Good Food

 Farmer meeting season is in full swing.  Last week I attended PP Winter Conference, Beck's Winter Meeting, and Compeer Financial's Winter Meeting.  Besides excellent meetings, they served excellent food.  Rib-eye steaks, then America's Cut Chops, followed by Prime Rib!

I always told my daughters that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, and that is especially true of farmers!

I had an eye doctor appointment last week and our old van was in the shop.  So I had to take the farm pickup into Peoria.  I stopped at Taco Bell for lunch on the way home (my favorite fast food).  When I got in my truck to leave it wouldn't start.  The battery was good and the solenoid clicked but the starter wouldn't engage.  This has happened before, so after trying several times over several minutes, I finally went to the tool box.  I called my brother to come pick me up when it wouldn't start, but I kept trying.  I crawled under the truck ( in my town clothes!) with a hammer and jiggled the cables and tapped on the starter.  Still wouldn't start.  I crawled under the truck two more times and tapped the starter with the hammer and finally it turned over and the truck started.  I called off my brother.  When I got home the repair shop called and said our van was finished, so I drove the pickup to get it and left it there to be repaired.  A couple days later I heard that a friend was killed when he was run over by his own pickup.  He had stopped at a gas station and crawled under it to check a noise, but it must not have been fully in park and it started rolling.  Not a nice way to go.

This week the old farmers wife fed him beef from front to back (head to tail).  Earlier in the week she made beef tongue tacos (very good!). In the middle of the week we had hamburgers, and today she made Ox Tail soup!  It was the first time for ox tail soup, and it turned out delicious!  We ended up with an Instant Pot after Christmas (someone in the family received two), so lots of new recipes are being tried.  I am enjoying it.

My mother inherited my Grandma Metzger's Christmas Cactus.  Mom is 94 years old and she remembers it in their home when she was a young girl, so she is unsure of exactly how old it might be.  She diligently cares for it every day.  She makes sure it has the right amount of light, water, and trims it.  Numerous family members have taken cuttings from it over the years and started plants from it.   This week it started blooming again, even though it is a little late for Christmas.

 

And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:                                                 Luke 15:23

Devotionals

 After I became converted, I borrowed a daily devotional book from my Mother and read it daily for the next year.  It happened to be Come Ye Apart, by J.R. Miller.  I really appreciated the verse and short teaching that a daily devotional provided.  I didn't consistently read a daily devotional in the early years, but for the last twenty years or so I have read one daily every year.  The last ten years or so, I have done two each morning.  One is usually a "heavier" one and then a "lighter" one.  Some of the authors include Oswald Chambers, A.W. Tozier, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Spurgeon, or Billy Graham.  Several I have gone through more than once.  This is of course in addition to daily Bible reading.  When we were raising our children, I usually read the Bible twice a day plus Bible stories.  

I bring up this topic because with the beginning of the New Year, I had to again pick which devotionals to read this year.  One of my favorites, which I have read several times is Honey from the Hive, by Joseph Stoll.  He is an Amish preacher from Canada and I really appreciate his practical, down to earth, conservative Anabaptist teachings.  So I have decided it will be one of my choices again this year.  I am always on the lookout for others, so if anyone has one to recommend, let me know. 

    Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.      Isaiah 58:2