Delicious Rice!

Hi all,

Here's an interesting way of cooking rice that I've tried and liked recently, it's especially good for plain white rice like Tastic, and I was delighted to discover that it also gets (usually chewy) brown rice SOFT! It's a double-boiling method.
I was skeptical at first thinking it was going to take longer, need more attention, too fussy, etc but was pleasantly surprised. No more soggy, flavourless rice for me!
Now its soft, but firm, with a delicious buttery taste.
Brilliant with curries, stews, stir-fries, etc. Suitable for all types of rice. For traditionally longercooking, long-grain rices use more water. I find it shorter in cooking time, and not much more effort - just the rinsing which isn't a big deal - and definitely worth the flavour. My son and husband completely endorse this way of cooking rice now :) :)

First, wash rice well, use a whisk, and quickly rinse 2 or 3 times until water runs clear.
Then fill pot generously with water: 1 part rice, 3 or 4 parts water.

Boil on high until water completely/mostly evaporates, just keep an eye on the last bit so rice doesn't burn!
Being very careful of heated pot, and using whisk again, rinse rice a few times thoroughly with cold water, until discarded water runs clear.

Now add just enough water to see it through the top of the grains, ie: just under surface of rice.
Mix in a tablespoon of butter or margarine, a pinch of salt, and boil again. Stir a few times until marg/butter has melted into water.
As water nears bottom, part the rice carefully with fork/spoon to see if water's all gone, fluff up rice and enjoy!

You can also save on more expensive rices, but increase the nutritional value and get a pretty presentation, if you mix ordinary white rice with brown rice in a half-half ratio, or with rice mixes - brown rice, lentils, split peas, sundried tomatoes.

What exactly is Grace?

The late pastor and Bible scholar Donald Barnhouse perhaps said it best: “Love that goes upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection; love that stoops is grace.”

To show grace is to extend favour or kindness to one who doesn’t deserve it and can never earn it. Receiving God’s acceptance by grace always stands in sharp contrast to earning it on the basis of works. Every time the thought of grace appears, there is the idea of its being undeserved. In no way is the recipient getting what he or she really deserves. Favour is being extended simply out of the goodness of the heart of the giver.

One more thing should be emphasized about grace: It is absolutely and totally free. You will never be asked to pay it back. You couldn’t even if you tried. Most of us have trouble with that thought, because we work for everything we get. As the old saying goes, “There ain’t no free lunch.” But in this case, grace comes to us free and clear, no strings attached. We should not even try to repay it; to do so is insulting.

Imagine going to the house of a friend who has invited you over to enjoy a meal. You finish the delicious meal and then listen to some fine music and visit for a while. Finally, you stand up and get your things as you prepare to leave. But before you leave, you reach into your pocket and say, “Now, how much do I owe you?” What an insult! You don’t do that with someone who has graciously given you a meal. Isn’t it strange, though, how this world is running over with people who think there’s something they must do to pay God back? Somehow they are hoping God will smile on them if they work really hard and earn His acceptance, but that’s an acceptance on the basis of works. That’s not the way it is with grace.

And now that Christ has come and died and thereby satisfied the Father’s demands on sin, all we need to do is claim His grace by accepting the free gift of eternal life. Period. He smiles on us because His Son’s death and resurrection.

Amazing, this grace! Remarkable, the freedom and release it brought. And it came in full force from the only One on earth who has unlimited power, The Son of God.

My plea is that we not limit it to Him. We, too, can learn to be just as gracious as He. And since we can, we must... not only in our words and in great acts of compassion and understanding but in small ways as well.

 - Taken from Chapter 1, The Grace Awakening by Charles R. Swindoll

Earliest Grace Killers

The human heart cries out to be free.
Everything within us fights against the bondage of tyranny and oppression. Our souls were not made to live in cages of fear that restrict us from the joys of liberty. Once we get a taste of such relief, our appetite for more becomes consuming. It is every bit as true for God's people who have existed too long in the suffocating grip of legalistic demands and expectations.

There are killers on the loose today. The problem is that you can't tell by looking. They don't wear little buttons that give away their identity, nor do they carry signs warning everybody to stay away. On the contrary, a lot of them carry Bibles and appear to be clean-living, nice-looking, law-abiding citizens. Many are so respected in the community, their neighbours would never guess they are living next door to killers.
They kill freedom, spontaneity, and creativity; they kill joy as well as productivity. They kill with their words and their pens and their looks. They kill with their attitudes far more often than with their behaviour. The amazing thing is that they get away with it, day in and day out, without being confronted or exposed. Their intolerance is tolerated. Their judgemental spirits remain unjudged. Their bullying tactics continue unchecked. And their narrow-mindedness is either explained away or quickly defended. The bondage that results would be criminal were it not so subtle and wrapped in such spiritual-sounding garb.

John puts the capstone on his introductory remarks by summing up the difference between contrastive styles of ministry: "For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17) Let's look at the example of the Pharisees.
Obsessed with duty, external conduct, and a constant focusing only on right and wrong (especially in others' lives), they promoted a system so demanding there was no room left for joy. This led to harsh, judgemental, even prejudicial pronouncements as the religious system they promoted degenerated into external performance rather than internal authenticity. Obedience became a matter of grim compulsion instead of a joyous overflow prompted by love.

But when "grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ", a long-awaited revolution of the heart began to set religious captives free. Fearful bondage motivated by guilt was replaced with a fresh motivation to follow Him in truth simply out of deep devotion and delight. Rather than focusing on the accomplishments of the flesh, He spoke of the heart. Instead of demanding that the sinner fulfill a long list of requirements, He emphasized faith, if only the size of a mustard seed.
The change spelled freedom, as the Lord Himself taught: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). Rigid, barren religion was, at last, replaced by a grace-oriented relationship - liberating grace. His followers loved it. His enemies hated it... and Him. Without a doubt, the earliest grace killers were the Pharisees.

- Taken from Chapter 1, The Grace Awakening by Charles R. Swindoll

Blood Type?

After doing some looking into Blood Types, and whether there really is an ideal range of food that each blood type should be eating, my husband Nick gleefully pounced on the fact that he's an O+ and I'm and A+
I think... I guess...  I'm not actually sure.. I had a child, had surgery in hospital, do blood tests, etc... but I'm thinking I vaguely remember being A+... shocking I know. The book's called Eat Right For Your Type.

So, according to this dietary theory - which sounds pretty logical - here's where you add your COMMENTS and let me know whether you think this is completely unfounded, or could be true -
He is an O+, and is therefore "A Meat Eater!"
cue angels singing sweetly, Lion King-like ray of light strategically shining through cloud, confetti raining down, cheerleaders, etc etc

He is so pleased at this that he refused to eat rice for supper last night, "Dear, my blood type says I'm not supposed to eat too many grains", and happily turns to me to ask when next I'm going grocery shopping because the book says he can technically have meat everyday, for almost every meal if he wanted to, as long as its balanced with enough veg.. the right veggies, mind... not mushrooms, potatoes, sweetcorn, and a bunch of others he was reading out to me last night... He did remark this morning that Avocados are on his Foods To Avoid list, but while longing looking at the last one on the kitchen counter, that he might make an exception for them.... :)

For those of you who KNOW my husband, look again, yes, up there, read carefully.... Yes!! HE READ!!! Nick doesn't read (or so he says). Rather he claims often, and loud, and clear, that he's allergic to books, that they make him fall asleep, and he can't see why anyone would waste good time reading...

So, I'm thinking that if he's so interested in food, and while he's on this quest to discover as much as he can Justify to Eat, maybe I'll buy him some more food books... as long as he's reading, right?

This Law of Culture

"And you must know this law of culture: two civilizations cannot know and understand one another well. You will start going deaf and blind. You will be content in your civilization surrounded by the hedge, but signals from the other civilization will be as incomprehensible to you as if they had been sent by the inhabitants of Venus. If you feel like it, you can become an explorer in your own country. You can become Columbus, Magellan, Livingstone. But I doubt that you will have such a desire. Such expeditions are very dangerous, and you are no madman, are you?"
- Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor

WALLS

Man is
a great wall builder
The Berlin Wall
The Wailing Wall of Jerusalem
But the wall
most impregnable
Has a moat
flowing with fright
around his heart

A wall without windows
for the spirit to breeze through

A wall
without a door
for love to walk in.

- Oswald Mtshali, Soweto Poet

My Traitor's Heart

"Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart - Blood and Bad Dreams: A South African Explores the Madness in His Country, His Tribe and Himself." In 1977, Rian Malan, descendant of Daniel Francois Malan, South Africa's first nationalist Prime Minister, and one of the master builders of apartheid, fled his homeland to live in America. Eight years later he returned from exile to face the paradox, his family history, his conscience, and to write this book. This is his first book, published in 1990.

I borrowed this book from my dear friend, Heather, following our conversation after braaing at their farm way up in the mountains behind Malkerns/Matsapha area (Swaziland, for the tourists). She is a South African, married to Zakari, a Finn, living and farming trees in rural Swaziland. Nick (my husband) is Cape Town-born, but Swazi-raised; and I am Dutch, but born and raised in Swaziland.

Anyway, we were talking about how little I felt I had been affected by Apartheid, even though it was just across the border. For all I comprehend racism, it could come from another world. I stated that I felt blessed to have been raised in Swaziland. Sheltered from the worst of the hate, but surrounded by the best of all that multi-culturism offers...

When at first, I had declared Apartheid had not touched me much, I realised on reflection, and as I was reading this book... that just as the Holocaust had been experienced by all my older Dutch relatives in some personal way, Apartheid has touched and shaped, and defined all in Southern Africa... maybe some in varying degrees, but all, yes. Is anyone who has lived in Southern Africa, then or now, truly untouched? No, of course not.

Rian Malan worked as a journalist/reporter throughout the time, and courageously pursued some tragic, truth telling stories, and at a time when people were being given so much half-informed and overly-optimistic simplification; at a time when asking the wrong questions, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, being the wrong colour, was life threatening.

No one who reads it could ever forget it. I recommend you read it. Below are other people's quotes, etc. taken from within Malan's book:

"The book Rian Malan set out to write was altogether more conventional than the one he has written. It was supposed to be a history of the great and detested Malan family, as told by its kafferboetie (that is, "brother of blacks", "nigger-lover") renegade. But along the way he ran into, and faced up to, the truth that is the making of his book - that for all his nigger-loving, leftist views, for all his long hair and days smoking zol (dope) on the hillsides in the mystical Tolkeinish company of "wise old Afs", for all his daubing pro-black slogans on the walls of Johannesburg's northern suburbs, where scarcely a black would ever see them, he was still a Malan; that he could only write about the atrocity of South Africa by admitting the atrocity hidden in his own traitorous heart... Here, as in nothing I've read before, is the demotic voice of black and Afrikaaner South Africa... The old woman, Creina Alcock, tells Rian Malan: "Love is worth nothing until it has been tested by its own defeat... Love is to enable you to transcend defeat." My Traitor's Heart, which tells us of the defeat of its author's illusions, his ideals, his sense of his own goodness, his courage, and his ability to comprehend his fellow South Africans as they dance their death-dances, which is full of bitterness, cynicism, anger and storms, is a triumphant instance of this type of defeated love." 
- Salman Rushdie -

"How do I live in this strange place?" - Bernoldus Niemand, from the Boer reggae song, "Reggae Vibes Is Cool"

"We are betrayed by what is false within" - George Meredith

"I found myself haunted by an impression I myself would not understand. I kept thinking that the land smelled queer. It was the smell of blood, as though the soil was soaked with blood." - Carl Jung, upon arriving in Africa

"What then shall we do?" - Leo Tolstoy

"Africa is a cruel country; it takes your heart and grinds it into powdered stone - and no-one minds." - Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika

Check It Out!

By the way, Tash's blog is called "My Journey to a Place Unknown" you'll find it at http://swazitash.blogspot.com/

FOLLOW (see here's the key word, don't be shy people, click "follow", Mine too please!) her preparations for her trip to Italy, and The Challenge :) :)

Reflection on Giving and Receiving

The book I'm reading at the moment (really, like NOW, because Wednesday's book was different), is "Gifts" by Nuruddin Farah.
Gifts is Duniya's story. She is a single mother of two (actually 3, her teen boy & girl twins, and a 9 yr old girl by husband #2) with a demanding job at the maternity hospital in war-torn Mogadiscio, in a world where she has to battle for independence and self-sufficiency. An impossible load at the hospital, the food and fuel shortages, the war, and the narrow constraints of Islamic society pin her down.
Then, just as she reluctantly gets romantically involved with the charming and wealthy Basaaso, her daughter brings home a mysterious abandoned baby boy (The Nameless One) found in a rubbish bin.
Part love story, part mystery, the plot turns on the idea of gifts and the price you pay for accepting them. Ranging from a simple cooking pot to the cargoes of foreign food-aid dumped in Somalia, and even to Duniya's gift of her sexuality, Gifts is a complex and fascinating reflection on giving and receiving, written in a surprisingly earthy, opulently lyrical style. Her honest interactions with her twins, the cultural greetings and language dances are interwoven with snippets of her whimsical, often symbolic day-dreaming. Duniya's name means "the cosmos". (I love names and their meanings!)
I haven't finished it yet, probably by tonight. There isn't a whole lot of writing coming out of Somalia, although the country's drawn me for years. With a horrifc civil war raging for more than 20 years, and a beautiful people caught in the crossfire, the world has grown tired of hearing how desperate the situation is, and having become jaded has accepted that that's what Somalia's like, and will most likely ever be. Pirates hijacking oil tankers is about it as far as news coverage goes.
I love this book's humour and foreign-ness, and the main character's intelligent thinkings.

Tash has unleashed a monster!

"It's ALIVE!! Mmwhuaahaahahaha!!!!!"
Tashy is so darn inspiring that here we are... Exciting! :)  I. Have. A. Blog.
She's going to wish she never sent me her link so I could have a look. Mind you, her one is personable, challenging, witty, honest, fun, it has purpose! ... mine... well, mine's going to be a tad deranged.