All Things Supercinski

We had a wonderful Christmas, enjoying family and seeing many good friends. We hope that you have as well! Here’s a bit of what we have been up to:

First, we celebrated Christmas with Travis and Debbi (a.k.a. Pa and Granny). They brought some big boxes for a little boy.

They also brought him a push-walker/push-rider toy, which happened to be the gift of the year since Josiah’s Aunt Marcia and my mom also bought him one. He really likes to be pushed around on it and to play with all the bells and whistles.

Then we packed up and headed to Baton Rouge, Lousey-ana (have you seen their highways?) for the long-anticipated Josh Langston-Melanie Fox wedding. It was a great trip and we were able to catch up with many dear friends who live far away. Here is the one picture we got from that weekend–perhaps Josh will update his blog someday with a photo or two.

We got back to College Station and celebrated Christmas here with the Supercinskis.

I was so excited to make Christmas dinner for the first time; Thomas smoked a turkey on the grill.

It turned out beautifully. Really, it did. That’s just the skin. It comes off and underneath was some of the most tender turkey I’ve eaten. We have plenty leftover if you want to try some!

We’ll wrap up the festivities tomorrow with a visit from my mom and perhaps my little sister. We hope you have a happy New Year! We can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store for us in 2007!

Josiah learned a new trick yesterday. Check it out.

Along the lines of our previous post about cleaning, here are some of my favorite cooking shortcuts. Cooking ahead and freezing are involved in both of these.

How many recipes do you know that call for chopped onions? I would suggest that at least half of mine do. I realized one day how much time I was wasting chopping onions everyday (and subsequently in cleaning the cutting board, etc.). So, I started buying several onions every couple of weeks, chopping them up really well and putting them in a freezer bag in the freezer. When I need onions, I just bang the bag on the counter and toss in however many I need. They don’t need thawing for casseroles and soups, and if you need to saute them, you do it just the same.

Bone-in chicken breasts were on sale for 88 cents a pound about a month ago. Or was it two? I stocked up and bought eight packages at 2.5 pounds each. I skinned them and stuck them in the crockpot with a little bit of chicken broth and cooked them until they were done. I shredded them up and then threw in another batch. I think I did five batches, but it was worth the time. I put them in two-cup increments into food saver bags with a bit of broth, vaccum-sealed them and froze them. They are perfect for soups, casseroles, enchiladas, pizzas, and more. If your mom didn’t give you her old food saver, you can put them in regular plastic bags, squeezing out the air.

Here’s a recipe that uses both of these time-savers. This is perfect for a cold winter day. Wait, what’s that? It’s 75 degrees out in mid-December? Yeah, maybe it will be good in January.

Chicken Wild Rice Soup
1/2 cup butter
1 small-medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped (1/2 cup?)
5 carrots, peeled and chopped (1 cup?)
4-5 mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup flour
6 cups chicken broth
3-4 cups cooked wild rice
3-4 cups cooked, shredded chicken
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup half and half

Melt butter in large saucepan. Add the onion, celery and carrots and saute for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and garlic and saute and additional 2 minutes. Add the flour and stir well. Gradually add the broth, stirring until all has ben added. Bring just to a boil and reduce the heat to low and simmer. Now, add the rice, chicken, seasonings and almonds. Let it get hot and then add the half-and-half. Let simmer for 1-2 hours, but don’t let it boil or it will break your roux. I freeze half of this in freezer bags and it makes for a very easy meal the next month. This goes really well with some good bread.

Our little munchkin is ten months old today. I can’t believe we’re already five-sixths of the way through this year! He is learning so much and getting so mobile these days. Josiah’s biggest accomplishment this month is standing up. He is obsessed with pulling up on things and standing, and we are so proud of him. Most babies go from sitting to standing which isn’t too difficult, but an accomplishment nonetheless. Josiah, however, doesn’t understand why he should sit, it’s far too restrictive for him. He’s learned to pull up to standing from being on his belly. Watch.

Thomas is quite proud of his ability to find holds to grip onto, in anticipation of rock climbing someday. Standing is the first thing Josiah does when he wakes up, and the last thing he does before he goes to sleep. Now, if he would just learn how to get down… At least he doesn’t push himself backward anymore. He has learned it isn’t always best when we aren’t there. Now, he’ll hold his arm out, waiting for one of us to assist him down. He even tries to stand in the tub.

Josiah started using another sign this week. He surprised me with “more” the other day at the park. I was talking with a friend, not realizing he needed another push on the swing. I looked over and he was signing more! He has also been doing it when he wants another bite of food. The only other sign he uses consistently is “finished”. He does it when he wants down, is done eating, even the other day when he was ready for his nap. He’s also saying “momma” and “dada” more consistently.

With his newfound standing skills, Josiah can also open cabinets, but hasn’t decided to explore everything inside yet. He’s content with opening the doors and then slamming them closed. He is getting longer too. I realized this morning that I don’t have to roll up his pants anymore, and haven’t for a couple of weeks. Josiah is also thinking about giving up army crawling and crawling in the more traditional sense. He gets up on all fours, takes a small step and then plops on his belly and takes off. I’m ready for him to start the more traditional crawl, as army crawling is very messy when we are outside. All of this is hard work, leading to good, long naps.

I’ve been tagged. There is a tagging frenzy going on among Living Hope bloggers. It has been great fun reading about everyone, so here goes mine. I am supposed to share five things with you that you don’t know about me. However, if you are a family member, former roommate or good college friend, you probably know most of these already.

1. When I was in middle school, my parents got a brilliant idea to start a business for their four children (I am the second oldest). We spent a summer building this huge greenhouse complete with homemade PVC racks to hold hundreds of plant trays, like this:

We ordered seedlings of flowering bedding plants (pansies and kale in the fall, begonias, vincas, etc. in the spring), transplanted them into trays like the one above, and we watered and tended these plants until they were big enough to sell. Then, afterschool, my dad would drive us around neighborhoods where we would hang fliers on every door advertising our business–flowers by the tray or, for an extra charge, we would even plant them in your yard for you. We spent our Saturdays planting flowers in stranger’s yards, wearing our t-shirts with our business name: “Walker Family Flowers”. The worst part about it was not the hours of monotonous labor, but that we would often see friends or acquaintances from school while we were planting flowers in their or their neighbor’s houses, which was absolutely mortifying to us adolescents. Each of us agree that, in hindsight, it really wasn’t the best idea, but we did earn some spending and saving money and it kept us quite busy.

2. I have a rod that is screwed into my spine. It was put in there my senior year of high school to correct scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. My curve was a large one (60 degrees on bottom, smaller on top) that wasn’t corrected by wearing a huge night brace for a year. I have a 14-inch long scar from the left side of by navel around to below my left shoulder-blade and I’m missing a rib which they used to fuse my spine. It was a really difficult experience, but I learned a lot. Going through childbirth without drugs was a breeze compared to recovery from this surgery. Ronald (the name Bethany gave my rod) turns 7 years old in just 11 days. I’ve always wanted to throw a birthday party for him, but never received much interest from those close to me, as it was always after finals or just too cheesey.

3. When I was in college, I spent 8 weeks one summer in Nepal. I had all kinds of crazy experiences from getting intestinal worms to having diarrhea in my pants to experiencing an earthquake to having all of my belongings stolen by Communist rebels (Maoists). They broke the door down of the house I was staying in, stole a ton of stuff (including all my clothes, sundries and journal), burned the bed I was supposed to sleep on, took the sweet missionary family’s stuff whose house we were in, attempted to burn down their house, marched us out at gunpoint, set off some dynamite, and burned their office building too. Thankfully we weren’t hurt at all and they left us alone once we were outside. I grew a lot in faith through this summer as it was evident how much the Lord sustained me. The worst part about this experience was that I lost all of my underwear except the pair I was wearing at the time. I had to buy replacements at a street bazaar. The only underwear we found had a hair in them. You know what kind I’m talking about.

4. I can’t stand the sound of people picking at their finger or toenails. It is the sickest sound in the world, so stop. It makes me gag.

5. I once emptied my bladder in my pants because I was laughing so hard at Matt Graham and some of his friends. Thankfully, it was outside and no boys saw me, but everytime I drive by Scandia Apartments on Anderson, I remember that fateful night, full of laughter.

Now I have to tag 5 people. I tag Thomas (we haven’t heard from him in a while), Bethany, Vanessa, Erin and Laura Stiller.

Looking for a Christmas gift for a special woman in your life? I would like to recommend Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God by Noel Piper. This is a wonderul book that includes five short biographies of five women who lived lives faithful to God. I love to read biographies as I find that I can learn more from them than many books about “Christian living”. This book is especially great in that it offers short glimpses into each woman’s life and is not as exhaustive (or sometimes exhausting) as most biographies. At the end of each biography, Noel Piper takes a few pages to draw out lessons we can learn about God and our walks with Him. I appreciated this as it helps the reader to think more about what was just read, rather than just enjoying a story. She also dedicates each chapter to a person with the same qualities of the woman she wrote about in the chapter.

She writes about Sarah Edwards (faithful in the mundane), Lilias Trotter (faithful in weakness), Gladys Aylward (faithful in humility), Esther Ahn Kim (faithful in suffering), and Helen Roseveare (faithful in loss). Each woman walked through times of mundaneness, weakness, humility, suffering and/or loss and gives us valuable lessons we can take away. I enjoyed reading about Esther Ahn Kim and Helen Roseveare, women who are not as widely known, but who perserevered through much and had great faith. Thanks Sally for letting me borrow it.