Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Each Day Has Trouble of Its Own
3:40 PM
I think we can all agree that we're living in a day when it's probably best to limit our daily intake of news as far as it's possible. For our mental and physical health, it's good to stay informed but not be hooked to an IV of it where it's fed to us continuously, drip after drip. As kind of a news junkie, it's been an adjustment I've learned I needed to make as things have ramped up around the country. Watching what appears to be the world turning upside down is enough to make a person lose their joy and peace and hope- all those things we're supposed to have in abundance.
As y'all know, I used Ancestry.com to trace back my family history during the quarantine. I trust you didn't forget the part about me descending from Scottish royalty. Well, something else that I was reminded of in the pages of our history- every generation has had its struggles and hardships. Some have been unique to a certain time period and some are like history repeating itself but there has always been struggle.
While Carson napped in his baby bed, I remember I was working in the kitchen when the news interrupted the tv show I had on as background noise. I remember going into the family room and turning up the volume because it was obvious that something terrible had happened. I sat in a chair, still holding a damp dish towel, and watched the horror. The second plane hit and so did the reality that this was no accident. I remember being so scared because it was all happening so fast and no one knew what would unfold next. I sat in that chair thinking most about my baby in his bed and my young child at her school and I wondered what was happening to their world.
I was born in 1968. I've heard it referred to as the year that shattered America. To say that there was a lot going on would be an understatement. I was born about a month after Martin Luther King, Jr was killed. There were the civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War and its war demonstrators, and another Kennedy was assasinated- just to name a few more. Locally, a Jewish synagogue was bombed. After I was born and was tucked away in the hospital nursery, a smoke bomb was thrown into that area. It was an attempt to busy all the firetrucks and law enforcement while another act of hatred was being carried out on another side of town. As my Mama watched the bassinets rolling down the smoky hallway with nurses telling her to get back in her room, I'm sure she was wondering what was happening to my world.
When my mother was less than three months old, my grandmother kissed my granddaddy and he left for Camp Shelby and then onto Fort McClellan to train for his role in World War 2. All alone with an infant, my grandmother had no idea where he'd be going or when he'd be back or even if he would. For 4 years, he was a world away from south Mississippi in France, Germany, and Austria. As part of the war effort, my grandmother worked in a factory that made parachutes for the troops, while her mother kept her baby. Knowing about all the terror of the Nazi regime and not sure how the effort to stop them would turn out, I'm certain, when she held my mother in her arms, she was wondering what was happening to her world.
My great-grandmother who was born in the late 1800's was widowed at a fairly young age in the middle of the Great Depression. Most of her 9 children were still young enough to be living at home and their provision and care fell solely on her shoulders with her husband gone. Her older boys planted crops. The vegetables were canned. Some fruits were canned and some sun-dried. She had chickens for eggs and meat and cows for milking. They raised hogs and cured the meat. Before sunrise to after dark, while she worked to keep everyone fed and clothed, there's no doubt she was wondering what was happening to their world.
That same great-grandmother, who cared for her children through the depression, lost her father in 1918 to the Spanish flu epidemic that killed 500,000 Americans, which brings us back around to something that sounds really familiar. These stories were just from one line of my family- my mother's mother. I'm sure I could take each family line and continue to go back, generation after generation as far as the existence of human life would take me, and find significant issues and struggles that faced each one. War, disease, economic disaster, social unrest, pioneer hardships, and on and on. We can be tempted to believe that this time we're in is as bad as it's ever been, but I'm sure other generations from the past would strongly disagree.
One disadvantage that we clearly do have over them all, though, is that we're constantly blasted with every morsel of bad news as it happens. Instantly and continuously. Aside from all the news outlets and social media dissemination, almost every citizen in every corner of the earth is armed with a camera, a recording device, and many public platforms to share their findings, so we see disturbing footage and hear shocking stories all day long. Unlike generations before us, we don't have to wait for a newspaper to land in our yard or the news to broadcast the highlights on the radio or even for Walter Cronkite to break in with a newsflash. No, our minds are constantly fed bad news because it sells better than the good kind.
As Christians, we can allow that constant drip to make us anxious, bitter, and angry or we can realize that we're just living out the struggles of our day. Like every other generation before us has done. Yes, there is evil. Yes, there is godlessness. Yes, there are problems. Yes, there are people who wish to do us harm. But, those things have always been and always will be as long as God keeps us here on this earth.
We can let the echo of bad news drown out everything good until it dominates our minds and hearts or we can control the volume and monitor its flow and let God's Good News have the microphone. Nothing about our particular time has caught Him off guard. And as long as He has us here, He has a purpose for each one of us. Our time will certainly be better spent looking for that purpose rather than watching the news.
Hope we can all find some lovely and honorable things to think about, this week. It's out there- let's find it!
"I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." John 16:33
"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you."
Isaiah 26:3
As y'all know, I used Ancestry.com to trace back my family history during the quarantine. I trust you didn't forget the part about me descending from Scottish royalty. Well, something else that I was reminded of in the pages of our history- every generation has had its struggles and hardships. Some have been unique to a certain time period and some are like history repeating itself but there has always been struggle.
While Carson napped in his baby bed, I remember I was working in the kitchen when the news interrupted the tv show I had on as background noise. I remember going into the family room and turning up the volume because it was obvious that something terrible had happened. I sat in a chair, still holding a damp dish towel, and watched the horror. The second plane hit and so did the reality that this was no accident. I remember being so scared because it was all happening so fast and no one knew what would unfold next. I sat in that chair thinking most about my baby in his bed and my young child at her school and I wondered what was happening to their world.
I was born in 1968. I've heard it referred to as the year that shattered America. To say that there was a lot going on would be an understatement. I was born about a month after Martin Luther King, Jr was killed. There were the civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War and its war demonstrators, and another Kennedy was assasinated- just to name a few more. Locally, a Jewish synagogue was bombed. After I was born and was tucked away in the hospital nursery, a smoke bomb was thrown into that area. It was an attempt to busy all the firetrucks and law enforcement while another act of hatred was being carried out on another side of town. As my Mama watched the bassinets rolling down the smoky hallway with nurses telling her to get back in her room, I'm sure she was wondering what was happening to my world.
When my mother was less than three months old, my grandmother kissed my granddaddy and he left for Camp Shelby and then onto Fort McClellan to train for his role in World War 2. All alone with an infant, my grandmother had no idea where he'd be going or when he'd be back or even if he would. For 4 years, he was a world away from south Mississippi in France, Germany, and Austria. As part of the war effort, my grandmother worked in a factory that made parachutes for the troops, while her mother kept her baby. Knowing about all the terror of the Nazi regime and not sure how the effort to stop them would turn out, I'm certain, when she held my mother in her arms, she was wondering what was happening to her world.
My great-grandmother who was born in the late 1800's was widowed at a fairly young age in the middle of the Great Depression. Most of her 9 children were still young enough to be living at home and their provision and care fell solely on her shoulders with her husband gone. Her older boys planted crops. The vegetables were canned. Some fruits were canned and some sun-dried. She had chickens for eggs and meat and cows for milking. They raised hogs and cured the meat. Before sunrise to after dark, while she worked to keep everyone fed and clothed, there's no doubt she was wondering what was happening to their world.
One disadvantage that we clearly do have over them all, though, is that we're constantly blasted with every morsel of bad news as it happens. Instantly and continuously. Aside from all the news outlets and social media dissemination, almost every citizen in every corner of the earth is armed with a camera, a recording device, and many public platforms to share their findings, so we see disturbing footage and hear shocking stories all day long. Unlike generations before us, we don't have to wait for a newspaper to land in our yard or the news to broadcast the highlights on the radio or even for Walter Cronkite to break in with a newsflash. No, our minds are constantly fed bad news because it sells better than the good kind.
As Christians, we can allow that constant drip to make us anxious, bitter, and angry or we can realize that we're just living out the struggles of our day. Like every other generation before us has done. Yes, there is evil. Yes, there is godlessness. Yes, there are problems. Yes, there are people who wish to do us harm. But, those things have always been and always will be as long as God keeps us here on this earth.
We can let the echo of bad news drown out everything good until it dominates our minds and hearts or we can control the volume and monitor its flow and let God's Good News have the microphone. Nothing about our particular time has caught Him off guard. And as long as He has us here, He has a purpose for each one of us. Our time will certainly be better spent looking for that purpose rather than watching the news.
Hope we can all find some lovely and honorable things to think about, this week. It's out there- let's find it!
"I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." John 16:33
"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you."
Isaiah 26:3
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Hello, Hello Fresh
11:26 PM
Hey, it's been a little while! I've found that I have fallen into the quarantine mentality. Nowadays, if you don't feel like doing something, you pretty much get a free pass- you know, with "everything that's going on" as we like to say in the South. Of course, blogging has nothing to do with staying safe during a pandemic, but the quarantine mindset- well, it seems to spill over into anywhere we'll let it. If you want to put off doing something- well, people will understand right now. It's fine. That's where I've been. Kind of in quarantine/summer vacay mode.
I haven't been completely idle. I have put up a lot of vegetables. Over 40 bags of peas and butter beans. Blair and John Samuel came for a long 4th weekend and we enjoyed an open air, no hugging holiday with our extended family for the first time in a long while. Davis' post retirement business has grown to the point where I'm helping him with some of his computer work. I'm in training right now, so I'll let you know how I like him as a boss as this progresses. We went through this biblical-like rainy period around here. It was dreary, but it did delay the arrival of the more serious Mississippi heat that's expected long before now. I'm afraid the reprieve is over and the life-sucking, hope-draining blaze is here in all its splendor. Yesterday, I went with my friends, Gena and Jean, to Laurel to see the sights and shopping of the small town featured on HGTV's show, Hometown. It was there on their sizzlin' streets that I decided that once I got home, I would not be going back outside until first frost. Y'all know how I feel about this. I've also been working on a paint by number of Ruby given to me by my kids and have accumulated some Ruby stories that need to be told soon. I've done the fall ordering for the stores online and through rep visits since I'm not attempting market, this year. I've been sitting on pins and needles about football season- dying to hear any tidbit of hopeful news. They just can't take it away- they just can't. Carson goes back to school in a couple of weeks and he's outgrown a lot of his clothes, so there's been some shopping. He's been home for the longest spring break in the history of the world. Long enough to grow a couple of sizes and I like to think all this cooking I've done since March has made this growth spurt possible.
So, since I've been truant and am feeling a little rusty, I thought we'd talk about the light and non-controversial topic of home delivered meal prep kits.
A while back, Blair and John Samuel started Hello Fresh and really liked it, so I decided we'd give it a whirl. With Carson home, I feel like I'm in the kitchen more than I'm not and was becoming deficient in ideas and short on enthusiasm. I've always had some concerns about those meal programs, though, and the main one among them being serving sizes and how many bowls of cereal I'd have to eat between dinner and bedtime. Usually, when something says 4 servings, in my mind, they're really referring to a woman and her 3 young toddlers. My faith in hearty portions was shaky.
Maybe if I told you about my background, you'd understand why that's such a pressing concern. First, I grew up in the South between two brothers and a daddy, who all loved to eat. Three times a day, we were cooked for by my mother, the home economics major, who could/can work the kitchen like nobody's business. It was hard to resist the stuff she was pumping out of there. So, seated among all those men and man cubs at our table and being served all the goodness, I learned how to eat heartily. It didn't help that I was a twig of a girl. A twig, I tell you. I was 95 lbs when I graduated from high school. In one sitting, I'd eat one dozen of my Mama's peanut butter cookies as they'd come out of the oven with a couple of glasses of milk and I never gained an ounce. Never. An. Ounce. It was a perfect world, really- just how I imagine heaven will be. The only drawback is when your eating habits form while your metabolism is like that of a hummingbird, it can be a difficult adjustment when it slows to the rate of an emu by your 40's and 50's. That inner skinny voice still tries to deceive me, whispering in my ear, "You should have another piece of pie, you 95lb goddess. It's no match for your young, robust metabolism."
So, because my eating habits developed under such ideal circumstances, I am now a grown woman who loves to eat more than anything and who wants to feel full when I get up from the table even if I have to spend more and more and more time on the treadmill, each day, to make it work. When I attend those ladies' salad luncheons where there's a dollop of chicken salad, a little cup of fruit, and a nest of greenery, I'm thinking, "where am I going to stop on my way home to get some real food because this is not gonna do it?" This takes me back to my primary concern about meal prep kits- portion sizes.
A while back, Blair and John Samuel started Hello Fresh and really liked it, so I decided we'd give it a whirl. With Carson home, I feel like I'm in the kitchen more than I'm not and was becoming deficient in ideas and short on enthusiasm. I've always had some concerns about those meal programs, though, and the main one among them being serving sizes and how many bowls of cereal I'd have to eat between dinner and bedtime. Usually, when something says 4 servings, in my mind, they're really referring to a woman and her 3 young toddlers. My faith in hearty portions was shaky.
Maybe if I told you about my background, you'd understand why that's such a pressing concern. First, I grew up in the South between two brothers and a daddy, who all loved to eat. Three times a day, we were cooked for by my mother, the home economics major, who could/can work the kitchen like nobody's business. It was hard to resist the stuff she was pumping out of there. So, seated among all those men and man cubs at our table and being served all the goodness, I learned how to eat heartily. It didn't help that I was a twig of a girl. A twig, I tell you. I was 95 lbs when I graduated from high school. In one sitting, I'd eat one dozen of my Mama's peanut butter cookies as they'd come out of the oven with a couple of glasses of milk and I never gained an ounce. Never. An. Ounce. It was a perfect world, really- just how I imagine heaven will be. The only drawback is when your eating habits form while your metabolism is like that of a hummingbird, it can be a difficult adjustment when it slows to the rate of an emu by your 40's and 50's. That inner skinny voice still tries to deceive me, whispering in my ear, "You should have another piece of pie, you 95lb goddess. It's no match for your young, robust metabolism."
So, because my eating habits developed under such ideal circumstances, I am now a grown woman who loves to eat more than anything and who wants to feel full when I get up from the table even if I have to spend more and more and more time on the treadmill, each day, to make it work. When I attend those ladies' salad luncheons where there's a dollop of chicken salad, a little cup of fruit, and a nest of greenery, I'm thinking, "where am I going to stop on my way home to get some real food because this is not gonna do it?" This takes me back to my primary concern about meal prep kits- portion sizes.
Well, Hello Fresh pleasantly surprised me. I am quite full when I get up from the table. When I opened the contents of the ingredient bag for the smothered meatballs and mashed potatoes pictured below, I didn't think there was any way those few ping pong ball potatoes were going to make enough for all of us, but they did, which tells me I probably waste a lot of food. Excuse my presentation. And I like my green beans a little on the caramelized side. And, also, I'm not a food blogger.
Secondly, I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to find foods that we would eat. Well, let me rephrase that. I was concerned I wouldn't be able to find foods that Carson and I would eat. Davis will eat anything on God's earth and I mean that. I am more selective and Carson is way more selective. When I saw chickpea tinga tacos, creamy dreamy mushroom cavatappi, and brushchetta zucchini boats, I'm wondering- ok, first, where is the meat and, second, these pictures don't look like foods we enjoy down here in the South. I mean- hello, Hello Fresh, what in the tarnation is this chermoula and chimichurri you speak of? And it would be helpful if you'd just put macaroni in parentheses after cavatappi so those of us in the back will know what you mean. I suppose I have a more plain spoken palate. But, Hello Fresh offers so many choices, each week, that I'm always able to find three dishes that I think we'll all enjoy.
We have the three meal plan and it arrives on Wednesdays. The available delivery days depend on the area where you live. Everything I need is included except oil, salt, pepper, sugar, and butter. The ingredients are already measured out, so I just get the amounts I need and no measuring saves time. The meats come sandwiched between ice packs on the bottom and the other ingredients are in separate bags labeled for each recipe. The produce is really fresh and pretty. Each meal comes with a large recipe/instruction card for the dish and most of them are ready in 30-40 minutes. The instructions are so easy to follow that Carson has made a couple of them for us and really enjoyed it. I've only had one issue with an ingredient and their customer service couldn't have been nicer, so my experience has really been positive.
I think this is something I'll continue to do. I have skipped the next couple of weeks until Carson goes back to school. He really limits our choices with his texture issues. Also, there's not a three serving option and four gets a little pricey, but it'll be perfect for Davis and me when our nest empties out again. Three nights a week, I can just put it on auto-pilot and not have to think about what's for dinner.
I hope y'all are doing well. I'll be back next week with, hopefully, some more exciting reading material.
Have a great weekend and stay cool!
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