Those Pesky Distractions

Surprise!

You never know when the latest installment of this little blog of mine is going to appear, do you? I don't write for two weeks, and then I write two days in a row. That's just the way it works when something is on my heart.

I choose to have my personal time with the Lord in the mornings, because I believe there are many benefits to reading the Word and committing your day to God early in the day. That said, I am not a person who does that the minute I wake up. I can concentrate much better after I get myself going in the morning and after my husband leaves for work.

But...does this sound familiar: You get up in the morning full of good intentions and determined to let nothing get in the way of you spending quality time with God today and to accomplish as much as you can on your to-do list. You start your morning off with a good workout. So far, so good. Passing through the kitchen on the way to shower before your devotions, you decide you need to eat breakfast because if you eat breakfast too late, it messes up lunch. While you are eating your breakfast, you log in and check your e-mails. There are some e-mails which need a response, there are some blogs to read, and some links to events and news stories, as well as information and coupons on sales at your favorite stores. Before you know it, you look at the clock and an hour has passed! And you haven't even gotten to the shower, much less your time with God!

Or this scenario: Same morning, same good intentions. When you go into the bedroom to retrieve your Bible and notebook, you see your husband's tie and suit coat lying on the chair. So you take a minute to hang them up. While you are hanging them in the closet, you notice that the laundry hamper which is in the closet is close to overflowing. You figure it will only take a few minutes to sort the laundry and start a load. While you are doing that in the laundry room, you take care of a pile of old clothing that is headed for donation and clean up a spill from a bottle of detergent because the lid wasn't tight. And so it goes, until...oops! It is now mid-morning and I only have a couple minutes to read my Bible before I have to get ready for my appointment.

Those pesky distractions! There are a million of them, and Satan loves to use them in our lives to keep us from "that one needful thing" - our time in the Word with God. I will confess that one of my biggest personal distractions is Facebook. As a side note, I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I love keeping connected with friends and family that live around the nation and even the world. I love being able to post verses, good quotes, and words of encouragement. I love reading verses, good quotes, and words of encouragement. I get good ideas for books to read and for ministry. However, I also dislike Facebook for many reasons: reading people's complaining and griping which I too often get caught up in, and finding out information that I wish I didn't know because it discourages me. And biggest of all, because it can be a distraction for me when I allow it to keep me from doing other and better things. I have had to impose a rule for myself that I don't check Facebook until later in the day, AFTER I have had my time with God. It could be the same with anything you find to be a distraction: reading the newspaper, texting on your phone, or watching a TV show, for instance.

The verse that comes to mind is Song of Solomon 1:15 - "Take the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." That's is what the distractions in our days are like - pesky little foxes that sneak in and ruin what has been planted in our lives, what would have been good if the foxes hadn't gotten to them. Foxes are known to be sneaky. And isn't that the way it is with distractions - they seem so innocent and they sneak up on us, and they steal our time!

Friend, today I hope you will take a couple minutes to consider what might be distracting you and keeping you from doing what you should be doing. Ask the Lord to help you to identify the "little foxes" in your life, and for His help to be disciplined, to stay focused and not be distracted from what is really important.

Lovingly,
Kathi

Baking in my kitchen: Homemade Bisquick, cinnamon rolls, and coffee cake

Greetings on a cold January day! This time of year I have always loved to spend an afternoon in my kitchen and bake, bake, bake! I have loved to bake ever since I was a little girl, and even today baking is one of my favorite ways to de-stress. When I was working full time with 3 young children while my husband was in seminary, I used to come home from working all day and bake something. My co-workers thought I was crazy, but baking is relaxing for me and it's fun to share the product! Last summer I was diagnosed as having a gluten sensitivity, so sadly I have really cut back on my baking, since it is just my hubby and myself at home. At Christmas and New Years when we had a house full of our adult children and young grandchildren, I did plenty of baking and loved every minute of it! I normally bake from scratch, but I do have some great recipes which call for Bisquick as a short-cut. One morning after Christmas, I went to make our family's favorite cinnamon rolls, which happen to be made with Bisquick, and I discovered I didn't have any. After some on-line investigating, I found this recipe for homemade Bisquick so I tried it... and it was wonderful! Seriously, I will probably never buy Bisquick again now that I know how easy it is to make. Here is the basic recipe:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 cup of cold butter or shortening

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.  Cut in the butter or shortening until mixture resemble fine crumbs. That's it. You can double or triple this recipe and keep it on hand - it stores in the refrigerator for 4 months. Use it to make biscuits, pancakes, and anything you would make using Bisquick. Note to my gluten-free friends: I plan to try replacing the all-purpose flour with gluten-free flour (the 1-1 kind that you can substitute cup for cup). I'll let you know how that turns out!

Now for my favorite recipe that uses Bisquick: Cinnamon Rolls. These cinnamon rolls are different from your usual yeasty cinnamon rolls. They are smaller, dense, flaky and delicious. They are copied from a couple restaurants where we lived in Illinois who made them locally famous.

Cinnamon rolls
1 package dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
3 cups Bisquick baking mix
1/2 c. cold water
1 stick margarine or butter, melted
2 cups sugar
3 tsp. cinnamon

Dissolve yeast in the warm water. Combine Bisquick, cold water and yeast mixture in a large bowl. Stir with fork until soft dough forms. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl and set aside. Divide dough into 4 equal balls. Roll first ball into a 9x12 rectangle. Brush with a good amount of melted margarine and sprinkle generously with the sugar/cinnamon mixture. Roll up and place on greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with the other 3 balls, placing them on baking sheet with sides touching. They will look like this:

Pour all the leftover margarine over the top, and cover with all the leftover sugar/cinnamon mixture. Using a serrated knife, cut between the logs horizontally, and then make 5 even vertical cuts through them. They will look like this:

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Makes 24 yummy rolls.

Since I gave you the Bisquick recipe, here is another great and easy recipe: Cranberry coffee cake. This is good for using up leftover cranberry sauce!

2 cups Bisquick baking mix

2 T. sugar

2/3 cup milk

1 egg, lightly beaten

2/3 cup jellied cranberry sauce

Topping:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped nuts, optional

Glaze:

1 cup confectioner's sugar

2 T. milk

1/4 tsp. vanilla.

Mix the Bisquick, sugar, milk and egg in a bowl. Pour into greased square baking dish. Drop cranberry sauce by spoonfuls over the batter. Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle over all. Bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Cool. Combine glaze ingredients and drizzle over. Makes 9 servings.

Am I making you hungry yet? Hope these inspire you to get busy in your kitchen! 

Happy baking,

Kathi

Thinking about...A Centerpiece

I will be the first to admit that this might be one of my more unusual posts. I have a quirky habit of taking an ordinary thing or event, and drawing a spiritual lesson from it. Such is the case today. I want to tell you the story of a centerpiece.

Our church is blessed with a beautiful and spacious location, and next to the church is a nursery and floral business. This past year, the owner of that business began attending our church, and  eventually he accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior! What a blessing!

On Christmas Eve, this man presented me with what is the most beautiful centerpiece I have ever had that he designed for me. This centerpiece is absolutely gorgeous. It is filled with all sorts of lovely things: miniature birds, beautiful artificial fruit, burlap-wrapped packages and balls, lots of pinecones and red berries, and much more. I was so excited!

It also contained fresh evergreen and holly branches. I knew that if I wanted to preserve my centerpiece for next year, I would need to remove all the fresh greenery. It didn't seem like a big deal. It looked like the greenery was just inserted here and there among the pretty things. So, covering my kitchen counter with newspaper, I set to work.

It didn't take me long to discover that I had seriously underestimated the amount of fresh greenery in this centerpiece. The pile of discarded greenery on my counter grew. And as I continued to remove it, the centerpiece began to fall apart. That's when it hit me: the pretty things were NOT the foundation of this centerpiece after all. The fresh greenery was. I had assumed the greenery was just stuck in here and there, when in actuality, it formed the foundation for all the pretty adornments. And so I began thinking about that. How many times we falsely believe the pretty adornments in our life are the foundation and the most important part of our lives, when it is really something else that is the true foundation: our relationship with the Lord. Our time with God and our walk with Him forms the true foundation, and on that all the other things depend. The "adornments" in our lives are just that - adornments. Not the other way around. And when we remove the foundation by neglecting Him, everything else falls apart. 

Not only did my centerpiece begin to fall apart without the greenery which formed the foundation, but I noticed even as I re-constructed it that it wasn't nearly as beautiful without any greenery. I hadn't thought that the greenery was that important in the appearance of the centerpiece, but it turns out that it was. In our Christian lives, it is that inner beauty that comes only from the love, peace, and joy that God gives that truly makes us attractive. 1 Peter 3:4 says, in talking about the appearance of women, "But let it be the hidden man of the heart, that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek (gentle) and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God a great price."  The lasting fruit of a strong spiritual foundation is found in Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." So often we live as if the outwardly visible, attractive things are the most important part, when in reality the true beauty in our lives comes from a strong foundation of knowing Jesus Christ.

Thoughtfully,

Kathi

From my kitchen: Soup's on!

Happy wintery Wednesday! In my part of the country, we woke up this morning to everything being covered in ice! The trees and bushes look beautiful as they shimmer with ice, but I am very thankful I get to stay home where it's nice and cozy, and look at the ice-covered world without actually having to venture outside!

This time of year I love spending time in the kitchen, and I really love making a pot of soup for us to enjoy. In fact, I have so many good soup recipes it was difficult for me to narrow it down to which ones to share here with you! Recently at church we had a soup fellowship, and I brought one of my favorites: cheeseburger soup. It proved to be very popular and since I had a lot of requests for the recipe, I decided I would post it here for my readers. The recipe originally comes from Taste of Home and I have modified it just a bit.

Cheeseburger Soup
1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. shredded carrots
1 tsp each basil and parsley
5 T butter, divided
3 cups chicken broth
4 cups peeled, diced potatoes
1/2 c. flour
8 oz. Velveeta cheese, cubed
1 1/2 cups milk
                                                              1/4 c. sour cream
(Hey, I never promised that this was a healthy soup!) This soup does go together fairly quickly - the thing that takes the longest is to peel and dice the potatoes. I do that first. Then brown the ground beef in a large pot. Drain it and set it aside. In the same pot, melt 1 T. of the butter and sauté the onion, carrots, and seasonings. Add chicken broth, diced potatoes, and ground beef. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer 10 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. In the meantime, in a small pan melt the remaining butter, whisk in the flour and add mixture to soup. Cook and stir for about 2 minutes or until soup is thickened. Reduce heat to low and stir in cheese and milk. Stir over low heat until cheese melts. Salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat. Stir in sour cream. At this point you can serve it, or keep it warm in a slow cooker until ready to eat.

In case you would like a recipe that is easier, I have another favorite for you. Cheesy Tex-Mex soup is made in a slow cooker and besides browning ground beef, you simply open cans and toss everything into the slow cooker! I got this recipe from a friend who is an amazing cook, and while I don't have a picture of it, it is a regular at our house this time of year! I doubled this and made it for our family in 2 slow cookers on Christmas Eve.

Slow Cooker Cheesy Tex-Mex Soup
1 lb. ground beef, browned and drained
1 can corn, undrained
1 can kidney beans, undrained
1 can diced tomatoes with green chiles, undrained
1 can stewed tomatoes, undrained
2 T. dry taco seasoning
1 lb. Velveeta cheese, cubed
tortilla chips for topping

(Note: this recipe does not call for any additional liquid.) Brown the ground beef and combine all ingredients except the chips in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 3-4 hours. Stir well and serve with tortilla chips broken on top. Bonus: this is one of those soups that tastes even better re-heated the next day! If you want to make this soup healthier, you could probably leave out or reduce the cheese (it is very cheesy) or just garnish with shredded cheese.

This is a great time of year to pull out your cookbooks and make some of those recipes that you haven't made in a long time, or some new ones that you have been wanting to try. Or how about making some of those wonderful-looking recipes you have saved to your Pinterest boards? Have fun cooking and baking!

Til next time,
Kathi

New Years Goals

Hello there! It's been awhile, I know. I had hoped to be able to post a new blog entry much sooner than this, but all the busyness of our family here for Christmas and New Years, and then the getting-back-to-normal process afterwards coupled with a nasty cold and sinus infection has kept me quite occupied for the past couple weeks! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Here are some snapshots from ours:

Our 4 grands who were here for Christmas

Trying to get a picture without one of the kids "escaping" kept us laughing!

Brothers playing Wii with our grandson

We enjoyed a visit to Busch Gardens Christmastown!

Now that things have settled down after the holidays, I have been giving some serious thought to setting some goals for this new year. While I am not real big on "resolutions", I am a goal-setter, and I find that the beginning of a new year is the perfect time for reflection and consideration of what I would like to change or accomplish in the year ahead. The old saying "If you aim for nothing, you'll hit it every time" is actually pretty true!

Goals
1) provide focus
2) are an opportunity for specific measurement
3) provide encouragement as you see what has been accomplished
4) help you set priorities and make good choices

I like to set goals in spiritual, physical, and mental areas of my life.

Spiritually - Many years ago, I began to prayerfully select a special verse for the new year, and more recently a character quality to study and concentrate on. If you would look through my Bible,  you would see "2006 verse" or "2011 verse" noted in the margins of the pages. This year I have chosen Proverbs 31:26 - "She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness." Having this as my special verse for 2015 is a constant reminder to me to strive to be wise and kind in everything I say. Along with this, I have chosen kindness as the character quality to concentrate on this year. I have already enjoyed beginning to study the theme of God's lovingkindness which is mentioned so often in Scripture and is the basis for God's requirement for us to be kind. These are just two ideas for you to consider. Maybe you need to set some spiritual goals in the areas of prayer or Scripture memorization, books or portions of the Bible to study, or just being more consistent and intentional in your personal quiet time with God.

Physically - This is the most popular area where people set new goals, and often we fail to attain these goals. I do think it is good to think about what you need to do to take better care of yourself physically. It doesn't have to be big! Keeping goals small and manageable helps to keep us accountable, and we are more likely to attain specific goals than vague ones. Do you need to schedule a check-up or a mammogram? Exercise more regularly? Take better care of your skin? Keep a food journal to be more disciplined in your food intake, or use a pedometer to be more active? Think about what you need to improve and then implement small steps to achieve those goals.

Mentally - This area is actually the "fun" one for me. It is good to challenge ourselves to learn new things and spend time doing things we enjoy. Things like taking a class, learning a new skill, trying new recipes, completing a project that you have not finished, reading books, re-decorating a room, or organizing a closet are great goals to put on your list for this new year.

Lamentations 3:40 tells us, "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord." I also like Deut. 11:16 - "Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived and ye turn aside..." Taking heed simply means that we are to pay attention. Sometimes that's all it takes - paying attention to those areas in our lives that need some improvement. I hope you will spend some time searching and seeking what the Lord would have you to do in 2015. Happy New Year!

With Love,
Kathi