120 biscuits from The $120 Food Challenge

Here is a great little biscuit recipe from the great The $120 Food Challenge.

Ingredients
500g butter
1 tin condensed milk
1 cup sugar
5 cups self-raising flour

1.  Preheat oven to 170°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
2.  Cream sugar and butter in a large bowl with electric beaters until creamy and fluffy.
3.  Add condensed milk and flour and mix in thoroughly.
4.  Add your flavourings as required.
5.  Roll teaspoonfuls of dough between damp hands into a ball and place on baking tray. Press down slightly with a fork.
6.   Bake for about 10 – 15 minutes or until golden brown. The biscuits will harden once they cool.

This recipe will yield about 120 biscuits OR...and here is the really wonderful thing...you can divide the mixture into three equal amounts, cook with one portion and wrap the other two parts with gladwrap and freeze for use at a later stage. 

This is an excellent basic biscuit mix.  Today I created three sorts of biscuits out of one portion...


Jam drops

Slightly overdone
(because you shouldn't be taking photos of one batch
while the other batch is cooking)
choc chip biscuits

Iced apricot and coconut biscuits 

Forty lovely biscuits ready for lunchboxes, morning teas and suppers this week.  And the potential to make eighty more when these run out.  I am thinking coconut and lemon, fruit and nut, plain with a glace cherry on top...  They would work well stuck together with marshmallows - this biscuit mix isn't nearly as sweet as the Marshmallow Kiss recipe - or with nutella, as suggested at the $120 Food Challenge site.

Quick, easy and delicious.

And a new take on ACTS

ACTS is another and very well known prayer schema.

Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication

It's a really helpful way to organise one's prayer life, praying one's way through that list, and it ensures that prayer doesn't degenerate into a whiny, needy shopping list.  I have used it often, although not slavishly or exclusively.

But as I listened to Tim Keller's sermon on prayer at the pool I was delighted to learn of a new way to use this schema.  He described using ACTS as a means of meditating on Scripture.  He suggests taking a short passage of Scripture and then, having read through it a handful of times, pray through it using ACTS.

The very next day I was reading Matthew chapter 22, which includes these famous verses:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.   And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

And I decided to have a go.

Adoration - what a GREAT God we have, that He is worthy to be loved with all our heart, soul and mind, and that he gives us people (neighbours) to love.  And what a great God that He gave us Jesus.
Confession - DO I love Him with all my heart, soul and mind?  And do I love my neighbour (and I started with my own family) as I love myself?  There was plenty to confess there - we were well into the long school holidays by then!  This section probably took me the longest.
Thanksgiving - for a God who forgives, for a God who invites us to be in relationship with Him and to love Him with all our heart, soul and strength, for a vast array of neighbours to love, that those I love also have big hearts to forgive me when I don't love them as well or as fully as I should.
Supplication - for a bigger heart, capacity and desire to love God with all my heart, soul and mind and to love my neighbour as myself, and for new and creative ways in which to do this.

I have had some good times of "meditating on Scripture" in the past but generally I either don't do it or when I do try, find myself floundering or distracted pretty quickly.  I found this use of ACTS profoundly helpful - I think it will be a very useful tool as I learn how to pray in God's will without distraction and am looking forward to applying it to many other passages from the Bible.

A new take on IOUS

Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain. (Psalm 119:36)
Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. (Psalm 119:18)
Unite my heart to fear your name. (Psalm 86:11)
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

I first heard about this lovely prayer, assembled directly from Scripture by John Piper, from Jean.  She suggested it as a good one to pray prior to reading the Bible.  I copied it out on the front page of my Bible and have used it almost every day before reading the Bible ever since.

I recently looked it up on John Piper's blog to find it mentioned in an article about how to pray for the pastoral staff at his church.  It turns out he uses the IOUS prayer to pray for those close to his heart. 

It is a beautiful way to pray for those we love - great prayers to pray for others and ourselves - as well as for our own times reading God's Word.

Marilynne Robinson trio

The Marilynne Robinson trio.  It sounds like a jazz ensemble!  But no.  This is a trio of three great novels.

Last year I read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.  First published in 2004, it is a letter written by Reverend John Ames to his young son.  Ames has discovered he has a heart condition that will take his life, no doubt soon and without notice, and he wants to write down all the things he wishes his young son to know - things he would have shared over time as his son grew up, had he had the opportunity to live a longer life.   And it is a wonderfully written novel.  It moved along so slowly, and yet it was a page turner.  It was oh so gentle, but not light weight by any stretch of the imagination.  Full of peace, compassion, deep love, honour, loyalty and lived out, deeply understood theology.  Beautiful holiday reading!

A thread in the story is the relationship John Ames and his family has to Robert Boughton, a fellow minister in the town of Gilead who has been Ames' friend since childhood, and his family.  In 2008 Robinson published Home, which unveiled what was happening withing the walls of the Boughton household during the days and weeks described in the pages of Gilead.

I somewhat courageously opened the first page of Home within an hour of closing the last page on Gilead.  Always a risk.  Gilead was so enjoyable - one of those books where I slowed my reading pace right down in the last twenty or so pages to prolong reaching the last page. 

But I wasn't disappointed.  Home is equally compelling, but grittier - and a much sadder story.  Where Gilead was full of hope, Home felt desolate.  But Robinson has crafted the story well.  I didn't finish the book in deep despair.  Desolate but not despairing.  Just like Gilead was slow but still a page turner.

That was last year.  This holidays I have been reading Housekeeping, Robinson's first novel, published in 1980.  Whereas I was hooked into Gilead within a page or two and Home within a handful of pages, I didn't really get into this story until about a third of the way through the book.  The thing that kept me going was her use of language.  She has the most extraordianary vocabulary and a classical turn of phrase. 

Housekeeping is a book about family life, based on the idea that the place where we find love and growth and nurturing is the family home.  But this story is about what happens when tragedy eats away at the fabric of the family home.  When there is an illusion of keeping house - but not the keeping of a home.  It's life at the edge of madness.  Life where transcience, loneliness and loss prevail.  And yet, right at the end there was a glimpse of the deep connectedness that exists within families.  Not a happy read, but a fine book none the less. 

So that's it for fiction for now.  School starts in week's time and it's back to non fiction for the next ten or so weeks.

Twisting by the pool

Today we finish our two annual weeks of Vac Swim.  Both boys had lessons this year - AT THE SAME TIME!!!  On the first day I cast around looking for families we know - and was quietly pleased (I confess) to find that I didn't recognise anyone at the pool.  Which freed me up from conversation to pack my mp3 player in the bag of stuff on day two through ten.  Half an hour to listen to sermons for nine days running. 

So I've been taking my spot on the bench each day, midway down the pool, doing a fairly good impersonation of someone watching a tennis match, as I keep an eye on two different swimming lessons at opposite ends of the pool.

And I've been listening to three wonderful sermons. 

Personal Prayer by Tim Keller. 
Hearty thanks to Ali for recommending this one.  A great sermon exhorting us to daily prayer with lots of helpful examples and ideas.  I'll probably refer to this sermon a few times down the track.

Holding Fast to the Word of God in 2010 [and 2011 and beyond!] by John Piper.
A great sermon exhorting us to daily, diligent reading of God's Word - not a slavish, duty bound reading of the Bible but meaningful, nurturing reading.  This sermon was based on a passage from Philippians (ah, how I love Philippians) and as it turns out, was delivered last year on my birthday!  If nothing else, it was worth listening to it just to hear John Piper read the whole of Philippians at the beginning.  I don't think I have ever heard it read so beautifully before.  Very moving.  But don't stop there.  The sermon is just as moving.

These two sermons are great "start of the year" sermons.  Good "rebooting" sermons.  Probably worth listening to each year at Vac Swim.  It's a good thing I don't know how to erase things from my MP3 player!!

And then finally, Sustained by Sovereign Grace.  How to Endure to the End by John Piper.
I was pointed to both of the Piper sermons late last year (thanks, my friend, who directed me to these) and this one, about trusting in the God of amazing grace during times of hardship, became especially topical as we watched the tragedy of the eastern states floods unfold.  I have written more than once about the idea of storing up on God's goodness during the good times in readiness for the hard times.  This sermon is definitely fits this category - and yet it also has words of great comfort for those in the midst of hardship.

I'm not really one for downloading sermons from the internet.  In fact this is the first time I have heard a sermon from either of these men!  But I have certainly been well fed these last two weeks.  And now I am off to listen to the Keller sermon one more time...and to see if the boys passed their swimming tests.  Day ten of twisting by the pool, in my own quiet way!

One thing is for certain...

...even if I make no other plans for 2011, this is the year that I HAVE to factor in some exercise.  I have before me a somewhat cleared slate and if I don't timetable some exercise into at least some of the spaces - and do so early on - it may never ever happen ever again.

This is not a New Year's resolution.  It is a statement of fact.

Cartoon from here



2011 - Starting it without a list!

As I reflect back on the last few years, there seems to be a definite pattern forming.  The year starts fresh with new hope, and the quiet month of January provides refreshment and restores energy.  I leap into madcap schemes somewhat rashly in this month of quiet and energy - start a blog, join Facebook, sign up to be on the Taste Test team for an edition of a cooking magazine - and also plan for the things that will fill my year.  And then life gets going a-new during February - new school year, new groups, new things to do.   Things bubble away for a few months with enthusiasm. 

And then, well, it's not that the enthusiasm runs out, but the weather gets cold, the things that were in the planning stages in committees during the first half of the year need action in the second half of the year, other things crop up, people get sick, life gets busy.  The second half of the year is the business end of the year - not a time for new schemes, but a time to get stuff done. 

And then it starts over again.

So, here we are.  The first day 2011.  I don't have any madcap schemes brewing as yet.  But there is still time.  The blog, the Facebook account and the email to the cooking magazine all happened spontaneously in mid-January, just after my birthday, so something crazy may yet happen! 

In terms of a deeper perspective on the year, I am tempted at one level to write a big list of my hopes, dreams, goals, plans and yes, New Year's resolutions and send it out into cyberspace.  I DO love a list and I DO love to plan!!  And it would be all too easy to fill every moment of every day.  Indeed I could overfill a week with ease, such are the possibilities.

But I know that I am at the threshold of the fresh, enthusiastic part of the year.  I need to remember that just four days ago I was at the very end of the business end of the year and could barely drag myself around for tiredness.

And I know that I face another year of transition, as both of our boys will be in school full time for the first time. I think that most of the thinking/work on this subject is done.  But I imagine there will be some new, strange and difficult moments to navigate. 

And my thoughts keep returning to a friend's wise, wise advice to keep a "lazy diary" - making sure we don't over-commit in the early part of the year because things will take longer than we expect, we WILL get sick at some stage in the year and we want to leave time in our lives to respond to the people and the opportunities that God gives us - things nowhere to be found in a year planner on the 1st January, hard as we might try to plan for all eventualities.

It's not that I don't feel a sense of optimism for the year to come.  I stand here looking out on 2011 with great hope.  But this year marks the beginning of a new phase with no small children at home or routine paid employment to head out to each day.  I don't want to be overcautious nor do I plan to be lazy in the true sense of the word (tempting as that big, lovely tin of T2 English Breakfast tea leaves I got for Christmas and the new list on my sidebar...oops!  there's a list!!!...of books I'd like to be reading during 2011 might be.)  At the other end of the spectrum there is the danger of over-progamming the week.  There is PLENTY I could be doing but in the end, being spread too thinly helps no-one and leaves no room to respond to the unexpected.

So, here we are - 1st January 2011.  No lists.  Well, there is a list (besides the book list.)  It's a prayer list - a list of options and possibilities to be prayed through.  And I pray that by February I'll have a clearer sense of what this year is going to look like - and if I don't then I am happy for this to take longer.

Happy New Year.

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

2010 in lists

At the beginning of 2010 I joined Facebook.  An application popped up recently that allowed you to discover which ten words you used most frequently during the year.  My top ten were...

1:  Tea 
(I have had one of those "Quote a day" calendars dedicated to tea on my fridge this year.  Couldn't help but share a few of the gems found there in, although when this list came up I did wonder about have "Tea" before "God"!)
2:  God
3:  Jesus
4:  Reading
5:  School
6:  Book
7:  Club
(Frequent references to The Calvin Club and yes Cathy, I am back on board for 2011!!  I have one bookmark at Chapter 10 and another at Chapter 12...)
8:  Bible
9:  Great
10: Happy

What then is the view of 2010 from surveying this blog?  Apart from the various posts where I signed off from blogging (not once but twice...ridiculous...just ignore it if I do that again!), here are the posts that generated the most comments this year...

1. A Difficult transition
2. Epiphany
3. God is always good
4. How I won the vegie war
5. Highlights from Raising Boys
6. Meredith - Masterchef for the month of May
7. The year of the roast - 30th March 2010

The major decision that dominated the first half of the year, parenting, reading, cooking, reflecting on God.  These posts didn't just rise to the surface because of the number of comments either.  Apart from some of the lists that I have on my sidebar, the Stat Counter suggests that these are the ones that people seem to revisit the most.

In our annual family Christmas letter we each listed our top five highlights of the year.  Mine were...

1. Attending not one but TWO symphony concerts during the year, one of which included the most perfect performance you’ll ever hear of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 – “The Emperor” – with soloist French pianist François-Frédéric Guy.
2. The family holiday on Rottnest Island. Finding two baby mice having a party in our food box one morning was funny. Sitting on the beach with [one of our sons], sheltering from the rain under beach towels was gorgeous.
3. Being a member of the “Taste Test Team” for an edition of an Australian cooking magazine – which entailed testing four recipes and writing reviews – and receiving a Kenwood hand mixer for those efforts. The Pears in Parchment were truly excellent!
4. Rediscovering the joy of reading again. Fifteen books – a mix of fiction and non-fiction - under the belt for 2010. Looking forward to another fifteen (or more) in 2011.
5. Drinking tea – with [my husband] (while he had coffee!), with friends and family, while reading the Bible in the morning – good to have the time to drink the tea hot in good company and to get to the bottom of the cup for the first time in a few years.

In lots of ways these three lists wrap the year up pretty well.  Of course there were many other things that don't rise to the surface because maybe they happen in some form every year - or they can't rise to the surface because they just aren't my stories to tell...

1. The deepening of relationships with others here on earth and with God.
2. The stuff of family life.
3. Meeting new friends and farewelling others to other parts of the world and to heaven.
4. The handful of particularly good Scripture lessons.
5. The a-HA moments during personal prayer and Bible reading.
6. The privilege of walking alongside others practically and prayerfully as they circumnavigated the year in all its joys and tragedies, that in turn shaped my own life.
7. The letters penned and received.

These lists lean mostly towards the positive and don't give audience to the harder times of the year, which, like every year, were there.  Every year will bring good times and hard times - sometimes driven by circumstance and sometimes by attitude.  I am thanking God for 2010 and praying to grow in grace - to be genuinely grateful for the good times that lay ahead and to travel the tough times that will also come in a way that honours God all through the new year ahead.

But I trust in you, LORD;

I say, “You are my God.”

My times are in your hands.

Psalm 31:14,15a

Christmas Day 2010

Merry Christmas.
May you wonder afresh at Immanuel - God with us - as we celebrate the birth of God's precious Son,
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
today.
And thank you for reading my blog this year.  I love it when you come and visit.
Love Meredith xx

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 4:5-11

Advent 2010 # 4 - An Advent Basket

One aspect of Advent is that sense of waiting, of hopeful anticipation.  And one of the things that has filled me with joyful anticipation during Advent this year is knowing that a very dear friend of mine will find out tomorrow morning that this basket, which she received at the end of November...

All wrapped up

...was from me.  I first read about the idea of Advent baskets on Molly Piper's blog and was further encouraged when Cathy picked up and ran with the idea.  And so I made one too - a basket of 25 small gifts, one to be opened each day in December, leading up to Christmas.

 

These baskets can operate along the lines of Advent calendars with daily Bible readings pointing to the birth of Christ.  My way of incorporating that aspect was to make a copy of Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus as the first gift to be unwrapped.  After that, the emphasis was on little, happy gifts - to help with the preparations for Christmas (cards, pens, ribbons), things to ease the stress of December (tea leaves, candles, lollies), a few Christmas-y things (magnets, decorations, Christmas cooking bits and pieces) and towards the end, things ready for summer holidays (lotions and potions and grown up, nice sunscreen).  The final gift was a copy of Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross, which is the Easter companion to Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus, because without Christmas there is no Easter.

What was under all the wrapping paper

The basket was delivered to my sweet friend via a long and winding road of people.  She has no idea it was from me.  So much so that when I spoke to her on the phone about a week ago she told me all about it.  I was delighted to hear her talk - it has blessed her in all the ways I hoped it would, giving a little light each day in what has otherwise been a pretty dark end to a dark year - and I was so glad that she couldn't see my face as she was speaking.  It has blessed her but it has also blessed me.  It has been fun thinking of her opening a new parcel each day, finding joy in the daily surprises, wondering where they came from and it has reminded me to keep her in my prayers.

And so tomorrow Advent becomes Christmas Day.  The waiting is over.  My friend will know who gave her the Advent basket because I wrote her a letter with the last gift.  I will get to talk to her about the joy it has given me.  And together we will rejoice.

Week three in "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus"

Advent reading

From Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. (pages 97 and 98)

People love to celebrate.  People love to break from the routine of life and celebrate.  All over the world right now lights are strung and special music is being broadcast and  trees are decorated and gifts have been lovingly purchased and lavish feasts are being prapared.  The curse over C.S. Lewis' land of Narnia was that it was always winter but never Christmas.  What monotony and tedium and bleak weariness!  Life must be punctuated with celebration.  It's a universal human impulse.  And where did this inclination come from?  God created us this way. "What is the chief end of man?" the Westminster Catechism asks.  'Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever."  Now, that is celebrating worthy of the name!

...Whether we have a silly reason or a solid reason, we will celebrate, because God made us this way.  And we who belong to Jesus have powerful reasons to celebrate.  God has come to us.  God has shown that this life is not the only life we will ever know, and that this world is not the only reality we will ever experience.  God has thrown open the gates of heaven to us through Christ his Son.  We have seen the celebration going on within those gates.  And that's where we're headed."

From Joni Eareckson Tada (page 137)

On this side of eternity, Christmas is still a promise.  Yes, the Saviour has come, and with him peace on earth, but the story is not finished.  Yes, there is peace in our hearts, but we long for peace in our world.

Every Christmas is still a "turning of the page" until Jesus returns.  Every December 25 marks another year that draws us closer to the fulfillment of the ages, that draws us closer to...home.

When we realise that Jesus is the answer to our deepest longing, even Christmas longings, each Advent brings us closer to his glorious return to earth.   When we see him as he is, King of kings and Lord of lords, that will be "Christmas" indeed!

Advent 2010 #3 - Presents



Image from here

Here is a really great idea that a very dear friend of mine shared with me last week - which I share with permission.  She is going to write out key Christmas Bible verses on small pieces of card and stick them on a few of the Christmas presents under her tree - each one to be read out before the present is opened,  to remind everyone about Jesus in the midst of the wrapping paper frenzy.  Genius.  I think it would be exasperating to have too many, but maybe six or eight verses all up might be great - one or two each depending on the size of your family. 

I am thinking that I might do this by starting with a long strip of cardboard and dividing it into eight sections, cutting it out like a jigsaw.  The verses will end up being read out in a random order (unless I organise some very fancy way of ordering how presents are opened...probably not...) but we can collect the jigsaw pieces up as we go.  Then maybe on Boxing Day we can put the jigsaw together and read through the sequence one more time before the Christmas story is packed away until next year.

As I think about it, this might be a great idea for a Sunday School activity for this coming week.  Each child can make a set of jigsaw pieces and give them to their parents to attach to the gifts under their own trees.  Must get that organised before Sunday. 

Week two in "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus"

Advent reading

From J.I Packer (page 71)

This Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity - hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory - because at the Father's will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross.  It is the most wonderful message the world had ever heard, or will hear.

From Randy Alcorn (page 89)

As we gaze on nativity scenes and smile at those gunnysack shepherds, let's not lose sight of the striking irony.  A handful of shepherds, marginalized by the social and religious elite, were chosen to break the silence of centuries, heralding Messiah's birth.