“Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people.

It’s more like the smelling salts.”

~~Pastor Tim Keller

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Have any of you eaten a Buddha Bowl? Some call them Big Bowls, or Grain Bowls….I don’t know what to call them myself, but I could eat one every day for the rest of my life and be happy.

I made Grain Bowls for company recently, and here’s a picture of what they looked like:

There are just layers of textures and flavors! Many recipes have a fried egg on top of all the rest of the ingredients, so maybe I’ll try that next time.

I started with cooked brown rice, spooned into the bottom of the bowl. You can see marinated chicken breast to the left, then above that some curry-toasted chickpeas I made. The dark green is sauteed kale with a bit of garlic, sliced tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms with sherry and garlic, roasted sweet potato strips, and the creamy dollop on the sweet potato is a tahini dressing I made.

It was so colorful and delicious I had to restrain myself from moaning at the table. The people I invited over wouldn’t have understood that. I have a couple of friends who would be fine with me rolling my eyes and moaning at a bite of something delicious, but I wasn’t so sure about these folks, so I forced myself to stay light and relaxed  and hostessy and conversational.

I would encourage you to look for Buddha Bowl or Grain Bowl recipes online — there are hundreds of them. There are even whole cookbooks devoted to them. I want to have about five or six favorites to keep rotating week after week.

I’m off to run some errands now that it’s 60-something degrees out instead of the hot and steamy weather we’ve had for literally months now.

Let me know if you’ve ever eaten or made a Buddha Bowl!

We are all pretty tickled around here, because on Wednesday my middle daughter Carolyn gave birth to her seventh child. (Little Hannah was born and died last summer… we wait for the time when we’ll be able to see her again someday.)

Levi Samuel came into this world healthy, pink, and demonstrating how well his lungs were working. He weighed 8 pounds, 9 ounces, and is a long 23 inches. He has a bit of light colored hair, the blondest eyebrows, big feet, and as most grandmas like to say, a perfectly shaped head.

My oldest daughter Sharon took some pictures of their family yesterday, holding Levi and beaming their love at him.

Clara is 16 1/2 and told her mom how proud she was of her, and is attached to Levi already….

Elijah is 15 and is showing what a good dad he’ll be with the way he tenderly loves his littlest sister Miriam…

Vivienne is 12 1/2, and will be the big sister who piques Levi’s interest in the way things work in the universe…

Audrey is 10 1/2, and will shower him with hugs and kisses, and teach him how to have fun…

Miriam is almost 4, and believes that Jeremy and Carolyn had this baby for her and she keeps calling him “my baby”…

Daddy Jeremy is one of the best fathers I’ve ever known…

And my Carolyn is an amazing, strong, quietly tenacious, gifted, loving, brilliant, funny, and beautiful mother…

Truly, truly, God has been kind to us.

I just purchased an electric fireplace for my bedroom. I got it on sale, plus with another discount and a rebate. I’m trying to decide how to arrange my bedroom chairs around it. Would you like to help me?

Below is a picture of part of my bedroom, which is pretty good-sized. The windows behind the bed face Lake Superior, so I am blessed to be able to look out and see that breathtaking, vast body of water every single day. You can click these photos to enlarge them if you like.

I put the fireplace on a blank wall. It has a fairly real looking flame with glowing embers and logs, and it will keep this room warm. It can also be used for just the flame with no heat. I love sitting in my bedroom chair (the biggest one with the darkest plaid fabric) to read, do my Bible study, write in my gratitude journal, and to have tea with friends.

Option #1: Below you can see the two chairs arranged in an L shape, close to the fireplace.

Another view of option #1: I like this arrangement because I can enjoy the fireplace, have some natural light behind me for reading, and can still look to my left and see Lake Superior through the windows.

Option #2: The chairs are facing each other near the fireplace, sharing the ottoman. I have some friends named John and Barb who have their chairs placed this way, and they have their coffee and morning devotions together like this. They like the face-to-face interaction this arrangement gives them, and I like that idea a lot too.

Option #2: Another view of the chairs facing each other.

Option #3: I arranged the chairs at an angle, both facing the fireplace. I had to put the little lamp that was on the round table somewhere else, since with this setting there’s no close outlet for the lamp. I also haven’t styled the mantel yet — I will be thinking about how to dress the space in the future. I need something large on the wall behind the fireplace too. And if I choose this arrangement I need to center it on the wall.

Option #3: Another view of the chairs angled toward the fireplace. I think this is homey feeling, but miss having my chair situated so I can see Lake Superior at the same time.

As you can see, there are advantages to all three chair placements.

Would you mind casting your vote in the comments? Let me know if you like #1, #2 or #3 better. Or maybe you have an even different idea — I’d love to know what you think.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Yesterday I drove about 45 minutes south to pick up three grandchildren from their church summer camp. They’ve been going for years and look forward to it so much. It was fun to listen to the three of them (and a friend who went with them) chatter in the back seat about their adventures there. It got me thinking once again about how quickly all my grands have grown.

Clara (below) was my first grandchild, and she is almost six feet tall now, and is sixteen years old. I know this sounds like a trite thing for a grandmother to say, but I almost can’t handle this. I want to slow down time and stretch out the moments, but of course that never happens. Clara has had artistic talent since she was a toddler, and wants to someday be an animator. Her head is always tilted toward her portfolio and the thousands of truly astounding drawings she has done over the past years. She is a deep thinker, loves to watch favorite movies over and over, and gets along surprisingly well with her slightly younger brother. Clara and I have had many fun times together — WWG days, memorizing Bible verses together, and reading books out loud. When she was barely out of kindergarten she recorded the message on my voicemail, and to this day it brings a tear to hear that tiny voice say, “You’ve reached Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Please leave a message.” I will never, ever change it. Clara warms my heart.

Elijah (below) is sixteen months younger than Clara, and when they were little, people used to think they were twins. He has grown at least five inches in the last five months, and is pushing six feet himself, if he hasn’t already reached that mark last night while he slept. He turned fifteen years old yesterday. His smile lights up his whole face. Elijah excels in math and science, and has plans for big finance someday. He can draw too. He is a delight to talk to because he’s such a good conversationalist. How many fifteen year olds can we say that about? He’s a bit of a joker and I’ve heard he can be the class clown. Elijah also adores his youngest sister Miriam. They have a very special relationship, and he’s patient and tender with her. When I picked him up from church camp yesterday, one of the first things he said from the back seat was, “I missed Miri!” She apparently wanted to sit with him a long time after he got home, and her head was planted with many brotherly kisses. Elijah makes me smile.

Vivienne (below) will be thirteen in a few months and like her siblings, she is tall and lanky and all legs. She has been an observer since she was less than a year old. I remember watching her study the tip of a pencil eraser for a long period of time, pore over the science books I keep on the grandchildren’s bookshelves, and draw detailed dragons with hundreds of scales. When she was about seven, I picked her up from school one afternoon to give her a ride home. She has always been reserved and deep in her own thoughts, but from the silence in the back seat she piped up in her very feminine voice and asked, “Grandma, have you ever considered whether or not infinity has mass?” Uh, no. I took a stab and said I didn’t think it did, and she cheerfully agreed that it probably didn’t. She has always been more interested in facts than fancy. While other little girls chatter about nail polish and boys, Vivie ponders things like black holes in the universe, and the intriguing fact that snails can breathe through their skin. I look forward to seeing what kinds of things she accomplishes with that mind of hers. Vivie delights me.

Audrey (below) is 10 1/2 and has burned brightly since she was an infant. Her energy, laugh, vibrant expressions, friendliness and enthusiasm have heartened me countless times. She can draw too. Audrey is an includer — she loves her friends and wants to get to know everyone and draw them in. She is muscular and athletic and has been able to do impressive things the rest of us would be crippled by. She’s affectionate and open-hearted. She laughs easily and feels things deeply, and I believe her passionate temperament will be a magnetic force for God’s kingdom someday. She is others-focused and hangs her head out of the car when I pick her up from school, waving and calling out the names of school friends, boys and girls alike. As a toddler she called Michael and me “Bocka and Backa,” and it was a day of mourning when she grew out of that and started calling us Grandpa and Grandma. 🙂 Audrey is curious and loves animals, and created an adventure in her home years ago when she found a baby Canada goose near a pond in their neighborhood and decided he would make a good family pet. (He was successfully returned to his frantically honking parents.) Audrey brings me such happiness.

Miriam is 3 1/2 and is one of the most cheerful children I’ve ever known. She is content and talkative, loves her older siblings (Cwawa, Hijah, Veevie and Audwie), and is generally adored by all people on the earth. She associates two main things with me: scrambled eggs and fingernail clippers, asking for the former as soon as she sets foot in my house, and signalling it’s time for the latter by finding them in my bedroom drawer and planting herself in my lap and sticking out her hand. “Cwick, cwick!” she says as I cut her nails. She talks well and a lot for a child her age. Miri (pronounced MEER-y) loves her brother Elijah so much she runs to him when he comes home from school and reaches up for him to pick her up. She also had a very special relationship with her beloved great-grandmother Mary Lou, who recently went to heaven. Miri has so much love in her heart for such a little girl. You can actually feel that love when you’re with her, and it’s one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever known.

I was forty-four when I became a grandma for the first time. I’ll be sixty-one soon, and all these beautiful children have flown into my life and grown up around me in the blink of an eye. I can’t thank their parents (Jeremy and Carolyn) enough. I can’t thank God enough for His goodness to me through them. But I will make it my life’s goal to say thank you, thank you, thank you, for them, until the day I die.

I’ve been wondering for a long time why podcasts are all the rage. I know so many people who love podcasts and listen to them in the car, when they go to bed at night, while they’re working or cooking dinner. I love to listen to music and enjoy an audio book now and then, but I haven’t been able to get into even one podcast. I thought I’d jump on my blog and ask if any of you like podcasts, and why? 

The ones I’ve tried are the highly rated ones: S-Town, This American Life, Invisibilia, and Stuff You Should Know. To be fair, I’ve only listened to one episode of each one and found them pretty uninteresting, and I was scratching my head in puzzlement. Do I need to just keep going to understand the appeal? I have experienced this with various television series before (for example, Doc Martin, which took quite a while to understand but now I wouldn’t miss it), so maybe someone needs to tell me to keep at it.

What are your favorite podcasts? Did you have to keep listening to be interested? Am I just old now, and completely and permanently disconnected from modern culture? I would love to read everyone’s opinions on this.

And I hope it’s warmer where you are than it is where I am.

Every Easter I make Julie’s Stuffed Baked Potatoes, and the rest of my family brings the ham, vegetables, desserts, appetizers, etc. I shopped today for all the ingredients, and thought I would repost the recipe for those of you who haven’t tried these yet. They are moanworthy.

You will need large baking potatoes, cheese (I often use colbyjack but you could use cheddar, jack, pepper jack, whatever), blue cheese dressing, parmesan cheese, butter, green onions, and McCormick Salad Supreme.

First, bake your potatoes. I have two ovens, which comes in very handy on holidays. I baked my large baking potatoes in the smaller upper oven (you can see the pizza stone I store there) while the not-so-ho-hum ham was cooking in the larger oven below.

While your potatoes are baking, take some green onions and chop them up pretty fine. I used about 4-5 onions. One nice thing about this recipe is that you can just put in as much or as little of everything as you like. Experiment with the flavors and adjust as you go. You’ll see how I did that later. I use the green and the white of the green onions. Some people call them scallions but I never have. Maybe one of you can tell us why they’re called scallions – is it a regional thing? I don’t care as much for that name because it reminds me of the word scallywag, and the word scallywag reminds me of a certain person that I would prefer not to be reminded about when I’m making Stuffed Baked Potatoes.

This next part is important. Have all your ingredients ready in a bowl while your potatoes are baking, because it’s the heat of the baked potatoes that will cause everything to melt together nicely. Below you can see that I tossed in about two heaping cups of grated colbyjack cheese. We were feeding a lot of people on Easter.

Next, I added about 3/4 cup of blue cheese dressing and about 3/4 cup of Parmesan cheese. You could use less or more of either ingredient. I happen to love blue cheese dressing so I put in a lot. Maybe it was even closer to a cup of blue cheese dressing.

If you look closely now, you can see that the first potato is in there (I’ll get to that in a minute) and I also threw in about 3/4 of a stick of butter. This is Easter, so don’t worry about fat grams. You could worry about that the day after Easter. Well, don’t worry about things anyway.

Now I just started to mash things together a little bit. My potatoes were done baking. I smooshed things around with the fork while my daughter took photos with her very nice camera that she uses for her amazing photography business.

When the potatoes are done, I take them out one by one, hold them in an oven mitted hand, and gently cut them in half, taking care not to ruin my beautiful oven mitts.

I take a large spoon, and while cradling the hot potato in my mitt (please try not to notice the holes in my mitt) I gently scoop out the very hot potato innards.  I try not to ruin the skin, but sometimes it happens. See how there’s very little left of the innards? Then you can just set these forlorn looking skins on a baking sheet.

And they will look like this. Sort of like sad spudwaifs.

Because I have made this recipe hundreds of times, I can tell by looking if it’s what we’ll like. I could see after smooshing and mashing that for the number of people we were going to feed, we needed to add another handful of cheese. Just stir and mash with a fork until the hot potato innards have melted most of everything, and until you don’t have any clumps of unmashed potato left. If you do, that’s okay though. Potato clods never hurt anyone.

Now you can take your holey mitts off and start to fill the empty potato skins. The mixture will be cooled off enough to use your hands. Grab a few globs of cheesy goodness and press them into the potato skins.

Make sure you delicately lift your little finger as you do it, as a polite Englishwoman would do when sipping her afternoon tea. I’m not sure why this important, but just take my word for it.

When you have enough in a skin, it will look like this:

Not too much – just a little mound of the potato/cheese mixture will do.

You can find this product in the spices aisle at your grocery store. I’ve used it for years for just this one dish, and it adds color, great flavor and interest. It’s supposed to be for salads and pasta and I’ve never used it on either. Just on my Stuffed Baked Potatoes. (When McCormick comes out with a new product called McCormick Stuffed Baked Potato Topping, maybe then I’ll try it on my salads and pasta.)

Here are all the potato halves, stuffed with that delicious cheesy mixture, sprinkled conservatively with the Salad Supreme, and lined up ready to go back into the oven. If you lean to the left politically, then you could be a liberal sprinkler. For the most part I’m a conservative sprinkler.

I then bake them at about 375 or 400 degrees (I can’t remember which) until they get hot all the way through, maybe about fifteen minutes or so. Then about five minutes before I’m ready to serve my Stuffed Baked Potatoes, I turn on the broiler and begin to watch them carefully. I want them to get just a little bit darker and start to bubble. You could let them get browner than this if you like – just keep an eye on them.

Above, I took them out and thought they needed another two minutes under the broiler. Here’s the final result below:

And they are all gone.

These also freeze really well, reheat really well, taste good the next day for leftovers, and some people even like them packed in their lunches.

How do you fix your Stuffed Baked Potatoes?

Sharon and I were talking about all the variations that would be good with these – bacon bits, broccoli, rosemary, and a few other things I can’t remember now. What else would you add to your Stuffed Baked Potatoes?

Let me know if you try them.  Have a wonderful week…

In light of the recent passing of Billy Graham, I thought I would republish this old post of mine about Billy’s wife Ruth.

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Several years ago the phone rang while I was vacuuming, and I thought I’d let it go over to voice mail. Then I saw that Michael picked it up in the garage and was speaking with someone for quite a while. When he hung up the phone he came in the back door with tears in his eyes, and my stomach sank as I thought the absolute worst and then whispered to him, “Who was that?”

“Ruth Graham,” he answered emotionally.

It took me a few seconds to react and I stood there staring at him, saying nothing. Ruth Graham, Ruth Graham, Ruth Graham – I was searching through mental files for something that would click, because I was expecting news about a family member.

Then it registered.

“Billy’s wife?” I asked incredulously. He nodded and his tears spilled over as he told me why she had called. Most of you probably know that Ruth Bell Graham had been an invalid for quite a while before her death a few years ago, but apparently she hadn’t let that stop her from impacting the kingdom for Christ.

I’d read that even though she was bedridden and in constant pain, she studied her Bible and spent hours in prayer each day, and that her passion for Jesus hadn’t been diminished by her suffering. So on this particular day, Mrs. Billy Graham was volunteering for her son Franklin’s organization, and she called to thank us for giving to Samaritan’s Purse. Michael and I had sent a small donation a few weeks before.

After she thanked Michael, Mrs. Graham chatted with him and asked him if there was anything she could lift up to the Lord for our family. He told her about one of our daughters, who was a prodigal taking a faraway path. For the next couple of minutes, Michael bowed his head and tried to keep from sobbing while Ruth Graham compassionately and powerfully prayed for our girl by name. Mrs. Graham knew a thing or two about prodigals from her own experience. I will never forget that blessing, that gift from God to my husband and me, and how greatly that encouraged us.

I remember marveling as I did the rest of my housework that day, “Ruth Graham has our phone number!” 🙂  And the next time we saw our daughter we told her that Mrs. Billy Graham had prayed for her, and she was surprised and encouraged too.

Over the years we began to see the hand of God move in our daughter’s life, just as we’ve seen His hand in our other daughters’ lives, and of course in our own lives as well. He has been faithful and merciful. Ruth Bell Graham isn’t the only one who has prayed for our family. We have cried out to God for our family, in whispered prayers while driving, in silence while doing dishes, in wailing and in weeping while snotting into the couch cushions, and I suppose we will continue to pray until we take our last breath on this earth – the needs are many and the Supplier is great.

Which one of you doesn’t relate? Aren’t we all deeply yearning for God to intervene in our lives and in the lives of the ones we love? I think the hardest thing about prayer is God’s timing. I have found it difficult to continue to pray in faith while wondering why God doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to tend to my cries and important requests. But I’m learning. He’s teaching me patience and trust. My progress is snail-like, but at least I’m moving in the right direction.

So who is praying for you today? Your friends? Your spouse? Your pastor? Romans 8:34 says that even Jesus is ever interceding for us. I don’t fully understand this, but I accept it and give thanks.

I am no Ruth Graham, but I would be honored to pray for you today. We don’t even have to know each other – if you happened across this blog and you would like prayer for anything at all, please e-mail me and I will pray for you and keep your request confidential. I will sit quietly with you in God’s Waiting Room as you watch to see His hand move in those situations and people so dear to your heart.

Kneeling down and looking up,

“Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback.

And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.”

~~John Piper

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It’s hard to believe that on November 28th, the temperature was fifty degrees. Any snow we’ve had has melted, the frost is coming up out of the ground, and I’m still wearing my Birkenstocks. I remember Novembers of long ago, and it wasn’t unusual to have three feet of snow on the ground and sub-zero temps. No one is complaining, but everyone is commenting on how weird the weather is everywhere.

We are looking Christmas-y in our cozy home, in spite of the lack of winter weather. Sara gets the bug to decorate for Christmas right after Thanksgiving, and I thought I’d share a few pictures I took today with my phone.

Is there anything better than a tartan plaid throw on a neutral colored couch? Well, maybe a piece of See’s candy, or a trip to Switzerland, or a hug from a grandchild… but plaid throws are pretty high up on my list of wonderful things.

Our tree, full of more red this year than ever before:

We have three small hanging lights over our bar in the kitchen, and Sara ties ornaments to them every year:

This stocking, with my mother’s name on it (Virginia) is about 65 years old. I hope it passes down through many generations to remind our family of that woman who loved us so well:

Mendelssohn the Moose is sporting some jingle bells to keep his mood merry and bright. From what little I know about the moose population, they could use some help with this.

This red and blue plaid pillow was an early Christmas gift from Sara to me — she knows how my heart thrills to anything plaid:

And she has decked our deck flower boxes with fresh greens, birch twigs from Bruno, Minnesota, and huge plastic ornaments. These look stunning after it snows:

A reindeer (I’m assuming) and a cardinal, existing together quite peacefully on the handles of my kitchen hutch. The wool cardinal was a thoughtful gift from my friend from church, Julie:

Sara thought our plain mantel needed some over-the-top Christmas festooning this year — isn’t it pretty?

And a view from the front:

As I sit and type this at 4:00 p.m. on this Tuesday afternoon, I’m already in my nightgown. Community Bible Study was this morning, and what a joy and privilege it was to gather around a table with women young and old, and dig into even the book of Exodus! We find God’s beauty, compassion and mercy there, and He feeds us with His Word each week.

Once again, I have tried to write about the recent heaven-going of my tenth grandbaby Hannah Joy, and I just can’t seem to do it. I hope I’ll be able to share soon. As we sat around our Thanksgiving table last week and each commented on what we are grateful for, Hannah’s name was mentioned several times. She lived on this earth for less than two hours, yet her perfect life impacted our lives with such power and longing there aren’t really adequate words for it. She brought an exquisite beauty into our midst that has marked us forever. We are trusting Jesus with her now.

Aside from my regular foster care provider job which I have done in my home now for seventeen years, I have been busy with a new friendship. I’ve shared a little before about a man I met about a year and a half ago, in a grief support group for seniors who’ve lost spouses. A group of us have lunch together twice a month, and it has been a wonderful blessing to fellowship with people who truly understand this kind of loss. Mr. L. and I see each other two or three times a week, and since he lives a ways from me in a cabin he built in the woods, when he comes into town we tend to spend the day together.  We walk as much as we can, have Cobb salads for lunch at The Duluth Grill, take tea together while watching the shipping traffic on Lake Superior, and watch Doc Martin episodes on TV as the day draws to a close. Last week for the first time, it was too cold to walk in the cemetery as we usually do, so we drove to the mall and joined the early morning walkers there. They let the walkers in early before the mall opens, so we put in a couple of miles and I snapped this picture of Mr. L:

Other shocking things that have happened in the last months: my oldest grandson (age 15) is now 6′ 5″ tall. My oldest granddaughter (age 15) is now 5′ 11″ tall. I flew to Florida and spent a few days at Walt Disney World with my daughter Sharon and her family. I bought a new car. I have only read two books. And I am thinking about retirement.

One of the two books I’ve recently read is by Brennan Manning, recommended by my friend Ember, and it was a comfort to me. Click here to see. What are you reading that you could recommend?

Even though it’s still November, I’m hoping that your Christmas season is lean on the shopping and all the running about, and full of peaceful family times, quiet contemplation on the goodness of God, and heartfelt rejoicing that unto us a Savior is born. All my hope rests in that.

God bless and keep you all,