Mom and Pastor on Edge

A Drive Through the National Park

Last Sunday, our family took a drive through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

These were the grown-ups.

We were quite brave, taking a car full of wild little Lewtons into a park with wild animals. Or maybe we were well-armed. In any case, Sammy took this picture before we embarked on our drive. Just before that, we spent a few minutes walking through the park station, looking at pictures, eating complimentary popcorn, and telling the kids "no" when they asked if we would buy souvenirs. 

It was Presidents' Day weekend. In honor of the day, there was a multiple choice quiz with about ten questions asking presidential trivia. You could complete the quiz and hand it in for a prize. In our family, Tom is the resident president-expert. Every kid is probably an expert on something. For Tom, it's presidential history. He can give you the names of all of the presidents in order. Usually, you can give him a year and he can tell you who was president at that time. He loves to learn about them.

He was working on the quiz and his dad "helped" him with one of the questions Tom wasn't sure about...which later was the only one Tom did not get right! (Truthfully, presidential history has always been Marcus' bag, but I guess it was a tricky question.) =)

Tom still walked away with a nice little cutout of Teddy Roosevelt. (A no-cost souvenir!)

This is Tom (without Teddy).

Three wild Lewtons: Tom, Karis and Sam.

Marcus and Sam, who can never find two of his own mittens, so he borrows Karis' instead, pink and all.

Karis turns three in a few weeks.

We took a mini-hike up a miniature butte. The boys were not at all afraid of any of the edges.

Tom wriggled his way through a rock. 

Whew! We all made it safely down to the end of the trail.

We saw very little wildlife outside of our own vehicle. Just these buffalo, along with the obligatory prairie dogs.

But we saw beautiful sights on that strangely warm, 50-degree February day. A drive through the park is ia good reminder of the uniqueness of creation. I'm not one to call the badlands beautiful, maybe because beautiful to me is still the endless of horizon of the trusty flat, flat land I grew up around. Roosevelt referred to the "immensity and mystery" of it all.

In the end, with all of the wild Lewtons in the car and accounted for, we exited the park. I wonder if Karis learned any naughty tricks from watching the wayward prairie dogs...

Extravagance in Advent

Two boys were playing house this morning. While Thomas "the dad" was giving Sam "the kid" a ride to school in the car...

 

I was busy in the kitchen, acting as though my life depended on baking up a storm. It was a great mental health morning,  calling upon the kitchen saints of old: Bobby Flay, the Pioneer Woman, and the crock pot.

Bobby Flay's Pumpkin Bread Pudding is ready to be custard-ed, PW's sugar cookies are chilling out in the fridge, getting ready to be shaped into a new creation (to borrow Saint Paul's words), and the peanuts are finished with their soak in the crock pot hot tub. (If you want a yummy recipe for chocolate covered peanuts, here it is: http://southernfood.about.com/od/candyrecipes/r/bl109c5.htm. I adjusted the ingredients a bit and dropped spoonfuls into muffin cups at the end. They taste like Reese Peanut Butter Cups!)

In the middle of putting the peanuts and the chocolate into the crock pot, it occurred to me that the combination of these two things tend to give me canker sores! It is a faithful equation:

salty treats + chocolate = a regretful Lisa

I came to this revelation only about ten years ago, when I realized I was spending every Christmas with a canker sore or two. How could this be, I wondered? Was it the chocolate drop cookies? Could it be the peanut butter and chocolate bon bons? Certainly it wasn't the chocolate covered potato chips! Unfortunately, the answer was yes, yes, and yes.

And so this morning, when I was doing this...

I came to believe the season of Advent can only be enjoyed with a spirit of extravagance that matchs the gift we anticipate in the manger under an extravagantly starry sky. Even if it means there may be a price to pay later on, this season of anticipation that goes so quickly should be welcomed with an extravagant array of good things.
 

Food Art

Many a-nights of looking cold mashed potatoes in the eye growing up, long after everyone else had cleaned their plates, taught me a thing or two about the desperate measures taken by parents who want their kids to eat.

My picking eating habits have been inherited by Thomas, who is usually too busy to sit down and bother to eat. When we are at the dinner table, he often ducks down undernearth the table, where he gravitates toward the helpless feet of Sam, either pinching or tickling them, or both at the same time.

Thomas, too, has looked a cold potato or two in the eye. Another desperate measure I've taken is food art. If I can make the food on his plate look relatively cool, the food might stand a chance of disappearing. Today at lunch, Thomas did some food art on his own. He took his peanut butter marshmallow fluff sandwich and made it into delicious artwork before making it disappear. (Of course, who would not eat a peanut butter marshmallow fluff sandwich, really? I can't believe I've gone all these years without knowing about such a creation? Thanks, Marya Skaare!)

Here is Thomas' creation:

Peanut butter marshmallow fluff, you delicious sandwich you, now you look as good as you taste. 

Pimentos

There are two different varieties of foods: foods that feed the belly and the foods that feed the soul.

When  Marcus and I got married, my mom gave us the coolest gift. It was a family cookbook with a collection of recipes from my aunts and cousins (and of course from my mom). There were several recipes that had been handed down from Grandma Florence and one Swedish Pancake recipe that my mom remembers Grandpa Russ making, standing at the stove flipping one single thin pancake at a time.

Another famous recipe is "Funeral Hotdish", coined by Grandma Florence because she would bring it to families who were grieving. "Oh, someone from church died. Time to boil the chicken for Funeral Hotdish," she would say. It's the most wonderful recipe in the world to me, a twist on homemade mac-n-cheese, with peas and pimentos joining the party. Marcus, who has some animosity toward hot dishes anyway, is less than impressed with the pimentos. What a party-pooper.

Tonight, the leftover turkey is swimming in a sea of Turkey (almost ready for the dumplings) Soup. It's his family's recipe, although Turkey Soup is kind of a free-for-all. But it is his soul food that followed Thanksgiving meals growing up. These soul food recipes come with marriage, a person could say. It's the way we blend our families while honoring each one at the same time. I make the Turkey Dumpling Soup and once in a while, he will eat a pimento. Once in a while!

Summer Cookin'

In my fridge, four friendly chicken breasts are bathing in a luxurious concoction that is a Pioneer Woman marinade. It's enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the dish, the juice of a lemon, a dash of kosher salt, a little dijon mustard, and some honey. Mmmm, honey. You can taste every marinade ingredient when you bite into the chicken, which PW suggests should enjoy their bath for about 24 hours. The wait is worth it.

Throughout the summer, I've been on a mission to cook without the oven. I think I've only used it twice. Once when Jo and James were visiting, and there must have been another time in there. The crock pot and grill stay busy throughout the summer.

For dessert tonight, I made a banana foster mixture in the crock pot and delightfully poured it on top of Marcus' and my peanut butter cup ice cream. Of course, the ice cream would be just fine without it, but then it would be rum-less, butter-less, and cinnamon-less. And that would be happy-less.

Food

I never used to be a big fan of eating. A hippy named Shawn once described eating as an inconvenience.  But he didn't know about The Pioneer Woman. (Neither did I, because it was pre-blogging.) Actually, eating was difficult a couple of years ago because my kids kept stealing my food. It seems like I should have been able to defend my plate against a one and three year old, but invevitably, I ended up eating very little because my kids always liked the food off of my plate better than theirs. Then I realized I was losing weight and now I guard my plate more carefully when my kids are around.

And I usually love eating. Tonight, I'm cooking for my parents and in-laws because they are gracious people and we are very, very thankful for them. (Except when our lives too closely resemble "Everybody Loves Ray".) We're having PW Chicken Fried Steak, PW Mashed Potatoes, PW French Puffs, Cheesy Bread (I figured that out all on my own), and probably a spinach salad as the obligatory vegetable. I've never made Chicken Fried Steak, but it's my father-in-law's favorite and because it creates gravy, Marcus will love it, too. I hope they are hungry because I bought lots of butter yesterday at little Dan's to use for this one meal. I think there will be 3-5 sticks of butter involved tonight. Obscene? Absolutely.