View of Who is a Super Mom

DECADES IN THE KITCHEN

This past week I finished up a project that had been in the making for several months, a heritage cookbook where I took a look at how our ancestors had gathered, preserved and prepared their food for the last 100 years. I have learned many things about wood burning stoves, refrigeration before electricity, canning and preserving food and the general dedication it took to run an organized kitchen and get food on the table in a time when food wasn’t as plentiful as it is today. Gratitude is what I feel for the women in my family line that have paved the way for me in the kitchen. Everyone of them were a Super Mom doing incredible things on a daily basis, like stoking the stove for 1 ½ hours so that they could bake their bread, using a bucket to carry all the water the family would need into their house and then carrying the dirty water back out, sweeping dirt floors clean (interesting thought, isn’t it), stretching the food budget when it was already stretched, and overall just doing the same work over and over and over each day.

On this Mother’s Day I honor them and wish to have stamped on my forehead to be grateful for my wonderful full and easy life with simple ease in the kitchen.

Who is that cry baby any way?

Michigan Lansing Mission- New President, Catch a Glimpse of Steve Hess

Quality verses Quantity

Clean and pitch, clean and pitch. I’ve been trying to wade through cupboards, boxes and drawers with a few target ideas in mind.

· Know what you have (sounds simple, but after 50 years of life . . .)

· Save only what you use or have a strong sentimentality towards

· Organize so that if someone else were to find it they would know what it is and why you saved it

One of the stacks was a pile of pillowcases. My grandmothers each made me a couple of beautiful sets, they were labor intensive and I wondered if I should even use them when I first received them. I think it was the right decision to wear them out with use. The rest of the pillowcases are simple pieces of fabric sewn together and given to my kids mostly for Valentines Day over the years. They were enjoyed for a brief period of time and discarded, as they should have been.

The lesson learned from the pillowcases can be transferred to many things. Value often comes with quality not quantity. No surprise here, right? There is a time and place for a quick fix but I know my behavior reflects that the corners were cut too often. Quality does matter.

Cleaning and organizing is good for more than the obvious organization. It's good for sorting out why you do or do not do things in life. I'm happy for the reflective moments to sweep cobwebs from inside my head.