Christians and Casserole

Despite our occasional misogyny, homophobia, and hypocrisy, we Christians at times make very positive contributions to society.  If you're making a T-chart of pros and cons for my religion, I'd add "making casseroles" to the Pros column alongside "Mother Theresa" and "Martin Luther King".  Indeed, Christians are in top form when there's a new baby around, whipping up casseroles of every imaginable description for the new family.

It must be noted that our family stands in great debt to the folks at our church, who evidently organized families to deliver us two to three home cooked meals a week for over a month right after the twins were born.  It was apparently an amazing act of graciousness and community that really helped us pull through.  I wouldn't know, as I have no memories of any kind for a period of about two months after the girls' birth.

One of the families who brought us food during that hard stretch recently had an adorable baby of their own!  Our activity this Tuesday was to make and bring a meal to this family, at least attempting to repay some of their kindness to us, and hopefully not bringing them any runny nose viruses.  

Some readers may not realize that there are entire Christian cookbooks made to serve the demand for freezable post-partum meals.  Below is one such resource from our shelf.

The three branches of Christian government: School, Legislature, and Windmill

It offers several examples of fine Christian food, ranging from the elaborate...

What on Earth is going on in bullet point 5??

to the bizarre:

I think "luncheon meat" is a polite way to refer to non-email SPAM

While these options were promising, I do not usually have the time to cook with actual recipes.  Instead, I rely on a dangerous combination of memory and improvisation.  I get mixed results: carving the walnuts off the outside of a Christmas cheese log, melting the cheesy core to make a sauce for noodles was a great bet; approximating Ramen with Thai rice noodles boiled in water seasoned with Old Bay and Lawry's salt was a bad one.
For today's activity I think I manged ok, making a big pot of chili on Monday night after the kids went to bed.

With the chili made, the kids and I used Tuesday morning to focus on making congratulations cards and dessert, which was this layered brownie mix in a jar thing.

Janie adds some finishing touches

The kids learned the word "funnel"

The brownie mix turned out pretty good.  We only had to dump it out and start over once when Sam got carried away adding flour.

It was nice for the kids to meet the new baby when we brought the package over.  They played a little with the older sister while I bored the visiting grandparents with my views on school reform.  Before long we left the family to rest and  I took the kids to a nearby park, then home.  Unsurprisingly,  a 30-minute drive home listening to an NPR expert on Afghan-Pakistani relations put all three to sleep.

Feel free to post a comment: It's lunchtime and you're by yourself with three sleeping kids in carseats, parked in front of your house.  What do you do?

Fun Rating: 8 out of 10 The kids liked dumping brownie ingredients into the jar and making cards.  They had a good time meeting the baby, and crying at the park was minimal.  Miraculously, all three transfered from the car and kept sleeping, allowing Daddie to draft his blog entry and tidy the house!