This past week Josh and I decided that we are going to try to eat healthier when we cook at home. One of his coworkers gave him a cooking magazine that gave us some great ideas. The other night we tried our first one that Josh picked out – it was amazing, and not at all what I expected! So I am going to share it with you all.
(I was also thinking you could use it over pasta or something like that if you really don’t like polenta). I do want to let you know that when you cook this polenta it is to the consistency of about cream of wheat, not the hard sliced type that many of you think of at the word polenta.
1tablespoon olive oil (enough to cook the sausage in)
3 ounces (2 links) sun-dried tomato chicken sausage (should be able to find in your freezer section)
1 cup chopped onion
3 cloves garlic minced
1tablespoon fresh chopped oregano
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 (14.5 oz.) cans of diced tomatoes – un-drained
½ cup chopped fresh basil – divided
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
¾ cup quick cooking polenta (I used regular and it was fine)
½ cup grated parmesan cheese – divided
( if you don’t have or cannot get the fresh herbs-like me-just used dried to taste. Also you can use however much onion and garlic you like-I didn’t use as much as it called for).
When I followed the directions I noticed that the onion and garlic where not cooked enough so I will give you how I would make it instead.
(1) Heat your oil and sauté the onion and garlic till soften. Then add the sausage and cook for a few minutes till done. Add oregano, tomatoes, red pepper and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes. Add half of the basil and stir.
(2) In a separate pot, combine water and broth and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat and add polenta stirring frequently. Cook until thickened. Stir in half of your cheese.
(3) In each bowl put some of the polenta then pour some of the sauce over it. Garnish with remaining cheese and basil.
After meeting on Sunday we took the young boy home who I told you all about-his name is Leander by the way. It turns out he is 13 years old and for the first time ever he is going to school this year. He sat with us last week for the meeting, and it was so amazing to watch him. He knows where all the scriptures are and tries to look them up ahead like in the watchtower to see if he could read it. So despite his lack of reading skills he tries very hard and does really well. This picture is off him and two boys who are part of the family studying in our hall (I mentioned there mom & sisters helped us clean at the kingdom hall). Just an example of what we see here.
This past weekend we also had our first company over! It was Jason and Miki Schultz, a bethel couple. They actually came to Guam as international volunteers about the time I left and then went home, packed up and came to bethel. We had a nice evening at our house where we both had cooked. It was so nice!
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| miki & jason schultz |
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| lobby at bethel |
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| map of micronesia-miki was our tour guide |
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| matt in translation hub |
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| the backside of bethel-it has grown in nicely since we put the grass in and walkway |
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| jason dancing in the kitchen |
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| there is now a window into the kitchen! |
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| lunch at bethel |
On the holiday since we both had it off, we went into bethel for a tour (since we both had not been in a long time) and also for lunch. It was great to see some of the friends I used to see a lot but since we are all in different congregations we don’t see much of each other. We also learned about the progression of the construction. It seems that they have finished projects on Rota, Tinian, Pohnpai, and Kosrai and are currently working on Ebeye and Chuuk. It started out as just one group doing construction but has turned into two. Many of the friends have come from the islands, like 3 of the brothers are from I believe Saipan, they had worked on the Rota and Tinian projects and then filled out applications to continue with the other projects. Also in the fall, one of the groups will be coming here to Guam to work on the south hall.In translation, they cover six languages under this branch – Palauan, Marshallese, Pohnpaian, Chuukese, Kosraian, Yapese-I believe. Now all the translation teams are out on the islands which make their job a bit easier and more accurate. One of the sisters in translation was telling us that now the friends get a watchtower which is a combination of our regular and study editions and that it is also simultaneous to ours. So not only has the work speed up but they are able to produce more. One of the brothers in the service department said that they try to pick articles that are pertaining to needs of that island to add into the watchtower, and that they get permission to use ones that are from our older issues especially the awakes since the islands don’t get the awake. Then they have service meeting parts to go over the articles so they understand them and become familiar with them – so when the service desk works on the km’s they have to edit to add these parts or even change what books they are studying since they don’t have the bible study book we are using so they use the bible teach book. Also for the review they have to change questions sometimes because of them not having those research in their language.
