Amazing 'Clean out the fridge' Potato Soup

I love this recipe, if you can call it that, it's more like guidelines, but it cleans up a bunch of leftovers and uses whatever you have on hand to make a tasty and hearty meal that can be adapted to your own dietary peculiarities.

First, take that bag of potatoes you need to use up before it goes bad (2-5 pounds) and take the biggest pot you own (5-8 quarts) and a good knife and a little water and you are well on your way to homemade soup.  Cut the potatoes into bite size pieces (peel if you like) and toss them into the pot along with any raw carrots or celery you'd like in the concoction and add just enough water to cover the vegetables.  Boil until soft.  At this point you can let it cool and put it in the fridge until you are ready to eat or you can continue on to make your masterpiece.

To the steaming pot of potatoes add either chicken bouillon or broth (if using broth, feel free to drain off some of the water) about 2-4 cups worth, garlic, onion, basil, rosemary, black pepper, parsley, and seasoned salt (or your preferred herbs and spices).  If you want to add in frozen or canned veggies at this point, feel free.  Stir in a cup or two of milk (or cream!) and a cup or two of ham, bacon, salami, sausage, chicken or whatever meat you prefer (if any).  Heat through and add 2-3 cups of your favorite cheese right before serving (stir in well).  The potatoes should be mushy enough to thicken the soup, if not, you can use an immersion blend, squash them up a bit with the spoon, add some potato flakes or thickener of choice.  Enjoy!

Not our ways!

For those days that just won't go right, here's an enlightening and encouraging article.  For the person who is so focused on the what, working their fingers to the bone for some great cause, that they forget about the why, here's another great article.  And another on busyness for the person who sees their value in what they do, not in who they are.  These all showed up on the same day, a day I was struggling with one of the great philosophical questions of the ages: what is it all about, what does it all mean, am I actually accomplishing anything meaningful?  I'm not just a busy mom/career woman trying to balance the work/life conundrum like so many others in my cohort, rather I'm an ex-career woman turned stay-at-home mom, one with a chronic inflammatory disease that sometimes makes it hard to get out of bed of a morning, let alone accomplish anything productive besides just surviving the day.  My husband is out shoveling snow and I want above all else to help him, but I can't, not if I don't want to spend the next three days sick and miserable.  So here I sit feeling useless, unproductive...worthless.

But that's our culture speaking, one that defines one's value by one's usefulness.  That isn't the scale I should be using to judge my situation, not if my faith means anything.  I am valuable simply because I was created, if I never accomplish anything else in my entire life, that's okay.  The success of others shouldn't discourage me, it is not a competition after all.  There is no dishonor in a small, quiet life if that's the course I've been given to run and I run it faithfully, well, more of a stumbling walk, but the metaphor still holds.  'His ways are not our ways,' and 'the heart of man plans his way but the Lord establishes his steps,' should give me some clue, but sometimes I am a very slow learner!

Dutch oven garlic cheese pull apart bread!

I've tried a dozen different recipes and techniques to produce a soft/crusty savory garlic cheese pull apart bread but most have come away rather blasé and not worth repeating and I nearly gave it up as impossible, but the advent of a dutch oven in my life and my success with other yeasty breads therein has given me fresh hope.  I found this recipe and it's a keeper!  I used a basic white recipe (1.5#) from the bread machine instead of purchased dough.  I baked it in the oven and found it needed a much longer cooking time than that recommended (375 for 30-45 minutes) and taking the lid off for the last 5-10 minutes makes it nice and golden brown on top too, enjoy!

The unthinkable!

I grew up in the era when computers were merely entertainment machines with green and black screens and requiring actual floppy disks to do anything at all; I was over the moon when I hit seventh grade and was able to type papers instead of writing them longhand.  By then the computer games had also evolved to include color and an attempt at 3-D graphics.  It was also about this time I fell in love with the Sim games (no, not the Sims, but the less flashy and far more interesting forebears including Sim Ant, Sim Farm, and Sim Earth (I was never a Sim City fan...too bucolic!)).  I spent hours (months?) mastering the games.  But, as with all great games, the technology evolved and those beloved classics are now but a thing of myth and legend.  I've dabbled in a few of the more modern 'app' games of a similar mien but haven't found anything that captivated me like those old floppy games did.  Either the world was tedious and uncreative or there was too much waiting or ad time or there was no point or strategy or challenge.

I had given up on anything even half so interesting as my childhood favorites, wondering if all creativity had died with the new millennium, but happily I was wrong.  This last week I ran across a game called Dragonvale, and I am hooked.  It is something like Sim Farm meets Pokeman (I've only played the version for the original gameboy) without those silly 'matches.'  It makes both my biology nerd and fantasy geek sides happy and it may also do the impossible for this 'must have satisfaction this instant' generation, namely making you wait up to two days to breed some of the rarer dragons; it's almost like surfing the internet via dial-up!  The art work is beautiful, there is geeky genius and humor everywhere, you can't master it in three days but there is enough to keep you occupied that you don't give up in despair either.  Overall, I'm very happy with my discovery, and even better, unlike some games where the more you tap the more things happen, there is a limited amount of things you can do before having to wait, forcing you to have a real, non-virtual life.  Who thought an app could teach you patience?  

How to commit virtual suicide or attack of the irate 'pet parents?'

I found this article rather fascinating, now before you stone me for linking to it or the author for writing it, take a few minutes and process what he is trying to say, it is an intriguing look into an issue that says much about our self-obsessed modern culture.  I work in the industry and the swift transition from 'pet' to 'child' has been rather concerning to me though everyone else seems to just think it is cute and harmless (and a boon to my profession); I find this fuzzing of the edges of what is and is not a person rather disturbing, especially as an adoptive parent (try searching 'adoption' on Pinterest and see what comes up: scads and scads of dogs!).  This article is a timely and incisive look into the topic and is well worth the read, even if you are scandalized that some people still believe that a dog is still just a dog.

'...for the days are evil'

'Redeem the time,' is how the titular phrase starts out and it's been on my heart lately.  We just finalized our second adoption, after nearly eight years of paperwork, waiting, and emotional rollercoasters, I still haven't quite realized that we are done.  We're just another family now, no more waiting, no more social workers or paper work, no more wondering, hoping, yearning, doubt and despair, angst and frustration.  I can leave the state without permission; I don't have to check in monthly with anybody; there is no more paperwork to update.  Weird!

If I could change one thing about the process, at least of those things over which I have control as the cost, bureaucracy, frustration, ungainliness are quite beyond my means to rectify, it would be to wait gracefully.  The days will pass whether I am frustrated or content, anxious or at peace, despairing or hopeful.  However long it takes, it is undoubtedly a long process, a full quarter of my life!, and wasting the time in angst is not helpful to anyone, most especially myself and my family nor does it help the process in the least.  Why can't I just have faith, be content and hopeful that things will work out as they will, and even if they don't work out as I hope, I must still live with that reality so I might as well get used to the idea.  Perhaps I have finally learned that lesson, albeit too late to help in either of my previous adoptions, but perhaps it will help in future endeavors?

They say marriage is an excellent discipleship tool and I will certainly add parenting to that list, but being waitlisted during the adoption process certainly has its own character honing aspects too.  Even when it seemed like I was like to wait forever and futilely at that, even if we had not been successful, the wait would not have been in vain.  'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, a belief in things unseen,' so why can't I just wait in faith?  As what can be more hoped for or unseen than waiting for an adoption to go through?  But it is not completely unseen, my Father has seen it, or not, if it is not to be, He has been there (is there, will be there?, what is the proper tense for an eternal perspective?) and all He asks is that I trust Him to know how things will turn out and that He'll take care of the details in the interim.  That is Faith.  That is what this waiting is all about, molding me, making me more like Him; to be content in the present for He knows and will provide for the future, whatever betide.  This is so much easier to say in retrospect!  I wonder if one day we will all look back on all the needless fuss and bother we experienced on a daily basis and laugh at ourselves as I do now at my fruitless anxiety during our adoption wait.  Wise is she who learns to wait in peace ere the wait is over!

An amazing way to bake bread!

I thought it might be possible, but couldn't find much out about it online (therefore it must not be possible, right?).  I've lately had a dubious flirtation with cast iron and lately have acquired a dutch oven (5 quart cast iron pot with lid).  I found plenty of articles on bread in the crockpot or no-knead recipes for the dutch oven, but what about a regular yeast bread recipe?  I finally found this article, that actually made it sound possible so I gave it a chance.  I followed the directions using an oatmeal honey bread I haven't made in quite awhile, plopped the dough straight from the bread machine into the preheated dutch oven, put the lid back on and tossed it in the super hot over for 30 minutes.  It sure didn't look like much when that sorry little blob of dough sort of oozed/globbed into the pot, but I hoped for the best.  The results were amazing!  I tend to make French loaves when I make loaf type bread as I can never get it cooked on the inside without over browning the crust, or the crust looks great but it is still doughy in the middle, ugh!  This rectifies that little problem beautifully, besides for that, the crust is crunchy, the loaf is beautifully artisan, and the bread itself is super soft and moist.  I love it!