My youngest child has been battling canker sores lately so I had to come up with a sugar-free dessert that wouldn’t aggravate them. We always have a treat for Family Home Evening on Sunday nights. (I am happy to report that with the use of homeopathy and also avoiding sugar, the sores have gone away.)
Sorry the photo above doesn’t have perfect lighting, it makes the cake not as attractive as it looked in real life. I adapted this from the Trim Healthy Mama Trimtastic Zucchini Cake. I didn’t have zucchini on hand, so I used another secret vegetable ingredient….hmm…what could it be?
(I use spaghetti squash as a low-carb noodle sub, cook 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 greased pan. Bake for 35 to 50 minutes until knife inserted comes out clean.
Cool completely by sticking in a fridge.
Frost with this easy chocolate frosting:
Whip 2 cups real cream until fluffy, and add stevia and teeny bit of mineral salt and cocoa to taste. Or leave out the cocoa and add vanilla for a white frosting. Frost the completely cooled cake.
Frost generously! It’s hard to tell in the pic below, but the frosting is 1/4 inch thick. It 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 next time with this recipe, I am making this as a double layer cake with frosting in between to better fit the adobe description. The cake tastes best when both the cake and frosting have been chilled. Yum!
The woman above is my friend Tammi Hyde. She also is my graphic designer, having done the Tree of Life logo for my blog. She has lost almost 200 lbs with the keto diet. I’m so excited for her! You go girl!
Update on 2/1/20:
She has now officially lost 200 lbs! I’m so proud of her! Here is her video about that from last September 2019!
You can follow her on her YouTube channel Keto in the Chaos. She has lots of tips and recipes, She is a busy mama of 9 who takes kids to dance class and competitions all over, plus she has a photography business, so she knows how to get things done! So If you have ever wondered about how to do the ketogenic diet as a busy mom, she is the go-to girl.
She went sledding for the first time in 30 years and had a recipe published in Woman’s World, sharing the cover with Marie Osmond. Congratulations Tammi!
The above video shows her photo shoot, then the one below shows the first time she read the article after publication. It was so cool for me to see the magazine at Walmart right before Christmas and say, “Hey I know her!”
In the videos below she tells keto beginners how to start. She presents key info about electrolytes in lesson 2. I’m wondering if my lack of knowledge about electrolytes is why I got insomnia and hormone imbalance when doing keto and had to stop.
For the second week of my study of the Sermon on the Mount from Come, Follow Me, the New Testament family based curriculum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I studied the word “judge.” I studied it in terms of translating the word into ancient Hebrew symbols. You can read my previous post to see what I discovered about “salt” when I translated it into the ancient Hebrew pictograms. I love doing this as part of my personal scripture study every morning. It is a treasure hunt of discovery and wonder every single day!
This study was amazingly Providential for me. More on that at the end of this post.
This week’s study was Part 2 of the Sermon on the Mount. It involved Matthew 6 and 7. In Matthew 7:1-2 Jesus told us to “judge righteously,” according to the Joseph Smith Translation. The KJV says we are “to judge not,” but Joseph Smith corrected that under the influence of the Holy Spirit and translated it as “judge righteously” so that we create a “righteous judgement.” So we are to judge, we just have to be super careful that we do it righteously. How do we do that? Well, the Hebrew word for “judge” gives us the secret. The word for judge in Hebrew is “shaphat.” Here is what it looks like:
שופט
So these Hebrew letters are, from right to left:
schin yod peh tav
We say the “sh” sound for schin, “ya” for yod, “f” or “p” or “ph” for the peh, and “t” for the tav. So that gives us “shaphat.”
Translated into the pictograms the symbols for these letters are, again, right to left:
When I first saw these symbols I didn’t know what the composite meaning could be. Then I listened to ta talk from General Conference by Elder Lynn G. Robbins about judging righteously, below. Here is the text of his talk.
Then I understood. It was like the heavens opened, and in my mind’s ear I heard angelic music. As the music played in my mind, light opened up. The meaning of “shophat/judge” came into sharp focus.
I realized that a true judge, a judge who judges righteously, is a disciple, both a follower and learner of Jesus Christ. Here is my interpretation of the Hebrew pictograms for judge:
“One with strength who digests and speaks the signs.”
or more elaborately, “One who is so thoroughly consumed with the truth that one can teach others how to read the signs and be happy and stay out of trouble.”
Someone who is in what we perceive to be trouble could be there because he or she doesn’t know the truth or how to read the signs. So if we “judge” them to be be bad or foolish, we may be judging them without knowing what light they have. We can only judge righteously if we judge with that person’s light, which can only be known through the Spirit.
A righteous judgment involves helping one to learn to read the signs of what’s going on both outside one’s body, with social and environmental cues, and inside, with emotions and biochemical changes.
Someone who is in trouble could be there because he or she doesn’t know the truth of how to read physical, spiritual, and emotional signs. This can apply to so much of life: addiction prevention (see eternalwarriors.org), overeating, anger management, parenting, child discipline, succeeding in a job, owning a business, or as a student, and so much more. A righteous judgment involves helping one to learn to read the signs and change one’s heart and behavior accordingly to stay out of trouble. If you want to read why this revelation about judging fits so well into my life right now, keep reading. Otherwise, you can be done, as my husband tells me my blog posts are too long. 🙂
In the past two weeks, I have had a few different encounters with the idea of judging. First, I got to see Nicholeen Peck of Teaching Self-Government fame, at the AZ Winter Homeschool Conference. I attended Nicholeen’s seminar and bought her CDs over 10 years ago.
So I have done what I could to put her discipline system in my home. I tweaked it some and it has worked, for what I’ve put into it, but I know I have room for improvement, to fully implement it. I was thrilled to see that she now has a Choices Map so I bought it from her vendor table.
I have high hopes it will help my children better see the signposts of their good and bad choices, so they will be better judges of their own emotions and behavior and choose to have more freedom and more choices.
Second, I read Tito Momen’s book, My Name Used to Be Mohammed for my Quest class. It was such an amazing, true story! Tito, who was born a Muslim, was imprisoned for 15 years for becoming a Christian while living in Egypt. He had to appear before a judge and was convicted falsely on charges of dealing with illegal drugs.
Third, I revisited The Law by Bastiat and discussed it with my Quest class. I read this years ago when my older kids were still in the nest and taking a statesmanship class. It really got me thinking about what exactly is justice and what is the role of government. When do judges pervert the law? I’ve been pondering that.
Fourth, I got called to jury duty! This was the third time in three months. The first two times, I called the hotline the night before and found out the case was settled out of court. So I didn’t have to go. But this third time, the case went to court. I nervously entered the courthouse, not knowing what to expect. I definitely felt out of my element! I am not used to being dressed to look businesslike at 8 AM on a Monday morning! Fortunately, I was weeded out during the juror selection process before lunchtime hit. Whew! The judge said she expected the trial to last four days! This was a new experience for me. I have hopes that justice will be served. I hope the judge and jury will be fair and impartial. I hope that the accused will be exonerated if innocent, and if guilty, will learn from some teacher in his life, whether it be the formal judge or a righteous “judge” in the form of a friend, to recognize signs of impending trouble and respond accordingly.
It’s so wonderful how God gives me experiences that weave into what I am learning by studying the Bible. If you want to see my full article of how I study each lesson in Come, Follow Me on my own and with my family, go here. Beware, it’s long! 🙂
For Week #7 of Come, Follow Me, the home and family-based New Testament curriculum for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I learned something super enlightening, once again! I am loving this!
That week’s lesson was about the Sermon on the Mount. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus compared his followers to salt, in Matthew 5:13. Why did he do this? The question in the study guide asked that.
I pondered that question by doing a Hebrew word study on “salt.” I learned about Hebrew from my close friend Katie who owns this site here, where you can learn about Hebrew pictograms. Ever since I learned the meanings of the ancient pictograms which represent the letters of the Hebrew alphabet I have been fascinated with what I find.
In Hebrew the word for salt uses these letters:
מלח
chet lamed mem
which when spoken sounds like “melakh.” Hebrew is written and read from right to left. We read the mem first, the character on the far right. Then we read the middle character, the lamed, then the letter on the far left, the chet. The mem is like our letter “m,” the lamed is like our “l” and the chet is like a “hkh” sound. We add vowel sounds in between.
These letters translate into pictograms which are symbols for, again going from right to left, corresponding with the above characters:
(water) (shepherd’s staff) (fence)
And then, these symbols stand for the following ideas:
(mystery)(leader)(fence/boundaries/covenants)
So, in other words, salt in Hebrew can mean:
“Leaders who lead into the mysteries within the bounds of covenants.”
In other words, people of salt or covenant keepers or disciples of Jesus are to be the staff-holders or leaders, to help people to learn/ behold mysteries and to come within the boundaries or fences, that covenants, provide. Isn’t that beautiful?! A true leader is not someone who says to “do whatever you want,” or “do whatever feels good.” A true leader, a disciple, leads one into the covenants that Jesus offers through His restored gospel.
Doctrine and Covenants 103:9-10-13 even unites the candle and salt symbols together. As you probably know, Jesus tells his followers to be like both salt and a candle. Here is what the above scripture says:
9 For they were set to be a light unto the world, and to be the saviors of men;
10 And inasmuch as they are not the saviors of men, they are as salt that has lost its savor, and is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.
So if we are not leading people into the covenant path, we are not being true lights. President Nelson has asked us to be the gatherers of Israel to get people onto the covenant path. That is how we follow the Savior’s light, as images of his light. I love it! In the video below, he tells us that the greatest compliment we can have is to be a “covenant keeper.”
In his first message to the Church as president, President Nelson invited each member to stay on the covenant path.
The video below shows more examples of finding the meanings of words by using the ancient Hebrew pictogram meanings. It’s so fascinating!
Here is what I have come up with so far to use the Come, Follow Me Study Guides published by my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are getting the stories of Jesus ingrained into our hearts and seeing how His truths apply to us today. It’s so exciting! I am creating this plan to unify my personal, family, and congregational study of the New Testament this year of 2019.
I read the weekly assignments of scriptures on my own during my personal scripture study. Every morning I wake up most of the family for personal and family scripture study between 6 and 7 AM. I started doing this a few years ago when I still lived in Utah, after attending this event which inspired me. (My two teen boys are usually gone before then if it’s a weekday because they go to zero hour weight training and then seminary, then they come home for our homeschool day. They do personal worship on their own.) For our personal and family scripture reading (aka PoWeR Hour, for Pray, Write, Read) we each say a silent prayer, then read the scriptures silently on our own for five minutes, then write in our own journal for five minutes. (Before I assemble the family I have a lengthy prayer on my own out loud in my bathroom on my “prayer rug,” a bathroom rug to cushion my knees on the hard floor.) Then we do family reading of the Book of Mormon. We do this even if we are on vacation or visiting relatives.
I’ve had a hard time doing the actual reading of the Bible as a whole family every day, on top of our traditional family daily Book of Mormon reading. So here’s what I do, instead of attempting to fit the family NT reading into the morning scripture study, with the two middle boys gone.
I do this at night over dinner. First I briefly tell one of the stories from the weekly assigned reading to my children in my own words. Then I show my kids a Bible video if there is one to go with it. These videos are usually included in the lesson for Come, Follow Me Guide for Sunday School. Here is the full playlist. I mention the key doctrine that goes with the video/story. The key doctrines are always printed in bold in the lessons. Then I ask a question to get my kids to think of how that doctrine applies to them today. Questions are included in the lessons after the bold heading of the doctrine. Sometimes I even come up with my own questions and use those. I love to write down their answers in a special pretty notebook I have dedicated for our Come, Follow Me Family Study.
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Usually each story has a video, at least one doctrine, and at least one question. I’ve noticed the stories are the same for the Family and Individuals Guide, the Sunday School Guide, and the Primary Guide, but the doctrines and questions used are a little different sometimes. For example, last week we read about how Jesus took a turn as a reader of the scriptures in the temple. He read Isaiah 61:1-2 and then announced that he was the fulfillment of the prophecy. He publicly announced that was He was/is the Messiah.
So I showed the above video. Then I shared the doctrine, “Jesus is the prophesied Messiah.” Then I asked, “When have you felt a witness from the Spirit that Jesus is the Messiah?” I always share my own answer. My husband and older kids, ages 17 and 20, usually answer. The younger kids sometimes do, sometimes not, because they don’t have as much life behind them. I love hearing what anybody shares, but it’s especially wonderful to hear from my older boys. They always have responses that give me a glimpse into what’s going on in their lives. I’ve also set up a group texting app for my older kids who are out of the nest to ask them the same question.
Here are the other doctrines we reviewed last week.
“Communing with God prepares me to serve Him. “ This is from the story of Jesus going into the wilderness before his public ministry. Then I asked the kids, “What do you do to prepare to serve God?”
“Jesus Christ set the example for me by resisting temptation.” This is also from the wilderness story when Jesus fasted and the devil tempted him. Then the question is, “As you read Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13, what do you learn that can help you when you face temptations?”
“As I trust in the Lord, He can help me reach my divine potential.” This is from the story of Peter trusting Jesus when Jesus asked him to thrust his net back into the water after fishing all night and not catching any fish. I thought of my own question for this one, but it’s similar to the one in the curriculum. My question was, “When have you trusted in a call you felt from the Savior, through the Holy Spirit, and you followed it like Peter, and you felt astonished at the results?” My older boys gave me amazing insights into their life as answers. I got that question from watching this video below, from Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler.
Do you see the basic pattern of telling the story of Jesus from the scriptures, showing the video of the story, sharing the doctrine(s) involved, and then asking a question, or two to see how we individually see the doctrine in action? I love it! One of these days I am going to ask what doctrines they see after we read the readings without telling them to get them to think more. It’s so simple, we can do it over dinner! As I said before, I love keeping a notebook to journal all the questions and answers.
Usually each story has a video from the Church’s Bible Video Collection, at least one doctrine, and at least one question. I’ve noticed the stories are the same for the Family and Individuals Guide, the Sunday School Guide, and the Primary Guide, but the doctrines and questions mentioned are a little different sometimes. For example, here are the doctrines highlighted in each guide for Week #7, about Matthew 4, and Luke 4-5.
For the Family/Individual Guide, the doctrines are:
Communing with God prepares me to serve Him.
Jesus Christ set the example for me by resisting temptation.
Jesus Christ is the prophesied Messiah.
As I trust in the Lord, He can help me reach my divine potential.
For the Sunday School Guide, the doctrines are:
Heavenly Father has given us the power and means to resist temptation.
Jesus Christ is the prophesied Messiah.
The commitment to follow Christ means accepting His will and forsaking our own.
For the Primary Guide, the doctrines highlighted are:
I can choose the right as Jesus did.
Jesus Christ is my Savior.
Jesus Christ invites us to be “fishers of men.”
See how they are all related, but a bit different, adapted to ages and groups? They all mesh together though. Just when I think I have thought of all the insights, I realize I am mistaken when I go to Sunday School at church and hear from fellow Saints about their insights in Sunday School class. So I don’t want to miss out on that part of my scripture study either, learning with my congregation. I love it!
So that’s how I am fitting in the Come Follow Me guides on a near daily basis for my family and me.
Now for Sundays at home…Al Fox Carraway talks about how she uses it for Sunday and then below that I share how we do it. She has little kids. My youngest is 9 so I do it differently.
After church on Sunday, for our “homechurching” to replace the third hour we have been accustomed to attending, since 1980 (and yes, I am old enough to remember the start of the three hour block, we lived in upstate New York at the time), before the change to 2 hours at the start of 2019, we go through the “Ideas for Family Scripture Study and Family Home Evening” section in the Family and Individual Guide. Go here. scroll down, and you will see that section.
I’ve noticed that it’s best not to just plow through the reading of the scriptures that are mentioned, letting the words go through our eyes and out our brains, to be forgotten a second later, sad to say. To really get the words in our hearts so that we remember them, I like to give a question before the reading to get us all in “search” mode as we read, so we are paying attention to the words we read. The study guide usually has a question to ponder or to guide our search with each reading, so I will ask that question, before the reading. If the kids don’t answer, I will ask it again and have us read again until someone answers. Taking the reading slowly and repeating is totally OK. No sense in reading just to be reading the words. Take it slowly and really digest the truths by asking questions. That’s what Jesus did.
This curriculum is allowing me to fulfill President Nelson’s admonition to “talk of Christ and rejoice in Christ.” This is what he said in October 2018 General Conference to all the women in the church when he told us to read the Book of Mormon, “As you read, I would encourage you to mark each verse that speaks of or refers to the Savior. Then, be intentional about talking of Christ, rejoicing in Christ, and preaching of Christ with your families and friends. You and they will be drawn closer to the Savior through this process. And changes, even miracles, will begin to happen.”
So, we’ve been doing the Family Study of the New Testament on Sunday afternoons after church, then also later that day on Sunday nights for Family Home Evening (FHE). My husband has been gone on Monday nights lately so we do FHE on Sunday night.
OK, now for my personal study. For my personal study I am doing the following:
-document study quadrants on Monday through Wednesdays. I learned about this from taking LEMI training. I divide my page into four quadrants, and label each quadrant with the heading: “Vocabulary,” “Lines of Logic and Equations,” “Aha’s and Epiphanies,” and “I Wonders.” On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings I write these down as I read. Then on Thursday and Friday I work on completing the vocabulary definitions into the ancient Hebrew pictogram meanings of each letter and the “I Wonder” questions. (As you can see from above, I haven’t finished my definitions yet.)
Ancient Hebrew gives amazing insights! This is another post for another day, to go into depth, but briefly I will say that I got turned on to ancient Hebrew by my close friend Katie. She has a web site here for more about that. The New Testament was not originally written in Hebrew of course, it was written in Greek. Translating the words into Hebrew by using Google and then analyzing the meaning from the pictogram perspective, however, reveals rich and deep layers of meaning that I don’t get in any other way. You can get a brief idea of the deeper meanings of the pictograms in the video above. I studied the word light when I studied the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 last week.
-watching the Don’t Miss This video commentary on Mon. or Tues. morning while I exercise. I love what I learn from the Spirit as I listen to Emily and David on this show. They also provide a study sheet which I look at to give me journal writing prompts and principles to write about. Here is the page for their Come, Follow Me Resources. Scroll down and look for where it says, “Download Study Sheet,” for each lesson.
-reading Jesus the Christ to get author James E. Talmage’s commentary on the stories. Jesus the Christ is free in the LDS Gospel Library app and on lds.org here. (The fascinating story behind Brother Talmage writing Jesus the Christ is here.)
-referring to the LDS Citation Index to see what the Church leaders have said about these scriptures in General Conference talks and other writings. It is easy to get overwhelmed though when reading these, so if you are the type to get easily overwhelmed then don’t go there. 🙂
-using the seminary and institute manual commentary. Many times though those manuals don’t answer my questions. Usually Talmage’s Jesus the Christ answers them. I discovered this because I would share some of my “I wonders” during our family sharing and then my returned-missionary son has said more than once, “Oh, read Jesus the Christ. It talks about it in there.”
-listening to the related General Conference talks or Ensign articles mentioned in the CFM study guides for Ind. and Families and Sunday School as I prep breakfast in the morning or drive a kid somewhere.
-showing the related videos and listening to the articles mentioned by homeschool blogger mom Montserrat over here.
I love doing this! I feel my spiritual life growing by leaps and bounds! I feel so blessed to have Jesus Christ as my Savior and to know Him through the sacred words of the writers of the Gospels. My life has been greatly enriched by studying these words. It is amazing!
I am learning new things about the stories of Jesus every day as I use the Come, Follow Me curriculum. Last Sunday’s readings were about three stories involving Jesus and water:
Jesus turning water into wine
Nicodemus asking Jesus about being born again, which involves baptism, or being born of water
Jesus ministering to the woman at the well of water by not simply talking to her but asking her questions and revealing who He was/is.
Then there was one more story, of Jesus cleansing the temple of the moneychangers. I like that story because it shows that it’s OK to get angry, as long as the anger is to defend sacred things.
I loved having this wonderment come to me as I pondered the story of Jesus turning the water into wine, his first public miracle, at the wedding at Cana. Jesus did this miracle specifically for his mother, because she asked him to. This didn’t sink in for me the first time I read the story, it came later in the week, when I read it again. I thought, “Wow, I wonder if Jesus did this on purpose for us all to see that our first ‘miracles’ that we do in our lives are to be done for the ones closest to us, such as our mother or father, brother or sister?” Then I started wondering what figurative miracle I can do for my mother, my mother-in-law, my father, and other family members. I am still thinking about this one and writing about it in my journal.
Egads! This is the view from my front door two days ago! Something I expect to see in Utah, where I moved from three years ago, but not closer to the equator, where I am now. Alas, we are not immune from snow. Fortunately, it usually melts before noon. There has only been one day when it lasted past that. And it only snows 2 to 3 times a year. Knock on wood, as we are still in February. We have a winter storm warning right now for tomorrow. It’s supposed to be so bad that the officials have already decided to close down the high school and seminary classes tomorrow. No such thing would happen in Utah. Life goes on, despite the snow. I have to give winter credit though, it does have its own beauty.
What is a non-snow person like me to do? Remember the concept of hygge, that’s what. I wrote about that over here. If you don’t want to read that, what I’m writing here is a briefer version of hygge, or how to thrive in winter. Here are the best parts of winter to enjoy:
Christmas. That’s over, darn.
Hot cocoa, especially with a drop or two of peppermint oil.
Flannel sheets. I never put these on the bed this year though, because I was hot flashing. Menopause, here we come! I’m too warm for flannel sheets!
Stories around our firepit.
Picture books, and studying other classic books. See my post last month for our currents. The other day I read this one to my youngest after the older kids were all at classes or work. It made for a delightful day. It makes me wonder what the libertarian side of the economic story is.
Reading aloud, which does cover #4 but also deserves its own entry. #4 includes reading silently on my own too. 🙂 (My latest favorite for reading to myself is this one, not for young kids, which I’m reading for Quest, a class I mentor for homeschooled teens, including my 17 year old. For reading aloud to the kids, my latest favorite is this one.)
Crafting. I’ve been making a rag rug which is super fun whenever I watch a movie with my husband.
Sleeping. ‘Nuff said. So much easier to do now that my youngest is 9. My kids actually tell me they want to go to bed. What music to a mother’s ears! I thought the day would never get here!
Sweaters! The best part! Yes, I can wear sweaters every day! Christmas is over, but sweater-wearing season isn’t. My capris may be tucked in my drawers, but I don’t miss them because I can wear sweaters. I can easily take them off and put back on when the hot flashes come and go. I looove, loooove, looove coming up with new combinations of my bright sweaters and contrasting tops, all found at thrift stores or inherited from my newly married daughter who left a closet of clothes.
Here a few of my combinations. I mostly wear cardigans. Pullovers aren’t so fun for some reason. It’s my inner Mr. Rogers coming out. Each of these sweaters were $4 or less from thrift stores. Except the zip-up white sweater. That one was $7 in Boise.
Oh what do you do in the wintertime, when all the world is drear’? Please tell me in the comments below.
It’s time for a giveaway! I previewed this book over here, and now I’m ready to review it, after using the book and testing many of the recipes for over a year. So, first read my preview, over here. Then come back here and read the rest of this, and enter the drawing for the giveaway by making a comment below.
Here are my favorite recipes from the book:
cheesy chicken spaghetti squash casserole
stew of love
pizza casserole
nachos made from cauliflower slices (see below)
garlic parmesan asparagus
caramel apple BAM cake (bam stands for bust a myth, the myth being that you can’t have bananas on the THM plan, based on the banana BAM cake from the first book )
pumpkin bam cake
cinnamon bun shake
gingerbread secret big boy shake
lemonade
lemon whip
teriyaki beef and broccoli
I have to admit though, a few times the recipes are a bit too complicated for me. Even Pearl’s “Drive Thru Sue” recipes can have too many steps. I love to be more simple. I often take the idea of the recipe and simplify it. Nobody here at my home, including me, knows what it’s “supposed” to taste like it so it works! For example, I thought the cheeseburger soup was far too complicated to make because it says to cook the squash with the ground beef and the cauliflower and the broth. Then you are supposed to pick out the squash and cauliflower, avoiding the meat, and puree the veggie blend in a blender, then add it back to the pot with the meat and serve with the meat in crumbled up chunks but not whizzed up. That took too much time. Next time I will cook the squash separately so I don’t have to pick it out from the meat.
Here is what I learned from this book, in other words, what wasn’t in the first book:
The idea of Trimmy soups, invented by Serene, which are superfoods-y and comforting at the same time. They include gelatin and lecithin
how to make a cream of wheat substitute
how make oatmeal stretch so you have more volume in a serving but still fit in the limit allowed for an E meal
how to make a low carb bread that looks like white flour sandwich bread (top photo of this post, with a sweet cinnamon swirl version, pictured below)
that baobab powder has the highest Vitamin C content of any food
how fun it is to have themed family dinners (We did this for the spring General Conference Weekend, where I made the THM cauliflower nachos for between sessions and then the scones and jam gravy for the next day) The books has recipes for sushi night, burrito night, pizza night, salad bar night, and more
that THM has a new line of natural extracts. They are included in many of the recipes, but weren’t ready at the time of publication of this book in September 2017. Now they are available. Hooray! I have the first batch released. I love the caramel and maple. The other flavors are OK (banana, coconut, pineapple, and cherry). I haven’t used those other four much, yet. When I do I will give a review of them. I do have to wonder though, how can extracts be completely “natural”?
how to make a Yuck Yum Bitty (a smoothie in a meal that can be FP, E or S) one of Serene’s latest concoction fad
how to have your cake and eat it too. The THM cakes can be eaten for a meal, just as in the first book, but in this book Serene and Pearl suggest what to do if you are eating the cakes and not losing weight.
I have just scratched the surface of this book in this post and in my cooking! I give it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars, only because it didn’t meet my hopes of going deeper into the numbers and the science of the plan. It didn’t. I think it’s also too bad that the color codes of the fuels: E, S, and FP for the circles at the top of each recipe aren’t the same colors as in the first book. That can be confusing. Those are super minor things though, hence I only took half a star away. Overall I love the book. I love how it has testimonials of weight loss from people using the THM Plan from all kinds of people young and old, including men, married couples, sisters, and young men and women. It’s also wonderful to see a recipe index in the back according to the fuel categories of E, S, and FP. So if you know it’s time for an E, S, or FP meal, you can go to the index and pick out a main dish, side, breakfast or baked good, dessert, drink, or sauce for that fuel type. There is so much more I haven’t even tried, like the salted caramel cupcakes, the Almond Joy and Ding Dong look alikes, all the one skillet recipes, the crustless quiche, all the new bars, crackers, and the dressings and sauces, like kale pesto.
If you would like to be entered in the random drawing of the giveaway of the book, please comment below as to why you want the cookbook. The deadline to enter is April 5 midnight and the winner will be announced sometime in the second week of April.
I had a bunch of insights on the doctrine for those scriptures, but I’ll just share a bit of those here. The stories in those scriptures were Jesus fasting in the wilderness with the temptations from the devil, Jesus announcing in the temple that he had fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-2, publicly announcing that He is the Messiah, and then Jesus calling Peter to be one of his apostles. Here are five questions I asked my family relating to these stories:
1. “What do you do to commune with God, like Jesus did when He went into the wilderness?” This actually brought up the comment from one of the kids that he doesn’t want to commune with God. So that is feedback for me to pray that he will want to commune with God, that he will want to feel God’s love.
2. “What did Jesus do to resist the powers of the devil? What do you do to resist the temptations of the devil?”
3. “When did you feel that Jesus is truly the Messiah, the one that had been prophesied about in scripture?” This question is to apply the doctrine to our own lives from the story in Luke 4:16-32, that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah. I shared the story of the first time I felt the Spirit confirm to me in unmistakable terms that Jesus is my Redeemer and Savior. I was practicing the organ to play for my congregation’s Sabbath meeting, our sacrament meeting. I was struggling to get through a song with my four-month-old-baby in tow. I had put her on a blanket on the floor. (She’s now 23 years old, married, with her own four-month-old baby.) I was hoping to get in at least 30 minutes of practice before she started fussing, wanting to nurse or be held. As I practiced the Easter hymn that has the words, “rising from the purple east, symbol of our Easter feast,” I felt the Spirit burn within me that the Savior is indeed my Savior. I played the organ with triumphant sounding stops and the whole moment was just this glorious enrapturement feeling of peace, joy, triumph, and victory through Christ Jesus. It’s hard to describe. in that moment, I felt the Savior also accepting my sacrifice of time to fulfill my calling as an organist, to serve Him, and that He was helping me to juggle my responsibilities as a young mother of a baby and toddler and an organist. I only hope that each one of you can feel that same witness to strengthen you in your responsibilities.
4. As a follow up to the previous question, I read aloud the scripture that Jesus had cited, Isaiah 61:1-2. I asked my husband and kids over dinner what role that is listed in that scripture they felt Jesus was fulfilling when they felt a witness that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah. We had such an enlightening conversation, full of the Spirit.
5. I shared the story of Jesus inviting Peter to do four things in Luke 5:1-10. (If you read that passage, you can find the four things.) The last invitation was to cast the net out again, even though Peter had been waiting to catch fish all night with his net out. Catching nothing, he had brought it back in. Maybe he had even cleaned it up and repaired it when Jesus asked him to cast it out again. Peter probably felt that the Savior’s invitation was illogical but he put the net out again, trusting Jesus. So my question to my kids was, “When did you feel a call from the Savior, through His Holy Spirit, that seemed illogical, but you did it anyway like Peter, and you were astonished at the results?” I asked this over dinner. My two big boys at home, ages 17 and 20, shared wonderful answers that gave me insight into their lives. The younger kids don’t have an answer yet. That’s OK. We can always revisit the question.
I love this gift of Come, Follow Me because it is giving me amazing questions to ask my kids that are spiritual in nature, which I had never thought of before. All over dinner! We don’t have to set aside any extra time to do this. For the past two years I have been using a Question and Answer a Day book I bought on Amazon to ask questions over dinner time, but so many of the questions are silly and not amazing. So I’m grateful to this new curriculum to help me see that I can just use the doctrines from stories in the scriptures to come up with questions, questions that resonate eternal truth and deal with real life application. The study guide often has questions that I use or I tweak them to come up with my own. I also watch the video released every week on the YouTube Channel called “Don’t Miss This” by David Butler and Emily Belle Freeman to get ideas for questions to ask my family and to use as journal writing prompts.
Last Sunday we had a treat! President Russell M. Nelson, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a prophet of God, came to Arizona! We got to go to our local church building to see the livestream. I distinctly felt the Spirit more than once bear witness to me that He is God’s prophet, chosen by Him to preside over the kingdom of God on earth today. We also got to hear from his wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, and President Dallin H. Oaks and Sister Kristen M. Oaks. It was wonderful to bask in the Spirit of God emanating from these leaders. I will always remember this night as a time I felt the Spirit strongly and distinctly.
Tree of Life Mothering 