Don’t Miss the Green Light

In my last blog post, I talked about how I don’t want to be a backseat driver with God’s plans in my life. Ready for another driving-related analogy?

I also don’t want to sit through any green lights.

I sit waiting for sixth-graders on a field trip.
How does driving a bus full of rowdy children fit into God's plan?

Okay, there’s absolutely a backstory to that. Nearly a year ago—or maybe it’s been a whole year—I approached our church’s interim pastor, “Doc,” with an idea. I wanted a new Bible study, I told him. I was hungry for Bible study and needed accountability. I couldn’t make it to our church’s Tuesday evening study because of ongoing commitments, and I didn’t feel it was welcoming toward younger women anyway. I wanted to start a Bible study that was open to any of the women of the church, but that would specifically draw moms and younger women.

That was a great idea, he told me. Go ahead and do it.

It wasn’t completely unexpected. When someone comes up with a new idea, a good leader will tell them to run with it. So I did. I researched and decided on Priscilla Shirer’s study, Gideon: Your Weakness. God’s Strength. I even went out and purchased the DVD and leader’s guide with my own money, because I did not want that Bible study to fall by the wayside. It had to happen.

But of course, it did. Fall by the wayside, I mean. First a scheduling conflict, then the holidays. Then more scheduling problems, then spring, followed by summer. I knew there was no way I could get a new Bible study up and going over the summer.

Then it was fall. Soccer. Drama club. Two new jobs. The Bible study was on the back burner, but I checked in with the church administrator occasionally to make sure it didn’t slide off the stove completely. She checked with me on scheduling. More recently, divisiveness and factions have reared their ugly heads. That only made me more convinced that this study needed to go forward. Finally, a date was set.

Today. It’s today. When the date was set, it felt like plenty of time. That was before our lives were turned completely upside down. This week, I’m coming off six straight days of work, four of them 12-hour days. I’ve attended two play performances to support my daughter and her friend. I’m exhausted. I’m distracted by the work I have to do over the weekend. That’s why I didn’t sit down to refresh myself on the first lesson of this study until this morning.

Such a good study. I’d recommend it (obviously). It hit me like a ton of bricks, though, when Shirer talked about a time she’d been so busy taking care of chaos in the back seat that she’s sat all the way through a green light. (As a mom, I related to that. As a bus driver…well, I’ve certainly blocked some traffic.) It was an illustration of how we get so caught up in our own lives that we miss the big green lights God sets in front of us. Like when we get so caught up in lost jobs and new jobs and daily routines and postponements, and we miss the opportunities that God is showing us—sometimes with big, flashing, neon signs.

She also mentioned her friend, Christine. I knew from the reference that she meant Christine Cain. I suddenly remembered that I had bought a book by Christine Cain weeks, maybe months, ago, and that it was still sitting on the shelf wrapped in cellophane. With the renewed energy and determination to dig deeper in my faith that the video had inspired, I pulled it off the shelf and dove into the forward of the book, Unexpected.

I can’t quote the whole forward here, both for space and legal reasons, but a few quotes jumped off the page.

“When God gave Abraham such an outlandish and unexpected promise, he simply believed God’s promise—he risked hope against all rational hope. He didn’t deny the facts of his circumstances, but he refused to believe they were the whole truth because they did not account for God’s promise” (page 13).

I almost dropped the book. Abraham answered God’s unexpected call because he recognized it as a green light. How many times do the green lights in our lives appear as unexpected circumstances? How many times are those circumstances unwelcome, uncomfortable, or outlandish?

I can’t pretend to know God’s plans for my future, for my family’s future. I don't know how bus driving and news reporting and dealing with rowdy children—and sometimes childish adults—plays into it. I’m only beginning to understand the unexpected green lights He’s giving me as I interact with people and circumstances I’ve never experienced before. I am, however, beginning to see how God is using the unexpected in our lives to grow us and prepare us to go full speed ahead.

“And, in our humanness, we will try to control everything—including God. Yet, we serve a God who refuses to be controlled by us. That’s because part of the mystery and the adventure of following Jesus is to trust him no matter what is going on around us. To keep our hearts completely open to him, so that when the unexpected happens, he can use it for our good. To free him to use the unexpected, a necessary catalyst, to grow us, sanctify us, and help us to see life with a whole new perspective, because nothing grows without disruption and interruption—without the unexpected” (Christine Cain, Unexpected, pg. 33).

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28, NIV).

Backseat Driver

I started this post several weeks ago. As you’ll see, though, I’ve been … busy.

There’s a line from a TobyMac song, “Backseat Driver,” that goes, “Thought I had it all right 'til the road went left….”

Boy, does that describe life. Three months ago, I thought I knew what the fall and winter would hold. I would continue to homeschool. I would blog, and experiment with homesteady things like making cheese and fermenting vegetables. I would…well, I would pretty much continue to do what I had been doing.

Oh, there were uncertainties, but I thought I even had a handle on them. These, not those, were the uncertainties I was facing. Would we find a new house and move? Would we stay in the general area or move across state lines? Would my children like soccer, and would public school teens accept my home-schooled daughter in their high school drama club?

In a parody of a cliche, that was soooo three month ago.

So many changes. In some ways, I hardly recognize my life any more. As of a month ago, I’m now a school bus driver. No, the irony doesn’t escape me. (Or is that irony? That word confuses me.) Anyway, I hired on with a local bus company at the end of August. I jumped through a whole lot of twirling, spinning hoops to make it into the driver’s seat four weeks ago.

Life as a small-town bus driver is full of stories. I'll share some later.

I knew going in that I would need a CDL (Commercial Driver’s License). I did not realize that the DMV and Oregon Department of Education team up together to torture, I mean train, prospective drivers. They make sure drivers know not only how to drive a bus, but also details like how to inspect the slack adjuster and how much tread depth is required on the tires. (No less than 4/32 of an inch on the front and 2/32 of an inch on the back, if you’re interested. You’re probably not.)

If you don’t know what a slack adjuster is, I’m going to let you look that one up.

I wasn’t surprised that I needed a drug test. The young woman who administered it, though, could either tell that I’d never taken one before or thought I was actually on drugs. (Wait. I have to put all my belongings in that locker and you don’t want me to flush?)

I didn’t realize I would need a special Department of Transportation physical, or that my left eye would fail the eyesight portion and I would need a special note from my optometrist.

I didn’t realize my driver’s test would take three hours, or how many more hours I would spend waiting in the DMV.

I now get up at 5 a.m. four or five days a week to be at my bus by 5:45, to be on the road by 6:15. I return in the afternoon to be at the elementary school by 3:15. I finish my route by 5 p.m.-ish, depending on how many students are on the bus and how badly behaved they are after having to sit still most of the day. Believe me, stories from those drives are a whole post on their own.

In the midst of all this, my son's soccer team placed third in the league playoffs.

It’s a huge change, but only the tip of the iceberg. My husband has gone from a daily commute of nearly 150 miles to no commute at all. That changed the day before I passed my CDL test. Since then, he’s been busy applying for substitute teach jobs while looking for something more long-term. The need for house hunting has been removed, at least for the moment. (He also had to take a drug test. I warned him about the whole not flushing thing.)

That will also partly explain my apparent fit of insanity when I walked into the newspaper where I used to work and requested my old job back. So, yes, I now work two part-time jobs, one as a school bus driver and the other as a news editor.

Homeschooling has been turned on its head, with my hubby picking up much of my slack for the moment.

And I’m tired. So, so tired.

If anyone had told me three months ago that my life would look like this at the end of October, I wouldn’t have believed it. It’s certainly not the direction I would have set my own life GPS. I’ve had to hang on to everything I believe and tell myself, “Don’t be a backseat driver.” God is certainly in the driver’s seat here. I certainly am not. Okay, well, I am, literally, but I’m not. I have no illusions now that I know what tomorrow or the next day will bring. I can only hang on and know that there is a lesson in here somewhere—for me, for my husband, for my children. There are experiences God wants us to have that are unlike any of our experiences before.

It goes back to a saying I’ve heard several times. “I’ve learned two things in life: There is a God, and I’m not Him.”

And I’m certainly not going to be a backseat driver.

Beauty and Function: Foraging in the Flower Bed

My garden and flower beds are sadly neglected this year, but even a quick trip
yields a harvest of flowers and herbs for both food and medicine.
In this photo are rosemary, yarrow, thyme, sage, mint, and lavender, among others.

I love growing plants that are both beautiful and functional. That’s not to say I won’t grow plants for either function or beauty, but if they supply both, it’s definitely a plus. That’s why you’ll find my garden and flower beds filled with plants like yarrow, lavender, and mint. (Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are in there, too, but I think that’s a different blog post.) I can’t do more than touch on a few of them, but here are three of my favorites:

Peppermint uses go far beyond candy canes.

Peppermint

Have you ever driven by a peppermint field? That scent! It can carry on the breeze for miles. Mint plants of all types love water, which can be a challenge in this area. I solve the problem by planting it near a constant water source. Currently, that means a spigot near the garden, where the mint frequently gets excess water dripped or splashed on it. Careful, though! In the right conditions, it can absolutely take over your garden or flower bed, so either plant it where you don’t mind the spread or be prepared to battle its progress every year. I don’t mind the spread of mine. I harvest vast quantities every year for drying. (For tea, of course, but my Italian husband has also shown me how to use it in meatballs, and I’m hooked.)

The dark-green leaves provide a cool touch in a dry landscape, and this well-known herb does sport beautiful purple flowers if you let it go to bloom. And, yes, we all know about peppermint candy canes and peppermint tea. But there’s far more to this plant than taste alone.

Peppermint is a soothing aromatic—a cup of peppermint tea is a delight to both the tastebuds and the nose. It’s not just the smell, though. Though it can increase heartburn in some people, Peppermint is generally an antacid, and it is effective against nausea and vomiting. It helps expel gas, though I'm sure you never have that problem. It’s diaphoretic, meaning it can induce perspiration, so is somewhat useful for colds and fevers. It can help soothe headaches, and I diffuse the essential oil either alone or with lavender oil to help with headaches. I also diffuse it, alone or with eucalyptus and Cyprus oils, to ease congestion. 

Lavender not only smells good, but it can also relieve pain.

Lavender

Of all the plants I could name on this list, lavender is probably the best known and most beloved. Its masses of small purple (or should I say, lavender) flowers always brighten my day, not to mention the smell! We’re all familiar with that relaxing scent. Drought-resistant varieties like French lavender grow well in this climate with minimal watering, and I have two huge plants that have made themselves the showpieces of my front flowerbed. I’ve used the flowers several times to add scent in soap making. I’ve even made lavender cookies and gelato! Its abilities go far beyond that, though.

Lavender is a mild analgesic, meaning it can be used to relieve pain, so it’s helpful for headaches and migraines. I often put the essential oil in a diffuser along with peppermint and Cyprus oils for just that purpose. Lavender essential oil is antifungal and can be used on burns. Finally, it’s an aromatic and relaxant, easing tension and anxiety, lifting mood, and even mildly antidepressant. 

Yarrow is a medicinal powerhouse.

Yarrow

Yarrow’s simple clusters of small white flowers are unassuming but lovely as they blanket the hills of Eastern Oregon in spring and early summer. It takes a rugged plant to grow wild around here—cold winters, hot summers, semi-arid and drought-ridden, shallow and rocky soil—but yarrow is a survivor. In fact, it’s pretty prolific and will take over given the right conditions. It’s certainly doing its best in my flower bed, but I don’t really mind. It also makes an excellent ground cover instead of grass when kept mown.

Moreover, yarrow is a powerhouse of medicinal remedies. It’s anti-inflammatory and anti-viral. It’s a fever reducer and induces perspiration. Finally, it can help heal wounds and stem bleeding.

I’ve personally made it into tinctures for internal use, but I find it more palatable to make the flowers into tea. The tea can be used for colds, fever, and even menstrual cramps**. My friend, Dorene, over at Faith-Family-Farm recently wrote an excellent post on using the leaves to make a healing salve. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s on my extensive to-do list. I’d also like to try it in some homemade soap.

**Please note: Women who may be pregnant should be careful taking yarrow internally, as it can sometimes cause miscarriage. It’s always best to do your own research from reliable sources before using any herbal remedy!

One more benefit to these three plants? The bees love them! That’s a win-win for everybody.

My front flowerbed follows the riotous pattern of an English country garden,
with plants chosen for beauty, but also for function such as food, medicine,
and pollinator forage.

Feeling Feta

Not a perfect attempt, but pretty tasty, all the same.

In journalism school, we were taught rules for writing headlines. Among them were no alliterations and absolutely no puns. I obviously took the advice to heart.

I started this post a couple of weeks ago. On that mid-July morning, the air had a touch of fall, and there was a faint autumnal note from my front-porch windchime.

At least, I thought so.

Not so today. We’re in the middle of a heat wave, and the forecast for today is a balmy 106 degrees. Like every day this week, it’s a perfect day to stay inside. It’s not a perfect day to bake. I’m baking anyway, of course, because I need more biscotti for the farmers market this afternoon.

It’s been a rough few weeks. I had a busy week helping with Vacation Bible School, followed by a frustrating week of yet another bad summer cold. That was followed by a span of depression and apathy. To be honest, I haven’t quite snapped out of that last one. I know it’s compounded by the fact that we gave away four of our litter of kittens, only to have their mother disappear and the remaining kitten fall ill and die. In only a few days, we went from seven cats back down to one. Our faithful Jello remains, as does our dog, Teeny (aka “Mousebreath”).

Enough depressing news, though. I said I’ve been dabbling. While many of my dabbling plans were sidelined by recent events, I did carry one project through to something of a success.

Feta.

I’ve never attempted cheese before. The process has always intimidated the heck out of me. Rising prices have put me on self-suffiency kick, though, and cheese seems like one of those things a self-sufficient homesteader would know how to make. I looked up several completely from-scratch recipes, some of which I may be brave enough to try some day. In the end, I chickened out and bought a feta cheese starter from Cultures for Health.

Caveat here—I used cow’s milk. According to purists like the European Union, this apparently means I didn’t make feta at all, since real feta is made of sheep’s milk with no more than 30 percent goat milk. Whatever. I have no sheep or goats to milk, but I do have whole milk from Walmart. That seemed good enough for a trial that had no guarantee of producing something edible.

Milk, heated slowly to a low temperature, plus rennet and feta starter.

The starter definitely made the process easier, but I don’t think it made it idiot proof. I heated the milk and added the starter per the directions. After letting it sit overnight, it had developed what looked like a pretty good curd, at least to my untrained eye.

Somehow, I think the curd needed to set more.

It turns out you have to cut the curd. I did this, and the curd suddenly looked less defined. That didn’t seem good.

By the time I got the curds into the colander, I wasn't sure they were curds at all.

I let the cut curds sit for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, before moving the curds to a colander to begin draining the whey. (I used a floursack towel as my cloth. Seemed to work.) The directions said to make a bag out of the cloth and hang it to drain. I couldn’t understand how I was supposed to do that until I found a picture online. It looked a lot like this:

It doesn't look fancy, but it did the job.

It took more than the prescribed four hours for the whey to drain off. I knew going in that I would get more whey than cheese, but I had no real concept of exactly how much whey I would be dealing with. I got nearly three quarts of whey from my gallon of milk.

The curds I had left were put in a sterilized jar with a brine solution and left in the fridge for several days. This was good, because I got that summer cold soon after putting the curds in to brine, so I had some breathing space before I needed to deal with the cheese again.

My Cultures for Health directions conveniently ended there. I used my common sense, such as it is, to pull the cheese from the brine and drain it again. It was pretty soggy, but after a bit of draining, it looked something like cheese. A soft cheese, granted, but cheese.

It never did get solid and crumbly like the feta I’m used to from the store. I don’t know if that means I made a mistake or if the cow’s milk changed the consistency. The starter package came with enough starter for four batches, so I will have the opportunity to try it again. Maybe I can get my hands on some sheep’s milk (I happen to know a gal…).

It worked where it mattered, though. It tastes like feta! Well, if feta were made from cow’s milk. While the consistency is similar to cream cheese, spreading rather than crumbling, it tastes divine spread on a slice of French bread. 

I managed to drain the cheese a little more after this photo, but it still spreads rather than crumbles.

All that remained was to find a use for all that whey. It turns out there are many, many ways to use whey. For me, the easiest and most obvious was to use it as the liquid base for a smoothie. (I did try drinking it straight. Tasted kind of like buttermilk.) As with the cheese itself, I have more research and more experimenting to do. I’m feeling good about the prospect.

Whey, a natural source of protein, makes a pretty good base for a smoothie.

 

Writer of All Trades

One thing I love about it writing is the ability it gives me to learn about so many other subjects.

An old chestnut states, “Write what you know.” Some people are experts at a topic or skill and write from that expertise. I’ve never mastered any skill except writing (and some might debate that). I love writing, and it normally comes easily to me. In order to write about something well, though, you have to know enough about it to explain it to someone else.

That’s the real work of writing—knowing something well and being able to pass on that knowledge. In the course of my life, I’ve learned many things and interviewed many people. Not as many as more famous, prolific writers, but enough to know more than most about an embarrassing number of topics—and yet not enough to be an expert in any of them. I find myself being a “jack of all trades and master of none,” and it’s okay. I think that’s the place most professional writers find themselves living. It’s a state of constant curiosity, of exploration and expansion and reinvention.

I remember a professor in graduate school telling a story about author Debbie Macomber. If I remember that discussion (it was 20 years ago, so forgive me if I get the details wrong), she was already a successful writer when she saw that knitting was coming back into fashion as a pastime.

She decided to center her next novels around that trend, but first had to research the world of knitting in order to have an authentic backdrop for her novels. The Blossom Street novels were born, along with several other non-fiction forays into knitting and knitting patterns. I confess that I have never followed Macomber's books, but I have no doubt she has since reinvented her novels and, in a sense, herself.

For me, reinventing myself is not a matter of being uncomfortable in my own skin. It’s more of a curiosity about what it’s like to live in someone else’s skin for a while. I think it must be similar to acting. I immerse myself in a world for a while, and then move on.

So what have I been doing lately? I’ve been dabbling, expanding. When I’ve dabbled a bit more, I’ll share what I’ve learned.

Maybe one of these days I will become an expert on keeping my house clean.

Speaking of knitting, I found these rascals playing with my circular
knitting needles a few minutes ago. I love these kittens to death,
but at eight weeks old, they do nothing to help keep the
house clean, and a lot to make it dirty--such as when they knock over
my basket of needlework and take a nap on top of the contents.

Misadventures in Macarons

Some days are more frustrating than others.

I had big plans for this week. These plans were based on the fact that my oldest daughter is at summer camp for a week and my husband is at a work retreat for three days. Somehow, in my mind, that translated to an ability to get more done. I’m not sure why, since I’ve actually lost the two lowest-maintenance and most helpful members of the family.

Last week I bit the bullet and ventured into the world of biscotti.

Last week was the first week of the local farmers market. I’ve always wanted to make biscotti but have always been intimidated, so I decided to tackle that fear and made not one, but five different flavors to sell at the farmers market. The super-crunchy cookies were so much easier than I ever imagined, especially with this Classic Biscotti Recipe – Four Ways from Kristine’s Kitchen. I promised myself several more flavors for the market this week, and have already knocked out lemon and anise.

The biscotti was such a success, both in ease and in farmers market sales,
that I'm back at it this week. So far I've made anise (above) and lemon.
I plan to add almond and hazelnut to the mix

That’s the good news. Meanwhile, I’m dealing with a nine- and ten-year-old, who both have an endless supply of observations and “what if” and “why” questions. I have a barking dog. I have a cranky old cat, and a mother cat with five kittens underfoot—under my feet, that is. I have dishes to do, flower beds to weed, a garden to finish planting, and … in a paraphrase of the Disney song, “We don’t talk about laundry, no, no.…”

The obvious way to deal with all of that is to tackle another intimidating (but actually difficult) recipe I have on my bucket list.

Macarons. That’s macarons with one “o,” not to be confused with macaroons, which are tasty but not nearly so particular. Macarons are French and, like many French foods, have an attitude all their own. I found a French macaron recipe by John Kanell on his Preppy Kitchen blog, which seemed to have enough directions and tips for a nervous novice like me.

Did I mention I have two children talking at me nonstop? They’re like a noisy little conversational tag team, though they don’t always take turns. I blame that, not the recipe author, for how this recipe has gone.

There's the meringue, lingering at the soft peak stage.

First, for the first time in several months, if not years, I failed to correctly separate an egg on the first try. That’s a no-no for these meringue-based confections.

Second, the recipe called for two kinds of sugar. I perused the directions for when to add the granulated sugar. (“Mommy, what if you met a seven-foot-tall Chinese man?”) Not seeing it, I assumed the author neglected to say they should both be added to the almond flour at once. Not until later did I see that I was to add the granulated sugar to the egg whites before beating. Oops. That’s probably going to change something.

It doesn't really look like lava to me.

Third, egg whites linger at the soft-peak stage forever. That’s not really news since it’s always true for me, but it is irritating.

Fourth, the directions said to fold the dry ingredients into the meringue until the batter reached the consistency of “lava.” That’s interesting. It never did, which of course has nothing to do with adding the sugar at the wrong time.

Wrong piping tip, but they're kind of pretty. I didn't bother
trying to fill them this week. Heaven only knows what would 
have happened.

And, as I filled the pastry bag to pipe the macarons onto the baking sheet, I realized I didn’t have a plain round tip large enough to pipe the cookies without making a mess of them. I improvised. I eventually ended up with something pretty, if not macaron-looking.

Two things I did right—they taste good, and I think they’re the right size.

Never mind. I just realized my count is off by half a dozen.

I’ll try again next week.

The macarons won't be going to farmers market this week, but
they're still good with a mid-morning cup of coffee

In Patience, or Out of It

There’s an old saying: “Be careful what you pray for. You just may get it.”

I learned long ago not to pray for patience.

I’ve also heard Christian authors and speakers say that when they write a book on a certain topic, that is the worst season in their life for that topic. Write a book on marriage—have difficulties in marriage. Write a book on community—struggle with loneliness.

Shortly after my last blog post, I was reflecting on all the waiting we do in life, from waiting on God to waiting for food to ferment. I thought, I’ve made pretty good progress with patience. I should write a blog post about it.

A month ago, I researched how to grow sweet potatoes and decided
to begin my own process with a store-bought sweet potato.

What a terrible idea.

Everything went wrong. The weather turned bad again. I lost precious patience resources as I had to wait yet again to accomplish long-neglected outside chores. Even worse, my own mood has always been linked to the sun—or lack of it—and I quickly became moody and tired, losing patience with my own weakness.

My sweet potato experiment began May 19.

Inside chores went undone, causing me to lose patience with the housework.

My children forgot every bit of character training they’ve ever had, arguing constantly and pushing every last button I have. My patience wore paper thin.

I caught a doozy of a cold that knocked me sideways for several days, which again made me impatient with my own body as my children fended for themselves and piles of dishes and laundry grew higher.

By May 30, I had a tiny sprout and a tendril of root on one sweet potato.

Our internet went down and remained down for a week. It wore on me as I waited for it to be restored so I could complete online tasks that had already been left too long. Worse, anyone who has been in a house with modern children during bad weather with no internet access will know that the whining and fighting increased exponentially.

June 13, healthy sprouts and more roots.

I was still struggling with remnants of my cold when I babysat a couple of my friend’s children, including a two-year-old. I’d planned to putter around with chores and let the toddler hang out with me. That was the morning the water was shut off for two hours without warning.

That was when I finally admitted, Okay, God, I get it. I’m not that great at patience!

Now, on June 20, I think this sprouted sweet potato may be ready for the next step.

(Just now, as I was trying to find words for my next sentence, my teen daughter walked in and promptly began spewing out every thought in her head without regard for what I’m doing at this computer. Breathe in… Breathe out… One… Two… Three… )

If I can regain the point I nearly lost just now, I know I’m not trying to say God likes to mess with us. However, like any good parent, He never misses a good teaching moment. It’s as if, the moment we think we’re ready to graduate, He hands us the midterm. If you’re like me, you find yourself barely passing the test, if not failing outright.

I have grown in patience. I can look back and see the unsteady progress I’ve made over long years. I have not reached the pinnacle of mastery, however. I never will this side of heaven.

Not everyone reading this is a homeschooler. Let me tell you, as a homeschooler, one of my least favorite statements from non-homeschooling parents is, “Oh, I would never have the patience to homeschool.”

No kidding. No one does. If life is a testing ground for the things God wants us to learn, like patience, homeschooling is a pressurized environment that amplifies everything tenfold. At times I compare it to living in a pressure-cooker. I don’t homeschool because I have exceptional patience. Any patience I have has grown through homeschooling.

Last year, before my husband left his job, I bought a fig sapling.
I had a spot picked for it off the back corner of the house.
With our future suddenly in the air, though, I decided not to put it in the ground,
but to keep it in a pot. It overwintered by a window in our office.
Several times I thought I was going to lose it.
Now, more than a year later, it has several green figs clustering on its branches.

As I fail those tests, though, I find myself most of all losing patience with myself. How can I have been through so much and still get it so wrong? Knowing weakness, how do I so quickly condemn others for theirs? Experiencing grace, why am I so slow to extend it?

Knowing God’s patience, how is it so difficult to be patient with myself and others?

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

It’s a good thing God is so patient with such a slow learner.

Adventures with Beverages: Kvass, Carbonated Pickle Juice, and Ginger Ale

The bread kvass was a success, so my
experimentation with this beverage continues.

It’s Monday. We had some beautiful, warm days last week, but the weather has returned to gray and rainy. I don’t know about you, but my energy and mood tend to tank on gray, gloomy days. After the last couple of years of drought and terrible fires, I know we need the rain. My head knows, anyway, and I keep repeating the mantra: We need the rain. We need the rain. We need the rain. Still, I would rather have sunny, warm weather to make me feel cheerful and motivated.

My son doesn’t seem affected. He has been talking nonstop since first thing this morning—mostly energetic nonsense that feels more like noise than conversation. That alone makes me feel ready to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.

I did promise I would report back on the bread kvass, though. I tested it last Tuesday and…

It. Was. Amazing.

I have to admit that I didn’t have really high hopes after tasting the carrot kvass, but the bread kvass exceeded my expectations. It was pleasantly sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, and the light carbonation gave it the perfect little sparkle. It’s actually something I might be tempted to overindulge in.

(There is a caveat here. My husband likes the bread kvass, and my son said, “I didn’t know bread juice could taste so good.” My daughters, however, think it’s nasty and refuse to drink it. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste.)

It was all about fermentation in our kitchen last week.
It was also deja vu all over again as we tried to find creative uses for the sourdough
starter discard--like sourdough pancakes and sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

Given the debatable success of the bread kvass, I tried to redeem my second batch of carrot kvass. Adding sugar and sourdough starter turned it into something slightly more drinkable, but it’s still too salty to be enjoyable. I left a small bottle out a day longer than the rest of it, just to see what happened. That bottle developed amazing carbonation but lost some sweetness, so it still tasted like carbonated pickle juice. I officially consider that carrot-ginger-orange kvass a failure.

Without a viable sourdough starter, yogurt and
baker's yeast will have to pinch-hit for the natural yeasts.

Since I had such success with the bread kvass, though, I decided to give it another go. It would have been more frugal and way more authentic to make my own rye sourdough starter and rye bread, but I was impatient, so I bought highly authentic dark rye bread at Walmart. The flaw in my plan turned out to be my sourdough starter. After tending it like a baby the first few days, I neglected it for a few more days. It had not only separated, which is normal, but had developed a gross and questionable film over the liquid. I dumped it and will have to begin again with my starter.

This jar of fermenting rye bread kvass looks like a hot mess,
but I'm hoping the result will be something wonderful.

Since I now lack a sourdough starter, I used a combination of plain yogurt and a pinch of yeast to replace it in the kvass recipe. I also used my own raw honey instead of sugar, boiled with water and orange peel. I combined all that with the toasted rye bread. Hopefully the result will be as tasty as the last batch of bread kvass.

Hopefully these ingredients are part of the recipe for success in 
homemade ginger ale.

Since I was already in the kitchen messing with fermentation, I also carried through with a promise I’d made to my youngest daughter. Several weeks ago, I had told her I would make homemade ginger ale. If you Google homemade ginger ale, you’ll find a variety of recipes, most requiring club soda or CO². I, however, was in search of the old-fashioned method to create the pop/soda version using yeast. I found it, of all places, on WikiHow. I used the traditional, non-cooked method requiring only sugar, yeast, ginger root, lemon, and water. We’ll see how it turns out.

Kvass and home-fermented ginger ale. Am I going too far?

Beyond that, I’m still finding it difficult to motivate myself for the day. The kiddos may be getting microwaved taquitos for lunch--with a side of kvass, of course.

Kvass, Take 2, and Sourdough Oatmeal Bread

I didn’t have any great desire to make bread first thing Monday morning. However, I’d started a sponge Saturday afternoon, and I was a day overdue making it into dough. (I’m not sure what I was thinking—between church and a six-hour round trip to the airport on Sunday, when exactly was I going to make bread?)

Even at the resting stage, this sourdough oatmeal dough looked promising.

So, first on my list today was the dough for Sourdough Oatmeal Bread. It’s another Bernard Clayton recipe, which I’ve made successfully before using the Amish Friendship Bread Starter. Since I had my doubts about this starter, I also had my doubts about how the bread would turn out this time. It’s rising as I type this, though, and I can hardly wait to try it warm from the oven after it’s baked.

A finished loaf of Sourdough Oatmeal Bread.
The smell in my house right now is heavenly.

I also promised myself I would start the week with another batch of kvass. Last week’s batch has settled into a nice pickle-juice flavor. Maybe my pickle-loving son will like it.

This time I’m using bread. It’s an entirely different approach from the carrot kvass I tried last week. This recipe from PracticalSelf Reliance calls for toasted bread, sourdough starter, water, and sweetener.

Toasting the bread is the first step in making the bread kvass.

I didn’t go completely authentic. I didn’t have any rye bread or rye sourdough starter on hand, but I did have a loaf of buttermilk bread that had received a less-than-enthusiastic response from my family. I diced that and toasted it, which gave me a little more than four cups of bread. I combined that with my honey sourdough starter and sugar water. Maple syrup or honey would have been better for this recipe—a.k.a., more authentic—but I had white sugar on hand, so I used that.

Into the jar the toasted bread goes.

A kitchen helper couldn't help photo-bombing the kvass, unbrushed hair and all.

Again, this recipe was amazingly simple to put together once I had the ingredients together, so I had it in the half-gallon jar in a jiffy. Now all that remains is to let it be so it can ferment for the next couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Within minutes, the toasted bread had expanded in the liquid.
Let's hope we have the same success with the fermentation.

Finally, my eldest has been 14 for a week, heaven help us all. Those birthday kittens are also a week old. Eyes not yet open, they seem to have doubled in size. The negotiations have started over which one, if any, our children will be allowed to keep. Good thing their father is in on the bargaining, or we’d have a lot of cats when we left the table.

Exactly who is supposed to resist these cuties?

Temperature-mental Ferments

After an explosive start, you might have expected a lot from my sourdough starter. However, the starter not only slowed down, but now seems downright dormant.

It could be operator error, but I blame the temperature in our house. Our oil heater broke, leaving us at the mercy of limited electric heat. Since the outside temperature has dropped back into the fifties, the temperature inside is several degrees cooler than normal. Whenever I’m tempted to complain about the cold—which is often—I remind myself that the heater was working when we got snow right before Easter. Things could have been worse.

On the bright side, the hose on our dryer vent is broken, and I keep forgetting to buy a new one. Whenever I run the dryer, it creates a warm, moist, spa-like atmosphere in the downstairs. It’s like our own little jungle. I even put my peace lily in the bathroom/laundry room to enhance the effect and soak up a little of the humidity. (I recently read this article on the 17 Best Houseplants for Your Bathroom. Spathiphyllum is on the list, so why not?)

I also overflowed a birthday cake in the oven Wednesday (yes, the second birthday in a week), which gave me a good excuse to run the self-clean on my oven. So, for at least a couple of hours, the kitchen was warm.

If it seems like I’m grasping hard for bright sides, it’s because I am. I feel gratitude is an essential part of life, and God is graciously giving me lots of opportunities to practice that attitude.

All that to say, fermentations are temperamental about temperature, so I’m not surprised if some of mine aren’t performing at their best.

The apple-scrap vinegar is an exception to that. At two weeks and three days, I was satisfied it had fermented enough. I strained out the apple scraps and bottled it. If the bottle doesn’t look fancy, that’s because it used to hold store-bought vinegar. It’s full of the homemade stuff, now, and I’m pretty satisfied with that.

The kvass still doesn’t taste like something I want to drink. The saltiness has decreased to a point of semi-drinkability, though, and I could detect the barest hint of carbonation. I decided to move on to step two. I strained out the carrots, orange peels and ginger, then placed them back in the jar with a cup of the kvass to start another fermentation. It will be weaker than the first, but that may be a good thing. I filled the jar with water, covered it with a coffee filter, and placed it back in the cupboard.

That left me about five cups of kvass, so I decided to put that through a second fermentation. I sweetened each jar with about a teaspoon of raw honey from my last honey harvest. The honey was well crystallized, but that won’t hurt anything. I sealed the jars and set them, yes, into a cupboard, to ferment for another day or three. I’ll check back and let you know how it turns out.

With my vinegar done and bottled, I have a half-gallon jar free for another culture. I’m already pondering more kvass. Should I try a fruit kvass or go way, way old school and make some out of rye bread? Send me your thoughts.

Have a good weekend!

Birthdays, Birth Days, and a Little Bit of Light

 I’m thinking about light today. I’m making my way through Cas Monaco’s Bible study on 1 John, Astonishing Love. It’s strange how you can read the same words over and over, but then one day they hit you – Bam! – in a new way.

First John is all about love and light. 1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another….” I’ve always loved the imagery of light. When I read these and similar words, I picture myself in a circle of brilliant light surrounded by inky darkness. That light is a safe, comfortable place, full of warmth and, well, light.

What about the light source, though? I tend to picture it out of sight, up above somewhere, but the Bible tells us God is the light source (1 John 1:5). Moreover, Jesus Himself is the light.

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’” (John 8:12).

God in Christ isn’t simply with me, walking in a circle of light cast by some outside source. He is the light. He will always be in the center of that circle of light, because it cannot exist without Him. He is the radiance dispelling the shadows and casting the light in which I walk.

But what does that mean for me? I’m reminded of Paul’s words in Galatians 2: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Christ lives in me. Christ is the light. I am to walk in the light as He is in the light. So that means…

“You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14)

“…for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Eph. 5:8a).

The simple birthday cake looked amazing until all the lemon slices slid off.

Whoa. Ponder that as you walk through your day.

On a more mundane, but still miraculous, note, remember the pregnant cat I mentioned in my post about my daughter’s birthday? Well, I should have waited to publish that post. While I was putting the finishing touches on my daughter’s cake, she called to me, “Autumn is acting strange. She meowing a lot and panting. I think she might be having the kittens.”

By the time my daughter's birthday dinner was ready,
our cat had presented us with three wiggly kittens.

Autumn, of course, is the cat. And yes, I did have to abandon the cake to help the first-time mother give birth. That may or may not have anything to do with the way the cake fell apart later. (Probably not, but we’ll say it did.) I’m sure it’s simply a sign of her inexperience that she chose to give birth not in a provided box or dark hidey-hole somewhere, but right in the middle of the foyer. Also, if you’ve never had to help a cat expel a placenta, it’s just as slimy as it sounds.

My children had various reactions to the wonder of birth. My eldest daughter, receiving such a marvelous birthday gift, said, “I know this is supposed to be the miracle of birth, but it’s kind of gross.”

My youngest daughter, who had been over the moon at the prospect of kittens, exclaimed, “That kitten is more ugly than cute. It’s terrifying!”

My 10-year-old son said, simply, “This is a big day for me.”

By the next morning, we had five newborn balls of fluff.