During the past few weeks, I have been delving into a cook book I was given at my bridal shower, 40+ years ago! This book, Cooking for Two, by Betty Crocker, is now in tatters, held together by two elastic bands. However, since some of my favourite recipes come from that book, last week I went online and ordered a new to me, used copy. The book was first published in 1964 and is so much fun to flip through, even now!

I have been making homemade macaroni and cheese every other week during the pandemic. It is fan favourite around here, so I am going to share it with you this morning!

Macaroni and Cheese

Heat up your oven to 350 degrees.

Cook 1.5 cups of macaroni noodles.

While you do, grate 2- 3 cups of medium cheddar cheese. (with some experimentation you will come to know how cheesy you like your mac and cheese!)

Get 1 cup of milk ready and 1 tbsp of butter. Grease a baking dish with some butter.

When the noodles are ready, in the baking dish alternate layers of noodles, cheese, milk, and a dollop of butter, doing that about 3 times in succession.

Place the baking dish, uncovered, into the oven for 30-40 minutes, depending on how long it takes for the top to be golden brown. ( again, it takes some trial and error!)

Prepare a tossed salad, set the table, and serve the mac and cheese right away when it’s done.

Yummy! Comforting! Filling! … It’s a winner!!

Enjoy!

Growing up, Mom always had a cleaning lady, and I have always had one too. I have looked at cleaning as a real nuisance, a necessary evil. So when I found myself having to clean for myself since mid March, I at first totally resisted it and didn’t do it, then grudgingly, when it became necessary, started in. I found I didn’t mind it as much as I thought I would, especially as I had a spouse who was willing to share the duties with me, 50/50.

I have been reading Sarah Ban Breathnach’s updated and revised edition of Simple Abundance this year. In May she is writing about the home. I love what she has to say in the May 17th meditation about doing housework:

“Drudgery can be transformed, through a willing and open heart, into labors of love. I’ve mentioned it before, but it takes a little time for us to understand the profound power we have over any situation by the words we use to describe it. Start with the words that describe, or name, your efforts. The biggest catalyst for change at home was when I started calling “chores” my “tasks.” Instead of calling your daily round “housework” why not call it “caring for my home.”….. After all, caring-for yourself, your loved ones, your pets, and your home—-is truly what you are doing when you dust, change the kitty litter, sort the laundry, prepare the meals, and work in the garden.”

I read this meditation a few days ago, and shared it with my partner. Neither of us enjoy cleaning, but we were both willing to try looking at cleaning as “caring for our home.” Dusting is on my list of tasks, and I found a little quote which has changed the way I look it:

“Time to dust again.

Time to caress my house,

to stroke all its surfaces.

I want to think of it as a kind of lovemaking…

the chance to appreciate by touch

what I live with and cherish.

Gunnilla Norris

Yesterday, I tried dusting with this quote in mind, and I found it really did change the experience for me. I was dusting our dining room suite which belonged to my beloved Nana. I started remembering dinners at her house when I was growing up, and as I dusted the chair at the head of the table I remembered my grandfather, and how I got to sit at his left hand. The dining room suite is beautiful, and it could use some polishing with lemon oil. I actually think I will do that this week. Wow! Who knew dusting could be such an enjoyable experience, when viewed with a different perspective?

Thank you Sarah, and thank you Gunnilla for introducing me to a new way to approach caring for my home. May it be helpful for you too!

My mom is an excellent cook and baker. She has a great eye for a recipe which is simple, yet gets great results. Here is her recipe for what she simply calls:

Chocolate Treats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line a cookie sheet with either parchment paper or a greased sheet of aluminum foil.

Place 40 saltine crackers, salted side up, side by side and touching, on the cookie sheet.

Combine 3/4 cup of brown sugar and 1 cup of butter in a saucepan, cooking over medium heat , and stirring constantly for 3 or 4 minutes, until the mixture is bubbling and syrupy.

Pour the mixture over the crackers. Bake for 10-12 minutes and then remove from oven.

Sprinkle 2 cups of chocolate chips over the crackers and let sit for 2 minutes, while they melt. Then spread the chocolate over the crackers ( I found an icing knife worked best, but you could use a spatula too).

Now sprinkle 3/4 cup of either chopped walnuts or chopped pecans or slivered almonds over top.

Put the tray into the fridge for 30 minutes or so so the candy can cool and harden.

Take it out, and break the candy into various sized pieces.

Keep it in a covered container, either in the fridge for up to 2 weeks (but it will never last that long!) or put into the freezer.

I made the recipe on the weekend and my spouse says it is the best candy he ever tasted! I thought it gave a great result for the 30 minutes or so it took to make it!! I invite you to give it a try too either when you need a sense of accomplishment, quickly, or you have a need to do something creative and fun!

Every Saturday morning, I look forward to reading Bruce MacNaughton’s blog. He is the owner of the PEI Preserve Company and his weekly blog is a treasure trove of quotes, videos, music etc. Today he pointed us to a You Tube video called The Great Realization. It is a 4 minute bedtime story written in the form of a poem. It was, for me, an example of beautiful, insightful simple truth.

If you are interested in seeing it, if you google ‘The Great Realization Tomfoolery’, you will find it.

Enjoy!

Here is another beauty from Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart : Meditations for the Restless Soul:

In Each Moment

Oh,teach me in each moment

of every Now to know that

You are the Here in all my

wandering and the Yes in

all my wondering and the Love

in nothing less than everything.

I invite you to read this beautiful poem aloud to yourself two times. As you read, listen for the word or phrase that shimmers for you, the one that your soul is really attracted to in this moment, today.

Take a few deep breaths. Then read the poem again, and as you do, focus on the word or phrase that shimmered for you, and allow images, memories, and feelings to arise naturally from pondering that word or phrase. Breathe deeply and enjoy this unfolding.

Read the poem again and this time, listen for an invitation that may be arising from the word or phrase that called to you. Breathe deeply a few more times as you do so. Let the invitation come to you, don’t force it.

Then letting the poem, your memories,images and feelings, and the invitation go for now, simply settle into a few minutes of enjoying the presence of God, and the peace you feel, and the stillness of this moment. Breathing deeply, rest in God’s presence awhile. When you are ready, open your eyes and step back into the business of living your life today.

Sometimes I see a flower so beautiful, or read a poem so lovely that I feel like I might faint! I am not quite sure why this happens, but it’s a sure sign for me that I have come into contact with something that is really important for me. Yesterday, I started reading a book called Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul, by Jon M Sweeney and Mark S Burrows. Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest and a mystic. I read the first poem and experienced that feeling of swooning… Oh boy, the words were so beautiful and seemed so true that I wanted to share it with you:

Opening the Heart’s Door

Ours is not the work

of seeking You here

or there where we

think You might be,

but of opening

the heart’s door,

and when we do this

You cannot resist

coming in, since

our opening and Your

entering are one; You

knock and wait, and

when we open we

find that You were

there all along and

will not leave us.

Dear readers,

I have realized I didn’t let you know in which cookbook you can find the recipe for Oatmeal Raisin cookies. I have edited Make Something! Part Two, giving you the publishing information for that fabulous cookbook, and now you can order it if you wish!

Also, I didn’t give you the reference for the You Tube video I mentioned that discussed how to shift your mood when you are feeling depressed. I just edited Moodshifting and have added the URL, in case you would like to read more of the author, Bo Miller’s, suggestions.

Hopefully though, as spring has suddenly arrived, you are looking forward to a lovely weekend of rest and relaxation, enjoying the sunshine, your garden, and your barbeque. May it be so!!

Love, Sue

I have a wonderful recipe book that I bought many years ago, during a trip to Newfoundland. Almost every recipe I have tried has turned out very well, but the most successful of all was the one I made this week.

Talk about a moodshifter! Oh my goodness, the fragrances that filled the house + the taste of the cookie dough + the yumminess of the finished product were amazing

If you feel like ‘making something’ this weekend, I can heartily recommend this recipe:

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

1 c butter, melted

2 c brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1.5 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

3 cup rolled oats (Quaker quick oats worked well)

1 c walnuts

1 c raisins

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl mix together the melted butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla. Sift in the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon and mix well. Stir in the oats, nuts and raisins.

Drop the dough by the spoonful onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes. Even though the cookies may look a little undercooked, take them out of the oven after the 10 minutes as they will finish cooking and firm up on the cookie sheet as they cool.

Oh boy! Although I am a definite chocolate fan, these cookies were really delicious! Enjoy!

The recipe comes from the book George House Heritage Bed and Breakfast Kitchen Recipes by Todd Warren and Dale Cameron, published by Flanker Press, St John’s, 2010.

Another suggestion that was made about how to shift our mood when we feel out of sorts was to ‘make something.’ Now that was a suggestion I had never heard before! As I have been reflecting on that, I realized that it too is true for me.

When I feel out of sorts, something that can really help me is to sit down at my art table and make a card. I have a package of handmade Japanese stencilled papers that I purchased from our local art gallery. I will look through the package, choose a design that appeals to me and then cut out a piece in the shape of a circle, a square, a rectangle or a heart and glue it onto a piece of plain white, beige or pink blank cards that I have purchased from Michael’s in advance. There is something so soothing about engaging with the beautiful Japanese paper in this way, and doing so reliably picks up my mood.

Sometimes making dinner from scratch, like homemade macaroni and cheese, is helpful, or baking a batch of cookies, especially with the idea in mind of sharing them with others becomes ‘making something’ which will help to transform a low mood.

If I combine ‘making something’ with listening to a favourite CD, that seems to work even better!

Have you found that making something helps you transform a low mood? I know I had never thought directly about it before, but now that it’s been brought to my attention, I hope that I can consciously choose to make something when I feel out of sorts. I hope this will work for you too!

Yesterday I watched a You Tube video which discussed how to shift our mood when we feel down or blue. (What do you do when you get depressed as an INFJ by Bo Miller, https://ispeakpeople.com/depressed.) The speaker suggested eleven things we can try when we are in that frame of mind. One suggestion was to listen to music. I mulled that over yesterday and realized how true it is that the right kind of music can almost instantly improve my frame of mind.

I love listening to a CD I have of a choir of women singing chants written by Hildegard of Bingen. As I sit with eyes closed and breathing deeply, I am transported in time to an ancient monastery. I feel instantly calm, serene, content and comforted as I listen to the singing.

Another favourite CD for me is Bone on Bone, by Bruce Cockburn. When I feel restless and out of sorts, I listen to the song The States I’m In. I can’t help but dance in response, and that causes me to feel invigorated and alive again.

I also love to dance while listening to Whitney Houston singing her song Exhale. It’s hard to describe how I feel while I am dancing to this song, but I come away feeling uplifted and ready to engage with life again.

Yes, it is totally true! The right music and the time and place to sit and breathe deeply, or to move to it, can provide instant relief. I bet as you think about it, you will know there is music which has the same effect on you. I invite you to put on a favourite piece of your music today, and enjoy its powerful, healing effects on you too!