Gratitude



In this season of late summer bounty, a post about gratitude seemed necessary. In fact, the words were chomping at the bit to get out on the "page" and the pictures practically leapt off my camera. Without further ado, here are the things I'm grateful for with hope that they will inspire your own gratitude.

 

1. Fresh summer flowers. I'm thankful to have planted zinnias and cosmos in my garden this year. I'm even more grateful that miniature black-eyed Susans, snapdragons, marigolds, and nasturtiums appeared in my garden as if by magic (also known as re-seeding to the practical among us). I've tried to keep a fresh bouquet on our dining room table at all times. 

 

 

2. Simple and creative summer meals. The top photo is caprese, which is simply stacks of sliced fresh mozzerella and tomatoes sprinkled with basil. The bottom picture was my dinner tonight: zucchini nachos with garden tomatoes, zucchini, and green onions and lots of cheese.

 

3. Provisions for winter. My mom willingly threw herself into two huge canning projects with me over Labor Day weekend. We canned 23 quarts of peaches and 20 quarts of applesauce. It gives me joy to see the bounty of summer stored up for the cold and dark days of winter. 

 

4. Garden bounty. Today, I picked all the veggies you see below in Dottie's and my garden. (I'm harvesting veggies in Dottie's garden while she's out of town.) Lots of green beans, four cucumbers, four zucchini/summer squash, and a bowlful of Sun Gold and Juliet tomatoes. That being said, does anyone have zucchini recipes they'd like to share with me? :)



 

 

5. A working kitchen sink! We were without a kitchen sink for exactly a week. As I made dinner on Wednesday night, I had several impulses to take my dishes to the bathroom to wash them. I was so happy when I looked over my shoulder and saw this shiny new faucet to dispel all thoughts of inconvenience. 

 

 

6. Visiting with old friends. I've gotten to see my friend and former housemate Heidi four times in the past week for which I'm very grateful as she's now started a busy semester of school and work. On Tuesday, I spent time with my friend Sam and her husband Andrew. Sam and I went to Whitworth and studied abroad in England together. Tomorrow morning, I'm having breakfast with my freshman year roommate and her husband. (I'm also grateful we're meeting at the Petit Chat bakery!) Old friends are comforting because they remind me of the good ol' times, but also of the new ways in which friendships are preserved over time and distance.

 

7. My first-ever baby shower for a friend. It's a new season of life I'm entering with marriages of friends and now the babies of friends. Tomorrow, I get to attend two baby showers, one for my college friend Angela and another for her sister-in-law Karinda. I had my first experience with gift registries at Target today and, despite being confused about baby stuff in general, I managed to buy some pretty cute duds. For the record, the baby bib says "Revved up for Snacktime." I thought that was perfect coming from me. :) 

 

8. My ice-cream maker. I have to say that my impulse kitchen purchase of the summer has turned out to be brilliant. In the past week, I made Thin Mint Peppermint Ice Cream and fresh peach pie ice cream with chunks of cinnamon sugar pie crust. My mom and I enjoyed both ice cream flavors over the weekend.

 

9. Inconveniences and struggles. On Sunday, my pastor talked about the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17:10-19 in a sermon titled "Eucharistic Repentence." He used "eucharistic" to reflect its root meaning of gratitude and "repentence" to mean an action needing a 180 degree turn. Gratitude, especially for the hard things, does take effort, a 180 degree turn to recognize that even inconvenience and suffering come from the hand of a good God. Sometimes, like in the case of the 10 lepers, "eucharistic repentence" means turning from a lesser good to a greater good. The nine lepers probably ran back to their families and were full of graitude for health and wholeness. That's good! But the tenth leper who returned to Jesus was the only one to direct his gratitude in the most proper place: to the only One through whom healing and wholeness was possible. The sermon gave me a lot to think about. In this season of late summer, I have many good gifts for which to be grateful. But there will be seasons of life that aren't as cheery and the call to be grateful will be no less.

 

10. The Giver of all good gifts. "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17, NRSV).

 

What are you thankful for in this season of your life?

Made-From-Scratch Wontons

Last Saturday night, my two friends from church and I gathered to make wontons from scratch! Margaret, at whose house we were meeting, had made wontons with friends once before, so we had a potluck style dinner and she showed us how to form the wontons. We made nearly 50 wontons! Below are some pictures from our time together.

Here are the wontons ready to go out to the fryer:

Bethany frying up the wontons and me looking weird: 



Our wonderful spread ready to be eaten and enjoyed! 

We had two different kinds of wontons. The wontons in the middle of the table are stuffed with pork, shrimp, mushrooms, green onions, and water chestnuts. The wontons at the end of the table are stuffed with cream cheese and green onions. We also have apricot and cherry dipping sauce, lemongrass, baby corn, and ginger rice from Trader Joe's, and fruit salad. Yum!!

We had a lovely evening and had leftovers for later, too, which I ate for Sunday and Monday lunches. For dessert, we enjoyed my second batch of ice cream: homemade strawberry ice cream with Green Bluff strawberries. Thanks for reading!

What's something you like to make from scratch?

Life Around the Table

For a while, I was going through a dry spell with reading. I hardly read anything except cooking blogs and then only scanned through recipe after recipe. Then I house-sat and couldn't get the Wifi password to work. You might call this a saving grace. Besides hosting several groups of people, I also re-discovered my normal hankering for reading. My housemate asked me tonight: "How many books do you normally have checked out from the library?" Without hesitation, I answered, "About 30." Many are fated to only ever sit in stacks on my desk, bookshelf, and nightstand, but, if a book is lucky, I'll actually read it.

Such was the case with a new book called Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table by Shauna Niequist. I just finished the book today and loved every sentence of it. Shauna, if possible, loves food even more than I do. It was a comfort to read the book and know that I'm not the only one in the world whose love of food veers towards obsessive. (Just ask my friend who went with me to Trader Joe's yesterday.) Better than that, Shauna grounds food and meals solidly in the living out of a faithful Christian life. You don't have to be a foodie to do this. In fact, I have a friend who hates cooking. But when it was her turn to host the Children's Ministry Committee from church, she made us a wonderful waffle, bacon and egg meal. Whether or not she enjoyed putting it together, there's no doubt that the meal unified us and prepared us for the discussion and prayer portion of our meeting.

Bread and Wine is full of stories from Shauna's life. Most of the stories were things I could relate to whole-heartedly and have experienced numerous times in cooking: spontaneity, inconvenience, unexpected mistakes and successes both, meaningful conversation, working-with-what-you-have meals, and simple, memory-evoking pleasures. Shauna also made it clear that it's okay for meals prepared for other people to be flawed. Perfection isn't the goal; fellowship is. I was comforted by this. I've often had friends over for dinner and have been more concerned with how something I cooked turned out than with the people at my table. Besides, what's life without a little imperfection anyway? It's why we try again (and again and again).

I always have cooking experiences from which I can draw useful spiritual lessons. One in particular stands out from recent weeks: making baklava with my friend Janie. She was making two trays of baklava for two different events, and I'd always wanted to make it. I came over to her house one Wednesday evening, and we got to work. After melting something like seven sticks of butter, we unrolled bundles of filo dough, impossibly thin and delicate. Following the complex instructions carefully, we layered the filo dough and brushed it liberally with the melted butter. Every once in a while, we'd spread a pecan-sugar mixture in between the layers. In the middle of the directions, we realized that we were going to run out of filo dough. Fortunately, mishap though it was, no one will ever know that we used 20 sheets of filo instead of 30.

When all the layers were assembled, it took us a good 15 minutes to score the baklava into narrow diamonds, so the honey-sugar syrup could soak into every crevice. By this time, it was nearly 9 PM, and I had to work the next morning, so I didn't get to help Janie complete the baklava. However, at work the next day, I had a visitor stop by with a package:

 

 

Biting into the honey-soaked squares of baklava made the work of the night before worth it. Actually, I take that back. Walking around my office and sharing squares of the baklava with my co-workers made it worth it. It was seeing my co-workers' eyes light up and hearing the crackle of the baked filo dough as they took a bite that made the often inconvenient work of making the baklava worth the effort. It's a tactile way of connecting one person to another. It's a blessed sharing and receiving.  

 

Shauna writes: "This is what I want you to do: I want you to tell someone you love them, and dinner's at six. I want you to throw open your front door and welcome the people you love into the inevitable mess with hugs and laughter. I want you to light a burner on the stove, to chop and stir and season with love and abandon...Gather the people you love around your table and feed them with love and honesty and creativity. Feed them with your hands and the flavors and smells that remind you of home and beauty and the best stories you've ever heard, the best stories you've ever lived."

 

All I can say to that is: "Amen!" Go and do likewise.

A Cooking Hiatus

You may not believe this, but I've had little or no creative energy to cook in the past couple weeks. I've been eating an inordinate number of easy meals (grilled cheese, scrambled eggs, etc.). This is not my usual self (as you well know). I have ideas for what to cook, but no energy to implement them.

Honestly, I think I'm still getting used to working full time. Not the work itself--I'm used to that--but rather the limitations that working full time puts on my free time. There's simply no way to fit everything I want to do into the free time I have. And yet sometimes, I feel paralyzed. There's so much I could do, I'm not sure what I should do. I've talked about this before on the blog. So you can see that it continues to be a struggle for me.

However, I didn't intend to write a blog about this topic. I mostly set out to write a blog to process what I've been feeling and experiencing recently. Writing has always helped me process my life. Tonight, I mostly want to write about some lovely meals I've had in the past couple days that were provided for me.

On Friday and Saturday, I was at a women's retreat for my church at Camp Spaulding, which is a Presbyterian camp and retreat center north of Spokane. On Friday afternoon, my friend Margaret and I drove the 45 minutes north to camp. It was snowy at camp in contrast to wet and rainy Spokane. The lodge is a beautiful place with four-person rooms that include bathrooms. (This is my kind of roughing it!) There were about 45 women from Colbert at the retreat, which tells me that time for seeking Christ in fellowship with other women is a deeply felt need. I'm now praying that God would be faithful to bring about new and deeper relationships amongst the women who were there.

We got to enjoy dinner on Friday and breakfast and lunch on Saturday at the lodge. The food was wonderful. On Friday night, we had stuffed chicken breasts, a big salad, rolls, fresh fruit, and, for dessert, German Chocolate cake. The breakfast was rather atypical for a camp meal, but it was delicious. Pumpkin scones with pumpkin butter, parfaits with yogurt, frozen raspberries, and granola, and bacon. I had so much at breakfast, I was hardly hungry for lunch. I did find a little corner of room in my stomach and boy am I glad I did! Lunch was a pureed squash soup with pumpkin seeds on top, artichoke dip with fresh slices of bread, and a big salad with lots of good ingredients. Dessert, a necessity on a retreat, was big, soft ginger cookies.

I decided to write about the meals with such detail because of the detail that was put into each meal in the first place. I think it's a beautiful picture of the Kingdom of God to serve meals with such thoughtfulness, generosity, and creativity. I also loved the time of fellowship around the table. There's something so satisfying and unifing about eating a good meal with friends around a table.

The other meal I want to write about is my Monday night dinner with the Colbert Children's Ministry committee. We were at one committee member's house, and she prepared a feast: tortellini with pesto, spaghetti with clam sauce, rotini with tomato sauce, turkey meatballs, white rolls, and a salad with romaine, black olives, sliced cucumber, and an Italian dressing. For dessert, we had brownies with either peppermint or vanilla ice cream, hot fudge or caramel, and spiced nuts. This meal particularly brings out the creativity. I would never have thought to add spiced nuts to your basic brownie/ice cream combo or turkey meatballs with a pesto pasta.

Perhaps some of my unenthusiasm recently is that I only cook for myself. I am definitely more motivated to cook when I'm making food for other people. I'm praying that in the coming couple weeks, I can be creative with my meals, but still allow myself some grace when all I feel like eating is peanut butter and jam on toast.

But whether it's toast or stuffed chicken breasts for dinner, I'm praying that we can all be thoughtful, generous, and creative in our approach to the Christian life and our relationships with others. May food be just the start!

P.S. Thanks to my housemate for the fresh, gooey brownie I just ate. Yum. Not healthy, maybe, but certainly generous and thoughtful. :)

This is the Day that the Lord has Made!

My housemate, Pam, had a wonderful idea. Each of my five housemates wrote a note to the other four housemates and put our notes, along with a small chocolate, into an Advent calendar that Pam owns. So about every five days, each of us gets to open the little red wooden door and pull out an encouraging piece of chocolate and an even more encouraging note. I have read two of my notes so far, and it was a great blessing to write down things I appreciate about my housemates, too.

The picture above was made for me by my housemate Katie, and I love it! The detail is so lovely. I have it at my desk at work and it brings me joy and encouragement throughout the day. I pray that seeing this picture encourages you this day, as well, because, after all, this is the day that the LORD has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

Rootedness

Root us in a place, Lord, that we might find our home in you.

 

Lord, to be rooted in place takes commitment to land, to people, to friends and family, to transients in our community, and to the plight of our neighborhoods. Being rooted is no easy task, but you demonstrated such rootedness in your incarnation. Give us courage to take up the hard task of knowing you while standing in place. Amen.

 

 

 

 



Year of Plenty, Part 5: Living La Vida Local

In last week's Year of Plenty discussion, we talked about eating local meat. The chapters we read were about chicken dignity (from the Goodwins' experience raising chickens) and being "green" as Christians, so technically the topic of local meat fell under both chapters.

Eating local meat in Spokane is expensive; there's no getting around it. I suspect this is the case for other cities, too, but I don't know for sure. I've had several forays into local and organic meat, including buying ground beef and sausages from a local farmer this summer and organic whole chickens from Costco, but neither of these methods seem sustainable. The farmer's market where I got the beef and sausage is closed for the season. And while Costco is always easily accessible, I honestly would rather buy Costco's $4.99 rotisserie chickens because they're cheap, tasty, and thrifty. I can get four main dish meals from one chicken. In fact, I just used 2 cups of leftover cubed chicken meat for two meals: hummus/chicken/spinach wraps and a pot of chicken noodle soup.

However, our conversation on Sunday renewed my conviction that the way most American meat is grown, processed, and transported is a violation of the basic dignity of the animals God has created. Don't get me wrong, I'm no vegetarian or vegan. I fully believe that God allows and intends for us to eat animals, but I want eating animals to be consistent with my Christian beliefs.

Two disclaimers: 1) I don't think buying meat from a chain store is morally wrong. If it's a question of feeding needy people vs. caring for the dignity of animals, feed people. As I said, eating local meat is expensive, so I'll only be buying one or two meat items a month. 2) I don't know a lot about this subject, so bear with me on this road of discovery. If you have helpful insights, thoughts, or corrections, don't hesitate to speak up!

In an attempt to explore this local meat-eating thing, I scheduled another foodie foray for Saturday. The destination: Egger's Meats. When I told my housemate who grew up near Spokane where I was headed, she said her grandma always bought meat from Egger's. Perfect. Local and historic.  

When I walked into Egger's, I immediately saw an employee in a red apron and hat. He asked if he could help me with anything. I told him it was my first time and that I was just looking. And look I did. I studied everything. The prices, the kinds of beef cuts, the kinds of sausage. I asked about ham with and without the bone and how much they both weighed on average. I'm sure they thought I was really weird. Who is this young person who cares so much about meat and is so weirdly excited about it?

I tried a sample of Egger's own bacon and a little piece of ham. Both samples were delicious. As I was standing by the case of sausages, I struck up a short conversation with an older man named Floyd. He was buying a pound of ground beef to share with his dog. I told him I was going to buy a pound of deli ham. My lunch plan this week is ham, Gouda, and tomato sandwiches with mayo and whole-grain mustard.

With my pound of ham in hand, I signed up for a monthly mailing list, grabbed another sample (homemade sausage stuffing!), and booked it out of there before I bought anything else. As I drove off, I was so excited that I turned in the wrong direction. :)

I didn't have the guts to ask where Egger's sources its meat, but I will definitely be asking that question on a future trip. As I back-tracked from my initial wrong turn, I decided I would purchase as much of my meat there as possible. Even if the meat isn't strictly local, Egger's is local. I figure it's a good place to start and, if the clientele was any indication, it'll be a good place to stick around, too.

**

I had another locavore adventure today. My dad asked for another box of McIntosh apples from Green Bluff, so after church, I drove up to the bluff. I'd never been up in November. The fields and trees were covered with snow and the landscape had that lonely, fallow feel of winter. I stopped at Siemer's and tentatively poked my head into the barn. I didn't see anyone. I walked back into a storage/work room and saw a huge orange cat and heard someone working. I retreated and an older man presently came out. He looked surprised that I was there, but asked me pleasantly what I wanted. The onions were tempting, so I ended up with a 10-pound bag for $2.95. As I was about to pick up my bag to leave, Mr. Siemer (for that's surely who he was) picked up a buttercup squash and asked: "Have you cooked with this?"

I shook my head. He said, "These squash are just so good. Cook 'em like an acorn squash, and you'll love it." He put the squash in my bag. "On the house," he said.

I didn't tell him I already had about 10 squash of various varieties at home. You don't mess with a farmer's generosity. I ended up talking with him for 15 minutes after that and heard a taste of the farmer's life. He reminded me of my grandpa...skinny, tall, and with a nose that gotten bigger and redder with continual exposure to sun. As he talked on, it occurred to me that most of the time, a farm is a lonely place. The crowds of harvest in September and October are the exception rather than the norm.

As I drove back down to the valley, I realized that Craig Goodwin's journey also started with piles of winter squash in Mr. Siemer's barn. We're set to finish Year of Plenty next Sunday and it seems I've come both to the end of the book and back to its beginning. But surely I'm really just beginning.

***

End Note about the Title: I was discussing with my housemate what the title of Ricky Martin's song "Living La Vida Loca" means, and we roughly translated it to "living a crazy life." Sometimes, the local life is a crazy life (though crazy in a good way), so I think the title of the song fits, even without my slight alteration. Thanks for going along with it. :)

How Merciful You Are, Lord

How merciful you are, Lord, that you forgive us our sins, all our sins.

Teach us the merciful art of public and private confession,

not for our shame but for the cleansing of our sins

and the fallowing of our rough hearts.

Amen.

 

 



Year of Plenty: Part 2, Sort Of

We had a great discussion in Sunday School about Year of Plenty. My parents, visiting from Portland, OR, were a delightful addition to our group. However, I'm not going to write about our discussion this week. Lame, I know, but for some reason, I'm really tired. It might as well be spring with only some wrinkled potatoes rolling around in my metaphorical root cellar; I'm at the end of my energy store. 

 

I always have recipes I want to try buzzing around in my head like busy bees. With the change of seasons, I'm starting to think about all the wonderful ways to use pumpkin, winter squash, and root vegetables. Waking up to the beauty of fall and winter's humble vegetables has been delightful. I'm thinking of making a chicken curry with apples and squash and a roasted root vegetable soup soon. 

 

Have you noticed all the pumpkin and apple-themed drinks and pastries in coffee shops recently? I was at Petit Chat Bakery this morning, and I asked what flavor one particular scone was. One person said Maple Walnut; another said (more definitively) that it was Pumpkin White Chocolate. Anything with chocolate is sure to earn my allegiance, so I ordered the scone and found it was actually Pumpkin Walnut! There was also a round loaf of fresh Pumpkin Walnut bread that I bought after thinking about French toast and PB&J with peanut butter and pear butter. I love that this bakery has fresh, local bread at a decent price with quality ingredients. On Sunday, all the week's leftover bread is half off, so I often make a pilgrimage there before church. This Sunday, I snagged a loaf of Whole Wheat and a loaf of Dill Chive Garlic (and my parents paid for it!).

 

Last Thursday, I made meatballs for the first time with lots of local ingredients: Darigold milk, local ground beef, Green Bluff onions, a slice of Petit Chat sourdough bread, and a local duck egg. The ingredients that weren't local are the parsley and the Feta cheese you can almost see in the picture. Pretty good all around! I cooked them up with tomato sauce and whole wheat pasta for my parents on Friday.

 

 

I thought I'd include a couple other pictures of my time with my parents. The first is my dad and me at Eleven Acres Farm at Green Bluff with boxes of winter squash around us. The second picture is our Friday night dessert: baked apples stuffed with brown sugar, dried cherries, and walnuts. Yum!

 



The second-to-last thing I want to say is that I got a newsletter from the Spokane Country Library district with fun events happening at different library branches. It reminded me that there are so many fun things going on in Spokane in October. Trips to the Fall Festival at Green Bluff, a Firefighters v/ Librarians Chili Cook-Off at the North Spokane library on Oct. 20, a lecture by Shane Claiborne at Whitworth next week, concerts at the Spokane Symphony and at Whitworth, a Compost Fair at the end of the month, and live 40s dancing music at different libraries throughout the month. How cool is all that?! If you're in Spokane, check out some of these events. If you're not in Spokane, I encourage you to find out what's happening locally in your own community.

And finally, a beautiful poem to leave you with. Find it here.

American Grown: A Book Review

I've been researching popular Christian blogs at work and noticed that many Christian bloggers write book reviews on their blogs. I thought that'd be a fun thing to do on this blog occasionally. I know many of you love to read and are always looking for good book recommendations. I'd love for you to use the comments section here to recommend your own books or chime in on my review if you've read the book.

This will also help me be accountable to reading more often and blogging more frequently. A win-win situation, right? :o)

I appreciated American Grown right off the bat for two reasons. 1) It celebrates the history of American gardens from the extensive gardens at Thomas Jefferson's estate, Monticello, to the Victory Gardens of WWII. 2) The book embraces subjects that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike can support because the book is fundamentally about the joys of gardening, eating fresh, local food and the benefits of an active lifestyle.

The book is divided into four main sections: spring, summer, fall and winter. The primary narrative centers on the evolution of Michelle Obama's White House Garden over the past several years. My favorite part of this book was the way the garden involved people and celebrated tradition and diversity. Elementary school kids planted. White House staff tended the garden. Visiting dignataries received honey from the White House beehives and pickled vegetables from the garden. Native Americans taught the "three sisters planting" (planting corn, beans, and winter squash in the same bed). The plants that grow in the garden celebrate culinary traditions from around the country and world. Etc.

Gardens have a great knack for building healthy communities. Besides using the White House garden as an example of this, Michelle highlights community and school gardens that are bringing new life to derelict land, introducing kids to homegrown food, and drawing communities together.  

I also love that a portion of food from the White House garden goes to a local D.C. nonprofit called Miriam's Kitchen that serves the homeless. Michelle writes "[Miriam's Kitchen's] philosophy is that if someone comes and will only get one meal, it should be the very best meal they can have" (132). I love the principle behind that...when someone is in need, we give them the very best we have.

There's a lot more to like about this book, but I'll leave it you to read and discover. It's not an explicitly Christian book, but there is much to enjoy from a Christian perspective, both in affirming the goodness of creation and its higher purpose in helping people enjoy God's good gifts. And now, in the spirit of gardening, here are some pictures from my garden! I was going to show you my first Silvery Fir Tree tomato, but I ate it before I could take the picture. Perhaps that's how it should be. :o)

My first heirloom Bennings Green Tint Scallop summer squash. I grew it from a seed I got from my friend Megan. Here's the description from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed website: "Colorful light green scalloped shaped fruit, tender and good quality; excellent yields, easy to grow. We have grown this variety for many years; an old favorite."

A zinnia I grew from birthday seeds sent to me by my friend Lydia.

A street view of my garden at Dottie's house with the garden sign I bought at the Gresham Farmer's Market two summers ago. The squash is a Long Cheese Squash, supposed to be extra good for pies!

I will post more garden pictures later. I'm proud of my garden this year and thank God that it's actually produced!

Question to ponder from American Grown by Michelle Obama: Have you experienced community around a garden? What did it look like?