Simple Home Living: 11/4/07

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Women struggle with anger and more...

anger,
bitterness,
father wounds,
how to journal,
how to really listen,
how to deal with gossip,
how to deal with criticism,
dealing with body image,
creating a peaceful home,
how to have confidence in starting new relationships.

Precious Women from Tucson's E-Free Church

1st E- Free

I just made the BEST EVER Brownies

I just got back this afternoon from Tucson. I had a speaking engagement at the E-Free Church on Swan Road. The last bit of encouragement I gave these precious women was was "go home and bake cookies." It DOES have a "special" meaning.

Like every good teacher, you do what you tell the ones you teach, I didn't "bake cookies" but I did pull out Martha Stewart's Favorite Comfort Food Cookbook, turned to the chocolate section and proceeded to make the BEST Brownies ever. So, wonderful that they smell in the oven drew my darling husband into the kitchen.

For all your brownie lovers - here's the recipe. So...go "bake brownies."
Ingredients:
12 T. 1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, cut in pieces
8 oz of best quality bittersweet or semisweet chocolate ( all I had was chocolate chips and it worked)
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 T. pure vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup sifted all purpose flour
1/2 t salt

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 13 inch baking pan with butter
2. In the top of a double boiler or n a heat - proof bowl over simmering water, melt the butter and chocolate until smooth; stir occasionally. Remove from the heat. Allow to cool to room temperature.
3. In a large mixing bow, combine the eggs, granulated and brown sugars, and vanilla, and beat well with a wire whisk. In a separate bowl, combine the sifted flour and salt. Add the cooled chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and, using a wooden spoon, stir until well combined. Gradually add the flour mixture, and beat until thoroughly combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
4. Bake until a tester inserted into the center of the brownie comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Do not over bake. Let stand on a rack in the pan until cool.
5. Enjoy.

The bottom picture show what the condition of my brownies looked like after less than 3 minutes out of the oven.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Where's Lylah Going?

Today, I head to Tucson. I am so privileged to speak at an E-Free Church in the Tucson Valley. My subject: Marriage.

Actually, that's just about the only subject that I take requests for.

Why?

Because God's heart is for marriage and many are in a mess today.

What's the title of my message? The Woman's Place

What's my text? Ephesians 5:33

Why is that my choice? Because (generally) women don't understand what it means to reverence their husband. Generally, women don't have a clue what it means to come under the (mantel) authority of their husband. They don't understand that their husbands havent earned the position - it's been given by God. Whether a husband likes it or not, he's been positioned (and will be responsible for) a place (in the marriage relationship) of authority.

Anything God says for a woman to do - He gives wisdom and simple practical how to do its.

Here are some synonyms of the word reverence:
admire
value
show consideration for
follow
high opinion
defer to
esteem
worship
awe
amazement
veneration
devotion
love
regard
appreciation.

When we apply God's word, it work. If it's not working, it's because it's NOT been applied, or it's been misapplied. So, what do you think?

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Holiday Cranberry Sauce

Besides Turkey, this will be on our Thanksgiving Day Table. The recipe comes from the Westin Price Foundation site.

Holiday Cranberry Sauce
This cranberry sauce makes a wonderful condiment for meat at Thanksgiving or Christmas. For a real treat, use any leftover sauce as a topping on apple pie.

1 -12 oz. bag cranberries1 cup water1/2 cup granulated maple sugar or Rapadura1 orange, zested, peeled and finely choppedzest of one orange2 medium apples, peeled and chopped1/2 tsp. ground cloves1/4 tsp. cinnamon1/8 tsp. allspice1/8 tsp. ginger1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped

Place cranberries, water and granulated maple sugar or Rapadura in a large pan and bring to a boil. When the sugar has dissolved and most of the berries have popped, reduce the heat and add the chopped orange, zest and apples. When the apples are almost cooked, add the spices and walnuts. Simmer until apples are just soft. Chill and serve cold.

Butter? Margarine?

I don't use margarine - EVER! Here's the reason why. It's long - but worth the time to read.

Want to Learn Spanish?

I'm not so good at rolling my "rrrrsss", but I'm trying. I've been listening to Spanish Learning Podcast (for free). Here's the two sites that are helping me learn a new language!

Notes in Spanish and Coffee Break Spanish Both are incredibly helpful. I just download them on my I-Pod and listen and repeat while cooking dinner or washing dishes. Coffee Break Spanish is a bit easier for me to capture right now.

Croquetas - Tapas of the week

While in Spain, I came to LOVE what's called - Croquetas. I just found a recipe for these wonderful tapas.

Croquetas are made of a thick bechamel usually containing flecks of serrano ham (though chicken, fish and meat croquetas are also common), coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried. They are a meal in themselves (if you eat enough of them of course), and though they are rarely handed over for free with drinks, a plate of half a dozen will cost around 7 to 10 euros in restaurants and bars.

Like many Spanish dishes, the croqueta was born out of necessity, when Spain was suffering one of many periods of hunger and resourceful cooks had to invent good food from very basic raw materials. So, here we have flour, milk, breadcrumbs, scraps of ham, and little else, all put together to wonderful effect. Stuck on a desert island with only one choice of Spanish tapas, the Croqueta would get my vote every time… which tapas would you pick?

I found this on - Notes From Spain

Bechamel Coated Fried Chicken

I just got off the phone with my daughter who lives in Spain. Like I often do, I asked what's for dinner. Sounded so yummy, I went on a google recipe search. I'm not sure if it's exactly like what she's prepared...but it's worth a try.

Bechamel Coated Fried Chicken Recipe
2 whole chicken breasts, splitcoarse saltfreshly ground pepper1/4 tsp thyme1 bay leaf1/2 onion, peeled1 sprig parsely1 egg, beatenbread crumbsoil for fryingbechamel sauce: 5 tbsps butter6 tbsps flour3/4 cup milksaltfreshly ground pepper1/8 tsp ground nutmeg.

Remove the small rib bones from the chicken, leaving the large breast bone intact.

Cook the breasts in water to cover with the salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaf, onion, and parsley. Add also the bones that have been removed.

Cook about 15 minutes - do not overcook. Remove the chicken and continue cooking the broth another 30 minutes. Reserve 3/4 cup of the broth for the bechamel sauce. cool, then chill the chicken.

To make the bechamel sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and cook a minute or so. Stir in the reserved broth, the milk, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Cook until the sauce is thickened and smooth. cool, stirring occasionally.

Dip the cold chicken pieces in the bechamel sauce, coating them completely on all sides. Place the breasts on a plate and refrigerate until the sauce hardens, at least 1 hour. Dip the breasts in the beaten egg, then into bread crumbs to coat.

Fry immediately in hot oil, at least 1" deep, until the chicken is golden on all sides. drain. The trick lies in chilling the bechamel so that during frying it clings to the chicken.

Here's the second one I found:

CHICKEN BREAST WITH BECHAMEL SAUCE

BREAST MEAT:
1 chicken breast, skinned and bonedPinch white pepperPinch sage, fresh or dry1 to 2 lg. spinach leaves1 slice imported Swiss cheese1 slice prosciutto ham1 tbsp. Parmesan cheese, freshly grated2 to 3 dry porcini mushrooms, soaked in waterFlour and bread crumbs1 egg, beatenVegetable oil

BECHAMEL SAUCE:
2 oz. butter1/2 med. shallot, chopped3 to 4 mushrooms, sliced thin2 oz. flour1 c. hot milkPinch nutmeg. Salt to taste.

Flatten chicken breast evenly all around. Sprinkle with sage and pepper. Place spinach on top, follow with Swiss cheese, prosciutto, grated Parmesan and mushrooms. Fold the meat on the right and left sides and roll it making sure the stuffing is well sealed. Dredge the breast roll with flour, dip into beaten egg then into bread crumbs. Heat oil (to cover bottom) in frying pan and fry chicken until golden brown on all sides. Remove from pan and put in baking dish in preheated oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

While chicken is cooking prepare the Bechamel sauce. Saute the shallots and mushrooms with butter in saucepan until shallots are wilted. Add flour and mix vigorously. Remove pan from heat, gradually add milk, mixing with a whisk to prevent lumps. Put saucepan back on the flame and bring to a slow boil and cook for about 5 minutes. Add nutmeg and salt.
Slice chicken roll, and serve with the sauce on the side. Serves 1.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Andi's Recipe for Hummus

If you've never eaten hummus, you ought to give it a try. It's a regular in the middle east and it's great with pita bread.

My friend, Andi, just told me she made some. I asked her to forward the recipe so you could try it.

Here is my first ever hummus recipe. I hope to make some variations with eggplant, cilantro, jalapenos, and pine nuts.

3 cups cooked chickpeas, from 1 1/2 cups dried chickpeas
1/2 tsp salt
4 garlic cloves (more or less depending on how much garlic you like)
1/2 cup Tahiti (sesame seed paste)
1/2 cup lemon juice (fresh lemons, about 2)

Pinch of Olive oil, salt, and pepper

olive oil, parsley, paprika or cumin for serving

1. Soak the chickpeas overnight in water. Drain, and place chickpeas in a pot and add fresh water to cover by at least one inch, gently rub the chickpeas against each other with your hands. Bring the chickpeas to a boil with a pinch of salt, skim the surface, then lower the heat and simmer until the chickpeas are tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

2. Drain the chickpeas, reserving their liquid.

3. Peel the 4 garlic cloves and place them in a piece of aluminum foil. Top with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. Seal up the foil and bake in the oven at 425 for above 5 minutes, or until the garlic looks roasted.

3. Place the garlic and salt in a food processor and pulse to chop. Add the tahini and lemon juice and process until the mixture is pureed. Add the chickpeas and process until very smooth. Thin the hummus to the desired consistency with the reserved cooking liquid. Taste and adjust seasoning with lemon juice and salt.

Chill and serve with pita or veggies.

It's a Nana Day!

Today I went with Zane's pre-school class (teacher Mrs. Fox) to a home out in Gilbert. We got to see wallabies, turkeys, tortoises and other species of God amazing creation.

Afterwards, we trekked to our home and made Anna's Best Chocholate Chip Cookies!

Another Comfortable Looking Shirt

The Cutest Mama Shirt!

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

I found some soy candles.

My mom emailed me the other day, very excited about her new candles. I asked her if they were soy. Nope, they weren't. I told her I'd find a resource for her and here it is. Soy Candles.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Survivor

I subscribe to Tony Perkin's Washington Update. This e-newsletter just came into my box. It's amazing and needs to be read. I'll quote:

Survivor: The Womb Edition
Having just witnessed the miracle of new life, I was amazed at the story of the Lord's protection over an unborn baby that doctors in the U.K. tried--unsuccessfully--to abort. The child, who physicians claimed suffered from an enlarged heart that would likely be fatal in the womb, was a twin. Heeding their doctors' advice, which was to put the child out of his misery, Rebecca and Mark Jones reluctantly agreed to abort the baby in hopes of saving his brother. Gabriel, as he is now known, had other ideas. When the medical team tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off the blood supply, the cord was too strong. Next they tried to divide the placenta in half "so that when Gabriel died, it wouldn't affect his twin brother."

To everyone's amazement, Gabriel survived for another five weeks--long enough for Rebecca to deliver him. She and her husband now marvel that their babies are both alive and completely healthy. "No one could quite believe it," Rebecca says, seven months later. In fact, the procedure that doctors thought would end Gabriel's life was later credited with saving it.

The distribution of nutrients through the separate placentas helped give him the strength he needed to keep fighting. As moving as this story is, it does underscore just how vital it is for families to have pro-life doctors who share their worldview. Like the Joneses, we're often at the mercy of the medical community's opinion, and surely we all want their advice to be illuminated through a pro-life lens.

Additional Resources We're twinseparable! Happy with his brother, the boy who refused to die See the little guy's picture!

Life Coach Moms updated site

I've been working profusely on reconstructing my site at www.lifecoachmoms.com and today, it's done! I'm celebrating. Sure there will be a few minor things that need attention, but that's life, right?

Now that it's done - I'm shifting my focus. Besides, husband, home front and family - I'm preparing to speak to women this coming weekend. I'll be headed to Tucson on Friday to speak at a workshop on Saturday. My subject? Marriage.

God's Word is true and when I apply it - it works. Isn't it one thing to study the fruit of the Holy Spirit and another to apply it in marriage? Ahh..conviction is sweet to the soul.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Learning How to Listen to Your Husband

This next Friday, Linda and I head to Tucson. We'll speak at a Women's Saturday Brunch - on the subject that I LOVE to talk about - Marriage.

I'm so thankful that it was God's idea and not mine. I'm so thankful that He's given us a guide book that is FULL of principles for life and how to do life and how to relate to Him and others (biblically).

I had a Coffee Talk Group yesterday, with a few of my older women friends. They are 70+. What a joy it is to sit and listen and sip coffee with them. I asked Joannie, "What do you think I should tell these women about marriage? What is it you wished you'd done different in your marriage with George (who has since passed on)?"

Joannie didn't hesitate. She said to LISTEN. She wished she'd listened to George. Sure reflective, but LISTEN TO HIM.

My husband has coined a phrase: to hear a heart is to win a heart. Wives get easily frustrated in marriage - because they don't slow down and listen. I wrote this advice article some time ago and thought it'd be good for some reader of this post - just today!

Learning to listen to anyone takes understanding, self-control, and a desire to unselfishly care about the other person. Listening is a way to show that I care.

Learning to listen well requires that I become mature. At times, it is easier to put on the “listening mode hat” with someone who does not live with me. They are not close to me and they can not hurt me. I know that I can pride myself with great listening skills outside my home with another person, but the test of my maturity level, love and ability to listen with my heart will be in my relationship with my husband.

Learning to listen to a husband with your heart can sometimes be the most difficult, and the most rewarding.

Listening – getting into their world – is the best gift I can give to my husband, my daughters, or my grandchildren. When I listen to them it says, “I value you.” I am saying, “You are worth it.” When I put my own mental pause button on and practice James 1:19—be quick to listen and slow to speak—I am saying, “You are more important than anything.” It is my home front, and my “up and close personal” relationships where what I am and who I am tested and revealed. My close relationships earn me opportunity for the most character. In them, I can know God's love, and in them, I grow the most.

Two Keys to Learning to Listen
Understanding our Differences
None of us would argue that men and women are different. Clinical research has shown that God wired our brains differently. We think differently. We view situations and problem differently. We even tend to approach solving problems differently. Men tend to view solving problems as an opportunity to demonstrate their competence and resolve. How the problems are solved is not as important as solving it effectively. Women are usually more concerned about how the problem is solved. For us, solving a problem has the potential to affect our sense of “closeness.”

According to Mark Gunger of Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage, men’s brains have boxes that are not connected whereas in a woman’s brains everything is connected to everything else. That is why women can be thinking about five different things at the same time. It is why women are generally good at multi-tasking. With a lot of humor, Mark says that there is a special box in a man’s brain called the ‘nothing’ box. He says that’s why a man can at times appear as if he’s doing nothing (like flip the channels on t.v.)

Understanding the Different Thinking Processes
I think an essential element in beginning to listen to our husbands is to understand how God wired their thinking processes. In general, men and women do process information differently. According to clinical & medical psychologist Michael G. Connor, women tend to be intuitive global thinkers.

Generally, we consider multiple sources of information simultaneously. We view a situation in terms of interconnectedness and we understand and view problems all at once. Men on the other hand will tend to focus on one problem at a time. Dr. Connor says that men have an ability to separate themselves from problems and minimize the complexity where as women tend to be overwhelmed by having a harder time separating their personal experience from a problem. Men will understand a problem one piece at a time. They tend to take a linear or sequential perspective.

What impedes learning to listen? Unrealistic expectations!
It has been my observation and my personal experience that women can live within this bubble of “unrealistic expectations” that are subconsciously placed on husbands. A few of those unrealistic exceptions are:

he should think like me,

he should feel like me,

he should act like me and

he should do it within the time frame that I think he should do it – whatever the “do it” might happen to be.

These expectations are unrealistic. They are an internal demand that he measure up. Ultimately they leave a husband, or anyone else feeling unloved, inadequate, cynical, apathetic, or ashamed.

So, NOW, let’s talk about listening to your husband…

I've given you some general understanding about yourself and your husband, and I want to share with you some practical steps to begin to listen to your man.

1. The next time you hear the voice of your husband, pause. Really, pause. Disengage from all the places your mind is going to: dinner, the kids, the cute shoes you saw at the mall today, how tired you are, what the teacher said about your daughter today, the soccer mom who shared that she and her husband are getting divorced and whatever then…

2. If you need to stop what you’re doing then stop. Multi-tasking and listening do not always mix. In reality, they never mix. Besides, most husbands do not like their wife “doing something” while they are talking. We think we can catch everything, but often we do not. I sure don't.

3. Re-engage your mind and tell yourself, “This is my husband talking. This is my man. He is saying something that I need to hear."

4. Take the posture of hanging unto his every word. Linda Fox, one of our Life Coach Moms, uses this phrase. She encourages wives to hang on their mans every word. This might sound nuts, but so many men say so few words that were women to hang on them, they might get more of them. Unfortunately, it can be the wrong woman to hang on his words – like the one at the office. You bet she will hang on your husband’s words – because she wants your husband.

5. When Michael begins to share something, if I do not give him the ‘eye to eye’ attention, generally, he will stop sharing. It is a way that I work on honoring him.

6. As he is speaking, take in his words. You do have a sharp mind and you can capture them. When he is finished, simply say something like, “OK, so, you’re saying…” It’s not necessary to repeat them verbatim, but do capture the essence. He’ll most likely say ‘yes’ cause you are such a good listener. If he continues talking, mirror that phrase too.

7. Just because your husband is saying, something does not mean that you agree with it when you reflect it back to him. You are simply giving him the gift of listening with your heart to his.

So, what do you think? How well do you listen to your husband? How has this post helped you?