by jphilo | Jan 25, 2011 | Family
This week’s recycled post comes from two years ago. The manuscript for A Different Dream for My Child had recently been sent to the publisher. Allen was job hunting in the midst of the worst recession since the early 1980s. Mom had decided to sell her house and permanently move in with my brother’s family. Looking back on that busy winter, I’m grateful for this quieter January with enough time in it to complete my new book. Much has changed in the past two years, but one thing remains true. God’s timing is always perfect.
Neither Easy or Quick – Recycled
What with digging out from frequent snowfalls, figuring out Mom’s finances, helping our son get back on his feet, and meeting church obligations, very little has been easy or quick this month. Every week, I’ve sandwiched in a little writing time here and there, but much of it has been shoved to the side.
Last week, my calendar for the following week looked relatively free, so I though things would turn around when it arrived. But then Allen called. “I start a new job on Wednesday, so I’m driving down Monday to pick up some things I’ll need and spend the night.” Then my cousin Gail called. “I’ll be in Ames Monday. Can I stop by to visit?” Suddenly Monday was booked, but after Allen left early Tuesday I would have all morning to write before spending the afternoon with Mom.
Monday night Allen asked, “Do you want to go to the bakery for a quick breakfast?” Every cell in my body wanted to shout, “No, I want to write,” but I held those pesky words in check. We had gone seven long years without the small delight of breakfast at the bakery, I reminded myself. So Tuesday morning we braved the frigid dawn and spent an hour talking over pastries and coffee.
The cold swirled around my ankles as we drove home. “I think I’ll walk indoors instead of bundling up and going outside,” I told Allen.
“But Mom,” he said. “it’s not windy. And the sun’s shining. Do you want to miss that?”
The sun warmed my back as I walked. The snow drifts sculpted by last week’s ground blizzards flaunted their ridges and curves with every step I took. The walk was what I needed. I thought about the momentary, fleeting gifts I’d already received that morning – confidences shared at breakfast and the parade of stark winter beauty lining my gravel road. Neither easy or quick, yet happiness sank deep into my heart.
by jphilo | Jan 14, 2011 | Family, Recipes
All right, food groupies, it’s time for round two of the New Year’s Pizza Bake Off. Last week, you received the recipe from the southern Minnesota contingent of the family. This week’s offering is from the northwest Iowa branch, a recipe they’ve perfected since their wedding in July. Theirs features a yummy whole wheat pizza crust, homemade sauce, and steamed broccoli as one of their toppings. Without any further ado, here’s recipe #2.
Whole Wheat Pizza Dough
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 cups King Arthur’s whole wheat flour
Dissolve yeast in water. Add honey and oil. Add salt to flour. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Mix with a spoon until you must knead it. Knead dough 100 times per cup of flour, 50 times per half cup. Let rise for 45 minutes in a clean, moist, covered container. Push dough down and let it rise for 45 minutes again. Punch down and roll into a circle. Place on a pizza stone. (You can divide the dough in two for thin crust pizzas.)
Pizza Sauce
1 small can crushed tomatoes (use diced tomatoes if you prefer chunky sauce)
1 small can tomato paste
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 large garlic clove, crushed
Italian spices (basil, thyme, marjoram, oregano, anise, fennel) to taste
1/4 chopped sweet red pepper
Saute onions and pepper in olive oil. When soft, add tomatoes and tomato paste. (You may want to mash diced tomatoes with a potato masher to reach desired consistency.) Add garlic, vinegar and other spices. Let simmer 15 minutes to saturate flavors.
Spread sauce on top of dough. Add toppings (this couple likes steamed broccoli florets, onion, olives, mushrooms) or anything else you like. Sprinkle with 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese. Bake at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes or until cheese starts to brown.
by jphilo | Jan 11, 2011 | Family
One look at this entry from December 31, 2009, and I knew it had to be the recycled post of the week. A little over a year ago, Anne and her fiance were on the road in a snowstorm, while I lay warm in my bed. This year, Anne and her fiance are snug and warm while I’m braving winter weather. Though the tables have been turned from then to now, one thing remains true. None of us, even in the midst of snowstorms and uncertainty, have reason to waste God’s wonderful grace.
Don’t Waste His Grace
Last week’s winter storm made the Wednesday evening before Christmas a rather trying one at our house. Anne and her fiancee thought they could outrun the storm bearing down on northwest Iowa by leaving for Wisconsin early in the afternoon. For the first few hours, they made good progress. But as darkness fell and traffic slowed the storm caught up with them.
Anne called around 6:30 PM to say they had pulled into a rest stop on I-90, not far from Rochester, Minnesota. “We’ll spend the night in the car,” she said. “The visibility’s so bad we can’t even get to the next town.” After reassuring me they had plenty of blankets, food, water and gasoline, she hung up.
If the call had come two or three years ago, the thought of my daughter marooned at a rest stop in a blizzard would have kept me awake most of the night. But in the last few years, I have seen God so powerfully at work in our lives, I was able to fall asleep, confident that He would watch over my daughter and the man she’s going to marry.
The same night Anne slept in the car, the cold woke Hiram and I woke in the middle of the night. An ice storm had knocked out our electricity, but instead of fretting about when it would come on and how our daughter was faring, I piled extra blankets on the bed and thought about something I’d recently read in John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life.
“We simply take life and breath and health and friends and everything for granted. We think it is ours by right. But the fact is that it is not ours by right.” Piper goes on to remind us that we are sinful, we’re the ones who rebelled against our Creator. “Therefore, every breath we take, every time our heart beats, every day that the sun rises, every moment we see with our eyes or hear with our ears or speak with our mouths or walk with our legs is, for now,a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only judgement…for those who see the merciful hand of God in every breath they take and give credit where it is due, Jesus Christ will be seen and savored…Every heartbeat will be received as a gift from his hand.”
I lay, waiting for the extra blankets to warm us, and thought about my daughter’s life in a new way. The years we’ve had with her are an undeserved gift. So is electricity and a warm house and Christmas and a husband who loves me. If I accept these good gifts from God, then I can trust him, even when what he gives is not what I think I need. Then, I fell asleep asking him to prepare me for whatever news came in the morning.
When we woke, the electricity was on. The house was warm. An hour or two later, Anne called to say the snow had stopped, and they were on their way. By noon she called to say they had arrived. Once again, God’s grace was poured out upon our family. I thanked him for the undeserved gift of our travelers’ safety. I asked him to make me mindful of his grace.
Please God, I pray again whenever I feel my heart beat, continue to make me grateful. Don’t let me waste your grace.
by jphilo | Jan 7, 2011 | Family, Recipes
One week ago today, when our kids were home, the two couples staged their own pizza bake-off for supper. Their creations posed for a photo shoot as they came out of the oven, and then we devoured the results. Bellies full, the cooks wrote down their recipes, so I could share them with you.
This week’s recipe comes from the southern Minnesota Philos. The dough recipe comes from an Italian Country cooking cookbook they found somewhere. The sauce and toppings are their own creations. Hiram and are now two of the recipe’s biggest fans. The Minnesota Philos even left some semolina so we can make it again. Then I’ll have to find a store around here that carries it. Any suggestions about where to look?
Southern Minnesota Pizza
Pizza Dough: Sauce:
3 cups all-purpose flour 1 can pizza sauce with three cloves of
1/3 cup semolina 3 cloves crushed garlic
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups warm water Toppings:
1/4 cup olive oil chopped mushrooms, onion, olives
2 teaspoons dried yeast
Combine flour. semolina and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer. Combine water, oil, and yeast in a small bowl and stir to dissolve yeast. Combine the two mixtures in the mixer bowl and mix with beater until smooth, then change to the dough hook and mix at moderate speed for 10 minutes or until dough is smooth and pliable. (If you don’t have a mixer with a dough hook, knead by hand for 15-20 minutes.)
Oil a bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn over to coat all sides with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and rest in a warm place until doubled in size (45 minutes to an hour) or overnight in the refrigerator.
Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Punch down dough and roll out. (Our cooks made a thick crust pizza, but the dough could be divided for 2-3 thin crusted ones.) Transfer dough onto a heated pizza stone.
Combine pizza sauce and crushed garlic. Spread over crust. Add toppings and spread 2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese over top. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning.
Bake at 500 degrees until bubbly in the middle. Cut into pieces and serve. Mmm, mmm.
Come back next week for the second pizza bake off recipe. It’s as good as this one, so you won’t want to miss it!
by jphilo | Jan 3, 2011 | Family
The house is quiet this morning, after almost a week of fun, family, and relaxation. From Thursday to Sunday, all four of our kids (two by birth and two by marriage) were with us for the first multi-day stretch ever. When they left after lunch on Sunday and a 24 hour infusion of extended family, we were all still on good terms with one another. Therefore, the weekend can be considered a success.
But by my count it was more than successful. In fact, compiling the complete list of Christmas blessings and good memories we experienced would take more time than I have to spare. So here are a few that stand out:
- Planning meals and cooking with the kids.
- Tasting the results of the pizza bake-off on New Year’s Eve.
- Having people volunteer to set the table and clean up after meals.
- Learning to play the board game Carcassonne, thanks to our new son.
- Listening to our daughters talk while one taught the other how to knit.
- Giving the kids hugs at bedtime.
- Hearing about our kids’ dreams for the future.
- Watching our sons play with the pen/laser/flashlight keychains from their Christmas stockings.
- Seeing Hiram’s expression when he pulled cheetah spot patterned duct tape from his stocking.
- Watching my nephew put together a jigsaw puzzle with lightning speed.
- Observing Mom’s pleasure when a story she wrote about her childhood was read aloud.
- Fighting over the squirrel underpants, Twisted Tales from Shakespeare, and travel ping pong during the White Elephant gift exchange.
- Falling asleep to the sound of young voices and happy conversations.
What Christmas blessings stand out for you? What are you grateful for as the new year begins? What’s making you smile today?
by jphilo | Dec 24, 2010 | Family
Snow is falling slowly, gently. It rests upon the quiet trees and bends dry grass in the ditches. A small, soft mound of white covers the top of the old lamp post that marks the eastern border of our Narnia, there beside the evergreens and the lilacs.
For the twenty years we’ve lived here the lamp has stood, useless and rusting, a relic left by former residents who called this house home long before we did. During our stay in this land, we’ve demolished other useless things – dead trees, scraggly bushes, and a decrepit fence – but the lamp post remains, a reminder of our move to Narnia when our children were ten and four.
They were deeply smitten by magic in those days, most alive during the evening hours when we read aloud to them from C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles, Tolkien’s trilogy, and the Resistance Tales of David and Karen Mains. All through their childhoods and adolescents they watched for Aslan, believing he would return as promised when their numbers swelled from two to four.
In a few short days they will arrive, our two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve. Grown up but still steeped in magic, still believing, they will enter Narnia and celebrate Aslan’s arrival in human flesh, the lion of Judah born in a manger, the Word made flesh.
In the cold, dark winter days before they come, there’s just enough time to dust the ancient wardrobe. Just enough time fill it to bursting with old fur coats. Just enough time to get ready for deep magic.
It’s time to wait beside the lamp post.
It’s almost Christmas.
Aslan’s on the move.
