Faith is a little like salt. We often go through life avoiding it when in reality we need a little very day for our health. Salt is such a common thing. For Americans salt is cheap and easy to come by. You can find it in all sorts of forms from table salt to kosher salt or even fancy gourmet versions. You can even get in little packets at every fast food resturant and convenience store. It's easy to think that something this common is unimportant, but our bodies are made up of salt and with out some in our diet, our physical health would suffer. Sometimes we treat our faith like salt. We avoid it, or limit our intake. Sometimes we think it's only ok in a certain gourmet form. It's easy to to be fooled into thinking that our faith life does not impact all areas of our lives. We can probably think of lot's of situations where we don't think it applies at all. Maybe when you are at the Post Office or DMV, maybe when you go for drinks after work, in the polling booth, school program, dressing room...... Many of us think it's only for Sundays with maybe a occasional Wedneday night or meal time prayer thrown in. Well heres something to consider , When you make Chocolate Chip cookies, the recipe calls for a pinch of salt, some people leave it out, they swear it isn't needed, but if you leave the salt out they just aren't as good. The salt enhances the flavor. The same is true for life. Our faith can be a little bitter sometimes but if we sprinkle it about in our daily lives and don't just leave it for certain things everything will be enhanced

be Mary

This has been a year of Mary for me. At times I seemed to stumble over her almost daily. Don't get me wrong, I think of Mary, I say my Rosary, and I see her image as Our Lady of Guadalupe at mass every week, but this year I seemed to stumble over her too. Here's and example: On the trip to find my MOG dress We stopped at B&N to rest, I picked up a book with Mary on the cover, it looked pretty good, but I was not spending big money on books that day. I put it down and walked away. While standing by the check out waiting for my daughter to make her purchases, I looked down at the clearance books, you know the $2 book table. There it was. The same book, marked $2.00 not $25.00. Of course I bought it, and I loved it. Things like this have been happening for a year. Every time I turn around, God has put Mary in my path. I have had to rethink my image of her, I have felt comforted by her as I went through the changes that have been happening this year. I have re-introduced her to friends, who are not Catholic and through her, I have felt closer to her son, my Lord and Savior. All and all. it's been a very Mary year

Christmas day has come and gone and now we prepare for the new year. There are times when we get distracted by the focus on, how we will spend the eve. At these times we forget we are preparing for the coming year and all that it will hold. Perhaps, we should spend the eve contemplating how we spent the year we are leaving behind. 2006 was a big year in our household. I had an premonition of this as we gathered to decorate our tree in 2005. We celebrated a graduation, a confirmation, an engagment, a wedding, another engagment, a child moving overseas an empty nest (if you don't count pets they left behind) and the announcment that we will become Grandparents in 2007. I think you can say this adds up to a great year. We also had sickness, sorrow, andger and hurt, but I think in the end the joy has far outshone the tears. I hope that 2007 brings much joy and little sorrow to us all. I will mark the year with friends and family of all ages to toast to life and pray for the future. I will pray that I remeber to let joy win. My favorite quotes of the year was from St Augustine "God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering"

My mom recent sent out this post to friends and family, and with her permission I am adding it to mine Stuffing - A Recipe For Life
I was reading just yesterday, that stuffing/dressing is the most important feature of a Thanksgiving feast. There is wide diversity regarding ingredients, spices, texture, etc., but what really matters is that what ever “best family recipe” you are used to is the one you like and will try to make in future years. Never matter that it tastes a little different as each person makes it and puts his or her own personal spin on it, it is called and will be called “the old family recipe.”
In our family, I guess I am the stuffing expert. I watched my dad make his famous brand for years, and when I became the official family turkey baker, I prepared it according to his directions, but as I served it that first year, I knew that the flavor was just a little different than my dad’s - good, even delicious, but different. My dressing evolved into two types over the years - regular and sausage. Both are excellent, although Friend-Hubby prefers the sausage and I prefer the regular.
I have not cooked the big family dinner in a few years now, but each year, my daughter calls to check in and make sure she is making (the only dressing I have ever made according to her) the sausage dressing correctly. One year, my grandson Chris called from England to make sure he had the recipe for regular stuffing right (the only dressing I have ever made according to him).
The funny thing is that I do not have a recipe. I have the basic ingredients, bread, spices, onions, butter, chicken stock, water, and celery. I use different amounts of each, depending on how much dressing I need to make. I make way more than I stuff the turkey with, usually two separate baking dishes full (one with regular, and one with sausage). I go easy on the celery because I don’t like big junks of celery, even when cooked. My seasonings are dumped in and I tell by smell whether I have the right amount in the mixture. I don’t know what I would do if I had a bad cold, or lost my sense of smell.
After a lot of soul searching this Thanksgiving, I realized that making stuffing is a lot like becoming a Christian. It takes many ingredients to put our own faith walks together, and they vary for each person. As we emerge Christians, each of us has gone on a different path with many adventures along the way. We all are basically the same, but like my daughter and grandson, we need to check in with our maker from time to time, to make sure we have the ingredients correct. My recipe for stuffing could also be called my recipe for my relationship with God. Take the raw person (me), add spice and solid ingredients (prayer, reading and studying the Bible, discussion with others in the faith, attending worship, etc.), allow to saturate and fill, and bingo, here I am, one Christian, content with life and the way I make stuffing.
I know I have taken liberties with becoming a Christian here. I may sound flip, but I assure you that I do not take my faith or my stuffing lightly. I have a basic inner recipe for each, and when I follow this recipe, I am pretty happy with the results.
God bless you all as you make your stuffing or live your faith. Love, Church Lady Happy Thanksgiving to all.............................

We have company

So I haven't blogged much. As soon as I started this we got house guests. I loved having them, but whew am I beat. Here is a quick easy meal that I make for company or any night. It's an old standby made with many thing I usually have on hand: 2 Whole chicken breasts cut up(halved or smaller) 1 can Chicken broth 1 onion chopped 1-2 cups mushrooms (you can use canned I prefer fresh) 1/2 pint cream Salt and pepper chicken. Brown chicken in butter. When brown add onions, cook till they sweat. Add mushrooms, cook till they release their liquid also. Add chicken broth, stir, let simmer till reduced by half. Now add cream, stir in and let reduce by half again. Serve with rice. I use larger pieces of chicken when serving to guests or on special occasions . It makes a nice presentation. I cut the chicken up smaller(it cooks faster) for family nights and then spoon it directly over the rice. Hope your family likes it as much as mine. C

Mary

• Several years ago I attended a youth ministry workshop that really made me stop and think. The guest speaker, Jesse Manebusen started talking about Mary. Talking about Mary and how she chose to be the mother of Christ and what a powerful choice it was. Now I don't know if you're like me but I always sort of had a sort of wishywashy Mary pictured in my head. She was never really much in my mind except at Christmas. Just sort of a minor character in the Christmas pageant. Until Jesse spoke, I had never pictured her as strong. I never though about her making that difficult choice. There she was....A nice, quiet Jewish girl, engaged, probably worrying about where to seat the great aunts at the wedding feast when this Angel shows up and says hey... Your going to have a baby. No date, no dinner first. Just the Good News . Now remember, this was BC. The law was very specific if she had a baby with no ring, Joe could send her away and she would probably be killed. Tough choice huh. I'm not sure my faith would be strong enough to say yes to that. Strong lady that Mary... I think that it was after that workshop that I began to really be conscious of the choices I a was making in my life. Sometimes we forget that we have a choice. Where to live, what to eat, what to wear, what to say. Sometimes we get so caught up in our lives that we begin to feel like victims rather than participants. Well anyway we always have a choice. As a Catholic mom I need to remember that. Everyday I get to choose and the choices are important. As a woman of this generation being a mom first is defiantly a choice. It is not a automatic thing like it was for our moms and grandmothers..... I like to remind the youth I work with that we are all kind of like Indiana Jones, we must choose and choose wisely. So on the eat and drink part . That will definitely be part of this blog because , well I love food. Here is an easy recipe for no cook candy that my grandma used to let us make with her. No Cook Candy 1 cup honey or corn syrup 1 cup dry powdered milk 1 cup peanut butter Mix all ingredients and shape in as desired Roll in chocolate supremely, cookie crumbs, chopped nuts or coconut for variety