Some blog links that might be of interest

I thought I’d just post a few links that might be of interest to some of my readers. :-)

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The Castleberry family in Wisconsin:

Farming Wisconsin

My sister and I have read their homesteading stories and some of their other books, and enjoyed them quite well. They are homeschoolers who moved to northern Wisconsin years ago to become at least partly self-sufficient. The story, as related in their homestead stories, is quite amazing and entertaining! This is their blog world presence.

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Here are the blogs of my sister-in-law and my niece in Australia. These should be encouraging to home school mommies, daughters and keepers at home. :-)

Aussie Van Nattan Adventures
Recipes from Down Under
Dreaming of Days Gone By
A Little Country Girl

Happy Mother’s Day!

In honor of Mother’s Day here are a few links to some home style recipes:

My Mother’s Finest Recipes - This site includes a number of traditional Pennsylvania Dutch recipes.

Texas Cooking – Grandma’s Cookbook

Mother’s Day Recipes

My Grandma’s Recipes - a blog

Note: Disclaimer on any inappropriate content at these sites. I didn’t read them in depth!

Vanilla Cream Sauce

Here is the recipe for Vanilla Cream Sauce to go with the rhubarb crumble:
2 cups whipping cream
2/3 cup sugar
4 Tbs. all-purpose flour
3 Tbs. butter
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Stir first 3 ingredients together in a medium saucepan. Cut butter into slivers and add. Cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until butter is melted and mixture begins to boil and/or is thickened. Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla. Serve warm.
For a thinner sauce use only 2 Tbs. of flour. For a thicker sauce use 5 Tbs.
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This sauce would be good used a variety of ways, but be forewarned, it is very rich! It is simple to make, but tastes quite luxurious. (I found this recipe online, though I've forgotten where.  For a change, I don't think I altered this recipe. Ha.)

Rhubarb Crumble

7 Cups diced rhubarb (fresh or frozen)
2 Tbl. all-purpose flour
1 Cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
Topping:
3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
1 Cup packed brown sugar
1 Cup rolled oats
3/4 Cup butter
In a mixing bowl, combine rhubarb, flour, sugar and salt. Spoon into a greased 9x13” baking pan; set aside. For topping: combine flour, brown sugar and oats. Cut in butter till crumbly. Sprinkle over the rhubarb mixture. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes or until lightly browned and bubbly.
Yield: 6-8 servings.
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My mom and I made this in January with some frozen rhubarb given to us by a friend. It turned out quite well, but I wanted some kind of sauce to put on it to kind help cut the sharpness that rhubarb sometimes has. So, I looked up a vanilla cream sauce on the internet and came up with something. It was really good on the crumble. Sorry I didn’t take any pictures, but it wasn’t the most striking dessert we ever made since the rhubarb was more green than red.
Anyway, I’ll post the vanilla cream sauce recipe as well. It would be equally good on a number of other things – even just poured over fresh fruit.
Note: We doubled the original recipe and I accounted for that in the measurements here. However, we had more than double the amount of rhubarb called for. So, please sweeten this to your taste. We also put it in a pan that was “double” what the recipe called for, but it seemed too thin to us. So, in posting the recipe here I have called for a 9x13 inch pan. If this seems too small to you feel free to use a larger one. The one we made did turn out very thin, though, and we would make it in a 9x13 if we make it again, I think.

Breakfast with the Lord

I saw the first part of the Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I saw just enough of it to know that I didn’t want to see the rest of it!  But, in that movie the heroine that Hepburn portrayed, I forget her “name”, talks about what she does when she is sad - not really depressed, but just sad. She said her solution was to go and eat breakfast at Tiffany’s, a prestigious jewelry store in New York. The movie portrayed her as taking a “to go” breakfast early in the morning to the still closed store, and eating it outside while looking at the window displays. This sad solution was supposed to cure sadness!

While I realize this was “just a movie”, I also know that the world finds many “solutions” to sadness, and other problems, that are just like this – empty, hollow, even silly. It is not a solution. It is only an anesthetic of sorts to temporarily numb the mind into forgetting the trouble. Worldly wisdom is full of such things.

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of
men, after the rudiments of the world, and not
after Christ.

According to Samuel Johnson, “rudiment” means “The first principles; the first elements of science…The first part of education…The first, inaccurate, unshapen beginning or original of any thing…” So, rudiments of the world would represent those ideals and philosophies and solutions to life that are formed based upon our early knowledge before we are made new creatures in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). This solution mentioned in Breakfast at Tiffany’s presents for us the rudiments of the world, I think.
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My husband leaves very early in the morning for work. He leaves so early that he wouldn’t want me to get up with him. This means that I eat alone most mornings.  At first it was hard for me to adjust to eating breakfast alone.

It didn’t take long after he started the early morning schedule, though, for me to realize I needed to do something to make breakfast more pleasant for myself in order to start my day with a better frame of mind. I could have read any book, but the Holy Spirit compelled me to spend that time with the Lord, so I started reading my Bible while I eat.

I know. Someone will probably think this is “unspiritual” because “we should be totally focused on God’s word when we read it”, or some such thing. I would have thought the same thing years ago. Frankly, I enjoy my breakfasts with the Lord a lot. It helps keep my mind focused on something profitable and useful rather than fretting or going over and over all the things I “need” to get done on a given day. I don’t think that the latter things help digestion much for one thing, and secondly, it’s really nice to “eat with” my Best Friend!
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Back to the original topic now.

What a wonderful blessing it is for those of us who are “in Christ” that we do not have to resort to the world’s empty solutions for dealing with sadness! We are not left comfortless. The Holy Spirit of God will lead us to solutions that are helpful and profitable; things that will edify us and, often, others as well.

John 14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

We who are Christ’s are not stuck with the rudiments of the world! We have better solutions available to us.
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I hope this doesn’t sound puffed up or self-righteous. It is not intended to be. I just wanted to share this experience and blessing with you.

I would like to start trying to post some of the thoughts and things that I learn from my “breakfasts with the Lord”. Maybe it would be better to start a new blog, but at this point I’m going to try adding it here. I hope someone else will also be blessed. :-)

Cleaning Up Dropped Eggs

A few weeks ago while working in the kitchen I managed to drop an egg on the floor, or rather part of an egg. I caught part of it still in the shell, but there was still a good amount of egg white on the floor. I hate dropping eggs! It makes such a mess and they are so hard to clean up. It really does tend to spread all over the place as you work on it and it makes it seem like a lot more egg white than it really was!

This time, though, I happened to remember reading something about sprinkling flour or corn meal on a mess to clean it up. I think that was corn meal on an oil spill, if I remember correctly. But, I decided to try some flour on the egg white and see what happened. I used some of my white flour (cheaper) and carefully sprinkled it over the egg white. After a few minutes it looked like it needed more, so I added some and kind of spread it around. I left this for a good long time (something that probably wouldn't be practical with small kids or pets around). Later, when I came back to clean it up the flour had soaked in quite a bit and it was much easier to wipe up than the plain egg white would have been!

I realize that some would not consider this a good use of their flour, and that I can understand, but for those with limited strength or difficulty in cleaning up such messes this might prove useful. Anyway, I wanted to share it. Eggs on the floor are a nuisance and anything that will help clean it up more efficiently is good news to me!

Recycling.....well, sort of....

I have started to recycle much more seriously now. No, I'm not trying to "save the planet". There is no need to do that as far as I can see. I don't believe man can destroy this earth anyway. God specifically said that He has reserved that privilege to Himself, and rightly so - He made it in the first place.

We are told in more than one place in the Bible that the Lord God Almighty intends to bring this earth to its' final end Himself. I will only quote one instance since it seems most appropriate to me for this discussion. Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, 12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

I like that! We don't need to fret over what "might" happen to the earth in 200 thousand years if we drive too much or throw our plastic wrappers away carelessly or incinerate the old newspapers we cleaned out of our grandparents' house. There is great liberty in those verses from the scare tactics that are forced upon us today.

Ought we to be good stewards of God's creation? Yes. But, man, whether capable or not, is not going to be permitted to destroy this earth! God will attend to that Himself; and, by the way, He intends to destroy this place He created out of nothing with a Big Bang (evolutionists just got theirs at the wrong end) and one huge fire (think, major "pollution").

Whew! Now that we don't have to sweat that any more, why am I recycling?

Well, first off, I'm not recycling according to the "accepted" method. I am not dividing my trash into several piles and making trips to dump certain types at "special" recycling locations. If you want to do that and feel it's a good use of your time, go ahead. You're welcome to it. I have enough sorting with just our laundry. ;-)

What I am doing is what my parents and grandparents did in the past. I'm saving things and reusing them for other purposes. Now, before you visualize cupboards full of flimsy butter containers, piles of old pizza boxes, and bags and bags of bags and bags let me say this - that's not exactly what I'm doing either. :-)

My main interest in reusing things effectively is to save some of my husband's hard earned money for other things. We're talking budget conscious recycling and reusing, not fanatical collecting or saving the earth. My aim is to save a little money, but not go to excessive effort nor to collect things randomly just because they "might" be useful sometime. Most of my ideas are probably pretty well known in general, but I thought it might be interesting to share some of my little projects in that line here with you. I also may include some other ideas for "waste management" in the home. :-)

I am reminded of an old poem I first saw in one of my craft books:

Use it up,

Wear it out,

Make it do,

Do without.

This pretty much sums up my "recycling program".