Beef Goulash ~ Dana

It’s still winter. And even though here in So Cal we’re sweating, we know that lots of our folk are freezing their tails off this weekend. This goulash is just what the doctor (or weatherman) ordered. So whether you’re in need of warmth down to your toes, or would just like a bowlful of comfort, it’s sure to hit the spot!

Beef Goulash (from Tyler Florence)

4 slices bacon, chopped

3 pounds boneless beef shank, trimmed and cut into 2-inch cubes

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 Tbsp flour

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 medium onions, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 roasted red peppers, peeled and sliced

3 Tbsp Hungarian sweet paprika

2 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and ground

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1 (15-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, hand crushed

6 cups low-sodium beef broth

4 russet potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced

½ cup sour cream

Place a large heavy pot over medium heat and add the bacon. Fry for about 5 minutes until crisp and remove to a paper towel and reserve. Add the beef to the hot bacon fat and brown it evenly on all sides, turning with tongs; season generously with salt and pepper. While the beef is searing, sprinkle the flour evenly in the pot and continue to stir to dissolve any clumps. Add a little oil if necessary to keep the meat from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Toss in the onions, garlic, roasted peppers, paprika, and caraway, cook and stir for 2 minutes until fragrant. Stir in the vinegar, tomatoes, and broth. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer and cook for one hour, covered, stirring occasionally.

Add the potatoes. Crumble the reserved bacon into the stew and continue to simmer for 30 minutes, partially covered, until the potatoes are tender. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and stir the sour cream into the goulash just before serving.

Dryer Balls

Update: Aaron is getting a dog! The Angel for Aaron page raised $12,000 in seven days. Seven. It wasn’t just money that made that happen, so thanks to everyone who donated, prayed and shared. The dog won’t be in the house for another 12-18 months, but we’ll keep you posted.

Two years ago Shea had enough State Farm points that we could get a new washer and dryer. Because I dream of appliances for years before I purchase, I already knew what I wanted: a Maytag Bravos top loader and dryer. I was going to wash twelve pairs of jeans at once. Watch my dust.

Then, at the last moment, I changed my mind and went with the trendy Whirlpool front loader and steam dryer.

There has not been one day since that I have been happy with this choice. Not. One. As my dad pointed out, there’s a reason they stopped making front loaders in the 70s.

The clothes smell. It’s because the water never fully drains from the drum, which lays on its side. The steam dryer does not help matters, even with the steam off. I have managed to conquer these issues one at a time: I use less detergent than recommended, I use vinegar as my fabric softener, I double spin the clothes and wash smaller loads at a time.

Our electric and gas bills have actually gone up with these newer more fuel efficient machines, because it takes two rounds to wash and dry every load.

So one day I searched “Make the clothes dry faster”, and found DIY Natural, which is a website founded by a husband and wife team looking to make the world a safer, cleaner place. They have an article about the power and magic of homemade dryer balls. You only need three things: 100% wool yarn, a hook and a pair of old or cheap tights.

All you do—and they have a video tutorial in case you need it—is wrap a skein of wool around and around and around until you have a ball somewhere between the size of a tennis ball and a softball. Then you stick it in the pantyhose, wash it in hot, hot, hot water, dry it on the hottest setting and poof! You have a felted dryer ball. Pop four or five of these suckers into your dryer with wet clothes and they dry the clothes faster by bouncing around and creating pockets for the hot air. They also eliminate static. And they aren’t poison, like every single dryer sheet on the market.

True story: Lesley and I were shopping at a craft fair before Christmas. A woman was selling safe cleaning products with a national brand. I was excited to see that she had dryer balls! They were white and the size of tennis balls! They were just like mine!

They were $29.

Cruise Etsy to see similarly priced balls. Yes, the ones with designs felted onto them are adorable and I wish I knew how to do that. But since no one sees my dryer balls and on more than one occasion Lizzie has mistaken a dryer ball for a chew toy, I am ok with my whatever wool was on sale dryer balls.

I gave them for Christmas presents, and people love them. My dad loves them.

So we want to give a set to one of our readers. All you have to do is comment on this post. Each post will get a number and then my kids will pull a number out of a hat.

Another true story, for a laugh before we go: after Christmas, we had a dinner party where I cooked Aunt Debbie’s ham. It made a mess in the pan, and one of our friends was trying to clean it. Finally she said “We need a dryer sheet! You put a dryer sheet in here and heat it up on the stove and this will come right off.”

My other friend leaned over to her and whispered “You aren’t going to find a dryer sheet in this house”.

How well she knows!

Crazy Mode ~ Jen

Crazy is a tough word.

In the purest definition, it refers to a mentally deranged person. Through common usage, it has also come to mean “possessed by enthusiasm and excitement, immoderately fond and infatuated, intensely involved and preoccupied, foolish or impractical”.

I have been all those things.

Not so very long ago, control was my unhealthy obsession. In the “intensely involved and preoccupied” sense, I was crazy about my control. I believed that if I could control things—myself, others and things, then I could shelter my family from the storm. I read every horrible story on the internet about every child who died or disappeared. I read the story until I found the place where someone had lost control, where if they had just made a different choice, none of it would have happened. Then I held on to that “lesson” in my head to make sure I never made that choice.

The stories where there was no moment when a choice was made, when there was nothing anyone could do, haunted me. Two of those stories had things in common: a mini-van, a big rig and an off-ramp. Accidents. But I traded in my crossover for a Tahoe. It has a third seat that I didn’t let my kids sit in. I needed the four feet of empty space between my babies and the big truck with no brakes slamming into the back of us. I started avoiding the off-ramps where traffic had a tendency to back up suddenly. And if there was a big truck behind me, I’d move over.

In hindsight, I realize this was the start of my postpartum anxiety journey that would come to a fractured head in 2012. My efforts to control everything around me were evidence that I was slowly sliding off my rocker. In the midst of my madness, it’s fair to say that I was addicted to control. I was also only working in my head. It was an overly practical, logical place to be. My heart was crying out for rest from all the worry, horror and anxiety I was dumping into it, but my brain was driven to understand, to head trouble off before it came knocking on my door.

Trouble came knocking anyway. It always does. Life and death will out.

In recovery from my crazy, I spent a lot of time reading Richard Rohr, who I have talked about before. Two of his books met me where I was, like the Good Samaritan: Everything Belongs and Falling Up. They were a challenge to get my heart and faith in the game. I had left them behind. I wasn’t trusting God at all. I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t praying. I wasn’t reaching out a hand. I wasn’t letting myself be loved. I had crowded God out of my life and was trying to do His job.

And I was letting fear—a huge, angry, anxious, evil fear—eat my peace.

I needed to unlearn the things that hormones and fearful motherhood taught me. I have unclenched my fists, to let go of what I was holding so tightly.

It’s no good to me strangled.

I turned my hands up and out and am learning to cradle. I’m giving my fear to God, as fast as it comes to me. I am listening. I am praying. I am believing.

I had to give up my need to control, which drove me out of control, to get some self-control.

I would have never believed it five years ago, but letting go has brought me more peace than trying to control it all. It has decluttered my life, simplified it, clarified it.

In a wonderful turn of events, I have less to worry about now than I did when I was trying to control everything so I would have less to worry about.

Crazy, but true.

Cookie Monster ~ Jen

I was a Campfire girl. We didn’t sell cookies. We sold almond roca and mints. And it wasn’t a very big deal. We walked the neighborhood, called grandma and sold at the local grocery store.

To be fair, I don’t think Girl Scout cookies were a great big thing in the 80s either.

Teresa is a Gold Award Scout. That’s the Girl Scout equivalent of an Eagle Scout. Over the last 15 years, I have bought my fair share of cookies from her. Cookies were always a big thing for her, but I just assumed she was good at selling them, and probably the exception, not the rule.

The last month—our first foray into Girl Scout cookie selling—has disabused me of that notion.

Every single movie parody, stand up routine and Saturday Night Live send up of the Girl Scouts is deserved. Maybe not where the girls are concerned, but I promise you that the adult Girl Scout world is a virtual Jonestown and you better drink the koolaide.

From the Family Guide to Cookies 2014 published by the Girl Scouts:

Why a cookie program?

Did you know that participating in a Cookie Program helps build self-esteem? Learning that you can set a goal, budget for your needs, create a marketing plan and then go and make it happen teaches our girls to believe in themselves better than any “self-help” training.

Doesn’t that sound like a creepy recruiting pitch for selling timeshares in the Caribbean?

When you couple this with the understanding that only $.70 of each $4 box goes back to the troop or scout and that our leaders were required to commit to a certain number of cases before ordering started, that little blurb is pretty impressive spin for what is a massive fundraising campaign for the organization. GSA gets $2.08 per box.

Also in the Family Guide to Cookies:

If you can’t see it, these are the guidelines on Whistleblowing and Divorces. Third party whistleblowing is not acceptable, along with anonymous whistleblowing. If you are going to call out your five year old neighbor for doing a walk-about after the walk-about sale window has closed, you better be ready to give your full name.

My favorite part of this little publication:

I’ve tried for three weeks, but cannot begin to imagine a situation where a border treaty seemed like the only, best, last solution.

I’m running a huge risk by writing this. It says very clearly in the Adult Code of Conduct—which both Shea and I had to sign—that willful creation of discord is a violation. Uh-oh.

Because I haven’t even said what I really want to say.

How on earth can an organization which claims to want the best for their scouts, including physical health, sell these things, which are pure crap??? Tons of calories, sugar, palm oil and unpronounceable ingredients.

The Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties are vegan. How can that be when they are covered in chocolate, I wondered. Turns out, chocolate comes from a bean. That’s vegan. The higher the percentage of chocolate, the more pure it is.

And yet my ingredients list clearly states that the Thin Mints and Patties contain less than 2% of cocoa. Animal by-products are not vegan, but chemicals are? Talk about the letter and not the spirit of the law.*

And how about the math of it all?

If a young lady sells 1250 boxes of cookies, she qualifies for a Google Chromebook. She’s earned her troop $875. She’s earned GSA $2575. She’s earned herself $400 in Cookie Dough that she can apply towards Girl Scout trips and costs. The troop and GSA take-away from this child’s efforts is $3050.

A Google Chromebook retails for $199.

Maybe these details are the man behind the curtain when we’re talking about building self-esteem “better than any self-help training”.

Two weeks ago, I got called in to help pick up our cookies because I have a Tahoe. I drove to our local semi-pro baseball stadium where I was directed by a woman wearing a tutu to park in the holding lot. I joined two of our troop leaders in their big cars. At our appointed time, we lined up our cars to drive through the parking lot. At this point I was kind of out of words because we were following behind a U-Haul that someone rented to pick up their cookies. Across the parking lot, I could see toy haulers and horse trailers. I was told not to get out of my car at any time for any reason once I entered the cookie line, where soccer moms and dads wearing tutus were loading boxes of cookies and grooving to Taylor Swift.

When our leader hit the front of the line, the lady with the clipboard laughed. Threw her head back and laughed.

“You’re only getting 67 cases? You don’t need all these cars! You only need one. We can get 230 cases into the back of a mini-van!”

Our troop leader, who I love and who I know will never drink the Koolaide, waved me off with a roll of the eyes and a smile. I knew what she was thinking: Now we’re that troop.

Thank. Goodness.

*I’m not saying that I didn’t eat a whole box of Thin Mints all by myself. I’m just saying it was bad for me.

Determined to Get Aaron a Dog ~ Jen

I prayed this week for God to help me find ways to not think of food so often. In typical God fashion, He came large.

One of the distractions I can’t talk about yet, because it’s not a done deal and I am still not sure how it will all shake out. The next 48 hours are huge, so if you have prayer space to spare, maybe you could ask the Lord to guide our choices.

The other distraction has my heart full, full, full of love. Remember this post from last year? My good and beautiful friend Lisa wrote that post. Her son Aaron is the apple cheeked bubba in the pictures.

Aaron has autism, but that’s not the thing you need to know about him. He’s smart as a whip and has been since he was born. His eyes are soulful, deep and knowing. He’s careful too, and he knows when enough is enough, which is a lesson most adults are still struggling to learn.

When enough is enough, Aaron does two things: he stays put where he feels safe, or he runs.

If he stays put, even with determination, Lisa and her husband Steve can work with that. The therapists can work with that. The extended family and friends have learned what to do to make experiences less threatening. And we all know that coming to where Aaron feels safe is best for him right now.

But the running is a whole other thing. Aaron is tall and strong for his age, and he’s only going to grow. He can get out, over and through, just like any other boy his age. It scares the heck out of Lisa and Steve what could happen one day if he got away. Away into the street, or across a parking lot, or some place where he couldn’t tell people who he is.

So, because Lisa and Steve are very determined folks, an idea took shape. What if Aaron had a companion dog?

Lisa and Steve already have a dog, Mia. She is one of Aaron’s best friends. But Mia can’t be the companion Aaron needs because even though she loves her some Aaron, she’s the size of a sandwich.

Aaron needs a big dog. And these are the things Lisa dreams a dog could be to Aaron:

A highly trained and calm Autism service dog won’t be placing demands on Aaron the way that people in his life do. The dog can help convey the message to Aaron that he is good enough as he is, Autism or no Autism. A dog doesn’t judge behaviors. He doesn’t mind if you flap your hands, spin in circles, repeat lines from movies or spell the same words over and over again. He will probably wag his tail when you eat peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He won’t mind that you refuse to wear your scratchy school uniform and cry every time you have to take a bath. He might even distract you by being silly so that you can do the things you need to do. And, when you lay on the floor in public, because you’re overwhelmed, he won’t care about disapproving looks from strangers. In fact, he might just lick your face, nudge you to get up, and remind you that there is nothing to fear.

Last week she found out that they have been approved to get a dog from the good folks at Good Dog! Autism Companions, probably a golden retriever or yellow Labrador.

It takes…are you ready…$12,000 to train a dog like this. Well, we can’t expect a special dog for a special boy to come cheap. It’s just what it is. And as Lisa told me “Aaron WILL get a dog. We WILL make this happen.”

Lisa launched the fundraising page for Aaron on Monday at about 12:30. You know what happened next? Within 24 hours, over $3000 were donated. As of yesterday, it was $6600. It’s been blowing our minds. It’s a lot of love and determination.

Lisa and Steve are determined to provide the best environment for their son to be who he is meant to be.

Their family, friends and complete strangers are determined to make this happen for them.

We want to invite you to join in. Like the Church says, we can use our Time, Talent or Treasure, whatever we have to give.

Lisa, Steve and Aaron could use a prayer.

They could use all of us spreading the word on our social media sites.

And of course, they could use some of the money we set aside for just this type of thing.

Aaron needs an Angel. Can you help?

http://www.gooddogautismdonations.org/participant/68067

I am still doing the Made to Crave bible study online and “Determination” was our word of the week. It became clear as the week went on that the word was not for my diet or my Bible study. It was for this effort. I apologize to the MTC community for being a bit off-topic, but this is where God took me this week: away from my pantry and scale and towards all the good in the world!

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