Graced with Grace

Tonight was one of those nights when...   the dishes are piled up so high that you would think, “How in the world am I going to wash all of those dishes. I didn’t even know we could use so many dishes for one simple meal.” And you look at those dishes and finally you know that it has to be done and it can be done and it must be done. So with a grin you pull up your sleeves and you tackle those dishes with a vengeance that you didn’t know you had. Then less then 20 minutes later the dishes are all washed and dried and put away and the sink is cleaned to a shine. Then you say, “Wow! It can be done. That didn’t take long at all and I thought I had a lot to do.”  And you smile and dance away so you can write a blog post about it because that was your plan all along. ;) And here is a poem I wrote about dish washing called The Dishwasher . Enjoy! ;)

As my sisters and I sat enjoying a delightful tea party, Elisabeth asks, “What are some good questions to ask, to get a conversation going?” That was all we need to get us going on a lengthy conversation about communication. First we discussed the basics. What are some good questions to ask? We girls didn’t have much of an answer to that. Rather we discussed how difficult it was for us to actually get into a good interesting conversation. How helpful it would be if there was a book which just gave you lots of good questions to ask, but then when you get into a real life conversation those questions just fly out the window and are either forgotten or just don’t seem to be the right ones. Or some times we contemplate long and hard about what were going to talk about, but conversations never go as planned. Then there are always those awkward silences. What do you do about that? Well, really a silence is not so bad. I think some people think that there can never be a silent momen...

Hand-kneaded Bread One day I decided that I was going to try hand-kneading my bread. I had made bread in our Bosch mixer numerous times and it always turned out well.  I felt quite confident that I could hand-knead the dough and it would still turn out just fine. So I pull out a recipe book and start flipping through till I come to the section about hand-kneading your bread. I read through it quickly, thinking I got it all down. Every thing goes well, and I finally start kneading the bread. I kneaded it till it looked smooth and elasticity, just as it said and then let it rise. It rose wonderfully. It seemed to be working quite well. I was pretty proud of my self. “Who says Hand-kneading is hard” I thought to myself as I puffed up with self glorification. Nevertheless, when all had been said and done, I pull out the bread from the oven and it was all sunk in (I, of course, blamed it on my sisters for being to wild and jumping), to my great distress. When I told my mom tha...

      Thank you very much all of you who left a comment sharing one of your kitchen stories. I enjoyed them all very much and any one who didn’t have a chance to share yours, please feel free to do so on this post or on part 1 . I look forward to reading them.       Now for a couple of my stories, which I hope you will enjoy very much and get a good laugh over. Bean Bread       One day as I was making some bread, my mom was cleaning out our refrigerator. Then my mom came upon some bean sprouts that had been sitting in there for quite awhile. Therefore, she suggests to me that I put them in the bread. I was a good bit skeptical of that idea, thinking it would be utterly nasty, but mother assures me that people do make bread with that kind of bean sprout and that it is quite good, so in go the bean sprouts. Lets just say that those four loaves of bread lasted a very long time and when ever possible we girls would do our best to ...

I don’t know about you, but I really enjoy cooking. But as you know, anyone who has done any amount of cooking has their share of cooking mistakes. I know I’ve run into mine. In fact, I plan to do a post sharing some of my hilarious stories from the kitchen, that weren’t so hilarious at the time that it happened. Right now I don’t have the time, so instead I ask you to leave a comment and share some of your best and funniest cooking mistakes and stories from the kitchen. I’m sure that if you’ve ever cooked at all then you have at least one story to tell, so please don’t be shy. I want to hear the men’s cooking stories too, not just the women’s. After ya’ll share some of your stories, which I very much look forward to reading and laughing over, I will come back and post some of mine and you can laugh all you want. Also I have a question that has nothing to do with cooking. How do you do a “Give Away” on blogspot? If any one has done a Give Away on blogspot, then I would ap...