So I was delighted to have so many new readers yesterday. Thank you Jules and all your followers for stopping by!

Let’s get to it:

Comment 39 (I did not include my comments in the count) was made by…

Stacy!

So Stacy, send me an email with your address to jtousey(at)gmail(dot)com.

Happy {gluten-free} eating!

I have so many friends who are living gluten-free lives. I always feel a little twinge of guilt when I publish recipes that contain flour (which is pretty much every recipe) because I know that some of my regular (ie: favorite) readers are home crying into their gluten-free crispix, disappointed that they will not be able to eat the deliciousness that comes out of my kitchen.

So to make it up to you, I have located a recipe for donuts and a recipe for BIEGNETS that are completely gluten-free.

Yes, these recipes are more labor-intensive than my canned biscuit donuts or my easy-peasy beignets, but I bet they will be really tasty.

To sweeten my apology, I am going to offer one of my readers a 5-pound bag of Jules’ all-purpose flour. Just leave a comment here for one entry and get another entry by reposting on Facebook. I’ll draw a name on Tuesday.

It’s not Fat Tuesday, but you’ll be stuffing your face with beignets like it is.

I asked little Samuel what he wanted to make and he immediately said “beignets!”

So we made beignets! {That’s pronounced “been-yays” according to Charlotte.}
 

I made these for Sam’s birthday and posted about them, but I did not include the recipe* so I want to share it with you now. ‘Cause I am cool like that. {All apologies to my gluten-free friends & to the citizens of New Orleans who would certainly scoff at my homemade knock-offs.}

Ingredients:

1 pound frozen bread dough
2 cups vegetable oil
1-2 cups confectioner’s sugar
Flour for dusting

 Spray or grease a large bowl with cooking spray or vegetable oil. Place frozen dough in the bowl, cover with a towel and let sit in a warm, dry place. Let sit until dough is thawed and doubled in size (preferably overnight).

 When dough is ready, punch it down and turn it out onto a clean surface dusted with flour. Sprinkle the dough with a little flour and roll out with a rolling pin until the dough is about to about 1/4-inch thick and then cut into 1-inch squares (we use a pizza cutter). Place the squares on a baking sheet lined with parchment, and let sit for a few minutes.

 In the meantime, heat the oil in a dutch oven or a deep pan over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, deep-fry the squares in batches, flipping constantly, until they become a golden color. After beignets are fried, drain them for a few seconds on paper towels, and then toss them into a large plastic storage bag or paper bag filled with confectioners’ sugar. Hold bag closed and shake to coat evenly.

 {Kids can help with the punching, rolling, cutting, and shaking the sugar bag.}

Enjoy them while they’re hot!

*I have to give credit where credit is due on this one. I got the idea for making beignets this way from my mother-in-law, Debbie. She makes elephant ears for the kids from frozen bread dough, and after watching the ladies at the Port Orleans beignet bar make them pretty much the same way she makes elephant ears, I was inspired to come home and give it a try. If you want to make elephant ears instead, divide the dough up into smaller balls {as many as you have people} and then roll out the individual dough balls into roundish disks and fry in the oil, flipping occasionally until nice and brown. And then just shake the sugar on the pastry. Cinnamon & sugar are pretty yummy toppings, too.

If you live in an area that has a Wegman’s, I highly recommend their frozen bread dough. You can get two one-pound dough balls in a package for relatively cheap, and it is just the best tasting bread. The best, Jerry!

I know that I can have an experience that seems so unbelievably huge and life-changing that I think there is no way I will ever forget that feeling, or the lessons I learned.  But the farther I get from the event, from the experience, the smaller it becomes in my life.

How can we forget God, or what He has done for us? How hard is it to remember? How can something so spectacular become just this thing we hardly notice sometimes?

I try not to forget. Really, I do.  But the Fall reduced us to simple, forgetful creatures who are easily distracted by shiny things.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
-CS Lewis

I was mulling over what my friend had shared today when I was cleaning a cabinet in the office/kitchen. I pulled out my copy of Crazy Love, and opened it to the front cover. I was immediately reminded of a major, life-changing experience I had in 2010. A day I haven’t forgotten, but one I don’t remember very often.

And I thought, what’s the point of having Francis Chan’s autograph if you don’t ever look at it?

But more importantly, what’s the good in having an admonition from Francis Chan to love Him if I don’t remember to do it?

So I ripped out the first page of my sweet little book and framed it and put it right by my quiet time chair so I can look at it every day. I want to remember to love Him so that I don’t forget to love Him.

After all, He did not forget to love me.

How do you fight to remember?

]]> http://tousey.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/fighting-to-remember/feed/ 3 jtousey IMG_7325 IMG_7324 IMG_7323 http://tousey.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/fresh-vision/ http://tousey.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/fresh-vision/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:02:45 +0000 jtousey http://tousey.wordpress.com/?p=3192 ]]> I got glasses.

{I am not sure “I got glasses” is the best use of my grammatical skills, but this post is about eyesight, not grammar.}

My sight has been a little wonky for a while now. Nine years to be specific. But the optometrist in Raleigh was not convinced that I wasn’t just after some insurance-funded fashionable readers, so that’s what I got. Unfortunately readers didn’t help me see the words on the screen at church.

The worst of it for a long time was just that words on screens and signs were a little blurry. Annoying, yes; life-stopping, no.

Over the past year the words were getting blurrier. But the deal-breaker for me came by way of my camera. I couldn’t clearly see through the viewfinder any more. I was depending on the auto-focus and hoping for the best. I wouldn’t know for sure how photos turned out until I dumped them onto the computer. {And all the old film cameras are saying, “Cry me a river!”}

My photographs were suffering. The banana-gun photos were the last straw.

So I made an appointment, and whaddaya know, I have astigmatism. This was not a complete shock, since my baby brother was diagnosed with astigmatism at a young age and apparently it is hereditary and can grow worse over time.

When I went back to the Costco to pick up my {extremely cute & discounted Betsey Johnson gingham} spectacles, I was truly skeptical that they would help.

I was shocked when I put them on. I could see! I could clearly read the Pharmacy sign from across the store. I could see colors I didn’t know existed in the confines of the warehouse. I could tell you the eye color of the checkout girl in lane four! {That last one is so not true.}

I honestly had no idea how bad my eyesight was until it was corrected. I really had gotten used to the blurriness, and until it affected something that I loved dearly I wasn’t in a massive hurry to fix it.

{This is a serious face to let you know that some spiritual application is coming up. Hopefully you’ll thank me later!}

As I was walking the dog later that day, pondering the amazing colors of the trees and the grass and the sky, I became painfully aware of my need for fresh, clear vision from the Lord. I can so easily allow my prayer life and my time with him to grow stagnant and become a lower priority in my life. And when that happens, my vision of Him gets blurry. God goes out of focus, and I just get used to it. And I can keep on this way until some aspect of my life becomes affected by my blurry vision. Maybe it’s the relationship I have with my husband, or with my children. Maybe I am falling out of touch with dear friends or I am overwhelmed at home or work.

I know an issue for me has been just doing things the way I always do them; day in and day out kind of taking things as they come without asking God to set the agenda for my day. And in living this way I often find myself saying “yes” to the wrong things and completely missing out on opportunities God has for me.

I mentioned before that I am working with a life coach; Chris Mattix is a longtime friend and now personal coach. She has been like my new pair of glasses. God is using her in my life to help me see things that I have been missing and she is guiding me to set my priorities and really focus in on God and his plan for my life.

The first thing we tackled was my daily quiet time. For too long it had been something I did a few times a week, and half-heartedly lots of times, if I am being honest. Chris has also helped me to be deliberate about naming my values and passions, and using those as a filter for decision-making. This filter has already been key in helping me eliminate activities that will not be fruit-bearing so that I have room in my life for activities and opportunities that will bear fruit for God’s kingdom and for my family.

I won’t beat the “fresh vision” metaphor to death, but I do want you to encourage you to spend some time with God today. Ask Him to give you fresh vision for this new year. Look for things in your life that are holding you back from the life God has planned for you, things that you have gotten used to so that you really don’t notice them anymore.

I can already see new doors that God is opening up for me this year; new adventures and projects that would not be possible if I were still walking around with a blurred vision of him. I am so thankful to God for my new physical vision and for the new, sharp, spiritual vision He is giving me.

Y’all have a good night!

I love how Sam is able to sit and work for so long on a little project. He gets so into the building, and he hates to stop in the middle.

And if you have been around Sam at all lately, then you know that he is a leeetle bit obsessed with Transformers.

Tim and I had purchased a couple of the smaller Kre-o sets a while back, and he just sailed right through them. He used his Christmas money to buy this larger set and he has been playing with it every day since. He comes right in from school and heads for the box.

It’s so neat to step back and remember the little boy who was just learning to play with blocks, and then Duplos {putting as many into his mouth as he stacked} and then his first experience with Legos when he needed help for every step. Now he pulls out the instruction book and works his way through, just asking for occasional assistance to find a particular piece or to separate two of those pesky flat pieces.

I feel like I use the word bittersweet so much that it has begun to lose all meaning. But there really is no better word for where we are with Sam. He has lost all traces of my little baby, but he is growing into the neatest boy. I still have those days where I look at him and wonder when his mom is going to show up to claim him. I never imagined that Tim and I would be so blessed to have a child like Sam.

Love you Bud!

But the real story of today was the hike we took at Cunningham Falls. Both families set out for a mile hike up part of a mountain and then back down. I expected that Tim and I would take turns carrying Charlotte, since she can tend to tire out and she asks to be carried a lot when we are out and about. But aside from a couple of minutes on Tim’s back, she walked the whole way! Certainly her determination was helped by wanting to keep up with Sam and the three girls we were with. But still. Tim and I kept looking at her, and I know he was thinking the same thing I was; that our little BG was doing great! Charlotte, with her wonky heart, whose life is being sustained, in part, by a tiny piece of Gore-Tex, hiked herself a little mile today.

Last  night we sang Come Thou Fount at our small group meeting, and I think a line from that sums up our journey with Charlotte so well:
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.

I mentioned in a previous post about a Bible reading plan that I was using. I meant to repost that before the first, but it’s not to late if you want to start today. This is not a “read-the-Bible-through” plan, but a plan centered on meditating on God’s word. Here is the plan, and each month has catch-up days built in, so no worries on being four days behind!

I haven’t mentioned Duke in a while; he is 11 months old now, and he weighs ten pounds. He probably won’t get too much bigger, thank goodness. He and the kids are finally getting good at playing with each other now that he has passed the phase where he only wants to bite and chew. Sam is taking on more responsibility with Duke now, like feeding him and going on more walks with us. Duke and I have been taking training/obedience classes, and I have seen such a big difference in his behavior. I think we have a great little dog on our hands!

The first day back at school was great for both kids. Sam had a bit of a meltdown this morning when he discovered I had made him a cheese sandwich for lunch today, but otherwise the morning has been uneventful. Charlotte is finishing up her breakfast right now and I am finishing up this blog post. I hope you all have a lovely day, and I hope that you stay warm, wherever you are.

Blessings to you!

Tomorrow the kids go back to school, and Tim and I go back to work. We had lots of fun and rest on this break. We got to spend some good time with lots of our family and friends. We spent Christmas in SC with family where I got to see these girls and their sweet babies. And of course we got to see all the Metcalfs and Listers and my family that we don’t see nearly enough.

We came back to Maryland after Christmas and we spent the week with Regular Nana and Papa. We had such a nice visit and the kids got lots of play and reading time in with Touseys. We drove into DC one evening to see the National Tree and the tree out from of the Capitol followed by a trip to Krispy Kreme. It was really a dream come true for me!
 

To wrap up the holiday we hosted the first-annual New Year’s Day soup party at the Tousey’s. Our mentor couple from Raleigh hosted a soup party each year on January first, and it was always one of our favorite gatherings. Our first go was a big hit; we served three kinds of soups with fixings, bread and chips, and then our guests brought leftover Christmas goodies to share. We had a great time, and it was the perfect way to end vacation.

So tomorrow we are back to our normal routine. We have some family goals for the year that I am looking forward to, and one of my personal goals is to blog more, so plan on stopping by a little more this year.

I hope your week is off to a good start!