Our New Breakfast Favorite!

Banana Pancakes (except they are not pancakes)

coconut oil
1 banana peeled and sliced
3 eggs
cinnamon

In a skillet melt coconut oil over medium heat.

Throw in the bananas and cook until soft and sort of translucent

Whisk 3 eggs in a separate bowl

Pour over bananas in skillet.

Allow to cook until sides look set

Then fold over (like an omelet)

Continue cooking until inside is cooked.

Sprinkle with cinnamon and serve.


YUMMO! Does not sound good as a recipe but it smells and is terrific.  Nice change to typical eggs.

recipe taken from Tim Meggison Ely Fitness Camp

Learning HOW to eat...

Throughout my past 3 years here in England, I have been blessed to be surrounded by some of the most awesome Christian women.  They are women who challenged me to challenge myself about the foods we allow to enter our bodies.  Now, consider this... I am from South Louisiana.  We are known for our food.  Not for its health benefits but for its taste.  We do not use recipes, we use our brains and taste buds and we can produce some of the finest of fare.  However, because we will eat almost ANYTHING in Louisiana, we often times do not even pay attention to the things we put into our bodies.

As Christians, we all know that our bodies are a temple.  We know that we try to abstain from chemicals and drugs and things that may harm our temple.  Then why, do we not put as much thought into the food that put into them??? As Americans we have been lied to for years.  Think about it, the agency that controls the food pyramid is  the same agency that profits off of food sales???

As I have gotten older, and sadly as I have left Louisiana, I have been forced to learn and grow in all areas of my life.  Leaving your small town mentality forces someone to adopt their own thoughts and opinions.  Think about all the areas that we have been mislead as a society and blindly followed...

Example 1, So called health foods.  Dont believe me, then go and watch this video on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nGPlZawoRU

Example 2, Sodas are bad for you but if you drink Diet Soda you wont get all those calories.  No you wont but you are ingesting one of the worst ingredients ever created.. Aspartame.. Don't believe me.  Research it and find out.  Watch this video on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVrTKxTpZWY

I could go on and on.  There are so many examples of things we have been told were good and later found out were bad, that it would be impossible to list them all.  Then we fall into the trap of thinking about cost.  Eating correctly costs more money doesn't it?  Well, I will not mislead you.  It does cost more to adequately feed our bodies BUT doesn't doctor bills and missed workdays cost just as much.

If you go looking for a DIET plan to get you healthy and fit, there are PLENTY to choose from.  I have done many of them myself.  But honestly it is more of the same.  Who's science is accurate and who really does have the best idea of how to get your body to lose excess weight?

As a Christian, there is only one answer to that question. The CREATOR!  God created the perfect plan for how we are to nourish our bodies.  He gave us plants, vegetation and animals.  Why is it we now have this need to have more... We in essence say to God, what he gave us was not enough.  We need to modify its tastes or make it BETTER.  Wow, how like Eve we truly are.  That we think we are somehow able to create something better than what he has already given us.

We do not need modified food to get great taste.  We need to return to the foods that God designed for us to eat.  It is basic and no one wants to admit that we need to return to the basics.  What is so wrong with a plate containing a slab of beef, some broccoli (grown without pesticides), and a lavish salad of mix veg?  Why are we so repulsed by the basic food that God designed our bodies to survive on?

Oh, I could go on and on... About how our greed led us to women HAVING to work which led to the need for convenience driven foods which led to more and more lab created and prepackaged foods which led to more and more sickness and cancer which led to more and more people dying younger and leaving children in the same pattern of bad food choices.

As we have been here for 3 years and I have experienced living in a culture that thrives on eating fresh fruit and veg and grass fed beef and being able to shop at a chain supermarket and know exactly which farm gave you the meat you are purchasing, my eyes have been opened to a REAL FOOD REALITY that does not exist in most of America.

I have been re-establishing our families eating pattern for most of our time here.  We have removed products that we know to be detrimental and we have tried eating a better way.  But today, I am vowing to myself and to my God to begin to treat his temple-my BODY as sacred and as something that was entrusted to me by him.

This will be a long and hard journey as we relearn how to treat our bodies.  But I hope that with the strength of the one who moves mountains that I can and will have a family that will be honoring God in our food choices.   So stay tuned as I learn and grow and I am sure I complain and gripe as I find my way through this desert and into the land of milk and honey.

I have not blogged on here in a year.  But it is my hope to use this blog as a platform to share information I learn and recipes we love and all the ups and downs.

The new road begins tomorrow... Time to throw out the bad and fill in with the good.  Now that I know how bad some of this stuff is, I have a hard time even giving it away.  I dont want anyone else to eat it either.

The journey starts now... I will keep you posted.

It's Been awhile!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, I can hardly believe it has been nearly a year since I last posted on this blog.  Life has been hectic and crazy as always.  I guess I just have been busy being busy.  I guess today, for some reason I just needed to write.  Have you ever had one of those days where talking just would not bring resolution but instead you felt the need to just write it all out and then read your own thoughts back to yourself?  Today is one of those days for me.

Have you ever wondered how we stray so far so easily from where our hearts should be?  It has now been 2 years and 1 month that we have lived in England.  The first 18 months here were VERY difficult and I can gladly say that I am grateful that those dark months have passed. Going back home (to my parents house in Louisiana) was of great benefit to me in health-physical as well as emotional, well really, to my overall outlook on England and on life.  Those couple of months I spent at home were so refreshing to my soul.  God used multiple people and circumstances to show me truth and to renew my heart for the duration of this journey in England.  When we returned to England, I had a renewed outlook and a fresh vision of how life would be.  I made a determined effort to MAKE this home and to MAKE this a happy place regardless of the circumstances around me.

Now, here is the dilemma.  If you were to reread the last paragraph, there seems to be a continuing tense... "I" and "me".  So my thoughts today have to deal with selfishness.  Yes, we all suffer it.  It is one of the most powerful of all sins.  Easily lured, easily trapped and all too easily not noticed.

 Galatians 5:19-21
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

I tell you that when I realized this I was astonished.  I have been blinded by ME! The enemy has used many a tactic to entice me through my life but never did I see myself as being such a viable tool in his arsenal.  How easily I was swept away into the distraction of my own self pity and worry and sickness and pain.  How quickly did I slip into the cesspool of my own decaying flesh.  I allowed MY wants, MY needs, MY desires to control my ACTIONS, my THOUGHTS, my ATTITUDE.  

And I am crushed.  Crushed over my own ability fall so easily.  Even in the darkest moments, when I laid in bed crying out to God, it was even then all about ME.  My focus was no longer on how Great HE is but on how Awful I was feeling.  Not on his power but on my weakness.  But the greatest consequence of this transgression is the brokenness in my heart about my children.

They are the ones who have suffered greatest (earthly) from my sin.  They are the ones who have had to live life a completely different way than they are accustomed.  Not only were they thrown into a new country, with a new culture, away from family and friends but they did not even have ME.  The one person that God has placed in their life to be the guardian over their hearts and to nurture them and to love them in a way that exemplifies the love of the Father.  Trust me, I have been no example of God's love to them.  My expectations of them remained constant but my instruction and direction had ceased.  And now, as I type these words with tears I am once again reminded of how our sins as parents do, indeed affect our children.  Don't get me wrong, they were fed, they were bathed, they were put into bed with the occassional story book or bible reading but that was pretty much it.  They spent their days playing and I spent mine sulking.  Even on days when I was not outwardly sulking, I was sulking inwardly.  

Now you may be wondering how I figured it out?  Did I have a vision or some great revelation of truth? NO. You see the enemy got a little too cocky and showed himself to me.  Not long after the start of this year, the tide started to turn.  I started making friends and I started getting a life here in England.  At first, it was all so exciting and sweet.  I was captured by the moments that I was sure that God had given specifically for me.  Surely,  God had finally begun to answer my prayers and he was starting to fill in all those gaps and holes that were leaving me lonely and aching.  I am grateful for all of my new friendships this past year and I am so glad that our lives have crossed paths.  But then I began to notice that the more time I spent caught up in my "blessings", the less I was spending sulking but I still was not placing the priority in my life where it should be.  You see, once the enemy had me, he dangled all the shiny things in front of me, the things that my heart longed for most.  Please, do not misunderstand me, I am not saying my friends are the devil or my life here is the devil.  It is the idea of it all.  I know that God will only bless me with things that will bring HIM Glory and will bring growth in me.  This new life has been great but it has not been about God and it has been yet another distraction from my family.  

So here I sit, a new life in England that is really not all that bad, a bunch of new friendships and no more sulking.  But where are my children.  They are still playing.  But I am not playing with them.  I am too busy barking the orders for the day or frustrated when I have to stop chatting to deal with a discipline issue.  What has happened to me??????????????  I am devastated with the state of my heart and with the condition that apparently prevails in me.  I am broken over the hearts of my children and over my lack of protection on their hearts.  How on earth did this happen??  

So here I am.  Just writing all this out here and thinking... I know that "I" can not repair the damage.  And now I will wait and trust that God has shown me these things for a reason.  That he will guide me in the best way to bring a happiness in our home that focusses on HIM and on them.  I know that as parents we all make mistakes, I just pray that God will here my cry and that he will heal our home and the emotional damage that I may have done to our children.

Lord, I pray that you would remove ME from the throne of my heart.  I have tried to reign and use you as my wise counsel instead of allowing you to reign in me while I followed your WORD.  Lord, I repent of allowing my self to stand in the way of you.  God please, even as I type these words, begin to fill my thoughts with ways in which I can better LOVE my children.  Not in some earthly sense of LOVE but a way that I can exemplify your love to them.  Lord, heal their wounds.  Lord, give me the perfect words to speak to them each and every time I open my mouth.  Lord, forgive me for putting me and then others before you and before my family.  I am so unworthy and undeserving of any gift from you but God I ask that you would allow me a chance to Glorify YOU through this.  Lord, let me failures be your chance to SHINE to the boys.  Let me sins be an opportunity for growth in me as well as in them.  And Lord, thank you.  Thank you for showing me when I slip away from under your protection.  Thank you for calling me back... for shouting at me... for rescuing me......... from ME! I pray this in the name of your precious son who has paid with his life for me to gain mine, Amen.