Cottage Cheese Pancakes

Well, my last trip to the grocery store I decided to buy some Organic Valley cottage cheese after discovering that although the milk in it was pasteurized, it was NOT homogenized and was therefore acceptable to me as being healthy enough, lol. But it sat in the fridge all last week, unopened, because to be honest I couldn't think of anything to make with it. I like cottage cheese just by itself, but I had really been hoping to incorporate it into some kind of meal for my family, and with Italian food not being an option (Wes's stomach tends to react poorly to all things overly tomatoey) I didn't really know what to do.

So this morning I searched the web and found a recipe for French cottage cheese pancakes. I changed it up a little to make it healthier and came up with this:

1 cup cottage cheese
3/4 cup arrowroot powder
3 eggs
4 tablespoons whole sugar
3 tablespoons milk
4 tablespoons melted butter
Splash of vanilla extract

I combined everything in the blender and cooked it like I would regular pancakes. They were a little different - kind of mushy on the insides, I guess because of the cottage cheese, so it made me feel like they weren't quite cooked all the way even though I think they really were - but after I ate two or three they really started to grow on me. I think they'd be really good served with crushed blueberries and rolled up, but I didn't have any blueberries to try that out. Maybe next time. Ooh! They might be good spread with Just Fruit jam, too. Hmm...

I did find that they turned out a little less mushy in the middle if I cooked them at a lower temperature. Our stovetop has knobs that range from 1-9, not including the "lo" and "hi" settings, and I usually do pancakes at like a 6, but for this recipe I ended up turning it down to a 3 before they really started turning out good.

Loving Your Husband - Introduction

So, here I am finally getting back to my blog, and I have no idea what to write about. So I thought I'd introduce a new category - Loving Your Husband. My favorite blogs always include something about loving your husband, and it's something I'm passionate about, so why not include it here? And after all, what better way to learn surrender than by getting married? Lol.

Seriously, though, I think that's one of God's main purposes in marriage - to teach us selflessness. There's a certain, uh... a certain level or depth of selflessness that can be realized in marriage that I don't think can be found any other way. There's just something about being unbreakably bound to someone that teaches you that you've got to give if you want to get anywhere together.

I've heard that one method of teaching young horses to give to pressure on a lead line is to tie their lead line to a donkey or mule's halter and release them in a pasture. Donkeys and mules have stubbornness issues - they prefer to plow through pressure rather than yield to it. So when the young horse tries to walk off, or when the mule walks and the horse doesn't follow, the mule just keeps pulling and drags the little horse along behind until it learns that if it follows and yields to the pressure, it can keep the line slack and stop the halter from pulling on its face.

I've never personally halter-trained a horse using this method, but I know enough about horses and how they learn to say that it would definitely work. Now, I'm not intentionally trying to liken our husbands to mules... that's not the point. The point is that when you're tied to someone, you might as well learn to work as a team and to follow the other one's leadership, because when you do, things tend to go a lot more smoothly.

Not that surrendering your own wants is always easy. What if the horse wants water? He has to wait for the mule to go to the trough, and yeah, that kind of sucks. But hey, it's not the end of the world. And anyway, in marriage at least you have the capability to make suggestions and requests.

I do totally believe that God designed marriage to be a relationship where the husband is the clear and defined leader and the wife's role is more of a supportive and helping role. Hopefully that doesn't offend anyone, but if it does, I'm still saying it, because I really do believe it with all my heart. That doesn't mean I think men are better than women or anything like that. I think we're equal but simply have different roles. Two people can't lead - there's always eventually going to be a clash of interests, and someone's going to have to be able to make the final decision or you're just not going to get anywhere but in a very long fight.

So yeah. Surrender. Sometimes it sucks but it's way worth it for what you get in return. Love, joy, patience, closeness to God.

I think I kind of went off on a tangent there, but now that I think about it that does fall under the category of loving your husband. After all, one of the main ways we can show our husbands that we love them is by being willing to surrender to their leadership. This is a great display of trust and respect and I think most if not all men really need to feel respected in order to function at their best.

Okay. Well, it's getting late, so that's all for now. Hopefully I won't let it go so long between posts this time. :) And maybe one day I'll get around to transferring some of my hand-written journal stuff over here. Okay, seriously. Signing out now.

Boxed cereals

What do I think of boxed cereal? Well, it tastes great, is easy to fix, and has always been one of my favorite snacks/meals/desserts. But recently I've been reading some information about processed foods (and grains in general) that has led me to believe that even the so-called "healthy" cereals do more harm than good to your body.

Grains, seeds, and beans all contain nutrient inhibitors. As I understand it, these are the things that preserve the nutrients in the seed until it germinates. But if you eat any of these foods with the nutrient inhibitors still in them, they will, as their name implies, inhibit the nutrients from being absorbed by your body. This is why grains, seeds, nuts, and beans need to be either soaked, fermented, or sprouted in order for their nutrients to be accessible to your body.

In addition, boxed cereals are so highly processed that most of their nutritional value is destroyed. Of course, all kinds of synthetic vitamins and minerals are added to cereals to try to boost their nutritional value, but artificial nutrients aren't absorbed into the body nearly as well as natural ones. Which makes me wonder why we don't just eat the stuff God made for us to eat. I mean, it's getting more and more obvious as the scientific research keeps coming in. Natural, unprocessed food is always the healthier way to go. Processed and synthetic foods are constantly being found to cause all kinds of health problems and diseases. So yeah, it looks like God really did know what he was doing when he made all this. Lol. But it just amazes me how long it's taking us to figure that out.

For further research, a well-written and very informative article on cereal can be found here: http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/why_i_don%E2%80%99t_eat_boxed_cereal_%E2%80%94_not_even_the_%E2%80%98healthy%E2%80%99_ones%E2%80%A6.html

And a great article on soaking grains can be found here: http://www.passionatehomemaking.com/2008/04/whole-grains-grinding-soaking.html

Here's a good one on white rice vs. brown, based on the understanding that brown rice, while containing many more nutrients, is also full of nutrient inhibitors, and is very difficult to digest: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2010/07/what-white-rice-better-than-brown/

Introduction - is eating healthy worth the cost?

Before my first child started eating solid foods, my thoughts on healthy food were basically this: it's better to eat cheap than healthy, because I can use the money I save to help others.

I saw nothing wrong with this idea. It was selfless, after all, and my motive was good. It had little to do with the taste of the food or the ease of preparation. It was just about saving the money for what I thought was something more important.

But then I started doing some research when Kaira started eating, and I haven't stopped yet. There's so much information out there! I was blown away by what I was learning. And eventually I started thinking ahead a little more and came to a new conclusion: if I take the best care I can of the body I have, I will have more energy with which to serve the Lord, and will be in better health, meaning (possibly) less money wasted later on in life on medical problems of all sorts.

I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of health problems in America stem from our horrible eating habits. Thus, it seemed logical to start a new category in the Learning Surrender blog - Health and Nutrition.

After all, healthy eating is, in a way, related to surrender, isn't it? We want to eat what tastes good - and often the foods that taste the best to us are also the most toxic to our bodies. It's a constant struggle against the desires of the flesh, and it is no easy thing. But it is, I think, a fight worth fighting. Not only will you feel more energetic and less "bleh" all the time, but you will also develop determination and discipline, both useful traits as you seek to walk by the Spirit of God.

So I guess that's it for the introduction. Thanks for reading!

Be all there

“Wherever you are, be all there. It is only possible in the posture of eucharisteo (thanksgiving). Give thanks and see God. Full attention slows the current. Simplicity is a matter of focus. That keeps the focus simple.” – Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

So much wisdom in such a short paragraph. I have really been struggling with this lately. I sometimes wonder why I feel so distant from the life I have lived so far, from childhood until very recently. It seems to me that this paragraph is the answer. I feel distant from my life because I feel like I haven't really been living. Because I haven't been "all there."

Very rarely have I been focused and truly living in the now. As a child I think I tended to simply react to things without really considering and thinking about my reaction first. I don't remember things feeling very important to me - it was like I was just drifting along, doing what I was taught and trying to get the things I wanted. It's a very shallow way to live.

Today, I think a lot more, and reflect quite a bit, but when it comes to living in the now, with full focus on the present, again I am failing. Life is improv, and I suck at improv. :) I freeze up. My mind scrambles for the best "appropriate reaction" to the words or actions of someone, but sometimes the easy answer isn't the real one. It's polite to laugh when someone tells a joke, but if that joke mocks the God I serve, or if it is vulgar or crude, and I laugh without thinking because I know the person WANTS me to laugh...

And here is the simple answer to all of that. Wherever you are, be there. Think before you react. React in a real way. Live the best you can in the present, loving God with all your heart and honoring him with all your actions, and you will have nothing to regret.

But how hard it is to focus! That's the struggle.

“When I stop speeding through life, I find the joy in each days doings, in the life that cannot be bought, but only discovered, created, savored, and lived.” – Katrina Kennison