Not an Improvement, Unfortunately

I don’t watch much food TV. It’s misleading, and there is a feedback problem associated with the foodie establishment. Foodies can be very narrow-minded about anything that comes from outside their little realm. They seem to suffer from NIH syndrome, and I think TV makes it worse.

Nonetheless, last night I checked out Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. I loved it. Sometimes I dream of opening a pizzeria, but I don’t have the know-how that comes from experience, and Kitchen Nightmares provides a lot of insight. So far, it has confirmed what I already knew: training is no substitute for talent and common sense.

Last night he worked on a place in New York. The owner–this is unbelievable–was about 25 when he convinced his girlfriend’s parents to invest everything they had in an Italian restaurant…in a city full of Italian restaurants. Seriously, you have to be a fire-eating risk-taker to invest in ANY restaurant, but imagine handing your money over to a kid who has never run a place. He hadn’t even worked in an Italian restaurant. These poor people. They tried to do something good for their daughter and future son-in-law, but their actions were–there is no other way to describe it–extremely stupid.

The kid was beyond belief. He was extremely arrogant and refused to take advice. Mind you, this was a person who was in the process of impoverishing two old people who were trying to help him. I have to wonder if he’s a sociopath. How can anyone be that ungrateful? Maybe I’ve forgotten what a moron I was at that age.

Here’s a list of things Ramsay found:

1. The kitchen (the kitchen these people bought for him) was so filthy, it wasn’t fit for operation. It was disgusting, and the kid said CLEANING IT WAS THE STAFF’S JOB. We’re talking about HIS OWN KITCHEN. He thought the staff was in charge. Never mind the people who sacrificed to buy it for him. Words fail me.

2. The food was bad. Evidently, this boy had no idea what he was doing, yet at the same time, he was so abnormally confident in his abilities, he was sure the food was excellent. Ramsay used the word “hideous” to describe it.

3. He never tasted his own food! Surely they made that part up. No chef is that stupid. It’s like trying to play an instrument you can’t hear. Only an idiot would try it.

Ramsay practically had to mud-wrestle this kid just to get him to take suggestions. I would have left after half an hour. In fact, Ramsay did leave, but the kid managed to get him to return.

Human incompetence is so deep and so amazing, it is hard to maintain an understanding of how complete and pervasive it is. It’s natural to assume people aren’t utter fools. But many of them are. They say 90% of new restaurants fail. Maybe guys like this account for a lot of that.

They cleaned up the kitchen, and Ramsay just plain GAVE him new recipes. Then they tried to run the place for a night. The kid refused to taste the food, even after people sent it back! Some folks are determined to fail, regardless of what you do for them.

They finally redecorated the place at the BBC’s expense, and Ramsay even gave the kid an engagement ring for his girlfriend. I had always heard that Ramsay was a jerk, but he came across like a saint last night. The renewed restaurant did well that night. I wonder how it’s doing today. My guess is that a week of spoon-feeding didn’t do the trick. Ramsay gave him detox. What he needed was long-term rehab.

I wonder if Google will tell me what happened to the restaurant.

Oh, no! It was seized for failure to pay taxes! Unbelievable. That kid is either going to jail or setting out on a lifetime of working at places like T.G.I. Friday’s. What happened to the parents? I feel so bad for them.

I know this: it will be a long time before someone buys him another restaurant.

I wonder what the other episodes are like.

Somebody Talk me Down

The other day I realized I had lots of homemade pork sausage in the freezer, and I needed to start eating it. It’s over a year old.

Here’s what I had for dinner tonight. It’s BISCUITS AND GRAVY AND HOMEMADE PORK SAUSAGE! It was incredible. I finished like an hour ago, and about every five minutes I hear myself say, “MAN, that was good.”

I do not understand my own cooking. Some of it is over the top, and some of it, like the biscuits and gravy, is very understated. What could be more understated than a biscuit? Sometimes I do something insane, like the whole stuffed pig covered in sage and apricot sauce, and other times I try to make something very ordinary, so well that it’s still exciting. You would think I would go one way or the other.

MAN, that was good.

Sorry.

This batch of sausage isn’t all that high in fat, so I had to add a spoonful of lard to the grease in order make the gravy. And I made the biscuits with a mix of bacon grease and butter, just to see what would happen. I also messed with the leavening and added a teaspoon of sugar, figuring there is almost nothing a teaspoon of sugar won’t help.

MAN…never mind.

I guess I’ll be reliving that meal until I go to bed. To me, there are two things that tell me when I’ve got a good recipe. First, I can’t quit eating it. Second, after it’s gone, I sit and think about it for at least two hours.

Why did this happen to me? Obviously, God has dropped a gift on me. What am I supposed to do with it?

Drowning in Food Ideas

Today I’m making spicy fried chicken with homemade sourdough batter, plus mashed red potatoes and cream gravy, with bacon grease biscuits. Inspiration is falling like rain. I hope this works. A lot of this stuff is coming to me as I work on the food.

More

The chicken was excellent, but I think I’m frying too much chicken in a small pan, because it’s not crisp on the outside the way it should be. The recipe is a keeper, although I have to increase the peppers.

Bad Breath a Small Price to Pay

These are pretty sick.

Here’s some rolls without sauce.

Here’s some rolls with sauce.

Here’s the bottom of a roll, so you can see how they brown up. Crunchy and full of flavor.

Here’s how they pull apart. Beautiful.

The flavor and texture are excellent, but strangely, they seem a little sweet. Next time I’ll use more starter and make sure they’re sour. In any case, I have never had a roll this good in a restaurant. Very nice.

Baked up a small loaf, too, and it was also good, although you don’t get the pull-apart strips.

Thank you, Lord. These are tasty.

SHOO!

Sourdough is changing my life.

I started out by making sourdough garlic rolls. Then I branched out and made a loaf of bread. Then while I was pouring some excess starter down the sink, it hit me: “This looks a lot like fried chicken batter.”

Oh, yes.

I plan to try it, as soon as I can get a milk-based batter to ferment. I have another idea for improving it, but it will have to wait until next time. I should be able to fry some drumsticks tomorrow.

Again, I credit God with these ideas. The other day I sat down to write recipes, and a team of yard guys was making a huge racket near me, and I came up with nearly nothing. The next day a pile of ideas landed on me the way Plymouth Rock didn’t really land on Malcolm X.

Nothing like reaching too far for a metaphor.

Last year I fasted and then found I had improved self-control, especially in the area of eating. I lost lots of weight without much effort. This week I repeated the fast. I was starting to feel like gluttony was creeping back toward me. Now I feel great again. This morning I had oatmeal with water and salt, period. Can you imagine anything more disgusting? But I had no problem with it.

Mike has dropped something like 40 pounds since he accompanied me on my second fast, a few months back.

In a related matter, today I learned something interesting while Googling the origins of the swastika. As you may know, people claim the Nazi swastika was a reversed form of an old Buddhist symbol used in Tibet and India. That’s not true. It turns out the Tibetans use both forms of the symbol. Perry Stone claims that when Hitler was elected, the Tibetan monks said that a thousand of their “gods” left Tibet for Germany. Maybe they were right. There is a big occult link between Tibetan Buddhism and Nazism. Fun stuff to look up.

That’s not the thing I plan to write about, though. While I was reading, I came across the concept of “hungry ghosts.” The Tibetans believe there are dead people out there, roaming around trying to satisfy their earthly desires through us. I think I have that right; you can check. These beings have withered arms, tiny mouths, extremely slender necks, and huge bellies. If they try to eat, they feel intense pain.

This idea is also found in Christianity, but we call them demons. The Book of Enoch suggests they are the dead spirits of the giants spawned by rebellious angels who had sex with women. I believe the Book of Enoch is correct, and I have seen plenty of evidence to back it up. If you start with the premise that God is working to exterminate the seed of the fallen angels, many things in the Bible that are hard to understand suddenly make sense.

It’s interesting to me that false religions like Buddhism acknowledge what we know. They have the wrong explanations, but they see many of the same phenomena.

It’s also funny that proud Americans turn to Buddhism because they think it isn’t a religion. They think belief in supernatural beings is primitive. Buddhism is full of supernatural beings and concepts. Buddha as a Hindu, after all. When you go from Christianity to Buddhism, you’re not moving from superstition to enlightened philosophy. You’re abandoning one set of supernatural beliefs for another. Might as well be voodoo.

I think I drove one or more of these things off when I fasted, and that’s why I don’t have a problem with gluttony any more. I think fasting makes them miserable, and it teaches them they’re not welcome, and that more suffering is coming if they remain. It’s sort of like a deportation procedure for illegal aliens. In fact, I think aliens symbolize demons in the Old Testament. One of the big curses is to have aliens come into your land and have power over you. In the Old Testament, the Holy Land symbolized a human body, and the enemies of the Hebrews symbolized hostile spirits, so it only makes sense that demons would be represented by hostile aliens.

I know some Christians will jump up and claim you just have to tell them to leave in the name of Jesus. Unfortunately, Jesus himself said otherwise. Some will go easily, but others require prayer and fasting before they will pay attention.

On Thursday (second day of my fast), I found myself feeling compelled to watch food shows. Seems like a crazy thing to do, but I enjoyed it. Looking back, I think it may have been the Holy Spirit’s way of making my personal spirits suffer and leave. Call me crazy if you want. My size 30 shorts don’t lie. What do you have to put up against them? I know the answer already: nothing. It’s impossible to successfully contradict the things another person has witnessed.

I saw Jentezen Franklin on the tube last night. Ordinarily I have serious doubts about him, but he said some useful things. He expressed impatience with people who say they believe in Jesus, yet who don’t believe in Satan or demons. His question: how can you believe in someone who believes things you don’t? Jesus dealt with evil spirits all the time. If you’re a Christian, you have to believe they exist.

Fasting is incredibly powerful, and that’s why Jesus fasted after receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit and before doing miracles and embarking on a ministry. If he had not fasted, the demons assigned to him would have remained and clouded his judgment, and he might have ended up using his great power to serve them, inadvertently. God does not like giving power to evil spirits. That’s why he doesn’t give us all the money and power and success we want, right away. Satan stuffs people with “blessings” they can’t handle, and it destroys them. God waits until it’s safe to bless us. That’s why he told us we had to put his kingdom and his righteousness first, and that our blessings would arrive later.

You wouldn’t let your kids eat dessert before the meat and vegetables. There is a proper order to things.

I’m glad I’m not fasting today. I have rolls and a loaf of bread rising, and I have to be able to sample them. Lunch will be a crummy chicken sandwich, though.

I’m pretty sure what I believe is true. It lines up with the word, and it makes sense. Try it yourself and see if you get the same results I did.

I Pity the Fool

The weather is glorious today. In Miami, fall is spring, and we are finally getting temperatures that make outdoor life bearable. I may actually DO something, like painting the soffit that was repaired months ago.

No, surely not.

I had a great experience last night. I went on a fast this week, and the end point was 6 p.m. yesterday. I was planning to make sourdough garlic rolls and pizza (in moderate portions, since I was fasting partly to keep gluttony out of my life), but my father offered to buy me dinner. He took me to Randazzo’s Little Italy, a restaurant run by a former boxer. I love this place. They play The Godfather nearly all the time, on big screens, and the food is pretty much what I would cook if I were Italian. Giant portions of red and white food, and it’s all tasty.

Last time I was there, I had rigatoni with neckbones and sausage, and I told the maitre d’ they needed to brine the neckbones in baking soda to kill the boar taint. I don’t know if they’re doing it or what, but last night, the neckbones were totally stench-free. Delicious. And the waiter grated a big pile of extra romano on a side plate, just because I asked for a heavy dose. That’s how you run a restaurant, baby. A lot of places cook pansy food that looks healthy but isn’t and tastes like silk flowers, to satisfy people who can’t get real about what they want. Randazzo’s puts a feed on, and you’re expected to take it like a man. The menu tells people that if they have high cholesterol, they should go eat Chinese food.

I enjoyed my dad’s company, and the food was fantastic, and I even had the sneaky pleasure of knowing my own food is a little bit better. On the way home, my dad made a special cell call to Mike to torment him with a description of the food we ate. All in all, I give the event a 9.

I am the opposite of a food snob. I completely understand beer snobbery and whisky snobbery, since good beer and whisky are a thousand times better than bad. But I do not understand frou-frou girly food. Give me twenty bucks, and I can make a dinner for four that will bring my guests to their knees. A great biscuit is better than boring pate. I guess Mr. Randazzo feels the same way. His ingredients seem very ordinary, but the food rocks. Good cooking isn’t about innovation or cleverness or expensive ingredients. It’s about knowing what tastes good, pure and simple. It reminds me of what Glenn Gould said: “You don’t play the piano with your fingers. You play it with your mind.” Good pianists say you can play anything you can hear. I think a determined cook can cook any dish he is capable of conceiving and appreciating. If you can imagine the taste, and your instincts are good, you will eventually be a great cook.

I can’t find the exact wording of the Gould quotation, but I think it’s right.

I’m fooling with sourdough today. I’m not sure how to work it. The first batch I made fermented for one day, and then I added yeast and let it rise. Last week, I made a batch to store in the freezer, and I let it ferment for two days, and it rose without yeast. This is interesting, because I’m sure sourdough without yeast has its own great qualities, but I don’t know how to manage it.

I will explain.

When I made the first batch, it fermented enough to taste good and have a great texture, but it didn’t rise until I added yeast. I put the yeast in and then formed rolls, and then it rose. This took around two hours, so the dough stayed in the shapes I created. If I use bacteria alone, I believe the rise will take a lot longer. This will probably cause the dough knots to melt back together overnight, and that would mess up the rolls. You want them to come apart in pieces.

I decided to take some dough out of the freezer, form it into a loaf and some rolls, and see what happened. I suspect the bacteria ate so much of the sugar in the dough that the dough will not poof up again, but you never know.

I’ve noticed that the fermentation makes the dough very sticky, as though it had extra water. So I guess next time I’ll have to cut the water back by maybe 5%. Maybe it’s just the gluten, absorbing water overnight. I don’t know. I am not a real baker.

I’d like to learn to make breakfast rolls with this stuff. If you’ve traveled to Europe, you may have had fresh-baked hard rolls with a continental breakfast. The ones I’m thinking of have a shiny crust, and they’re chewy. I’d like to make something similar with sourdough. I think it would be one of the greatest breakfasts possible. I already make croissant-type deals full of chocolate or strawberry and cheesecake filling, and if you put hard sourdough rolls next to them, along with strong, sweet hot chocolate, you’d have the makings of paradise.

My two favorite breakfasts are a Kentucky breakfast (country ham, biscuits, et cetera) and McDonald’s with ketchup on the side. After that, continental breakfast with butter and really good preserves. After that, eggs Benedict. So the rolls are clearly a priority.

I wanted to do sourdough biscuits, but I wasn’t sure how. I think the fermentation would kill the baking soda, and the biscuits wouldn’t rise. And the texture would be funny, because the gluten would activate. It occurred to me this morning that maybe the answer is to sour the milk, not the dough. Of course, that would be a lot like buttermilk biscuits, wouldn’t it? But as I understand it, the buttermilk we buy in stores is fake and doesn’t taste like the real thing. I wouldn’t know; my mom used to get the real thing when she was a kid, but she is no longer around to tell me what it was like. I suspect the sourdough bacteria would give a different result. Can’t hurt to find out. I can set some milk out with sourdough culture in it and see what happens. Ohhhh….hey! What if I gave up on the biscuits and made sourdough GRAVY? Oh, man. THAT’S an idea.

If I could make it with cultured milk, I could freeze the milk in advance. What convenience.

Now I’m thinking about croissants. Some day if I love someone enough to do it, I should make a big continental breakfast with pain au chocolat, strawberry cheesecake croissants, and sourdough rolls. That would KILL.

I wish I had a source for real butter. The expensive stuff they sell in stores (Plugra, and so on) is no good. If you’ve ever had fresh (churned) butter from an actual cow, you know what I mean. Maybe the crud in the churn gives it flavor.

I made the mistake of watching The Food Network while fasting. I watched Man Versus Food. It’s a show in which a guy goes around trying to eat challenging objects.

I respected some of the things he ate. There was a greasy roast beef sandwich that looked good, and the same place also served roast beef combined with a cheeseburger and sauteed onions. But for the most part, it seemed like the restaurateurs simply took ordinary food and made it larger. That’s not cooking. That’s engineering. Boring. I make a lot of big food, but generally, there is more to it than size. For example, I make chicken-fried steak on a Frisbee-sized biscuit, but I use a home-aged rib eye instead of a nasty chunk of cube steak with varicose veins, so it’s not like I just added weight. Anyone can make food bigger. I can’t get excited about that.

The show is good, even if the food is not always interesting.

I also enjoyed a show about cheap restaurants. The title is “Something, Drive-Ins, and Dives.” I forget. A guy with bleached hair traveled from place to place, checking out great cheap food. I particularly liked a Mexican place he found. They operate out of a Shell station. Seriously. A Mexican family put a restaurant kitchen in there, and the food is supposedly really good.

I keep thinking of my dream of opening a pizza place. I won’t rule it out. I’ve learned so much at my church, I can crank out six dozen garlic rolls in twenty minutes, starting from zero. Pizza is also pretty fast, and if I used sourdough, it would be even faster, because I could do prep days in advance. And I still haven’t had a cheesecake that compares to mine (Randazzo’s has a very good one, though).

Maybe some day. God has to open the door and show me a way. Restaurants are really bad investments, because they almost always fail, so you don’t want to start one without a higher power stacking the cards.

Randazzo’s was inspiring. It shows how well one good cook can do, if things work out.

Progress Never Stops

Last night I had the best Italian (maybe “Italian-style”) meal of my entire life.

Since I stopped working in my church’s cafe, I’ve been getting lots of food ideas. I got some wonderful ideas for improving my garlic rolls.

One big change involves the structure of the rolls. As you may know, many people make garlic rolls by tying strips of dough in knots, which improves the texture immensely. I like to cut the strips lengthwise before tying them. This way you get two strips, which are better than one. This week I decided to divide them one more time, into four strips, and I took steps to prevent the strips from re-joining during the rising process. I also twist the strip assemblies like candy canes before tying the knots.

I’m also using sourdough now. I made my own starter using bacteria from a very unlikely source, and I made a big batch of dough without yeast. The idea is to keep portions of this stuff frozen. When you need one, you put it in the fridge. It can sit there all week (maybe longer), and whenever you want to make rolls, you mix it with fresh dough, and in a fairly short time, you have excellent sourdough with a beautiful texture.

If it gets old, throw it out and thaw a new portion. They probably cost fifteen cents to make.

Yesterday I decided to make three rolls. One with all the improvements, and two the way I was making them last week. I bought the cheapest grating cheese (mystery-brand romano) I could find, since I was only doing a test. I also made spaghetti rigati (spaghetti with longitudinal ridges) with sauce based on tomato paste and Cento cherry tomatoes. I had a can lying around (bought it so I could try it in pizza sauce), and I figured it was time to use it.

The cheap cheese turned out to be the best grated cheese I had ever eaten. It didn’t have a lot of weird, funky flavors, the way many expensive cheeses do, but the taste and texture were perfect by my standards. The sauce was a thing of beauty; I think I know of better tomato products to use, but the cherry tomatoes were very good, and I left the skins in for fiber.

I made the spaghetti, buttered it, dumped half of it in a bowl, piled a lot of thawed-out mozzarella (still cleaning out the deep freeze) on it, added the rest of the spaghetti, tossed it slightly, added sauce, and grated cheese over the result.

The roll…I can’t describe it. I would almost describe my response to it as reverence. I covered the rolls with garlic sauce and grated cheese, and I ate them one at a time, and while all of them were excellent, the one I did the new way was on its own plane of existence. It fell apart beautifully. The mix of textures was a joy to behold. The sourdough flavor and aroma transported me. And that cheap cheese complemented it perfectly.

I think I have a way to improve the dough even more, but I would lose a little bit of the convenience. I can’t wait to use it in pizza.

There is no doubt about it. God guides my cooking. The ideas fall like rain. They land on my head when I least expect it. What is the purpose? I can’t even guess. I thought I was supposed to be making this stuff in church, but I was not able to do that.

I would love to open a pizzeria and sell nothing but pizza, rolls, and cheesecake. I honestly think people would faint in the parking lot. But people keep telling me quality doesn’t count in the pizza business. It certainly hasn’t counted for much in other business ventures I’ve been involved in, except for law. Oddly, law practice seems to be a purer than average meritocracy. Gladhanding and office politics count for something, but if you’re good, work will come to you, because the people who aren’t good are afraid to stand on their own feet; they will want you to do their work for them and hold their hands.

It would be great to do things for my church, but it’s extremely difficult to bless Christians. It seems like they mess up every good idea you give them. Buy your church a new chapel, and they’ll use it to store fertilizer. Buy them chef’s knives, and they’ll use them as screwdrivers and chisels. I suppose this is what God has to deal with every day. “Here’s a pillar of fire and a cloud to guide you through the wilderness and defeat all your enemies, and WAIT! Get away from that golden calf! What are you DOING? Get back here! Stop burning your babies for Molech this INSTANT! Are you listening to me?”

I assume God will not help a church make good use of things, unless the people in the church are on the right spiritual wavelength. If there isn’t enough prayer and enough determination to walk by faith instead of jumping into projects that seem right to our limited minds, God takes his hand off what we do, and the enemy wrecks it. Maybe. There has to be some explanation. Maybe I am pushing my church to accept things God wants me to keep, or maybe God is teaching me to have realistic expectations when I deal with churches (my pick for likeliest explanation). Anyway, it looks like my only hope of accomplishing anything with the good things God gives me is to hold onto them, do my best with them, and support God’s work from whatever profits I receive.

I am really enjoying the ideas I get, even if they don’t bless anyone except me and my family and friends.

This week I’m repeating the fast that delivered me from overeating. I do that once in a while. I felt it was time. It seemed like gluttony was trying to creep back into my life, which is to be expected periodically.

I couldn’t get anyone to join me on this fast. Oh, well. I’ll get my blessings, and I tried to help other people get theirs. What more can I do? When you’re a Christian, you have to accept the fact that very often, you are going to have to step out on your own, because other people will not want to go forward with you.

The armorbearer team at my church fasts every Monday, but it’s not much of a fast. It’s surprisingly hard to get people to go a day without calories. We fast on Mondays until 6 p.m., which amounts to less than 24 hours when you count sleep time, and we are allowed to have any liquids we want. You could have ten milkshakes on this fast. I think it’s better than nothing, but I don’t think it achieves nearly as much as a zero-calorie fast, and I was starting to accept it as my standard fast. So I needed to upgrade. I’m back to zero calories, and I’m doing this two-day deal, which is called the Armorbearer Freedom Fast.

Mike has lost over 35 pounds since he went on the last Freedom Fast. That’s a good result and a great testimony to God’s power and kindness.

I’m Stuffed

If there is one thing I feel sure about as a Christian, it’s this: if you want God to reveal things to you, you are going to have to spend a lot of time praying in the Spirit. The less I do it, the less I receive. The more I do it, the more I hear.

Yesterday was a remarkable day. I’m going through the Bible systematically this year, and right now, I’m working on Jeremiah. “Coincidentally,” Perry Stone has been doing a lot of teaching about hell. It turns out this stuff fits together in an impressive way.

The book of Jeremiah compares us to clay in a potter’s hand. It says that when we’re “marred,” God re-shapes us.

Jerusalem contains a valley known as the Valley of Hinnom. This is a deep spot where the ancients burned their trash. Long ago, it was the place where Canaanites burned their children alive as sacrifices to Moloch. God took Moloch’s holy place and turned it into a trash dump. Fires burned all the time in the Valley of Hinnom.

Judas hanged himself in this area. In all likelihood, he hanged himself near the top, and he fell into the valley, and this is what caused his intestines to burst out.

When Judas realized Jesus was not going to escape death, he tried to give his payment (silver, symbolic of redemption) back to the High Priest, but it was rejected as blood money. The priests used it to buy a place called “the potter’s field,” to be used to bury the poor.

The potter’s field was in the area of the Valley of Hinnom. Potters worked there. They discarded bad merchandise there, in the form of broken pottery, or potsherds.

The Bible calls us “vessels,” and it refers to “flasks.” The first miracle Jesus performed involved turning water into wine, at a wedding in Cana. That water was in seven vessels used to fill mikvehs (sanctifying baths). The Bible tells us the Holy Spirit has seven parts. Christianity involves receiving the Holy Spirit, which is referred to as “living water.” The Holy Spirit fills us and changes us. It’s an internal mikveh. At Pentecost, when the baptism with the Holy Spirit fell for the first time, people declared that they believed the recipients were “full of new wine.” The miracle at Cana showed what Jesus intended to do to his church.

The Bible calls proud people “stiff-necked.” When a flask or other earthen vessel is fired, it becomes impossible to mold it, and the neck becomes stiff.

In the Bible, the Valley of Hinnom is used as a symbol for hell. And it just happens to be a former center of Satan worship, where fire used to burn all the time, and where malformed vessels were shattered and discarded because they had become too stiff to repair.

Sometimes God paints a picture for us, and all you have to do is open your eyes and look. Hell is reserved for Satan. It will also receive people who are too hard to allow God to change them. And God gave us the Valley of Hinnom to prove this is all true.

This is a pretty good explanation for the phrase “stiff-necked.” Pride doesn’t make your neck stiff. People don’t respond to pride physically by stiffening their necks. But it makes sense when you’re talking about pottery.

Incidentally, Moloch worship was Satan’s imitation of damnation and the lake of fire. God does not want to cast his children into eternal fire, so what did Satan do? He created a form of worship in which people threw their babies into burning pitch, in the belly of an idol. Satan always parodies God, even when he doesn’t realize it. And as Perry Stone says, the modern replacement for Moloch worship is abortion. A womb is supposed to be a place of nurturing and growth, but Satan convinces women to turn their wombs–their bellies, just like Moloch’s–into slaughterhouses. Places where beings are destroyed. What could be more perverse or disgusting?

I’ll bet there are many women out there who have had abortions, yet who would not live in a house where a murder has occurred. If you kill your unborn child, aren’t you such a house? Strange.

In lighter news, I came up with a shocking improvement for my garlic roll recipe. I made kimchi a while back, and I realized it was full of lactobacillus (taken from a jar of kimchi I bought), so it might be a good source for bacteria to make bread. I put some kimchi liquor into a jar with flour and water, and a day later, I had sourdough starter.

I mixed some of the starter into a batch of dough, without yeast. I let it sit for a day, and then I mixed yeast in and made rolls. They were incredible. The texture was different; the rolls were more transparent and satisfying to chew. The smell of sourdough filled the kitchen as they baked. I love it. And while I was eating them, I realized I finally had a great way to make dough in advance. If you put yeast in dough, it’s hard to freeze it well because of the CO2 that escapes, but if you make dough without yeast, it will work great with vacuum bags.

I’m going to make pizza this way from now on. It will be incredible.

I credit God. He just drops this stuff on me. I also have a new way of assembling the rolls, which gives them a much more complicated and pleasing structure to pull apart and eat. I recently received two ideas along this line. I got one a few days back, and another improvement came to me as I was typing this.

Unfortunately, I am not going to be cooking for my church any more. They’re going to miss out on all my new creations. I’m sure God will show me what to do with them. It’s too bad, because the new dough will make prep extremely easy and efficient, and I would have been able to streamline pizza production enormously.

This week someone asked me to make one of my banana nut bread/pineapple upside-down cakes for her birthday, but I had to turn her down. The nature of the food I cooked was somewhat sensational. It always made a splash. I think that spark is gone from our kitchen now. The food will be good, but not exciting.

I have two new chef friends. These are real chefs, not sous chefs or line cooks. They compete in nationwide contests held by the company that employs them, and they’ve won expensive vacations. They go to my church, but they won’t go near the cafe. Very sad, because they both run commercial dining facilities for big companies. I know of three chefs who go to my church but avoid the kitchen, and now I’ve joined them.

When smart, unselfish Spirit-filled people avoid an enterprise, it’s not a good sign.

These ladies have all sorts of training and experience, but they treat me with respect, and I appreciate that. I know I don’t have their superior knowledge and training.

On Saturday, one of them is cooking for a bunch of people, and I’m invited. She just asked me to make rolls! How about that!

I finally have a decent mixer. A long while back, I recommended a Bosch Universal Plus for my church, and I’ve used it for pizza, rolls, and cheesecake. It’s so great, I got one for myself. I’ve never had a stand mixer before. It’s my understanding that a more conventional mixer may be better for cakes and so on, but the Bosch is unbeatable for dough. I’ve tried a Hobart Kitchenaid for dough, and it’s horrible. Throws flour all over, has a small capacity, leaves tons of residue in the bowl, and turns the dough into a fist that climbs up the dough hook. With the Bosch, you turn it on, turn it off, empty it, and toss the parts in the dishwasher. Bam, you’re done. And it has a lid that locks on. It even has suction-cup feet so it won’t wander around the kitchen.

I guess the one in my church will sit and rot in my absence. I was the only one who knew how to use it.

If you get a Bosch, I recommend getting the stainless bowl. It usually comes with a plastic job. The version I ordered comes with both, so I won’t have problems if I need to mix two different things. You can also hook a meat grinder to it. That would be fantastic. Homemade sausage is the bomb.

I better get off my butt and make dough. I have to be ready for Saturday.

More

Gallery of sourdough rolls:

Bring Your Keys

Recently I posted something about some problems that occurred at my church, and the way God was leading me through them. I decided to take it down. There is a 0.001% chance that someone from my church might read my blog, and if they did, they might find what I wrote divisive. I don’t want to risk it.

It’s hard to know when it’s okay to give your testimony regarding fellow Christians who cause you problems. It has value as testimony, but it can also inflame them and their friends against you. It can also come off as self-righteousness or schadenfreude, which is a tempting dish Christians are not allowed to touch. The Bible says God may turn his wrath away from your enemies if you celebrate their defeat.

I don’t cook at my church any more. Very sad, but there it is. My role was suddenly reduced to the point where it would have been foolish to do all that work. I used to sell 15-20 pizzas per event, but I am down to 9, and the display area has been sharply reduced, so it would have gotten much worse. It reached a point where instead of making the church $250 a day (or over $10,000 per year), I would have been bringing in 50 bucks. In order to do that, I’d have to miss working as an Armorbearer, and the leader of the Armorbearers would really like me to spend less time in the kitchen. The economics don’t make sense.

My participation in special events was cut out entirely.

On top of that, I suddenly became aware that the church has a paid chef running the kitchen. No one told me about this until this week. Last I knew, we were all volunteers, and I answered only to the pastor running the cafe. I was exceeding my authority, but I had no way of knowing it.

One of the fundamental rules of institutional cooking is that there has to be a single authority in charge of any kitchen. I was an unnecessary hindering authority, and I didn’t even know it. I had been trying for weeks to get information on what was going on, but I couldn’t get emails or texts answered, and there were no meetings.

I also learned that although I had been encouraged to increase the professionalism of the kitchen workers, I was going to be expected to stop resisting the lack of order. I would have had to work in an regime that conflicts sharply with my work ethic. When you take joy in doing things right, and you’re passionate about it, it’s extremely difficult to work in an enterprise where low standards are defended and promoted.

Maybe I expected too much. I hoped to be a kind of Jaime Escalante figure, helping people rise to meet greater expectations. Instead, I learned that we were expected to go along to get along. I think the fear was that if we pushed people to excel, they would simply go home. And maybe that’s right, but I’m not suited to work in that kind of environment. I felt like Howard Roarke would have felt, pasting Parthenon replicas to the facades of his elevations.

In a nutshell, I faced a constructive discharge, and I left in order to avoid adding to the entropy. And there are other reasons why I couldn’t remain, but I don’t think I should reveal everything.

It’s still a sticky situation, because before I found out all this new information, I talked to the head pastor. We agreed that I would cook for visiting VIPs from then on. I doubt he has any idea I’m out of the kitchen, and it’s not my place to butt in and let him know. He’s in charge of the whole church. His word is law, but he runs the kitchen through a subordinate, and that’s the person I was under.

I learned some wonderful lessons from all this. I knew that the supernatural battle has to come first, and I was trying to implement this knowledge, but I learned that you have to get reinforcements sometimes. We’re constantly taught that God, in us, is greater than the world. But I learned that no matter how good your prayer life is, Satan is still extremely strong, and sometimes you will need reinforcements. Many Christians would consider that a repudiation of faith, but it’s reality. You can get in big trouble fighting strong spirits on your own, even with God on your side.

Someone sent me to meet with our church’s prayer team over the cafe mess, and it was like going to a hospital after being pulled off a raft in the middle of the ocean. I can’t tell you how refreshing it was. They had the kind of worship the main services lack. There was no rap. There was no rock. There was real worship music. There was prolonged prayer. There was serious teaching of scripture, not just the soft stuff we serve out front. I had been hoping to find this kind of atmosphere somewhere in my church, and on Wednesday night, I found it. Or it found me. I’m going to join the team if they’ll have me. This is what I really wanted. Working with your talents is very nice, but it’s garbage compared to working with your faith and drawing near to God.

It’s funny; the temple had a main area where ordinary people could come and go, and then behind that, they had an area for the priests, and behind that, they had the Holy of Holies. Our church has a sanctuary for services, but the prayer team meets in a smaller room behind it, pretty much where the priests would be in a temple. That’s where I want to be. That’s where things happen.

I also found out that a person who seemed to be causing most of my problems was actually a relatively minor player. The biggest source of chaos and strife was someone else. I knew Satan liked to fool people and pit them against each other, but now I have new respect for his abilities in this area.

My involvement with the Armorbearers is increasing. I’m back where I’m supposed to be, and it feels fantastic. I can’t describe the relief. I got some great rewards from cooking, and I’m sure my time in the cafe was God’s idea, but I am loving getting back to my earlier calling. And there are so many unpleasant repetitious problems I won’t have to face any more. I go in, I do my job with a spiritual crew that understands responsibility and authority, and I go home. It’s like a vacation.

I’m planning to work with the prayer team to fix the cafe. Some of us are thinking of going in when the place is closed and praying the paint off the walls. That will be fantastic. The leader of the prayer team is taking the issue to God, so I don’t know if the plan will be put to work.

When I was with the prayer team, several of them kept telling me I needed to go back to the cafe. The problem was that I had already made a commitment to the Armorbearers, and my leader and I had prayed about it, and I had prayed about it, and leaving seemed correct. I came to the conclusion that returning as a prayer warrior was the best thing. I’ll still be there, and I’ll be doing something extremely important, but I won’t be in the way, cooking and imposing my standards in someone else’s kitchen. The chef has to put her stamp on the place, if she is to succeed and get any kind of respect, and for that to happen, I have to be gone.

Things keep improving for me. That’s how walking by faith is. You grow and improve and gain strength. My tool chest gets bigger and bigger, thanks to God’s generosity and patience.

We Should Have a Pie Fight

Things are going great here.

Over the last few weeks, I started to feel I was doing too much work at church. That’s not really correct. I felt I was doing too little supernatural warfare, compared to the amount of mind-and-hands work I was doing at church. I was getting up and taking off for church without prayer, and I was coming home too late for prayer. I was letting natural work push supernatural work out of the frame.

I knew this was no good. It was driving me crazy. All my strength comes from prayer, study, fasting, giving, and worship. When those things slide, the foundation of my life collapses.

I felt like gluttony was trying to get ahold of me again, and I was generally dealing with a flesh uprising I wanted no part of.

I ramped things up. I started increasing my morning prayers and making time to pray in the afternoon. As an Armorbearer, I’m allowed to drink liquids like protein shakes while fasting, but I went back to water and unsweetened, zero-calorie liquids. I resumed taking communion. I made sure I read the word.

Things have improved greatly. God is really fighting on my side now. My flesh is taking the beating it deserved. My appetite is under control. The sensation of the Holy Spirit’s presence is strong. A week or two back, he surrounded me for a whole evening. I felt like I was full of codeine.

If you don’t believe in the baptism with the Holy Spirit, all I can say is, consider my testimony. I would not make my experiences up. What’s worse? Having to admit your church is wrong, or becoming a spiritual stillbirth? The Gospels tell us “living water” refers to the Holy Spirit living inside us, as a result of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. They say that expressly. Oral Roberts didn’t invent it. Don’t let the nuttiness of some Christians lead you to discount the most powerful gift God gave us.

The Holy Spirit is not Hitler; you can resist the improvements he wants to make in you. This is why some charismatics are so embarrassing. They’re not listening or improving. They use God as an excuse to satisfy their greed and lust. It doesn’t mean the baptism is a hoax.

It’s 2010, and people still think Christianity is about work. About being good. That’s not it. That’s not even a fair description of pre-Christian Judaism, which was much more work than any type of Christianity I know of. Christianity is about being inseminated with the Spirit of God and allowing him to grow inside you until you resemble the father. It’s conception and gestation. It’s supernatural change. That’s what it’s all about. You can’t improve yourself. You have to let God do it, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the mechanism.

If you have ears to hear, you will understand.

I feel like God is turning me into a supernatural wrecking machine. For some time, I’ve been very impressed with the importance of becoming a supernatural warrior. This life is war; our primary function is to fight. As my relationship with God improves and he crucifies my flesh and helps me behave correctly, I become more powerful. I become slippery to Satan; sins are the handles he uses to grip us. I can tell I’m getting a lot stronger, and I wonder what the reason is. I feel like God is preparing me for a major battle. Or maybe this is just how we’re all supposed to be, all the time.

I’m learning that persecution can come from within the church. I should have been ready. This weekend I realized that most of the persecution I recalled reading about in the Bible came from believers. People who believed in God delivered Jesus to the Romans and insisted he be killed. They slaughtered the prophets. Heretics in the early church persecuted Paul, who began as a persecutor and murderer. Sometimes the heathens got some licks in, but recall that David was more afraid of Saul than the Philistines.

I think God gave me a ministry involving food. He gave me fantastic recipes which were clearly better than anything a person of my background could be expected to create. He got my cookbook published. He gave me supernatural weight loss. He had his pastors ask me to work in a church cafe. He gave me a loyal following among the people at church. I can’t walk through the place without people telling me how great the food is. People tell me I’m the best cook on earth. I made cheesecakes for some visiting VIPs a while back, and some of them said it was the best they had ever had. This kind of praise has become routine, and it’s fairly obvious that the recipes are gifts from God. They should glorify him, not me.

Lately, as I let the supernatural part of my walk decay, I started having problems. People were opposing my work in the cafe. I don’t want to get into particulars, but it has been a real problem. I feel unwelcome, and I have to fight in order to donate my time and talent. That’s insane.

A little while back, we had a major event at church, and there was an effort to keep me from cooking for it, On top of that, my work area was buried under piles of supplies and equipment, and I was told I might not be able to get supplies to cook the following week. And I was treated very rudely when I inquired about getting the work area cleared. I couldn’t even get the person who treated me rudely to accept my apology, and I didn’t do anything wrong to begin with.

I didn’t lift a finger against anyone in the natural. I tried to get a little support from the people above me, and it didn’t work, and I felt led to stop. I felt that God was holding them back so he alone could deliver me. He came through so powerfully, it shocked me. I actually felt sorry for the people who had come against me. Now at least one of them thinks I planned it. I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t see it coming. All I did was bake two cheesecakes in order to help my pastor. As a result, I got promotion and honor, and things went badly for the people who opposed me. Their own efforts got a lot of criticism from people who attended the event. People–friends and mere acquaintances–have come to me unsolicited and criticized their work.

The people who worked against me should be on top. They have tons of training which I lack. But God put me over, like you would not believe. With no warning to me, he used me to chastise people who went to cooking school. My natural tendency is to feel that a self-taught cook shouldn’t cross swords with people who have studied, but I am developing a powerful reputation.

An anointing is a job. When God anoints you, it means he has hired you. When you hire someone, you support them. You give them what they need to get the job done, and you fight anyone who gets in their way. That’s what happened to me. It doesn’t matter whether I went to culinary school. God wants me to cook, and he is going to see to it that I do it. If I end up doing something else, it will be because God has something else for me to do. No one can take away what God wants me to have, and it’s a sin to try.

I don’t care whether I cook at church or not. I could use some rest, and I’m not anxious to pour more money into the cafe. If the people in charge decide placating the venal and arrogant is easier than backing the faithful and obedient, hooray. I’ll be an Armorbearer and continue helping the pastor write books. “In God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.”

If I am asked to leave now, I will leave in victory. If I stay, I’ll be able to do more cooking for God. I can’t lose. God has gone before me and prepared my path.

The supernatural warfare has been incredibly helpful. So much so that I’m grateful for my enemies. How would I learn and grow without them? I can’t ask for life without conflict, because I was created to make war. That’s fine. All I ask is that God remain with me and fight for me.

Sandwich Idea Strikes

Don’t even tell me my recipes don’t come from God.

Months ago, I got the idea of making homemade pork sausage. I bought pork at Costco, plus smoked bacon to perk it up, and I made bulk sausage. It was incredible. Today I’m eating it; I thawed out a package because I needed to start rotating old stuff out of the deep freeze.

I was eating a delicious slice of this stuff when it hit me: BARBECUE SAUCE. I ran to the fridge and got some Sonny’s Smokin’ sauce and tried it on the sausage. BULLSEYE.

Here’s my idea. Fried sausage on a buttered, toasted onion bun. Add sauteed onions with barbecue sauce and butter, plus a few slices of thin dill pickle. OH YEAH! This will be far superior to barbecued pork, and I won’t need to smoke it!

Que Va? Indians Must Have Moved in Next Door

I had a wonderful inspiration this morning before I got out of bed.

What if I took my Indian-style chicken curry recipe and added orange, tangerine, or clementine juice, along with zest strips? That would be fantastic, right? And I could also add chopped red pepper for texture and flavor.

It wasn’t long before I found myself at the store. Walking to get the ingredients. Walking past the canned fruit. Seeing the canned pineapple out of the corner of my eye. Turning around. Going back.

What if I fried pineapple chunks in olive oil and added them to the curry?

I grabbed a can of pineapple.

I also decided to use garlic slices instead of pureeing them with the other sauce ingredients. Anything to make the sauce less monotonous.

Now the curry is simmering, and I have a saucepan full of basmati rice going. I make it with chicken broth, Coco Lopez, carrot strips and golden raisins fried in butter, cinnamon, and butter.

This is going to be amazing. But will it be too much like Thai red gang curry? Truthfully, I don’t care. That would suit me fine.

Surely these ideas come from God. I’ve already tried the sauce, and it made me weak.

Maybe I’ll post a photo.

Photo

It’s excellent, but it would benefit from three things. 1. More habaneros (I can fix that). 2. A day of rest. 3. Chicken stock made with bones.

Tomorrow, after the flavors mingle, it will defy description.

Home Pickling Adventures

I never cared all that much for sweet pickles, until I tried the ones my grandmother made. They were extremely crunchy, and they had lots of green dye in them, so they had an interesting appearance.

A while back I started canning my own pickles. I’ve written about it here. They’re somewhat similar to the ones Granny made.

I cranked out six jars of pickles today. They should be magnificent. I won’t know until I try one later in the day.

I also sliced two heads of cabbage for kimchi. I am crazy about homemade kimchi. I made my first batch last month, and it was stupendous. This time, I’m making it even hotter, with my horrendous backyard-grown Trinidad Scorpion peppers.

I used regular old cabbage last time, but the recipes I’ve seen call for Napa cabbage. I bought two heads for my latest kimchi batch. I will never buy it again. It cost me over ten bucks for two cabbages. I don’t care how good this stuff is. It’s not worth it. I believe the other cabbages cost 90 cents a head.

Pickling stuff is a pretty good deal. You don’t have to be insanely meticulous about sanitation and so on, because the acidity prevents botulism, and you don’t have to use a pressure canner.

It’s probably impossible to can kimchi. The bacteria that create it would make sealed jars blow up, and if you heated the kimchi to kill the bacteria, you’d end up with something pretty odd.

I wonder if I can do this with chutney.

Milk and Honey, Cream Cheese and Sugar…Same Deal

The other day, Virgil warned me that I was once again within the CONE OF CERTAIN DEATH. A tropical storm was on the way.

It looked pretty bad. This thing was supposed to go right over me. And Miami hasn’t caught up with the mid-20th-century, so almost all of our power lines are still on poles. That means the city goes black when the wind blows. This makes complete sense, since there is no reason to think Miami would ever experience high winds.

Of course, being a big Christian and all, I prayed. And today the storm has shifted course, and it’s out in the Gulf Stream. It’s not even windy here.

Is it okay if I take full credit for this one? I guess not.

Life is pretty sweet here. Guitar practice is going well. Unlike most people, I believe in practicing too fast as well as slowly, and it’s paying off, big-time. I keep working on ZZ Top, and I got faster and faster without realizing it, and now when I play along with the recording, I feel like I’m crawling. That’s great, because it means the music seems slower to me, so I feel like I have more time to think about each note.

I think the computer screwed up my picking hand. I am working on that. I have always held the mouse between my thumb and ring finger, with my index and middle fingers on the buttons. This is extremely unnatural. It causes you to squeeze inward with your ring finger all day, and I notice that now I have chronic soreness in the muscles I use to do this. Flatpicking tends to stretch these muscles, so it’s not a big surprise. If you play the guitar, or plan to learn, you might consider changing the way you hold a computer mouse.

I ordered two sets of P90 pickups. One is for my grey History Les Paul copy; I ordered Z90 humbucker-sized pickups from Harmonic Designs. They’re not cheap, but the sound samples are great. I also decided to try some inexpensive P90s on my History ES335 copy. I chose Mean 90s from Guitar Fetish. These are Asian jobs. They cost about a third as much as American pickups. Worth a shot. They get great reviews.

I’m not sure why pickups cost so much. A pickup is a few magnets and a little wire. You would think they could be sold profitably for forty bucks each. And maybe they can. I doubt the people who make them are pure socialists.

I stuck a new tone capacitor in my Chinese Epiphone Riviera. This guitar does not have a very bright sound, and I have read that .022uF capacitors (the standard) are actually too big, causing high frequencies to die off. I stuck a 6800pF capacitor in the guitar, and it does sound brighter, but it lacks the overall tastiness of the Blues 90 sound I get from my Blueshawk. I may stick Lollar P90s in it. The guitar is definitely worth the effort. I don’t want to decide until I hear the cheap Asian pickups.

Changing the capacitor was not fun. You have to pull every bit of electronic stuff out through the F-holes. And I ended up putting a tiny crack in one of my knobs. It turns out you can remove a knob safely by wrapping a thin cloth around it and yanking. I did not know that, so now I have to order knobs.

“Coincidentally” (I use that word so much), there is a guy who did a long series of videos and blog posts about the Epiphone Riviera, and I learned the cloth trick from him. You can find him by Googling “planetz.” The info should be helpful for working on any guitar with F-holes.

I guess it sounds like I hate humbuckers, but that’s not true. I love the humbuckers in my Burny Les Paul. But I feel like one humbucker guitar is enough.

It’s a funny thing, but I don’t have any complaints about my Fender pickups. Both guitars have Texas Specials, and I have no desire to change them.

I didn’t buy expensive tone capacitors. I went to Mouser Electronics and ordered some sort of film jobs. I read that the obsession with expensive capacitors was probably pointless, and given my experience with other audio myths, I believed it. When I studied electronics in college, they didn’t tell us to change our calculations when we used $40 paper-and-oil capacitors. All that mattered was the capacitance. I have a feeling the engineers know more about this than the musicians.

On Saturday I had a great experience. I celebrated Sukkot with a bunch of Messianic Jews. I was only able to get one person from my church to go with me, but it was worth it.

The event took place at the home of Ben Juster, son of Dan Juster, the rabbi who runs Tikkun Ministries. Look him up. They had a big ol’ tabernacle in the backyard, and I brought a strawberry cheesecake that could not have been better had the angels themselves delivered it. Bringing a really good cheesecake to a gathering of Jews is a little like bringing whiskey to Indians, but it was well received.

Many Christians believe Sukkot presages the Messianic Age, when Jesus will return and live here with us. I think that’s probably correct. I suppose the sukkah (tabernacle or booth) represents the physical bodies of believers; Jesus will associate with us even though we are still flesh. Right now he does this through the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

The Bible talks about people failing to be obedient during the Messianic Age. Imagine that. Jesus himself is sitting on a throne in Jerusalem, and everyone knows who he is, yet some people still rebel. I have no problem believing that. Human beings have a limitless capacity for rationalization and self-deception. People wanted to stone Moses even after they saw God support him with miracles. Wait…that was in the movie, which is full of craziness. Well anyway, they defied Moses.

Yesterday I found out that my pastor’s daughter in law is a big student of the Jewish origins of Christianity. That was a surprise. Maybe I’ll be able to pry her and her husband loose one Saturday so they can visit the synagogue. It’s very hard for them to get permission to miss our Saturday service.

I managed to turn someone on to Perry Stone this week. The church friend who went to the Sukkot thing with me listened to Perry while we drove. He was talking about silver as a symbol of redemption. He has an interesting theory. Remember how David got in trouble for conducting a census? God hit Israel with a plague that killed 70,000 people. Stone’s theory is that the big sin here was the failure to pay the silver redemption cost. I don’t recall exactly how it works, but males have to be redeemed with silver, and when you have a census, you’re supposed to pay. Anyway, I ended up lending the CD to my friend.

Stone also says the word “tekel” in “mene mene tekel upharsin” is actually “shekel.” The shekel is a unit of weight, and God was saying the Babylonians had been weighed, and that they had been found wanting. This makes sense to me, because a lot of “T” sounds have been converted to “S” sounds by Western Jews. For example, they say “shabbos” instead of “shabbat.” But I don’t really know anything about it.

Stone’s audio teaching about the census is titled “Not Just a Shekel.” I highly recommend it. You may be unable to get it unless you’re a “partner” of his ministry, though.

I only know of two examples where God himself wrote on stone. One is the delivery of the Ten Commandments, and the other is the incident in the palace at Babylon. There is a funny parallel. God gave the commandments to Hebrews who were celebrating with a heathen idol made of gold. God gave the other inscription to heathens who were celebrating with golden items stolen from the temple and the Holy of Holies. I wonder if that means anything.

With Which Thou Mayest Blow Thine Enemies’ Arteries to Tiny Bits

Idolatry takes some unexpected forms. The most surprising one, in my opinion, is church-related idolatry. You can turn the work you do with your natural abilities into an idol. You can even turn prayer or the Bible into an idol.

I do a lot of volunteer work at my church. Lately it has become obvious to me that I have to start cutting back. Either that, or God is going to have to open up a door to permit me to keep it up. If I could, I’d just live at church and work there all day (surprising to see myself write that), but that’s not my situation. I have to choose the ministries in which I serve.

I’ve worked on a book and other written materials for the church. I’ve cooked a great deal. I’ve served as an Armorbearer. I’ve attended functions which really were not all that relevant to my walk. It’s too much. I know it’s too much, because my prayer life is suffering.

Prayer is the single most important thing a Christian does. Some people think Christianity is about being good and not going to hell. That’s wrong. The whole point of Christianity is to know God personally and to be changed by the Holy Spirit. Without prayer, that doesn’t happen. You end up detached from the herd, doing whatever seems best to your limited mind, when you should be guided by the gifts of the Spirit.

I used to go to bed early and get up early. Now I get up between 7:00 and 9:00 on most days. My commitments at church sometimes keep me up until past 11:00, so I can’t just flop into bed and get up at 5:30. I refuse to do it. Doing without sleep is like eating junk food or smoking cigarettes; it’s extremely unhealthy. It makes you fat, it ruins your concentration, it degrades your memory, it wrecks your mood and leads to anxiety and depression, and it raises your blood pressure. I get tired of hearing people brag about how little they sleep. It’s like bragging about not brushing your teeth. Why would you brag about destroying yourself? I know there are people who would tell me they care more about their wonderful walks with God than about sleep. Well, maybe they can explain this:

It is vain for thee to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

Here is a clearer translation, from The Complete Jewish Bible:

Ps 127:2
In vain do you get up early
and put off going to bed,
working hard to earn a living;
for he provides for his beloved,
even when they sleep.

Here’s Matthew 11:29-30:

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Some people think it’s virtuous to live a life of chronic deprivation and misery. God says otherwise. I believe God. Call me crazy.

I know people will cite Paul, pointing out that he got beaten a lot and so on. I don’t recall Paul saying he slept three hours every night, or that he worked so hard he didn’t have time to pray and worship. And there is a difference between occasional persecution, or occasional hardship, and perpetual drudgery. If drudgery were the answer, we would be able to save ourselves through works, wouldn’t we? I believe we are all charity cases, and God gives us things we don’t deserve. I believe faith and gratitude are more pleasing to God than hard work. I believe too much hard work and deprivation leads to pride, and God has made it very clear he hates pride.

I have to get God’s guidance and then cut back on the stuff I do at church. I have to accept the fact that things will remain undone. That’s just how churches are. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Even God is unable to make the church run perfectly, without going against his own nature. If that were not true, the church would be perfect.

I have a friend who told me he can’t attend church because he is so busy working as a volunteer. That’s crazy. Would you kick a patient out of a hospital bed and make him mop the floor of the ward? Better not to volunteer at all than to let volunteer work become an idol.

He told me he knows someone who secretly attends another church, because that person’s work at my church makes it impossible for him to sit in a service without working. If my pastor knew that, I think he’d blow a gasket. He doesn’t preach four or five times a week so people can miss his sermons because they’re selling sodas or sewing costumes for plays.

I’m not making pizza at church tomorrow. Tonight I have to go to a Sukkot celebration with a bunch of Messianic Jews, so I can’t attend Saturday night church. That means I have to attend tomorrow, and it means I’ll be up late. That all adds up to arriving late tomorrow and being unable to make the dough on time. That’s life. I’ve trained 7 or 8 people to make pizza. I prepared for days when I would be unavailable, but the helpers I taught haven’t taken up the slack, so when I’m not there, there is no pizza. Wish it were otherwise, but I have to get my rest and worship.

Maybe I should make a short formal list of my priorities and put it on the wall so I have guidance when I have problems like this.

I’m taking a beautiful strawberry cheesecake to the Sukkot thing. I expect it to be a hit. Jews will surround a good cheesecake like the Red Sea closing in on Pharaoh’s army. It’s hard for me to think of a gift that is likely to be received with more joy. You can’t buy good cheesecake in South Florida. If you think you can, it’s because you haven’t tried my cheesecake. I think God handed me that recipe, possibly so I would have it ready to use this very day.

I have to go reduce the sauce and slice the berries. Happy Sukkot, or whatever it is you’re supposed to say.

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Cell phone photo.