They liked it anyway…

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I didn’t plan this meal very well…Let me back up to say that I’ve been spending some time in the evenings when we’re watching what little there is to watch on TV (summer TV is an even more barren place in the vast TV wasteland!) or listening to music (now that I can get to my records) going through recipe magazines like Taste of Home and its affiliates that have stacked up over the last several months while I have been doing other things. Meal planning is not my favorite thing to do anyway, and I sometimes cringe at having just the same old stuff I’ve been making for years to choose from. So going through magazines and getting ideas sometimes revives the culinary aspect of my homemaking occupation.

I had found a couple of recipes for ham steaks that sounded really good. I had only made ham steaks maybe once or twice in 27+ years of marriage. I don’t remember that my mom ever made them. I thought they’d be a good addition to my repertoire because, as the boys get older and get involved in youth group activities and jobs and such, we frequently find only 2 or 3 of us at home at dinnertime. A ham steak would be a good way to make a dish with ham without having to roast a whole big one.

So I clipped the two recipes I found and put them in my folder for new recipes. The next few times I was at the grocery store I looked for ham steaks, but I couldn’t find them. Then one day at another store that I use just for quick pick-ups (it doesn’t have many of the regular things I buy and its layout doesn’t make sense to me, so I don’t do the biggest part of my shopping there), I suddenly remembered ham steaks and swung by their meat department to see if they had any — and they did! I got two to have enough for all four of us (the fifth family member is still working at a camp in CA for the summer for a few more weeks). I put them in the freezer when I got home.

Last Saturday night I decided to try the ham steaks for dinner the next day, so I pulled them out of the freezer to thaw. I got out my new-recipe folder to dig out the ham steak recipe to see what I needed to do the next day. That was when I discovered it called for fully-cooked ham steaks (mine weren’t), pineapple juice (which I didn’t have on hand and wouldn’t unless I bought it for a special recipe) and ground mustard (I only had prepared).

Hmmm.

Off and on through the rest of the evening and the next morning I pondered what to do with them. I thought through my other ham recipes and wasn’t inspired. I had really wanted to make something new. After breakfast I looked at the recipe again. I decided to use apple juice instead of the pineapple and prepared mustard instead of the ground. As I mixed up the ingredients for the marinade, it looked pretty good until the mustard — that made it look too yellowish. As I put the ham and marinade into a ziploc bag and put it in the refirgerator, I hoped I didn’t just ruin two perfectly good pieces of meat and tried to think of another quick-fix meal I could have on standby if this failed.

When we came home from church I asked my husband if he would grill the ham, to which he readily agreed. Since the recipe had called for already cooked ham and since he had never grilled hams steaks before, he used a meat thermometer just to make sure it was done. But it was sliced thinly enough that getting cooked through was no problem.

When he brought in the platter of grilled meat he said, “You’re going to wish you had more of this.” I said, “Why? Is it good?” He said, “Yeah!”

And it was! Really good! It didn’t have the type of flavor that just bowls you over when you put it in your mouth, but as you begin eating it, the delicious flavor comes through.

So I’m delighted to have a new great recipe on hand. And since it marinates for a couple of hours, it works really well for an after-church meal if you have time to make up the marinade beforehand. I thought about trying it to make it the way it was originally written next time just to compare — but I think I will stick with what works.

I didn’t take a picture, though I thought about it (in fact, I was thinking “You know you’re a blogger when you want to take pictures of a new dinner before letting anyone eat”). Just think dark pink meat with grill stripes.

Here’s my revised version, which I doubled for us:

Marinated Ham Steak

1/2 cup apple juice
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon margarine, melted
1 to 2 teaspoons mustard
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1 ham steak

Combine first six ingredients and pour into a resealable plastic bag. Add ham; seal bag and turn to coat. Refrigerate at least two hours, turning occasionally.

Drain marinade and grill ham, uncovered, over medium heat. If the ham is fully cooked beforehand, grill only 3-4 minutes on each side; if the ham is raw, plan on 10-15 minutes or until meat thermometer reaches 140-160 degrees.

The original recipe says to baste the steak frequently with the reserved marinade, but that’s best only if the ham is fully cooked before it marinates. If the meat is raw when it marinates, you don’t want to use that marinade for basting and end up with residuals from raw meat on your cooked steak — only baste with that marinade if you allow time for the added basting to get fully heated: don’t baste with it just before serving or in the last few of minutes of grilling.

The original recipe also said to cut the steak in half before serving, but I cut it up into smaller pieces before marinating in order to get it to fit in the bag plus to let the marinade get to more surfaces of the meat.

If you ever try this, let me know what you think.

A couple of book reviews

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I was looking on my bookshelf for something easy to get into in anticipation of a long doctor’s appointment (rather a long time in the waiting room). I found a small book called Sweet Dreams Drive by Robin Lee Hatcher there. I don’t remember buying it, but it had a big sale sticker on it and I had at least heard of the author, so that must’ve been part of my motivation, plus the fact that it looked like a good story. I didn’t realize at first it was the fourth in a series called Hart’s Crossing about a folks in a small town in Idaho. It wasn’t originally on my Summer Reading List, though I am adding it on. :)The story is about a couple who had found each other unexpectedly, fallen in love, and went on to pursue the American Dream — and run into problems with debt and a lack of communication and the sleep deprivation and tiredness resulting from the birth of twins. The point of view shifts back and forth between the husband and wife, Al and Patti, but what I liked about that was that we see the same situation from each point of view and see how it causes different reactions. It’s a sweet story of how they learn to sacrifice and put each other first and make their marriage even better than it was before.

Now I want to get the first three books in the series! I don’t think they are needed to really understand this story, but I liked the town the characters and want to read about the rest of them.

The second book is a prize that I won in Katrina’s Books Galore give-away last spring (thanks. Katrina!), Scrap Everything by Leslie Gould. The basic premise is the friendship that develops between two unlikely women. Elise has moved to her husband’s home town as a temporary stop on her way to her dream location of Seattle. Partly because she doesn’t really want to live in the town and partly because she considers it a short stay and doesn’t want to put down roots and partly because of her personality, which is somewhat reticent to get to know people, she seems aloof (another character later described her as “needy,” but I didn’t see her as needy at all: she seemed just the opposite to me. She didn’t want or think she needed their friendship or their help at all at first). One of the first women she meets is Rebekah, a new owner of a scrapbooking shop, whom Elise thinks is “perky” and describes as someone who “spoke in italics and exclamation points.”

Elise’s husband, Ted, is unexpectedly called back from army reserves to active duty and her oldest son has behavioral problems. Rebekah’s adopted daughter faces a medical crisis with a need for a kidney transplant, and the family seems about to lose either their farm or Rebekah’s business due to the expenses, especially when a laspe in insurance coverage is discovered. As they meet over scrapbooking, horseback riding at Rebekah’s farm, and helping each other through their problems, they learn to give each other a chance, they learn to give, and they learn to give up control to the only One who can control the events in their lives.

Even though the title and a lot of the setting pertains to scrapbooking, a reader wouldn’t need to be a scrapbooker to enjoy the book.

I found the physical transitions a little choppy and unclear in places. For instance, in the sixth chapter, Rebekah and her husband, Patrick, are in their kitchen talking. He has just gotten a glass of water when their conversation takes an unpleasant turn, and Rebekah says, “I’m too tired for this. Good night.” and turns off the kitchen light. It sounded (to me, anyway) like she left him standing in the kitchen in the dark. Maybe she did. But I think it was meant to convey they were done in the kitchen and going on to bed. There were a few “Huh?” moments like that throughout the book, but I don’t feel they marred the major part of the story.

I identified most with Elise; I could understand her feelings and reactions throughout the book. Maybe because of that, I felt some of the others were too hard on her later on in the book. I empathized with her mapping out her ideal plan and getting frustrated because God wasn’t allowing things to work out accordingly, then having to yield that plan to Him. And Rebekah, though a go-getter and ones who makes things happen, had to learn there are things out of her control as well that she just has to trust God for.

Overall I would recommend this book, and I’d like to read Leslie’s other two books as well some time.

I won a book from Deena at A Peek At My Bookshelf and volunteered to review a couple of other books, and wanted to start right away on the new book just out by Kay Washer, so I may have to scrap my Summer Reading List before it’s over. 🙂 But that’s fine — I do want to read all those books, whether I get to them this summer or next fall. We’ll see how it goes. I have plenty of to-be-read books stacked up to keep me happy for a long time. 🙂

Wordless Wednesday: Simple Pleasures

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See more or add your own Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes For Mom or the Wordless Wednesday HQ.

Faith isn’t arrogance

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I was reading an online news article about the death of Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, and someone in the comments section called it the height of arrogance that she said she was going straight to heaven.

I can’t speak for Tammy Faye — I don’t know much about her other than general knowledge from the news over the years. But it isn’t arrogance to confidently declare that one is going to heaven if one’s confidence is in Christ.

I John 5:13 says, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God” (emphasis mine).

How miserable it would be to go through life not knowing that!

Of course, if someone believed that getting to heaven was based on one’s good works outweighing the bad or trying to “do the best I can,” then it might indeed sound arrogant to say confidently that one is going to heaven, because that confidence would be based on thinking he or she was a pretty good person. But it would be worse than arrogant: it would dead wrong.

Isaiah 64:6: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”

Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Salvation is based in dependence on what Christ did.

I Corinthians 15:3-4: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

I John 5:11-12: “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

Time Travel Tuesday: Spousal Encounter

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My Life as Annie hosts the weekly Time Travel Tuesday and asks us this week about the day we first met our future spouse.

Jim worked as an usher at college his freshman year, my sophomore year (he’s six months younger), and I would see him in the aisles seating people and thought he was a nice-looking guy. I knew that he also worked in the library, where I worked, but we never worked the same shift, so I didn’t meet him that year. The next year found us scheduled at the same time, though he worked in the Periodical Room and I worked at the circulation desk. But he had to pass by the circulation desk as he went to and from the Periodical Room to retrieve older copies of magazines that weren’t out on the shelves, so at some point I said Hi and introduced myself. That was very out of character for me — I was terribly shy and reticent growing up, but going to a smaller Christian school my last two years of high school and getting involved in things like yearbook and student council, which I never would have even attempted previously, then being in the dorm at a Christian college were some of the things the Lord used to draw me out of my shell.

So our first meeting was pretty much just meeting each other for a few minutes at work. Annie asks whether it was “love at first site” or whether it took longer. I mentioned in the “First Date Edition” of Time Travel Tuesday that it took a bit longer. I always enjoyed working when Jim was there and enjoyed getting to know him, but even after we went out the first time or two, I was still thinking of him as just a good friend. But, as I mentioned in that post, I was very excited when he did ask me out that January. We continued to get to know each other and our relationship continued to grow, and I had to work through some issues — more details are in a post about our love story from a carnival Barb at A Chelsea Morning had on that topic last September. I like to think that we grew into love rather than falling in it. 🙂 We dated for a year and a half, were engaged for six months, and have been married for 27 1/2 years.

Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt: Tiny

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Theme: Tiny | Become a Photo Hunter | View Blogroll

Tiny spatterware:

 

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Tiny bears on a tiny bench:

Little bears on a little bench

Tiny paper hearts:

Tiny hearts

Tiny warriors (the same ones who cast the shadow last week):

Tiny warriors

My Childhood Home

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Mary at Owlhaven is sponsoring a meme today, July 20, called My Childhood Home. She says, “I’d like you all to consider writing about your childhood home. It doesn’t matter how big or small it was. All the memories don’t have to be picture-perfect. If you moved a lot, it’s fine to pick one favorite house. What I want to hear are details that were important to you as a child: your secret hideout under the stairs, the single-paned picture window you licked and froze your tongue to one winter morning, the backyard tree you climbed, the way your mother washed your hair in the kitchen sink every Saturday night, or any other strong indelible memory you have.” She has a Mr. Linky here so that anyone who wants to participate can write a post on their blog and put the link on that post. More details are here.

We moved around quite a bit when I was younger, so I don’t have a memory of one old family homestead. I think that would be neat, though! But the one home I most associate with my childhood is my grandfather’s. We lived with him for several years. I don’t even really remember much about the house itself except that it was a yellowish color. I do remember the address, and if I am ever back in Corpus Christi, I want to try to find it.

So, lacking those details, I am just going to share some memories associated with that house, if that’s ok.

  • My grandfather had a very distinctive laugh, and he loved to tease, so he laughed often. Even now, though he has been gone many years, whenever I think of him his laugh is the first thing that comes to mind.
  • My brother was born in that house when I was four years old, but it was not a planned home birth. My mother had been to the doctor that day, but he told her she wouldn’t deliver any time soon. She had a horrible backache and was probably experiencing back labor but was unaware that that’s what it was. There was a bathroom that connected my bedroom and my parents’, and that evening my mom was in there when she cried out for my dad. He came and picked her up and took her to their room — and shut the door. I couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t let me in, but being raised to be an obedient child, I went back to bed as I was told. My grandfather came through to check on me. Then some time later I was told I had a baby brother, and I got to see him all asleep in his bassinet. They did have to go on to the hospital for a couple of days because of the “unsanitary” birth, as it was called, and I stayed with our neighbor, Mrs. Beeson.
  • I don’t remember at all what Mrs. Beeson’s face looked like because she wore those big old Little House on the Prairie type bonnets. She puttered around in her yard a lot. She had what I remember as an enormous (though it probably wasn’t that big) woodsy area out behind her house with a table, potting shelves and materials, and all kinds of little tins and things for making mud pies and such. A lot of the neighbor children often played back there.
  • When my brother was older, we shared a bunk bed: I had the top bunk and he had the bottom one. When he was little he was always having adventurous dreams involving wild animals. He woke up in the night and went to tell my parents that he saw a snake in the springs under the top bunk (in those days that was all open). They thought he was just dreaming and tried to get him to go back to bed, but he kept insisting. So one of them came back to the bedroom to reassure him that everything was all right, and found that there was a snake, by that time on my bed not far from my head! I don’t remember the sequence of events, but soon I was up and the snake was on the floor, and Mrs. Beeson was there cutting it in half with her ax (she was just the type of lady who would have an ax handy and know how to use it). She said it wasn’t poisonous: she called it an egg snake. It was discovered there was a nest with eggs in it in the window next to the beds, and that was probably what it was after. But what I remember most was the way the snake continued to writhe and open and close its mouth after it was chopped in half.
  • I used to be kind of fearful at night (I don’t remember if this was before or after the snake incident!) and one night I saw a rounded shadowy shape beside my bed. I convinced myself it was a headhunter (don’t ask me why…) and that if I just kept my eyes closed, he would leave me alone. When I woke up the next morning, I saw the rounded shape was the teddy bear beside me.
  • There was a man who came to the house to sell coffee often. I don’t know exactly how that all worked, but I do remember he called me Goldilocks.
  • I had forgotten this til I saw Lyndy mention it, but most nights after dinner, people would come out to their front yards with lawn chairs and watch their kids play and visit with each other. For a time my dad had a motor scooter and he would take kids for rides up and down the street.
  • I used to be quite a tree climber and I do remember climbing a tree in the front yard, especially when I was playing something imaginary. I don’t know if it was at this house or another, but one house had four chinaberry trees in the back which several neighborhood kids and I would climb and through chinaberries at each other.
  • A couple of the other childhood home posts reminded me of something else characteristic of homes in the late 50s and 60s: Venetian blinds and box fans. That triggered memories of big TVs with rabbit ears (sometimes tipped in foil) that also had big tubes in that big that had to be taken out and replaced sometimes, and humongous stereo cabinets.

There are other vague memories associated with that house — my grandfather reading the newspaper, my brother in cowboy boots and a diaper playing with kittens, my mom making a snack of graham crackers and peanut butter and honey — I think we were still there when my sister was born when I was eight and my brother was four, because I remember staying with Mrs. Beeson again, this time with my brother.

Thanks, Mary, for this trip down memory lane!

Show and Tell Friday

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(The Friday’s Feast is below this post.)

show-and-tell.jpg Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Friday” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky.“

Since I’ve had rather lengthy “Show and Tells” the last few weeks, I decided to keep this one short and simple. 🙂

We lived in GA for four years, and when it came time for us to move back to SC, the ladies Sunday School class I was in gave me this as a going away present. I love it.

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Booking Through Thursday: Just Wild About Harry

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btt2.jpg The Booking Through Thursday topic for this week is:

  1. Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it?
  2. If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties?
  3. If you’re not going to read it, why not?
  4. And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?

At first I wasn’t going to participate in BTT this week because I’m one of the few people on the planet not into HP. But I just finished writing a lot of my thoughts in a comment on Cindy’s Notes In the Key of Life, so I thought I may as well post them here also.

The short answer is no, I haven’t read the books or seen the films. The “why” will take a little longer to explain.

As a Christian trying to order my life by the Word of God, I have a problem with stories about witchcraft and the occult. One of the most notable passages is Deuteronomy 18:10-12:

“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”

When we were watching the Lord of the Rings series, I found there are, of course, wizards in it. I did wrestle with that in my own conscience. Finally I concluded that Gandalf and the others are not wizards in the occultish sense of the word. They’re more like Middle Earth super heroes, a la Superman and Spiderman and Batman. It’s more fantasy than real occult — we don’t see witches and wizards or people in the occult world in real life riding on bird’s backs or powering off against each other with wands or staffs.

I thought also of the witch in The Wizard of Oz. She is a “fairy tale” witch — witches in real life aren’t green and don’t have flying monkeys. Really the implications of there being such a thing as a “good witch” in Glenda bothers me more than the Wicked Witch of the West. But in the story she’s more like Cinderella’s fairy godmother.

So in our family we’ve made a distinction between fairly tale type magic and the real occult. And even the fairy tale magic I’d rather have as little of as possible.

On the other hand, I have (rarely and not on purpose) read books and watched films that had a much darker and more dangerous pull and more palpable real evil even though there were no outwardly occult signs or symbols or people.

That said, we haven’t gotten into HP at all. He may be more the “fairy tale” type of wizard rather than really occultish — I don’t know. If any of my kids were interested in the series, I would have to check into it. But they are not at all interested. And though part of me wants to check them out just to see what they are all about and to speak of them intelligently when they come up in a conversation, my TBR pile is massive already and I don’t need another obsession.