Dough Keeps Rising

I wish I could blog everything that happened on Saturday. I can’t reveal everything, but I will tell what I can.

For weeks I’ve been working to get my prayer group to go visit Ayts Chayim Messianic Synagogue, in Boca. We finally made it on Saturday. Only five of us showed up, but it was a good start.

We were under the impression that sabbath worship would be preceded by an adult class concerning information provided by Sam Solomon, a former Muslim and professor of sharia law. He appeared at Ayts Chayim the week before and told the congregation and the rabbi a lot of disturbing things about Islamist infiltration in our government and our military.

It turned out the class was actually a discussion of people’s reactions to Mr. Solomon. You might assume people raised their hands and talked about their fear of Islamists and the need to crack down on them, but most of the comments concerned the difficulty of communicating with Muslim acquaintances the congregants wanted to introduce to Yeshua. These people were concerned less about their own security than they were with the welfare of unbelievers they knew.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Polls taken in Muslim countries show that a high percentage of Muslims admit hating Jews, yet polls taken in Israel do not reflect much Jewish hate for Muslims.

When we headed into the sanctuary for worship, volunteers offered my friends yarmulkes and prayer shawls. I turned them down. I’ve seen how I look in a yarmulke. Some of my friends accepted the headgear, and one even went for the shawl.

The service was excellent. This synagogue encourages demonstrative worship, much like any charismatic church, and the people were very involved. A group of women danced at the front of the room, and people were raising their hands and praising God. The music was very good. Less noisy than what we get at my church.

This day featured a double portion of the Torah. When they brought the scroll out, people touched it and showed reverence for it, and a man carried it around the sanctuary while people danced behind it. A friend asked what was going on, and I said Jews revered the Torah scroll more than we do our Bibles. I pointed out that they had had to work to preserve the Torah; for thousands of years people had been banning and burning it. I said what we were seeing was a bit like The Book of Eli. God’s word was to be preserved and revered.

When the Torah portions were read, I could not see the person doing the reading. Then someone pointed him out. I couldn’t see him because he was sitting down. He was in the front row, using a Braille Torah. The man was blind. I hadn’t known that when I mentioned The Book of Eli to my friend.

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll understand.

Rabbi Brawer taught about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He went through Old and New Testament passages demonstrating that the power of the Holy Spirit had been with us since the beginning. In fact, he is mentioned in Genesis, before the passages about the creation of man.

My friend were overwhelmed by the warmth of the congregation, and so was I. And it was very moving, seeing so many Jewish believers, assembled to honor Yeshua in spite of the hatred and rejection it brought them from their own people.

I met an older gentleman–about my dad’s age–and talked to him about life as a Messianic. I told him there were three kinds of people I loved meeting. Conservative Jews, armed Jews, and Jews who believed in Yeshua. He told me he was all three. He’s an NRA member, and he carries! I love it.

One of my friends is the leader of all the volunteers at my church. The lady who introduced us to Ayts Chayim is a field worker for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. He hit it off with both of them, and hopefully, he will develop relationships with them and help Ayts Chayim and my church bond a little. He has my pastor’s ear every day.

My father tried to make it to the class, but he got lost. That’s okay. My friend from the IFCJ showed us a disk containing Mr. Solomon’s lecture. We are planning to meet with her so we can hear it. That will give my father another excuse to join us.

We can’t get a copy. The material is not for public consumption. I’m thinking we should ask to be allowed to use my church’s cafe. That way, more of us could hear it, my dad would not have to drive so far, I would be able to cook, and my dad and my friend would get to visit my church.

That’s part of the story. I can’t get into the rest. Other things are breaking loose in my life, but this is not the time to disclose them.

On Saturday, I helped the cafe people make food for a weekly event called “Rhythms Lounge.” It’s mostly kids. People from church perform. They play music and recite poetry and so on. It’s very good. They asked if I could show up and teach people to make pizza. No problem!

When I got there, I found my three new assistants waiting. They’re all chefs! They’re graduates from Le Cordon Bleu, and they work in the big hotels on the Beach. Can you believe that? I learned how to cook, standing in front of a $300 stove in my housecoat, and I was showing these highly trained women what to do. Talk about favor.

It was pretty funny. The way I make dough is very unorthodox, and if you believe the pizza nerds on the Internet, it shouldn’t work. But the chefs wanted to see how I did it, and they were very impressed with the food. As I noted earlier, they said it was as good as Brooklyn’s best. That felt great.

I used to sweat and slave in the cafe, but more and more, I’m managing. I stand behind people and give tips as they work. It’s fantastic.

Of course, in the future, these women will be contributing their own material. That will be a huge blessing. And they know how to do institutional cooking. They volunteered to organize the kitchen. I can’t wait to see that.

They gave me a couple of useful tips. From now on, when I make cheesecake, I plan to line my springform pans with crust, from top to bottom, to hold the berry mess in. And they showed me I could keep pans from sliding around when I roll out dough, by putting damp paper towels under them. They also suggested I refrigerate unused dough. It works okay, but the rolls aren’t quite as good as fresh ones. Worth doing, anyway.

I’m planning to do a cobbler as soon as I can. Cobbler and vanilla ice cream. If we can figure out a way to handle ice cream. I suppose we could carve out portions and put them in the freezer and bring them out and add cobbler as people place orders. I also want to do hot cinnamon rolls with ice cream.

As volunteers, we are told to “reproduce ourselves.” That makes sense. Christianity is the same way. You accept Jesus, you make progress, and then you help others accept him. I haven’t been able to do much to reproduce myself as a cook, but God has handed me six helpers, so it worked out anyway.

In other news, I ordered a scope for my LR-308. On advice from reader Blindshooter and fellow blogger Jim from Smoke on the Water, I went with the Leupold VX-3 in 6.5-20x50mm. It may be ten years before I try 20x, but it will be there when I’m ready. One of my church buddies wants to shoot it with me.

Now you are all caught up on my life. I’ll be back if anything new happens.

Chin-Deep in It

I had three trained chefs assisting me tonight! Unbelievable! Two are from New York, and they know good pizza. They couldn’t believe the weird way I made my rolls and pizza, but they said the food was as good as Brooklyn’s best! What a night! They’re going to start working culinary miracles for Trinity Church, and I plan to be right there beside them.

Hook me Up to the Battery Charger

I am pooped.

I worked late making croissants to bring with me today for my prayer group’s field trip to Ayts Chayim Messianic Synagogue, and then I got up at 6:00 and hit the road. At 9:00 a.m. we found ourselves at a discussion of the Islamist threat, and then there was a very long worship service, and then it took me an hour to drive home.

The croissants failed QC inspection, by the way. I just destroyed some of the evidence. You really need two days to make croissants, if you plan to have any type of life during those days. I didn’t give them enough time to rest or rise, so while they are extremely tasty, I am not going to let anyone else see them.

The service was phenomenal. I am too tired to go into it, but it was like being God’s pate goose. Sit there, open wide, and wait for the funnel. God comes along with the bucket of holy goose feed, and then everything goes crazy.

Now I have been asked to help get pizza going for my church’s Saturday night project, known as Rhythms Lounge. I agreed, but it means I have to get my butt back in the truck shortly, so right now I am having a Coke and trying to regain my bearings. Marv and Maynard are behind me, grunting and whining, respectively. I have to take the out and pound them before I can go anywhere.

I would say it was an amazing day, but that would be so weak, it would not come close to describing what happened. I feel like I’m swimming in God’s favor like a fly trapped in a bowl of soup.

Maybe I’ll explain tomorrow. Right now I have birds to wrestle.

I met an old Jew who carries, votes conservative, and believes in Jesus! This must be how birdwatchers feel when they spot a pileated woodpecker. Or whatever that rare kind of woodpecker is.

We’re hoping we can get him and his friends to go to the range with us.

Lightning Hazard

Here is some incredible news. I told my dad about the terrorism lecture I’m going to see tomorrow at the Messianic synagogue, and he says he wants to go! Of course, he wants no part of the worship service. That’s what he says right now, anyway!

It’s amazing how God is putting this outing together. What else can happen before tomorrow?

Snow Shovel Required

One nice thing about making croissants is that it makes me realize how easy and simple it is to make other baked goods.

I just slapped a batch of dough together. It left a crust of dough bits all over the stove top (my rolling surface), and of course, I made some mistakes and got flour into places where it should not have gone. But I managed to get the dough made and folded and stored in the fridge in foil, and the cleanup wasn’t all that bad.

I’d say it takes about half an hour of work to get croissant dough to the point where it’s ready for it’s pre-baking rest. But that’s only if you have butter frozen and flour chilled. You have to use cold flour and frozen butter. I make it worse by burning some of the butter and refreezing it, for flavor.

It seems to pay off. I ate some of the dough (for the children, mind you, not just wanton gluttony), and if the croissants are anything like as good as the dough, I am in for some fine eating.

I’m going to work on cinnamon rolls after lunch. I had the most hideous idea, I’m almost afraid to share it. What if I make cinnamon rolls using CROISSANT DOUGH? It should be illegal to do that. It’s terrifying. Imagine how good that must be. Then you dump a hot croissant in a bowl with some vanilla ice cream and extra cinnamon sauce. Oh, man! You know that has to be good.

I may buy a dozen bagels for insurance. I haven’t made croissants in four years, so I don’t know what’s going to happen. I give myself credit: I know how to write a recipe so an idiot can follow it. I think I’ll be okay.

I’m using GFS Primo Gusto flour. I assume there is some kind of official Vichy-approved croissant flour out there somewhere, but I Googled around, and it seemed like bread flour was the norm. I have gotten wonderful results with Primo Gusto, so I figured I’d give it a shot. And I just happened to have several bags in the freezer, which gave me a head start.

It’s incredible how things have turned out today. Originally, it looked like four guys from my church would show up at the Messianic synagogue, more or less to pay our respects. Then I got a call from my contact. She said that last week, Islamic scholar Sam Solomon spoke there. Mind-blowing information about terrorism and Islamist infiltration. He used to be a Muslim, but he’s a Christian now, and he is helping Westerners wake up and prepare. There will be a class before the service tomorrow, and it will be based on information provided by Mr. Solomon. And we’re invited to the class.

Now it looks like we may have six or eight guys, including some armorbearers. The security angle makes it a natural fit. Should be fascinating. And we can help the folks at the synagogue with their questions on firearms and security. This is wild. Any time you help Jews provide for their self-defense, you have accomplished something worthwhile.

Thanks to political correctness, Muslim nutcases have infiltrated our military; they have already murdered a number of our troops. From what I gather from today’s conversation, the situation is much worse than we know. Unfortunately, I may not be able to pass all the new information on via this blog.

Are tea partiers and conservative Christians crazy to be stocking up on guns and ammunition? Maybe it’s an overreaction, but depending on what the Islamists have prepared for us and how badly our defenses have been compromised, maybe gun nuts are on the right track.

Hope not. I hope that in my case it turns out to be a harmless hobby I can enjoy until I drop dead at 95 from eating too many croissants.

Breakfast Choice

I have a tough decision to make today.

Tomorrow morning, I will be visiting a Messianic synagogue with my prayer group. Before that, we’ll be having breakfast at the home of the lady who invited us. I asked if I could bring anything, and she suggested bagels.

That would be a good idea. BUT…why not make pain au chocolat and strawberry croissants with cheesecake filling instead?

It would be a lot of aggravation, but man, they’re good. The big risk is that something will go wrong, and then I’ll end up at her house with a dozen Krispy Kremes in a box.

I think I should go for it. How often do you get to make croissants?

Here’s a photo of the items in question. They’re not really croissants, since they’re not crescent-shaped, but I don’t know what else to call them. The real name for the chocolate jobs is pain au chocolat, but I have no idea what to call the other ones. Pain aux fraises et fromage?

If I’m going to make these things, I’ll have to hit the store pretty early. I need milk, butter, strawberries, and cream cheese.

More

On a more important note, reader Steve in CA says:

I have a request, my oldest daughter is pregnant and her water broke at 22 weeks. I am asking that she gets the strength and the baby the blessings need to reach viability for delivery. She has had a miscarriage before and I am frightened.

Dad Still has Troubles

Reader Blindshooter says:

My Dad had a bad day today with a blocked catheter, I won’t go into details but he is better now. The Docs can’t get the bleeding to stop without fear of a blood clot from a metal heart valve. Any prayers are much appreciated.

Free Cheese!

I am making strawberry goop.

Strawberries are extremely cheap, and they are at the peak of their flavor. I bought a load of them the other day, and today I realized I had to render them down into cheesecake-topping goop or let them grow mold and throw them out.

I have about 2 1/2 quarts of berries on the stove, heating with water and sugar. I think I’ll just get rid of the pulp, make two 15-ounce portions of goop, and freeze them. Without the starch. Best to add that when I make the cheesecakes.

Day after tomorrow, my prayer group is going to visit a Messianic worship service. I offered to bring something. I could bring bagels, but I am tempted to make strawberry croissants with cheesecake filling, plus pain au chocolat. This would mean putting in a lot of work tomorrow, however. Bagels might be the way to go.

I look forward to getting this stuff frozen. I already froze a bunch of Costco steaks, and I am eager to move on to something other than food.

Oh, man! The Grande cheese rep just dropped a couple of pounds of 50/50 blend off! Did I say I didn’t want to fool with food? Scratch that nonsense!

Tears in his Eyes, I Guess

I keep waking up full of energy, ready to attack the day.

This is not normal.

I have always hated getting up in the morning. For that matter, I have never been a big fan of going to bed. When I was in college, my friends used to bang on my door with their fists at noon, trying to get me up so I could have lunch with them at Happy Burger, over on Broadway.

Great burgers, by the way.

To get back to mornings, for most of my life, I have regarded getting up as a great evil, to be avoided at all costs. I used to get up and literally stumble around, trying to get it together. I would do stupid things like putting the cereal in the refrigerator and the milk in the cupboard. It was pretty awful.

For a long time, I’ve used coffee to reset my morning clock. I would get up and have a quart of coffee to get the wheels turning. It worked pretty well, although it tended to make me a little crabby later on. Which I sort of enjoyed. Okay, not really.

A while back, I started getting the idea that God wanted me to give up coffee. It started keeping me awake at night, which was new. I would drink coffee to get up and take antihistamine to get to sleep. I began to feel as though it was time to let the caffeine go.

This was alarming. I have nearly given up artificial sweeteners, I can’t drink sugary soda all day, fruit juice is just as sugary as soda, and tea gives me kidneystones. Without coffee, I would be lost. What would I drink? A Christian can’t swill beer all day. Not unless he’s a monk. Then it’s okay. Ha ha. Religious humor.

I gave up real coffee, switching to decaf. If there is a difference in the taste, I can’t tell. I thought I would miss the caffeine rush, but that hasn’t happened. I get up every morning and have a quart of unleaded, I enjoy it, and I don’t get crabby. No crabbier than I was to start with.

I thought I would be unable to move until noon, but that hasn’t panned out. I wake up, I spend an hour or so in prayer, and I get out of bed anxious to get stuff done and experience the day. That is just plain weird. Like a mental illness. I don’t understand it. But it’s wonderful.

I had to have coffee to go with breakfast. My breakfast is pathetic. I eat a small amount of oatmeal with salt and sugar or maple syrup. I have to have something else with it, or I would go insane. Now I eat my oatmeal and enjoy my decaf, and I don’t miss country ham and hot biscuits and gravy. All that much.

I’ll tell you something funny. When you fast regularly, no matter what you eat for breakfast, your first meal of the day will seem like a banquet. You will wake up every morning and think, “Thank GOD I don’t have to drink water all day today.” I enjoy my crappy oatmeal and fake coffee a great deal.

We have spirits that hinder us and sap our energy and waste our time and discourage us. I think mine are getting pounded these days. I feel full of optimism, and I am receiving what Christians refer to as “favor,” which means things are going well even when I’m not paying attention.

I’ll give an example. I kept thinking about buying an AR10. But they cost a lot of money. Although I knew Gunbroker was hopeless, I looked at the ads. One day a gun I liked popped up for a hundred dollars below cost. If you order one from the factory, it takes months, because Obama is the savior of the gun industry and he has increased demand beyond manufacturers’ wildest hopes. Still, I got it for very little.

Let’s see. Here is another one. I designed a Cafepress T-shirt and ordered one for myself. When it came, it seemed to have some kind of goo on the front. I called and complained. They said they would send me a new one, but they said the old one might be okay after I washed it. So I washed it, and it came out fine, and I get to keep the first one. So I have two shirts.

I already wrote the story about my ticket to the National Day of Prayer.

Now my church’s cafe is going nuts. I have been frustrated because of the lack of a beverage fountain, and since I started making cheesecake, I have been thinking about the need for stuff that will allow us to sell cold food. I went to church yesterday, and there was a beautiful new Pepsi fountain at the cafe! It was there on Sunday, but I didn’t notice. And the pastor who runs the cafe started telling me about all the new stuff they were getting, so people would be able to buy cold things like desserts! I never told him we needed that. Never mentioned it, as far as I know.

Psalm 127 says, “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he giveth his beloved sleep.” That last bit can also be translated, “He blesses his beloved even when they sleep.” It appears to be true.

Christians consistently overrate hard work. We want to feel like we’re showing our gratitude by working hard, but in reality, it’s a form of pride. We’re supposed to be given things we do not deserve, and we are supposed to glorify God for it. Sure, we work, but it’s not supposed to be utter drudgery. After all, Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light. Your main obligations are to have faith and obey, not to do the heavy lifting. After all, Moses didn’t have to part the Red Sea with a bucket.

It can be very comforting to let yourself suffer and sweat, because it makes you feel like a martyr, and deep in your heart, you may start thinking you deserve the things you get from God. But it’s pride. There is nothing righteous about it. Adam didn’t deserve the trees in the garden. The Hebrews didn’t deserve manna or the Promised Land. We don’t deserve the Holy Spirit or the many blessings we get from God. We are welfare cases. Best to accept it. The suffering that is necessary is sufficient. We don’t have to add to it. That’s what I think.

And much of the work we do for God doesn’t feel like work, so it’s wrong to glorify yourself for doing it.

By the way, the rifle arrived faster than I thought I would. I posted a Youtube of me getting it ready to use. Check it out.

*Exhale*

Some gun on an auction site went so low on a new .308 rifle, I went insane and bought it. I had no choice. It was unfair, really. He wanted over a hundred dollars less than my dealer’s cost.

Now, what kind of optics do I need? I plan to use this thing at the range for now, at 100 yards, but I would like a scope that would work later with a .260 barrel and long distances. Just once in my life, I would like to shoot something a thousand yards away.

I have the nuttiest feeling that God has been pushing me to get an AR10. I’m not really that excited about it. I can take it or leave it (or at least I could, until the price collapsed). It’s not like the .38 Super or the SW1911, which made me drool for weeks. Very strange.

Now Janet Napolitano’s goons will be putting a notation on my file. “Thinks God tells him to buy sniper rifles.”

I have no desire to drive around in a van shooting people. Honest. But I might get an urge to make a few prairie dogs pop like water balloons.

Call my People, O’Reilly

Isn’t life kooky.

Though a weird series of events, I got invited to the National Day of Prayer, in Washington, DC. Mike got invited through me. We were going to hear Franklin Graham speak. He is Billy Graham’s son.

Today I saw this story on Yahoo News: Group Wants Evangelist’s Pentagon Event Cancelled. Some guy named Mikey Weinstein–that’s really what he calls himself–says Graham should be disinvited because he has criticized Islam as “evil.”

Mr. Weinstein is in charge of an obscure outfit called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. My wild guess: the foundation consists of an 800 number that goes to his cell phone. For years I’ve wanted to call myself a foundation or a coalition, purely to lampoon the practice of using pompous language to make oneself seem important, but I never got around to it. I know it would get me on cable news a lot. That’s where cable guests often come from. You form a corporation for $75, get an agent, and let the networks know you’re available. Seriously, that will get you on the news. Don’t forget to wear a suit, and get some glasses to make you look intelligent and serious.

His website lists no staff.

Points to ponder: how long has it been since Mikey Weinstein attended services at a house of worship, and what is his prayer schedule like? One would assume that a person who fights for religious freedom would have a religion which he wishes to be free to practice. Can’t find any references to Mr. Weinstein’s religious bent on the web.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Weinstein has dedicated his life–no exaggeration–to battling evangelical Christianity. In other words, he is battling all Christians who believe the Bible. If you go to church on Christmas and Easter and you never pray, Mr. Weinstein has no problems with you, because you aren’t accomplishing anything. He is only after serious Christians.

Here is a clip from Wikipedia:

The group was founded by Michael Weinstein in early 2006 to oppose the spread of religious intimidation by evangelical Christians in positions of power within the US military. Weinstein describes the group’s target as “a small subset of evangelical Christianity that’s called premilliennial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity or just Dominionist Christianity.”

Am I crazy, or is this persecution? If he were an atheist (he probably is, though) fighting all religions, I would not be hearing sirens, but targeting one branch of one religion seems bigoted and irrational. What would people say if I dedicated my life to fighting Orthodox Judaism or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, while leaving other religions unmolested? They’d call me a Crusader and a bigot. How is Mr. Weinstein any different?

Is he fighting Muslims who want to rearrange their work areas and schedules so they can pray? Is he fighting to keep healthy, inexpensive, delicious pork on the menus at military mess halls? Does he want to force Jewish soldiers to work on the sabbath? I wonder.

Mr. Weinstein is disturbed by Christianity’s influence over our military. Me, I think it’s the single best thing about our military. The political side of our government is extremely venal and godless, but our soldiers and sailors are still working to bring us God’s blessings. That’s very important. If there is one part of government you want God to bless, it’s the part that fights our enemies directly, by force of arms.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize! I saw that on the web. The Nobels are amazing. Does the list come directly from Satan’s desk, or what? Has anyone looked at the list? Is Satan’s signature at the bottom? Is the list delivered to Stockholm by an imp?

All you have to do is attack Christianity, capitalism, or America, and you make the cut. They should start calling them the Ignobel Prizes. They’ve become completely absurd. They used to go to people who did useful things like revolutionizing physics. Now all you have to do is lie about global warming or spend twenty days in the White House without achieving anything.

Mr. Weinstein is a lawyer, so he knows what “sandbagging” is. It means attacking your opponent at the last possible moment, so he has no time to prepare a defense. That’s what he’s doing with his attack on Franklin Graham. The event is taking place two weeks from now, and Mr. Weinstein has had a long time to get his spiel ready, and he waited until yesterday. He knows there will be no time for a thoughtful dialogue now. He’ll provoke a kneejerk, drive-by attack from the press, and if he manages to generate hysteria, it will still be in full bloom on the day of the event. Those are bush league tactics in my book.

Nonetheless, there is some validity to his position. When you ask the government to subsidize an event, you sell your soul to the founder of the feast. This is why universities are so crazy. They take piles of taxpayer money, and it comes with strings attached. By making the National Day of Prayer a government event, we pretty much asked for potshots from extremists. I don’t know why we need the government’s imprimatur. Seems to me we could just coordinate and show up on our own.

Church tax exemptions are problematic, too. Preachers have a responsibility to preach about politics, but if they uphold it, they run the risk of losing tax exemptions. So they stay quiet when God-hating fringe characters run for office. That harms America. Better to be like Jesus and let the fish you catch pay the taxes. That’s my opinion. If God is with you, presumably your flock will support you well enough to allow you to pay Uncle Sam to get lost.

I would like to see a wave of evangelism so strong, we would bury the malcontents and our government could go back to acknowledging God openly. But that hasn’t happened yet. We should take attacks like Mr. Weinstein’s as inspiration to evangelize and get the votes we need to produce a godly government. And we should pray for him to change and find the good things we’ve found.

I’m going to pray that the attack fizzles, and that we learn to mobilize in Washington without the government’s help. Leftists don’t need government help at Burning Man. We don’t need help with tea parties. We should be able to orchestrate massive prayer events on our own.

Pizza has its Limits

I have been thinking of new ways to inject life into my church’s cafe. Yesterday it dawned on me: cinnamon rolls.

Check these out:

I made those some years ago. I believe I used a springform pan. They were better than any rolls I’ve bought, and I think it would be easy to make them in large quantities for church. The smell of cinnamon rolls baking should be a pretty good marketing tool.

I have to dig up my recipe, make some rolls, and see how good they are.

We should be able to get a dollar for each roll. I don’t think they cost a lot to make. Mostly flour. Pecans aren’t cheap, but you don’t need a whole lot of them.

There are some foods you just can’t buy, unless you’re willing to accept low quality. Pizza is an example. Cinnamon rolls make the list. I would also add honey-garlic chicken, which is a Cantonese dish consisting of chicken in batter, deep-fried and covered with a sauce made from citrus, honey, and garlic. I add habanero bits to my sauce, which makes all the difference in the world.

I have a little rib roast warming up on the counter. Since yesterday it has been absorbing butter, garlic, and salt. Should be a thing of beauty once it’s done. I think they could bottle the smell of the raw roast and sell it to women as perfume.

This may be a good day to price an AR10 in .308. I can’t just think about food all the time.

Decision Near?

The .308/.260 Remington puzzle seems to be unraveling.

I wanted a nice long-distance-capable semiautomatic rifle. The 6.5 Grendel looked good, but while it does well at long distances, it gives up some long-range punch in order to fit the AR15 platform. The .308 is a dandy choice, but other calibers do better at long ranges, and the recoil is bad. The .260 Remington looked really good, but the ammunition is expensive.

Last week I discovered that excellent .308 ammunition is cheap. That got me thinking. I can get a relatively short-barreled AR10 in .308, shoot it very accurately at my local range, which only goes to 100 yards, and put a .260 upper on it occasionally. And the .308 would be easier to carry, and if I ever got a chance to shoot pigs or deer, it would be a great choice.

So now I’m thinking about getting a .308 from DPMS. I considered other brands, but DPMS has a wonderful reputation for accuracy and reliability, and they don’t charge an arm and a leg.

This seems to be the smart choice, if I do this.

I saw a hilarious gun on the web today. A company called Knight Armament makes it. It’s an AR15-looking gun (“Stoner 16”) with a cool attachment under the handguard. The attachment is…a 12-gauge shotgun.

I’m serious. Here is a link.

I guess I don’t have to feel self-conscious about a laser and a flashlight now.

This is the craziest gun I’ve ever seen. It’s the gun equivalent of a double-necked guitar. It would be a great gun for a woman. Whenever they go anywhere, they like to pack everything they own.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get the Romak III working right. I have to reinstall the fire control group and fiddle with it. Red Star Arms does not answer emails about the fire control group they manufacture; something to think about before buying one.

The Romak is fun, but it’s a curiosity more than a practical weapon. The trigger that comes with it is complete garbage and will not permit accurate shooting. I don’t know how they manage to use it in battle. I guess they’re satisfied with 10 MOA shooting. It’s very popular with our enemies in Iraq, but then they probably can’t obtain guns that work correctly as manufactured.

If they took the trigger slap out of the trigger, the gun would be pretty good. But it ought to sell for $400. It looks like someone built it in his garage.

I got ripped off when I bought my specimen. They were selling for nearly $800. Now they can be had for $600. Cheap ammunition is still available, so the picture isn’t totally bleak.

If I had the decision to make all over again, I’d get a PTR91. Similar money, better performance.

I had a great experience last night. I asked for a scripture to read, and I felt like I should turn to 1 Peter. I went through it, making notes and underlining. It confirms so much of what I’ve come to believe, and what I’ve been taught. Prayer in the Spirit cleanses us and helps us behave. We are little portable embassies of the kingdom of heaven, living temporarily in a foreign land. The good things we receive, and even our good acts, come from God. Our contributions are relatively minor. And each of us is an essential and unique part of the machine that will change the world.

More and more, I feel the the Bible is being opened up to me. I believe this is a consequence of prolonged prayer in the Spirit. I’m not the only one who believes it. Perry Stone says it leads to revelation. He says he does it so much, people are amused by it.

The Bible yields its treasures, bit by bit, as we need them. Some things stay hidden, because the time is not right for us to understand them.

It’s a great relief, to be able to understand the Bible and see the pieces fit together. How many times have you been frustrated after reading a chapter? You make as much sense of it as you can, and you go on, figuring God will clear it up when the time comes. That’s better than not reading at all, but it can’t compare to getting divine insight as you go.

Twenty years ago, I knew prayer in tongues was a foundational gift. I knew it was the key to growth. But I wandered off and got lost. Too bad. I wonder what could have been.

I noticed something while reading a book Paul wrote. When he quotes scripture, sometimes he quotes several verses consecutively, even though they come from different parts of the Bible. I think this is something we are expected to be able to do. God stirred his word up, putting related parts in different places. It’s sort of like the Tower of Babel; he made it impossible for our natural minds to sort it out, because we were not ready for the knowledge. Now with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can take verses from different areas of the Bible and combine them so they work together and express God’s meaning. It’s like the valley of dry bones. The parts are spread out and jumbled up, but they can be reassembled and put to work. The Bible says, “Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth” (Psalm 141). Like the verses of the Bible, or like Jacob’s descendants, we wait to be re-ordered and given new life by the Holy Spirit.

This is unrelated, but I had a funny thought last night while I was watching a drug commercial. I thought about depression, which can be caused by a spirit. It occurred to me that it was ironic that a foul spirit could wrap itself around you and whisper depressing things about your future. Who has a better future than a Christian, and who has a worse future than a foul spirit? They have no future. They’re going to burn while we laugh.

I think it might be a good idea to fight fire with fire. If you hear a little voice in your head, putting you down and telling you you’re not going to have a good future, open your mouth and say, “The Bible says I’m part of a royal priesthood. I’m going to live forever in God’s presence. You, on the other hand, are going to roast alive–screaming in agony–in front of your assembled enemies while we shout and high-five each other. No one can save you. I’M the one who should be depressed?”

Maybe it’s a bad move, but it’s a funny thought.

Jesus was tortured to death in front of his jeering enemies, and then he ascended to paradise and took his seat at the right hand of God, and now he has all power over every spirit. Demons, on the other hand, are going to be killed painfully in front of their enemies, and then they’re going to be gone, and they will be remembered as creation’s biggest failures. The parallel is obvious, but the end results are very different. Maybe God gave us the burnt sacrifices of the Temple so the smell would remind the fallen of their fate. Maybe the death ovens of the Nazis and the altars of Molech and the burning World Trade Center were Satan’s pathetic parodies of the burnt offerings. The same may be true of abortion mills.

Incidentally, I am starting to think the book of Amos predicted the Shoah, as well as the renewal of Israel and the Messianic Age. Amos talks of bald heads and piles of bodies. Remarkable.

Enough stuff for one morning. I should be making strawberry goop for cheesecake topping.

TRIFECTA

I can’t believe how much I accomplished today. I managed to provide my church’s cafe with pizza, garlic rolls, and strawberry cheesecake, all made from scratch.

The Lord kicked in some needed assistance. I already had a sixteen-year-old working with me, and today another kid volunteered. One of my friends runs my prayer group, and he’s an armorbearer, and he’s in charge of all 700 of the church’s volunteers. His eleven-year-old son really wanted to learn how to make pizza, so I put him on the team.

Before half of the day was gone, these two were making pies from the ground up, except for some help with making dough. And I got them to roll out and tie garlic rolls, too. The biggest problem was slowing them down. We made more pies than we could use.

Now I’m enjoying one of the perks of seniority. I get to make other people do the crummiest jobs. But they take a lot of the fun out of it by volunteering for the crummy jobs before I can give the orders.

Church kids are amazing. They never seem to whine or say anything snotty. I did have a problem with them hiding in the refrigerator, but that was only because it was hot in the kitchen. They couldn’t take it. So they got out. You know how that works.

Berries are still very cheap, so I am planning to buy maybe thirty dollars’ worth, turn all of them into the base goo that holds berries onto the cheesecake, and freeze it. Later in the year, when berries are expensive, I’ll have this stuff to rely on. If necessary, I can use goo and no berries. It would still be very good, and it would be cheap.

Florida strawberries are much better than the ones we get from California. Maybe it’s because they aren’t picked green so they can make the long trip. The berries I bought for the cheesecake are nearly as good as wild strawberries, which is saying something.

I may switch over to flan, because cheesecake is expensive and hard to make. We had to charge $3.00 a slice, too. We can probably sell flan for $1.50 a slice and make more money.

We have been giving food away at the end of the night on Tuesdays, and as I feared, people have adopted a strategy of waiting for the free stuff instead of paying. So I’m going to try to put in a new policy: free food for volunteers only. Work in the cafe, or pay. It’s better to throw the food out than give it away to people who are trying to take advantage of the church. I don’t like the idea of throwing out food, but finding a way to get it to people who actually deserve it is impossible.

I am told that the pastor’s wife (also a pastor) wants to keep the cafe open on Tuesdays, which would be a change from the current policy, under which we close it during the service. Her son is in charge of the service, so the two of them will have to get together and make a decision, but it’s starting to look like Tuesdays might become viable again.

I made pizza for the lunch crowd Thursday before last, and I’m told they clamored for it last week. I need to get another student who can work on Thursdays. That means an adult. If God is in it, someone will show up.

Someone asked for the pizza recipe today. My response was that you have to work in the kitchen to get it. Some of these people need to get a little church spirit.

The sauce is better than ever. I improved it with my secret ingredient. It really makes a difference. There isn’t much I can do to make it better.

The rolls are a good idea. It costs around 50 cents to make a dozen, and we get $4.50 for an order that size. They’re also easier to make than pizza.

I had to buy a slice of cheesecake today. I brought an apple and some raw vegetables to keep me alive, but I have to fast tomorrow, and I figured I should indulge. My knees nearly buckled when I took the first bite. I love that stuff.

Now I’m sitting here thinking about it.

He Also Makes Great Appliances

I was just reading about how Arizona has become the third state (after Alaska and Vermont) to allow concealed carry without a permit. Some whiner in the news article was moaning about how this would lead to accidental shootings involving people who had no training.

I would argue that being accidentally shot is better than being deliberately raped or murdered, unless the accidental shooting is really bad. When it comes to concealed weapons and accidental shootings, I think the leg is the usual victim.

It occurs to me that this would be a great opportunity to build a bridge between Second Amendment supporters and people who have an irrational fear of firearms. Here is something we agree on: people who handle guns should have training. So LET’S MAKE FIREARMS TRAINING COMPULSORY IN ALL OUR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

The logic is inescapable. Now the folks with neurotic gun fears will be able to sleep easy at night. Or if not, at least the irrational fear that keeps them awake will be unrelated to guns. Maybe they’ll lie awake thinking every creak and crackle is Sarah Palin, sneaking into their houses in a moose costume, to force them to carry their unborn babies to term.

If we make our kids learn to shoot, the obvious danger is that one day America might be a crime-plagued hellhole like Switzerland. Or like America used to be, before gun control solved all of our problems.

Tomorrow at 7:30, I expect to be standing in my church’s kitchen, making pizza and garlic rolls while carrying a loaded pistol with night sights. This summer, I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to teach a bunch of Jesus-loving Jews to shoot. Where did my mother go wrong?

Dang, my life sounds pretty good when I write it up like that.

I have a cheesecake waiting in the fridge. I made it for the church’s cafe. I’d kill for a few slices, but unfortunately, they belong to to God. And you know what he says. “I am a jealous God.” This cheesecake gives that scripture new life.

This cheesecake is arguably more tempting and more dangerous than the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If Satan had had this cheesecake, he would not have had to go to the Garden of Eden to tempt the first people. Eve would have smelled it and followed her nose to hell and agreed to whatever terms he cared to name. In fact, instead of bargaining with him, she might have just beaten him to a pulp and taken it.

I am not sure human beings were ever intended to have anything this good. When earthly pleasures get sufficiently intense, they might dull people’s enthusiasm for paradise. If the stuff they have up there is better than my pizza and rolls and cheesecake, we should all hoped to get martyred as soon as possible so we can get our hands on it.

I bought about a gallon of peeled garlic tonight. I have four gallons of oil at church, plus parsley and lots of flour. I don’t know if I can pull off rolls and pizza on the same day, but I am game to try. Using the new mixer, I can crank out dough for 6 dozen rolls in a couple of minutes. Making rolls is not nearly as hard as making pizza. I might be able to do it, if I can get the pizza going efficiently enough. I will want to try my new trick of adding the yeast after mixing the dough, which complicates things. It will be worth it to hear the customers groaning in ecstasy.

My assistant should be there in the morning. If I can get him up to speed, this might work.