Thankful

Ah, it's that time of year again. . .where we start talking about what we're thankful for. . .well, let me start off by saying that I am thankful that at any moment of any day I have so much to be thankful for. Here are some things that come to mind this morning:

- God's unrelenting pursuit of me displayed in His incredible forgiveness and grace daily

- Fall Retreat was used by Jesus to grow my students and me so much (yay for studying Jonah!)

- Marianne's Ice Cream in Santa Cruz - "Heaven" (vanilla with peanut butter and brownie) was indeed heavenly

- camp fires and guitars and singing our hearts out for hours

- a healthy baby boy, Andrew Daniel, given to the Goodsons on Friday afternoon. . .getting to hold him as he slept yesterday

- sage green flannel sheets

- precious time of tea and prayer with a friend (who's an answered prayer!) this morning

- God's incredible protection over my family

- the thought of a dear friend coming to visit this weekend

- homemade pumpkin gnocchi (see recipe below!)

- sweet mail from a sweet friend. . .and from a child I sponsor in Peru (she's getting so big!)

- learning more and more, with eyes of faith, how completely and perfectly in control God is over all things

Ok - that's what comes to mind right now! Now, as for this amazingly healthy and oh-so easy and tasty recipe. . .basically I baked those pumpkin chocolate chip muffins again (the students loved them this weekend!) but had pumpkin puree left over so when I got home yesterday I decided to try out this recipe and I highly recommend it:

Pumpkin Gnocchi

1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree

1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (a just used a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg instead)

Boil a pot of water that has been salted somewhat generously (it'll add to the flavor). Mix together with your hands until a dough forms. Cut the dough into 5ths and roll out each 5th until it's long and thin (this could be so fun for kids to make!), cut it into bite size pieces and dump small batches into the boiling water. Boil for 3 minutes. Drain and serve with some butter and parmesan cheese (or it would be tasty with some pesto).

Ok - so I fully expected this to taste bad (low expectations huh? :)) but I thought it was still worth a try since I had to do something with that extra pumpkin. . .well, it actually tastes so awesome. The pumpkin is subtle and the whole wheat flour (I've been using Trader's "white whole wheat") gives it a great nutty flavor. Who knew that making gnocchi is so easy?

Off to do some cleaning (oh dear, this place is a disaster right now) and then lunch with my neighbor friend. Thankful for you and for how God's wants to work in and through you this week!