Regular Meals--at Home, and at Church

This past week, a pair of things happened that made me sit up and take notice.

They were a pair of meals: one was a family meal, and one was a meal at church.

Both meals stood out because of their delightfulness. They were both normal meals in most outward respects--normal in that they were the meals we all expected to have, with the people with whom we expected to have them.

But they both seemed to have a bit of something extra. At the family meal, everyone was just a bit happier than usual. The conversation, usually good, was even better. The food, also usually good, was amazing. The smiles and laughter, usually plentiful, seemed to overflow.

At church, it was Trinity Sunday. The sermon, usually good, seemed to strike at the heart even more deeply. The music, also usually good, was even more moving. The eucharistic meal we shared, always a fearful joy, felt even more meaningful.

The Normal and the Good
Experiencing these two very good meals, the one following closely on the other, made me think: The only way to have very good meals like this sometimes, is to have normal good meals all the time.

You can't really plan for a normal, regular meal that is better than usual--a normal meal that suddenly lifts up onto a higher plane of happiness and delight. It just happens, sometimes.

But it only really happens when you have normal, regular good meals, well...regularly.

Yes, there are things like wedding feasts--meals you expect to be extraordinary, both in fare and in delight. But...those are the exception.

In day-to-day life, the really good meals happen because the sort-of-okay meals happen. Because you faithfully show up, and prepare food, and listen to the people you love, and clean up afterwards.

Both at home, and at church.

If you want the extraordinary, you need to be there for the quotidian.

Show up.

Love.

Partake.

And then see what happens.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Savory Oatmeal with Garlic, Cherry Tomatoes, Mushrooms, & Pepperjack

I have a new favorite breakfast. It lets me indulge in all my love of salty carbs, and still has a pretty reasonable calorie count and lots of fiber and vitamins and produce and other good stuff like that.

It's savory oatmeal.

Yes: all the health benefits of oatmeal can be yours, without once indulging in some overly-sweetened, pre-packaged junk that only a seven-year-old could love.

You can add any good and savory thing you like--I've heard tell of plopping a fried egg on top, or mixing in some sautéed onions--but this is how I like mine.

First, I measure in my half-cup of dry instant oats, and then I sprinkle in a generous amount of garlic powder, and a reasonable few shakes of salt and red pepper flakes:



Then I add my cup of water, mix, and microwave according to the directions on the tub--about a minute and a half on high.

Then I add a small can of drained mushrooms, about a cup of chopped-up tomatoes, and an ounce of pepperjack:



Then I pour some milk--maybe half a cup?--over the top and mix it all together:



Mmm. A big bowl of salty, carb-y goodness, all under 400 calories, and with 20 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber, to boot.


Eat hearty!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: Lent, Empathy, and more!

Some good reading for your Sunday afternoon....

"Vegetable Stock and Easing into Lent":

We haven't stopped running since before Christmas and it is already a scorching 90 degrees in the Rio Grande Valley. The fact that we are a week into Lent seems impossible, I'm not getting any cues from my life my world that say, "it is time to slow down," and making space for quiet meditation is the last thing I have time for. 

But I suppose this is part of why we have Liturgical seasons. I may never stop hurrying and the seasons in south Texas may always feel out of sync with the rest of the country. Maybe a few times a year I need to be told to how feel because otherwise I would continue to race tripping over my own numb legs.

"They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain":

The pain doesn't go away; but somehow or other, empathy gives the pain meaning, and pain-with-meaning is bearable. I don't actually know how to say what the effect of empathy is, I can only say what it's like. Like magic.

"Undiscovered J.R.R. Tolkien poems found in 1936 school magazine": ooh, look, look, look!  I especially love the Christmas one.


"Sex on the Silver Screen":

Let’s begin here: What we see on the screen is both fact and fiction. When it comes to nakedness and sex in movies, we sometimes lose the fact in the fiction. What we watch is a fictional story, but one that has been acted out in real ways by real people. This has important implications when it comes to a bedroom scene. To film that scene, real people had to remove real clothes, bare real bodies, touch each other in real places, and move together in a real bed.

"And We Created Luncheon, and It Was Good"- whenever Anne writes about cooking, my mouth starts watering. A sample:

Yesterday, because I knew I needed to be about my business in a timely way, I pulled a capacious pot from the soothing cool of my fridge, placed it lovingly on my stove, and turned on the heat. Inside was half a pork roast, cubed and succulent, and half a head of cabbage, chopped and mellowed with chickpeas. Soup, in other words, and golden brown rolls ready to be heated in the oven.  The soup came back up to the boil, the bread softened and warmed, and the aromas wafted aloft to the heavens, gathering us all together for Luncheon.

Hope the rest of your weekend is restful and good!
-Jessica Snell

Recently Tried Recipes (with reviews!)

beef and ale pie - loaded w/ veg, too. Yum!

"Skillet Beef and Ale Pie": Mmm, yum. This was a delicious dish.  Though, I have to admit that as I was cooking it I found the recommended seasoning just a bit lacking, so I added garlic (always add garlic!) and some extra thyme.

Next time I might add fewer tomatoes and more celery and carrots - maybe some other vegetables, too. This recipe strikes me as very versatile and I think it could easily accommodating a variety of veggie/meat/spice variations.

But beef + veggies drowned in a delicious gravy and topped with a flaky crust? Thumbs up.


"Mexican Rice": delicious the night of - even better the next day in a BRC burrito!


"Shrimp Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce": These were not only beautiful (look at the picture at the link!), but they were delicious.
The kids, however, preferred eating them in a deconstructed manner, i.e., they wanted all the insides on their own.  I liked mine all-of-a-piece.
Bonus: the pickled veg, which I made too many of, were pretty yummy on their own as a snack later.


Have you cooked anything new recently? Share it with us in the comments!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Cold, Composed Dinners (perfect for summer!)

So, the other dinner-making experiment I've been trying this summer - aside from having my kids help me make it - is having "cold, composed dinners" on occasion.

The idea behind these is simple: you have a variety of foods, mostly bite-sized, that taste good cold.  You want a protein or two, several kinds of produce, maybe some dips, something pickled, some nuts, some dried fruits, some crackers . . . and you let each person pick themselves up the bits that they like best.

Hopefully, this results in a balanced plate full of goodness. 

The plate in the picture above is an example. For that meal, I had:

-sausage

-garlic hummus

-wheat thins

-Swiss cheese

-cherries

-grapes

-lychee

-olives

-carrots

You don't need very much of any one thing, and it's easy to weight the plates so that they're more full of veggies and fruits than anything else. It's a nice way to have a small sampling of rich ingredients without taking an unhealthy amount. Olives and sausage are lovely, but they're better when balanced with fresh, crisp carrots & cherries (or celery, or romaine, or oranges, or apples, or . . . or, or, or).

One of the posts that inspired this style of eating for me was this one from The Clothes Make the Girl: "Great Ingredients: No Recipe Required".  She has lots of ideas for how to make this kind of meal. I love her lists of ingredients, and her ideas for combining them.

I like having this method in my back pocket as a dinner option, especially for those evenings when it's hot, and we're all feeling lazy and hungry and ready just to eat something good.

What about you? Have you tried this style of eating?

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: Virus-full waters, Cold Summer Dinners, Publishing Rejections, and more!

Your weekly round-up of good reading from around the web:

"AP Investigation: Olympic teams to swim, boat in Rio's filth": eeeew . . .

"Top 10 Cold Summer Dinners": so perfect for this time of year!


"Rejection Relief - First Blood": Caution for language, but some great stuff for writers.


"The Holy Round of Creeds and Chants and Mysteries": exegesis of a fascinating little poem.


"July Happened": heartbreaking and real.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

cooking dinner with the kids (well, actually, with one kid at a time)

I always have trouble getting into a summer routine, but this year it was easier, because there were a few things I knew I wanted to do.

And one of them was to cook dinner with my kids.

Bess is almost 11. Gamgee is 9.  And Lucy and Anna are both 7.

Great ages, marvelous ages, capable ages.  (Seriously, dear moms of young ones, it gets better and better. Harder in some ways, easier in others, but . . . better. Because they become people, more and more. And that is lovely.)


But anyway, Adam and I have four children. And that is not so much as some, but it is a fair amount of children as these things go, and while I love them when they're acting like a litter of puppies - all tumbling over each other and shouting and playing and shouting (So. Much. Shouting.) - I also really love spending time with them one-on-one, when I can pay real, focused attention to each individual child.

And it struck me that since dinner has to be made every night, and since each of them enjoys spending time in the kitchen (none so much as Bess, who is the sort of child who makes banana cream pies from scratch - pie crust and meringue and pudding and all), that taking one of them every weeknight as my Dinner Buddy - i.e., co-chef - would be a great way to get some one-on-one time in.

And it has been.

Now, to be honest, making dinner with a seven-year-old (or nine-year-old, or almost-eleven-year-old) makes dinner prep. take twice as long*, but that's an okay price to pay for some quality time with each of these small people I love who are swiftly ceasing to be small and so quickly becoming big people with personalities and loves and annoyances and hang-ups and joys and everything that makes up a person in this world.

I want to be there with each of them as they grow through these important years.

Making dinner is just one small way.

But it's a good way. And I love this time, and I am grateful for it.

Thanks be to God.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell



*I lie. It's at least three-times-as-long.

Weekly Links: Planned Parenthood, Obergefell, earthquakes, and more!

So very, very many links for you this week. (Possibly because I took a week or two off!)

Enjoy the good words of people so much smarter than me.



"After Obergefell": I always find it heartening when smart, godly people give good counsel on what to do (as opposed to the disheartening feeling I get after reading an article that's a mere wringing of the hands):

Churches must take responsibility for marriages and families. The argument that we need to protect marriage for children is true in principle, laughable in practice. In sections of America, marriages aren’t steady enough to protect anyone. The best argument for traditional marriage is a thriving traditional marriage.

"The Really Big One" - Terrifying. (And makes me happy to be a bit east and a bit south of the region they're talking about. But still, as some one close to the Pacific and very sincerely in earthquake country? Terrifying.)

"10 Foods that Regrow in Water Alone" - Here's a break from the doom-and-gloom: things still grow! And better and more easily than you might have guessed!

"The End of Sexual Ethics: Love and the Limits of Reason": charity and logic applied to sexual ethics and identity.  God bless you, Matt Anderson.


"Arms Wide Open":

I am the type who rehearses life. I plan. I practice. I think of every possible thing that could go wrong, and I set aside provisions for them. I am careful and fearful and shy. But my daughter? She is brave.

"Planned Parenthood and the Atrocity of Corpse Selling": This is really horrific.

"I, Racist":

You are “you,” I am “one of them.” 

"How We Do Family Devotions":

I read slowly and expressively with just enough drama to cut through their early-morning fog. I pause to tell my daughter to remove her hands from around her sister’s neck, and keep reading. When I have come to the end of our passage I briefly explain something from the passage (and by “briefly” I mean a minute or less). Sometimes I have to cheat by quickly consulting the study Bible notes so I’ll have something worth saying. Then I try to come up with a question or two I can ask the kids—a question of comprehension or of application. And I explain why calling your brother “a stupid idiot” is inappropriate during a reading of 1 Corinthians 13. And that’s our Bible reading.

"Non-Competing Theories of the Atonement":

As I told my veteran pastor of my plans to do graduate studies in the doctrine of the atonement, a wry smile creased his face as he asked: "So...which theory of the atonement do you believe in?" I responded, "All of them!"

Pantry Meals for Those Nights (you know the ones I mean)

Even though I regularly menu-plan for our household, there are weeks when I, well, don't.

Maybe I'm sick, maybe work is overwhelming . . . whatever it is, there are weeks when I don't quite get to planning the menu.

Or, more often, there are nights when the planned menu item just sounds like too much work.

So, in order to keep us from either doing takeout (too expensive) or starving (too stupid), I have a few go-to "pantry meals", or meals that I can make easily with items I always keep in my pantry (and/or freezer).


Less expensive than takeout, healthier than fast-food, here are my go-to pantry meals:

1) Pasta Salad. Trader Joe's dried ravioli + canned chicken + oil and rice vinegar and spices (mostly Mexican oregano - so good!) and chopped olives and canned tomatoes. Easy-peasy.

2) Quesadillas (and variations). Tortillas + cheese. If you want to get fancy, throw in leftover veggies and meat. Add spices. Yum!

3) Nachos (and variations). Tortilla chips + cheese. This is basically quesadillas for a crowd. Again: add meat, veggies, and spices. Serve with sour cream and salsa.

4) Whole wheat pasta + fro. veg. + canned chicken + alfredo sauce.  Boil some water (add salt to it first, and maybe some dried onion, parsley, and garlic).  Add frozen veggies and bring back to a boil. Add pasta and cook according to package directions. Drain. Then add alfredo sauce and chicken. Easy, fast, pretty healthy. Cost of all ingredients should be under $10, which is pretty good for a family of six!

5) Rice + fro. veg. + curry sauce + cashews.  This is pretty similar to the recipe above: cook the veggies with the rice. (Heat water to a boil - enough to cook the rice - then add veggies. Bring back to a boil. Add rice and cook according to package directions).  Heat chicken with curry sauce (I recommend the Thai Green Curry sauce from Trader Joe's - or their yellow curry or red curry sauces. Mmmm).  Serve w/ rice & veg, sprinkle with salted cashews

6) Egg burritos.  Cook eggs. Put cooked eggs in tortillas w/ cheese. Toast those up in your frying pan. Salt and pepper. Add some salsa and maybe some sour cream. Yum, yum, yum.

7) Popcorn. Serve w/ cheese slices and apples. This is an old family tradition for Sunday nights, so the mother doesn't have to cook. I admit, I don't use it that often, but it's not a bad fall-back. Not at all.

I've noticed I say "yum" a lot in this entry. And that's the thing: pantry meals have to taste good, or you wouldn't bother to make them.

So, what are your family's favorite pantry meals?


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Grown-Up Soda

I read a post over at the Kitchn, called "A Low-Alcohol, Grown-up Soda", and I was intrigued.

So I gave it a try and guess what?  It was pretty good!


It was good enough that I wanted to keep experimenting with it.

Here's why:
-I like having something nice to drink in the evening
-I don't really like soda (too sweet! blergh.)
-I live in Los Angeles, and so it's rare that tea or coffee sound nice in the evening (too hot!)
-I like alcoholic drinks on occasion, but having your regular "nice to drink in the evening" item be alcoholic is bad for so many reasons

So, I started experimenting, and I've come up with something I think is pretty good.

It all hinges on the bitters: bitters are alcoholic, but they're alcoholic like vanilla extract is alcoholic, i.e., the alcohol is used to extract nice, strong flavors from the aromatics, and so you use them very sparingly. Bitters are so strong that they're measured by the "dash". So, unless you're doing something extremely odd, you're using such a small amount in your drink that just adding bitters leaves your drink essentially non-alcoholic.

But they add SO much flavor.  And for someone like me, who likes bitter better than sweet when it comes to drink, they're just perfect for adding that "little something" to your drink.


So. Here's my recipe for "grown-up soda", sans vermouth.

mmm, mango and raspberry!

Ingredients:
-juice, your favorite kind (I used a mango blend this time)
-seltzer (i.e, soda water. Go ahead and get a flavored kind, if you like, but I recommend one without sugar or sweetners. The juice makes it sweet enough)
-bitters. I used Angostura, but use whatever you like best.

Steps:
1. Add 1/4-1/2 cup juice to your glass. (The more juice you add, the sweeter the final product.) Add ice if you want it colder.

dig the Green Dragon glass.

2. Fill the rest of the glass with seltzer.
3. Shake a few dashes of bitters in that glass.

Ooh, look at the pretty bitters!

4. Stir, and then enjoy!


Hope you enjoy the recipe - and please feel free to share! :)


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links

"Guy in your MFA":

 Guy In Your MFA (Guy) was born out of a big stack of pieces I needed to critique for the next day and my frustration with this whole culture of pseudo-pretentious literary works, both in myself and in my colleagues.

"Five Things Every Christian Should be Doing with God’s Word"

. . . Psalm 119 is one of the best examples of Scripture speaking about Scripture.  It is the Word about the Word.
And in it, we find David interacting with the Word of God in five ways that should be paradigmatic for all believers . . .

"The Most Qualified By Far: On Clinton and Qualifications":

Mrs. Clinton is one times more qualified than Mr. Bush . . . at best.

"A Composed Salad Is a Meal Unto Itself":

 . . . it can contain almost anything the cook wants to arrange, roll, roast, poach, bake or grill, from thin shavings of fennel and whole kernels of local corn to dollops of ricotta and shards of country ham. Tossed together, the result would be sloppy and monotonous. A bit of order makes it satisfying and elegant.

Weekly Links: good rules for eating, superheroes, and more!

"Simple Rules for Healthy Eating":

It’s much easier, unfortunately, to tell you what not to do. But here at The Upshot, we don’t avoid the hard questions. So I’m going to put myself on the line. Below are the general rules I live by. They’re the ones I share with patients, with friends and with family. They’re the ones I support as a pediatrician and a health services researcher. But I acknowledge up front that they may apply only to healthy people without metabolic disorders (me, for instance, as far as I know).

"Why Comic Book Nerds Hate 'Batman vs. Superman'":

Zack Snyder thinks about comic books the way that Peter Jackson thinks about Tolkien. All he sees are the battles and the fights and is completely blind to the themes and characterization that make those bouts of violence mean anything. 

"In Love with Small Towns: Author Interview with Jill Kemerer": I love reading about the persistence it takes to make it as an author - I find it so encouraging!

"The Power of Confession":

The beautiful thing about testimonies at their best is they're not meant to establish the speaker in a power relationship with the listener. Rather, they're an act of humility. Here is my life, the testimony-giver says. Please find in it your own path toward assurance. And please know that after today, I will go on living; this is not the end of the story.

"80's Free Range Childhood Was Not the Sam as 50's Childhood":

Surely we’ve learned something from the scandals in the church and all the conversations about rape culture and bullies–that abuse thrives where there’s silence and lack of supervision, where popularity is currency, where might is right, where blackmail keeps what happens on the playground on the playground. Children really can be quite naughty left to their own devices. Almost as naughty as grownups.

This article: "Why I Haven't Spoken Out on Gay Marriage Till Now"  and its follow-up, "Why I haven't Spoken Up: More Thoughts", I value particularly because they are from a tradition that is not my own, and take an approach that is different than many I've seen, yet clearly a path taken in both charity and obedience. I don't think I agree with all of it, but I found a lot of food for thought in her words.


Finally, skip this if you don't want the earworm, but this guy definitely has the right idea on how to have fun with singing in your car (love the looks on his friend's face):


Have a great weekend!
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: Dinner, the Playbook

I am a huge fan of cookbooks.

And cooking magazines.

And cooking blogs.

But this book is something else.  I love "Dinner: the Playbook", by Jenny Rosenstrach.

I didn't buy this book at first. I heard about it and - like most books I hear about and am interested in - I borrowed it from the library.

But after a few weeks of using the library's copy, I knew that I wanted my own. (If only to keep from staining the library's copy.  It's just . . . paying library fines is not an unlikely scenario for me, iykwim.)

So, I bought a copy, and I've been using it ever since.

I love this book.  I'm good at menu planning and I actually like cooking, but this book makes both of those jobs easier not only provides interesting main dishes, but by suggesting veggie-heavy side dishes to go with.

Eventually, I realized that this book was the work of a blogger that I've subscribed to for a long time, but that (sorry!) I hadn't really paid much attention to (it's easy to do that in an RSS reader).

But after I checked this book out of the library, I used it in my weekly menu planning. And I loved two things about it:

1) The little chef-ly details. Each recipe has those nice little details - you know, the ones that don't take much time or fuss, but make all the difference between the final dish tasting good, and tasting great.  (E.g., letting a clove of garlic sizzle in the olive oil for a few minutes and then fishing it out before frying your omelet - mmm, easy garlic-infused oil.)

2) The side dish suggestions. My go-to side dish is seasonal fruit. Healthy? yes. Yummy? yes. Boring? . . . sometimes.

But "Dinner: the Playbook" has a list of easy, (mostly) veggie side dishes.  And each main dish recipe suggests which one (or ones) you should serve with it.  This makes things so much easier.  I can menu-plan based on the main dishes I want to make, and I don't have to go searching for something healthy and produce-based that will go with them.  It's right there.


Here's one of the meals I made out of this cookbook recently:

It's a baked potato bar (the potatoes are covered in cheddar cheese), and her topping suggestions were great: caramelized onions, steamed broccoli, ham, yogurt, and salsa. It was delicious, and each of us could customize our own potato. Everyone liked it, and we all got plenty of veg.

There are more creative meals in here, for sure, this is just one I managed to get a picture of.   :)  Anyway, I'd recommend this cookbook to anyone looking for something a bit out of the ordinary way, but not so far out of the way that the kids won't eat up!  :)

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links: Rainbow Recipes, Horror vs. Terror, and more!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"27 Rainbow Recipes that Will Bring Joy to Your Life": So pretty.

"Why the Shift from Horror to Terror on 'CSI' Is a Problem":

There is a fine line between accurate storytelling—wherein a crime show might show some violence to tell an honest story about the consequences of wrongdoing—and gratuitous depiction, in which violence is portrayed not for the sake of the story but for the spectacle of it. 

"Fittest Type of All Disciples: Bartholomew/Nathanael":

Because of the way Nathanael is brought to Jesus, commentator Rudolf Stier calls Nathanel "the fittest type of all disciples." God has already been at work on him in multiples ways; he is summoned by the witness of another disciple; and he is introduced directly to Jesus, converted by his word. Nathanael's faith is the occasion of Jesus first "truly, truly I say to you" statement.

"Mincemeat: on Writing":

As a writer and a mother of two children, I thought I didn't have any spare time. And then we added twins to our family, and I wondered what I used to do with all that spare time. 

"The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think":

. . . human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It's how we get our satisfaction. If we can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find -- the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about 'addiction' altogether, and instead call it 'bonding.' A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn't bond as fully with anything else. 

So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.

"Am I Empty?":

Empty.  It needs to be said.  Infertility and miscarriage leave one empty.  There is pain.  There is loss. Someone is missing. That needs to be acknowledged. Years later, there are scars.  I felt it then; I feel them now.  I contemplated the starkness of the word, the label.  My label.  My label?

"Measles Is Horrible":

Before the vaccine, the United States saw approximately 4 million cases of measles each year and 400 to 500 deaths. These are the stats that vaccine-deniers tend to emphasize—a relatively low number of deaths compared with the number of infections. However, those statistics alone leave out a big part of measles infections. Prevaccine, almost 48,000 people were also hospitalized each year because of measles and measles complications. One in 20 of those infected developed pneumonia. More rarely but more seriously, each year 1,000 became chronically disabled due to measles encephalitis. 

Measles is not a benign disease.

Recently-tried Recipes

Cooking is one of those things that just has to happen in order for life to go on (and it can't always be as simple as the cheese, crackers, and grapes pictured above), but I've found I enjoy the necessity a lot more when I try new things. So, in that spirit, here are some recipes I've tried recently, along with a short review of each:


"Chicken, Bacon, and Corn Salad with Honey-Lime Vinaigrette":  This was sooooo good. And I prepared most of it separately so the kids could pick and choose what they wanted and what they didn't, and so it worked pretty well as a family dinner, too.

"Mexican Street Corn Pasta Salad": This one I made for a Sunday potluck at church. It was great! I kept everything separate until right before we served up, and that worked really well.

"Crab and Corn Chowder, with Bacon and Jalapeno": This is one I made just for me - my family is not such a big fan of seafood. But I thought this was AMAZING. So yummy.  I didn't mind not sharing. :)

"Warm, Spiced Sangria": I made this for Thanksgiving, and it was so good, and so well-received, that I made it for Christmas too.  Highly recommended. (But perhaps to0 delicious and wonderful for anything but a feast!)

"Over-the-top Creamed Brussels Sprouts Gratin": this really is over-the-top.  Another Thanksgiving recipe: it was perfect for a feast, but too much for every day. (It starts with frying bacon IN butter - how could it be anything BUT a feast recipe?)

"Garlic Noodles": this, on the other hand, is a lovely work-a-day sort of a recipe. The kids loved it.  Add some veggies & leftover chicken, and you've got a perfect weekday lunch.


Have you tried any new recipes recently?


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Recently-tried Recipes

I've found out recently, that I can get rid of a lot of the plodding feel of cooking dinner again (it's the again (and again, and again) part that gets difficult) by regularly throwing new recipes into the mix. Here are a few I've tried - and liked - recently.

"Almost Famous: Ikea's Swedish Meatballs": These were creamy and wonderful. Though I had to both make the meatballs and the sauce from scratch, it still didn't feel like a fussy meal. The meatballs came together easily, and the sauce was just a basic white sauce, with a few extra touches. And the results? Deeee-licious.

"Grilled Turkey, Apple, and Cheddar Sandwiches": After hearing the ingredients, our kids opted for regular ol' grilled cheese. Which is probably a good thing, because the mango chutney I bought for this recipe turned out to be pretty spicy (it had a lot of ginger in it).

I loved these. So did my husband. He said, "they're good. Despite the parsley".

And I said, "They're good. Despite the ginger."

So there you go: these sandwiches were good enough to overcome not one, but two mild dislikes on the part of the eaters. We're totally planning on making them again. They were excellent.


If you've tried any new recipes recently that were a hit with your families, I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Recently-tried recipes

I went on a baking spree recently. I just had this urge to open up a ton of bookmarked recipes and sprint through them.

So I did! And boy, did we eat well that night (and for several mornings afterwards).

Here's what I made:

-Lemon-Herb Roasted shrimp - om nom nom nom.  Nom nom. Nom, nommy-nom nom.

Just sayin'.  (But then, I like shrimp.)

-healthy pumpkin spice latte - this one I modified by using dairy milk, rather than almond. It was much darker and earthier than the fluffy Starbucks version, but I really liked it. And she's right: this version could be a meal.

-island spice cookies - oh my goodness, this is what Lofthouse cookies wish they were. Be sure to make the maple icing. (And next time, I might add a little Chinese Five Spice powder to these, just to pack a bit more punch - I like my spice cookies spicy. But they were still scrumptious, just as written.)

-muesli cookies - my husband really liked these, and so did one of my kids. I need to make them again to see if I do too - I was recovering from wisdom tooth removal while these were in play.

-pb granola bars - These were a hit with 4 out of 6 family members - but the people who liked them really liked them. I was one of the few exceptions; the honey taste was just too strong for me. But if you really like the taste of honey, you will devour these. I'm planning on making them again, because they're super-simple, decently healthy, and a great easy breakfast if you make them beforehand.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

P.S.: On a recent post, I asked for breakfast ideas, so I wanted to be sure to note that both the muesli cookies and the pb bars froze really well, and helped me in my quest for easier breakfasts!

7 Quick Takes

1. I started Jennifer Fulwiler's (our host's) book, "Something Other Than God" one night, and finished it the next. It is so good. (Review forthcoming.)

2. Kalos Press is still looking for submissions on miscarriage and infertility. The deadline is June 1. I encourage you take a look at the call for submissions, and maybe pass it on, if you know someone who would be a good contributer!

3. My daughter has taken to reading my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook as if it were a novel. This has resulted, in the last few day, in made-from-scratch devil's food cake (with fudge frosting) and homemade blueberry muffins, appearing in my kitchen, as if by magic.

So yes, dear child, I will keep buying you cocoa and butter and sugar. You bake away, you brilliant girl, you.

4. (Seriously, it's fun to watch my eldest adopt a hobby so whole-heartedly. I delight in her delight.)

5. So, here's a question for you: what's your favorite part of U.S. History? I admit to being an Anglophile, and overdosing on British history, but it's time for me to learn a bit more about my own country's past. Where should I start? What stories and settings from the United States really capture your imagination? I'd love to know.

6.  Today I had the rare experience of my cat actually coming to me, and wanting to be scratched and petted and snuggled.

He's the sort of cranky beast that thanks you for your pains by biting you when he's had enough loving - purring all the while of course. He's a bit of a psychopath, but we keep him around because he's so terribly pretty. And he kills bugs. (I admire that in a cat.)

Anyone else have a cranky pet?

(I have to say: my dog makes up for our cat's crankiness. Our dog only wants us to LOVE HER, PLEASE LOVE HER, SHE ONLY WANTS US TO LOVE HER AND WALK HER AND FEED HER AND SCRITCH HER OH, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!!!

But that' s dog for you, right?)

7. Is it terrible that I really, really want to watch this?




More Quick Takes can be found here, at Conversion Diary.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Modeling a Healthy View of Food for Your Child (even if you haven’t always had one) - Part One

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Miriam Yvanovich, of BabyBellies.org, to the blog. Miriam writes here about motherhood, food, and self-image. Take it away, Miriam!

I grew up in a family that had a typical view of food: three meals and a couple of snacks per day, plus special desserts and dishes for birthdays and celebrations. I loved helping my mom cook and learned to associate making food for others as a way of showing love. 

Somewhere along the way, I hit puberty and started noticing how different *my* body was from bodies that I saw in magazines and in media. Now, mind you, we didn’t subscribe to any of these magazines, I never played with Barbie dolls (my mom called their bodies unrealistic), and I watched no television until age 10, and very little after that. I simply began to absorb images from the world around me, the library, magazines in waiting rooms, and my heightened awareness of how people talked about their bodies.

One day, while shopping for a bathing suit, I tried one on. Looking back now, I can see that I didn’t know my own size and grabbed one that was two size too small. I looked into the mirror and saw bulges and rolls. I remember seeing my face crinkle in disgust and I quietly spoke aloud, “I’m going to lose weight.”

I was 14. I was 5’ 3” and weighed 110 lbs.

So began my journey into anorexia. While I only lost twenty lbs, eventually weighing 90 lbs, my mental transformation into a calorie-calculating, fat-gram-counting machine was much more drastic. Eventually, all I thought about was food and how to avoid eating it. I spent hours reading as much as I could about weight loss, exercised as much as possible (although I eventually got so tired from caloric deprivation that I had to cut back), and ate the tiniest portions I could get away with. When my friends and I went out for meals, I ate as little as possible and then would “playfully” jump up and down on our way out to the car to allegedly help my food settle (but really to burn as many calories as possible).

As is the case in just about every disordered eating story, I got tons of compliments on my weight loss and learned to crave the validation of being “tiny” and “soooo skinny.”

After a year of this, I had an epiphany. I was 15 and had just graduated from high school two years early. I was about to start college, and as I lay in bed I suddenly realized that the world was filled with possibilities and fascinating, beautiful things to learn about and explore. This realization was so intense that my heart felt like it swelled with this knowledge and tears came to my eyes. I thought to myself, “I don’t want to think about food every waking moment.”

I decided to stop losing weight, and I eventually put on a few pounds, getting back up to around 100. Throughout college, I continued to have a very disordered relationship with food, and while I never went back to obsessive dieting, I thought about food and criticized my body and food choices far too often and too harshly.

Fast forward another 14 years: I’m 29 and pregnant with a baby girl.

I learn to fall in love with my body and its extraordinary, life-giving capacity. I learn to be gentle and caring toward the tiny girl growing in my uterus, and thus learn that my imperfect body, too, is deserving of gentle, caring attention.

I give birth and discover that my daughter is the most beautiful creature on the planet. Her stunning cheeks, tiny limbs, and soul-filled eyes are so utterly perfect and heart-rendingly beautiful that I cry when I realize that one day, she may look at her reflection and wrinkle her nose in disgust.

I resolve then and there to have a healthy, caring, joy-filled relationship with my own body so that she won’t see that self-hatred modeled by me.

But how?

To be continued tomorrow in Part Two . . .

~
Miriam blogs at BabyBellies.org, a place filled with holistic tips to nourish and nurture your preemie (or any little one who needs some extra TLC). She is a stay at home mom, a fitness enthusiast, an avid reader, and a Pinterest junkie.

3 Great Ways to Use Winter Squash

Along with healthy greens, the other thing I'm always getting in my CSA basket is winter squash. Here are a few good ways to use it:

1) Stuff it. All that yummy stuff in the middle and you'll scarcely notice the healthy vegetable around the edge.

2) Bake with it. For butternut squash: puree it and use it in place of canned pumpkin. Roasting squash is as easy as halving it, scooping out the seeds, placing it upside down on a greased baking sheet, and roasting it at about 400 degrees for about 40 minutes (give or take, depending on the size of the squash). Once it's roasted, you can puree it, and then you've basically got yourself a homemade can of Libby's packed pumpkin. You can use the butternut puree as a replacement in pumpkin pie, pumpkin bars, or pumpkin cookies.

3) Use it as a base for soup. Again, you can use it in place of canned pumpkin. My favorite squash soup involves beans, lime, coconut milk, and sage.



And that is the sum total of my creativity. What do you do with your winter squashes?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell