An Olive Oil Tasting Party

Each month my sisters and I spend a day together, sometimes working on a project and more often spending quality time over coffee and Boggle. Recently, we started taking turns planning an activity for the day. This time it was my turn, and I stumbled upon the idea of doing an olive oil taste test. It was unique enough that I decided to keep my plan a surprise. The only information I gave my sisters about my activity was that none of us have ever done it before. That piqued their interest and kept them guessing:

"Are we going to practice giving IV's to each other?"

"Is it a hotdog eating contest?"

"How much carpentry have you done?"

"Handstands? New aerobics moves?"

In between laughing at their ideas, I was doing research on olives and oils, a fascinating study. Here are only a few points of interest I gleaned and shared with my sisters:

• The black olives you buy in tin cans at supermarkets are actually green olives that have been treated with oxygen and iron compounds to give them their shiny, patent leather appearance.
• "Cold pressed" is largely an archaic term. Extra-virgin olive oil is made from olives fresh off the tree and ground by a large garbage disposal-type machine. The oil is extracted from that paste by a centrifuge. No heat is used. If there are imperfections in the oil, disqualifying it from earning an extra-virgin olive oil status, it is heated, making it refined or "Pure Olive Oil." 
• All olives are excessively bitter straight from the tree, even ripe, black ones. They need to be brined to make them palatable. 
• Color does not affect the flavor of olive oil. Experts use blue containers when tasting olive oils.

For the taste test, I found Italian, Chilean, and Californian olive oils which we used as dipping oils and to dress a simple salad. The Italian oil had the most bite, a flavor that comes from polyphenols which are the healthy, cancer fighting, cholesterol lowering properties. Our favorite oil was the milder one from Chile. Flavor is affected both by varietals of olives and regions they are grown in. If olives are harvested early, they have a harsher flavor. The riper the olive, the softer the taste. Tuscany oils tend to be pungent and peppery because the olives need to be harvested before snowfall; our Italian oil likely was affected by that. 

I made an artisan bread to serve as a conveyor for the seasoned dipping oil. Even with garlic and herbs, the different flavors of the three olive oils came through. 

The printouts list words the experts use to describe oils (grassy,
peppery, buttery, soft, etc.) to help us knowledgeably describe their smell and taste.

To round out our meal, we had baked, herbed ricotta to eat on the bread, falafel, stuffed grape leaves, and an orange-date salad. (Three ladies with not much else on their agenda for the day can make a fine lunch.) 

Stuffed grape leaves in the making. Yum!

Oranges, dates, almonds,
cinnamon and mint. Delish!

While I might never host another Olive Oil Tasting Party, as fun as it was, I am completely sold on the artisan bread. I found the recipe on this blog.

No-Knead Artisan Bread

3 1/4 cups flour

2 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

Mix flour, salt and yeast together, then add the water. Stir with a wooden spoon until it becomes a cohesive, craggy mass. 

Cover with plastic wrap poked with a toothpick or in a plastic container with the lid not entirely closed. Let it rise on the counter overnight and as long as 24 hours. It should get little bubbles or "eyes" on the top when it is ready to bake.

When you are ready to bake it, use well-floured hands to form it into a ball, manipulating it as little as possible. You can cut an X or slashes on top if you like. 

Let it rest while your oven preheats. 

Preheat oven and the baking dish to 450 degrees. 

When they are hot, carefully place the bread into the baking dish. 

Bake covered for 30 minutes. 

Uncover and bake until brown, about seven minutes. 

NOTES: --Whole wheat flour doesn't work well with this recipe.
--Kosher salt is strongly recommended. I made it with regular salt and was happy with the results. But maybe I don't know what I'm missing.
--Bake it in a 5.5 quart Dutch oven, on a baking sheet with a bowl inverted over it as a lid, in a crockpot insert with an ovenproof cover, or, as I did, any large glass casserole dish with a lid.

--If you like, you can add herbs and cheese when you  mix in the flour.

Bridging Transition

Image sourced from pixabay.com

Transition is an explosion of change and emotional upheaval. If you are going through a major life change (job switch, moving to a new community, etc.), you might find this bridge analogy a helpful one. We have. 

One side of the bridge is firmly planted on the soil of That Which is Familiar To You. For us, it was Ghana. We had daily routines, were comfortable with our roles, knew local prices, had a church, friends, and a place to belong. Here are words that have been used to describe this stage: 

• stable
• comfortable
• boring
• pleasant
• safe
• familiar

Stepping onto the first segment of the bridge begins the time of Unsettling. There are lots of goodbyes to say, belongings to sort, (in our case) an entire life to pack into totes, replacements to train. Hearts are filled with a strange mixture of sadness that comes with saying goodbye and the throbbing excitement of happy hellos to come. Goodbyes always include loss of some kind. In this stage, you begin to get a sense of what you are about to lose and what you will gain. Some descriptions from people who have been in this unsettling period are: 

• uncertainty
• excitement
• doubt 
• anxious
• busy
• exhausting
• tired of goodbyes
• sorting 

From there, you step into the center of the bridge, correctly labeled with a single word: CHAOS. The happiness of seeing family and the fun of eating cheeseburgers gets all tangled up with the uncertainty what is expected of you and the guilt of enjoying the good life while others are still working and suffering. Gains and losses, complete happiness and total sadness, it is all there. This is a time of: 

• overwhelm
• exhaustion
• frustration
• excitement
• guilt 
• fear
• stress
• dependence
• joy
• sadness
• don't fit in

The final stretch of the bridge is the Resettling stage. In this stage, you are becoming familiar with the new routines, house and vehicles are being acquired, and you learn the local price for peanut butter. You might be feeling:

• hope
• gratitude
• confidence
• relief

Experts say you have successfully crossed the bridge when you are settled in a house, job, and church. Routines are working. Home feels established. You have resettled.

Reader, perhaps you recognize yourself somewhere on this bridge. Transition is a process and can be a lengthy one, depending on the support you receive and the depths of your loss. Regardless of your pace or place on the bridge, take heart. Our God, Who never changes, is with you throughout your transition. 

And there is more good news: Bridges don't last forever. 

Goodbyes, Hellos, and Change

Several months ago, we said good-bye to the missionary team we were a part of for three uninterrupted years. We miss the sense of belonging that team-life gives you and, of course, we miss the team themselves.

Our family during the farewell the team held for us

We also said goodbye to Deeper Life, the church that had become our home and was filled with our friends. They held a farewell service for us, complete with a message from the district pastor, formal photographs, and gifts. We were deeply blessed by their love and care. 

We said goodbye to friends and pets, neighborhood and house, markets and the richness of overseas living. 

Two of Tyler's pets, turtles Tiny and Moses

Shortly thereafter, we said hello to 19 family members who met us at the airport. We flew through Paris, abandoning a visit to the Eiffel Tower on our short layover after multiple people discouraged us from going, including our French flight attendant. It was good we didn't risk it because it would have been too bad to be delayed in France with all this love waiting to be showered upon us.

 I almost always think of Heaven when I look back at these homecomings. The love, the connection, and the joy of reuniting is surely only a foretaste of what Heaven will be like.

  

On our last day in Ghana, we were able to have our favorite food one last time. I chose kenkey, a steamed, fermented corn dough eaten with a spicy sauce. 

And not many days later, we were enjoying an American breakfast buffet at an adorable country restaurant with my sister-in-law as our server

and made pizzas with Grandma.

We said goodbye to African field trips and said hello to American scenery.

A wild elephant in Mole National Park

I said goodbye to the dearth of sister-time and a lack of books and am soaking up the joy of both of them.

Book shopping with a sister in an attic when its raining.
 Does it get any better?

We three also went book shopping in an
unheated house in a bad snowstorm.
Sisters keep life far from boring.

Change, even good change, is associated with loss. In transitional periods, the good and the hard co-mingle, creating a melting pot of emotions that need to be processed and sorted. If you are going through a major life change right now, you might be interested in my next post, the Bridge of Transition. The analogy (not original with me) brought some clarity to the feelings associated with the pictures on this page. 

Scuffy and Me

“I was meant for bigger things!” Scuffy glared at us indignantly from his bathtub.

My two children ground an elbow apiece into my lap as they leaned over the book for a better view of the frustrated tugboat knocking his prow against the tub. While my children talked about his paint and facial expression, I recognized myself in Scuffy. I, too, was frustrated and chafing, bumping against life’s margins.

We were freshly settled in Accra, Ghana, and finding our way as hosts and Field Secretary for our mission. Our job was comprised of simple tasks almost anyone could do. An occasional comment from a colleague or guest suggested that we were doing satisfactory work, but I wasn’t finding fulfillment in it. Compared to the rich years we spent living in a village, this position felt insignificant. Although John was busy in town, my calendar had large, empty blotches, leaving me restless. Like Scuffy the Tugboat, I felt ready for bigger things.

At the apex of my inward chafing, we hosted Emanuel, our mission’s chairman who asked about our work. It was a basic report: Host guests. Run errands. Sit in traffic jams. Make airport runs. Process paperwork. Repeat.

When John stopped talking, Emanuel asked, “Do you feel fulfilled in what you are doing?”

John’s eyes were kind as he looked at me, knowing how I felt. He is the kind of guy who does what is needed without considering his own satisfaction or fulfillment. I’m not so selfless.

I took his look as my cue to speak. “I am having trouble feeling fulfilled.” Admitting it felt like defeat. “I had been warned that this station was lonely, but I didn’t know that lonely was synonymous with boring.”

Emanuel didn’t say a lot at the time, but his parting words the next morning would transform my years of service —and, perhaps, the rest of my life: “Remember that faithfulness is all God is asking of you.”

Life words, these! Like a swimmer bursts through the surface, gulping oxygen into depraved lungs, these words brought life back into my soul. Circumstances hadn’t changed, but I had been given purpose and freedom.

I closed the metal gates of our compound behind the departing men and recalled a phrase from a long ago sermon, “What is in your hand?”

When God asked Moses that question, Moses looked and saw a staff. God used that staff to perform miracles before Pharaoh and begin the deliverance of the Israelites.

On another occasion, a desperate widow went to a prophet to pour out the story of her unpayable debt. “What do you have in your house?” he asked. She had a small pitcher of oil. It wasn’t much, but it was all God needed to spare her sons and secure their future.

The question “What is in your hand?” together with the phrase, “Faithfulness is all God requires of you” created a bedrock of purpose for my future years of service. I determined to be faithful in any task God laid out for me, no matter how mundane.

In my hand that day was a basket of sheets and towels that needed to be washed. At hand, also, was a cleaning lady who needed a job and some instructions on what to do. It was a couple of children who were waiting for oversight in their schooling. I received each task as a God-given assignment. The widow didn’t grouse about the size of her oil cruse and neither would I, for faithfulness is all God asked of me.

That was the turning point for me in Accra. Fulfillment came. It wasn’t found in sheets or dusty floors or a filled calendar. It was found in the joy of knowing I pleased my Father with simple and faithful obedience.

Like Scuffy who learned that his bathtub was the right place for him, my position, too, fit me just right.

Tis the Season for. . .Applesauce?

We are back in the US, living in a house furnished and provided by the mission until we find one of our own. I plan to tell you a little bit about our transition back to the States but will do that on a later date. Right now, I thought you might appreciate the following post on making applesauce in December.  

"You know how big sisters have a way of convincing younger siblings to go along with their plans? They can make it sound really good and sell everybody on their ideas. Well, apparently they don't outgrow that trait. My big sister just did it again."

Dawn's lady friends were laughing at her good-natured comments, but there might have been an element of truth in her words: Doing a tri-family applesauce day on a cold day in December was Laura's idea. "The men and teens will help us some Saturday," she said. "It will be fun!" Fifteen bushels of fun.

Laura ordered a mixture of Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious, and Cortland apples and volunteered to pick them up."It doesn't look like too many apples in the back of my van," she said.

She sounded much more cheerful than Dawn and I felt. As the day approached, the two of us were second-guessing the wisdom of doing a mass operation. Our group chat reflected our hesitation.

Me: "Girls. Are we crazy? Fifteen bushels of apples?"

Dawn's immediate response: "We're crazy!"

Laura: "Fun, my dear, Fun! Corn day made great memories! (I was in Ghana when they did 100 dozen ears of corn together.) Maybe not all positive, but stories we can tell our great-grandchildren." 

Me: "My question is. . .how many stories do the great-grands need?" 

In the end, Laura was right, as big sisters often are. It truly was a fun day.

The men cooked everything outside and used a hose to rinse out the kettles between batches. They also helped cut up apples if they had nothing better to do.

Sometimes one of the slowest portions of doing applesauce is cranking cooked apples through a Victorio strainer. Our day was saved by the loan of a commercial machine that could churn through a large kettle of apples in about a minute.

Only four and a half hours after we started, all fifteen bushels were jarred and waiting to be canned. 309 quarts of applesauce, on the final count. I was impressed.

Equally impressive was that Laura had the interest and energy to make homemade apple fritters for everyone. For part of the morning, she split her time between helping with the applesauce operation and manning the fryer, making it look effortless while she was at it.

Quality control team

And since the deep fat fryer was already set up, at lunchtime Laura made everyone cheese fries, too.

After the applesauce was all in jars and the mess was cleaned up, we ladies brewed coffee and played Boggle while the men canned the fruit outside. (Three cheers for our husbands!) We took them coffee periodically and bowls of soup for supper, but they stayed with it all day. They were so cold by the end, one of them said, that their spinal fluid was gelling. Obviously their sense of humor hadn't met a similar fate.

In the future, Laura might be able to sell us on the idea of another tri-family applesauce marathon. Not only was it a fun and efficient way to make applesauce, I overheard her say something about making apple fritters an annual tradition.

A Matter of Perspective

     It was cold. At least, it felt cold to the two children dancing in the rain. Heads tilted against the torrential downpour, they came shrieking and laughing onto the porch for temporary shelter. Dripping wet, the younger one tapped my arm lightly the way you might touch a pan to see if it is too hot to carry.

    “Isn’t my hand cold?” Her eyes glittered with happiness. “It is so cold out here! It is as cold as when it snows! I think so!”

     And she dashed back into the rain.

     The thermometer in my kitchen read 92 degrees. Granted, in the rain outside, it was ten degrees cooler, but certainly not cold enough for snow.

     My daughter’s understanding of temperatures is warped from living in Africa for the past three years. America’s chill is long forgotten. But she knows that one day she will experience winter and this, this is how cold it will be!

     Even as I smiled at her skewed perspective, I realized we are the same, she and I.

     My expectations of Heaven are warped by today’s realities. Judging by what I read in the Bible and from life’s experiences, I try to imagine the intensity of being in His presence, to visualize what Heaven must look like. But earthly that I am, my best efforts cannot do justice to the glories that are to come.

     My shivering daughter returned to my side. She needed a towel and dry clothes. Her feet were cold, she said, and her arms were covered in goosebumps. I smiled, knowingly. One day soon she will find out what cold really is.

    After she was dry, we sat tightly together on the porch, my arms wrapped around her as we watched the rain. I tightened my hug, enjoying the moment. This, this togetherness must surely be like the love in Heaven.

     And my Father smiles, knowingly. One day soon I will find out.

The Largest Tree in West Africa

It wasn't meant to be an advertisement, but a passing comment of a friend sold me on the idea of seeing The Big Tree. "We saw a sign that pointed to the largest tree in West Africa," he said. "We were too busy to check it out, but it is only a couple hours from here."

Immediately, I wrote "The Big Tree" on my list of Places to Go Before Leaving Ghana. Part of the reason it appealed to me is that I am sorry to forever have missed my chance of driving through the giant sequoia in California.That iconic tree was something I wanted to see before I died. It felt like it would always be there, like maybe John and I could take a trip to the West Coast as retirees and see the tree then. But it fell. 

The largest tree in West Africa would help make up for my loss.

On our way home from our final visit to northern Ghana, we typed the tree's location into Google maps. Google maps has surprised us with its reliability and accuracy in Ghana. But this time it was wrong. The supposed fastest route ended up being a tractor path, wide enough for one car at a time. Grass grew between the tire tracks in some places. Over every hill, I expected the road to end in a farm. Everything was soggy because this is rainy season, and the truck slid around in deep mud. Villages were far between, so we discussed the possibility of being stranded in the mud on some out-of-the-way road, left to ourselves until the area dries out in January. The road had washouts and a narrow bridge made of uneven logs draped across a creek. 

Our uncertainty of this route taking us to our destination was reflected in occasional comments like: "Well, there are still tire tracks through here, so that is a good sign." 

After an hour and a half of poking along on this unbelievable road, we saw pavement and cheered. And a full two hours after Google maps' estimated time of arrival, we reached the Big Tree. Rain clouds were building all around us. Just when we stepped out of the truck, thunder rolled. But we were this close and had been jounced and bounced over such terrible roads that a little rain wasn't going to stop us. We trotted down the trail to the tree. 

And there it was, a 412-year-old Tieghemela heckle.This species is threatened with extinction since so many were harvested and they don't easily regenerate in the wild. 

The tree doesn't look very big on the pictures and was actually smaller in real life than I expected. But, still, it is a big tree, measuring thirty-nine feet in circumference and being nearly 220 feet tall. 

I would have liked to spend more time there, giving the children a chance to climb around at the base, to swing on the swing in a nearby tree, and to watch the army ant colony we stepped across. But it was starting to rain, and, worse, the baby somehow managed to bypass his diaper (?!) and hastened John's drenching. 

We raced back to the truck just as rain came down in torrents, satisfied that we had seen The Big Tree. 

(Just a side note for anyone else interested in visiting the tree: There is a nice road leading to the forest, but it comes in from the south, not the north. We found it on the way home.)