Breakfast Adventures: Poached Egg on Toast with Mushrooms in Garlic and Butter Sauce (aka , how to gross out almost all your kids)

It's summer.  Glorious summer.  When time is loose and the world doesn't end if I don't get breakfast made and everyone out of the door by 7:30am.  Heck, it is currently 7:21am and only one kid is even awake!  Now if only I could sleep in, I would.

Recently I took advantage of this extra time to return to making different things for breakfast besides the same old same old eggs, toast and fruit that has been our school day staple.  And by that I at least I mean cooking the eggs in a different way, right?  Right.

I had leftover baby Portabella mushrooms I needed to use up and some garlic and butter, so I sauteed the mushrooms and garlic in butter, poached some eggs, toasted some toast and there I had it!  A delicious breakfast.  I even went so far as to serve in season, deliciously ripe, in season strawberries with freshly whipped cream. (As kids we called it "whup cream".  I did grow up in Texas, after all!)

The butter has all run off and soaked into the toast.  Mmmm.

Matt's comments were, "Man this is good!"  and "I feel like I am dining at a cafe in Paris." (where he has never been and wouldn't know that breakfast in Paris mostly consists of cafe au lait and a croissant) but I know what he meant and I liked the compliment.

Cora gave it a big thumbs up and ate every scrap.

The youngest two gave me these faces and these tears.

Guess what kids?  Mama is never gonna stop making weird food for you to cry about!  Ha!  We folks with a more sophisticated fake French palate are going to continue to eat this stuff from time to time and I know you think you don't like it, but your mouth is going to catch up with the rest of us some day.  Until then cry on, my loves, cry on.

Happy Summer!

The Deep Places

I notice in my life there are seasons when I fall silent.  As a lifelong journaler, this is strange to look back on. I used to wonder why and try to remember what was going on in my life then.  Now, as an adult, I have figured it out.  These are the times when the things that are going on inside me become too complex, too deep, too painful or angry for me to figure it all out, much less write about it.  I fell silent here too.  Life still went on.  The kids did funny things, we celebrated birthdays and holidays. I laughed and took photos, traveled with my family and wrote funny blurbs on facebook, where my life looks shiny and mostly happy.

But here I have to get still.  I have to get quiet.  And here is where I find what is underneath all of that surface life.  And I have been trying to ignore it.

In the deep places, I don't find rest, or contentment, understanding or faith.  Right now, in the deep places, I find longing like a deep dark well.  I find anger so strong that it threatens like a wildfire to consume the rest of my life.  I find sadness like an endless grey sea and lack of faith.  These things disturb me and I don't understand them, so I don't visit the deep places for very long.

Thankfully there are those around me who help me walk through the deep places, help me talk about these things.  To help me be present in my life instead of wander through my life as a documentary journalist, taking photos of life around me and never being in the photos.

Now, family members and friends who like to worry about me/love me, this is not an invitation to fix me.  That's not your job.  Thanks for the love you give and I understand that you want me to not hurt or be angry, but no one can take that away.  It is only God who can heal us in the deep places and I am seriously considering letting Him.  I've held Him at arm's length for a long time about this place, dancing around faith and surrender like a child throwing a tantrum at the end of his mother's arm, taking back the steering wheel of the ambulance when I need to be in the back on life support.  Don't worry.  He's got me.  He is never going to let me go.  Even when I go to the deep places.