Around the Table with KJs Ladies

 I love to cook, try new recipes, watch cooking shows... all of it.  I like it so much I rarely cook the same thing twice, so I can never find the right recipe at the right time when someone says, "remember when you made...." 

So this is my attempt at keeping tracking of all those recipes I try each week.  

It is also a way for my girls to look back at what they ate when they were at home sitting around my table and hopefully someday they will want to recreate them in their homes with all their littles sitting around their table.

What will you see here:

• weekly menus
• links to recipes
• a plan of action for the food I will buy and prepare this week (thus the chaos coordinator)- keep in mind it is the PLAN not the results of my cooking... the results may be a very different post.
• suggestions for products- especially my favorite dairy free stuff
• dairy free options- our oldest has a cow protein allergy so you will not find a lot of milk, cheese, or beef in my menus and if you do I have generally substituted with d/f options or left it out.
• wild game recipes- we are BIG hunters/fishers and process a lot of of our own meat, just a word of caution...if you are not into that sorta thing, this may not be the site for you
• all my recipes are made for 6-8 adult servings- teenagers (yes even girls) eat A LOT
• Occasionally recipes from a paid recipe service called eMeals: because these not my recipes, I will not share unless I doctor it enough to really be mine, but I highly recommend them... check it out. 
• Plan-ahead meals: I work full-time outside the home... therefore I prep on weekends for the week...sometimes... other times we eat at 8pm, and other times I fly by the seat of my pants...just depends on the day and my mood.
• Gathering Recipes: I love, love, love to cook for a crowd.  You will often find a meal for guests on my weekly menu.
• other random items I find interesting- it is my site after all :) 

What you will NOT see here:

• pretty little menu planners, home binders, or artsy notebooks, etc.: straight up word document here: Blank Menu Planner
• beautiful photos of all the food I make- I am not that ambitious, sure you will probably see some food photos cause I am a foodie and photographer but Pioneer Woman I am not. 
• a large clean kitchen with commercial grade equipment- quite the opposite, therefore I tend NOT to take pictures of me in my old 80's dated galley kitchen.
• pretty little "dressings" on all my food- come on, I am feeding 3 hungry teenagers, they don't care what the food looks like...just what it tastes like
• recipes I have followed to the letter- recipes are guidelines...starting points.  I generally will mess with it in some way.
• my own original recipe that I have come up with from scratch- again see above point- I generally start with someone else's recipe and then fuss with it to make it my own.... if that what "my original recipe" is, than sure you will see those on this site.
• healthy foods or the newest and latest fad in foods- KALE?? really? nope not happening here.  Give me bacon, cheese, sour cream and full fat milk please.

Guess that about covers it for rules. Next post... actual menu.

What’s on My Nightstand?

Want to take a look into my bedroom nightstand?  My book stash has grown a bit with all this extra time on my hands.  I have two devotionals.  Well... actually I have three, but I left it at work, and at this rate who knows when I will be going back there... and I have been wanting to get a new one for home anyway, because I recently heard on a Podcast (pretty sure it was Proverbs 31 podcast) that you will focus on the first thing you read in the morning, so they suggested a quick devotional first thing before you even look at your phone.  Just kinda puts you in the right frame of mind.  So I am trying... these two devotionals....

First, my mentor mentioned this one: Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

and this other devotional was just recommended to me by our Ladies Sunday School teachers, (I am sucker for any book recommend!)  .... New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp

I couldn't choose, so I got both!

And I am continuing my pleasure book a month challenge.... this month is Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan which was a recommend from a Goodreads list I subscribe to.

And my phone is always beside my bed... yes I am a little attached. 😊

In the background is my ever present cup of coffee.  (Wild Mountain blueberry by Green Mountain).  

Finally my favorite lotion sent to me for my birthday last year by my bestest friend!  It is coconut and lemon scented... luscious

There you have it!  A peek into my bedroom....

Life at a Standstill

Life is so different now isn't it?

This morning I saw this on my dining room table... a family devotional, a Bible and a face mask.  These seem to be the things that define us in these days... family, faith, and isolation.

I‘m gonna be straight up honest... I HATE THE ISOLATION PART!

Being a Enneagram 7-8 is so hard right now... I just wanna feel a "people" vibe.  (Video conferencing comes close but it is not quite there.) I want to be with people.  That is the "7" in me

Now the 8...  this is the challenge.  I understand that I have to remain isolated for the good of people.  I also understand that the more I isolate the quicker this goes.  I really do understand the reasoning. But being an "8" makes me want to challenge everything and say... "I don't care! I want to see people!"  In my mind everyone else is wrong... and everything in me wants to tell everyone else how to do it...and then just throw caution to the wind and have a party!

Right here is where I need to breathe, and continue to remind myself of a few things....

Timothy 1:7  "for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but power and love and self-control"

I need to remember to use wise judgement and prayer in all decisions.  Right now it is true that our world is full of fear, suspicion, and anger; but I have the Spirit of God (in the form of the Holy Spirit) inside of me.  He will guide and direct me.  I do not need to be ruled by the emotions of the day... I need to ruled by Him.  All of "this" is still under His control.  I must turn to Him for discernment and direction.

I all too often allow the "mood" or the "vibe" from people around me to guide my decisions.  (again that is the people person in me).  I am learning that God has placed me right where I am to be full of hope and light in the darkness of this world not to get sucked into the hopelessness of the world.  

Hebrews 10:25: "and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works; not neglecting to meet one another as is the habit of some, but encourage one another, and all the more as the day draws near."

This is the hardest thing for me to work out in my brain right now.  This looks ALL DIFFERENT!! We can't gather together, we can't be in another's presence right now and it FEELS SO WRONG!  But what does it mean?  How can I continue to use my gifts of hospitality in this time?

I have had to learn some hard lessons in this season of life right now.  Not everyone is as comfortable "ignoring the rules" and just getting together as I am.  (Boundaries anyone?) Honestly, at first that bothered me... why was everyone so afraid?  Then as time goes on, I realize that maybe... just maybe... I have to think differently. I am still not afraid to have others over (in small groups mind you) but I have come to understand that I must respect others boundaries. I can still use my gifts of hospitality, just in other ways.  I began to ask the Holy Spirit for different ideas... you know what?  He gave me some different ideas!  Sure; does hospitality look like I thought it did?  Nope not at all!  But I will continue to do what is put before me in this season.

Added bonus...the Holy Spirit directed us to some folks who were ok with gathering... safely and in small numbers, and very spread out... but still they were willing.  That meant a lot to me!

Deuteronomy 6:12 "Then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the hand of Egypt"

We are all dealing with our stuff; anxiety, stress, loss of control, anger... you name it!  I am too!  I worry about my family being able to find toilet paper, ground beef and pasta as much as the rest of you.  I am stressed about trying to get my ADD kiddos on a normal routine with this whole new world of "homeschool."  I feel the loss of control as the government keeps telling me what I cannot do.  I feel anger when people don't have the same boundaries as I do.  But I need to remind myself these are all things that I cannot change.  These are things that I cannot fix.  But God can.  I am no longer a slave to anxiety, stress, loss of control and anger, it is the Evil One who continues to bring me back there! So instead I will choose to find the good amid the crisis...

**we are together as a family.... I am always saying how busy I am... now I am not!

**we are able to have family dinners again... all the activities are cancelled

**we are working from home.... we are not on the front lines.... thank you to all those who are essential

**we are spending more time in God's Word... I am always saying I wish I had more consistency... now I do

**our schedule is so much more relaxed... I am glad for this.... it allows a lot of spontaneous activities

**piano practice, showers, laundry, grocery shopping.... all of it can happen at anytime and we are not frustrated trying to find the smallest bit of time for them

**house projects... all those little things like organizing and cleaning out... YAY!!

**we get to sleep in

**we aren't using as much gas money

**we continue to have our jobs

**our kiddos teachers are doing amazing things with the kiddos during this stressful time

**we have found new ways to reach out to our close friends and family even if we cannot be with them during this time

**we have not run out of toilet paper yet (and we didn't hoard buy any either)... although we might need some toothpaste soon. 😂

** finally I have time to write again... 

So.... what is it that you find is an unexpected blessing during this???

My Story... Making it My Own

So when we last left off I was a tiny girl in a folding chair in a small country church... let's skip ahead to my teen years.... 17 to be exact...

I was not the model citizen of God's heavenly army that you may expect (or I hope you would).  I am very much a people person and need to be liked by people (my personal snare that Satan trips me up on ALL.THE.TIME)  and coming from a very small town where there were not many Christian influences, I quickly fell prey to all forms of people-idols.

One of the small things that my parents did to help us to find like-minded folk was to send us away to summer camp each year to a place called Word of Life.  It was through years of contact with many Christian kids/teens that I got a glimpse of the bigger world than my teeny little world in upstate NY.  One summer I even spent the entire summer working as a waitress at their resort.  It was at this time I was introduced to the Word of Life Bible Institute.  Now, for those of you not familiar with this particular institution... it is a year-long intense dive into all things Bible related in an ultra-strict, some calling it legalistic, type of place.  Just to give you a favor of the culture, no PC (personal contact) between males and females, no movies, no radios, no card games, no televisions, and so and so forth...  So for a 16-year old kid, there for the summer, still liking to go home and live a normal life... going to college here?  NOT A CHANCE!!  Can you see where I am going?

On the back side of this little story, my grandmother graduated from Liberty University and loved it, so much so she encouraged all her grandchildren to attend there.  I took her up on it. While a Liberty is a private christian college (which made my parents happy), it was big and it was a normal college with normal rules.

It was also that year that a large grant came through that made going to Liberty University a great deal and can you guess what the deal included??... you guessed it...you had to do your freshman year at Word of Life Bible Institute.  So that is how at 17 I suddenly find my sitting at computer filling out an application for WOLBI and not exactly knowing how I got there but convincing myself I can do anything for a year... right?

So long story short I end up at WOLBI and lo and behold it is actually good for me and I enjoy it.  But more than that it is where I end up seeing the Christian life lived out for real in others, I see what it really means to be a Christian.  Which means in January 1994 I rededicated my life and this time I made it my own.  Which bring me to the next stage of my story... did I really mean it?  Stay tuned....

My Story... the Beginning

I recently asked someone about their testimony and then of course they asked... what about you?  I have chewed on this question for a month now and while I know I have a simple answer, my testimony is so big with so many moments in between I have really desired to write down those moments, because you see, my testimony is a moment in time, a specific moment, but it is also what I am from then until now... many moments.  So I thought I would pick up my digital pen and dust off my digital pad of paper and write down those moments in a mini series of My Story.  While it may only intrigue a few folks, it can stop rolling round in my little brain and find a home here.

So my testimony, or for those who don't even know what that means, my personal walk with the Almighty God of this universe began at the humble age of 10.  I pretty much grew up in a Christian home, my parents did not.  They both were saved when I was 4 years old by complete strangers (at the time, but now life long friends) when they were "almost dared" to go to church and then invited home to dinner and presented the gospel.  They were the first in both of their families and have had the privilege of seeing many of their siblings and parents come to know the Lord.  But my guess is that seeing their children (one of whom is even a pastor) and grandchildren know the Lord and all grow up in a Christian home is the greatest blessing of all... but I digress... that is their story not mine.  But... it does lead you to my story because it was in the church where my parents took us every Sunday, Wednesday, and any other day there was something happening there, that God reached down and opened a tiny little girl's heart.

Ok so the year is 1985, and the Sunday is extra special because it is Easter Sunday. But not the morning service where all the lilies are and the little bouncy dresses with pretty straw bonnets are.  It is the evening service, when everyone has had their ham dinner, the lilies have all been taken home, and the service is a little more causal.  I remember I loved the evening service in that little church because we could choose the songs, the pastor would ask what are we going to sing and you could pick your favorite and call out the number and we would sing it.  (My favorite was always Pass It On)  This Sunday though I don't remember all the details, and I was a kid, so I remember that when the pastor started to speak, it was my time to "tune out" or color in my coloring book.   I remember this night was different.  Something caught my attention about what the pastor was saying and I really listened... it was the story of Jesus and his death on a cross, one I had heard many times, but this time it was different, it was about ME.  And while there was no alter call, no hand raising, no special rejoicing, it was just me, a tiny little girl, sitting in a brown folding chair, asking Jesus to come into her heart.

To this day 30+ years later, I can remember that moment clear as day.  I can remember the feeling of freshness.  I can remember the almost brand new me.

Now that is just the beginning of my story, God had many milestones ahead for me.... stay tuned.