I found this recipe on Heavenly Homemaker’s site.  The only thing that I do differently is to use vanilla beans instead of vanilla extract.  We have grown to love this recipe!  Gregg has always loved a snack of vanilla wafers and peanut butter.  I love that I found such a healthy recipe.  I send a batch or two with every care package to Gregg, and use them when I make Banana Pudding and Mascarpone Cheesecake with Almond Crust.

½ cup butter
¾ cup light brown sugar
1 egg
seeds from 1 vanilla pod -or- 1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat flour
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder

large bowl
mixer
piping bag
parchment paper
baking sheet

Preheat oven to 325° degrees F.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

See vanilla pod.  (My pictures were terribly blurry – I will post them as soon as I take more.)

Put butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla in large bowl.

Cream together.

Add flour, salt, and baking powder.

Put in a piping bag.  (If you don’t have one, you can use a small spoon to do the same thing.)

Pipe small drops of dough onto the parchment paper (about the size of a cherry tomato).

Place in oven.  Bake for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes, turn the oven off and leave them in there for 30 more minutes.  Remove from oven and place on cooling rack.

About 2 dozen cookies.

I would love to hear any feedback about this recipe. Did you make it? Did you enjoy it? Did you make any adjustments to it?

Hallee

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A woman in his church (where he pastors) had a daughter who was having panic attacks on such a scale that she was being removed from public schools and was going to be institutionalized because these attacks were coming with such force and such regularity and no medication seemed to be helping them.  On her last day at public school, her mom dropped her off then went to her car and prayed, “God, please just get her through the day.”  She felt a stirring response in her heart that said, Is that all you got?  ‘Just get her through the day?’  Because I can do that.  But I can also do so much more — you just have to ask.

Wow.  So, the mom said, “No.  That’s not all.  Help her thrive today.  I want her to have no attacks and to be whole and to THRIVE today.”

Her daughter never had another panic attack, a few months later was removed from all medication, and is now a successful high school student, athlete, and straight-A student.

The pastor then went on to talk about how watered down and muted our prayers typically are.  1 John 5:14-15 assures us that God hears us and answers our prayers.  Exodus 32:14 even shows an example of God changing his mind through someone’s prayerful appeal.

In his book, Will Davis, Jr., instructs parents to pray “Big” for their children.  Don’t hold anything back.  Don’t go to God meekly and say, “Help Bobby have a good life.”  Go instead to God and appeal to Him, and say, “Help Bobby thrive in this life.  Give him wisdom and knowledge so that he gets good grades and makes good decisions.  Ignite a passion for You in his heart so that he places You as head of his life.  Let him be a shining light for Your majesty in this dark world.  Give him honor and integrity.  Give him a good, Godly wife…” etc.

Go to God with faith and with confidence.  Pray for your children every day, and don’t be afraid to go “Big”.  Don’t be afraid to ask, and have faith.  Believe that God hears you and listens to you and considers what you say and for what you ask.

I’m excited about reading this book.  I’ve added it and the other books about praying (Pray Big and Pray Big for Your Marriage) by this pastor to my list.  If he writes as succinctly as he speaks, then his books can be powerful teaching tools about praying.

Hallee

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The quote at the top of the website for this organization says:

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”   -Harriet Tubman

The founder of this group obviously is a dreamer who knows how to step up to the plate and make her dreams come true.  Currently, Helping Hearts Helping Hands provides food, fresh water, clothing, shoes, and vitamins to villages in Honduras. They are in the process of purchasing property in Honduras to start and orphanage, and their host family has already moved in. This property that they’re purchasing for the orphanage is set on a beautiful 2 acre piece of land and has two homes, ideal for their orphanage.  The founder and her family travel to Honduras every 2-3 months and spend 1-2 months down there each trip. Their goal is to have the orphanage open and ready for children by April of 2010.

What makes this particular organization so unique is that the founder is 17.  Here is her bio from her website:

Erica Cale is 17 years old and has always had a passion for helping others. She graduated from High School in November 2008 and will be taking online college courses, which makes traveling and being away on mission trips possible. On April 10, 2007 she realized what her calling in life was: to be a missionary and live her life helping others. April 10th was her first day in Honduras and she knew it was meant to be. Her passion, her goal, her dream in life….mission work.  “Let’s make a difference together, every prayer and every person can help!”

I am just beyond impressed with this young lady.  I love that she not only felt convicted to do this, but followed through and DID it.  It speaks volumes to how God has a plan for us, and how if we just listen to Him then do what He asks, He will see that the doors are opened and barriers removed.

I love that Erica’s family obviously supports her in her mission work.  Her mother serves as president of Helping Hearts Helping Hands.  I hope that if one of my children came to me with an idea like this one, I would be as open to the Lord as Nancy obviously is.

If Gregg were home, I’m certain we would find a way to be at their 3rd Annual Emerald Ball this weekend.  It would be awesome to meet this family in person.

I pray that the ball is wildly successful.  I pray that their orphanage opens next month and that God just continues to use Erica and her family and amazing and magnificent ways.  I pray that they are shielded with protection from the slings and errors that will certainly be headed their way as they approach the opening of their orphanage.  And I pray that the orphans feel the love of God through this amazing family.

Thank you, S. Zurek, for introducing us to such an amazing ministry.

Hallee

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Because, it's not like they don't have any toys of their own or anything. And we are not even going to go into where the dog food ended up so that they could have the dog bowl to fill with dog treats. ~sigh~

Hallee

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I had my turn a couple of weeks ago and I must say I feel both humbled and honored to have been asked to participate. There have been some fantastic bloggers so far. Today it is Nina Planck, author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why vs. Katie of Kitchen Stewardship.

If you need to catch up, here is the intro and the completed face-offs so far:

The Original Announcement and Schedule

1. Face-Off one: Ren at Edible Aria vs. Jo-Lynne at Musings of a Housewife
2. Face-Off two: Rachel at Titus 2 Homemaker vs. Wardeh at GNOWFGLINS
3. Face-Off three: Kimberly at Hartke is Online! vs. Peggy at Local Nourishment
4. Face-off four: Donielle at Naturally Knocked Up vs. Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking
5. Face-off five: Ann Marie at Cheeseslave vs. Sarah at Sarah’s Musings
6. Face-off six: Kelly the Kitchen Kop vs. Anne at Catholic Mommy Brain
7. Face-off seven: Paula (aka Mother Hen) at The Chicken Coop vs. Jen at A Heavenly Perspective
8. Face-off eight: Stephanie at Keeper of the Home vs. Carrie at Organic and Thrifty
9. Face-off nine: Virginia at Living the Local Life vs. Kim at Homestead Acres
10. Face-off ten: Me! Hallee the Homemaker vs. Mare at Just Making Noise
11. Face-off eleven: Jenny at The Nourished Kitchen vs. Michelle at Find Your Balance
12. Face-off twelve: Alex at Feed Me Like You Mean It vs. Raine at Agriculture Society
13. Face-off thirteen: Shelley at MAHM vs. Lisa at Mama Says
14. Face-off fourteen: Sally Fallon Morell, author of Nourishing Traditions vs. Shannon of Nourishing Days

And today’s face off:

Real Food Face-Off Finale: Nina Planck vs. Kitchen Stewardship

This is all very exciting. I have seriously enjoyed each installment, and seeing how similar and different my answers are to so many of these other bloggers who have similar loves and philosophies of food as I do. I love gleaning and learning and sharing information on eating healthy REAL FOOD. I hope that you enjoy it as well!

Hallee

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Fallacies from Relevance

A fallacy from relevance occurs when the response to a conclusion or an argument is not relevant to the conclusion or argument. These are fallacies that ignore the point at hand and attempt to derail the argument by bringing irrelevancies into the arena of the debate. In this post, I will discuss the Genetic Fallacy and the Gambler’s Fallacy.

Genetic Fallacy

The genetic fallacy is committed when an idea is either accepted or rejected because of its source, rather than its merit.

Even from bad things, good may come; we therefore ought not to reject an idea just because of where it comes from, as ad hominem arguments do.

Equally, even good sources may sometimes produce bad results; accepting an idea because of the goodness of its source, as in appeals to authority, is therefore no better than rejecting an idea because of the badness of its source. Both types of argument are fallacious.

Examples

1. My mommy told me that the tooth fairy is real.
2. (Therefore) The tooth fairy is real.

1. Jet propulsion was pioneered in Germany during the war.
2. (Therefore) Jet propulsion is a bad thing.

Each of these arguments commits the genetic fallacy, because each judges an idea by the goodness or badness of its source, rather than on its own merits.

Gambler’s Fallacy

The gambler’s fallacy is the fallacy of assuming that short-term deviations from probability will be corrected in the short-term. Faced with a series of events that are statistically unlikely, say, a serious of 9 coin tosses that have landed heads-up, it is very tempting to expect the next coin toss to land tails-up. The past series of results, though, has absolutely zero effect on the probability of the various possible outcomes of the forthcoming coin toss.

Example

1. This ball has landed on RED nine times in a row.
2. (Therefore) It will probably land on BLACK with the next spinbal.

This inference is an example of the gambler’s fallacy. When a ball is tossed in a 38 position roulette wheel, the odds of it landing in RED are 9 in 19, the odds of it landing in BLACK are 9 in 19, and the odds of it landing in GREEN are 1 in 19.  These probabilities are utterly unaffected by the results of any previous tosses.  The odds are the same each and every toss.

The gambler’s fallacy appears to be a reasonable way of thinking because we know that if the ball has landed on RED ten straight times, it is very unlikely to land on RED every single time. Think of tossing a coin, for example.  If we observe a tossed coin landing heads-up nine times in a row we therefore infer that the unlikely sequence will not be continued, and that next time the coin will land tails-up.

In fact, though, the probabilities remain exactly the same with each new toss. Past results have no bearing whatsoever on random future outcomes.

Conclusion:

Recognizing truth is an essential survival tool for the mind, and ultimately, for the soul. It is vital that believers weigh the so-called “wisdom” of the world on the perfect scale of authoritative scripture. (I Corinthians 1:19-21)

Teaching our children the ability to recognize fallacies of this type, giving them the intellectual skill to deconstruct these types of arguments, will ensure that the arguments they, themselves, will one day make are at least valid and thoughtfully arrived upon. It will also assist them to investigate more deeply into the conclusions espoused by those in the world whose motives might not come from love and might not have been very carefully arrived at or well researched.

Hallee

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Menu for the week of 08 March 2010

The “rules” of our household diet can be found in the tab above labeled Hallee’s Galley and further explained in Our Diet.

I usually serve leftovers for lunch the next day, or we’ll save them during the week to graze lunch on the weekends. One meal a week, we eat whatever we want. This is usually our “Dinner Out” meal.

Almost all of the breads are homemade using fresh milled flour.  I’ll continue to link to my recipes as I post them.

Here’s the menu for my family for the week of Monday, 08 March 2010. As far as desserts go, we will be making shamrock cupcakes and St. Patrick’s Day cookies in order to prepare blog posts for the coming holiday!

Breakfast:

Dinner:

not sure what the schedule will be like.  It may be on the road, it may be something quick like Easy Tuna Casserole

Tuesday:

Breakfast:

Dinner:

Hearty 16-Bean Soup, cornbread

Wednesday:

Breakfast:

Dinner:

I cook dinner for 50+ people for my church on Wednesday nights.  Tonight’s menu is oven fried chicken, sour cream and chive potatoes, peas and carrots, garden salad, yeast rolls, and banana pudding (recipe to follow).

Thursday:

Breakfast:

Dinner:

burritos, corn, seasoned rice

Friday:

Breakfast:

Dinner:

fish sticks (recipe to follow), fried potatoes, green peas, cole slaw

Saturday:

Breakfast:

Dinner:

Dinner out with the girls.  Babysitter is getting pizza.

Sunday:

Breakfast:

Dinner:

potato soup (recipe to follow), cheese biscuits, garden salad

Hallee

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Here is a large version of it:

Very soon it will be over on the sidebar for you to “grab”.

I’m so excited!

Also, if you notice there’s a new button in the sidebar that says, “Top Mommy Blogs.”  If you click this, my blog gets a “vote”.  This is for nothing but fun and exposure.  Every unique computer can “vote” once per day.  In a day’s time, I moved from #678 to #130, so I’m just simply curious about it and think it will be fun to see how fast I can rise up in those Top Mommy Blogs.”

And last, but not least, I am SO excited to be guest posting this week at Today’s Housewife.  I will be posting about my cooking ministry at church.  Keep an eye out for that this Friday!

Hallee

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A Sunday guest post by my brilliant husband, Gregg.

Every Sunday, my clever husband offers me a “day of rest” by writing posts on the subject of his primary ministry. This is a topic that is gaining more and more attention in our modern culture. The topic, Creationism vs. Darwinism, is a subject that has broad reaching scientific, social, and metaphysical implications. He chooses to conclude each post with a message intended to hearten and bolster believers. However, for believers and non-believers alike, the primary purpose is to present scientific, historical, logical, and/or sociological data in an empirical fashion, as much as possible written in layman’s terms, and in a format suitable for supplementing any homeschool curriculum whether you choose to believe the Biblical account — or secular guesses — about the origins of human life on earth.

A Darwinian Primer

The 6 types of evolution taught in the average public school, the first 5 being types of Darwinian evolution, and the last being simple modifications or changes within kind and not even really “evolution” are:

1. Cosmic evolution
2. Stellar evolution
3. Chemical evolution
4. Abiogenesis—Life from non-life
5. Macro-evolution

• Micro-evolution (Changes within kind – not evolution)

Abiogenesis Reloaded

In previous Sunday posts, I documented the impossibilities of Cosmic evolution, Stellar evolution, and Chemical evolution.  I then presented a comprehensive series of posts documenting that life on earth simply cannot have been around for billions or millions of years based on numerous scientific facts.

Last Sunday, I explained the basics of the Darwinist belief in abiogenesis, recently re-packaged and re-branded and re-labeled to be called biopoiesis, or whatever other new and improved authoritatively scientific sounding jargon they want to call their religious belief in spontaneous generation.

If you do not have that context, I encourage you to select the CREATION category and read through all of the previous posts.  I pray that doing so will be a blessing to you.

What is Abiogenesis?

Abiogenesis is the notion that if you assemble all of the base components you need in order for life to exist under the ideal conditions, that life will simply happen.  The context of this so called theory is that all of the base components needed in order for life to exist, along with all of the ideal conditions, along with energy, came together randomly and exclusively by way of undirected processes long ago and far away.

In short, Abiogenesis, while a really authoritative and scientific sounding word, is really just a fairy tale.

Before I get pretty specific about the science, let me just speak from the heart using what we used to call common sense.  Every jar of peanut butter is packed — PACKED —  with proteins and amino acids, oils, tissues, organic compounds — it is a virtual jar of primordial ooze!  Yet, oddly, brand new life forms never spontaneously spring into existence out of the peanut butter — otherwise, I dare say you would use a lot more caution every time you opened the lid!  But perhaps that isn’t a fair comparison.

Let’s take a frog — a living frog.  Obviously, a living frog has every possible component needed to sustain life since, you know, it IS alive.  In addition, a frog is a fairly simple organism as organisms go.  (All forms of life are ridiculously complex, so I confess to some tongue-in-cheekiness just now.)  Anyway, starting with a frog, let’s toss him in a blender and hit puree.

Now, please, if it isn’t too much trouble, go ahead and recreate the necessary ideal conditions and apply the proper energy until the frog is once more living.  The only restrictions I will apply to this quest are,  if you wouldn’t mind terribly, that the conditions you create must be realistic.  In other words, it must have been possible for those exact same conditions to at least theoretically exist through purely random chance and undirected processes at some time in the past.

Too difficult?  I see.

How about if I remove the restriction?  How about if you can DESIGN a perfect environment and ENGINEER apparatus to reanimate the frog even if those things clearly could never have existed in nature and it is absolutely impossible that they would ever come about by undirected random processes?  How about it?

Still too difficult?  Oh.

Well, how about if you just use the pureed frog goo as the starting point, the base foundation, to create ANY LIVING THING, not necessarily a frog.  No?  Well, maybe not even REALLY, then.  Maybe just credibly in theory create something living.  How long do you suppose that would take?

Never, you say?  Is never the answer?  Oh.  Okay, then.

How about if you don’t start with organic compounds.  Maybe just start with a rock, or sand, or seawater, or poisonous gases.  Does that make the task somewhat less daunting?

Well, of course it doesn’t.  The belief in abiogenesis is a religious belief that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything scientific or real.  It is an article of faith in an impossibility because, if you are a Darwinist, the alternative is a Creator which is nightmarish to them.

I submit to you that nothing about the creation of life — any life — is spontaneous, accidental, or random.  The universe and all of the laws of the universe conspire to actually make life an ANOMALY.  On the universal scale, life is astonishingly and astoundingly rare.  The notion that one can start with sand and seawater or poisonous gas and just add energy to form simple and correctly organized organic compounds, that one can further agitate those newly created compounds so that they, in turn, “naturally” and “spontaneously” generate full blown living things entirely as a result of random and undirected processes is — in a word — ridiculous.

The entire notion taught and touted in science classes and science textbooks every school day ISN’T EVEN SCIENTIFIC!

Welcome (Back) to the Dark Ages of Science

People once thought that fruit flies spontaneously came forth from fruit, geese from barnacles, mice from dirty clothes, bees from dead calves, and so on. Notable scientists throughout history even believed in spontaneous generation. Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Hegel, and Shilling believed it, for example. Careful experiments by Spallanzani in 1780 — and ultimately by Louis Pasteur in 1860 right around the time of Darwin’s father shipped his shiftless son off on that famous voyage — totally disproved the foolish notion, and the average human being today reaps the benefit of simply knowing better.

However, Darwinian scientists and humanist acolytes still faithfully believe in spontaneous generation. Ironically, the late Isaac Asimov, a staunch atheist, summed it up very well.

“[Louis] Pasteur’s demonstration apparently laid the theory of spontaneous generation to rest permanently. All this left a germ of embarrassment for [Darwinian] scientists. How had life originated after all, if not through divine creation or through spontaneous generation? …
“They [Darwinian scientists] are back to spontaneous generation, but with a difference. The pre-Pasteur view of spontaneous generation was of something taking place now and quickly. The modern [Darwinist] view is that it took place long ago and very slowly.”
—Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s New Guide to Science (1984), pp. 638-639. Brackets mine, emphasis his.

Darwinists faithfully believe in and dogmatically teach spontaneous generation. Think about the implications of that for a minute. Scientifically speaking, we are no longer on a journey of discovery. We are backtracking in an attempt to rationalize and justify a quaint notion that was utterly disproved over a century and a half in the past. Intellectually, scientifically, methodologically, and inevitably we are returning to the Dark Ages!

In contrast, Rudolf Virchow’s aphorism ‘omnis cellula e cellula‘ [every cell arises from a preexisting cell] ranks with Louis Pasteur’s ‘omne vivum e vivo‘ [every living thing arises from a preexisting living thing] as among the most revolutionary generalizations of biology. True science, actual biology, teaches biogenesis, which means, in general, that life can only come from life and, specifically, that one kind of species can only come from living parents of the same kind of species. For instance, some kind of male dog and some kind of female dog will only ever bring forth some kind of dog. This is modification within kind. That is real science.

WINNER(S) of the THE GALACTIC LOTTERY!

In order for life to occur via the Darwinian myth, DNA and proteins would have to link up with ease into very long, extremely complicated, and highly specific coded strings containing extremely specific information. In addition, thousands of other complicated chemical combinations would have to be accomplished within the space of a few eye-blinks. How long could you live without an ability to consume nutrients? How long could you live without the ability to process those nutrients into useful fuel for your tissues? How long could you live without the ability to eliminate waste? The list goes on and on. The situation is no different for even the simplest forms of life. Everything would have to suddenly be in place — instantly in fact. In structure, arrangement, coordination, coding, chemical makeup, feeding, elimination, respiration, circulation, all of it. And everything would have to work perfectly right at the start. There is absolutely no room for error.

In order for life to arise from non-life by randomness and pure chance, that first life form would be the luckiest living thing in the history of life in the universe. All the parts would suddenly have to exist, in all of their nearly infinite complexity, with all of their interdependent systems tightly and perfectly integrated, without even a single element of waste or error in the (randomly arrived upon) design, and all would have to essentially and immediately function with absolute perfection.

Additionally, the formation of amino acids, protein, DNA, enzymes, and all the rest needed to form the first living creature, had to occur within an extremely short amount of time. It would all have had to occur within far less than a single generation, possibly less than a few minutes. Basically, it would have had to occur within a single moment. Otherwise, in the very next moment the organism would die. Literally millions of perfectly functioning systems had to come together all at once.

Mathematicians have calculated the odds of this taking place and those odds are 1 chance in the number 40,187 followed by six hundred trillion trillion trillion zeros. That second number is more atoms, by the way, than there are in the entire known universe. That first life form would have been the lucky winner of the galactic lottery.

Once that life form won against those clearly impossible odds, it then would have to be able to reproduce right away. In order to propagate life, it would have needed all of the DNA coding and fission ability to divide and copy itself asexually.

Just as an aside, there is really no Darwinian explanation for the predominance of the separate and distinct sexes in living organisms today. Having two sexes provides absolutely no survival or fitness advantage when measured using the Darwinian evolutionary yardstick. It would be much more evolutionarily advantageous for all forms of life to reproduce asexually. If we were all one sex, it would also “fit” the Darwinian abiogenetic fairy tale model of how life originated much more nicely since there is no practical explanation for how or why independent sexes evolved.

But they DO exist — sooooo.

Maybe that first life form had to have the ability to reproduce sexually — which would require a mate with which to produce offspring. That means that there would have had to have been at least two galactic lottery winners in that moment, co-located near enough to each other for reproduction to occur, and each “randomly” appearing with interdependent yet perfectly compatible sexual apparatus — and they had to like each other, you know, or each would have had to have been “randomly” encoded and arranged such as to have a biological and instinctive imperative to mate with each other. This also bumps the odds against all this occurring up by adding another million trillion trillion trillion trillion zeros to that second number.

The Truth

It is absolutely amazing just how much  effort, thought, and scientific endeavor in the last 150 years has been diverted to an almost desperate and utterly fruitless effort to prove true the ramblings of a 19th century British eccentric who spent his life either nursing his digestive problems, dealing with his many phobias, pondering why his children suffered from various mental deficiencies after he married his own first cousin, or simply wondering how life might possibly have sprung into existence without having been created by God.

In order to believe in Darwinism, one must first have a desire to abandon the quest for truth.  In pure terms, the quest for truth will inevitably lead to abandoning Darwinism and all of its fallacious trappings.  Even an intellectually honest atheist would have to admit that Darwinism is just plain silly even if that atheist refused to acknowledge the logical alternative.

I pray that this Sunday post has blessed you.

God Bless you and yours.

Gregg

Here is my monthly reminder to you guys, my buddies.  Please remember to do monthly self exam.  The earlier detection, the more likely a positive outcome.

For more information on breast cancer, please visit National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, The American Cancer Society.

Please continue to pray for healing and for knowledge to fight this battle.

Hallee

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