My Web Wanderings (weekly)

• Debate: Should graphic pro-life sites be banned? - mirror.co.uk

  This is something I am unsure about but I don't think I agree with the reasoning of the first lady in this article. Perhaps if they showed the pictures to women considering abortions the abortion rate would be much lower?

  tags: pro-life

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Web Wanderings (weekly)

• Pro-Life Blogs

  tags: pro-life

• A Joyful Birth : Scripture

  tags: Birth

• Hospital to Home: Eating During Labor

  tags: Birth

• Laced with Grace » Why me?

  tags: Christian, life

  • We can often get caught in a trap, thinking we are the only one who suffers, who is suffering. We can mistakenly assume that “everyone else’s” life is wonderful. But, Jesus tells us that we will ALL endure trials here on earth. But, Jesus gives us tremendous hope, promising that He has overcome the world!

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Lentils and Rice

I just typed up this recipe for some friends (one of them has anaemia because they had cut back significantly on meat due to costs) and I thought it would be good to share here. As you will see from the figures at the bottom, it offers significant savings compared with meat.

Ingredients

½ cup lentils

1 cup rice

1tbsp whey

1 ½ cups stock (approx 750ml)

1 small onion, chopped

1 small clove of garlic, crushed

1 tsp thyme

salt and pepper

The night before

1. Place lentils, rice and whey in large jug and fill with water to double the volume.
2. Leave to soak overnight.

The next day

1. Strain and rinse lentils and rice.
2. Place in pan with all the other ingredients and bring to the boil.
3. Leave to simmer for 1-2 hours until all the stock has been absorbed.
4. This makes approximately 2lbs/1kg.

Serving suggestions:

• Can be served as is with vegetable casserole. We usually add some homemade salsa on the side to make it a little more tasty.
• Can be used in any dish which calls for mince (ground meat).
• Lentil burgers – mix with egg, tomato puree or salsa and seasonings (I usually use curry paste); place in heaps on greased baking tray; cover with tin foil and bake at GM4/180°C for 30-50 minutes.
• Meat loaf.

Iron Content

Lentils and Rice contains approximately 1.3mg iron per 100g which is roughly similar to chicken.

Lamb contains about 1.7 mg/100g.

Turkey contains about 2.1 mg/100g.

Beef contains about 2.7 mg/100g.

Ham contains about 1.1 mg/100g.

Pork contains about 0.9 mg/100g.

Bacon contains about 0.1 mg/100g.

Cost (1kg is roughly 2lb)

Lentils and rice costs about £1/kg.

Pork mince is £4/kg.

Lamb mince is £4.60/kg.

Beef mince is £3.75/kg.

Tesco value mince is £2.42/kg.

A blogging rest

At the moment things seem to have come together so that I am not getting much done. None of them on their own would make a significant impact but in combination they do. (Please note I am not complaining: I realise God has a purpose in everything even if I do not know what it is.)

The first is that my husband is working different hours to usual so is out of the house for much longer and gets home later than our usual bedtime. This would not be so bad if Little Girl and I hadn't both come down ill at the same time (there's something going round our church).

In addition to this we have an ongoing problem with our freezer which means that I keep having to defrost our freezer when engineers come round to look at it. As a result I have had to run my freezer stocks down and don't currently have a stash of precooked meals in the freezer which I would usually make use of at a time like this. Fortunately one of my husband's customers who has lots of spare space in her freezer has kindly taken almost all of the frozen breastmilk which is a blessing as I don't know what we would do with it otherwise.

Anyway, since I'm struggling to keep up with everything and writing posts is just too mentally taxing at the moment, I thought it sensible to have a blogging rest until the New Year. I may do the odd little post and there will be the automated posts from Diigo but that will be it until January.

My Web Wanderings (weekly)

• Want What You Have: God Bless the Good Husbands

  tags: Marriage

• Jar Cakes, Jar Mixes, Food Gifts From the Recipe - The Recipe Link

  tags: Homemade gifts

• Ivory blossom: Greetings from the middle of nowhere

  tags: Moral standards

• The Kitchen Revolution: A Year of Time-and-Money-Saving Recipes

  tags: Menu planning

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Seven Random Things

While catching up on posts in Bloglines, I realised that Crystal tagged me back in September and I haven't done it yet so here goes:

The Rules

1. Post the rules on your blog
2. Write 7 random things about yourself
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post

- I was born on a Saturday.
- I have double jointed thumbs.
- I am 1/8 Indian.
- Although I was not "homeschooled" my mum taught me to read, write, tell the time, add and subtract and do long multiplication and division.
- I have been a Christian for approximately ten years.
- When I was younger my ambition was to become the youngest person to swim the Channel.
- I made my wedding dress the fortnight before I got married.

In the spirit of randomness I'm going to tag the last seven people (excluding those who aren't blogging) to comment on my blog so that's:
1. Heather
2. Brandy
3. Casey
4. Mrs Flam
5. Suzanne
6. Linda
7. Our Family Is His

Blog Awards

Since April, three four people have been kind enough to give me blog awards so it is about time I passed them on.

The first one came from Toni in April:

I'm passing it on to the following people:
1. Amy from Amy's Place
2. Amy from Blessed Motherhood
3. Buffy from Buffy's Salon
4. Jimena from Do Good and Communicate
5. Shannon from Homemaking in the REAL World
6. Jennifer from Joyful and Graceful Living
7. Rachel from Life in the South
8. Casey from The Beautiful Letdown
9. Heather from Wanting What You Have
10. Amanda from Wholly by Grace

Then more recently in September I got the BFF Gold Card from Heather:

Here are the rules:

Rules: You may choose 5 awardees

Choose 4 faithful readers of your blog.

1 should be someone new or someone far away.

I've picked:

1. Toni from Amazing Grace

2. Heather from Wanting What You Have

3. Crystal from The Richey Family

4. Jennifer from Kruegers Journey to Simplicity

5. (new) New Life

Also in September, Amy gave me this award:

Which I am passing on to Elena at My Domestic Church.

And finally Our Family is His gave me this one:

The Rules:

1. Put the award up on your blog

2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you

3. Nominate at least seven other blogs

4. Add links to these blogs on your blog

5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog

My nominees are:

1. God's Dancing Child at Dancing Among Infinite Love, Yahweh's
2. Linda at Ivory Blossom
3. Stephanie at Sojourner in a Strange Land
4. Brandy at A Work in Progress
5. Milehimama at Mama Says
6. Kristin at Homemaker at Heart
7. Ace at Joy and Grace

Each blog has different reasons for being picked and I like them for many different reasons but if I figure if I try to include reasons for each one I'll never get this post finished. If you have time, do check some of them out.