Pumpkin Personalities

Joy making perfect polka dots on her colorful pumpkin.



Tessa dressing up her stylish little pumpkin in black and white.


Crystal and her pumpkin making silly faces together.

Kate showing off her artistic caricature in her mini-me pumpkin.

Loren concentrating hard on her creative skills (and making us laugh in the process).

Me sittin pretty with my pretty little pumpkin.

I'm Dreaming of a White Pumpkin

Here in Houston, we're having what my friend Emily and I like to call, "Faux Fall". We'll enjoy a couple of days of lovely fallish weather followed by a couple of days of sweltering heat and humidity. This fickle fall forces us to grab on to any moments we can to celebrate the change of seasons.

In honor of the cold front coming in this weekend, some of us girls are going to have a little fall party tonight. We're going to enjoy some fun fall foods and try our hands at pumpkin carving/painting. If our pumpkin projects turn out to be as cute as I hope...I'll share the results here. In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy these yummy fall recipes.

WHITE CHILI
Yield
Makes 4 quarts
Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
8 skinned and boned chicken breast halves, cut into bite-size pieces
3 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
4 (15-ounce) cans cannellini or great Northern beans, rinsed, drained, and divided
1 (14 1/2-ounce) can chicken broth
1 (16-ounce) package frozen shoepeg white corn
2 (4.5-ounce) cans chopped green chiles
3 tablespoons lime juice
Garnish with cilantro sprigs

Preparation:
Sauté chopped onion in hot oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat 7 minutes; add garlic, and sauté 2 to 3 minutes.

Stir in chicken pieces, and cook, stirring constantly, until chicken is lightly browned. Stir in 3 cups water and next 5 ingredients; reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often, 10 minutes or until chicken is done.

Place 2 cans of beans in a blender; add broth, and process until smooth, stopping to scrape down sides.

Stir bean pureé, remaining 2 cans of beans, corn, and chiles into chicken mixture in Dutch oven; bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often, 30 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Stir in lime juice just before serving. Garnish, if desired.

Note: Use a handheld submersion blender to pureé the beans and broth, if desired.
Southern Living, JANUARY 2002

PUMPKIN CRUNCH CAKE
1 pkg. Duncan Hines yellow cake mix
3 eggs, beaten
1 16 oz. can pumpkin
1 12 oz. can evaporated milk
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup pecans
1 cup melted butter

- Spray bottom of 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.
- Preheat oven to 350-
- Combine pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, spice, and salt; mix well.
- Pour into 9x13 dish
- Sprinkle dry cake mix evenly over the pumpkin mixture.
- Top with pecans
- Drizzle melted butter over the top.
- Bake for 1 hour until golden brown & bubbly - it sometimes needs longer.
- Cool completely before serving.
- Serve with Cool Whip topping.

(Especially good with the "French Vanilla" flavored cool whip!!)

Recipe from: Jennifer Mills

Fall Riot..."in their own words"

For the past few months, our staff has been praying and preparing for an event called "Fall Riot". Last night over 1800 High School and Junior High students from around Katy showed up for that event. And while the turn out was amazing, it's what God did in the hearts of those students that was even more amazing. Today I sat down to a list of about 30 names...only a small portion of the 250 students total who said God was working in their heart last night. While I normally am not a fan of calling through lists, this one was different...it was a joy to hear the sweet stories of these students who wanted more of God in their lives.

As I read through the notes students had written in their own words about the event last night and about God's work in their heart, I was moved. One student wrote: "This was my first time at church." Another student wrote: "Tonight was really fun." Another confessed: "I need help with my life...I've never really understood until now." On the phone later, I heard several students say "I've never gone to church" or "My parents don't go to church". Many of them said, "I want to start coming to church, but I don't have a ride." How heartbreaking to think that many of them want to be here, but they don't have the support of their parents.

One thing I always try to do when I'm counseling a student is to give them an opportunity to tell me what God did in their heart, rather than asking them if it was "this" or "that". Most of them struggle to put it in to words. Some of them don't even know why, they just know that God was telling them something. They'll say things like "I just don't feel like I used to with God." or "I just want to get closer to Him." When I asked one student why he walked back during the invitation time he said, "Well they said if you wanted to follow Jesus Christ as your Savior to come back there, so I did." Plain and simple. Another said, "I've just never known God like I did last night."

I love hearing these stories because it's a way that we see God working in the lives of the students we have the opportunity to minister to. It's not just about feelings, but it's also not all about knowing the exact right words to say. It's about God drawing their hearts to Him. And we get to share in those stories, when we hear them put it "in their own words".