Avocado and Grapefruit Salad

Summer and salads what a wonderful time of the year.  

The combination of ingredients is limitless and over the summer we will share with you some of our favourite ones.  

Ingredients

• Kale
• 1 Grapefruit 
• 1 Avocado 
• 1/4 cup Pumpkin-seed 
• 1/4 cup Dry cranberries 
• 1/2 cup Blueberries 
• Salad dressing of your choice
• (amounts used for one serving)

Directions 

1) Clean the amount of kale you require for the size of salad you require 

2) Gently knead the kale until it begins to turn bright green

3) Peel grapefruit and remove all member cut into bite size pieces 

4) Clean blueberries 

5) Prepare avocado and slice into wedges

6) Tossing kale, grapefruit, pumpkin-seeds, cranberries, blueberries, keeping back 1/4 of the tossed mix and plate the salad

7) Add avocado and cover with remaining toss mix

8) Drizzle with your favourite dressing

From Our Table To Yours

Grandma Snyder

© 2013- 2016 twosnydergirls 

In the name of beauty

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Depression

Depression walks beside each of us everyday,

 it is part of the human condition and some days no matter what you or others do we takes its hand, we become traveling companions.

On days such as these knowing that it will pass and that tomorrow will bring hope, opportunity and choice gets us through today.

When depression becomes a constant travelling partner again it is this knowledge of tomorrow that provides the courage to ask for help.

Because we are not mentally ill,

we are human and depression walks beside each of us everyday and we can let go of its hand and travel tomorrows free of its influence!

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Stuffed Mushrooms

When supper options are getting boring and you are tempted to eat out at your local fast food restaurant consider stuffed mushrooms.  A quick trip to the grocery store and you will have all the ingredients you need and a short 30 minutes later you are sitting down to a delicious meal.  Here is Auntie Carla’s recipe for stuffed mushrooms.

Ingredients:

• 8 large mushrooms
• 3 green onions
• 1/4 cup of chives
• 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
• 1 teaspoon oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 eggs beaten
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 3 tablespoon shredded Parmesan Cheese
• 1/4 cup grated Mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup grated mix Cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Clean the mushrooms remove stems
2. Finely chopped the mushroom stems, green onions, garlic
3. Sauté the chopped vegetables in the oil until all of the liquid evaporates
4. Set aside to cool
5. In a medium bowl beat the egg and to this add bread crumbs, all but 1/4 cup of the cheese and the cooled sautéed vegetables and mix well
6. Spoon into mushroom caps
7. Bake 350 for 20 minutes
8. Remove from oven top the mushrooms with the last 1/4 cup of cheese and return to the oven for 5 minutes
9. Serve with a salad

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Birds in Spring

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Three Sister Garden

June 12, 2016 marked the planting of squash in the church’s Three Sister Garden, Peace Garden.  

This is the second year that our local Mennonite Congregation has support this learning opportunity for the children and fundraising opportunity for our local food bank.

The Sunday School children started squash and sunflower plants from seed early in the spring and they watched the seeds grow on the church window ledges.  

Once the plants reached the two leaf stage the children transplanted their seedling’s into larger pots and today they transplanted those pots outside into our Three Sister Garden.

How does this benefit the Food Bank?  

The surplus plants were taken home by members of the congregation who on Thanksgiving Sunday October 9, 2016 will make a donation to the children’s garden that equals the produce the plants produced for them.  

And through out the year anyone who has taken corn, beans, squash or pumpkins home from the children’s garden will make a donation with all funds raised going to the Food Bank.

The Three Sister Garden Companion Planting is an Indigenous form of permaculture gardening.

Sister corn is the first of the three sisters to be planted and she offers support for the beans.  
Sister bean comes next and she moves nitrogen from the air back into the soil and as her vines grow up the corn and into the squash vines she ensures the sisters stay together.  

The last sister to be planted is squash, her broad leaves create a canopy that hold moisture in the ground and her prickly vines discourage animals from entered the garden. 

In this way the three sister companion planting system, creates a low maintenance garden where each plant gives back to the soil what the others needs and acts to protect and support the garden as a whole.

Links to Our Other Three Sister Garden Posts.

Transplanting Our Peace Garden

Seeds to Food A Fun Activity

A Peace Garden 2015

Preparing and Planting Sister Corn 2014

Our Three Sister Garden 2014 

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

To Plant A Garden

There are days when tomorrow is beyond our ability to see.

Days when the now that is our today is so intense,

it blinds us to opportunities that tomorrow brings.

Days where no matter what we do we are consumed with hopelessness.

Where all we can do is sit and ruminate on what is lost.

Before this happens to you create or find a place in a garden where you can sit, touch the soil, hear wind in the trees and bird song.

A place where the expectation of tomorrow is so real that one can not but believe in the opportunities that will come with the new day.

Visit this place often and  be mindful that it is here you will come, to remind yourself of hope, life, joy and tomorrow.

Take pictures of it to carry with you.

Go to your garden and know tomorrow always comes.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Your faith has saved you

We are all sinners.

No human being sits in spiritual judgement over another.

The scripture passage above is followed by a parable and finally with Jesus comparing the woman’s love for him as greater than that of his host.

Of what little she had of value she gave all out of faith and love.

How often does organized religion like the Pharisee's of this passage label who we should and should not allow to love us - who is acceptable in God’s eyes ~ too often in my experience.

Today in our worship service God as a gardener was discussed and this passage was read.  

God did not/ does not plant seeds of love and faith once in a human lifetime.

The opportunities to find and to know spiritual love is always present. 

God is sowing seeds of love and forgiveness wherever we travel each day of our lives.

There is no place we can go that God’s love is not there if we have the faith to see and accept.

There is no sinner so corrupt that God will turn love and forgiveness away.

“This is why I tell you that her many sins have been forgiven; so she has shown great love.  The one who is forgiven little loves little” Luke 7:47

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary reading for this week 2 Samuel 11:26–12:10, 13-15; Psalm 32; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36–8:3

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Mennonite farmers like many other farmers had an abundance of eggs and milk in the spring and custard pie was a way to prolong the joy of fresh fruit pies.

As a child custard fruit pie was served both at the beginning of a fruit season and at the end. 

I remember my Grandmother saying “when there is just a little bit of fruit make fruit custard”.  To this day it is one of my favourite pies.

As a mother because the pie contained eggs and milk for a treat we would allow our children to have a piece of custard pie for breakfast.

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 ¼ cups finely chopped rhubarb
• ¾ cups sugar (note: if you use green rhubarb you may have to increase this to 1 cup)
• 1 cup milk (we use almond milk)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon flour (we use gluten free)
• 1 tablespoon margarine
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 12-inch unbaked pie shell (we use gluten free)

Directions:

1. Clean, wash and chop the rhubarb
2. Beat together the eggs, sugar and milk
3. Melt the margarine and add to the wet mixture mixing well
4. Place the rhubarb in the bottom of the pie shell
5. Pour the liquid over the rhubarb
6. Back at 350 °F for 1 hour or until the custard is fully cooked.

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Poppies Of My Garden

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

I am not ready to retire!

I am tired. 

Working all of my adult life both full time outside of the home and in an equal partnership at home with my life partner.

I have pursued hobbies, travelled, acted, been part of social activism, pursued higher education and remade myself numerous times as my life has demanded.

My retirement date will come and go in June 2016 and I will continue to work because I am afraid to stop – what will I do?

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote describes what I know.  

There is a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day with being tired knowing that you accomplished something, you were part of something bigger that is making a difference.

Being tired because of boredom well that is something I cannot tolerate and so I will continue to work past the magical date that so many of my peers long for.

As I struggled with the 'why' of why I will not retire  and I came to realize that I do not know who I will be once I retire.

What will I pursue, who will be pursuing me, where will I find meaning full work, how will I keep boredom at bay?

For some of us preparing for retirement means a great deal more than ensuring we have enough money to live on.

For some of us it means knowing what our goals will be on that Monday morning following retirement, the routines and challenges that will continue make life worth living.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Your Spirit will Guide

Look and see the painted canvas of the setting sun

And our place in creation takes on a new meaning.

No longer are we the centre of a life of our own creating.

Who am we that we should be part of this creation?

We are observers, inheritors, caretakers and echoes of the Divine love of creation.

The Divine in us is the energy to create, the gift to love and know love.

We have the ability to mirror Divine beauty in our thought, our doing, and our creative endeavours.

To recognize in our reality not a life long struggle between amusement or boredom.

To see we are gardeners of creation, caretaker of each other’s well being.

Being human is a vocation,

in all we do we are to mirror the Divine in us,

to reveal our connection to God,

to create opportunities of hope and joy for those around us and by extension for ourselves.

At our core is the yearning to meditate on the Divine, 

being mindful of the Creator's spirit as it guides us through life.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Thank you to Juanita Laverty for the inspiration for today Spiritual Sunday post.

Lectionary readings for this week Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalms 8; Romans 5: 1-5; John 16: 1-25.

Beautiful Weeds

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Compassion

Over the past number of days’ we have struggled with compassion.

Intellectualizing how to show compassion to family that is estranged.

Remaining compassionate in the face of resentment over demands for our time.

Concerned when fear has pushed compassion out of the way.

Be mindful of how you let your emotions control your ability to influence both yourself and those around you.

Fear and resentment isolate and turn us in on ourselves

Compassion and love keep us empowered and looking outward.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

So that your love for me might be in them

"And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.”  Acts  17:16:26

And rather than running away from the danger these early Christians stayed where they were.  They stayed put in the face of the danger God had just freed them from.  Letting God's love shine through their actions to their jailer and he lived physically and was born a new spiritually.

How often have we prayed to be rescued at the expense of others?  How often do we walk away taking our experience of God’s love with us and leave others to struggle and to not know the love of God that shines through when Christian remain to struggle with others.

Jesus prayed such a prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed not to have to suffer on the cross and he submitted to God's will and thus we live.  We know God's love for us through Christ's acceptance to his Father's will.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls 

Lectionary readings Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revaluation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21, John 17:20-26

Tabbouleh Gluten Free

It was at a local Vegan restaurant where we first had grain free tabbouleh  and it is by far one of the brightest and freshest dishes we have ever had.  

Here is our version for you to try and it is every bite as good as the dish we were served at the restaurant.

Ingredients:

• 4 small parsnips
• 1 handful fresh mint
• 2 handfuls fresh parsley
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 English cucumber
• 1 lemon
• 1 lime
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Peel the parsnips and mince in a food processor until the parsnip is the size of bulghur wheat and set aside.
2. Wash and mince the mint and parsley
3. Clean and dice both the cucumber and tomatoes, remove all seeds from the tomatoes before dicing.
4. Mix all of the vegetables and herbs together
5. Squeeze the juice of both the lemon and lime onto the vegetables and mix again.
6. Refrigerate for up to 6 hours
7. Prior to serving salt and pepper to taste.

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013 – 2016 twosnydergirls

Metal Comes Alive Part 1

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

The pieces of art can be found at 

2631 Herrgott Rd. St. Clements, Ontario Canada N0B 2M0

We found them on a holiday Monday country drive.

5 Minutes Of My Day Three Years of a Photographic Journal

Today is the third anniversary of  our photo journal entitled 

5 Minutes of My Day.

May 24, 2014

It was in exploring google+ that we found a photograph entitled "5 minutes of my day"  we were to learn that this was a one week challenge through one of the photographic communities. 

May 24, 2015

We so enjoyed taking one photograph a day that we continued and now three years later it is the most watched page of our small blog and the part of the blog that brings us the greatest joy.

May 24, 2016

We often look back and it is surprising what you can learn about yourself through the photographs you take and the things that capture your attention.

Visit the page at the top of the blog called 5 Minutes Of My Day to see all of the pictures from the past three years.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Gluten Free Date Squares

The past few weeks have been stressful on our family and extended family as we wait for a loved one to heal.  Comfort food always seems to be the best thing to serve at these times and Date Squares fit into this category for us.  As a child I remember visiting Aunt Marjorie and sitting down to table with a glass of Niagara Dry Ginger Ale and her homemade date squares.   Here is Aunt Marjorie’s recipe converted to be gluten free.

Ingredients:

• 350 grams dates chopped
• 1 cup of water
• 1/4 cup coconut sugar
• 1 3/4 cup gluten free cooking oats
• 1 1/2 cup gluten free flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons xanthium gum
• 3/4 cup butter substitute
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup coconut sugar

Directions:

1. In a sauce pan add chopped dates, water and 1/4 of coconut sugar bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes set aside to cool.
2. Mix the remaining 6 ingredients together and divide in half.
3. Grease or line an 8x8 baking dish with parchment paper
4. Cover the bottom of the pan evenly with 1/2 the oats mixture and press this down
5. Pour the cooled date mixture evenly on top of the pressed oats mixture
6. Cover with the remaining oats mixture and lightly pat this down
7. Bake at 350 F for 30 minute

From our table to yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

First Flowers Of Spring

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls