Very proud of myself for preparing all sorts of stuff ahead for this week: healthy and delish! AHEAD!! We eat out or pick-up TOO much! Busy life. Just as I was about to post this healthful factoid, Dave messaged me that he wondered if I would make some fudge…no doubt to go with the giant 3-layer coconut cake on the counter. Tsk. I don’t think so.
I figure, according to King Sooper’s deli dept, I just made 7+ side dishes and salads for $25-30 that would have cost me $60-75 through them. Nice. That is not even counting keeping my own boiled eggs on hand. Did you know they sell those?! Geesh.
Anyhow, I feel accomplished. Cook once, eat 7: a good thing!
NOTE TO SELF: Remember to tell Dave not buy so much fruit at once, espcially if he wants fudge.
In unrelated news: I feel the need, the need for speed!
You know the deli section in a nice supermarket or even a Super Target?
You know where you walk up and there are all sorts of gourmet cheeses and specialty meats and a big glass cooler heaped-full of freshly-made salads? Um, yeah. Dave wants our refrigerator to look like that…all the time.
We are going to try, I guess. Sort of . This week. Today, though, so it will all last all week. Because we have things going, you know.
He started pulling salads from his 30-year memory bank, “Hey – what was that one salad you made…” “Remember that one with broccoli…” I mean, he went back to Kokomo 1981 and right up through the years. Good grief.
The whole thing poses a two-fold problem:
Dave wants a great big selection he can just try little amounts of here and there.
I cook for crowds. That is when and how I cook. I mean, if I am going to make something uber-fab and delicious, then there should be enough to feed the multitudes. Jesus would not have had to worry about hungry people if I had been around!
So, the theme of the day is tempering. I must temper my desrie to make the world’s biggest ever, most-fabulous gourmet bacon-gorgonzola red-potato salad (forcing Dave to eat just that every day all day long for the week), with his desire for a thousand choices, many of which we’d end up tossing in a few days.
Here is where I think we are landing: Carole Loftis’ Broccoli Salad (Kokomo, 1981), Three-bean salad (pre-me, ick), Marinated Calamato and Gorgonzola (yum!), Chandra’s Corn and Black Bean Salad with Avocado and Cilantro (2009 was when this entered my repertoire, love it), and chicken salad with grapes and walnus and all that (mid-80s). To accompany and change up at a moments’ notice: Barilla Corkscrew pasta and Ranch dressing, some provolone and Amablue bleu cheese, an assortment of crackers (Triscuits, Wheat Thins, Pita Chips), olives and pickles, and bacon because-I-am-a-bacon-nut and salami and ham, maybe some thin-sliced turkey.
Fire up the grill nightly for some steak or chops or chicken breast and, hey…hmmmm….this may actually be ok. I am already thinking of next week: Thai Cucumber Salad, Garlic Sweet Pea Salad, BLT Pasta Salad, Asian Sesame Slaw, Popcorn Salad…
Well, maybe I should just wait to see how this week goes??
Well, my curiosity is piqued. Currently #1 bestselling e-book in Amazon’s home cleaning, care taking and relocating category, this book throws in the tagline “Having a Martha House the Mary Way.” And for this self-described recovering Martha (trying to figure out why {the heck!} Mary just gets to sit around when there is work to be done)…oh, that’s ME, btw, well, I am definitely curious.
The author says we are, in the course of this month-long daily reading and the challenges provided, forgoing perfection and choosing life. Where was she when I was o-so-much younger?
Never too late, though, right? Only $4.99 for your Kindle.
And just plain pretty. I am becoming more and more enamored with crystal-clear and shiny-clean glass. Even rinsing a salsa jar to toss into the recycle bin, I am a little impressed with the beauty of it, the simple glass jar. I know. I’m weird. But you are reading me so you must be weird, too.
Yay for all of us becoming more aware of wastefulness and how to avoid it. Yay for re-purposing, re-using, re-cycling. Yay for shiny glaass catching the light and then letting it go to dance around the room.
And yay for pretty jars that can serve as flower vases – hanging bud vessels – candle holders – tea glasses – penny holders – marble holders – bug collections – vacation souvenirs showcases – photo displayers – art supply organizers – speciman vials – mixed paints containers – light catchers – lemonade flasks – flour cannisters – grandbebe treasure receptacles – utensil storage – bath salts bottles – and all sorts of other fun stuff!
Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90.12 niv
When I get the time…
Where did the time go?
There aren’t enough hours in the day…
Time flies when you’re [fill in the blank].
I don’t have time for this.
An “alarm” clock. Is this why time alarms me???
A quote I have kept for years…
“Don’t ever say, ‘I don’t have time.’ What you mean is ‘I haven’t arranged my life so I can make the time to do more of the things that are meaningful to me.'” ~Alexandra Stoddard
I continue to work on discerning the difference between the apprehensive, nerve-inducing “what time is it?” and the more important “what is it time for?” I wanna be doing the right thing at the right time. Ecclesiastes 3, says,
1 For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do people really get for all their hard work? 10 I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. 11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.
I don’t want to get all the way to the end and realized I wasted precious time, not one minute of the plan of God for my life.
There is a TIME { f o r } everything, even if this isn’t exactly the time right now. A mystery I am pondering. If I had it to do all over again…
Teach us to number our days, our hours, our minutes and seconds; teach us to discern and organize our very lives, Lord, in a way that welcomes You (Wisdom) and heals our hearts….Every morning, every evening, all our days: May Your favor rest on us. Establish the work of our hands, yes – establish the work of our hands.
From Psalm 90, a Prayer of Moses, the man of God
If I could put time in a bottle, the first thing thing that I’d like to do….
NOTE TO SELF: So, ummmmmm….in light of the previous post (from yesterday), it must be time for Heaven Fest.
HOW DO YOU DECIDE HOW TO DECORATE AND DESIGN YOUR HOME/YOUR LIFE?
Easy. E A S Y !
Ask yourself: If some one spent several days visiting my house, how would I want them to recount their time here?
How you answer that question will give you insight into what your home should reflect about you. Just remember to throw out pretentiousness and airs. A real home with well-loved belongings and sunlight streaming through squeaky-clean windows (I need some of those!) filled with the sound of life will impress everytime. Plus be a place you you will want to nestle into every single day. It isn’t perfection. Repeat that, please: it is not perfection. It is authenticity. Edit, putter and enjoy the process.
And isn’t home, really, after all, the sum of the people living there?
Stef shared this with me the other day from the movie “The Notebook” (yes, yes, yes, you should see it!).
When Noah’s grown children were trying to get him to move back “home” leaving his wife, Allie, in the nursing facility as she was failing, he said,
Some days I get really nostalgic with an actual sort of hunger and bittersweet longing for a person or thing from the past; usually feeling homesick for a place or a time in a sort of regretful kind of way.
Some days I am full of memories and just so grateful for the rich, full remembrances of life.
Nostalgia makes me yearn, melancholy raring its powerful head, makes me wish for do-overs from earlier times, or for the gift of just going back and seeing things again, the way they once were, but with the wisdom of the years, with understanding so I’d not have missed anything important.
But memories“light the corners of my mind” like Barbra so beautifully sang way back when and are the things on which everything now is built. They are the building blocks of my present and have added the depth and dimension that cause intricate color patterns that weave in and out of all I have seen and am and will be. They are epic backstory, the altar of remembrance and the reminder that the story isn’t over. It is just in the middle somewhere…
“Where are you from or where did you spend most of your growing up years?” was the question.
Darla and Rachel, Joan and Sherri and I were getting better acquainted. Such a simple question causes a waterfall of thoughts on the topic. I have so many short, pat answers I have given over the years.
I sometimes say, “I am an Iowa girl,”because I was born there and we lived in three different cities where my dad pastored churches in Iowa and then after marrying, Dave and I led a church in a fourth city in the Corn state.
The house on 1723 York Street, Des Moines
Other times I claim the “near Chicago” as my “home,” because we lived in that little piece of northwest Indiana that ispart of the greater-Chicago-metro area and is actually in Chicago’s time-zone (as opposed to the rest of Indiana) and it is where the Moslanders (Ross-the-Boss, Mrs Moss and all the little Landers) ended up together before we all started leaving home.
There were the short years in Louisiana…
But my parents moved…have moved several times since, to different ministries in various cities and states and wherever they go becomes “home.” I always feel a bit unsettled when they move until I see pictures of the house and google the street and get to go visit. I need to know where they are. I need to know where the boxes (the very few that are left) which are holding the photographic proof of our journeys and my life, are being stored.
So a simple question like, “Where are you from?” throws me into a few-seconds of a spin, trying to decide how to answer accurately, but without boring them with the tedious details of a dozen different houses and 11 schools during my lifetime, of 12 different communities, some more than once, of living as far north as Minot, North Dakota and as far south as Robert, Louisiana – two locations which were, indeed, worlds apart.
Where am I from?
And in a nostalgic mood, I get all tender, feeling I am from nowhere. But in days of remembrance, in times I am grasping what Shakespeare meant when he said, “The past is prologue,” meaning it has all just been preparation for where I am now, all setting up the real story of today, I am grateful for adventures and places, for the people and times I wouldn’t trade.
I look at Darla and Rachael, Joan and Sherri, kind faces waiting to hear a geographical clue to my existence.
“I am not really from any place,” I tell them. I am from a story and I am in the middle of it now.” Home is where my heart is – and there is a little of my heart in lots of places, or maybe the places are here with my in my heart. And I am full of wonderful memories of how I arrived here, interesting people who were kind enough along the way to notice my existence and deposit something rich, funny, happy, sad, meaningful or silly treasure into my life.
The older I get, the more I realize the things of value that have been given to me and I get a strong desire to walk where I once walked and look people in the face and say, “I didn’t know it at the time – when we were just ‘passing through’ so I maybe kept a wall between us, but you were part of God’s plan, a gift {even maybe a disruption} for me straight from Him.” And I’d like to tell people thank-you and kiss them on the cheek and apologize that I just didn’t know. I didn’t know they were so integral to my story. I thought I was sometimes too focused on trying to get somewhere, trying to find home/destiny/purpose. But I see it now. They were that for me right in that moment. They were my home.
Dear little Jeanie: why so serious? God has good stuff planned for you ahead. So enjoy today.
This kind of treasure is unavailable to the 20-year old. It is gained only by getting older and by understanding the past as prologue to whatever richness I now live in – past is part of it all. And really just the beginning…
Made a quick trip in to the garden to drop some snow pea seeds into one of the garden squares today. Lo and behold, under the soil, hidden and quite unexpected, little tiny carrots. Orange and cute. And curious. You have to admire a self-starter.
Note the ornery garlic chives in the foreground.
“Parched ground that soaks up the rain and then produces an abundance of carrots and corn for its gardener gets God’s “Well done!” But if it produces weeds and thistles, it’s more likely to get cussed out. Fields like that are burned, not harvested.” Hebrews 5.4b The Message
I happened across a mis-mixed can of Behr, red latex enamel for only $1.00 at Home Depot. I tested it on my cutlery tray. A few scraps of leftover felt and {voila}. Happy for me when I need a spoon. Or fork. Or a knife, even.
Stormie works in the billboard-graphic ads biz. A big chunk of anything you see on billboards or plastered on the sides of buses might have crossed her desk for art-checking. She sent me this very cool photo yesterday, an add for Bloom, “a different kind of grocery store.” www.shopbloom.com
On first glance? Very cool, clean, fresh. Look at those gorgeous, juicy tomatoes. Beautifully, neatly draped over the little garden sign. Quite modern and makes you want to eat healthy. But yikes, people. Tomatoes don’t grow like that. I actually enlarged the photo to make sure those were even tomato leaves, because they look so strange, just sort of plunked in like that via photo-editing. Hydroponics, I wondered? Some weird genetically engineered-type tomato plant? And what tomato 5-pack is that exposed? If that many leaves are missing, the dreaded leaf-devouring horn worm can be heard licking his lips nearby. Trust me on that one. Plus, um, tomatoes have to be planted deep. Deeeeeeeep. You can’t just throw one on the window sill.
A couple of these boogers can defoliate an entire large tomato plant is jjst a few days. Gross. They actually consume and fatten up to pretty big leaf-green larvae while destroying your tomatoes. They are the devil.
So yeah. On first glance this ad is pretty and neat and appealing and very suburban. But I am going to have to say no. I mean-think about the mis-information you are giving our children, Bloom! Tomato-growing is space and time-consuming and messy and deep holes and gazillions of leaves and hard-but-o-so-rewarding work.
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.” -Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own(one of my favorite baseball movies of all times…heck, one of my fav movies!).
Some google images, tantalizing my tastebuds. Real tomatoes in real gardens.
I apparently take tomato production quite seriously.
Look at this t-shirt I spotted while browsing google images:
