Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Which Body Part Are You?

Don’t you just love cookies shaped like little people, such as gingerbread men and women?

I always start munching on gingerbread people at the head. According to a survey conducted by the folks at Dunkin’ Donuts, I’m not alone. Almost two thirds of people surveyed start at the top when eating a gingerbread figure. A fifth of people begin with the legs, while the remainder go for the arms first. (To make some gingerbread people yourself, see below for a classic recipe.)

We seem to have a penchant for foods shaped like bodies, or at least named after various body parts.

There are chicken fingers, kidney beans, artichoke hearts, navel oranges, black-eyed peas, heads of lettuce, ladyfingers and elbow macaroni.

The Italians have given us pasta shapes like orecchiette (little ears), linguini (little tongues), and capellini (angel’s hair). In France, cotton candy is called, “Dad’s beard.”

Our bodies are precious to us and are wondrously made, so it’s no wonder we pay tribute to them by naming foods after our various body parts.

But did you know that if you’re a believer, you don’t just have your own body, you’re a part of another body, too?

Scripture tells us that those who follow Jesus are all parts of the body of Christ.

“Our bodies have many parts, but the many parts make up only one body when they are all put together. So it is with the ‘body’ of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12)
“All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27)
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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Don’t Spoil Your Spiritual Appetite!

When you were young, did your parents ever admonish you not to eat sweets too close to dinner time because it would “spoil your appetite”?

Mine certainly did. However, delaying dessert until after dinner is difficult to do.

The look of a beautifully frosted cake or the smell of freshly baked cookies can be notoriously tempting. And of course, one cookie or piece of cake invariably leads to another…

Before you know it, you’ve stuffed yourself with sugary foods and are too full to eat dinner. You miss out on all the good protein and vegetables in the main meal.

I guess Mom and Dad knew best: we should fill ourselves with more nourishing things first, and leave the dessert until afterward as a treat, not the main course.

The same lesson holds for us spiritually, doesn’t it?

We should concentrate on things of substance in our lives first.

So often we fill our lives with things we think will make us happy: entertainment, money, accomplishments, or possessions. But these things are temporary, and will eventually disappoint us. They’re not really satisfying in a lasting way.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Christmas Fruitcake Hack

Do you like Christmas fruitcake? Or do you just pretend to?

Some people look forward to making or receiving fruitcakes at this time of year. Other people dread the prospect of eating fruitcake yet again.

If you’ve been faking enjoyment of Christmas fruitcake all these years and would really rather not eat any more of it, I think I have a solution for you:

Make Christmas fruitcake cookies instead.

I hit upon this idea years ago and have never looked back. I liked some of the ingredients in fruitcake, but was never fond of the dense, molasses-y cake surrounding them.

With fruitcake cookies, however, you keep the best parts of fruitcake and add more butter. You also omit the ingredients that are unpalatable to you. The recipe is thereby transformed into something completely new. What results is a scrumptious cookie that is a crowd-pleaser whenever I serve it.

In the same way, isn’t that sort of what God does in our lives? When we become believers in Jesus, God keeps the best parts of us and adds the Holy Spirit. As we become more like Jesus, the unpalatable aspects of us are gradually left behind: our impatience, pride, lack of generosity, selfishness, etc.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Don’t Spoil Your (Spiritual) Appetite

Photo by Free-Photos on Pixabay

When you were young, did your parents ever admonish you not to eat sweets too close to dinner time because it would “spoil your appetite”?

Mine certainly did. However, delaying dessert until after dinner is difficult to do.

The look of a beautifully frosted cake or the smell of freshly baked cookies can be notoriously tempting. And of course, one cookie or piece of cake invariably leads to another…

Before you know it, you’ve stuffed yourself with sugary foods and are too full to eat dinner. You miss out on all the good protein and vegetables in the main meal.

I guess Mom and Dad knew best: we should fill ourselves with more nourishing things first, and leave the dessert until afterward as a treat, not the main course.

The same lesson holds for us spiritually, doesn’t it?

We should concentrate on things of substance in our lives first.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

The Recipe For Your Life

Photo by silviarita on Pixabay

Don’t you love cookie recipes that give you a lot of leeway in creating your own variations?

The instructions will give you the ingredients for a basic cookie, but then list options for different flavours or additions to create your own version.

Perhaps you want to add pecans instead of chocolate chips. Or maybe you’d rather substitute mint flavouring in place of vanilla.

These build-your-own cookie recipes sure are versatile. You get to pick and choose exactly what you want to put in the dough.

Don’t you wish life was like this?

Do you ever wish you could have chosen the “recipe” for your life story? That you could have picked out beforehand which “ingredients” would be part of your life?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Making Butter Yourself

Photo by rodeopix on Pixabay

Some things are better when they don’t come too easily, aren’t they?

Like making butter yourself. When I was a child, I had the chance to do just that.

On a visit to my grandparents’ farm, my grandmother handed me a closed jar with rich cream inside it from their dairy cows. She instructed me to shake the jar vigorously.

I did so, but didn’t see much happening. I wanted to give up, but Grandma told me to keep agitating the jar. I obeyed, and soon started to see clumps forming inside the jar.

Grandma knew it wasn’t ready yet, however, and instructed me to keep going. My little arms were getting tired, but eventually Grandma told me I could stop. The cream had finally transformed into the right consistency.

I had made butter! (Well, technically, I suppose most of the credit should go to the cows.)

It was hard work making that fresh butter, but the taste of it was heavenly on fresh bread. It was vastly superior to the blocks of chilled butter you buy in the supermarket. Not only did it taste wonderful, I appreciated the butter more because I’d put in the work myself to make it.

Sometimes God lets us go through the effort of doing things for ourselves, doesn’t He?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

A Gardener’s Worst Enemy

Garlic Mustard
Photo by Simone VomFeld on Pixabay

Gardeners may not realize it, but they’re a bit like soldiers in wartime. Their enemies aren’t people, of course, but an even more insidious foe:

Weeds.

Weeds infiltrate our gardens like enemy invaders: dandelions, nettles, thistles, couch grass and garlic mustard, to name a few. They may seem innocent enough when there are only a few of them, but make no mistake: their ultimate aim is to take over and occupy your territory.

One vanguard weed may sneak in and settle, and you think nothing of it. If you’re not vigilant, though, that lone plant will soon multiply into an overwhelming host.

Or you pull up a dandelion and think that’s the end of it, but unless you’ve been very thorough, part of the taproot remains deep in the soil. The weed will come up again long after you thought you’ve eradicated it.

The seeds of weeds may stay in the soil of your garden and remain viable for years. They lie in wait like sleeper agents, waiting patiently for the right opportunity to spring up and attack.

The mission of weeds is simple but deadly: to compete with other plants for light, water and nutrients and crowd them out so they die. They’re dastardly adversaries, often needing less sunlight and water than other plants to survive.

And the worst part of it is that they’re very hard to kill.

Weeds are sort of like sin, aren’t they?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Sweetest Perfume Can’t Be Bought

Vintage perfume bottles
Photo by domeckopol on Pixabay

We humans can’t help but react instinctively to a beautiful smell, can we?

In my last post, The Perfect Recipe for Bread, I mentioned how wonderful the smell of freshly baked bread is in your own home. The same is true when you bake a cake, cook a roast, light a scented candle, or when you bring a bouquet of flowers inside: the aroma fills the whole house and gives you a deep sense of pleasure.

You get the same pleasing effect when you take a walk in your neighbourhood and can detect cooking smells emanating from houses as you pass by: here someone’s making a rich stew, over there a spicy curry. Even better is strolling by someone’s garden and being enveloped by the scent of the lilacs or roses growing there.

But what if a beautiful aroma could permeate an even bigger area?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Short But Sweet

Scottish Terriers: short but sweet!
Photo by Trisha Shears on Wikimedia Commons CC BY-2.0

Last week, the Scots celebrated “Hogmanay,” or New Year’s Eve. A particularly delicious treat often consumed there on this holiday is shortbread, which is a Scottish invention. It’s not really a bread, but rather a buttery, rich, crumbly type of cookie (recipe below).

But why is it called “short” bread? Is it vertically challenged? Well, yes, it’s quite a flat cookie, but in this case the word “short” means something different.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Christmas Fruitcake Solution

Do you like Christmas fruitcake? Or do you just pretend to? Some people look forward to making or receiving fruitcakes at this time of year. Other people dread the prospect of eating fruitcake yet again.

If you’ve been faking enjoyment of Christmas fruitcake all these years and would really rather not eat any more of it, I think I have a solution for you:

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