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The Sanders Siblings' Cruise Clockwise from top left: Uncle Bob, Uncle Curry, Aunt Twila, Aunt Malinda, Grammy, and Grandad |
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| Grammy took the opportunity to celebrate Grandad's retirement. |
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| Grandad's oldest brother Curry and Curry's wife Dotty helped make the event special. |
"Once admit that human life can be guided by reason, and all possibility of life is annihilated."
1. The rise of our birth control-friendly culture and our abortion-friendly culture happened as twin parts of the same zeitgeist. This was all part of our cultural apostasy, and our rejection of the Christian view of marriage and family.
2. Notwithstanding, the Scriptures say nothing definitively about birth control considered as such. Despite the anti-family bias that created the default assumptions of the world around us, we still have to be careful not to go beyond what is written. We especially have to take care not to go beyond what is written. Slavish following of the world is bad, but so is knee-jerk reaction to it.
7. While the Scriptures don't say anything definitively about birth control as such, they do teach an enormous amount about the blessing of faithful covenant seed. This is one of the three main reasons for covenant marriage -- the begetting of a godly seed (Mal. 2:15). This should be taught and emphasized in the church, and is the only really effective way to counter the world's anti-child bigotry. If this is effectively done, visitors to your church will think you must teach against birth control, and they will think this because of the large teeming population at the three foot level that they can see during fellowship hour.
8. More is involved in raising up a godly seed than to have a man with dogmatic convictions about birth control, matched only by his unwillingness to feed, read to, educate, pay tuition for, bestow upon, and love the results of his dogmatism. There are no promised covenantal blessings for the self-absorbed proprietors of stud farms.
9. Children are a blessing from the Lord, but not an automatic blessing from the Lord. They are a covenant blessing, which means the terms of the covenant must always be believed and remembered. A man with a lazy son is ashamed (Prov. 10:5), and it should be obvious that he would not be more greatly blessed if he had five sons sleeping through the harvest.
11. As each married couple make their decisions about this, and as pastors help them, they should take care to make careful distinctions with regard to motive, as well as a sharp distinction between principles and methods. We must learn to distinguish between a couple postponing fruitfulness for no reason other than that the worldlings told them they should spend some time surfing together in Argentina first, and a seasoned married couple with six kids who stop having them because their covenantal hands are quite full. It appears that the former do not understand the creation order at all, and that the latter don't have any problem at all understanding it. To focus on birth control in isolation interferes with such essential distinctions from being made.
We have no choice but to give ourselves for our children, but we learn that in giving ourselves we receive our selves. In the frailty of this little form that called such an immense love out of me, this bundle of winsome life and running legs and embracing arms, I share in the quintessentially human condition of loving recklessly what is fragile, fleeting, and at risk. There is nothing for it; I cannot help myself. Even at thirteen months, my daughter was sweet and vulnerable and of immeasurable sacred worth. She was not perfect, but she was everything that was good in me, and yet so much better, the highest art I had created, my only true thing in a counterfeit world. She was my little girl. She still is, and always will be. And the joy of loving and being loved by her—well, it was worth any sacrifice and any risk.
Joke: What does a chef make for dinner when she has the night off?
Answer: Reservations!
It’s true. Most working chefs rarely cook at home. Perhaps that is because we have been told that it is not healthy to take our work home with us at the end of the day.
I am an exception. I am a retired NYC restaurant chef, cooking instructor, wife and mother and I prepare all of my family’s meals at home. That’s right, breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week, at home. I prefer it that way. I know what we are eating and we always feel good after a meal.
The Real Truth About Eating Out
After all these years, I know the bitter truth about what you are getting when you dine out.
Let me enlighten you.
Most cooking oil in professional kitchens is a mix (25/75) olive oil to cheap canola oil. Most frying oil is made from GM soy and practically all corn products: tortilla chips, soft tacos, polenta, grits, etc. are GM as well.
Seafood is mostly farm raised. Eggs and poultry are rarely pastured unless noted on the menu and then the entree is at least $30. All bacon has nitrites/nitrates and dairy is unfortunately pasteurized (the occasional raw milk artisinal cheese will find its way onto the better menus). Pork is seeing a change since you can’t throw a ham hock these days without hitting a menu that features a pork belly dish on it (thank you Momofuku).
Most produce is conventional which means that 85% of the mashed potatoes in restaurants today are toxic from pesticides living in the mineral depleted soil.
Grass fed beef, thank goodness, has become the new darling of the restaurant world and is finding it’s way onto many café menus, NYC lunch trucks and even in new fast food burger joints (elevation burger).
When they bring tallow back to fry the chips, that’s when I’ll think about giving them my business. On a recent trip to The Strip House (I was taken by a friend for my birthday who knows I love steak), I ordered the special grass-fed Delmonico rib eye, crisp goose fat potatoes and black truffle creamed spinach. Sometimes you can hit it bang on the head. The steak alone was $42 but boy oh boy was it GOOD!
When you dine out, Real Food costs big money.
Is It Possible to Eat Out Safely?
My simple advice is to stick to the more expensive restaurants and the ones that offer better, Real Food choices on their menus.
If you can’t afford them, stay home and cook!
Once upon a time restaurants were only for the rich and famous. I assure you that you are not missing much. I send my family off each day with food that I lovingly prepare. I do not believe in letting anyone else feed and nourish my family. That is my sacred right as a wife and mother, which is hilarious considering that I fed people for a living for many years, and I thank you all for trusting me. Someday, I sincerely hope to have the privilege to do it again. But not in NYC. My restaurant space that was once renting for $3,000 a month is now going for $14,000 and those numbers just don’t add up.
Born and raised in NY, Emily Duff has been cooking professionally in NYC since 1988. Emily worked for farmers Wilklow, Bradley and Dent from 1989 – 1991 at the Tribeca Washington Farmers Market and Brooklyn, Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. Her café Henrietta’s Feed & Grain (1993) was one of the first eateries to employ a completely seasonal menu based on the bounty of local growers from NY and NJ. The Feed & Grain earned her a reputation of being a chef true to flavor and respectful of ingredients while creating and serving honest, delicious, healing food. Emily enjoyed cooking in restaurant kitchens all over NYC until she retired in 2002 to continue her work in private catering and plan a family. In 2005, after giving birth to her daughter, Emily set forth on a dedicated path of learning in the field of Traditional Nutrition and Natural healing. The birth of her son solidified her dedication and saw a marriage of her passions: Health & Wellness, Food & Family. Family2Table is her vehicle for sharing all that she has learned in her 20 plus years of work. You can read her blog at family2table
"And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth."
