[Courtney] Hello everyone and welcome back.

My name is Minister Courtney and I am here with my spouse, Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple.

And I am here with some very exciting news.

A life update, if you will.

An achievement, a celebration.

I have become an ordained minister.

I have become an ordained minister.

But I have not become a minister of just any church, oh no, I have become an ordained minister of the Church of Gnome, which some of you listeners out there know is perfect for me.

[Royce] Many listeners are not surprised.

[Courtney] Many listeners are not surprised.

If you are surprised, please go listen to the episode: A Christian Boy Broke Up With Courtney Because of Gnomes, because that’s how it started.

That was the beginning of the end.

So this actually all started when, truthfully, one of our most religious friends just saw, like, an ad on Facebook or something about the Church of Gnome and he knows me oh so well.

So I got a series of text messages saying, “Omg, you’ve got to do this.” And I did.

I did have to do this.

I really feel like my entire life has been leading up to this point.

[Royce] Your life does have a heavy presence of gnomes, rivaling that of some of our Scandinavian friends.

[Courtney] [laughs] It– Yeah.

[laughs] I don’t know how this happened, but I often tell people that the gnomes chose me.

This was not an active choice that I made.

And, as silly as this sounds, as much of a joke as this may seem, the Church of Gnome is a registered church.

I have obtained my certificate of ordination, hereby affirming me as an ordained minister of the Church of Gnome.

I have a little ID card that I can fit in my wallet that has a gnome on it and says ordained minister.

And, of course, a letter of good standing from the church itself proclaiming that I am authorized to perform all duties and sacraments typically associated with a ministerial role, including, but not limited to, conducting wedding ceremonies, funerals and other spiritual services as permitted, within the bounds of the law.

[Royce] And that was one thing I was going to ask you, because I don’t think I thought about it when you decided you were going to become a minister of the Church of Gnome.

Is this strictly a US thing, or do other countries have very similar laws?

[Courtney] In terms of, like officiating weddings?

[Royce] Yeah.

[Courtney] I don’t know too much about other countries, but I know that there are a lot of US states where you do have to have an ordained minister to officiate your wedding.

Which is often very frustrating for people who are not religious.

Like, I know personally staunch atheists who have still had to get a minister to officiate their wedding.

And in a lot of situations like that, it’s like one of their friends or someone important in their life just goes online to become an ordained minister at whatever church will allow you to just fill out a form online and become a minister.

But, like every state does have slightly different marriage laws.

I mean, we went over some of those when we did talk about marriage laws.

And I think we’ve also got a future episode that we’ve been talking about for quite some time about just like weird wedding laws in this country, and like the weirdest ways to wed, cause there are some goofy ones out there, like old laws that are still on the books.

[Royce] Or random pieces of taxidermy.

[Courtney] And that too.

Spoiler alert, Royce.

[Royce] Tune in sometime in the future to figure out what that was about.

[Courtney] We haven’t recorded this episode yet, but we’ve been talking about doing it for over a year, because that’s how it goes.

But some of you may be asking, I mean those of you who have been listening long enough to know my gnomish proclivities are also probably aware of the fact that we did not have a wedding and we in fact got married in a state where we did not need to have an officiant at all in order to get married.

So some of you may be wondering why someone like me would get ordained.

[Royce] Fun.

[Courtney] Fun.

But mostly, I mean yeah, there are people in states who do have to have an ordained minister be a wedding officiant.

I think that is a silly requirement.

I don’t think that should be a law anywhere.

[Royce] And so you’re going to solve it through silly means.

[Courtney] Yes, I will be your ordained minister.

I will officiate your weddings.

I would love to officiate an ace wedding.

I’d love it.

[Royce] Is it required for you to wear the hat when you’re officiating?

[Courtney] It’s recommended, but above all else, they say, it’s up to, you know, the couple, the people whose ceremony you’re presiding over, which of course makes sense.

But yes, I do have my religious head covering: pointy gnome hat.

If you want me to wear it, I will.

But I assure you it’s not even the most interesting hat that I own.

But yeah, are you kidding me?

I would love to officiate an ace wedding.

I’d love to officiate queer weddings of any kind.

I’d love to officiate non-legally binding ceremonies for people who still cannot legally wed like polyamorous family units.

Even if you aren’t getting, like, government married, I’ll do a ceremony for just a personal and social familial recognition of a queerplatonic partnership.

I’ll do best friend ceremony, even if you don’t label yourself as QPR, I will do all of it.

I will do any of it.

I, I’ll do.

I’ll do funerals.

[Courtney] I mean, as silly and goofy as this sounds, I do actually have a lot of experience speaking with people about like end of life things.

So I promise we will set the tone that you desire for whatever spiritual services.

In fact, I do believe I am already booked to run a vow renewal next year, which I am over the moon about.

I have been a public speaker in many facets at multiple times in my life, so people have paid me good money to speak in front of crowds.

So this is very much in my wheelhouse.

If you want it ridiculous, we can make it ridiculous.

If you want it sentimental, we can make it sentimental.

[Courtney] The government is not, nor has it ever been, a good judge of who can and cannot get married or who can and cannot access certain rights or privileges.

So I’m super happy to do ceremonies that aren’t by the books, I suppose.

[Courtney] But if you are at a point in your life where getting, like, legally married is going to be a benefit for you in your life, and that’s something you want, I am so happy to lend my gnomian credentials to the affair.

Because the vow renewal I have been asked to do is not an ace vow renewal.

It is a queer vow renewal, which is a good start.

But I think we’ve got to get some ace events under my belt.

That’s really what I want.

And I’m not going to charge for these services, with the exception of, like, if you’re very far away from me, you’ll probably have to pay for my travel expenses.

But there are, like, ministers who, for wedding officiation, will, like, charge money to do that.

Or people will charge to, like, write the ceremony and whatnot.

No, I won’t do that.

If you can get me to the ceremony, I will do it.

Whatever it is that you would like me to do.

And we’ll have a great time!

I hope, I wish.

[Courtney] And I think now at this point I’m well on my way to becoming one of the most peculiarly credentialed gnome experts, because now I have the spiritual certification, but I do also have the academic credentials.

Because I did, in fact, attend Icelandic Elf School.

I have a diploma signed by the headmaster of Elf School.

That was one of the weirdest experiences of my life and I loved every single minute of it, because that’s exactly what I wanted out of Elf School.

That’s exactly what I want out of a– a gnomian life is just for it to be as strange and unusual as possible.

In fact, the headmaster of elf school told me that I was perhaps his best student ever and he hired me on the spot to write for an upcoming book that’s going to get published.

[Royce] Have you done that writing yet?

[Courtney] No, but I– We have to do a research trip.

I told him we’d get some very specific photographs that we are not going to be able to get until October, so I have at least until then to do the writing that I have been paid to do.

So, yeah, that’s most of it.

We didn’t have all that much for this episode today, so I guess let’s just talk about how, how to live one’s best gnome-ian life.

I mean, as I said, part of it to me is to have as weird a life as possible.

That’s something very important to me and feels very gnome-ish to me.

Gnomes are weird little guys.

But also feels very nature-heavy to me.

We’ve been doing a lot of nature, a lot of gardening.

You mostly do outdoor gardening, and then I have way too many bonsai trees now.

[Royce] Yeah, well, you’ve been trimming and maintaining the trees and I’ve been propagating the cuttings.

We actually have some third generation trees already.

They– little ficus trees propagate really quickly.

[Courtney] So many little ficus trees.

[Royce] You have had some cuttings that have rooted off of prior cuttings at this point.

[Courtney] Yeah, they’re prolific.

And I love them so much.

But bonsai have been, like, my biggest plant hobby for me.

I have my two like large, well-established trees, and then dozens of little tiny trees that we’re working on.

But you’ve been a lot more diverse with your plant experiments and a lot of those are going really well.

So tell us about them.

How’s that going?

[Royce] It’s a mix.

I think, with plants, and I was also going to lump mushrooms into gnomes, because I feel like every shirt or pin or piece of artwork, or I mean even this certificate of ordination here, you rarely see gnomes without mushrooms next to them.

Possibly for scale?

[Courtney] [laughs] Well, I learned in Elf School that– And elf, mind you, is like an umbrella term, is like an umbrella term in Iceland for, like, things that we would split out into gnome, elf, troll, different creatures.

Kind of like how in Sweden everything is called a troll.

A lot of magical things are called trolls that we would subdivide into more specific categories.

But oh yeah, I learned all the different types of elves, including little like flower elves that are just tiny little things, and then slightly bigger ones, and and and then you have the hidden people who are the same size and shape as we are and look just like us.

So it is always interesting when there is a mushroom for scale, because I’ve learned there are gnomes and elves of all sizes.

But I am partial to the little ones, I think.

[Royce] I think that’s what most of the varied depictions around the house are.

You have a collection of gnomes at this point.

[Courtney] How did that happen?

[Royce] Some indoor, some outdoor.

[Courtney] Yeah, we do have a cute little gnome riding on a snail in the garden that says welcome to our garden.

I do like him.

Also shout out you know who you are to the MarketplACE vendor whom I purchased something totally unrelated from, and they fully sent me, like, a Gothic gnome wood cutting that isn’t even in their shop and I did not even order.

But it’s got skulls and a scythe and hourglass and it’s just a gnome.

And I was like, oh, this is shockingly perfect for me.

I love it so much I’m looking at it right now.

It is– It is hanging up in the room that we record in.

[Royce] But yeah, growing things has been a big mix.

Part of that is finally deciding that, yes, grass sucks, how do we replace it?

And going through that whole process of finding better ground covers that grow in the various levels of sun and getting them started without spending a ton of money.

I’ve been trying to work on things with little bursts of activity and then give things time to grow and see what works and what doesn’t.

And then just refine that.

So there’s a lot of letting wild things grow and cataloging them and cutting some back and figuring all that out.

There’s been a lot of scattering of just native wildflower seeds and seeing what pops up and occasionally shifting them around.

[Courtney] Would you still classify your gardening as chaotic neutral gardening?

Because that’s what you were calling it a couple years ago, but we’ve also been refining some along the way.

[Royce] It is more organized now.

That was more when I was pretty strictly just working with whatever the birds brought, basically.

Whatever was just growing in the yard.

[Courtney] The volunteers.

[Royce] I have a decent seed collection at this point, and even that, learning how to germinate things properly under the right conditions, takes some trial and error here and there.

Last year was our first big harvest year, like where we actually grew a lot of produce.

[Courtney] Yeah, definitely, first year where we were, like, feeding ourselves daily with food from the garden and also, at various points, were like foisting extra tomatoes upon people.

[Royce] Yeah, and last year was more diverse.

This year I had some early season seed problems.

And I think I just remember being particularly busy around that time of year.

I felt more prepared last year and did things in a more spread out way.

We have more stuff this year because we have an entire large bed of turnips and possibly radishes if they come in a little bit later.

But then also like 40 tomato plants because of an accident.

[Courtney] Oops, what a happy accident.

[Royce] And a lot of other greens, probably broccoli.

[Courtney] Well then, we’ve also got our massive mulberry tree, which has been very kind to us this year.

[Royce] This year has been really good for that.

[Courtney] It’s been so good.

And our mock strawberries that just started growing in our yard we have just let, and now those have exploded and are everywhere.

And so I actually baked as an experiment a mulberry and mock strawberry pie and it was actually pretty good.

And I still had enough mulberries left over to make like some little puff pastry, sort of like breakfast-y desserts with them.

And we’ve still got a massive bowl of mulberries in the fridge right now just to snack on.

So that’s been kind to us this year.

[Royce] Yeah, the mock strawberries were something that just grew naturally.

I think the mulberry bush is also something that grew naturally.

That’s the bird’s fault.

There are little mulberry trees trying to grow everywhere.

[Courtney] Or the bird’s blessings.

But yeah, it’s bigger than our house now.

That mulberry bush is huge.

[Royce] It’s a big enough bush that it needs trimming periodically.

And I think we actually have the smallest type of mulberry bush too, because there are three major kinds, I think.

[Courtney] That’s the smallest kind?

The one that’s taller than our house?

[Royce] Uh-huh.

[Courtney] Wow, because we can’t even pick them all, because we can’t reach them, and you won’t let me up on a ladder.

[laughs] For my own safety, to be fair.

[Royce] On the mushroom front, that’s still just a lot of slow and steady progress.

I did get a couple of wine caps, which was exciting, but I’m still waiting for beds to like, fully form and actually remain season by season.

[Courtney] Yeah, growing outdoor mushrooms is very cool.

But then those like indoor bucket mushrooms are also very weird.

[Royce] It’s been a struggle to get mushrooms growing in buckets and not have some kind of contamination.

I’ve had a lot of trouble with fungus gnats.

And I mean, sometimes mushrooms need a lot of humidity and it can be tricky to get the mushrooms to grow and not have other forms of mold growing.

So that’s still a work in progress.

[Courtney] How do we impress upon the listeners exactly how absurd our parsley is?

[Royce] Well, the other day, out of curiosity, I just searched, like, how tall does parsley get?

And there were some estimates that were like, oh, depending on the variety, it might be one to two feet, maybe two to three feet tall, something around that.

And so I grabbed a tape measure and measured our five foot tall parsley stalk.

[Courtney] It’s five feet tall!

And the stalks are so thick.

[Royce] It is kind of in its final stages.

Parsley’s a biennial plant, I think, is the classification.

It grows leaves the first year and seeds the next year.

So we’ll have a ton of seeds over summer and then it’ll probably die back.

[Courtney] It’s a massive bush.

It is the weirdest thing.

So yeah, if any of you have any, like, really great parsley heavy recipes that are vegan or can be veganized, please drop them.

[chuckles] Because I can only drink so much homemade parsley soda.

But yeah, I mean, alongside growing a lot more of our own food, we’ve also just been learning how to make a wider variety of things.

[Royce] That’s true.

That’s one side effect from going vegan is you have to kind of take a step back and look at everything again.

[Courtney] You should talk about the seitan, because that’s, I think, one of the most exciting kitchen revelations we have ever had in the entire history of our relationship.

[Royce] Oh yeah, seitan.

There are a lot of different ways to make seitan.

I think I mentioned it once when we were first starting that I had– I don’t like to follow instructions.

Or I don’t like to follow complicated instructions.

With cooking.

It’s also with, I mean, with some of our gardening things.

One of the reasons why getting mushrooms down is taking so long is that, if I do everything to the letter, one, I would probably need to get more sophisticated equipment.

But two, I just wouldn’t do it as frequently.

I wouldn’t try growing things as frequently because it’d be more of a hassle and I wouldn’t want to.

So a lot of this is about finding a process that I can do in perpetuity and that is going to involve finding a particular way to do things.

And so, with seitan, I wanted something that was going to be fairly low effort.

And so you can get a big bag of vital wheat gluten online, or, if you have a store with a big enough variety, it’s pretty cheap.

[Royce] It’s actually probably one of the least expensive forms of protein we get.

Because what you’re buying is wheat that’s had all the starch worked out of it basically, in a bag of just like very fine flour basically.

And all you really do is mix some kind of seasoning into that, like what you would use for a rub for meat or something like that.

Add in a little bit of some type of flour that isn’t going to rise, like something made from legumes or rice or something like that.

And then add the same amount of water as you had vital wheat gluten.

And it’s like the opposite of trying to make a loaf of bread.

You want it– You want to make a dough ball, while kneading it as little as possible.

It needs to be fully incorporated, but you don’t want to really work it because you’ll– you end up causing it to rise too much.

You’ll end up with too many air pockets or have the gluten overdeveloped.

You’ll cause it to puff up when you really want it to stay dense.

[Courtney] Yeah, it’s not supposed to be a bread consistency.

It’s supposed to be more like a meat-like consistency.

[Royce] Yeah, but that’s basically the process is: put a few quick dry ingredients in a bowl, add a bit of water, work it together as quickly as you can, and then spread it fairly thin on a baking sheet, and stick it in the oven for half an hour.

And after it comes out of the oven it will have risen a little bit, but should be pretty dense and pretty firm.

And you could go ahead and just cook with it right after that.

I guess you wouldn’t even necessarily need to do that.

We tend to cook it twice.

So we make the seitan first, which is what I’ve described so far, baking a little dense loaf of it.

[Courtney] And normally several servings at a time, so that we can cook like a few different things with it.

[Royce] Yeah, and then we tend to cut that into fairly small, bite-sized pieces, and let it marinate in some liquid overnight.

And then use that in a stir fry or something like that.

[Courtney] And it’s so good.

[Royce] To finish cooking it.

[Courtney] It is so good, it is so cheap, it is easy once you know what you’re doing.

And you can just make so many things with it.

Honestly, this Gnomian minister says hail seitan.

[Royce] It has been a good addition to tofu, which is kind of our standard that we have around for a lot of things.

Occasionally we’ll find something else, like some tempeh, which is a little pricier.

[Courtney] Yeah, well it’s– It’s just such a good protein heavy option.

Very inexpensive but also just really, really versatile.

And I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but I did like a meat pie experiment last December where I was trying to find a really good meat pie recipe that was completely vegan.

But not only did I have to figure out what the filling and the meat substitute was going to be, but I hadn’t really made pie crust since going vegan, so I wanted to figure out how to make a solid pie crust again.

[Courtney] And the best pie, our favorite one, and the one that I ended up serving our D&D party when we started Curse of Strahd is just mostly seitan.

It’s seitan and leek and spices.

And somehow that ended up being like the tastiest, meatiest little pies.

And we tried so many different things.

We tried lentil based things, we tried tofu, we tried actually buying various meat substitutes from the store, like vegan meat crumbles, vegan, you know, chicken substitutes, and still just the seitan that you made out of vital wheat gluten flour ended up being the best one.

And cheapest to make.

And fastest and easiest of all the pies recipes to make too.

[Royce] Yeah it does.

[Courtney] So yeah, wins all around.

[Royce] Compared to a lot of other things, one of the things that we’ve always had trouble with is getting vegan sources of protein to get crispy.

I feel like that’s often a struggle.

We’ve gotten better about making crispy tofu, but that took us a bit.

[Courtney] Oh yeah, and like the air fryer helps so much.

[Royce] Yeah, but seitan cooks up really well.

It also takes in flavor.

It helps that, you know, you put some seasoning into the flour in the beginning and then you also marinate it and then if you’re cooking it in a stir fry, which is what we usually do, it’s also getting some additional flavor from the food or the seasonings around it.

I don’t remember what my math was, I think– I think we were making about a pound of it for, I don’t know, 50 cents-ish?

[Courtney] Amazing.

And like that’s a lot of servings of protein.

Gosh, not to change the subject again.

But now I’m looking at that little gnome and now I’m trying to figure out how many little gnomes we actually have hidden around the house in different places.

It’s a good number.

I’ve got a gnome pin cushion that I got in Sweden.

I’ve got my little grim reaper gnome.

[Royce] You’ve got the witches.

[Courtney] [gasps] The witches!

I almost forgot about the witches.

They were too suspicious for me not to buy them.

They were just at the grocery store closest to our house.

Clearly gnomes.

This was like leading up to Halloween.

Very clearly gnomes, but they were labeled as witches on the sale tag.

[Royce] They had some, like, Halloweeny attire.

[Courtney] They had like a witch hat on but it was like covering their eyes and they had the nose and the beard and it’s like that is very clearly a gnome.

But no, witches.

So we– yes, we’ve got the two witches.

It’s another thing about gnomes: you should be weird, you should grow your own food, enjoy nature, but you should also be at least a little bit suspicious.

Got a couple little clay gnomes at a Renaissance festival and put them in my curio cabinet.

[Courtney] I did find– there was that one day that I was in such a mood that I was like, “I have to be in a forest right now, I have to go and I need to find a walnut.” That was my mission for the day was “I have to find a walnut in a forest.” So I ended up going to an arboretum and I did find walnuts and I collected them and picked them up in my little scavenger bag.

But their gift shop just had two gnomes, so I had to get those, of course, bring home with my forest walnuts.

[Courtney] We mentioned the garden one.

I’ve got my gay little gnome from Iceland.

The Icelandic Knitting Association made these adorable little gnome guys, hand knitted with like rainbow hat, rainbow pointy hat.

Very cute, has a little charm that says, “Made with love.” I did just impulsively buy some sculpting clay several months ago and did just immediately start sculpting little like video game characters.

And for someone who has never sculpted with clay before, I didn’t think they were half bad.

So now I’m thinking about those little clay gnomes I have and thinking maybe I need to start making clay gnomes.

I can make little ace gnomes.

That would be cute.

As if I don’t have enough projects right now.

[Courtney] So, yeah, I think that’s all.

Keeping it light today, casual, fun, goofy.

One thing to note, because we’re about to end off and, as you listeners well know, we like to end with a featured MarketplACE vendor of the week, we have added an extra category to our MarketplACE for professional services.

Because we’ve already had people on the MarketplACE who just haven’t had a really good checkbox, who provide all sorts of different services like coaching or sensitivity reading.

So we’re primarily adding this for those folks who have already been there and could benefit from that additional category.

There have also been a couple of you who have reached out wanting to add your own shop, where this would fit in better than our other current categories.

[Courtney] But I figured, what the heck?

I’m gonna put myself on the MarketplACE for my gnome officiation services.

I am so serious about this, if you are, I want to officiate an ace event.

Wedding or not, government implications or not.

I want to do it.

For the cost of my travel, I will do whatever event you want me to.

And maybe I’ll even throw in a little ace clay gnome if I figure out how to sculpt those.

But that is going to be all for today.

So thank you all, as always, for being here.

We will talk to you all next time.

And until then, gnomish blessings to you all.