Bet On Dinner

1.// I’m less than a week from my due date with our sweet girl. We can’t wait to meet her! I’ll try to keep posting recipes this summer, but I’m going to be doing more baby snuggling than cooking in the coming weeks. :o)

2.// Our garden worked! We harvested our first green beans yesterday and ate them for dinner tonight. This particular plant was one my daughter planted at preschool, but the other plants have teeny green beans, too!

3.// For my NC readers – have you heard of The Produce Box? I’ve been using it since April and LOVE it! Here’s why: I get fresh produce from NC farms delivered to my door, and I can skip a week whenever I want to (I’ve gotten 5 boxes in the last 8 weeks). My favorite thing is that I can totally customize what’s in my box OR choose from a menu of great boxes of whatever is seasonal and abundant. I’ve done both – it’s been fun to get things I might not normally stick in my cart at the grocery store and figure out what to do with them, but I also like being able to pick exactly what I want (this week, I ordered blackberries, bibb lettuce, broccoli, peaches, sweet potatoes, and squash and zucchini). If you want to try it out, I would love for you to use my link to sign up and use the code FRIEND to get half off of the enrollment fee (so it’s $9 instead of $18 for the year – you enter it on the second page of the sign-up process). Plus, I’ll get a $5 credit and love you very much! ;o) And if you’re curious, here’s an interesting article comparing the price to grocery store produce.

4.// After I linked to this recipe for steak with garlic-shallot compound butter on Facebook, my mom made it happen (with Jay manning the grill) on Memorial Day. I’m happy to eat a steak with just salt and pepper, but this was magically delicious. It makes a lot of butter, and you can freeze it, so this meal will be on repeat later this summer!

5.// I didn’t get a donut on National Donut Day (June 3rd, if you want to mark your calendar for next year). I waited too long and my favorite local place was sold out. I’ll be back this week, Donut Inn, don’t you worry.

6.// Our Harris Teeter won’t stop running the buy 2/get 3 free ice cream sale. Whyyyy must they do this?? Why do I always think I can buy 5 tubs of ice cream and then just eat an occasional bowl over a long period of time? This has never, ever happened. We plow through them at an alarming rate. #givemealltheSouthernMilkChocolate #icecreameverynight #icecreamtwiceadaysomedays #selfcontrolwho?

7.// I’m in a Bible study at my church, and we’re reading the book A Praying Life by Paul Miller. I had read it a few years ago, but it’s been so good to study it with a group. I’ve been feeling a little discouraged/weary of my self-imposed blog posting schedules and calendars, and not sure how I can/if I should try to keep it up with a newborn. I read this last week, about things we don’t ask God for:

“We can do the same thing with a promotion. It feels selfish to pray for one, so instead we’ll work for one! We end up separating a big part of our lives from God because we are trying to feel good about ourselves. As we have seen, we create two selves – a spiritual self and a material self.”

I was so surprised and convicted to realize how perfectly it described my approach to blogging – what started as a fun hobby had turned very goal-oriented (I mean, other people make an income doing this, man!), but I hadn’t actually stopped to ask God for wisdom, or to question whether a goal of making money is the right one for my blog, or to ask God for success (and how exactly will I define that?), or to evaluate whether spending more time on the computer and on social media is what’s best for me and my family. So while having a baby gives me an obvious reason to pull back a bit, I’m also asking God (from a new position of humility and recognition of my weakness, and acknowledgement that all my work is in vain if I’m working for the wrong things) for direction and help. So thanks for your patience if things are spotty or look different in the future! And thanks for being a reader – I know it’s a faithful few who read these non-recipe posts, and probably fewer who make it to the end of a long one like this. :o)