“I’m tired as I type which reminds me to remind you that getting adequate sleep is more important than anything you might accomplish by staying up too late working on what “must” get done. If we deprive ourselves of precious recovery time, life simply becomes less enjoyable as we continue to burn out emotionally and physically. Not to mention the scientific proof that lack of sleep is an underlying cause of many health issues and has been linked to the likes of increased cancer risk (especially in women) to fun stuff like depression. So get your Zs people!!”

I found these wise words on Everyday Paleo a blog written by a mother of three who is a Crossfit coach. That I would ever be reading a paleo blog is surprising, but I’m starting to rethink a lot of things about my life long approach to food. One of the consistent themes that I’m running across is the importance of getting enough sleep. I think I’ve been sleep deprived for over two decades. I have never been good at hitting the “off” switch, in fact, I don’t’ know where mine is. I am not good at just taking time to rest and relax when there are still things on the to-do list. When are there not things on that list? Still, I’m trying and it’s been fun spending the evenings playing games with my family members instead of working, working, working.

I have many friends who are a few years to many years younger then I am and one of the pieces of advice I’d like to give you is this: Don’t sacrifice your sleep. On occasion you may need to burn the candle at both ends. It should be unusual instead of normal. Some of you are just like I was at your age and I think it’s a profound mistake. Sadly, I think the ones who most need to hear this message will dismiss it with incredible rationalization skills. I understand, I would have done the same. I just WISH that I could cause you to re-think that rationalization of yours.

Get some Zzzz, friends, because in the whole of life you’ll be a better servant of the Most High God if you do!

When it comes to Gazpacho, I’m rather childish. You know how a child will look at the food set before him and immediately declare, “I don’t like this!” simply because, in their opinion, it looks funny. I haven’t a clue how to pronounce Gazpacho, I’ve never seen it, and I’m “sure” I don’t like it. How can you like something you can’t pronounce. Silly, I know.

I follow a cookbook author on twitter and he posted something about Gazpacho. It was probably a recipe, but I don’t know because I didn’t click on the link. “I don’t like it.” This got me thinking . . . how many good things do we miss because at first glance we don’t like something about it?

How many times have we avoided talking to a person because somehow they were different? Maybe their face was unique, maybe their mannerisms were awkward, maybe they dressed differently. Perhaps that person was meant by God to somehow be a blessing in our lives, but we missed the blessing because of an “I don’t like it” type of attitude.

What about places? Perhaps we had opportunities to go minister somewhere different. That may have been twenty minutes from home or half way around the world. Sadly, we looked at the plate offered us and said, “I don’t like it,” because it made us uncomfortable or we were afraid of the unknown. In so doing we missed yet another opportunity for blessings.

I’m still not sure I’ll try Gazpacho, but I hope when God brings people and places into my life that I will apply the two bite rule and give them an honest chance.

What about you?Where are your Gazpacho challenges? I’d love to hear about them.

Do you ever wish you could serve fresh baked muffins, but don’t have the time? Muffins can be a perfect spontaneous hospitality treat, a great breakfast when you have guests or just a treat for your family one morning! Most muffins are not a big deal to whip up, the problem is usually the clean up. We just don’t have the time to make them and clean up! I have a tip to solve this problem! This is one of my very most favorite kitchen tricks! I’ve used it with dozens of recipes and it has never failed. If you want fresh baked muffins, but you need to make them ahead, here is the secret!

Make your muffins just like the recipe says to make them.

Put them in muffin cups lined with cupcake liners.

Place in freezer and freeze solid.

Once frozen, remover from freezer and put into storage container (it can be gallon sized zipper style bags or rectangular freezer containers – I have ones from Tupperware that I love!). Return to freezer to keep frozen.

When it is time to bake the muffins. Put them in the oven at the temperature the recipe called for and add 5 minutes to the baking time. They’ll turn out perfectly every time! I recommend you label the container with the name of the muffin, the oven temperature and the cooking time adding the 5 minute amount. This way when you pull them out of the freezer you have all the information you need to bake them.

So make those great big quadruple batches and enjoy the fruit of your labor for weeks to come!

Please share your favorite muffin recipe with me here! Also, I’d love to hear how you used this tip to bless your family or others.

What do you do with cherries when they are a great buy? Without question, one of the best things about summertime is all the fresh fruit! This week Washington Cherries are on sale for $1.69 in my area. That’s a great time to buy them. I remember well when, on the right week, you could pick them up for $0.99 a pound! Wow! Actually, last year that did happen one week, although it’s very rare anymore. Cherries are my husband’s favorite fruit so I am always excited to find them at a good price. If you want to purchase quite a few of them, call your various grocery stores and ask to speak to the produce manager. Ask him how much he would charge you for a case of cherries (about 18 pounds). Often they will give you a better price by the case. I usually call early in a sale like this to see if they’ll bargain. Different produce managers will give different bargains so shop around a bit. Putting several cases in your freezer for winter is a smart thing to do. I’ll share with you some of my favorite things to do with cherries! Tomorrow I’ll try to share with you my famous Muffin Tip, which you’ll love. In the meanwhile, you can go stock up on cherries so you’re ready! By the way, if you have any great cherry ideas or recipes, please share them here!

Freeze Them!
Cherries are a little bit time consuming to freeze, but well worth the effort! You want to wash them in ice cold water, remove the stems and drain them well. Don’t let your fruit sit in the water for long periods of time, it’s not good for them. The next step is to get the pit out. Pitting cherries can be lots of fun for the children! I like to do it outside, because it tends to be messy. I cover my table with an old washable tablecloth that I can easily toss in the washing machine. There are a number of different gadgets for removing the pits. Google the phrase “cherry stoner” (without the quotations) and you’ll find several. We’ve used this one for years. Once the pits are removed put the cherries in a single layer on a cookie sheet that has been lightly sprayed with a cooking spray. Use the kind of tray that has sides on it. A half-sheet cake pan is a good size. When the pan is covered with cherries, put them in the freezer until frozen. Finally, remove the frozen cherries and put them into whatever sized ziploc bag you want to use. I freeze them in quart bags. During the winter they are wonderful to eat frozen, thawed and put on ice cream, added to other fruit for a fruit salad, and probably many other things that I’ve not yet thought of! Enjoy the “fruit” of your labor!

Fresh Cherry Muffins

Fresh Cherry Muffins
From the Kitchen of: ME!
These are hands down my favorite muffin recipe of all our scrumptious muffin recipes!!! You only get to have them during this small window of the year. Because you need to pit and slice the cherries, they are more time consuming then most muffins, but oh so worth it!

½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp almond extract
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 ½ cups cherries
2 cups flour
½ cup milk

Topping:
1 – 2 Tbsp sugar
¼ tsp nutmeg

Beat butter and sugar till creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beat in extract, baking powder and salt. By hand mix in cherries. Then ½ flour and ½ milk. Repeat. Put in 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle with topping.

Bake 25-30 minutes at 375 degrees.

Cool 15 minutes in pan.

Fresh Cherry Bread

Cherry Bread
I found this in my recipe file. Sadly, I don’t know who it came from. Judging from the handwriting I think there is a possibility it came from my Aunt Billie but it might have been Aunt Tiny. I wish I knew for certain. I highly recommend that whenever you get a recipe from someone you add both the name of the person the recipe comes from as well as the date you received it. Decades later you’ll be so glad for those bits of information.

4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
½ cup shortening (I use butter)
2 eggs
1 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp orange peel (grate)
¼ cup warm water
1 cup chopped nuts (I use pecans)
2 cups chopped cherries (drain well)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and Flour Pans – do you know about the Baking Spray from Pam? It sprays the flour and grease together. Great stuff!

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder into bowl. Cut in shortening. Beat in egg, orange juice, peel and water. Stir in nuts and cherries.

Bake in 3 pans (7 ½ x3 ½ x 2) for 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Cheers to your Cherry Creations!

Yesterday I wrote about having 24 hours all to yourself. What if that is simply not an option? For most of our lives it really isn’t. For a number of years I had an ideal alternative. Perhaps if you think and pray, you might find that you could work out something similar.

I had a friend who had children of similar ages to my children and they all got along well. We traded every Thursday afternoon. One week I had all the children and the next week she had all the children. The agreement was when you did not have the children, you were free to do anything you wanted – guilt free! You could go shopping, have a manicure, stay home and have a planning session, take a nap, whatever you really wanted to do! I don’t know about her, but I made the most of those afternoons, at home, getting things done that required my focused attention. It was a life saver.

The other thing that surprised both of us was that on the afternoons we had all the children at our house, we still got more done then we would normally. The reason was that the children were so entertained having their friends over that they didn’t need our attention.

It was a sad day when they moved away.

Ministry Opportunity

Would you like to bless some woman who is crying out for some time alone? Are you at a stage in life where you don’t have younger children you are responsible for? Could you offer once a week, once a month, four times a year to watch somebody else’s children in your home? It wouldn’t have to be that hard and actually if you offered two mother’s at the same time you might find a situation like we had! You could start at lunchtime. Eating food together always breaks the ice. Lunches for little people are easy (and can be lots of fun* too). Then you have some activities planned for the afternoon. Remember that the best flow is active/inactive alternating back and forth. Depending on the ages of the children some might even nap. You could read out loud to them. If they’re a little bit older you might even do a chapter book or series of books that you read from each week. I’m guessing they’d be eager to return to your home for the next “installment.” You could do some basic crafts or if you’re one of those wonder women you could do some involved crafts! Go outdoors for soap bubbles, sidewalk chalk or a park outing. This could be older women who have grown children or young ladies who are not yet married and can carve an afternoon out of their schedules. I know there is at least one woman around you who is close to melt-down and would be so blessed if you could give her an afternoon off.

*One fun idea is to work with a color theme. Each time you get together focus on a different color. Get colored paper plates & napkins from the dollar store. Try to serve foods that are that color or use some food coloring to make them that color. Have games that involve colors and use your color of the week. Look for books at the library that focus on your color. We used to have color days and we had a blast with them!

My friend, Doug, asked a compelling question at his blog a couple of months ago. The question resonated with me, because I often crave time alone! Doug’s question essentially boils down to this: If somebody took over all of your responsibilities for the next 24 hours, what would you do? I suspect most mothers day-dream about this from time to time. “24 hours all to myself!” I also suspect that for most of them, if they could really have those 24 hours they’d like to be home and have the family gone, at least if they have been married for any length of time. There are SO many things I want to do without interruption and they are ALL at home.

Still, when I thought about Doug’s question, I found it was not easy to think about what I would really do. The reality is you immediately have to face the choice between what do I want to do and what ought I to do? Those are two very different things! It would be deliciously fun to take an entire day and do none of the things I ought to do! A long lazy morning, sleeping in and reading a pleasure book. A scrumptious brunch while continuing to read or maybe writing a real pen and paper letter to a friend. An afternoon watching a double feature in my own living room all alone. A long soak in the tub. Lots of time to meander around the house thinking uninterrupted thoughts (this is possibly my greatest desire). Just quiet and lots of it. Those sound wonderful! Equally wonderful would be to tackle one or more projects that require focused concentration. We always have a long list of those and we rarely get to them. I suppose the two might be able to be combined if one was able to have enough uninterrupted thought to prepare.

It seems that the key aspect of both what I might like to do and what I ought to do centers around uninterrupted thought time. For me, that’s the thing money can’t buy. If you send me out of the home, it isn’t the same. Granted a retreat somewhere to just wrestle with God over many things would always be profitable, but some of the things I really need to ponder deeply are not going to come to mind away from ground zero. I need to be home, alone, to really wrestle with God about many of the things that impact me and the family right here where we live. I also need to be home, alone, with uninterrupted thoughts to tackle some of the bigger to-do items on my list with the greatest effectiveness.

I do think to be able to really enjoy the 24 hours, you need a little advance time to be sure you have the things necessary to make the most of that time. A gift of 24 all-to-yourself hours is a wonderful gift! If Doug can figure out how to market that gift, he may be able to take an early retirement!

Once upon a time, I thought I would like a blog. Frequently I think of nuggets of insight, have funny stories or great ideas that I would like to share with “someone” out there. I shared this desire with my daughter and she set about to create a blog just for ME, something that reflected me. I think she has done an excellent job and I’m excited to be here. I’ve had the blog for almost two months now and could not seem to get the first post written. I’ve had plenty of ideas for a post to write, but none of them qualified as a “first post.” Not that I’ve read any rules for first posts or anything! The adventure begins with this post and I certainly hope the story ends, “ . . . and they all lived happily ever after.”