How do you make stuffed green peppers? Are stuffed peppers one of those dishes that people either hate or love? Like liver?
I haven’t decided.
But we had a green pepper bonanza this year down on the Davis farm—after two years of barely squeaking out a crop of three or four peppers. Period. I kid you not. Out of our usual six plants. Something was wrong.
So we doubled our planting—tried 12 plants of two different varieties, (shame on me for not writing the types down), and asked the two greenhouses we bought them from what they would do to get a better yield. BOTH of them, conservative Mennonite women (which is irrelevant but interesting, and they likely wouldn’t lie) recommended using Epsom salt diluted at the rate of one tablespoon per gallon of water, applied to the plants about three times in monthly intervals during the early growing season. Said our garden likely lacked lime. So we tried it.
Best. Yield. Ever. And I wouldn’t lie. My husband has taken a pepper almost every day in his lunch for the last 3-4 months. We love them raw and ate them almost every night for dinner. We’ve given scores away. There are probably 50-75 tiny ones out there right now that will not develop because of frost.
I don’t really can or freeze them (except for a bag or two of chopped pepper to use in a few dishes) but my really dirty secret is this: I’m not a big fan of dishes such as stuffed green peppers. I cannot lie.
But I needed a dish for our church’s homecoming last weekend and I know that many people are big fans so I did some research and found this recipe.
There was a huge line for our homecoming potluck and by the time I went through the line, the 12 peppers were all gone except for a few dribbles in the pan. I didn’t cry.
Here is how I adapted a recipe from AllRecipes.com for a large dish to serve 12:
12 peppers
Salt to taste
2 lb. ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
Salt and pepper to taste
Garlic clove or garlic powder, to your taste
1 quart or 15 oz. can of tomatoes
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 cup rice
1 cup water
2 cups cheddar cheese
1 can tomato soup
Prepare green peppers by slicing off top, removing insides and seeds. If bottoms are uneven, slice them just enough that green pepper shells will sit up in pan, a neat trick I learned over here.
Bring salted water to boil; cook peppers for 5 minutes. Lightly sprinkle salt inside each pepper; set aside in 13 by 9 inch greased baking dish.
Sauté beef, onion, chopped garlic or powder. Drain fat. Add salt and pepper.
Stir in tomatoes, uncooked rice, water, and Worcestershire sauce.
Cover and simmer until rice is tender, about 30 minutes. Remove from hear. Stir in part of cheese, reserving some to sprinkle on top of stuffed peppers.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Stuff each pepper, using ice cream scoop or spoon. Place in baking dish. In separate bowl, combine tomato soup with about ½ can of water and stir until “soup” is gravy consistency. Pour over peppers, making sure some gets down into each pepper. It is okay to have excess spill over to bottom of baking dish. Cover tops with remaining cheese.
Bake 25-35 minutes until cheese is bubbly and browned.
Note: this recipe made too much rice/ground beef/onion/cheese/tomato stuffing; you will have more or less leftover depending on the size of peppers you use. Or reduce the amount of ground beef used. I sent a bonus one quart sized-casserole dish of leftover stuffing home with my daughter. They didn’t cry.
Bonus dish – about 1 quart sized dish of extra stuffing.
P.S. I had planned to eat a stuffed pepper, but didn’t get to. I loved the insides, but am less a fan of the baked pepper shells. Another daughter recommended I try a taco type filling next time. We’ll see!
***
Do you have a favorite stuffed green pepper recipe? I’d love to hear about it. Here’s a challenge: post a recipe (or link) so good I’ll just have to try it. I’ll do a new blog post if you send me one you think I’ll like! I still have peppers to use up.
Give it your best shot. Convince me. Can you teach an old dog (me) a new like?
Or, respond to this:
What is a new dish you have made in the last year?
I also learned new dishes as a result of the cookbook/inspirational I wrote with food editors Jodi Nisly Hertzler and Carmen Wyse a couple years ago, Whatever Happened to Dinner? Check it out here.
When you get to my age, there is something richly introspective about a church’s homecoming commemoration that makes one think about life, death, God and the future.
And deeply emotional. When I saw one woman begin to dab at her eyes before the service had barely begun, I panicked, thinking, oh my, this is going to be a two or three tissue service and did I even have one in my purse?
Trinity’s anniversary gift to itself: the brand new Presbyterian hymnal,
Glory to God graced every chair in the sanctuary.
Not to worry. Tissue in hand, I opted not to sing the emotion-filled verses of “Thank you, for giving me the morning” and “Be Not Afraid,” during the opening singalong, picked as representative of music loved during the eras of our three different pastors. Why didn’t I sing outloud? I did not want to fill up my tissue before the service had even begun.
Trinity’s three pastors: Dan Grandstaff, Ann Held, Don Allen. They served all 50 years, different eras. Note their first names use only four letters of the alphabet.
At one point I spied Becca and George and Ginger on the other side of the congregation and it was like a time warp to have these former members back in “their” chairs. (No pews or benches for our congregation which has always valued the flexibility of a “sanctuary” where the night before, it was turned into a square dance hall.)
Hoeing down with a pulled together blue grass band and professional caller. (Happy to see my work colleague Beth Nealon and her husband Dave far right adding their chords.)
It is an open-beamed room where yoga devotees love the parquet floor, with full-length windows on each side, and a garden filling the view to the north. Where currently, contra-dancing lines up most Monday nights. Where at-risk kids are trained in bugle blowing and drumming, in hopes they might have something other than the street and drugs to hang on to as they go through adolescence.) But I digress.
It is all of this tradition and more that most of us connected to Trinity Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg, Va., call this old house “home” for myriad reasons: some children of the church recall it as a stopping off place walking home from the local elementary school; a kitchen where my family frequently downed pizza when Dad mowed the lawn on Friday nights; a place where I, and two of my daughters (and many many others) have dressed for our weddings;
where all three of our daughters were baptized and later confirmed.
Top, our daughter Tanya and pastor Dan. Middle, daughter Michelle and interim pastor Tempe Earl Fussel. Bottom, Doreen as our babe in arms, with sisters Michelle and Tanya, probably Doreen’s first Easter.
And now my oldest daughter’s baby kicks (at eight months along) as we absorb the nearly two hour homecoming service filled with music and folks sharing memories and highlights of 50 years of serving God in this community–and far beyond. To close, there is a spontaneous conga-type train threading through the crowded room to the glorious strains of “Lord of the Dance.”
My husband and I have been part of Trinity since our early dating days the summer of 1975. We chose this church as neutral turf for a born and bred Lutheran (him) and Mennonite (me). One of my college roommates attended Trinity as a student and I knew others from Eastern Mennonite University who did: Evie Krieder (who was also one of my friends way back in high school), Reta Halterman Finger, a professor there. My husband-to-be also knew a family from the church, the Churchmans (yes, really), who were dear to him growing up. Thus we both agreed we would try this church when we were looking for a place to go on Sundays as young adults (it never seemed right not going anywhere). We finally joined in 1980 when our first child was on the way—the same child whose own baby-in-waiting was giving her kicks during the homecoming service.
Not only is this church family (with squabbles, hurt feelings, overflowing toilets at inopportune times, like when “company’s” here for the homecoming), but also the building was literally home for several families since it was built in 1825, and a man who lived in the house as a child (the last family to occupy it) was actually present for the homecoming picnic.
Trinity gathers in an antebellum columned home; this photo from the 60s.
What a rich, full circle. I very much remember the 20th anniversary in 1983 when we had a toddler and a baby. By 1988, when we celebrated the 25th anniversary, our family was complete, at least as far as children was concerned.
So my daughter’s reflections this day during the “Time with the Children” remembering friendships and tree climbing and Halloween parties and advent fairs and children’s choir and playing knuckle ball were told full of emotion, joy and love.
And when a time capsule is buried to be opened in 2038 (oh my goodness, that sounds so far in the future, so “1984” but of course it really isn’t) one can’t help but think, who in this circle will still be here? Which of us will have our ashes already buried near this very spot? In my mind I flit through so many dearly loved friends and members who have already crossed the divide between earth and eternity just in recent years: Laura, John, Jane, Emily, Ken, Sherry, Richard, Ken, John, Julianne, Olivia, Jim, Dorothy, Tom, Alisa, Catherine, Jean, Daisy, Jim, Flossie, Lill, Rai, Don, Connie, and I’ve probably missed many other very special folks.
Why shouldn’t a church service, and especially a homecoming celebration stir these thoughts? We mustn’t shy away from them. No wonder a few tears were shed. For what is faith but one long preparation for a grand homecoming harmony with kindred souls—yes—in the sweet bye and bye, with our sweet Lord and Savior.
*****
Homecoming Photo Gallery
New banner made by lifelong friends Susan, Ginny and Page. Altar cloth is one of Trinity’s first ever banners of burlap, for the Marketplace House Church which ran a coffee house near Court Square in Harrisonburg for many years.
Ben and Luke help “plant” a time capsule.
Pastor Ann, far right, and Betty Allen, (in green) tell about some of the items in the time capsule.
Singing grace before the Homecoming picnic meal.
- Former pastor Dan, center, with son Peter, right, and my daughter, Michelle, left. These two plus Thomas (see next pic) spent many hours in the nursery together.
Sister and brother Catherine and Thomas Barber, now both married and shown with their own children, were some of the first friends for my children at church.
The next generation helps crank the ice cream freezers.
How many Presbyterian men does it take to grill a few hamburgers, veggie burgers and hot dogs these days?
(Top left, my normal waffles from Belgian waffle maker. Lower right, waffles from my daughter’s waffle maker.)
Several years ago for Christmas one of my daughters got me a waffle maker (which is another story I’ll tell sometime).
I had never particularly wanted one in my old kitchen because “where would I put it?” was always my question of the day when looking at some gadgety single-use kitchen item. Like who needs a grilled cheese maker, really.
But after we moved to a new home in 2007, I hinted I might enjoy a waffle maker now that I had more room in our kitchen.
The recipe book that came with the waffle maker had this basic recipe—that looked way complicated at first. Who whips egg whites anymore, when you can just whip out a pancake mix and have (sort of) waffles in your waffle maker?
I do. Now. Especially when the kids and sons-in-law are home for the weekend or a holiday. It is our special treat, and we usually eat until they are gone (the recipe makes probably 9 or 10 rounds of waffles–that’s 4 little sections in one round, and sometimes we share rounds).
This is an awesome recipe and well worth the time to beat the whites and sift the flour. They come out airy and fluffy and thick—when you use a Belgian type “flip” waffle maker, as shown here.
For this batch, I was at my daughter’s house helping with Sam and they just had the thin waffle maker kind, and the waffles were still great, just not as tall or airy.
(Check out this telling why 1/2 cup of cornstarch, and separating the egg whites and yolks, makes the important difference in outcome.)
Waffles – adapted from Oster Waffle Maker recipe book
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup cornstarch
1 Table. baking powder
1 tea. salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter melted
4 large eggs, separated**
2 Table. sugar
1 3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
In large bowl, sift or whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt to blend thoroughly; set aside.
In mixer bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form.
(Soft peaks, add sugar now.)
Add sugar; continue beating until stiff peaks form; set aside.
(This is stiff.)
Separately, whisk together egg yolks, milk, and vanilla (not pictured).
Take your flour mixture (shown above) …
… and blend flour mixture with egg/milk/vanilla mixture until dry ingredients are moistened (there should still be small lumps; do not over mix).
Stir in melted butter.
Fold in beaten egg whites until all combined to make your batter.
Pour batter onto hot, greased waffle iron and cook using instructions from the waffle iron. Makes about 5 ½ c. batter.
**This is where I’ve adapted the recipe. I use 4 eggs because my Kitchen Aid mixer bowl is so deep that the beater barely dips into the egg white using only 3.
But using 4 eggs, the beater/whisk attachment tip reaches into the egg whites enough (after you raise the bowl) that it begins the connection to the liquid and then gradually brings along more and more of the whites and soon you have a glorious bowl of stiff egg whites. (Adding the sugar at the “almost there” stage as described above.)
P.S. I wasn’t sure if I could beat egg whites with my daughter’s little old hand held mixer (that we bought her when she moved to an apartment in college).
But sure enough, they beat up just fine, perhaps took a little longer. So way to go, little old apartment mixer.
P.S.P.S. These freeze well, if you have leftovers. Just put a layer of wax paper between rounds in a freezer bag. Pop in toaster or microwave on a busy work/school morning.
***
What is your favorite Saturday or Sunday morning breakfast? Who cooks it? Dad? Mom? Kids? IHOP?
Alas, this waffle recipe did not make it into my Whatever Happened to Dinner recipe book but 100 some others did (not nearly all mine, and the recipe editors/testers did a great job), and here’s the scoop.
(Parts of this reblogged from my post over on Mennobytes Blog on October 11, 2013.)
For one and a half days in September, I was invited to speak at Amigo Centre near Sturgis, Michigan on Mennonite cooking. I’ve been looking forward to it all year and boning up on how to make homemade noodles which I shared in posts here and here and here.
But at Amigo Centre I would learn from a real Amish cook. More on that below. And I did learn a lot. Such as today’s Amish cooks use noodle cutters and dough flatteners like everyone else, to make the job go much easier than in the experiments I tried above.
The highlight of my time with these Road Scholars was a session arranged by Mandy Yoder, adult program director at Amigo Centre. She invited a local Amish mother, Maggie, to help the participants learn how to make homemade noodles. So we all got to make our own batch, cut, and dry them—using a beautiful mini-drying rack made for us by an Amish woodworking shop.
Maggie stirring a big batch of dough.
Maggie is a petite young woman with two toddlers at home—who I think was happy to send them off with her husband for the morning. She seemed to enjoy interacting with us and gave permission for us to photograph the process including herself, as long as she did not pose. She and Mandy made up a huge batch of homemade noodles for us to enjoy at lunch that day, and then helped us make smaller batches to roll out and take home. There was even one batch of gluten-free noodles for a participant with that allergy.
Maggie, center, helping Road Scholar participants manage their dough.
It was a little like 7th or 8th grade home economics all over again (I know, few schools still offer these basic classes), with overgrown “kids” wandering around with their batches of dough asking questions:
Did it need more water?
Does it have enough flour?
Is my dough too sticky?
Are mine dry enough to run through the cutters?
Some chopped up their noodles; some choose finely cut settings, others a wider noodle.
Will any of us ever make homemade noodles again?
Yours truly, learning from better cooks.
Without the roller and cutters, it is a little daunting. In preparation for this session. I made two batches including one using lard and I’ll have to say Maggie’s recipe was even better than the one I tried, and she didn’t use any lard. So if economic conditions get really tough, it is nice to know that you can still make food-that-will-stick-to-your-ribs using just flour, water, eggs and a dash of salt!
Here are the basic proportions we used:
3 egg yolks
3 TB water
1 ½ c. flour
¼ t. salt
Beat egg yolks and water thoroughly. Stir in salt and flour. Knead together. Form a small ball or two, Roll out. Dough will be very stiff.
Someone asked what is different about Amish noodles. I can’t find now where this was posted or written (if someone knows, please help me out!), but here is what someone said: “Doing a little research it appears to be a difference of [using] eggs and the type of flour [used] and the part of Italy you are from for pasta. Amish noodles made mostly by descendents of German or Swiss use eggs and all purpose flour. Pasta, depending on where it originates in Italy, will sometimes use olive oil or eggs or Semolina flour with the all purpose flour. Amish noodles are very doughy and tend to be cooked until soft, and not al dente.”
To muddy the waters even further, here is someone going on about the differences between Chinese noodles, Italian pasta, etc.
And a small caution: since there are no preservatives in these, eventually the noodles can get, er, buggy if just kept in your pantry. You might want to try freezing the dry noodles if you will be shelving them longer than 2-3 months.
***
The setting was a second part of a week-long “Study in Shared Heritage: The Amish and Mennonites,” with 24 participants in the international Road Scholar program (formerly ElderHostel), which combines learning and tourism. They had lectures, looked at videos, visited an Amish home and woodworking shop, and other Amish businesses, and were treated to an Amish “thresher’s” dinner. None of the participants were Mennonite, but all were interested enough in everything Mennonite that they spent a week learning and absorbing Mennonite and Amish faith and culture. Some of them already owned More with Less Cookbook.
***
Camp Amigo/Amigo Centre is (almost) world-known for its Baked Oatmeal (if the World Wide Web counts.) Seriously, I was surprised to find their famous baked oatmeal at the awesome “Calories Count” website giving a complete nutritional breakdown.
Waaahhhh … pause … repeat … waaahhh …. Wimper wimper …. Waaaahhhhh!!
A newborn’s hunger cry is piercing, plaintive, pathetic. He looks at you between wails with “Well, aren’t you going to do something for crying out loud? Waaah!! Did I say I wanted a bath right now??! Waah!”
I heard plenty of this the last few days as I returned to help out the new parents of Sam, our first grandchild, a few days. Soon Sam, after announcing his sharp hunger pains, is happily nursing from his mother.
Sam’s cries hit home for me when we were able to go to worship at my daughter’s church on Sunday morning and it was Walk for CROP day. The youth of her church were collecting donations for their participation in the annual walk, raising funds especially for hungry children around the world.
The reason this particular walk is so near to my heart is my father’s own deep involvement—not in CROP walks, but in a forerunner activity for CROP and Church World Service which eventually led to the walks and perhaps (not sure here) the advent of “walks” as a powerful community way to raise money for myriad causes. (Does anyone know or remember having a walk to raise money before 1969? The history of one of, if not the biggest CROP walk in the U.S., in Charlotte, NC gives the beginning date of any CROP walks as 1969 in Bismarck, ND.)
As a Mennonite farmer in Indiana, Dad always preached to us about the “hungry children of the world.” He was far from alone in that. Isn’t that what dads and moms everywhere remind their kids when they don’t want to eat what’s on their plate? Early on Dad became one of Elkhart County, Indiana’s “Friendship Acre” organizers going farmer to farmer to sign them up to contribute each year, either a portion of their actual crop, or the money one acre grew, for Christian Rural Overseas Program.
Dad (Vernon U. Miller) in front of our garage displaying a “Friendship Acres” sign.
Then one year, circa 1962 or 63, he discussed with others the idea of “couldn’t we do a much bigger thing if we got together a planted a whole farm for CROP?” They got local grain and fertilizer companies to donate grain and fertilizer for the effort, and Dad also talked banks into helping rent an entire farm for charity “to feed hungry people,” in my dad’s parlance.
The media were invited and sent reporters out to the farm on “planting day.”
This is the picture of my father (middle) and sister, Pert, and Marvin Mishler, far left (and some of the most crooked rows in the whole project, my dad groaned) that made it onto the cover of Indiana Farmer magazine. My mom helped organize a wonderful potluck dinner that day, like at an old fashioned barn raising. When the plowing and planting ceased long enough for a few speeches as the TV cameras rolled, and then all the men removed their hats for the blessing before the meal, I was probably never prouder (in a humble Mennonite way) of my Dad than in that moment.
So that’s why I’m a sucker for church youth who are walking for CROP.
Can you imagine how sad and difficult it would be to have an infant and not be able to really ever satisfy its hunger cry? To put it to nurse and perhaps have a few drops come out but not really fill the child because you are so hungry yourself and your food or milk has gone to feed other children? I can hardly imagine it but such images are what motivate me to write out another check in hopes of helping at least a few folks, either locally or around the world (CROP walks typically divide their funds between local and international efforts).
I know some international relief programs come under scrutiny from time to time for waste and squandering funds. One of the things my Dad also did was sell a few pigs one year and invest in a trip for he and mom to visit many sites overseas where the CROP monies had gone, to see whether the program was reaching the people they intended to reach. Dad came back very satisfied that the program was indeed, for the most part, reaching hungry people. One of his stories involved watching a man come and sweep up the remaining grain spilled from a loading platform and sack up a small bag of the “waste” to be used by his family. Mom and Dad came back from their trip and shared that story and many others all around northern Indiana.
Most of us have forgotten what it feels like to truly experience hunger’s sharp pains. An infant doesn’t know what is attacking his or her insides, he just feels pain. Her tummy doesn’t hold very much food. The pain returns. “Waaahhhh! Aren’t you going to do something, for crying out loud?”
***
For more, or to donate to CROP, go here.
Me with my sister-in-law Barbara, on left, along the New Hampshire coast a couple years ago.
My sister-in-law Barbara is an awesome cook. I don’t know of anyone who would disagree with me on that. She MAKES THE BEST MACARONI AND CHEESE IN THE WORLD and I can’t come near her dish even though I’ve tried for some 37 years. Sometime, maybe we’ll do a tutorial with her on the mac and cheese.
Much of what I’ve learned about Virginia-style cooking I’ve learned from her example, who learned from her mother. Plus my brothers-in-law, who aren’t bad in the kitchen. (Don’t know why that gene skipped my husband, except that the older boys learned to cook because their mother was greatly hampered by rheumatoid arthritis through all of their childhood and they had to help get supper on the table.) They all make great fried chicken, southern ice tea, green beans, oysters, gravy and more.
Thanksgiving dinner at Barbara’s house last year. I’m hungry already.
So one evening years ago when Barbara served up some pork spareribs cooked in a barbecue sauce in the oven, I wanted her recipe. She may have gotten it from a magazine, I don’t know. It is pretty basic but it is easy and makes a delectable dish out of ordinary pork tenderloin or spareribs, and using ingredients that practically everyone has in their kitchen. I usually make them with oven roasted potato wedges since the oven is on anyway.
My husband loves cleaning off the sparerib bones so if that’s what’s on sale, that’s what I get. The nice thing about leftovers is they can be chopped by knife (coarsely) or blender (if you like it finer) into barbecue sandwiches for a second meal. Blended even more finely, they can make a dip with crackers. Top with an olive or pickle and you’ve got an hors d’oeuvre. (Sorry, no pictures.)
Here’s Barbara’s recipe:
Barbecue Spareribs
6 pork spareribs or tenderloin
3/4 cup ketchup
3/4 cup water
2 Table. Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tea. pepper
1 tea. paprika
2 Table. vinegar
1 tea. chili powder
Salt to taste
Cook spareribs in boiling salted water until half done, about 15 minutes. Mix all other ingredients together and heat in small pan. Put ribs in 13 x 9 inch baking dish. Spoon sauce over top of ribs and extra into pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 1/2 hour. I usually turn them over half way through and redistribute the sauce.
Part of the Davis clan, a couple years ago.
***
My 2010 book, Whatever Happened to Dinner? has some Davis Virginia specialties in it, but also recipes from a wider group of families from my office.
(Yes, I was a college student once too. Here Dorcas Kraybill and I
were working on our college literary magazine at Eastern Mennonite University, the Phoenix, which is still published.)
A student from James Madison University interviewed me this week for a class assignment because of my role as editor for Living. I enjoy having the tables turned and sitting down with anyone to talk shop: how to prepare for a job like this, what to do or not do, what do you do in a typical day, what is the best part of the job or why do you like it, what are the drawbacks?
I’ve done this with middle schoolers, high schoolers, college kids and occasionally beyond.
However, the media environment has changed so much that I have had to change up my spiel. Of course.
Even if you are still interested in going into old fashioned books, magazines, and newspapers–producing a printed product on paper–half of your energies need to go into the e-end–social media, blogging, websites. No longer can you just write a book or publish a magazine and put it out there for publication. You have to have to be multi-present. Here is just one blog which focuses on how to create a writer platform.
The young woman who talked to me this week, needs to get at least one thing accepted for publication as part of her class assignment by the end of the semester. That’s a pretty tall order. I didn’t ask her (but should have) whether it needed to be in print or if it could be electronic–online. Anyone can publish anything themselves on a blog. If I were the teacher, that wouldn’t count. But getting something published on say, HuffPost online, or any of many other respectable forums, should count as credit towards a class assignment, in this day.
I used to depend on the Writer’s Market and would invest in buying one every couple years. No more, since I’m more on the editing end and not actively seeking new markets. I still keep an old one on my shelf, but if I need to do occasional research to find up-to-date information, I do so online. I’m thrilled to see Writer’s Market is still published, though. It has lots of great information and hints and insights for any beginning writer seeking publication. A worthy investment for any would-be writer.
(Ok, this is from the 80s.)
But what do I tell kids hoping to get into this field?
- Write for your student newspaper in high school and college.
- Do any internship you can get your hands on, for hands on experience.
- Try to get published: a publishing portfolio is usually impressive to any employer.
- Do consider a blog, but only if you plan to keep it going on a regular basis. Find a niche and pursue it. The regular writing practice–and trying to hone each post–is good discipline and you may just stumble onto a winner like my writing colleague Hannah Heinzekehr, who began The Femonite as a seminary class assignment. It is now a respected and well-followed blog although I don’t know her numbers.
I sometimes add: don’t expect to get rich. Don’t even expect to make a living at freelancing. It can be a side job, or be o.k. if you spouse is well-employed, or if you can live on $50 here, $75 there, and a couple of freebies thrown in.
The best part of the job? Not seeing my name in print–which maybe was what I enjoyed just starting out, but now it is the contacts and people I’ve met through the years as I’ve interviewed and written about them. I’ll write about that sometime. Some amazing and big names; others very ordinary folks with extraordinary stories.
Now editing, that’s a different ballgame, and maybe I’ll write about that too. It may pay better, but takes different gifts and skills.
If you dream of becoming a writer and enjoy writing (and of course have some gift for it–which means that someone beside your mother and your best friend have told you write well), you can probably find a way to get published and get paid doing it. Aim high, and market well.
***
If you’re a writer, how did you get your start? What do you tell other aspiring writers/editors?
***
I work both for Living, and for MennoMedia which you can find more about through the links.
For anyone who has been wondering, or happens to remember my earlier posts about becoming a grandmother, yes, our first grandbaby has arrived!
Everyone says how much better it is to be grandparents because you can kiss ‘em and love ‘em and send them home and not be getting up at nights with them.
But I’m not sure how to be happy doing that when my daughter and her husband are in that new baby fog of wondering if they will ever sleep clear through a night again.
I had to leave this baby much too soon – after three days of yes, enjoying snuggling new born cheeks and adorable finger wraps – and even though I get to return to help out a little with those sleepless nights, I wish he lived five minutes away instead of five hours.
Then there are many of my grandparenting colleagues who live 1,000, 3,000 even 5,000 miles away from their grands. And while people used to live closer to their children and grandchildren, I also think of the settler and immigrant families of old who moved across the ocean and in some cases never saw their parents or grandparents again. Of course, I have lived 600-some miles from my parents all my married life and I feel like our children grew to have great love and connections with these grandparents.
So this is how it went down: While I was enjoying swans and hiking through wetlands early on the final day of my speaking commitment (made long before we knew anything about this baby!), my daughter’s labor was being induced. That evening, while I was wandering around the Indiana Michigan Mennonite Relief Sale with my mother and sister, Tanya’s labor kicked into high gear and became so intense she had to go with an epidural. Yes, I was on pins and needles. Yes, I wanted to be there with her, but I would just get there as soon as I could. I hoped and prayed she wouldn’t have to labor all night. I knew I wouldn’t sleep much either.
At 11:30 p.m. the call came as I had just dropped off to sleep. “We have a boy! We’ve named him Sam” said Tanya happily; she sounded a bit smoothed out by the medications.
Immediately I loved the name and the child. I loved that he was finally here, and all appeared to be well, my daughter and her husband were swooning in the early aftermath of bonding time with their new son. I told her she could break the news to her dad, anxiously awaiting news back in Virginia.
I tried to go back to sleep. Funny joke. But I didn’t mind. The labor was over. Thank God.
The next day I couldn’t get there fast enough, through a circuitous route when you end up driving west to fly east and drive south. We arrived at the hospital about 7:15 p.m. Oh happy day.
Sam was and is beautiful, a handful of hungry tummy and increasing lung strength, who did everything babies are supposed to do: squirm, grimace, make wonderful faces, yawn, sleep, nurse (open tiny mouth wide!), wet and dirty his diapers, snuggle, wake his parents too much at night. Suddenly I was thrust back into early nursing woes and pain and feeling like you’ll never get enough sleep again.
His father, after a night or two at home, said “I knew they were supposed to wake up every three hours or so to eat but I didn’t know they stayed awake between times!” My daughter said, with appreciation, “Parenting is hard.” (So much for labor being over.)
Something you can never fully prepare for ahead of time. But amid these struggles I see and hear wonderful bonds of love and commitment strengthening and I trust they too will get through these groggy days and long nights.
With Grandma Sue.
Welcome to the world Sam. You are loved!
Ike meets Sam.
***
What have been your surprises in grandparenting? Parenting? How do you work at keeping connections from a distance?
Swans gliding on a calm Michigan lake in early fall.
Early morning mist shrouding wetland.
Poison sumac warning us to stay away with its bright fall colors.
Dew lacing a spider web in the dawning new day. In the woods, dark wet ground sports four or five different mosses, said our guide. Hmm. I knew mosses sometimes looked different, but didn’t know they had different names. How rich and varied is the natural world when we take time to truly notice.
Finally, brilliant sun beaming through the woods, warming our slightly chilly walk.
And much more that I can’t name now.
It had been a long time since I’d been on a true nature hike with a naturalist (far right, Jim Gascho).
My stomping grounds at Camp Amigo were not the first childhood camp I ever went to (established in 1957, and I remember well my dad’s excitement to help with early projects making a campground out of woods and lake). Little Eden (how aptly named) a bit further upstate was my first, where my parents coaxed me into leaving my “gi gi” pacifier as a toddler.
But these grounds at Camp Amigo are close to holy pilgrimage every time I have the opportunity to return to this lower-Michigan-basic-lake-cabins-woods-tennis-and-ball-courts-church campground. How well I remember pondering life direction and my own spiritual wanderings around evening campfires.
The camp is now called Amigo Centre, headquarters for an exciting outdoor/environmental educational program for public and private school children and hosting a variety of adult programs all year long such as Road Scholars, which I’ll write more about soon, and Quilting Retreats and Scrapbooking and other cool stuff.
Its slogan/logo is “In Harmony with God and Nature.” A perfect slogan for this blog, too, methinks. God for me is inseparable from nature whether it is ocean’s depths or mountain heights or limitless sky or rollicking river.
I do not just find God in nature, God finds me and wraps me once again in thrall of a wondrous world.
Thanks be to God.
***
Where do you find God, or God find you? What places do you remember in your childhood or teenage years as being special? I’d love to hear about them.
I baked up some peanut butter cookies to carry to my first grandbaby down in North Carolina (still waiting as of this writing/posting). Of course I know technically the grandbaby won’t eat the cookies but the mother will, and she plans to nurse, so there you go. Cooking for my grandbaby.
I went to my trusty recipe box but my tried and true, greased-up-and-stained-up recipe card was gone! Nowhere to be found. Luckily I had this written down on the computer, to send one of my daughters at some point, I’m sure. It is nothing fancy, but your basic peanut butter cookie and I whipped them up in less than 15 minutes using my powerful Kitchen Aid mixer.
Now, the recipe says you are supposed to let them chill a half hour before baking but I rarely do and this time I tried another shortcut and discovered, eureka, you really don’t have to roll them in balls to press them crisscross with a fork. Are you reading this Doreen?
My youngest loves to make and eat peanut butter cookies and she frequently would surprise me with them when I came home in the four years she lived at home after college and mixed up a batch on her day off. But she HATED to roll them in balls so always wanted me to help with that.
So I skipped that step and just plunked dough on the cookie sheet and pressed that hunk down..
Take that, cookie dough. Good anyway you press them.
Who really can tell the difference between the ones rolled into a ball first
And the ones just kind of spooned or forked onto the cookie sheet?
You can maybe tell here.
But not here.
Or below. And who cares, as long as you’re not a food stylist prettying up things for a blog.
Which I’m not.
So enjoy my homely tips and not bad cookies.
My husband and his brother scarfed this whole plate down before I whisked the last one away.
Peanut Butter Cookies
Cream together:
1 c. shortening
1 c. peanut butter
Add and mix:
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
Then add dry things:
3 c. flour
1/2 tea. salt
2 tea. soda
1 tea. baking powder
Chill dough as long as you can. Shape into 1″ balls. Press with fork. 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes.
***
What are your favorite freezer-staple cookies?
And here’s a bonus: the best site for figuring out what went wrong with your baking.
findingharmonyblog 
