Trust

My little Kindergarten Sunday School lesson was from Exodus 17:1-6 this week.
Water from the rock.
Our theme for this month was trusting in God. (Our memory verse is Proverbs 3:5) So far we’ve learned that Abraham trusted God & moved his family to an unknown land. Next, he trusted God to fulfill His promise of a son. Last week the lesson was about the Israelites complaining about having no food after leaving Egypt, so the Lord fed them with manna and birds. Sooooooooo, this pattern of provision being established, don’t you think the children of Israel should’ve trusted God with their thirst?
No?
Am I the same?
I do believe at times I am the most “trustless” person in the world! Repeatedly my Father takes care of needs & wants; yet still I whine about being thirsty in a desert.
Anyhoo… Lesson finished. Kinda.I made water-from-the-rock cookies. (Actually, they’re just blue Jell-O cookies in disguise.)Quite easy to mix up: you just cream 3/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup sugar, & a 3oz. pkg of Jell-O. After that’s light & fluffy you add 2 eggs & flavoring extract if you want to accent the flavor. Then you add these dry ingredients that you’ve sifted together in a smaller bowl: 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder & 1 teaspoon salt. Preheat the oven to 400°. Roll dough into 1” balls, roll in sugar and place 2” apart on prepared cookie sheet. Flatten with bottom of a glass dipped in sugar. Bake for 6 minutes. (any longer & they’ll brown… badly…)So, while my first batch of water-from-the-rock cookies were baking, I was finishing up the little snack baggies.Ran off some labels with the memory verse.Added grapevines to symbolize Moses’ staff used to strike the rock. (by the way – never knew licorice wasn’t gluten-free… pays to read the label prior to stuffing one’s face eating several whips tasting…)
Everything was going smoothly until I took the pan of cookies out of the oven. I neglected to get hold of the parchment paper while at the same time taking the pan out of the oven at a slight angle. First batch = total waste!Next batches came out relatively trouble free. So I finished packaging them up & took them to church the next day.

fish & chips challenge

Abandoning my English heritage (alright, those ancestors came here 200, even 300 years ago…) to bow to our proximity to Baja; my guys & I would much rather eat pescado y papas fritas tortillas fritas TOSTITOS® SCOOPS!®.
They don’t really like this local jointand their palate is not “refined” enough to enjoyKristen’s choice of ingredients for the June Improv Challenge offered a little chance to think “outside the basket” for a recipe. Our favorite place to eat fish is soooooooo far away……but we often try to revisit the flavors. So today, I wanted to create a Baja-style fish & “chips” recipe. (I’d much rather wrap the fish in a fresh, warm, corn tortilla; but decided to stick with the “chip” theme and make a little less work in my hot kitchen…)So actually, we’ve got a couple recipes for the price of one today: the dry rub for the fish, the chipotlé crema for the cabbage, and the mango pico de gallo.
For the dry rub you’ll need:

• 1Tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
• olive oil

Stir the dry ingredients together. Drizzle the oil over the fish. (For this meal I used about a pound and a half of halibut.) Sprinkle with the rub & work lightly into the fish. Cover until grilling time!Earlier in the day I made my shredded cabbage with chipotlé crema:

• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup mayonaise
• 1 teaspoon Chipotlé Tabasco
• juice from 1/2 lime (1-2 liquid oz.)
• 4 cups finely shredded cabbage

Blend together all but the cabbage. Then pour over cabbage & mix well. Chill until ready to serve.And, even earlier in the day I made the mango pico de gallo:

• 1 jalapeño pepper
• 2 ripe mangos
• juice from 2 limes
• 6 roma tomatoes
• 4-5 cloves garlic
• 6 green onions
• 1/4 cup cilantro leaves
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

(Make sure you adjust your ingredients according to your personal salsa taste. We don’t like a lot of cilantro, but love garlic & lime…) Finely chop & stir together.After the hubs got home, the grill was lit & the fish put on after the pre-heat.I set up the little tortilla cups on my platter.Filled the bottom with grilled fish.Added the chipotlé crema/cabbage mixture.Spooned a bit of the mango pico, and then topped them with an avocado slice.mmmmmmmmmmm – so delish!My boys got tired of the taco that disappeared in one bite, so we wrapped theirs up in a flour tortilla.I tell you – I love it when dinner can be cooked outdoors!
Check out the other fish & chips interpretations in the links below:

gluten free carrot bread (the slow-cooker way…)

I had to defrost my big freezer last week and I found several containers of (cooked) carrot pureé that I needed to use. Made me decide to experiment with my gluten-full carrot bread recipe using GF flours. I also had heard talk of baking quick breads in the crockpot, so I wished to try that as well.I mixed the dry ingredients into a large bowl:

• 1 1/2 c. GF flour
• 1 T. psyllium
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. kosher salt
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. nutmeg

In the mixer, I blended the following:

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 c. sour cream or plain yogurt
• 1/2 c. honey (I actually used half molasses & half honey this time)
• 1 c. carrot pureé

Stirred the dry ingredients into the liquids.Scraped the batter into my prepared loaf pan.Placed it in the crockpot & covered with a few layers of paper towels under the lid (to absorb the steam droplets that collect on the underside of the lid…) Set it on the “high” setting and walked away for about 3 hours. Smelled so wonderful I had a hard time letting the bread cool.Very nice texture.Awesome with cream cheese!

Whither thou goest…

This week my love & I celebrated 21 wonderful years of marriage. I asked him if he had a do-over, would he do it again? This is what I found on facebook:I would follow my husband to the ends of the world & live in a shack, if I had to. By God’s grace, we’ve had a comfortable life, complete with three marvelous young men. I decided to commemorate how “far” we’d come.This is where we had our first date.Here is where we married.This was the location of our first home.As you can see by the coordinates, I haven’t had to follow him very far… God is so good!

Very Berry Lemon Cake, gluten free

A couple weeks ago, a lady shared this recipe on one of my embroidery forums:Sounded like it would taste delicious – but could I mix my magic flours to make it gluten free?

Fortunately, Sprouts had berries on sale. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to experiment with flours. Fortunately, I found this:I beat my four eggs then added the sour cream. After that was smooth I added 1 Tablespoon lemon extract and the contents of the cake mix. Once that was all incorporated, I stirred in 1 cup fresh blueberries by hand.I gotta tell you – I am a “batter-licker”. And I tried this one after I scraped it all into my coconut-oiled & rice-floured pan... oh.my.goodness!

I decided to bake the cake at the temperature prescribed by the mix, so I popped my cake into the preheated 325° oven. Therefore, it needed to bake about 45-50 minutes before my tester came out dry.I was positively dying, smelling that cake as it cooled.It was originally served to my guests with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. (No one could tell it was GF!)…but it was outstanding the next morning with a little fresh mango on the side.The texture, even two days later, was excellent. Still moist and not at all grainy.

Sooooooo, you’ll have to excuse me – it’s time for my mid-morning coffee. And I still have one slice of this heavenly cake waiting for me from the freezer…