Robert's Apple Pie, as promised

Here is a picture of what is left of the pie my husband made for last night's celebration. My first picture post from my Droid! Many more to come, I promise!

New Year Day with a last Christmas Dinner

We have friends with whom we have come to a tradition of sharing Christmas. This year they were in Detroit on Christmas, so we postponed our celebration to New Year's Day. I had the best of intentions to try out my new Droid to take pictures and post to this site, but I just plain forgot to take pictures. Some meals are hectic that way. Seems like everything is done at the last possible moment and it is just too chaotic to remember to take pictures.
We did have a lovely meal though. I have no idea why a bunch of carnivores expect a vegetarian to prepare their meat, but I did an admirable Baron of Beef Roast and I really wish I had a picture to remember how gorgeous it was (for meat). I baked it with potatoes and carrots which took far longer to cook than I anticipated. They looked spectacular, but I understand they were a bit more chewy than is optimal. For myself, I decided I need all the luck I can get in 2010, so I did a bit of a mirapoix to which I added the black-eyed peas and some vegetable broth. I added just a touch of wine after everything was nicely done and stirred in a bit of Boursin to make the sauce. This was served over rice. Wouldn't you know that the people who poo-poo'd the idea of black-eyed peas, saying they are tasteless and not suitable for polite company begged to taste my concoction. The black-eyed peas on rice were a big hit. Our friends made individual frozen fruit salads that would have been lovely desserts -- lots of coconut, marshmallow and whipped cream.
But we had dessert planned and it was not to be missed! Years ago, when we bought our first microwave -- an Amanda RadarRange, microwaves were so new and unique that they offered six classes on how to use a microwave. One of the recipes we were taught was one for microwave Apple Pie and my husband took it on as his specialty. He hadn't made one in 10 or 15 years, but he dusted off the old recipe for our Christmas dinner and repeated it this evening for our Christmas/New Year celebration. I'll take a picture of the half that is left with my Droid and post it here in the morning!
Here's wishing all my readers, friends and families a very blessed and happy New Year!

The Reason for the Season

I wish a blessed and joyous Christmas to each and every one of you!
For thousands of years, God reached out to touch God's people. He brought the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt and tried to teach them His ways. He spoke to Moses. He gave us law and prophets. He sent floods and other catastrophes to try to get our attention. God has always been faithful to us, his often faithless people.
And then, two thousand years ago, God sent Jesus! This ultimate act of love was not without its pitfalls. Not everyone recognized this Jesus whose very name meant salvation. In a few months, we Christians will remember just how very wrong this act could be and, just days after that, how very good this act could be.
Today, in every gift, in each smiling face, we can see the face of a gracious and loving God who sent the tiny baby we celebrate. We can see the tiny baby who was sent to change our lives!
Have a Holy Day!

BloggerAid, Changing the Face of Famine Cookbook Available

At long last, the cookbook is now available! I was mistaken when I said it would be available from Amazon.com. Instead, it is available from a subsidiary of Amazon, Create Space. The cost is $30 per copy and it would make a GREAT holiday gift!
As I have said in the past, the recipes represent a very wide range of cultures and countries and all the proceeds from sale of the cookbook will go to the U.N. World Food Programme School Lunch.
I'm working on setting up some signing sessions, but there are challenges involved. Create Space does not allow one to order books on speculation and return the unsold copies. Don't wait for a signing session, order your copies now for you and for gifts!

The latest on the Blogger Aid cookbook

I'm just too excited for words. The BloggerAid Changing the Face of Famine cookbook with my Spinach-Mushroom Lasagna recipe (hint, hint) is in the final stages of development. Right now, we are deciding on a cover and the designs are wonderful. Even though we are donating all the proceeds from the cookbook to the WFP School Lunch Program, that doesn't eliminate printing costs. We can donate the recipes, the editing, the typesetting and such, but we do have to pay for the cost of printing.
The Cookbook People donated some software as a prize and they will donate $20 for each of us BloggerAid CtFF folks who mention The Cookbook People in our blog. If you've ever thought it might be nice to make up a cookbook of the family recipes, check out The Cookbook People. They offer software to create the cookbooks, binders and lovely recipe boxes. I have a dear niece who is forever calling me for a chicken recipe I made up for her a few years ago. Might be a good idea to create a cookbook for her.
By the way, the chicken recipe she keeps forgetting:

Saute chicken breasts in olive oil (may be a mix of olive oil and butter). When the chicken is browned and almost cooked through, add about 2 Tbs. fresh thyme and 1/4 c. decent white wine. When the chicken reaches appropriate doneness on a meat thermometer and the wine has reduced a bit, add 2 Tbs. of cream cheese (or neufachatel for lower calories). Salt and pepper to taste.

My niece has fallen into a habit of making this every time she cooks dinner for a new fellow, so I always know when there is a new semi-serious boyfriend because she calls me for the recipe.

Getting back to our new normal

I've been neglecting this blog lately. I apologize and promise that there is at least one great restaurant review coming and a cookbook to review as soon as I get back in the kitchen for real.
There is no small amount of personal irony that, while our elected representatives are deliberating over or obstructing health care reform, my husband and I have been learning just how many issues there are to be reformed in the health care arena. My husband has Stage 2 follicular b-cell lymphoma. It is amazing how many processes are involved in the diagnosis and staging process! And it is frightening how many places along the way that things can go wrong in terms of health insurance! There was a snafu or mis-communication or something that meant we had no referral to the surgeon who did the biopsies. We are still waiting to see if the insurance will cover both the in-office biopsies and the surgical biopsy.
Looking on the positive side, Robert's lymphoma is a relatively easy one. He has no sign of the disease either below the diaphragm or in the bone marrow. He will have 6 rounds of chemo, three weeks apart; a PET scan and at least two more doses of Rituxan (one of those miraculous new anti-body treatments"), before the next new normal of 4 weekly rounds of Rituxan every 6 months thereafter as a maintenance treatment.
Now that he has started chemo, there will be, we hope, fewer trips running from doctor to doctor and procedure to procedure and I will get back to blogging and cooking.
Thank you to those who have offered prayers and positive thoughts in this past couple of months.

Iftar

One of the many marvelous things that came from our summer comparative religions series was a new friend, actually a family of new friends. Andrea Mikulin of the Mosaic Foundation was our hostess when we visited the mosque and her husband, Hasan, and their friend Ihsen, shepherded the guys through worship downstairs. Andrea and Hasan have turned into marvelous friends. Andrea faithfully prayed for my husband as he went through the diagnostic process and continues to pray and offer help as he begins his chemo process.
Last night, Andrea and Hasan hosted Iftar, the fast breaking meal of Ramadan, in their home. We met Christine, a sociology professor who is writing a book on second generation American Muslims. The daughter of a Pakistani father and an Italian-American mother, she knows a thing or two about her subject. There was the couple visiting from Turkey and their daughter and granddaughter and four people who are active at University Park Methodist. We were about as varied a group as you can imagine. Yet there were commonalities around that table. All of us love to travel and experience other cultures, all of us apparently like to eat (the food disappeared with oohs, aahs and yums) and all of us were very interested in learning about each other.
The Mosaic Foundation offers free cooking classes on Turkish cooking and I have every intention of being there when the next class is offered after Ramadan! I'll let you know all about it!