Jesus Directed To Prepare The Passover

Have you ever celebrated Pesach or Passover as Jesus did with His apostles for The Last Super?

Pictured here are samples of the Seder Plates used for the Passover dinner. Our church and several other churches in our area celebrate the seder meal each year and several newspaper articles have been written about it in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News. Has this Jewish celebration been adopted by your church, I wonder? If you are Jewish, I’d love to hear about your memories or what you look forward to each year during Passover.

Visit Amy at The 160 Acre Woods for more Word-Filled Wednesday Participants.

Please Advise :-)

This Works For Me Wednesday Backwards Edition came at just the perfect time because I happen to need advise on several issues.  Please help me out and thanks for all your comments.

• Which blog reader do you prefer and why?  (I’ve been using and loving WordPress Blog Surfer, but it only works for WordPress blogs.)
• What is your favorite, easy to make/serve dessert for your family?  I often serve ice cream as it’s real easy, tasty and in hot Southern California it also cools us down, but I’d love your ideas or recipes for some more variety.
• Our son is doing a poll for school and would like me to ask which presidential candidate do you DISLIKE the most and why?
• Life is getting outrageously expensive.  The price of everything is going up except for paychecks.  What are your best ways of saving money and stretching your shrinking dollar?
• It’s time to change cell phones, so which company are you happy with?  Which plan gets the most minutes for the least amount of money?
• Can you recommend digital scrapbooking sites?

For more participants, be sure to visit Rocks In My Dryer.

Don’t miss my other Works For Me Wednesday posts on my Household Tips page and Organizing Tips page.

Inhumane Conditions In The Slaughterhouse Since 1993?? They Told Us California Cows Were Happy Cows!!

With this week-end’s meat recall, 143 million pounds of beef, the largest recall in history, comes an even more disturbing possibility. A video has surfaced that shows inhumane conditions may have occurred since 1993. That’s 15 years!! Did the government do anything to safeguard that consumers eat healthy food? Did the greedy big business slaughterhouse have the least thought about the public school children who would eat tainted meat? Are California cows happy cows as the advertising slogan claims? You decide.

Check out Tad Cronn’s article and look at the video he posted.

Fast, Easy Valentine Hearts For Breakfast or Anytime

This Valentine’s Day falls on a weekday so a special breakfast for your family might seem impossible, but not if you follow these quick and easy tips. Armed with my heart shaped cookie cutters of varying sizes I can show my heartfelt sentiments with morning canapes which are some of the easiest and fastest things you can possibly make.

These ideas can also be easily adapted into sandwiches for the lunch boxes (children LOVE them) or appetizers for your romantic dinner for two or even include all your children to celebrate your family’s love.

Here’s just a sampling of the variations you can make in little more time than it takes for your toaster to pop up.

Cut your favorite brand of store-bought waffles, English muffins or sliced bread with your heart-shaped cookie cutters. Toast, and add your favorite savory or sweet toppings. If your topping is not spreadable, use your cookie cutters again!

• Sweet:
• Jelly/Jam especially red ones to keep with the Valentine theme such as strawberry, cherry, or plum;
• Sugar and cinnamon;
• Lemon curd;
• Peanut butter or peanut butter and jelly;
• Butter;
• Apple sauce or apple butter;
• Cream cheese;
• Whipped cream and red sugar sprinkles;
• Nuttela (chocolate and hazelnut spread);
• Or to be totally decadent, an ice cream Sunday with a heart waffle or two on the side.

• Savory:
• Pate or braunschweiger;
• Canadian bacon;
• Ham;
• Shredded or sliced cheese; (shredded will melt faster in your toaster over)
• Minced sun-dried tomatoes;
• Turkey;
• Pastrami or any other deli meats;
• Egg (such as scrambled or over easy, etc.)
• Roasted bell peppers (they come right out of a jar these days);
• Herb cheese spread such as Rondele or Alouette;
• Lox (smoked salmon);
• Marinated mushrooms;
• Marinated artichoke hearts.

I’m sure I missed lots of great toppings, so let us know your great ideas too.

And for the scraps left over from those heart cutouts, some very lucky dogs will love you, or you can save them for your next turkey stuffing.

Lovely Valentine Dessert Recipe

I was visiting some of my commenters’ blogs and I came across this lovely heart-shaped Valentine dessert recipe posted by Melanie at Monday Through Sunday.

The picture looks good enough to eat and Melanie says it’s real simple to make, so if you’re in need of just that this Valentine’s Day, go take a look at the recipe.

Do you have any simple but special recipes fit for your Valentine?

Growing Blog, Top Post And Blog Forecast For 2008

I’m amazed and also quite pleased to see that I continue to make the Growing Blog list on WordPress despite the exponential factor which should make it progressively more difficult to be on this list.

To remain a growing blog, you not only have to grow, but you have to outdo your own growing rate and the rate of others each time, and I’ve started the new year with a bang not only being one of the WordPress Growing Blogs, but also having one of the Top Posts on WordPress.

At last count my post Organizing Household Resources In An Address Book was the 99th Top Post on WordPress out of more than 2 million blogs and an unknown bazillion posts.

I’ve said it before, but I have to say it again that I thank my readers.  I’m so glad that you find my blog to be interesting and useful.  I’m so glad when I look at my statistics and see that you came to my site from a link which was e-mailed to you or when I read my own e-mail and there’s a note from you telling me that you are putting me on your reader so you won’t miss a post.

As you saw with yesterday’s post, I don’t like to make New Year Resolutions because so few people can keep them and if I’m going to have a resolution or a goal, why wait for January 1, but here are just a few of the directions I see my blog going in the coming months.  I have other plans too that I’ll let you know about as the year unfolds.

If you’ve made the resolution to be organized, this blog is quickly becoming the place to find easy tips and solutions.  I’ve even created pages at the top of this blog for Household Tips and for Organizing so that you can easily find my posts at any time.  To help you with that there are also a search feature and a calendar in the sidebar.

I’ve noticed that you are also especially interested in my posts on healthy eating and cookies (not so healthy but yummy) as well as other recipes.  So I’ll give you a bit more in these areas too in the coming months.

I’ll continue to post about religion, God and my opinions on the topic.  The Lenten season is approaching quickly.  For the past two years I have used the book “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren to prepare for Easter by reading his book and reflecting on his 40-day spiritual journey.  I found different insights each year as I have grown and changed, and for 2008 I hope you’ll join me on-line.  I highly recommend this book which according to Publishers Weekly has become “the bestselling nonfiction hardback book in history.”  So come find out why with me and my other readers.  If you don’t already own it, you can check it out from your local library when the time comes, or you can purchase it.

Today and anytime, feel free to leave me comments.  Comments help us get to know each other and to build a community.

In the meantime, thanks a million to all of you for reading my blog, and I wish you and your loved ones a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2008!!!

USDA Approved Our Eggs

The United States Department of Agriculture agent approved the eggs I bought just moments before I picked them up. You see pictured here the USDA tag. It was a hot topic of conversation at my husband’s work, and in the decades we’ve been alive, neither of us has ever come across one of these before, nor have any of the people we spoke with. It was so unusual, in fact, that the customers at the store were all looking at the tag suspiciously and refusing to take these eggs. My husband and I grabbed them all the faster. I have no idea what it is the USDA inspects when the agents are looking at eggs, but obviously these passed the test and have the initialed tag and the #5 scribble on the carton itself to prove it. Besides, I thought it would be an interesting tidbit to share with all of my blog readers. Have you ever bought anything sampled by a USDA agent? The USDA knows eggs, because these eggs were very good indeed!

WFMW — 10 Minutes Flat

If you came here looking for household tips or Christmas tips, ideas or resources, just click on those pages, and for more of this week’s WFMW go see Shannon.

Well Shannon, at Rocks in My Dryer has given us a theme this week and she wants recipes for Works For Me Wednesday. Here’s the setup: It’s 5:30 p.m., we’re tired, we have a headache from having barely survived the worst day of our life and of course our cook is Missing In Action and we’re too poor for takeout. We don’t have any leftovers in the fridge or anything in the freezer that we can just zap because, you know, it’s the worst day from hell and we didn’t even think ahead to use our Crockpot, so what is going to work for me? And you?

Here’s four ideas:

1. Refer to my own blog for my Tomato Chicken Salad Recipe which I make in 10 minutes flat! Round it out with a cheese platter and fruit (no cooking there either, just pull it out of the fridge and slap it on a tray) and you still have a gourmet French meal! Now that works for me!

2. Grab my very best cookbook and look up the section “Dinners in half an hour”. What cookbook would that be, you ask? Dinners in half an hour is in The French Chef Cookbook. Well any cookbook by Julia Child will work too. Julia has the very best cookbooks because she not only tells us how to cook the recipes, but also tells us what NOT to do. With Julia by my side it wouldn’t matter if my brain were turned off, I know I don’t have to be concerned about anything because she will have tested every step right down to the last grain of salt. I could cook a recipe for the very first time and even serve it to a stereotypical mother-in-law from hell and not have one iota of concern. Now that works for me too;

3. Grab a Rachel Ray cookbook, because she too makes a complete meal in half an hour;

4. Grab one of Chef Emeril Lagasse’s children’s cookbooks because everything in there is super easy, super fast and super tasty. You can see my complete review of his series of children’s cookbooks right here on my Cooking For Children post.

Feel free to leave a comment even if it’s just to say “hi”.
Happy Wednesday, Everybody!!

Reader Asks Where To Purchase Quality Foods Online

As my regular readers know, healthy and quality foods are important to our family. One of my readers has asked if I know of quality food sources online, and yes, I do know a few, but I wonder if the rest of my readers know of any others.

So please help us out by commenting. Here is Leo’s complete question posted in response to yesterday’s Wow! Every Cookie Imaginable!:

wow…thats all I can say…wow! I love this blog!!!!
Do you by chance, know of any quality online food services? I am starting to order all my food online because of various reasons. (Health being one of them) So far I have found 2 services, Fresh Dining (an LA company) and Celebrity Foods, but you have to call them so they can talk to you about your need. I would really like any suggestions that you may have, so I can widen my list of quality places online where I can order healthy food from.
Thank you and have a great night or day…depending on when you read this. LOL!!!!

Nov 30, 1:33 AM — [ Edit | Delete | Approve | Spam ] — View post “WOW! Every Cookie Imaginable!”

Leo, here’s the sources I can personally vouch for. (Click on the links.)

1. Whole Foods Market — They are headquartered in Texas and have regular stores throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. While they do deliver, their delivery policy however varies by store so you need to check with your local stores. Whole Foods carries a wide variety of foods, cleaners and body products.

2. Country Sun Natural Foods is a small, very friendly store in Palo Alto, Calif. Their online store carries groceries, organic wine, vitamins, herbs and body care products. They have monthly sales and they provide senior discounts. If you don’t see what you want, but they carry that item in the brick and mortar store, they will usually add it online just for you. If they don’t carry it, they will often special order it or at least point you in the right direction. Yes, they really are that friendly. You can see what I said about them in the post Flavor and Flowers at Farmer’s Market. Your previous shopping carts will be remembered for 60 days for faster reordering too. They also publish Taste For Life Magazine which is available instore and shipped with every order.

3. Infinity Goods — Yes, that’s us! We are an online Amazon Affiliate store. Amazon now has a grocery store. We have requested more health foods and quality foods for our affiliate store at infinitygoods.com. For now we carry products in our gourmet foods section like Alaska wild salmon, Omaha Steaks (and other Omaha foods), maple syrup, stevia and even whole black winter truffles direct from France, and much more. We will start carrying more foods as Amazon makes it available. If you want a specific food which Amazon carries, but we do not have listed, we will add it to our products for you, just let us know. When you shop at Infinity Goods, you use the same Amazon shopping cart, products come to you directly from Amazon and we have the same Amazon return policy. So be sure to shop with us whenever a product attracts your eye. You’ll be helping me and my small family.

4. Fabrique Delices — It is a French charcuterie or delicatessen. It’s not a one-stop shopping since they only provide deli products, but they are excellent. They serve the Pope and the White House, but remain a good value for the quality. I also mentioned them in my Farmer’s Market post, along with a couple of small family businesses with online stores, Prevedelli Farms and Bolani and Sauce.

Dear Readers, if you can, please don’t forget to post your own suggestions for Leo and all of us. It will be greatly useful to all who visit here. In advance, I thank all of you.

Thursday Thirteen #6 — My Interests

I am sharing with you 13 topics which interest me and are important to me. They are in no particular order, because most of these would all tie with each other. These are topics
you see and which will recur on my blog. To see more participants in this carnival or for
details on how to join, visit Thursday Thirteen.

1. Computers/Internet/Blogs/Technology/Science
These sort of overlap in many ways. I’m forward thinking and I’ve been using computers
since before my teen years, back in the days when people were saying it was a waste of
time, and it wouldn’t last. Wait, aren’t a lot of people still saying that? Well 30+
years later, I’m still interested. I remember asking for a calculator as a Christmas gift
when I was in Kindergarten. The people selling them were flabbergasted that a child would want one and thought no child would ever need one. This “pocket” calculator, the smallest on the market at the time, was about the size of a small paperback!

2. Fine Art
I was an art history minor and an art minor. I seriously considered switching it to my
major, and often wonder if I didn’t make a mistake. I draw, paint, photograph, make
ceramics and do a lot of new media paintings — that’s every stroke hand-painted by me, but instead of using paint, I use computers. Museums and galleries recognize new media, but the average person out there still claims the computer makes the paintings. Not so! This would be the equivalent of saying oil paint and brushes are the artists making the artwork. Computers do not make art. Paint and brushes do not make art. The people, the artists make art, regardless of which tools they use.

3. History/Biographies/Autobiographies
As much as I like the future, I also like the past. We can learn from our past and our
past can help us understand our present. I’m very much interested in people and their
lives which is why I like history and also what leads me to the next item.

4. Psychology/Sociology
I’m interested in people and what makes them tick. I’m also interested in science, so
psychology helps me understand the individual and sociology helps me understand the groups and societies we live in. In college my sociology professor had wanted me to switch majors to either sociology (he hoped) or psychology (which he admitted was related and thought I would like too). I ended up with an additional certificate in psychology, but I never switched majors to either psychology or sociology.

5. Cross-stitching/Crafts
My grandmother taught me how to cross-stitch and I spent numerous hours watching her even before she taught me how to do it. I find it very relaxing and as I like art and to create, cross-stitching and other crafts are just related to that.

6. Reading/Writing/Journalism/News/Books
These are all intertwined. As a professional journalist, writing and reading are just my
life. I just could not live without reading. I have to learn at all times and reading is
the best way for me to do that. I have been wanting to write since early childhood. I
have attempted not to write for a living, but life was just too miserable without a pen in
my hand or a keyboard at my fingertips. I’m a published journalist, but I would love to be a published author using either my journalistic skills to write non-fiction or even writing a
novel. I’m one of the crazy participants in National Novel Writing Month. Any publishers
out there interested in my writing voice?

7. Religion/God
I believe in God and shout it from the rooftops, but won’t attempt to convert atheists as
belief needs to come from inside your heart and soul. I worked for my parish for several
years and wanted to work there until retirement, but an evil man came into our midst,
getting rid of staff and clergy, swiftly putting a financially viable parish in the red,
and destroying the work of the last 40+ years. Some will turn away from God because of
him, but the destruction he brings is not of God. Destruction can never be of God.

8. Education
I love to learn, my husband and I have both taught, and since we have a son, education is very important to us. He went to private schools for several years and while that was fine, we found something better through an excellent public school system with an independent study program. Forget all the stereotypes of homeschooling and of public school. That’s not what it is. It’s more a combination of when people had private tutors teach their children, the one-room schools and parents nurturing their own children. The program is what it is thanks to our son’s wonderful teachers, especially the founder, Resa Steindel Brown. If you want a glimpse at what it’s all about, read her fantastic book, The Call to Brilliance: A True Story to Inspire Parents and Educators. You can also read about his science teacher in my blog posts here and here.

9. Family
Family and extended family is extremely important to me. It is where we receive and give love and support. Here on Earth, not counting God in Heaven, it is the one most important thing and it just doesn’t get more basic than that.

10. Movies/Plays
I don’t watch much TV, but I love a good movie or play. While it can’t replace a good
book, it’s still a story, whether real or fictional, and I love to be entertained. I
prefer comedies, especially for movies, because I don’t know about your life, but my life
is enough of a drama as it is. I just don’t need other people’s too, especially the made-
up ones. I really like adventures too, because this way I can escape to some fabulous
world and live vicariously. I would like science fiction, but most don’t meet my quality
standards unfortunately.

11. Hiking/Walking/Swimming
I enjoy being in nature and these are the most fun forms of exercise for me. These are not boring to me. I enjoy the scenery. Running would be too fast and strenuous to enjoy the
scenery. These are also quiet and since I despise noise, anything with bouncing balls,
whistling referees or echoing gymnasiums just would not work for me.

12. Cooking/Gourmet Food/Reading Cookbooks
Yes, I read cookbooks. I actually read cookbooks more than I eat or cook. As a teen my
mom would tell me that I read cookbooks instead of eating. I also love to cook when I
don’t have a full-time job. If I’m working, then cooking is no longer a pleasure and
something that I do for the family that I love. It becomes a chore and a race to put
anything on a plate in front of starving eyes in less than half an hour from the time I run
through the front door. But when I am not working, I will use all my knowledge from
reading all these cookbooks and all my creativity and use cooking as another art-form. I
also like real food. I am against eating engineered chemicals, dyes, artificial products.
I like wild salmon, trout and other fish, I like real butter on all my foods and especially
my popcorn. And you really don’t want me to get started on cloned meat, or cloned
anything, because I’m really against that!

13.Travel
I don’t travel enough. I would love to travel 365 days a year, but that’s simply not
possible. I put roots down with a family and a house. Once upon a time I contemplated
becoming a foreign correspondent, a travel writer and even a pilot or a stewardess, just so
that I could travel, but I will just have to be satisfied with having been to Germany,
France, Switzerland, Italy, England, Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Arizona,
Nevada, Georgia, … Oops, that sounds like another Thursday Thirteen! 😉

Just click on Mister Linky to add your Thursday 13 link and see the other participants who linked here. And please don’t forget to post a comment. Thanks!

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.