Round the Sphere Again

A full of beans edition. 

You know how to cook them; now how to you use them?

• You could make that old standby, Home Made Pork and Bean (Mennonite girls can cook). I do pork and beans something like this, but I can’t give you my recipe because I just throw stuff in and hope for the best. I don’t use onions, because there are a couple of onion-phobes in the fam; and I’ve never added ginger, but I think I’ll try that next time. I don’t have a bean pot, so I use my slow cooker. 


• One of our family favorites is Slow-Cooked Southwest Chicken, which puts black beans to yummy use. Youngest son doesn’t eat his over rice, but puts it in a bowl and scoops it up with tortilla chips. It’s also good sprinkled with cheese and rolled up in a tortilla. 


• Or if you don’t have time for all that slow cooking, you can make White Bean Puree with Poached Eggs (Serious Eats). This simple dish looks boring, but it certainly doesn’t taste boring. And as a big bonus, it used some of those exquisite farm-fresh eggs taking up all the room in my fridge.

 Do you have a favorite recipe that uses cooked dried beans?

• Kim of Hiraeth shares a recipe for Cowboy Beans in a comment.
  

Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful for the fresh flowers beside me.

I’m thankful for hot water and, while I’m at it, clean water and running water. I’m thankful for the good gift of plumbing.

I’m thankful for God’s provision and protection through another year, a year that has at times been a difficult one, but also joyous.

And bear with me while I repeat myself: I’m thankful for good health. Not everyone reaches my age without major health problems. So yes, I’m thankful for another year of good health.

Come to think of it, not everyone reaches my age. I’m thankful for another year of life.

I’m thankful for promised cake yet to come. 

On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others.

Divine Reasons for Divine Doings

Another daily devotional from the little book Opened Treasures written by Frances Ridley Havergal.

And they shall know that I am the Lord (Ezekiel 6:10).

It is one of the shining threads that run all through the Bible, a supply indeed for the heart’s desire of those who delight in the Lord. It is never long out of sight, judgments and mercies being alike sent for this great purpose. For this the waters of the Red Sea receded and returned again; for this the Jordan was dried up; for this Goliath was delivered into David’s hand; for this 185,000 of the Assyrians were smitten by God’s angel; and many more instances. Throughout Ezekiel it seems to be the very key-word, recurring seventy-five times as the divine reason of divine doings, that they may “know that I am the Lord.” Is there not a peculiar solace in this?