Adventures in Pumpkin Bread

The cooler temperatures gave me a yen to make pumpkin bread. I don't recall whether I'd ever made it before. I didn't have a good recipe I could immediately turn to, and I honestly didn't want to find a recipe online -- you never know about those. Besides, I was honestly in the mood to peruse some of my more lovely recipe books. Which I did: Tasha Tudor's Recipe Book, Jan Karon's Mitford Cookbook (thank you, Carolyn!!!), and the trusty America's Test Kitchen cookbook.

I finally blended 2 recipes I found, and made a loaf. Julia helped. The ATK book noted that canned pumpkin will taste better if you warm it well on the stove with its spices. It gets rid of the canned/chemical taste. So we did.
(Meanwhile, Adam spent the morning wrestling with my laptop, whose hard drive was FULL. As in, things wouldn't run because there was not a smidgen of space left. There it is in its naked state. Poor thing. He couldn't find a solution, so I ended up deleting over 3700 photos I had on my IPhoto. Sigh.
Here's the loaf. I didn't cook it fully, so it was heavy. But it tasted great, and Julia gobbled up about half of it. Still, the recipe was less than satisfactory. It was really a banana bread recipe, and I don't think the substitution was, um, perfect.
That was yesterday. So, today, I tried again. And again, I thank my friend Carolyn for a GREAT pumpkin/cranberry bread recipe. She uses it for a large coffee cake in a bundt pan, but I opted for mini-loaves. Aren't they cute? (There's an extra little round loaf just for Julia.)
I adore these little loaf pans. I've picked them up at junk stores for 25¢ each. I think I'll give these loaves to friends, but I'm planning to bake pumpkin bread on a regular basis this fall. It makes the house smell just as it should.

House of Cards

Anna spent some concentration time doing this at the lake house:

A Much-Needed Rest

On Labor Day we were invited to the lake house of some dear friends. They are so generous to invite us often!
When I took this picture, the little flower was spinning fast in the wind. But in the pic, it looks still.
Their lawn stretches to the lake, dappled in peaceful light. I enjoy strolling to the water to check on the kids, then strolling back to the house to talk with my friend.
This is the old cabin. When our friends were first married (many, many years ago now!) they lived in this rustic abode. I think it's precious! But you can no longer go inside safely.
This is the lake house. It's also rustic, and I adore a place like this! I told my friend, if I came out here for the weekend as they do, I would never go back to my house in town! They are still working full-time, far past retirement, and are some of the busiest, most productive people I know. They enjoy it.
The living area. There's no central heat in the house -- only this large wood-burning stove insert. The house also is not insulated, so they close it up in the winter.
The beautiful view of the lake from their dining table. I think I would sit here for hours. I'm sure I would be most unproductive if I lived in this little spot, but my mind -- oh, my mind, would have many thoughts, and much poetry would be written that (sadly) will never see the light of day, as I am now.

Disappointment

Tuesday evening Adam got news that the job position in Mississippi will not work out.

(A beautiful picture. Just because I needed one.)

It's hard to know what to write about this news. I know God must not want us there. I know He's in charge. I know He has perfect timing, that He loves us, that He promises to care for us. I know all these things both from instruction and experience.

And I'm not freaking out, or angry, or lying in a dark room sobbing.

But it's hard to understand why we are selected to be recipients of so many set-backs, discouragements and reversals. Do you hear that crashing noise? That's the door of our life, slamming shut again.

We've had encouragement too. I read about David in I Samuel when the king had a death threat on his head. I wrote about it, but I think it's too wordy for here. Adam prayed and thought he was hopeless, and then remembered that hope is confidence in things we can't see (yet), so he can still safely have hope. His study last night at church on Acts 21 was excellent and lively.

But disappointments from God's hand make me feel like a red-headed step-child. Perhaps they should make me feel special, like He's singled me out for some great work, and this is my unique preparation. But after 21 years, I feel more like he's just giving me the preparation and never the work.

"Wait for the LORD. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the LORD."
Ps. 27:14

There's a first time for everything:

Like making fried green tomatoes. Thanks to some friends on facebook, I was suddenly inspired to make these for lunch today. They posted this recipe, which I generally followed.
I chose two of our nicest, biggest tomatoes from the garden, and sliced them in thick slabs.
I dipped them in milk, then the dry mixture, then did both again, attempting to get the coating to stick well. It might have helped.
My peanut oil was nice and hot, perhaps too hot. And my BIG MISTAKE was not choosing a frying pan that was deep enough. I know better than this. However, if I have one flaw (one? ha!), it is that my frugality will usually win over my wisdom. I didn't want to use a lot of oil (and this was left-over oil, so that should tell you how insanely frugal I am) in my large chicken fryer. See how active that oil is? I nearly caught the kitchen on fire. I stopped at 3 tomato slices because I was afraid to continue....
However, they turned out fine. Now, folks, this is not fancy fare. However, I am not wild about the breading. It was too much corn meal, not enough flour, and too salty -- probably my fault for using Lawry's. It's important to leave the tomato in the oil long enough to cook it, so it is soft and not hard like a normal green tomato. I turned the heat down a bit to get it under control, and cook it slower.
They're really delicious -- well, I've had fabulous ones in restaurants. Remember, it's actually a fruit, so the flavor of the tomato is NOT like some cooked veggie. It's sweet because it's a fruit, but also tangy because its not ripe yet. Very nice combination. Next time I'll do a better job.
The indifference of the quality, however, has not kept me from eating them all up :)

The Lord's Fast

I didn't grow up with people who fasted. We were a very devout, sincere Christian family, and I was raised to love God and His church. We prayed, and worshiped, and tithed, and read Scripture. But I don't recall fasting.

So, although I think it must be a good thing to do, I've really never had a spiritual context in which fasting made much sense to me. I've had pastors and others try to explain to me how abstaining from food is supposed to be a means of grace to my soul, but I've never understood it.

So, this passage from this morning's sermon was a comfort to me. It's Isaiah 58: 6-10, and it's God who is speaking:

"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am.'

If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday."

That's a totally different kind of fasting. And I say it is a comfort to me, only because it is at least a fast that I can understand -- I know what this activity looks like and I understand how it is spiritually beneficial to me. Of course, I don't do this kind of fasting well either. I'm minimal at best, in my service to the needy around me. And as far as taking homeless strangers into my house? Never.

As a Christian, do I spend my time loosening the bonds -- both spiritual and physical -- that enslave others? The church through history has been particularly bad at this. We tend to want to add to the yoke, crush people with law and guilt, relish in their demise.

I attended a ladies' conference recently, and one question that the speaker asked us stuck in my mind. She said, "Are you a life-giver, or a death-giver?" In other words, in all that you do as a Christian woman, are you passing on the spirit of life from God to others, dispensing joy and hope and love and encouragement, showing Jesus as you interact with everyone? Or do you suck the life out of others with negativity, using gossip and ill-will and anger, discouragement and doubt. You're either doing the one, or doing the other.

Being a life-giver means denying self, but in the act you gain more joy than you think possible. You forget about the self-denial, I suppose, in the fun of watching the "life" spread around. Perhaps this is how it is like fasting, in which one denies food to the body, but the spiritual enrichment is enough that the faster doesn't even think about the food.

One more thought: in the passage above, notice what God says about the faster -- the one who gives sacrificially: "Your healing shall spring up speedily," "the LORD shall be your rear guard," "you shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am.'"

This faster is a sufferer also. He needs healing; he's weak and ill. He needs a guard; he's under attack. He is crying out for God; he is lonely for Him.

This is a hard lesson for me to accept, that I have to be a life-giver even when I'm hurting. Even when I think I'M the one who should be given TO. The way to healing, relief, and God's voice, is to get up off my whining bed and stop waiting for someone to do for me. God promises -- he PROMISES -- that when I exert myself to loose the bonds of those enslaved around me, he will come, he will heal, he will protect.

I don't feel strong enough to help anyone else right now. I'm weaker by the day. In that weakness, God tells me to pour myself out, to engage in his fast. I'll be praying for opportunities to loosen bonds.

Backyard Adventures

The weather has turned glorious today. I know it's fickle. I know it'll warm up again. But for today, I'm gonna pretend that autumn has come. So, we're outside a little today -- well, more than we were. Julia's been working on this fort/hut. She got the weeds from ... where else? Our garden.
Julia and Adam picked apples from our 2 trees last week, and they've been sitting around the kitchen, driving me nuts ever since. They were a little beaten and worse for the wear, but I peeled, cored and sliced them, and am stewing apples today. I gave some to our neighbors, and this is the second batch.
I told Adam it would be great if he weed-eated the garden, so that I could find my potato plants and start digging potatoes. He used the weed-eater, and then decided it would be easier just to MOW THE GARDEN, since there was hardly anything left in there. We thought. And ... Julia found our backyard turtle. We hadn't seen him in over a year. But in our yard, that's not surprising - haha! She painted a big "J" on his back with sparkly purple nail polish. I think I'll call him Jerome.

Anyway, I tramped through part of the garden and found a watermelon! And Adam had told me that there weren't anymore in there. A few minutes later, after he'd been mowing, he walked to the house with a much larger melon in his hand. Part of it was already sliced off. Or should I say MOWED off!?
He cleaned it up and declared it delicious. It's been an adventurous day so far.