Read by tens of people every single day
And I’ll be back in just a little bit with actual original content – because my sister-in-law Janie is making FRIED GREEN TOMATOES tonight, and I plan to capture every delicious moment via some truly mediocre photography.
I’m shooting for the bloggy stars, y’all.
There have been various points along this bloggy road when I’ve struggled with a bit of writer’s block.
This is one of them.
And if you’ve been reading here for any time at all, you know that I desperately want to put the word writer in quotation marks so that it’s actually “writer,” because I have a very difficult time assigning a writer-y label to myself, but I recognize that using the quotes will lead to many, many emails in which you gently encourage me to HAVE SOME CONFIDENCE, ALREADY, so I’m going to leave it at writer without the quotation marks, but don’t kid yourself for one second: there are totally quotation marks in my head.
So.
I have no choice but to send you elsewhere.
And trust me, you’ll be much happier going to these other places than you would be sticking around here and reading about my writer’s block (QUOTATION MARKS!).
In no particular order:
1) Melanie at This Ain’t New York has written a really thoughtful post on freedom. It’s well worth checking out.
2) My sweet friend Robin posted this morning about her friend Anne‘s book called Mad Church Disease. (sidenote: was that just a record for the most links ever in a single sentence? I think so.)
Anne’s book deals with staff and volunteer ministry burn-out (NOT THAT ANY OF US WOULD KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT, OF COURSE), and she has posted several interesting, completely anonymous surveys that will help her with her research. Click here if you’d like to help her out.
3) A few days ago, I got a copy of the upcoming CD from a group called Monk & Neagle.
Now I don’t want to build it up too much, but I just have to say: IT IS THE BEST CD I HAVE HEARD IN YEARS.
Christian music or otherwise.
D. has even jumped on the bandwagon and SIGNED UP FOR THEIR MAILING LIST, and I’m not sure that’s something he’s done before in his whole life ever. But he too agrees that the CD is extraordinary. You can listen to a few of the songs here.
And I’m mentioning it now – even though the CD won’t be released until September – to prepare y’all for the fact that I’m going to be talking about it a lot. A whole lot.
SWEET MERCY. I think it has changed my life just a little bit.
Except it hasn’t made the writer’s block go away.
(QUOTATION MARKS!)
I’ll never forget the day I first heard of Johnny Micheal “Mike” Spann. I was standing in my kitchen, watching non-stop post-9/11 coverage on television. The US had recently invaded Afghanistan, and, like so many other Americans, I expected at any moment to hear the news that Osama bin Laden had been captured.
What I heard instead was that an American CIA agent had been killed in a prison uprising. He was an Alabama boy – a native of Winfield who served in the Marine Corps and graduated from Auburn University. He was survived by a wife and three young children.
His name was Mike Spann, and he was the first American citizen killed in post-9/11 combat. He was only 32 years old.
There is absolutely nothing I can say that would adequately address the heroism of Mike Spann and the other 3,500-plus men and women who have sacrificed their lives during this seemingly endless war on terror.
But what I can do, what all of us can do, on this day when we celebrate the freedom that life in this country affords, is to remember them.
To see the website Mike’s family has created to honor his memory, click here.
In addition, you can read the Congressional resolution passed in his honor, along with a page devoted to American heroes buried at Arlington Cemetery.
If you’re interested in paying tribute to one of our nation’s fallen men or women, you can find more information at Some Gave All.
A few days ago Barb mentioned that she’d been making my recipe for blackeyed peas fairly often. Since then I’ve had several people email me to ask if I’d share the recipe.
And please understand: the term “recipe” is generous, really, because I think I make blackeyed peas a little differently every single time. As long as you soak them ahead of time and use some sort of salted pork product when you cook them, it’s almost impossible to mess them up.
Also: I realize that some of you might be reading this and thinking “Ewww! Salted pork product? Like bacon? Won’t that add a bunch of fat to my vegetables?”
And to answer your question: why, yes, yes it will.
But in my opinion, cooking peas or beans without a little pork is like ordering pizza without cheese. WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO SUCH A THING?
Anyway, I had big plans to take lots of pictures of my blackeyed pea-cooking process, but I just lost the will, frankly, because I’m tired. However, I did manage to take a picture of all the ingredients I use, and I will share said picture with you at this juncture:
So.
Does anyone notice what’s missing from the picture?
That would be the peas.
And, oddly enough, a bag of peas is an integral part of a recipe for, you know, peas. Unless you are a wizard. In which case you could just wave your wand and make a big pot of peas using only a bag of cotton balls and some dryer sheets. Which would no doubt be something to behold.
See? I told you I was tired.
So if you’re not a wizard, it would probably be a really good idea to include a one pound bag of dried blackeyed peas (not frozen) when you make this recipe. Or else you will just end up with some highly seasoned water. And while the water might be somewhat tasty thanks to all the PORK FAT, it probably won’t be very filling.
Here’s what you do.
Pour the bag of dried blackeyed peas into a boiler that contains 6-8 cups of water. Bring them to a gentle boil over medium high heat. Don’t crank up the heat because the peas can scorch pretty easily (she says, having learned that lesson the hard way). Let them boil for 2 minutes. Take them off the heat, cover, and leave them alone for an hour or two.
After the peas have soaked for at least an hour, pour them into a colander and rinse thoroughly with cold water. Put them back in your boiler (or your crockpot), cover with 6-8 cups of water (I usually do 8 because I like to cook them a long time), and then add all your seasonings.
And while I don’t really measure how much of each seasoning I use, here’s my best guess:
2 tsp. salt (more if you like)
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper (more if you like)
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce (sometimes I use it; sometimes I don’t)
1/2 tsp. Cavender’s Greek seasoning
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/8 tsp. red pepper
3 slices thick cut bacon, quartered
Throw all the seasonings in the pot – and bring the peas up to another gentle boil. Reduce heat to a low simmer, and let them cook for 1 1/2 – 2 hours. Or longer. Make sure not to stir them too much or you’ll break the peas and end up with a very tasty bowl of mush.
They’re even better if you cook them the night before you’re planning to serve them (which I’m doing right now), let them cool, put them in the refrigerator, and then bring them up to a gentle simmer for about 30 minutes the next day – right before you’re ready to eat. And then? OH MY WORD AT THE TASTY GOODNESS. As far as I’m concerned, some blackeyed peas with a hot skillet of homemade cornbread is a meal in and of itself. So delicious.
Happy 4th, y’all!
All righty, y’all – I’ve consulted my trusty random number generator, matched the random numbers with the comment numbers (I see numbers beside your comments when I’m logged in to WordPress – it’s BLOGGITY MAGIC, IT IS!), and I now have a list of 15 lucky winners.
I’ll put the number beside the name just for clarification (count the first comment on the post as 1 and the last comment on the post as 191).
Ready?
Congratulations, y’all!
If you’d email me your address by this Thursday, that would be great.
I will not use the address to do anything other than have a CD sent to you by the lovely people at Mandisa’s record label.
And maybe sell your personal information to a large ring of thieves.
But other than that, it’ll all be TOTALLY confidential.
Okay. Before you look at these pictures, you need to keep a couple of things in mind.
1) The before and after aren’t going to look all that different.
and
2) The before and after aren’t going to look all that different.
Honestly, I felt like a bit of a goofball when I was uploading these pictures, because they essentially amount to LOOK, Y’ALL! I SWITCHED LAMPS!
AND CLEANED!
But since the ($10!) desk and the two ($3.88 each!) end tables need a little refurbishing, they’re not in these pictures (and wouldn’t be even if they were finished – because I’m going to use them in other parts of the house).
So what this post basically amounts to is that I tidied up my living room – which certainly needed to be done – and I worked in some of my thrift store/estate sale accessories. I do think that the thrift store lamps make a big difference, mainly because we have big furniture, and the scale of the old, big lamps works better than the lamps I was using before.
I’m afraid that the “before” pictures may be enough to keep Mama out of church for three Sundays straight, because how will she ever explain to her friends why her daughter’s coffee table was in such disarray? And that there were pictures of the cluttered coffee table ON THE INTERNET?
It’s a good thing I didn’t take pictures of all the old, dusty candy I found underneath one of the couches. Because I’m afraid that would’ve sent Mama straight to the emergency room.
One woman can only bear so much shame.
(sidenote: I’m very nervous about this whole thing, to the point that I would like to distract you from the underwhelming spectacle you’re about to see. As a result, I am fighting a seemingly irrepressible desire to tap dance. In a sparkly costume. While twirling fire batons. Because that would most certainly make you forget about all of this before and after business.)
Oh, never mind.
Here’s what I was up against when I started this process.
But if you look really carefully, you’ll see two smallish lamps over to the left-hand side of the picture. They look ridiculous given the size of the room, but they’re what I had when we moved in, and I’m a make-do kind of girl.
Here’s D.’s chair and one of the areas I was hoping to re-vamp with my thrift store finds.
I had resorted to using a plant stand as an end table, and the light from the lamp was at horrible angle. The phrase “uncomfortable glare” comes to mind.
And don’t ask me why I have the throw on the ottoman pulled up halfway. Because I have no idea. I can only assume that at some point I had to retrieve a ball or search for a remote or rescue a small action figure.
The next area I wanted to work on was our coffee table, which was what one might refer to as a hot mess.
And I’m sure you’ll agree that there are few things in life as klassy as a large wooden bowl filled with six or forty-two remotes.
Finally, I felt like the end table next to the beige sofa needed something bigger to anchor it. The lamp was too small, and all the accessories were even smaller.
So those were the problem areas.
I contemplated trying to rearrange the room for about four seconds, but I become a woman obsessed when I start moving furniture. I wanted to actually finish whatever projects I started yesterday – as opposed to piling all the furniture in the center of the living room and then collapsing in a corner, wailing about how NOTHING IS DONE! NOTHING IS DONE! EVERYTHING IS A WRECK! while D. looked on in horror.
Anyway.
Here’s the finished product.
I mean, if nothing else, neat helps. You know?
Perhaps I have learned a valuable lesson.
And this is the first “target area” – by D.’s chair.
The round table is from the estate sale, and the lamp (only $9.88! with shade!) and piece of green glass came from the thrift store. I really do love how the table fills up that spot, and the lamp is a great punch of color against the wall of windows.
Even better:
A drawer for the remotes!
Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?
Next, I tackled the coffee table.
I got the brass planter from the estate sale and the green candy jar from the thrift store. Everything else was mine – just re-purposed a bit.
And then the other end table, previously known as Where The Small Things Are:
The oh-so-60’s lamp came from the thrift store (another $9.88 find), and the Partridge Family metal tree (that’s actually Hallmark circa 2002) came from the estate sale. I feel like the table can now hold its own next to the big ole beige sofa. And the metal thingy actually has the color of my walls in the leaves, which was an unexpected bonus.
And I have to say: I feel so much better about the whole room now. D. remarked this morning that he really likes it, and trust me when I tell you that is a huge deal – because normally his only decorative observation involves whether or not he has an unobstructed view of the television.
I didn’t spend a lot of money – maybe $60 total – and best of all, I have a room that’s finished, comfortable, and a little bit eclectic. This room is totally “us” – a reflection of our family’s personality – and for the first time since we moved in December, our living room feels like home.
And that, oh internets, is priceless.
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