Ooh, last week’s lesson #13, from Come, Follow Me, about Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes and walking on water had so many golden nuggets of truth!
I will write about one of those golden nuggets here. In Matthew 14:25, it says that Jesus come in the fourth watch. What is the fourth watch? It is the period of time between 3 and 6 AM. For the past few years I occasionally wake up during this time. I used to plan on sleeping more when this happened. Usually I could turn over and fall back to sleep. A few times however I would lie there awake, not able to sleep any more. Then I attended a Veggie Gals gathering and one of my Veggie Gal friends suggested that when that happens, God is gently nudging you because He wants to speak to you. So It’s important to get up and pray and let God know that you are there seeking Him and ready to listen, just as Samuel said, “Speak God, for thy servant listeneth.” She said to take a notebook and write down the answers you get. She said you can go back to bed if you want, and usually, you can more easily, because God’s purpose for waking you has been fulfilled.
I have been experimenting with this and have received some answers that I normally wouldn’t. It’s wonderful!
When President Nelson and his wife Sister Wendy Nelson came to Arizona recently and spoke to the Saints, she shared that he has been getting revelation many times during the night. He records the revelation on a yellow pad. Perhaps these times have been during the fourth watch. I don’t know, but it’s entirely possible. Here is an article about that.
Brother S. Michael Wilcox gave an Education Week talk about the fourth watch, shown above. It is especially important for those of us who feel that our prayers go unanswered. Or if you feel stuck in a rut. Getting up before daylight and praying during the dark of early morning, during the fourth watch, somehow makes it easier to hear the voice of God. Maybe because it’s so dark and still, it’s easier to sense the light of revelation because of the contrast with physical darkness. I don’t know, but I have experienced it and enjoy the results.
Jesus set the example for us to pray during the dark by getting up before day and praying. See Mark 1:35. I blogged about that here. I know that it can be hard to do this consistently, as a mom, because of varying schedules of family members and the crucial importance of sleep. So I am not saying that if you don’t wake up every day to pray before 6 AM you are sinning. That being said if you feel stuck or that your prayers are not being answered, experiment and see if praying during the fourth watch helps. Your version of praying a “great while before day” and “the fourth watch” will look different for you depending on your family’s schedule. The point is to pray alone before the busy-ness of the day settles in. There’s something about getting up, sacrificing sleep, and deliberately seeking God in prayer when everything around you is hushed and quiet that gives a sign to God that you truly want to hear him and obey.
The video below touches on the Fourth Watch principle and does a nice summary of the whole scripture reading for Come, Follow Me Week #13. You can read about how we use the Come, Follow Me Study Guide here.
The Trim Healthy Mama sisters, Serene and Pearl, show a hack for stretching ground beef in the video above. I’ve been doing a similar thing already for years, except I use cabbage. For those of you like my sister-in-law who think mushrooms are totally gross, cabbage will do the trick. Cabbage definitely lasts longer. It doesn’t get slimy like mushrooms do if left for over a week in the fridge. Mushrooms probably provide, however, a beefier texture. They say that mushrooms provide lots of Vitamin D if brought to room temperature, and I doubt if cabbage has Vitamin D, so each ingredient has advantages. Next time we have taco salad I’m going to try this recipe! You can see my hacks for doing the THM diet on the cheap here.
Last Sunday while sitting in Relief Society (the women’s organization of my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) I had a mind meld. I had two concepts, one from the New Testament, and one from the talk we were discussing that day, meld in my mind. It was so fabulous! I love it when this happens.
The New Testament lesson for last week was from the Come, Follow Me Study Guide, about the parable of the sower, in Matthew 13. So I had been thinking a lot about seeds and soils. The video below shows Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler discussing the parable.
Jesus shared this parable to help us see that people have different conditions of the heart. Each one of us have hearts that can be hard or soft, unreceptive to truth, or receptive to truth. A heart can be like soil. It is much easier for a seed to grow in soft, rich soil, than hard. It’s much easier for truth to grow in a soft heart. As a family, we talked about this parable during dinner one night. I told the kids that we can each do things to make our hearts soft, every day. These are things that nurture our soul/soil, like yummy food, music we like, having clean clothes in our drawers and closet, talking with friends, and reading good books. For me especially, doing my healthy posture exercises help as well and having sunshine. I asked the kids to tell me what helped them and they agreed on the yummy food, music, and the friends. The younger ones didn’t want to say anything more, either because they didn’t know, or they didn’t want to tell me.
I’ve realized from this Come, Follow Me lesson that the seed symbolizes any nugget of truth. It can be a doctrine, a gospel truth, or it can be a practical truth. It can be a prompting from the Holy Ghost, about what to do regarding the practical living of daily life. A prompting that will help us in that very day or help someone else. It can even be advice from a friend or a parent, even at my age. (Like the time I was last at my childhood home, and my dad told me to do something. I didn’t want to do it, but I decided to oblige him.)
Then I went to a retreat for my homeschooling moms’ circle of friends. My friend Sarah did a presentation about how to have parent mentor meetings with your kids. I was pondering how to up my game with that. My older kids did them willingly when they were home, during their scholar phase, but the three youngest balk at them. So I was pondering how to help them want them.
I realized that what would help is to do things to soften their hearts. So ever since I’ve been pondering the few things they said and what I’ve observed from them, that they like.
“As daughters of God, you have an innate and great capacity to sense the needs of others and to love. That, in turn, makes you more susceptible to the whisperings of the Spirit. The Spirit can then guide what you think, what you say, and what you do to nurture people so the Lord may pour knowledge, truth, and courage upon them. ”
I thought, “Wow, we as women have innately soft hearts, and that allows us to see the soft things in life we can do to soften other people’s hearts, like a cheery hello, a compliment, a smile, giving a gift, or speaking some other love language. Then those ‘soft hearts’ will be more receptive to whatever ‘seed of truth’ I want to plant in their hearts. Like the importance of regular meetings, and whatever instruction I give them.
So as I pray to draw near to God, He will pour out His Spirit upon me to help me know what I can do to soften the hearts of my children, even when they don’t know, or don’t tell me, what would help them. I know that as I do this, parent mentor meetings will become easier.
The inspiration is coming! Just this morning I drove my son home from seminary. While he was inside class, I went shopping for oatmeal, since we are out, even though it was early in the morning and I would rather have been home. His older brother, who usually drives him to seminary, is gone for an extended period of time so I get to do driving duties when the carpool doesn’t work. As we were driving home, I got the prompting, “Go buy some tissues for him.” He had been sniffling a lot lately, and we were out of tissues at home. My immediate reply was, “I was just at the store! I am not going back! I hate shopping! No, we are going home. He can make do with toilet paper or paper napkins, until I come back for a big shopping trip. I am not going back into that store, I want to be home!” But the Spirit persisted, with its seed, as a sower, and I chose to have a soft heart and let the seed be planted by taking the action. I changed lanes and turned into the store’s parking lot.
As we went inside, he mentioned something he wanted to buy with his own money to replace something he has that he loves that is broken. So I let him go buy that thing. I hope that was a HUGE deposit in his emotional bank account, to help him have a soft heart.
I am excited to put more thought into this stewardship I have to help cultivate soft hearts in my home. It really helps me feel that the little things that the enemy tells me aren’t important, like good food, flowers in the home, beautiful music, enriching books and movies, dejunking, kind words, a calm, kind voice, and compliments, really are important.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
What!? This is one of those verses that I don’t ever remember seeing in the Bible until now. What happened to “peace on earth, goodwill to men”? Talk about a paradox in Christianity!
My five sons and I.
To help me understand the paradox, I looked up the word “sword” in Hebrew. I know that the New Testament was originally written in Greek, but the ancient Hebrew still holds meaning for understanding English words.
“Sword” in Hebrew is written like this:
זין
and pronounced like”zayin”
The letter characters are from right to left, since Hebrew reads right to left: “zayin”(yes, the letter that starts the word has the same name as the word), “yod,” and “nun.” These are similar to our letters in the English alphabet for “z” “y” and “n.” Here are the ancient Hebrew pictograms of these letters, again from right to left:
(mattock, an agricultural tool, for zayin)
(arm, for yod)
(sprouting seed, for nun)
So those pictograms represent these ideas:
(cut ground/nourish = mattock/zayin)
(work/throw/worship = arm/yod)
(heir = sprouting seed/nun)
How fitting that Jesus called himself a sword before he gave the parable of the sower and the seed that follows Matthew 10 a few chapters later in Matthew 13. He is truly the one who cuts the ground or soil of our minds, to plant or pierce the soil of our minds with truth, that we might work with him and be joint heirs with Him of the Father’s kingdom.
Here are the verses that follow the above statement from Jesus:
“For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foesshall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. Hethat findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 10:35-38)
So in other words, Jesus comes to separate us, with the sharpness and strength of a sword, from anything that keeps us from God, even if it is a mother, father, or child. Here’s what Elder D. Todd Christofferson has to say about this:
“I’m confident that a number of you have been rejected and ostracized by father and mother, brothers and sisters as you accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ and entered into His covenant. In one way or another, your superior love of Christ has required the sacrifice of relationships that were dear to you, and you have shed many tears. Yet with your own love undiminished, you hold steady under this cross, showing yourself unashamed of the Son of God” (“Finding Your Life,” Ensign, Mar. 2016, 28).
I haven’t ever had to do this but I applaud any of you who have. Jesus will richly reward you.
So remember how I used spaghetti squash to adapt the Trim Healthy Mama Trimtastic Zucchini cake (page 296 of the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook)? I did the same thing with the recipe recently. Only this time I did have some zucchini on hand so I made the cake with squash AND zucchini. I also improved the cake by doing two things:
Waiting until the cake was chilled before frosting it. That kept the cake from melting the frosting.
Dressing it up into a double layer birthday cake with more decoration, including strawberries.
My husband had a birthday last week so I had fun dolling the cake up. Here is the recipe again with my instructions on how to make into a fancy birthday cake. Like I mentioned before, It is adapted from the THM Trimtastic Cake. It is doubled in size, and with a change in the flours because one of my kids can’t have almond flour, which is in the THM Baking Blend.
3 cups pureed cooked spaghetti squash, yes spaghetti squash, or a combination of pureed squash and pureed zucchini
(I use spaghetti squash as a low-carb noodle sub, cooked for 1 1/2 hours at 375 degrees after poking it a few times with a fork. Cut in half after baking, use oven mitts, then after it is cool, scrape out the seeds. After using for noodles I save the leftovers for omelettes and baking low-carb treats like this)
8 eggs, yes 8!
1 stick of butter melted (1/2 cup)
Then add the dry ingredients and mix more:
3/4 c oat fiber
3/4 c ground golden flaxseed
1 1/2 c ground erythritol powder (I still feel funny when using this, it seems so fake to me, but for times when sugar causes more problems than erythritol might I am OK using it)
1 1/2 tsp stevia extract
1 T vanilla extract
2 tsp aluminum-free baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
4 pinches mineral salt
8 T cocoa powder
1 cup stevia sweetened chocolate chips
Mix thoroughly. Pour into two greased round cake pans. I had a hard time getting the cake pans out onto a serving platter, so next time I will dust the pans with wheat flour. I had just greased them and not floured them. I had to use a butter knife and do the tapping thing. If you are allergic to wheat then try dusting with oat fiber and or arrowroot powder. I’m not sure how that will turn out, it just sounds like it will. I haven’t tried it yet. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until knife inserted comes out clean.
Cool completely by sticking in a fridge.
Frost with this easy chocolate frosting:
Whip 3 cups real cream until fluffy (stiff peaks) then add stevia and teeny bit of mineral salt and cocoa to taste. Or leave out the cocoa and add vanilla for a white frosting. Make most of it chocolate frosting, and save some to be white/vanilla.
After the cake has chilled, carefully turn upside down onto a serving platter. Frost* that layer. Then put on the second layer, and frost that. Add some strawberries, as my daughter did, decoratively, and then put the white frosting in a cake decorator tube (I use this one from Pampered Chef, it’s so much better than using bags) and trim the edges with a fancy tip. The picture below, although not totally pretty picture perfect, shows the generous frosting layers. I’m sure yours will be much more blog- photo-stylized-worthy! This cake is so filling with the frosting made out of pure cream that you can only eat one slice for dessert. Then have the rest for breakfast the next day! Then you will be hungry enough to have more than one piece! 🙂
*Frost generously! As I mentioned in my last post about this recipe, this frosting reminds me of the quote from the children’s book, Gone Away Lake, where Mrs. Cheever, the neighbor lady, says that the proper way to make a chocolate cake is to frost generously so that it looks like “built” like an adobe home. So I “built” my cake with the frosting this time as a double-layer cake and it definitely looks adobe-like! I love it! (I don’t know why the frosting looks almost pink, it didn’t have any red food dye to color it, just cocoa powder to make it a pale brown.)
Before we get any more into March, I want to share the classics we learned from and studied in February and this first half of March. The above photo shows some of the picture books that I picked up from the library in February. Here are they are below along with a bunch of other books we’ve been learning from. Books really do make a difference in my life. When I surround myself with great books, I am so much happier. 🙂 I treat my weekly trip to the public library just as seriously as my weekly trip to the grocery store. It just has to be done to make things run smoothly and happily for me as a homeschooling mom! One of my favorite all-time activities is to get book recommendations from my kids’ commonwealth class book lists, friends, or from catalogs, and then go place them on hold on the library’s web site, get them, and read them. Such satisfaction!
When I read this a year ago, I didn’t like it as much as I do now. I guess my Carol Tuttle Type 4-ness was kicking in, being overly critical of the implausibility of having sweaters connected by yarn as people are wearing them, not to mention having buildings, vehicles, and mailboxes covered in sweaters and all connected. After revisiting it this winter and suspending my realism, I agree with Sarah Mackenzie. It pretty much is the perfect picture book. The pictures tell the story even more than the words. I love the implication that what you put out, comes back to you. In other words, charity never faileth. Kindness works long-term. This is one of the best books to read in winter because of the theme of sweaters, which are, yeah, the best thing about winter, after Christmas. Except for maybe cuddling on the couch reading picture books.
A sweet picture book about being a grandfather. Rather rare, and the fact that Billy Crystal is the author, well, that makes it even better. He seems like such a nice guy, and hey, he was in Princess Bride too.
This is one of the best books about the potential for someone young to create something so life-changing for generations to come. Louis Braille was a teenager when he created the Braille alphabet. I didn’t know that! This is such a great story of “grit.” See a book at the end of this post for more on that.
The illustrations in this book are the best! I love Claire Keane’s style! Such a sweet story about love for a pet. When I read it to my son I pointed out that what the girl went through for the duck, a parent goes through for a child. Hopefully that helps him understand my mother love more.
I have to read the above book every March, because it combines two of the themes I use for March in my devotionals ebook: family history and St. Patrick’s Day. I just love the story!
Another great story of the power of grit. Howard Carter simply did not give up his passion to find King Tut’s treasure.
This is a great, true story of Peter Mark Roget, the man who wrote Roget’s Thesaurus. I love how it talks about how even in his childhood he was fascinated with words, lists, and facts. Melissa Sweet, the illustrator, has such a fun style of making collages of her drawings with photos of real objects. even the textured cover of books. She did the same with a picture book bio of E. B. White, which I love too. I love it that Roget found his passion at such a young age. Another great example of grit, as defined by Angela Duckworth, because he combined passion with perseverance. My favorite quote from the book: “If only all the ideas in the world could be found in one place, then everyone could find the best word.” He became a medical doctor, but that didn’t detour him from his long-held desire to create the ultimate list, a thesaurus, which literally means, “a treasure house of words.” I love it! This is the perfect book to help nerdy kids like me who used to read the dictionary, encyclopedia, and telephone book for fun, feel not so alone in their love for words. His thesaurus is still in print. I love reading about people who create classics, works of art and science and words that stand the test of time. So inspiring!
I saw this book at the library in another town after I was excused for jury duty. That experience was rather stressful so where else would I seek refuge but a library? (The temple was too far away.) I knew I had to get this book. It has beautiful double-page spreads of maps of different areas all over the world. The unusual feature is that it shows historical events, a timeline of events that happened in that place, on the map, with 3-D graphics and lots of facts. Perfect for visual learners! It’s a wondrous combination of geography and history. By poring over these pages you and your kids will understand the broad reach of the Roman empire, ancient Asia, medieval times, the places of the Revolutionary and World Wars, among others. You will also see things that have affected world trade like the Silk Road, the slave trade, and the Internet. It also shows maps of where some Bible Stories took place, the Great Wall of China, China’s Golden Age, and ancient American cultures, including the Hopewell and Adena cultures. So, so cool! I definitely want to get my own copy of it.
My husband and I watched this for one of our date nights in February. It’s one of those rare movies that shows the power of married love for helping a man accomplish his quest. (A major point Ramona Zabriskie makes in her Wife for Life book.) Best of all, it’s true! It does have a few mild swear words so you might want to watch with the online script pulled up, read ahead, and mute at appropriate times if watching with kids. With those words muted out it’s a great family movie and a great date night movie because of the marriage theme. I really like the actress who plays Mary, Bobby’s wife. She shows so much emotion with her face, and her hair, fashion sense, and eyebrows are just the best. 🙂 Bobby is also a fabulous example of grit. I have a funny story to go with this movie. My dh and I decided to watch it on our laptop in the car while parked up a nearby canyon for date night. I didn’t charge the laptop enough before we left so it died in the middle of the movie. So we plugged the laptop into the car’s AC outlet (which I love having, btw, for laptop use as a passenger when someone else is driving) to use the car’s electrical system, and that ended up draining the car’s battery. So then we couldn’t drive home. We had to call my teenage son to come rescue us, as if we were two irresponsible teenagers who had gone parking and gotten into trouble. So funny!
We finished this book after I read it aloud for over a month to the kids during their kitchen cleaning/dishes time. I did read ahead and skip some parts and paraphrase because it’s written for adults and not kids. Mr. Rogers played a healing role in the author’s life, to help him heal from depression, a verbally abusive father, and the death of his brother, who died from cancer. So amazing! “I’m proud of you,” has become a phrase in our family now, which usually elicits laughter. Like when I climbed into bed one night, and announced to my husband, whose head had already hit the pillow. I told him I had finished the book with the kids that day and he surprised me by saying, “I’m proud of you!” I learned a lot about Mr. Rogers from reading it. He was amazing!
I highly recommend all of the Uncle Eric books, to get a rare side of politics, history, and economy that you don’t hear in the mainstream press, including public school textbooks. I am reading this one aloud to my two teens who are doing the LEMI Hero Project. We are almost done, then we will do the WW2 book.
My two younger teens are reading/listening to the above book as part of the Hero Project. It tells of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, through the lives of six characters. A sobering book.
This one is a real cliffhanger. I hope it gets my kids thinking about claiming the nobility in their lives, and the differences between royal roles, royal titles, and claiming leadership. We shall see. Sarah Mackenzie recommends it in her podcasts. True story: this is the first book I have read aloud that has caused my 14 year old son to sneak off and read ahead of me. I finally have found a book that he loves! Thank goodness it’s part 1 of a trilogy!
I am listening to the above book for my moms’ class at my once a week homeschool group (a commonwealth school). I love the little insights Betsy has along the way of her disrupted upbringing, when she goes to live with her extended family. Her insights harmonize with the way I’ve strived to raise my children. Things like, you don’t need stay at a certain level of academic knowledge, just because you are in a grade at a public school, you can learn as fast as you want. (Or any knowledge for that matter.) Also that Betsy’s aunt had a goal to really understand her. This is a glimpse into the ideal childhood.
We read this book as part of Quest, a LEMI Project class for olders scholars that I mentor. My 17 year old is in the class. We read this book to help us understand the Islamic worldview. I loved reading it after my son did, to see all the points that he underlined. Tito Momen is a hero of mine! He was in prison for 15 years because of a false accusation, which was a thin veil for his real “crime,” which was converting to Christianity. After reading the book, I feel like I have a new friend. The feeling of love that enveloped me as I read the last page was so tremendous. This book is a must read to help you understand Christian persecution in the Islamic world.
I listened to this book when my two oldest kids were taking a statesmanship class. Now I get to revisit it again with kid #4 taking Quest. Dare I say anything negative about this book that is so revered by my homeschooling compatriots? It is has a lot of good information, but I have to wonder how much actually comes from the writings of the Founding Fathers, and how much is Skousen’s agenda of how he thinks government should be. I do like the book anyway. I especially like the part about how Communism started spreading in the U.S. by the people in the movement relabeling their organization.
The book has some errors. My attorney husband who tends to read better and catch discrepancies has found a few. All in all though it’s a decent summary of government based on limited powers, which is how our constitutional government is supposed to work. I’m listening to the YouTube of it which brings back memories of listening to it when the older kiddos were at home, since it’s the same narrator/version. A pleasant enough voice but if I am even slightly sleepy and driving it’s not a good combination, just like how it was 10 years ago!
So my homeschool group is discussing this book soon at a moms’ retreat. It’s a great combination of research and readability about the science of passion and determination. Many books written by college professors/researchers tend to be dry. Duckworth definitely has a gift to make her research about motivation, the improvement of skill, and persistence accessible. This book is a great follow-up to Carol Dweck’s Mindset, which our homeschool parents’ group discussed in January. One of the moms in my group says that Elder Lynn G. Robbins recently recommended Grit in a talk he gave at a regional conference here in AZ. This is the perfect book to help a parent understand how to help yourself and others develop more purpose in your life, more task power, and more passion. I’m so excited to finish it and talk about it this weekend!
I heard about this series, Lark Rise to Candleford, from my friend Heidi. It is based on a book. I started watching it with my daughter during her babymoon last fall with her Amazon Prime account. It was the perfect thing for us to share together; not brain candy, but still light, cheerful, and enough meaning to be thought-provoking. During the middle of the night when nursing she would watch, skipping ahead of me/”movie betraying” me. It’s OK. I knew I could catch up to her later. I thoroughly enjoyed it, at least the first three episodes. I got the book on CD when I came back home but didn’t finish it, even though we listened to some of it on a road trip to Utah. So then I asked for the DVD set for my birthday, and my grown son delivered! He gave me the entire collection of all the seasons! Bless that son! I love that it shows a village of people interacting, with different challenges: the older single woman who is the postmistress, the young single woman, still in her teen years, who is sent off to work to help provide for her family back home, the young man who starts falling in love with her, the alcoholic woman with a growing family who struggles with her addiction and her husband having to be gone out of town for work, the older couple, among many others. It’s definitely a slice of real agricultural, small-town life. My husband and I have been slowly going through it for date nights.
Wow, this is all in addition to our regular family scripture study, mathusee study for the younger kiddos, handwriting, and the Come Follow Me study guide. I am definitely loving this time of year, with all this time to read!
For Week #11 of Come, Follow Me, the New Testament readings included the teaching of Jesus from Matthew 11:29, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
So I looked up how the word “yoke” translates into Hebrew. Here it is:
עול
These letters are, from right to left, “ayin,” “yod” and “lamed.” In Hebrew the word is “ol.”
The ancient Hebrew pictograms for these Hebrew letters stand for, from right to left:
“eyes” “arm” and “shepherd’s staff”
The meanings of these symbols are: vision, work/man’s intelligence, and being led by a leader/staff.
So the composite meaning of the word is “Seeing the work/burden as a shepherd’s staff.”
In other words, sometimes what we feel as a yoke, a burden, or a restraint is the very thing that leads us to greater joy, happiness, and life. Truly that is the role of Christ for us. Here are three videos that teach about that:
I hope you will see that your burdens, your yokes, are to help you have greater joy. They are evidence of God’s love for you.
So here’s what I learned from last week’s study of Come, Follow Me, the Bible-based curriculum for home and church study for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
My favorite story from last week’s lesson was that of the woman who had the issue of blood for 12 years that was dried up when she touched the hem of the Savior’s garment. I am assuming this “issue of blood” was some kind of menstrual issue. It probably was, as if it had been a wound on the surface of her skin, she probably would have died if she had continuously bled from surface wound for 12 years.
We are used to thinking of virtue in terms of simple goodness, and sexual purity. Or we think of it terms of virility, since virility and virtue both have the same Latin root “vir” which means “man.”
This story suggests to me that there is more to virtue than simple sexual purity and the basic good, virtuous character traits of honesty and kindness. There is something about virtue being connected to the women’s fertility cycle. When we as a society treat this awesome cycle in the way that God views it, as a cycle created by him to be the fountain of life, our society will be truly virtuous. That means honoring the cycle and not doing things to interrupt it, squash it, or hide it. You can read more about that in my chapter on fertility in my book. Click on the tab “the book” in my header above to find that chapter. Nancy Campbell, founder of Above Rubies, also has much information about honoring fertility on her web site. Here is a link to the articles about fertility on her web site.
This is the best snack ever! Forget what Jim Gaffigan says, that kale “tastes like bug spray.” Yes, maybe it does, if it is raw! I’ve never actually tasted bug spray so I wouldn’t know. Maybe he’s thinking that when you eat kale raw, it tastes the way bug spray smells.
I don’t like raw kale at all, and according to Sarah at The Healthy Home Economist, raw kale is not good for you. The great news is that it’s better for you cooked, and when you cook kale to a crisp with a bit of butter, and toss in some mineral salt, kale tastes like potato chips!
It’s true!
So years ago I made kale chips like this, over here, in an oven. The problem is that I have a hard time not burning them. It also seems like such effort to get out the jelly roll pan, the parchment paper, massage the leaves with ACV, and wait for the oven to heat up.
Now I do my kale chips this super easy way. It’s so easy and delicious I do it twice a day sometimes.
Melt 1 T butter in a frying pan on low heat to avoid burning. Yes, keep it on low! Don’t be like me and leave on medium and walk away to do “just one thing” and come back to burnt butter.
Add in a cup or two of raw kale leaves. Stir around until the butter evenly coats the pan and the leaves. Sprinkle on some salt, and other seasonings you like, like cumin, paprika, garlic powder, nutritional yeast. Keep the temp on low, and stir every few minutes, and just keep roasting on low until the edges turn crispy and slightly brown and the kale leaves are thoroughly dry. Then eat! Store after they are completely cool, at room temp, so they don’t get wilty and limpy and soft in the fridge. I love the crispy little curly edges that are so delicate and salty. Super yum! I eat these when I am hangry and they hit the spot!
Tree of Life Mothering 