Healing Balm

courtesy of flickr

"If you suffer any kind of loss, don't try to get your arms around it. Let God get His arms around you. He knows your suffering and will give you the comfort of His presence and the healing balm of His love."
~Stormie Omartian

Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

Pumpkin Pie Snickerdoodle Bars!

They were almost gone when I remembered to take a picture...

I found the recipe here while doing a search, but it's out there in varying forms, in many places. As a lover of both Snickerdoodles and all things pumpkin, especially Pumpkin Pie, these seemed like the perfect pairing for a sweet treat this time of year! So I decided to be brave and give these a try since I was making them for dh to take to a work party where my Snickerdoodles are always requested at potlucks!

I'll just give you my version here since I made a bunch of changes...I did try to "healthify" it a little :-)- Oh, so yummy! And they can be eaten as part of a nutritious meal. I had days of eating these when the scale still went down :-)

Pumpkin Pie Snickerdoodle Bars

Snickerdoodle Layer
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t cream of tarter (mine is a little old, so not sure if that means it was stronger or weaker?)
1/2 t sea salt
2 cups brown sugar (un-packed)
1 cup butter, at room temperature (I used Imperial Vegetable Spread Sticks-1/3 less fat)
2 eggs, at room temp.
1 T vanilla extract

Pumpkin Pie Layer
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 stick butter, at room temp. (I used the Imperial again here; the first time I made these I used 1/2 cup Best Life Buttery Spread because I was out of the other, and they were totally fine!)
1 t baking powder
1/2 t sea salt
1 1/2 t Pumpkin Pie Spice
2 eggs, at room temp.
15 oz. can of pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling!)
~3 t white sugar
~3 t cinnamon

(I did not make the white chocolate drizzle as the original recipe suggests.)

Directions (with some editing)
Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a 9x13 inch pan.

To make Snickerdoodle layer:
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. In large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth.

Stir in the flour mixture until well blended. Spread evenly in prepared pan (mixture will be thick and cookiebatter-ish.)

To make Pumpkin Pie layer:
In a mixer bowl (you can use the same one you used to make the Snickerdoodle batter) with a paddle attachment (or as I used just a hand mixer the first time and stirred by hand the second time), mix together all ingredients until well combined. This layer will be less thick and more pourable. Pour over the Snickerdoodle layer, smoothing out the top.

Combine white sugar and cinnamon in a little bowl. Evenly sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture over the top of the batter.

Bake for 35 minutes (be careful as oven temps vary!) or until a toothpick inserted into the *center* of the pan comes out clean. Let the bars cool completely (about an hour). They will deflate a bit and remain a bit pie-like on the top layer. I find that these are yummy when still warm but the layers (esp. this second time separated until they had been in the fridge overnight).

Store covered in the fridge once cooled.

*I am still perfecting these as I would like to experiment with the Snickerdoodle part a little more, maybe make without the brown sugar as my Snickerdoodle recipe doesn't call for it and I think it does change the taste a little. But they are still really good!

It's Soup Weather Again~ Lower Carb Baked Potato

In an effort to try "healthified" versions of our favorites since we've started making a conscious effort to eat better, I found this recipe here (picture of soup with recipe) and modified it just a little.

Here are my ingredient modifications:

5 russet potatoes (instead of 2)
2 cups of fat free chicken broth (instead of 1 1/2 cups)
2 cups of 1% reduced-fat milk (instead of 1 1/2 cups)
1 cup of light sour cream (instead of 1/2 cup)
~12 T of reduced-fat shredded sharp cheddar cheese (instead of 10 T)
6 slices of pork bacon for 1 slice/bowl (instead of only 3 slices)

My cooking modifications:

I don't have a steamer so I boiled the cauliflower for maybe 6 minutes? Then drained and divided in 3 batches for pureeing in my blender with ~1 T of milk each time. Then I added back to the pan with the potatoes chunked, and continued with the directions given (since I don't have an immersion blender). In the future I will add some minced garlic to the cauliflower when I blend it I think. My full-carb BP soup recipe calls for garlic and I definitely think it adds a nice touch.

We got about 6 bowls (more than 1 c. servings each). I topped mine with just one slice of bacon, a dash of garlic powder, and some more chives. This was very, very, yummy! I am definitely making it again! I was so happy to find this version as BP soup is one of our cold weather staples :-)

I served it with multi-grain bread.

Perfect Love

"The deeper we press into the Lord, the more of His perfect love we experience, and the less fear we will have." ~Stormie Omartian



photo courtesy of flickr

Thank you

I know commenting is not everybody's cup of tea (or coffee!) out in the World Wide Web, but I love to hear from my readers!

I have put my email address in the sidebar of my blog if anyone ever wants to contact me that way and let me know you are out there, or if you have any thoughts on posts, etc.

And thank you for reading. It truly means a lot. Writing this blog, and sharing is "therapy" for me. But my prayer since I started this blog has also been to encourage others walking this road and to help those walking with us to understand a little better what we are going through. And of course to share the blessings along the way.

Suffering Well

I have been reading the transcripts for this radio program series for Christian women and just wanted to share. God has really been speaking to me through this series so far and as they say in the transcript, it can apply to any trial, not just breast cancer as the guests on this show talk about. I have been sharing it with dh since I think the concepts are so applicable to either gender! Today's transcript in particular spoke to me, "The Image of His Son". I hope you find it to be a blessing as well.

*As a side note, only the ones through the current date are available in the series :)

Scars

“Your hardships, like nothing else, are preparing you to meet your God. Your suffering is getting you ready - for what proof could you bring of your love for Jesus if this life left you totally unscarred?”~ Joni Erikson Tada

King of Glory!

This past weekend I had the privilege of going on a Women's Retreat with my church and I took my mom with me too :-) It was a lot of fun and I came home with so much new knowledge of, and hunger for learning more about, God and His word.

The weather was soooo beautiful. The trees were adorned with beautiful fall foliage. And the sun was shining gloriously through all the colors making them look even more vibrant.

It was perfectly fitting for our theme "Behold the King of Glory". It was so encouraging to be able to just focus on the relationship that God wants to have with me and what I, as a woman, should be doing to build my relationship with Christ and as a result, be reflecting His glory.

On the way home I kept playing over and over the song below, by Third Day. So perfectly fitting for the weekend I had. We had talked about Moses seeing Christ on the mountaintop, but he only saw God's backside, and with even just seeing His backside, he was glowing when he came down from that mountain. It makes me ponder what God could do in my life if I just give him even a little of my time every day!

You can listen to the song here.


"Show Me Your Glory"

I caught a glimpse of Your splendor
In the corner of my eye
The most beautiful thing I've ever seen
And it was like a flash of lightning
Reflected off the sky
And I know I'll never be the same

Show me Your glory
Send down Your presence
I want to see Your face
Show me Your glory
Majesty shines about You
I can't go on without You, Lord

When I climb down the mountain
And get back to my life
I won't settle for ordinary things
I'm gonna follow You forever
And for all of my days
I won't rest 'til I see You again

Show me Your glory
Show me Your glory
I can't live without You

My Calling

Recently I have come across the phrase the "holy call of motherhood" a lot and it has really made me dig deeper to try and find the basis of this phrase. I've also seen the phrase that being a mom is "the highest call" of a woman. Again I ask, really?!? What about single women? What about those who thought they were going to be moms because they had never felt so sure of anything else in their lives (besides being a wife), but it is physically impossible? And what about those who feel God calling them to be complete as two (just husband and wife, fully complete)? I realize that I am viewing this world through the lenses of IF. I get that. But I am really trying to figure out where these phrases are in the Bible, and upon my searching so far I still haven't found any evidence that motherhood is either of these.

As a result of talking about this with some fellow sister's in Christ (both moms and non-moms), I've come to the conclusion, and it has also confirmed my original thinking, that this phrase and concept just doesn't exist in God's Word. There is no one call that is holier than another since we are all created in Christ's image and no one person is better than another, or holier than another, or has a higher calling than another. There really is no reason for anyone to exalt their role in life over that of anothers.

One of the women I was talking to about this pointed out the fact that many women are mentioned in the Bible who, to our knowledge, did not have children. If these women did have children, given the time period and culture, they most likely would have been mentioned. A few of these likely childless women who answered God's call upon their lives are: Esther, Deborah, Priscilla, and Mary & Martha.

While doing some research, I came across this list that I think is both very intriguing and encouraging as a woman seeking to find meaning in a life that does not involve motherhood at the moment and who does not know if it ever will.

In conclusion, it is clear for me to see that my call as a Christian woman, whether or not I am someone's mom, is to obey God and He will use me to His glory.

Dreams

"Dreams are always crushing when they don't come true. But it’s the simple dreams that are often the most painful because they seem so personal, so reasonable, so attainable. You're always close enough to touch, but never quite close enough to hold, and it’s enough to break your heart."
~in “3 Weeks with My Brother” by Nicholas Sparks

So perfectly said.