I’ve been doing my best to make food stretch around here since we have 5 (well, 6 including our unborn grandson) extra mouths to feed. We were given half a roast from a dear couple at church on Sunday. We used it for one meal and had half of it left so I decided to make enchiladas. I often will freeze those extra one or two leftover tortillas so I was thankful to discover I had now acquired enough for an entire meal. I also had some mexican cheese (the round kind) that I had received free. I was hoping it would taste okay in a casserole dish and it was fine. I mixed it with the cheddar. But, I had no enchilada sauce. So, I tried making one of Laine’s mother in love’s recipes. It turned out great and was not difficult at all. The process is similar to making homemade gravy. I’m so happy to have another recipe I can make from scratch in a pinch.

Homemade Enchilada Sauce

Brown together in a skillet for a couple of minutes the following. Be careful to stir so it won’t burn:

3 Tbsp. vegetable oil

6 Tbsp. chili powder (Gehbardts is the best but I used what I had on hand)

3 (I used 5) crushed garlic cloves

Add the next ingredients slowly, mixing it into the chili powder/oil mixture to avoid lumps.

3-3 1/2 c. water or chicken broth

1 tsp. of salt or more to taste

Bring to a boil and stir until thickened. (Laine says you can use this sauce to make enchiladas or add to cooked ground beef or cooked chicken for tacos or enchiladas. )

I put a small amount of sauce in a 9 x 13. A lot of people soften their tortillas in oil but I prefer to soften mine in the microwave for just a few minutes. I place the tortilla in the pyrex pan and fill with the meat, cheese, diced onions and a little salsa (or you can use extra enchilada sauce). I used to add spanish rice to stretch my meat before we were watching our carbs. Roll up tightly. Fill up the dish and then cover the enchiladas with more sauce. Top with cheese and sliced olives if you have them on hand. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until heated through.

Cheap, inexpensive dinner!

Below is a picture of Grammy with one of her sweet peas!

Well, I’m packing myself silly these days! Thanks to each one of you who have been praying. The Lord knocked down some huge obstacles concerning our title issues last week. There is one lien, from the previous owner, that needs to be dealt with but we’re hopeful it will be taken care of in time. The appraisal came back perfect and now we’re just waiting on FHA to approve it. I guess a new law went into effect back in January that jumbo loan appraisals have to be okayed by FHA. Our realtor isn’t concerned about it. Our pest inspection along with our home inspection went well, also! PTL!

So, my goal (we will see if it’s the Lord’s) this week is to pack everything I can get my hands on except the bare essentials we need to survive until the move. I made great progress yesterday with some help from my daughter in love and son. I’m trying to keep some measure of order and cleanliness in my home while we’re packing.

I heard of a great idea to hopefully make the move easier. I’m not only marking each box with the name of the room and contents but I’m placing a colored sticker  on it, too. The kitchen is red, the living room blue,etc. I’m making a floor plan of the new home. I’ll place a matching  sticker in the room I want the box to end up. So, when someone looks at my ’office box’ they will see the name OFFICE (along with a few contents) and a  yellow  sticker. They will then look at the floor plan and see which room that box will go in.  I’ll post a copy of the floor plan in each room so that our family and friends can take a quick peek and know where to place the box. I’m hoping this will save a lot of time and questions.

So, please continue to keep us in your prayers. We are scheduled to close on the first of August. I’m not excited yet but very hopeful that this may actually be the ONE. My dear husband looked so worn out last night. I pray that this will go through so he can cut back on his hours. It should save us 1200.00 a month plus cut 2 hours off his daily commute.

This is a picture of my daughter-in-love and my son holding up a baby quilt she made. The babies name is diagonal in the squares. She did a great job.

Blessings,
Georgene

 I was telling a friend yesterday that I am so thankful for all the ‘lean years’ where the Lord taught me how to stretch my husband’s budget. We are smack dab in one of those times where every bit of knowledge I’ve learned over the past years is being put to work. We’ve added another 5 loved ones to our home but our income has remained the same. God is providing wonderfully!

So, I’m pulling up all the things the Lord has taught me since I was a young wife.

I’m ‘doing instead of buying’ as much as possible. I’m making do. I’m doing without.

I bought some more clothesline and both of our families are hanging our clothes on the line and then fluffing them in the dryer for 5 minutes.

I’ve set up Friday as my ‘car washing day’. I’m an early riser so I’ll head out to wash the car as soon as the sun comes up. This saves me $25.00 a month.

I’m cooking as much as possible from scratch. I’m thankful for all the recipes I’ve collected over the years. I’m also thankful for Recipezaar. They are a wonderful resource for new recipes. I love their rating system. This week I made homemade tortillas (recipe from Laine’s Letters) to stretch our chicken fajita meal. I used a piece of round steak (my son pounded it to make it tender) that cost less than $4.00. I’m making my husband’s favorite birthday cake today (German Chocolate) instead of buying the frosting and cake mix. I have large plastic bins I purchased from Smart & Final years ago where I keep my flour and sugar and powdered sugar stocked. I don’t do much baking these days for health reasons but I still like to keep them mostly filled so I can whip up a dessert when needed. I’ll also be making some homemade spaghetti sauce today along with some homemade buttermilk dressing since I have leftover buttermilk from the cake.

Keeping the air conditioner turned off is not an option at this point. My daughter in love is expecting within 6 weeks and my husband needs a good nights sleep. So, we keep it at 80 and drop it to 78 at night. It keeps my bill higher than I’d like but oh well! I open up the doors and windows early in the morning to let the cool air in and close everything up, along with the shades, before it starts getting warm.

I just made up another batch of laundry detergent. I save a lot in this area. I found I can’t use it on my towels, though. For some reason it makes them smell metal-y. I think it’s because of our well water which has a high lead content. So, I use laundry detergent for our towels but homemade detergent for everything else. I added a scented oil to it this time.

I’m trying to keep an eye on waste, too. I had a couple of pork chops that didn’t get eaten. I should have frozen them to fill in on another meal. I’m going to be quick to freeze leftovers from now on. Also, I’ve noticed our youngest granddaughter is wasting a lot of food so we need to cut back on her portions.

Be sure to check out Biblical Womanhood for more money saving ideas.

*~*~*

We seem to have made some progress yesterday concerning clearing our title. I’m hoping to receive a good report today. God seems to be moving and we are so grateful. Our appraisal came back good! Thank you for praying. Please don’t stop! We have a few hurdles left.

I “LOVE” to read… mostly books on Christian Living but I also enjoy a good missionary bio, too! The excerpt below is from Tim Challies website. I subscribed to his website because of his good book reviews. Occasionally, he will write something on a more personal note. I especially liked what he wrote this morning. I’ve been praying about how to respond to a particular sin in a loved one. I believe this was my answer although this is not the only answer God’s Word gives to responding to sin in a loved one. We find in scripture that we are exhorted to confront sin. Other exhortations in Proverbs warn us about rebuking mockers and fools. But, this can and should be the first response to sin… to look at our own hearts first and confess the sin we see there.  You can read more from Tim on his website.

“This is just about my favorite time of day. The house is quiet and no one else awake. It allows me a few minutes to myself—time I use every day to read the Bible and pray. I know that in a few minutes the family will begin to stir. Nick and Abby will wake up and Michaela will not be far behind. It won’t be long before the quiet is punctuated by their childish squabbles over who gets to eat what or who gets to sit where. I can pretty well count on this.

A little bit after nine, we will head to church. Here we’ll enjoy a time of worship and fellowship with a group of our favorite people. Though we love them dearly, I’m quite sure we’ll see evidence of sin in their lives—we’ll hear people say things they shouldn’t say and see them do things they shouldn’t do. After church we’ll head to the home of some friends to spend the afternoon with them and, once again, I’m sure there will be plenty of evidence of sin in their lives and in ours. We’ll return to church in the late afternoon to once more hear a sinful brother preach what I’m sure will be an excellent but somehow-imperfect sermon. And after it all, we’ll head home. And as we do, you can be sure that there will be more sin, more fighting or complaining or temptation to say things that just have no business being said.

All day we will see the evidence of sin in others around us. It is inevitable, is it not? How are we to react to such sin? It is here that Jonathan Edwards offers a valuable resolution and one that I hope will be in my mind and on my heart as I see so much sin today. I trust that you will benefit from reading it and pondering it as well.

Resolved, To act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings, as others, and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.”

I hope everyone is doing well. I’ve fallen behind in posting and in responding. I’m using every free moment to pack and go through things. I’m making some headway. My son and his wife and three children are also staying with us temporarily while he looks for work. My daughter in love is expecting in August. Lots of cooking, cleaning and swimming going on these days. I think it was 110 degrees in our neck of the woods yesterday. I stayed up after my husband left for work at 3:30 so that I could do my devotions and then get outside as soon as the sun comes up to do the lawn work. I melt in the heat.  

Oh, and we put an offer on a house yesterday and hope to hear back today. So far the escrow on our home is moving forward. I’m praying that God’s power will see it through this time. Please keep us in your prayers.

Blessings to all!

Nancy DeMoss: We’ve been on a journey with the Children of Israel, going through the wilderness. We’ve seen their tendency to murmur and complain and whine when they find themselves in difficult circumstances and situations. We saw that in the early days after they came out of Egypt, in those first two months, the first four times they complained, God responded by performing a miracle, meeting their needs. He showed them mercy and grace.

But in our last session we saw that once they had learned who God was and how good God was and His ability to provide–then when they persisted in their murmuring, God said, “I’ve got a different response.” God began to judge them. We see that God takes this sin very seriously because it’s a sin that expresses doubt in the goodness of God.

When we left the Israelites they were at Kadesh-barnea, it was the time when they should have been going into the Promised Land. But when the spies came back, ten of them said, “This is hard. We will not be able to win against the giants in the land.” The people murmured against Moses and Aaron; they said, “We wish we had died in Egypt. We just want to die in this wilderness. Why have you brought us out here?” They murmured, and God said, “You want to die? I’ll let you die. In fact, you’re all going to die in this wilderness.”

What should have been an 11-day journey into the Promised Land became a 38-year trek–round and round in the wilderness, wandering in circles, until that entire generation age 20 and older had died off. They went around the Promised Land, but they were never able to enter into it–a whole generation that never entered into the Promised Land. Why? Because of a root sin of discontentment. Discontentment–discontented with God. He was not enough. His presence was not enough. His provision was not enough. They were not satisfied with His plan. We see in the Children of Israel a murmuring heart–the sin of discontentment–and the serious consequences that it brings.

“The liberty of those who have nothing to lose because they have nothing to keep. We can do without anything while we have God.”      

                                                                                    Lilias Trotter

Isabella Lilias Trotter (14 July 1853 – 28 August 1928) was a artist and a missionary for over 38 years to the Muslims of Algeria. (You can read more about her life at the link below. They also offer quite a few of her writings online. The ‘Parables of the Cross’ and ‘Parables of the Cross-life’ are her most famous writings. )  She was known as a brilliant artist who saw God through His creation. She gave up the opportunity to become a famous artist in order to serve Christ fully as a missionary to Algeria saying, “I see clear as daylight now, I cannot give myself to painting in the way he means (her friend/mentor Ruskin) and continue to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilias_Trotter