Beloved:

      I love, love, love Thanksgiving.  Ben is bringing home two international students for the whole break.  Mariah invited friends.  Some combination of our usual family and friends will be here, some for the day and some for a night or two.  I’m extra anxious to snuggle the new baby of Louisville friends.   In all we’ll have five kids ages 6 and younger..   Netnet* is in her element!  

     If I’m not working, and sometimes when I am, I’m thinking about food. Groceries, recipes, and menus swirl in my head constantly.  I doodle notes to myself everywhere.  Kroger was out of pie crusts (I can hear my crust making friends sighing now!) and won’t get any more pie pumpkins. Sam’s will have the crusts and I’ll call Musgraves about pumpkins. It’s not lost on me that I bake fresh pumpkin in a pre-made crust but this is how I roll.  

     I bought a twenty pound turkey.  Last year’s sixteen pounder provided no leftovers thereby fuddling my Friday Saturday plan.  Below is a recipe from a super website Mariah found on Pinterest.  It’s on myAfter Thanksgiving Use Up The Leftovers menu list.  I intend to drain and dump in the leftover green beans and all the relish tray vegetables along with the regular ingredients.  

     By Saturday afternoon the house will be quiet again and I’ll be exhausted, probably with a sermon to finish.  But happy to have such grace in hand.  These years fly by.  No time ago I was the young bride at Myra’s house.  She and Elsie and Frieda ran the kitchen.  The fourth sister, Ethel, was there but don’t remember her cooking.  The memories are vivid but the days are gone.  As will be my own, me in my kitchen.  Maybe they’ll laugh and say, she was a good cook but she couldn’t make a pie crust to save her soul.   I’m okay with that.  

 I pray the holidays find you joyful.  If not, I pray they find you peaceful.  ~ peace and prayers, pastor annette

     
Chicken/Turkey Tortilla Soup

Ingredients:

- 4 chicken boneless skinless chicken breasts, not frozen
- 2 cans diced tomatoes (not drained), 14.5 ounce (I love Hunt’s fire-roasted tomatoes)
- 2 can black beans (drained), 14.5 ounce
- 1  onion, diced
- 2 Tbsp minced garlic
- 1 cup frozen corn
- 1 jalapeno, seeded and finely diced  
- 2 limes, juiced  
- 1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped  
- 3 14.5 ounce cans low-sodium chicken broth (I will use turkey broth)
- 1 tsp EACH of salt and pepper (or to taste)
~ Hot sauce to taste, (I used about 1 tsp and mine wasn’t especially hot, just a little warm.)


The regular directions:  Literally, dump everything except the cilantro into a large pot, even the raw chicken.  I was suspicious at first but it works.  Bring soup to a boil, then reduce heat to med-low and keep it at a slow boil for 25 minutes.  After 25 minutes, take the chicken out of your pot with a fork and put it on a separate plate.  Cut into the chicken to make sure it’s cooked all the way through, then using two forks (or a knife and a fork) shred your chicken. Once shredded, put back in the pot and add cilantro. Mix together, and serve!

When using leftover turkey however, obviously cook time is greatly reduced, just long enough to blend flavors.  I plan to dump it all into a crockpot as I clean up after the meal on Thursday, put it in the fridge and then turn it on the lowest setting Friday morning.  I’ll put a sticky note above the crockpot telling them where the garnishes are. People can just eat whenever they want.  

Garnish ideas - more cilantro, lime, avocado, or Greek yogurt mixed with lime juice (tastes like sour cream).  I like the tiny little tortilla chips on the store aisle with salad dressing

*Netnet was coined 26 years ago by my oldest niece who considered Aunt Annette too cumbersome. 

Beloved:

     Sixteen years ago this Sunday, on about as much snow as dusts the streets this morning, my van slid across the center line and hit another car head-on. I called it a terrible day.  My husband said, “Are you kidding me?  You came home to us!”  My left wrist was shattered and I spent the entire winter in a cast.   My kids were 7, 2, and 9 months old.

     That 9-month-old just walked herself out to a car and drove herself to to school.  The same kid I once didn’t let use scissors unsupervised now has keys to a five thousand pound death machine.  I suggested a snow day in bed with books and crayons.  She declined.  Nothing prepared me for the anxiety of my kids driving.  When two or three of them travel together,  I feel like I’m in labor again, remembering just to breathe.  

     Imagine what God must go through every morning. watching us rush about in this slippery world.  We feel so competent, so necessary to the needs of the day.  Yet I wonder if to God we aren’t still toddling around, barely safe from ourselves?  What courage it takes to love one another as God loves us, to love without controlling, without so much interference the other cannot live her life.  What intention it takes to love others so that they are loved and not so we  feel safer.  

Great is the temptation to require my daughter to text me when she arrives at each new destination, to keep constant tab on her safety.  I mostly don’t. She knows I’m anxious so she checks in to reassure me.  I could learn from that, learn to pray more from love than fear, from gratitude than anxiety.  

I pray this beautiful day brings you much love.  ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette

Beloved:

            Last month’s piece about my dog Cody (Creek Running, October 15, 2013) received more comments than any I have written, all of them some version of, he’s the best dog ever so please let him have the surgery.   We did so and given his fan base it seems fitting I send an update.  

One week into his recovery he is still limping heavily and sleeping most of the time.  He has twenty staples down one leg and terrible bruising.  The greatest indignity is the cone he has to wear around his neck to prevent him from licking or chewing at his incision.  The cone also prevents him any peripheral vision so he constantly bonks into door frames and furniture.  We take him back to the vet every few days for a laser treatment which directs a jet of heat into his knee joint and wound site to stimulate healing cell activity.  Arlington Animal Hospital is his second home and Mark the vet assistant is his new best friend.   

I’m finally and completely over any reluctance to compare my dog’s behavior to Christ-likeness.  Cody is always, kind, always patient, always gentle, especially with little kids and disabled people.  He complains rarely and apologetically.  He loves to love and he loves to be loved.  Consequently, he has no enemies, only friends.  At the mention of him, people go all soft eyed and sentimental.  He’s received two get well cards and a box of fancy dog treats through the mail.  His presence blesses us.  

The world would be a profoundly nicer place to live if more people took personality lessons from Cody, or better yet - our Lord.   Gentleness and kindness, inclusiveness and courage through suffering are Christian disciplines that seem to come more easily to creatures without egos but are expected of us two-legged ones nevertheless.  Imagine work meetings absent of ego or complaining.  Imagine simple social interactions driven by kindness and patience.  Imagine the name Church causing people everywhere to go soft eyed and sentimental because the very mention reminded them of being loved by the sweetest people on earth.  

Thanks for your good wishes for Cody.  He’s getting better every day.  May the same days find us getting better too, becoming the people and the church known for our kindness, patience and love.  ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette--