An Armchair’s View of the World
It was great to be with the family on Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law, Courtney, is an amazing cook. If you are looking for some great recipes, she posts them on her blog. Tell her that I sent you!
Eating is a big part of being BARKER. So that means that Thanksgiving is like the Super Bowl of eating. My grandma would make enough food to feed two or three families. There was never one thing that would run out.
What I have found interesting in my years is that people’s Thanksgiving Day menus vary. This was shocking to me, since I figured everyone ate the exact thing every Thanksgiving. So, if you would like to have Barker feast for the last Thursday in November, here is what you should serve.
So, if you don’t have these ten things, email me and I will send you a recipe.
Happy Thanksgiving.
There is something spiritual about a good bowl of soup. Something beyond the senses that hovers around ideas of soul, heaven, and transcendence. To think differently, or to not know this experience, only exposes the lack of good soup in your life. As the leaves change color, frost does it’s job of suspending all life, and darkness rules the day more than light, one thing confronts the oppressing feelings that come with these things–SOUP.
I find myself reading through more and more soup recipes strategizing how to fight back the winter blues. I already have quite the collection of soup recipes, including:
Each of these has its own power against the winter onslaught. Each has a warming satisfaction that laughs winter in the face.
If you find yourself dreading winter, or wanting to get to spring too quickly, I recommend soup. Soup for the soul. You will find it a spiritual experience. As your fingers thaw, wrapped around the metal spoon that gains heat from the soup, or as your nose, ears and cheeks defrost from the rising steam, you will experience the ecstasy of soup. Slurp it in if you like. You won’t be satisfied until you grab the bowl with both hands and drink until the last drop is taken in…amen.
Stay away from false spiritual experiences. Anything that says Campbell’s on it is only an anti-soup, designed to lure you into watered down taste of mushy, malformed ingredients. A true spiritual soup experience is to be done on one’s own. Don’t let your experience be canned.
It doesn’t take much to make a good soup: Love, patience, a few ingredients. The process is what makes the experience spiritual. No one flies to the top of a mountain and takes in the same experience as those who would transverse the face of it. So, too, with those who would take soup and make it a “quick fix”. Such actions are idolatry. It is looking for something real among the unreal. True soup worshipers will understand the importance of stirring, and tasting, and improving the soup. They will see the soup as a journey that leads to taste ecstasy, enlightenment.
There are many cold days ahead, but I do not dread, I do not dread.
For I know that soup will thaw the dead, thaw the dead.
Warming delight that ignites the soul, ignites the soul.
Maybe I’ll have one more bowl, one more bowl.
There is a show on television that has peaked my interest. I have never watched a full episode, but as I flip back and forth from The Office to avoid commercials I am becoming increasingly intrigued. It is called Kitchen Nightmares. It is a lot like Extreme Home Makeover with a lot less warm fuzzies and different kinds of crying. Gordon Ramsey is a renown chef who goes into restaurants and whips them into shape like a 2 egg meringue topping. There is a lot of yelling, fighting and bleeping. His end goal, though, is to help the restaurant be successful. You would be surprised at how some people fight this.
I got to thinking about this mindset with churches. It would be great if a church could have Chef Ramsey come in and say, “Your coffee is terrible. No one greeted me at the door. Why weren’t the words to the sermon on the screen, and your pastor seems to be a snob.” I would pay big money for that. The closest I have found is a site that goes into churches like a secret shopper. They call themselves the Mystery Worshippers. It can be just as useful, but I like the idea of a pastor being cussed at because he is dropping the ball at his church and hindering the growth and success of it.
More churches need to be evaluated. Including mine. I hope that we are never afraid of someone taking an in-depth look at our church. I wish it could be Chef Ramsey, though. Then I get reamed out and still get a great lunch.
It may not seem like me, but I am creature of habit. Every morning for breakfast I have an AE yogurt with grape nuts mixed in. Except for on Wednesdays, which is Egg Day. Warren Erickson says I am a “dog” because, like them, I eat the same thing every day. This is true of my Friday nights as well.
While unemployed from Valley Church, I decided to do something with my time, something I had been meaning to do for quite a while–master pizza. Think about it, I have been in student ministry for 17 years. Do you have any idea how many pizza of pizza I have consumed in that time? It has to be near the tens of thousands. And, except for a few exceptions like Big Tomato Pizza, Gino’s East, and Giordanno’s, I haven’t really liked much of the pizza I have eaten. So, with all that free time I had, I set out to make the best home pizza.
It took a while to get the recipe right. I tried some cook books, some prepared box crusts, and even Boboli, but I wasn’t satisfied. Not until I found an online recipe made by a woman who actually lives in Marshalltown, IA, did I find the right recipe for me. The recipe is for crust and sauce. I spend literally months making it to the way I like it, and finally I was the Dr. Frankenstien of pizza.
In order to have the pizza on Friday, the crust must be made on Wednesday. The same goes with the sauce which is zesty and think. Since we started Pizza Nite, we have had nearly 100 people over to our house on Fridays. I have made it for kids (who love to put honey on the crust) and adults (who love my BBQ chicken pizza, also shown in picture).
When we realized we had a perfect recipe for the Barker family we had to give it a name, like a restaurant would. We call it DOGHOUSE Pizza. Maybe you can stop on by some time. Sorry no walk-in, reservations only.
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