Now We're Cookin'!!

There are so many things to learn as a new preacher's wife. Being on call 24/7, living in the parking lot of the church, having people you have never met call you Bro. Josh's wife when you pick up movies from Movie Gallery. But for me, the greatest challenge came in the form of a casserole dish. You see, at our church, we like to eat. A lot. At least every 4th Sunday. We also have a church full of women who could give Rachel Ray a run for her money. They are award winning pie bakers and $100 cake making experts. (I'm not kidding, somebody paid a $100 for one of our lady's cakes at an auction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do you know how many boxes of oreo pie filling you can buy for that?!?!) But that is the point...their stuff does NOT comes from boxes. My stuff does...

My specialty is a pasta dish you may also know as "Suddenly Pasta". One of our dear girls went on and on about how much she likes it one time that I took it. So, it became one of my usual contributions. Even I can make "Suddenly Pasta". Well, I thought I could. There was one Sunday I stayed home sick, but sent my food by Josh. (Don't worry, I was not contagious.) He brought me a plate that night complete with some of my "Suddenly Pasta". It was...plain. It was at that moment I looked in my kitchen and saw the seasoning packet sitting on the counter. Truly I had sent boxed food to an eating event and it was only half done!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, the last couple of months I have tried to spread my cooking wings. Last month I was out of town and had forgotten about it so I created what I called the "what is left in the fridge" casserole. Several people just raved about it and wanted the recipe. I wish I had my camera with me to capture the looks of amazement on people's faces when they found out I was the one who brought it.

Well today we had our Harvest Sunday complete with dinner after the morning service. It is always a big deal and we were expecting a bigger crowd so I fixed 3 casseroles and a bread pudding. I had never made a bread pudding, mind you, but it seemed like something our ladies would do. Y'all, those ladies just went on and on about how good it was. I felt like I had arrived. I was inching my way into the inner circle of Betty Crockerdom. I also had a couple of people ask for the recipe for one of my casseroles. It was a proud moment.

Never fear, God does not allow pride to dwell long in my soul. One of the boys came and sat across the table from me and heard me bragging to Josh about what all of the ladies had said. He said, "Yea, they are all saying "She can cook now!"" LOL. I could just see all of the ladies gathered in the kitchen cautiously testing a food product brought in by the box cooking, city girl preacher's wife. They must have thought the fact that I brought real food was as miraculous as Jesus walking on water!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you LORD, for little miracles. :)

There'll Be Days Like This....

Days like today are why I have a blog. If it weren't for the fact that I knew at the end of the day I could tell my story and pretend like someone cares, I would probably just drown myself in cake frosting and diet coke. Okay, so I have done that, but I will get to that part later.

The day began about 5 or 6 when Kate wandered into our room with a book. Beauty and the Beast to be exact. This wandering into our room is a new thing as she sleeps in her playpen and has just recently learned to climb out. I have her toddler bed set up but have been worried about her getting up and wandering around the house while we're asleep. Guess that doesn't matter now! Anyway, she cuddled up with me and looked at her book. It was a sweet moment. How I wish I could enjoy moments at 5 o'clock in the morning more. :) She also entertained me greatly when I was changing her pull-up and she handed me her doll instead. She's a mess!

Today was designated housecleaning and cake making day. Yes, everyone here was as thrilled as you are imagining. Actually, my kids seemed extra eager to help clean I guess because of the excitement of Eli's party tommorrow. We adorned ourselves in our rattiest, housecleaning attire and got to it. It was a family affair and I must say it makes my life much easier when it is that way. I had a ton of stuff I had put in the hallway waiting to go to storage. Josh packed up Sarah and they headed to our storage unit in Newton. I noticed he had taken his truck and this was of particular interest to me because his battery had died in his truck and he had to take the one out of the jeep to get the truck to start. Not too long after he left my friend Kim called. We are planning our high school's ten year reunion and we needed to have a little pow wow about what to do if nobody decides to come. I'm trying really hard not to stress out about it, but it is quite an undertaking and all of us who are working on it live in different states and each have a million things going on. Anyway, as we hung up I got a text message of Philippians 4:13 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." My first thought was that it was sweet of that person to send it to me. Looking back I should have known it was a message from God preparing me.

Two seconds later Josh called. I figured he was going to tell me he was on his way home or ask if I needed anything from town. But he wasn't. He and Sarah were broke down at the storage place. This was quite a situation as I was at home with a jeep with no battery in it. One of our church members was working across the street at the cemetary. Another was in the field in our backyard working in the garden. They both had trucks. And I had two kids with car seats and needed to pick up two more people. Not good. Mr. R.B.'s truck also had a trailer hooked up and I cannot begin to tell you the visions of destruction that crossed my mind. I just can't even fathom how much damage I could do trying turn that trailer into a parking lot. I talked to Mr. Clyde and he said we could use his car that was at his house. He said I could take him home and get the car and then he remembered I had the kids. Finally, Mr. R.B. took him to his house and he brought us his car. A Mercedes Benz I might add. Hey, if you're going to have a day like this it doesn't hurt to get to drive a luxury car!!! I loaded up the car seats in the Benz and headed to rescue our fellow family members. Luckily I was only halfway down the street when I remembered I had forgotten the jumper cables. So we turned around. Eventually we made it to Newton.

Josh had me backing up and turning around trying to get in the right position and I realized in that moment why I cannot have a luxury vehicle. We were at a very busy place with lots of traffic and as I was backing up I prayed "Lord, please protect the car. Oh yea, and my kids too." We weren't able to get the truck jumped off so Josh just got in the car with us. We had to go by the Pig to get the cake mix for Eli's cake and we decided to make the most of it and pick up some barbecue from our favorite restaurant next to the Pig. I was going to run in the store and Josh was going to place our order, but we could not get the key out of the car to save our lives so I just ran in the store. I hadn't been in there 2 minutes when Josh and the kids came. So we all went to wait on our order. Can I just tell you we were all still in our rattiest, housecleaning clothes and we were looking ROUGH! Kate didn't even have shoes on. I had to laugh about us driving around in the Benz looking like we just come in from the farm.

We made it home just in time to scarf down our food and get ready for tball. Josh put the battery back in the jeep and it worked so we know something else is going on with his truck. (If you read my blogs often you know that we are really lucky with cars:) I got to drive the Benz all by myself to take it back. I so would have gotten a picture if I hadn't been looking like death warmed over all day. After another exciting tball adventure I came home to make the cake. Y'all, just in case you are wondering, I have not magically turned into Martha Stewart overnight, despite my extreme overconfidence that I could recreate the birthday cake that I would give you the link to, but I don't want you to ever see what it is really supposed to look like.

I will show you pictures after the party, but now I will just leave you with this info. I have nicknamed this cake the kidney cake, I don't ever want to see hot tamale candy again, and I am covered, literally, head to toe in colored frosting. All day long I had that song "Mama said there'd be days like this, there'll be days like this my mama said." You know that song? Well, by the time I got done with the cake, the new song was "From a Distance" by Bette Midler. No one will actually be allowed within 10 feet of the cake as it definitely looks better from a distance!! All I know is that I got to end this day licking frosting out of the can. Guess it could be worse!

Cooking by Picture

I had a hallelujah moment tonight. I found a recipe here and I actually had all of the ingredients I needed! I couldn't believe it. And not only did I have all of the ingredients, but the recipe was actually shown step by step with pictures. How awesome is that? I remember when I first got married someone telling me that if you could read you could cook. So, I took that very literally. I did not fix anything unless I had the recipe right in front of me and had every ingredient measured to the perfect proportion. Thankfully, I have grown in my cooking skills and I now have my own recipes that I use a "little of this" and a "lot of that". I don't always need the recipe to spell it out for me. But I gotta say, it was nice to cook by picture tonight. Kind of like painting by numbers. (I stink at that by the way:)

As I was thinking about my excitement over this recipe (really, when did recipes become exciting to me?), I began to ponder some things I've been dealing with. Don't you wish sometimes that life came with a picture book detailing every step you should take? Of course now we live in a time when we do have books for just about everything imaginable. And luckily they have a whole series designated to teaching us dummies how to do everything from turn on a computer to how to speak Swahili. :)

As I've shared, Josh and I are at a waiting point. A seeking point. Not sure is a difficult location to hang out at. I know that on some level we all struggle with the questions "What am I supposed to do?" "Where do I go?" "What is the plan?" Apparently God has not chosen to give us the details of this specific plan right now, but 2 Thessalonians 3:5 says, "Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ." No matter what earthly, geographic location God may lead us to, He is always directing our hearts to grow in love and patience and to know His love and patience. He may not be giving us step by step directions for our life right now, but the picture is clear to me!

What do YOU think?

Okay. Since I have shared my cake making snafus (as my dad would say) I thought that I would invite you along for the adventure of choosing a cake for Eli's upcoming birthday. Now, I really need feedback here. This will be a rocket themed party (his final answer after considering an alligator party, a race car party, a pirate party, and a tractor party).




Now...these are the questions I need you to consider.
1. Which of these cakes would I end up throwing across the room before it is all done?
2. Which cake caused Josh to give me the "yeah right" look?
3. Which cake would you look at (especially after I made it) and say "What the heck is that?"
4. How many attempts would each of these cakes take?
5. How in the world do you make these anyway?
6. How many trips to and from the Pig (30 minute drive) could I make that would equal the same amount of time it would take to make one of these?
7. Are any of these even that cute?


Okay, your turn to weigh in. Let me know what you think!!

Having My Cake (And a Piece of Humble Pie, Too!!)

I will start this by saying that this blog will serve as an example of how I do "the best that I can" but it ain't always pretty. I have never been what you would consider the domesticated type. I consider a frozen pizza a homecooked meal because I have to put it in the oven. Well, the last couple of years I have felt inspired to think outside of the pizza box and I've decided that I should attempt some cake decorating. My friend Kim (you can check out her blog at http://crazyjesushalleluiah.blogspot.com/) makes some totally cool birthday cakes for her kids and I decided that I should give it a try! Well, for Eli's 2nd birthday I made a "Dump Truck" cake. It was chocolate with chocolate icing I made out of pudding and cool whip. I sprinkled crushed oreos on it to look like dirt and put some construction trucks on top of it. I was SO proud! I took a picture of it to work and the first person I showed it to laughed out loud! She said "That looks like something I would make!" She did not mean that in a nice way either. It quickly humbled me and I realized that my cake decorating did not inspire the same awe that Kim's did. Needless to say, I have not attempted to show off my skills for anymore birthdays.


Well, a few weeks ago at my mom's I was looking through some of her magazines and I came across this cake. Isn't it beautiful? Looking at it I realized that it was almond slices and chocolate chips and that crazy Martha Stewart wannabe voice came back and said "You can do that!" (I guess that voices in my head should be the first clue that this wouldn't go well.)


I didn't even dare try to make the cake from scratch. This attempt would be for decorating purposes only. So, I bought a box cake and decided it couldn't be too hard. I made sure to spray the pans. Do you know that scene from Christmas Vacation when they go sledding and use Clark's new, special lubricant stuff? Yea, I sprayed those pans GOOD. There would be no sticking. In fact, I may call this my PAMcake. Despite my excessive use of PAM, my cake did stick. This is how it looked.

As my friend Karen says, frosting covers a multitude of sins (that is so how I feel about my make-up!) and let me tell you, I was wondering if there was enough frosting in the state of Mississippi to fix this PAMcake that was turning into a crumb cake! This is the final result and I thought it looked a lot better until I posted that pic from the magazine!

It may not have been the best looking cake, but it seemed to be a big hit with the kids and the neighborhood dogs! That's Sarah, Eli, and our friend Elam having a cake picnic on the trampoline. They are surrounded by our neighborhood dogs who seem eager for a piece. Of course, they also eat our garbage, but I won't think about that!!!!!!!!!

Parsley

It's never good when someone calls and asks how you're doing and you have to answer, "I'm just stting on the side of the road crying." I didn't add that I was praying that no truck driver would be having a bad day and swerve even an inch as there was no margin of error where I was parked.

This day started as a normal Saturday. I needed to go grocery shopping. We had to make an unexpected trip out of town the weekend before and we were getting down to our last saltine. But, being the true diva that I have become I decided I needed to make the 45 minute trip into Meridian. You see, our Wal-Mart does not carry the South Beach Diet Pizzas and for some reason I have become totally addicted to them. Anyway, I got to Wal-Mart and was sitting in the jeep looking through my coupons (my small attempt to save money) when out of nowhere there was a loud sound that sounded just like someone had hit me. (I know that sound too well-see previous blogs). I looked up and realized I hadn't felt anybody hit me and that is when the smoke began rising. My heart sank and my mind raced. This had happened to me before. I started to panic but I thought that maybe if I went inside to shop by the time I came out it would have cooled down enough to drive.

When I got out I was disheartened to see a green liquid all over the ground. I couldn't remember what that meant, but I knew it wasn't good. A man came over and said, "Something broke". I don't know what it is about me that I always come across the most helpful people. He told me that it should cool down while I was shopping so I was glad that I had figured that much on my own.

I did my shopping and it took quite awhile. Now that I am at home I am determined to try new recipes and check labels to see how healthy the food is. I'm still learning though. One of my recipes called for parsley and I realizedt that I didn't know if it meant real parsley or the kind in the seasoning section. So, I got both. I did decide that if we could learn to live off of real parsley then we could fit our groceries into our budget and I could fit into my clothes. So, now I'm trying to switch to an all parsley diet. Um, yeah right. Oh well. I also got the anti-freeze that Josh had instructed me to get to refill whatever had just blown up in the jeep.

When I got back to the parking lot I loaded the bomb shelter quantity of food I had bought into the jeep. Then, I had to figure out where to put that anti-freeze stuff. So, there I was on the phone trying to hold up the hood of the jeep and open the anti-freeze bottle. As I opened the hood and asked Josh where it was supposed to go I saw a cap that said "Anti-freeze". That was very helpful. I've decided I'm going to create a girl friendly car with pretty colors and big letters and arrows showing where everything goes. I'm pretty sure I spilled more anti-freeze than I actually got into the thing (that's technical mechanical talk), but the jeep started and seemed to be doing ok for a little while.

Once I was on the interstate it started overheating again, but Josh was on the phone telling me that it should be okay once I got out of town. Just as I passed the exit I was going to stop at the jeep started slowing down. No matter how hard I pressed on the accelerator the speed was dropping. I kept hearing this noise but I was driving past the airport and I thought it was a plane or something. Then I noticed it would go away when I took my foot off the accelerator. I was making that noise!! I pulled off on the side of the road. This was not a good situation. Josh was at home with all three kids and had no way to come get me as his car is still not running. I called Karen who will probably start blocking my calls from now on and she said she could come and take me and my groceries home.

It was at that point my friend Brandi called. She had been to a ladie's retreat and was excited to tell me about it. That was when I shared my predicament with her. I was, in fact, sitting on the side of the road crying. I told her Karen was on her way and she told me that she could talk to me while I waited. It was good to hear how her weekend had been and think about something besides the fact I had blown up the motor in the only running vehicle we have and that I just got my last paycheck two weeks ago. When my phone first rang I thought it was the worst timing possible. But after we talked I realized that God was so good to send me encouraging words in my time of distress. Proverbs 16:24 says, "Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, Sweetness to the soul and health to the bones."

On the way home (after we had unloaded all of the groceries and reloaded them into Karen's car) I shared my idea about the parsley diet. As I did I was reminded about a Beth Moore conference I had gone to a few years ago. She shared how she was making homemade soup with her daughter when she realized she didn't have any parsley. (I suppose she knew what kind she was supposed to have). She said she went into panic mode and was having a nervous breakdown about the parsley. She said finally her daughter looked at her and said, "It's just parsley". It was so funny that I remembered that story at that moment because I knew God was trying to tell me "This is just parsley". In the big recipe of life broken down cars are really not the end of the world.

Josh called yesterday to tell me the quote from the mechanic. He asked if I was sitting down. He told me the quote. I really should have been laying down in the fetal position. We are starting the parsley diet tonight!

Domestic Diva Dropout

Okay, I've been home for two months now and I just have to be honest. I totally stink at being a domestic diva. All dreams and hopes I had of 8 course fresh from scratch meals, spotless floors and volumes of scrapbooks have been dashed. Kate was just walking through the living room with an empty pizza hut box, a testament to the fact that I have not been cooking every meal. As I write there is a hugh shop vac we borrowed from the church that I've just decided to leave in the dining room as it is the most efficient way to clean up after meals where most of the food ends up on the floor. As for scrapbooking...doesn't that require sitting down? :)
So, needless to say I do not feel that I have accomplished my goals. I will definitely not be asked to write any articles for the Ladies Home Journal or appear on tv morning shows sharing my great housekeeping secrets. In fact, you may see me on an upcoming episode of SuperNanny. :) Oh well.
Here are some of the things I am experiencing:

Kate is into EVERYTHING!!!! She walks around with purses and babydolls and has created her own language. She also has curls! She is a cuddler, but I have also seen her grab Eli by the shirt and take him down. She loves music and can't help but dance to anything that comes on.

Sarah is doing really well in 1st grade. She already has 15 spelling words every week and more homework than I think I had in middle school! As always with Sarah, life is a big social event. She has started taking dance and loves it. She always asks me if she has to go to school or if she can just do dance. That's my girl!

Eli has become quite the little dude.He asked me the other day "Do I look cool or do I look awesome?" To have the self-esteem of a 3 year old! He loves cars, and balls and dressing himself. I'm still trying to figure out the statistical odds of putting your pants on backwards every single time, but I was never good at math. :) He has it rough right now surrounded by so many girls, but it will work out for him one day!

Despite the fact that I made chicken and chip casserole the other night and forgot the chicken (seriously), I have high hopes for the future. At least I have plenty of time to save for my children's therapy! :)