Let's Talk About Sex

Just kidding, let's talk about Jesus instead. And food...I love food.

I love Jesus and I love church, I even love the excessive cheesiness of the worship songs, but I've found myself at a standstill on Sunday mornings. Why? Because most Christians just suck. Sure, the majority of people go to church to have a relationship with their friends God, and most pastors want to help themselves the needy, but in this Christmas season, it's hard to listen to a bunch of people speaking Christianese about "running the race of Christ towards the finish line" and "living out the plans He has for us" when people in the world are starving to death and we are eating so much we feel like barfing. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but something tells me "running the race" doesn't include trampling people to get an extra 30% off the day after "giving thanks" and that the plans He has for us are not to waste our lives chasing money. Jesus didn't just sit around in a small group and chat about helping others, he actually did it.

When did "being the church" turn into donating money so pastors could bring home half a mil every year (Mark Driscoll anyone)? And when did helping the poor turn into donating a little bit of cash on Christmas? Don't get me wrong, helping people is always great, but there are three hundred and sixty five days in a year, why do we only think about the people freezing to death on our streets on one of those days?

We have one life on this earth, one chance to make a difference, one chance to love the people who need it most, and once chance to give back because we are so fortunate to live in a country where we can.

"Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection and take delight in honoring each other. 

-Romans 12:9-10

On a brighter note, I made some seriously delish beef stew the other day and who would I be if I didn't share it with the nonexistent viewers of this blog? So here you go, maybe you can whip up a big pot and pass it out to some hungry peeps.

Beef Stew

*This is a mash up of a few different recipes I have come across

-4 large carrots, peeled and chopped

-1 yellow onion, peeled and chopped

-5 red potatoes, chopped

-1/2 cup frozen pees

-2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

-2 celery ribs, chopped

-1 1/2 lbs grass fed beef stew meat

-2 Tbs olive oil

-4 cups beef broth or stock

-1/4 cup whole wheat flour 

-2 Tbs dijon mustard

-1/2 tsp ground cloves

-2 bay leaves

-1 Tbs fresh rosemary, minced(plus more for garnish)

-1 tsp fresh thyme, minced (plus more for garnish)

-salt and pepper

Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium/high heat. In a large bowl, add the stew meat and season liberally with salt and pepper, add the flour and toss until all of the meat is evenly dredged.

Add stew meat and remaining flour to heated pot and let beef cook on each side about 2-3 minutes.

Once the beef is browned, add beef broth or stock, garlic, mustard, ground cloves, bay leaves, rosemary and thyme. Cover and let simmer about 1 1/2 hours.

After 1 1/2 hours, add the remaining ingredients and cook another 30-45 minutes (depending on how soft you want the veggies). Add a little bit more salt and pepper if desired and enjoy!

This recipe made enough for me and the hubs to eat for dinner two nights in a row.

*quick shout out to my amazing talented Aunt Guyla for making that awesome bowl in the picture!

Derek, Marilyn and the Width of my Hand

Lord, remind me that my days are numbered- how fleeting my life is. You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is but a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.

Psalm 39:4-6

As I sit in our tiny 300 sq ft apartment and listen to the rain tap my window, I am reminded of what's important in life: chocolate how we spend it. Too often we waste our lives in jobs we hate, working for someone we want to stab in the jugular have no respect for, living somewhere we don't want to be (not us, we move every five minutes). Maybe it's just our generations' overabundance of participation trophies and Marilyn Monroe quotes, like this one below, that has us believing that the American Dream sucks (which it does). By the by, I'm pretty sure the whole hipster movement was born out of this quote, because that is ridiculousness at it's finest, and god-forbid they be anything close to boring.

I know what you're thinking, "easy for you to say Brianna, you don't have a job!" I prefer to think of it as an extended vacation, (plus I'm in the middle of a career change so it's fine, people!) but let's be honest here, unless you're galloping into work everyday like a freaking steed, stoked on life to start your day, you're probably reading this and saying to yourself, "oh crap! Brianna is SO right!" I know, I know, I'm smart. Jk lolz.

But anywhoosies, back to what this ramble-fest blog post is actually about. This life is so fleeting, why waste anymore of it doing something you hate just to die in a freak gasoline fight accident? Life is about love. Loving yourself, loving everyone around you and loving the big guy upstairs who created us all simply because He had so much love to share. Not about climbing the corporate ladder, chasing the American Dream or working for the man and life sure as heck isn't about how much money you can hoard for yourself.

Do you understand that the world does not revolve around you and your "do whatever it takes, ruin as many people's lives, so long as you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long so you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way"

"We are merely moving shadows, and our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it." Psalm 39:6

(Well, I'll actually be the one spending it, on student loans. Thanks 'Merica for convincing the youth of the nation that higher education is the only way to make something out of yourself and then financially-raping us all while we contract Hepatitis A from a nasty walk-in clinic because we can't afford Obamacare*.)


*Just kidding, thanks for the health insurance mom!

Pie and Proverbs

5:30 am. Wake up, make coffee, pack lunch, cereal to bowl, add some milk, kiss goodbye, back to bed. 11:00 am. Spend the next hour trying to wake up again, make coffee, cereal to bowl, add some milk, read bible, try to write, run some errands, make dinner, go to work. 1:30 am. Come home from work, shower, sleep. Repeat. This little routine reaffirms my hatred for the foodservice industry. Good thing I didn't spend seven years of my life and two degrees on it...After years of slaving away working hard, I finally finished my BA in Hospitality Management. I thought, maybe someday I'll open a little French Cafe and spend my days baking pastries and sipping cappuccinos with Bille Holiday playing in the backgroud. People would be sitting in cozy armchairs indulging in one of my sweet treats, reading an old Jane Austin novel or talking about life with friends, the comforting sound of the crackling fireplace lulling us all into a sugary haze saturated with happiness and warmth. Sounds lovely doesn't it?

I had so many different dreams as a kid of what I wanted to be when I grew up. Dentist, mountain woman, owner of a maple syrup farm, housewife, owner of a french bakery. I tried to go with the last one only to realize that working with crazy foodies makes me want to gouge out my eyes and kill myself cry. The housewife option sounded pretty awesome too until I didn't work for a few months after getting married and spent my days pathetically binge watching so many TV shows that I could no longer differentiate between the characters' struggles and my own. Rough life, I know. A stay at home mom is the next path I want to try and walk down but that requires kids and I know my hubs wouldn't be too stoked on babies just yet. Not to mention I've got a bet to win and popping out a bunch of little nuggets would mean only one thing: I would lose the bet. Not gonna happen Lisa. Although I hate my current career path, when I do make that triumphant leap from disgruntled pastry person to #1 mom, I'm sure my kids will be fat and happy from all of the butter-filled, high-cholesterol-laden, sugar-infused goodies I'll be pumping out on the regular.

If there's one thing I've learned so far from living a slow-paced life in Montana it's this: at the end of this fleeting life, I don't want to look back at the wasted days spent sitting on the couch or chasing this stupid American Dream that's been force-fed into all of us since we could roll over and manage to mutter out a form of the word 'mom.' I want to look back on how I impacted the world, how I loved my husband the way God loves me and how I lived a life striving to do his will, not my own. I want to live the life of a Proverbs 31 woman, being a light to those in desperate need of a little sunshine and making delightfully delicious desserts along the way...like pie.

World's Best Pie Dough
Normally I wouldn't share this with anyone but now that I've decided to ditch my dreams of opening a cafe, why not give the world the gift of unbelievably mind-blowing pie dough?

Yield: 1 9" pie, bottom and top crusts
Time: roughly 10 minutes

1 lb pastry flour
1 tsp salt
10 oz butter, chilled
3/4 C ice water, about
1 Tbs fresh lemon juice or vinegar
2 Tbs sugar

1) Cut your chilled butter into 1" cubes. The butter must be chilled, like cut up and sitting in the fridge all night chilled, not like you stuck it in there for 30 minutes thinking that would be good enough. If the butter isn't super cold then the pie crust won't be permeated with little flakes of heaven.

2) Put the pastry flour, sugar and salt in a large, seriously large, unless you want flour all over your kitchen, bowl and mix it up a little so the sugar and salt are distributed throughout.

3) Measure out your ice water, literal ice water...with chunks of ice floating around.

4) Add the butter to the flour mixture and with your index fingers and thumbs, flatten out the chunks of butter, making sure they are all coated with flour. This step is what causes the super flakey crust.

5) Add the lemon juice or vinegar (I like to use organic apple cider vinegar) to the flour mixture and slowly add the ice water. I hardly ever use all of it so don't just dump it in, you want the mixture to be wet enough to create a ball of dough but not super sticky.

6) Form the dough into 2 balls, wrap in plastic wrap and store in the fridge.

Note: When making pie, use chilled dough, roll out the bottom dough first and place the pie plate with the rolled out dough in the freezer until you are ready to bake it off, this will maintain its shape. If the dough is warm when it is put in the oven then the dough will fall and it won't look pretty, but it will still taste amazing so do with it what you will. I like to pre-bake my bottom crust first. If you do this, make sure to poke holes in the bottom of your crust with a fork and put parchment with dried beans on it as well so it doesn't puff up. I also like to brush my top crust with egg wash (1 egg, a pinch of salt and a splash of water mixed together) and sprinkle it with organic cane sugar.

Chicken Pot Pie I made last week

Coffee, Blizzards and the Beach

I first fell in love with coffee as a young child, the rich scent filled our home every morning as my dad brewed his freshly ground French Roast. As a preteen I forced myself to drink that sweet nectar of life by adding bag upon bag of sugar and way too much cream to dilute it to a concoction of fat and crystalized cancer with a splash of caffeine. Upon the start of high school I was introduced to Starbucks Frappuccinos, basically the same thing as before except it was blended with hydrogenated oils and ice, and as my high school career came to a close I slowly moved away from the liquid sugar that is a frappuccino and onto caramel macchiatos and mochas. It wasn't until I graduated from high school that I finally graduated to sugarless coffee with just a splash of skim milk (I was watching my figure, you see) and from there uprooted myself and moved to the coffee capital of the country: Seattle. (I also like to think of Seattle as the love capital because it is where I met two of the loves of my life: Lacey Shaver and her brother, aka, my husband). In Seatown I found my love for coffee to continuously grow stronger and I came into my own: triple tall americano black. Oh that warm, earthy taste of a fresh pulled espresso shot and hot water. Since then I probably consume much more coffee than necessary and I'm convinced it partially has to do with me being a Christian. Instead of going out and partying (which I was very good at unfortunately for a time) I nestle into one of my favorite spots in town with a big huge americano, my laptop for writing and a book, for good measure of course.

I currently work at Montana Coffee Traders, the local monopoly coffee roastery in Northwestern Montana. While this may seem like a dream job for an avid coffee drinker such as myself (let's be honest, it is) it also just feeds my addiction. To coffee? Good question, but no, to sugar. I am one of the bakers and when the sweet smell of freshly baked goods comes pouring out of the oven into my nostrils what am I supposed to do? The free coffee makes it all worth it.

                 

Segue

On of my favorite men in this world, my Father, recently made the trek from sunny Southern California to cold, mountainous Montana. Contrary to popular belief, the weather here really isn't that bad, especially compared to the midwest. But isn't Montana in the midwest?? Um no, look at a map people. Anywhoosies, as we gorged ourselves on too much coffee, too much food and too much sweets, I thought to myself: yolo, I'm eating everyting!! Just kidding, who still says yolo? I thought to myself that I truly am blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world and be surrounded with such heartwarming, wonderful people. My dad was probably thinking the same thing...about California, especially after the blizzard of a snowstorm we were caught in on top of Big Mountain. Half way through the day snowboarding I found myself toppled over on the side of a mountain, about to fall into the abyss of powder, drenched in the snow that had melted through my clothes and blind from my crappy $5 kids goggles. If you've never skiied the Fish I would highly recommend it, just check the snow report first.

Segue numero dos

The beach, oh how I long for the hot sand under my bare feet, the salt water that transforms my hair into frizzy, itchy knots luscious, beachy waves and the cold water on my sunburt face. I suppose living on Whitefish Lake will have to do though ;)