SWALLOWING WITHOUT PAIN

Hi everyone--sorry so long to be away...it's been a crazy and stressful couple of weeks.

I am grateful today to be able to swallow without pain. Again, one of those things that you don't even think about, let alone be grateful for, until you go without it or see someone who does. (Sorry if you are reading this Lori or Anne :(

I have two friends who have gone through the joy of a tonsilectomy in recent weeks and they hurt. A lot.

My husband got his tonsils out when he was a teenager and he said that it really hurt, but he recovered fairly quickly.

I think the older you get, the more painful it is and the longer it takes to recover. My poor friends.

But I am so grateful for the reminder to appreciate this small, but very important part of life. Hoorah for swallowing!

BEANS

Yes, I said beans. You know, black, pinto, kidney, etc. And don't forget lentils--my boys seem to do better with the texture of lentils than with beans. In the words of my 7-year-old, "I don't like beans, Mom. When I bite into one, it explodes." Yeah, well...who's to argue with that? The texture of beans does take a bit of acclimation.

We had a cooking class at our church a couple of nights ago and Wow! Who knew beans could be so delicious? A friend who is a wonderful cook and who has been cooking with beans ever since she served a church mission in Brazil taught the class and made 11 bean dishes for us to try, three of them desserts (more on that later). It was fun, informative and delicious! And we got to come and help her cook before the class and learn how non-scary beans are to cook with.

I have lots of beans in my food storage, but have actually never cooked with dried beans because I've always thought that they took so long to prepare. They do, if you use the traditional method, but did you know that you can cook them in the crockpot? (3-4 hours with no presoaking) Also, you can cook them in your pressure cooker (45 minutes, also no presoaking). I'm excited to try it.

But just in time for the weekend, I am including for you here one of the recipes that we sampled: Polka Dot Bean Brownies. Now, everyone knows that if you add whole wheat flour to a dessert, it makes them healthy, right? The same is true for beans. And these brownies have a whole cup of cooked beans in them (never mind the 2 cups of sugar and two kinds of chocolate chips--the addition of beans totally outweighs this). Also, these bad boys do not even need frosting: they are so moist and delicious just by themselves, so eat one before you go to the trouble of making frosting.

I got this recipe from the Idaho Bean Commission website: http://www2.state.id.us/bean/index.cfm

Polka Dot Bean Brownies

Ingredients:
3/4 cups cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup melted butter
1/2 cup boiling water
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup pinto beans, cooked and mashed
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Chocolate Frosting

Preparation: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine cocoa and soda; blend in 1/3 cup melted margarine. Add boiling water. Stir until mixture thickens. Stir in sugar, eggs, and remaining 1/2 cup butter.
Add beans, flour, vanilla and salt; stir until smooth. Add chips.
Turn mixture into a greased 9 x 13-inch pan. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until sides pull away from pan.
Cool completely and frost or dust with powdered sugar.

FLOWERS IN SPRING and A SWEET HUSBAND

Yes, many of you are experiencing spring right now: grass getting green, daffodils, crocuses and tulips blooming, warmer weather. I love spring flowers (purple crocuses are my favorite).

Well, today we woke up to three inches of snow. Sigh.

So not many colors going on yet where I live. (except white, brown and our grass is starting to consider thinking about maybe turning green :0)

How blessed I am, then, to have a husband who knows I love color and knows I love flowers and who brings them to me occasionally (usually not for any specific reason other than "I love you and think you are wonderful." I love that reason!).

Here is the bouquet I am enjoying currently. I love the yellows, pinks and purples--so springy!

A DELICIOUS DRINK OF WATER

I don't know if you have good-tasting water where you live, but if not, I'm sorry. I hope that if you don't, you at least have yummy bottled water or something. I'm so grateful that the town I live in happens to have absolutely delicious water, a luxury I totally take for granted until I go somewhere and taste gross water.

There's a great young adult book by Natalie Babbit called 'The Search for Delicious' about a king who is compiling a dictionary and gets stuck on the word 'delicious' so he sends his pageboy out to take a poll around his country about what food is the most delicious. Of course, no one can agree, and the boy gets all sorts of different answers from people. Then something happens to their water supply and the people can't access any water. They get so thirsty and by the time they get everything resolved and are able to get a drink of water, they finally all agree on the definition of delicious: a cool drink of water when you are very thirsty. There is nothing quite so satistying.

What a blessing to have easy access to clean drinking water!

IN THE LEAFY TREETOPS

The sound of birds singing may be my favorite sound in the world to wake up to. It is such a sweet, gentle and cheerful sound (unlike a rooster, which I've been woken up by before, and that sound tends to be much more grating than pleasant!).

One of my favorite songs at church when I was little was called "In the Leafy Treetops." Here are the lyrics and this link if you want to listen to it:
In the leafy treetops, the birds sing good morning.
They're first to see the sun, they must tell everyone.
In the leafy treetops, the birds sing good morning."

Sweet and simple :0) Although to this day have no idea what it has to do with church...

So this morning I was laying in bed trying to wake up when I heard birds for the first time this spring (hoorah!), and even though I didn't consciously think of the words of this song, my brain assumed it was sunny outside (you see the way this song is ingrained into my psyche). As I ventured out to the kitchen and opened the curtains, I discovered that it was not sunny at all. Light: yes (although actually kind of gray). Sunny: no. It's been overcast and dreary all day. Go figure! I thought that if the birds were singing, it automatically had to be sunny :0).

Oh well, it actually hasn't mattered because just waking up to that bird saying to me in his cute little tweety language, "What an awesome day it is! You really should get up and enjoy it!" has made my day more pleasant. Interesting how starting off right can make a difference, huh?

What about you? What's your favorite sound to wake up to?

HOPE

I am so grateful for Hope, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It is so wonderful to know that no matter how bleak things look or seem (or are), or for however long they seem that way (sometimes soooooo long--years and years), that even if you have nothing else to hold on to, you always have Hope. After a horrible day or week or month (or year), that you can know that things will eventually get better.

You just have to focus on that light and keep going. It's such a good thing we don't know how our lives are going to turn out and how long the hard times in our lives will last! Since I don't know how much longer I have to struggle with something, I choose to believe that it will get better tomorrow. And when tomorrow isn't any better? Well, it must be the next day then. Yes, this could go on for years, but that's ok, because as long as I have Hope, I can keep going. :)

GREEN

Yes, today is St. Patrick's Day, so don't we have to celebrate green? :0) It is a fun day to dress my children (and myself, I must admit) in green and make green pancakes (yeah, I'm purposefully not including a picture of them because they turned out looking kind of nasty, but my kids loved them!) But really...I'm grateful for green always; today is just a good day to spotlight it.

Technically, green is a cool color, which means it is soothing and calming, but I love it because it can also be so vibrant and alive. Perhaps it's not as visually dramatic as red or orange, but because green is a combination of both a warm and cool color, it can be both calming and exciting, which is one thing that makes it such a great color!

I love me a soft, mellow sage, a vibrant emerald, a cool olive, a deep forest green. There are just so many greens to love! And have you ever noticed all the different shades of greens you can find in nature--wow! I think God must really love green to make plants, grass, trees, flower foliage all green.

And after a winter of white and brown, green is the most beautiful color in the world! It means warm days are coming: gardens, picnics, trips to the park, family bike rides...you know--just all those wonderful spring and summer things. The snow is almost gone from our yard, and I'm not seeing tons of green yet (our highs are still mostly in the 40s), but I know the green is coming: the buds on the trees, the crocus and tulip leaves peeking out of the earth, the green shoots of grass mixing in with the dormant brown, making it more green every day. Hoorah for green!

What's your favorite green?