Of prayer journals, washing produce, baking potatoes, & more

A PERSONAL PRAYER JOURNAL:

People of all faiths will benefit from being reminded of how the grace of G-d has given us so many blessings. And it is always nice to have a prayerbook that reminds us of whom we want to pray for & what we want to say, as it is overwhelming without one to remember every person we have offered to pray for, every desire we have for our country, our extended families, & our friends. Evangelical Christians have a solution: they keep prayer journals. A journal starts with a list of what they are thankful for. They update this as new blessings occur, & look it over when they are feeling down or on Thanksgiving Day. The other list they keep is one of personal petitions. Again, they keep adding to it, & they look at it every day to be reminded of what to pray for (of course, with many desires, they pray for only a portion on any given day.) When they need to see a miracle, they review this list & see how many prayers G-d has answered. They add to their thanksgiving list those prayers that were answered with blessings. I brought this idea up to an Orthodox Jew in my family, to see what she thought of expressing it to Jews as well as to Christians, and the idea excited her & she felt very favorable towards it.

HOW I WASH VEGETABLES & FRUITS:

You know, I’m sure, that before you cut an avocado, a melon, an orange, or any other fruit or vegetable that you aren’t going to peel (such as is my habit, potatoes), you need to wash it thoroughly to remove both soil & any pesticides that were used in growing it. (If you were not to, you’d be moving pathogens from the peel to the inside when you cut the produce.) This is my method. I fill a dishpan with a tad of dishwashing liquid & lots of warm water. I immerse the produce & swish it around. Then I toss out all the water, & repeat the process twice, but without using any soap the 2nd & 3rd time. Finally, I dry off the produce with a tea towel.

BAKING GREAT POTATOES:

Before I set the oven at 350 or 400 degrees for some other purpose, I begin to prepare baked potatoes. As anyone else would do, I wash them & use a fork to poke them so that they will not burst in the oven. Then I place them ON THE FLOOR of the oven. I bake them for an hour at 400 degrees or 90 minutes at 350 degrees (I may have to keep the oven on after removing the other dish I’ve prepared .) The result? Wonderfully soft inner potatoes with crispy skins. Wow!

A SPECIAL TABLE PLACE-SETTING FOR A SPECIAL PERSON:

Beverly Nye, a homemaker who has written 3 books explaining how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (pejoratively called “Mormons”) take care of their families, suggests that a special china plate, unique among your possessions, be placed where a particular member of your family will be sitting. Such a person may be having a birthday that day (if you have twins or triplets, you’d better purchase multiple special-china plates!), have done something special that day such as being on the team that won a soccer game, OR have had a particularly bad day & could use some cheering up.

THE MANY USES OF A COMPUTER-GENERATED GROCERY LIST:

Before I go grocery-shopping (which I do on a monthly basis, except for picking up the odd produce – in this way, I avoid going over my budget), I use my computer to come up with a grocery list that I set forth like the example just below. As I shop, I fill in the prices that I don’t know. Then, when I come home, I post the finished list until the next time that I am to prepare a list, so that I can fill in more prices. I also:

(1) Enter the prices into a “price book,” so that I can see how much the various stores are charging, & I note whether the price is a sale price, a loss-leader, or a regular price,
(2) Post a new to-buy list, so that during the ensuing month, I can add items that I want to purchase when I go shopping the next month, &
(3) In the ensuing month, I delete items for the previous month that I have enough of on hand.

Grocery Shopping – Date: October 1, 2004 Store: Big Apple

There follows a table, which I cannot reproduce in this blog. Imagine that each set of entries runs horizontally across a row in the table.

Item
Notes
Amount
Price Each
Total Price





Black beans

2 pounds




Red kidney beans

1 pound




Scallions

Bunch
0.49





Hope that this has proven helpful to you!

RECIPE OF THE WEEK:

Here’s a recipe that will make your family feel cozy & warm as the leaves fall, that’s a good change from saturated fats (& trans-fatty acids) that you don’t want to be feeding them every day:

Yummy Vegetarian Chili

This recipe is loosely based on one from the Physicians’s Committee for Responsible Medicine.

½ c boiling water
½ c textured vegetable protein
2 T canola oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 bell peppers (red if you can afford them – they are more nutritious than the green ones)
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 of your frozen home-cooked-in-the-oven containers of beans (thawed – use 2 types – it’s nice if one type is pinto or kidney beans) – this is 3-1/2 c or 2 cans of beans if you don't have the home-cooked ones on hand.
2 cups frozen corn, thawed
1 can of tomato sauce (15 oz) or 2 c of your home-made tomato sauce
1 tsp chili powder
1 heaping tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
¾ tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp cayenne

Put the textured vegetable protein in a small bowl & pour the boiling water over it. Let stand while you sauté over medium heat in a Dutch oven (boy! Do I enjoy my Dutch oven!) the onion, peppers, and garlic in the oil till soft, stirring occasionally. Add the remaining ingredients & stir thoroughly. Bring to a boil. Then turn the heat down to low & cover the pot. Cook for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Serve to 4 people with hearty appetites – cornbread is a nice, but not necessary, accompliament. You’ll get kudos.