My first Polenta

I love trying new recipes and foods. The last two Sunday's I've been able to do just that and it's been a blast. This week I tried a recipe from the Cooking Light magazine: Parmesan Polenta and Spicy Sausage Sauce. And a side of sauteed spinach on the side.

The spicy tomato sausage sauce

The polenta- BEFORE

Fresh Spinach

The complete meal!

I think it would have come out great if I had used a different sausage. It called for a sweet italian chicken sausage and I got something completely different, more like a smoked sausage. You can tell I rarely buy sausage. Anyway, so instead of a more Italian feel it kinda had a cajun, gumbo kinda taste. So I suppose if you really like that than it would be great for you.

Overall though, I think it's worth another shot, with some minor corrections. We have a ton left over so we'll be eating it again tomorrow night and probably freezing some as well.

Book Review - Redeeming Love

Redeeming Love
by Francine Rivers


What a wonderful read! It is a semi-modern take on the story of Hosea and Gomer. While some may say once a prostitute always a prostitute, Michael pursues "Angel" with a relentless love. He pursues again and again and by God's grace points his beloved to the one who is the Author of love. What a great analogy of God's relentless and passionate love for us. How often we turn back to our sin not believing things can be different. How often we run from the One who offers us grace. True freedom is found when we surrender to the love that engulfs our soul and let Him define who we are.

It also seemed very relevant to me in terms of the subject matter. Today prostitution forced and by choice is prominent and it is worth noting that what people do is not who they are. They are just as worthy of God's love as we are, which is not at all. He extends his grace and mercy to all who would come to him. How relentless our pursuit should be to bring these "children" out of what they know and show them what true love looks like. I hurt for them. I hurt for the children forced into these awful situations, losing their innocence to satisfy the evil desires of mankind. Hardened by the hopeless situations they find themselves in, locking away their emotions to survive. Who will show them God's love?

3 Apples Doesn't Necessary Mean 3 Apples

I set out to make my first apple pie on my own. I got a nice simple recipe for pineapple, apple pie which looked delicious. I did the easy thing and bought refrigerated pie crusts instead of making my own. I had bought some apples last week. Really, I've been buying apples every week since September and am sad that the season will be coming to an end. But maybe I'll find some really good deals on bulk apples they need to get rid of.

Back to the pie...So the recipe called for 3 apples. I had 3 apples and followed the instructions to the tee. But when I filled my pie crust to the max I still had at least 1/2 the filling left in the bowl. I called my husband over to ask him his thoughts on the matter. There was obviously no way all that filling was supposed to fit in that small pie crust. I re-checked the recipe to see if I had done something wrong. He checked too. Nope. So all I can figure is my apples were really big. This is indeed true, but how am I to know whether or not to use small apples or large apples for the recipe? It does not specify.

However, all is not lost and in fact it turned out quite well. The package I bought had two pie crusts so I just had to make 2 pies instead of one. They came out quite tasty and we will be finishing off the second tomorrow. Yummy. Not bad for a first try.

Before in the oven

All ready to be chowed down!

80's anyone?

We were so thrilled at attend a retro birthday party for a friend of ours. Naturally we had to look the part! John was going for the Vanilla ice look and I guess I was an 80's rocker girl. We got to roller skate! Remember those? It was a blast and something I haven't done for so long. Ahhhh....the memories!

When life gets crazy....

I realize it's been a long while since I've written any posts. It's not for lack of anything to say that's for sure. In fact, I think it's just the opposite. Sometimes life gets in the way. Then before I know it too much life has happened and I feel overwhelmed about trying to play "catch up."

The only solution to this problem that I see is to simply not try. So I will not try to re-cap everything that has happened in life since my last post. It's just too much. Instead let's just start with the present and move forward.

Actually it seems there is probably some sort of lesson in that. If we dwell too much in the past it's impossible to move forward. We just need to let it go and live in the present. So this is my attempt at that. Here's to today! A new day! A new start! A new post!