What's In My Teapot?

We made it! We fed the young people and we fed ourselves and we had enough for everyone (with leftovers!) and we chatted our way through the cleanup so that it took way longer than it should have and we returned to our respective homes thankful that Bible-school comes only once a year!!! How's that for a success story on feeding the multitude? Just in case you wish to know more (and since I promised details!) here are a few things for the record... We served right around 95 people (10 were children and the rest youth through adult.)  Keep in mind, though, that a group of young people never eat as much as you think they should during Bible-school, with their well-fed and under-active lifestyle, so if you were preparing this menu for a crew of young people who had just put in a hard days work, you may want to figure accordingly!!! Enchiladas: we made 101 and had several pans leftover (exact amount unknown) but I would still make about that many again if I was aiming to f...

If there is one word that sums up what we want to give our young people this week, I think we could say it is nourishment . We want to give them solid, Kingdom-based teaching, opportunities to form good relationship and interact with other youth, and plenty of food at our tables. If we can do all of these things, we will have nourished the soul, the emotions, and the body respectively, and in turn should be looking at a healthy bunch of young people when they stand up to sing on Sunday morning! As you already know if you read my other two Bible-school-related posts this week, The Beginning and The Dynamics , I am on the physical food side in the nourishment department, and my kitchen can prove it! When I signed up for providing supper for the Bible-school students on Thursday evening, I already had in mind that I would like to do a repeat of the meal I did last year! It may not sound very creative to do the same thing twice, but sometimes, trying to figure out a menu for a cr...

Have no fear, this is not a post on the merits of taking your own bags to the grocery store and planting trees and turning the water off while brushing your teeth! It's not even about the joys of recycling, although our big blue recycling container is currently overflowing in a way that gives me no end of pleasure these days, which means I am making headway in the cleaning frenzy purge that is underway at our house! No, all of these things are right and good, but this post is about feeling Irish for a day, making corned beef and cabbage, and finding out what, exactly, a three leaf clover has to do with March 17th! In other words, it's about how our little family enjoys a few fun traditions and a bit of extra green on St. Patrick's Day. To begin with, what is St. Patrick's Day? Well, to make a long explanation short, it is a global celebration of Irish culture on or around March 17. It particularly remembers St Patrick, one of Ireland's patron saints, w...

I have a bit of a tradition going on in my kitchen that Monday night is soup night! I don't remember exactly how or why this started, but I am a bit enamored with soups and all the different varieties, and over the years it has proven to be a handy way to start the week, especially as I like to make a large pot and then have enough leftovers for at least one more meal (and often more!) I like to have the second go of soup on Wednesdays, when we usually have evening plans: either prayer meeting, Ladies Night for me or Men's Meeting for Wesley. I have found that by switching up the sides a bit (cheese & crackers the first night, salad the second) you can keep meals interesting even if the main dish stays the same. Over the summer this tradition seemed to be more of a drag than anything and there were times I deviated from soup just because I couldn't find one that looked good or that I had the ingredients for. And sometimes I just plain down didn't feel like dicin...