Would you like burnt toast with that?

March 27, 2017August 25, 2022 / Apple Hill Cottage / 8 Comments

I’m cooking this week for a crowd of high school kids at the Foley Center, the headquarters for the Christian Appalachian Project, in Martin, Kentucky. Really I’m just serving and taking directions from the real cooks who are running the kitchen, and that’s just fine with me. I’m not ready to be in charge of making breakfasts, lunch, and dinner for 60 people, whether they be preschoolers, high-schoolers, or out-of-schoolers.

Yesterday I cooked the pasta; this morning I baked the biscuits, helped with the making of egg casseroles (cracked and beat 9 dozen eggs), and baked a poke cake using ingredients I wouldn’t be caught dead having in my own kitchen. But hey, I’m probably going to try some of it because a little bit of something bad once in awhile isn’t going to kill me.

Okay, so, I try to eat healthy: Buy organic, grow a lot of our own food, and scrutinize ingredients on food boxes at the grocery store. But I’m not a purist. In fact, as I’m writing this post I have a handful of gummy worms by the computer; they were sitting out on the counter in a giant bag, free for anyone. And they taste fun. But this is not going to be a food rant post.

Last night we were baking the garlic toast and getting last minute instructions on how to serve the food. The first batch of twenty-eight pieces of bread got a little, er, dark while we were talking. We had set the timer, but the convection oven cooked them faster than expected. We put them on the bottom of the server, piled the perfectly cooked pieces on top, and hoped we wouldn’t get down to those bottom well done pieces of bread.

But we did. The lady who was slopping food on plates with me jokingly began asking all the kids if they wanted the burnt toast. Of course, no one took any. So I started giving them a choice between dark or light. Suddenly we got some takers. When we called them regular or crunchy, we got more takers.

Now this was not a scientific experiment, but just a lovely lesson on how important words are.

eat your words

Because those burnt words might taste bad going down… but they taste worse when someone throws them back at you.

Ordinary Days : a letter to my future self

November 26, 2016November 20, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

light behind the storm clouds
Dear You,
Remember that rainy September day?
The cloud-filled sky and the freedom
from the sun’s tyranny?
No need to finish up summer today.

You gave yourself permission
to bake bread and make
a long slow simmering stew,
pore over knitting patterns
and write a poem to the future you.

You wanted to write in longhand
(not that there’s anything wrong with Pages or Word
or an online thesaurus)
but a letter deserves a pen.
There was that old found notebook and
There was your old found self in the pages.

Gardens you have planted — elsewhere.
Prayers that have been answered — somewhere.
Wisps of words you loved — written there.
Lists of books to read that now,
here in the present future,
were read in the long ago past.

And there was that quote from Chesterton
about the best book he never wrote…
You’ve written yours.
Begun in one life, finished in another.
It changed and grew with you
as you changed and grew.
Mais plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Blue sky behind gray clouds
Have you been grateful for your two lives—
three or four, really if it comes to that—
Have you been grateful for the sameness of those lives—
the sky, the stars, the seasons, the circles, the cycles?
for that sameness enables us to see
the unpredictable unexpecteds
the extraordinary exquisiteness
the glorious graces
of those ordinary days
that make unordinary lives.

Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.
–G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

125. 2,015 Little Blessings

January 3, 2015April 1, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 4 Comments

My word for 2015 is content.

I struggle with contentment,

though I shouldn’t.

I have everything I need.

except I need a better car, a new blender, new sliding glass doors for the bedroom…

More than enough.

yes, I sure don’t need more junk; we don’t have room for what we have.

My cup runneth over.

yet still I yearn.

Not only for things

but for emotional peace

Not only for me

but for the people I love

Not only for this life —

I yearn for God.

In order to stop all this yearning, I’m keeping track of my blessings again this year. He has given me. So much.

2,015 blessings for 2015 = 167.9 blessings per month = 5.5 blessings per day = the practice of contentment for what I have been given.

January

A beautiful sunrise on the first day of 2015.
The ability to look at the sunrise from my bed, thank God for its beauty, and close my eyes again.
The one day of the year when we can lounge in bed with coffee and biscotti and not feel guilty.
First fire in the stove in the mudroom.
A delicious dinner of pork Bo-ssam lettuce wraps.
Starting and ending the first day of the new year in prayer.
Easy cookies to make from a jar — a Christmas present from my sister.
Time to work on my blog.
Time to get needed work accomplished.
Leftovers so I don’t have to cook.
Making arrangements to volunteer at a new place in a new year.
A thank you card from our sponsored child in Rancho Los Amigos. He’s handsome and growing up.
The money to spend on a sponsored child.
A warmish day, with dots of blue sky and No Snow!
A beautiful aura around a large, bright moon.

This is the beginning of my blessings project for 2015. I’m only publicizing it for encouragement. Your encouragement. I’ve been blessed (?) with a personality that is more pessimistic than optimistic, tending toward depression rather than enthusiasm — especially in the winter. This is my way of change — to express joy and contentment for the little everyday blessings.

I do want to encourage you to do your own “resolutions” or changes for God’s glory, not your own. Are you trying to lose weight? Do it for his glory, not yours. Are you trying to organize your life? Do it for his glory, not yours. Are you trying to work on your marriage? Improve your prayer life? Exercise more? Do it all for his glory, not yours, and …

…before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.” –Philippians 4:6-7 The Message.