Triple Onion Soup with Triple Cheese Toast

I adore French Onion soup, so I was anxious to try this one. At least until I read through the ingredients list and discovered leeks and shallots. I'm guessing I can find these things in produce, but outside of that I have no clue. Fortunately, Erik did the shopping that day and he was able to track them down.

I have accepted the fact that I can not do what Rachael Ray does in 30 minutes, which is how long every recipe in this book is supposed to take including all the slicing and dicing. Whatever. I began chopping at 5:00. I believe we sat down to eat around 6:45.

What Rachael fails to take into consideration is how many times the 4 year old will stand outside your 2nd floor apartment window calling out "mo-om!" or how many times the baby will drop his plug out of his mouth and begin wailing in distress.

I did not get off to a good start when I thought it would be fine to just go ahead and drop the butter into the soup pot first. As my butter began to burn, I realized that she actually had a reason for telling me to put the olive oil in first and then "add" the butter. Point taken.

And then there were the leeks. I have begun to allow additional time to look up further info on the internet and this was one of those times. The instructions said simply to cut into "half moons", wash, and drain. Huh???? I tried to find pictures or further instruction online but to no avail. I will say this in hindsight. It would be fine without the silly leeks. Double onion is just fine with me.

Oh yeah, the prep time was also extended when I realized that my crusty bread purchased a few days ago had become far too crusty and my husband had eaten most of it anyway, so I had to place a quick call to him at work that he would be dashing out to the store for more bread as soon as he got home.

So overall, not what one would call smooth, but it did taste pretty good even with the 2 extra cups of broth I added. I won't even go into that.

Just thought I'd share a little bit of the comic stylings of Heather in the kitchen. Believe it or not, I'm making progress.

When God was handing out taste in feminine literature, I must have gone to pee. . . .

I have a confession to make. I am not proud of it and must admit it makes me feel somewhat incomplete as a woman.

I have never read a Jane Austen novel.

I haven't even seen any of the movies. I tried to once in my mid 20's but honestly I can't even remember which book it was. That's how disinterested I was. I just feel so inadequate and just generally unhip whenever people start talking all Mr. Darcy and Emma and whatnot.

But recently while at our public library, I actually left the children's area and wandered into adult fiction where I stumbled across Miss Jane's portion of the shelf. I thought to myself that perhaps I should give it another go, but I really don't know where to start.

This is where you come in dear readers. I know there aren't many of you, but I do know that you are primarily well read women. Where should a Jane Austen virgin begin? Maybe something without too many characters to keep up with? Should I brush up on English propriety of that era? (See, I don't even know what era she wrote in.) Or have I passed my Jane Austen prime now that I am solidly in my late 30's and rapidly approaching the next decade?

Any and all comments/advice are appreciated.

p.s. I did come home with an Elizabeth Berg tome, so I am not completely hopeless. Just lacking when it comes to the classics.

My new friend . . . and future enemy

Since being on maternity leave (not vacation as some of my co-workers believe) I have indulged a bit in one of my guilty pleasures. Daytime TV. I believe it was with my first child that I discovered "Trading Spaces" and with my second there was my afternoon getaway with Samantha Brown on "Great Hotels". Now we are back to basic cable so my options have been a bit limited. But I decided to give this little Rachael Ray gal a go and see what the big deal was and if she could help at all with my, ummmm, disorder. Well, I was sucked in enough to track down one of her cookbooks at the library and let me tell you, it has been quite a good time. I have prepared a meal for my family at least twice and sometimes 3 times a week. Even had friends over to join us. Erik has even taken seconds of a few things, which is one of my measures of true success.

I think what I like is that Rachael comes the closest to presenting a recipe in a manner that doesn't make me start twitching before it's all done. She does throw in random ingredients that I have no idea what they actually are, much less where to find them. (I have yet to locate a can of smoked paprika anywhere.) She also tends to rather high end ingredients. I think I've made 3 recipes with Gruyere cheese, which I do love, but it does not come cheap. The good news is that our grocery budget has recently been expanded - I may do a separate post about that - but it is a temporary situation. Eventually, the carriage will turn back into a pumpkin and I won't be able to afford her anymore, which means I will have no option but to hate her.

But until then, we're eatin' gooooood!

Prayer and perspective

Sometimes, folks will ask what is so different about Orthodoxy or what it is that I get out of it. I often find myself using the word "perspective". It is not that it has changed my beliefs, but rather has taken me on this walk to view and experience my faith from a different angle. I have this mental picture of actually walking around the perimeter of something and then stopping to look and realizing that from that particular vantage point the same thing looks very different. The object doesn't change, but my perspective does.

Case in point, prayer. Most of the praying I have known in my life involved claiming God's promises, speaking boldly (and sometimes loudly)about your requests and needs as well as your worship and adoration. It wasn't necessarily greedy self-centered prayers just very direct and audible and "me" based.

Now for a little different perspective. These are some excerpts from a series of books by Fr. Thomas Hopko entitled "The Orthodox Faith" specifically regarding prayer.
"Sometimes prayer is defined as a dialogue with God."

So far so good. This is just what I have always been taught and believed. But it goes on with the following.

"This definition is sufficient if we remember that it is a dialogue of silence, carried on in the silence of our hearts."

Whoah, there's a twist. A couple of paragraphs later it even says that

"Saying prayers is not the same as praying. Prayer should be done secretly, briefly, regularly, without many words, with trust in God that he hears, and with the willingness to do what God shows us to do."

Now that is almost a world apart from what I have known . . . up to now at least. But the thing is, it's still prayer as communicating with God, but it is a different way to look at the purpose and practice of it. I don't feel like it invalidates what I have known in the past, but it does fill out and give a much broader meaning to what prayer is. Here is the really tough part that to me truly alters the perspective of my motivation to pray. Quite frankly, it rings true in my heart while scaring the bujeezers out of me.

"The purpose of prayer is to have communion with God and to be capable of accomplishing His will. Christians pray to enable themselves to know God and to do His commandments. Unless a person is willing to change himself and to conform himself to Christ in the fulfillment of his commandments, he has no reason or purpose to pray. According to the saints, it is even spiritually dangerous to pray to God without the intention of responding and moving along the path that prayer will take us."

See it? Prayer becomes about changing me and not the world around me. It becomes about what I can be transformed to, by and for God and not what He can make happen.

Perspective is a good thing.