Maybe You Should Keep The Mistakes

A few days ago I drove into town to run a few errands.  I had Charity with me at the time and had grabbed my item off the store shelf and went and stood in the checkout line.  In front of me was a mom with her little girl, the little girl was about 4 or 5 years old with big brown eyes and big brown curls.

The moment I got in line, the little girl turned to me and said “Where’s your boy?”.

Her mother looked up and saw she was talking to me and said  “Sh Sh, leave the lady alone.”

I turned to the mother and said “It’s alright, I don’t mind.”  Talking to children, either my own or those of others, is often my favorite way to pass time while standing in a checkout line.  The mother gave me a half-smile and turned her attention to purchasing her items.

I turned to the little girl and said “My boy is at home.  I have 3 boys, but they didn’t come with me, they’re all at home with their daddy right now.”  That answer seemed to satisfy her.

She then looked down at my hand, at the item I was planning to purchase.  She pointed at it and said “What’s that?”

The day before I had been filling out forms for medical insurance and had gotten frustrated when I couldn’t find the White-Out to fix a mistake I had made on the form.

I looked down at my item and replied “This is White-Out, it’s for covering up the mistakes I make when I’m writing.”

She seemed slightly puzzled by that.  She looked down at the item again and then up at me, her big brown eyes staring right into mine in that clear, honest, innocent way that only a child can and she said “Well, maybe you should keep the mistakes.”

I paused for a moment, chuckled slightly and then smiled at her and said “Yeah, maybe I should.”

She smiled back.

At that exact moment her mother, who had finished purchasing her items and had turned to leave, called out “Trinity, come on we’re leaving!”.  Trinity then gave me a small wave and ran off to join her mother.

Trinity.  I chuckled to myself again.  OK, Father I hear you.

After all, what is a life without mistakes?  A life not lived.

We’re put here on this planet earth to experience life as a journey, not for the physcial body but for the soul, the true self.  A journey of transformation in which we learn about God and about ourselves.  Usually we start out whole, losing ourselves somewhere along the way, finding ourselves again and in that process finding God, and then gradually passing away from this world into God to become our Eternal Whole REAL SELF that is in HIM.

Mistakes are a big part of this process and yet we all try so hard to cover them up, to act like we never make any and to pretend that we always know exactly what we are doing.  But, I daresay, if we allow a mistake to be what it is…our teacher…we can learn far more from a mistake than we ever can from any “right decision” we have made.

Mistakes are an essential thread in the tapestry of life that we are all in the process of weaving, and if we pulled out every mistake then not only would the final picture be distorted and not make any sense, but the entire thing would fall apart….a pile of threads, of no good to any person.

Mistakes, more than any “right decision” reveal most who exactly we are as people, our inherent drives and weaknesses…what makes us tick…which may explain why we all try so hard to cover them up.

And there is no law written in stone somewhere that says you can never fix a mistake or try to improve the effects of one….after all, as the saying goes “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing (making the same mistake) over and over again while expecting different results.”

The best way to learn from a mistake is to absorb and retain the lesson it is meant to teach you and then get on with LIFE!!  Move on to the next mistake, the next lesson there is to learn, and at the end of life you will look back to see a beautiful tapestry of complex design and many colors….one that shines forth with the brilliance of a life well-lived, showing the character of a person who never gave up.

Yes, from now on I will keep the mistakes 🙂

 

(originally published on March 9, 2011 on my facebook page)

Our Daily Bread: From Grain To Loaf…Part Two

(Click here for part one)

How To Make A Truly Nutritious Loaf Of Bread

This is not hard, not at all.  Just a few simple ingredients are needed.

1.  Whole Wheat Flour, preferably freshly ground.  The oils in whole wheat flour can be highly volatile, meaning that they spoil easily.  Under very warm conditions the oils can go rancid within 72 hours, while not exactly a good thing from a health standpoint it isn’t devastating, but it can make your bread taste bitter.  That’s why whole wheat store bought bread has a sort of  “off-taste”, you can especially taste it when you compare it side by side with bread made from freshly ground flour.  If you buy your flour already ground, buy it as fresh as you can get and then store it in the fridge.  If you’re interested in buying the whole grain and grinding your own flour, almost any natural food store will allow you to order grain in bulk.  I currently buy “hard red spring wheat” for making yeasted bread products and for making quick breads (those using baking soda or baking powder for leavening) I use “soft winter wheat”.  A 50 pound bag of organic hard red spring wheat costs me about $36…1 cup of wheat makes about 1 cup of flour and there is 2 cups of flour in 1 pound, that’s 100 cups of flour in a 50 pound bag which comes out to 36 cents a cup…and I use about 3 cups of flour for 1 loaf of bread, so that comes out to $1.08 per loaf! 😀

My grain grinder...a "Wondermill Junior"...I like to use the stone burrs for "stoneground" flour...

here I am...grinding flour, it takes me about 20 minutes to grind enough flour for 1 loaf of bread (my 8 year old son, Elijah, took this picture)

2.  Whey.  Whey is the protein-rich liquid portion of milk, as opposed to the milk solids which is what is used in making cheese.  We have goats and I make our own raw milk goat cheese, the whey leftover from cheese making is what I use in making bread, this is how our fore-mothers would have done it.  If you don’t have goats or cows, the easiest way to get whey (hehehe) is by buying yogurt and straining the whey off to make yogurt cheese.  This is what I do in the dead of winter when my goats are pregnant and not in milk.  The yogurt thickens up nicely and all kinds of seasonings can be added to it to make a nice soft cheese to spread on slices of your bread.  This makes for a nice late afternoon snack.   Also, it is SO important that you use a good, high quality yogurt with LIVE and ACTIVE cultures.  Dannon Plain Whole Milk Yogurt works well if you’re on a budget, but if money is no issue then use Stonyfield Plain Whole Milk Yogurt or Brown Cow Plain Whole Milk Yogurt, both are FAR superior in taste, quality, and nutrition and since it’s organic you can be sure that there is no pus from rampant udder infection from the overuse of growth hormone to artificially increase milk production, no antibiotics to treat the infection either…ick.  It is the cultures, probiotics, or “good bacteria” in the yogurt that are responsible for neutralizing the phytic acid in the flour, this is why you must make sure your yogurt is “alive”.

For draining the whey from yogurt I use a little plastic "reusable" coffee filter that I stick inside a liquid measuring cup

after draining off all the whey, you get yogurt "cheese"

3.  Yeast.  Regular ol’ yeast that you buy from the store works just fine.  However, I don’t use nearly as much as most recipes call for and there is a reason for that.  I want the bread to rise slowly so that the “good bacteria” in the whey have enough time to neutralize all the phytic acid in the flour.  I have read some sources that say at least 7 hours is needed and other sources that say 12 hours.  I usually mix my bread together in the evening and then let it rise all night for fresh baked bread with breakfast.  My rule of thumb is 1/4 tsp. yeast per loaf of bread.

In the past, I have made bread in all different kinds of ways from whole wheat to sourdough, completely by hand to using a bread machine, at one point I would even sprout the wheat and then dry it in the dehydrator and then grind the dried sprouted kernals into flour to make “sprouted wheat” bread.  But right now, in my life, I have FIVE KIDS whom I home-school, plus livestock and a large garden and fruit trees and I just don’t have time to be experimenting with my bread, bread is too basic for me at this point, all I need is a good “tried and true” nutritious loaf while investing as little personal time and energy as possible.  I may grind my own flour by hand but my bread machine (which I picked up for a whole 5 dollars from the local second hand shop) does ALL the kneading for me…  although, I still will occasionally knead a loaf by hand just for the fun of it 😀

my bread machine..cost me a whole 5 dollars...

Here is the recipe I use to make 1 loaf of whole wheat bread.  I add powdered kelp and flax meal for added nutrition, they are entirely optional though, as well as the butter and salt, but the butter makes for a softer loaf and everything tastes better with salt.

1 cup of whey

2 1/2 – 3 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp. yeast

1/2 tsp. real sea salt (optional)

2 tbsp. butter (optional)

1 Tbsp. kelp powder (optional)

1 Tbsp. flax meal (optional)

the ingredients inside the breadmaker

After I have the dough go through a kneading on the “whole wheat dough” cycle, I then remove the dough and shape into a loaf and let rise in a warm place for at least 7 hours.  If you are really new to bread making and need to learn to knead by hand there are TONS of really good bread making videos on YouTube that could easily show you.  After the dough has fully risen I then heat the oven as hot as it will go, that’s about 550 degrees for me and then pop the bread in and turn the heat down to 350 and bake for about 30 minutes.  Getting the oven as hot as possible really helps with the rising of the bread at the very beginning of baking.

the finished loaf, topped with some dill seeds harvested from last year's garden

Ok, stay tuned for the next part, as I have the time…it will be about making whole wheat sourdough bread completely by hand! 😀

Our Daily Bread: From Grain To Loaf…Part One

Kernels of wheat on the stalk

Bread.  It’s been called the “staff of life”, the basis of civilization, and the primary goal of agriculture.   But that’s just lip service.  In our american culture we pay homage to bread with words that claim to remember, a false fantasy of some time some place of simplicity, wholeness and the smell of bread baking in the oven.

Cause that’s what the TV commercial taught us.

However, in reality, an average loaf of bread from the average grocery store tastes like shi…ngles, roofing shingles….or maybe  ..cardboard….with a hint of plastic wrap, and a bit of white glue thrown in for good measure.  And, you know what?  That would be just fine, I could allow for that if the bread itself was actually nutritious…but it’s NOT.  We forgot how to make a nutritious loaf of bread long, long ago.

A little known fact about bread, about wheat, a kernel of wheat is a SEED.  This is SO important!  Most people just see the finished loaf of bread, a few others may see the flour that went into the bread and some may have even baked it themselves…although that brand of people is becoming rare, like an endangered species.  But how many do you know of that begin with the seed, the grain itself?

Hard Red Spring Wheat...perfect for bread baking

Another little known fact, SEEDS are the baby form of a plant.  The whole goal and purpose in life for a seed is to find it’s ideal growing conditions…warm temperatures, lots of water along a beach with a pina colada in hand….no wait, that’s MY ideal growing conditions! 😉

But seriously, a seed’s sole purpose is to sprout and grow into a plant and in order to do this the seed has certain protective mechanisms, namely certain enzymes whose function is to protect the seed…the main one is called “phytic acid”.  In the wild, the seed would have matured on the stalk and then be eaten, plant and all, by some type of herbivorous creature with some chewing involved, but usually swallowed whole, especially in the case of birds.  And the phytic acid, which is the seed’s protective barrier, would neutralize the digestive enzymes so that the seed couldn’t be digested in hopes that when it came out the “tail end” later on it would be resting in a good place to sprout, with it’s own special “compost” encasing it.   Each and every creature, especially birds, spreads around seeds in this way.

In the case of most herbivorous creatures, those who live solely on plant matter, this isn’t a problem because they usually have at least 3 or 4 stomachs with one stomach, called the “rumen”, acting as a large fermentation vessel.  This process of fermentation neutralizes the “protective mechanism” of the seed, thereby making all the nutrients in the seed fully available for absorption by the body.  But if you’re a human and you aren’t fortunate enough to have your own built in “fermentation vessel” the phytic acid itself can cause problems in the body, weakening the power of the digestive juices and enzymes which leads to a WHOLE host of other problems which occurs when our food isn’t digested properly, most of the diseases of “modern man” find their root here.  Without neutralizing the phytic acid the nutrients remain bound up in the seed for the purpose of feeding the young plant once the seed sprouts…therefore the germination process, soaking the seed in water until it sprouts, also neutralizes the phytic acid.

A mouse baked into a loaf of factory made, store bought, white bread...oh boy, mouse meat sandwiches are my FAVORITE! 😎

So, in order to make a loaf of truly nutritious life sustaining bread the kernel of wheat has to undergo either a fermentation process or a soaking process otherwise, in the long run, because of the phytic acid, the bread may actually cause more harm than good.  With the advent of The Industrial Revolution this fact was sort of thrown by the wayside in the name of efficiency, time=money, and the worship by rich businessmen of the almighty dollar.  By cutting out this extra step and reducing the time it took to make a loaf of bread a much larger profit could be realized, to Hell with the health of the consumer.  For REAL, they don’t care about you…all they want is your money.

Stay tuned for Part Two where I will show you how I make a loaf of truly nutritious life sustaining bread…starting with grinding my own flour, just like great great grandma did! 😀

It’s The MOST Wonderful Time Of The Year!

The SEED CATALOGS are arriving!  Bet you didn’t see that one coming 😉

And that’s my excuse, that is where I have been.  ALL of my free time, which isn’t much, that is supposed to be going into this blog has been occupied by my reading of the seed catalogs along with my husband.  We like to go through them together, with our own separate gardening notebooks in hand, and take notes and talk and dream and plan…building sandcastles in the sky…well, maybe…but it’s fun and that is precious to me right now as there is so little in this world that I truly enjoy anymore.  Right now it is my husband, my children, seed catalogs, Skyrim (awesome video game for the x-box 360) and coffee…everything else is just sort of  a necessary bore at the moment.  And no, I won’t apologize for that 😛

This time of the year, the time of decreasing light leading up to the night of (seems like) “eternal darkness” is always the hardest time of the year for me.  I’ve often wondered if I have what they call “seasonal affective DISorder” but then again to react this way to receiving  less light is not necessarily a disorder now is it?  The changing of the season should effect us, shouldn’t it?  Unless you are so disconnected you can’t see that, which I guess is totally possible for those living cities or suburbia, but that’s not me….that is so not me.

That is why I LOVE the holy days of Light…of  The Light…The Light of The World….who is JESUS CHRIST.  Yes, I am speaking of Hanukkah…I prefer it much more than christmas.  Do you know the story of Hanukkah?  It has much to do with living your Faith out in the face of persecution.

More than 2000 years ago, the land of Judea was ruled by Antiochus, a tyrannical Syrian king. He was a tyrant – cruel, harsh and savage. He wore his pride like a garment. Believing that he was deity in the flesh, he referred to himself as Antiochus Theos Epiphanes (“Antichous, the visible god”). His detractors called him Epimanes, or “madman.” Without warning, Israel found herself exposed to his intolerant rule – a foreshadowing of the coming Antichrist.  Antiochus was anxious to unite his kingdom of many languages, cultures and religions. These diversities only served to fan the fires on individual nationalism and independence. He desired to impose or “hellenize” Greek language, thought, and religion upon his subjects in an effort to unify his rule through assimilation. And that’s precisely what Antiochus did to the Jews: he forbade them to circumcise their sons, or observe the Sabbath or study their religious text, the Torah, and he erected a statue of Zeus in their sacred temple of Jerusalem and offered swine upon the alter of God. Many Jews followed his decrees, because they had no choice; those who resisted were executed.

In 167 B.C., the Jews — driven to desperation — rose up against Antiochus. Mattathias, a well-respected priest, gathered together an army and put his five sons in charge. Judah and his brothers wanted a name for their battalion that would signify force and strength; “Maccabee”, meaning “hammer”, fit the bill.

It took three years of fighting, but eventually the Maccabees drove the Syrians out of Israel and reclaimed the temple in Jerusalem. This took place about  164 B.C. Judas Maccabees and his followers came back into Jerusalem and solemnly cleansed the Temple from the profanations to which it had been subjected under Antiochus. Naturally, the Maccabees quickly got rid of the statue of Zeus.  They removed the polluted altar, and put the stones in a separate place on the Temple mount, and restored the worship of the Lord (1 Maccabees 4:52, 56, 59). Then they cleansed and purified the temple, and rekindled the menorah, a candelabra that symbolized God’s Divine Presence. Oddly enough, although it only held enough oil to burn for a single day, the menorah burned for eight. This was the miracle.  This “cleansing of the Sanctuary” (Daniel 8:13-14) took place on the 25th day of Chisleu (December the 25th), and the joyous celebration lasted for eight days. The Temple was the central power of unity, binding the Jews together as one. According to the prophetic word of the last prophet, Malachi, the Messiah would “suddenly come to His Temple” (Mal. 3:1)

Jesus is “the light of the world” who is coming to rescue His People  from the oppression of the world about them.

The miracle of Hanukkah lies not only in the oil which didn’t run out but also in the preservation of God’s people and the continuation of the covenant promises that God will heal and deliver them. The one who heals is Yeshua, Jesus The Christ, the man who said at Hanukkah (The Feast Of Dedication, John 10) he was one with the Father, the one who said he is the good shepherd of Israel who leads his people to circumcised hearts (which is repentance or a turning away from our natural “human nature”) and eternal life.

When a new Antiochus arises, as in the anti-christ, to greatly trouble Israel (God’s People) again, it will be Yeshua who comes to deliver his people. In the meantime, we are the Hasidei Yeshua, the pious ones of Yeshua, who stand firm in faithfulness to God’s ways and who do not compromise. Great movements of salvation do not usually look impressive, but when the times get difficult, the ones made to shine with His Light are revealed.

Marinated Kale

hands crunching kale...very therapeutic

I LOVE this recipe…it’s my favorite way to eat greens, especially right now when it’s the ONLY thing coming from the garden….red russian kale, swiss chard, spinach especially!

1 bunch kale -washed, cut or ripped into small 1-2 inch pieces

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 1/2 tbsp tamari

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp minced ginger

1-3 tbsp. sesame seeds (optional)

1. Place prepped kale into a large bowl.
2. In a separate small to medium bowl, whisk together sesame oil and tamari till emulsified/combined nicely. Whisk in garlic and ginger.
3. Pour sauce over kale and massage sauce into the kale…using your hands!  This will help ensure all pieces of kale are covered.
4. Add sesame seeds to the kale (if you’re not sure if you’d rather go 1 or 3 tbsp, I suggest adding 1 and mixing up and checking coverage. You can always add more sesame seeds but you can’t take them back out…not easily at least).
5. Cover and let marinate in fridge for at least 24 hours.
6. Right before I eat it I like to sprinkle some dried cherries or cranberries over it…. Enjoy! 🙂