Semi-from-scratch supper

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Our local grocery store has an awesome bulk aisle where I buy spices and seasonings. I can get a little zip-bag of cinnamon for less than a buck, whereas the shaker bottle would cost a few dollars. I saw the other day that they had lemon pepper seasoning, so I got a baggie full and decided to give it a try with some frozen tilapia. I didn’t set out to make a gourmet meal, but I had a basket of citrus fruits that I bought from one of my students who was doing a fundraiser for Ag, and they needed to be used soon. So, tossed the fillets in the lemon pepper seasoning, then I cut up a lemon and squeezed the juice over the fish and topped the fillets with some lemon slices. I baked six fillets at 400 for about 20 min total (flipped halfway through and squeezed some more lemon on them).

2013-12-22 17.41.22The citrus basket also included avocados, and I’ve had a hankering for guacamole for a while. So, I looked up a few recipes and then modified with what I had on hand and what I like (for example: not a lot of cilantro, if any). I didn’t really measure as I went along, but here’s a rough estimate of what I used:

  • 1/3 white onion
  • 2 large avocados
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 2 Tbsp lemon juice

Run the onions in a food processor until coarsely chopped. Add all the other ingredients & blend until mostly creamy. Serve with celery sticks, tortilla chips, or just lick the bowl (remove the food processor blade first!).

Most recipes called for cilantro, but I didn’t have any and don’t really care for it (like I said). Some recipes also called for tomatoes, which I didn’t have on hand, either. Regardless, the boys gave the guacamole 100 out of 10 stars. I’ll say it was a winner! Even my 14yo anti-veggie critic liked it, so that’s praise if I’ve ever heard it. 🙂

2013-12-22 17.56.04Lastly, I had a small jar of pesto that I found on sale and thought it would be yummy with pasta. I tossed it with some fettuccine and a drizzle of olive oil. It was pretty good, but I needed more pesto for the quantity of pasta that I made, so the flavor was sparse.

All in all, it was a pretty delicious thrown-together supper for a Saturday when I actually had a bit of time to experiment in the kitchen.

Is Jesus Just Enough? (Prayer Devotional for the week of December 22, 2013)

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I read a comic recently about a man asking his wife to pick up something at the grocery store, except he spoke to her in the way that a lot of us Christians pray nowadays. The conversation went something like: “Honey, if you could just, you know, maybe just pick up some milk, Honey. I want to just thank you, Honey, if you would, for just getting the milk.”

It sounds silly in that context, but isn’t that what our prayers sound like more often than not? We hem and haw to try to get the words right, instead of speaking our hearts. We box God in (maybe without meaning to) with our “ifs” and “justs.” We cut to the chase about what we need (perhaps more often, what we want) and gloss over praise, thanks, and confession.

What if we spent a day talking to God in prayer about how awesome and wonderful he is, without asking for a thing? In Psalm 103:20-22, David described how he wanted his soul to praise God like the angels in heaven. We could learn a lot by reading how the angels worship God. There are some very beautiful examples in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 7:12 (NIV), the Bible describes how heavenly hosts fall down in worship before God, exclaiming: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” Earlier in Ch. 4, we read about heavenly creatures who repeat day and night: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.”

24/7, these heavenly citizens praise God. I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to find 24 minutes to pause and pray. As we go through this week with the hustle & bustle of Christmas, let’s ask ourselves: Is Jesus “just” a feel-good story to think about once a year? Is he “just” the one you go to when you need something? Or, is he your all in all? Instead of getting caught up in the distractions of the season, let’s find time to reflect on God’s glory, wisdom, honor, power and strength, and praise him as the angels do.

It’s been a long week

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Today is the Friday before a one-day workweek and holiday, which means that even yesterday, a lot of folks were out. Classes are finished, so faculty are scarce, and many staff also took vacation time to start their Christmas break early. We’re already shorthanded in my office because of a vacancy, so of course, fires broke out this week with urgent deadlines and needed immediate attention from a skeleton crew around campus.

I was so thankful to see this week come to a close, and even though I’ll be working on Monday before our holiday, I welcome the chance to get some work done in peace & quiet. As I thought about the hectic and rather stressful week, I remembered another deadline-intense job that had nothing to do with being short-handed before a holiday. It was just a miserable place to work …

I was a reporter at a small town newspaper in southeast Texas. I used an Army-surplus metal desk where you had to ground yourself before you touched the keyboard (which was mounted in a metal tray, for some not-so-brilliant reason) and sat in the metal chair. My computer served no purpose other than a direct-to-printer word processor, if you could even call it that. You had to print as soon as you finished typing, and Lord help you if you made a typo and had to start over, because you couldn’t save anything. It didn’t even have a floppy disk drive. I don’t recall what kind of computer it was, but you might say that it was a step above an electric typewriter and a long way from Word Perfect. (Actually, I think I would have preferred the electric typewriter.)

If bad weather was rolling in, you had to type like the wind or risk losing everything — or worse, getting shocked by that horrible machine. Needless to say, the deadline pressure was pretty intense. That job was what I politely now call “character-building.” I couldn’t stand it most days, and it was not what I thought journalism would be like.

Thinking back on that role makes me grateful to be where I am today. Sure, there are stressful days and hectic weeks, but at least the work is fulfilling … and my computer doesn’t try to electrocute me. Perspective! 🙂