"The Mediterranean Portion of the Heavenly Banqueting Table."

As many are nearing the end of more intense quarantine, I want to thank you all for participating and for the recommendations and camaraderie 😊. We may post less as life gets more crazy, but feel free to keeping posting and to tune back in for further updates and ideas as I've loved having this resource for meals and books!

As a final hurrah for this stage of quarantine, here is the recipe for my magna opus 😂 I have titled it "The Mediterranean Portion of the Heavenly Banqueting Table."

This time I used a variety of links to what people rated the BEST of each element of the meal and have included them below: 

1) I grilled chicken kabobs using this recipe (pardon the title): https://damndelicious.net/2019/08/28/greek-chicken-kabobs/ . As a first time griller, it felt like a miracle to see my little speared baby kabobs grow up in to some of the best chicken ever haha. 

2) While the chicken was marinating, I then made this Tzatziki sauce (I usually don't like it, but this was AMAZING). I used this recipe https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/homemade-tzatziki-sauce/ ----Big tip here is that you really should squeeze the extra juice out of the cucumber and I substituted chili powder for paprika and voila...it was perfect! 

3) I also made a salad: Ice berg lettuce cut up into tiny pieces, cherry tomatoes, craisins, pasteurized feta cheese, and cucumbers (also great to have a little cucumber cut up on the side or other veggies to dip in the delicious sauce). I used balsamic vinaigrette for my dressing and it was perfecto.

4) Right before serving, I heated up some pita breads in a skillet so they would be warm for dipping in the sauce.

5) Finally, I served it all with a side of humus from Aldi.

Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. It was tasty. AND....I got a handshake from Camden 😂😍5.0.

On this lovely happy note, I wish you all the best in our (hopefully) final stretch of deep quarantine. So much love to and prayers for you all!!! 

Colonial Quarantine Adventures

Happy days! We've made it safely to Yorktown due to the gracious gift of my niece who so kindly let us borrow her training potty 😂 (which spectacularly includes song and flashing light features). 

We are safely snuggled into our new quarantine quarters. 🤣We may have a little lapse in posting for a week while we visit, but feel free to keep posting great books and recipes and loveliness! See you in a bit and happy warm days! 

Happy colonial-style quarantining 🤣

Strawberry Salsa Fajitas...Oh. My. Goodness.

It's official. My husband is the bravest man alive. I wanted to do something fun and was in a big-time chopping and stirring kind've mood...so I discovered/enhanced/perfected Strawberry Salsa

Fajitas🍓🍓. Oh my, oh my. Thankfully I had tried mango salsa before so I had some sort've fruit salsa reference point to keep the decision from being a complete leap into the dark; However, it was still a rather dramatic and nerve-racking experience. And I'll admit there was some radical nervousness as we both took our first bites....

Miracle of miracles, we loved it! It's been added to my when-I-open-a-restaurant list and got a 4.8 on the taste scale and a 5 for creativity (if my husband liked scallions it would have been a 5, I'm sure of it haha).

So here it is!

Salsa:
1) About a cup of cut-into-tiny pieces strawberries...more wouldn't be bad though 😉.
2) 1 tbsp. of chopped green scallions.
3) 3 tbsps. finely chopped cilantro (use more or less depending on your love of cilantro).
4) Salt and pepper to taste (I did a few cranks of my shaker/dispensers).
5) 1/4 a 10oz can of diced tomatoes and green chilies (you can also add cut up jalapeño,s but that was off the table for my pregnant self haha).
6) 3 tbsps. lime juice (can add more if you love the flavor)

Simply cut all this up and add it all to the bowling giving it a good mix and then store in the fridge until ready to serve.

Chicken:
1) 2 tbsps. lime juice
2) 2 tbsps. olive oil
3) 2 tbsps. honey
4) Salt and pepper to taste (a few cranks on both sides of the chicken as you cook)
5) 1/2 tbsp. cilantro

Instructions:
1) Defrost chicken (I used chicken tenderloins) and cut into smaller, long strips for fajitas.
2) Mix up the lime juice, olive oil, honey, and cilantro in a bowl.
3) Drizzle a little olive oil into the bottom of a frying pan and add the chicken on medium/high heat. Add the salt and pepper to the first side of the chicken.
4) After first side is no longer pink, flip the chicken  and after you have salted and peppered this side, drizzle half the lime, honey, olive oil sauce onto the chicken. Keep stirring and flipping and adding the sauce as the chicken cooks (go until slightly browning and has reached 165 degrees and is cooked all the way through).
5) Keep chicken warm to serve with the salsa on corn tortillas.

Fajita Toppings/Additions:

1) Corn tortillas (This is a link to my favorite online instructions for heating tortillas....funny and insightful 😅:  https://www.bonappetit.com/story/how-to-warm-corn-tortillas). I heated mine in a skillet until they were just getting the little brown spots on both sides.
2) Lettuce (we did finely chopped up iceberg because it was more for the lettuce crunch).
3) Shredded pepper-jack cheese.
4) Any other toppings you might like!

Set the table, pray, and set forth on the journey of decorating and eating these delicious creations. Don't be afraid of the salsa....ladle it on with courage. It's amazing. Plus you'll feel really brave when it's all over and can then tell everyone about the bravery it took to eat one of the tastiest meals of your life 😆.

Happy strawberrying!

Flavored water experiments

To encourage myself to drink more water, I have been trying some of the “recipes” for flavored water.  Day 1 - not really an experiment, I just sliced fresh lemon 🍋  My stomach can’t handle the acid, so on to day 2. Day 2 - cucumber 🥒 and strawberries 🍓 - too many cucumber slices (I put in 5!) and could hardly taste strawberries. Day 3 - had fresh ginger, so peeled and cut a chunk in 5 pieces (put them ALL in) and threw in a handful of frozen blueberries. Yum! Even my husband was drinking it now. Kept that in fridge for 3 days and kept adding water. Day 4 - back to cucumber and strawberries. This time only 2 slices of cucumber and lots of slices strawberries 🤞🤞

Blueberry/ginger on left, strawberry/cucumber on right

The English Game: How a Series Captured Our Quarantined Hearts

The English Game

I know this isn't a book or recipe and is only mildly connected to exercise in a topical sort've way (watching the history of football aka soccer counts, right? 😁), but I just had to share about one of the best things we've watched while in quarantine: The English Game.  As a loving and kind wife who was trying to serve her sweet husband by picking a show that would particularly interest his soccer loving heart, I randomly selected this masterpiece . . . never realizing how self-serving it would be as it quickly became one of my favorite mini-series events ever. 

Why is this such a good film? While trying my absolute best not to be the worst spoiler of all time, this series encapsulates all of my favorite movie themes: sports competition, radical forgiveness, broken marriages and redemption, sacrificial and joyful living, and some good classic make-you-think ethical dilemmas. Top all this off with the beautiful sets, directing and cinematography of the Downton Abbey team (and some of the most magnificently entertaining period-piece facial hair I've ever seen 😆) and it's too good to be true. 

Unlike many movies today, this series captured my heart by actually depicting honest character growth and one of my favorite portrayals of really grappling with grief and how to face it fully without ignoring its reality or pushing it away, but also not allowing it to swallow you up. It is a rare and beautiful thing to see a true story of people who learn to let grief and hardship teach them how to love and serve and to feel deeply for others - and that is precisely what this movie does (hint/spoiler, this movie is not simply the story of soccer, but of sanctification and growth). To sum it up, the series embodies one of my favorite verses: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). Instead of letting pain or suffering control their lives, the movie paints a picture of hope in how God can use such times by allowing His comfort to enable us to comfort those  around us. It's a broken world that we live in with so much pain and hurt and sin, but, we are enabled to love, feel deeply for, and pour into others, even when we feel the brokenness most. It makes you ask yourself if that is how you view suffering. Do we see it as a chance to grow in our ability to comfort and love others?

I'm going to stop here so as not to ruin things, but for anyone thinking about how to channel loneliness, disappointment, or suffering into good and beautiful things, it's definitely worth a watch ❤ Also, it includes sports and British and Scottish accents, which certainly don't detract from the wonderfulness. Happy viewing!

P.S. I've chosen a whopper book, but a review is coming and....sneak preview, but, Strawberry Salsa Chicken Tacos....amazing. 

Muffins for the Morning or in the Afternoon or Even in the Evening and Underneath the Moon

The glorious day has arrived! I have begun work again in earnest and I'm LOVING it. I love routines and deadlines and meetings and it's terribly weird of me, but is just the truth. I am now officially Professor Woodward, Esq., though I haven't yet convinced Camden to make this his main manner of addressing me haha. Also, we are officially having a little baby boy and my goodness what an exciting adventure that will be! 

To celebrate the momentous nature of this week and the crazy business that has begun, I have baked my new favorite muffins. These little muffs were a way to get out my wiggles of excitement with some solid mixing and pouring and impatient oven-watching. (Baking was a necessity for otherwise I was going to be banished to the basement as my dancing was simply not conducive to creating a good work atmosphere). Credit for these little puffs of goodness goes to the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook (one of my favorites as my mom used it when we were little so it tastes like sweet memories).  I slightly modified the recipe (as can you!) to fit our dietary needs and taste preferences. Here it is!

Ingredients:

1) 2 cups all-purpose flour (we used King Arthur Gluten-Free flour and it worked great!)

2) 3/4 cups sugar (we did a little less because we don't like super sweet).

3) 2 1/2 tsp baking powder

4) 1/4 tsp salt

5) 2 eggs lightly beaten

6) 3/4 cup milk

7) 6 tbsp melted butter

8) These are optional and can be changed out for other fruits/nuts,  but we did about 1/2 cup craisins and 1/2 cup oatmeal as added flavor/texture

9) A tbsp of brown sugar for sprinkling lightly on top of muffins

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 375

2) Grease or line with muffin cups a 12 cup muffin tin.

3) Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl and make a little well in the center of the mixture into which to pour the wet mix in step 4.

4) In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, milk and melted butter and then pour the mix into the well created in the flour mix.

5) Stir, though it will stay lumpy. Once all is wet, add in your extra taste ingredients such as craisins and oatmeal.

6) Ladle batter evenly into the muffin cups and then sprinkle each lightly with the brown sugar.

7) Bake for 18-20 minutes or until it gets that happy golden look.

8) Cool a bit and then serve. Great as a side or snack or dessert or breakfast...whatever you might need haha. 

I only have a picture of one muffin now....as the rest were demolished by the two boys in my life, sweet Camden and Baby Yoda. But let this picture stand as a testimony to their tastiness haha.  Enjoy!

The last muffin standing

Exercise Check-in

Happy completion of week 3 of the quarantine blog! This is the picture of my barely-survived-the-frost garden haha. Here's to warmer days ahead! Feel free to post below your steps/work-out achievements for the week. My step counter was out of commission due to visiting a hospital for a check-up this week so I had to manually count, but I think I got close to 50,000 (we did more than 10,000 today as penance 😄). Looking forward to more tasty food, walking, and posting about my newest book on Covenants...soooo good. Happy Mother's Day!