Recipe: Vegetarian Sloppy Joes!

I love this recipe so much! Unfortunately, I can't manage to get a good picture of it. It looks really yummy in real life but all the pictures I tried to take of it made it look unappetizing. So, here's a picture of beans:

And the recipe:

1) Prepare a cup-ish of pinto and a cup-ish black beans. You can get these from a can if you like but I like to use our Instant Pot to make them fresh from hard beans.

2) Get a pan and grease it with olive oil. Add minced two cloves worth of garlic and diced onions (1/2 onion worth) and a handful of cilantro. Also add salt, pepper, herbs de province, and oregano. Cook all of this for a while until the onions are translucent.

3) Now, add the pinto and black beans to the pan. Also, add ketchup, mustard, and BBQ sauce. How much? I don't know. A bunch! I put in something like 5 squirts of ketchup, 3 squirts of mustard, and half the container of BBQ Sauce (you can also mix in some salsa if you want it to be spicy).

4) Cook of this until it is done. Taste it as it goes. Add more seasoning if desired. Also, if it is more liquidy than you like, add corn starch until it reaches the desired thickness. Stir periodically. I consider this step done when the sauce gets thick and sticky kind of like syrup.

5) Once this is all done, you can serve it on bread. I like to grill one side of the bread in butter. I also like to top it with hummus, avocado, dill peppers, arugula, and/or Veganaise. Cole slaw would probably also make a great toper but I haven't tried that yet.

Other times, I serve it on tortillas. When I do this, I do this, I usually top it avocado, cheese, and sometimes hummus.

Enjoy!

On the Dilemma of Christmas Greetings

It can be hard to know how to best greet people at Christmas time. As reported in this post and this one too, I love December because our family's Christmas traditions help us worship Christ and translate that worship into service to other people. That fills us with joy and helps us to remember how to really live. It is great! It's fabulous. So, when I see people, I want to share the joy and inner peace I'm experiencing by saying, "Merry Christmas!"

At the same time, I've sometimes worried about someone feeling excluded who does not celebrate Christmas. I don't want to say, "Happy Holidays" because it seems to water down what I'm experiencing in December but I also want to show respect to people who choose to believe and celebrate differently than I do. I see that kind of respect for other people as its own sort of sacred thing.

At church a week ago, my good friend shared a story that helped me resolve this quandary. He said that he was with some Jewish friends of his and told them, "Happy Hannukkah." They stopped him sand said, "You're Christian. You shouldn't be saying, 'Happy Hannukah.' You should say, 'Merry Christmas.' You say 'Merry Christmas' to us and we'll say 'Happy Hannukah' to you and then we can all respond with 'Thank you.'"

I love this way of seeing it! I want to be true to the deep feelings I have about celebrating Christ's birth but I also want other people to feel like they can express their deep feelings about whatever they celebrate. So, I'm going to do things the way my friend's Jewish friends suggested. I'm going to say, "Merry Christmas" to people and be happy when people express holiday greetings to me in whatever way they desire. And I'll say "Thank you" to people when they give me whatever greeting they choose to give.

And, so, in that vein, here is a video Christmas card from my family (with an update on how we're doing in the description below):

Christmas Update

At the beginning of December, I posted this post on our family Christmas traditions. I said I’d be posting more posts about how our traditions are going but honestly have not made time for it because I’ve been enjoying Christmas time so much! This one will probably be the only one I do before Christmas.

Our daily Christmas Devotionals have brought the Christmas spirit into our home and family more quickly and more powerfully than any year before! Every time someone asks me how I'm doing, I enthusiastically say I'm doing great and that I love this time of year. I find myself telling everyone how awesome our Christmas Devotionals are! I hope I don't come off as bragging—I just want to share it because it's making us so happy. It has been so wonderful to sing worshipful Christmas hymns each day and read scriptures together each day and set goals to serve people each day! I’ve learned that singing sacred music before reading scriptures really helps us kids get into scripture study more.

Also, our Church is doing this amazing Advent social media campaign called #LightTheWorld. It complements our Christmas Devotionals so well because each day there is a video that highlights something Christ did and how we can do it too in our own way! We’ve added these 30 second videos to our daily devotionals and have used the theme of each one to inform the gift we give the Savior that day.

The greatest blessing that has come of this is watching our kids get excited about doing good things. When the daily theme was “Heal the Sick”, one of our children chose to take all of the money in his little bank and give it to Primary Children’s hospital. When the theme was “Clothe the Naked”, one of them went and got some clothes and wanted to give them to people who don’t have clothes. One child likes to hold the baby Jesus from the nativity while we sing the daily Christmas hymn and always says, “I help Jesus” when we ask what gift we’ll give to the Savior each day. Seeing them do these things is such a blessing because they are doing them of their own accord.

Through all of this, I am reflecting a lot on Ebenezer Scrooge and how Dickens said that he learned to keep Christmas all year long. I wonder if there are aspects of our Christmas Devotionals that we should do even after Christmas is over. I don’t want them to become cliché or too normal for our kids so I think we’ll definitely have some aspects of the devotionals that are unique to December but maybe we can sing before scripture study all year long and maybe we can set and report on goals with scripture study somehow the rest of the year.

How have your Christmas traditions gone this year? What do you think it means to keep Christmas all year long?

Christmas Traditions

The Christmas season is such a magical time. There is something special in the air that makes me feel wonderful. But, of course, it isn’t special just because the calendar says December. There isn’t some arbitrary special feeling that comes upon people once a year because of the earth’s position in relation to the sun. It’s special because of how we as individuals, families, and a society act and think differently at this time of year.

That said, during our first three years of marriage, Jamie and I had to fight each year to “feel the Christmas magic”. It would get to be halfway into December and we’d realize that we felt terribly normal. We yearned to feel that special something during Christmas. Each year, we’d pray for help to feel the Christmas spirit and then we’d be lead to serve someone in need and worship Christ in some special way and then that special Christmas feeling would come.

After a few years of this, we learned our lesson and decided it was time to institutionalize some family Christmas traditions focused on service and on Christ. We began what we call our “Christmas Devotionals”. We made 30+ tree ornaments that each have a Christmas hymn on them as well as a scripture. The scriptures are segments of the Christmas story in the New Testament or prophesies from the Old Testament or Book of Mormon about Christ (you can read the list of scriptures and hymns we use here). We also bought an inexpensive notebook we use as a Christmas diary.

Each year, soon after Thanksgiving, we decorate our home for Christmas. We put up the Christmas tree but intentionally leave it just a little sparse with ornaments. Then, each evening until Christmas, one of the kids picks one of the special ornaments we made. We sing the Christmas hymn on it and read the scripture. Then, we get out the Christmas diary and each write down one thing we’ll do the next day to give a gift to the Savior. The gift is often in the form of helping others in some way. The next night, as we do the devotional, we talk about how it went giving those gifts and write down new ones.

We’ve learned from experience that the actions we do to give gifts to Jesus is the key to the whole thing bringing the Christmas spirit. One year, we decided to just do the hymn and scripture and skip writing down the gift. We wanted to speed up the process to accommodate small children. But we found that, without the commitment to action, we didn’t feel the magic of the season like we wanted. To go from hollow to holy, we had to not only sing and read scripture but also give of ourselves.

Other traditions have also helped us focus on Christ at this time of year. For example, we try to involve our chidren each year in giving gifts to a family in need. Jamie and I have a tradition of saying we’ll read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol each year. We have a tradition of not doing so each year—but this year will be different….

Personal traditions are great too! I like to dedicate my December personal scripture study to reading one of the New Testament Gospels or the “Fifth Gospel” in the Book of Mormon (which tells the story of Christ’s post-resurrection visit to the Americas). I rotate through one Gospel each year. I enjoy reflecting on Christ’s life, example, and sacrifice each December to remind me why His birth matters so much. Now that I’m blogging more, I’ve decided to try out a new tradition. For the month of December, I’ve revamped my blog to add some Christmas cheer and I’ll be posting short reports on special experiences we have as we go about our Christmas traditions.

Of course, it’s good to have Christmas traditions that are just fun too! We like to give gifts of course. We watch Home Alone together each year along with the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Every year, I like to welcome in the season by posting the funny parody video on Facebook. Fun and joy and laughter are part of the magic of Christmas along with service and Christ. But we’ve found that putting Christ (which includes serving Him and His children) at the heart of our festivities animates and quickens all the other pleasantries of the season.*

I hope this blog post will start a helpful thread of sharing tradition ideas with one another. So, please comment: what Christmas or Holiday traditions do you have? How do they help you feel the magic of the season?

*This makes me think of a prophetic quote given in a 1988 Christmas address, “...men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life” (Ezra Taft Benson, “Gifts and Expectations”, Ensign, December 1988). I highly recommend reading the entire article.

Best Turkey EVER!!!!!

As I wrote about in a previous post, we don't eat hardly any meat. But we do eat a little bit of meat in the winter. By a little, I mean like one meal / week and only a little bit at that meal. And we do our best to eat meat from animals that were treated well while alive. We measure the "winter" in which we eat meat as starting on Thanksgiving and ending on Easter.

So, tomorrow, we will be making turkey.

And while working on a cooking television show years ago, I learned the absolute best way to cook a turkey. Here it is (ingredients and needed supplies in bold):

1. Cut up a large apple and a large onion into diced pieces. Mix them together along with 2 cloves worth of minced garlic. Stuff the inside of the turkey with half of the onion, apple, and garlic mix along with 2-3 sprigs of Rosemary.
2. Put the turkey in the pan with the white meat side down. Put a cup or two of water in the pan. Cover the whole bird with olive oil and then lots of salt and pepper. Take the remaining apples, onion, and garlic and put in all over the top. A bunch of it will fall in the water. That's great.
3. Cover the whole thing with aluminum foil but make sure the aluminum foil doesn't actually touch the turkey.
4. Cook the whole thing for however long the instructions say to cook that much bird for. Every 45-60 minutes, pull it out and basque it and put it back in.
5. When you only have 30-45 minutes left, pull the whole bird out and flip it over. Put it back in and let it cook without the aluminum foil. After the cooking time is complete, pull it out. Do not cut into it for 15-30 minutes or the moisture will escape. But once that time has passed, carve it up and serve! I guarantee it will be the best turkey you have ever eaten.

But, of course, Thanksgiving is still Thanksgiving without the turkey. For example, there are plenty of people who are vegetarian all year round who enjoy a wonderful holiday. But Thanksgiving isn't Thanksgiving without Thanks. So, here's to all of us giving some. In that spirit, here and here are links to two previous posts on gratitude. I hope you find them helpful :)

Why a Weekly Holy Day?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this post about how Sunday is the eighth day of the week. To sum it up quickly, Sunday was the eighth day to early Christians because it was the day after the Sabbath (the seventh day). Sunday was a weekly holy day called "the Lord's Day" when they commemorated Jesus rising from the dead on the day after the Sabbath.

Whether we call it the Sabbath or the Lord's Day, we need a holy day each week. The Lord commanded it on Sinai, reiterated that command in our era, and set the example by resting Himself. But, as with all of His commandments, He doesn’t ask us to do this because He needs it but rather because He knows we need it. Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

Why do we need a weekly holy day? I discovered a trilogy of short videos that feature one of Jesus’ apostles addressing that very question. I especially enjoyed the second installment (embedded on this page) that talks about the symbolism of the hexagram (Star of David).

I personally love how the doctrine of a weekly Sabbath leverages the power of scheduling to our spiritual benefit. Schedules are powerful things. I go to work at a certain time each day and leave work at a certain time each day because my employer has established a schedule that I have agreed to. Work gets done because of that schedule. Before the internet, people faithfully tuned in for their favorite shows each week because of the power of routine scheduling. Most people wake up and go to sleep and eat at certain times for the same reasons. Stuff gets done because of routines and schedules. The Lord understands this and leverages it to help us devote at least 1/7 of our time each week to our spirituality. When we do this week after week after week, it has profound positive effects on who we are.

Also, the Sabbath helps us avoid the love of money. Our society measures the strength of our economy by the status of the stock market. A company’s stock is considered strong when it is making more money. Having consistently enough or sufficient for one’s needs is considered failure. We’ve accepted as status quo that one needs to relentlessly grow the bottom line and always have more and more money to be successful.

But the law of the Sabbath invites us to choose to make less money. We show our devotion by not working one day a week and not requiring others to work either. In the Old Testament, there was even a Sabbath year every seven years when the people were not allowed to make a profit on the land, were to forgive debts, and were let the poor and the stranger take freely of the fruit of the field. The focus wasn’t on extracting all they could get from the land but on taking a little less, being content with enough, and helping others. I believe the Lord would like for companies (even factories that “need to produce all seven days”) to close one day a week if, for no other reason, than to remind employers and employees that it is good to let go of growth obsession and be OK with sufficiency and learn to intentionally forgo profit to do the right thing.

Finally (and this relates back to the power of scheduling), the Lord’s Day is a weekly opportunity to remember Jesus Christ. We don’t have to wait until Easter to celebrate the Resurrection. Every Sunday is a celebration of that Miracle of miracles that happened on the eighth day. Every Sunday is a chance to participate in the Lord’s supper as He commanded in remembrance of the body and blood He gave for us. The words of the prayer associated with this Communion say that those who partake will “always have his Spirit to be with them” as “they do always remember him”. Devoting an entire day to celebrating Jesus’ Atonement and Resurrection not only helps us remember Him that day but reorients us toward remembering Him all week long which allows us to always have His Spirit with us. That Spirit is grace which works on us and changes who we are and makes us into new creatures who reflect who He is.

Living in the Now

Jamie and I have big plans for the future. When we sold our house over a year ago, we intentionally chose to rent next so that we could keep ourselves flexible to move on to the next big thing when all lines up correctly. We plan on moving closer to our family for the first time in our marriage, securing a good amount of land where we can produce as much of our own food as possible, and creating a lifestyle where neither of us works more than 20 hours/week so we can make family time and service to our community the center of our lives. We are so excited for these plans! A day does not go by that we do not make mention in our home of the magical “some day” when we’ll have the life we’re working for.

But the way I think about that future changed this week (and no, I’m not talking about the presidential election). I received a blessing this week—let me explain what that is: in our church, when we’re sick or going through a hard time, we follow the Biblical counsel in James 5:14-15 and call on our brothers in the faith to come and give a “blessing”. The person or people giving the blessing put their hands on the recipient, invoke the Savior’s name, and listen to the Holy Spirit to know what blessings to promise the person and what words of counsel or comfort to say. I’ve received and given many blessings in my life. It has been a beautiful way to increase a sense of community and also get help when I needed it. Countless times, blessings have helped me make positive and needed tweaks in life. In fact, the big goals our family has for the future came as a result of blessings Jamie and I received.

On Monday, a good friend and I gave each other blessings. Both of us were feeling anxious for the future. I was yearning for our goals to come more quickly and he was worried about the future of his love life. The blessing he gave me told me that God is pleased with the goals that I have and He smiles upon my enthusiasm toward reaching them but that He also wants me to focus more on the present. I was told that the experiences and relationships I enjoy while living in our current apartment will become precious memories but that I will miss out on that if I don’t live fully in the moment.

So, I’ve been trying to make mental course corrections this week. I’ve been thinking of teachings of Jesus such as “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” And how He taught His disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” rather than pray for tomorrow’s bread. I’ve also been thinking about gratitude and some of the teachings of Buddhism. I love how Buddhists recognize that everything will decay and pass away but rather than be pessimistic about this, they use it as a reason to be profoundly grateful that things do exist as they do now. This attitude can help one live with wonder in the moment.

This doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on planning or saying, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” I still believe that “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear” and still hold on to the goals we have for the future. But I was worrying too much about if we were doing enough to prepare for those goals. That worry was fear and it wasn’t helpful. We will steadily do what we need to do to reach our goals but we won’t worry about it. We’ll enjoy now and make memories now.

All of this makes me think about what Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday night about the election. If you haven’t watched it, then head on over and check it out. It’s great! He talks about how maybe the internet has created a world where we’re all politicking too much and we’re not really living. He’s not saying that we shouldn’t do our due part to be informed, vote, and influence policy in good directions but he is saying that we need to spend the majority of our time living. We need to live now.

So, I’m trying to make “live in the moment” more than a cliché. I’m not yet sure how to do that entirely. And would very much appreciate any advice from any of you. In the meantime, I went with my kids to the park the other night. We ran on the sidewalk that encircles the park over and over again, jumping over each crack. We all laughed and, in that moment, there was nothing in the world other than us, laughter, and connection. It was pretty great. We were alive.