Worth Sharing This Week: Room To Grow

The Jane Austen Newsletter recommended this soundtrack from the movie "Emma" this week.

 What a pleasant bit of listening that was!   Since the frontispiece identified the composer of the works as Rachel Portman,

I decided to give other of her movie scores a listen and I was pleasantly surprised to discover yet another modern day composer I like rather well.   Her music is easily recognizable from piece to piece once you start to listen to them.   It was no surprise to learn she'd written the score to "Chocolat" which is another must buy movie I need to add to my videos.

 I have so enjoyed getting to know the music of so many new to me composers, some modern and some historic, over these last few months.  As I get to know new composers to hear their voice within each piece so that it's immediately identifiable as their music is such a joy.  With writers it's often a pattern of words.  With composers it's a progression of chords that reveals their voice. 

I am feeling more and more fulfilled as I spend each week listening to lovely music.  What a blessing the internet has proven to be for 'instant' knowledge!



Last week, Lancia Smith shared a bit about 'Cultivators' in her post on rest for The Cultivating Project.  It struck me hard when I read it.   It has stuck with me all week long and this week I went back to the site to read a few more of the current season of posts as well as to seek out that special bit that stayed with me so through the week.

First I read the group's Manifesto which is powerful in and of itself:

"We cultivate our lives to produce the fruit of the Spirit as much as we cultivate it to produce art. We cultivate healthy marriages and healthy children. We cultivate circles of nourished friends, and honourable ways to make a living. We cultivate by choice and we cultivate by discipline. We cultivate the conditions in which goodness, truth, and beauty thrive within the lines drawn for us. We cultivate spaces for others to find refuge, healing, and places to flourish of their own. We cultivate planting, growth, harvest, and Sabbath in their seasons. We nurture growth and we defend it. We are namers and makers, prayers and labourers, envisioners and incarnators. We cultivate life.

We are Cultivators tending to the business of both earth and Heaven, walking with God as we are made to in the gardens of our lives and the Kingdom that is coming."

Then on to read in Lancia Smith's post these words:

"As Cultivators, we practice so that we can master our crafts and be excellent in them. We practice cultivating virtue so we can become spiritually mature and filled with the fullness of Christ. We practice community and core relationships so we live out our calling within the Body of Christ and to bear a shining witness to the watching world. Whatever truth there is in the saying, “Practice makes perfect”, the striving for perfection is not the same thing as practicing for mastery or excellence. I do know for certain that practice makes better, even if it never makes perfect.

Part of our practice in cultivating the good, the true, and the beautiful is acknowledging the rhythms into which we are made as human beings. Rest is an abiding rhythm for which we are made. 

Cultivators, by our nature and calling, live within the confines and the forms of the seasons. Winter, so often the least loved and least welcomed because of its bitter conditions and barrenness of green, is truthfully the season of rest and the birth place of renewal. It is in the resting place that the land is renewed and everything that depends upon the land, including us. Welcoming rest as we cultivate winter is our reboot to be reset and restored. Receive the invitation to enter into that grace, and trust Him to hold your seasons and you safely in place."

A few years ago a friend began a group of spiritual women whom she called Gatekeepers.  I was honored when she asked me to be part of the group but I felt uneasy with the 'position' so to speak.  Yet when I read Smith's words last week about being a cultivator, I felt that slight 'ping' of crystal truth ring within me and knew without doubt that I'd found my true title.

Sometimes we don't even know ourselves who or what we are exactly but we do know what we are not.  And then one day we know...My theme, the source of much of my talk has been to say repeatedly that we're seasonal, our lives are seasonal and cyclical.  I talk constantly of sowing seeds and reaping harvests. Without even knowing who I was, I was speaking my own truth, one that I recognized immediately upon reading in Smith's post last week.

From TheCultivatingProject this gem this week from writer Jordan Durbin:

Rest, for me, is found in being where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to do.  It is not actually the complete absence of labor, but rather finding peace in doing the labor I’m called to do. 

I often find this is true...I may be tired but it's not just tired.  There's a great deal of happiness and satisfaction tied to the tasks I've done that made me tired.  And it is restful to be in that mindset.

However, I do believe in the art of learning to REST in that we stop, are silent, do nothing, aren't busy occupying our hands or minds.  It's a worthwhile thing to take those few moments daily and do NOTHING and drink in the surroundings whether it's sitting by a warm fire and watching birds outside the window or sitting on a porch contemplating the natural world around us...Or even just waiting in a car for someone else to shop or come out from an appointment.  




I got a newsletter this week from The Cultivating Project and in it was shared a playlist of music to go with the newsletter.  You will need to sign up for a spotify account if you don't already have one but it's free.  Enjoy!



Many times I've shared my dismay that we beat ourselves up over what we have compared to another's more perfect looking decor, clothes, makeup, skill at a craft, etc. portrayed in a magazine or on TV.   Yet so many of those images are not real life.

You wonder why your food doesn't turn out photo perfect compared to the page in the cookbook but it's not a true picture.  It's shaving cream and soy sauce and food coloring and raw foods that hold their shape better than cooked ones.  It's food you wouldn't want to eat in any form when the stylists are done with their photo shoot.  But you will admit that your dish, which might look like a stew when it wasn't meant to be tastes pretty good and your family was happy eating it...So which would you have?  Perfection or something that nourished bodies and earned you kudos for another successful attempt at adding something new to their diets?

I have followed two or three bloggers whose homes are pretty nice looking and something that many strive to copy but when a magazine comes in to do a photo shoot they alter that blogger's style.  They change the color of this piece or that wall, and add in plants or subtract some art piece that made the blogger's heart sing and what we end up seeing isn't the space that blogger happened to live in day to day and had only vague resemblance to the blogger's style overall.

And then there are all those beautiful crafts we see on Pinterest that we hope to replicate but somehow our embroidery stitch goes wonky, the fabric we choose for our quilt puckers, the frosting on our cake is too thick or too thin...Or we're so fraught with anxiety because we've never attempted anything like that before that we just gasp with awe and then leave the page because we can never do anything that looks so lovely so we stick to the tried and true and never attempt to do anything that might make our heart sing with joy.

Well Parisienne Farmgirl had a lovely video this week about Celebrating the Amateur and it's worth watching a hundred times over until it gets into our heads that starting is always the beginning of a lovely journey.



Brunswick Stew

Brunswick Stew is like BBQ or Chili.   It's open to interpretation and different from region to region and sometimes even from one county or town to another.  True story: A friend and I used to argue over where to go for lunch on the days we wanted Brunswick Stew.  She favored the stew at the place on the left of the highway and I favored the stew at the place on the right.  We agreed that the BBQ tasted pretty much the same but the stews were totally different.   So our only solution ended being to stop at BOTH places.  And yes, Brunswick Stew is traditionally served with a side of pulled BBQ sandwiches and dill pickles and chips and in some places they even toss in an extra side of slaw!

Granny made a Brunswick stew that I really loved.  Later Mama took up the reins and began to make Brunswick Stew.  One day in my youngest married days I was homesick for Brunswick Stew and so I followed a recipe in my oldest cookbook.  It was good...but definitely not the stew I grew up eating.

Flash forward a few years.  We stopped eating pork years ago and when we did, Mama always made her Brunswick Stew without pork in it, dished up our portion and then added it in for every one else she was gifting Brunswick Stew to.  Very generous of her to do so but Mama doesn't make stew anymore.  One other thing...Brunswick Stew recipes are rarely shared...and frankly I'll tell you that anyone who did share a recipe was highly suspect.   Brunswick Stews were guarded like pound cake recipes.

So I  decided that I would make my own this week.   I tweaked the recipe in my oldest cookbook adding in the few things that I felt pretty sure were the 'different' part of Granny's and Mama's stews. It's good y'all!   It's perfect for a cold or rainy or snowy winter day.  It's excellent as a side for pulled Bbq sandwiches but the Bbq is really unnecessary.  I served with a pan of crispy crust corn bread.

Brunswick Stew

1 whole chicken, cooked and meat pulled from the bone
(Or you can add a half pound of browned ground beef, diced cooked pork shoulder and chicken to equal about three pounds.    I just used the chicken)
1 very large chopped onion
1 15 ounce can of fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 cup of English peas (optional and you may use frozen or canned that have been drained)
2 cups of whole kernel corn (frozen or drained canned)
1 1/2 cups of butter beans (small green limas, frozen)
1 large potato diced
4-6 cups of chicken broth
hot sauce (Tabasco or whatever brand you prefer.  I used a brand purchased at Aldi)
Apple Cider Vinegar
Catsup
Salt and Pepper to taste

I halved this recipe for the two of us and still had a gracious plenty so be aware that this makes up a good amount of stew as written.

In a small amount of oil (2 tbsps) cook onion until just tender and translucent.  Add meat, tomatoes, peas, corn, butter beans, potato and broth to the pan.  Heat to a simmer.  Here's where the no measuring but oh so necessary for flavor ingredients come in and I'm going to tell you approximately how much I used of each item.  My hot sauce is not exactly hot.  It's pretty mild.  So I shook the bottle over the pan about 8 times.  Add in about 1/4 cup of vinegar.  Believe me, it's not too much!  And because my catsup is in a squeeze bottle, I squeezed it over the pot for about a 5 count.  Add at least a teaspoon of salt and then add pepper.  Taste the broth...Adjust seasonings if needed, then allow all this to come up to a boil and reduce heat to a steady simmer for at least 3 hours or longer.  And yes, you can use your slow cooker if you so desire but be sure to cook that onion first!

I tasted mine after four hours and decided to add a couple of shakes more hot sauce, a couple of spoons of vinegar and a squidge of catsup more.  This is all done to my taste mind you and should be done to yours.  It really all demands on how much vinegar you have in your brand of catsup and how hot the hot sauce is as to whether you want to add more of anything.