Easy, Quick, Cheap MUFFINS

April 30, 2011
These muffins are tasty and tender and if you have a couple ripe bananas to throw in, squish them up and do it.  If you’re more of a raisin person, toss in a handful. Chopped apples with a bit of cinnamon. . .yum.  Happily, the plain old no-substitution version is yummy too.

Heat oven to 375

2 cups milk

2 cups quick cooking oats

2 eggs

1/2 cups vegetable oil

2 cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour

1/2 cups white or brown sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Soak oatmeal in milk for 10 minutes or so while you grease your pans and assemble the other goodies. Add in order listed with nuts, fruit etc and a teaspoon of cinnamon last, if so desired.

Yield is 24 lovely snack or breakfast muffins. Line with paper or grease muffin pans, bake about 15 minutes until springy.
 

Magic coach to magic muffins

April 29, 2011
Now that the royal wedding party is safely inside the castle, what do we do with the leftover pumpkin? Make magic muffins! (They disappear and are nutritionally almost perfect.)
Blend together:
3 cups of flour (You may want to substitute a half cup of ground flax seed for extra Omega 3’s, 1/2 cup of soy or navy bean flour for additonal fiber and protein, and use wheat flour instead of white for the rest. This is the way I usually make it. Note: the bean flour gives the raw batter a very off flavor that goes away when baked.)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 cup walnuts

6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips or raisins
mix wet separately and then blend with dry just until moistened,
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 15 oz can solid packed pumpkin or one pint home canned
1/2 cup oil

Heat oven to 400, fill paper lined (or greased or non-stick sprayed) muffin pans  Bake about 18 minutes. Makes 24 muffins. I ususally double this recipe and freeze a dozen for when their are peasant uprisings and I need a quick solution, give away a dozen to form fast allies, and then serve the rest in the south breakfast room in the morning or at tea time.

Tomorrow, a super simple oatmeal muffin recipe.

Live like a princess on a Pauper’s budget, daily tip:

April 28, 2011
Shop early! In clothing stores, shop early in a clearance sale. For groceries, shop early in the day and early in the week. Daily specials or meat that needs to be frozen soon will be marked down first thing in the morning or over night in the case of stores with butcher departments. Produce that’s getting a little ripe will be marked down to sell quickly. When you find a bargain. . .STOCK UP.

The best and worst of living in Oklahoma

April 27, 2011

The roses are Knockout, dianthus, pansies, iris and purple verbena. The fourth photo is our new storm shelter packed in with Oklahoma red dirt.

Live like a Princess on a Pauper’s Budget!, Phase one, day one

April 27, 2011
What a lovely day to begin living like a prince or princess when you only have a pauper’s budget, (or something in between.) So. . .how does a princess live? I asked my friend Tevia who sees our current world conditions as something similar to a fiddler on the roof. . .in a lightening storm. . .in an aluminum foil suit. . .wearing slick bottom dress shoes. . .while trying to dance and accompany herself/himself in The Nutcracker. His deeply insightful answers encompass almost every aspect of life and even dive deep into the meaning of being a son or daughter of our Heavenly King.

But out of small and simple things cometh that which is great, so we must start in our quest for the good life somewhere. If you trust me in the beginning, you’ll see great results sooner. You’ll be healthier, happier and have more time and money for your highest priorities. 

Tevia’s first idea of the princely life is that he wouldn’t have to work hard. Now, he was a Ukrainian milkman who harnessed his wooden cart to himself when his horse was lamed. He would consider hard work to be something more intense than what most of us do, but even so, our first consideration is to work less with better results. Consequently I never bother with couponing. It’s fine as a hobby, but it is so time consuming that it isn’t often part of a Princess’s life. (If you find a coupon for something you already buy or need in the paper, tear it out and put it in the same place you keep your method of payment. If you write checks, put it in the checkbook. If you use a debit card, put it in your wallet with the debit card.)

Phase One: Save half the time you ordinarily spend in a grocery store per month. Each phase will have a start cost but you’ll make that back very quickly in each case.

Action: Make a shopping list with these items on it:

4 boxes baking soda

4 cans baking powder

4 round boxes of salt

4 4-5 pound bags of sugar

40 pounds total of flour

4 large size containers of quick oats

4 dozen eggs

4 twelve ounce packs of chocolate chips

4 fifteen oz packs of raisins (if you like raisins)

1 pound of walnuts (if you like walnuts)

4 large cans of pumpkin puree

4 large boxes of powdered milk

1 gallon container of canola oil or equivalent amount in smaller containers. (Canola is the best nutritional buy)

Cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla (imitation is fine, and you can buy it for less in the Mexican part of many grocery stores. Double the quantity for half the price. . .at least as good as the spice aisle stuff)

10 pounds of bananas.

1 can of cocoa powder
1 cans non-stick spray

Be sure you have at least one twelve cup muffin pan for every two people in your household.

This may look like a food storage list, but these are ingredients for delicious muffins, pancakes, waffles milkshakes. By keeping stocked up on these ingredients you never have to make emergency trips to the store. You may enjoy to toy with the recipes I’ll give you and I’ll often make suggestions to enhance the nutrition in recipes, but this basic stuff rarely goes on sale, has a long shelf life, (bananas go in the freezer) so you can buy it all right away and be well on your way to living like royalty.

Done? Now call the friend or family member you’ve been thinking of calling for a week.

Tomorrow: Quick, delicious, nutritious, inexpensive recipes to replace cold cereal and expensive afternoon snacks.

Live like a Princess on a Pauper’s budget

April 26, 2011
Inflation is biting all of us, and the lovely thing about blogging instead of writing newspaper columns is that I can change the foremat and emphasis at will.  And I WILL!  Instead of a “Musing” type column on Wednesdays, I’m going to begin posting columns with tips and tutorials on “How to thrive in a tough economy.” These will be ways to both save money AND simplify your life. I’ll add an (almost) daily idea of things to do each day that will make your life easier and less costly. It will be ideal for everyone dealing with a tight budget, limited time, and a desire for a comfortable, rewarding lifestyle.  The new column starts Wednesday the 26th. (Don’t worry, you’ll still get your Saturday Morning short story each week too!)
And thanks to ALL who are linking and forewarding my blogspot. It’s gaining momentum and accomplishing the purposes for which it exists. Keep it up!

Saturday Morning Short Story: The Alabaster Box, An Easter Story

April 23, 2011
“Give it to me, or I shall cast you off!” Suzanna remembered the words her husband had used as perfectly as she remembered the camel prod he struck her with when Able said it. “Give me the alabaster box now or you must move from my house. I married you for it, now you must give it to me!”

But Suzanna would never give it to him. She had left him, knowing that he thought he could take it from her when she left, as he thought she must remove it from its hiding place. But it was not hidden in her marriage home. It lay safe in its out box and wrapping buried in the vegetable garden of her father’s home.

But Father and Mother were dead and her older brother had fled the country. They had all travelled to a distant land in a caravan with Able. He said they were ill in the desert and he had buried them in the sand. But her brother had not died and flew ahead of his brother in law back to Judah to warn her and tell her the truth. He had helped her bury the box of ointment and then he and his wife and child fled. f Able was a merchant like her father had been. They became partners after her father risked half his great fortunes to buy the alabaster box of ointment from Egypt. The ointment was not ordinary salve, but relieved all pain when rubbed into the skin. It was said to cure leprosy too.

She had lived alone in her parent’s home for two years. Though her family property became Able’s legally since her brother was thought dead, he did not maintain the house or the woman who lived there.

Suzanna had been forced to find a way to get money. Now creeping disease made it impossible for her to be with her husband again, had she wanted to. But she had accepted the idea of hungry, feverish death before she would return to him.

One April morning, a woman stopped by her garden gate as she dug weeds. She was a Magdalene and though Suzanna warned her away, she came forward and fell to her knees beside her and began helping to pull out the weeds.

“I am diseased, unclean, and a harlot!”

“I know. I also was filled with devils, tormented by them, laden with disease and without hope. I was you. Now I am clean.”

“How can that be?” Suzanna scoffed. The woman seized her hand and pushed it against her own cheek and Suzanna examined her face more closely. She was older that Suzanna, but the lines of the harsh life she claimed she had lived, were also apparent. “Can it be?” she asked.

“Come and see. Wash yourself, put on your beautiful garments. Prepare to meet my master.”?

“Who is he?”

“He is the Lord. The Lord of all. He is the Messiah!”

“Can the Messiah have come and all of Israel not rejoiced? How do you know.” She withdrew her hand from the Magdalene’s and stepped away from her.

“Yes! Remember the words, ‘I came unto my own and my own received me not? Afflicted, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief?’ That is Him. Come! Make haste! I am the living testimony of his power. He will heal you and cleanse you.”

Suzanna stared into the woman’s face. Her eyes pled with Suzanna to believe and rejoice with her. Suzanna ran back into the garden, levered up a large stone and began to dig.

A few hours later, the two women and others of the Magdalene’s friends stepped through the gate of Jerusalem. There were drying palm fronts all over the street as though a king had passed by a few days earlier. The Magdalene inquired in a house and learned that her master had gone to Bethany.

They camped outside the city walls near a brook. The next morning, they went to Bethany and found more of the woman’s friends, people who also called her master their own, waiting outside of a household where it was said Simon, a leper lived.

“He is at meat,” one of the men told her. He stepped away from her as he spoke. Suzanna was used to it.

But the Magdalene pushed her forward. “Go to the window and look at him.”

Suzanna did as she was bidden. The window was unlatched in the warm April day. Two men sat together and the other reached out and touched his head. “Be ye clean,” he said. Before her very eyes, Suzanna watched the leprous patches vanish and clean, childish skin appear.

“He is the Lord!” Suzanna exclaimed.

The Healer raised his eyes to hers and held out his open hand to her. “And be ye clean also.”

Suzanna had long since ceased to notice the physical sensations of disease and guilt and grief. When the Master said those words to her, the fever departed, her body was healed and heart came to rest in her chest in perfect peace.

The host smiled at her and beckoned her to come in.

She nearly tripped in her haste as she tried to remove the alabaster box of ointment from its outer box. When she had it out, she let the outer box fall to the ground at the threshold of the house.

She studied the man as she came forward. He wore a beautiful coat, made all in one piece, without seam or pucker. His face was tan with mild, blue eyes. Neither handsome nor otherwise.

The host stood back a little, weeping with her as she knelt on the floor before the Healer. “Who am I, Daughter? the Lord asked.”

“Thou are the Christ.” The words came without constraint or doubt. “Thou art the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief. My father told me that he believed that the Jews would kill there Messiah when he came. That cannot be!”

The Lord touched her chin and raised her eyes to his. She knew the truth.

Suzanna stood and moved behind him. She poured out the full contents of the alabaster box onto his head.

“It is said to relieve pain. It may protect you from it when the time comes.”

He turned and looked up at her. “I will think of you when the time comes.”

How to celebrate Easter?

April 21, 2011
http://youtu.be/bwwxBjpvDVQ

Wednesday wondering: If I were in charge of the USA.

April 20, 2011
If I had absolute power for 24 hours, I could fix some of the most pressing problems in the USA. And it’s simple. It’s common sense. And it has something of a sound foundation in the Constitution.
There’s a little clause in the Constitution that says there can be no taxation without representation. So if these folks are going to take some of our money to run the country, they must represent our interests. We are essentially hiring them to do a job.
Apply the converse is what would, with the mere stroke of a pen, clean out the majority of corruption, eliminate the debt eventually, and produce so many jobs, we’d be sending recruiters to Mexico and Central America saying ,”Please come to America where there is so much prosperity and opportunity that we can’t supply the demand.”
This pen-stroke of genius is to make a law that says ‘No representation without taxation’. Do you see the beautiful ramifications of the idea. If when people took a direct benefit from the federal government like food stamps, or Pell grants, or subsidized housing or earned income credit or any other money or benefit for which they had to make NO sacrifice, they would forfeit their right to vote for a lengthy period of time.
It would stop corruption in the government because representatives would only represent the interests of those people who labored to produce the money to provide government benefits. When we have a vast voting block choosing representatives who promise increasingly elaborate perks and benefits for which somebody else must pay, there is nothing to motivate those representative from promising cruises and palaces and gourmet lifestyles. . .
It would end the deficit because tax payers will pick representatives who demand less of them, not more. People who pay taxes are VERY motivated to be sure the government costs and spends less and would not tolerate waste.
Tax payers mostly live within their means and would force the government to do so also.
It’s fair. If the taxpayer is the employer, shouldn’t the employer decide what work the employee does? It seems obvious that this is the case, doesn’t it?
Prosperity would abound because taxpayers are more prosperous than non-taxpayers and with the streamlined governement that would result from accountable behavior of the representatives, people would have courage and confidence enough to hire people. Lots of people. Uncle Sam would butt out in establishing the true value of labor. The market would find it’s own fair levels through supply and demand.
The illegal immigration problem would go away. We’d have plenty of workers here, and when new people wanted to come in, there would be an abundance through the increased prosperity and the drastically decreased dole. They would have no influence on governement or politics until they were  themselves taxpayers. The only control we would need would be to eliminate criminal immigration.
Do you remember the interview done in the last presidential election where a woman said she was voting for Obama because he promised that she wouldnt’ have to worry about her mortgage anymore?  Did she think Mr. and Mrs. Obama were going to chip in to pay her mortgage? No, she thought she’d found a very expert pick pocket and wanted to use him.
Now if this were to be considered, (which obviously no representative of a district without income taxpayers, (half the USA) would vote for it.
So the next best thing is a Federal sales tax to replace the income tax. Everyone pays. Everyone pays exactly in proportion to their consumption. Everyone has a vested interest in the economy and money saving methods.
If I were in charge of the USA, I would also make most of that federal sales tax be applied only in the community where it was collected. Oh, I guess that would be a state. That’s it! I’m in favor of the STATES handling their unique problems and challenges according to their resources. Let the government provide for common defense of those states through the military. . .wait a minute, didn’t I read something about that in the Constitution? 

What became of “The Masterpiece?”

April 18, 2011
 The Masterpiece was finished long ago. I submitted it to the same publisher as “The Angel’s Song” about a year later and they accepted it for publication. It recieved an O for outstanding, and the readers added two plusses for emphasis. I was tickled of course, but after two years of waiting to release it statigically, Granite said policy required that I officially resubmit (they had a two-year hold limit) and by then I was pretty disenchanted with their operation. I retrieved it from them and I have not submitted it elsewhere since. I recently re-edited it and have queried a couple of agents about it. I am also contemplating self-publishing it the first part of next year. Those who have read it nag me all the time to stop fooling with the light reading and publish what they consider to be my true “masterpiece”. Hence the dithering about how to produce it.
   I am actively seeking an agent for ‘That Thy Days May Be Long’ which is also a full length historical fiction novel (about 110,000 words). I’m very pleased with the way it turned out. . .even if I do say so myself. Only a few have read it and response has been very positive. Ideally, I’ll hook a publisher that will do so well with “That Thy Day’s May Be Long” that they’ll be eager to publish the Christian historical fiction novel, “The Masterpiece” (with it’s narrower market).
  I would love some readers’ input on this decision.
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