Disclaimer: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
These non-stick pots and pans are dishwasher safe. But the best feature of the Gotham Steel Stackable Pots and Pans Set – Stackmaster Complete 10 Piece Cookware Set is that they are stackable.
I don’t mean just that they can be heaped one upon another. These pots and pans have a purposeful design that allows them to be stacked together in such a way to prevent the non-stick coating from being scratched, and to compact the stack into the shortest possible piles.
The fry pans are grouped together and the pots are assembled separately. The lids fit closely upon each other.
Besides having a great set of cookware that takes up very little space, it isn’t hard to find the piece you need. Every pot and pan is organized and right where it should be.
I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to get in the kitchen and start making something delicious!
It’s a week until Thanksgiving Day, so there’s still time to order and have this set to prepare your Thanksgiving Dinner!
This book opens with a few words from Joni Eareckson Tada, a well known Christian quadriplegic. She learned to trust God to write her story, not at all one she would have written herself, but one she praises Him for now.
Both Robert Wolgemuth and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth have extensive backgrounds in writing, so it’s no surprise they should write a book about writing a story. First they cover the parts of a story, information I was familiar with and not so excited to cover again.
Then they looked at a couple Bible stories – Joseph and Esther – which I was also familiar with, but now I was starting to see how to apply their premise: You can trust God to write your story.
Together, Nancy and Robert have an amazing story of their own to tell. Parts of their story are interspersed between the chapters of this book.
The book continued with examples from the lives of people they knew personally, in sections which titles start, “You can trust God to write your story when…”
Some of the situations looked at included, you lose your health, your children break your heart, when you lose a loved one, and when you’re facing death.
Suddenly this book to which I was just giving mental assent, engaged every neuron. The synapses were firing, saying back up and take another look at that part about trusting God to write your story when your child breaks your heart.
One Christian couple (not the first ones I’ve read about or known in my life) had a son who had followed the Lord, then announced he was gay. Another Christian couple had a son who had moved away – they didn’t know where – carried by addiction. They hadn’t seen or heard from him in years. They didn’t know if he was dead or alive.
My own broken heart wasn’t born from the exact circumstances of either of those prodigal children, but my children’s situations are close enough for me to seize upon the conclusions the gay son’s parents have arrived at (paraphrased):
My husband and I cannot change my child’s heart.
We are not responsible to fix our child. Our adult child is responsible for his/her own decisions.
We won’t stop loving them or praying for them. And to those I will add another:
I can trust God to write the rest of their story. Is my heart still broken because my children are not walking with God? Of course! But my perspective is changed when I trust God that He is good, and His plan for me and my children is good. Is there a chapter in your life you are wondering how it will end? Perhaps you can gain some insight from this book. I did.
Holiday shopping time will be here before you know it. Even if you aren’t in the mood to buy presents, maybe you’d like to tighten up a little before Turkey Day. To that end I’m going to let you know what I found out when I reviewed three different yoga mats.
I reviewed one rubber mat and two foam mats. Let’s start with the rubber mat.
The AmazonBasics Rubber
& Suede Yoga Mat, Blue 0.16“, is as its name implies, made of rubber with
the top surface of suede. The rubber mat seems to have developed a loyal group
of users. Many people prefer the suede surface for its stability and softness.
They also like the rubber material because they believe it moves around less
than a foam mat.
These two possible
benefits do not outweigh the biggest shortcoming for me. A rubber mat like this
one is at least twice as heavy as a foam mat. This may not be quite as
important if you are doing your workouts at home and do not have to take your
mat back and forth to class. But when portability matters the extra weight of
the rubber can be a big drawback.
In its favor, the AmazonBasics Rubber & Suede Yoga Mat
does come with a nifty nylon carrying bag. The bag has a large-hole,
fish-net-like weave in the center portion to let your mat breathe, and maybe
keep some of the funk from compounding as if it were shut up in a gym locker.
Also in this mat’s favor, in comparison to the standard foam
yoga mat, this rubber and suede mat is half a foot longer. Although this does
contribute slightly to the weight, if you are over 5’6” and laying on your back
you may appreciate the longer length.
I gave the AmazonBasics Rubber & Suede Yoga Mat a solid 3
Stars. But if you work out at home and are tall, I can see a clear case for a
higher rating.
Now let’s look at foam mats. First, the FILA Assessories Yoga Mat.
I like that the FILA Accessories Yoga Mat – Classic Exercise Mat with Carrying Strap Sling for Yoga, Pilates, Stretching & Floor Workouts is light weight and very portable. It comes with a string slip-knot sling to make it even easier to schlep to class, if that’s where you do your workouts.
The FILA mat seems to be made of some type of foam which gives it that light-weight property, as well as providing cushioning. It is 5 mm thick, which seems pretty standard for this type of foam mat.
The surface is designed with miniature bumps and has an element of tackiness, especially once it is moistened with perspiration. The manufacturer recommends it be wiped down after use. I did not detect any chemical or other unpleasant odors from the FILA mat.
Also standard for this type of foam mat is the 68 inch by 24 inch dimension, or about five and a half feet long by two feet wide. Another nice feature of the FILA yoga mat is the price point, which at $19.99 is good in comparison to similar mats.
I awarded the FILA mat 5 stars. It held it’s ground in price point, weight, and features.
And finally, let’s take a look at another foam mat, the Gaiam Yoga Mat.
This Gaiam
Yoga Mat – Premium Print 5mm Thick Exercise & Fitness Mat for All Types of
Yoga, Pilates & Floor Exercises ranked highly in just about every category.
As a foam mat, it is very light weight and portable, which makes a difference if you are carrying your mat to class. Although it is advertised as being 5 mm thick, the foam seemed more compressed than the same thickness FILA mat.
If you are a self-starter, the Gaiam Yoga Mat offers a free download workout to get going. You don’t have the excuse of having to find a class or not knowing how to do the poses or exercises. This is a feature unique to Gaiam of the three mats I reviewed.
As a personal preference, I would rather not have the mandala design which is associated with certain eastern religions.
My Conclusions:
Of the three yoga mats I reviewed, FILA comes in as my favorite for being the lowest priced, tied for the lightest weight, and having the string sling. The surface texture has adequate stickiness and there is good cushioning. For me, there were no major drawbacks with the FILA.
See the chart to make comparisons of the features that are important to you, and pick your favorite.
Born nearly blind with cataracts, her family foreigners in Vietnam, there were no doctors to correct Julie’s sight. Her spirit-worshipping grandmother commanded Julie be taken to an herbalist who would concoct a potion to make her sleep…forever. Fortunately the herbalist refused to cooperate.
So it truly was a miracle that her family fled to America and Julie was able to get surgery that preserved some of her sight. Still legally blind, she felt she had to prove that she was just as smart and could do anything the sighted kids could. She traveled the world, studied, and eventually graduated from Harvard Law School. Julie even met the love of her life and lived the dream she never thought would come true; she married and had children.
Stage IV colon cancer came worse than a punch in the gut on a trip across the country for a family wedding. In a whirlwind of pain and emotions Julie experienced crisis with unfamiliar doctors, panic sparked by what her symptoms could foretell, transcontinental consultations with medical professionals, and urgent directives to transfer to a different hospital to have emergency surgery. In Julie’s mind, this is where her miracle life began to unwind.
Julie began keeping a blog, somewhat introspective, painfully honest, and real. As her followers grew, Random House took note and offered to edit the blog into Julie’s memoir. Thus the book begins, “If you are here, then I am not, but it’s OK.”
Available in Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, and Paperback.
“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
The Anova Culinary AN500-US00 Anova Precision Cooker, 1000 Watts, Black and Silver is a cooking tool that uses the sous vide method of cooking. Sous vide (pronounced “soo veed”) is French, and its literal meaning is rendered, “under vacuum”. If I hadn’t looked that up I might have guessed it meant, “You ain’t eatin’ anytime soon.”
If the microwave is too slow for you, the sous vide method will be beyond your tolerance. Most things take at least an hour and a half to two hours to cook. But, if you have the patience, you will be rewarded with gastronomic delights.
Perhaps also from the French are the precise, unhurried methods, meticulous preparation, and careful presentation of food that results in world renowned dishes, chefs, and restaurants. Plan for a good couple hours for meal preparation with your Anova Precision Cooker. If you are cooking a steak to precise doneness, you will have exact results – every time – but cooking may take a good two hours.
The first step is to affix the Anova Precision Cooker to the inside of a large pot, and add water to between the minimum and maximum levels indicated on the cooker.
Place your food in a vacuum sealed plastic bag. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, you can put your food in a Zip-loc bag. Push most of the air out of the Zip-loc bag and immerse the food under the water. That will cause most of the rest of the air to come out and you can zip the bag closed. If the food is heavy it may stay on the bottom. Otherwise weight it down, while also clipping the edge of the bag to the edge of the pan opposite the Anova Precision Cooker.
If a cookbook came with my cooker I must have misplaced it, but that’s not a problem in this internet age. I had two pieces of frozen salmon I wanted to cook, so I checked a few recipes and settled on a temperature of about 135 degrees F for about one and a half hours. The fish I bought already had seasoning on it, but you could add olive oil and your favorite herbs.
The time and temperature are easy to set on the Cooker. After setting it up and getting it started, the cooker heats the water as it circulates it in the pan.
I checked on the progress a couple times over the next hour, but I was working on something and didn’t want to stop when the timer went off. I assumed the cooker would automatically turn off when the time was up. Not so!
When I finally got to the kitchen, there was no burnt pan or ruined fish. The timer on the Precision Cooker was sitting on 00.00, but the cooker was still humming away and circulating the hot water. Neither the fish nor the pan was any worse for the extra cooking. The Anova Precision Cooker seemed just fine too.
Depending on what you cooked, this is the point where you would clean off any congealed blood and sear the outside, putting on some grill marks, and adding the final seasoning. My fish turned out flaky and tasty!
The best foods to cook with the sous vide method are eggs, and meat, especially the tough cuts of meat. High end restaurants frequently use sous vide to cook your steak to perfection. Pork does well, cooked by sous vide. Carrots are a vegetable that you can cook easily with this method.
You can also run your Anova Precision Cooker from an app on your phone. You don’t even need to be at home!
If you love food – not so much in the sense of stuffing your face – but love to cook, love to experiment, love to arrange presentation, love to deftly blend flavors, then I think you will love the ability this machine has to cook food precisely. You will be enthralled by the possibilities such a device will make available to you. Maybe “you ain’t eatin’ anytime soon”, but that’s not the important thing.
https://amzn.to/344MlNK #PaidLink “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
“The link below is a paid link. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
The United States in 100 Words, authored by Nancy Dickmann
and illustrated by Paul Boston, is a enjoyable children’s book which is so
engrossing, they will learn about nature, industry, history, government,
culture, American values, and the mathematical concept of 100, before they realize
it. Icons at the top of each page show which category or categories that topic
draws from (besides math, which permeates every page).
The concept of the book is based on 100. One hundred words
were chosen to represent America, words like Plains, Canyon, Vegas,
Prohibition, Woodstock, Volunteer, and Rosa (Parks). Each of these 100 words
has its own page, and that word is described in – you guessed it – one hundred
words. The descriptions are therefore concise and not overwhelming. Each of the main 100 words has its own large
illustration.
Dickmann herself acknowledges that the words she chose to
represent our country are a reflection of who she is and her personal
experiences, although she did try to reach outside of that realm, as well as
into the future and back at history to get a list that would represent all
Americans.
Resources in the back of the book include a Timeline, a map
of the United States with all 50 states labeled, a short glossary, a short
index, and a list of references where more information can be found.
Much can be learned
from this book. If you have a child who loves to soak up facts, this is a
sponge waiting to be squeezed out in a delightful way.
“Do Angels Really Have Wings? And 199
Other Questions about God, Life and the Bible” is a compilation of questions and answers
collected over the past thirty years from broadcast and print content developed
in association with The Moody Bible Institute.
Although the title, “Do
Angels Really Have Wings?” may sound lighthearted, this book doesn’t
shrink from also answering more serious questions related to the Christian
faith. Don’t fear you will be bogged down in theology. All the answers are
short and to the point, and are designed to give you a better understanding of some
of the things Christians have long pondered, and things that have been a stumbling
block to the world.
Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t
do something about the pain and suffering in the world? What happens to babies
when they die? How can a good god send anyone to hell? Where did Cain get his
wife? Will I know my spouse in heaven? Did Adam have a belly button?
The questions can be searched by the subject or scripture indexes in the back of the book, making it not just good reading, but a useful reference. If you’re looking for a good answer book for yourself or possibly for a gift, I recommend “Do Angels Really Have Wings?”
Born
for This: My Story in Music is the memoir of Benjamin, “BeBe”, Winans. Born
into the large Winans family of Winans Family Singers fame, BeBe was the
youngest son of ten children. BeBe watched his older brothers work diligently
under the tutelage of their father David, or “Skippy”, first in the church choir
and then as they formed their own Gospel group.
Skippy
was strict but loving. They had to give their best for God, but there was to be
no boastful pride should they succeed. BeBe longed to join his older brothers
on the stage, to make singing his career too.
He worked hard and begged God and his parents for his chance, but was
told he wasn’t ready yet.
Finally
BeBe and his younger sister CeCe were allowed to travel from Detroit to North
Carolina to audition for Jim and Tammy Bakker’s televised PTL program. To BeBe’s
dismay his sister made the cut, but he didn’t. Since CeCe was still shy of 16
years old, BeBe offered to go to North Carolina to live with her so she could
follow her dream.
The
book’s title, Born for This, comes from a song BeBe wrote out of his disappointment.
It is an affirming lyric proclaiming that God gave him the talent and would
indeed use him as a singer.
BeBe was
eventually hired by PTL to sing with CeCe, but he continued to work through the
dissonance of desiring to be a star while staying humble. BeBe and CeCe matured
in their professional lives while at PTL, also learning how to navigate in the
sometimes tricky non-African American world outside of Detroit.
BeBe
has an engaging story that I’m sure would be of interest to many, but his book
is presented as a rambling, scattered tale that would make it easy to not
finish. With some better editing this could become a first-rate memoir.
Thanks to my reading friend Elyse who recommends the BEST books!
This book was narrated by Elyse’s high school admirer, “Tommy” Hanks.
Many reviews have already been written on the Dutch House, so I
won’t rehash what everyone else has already said. I only want to touch on one element,
the symbolism of the house as wealth, verses love.
****SPOILER ALERT****
Cyril wanted the love of his wife Elna, so he gave her the Dutch
House, but she despised the ostentation the house represented and wanted to serve
the poor.
If only Mother hadn’t gone; perhaps Maeve wouldn’t have gotten
sick, Cyril wouldn’t have been hoodwinked by Andrea; Danny could have taken
over his father’s business (the love of buildings) which Danny loved instead of
being made to study medicine out of spite.
Elna first moved into Maeve’s house to nurse her, and then into
the Dutch House to nurse Andrea. She made remarks to the effect that she was
paying for her mistakes, a very Catholic idea. However, after Andrea’s death
Mother stayed on at the Dutch House, appointing herself as caretaker,
apparently having lost the self-righteous attitude that compelled her to
forsake her family and leave the opulent mansion.
Danny wanted a way to thank Maeve for all the work she did for
his business, when she refused to cash the checks he made out to her. Danny
bought the small rental house where Maeve lived and gave her the deed. This she
accepted with magnanimous gratitude.
The children, Maeve and Danny, wanted the love of their mother
and father, but grew to despise the house when it became a symbol of Andrea’s
hatred toward them
Andrea wanted the Dutch House, and feigned love to get it.
Andrea sweetly and manipulatively handed out invectives like
lunch money to kids heading to school. Sometimes Andrea lost her temper and
hurled the hatred. Didn’t Andrea know that people in glass houses shouldn’t
throw stones?
Norma was forced into taking Maeve’s bedroom in the house, and
she felt guilty about it. Norma loved Maeve and was still apologizing as an
adult, for taking her room and for taking their house.
Only in the end is this juxtaposition of wealth and love
resolved in Danny’s daughter. She fulfills her childhood dream of becoming an
actress, falls in love with the Dutch House, and buys it from Norma. The book
culminates in a lavish party at the house, even summoning the spirit of Maeve,
and a tender father-daughter moment.
My husband was the first to use these gloves, and he said he loves the fit; they come up the arm far enough to keep water from getting down inside the glove. He also likes the grip pads on them. He has plans to use them as liners in his winter gloves when he needs to clean the snow off of his windshield. I like that they are ergonomically paired into right and left hand gloves. I also like that they are reusable. That’s important when you are watching your pennies!
