It's a Deceptive Green, Promising "Forever"

We sat out on the deck this evening. Eating ice cream. Looking out over the green that comes only with spring. It's a deceptive green in that its appearance seems to promise "forever". But spring will not last. Summer will come. And there will be hot days, really hot days. The grass will begin to brown, the trees will be dirty with dust, and weeds will begin to take over the garden.

As we sat there I stilled myself and let my senses enjoy the moment...the quietness of a small town on a late spring evening. Off in the distance I could hear faint sounds of the summer ball games. Close by I heard the calm chirp of birds. I imagined I could almost hear time itself and if I paid close attention I might catch glimpses of days gone by.

I had a similar experience two days ago. I had been cleaning the weeds out of the flower bed near the deck and I was on my knees, using an old steak knife to skim the earth free of weed seedlings. I sat back for a moment and almost laid down on the grass the way we used to do as children. I should have done that. Lie on the grass, feast on the sky, soak up the moment.

Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Before summer gets here.

Yummy Black & White Cookies by Yiddle

Yiddle over at yiddle.net spent yesterday baking cookies. Not just plain ordinary cookies, mind you! No! These are fabulous Black & White Cookies! Think of these when you want a special treat at your next fun event.

And these would also be a great project for your kids. Her secret "how-to" is simple and so easy that anyone could make them. Of course, they take a teensy bit of hands-on effort but the process is much simpler than I thought.


These are so cool I think you will definitely want to jump right over there and see how she makes 'em. Yiddle gives a link to the recipe she used as well as written instructions on how to make 'em.


Yumm!

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Is It Real Sourdough or Not?

I've written before about my KH (kitchen hobby) of making sourdough bread. My Mom tells me that her mother kept a batch of bread starter (a flour and water mixture that had been fermented with yeast) in the basement. On baking day Gramma would send one of the kids down to fetch the starter. Gramma would add flour and water to the starter and set it in a warm spot to make a "sponge". The sponge would be allowed to sit for several hours or overnight to ferment. She always saved a small amount of the starter and fed it with flour and water before setting it back in the basement till the next baking day.

After the sponge had time to bubble and ferment, she added additional flour and perhaps sugar and milk until the dough was just the right consistency to make bread. After being thoroughly kneaded, the dough was set aside again to rise. Then it was punched down, shaped into loaves, let rise again, and baked in Gramma's old wood stove.

You can read about my previous experiences with sourdough here. ( Be sure to scroll down to read all posts. You can also find out where I got my original sourdough starter.) Originally I used recipes that included the addition of yeast which insured the dough would rise in a reasonable amount of time. The yeast added a bit of extra kick, if you please.

However, a real sourdough shouldn't need yeast to cause the dough to rise, but I hadn't quite figured out how to bake without the additional yeast...my few attempts resulted in a dough that just sat there like a lump on a log, refusing to rise even after sitting overnight. I ended up tossing them in the garbage. I believe the problem was that I was not using sufficient starter for the recipe I was using.

But Today!!!! Today I made "real" sourdough without yeast.

Last evening I began a sponge by taking one cup of my starter, adding two and a fourth cups of flour plus two cups of water, and placing the resulting sponge in a warm spot overnight to ferment. This morning this is what it looked like. (I fed the remaining cup of starter by adding 1/4 cup each of flour and water and placing it in the fridge till my next batch of bread.)

I was pretty certain I had finally figured out how to avoid adding yeast but I decided to split the sponge into two batches. Each had the same ingredients added to the sponge (flour, water, milk, butter, salt, sugar) but one batch had regular yeast added and one batch did not.

Naturally the yeast batch rose faster. In fact it was speedy enough that it was baked and out of the oven before the "real" sourdough (without added yeast) had risen enough to punch down and shape into a loaf. However, the real stuff did eventually double in size and I shaped it into a loaf and placed it into a pan to rise, later to bake.

The thermometer? Who would figure to use a meat thermometer when baking bread? I had my old favorite bread recipe down to a T and I knew it took exactly 23 minutes at 400 degrees to bake a good loaf of bread. However many websites that talk about sourdough mention using a thermometer to bring the internal temp up to 200 degrees before declaring a loaf "done". So now I bake the loaf to "almost done", add the thermometer, and watch it for a few minutes till it comes up to temp. No more half-baked loaves. (I'm the only one half-baked in this house.)

When both loaves were done, I set them side by side. The size is about the same. The texture of the crumb is about the same. The taste is slightly different and I actually prefer the sourdough over the yeast/sourdough.

I recognize that traditional San Francisco sourdough has a much holier (not meaning "holier than thou") texture...I mean that it is full of large holes formed by the formation of gasses during the rising stage. But I'm not working towards that. I'm just happy to have the stuff rise and bake into a yummy loaf of bread.

I think I'm getting the hang of it!

Let Me Say Up Front....

Let me just say up front that I am not a hugger. I don't know why, but I seem quite satisfied with a happy "how do ya do". (No, I don't really talk that way!) However, society seems to deem a hug appropriate and often expected when greeting other women, especially friends and family. So I've learned to hug. But it still feels weird to me. (I know, that makes ME seem kinda weird!)

I've mentioned that Dad has been gone for 24 years now. And I miss him. So I was a bit stunned a couple years ago as we were paying for a meal at Red Lobster to see another customer who was almost the spitting image of my father. He was about the same height, had the same hairline, the same swollen arthritic knuckles, a quiet demeanor and was wearing an overcoat similar to what my dad wore. The resemblance was so amazing that I'm certain I stood with my mouth hanging open and my eyes glued upon him. If he had been facing me he surely would have noticed my stare, but he wasn't and so I let myself watch, pretending I was seeing my dad once again.

Later I kicked myself for not going up to the guy, for not being brave enough to say something stupid like "Hey, you look just like my dad. Can I have a hug?" But I hadn't and I figured I'd missed out on a real hug opportunity. Even though I'm not a hugger, I'd dearly love to get a hug one more time from my dad.

Sometime after that scenario my hubby and I had gone to a live performance at the theater in the city up the road. As we left the building I was surprised and delighted to see this same old gentleman. He was standing at the curb, waiting for the light to change so he could cross the street. This time I thought to myself, "Aha! I have a second chance!" And so I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I turned back, walked up to him, explained that he looked just like my dad and boldly added, "Can I have a hug?"

Well, you can imagine his reaction. This very nice man looked at me as if I were some kind of weirdo. He was probably right. I mean, wouldn't you think it weird if someone walked up to you and said you looked like their late Aunt Jane and then asked for a hug? Think mugger! Or pickpocket! Or purse snatcher! Can you blame the guy for abruptly stepping down off the curb and high-tailing it across the street? Yep! I was a bit embarrassed.

Just goes to show you...weirdos come in every shape and form. I see one in the mirror every day. (She said with a slight, ever so slight, giggle.)

I'm anxious to get this chemo done and get my immune system back to normal so I can feel free to hug again. I need to hug my family and friends more often. I need to stop feeling weird about hugs.

Remembering

If my dad were alive today he'd be 109 years old. Do the math. You probably think I'm a lot older than I am. But Dad did not marry until he was 40 years old. Then he went on to raise six kids, working hard as a hired hand on a small farm. In many ways he was a remarkable man, able to fix anything and everything that needed fixing on the farm. Not that he ever held a high-paying job nor enabled his family to live in luxury. We lived frugally on a hired hand's wages. Sometimes there simply was "no money".

But we were not "poor". We knew kids in school whose families were "poor". In comparison to their tough lives, we had it easy. A roof over our heads. Food in the garden and cellar. Eggs from the chickens and milk from the cows. It meant hard work on his part as well as ours for we learned young how to help our mom and dad with chores, make beds, dust floors, cook eggs or hamburgers in a cast-iron skillet, peel potatoes for supper. By the time we were ten or twelve, we were earning small amounts of money by picking up corn (gleaning) from the ground after the combines had done their job of harvesting. Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays meant we were out in the field, walking the rows, shucking and tossing corn into a five-gallon bucket which we filled and carried to a spot in the row where we dumped the corn, piling it in piles until we could later drive Dad's old International pickup through the field to gather the piles into the truck. By the age of twelve, we were spending our summers in the field as well, hoeing seed corn fields, detasseling, and hoeing beans until the start of the new school year.

Yesterday I visited my dad's grave at a small country cemetery in Saunders County, Nebraska. Dates on the stones range from the late 1800s to this decade. My family's plot includes my dad, one of his brothers and a sister, and their parents. I and my siblings make the 100 mile trip now and then. Sometimes every two or three Memorial Days apart. In the past we've coordinated our visit to meet there together, bringing sandwiches, coffee, chips and picnicking under the trees. It's a peaceful location, atop the hill, looking out over Nebraska farmland. The homestead next to the cemetery is the one on which my parents lived when they first married before they moved to Iowa. Did I say peaceful? Yes. And I myself get a certain amount of peace looking out over the hilly countryside, trying to see back into time, into the lives of my parents and grandparents.

This time I cried. Wept. Not in a maudlin way, but in a "missing" way. I miss my dad. He's been gone 24 years now and that's a long time not to see your dad.

Today's Scriptures include John 5:25 and John 11:25 and I Thessalonians 4:13-14. (Don't forget to place your cursor over the scriptures to read them.)

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Well, Fiddlesticks! Delayed Again!

Tomorrow was to have been session 5 (out of 6) of my chemotherapy. However, my white blood counts are too low, in spite of last week's jump with the neupogen shots.

Who would ever believe a person would be disappointed about missing a chemo session? But I am. (ungrateful wretch!) This means I will not complete chemo as soon as I thought. We've had three one-week delays now and I'm guessing the 6th session will be delayed as well.

Another disappointment this week is that my eyelashes have disappeared. I was feeling a bit low about that until I sez to myself, "At least it's not teeth!" At least hair and lashes will grow back! At any rate, I can't change any of it, neither the delay nor the hair loss, so may as well sit back and enjoy one more week of feeling good. (still an ungrateful wretch!!!) So instead of fretting, I will let God deal with the "when" of it all.

Today's Scripture is James 4:13-15 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city (and have chemo), and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit."Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."

In the Midst of Pain and Death We Rejoice!

For ease of reading, you can place your cursor over the referenced verses to read a pop-up of the verse. In most instances I've typed out at least part of the verse, but you can use the pop-ups if you wish.

Last week in reading in the New Testament the words in Luke 10:20 jumped out at us. Jesus had sent seventy disciples to go out into the villages, etc., to teach and to heal. When they returned the seventy were rejoicing that "even the demons were subject to them".

But read Jesus' response in Luke 10:20...""Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven."

Names recorded in heaven? Where? And for what? Let's check further!

In Psalm 139:16 David speaks of God having chosen him from his mother's womb, before he was born. He says this...."Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.

Daniel 12:1-2 speaks of a book as well..."at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued."

In Philippians 4:3, Paul is instructing the brethren to love and be of help to one another. He describes his fellow believers as those "whose names are in the book of life."

In Hebrews 12:23 the writer describes believers as being members of the "church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.."

The Spirit of Christ is speaking to the disciple John in vision when he states in Revelation 3:5 "He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels."

In Revelation 13:8, we see that not all are written in the book of life. This verse speaks of those who worship the beast (those who do not worship God). And it speaks of them "whose name has NOT been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb..." Also see Revelation 17:8 in regards to those whose names are Not written in the book.

And now we go to Revelation 20:12 wherein it states, "And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds." Follow that verse with Revelation 20:15 and you will see it is Not Good to not have your name written in the book of life! Then Revelation 21:27 speaks of the New Jerusalem (the heavenly city) when it says that no one shall come into the heavenly city except those "...whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life."

Now I want to take you back to Luke 10:20. Jesus instructs the disciples (and believers) to rejoice! And he says in regards to experiences, even miraculous experiences, that we are to rejoice not in those experiences but in the fact that our names are recorded in the book of life from the foundation of the world.

We can rejoice that God, before Creation itself, had already prepared a kingdom, a New Jerusalem, heaven if you please, for His people. We see that in Matthew 25:34 where Jesus is speaking of Judgment Day. He says this: "Then the King (that's Jesus) will say those on His right (believers) 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'"

Regardless of our earthly circumstances those who follow Christ are to rejoice! Our names are written! Christ's redemptive work was put in place before the foundation of the world...the plan of salvation was a sure thing...our salvation was a sure thing...and now we walk with joy. Ephesians 1:4 and Hebrews 4:3.

Rejoice! Even in the midst of cancer, I can rejoice!