A to Z Blog Challenge: Day 2

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 5 Comments

Today is “B” day in the blog challenge.  I haven’t checked the stats, but it seems like B words ought to be one of the biggest occupants of the English dictionary.  It was tempting to choose blogging or books.  I even thought about transcribing the entire Berenstains’ B Book, as I spent a good portion of my life with a kid or two or three on my lap reading it till I was sure I was blue or brown or burgundy in the face…”Big brown bear, blue bull, beautiful baboon…”  But I’ve decided to stick with boiling up food-related themes.  Here I seek to bolster support for breading.

It seems like breading gets a bum rap these days, but I’ve learned from one of the country’s most credible weight loss programs that it can be used in healthy ways.  And lo and behold it’s actually quite quick and easy to make something taste “special.”  All you have to do is take 4-ounce cuts of turkey or chicken breast (sometimes I pound the chicken breasts to 1/4 inch thickness) or boneless pork tenderloin cutlets, season them with salt and pepper, brush both sides with a thin coating of reduced fat mayonnaise and press them into Italian-seasoned bread crumbs.  Place them on a lightly greased broiler pan and broil them 4 inches from the heat for 3-4 minutes on each side.

I will be completely befuddled if this method doesn’t boost your opinion of breading.

Blogging from A to Z Challenge April 2012

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 10 Comments

Abyss.  Arizona.  Atheist.  Ambien.  (I could use some.)  Thanks to my friend, Laura, at Spotts in the Valley of the Sun, A-words are firing around in my head like comets.  She tipped me off about this blog challenge – perhaps just what I needed to re-activate my enthusiasm for blogging.

As the mother of an Annie who is in culinary school, I’ve settled upon the word appetizer, because regardless of what happens to be firing around upstairs, the ardors of my stomach usually win out.

Before I was married (nearly 27 years ago) I had hardly ever eaten appetizers.  Growing up as a ranch kid I was trained early to go straight for the potatoes and meat – corn-fed and fattened yards from my bedroom window.  But marrying the man who is still my husband and the gourmet of the family (at least until Annie graduates) introduced me to the art of appetizers and the friends who rocked them.  Like Susan Eden.  Here’s a recipe we begged her for after devouring them at a football bash.

Stuffed Mushrooms

12-14 large mushrooms

1 8 oz. pkg cream cheese, softened

2 Tbsp sour cream

1 Tbsp finely minced onion

4 pieces crisp-cooked bacon, crumbled

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp dill weed

grated cheddar cheese

Clean mushrooms, remove stems and hollow out cavities.  Cream together cream cheese and all remaining ingredients EXCEPT cheddar cheese.  Spoon into mushroom caps and place on a greased baking sheet.   Top with grated cheese.  Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, until cheese is lightly browned.

Bon appetit!

Grinding out a prayer

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 7 Comments

An author whose blog I enjoy, recently asked readers to identify their 2011 “theme songs.”  Thanks to my friend, Jeanny, I knew exactly what I would choose.  After church last Sunday, Jeanny, who sings with the lilting, pulsating voice of an angel, suggested that I listen to Van Morrison’s version of  Be Thou My Vision.  Be Thou My Vision has long been a favorite hymn of mine, but it took hearing Morrison grind out the ancient Irish poem, to adopt it as my theme for 2011.  This is not Morrison’s  young and cheery Brown- Eyed Girl voice.  It is a voice weathered and rough-hewn like the stone fences that cascade down the green hills in the meadows of his native Ireland.  It is a chiseled plea.

“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; naught be all else to me save that thou art – thou my best thought by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.”

Jeanny didn’t say why she liked this version.  She is a quietly exuberant woman, undergoing the Scupltor’s  chisel herself, as she and her husband struggle to maintain their footing on the rocky path of raising an autistic child.  Though her burdens are immense she radiates the light of the One whose presence she seeks.

“Be thou my battleshield, sword for my fight; be thou my dignity, thou my delight, thou my soul’s shelter, thou my high tow’r; raise thou me heav’nward, O Pow’r of my pow’r.”

Jeanny’s son is in elementary school, but four of my kids have or will soon have “flown the coop” – a much better euphemism for the wing-growing process than the gentle, benign “leaving the nest.”  This period of pushing and pulling, pursed lips and prayer poses an assault on my ability to remain dignified.  Addictions, joblessness, car wrecks and college choices. Often I feel like the strains voiced by Morrison’s contemporary, Mick Jagger, “If I don’t get some shelter, oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away.”  The delights (scholarships, rehab successes, good grades and growth in faith)  though thoroughly penetrating when realized, aren’t fully satisfying apart from the power of my Power.

“High King of heaven, my victory won, may I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heav’n’s Sun!  Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my vision, O Ruler of all.”

I think I’m going to stick with this chiseled plea for 2012, too.

Loey Poetry – Black Leather Purse

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 6 Comments

Down on the floor slouching

but smiling

is a black leather purse.

It has eyes.

Three little silver buttons

arranged in a circle

makes one.

Another three arranged in a circle

makes two.

The big happy squiggly grin is

made of a golden zipper.

It’s unzipped and looks like

it’s saying, “What’s up?”

I’m sure it’s full of car keys,

gum wrappers, hand sanitizer,

wallet, loose change, pens,

pencils, gift cards –

with 37 cents left –

hair ties.

So, this black leather purse has a

face and a belly

and that’s about it.

Recordings to Hear Before You Die

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 6 Comments

I noticed a fantastic phenomenon as my children were exchanging gifts this Christmas: much of it centered around music – CD’s, downloads, band T-shirts, concert tickets, etc.  Though they range in age from 10 to 24, this was common ground for them all.

I also noticed – while I was crying tears of joy over the symphony tickets that three of them gave me (Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue performed by the Phoenix Symphony!) and my husband was perusing his new Rolling Stones book – that the kids were all burbling about bands I’d never heard of.   I love their audacious sense of musical exploration.    In fact, they’ve inspired me to begin an adventure of my own.

Actually, I suppose it would be more honest to  say that my kids have re-inspired me.  I’ve wanted to embark upon this adventure ever since I gave my husband the book, “1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die” for our 25th wedding anniversary.  I thought we could spend our next 25 years working our way through it.  My husband and I always exchange gifts we’d like to receive ourselves; I give him books, he gives me cooking utensils – with the exception of that particular instance, when he gave me a trip to Ireland.  Utensils or not, his gifts usually top mine.  Neither of us, however, have made any progress in the book.  Until today.

Today is my birthday.  I am now the age my father was when he died.  Not only am I struck, once again, by how young he was, but I’m amazed at how I’ve seen God do so much through a life cut so short.  My siblings and I – the abundant bounty and adventures of our lives – are evidence that God does indeed “restore the years that the locust have eaten.” (Joel 2:25)  Our father’s years were short, but they have been restored through the lives of his children and grandchildren – at least that’s the way I see it.   For me, this has meant a life rich in music and books.  That is why this book – about music – is the perfect capstone for a birthday which is for me wrapped up in no small amount of bewilderment and blessing.

I’ve added a new page to my blog, “Song Journal.”  It is in no way intended as an alternative to Tom Moon’s book.  It is, however, based upon his interesting and inspiring recommendations.  I hope you’ll join me on this adventure.

Apologies to Sara Bareilles

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 15 Comments

If you watch the video below and substitute the words “blog post” for “love song,” you might get a feel for my quandary.   I’m a little mixed on the whole “If you want me to read your blog, you have to post on a predictable schedule” rule.  On one hand, I totally get it.  It’s disappointing – even frustrating – to visit a blog from which you once read a really great post (and I’m not implying you found one here, although I hope so), only to find nothing new has been posted in weeks or months.  BUT sometimes (like today) I know I’m just posting for the sake of posting, and while I know that if I was a “really good blogger,” I could come up with something better, sometimes I just don’t feel like it or I have more important things to do.  Gasp!  More important than blogging?  Yes.  I wish that included writing songs like Sara Bareilles, but it usually consists of a lot of little quotidian things.  I was going to give you a few examples, but for some reason, “hanging out with the kids” doesn’t sound so quotidian.  It sounds down right spectacular and miraculous, which renders my lack of blogging inspiration completely inexplicable.  The new year has just begun.  Hope is irresistible.   In the meantime, enjoy the song…

 

You can’t go home

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 15 Comments

It’s always a sad day to have to disagree with Jon Bon Jovi and agree with your mother-in-law, but here I am.  When Bon Jovi asks with rock-n- roll bravado, “Who says you can’t go home?” who wants to disagree?  Not me.  And yet, when my daughter was preparing to make the drive home after her first semester of college, and her grandmother told her that going home wouldn’t be the same, I knew her MeMa was right.  My daughter didn’t want to believe it, she confessed to me, but before she knew it, she was experiencing all the angst that comes with wondering how things will be when you get home.  Will your friends treat you the same?  Will your parents and your siblings be the same?  Will all those familiar places calm the unsettled yearnings of your heart?  She learned that you really can’t go home – at least not the same person you were before.

As she was making that long drive home, across three state lines and past an obscene number of Subway restaurants, my daughter was anticipating a joyous reunion with family and friends, still clinging to the hope that her grandma didn’t know what she was talking about.  She wasn’t thinking about the fact that she has spent the last six months living with new people, working with new people, studying with new people, worshipping with new people, buying tampons and Top Ramen and Chai tea lattes from new people.  Those seemingly mundane activities can’t help but change a girl.  She has a whole new set of experiences that don’t include those of us back home.  She’s in that terribly frightening but awesomely exciting place in her life where she’s holding onto the fragile threads of change, trusting that they’ll weave her into a life that is every bit as durable as the piece of cloth from which she is being unraveled.  From one tapestry to another, this is the way the Weaver of our lives works.  He does not allow us to hang perpetually on museum walls, but rather proves Himself to be the artisan of living, breathing fabric that surpasses the finest breathable cotton cultivated on this planet.

Of course, my daughter did experience the reassurance of the love of family and friends this trip, and I am confident that someday she will be able to come home without angst and reservation.  Bon Jovi’s words will ring true, and my mother-in-law will be…well, a little less right.  There will be more strands of my daughter woven into a lovely new tapestry than will remain in the old, and she will be beginning to feel secure with the new thing of beauty that she will be.  Even if the Master Weaver does allow times in her life when the dust mites of reality nibble on her front side and the cold walls of perseverance chill her backside, she will know that “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.”

Judging a book

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 10 Comments

My husband is a master gift disguiser, beginning with our first Christmas together in our lower level one-bedroom in the shadow of the Rockies.  While our upstairs neighbor was getting high and coming up with new schemes to try to borrow money from us, and our kitten, Haley, was cometing around our Charlie Brown Christmas tree, he was wrapping up nuts and bolts for masterful plots of deception.  This year is no different.  Let the games begin.

I take a different tack – especially when it comes to wrapping up the plots themselves.  This year I’m intentionally going out of my way to make them obvious.  Whether you asked for a book or not, you’ll be able to tell that you’re getting one.  Your eye will spy it and you’ll be tempted to laugh at my inept skills in the art of surprise, but as you handle the rectangular packages with the tell-tale indentation on one side, you’ll be sucked into unraveling my own little yarn.  You’ll unknowingly be reading the unwritten message on the back of the package.  You can’t see the words, but with Braille-like finesse you’ll be reading them:

“Herein lies a book.  It may or may not be one from your wish list.  It may have been especially selected because the giver spied it on a shelf or a bin in a bookstore and lovingly perused the contents and thought it would be the perfect one for you.  As your imagination grapples to get its bearings, picture yourself reading this book – a Mystery for now – cuddled up in that overstuffed chair in the dimly lit corner opposite the twinkling, fragrant tree.  While everyone else is at the kitchen table destroying one another in a raucous game of Skip-Bo, you’ll be lost in your own little world – whatever world that is – whatever world you are holding in your hands right now.  You’ll sense the presence of your loved ones and that will comfort you and embolden you to unreservedly strike out on a new journey through pristine, unsullied pages – or perhaps through pages a little yellowed, a little musty, a little marked with a mysterious stranger’s inky scribbles.  No, you can’t precisely judge it by its wrapping.  Its size and feel have told you enough to hook you.  Like every good story, you won’t really know where it will take you until you unwrap it.  That will happen soon enough, but for now just keep rereading this teaser, this prologue to hours of happiness.  The more you do, the more you’ll wonder and the more enthralling will be that moment when you finally know to which world you’re headed.“

Road Ramblings

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 6 Comments

Point me to a road, and I will ramble down it, and more than likely, stray from it.   Loey just reminded me that I haven’t blogged in a while.  But I have been on the road – so many roads.  The Road, On the Road, On the Road Again, On the Road with Charles Kuralt.

Today I finally watched the movie, The Road, having read the book a few years ago.  I love that it is the color of ashes.  I wonder: Do I carry the fire?

On the Road Again and On the Road With Charles Kuralt.  Both feature two distinct, but fading voices from my adolescence, but I only mention them because they popped into my mind when it began to wander down this topic.  I have for some time intended to go where I will take you now…

On the Road. (The Original Scroll. By Jack Kerouac.)  Warning:   a book review commences here…I was at first fascinated with the romantic idea of this book – the founder of the Beat Generation himself,  journeying back and forth across America, the words used to describe his wild longings and adventures trailing behind him like the dusty, greasy miles of highway he leaves behind him.  Indeed, Kerouac beautifully accomplishes Joyce-like prose, depicting the post WWII angst of a country in the midst of change in life, politics, and music.

If  only the soundtrack of his journey was limited to his thoughts! But no –  for much of the journey Jack’s hyper, oversexed, irresponsible traveling companion, Neal, provides uninvited annoying static.  Yes, I realize that Neal is just as “beat” as Jack, but while Jack may find Neal’s antics and his search for his father inspiring and refreshing, I found them to be grating.  The lead foot of my brain was pressed on my inner gas pedal, speeding on to reach the points where Neal is dropped off to go about his own personal business – usually nursing or aggravating relationships with women he’s left in tattered confusion.  I wanted to be left alone with Jack, going to the places his journey would take me.    At those times, Jack said things like, “A the end of the American road is a man and a woman making love in a hotel room.”  And, “I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope.  I have always believed in these things.  It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a middleclass philosophy out of it.”  Jack seemed to forget all those things when he was with Neal.  Until the end of the book.

At the end of the book  Jack, Neal and another friend head south of the border, where the sultry sights, sounds and scents of the Mexican desert and its inhabitants subtly, yet definitively overtake and subdue Neal’s static.    Still, it’s when he’s sleeping in the back of the car, that Jack’s voice is heard best. Driving through terrain that launches Jack into Biblical allusions, he writes, “…we passed suddenly through a ruined dusty dobe town in which hundreds of shepherds were gathered by the shade of a battered wall, their long robes trailing in the dust, their dogs leaping, their children running, their women with head lowered gazing sorrowfully, the men with high staves watching us pass with noble and chieflike miens, as though they had been interrupted in their communal meditations in the living sun by the sudden clanking folly from America with its three broken bozos inside. ”

The roads are still strewn with broken bozos.  One is pulling over for the night right now.

Despair? Wa-Hoo!

~ Bri Sperry-Renfrew ~ 5 Comments

For no good reason, I’ve been moaning and groaning, feeling sorry for myself, and generally having an off day.   Nothing like a little Billy Collins to bring me out of my funk…

Despair

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry/flowers wilting on the table,/the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.

Dead leaves cover the ground,/the wind moans in the chimney,/and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin

I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets/would make of all this/these shadows and empty cupboards?

Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,/my thoughts turn to the great/tenth-century celebrator of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things/could hardly be restrained,/and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,/Ye-Hah.