Russian Salad - Vegan

Growing up within a Russian Mennonite extended family there were many delicious dishes that we would only have when we went visiting.  

Russian salad was such a dish.  

As children we all thought Russian salad was an adult code name for emptying the refrigerator because it contains some many different vegetables and fruits and it did not matter to us because it was a favourite.

We have reworked the original recipe without loosing any flavour to meet the requirements of a healthier diet.

Our recipe is vegan.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of julienned Brussels sprouts, carrots and cabbage (the ratio is up to your tastes we used very little cabbage)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large potatoes cubed into bite size pieces
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 1 cup of peas
• 1 cup cubed cucumber
• 1 small can crushed pineapple with juice
• 2 apples cored and cubed
• 1 cup coconut cream
• ½ cup of our favourite mayo

The ingredients without the dressing.

Directions:

1. Prepare the julienned ingredients and place in a large mixing bowl
2. Prepare the apple, and cucumber and add to the julienned Brussel sprouts bowl
3. Add to this the crushed pineapple and juice combined
4. In a frying pan sauté in the olive oil the cubed potatoes and raisins until the raisins are plump and potatoes start too brown.
5. Add all of the ingredients to the other vegetables.
6. Mix together the coconut cream and mayo which makes the dressing and mix this into your salad.
7. Place in refrigerator for approx. 3 hours or overnight.
8. Salt and Pepper individual serving to taste.

From Our Table to Your

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Goldenrod

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Perfect Love

This quote was on the wall of a friend's home and it trouble me as a new parent how could there be any more perfect love that our love for our first born son.  

The Grandmother in whose home the quote was found just smiled and said someday you should be so luck as to understand.

Now as a grandmother myself I do. 

As a parent my love for our children was unconditional, I would have given my life for them and yet I questioned my every action.  

I worried over every decision and cared too much what other people thought.  

The worst part was measured by value as a parent against my children’s progress both positive and negative.

I now believe the perfect love referred to in the quote is the freed from self reproach as you engage in play for the pure joy of play and eating ice cream before lunch just because you can.

Getting to know your grandchildren not as your children with responsibility for their future.

 Getting to know them as people unique and very separate from you.

Getting to know them and rediscovering yourself, the child you once were and still remain.

As parents and grandparents there is a perfect joy in exploring who your children are as people and through them getting to know yourself better.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Bless the Lord

“Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service.” Hebrews 12:28 

Gratitude is an interesting concept and one that is gaining favour both in the secular and spiritual world.  

Being grateful changes our brain chemistry, we are less stressed, more focused on the positive – we are healthier.

Yet many Christians live in a state of fear, they are afraid that they are not good enough to enter Heaven and so following rules and making sure others do the same becomes the focus of their lives.

If we truly believed we belonged to an eternal spiritual kingdom that cannot be shaken, the foundation of our lives would be built on grace, on gratitude and all our actions both great and small would be offered in the same.

If we truly believed our God to be merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness what reasons would we have to fear entrance into God’s kingdom?

Yet we demand that rules be followed, we argue over the rightness of every form of worship, we worry and stress – we live in fear of God.  

Thus we live our lives not in a state of grace and gratitude we live  constantly vigilant for the rightness and wrongness of our faith, our service to the world often demands the recipients of our service follow the rules and be grateful for it.

We are quick to judge, we are aloof in our rightness, quick to anger, and very short on unconditional love.  We are the opposite of how God is described in Psalm 103:8.

Our God is a loving God, the creator and redeemer of all, and our eternal spiritual kingdom is unshakable for this I am are grateful. 

There is nothing that I can do on my own to compel God to let me into heaven!

I will enter through God's grace and for this I am grateful.

Live your life in the surety of God’s unconditional love for you.  

Live all your moments in faithful reflection of God’s loving kindness, so that in all you do you are gracious, constantly living in a state of gratitude.

   

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 58: 9b-14, Psalm 103: 1-8, Hebrews 12: 18-29, Luke 13: 10-17

Kale Chickpea Bites Vegan

We find it very disappointing when we purchase a vegan item in the grocery store only to find salt and fillers the first three ingredients.  This is where the idea for this weeks post started and we hope will end with some suggestions from you.

Using ingredients that we had on hand we experimented until we came up with a flavour we liked and a consistency that held together.

It in the area of consistency that we are looking for your help.  Our bites are very delicate and while they can be dipped into a sauce and eaten by hand, they have a tendency to fall apart as well.

Help!

We do not want to add filler as empty calories are not what we are looking for – do you have any suggestions?

Remember this is a vegan recipe.

 

Please post your suggestions in the comments sections.

Kale Chickpea Bites

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cooked quinoa
• In a food processor finely chop
• 1 medium onion
• 1 ½ cups of finely chopped kale
• 1 can of chickpeas
• Finely shred 2 medium potatoes
• 6 tablespoons of Shawarma Marinade
• 1 tablespoon turmeric
• 1 tablespoon Gluten Free Soy Sauce
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 cup gluten free flour – we used potato flour
• 3 tablespoons chi seeds
• Olive oil

Directions:

1. Combine in a large bowl all ingredients above and mix until well combined.  If it is too dry you can add vegetable broth a tablespoon at a time.  Once you have a consistency that will hold together let the batter rest for 10 times for chi seeds absorb the liquid.
2. Make small bite size rounds with the batter.
3. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and brown the bits just until you have a brown crunchy crust on the outside remove and set aside.
4. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F
5. Place the fried bits onto a baking sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
6. Serve with your favourite dipping sauce

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©20013-2016 twosnydergirls

Tinsmith's Shop

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Black Creek Pioneer Village

Perfection

Perfection is a terrible, awful, despicable goal. 

It rejects nature, creation, humanity!

We will never be perfect.

Nothing we do, say or create will be perfect.

No situation, or experience is perfect.

We really do not know what perfection is, except to know that somewhere we learned it is the goal we strive for.

That only when we have been perfect will we truly be loved and valued

Loved, valued by who?

How sad to learn after more than 40 years of striving for perfection that it was self love we are striving for.

Perfection has no place in the human experience, because it is in imperfection that beautiful has a chance to shine.

Imperfection makes us unique, calls attention to our personal stories, that make me, me.

A wise woman, once commented that she hopes in heaven she gets to keep the  scare on her leg because it and the story behind the scare shaped who she is.

Be mindful this week how beautiful your imperfections are and how perfection is a trick of the mind/advertisement/consumerism,  a black hole the sucks your unique spirit out of you.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

So great a cloud of witnesses

The readings this week brought both joy and spiritual struggle. 

Words of love, faith and compassion

and

Angry words from an angry God.

There is too much anger and retribution in our world,

and far too little faith and compassion.

We each must find our own path and understand our God through

personal experience, and spiritual need.

We leave you the scripture passages to read for yourself, 

to understand as the Spirit leads you.

We are all witnesses, we all stand and watch and know ourselves to be spiritual beings.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings: Jeremiah 23:23-29, Psalm 82, Hebrews 11:29–12:2, Luke 12:49-56.

Horseradish and Leek Soup

Have you ever ordered a soup not because you necessarily thought it would be delicious, no more because the name of the soup intrigued you? 

That is exactly how we stumbled onto this soup.

We did not have high expectations and so we ordered a small bowl between the two of us and that did not work because it was delicious!  

Our waitress seeing our enthusiasm brought two more bowls it hopes that our praises would motivate other patrons to try it.

Now we were challenged to replicate the soup and so to the internet we turned where we found numerous soup recipes that had horseradish as an ingredient.  

We narrowed those down to soups that also contained cheese and beer, the other two ingredients the restaurant was willing to disclose their soup contained.

Here is the recipe that we came up with.  We replaced cream, flour and butter with a head of cauliflower without loosing any flavour, making our soup healthier so we can eat more.

We hope you try this recipe and enjoy it as much as we do.

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cauliflower broken into flowerets
• 3 large carrots chopped
• 3 cups of vegetable broth
• 2 cups water
• 1 can of dark beer
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 leeks chopped
• 3 garlic cloves chopped
• ½ cup creamy horseradish
• 2 cups sharp cheese
• Salt to taste

Direction:

1. Clean and chop the cauliflower and carrots.
2. In a large soup pot add the broth, water and beer and add the cauliflower and carrots, and bring to a simmer.
3. In a frying pan sauté the chopped leeks and garlic until the leeks are translucent
4.  Add leeks and garlic to the soup pot and continue cooking until the carrots are tender.
5. Carefully blend the contents of the pot to a consistency your family likes.  (we use a wand blender directly in the soup pot)
6. Add the cheese and horseradish blend until these are incorporated
7. Salt and pepper to taste
8. Serve

From Our table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

The Caboose

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

It's my job to like me!

Lately I have been surprised by the sudden and unexpected appearance of my reflection.  

I am older than I feel and beginning to look like the beloved Grandmother of my childhood.

My hair is mostly grey now and I refuse to dye it just because convention tells me I should desire to look younger.

The skin on my arms and my face is loosening, there are wrinkles where once there was smooth skin and I will not even consider Botox, or plastic surgery.

I eat healthy and do not diet.

I walk 5 miles a day or more and play with my grandchildren.

I like me!

I embrace my grey hair, loose skin, wrinkles, jiggles and all.

I am 60 years old and I like me.

Be mindful that you have to like who you are and who you are becoming because society will always try to remake you in their image.

You are who you are and really that is all that counts.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Our Soul Waits

Being at church this Sunday was the last place I wanted to be.  

It was too hot, I had a headache and just did not want to be in church – I wanted to do nothing with no one! 

And because the love of my life was dressing to attend the service with a smile on his face and expectation in his step I too got up from my bed and readied myself for church.

I was not and had not been mindful of what the shared worship experience in our small Mennonite church could mean to me.  

Hebrew 11:15 “And if indeed [I] had been mindful of [ the wonder, praise and glory experienced there I] would have [expectantly embraced] the opportunity to return.

It was when we sang that my spirit soared and knew the nearness of heaven – that I once again became mindful of power of the experience of shared worship.

Thus it was that today I learned the lesson of this week’s scriptures in a very personal and intimate way.  

In our busy lives it is too easy to stop waiting and expecting God’s presence.  

To think I almost did not go to church and how my life would have been diminished by that one act.

Be mindful to look for God’s blessing in your life.

Seek God’s presence in each moment of your day, name it, know it so that you can find your way back in times of darkness and trouble.

Know that it is our Father’s good pleasure to give you all the glories of the kingdom, if we but remember the way. 

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings Genesis 15:1-6, Psalm 33:12-22, Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40.

Mashed Potato Salmon Patties

What do you do with leftover mashed potatoes because if your house is anything like ours there are either not enough mashed potatoes or too many!

About two months ago at our regular Sunday dinner with Great Grandma there were leftovers and with a sigh we said to no one in particular what are we going to do with all these potatoes?  Great Grandma look up at us and said salmon patties of course.

I do not remember salmon patties being part of my childhood and they were apart of Great Grandma’s childhood.  Great Great Grandma a woman of her time never wasted anything and left over mashed potatoes became salmon patties the next day.  Great Grandma talked about how the horse-drawn fish carter would come by once a week and her mother would pick out her salmon.

Using Great Grandma’s memory as guide we worked with the recipe and came up with a new family favourite.  We like them so mush that we have been know to make mashed potatoes just for this recipe. 

We freeze them and take them for lunch they can be eaten with a knife and fork or by hand when the situation calls for it.

Ingredients

• 2 cups mashed potatoes
• 2 cups fine bread crumbs (we used gluten free)
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup finely chopped green onion or cooking onion
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Mix everything together
2. Make into patties and fry

From Our Table To Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013 - 2016 twosnydergirls

Children at the waters edge

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Great Minds

Gossip is an ugly form of communication. 

It damages the sender as well as all who stand by and listen to these ugly words.

Gossip only survives because we are ready and waiting to listen!

Small minded people

Be mindful of what you listen to!

Walk away from gossip as soon as you identify the words being said for what they are gossip!  And if you are brave enough call it for what it is gossip.

OR

Be bold and wonder out loud in the presence of gossip, how what is being said helps to create peace, joy and a caring community for the one being spoken about and for all of us?

Have a Great Mind

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Seek the things that are above!

This week’s readings put me in mind of the tiny house movement that is sweeping across the industrialized world.  A movement that only the wealthiest and the vainest of societies can have.  

It is the equivalent of cultural blow-back on our obsession with consumerism, our need to have more and more stuff, "our vanity of vanities."

Most of the world ekes out survival on a daily basis from refugee tents, mud shacks, one room hovels or shelter-less in the open air.  

These people have no choice, no money, no way out, no political power and yet they are people of great hope, of enormous spiritual strength and faith.

The Mennonite Church in North America is growing smaller and older while in the third world it is a youthful movement that grows stronger and larger. 

Here is another question that is rooted in the scriptures this week in our vanity - Where do miracles still happen today?

In the civilized world (yes sarcasm intended) we dismiss miracles as having been debunked by medical science – our vanity gets in the way again.  

Whereas from the Mennonite's in Africa and Asia we hear stories of modern miracles.  These are places where consumerism has not yet infected the people with the vanity of personal ownership.  

Places where Christian’s have not given away their spiritual wealth at the alter of things.

Oh to live in a tent and know the personal touch of my Lord every moment of the day!

And yet I will not give away all that I have and so it is the proverbial “eye of the needle” that my soul will need to pass through on its journey to eternity.  

How else will all of my vanity be stripped from me so that I can enter heaven open to the wonders of miracles?

How else will my soul learn to seek the things that are above anew!

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Psalm 49: 1-12, Colossians 3: 1-11, Luke 12 13-21.

Sunday Salad

Growing up in a Mennonite household there were certain dishes that were associated with a family member or a day of the week.  

Sunday salad is one such dish.  It did not matter who you visited as long as it was on Sunday this marshmallow delight was on the menu.  

The salad goes by many names and for us it was always known as Sunday Salad.

The flavour of jello and combination of fruit might change and yet the salad remained basically the same through the use of miniature marshmallows and Cool Whip.

 

For the past number of years this salad has fell out of out of favour for healthier salads and as will happen it is making a come back.

Here is the salad recipe that we grew up with for you to enjoy.

Ingredients

• 1 package orange jello
• 1 can crushed pineapple with juice
• 1 can Mandarin oranges drained
• 1 container Cool Whip
• 2 cup miniature marshmallows

Directions

1. Place crushed pineapple and juice in a bowl add jello
2. Drain oranges and add to jello
3. Add marshmallows
4. Add Cool Whip and stir together
5. Refrigerate overnight
6. Serve

From Our Table To Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013 - 2016 twosnydergirls

Date Night

Friday July 29, 2016 we will spending the greater part of the day away from computers enjoying old fashion pursuits like reading a book, looking through thrift stores, sitting with a great cup of coffee and watching a movie.  

So we will once again post Foodie Friday on Saturday.  

Thank you for all your encouragement and comments.

Grandma Snyder 

Summer Fence Line

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls