2,000th post!

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I feel like I should say something profound for this milestone post, but I’m plum out of brilliant insights, so I think I’ll just tell you what we had for dinner, because it was pretty awesome. 🙂

Shoestring parsnips

Shoestring parsnips

I came across a recipe for parsnips recently on a food blog that I enjoy reading, and it sounded too yummy not to try. I’ve never had parsnips before. They are a root vegetable and look like albino carrots. I noticed as I peeled them that they have a citrusy scent, almost like lemongrass. The boys were amazed and couldn’t wait to try them.

Christi Silbaugh’s recipe for Shoestring Garlic Parsnip Fries reminded me of the “SmashFries” that the boys and I love so much, so I tweaked it a bit and prepared the parsnips in a skillet with minced garlic, Italian seasoning and a dash of salt & pepper.

The boys devoured every last one of them and begged me to buy parsnips again soon. I saved the cut-off tops from each root to soak in water, in the hopes that perhaps we can grow our own. In the meantime, I’ll try to splurge and get them again at the grocery store sometime relatively soon. They are more expensive than carrots; I think they were about $2.50 a bag, if I recall correctly. But, they sound like a great alternative to potatoes.

Lima & garbanzo bean soup

Lima & garbanzo bean soup

For the main dish, I just fixed some bean soup, but it was a huge hit. Honestly, I was just trying to throw something together without have to go back to the grocery store on Thanksgiving week (no such luck, though, since I realized later that I still need a few things for my turkey brine).

Anyway, I had a bag of lima beans and a half-bag of garbanzo beans that I soaked overnight and put in the Crock-Pot this morning with a frozen turkey neck bone and a packet of onion soup mix.

When I got home from work, I removed the bone and added some poultry seasoning, onion powder, salt and pepper and a squirt of Sriracha sauce. It had a little bit of spice without too much heat. A couple of the kids even asked for seconds. Not bad for a thrown-together dinner! 🙂

You Get What You Get (Prayer Devotional for the week of November 24, 2013)

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My kids learned a saying in preschool, and it has stuck to this day: “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.” It could refer to any issue from what color crayon you want to whether or not you feel like eating lasagna for dinner. Who says grass has to be green? Just color it brown and pretend like it’s summer in Texas. 😉 As for the dinner conundrum, I prepare and serve food to my family that is reasonably healthy and usually quite tasty, and if you’re hungry, then you’ll eat it. (I realize that may sound strict, but I am not a short-order cook and have no intention of becoming one.)

The point is that most of the things that we get upset about are really not that important, and the source of our frustration is often greed.

I did a text search in several translations to find Bible verses on thankfulness, and I was surprised to discover that “thank” (including thankful, thanksgiving, etc.) is first used in the book of Leviticus. All throughout Genesis and Exodus, there is no mention of thanks. When Adam and Eve were chilling out in the Garden of Eden, they didn’t stop to say thank you to God. In fact, they let greed get the best of them. You know how the story goes: they both did the one thing that God said they couldn’t do: they ate the forbidden fruit (see Genesis 2-3).

What is it with us and food? In Exodus, we see how God rescued his people time and time again, but they were quick to forget his goodness. God provided fresh water, quail, and manna (all of which they griped about … maybe they were craving lasagna), not to mention the mind-blowing miracles the Israelites witnessed as they left Egypt.

Finally, we come to Leviticus 7. Moses received instructions from God about the proper ways to give offerings to the Lord, and the word thanksgiving is used as an example of a type of sacrifice. The verb to thank doesn’t show up until David’s time (in 2 Samuel 22 or 1 Chronicles 16, depending on the translation).

As you prepare to spend Thanksgiving with friends and loved ones, don’t just go through the motions like Moses’ step-by-step instructions. Instead, take David’s approach and treat the holiday (and every day, for that matter) as an opportunity to thank God from your heart.

Proposal Defense Scheduled!

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Thursday, Dec. 5 is going to be a nerve-wracking day, but hopefully in the exciting & fun way, and not the queasy stomach way. 🙂  My proposal defense is scheduled for noon (EST). Since I am four states away from my university, I will connect via a web conferencing tool, but those on site at the university will gather in a meeting room on campus. I feel so honored; one of my classmates who lives there emailed me today and said that she would attend! That degree of moral support is so encouraging.

So, what’s a proposal defense, you ask? (Well, even if you didn’t ask, I’ll explain it anyway.) 🙂 Chapters 1-3 of the dissertation make up the proposal. At this point, everything is worded in future tense. You talk about the “proposed study” and what it will do or seeks to do. Chapter 1 is the introduction, which gives an overview of your idea and why you want to study it. Chapter 2 is called the literature review, and you discuss what other scholars have to say about your topic. Chapter 3 is the methodology, and that’s where you explain the theory(ies) and statistics that you’ll be using. You describe how you plan to gather the data and how you are going to examine it.

Chapters 4-5 describe the study, your findings and recommendations. You can’t move on to Ch. 4 until you’ve defended the proposed study, to begin with.  That’s why this step is so important. In the case of an experimental study, you can’t start the experiment until you’ve defended your proposal. In my case, I’m not doing an experimental study, but I still can’t proceed until I get the green light for Chs. 1-3. That’s what I’ll be doing on Dec. 5: I’ll give a PowerPoint presentation to provide an overview of the first three chapters, and then open the floor to questions. My committee members may have (will have!!) questions — hopefully ones that I can answer, LOL. Others in attendance (such as the department chair, other faculty or curious people who are sitting in the discussion for fun) can also raise concerns or ask questions. I’ll have to think on my feet and know my stuff.

I’m looking forward to it, because it’s such an important step, but of course, I’m a little nervous. My committee may send suggestions between now and then, which I’ll be working on as we go along, but they may just save their questions until that day.

Once the presentation is finished, then I should receive approval to proceed with the rest of the study. That’s the fun part! I will collect my data and analyze it over the Christmas & New Year holiday. I am hoping to have a pretty solid draft of Chs. 4 & 5 by early January. If all goes well, then I should be ready to do my final defense sometime around Spring Break. For that one, I’ll have to go to Georgia and face the firing squad, er, I mean, my committee, in person. 🙂 After that, I’ll be Dr.!!!!