Inadequacy

To all the moms out there...

I've been thinking a lot recently about how inadequate I feel. My home is constantly a mess--no, a DISASTER. Dirty dishes, junk on the counters, toys EVERYWHERE, piles of laundry to wash and fold...the list goes on and on. You all know! And yet, so many of the women in my life have come to me lately praising me for how industrious I am-how they wish they could accomplish half the things I post on Facebook. Do you know how that makes me feel?

At first, the glow and warmth of their praise runs through me and my first thought is "oh, it's nothing! I don't think I really do that much...etc." and then I've really had to think about my response. Do I really feel like it's nothing? Do I really feel like I don't do that much? NO! I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I'm constantly running, but I'm not really doing all the things that needs to get accomplished! Why do I feel so INADEQUATE? And, am I doing all these things and posting on Facebook just to get recognition, praise, compliments? Well, I have to be honest and say, yes. I am a people-pleaser. I love it when people notice the things I do. However, I love my family even more. I love doing the little things for them like making a delicious dinner, or dessert-making sure that they eat healthy foods. I love it when my home is clean and I feel organized--those are the things that motivate me most. On the flip side, I've been telling my friends that as long as you have a happy home, clean, fed and healthy children...they are doing all the right things! Who cares about a messy house?! But here's the thing. When it's all about what I can do, what I need to accomplish, what I should be doing--do you see the trend? All the "I's?"

So...

Friends-here's the conclusion I've come to. The most important thing in life is to love God-to follow Christ. Second, is to love your family. Do what it needs to take care of your family-to be the support your husband needs, feed and nurture your children and give them a safe, clean, loving home. Third, love your neighbors. Love on them by praying for them, love on them by listening, by gifting them with whatever gifts and strengths God gave you--pass it on to them. Everything else can fall to the wayside! Those are easy things to say, I know! But, if you live by those three things...wow! I know I feel much more blessed--IT'S NOT ABOUT ME anymore!

I want to share with you the lyrics of a song that has really changed my heart.

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong, a perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart;
I know that while in heaven he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin.


Because a sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Praise the One,
Risen Son of God!

Behold him there, the risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I AM,
The King of glory and of grace!

One in himself, I cannot die
My soul is purchased by his blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God
With Christ, my Savior and my God

None of the things I do can ever compare to what Christ did for me. And, ladies--each one of you have special strengths and gifts that God has given you. I get to do a lot of the things I do because I am blessed to be able to stay home. Some of you work outside the home--not only because you want to, but it could be because you NEED to. There is a lot of love and sacrifice there and it's not to be taken lightly! That is HARD work! Bless you for doing what needs to be done to help provide for your family!

There you have it! I have a lot more thoughts running through my brain, but I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone! Keep up the good work and do not falter in your path! We all have our race to run and remember, we can do ALL THINGS in Christ! Those words should not be taken lightly, but taken to HEART and be encouraged!

Cranberry White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Before I share my cookie recipe, I realize it's been way too long since I blogged last! I wish I could say I had a really busy week--but in reality, nothing changed much other than I started teaching again after Spring Break.

I found a post on William Sonoma's website for juicing. I think it's 30 different juices for 30 days. It looks interesting. I think I will try it starting tomorrow. I'll try my best to post pics and recipes as I go along.

Now, to the cookie recipe. I had a play date planned with a friend today, which we ended up canceling...but I like to provide snacks if we're hosting the date at our house. So, I was racking my brain for a healthy, but yummy cookie recipe. Here's what I came up with!

Cranberry White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 c. Applesauce
1/2 c. Agave syrup
1/4 c. Brown sugar (you could probably forego the sugar...Agave syrup is really sweet)
3 well-ripe bananas, mashed
1 egg, beaten (I used milled flaxseed...1 Tbsp milled flaxseed + 1 Tbsp water)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 c. flour (use GF, if you can't eat gluten)
3 c. old fashioned oats
3/4 c. white chocolate chips
1 c. dried cranberries (I used the whole bag...LOVE dried fruit!)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a cookie sheet with cooking spray.

Mix Applesauce, Agave syrup, sugar, bananas, egg and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. In a separate medium bowl, mix salt, soda, flour and oats together. Add to the wet ingredients and mix well. Gently fold in the chocolate chips and cranberries and bake for 9-12 minutes. Let it sit on the cookie sheet for a couple minutes before placing on the cooling rack--otherwise it will droop and crumble all over the place. Not good! :-)

Hope you guys like it. It is not the soft, fluffy cookie texture you would get with the Toll House cookie recipe, but it is a healthier alternative and pretty delicious. The cookies are still soft, but chewy--like a baked oatmeal. If you want to go even healthier, omit the chocolate chips and add walnuts instead for a nutty flavor. Maybe drizzle some icing?? :-) I sure do love my sugar! Happy baking!

Cleaning

I'm somewhat in cleaning mode today. We have a lot to do before we start another week and I start working again. It was so wonderful having an entire week off from teaching. What a blessing! Anyways, my father-in-law is coming to visit tonight and my stove was looking yucky. And I mean, REALLY yucky! So, I sprayed my usual cleaner on there and had a bucket of hot soapy water and started to wipe. Sick! It was greasy and tons of food was stuck on there...I did not feel up to cleaning this stove top for the next two hours. Then I remembered a cleaning solution that I saw on Pinterest! Happy!

Make a paste of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and smear it all over the top. Let it get a little crusty and wipe it off with a damp washcloth. It took me less than 20 minutes to get my stove looking pretty clean without a lot of elbow grease! I wish I had taken a before picture--if you guys saw how gross it was, you would be amazed at the transformation! I will be doing this to my oven on Sunday. If the grease is especially hard to get off, make the paste, let it dry for 1-2 hours and then use vinegar in a spray bottle and spray it on the surface as you're wiping it off. I'll take before and after pictures of my oven and let you know how that works. If it does as good of a job as my stovetop--I will not be wasting any more money on oven cleaners. Do you KNOW how much those cost and how toxic they are?! It's about $5 a bottle and I've been known to use 2 to get my oven mediocre-clean. Definitely not worth the time OR the money. And believe me, my time is way more valuable. :-)

I love, love love cheap AND easy cleaning solutions! Hope you guys try it out for yourselves and see the difference!

Next on the list of things to do: clean my living room before 5 tonight and paint Miss Phoebe's room tomorrow. Thanks to my mom, that is so gonna happen! Yay! It's yellow right now, but it will be a lovely lavender by the time we're done. Oh, and I really gotta clean her room. It amazes me that she's turned into such a packrat. Hmmm, wonder who she gets that from? I'll give you two guesses and the first one doesn't count.

Now, I'm off to reprimand my daughter for being too loud during quiet time and then taking a little nap myself to get me through til tonight. :-) Have a great afternoon!

JUICER

Here's my new juicer. It's made by Breville, as you can see from the box. I bought it from Amazon--not quite sure if I necessarily got an awesome deal on it, but I did get free shipping which was nice. We made an apple, carrot and celery juice and, wow! It was 1). delicious 2). the juicer was incredible--fast, and the amount of jucie you got was TONS! The pulp that was left over was pretty much dry! Unbelievable! 3). clean up was a BREEZE! You don't often hear me rave about a product, but this is one of the best purchases I've made in the last couple of years! I bought it on Amazon for $150 and of course, that included the shipping because I'm a Amazon Prime member (for the month, anyway). I'm still debating on whether that's worth $80 a year. We'll see.

Here is a photo of the juice we made:

Yummy! It looks kinda yucky because I drank half of it before I remembered to take a picture. I think next time, I will be pouring it over a glass of ice. I love my juice COLD! If you have a juicer, here's the recipe.

3 apples (I used Gala apples) whole (if the feeding tube is big enough, otherwise cut in half/quarters)
4 large stalks of celery
3 medium carrots

Juice on high--remember, the produce might jump out of the feeding tube, so make sure you have the little pusher ready to cover the hole of the feeding tube. My juicer is pretty powerful at 850w, so it only took about 2 minutes and all we had left was dry pulp and at least 2 cups of juice using only that much fruit/veggies. AMAZING!

If you're in the market for a juicer-I would spend a little more and buy this one. I just can't even believe how easy it is to use and how delicious the juice is. I can't wait to grocery shop next week to get enough produce to make juice every day! :-)

GF Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

So, here's the scoop on these little babies! I am addicted to Pinterest. No doubt those of you who know me have heard nonstop about how good some of the recipes are on there. I've been testing them for the last 3 weeks and I'm sure you noticed my waistline expanding (not due to the baby! But due to me consuming delicious substances such as cookies, cake, casseroles, soups, you name it!).

I made these cookies using a Pinterest link. I found it on Meaningful Eats (www.meaningfuleats.blogspot.com) and she calls them Flourless Chocolate Cookies. I didn't change much other than the type of chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate). Let me tell ya-they are way, way, way yummy for not having any gluten in them. If you'll be a little more patient with me, I will share the recipe. I just wanted to yak some more about why I'm posting about GF foods.

Most of you know that I was adopted from Korea when I was nine. Up until I came to America, I (obviously) ate only Korean foods. Not to say that all Korean foods are GF, but most of it is. Rice, fish, kimchi (pickled cabbage), rice noodles, sweet potato noodles. We would VERY rarely eat wheat/white bread, wheat flour-based foods. So after living here, in the US for the past (almost) twenty years--I decided to try and eat mostly GF and see if I noticed any changes. I figured why not and, I was much skinnier those days. Yeah, yeah, I was a child...blah blah. But, after giving birth to my daughter and watching her grow...I'm wondering if there isn't something to eating GF and eating only small amounts of dairy products. We noticed a pretty big difference in how our children's skin, general disposition and even their weight changed when we went mostly GF the past year. We started shortly after Shiloh's first birthday up until end of September. They were happier (mostly), were more active, they didn't have their facial eczema (only after 2 days of being GF), and Phoebe lost a lot of her chubby (she didn't lose any weight! Just the big cheeks and some fat rolls on her thighs. I would NEVER EVER EVER let a child her age go on a restrictive diet for weight loss! That is not healthy-especially if they weren't eating tons of junk food to begin with. I did it and absolutely made sure she was getting all the nutrients and vitamins she needed!), etc. I could keep going and going and going on the benefits. I think there are a lot of genetic factors involved, but for us-I know we Warrens are pretty gluten sensitive.

So that being said, I love bread. I love crackers, cereal, cakes, cookies, noodles. I probably won't be giving up wheat flour anytime soon (this is, hopefully, my last pregnancy and I'm gonna milk it for all its worth!) and will probably keep on making all those things. But, for those of you who are interested and wanting a easy, yummy GF recipe-this one's for you! Enjoy!

3c. powdered sugar

2/3c. unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2-4 egg whites, at room temperature

1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract

1c. bittersweet chocolate chips (remember, I used GF milk chocolate chips)

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper and spray with nonstick spray.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together powdered sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Whisk in egg whites (start with two) and add the vanilla. Beat until the batter is moistened. You're looking for a thick, brownie-like batter consistency. If it's too dry, add in one egg white at a time until you get the desired consistency. Gently stir in the chocolate chips.

3. Spoon batter onto the prepared baking sheets in 12 evenly spaced mounds per cookie sheet. Bake about 14 minutes until the tops are glossy and lightly cracked. Slide the parchment paper (with the cookies...lol) onto wire racks. Let cookies cool completely and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days. 

Hope you guys like them, cuz I sure did! And of course, so did my chocoholic children. :-) 

Does anyone know what foraging means? I looked it up on Google, not because I didn't know--but because I wanted a better definition than what was inside my head. I find that it's been some time since I've had to write anything that was somewhat significant.

I'm onto my fourth pregnancy and wow! So much has happened since I last blogged--Phoebe is 3 1/2 now, I've had a miscarriage ,and Shiloh is almost 21 months and Penny is due in 15 weeks. Due to so many changes in my life, I decided to start over and try again brand new. :-)

So, back to foraging. I've been thinking about a title for my new blog. What fits? What's cool? What is the best title that would best describe what's happening in my life? Foraging a New Path became the answer to all these questions. The definition of forage/foraging means:

The act of looking or searching for food or provisions--according to Google.

The Warrens are HUGE foodies. WE LOVE FOOD! It is a pretty big blessing that the Lord has protected us from being massively overweight because we love eating so much. The looking or searching for food fits really well, but how does that fit with the rest of my life? Let me share. LOL

I'm always in search of something. We all are. I found my answer in God--found my salvation in Christ and living my "walk" through the help of the Spirit. This is pretty tough to do on a day-to-day basis and sometimes, gasp! I forget that I can't do it on my own. Again, that's where the help of the Spirit comes in. How reassuring that God is constant when I'm not. God provides and I go searching/looking for Him especially when I am so tired and discourgaed. And trust me, that happens all too often. Foraging for my spiritual food is a daily task, so I figure that this also fits with my title.

I am intending this blog to be my dumping ground for lotsa things. A lovely place to brag about how wonderfully awesome my husband and children are, a cool spot for my special, nummy, incredible recipes that I think you should all know about, a place for deep thoughts to come spewing out when I'm not able to sleep (now that I'm getting huge and uncomfortable), and a place to share funny situations and happenings that seem to pop up occassionally in my life. So, here's to new beginnings! Hope you enjoy!

Loves to y'all.