Honey Mustard Dip

Our local grocery store had samples before Thanksgiving, and one of them was for Bison's new Honey Mustard Dip. It is delicious! Last night I decided to try and make something similar and found this recipe on-line at everydaycook.com:

1/2 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
3 tablespoons honey

Just whisk everything together. I eye-balled the ingredients and it come out great. I would like to try it with dijon mustard also sometime. this is my kind of recipe - cheap, easy, delicious. Enjoy!

Missions & Ministries - Part 4

Today's focus is The Rochester Family Mission. (www.rochesterfamilymission.com) I met the director, Barbara Thomas, a few years ago when our church hosted a missions conference. The mission's outreaches include food distribution, youth programs, tutoring and educational programs, and RICE (Rochester Institute of Christian Education). A couple from our church has volunteered there for years, so I have confidence that this is an organization that is doing the Lord's work with integrity and responsible stewardship.

C. S. Lewis

I have been listening to "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis on audio cassette. As always, he manages to express things with clarity and simplicity. Here is a quote that especially jumped out at me:

"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul."

Ouch!

Missions & Ministries- Part 3

Today's focus is a radio show aimed at working women, "The Christian Working Woman" with Mary Whelchel. (www.christianworkingwoman.org) In addition to her daily radio show, every summer Mary and her assistant Lucinda travel to Africa for 2 weeks to minister to women there. Part of that trip involves taking gifts and materials to distribute. Additionally, as opportunities arise, the ministry will do special aid projects. An example is Haiti. After the earthquake, TCWW located a couple of families in Haiti that had been seriously affected by the earthquake. All the special donations went directly to those families. TCWW combines evangelism and discipleship in down to earth ways that are biblically sound and easy to understand and remember,

Missions & Ministries- Part 2.

Another organization high on my list is Logoi. (www.logoi.org) The founder, Les Thompson, was born in Cuba to missionary parents, and lived there until they were asked to leave in the 1960's. He is a missionary, pastor, and author. The ministry is based in Miami and their main goal is equipping Spanish speaking pastors and believers with sound Christian materials. They hold pastor's conferences in Cuba, Latin America and South America. They also have a newly developed website where Spanish speaking pastors can make a wish list and English speaking believers can make those wish lists a reality. I have not explored their new site much yet, but it seems to have great potential and to be using the power of the internet to link believers around the world, to the glory of God.

Missions & Ministries- Part 1

Yesterday, Little Man's Father & I went to a missions conference. At first, I wondered why it had been scheduled in December, when everyone is accelerating toward Christmas. After listening to the speakers, my thoughts and attitude had been re-aligned. Missions is all about glorifying God and telling people that they can have peace with God because of Jesus. Hearing about various mission endeavors in various parts of the world was such an antidote to the commercialization of Christmas that starts before Halloween and increases until everyone is sick of the holiday before it even gets here. How sad. Don't get me wrong - I love all the tradition and trimmings and I'm busy shopping and decorating and moving through the various celebrations of the season. But in the midst of it, I'm trying to keep a place of peace and stillness and trying to take time to focus on the incarnation of our Lord and all its implications.

As part of that, I thought I would focus on some of the mission & ministry endeavors that I've become aware of, in no particular order. The first one is "Come Over and Help", which I heard about for the first time yesterday. Their website is www.coah.org. Their area of work is Eastern Europe and countries that were formerly communist. They don't have missionaries - instead, they partner with churches and ministries that are already established and help them in whatever way is needed to carry out their work. The areas the speaker highlighted yesterday are pastor training, prison ministry, orphanages, church building and humanitarian aid.

Celtic Advent

In the Celtic Christian tradition, Advent is a full 40 days of preparation, similar to Lent. In "The Celtic Daily Prayer" book by the Northumbria Community, it is described as a time of repentance, humbling and interior "housecleaning". John the Baptist's warning was to prepare a way for the Lord by making a clear and level path, getting rid of boulders (the things we have done that we should not have) and filling in the potholes (the things we should have done and failed to do).

In the past, I have only noticed Advent on Sundays when we lit a candle at church in the Advent wreath. I really love this idea of Celtic Advent as a way to spiritually prepare for the holiday season. In googling "Celtic Advent", I found the following at www.wellsprings.org.uk:

Opening Responses
Reader	Days of heavy clouds stifling the sunlight the world burdened by greyness and gloom
ALL	OPEN OUR EYES, LORD TO THE COMING OF YOUR LIGHT LIFTING THE BURDEN OF DARKNESS FROM OUR LIVES.
Reader	Chillness that seeps deep into bones hearts and spirits rigid with frost-hardness souls wrapped up against coldness and loneliness.
ALL	OPEN OUR SOULS, LORD, TO THE WARMTH OF YOUR COMING MELTING THE HARDNESS THAT KEEPS US FROM YOU AND FROM EACH OTHER.
Reader	Trees - branches bare against the steel skies stems crumpled under weight of frost - weight of snow last year’s leaves - blackened and slippery underfoot - nature oppressed by wintriness - yet resting - awaiting rebirth.
ALL	CHERISH OUR HEARTS, LORD OPPRESSED BY WINTRINESS - ASSURE US OF YOUR COMING OF YOUR CALL TO NEW LIFE.

Closing Responses
Reader	We take the light of our prayer into the world
ALL	TO PRAY FOR THOSE UNABLE TO PRAY; TO OFFER OURSELVES AS ANSWERS TO PRAYER.
Reader	We take the light of our compassion into the world:
ALL	TO COME ALONGSIDE THOSE WHO ARE SUFFERING ANGUISH OF HEART ANGUISH OF MIND AND BE AS CHRIST FOR THEM.
Reader	We take the light of God's power into the world:
ALL	GOD'S POWER MADE PERFECT IN POWERLESSNESS STRENGTH MADE KNOWN IN WEAKNESS LIFE MADE KNOWN IN DYING.
Reader	God enters the hearts of all who pray - and feel they are not heard suffers their pain - their humiliation - carries the burdens of the world and dies that we might live May our God bless us
ALL	THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
Reader	And until we meet again
ALL	MAY GOD HOLD US IN THE PALM OF HIS HAND. AMEN

Cooking Shows

I am hopelessly addicted to cooking shows. Now that we have DVR as part of our cable service, I have been feeding this addiction! Here are some of my favorites:

Aarti Party - This show features Aarti Sequira, the winner of the 2010 Next Food Network Star competition. I tuned in to the competition about 3 or 4 episodes in, and immediately was drawn to Aarti. There was another competitor, Brad, that I also liked, but I was very happy when Aarti was the winner. She is cute, bubbly, interesting, and has recipes I might actually try making. I also like that she is happily married, not stick thin, and most of all, she loves the Lord and is not ashamed to say so. (I think her lovely British accent helps too!) Her prize for winning was 6 episodes of a cooking show. I was happy to read that they have decided to do a 2nd season, which will be another 12 episodes.



Nigella Lawson - How can you not love someone who delights in family and food the way Nigella does? I love seeing her home (according to chefography, filming in her home instead of a studio set was a new concept when she started) and also the little clips they do of her shopping. I also relate to her underlying theme, which is that cooking at home is not supposed to be like restaurant cooking, but should be interesting and delicious, none the less. I also admire her for the way she has coped with losing her mother, her first husband, and her sister to cancer.



Rachel Allen - This is a new discovery, thanks to the Cooking Channel. Rachel Allen is Ireland's answer to Nigella Lawson and her show on the Cooking Channel is called "Bake". I love watching it because baking in the UK is quite different than baking in the US. She even emphasized that on one episode by going to a bakery in England owned by 2 Americans. Just yesterday I was poking around the Create network and discovered another series called Rachel Allen's Favorite Food at Home, which debuted on PBS in May of 2010.





Laura Calder - Another Cooking Channel program, called French Food at Home. According to wikipedia, there are 78 episodes of her show and they were shot in a home kitchen. I don't know if it is her kitchen or not, but it's beautiful. Laura is quirky and opinionated (in a very gentle way!) about cooking, and fixes stuff I'll probably never try, but her show is so different than anyone else's that I enjoy watching it.






Jamie Oliver - He just cracks me up with his British slang and his scruffy appearance. I love the shots of his garden, kitchen and house, and all the vintage dishes he uses to serve up his chow. I'd love to see behind the scenes on his show to see how much is really Jamie and how much is the work of a "stylist". Oh well, I love to watch him grab and chop and toss together and come up with a wonderful end product.




Ina Garten - I know it is supposed to be "cool" to mock her catch phrases ("how easy is that?") and her endless parade of Hamptons friends, but I still love her cooking style and philosophy. Easy and delicious, with the emphasis on the people, not on impressing with your cooking skills. I love her calm voice and easy-going manner.

Every Job has Its Perks

I work for the family construction company. I grew up around big equipment. My father used to deliver a dump truck load of sand for our sand box every Spring. He dug the hole for our pool when I was little. Little by little he cleared out the overgrown lot next door to us and turned it into a nice yard. So, this summer when I was looking at the overgrown back part of our property, I instantly thought of the hydro axe. My cousin came over to check things out and then dispatched not only the hydro axe but a Komatsu 200 shovel equipped with a bucket that has a thumb and one of our best operators to run them. In one day (ONE DAY!!!) he had managed to fill in the old pit of despair and clear out fences, saplings, weeds and vines and reveal the back portion of our property. In a few more hours yesterday morning, he weeded my red shed garden, took down the lunging ring and hydro-axed the stuff that had grown up inside it, and dug us a new, enormous pit of despair! Gotta love heavy equipment!!! I'm stoked and re-energized to spiff up the place!

In the "If I Knew What I Was Doing..." Department

Quite a while ago, we bought an Olympus Digital Camera. I let Little Man's Father use it for several years. Then I decided I wanted to photograph the bowling balls, so I started messing with it. At that time, it held 20 pictures on its memory card. Then I learned about memory cards and bought one with more capacity. Mind you, this was a smart media card, which was considered an antique when I bought it, since now everything works on a scandisk card. Anyhow, this new card gave me 153 pictures, which was quite an improvement. In my quest to photograph bowling balls and jewelry, I discovered the macro button (VERY COOL!) and other features, and have had a lovely old time snapping pictures.

Enter the card reader! For Christmas, my sister received a digital frame. (Speaking of VERY COOL!) We all thought that Little Man's Grandmother would enjoy a digital frame, so we bought it for her January birthday. At that time I learned about card readers. Since our Olympus camera takes forever to download pictures, being able to move them around with a card reader was a huge advancement. In May we decided that Little Man's Grandfather should also have a digital frame, so when I purchased it I bought myself a card reader. It even handled the smart media card. I love this thing!

Fast forward to yesterday. Little Man's Grandfather had a huge auction, and as his bookkeeper, I took pictures of each lot. Somehow, when I was moving the pictures from my camera to my computer, I deleted the formatting on the card. Yesterday I couldn't use the camera since I didn't know what was wrong with it. This AM, with some time to look at the instruction book (look at the instructions - what a concept!), I found out about the formatting. Also, the card must have had a fingerprint or something on it, because it wouldn't work until I wiped it off with a tissue.

Here's the whole point of this entry. Since the re-formatting, I now have the capacity for 257 pictures!!! No, I didn't change the resolution - it is the same as always. But for some reason, I can go longer before I have to dump the pictures. Like the title says, "If I knew what I was doing, I'd be dangerous!" (and also wouldn't have to work so hard!)

And in case you are wondering, Little Man's Father has a Kodak digital that holds about 4000 pictures. I could update, but even though my camera is older and doesn't have as much memory, I think the picture quality is wonderful, and since I'm still learning new things about it, I'll keep playing with it for the time being. Sometime soon, we might make the leap to an SLR camera that works with all the old lenses we had with our 35 MM camera. Reading the Pioneer Woman's blog makes me want to learn more about photography and photoshop. That should keep me off the streets for decades!

Tea Kettle Inn

Last weekend my mother and I went to a wedding in Harrisburg, PA. We stayed at the Tea Kettle Inn in Manheim, PA and had a lovely time there. Here are some pictures:

Fun With Fruit

We LOVE rhubarb. Here is a recipe we have been enjoying:

Rhubarb – Blueberry Crisp (adapted from Betty Crocker)

4 cups cut up rhubarb
3 cups blueberries (frozen are fine)
Salt (divided)
1 ¼ cup flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 ½ cup sugar
½ cup oatmeal
2/3 cup butter
2 tsp cinnamon

Place cut up rhubarb in a 9 x 13 ungreased pan. Sprinkle with ¼ tsp salt. Place 3 cups blueberries over the rhubarb.

Combine the flour, sugar, brown sugar, oatmeal, cinnamon, ¼ tsp salt. Cut in the butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over the rhubarb and blueberries.

Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.


For your further use are the two original recipes that I combined to make the one above:

Rhubarb Crisp (Betty Crocker’s new & Revised Cookbook – 1978)

4 cups cut up rhubarb
½ tsp salt
1 1/3 to 2 cups sugar
¾ cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup butter

Arrange rhubarb in ungreased 8 x 8 backing dish. Sprinkle with salt.

Mix sugar, flour & cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly, sprinkle over rhubarb.

Bake at 350 for 40 to 50 minutes.


Blueberry Crisp (Betty Crocker’s New & Revised Cookbook – 1978)

3 cups blueberries or 1 package (16 oz) frozen (I used 3 cups frozen)
2 tbsp lemon juice
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
½ cup flour
½ cup oatmeal
1/3 cup butter – softened
¾ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt

Arrange blueberries in an ungreased 8 x 8 baking dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice.

Mix brown sugar, flour, oats, butter, cinnamon & salt. Sprinkle on top.

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

Binky

Black cats are VERY hard to photograph. Couple that with the fact that usually when I get the camera out, Binky stops doing whatever cute thing he was up to and comes over to get petted and lick the camera! Today he actually slept through this photo op, so here's a current picture of the big brother, resting up up Daddy's feet, plus a couple from a few days ago. He's an in & out cat (not my first choice) which fascinates the other two, who are not allowed out.

Birthdays

The darlings arrived in July of 2009 and the vet thought they were each around 10 weeks old, which makes their birthdays sometime around now. Last night we went out with the couple that brought us Raquel, so we made it a birthday party. Since the guest of honor couldn't make it, we printed out this picture of her and took it to the restaurant in a frame! The waitress was a cat-lover, so when she brought me dessert, she had written "Happy Birthday Raquel" in chocolate syrup around the rim of the plate! Nice to know we're not alone in our feline goofiness.

Re-Living My Childhood - part 3

Spoiler Alert! I might give away too much, so if you haven't read Smoky the Cow Horse by Will James and you want to, be warned!

I remember my father getting this book for me from the library. It is memorable because Dad was not much of a fiction reader. However, he had read this book as a boy and brought it home for me to read. I read it several times as a girl, along with everything else Will James wrote. I loved the illustrations, which were by the author, and I loved the casual way he spoke directly to the reader, as if he were telling a story around a campfire.

This time, I listened to Smoky as a book on tape. It was produced in 1981 and wasn't the greatest audio book I have ever listened to. The audio book industry has come a long way in 29 years. I thought the reader was kind of ordinary. I would love to hear this book read by someone that sounded more like a cowboy - like Clint Eastwood. The recording was 5 tapes long and I almost stopped after the 3rd tape because I remembered the last half of the book being sad. My memory was correct and it made me heartsick to listen to the description of Smoky being abused, but I carried on because I also remembered that there was a happy ending.

It was interesting to read reviews of this book. Some people loved the whole book. Some people liked the second half because there was more "story" happening. Some people were offended by the racism. Some people hated the bad grammar and cowboy slang. I was just interested to observe how much our outlook has changed since this book was written (1927) and took it as a glimpse into a slice of the American West that has slipped into history.

If you google Smoky The Cowhorse, you will find an Australian site that has the entire book on line, including the illustrations. Also, there is major spoiler information on the wikipedia site about this book. www.willjames.com will take you to a site that sells Will Jame's artwork. www.willjames.org will take you to the Will James Society. I was interested to learn "Lone Cowboy" by Will James, which was sub-titled "an autobiography" was actually completely fiction up to his mid-teens and a mixture of fact and fiction after that. (The things you learn from the internet!)

Re-living My Childhood Part 2

Finding one childhood favorite prompted me to try some more books on tape and voila - "The Black Stallion"! I still remember discovering these books. Our neighbors gave me "The Horse Tamer" by Walter Farley for my birthday one year, probably when I was 12 or so, and I loved it. I was a total bookworm (and horse-crazy to boot!) as a kid, so I would lug home armloads of books from the library. Walter Farley could make a horse race last 3 chapters and it was IMPOSSIBLE to put the book down! Once I read one of his books, I was always haunting the library for more. I'm sure that enjoying his books early on paved the way for my love of Dick Francis books as an adult.

I was interested to find that there is a website, www.theblackstallion.com, run by Tim Farley, the author's son. They have used the popularity of the books and movies to promote literacy. They also work with the Arabian Nights dinner show, which features the horse that starred in the Black Stallion movies.

We went to see the Arabian Nights show a while back and it was very entertaining. I particularly remember the Black Stallion because he was absolutely gorgeous and his entire performance was hands off! His trainer used verbal and hand signals while standing at one end of the arena, while this beautiful creature did his moves without halter, saddle, bridle or rider. Very impressive!

Arabian Nights has a blog that features behind the scenes looks at their entertainers and horses. You can find that at www.arabian-nights.com.

Re-living My Childhood

We live about a mile south of Lake Ontario, so we drive the Ontario Parkway frequently. A common site is to look north across a cattail filled pond to see a row of houses, then the lake. It reminded me of a book I remembered called "Gone Away Lake" by Elizabeth Enright. I looked it up on the library's website and discovered that it was available as a book on tape. What a treat! It was interesting to listen to it as an adult and think about why it had appealed to me. I think it was the idea of finding a whole bunch of houses that had been abandoned, still totally filled with their original contents, and exploring them. That treasure hunting instinct... I was also interested to see how things had changed since the book was written in 1957. The main characters in this book would leave the house in the AM and not show back up until dinner and their parents didn't worry about them or call the police. Also, a 12 year old and a 6 year old were put on a train for an all-day journey and it wasn't a big deal. On the other hand, the older folks in the book living off the land and using the natural resources is as current as today's headlines. Fascinating!

There's a sequel called "Return to Gone Away". The library doesn't have it on tape, but maybe I'll get it out in book form and enjoy it soon, as well as some of the author's other works.

Easter Morning

The first picture was taken 7-11-09. The second picture was taken this AM, 4-04-10. They just take up more space on the desk! Happy Easter to one and all!

Clovis & Raquel

Here are some shots of Clovis and Raquel from yesterday, when they were helping me in the office.

Winter Sowing

I finally started this year's winter sowing on March 6th. We won't discuss last year's crop, except to say that it got away from me. I planted most of the vegetables, which germinated pretty well, but then I mulched the patch with dried grass clippings, a HUGE mistake. I blinked twice and the whole patch (in front of the red shed) had weeds about 3 feet tall!!! I never did finish planting the flowers and today I dumped what was left of last year's efforts onto the red shed patch, which I managed to get mostly cleared before the snow came. This year, other than the strawberries and rhubarb, I think I'm going to stick with annuals in that patch.

In an effort to remind myself why I bother, I looked at some pictures from 2008, when I had some success. That's also when a lot of what I winter sowed and planted in 2007 filled in and looked wonderful.

Also a few years ago, I made planting areas on both sides of the paddock fence using the lasagna method. They got completely out of control also last summer, so this year, hopefully, I'm going to abandon the south patch, transplant anything worth saving (not much - some tired lavender and a sedum) and focus my efforts on the north patch. That side is where Little Lady, The Baby, Cammie, and Little Man are buried, marked by bowling balls, so I hope to tidy the whole thing up and make it look good this year.

Hooray for Spring and second (and third) chances!!!

Binky is IN!!!

Last Fall, I was busy talking to Spooky (so I thought) who was out by the pole barn when she brushed my leg. OK - if you're here, who's that??? That was our introduction to Binky. Since then, he has put on a steady campaign to become a house cat, including pawing at the back door and then at the dining room windows, meowing frantically all the while. Friday, February 26, he won!

So, after the requisite trip to the vet and layout of cash, Binky was pronounced healthy and ready to join the family. He is a neutered male, probably around 2 years old, 11 lbs, 4 oz, and has short black fur with a touch of white on his chest. He is a lover! He was also a yappy cat, but has hardly uttered a meow since he came in. (thankfully!)

Clovis wants to be friends but Binky is not too sure about that. Meanwhile, Raquel just does that low growl in her throat whenever he comes near. Today they all went into the Blue Room together and survived, so hopefully they'll bond soon. At least they aren't actually fighting, just walking cautiously around each other.

Typical of black cats, he is very hard to photograph. One of these days maybe I'll follow through on my resolution to learn more about photography so I can do my darlings justice.

Today's Roasting Experiment

Today's attempt to clean up the fridge reinforced my premise that you can't go wrong with roasted vegetables. I cut up plum tomatoes that were starting to look tired, some red peppers, a green pepper and part of a zuchinni (the rest was definitely too tired). I also added an onion. Everything was cut in chunks. Then I sprinkled garlic powder (because I ran out of garlic cloves), basil, oregano, and rosemary and drizzled olive oil over all. It roasted in a 400 degree oven for about 40 minutes. I reached in a couple of times and gave it a stir. (Also, I lined the pan with foil - easy on the dishwasher [aka-yours truly]).

Meanwhile, I put 2 jars of plain spaghetti sauce that we had received in a gift basket into the slow cooker. When the veggies were done I dumped them in, juices and all, and let it warm up and bubble for a few hours.

The final touch was some low carb meatballs. I adapted this recipe from one I found on line:

2 lbs ground beef
2 beaten eggs
3/4 cups parmesan cheese
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder

Mix all of the above together and roll into golf ball sized balls. Place on a baking sheet (use foil for easy clean-up) and bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes.

I put 12 meatballs into the sauce and put the rest into the freezer for future use.

Some cooking show I watched recently said to work the ground beef gently and not squash it together, so I stirred it with a fork and used a light touch on rolling the balls. I thought they came out good - not too hard or dense.

I had a box of Dreamfields Rotini in the cupboard, so that's what we enjoyed the sauce on. Little Man's Father liked it and so did I!

Dick Francis

Sadly, one of my very favorite authors, Dick Francis, passed away on February 14 at the age of 89. I have enjoyed his stories for years, especially in audiobook form, and am saddened to think that this era has come to an end. His last few books were collaborations with his son, so perhaps Felix will carry on the tradition. Reports are that most of the books were collaborations with his wife, and many criticized that they were formulaic. True - but I still loved them! The crimes were always ingenious and I always thought it was a good thing that he decided to be a writer instead of a crook.

There is a Hope

Stuart Townend is one of my favorite Christian songwriters, and this song of his is one of my favorites. There is a wonderful video of it on youtube. Someday maybe I'll master how to embed it in my blog. Until then, you'll have to google it. Anyhow, here are the lyrics - perfect for a rainy Monday morning in January!

There is a Hope by Stuart Townend and Mark Edwards - 2007

There is a hope that burns within my heart,
that gives me strength for every passing day;
a glimpse of glory now revealed in meagre part,
yet drives all doubt away:
I stand with Christ, with sins forgiven;
and Christ in me, the hope of heaven!
My highest calling and my deepest joy -
to make His will my home.

There is a hope that lifts my weary head,
a consolation strong against despair,
that when the world has plunged me in its deepest pit,
I find the Saviour there!
Through present sufferings, future's fear,
He whispers "courage" in my ear.
For I am safe in everlasting arms,
and they will lead me home.

There is a hope that stands the test of time,
that lifts my eyes beyond the beckoning grave,
to see the matchless bueaty of a day divine
when I behold His face!
When sufferings cease and sorrows die,
and every longing satisfied.
Then joy unspeakable will flood my soul,
for I am truly home.