My Name is Kimberly, and I'm a cookbook-aholic....

I love cookbooks. I have many of them and am always looking for new good ones. I have some that are purely for looking at and reading through, because the recipes are far too extravagant to be practical for my life. I have some that are reference guides, full of basic information like how to make chicken stock and how long to bake a potato. Then there are those that I cook from each and every week. They are dog-eared, marked-up and worn. I love those cookbooks and feel like I have made a new friend when I find another to add to the collection. That is how I feel about the cookbook that I am giving away this week. I have blogged about it before, and am so excited to introduce someone else to this terrific book. I have only had the book a short time but have already made no less than 10 recipes from it and ALL of them have been good. Most of them have been outstanding.

The book is Don't Panic, Dinner's in the Freezer and it is not only full of good recipes, it teaches you how to make the most of your time, cooking in multiples and freezing for later. It has an exhaustive guide, explaining how best to freeze things to maximize your freezer space and their life in the freezer. It has been such a relief to have a small stockpile on hand for those days when the kids have driven me to exhaustion or I was longer at Target than I had planned and need to make dinner in a hurry. Even better, I was recently able to bless a woman at church who just had a baby by bringing her a meal of homemade soup and bread, but I didn't actually have to make any of it....it was already done and in my freezer! I don't know about you, but it's a lot easier to volunteer for things like meals on wheels when you don't have to figure out how on earth you're going to find the time to do it!

So here's the deal....
If you want to enter my giveaway, leave me a comment on THIS post before Friday, November 3rd at 9pm Pacific time and I will pick a random winner on Saturday, November 4th! Don't forget to leave me an email address so I can contact you to let you know if you've won!

Make sure and check out Shannon's "It's Fall, Y'all" giveaway for more things to win!

***Updated***
Wow! I can't believe how many of you entered my little giveaway! Thanks so much! I will use the random number generator to find out who won and let you all know tomorrow!

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Buy This

I have always been a Bebo Norman fan, counting his concert as one of my favorites ever attended. Everything that he is on disc he is exponentially live. If you have the chance to see him....run! He is truly a talent, not a product of a studio, and his love of Jesus oozes from him.

Anyway....one of the biggest sacrifices I have made as a stay-at-home mom is that my music buying budget has significantly decreased. For this reason I just yesterday bought Bebo's newest (um....if you consider Sept of 2006 new) album, Between the Dreaming and the Coming True. I bought it on iTunes and am listening to it on my iPod as I type this. Honestly....I don't know how I have lived this long without this CD. It is far and away his best, and I can't recommend it enough. If you like Bebo, or are a fan of singer-songwriters or just like music, go buy this. You won't regret it.

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She is a Miracle, she just doesn't believe it.

Part of the struggle in the life of a Christian is the desire to pursue God's will for our lives, yet not always knowing what that is. When we add our own desires, the desires of those around us and what the world says our pursuits should be, staying on track can be difficult, to say the least. It is not in our human nature to be self-sacrificing and to glorify someone other than ourselves. Both of those things are necessary to be living as God has intended for us. As I grow in years, I want nothing more than to be able to look back at my life and see God's fingerprints all over what I have accomplished. There is a woman in my life that can do just that if she chooses, but I'm not always sure that this occurs to her.

I think when my Aunt Maureen looks back at her life so far, she sees a lot of things she wishes were different. Different choices on the part of herself and the ones she loves. I think she wishes that she had had children of her own, and that her family members had lived without the diseases they have faced and succumbed to. I think she wishes that a lot of the wounds she's received at the hands of people she trusted weren't there. I think she thinks that life would be so much better if these things had been different, and she may be right.

When I look back at her life so far, though, I see something very different. Her father, my Grandpa Lou, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at a very young age. He became unable to care for himself, and though he lived thousands of miles away, my Aunt brought him here and took care of him, eventually even building her house especially to accommodate him and his needs. She cleaned, cooked and cared for him, even when that became extraordinarily difficult. Even now, as he's in heaven, she cares for his memory. Not long after this, her mother-in-law had to have her leg amputated and needed to be cared for. My Aunt took on the responsibility, once again becoming housekeeper, laundress, cook, nurse and companion to an elderly family member. It would never have occurred to my Aunt not to.

Now my Grandma has cancer. She lives over a thousand miles away from us, and yet my Aunt travels to be with her on a very regular basis. Cooking for her, cleaning for her, taking her to doctor's appointments and keeping her company. You can hear the difference in my Grandma's voice on the phone when my Aunt is there. She is being nourished, both with food and with love. The chemo and the cancer have much less power over her when she is being cherished and cared for the way my Aunt does.

When I look at my Aunt's life, I see God's direction all over it. Had she children of her own, she would never have been available to care for these individuals who needed her so much. Had she worked in a traditional job, she would have not been able to do all the things necessary to provide. I don't think my Aunt Maureen knows what a special, giving person it takes to sacrifice the way she does. I don't think she knows what a miracle she is in the lives of these loved ones. I don't think she knows what a miracle she is to me, or my mom, or my brother. We can't do the things she does, but knowing that someone is caring for my Grandma makes all the difference in the world to us.

Aunt Maureen, I know it's not always easy to give the way you do. I know there are days when it's frustrating and you feel like you're all alone. Please know that you are not. You are cherished, you are prayed for, you are thought of and you are walking the steps God prepared in advance for you to take. You are a miracle and I could not love you more.

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I think I need a vacation!

I spent 10 minutes this morning looking for a pair of yoga pants I wanted to make sure were clean and available for me to wear to the gym tonight. I looked everywhere I thought they could be....in the drawer, in the closet, in the hamper, under the bed....

Eventually I gave up. I find that if something is frustrating me, the best thing to do is to walk away from it for awhile and come back a little later with fresh eyes or a fresh attitude. I knew that if I just waited a little while, I would find the pants.

What do you know! I was absolutely right. I fed the kids breakfast and made the beds and a few other miscellaneous things and what do you know? I found the pants! I WAS WEARING THEM! I HAD BEEN WEARING THEM THE WHOLE TIME! I think I need a vacation!

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You might be a Parent (of Toddlers).....

Lately, as I have been living my everyday life, I have found myself in situations that would never have happened before I was a parent. I have had to laugh as I try to imagine these things in my life a few years ago. So in an ode to Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a Redneck", I have compiled a list of "You might be a Parent (0f Toddlers)".....

**If you find yourself talking to your friends about poop and everyone involved in the conversation thinks this is normal, you might be a parent.

**If you find yourself eating breakfast with a construction workers hat on your head and you do not work in the construction business, you might be a parent.

**If you find yourself clapping and dancing because someone used a toilet, you might be a parent.

**If grabbing a booger off of someone else's nose has become a fairly routine part of your life, you might be a parent.

**If you find yourself very excited about the new episode of "Little Einsteins" because you are so sick of the rest of them, you might be a parent.

**If your back is killing you because you have given too many horsey rides in one day, you might be a parent (or you have some weird friends).

**If your brother can't choose the restaurant he wants to go to for his birthday because it's not family friendly, you might be a parent (sorry, Kev!)

**If the fact that Chuck E. Cheese's is not in the 2008 Entertainment Book has you totally bummed, you might be a parent.

And last but not least....

**If you love another human being (or two, or three....) more than you ever knew you were capable, you might be a parent.

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In the Kitchen with Kimberly

We are officially into the throws of Autumn around here. I read a lot of blogs of women in the South who are still experiencing the heat of Summer, but not where I live. When the meteorologists have their 7-day forecasts on the screen, they look like one long rain cloud. There are those who would find that terrible, my husband being one of them. He'll say things to Elijah like "We can't go outside today, son, because the weather is bad." That is when I remind him that that is an opinion.

I love this weather. I wait all summer long for the weather to turn and I live in an area of the United States that does not disappoint. I have mentioned in many posts the reasons why I love the rain and dislike the heat, but one of the main reasons has to do with all of the time I get to spend in my kitchen when the weather turns to gray. Because I am not fortunate enough to have Air Conditioning, my oven does not get turned on once the thermostat hits about 85 degrees (and even if I did have AC....why would I spend all that money cooling down my house only to heat it up again with the oven?). This greatly limits the things I can do, culinarily speaking. Even my friend, the Crock-Pot, is not very helpful, because who really feels like a nice, hearty Pot Roast (or the like) if your apartment is thick with heat and humidity? So the summers around here consist of stir-frys and grilled chicken and sandwiches and salads. I'm pretty good about making those things as creative as I can, but they still are what they are, and I get bored. By the end of the summer, I find myself sending Mark to Taco Bell more than I am proud of.

So last weekend, in the pouring rain, I made my way to two grocery stores with a list a mile long. I was gleeful as I thought about all of the things I could make. Soups and Stews, Roasts and Casseroles, Breads and Cookies. I was re-energized! For the first time in ages, I threw things into my grocery cart with little regard for what the total at the check stand would be (notice I said little regard, not no regard). I felt domestic and maternal. I was going to fill my families tummies with delicious, delightful goodies.

One of my most exciting finds this summer was a book called Don't Panic, Dinner's in the Freezer. A friend of mine said she had heard good things about it so we decided to order it from Amazon.com together (so we could qualify for the free shipping!). Last weekend I made four recipes from it and not one of them disappointed. The premise of the book is this: You can use it as a regular old cookbook and it will do you just fine. The intention of the book, however, is to teach you how to successfully multiply your recipe and freeze some of it for later. It breaks the ingredients down for you for single, triple, or even 12 times the recipe! It has an exhaustive section on how to then go about freezing things so that they take up as little room in your freezer as possible and last the longest amount of time. It's recipes include everything from Beverages to Brunch to Beef to Brownies and everything in between. So far I have made a chicken dish (Buttermilk Herb Chicken), two soups (Broccoli Cheese and North Woods Wild Rice) and a baked good (Lemon Bread). All of them have been outstanding! I not only made wonderful meals for my family, I now have over 4 meals on stand-by in my freezer for the days that time gets away from me or I have had an ugly day with the kids and want to be able to put my feet up when Mark gets home instead of making a meal. I highly recommend this book! I am even considering making it my give-away for Shannon's Fall Giveaway Carnival. So if you love cooking as much as I do, but find that sometimes you need a backup plan, pick up this book (or come enter my giveaway when the time comes)!

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Jesus was an activity

For all of my adult life I have been a part of the same small group Bible study. It has evolved over the years as members have come and gone, moving on or moving away, but the core members have remained the same. We began as a singles group, but now most of us are married, and at last count, there are 6 children among us. Due to the ever-expanding size of our families, this group recently had to disband. This was a long time coming, as we had been struggling for months trying to figure out how to accommodate childcare for 6 without it becoming a large financial burden (we're all single income families) for any one of us. The honest truth about things is that this childcare struggle nearly ruined our friendships. It's not worth explaining all of the reasons it became so divisive, there just was never a consensus on how we could do things. So it was decided that we would meet socially on a monthly basis to maintain our friendships, but we would no longer be a weekly small group. This was a necessary, yet very sad, decision.

Mark and I, along with another couple from the original group, started a small group at our church and are embarking on a new journey, with some familiar faces, but also some new. The nervousness I felt the first night really took me by surprise. I had become so comfortable in my old group. They were family, and they were my comfort zone. To be with strangers, sharing intimate things about my life and my walk with the Lord, was stretching my boundaries. What I have learned, however, is that fresh faces and fresh insight are as tremendous a blessing a deep friendship and familiarity.

Susan is the name of one of the new friends I am making. She and her husband, Ranjeet, are joining us as we study Phil Yancey's book The Jesus I Never Knew . Our first week of study, we talked about our mind's picture of Jesus vs. the world's picture of Jesus vs. the Bible's picture of Jesus. We reflected back on our childhood and the different people and events that shaped our ideas of Jesus. We discussed the "western" Jesus you find in paintings and in Bibles, with his long, blond hair and blue eyes, and how it would have been strange for a middle-eastern Jew to look anything like that. We discussed the "warm-fuzzy" Jesus of the post-modern church and the public at large, and how, when you read the gospels, Jesus wasn't always very "nice" at all. Truly kind and truly loving, always, but "nice"? No. We all had similar influences in our lives, citing parents, pastors and friends as people who showed us who Jesus was, or wasn't, through the years.

We came to our high school years and were reflecting on our influences. We all said that we had been very active in our youth groups at church, surrounded by church-going friends and positive influences. The mystery for us all, then, was why did we all agree that we never really got to know Jesus personally until after college? Then Susan said something that hit the nail right on the head. Because in high school, Jesus was an activity. He was something we did. Not someone we knew. "Jesus" was church, Sunday school, Youth group, church camp. He was fun and friendship and a place to be. Who He was didn't much matter. When she said this, it was like a light-bulb went off in my head. Suddenly the fact that my faith was superficial for so many years made perfect sense.

This idea has stuck with me for over a week since she said it. I have begun praying that I parent in ways that ensure that for my kids, Jesus is never an activity. He was a man, and He is God. He loves us deeply and has so much He wants to teach us and bless us with. I believe in activities, because after all....even though it took awhile for me to put the relationship in my faith, my foundation had been built by all of those years in church, Sunday school, Youth group and camp. What I am building now is stronger for all of those years. I only hope to spare my kids the years in between. The years of distance from a savior who aches to know them deeply and give direction to their lives. I know that there is only so much I can do, and that ultimately they will make their own choices. But for as long as I can, I'm going to spend time introducing my boys to the love of my life: Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God.

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