Thanksmas

This is so long overdue, but these were 

pictures from my thanksgiving/Christmas at home in Kentucky. It was a time of remembering and learning and navigating. These are too beautiful of moments to not share... 

Second chances and oatmeal

There is a silence in morning that causes tears to sting my eyes. Why me? This morning? This priveledge? I was gifted with them by no deserving gleam of my own heart. But they were given to me like a weed picked from the earth in the hand of a rapturous child. 

"Here, for you! Because.... Just because I love you."

Ok, so maybe I fill this sacred space with peanut butter oatmeal and journaling. Does that make it wasted or less holy? No, I don't think so. I think it makes it mine. 

Gregory Allen Isiakov, my muse these days, says if it weren't for second chances we would all be "as lonely as a ring on a cold coffee cup." 

He is right. How melonchey it feels to observe something that was once warm and full be rendered empty. 

Praise God who continues to fill our coffee cups to overflowing! He will never leave us without. 

Pretty Soup

Just threw a bunch of things in a pot and took pictures. :) 

Celebrating because we can... With doughnuts.

My roommate Laura knows all of the holidays... Ever. 

She informed me excitedly last week that this Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving. Normally that would include a pancake dinner with lots and lots of maple syrup. 

We decided that doughnuts and cider sounded better. 

Sour Cream Cake Doughnuts - Gluten Free

For the donuts:
• 2 cups all purpose gluten free flour
• 1/4 cup almond flour 
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons palm shortening
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• Canola oil, for frying
For the glaze:
• 3 1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup hot water

Beat the shortening, sugar, and eggs until thick and pale. 

In a seperate bowl combine the dry ingredients. 

Add to the mixer alternating with the sour cream in three batches. The dough will be sticky. 

Chill for an hour. 

Roll out the dough to about a 1/2 inch depending on how thick you want your doughnuts. Drop into hot oil ad fry on each side until golden. You will know your oil is ready if the doughnut rises immediately to float. 

For the glaze: 

Combine all ingredients and stir! Dip the doughnuts completely after that have cooled. 

Wildwood

I have been reading this book. It is a treasure trove (as evidenced by it's cover) of magical woodland wonder. 

My book review at only half way through reads as thus. 

Thank you Colin Meloy for trekking the hidden paths of wildwood, and following them to my own imagination. 

I get swept away every time I read it's verbiage. I want to smell the moss Prue ( the heroine) talks so fondly about. I want to be frightened by coyote malitia in red tattered coats. I want to taste blackberry wine, even if it does get you tipsy faster than most beverages, and I long to meet the crown prince. A great magestic owl who's eyes, once locked with your own, seem to carry away your deepest secrets. 

[ a lovely little one waiting to be appreciated on the library steps] 

The writer talks of the woods repeatedly. It makes you want to plunge headlong into its deep, cool, earthy recesses. Not shockingly, I have taken to appreciating leaves and sticks and the like even more than my already obsession since picking up this book. They are my friends. They are what God made. And for some reason... They make me feel comforted. A leave stays where it's placed, loyal, living, patient. 

I love the forest. It so quickly lends itself to a sanctuary. 

[ me and a mushroom I found on an evening walk]

Morningtime

I love biscuts, and have never found a gluten free replacement, but with this recipe I think I got close! They are flakey and buttery, and darn good. 

D and I had a lazy slow morning of reading library books, lit candles, and baths. We finished the lovely train of events with these biscuts and honey. Sticky little hands and sleepy eyes. 

Gluten free fluffy buttermilk bicuits 

• 1 1/4 cups brown rice flour
• 1/4 cup tapioca starch
• 3 teaspoons xanthan gum 
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cut into chunks
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• milk for brushing the tops of biscuits before baking, optional

Sift the dry ingredients together and in the bowl of a stand mixer, cut the butter in until it resembles the size of peas. 

With the mixer on, incorporate the eggs and buttermilk one at a time. 

Turn the dough into a surface dusted with a little rice flour. Handle the dough as little as possible. Roll it out to an inch thick and cut into squares. 

Brush each with milk and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. 

Bake at 400 for 15 min 

Little Man Theology

"D" is what we will call him...

He is the little one I get to play mama with, love, and care for, but most days I feel as though he is caring for me. 

There are some days, like all of us, where I come into work like every other but my eyes feel leaky, and my heart full of unexpressed weights desperately in need of being lifted. 

"D" helps me with that. 

He, in his startling and unassuming youth, does not allow those days to slip past his ability to reach out. He seems to notice every time pain or panic pricks my heart, addressing it in ways only he knows how. 

One time, he stopped mid lunch and laid his tiny, ketchup smeared ( "D" puts ketchup on everything ) hand on mine. "God loves you really much, and he thinks you're special the way you are," he offered slowly with diction, still chewing. He removed his hand and picked up his fork for another bite. "Ok?" He asked pointedly, probably due to the fact that I was sitting a cross from him in silence with tears rolling down my cheeks. "Ok," I sniffed. I was in a whirlwind of identity crisis when I arrived at work that morning, wanting to be all that God had for me, hating who I was instead. Did "d" see that in my eyes? I thanked him after lunch, using words he would understand. He said that I was welcome and he loved me. 

He is three years old. 

But he hears God's heart better than most of us I believe. 

Later that week he would ask if we could pray about sin. We were barreling down the road but I stopped the car and pulled over anyway. I climbed in the backseat with him and we prayed. My heart seemed murky next to his, but in all reality we both had confessions to make and forgiveness to ask for. 

There is something God knows all too well of me. There is a large portion of my heart that still wears footie pajamas. I am younger than I let on, or maybe it's that I see things as if I am looking up at them. At any length, I am still very childlike in spirit. 

Because of this, when "D" says something hard, or true, I hear it. Maybe it's because his face has dirt on it, or could it be that he just called me "mama bird" ... Tweet tweet. Even so, I believe it is due to the fact that when he speaks truth, the piece of me that understands youth resonates. Child's heart meets child's heart. 

When "D" confronts, I accept. 

Today, as he fastens his superD cape around his neck, he turns to me and proclaims, " sometimes when we can't save the world we say, nevermind!"

I laughed, and then sighed. Letting my agenda, and my ability to save the future float away In the wind sounded like a lovely... If not daunting, idea. 

I get locked in and pulled down. 

Wouldn't it be so much better to adopt "D's" mindset? 

I can't save the world today. I'm too tired and God will do a better job anyhow. 

Nevermind. 

Now doesn't that feel like freedom?  

Beautiful Rutabagas

Vegitables are beautiful. I might go so far as to say they are holy. Living things that give of themselves selflessly. 

Psalm 119:96 I have seen the consummation of all perfection 

I was reading this verse and staring at the large (and only slightly frightening ) rutabaga that I vased in my room. I could not bear to eat it after gathering it up in my arm in the field. It was love at first sight. It's stems are blush fading to deep green and the body is a deep plumb purple, slashed with white score marks. So close to a work of art in my mind. Perfection in creation. 

But this verse. The writer says that in seeing God, he has seen the consummation of ALL perfection! 

Consummation: the state of being consummated; perfection; fulfillment.

Perfection: . the highest degree of proficiency, skill, or excellence, as in some art.

God is the fulfillment of all artistic skill. This rutabaga is rooted in excellence. 

If I am taken by a vegitable, how much more would I sit stunned in the presence of someone who is the consumation of all perfection? 

Cold. Foggy. Apples. Farm.

I took little man to a farm out towards the mountains last week. It was crisp and we wore matching flannel. We packed a lunch of cheese quesadillas, apples, and lots of water. The drive was about an hour. An hour of my windshield wipers beating fog away in time to the lilting sounds of Jack Johnson. An hour of road beneath tires, and a tiny voice asking earthy questions. Ahh, moving.

We arrived just as the tractor full of suburban farmers come to visit was pulling away. Armed with cloth totes we jumped aboard the slow moving wagon of hay and set out to the fields. 

The farm was huge! Mountains looming over us and expansive fields stretching as far as we could see. 

Little man and I don't mind dirt at all. We roll up our sleeves and dug for those potatoes!

The carrots were our favorite by far. Grabbing them by their leafy hair and heaving against the soil's grip. A crumbling, shifting quake and... Viola! Carrot resurrections everywhere. We yank them up, like a backwards baptism. 

Our entire haul included both green and purple kale, cabbage, carrots, sweet and brown potatoes, peppers, pumpkins, Indian corn, onions, celery, and one magnanimous rutabaga. 

It was a lovely, dirty, wholesome day. We drove home, took baths, at a whole carrot each and then little man went to bed. 

While he slept... I made apple butter. :) 

• Apple Butter
• 2 lbs Granny Smith or honey crisp apples
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinager
• Water to cover
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tbs cinnamon
• 1 tbs cloves 
• 1 tbs ground ginger
• 1 tbs allspice 
• The rind and juice of one lemon

Rough chop the apples and put them in a large pot with the vinager. Cover with water and brig to a boil. Simmer them until soft. Purée with an blender and return to the pit with the sugar, spices and lemon. Cook on low heat until the cot is amber and the consistency thick and smooth. 

Your house will smell amazing at this point. 

Let the apple butter cool completely before canning it.