Forever Beloved

Faith, Love & Truth

Gather Around the Amish Table {Book Review + Giveaway}

Gather Around the Amish Table
Treasured Recipes and Stories from Plain Communities
By Lucy Leid
Incorporate Amish cooking traditions this fall in your kitchen with Lucy Leid’s Gather Around the Amish Table. Straight from Amish kitchens to yours, this cookbook offers favorite family recipes and charming stories from Amish and Mennonite cooks. Gather your family around the table to sample the nourishing fare and trademark charm of the plain people. In the words of one cookbook contributor: “Bake someone happy!”
This cookbook combines two of my favorite things…food and the Amish.  In the past few years, we’ve had quite a few Amish families move in around our area.  Actually, I can sit on my porch on any given day and watch buggies drive past.  One of our favorite summer activities is visiting the Amish bake sales.  Their baked goods are like no other!  You just can’t beat pies, cookies and fry pies baked from scratch.  So when I saw this book, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it!
I had an evening alone, so I snuggled on the couch with a blanket and a cup of coffee.  I pulled this book off the coffee table and began leafing through it.  What I found inside the cover was amazing..not only recipes but pictures and stories to go along with each one!  Oh my, if it wasn’t so late I would have been running straight to my kitchen.
This cookbook came at the perfect time, my bread machine quit last week.  I know, I’m still ridiculously sad about that.  So if I make bread, it has to be hand kneaded and let to rise.  There was a cheesy bread stick recipe in this cookbook that I was dying to try.  The recipe was so descriptive, even I could do it myself!  I made them to go alongside baked ziti and they completed our meal perfectly.
Gather Around the Amish Table is absolutely a keeper and will be going straight on my cookbook shelf.  I highly recommend it!

Special THANK YOU to LitFuse for providing me with a complimentary copy in exchange for my honest review.  My review is my own personal opinion.

Get your fall baking underway with an Amish baking basket giveaway from Lucy and MennoMedia!

gather-400 

One grand prize winner will receive:

gather-lasagna-recipe 

Enter today by clicking the icon below. But hurry, the giveaway ends on September 29th. The winner will be announced September 30th on the Litfuse blog.

gather-enterbanner

You can purchase your own copy HERE.

Lucy Leid is an Old Order Mennonite wife, mother, and cook in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

NINE | DEAR BEAUTIFUL GIRL

Today’s prompt: Write a letter to sixteen-year-old you. Any advice or funny stories?

Dear Beautiful Girl…

Oh pretty girl. If I could give you anything right now it would be a hug.

I would stand there and just hold you, look you in the eyes and promise you that it does get better. It really does. These years don’t define you. I’m so sorry that you’re going through all of that right now, but it gets better. So much better.

I know you’re listening to Garth Brooks while everyone else is listening to Metallica. I know you’re driving a John Deere and plowing a garden while everyone else is hanging out with their friends. I know you’re sharpening the blades on the lawnmower while everyone else is heading to the beach. I know you feel like you don’t fit in. It’s all good chickie, someday being country is actually cool!

Your hair is amazing. Enjoy every single second of your big hair, soon it goes out of style and never comes back in. I know, unbelievable. But the adult you is still holding out hope it will come back in style someday.

I know how badly you want to try out for cheerleading. You came so close, but you allowed someone else’s words to ruin it. Stop doing that! One statement of “Amy, a cheerleader? Are you serious?” completely ruined your confidence and thoughts of trying out. Ignore them and just try out! If you don’t, you will regret this your entire life.

I know how critically important it feels to fit in, to be cool, and most of all, to be beautiful. And thin. Oh, how important that is.

I want you to know a few things. First of all, you are thin! And your 40something self will wish she looked like you. Secondly, a woman’s worth is not determined by her weight. You know that. Deep down you have to know that.

But yet…

I see the days when you eat a candy bar, sneak out into the bathroom to try to vomit it up. It doesn’t work and just makes you feel like more of a failure. I see the days when you can’t concentrate because you’re hungry. You’ve convinced yourself that food is disgusting and when you glance around the lunchroom, watching everyone shove food in their mouth, it makes you nauseous. Again, you revise your daily 600-calorie or less menu. One thing it can never include is food at school in front of others. I see you leafing through the pages of the latest issue of Seventeen, tears dripping down your cheeks because you’ll never look like those girls, and it makes you feel like your worth is less than zero.

I know you hate your lips and how full they are. Those kids around you certainly haven’t helped that matter at all, calling you horrible racist names. But guess what? Some day women are going to pay to have amazing lips like yours! I know, right? And God gave you them for free 🙂 You trendsetter you.

So, you’re finally old enough to date and you’ll finally get your first boyfriend. But sadly, for two years he fills your head with “I won’t date a fat girl, remember that”, “Look how fat your thighs look in those pants” and “If you would just lose weight, you’d be so beautiful.” You will spend countless date nights sitting in restaurants watching him eat because he feels you’ve had your calorie fill for the day. And countless nights hungrily crying yourself to sleep. Eventually he is out of the picture, but his words aren’t.

Those words will haunt you for decades.

Darling, gorgeous, lovely, wonderfulness…you are beautiful and worthy exactly as you are, and nothing anyone can say or do will change that truth. Do you hear me? Your body type does not dictate your worth, no matter what society tells us.

God has told you the truth about who you are. You are beautiful simply because He made you. The only perspective that matters and the only One who defines us is our Maker. How freeing is that truth?

You are beautiful. Nothing can change that fact. Ever. Not aging, not gray hair and not scars from surgeries. The only thing that can change is whether you believe it or not.

Despite what all the guidance counselors tell you, these years do not define you. You will be so much more than high school. You are a child of God…and no prom dress, hair cut, boyfriend, car, or fight with a friend can ever change that.

You are wonderful and worthy. Please remember that. You are amazing!

Love,
Your Future Self

Dear Fat People

I swore to myself I wouldn’t watch the Nicole Arbour video.  I knew it would just infuriate me.  But after thinking on it for a few days, I decided to watch it so I could at least weigh in {no pun intended} with my opinion.  Just a warning…if you start reading this and go search for the video to watch it…the language she uses is less than stellar.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how emotionally exhausting and triggering this video would be.

If you have followed my blog for any amount of time, you know my journey.  It has been a long, scary, life-threatening, exhausting, grueling journey.  And yes, to be blunt, it has left me fat.

In her video, Nicole spends roughly 6 minutes shaming people for being overweight.  It was intended as satire and controversial humor.  I love humor, I honestly do.  I love to laugh and I love sarcasm.  I didn’t get any of that from the video.

It’s about to get real up in here y’all.

I have lived life in a size 12 body and a size 24 body, and every size in between. I have been called fat, cow, heifer and lots of other names. I have been told I have such a pretty face, if I would just lose some weight. I have been told it’s a shame I got sick, because I was just starting to look good.  Mean words that were said without a second thought, but they stay in my head for years. 

I have distanced myself from people because I was tired of being the fat friend.  And I was positive they didn’t want to be seen in public with me.  I have read fat shaming posts and fat jokes on Facebook daily.  I have listened to someone talk about another person being fat and instantly thought they must feel that same way about me.  I have intentionally walked past a mirror and shielded my eyes so I didn’t have to look at my body.  I have rolled my eyes and thrown compliments away because I knew they couldn’t be true.  I have hidden my body from my husband.  I have starved myself.  I have hated myself.

I have carried oh-so-much shame around with me over those years. And it seemed no amount of self-help books, dieting or trying to sort it out in my head ever worked. I had an unhealthy and unfortunate amount of shame and self-loathing toward my body. I could not imagine why God would give other girls perfect bodies then give me this one.

Learning to love myself regardless of my size was one of the hardest and most crucial things I’ve done. I have been stuck in the not enoughs my entire life. And people exactly like the girl that made this video were certainly contributing factors to that.

If you have never been overweight, you don’t know.  If you have not sat in a doctors office and listened to their diagnosis, you don’t know.  If you have never been fat shamed (which, by the way, IS a real thing), you don’t know.  If you have never had that daily battle in your own mind, you don’t know.  If you have never been made fun of, you don’t know.

We are all women struggling with some type of body image in this media-forced mean girl world.  And it’s time we start building each other up rather than tearing each other down for our differences.  All bodies are good bodies. All bodies are real bodies. All bodies are worthy of love and respect.

Honestly y’all, just love on others.  Remember that every single person you run into is fighting some type of battle that you can’t see.  We are told in Mark 12: 30-31  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”  

I was going to post her comments and my reply to them, but I’m not. I was going to post facts and statistics, but I’m not. Because I don’t need to defend the body that God gave me and neither do you. In moments of weakness, moments of words spoken, moments of videos on YouTube…I refuse to give in to the lies. I will continue to tell myself I am loved, and so are you, just as we are, not as others think we should be.

 
The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7