Chocoholic!!!

So I got this cool sample to try: HERSHEY's Spread. If you know me, you know I love chocolate, have devoured far more than my body weight in Hershey's over my lifetime, and really love eating sweet spreads off a spoon… (remember all the frosting Freshman year Heather???)

I also am quite fond of Nutella, so I knew I would like the spread. I asked for Chocolate with Almonds to mix it up a bit, and it's been wonderful! The spread itself has this creamy, silky texture-- not mealy like chocolate peanut butter-- and it's a bit thicker than Nutella. It's a lot like a good, thick chocolate frosting. Since the texture passed muster, I thought about the taste. At first, I was taken aback because it was not as Hershey-y as I expected, but then I remembered the almond and when I changed my expectations for the spread, I fell in love. It's so much better than a Hershey's with Almonds bar, and it is nuttier than Nutella without letting the nuts overpower the chocolate, like chocolate peanut butter. A++ for flavor.

My next job (after consuming a spoonful or four) was to try the spread on a number of different things, which I did over the course of the weekend.

Toast with Hershey's Spread and Dried Cranberries was a stellar breakfast when I had to get up super early. Observe:

Next, spread on crackers for a snack, which wasn't quiet as good as the toast. But it was fantastic on crepes! 

The Hershey's spread was excellent with apples-- the nutty, sweet, tart, and creamy went together really well:

But my absolute favorite was this:

A Giant marshmallow, a generous helping go Hershey's spread, and sprinkle with sprinkles-- decedent, delicious, and plenty of sweet to last me all afternoon. 

In conclusion, I really liked this product and would get it instead of Nutella next time I'm looking for a chocolate spread. I also have to be careful with it-- I like it too much! 

Weddings and things

Obviously, I have marriage on the mind, not gonna lie: http://ellakkat.blogspot.com/2011/10/jitters.html


I'm living with a couple who's been married less than five years. All my older cousins are married as of June. A friend here recently got engaged and we went to a wedding fair with her while facebook keeps showing new profile pictures of friends-turned-brides and then of course there are the chick flicks and Disney movies and all.


With all these weddings around me, I am finding that singleness doesn't daunt me the way it did five months ago. I would love a boyfriend, fiance, husband-- but all in the right time. The idea of marriage and a wedding is still terribly exciting but the waiting is not so heavy as before. So many people made jokes about me finding a British boy to marry and I sort of thought that would happen-- I've heard so many stories about cross-continental love, read far too many books, and even been to one wedding (he moved to the States). And Mom seemed terrified that I would find a white knight here who would gallop me off into the misty sunset. I've spent much of the past year wanting a relationship that would lead to an engagement ring and since American boys were not obliging, surely a British guy would turn up.


A few obstacles: There are no single adult guys at Lincoln Baptist Church, which is pretty much my entire social ground, and the few guys I do meet outside the church are probably not Christians. I don't really think it's God's plan to send a husband my way while I'm in England.


Still, with all these thoughts and emotions about marriage and being married and wanting that, I am extremely content being single right now. I haven't felt the longing for a boyfriend or sharp loneliness in a really long time and it's amazing! Having real work to do, having plans for down time, encouragement from my friend Kelley and then praying constantly for God's will have helped but really God is the only one who could have eased these desires in my heart. And I am so grateful-- it's no fun to constantly feel lonely. Now the loneliness is gone without some person trying to fill a God-shaped hole. Thank you Lord for freedom!


I cannot wait to see what plans God has for me next and where I will go from here. I cannot wait to meet the man he has for me to marry. But I am content here, growing where I am planted, learning new things and new ways of doing things, and having time between school and grown-up life to rest for a moment.


God it good all the time! I am grateful to all my dear friends who are reading and praying for me. Those prayers do make a difference and I thank you!


Grace and Peace,
Caitlin

The Space Trilogy

My college admissions advisor was reading these books when I looked at my school and recommended them. On a fit of C.S. Lewis longing, I picked them up off the shelf and my whole world view changed. Set on Mars, Venus, and Earth, these books explore all kinds of ideas about the Fall, redemption, and beings beyond our comprehension (we call them angels and demons, here they are the eldila).

This book made me really think-- especially after reading bits of Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, and taking Developing a Christian Mind. I had to stop reading and just stare out to window (I read much of the series in a car) and contemplate. Each planet, according to the book, are ruled by an Oyarsa, an archangel that speaks for the planet in heavenly courts. The Oyarsa for Earth (called Thulcandra) is bent. He has led the world astray and carefully turned it from God to a destructive path.

The idea of being bent, not broken, really intrigued me. It's true that Satan has no use for a broken man. A broken man serves as a warning to all the men on the straight path as to what happens when one leaves the Lord. A bent man, though, the one who is a rich, handsome, successful man who does't really make to church on Sunday but says he's a Christian but he doesn't really make time for his family.... you get the picture. If Satan can just bend our wills away from God, we can easily serve him while appearing to be a Christian, living for God. 

Other very deep ideas pervaded the books and I will certainly be reading them again, but this one stuck out to me the most. 

These books have a fantastic story, classic Lewis pacing, and deep deep thoughts behind it. Read it and travel beyond your imagination.

Help please?

I know it's been awhile... my apologies. And this isn't a real post, but...
If you could head over to Dreamland and rate some poetry, I would be most obliged.
Thanks y'all!

Snow-daze

It's everywhere. I don't know where it came from and frankly I am ready for it to go home! This is Texas--- waaay to close to the equator for all this slipery white stuff. In other news, my snow/ice days accomplishments:

Chapters Read for Social Psych: 3
Shakespeare read: 0
Narnia books read: 4
Spanish Homework done: ALL of it
Movies watched: 3
TV shows caught up on: 4
Things baked: 2
Breakfasts-for-dinner: 2
Valentines HAND made: 5 (yeah, five! Then I got bored and cleaned it up....)
Treks up That Hill: 2
Treks to the Nurse's Office: 4
Treks to the Doctor's Office: 1
Second-degree burns from the kettle: 1
Cups of Tea: 20? maybe more or less... there's been a lot
Chocolate overdoses: 2
Times to wear my pretty pink boots: too many to count

So it's been productive. I've talked to my roommates more these past three days than I had the past three weeks. My rain boots are completely broken in and I am very aware of what's going on on Facebook! The time to read and sleep in has been great. And Greer is teaching me geography! Anyway, if you want to come hang out, we have brownie-fudge and tea and a kettle just dying to meet you... :)

Happy Snow days!

(hope it melts soon...)

The Defense of Faery: Moving Past Sidney's Defense

“Give people a fact or idea and you enlighten their mind. Tell them a story

 and you touch their souls.” ~Hasidic proverb

Sir Philip Sidney makes a brilliant defense for poesy (or fiction as it is now called) in his work The Defense of Poesy.  By calling upon classical mindsets, the glory of imagination, and the practical value of poesy, Sidney proves fiction quite essential to the human existance. Just as poesy proves important to the culture, development, and freedom of humans, so the imaginary realm of Faery answers a specific need in humans—not just children— by drawing men closer to God through teaching morality and wonder and giving men a glimpse of Heaven, much more than simple fiction ever could.

In his Defense, Sidney calls poesy the very epitome of art: “no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to virtue…none can both teach and move thereto so much as poetry….ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed” (967). He points out only the poet (or fiction writer) actually creates something new, bringing new lands, creatures, and lives into being with mere words. The poet works with nature—not to define or destroy her secrets but to create an image of the way life is and the way which life can be (Sidney 956-957). Sir Philip Sidney sprand to the defense when poesy came under attack in the Elizabethan era. Convinced poesy is morally beneficial, Sidney asserts that poesy is “not being an art of lies but of true doctrine; not of effiminateness, but of notable sirring to courage; not of abusing man’s wit, but of strengthening man’s wit” (968). Poesy’s very aim, to teach and to delight, refines men. With delight, poesy is able “to move men to take that goodness in hand, which without delight they would fly as from a stranger; and teach, to make them know what goodness where unto they are moved” (Sidney 959). Perhaps, though, there is a genre within poesy which better teaches and delights than any other—better than the historical novel, the poem, the realistic fiction, mystery, or any other— a sort of fiction which captures the imagination and makes the world into a Narnia of sorts, if only for a short time. This genre, which teaches men about goodness, nobleness, honor, justice, love, and mercy, goes by the name Fantasy and at its very core rests the tale essential to all men: the fairy tale.

So friends, what do you think? Want to know more?

The Help

Not a Christmassy post, but about a book. A good book. A book that penetrated my desire for entertainment and really made me think about what it means to be me. To be where I am from. And where I am now.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, is a novel about three women who speak out durring the turbulent 60's in Mississippi. Skeeter, a young white woman just home from college, suddenly discovers that like in Jacksonville is so much less than she wants. And with the disappearence of the woman who raised her, the black maid Constantine, Skeeter begins to comprehend the deadly spires her society is built upon. Aibileen, a stong black maid raising her seventeenth white child, works for Skeeter's friend-- raising a little girl that will likely never outgrow the system that produced her. Pulling in Minny, Aibileen's best friend and the most smart-mouthed maid in the West, Skeeter and Aibileen conspire to tell their stories to a world in desperate need of change.

Pausing withing simple passages, I found myself reassesing things I thought funny, steriotypes burried in my mind, and what I really expect out of life. This is a story about writing-- something I want to do forever-- and the power one can have with writing. Having a voice, something to say, and the means to say it seem downplayed in out information-overload society. At the same time, with great power comes great responsiblity. Resources are given to be used. If I have something to say, I need to say it, whether published by a huge publishing house or simply to this blog.

This is a story about what it means to be human. Coming off Guilliver's Travels, I see the irony and inhumanity more I think. (hmmm... maybe the classics are important?)

And this is a story about how we really aren't so different; a familiar story but something we forget so easily. The author herself quotes her favorite line as We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd though.

In striving to tell those untold stories, the heroines find so much more about themselves. A journey more of us should embark on.