26 October 2011

An Egg-cellent Finale

Please pardon the really lame pun, but it's true! I have finally finished my 30 eggs from two weeks ago! I am currently boiling the remaining eight (two accidentally cracked :( ) to keep for breakfast and lunch tomorrow and the day after. I'm not exactly sure if these last eight eggs will be unspoiled, since I've never had to keep eggs for two weeks, but I'm sure the "expiration date" phenomena is more of a commercial ploy than a fact (!).

So thank you to all who sent me suggestions on various egg-based dishes. The post on about my egg story received the most comments I've ever had! Keep them coming, I love to hear what you all think and which types of posts you enjoy!

Peace and blessings to you all as this month comes to a close :)

With love from Palestine,
Courtney

11 October 2011

Egg Salad, Boiled Eggs, Scrambled Eggs, Deviled Eggs, Macaroni Salad, French Toast, etc.

After volunteering at the school today, I decided to grab some groceries on my walk back to my apartment. It was a splendid idea and I love making the most of my trip home. I gathered up a shopping basket full of food and made my way to the deli section where there were mountains of eggs in giant egg cartons. This is it, I thought, it's my time to shine. I'm going to use my Arabic to order my eggs! And so I did, I ordered a whole dozen. Although I probably only needed six, I thought it would be worth it to get the extra now and have them in my fridge when need be. The gentleman helping to pack my eggs (in the carton with the pastic wrap) even gave me the option of which section of eggs I wanted. I didn't know the difference so I said I would take the bright white eggs in the larger container.  I went around the corner to grab my newest and final parcel for this grocery voyage and met with the man giving me quite a few more eggs than I thought I had asked for. I didn't count, but I thought, a dozen and a half or so, perhaps? That's nothing to make him rewrap the eggs for. 


Needless to say, I am now sitting with thirty bright, white eggs in my fridge, trying to come up with recipes to use them. Next time, I think I'll let go of my pride/embarrassment and just say that I don't really need two and a half dozen eggs. Oh, and I'm having French Toast in the morning ;)


C'est la vie! Roll with the punches...or eggs, as the case may be!



10 October 2011

Embracing Mistakes

Have you ever done something, gone along with life like everything is peachy, and then realized you inadvertently hurt someone or otherwise screwed up? Sometimes there's not much you can do aside from trying to brush all the shattered pieces of glass into the same bucket and pray for the best, having faith that God is right beside you, guiding you.

Me? No, I never make mistakes! (I can't even pretend to not laugh at that.)

All month, in fact, all my life, I've made mistakes. You, too? You don't say! And all this time I was down on myself for being a unique peculiar oddball imperfect woman...you say that's all of us? (Minus the woman part for some.)

Sometimes you can fix these blunders, sometimes you can't. Either way, the only thing that keeps the peace within me is having faith that God will carry us through it (not without some effort on our own part, of course) and help us to grow from it. Lesson(s) learned...and new ones learned...and then more learned...


C'est la vie, eh?

Perhaps it's the History Major in me,
but I think letters are that much more
beautiful when they have crossed out
words and ink blotches.
Life certainly hasn't "stopped" while I've started this most recent journey. A new chapter in a book can still have typos. Hopefully not the same ones over and over, but small blotches, or what seem to be blotches, along the way. In the end, you can still have a brilliant book, complete with it's minor, unique spots and spurts and misspelled words. Sometimes, even, these misspellings become new words (seriously, Shakespeare created words so why can't I). So, this month I'm going to focus on embracing my metaphorical (and completely literal) misspellings and embrace them less as personal failings and more as ways of seeing the world in a new way and learning and looking forward from my mistakes. I encourage you to try this challenge with me :)

"I do not at all understand the mystery of grace-only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us." -Anne Lamont 
 

02 October 2011

Christianity is a verb

One of my fellow YAGMs in Malaysia posted this short video on Facebook (Check out Elizabeth's experience this year as a YAGM at her blog). I love it, both in style and in content. Take a few minutes to watch it, maybe pass it on.

What is the point of graceful salvation? Simply put, I believe it means that because you don't have to worry about your own salvation (that whole birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ thing has already been taken care of for you), you can look outside yourself and focus on acting as an agent of change and work towards fixing the broken parts of this world that we live in right now. Being a Christian means you follow Christ, and Christ never stood still...