This Easter weekend was great! My brother Kevin was here, so I spent almost the entire weekend with my family. We ate good food, saw a movie, and watched a lot of basketball. I had been looking forward to my church’s annual Easter Eve concert at the Levitt Shell – everyone picnics and it’s a lot of fun. But the weather was crummy this year (seriously, WHEN will spring get here??). I dithered about it all morning before deciding not to go sit in the cold rain by myself. By the time I heard that the concert was moved to the church, we had already made dinner plans, and I didn’t want to break up family time. I was bummed to miss, but apparently the turnout was good, so that’s the important thing.
Early last week, my domestic urges kicked in big time. I thought of a whole menu plan for Easter. My parents agreed to break tradition and let me cook our Easter dinner this year, as long as we ate it at their house on my mom’s china. We had Mustard-Crusted Pork Roast with Shallots and Wine Sauce, with sides of Parmesan polenta, green beans that my dad prepared, and cranberry sauce from a can (I love it). For dessert I made a Meyer lemon pound cake. The cake was very pretty, but I used Splenda instead of sugar so my pre-diabetic mom could enjoy it, and it turned out dry. Lesson learned. My mom and Kevin liked it, but I was a little disappointed.
Anyway, I recommend this pork roast recipe for any occasion. It’s easy and adaptable – I used a boneless pork loin roast and was short on shallots, and no harm was done. You can even cut the cooking time in half by cutting the roast in half lengthwise (which we did so Kevin could get back to Indiana by a decent hour).
This is going to sound cheesy and cliche, but my family talked a lot about the Bible and Jesus this weekend, and it made me really happy. These past few days have reminded me how endlessly interesting Jesus is. He’s always more than you expect, and there’s always another layer to uncover. I’m thankful that He’s my Savior, Friend, and go-between.
3 Comments + Posted in: celebrate, family, food
Happy April!
Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
I don’t know how to sum up this marvelous conclusion to The Infernal Devices without spoiling anything. It’s moving, surprising, and epic in the truest sense. As soon as I finished, I wanted to re-read the modern-day Mortal Instruments series to find all the cross-references which will now have much greater meaning. It takes special talent to build a strong, believable universe that crosses generations, and make all the pieces fit. Fantastic.
At Least You’re In Tuscany: A Somewhat Disastrous Quest for the Sweet Life by Jennifer Criswell
Netgalley read; review to come later this week. Sorry, I’m a little behind on things. I will say that I really liked this!
You Are A Writer (So Start Acting Like One) by Jeff Goins
Although there are a few great nuggets in this book for writers, I was largely underwhelmed by it. It’s more of the hustle-hustle talk I’ve grown weary of. On the plus side, I’m already doing a lot of the things he recommends, so that was kind of reassuring. I give this book three stars only for Goins’ observation that “you can’t react and create at the same time,” which really resonated with me. Other than that, go read Bird by Bird or something. :)
Save The Date by Jenny B. Jones
Lucy, the owner of a Charleston nonprofit for homeless young women, is in trouble. Her main source of funding has evaporated, and she’s weeks from having to turn her girls back out onto the streets. When she goes to a benefit to appeal to donors, she runs into Alex, a former classmate turned ex-NFL star, notorious playboy, and candidate for Congress. Unbeknownst to her, Alex’s campaign is floundering and he needs something to improve his public image. He makes Lucy an offer she (seriously) can’t refuse: pose as his fiancee until the campaign is over, and he’ll save her girls’ home. What follows is enjoyably predictable, but also has some surprises thrown in. I can see why many of my friends love this book. It would be a great movie, and Reese Witherspoon would make a perfect Lucy (if she gained a little weight!).
Bread & Wine: Finding Community and Life Around The Table by Shauna Niequist
LOVED this and reviewed it here.
Books for March: 5
2013 year to date: 18
3 Comments + Posted in: book reviews, reading
We Christians are supposed to spend Good Friday dwelling on how much Jesus suffered to cleanse us from our sins. Yes, His suffering was immeasurable, but we often lose sight of why He went through it – “for the joy set before Him.” Not purely for suffering’s sake, or to grudgingly make a way for us hopelessly sinful humans. It was His joy to mend the gap and reconcile us to His Father. Jesus had motives. His happiness is tied up in ours. He wasn’t robotically going through the motions of His difficult purpose on earth – He gladly persevered because the fruits of His labor were guaranteed.
This has been the winter of my discontent. The “sufferings” in my life are pretty frivolous compared to what millions of people currently deal with, but they are still real, slowly wearing me down as all sufferings do. Usually, if I have assurance of some eventual purpose or payoff (sometimes even if I’m not the beneficiary of it), I can endure things for a long time. What’s finally sent me off the rails and into the swamp of despair is a loss of purpose. For a variety of reasons, my “thorns” don’t seem to have any point or positive effect anymore. I fear that they’ll just keep weakening me until I’m useless to God, virtually laying on the floor crying out to Him all the time instead of out serving and accomplishing for Him, and my life will count for nothing. The end.
No one can stand up for long under that kind of hopelessness, and I don’t think we’re meant to, because even Jesus didn’t. Even Jesus, the only perfectly holy person who ever lived, didn’t suffer in a vacuum. He had His eyes on the prize, and God infused meaning into everything He did. That gives me a renewed confidence in God’s sovereignty over our circumstances. Over the last few years, I’ve often felt doomed in certain ways because our world is just so messed up. I’ve pictured God shrugging sympathetically and saying “Sorry, kiddo. Fallen world.” But on this Good Friday, I feel reassured that our suffering is not some crazy random happenstance, just the byproduct of a fallen world. Even when there’s no evidence, God still has a purpose and will be glorified in all of it. Jesus needed motivation to endure, and God knows that we do too. Jesus’ motives on the cross – love for us, love for His Father – should be ours too. As my pastor said last night at Maundy Thursday service, “If these joys are good enough for Jesus, they are good enough for you.”
We can rest and know that no matter what’s happening or not happening in our lives, if we are God’s, He loves us and is pleased with us. He loves us so much that He sent His Son to die for our sins. And in the words of a famous preacher whose name I can’t remember – SUNDAY’S COMING.
6 Comments + Posted in: celebrate, faith, hope
As I mentioned yesterday, I just read Shauna Niequist’s new book, Bread & Wine. In the letter that came with the book, Shauna encouraged reviewers to have a dinner party using some of her recipes. Like her, I love an excuse to get together with friends, especially around a table. So I set a date and invited a small group of friends whom I thought would enjoy each other (several of whom I’d long wanted to introduce to each other). I e-mailed them explaining about Bread & Wine, the recipes, and the dinner party. To my excitement, most of them could come and were enthusiastic about choosing recipes! Dividing up the cooking made for a very low-stress party for me.
Our dinner menu (from the book) was as follows:
Bacon Wrapped Dates
Goat Cheese Biscuits
Brannon’s Caesar Salad
Maple Balsamic Pork Tenderloin
Dessert:
Blueberry Crisp
Nigella Lawson’s Flourless Chocolate Brownies (both with and without nuts)
Non-book menu items:
Hillary‘s couscous (legendary!)
Ina Garten’s Parmesan Roasted Broccoli (I wanted an extra side, and this broccoli is one of my favorite things in the world.)
Since I was hosting, I prepared the pork tenderloin for the main dish. Unfortunately I had some trouble with the recipe, which simply called for “2 tenderloins.” I don’t cook meat very often, so I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. First I erroneously bought a five-pound pork loin roast. After intense discussion and texting of photos with my friend Stacy, I went back to the store and bought two correctly sized tenderloins. Then, paranoid that I still didn’t have the right cut of meat, I searched Shauna’s blog for a link to the original recipe to double-check the weight. With that settled, I was still skeptical about the tenderloins only needing to be sautéed for two minutes on a side. Sure enough, they remained pink inside (and got pretty charred outside), but 10-15 additional minutes in the oven finished them off. In the end, the pork still tasted great, and my friends weren’t upset about the delay. Some of them were confused by their recipes too. Maybe I’m just clueless, but I think more clarification would have been helpful.
All of the food was delicious, but if I had to choose a favorite item, it would probably be the goat cheese biscuits (prepared by Caroline). They were AMAZING. I also took a lot of blueberry crisp off Elizabeth’s hands (she made a double batch), and it’s been fantastic for breakfast the past couple of days. I think it needs ice cream if you’re having it as a dessert.
Eight ladies were in attendance including me. As it happens, that’s the maximum number I can fit comfortably around my dining table with the leaf out. We all feasted and had some great conversation and fellowship. Everyone seemed to connect easily. We had a good mix of Memphis natives, new-to-towners, single women, married women, and moms. That’s hard to achieve nowadays! I was prepared for most people to take off after dinner, but happily, they stayed and talked well into the evening. I wish I’d documented the evening better, but I didn’t want to annoy everyone with incessant picture-taking.
So, the dinner party was everything I hoped it would be, and I was very happy. (The company and good food were also timely comforts for me and Kathy after the Tigers’ bummer loss in the second round of the NCAA tournament that afternoon.) Several people said we should do this again. It would be great, and appropriate, if this party was the start of something new!
3 Comments + Posted in: celebrate, food
I discovered Shauna Niequist in the summer of 2010, when I impulse-bought her second book, Bittersweet. In that rough period of my life, her raw, honest, yet hopeful words were a huge comfort to me. I went on to devour her earlier book, Cold Tangerines, and loved it too. So when she recently put out a call on her blog for reviewers of her long-anticipated third book, Bread & Wine, I was thrilled to participate!
Bread & Wine is about the intersections of food and fellowship, food and culture, food and travel, food and memories, all within the context of a normal life. It’s a celebration of food without snobbery – you won’t find any reviews of five-star restaurants here. Through personal stories, Shauna demonstrates the power of sharing simple but good food with people you love, especially when life is tumbling down around your ears. Many of the chapters involve her Cooking Club, a group of friends who started cooking and eating together once a month and formed strong bonds around the table. Other chapters focus on especially memorable or meaningful meals in her past – the wedding leftovers she and her husband shared on a window seat, special dinner parties for friends’ birthdays, a potluck cookout with her family after her son’s baptism. She also reflects on times when others ministered to her through food.
Most of the essays end with a recipe related to the story, and they all sound amazing. In the letter that came with the ARC, Shauna encouraged reviewers to have a dinner party including some of the recipes from the book. Well, I did, and it was fantastic. Read about it here tomorrow! I’ll share more specifically about the recipes then. She also includes a helpful appendix about her pantry staples and weeknight dinner routine, and basic entertaining tips.
As much as I enjoyed the food talk, my favorite aspect of Bread & Wine was Shauna’s usual vulnerability and transparency about her personal struggles. As someone who dealt with infertility for many years, then endured a rough pregnancy and a health scare with her son after he was born, she’s well acquainted with life not going according to plan. She also talks openly about her overachieving nature, her experiences as a writer, and her innate need for constant community with the people she loves. I relate to her deeply. For me, reading her books is like reading letters from a wiser older sister. I feel less alone in my messiness, and inspired to handle it in a more positive, productive way. Somehow, Shauna fully validates the pain and junk of life, while simultaneously pointing to its joys, victories, and the God who rules over it all. She is an ambassador of Wholeheartedness.
Bread & Wine will be released on April 9. I soaked up every word of this book, and highly recommend it.
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