To cleave...

Finally, in less than three weeks we will have our church wedding!

More than a month

It's been over a month since my last post ... life has been busy around here :). But besides lots of work there were many fun events too. Hikes, a wedding, shopping trips with DH, beer garden visits, dinners with friends, ...

We went hiking the first of May to enjoy spring which finally arrived here. Last Thursday was also a pubic holiday in Germany, so we drove across the border into Belgium to hike, walk around Malmédy and shop at a Belgian supermarket. That's always fun because they stock many Frensh articles too. We left with a shopping cart full of wine, ice cream, coffee, hard-to-find-in-Germany vegetables, fresh mussels and 10 (!) bottles of shower soap. Our favorite brand isn't stocked in Germany, so we used the opportunity.

The pictures above are from both trips.

Contentment through small things

I had a busy week at work while starting treatment for some health problems. So I was home quite late most evenings. I am looking forward every day to the moment when I enter our small cosy apartment, DH either busy cooking dinner or relaxing in the living-room (he enjoys cooking about as much as I do). I have a hard time adjusting to the fact that I don't have much time to be a keeper of the home during the week, even though this is what DH and I chose together.
So I definately enjoyed some baking time today using my hands, working in our nice kitchen to make our home filled with delicious smells and make DH happy who just loves cakes, cookies and sweets.
So here is the result (it's a cake consisting of many small jam rolls):



Btw I tried this recipe on Wednesday and we both loved. It's a spring version of Tabbouleh, the original recipe is a vegetarian one. We skipped the walnuts and had marinated grilled meat on the side :). Seriously try it, it tastes great.

Tonight we have a charity concert at our church. Maybe my camera might even take a video that I'll be able to post? Hopefully I'll be able to share tomorrow! I also updated my sidebar with quite a number of links to blogs I read regularly.
Have a blessed weekend.

I cannot imagine ...

this happening on the German Idol show. Even though the guy who had least votes last night was a Christian. But a participant singing a Christian worship song? I'd love it, but I don't think it will happen.
Btw "My Jesus, my savior" is one of my favorite worship songs. And there is a German version of it!

Chicken, books and other trivia

Of course weekends have always been cherished, but I don't think I've ever appreciated them as much as now that I work from Monday to Friday. Now I definately agree that weekends should be a day longer ... there is never enough time to do all I would like to :).
Not much happened this week, but I decided to put up at least a short post again. Some of the things I love are cooking and reading.
I especially enjoy historical fiction. Here are some recommandations of books I recently read:

• Anne Perry's WWI series, consisting of five volumes (No graves as yet; Shoulder the sky; Angels in the gloom; At some disputed barricade; We shall not sleep).
• The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon (Victorian England and the Crimean War)
• Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir (Lady Jane Grey)

We also tried out a funny recipe DH suggested. The pictures may look a little gross, but the result was delicious. It is an interesting way to cook chicken with beer.

Take a (large) beer can, open it and pour a little beer off into a glass. Prepare the chicken, either rubbing it with spices or a mixture of 2 TBS mustard, 2 TBS olive oil, 1 TS salt, about 1 TBS paprika spice and a dash of soy sauce. Place the chicken on the beer can, so that about a third to half of the can is inside the chicken cavity.



Put it upright in the oven at 200° C for about an hour and 15 minutes or until meat is cooked through. The chicken will be really tender and tastes great. We definately had fun trying it :).

Walk on Easter Sunday

These are two pictures from our walk on Easter Sunday morning. After an early church service and a cozy breakfast we headed out for a walk with my in-laws. The weather around Easter was suddenly really cold with snow and rain, but on Sunday the weather was beautiful. I wanted to post something more substantial, but I have trouble concentrating as I'm sneezing and feverish... Wah!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Food for thought over a long weekend

We will leave tomorrow morning for a weekend with my in-laws. It's always fun and relaxing to visit them. They live a two-hour drive to the north-east from here. For those from Germany or interested in German geography: my in-laws live in Paderborn :).

But as for once I have a little time to blog, I thought I'd put up another post and leave you with a few quotes I came across while reading about Holy Week and Christ' sufferings on our behalf. The quotes are from Frederick S. Leahy's The Cross He bore. Have a blessed Easter, everyone!

"As we meditate on Christ's prayerful submission in Gethsemane, we should realize that there, as Philip E. Hughes puts it, "we see him enduring our hell so that we may be set free to enter his heaven". And so at unspeakable cost he drank "the cup" to the very last drop. [...] Now he gives to his people the cup of salvation (Psalm 116:13). These two cups, one so bitter, the other so sweet, stand side by side: the one cup necessitated the other. One cup was emptied that the other might be filled to overflowing. The first cup guaranteed the second. Both cups are precious and bear the hallmark of sovereign grace."

[Christ] never doubet the holy decree by which he came into the world to save sinners. And so the darker the night, the greater the storm and fiercer the conflict, the more he reached out to his Father and rested in his sovereign will.