Of French Toast, Contentment and Simple Things

 Everyone should eat French Toast occasionally, but only if you make it from yummy ingredients.

I made white bread (just this once we'll ignore the old saying 'the whiter your bread, the quicker you're dead') and added candied fruit. The next day it was just begging to be made into French Toast.  Seriously.

 Day old, it sliced up fabulously (what was so great about presliced bread, I'd like to know?)

I beat up eggs (our own, of course, from feisty Black Austrolorp hens), add in copious amounts of vanilla & cinnamon and mellow it out with fresh milk.  Did I mention it is goat milk?   And artificial vanilla?  Don't even go there.  Real stuff, all the way.

 Dip it, slap it on the griddle, flip it,  and in about 5 minutes you've got breakfast!  Be sure to put real butter & real maple syrup on it.  After all, what would be the point of eating fake food?

Voila, the finished product.  (Have you ever noticed how many times people spell VOILA incorrectly?  I've seen such horrid examples as 'wa-la' and 'walla'.  Oh dear.)  (Have you ever noticed how many times I put things in parenthesis?)

On another note, Christmas is past now and we look ahead to the New Year.  I always feel melancholy at Christmas.  My kids haven't married, so no extended family there.  I'm an only child..no family there either.  I only ever knew my Mom's side of the family and most of them have passed away.  Christmas nowadays is very quiet.

I guess I didn't appreciate it as fully as I should have.  This Christmas I spent the day in my recliner with a heating pad on my painful lower abdomen (enough information there!).  At about 4 the next morning, my husband and I travelled the 30+ miles to the hospital emergency room, where I was subjected to many unpleasant experiences until it was determined that I have diverticulitis.  Seriously...me?  But I'm only.....never mind.   This was NOT on my Christmas list. 

Now I'm home and taking antibiotics and trying to be happy to sit in a chair.  I prefer to be moving all the time from arising in the morning, until I hit my bed at night.  This......this just SITTING.....makes me twitch.
And while everyone else is eating delicious leftovers from Christmas dinner (with GRAVY, no less!) I am reduced to chicken broth and jello.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm writing this tongue-in-cheek.  I am THRILLED to be home in my recliner as opposed to tensely waiting on a hospital bed.  I LOVE our home canned chicken broth and feel fortunate to be in my own home sipping it, comforting heating pad & all.  The jello became a joke as for some reason my daughters seem incapable of making jello that actually sets up (today was no exception) so I mustered up all my gumption and made it myself.  Don't laugh, but it now is calling to me from the fridge....cool, orangey, practically solid!

It was a great Christmas.  I love my kids, my husband, my mom.  We are so blessed to have Mom still with us after all her health issues this past year.  The Lord blesses us richly every day and I'm grateful. 

I think I'll go see if the jello set up.  And I'll be thankful with every nibble for a lovely quiet Christmas just past. 

Thank you Lord Jesus for every earthly gift you've bestowed upon us this year, but especially for the promise of salvation sent down those many long years ago to that lowly manger in Bethlehem.  We are undeserving, but oh so grateful.