The Child In The Midst

Of late, I have been reading through the book “Unspoken Sermons” by George MacDonald, it is a goodly book with much delicious and nutritious food for the soul to chew and digest and I have been greatly enjoying this “meal” of a book.  Especially this excerpt, from the chapter “The Child In The Midst”, which I want to share with you in this post:

For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father’s face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?

In this, then, is God like the child: that he is simply and altogether our friend, our father—our more than friend, father, and mother—our infinite love-perfect God.

Grand and strong beyond all that human imagination can conceive of poet-thinking and kingly action, he is delicate beyond all that human tenderness can conceive of husband or wife, homely beyond all that human heart can conceive of father or mother. He has not two thoughts about us. With him all is simplicity of purpose and meaning and effort and end—namely, that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness. It is so plain that any one may see it, every one ought to see it, every one shall see it. It must be so. He is utterly true and good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.

How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this.

Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were—no, not a truer, for the other is false, but—a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.

The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity; who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss; the God of history working in time unto christianity; this God is the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted.

The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fullness of the treasures of the Godhead, than our imagination can touch their measure. Of him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of his creatures can pass unseen; and while one of them remains unsatisfied, he is not Lord over all.

Therefore, with angels and with archangels, with the spirits of the just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with the Lord himself, and for all them that know him not, we praise and magnify and laud his name in itself, saying “Our Father”.

We do not draw back for that we are unworthy, nor even for that we are hard-hearted and care not for the good. For it is his childlikeness that makes him our God and Father. The perfection of his relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils; for our childhood is born of his Fatherhood.

That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, “Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.”

Such a faith will not lead to presumption. The man who can pray such a prayer will know better than another, that God is not mocked; that he is not a man that he should repent; that tears and entreaties will not work on him to the breach of one of his laws; that for God to give a man because he asked for it that which was not in harmony with his laws of truth and right, would be to damn him—to cast him into the outer darkness. And he knows that out of that prison the childlike, imperturbable God will let no man come till he has paid the uttermost farthing.

And if he should forget this, the God to whom he belongs does not forget it, does not forget him.

Life is no series of chances with a few providences sprinkled between to keep up a justly failing belief, but one providence of God; and the man shall not live long before life itself shall remind him, it may be in agony of soul, of that which he has forgotten. When he prays for comfort, the answer may come in dismay and terror and the turning aside of the Father’s countenance; for love itself will, for love’s sake, turn the countenance away from that which is not lovely; and he will have to read, written upon the dark wall of his imprisoned conscience, the words, awful and glorious, Our God is a Consuming Fire.

My “World Famous” Jalapeno Poppers

Note that Nathan left on the fridge to remind me

I originally posted this long long ago on my first “Musings Of A Mountain Mama” Blog back in 2006…or was it 2007?  Somewheres during that time anyways, and since then I have had several people ask me for the recipe over the years, so I thought I would do a deluxe recipe post replete with pictures of how I make jalapeno poppers.  We finally got enough jalapenos to make a batch of poppers last night, always around the middle of summer we make tons of poppers and gorge ourselves, it’s a family tradition! 😀

So, to begin, here is the recipe:

1 8oz. bar of cream cheese, room temperature (I have also used fresh homemade chevre with excellent results!)

1 4oz. block of extra sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

1 tsp. onion powder

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1 tsp. mesquite smoke flavor

1/2 tsp. sea salt (real salt)

freshly ground pepper to taste

Makes about 30 poppers and recipe easily doubles, triples, or quadruples depending on how many jalapenos you have!  (each 1 jalapeno = 2 poppers)

first put all the filling ingredients into a big bowl

then mix it all really well, I like to use a fork to kinda mash it up

pick your jalapenos from the garden

cut them all in half longways

remove the innards (I very much suggest that you wear latex gloves while doing this part, the sting of hot pepper juice is NOT something you wanna mess around with..take it from someone whose learned this the hard way, on more than one occasion 😕 )

now fill all those lovely empty pepper halves with the cheese filling

after that, it’s now time to “bread” them…you will need milk, flour, and plain breadcrumbs (I’ve also used panko bread crumbs before, they make an “extra crunchy” popper..)

dip the stuffed pepper half in the milk the roll in the flour, this works best when you designate a hand to each job…left hand for milk, right hand for flour/breadcrumbs. Otherwise your wet with milk hand will get all gummed up with flour and breadcrumbs and require frequent washings (…again, I have learned this the hard way on more than one occasion…)

after the flour mixture has had about 10-20 minutes to dry, do another layer of flour let dry another 10-20 minutes and then do a layer of breadcrumbs and, for best results, refrigerate for a couple of hours before deep frying…alternatively you can also do ALL of this the day BEFORE you plan to serve them, I often do this when we have guests visiting that way I won’t be stuck in the kitchen all day…they also freeze well (in a single layer on a cookie sheet then packed into gallon sized ziploc bags) and can be deep fried while still frozen…

deep fry at 375F for 3-4 minutes in batches of 3 at a time….I use peanut oil in a cast iron dutch oven with a candy thermometer to help me keep track of the temperature

the finished jalapeno poppers ooozing cheese because I did not refrigerate first and let the filling hard up before frying…no matter, everybody still loved ’em! They disappeared from the plate nearly as fast as I was making them, almost didn’t even get this pic 🙂

Bringing In The Peas

Blue – podded  “blauwschokker” peas also known as capucijner (cap u see ner) peas

…it has two different colors of flowers, pink/purple type and a more bluish/purple type…

bluish/black pods, at this young stage they can be eaten just like snow peas or sugar snap peas

or you can leave them on the vine..

to fully mature

and then tear down those vines

harvest the fully mature pea pods…

and have your kids help you shell the peas

and then feed the vines to the goats (goats LOVE pea vines)…

and then use about 1 pound of those peas, which range from fully mature to fully dried (the darker ones are fully dried)..

and fresh snap beans from the garden, yellow and green, finely chopped..

along with meat from a young rooster, killed a few days ago and cooked until falling apart and making it’s own delicious broth, the meat very finely diced into the soup in order to make it more tender (rooster is tasty but tough)…

combined with fresh broth from the young rooster, let it all cook down for several hours, and you have Pea and Bean Rooster Soup! 😀

This will be our third year growing these peas, we’ve saved seeds from each year to grow the next year.  This year we harvested about 3 pounds of peas, our most ever!  These are super easy to grow and make for a VERY tasty soup, not at all “pea like” but more like a bean with a very meaty rich taste, most of the peas retain their shape when cooked but some cook down completely and help thicken and intensify the flavor of the soup.  This pea is a Dutch heirloom and I am Dutch along with German and  Scottish so I am always looking to grow heirloom vegetables from these cultures and peas do very well in our climate.  Not to mention the fact that they are SO BEAUTY FULL, they have very quickly become a favorite of ours, one that we plan to grow every year.  This is a VERY OLD pea, originally grown by the Capuchin monks in Flanders, Europe during the 1500’s!

As Promised

view of the house from over the bridge on the other side of the creek

The enclosed front porch with screen windows

This summer has been quite busy and filled up thus far!  Our major projects have been the enclosure of both the front porch and side porches to create more space in this cramped little 1,000 sq.ft. cottage.  Nathan did the building and I did the painting…our front porch has now become our main “hang out” area…where the older boys go to read or play board games and video games in a toddler free zone 😉

Inside of enclosed front porch, bench on right

“play area” on left with bench and table and shelves

The enclosed side porch was turned into a work area for storing tools and garden stuff, Nathan mostly uses this and he loves his new room!

enclosed side porch

interior of enclosed side porch with many many shelves for storage

We’ve also had lost of visitors, Nathan’s parents visiting June 28th – July 1st and my parents visiting July 4th – July 7th.  We immensely enjoyed their visits, as did the children and they will all be sorely missed until we see them again in the Fall.  There were two birthdays as well…

Charity celebrated her 3rd birthday on June 27th…here she is sitting on the table eating cookies that grandma brought for everyone 🙂

And cute little Samuel celebrated his 2nd birthday on July 3rd

And here’s a funny story.  About 3 weeks ago I went out in the backyard fixin’ to kill our oldest hen, a barred rock who is 5 years old, in order to make room for the 35 brand new chicks that we purchased back in April.  I looked and looked and could not find her anywhere, so I gave up and went back inside, a couple of days a ago she shows up out of nowhere with three tiny puffballs trailing after her.  She had never gone broody before, but becoming a mama just saved her life ’cause I no longer have the heart to kill her and, besides, a hen that goes broody is worth it’s weight in gold!

the chickie mama with her puffballs

the duck does not like the chickies…bad duck bad

The garden is coming along quite nicely with all kinds of greens and herbs, and corn, and snap beans, tobbaco and potatoes, garlic and peas and, of course, the tomatoes!  Here are a few random garden shots..

Expect more “regular” blogging from here on out! 😀

Me On Facebook

I am on facebook more often than here, I don’t accept just any friend but I do post a lot of things for public consumption and you can follow me there, here’s the link:

https://www.facebook.com/evenavapor

I’ll be back to regular blogging on July 8th with much to show and share!