June 27, 2008

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  I’ve returned from a morning walk with my friend, Linda, her baby, and two other neighbors from church as well. We had been walking regularly but when it started getting so hot I thought I was doomed to stay inside the house the rest of the summer… But I started walking earlier in the morning, and the past two morning have walked with these lovely ladies, and it feels great! Get to have some adult interaction, and the babies have loved it too… And I have the 3rd load of laundry in the washer.  So I’m feeling virtuous already.

  THANK YOU THANK YOU  THANK YOU for all the wonderful ideas regarding the table and chairs!! I think I need TEN sets of table and chairs just to do all the great ideas! I shall have to think about what I will do exactly, so don’t expect a completed picture very soon, but oh, so many great ideas! It’ll be for Zoe’, and will probably go in her room, so that’ll affect the colors I decide on…

  I was doing some recipe searches yesterday for a while… I’ve been a big fan of cooks.com for a while as well as some other recipe finder websites. But one of my friends recently told me that you can go online to Taste of Home, type in any ingredient (such as eggplant, zucchini, chicken, etc.) and have hundreds of menus to choose from! (Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had no idea). I’m a bigger fan of Taste of Home than I am of cooks.com, especially because there are pictures sometimes. Pictures always sell me on something. Sooo, because we have oodles and oodles of eggplant and squash and such things in the garden, I was so happy to know about this! I love to try new food ideas anyway, so last night’s supper was mostly new things…

  AND, let me introduce a killer chicken recipe (not from TOH, just found it browsing). If you like Italian sort of food, and if you like to grill, this is for you. So very simple and easy, it’s amazing. And it tastes even more amazing than it looks…  The recipe called for boneless chicken breast but we just grilled ours on the bone and put the topping on after it was finished… Although we both agreed it would have been better as the recipe indicated. But -  can you say DELICIOUS!?!!

   

  

  The Recipe:

  GRILLED BRUSCHETTA CHICKEN
  serves: 4                     prep time: 5 minutes plus grilling

  1/4 cup Sun-Dried Tomato Dressing, divided (we used Italian because I didn’t have this on hand)
  4 small boneless skinless chicken breast halves (1 lb)
  1 medium tomato, finely chopped
  1/2 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
  1/4 cup chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp. dried basil leaves
  (opt: we thought a little garlic would be good in here too, although we didn’t add it last night)
  
  1. Preheat grill to medium heat. Preheat oven to 350′.
  2. Pour 2 Tbsp. of the dressing over chicken in resealable plastic bag; seal bag. Turn bag over several times to evenly coat chicken. Refrigerate 10 minutes to marinade.
  3. Grill chicken 6 minutes. Meanwhile, combine tomatoes, cheese, basil, and remaining 2 Tbsp. dressing.
  4. Turn chicken over, grill an additional 8 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
  5. Place chicken on a baking sheet and top with the tomato mixture. Place in oven just until cheese begins to melt (should not be melted much at all).

  Oh, and if this matters to you, it has only 200 calories!

  EVER so good! Ben and I both agreed that this could easily be a $12 plate at a restaurant… Let me know if you try it and what you think!

   

  We’ve been eating a lot of salads too… Sometimes the salad will be our main dish, other times a side…

  This is a ‘Marylou Wanna-be’  (I don’t know how to link to the page where she “built a salad”, so you’ll have to look)

  

  A Cobb Salad

  

  One of our all-time favorites – Grilled Caesar Salad. For those of you who live in Lancaster and have gone to the Belvedere Inn for a meal, you know how wonderful these are!!

  
  
  And yes, we are still enjoying our fresh blueberries – what remains after the birds feast on them!

  

  I’m really using this link feature, and hope it’s working correctly!! Or hope I’m doing it correctly! Let me know if it’s not…

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  I was reading this morning in Strong Women, Soft Hearts (lent to me by my sister Ervina)  in the chapter about control… I don’t tend to think of myself as a controlling person, but some of the quotes in it really made me think, and I realized I have been dealing with some of these very things. Let me share them with you…

  “Control is the most subtle of dynamics, as natural as the air you breathe. It’s the insistence that your life follow a particular path. It’s about having an agenda for your life – a picture of some ideal that is shaped, usually, in childhood.”

  “We have our own personal versions of trying to arrange the pieces of life so that they make a beautiful whole – or at least keep things from getting worse. Often the mirages in our minds are not so much wrong – they’re just ours. Our own agendas. The faces of control take such varied and subtle shapes.”

  “[Control] usually takes one of two shapes. One looks anxious, overbearing, just plain trying too hard. The other is more a story of avoidance and self-protection.  However control is expressed in your life, the most important thing is to take stock of your own heart. What is the pain in your life that just sits there fermenting, expressing itself as control? And how would God lead you to deal with it differently, in a way that would express an active sense of trusting him?”

  “Control masquerades as strength, but it’s really not. It’s more like teeth-gritting determination, or white-knuckled fear with an edge to it.”

  “Our predicament is that we must have life – and we cannot make it happen. We long to be loved. We want our lives to matter in the scheme of things – and all these longings are legitimate. But we are hamstrung in really being able to bring this about in any significant or lasting way.”

  “‘You have to realize… that your dreams aren’t going to materialize in the way you have hoped – even the ones you thought God gave you. Some will turn out better than you could ever imagine. Some will go belly up. And hardly any will match the picture in your mind.’”

  “The amazing thing is the God follows us into the blackened ruins of our failed dreams, our misbegotten mirages, into the house of cards that has collapsed on us in some way; and he speaks, not with the chastisement we feel we deserve, but of all things, with tenderness…”

  And one last quote by C.S. Lewis:

  “The thing is to rely only on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small price to pay for having been brought to that dependence. Meanwhile, the trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing has yet been done.” 

  I’m at a loss for words after all that! So – be blessed today as you live in Trust with the Lord!

   

  • 10:49 am
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