God Revealed in Nature

My food philosophy is very closely tied into my faith in God. My philosophy basically is that God made us so He knows what's good for us. And so I try to eat things as closely to what He originally made as possible. I prefer food in it's most natural state.

This has been a process for me. When I got married and became responsible for meal planning and shopping for my family boxed mac and cheese and cereal were regular staples in my cupboards. I NEVER bought real butter...margarine is cheaper after all! I placed the value of foods on how cheap and quickly  they could be prepared and still taste yummy.

When I developed an auto immune disease around 6 years ago, I really began to change my view of food. My priorities in regard to food changed dramatically.

And then I became pregnant with twins and I was determined to carry them full term. So I put my faith in God and I did what I could with nutrition to insure a safe and healthy pregnancy. I ended up carrying them full term and delivering them at home (not on purpose!) and having a healthy 8# 4oz boy and a 6# 13oz girl. Praise God!

All of my pregnancies taught me something about God. He made our bodies and He knew what He was doing when He did it. And so obviously the things that He has provided for us to eat are what is going to make our bodies function at their best, right?

My most recent stepping stone in this process is making a commitment to buying and using only seasonal produce. Not only is it more cost effective to do this, it supports more local agriculture and it has health benefits as well! God is amazing! I mean, think of the health problems people face in the winter...colds, flu, infections of all sorts. Now think about the produce that is in season during this time...lemons, oranges, apples, pears, lettuce...all of which are rich in vitamin C, super antioxidants and fiber (which cleanse our body of bad stuff). God gave us what we need to fend off these illnesses...exactly when we need it!

For me, putting it in that light gives me purpose. (I'm not saying this is a moral issue and if this is not a priority for you, then please understand I'm not saying it necessarily should be...I understand that we all have different views and priorities!). But I love finding God in ways that I never have before. I love seeing Him while I'm grocery shopping...or while I'm preparing a meal for my family. It helps me to refocus and realize that all of this only matters because of Him, and it reminds me to be thankful because I am truly blessed!

I've Got The Itch!

I have never been a shopper. When I was in college I kind of developed an unhealthy relationship with shopping. I used it to fill my voids (along with food and promiscuity).  And up until the last couple of years, while I didn't have access to a lot of money, I spent a lot of money that I shouldn't have to comfort myself. Of course, we all know THAT drill. It's not really comforting because then you feel guilty.

For the last few years God has really curbed that appetite in me. He's taught me that nothing--not shopping, not eating, not fulfilling the desires of my flesh, not inflicting pain upon myself--NOTHING will fill the God shaped hole in my heart except HIM.

The last week or so I've really had an itch to shop.

Honestly, there are a lot of things we need (Nathaniel's tennis shoes have been duct taped closed and now the duct tape isn't holding...AKA He NEEDS shoes) but there's also a very limited budget for those things...and some of them will have to wait.

I've been struggling with contentment.

I've been focusing on the fact that all of my jackets and warm clothing are too big for me...and brushing aside the fact that I have a jacket at all. I've been focusing on the fact that other people's kids have multiple pairs of shoes instead of on the fact that my kids have shoes.

It's so funny how I kind of expect God to meet my standards. If I don't have multiple pairs of shoes, God hasn't met my need for shoes...right?! Kind of like the Israelites in the desert. They didn't have 5 pairs of shoes to choose from, but they had shoes that didn't wear out. They didn't have a big Thanksgiving feast to eat every day, but they had manna.

God never said that he would buy me a pair of new running shoes, he would give my kids the same standard of living that all their friends have, or that I would have a jacket that fits. But I have running shoes, my kids are clean, fed and happy and I have a jacket.

And at the end of the day I am truly blessed. Not being able to just go and shop away my sorrows helps me to depend on God instead of a new pair of shoes. It's helps me to remember that my treasure is not here. That my focus is not on fashion. It's on Jesus.

God is so awesome! Today I am thankful for warm clothes and shoes. And that God doesn't give me everything that I think I want, because what He has to give me is always so much infinitely better.

Granola Bars!

The desire to cut out processed/convenient foods has greatly impacted our lives. I think that most of us dread  and are turned off by the time that is involved in making things from scratch. And I'll be honest, it does require a lot of time in the kitchen...but I honestly don't think that whipping up a batch of granola bars takes any more time than running to the store to pick up a box of granola bars...and you skip all the extra junk that is in store bought granola bars!

I will say that I prefer to send a piece of fruit and in the winter when our orange tree is producing, that's pretty much our staple school snack. But I like to mix it up a little sometimes with some homemade goodness.

The thing I love about these granola bars is that I know exactly what is in them, they are sturdy--they can survive a backpack and still remain intact, and it's easy to "mix it up".

Here's what you'll need

4 1/2 cups of oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup maple syrup (you could substitute brown sugar, if you prefer...use the same amount either way)
2/3 cup melted butter
2 cups total of whatever "pieces" you want to add--chocolate chips, dried fruit, nuts

Preheat your oven to 325 and prepare a 9x13 pan (butter/flour whatever you want to use to keep the bars from sticking).

Mix all of the dry ingredients together (I don't bother with a mixer...a pastry blender would work well...I use a spatula). Create a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients to the well. Mix everything together and spoon and press into your prepared pan.

Bake around 20 minutes or until the edges are a golden brown.

Let me know if you try them and tell me what you think or how you improved them!

Sometimes My Kids Set Me Straight

Last night, as we got home from church, it was late. Uriah and Elisabeth were both having meltdowns and the older kids were fussing up a storm. So I hurried them through their bedtime routines.

In a flurry of brushed teeth, clothes changed and laid out, they got into bed.

Here's where I sighed a BIG sigh of relief.

And then from the boys room I heard a voice, "Mommy, can we say a prayer?"

This is what went through my head...Yeah, jerk mom! Why didn't you ALREADY say a prayer? What kind of mom ARE YOU?!

So I got the girls out of bed and we all gathered in the boys room. And let me tell ya, a portion of that prayer was a humbled pleading for God to change me and thankfulness for the ways He already has.

On some days I think my parenting goal is simply to survive. But that's not what parenting is about. Yeah, there are rough days. But parenting is about showing them who God is. Even our imperfections can point their hearts toward Him. Because our imperfections remind us, and them, that they need a Savior and that we are not it.

So, yeah, I'm not a perfect mom. I am a deeply flawed mom depending on the grace of God to change me and to leave my children as un scarred by my imperfections as they can be.

Praise God for His mercy and grace!

With Me, It's All 'Er Nothin', Is it All 'Er Nothin' With You?

I tend to be an all or nothin' kinda girl. If I get everything on my to-do list done then I feel good and it's been a successful day, but if not, I'm depressed and feel like a failure.


Recently I was reading the creation story and I started to ponder the fact that God did what He did on certain days, then He looked at what He had done that day and was satisfied...and then left the rest for "tomorrow". He didn't do it all in one day, and presumably, He could have. And when He was done for the week, He took a day off.


I think it's pretty common for moms to feel pressured to have a clean home, clean children, a meal on the table and still have time to give our husbands some attention at the end of the day. We give ourselves so much to do every day that something has to give...whether it's going through the drive thru for dinner or being tired and grumpy with our husbands!

Until the last few months, my home was either a complete mess or spotless. For the past few months it's been varying degrees in between. It's pretty clean most of the time. And most of the time my laundry is done. But sometimes I go to bed with laundry on the laundry room floor...and while I hate it, I'm learning to tell myself "well, I guess I'll try again tomorrow!"

Let me tell ya, a few months ago if I had a streak of keeping my laundry done and then "failed" one day, I would have given up. But I've been pondering the creation story and I've come to some conclusions that have had really good repercussion in my life...

1.  Not everything has to be done in one day. God did what He did and then stood back and enjoyed the view. So, do what I can but leave enough time to enjoy the fruits of my labor with my family. Because that's the reason we do it all anyway. If we're "doing it all" but missing out on time with our kids or husband and opportunities to serve others...then what's the point?

2.  Do SOMETHING every day. Again, do what I can and when I'm done don't listen to the voices that are in my head listing all of the other things I should get done. Just shut it off until tomorrow. There are more important things in life than having every can in my pantry facing forward.

3.  Take periodic rest days. This is hard. It's so hard to take rest days. But God thought they were necessary and went to great lengths to enforce the Sabbath day with the Israelites.

I think that viewing this through the creation story has really helped me to look at God in a new way. It's baffling how each thing I learn about Him just reinforces to me how utterly good and completely amazing He is!

The thing is, everything we do is to prepare ourselves and our families to serve others and love God...keeping our homes is one way that we do that.

Countdown to Thanksgiving: Today I am thankful for laundry. I am thankful that God can (and does) take the things I struggle with and moan and groan over and uses them to change me!

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Me and Lilla bein' silly.

As a parent I think it's fairly normal to have a list of things I want my children to have and a standard of living I want them to live. I want them to have a magical childhood. I want them to be carefree. It's my own sort of "keeping up with the Joneses".

And up until the past few years I've kind of had a sense of entitlement about it all. And we've felt a pressure to be able to put presents under the Christmas tree, to be able to take our family out to dinner to socialize with friends and family (because that's what people do, right?!).

In the past year or so I've really realized just how ridiculous that is.

Life isn't about presents under a Christmas tree, or going to movies or eating ice cream. And while it's fun to be able to do those things, we can't do those things and still pay our bills.

We've stopped feeling pressured to keep up. Our clothes are worn, we probably won't be going to the movies anytime soon and we'll be staying at home to eat our meals....but don't feel sorry for us or think our life is less fulfilled because of those things. Because our clothes have character, our living room is our theater (we see a Tony Award worthy play every week!), and our dinner table is set and enjoyed with love. And we're less distracted (than we used to be) by material things, which leaves us more time to enjoy each other and think of others...which is what life is all about!

And that definitely works for us!

How To: Ski Ball-- Lessons from the Life of Elisabeth

I'm pretty sure there's not a person alive who enjoys life more than Elisabeth. She's a free spirit, with a song on her lips, a smile in her heart and, I'm convinced, magic in her step. She leaves a trail of sparkle everywhere she goes.

Tonight my dad treated our family to a trip to John's Incredible Pizza. Elisabeth spent most of the time at the Ski Ball game. When one game would end, without inserting more tokens, she would push the 'start' button and a new game would begin (see?! I told you she is magic!).

Elisabeth's approach to Ski ball is a unique (and fairly dangerous) one.

First of all, the balls must be named and assigned a familial position (mom/dad/sister/brother). Then, she closes her eyes and tosses the ball. Sometimes the ball heads in the general vicinity of the alley she's playing on, and sometimes not. Sometimes you can't tell which alley she's playing on because she's technically playing on them all. It doesn't matter if she gets the ball in her own gutter or the one next to her...the fact that the ball didn't roll back to her is an accomplishment to be celebrated! And believe me. Every. Single. Ball. is celebrated with a parade and dancing and giggling fit for Disneyland.

I am pretty sure I've never seen a kid enjoy Ski Ball that much. And I'm pretty sure I've never enjoyed watching a game of Ski Ball that much.

It's amazing how some people just spread joy. They don't have to tell you to be joyful...because theirs is infectious.

It's a good reminder. Not only to be joyful in even the most mundane tasks but in how our attitude affects the people around us...and that life is too short to not be silly sometimes!

Avoiding Convenience Foods

Photo Credit http://www.whattomakefordinner.org/

I absolutely know what it's like to be dog tired. I know what it's like to get to the end of the day and realize that I haven't even THOUGHT about dinner.

I also know the temptation to drive to the drive thru at that point. I've been there and done that.

Fast food and even most store-bought convenience foods are hard on the budget. And over the last few years we have gradually cut out 95% of our fast food/convenience food consumption. I do still buy the occasional box of Dino Bites and even less often we go for fast food.


The thing is, I still have days where I'm dog tired...and realize at the end of the day that I have no idea what we're gonna have for dinner. All of this has been a learning experience for me and I've discovered that there are a few things that profoundly effect the peace of our home around 5 o'clock in the evening and make dinner a much more pleasant experience for my whole family.

1.  Meal planning. I don't do anything fancy. There are some really cute, free (woohoo! who doesn't love free stuff?!) menu planning pages out there. Sometimes I'm all fancy and use one of those and sometimes I use a blank sheet of paper that nobody but me could make heads or tails of. My family really enjoys it when I post my menu plan on the fridge so they can check it and either get excited about dinner or check their attitude and count their blessings that they get to have their least favorite meal instead a bowl of grasshoppers.

I should note that I don't necessarily decide in advance on what day we will have which meal. Sometimes I just make a list of the assortment of meals we'll have for the next two weeks and then decide on a daily basis what we'll actually have on that day.

2.  Make a grocery list based on my meal plan. I try to base my menu plan around a few key ingredients. Like if one recipe calls for half of a whole chicken I would either have that meal twice or find another recipe that calls for the other half of the chicken...so I don't end up wasting half a chicken because we're having beef all the other nights...you know what I mean?

3.  Make a big batch of ingredients that take a while to cook, like brown rice (which takes 25-40 minutes) and beans (which can take HOURS to prepare) to keep in the fridge (I know that you can buy canned beans but I just think dried beans are healthier). Tonight I did a variation of Cheesy Beef and Rice. The rice was already cooked so I threw it in the casserole, and since I had them in the fridge I included lentils...so I cut at least half an hour off of dinner prep time (and the dishes I would have had to dirty to cook them are already done!).

4.  I unload my dishwasher before starting dinner prep so all I have to do is stick the dishes in as I am done using them and most of the dishes are done before we even have dinner. The kids are also in the habit now of putting THEIR plates in the dishwasher. So I don't have a sink full of dishes staring me down and overwhelming me after dinner and I can sit and enjoy dinner with my family in a stress free environment!

Convenience foods are...convenient but it's not that difficult to make homemade dinners more doable. And nothing beats the fun (and confidence boost) of my kids trying to think of the name I should give the restaurant they think I should be head chef of.

People are More Important than Food

I love studying nutrition. I love seeking out information on how to help my body function at it's highest capacity.

But you know what I've noticed? I've noticed that sometimes this "knowledge" leads to my looking into other peoples grocery carts and thinking to myself  "oh my goodness, I can't believe they eat that!"

Which has lead me to several observations.

1.  The world of nutrition is a lot like the "religious world"...there are a bunch of people who ALL think they know the truth and anyone who disagrees is either insincere or just ignorant.

For example:

Some people (who are considered experts) say you should take generic fish oil. Other experts say those experts have got it all wrong and you should take krill oil. Still other experts say both of those experts have it wrong and you should take cod liver oil. And the funny thing is, they all have "evidence" to back up their claim.

Sounds confusing, doesn't it?

It basically comes down to who you trust. And the thing is, the people who follow these people obviously benefit from doing so...so maybe they all have their place and maybe God never intended for us to get so uppity about it all.

2.  I think that sometimes nutrition gets taken out of context. Yes, we should strive to be good stewards of our bodies. Yes we should use self control and do what we can to keep our bodies working at their optimum level so that when our "neighbors" need our help we are healthy and able to do so...but when our nutrition views take precedents over who we will and won't socialize with or how we view people who don't agree with us or follow a different plan...then it is out of it's context.

3.  But the thing is, it doesn't matter how much fish oil (or krill oil or cod liver oil) we take...we don't have the power to add even one day to our lives.

4.  Eating healthy foods (and taking supplements if you choose to do so) is only meaningful in the context of being a servant, of loving God with everything that we are...because our bodies are not our own.

5.  If nutrition gets in the way of loving people, it has lost it's meaning. If I place so much emphasis on nutrition that I find myself using it as a basis of judgement, then it has no value.

I'm going to continue to strive to feed my family healthy things. But I'm going to do it with the understanding that whether I take krill oil or fish oil or cod liver oil (or follow a specific diet or nutrition plan) only has eternal value if it aids me in loving God.

All we can do is our best and if a friend wants to meet me at McDonalds for lunch...that person has more value than my nutritional stance on the food offerings of McDonalds. I will happily and without regret or reservation gobble up a cheeseburger and maybe a fry or two...all in the name of love!

So there you have it! :)

God Designed Girlfriends Book Club

I have wanted to be in a book club for so long. I have literally been searching for a group of girls that would get together and discuss literature/fiction...well, really ANY type of book...with me.

Recently I found a girl who not only wanted to get together to discuss books...when I asked her she jumped up and down and hasn't stopped talking about it (and asking about it!) since I asked her.

Well, tonight after several weeks of trying to find a time to have our first meeting...I put the kids in bed and MADE time.

I'm not sure what our first book will be...we are planning to have that decided by Sunday evening. Tonight we just talked about books we've read recently, what we liked and didn't like about them and which character was our favorite.

Can you tell we had fun?!

Any book suggestions?

Pumpkin Pie!

Today started out rough. I had this wonderful plan that I was going to work outside in our yard all day.

I wheeled the lawn mower out to the front yard, fully expecting my plans to gracefully fall into place. But after an hour of trying to start the dumb thing and actually crying (yes, I did cry over the fact that the lawn mower wouldn't start...I'm ridiculous...I know...I'm pretty sure there was a pride issue here) I finally gave up (that is painful for me to say...maybe God was workin on my pride??).

So instead I decided to wing my way through making a pumpkin pie (w/ a graham cracker crust to change it up and homemade whipped cream), completely from scratch. I researched the components of pumpkin pie and then decided to kind of wing my way through it.

Yes, those are kid fingerprints. Don't judge me. :)

I started off making graham crackers. I doubled the recipe so my family would have some to eat since they are soooooooooo good. I put half into a plastic bag and crushed them and mixed them with a little coconut oil and pressed them into a baking stone.

Then I mixed up the goop for the filling. I used honey and maple syrup as my sweeteners in place of white sugar, four eggs, typical pumpkin pie spices, a little salt, a little vanilla, some of the fresh pumpkin puree I whipped up yesterday and whipping cream (most recipes call for condensed milk but I don't have any and canned milk seems kind of yucky to me!).

I filled the crust with the filling and stuck it in the oven until it looked done to me.

 I kind of chickened out of the whipped cream but at the last minute whipped up a batch. So YUM! And just as easy as getting cool whip from the store (easier in my case because I had all the ingredients--heavy whipping cream, honey and vanilla--on hand).

I pulled the pie out of the oven and let it cool for a bit and then served up pieces--complete with a dollop of whipped cream--to my family.

 And the verdict?! While it tastes REALLY good (although probably not the best I've ever had...but it was very much fresh and THAT was a nice change)...the consistency was not what I had hoped. Using honey and maple syrup make it a little heavier, I think, than white sugar and some adjustments need to be made there.

Also, if I use the same proportions I think two smaller pans would work better...the filling struggled to get cooked completely through because it was so thick.

Overall it was a success. Not because it was the best pumpkin pie ever consumed...but because I put myself out there to create something (which has been really difficult for me to do in the past!), I did my best and even though it wasn't a complete success I learned something and hopefully my next attempt will benefit from the wisdom and experience I gained from this one.