1,000,000 Celebrations!

In Celebration of over 1,000,000 hits on my blog I’m giving away our new Celebrations Cookbook to one of you who leave a comment on this post. Oops!! I forgot to mention that the giveaway will close Saturday night and I’ll announce the winner on Monday!

In March of 2007 my brother Steve sat me down and told me he was going to help me start my own blog since I was enjoying visiting so many. Since that time I have learned so much and I understand a few more things about my computer. One of the best things that has happened from my blogging experience are the new friendships I’ve enjoyed. Meeting some of these friends in person has been such a special blessing. One of my meetings resulted in a walking buddy for the years that Dear and I were living in Camarillo, California. Now that we are back in Washington, I miss my walking buddy, Willow.

During my blogging I stumbled upon Lovella’s blog and noticed that she baked Paska at Easter time. I was curious because being from a Russian Immigrant family we always had this same Easter treat year after year. I started following her blog and soon realized a lot of her recipes were similar to the Russian recipes my mom made in our kitchen. Soon Lovella decided to start a cooking blog where recipes were posted every day. She asked if I’d like to contribute. I started slow but then became more regular when I embraced this fun concept and my responsibility of being a contributor. Over the course of time the  Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog was cemented with 10 contributors and I was one of the 10. After this point Lovella was contacted by Menno Media with the idea of a Mennonite Girls Can Cook cookbook. The ten of us met for the first time all together in Canada and signed a contract and got to work. Even though I’m the one contributor of the 10 that is not Mennonite or Canadian, I’ve been embraced and accepted as their “Russian American Cousin”.

Our first cookbook has been a fun venture and has afforded the 10 of us the opportunity to share all of our royalties to build a greenhouse at the Good Shepherd Shelter in the Ukraine. From the beginning we as the authors agreed that we have all we need and we wanted to help those less fortunate with our portion of profits from our book. The whole story of the Mennonite/Ukranian/ Canadian connection is explained in the book and on our blog. Our first book is still available and you can click over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog to see where the book can be purchased. It is also available at Amazon.

This is the greenhouse at the Good Shepherd Shelter in the Ukraine. They are already growing food year round in the greenhouse!

Our 2nd cookbook will be published May 1st of this year. For our 2nd book our author royalties will again go to a mission project that we are deciding on together. The photo above was taken during our time together to sign the contract for our 2nd book. These 9 wonderful women of faith have become my partners and dear friends all because of my little blog. Who could have ever dreamed this? It is amazing what God has given to me through “The Happy Wonderer” I wonder who I’ll meet in the future?

We are excited about our new book and the themes and recipes included this time around. I really love the cover and am looking forward to seeing all the recipes and photos put together and having the hard copy in my hands!

If you leave a comment and are chosen for my giveaway please understand that I won’t be sending you our new cookbook till May of this year. Besides your comment you will need to leave a reliable email address so I can contact you to get an address to mail the book. Your email address won’t be visible to anyone but me. Thank you to all my regular readers and bloggy friends for supporting me with your kind thoughts and comments. I appreciate all of you!

Snow & Ice ~ Tablescape

Kathleen at Cuisine Kathleen hosts a weekly meme called Let’s Dish. This week she challenged us to come up with a scape using the theme of Snow and Ice. Here’s what I came up with…

We sat at a version of this table on Sunday night with our son and his wife to celebrate our son’s birthday. I’m sorry to say I forgot to take photos of our actual dinner…oops! Our dining chairs are off to the upholsterer and we aren’t sure when we’ll be getting them back so we are using some of our folding chairs for the time being.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we’ve had several foggy days. The sun finally made a breakthrough on Tuesday afternoon. We are going to have our rain pattern return for a few days with a dry weekend promised so far. With our freezing fog we’ve had some ice issues. Do you have snow and ice in your neck of the woods?

Are You Dreary?

We are still gloomy and cold in the Seattle area, weather wise.

We are suppose to get some rain and hopefully it will wash all this fog away.

In the meantime I’m setting a sparkly table for Cuisine Kathleen’s Snow and Ice challenge.

I used the same setting modified for the birthday meal we served our son Josh and our daughter in law, Laura, on Sunday. I’m off my game because I didn’t take one photo of the food I served. We had lamb shanks in a merlot tomato sauce and roasted potatoes with a cucumber/tomato salad. Yum!

I’m getting organized for my 1,000,000 hits giveaway. Stay tuned…

Sunlit Sunday?

The fog has blocked out the sun in our part of the world for several days now so I decided to go to my photos from a year ago to show some sunlit offerings! We have also had a good stretch of days that start in the 20’s and just inch their way up, trying to reach the 40’s.

It’s hard to believe that just a year ago our daughter Katie and I were at a wedding show at the Seattle Center. Her and Andrew’s wedding ceremony was in March of last year. I decided to pick this photo for Sunlit Sunday because she just called yesterday letting us know she will be arriving in Seattle for a month long stay while our son-in-law Andrew has some cold weather training in Northern California. They currently live at Camp Lejeune Marine Base in North Carolina. There is always a bedroom ready for visits from our kids!

To cheer myself up and to remind myself that the sun is shining but I just can’t see it’s glory right now I searched for more January shots of sunshine from last year…

Not real bright but the sun is breaking through. These are floating houses on North Lake Union in Seattle. If you look closely you can see the Space Needle in the background.

A lovely shaft of sunshine lighting up my bouquet of tulips from January of last year, too.

Hope the sun is lighting up your part of the world today!

I’m joining My Little Home and Garden for her Sunlit Sunday Meme.

Yesterday was our firstborn’s birthday so we’ll be enjoying a meal together for him and our dear daughter in love this evening. We love to celebrate our family. Speaking of celebrating, it  looks like my blog will be having a big celebration real soon as my total blog visits are inching to 1,000,000 viewers!! I never imagined when I started blogging in March of 2007 that my blog would be visited by so many. I’m working on a giveaway for this landmark event to be announced this week!

Jesus My Only Hope ~ Hymn

Jesus, My Only Hope

Jesus, my only hope, friend ever dear,
Bend to my earnest prayer Thy gracious ear;
Come from Thy throne above, come and my dross remove,
Fill me with perfect love, Savior, to Thee.

Jesus, my only hope, grant me Thy grace,
Teach me in joy and pain Thy hand to trace;
Keep Thou my heart in peace, bid ev’ry murmur cease,
Come and my faith increase, Savior, in Thee.

Jesus, my only hope, Jesus, my King,
Help me with heart and voice Thy praise to sing;
Now let Thy beams divine bright o’er my pathway shine,
Draw me, O Savior mine, closer to Thee.

Jesus, my only hope, be Thou my guest;
Under Thy mighty wings, O let me rest,
Rest till the angel band home to the promised land
Bears me at Thy command, Savior, to Thee.

Words: Fanny Crosby

The Five…

Today is Friday and I’m joining Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for her Friday’s Fave Five. It’s good to think back over the past week and see the good things in life that God has blessed you with to enjoy.

1. Vareniki have become traditional for my family to prepare together before Christmas and then to serve on Christmas Eve for dessert. My mom’s version are larger and fancier than these but when I don’t get my mom’s these are the next best thing. I can buy them at a European Deli not too far form my home. They call them perogies but the Russian on the upper left translates to Vareniki with cheese. After they are formed, filled with cheese and sealed they are boiled cooled and frozen. We like to serve them hot out of the oven after they are cooked from their frozen state with butter and 1/2 and 1/2. Then we plop some sour cream on top and cover them with good maple syrup. Delicious! We had these for breakfast last Saturday before we started in on cleaning out the garage loft.

2. When we crave a good meatball sandwich we drive to a pizza joint in Lynnwood. We’ve tried to find a good one closer to us but they always disappoint. These were delicious as usual. I brought half of mine home for another day. All my favorites aren’t about food but it seems the freezing snap we’ve had since last Friday made us seek out some of our favorite comfort foods.

3. Our favorite sons both have birthdays this week. We are so thankful that God blessed us with them. Each one is unique and appreciated!

4. I’m thankful for the local library where I can put books on hold and then check out to enjoy without spending lots of money. The book in the middle is co-authored by our friend Lela Gilbert. Lela has a new book out that I’ve ordered from Amazon called, Saturday People, Sunday People. I’ll share more about it after it arrives. Without Reservations was recommended to me by Susan in Switzerland after she read about our upcoming trip to Milan. The Unofficial Downton Abbey cookbook is just for fun.

5. We are excited about finally sending our chairs out to be reupholstered. They were in sorry shape after 36 years or so of wear and tear. We are looking forward to their new look and feel.

In the meantime the table is very lonely.

Looking forward to coming around and seeing your favorites this week. What’s in store for your weekend? Some of us in the U.S. get a long weekend since Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. observance. Dear’s company doesn’t give him the day off. We hope to celebrate with Josh and Laura on Sunday if they are well enough. (Lousy illnesses gripping our world!) We also are plowing forward to try to  finish the clean up in the garage. Blessings!!

What Warms Your Heart?

There are some things that we just have to wake up and see and our hearts will be warmed. And then there are the deliberate things we do or put on our schedule that can warm our heart, too.

The second Thursday of every month our church rallies volunteers to cook a meal in the church kitchen at 5:30. It’s the exact same recipe every month with a different group of people cooking it but the same supervisors to guide the volunteers. The “supe” is checking the meat to make sure it’s up to the right temperature.

Large coolers are fitted with a food safe liner to mix the dish in and to transport the dish from Kirkland to Seattle arriving hot and ready to serve. I suppose we could call these coolers “warmers” or portable ovens. First the sauce goes in. 

Then the meat and the vegetables, the rice and some more vegetables. Stir it up with the big wooden food paddle.

You add the carrots last and keep stirring.

While the hot meal is being cooked more volunteers are preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to send off with the homeless after they enjoy their hot meal.

This time we also had warm blankets to load up and distribute to the guys that would be lining up for dinner.

Of course there’s the clean-up, too. So whoever is not stirring the final product gets busy washing up as much as they can before we take off to go downtown so there is less to clean up when we come back. We load everything up in the van that will transport us across Lake Washington to the meal site. Then we wait for Kay Abe. The little perky lady that started the Lord’s Table.

“Hungry patrons stand in a line curving around the fence. Men and women of all ages and races patiently wait as Kay Abe rushes around to make last-minute arrangements. Someone can’t locate a knife to serve the pie, but digging through her bag of supplies, Abe finds something that can work.”

Our church’s ministry is called Isaiah 58 and we partner with the organization downtown called The Lord’s Table. The Lord’s Table started with one dear woman who decided she could feed the homeless. Now after several years different volunteer groups partner with Kay Abe to serve these hot meals Monday thru Thursday nights. Last Thursday night I held Kay’s hand as we stood in a circle holding hands to pray and thank God for the men who came to eat the meal, she told us she is now 86.  You can read a little about Kay and this ministry here, and  here. You can see from the first article that she used to do the brunt of the work.

I didn’t count but we served close to 100 this night. Besides the hot dish we served green salad, fruit salad, buttered bread, hot drinks, and dessert. It was a very cold night and the favorite drink for the night was hot chocolate. All but 4 of the blankets were distributed. This whole process downtown occurs from approximately 8 pm – 9 pm. After we cleaned up even the pigeons were able to glean some food.

Sometimes it’s hard to put something like this on your calendar. This very day I was sitting in my warm house thinking about how cold it would be downtown and wondering how I might get out of it. My throat was a little scratchy, you know. Maybe I should just stay home. I’m glad the Lord fixed my attitude and I went. The whole evening warmed my heart. 1. Making sandwiches with the members of our small group and their children. 2. Watching the hot dish crew mix and cook and stir the main dish. 3. Watching others from our small group wash up the dishes smiling and laughing. 4. Loading up the van. 5. Then being able to load plates and smile and give a cheery greeting to all who came through the line downtown.  6. Meeting Kay again and being blessed by her unselfish service to the Homeless in downtown Seattle. Yep…my heart was warm and bubbling over…

I’m sure you can find a similar ministry where you live and I encourage you to take the leap and join in for an evening or day. You will get a new perspective…

Encouraging Words…

For Vee’s January Notecard Party I decided to go with a theme and find illustrated verses that I’ve posted in the past.

It’s been a while since I’ve put together photos with verses from the Bible. I hope to do some new ones soon.

Thank you Vee, for hosting this meme!

I’m adding this photo of our 2 sons to say Happy Birthday to them. Today is Dan’s birthday and Saturday is Joshua’s birthday. They are sons that make us proud to be their parents. May God continue to bless their lives on this earth!

Your dad and I love the two of you and we are so grateful for your love and care for each other, too!

In the Blink of An Eye…

…it will disappear. Snow is not guaranteed in the Seattle area. Sometimes if it comes it hangs around for a little while but usually it’s gone before you can get your camera out. The freeze at our house is working on it’s 4th day now and before it leaves us I’ll post some more of my frosty photos. Many areas in the Seattle area didn’t get any snow.

This is a special week in our family. Both of our sons have birthdays this week on Wednesday and on Saturday.

Dear and I were working in the garage this past weekend. We were cleaning out the loft. We had lots of leftover debris from having our new roof put on. Dear did the brunt of the work. Clearing out, throwing out, vacuuming, re-packing, and making piles of what to shred and what to share. There were some fun discoveries (not rat related). Our kids now have their piles of memorabilia to sort through and decide what they want to keep. It was fun to see things from our sons and daughter’s growing up years. Baseball, Soccer, Star Wars, G.I. Joe and Mother Goose, Barbie, Beanie Babies and more!

It’s time to send the stash along to their grown-up homes or get rid of it. I sound real tough about the getting rid of the stuff but some things will be hard to part with…