Zechariah 13:9

And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God. Zechariah 13:9

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Never-ending!

There are a few things in life that are never-ending ....
laundry
 the need to eat
and dirty dishes

 I fancy thinking about the fun things we could do, the lovely places we could go, and the money we would save, if the above mentioned were "ending." 
If we didn't eat, there would be no dirty dishes.  But not having to eat?  What would that be like?

 And what about the laundry?  Oh!  I have an idea for that one!  Disposable garbage bags!  We would have to petition Glad to make purple, pink, blue and green bags for sure, and save the black bags for funerals!   :)  This type of apparel could be hosed off and reused and when it gets holey, pitch it and get another one out of the box.

But if we didn't eat?  What WOULD it really be like?  How much time do we really put into shopping, preparing food and eating it?   And how many hours do husbands and wives have to labor to pay for it?
Finding those answers is your homework assignment for this week.  :)

I have never kept a time-card to log in and out while feeding my family, but I am positive I go into overtime!  Double overtime including laundry!  And I am positive that many of you are saying,
 "me too! me too!"  Many mom's can relate to overtime. 
 
 This was my yesterday....
(this is not my typical day)

Packaged 100# of fresh cased sausage
Fried approximately 35# of fresh loose sausage
Mixed up and baked 4 dozen sausage and egg muffins, and 4 breakfast casseroles for freezer
Curdled 4 gallon of milk into a batch of cheese
Beat 1 2/3 gallons of cream into butter
Prepared a gallon of yogurt to be fermented
The menfolk sliced 7 pans of meat pudding to put into freezer
washed and hung up umpteen loads of laundry
 threw in the oven 3 bought pizzas for supper

 Did you notice I wrote "bought pizza?"  Yep!  Bought pizza in the midst of home-made cheese and butter.  It was wonderful to not add home-made to the word pizza.  Sometimes I like "bought" over "home-made".  It is a more soothing word - it means I have more time to blog or read. :)  
And it is only because of a few cows, we are able to have milk products.  If we ever move from the farm, we would not experience a Saturday like the above ever again.



Anyway, while chugging away at those tasks, I was not patting myself on the back for any of the accomplishments, (well, I was for the bought pizza!  So glad I bought it!) but rather contemplated on whether I viewed those tasks as a blessing or curse, worthwhile effort or wasted time.
Oh, I would've much rather had my nose in a book, or rather on the Kindle that Dave gave me for Christmas.  Visiting friends or sewing would've also been a nice thing to do.

But I was stuck with food prep!
Stuck?
Is that how I felt?


No.....
(well maybe a bit a pressure was felt)
and after really thinking about it, I concluded that I was struck with a privilege!  
How dare I even think about complaining!



Due to health issues with Dave and myself, our family's diet has been tweaked quite a bit since our first married years.  And it continues to be tweaked.  Tweaking has been extremely worth the time and effort.  It has brought much improved health to both of us (will share how and why in upcoming post), however, it is not a "fast food" way of eating, as much as I wish it was.  It is much less time consuming to go to the store and buy noodles, cereal, snacks, frozen meat (and of course, pizza!) than it is to grow veggies, feed that meat on the hoof, butcher and freeze, and add healthy fats.

It is time consuming to eat healthy!
Very much so!
Is it more expensive?
Maybe we can schedule a debate on that one.

But, what are our choices?

We need to eat to live.  God made it so!
And how well we live depends on what we eat!
(and that becomes more of a believable statement the older we get)

So, the choices are:
eat healthy whole foods
or 
eat fakeprocessedwillkillyou foods

Can you mix the choices together?
Absolutely!
It will have different results for different people.

For my hubby and I, it is best not to combine the choices.
Thus, explains the up to our elbows egg, cheese and meat Saturday.
So, after a good nights sleep last night, a day of rest today,
 tomorrow I will tackle the laundry issue - again.

 I am in search of red garbage bags!  I love wearing red!
Anyone know where I can find some?

Until next time..............