When a bright spirit touches you

Have you ever brushed up against someone in life - during the course of your normal day - who had a burning bright spirit?

I was the lucky recipient of such a brush-up last week. In a pawn shop of all places. The person who started Underground Cafe to feed the hungry in Wichita, KS, was there receiving a donation.

This man was so full of God and life, it practically poured out of him and spilled onto everyone nearby. He told us his story in such a cheerful way with a laugh that carried through the room.

He's 65. His grandmother taught him to cook at age 12 in Louisiana. At 20, he went to Vietnam and - having been tasked with demolition work - when someone asked "Is there anyone here who can cook?" he jumped at the chance.

"I didn't know God was preparing me for this," he told my husband and I.

Well, "this" is a crazy successful ministry to feed the hungry. Every Wednesday he cooks for, at times, nearly 300 people, all done with donations and volunteer time.

"There are people who can't wait to get off work at 5 p.m. to come over and help out. I haven't had anyone volunteer to help cook though, but it's not me cooking, it's God. I don't even know each week what I'm going to make."

He told us, "When we started we fed 47 people and that was the last time it was only that many. Now it's more like 247."

This bright spirit opened the ministry one year ago. As he walked out of the store today, he bounced - the kind of bounce done by someone completely convinced and convicted of what they are doing. His spirit was infectious.

What a blessing to have known this person for just a few moments. Go on over and check out this ministry and what God is doing through it. 

Breaded prairie chicken (or chicken breast) & gravy

My hunting hubby always comes home with new things to cook. Venison, wild hog, dove. This time it was prairie chicken. They're interesting looking birds. You can check out Wikipedia's entry on them.

Anyway, I had no idea what to do with it, so went to town on Google and found this recipe. While it's technically for prairie chicken, I think you could use it for chicken or turkey breast as well. I tweaked the recipe some as usual and completely forgot about the bacon, so it is omitted here. If you want to use bacon, check the recipe above or perhaps drape it across the top while it is baking. I found it fantastic without it.

Baked Prairie (or Other) Chicken

1 prairie chicken breast, cut up (or 1 turkey breast cut up or 2 chicken breasts)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp savory, dash of thyme and basil (instead I used Head Country, or you could add garlic, Italian seasoning, whatever you like)
1/4 cup butter
I dipped the bird in milk first but you could also use egg or melted butter. Mix flour and spices, then dredge breast in seasoned flour. Brown in melted butter in a skillet. Transfer to baking dish. Cover and bake in 325 degree oven for 60 minutes or until tender.

I then made gravy to put over the top using my Mom's recipe. Scrumptious country cooking.

Turned out very tender and tasty even though prairie chicken is a dark meat.

Mom's gravy is the best!

Small Town Tuesday: Fundraiser panic

This is my weekly installment of Small Town Tuesday. If you have a small-town story (with pictures is even better! ) please send me a message at vash_ii@yahoo.com or on Facebook.

  
I had a moment of panic the other day when I was penciling something into my schedule book. I had heard our fire department was having a hog roast fundraiser over at the Catholic Church to help renovate a fire truck.

That's a good cause, I thought. And very few in a small Midwest town will miss out on a good hog roast. 

I turned to the day in October when the roast was schedule for and - horror! - it was the same day and time as our women's fellowship annual chicken noodle dinner! 

Now, in a big city this would hardly matter. There are enough people to spread around to dozens of fundraisers. When you're dealing with less than 1,000 people in town, that is not the case. This can't be, I thought! 

So, Brady and I did what we always do in a crisis, we hopped on our bikes and headed across town to see my mother-in-law! She'd know what to do!

I explained the situation to her and she said, "Oh dear. You need to call the president!" I called up this wonderful, nice lady and told her the deal too. As it turned out, another women's fellowship member - and mother of the volunteer firefighter guy (and hubby's long time friend) who had told me about the hog roast - had called her already and they rescheduled the dinner for the following weekend. 

The thing is, in a small town both of these fundraisers are crucially important. We're 10 miles from any larger town, so firefighting HAS to be done quickly and locally. 

And the chicken noodle dinner (more later this month on the traditional making of the noodles) is the women's fellowship main fundraiser each year. This year the funds will go to a church member's 15-year-old grand son who, after suffering terrible seizures, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. 

Like I always say, here what we do is personal. We know who we're helping and I love that. 

So, looks like I'll be busy two weekends in October at least and full of really, really good food.

Flower to fabulous, and why I love wasps

Nature amazes me.

That God takes something so beautiful and delicate as this okra flower and turns it into something we can eat just blows my mind! That I can plant tiny seeds the size of a BB and later feed my family for months from it is stunning.

This one simple thing has transformed the way I look at wasps. I used to hate them, darn near had a panic attack every time I saw one.

But now I know the beauty that lives within those little pollinators. Now I love them. Bring on the wasps!

They - along with all their little friends the bees, dragonflies and butterflies - help make this flower into something fabulous and tasty. Thank you, you wonderful plants and you little pollinators, and thank you, God. What a truly wonderful world.

Okra flowers are so beautiful. It amazes me they go from this...

... to this. Dee-lish!

A day spent on the farm

I'm blessed to have a brother and sister-in-law with a 10 or so acre sustenance farm and - bonus! - they live only an hour or so away.

Here was a recent visit. Can you tell Brady had fun? I think farms are so good for kids. If you don't have a family member with one, do a search for farm tours in your state. A Google search for farm tours in Kansas brought all these up. It's worth a try!

Miniature donkeys, the most adorable creatures!

The goats like jelly beans!

Fighting each other for food!

Bunch of roosters.

Feeding the horses. Geez, everybody's hungry.

They did this for about 20 minutes. I'm not sure which one had more fun.

Both worn out now.

I love this. These are volunteer cantaloupes that grew out of the flower bed compost. They made the best cantaloupes!

Why my picky eater eats veggies

He takes joy in harvesting cucumbers.

It's tough when you have a picky eater. You worry they will grow up with bad eating habits. They'll just eat junk food. They'll never embrace vegetables.

And it'll be all your fault!

When Brady was young, I got a lot of judgmental comments about his picky-eater-ness. I, personally, didn't push it too hard. I think I had a feeling about it.

And, thank goodness, because little did we all know he had a terrible egg allergy that meant - until age 4 - he never knew what would make him throw up or feel nauseous.

Guess I'd be picky too. But once we discovered it, the work of overcoming his caution toward food began.

To this day he remains cautious of eating new things. He doesn't like stuff all mixed together. He wants to SEE and KNOW exactly what he's eating. He may always be that way. I think what starts early can persist throughout life.

So, we don't make it a battle. We eat mostly the same things, but sometimes in different ways. We introduce new things in a structured way.

But I have to say, if I had to pick one thing, just one thing, that has made the most difference, it would be:

our garden.

Everything we grow - okra, butternut squash, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, carrots, fresh basil - he tries because they came out of the garden. If we grow it, he'll eat it. He trusts it.

We laid in bed the other night planning what we'd grow next year, including cantaloupe. He said, "I'll bet cantaloupe we grow at home is way better than from the store, especially in our garden."

Hear that ownership? Awesome.

If you have a picky eater, consider throwing some seeds in a pot or in a little space of land next year. See what grows and how your child grows as well.

Are your children picky or open to all foods? What methods do you use to help them open up and try new things?

2 ways to use fresh pumpkin

After Halloween, pumpkins go on super sale. Prior to this year, I didn't take advantage of that but now I know there's so much you can do with fresh pumpkin!

Here are two ways I will make use of them:

Pumpkin puree

This is so versatile. It can be used in muffins, waffles, pancakes, cookies, as a substitute for egg in most recipes or instead of canned pumpkin in a pie.

Above is the 2 cups of pumpkin puree I got from my one garden pumpkin (Coming soon: My battle with squash bugs).

And here is the pie I made out of it.

I compiled several recipes online last year. The two I went by were this one and this one.

What I did this year was the steaming method. I used my rice/veggie steamer, cut the pumpkin in half, scooped out the stringy innards and seeds (but save those seeds and see below!), cut the rind off, cut them into chunks and steamed them for a good 45 minutes.

Then I checked them to make sure they were soft enough to mash, if not I added 10 more minutes, then use whatever method you prefer to puree something. I just mashed them over and over like I would mashed potatoes and that was good enough.
 

 

Roasted Seeds

My husband and I LOVE roasted pumpkin seeds. Light, crunchy, you do NOT have to peel them, just eat them shell and all when they are prepared the following way.

The recipe came out of Rachael Ray Magazine and they turn out glorious. We each got 1/2 cup of glorious seeds.

Oven-Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

1 cup cleaned raw whole pumpkin seeds
1 Tbsp plus 2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil (I used canola)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In small saucepan, bring 4 cups of water, the seeds and 1 Tbsp salt to a boil. Summer 10 mins, then drain. Pat seeds dry between paper towels.

Toss seeds with the oil and remaining salt. At this point, I personally added some BBQ spice but you could add season salt, paprika, garlic, chili powder, cumin, Head Country, whatever your favorite spice or seasoning is. Spread in a single layer on a greased, foil-lined baking sheet. Roast until golden, 10 to 12 minutes. Stir and roast 5 minutes more.

Raw and rinsed.

Slightly cooked.

Roasted and toasted and ready to eat!

Small Town Tuesday: Country cook-out

This is my weekly installment of Small Town Tuesday. If you have a small-town story (with pictures is even better! ) please send me a message at vash_ii@yahoo.com or on Facebook. 

Since we live in a small town, our gatherings tend to be pretty informal and I never quite know what to expect. On July 4, we all hung out up on Main Street at a building we have and watched the town go by all day long and into the night.

On Labor Day this year, we went out to our little pond north of town. We have a small camper we take out that we can plug in to use the frig and have water. And this year, thank the Lord, we have water in the pond.

Here's a glimpse into our country cookout.

We were able to make a little fire and use it to cook our wild hog link sausages and hog/deer burgers (I didn't get pictures but they tasted great!).
 

Brady was able to go on his very first john boat ride.
 

All was fun and games for about the first 20 minutes until he realized his step-grandpa was planning on hand trimming all of the little trees that had grown out in the pond when it was dry during the drought.

About this time I hear him shout from across the pond, "Mom, I'm trapped and he won't bring me back!"

This very loud complaining went on another 20 minutes before they finally came back to shore. Then he promptly flopped down for some homemade lemonade. Whew!

Here's some country cooking I did for the shin-dig, which all tasted pretty good I think. The okra and cukes were from the garden.

Garlic Parmesan pull-apart.

Stewed okra and tomatoes.

Marinated cucumbers.

Homemade potato salad.

Mostly, we had a fun and different kind of day. Gosh, wonder what Thanksgiving will bring? How do you like to spend holidays? What special things do you and your family do?

Parents as Teachers: A learning play group

I want to toss out a recommendation for an agency that made a big impact on our lives when Brady was young. It's called Parents as Teachers.

To the left is Brady as a toddler at a Parents as Teachers annual Truck Day in rural South Carolina. And below during a Halloween party playing with a friend as a baby (he's the Batman, not the Spiderman, ha!).

For us, the P.A.T. playgroups gave us structure, routine, learning opportunities, somewhere to go and a chance to be social. I was a stay-at-home mom in a suburb with no close friends or family nearby.

It was just the two of us a lot of days, so we went to two different P.A.T. play groups in our area every week and we loved it. We made friends and both learned a lot.

If you have a young child, you can find one near you by checking here. My favorite statement from their website was this:

Parents are their children's first and most influential teachers.

If you've never heard of P.A.T., here is more information on their vision and history from their website.

• To provide the information, support and encouragement parents need to help their children develop optimally during the crucial early years of life.
• The early years of a child's life are critical for optimal development and provide the foundation for success in school and in life.
• All young children and their families deserve the same opportunities to succeed, regardless of any demographic, geographic or economic considerations.
• In 1981, Missouri pioneered the concept of helping parents embrace their important role as their child’s first and best teacher.
• The concept for Parents as Teachers was developed in the 1970s when Missouri educators noted that children were beginning kindergarten with varying levels of school readiness.
• Research showed that greater parent involvement is a critical link in the child's development of learning skills, including reading and writing.
• Since 1985, Parents as Teachers has expanded to all 50 states and seven other countries.

Funny things Brady says... Pizza Pizza

So Brady came home yesterday just fired up as could be that his school was collecting Little Caesars Pizza tokens off of their boxes. I think the closest one is 30 minutes from us.

He is making a big case for us getting the pizza because it helps the school and ....

"If we get 100 tickets, our teacher will dress up like the Little Caesars guy!"

And really, who wouldn't want to see that! 

Pause.

(I can tell he's thinking hard now.)

Longer pause.

(He hates pizza.)

"But remember, you know, I'm not in it for the pizza."