Blue Jeans and Cotton Tees

My sweet, wonderful niece Sarah is my guest blogger again today! I think you will enjoy her thoughts as much as I have…

I love all the poems that Auntie M posts here – there is such a beauty and peacefulness about poems. Even when they include great passion or longing, still, there is a feeling about them that everything is going to be okay. There’s a peace.

Here’s a poem I love to get out every Autumn and read through. There’s something about Fall that makes me want to travel and see things like the colors in the trees and the richness of the harvest, or even the faces of my friends before the winter snows holes us up in our respective cities.

The Roads
By C. S. Lewis

I stand on the windy uplands among the hills of Down
With all the world spread out beneath, meadow and sea and town,
And ploughlands on the far-off hills that glow with friendly brown.

And ever across the rolling land to the far horizon line,
Where the blue hills border the misty west, I see the white roads twine,
The rare roads and the fair roads that call this heart of mine.

I see them dip in the valleys and vanish and rise and bend
From shadowy dell to windswept fell, and still to the West they wend,
And over the cold blue ridge at last to the great world’s uttermost end.

And the call of the roads is upon me, a desire in my spirit has grown
To wander forth in the highways, ‘twixt earth and sky alone,
And seek for the lands no foot has trod and the seas no sail has known:

For the lands to the west of the evening and east of the morning’s birth,
Where the gods unseen in their valleys green are glad at the ends of the earth
And fear no morrow to bring them sorrow, nor night to quench their mirth.

This morning as I whipped up some apple, pear, banana fruit smoothies for my children and watched them guzzle them down, I got to thinking.

Now I realize that thinking that early in the morning can often be dangerous, as my brain is not fully activated yet. But my idea seemed like such a good one- are you ready? I could hide other fruits and vegetables in their smoothies!

It was brilliant!

Just think about the vegetables that could be blended right in!  Even my pickiest eater wouldn’t be able to pick them back out again!

Think about the nutrients my kids would unknowingly consume! Frozen peas, carrots, green beans, celery… no, wait…those are too normal. What about broccoli or kohlrabi or Brussels sprouts?  I know- tomatoes!

Some mothers seem to get away with it on a regular basis.

My sister-in-law Julie cooks up a vegetable medley that she hides in almost everything. Her meatballs are so packed with vitamins they should have a warning label. “Beware: These meatballs are extremely healthy and will make you as strong as Popeye.”

My friend Cinnamon concocts a smoothie for her children that includes spinach! Yes, spinach. And they drink it?! As if any of my kids would voluntarily drink something green.

Ahh yes- that brings us to the heart of the matter. When tricking kids into eating something healthy it must be well-hidden.

How could I possibly disguise the color and smell of say, spinach. It tends to be quite green no matter what you do with it.

Believe me I know. My Mom was always trying to hide things from us. Didn’t always work though. Her most famous cooking story remains “The Legend of the Green Fish Loaf.”

She had discovered a recipe for a fish loaf using canned salmon and spinach. She decided that she would just throw the spinach in the blender with the other ingredients and hide it. We would never know it was there!

She learned that spinach cannot be disguised. It turned the entire salmon loaf green.

We rushed to the table in anticipation of supper and there IT sat.  All green and bubbly with cheese on top. I wish we would have taken pictures of our faces as we sat around the table looking at IT.

IT went over like the proverbial lead balloon. Poor Mom has never been able to forget it. (Being the good children that we are, we keep reminding her.)

No, I realize now that such thinking is quite dangerous. There is an art to subterfuge as a mother, and I definitely have a lot to learn about it!

Hey, I still have a kid who can pick out ground up onions in a meatball.  Maybe I should send him to Aunt Julie’s for awhile….

In my continuing effort to use up the massive amounts of apples that are accumulating on my porch, I dug out a recipe I haven’t used in years- canned apple pie filling.

I made some years ago (back when I only had 2 children and a house in the suburbs) and remembered that it yummy- just a little sweeter than I liked.

Since I was using a sweeter apple (yellow delicious) I decided to cut the sugar in half.  If I do another batch with a tart apple- like Granny Smith- I will use the full amount.

It actually went very quickly, we had a canner filled and cooking in 30 minutes. (But I did use my apple peeler
and I had 3 children assisting me.)

Apple Pie Filling

In large sauce pan combine 4-1/2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of cornstarch, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Stir in 10 cups of water.

Cook and stir until thick and bubbly.

Add 3 tablespoons lemon juice and a few drops of yellow food coloring (if desired- I left it out).

Peel, core, and cut 5-6 pounds of tart apples (about 30 depending on the size).

Pack apples into hot, sterilized jars leaving 1 inch head space.

Fill with hot syrup leaving 1/2 inch head space, using the handle of a plastic spatula to help distribute the syrup. (Do not use a knife or metal object- you may nick or crack your canning jar!) You will need to move the apples around to get the thick syrup to fill in the gaps.

Adjust lids and process in a boiling water bath canner 15 minutes for pints and 20 minutes for quarts.

I got 7 quarts out of one batch and had enough syrup to cut up a few more apples and make a pie.

It is very important to watch the head space! The apples will cook in the canner and let out juice that needs somewhere to go.

One quart of apple pie filling is enough for an 8-9 inch pie.

Poppa Sanding

We are in the final stages of a massive home renovation. Eight years ago we moved a large beautiful old farm house to our land and have been slowly fixing it up.

We gutted it, rearranged the rooms slightly, replaced windows, put in a ground source heat pump, replaced the roof, redid the electricity and the plumbing, all before finally dry walling, painting and now refinishing the floors.

Eight years worth of hard work and we’re down to just a few more tasks before we can move in. Yet these few tasks have been very frustrating. Everything is taking longer than it is supposed to and not going according to plan.

We “planned” to spend 2 weeks on the floors. We’re now on week 3 with work still to be done.

We “planned” to just sand the pine floors upstairs, stain them and use them as is. We ended up spending days painfully removing the glue-like gunk from those floors before we could even think about varnish.

We “planned” that the varnish would seal in the stuff between the cracks in those pine floors- but it didn’t. It keeps floating up and coming out. Yuck.

We “planned” to be moved in by November 1st.  Not gonna happen.

Our new plans include carefully removing the gunk from between the cracks and varnishing them again.

We just added it to the to-do list that gets longer every day.

I was telling my woes to my brother the other day and he very wisely said, “Plans are what you make while real life happens.” So true.

He also said, “The best battle plans only last until the enemy army approaches.” Thanks, Tim.

I think it’s time to stop looking at my to-do list that never gets any shorter and start looking to my Heavenly Father who knows all things.

He knows my needs, my desires, my dreams. He knows my frame- He designed it! He knows our schedule, our finances, our strength.

He has great plans for me- He promised.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future.”

My lovely niece Sarah sent me this recently. It touched me and I thought you would appreciate it, too. So I’m letting Sarah be my guest blogger today. Enjoy …

I read a verse that made me laugh this morning.

It was in Isaiah 26:12 and said, “Lord, you have established peace for us; all that we have accomplished You have done for us.”

What a way for God to point out the humility I need to have! EVERYTHING I have ever accomplished was really God doing it. And it isn’t even the work through me like I used to like to think –  it actually was God doing it for me.

Like a little kid who needs help tying their shoes. It definitely is still their shoe that gets tied, but it is the adult who does the tying.

What a crazy humble God who lets me think I am doing so much when it is only Him doing anything.