by jphilo | Mar 23, 2011 | Recipes
Today’s recipe for Broccoli Cheese Pie comes from my new daughter. She and my son served it when I stayed overnight with them a few weeks ago. It’s tasty, healthy, and easy. I finally got around to making it last week, and it didn’t last long. Hiram loved it and kept going back for more. No leftovers after this meal!
My only addition to the recipe is to let the dish sit for 5 – 10 minutes after taking it from the oven. It’s much easier to get out of the pie pan that way.
Broccoli Cheese Pie
2 tablespoons plain, dry breadcrumbs
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce (I used cayenne pepper instead)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Fresh ground pepper to taste
2 C cubed whole wheat bread (about 2 slices)
3 C broccoli florets
2 teaspoons olive oil
4 slices canadian bacon diced (simply leave out to make vegetarian)
1 medium onion chopped
1 C grated monterey jack or mozzarella cheese
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 9 inch deep dish pie pan with cooking spray, add breadcrumbs and tilt pie pan to coat the bottom and sides.
Whisk eggs, milk, hot sauce, salt and pepper. Add bread and stir to coat. Set aside. Steam broccoli until tender, drain, chop coarsely. Heat oil in skillet add onion (and bacon if desired) until softened. Add onions and broccoli to the egg mixture, then add in cheese.
Pour into pan.
Bake until light golden and set, 45 to 50 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve
by jphilo | Feb 15, 2011 | Family
My, oh, my! This post from February 16, 2009 was a reminder of how much has happened in the last two years. My mother’s house sold 4 hours after it was put up for in March of 2009, during the worst housing market in decades. Our son now has a pick up, a job, a wife, a dog, and a bright future. Our daughter has a husband and will graduate from college in a few short months. Instead of cleaning a house this February, my sister and her husband went to London and Paris. The spare room is now Hiram’s office, and I’m busy with book rewrites.
But some things remain the same. My scrapbooking keeps getting pre-empted, God is faithful, life will look much different in two more years,and pride is a continual struggle in my life.
Pride Cometh Before the Mess – Recycled
Last Saturday morning, I felt pretty proud of myself. The house was back to normal after all our December excitement, and all the treasures bequeathed by Mom were in place. My schedule for the coming week was much clearer than normal, so I anticipated a highly productive writing week.
I was so pleased with my organizational ability, I was probably insufferable. But only lasted until my sister arrived around noon, and we went to Mom’s house to sort through her things so we can put the house on the market. By Sunday evening, Hiram had hauled several loads of new treasures to our house and put them in the spare bedroom. I was too bummed to climb the stairs and face the mess. On Monday morning, my sister’s parting advice was, “Don’t even look at it for a week.”
Good advice and I stuck to it, at least until Anne called before noon with a case of the February college blues and a great desire to come home this weekend. But she’s stranded because she loaned her car to Allen until he found a job and could afford his own set of wheels. I can’t pick her up Friday because we have a meeting about Mom’s finances scheduled that afternoon. So I called my son, who now has a job and will have his own truck by the end of the week.
About three or ten phone calls later, everything was arranged for him to pick her up and bring her home, leave her car in Iowa, and ride home with a friend who will also spend the weekend with us. Anne will sleep in her bedroom, Allen said he’ll take the couch.
This means I can’t take my sister’s advice. I have to clean the mess by the end of the week. It also means I won’t be scrapbooking this weekend as I planned. But it also means that by next Monday the spare room will be clean, Anne will have a way to get home for spring break, and I won’t be quite so insufferable.
by jphilo | Jan 31, 2011 | Family
Hiram and I ask the same question after every conversation with our kids. Can farmer genes lie dormant in one generation and then emerge full-blown in the next?
See, both our dads loved farming, but had to give up on their dreams – my dad due to multiple sclerosis and Hiram’s dad due to Alaska’s climate allowing farmers to grow more debt than crops. Still, Hiram grew up on the farm-turned-airstrip with the barn-turned-airplane hanger, so he knew enough about farming to know it wasn’t for him. And I grew up spending part of each summer with my cousins at their parents farms, enough to learn the following lessons:
- The back of a horse is too far from the ground. (Notice the girl wedged in front of her sister, reaching around her brother to get a death grip on the saddle. That’s me.)
- Gathering eggs is fun until the hens peck at you.
- Climbing a manure spreader makes you stinky.
- Falling down while climbing the machine that carries hay bales into the barn loft can result in nasty skinned knees.
- Hay is itchy.
- Barn kittens are cute until their claws dig into your shoulder.
- Farm animals smell.
- Weeds grow faster than crops.
The list could be longer, but suffice it to say that over the years, I’ve come to love the idea of farming more than the practice.
But our kids are a different matter. This weekend, Allen completed the fourth week of his ten week farrier school. After the first week, he was so tired he could barely talk. The second week was a little better. By the third week, he was pretty sure he’d made the right decision, and this past weekend he was positive. In the short term, it’s the training he needs to increase his income. in the short long term, its the next step in gaining skills required for life on an organic farm that uses work horses rather than motorized machinery. Of course, even his grandparents didn’t do that kind of farming. The horse-drawn farming gene goes back at least one more generation, maybe two.
But Allen isn’t the only one to inherit the farmer gene. His sister, Anne, who loves to sew and design clothes, is hoping to launch an internet sewing business soon. Her long term dream is to have a small farm where she can raise sheep and other critters, then spin her own yarn for weaving, knitting and who knows what.
So I ask you, how long can the farmer gene lie dormant? Can it mutate? How much is nature? How much is nurture? So many questions remain to be answered. But I can tell you this, watching dreams unfold is fascinating entertainment. And watching our kids evolve into adults who can attain them is an undeserved blessing for which we are grateful. When their dreams become reality, I will have only one request for the farmers.
Please, don’t make me ride a horse.
Cause the old gray mare’s back is still what she used to be.
Way too far off the ground.
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 18, 2011 | Reflections on the Past
One look at the title of the blog entry originally posted in January of 2008, and I knew it would be this week’s recycled post. For the past three weeks, death has been on my mind. Not because someone is dying. Because I’m writing the section of Different Dream Parenting about death. Not just death, but the death and children. Not fun.
I feel like a hypocrite tackling the subject since both my children are living. But often while writing, and again today while reading through this old post, I find reassurance in my father’s life and my son’s early years. Those experiences taught me to think about death, and those thoughts are the foundation of what I’m writing now, as this recycled post shows.
Do You Ever Think About Death? – Recycled
“Do you ever think about death?” A friend asked the question in an email this morning. He thinks his son, who has been ill for a very long time, may be dying.
Yes, I told my friend, I think about death every day. It started when I was a kid, and I looked at pictures of my dad in his younger days – showing cattle, playing football, goofing around with his friends. That young man didn’t look like my dad. My dad sat in a wheelchair, weakened by multiple sclerosis. He grew weaker for thirty-eight years before his body died, but even as a kid, I knew that little bits of him died every single day.
When my son was born, my husband and I confronted death often. It almost tore me apart until God showed me the depths of His love for our baby, and I learned to hope in His promises.
Sure, I think of death every day. But I think a lot more about life when I face choices about what I believe and what I do based on my beliefs. Will I concentrate on the little bits of me that die every day or will I focus on the new life I receive? Will I fear death or love life? Will I ignore evidence of God at work in or will I acknowledge and submit to it?
As I think about death and life, the truth becomes clear. I can’t stop death. But I can choose to live in a way that honors the gift of life, the life God gave my father, the life he’s given my son, and the life of my friend’s child.
Every day, I think about death. But I choose hope.
