God is the Perfect Example to Look to for Parenting Advice

My father-in-law got me a book for Christmas by Elder Bednar called Increase in Learning and there was something that stood out to me about teaching your children. He says the admonition in D&C is not for parents to teach their children but for them to teach them to understand. To understand does not mean to just mentally comprehend but to feel it in their hearts. He gave an example of how God helps his children to understand. Adam was hiding because he had eaten of the tree of life and was ashamed. God called to Adam, "Where art thou?" God already knew where he was so why ask the question if he already knows. Many parents would say "Adam, get out from under there!" and proceed to give him a lecture. God asked Adam what he was doing. By doing so he was treating him as an agent and inviting him to act. God asks additional questions and Adam begins to respond and then come to understand what he had done. The Father did not ask because He did not know where Adam was but because Adam did not know where Adam was. He gave another example of when Nephi wanted to know what his father had seen in The Dream of the Tree of Life. The Holy Ghost invited him to look. After seeing the vision the Holy Ghost asks him. What did you see? My mom told me that in institute classes now they have time for the students to write down their thoughts and impressions. I served my mission a few years after preach my gospel came out and my mission president challenged us to invite everyone we talked to, on the first time meeting to baptism. We told them that we wanted to give them a goal and set a date for their baptism and over the next few weeks we helped them prepare by coming to know for themselves by the witness of the Holy Ghost that this is the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, ect.We gave them scripture passages for them to read on their own and we invited them to pray to receive their own answers on the truth of the things we were teaching them. I firmly believe that everyone of us needs to gain our own witness. It is only through the Holy Ghost that we can come to understand in our hearts the doctrines of the gospel and other truths relating to life. And we can only receive that witness if we act. The principle of faith and how to develop it is mentioned many times in the scriptures and in church meetings. I thought it really wonderful to see it related to one of our most sacred responsibilities and that is raising our children. Just one more quote that Mike shared with me from his personal study that I want to share.
George Albert Smith said "It is our duty-I should say, it is our privilege as well as our duty to take sufficient time to surround our children with safeguards and to so love them and earn their love that they will be glad to listen to our advice and counsel."
I know with a deep understanding in my heart and as I have personally witness in my life, that God will open the windows of heaven and pour out his spirit upon those who seek, ask and act to the understanding in their hearts of His truths and with that understanding become changed more and more like our savior and be able to fulfill all the things we rejoiced, in the spirit world, over the opportunity to do and become in this life. And I want to do my very best to fulfill my sacred responsibility as a parent to raise my children in a home filled with the spirit and love and help my children come to an understanding and gain their own testimonies.

Recipe of the Week

I had such a hard time choosing a recipe this week as there were at least 4 new recipes I tried this week that were truly awesome. But since last weeks recipe was quite advanced baking as well as very time consuming and I have promised fast and easy recipes, I went with the easiest recipe. This one we actually have been making for years. We learned it on our missions in Taiwan. It is even better when you make your own bing (that is the word Chinese use for any and all breads that are usually but not always flat and round). But we have made it even simpler by just using a tortilla you can buy at the store. There is a delicious sweet and garlicy soy based sauce that Taiwanese serve with most things breakfast but I have not been able to find it here. I have been experimenting to make it my self because I miss that stuff so much and I am close but not quite there yet. But they also serve it with sweet chili sauce and that is easy to find and a highly recommended condiment for just about anything. The one similar to that in Taiwan looks like ketchup, so different from the commonly seen Thai sweet chili sauce that is transparent with pieces of chili floating around in it. I find that one too sweet with zero spiciness but a lot of people really like it.

Dan Bing
(recipe for one serving)

2 eggs, beaten
some oil
any other fillings you want (commonly seen in Taiwan is corn, green onion, ham, chicken or bacon)
sweet chili sauce

Heat a frying pan over medium heat for 5-10 minutes then add a little oil and swirl it around until it lightly coats the bottom of the pan. Pour beaten eggs, that have been mixed with what ever other ingredients you want or just left plain, into the pan and turn the pan so that the egg spreads out to roughly the same circumference as your tortilla. Place tortilla on top of egg. Wait 1 minute or until tortilla gets puffy and the egg underneath feels firm to the touch. It tastes best when the egg is only lightly browned. Loosen the egg from the pan and flip the tortilla over (the egg will have adhered to the tortilla) and lightly brown the tortilla. Remove from pan and when cool enough to touch, roll it up. Serve with sauce.

Stake's 100 Day to Zion Challenge

Our Stake has given us a challenge for the new year. They have challenged us for 100 days straight to do personal prayer and scripture study, family prayer and scripture study and hold family home evening once a week and to have a family service activity once a week. Mike and I have decided to just say yes, make a firm decision and commitment and stick to it. We decided to not wait til January but to start right away and we can already feel the increased spirit and love in our home. Our kids are young and so we keep it quite simple. We have found the childrens stories very helpful on www.lds.org. We had the mormon channel on one day and there was a comment made that children are being raised in enemy territory and we knew that we did not want that to be our children. We believe that these four things, as we practice them faithfully will keep the influences of the enemy at bay and out of our home. Mike and I over the years have tried several times to be more faithful in these four things and I guess we lacked the motivation. Things are different, we have found the testimony and conviction we need to be faithful and what a huge blessing it is in our lives.

Recipe of the Week

I have been experimenting for years to learn to make excellent pizzeria style pizza as to me that is the perfect pizza and who doesn't love a really good pizza. I was making personal size pizzas to sell to mikes co-workers this week and so I decided to post this recipe as recipe of the week. It is not quick and easy but at least the work is split up over an at least 24 hour period. It is the pizza for special occasions, not a last minute pizza recipe but it is worth it, at least I think so. The crust is chewy and crispy yet light and airy and full of irregular sized bubbles. I love a good crumb (the bubbles you see in bread, big, small, minuscule or irregular meaning all different sizes). This dough goes through a process called cold fermentation which allows it time to develop a truly rustic flavor. That is the reason for so little yeast if you bakers are wondering. Otherwise the the dough would over ferment, in other words it would run out of food before the dough has the chance to take on the complex flavors that time gives it. Many bakeries use a sponge to do this as it is not practical to need cold storage for the amount of dough they produce. But for home bakers this is far more practical then keeping a sponge alive. I have a recipe for rolls that use cold fermentation and they are amazing. I also have been doing french bread using this method.

Ingredients for crust
flour (amount varies depending on brand and location)
2 tsp. table salt
1 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 cups water
2 Tbsp. olive oil

Combine yeast, water and sugar and let sit for 5 minutes. Mix in salt, olive oil and 2 cups flour. Stir for one minute and then let rest 5 minutes so the flour can fully hydrate. Continue mixing and add flour as needed, a little at a time until you have a soft smooth dough that is somewhere between sticky and tacky. Spread a little oil on the counter and your hands and put the dough on the counter and stretch out one side of the dough and then fold it back over top of the dough then repeat with the other three sides. Turn over and cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Repeat another three times waiting 10 minutes in between each stretching. You will see the dough get super soft and smooth. I liken how it looks to a ball of fresh mozzarella. Place dough in a clean oiled bowl, cover with plastic and refrigerate for at least 24 hours and up to 4 days. Bring the dough out of the fridge an hour and a half before you plan to cook it and divide into how ever many pizzas you want to make, keeping size of pizza and thickness of crust in mind.  Shape into balls and cover but leave out at room temp.If you don't want to bake them all that day then place the ones you won't be using back in the fridge. About 1 hour before baking place your pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 500 degrees F. Once the hour and a half is up for the dough to come to room temp. sprinkle some flour on your counter and on hands and transfer one ball of dough to the counter. Sprinkle flour over the dough ball and then carefully and lightly stretch out the ball they place over your fist and put your other fist beside the first and carefully stretch the dough with your two fists while rotating the dough on top of your fists until desired size. Be very gentle when forming it so you don't pop many bubbles as this is key to the texture. Place on oiled parchment paper. Transfer to peel and top pizza as desired then use the peel to transfer the pizza and parchment paper to the preheated pizza stone. Immediately turn the heat down to 425-450 degrees F depending on your oven. Bake, turning once until evenly browned. Repeat with remaining dough.

Two talks for your personal study

I just wanted to reccomend two talks that I find incredibly inspirational and motivational for you all to read. The first is Terror, Triumph and a Wedding Feast by Elder Holland and the second is The Three I's by Elder Sterling W. Sill.

a crawling race

So Makayla is quite happy to be mobile. She started to crawl days before pulling up on things. She often has a big smile when she is crawling. Howver, that also means we have two girls getting into things now...

Recipe of the Week

I have decided to post our favourite recipe of the week each week , unless there is none of course. Cooking is a favourite hobby of mine but all the excitement for me is in trying new recipes, finding the perfect recipe for a favourite food and experimenting so probably 80 percent of the time I am cooking it is a new recipe I have never tried before. May as well keep what you must do everyday exciting instead of letting it get mundane right. So this means we are constantly finding new favourites. Most of them are fairly easy and not much hassle to prepare because I am a mother of a toddler and a baby. A lot of people are short of time for some reason or another so I would love to share the recipes we find with you all. This weeks recipe is a recipe that we keep coming back to from a cookbook we were given at our wedding. I use whatever pasta I have or feel like and substitute my own quick and easy homemade sausage. The recipe follows. This is also really popular with broccoli rabe ( you can substitute spinach or another green if you can't find it) All are really good but for spinach I would just toss it in at the end when everything is done cooking. Spinach any more cooked than just wilted is pretty bitter and slimy in my opinion so I just toss it with hot food
and then it is delicious. I also always chop spinach when cooked and that makes it a lot tastier in food as well. Actually I love it when cooked and prepared exactly as just described but can't stand it overcook or in whole leaves. just me but also a tip for those that have a bad taste for spinach to try it again using these methods. Also a great way to get kids to eat it.

Orecchiette with Broccoli and Italian Sausage
1 bunch broccoli (about 1 pound)
10 ounces Italian sausages
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp. salt
12 ounces orecchiette or small shell pasta
3/4 cup chicken broth
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Cut broccoli into florets. If using italian sausage prick the sausages several times. Place in a non-stick skillet with 1/4 cup water and cook over medium heat 10-15 minutes. Pour fat out of skillet and set sausages aside to cool then cut into 1/4 inch slices. In same skillet, heat oil over low heat and add garlic and cook 2 minutes or until tender. Add broccoli, cooked sausage and salt. Add chicken broth, cover and cook 20 minutes or until broccoli is very soft.Meanwhile cook pasta and reserve 1/3 cup pasta water. Add lemon juice to broccoli mixture. Transfer mixture to large bowl, add pasta, Parmesan cheese and reserved pasta cooking liquid and toss well. Mash up broccoi with a wooden spoon or leave whole.

Sausage
1 lb. ground pork or chicken
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 Tbsp. course salt
1/4 Tbsp. black pepper
1/4 Tbsp. fennel
1/2 Tbsp. chopped parsley
1/2 tsp. rubbed sage
2/3 tsp ground marjoram

Mix all ingredients together and marinade in fridge 2 hours. You may then cook how ever you like to be used right away or frozen. I make it into little rounds, cook and freeze in a large ziplock bag. It is then convenient to use in pasta or on pizza for quick meals with minimal prep.

Jada and Makayla's new successes

Our girls are growing up so fast. Kayla is Crawling and pulling up on things now. The crawling came first but not by much. And Jada is potty trained!!! Yeah! Not night trained yet so if you count that as potty trained than she is 90 percent of the way there. She actually was not too hard to teach, I was kind of dreading it because I thought it would be alot harder than it was. I would say it took about 2 months to get to the point where she can recognize when she needs to and goes all by herself without any prompting. I am crossing my fingers that makayla will be easy to train too. As those of you know who have been following this blog, I used EC elimination communication (as they call it here in the west) with jada from newborn to about 6 months. It is a potty training method used all throughout asia, which is how I learned about it, and in africa, ect. It has been gaining popularity in the west recently because people are becoming more concious of taking care of the environment and going green. Alot of people also have gone back to cloth diapers because of concerns about the environment. That is not why they do it that way in Asia, it is just tradition there. I was not very good at being consistent with it. But I found it very useful for somethings. Basically from birth I taught her to associate eliminating with a certain sound I made. It was great because when ever I changed her diaper I also took her to the potty and I could communicate with her what I wanted her to do. This meant her new diaper stayed clean for quite a while. That was wonderful and very useful. I wish I could say I was better at it. I haven't even made an attempt with Makayla which is unfortunate. Oh, well. I feel really bad, I know I should at least use cloth diapers.

Food Blogs

I want to share with everyone my two favorite favorite food blogs. Everything I have made from recipes on these sites has been awesome, I mean I would be very happy if this quality of food was served to me at restaurants. Both sites also tailor their recipes for the health conscience. www.skinnytaste.com and http://www.easy-chicken-recipes.com/. Try out the cuban, mexican and puertorican recipes on skinnytaste, restaurant quality only better because it isn't loaded with tons of fat, salt and msg. Love, love, love these blogs. The skinnytaste site also has baked versions for alot of popular deep-fried foods such as chicken nuggets, french fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings, ect. Baking not only makes them healthier but some much less fuss and mess. Some of my very favourite recipes on the easy-chicken-recipes site are teriyaki chicken, general tao's chicken, orange chicken, chicken lo mein (done with chinese flat wheat noodles), salsa chicken, buffalo chicken sandwhiches, spicy fried chicken (mike compares it to Zums of waterton fried chicken and you don't have to make it spicy), chicken and dumplings (best I have ever had) and garlic chicken (so much flavor, we couldn't believe how good it was). And there are many, many more we just have not tried yet.