At the Beach

On Friday, June 21, a devotional I wrote was published in The Upper Room devotional guide (click here to read it).  I was also invited to write a post for their blog, which I thought I would also share with you.  If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will already know most of this information.  But some stories are worth telling more than once!  I am deeply grateful for The Upper Room for printing my writing and for their ministry to people around the world.

As I write this follow up post for the devotion about riding the waves, my family is eagerly awaiting another trip to the beach.  We have gone to the gulf coast in Florida at the same time every year since I was small.  Now my husband and children and I do the same.  Ours is a special trip that connects us to family and the common history that we celebrate.

Every year, our beach trip is meant to coincide with a very special event in the lives of our family.  On the first Sunday of every June, there is a homecoming at a small church in south Alabama called Shady Hill.  Built on an unpaved road among farms and forests, this church has a long history in its community.  It is also a significant part of my family history, and its homecoming has served as a kind of reunion for my kin.  We have been going to it for as long as I can remember.

The homecoming has two particular elements that make it special.  Its main attraction is a Sacred Harp singing.  The shape note hymns are pretty unfamiliar to me, but its tradition is well established in south Alabama.  Though I was grown before I stepped inside the sanctuary to participate in the music, my family named the occasion by this special part of it.  The event was The Singing.

The other special piece to this day is the dinner on the grounds.  Served in covered dish style, much of the meal will have been grown in gardens and farms within a mile of the church.  When I was young, I loved to watch the cement tables fill, little by little, with the mouthwatering, traditional foods.  The meals I eat on this hallowed ground are still some of the best I ever have.

Our attendance at the Singing always comes with the family trip to the beach.  My children love to romp in the surf, my husband likes to snorkel, while I never fail to be amazed at the awe-inspiring beauty of the place.  We adore the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.  It has been a part of my grounding since I was small.  So nowadays when my family visits the gulf coast, as we roast in the sun and sink our toes in the sand, as we cook and sing and ride the waves, we remember our deeper connections to all of our kin, and to the One who makes beaches and music and family.

Getting Back to the Garden

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
   and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth.

                                     Psalm 104:14

          

I didn’t plant this year.  During the cold days of February as I was busy preparing for Ash Wednesday and making plans for the Lenten season, I wasn’t in the mood to get seed starter under my fingernails.  I lacked the patience to water dirt for weeks until something green finally chose to appear.  On my mind was also my terribly neglected plants of 2012, my weedy plot at our community garden, and the pots on my deck, abandoned way too soon.

So this year I didn’t try.  I have nothing growing. 

This decision was on my mind during our beach vacation, among my dear family, as we discussed that special annual event, The Singing.  I have long believed that the vast majority of the food there came from local farms and gardens, with occasional gatecrashing by some Kentucky Fried Chicken or grocery store potato salad.  I thought that the field peas and the greens and the pecans that filled sugary pies had all grown up nearby.  Turns out, I wasn’t quite right.

Certainly in years past, this had been the case.  When my grandmother and aunt Florence worked together to make our family’s contribution to the feast – having shut everyone else out of the kitchen – nearly all of their ingredients had come from either their own garden or other nearby resources.  Today, this is still probably true of a certain percent of the dishes that appear on the church’s cement tables.  And yet, I had failed to notice that this is not the standard it used to be.  While the tables still contain their share of fried okra and green beans (even the universal and wonderful deviled eggs), many people now make the choice that I did: to bring dessert.

For years, I chose cookies because they were easy to keep and transport.  Desserts are always popular and I knew what I brought was likely to be eaten. This seemed logical at the time, but now, I’m not so sure.  Lots of people have been choosing this option to the detriment of our waistlines and our gardening abilities.  There just aren’t as many farmers and gardeners as there used to be.  Lots of people still come, but they bring items that are easier to prepare with ingredients available in their local Food World.

It is hard to grow food.  There are a thousand things that can go wrong and many steps required in making them go right.  Plants are needy.  They require a lot of attention in the form of water, fertilizer, weeding and plucking off little green worms.   Few of us remember the length of time and the enormous work involved in preparing food before this age of convenience.  Previous to microwave dinners and brownie mixes, cooking for a family might be a full time job.  It isn’t surprising that folks aren’t keen on doing it the hard way.

Like many things in life, however, the hard way can be the good way.  A few modern conveniences are great, but laboring for our sustenance probably comes with plenty of character-building qualities.  And “eating off the ground” is generally considered to be the healthiest way to go.  What is grown in the soil comes directly from the hand of God.  While this doesn’t mean that everything in nature is edible, most of the things that we human beings have devised – from Mars bars to frozen pizza – are a sad choice compared to a peach or tomato.

So . . . as soon as I publish this blog post, my next act will be to place in some potting soil my first and maybe only plant of the season: a nice basil plant that I bought at our local farmer’s market.  And next year, when the time comes for The Singing, I will decide what vegetable to cook.  Maybe something from the garden.

Blessed eating!

 

Below is the recipe for what I hope will be my last dessert to take to Shady Hill Baptist Church.  Though it may not be out of the garden, it was really good!

Coconut, Cream Cheese and Caramel Dessert

Put pie crust in a 9x13 inch dish and brown.  Brown about ½ bag of coconut with a 1/2 c. of pecans and a little margarine in the oven.  Mix together:  1 can sweetened condensed milk, 8 oz. cream cheese.  Add 16 oz. Cool Whip and blend with a spoon.  Put one layer of creamed mixture over baked crust then a layer of coconut mixture.  Repeat.  Drizzle the top with caramel topping.  Refrigerate overnight. – Mrs. Bruley

Note: The coconut and pecans do not absolutely have to be browned.  For me they worked just fine plain after my attempts to brown them nearly alerted the fire department!

 

Travel Cooking

It was just a few days after our celebration of Jesus’ journey from cross to garden, from death to life that we began a journey of our own.  Maybe that’s just a fancy way of saying that spring break came right after Easter this year, but after celebrating the resurrection, we seemed all the more ready to embark on a new adventure.  This time, to central Florida.

Our family recently purchased a new pop-up camper, and I can’t tell you how much we have enjoyed it already.  The pop-up allows us to travel on a level somewhere between roughing it and not.  Our son loves the slide out beds while our daughter loves the constant opportunity to play outside.  The camper not only sleeps our family comfortably, but gives us a nice place to eat together, and even – most important to me - cook our own meals.

So . . . I made some extensive meal plans for our trip.  I imagined things would be much tougher than they actually turned out to be, and I took my recipes from camping websites where the assumption was that we would be cooking over an open fire.   I had two gas burners, so that kind of qualifies.  The other assumption, which I loved, was that kids would be involved and that the recipe would need to be simple and fun.

And so we had scrambled eggs with cheese and goldfish crackers on the day we saw the Tampa Aquarium, and Banana Boats for desert on the day we went to the Okefenokee Swamp.  Not every food was themed specifically for the day’s activities, but they were all pretty fun and good.

Travel is all about seeing new things and enjoying new experiences.  In this trip, not only did we get to visit places we had never been, but we got to live life just a little closer to nature.  We fended for ourselves just a little bit more than before, living not only just a little closer to the land, but closer to our neighbors in the next campsite as well.

Common wisdom tells us that we find God in unexpected places.  Having traveled and witnessed the never-before-seen, I know that that is true.  God can be found in the prairies of Florida, the swamps of Georgia and the state parks and campsites across the country.  Each one had its own beauty, and each one was made by God.

Travel if you can.  If you can’t, look harder at your own locale.  The more you see, the more you will know of God’s imagination and the indescribable love that brought about an amazing and varied world.  This world may not belong to us, but we get to be willing participants in each day.  Don’t miss that opportunity.

Blessed eating!

One of my favorite dishes on the trip.

Black Cherry Dump Cake

Chocolate Cake Mix                        1 Stick Butter

1 Can Cherry Pie Filling

Pour cherry pie filling into pot or Dutch oven.  Cover with Chocolate Cake Mix.  Slice butter and place on top of cake mix.  Cook until done.

 

 

 

Still Here

As I type these words, I feel as if I am whispering into a cave, long abandoned.  “Is anyone still here?”

My schedule, both wonderfully busy and terribly full, becomes such that my blog has often had to sit on the sidelines.  I don’t have the heart to give it up entirely, so I pick up the laptop on my vacation while I’m planning my next meal and enjoying some time to reflect.  I remember my 1 year anniversary of blog writing like it was yesterday.  Now it is a couple of years back.  I meant to whoop it up at my 100^th post in some clever way, but that somehow got past unnoticed.

I’m not sure if anyone is still out there reading what I write, but I’ll continue to do it for the reasons that I started with: to explore God’s work in my life, especially through the elements of food and family.  And if you are there still reading my writing, thank you for hanging around.  I hope the dinner’s been worth it!

At this moment, I’m watching my son pull out his dominoes, ready to set them up and knock them down on the table in the beach house overlooking the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.  My daughter is playing with the tablet.  This morning, we rode waves until we were exhausted and starving, then had seafood for lunch.  Time moves slowly here.  We don’t often experience that in real life, the life of the city and work and obligations.

I have refrained from planning every meal while I’m here (unlike our last vacation), but I do have some cooking planned;  a seafood casserole one day, a corn chowder and salad on another.  And I still need to come up with a cookie recipe to take to The Singing.  I am open to any suggestions!

I believe that God is in each step of our path.  This is a remarkably good thing.  Sometimes the trail is straight and smooth like a highway, where there is nothing to do but run.  On some days, it meanders blessedly through serene landscapes, giving us time to pause and be grateful.  Though it is sometimes difficult, I try to appreciate every leg of the journey.  I will likely miss them when they are complete.  There will be days when I may yearn for them back again, so I try not to wish them away.

If you are still in this cave, if you still take a moment to read this blog, thank you for being a part of the journey with me.  I don’t know how often we will travel together, but I am grateful for your company on the trail.  For now, know that my family and I are still cooking, for others and for ourselves.  The picture above is of my daughter helping with the cookies which will be a thank you gift for her teacher after a wonderful year of learning.

We are still learning; still going, still preparing food and sitting down to wonderful meals together.  Thank you for sharing this one with us.

Blessed eating!

Seven Layer Cookies

1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs      ½ cup butter, melted
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips    1 cup butterscotch-flavored chips                       
1 1/3 cup flaked coconut                  1 cup chopped nuts
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk             

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Pour melted butter in a baking dish, cover with graham cracker crumbs and press firmly in the bottom of the pan.  Layer with chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconut and nuts.  Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over all.

Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned.  Cool and cut into bars.

p.s.  The teachers loved them!

                                                                                                                             

Pope

You would have thought it was the Super Bowl or maybe the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the way it was covered in the news.  Anchors sat on tall directors chairs strategically positioned in front of a picturesque location in St Peter’s Square.  Religious experts from many traditions were interviewed to speculate on who the new pope might be, then on what his character might contain and where he might lead the Roman Catholic Church.

 If I sound skeptical, I don’t mean to.  I was very much drawn into the story of the papal election, even if the tradition isn’t mine.  While the pope doesn’t represent my place of worship, he is for many a leading voice from the Christian church.  I often find myself calling him “our” new pope, even though we Methodists will never have one.

I’m only surprised – happily – that in today’s increasingly secular world, there is so much interest, even intrigue, over the leader of a tradition that is centuries old and whose customs and styles seem far from mainstream.  This could be said of any of our denominations and so I celebrate on behalf of all Christians for this one.

The church is constantly at work defining our faith in new generations.  This is especially true when we see our numbers waning.  We are working continually to discern what is valuable and what is fleeting; differentiating the fine antique from the passing fad.  As we hand our faith on to those who will come after us, we grapple with the questions of relevance, importance and authenticity.

What does truly matter about our faith?  Which things are to be kept or relinquished?  We wade through issues from priestly attire to worship style to language and politics as we try to speak our beliefs in an unchanging God, and make them accessible to those who may carry them after us.

But these actually aren’t questions any of us can answer beyond our own skin.  We can ultimately interpret the meaning of the faith for ourselves and no one else.  We can teach, reach and pray.  Still, every new generation, in fact every new person, will decide for him/herself what traditions are meaningful and which practices bring the faith to life.  If we want to communicate ours, all we can do is live them as deeply and authentically as we can. 

As we watch this new leader begin his work under the global eye, each one of us will continue the day-to-day work of living the faith so that it may breathe and grow into new eras.  Whether you are pope or parishioner, there is no more important work.

 

Red shoes and white robes are a papal tradition.  A Methodist one is the covered dish supper. Here is a recipe for the latter.

Broccoli Casserole

2 pkgs. of frozen broccoli            1 c. cheese
1 c. mayonnaise                            1 can cr. mushroom soup
2 T. dried onion soup                    2-3 eggs, beaten
1 tube Ritz crackers                       1 stick margarine, melted

Mix all except crackers and margarine.  Crush crackers, mix with margarine and top broccoli mixture.  Bake at 350^o until brown. – Eunice Henderson

 

Beginning Lent

We are just over a week into Lent; the holy season of preparation through which we make ourselves ready for the celebration of Easter.  Ten days have passed since we put ashes on our head.  Probably just as many have past that I have broken my Lenten fast in one way or another.

Lent is meant to be a somber season.  We remember Jesus’ humanity as we fully experience our own.  We study the disciples’ disappointing attempts at faithfulness and find their story written in us. We take one step closer to comprehending Jesus’ sacrifice as we try - and often fail – to make sacrifices ourselves.   When we arrive at the day of Resurrection, we can feel its full joy after having known some of its cost.

So we fast for Lent.  We give things up.  This is a part of our reflection and learning.  We learn the spiritual discipline of doing without, of making the choice not to give ourselves something we want.  Our culture and environment don’t prepare us well for these kinds of decisions.  We also, more importantly, learn about our own failure and God’s abundant grace.  We practice the crucial disciplines of confession, of acknowledging our own mistakes and perceiving our need for God’s forgiveness.

There are a lot of reasons we fail to keep our fast.  Peer pressure is one.  It would be ungrateful of me, after all, not to enjoy that funnel cake my husband sweetly bought me.  As I ingest the fried dough and powdered sugar, I think how easy it is to stray from the path just to go along with the tide.

Brain chemistry isn’t always on our side, either.  Sugar is addictive.  Its strength is that it has a greater hold on me than I am aware of.  It finds its way into my body when I am stressed or tired or bored or any other number of reasons.  When I imagine that my own will power alone will be adequate, or that by myself and without God’s help I can follow the path laid out for me, I open myself to bigger missteps, worse stumbles than I might have had if my eyes were really open.

We fail out of a fear of loss.  As I was contemplating the delicious box of Valentines Day candy that my dear husband – who clearly wants a cuddly wife – presented to me, I felt a strange queasy sense of panic at the thought of losing the opportunity that had been given.  Was I reacting to some strange evolutionary instinct of self-preservation or am I just way too hooked on chocolate?

There are countless reasons that we might break a Lenten fast.  Every single one teaches us a lesson about our own humanity.  We would do well to pay attention.  Breaking a fast isn’t a sin.  Giving something up is a self-imposed discipline, a choice that we make to further our own spiritual good.  Failure isn’t the breaking of a commandment, but a stumble that gives us a better chance to learn the terrain and secure our footing.

The Lenten fast shouldn’t become an idol.  It isn’t an end in itself.  While we shouldn’t intentionally try to mess up, the goal isn’t perfection either; only the perfecting of hearts in love, a process known in Wesleyan circles as sanctification.

Work on a fast in this season.  Whether you think you will do it well or poorly, take on the challenge and learn the lessons it will teach.  Whether you give something up, or take something on, whether it requires a lot of your time or a little, when Easter arrives, you will be all the more ready to celebrate.

Blessed eating!

 

May this recipe not break your fast.

Blueberry Muffins

2 eggs                   ½ cup shortening
1 c. sugar             2 c.s.r. flour
1 c. milk                1 c. blueberries
Mix together. I use the paper muffin cups in my muffin pan.  Bake until brown. – Joyce Bass

Pairings

I like to put different things together.   It doesn’t always work.  Mexican food is great, not only because of my cilantro addiction or my reverence for pico de gallo.  Everthing about what is traditionally known as Mexican food can be mixed together and still be great!  Most food pairings aren’t so easy, though.  When it comes to wine and food, there are even classes in it.

Pairings are important because of the obvious, but often overlooked, reality that things are different.  Sometimes when things are different, they go together really well.  One aspect of one food will bring out and highlight an aspect in the other.  Both are better for the two being together.   

A few of these we know well.  We know that catsup is marvelous on french fries and cheeseburgers.  Coffee is amazing with chocolate.  Salt is (unfortunately) good with everything.  More often, though it takes some thought to find the right foods that blend together.  We know the endeavor is worth it and the results can be delicious, though sadly our efforts often stop at our plate.

In our political life, we find less and less room to put more than one idea together.  Every side behaves as if it is the only one, that there are no benefits to others, and the only solution is all or nothing.  Though I doubt our representatives are thinking very theologically about this, this does represent a strange way to understand God.  For whatever unfathomable reason, God made us all different.  And not just a little.  We have vastly different perspectives and leanings.   

Surely this isn't an accident.  It must be that we were meant to go together, to temper each other’s ideas, to bring out the best in each other.  We can choose to create a greater sum or to cancel each other out.

I’ve never heard of a class in this kind of pairing, but maybe there ought to be.  I found it interesting that its homonym, “paring” means something opposite; to cut down or reduce.  I suppose we can choose to spend our time doing one or the other.  Which would you rather do? 

Blessed eating!

 

Here is a recipe in which many things go together well. 

Tijuana Torte

1 lb ground beef (or turkey)                        1 onion, chopped

16oz can stewed tomatoes                          8 oz can tomato sauce

4 oz can green chilies (diced)                      1 pk taco seasoning

1 pk flour Tortillas                                            1 c sour cream

1 lb Mexican Blend grated cheese 

Preheat oven to 350.  Brown beef & onion.  Add other ingredients except tortillas, cheese and sour cream.  Simmer 10-15.  Place ¼ c. mixture in 9x13 baking dish.  Layer with tortillas.  Layer meat mixture and cover with cheese.  Repeat about 3 layers to the top of dish then spread sour cream on top and add more cheese. Bake at 350^o for 25 minutes. – Jerral Taylor