I am a recovering Army brat who loves to travel and start new adventures. My handsome husband and I met at Oklahoma Christian University and he whisked me away to Kansas. So, I bought some ruby red high heels and made Topeka my home. I have a rough and rowdy Princess 4-year-old girl, amazing twin boys (almost 3) and a newborn baby girl who all make every day an adventure. We are grateful to be part of an amazing church in Topeka who regularly challenges and encourages our whole family. I have been both a full-time working mom and a stay-at-home-mom and/or both at the same time at one point or another. I am constantly seeking God’s wisdom on “balancing it all” and following His plan for my life, not mine.
A mentor I deeply respect once told me, “Busyness is not a spiritual gift.”
This sage piece of wisdom has resurfaced in my mind more frequently as my family grows. To some degree, life is just busy! It is busy in all sorts of ways, and honestly, we are busy in some way or another in every season of our lives.
How many times have you answered, “Oh, we’ve just been busy!” when someone has asked how you’ve been doing lately? Is that what we should accept as the norm for our families?
As we face a spring and summer full of extra busyness with graduations, trips, weddings, family events, block parties, and holidays, I want to encourage you to consider a couple tips.
Tips to Un-crazy a Busy Summer
1. Don’t let a busy summer and routine change keep you from reading your Bible and spending time with God. As we see with Martha in Luke 10, Martha was anxious and troubled with all her preparations but Jesus wanted her to sit and listen to the “good portion” like her sister Mary. Guys, if I’m like anyone in the Bible, it’s Martha. Don’t be like Martha and me, spend extra time with the Lord.
2. If you have kids, try not to over-extend your kiddos for the sake of attending something. Sometimes, certain family gatherings scheduled smack in the middle of nap time just aren’t going to work. That’s OK.
3. Be intentional about days of rest. My family recently went through a four-day event binge which ended on a Sunday evening. My husband and I realized we never got a day of rest together as a family. There’s a reason God built that in…and even Jesus encouraged his disciples to rest in Mark 6:31. Anyway, that’s not a schedule we plan to replicate any time in the near future.
4. If you’ve committed to “bringing something” find three easy crowd-pleaser recipes for rotation. Easy and delicious is the key. One of my favorites is below. It’s fresh, healthy, and so easy.
In the end, there are some things we need to do and some things we don’t. Setting boundaries for yourself and your family through your decisions on calendar commitments can make all the difference.
2 cups of cooked quinoa (cooked according to package directions, cooled to room temp). I also like couscous if I don’t have good quinoa on hand.
2 medium fresh tomatoes, diced small
1/2 cup very finely chopped red onion
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 can (15 ounces) of sweet yellow corn, rinsed and drained
1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup chopped sweet red pepper
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped (2 if you like heat)
3/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
1/4 cup lime juice, plus a few dashes more to taste before serving
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
1 cup (4 ounces) crumbled queso fresco or feta cheese
Directions:
Mix everything together in a big bowl. Refrigerate for at least an hour, but overnight is better. Before serving, taste and add a little bit more oil and lime juice if it’s dry.
I am an Oklahoman by birth, a Texan by current living situation, but claim the world as my playground.I love to travel and hope to someday soon take our family on adventures to far off lands, where we can share God with others and experience all the wonders He has created.
I am a mother of 5 crazy, homeschooling children ages 10 & under, wife to an amazing man, and daughter of the King of the Universe!I enjoy reading, making my kids laugh, cooking, all things natural, learning to play guitar and dusting off my piano skills.One day I hope to run again, but until then I’m learning patience.
When November flips open on my calendar, I can’t help but immediately start to think about the smells and tastes of the season. Pumpkin pie with whipped cream, turkey, green beans, banana bread, pecan pie with milk, cranberry sauce….now I’m drooling!
Now, what I picture alongside the food is my family and friends. I’ve always had the opportunity to spend the holidays with my family except one year when I lived overseas. That year reminded me how wonderful hospitality truly is.
So this month, we want to encourage you to extend the hand of hospitality. Invite a friend or even someone you don’t know to share a meal with you.
Extending the hand of hospitality could take on many forms:
Have a picnic in the park with friends (depending on the weather and where you live).
Invite someone on a street corner to meet you at the nearest food establishment or bring them a meal.
Share meaningful conversation with a friend over coffee or hot chocolate, either in your home or at a local coffee shop.
Plan on making a double portion for Sunday lunch and invite another couple or family over. Maybe that could be a visitor from church or the new family who just placed membership or a family who is just visiting.
Take dinner over to a friend’s house and surprise them with a home-cooked meal.
Reach out to someone you have been estranged from.
You could even invite a friend or an acquaintance for Thanksgiving dinner! If you live near a college, invite someone who can’t go home for the holiday. Or, if you live near a military base, invite a few soldiers over. College kids and soldiers always appreciate a home-cooked meal!
There are so many choices but one thing is for sure: sharing a meal means sharing our lives. So be blessed by the presence of others and your heart will be blessed also.
Who is the first person that came to mind while reading this?
That very well could be the Holy Spirit planting an idea. Now, find the time to reach out to that person and plan a time to share a meal together.
I am an Oklahoman by birth, a Texan by current living situation, but claim the world as my playground.I love to travel and hope to someday soon take our family on adventures to far off lands, where we can share God with others and experience all the wonders He has created.
I am a mother of 5 crazy, homeschooling children ages 10 & under, wife to an amazing man, and daughter of the King of the Universe!I enjoy reading, making my kids laugh, cooking, all things natural, learning to play guitar and dusting off my piano skills.One day I hope to run again, but until then I’m learning patience.
I’ve been trying to decrease our food budget around here lately. This past week was dedicated to cooking without going grocery shopping, which meant shopping in our pantry. So here I am, sharing the 6 easy dinners, that could quickly be thrown together while trying to take care of a newborn, whose favorite time to be held seems to be the moment I start to cook.
But isn’t she just adorable!?! Why wouldn’t I want to cook quickly so I can love on her again?
Thyme Crusted Baked Potatoes
These spuds are so tasty that you will want to eat the skin. I’ve never been a potato skin eater, until I rubbed this blend of seasoning on them and then my spud eating moments forever.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wash potatoes & prick them with a form on all sides.
Rub olive oil on the potatoes and place them in a glass baking pan.
Then sprinkle the Potato Seasoning on both side of the potatoes. The seasoning consists of:
Dried Thyme
Salt
Pepper
Herbamare
(The amount of seasoning depends on how many potatoes will be baked. Usually, I use 2-3 parts Thyme, 2 parts Herbamare, 1 part salt and 1 part pepper. But season to your liking.)
Bake for 30-45 minutes depending on the size and quantity of the potatoes you are baking.
Add whatever potato fixings you have on hand like cheese, plain yogurt is a great substitute for sour cream, and butter. I almost warmed up a frozen bag of homemade chili I had in the freezer, but decided to save it for another day.
I like to bake a whole bag of potatoes at a time. This allows us to feed more than just our family or use the leftovers to make potato soup later.
Creamy Meaty Pasta
This dish gives a little oomph to a normal spaghetti dish by adding one extra ingredient – cream cheese!
Cook the spaghetti like normal.
While the spaghetti is cooking, cook the meat. I typically use beef or turkey. Add your favorite seasonings. (Thyme, Salt, Pepper & Herbamare and maybe even some Basil are what I like to add).
Once the meat is finished, then add the cream cheese (4 oz – 8 oz depending on how creamy you would like the dish).
After draining the spaghetti, then add it to the meat mixture and mix it all together.
Taco Salad
This is my oldest daughter’s favorite dish and the fact that we ate it on Tuesday made the meal even more fun!
We layered the following:
Shredded Lettuce
Black Beans & Garbanzo Beans
Taco Meat
Shredded Cheese
Salsa
Plain Yogurt for sour cream usually, but this time we were out.
You can always add extra veggies to this dish – corn, peppers, tomatoes, etc.
Creamy Vegetable Pasta Soup (Non-dairy)
This recipe is one I adapted from the great Toni, who is amazing in the kitchen.
In a large pot, bring the following to a boil:
1 quart vegetable or chicken broth. (I typically use my left over homemade chicken broth.)
1 quart water
1 large sweet potato diced (around 4 cups)
1 onion
1 garlic clove
1 shredded carrot
After it has been brought to a bowl, add in 2 cups of a fun kind of pasta + 1/2 tsp of dried basil & 1/2 tsp of dried dill. Let this simmer for about 8 minutes then add in the following cashew mixture.
In a food processor or blender, add in:
1 cup cashews + 1 1/2 cup water. (I add all the cashews and 1/2 cup of water, blend it up well, then add the rest of the water.) This week I only had 1/4 a cup of cashews so used peanuts for the other 3/4 cup. It still tasted good. When working from the pantry it’s all about what can I substitute!
1 cup of frozen corn
1 15 oz can of crushed tomatoes
After you’ve added in the cashew mixture, bring it back to a boil. Then serve! This is one of our favorite soups. The night I made it, this pot actually fed 3 adults and 8 kids.
Breakfast Sandwiches
My oldest daughter’s cooking skills are blossoming. She enjoys cooking scrambled eggs and they actually taste fluffier than mine! Add these scrambled eggs to a toasted English muffin, slathered in Vegenaise, teamed up with cheese and bacon and we are in breakfast for dinner heaven!
Corn Chowder
I found this Corn Chowder recipe online and decided to give it a try. It was quick, easy, and yummy. I did a few substitutions because I didn’t have all the ingredients but it was still yummy!
My substitutions included using:
Coconut oil instead of butter or olive oil
Milk instead of cream
Frozen corn instead of fresh
An extra quart of water to make sure there would be plenty to feed our family.
Two extra potatoes, a clove of garlic, and of course, herbamare.
What I liked about shopping from my pantry is that not only did we save money and use what we had, but we were able to stretch out our dinners so that we could share them with others. So often I step into my pantry or open the fridge and think there is nothing there, but the reality is I have plenty of options to get a little creative and invite others on a taste-bud adventure with us. Of course, sometimes these edible adventures end up creating memories that make us all laugh later, but it’s worth it. Thankfully, this week we didn’t have any major recipe wrecks but believe me they do happen!
What are some of your quick and easy dinners that you can throw together easily?
I am a recovering Army brat who loves to travel and start new adventures. My handsome husband and I met at Oklahoma Christian University and he whisked me away to Kansas. So, I bought some ruby red high heels and made Topeka my home. I have a rough and rowdy Princess 4-year-old girl, amazing twin boys (almost 3) and a newborn baby girl who all make every day an adventure. We are grateful to be part of an amazing church in Topeka who regularly challenges and encourages our whole family. I have been both a full-time working mom and a stay-at-home-mom and/or both at the same time at one point or another. I am constantly seeking God’s wisdom on “balancing it all” and following His plan for my life, not mine.
I grew up in a home where my parents entertained pretty frequently. We always had people in our house for my dad’s job, or church fellowship, or just because my mom, who is a natural hostess, invited someone over that night. My mom has always impressed me with how she can entertain in a pinch and everything was always wonderful. Someday I will grow up to be like my mom. She was a Pinterest mom before that was a “thing” and she came by it naturally from my grandmother. It also might be an Army wife thing. One of my mom’s many gifts is hospitality and generosity.
Thankfully, this has all resulted in tons of impressive but quick dinners, appetizers, and sides that never fail. Go Mom!
I love to cook and I love to entertain, although I am not as good as my mom at hosting and my “skills” in hospitality have progressively worsened after I had kids… oh well. I’m working on it.
Hospitality
Hospitality is a spiritual gift for some and for others, it seems like a nightmare. Even if you enjoy it, sometimes hospitality is inconvenient. A dear friend and mentor of mine once challenged me to allow myself to be inconvenienced. She urged me to intentionally change my attitude about serving others when it seemed to push me outside my comfort bubble. She challenged me to open my heart to opportunities that seemed to cause more work or interruption in my day and see how the Lord worked through it to minister not only to me, but to allow myself to be used in those situations to serve others and be hospitable.
Here are a few verses to meditate on:
1 Peter 4:9 (ESV) – “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”
Romans 12:13 (ESV) – “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”
Hebrews 13:2 (ESV) – “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Some of these are talking about the serving the body of Christ as a whole, but the idea here is serving others and having a right heart about showing love even in the midst of inconvenience in your day, or all the stress or the hours of clean up.
Hospitality Challenge
I want to encourage you to look for ways to serve not only other fellow members of the church, but your community as well. This might even look like being helpful or “hospitable” to a fellow mom at a park you usually go to (anyone ever forget the diaper bag?!), maybe it looks like offering to run an errand for someone, or taking a meal. Truly, I think our challenge here is looking for opportunities to serve with a willing heart outside of our comfort bubble or our plan for the day, however that may look in your life.
You never know when serving someone, even in a seemingly small way, is “entertaining angels” or helping to further God’s Kingdom.
All that being said, every once in awhile we just need to make a meal that tastes good but doesn’t require an all-day production. Sometimes family pops over for dinner unexpectedly, or maybe you decided to invite that new person at church over, or bring something to the family down the street going through a rough time. Usually, (or if I really plan ahead) I go to the crock pot for some of my favorite feed-a-crowd deliciousness but sometimes I don’t have time for a crock pot meal to cook.
Here is a great meal that strikes a nice chord between homemade and super convenient.
Behold: Homemade meatballs, tomato sauce and pasta.
This can be easily doubled or tripled for either a big group or to freeze. My kids love these so I usually have a bag in the freezer that I can use for a quick lunch (or to feed an impromptu dinner guest).
Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground Italian Sausage – any kind you like, I use sweet or mild for the kids
¾ cup Italian breadcrumbs (In a pinch I’ve also used panko, but increase seasonings by at least a tsp each if you use unseasoned crumbs.)
2 cloves minced garlic
¼ cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
1 tsp each of the following:
Dried oregano
Dried thyme
Dried basil
OR
1 Tbsp of your favorite Italian seasoning
Optional: fresh snipped basil
1 box of penne or spaghetti pasta
Tomato Sauce:
What’s more cheater and delicious than a good jarred sauce? Buy two, or get one jar of your favorite sauce and one can of diced Italian tomatoes.
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. .
Dump all the ingredients (except the sauce and pasta) into a bowl and mix with your hands just until well-combined. Don’t over-mix or your meatballs will get tough. Tip: mix using your fingers, don’t “knead” the meat.
If the meat mixture seems too dry (if it’s really crumbly and not coming together into balls), add about 1 tsp of olive oil at a time to gain the right consistency.
Grease a large cookie sheet or two depending on the size of your meatballs. Roll them into anywhere from about 1-inch to 2-inch balls. Make smaller ones for it to stretch further; big ones are fun for meatball sandwiches.
Bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes on the middle rack.
Use it all now or freeze it for later
If you are using them right away, dump the whole tray (drippings and all) into a pot of your favorite jarred spaghetti sauce. I recommend two standard jars for this, or one jar and one 14 oz can of Italian diced tomatoes. If you are feeling fancy, you can even make your own sauce, you know, with all your free time ;).
Let it simmer together for at least 20 minutes, or up to an hour on low. Season to taste and serve with cooked pasta!
I like to use a box of penne with this. Toss it in the sauce and meatballs and throw a handful of shredded mozzarella or some fresh chopped Italian parsley on top for a quick delicious meal that feeds a large group.
Serve with some crusty bread and a salad (even a bag-o-salad). It’s a wonderful hearty meal everyone will love.
Again, these meatballs freeze great and they are pretty forgiving on measurements. If you make them ahead, then just add them cold to the sauce and heat together on medium until it’s all heated through.
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