The Chicken Rut

Do you ever get in an absolute rut with meal planning?  My most nutritious creations are rejected by my Mexican-born children, and we end up with the same ol’  same ol’.  I could use some inspiration.  Give me non-chicken, non-Mexican recipes, please.

My one daughter-in-law figured it out right away.  Her definition of Mexican food:  the exact same ingredients rearranged and called something different.  Give me these staples and we can eat for a month:  black beans, tortillas, chicken, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, onions, cilantro, salsa, and sometimes corn, lettuce, or sour cream. 

Wrap it all in a flour tortilla and call it a burrito. 

Wrap some of it in a corn tortilla, cover with a sauce made of the other ingredients, cook it, and call it an enchilada. 

Spread beans on a tostada, add lettuce and rest of ingredients and call it a tostada.

Mix it all with rice and add olive oil and lime juice, and call it Fiesta Rice.

Put the chicken and cheese in a flour tortilla, fold it in half, cook it on a griddle, add avocado and pico de gallo (diced tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime juice, and sea salt), and call it a quesadilla.

Beans, cheese, and chicken on tortilla chips with chilies and ya – we have nachos.

Add a tomato based broth, add chicken, cheese, sour cream, avocados, and fried corn tortilla strips, and call it Tortilla Soup.  Use a chicken broth with lots of seasoning and pureed beans, and you've got bean soup.

My latest craze is Southwest Chopped Chicken Salad, a recipe I found on Pinterest, with mostly the same ingredients (diced chicken, tomatoes, corn, rinsed black beans, green onions, bell pepper, cilantro, avocado, and lettuce, mixed with a dressing of ½ cup mayonnaise, 2/3 cup plain (Greek) yogurt, 1 tablespoon ranch seasoning, and 1 tablespoon taco seasoning.  Top with crushed tortilla chips, and yum!

Have I made my point?  We seriously eat the same thing ALL THE TIME.  The only thing missing from the list is tacos, which may involve some of the same ingredients, but we generally go out for tacos when we have a hankering for them, so we can get out of the chicken rut and have pork or beef.

I’m probably making some of you salivate thinking of Mexican food.  Hopefully (surely?) you can get these ingredients, except maybe the corn tortillas.  Feel free to incorporate my boring menu plans into your own – on one condition:  please give me some new ideas!  I am desperate to get out of this rut.

What are your stand-by menus?  Have you incorporated local spices and recipes into your daily fare?  Can you share some ideas for those of us craving something new and different?  Variety that doesn’t involve spinach would be greatly appreciated by my family.

IRL* Yes, ladies, it really is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Note:  I'll be out in a village without internet access when this is published, but I will respond to your comments later on.  Thanks in advance for your inspiring recipes!  Jamie Jo

Never Say Never

You never miss what you've never had. Or do you?

Growing up I never missed having aunts, uncles, or cousins, because both my parents were only children. I never knew what I was missing.

Living the past 25 years outside the U.S. without a Starbucks close by has not been a sacrifice, because Starbucks didn’t even exist when I left, and besides, I almost never drink coffee.

Likewise I never knew of such things as memory foam and sleep number mattresses, so I’ve never missed them. We’ve never had anything larger than a full size bed, so it never feels like a sacrifice to not have a queen or king-size bed.

The things I grew up having, like automatic washing machines and clothes dryers, dishwashers, Kitchen Aid mixers, and all sorts of convenience foods at the grocery store – these I did miss.

Many years ago a pedicurist came on a short-term team, insisting that the delight of her week would be to give me a pedicure. “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news….” This was her obsession. Up until then I had never missed such luxuries, having never splurged on a pedicure in my life.

It was ticklish and embarrassing to have someone touch my grungy feet after years of wearing sandals year-round on dusty unpaved roads. I tried every way possible to postpone this “treat” – hoping she would just forget the whole thing. The last night, though, she would not be deterred, and I experienced my first pedicure.

Maybe some of you received your first (free!) pedicure at a Women of the Harvest Retreat, and you know what an amazing feeling it is to have your feet pampered. After that, I was hooked. I don’t actually pay for a pedicure very often, but I find myself wishing I could.

Thanks to the internet (Pinterest), visits to the U.S. every year or so, and talking to new missionaries and short-termers, I now know about many other things I have never experienced, and if I’m not careful I can begin to covet and crave things I have never even seen.

Then came Easter. Sunday morning I gathered with family and friends at sunrise, worshipping and remembering the Resurrection, and out of nowhere I got a blast of longing for something I have never seen except in tiny glimpses.

Heaven.

Do you ever find yourself feeling so homesick for your real home that it brings tears to your eyes? I’ve never seen heaven, but I sure do miss it.

My current must-read book is Heaven, by Randy Alcorn. I recommend it to each of you. It makes me strangely content with my life on earth, knowing there is much more to come. Any small sacrifices I make to serve the Lord now will be worth it in the end.

It’s always good to be reminded that this life is short, and eternity is long.

IRL* Sacrifice does not always feel rewarding, and it’s not always pleasant, but to quote an old favorite song, “It will be worth it all when we see Jesus.”

Computer-induced ADD

Time is another one of my obsessions. I waste more time pondering what in the world I’ve done with it. Dh says I just think too much in general. But honestly, have you taken time to analyze where it goes?

In the old days of intense mothering (where some of you currently and seemingly forever reside), one day morphed into the next as I endured those 24/7 shifts seven days a week with no clue such a thing as “free time” even existed. Back then it was a good thing to be overseas where real life was busy, and we had no such thing as telephone and junk mail, not to mention sports or other extra-curricular activities for the kids. I could focus on the little priorities I was raising.

Nowadays I find I have developed a case of adult-onset ADD. I tend to flit from one time waster to another. Having Internet has contributed to the problem. I can “quickly” check in on Facebook, mostly looking for news from my children, and find myself fully sucked in an hour later, praying for this, “liking” that, and wishing a dozen friends a happy birthday.

Then there is Pinterest. If you haven’t discovered Pinterest yet, don’t go near it unless you are highly disciplined, and can stay there only for 10 minutes of inspiration and relaxation. For me, I find way too many recipes and craft ideas that I know full well I will never try, but I file them away for a hypothetical day in the future when I might.

Being the frugal missionary, I was delighted with a link on Pinterest for painting upholstered furniture. That would be so much simpler than shopping for fabric, finding someone to do the work, hauling the furniture to the city, etc. Right? I wasted the next hour reading blog after blog about how to do this “simple” job. Then I discovered that the main ingredient I needed was something I would never be able to find in Mexico. Another good idea that will come to nothing.

One final time eater is my Kindle. I hesitate to say anything, because I honestly LOVE my Kindle. I have several versions of the Bible on it, plus several devotional books I am using for 2012. The trouble is that I fritter my time away hunting for online bargains and freebies to read. For a while I was downloading so many free books, it was a full-time job just to organize them all.

The biggest blessing I discovered this past week is that I can borrow books for free with Amazon Prime. Now that’s cool. I am only allowed one book at a time. That forces me to focus and actually finish one book before I download the next one.

Having Amazon Prime is worth it for me, since I tend to procrastinate on ordering things (another symptom of my ADD-ishness) until I am forced to pay for second day shipping or risk wasting further time writing emails to track down packages that inevitably arrive too late.

Somehow I picture the rest of you happily occupied with real people and projects, well organized and self-disciplined, ministering to others full-time. For your sake, I hope you are not in a computer-induced attention deficit mode. If you are, may 2012 be a year we both find balance between worthwhile and wasted time.

IRL* Striving to regain control over my time.