Category: Cooking

Timing, Apparently It’s Important

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In case my post about cleaning the bathroom wasn’t clue enough (check it out here), timing is kind of import to me. This is actually something I’m just starting to realize, specifically since I’ve started writing this blog. Perhaps it is because I’m taking more time to reflect on my day, my comings and goings, interactions or lack there of, etc., and trying to see where and how God fits into it all. I think that it has been an excellent exercise.

I was recently making some sugar cookies from a recipe that a friend gave me. She made these amazing, and I truly do mean amazing, bunny rabbit sugar cookies for Easter. They were decorated and thick, just like you would buy in a specialty bakery. She even individually wrapped them. So cute, I wish I had a picture to show you.

Anyway, she graciously let me have her recipe as well as the icing recipe. She included some of her tips and tricks for making these cookies. One of them has completely revolutionized how I make sugar cookies.

I should preface this with some information about sugar cookies for those of you who don’t make them or haven’t made them before. They can be hugely labor intensive. After mixing the dough, you have to let it chill for at least an hour, usually more depending on how big a batch you’ve gotten yourself into. Most cookies you can mix, plop on a cookie sheet and a few minutes later be dunking some hot but deliciously gooey cookies into your cup of milk. Not sugar cookies. Once the dough has chilled, you have to roll it out in sections with lots of flour sprinkled everywhere to keep your rolling pin from sticking. Then you cut out your cookie shapes with your cookie cutter, ball up the left overs, and roll it out again. Repeat until all your dough is gone.

Now you can cook them. Unfortunately for me, when I say “cook” them I actually mean burn 80% of them. But, I think I’ve figured out the trick to my oven which I will explain in a minute.

Pre-rolled sugar cookie dough ready to be chilled
Pre-rolled sugar cookie dough ready to be chilled

Ok, so that’s the sugar cookie tutorial. Now, how did my friend revolutionize my sugar cookie experience? It’s all about the timing. She suggests that instead of chilling the dough in a big ball, I should go immediately from mixing to rolling, but between two pieces of wax paper. No major flour mess that envelops the whole kitchen. Now, you can chill the dough pre-rolled out. Once it is chilled, pull it out one sheet at a time, cut and re-roll between the wax paper. Amazing!

Doesn’t sound super amazing to you? Sounds like all I did was change the timing of one step, not a huge deal. But it is, it so is, at least for me. Not having to roll out the dough after chilling has always felt like so much work and effort. I can pinpoint this step as the one that keeps me from making sugar cookies most of the time. However, rolling out the dough immediately after mixing is much less intimidating, and the following steps feel like I’m going downhill instead of up. It’s all about the timing.

I am starting to understand that the timing of when I accomplish things matters almost as much as how I accomplish them. I am more productive when it comes to housework in the morning than in the afternoon. I am also much more willing to run errands and be out and about in the morning. Ask me to go shopping with the kids after naps and you may as well be asking me to pick up after the dog. I’ll do it, because I know I have to, but I won’t be overly excited about it either. But, I am more creative in the afternoon and evening. As I write this post it’s 3pm in the afternoon and I’m 600 words in after only 20 minutes. I’ve been starting to pick up my guitar again and I’m finding that I enjoy playing it more in the afternoons and evenings.

Something I’ve noticed in my musings about timing and how I choose to spend my time is that I don’t have a steady time for God. I pray throughout the day, but I struggle with carving out a time for God. Our parish has started a prayer ministry and gives a group of us monthly prayers to pray for our parish. When I first started, I did such a good job, but after a few months I’ve fizzled out and I am struggling to get back into the habit.

In our homily at Mass today, our priest talked about how important it is to “waste time with God.” This phrase struck me. Wasting time, what do I waste time on? Who do I waste time with? Wasting time isn’t always a bad thing. When Ben and I were dating, we wasted so much time together while we got to know each other. We should have been studying for tests or doing homework (we met in college), but instead we were wasting time going for walks, eating ice cream, and growing in our relationship. We all know that there are lots of ways to waste time that are not as promising. Wasting time watching TV when there is work to be done, wasting time on our phone when we could be interacting with our children or other people, wasting time on side projects or hobbies while neglecting our responsibilities that should take priority.

When our priest talked about wasting time with God, he was talking about spending quality time with God, getting to know Him, allowing Him to help us get to know ourselves. Spending time in prayer, adoration, wonder, thanks, sorrow, despair, hope, anticipation, pick an emotion and spend time with it and God.

If timing is something that appears to be part of my subconscious make-up, I need to seriously consider how to better incorporate God into my timing routines.

Salt Cravings

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Do you ever have one of those days where you need salt. Everything salty sounds delicious and you find yourself fantasizing about french fries, potato chips, pretzels, or anything with enough salty goodness  to satisfy the craving. And no, this doesn’t just happen when I’m pregnant. I’m sure you’ve all had at least one day like this. Our bodies need salt. It is one of the components necessary to help water move through our systems. Our bodies do not function properly when we do not have enough salt.

Everything in life needs a little salt. Have you ever noticed on pretty much any cooking show that has a judge, someone is always critiqued for not using enough salt. Just the other day I heard a judge say “If you had just put a few more grains of salt, then the flavors would have really popped.” Even desserts need to have some salt.

There was one time, I was in high school, that I was making a new cookie recipe. I believed that the recipe, in my fairly inexperienced baking hands, called for too much salt. These were supposed to be sweet cookies after all. So I left the salt out. I think that we all know how those cookies tasted. Lifeless.

It is interesting, Jesus told his followers to be the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). He didn’t say to be the yeast, to be the flour, or to be the water – all other fundamental ingredients. What makes salt different is it’s ability to add flavor. Flour, yeast and water are all basic components to make bread. You don’t technically need salt to make bread, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you like to eat cardboard. Maybe you do.

I definitely don’t like cardboard. I like flavor in my food and my life. I like to think that Jesus did too. After all, he did hang out with some pretty “flavorful” people for the time (tax collectors, women, non-Jews, lepers, to name a few) and he certainly spiced up the lives of his followers. Jesus asks us to do the same. We are supposed to spice things up. How? By being fully alive.

To be fully alive, we have to know who we are. We are children of the most high God, the author of all creation. We cannot be fully alive without recognizing that we are not the source of our existence. How can a building stand when it’s foundation is cracked? The basis of our “saltiness” comes from this primary fact of our being.

If you are ever feeling like you are losing touch with your “saltiness” (aka your ability to connect with Jesus and therefore your ability to see the world as he would want you), take some time to think about your encounters with Jesus. Pope Francis just said ““He never forgers, but we forget the encounter with Christ. And this would be a good assignment to do at home, to consider: ‘When have I really felt that the Lord was close to me? When have I felt the need to change my life, or to become better, or to forgive someone? When have I felt the Lord asking something of me? When have I encountered the Lord?’ Because our faith is an encounter with Jesus. This is the foundation of our faith: I have encountered Jesus.” (see more at http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-our-faith-is-an-encounter-with-jesus)

Conquering Fears – Halibut Style

Published on by Kate1 Comment

I have a confession – I am scared of fish. Not happy alive fish swimming in a river or cute little fish in aquariums. No, I mean the fish at the store that is staring at you with those lifeless eyes or the big bags of frozen shrimp. The fish on ice, those are the fish that make me walk quickly through the supermarket (here on base, we call it the commissary) and wrinkle my nose at the smell. So, I ask you, do you think I would enjoy cooking fish? Fairly obviously, you probably can guess the answer is no.

I was not raised eating fish. We didn’t even have fish sticks, which probably don’t even have all that much fish in them. My mom doesn’t really like fish, though she is trying. But fish wasn’t in her cooking wheelhouse while we were growing up, which means it isn’t in mine. At all. I was just telling Ben that I don’t even know how to tell when a fish is cooked, much less how to cook one.

Ben likes fish. When he is flying on the road, he spends a lot of time in the Pacific. He is always telling me about the sushi he had here, the tuna sliders he had there, and all sorts of things that I can’t imagine eating, let alone trying to cook. When I told him about not knowing when a fish is cooked, he laughed. He said it didn’t matter too much since you can eat most fish raw so if it’s a little under, no big deal. What?!? If I had any hopes of raising the courage to attempt cooking some fish, there it went, swimming away with the thought of “who cares if it’s a little raw.”

But, and there’s always a but, fish is so good for you! We are supposed to eat fish something like 2 or 3 times a week! That’s a lot of fish. A lot. Sometimes it’s hard to do things that are good for us when we don’t want to do them. Depending on the task, it could appear impossible. These challenges can arise anywhere in our lives. For a lot of people, myself included, taking the time to work out is hard. It’s something we all should do, but we find other things to do instead or make excuses about why we don’t have the time. Our bodies can suffer because of our lack of discipline in this area.

Another common area that gets pushed into the back corner of our life is prayer and church. What better time to do some shopping than on Sunday morning when everyone else is a church, right? Maybe not so much. At least based on what God asks of us, to keep holy the Sabbath. It’s interesting, whenever I talk to someone about church and they aren’t presently going, they are quick to come up with reasons why they are not attending. It’s as if there is some part of them that is saying, “Yes you have all these reasons why not to go, but you should probably figure out a way anyway.”

This is the voice in my head when it comes to fish. So, begrudgingly, and while grumbling under my breath, I headed to a grocery store that Ben says has quality fresh fish. I went to one of my trusted recipe websites, http://thepioneerwoman.com/. Everything she makes is simple, a bit rustic, and I have been able to execute well. So, I found this recipe for fresh halibut: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/10/bronzed-sea-bass-with-lemon-shallot-butter/. Technically, her recipe is for a piece of sea bass but she claimed that it would work with halibut too. I followed the directions and I’m pretty sure, though I guess there’s no way to know since Ben was gone at the time, if I actually cooked it all the way. And even if the fish wasn’t exactly perfect, smothering anything in a lemon butter sauce (I didn’t have shallots so I just left them out) has to be edible at least. The kids and I ate it – and I didn’t explode, implode or otherwise suffer injury. The kids didn’t either – John even asked for seconds! Crazy, if you ask me. Crazy good.

I’m excited to make this recipe again when Ben is home. I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence – I’m excited to cook fish. Me! The person who at the start admitted to being terrified of the thought. That’s how these things happen. We work up the courage to try something, even just once. We find a trusted guide, stay the course and relish the results. I can and should apply this lesson to other areas of my life – like getting proper exercise. I’m a work in progress, check back with me in a few months. Maybe others can glean some wisdom from my fish-scapades, maybe even gather the course to try church again, even just once.