Friday, September 23, 2011

Milestones

A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.        Ecclesiastes 1:4 

Today is a special day.  One year ago today, I started a blog.  I continue to write and it continues to be a lot of fun.  In the past twelve months, I have written 66 blog posts and tried, by my count, 121 recipes.  I have enjoyed every recipe attempted– even the indigestible ones – and every minute spent writing about the cooking experience and the lessons learned.  More than that, I have relished the chance to reflect on all that food means to us, both physically and spiritually.

What do I wish were different?  Well, I am still nowhere near the end of the Bass Family and Friends cookbook.  Even if I consolidate the many recipes for meatloaf or porcupine meatballs, I still have a long way to go.  Also, I’m about 5 recipes into Food To Live By, the book I started in June with the hopes of enjoying the fresh products of the growing season.  The problem . . . well . . . it’s September.   Just a few more weeks before our Farmer’s Market packs it in for the colder months.

So not everything goes as planned.  But there are benefits even to the detours.  My still unfinished journey through the Bass cookbook has helped me to engage my family and my history in a completely new way, one which I am still exploring.  My slow pace through my cookbooks has compelled me to be flexible.  It has caused me to remember why I am following this project in the first place, and to think carefully about how I spend my time.  My judiciously arranged schedule, with particular recipes slated for specific calendar dates, has long since gone out the window.  But the project hasn’t, and that’s good enough for me.

My time spent at the farmer’s market has also lent a special dimension to this writing.  While I am still learning which foods will come into season at which times, I am learning to deeply appreciate the cyclical nature of things.  There can be good years and bad years, but the seasons remain the same.  The corn won’t be here early in June, but when the peaches are ready, they will be overflowing.

I think of the tomato growers following the same pattern each year as they do the labor involved with bringing a seed to fruit-bearing plant.  Much of life happens in cycles.  The same things happen again and again, but different each time.  And each time with profound purpose.  This matters to me when I am experiencing, say, writer’s block.  When I feel like I have said everything that is in me to say – probably more than once – and I couldn’t come up with a new idea if my life depended on it.  When my tomatoes are eaten up with blight and my words start to all sound the same.

It is then that I appreciate the work of the farmer.  To simply be here.  To show up.  To keep planting seed, keep watering.  To wait until something grows in its own good time.  Until that time, trust what has gone before.  And above all, trust God.

Happy anniversary, everyone.   If you are reading this then you have been part of the journey and I am grateful for your company.  In celebration of this special day, and in the interest of inviting even more camaraderie, we are doing something new.  I am starting a Facebook page for this blog.  I’m not quite sure what might be accomplished by doing this, but it seems like a groovy thing to do.  All the other cool blogs are doing it.  We might as well join in the fun.

If anyone has any ideas about how to do this well – how to link blog and FB page, for example – feel free to share your wisdom.  This is new territory for me.

I made the Hamburger Pie, several weeks ago.  We liked it.  I hope you do.

Blessed eating!

Hamburger Pie
1 lb. ground beef             1 t. salt
½ onion, chopped            1 can cond. tomato soup
½ c. water                          1 can wh. kernel corn
1 can English peas            6 potatoes, creamed
Brown the ground beef.  Drain well.  Add onion, salt and water.  Simmer about 20 minutes.  Cook the corn and peas separately.  Put the meat mixture in the bottom of a large baking dish.  Layer the soup, peas, and corn.  The potatoes should be placed on top of all of this.  Bake at 350o until the potatoes are golden brown. – Learvene T. Bass

1 comment:

  1. thanks for visiting my blog and esp thanks for the blessing! how cool to have a food blog and 66/121 posts and recipes feels like exactly the right pace. BTW, I was born in Mobile...

    About linking blog and facebook, on facebook I've joined networked blogs and my blog posts publish automatically on FB, sometimes with a few minutes delay. You can invite your friends to follow your blog and since people can do topical searches, I have a surprising number of non-friends following my theology blog.

    But your question sounded more like linking to your FB page, which I've done for my design page. Have you started and published it yet? When you do, FB has blog/website widget badges you can customize to a surprising degree and that update dynamically. Although my design blogs are currently inactive, they're also on networked blogs and I'd advise you to do both that and the badge. Have you liked my page yet? I hope you will: suntreeriver design.

    Abundant blessings back at ya!

    ReplyDelete