Saturday, July 04, 2009
Guacamole
Here is a terrific recipe for guacamole. I have never had mine come out *just right*, but this one sure did. Happy 4th of July!
Friday, July 03, 2009
Beef Brisket
I made Pioneer Woman's Beef Brisket tonight and my husband said it is the best meat he has ever had in his life. I think he was really hungry at the time too so that helped that compliment along:0) But, this recipe is great, feeds a lot of people, is very easy, and does not require much last minute attention.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
You are what you eat?
An apple a day...
makes you a Super Hero!
I don't know what they ate here...
but it made them silly!
Cupcakes make you...
cute when you put the liner on your head!
makes you a Super Hero!
I don't know what they ate here...
but it made them silly!
Cupcakes make you...
cute when you put the liner on your head!
Hard to be a Housewife?
It can be crazy being a stay at home mom sometimes, but we have to admit, we've got it pretty good. Check out this job description of a housewife from the middle ages. I found it in Archers, Alchemists, and 98 Other Medieval Jobs You Might Have Loved or Loathed. Thanks Lori for giving it to me!
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Housewife
You get up before sunrise to prepare meals, work with the men in the field, grow and harvest vegetables, gather wild nuts and berries,store food for winter, spin wool into yarn, weave cloth and make clothes for the family, milk the cow, make butter and cheese, gather eggs, clean house, collect the family's urine to sell to the tanner, nurse the baby, carry water, brew ale, make candles, and drop into bed with it's too dark to do anything more. You don't have time or energy to play with the children; you need them to help as soon as they can walk and talk. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? But hard physical work can be very satisfying and the housewife's tasks were often enjoyable in themselves. People today do many of the same things as hobbies. The housewife of the Middle Ages had no let-up, though. Her successes and failures affected the whole family.
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Housewife
You get up before sunrise to prepare meals, work with the men in the field, grow and harvest vegetables, gather wild nuts and berries,store food for winter, spin wool into yarn, weave cloth and make clothes for the family, milk the cow, make butter and cheese, gather eggs, clean house, collect the family's urine to sell to the tanner, nurse the baby, carry water, brew ale, make candles, and drop into bed with it's too dark to do anything more. You don't have time or energy to play with the children; you need them to help as soon as they can walk and talk. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? But hard physical work can be very satisfying and the housewife's tasks were often enjoyable in themselves. People today do many of the same things as hobbies. The housewife of the Middle Ages had no let-up, though. Her successes and failures affected the whole family.
The Mystery of Marriage
In the following quote from The Mystery of Marriage Mike Mason draws out the beauty of how marriage is the ultimate example of "iron sharpening iron."
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What is most unique about the tenacious fidelity of marriage is that it allows for such a really brutal amount of "sharpening" to take place, yet in the gentlest way imaginable. Who ever heard of being sharpened against a warm, familiar body of loved flesh? Only the Lord could have devised such an awesomely tender and heartwarming means for men and women to be made into swords. Yet for all its gentleness, marriage is still a fire and a sword itself, a fire which brands, and a sword which inflicts a wound far deeper than any arrow of Cupid. For it is a wound in a person's pride, in a place which cannot be healed, and from the moment a man and woman first stand transfixed in one another's light they will begin to feel this wound of marriage opening up in them. The Lord God made woman out of part of man's side and closed up the place with flesh, but in marriage He reopens this empty, aching place in man and begins the process of putting the woman back again, if not literally IN the side, then certainly AT it: permanently there, intrusively there, a sudden lifelong resident of a space which until that point the man will have considered to be his own private territory, even his own body. But it marriage he will cleave to the woman, and the woman to him, the way his own flesh cleaves to his own bones.
Just so, says the Lord, do I Myself desire to invade your deepest privacy, binding you to Me all your life long and even into eternity with cords of blood.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What is most unique about the tenacious fidelity of marriage is that it allows for such a really brutal amount of "sharpening" to take place, yet in the gentlest way imaginable. Who ever heard of being sharpened against a warm, familiar body of loved flesh? Only the Lord could have devised such an awesomely tender and heartwarming means for men and women to be made into swords. Yet for all its gentleness, marriage is still a fire and a sword itself, a fire which brands, and a sword which inflicts a wound far deeper than any arrow of Cupid. For it is a wound in a person's pride, in a place which cannot be healed, and from the moment a man and woman first stand transfixed in one another's light they will begin to feel this wound of marriage opening up in them. The Lord God made woman out of part of man's side and closed up the place with flesh, but in marriage He reopens this empty, aching place in man and begins the process of putting the woman back again, if not literally IN the side, then certainly AT it: permanently there, intrusively there, a sudden lifelong resident of a space which until that point the man will have considered to be his own private territory, even his own body. But it marriage he will cleave to the woman, and the woman to him, the way his own flesh cleaves to his own bones.
Just so, says the Lord, do I Myself desire to invade your deepest privacy, binding you to Me all your life long and even into eternity with cords of blood.
Friday, June 26, 2009
The Ducks and Moms
I posted a link to this article a while back, but I just had to "re-post" it. The article is called What a Mother Must Sacrifice. What a great picture and challenge for all of us moms.
Organizing Life
Simple Mom had a great post entitled Steps for Organizing...Life. I highly recommend it! It is so hard to stay on top of it all; especially with some little ones underfoot. This post gives some great tips and a place to jump in and get started.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A Grief Observed
My good friend Lori has a wonderful way with words and she KNOWS her books! Here is a link to her post, but I copied a bit of it here.
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A Grief Observed
C.S. Lewis's true love came to him late in life in the person of Joy Gresham and though they had only been married for 4 years when she lost her battle with cancer, he was deeply and permanently affected. Only the hardest of hearts could not be moved by the thoughts and emotions he conveys in this brief journal. Though it's brevity makes for a quick and easy read, it is nevertheless a profound and soul-stirring account of one man's journey of faith through a dark valley.
*Brandy here...this is where the quote from the book begins.
Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. From the rational point of view, what new factor had H.'s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned - I had warned myself - not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were a part of the program. We were even told, "Blessed are they that mourn," and I accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn't for a man whose faith and whose concern for other people's sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which "took these things into account" was not faith but imagination. The taking them into account was not real sympathy. If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous concerns labelled "Illness," "Pain," "Death," and "Loneliness." I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn't.
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*Brandy again. This made me think of another article I read recently (I can't remember where) about doing battle with our tears. The writer said that too often we cry for ourselves, but God gave us tears to cry for others. We are to feel others pain and cry out to God to hear and answer. Abortion. Murder. Rape. Persecution. The scriptures talk about "crying out to the Lord" and Him hearing and answering. May we truly feel and enter into the pain of others. Then when our own troubles come we will be more prepared, having truly carried the burdens of others who have gone before us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Grief Observed
C.S. Lewis's true love came to him late in life in the person of Joy Gresham and though they had only been married for 4 years when she lost her battle with cancer, he was deeply and permanently affected. Only the hardest of hearts could not be moved by the thoughts and emotions he conveys in this brief journal. Though it's brevity makes for a quick and easy read, it is nevertheless a profound and soul-stirring account of one man's journey of faith through a dark valley.
*Brandy here...this is where the quote from the book begins.
Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. From the rational point of view, what new factor had H.'s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned - I had warned myself - not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were a part of the program. We were even told, "Blessed are they that mourn," and I accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn't for a man whose faith and whose concern for other people's sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which "took these things into account" was not faith but imagination. The taking them into account was not real sympathy. If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous concerns labelled "Illness," "Pain," "Death," and "Loneliness." I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn't.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Brandy again. This made me think of another article I read recently (I can't remember where) about doing battle with our tears. The writer said that too often we cry for ourselves, but God gave us tears to cry for others. We are to feel others pain and cry out to God to hear and answer. Abortion. Murder. Rape. Persecution. The scriptures talk about "crying out to the Lord" and Him hearing and answering. May we truly feel and enter into the pain of others. Then when our own troubles come we will be more prepared, having truly carried the burdens of others who have gone before us.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
How to deal with Immodesty
Here is an interesting post about how to deal with immodestly dressed women in the church. There are some interesting thoughts here. I especially appreciated her pointing out that sometimes the one critiquing the inappropriately dressed has a bigger problem...compulsively pointing out others faults!
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