Beauty and Truth

Today, I am enjoying the comfort and truth pouring out from the other voices. As I watched the southern snow (again!) sprinkle on the trees this morning like powdered sugar on a doughnut, I thought about the presence of beauty in the midst of hard times.

I hope you enjoy today's readings at The Moonboat and Light for My Lamp.

Ride the Trolley - Again!

Several years ago our family traveled to Yosemite National Park. We flew into San Francisco and spent a couple of days there. I had been to San Francisco a number of times before I married. To my young eyes, the city seemed nearly magical, with its steep hills floating into bay and the fog moving across it like a live thing. Most of all, I loved the trolley. The charm and the eclectic oddity of this place in American life was captured in one ride down from downtown to the water's edge. The brightly painted exterior, the little bell that sounded at each stop, and the sea breeze blowing through the open windows combined to transport me to a place that wasn't quite home but felt like it should be.

Our visit twenty years later was a homecoming. The one thing I longed to do was to take my husband on the trolley to the sea. I wanted to share with him the joyful memory and make a new one. It was nearly the first thing we did when we arrived. We went to the spot where the trolley turns around on the street and waited. We hopped on. We rode slowly down the busy streets, with the bell tinkling and the bay peeking out of the horizon in front of us. When we landed, my husband bought a small replica of the trolley for our Christmas tree. Each year, I put it on the tree and smile.

The trolley runs smoothly on a track that has been planned and laid out for it. It doesn't have to find a way through the traffic each time it goes. It follows the lines of wires overhead and moves steadily and surely toward its objective. Every day it carries different people with differing agendas. It travels through different kinds of weather. But the track is always the same.

The busiest areas of the house should be set up so that they operate like the trolley. Actions should run along the lines that have been laid out and which lead, in the most economical way, to a destination. When you do an activity, the necessary materials and tools should be located within an arm's reach and easy to put away with one movement. This way, your repeated daily efforts can run down established lines with little fuss or extra effort.

The best way to start is to think about what you do most often in a busy area of the house. Gather every thing you need for that activity. Set it in a large laundry basket or box, or put it out on a surface in front of you. Now think: how can you arrange these things in this space so that you don't have to take steps to reach each one? Where can you set them so that they are right where you are working or playing? Store them so that they can be retrieved and put away with the fewest movements possible. One, at most two, movements is your goal for each object, each tool.

You may find that you have to remove some of the objects that aren't really needed in this part of the house -- that large canning pot you never use, the pile of cookbooks you look at once a year, the magazines nobody reads. You may need to purchase open containers to organize some of the tools and supplies. Do it. This is a worthy investment of time and money which will pay large dividends over the days ahead.

When I set up my kitchen this way, I can make a cake in less that five minutes. That's because I never have to step away. I set up a baking center right by the fridge. Everything I need to bake with is either in the fridge, in the drawer right in front of me, or in the cabinets above me and below me. Does it make a difference? You bet. When I cook in a kitchen that has not been planned in this way, the same cake takes 25 minutes.

This arrangement does more than save time. It means my kitchen space stays tidier. Some of the clean-up can happen while I am working, since each thing is put away right there. The rest takes a couple of minutes. Before I walk away, the mess and the clutter have been replaced by a clean counter top.

You can apply this same principle to any area of the house: garage, bedrooms, office, family room. Everything that is used often can be organized around the space where people sit or stand. Store things at the place where they are used, and neatness follows naturally.

Lay down some tracks. Ride the trolley through your traffic. It's the best way to go.

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This is my favorite post on organization. I'm re-posting it here because I am doing a lot of cleaning right now and I'm starting to organize our living space. It's time for spring cleaning! I usually begin this in early March and put out spring decorations, too. Although I normally dislike housework, this annual freshening in late winter never fails to give me a lift.

Do you like cleaning? Is there anything you do to prepare your house for spring? Or do you keep things just the same?

Souper Supper

Do you have a kinder, more adaptable friend in the food world than soup? Who soothes you when you are ill? Who refuses to leave you when you are impoverished and stretches its resources to give a hearty sustenance and cheer? Who warms you in the winter and cools you in the summer? Yet who also is capable of doing honor to your richest table and impressing your most demanding guests? Soup does its loyal best, no matter what undignified conditions are imposed upon it. You don't catch steak hanging around when you're poor and sick, do you?

- Judith Martin (Miss Manners)

It's been a little while since I've shared a recipe with you. This is my husband's favorite soup dinner. It's a soup that can be hearty enough for a meal, and he claims he'd be happy to eat it every night! I like to make this meal because it is so easy. It only takes me a few minutes to prepare.

Split Pea Soup

Basic Ingredients:

1 pound of dried split peas

4 bay leaves

1 teaspoon basil

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon whole rosemary, lightly crushed

1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic

1 teaspoon salt (added after cooking is finished)

Optional Additions: Choose any combination

1 c. Carrots (thin-sliced fresh or frozen of any style), add at the beginning

1 c. chopped fresh onion or 2 tablespoons of dried onion, add at the beginning

1 c. frozen or fresh cauliflower florets (microwave 5-7 minutes until done, add at the end)

1 c. frozen or fresh broccoli florets (microwave 5-7 minutes until done, add at the end)

1-2 c. frozen corn ( added at the end, no extra cooking needed)

2 c. Potatoes, cubed (microwaved 10 minutes,add at the end or use cold, leftover potatoes),

add at the end

2 c. cooked pasta of any type (or cold, leftover pasta from the fridge), add at the end

Directions:

If I start this recipe in the Crockpot between 10:00 AM and noon, then it's ready in time for supper.

Place the split peas in Crockpot and rinse with warm water. Pour off as much of the water as you can without losing the peas and refill the pot. Fill the pot 2/3 full.

Add all of the spices except the salt.

Cook the split peas 4-6 hours on high in the Crockpot.

Remove the four bay leaves with a slotted spoon. Use a whisk to blend the peas until the mixture is smooth. Place the lid back on the soup and prepare the additional recipe ingredients.

Add the additional ingredients once they are ready and place the lid back on the soup. Let the soup continue cooking for 15 minutes -- enough time for the flavors to blend, but not enough time for the vegetables and pasta to become mushy.

Add the salt. If it still tastes "flat", add another 1/2 teaspoon or sprinkle some salt on top of the soup in your bowl.

Serving suggestions:

This soup is delicious with a whole-grain bread or baked potato and a salad on the side. My husband likes to break the bread or baked potato into a large bowl and spoon the soup over it.

Favorite breads include: sourdough, whole grain, pumpernickel, rye, and French. Sometimes I serve grilled cheese sandwiches to my college sons with the soup.

We do not eat any meat in this soup. Combining it with corn or whole grain bread provides a complete protein. But for meat lovers, adding ham or bacon will add extra flavor and heartiness. The ham or bacon should be cooked before adding it at the end.

This meal makes a very comforting dinner on cold winter nights!

All recipes, copyright 2010 Cassandra Frear.

A Meaningful Life

As a mother at home, with little affirmation from other adults, I struggled at times with low self-esteem. I wondered if I was doing anything with my life that mattered. There were days when I felt like life had passed me by. I was in the shadows, in the background, nearly invisible.

It's easy to feel this way when we serve our children all day long. Everything we are doing is for them. At the end of the day, we may not be able to see that we have accomplished very much. Other adults can't see it. And children don't have the maturity to appreciate or understand the sacrifice we make to be home with them and teach them. This can be very hard on us.

We are accustomed to measuring ourselves by what we do. I don't think this is all bad. Certainly, what people do shows who they are, what their character is like, what their values are. But this can become a problem when we find ourselves in a position without measurable accomplishments. How do we know we are living a meaningful and worthy life?

At Light for My Lamp today, I've shared a quote about this: A Meaningful Life. Let me know what you think.

Free Weather Lessons

The Weather has been strange lately. Last Friday, there was snow in 49 states. Records are being broken all over the country. The Deep South and Mid-Atlantic have been getting record snowfall while British Columbia has to make snow or ship snow for the Winter Olympics. But you don't have to take my word for it. You can read this recent article from The Weather Channel.

For those of you in the east, yet another winter storm -- two of them actually -- is knocking at your door. You can follow this series of interactive maps to get an overview.

Why all the talk here about weather? We're living through the type of winter that occurs very rarely. Are your kids fascinated? They could be. Talking about the weather could turn these crazy winter woes into a fun science unit.

The National Weather Service has just created Jetstream, an online school for weather with nifty summaries to help teachers and educate all of us. The site includes interesting graphics and a variety of topics. Each topic on the left side bar has many subtopics which you can uncover by clicking on the words. I was impressed by their lessons. While you may not want to read the summaries aloud to young children, you can read them for yourself in a couple of minutes and then use the pictures to explain. There's enough at this website for a series of pithy lessons for weeks.

Web Weather for Kids another fun online resource to try, complete with games, stories, and activities. Here you can find out what makes a blizzard and make your own snowflakes. Plenty of graphics and clear explanations are here on topics that will intrigue any student.

Often, the best lessons in our school room happened when we took time to enjoy what was happening right outside our door and interact with it.

What events in your world right now could become lessons? Have you taught any lessons recently from current events?

After Your Crash: Restoring Balance

At Light for my Lamp, I've written a post about 5 Principles for Living Well while serving others.

When we hit the wall in mid-winter, it's often because we have lost the balance between caring for ourselves and caring for others. We've tipped the scales in towards doing more and drained our resources, all the while continuing to work less effectively. Of course, as we work less effectively, we get further behind. Usually our first response to this is to work even harder, which only drains us more. We drift into a downward spiral leading to burnout.

My five principles are hard-earned lessons from over 25 years of mothering, homeschooling, and ministry. I hope you'll stop by to read them and leave me a note with your thoughts.

Have a wonderful day.

After You've Hit the Wall

Here's a great little post from Don Miller's Blog on Following God and Farming. This should help you start your week well. I like what Don has to say here about partnering with God to tend the field we've been given. I like what he has to say about setting good limits.

Sometimes we moms feel like we need to do too much, be too much, and we burn ourselves out by trying to measure up to expectations that exceed our abilities. We can also become discouraged when we compare ourselves to someone else. It's a bad way to hit the wall in winter, crumpled up against life's hard realities with our own dreams of what we might be crushed up against us.

But the crash itself is a good place to start, believe it or not, to find the life we long for. Any ending can become a good beginning. The end of something is always where we have to start from to begin again.

I'm not saying we should aim low. I'm not saying we can't strive for excellence. On the contrary, I think striving for excellence is very satisfying and it honors God. But we need to understand and apply the principle of partnering with God to do our work. We need to begin to see our work as a collaboration, rather than a lone enterprise.

Our abilities, or the lack of them, should only be a guide to how to manage ourselves. They do not need to determine whether we should homeschool. They help us distinguish between the places where we will need to bring in additional resources and the things we can do best ourselves.

So today, read Don Miller's post, and think about how it applies to you. If you're looking for a good winter read, a light book that is refreshing and uplifting, I recommend his A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. You'll find my review of it on The Moonboat Cafe today.