Country Porch Blog Party

Today Pleasantburg is participating in the Country Porch Blog Party. Different bloggers have been introducing themselves this week and we encourage you to come on over ...just click the blog party button above and pull up a chair!    

And now, I will tell you a bit about Pleasantburg Blog...

When did you begin Pleasantburg Blog?

I began Pleasantburg blog last spring. After several years of building my

 "blogging confidence" with our private family blog, some friends encouraged me to branch out into the wider blogging world.  

What is the purpose of Pleasantburg Blog?  

My prayer is that this blog will inspire women of all walks of life to make their homes a pleasant place to live and visit.  Pleasantburg is not about perfection, and it is not about a pie-in-the-sky approach to life...it is about creating a haven of rest in the midst of a world that has many trials and troubles.  Topics include everything from practical homemaking subjects ( including dealing with food allergies) to spiritual encouragement for the Christian homemaker. 

Who is doing the writing here?

Mrs T. ! I am married to the wonderful Mr. T. and we have five children, ranging in age from 17 to 4 years. I spend my days homeschooling our children and working to make our home a pleasant place. I love to read and garden, and I am in the over 40 crowd.  I am saved by God's grace and grow more thankful each day for His work in my life and heart.  

What are a few facts your blog readers might not know about you?

I am an adoptee and have been reunited with my birth mother. Our youngest child was premature and spent  his first few months in the hospital. I love good guacamole :).

I hope you enjoyed visiting Pleasantburg Blog...please come back again!

Plan It, Don't Panic Menu Challenge : Week 3

Well, it is Week 3 of the Plan It, Don't Panic Menu Challenge. I neglected to post my menu for week 2, but here's what's cookin' in my kitchen this week! All dishes are gluten free and dairy free.  The Lemon Honey Chicken was a new recipe this week. I served it tonight and it was a huge hit!

Monday:  Crock Pot Cranberry Pork, rice, peas

Tuesday:  Lemon Honey Chicken ( also in the crock pot!), green beans, mashed potatoes

Wednesday:  Lentils and Rice, roasted sweet potatoes, kale

Thursday:  Chili, cornbread ( for those who can eat it), salad

Friday:  Baked potatoes with leftover chili, cheese, and broccoli for toppings; green salad

Enjoy feeding your family this week and check out Plan it, Don't Panic for other great menu ideas!

Gluten Free/Egg Free/Dairy Free Oatmeal Cookies

There is nothing quite like a warm cookie and a hot cup of tea on a fall afternoon! This oatmeal cookie recipe has become one of our favorite gluten-free cookie options.  It is also egg, nut, and dairy free! The recipe is one I modified to suit our food allergies. The original  recipe is for Oatmeal Crispies and is found in  the Aurora Mennonite Church cookbook entitled Our Treasured Recipes. You can read about this cook book and how to order one at the end of this post. 

GF Oatmeal Crispies

1 c. margarine (or butter)
1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. GF vanilla
1 c. GF flour mix ( I have used GF baking mix in a pinch and they turned out ok...just a bit more like scones than cookies...and they were a bit hard when they cooled!)
1 1/2 c. GF oatmeal
a few handfulls of dried cranberries ( I think nuts would also be very good if you do not have nut allergies in your family)

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla.  Add flour and oatmeal.  Chill dough in refrigerator for 1 hour. Spoon dough onto greased cookie sheets and press with a fork. Bake at 350 for around 15 minutes.

They, like all cookies, are best warm. Light your favorite fall candle, brew a cup of tea, and enjoy a pleasant, allergy-free cookie break this afternoon!

*Looking for gluten free flour and baking mixes?Amazon sells all our favorites!  Although Pamela' s is probably my most favorite, it is not a good choice if you have tree nut allergies in the family.  I have found that all of these brands work very well for times when I am not able to put together my own GF flour mix.  Buying them in bulk from Amazon is both handy and cost effective.( And there are even more options on Amazon that I haven't tried yet...check out the Amazon search box in my side bar and enjoy browsing through the entire gluten free section!)  Happy Baking!

From Duty to Joy

...not our clothes line... we don't have any adorable bunnies in our area, but isn't he cute!

One of the best things that about living in an older home is that things are (as a rule)  family size and built to last.  The dining room?  Large enough for a crowd. The bath tub?  Still in great shape, and I bet a young mom could bathe at least four small children at a time! The bedrooms?  Designed to house more than one child. The clothesline?  Ah.... steel poles, 45 feet apart, and four wonderful rows of clothes drying goodness. I love it.

I didn't start out loving the idea of hanging out our wash to dry, but with a vintage clothes line beckoning to me, I felt I didn't have a choice. It was something I felt was my duty...saving our family money and using what the Lord has placed right there in our back yard to meet our needs. But now, hanging out the wash is one of the best parts of my day.  It is the semicolon between history and math...a pause between two related sections of my day. It is an import break in ideas that causes the latter subject to begin with a peaceful lowercase letter. It is a bit of fresh air in the middle of the morning, and a time for the little boy of the house to run outside and  help mom by carrying out the empty basket and handing her the clothes pins. In the afternoon there is another load to go out on the line....an opportunity to listen to the children enjoying their time outside without hovering over them, and the chance to see if the red-tailed hawk will be back. It is time for me to realize that my small amount of time and energy, combined with God's sunshine, are enabling our clothes to dry free of charge, while others are paying their machines to do this work for them. And later in the evening, with the last load in hand, it is a time for me to go out into the dusk alone. I often jokingly sing, " I Go to the Clothesline Alone" (to the tune of  " I Go to The Garden Alone"), because don't we moms cherish those few moments of alone time when the Lord gives them to us!

I once heard a home school mom say that she punctuated her day with her own little "happiness islands".  It sounded a little fruity to me at the time, and it still does.  I don't want to be running off doing my own thing in the midst of the day, focusing on my happiness when I should be focusing on the Lord and on my family. But I do need some semi colons in the midst of my daily paragraphs. Just a "slow" task now and then, preferably one that takes me outdoors and gives me time with an individual child or alone.  The Lord is good to turn our duties into joys!

Servanthood

     "Could it be right," Amy had asked, "to turn from so much that might be of profit and become just nursemaids?"  The answer was yes.  It is not the business of the servant to decide which work is great, which is small, which is important or unimportant--he is not greater than his master. 
     "If by doing some work which the undiscerning consider 'not spiritual work' I can best help others, and I inwardly rebel, thinking it is the spiritual for which I crave, when in truth it is the interesting and exciting, then I know nothing of Calvary love," Amy wrote after many years of such "unspiritual" work.  


               ~ from A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael, by Elisabeth Elliot

Miss Messy Learns to be Tidy: Room Bucks and the Family Thrift Store Explained

It has been my experience that girls generally will mature into wanting a tidy room.  When they are little we try to help them by establishing a clean-up routine, be it daily or weekly, but eventually they start taking the initiative to keep thing tidy without mom having to tell them. Appreciation for beauty and discipline creeps in with age, and watching it happen is wonderful time, indeed!  In our house this has usually started to happen around age twelve and until then, well, I just wait and train as best I can :)....and sometimes I am better at it than others!

 This being said, our youngest daughter spent the summer having huge issues with clothing all over the bedroom floor. ( You may remember that she is my child who is forever dressing up like historical figures!). I tried limiting her clothing options, but then we ended up with too few clothes for our laundry routine, and good clothes that were stained because she didn't have a good supply of play clothes. One day, after reading a wonderful post by Kelly at Generation Cedar, I came up with the idea of Room Bucks. Kelly had the great idea of limiting her children's clothing, but putting the extra clothing in a "Family Thrift Store" where the children could buy extra items as they needed them. ( It turned out she was having the exact same issues we were having with limiting clothing...I love that about blogs! Somewhere out there is another mom with your problem! Anyway...) Our youngest children really don't regularly have money of their own, so I decided to give her the chance to earn one "room buck" ( play money) during random, daily room inspections. If clothing was put away properly, she would earn one buck. I also reserved the right to charge her a room buck if "the maid" had to come in and take care of a mess before guests arrived ( or for some other reason). I limited her to just a  few outfits, but gave her the chance to "buy" her items back from the Family Thrift Store for 5 room bucks each.  Dress up clothes could be rented for 1 room buck each, which would be returned to her once I saw that they clothes were put back properly.

The results have been amazing. She has enough motivation to put things away properly and is gradually getting back some of her clothes as her self-discipline increases. I no longer need to nag or feel exasperated over the mess. Love that! I see that she is beginning to grasp the concepts of both simplicity and stewardship, as Kelly talked abut in her post. I really love that! How do you help your children learn to clean up after themselves? Do you have ideas to share on teaching simplicity and stewardship? How has another mom inspired you recently?

Plan-It, Don't Panic, Pleasantburg Style ~ Allergy Free!

 This week I am participating in the Plan it- Don't Panic Menu Planning Challenge....join us for great menu planning resources, ideas, and tips!

I was 40 years old before I began to enjoy cooking.  The shift occurred when  I realized that it was not the cooking I disliked, it was the obligation I felt to follow a recipe. Once I embraced the fact that I could ( and must, in the case of our food allergies/sensitivities) use a recipe as a mere guideline, I felt am amazing sense of  FREEDOM and joy in cooking!!!!

This week's menu items  are all loosely based  on recipes from Sue Gregg's Meals in Minutes cookbook. I invested in this cookbook when we had two babies and were living on a very small salary. This cookbook was a great help to me. If you are  looking to reduce food costs while still providing your family with healthy  whole food, I think this is one of the best resources you can own.  I have easily modified are all of this week's recipes to be gluten free. ( Feel free to email me or leave a comment if you want the details on how I did that.)

*Monday:  Enchilada Casserole and salad  ( separate dish without corn tortillas for those with corn sensitivity)

*Tuesday: Spaghetti and Meatballs and green beans ( separate gluten free pasta, but GF meatballs for everyone!)

*Wednesday: Sausage-Egg Strata, grits, and toast ( skip the grits for the corn sensitive, GF toast as needed )

*Thursday:  Crock Pot Beef Soup ( this one is not in Sue Gregg's cookbook...I just made it up one cold winter day !) and salad

*Friday:  Tuna casserole, asparagus, and rice

*Saturday: French Bread Pizza ( Udi GF hot dog bun pizza for the GF folks, without cheese for the GFCF among us...I highly recommend Hormel All-Natural pepperoni in the brown box, especially if you are concerned with preservatives.)

Pleasant dining to you and yours! Order your own Sue Gregg cookbooks here! The Breakfast Cookbook also has Allergy Free Alternatives.