Velveteen Me--To Desire Him More

Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. --The Velveteen Rabbit

The second in a series

After the first three weeks of exercise and prayer, I recognized that more habit-changing had to happen. I was no where close to the peaceful healing I so wanted and my family needed. I decided to stop blogging for the month of June. More about that in the next post.

In addition to the blogging break, I undertook the Saint Diet. I knew I wanted to fast--I wanted my body and my soul to be oriented towards dependence upon God. I considered other fasts, but this fast made the most sense to me. I wanted to overcome my tendency towards gluttony and to be reliant upon the tangible help of the Spirit to do it, but I wanted to work with my body chemistry, not against it. My body reacts very badly to sugar and to wheat. A fast that eliminates other foods, but allows wheat and sugar would have conspired to make overcoming my gluttony more difficult and it would have been detrimental to my physical well-being. Furthermore, I have learned that essential fatty acids are, well, essential, for me, particularly when battling depression. I paid careful attention to increasing fatty fish, beneficial oils, and EFA supplementation. The Saint Diet offers ample opportunity to whisper imploringly to the Spirit, "Please God, help me to desire you more than I desire this food." Jen does such a good job connecting the physical and spiritual dimensions in her posts, that little more needs to be said here.

After the first week or so of the "s" focus, I read this piece. And that finally resonated in a way no other look at fasting --and everyday eating--ever had. Again, I had to tweak a bit to reflect a healthy diet for me. But I have pretty much adopted this monkish meal plan.

My family does not eat this way. One of the other things I did during my detox time was to make well-considered meal plans and detailed grocery lists. I've always done this, but this time I did it with a distinct sense of detachment. I still believe in the beautiful expression of love and community that comes around the dining room table. And I still believe in healthy, well-prepared food. My personal perspective has changed a bit though, in a way I can't articulate very well.

This was about the time I added an intentional reduction in telephone use. I have long had a tradition of little or no telephone use when my husband is home. In searching my heart to see how things had gotten so out of control, I could see that my telephone and computer use had gone up exponentially when he stopped working from home and took a job downtown, right around the time Karoline was born. So, in order to train myself to be sensitive to computer and telephone use once again, I endeavored to refrain from both when my children were present and awake. It's crazy how much peace that practice brings! Truth be told, I have never been idle while on the phone. I use a headset and fold laundry, clean the kitchen, cook meals, but there's always a bit of chaos around me as I do.

And then there is another thing: my children are older now. Adult conversations don't sail over their heads. They hear them. They understand them as well as one can understand when he only hears one side. They shouldn't. It's not their world. Nor should I carry on a conversation with someone else while they are in the room. It's just rude. There are rare exceptions, of course. But they are exceptions. It's amazing how much this has affected the quality of the conversations I do have. When I wait until I can fully focus on talking instead of being distracted and interrupted by my children and couching my speech so as to protect them and the listener, I have better conversations. I can share more deeply. I can reach my "real." What's more important is that I can reach the "real" of the person to whom I am talking.

So, the second three weeks was more of the same exercise and prayer, with the addition of sharply curtailed internet use, very little telephone, and the Saint Diet. About a week into this phase, it was Memorial Day weekend. Three soccer tournaments, three different towns, all far away. I drove and drove and drove. I schlepped my poor baby around in 90 degree heat and DC humidity. I got to know every corner of rural Maryland.I didn't even think about the computer or the phone. When I got home at night, the only things I read were soccer-related emails. And I felt utterly detached from the bloggy world. That was the good part.

The bad part was that I was so unbelievably, incredibly, overwhelmingly tired that I seriously wondered when I would fall over. Around Thursday of the week following Memorial Day, I crashed again. And I despaired. All this work! All these habits! Hours and hours of prayer. And all that driving time? I had spent that listening to spiritually uplifting and challenging podcasts. Still, here I was a sobbing, exhausted heap.

What in the world was the problem with my program?

The whole series:

Velveteen Me

Velveteen Me~To Desire Him More

Velveteen Me~My Heart in My Home

Velveteen Me~The Years the Locusts Ate

Velveteen Me~New Beginning

Mmmm...smells good!

There's a pork roast cooking here.

Snow Day Reading and Eating

Some of you wrote to ask about the picture in this post. You want details? Here they are:

::Computer is fully charged and always plugged in. We rarely lose power here since the lines are all buried, but I like to know I'm fully charged should it happen. Same with my cell phone. Last night was Mike's first night home. My cell phone started the "low battery" beeping about 2 AM.  I recognized that I never would have let that happen if he were gone. I'm always on alert when he's gone. When he's home, I figure he's fully charged and in charge:-)

::Half and half is gone now. We used it for snow ice cream and chai tea. I didn't restock it for Blizzard '10. But I did buy seven gallons of whole milk. Works for tea, for ice cream, for bottomless cups of hot chocolate. I am a hot chocolate snob--made from scratch with milk, cocoa, and sugar every time. This little gadget makes it frothy, too (HT: Kimberlee).

::The small tin is Daddy Van's Beeswax polish. Bored children get the polish and a rag. Kitchen cabinets, furniture, banisters--there's no end to the polishing that can be done while the snow falls and the wind howls.

::Here's the current basket of snow books. We've pretty much memorized them now.

Snow

Snowsong Whistling

The Snowy Day (Karoline's current favorite)

Owl Moon

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (beautiful, effortless poetry memorization)

My Brother Loved Snowflakes

Snowflake Bentley

The Rag Coat (this one makes us so grateful for warmth)

Jan Brett's Snowy Treasury

::Children's Advil (Actually the medicine stockpile is a more extensive than this--my little girls are still struggling)

::And, finally the popcorn and marshmallows. This is standard snow food, but my littlest children probably don't know the whole meaning behind the tradition. When Michael was little, there was snow predicted one day. I made a big deal, stocked the snow books, talked it up in a big, big way. He was so looking forward to snowballs. No snow. So, I popped popcorn and made popcorn "snowballs." Saved the day. Now when snow is forecasted, I stockpile the ingredients for popcorn balls. That way, we have big, round, white balls no matter what.

 

Melt two sticks of butter in a very big pot.

 

While the butter is melting, pop 1 cup of popcorn. I do this in two batches.

Dump a bag of marshmallows into the melted butter.

  Stir until melted.

 

Pour the popcorn into the melted marshmallows and stir well.

 

Generously grease your hands with butter. As soon as the marshmallow-coated popcorn is just barely cool enough to handle, form into balls.

Even if you don't have snow, read the books and make the popcorn balls. Childhood should be sweet.

Super Stuffed Potatoes

6 large baking potatoes

one pound of bacon, fried crisp and crumbled

one stick of butter cut into chunks, plus more for rubbing

1 cup of cottage cheese, whirled in the blender to smoothness

2 cups grated sharp cheddar

up to 1 cup of milk

6 or so stalks of broccoli

seasoned salt to taste

Wash the potatoes well and then cut a small, shallow  slit all the way around the long way. This is where you will halve the potatoes after you cook them. This is a Laurel trick, though no doubt, Laurel would be horrified by the bacon addition;-)

Rub the potatoes generously with butter.

Bake the potatoes at 400 degrees for about an hour, until they are very soft inside and the skins are crisp.

While the potatoes are baking, peel the broccoli stems and then steam the whole stalks until they are very tender.

Turn the oven down to 350.

Carefully cut the potatoes in half and scoop the insides into a big bowl. Leave enough potato in the skin so that the skins don't fall apart.

Mash the broccoli (I pulse it in the food processor). Add the broccoli, the cottage cheese, the seasoned salt, the butter, the bacon, and a cup of the grated cheddar to the big bowl of potatoes and mix well, adding milk until the filling is smoothe.

Fill the potato skins with mixture and top with the rest of the cheese. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes.

You can make these even less healthy by using sour cream instead of cottage cheese and leaving out the broccoli. You can make them healthier, by using up to a half cup of milk instead of butter and leaving out the bacon. Or you can throw it all in there and persuade yourself that you are getting the best of all worlds.

Visit Faith and Family Live! for more Super Bowl Snack ideas.

Good Excuse for Cake

By six or so this evening, it was becoming clear that the contractors weren't going to appear. To this fact, I add this update to my "numbers"

Number of flat tires today: 2

Number of additional inches added to the forecast: 18

Number of minutes my neighbor reports waiting to check out at the supermarket (a task which still awaits me, because I spent the day sitting here waiting for the contractor and I didn't want to miss him): 60

I was seriously craving chocolate. And seriously feeling sorry for my gluten-free self because I couldn't do what Ann said to do when it's a hard day. So this cake recipe definitely caught my eye.

Kim made hers with coconut flour, which really intrigues me, but I haven't any and there's that grocery line. It's fast becoming a what-the-heck kind of week, so, I figured I had absolutely nothing to lose and pulled the following substitutions from the pantry:

3/4 cup rice flour & 3/4 cup hazelnut flour instead of wheat flour

1 teaspoon expresso powder in 1 cup of water instead of coffee

1/2 cup  butter for the shortening

We made the recipe as written because I didn't have enough cocoa to double it and we baked it 38 minutes.

And I'm happy to report that we didn't have any disasters during cake making. This is how we kept 'em busy. Note: I do not need butter from the store; the co-op delivered yesterday.

The cake was just what this day needed:-). I really liked the hazelnutty flavor.  And that makes twice this week I've baked a chocolate cake. Hmmm.