Warrior Sisters Camping Trip

Most of my friends are amazing women. Women who inspire me every day with how strong they are, both mentally and physically. For example, two of my friends, Rachel and Sam, started a free, all-women's self-defense non-profit organization called Warrior Sisters. They created it from the ground up without even knowing that much about self-defense before they started. Now in it's third year, Warrior Sisters trains about 20 women each week at their regular ongoing women's classes, and has regular 6-week cycles for teens. The organization has also expanded and has active chapters in Tulsa, New York, and British Columbia. Sam, Rachel, and I, along with two of our other friends, Elizabeth and Becky, all volunteer as organizers and trainers. It's an overall amazing, community-oriented organization and has helped so many women transform how they carry themselves in this world, and armed them with the ability to defend themselves verbally and physically from the daily onslaught of patriarchy that we as women always face. If you feel so inclined to participate or donate, please follow the link above!

These are badasses.

In addition to training together, we also love just hanging out together because there's something so powerful about being with a group of strong women. Last June, before I took off for my summer job, we were all able to get out for an overnight camping trip together at Fall Creek in Oregon. It was the end of the school year (3 of us are also teachers) and it was that time! Time to head out side, get rained on, change a tire in the mud, have a mouse eat through your food that you thought was safe in the truck, attempt to go barefoot running in the rain on gravel, and do some dipping in some pretty frigid early-summer water. We got a little bit of sun, too. And we had some really great fires and delicious food!

Pineapple Chicken Casserole over rice

For dinner one night, I brought along one of the meals I'd dehydrated a while ago and stuck in my freezer. A new recipe, too! It's a Pineapple Chicken Casserole and it's the most elaborate recipe I've created myself without basing it off another recipe. And it turned out just how I wanted it to! We ate it over rice to stretch it a little further since there were five of us, and the recipe I made was only for four people. But if you follow the quantities in the recipe it should be enough for 4 people to eat without rice. Everyone loved it!