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

Tapering Off: Does that have to be the norm?

This summer is all about family. I am consumed with travel itineraries. Dh is attending a family reunion with his mom in Wisconsin this week. Tomorrow, 16-year-old dd is visiting her big sister in Colorado before we all meet up in Illinois. Next week I will leave with the remaining two children, ages 12 and 14, to spend a week with ds and his fiancé before the wedding (!). Ds from Canada will join us for that week, too. The following week I’ll see the eldest ds and his wife, who are expecting my first granddaughter!

With the anticipation of many joy-filled reunions coming up, I’ve been on the Lingo phone and Skype a lot more than usual. Suddenly we can’t wait to see each other, so we are chatting almost daily. After the wedding, I’m sure the visiting will continue at a higher pace than usual, until it gradually tapers off to our norm, which is a couple of weeks between communication. Eventually real life consumes us all.

It’s like going to see the dentist. Before a check-up, I tend to pay a lot of attention to my teeth, trying to get them cleaned up before getting them cleaned. (How dumb is that?) Then after they are professionally cleaned, I am super diligent to brush and floss for the first few months, but when it’s time for my next appointment, I find myself digging out the floss again.

It’s inexcusable how neglectful I get the more time that passes between visits, whether with friends, family, or dentists. I might even argue the same applies to household help. We dash around tidying up the house if a maid is coming to clean, and then we work hard to try to preserve the clean house once she leaves. That never lasts long, though, unless we are expecting company. Clutter eventually reigns (or rains?).

Unfortunately, the same principle also applies to my times with God. The more I hang out with Him, the more I want to. Then if I am not super careful, I can easily fall back into bad habits of rushing through “mandatory” conversations with Him each day, allowing clutter to take over my daily agenda.

This summer I took the 90-day challenge with one of my readers I am blessed to know IRL. (Thanks, Inky’Spot!) We’ve been reading through the whole Bible since June. It takes me over an hour most days, and even longer if I journal, pray, and think over what I have read. It’s been a fabulous experience. The more time I spend with Jesus, the more time I want to spend with Him, just like with my family and friends.

Today is day 57, and I up to Jeremiah. I have no idea how I will carve out time for this luxury once I fly up to be with my family next week, but for now I am hooked.

IRL*Keeping up with adult children, cleaning house, flossing teeth, diet, exercise, daily Bible reading, and warfare prayer…. Discipline is such a virtue worth pursuing and maintaining.

CHAOS: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome

Giving people the benefit of the doubt, another viable reason people don’t have us over is that maybe, just possibly, their homes are a mess. It’s a thought. Flylady calls it CHAOS—Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. In fact I'm suffering from CHAOS myself right now.

Being married to a neatnik tidy husband, my sloppy creative approach to housekeeping had to be somewhat modified. Early on I realized that my scatterbrainedness temperament type was not going to work as an excuse for long. I read Side-tracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise by Pam Young and Peggy Jones, and made up my own system for tidying up the house without making Jim [dh*] insane.

I vowed to never again lose eyeglasses and keys. A huge blessing was having free radial keratotomy surgery on my eyes. After my vision was corrected, I no longer directed the daily game of “Hunt for Mommy’s Glasses.” When the computer fonts started mysteriously shrinking (once I hit forty), I succumbed to reading glasses, but I seldom lose them. I simply hide them everywhere. I leave a pair in every room of the house. That, too, makes my dh* a tad crazy, but he doesn’t complain [much].

In order to prevent lost keys, I systematically put them on a particular hook in the kitchen as soon as I walk in the house. When I am out, the keys go in my right front pocket. When I am in town using a parking garage, I always put the ticket in my back right pocket. My cell phone goes in my left front pocket. When I’m wearing a skirt without pockets, I am in trouble. At home I am almost as compulsive about where I put certain things. In fact, I never noticed this before, but I’ve become a bit obsessive compulsive to compensate for my tendency toward scatterbrainedness.

Until now, that is.

Dh* hired some guys to cover our ugly cracked cement floors with tile. This project required emptying each room and closet one by one while the men worked. We're talking seventeen years' worth of accumulated treasures. Ugh.

This month I realized how systematic I usually am. My little routines all went haywire. I’ve become a certifiable ADD scatterbrain again. No order anywhere. All my compensating techniques are out the window (while the flies and dust are coming in the doors the workers never close). How does a reformed space cadet slob keep from sliding down that slippery slope to old bad habits?

To stop the pendulum from swinging from ADD to OCD and back again, I am clinging to the Holy Spirit to again take control of my temperament. Impulsive and compulsive are both dangerous zones. Meanwhile I'm thankful for tips and encouragement from the SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) on their website, and from Flylady. (If only Flylady could help me get rid of all the flies in here!)

How about you?

IRL*Do you need Flylady to rescue you so you can be hospitable again?

Hall of Shame

Now that we have partially explored the idea of a "Missionary Hall of Fame," let’s very carefully and humbly consider the opposite. Without naming names or being too specific, let’s simply describe those we would mentally nominate for the "Missionary Hall of Shame."

Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? This one is tricky, because of course we should all look at our own shortcomings first. For me with my weird grasp of time and inability to remain entirely in the present (remember the post on time travel?), I not only face my current sins, (thankfully my past sins are washed away!), but also my potential sins in the future. Hopefully y’all will also find it fun and even beneficial to consider the missionary you don’t want to become.

I’ll start us off by nominating one I must be oh-so-careful not to resemble. Let’s call her Miss You-Think-You-Have-It-Bad. Rather than commiserating with my suffering and offering a word of wise counsel from Scripture or from her own experience, she would respond with a predictable one-upper. “You think you have it bad?! Well let me tell you how it was when we real missionaries were starting out forty years ago….” Blah, blah, blah.

Now that I have returned to Mexico, celebrating the beginning of our 25th year of being overseas, I want to follow Christ and become more like Him so that those following me will have a good example. I seriously don’t want to become a joke like Miss You-Think-You-Have-It-Bad or worse – like Penelope on the hilarious Saturday Night Live skit I saw this week on Facebook.

IRL* Strongly preferring to become like the Hall of Famers I admire, and examining my heart for bad habits that might land me in the Hall of Shame.

Women Who Defy...

Jamie Jo is on her way back to Mexico this week. In order to give her a break, this week's content is provided by the sole respondent (thanks, Karin!) to her request last week to submit their nomination for a woman working cross-culturally that defied the missionary stereotype. Thank you, Diane, for nominating Lil in the comment section of last week's blog--she sounded like an amazing woman!

Here's Karin's nominee:

"Dear Lady"

Our years living in the village in Central Asia were not a beautifying experience for me physically. The water was scarce and hard, the weather had no grace. Summers were baking hot and winters freezing cold with very little heating. Life was primitive with not many body products for sale to smooth rough skin and quench dry brittle hair. If you were willing to haul some beauty products in your suitcase from abroad it could come...if you had the weight allowance.
I still smile at my interesting observation. When we ladies living and working there would come back from our trips from our home countries we would have the newest haircuts, cute clothes and shoes. We even put make-up on daily. Then as time passed, our beauty routines would slowly fade. The hairstyles would become a daily ponytail, the make-up lessened and the clothes would fade. It was the more natural look—at times even leaning towards looking somewhat neglected.

One day a dear lady came to our town. She gathered the women together for a time of visiting and sharing. I vividly remember us sitting in a circle around the typical low table with flat mattresses on the floor with green tea being served in round Chinese printed cups on a brightly printed plastic tablecloth.

She shared from her heart about her personal experiences and difficulties. Then she hit our hearts full on with these words; "In twenty years time you ladies are not going to be the beauties in the world. Your skin is going to be telling a story of many hot summers and cold winters. You would have probably suffered diseases and hardships. Life would have taken its toll on your age." We did not need to hear much more than this. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. The lump in my throat testified to the truth of what she was saying, as I looked across the table, I did not see one person whose eyes were not full of tears. Life felt harsh, I did feel run down and the mirror did not lie. Yes, when last did I have a good haircut?

She continued: ”But God says you are going to be beautiful to Him in your hearts and souls. You would have walked a life of suffering and faith. You would have endured much. You would be strong in Him. You would be the spiritual giants of this world.” Some of us were wailing now. We were touched to the core. What a beautiful opportunity we had to share our hearts and longings that day to understand one another's needs. We prayed together and were comforted by the beautiful truth of this message.

She then played this song by a group called Delirious:

"FIND ME IN THE RIVER...find me in the river find me on my knees. I've walked against the water now I'm waiting if you please. We've long to see the roses but never felt the thorns and bought our pretty crowns but never paid the price.

Find me in the river; find me on my knees with my soul laid bare. Even though you are gone and I'm cracked and dry...

Find me in the river...I'm waiting here.

We didn't count on suffering we didn't count on pain but if the blessing is in the valley then in the river I will wait."

...see sidebar to click on the YouTube screen to hear it.

Looking back, now almost twelve years ago, I fondly but thoughtfully carry this message in my heart. I do think the weather and difficulties of life have taken its toll on my age and physique. But I do hope that one day I can look into the mirror of my heart and see myself as He sees me. It is true: physical beauty fades with time. But I do believe what lasts are those beauties in our hearts: the choice we make to forgive, to turn the other cheek, to walk the extra mile, to do without some things so someone else can have, giving to others from ourselves more than what we hoped or planned.

These things then would be the true jewels in our hearts.