This year, my family is having Thanksgiving dinner at our sister’s new house. My sister (who is now pregnant with her second child) and her husband moved into the house a few months ago and this Thanksgiving dinner is the first family even they’re hosting.

To make things easier, we’re all brining a different portion of the meal. The picture you see at the top here, is my contribution—two apple pies. Having made a third for general eating, I can say with confidence, these pies are amazing.

So, happy Thanksgiving everyone. Enjoy your time with family if you have it. And, on a more serious note, Psalm 97:12:

“Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous,and give thanks to his holy name!”

Gone are the days of a forgiving metabolism that allows me to eat and eat and eat and never gain a pound. Instead, I’ve reached the unfortunate 20-something age of denial, in which I tell myself a 1:00am trip to McDonalds isn’t going to matter one way or the other. Unfortunately, I’ve only just begun to grieve.

The 34 my waste has been seeing since high school has started to flirt with a 36. Button up shirts I was lookin’ so slick in two years ago are threatening to start pulling. And, for the first time in my life I have a gym membership…that I actually feel guilty for not using.

But see, here’s the problem. You see, this is America and it’s my patriotic duty to eat (constantly) until I’m about to vomit, at which point a short break is necessary before returning to my patriotism. So how do I do my patriotic duty without slipping over the edge into greasy morbid obesity? Let’s keep in mind here that I haven’t found a woman with who’s judgment will slip long enough for her to enter a committed relationship with me.

These questions are of the utmost importance. It seems from my perspective that there are two major options:

1. Eat less. Pfft. What? Sounds like treason to me. The founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they could hear that!

2. Get some exercise. At first, this looks like a pretty good option. But then again, if food is ‘fuel’ for the human body and I’m gaining weight, it must mean that I’m simply eating ‘too much’. My daily activities simply don’t require as much fuel as I’m giving them.

But wait, let’s say that out loud. “I’m eating too much”. Will you listen to yourself. That’s crazy talk.

Oh well, looks like it’s back to the drawing board… right after dinner.

I never stopped to think much about the fact that Jesus commanded his disciples to gather up the leftover pieces of bread and fish after he’d multiplied them for the five thousand.

John 6:12:

“…Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.”

It seems like, if there were ever a time where wasting food didn’t matter, it would be this one. I mean, they started with some barley loaves and two fish and Jesus turned it into enough to feed thousands, then still had twelve baskets of food left over.

Jesus created food out of thin air, then determined that it was crucial that none be wasted.

I’m sure there’s a lot to think about here. But my own first thought was about stewardship. Especially as Americans. We really are, in some ways, in a kind of Jesus-feeding-the-five-thousand scenario. This little fledgling country in just a few hundred years exploded into one of the most powerful, prosperous countries on the planet.

But now, in so many ways (from portion sizes, to the number of cars on the road), as a nation we’re really not treating the prosperity with the kind of reverence that Jesus treated the miracle.

It really makes you think. Waste, even when it doesn’t hurt anyone, isn’t something to be proud of.

My father made a trip to the wholesale club today. It’s something that he does every couple months to buy the things that get used up frequently—toilet paper, dish detergent, flour—mostly stuff like that.

Well, I happened to be around when he returned with a car load of groceries. After helping bring them into the house, I took the initiative to unload everything into their pantry.

A lot of it was bulky and difficult to nestle into tight spaces. At the frustration of moving thing around, I let out a frustrated sigh. Immediately I noticed how crazy that really was.

You know you live in a rich country when there’s so much food, it’s frustrating to find a place to put it all.

This is a weird place we live—but I’m grateful for it.

I love to cook and among my favorite things to make is pizza at home.

When I was a kid there was a pizzeria that made the best pizza in town. It wasn’t anything like franchise pizza. It was lighter, bigger and had a taste all its own. I later came to learn that everyone’s favorite pizza place was making a fairly authentic New York style pizza. Very thin in the middle, with very puffy crust on the outside.

Well, a few years back, our favorite pizza joint closed down to make way for a new gigantic grocery store,  which needless to say, didn’t sell our favorite pizza. It was a tragic trade off.

For some months, former employees of the pizzeria went and worked at similar joint 5 or 10 miles away. But for whatever reason, the new place couldn’t keep afloat in the sinking economy and it was forced to close its doors too.

Now, our suburban area is stuck with franchise pizza. Dominoes, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut. Don’t get me wrong. They’re not bad per se, they’re just not as good as the New York pizza we’d all grown attached to.

So, today, having had enough, I decided I wanted to learn to replicate the extinct pizzerias food. This means rethinking sauce, cheese and most importantly, the basics of making dough at home. Research suggested that I was doing nearly everything wrong if I wanted to accomplish New York pizza. I was going to have to learn to toss the dough. This is actually just as difficult as it sounds.

Well, after eight wasted lumps of dough, I finally produced an acceptable pie. Granted it was smaller than I’d wanted and the sauce, while similar to my goal didn’t quite hit the mark.

But, as they say, practice makes perfect. Next time, I think I’ll get it. Once it’s perfect, I think I’ll share my research so the world can benefit.

My mother had her knee replaced on Tuesday. She’s been in the hospital since. She’ll be returning home on Friday, but with a lot less mobility than she had before. To help ease the situation, my older sister suggested that I put together some meals that could be stored in my parent’s refrigerator and easily reheated without making too much of a mess.

Well, since my parent’s house always seems to be a busy hub of family related activity, I made a shopping list and preparations to make chicken chili, red curry, BBQ pulled pork and fresh pizza.

Hoping not to consume my entire day with cooking, I started almost all the meals at once. Boiling chicken and pork, rising dough. But, about the same time, it occurred to me that my father hadn’t had time to mow his lawn since most of his time was spent with my mother in the hospital. So, as the chicken and pork were cooking, and the dough was rising, I quickly ran out to mow the lawn, in hopes of beating an imminent thunderstorm.

I was successful at that.

Coming back inside, I got back to the food. The chicken and pork both needed to be shredded. Vegetables needed to be chopped and all of it needed to be combined.

The chili was first. Everything seemed to go fine. Then the pork. There was more fat than I anticipated and therefore less meat than I’d hoped. All is well, I thought to myself. Since there was a whole host of other food to eat. I seasoned the pork, then baked it. It turned out tasting okay.

Then came time to work out the pizza. Which, between finishing the lawn, chili and pork had risen way too much. It was nearly impossible to work with. One lump of dough was thrown away entirely. The other three were make-shifted into pizza crust, although they were ridiculously thin.

Meanwhile, as the pizza is cooking, my sister has a bowl of chili—only to discover I accidently used cayenne pepper instead of chili powder. It was almost unbearably spicy.

It was frustrating to look back and see that nearly every nail had been missed to some degree. But it all comes down to doing too much. Cutting any one of the activities out would have probably taken all the others to success. But as is, too much made too little. I guess I’ll have to remember than next time.

I remember back when I first started serving as a youth leader we were having these weekly leadership meetings. The church we were part of didn’t have any kind of college age ministry, so the youth leadership team kind of became that ministry. Pretty much everyone college aged at the church was on the “team” and every week we would get together for some teaching, prayer and sometimes some kind of worship. It was a good time for most, although in hindsight there were all kinds of things inherent to the ministry that I definitely wouldn’t agree with today.

I remember one week we did a spiritual gift inventory test in order to learn what our spiritual gifts were. If I remember correctly, I’m a prophetic apostle with the gift of healing, flight and time travel. Alright, that was a joke, but needless to say, the inventories were a little bit off the wall in their assessment. I don’t really remember exactly what it determined my spiritual gifts were, but I do remember scoring pretty high in the “hospitality” category (I didn’t know you needed that spiritual gift to be hospitable… who woulda thunk it?); maybe it was marking “yes” on the question asking, “Do you enjoy being hospitable?”. Regardless of the test, that assessment has definitely been reflected in my life. I love to entertain people, I love to feed people, and I love to invite people over and help create a friendly, comfortable environment for people to make new friends or become closer with current friends. In that world of hospitality, one of my favorite things to do is to cook. I really enjoy putting my mind to learning new types of food—I’ve been told that I’m going to make a woman very happy and fat one day.

So, I think today I’m going to try something new. I’m going to share with you my most recent favorite recipe (Ha, this is pretty weird). I hope you’ll try it out and enjoy it and entertain others with it. Maybe over it, you’ll encourage a brother or sister in the Lord, or perhaps share the Gospel with some poor lost sinner.

So, my recent favorite recipe is Chicken Chili. Now, don’t get intimidated; there aren’t that many ingredients and it’s a hard recipe to mess up! One of the things I love about this recipe is that you don’t really need to use white meat chicken (chicken thigh will do), which means you can save money on your protein, or you could even omit the meat altogether and it’d still taste great. Here’s what you’re going to need:

- about 2 lbs chicken meat (chopped into little pieces)

- 2 green peppers (diced)

- 1 red pepper (diced)

- 1 onion (diced)

- 1 cup of canned corn (drained)

- 2 (15 oz) cans dark red kidney beans with liquid

- 2 (15 oz) cans light red kidney beans with liquid

- 2 (15 oz) cans of diced tomatoes

- 1 (15 oz) can of tomato sauce

- 2 tablespoons of chili powder

- 1 tablespoon of dried parsley

- 1 teaspoon of garlic powder

- 1 ½ teaspoon of ground cayenne

- ½ teaspoon of ground cumin

- 2 tablespoons of cornstarch

1. If you don’t think you’re much of a cook, you’re going to find that chili is pretty hard to mess up. You want to start with a big pot. Coat it with cooking spray and turn the heat up to around medium, then add your chopped peppers, onion and chicken. Stir it around every so often for about 15 minutes until the veggies start getting soft and the chicken looks reasonably well cooked (don’t worry about under cooking, it’ll have a chance to finish cooking later if it doesn’t finish now).

2. Next, add your corn, kidney beans, diced tomatoes and tomato sauce. Stir everything around, and rest assured, it will definitely look gross at this point.

3. Once you’ve got everything mixed up, you can add the chili powder, dried parsley, garlic powder, ground cayenne and ground cumin. (DO NOT ADD THE CORN STARCH YET!) Mix everything up real well then let it come to a boil.

4. Once you have the pot of stuff boiling, spoon out about half a cup of the juice from the pot (avoid the other ingredients) and put it in a bowl. Add your cornstarch to the juice you just dished out and mix it real well until all the little corn starch lumps are gone. Add the little mixture back to the larger pot and stir it up real well.

5. Turn the heat down to low and let it simmer. It will taste pretty good after about an hour of simmering, but it will really taste good the next morning for breakfast.

When you’re all done and ready to eat, you can top it with cheddar cheese, sour cream and tortilla chips, or try it with sour dough bread or some corn bread. It’s probably going to be good no matter how you serve it. The other great thing about chili and other stews is that you’ll have leftovers for like a week. If you don’t eat it right away, freeze it. It’ll heat up great.