While making breakfast this morning, this was a nice wake up call:
PB jar. Top View.
Ahhh!!!!! OUT OF PEANUT BUTTER???
Thankfully, some aggressive scraping allowed me a get enough out for a sandwich. And, the good thing about the Sam's Club twin jar packages of PB is that, precisely half the time, there's another jar waitin' in the cabinet tucked away somewhere. Tucked away somewhere far away cause it takes a hella long time to eat 64 oz. of peanut butter by yourself (FYI, 64 oz = 3 pounds).
Ironically, my 7am reaction to staring into my empty jar of peanut butter was to think about a Queen oldie but goodie, Another One Bites the Dust:
What exactly does a 3 pound void of peanut butter look like?
I hope the holidays and traveling have been safe and happy for you.
Thanksgiving in the South is a wonderful opportunity to take in your favorite butter, sugar, corn syrup, mayo dishes... OH opps! I mean squash casserole, green bean 'salad', pecan pie, stuffing, and the like. All are deliciously wonderful and will have you in a happy food coma in no time at all. College football does provide some stimulation for keeping everyone pumped up, especially when UT defeats rival A&M.*
Perhaps my body was sending me SOS signals for a post-Thanksgiving feasting cleanse when it started craving healthy veggies again. Miraculously, this past week I've had a food creative spirit for creating healthy, veggie friendly dishes. My sister and several good friends are vegetarian (and some vegan). While the idea has crossed my mind quite a few times, I prefer the term 'Veggie Lover' over the restrictive feel that Vegetarian gives me. Loving sounds a lot better to me :D
Black Bean soup with guac and tomatoes on toasted wheat bread
Whole wheat Couscous with carrot, cucumber, tomato, and some cilantro, salt, peper, and lime juice to taste
Veggie burger (cooked frozen patty) with guac, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes on toasted wheat bread
You can probably see common ingredients in these dishes, aka, what I got at the grocery store this week! :D The amazing thing is, my bill was under 25 bucks and I've made A LOT of food with all of this. Everything is veggie and vegan friendly. It's a fun experiment to try! Everything is super easy to make; it almost takes more time to wash the dishes than make the food! Feel free to let me know if you want any tips on how to make this stuff!
*Shoutout to all my Georgia Tech buddies.... :(((( Sad loss against UGA. CPJ better be planning for next year's attack on them Dogs!!!
Today, bridesmaids dresses, a child in need of love and sponsorship in Ethiopia, and a random comment at a church group tonight hit me in the face with LOVE. And it came in the form of the number 27.
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Love to live and Live to love
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Have you ever seen 27 Dresses? A girlfriend of mine and I both have. Over a dinner conversation one night the topic came up of dresses and the movie. It just so happened to come up around the time I'd told my friends about the idea to financially sponsor an Ethiopian child in need of love and support. Through a friend's suggestion and encouragement, I'd decided to invest in an organization founded by a Georgia Tech professor and his wife that were doing mission work in Africa. The decision to sponsor was easy ... the decision on which one to sponsor was the hard part. There were close to 40 children that still needed sponsorship. And so, in a very random way, we decided why not the 27th child on the list? I'm sure there was more to the decision behind 27 (maybe .. ?) But, in the end, it made it easy to select the 27th child on the website's list and go with that child, whoever it may be. It would save me the heart wrenching decision of picking a child myself. Sooooo.... that is how 27 entered my life:
TSEGAYE MEKONEN MEGERSA
'27' as we lovingly refer to him is a 5 year old boy who does not attend school for financial reasons. Until now. He lives with his natural mother and runs errands for the family. And now, he has an extended family of American 20-something's who will send him love and support from the States in the hopes that our sponsorship will have a positive impact on his life and future. Maybe, just maybe, the love and pictures we send him of our smiling faces will put a smile on his.
Because of Kennedy, the organization that we're sponsoring 27 through, is a Christian based group that shares Christian teachings with the kids. Tonight, in the midst of studying and work and research and other of life's craziness, 27 was far from my mind. I was sitting with a group from a local church talking about 'Walls' that we put up inside ourselves and between others around us. Someone randomly brings up a stat he'd heard about it taking someone hearing about Jesus 27 times before they start to respond to the Church and to Jesus. Yep - 27 times.
It takes three seconds for me to make the connection to 'my' 27 and the dinner conversation about 27 Dresses I'd had several weeks before. It's a weird coincidence that a chick flick movie about a gal after true love leads to the decision on which child to sponsor that leads to a stat I hear tonight about it taking 27 times for a person to truly start to respond to talk about Jesus. However random it all may be, my heart swells when I think of the ONE thing they all have in common.
Love. Love in marriage and between friends. Love of children and the future. And love in your faith.
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"If I have the gift of prophesy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing".
My Own Little World by Matthew West
Challenge yourself to think outside your world. Would you be satisfied with your impact?
