Why Do We Dress Up For Church?

While helping her put on tights:

"Elese, why do you think we dress up for church?"

"I don't know."

"Is it so our friends admire how pretty we look?"

"Yeah!" (She never fails to take the bait.)

"Actually, it's to show God that we think he's important enough to dress up for. Remember last weekend when I made you a birthday cake? What if I'd just flopped the cake on a plate and put a blob of frosting on it? Would that have made you feel special?"

"Yeah..."

"Really? But what did I do? I made a cat cake that matched the cat theme of your party. I spent a lot of time on it, and I made it as pretty as I could. Do you know why I did that?"

"No."

"It's because making it pretty was one way that I could show you that you're really special. You are worth taking the time to make something pretty, and making you a pretty cake shows you that I love you more than making a cake that didn't take me any time and that I didn't really care how it looked.

"In the same way, we dress up for church because it's a way of showing honor to God. We believe that God is worth the extra time to look nice when we go to worship him. It's fun to dress up and look pretty, but it's important to remember that we're actually dressing up for God."

Grandpa Jack’s Minestrone

I think I was still in college when I first had this soup, and I knew then that I needed the recipe. (By the way, every now and then, I’m a little aghast that I haven’t shared this with you yet; it’s one of my all-time favorites, and it’s also now a great way to get my kids to happily eat a load of veggies.)

My grandparents called this “Upstate Minestrone,” because they got the recipe from some friends on the East Coast who would prepare a pot of this soup to simmer while they took an afternoon drive “upstate.” I prefer to just call it “Grandpa Jack’s Minestrone” because it reminds me of my talented grandfather who passed away about 5 months after Tito was born.

Now that #3 is due to arrive any day now (any minute would be nice), I found some zucchini and cabbage on sale and chopped them up in soup-ready bags to keep in the freezer. It’s not totally a freezer meal, but having the veggies (I froze the carrots with them, too) ready to go will make for a pretty quick and really healthy meal in the first few months of newborn haze.

Feel free to add more veggies to this soup if that suits you — my mom always likes to add red bell peppers to hers. You can also add other types of beans, use spicy Italian sausage instead of sweet Italian sausage, and top the finished soup with pesto and/or parmesan cheese. Or, it’s great “as is.” However you choose to ladle it up, I hope you’ll give it a try and enjoy it as much as we do.

Grandpa Jack’s Minestrone

1 lb sweet Italian sausage 1 T cooking oil 1 c diced onion 1 clove minced garlic 2 small zucchini, sliced 1 c sliced carrots 1 can diced tomatoes 2 cans beef broth (or ~3 cups water + 3 t beef Better than Bouillon) 1 t salt 1/4 t pepper 1 can great northern beans 2 c finely shredded cabbage chopped fresh parsley 1 t basil

Slice sausage crosswise about 1/2″ thick; brown with oil in a deep saucepan. Add onion, garlic, carrots, and basil. Cook for 5 minutes, until veggies begin to soften. Add zucchini, tomatoes with liquid, beef froth, cabbage, salt and pepper. Bring soup to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 1 hour. Add beans, cook another 20 minutes. Garnish with parsley if desired. Soup is even better the second day!

#cabbage #carrots #minestrone #tomato #beans #italian #creambased

Creamy Black Bean Chicken Soup

This soup is quite similar to the Slow Cooker Enchilada Soup that I posted about a few weeks ago (about which I’ve gotten great reviews – thanks, guys!), but it’s just different enough and just good enough that it’s worth sharing, too! We had this at Happy Hour last night and my Crockpot was scraped empty. A bonus is that it’s super easy and fast to throw together, especially if you use canned black beans.

I actually soaked my beans overnight and cooked them in the slow-cooker for a few hours in the morning before draining and adding the rest of the ingredients to the crockpot (soaking beans for 12-24 hours in water and lemon juice — about 1 T per cup of dry beans — helps with digestability and your body’s ability to absorb the nutritional content of the beans). If you’re out of your house all day, you could probably throw the soaked beans into the crockpot with other ingredients and about 2 cups of extra liquid. This soup would probably be extremely forgiving, as long as your beans and chicken are cooked, so feel free to throw it all in on high 3 hours before dinner or on low 9 hours beforehand… either way, I hope your family scrapes the bowl dry!

Creamy Black Bean Chicken Soup in the Slow-Cooker

(Recipe based on Pass the Fresh)

2 chicken breasts (frozen or thawed both work) 1 cup chicken broth (I used 1.5 c water and 1 t “Better than Bouillon”) 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed OR 1 cup dry black beans, soaked overnight and slightly pre-cooked 1 1/2 cup frozen corn 1 cup salsa (I used our family standard, Pioneer Woman’s recipe) 1 1/2 Tablespoons taco seasoning (make your own! Mine included smoked paprika, which added a great smoky flavor to the soup) 1/2 block (4 oz) cream cheese (the original recipe calls for sour cream and cheese, but I like the texture of cream cheese in soup, AND that’s what I had on hand)

Throw everything except the cream cheese into the slow cooker and cook on low 6-8 hours or on high 3-4 hours. In the last hour, remove and shred the chicken and add back in. Also, add the cream cheese in chunks and stir occasionally to make sure it is stirred in thoroughly. I served this with cilantro, diced jalapenos and tortilla chips, but you could also serve it with more sour cream, shredded cheese and diced fresh tomatoes. Yum!

#beans #chicken #crockpot #mexican #creambased