Standing in my gospel shoes

Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. Ephesians 6:14-15

I need to get me some gospel shoes. You probably think you really can’t buy gospel shoes. You’re wrong. I found them online. They look like high-top black Chucks with a cross on the tongue and the verse from Ephesians—"and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace"—written on the side. Of course these man-made gospel shoes that can be bought aren’t the kind I need.

For the past few weeks Pastor Mark has been preaching on the Whole Armor of God passage in Ephesians. He has stressed Paul’s exhortation to us to stand firm, to stand our ground, to stand with steady confidence rooted in the gospel.

Life has been hard lately. Death, illness, violence, sadness, and fear have been coming at me like darts, from all angles. But I keep reminding myself to stand firm. I realize that nothing I do on my own is enough to help me to stand in the midst of this onslaught. I need faith. It is faith, the complete reliance on God, that will give me the strength and peace to stand firm. I’ve got to put on my gospel shoes.

Colorado fish lips

I just got back from being in Colorado for nearly two weeks—in Aspen and Telluride. Both towns are in stunning locations. The feeling of standing on the heights of the Rocky Mountains at nearly 14,000 feet, inhaling clean air, seeing meadows of wildflowers and rushing mountain streams is breathtaking.

And both towns, particularly Aspen, are dripping in money. The rich aren’t stupid—they know where to go and where to be seen by other rich people.

But I’ve got the feeling the women of Aspen and Telluride aren’t representative of the average women of Colorado. For example, I drove from Aspen to Telluride and stopped in Paonia, Colorado, a small town surrounded by mines and fruit orchards. In Paonia the women wear beehive hairdos and false teeth. In Paonia the women wear polyester clothes left over from the last century. But at least the women in Paonia don’t look alike.

In Aspen there are a bunch of women who seem to have been punched out of a cookie cutter, like an updated version of Stepford wives. They all have Jennifer Anniston hair. They are all rail thin. Beyond rail thin. (It’s useful to be rail thin in Aspen because all the uber-expensive clothing stores carry clothes sizes that range from size 000 to size 4. Those of us who shop in the “women’s” section at Target might as well wrap ourselves in a table cloth.)

But here’s the thing that startled me most about the women in Aspen (and the non-hippie women in Telluride)—they all have those fish lips that you see in the plastic-surgery-gone-wrong photos. They walk around town with frozen faces and glossy lips way out of proportion to the rest of their bodies. I swear I just don’t get it. When did it become fashionable to look like a domestic abuse victim?

Saturday night

It’s Saturday night and I found myself singing, “Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody. I got some money ‘cause I just got paid.” (I love that song—where else could you find a rhyme that says, “instead of being my deliverance, she had a strange resemblance to a cat named Frankenstein.” Is that high art or what?)

I’m sitting here staring out the window, occasionally pecking on my computer keyboard, feeling like a giant nerd. Don’t all the cool people go out on Saturday night? Isn’t everyone at the movies or having romantic dinners with their sweethearts? Don’t get me wrong because I could be going out if I really wanted to. Like I need to go to the grocery store to pick up skim milk and multivitamins. Or I could go to Home Depot to get caulk. Maybe I could drive by the post office and drop my almost overdue phone bill in the mailbox. That’s exciting stuff.

I know rationally that there are plenty of people like me, people sitting home alone on Saturday night, doing laundry. Maybe this Saturday-night nerd thing is a leftover from high school. I never had a high school boyfriend. I just hung out with the girls. We girls found plenty of things to do and maybe we were better off because we didn’t have boyfriends, but we didn’t have very strong self-esteem and we thought something was wrong with us because we weren’t desired by teenaged boys. I’ve grown out of that—I no longer want to be desired by teenaged boys. Sometimes I just think it would be nice to have a reason to put on pantyhose, to wear that little black dress that I don’t even own. Is Saturday night overrated?

Watermelon salsa fresca

Totally got this from Lydia at the Perfect Pantry. (One of my favorite blogs--www.theperfectpantry.com.) It's a great recipe and everything except the mango is available now at my local farmer's market. I changed one thing by substituting sea salt for the kosher salt. I served it with a simple grilled chicken. It's delicious, fresh, and beautiful. Thanks, Lydia!

Watermelon, mango, and tomato salsa fresca

1 cup watermelon, diced
1 mango, diced
1/2 cup ripe tomato, seeded and diced

1/2 cup seedless (English) cucumber, diced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeds and ribs removed, minced
Juice of 1/2 lime (or more to taste)
Sea salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Chill until ready to use.

Recipes

I'm at risk of destroying my reputation by posting these recipes. Both are recipes that I developed and refined. But both are so easy that I should be ashamed. Is this not the woman who makes bittersweet chocolate ricotta torte that takes all day to bake? (All day to bake and less than an hour to eat. By myself.) Is this not the woman who makes Moroccan chicken couscous with about 120 ingredients? Yep. But truth be told, there is something so satifying about a simple recipe that works. You don't have to go to the grocery store with a spreadsheet as a shopping list--you can simply remember it. And you can add or change ingredients for variations.

For example, the chicken burgers started out as turkey burgers that someone at Weight Watchers told me about several years ago. The original version had defrosted frozen chopped spinach instead of sun-dried tomatoes. (That's great too but I prefer chicken to turkey and I like serving the chicken burgers with the spinach/orzo salad and need not to repeat the spinach.) And you can add julienned red bell pepper or marinated artichoke hearts or pinenuts to the salad. But again, there's something addictive about the simple light spinach/orzo combination that doesn't really need anything else.

Greek Chicken Burgers with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

1 pound ground white meat chicken
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes (in oil), chopped
1/2 cup feta cheese, diced
1 teaspoon Greek seasoning
1 tablespoon olive oil

In a bowl mix ground chicken, egg, sun-dried tomatoes, feta, and Greek seasoning. Form into 4 or 5 patties.

Heat oil in non-stick skillet and sauté burgers until brown, about 5 minutes per side.

Spinach/Orzo Salad

1 pound orzo

¼ cup olive oil

2 medium-size lemons, juiced

1 teaspoon Penzey’s lemon pepper

8 ounces baby spinach leaves, shredded

Cook orzo in boiling salted water. (Do not overcook!) Drain and transfer to a large bowl. Add enough olive oil to thoroughly coat the pasta. Add lemon juice and lemon pepper. Let the mixture sit until it has cooled to room temperature. On a cutting board, shred spinach (like shredding cabbage for coleslaw) and add to orzo mixture. Stir gently and chill for about an hour before serving.

Gibran, sorrow, and joy

I woke up today thinking about Khalil Gibran. In The Prophet he wrote, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?”

It’s a concept that I’ve carried with me for years, the concept of having a capacity for feeling that can be filled with sorrow or filled with joy. So maybe the capacity for deep feeling—feeling either sorrow or joy—is indeed a gift. Should I be grateful for such a gift? Even when it seems there's a load of sorrow in my cup?

You know how some people are relatively flat?  They smile occasionally, they may get a little angry or sad, but on a scale of one to ten, they go from zero to two, maybe all the way to three when their mother dies or they win the $250 million lottery. Maybe they were genetically engineered that way, they just got skipped over in the distribution of feeling genes.

Then there are others like me, those who cry when they see a dead cat in the road, those who catch their breath when they see the sun breaking through the mist over the river, those who have to dance when they hear Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie. How many times have I had to remind myself that it’s a gift when I am saddened over something that may not seem to affect others? It’s a gift because it’s the capacity to feel high, content, or madly in love, but the flip side is the capacity to feel hurt, anger, discouragement, or grief.

So now I grieve the senseless murder of my brother. I am saddened to see my dear friend going through grueling cancer treatment. I am concerned about my sister who had difficult surgery last week. I wish I were and I long to be in one of the joyful times. But for me, now is one of those times when the cup holds more sorrow than joy.

"The selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears." Gibran

Grilled chicken strawberry salad

I'm being gently chided (prodded?) for not posting for a week. Am I out of town? No. Am I depressed? No. I'm simply otherwise engaged. Certainly not otherwise engaged in the terms of "when the hogs ate Willy they was otherwise engaged"--that's an inside joke.

COOKING? Not much. I'm not cooking anything interesting because I'm in my first week back on the Weight Watchers wagon and trying to get my bearings.

PRAYING? Of course! I'm praying for my sister and praying to stay focused.

However, even though I'm not really cooking much, I'll share a great salad that I made twice this week. No measurements, just delicious in a guidelines sort of way.

Grilled chicken strawberry salad

Butterhead lettuce (I just like the tenderness of butterhead in this salad)
Handful of pea shoots
Grilled chicken breast (leftover chicken, grilled the night before)
Persian cucumber, sliced thin
Sliced strawberries
A few walnut halves
Trader Joe's cranberry walnut gorgonzola viniagrette

Fat prayer

Dear Lord—You know how I write you letters when I get really desperate? I’m really desperate. And the additional indignity of posting this on my blog for all the world to see brings the indignity to another level. (This is a huge leap of faith, this assumption that all the world is going to see what I write on my blog. I have a total of three readers and they are all in the United Arab Emirates. They are English 101 students and their interpretation of this will be something close to Yes, I'll have fries with that.)

I’m fat. I have to admit it and I have to realize that I haven’t been very effective correcting the situation on my own. I need you, Lord. I need you to keep me focused. I need you to give me the willpower not to eat what I shouldn’t eat. I need you to give me the energy to work out.

I can blame it on a thousand things—age, metabolism, bad genes, my hurt shoulder, emotional upheaval, my love of cooking. But placing blame doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. Please, Lord. I feel awful. I don’t understand what has happened but I’m trusting in your wisdom, your limitless power, and your patience to move me in the right direction.

Please, Lord. I promise you that I’ll try if you’ll just stay with me. Guide me to solutions, help me to find strength and focus. When I scream and yell in frustration, please be with me. In prayer, with you, it will happen.

Baguettes, Pete's, and beans

I just hate it when this happens. I’m innocently minding my own business when various forms of food jump out from behind the bushes and attack me.  You guessed it—I’ve found more things to love.

(1) Seeded baguettes from Leonora Bakery.

I was waiting in the dermatologist’s office, reading an article in Washingtonian magazine about local food sources. One of the things mentioned in the article was the baguettes at Arrowine. “How convenient,” I said to myself, “I’m only a few blocks from Arrowine.” So after the dermatologist burned some offensive items off of my body I consoled myself with a stop at Arrowine, a shop in Arlington on Lee Highway that features wine, cheese, and other gourmet foods. (http://www.arrowine.com/) I was just going to buy one of the infamous baguettes, but the man behind the counter told me there were even better baguettes and directed me to a basket of bread behind the counter—the Leonora baguettes. I humored him and bought one. How good could they be? Ummm . . .  it’s about a ten minute drive home and I ate almost an entire baguette in the car. I went back the next week to make sure they were that good. They are that good. The baguettes are delivered warm to Arrowine on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  You can get them delivered directly to your home for a minimum order. (www.leonorabakery.com/HOME.html)  So I can be a shut-in and still have baguettes? Dangerous.

(2) Pete’s Crazy Chicken Blend.

I found this on that trip to Arrowine too.  It’s a dry spice rub with an unlikely magic blend that includes things like wasabi and paprika and maple syrup. Go figure. I marinated chicken breasts in a simple mix of olive oil, lemon juice, and a very generous portion of Pete’s Crazy then grilled the chicken. Drop dead delicious. It comes from a spice vendor, the Spice and Tea Exchange, that sells online as well as from retail outlets. (www.spiceandtea.com) Just looking at the website makes my imagination run wild—like how can I use green chile sugar?

(3) Rancho Gordo Heirloom Beans.

You knew about heirloom tomatoes, of course, but did you know you could buy dried heirloom beans? I can’t even tell you how I ended up at the Rancho Gordo website.  I don’t know if was the work of the Lord or the work of Satan.  (http://www.ranchogordo.com/) Rancho Gordo makes beans fun again. (Maybe for you beans have always been fun but for a while I had lost the fervor.) There is a wide variety of beans as well as chiles and rice and spices. I got some Tiger’s Eye beans (Ojo de Tigre) and some flageolet beans to make cassoulet.  Tomorrow I’ll make the Tiger’s Eye beans into some sort of slow-cooked bean concoction but the cassoulet is on hold until cooler weather.

I was not compensated for any of these product endorsements. Doggonit.

Elsie G. Roe

Did you ever feel a connection with a stranger—someone you will never meet, someone long dead? I feel connected to Elsie G. Roe.

A few days ago I received a book I had ordered from one of those Amazon book resellers. The book is rather yellow and worn but I think it only cost me one cent over the shipping cost. It was written in 1969 by Clarence Jordan, a preacher, biblical scholar, and proponent of social and economic justice. This charming book (The Cotton Patch Version of Luke and Acts) is one of a series of Clarence Jordan’s versions of books of the New Testament, translated into a rural Southern vernacular.

Inside the front cover of the book is a bookplate—an etched drawing of an owl—and underneath is written, “from the books of Elsie G. Roe.” And tucked between the pages of the book I found two aging color photographs. One is a photo of three women standing in front of a large barn/garage structure. The second photo is of two women, a teenaged girl, and baby. One of the women is in both photos—I figure it must be Elsie Roe.

She is a stout woman with an ample bosom, a sweet smile, and over-sized glasses. In one of the photos she is wearing an unfortunate print turtleneck, a navy blue vest, and navy blue pants. The vest has five wooden buttons but Elsie has only buttoned a single button in the center and she has some papers stuffed in the front pocket. It was probably the 70s and I don’t think Elsie cared much about fashion. But there’s something about Elsie, something that compelled me to find out more about her.

Elsie Gertrude Roe died in 2003 at age 83 in Traverse City, Michigan. She was a graduate of a Bible college, a retired practical nurse, the widow of a Methodist minister, a mother, and grandmother. Her obituary says that “. . . she gave her heart to the Lord at a very early age and continued to live a Christian life.”

But here’s why I feel connected to Elsie Roe—this old used book of hers has phrases and passages underlined in red or highlighted in yellow. Reading the pages she read, knowing something about her, and seeing what she thought was important intrigues me. For example, from Acts 7:44:

“Now David got the idea of putting up a more plush sanctuary for the God of Jacob, but Solomon actually built it. But—THE ALMIGHTY DOES NOT LIVE IN MAN-MADE BUILDINGS.”

Or from Acts 10:23:

“All right, but as for me, God has made it plain as day to me that I’m never to think of any man as inferior or no good.”

I’m guessing Elsie Roe was a good woman.

His strength

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might." Ephesians 6:10

Funny thing how God seems to pound on my door sometimes, telling me exactly what I need to hear at exactly the right time. Yesterday I wrote about the things that give me strength. At church today the sermon made me focus on the source of strength, bringing me to acknowledge that any strength I may have comes from God.

Our pastor was giving us an introduction to the “Whole Armor of God” section of Ephesians. I’ve read this before, but never before was I so convicted.

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” Ephesians 6:13

Indeed I have witnessed firsthand the evil in this world. An evil man murdered my brother on April 3^rd. The thought that evil exists is no longer an abstraction, a theory to me—it is a hard reality. I have seen the “evil day” of which Paul writes. But I also know where to find the strength to withstand the evil. I know that without my faith in God I am simply not equipped to overcome this horrible knowledge. The strength is not mine but His.

Things carried

"Think about the things you carry,” he said to me a few days ago. So I’m thinking.

It was my counselor who challenged me with this assignment. He’s the pastoral counselor I’ve been seeing in the past few weeks since my brother was murdered. I’m just trying to sort out some things, to come to grips with my brother’s death, which for me was the latest and most horrific in a series of losses.

My most immediate thought was The Things They Carried, the gut-wrenching, beautifully written novel about the war in Vietnam by Tim O’Brien. In this book the author details the things that the infantrymen carried through the jungle—rifles and ammunition, communication equipment and mess kits, as well as letters from home and photographs. But these things that the troops carried are symbolic of their emotional burdens—fear, grief, love and longing, guilt, and an increasing alienation from their former lives back home.

Obviously the counselor is not asking me to think about the things I carry literally—not my purse and my calendar and my water bottle—but the things I carry figuratively. Some of the things I carry serve a purpose, they help me survive. I need a decent amount of fear to protect myself physically. I need a modicum of financial concern to keep a roof over my head, food in the pantry, and gasoline in my car. Just because I’m human I feel grief when I lose someone important to me. I love my children and grandchildren and don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop worrying about them or wanting to protect them—it’s just what mothers do. Yes, I feel remorse about things I have done and things I have failed to do, but I also realize that no amount of guilt will rewind time and let me relive the past. Yes, I sometimes fear the future. I fear facing future losses, I fear sickness and pain, I fear old age and loneliness. I fear anxiety, depression, and dependence. I wish I didn’t carry those fears but I don’t know how to put them aside.

Mostly I’m trying to focus on things like resilience, wonderful friends and family, creativity, and faith—these are the things I carry that make me strong.

Chocolate-covered bbq potato chips

Don't ever accuse me of being a serious food writer.

I had a brainstorm. I have a slight addiction to barbeque potato chips. I was in the grocery store noticing all things coated in chocolate—pretzels and nuts and celery sticks. I’m lying about the celery sticks. It made me wonder why no one made chocolate-covered potato chips, then I took the idea one step further to imagine chocolate-covered barbeque potato chips.

So I googled the term “chocolate-covered bbq potato chips” and found that, yes indeed others have had the same idea. There’s nothing new under the sun. There are recipes that detail the process for making a chip-specific chocolate sauce with instructions on how to dip the chips (with tongs!) in the sauce. Some claim that you should use rippled chips—probably a good idea because it seems you would need a hearty chip to stand up to the chocolate sauce.

If you don’t want to make your own, there are websites for gourmet food producers that sell chocolate-covered chips by the pound. (For example, see http://www.mantorvillefarms.com/ChocolatePotatoChips.html.) Some put the chips in fancy little boxes and some add a little squiggle of white chocolate. Why didn’t I think of the white chocolate squiggle? Someone is always a couple of steps ahead of me.

I suppose I could make a bittersweet chocolate ganache in which to dip the chips. Or I could order a couple of pounds online. Or I could try one of the recipes. Or maybe I could just buy a jar of good hot fudge sauce, heat it in the microwave, and serve with barbeque potato chips. Rippled, of course.

Chicken burgers

Question: Is a burger a burger if there is no beef involved? I don't know the answer to that question. But here's a variation on my infamous Greek Turkey Burgers. The turkey burgers have spinach and feta cheese in them. I wondered how it would work to use sun-dried tomatoes in a turkey burger. Then I ditched the ground turkey (because I just don't like turkey that much) in favor of ground chicken. This worked out pretty well. Next time I think I'll substitute Parmesan cheese or perhaps mozarella for the feta and do an Italian spice instead of Greek. Quick, easy, healthy. See what you think.

Chicken Burgers with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

1 pound ground white meat chicken
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes (in oil), chopped
1/3 cup feta cheese, diced
1 teaspoon Greek seasoning
1 tablespoon olive oil

In a bowl mix ground chicken, beaten egg, sun-dried tomatoes, feta, and Greek seasoning. Form into 4 or 5 patties.

Heat oil in non-stick skillet then saute burgers until brown, about 5 minutes per side.

Faith

Call me crazy, but I’m being re-baptized on Sunday. I tried to get excused from the public baptism ceremony by telling Pastor Mark that I was a precocious infant and I knew what I was doing when I was baptized the first time at two months of age. It didn’t work. I’m not comfortable being in the limelight but still I’m doing the full-tilt dunking thing in the presence of others. In addition to being videotaped (whine . . .) I need to make a brief profession of faith. So I’m trying to pull together my thoughts on faith—not just any faith, but my faith. Here’s what I’m thinking.

Until recently I thought of faith as an exercise in will—if I choose to believe and then act as if I believe and pray to believe, then I will believe. But in truth, that is a rather egocentric view of faith. If I believe scripture, then I was chosen by God to believe, rather than the other way around. In a sense I’m still hanging on to my will, my ego, when I say that my choosing to believe makes it so, for it was God’s will—not mine—that put the choosing on my heart.

I was a little Catholic girl and was baptized as an infant. I sort of always believed in God—more from a distance than in a personal way. Several years ago I was visiting my son in Seattle and we went his Acts 29 church there. The pastor was preaching from Ephesians. He said that we are not saved by good works, but by faith. What?!! Then why had I been so concerned about good works, why had I been doing all that rote prayer for so many years, thinking I was solely responsible for praying myself and everyone else into heaven? The pastor said that we should take that knowledge—that by grace we have been saved because Jesus has already atoned for our sins—and have fun, be joyful. It was a huge revelation to me. I had always felt that I would never be good enough to merit salvation. And then, right there in scripture, in God’s own words, I could see that I was off the hook. I realized that I needed to pay attention to scripture and understand what God was telling us directly, not to rely on someone else’s interpretation. I realized it was not my job to earn salvation, that I didn’t have to be perfect, that all I had to do was to believe in Him and act accordingly.

I chose to know God directly and personally. I chose the joyful route.