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Recipe: “Come on Over” Potato Chips

In the spirit of absolute transparency, I confess that I have very little self-discipline when it comes to potato chips. And by very little, I mean none! So when my sister told me about making potato chips at home—in the microwave, no less—I decided that it just may allow me to indulge without feeling the need to keep snitching some on a daily basis until the bag is empty! As most of us do when we hear a new idea or recipe, I tweaked it until it worked best for our setting and our taste buds.

They’re fun for kids of all ages to make, and they’re so easy to fix that kids of all ages can make them! We’ve enjoyed them as a crispy side dish with grilled hamburgers, and tonight we’re having them with pizza! These yummy chips make it easy to say, “Come on over”—for a snack or a meal!

“Come on Over” Potato Chips

Prep time: 5 minutes-ish per tray
Cooking time: 5–7 minutes-ish per tray
Serves: 2
From the kitchen of Brenda Henderson

Ingredients:

  • 2 medium potatoes for every 2–3 people
  • Cooking spray (flavor of your choosing)
  • Seasoning spices of your choosing (we like Steak and Shake’s Seasoning Salt, which is similar to Lowry’s)

Directions:

  1. Slice the rounded tip off of one end of a washed and cleaned potato.
  2. Using a potato peeler, “peel” horizontal slices of the potato (you should get about 25–30 slices [“chips”] per potato).
  3. Lightly spray the cooking spray onto a flat plate or microwavable cooking dish.
  4. Lay the slices on the flat plate or microwavable cooking dish. Do not overlap the slices. You will not get all of the slices from one potato on the first plate. It will take a few plates to complete both potatoes.
  5. Once all the chips are arranged on the plate or dish, lightly spray them with the cooking spray and lightly season with the spice(s) of your choosing.
  6. Depending on the wattage and power level of your microwave, you will cook the chips for 5-7 minutes. When they turn a golden brown, they are crispy and ready to remove from the microwave.
  7. Lay the chips on a paper towel to cool—or eat them while they’re warm!

You can store them in a brown paper bag or even store individual servings in small paper bags. I’ve kept mine as long as four days this way, and they were just as crispy on day four as they were on day one!

(By the way, I tried doing sweet potatoes this way. They were awful and shrunk to mini little chips. Don’t bother trying it. Just thank me for the warning!)

I’d love to hear how your chips turn out! I’m all but certain you’ll enjoy them, and you’ll be telling your friends, “Come on over for some homemade potato chips!”

Be sure to check back on Thursday for a blog post about what to say when visiting someone in the hospital. Thursday’s post includes a quick and easy gift to take with you when you visit.

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By Petals from the Basket | November 14, 2017 | "Come on Over" Recipes, Family, Friends, Ideas |

30 Days of EXPRESSING Gratitude

No, I will not be sending daily e-mails or posting daily thoughts regarding our annual Thirty Days of Gratitude. (You’re welcome.)

Yes, I would like to encourage you to join me in this annual endeavor! Some are following in along in my book, Petals of Gratitude. Some of you may want to join us by printing out the page below and using it as a guide for the next thirty days to express gratitude to those who have impacted your life in the areas listed on the chart.

No, we should not just be thankful for one month. But setting aside a month to express our gratitude in intentional ways is a huge boost—for us and for the recipients of our demonstrations of thanks!

Happy November! Simply click on the picture of the chart to print your free downloadable copy!

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By Petals from the Basket | November 1, 2017 | Events, Family, Friends, Ideas, Thirty Days of Gratitude |

Blessed

On this thirty-first day of the month before many of us our endeavor to be intentional about expressing our gratitude, I could think of nothing better than to share a thirty-one-minute video with you.

WAIT! Don’t log off yet.

Yes, that sounds like a long time to ask you to focus on this blog, but it’s not a long time to ask you to be truly bless as you listen to several of my dear friends who compiled this video for a ladies’ meeting at our church. Feel free to watch it in five-minute segments. That’s about how long each presentation is.

These ladies, all of whom have had what most of us would label as tragedies or trials, share how and why the “trial” could also be seen as a blessing. Stories from cancer…to caregiving…to addiction—each of them a blessing on its own, but a greater blessing when soaked into the heart via the words of the very women God entrusted with these lessons.

Five minutes and tissues…yes, you’ll want to have tissues nearby. Prepare to be blessed.

blessings video from Colonial Hills Baptist Church on Vimeo.

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By Petals from the Basket | October 31, 2017 | Bible Reading, Events, Family, Friends, God-and-I-Time, Guest Posts, Life Changes, Thirty Days of Gratitude |

The Joy of Giving

The Captain’s Corner

I had the blessing of wonderful Christian parents who taught me early on the privilege of giving to God. With a weekly allowance of one dollar, I would receive ten dimes from my dad. He would say, “Put one dime in the offering at church.” Later, when I trusted Christ as my personal Savior, Christian giving was already a habit in my life.

Airline flying was a lucrative profession. As my income increased, my late wife and I joyfully increased the percentage of our giving to the Lord. Even though our income was steady, there were uncertain times. For example, during the fuel crisis of the 1970s, I was faced with a possible layoff (called a “furlough” within the industry). We decided that we would just keep giving. Thankfully, the furlough was cancelled.

Later in my career, the pilots (along with all employees) were asked to take pay cuts to help the airline. This we did. And once again, we just kept giving. Thankfully, the pay cuts ended, and we were returned to our previous salaries.

About six months before my mandatory retirement at age sixty, my pilot pension was terminated by the bankruptcy court to help bring the airline out of bankruptcy. I had no idea just what my retirement income would be—if anything at all. However, we just kept giving, and God just kept supplying our needs, just as He promised in Philippians 4:19 (NASB): “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

God also promises to supply the gift and bless the giver. “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed” (2 Corinthians 9:8, NASB—for further reading on this, read 2 Corinthians, chapters 8 and 9).

Do we give in order to get from God? No. Do we give to get a tax deduction? No. We should give from grateful hearts, because He gave His Son to die for our sins and “gives us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17, NKJV).

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Joe Henderson, Brenda’s husband, is a retired international airline captain and now blogs in
“The Captain’s Corner” on a regular basis.

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By Petals from the Basket | October 28, 2017 | Bible Reading, Ideas, Life Changes, The Captain's Corner |

Cleaning Day

My mom cleans her home every Thursday morning. Like clockwork. And it shows. Her home is always ready for guests, and it always feels freshly cleaned. She keeps it tidy and “touched up” throughout the week.

My home is clean. But I found that adopting my mom’s Thursday morning routine didn’t work for me. Too often, Joe and I would be running errands, be out of town, or be helping someone somewhere on Thursdays, and my housecleaning would be the thing to get put on hold. I like things clean, but I confess that I’m also a piler, a (true) perfectionist, and a procrastinator—not a good combination! So I had to adopt a method that worked for me. More about that later.

As I grabbed my dusting cloth this morning to start on the family room shelves, it hit me that sin and dust are clearly first cousins. They both enter our homes and lives subtly. They both need to be dealt with before they grow in their scope. They are both among the things we too often try to hide rather than take care of.

James 1:15 (NASB) states all too clearly: “Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” It’s this vicious cycle that always needs to be dealt with—before it has a chance to overtake us and move to the next stage.

So let me jump back to the topic of cleaning and share the method that works for me, because it mirrors my daily “heart cleaning” in God’s Word.

For me, if I can do a little each day, my house feels like it’s in a perpetual state of clean. Then, if I miss a day, I can simply get right back on top of things the next day. So, for example, on Mondays, I do all the bathrooms. On Tuesdays, I vacuum and dust the upstairs. On Wednesdays, I do the living room and family room. On Thursdays, I clean the kitchen and dining room (since that’s generally when we grocery shop, and I can get the food put away as part of my kitchen-cleaning routine). And so on….

Every now and then, I do a deep cleaning, spending a little more time working on those areas that I may have inadvertently neglected or that only got “lightly” cleaned at other times.

My spiritual cleaning is the same. I daily seek the Lord and ask Him to cleanse my heart of the sin that is there, because I don’t want it to form roots and overtake me. His mercies are new every morning for a reason! I need them daily!

And yes, every now and then my heart needs a deep cleaning too. Sometimes sin builds up, becomes “comfortable,” and begins to overtake my thoughts, my words, my actions. That’s when I have to pause and spend extra time with the Lord, willingly praying the words of Psalm 51 to Him:

Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
    blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin!
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and renew a right spirit within me.

—Psalm 51:1–2, 10, ESV

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my cleaning and make sure I’m not using blogging as a procrastination tool that keeps me from getting today’s…er…yesterday’s…dusting done!

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By Petals from the Basket | October 26, 2017 | Bible Reading, God-and-I-Time, Ideas |