Our eggplant is now ready to pick so we went in search of a new recipe to try. There were numerous
recipes for curried eggplant, and each one either had ingredients we did not like or that we did not have on hand so we created our own. We
enjoy the earthy favour of our unique recipe please note there is no
heat in our recipe by design.
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons oil (we used coconut oil)
2 onions diced
2 garlic cloves minced
2 cups vegetable broth
6 cups of tomatoes diced
6 cups of eggplant diced (we used three small eggplants)
2 teaspoons freshly ground ginger
1 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon chopped basil
156 ml can of tomato paste
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
In a large frying pan saute the onions and garlic in the oil until the onions are translucent.
Add to this the vegetable broth, tomatoes, eggplant all the spices and the tomato paste
Simmer until the liquid has reduced.
Serve on rice.
Note: We were interrupted and had to leave the house before the liquid had reduced so we moved the curry to a slow cooker where it finished beautifully. The slow cooker was on medium heat with the lid on a slight angle to let some of the moisture escape.
You wake
up in the middle of the night and your mind is in overdrive!
And you run the same terrible thoughts through your mind over and over again.
Morning
comes and the thoughts that kept you up most of the night seem absurd.
Thoughts
are just thoughts!
Be
mindful that we have control over our thoughts and take charge when thoughts
are unhelpful, or produce worry.
Now when
waking in the middle of the night with a worrying thought I literally tell my
mind to go to sleep and stop worrying over nothing because all will be well in the morning.
Christ
provided us with many teachings on how to live and the one that consumed most
of his time was Love!
Love
complex, mystical and easy in its application.
Who are
we to love?
God, Christ,
ourselves, each other, stranger, enemies, mother, father, and children – there
appears to be no one who is outside God, and Christ’s instruction to love.
Deuteronomy
4:2, tells us
“do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it,
but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”
So we are
to be doers of love in all areas of our lives.
It is
easy to love our life partners, our children and grandchildren yet too often with
no forethought we throw love to the wind in favour of angry words.
James
1:19 offers these words of wisdom
“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to
speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the
righteousness that God desires”.
Anger is not a doer of love.
Gossip is
a form of anger, as it is spoken at the expense of someone else.
A child was recently repeated a piece of
gossip he heard in his home at church and was punished for this. As the child was hustled off to the car he
kept say but Daddy you said this.
Gossip is
not a doer of love.
James
1:26 cautions all Christians with these words
“Those who consider themselves
religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves,
and their religion is worthless.”
A Christian
woman setting up at a church bake sale was approached by a stranger. The woman smiles in greeting and says “Hello”. The stranger smiles back and replies “Your church
sign isn't up yet what kind of Christian are you? “Well” the woman says putting down a package
of butter tarts “the best person to answer that question would be my
neighbours.”
What
would your neighbours, the people living to the left and right of your home say
to the question “What kind of Christian is (your name)”
Do they
know you and your household are Christian?
Do you
know what their needs, worries and joys are?
Do you
know their names?
Ephesians
6:18 commissions those who follow the Christian path to
“Pray in
the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this
in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”
Our neighbours
are the Lord’s people as are the people we work with, the clerk at the variety
store, you get the idea.
As
parents and grandparents ask yourself this question:
What kind
of Christian do my (grand) children know me to be?
Your memories and stories just such seeds for your children.
Ice cream holds a place of prominence on the August calendar
with day's dedicated to soft ice cream, ice cream pie and many more ice cream
treats.
In August have fun and tell stories about ice cream.
1. Talk about your
earliest memory of ice cream. Where were
you, who were you with and what flavour was it?
At our church picnics after the pies, tarts, and cookies were
devoured the minister and church elders put on oven mitts and passed out
vanilla ice cream in cones. The ice cream
came pre-cut and roll in cardboard they looked very much like the centre cardboard
of toilet tissue. I now know the oven
mitts were because of the dry ice the ice cream was packed in. At the time though we would make up the most
ridiculous stories about how the ice cream would be too hot to touch.
2. If you have ever made homemade ice cream describe this
event to your (grand)children. A fun and
easy activity that you can do with children is make ice cream in a bag. Beware that younger children will tire
quickly and you will end up agitating their bag at some point in the process.
3. Do you have a favourite ice cream parlour? If you do take your (grand)children there to
have this month’s discussions. Thereafter
when they drive past the parlor or visit it they will be reminded of you and
they may tell your story to their children.
If you do not have a favourite parlour find one together with your
children and start new memories.
August for many is the last month of the school break and
vacation.
4. Learning to ride a bike is often a summer break
activity. Remember back to that very
first time you stayed up right on a two wheel bike and tell this story. What type of a bike was it, what was the
colour, was it your bike or someone elses?
5. If you still ride a bike tell your children why and the
enjoyment you derive from riding a bike.
6. Did you ever take a biking trip somewhere?
7. Swimming is also a summer activity take the time to
remember back to a very early memory that included swimming and recount
this.
8. How did you learn to swim? Lessons at a pool or in a lake
or a pond?
9. If you do not swim
or have a fear of swimming, using age appropriate language explain why. In your story talk about what you would do
differently now to overcome your fear. By placing our fears in the light of day our
children will have a new understanding of our behaviour and be less likely to
develop the same fears.
10. If you engage in any other water sports tell your
childhood stories and share pictures if you have them.
Fresh berry pie sweetened with sugar and thickened with
cornstarch is one of easiest and to our way of thinking best tasting pies. While we were in Saskatchewan this summer
Carla treated us to just one of these gems.
Saskatoon Berry Pie
Ingredient:
Double pie crust recipe
3 cups Saskatoon berries cleaned (this pie works with all
berries)
½ cup of sugar (note the original recipe called for 1 cup)
2 Tablespoons of cornstarch
Directions:
Prepare your pie crust and roll out one bottom which you place
in your pie plate and one top
In a large bowl mix the berries, sugar and cornstarch
Place the berry mixture in the pie plate and cover with second
pie crust
Cut steam vents in pie crust
Bake at 375 degrees F for 30 minutes
Your pie crust should be a golden brown colour
Note: Key to the success of plating this pie is cooling in completely
allowing the cornstarch to gel and hold the fruit together.
A smile changes you from inside and influences the people around you.
The Brain science surrounding the
simple act of smiling is overwhelmingly positive on our moods and health in general.
When you smile you feel better because you have stimulated the brains reward mechanism and it reduces stress hormones in the body.
The act of smiling makes you feel better.
Smiling is a basic form of communication know worldwide,
infants and children know this and have been known to smile 100’s of times a
day to endear themselves to the adults around them.
Smiling is contagious, when you smile
other are more likely to smile and so their internal chain response begins leading to them feeling happier.
It is as Mother Teresa says
“Peace begins with a smile.”
Be mindful this week how often you smile.
Notice how smiling affects those around you and
most importantly how it makes you feel.
Follow the example of our children and remember to smile
100’s of times each day.
Peace means to be at ease with your family, your neighbours
and your world.
Peace means to have the ability to walk down any street in
your community at any hour in the knowledge that you are safe from personal
threat and more than that that behind every door is a neighbour ready to help you.
Peace requires that each of us has:
safe sustainable housing
food that maintains health
meaningful work and leisure activity.
Peace means we live in a state of love and respect towards
ourselves, all humanity and God's creation.
Peace means that we live with less so that other can live with
more.
Living in peace means we do good because it is the right thing
to do not for a reward.
Peace means we live sustainable lifestyles.
Living in peace means tolerance for difference and living a
Christ filled life leading by example not by threats and fear.
And seeking peace always means that we
"[give] thank always for all
the things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Ephesian 5:20
We love meatloaf, there are so many different ways to make it
and all are great and we will confess that
there is very little that can compare to a cold meatloaf sandwich our
books.
For this recipe we once again
went into the many handwritten recipes that we have inherited from three great
family cooks and we have
included the original recipe at the bottom.
This dish was traditionally served with Fruit Relish, we will provide this
recipe in a later post.
It arrived in the hands of an otherwise unpleasant 10 year old
child.
As he poked his head into the car window he said with unexpected warmth in
his voice
“Thank you for driving our family”
In Sunday School that day each child received 5 cards
and they were tasked with giving away their cards before next Sunday
when in Sunday School they were to report on the acts of kindness they
experienced - describe to whom and why they gave each card away.
What a powerful learning experience for both the children who
had to look for acts of kindness directed at them and for the people who
received the cards.
We want our children and grandchildren to be empathetic, to
learn to see the world as other see and experience it. This task is just such a learning opportunity.
The children were learning to recognize random acts of
kindness in their lives, and in doing so will offer them in turn.
If you would like to do this activity with your (grand)children
or would like to hand out cards as an activity of gratitude yourself we created a card that you can use, just click on the link at the top of this post.
