I love to write about faith. Right up there with parenting, my relationship with God is perhaps my favorite reflection.
I haven't written much on faith lately because I feel like I've been subsisting on a lot of "milk" in my quiet times. Sometimes as far as I get is, "I have Jesus in my heart, I'm not going to Hell," because there are about a million things I hope I do differently in 2015. If I could wake up January 1st a different person, that is acceptable progress to me.
Last night, the "milk" was no exception. This is a "milk revelation," I am sorry to inform you, but it substantially changed me.
I was praying for myself- if I'm honest. For HELP. God, I need so much grace. The other day in church I was worshiping and telling myself I'm pretty sure I'm not going to Hell. I reminded myself that there exists an entire slew of religious people that don't do half of the things I do to capture God's heart, which in itself is pretty religious, and again I feared eternal damnation. I hate religion.
Fast forward to last night I was having a discussion with God about my many failures, and I'm not saying that He was confirming them back to me but just a quiet Presence there to listen and if all goes well, offer me earth-shattering wisdom to conquer my personal setbacks. I was telling him about someone very special to me, someone that I desperately want to please and I find myself falling short time and time and time again. You can say that my single mission is to please God and not man, but if you are married you understand that part of serving God is serving your spouse- and not in a subservient way, let's not make mountains out of mole hills. Here I am, asking God to help me please be a better wife. Help me die to myself. Help me not live and die by my feelings. Help me not love him so much. Help me not hate him so much. Help me. Help me. Help me.
Paul and I are in a weird season. I don't have the paper space to go into it, but just know that we're not separating, but forging, rather. I think marrying and divorcing are opposite processes, but make no mistake, both can be painful. Neither of us are in an abusive situation so we choose the process that will not cost our children millions of dollars in therapy and generational setbacks, K?
Where were we? Oh, yes. HELP. God whispers, "Have you forgiven him?"
Forgiveness is the cornerstone of nearly every deliverance and since I have been through inner healing and shame healing several times, you can believe that I have forgiven a number of perpetrators who were downright careless with my hapless heart. The need to forgive has sometimes flowed from me like a rushing rapid, and other times I have held a "how to forgive" guide in my hands and trembled as I read word for word, "I FORGIVE {insert name}" When God asked if I had forgiven Paul, I immediately thought yes. I mean, of course. We have been through marriage counseling. We have been to marriage conferences. We have RIDDEN IN THIS RODEO. Then I heard God ask, "Did you forgive him this morning?"
That was it. All of the sudden the revelation just fell from the air in my quiet room and I could just feel God's eyes on me, searching my heart as I thought about my morning, and my day, and my week.
Did I forgive him this morning....I think the answer is, no. I'm going to go with, no.
But I wasn't really mad at him this morning....except when he said "such and such" and it reminded me of something he said yesterday that hurt my feelings...which reminded me of this big, fat hairy problem that won't go away...that's leftover from 5 years ago, that I'm pretty sure I forgave him for last year.
Kris Valloton has a one liner that goes like this, "Forgiveness restores the standard." That means, when you forgive someone, you have no right to judge them based on what you forgave them for. What I felt like God was showing me was that forgiveness is not a verbal one-liner. Forgiveness far surpasses a choice to read a paper that says "I forgive..." Sometimes that is all we can do, and I believe God honors it. What I also believe, while we are talking about "milk revelations," is that living a life of "meaty Christianity" is having a lifestyle of forgiveness, therefore an inability to operate out of offense. If you are feeling the weight of impossibility, just know that while God sympathizes with our humanity He is also deeply involved and interested in our process. We're going to need grace for this.
I heard Father whisper also "70 x 7" and then in my head at 11:30 pm I counted my fingers until I had the proper number, and decided that I have actually forgiven my husband that many times, at least. With all eyes on me, I realized that this is more than something we do, but a condition of the heart. Since I had heard 70 x 7, I was compelled to read the scripture today and saw that Jesus quotes it before referring to the "parable of the unforgiving servant." If you haven't read it (Matthew 18:23ish), basically a wealthy king forgives his servant of an outrageous debt and then the servant refuses to forgive one of his servants for a minuscule debt. Then it goes onto say...I know you don't want to hear it....but stay with me, the King sends the servant to be tortured until he can pay his debt back. So while I said that we need grace to live a lifestyle of forgiveness and that's true, the real secret is to understand the depths of depravity that we have been forgiven of. God has pardoned us far more than we will ever pardon another. Speaking of a lifestyle of forgiveness, that is the life Jesus lived towards His followers. That is in essence the prophetic ministry, to see others how God sees them. To forgive others, as God forgives them. Every morning, His mercies are new, and ours should be as well. I remember in Firestarters someone once said, "I am grateful for a second chance" and our teacher corrected this recovering drug addict, "You mean, you are grateful for another first chance?" That is God's heart. Oh, praise Him.
I made the decision to forgive Paul, not even for wronging me, but for being different than me. Once I did that, I realized that it wasn't even about him, but ME. Then I saw that learning to live a lifestyle of forgiveness is not going to be about the other person 99% of the time but what I choose to do in my own heart. After this, I rolled over in bed and wrapped my arms around-seriously- the greatest, earthly blessing in my life, and kissed, kissed, kissed his face all over, and apologized for being such a flop of a wife. He assured me I wasn't, and then apologized for being a flop of a husband. I assured him there was no way he could ever be that. Then we kissed some more. And I decided, again, that Jesus is pretty much, hands down, the smartest person I know.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Holiday Baking
My last post invited my readers into my food-obsessed world, where I am obliviously satisfied, buried deep in sugar and flour. Does it fulfill me? Within moments, absolutely. But I shared that it is not my complete passion, just a piece of me. Like a sliver of my second favorite pie- it's apple pie. A choice I enjoy, but would gladly trade in for all the time in the world to simply write. Passion or pie? I'm not sure what we are talking about anymore.
Ok, let's talk pie. Or desserts, rather.
I had a tremendous honor of being interviewed by a college professor recently who had taken notice of my foodie posts and asked if I would divulge secrets to getting children to eat healthy. It was fun to be noticed. There is a piece of me (another sliver of life pie) that answers, "ME?" Yet, another that smirks and affirms, "Oh yes, a thousands time, ME." That slice isn't from my "humble pie," unfortunately.
If you want to know what I expressed concerning my foodie habits, it's really this: keep it simple. If I could sum up what I believe about food, my goal is to cut out the middle "production line" man and just make what I am able to in my kitchen. I have a head start in this arena, as I am a stay at home mom. I get paid $0 to spend 1,000 hours in the kitchen each week. All sarcasm aside, I have time to live like this, and if you don't, grace to you, friend. If you do, well, life can be sweet, salty, and as savory as you like.
I was inspired to write a short blog on food because I have been busily crafting gift baskets for family. I have a disease, still unnamed and therefore without a cure, that compels me to compulsively over-prepare food. Nearly every potluck I am invited to is prefaced days before with pacing and panicking, "There is just TOO much good food in this world! How can I pick ONE thing to make?" *pant, pant*
Here I am, yet again, crafting my food baskets, only 15 things to make! And, per my standards, they must all be basically from scratch, and at least 85% gluten-free and sugar-free. And organic and $500 worth of ingredients. And shoot me. I don't want to skip over the part of me that really enjoys baking diverse foods, because it's there. I just overbooked myself. I am committing to sit down right now and rest. Yes, writing is rest. I need to rest, as the last three days have been slammed full of sauerkraut making, cranberry-ginger ale, coconut-date thumbprint cookies, cinnamon granola, creamy coconut vanilla candies, chocolate covered caramels, thumbprint jam cookies (with homemade chia seed blueberry jam), and orange-chai flavored curd. Someone STOP me from cooking up some rosemary-thyme farmer's cheese. STOP ME! (Oh, so tasty on crackers). Ok, I'm under control.
I will now begin to divulge some of my Holiday recipes:
Christmas Granola:
You can find my recipe here. We made it with pecans, walnuts, and added in cranberries, unsweetened coconut, raisins, and cinnamon when it had cooled.
Creamy Coconut Candies:
Coconut manna melted down. Add vanilla extract, raw honey, and chopped pecans. Ta-da! Instant candy. I normally can't afford coconut manna, but I found it discounted 50% at the grocery store because someone had dropped it and busted the lid. I saw it, lonely there on the shelf, and immediately visions of raw, organic, super-food candy danced in my head (It's not nearly as poetic without "sugar plums". Interesting).
Chocolate Caramels:
I couldn't find a recipe, no matter how hard I tried, on google. I just want the option to SWEETEN my chocolate. So more visions danced in my head: of powdered coconut sugar (it has a lower glycemic index and I like to think I can eat more of it without getting the shakes) stirred into melted 100% cacao. With the help of my husband's coffee grinder, the coconut sugar became a great soft powder (I have made icing like this before too). I stirred it into the melted chocolate and kept tasting it until it was bittersweet.
Then, came the caramel. I researched homemade caramel, and then if it was possible to make caramel with coconut sugar. There were varying results, none was exactly what I was looking for (they were either completely dairy-free and I refuse to make caramel without butter. Or they were pure sugar and butter, which sounds awesome, but wasn't creative enough for me). The caramel I came up with was:
1/2 cup of 1/2 and 1/2 (figure that out!)
4 tablespoons of butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup coconut sugar
whisk and boil until it thickens.
It did thicken, but was taking forever, and I started worrying that when it cooled it would be toffee and not cream (which I wanted for the center of my chocolate). So when it was syrup, I removed it from the heat. Again, with the coffee grinder I made a chia seed dust. Chia seed will become gelatinous when stirred into a liquid, and about 4 tablespoons of ground chia seeds made the caramel extra creamy. The texture was just right.
Thumbprint blueberry-jam filled cookies:
First the jam: I cooked down frozen blueberries for about 15 minutes. I cooled it for about 20 minutes, then I put it into my food processor. Add raw honey or stevia (I have made it with both in different jam batches) and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. Pulse until liquidy-liquidesque. Whatever. Then pour into a jar and add several tablespoons of chia seeds. After 30 minutes, it will be a jelly texture. I wanted mine a little thicker and added gluccomannon. If you've never heard of this crazy word, well, it is technically a ground up konjac root. The powder expands and makes a great gravy, smoothie, jam, whatever you need thickened. It is one of those "random buys" I made last year and I use it quite a bit.
Now for dough. I love a good almond flour recipe like the next person, but sometimes- no wait, all of the time- there is no match for flour and butter. None. One of my favorite flours to work with is spelt. It doesn't seem to bloat me like regular wheat flour. I wanted a really crispy cookie, so I used 1 cup of Bob's Red Mill white flour and 1 1/2 cups of spelt flour.
First, I creamed 1 cup softened Kerrygold butter with 3/4 cup sugar.
Then added vanilla.
Then add the flour, 1/2 tsp of baking powder, and a dash of salt.
This was all an adaptation I found from a fully white flour recipe. It recommended wrapping the dough in plastic wrap and putting it in fridge because cold dough is easier to work with. After 30 minutes of chilling out, I brought it out and rolled one inch balls onto parchment paper, and pressed my thumb into it. The kids LOVE this. Then we scooped our blueberry jelly into the center wells we had created and they baked for 12 minutes at 350 degrees.
Cranberry-ginger ale:
Make Sally Fallon's base recipe, found here. After several days, it will be fizzy and read to go. I strained mine, and poured the two batches I had made into a bigger jar. Then I added 1 cup of cranberry juice, and 3 tablespoons of sugar. I also put a dash of cinnamon in. It will sit on the counter for two more days, ready for Christmas. Sauerkraut and Ginger-ale are at least a 7 day wait, so need to be planned.
Orange-chai flavored curd:
I started with this lady's base recipe, found here. It turned out delicious, but still, I felt the desire to make it mine. Cinnamon, clove powder, and a dash of ginger add up to a sweet, yet spicy orange flavored curd. Highly recommend. But get it off the burner before it turns to custard! Even if you don't, orange-chai flavored custard is delicious as well....you can trust me, I've tried it.
If you've noticed my coconut-date cookies didn't make the list, I just didn't like them. I also made some lemon creme candies from the coconut manna, but it wasn't my favorite either. I am making cranberry-spelt scones tomorrow morning and will serve the lemon candies melted over top. Problem solved!
Kids are running wild from all of the candy tasting they have been subjected to, so I must attend to their needs. Love to all, and happy holiday baking!
Ok, let's talk pie. Or desserts, rather.
I had a tremendous honor of being interviewed by a college professor recently who had taken notice of my foodie posts and asked if I would divulge secrets to getting children to eat healthy. It was fun to be noticed. There is a piece of me (another sliver of life pie) that answers, "ME?" Yet, another that smirks and affirms, "Oh yes, a thousands time, ME." That slice isn't from my "humble pie," unfortunately.
If you want to know what I expressed concerning my foodie habits, it's really this: keep it simple. If I could sum up what I believe about food, my goal is to cut out the middle "production line" man and just make what I am able to in my kitchen. I have a head start in this arena, as I am a stay at home mom. I get paid $0 to spend 1,000 hours in the kitchen each week. All sarcasm aside, I have time to live like this, and if you don't, grace to you, friend. If you do, well, life can be sweet, salty, and as savory as you like.
I was inspired to write a short blog on food because I have been busily crafting gift baskets for family. I have a disease, still unnamed and therefore without a cure, that compels me to compulsively over-prepare food. Nearly every potluck I am invited to is prefaced days before with pacing and panicking, "There is just TOO much good food in this world! How can I pick ONE thing to make?" *pant, pant*
Here I am, yet again, crafting my food baskets, only 15 things to make! And, per my standards, they must all be basically from scratch, and at least 85% gluten-free and sugar-free. And organic and $500 worth of ingredients. And shoot me. I don't want to skip over the part of me that really enjoys baking diverse foods, because it's there. I just overbooked myself. I am committing to sit down right now and rest. Yes, writing is rest. I need to rest, as the last three days have been slammed full of sauerkraut making, cranberry-ginger ale, coconut-date thumbprint cookies, cinnamon granola, creamy coconut vanilla candies, chocolate covered caramels, thumbprint jam cookies (with homemade chia seed blueberry jam), and orange-chai flavored curd. Someone STOP me from cooking up some rosemary-thyme farmer's cheese. STOP ME! (Oh, so tasty on crackers). Ok, I'm under control.
I will now begin to divulge some of my Holiday recipes:
Christmas Granola:
You can find my recipe here. We made it with pecans, walnuts, and added in cranberries, unsweetened coconut, raisins, and cinnamon when it had cooled.
Creamy Coconut Candies:
Coconut manna melted down. Add vanilla extract, raw honey, and chopped pecans. Ta-da! Instant candy. I normally can't afford coconut manna, but I found it discounted 50% at the grocery store because someone had dropped it and busted the lid. I saw it, lonely there on the shelf, and immediately visions of raw, organic, super-food candy danced in my head (It's not nearly as poetic without "sugar plums". Interesting).
Chocolate Caramels:
I couldn't find a recipe, no matter how hard I tried, on google. I just want the option to SWEETEN my chocolate. So more visions danced in my head: of powdered coconut sugar (it has a lower glycemic index and I like to think I can eat more of it without getting the shakes) stirred into melted 100% cacao. With the help of my husband's coffee grinder, the coconut sugar became a great soft powder (I have made icing like this before too). I stirred it into the melted chocolate and kept tasting it until it was bittersweet.
Then, came the caramel. I researched homemade caramel, and then if it was possible to make caramel with coconut sugar. There were varying results, none was exactly what I was looking for (they were either completely dairy-free and I refuse to make caramel without butter. Or they were pure sugar and butter, which sounds awesome, but wasn't creative enough for me). The caramel I came up with was:
1/2 cup of 1/2 and 1/2 (figure that out!)
4 tablespoons of butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup coconut sugar
whisk and boil until it thickens.
It did thicken, but was taking forever, and I started worrying that when it cooled it would be toffee and not cream (which I wanted for the center of my chocolate). So when it was syrup, I removed it from the heat. Again, with the coffee grinder I made a chia seed dust. Chia seed will become gelatinous when stirred into a liquid, and about 4 tablespoons of ground chia seeds made the caramel extra creamy. The texture was just right.
Thumbprint blueberry-jam filled cookies:
First the jam: I cooked down frozen blueberries for about 15 minutes. I cooled it for about 20 minutes, then I put it into my food processor. Add raw honey or stevia (I have made it with both in different jam batches) and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. Pulse until liquidy-liquidesque. Whatever. Then pour into a jar and add several tablespoons of chia seeds. After 30 minutes, it will be a jelly texture. I wanted mine a little thicker and added gluccomannon. If you've never heard of this crazy word, well, it is technically a ground up konjac root. The powder expands and makes a great gravy, smoothie, jam, whatever you need thickened. It is one of those "random buys" I made last year and I use it quite a bit.
Now for dough. I love a good almond flour recipe like the next person, but sometimes- no wait, all of the time- there is no match for flour and butter. None. One of my favorite flours to work with is spelt. It doesn't seem to bloat me like regular wheat flour. I wanted a really crispy cookie, so I used 1 cup of Bob's Red Mill white flour and 1 1/2 cups of spelt flour.
First, I creamed 1 cup softened Kerrygold butter with 3/4 cup sugar.
Then added vanilla.
Then add the flour, 1/2 tsp of baking powder, and a dash of salt.
This was all an adaptation I found from a fully white flour recipe. It recommended wrapping the dough in plastic wrap and putting it in fridge because cold dough is easier to work with. After 30 minutes of chilling out, I brought it out and rolled one inch balls onto parchment paper, and pressed my thumb into it. The kids LOVE this. Then we scooped our blueberry jelly into the center wells we had created and they baked for 12 minutes at 350 degrees.
Cranberry-ginger ale:
Make Sally Fallon's base recipe, found here. After several days, it will be fizzy and read to go. I strained mine, and poured the two batches I had made into a bigger jar. Then I added 1 cup of cranberry juice, and 3 tablespoons of sugar. I also put a dash of cinnamon in. It will sit on the counter for two more days, ready for Christmas. Sauerkraut and Ginger-ale are at least a 7 day wait, so need to be planned.
Orange-chai flavored curd:
I started with this lady's base recipe, found here. It turned out delicious, but still, I felt the desire to make it mine. Cinnamon, clove powder, and a dash of ginger add up to a sweet, yet spicy orange flavored curd. Highly recommend. But get it off the burner before it turns to custard! Even if you don't, orange-chai flavored custard is delicious as well....you can trust me, I've tried it.
If you've noticed my coconut-date cookies didn't make the list, I just didn't like them. I also made some lemon creme candies from the coconut manna, but it wasn't my favorite either. I am making cranberry-spelt scones tomorrow morning and will serve the lemon candies melted over top. Problem solved!
Kids are running wild from all of the candy tasting they have been subjected to, so I must attend to their needs. Love to all, and happy holiday baking!
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Healthy Seeds
I love my kitchen. If all goes my way, I can become lost for hours. For the past couple of years, I use Christmas as a way to stock up on kitchen essentials: blenders, dehydrators, food processors, cast iron pans, and a bread maker are all gifts from Christmases past. This year I felt no different when my husband asked what I wanted. I really want a new (refurbished, maybe?) Vitamix. Sometimes I daydream about erasing my heart from this blog and just talking about food. I daydream about little cottages with my name out front where I can serve up custom teas, and join the trending dish on essential oils and sauerkraut. I believe in natural remedies, that's true. But, if I may confess, there is also a dirty truth, that I use food to escape from feeling certain things that need to be felt. Fear. Loneliness. Confusion. Anger. Grief. All of it- and you'd never know because I am 95 pounds. Let's just say I store it in my neurons and grow increasingly insane as I lose my grip on it all.
This year, my will wanted something new and shiny on my kitchen counter. I wanted to spend all of my money on new flours and super foods to stuff my pantry with. God, I feel good when my kitchen is full. My emotions promise to behave when there is new food in the house. Not always, but usually when I post to facebook a meal creation, more than hard work and passion went into it, but all of my pain and guilt. I never feel satisfied or revived, just lousy. Or like I want to spend more money on more food. That is all for another time because I decided to do something different, something that would force me to reckon with all that usually stays masked, hidden beneath a frothy paleo coffee drink and pumpkin chai muffin.
I asked for my own laptop. Now, we're not the Waltons (were they wealthy?) so this guy I am typing on is not fancy or big, and can boast of no technical millennial advances- but it does have a keyboard and a screen, which were my basic requirements. Why a laptop? Because every piece of pain that arises from this broken life has a story. I have a story- YOU have a story. More than anything, I want to write mine. Yes, it's fallen and ugly. Yes, I get jammed up in the same places in my life time and time again, and I am frustrated. Especially since my story has already been written, and in the end my soul will be perfected along with my spirit. Somebody say "PROCESS" with me and then bang your first on the table. I'm tired. Aren't you tired? When I am at my end, writing to me is like feeding my story into a recycling bin. I empty out all that used up garbage, and in return I get new vessels to store my feelings in. New ideas and strategies to sort out life.
When my laptop came I first felt a drop of dread. Drop. Drop. Drop. You're a failure. You'll never write. The voice of my arch nemesis, Satan: I am going to laugh at you with the rest of the world.
I turned my eyes to Heaven, "Why did you make me do this?" (I like to blame God when I do brave things....it's usually obedience, not courage on my part), "Don't you know that being healthy is important to me?" I never really hear God speak in coherent sentences, maybe that's strange. I just know what He's saying to me and it was along these lines, "The healthiest thing you can do for yourself is start tying on that laptop." Nobody ever laughs at me in the kitchen, and it's my worst fear.
This, this is true ownership of my dream. When it came time to name this laptop I called it "Summer's Seed" because I don't expect to turn out a novel in a year, or even five years. This is my seed. Careful tending and consistence. That's my goal. Honesty, and commitment. I was thinking about this at church this morning when the Christmas story was told and someone read that the Wise men fell to their knees before baby Jesus, bowing in reverence to a King. He was a baby. He was God's seed, and hardly even resembled who the Savior of the World would become, and yet He was already the fulfillment of everything God has promised He would be. God would always provide for Mary and Joseph to tend to Him, and He would save us all. So many who have gone on to change the world, though not to the scale Jesus has done for us, started with a God-given gift. I wondered if this seed is already the fulfillment of what God is doing in my life: the full favor, all of the Father's pride on my projects, and unending ideas and inspirations from which to draw from. Those things are not in seed form- they are the completed promise. That's enough to make me sit up straight and tall, and tell the truth, well, in fiction form.
Jesus and new laptops, who knows if there be a correlation. All I know is that I want to be healthy, and this here, my little modest seed, is the best place to start.
This year, my will wanted something new and shiny on my kitchen counter. I wanted to spend all of my money on new flours and super foods to stuff my pantry with. God, I feel good when my kitchen is full. My emotions promise to behave when there is new food in the house. Not always, but usually when I post to facebook a meal creation, more than hard work and passion went into it, but all of my pain and guilt. I never feel satisfied or revived, just lousy. Or like I want to spend more money on more food. That is all for another time because I decided to do something different, something that would force me to reckon with all that usually stays masked, hidden beneath a frothy paleo coffee drink and pumpkin chai muffin.
I asked for my own laptop. Now, we're not the Waltons (were they wealthy?) so this guy I am typing on is not fancy or big, and can boast of no technical millennial advances- but it does have a keyboard and a screen, which were my basic requirements. Why a laptop? Because every piece of pain that arises from this broken life has a story. I have a story- YOU have a story. More than anything, I want to write mine. Yes, it's fallen and ugly. Yes, I get jammed up in the same places in my life time and time again, and I am frustrated. Especially since my story has already been written, and in the end my soul will be perfected along with my spirit. Somebody say "PROCESS" with me and then bang your first on the table. I'm tired. Aren't you tired? When I am at my end, writing to me is like feeding my story into a recycling bin. I empty out all that used up garbage, and in return I get new vessels to store my feelings in. New ideas and strategies to sort out life.
When my laptop came I first felt a drop of dread. Drop. Drop. Drop. You're a failure. You'll never write. The voice of my arch nemesis, Satan: I am going to laugh at you with the rest of the world.
I turned my eyes to Heaven, "Why did you make me do this?" (I like to blame God when I do brave things....it's usually obedience, not courage on my part), "Don't you know that being healthy is important to me?" I never really hear God speak in coherent sentences, maybe that's strange. I just know what He's saying to me and it was along these lines, "The healthiest thing you can do for yourself is start tying on that laptop." Nobody ever laughs at me in the kitchen, and it's my worst fear.
This, this is true ownership of my dream. When it came time to name this laptop I called it "Summer's Seed" because I don't expect to turn out a novel in a year, or even five years. This is my seed. Careful tending and consistence. That's my goal. Honesty, and commitment. I was thinking about this at church this morning when the Christmas story was told and someone read that the Wise men fell to their knees before baby Jesus, bowing in reverence to a King. He was a baby. He was God's seed, and hardly even resembled who the Savior of the World would become, and yet He was already the fulfillment of everything God has promised He would be. God would always provide for Mary and Joseph to tend to Him, and He would save us all. So many who have gone on to change the world, though not to the scale Jesus has done for us, started with a God-given gift. I wondered if this seed is already the fulfillment of what God is doing in my life: the full favor, all of the Father's pride on my projects, and unending ideas and inspirations from which to draw from. Those things are not in seed form- they are the completed promise. That's enough to make me sit up straight and tall, and tell the truth, well, in fiction form.
Jesus and new laptops, who knows if there be a correlation. All I know is that I want to be healthy, and this here, my little modest seed, is the best place to start.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Trinity's Birth
I have started this particular blog many times, and not captured all that had to be said in my mind. First of all, I am glad I waited. I just read through a previous draft and the subject entirety was basically, "I will never be pregnant again. You can't make me, world!"
Now that I have cooled off- literally, still sitting on cool packs 7 weeks post partum, I think I have a more well rounded view of my birth. There are two distinct and equally important stances that each of my feet is well embedded in.
One: I am watching my 2 year old circle about the living room right now. She stinks like poop. She has major bedhead. She is doing something really naughty by the Christmas tree, and as soon as I correct her, she will scream like a banshee and I will carry her over my shoulder and plop her in the crib. She will kick me in the nose, most likely, and damage an ear drum. BUT, I love her. This is just a moment in time, and as she circles the Christmas tree and throws glistening tinsel into the air and into her hair like a 4th of July reenactment, she is full of wonder and joy and thrill at all that is new in her life this Christmas. Praying she doesn't break anything glass. Warmth, aching heart, desperate devotion stuff stirring in me now.....I love my children.
Two: I don't enjoy giving birth. Well, who does? (Actually I have come across a few on certain birth blogs) I don't just not enjoy it. I skate past "I don't endure birth well" to "I cannot handle birth."
I have had 4 very different births, I think I can sum up pretty quickly.
Birth 1: Less than 4 hours long. Hospital. Epidural. Graceful delivery. 5 stitches and hellish recovery.
Birth 2: Less than 3 hours long. Hospital. Attempted spinal. "BABY IS COMING! I AM NOT NUMB!! BABY!!!". Graceful recovery.
Birth 3: Less than 2 hours long.....crowning in the elevator (of the hospital). Moderately difficult recovery.
Baby 4. More than 15 hours long. Homebirth 7 weeks ago. Still recovering.
I'm sure there are more components to each labor- like labor length, stresses surrounding labors and births, and baby sizes. I, however, have entered every birth with a "plan" and every birth my plan seems to go terribly wrong. (Has anyone ever followed that thing that every pregnancy book on earth tells you to create- THE ILLUSTRIOUS BIRTH PLAN!!!? The value that they carry in a birth was made known to me when I had my first baby....yeah, it stayed folded up in my hospital bag.) Once I realized that I have babies too fast to get pain relief, I had a PLAN to try natural birth. Once I realized that natural, 10 minute long births in a hospital are more traumatic for the staff THAN me, I planned a homebirth.
I am friends with many moms who are full on homebirth proponents- like, consider the hospital to be the most dangerous place for a birthing mom to be. I've never crossed over that far, but I did my research and felt it was safe, and even normal. Now, I am probably the first homebirther in history to admit that I really didn't enjoy my homebirth. I missed my IV, and my catheter, and nurses who took my baby away. I missed heating pads, and cold packs brought to me every other hour. I missed the pain pills. Even after I'd done the research, then I felt painfully guilty that I am apparently not as "natural," as I thought- or that I don't love my baby enough to choose the most natural route. But I've tasted and seen too much, and knew what I was missing.
On the flip side, I had a midwife who spent hour long appointments with me. She was kind and full of traditional wisdom I had never heard before. AND EVERYTHING WORKED! I soared through 3rd trimester. After the birth, I didn't have medical students popping in every couple of hours and bumbling around with my newborn, while trying to make small talk about breastfeeding and how much babies should urinate. I won't even mention the medical students that EACH took a turn dropping newborn Cori to test her startle reflex. THREE DOCTORS IN A ROW. I will never forget her jolting and screaming as she startled and squalled, startled and squalled...and again. Ok, so I mentioned it. I didn't miss that, ok? One thing I loved about homebirth is having CHOICES. That was nice.
But I'm stuck. I don't like giving birth in a hospital, and I don't like giving birth at home either.
As for Trinity's birth, I will start by igniting a mental picture for you. Imagine this book erupting into ghastly flames:
Intense? Well, my labor was intense. I feel foolish I let faith arise for a painless birth. Maybe I should laugh instead? Some day.
Because of my history with fast births, at the first sign of pain, I called my midwife. I was really convinced Paul was going to deliver Trinity and I wanted to eliminate that possibility. When my midwife arrived, I was 6 cm and mostly effaced. She confirmed my bag of water was bulging and Trinity was on her way. Somewhere around 3 am, Cori started screaming. Probably because our dog was outside our door (which is parallel to her door) whining to come lick and sniff our midwife and her sterile supplies. We have a wonderful friend (Laurie) who came to our house at that ridiculous hour to watch "Barbie's Life in the Dreamhouse" with Cori. Then came 3 am, 4 am, 5 am. I walked the halls and was amazed at how little pain I felt. Contraction...five minutes later....contraction...with perfect consistency. I became tired, but also knew that walking was moving my labor along. My midwife's apprentice checked me sometime in the early morning hours and determined I was close to 8 cm- she said dilation was kind of uneven, but it some places it was that much. I thought, "IT'S WORKING!" As in, I was experiencing a 98% painless labor. All I felt was pressure. At 6:30 am, everyone was sleeping but me. I started crying because for the first time all night, I felt all the energy drain from my body. I hadn't slept all night, my body had been laboring, AND I was met with a crossroad: keep walking or go to sleep. I was thinking that everyone would be majorly disappointed in me if they hung around that long with NO baby action, so I kept walking. At 8 am, I was met with a new challenge: finding completely new people to watch my kids. I cried some more. Good thing I had already tried to build a community here and many came through for me. I just had to network a little. Once that was taken care of, I went to sleep (with everyone's permission) and woke up to no contractions.
What happened? I don't know. I went for a brisk walk, and maybe contracted once every 10 minutes. My midwife checked me and guessed I was closer to 6 centimeters, but the cervix had swollen. After several more hours of napping, nothing was happening yet again. My midwife had some natural ideas to jumpstart labor and I agreed. First of all, clary sage in the diffuser gave me a god-awful migraine. Now I was tired, achy, AND my head hurt. Then came the black and blue cohosh- a uterine stimulant that I took alternately every 15 minutes for an hour. An hour after my doses, nothing was happening. My midwives had been at my house for over 10 hours and it was time for them to go home. I was nervous, but knew they couldn't live with me. So they went on home, and I curled up on the couch by my husband and watched the Giants game. Around 10:00 I had a contraction or 2 that hurt. In fact, they started to hurt so bad around 11:00 that I just stayed on the couch and slept because I didn't want to be alone. Paul woke me up when he went to bed and I moseyed to the room. At 2 am, I woke up in excruciating birth pain. I crawled to the toilet and when I peeked between my legs I saw BLOOD. It looked like a lot to me, and I panicked. I called the midwife in tears. At this point, I didn't trust myself to really know if I was in labor but I was terrified of the blood. "I am the worst human being on earth!" (that's what I was thinking). She reassured me the blood was normal "show" but I had never seen myself "show" that much! Contractions tightened, and I encouraged my midwife to come my way- to check baby, and possibly deliver her. I prayed in the shower as the contractions came, "Please God, protect my Trinity!! I love her so much!!" The contractions came and I cried some more, "Why, God? Why does this hurt so bad?" I finally got the courage to "feel" for myself, and sure enough, a squishy little head was just 1/2 an inch in.
When my midwife arrived, I was rejoicing inwardly, though outwardly wincing in pain and mentally tormented by the idea that blood loss could have meant something bad. She got a good heartbeat on Trinity and reassured me that all was ok. DEEP BREATH moment.
At this point Paul was being annoying, or as a sane laborer might call him, endlessly helpful. Poor Paul. I always feel like he's "in the way" as I'm laboring, pacing around me asking senseless questions, "Are you ok? Can I turn on music for you? How do you like this lighting?" I guess I'm just not a detail person when it comes to birth. He was telling me that my coping mechanism (showering) was depleting the hot water supply for my birth tub. Pesky details, again. Once the birth tub was full of basically warm water (he wasn't lying) I made my way into it, and was told 10 minutes until I met baby, most likely. You know, I really wasn't looking forward to meeting Trinity. I was, however, looking forward to ending the pain. I HATE that I felt this way. I HATE that "you're going to meet baby soon!" didn't comfort me. Maybe, "When this is over, you will have NO MORE PAIN!" But that would have been a lie, I guess. The poop, the blood, the creamy cheesy baby, the placenta, I really think homebirth put me closer than I'd like to be to that "stuff" I once considered non-mentionables.
I saw Anna Duggar's homebirth for her second baby. Do you know what she said as the baby passed into this world? "Thank you, Jesus!" I always wanted to say that. The thought, however, was far from my mind as Trinity came out of the water and onto my chest. The first thing I said as I peered down and onto the face of my miracle baby, "God that was hard. That was so hard." Welcome, Trinity.
Then, I proceeded to birth my placenta, and what looked like my body's complete blood capacity. I moved into the bed, my entire body trembling with chill (hormones turned hypothermia, apparently?) and continued to cramp. One thing I never knew about myself is that my blood clots really quickly. My midwife picked up on this when I was still cramping, and continuing to bleed heavily. She called it the "high end of normal," just something we were keeping an eye on. Two hours later, I was still nauseous, still dizzy, and still not able to nurse my baby. No heartwarming baby meets mommy stories here.
Recovery was hard, and has continued to be an oscillating process that has not carried me into normal just yet. I'm not sure if I want to have more children of my own, though I'm not making any permanent decisions. I just need more time to process. For now, I am in love with my new little person. OH, MY HEART. The hormones, these guys are for real. If you listened to my heart, I have this hunch it would sound Trin-nee-Tri-nee-Tri-nee. Just yesterday she lay next to me in bed, her eyes wide with wonder. I whispered, shhhhh and her eyes rolled back. I did it again. Her eyelids hung heavy and she went to sleep, that fast. "Shhh" is the sound my blood made when she was in my uterus. MIRACLES- that is what growing babies are made of.
This whole gushy, mushy, self-sacrificial baby-love stuff is real. It makes my processing more painful because I ask the question {to myself}, "Well, if this is what suffering gets you, can your heart afford to give it up? Who has precedence here? HEART OR BODY?" I don't know. Questions, just stop with the questions. Plus, no woman should be making decisions about future babies after just having a baby. All I know is A) I'm in love with a new baby, and B) Bringing babies into this world hurts.
Now stop all the "You're superwoman! I'm amazed by you! You inspire me!" comments I received while I was in labor. I'm here to destroy the notion that birth is romantic and beautiful--
actually, what hurts the most is that I hope and pray you don't believe me. I hope you GO FOR IT, have your babies (whoever you are!) because the truth is, birth is not impossible or wrong in any way. There's something that is wrong with me: I don't want to do it again. As hard as it is to admit that, I really need to take care of myself for a little while...emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, philosophically!!!
*Cue hysterical crying* WHY DON'T STORKS BRING BABIES????? WAHHHH!!!
Now that I have cooled off- literally, still sitting on cool packs 7 weeks post partum, I think I have a more well rounded view of my birth. There are two distinct and equally important stances that each of my feet is well embedded in.
One: I am watching my 2 year old circle about the living room right now. She stinks like poop. She has major bedhead. She is doing something really naughty by the Christmas tree, and as soon as I correct her, she will scream like a banshee and I will carry her over my shoulder and plop her in the crib. She will kick me in the nose, most likely, and damage an ear drum. BUT, I love her. This is just a moment in time, and as she circles the Christmas tree and throws glistening tinsel into the air and into her hair like a 4th of July reenactment, she is full of wonder and joy and thrill at all that is new in her life this Christmas. Praying she doesn't break anything glass. Warmth, aching heart, desperate devotion stuff stirring in me now.....I love my children.
Two: I don't enjoy giving birth. Well, who does? (Actually I have come across a few on certain birth blogs) I don't just not enjoy it. I skate past "I don't endure birth well" to "I cannot handle birth."
I have had 4 very different births, I think I can sum up pretty quickly.
Birth 1: Less than 4 hours long. Hospital. Epidural. Graceful delivery. 5 stitches and hellish recovery.
Birth 2: Less than 3 hours long. Hospital. Attempted spinal. "BABY IS COMING! I AM NOT NUMB!! BABY!!!". Graceful recovery.
Birth 3: Less than 2 hours long.....crowning in the elevator (of the hospital). Moderately difficult recovery.
Baby 4. More than 15 hours long. Homebirth 7 weeks ago. Still recovering.
I'm sure there are more components to each labor- like labor length, stresses surrounding labors and births, and baby sizes. I, however, have entered every birth with a "plan" and every birth my plan seems to go terribly wrong. (Has anyone ever followed that thing that every pregnancy book on earth tells you to create- THE ILLUSTRIOUS BIRTH PLAN!!!? The value that they carry in a birth was made known to me when I had my first baby....yeah, it stayed folded up in my hospital bag.) Once I realized that I have babies too fast to get pain relief, I had a PLAN to try natural birth. Once I realized that natural, 10 minute long births in a hospital are more traumatic for the staff THAN me, I planned a homebirth.
I am friends with many moms who are full on homebirth proponents- like, consider the hospital to be the most dangerous place for a birthing mom to be. I've never crossed over that far, but I did my research and felt it was safe, and even normal. Now, I am probably the first homebirther in history to admit that I really didn't enjoy my homebirth. I missed my IV, and my catheter, and nurses who took my baby away. I missed heating pads, and cold packs brought to me every other hour. I missed the pain pills. Even after I'd done the research, then I felt painfully guilty that I am apparently not as "natural," as I thought- or that I don't love my baby enough to choose the most natural route. But I've tasted and seen too much, and knew what I was missing.
On the flip side, I had a midwife who spent hour long appointments with me. She was kind and full of traditional wisdom I had never heard before. AND EVERYTHING WORKED! I soared through 3rd trimester. After the birth, I didn't have medical students popping in every couple of hours and bumbling around with my newborn, while trying to make small talk about breastfeeding and how much babies should urinate. I won't even mention the medical students that EACH took a turn dropping newborn Cori to test her startle reflex. THREE DOCTORS IN A ROW. I will never forget her jolting and screaming as she startled and squalled, startled and squalled...and again. Ok, so I mentioned it. I didn't miss that, ok? One thing I loved about homebirth is having CHOICES. That was nice.
But I'm stuck. I don't like giving birth in a hospital, and I don't like giving birth at home either.
As for Trinity's birth, I will start by igniting a mental picture for you. Imagine this book erupting into ghastly flames:
Intense? Well, my labor was intense. I feel foolish I let faith arise for a painless birth. Maybe I should laugh instead? Some day.
Because of my history with fast births, at the first sign of pain, I called my midwife. I was really convinced Paul was going to deliver Trinity and I wanted to eliminate that possibility. When my midwife arrived, I was 6 cm and mostly effaced. She confirmed my bag of water was bulging and Trinity was on her way. Somewhere around 3 am, Cori started screaming. Probably because our dog was outside our door (which is parallel to her door) whining to come lick and sniff our midwife and her sterile supplies. We have a wonderful friend (Laurie) who came to our house at that ridiculous hour to watch "Barbie's Life in the Dreamhouse" with Cori. Then came 3 am, 4 am, 5 am. I walked the halls and was amazed at how little pain I felt. Contraction...five minutes later....contraction...with perfect consistency. I became tired, but also knew that walking was moving my labor along. My midwife's apprentice checked me sometime in the early morning hours and determined I was close to 8 cm- she said dilation was kind of uneven, but it some places it was that much. I thought, "IT'S WORKING!" As in, I was experiencing a 98% painless labor. All I felt was pressure. At 6:30 am, everyone was sleeping but me. I started crying because for the first time all night, I felt all the energy drain from my body. I hadn't slept all night, my body had been laboring, AND I was met with a crossroad: keep walking or go to sleep. I was thinking that everyone would be majorly disappointed in me if they hung around that long with NO baby action, so I kept walking. At 8 am, I was met with a new challenge: finding completely new people to watch my kids. I cried some more. Good thing I had already tried to build a community here and many came through for me. I just had to network a little. Once that was taken care of, I went to sleep (with everyone's permission) and woke up to no contractions.
What happened? I don't know. I went for a brisk walk, and maybe contracted once every 10 minutes. My midwife checked me and guessed I was closer to 6 centimeters, but the cervix had swollen. After several more hours of napping, nothing was happening yet again. My midwife had some natural ideas to jumpstart labor and I agreed. First of all, clary sage in the diffuser gave me a god-awful migraine. Now I was tired, achy, AND my head hurt. Then came the black and blue cohosh- a uterine stimulant that I took alternately every 15 minutes for an hour. An hour after my doses, nothing was happening. My midwives had been at my house for over 10 hours and it was time for them to go home. I was nervous, but knew they couldn't live with me. So they went on home, and I curled up on the couch by my husband and watched the Giants game. Around 10:00 I had a contraction or 2 that hurt. In fact, they started to hurt so bad around 11:00 that I just stayed on the couch and slept because I didn't want to be alone. Paul woke me up when he went to bed and I moseyed to the room. At 2 am, I woke up in excruciating birth pain. I crawled to the toilet and when I peeked between my legs I saw BLOOD. It looked like a lot to me, and I panicked. I called the midwife in tears. At this point, I didn't trust myself to really know if I was in labor but I was terrified of the blood. "I am the worst human being on earth!" (that's what I was thinking). She reassured me the blood was normal "show" but I had never seen myself "show" that much! Contractions tightened, and I encouraged my midwife to come my way- to check baby, and possibly deliver her. I prayed in the shower as the contractions came, "Please God, protect my Trinity!! I love her so much!!" The contractions came and I cried some more, "Why, God? Why does this hurt so bad?" I finally got the courage to "feel" for myself, and sure enough, a squishy little head was just 1/2 an inch in.
When my midwife arrived, I was rejoicing inwardly, though outwardly wincing in pain and mentally tormented by the idea that blood loss could have meant something bad. She got a good heartbeat on Trinity and reassured me that all was ok. DEEP BREATH moment.
At this point Paul was being annoying, or as a sane laborer might call him, endlessly helpful. Poor Paul. I always feel like he's "in the way" as I'm laboring, pacing around me asking senseless questions, "Are you ok? Can I turn on music for you? How do you like this lighting?" I guess I'm just not a detail person when it comes to birth. He was telling me that my coping mechanism (showering) was depleting the hot water supply for my birth tub. Pesky details, again. Once the birth tub was full of basically warm water (he wasn't lying) I made my way into it, and was told 10 minutes until I met baby, most likely. You know, I really wasn't looking forward to meeting Trinity. I was, however, looking forward to ending the pain. I HATE that I felt this way. I HATE that "you're going to meet baby soon!" didn't comfort me. Maybe, "When this is over, you will have NO MORE PAIN!" But that would have been a lie, I guess. The poop, the blood, the creamy cheesy baby, the placenta, I really think homebirth put me closer than I'd like to be to that "stuff" I once considered non-mentionables.
I saw Anna Duggar's homebirth for her second baby. Do you know what she said as the baby passed into this world? "Thank you, Jesus!" I always wanted to say that. The thought, however, was far from my mind as Trinity came out of the water and onto my chest. The first thing I said as I peered down and onto the face of my miracle baby, "God that was hard. That was so hard." Welcome, Trinity.
Then, I proceeded to birth my placenta, and what looked like my body's complete blood capacity. I moved into the bed, my entire body trembling with chill (hormones turned hypothermia, apparently?) and continued to cramp. One thing I never knew about myself is that my blood clots really quickly. My midwife picked up on this when I was still cramping, and continuing to bleed heavily. She called it the "high end of normal," just something we were keeping an eye on. Two hours later, I was still nauseous, still dizzy, and still not able to nurse my baby. No heartwarming baby meets mommy stories here.
Recovery was hard, and has continued to be an oscillating process that has not carried me into normal just yet. I'm not sure if I want to have more children of my own, though I'm not making any permanent decisions. I just need more time to process. For now, I am in love with my new little person. OH, MY HEART. The hormones, these guys are for real. If you listened to my heart, I have this hunch it would sound Trin-nee-Tri-nee-Tri-nee. Just yesterday she lay next to me in bed, her eyes wide with wonder. I whispered, shhhhh and her eyes rolled back. I did it again. Her eyelids hung heavy and she went to sleep, that fast. "Shhh" is the sound my blood made when she was in my uterus. MIRACLES- that is what growing babies are made of.
This whole gushy, mushy, self-sacrificial baby-love stuff is real. It makes my processing more painful because I ask the question {to myself}, "Well, if this is what suffering gets you, can your heart afford to give it up? Who has precedence here? HEART OR BODY?" I don't know. Questions, just stop with the questions. Plus, no woman should be making decisions about future babies after just having a baby. All I know is A) I'm in love with a new baby, and B) Bringing babies into this world hurts.
Now stop all the "You're superwoman! I'm amazed by you! You inspire me!" comments I received while I was in labor. I'm here to destroy the notion that birth is romantic and beautiful--
actually, what hurts the most is that I hope and pray you don't believe me. I hope you GO FOR IT, have your babies (whoever you are!) because the truth is, birth is not impossible or wrong in any way. There's something that is wrong with me: I don't want to do it again. As hard as it is to admit that, I really need to take care of myself for a little while...emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, philosophically!!!
*Cue hysterical crying* WHY DON'T STORKS BRING BABIES????? WAHHHH!!!
Friday, December 5, 2014
Granola
I really thought when I got back into blogging, I would begin by telling my birth story.
But that's not going to happen. Instead, let's talk about happy, wonderful things. Like, homemade granola.
In the last month, I have attempted to make granola. I scoured the internet for a recipe, and found one that satisfies. So yes, for my return to blogging after pregnancy and birth hiatus, I am referring you to someone else's blog. This foodie is a genius and her granola is way better than my experimental attempts ever were:
Crunchy Granola
I do think, however, that I have made enough changes to warrant this my own recipe, but I still rely on her steps. This is how I do it:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Whisk together,
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup blackstrap molasses (or maple syrup is awesome, here)
1/3 cup coconut sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla
and a dash of salt.
Then, I mix in,
5 cups of regular oats
1 cup of walnuts (or pecans)
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
Read this lady's blog, she gets credit for the ramekin pressing. I'm guessing this seals the deal with the crunchy-holding-togetherness.
Dump your mixture onto a pan with parchment paper and use the back of a ramekin or glass jar to PRESS the mixture down.
I also cannot bake this longer than 20 minutes or it burns. I cook 10 minutes, rotate pan, 10 more minutes. Let it sit 45 minutes, and break it apart. It holds together so perfectly and beautifully, you'll feel like a 5 star chef. A mom chef. It's hard to get 5 stars, people. My critics are tough on me. After all, cereal makes them happy. If I use more than 3 ingredients things get tricky. This is a winner, though, and I hope you will make it!
Another optimistic tidbit: the recipe makes so much, there is no way you can eat it in one sitting! Yes!
Add ins at the end: coconut flakes, organic raisins, cranberries, and maybe a pinch of chocolate powder or cinnamon. Get creative, it's a flexible granola.
But that's not going to happen. Instead, let's talk about happy, wonderful things. Like, homemade granola.
In the last month, I have attempted to make granola. I scoured the internet for a recipe, and found one that satisfies. So yes, for my return to blogging after pregnancy and birth hiatus, I am referring you to someone else's blog. This foodie is a genius and her granola is way better than my experimental attempts ever were:
Crunchy Granola
I do think, however, that I have made enough changes to warrant this my own recipe, but I still rely on her steps. This is how I do it:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Whisk together,
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup blackstrap molasses (or maple syrup is awesome, here)
1/3 cup coconut sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla
and a dash of salt.
Then, I mix in,
5 cups of regular oats
1 cup of walnuts (or pecans)
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
Read this lady's blog, she gets credit for the ramekin pressing. I'm guessing this seals the deal with the crunchy-holding-togetherness.
Dump your mixture onto a pan with parchment paper and use the back of a ramekin or glass jar to PRESS the mixture down.
I also cannot bake this longer than 20 minutes or it burns. I cook 10 minutes, rotate pan, 10 more minutes. Let it sit 45 minutes, and break it apart. It holds together so perfectly and beautifully, you'll feel like a 5 star chef. A mom chef. It's hard to get 5 stars, people. My critics are tough on me. After all, cereal makes them happy. If I use more than 3 ingredients things get tricky. This is a winner, though, and I hope you will make it!
Add ins at the end: coconut flakes, organic raisins, cranberries, and maybe a pinch of chocolate powder or cinnamon. Get creative, it's a flexible granola.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)