17 October 2011

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins


We had the privilege to host a family of 7 in our home during the past week.  These special friends came down to Cape Town to have their 6th baby and 6th girl! 


What a blessed Mother.  Read more about this family and their new sibling on Kelly-Anne’s blog, Beautiful Girlhood.
On Thursday morning I decided to spoil my 13 'children' with these spicy muffins.


They are quick and easy to make and are perfect for a light lunch. They just loved it and finished them off in no time! When baked with rice milk and spelt flour, this is a wheat and diary free recipe.


The recipe makes 6 muffins, so I tripled the recipe, with great success!
Ingredients (Makes 6 Muffins):
1 egg, beaten
40 g sugar (I used organic brown Rapandura sugar)
120 ml milk (I used rice milk)
50 g unsalted butter, melted
200g refined spelt flour (or 150g all purpose flour)
½ tablespoon baking powder
pinch of salt
½ t ground cinnamon
2 small organic apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped
For the topping:
sugar
ground cinnamon
Cook’s tip:  Do not over mix the muffin mixture - it should be lumpy.
Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
  2. Line six medium sized muffin tins with paper cases.
  3. Mix the egg, sugar, milk and melted butter in a large bowl.
  4. Sift in the spelt/flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
  5. Add the chopped apple and mix roughly.
  6. Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin cases.
  7. To make the topping, mix sugar with the cinnamon.  Sprinkle over the uncooked muffins.
  8. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes, until well risen and golden brown.  Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

I enter this recipe in my Daughter’s Fortnightly Baking Fun Challenge.
  

The theme for this fortnight challenge is Muffins and I would love to win the Food Lovers’ Bread and Muffins recipe book.  


Remember every Fortnight there is a new Baking Fun Challenge and you stand a chance to win a stunning recipe book, which Heidi-Mari will post to ANY place in the world.
Bon Apetite!
Linnie

13 October 2011

What Motivates You?

Motivation - the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.  


One can have many reasons to act or behave the way one do.  It is very easy to loss track of the little blessings in live when:
  • Live is busy; 
  • Many minor things goes wrong in one day;
  • Hopes and expectations fail to be fulfilled;
  • You are overtaken by sleep deprivation;
  • You experience financial challenges and stress; or 
  • Physical stress, due to pregnancy, illness or just that time of the month, make it difficult to think positive.

On Tuesday afternoon I was driving home after dropping my little girl at ballet.  My Six year old was with me, and he was constantly chatting about everything he saw, with the full enthusiasm of a six year old, who believes everything in life is fine, as long as he has a strong Daddy and a loving Mommy.  

Just there and then it hit me, that I’m not currently living with enthusiasm!  Now I’m a very enthusiastic, do-it-with-all-my-might kind of person. My mother always called me her ‘bouncing ball’.  No matter how hard I hit the ground, I always bounce back.  But over the past few months I lost it.  After all I had reason to be sad, depressed, down-hearted - I lost a baby, an overwhelming, heart breaking experience.
But, I just couldn’t handle my own, depressed, sobering thoughts anymore.  
Now I must add, I’m currently part of an intensively bible study with the Maximize Your Mornings Ladies on The Fruit of The Spirit - Abiding Fruit. 


The week on “Walking in the flesh” and how we don’t understand what we do, turned me onto serious introspection.  What we don’t do, that we do.  What we long to do, that we don’t.  But there is hope! While I abide in Jesus and allow the Spirit to dwell in me, I will be dead to sin.  This week, we study 1 Cor. 13 - the well known passage on Love!
The idea of living out my life of love, was all to much to even try to accomplish, taking in account my downhearted, melancholic attitude.  It was just not possible.  Who can bear the fruit of the spirit when they are sad and depressed, overwhelmed and tired all the time?

I asked myself the very difficult question, What would it take to get back the positive, enthusiastic, bouncing ball Linnie?  The answer came quickly, I only have to make a decision - a decision to live out of a thankful heart!  I have even more reason to be a thankful person, filled with joy and peace.  I have Christ Jesus, who loves me with an everlasting love!  My life in Christ has all the hope I need.  But I need to make the decision to live out of that love and hope. Things will always go wrong, nothing is easy.  Jesus, Himself told us, “In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” He told this to us, so we might have peace!!  (John 16:33)  If I don’t make the decision to live out of love and hope, life will always press down on me. 
Out of what motivation do you live? Do you constantly measure your life against people around you. There will always be people in better situations than us, and it does have the possibility to leave us miserable. 

Or do I live out of a thankful heart. A thankful heart is such a powerful thing! The moment I start giving thanks for things, my attitude change.  
One of the most powerful verses for me in the Word of God is Phil 6:6-8
“6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.   
8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” 
It was Christo and my wedding verses!  
A thankful heart produces joy. Ps 100

So I’ve made a decision to be thankful in everything, practice the fruit of the Spirit and be a blessing to the people around me, rejoicing in a thankful heart.
Would you like to join me in a thankful test?  Oh I would love for all of you to participate.

What are you thankful for:
Spiritual
Material
Relational
Emotional
Whimsical
Here are my answers:
Spiritual - I’m so thankful for the gift of everlasting life, knowing nothing can ever separate me from the love of God.
Material - My home.  A place of sanctuary for my family and I, where I can be creative and live out my dreams.


Relational - My awesome husband.  He is my best friend, the love of my life, my protector, my priest, my other half.  I love him so much!
Emotional - Being a mother!  I love my 8 beautiful children so much, but I love motherhood even more, knowing it is the most influential career in the world!
Whimsical - My need for fun!  Whenever I feel down in the dumps, I’ll brainstorm for some fun and go for it.
Now I want to hear what you are thankful for!  
With lots of love
Linnie

"All the days of the afflicted are evil,
      But he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast."
Prov. 15:15

Linked up with Inspired to Action

12 October 2011

The Vision to Endure

The past week was a tough week!    It was the week our latest addition to the family was supposed to be born… Thankfully I had 6 months to work through the whole process of losing a child.  The stage of shock, unbelief, denial, anger, indescribable loss, longing, desperation, bargaining... but I hope to say during this past week I came to the place of total acceptance.  Trusting my loving, Heavenly Father that He knows the plans He has for me, plans to prosper me, not to harm me, to give me a hope and a future.  

Through this past 6 months I was desperately praying that the Lord would bless me with another child in my womb, before the first week of October.  In His wisdom He decided not to.  In a strange way I’m glad He didn’t, He took me through the whole process of acceptance and dependence on Him and Him alone! 
Dear Heidi-Mari and I had a long conversation on Saturday morning.  I almost missed the pain my children had to work through too, and especially Heidi-Mari.  How do we explain a painful experience like losing a sibling to your children?  
Jesus said in Matthew 15, ask whatever you want and it shall be given to you!  We asked for another baby to bring up in the fear of the Lord, to change the world for His glory.  How come the Lord took away that very special baby, which we know is in His perfect will? 
Oh, but didn’t we asked for a baby to change the world for His glory?  
Our 12 week old unborn baby had already changed the world for His glory, and we don’t even have the big picture.
I explained to Heidi-Mari, it is all about Vision.  God’s Vision.  We don’t know or understand God’s ways, but we do know God.  God is our loving Father, full of compassion, and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in mercy and truth. He is trustworthy.  But being a saved Child of the King of the Universe is NOT a guarantee that things will be smooth sailing.  Quite the opposite.  
Since I’m bought with a very high prize, the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, my life is not mine, therefore I will glorify God in my body and spirit, which are God’s. I’m His and I long to be for His service whatever He seems fit.  For years I had to work through being at His service in carrying and bringing up all the children He need for His work here on earth.  Lately He chose to take away one of those beautiful children for His work here on earth. 
I don’t have an idea who has or will be influenced by the loss of our baby. Whom will I be able to encourage through my experience of losing my unborn baby? It is all about God’s Vision. On top of it, God is working on my character - to be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
I recently read the testimony of Irene Sendler, who managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants during WWII.  She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Thousands of people were killed during WWII, but she made a difference in 2500 lives.  What would the world have been without those 2500 people?  
The same with us.  I don’t have an idea who God will influence by my experience, how Heidi-Mari will one day have the ability to make a difference because of her painful experience.  But I have the vision, that it will make a difference, and because of that, I can stand up straight and say, It is well with my soul!

Do we have God’s Vision.  God’s Vision which reaches way further than the here and now.
With love
Linnie   

09 October 2011

Spring Clean, Injuries and Felt Toys!

This coming week one of my best Friends, who is not from Cape Town, will have her 6th baby, by caesarian - YES, her 6th caesarian, isn’t that amazing - and they will stay with us for the week.  So during the past week, we spring cleaned and reorganized our home.  

While busy organizing the home, I sorted through clothes; I steam cleaned the carpets; 

and we deep cleaned the kitchen and room our friends would stay in.  

Then while in the final step of our spring cleaning, I seriously injured my head against the corner of a cupboard and our spring clean came to an abrupt stop!  The razor sharp corner of the cupboard, split open the skin on my forehead just into my hair line.  CJ and Heidi-Mari immediately knew how to stop the bleeding with Yarrow - so much blood with a head injury! They supported me through the immense shock and Josua and Danika took over caring for the little ones, while Christo, who arrived minutes later, attended to my wound.  With CJ and Heidi-Mari’s help Christo "stitched up” the wound with corn starch without taking me for stitches - not without cutting off some hair (LOL!). They ordered me to bed rest and I gladly gave in.  The rest of the day CJ, Heidi-Mari and Josua, cleaned up the room, prepared dinner and looked after their younger siblings.

On Friday I felt like someone that had brain damage!  I couldn’t think straight or do things at the same pace and fervency I’m used to, and decided to take the day off, as well as the weekend.  But I do have to stay busy, so I worked on my latest hobby - making felt food for Danika and the girls who will stay with us during the week! 
Here is my first finished project!
  
I enjoyed every minute making this Strawberry Cake and can’t wait to see the girls playing with it. 

One of Heidi-Mari’s best friends, Kelly-Anne started a Sewing Challenge a few months ago, and this month’s theme is Children’s Toys!  I like to enter this project into her challenge.  

The pattern for the Strawberry Cake and Plate I got here. The felt I bought over the years for different craft projects, at a local craft shop, the yarn I had from previous sewing projects and the buckram to strengthen the plate was left over from a ballet costume. 

I only had to buy the patterns, foam and filling. I got a cut off piece of foam at a local foam shop in Durbanville for next to nothing, and the filling at a local Craft shop!
I’m so thankful for Kelly-Anne starting this Sewing Challenge.  Since she’s running the Sewing Challenge, Heidi-Mari became interested in sewing and enjoys it more and more.  She already made a Duplo bag for the little one’s Duplo;

and a Princess crown for Danika who is always ‘dressing up’ as a Princess.

Wait till you see Heidi-Mari and Danika’s children toy projects…
Why don’t you give yourself some creative off time and enter Kelly-Anne’s Children Toys Sewing Challenge.
With love
Linnie

02 October 2011

The Blood Group Diet and Recipes

As a family we eat according to our Blood group.  Christo analysis the live blood samples of clients in his health shop through a dark field microscope daily.  When he consults his clients, one of the most revolutionary pieces of information he is able to show his clients is the correlation between their diet and the appearance of there blood cells under the dark field microscope.  You can immediately see when a client follows his blood group diet and when not!  
The testimonies of people who start to follow their blood group diet is amazing! The improvements in people is vast, ranging from more energy, better sleep, weight loss, less mood swings, better cognitive clarity to common things like sinus and eczema that disappears. Christo has seen more serious conditions like arthritis, diabetes and even psoriasis disappear when people follow the Blood Type Diet by Dr. Peter D’Adamo.
When clients eat whatever they want, the blood often end up looking like the pictures below, unhealthy, clumping together and in the long term can lead to disease.


But when they start following the blood type diet, the picture improves to a healthy looking sample as below.


I know the majority of my blog readers are Christians, and Dr. Peter D'Adamo is an Evolutionist and he has a philosophy around the Blood group diet’s origin. Some Christians don’t want to follow the Blood group diet, because of this.
Let's think about this.  We human beings need love.  There isn’t one person I know or ever read about who don’t flourish on love, any kind of love. And Jesus also commanded us to love each other, as He loved us (John 15). We also know every person has a specific love language, a favorite way of communicating love and when they receive love in that specific way, they feel more loved. There are wonderful books written by well respective Christians about the Love Language concept.  But what if this concept was at first observed by a Non-Christian, would that make the concept unacceptable for Christians? Sadly it could... Would it change the truth that we communicate love in a certain, favourite way?  I don’t think so.
It my opinion it is the same with the Blood type diet.  We all need food, right?  And in the short run all food will prevent us from dying of hunger.  But every person has a preference for certain foods, that correlates with his/her blood type. The fact that an Evolutionist observed the correlation, does that make it false?  His philosophy of evolution is totally wrong.  But that doesn’t change the truth, especially since their is scientific proof of the health benefits of this type of diet, as shown above and in many other scientific studies.  
God decided in His wisdom to create people with certain characteristics.  Certain colour eyes, hair, skin type, why not with a specific blood group too and a preference for certain food to make the body work optimal and stay healthy, just as people have a preference for a certain kind of love. That is even more evidence for a Creationist that God created us, and we didn’t evolved out of a blob of goo!


Get more of your Questions about the Blood group diet, answered by Christo here, at his blog Natural Medicine Talk. 
Since the Lord graciously ordained our whole family of ten to be O blood group, we have meat three times a day!  We buy all our meat (organic), as well as our chicken (organic) from the Boesmanland, once a month.  To have a ready-to-dish-up Bolognese sauce in the fridge saved me numerous times.  I share with you my Bolognese sauce, from James Peterson’s Meat book. 
Over at Heidi-Mari’s blog the Fortnightly Baking Fun Challenge is Italian Food. 




The prize with this Fortnightly Baking Fun Challenge is: 
Food Lovers' 
Pasta Recipe Book!



I would like to use the Bolognese sauce and enter one of my children’s favourite pasta recipes, Lasagna.


Bolognese Sauce
This famous Sauce we make with organic mince we get from the Boesmanland, here in South Africa.  We use it for multiple kinds of meals, not only in our lasagna, but also on pasta, on our home made pizza, in Shepard’s pie, or just on a sandwich for lunch. It also freeze very well, and often help me out on crazy evenings.
The secret to this sauce is the first step of sweating the vegetables and caramelizing the natural ‘juices’ of the meat, before adding the tomatoes)
Ingredients:
1 kg organic mince
3 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable chutney
10ml non-irritating curry powder
¾ cup dry white wine (I often use a rosé too, when I don’t have a dry white)
½ tube organic tomato paste 
1 tin canned organic tomato
½ cup organic heavy cream
15ml salt (or to taste)
fresh ground pepper (to taste)
In a heavy pot, heat the butter or olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onion and carrot and sweat the vegetables, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, or until they have softened.



Add the chutney and curry, and stir another 2 minutes.
Add the mince and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes, or until the meat begins to brown. (The meat will release liquid, 




which must be boiled down until it caramelizes on the bottom of the pan)



Add the wine, tomato paste, canned tomatoes, cream, salt and pepper and stir well.



Simmer gently, uncovered, for about 1½ hours, or until the meat yields when pressed with the back of a fork.  



If the sauce begins to get too thick before the flavors have married and the meat is tender, add water, a little at a time as needed to thin to a good consistency.
Fresh Egg Pasta Noodles
You can make pasta dough by combining the ingredients together by hand, but it is easier to mix it in a food processor.  The number of eggs you will need can vary - the more gluten in the flour, the more eggs you will need - so you must learn to recognize when the dough has the right amount of egg.  It should feel just moist to the touch but not sticky!  If it is too wet, it will stick to the rolling pin or in the pasta machine when you begin to roll it out.  If this happens, you can flour it as you roll it and it will absorb some of the flour reducing the stickiness.
Makes about 2 ½ pounds dough, enough for 8 first course servings or 6 main course servings (I only made ½ the amount for our family of 10)
6 Free range extra large eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour or 5 cups organic spelt flour (spelt contains less gluten than all purpose flour)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
To make the dough in a food processor (I use my Kenwood), make it in two batches to avoid straining the processor. 
Process 3 eggs with 2 cups of flour and 1 tablespoon of oil and repeat with the remaining ingredients.
Process until the dough forms a ragged mass around the sides of the processor.  If the dough doesn’t come together in a loosely cohesive mass, add another egg yolk (save the white) and process a little longer.  If it still doesn’t come together, add the egg white.  
Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead a few times with the heel of your hand until the dough comes together in a cohesive mass.
To make the dough by hand, mound the flour on a work surface, make a well in the center, and add the eggs and the oil to the well.  Lightly break up the eggs with your fingers, and then gradually pull the flour into the well.
Work the ingredients together with one hand until the dough comes together in a cohesive mass. 
Or, you can use this same method, but form the well of flour in a large bowl, rather than on a work surface.  If the dough remains crumbly, add an extra egg yolk, and then the white if necessary.  If the dough sticks to your hands, add a handful of flour.  
Knead the dough, one third at a time on the widest setting of your pasta maker, repeating until the dough is perfectly smooth and has the texture of suede.



When you are ready to roll out the dough, roll it once again through the widest setting, adjust the knob to the the next narrower setting, and roll the dough through again. 
Continue in this way, setting the machine to the next narrower setting each time, until you reach the narrowest or the second-to-narrowest setting.  
If the dough becomes long and unwieldy, cut it in half to make it easier to roll.
The dough should be thin enough for light to pass through it. 
Use the sheets for making ravioli, lasagna, or hand-cut ribbon width noodles or to run through the machine for machine-cut ribbon-width noodles.
Making the Lasagna!
Dough for fresh Egg Pasta Noodles
Mozzarella, sliced
Bolognese Sauce
Make the pasta and cut into lasagna-width noodles.
Butter a baking dish with high sides (a roasting pan also works well).
Put the first layer of lasagna noodles in the dish.



Layer the bolognese sauce and mozzarella on the first layer.



Repeat a second and third layer of lasagna noodles, bolognese sauce and mozzarella.
Finish the lasagna with a layer of sauce and a generous sprinkling of Parmigiano (I didn’t have and just put another layer of mozzarella on top)
Bake in a 180 degrees C oven, until you see the lasagna bubbling, about 1 hour.
Let cool for at least 15 minutes before serving or better yet, let cool completely so the layers settle and become easier to portion out, and then reheat to serve.


Bon appetite!
Linnie
  
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