I have been a life-long squash hater. Butternut, acorn, spaghetti, you name it… I don’t like it. My parents fought the good fight to teach their children the beauty of squash, but it never quite broke through to me.

That’s why I have been thrilled to find some ways to serve my family nutritious (and affordable!) squash in ways that even I can appreciate. This is our version of the “grilled cheese sandwiches” from Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious. I like my way better. ;)

Mix equal parts butternut squash puree (which I already have in my freezer from making baby food) and shredded cheese – today I used half cheddar and half mozzerella; use whatever you have/ like! I also like to add 1/4-1/2 tsp Brady’s Street Cheese Sprinkle from Penzey’s – SO good! If you don’t have that, you will want some kind of seasoning; garlic powder and salt would work well.

Spread this filling on whole wheat bread and make your sandwiches. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a nonstick skillet until hot; add the sandwiches and brown like you normally would do for grilled cheese.

We followed up our lunch with some blueberry bars (with lots of spinach!) that we made from Deceptively Delicious, also – you can find the recipe here. Her recipe calls for 1 cup of blueberry preserves, but I didn’t have that. I just blended the spinach together with 1 cu washed frozen blueberries and about 1/4 cu sugar. It worked just fine. You honestly cannot taste the spinach!

I love the fact that our lunch didn’t just taste better than weekday-at-home lunches usually do, but it was also full of wholesome fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats. And my kids just thought they were having grilled cheese and dessert. ;)

One note about Deceptively Delicious – I have enjoyed having this book as inspiration more than for actual recipes. I tweak them a LOT. She always calls for “trans-fat-free soft tub margarine spread” instead of butter, but I prefer using “real” foods instead of factory altered ones, so I opt for butter. Many of the recipes turn out with a funky texture – the macaroni and cheese is rather thick and gluey, so I add quite a bit of milk and omit the cream cheese; the sweet potato pancakes end up too thin and almost crunchy, so I up the flour and omit the extra oil added to the previously greased pan. You get the picture – just plan to experiment before settling on your own way to make these things if you get the book!

What healthy lunch ideas work for you? I always like to get new ideas!

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We’ve been busy ’round these parts. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I mean, I’ve been sewing and working on our master bedroom re-do (pictures coming on Things I Love Thursday!!), organizing and cleaning and gathering a mountain o’ stuff for a summer garage sale (this is very pressing as it is only 4 months away), and yesterday I intended to iron but made this pretty spring display on my mantel instead. There must be some reason beyond my control that the ironing pile continues to grow and threatens to eat me alive – CLEARLY I have been trying my best to get to it! ;) Funny how anything sounds better than the tasks you hate to do!

I am posting this picture sheepishly, so that my peeps in the blogosphere know the truth and I am accountable. To iron. Like a madwoman. TODAY. Poor NP is running out of shirts to wear for work. Why? Certainly not because we don’t have enough – simply because all of said shirts are on the closet floor getting more wrinkled than they were before. Our master bedroom is finally so beautiful, and then I open the closet and want to scream and run for the hills! Something’s gotta happen here!

So today’s agenda is: vacuum and then iron. Give kids a snack and iron. Watch them play while I iron. Give them lunch and iron… you get the picture.

I will post the updated picture at the end of the day. Hold me to it, bloggy friends! :)

What are you tackling today?

I haven’t written anything specifically about Easter for a couple of weeks. I’ve still been hashing through everything in my mind, especially when it comes to how to incorporate true celebration of Easter into our family traditions. I’ll talk about that more later.

But, this weekend I was at Borders with a friend and was browsing through the kids’ Easter books on display. Lo and behold, I found one I love!

The First Easter by Carol Heyer grabbed me as soon as I opened it because the illustrations are beautiful. Most of the other Easter books I looked at were cartoony – Heyer’s book has gorgeous fullpage life-like illustrations. I also really appreciate that Jesus is not really depicted in any of the pictures – one has the back of his head, most are drawn from His perspective so that He’s not in the picture other than His hands or something. Why is that a good thing? As I discussed in the review of The Shack, we need to be very careful about creating an image in our minds of God – especially God the Father, obviously, but even of Jesus – we’re not given physical descriptions of Him in Scripture, and there is surely a reason for that!

As I started to read the text, I was hooked. The other Easter books (Christian books included) for young children seemed to still be 90% about bunnies and eggs and then at the end would say, “But Easter is really all about…” with some kind of cartoon illustration of a cross and some Easter lilies. I wasn’t feeling it. The first page of Heyer’s book acknowledges the bunnies and eggs, but then goes into the whole story of Jesus. Let me walk you through the pages:

1 Nod to candy and Easter baskets
2-3 Jesus’ birth at Christmas, the visits of the shepherd and the magi, and an illustration of a camel! I love that it starts here!
4-5 Jesus choosing the 12 disciples, healing the sick and teaching about God, greeting the children.
6-7 Palm Sunday
8-9 Clearing the temple (I dare you to find another kids’ picture book about Easter with the clearing of the temple in it!!)
10-11 Talking with the chief priests and elders, and that the priests were angry with Him
12-13 Temple leaders plot to have Him arrested
14-15 The Last Supper (it even talks about the “Feast of Unleavened Bread” and that they were celebrating the “traditional Passover meal.”)
16-17 Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus’ arrest
18-19 Jesus before Caiaphas and Pilate
20-21 Golgatha – I like that the illustration on this page is of a soldier on the ground at the foot of the cross, shielding himself from the lightening. I appreciate that although it deals with the cross realistically the picture isn’t disturbing to a young child.
22-23 The empty tomb, angel at the entrance – and the angel is actually male!
24-25 Mary Magdalene meets Jesus in the garden
26 – “This is why Christians celebrate Easter” summary

I do want to say that some of the vocabulary is a bit above my 3-year-old, but that’s ok with me! Hooray for authors and illustrators for telling the Biblical account of the cornerstone of our faith in such a beautiful and truthful way.

I did not receive compensation of any kind for this post.  I am an amazon affiliate and would receive a small percentage of any sales resulting from the links provided.

As I mentioned in Lent, Fasting, and Other Outlandish Ideas, I am new to the world of fasting and incorporating this spiritual discipline into my walk with the Lord.

I said in that aforementioned post that Richard Foster points out that fasting reveals what controls us. I must attest that this is true! I was thinking this morning that it is strange that the days that I fast are often the roughest with my children. They’re irritable, I’m irritable, it’s often not a pretty sight. It’s hard not to get short with them when they’re following me around wining that they want a snack (after eating a whole bowl of something or another); I either catch myself eating a handful of something with them without thinking about it (Arg!) or somehow begrudge them that graham cracker as I hand it over!

I know that food is more than a survival necessity for me (unlike my husband, who doesn’t really care about eating. Seriously!) I eat when I’m bored, I eat when I’m frustrated, I eat when I’m lonely or sad… somehow we seem to use food to stuff down emotion. I often remark when we watch Biggest Loser that the trainers have to also be half-therapists for the amount of counselling they end up doing at the gym! Take away our comfort food and push us outside of what we feel capable of, and we lose it – all those emotions that we’ve expertly stuffed for so long are raw and exposed!

I’m realizing that, in a less dramatic way, fasting does this for me. When I get frustrated with the kids or start feeling trapped in the house, what do I do? Grab a snack. If I’m concerned about something or upset, what do I do? Grab a snack! Take away my snacks, and I get irritable! Not only am I hungry, but now I’m just stuck with my irritation and upsetting emotion with nothing to stuff it down with!

I had already been thinking about this today and then came across one of my favorite Psalms during my devotional time; this has always been a special passage to me, but it means even more with this framework of where my satisfaction and comfort is coming from.

O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
Psalm 63:1-5

How often do I come to a place of realizing that I am empty and incapable, and instead of realizing that the hunger in my soul is for God, I stuff a cracker in my mouth? When I am emptied of myself, do I long for His the comfort of His presence, or for an oreo as my comfort food?

Obviously physically our bodies need food and water to survive. But are we eating to satisfy legitimate physical hunger, or are we masking the symptoms of spiritual longings for His presence? Only God can satisfy our soul “as with the richest of foods.”

How blessed is the one whom You choose and bring near to You
To dwell in Your courts
We will be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,
Your holy temple.
Psalm 65:4 (NASB)

*Picture from wikipedia.org