Today over at Busted Halo you will find me talking about which part of liberation theology has stuck with me throughout the years. Please no one alert Gustavo Gutierrez. I’d be so embarrassed if he knew I was taking his life’s passion and work and whittling it down to my desire to eat better and not yell at my kids.
Cookbook Review: The Food You Crave
The Food You Crave from Ellie Krieger is a cookbook I’ve had for years. It was on sale at Half-Priced Books so I snagged it. I had no idea that it would become such a staple in our life. I cook at least two recipes out of it every week. This is especially a good January cookbook when we’re all trying to get on the healthy eating train.
Up until I bought this cookbook, I thought most recipes from cookbooks needed a lot of tweaking. I had used lots of Rachael Ray’s cookbooks and if I followed her recipes to the t, they usually came out bad. Not so for this book. Krieger does an amazing job constructing very solid recipes. Follow it exactly and usually it will turn out fantastic. Even the worst recipes are not bad, just bland, but I have only run across a few of those (lasanga rollups and stuffed peppers).
Even though our kids have food allergies, we’ve been able to make substitutions in her recipes without a whole lot of work. However, I haven’t tried many of the breakfasts or desserts because I just go to the Allergy Mama for that.
Where this book really shines is the sauces and the salads. I ate salad before I got this cookbook, but it was always the same buffet-type salad with iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes and sesame seeds. The salads in this book are amazing. The dressings, perfect. Because of this book, in the summer we eat salads as our entree most days because I don’t have to turn on the stove or oven and they are so darn tasty. Even the girls will chow down.
Also, what I appreciated about this book was the little tips she gave. For example: Did you know that when you drain and rinse canned beans it removes more than 40% of the sodium? You can do that for anything canned.
My favorites from this book:
- Lemon Chicken and Orzo Soup (subbed out the eggs for cornstarch)
- Cornmeal-Crusted Roasted Rataouille Tart (I have no idea how to make this dairy and egg-free, nor would I try, it is the most delicious thing I’ve ever made. No joke.)
- Crab Salad on Crisp Wonton Cups
- Grilled Thai Beef Salad (the girls eat this like it’s pizza)
- Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing (we cheat and use a little more bacon. Good winter salad.)
- All Day Breakfast Salad (Mine and B’s fav, better in the summer with good tomatoes)
- Salmon Cakes with Ginger-Sesame Sauce (I could drink this sauce – her lemon-mint tzatziki is pretty good, too)
- Fish Tacos (really it’s the Chipotle Cream that makes them so good)
- Her Honey Mustard recipe
After I had this book for a while, I went back to Half-Priced books and bought them outof copies. I’ve been giving them out as wedding gifts because I love this cookbook that much.
So click on these links and try out her food. Oh, and we’d be happy to come over and help you taste it 🙂
Authentic Moment #3: Lebron and “The” Shot
I have never seen such an unabashedly excited reaction.
Our Story: How We Met
In Oct 2013 we celebrated our five year anniversary. As we were driving back from Dallas this past Saturday from a work training, we spent most of the car ride trying to remember some of the details of our dating life. They are so fuzzy. We couldn’t even agree on when we had our first kiss. Goodness, we’ve only been married five years and we already can’t remember so many things that I hope to remember when we’re eighty. With that in mind, I decided I better get some of this down on paper because God knows what we will remember at our ten year anniversary. This is the story of how we met:
It was the summer of 2004. For the three years before that me and two of my best friends from high school had gone on a summer mission trip to a little Catholic school — St. Peter Indian Mission School
. Our home parish would load up some vans full of our youth group and drive us over to Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. There we would put on Vacation Bible School for K-8. But in 2004, our church decided to add a high school retreat for the high schoolers that lived on the reservation we served. Me and C and S were the only ones in college so they asked us to put it together and see if we could get some college guys to come along. My friend, S, who went to UT (Austin), called up Kraft and asked him if he knew of any guys in the Catholic fraternity that might be interested. Two guys signed up immediately but instead of put effort into looking for anyone else Kraft thought, hmm, free trip to AZ, why not? and he signed up, too.
Fast forward to the day before we left for St. Peter’s. Kraft and his two friends drove in to S’s house and me and C went to go meet them. Kraft tells me at the time they had no idea they were going to see anyone except S. They were not expecting to meet any new girls yet; they just thought they were going to crash at S’s house until the morning when they had to leave. We could totally tell. When C and I walked into S’s kitchen, the looks on the guys’ faces was so classic deer in the headlights. Later Kraft told me he was so embarrassed. He said that if he knew he was going to meet some girls he would have not worn what he was wearing. But we quickly all hit it off and were cracking up over some Subway sandwiches.
We all got along so so well. I remember just laughing and laughing that whole week. I didn’t feel any feelings of romance toward Brandon but I liked him right away. I loved how much he loved his faith and he was funny. Oh yeah, and I thought he was such an endearingly dorky guy. All three of the guys would sit around and argue about liturgical things.
The retreat we ran that week went great but it was exhausting. All the kids stayed with us overnight all week so we never got a break and they never, ever slept. For the whole week.
Of course the kids being high schoolers, they were very interested in our love lives and decided to take it upon themselves to play matchmaker. They paired up my other two friends with the other two guys and then they paired up Brandon and I. At this point, I still didn’t have feelings for Kraft in that way but (he told me later) he was so excited that they paired us up. The kids spent the rest of the week pretending that we were married to each other.
At some point during the week I realized that Kraft liked me. He would just always find a reason to be around me (not that any of us could get very far from one another), but he would always end up sitting next to me at lunch or during Mass or on a bus ride. I didn’t like him like that but I also wasn’t weirded out by it. I was so comfortable around him and could say anything to him. It was nice to make such a good friend so quickly.
By the end of the week, other than being exhausted, the six of us all really loved each other — not in the romanti
c sense but a true sense of camaraderie, of being family. We flew back to Houston and I’m pretty sure that Brandon made a deal with the person who was sitting next to me to move it so he could sit next to me. We talked and laughed the whole trip home and right as the plane started its descent, he finally worked up the courage to ask me….
for my AOL instant messenger screename and email address. Omigoodness, he was/is such a dork! He couldn’t even ask for my number but it was so so cute. To this day I want to make and sell shirts that say: “Hey baby, what’s your email? Let’s IM sometime.”
From My Point of Pew: 01.19.14
Readings for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
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From Fr. Jim’s homily – he started by emphasizing how important it is to realize God’s gift to us in our very existence. We must recognize the dignity that each person has and the dignity that we have just by being human. To never ignore someone or pretend they don’t exist. That’s why he says hi to everyone he comes across as he walks down the aisles at the grocery store. Because it’s the only thing he can do, recognize that they exist and are standing right next to him. And through Baptism we are transformed from ordinary people to people of God. People that have a calling and a mission. Part of everyone’s mission is to recognize the dignity of each person. But imagine if every Christian in the world understood his/her individual vocation and then actually lived it.
Remember to join in the conversation and leave your point of pew in the comment section.
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What is “From My Point of Pew”? Read here.
Gift Ideas: Duck Books
Yes, yes, it must seem odd to be in the market for children’s books specifically about ducks but so is my life. Teresa and ducks are a match made in heaven. If, upon her first sighting of a rubber duck, she was able to walk (or even stand) and they had seen each other from across a grassy field, it would have been one of those running-in-slow-motion-until-in-each-others-embrace kinds of meetings. In fact, her first words were duck duck. So it is, I have become a bit of an expert in children’s duck books. Mostly board books, but some longer picture books. Not to keep you on the edge of your seat any longer, here are my favorites in no particular order:
