Do You Who?

I am almost laughing as I sit here thinking about writing this post.  Although I risk embarrassing myself, I am going to share something that has become something of an obsession. Ok, maybe not exactly an obsession, but it is definitely consuming more of my time than I would like to admit.  By the way, the blame for this lies completely with my daughters.  They just seemed to be having such a lovely time watching this show that my curiosity won out.  Yes, it is a TV show.  I'm just going to say it...I love Doctor Who.  For pete's sake, I may even be a Whovian.  (Did I really just type that???)  Now I am laughing for real.

Doctor Who.  Perhaps you've heard of it?  BBC TV series, originally started in the 60's and  brought back to life in 2005.  It's full of cheesy BBC-typical special effects, complete with aliens and time travel in a British 1950's blue police box/spaceship called the TARDIS. I won't even try to explain the show.  It just sounds too ridiculous.  Honestly, I would never have made it past the very first episode if my girls hadn't told me to just keep watching.  And watch it I have.  I am currently in Season 3 and am completely hooked.  So bizarre.  The only other time I have ever done this was a couple of summers ago when I watched every episode of The X-Files.  (Love me some Fox Mulder!)  Ok, so maybe I am a nerd.  I am sure that will be a shocking confession to all of you who know me.  :)

Maddy made this birthday card for Kyra. Only fellow Whovians will understand.

Begin with a Blessing

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last night the hordes descended on our house. It was the best kind of horde, one filled with good food, kids and laughter.  Every Sunday evening we get together with some of our favorite people in the world--2 families that we have known for so long that we can hardly remember a time when they weren't part of our lives.  In our hearts, they are family.   The ones who know us inside and out, who've seen us at our ugliest and love us anyway.  Friends who have come to our house with a bag of groceries when we were going through hard times, that laugh and cry with us. Friends who will drop everything to pray for us. These are friends who love our kids, their homes a safe place for our family to just be who they are. What precious gifts to us, these loud, fun, loving families. 

Next week, our family will be part of the descending horde as we switch houses weekly.  It will be the same...the giant pot of soup, yummy bread and a little something sweet. Decaf  and tea will be served up with lots of laughter and love.  We will speak together of all kinds of randomness, of things we are struggling with, of good things that God is doing.  It will be loud. Kids will be running around, watching videos on Ipads, playing games, wreaking general havoc.  But at the end of the evening, we will all gather in one (very crowded!) room to talk about our Father.  There is no "Christian" book to discuss, no workbook to fill out, no dvd to watch.  It is just a time when kids and adults alike sit down to talk, share, vent, debate, laugh, cry and, at the end, to pray together before heading out the door for another busy 7 days.  What a wonderful way to begin the week.  Ah, the blessings of true friends.

Make Your Own

There are about a gazillion recipes out there that use condensed soups.  Really, a gazillion.  Just look on Pinterest. :)  Have you ever looked at the ingredients on a can of Campbell's Cream of Chicken?  Yikes!  All kinds of nasty.  Although I try to avoid condensed soups, chicken broccoli casserole is one of Shelby's favorites, so I do occasionally use them. To avoid all of the ingredient nastiness in the canned version, I tried out lots of recipes and came up with a version of cream of chicken soup that I think is pretty darn good. I don't measure, so I will try to give you approximations.  Just adjust to whatever tastes good to you.


Cream of Chicken Soup (substitute for Campbell's condensed soup)

In a saucepan:
1-2 cups of chicken stock, diced onion (about 1/4 cup or so), diced garlic (couple of cloves), seasonings*

*seasonings--salt and pepper, little bit of paprika, chopped fresh herbs like parsley/rosemary/oregano/sage/marjoram/thyme (use dried if that's what you have)

Simmer until the onions are nice and soft and rather translucent.
Add some milk and simmer a bit more.

In a separate bowl:

Whisk together milk and flour until smooth.  (This is to thicken the soup, so I would maybe do around a cup of milk and a few tablespoons of flour.)

Add to the stock and whisk it so there aren't any lumps.  It should thicken nicely.  
Taste it and add salt and pepper, if needed.

*If you don't have poultry seasoning, just mix together equal amounts of rosemary, oregano, sage, ginger, marjoram, thyme.  Put in a glass jar for whenever a recipe calls for it. 
*If you use something like Better than Bouillon, you could add a bit of that, too, if it seems like it needs a little more flavor. Never heard of Better than Bouillon? Look here

*For a gluten free version, you can use cornstarch to thicken.

FYI…Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup ingredient list…

Ingredients (29):

Chicken Stock, Wheat Flour, Chicken Fat, Chicken Meat Cooked, Cream, Corn Starch, Canola Oil,Corn Oil, Cottonseed Oil, Margarine, Chicken Mechanically Separated, Salt, Soybean(s) Oil, Water,Beta Carotene, Calcium Caseinate, Flavor(s) Chicken, Chicken Powder, Dairy Blend Dried,Whey Dried, Food Starch Modified, Monosodium Glutamate, Flavoring Natural, Sodium Phosphate, Soy Protein Concentrate, Soy Protein Isolate, Spice(s) Extractive, Whey, Yeast Extract

Give It a Rest

In typical Montana fashion, we've gone from nice and warm to suddenly cold.  Hello, Winter! For once, the weather guy was actually correct in his predictions. We spent the start of our week outside, enjoying the beautiful fall temps and getting things ready for the coming freeze.

It was a lovely season of growing and harvesting for us.  There isn't anything quite as wonderful as picking your dinner out of your very own gardens!  Here are a few pictures from spring to fall.

Got lots of kale and chard. I will miss going out every morning to pick greens for my smoothies!

New strawberry patch.  It did really well.

Tying up the raspberries

Ready for the compost bin :)

Our tomatoes did well, but I think I will plant cherry tomatoes next year.

Beets!!!  

We had an abundance of lettuce and greens. Daily salads during the summer.  Lovely!

Fresh carrots are the best!

Kyra's radishes. :)

New little plants.  Had to cover them with a net. Birds love berries, too.

My herb garden did so well! I was able to have fresh herbs all summer and still have lots to dry or freeze for winter.

Little carrots

Buttercrunch lettuce.  Sooooo good!!!!

Freezing rosemary in olive oil.  Great way to preserve your herbs for winter!

Putting the gardens to bed...

Got the garlic all planted and mulched

In the process of cleaning out the beds

Straw for mulch and compost bin

And so the gardens are all ready for their long winter sleep. Vegetable beds are cleaned out, garlic is planted.  Our herbs and fruit, in another garden on the side of the house, are looking rather sad and cold.  I admit that I cried a little when it was all done.  Thank you, Father, for blessing our little gardens with such a bountiful harvest. 

Goodnight, Garden.  Until next spring...

Desires of Your Heart

My kids are growing up and are becoming such beautiful, amazing young adults.  They are beginning to discover who they are, what they are passionate about, and what paths they may choose to take as they get older.  It is a lovely thing to watch.  Jay and I are proud of our munchkins, believing that they've turned out wonderfully--in spite of having the two of us for parents!  We are completely imperfect parents, but we have a God who loves our kids even more than we do and for that, we are so very, very grateful.

As I was looking at that cute little Christmas photo, I noticed Kyra holding her doll.  Since Kyra was a tiny, little girl she has loved the people of Africa.  Jay and I know that this is a passion that God has written on her heart since the day He formed her, a desire of her heart that comes from the Father.  Every baby doll she chose was black.  She would draw pictures of our family and she would color her skin black.  :)  We thought it was rather funny, but we could also see that she has a real connection to Africa. The time she spent last year helping in a Filipino orphanage confirmed her longing.  Her heart is beautiful, loving, compassionate...aching for those in poverty, for the orphans, for the homeless.  Her recent decision to become a lay midwife is wrapped up in her passion to love and serve those who have so little. She knows the desires of her heart and is trusting God to be the lamp to light her path. I am humbled, touched, and so proud to be her mama.  

The past couple of years have been a time of rediscovering myself.  Being so young when we started our family, I spent my 20's and 30's raising kids.  My passions and interests are no longer the same as they were before I had kids, so I've had to look inward and figure out what I want my life to be when my kids are moving on in their lives.  It is simultaneously intimidating and exciting.  Many, many times I have prayed this scripture over my own life and the lives of my family. 

         "Delight yourself also in the LORD; and he shall give you the desires of your heart."

My prayer on this and every single day is that the desires of our hearts come from Him.  As He places them there, step out in faith. He will never leave or forsake you.  Trust Him with your heart.  He loves you so.

Fruitful

Our raspberries, so remarkably hardy that they flourish in spite of the cold Montana winters, went crazy this year.  It could possibly have something to do with the fact that we got them cleaned out, fed and faithfully kept them watered (as opposed to last summer's weed filled, overgrown mess).  The point is, however, that they did incredibly well, spread like wildfire and produced lots of yummy berries.  It was a good year for harvest.

A few days ago, we had our first frost. We covered the gardens and hoped that everything survived. That frosty morning, as I was looking out the window while drinking a nice, hot cup of coffee, I noticed a lone raspberry on one of the canes.  Now this particular cane is one of our oldest and is quite the worse for wear.  In fact, we weren't even certain it was alive this spring.  It has many browned leaves and isn't as tall or lush as the others.  What amazes me most about this old, raggedy raspberry cane is it's fruitfulness.  It outproduced all of them with it's sweet, wonderful berries.

This ugly, sad looking little bush made me think of a scripture in the book of John.
   
              "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit."

God wants to use my past (and even those things that aren't exactly the distant past) for His glory. Every  decision, act or behavior--good and bad-- makes me who I am today.  All of those ugly things inside me that God has redeemed, every scar that remains even after He heals my hurt and my heart, every tear He has wiped away, every victory that I can claim and every joy and blessing that He has given...all of these things are my responsibility to use.

There are days when I feel like that raggedy raspberry cane looks...brown, old, small, worthless, useless.  Tired.  Days when I feel like I have nothing left to give--fruitless.   But then I am reminded of His mercies that are new every morning, of the miracle that is my heart, of His grace that is greater than all of my sin. I remember these things and find myself extending grace and love where I had once been judging and frustrated. All of those things that the enemy tries to use against me, my God uses for His glory.  He sees beauty where I see ugliness.  He tells me to love others as He loves me.  Be Fruitful.

Eat Your Greens!

Gardening in Montana is challenging, but so far this year we are doing quite well.  Lots of yummy greens out there. It's quite satisfying to prepare a meal with veggies grown in your own backyard. Last night we had mustard greens with our dinner and they were absolutely delightful.  I thought I'd share with you the way I prepared them.

Here are the little sprouts, trying hard to survive snow, below freezing temps and hailstorms.

Thankfully, they persevered.

After bringing in the freshly picked greens, I soaked them in a big bowl of water several times.  Just swish them around, drain the bowl and repeat.  Once that was done, I rinsed each leaf and put them in the colander to drain.  Trust me, unless you like your greens gritty, you'll want to rinse them well. 

Being a Texan and all, I decided to cook up some bacon to go in the greens. Applegate Farms has really good nitrate-free bacon and is by far the best bacon we can get at the store.   Anyhoo...I chopped the bacon along with some onions and fried it up in my favorite skillet.

While the bacon and onions were cooking, I chopped up the washed greens.  Once the bacon/onion was browned I added the chopped greens, a few at a time.  Greens pretty much cook down to nothing, so I had that colander stuffed with as many as I could fit.  I let them wilt a bit in the skillet before adding the next handful, until all of the greens would fit in the skillet.

Once the greens had wilted, I added a couple of teaspoons of apple cider vinegar and salt to taste and let it simmer for a couple of minutes.

Next came chicken broth.  I think I ended up putting in around 2 cups. I let that simmer for 15-20 minutes, basically until the greens were tender and good.

After simmering and cooking out most of the liquid, the greens just needed a little more salt and a bit of pepper.  You can do that to taste.  Here is a pic of the finished greens...

Honestly, these were sooooooo tasty and good!  I hope you give them a try.