The Scroll #193 Chicken Bites, Lentil Soup and Feral Cats

​ ​ Hello My Dearest One! How was your week? Was it the BEST? Was it the WORST? Was it somewhere in between? I'm hoping you are smiling and saying, "this one was the best" because your smile means the world to me. I'm sitting here at my kitchen table in the o'dark thirty drinking a hot cup of coffee wondering what the day will hold. The power went off yesterday morning at about 5am and I thought about getting up and writing to you then, but then realized I couldn't because I write this letter via an online software that I can't access if I don't have internet (which I don't when the power is out). Anyway, isn't that the weird thing about doing things online? Everything. Absolutely everything depends on electricity. I'm going to refrain from writing about my own personal celebration about longer days and warmer weather because I know not everyone is experiencing that, but hallelujah, we are here in the south. (I just wrote about it though, didn't I?). Anyway, you came for the food and here it is..... This week, I shared my good friend Mary's recipe for some Bacon Wrapped Marinated Chicken Bites. I DO MEAN they are good. I marinate them in the Lawrys Jerk Seasoning, but Mary uses Italian Dressing and they are delicious either way! Remember I told you about the argument regarding boiled eggs and how I got my feelings hurt? Yeah. I'm over it and we made up and everything is hunky dory. He also reminded me that I had been wanting to write about great seasoning to try on your boiled eggs and so I did. Here it is. ​Lentil Soup and Old El Paso Tacos are very popular over on YouTube with Sarah's people. ________________________________ HOT COOKING TIP OF THE WEEK Hot air in the oven is everything. It's everything. I know how ridiculous that sounds. But so many times I've personally made the mistake of overcrowding the oven and opening the oven too much thereby cooling the oven off, which doesn't work for roasting, baking or anything else you need an oven for. What you need to know about ovens... Heat rises. While your oven is designed to hold a steady and constant temperature, you'll also find that the top shelf runs a little hotter usually. That is why if you are baking on several shelves, you'll want to rotate your items half way through. If you have two pans of food in the oven, don't place them directly one over the top of the other if you can help it. Allow the heat to circulate as much as possible. When cooking anything, allow the heat to circulate as much as possible - so spread things out. Convection cooking blows a fan inside the oven to circulate the hot air and also, it makes it take longer to come to temperature. You might want to bring the oven to temp and then turn on the convection baking part. It'a always a good idea to get a separate read on the temp inside the oven. You can get a separate oven thermometer at the store, set it on the shelf and check the temp - see what's happening in there! If something is looking too brown on top, cover it with aluminum foil. Do you need something to brown and bubble on top? Remove the aluminum foil. _______________________________ THREE LITTLE THINGS I'm trying to be more thankful in my day to day life for the little things and sharing that here. It helps me to remember the larger things and keeps me humble. Maybe you need some of those reminders too? I'm thankful for my half feral but now pretty tame cat. He demands my attention and love. He requires that I sit down and hold him and pet him. When I do so, he rewards me by laying his head on my upper arm or hiding his head under my arm and that is just so sweet. It took forever for us to get to this point and I appreciate his trust so much. In other cat news, my friend who doesn't like cats at all has taken over feeding a cat that was left behind by his neighbors. I started doing it myself and now when I'm not there, he lovingly feeds the cat and gives him fresh water. That's really something, I think. This is a big thing to me BUT my foster dogs are probably getting their own REAL home this weekend and I couldn't be more happy for them! I'm taking a break from fostering for a while after I see them off. I've had four in the past year and I'm tired. ______________________________ A FINAL WORD I don't know if you have noticed or not, but the internet is changing. It's always changing. Over the next couple of years, I suspect you will notice a number of websites will change to a "members only" status and the freedom to roam the internet at will without giving out permissions and emails will be a thing of the past. It will probably happen at Loaves and Dishes too. I already ask that you sign up for some basic info and that helps me to know how to serve you better. It isn't mandatory at this point though. Consider something for a moment if you will. I spend hours and hours per week writing this website. Sarah spends hours producing food videos for you on YouTube. The supplies cost something as does the equipment (pans, stove, cameras, camera holders, etc. etc.). There are costs associated with the website to keep it running and healthy. We enjoy doing what we do and are so blessed to get to do it. We make our income through the ads that you see on the website and on YouTube and sometimes when you buy things on Amazon through our recommendations. Currently, the website collects information about the things you look at when you are casting around the internet (what shoes you like, the cars you look at, etc.) and then when you visit a website, including mine, you see ads for those things. In the future, you won't be followed around like this with your information collected. Also, some websites won't allow you onto their website unless you give up your email address (or something). I haven't made these changes yet and I hope I don't have to but I feel the day is coming sooner rather than later. I want you to know that I will never ever sell your information to anyone. Ever. Promise. If you visit the Loaves and Dishes website in the future and notice some of these changes, I want you to be able to say, "Oh yeah, Wendi told me about this" so it won't be such a shock and a surprise. Sometimes changes like this come and it sounds initially like such a good thing (privacy on the internet) but what actually happens is that what we have been used to doing crumbles before our very eyes (freely traversing the internet and looking at whatever we want). Anyway, no changes are afoot yet. But because I'm noticing that my own favorite websites are starting to have changes like this (mostly news sites), I thought I would mention it and try to help explain it. Wishing you the very best week ever. See you next week, God willing and the creeks don't rise! Love you! Wendi ​ ​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | PO Box 82 , Danbury, NC 27016