I Just Had to Share This Recipe...

...it's so good!

I made a new dish for Thanksgiving this year: Spiced Cranberry Applesauce. It was so easy, turned out great, and the only downside is that now there's none left!

Ingredients (this makes a LOT...just to warn you. It served 20+ hungry people on Thursday, with some left over for Friday grazing):

2 50-oz jars of unsweetened applesauce
2 12-oz bags of cranberries (I used fresh, but I don't see why frozen wouldn't work)
2 15-oz cans of mandarin orange segments
2 20-oz cans of pineapple tidbits (Who knew they made "tidbit" size?...larger than crushed, but smaller than segments)
Approximately 30 oz orange juice (I used about half of a 59 oz container)
1 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cloves

A word on the sugar and spices...I guesstimated the amounts and adjusted to taste. I suggest you start out with less and let the applesauce cook for a while, then add more sugar and spices as needed.

Instructions:
Combine everything in a really big crockpot, turn on low, and let cook for hours and hours until you simply can't stand it and HAVE to have a bowl. And then you have another, and another...

Note: I let the applesauce get really hot and bubbly, then I smashed the cranberries against the side of the crockpot with a spoon. I have no idea if this was necessary or not, but I liked the resulting texture.

Enjoy!

The Food Post

Gluten-free pancakes, loaded with flaxseed, dates, blueberries, shredded coconut, and almonds (I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something) with cinnamon agave apple topping.

Wheat-free bread cubes for Thanksgiving stuffing...

...Made from this loaf of bread that I baked all by myself...

...and then cut into slices...

...some of which I dipped into this soup, made with sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, rosemary, cinnamon, onions, and other savory spices. 

Rosemary from my rosemary plant, which has survived the deer thus far. Do deer eat rosemary? If I was a deer I would :)

Hungry?

A Word on Procrastination

I'm having a very productive day. Sweet russet potato soup is simmering on the stove, the warm aroma of rosemary and nutmeg wafting through the kitchen; a fresh loaf of wheat-free bread is rising on the countertop; and I'm sitting at the table sipping an agave-sweetened berry medley yogurt smoothie watching the antics of our two resident parakeets, Zoomer and Ziggy. Ah...life is good. And...I'm procrastinating...again...

I collapse on the table in a heap of despair. Alas! Duty calls...I still have schoolwork to do, despite the Siren call of a myriad of sundry tasks that I'd much rather be doing. I close off the little voice inside my head that is telling me that I need to bake a cake. I turn my back to the window so the sunshine outside doesn't steal my attention. I ignore the seven emails that I suddenly "need" to respond to.

And I'm finishing this post so I no longer have any reason to not focus on the assignments at hand: a 10-page paper for Ethics, and an evaluation tool for a research project grant application.

Life can be so cruel.

A Word of Encouragement

Every once in a while, I have "one of those days." You know, one of those ho-hum, difficult to stay focused, "I don't have any energy," and I don't really care days. Sometimes it's due to the weather, or perhaps a lack of sleep, or maybe it's purely idiopathic, but nevertheless a hindrance to productivity. In my case, today's apathy is related to a string of migraines this past week that have sapped my body of all energy and left me sitting at my desk reading Old's Maternal-Newborn Nursing and Women's Health with semi-glazed eyes and a lack of motivation to study for Monday's exam (covering 500+ Powerpoint slides, mind you).

So to everyone, myself included, who is having "one of those days," take cheer, for there is hope!

Hebrews 4:14-16 (NIV)

Jesus the Great High Priest

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,

Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 

15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, 

but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 

16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, 

so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

We, sinful man, if we have been redeemed from our sins and call Jesus our Lord, have a strong and perfect plea before God's throne. We are covered by the blood of the Lamb and can come before the very throne of the God of all and cry out for mercy and grace.

Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV)

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 

29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, 

and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Isaiah 43:1-3

Israel’s Only Savior

1 But now, this is what the LORD says— 

he who created you, Jacob, 

he who formed you, Israel: 

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; 

I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 

2 When you pass through the waters, 

I will be with you; 

and when you pass through the rivers, 

they will not sweep over you. 

When you walk through the fire, 

you will not be burned; 

the flames will not set you ablaze. 

3 For I am the LORD your God, 

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."

I feel so inspired by these verses, and yet so humbled at the same time. Can this be true? I have no cause for fear? Flames cannot burn me and I cannot be drowned by the waves crashing over my head? And the God who has saved me, and continues to pluck me from the dangers that befall me, KNOWS MY NAME.

And finally, we don't have to walk through this life alone. In addition to the very real relationship we have with Christ, we also have brothers and sisters in the Lord who are walking on this journey as well. I received an email from a dear friend today that was so encouraging, and I was reminded of what a special bond we share with each other in Christ.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

9 Two are better than one, 

because they have a good return for their labor: 

10 If either of them falls down, 

one can help the other up. 

But pity anyone who falls 

and has no one to help them up. 

11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. 

But how can one keep warm alone? 

12 Though one may be overpowered, 

two can defend themselves. 

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

So be encouraged in the Word, and let your inspiration come from the knowledge that you are a child of God! And also know that it's okay to have bad days, to make mistakes, and mess up. We are human. It's when our sin ceases to prick our conscience and we neglect to seek repentance that it becomes a problem. 

Parking tickets and Snickers bars

This week has been disastrous as far as parking is concerned. I got to my car today to find a $55 ticket on my windshield. I guess it’s better than finding that my car was towed again and getting a ticket on top of that. But still, really? I’ve been parking in the exact same parking spot for the past 10 weeks, and granted, the sign does say “no parking,” but the street is always filled with cars. Always!

This semester in general has been a transportation nightmare. The bus to the hospital has been 45 minutes late…twice, which is inexcusable in my opinion, especially when it’s 40 degrees outside and raining and it’s 6 in the morning and by the time the bus comes I’m late for clinical and then I have to explain everything to my instructor and sound like a completely incompetent nursing student; there’s been traffic on the highway to and from school for the past couple of months; I got pulled over by a policeman two weeks ago for driving on the berm to cut off traffic; and my car has cost me almost $200 in the past three days, not including my $50 fuel-up yesterday. Is this a sign that I should get a motorcycle? I think so. Small, compact, fuel and energy-efficient, and I can park it ANYWHERE. It’s brilliant. And our family has one, so I just need my license :)

On a completely different subject, I really need to cut back on my sugar intake. Throughout today I had 2 mini Snickers bars, 2 mini bags of M&Ms, and a half of a sugar donut pastry thing that was sitting in the kitchen at work. I was hungry!!! That’s the problem, I pack super-healthy portion-controlled meals but it’s never quite enough. Especially when you’re 2 hours into an Ethics lecture and simply can’t focus any more and you ate your lentils and cucumber salad right at the beginning of class.  I start the day out great, but by midafternoon, I am craving sugar! So I find something succulent and sweet to munch on, and my cravings are temporarily stayed. But then before too long, I’m not only craving more sugar, but I’m starting to feel hungry too. And no matter how much sugar I ingest, it doesn’t take away that deeper hunger, the longing for something more substantial. And even though the last thing I’m craving at the moment is a chicken salad, that’s exactly the type of thing I need. Fresh greens and protein. Because I know that if I keep eating the sugar, I’m going to crash within the next hour or so, and I’ll feel terrible. Like right now, my stomach is swollen from eating wheat and caramelly chocolaty goodness, and even though I ate a delicious Cobb salad for dinner after class (and realized after the first bite that what my body was really craving was nutrition) it doesn’t eliminate the sugary corn syrupy nastiness that my body is trying very hard to digest. 

That reminds me of life though. Our spirits need nourishment, healthy and uplifting food to keep us strong and boost our spiritual immune system so we don’t succumb to the sicknesses in the world. So the Lord builds cravings into our spiritual system so that we would desire to be filled by His Spirit and look to His Word for food. Yet all too often we feel the rumblings of spiritual emptiness and turn immediately to our own resources: television, exercise, worldly pleasures, and often find a sort of fulfillment and comfort. Some may spend the rest of their lives in this pattern of fulfilling their desires by the flesh, while others, who perhaps have tasted Real Food at one point or another, can never quite satisfy themselves in this manner. Unlike when I’m at school and I’ve run out of healthy food to eat, the Lord’s food is never unavailable. His cup is overflowing with goodness, and He has a table of grace spread out before His throne. His banquet never spoils, and the more time you spend at His table, the more you desire His food and His food alone. It’s an incredible picture of His goodness to us. Perhaps you’ve spent so much time eating the French fries and burgers of the world that you’ve lost your appetite for spinach and pastured chicken. That’s a place where I’ve found myself in the Lord; where I know I’m not eating right but in all honestly, am not craving the Word, or prayer. That’s when it’s of the utmost importance to immerse myself in Him, and allow Him to teach me how to love Him again. It’s a constant battle. Think about it. How many times do you eat each day? What happens when you don’t eat? How long can you go without eating? What happens to your body when you eat too much of the wrong kind of food? It’s no different with the Lord. That’s why food is such a perfect analogy for our relationship to the Word of God. We need to be fed multiple times each day. We cannot expect to have a healthy prayer life, spiritual life, or even life life if we are not starting each day, living each day, and ending each day in Him. I’m not there yet, but I’ve begun the process in my own life, which is half of the battle. The other half is continuing to move ever onward, “further up and further in!” and “upward and inward!” (C.S. Lewis The Last Battle). And what a glorious adventure it is. 

Distracted...

...thanks to my blog, I now have another excuse to NOT be studying right now. I have a Pediatrics exam on Monday, and just reading through my notes a couple of times isn't going to cut it. I was downstairs keeping an eye on the kids while my mom was on the elliptical, and trying to study at the same time, but then they started to make balloon animals, and the pervasive "squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak  squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak" of balloon twisting, tying, and head bopping was a little more than I could handle at the moment. Although I'm usually pretty good at multitasking, my mind just isn't settling down today. Maybe it's the weather? An unusually mild day compared to the miserably cold and wet Pittsburgh weather we've had the past week. Maybe the four cupcakes I ate for dinner last night? That's more wheat than I've eaten in months. Dinner! Oh! I forgot, I still have lentils sitting in my car from last night. And I should really clear out my car while it's still light out. Aaaaaand, I got distracted again. That's it, I'm disabling my laptop WiFi, settling down, and going to finish making my study guide.

Why I Now Find Myself Blogging, Part II

As I sat outside of the hospital waiting for my mom to pick me up, I was thinking about my book. What book? Oh, the one that I’m going to write some day. It’s not written yet, but I’ve been thinking about it! Hopefully I’m not the only one who’s looked back on her life and thought “You know, I should really write a book.” And then as I sat there, tried to do homework, got distracted, studied some more, and got distracted again, it occurred to me that until I write my book, I can blog in the meantime. I’m still catching up on 21st century technology (and since I never plan on having a Facebook-don’t bother looking me up, I’m not there-I will probably never catch up 100%) so this was a monumental breakthrough. My motivation for writing a book is to share lessons that I’ve learned from life so far and to show people that it’s okay to NOT be normal in the typical sense of the word. But I can accomplish the same things with a blog in the meantime. So if you’re looking for juicy tidbits of gossip or a Twitter-esque update on every single detail of my life, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. But if you are curious about my life as the oldest of seven kids, my experiences trying to make sense of my world, and my many many failures along the way, welcome to this adventure called life!

The title of my blog comes from a quote by Dale Carnegie: “When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” And my goal is to keep making lemonade until the day I die :) An observation that I’ve made in watching other people’s lives, and, in fact, my own, is that we as a people don’t like it when things don’t go our way. Shocking, I know, that things just don’t turn out the way you’d planned. I don't believe in fate, chance, or luck; I believe that a Sovereign Lord is ordaining each step of my path, and nothing happens that He hasn't allowed. But even though I wake up in the morning and pray that God’s will be done in my life, I still fight Him when he does exactly what I asked for. Go figure. It’s a constant reminder of my utter humanness, where I want to claim that I have faith while still remaining in control. So when God hands me a lemon, which I personally interpret as something sour and undesirable in its current state (my youngest sister, on the other hand, likes to eat lemons as is, and would say "Thanks!" if she were handed a lemon), it's because He wants me to do something with it, learn something from it, or just accept the fact that He is God and I am not. 

It's a lifelong lesson, and the lemons grow with the passing of time, but if you're on the right path, your faith will be even greater to meet the challenge. 

So thanks for reading and have a blessed day!

Why I Now Find Myself Blogging, Part I

4:00 Alarm goes off and I tumble out of bed and hit snooze

4:05 Alarm goes off and I tumble out of bed and hit snooze...again

4:10 Alarm goes off and I tumble out of bed and turn my alarm off.

By 4:45 I'm dressed for clinical and ready to leave. I finish my last bite of rice noodles and tuna and grab my backpack and the 58-quart Sterilite bin that holds baking supplies for later in the day.

5:23 About to park in my normal spot, I suddenly remember that today is street cleaning day, and my car will get towed if I leave it on the street. Ugh. I drive to the other end of campus and park in a 4-hour metered spot. I'll have my sister drop some quarters in the meter when it starts running at 8.

5:40 I catch a bus to the hospital, and drink half a bottle of 5 Hour Energy. I'm going to need it today.

6:00 I make it to the hospital 45 minutes early, which is perfect since I still have part of my clinical project to finish before I get on the floor.

10:50 My sister Lindsey calls. "Hey, Kels...I don't know how to tell you this...but...your car just got towed." Okay, this is a bit unexpected.
"Okay, um, why?"
"You were parked in a construction zone, they had orange cones set up I guess."
"Uh, not at 5:30 they didn't. There were like 20 other cars parked there. I took the last spot."
"Okay, well I don't know what happened, but the policeman gave me the number to call, and I'm running really late for my anatomy class..."
"Alright, don't worry about it, it will be fine, just text me the number and I'll call them and work it out."

I'm late passing my meds, my patient received a soap suds enema a half hour ago and needs to be moved back to her bed, and I think I'll just put the whole "Your car just got towed" information on the back burner until I can deal with it over my lunch break.

12:10 pm It's gonna cost me $135 to get my car out of the impound, and it will take me an hour and a half to even get to the place. Still having a good attitude, but I'm concerned about the rest of the day. I have a part time job as a research assistant and am supposed to be at a 3:30 meeting about a grant proposal...if I don't get out of clinical until 2:30 or 3, then have to bus downtown and take a T, I'll never make it to the impound and back in time. And on top of that, all my baking supplies are in my car, and I need those for tonight as well.

2:22 pm My superwoman mom comes to the rescue and picks me up from the hospital and takes me to the impound, saving me an hour. I rescue my car, happy to find out that I didn't get a ticket, mildly irritated that my car got towed in the first place.

2:45 pm I drive back to school, out of $135 but I have my car back, and amazingly make it to work on time. (Thank you Lord!)

11:00 pm The rest of my day was incident free, apart from random globs of icing on my shirt. I am part of a campus organization that sponsors schools for girls in developing countries. We are having a cupcake fundraiser tomorrow and Sunday and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening baking trays and trays of tie dye cupcakes, making posters, and icing cupcake after cupcake. Mindless productivity is extremely therapeutic :)