Foodie Fridays

I've been patiently, desperately, hungrily waiting for tomato season so that I could give you this most brilliantly simple and yet STUNNINGLY delicious salad. You could make it with hot-house tomatoes in the winter. And I would encourage you to try. But you'll quickly find that the picked-right-out-of-the-garden tomatoes are just so deadly good that you'll be willing to wait for August and September to eat this salad.

My first taste of this salad was on Chris and my 10th wedding anniversary at a lovely Inn not too far from here. Thankfully the restaurant gave a detailed description of the salad on the menu, and thankfully, I really enjoy trying to replicate restaurant food at home. Hence, I have come very close to getting the salad just right. Yay! This is, unfortunately, one of those recipes without specific amounts listed because you just need to know what's in it and then you can make as much or as little as you like. Trust me, it isn't rocket science! :-)

Without further ado: Tomato and Provolone Salad

What You Need:
Plump, perfect, ripe tomatoes, at least one per person (go for Beefstake or other large, full-flavoured tomatoes. Truthfully, anything fresh off the vine will be good)

Slices of provolone cheese (you can find it already sliced in the deli section, or order it at the counter)

Slices of Genoa Salami (or any other good, not sweet salami. And maybe not a spicy salami either. Something with a good amount of pepper, but not "heat". Does that make sense?)

Pesto (store-bought or homemade...doesn't matter)

Walnut Oil (okay, I know. Really? It is fabulous, but you can certainly use a good olive oil instead)

Black olives (optional)

Fresh basil or parsley (optional)

How to Do it!

Slice tomatoes, salami, and cheese into rounds, trying to make them as close to the same thickness as possible.

Alternate the slices, arranging them in a circle around your place (tomato, salami, cheese, tomato, salami cheese...). For a larger serving, or to make a larger serving platter worth, start near the outside edge of the plate and make overlapping circles/spirals towards the center of the plate.

Thin some pesto with the oil.

Drizzle over salad. Sprinkle with olives and fresh herbs, if using.

Sprinkle with coarse salt and freshly ground pepper if desired.

And then convince yourself that you want to share with the people you love, because truthfully, you may want to eat the whole thing by yourself. :-)

Serve with a good crusty bread to sop up all the dressing and tomato juices off the plate. You could arrange this salad on top of some greens to make it more filling. I'd recommend arugula or spinach as they are more flavourful and sturdy to stand up to the salad.

Enjoy!

Wow-ful Women Wednesdays

"He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support. He brought me out in to a broad place, he rescued me, because he delighted in me."

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave himself up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"



(Ps.18:16-19, Rom.8:31-32)

You Are For Me

Verse 1
So faithful
So constant
So loving and so true
So powerful in all You do
You fill me
You see me
You know my ev'ry move
You love for me to sing to You

Chorus 1
I know that You are for me
I know that You are for me
I know that You will never forsake me in my weakness
And I know that You have come now
Even if to write upon my heart
To remind me who you are

Verse 2
So patient
So gracious
So merciful and true
So wonderful in all You do
You fill me
You see me
You know my ev'ry move
And You love for me to sing to You Lord

CCLI Song No. 5265457
© 2008 Gateway Create Publishing (Admin. by Integrity's Praise! Music)
Kari Jobe
For use solely with the SongSelect Terms of Use. All rights Reserved. www.ccli.com
CCLI License No. 164330

Telemarketing Fun

My friend, Kristina, just posted a recent encounter with a telemarketer over at her blog and so I felt compelled to share with you my latest experience. Mine is a moral tale: a fable of sorts. Read, and learn.

Me: Hello, this is Barbara.

Telemarketer: [toilet flushing] Hello, my name is...

Me: Not interested. [Hang up, and disinfect ear]

And the moral of this tale:

If a sale you want to make,
And a pee break, need to take,
Please do the last well before the first,
So I don't know, and you don't burst.

Heard At My House

Daughter A, age 9: "I'm glad I'm me. I mean, I probably wouldn't be sad if I was somebody else either, but I'm glad I'm me. I just like it. And this house is the coziest house ever. And I love walking through the house and smelling all of Mom's yummy cooking smells. [extended, contented sigh] I think I'm just pretty happy."

Yes, dear Sunshine. You are just pretty happy. And we are so glad you are you, too. I couldn't imagine life with you!

Foodie Fridays

My husband loves me. But he's not a liar. And he's not a flatterer. So when he compliments me, I believe he means it and not that he is still viewing me through some Newly-wed Rose-coloured glasses.

And he says I make killer soups. He says I should write a cook book about soups. He says I could make money on my soups.

I heart that guy.

If you come to my house for lunch sometime for a 'thing' (you know, a baby dedication, birthday party, Thanksgiving Sunday lunch... a 'thing') you may find that I serve what I call, my "Soup Buffet". There will be 3 pots of soup, assorted breads, assorted garnishes for the soups and lots of clean bowls and spoons so you can try them all! It is really one of my favourite things to cook. Soup is so simple, yet when done well it can be surprisingly complex and exciting and satisfying! (can you tell I haven't had lunch yet...I'm hungry!)

So, today, for the first time, if I'm not mistaken, I will share with you one of my favourite soups! Because even in a heat wave, a pot of soup simmering on the stove is a beautiful thing.

Bits of Bite-Sized Broccoli Soup

2 large heads broccoli, in small florets (peel the stems and chop them up too!)
2 celery stalks with leaves, diced small
4 small carrots, diced small
1 large onion, diced small
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 large potatoes, diced small
Half a head of cauliflower, diced small
a handful each of fresh basil, thyme, and oregano (or 1/4 tsp each dried)
Chicken broth, or water (approx. 6 cups)

In large stock pot, heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (or vegetable oil). Saute the carrots, celery, and onion until softening. Add garlic and saute until it smells so good you want to eat it already! :-) (approx. 1-2 minutes: don't let the garlic burn.)

Add broccoli, cauliflower, and potato and herbs. Stir to mix well. Pour in broth and/or water just enough to barely cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil. Then turn down and let simmer 20 minutes, or until the veggies are soft.

In a food processor or blender, puree approximately half of the soup, then return to the pot. Add salt to taste. If it is too thick, add more broth, or even some milk (or soy milk). If it is too thin...um...well, dip your bread into it :-)

This is just plain yummy. Little kids even seem to like it as the bites of veggies seem to fit well in their mouths and not overwhelm them. This will make a fair number of servings and it freezes pretty well.

Also, sometimes, we grate half a pound of cheese into the pot too... :-)

Impressing God

How long have I sat thinking about this post? How long have I had a weight on my heart about this post? *sigh*

My first stirrings and musings on this matter came some 6 years ago when I read "An Unstoppable Force" by Erwin McManus. The whole book kind of got under my skin. And if I'm being honest, I felt sort of annoyed by the premise and presumption in the book. I don't own a copy of the book, so forgive me as I paraphrase, as best as I can, a recurring theme in his writing that got my goat. He would talk about how praying for our children to be safe was a poor thing to pray for. That our goal for ourselves and our children and our churches should be to live dangerous lives for Christ. God wasn't calling us to lives of safety, but to lives of danger, and risk, and doing big things for God.

Now, I agree that the Word promises that we will have trial. We will have tribulations. There is no denying that saints throughout history, and even to today, are suffering for the dangerous righteousness they are living out. And there is no denying that Christ himself did not choose an easy life of safety during his time on earth.

I agree that we need to live lives that are full of action. James says, "Faith without works is dead" and "Be not merely hearers of the word but doers also". We need to act. Jesus acted. I get that. I know the Parable of the Talents. I know how displeased the Manager was with the worker who merely buried his talents, folding his hands and twiddling his thumbs in safety and ease. And I know how pleased he was with the workers who used and developed and risked the talents for a greater reward. I know these truths.

And don't get me wrong: I know myself well enough to know that at heart I am lazy and selfish, and prone to justify my laziness and selfishness under the guise of "being cautious" or "being reasonable". I am also prone to worry, and so the easy thing for me would be to bubble wrap my children and say it was "just being a good steward of the gifts God has given to me".

And also don't get me wrong: The last thing I want is for the church to be a bunch of complacent, comfortable, casserole-loving, isolated, irrelevant, nice guys.

So I struggle with this. I don't want to live a meaningless life of ease and inactivity. I don't want to displease God by wasting the days he has given to me. And yet I look at the life he has given me and wonder how a mom of 7 is supposed to "go and do some big thing to impress God"? I mean, after all, I'm *just* a stay at home mom.

And then I see a video like this...



...and I don't disagree. I think he's right. On many, many levels, he is absolutely right.

But...

Will someone say that being a mom *is* doing a big thing for God?

Will someone please say that choosing to quit your job, live on one income, and stay home and homeschool is living a scary, crazy, unsafe life for some of us?

Will someone please say that being a mom or a dad who works all day, shining the light of Christ to his or her co-workers, and then coming home and making supper, reading stories, praying with the kids, and selflessly spending even more weary hours shining the light at home, and ushering your children into the kingdom of Christ through faith *is* doing a 'big thing for God'?

Will someone please say that working joyfully day in and day out on the factory assembly line,

and honouring your parents,

and loving the saints,

and serving in the local church,

and tithing,

and living your whole life--every second of every day--as a living sacrifice of worship to Christ is just as much a "big thing for God" as anything else you can dream up?

For some wholehearted Christ-seekers, the call will, in fact, be to pick up and spread the gospel to the far-reaching, life-threatening corners of the globe, and to them I say, "Thank you for going, and thank you for making those sacrifices, and thank you for being faithful. May the Lord bless you for your courage and faithful obedience." Truly.

But for the rest of us wholehearted Christ-seekers, who, for the time at least, are being called to stay home and just shine for Christ here, let me say to you, "Thank you for staying, and thank you for making these sacrifices, and thank you for being faithful. May the Lord bless you for your courage and faithful obedience, too."

We need to remember, *I* need to remember, that God is self-sufficient. He doesn't need me or you to dream up something wonderful to do. He doesn't need our service, he doesn't need our "staying" or our "going". However, He does invite us. And when and where and how he invites us better stir our hearts to specific obedience, no matter how different our invitation looks from that of the person next to us.

"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much." "Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand more." (Luke 16:10, Luke 12:48)

Lord, you have entrusted me with much here. Let me be faithful in this before I venture off to do anything else. Help me to hear your voice, and your call on my life so I can obey the things you've called me to do, and not try to respond to someone else's call. Help me to remain content in this big thing you've called me to instead of longingly looking for some other way to "impress" you. Thank you for this call, and for this mission. I pray that you will find me to be a faithful servant. And I do pray that you will embolden your church to do the things that please you, starting with the small acts of obedience and faithfulness right in front of our faces.

Wow-ful Women Wednesdays

We are in the middle of what seems to me to be an endless number of heatwaves around here. Not that I'm complaining....well. Actually, I might be. I'm not the most heat-tolerant creature. But we do have air conditioning. And I'm using the heat as a great excuse to not run. :-)

Nevertheless, I do not want to be a grumpy Canadian who can only be content with 4 months of Canadian climate! So as such, I will post a song today celebrating one of my favourite singers of all time, and celebrate summer all in one fell swoop.

Summertime by Sarah Vaughn (this is, in my humble opinion, the best version of this song ever done, by anyone, ever....so there!) :-)

Tomato-Plant Tenacity

We are gardeners. I can say that now, because we actually have a garden in our backyard and we actually work in it. That makes us gardeners. We have a beautifully designed garden with plots that are big enough to hold many plants, but that are small enough to manage. The garden has good drainage, good soil, and lots of sun. It is well-watered and weeded thanks to my first-born who may indeed have a green thumb. All in all, it has the makings of being a productive little bit of land. I can’t say we are good at gardening yet. Only time will tell, and at the time of this writing the jury is still out. There are lots of leaves and flowers, but not much fruit yet. However, it is only early July as I’m typing, so we’ll have to wait for the real harvest time to prove our worth.

But that lovely set of plots is not even the object of my attention and affection today. You see, in our enthusiasm for this new garden (or was it our lack of faith in our ability to keep things alive?) we bought a lot of tomato plants. A lot. Like, 25. They were tiny, and we figured some of them wouldn’t make it (we were right!) and we figured I really did want to can a lot of tomatoes if they all survived. And so we planted many, many tomatoes in the garden proper. But there were two more that just didn’t fit anywhere.

Or so we thought.

My husband stuck two in to our flowerbeds. Good idea. They get a little less sun there but they will be watered, and the thought was that if something died in the real garden we could transplant over one of these out of the flowerbeds. Good plan.

However, the other day, my seven-year old daughter decided to help weed the garden. And she yanked out “this really HUGE weed!” Um….oops. That was the tomato plant. See the flowers on it? See that it is, in fact, growing in a tomato cage? My eldest quickly tried to salvage the thing by replanting it as best as she could and watered it some more, but it looked pretty sickly. Especially disastrous was that this un-rooting happened at the beginning of a crazy heat wave in our neck of the woods. Even the well-established plants were suffering under the taxing heat. Surely this little guy with his roots all broken would never make it.


Please read the rest of my latest Heart Of the Matter Online Article here.

Scheduling Summer

If you are like our family, at the time of this writing, there are 69 days until school starts again. If that sounds overwhelming to you, then don’t get me started on how few days there are until Christmas!

Sixty-nine days is all at once a lot and not nearly enough days of rest and rejuvenation. Don’t you find that the kids who have been desperate for holidays all spring are bored and out of things to do by August 13th? And all those wonderful friendships in the neighbourhood that we hoped would blossom and grow over the summer break tend to actually wither and rot by the end of July? Maybe that’s not your reality. Maybe summer break for you is all about peace and domestic bliss and self-initiated chores. If so, you should write a book. I’d buy it.

Don’t get me wrong: summer, like the rest of the year, is generally a really smooth sail in our home. The kids get along with each other really well, and we all enjoy the break from the routine of school-books and assignments (and marking!) However, every summer there comes a moment where it is quite glaringly obvious that we have all, myself included, had too much free, unstructured, un-educational time. The bad habits of the neighbours are wearing off on my kids, mild irritations with each other become a bit less mild, and we are all generally looking for a rudder to our boat. What to do? What to do?

On top of that, haven’t we all sat at the dining room table in September listening to our kids ask, “What’s 8 times 7 again?” and then bemoan the incredible lack of retention children suffer over a summer that is devoid of intellectual stimulation.

In light of all that, I have come up with a list of things I’d like to do with our kids this summer. These are a few of the things that I always mean to work into our fall schedule, but they often get bumped by the “real school” stuff of core subjects and easily gradable topics. Maybe you’ll want to try some of these too. Or maybe you have a list of resources you’d like to share in the comments below.


Please read the rest of my latest Heart of the Matter Online article here. And be sure to browse their site. There is a wealth of wisdom there for moms of all sorts! What a talented bunch of contributors they have!

Foodie Fridays

This week is audience participation time. Don't be frightened. It will be really easy!

I was talking to my eldest girly here about what I should post for Foodie Friday. This being delicious summer time I was thinking about all the fantastic salads and BBQ's awaiting us. Is there any easier way to cook? While my man is grilling up some yummy anything on the BBQ, I put together what is the freshest and ripest from the garden and call it "Salad".

I'm of the school of thought that salad shouldn't be complicated. It hardly needs a recipe. There are very few veggies that go poorly together, so you can't really lose. However, I also am a big fan of putting together just the right flavours and textures to make a brilliant plateful of salady goodness. Soup and salad: my two favourite things in the world to dream up.

So here is my request of you: please leave a comment for all our benefit with your favourite salad recipe or favourite salad ingredients (if you don't have a real recipe per se). Also, for 'bonus points' leave us a comment about your favourite thing on the BBQ. If you can be specific about name brands of products, please do!

I'll start: One of my favourite things on the barbie is Grilled Eggplant Sandwiches. Slice an eggplant in to "not too thick, not too thin" slices lengthwise, brush with olive oil sprinkle with fresh basil and grill on both sides until it is browning, softened and gorgeous. Beside that, grill some sliced, sweet onion rounds. Then make into a glorious sandwich by layering the eggplant, onions, a good mustard and maybe a thin slice of perfect tomato on rye bread. Seriously. Yum.

Salad? I love that broccoli salad. You know the one: broccoli, cauliflower, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, old cheddar, bacon bits, in a light mayo dressing. So.good.

Your turn! Can't wait to read your responses! Yay for Bar-B-Q season!