Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Posts all rolled into One!!

31 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by The Thrifty Queen in gluten free, gluten intolerance

This week has been busy getting ready for our trip. For this reason, I haven’t had much time to blog.

Tonight I made some really awesome tasting Gluten Free Mini Chocolate Glazed Donuts. Can I just say that they are little bite sized pieces of heaven. So yummy! Tomorrow I will tell you about how I made the donuts, but for now, here is a picture of them. Drool away!

Today we found out that there is a pretty large chance that we could have some major flooding in our town. Unfortunately for us, we live across the street from the river and we have a basement. Since we are going on a trip in a few days, we have been working to get items upstairs just in case. It sounds like the flooding chance may not happen until we get back, but we need to be prepared.

Between getting school work done and moving boxes upstairs, I am exhausted. One would think that I would relax a bit since I am tired, but instead, I made donuts. Nothing like baking to reduce your stress level.

Tomorrow I will tell you more details about these lovely little donuts and the story behind why I decided to make them. But for now, have a good night!

Sundays are for Random Thoughts

27 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by The Thrifty Queen in Uncategorized

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With less than a month until Easter, I thought it would be interesting to find out some facts about the holiday itself. It is funny how throughout the growing up years, we learn certain things about holidays and each family has different traditional ways of celebrating. As a child I remember coloring hard boiled eggs at my grandparents kitchen table with my brother, sister, and cousins. Some would slowly take their time making beautiful colored eggs with different designs and bright colors. Others would hurry through the process and stick their eggs into one color, let them soak, and then take them out. You could always tell which eggs had been artfully created and which ones had been quickly dyed so the maker could move on to something seemingly more important. It was such a fun time to spend with family and I have a lot of great memories around that little kitchen table.

After we would fall asleep (or at least pretend to be sleeping), the adults would hide eggs all over Grandpa and Grandma’s house. They would also leave out a basket, stuffed animal, and other goodies for each child. As early as our parents would allow, we would sneak downstairs and start hunting for the candy eggs. We would find them everywhere…on house plants, in cupboards, in shoes, under the table, and sometimes even in the tissue box. The hunt would go on for quite a long time and we would end up with a basket of brightly colored candies to eat all by ourselves. Grandma would always say that she would end up finding eggs around her house for months after the egg hunt!! I bet she smiled every time she cleaned and found another one, just thinking of being together that Easter morning.

After all the festivities, we would get dressed up in our Easter attire complete with a colorful dress, white shoes, and some times even a hat and drive to the little church for Easter service. Easter is always one of my favorite church services because it holds so much promise for all of us. It is about new beginning and renewed life.

Easter is just as special now as it was back in that little house in Wildrose, but for many different reasons. While Easter may have started as a Pagan holiday celebrating fertility, birth, and spring, Christian missionaries in the second century adding the celebration of Christ’s resurrection into the celebration. It would have been dangerous for the very early Christian converts to celebrate their holy days with observances that did not coincide with celebrations that already existed. To save lives, the missionaries decided to spread their dogma slowly throughout the populations by allowing them to continue to celebrate pagan feasts, but to do so in a Christian manner. As it happened, the pagan festival of Eastre occurred at the same time of year as the Christian observance of the Resurrection of Christ. It made sense, therefore, to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian observance as pagans were slowly indoctrinated. The early name, Eastre, was eventually changed to its modern spelling, Easter (The Easter Page).

Ultimately, to me Easter is a time to thank God for sending Jesus and to remember the sacrifice of His Son on the cross to save us all from our sins. The Easter Season can be summed up by the words of the hymn, One Day by Wilbur Chapman written in 1908:

One day when Heaven was filled with His praises,
One day when sin was as black as could be,
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin,
Dwelt among men, my Example is He!