The recipe I am sharing for you was inspired by the Spicy Blackeyed Peas recipe I found on VegWeb.com. It is somewhat different–much less spicy–which is why I’m sharing the whole recipe with you here:

Soak 1 1/4 cups dry black eyed peas overnight (or a few hours), then drain, rinse, and pressure cook them for 1 minute (in my pressure cooker–they are all different; alternately, you could simmer them for 20-30 minutes). Once they are ready, add:

1/2 an onion, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, smashed
1-2 tsp of cumin
1/4 tsp chili powder (I like more, but my husband doesn’t)
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
salt and Bragg’s aminos to taste

Cook until the onion is soft and the flavors have blended. Then add:

2 tsp lemon juice

Serve hot. We usually serve these with cornbread. I also like to serve a side of kale cooked with cabbage, a little Bragg’s aminos, and a dash or two of lemon juice. Absolutely delicious!

Check back every Monday for more of my delicious Vegan Recipes, or just subscribe to the blog so you will never miss a post! Next week, Breaded Eggplant.

My youngest child is 16 1/2 months old. It’s about time I got down to my pre-pregnancy weight. At least, I think I should be able to. I know a lot of women that do. Even after 3 or 4 or more children. Of course, not everyone does or can, but I think in my case, I should be able to. It is mostly laziness and a love of food that has kept it from happening so far.

Every week I will post an update here, probably on Sundays. I will post my weight (first thing in the morning after peeing, before drinking water, without clothes–hey, stop laughing!), my goal for the week, and how I met my goal last week.

So… I stepped on the scales this morning (under above conditions), and I weighed in at 141. [Note about the picture--it's NOT me, though that was about my weight just before I gave birth 17 months ago!] I weighed 125 on my wedding day, and that is just about ideal for me.

Long term goal: To be able to fit into my wedding dress by my 5th anniversary, August 28. This will only happen if I don’t get pregnant between now and then. Not likely to happen, but anything is possible. If that happens, then my goal will be modified to not gain any more weight from the time I discover I am pregnant until my anniversary. That should be doable; first pregnancy I gained 0 pounds the first trimester, and second one only 2 or 3, I think. To achieve Plan A goal, I must lose about 16 pounds. That is a little over a pound per week.

Short term goal: To be down to 139 by next weigh in. This would normally be the 6th, but that is also D-day (that is, moving day), so if I manage to remember to weigh in first thing in the morning, I will do it. Otherwise, it might be Friday or Monday.

The plan: This plan has two sides: Diet and exercise. In the diet area, these are my goals:

• Avoid supper as much as possible. If I’m hungry, eat fruit only. This worked well for me before I had kids, and now that I am neither nursing nor pregnant, I should be able to do it again. I just need to get my body used to it.
• Only eat until I feel satisfied, no matter how good the food tastes or how much (or little) is left over.
• Have dessert no more than twice a week, and make sure it’s small and healthy.

In the exercise department, here are my goals:

• Do 2 sets of these exercises 2-3 times this week. The week after we move, I want to go up to the next level and do them at least twice. I’m currently using quart jars full of beans for weights. Don’t laugh! It’s all I’ve got. When I get through the whole 5 or 6 videos, I will start over using probably 5 or 7 lb.
• After we move, spend 20 minutes 2-3 days per week walking up and down the hill on our property as fast as I can. It’s pretty steep in spots, so I will probably have a hard time with this one. As it gets easier, I will increase the speed and probably the time as well. To make the time pass easier, I will listen to the Desire of Ages on tape. Yeah, I know, nobody listens to cassettes anymore, but I don’t have a portable CD player (yet), and I DO have rechargeable batteries! Plus I like the way this guy narrates! When I finish that, I will probably listen to Pilgrim’s Progress again–also on cassette.

Would you like to join me in this challenge? Post a comment to let me know your goals and plan of attack, and we’ll encourage each other! I’ll try to post an update every week, and then you can post your update as a comment. If you have a blog and want to do a link-up, let me know and I’ll put a link-up thingy at the end of this post. Otherwise we can just do the comment thing. Let me know what you want to do!

I don’t know about you, but I struggle with the Internet. The computer is in a very prominent place in our house; I walk by it all the time, and it is so tempting! That will change once we move, but that doesn’t mean that my character will change. If my goal is character development, I need to deal with this problem now, today, and not wait until we don’t have Internet and the computer is in an office at the end of a hall that I may not walk down every day.

Especially is it difficult for me when I want to use the computer for my personal devotions. It’s connected to DSL, so it’s got Internet as soon as it starts. And it’s so easy to open a browser. And once it’s open, I can see how many new email messages I have in the bottom corner, and all the places I like to go everyday are bookmarked at the top in toolbar.

So when I wanted to get on the computer to research a topic (I don’t have any resources for doing this offline–the few I do have are already packed), I knew it was going to be a temptation. As I showered (finishing with cold to wake me up!), I prayed about whether I should really even do this study during my quiet time, or try to do it another time (which rarely happens). When I felt that I needed to do it, I then prayed that He would give me the strength to resist the temptation. After all, He said in His Word:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

James 4:7

I submitted to Him and asked for His strength to not open the browser (because I could do all the research I needed in offline programs).

Shower finished, I started up the computer, praying again for strength. I opened the program and began my research. But as I tried to focus on the topic, my mind kept drifting to the Internet. I wonder who has sent me email. I wonder how many page views my blog had yesterday. I wonder if I’ll have time to post to the Works For Me Wednesday page, or if it will be too late… I kept dismissing the thoughts and bringing my mind back to my topic, but they kept returning. After doing this several times, I was about to get frustrated. But I realized that although I had to put out some effort, the battle really wasn’t mine, but God’s. I had done all I could. So I prayed, “Lord, please rebuke the devil and all these thoughts and help me to focus. I believe You want me to learn something from this study; help me not to be distracted again.”

And you know what? He did. After about 5 minutes, I suddenly realized that my desire to open a browser was gone. Absolutely gone. And I was able to finish my study without further distractions.

So what about you? Please share how the Lord has helped you in your struggle with self recently.

Several years ago I was taking a Sabbath afternoon walk with some friends, and accidentally splattered mud on the back of my white knee socks. I had been doing my own laundry long enough to learn that bleach doesn’t get out mud, and I was very unhappy. Out loud, I mused, “I wonder what can get mud out of white,” not really expecting an answer. But I got one. “Ivory soap.” I tried it, and it worked!

Since then, I try never to be without a bar of ivory soap in the house. Of course, the fact that my husband uses it to bathe helps, but even then, it is just so handy. I use it to clean shirt collars and cuffs that have gotten stained, to take the dirt out of white socks, and even for pretreating some food stains. It’s cheap and effective, and I highly recommend it.

One thing I have realized as a parent is that having your child’s heart is essential. You can train them until you are blue in the face, but if you don’t have their heart, you just breed rebellion in them. I recently read a post on this topic on another blog that I keep up with, and I want to share with you a short excerpt from the post Do You Have Your Child’s Heart:

The answer to nearly all child training questions is, you must have your child’s heart.  What exactly does this mean and how do we gain our child’s heart?

Proverbs 23:26 says it most like I’ve worded it,

My son, give me thy heart; And let thine eyes delight in my ways.

. . . This concept of having your children’s heart is vast and complex and I don’t pretend to have or know all the answers. . . . I believe the rewards of faithfulness in this area are most evident as your children get older and become more independent, but there are signs of success or failure early on.  A parent who is paying attention will know if they have their child’s heart.

Please go read the whole article. You will be blessed!

Well, it looks like we are not moving over Memorial day weekend. This might be a good thing, in some respects. There will probably be more people available to help us load and unload that way.

Our original (actually, second) closing date was May 10. If we had closed a few days later, as planned, we would have had all of last week and this week to fix up the place and move in by the end of the month. But thanks to problems with the money transfers from the USDA (we got a USDA loan) to the escrow company, we didn’t close until the 20th. That means we had 1 week to get everything done.

At first we thought, No big deal. The only things we need to worry about are painting and installing the laminate floor. Should be able to do all that in a week.

Or not. My husband hasn’t even started painting yet. He’s been plastering up the laundry room to make it look nicer and fix a leak or two in the foundation, running between Home Depot and the house, sorting out issues with the paint (they couldn’t find the tags indicating which paint was which color, and then they brought him the wrong order and couldn’t figure out what to do with the buckets of silver paint!).

We decided last night to get someone else to do the painting. The living room has a vaulted ceiling, and the darkest brown trim you ever saw. And by trim, I don’t just mean around windows and door frames. I mean there, plus wherever walls and ceilings meet, plus this (I think it is) 8″x12″ beam that runs the width of the living room… not to mention that the stairs and wood stove are NOT to be painted… nor the fan hanging down in the middle of the ceiling… We want the walls to be a very pale pink (that will look white unless next to real white), and the trim and ceilings to be white. So we are just going to fork out the money for someone else to do the painting, and my husband is going to go back to work for the rest of the week, starting this afternoon. And then he’ll go back to work on it Sunday.

But that’s not the half. The kitchen cook top is broken. It might work if I turned the nobs with a wrench and lighted it with matches (it’s gas). But we need to replace it. We went back and forth between just replacing the cooktop and putting in a whole stove/oven unit. The wall oven that it has is too small to fit my large cookie sheet (which I use every week to make oven fries), so I need a larger oven. We finally figured out that the oven that is there is smaller than the space will allow for; we have room for a 27″ oven (instead of the 24″ one that’s there now), so we’re going to get an electric oven to put in its place–but probably not until after we move. The two pieces separately will cost almost as much as a new all-in-one unit, but the installation will be much cheaper (since we won’t have to remodel the island to accommodate it!). And I think it will be nice having the oven up higher, out of reach of little hands.

So… here are a few pictures for you to see, to get an idea of how it looks now. I’ll post “after” pictures later.

Here’s part of the yard from the deck:

Some trees by the driveway:

The deck has some issues; also notice the horizontal slats:

But it has one nice feature–we don’t know yet if it works or not:

This is about half of the kitchen. The fridge and freezer and more cabinets are (or will be) to the right. Dining room is beyond that on the right. You can’t see it, but the floor is all wood:

Here is the cooktop. It doesn’t work. From here you can see the stairs to the living room (detailed below), the stairs down to the basement, and the hallway leading to the sewing room and front door:

Here are the steps from the kitchen into the living room. They appear to be made of fir; quite worn, aren’t they:

Here is the old wood stove. It’s not up to code, so we have to get a new one. That’s okay. The new one will have a glass door, which is so nice:

Above, there was a leak:

You can’t see it (my husband didn’t get a picture of it), but to the right of the wood stove is a cute little bay window. I’m going to make cushions for it similar to this one, and then finish it off with a couple of pillows. It will make a nice reading nook.

The living room has vaulted ceilings. Not sure why my husband didn’t get a picture of that very dark brown 8″x12″ beam beam that runs the width directly under the peak:

With the stove behind, here’s a view of the stairs and back door, which leads to the woodshed and parking area. The steps are bright because there is a skylight at the top of the stairs:

Upstairs the first room is the kids’ room. It’s made in two parts, with a skylight in the first section, then double doors, and another section with the closet and a window. They will probably sleep in the second section, and the first section will be for their toys and other things. Someone was painting in here, and they just set the paint cans down on the carpet. I don’t know if you can see the rings of dark olive green paint they left behind or not:

Here’s the wall they were painting. It’s just too dark. You can see the hallway and the living room ceiling out the door:

Here’s the tub in the kids’ bathroom. I think whoever left this house (it was foreclosed) hadn’t cleaned it for a few months. You can’t see the rest of the bathroom, but it’s a lovely rose pink, and the tub door has swans on it, I think. The counter is pink and white tile. This is one room that isn’t going to change, except for getting cleaned:

Here’s part of the master bedroom. It has 2 windows. The trim around them is pretty, I think, but my husband thinks it’s hideous. It’s a dark magenta. We’re going to change it to a nice olive green to match our bedspread:

Here is a wall that juts out into the master bedroom about 8 or 10 inches. I think it’s pretty; my husband doesn’t. We’re going to just paint it white. The little door is a laundry chute, and below to the left is a heater with the cover off:

Here’s the master bedroom walk-in closet:

There is a master bathroom, but I’m not including a picture. It’s not so bad, just white and black tile, similar to the kitchen counter. We’ll change it at some point, but not right now.

My husband didn’t take any pictures of the office. We’re not going to do anything with it before we move in, so I’ll take pictures later.

Downstairs, we have another bedroom. Whoever did the texturing on the walls was… well… I don’t know. There is no rhyme nor reason to it. It’s deep, painted over with glossy paint, and it’s absolutely hideous! We’re probably going to just get thin (1/4″) sheet rock and cover it, then paint over that. Sanding it down just didn’t work:

Here’s the laundry room, from in front of where the washer and dryer will be. It’s large. I’m going to put a table with fold-up legs along the right wall, beside the washer, and definitely make use of the rack and shelves to the left! I may someday install a fold-down ironing board in here:

Here’s the wall to the right of the picture above. My husband has plastered some of it with cement. The washer and dryer will go on the right:

Here is the water heater and holding tank. We are going to replace this water heater with a new one. Can you see where the laundry chute comes out?

That’s all for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed the tour. Check back frequently to see updates as things get fixed. Or just subscribe so you won’t miss anything!

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Just a note on the subscription contest. Subscriptions have been rising, and we are nearing our first goal of 25, which means I just may be able to pick a winner. But we still have fewer entries than we have subscriptions, and there is no excuse for that, since multiple entries are allowed. Even though we aren’t moving until the 6th, the contest still ends the 31st, and I will be mailing out the prizes to the winner(s) before we move! There will be 1 winner for ever 25 subscribers, with no upper limit! So copy that link, share it all over the internet. See how many entries you can make!

I just found these pictures on our camera and thought I’d post them. They are a week or two old. Enjoy!

Gislaine watches the hopper of our Champion Juicer Grain Grinder and tells me when it’s getting low:

I let her help me grate a carrot for veggie patties (recipe coming soon). I put the chairs in such a way that Manny couldn’t fall off:

He decided to get in on the action, too:

Sometimes I get a break from feeding Manny. But then I have to clean the bib for sure afterward. Manny tends to be rather fastidious and doesn’t like his chin getting food on it, so this doesn’t happen too often:

Here is Gislaine’s new jean skirt. I made it recently. You can go to my portfolio to see more pictures of it:

Have you ever noticed those peanut butter grinders in the grocery store? One day I decided to do a price comparison between that peanut butter and what I could get on the aisle. I discovered that, at least at WinCo, where I do most of my shopping, the freshly ground was cheaper!

So instead of buying a big jar of peanut better at Costco like my mom used to do (it would be rather hard, since I don’t have a Costco card, anyhow!), I buy a couple weeks’ supply freshly ground. That way I know exactly how old it is, what’s in it (peanuts, nothing more), and I can get more when I need it. One thing I really like is that I don’t have to spend time stirring the oil of a jar of 100% peanut butter, and wishing I could do a better job faster. Putting a cookie batter mixer on the end of an electric drill was my uncle’s solution, but it was still a lot of work and very messy! Buying freshly ground is so much better!

Works for me!

Connie @ Smockityfrocks.com is doing a link-up today. Head on over there and check out her demonstration and the other links!

Disclaimer: This method of canning beans is not conventional. Normally you would soak the beans and parboil them for 30 minutes first. However, I found this link had an easier way to do them, so I tried it. It worked. So I thought to myself, if I can can salsa in a waterbath canner with onion and garlic and other seasonings, why can’t I can beans in a pressure cooker with the seasonings in them already? If you want to follow my method, be sure you are familiar with canning. I am not giving every single step clearly in this demonstration, and if you are not familiar with pressure canning, you could make a fatal mistake. And please understand that this is not a recommended method; try it at your own risk.

I start out by putting 1 to 1 1/4 cup of beans in each jar. I used only 1 cup for the black and pinto beans, but 1 1/4 cup for the black-eyed peas. One cup is never quite enough for a meal of those:

Top them off with water and let them sit overnight. Actually, these sat almost 24 hours, because the black beans take longer to swell up. The next morning:

Preparations included 4 quarts of water (which proved about a cup short), 1 can of tomato sauce for the pinto beans (I put about 8 oz. with each batch, because my husband doesn’t like them without tomato), 3 quarts of water in the pressure canner, and water to soften the rubber on the lids:

While the water was heating, I rinsed the beans, pouring off the soak water and filling them 3 times with hot water (to heat them). I left the last rinse in the jars until I was ready to add the seasonings, and added hot water around them to keep them warm:

Here is what I put in: cumin, chili powder, onion, and garlic in all 3 kinds. The Braggs went in the pinto beans and black-eyed peas:

Dumped out the water, started adding the seasonings:

Believe it or not, a little Manzanilla olive water is my secret to delicious pinto beans!

After adding the rest of the seasonings, I put in boiling hot water:

Lids and rings:

Oops! Someone likes cameras!

In the pot, making sure they don’t touch each other or the sides:

I put the lid on and let it vent for 10 minutes, then put the weight on and brought it up to 11 lb pressure. Okay, so I missed 11 lb and it got to 13, but it came down after that. Never went below 11 lb for the duration–90 minutes:

Then I took them out and let them cool. Don’t they look lovely?

I’m not worried, because they will probably all be eaten before the month is out. Now I need to can some lentils… if I can find the time!

We are less than a week from the end of the contest, and I will be honest with you. I haven’t had the results I was hoping for. Now, either you’re waiting until the 31st (the official end of the contest) to sign up and enter, or I don’t know what. But as of Monday afternoon (the latest stats I have at the moment), my highest subscription (which has gone up and down) has not yet reached 25, and I have only had a few entries. This means that if you subscribe and enter your information on the form on the contest page, you have a a very good chance of winning. But only if we have at least 25 subscribers by the end of May! So share this blog (and especially the contest page) with your friends. You can enter extra times for doing this. Just go to the contest page for more details.

Please help me make this first give-away a success! I would hate to announce that there were no winners. I have done all I can. Now it’s up to you. Thank you for reading.

Please note: If you read this post in my Facebook notes or in a blog reader, you will need to actually go to my web page to view the entry form. Just click on the link above.