Good, Simple Food...Served at Home, Made with a Smile

Coming home at day's end, I check the mailbox and trudge down the sidewalk, kissing my fingers at the new crocus budding bravely beside a pile of snow. Unlocking the door, I absorb the silence inside and tiptoe in, as though intruding on ghostly shadows that recede before my steps. Sunlit fingers walk over the quiet plants in the solarium and warm the worn floorboards that creak under my feet. Nudging the back door open, I lean against the doorjam and breathe in the scent of warmth and sun and distant hazy mountains.

I never know exactly how long I'm there, absorbing the Comforter's presence. Finally, though, a naughty sprite nudges my elbow, breaking my reverie. You'd better get crackin' on dinner, girl. it says. The rude thing. So, snapping to energetic life, I bustle into the kitchen armed with my laptop. Now, you may laugh all you want, but this is my most important kitchen implement. Not, as you may suppose, for recipes. Not, as you may suppose again, for feverish social networking. Nay. I crave music all day and cannot have it, so I must while preparing dinner. Beginning my favorite playlist, I ply my skill with spatula and knife all the more merrily. Sometimes, when my favorite song shimmers through the air, I begin dancing round the woodstove, through the living room, into the bedrooms and back to the kitchen, with a stalk of celery in one hand and a pot holder in the other. Stubbing my toe dampens things a bit and returns me contrite to my task.

What am I making??? Perhaps something like the following recipe. Let me know if you like it.

Something or Others

-Gather

• Thawed Phyllo Sheets
• 1 lb. ground meat of your choice
• 1/2 stick Butter, melted
• Flour
• Cheese (your choice)
• Onion
• Garlic
• Oil
• Milk
• Sour Cream

Cook your meat and season as you like it. Garlic and onion go well with just about anything, in my opinion.

Spread two sheets of phyllo on a large baking sheet and brush liberally with melted butter. You can add the grease from cooking the meat to your cup of butter as well. Add another two sheets and repeat.

Spoon half the meat onto the phyllo and position thin slices of cheese on top. Delicately fold the phyllo over the meat and brush the pocket with butter. You can then sprinkle with salt or pepper or put extra cheese on top.

Heat oven to 400 degrees and bake until pockets are brown and glowing. Each serves approximately one person.

Meanwhile, add a bit of oil and flour to the meat fragments in the skillet and brown the roux to a decent tan. Add milk to thin and a spoonful of sour cream and reduce to your desired thickness. Flavor with salt and pepper to taste.

-Variations

• French: Beef, Montreal steak spice mixture, and swiss cheese
• Mexican: Beef or pork, cumin, red or green chili, paprika, red pepper, cheddar cheese. Served with guacamole, lettuce, and diced tomatos.
• Italian: Turkey or sausage, tomato sauce, oregano, basil, and mozzarella cheese. Serve with artichoke hearts.

I think there are a gazillion more variations on Something or Others. Got any? Drop me a line.

Cheers!

Piggy Bank Portfolio: Diaper Daze

Well, it's definitely been longer than a month's time since last I posted a money saving tip. Soooooooooooo, here it is.

Baby in the cradle or on the way?

Cloth diapering saves oodles of money and eliminates harmful chemicals. Its drawback is lower convenience and higher outset cost. Dear mommy, if you have opted for cloth diapers, you are an original heroine!

As soon as you decide to ditch disposables, spread the word. Family and friends can help load you up with cloth diapers and do-dads. Some fortunate moms have even been given months of diaper service as a shower gift. (One can always dream, right?)

Hit commercial laundering services or diaper services with a phone call. Sometimes, they'll allow customers to purchase reusables by the pound.

The following are some links to disposable diaper purveyors:

Amazing Amazon
Kelly's Closet
Birth to Potty Current $269.95 special on 66 piece kit that will take a baby from birth to potty training.

Take Heart



"I am sure of this, that He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

 

~Philippian 1:6

 

Take heart, you mourning soul

Sorrow shattering your light

Oh, what, what can I say to make you whole?

Come sit on this hill and watch the coming night 

 

See the stars? They are a bridge

Between your heart and God’s

And those who bravely tread the ridge

Of this earthly measuring rod 

Dear heart, look to the fields

Washing to the glowing canvas

Yet, no pain is too small to be healed

By the Great Physician at last 

We sit upon a giant land

And feel as small

As a grain of silent sand

Lost in the ocean’s thrall 

But didn’t you know? You are

A pearl in the making…

Precious as a far off star

Wholeness woven from your breaking

Extreme Faith

I was nine or so when my Mom first told me the story of a young Jewish girl. She was about my age when the Nazis came and dragged her family away to a brutal concentration camp. Within weeks her family had perished, their smoke curling gray from the prison stacks. Somehow, one day, she found her way to a hole in the mighty, concertina covered wall, and faded through it like a ghostly shadow when the officers weren’t looking. She stumbled across a cave some miles away and crept gratefully into its blackness. Who knows what happened after that? Maybe the rains caused a landslide that buried the cave mouth. Or perhaps, she backed further and further in, terrified eyes fixed on the light until it grew too small to be seen. Then her hands could not feel their way back out.

 

Whatever the case, someone stumbled on that cave long after the Liberation. They found two things: one was the fragile skeleton of a child. The other was etched on the opposite wall, “My God, you are my all in all…”

 

What if God held out His hands and asked you to give up everything? If serving Him meant that you would live without light, love, happiness, and security. If it meant suffering day by day, never to marry, find friendship, or enjoy security: in short, to give up on all that humanity values, what would you say? How far will you take your faith?

 

“If any man comes after me, He must deny Himself, take up His cross and follow me.” God has called to to absorb ourselves in Him, burning our will as a sacrifice before Him. No personal goal shall supersede Him in our thoughts or activities. God loves us more than we can imagine and will not willingly cause us to suffer, but someday, He may allow persecution, physical suffering, and such relational tumult as may never be resolved in this life. We will have waived the right to even ask ‘why’.

 

Now is the time to evaluate our priorities. Are we holding tightly to a possession, relationship, or career? If so, we will resist God when He removes it from our grasp, instead of responding with trust and poise. When you lay down their last dream to follow hard after God, you might break. It’s like dying. Then, you will feel the breath of God like you never have before. Suddenly, He will be your all in all. Neither riches nor poverty will be able to move you.

 

So if God takes our dearest desires, and even the basic elements that seem to be unalienable human rights, if He beckons us into a labyrinthine cave, never again to see the light of day, will the skeleton of our will be found to testify, “You are all in all…”?

 

Note: I have researched the story in this article and cannot easily locate evidence to back it, so I make no claims regarding its authenticity. However, its effect is certainly a poignant one.

The Last Hope

Shattered, his eyes, molten butterflies
Wings stilled, on the waning bloom
One flicking flame in the ‘croaching gloom
And the sun fallen from the skies

 

Comrades’ shadows stained with red

Surround him where he stood

Where victory and life had fled

In the fields stained with blood

Why would death spare one man
While better warriors fell?
Never forget…only from ashes can
The golden Phoenix swell

So as the lonely soldier there stood
Final guard in the battle for good
And the evil vanguard crossing the ford
His eyes flickered alive as he raised his broken sword

 

From "On the Ship of Dreams" by Hannah Terrell

If

 

By Rudyard Kipling

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you, but none too much
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty second’ worth of distance run
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"

Introducing...Piggybank Portfolio

While politicians are busy plunging into the fiscal abyss, the average Joe (not to mention Jane), is discovering new ways to pinch the penny so tightly as to flatten Honest Abe. In honor of this praiseworthy endeavor, this blog is introducing - drum roll please - Piggybank Portfolio, a monthly post containing nutritional tips for the malnourished wallet.

For the month of January, having worn out the almighty dollar on turkey and cranberry sauce, chefs and moms may have sticker shock when it comes to store-bought cooking oil spray.

But wait!

Snag a half-gallon of veggie oil on sale price. Mix 5 oz. of oil with a grain alcohol (such as vodka, if you don't mind having it around the house for cooking-only purposes.) Give the mixture a shake and decant into a spray bottle. Same ol' Pam for approximately .50 a pop.

A penny for your thoughts. Drop me a line and maybe I'll put your frugality wisdom into the Piggybank Portfolio!

Some of these ideas are mine, some are time-honored money saving schemes. Some I heard, but couldn't tell from what source, for the life of me.