"Fruit" Leather

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Want a fruit rollup?

Just foolin'. 

Unless you're willing to agree that the tomato is a fruit, that is--something my sweet husband would never admit--you're out of luck.

Citrus Jelly Babies (Pate de Fruit)

My lovely and generous neighbor Michele had a LOT of citrus on her trees this season, and she's not the only one.  Seems everywhere I went before Christmas, someone was graciously offering or eagerly taking lemons, oranges, tangerines or satsumas. I've been asking everybody who's taking or giving: "What do you do with it?"

I have heard precisely three replies:

• eat one a day (oranges),  
• make one pitcher of lemonade after another, and 
• freeze lemon juice as ice cubes. 

Honestly.

That's it.

Come on, now. In a part of the world celebrated for its food? With the internet and Pinterest in our very pockets? That's the best we can do? I don't think so.

When there's fresh fruit to be had and neighbors willing to donate it in the interest of (kitchen) science, I'm determined to try as many recipes as possible that don't end with "-ade."

So far: 

citrus handscrub

limoncello

arancello
citricello (and each in the "di crema" variety as well)

orange corriander liqueur

candied peels

orange vanilla bean jelly

lemon vanilla bean jelly

burgandy orange jelly

the first two jellies in a no-sugar-added variety

orange date walnut bread

lemon ricotta muffins

fruit leather

dried fruit sections for hot tea/snacking

...!

And these. They are made from an old Iraqi recipe I found online in the middle of one night and now cannot find to save me. (If you know where it is, please tell me, and I'll give credit!)

I made these before Christmas, sorry. We've been caught up in such a crazy time around here since then with so many more serious issues to think about that I never got around to posting it. Still, they're worth looking at even in January. Ponder the possibilities for snacks in non-Christmas shapes; it's what I'm doing. Hearts for Valentines (post soon!), Crowns for Mardi Gras, Shamrocks for St. Patty's Day.

Or just cubes for the average Thursday, like these:

These little sweeties are what the French call pate de fruit [PAHT duh fwee]. Think gumdrops, but all natural. Think your morning glass of orange juice molded into candy-aisle orange slices.

Think yum.

I think they might be vegan friendly, since they don't use commercial gelatin like most recipes do, but I'm not sure. It's just one whole piece of fruit, some sugar, and a little time (most of it without your attention), and the results were perfect for both the season's bounty and the season's gifting.

Time: about 10-minutes hands-on time, about 40 minutes total.

Ingredients:

one nice-sized orange (see below for other citrus to use)

3/4 cup sugar

maybe just a little powdered pectin, depending (see recipe)

Method:

(Don't faint...it's not hard at all!)

Boil the fruit whole in enough water to cover. I used a pot lid from a smaller pot to hold the fruit under the water, as you can see in the picture at right.

While the fruit is cooking, prepare your container. You can use a pan lined with parchment and slice the candy into cubes. Or, if you have them, spray with non-stick cooking spray and use a silicone mold like this "anyday" shape or the holiday-appropriate mold of your choice.

Dip the fruit out into a bowl and dump the water. You'll need the pot in a little while. Let the fruit cool enough so you can easily touch it.

Remove all the seeds. Really, every one. (You'll have little dots in your jellies if you don't.)

Decision time: how much do you like the slight bitterness of pith? If you like it a lot, dump the whole fruit and any juices that have run out into your blender. If, like me, you're fonder of biting into very sweet things that don't bite you back, remove and discard about half of the peel. THEN dump everything in the blender.

Add 3/4 cup sugar to the blender and liquefy the contents. If you discover you missed a seed, use a knife blade to remove it. (I don't know why this works at removing particles without taking too much fruit with it, but it does.) Some bigger bits of zest look pretty and work out just fine, but do puree the fruit. No lumps allowed!

Return this sugary slurry to the pot. If you've removed part of the peel, sprinkle 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of powdered pectin over the top, depending on how juicy your fruit turned out to be. (I used Ball low-sugar pectin.) Heat over medium to a low boil.

Watch and stir frequently (or end up scrubbing to get rid of stuck-on goop...not that I know that or anything) until it's nice and thick. You'll know it's done when you dip a wooden spoon in and it clings instead of drips. Tip: don't let it cook too long, or it will CLUMP instead of cling.

Spread into the prepared pan and use a spatula to smooth the top, or dip by spoonfuls into whatever mold you want to use. Set aside for 4 hours or longer to firm up.

Finally, sugar coat everything. Prepare a pan with superfine sugar or granulated sugar spread about 1/4 inch deep. Slice or unmold your jelly and place in the sugar. Roll to cover, leave to sit for a day or so. Roll them every time you pass by. The flavor improves and so does the texture, so a day or more of rest-and-roll is ideal.

Look how pretty!

Other citrus fruit variations I've tried:

--one of our very large local Meyer lemons 

--three limes

--three tangerines

--two of Michele's Satsumas for a lovely bright orange color

Added Flavoring ideas:

--half a vanilla bean to orange or lemon
--1/2 t grated ginger to orange, satsuma, or tangerine (perfect for my "gingerbread people" molds!)
--1/4 t ground nutmeg or cinnamon

(I think the vanilla is my favorite addition, but just plain orange is just plain delicious, too.)

Just A Drop in the Bucket

I've been looking out the window and eavesdropping in the ICU waiting room all week. Talk of bucket lists is actually frequent here, where life is suddenly (though no doubt only momentarily) valuable. "When this is over, I'm going to..." might be the second or third most often used phrase (right after "I can't believe..." and "We're just waiting...").

Bucket Lists are all the rage these days, and if you're short of ideas you can find them posted all over Pinterest and FaceBook.  100 places to go, 25 things to do before I die, 75 experiences I need to make me happy and complete.

It's a catchy idea, but it makes me vaguely uncomfortable. It sounds awfully cocky to me. Who am I to announce that I must have this experience or see that thing before I can die content with my life?

I have come to believe that there's such a thing as a divine lesson plan and that I'm the student. A teacher at heart, I know that SOMEbody needs to keep an over-arching view of what's gotta get learned...and that the "somebody" is NOT likely to be the student, not even the brightest one in the class.

I remember letting kids choose their stations as a young-and-hopeful new teacher, only to find out at the end of the unit that some kids had stayed too long at one of the "fun" stations and many had simply found a way to look busy while skipping the hard ones entirely. They all liked to play the games and paint, and would maybe condescend to writing me a sloppy rough draft if it wasn't too hard. But the difficult tasks? Nuh-uh, no thank you.

I've been trying that with my life (and sometimes I still do), have you? I've attempted to grab the plan book and fill up all the boxes with recesses and pleasant lessons so maybe there'd be no time in the period for too much of the rigorous work.

The view out the window from here

Making a bucket list would feel like more of the same.

Age and ouches have taught me this: it's best to leave the lesson planning to the Expert. I just don't believe I can out-god God any more.

While I trust that I can't outrun God either (meaning that however badly I choose, God will use the mess I make for my good and His glory), the several years' accumulation of teethmarks on my hindquarters have convinced me that setting myself up for independent study (while educational enough in the school-of-hard-knocks kind of way) has some serious drawbacks. Namely, I get myself off into the brambles where the Wild Things with the Very Sharp Teeth reside. Every single time.

Rather than staring out the window of the divine classroom, wishing I was out at recess or daydreaming about that cool classroom down the hall,  instead of wheedling that I can learn all the math I'll ever need by playing card games, I'm paying closer attention to the lessons already in progress.

At what I have been already been given.

Seeing the wrecks and the rainbows, both, as gifts.

It may sound nuts to you, but I truly believe that none of this craziness I call my life--NONE of it--is an accident. God doesn't deal in Plan Bs; whatever is happening was always on His lesson plan, and that's the only plan that matters.

Here's why: 

If I am in Christ (and I am), 

and Christ is in God (and He is), 

then any circumstance that gets to me 

has done so only by going through both of Them. 

Picture this: 

There's a book. 

In the book is an envelope.

In the envelope is a piece of paper. 

Can an arrow (or a fiery dart!)  hit the paper

without first getting through the book

and the envelope, both?

Nope.

That's it in a nutshell, but it would be hubris to apply out loud to anyone but myself, this platitudinous truth that God's got it handled and it'll all work for the good in the end.

"Count it all joy" is a lesson we cannot teach but only learn.

I don't say it blithely.  Don't think I've been living under a rock, that I've been sheltered. If I wrote it out for you, my life from early childhood on would sound like a bad made-for-TV movie script. Murder and shootout and stalking and abuse are on my life's word wall, mixed in with sweeter words like Jesus and blessing, and husband, children and joy in the later chapters.

When I say "It's All Good," I'm not spouting platitudes like the well-meaning hospital chaplain who stopped by this week, her religious-buzzword necklace so loosely strung together that if I didn't keep a weather eye on pop Christianity I might have wondered if she was quite entirely sane.

Myself, I know whereof I speak,  and the words, they have some substance.

And so the only bucket list I care about is the one God's got jotted down. I want to seize this day, this situation, these people. They are all--good, bad or ugly--God's gift, to me.

If I can't learn to consistently lean in, do the extra Book work, grab onto the Teacher, and count every  single lesson joy, it's not going to matter if I ever make it to Greece, or not.

Seize life! Eat bread with gusto,

Drink wine with a robust heart.

Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure!

Dress festively every morning.

Don’t skimp on colors and scarves.

Relish life with the spouse you love

Each and every day of your precarious life.

Each day is God’s gift. 

It’s all you get in exchange

For the hard work of staying alive.

Make the most of each one!

Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily!

This is your last and only chance at it,

For there’s neither work to do nor thoughts to think

In the company of the dead, where you’re most certainly headed.

Ecclesiastes 9: 7-10

The Message

Manna From Heaven

Okay, so it was really chicken, and it was from down the road, but I know Who it is that really sent it.

My sweet friend Stephanie--chief cheerleader and prayer warrior for so many and busy mom of four and ever-willing hands and feet of Jesus--popped in Tuesday with a 9" x 13" casserole of which I got not. one. bite. I never even saw any of it. You can see it here, though this photo is from the repeat, made for the whole family, made on the day I'm taking away from hospital duty to catch up a bit around here. (No surprise, it was deemed not quite as good when I made it. That little "je-ne-sais-quois" is understandably missing!)

C and I were, um, enjoying our hospital cafeteria delight in the next city over when the call came: were we going to eat at home, or not?

Turns out the 16-year-old was hoping to mop up the few tidbits he'd remembered to leave for us without having to feel guilty about it.

I hear it was delicious. For one 115-pound girl and one 150-pound boy to eat every THE WHOLE THING in one sitting, it must have been.

The animation is almost as short as the recipe!

Here's the recipe that I got over the phone the next day.  Steph's sister had pinned it and shared it with her. It's more directions than a recipe, but don't let that stop you. It will take you only slightly longer to make it than it will for you to watch the slide show.

Steph's One-Dish Chicken Casserole

1. Place bite-sized pieces of boneless, skinless chicken pieces in the middle of a 9" x 13" casserole. I used six thighs, but Steph used breasts. You choose.
2. Open a can of green beans and pour on one side of the chicken. 
3. Slice a few sliced red potatoes and put them on the other side. I used six potatoes.
4. Sprinkle a packet of dry Italian Seasoning mix evenly over everything.
5. Drizzle a 1/2 stick of butter over all. (I didn't take time to melt the butter, so I dotted the top with slices. It seemed to work.)
6. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. 

I highly suggest Steph's seventh step: share it with someone.

We've had a tough few years, a difficult few days, but so many folks have texted, called, Face-Booked and otherwise reached out to us that how can we do anything but rest in the evidences of God's care for us? We are hurting but not frantic. God is in control, and he is faithful to fulfill His promises toward us.

And I look at it this way:

What is a timely chicken casserole 

but Psalms 68:6 

served up in a Pyrex dish?

THIS is why food is ministry. It is more than calories that showed up at my door. (The kids were getting plenty of those in paper wrappers.) The food? It's just the messenger.

Steph? This is for you:

"Every time I think of you--and I think of you often!--I thank God for your life of free and open access to God given by Jesus. 
There's no end to what has happened in you--

it's beyond speech, beyond knowledge. 

The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your life!"

1 Corinthians 1:4-6, The Message

Wide Enough Margins

I'm not in the kitchen lately, despite about 50 pounds of citrus that really, really need my attention.

I'm doing math instead.

'Pythagorean Theorum"
 by Michael Paukner
 Used by permission

This kind of math: where the sum of the area of the squares on the legs equals something considerably more complex and meaningful than the area of the square on the hypotenuse; it's less homework and more art.

Our foreseeable days--if we are lucky--will be camped in a special ICU waiting room, waiting to see whether my brother-in-law will live or die, whether this clear-blue-sky encounter with some something that has stopped his heart will be it and all there is.

We're in that room closest to the big automatic doors, out of the general population, quiet and private. Just in case.

It makes me remember what I've been meaning to write: this is why life needs wide margins.

The story goes that a contemporary of Descartes named Pierre de Fermat, the founder of modern number theory, once found a staggering solution to something or other to do with the Pythagorean theorum. It being the 17th century, he scribbled:

"Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet."

[I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition that] this margin is too narrow to contain."

What a waste: to have something worth writing down, but no room left over for the words. (It was another 300 years before anybody with both enough brains and paper managed.)  What in history might have been altered if only the VERY IMPORTANT WORDS of the book in which he was writing hadn't been jammed right up against the blooming edges of the page? Was it all sooo important that no room could be left for one possibility more? I doubt it.

Not in so many words, but that's what our last 36 hours have been about. One way or another, we're coming to terms with (or fighting against) this: 

There isn't enough margin in our lives.

Assumptions, tangled remembrances and strangleholds of bitterness, are all scribbled fine and tight, right up to the edge, and even the whitespace in between the lines is colored in with obligations, excuses, even lies. 

But let tragedy start dropping saltwater on the ink and the letters as they fade all seem to spell just this one word, endlessly repeated: regret.

Not able to go back and do better this time, I look forward, making mental notes and promises. 

I want to

• remember there are variables--angles and numbers I do not know--before I think I've got someone all tallied up and figured out.
• allow generous margins to see people,  make time to spend time with them, and reach beyond what I think I know into what is really there. 
• leave more time in my schedule to do that good at every opportunity thing. "Some other time" must never apply to people. 
• add some neutral ground around my feelings so that no matter what the nugget in the middle is, there's plenty of room for grace to grow it into something different, something more. 
• reach beyond what I think is true and ask some tough questions as I'm led to (even if it makes everybody uncomfortable), because frankly, now I know there are worse things than the worm-in-hot-ashes interview, like the never-getting-to-know.
• add whitespace around what I think I know about the people I think I know, about their value and their motives, about their pain. I want room to discover. I don't want to keep knowing only what I already think I know. 
• leave the widest margins of all, bigger opportunities, for those I deeply love. There's no such thing as too many memories, too much time.

It's after midnight, and if we get tomorrow, it is to be a bellweather day, a day on which all the others we're told will turn, and though the need to think by touch on a keyboard was strong, so is knowing this:

There's no such thing as too many minutes spent cuddled up in the dark against my husband, 

thanking God for his warmth and beating heart.

Goodnight.

(Go hug somebody you can't imagine missing from your life.
Make the grapefruits and oranges wait.)

Bonne Année

Have you heard about the "Good Riddance" ceremony for New Year's? Apparently folks reflect on the passing year and write down events that they're glad are over and done with, then they symbolically shred (or sledgehammer!) the list.

I can imagine what's scribbled on those slips of paper, can't you? The hurts, inconveniences, and  difficulties that are just naturally part of life. That bad decision, this unfortunate choice, that uncomfortable happenstance.

The emotions attached to the little ceremony are probably about equal measures of bitterness and ruefulness, regret and bravado. It's half warning and half plea to "bad luck:" stay in the old year and leave the new year (and me!) alone. I'm sure it's cathartic.

I won't be writing anything on paper to shred. Not this year. It would feel wasteful, like throwing away a really meaty ham bone instead of making stock from it. I don't want to squander the chance to make something deeply nourishing from the bones of this year, of the last few. There's sustenance in there, I just know it.

It's not that I don't have regrets that I could list out in detail, so many things I wish I hadn't done or wish I had. Certainly there are circumstances I'd be glad to see the back side of, too. Sitting here enjoying the last few moments of this year's Christmas tree glow, though, mostly I find I'm just grateful.

We didn't have yearlong rainbows and roses. In fact, it may have been our hardest year yet.

First let me assure you: I'll understand if you think mine sound like "first world" problems. My husband is gainfully employed and is well-respected in his field, and I have the privilege of being the anchor at home. I economize at (nearly) every opportunity not because I'm worried there won't be enough money for the rent but just because I want to respect the effort required to earn the money by spending it thoughtfully. Our kids are healthy and we're not doing too bad ourselves. We just had a memorable visit to France (right in the middle of this ragged year), in fact, en famille. We have wonderful friends and a great church family. No matter what comes flying over the horizon to splatter itself on our windshield, we do have a windshield. Trust me, we know it.

Still, 2012 was just...different. There were the usual number of bugs (and a smallish bird or two) spattered on the windshield, but there was more, too. Something sharper, wounding deeper.

July 1993
Jamaica

July 2012
Champs Elysees

For much of the year, it wasn't us against the world. It was us--worn out and hurting--against each other.

And it was rough.

Call it engine trouble, us trying to power our life together with our own "good flesh," contrary to what we KNOW: God alone.

It might help to first know the backstory, that we've had a run of us-against-the-world years, starting about the time of Chet's dramatic diabetes diagnosis, which steamrolled into his mom's death, his adult son's estrangement and a too-long stint at a well-paying but unbelievably grueling job. Stirred in and mixed well was the menacing re-appearance a couple of years ago of the unbalanced would-be suitor who dogged my grad school years, a particularly heart-rending episode of my tormented sibling's lifelong struggles, a discouraging hormone replacement struggle, and the frustrating "diagnosis of exclusion" process that typifies fibromyalgia. And, of course, there's the issue of two strong-willed teens and two strong-willed parents in one house.

Among other ingredients, of course. Those were just what I consider big things, not the daily grinds. The off-grid weeks brought by four hurricanes, the two major surgeries and one minor, the root canals, the totaled truck? They don't even make the top 30. Since Thanksgiving 2007, we've had five years of one big thing after another.

All together, though, it's made for quite a batter, one that's battered us all.

Us against the world, until it just...wasn't. Not quite what we had in mind on December 31, 2012.

But God is faithful, and while I don't doubt the Enemy is still hoping for some uglier outcome, so far, it's so good. There have been so many sweet blessings squeezed out of what could have been a pretty sour year.

Maybe the best way--the only way--to start the new year off right is by giving God the glory for lessons of the old.

I remember better when I write, so consider this list some of my homework, not preaching. Just me, pondering and praising:

1. I'm thankful for the truth  "In Christ Alone," especially the Alison Krauss version of it. I'm a slow learner, and having a new heartsong helps. I hum it. I sing it. I mean every morning when I open my eyes to live it. My husband, my kids, my accomplishments are not--cannot be--my security. To place on any person that responsibility is to doom the person to failure and myself to disappointment. Daring to ground my significance in my "skills?" Just plain hubris. Getting my heart straight--a work-in-process for sure--is my biggest challenge.
2. I'm grateful for this man who keeps being okay with being married to the kid in the dunce cap, keeps reaching out to me, keeps trying. While we work pretty well together as a parenting and home-making team, we'd let the relationship part drift off.  I am sooo grateful he hasn't just given in to the "easy thing," and I'm positively giddy when I  see actual joy peeping around the corner! There are still rough days (yesterday, me losing sight of #1!), but every time I see his blue eyes flash affection, I'm hopeful, not to mention thrilled.
3. I'm beholden to the friends who opened their hearts and histories to us in encouragement. For too long, we both bought and sold the lie that we were doing fine despite the bugged-up windscreen, despite feeling like we were smooshed across the cosmic plane ourselves. Early last year, when we hit a point where the we first had to recognize and admit it to others that it was a facade that we simply couldn't maintain any more, nearly everyone we shared with reached for us, enfolded us, set to work wiping the Enemy's lie out of our eyes.  (He does so want us to believe that our marriage is a sham, that there was very little left worth saving, that the grass is so much greener over there!) When we cried "uncle," asking for help, pleading for prayers--praise God!--we got BOTH, and more, immediately and by the bucketful and from many directions. Coming clean first to ourselves and then to that handful of intimates was tough, but I think it might have been essential. Going from someone telling us not so long ago, "I wish we had the kind of relationship you two do" to admitting we were struggling mightily? Brutal. The potential for improving intimacy and blossoming authenticity between us and others too? Priceless.
4. I'm thankful for the slow-dawning realization that pain is not to be resisted but leaned into. Past years taught me that I have to do more than tolerate trouble. This year taught me that there's a big difference between accepting difficulty and receiving it. Here's what I think that difference is: Cutting away the neatly sliced parts from around the bone and throwing the bone and all the meat left attached to it in the trash? Tolerating. Putting the hambone in the freezer, recognizing some good might come from it at some point? Saying with a sigh, "I'm sure God's gonna do something with all that, someday." That's accepting.   But. Knowing there's sustenance to be found and going after it--chopping vegetables, crushing herbs, boiling the whole thing for hours and then keeping the heat up to reduce out the extra liquid to concentrate the strength and then--and here's the lesson that's changed everything for me--actually unclenching enough to offer thanks for the chopping and the boiling right in the middle of the owie bits? THAT is receiving. (Why do I want to receive instead of tolerate or accept?) I still clench, but I'm trying to remember peel those fingers back so I'm holding out an open, receiving palm.
5. Most important, I'm grateful and humbled God pursues us, together and separately. We are privileged to get private tutorials with the One-and-Only on the topic of that very one-and-onlyness. Not punished, not banished. Instructed. Because He loves us. The hard years and these difficult times aren't because He's mad at us, but because He actually delights in us (wild, huh?) and because He wants us to live at our best. There's only one Source of Life and--newsflash!--His name's not Chet! Unless we live this out in our marriage, we're two ticks with no dog, each scrabbling for the best tooth-hold on the other, but both still going to bed hungry.

So I'm not looking to say good riddance to last year's lessons. They were too juicy. While I can't say I'm exactly looking forward to the lessons slated for our divine lesson plan for this year, I am grateful that they are purposed, and I trust God they'll have plenty of meat. I believe every one of them is for God's glory and my good, no exceptions. (Read Hebrews 4:12)

(Too bad many of the spots are likely labeled "reteach," most of them with my name. 

Don't you hate being the slowest student in the class? I do.)

As we head into 2013, I still believe we have all the promise and potential we had back on Day 2, when I snapped this image of my bouquet the morning after our wedding. Maybe, after all this, we have even more. I hope so.

I don't know the precise lessons the new year will bring, I think I already know God's will, His main objective for it all.

Surprised? Think it sounds pretty brazen? I'll share:

“Give thanks in all circumstances, 

for this is God’s will for you…” 

(Thessalonians 5:18)

 Bonne année et bonne santé, everybody.

Food is the Messenger

A kitchen message is what I call the meals or treats I share with other families.  The gift of a dinner in disposable containers is a tangible, edible message from my kitchen and our home, saying "Hang in there," or "We love you," or "Praying for you," or "We're here for you."

Death. Birth. Surgery. Crazy season of life. Heartbreak of any sort. They're all excuses to take food to someone I love to ease their day (and maybe, sometimes, their budget).

I will never forget Mrs. Patty--the mother of a good friend--who showed up the afternoon after my mother-in-law's, death during that "suspended animation" that comes between the death and the funeral. (It was all I could do to deal with the phone, the clothes, and the crazy south-Louisiana snowstorm. Food wasn't even on my radar.)

In her hands was a battered stock pot full of homemade gumbo and a rice cooker full of hot rice. With a hug and a murmured promise to check in on us soon, she was gone in a flash. It was a simple meal, but it was Chet's kind of  comfort food growing up, and it was perfect.

Gumbo's not a quick dish to prepare, and so I  knew that almost as soon as she heard, Mrs. Patty had started sauteeing the "trinity" (onion, bell pepper, celery) and boiling that chicken, no doubt praying for us all the while. Three years on, my heart still swells with the warmth of the gesture. And my husband, who had previously been rather baffled as to why I went to "so much trouble" to take food to people when they could just grab something from McDonald's, suddenly understood that the food is just the messenger.

The folks I take food to aren't always personal friends I know well. I'm on the meals ministry of our pretty large church  (500 people attending two services), so that means sometimes I'm knocking on a strange door, handing food off to someone I may have only seen in passing (if at all). In those cases, I always hope to make a new friend, but even if I never see them again, I pray that they'll feel Jesus' love for them in the meal, that they'll know that His hands reached out to them in a stressful time, through me.

I feel privileged to be His hands, and if I could leave the meals anonymously to emphasize to the recipients just Who it is reaching out to them, I would. (But you know, it isn't wise to eat food left on your doorstep.)

If you're feeling called to send kitchen messages of your own, maybe some of what I've learned will help you on your way.

Meals as Ministry
Six (or seven) questions to ask before taking a meal
Tried and True
Special Needs
Making it special
Lagniappe
Free printables

Shareable Meals

Some meals are easier to whip up and tote across town than others. Long before I volunteered to help facilitate our church Meals Ministry, I was on the lookout for enjoyable but easy ways to bless others with food.  

Portability is a must, and affordability helps a lot. Variety is big too, though. After receiving the fifth lasagna or third roast, even the most grateful recipient will be happy for something to break up the monotony!

These are my go-to dishes because they're

• easily doubled (for large families or to feed my crew with enough to share)
• travel well 
• are unusual enough for adults but suitably familiar for families with finicky children
• taste luxurious but are also
• reasonably priced, especially if you watch for sales on the meat

Ham Pasta in Bechemel Sauce A kind of dressy mac-n-cheese, it's comfort food for both grown-ups and kids. Add a handful of frozen spinach or green peas for an all-in-one dish. Serve with: a green salad and maybe some cooked apples (or purchased applesauce).

Chicken-Bacon Alfredo A creamy, smoky bacon and grilled chicken dish that does need a little marinating, but why not marinate a double batch this week? Serve one to your family, then freeze the other half to share at a moment's notice when you need it. Serve with: green beans, edamame or a green salad and some crispy bread. Some cookies or a really ugly fudge cake would be nice, too.

Busy Day Strata  For a family in need of a little comfort food, this savory bread pudding is good not only as the main offering but also as a little "something extra" tucked in the bag for breakfast or lunch the next day.                                                                                          
Serve with: to turn this stand-alone breakfast into supper, add a green salad or a cup of soup.

.

For more on blessing others with the gift of food, visit
Meals as Ministry
Kitchen Messages
Food is the Messenger

Meals as Ministry

There's a reason so many of Jesus' miracles involve food. Food seems to minister in a way that a card or a bouquet of flowers just can't.


You don't have to belong to a meals ministry to bless somebody.  Though I've been ministered to by our church meals team several times for the usual reasons (death in the family, surgery, illness), I've also been blessed by individual friends, "just because." Once, when I was up to my neck with prepping the youth charity bazaar, a friend showed up with her crafting supplies to a work session...carrying a simple supper for my crew. I had to compose myself before we could craft!

You don't have to get all fancy. A casserole, a tray of sandwich fixin's, a pitcher of soup is wonderful. Gourmet food is fine if that's all you have, but simple comfort food is almost always best. (How a friend's 9 x 13 casserole blessed me during our recent crisis.) Remember this: your purpose is to bless, not to impress.

The need doesn't have to be large for the blessing to be huge. Look around. I'm guessing there's someone you know who could use a pick-me-up, whether you realize it or not. It doesn't need to be an all-out catastrophe before you take somebody food. I've felt led to bring a meal to someone for no obvious reason, and have found out later that it was God's perfect timing for one reason or the other.  (Once recently He even inspired the precise dish! My friend and I both had goosebumps when she told me that had been pining to herself for French Dip for two days before I called to say I was bringing some! Wow!)

Like the Nike ad says: just do it!

1. To organize meals with a group, find a website to help, ensuring variety and complete schedule coverage. TakeThemAMeal.com is our go-to organizing website, set up by the team before I volunteered to help . We can share the link to the meals ministry team, the church at large, or friends of the recipient easily. It's free (though our church donates to them yearly). You just create the listing, then send the link (and password) via e-mail. Bonus: give the link to the family receiving the food so they'll know what to expect, too.                              

2. Put yourself in their shoes. You're sick/sad/otherwise hurting or harried. Someone shows up at your door, ostensibly to "bless" you. Imagine how uplifting it is to open to door to…                          

· enough to feed your crew without a lot of extra work. An all-in-one casserole or entree, something green (grocery-store salad?), maybe even dessert. If you're really lucky, she also has a few muffins for breakfast or a quart of soup for lunch tomorrow, too. A card or flower plucked from the yard would be just so much gravy, but it's not missed if it's not there, either.

· a cheerful giver. It's so sweet to see a smiling, unrushed person bearing food! She doesn't make you feel like you're a burden even if she's late to soccer practice! Her demeanor assures you it's her pleasure to serve you as she asks a question or two about your well-being without demanding too many specifics, sincerely offers to do any small chore, then promises prayers and to check back with you on her way out the door. She leaves quickly, leaving you feeling very, very loved on. In fact, you feel ministered to. 

Mission accomplished.

For more on blessing others with the gift of food, visit
Shareable Meals
Kitchen Messages
Food is the Messenger