Personal Apple Pie

This week my husband lamented to me about how it seems I bake for everybody but him. At first I was a little irritated by this. I mean, its not my fault the guy doesn't like chocolate or really care for cookies or cupcakes. He's not even all that into bread!

But then I thought, hold on a minute... shouldn't  I use my baking powers not only for good, but for awesome? And how awesome would it be if I could figure out a way to bake for my beloved on a scale small enough so as to not have massive amounts of sweets tempting me for days on end (my hubby likes to take his time with desserts... a power I wish I had)?

And so I set out to create a mini fruit pie. I basically modified two recipes; one for savory pasties and one for apple dumplings. This recipe makes two individual apple pies. I haven't tried it yet myself, but I'm willing to bet that you can use pretty much any kind of pie filling you like, as well as your own crust recipe if you have a favorite. You will need a jumbo muffin tin for these.

Personal Apple Pie
 For Crust:

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 2 Tbs cold water

For Filling:

• 1 large granny smith apple, peeled, cored and diced
• 1 Tbp all purpose flour
• 1Tbp white sugar
• 1 Tbp brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg

To make the crust mix the salt in with the flour. Cut the shortening into the flour using a fork until it resembles course crumbs.  Add the water and mix until the dough pulls together. Form it into a ball, wrap it up in plastic wrap and set it in the fridge to chill.

To make the fill combine the apples with the flour, sugars and spices until well mixed.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Take the dough and divide it into half. Divide each half into two chunks, one larger than the other. Take the larger piece of dough and either roll it out or just squish it between your hands like I did until it big enough to cover the bottom and sides of the jumbo muffin tin cup.

Mold the piece into the cups, then fill with the apple mixture, dividing it evenly between the two. Now take the remaining dough pieces and roll or squish them out, cover the tops of the two pies with them and pinch the sides to seal up the pie. Take a sharp knife and cut slits into the tops of the pies. If you wish you can dab on some egg white to the tops of the pies.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the filling is bubbly and the tops are golden brown. Let cool completely before attempting to remove from the muffin tins.

The Streamlined Omelet

Omelets are a go to meal for me. I LOVE eggs. They are good for you and so tasty. Omelets are totally customizable and a great way to get more veggies into your day. Naturally it is easy to make them not so healthy, but by using lean meats like turkey or chicken and lowfat cheeses it's a great addition for a healthy lifestyle. You can put pretty much any kind of meat, cheese, bean and even rice in these fluffy pockets of breakfast delight (although really they are good any time of the day). They are a cinch to pull together, but if you're feeling intimidated don't worry! Here are my best omelet making tips for your enjoyment.

Before you even get your pan out gather and prepare your fixins. Scramble your eggs, chop veggies if you're using them and set out your cheeses and/or meats. Having them ready to go will make everything a little less crazy.

The next important thing is to use the right size pan. I like and 8" skillet for a 2 or 3 egg omelet. Give it a good coating of nonstick cooking spray and place over high heat on your stove to warm up.

If you are using onions or peppers, I recommend sauteing them for 3 or 4 minutes and then removing them from the pan. They taste fine raw too, so just go with your personal preference. If you do saute them, be sure to remove them from the pan and recoat the pan with cooking spray before adding your eggs.

You want your skillet to be nice and hot before adding the eggs. I mean, like just shy of burning the cooking spray. Once it's hot pour in your scrambled eggs. And turn the heat down to low.

Grab your spatula (small is best for this) and gently lift up one edge of the omelet. Tilt the pan and let some of the uncooked egg that's sitting on top run underneath. Repeat this process on different spots on the cooking omelet until you can't coax any more of the eggs to run underneath.

Add your fixins. I recommend putting your cheese down first, if using, and placing it just a few centimeters from the edge of the omelet. This way it acts as a seal for the edges when it melts.

Let the omelet cook for just a minute or two, then it's time to fold the edge over. I like to lift up the side of omelet and actually pinch the edge with my fingers, gently pulling it up and over like a bed sheet while using the spatula to help me. Once you got it folded over put it a bit on top to cement everything into place. Let it cook for just a minute more and your creation is ready!

Roasted Tomato Chicken Soup

It's officially early autumn now that Labor Day has come and gone, but you wouldn't know it by the local farmer's market. The apples, squash and pumpkins have started to arrive, but copious amounts of fresh stone fruits, berries, melons and tomatoes line the stalls. I decided to take advantage of the fruit before it disappears until next summer.

I've had this soup recipe for probably three years and just never got around to making it. You don't have to add chicken if you don't want to (if you'd prefer vegetarian use vegetable stock) and feel free to switch up the spinach with some other kind of leafy green. Fresh herbs work well in this recipe, too. Believe it or not, despite the tremendous amount of tomatoes at the Farmer's Market no one had any fresh basil. Go figure. As always, the longer you can let it simmer on the stove the better. Be sure to serve it with a grilled cheese sandwich or some crusty bread.

Roasted Tomato Chicken Soup

• 2 lbs Roma tomatoes
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 5 cloves garlic
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 2 tsp dried oregano 
• ½ tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 cups diced, cooked chicken
• 2 cups chopped baby spinach

 Preheat oven to 375 and quarter the tomatoes.

Place tomato halves, cut side up, on baking sheet with garlic cloves. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast in oven for 1 hour.

Snip the ends off garlic and squeeze the insides into a blender. Carefully add the entire contents (juices, tomatoes and all) of the baking tray. Add stock, tomato paste, basil, oregano and vinegar. Blend until smooth.

Place soup mixture into a large pot. Add chicken and spinach and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until spinach is wilted. Cover and let simmer over low heat for at least 30 minutes. To serve, scoop it into bowels and sprinkle some parsley and Parmesan cheese on top.

Creativity Outside the Box

I understand that we've got one creative God. I mean, with something like a platypus, how could you think that God isn't creative? Personally I believe the reason humans are so driven to create is because we were made in the image of a creative God. It's us imitating our heavenly father.

One of the biggest reasons I felt so ok with leaving graphic design as a career behind and switching to nursing is because I knew it would be easy to integrate the desire to create into my regular life. Something I've come to understand well over the past year is that business and pleasure are two VERY separate things for me. That is not to say that I cannot enjoy a job. Far from it. But what it does mean is that I don't think I can do something I find "fun" as work, nor can I work for "fun". One of two things will happen: either the business will overtake the pleasure or the pleasure will overtake the business. Either way productivity will fall. I find it funny that my dad warned me once about going into art as a career. He said it might end up not being fun anymore. For my brother that was not true. But for me it most certainly was.

I've been out of the office for almost a year now. In a way you could say that I have been outside of the box (no more beige cube, yay!). I value what I learned while working as a layout designer, but I can honestly say that I don't miss it. I still get the urge to make things pretty frequently, however. And I can always tell when I'm overdue. I get cranky.

All work and no play makes me an unhappy gal! My husband gets cranky when he is hungry but I get cranky when I haven't been creative for a while. Usually I remedy this by baking something. Not only is it quite cathartic, it's tasty. But sometimes I need something more involved in that. That's usually when I pull out the sewing machine.

As finals approach their end the creativity bug bit again, and out came this cute little shoulder bag. Took about five hours total to put together, and I feel better now. Time to hit up the books for the last mile.

Shhh... just roll with it.

I have a penchant for randomness. I also get very easily distracted. Currently as I attempt to punch out this blog post that has been lingering in my head like the funk of deep fry lingers around my kitchen after I make battered fish, I am extremely tempted to look up recipes for vegetarian rice bowls. I've been trying to eat more vegetables lately and save some green on our grocery budget by buying less meat. Last week I slipped in a rice and black bean enchilada dinner under Alex's carnivorous nose without him completely realizing the meal was vegetarian until after he had already devoured the savory wrap in all of it's beefless glory.

But this post isn't about eating more rabbit food (rabbit trails, maybe). It's about yet another twist in the story of my pencil-written life plans.

I was accepted into Grand Valley State University (Yay! Go, me!) and met with an adviser last week to talk about what classes I needed before I can apply for the nursing program. I have been assuming, based on careful calculations, that I would be ready to apply this fall and if accepted I would start in the winter. However, during my session with the adviser the word "prerequisite" and then the words "not met" were quickly followed by "have to take". Little did I know that the laziness of my youth would come back to bite me over a decade later.

When I was 16 I took AP Biology in high school. For some strange reason that I cannot recall now I didn't take the AP test for college credit. Somehow I managed to get through my first stint of college without this biology credit, but I will not be so lucky this time around. It has come back to haunt me in the form of BIO 120: General Biology I.

I tried to weasel my way out of this class. I emailed a myriad of people, made some phone calls and even checked to see if I could test out. The result? Utter and complete fail. It seem I have a summer date with an introduction to cell structure and physiology, growth and development, and genetics.

Needless to say, I was less than thrilled with this prospect. I passed Anatomy & Physiology with a perfect A: shouldn't that show my extreme prowess in the world of introductory biology classes? Apparently not. And this one, single little general biology class has thrown my carefully laid plans off track by one whole semester.

In addition I was informed that Grand Valley requires a semester gap between the time one is accepted into the nursing program and the semester that one begins the nursing program. Hence, I have now been pushed back TWO semesters. With this renewed schedule, assuming everything goes smoothly, I can expect to graduate from nursing school in the spring of 2013.

You should think that I would be used to this by now and that perhaps it wouldn't surprise me, having my plans derailed. But it's still rough when life forces you to readjust, especially when you are in a hurry. I was miffed. I was angry. And I was very, very unhappy.

It was time to have a what-the-frig-conversation with God.

I'm thankful God welcomes me into his presence no matter how I am feeling. He must be God if He can consistently do that. I know I am not that gracious, patient or loving with others. I prefer to deal with people who are happy, or at the very least are calm. I was neither of those things when I told God how I felt about His timing regarding me becoming a nurse.

The most wonderful thing I have discovered about unrestrained prayer like that, however, is that God does indeed meet with me. While I may not feel overly joyful after I have spent time spewing my frustration, 90% of the time I feel at peace. This occasion didn't fall into the 10% category.

Through the sheer grace of the Holy Spirit I was able say to myself, "Ok, there is nothing you can do about this. So instead of focusing on what you can't have you might as well focus on what you can do, instead." Quite suddenly the entire situation didn't seem to horrible. Basically being forced to be a part time student for the next year leaves me with a lot of time to focus on other things, or work part time should the need arise. I can take some other classes just for sheer interest if I choose, or I can increase my volunteer hours at the Pregnancy Resource Center.

I'd be completely lying if I said that I didn't mind the delay. But I also trust God. Lately I've been discovering how I can kinda wonder what God is doing but still feel at peace about it and trust that if He decided something is going to go down differently than I had planned or hoped, there is an amazingly good reason for it. More importantly than that I can trust that it is for my benefit.

I'm still flying by the seat of my pants. And in a way I guess you could say that I'm cool with it. I'm beginning to think that if I didn't delight in change as much as I do, things would be much harder. But God made me; He knows I prefer to do my best to just roll with the random things that come my way. And really, since He's the one who is in control, there is not a thing random about what happens in my life. I'll take my time getting into nursing school since that's what God wants. And I'll take my time finding just the right vegetarian rice bowl, too.

You're Gonna Need a Jumbo Bandaid For That One

Did you know that Americans love failure? Really, we do.

But only as the backdrop to success.

The people we hold up in high regard in this country are those who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps out of terrible adversity and now have the money, the career, the happy family... those are our success stories. Rags to riches, ash piles to gold piles. Honestly I do not think that there is anything wrong with a good success story. Kinda gives me hope.

But what about just plain, painful, smacks-you-in-the-face failure? I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Those times in your life when you try to accomplish something and it ends horribly, like by epic proportions. And it's so bad that you really can't do anything but stick the mangled idea in the corner, hope you forget about it and that over time the stinging red mark left by your colossal belly flop won't hurt so much. Sometimes you just can't redeem certain things.

Usually, however, you can at least move forward. I've heard many people say that you're only a failure if you quit. Well, does that statement account for changing directions? Some might consider the fact that I decided not to keep pursuing graphic design after I was laid off as me having failed in the art field. The truth of the matter is that I'm being Icelandic about it.

Did you know that Iceland is considered to be one of the happiest places in the world? Seriously. A study was done about it recently. It's hard to believe considering that they live in darkness for half the year (sun doesn't come up in the winter time). It could be because they all drink a ton on the weekends (but if you touch even half a glass of Merlot during the week you're a lush), but I think it has a lot more to do with their typically close knit communities and a sense that it's perfectly acceptable to fail... and then not have to redeem it. It is unusual there for a person to have just one career all their life. People reinvent themselves many times over their lives, even well into their later years.

There is an old, extremely campy song that goes, "when you fall down, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again". The song is entirely too cheerful for the subject matter, especially because each time you fall down it gets harder and harder to get up. And after awhile your strength runs out.

Alex and I both have been feeling pretty exhausted lately. But I can say that God has been teaching us some truths during this time. Mostly that we don't have control over anything in our lives (not even our thoughts or speech) despite our best efforts, and that eventually our own strength isn't enough to get us through. Right now, we both just want to take a break (although it took me much more longer than him to admit that... God in His wisdom saw fit to not have me marry another energizer bunny; thanks God!). Alex put it perfectly. He said that the best thing for us to do right now is to rest in God's strength and wait on Him.

I'm an independent person. I was raised to take care of myself and figure things out on my own. I'm thankful for that, but it gets me in trouble from time to time. Mostly it makes me pushy. I gotta wonder if God is ever amused by me trying to bully Him. I know Alex isn't when I try to bully him. Resting and waiting is not something I'm very good at. I do like to pick myself up, dust myself off and start over again. And I like to do it RIGHT NOW.

But another song also plays in my ear:

In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are still, when strivings cease
My comforter, my all in all
Here in the love of Christ I stand

I'm not very good at waiting. But God's word is full of instruction to do so. And God knows I'm not very good, so I don't at all find it surprising that this verse in Psalm 37 just came to my attention:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways.

Pass the jumbo bandaids, please.

Big Prayer Sticks and a Piñata God

Every once in a great while something becomes abundantly clear to me about life and the way the world works. Most recently it is this:

God is not a pinata, my prayers are not a big stick, and He will not spill out goodies from heaven if I just beat hard enough.

It seems to me that most people think praying is like writing a letter to Santa Claus. All too often I have fallen into the trap of believing that good little Christian boys and girls always get what they want if they do all the right things, behave the way God wants us to, and pray hard enough.

What a lie.

Where exactly did we get this idea? And why is this "gospel of prosperity" is so prevalent in our culture? We belittle God when get angry at Him for not giving us what we want. We are like selfish, bratty children demanding our way and then throwing a tantrum when God doesn't get with the program. And yet, we do. I know I do.

I am going to be 100% honest and admit that I am a selfish person and I wish life were easy. I do not want to struggle, I do not want to feel pain. I want everything to be happy and fun all the time and live a life of blissful luxury. And somewhere along the line I was deceived into believing that God was supposed to supply all that to me. But if God were nothing more than a genie in a bottle, a servant whom bent to my every wish, whim and want... He would not be God, would He? I would. And I know that when I am demanding my own way and expecting God to get on board that is exactly what I am doing: I am attempting to reverse our roles.

Lately I have been greatly challenged with the question if prayer does not change God's mind or cause Him to act, then what is the point of praying? Have you ever wondered that? Even as I typed those words the extreme rebellious, control freak nature of the thought was revealed. WE change God's mind? WE cause God to act? Oh, our hearts have not changed since Eden! Here I am, thousands of years later still trying to be like God.

Up until recently I have been somewhat mystified by the concept of prayer. I tend to be very trusting of God's word and most often even if I don't understand something I do my best to take in on faith that if it's in the Bible then it must be true. Since the Bible is full of commands to pray at all times in seasons for all reasons, I would pray. I did not always understand why I should pray, just that God calls us to do so.

Because His word promises it, I believe that God always answers prayer. Perhaps you have heard before that God's answers are either yes, no or not now. Maybe you have heard that too much, but I encourage you to not dismiss it as cliche. And if you have never heard that before, I encourage you to consider it now. I can think of times in my life when God answered yes, and I can think of a few times in my life when God answered not now then said yes later. I can think of many, many more times when God said no. Recently God has been telling me no a lot.

Alex did not get into the Air Force.
Terry did not recover from her cancer.
Our friend Jeff did not survive his car wreck.

I don't understand why. I may never, ever know why. And yet I still believe that God is good and that He cares for me. How can I? Because He walks with me. So often when we pray it is to ask God to take away pain, for us to be able to avoid suffering. In some ways I don't think there is anything wrong with that desire. If a person enjoys pain they are usually suffering from and emotional/psychological disorder. No one who has a healthy mind wants life to be difficult. But the fact of the matter is that no one can escape pain and suffering. Not even Jesus.

And that is when prayer becomes precious. During the deep valleys of our life, when everything is crashing down and it feels like it is too much to bear, God is the only thing in all of creation that can get us through the pain.

I don't have the eloquence nor the ability to effectively unpack the reasons for prayer. Below you will find a link to a sermon from Mars Hill Church in Seattle by Pastor Mark Driscoll. Alex and I listened to it recently and through it God granted me a better understanding of what prayer is and why we should do it. I encourage you to listen to it. It's long, but it's worth it. Download it and listen to it in your car the next time you have a long drive somewhere.

http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/pray-like-jesus/the-gethsemane-prayer

I will end by saying that I've come to understand that the purpose of prayer is not to make God get with my program, but to allow me to enter into His presence and have my will become aligned with His.

Why do you pray?