Paska (Easter) bread

Every year at Easter time I make paska bread. It's also known as Egg bread, or
Easter bread. It's my favorite. So I've decided to share my recipe. It's quite simple. So here you go. Enjoy!

Paska bread (4 loaves)

16 oz. water
3 lbs. flour
1 cup sugar
1 oz. powdered milk (1T)
1 Tablespoon salt
8 oz. margarine (2 sticks)
5 large eggs
2 1/2 yeast (I prefer cake yeast)

Mix in the salt and all the dry ingredients in a LARGE bowl. Then put the wet ingredients in the center of the dry ingredients. Crumble the yeast on top of the wet ingredients and mix everything together (I prefer to use my hands). I usually sit on the floor with the bowl b/w my legs. Once mixed continue to knead the dough for 15-30 mins.

After kneading cover bowl and let rise for 1 hour in a warm place. I put my oven on for 1 minute and put my dough in there. Or you can put a bowl of boiling water in the oven with the dough. Then punch down the dough and let raise a 1/2 hour.

Cut dough up into 4 equal pieces and form dough into loaves. In this picture I braided and then brought the ends of the braid together to make a round braided loaf.

Place them in a greased pie pan and let raise double in size (about 1/2 hour).

You can Egg wash before AND after you bake them. Egg wash consists of: 1 egg white, Tablespoon of milk, Tablespoon of water mixed together.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 mins.

Old hymns for our day

I've written before on this "movement" of putting old hymn texts to new music before. While I don't want to beat a dead horse, I want to express how much I enjoy playing and singing these beautiful texts from past theologians that are in a lot of ways poetic.

Isaac Wardell speaks to the writing of new music to these texts and how it has to capture the emotions of the words and what they mean, rather than just writing music that fits with the words. He says "fundamentally these hymns are, in a way, poems and, it's about the lyrics. But the purpose is for corporate worship. The priority is that the text and emotion being stirred is actually being meshed together in a way that people can sing together." A lot of times we don't take into consideration the emotion that the Holy Spirit is stirring inside of us when we are singing. So it is important that these things are taken into consideration when writing new music to these hymns.

Kevin Twit talks about retuning a hymn that is well known, and why we would want to change something that is not broken. Twit says "every text I believe has more emotional range nuance than any one tune can fully capture. Even when there's a good familiar tune it can be beneficial sometimes to introduce a new tune that helps them hear the words all over again." Many people ask me why you would want to change such time tested melodies, like O for a thousand tongues to sing or The Churches one foundation, and I think that Kevin makes a great point that it can open up that text and show new meaning in a different melody.

Please watch this interview and let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy!

Old Hymns for Our Day from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

ZR1 Corvette bed

I picked up something really cool on craigslist. A toddler bed that looks like a early 90's ZR1 Corvette. It has really cool decals on it, including ZR1 on the side. I can not find anything on the Internet about this bed, other than a few posts here and there on some Corvette forums. So if you have any info about this bed let me know.

I really like this bed for a few reasons. It isn't the cheap plastic car beds you find at walmart, it's fiberglass. It is the ZR1 model. The ZR1 was first introduced in 1991 and was made until 1995. It had the LT5 (Lotus) engine in it that produced 405 hp. This model is now becoming more rare and worth more as time goes on.

My uncle buys and sells Corvettes and parts. Growing up around these cars brings back great memories. Before I got married I owned a 1994 C4 Corvette, so the nostalgia is one of the reasons why I liked this so much.

I hope to share the same passion of cars with my son as he grows older. And what better way than to get him a Corvette bed?

Easy breadmaker Garlic Breadsticks

These aren't the most mind blowing breadsticks, but they're quick, easy, and good. Be creative.

Ingredients
1 1/8 cups water (70 to 80 degrees F)
2 tablespoons olive or canola oil
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon minced fresh basil
3 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon butter or stick margarine, melted


Directions
1. In bread machine pan, place the first nine ingredients in order suggested by manufacturer. Select dough setting (check dough after 5 minutes of mixing; add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water or flour if needed). When cycle is completed, turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into 20 portions. Shape each into a ball; roll each into a 9-in. rope. Place on greased baking sheets. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 40 minutes or until doubled. Bake at 350 degrees F for 18-22 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire racks. Brush warm breadsticks with butter

Vacation last week

We had an eventful vacation with the church youth group last week. We went a day early to Annapolis, Maryland. There we walk around town and the naval acadamy. Then, my favorite part, ate at Buddy's crab shack. I LOVE seafood. We stayed at the Marriot in town....it was really nice. Got hooked up by Meagan Price, she works for Marriot.

The next day we took our time and had some breakfast and headed off to bethany beach. There we spent 4 1/2 days with the youth group at the Bethany beach camp/conf. center. It's hard to relax with two children under 4. NEway, the weather wasn't that great. Chilly, cloudy, and sometimes rainy.

On Monday we headed to NJ to visit good friends, the Fosters. After spending the evening in their awesome farm house...we headed to the Crayola factory with them and spent the day there.

All in all, it was a good trip...busy, but good. It's always nice to be in your own bed.......

Back to blogging

I'm back to blogging. I usually do new posts for a week or so and then not find time to do them regularly. I'm going to try to do one a week. If that doesn't work out, I'll just blog through twitter and facebook.

New iPhone 3G S

Got the new iPhone 3G S yesterday. It's def. faster. I really like the video. What I don't like is the fact that you can't text photos until the end of the summer. Also has tethering, but isn't available until the end of the summer as well. Do they charge more for tethering? NEway, it's my 3rd iPhone in a little over a month.

Started out with the 8GB thinking I could delete stuff and be satisfied....well I wasn't. I upgraded to the 16GB. Then when they announced the 3G S at the WWDC I was upset because it was a $100 cheaper than the 16GB I got...and it did so much more, was faster, and had longer battery life. Sooo... I went to AT&T and they gave me a free upgrade PLUS gave me $100 back because I bought my iPhone within a certain timeframe (after May 9th).

With that being said, I am very satisfied with Apple/AT&T's customer service. I'm sure glad they gave me the free upgrade!

Verizon and At&t stores

My cousin and I had a free moment this afternoon to head to the verizon and At&t stores. We decided to see if the salesmen could "sell" us on either the storm or Iphone. Being that the verizon and At&t stores are close to each other in Monroeville it didn't take but an hour.

At the verizon store we were greeted by four handsome men with shiny shoes and neatly tucked in dress shirts. They proceeded to ask us how they could help us and directed us to the sales desk.

First things first, that place is huge! Why do you need that much square footage to sell something that has the average size of 3"X3"X1/4"? Not only that, there were well over 12 people working there. I guess they're doing something right though.

Anyway, we asked our salesman to tell us why we should go with the blackberry storm instead of the Iphone. This is where he proceeded to give his sales pitch, and on, and on, and on he went. Not only about the specs of the storm, but how bad the Iphone was. How he's used his friends, and people are suing At&t for no coverage in New York, and how blahhh blaahhhh blaaaahhhh bllaaaaahhhh. This man was REALLY working hard for this sale. After we left I pictured him folded over in half out of breath.

After prying ourselves out the door (with him still talking and following us) we headed to the At&t store.

The At&t store was about a 1/3 the size of the verizon store, and about 1/6th of employees. We didn't get jumped at the door or bombarded with handsome men.

Our salesman was down to earth. When asked a question he didn't know the answer to he humbly admitted and we moved on. He was short, simple, and to the point....not really like a real salesman. We spent 1/3 less time in the At&t store than the verizon.

When we left we joked how funny it was that the verizon salesman worked so hard, talked so long, and spent so much time trying to sell us the storm....but all the At&t salesman had to say was "Iphone."

At&t knows they have the best product on the market when it comes to touchscreen smartphones....all they have to say is "Iphone."

Maundy Thursday

As we come closer to Easter I am reminded more and more why I rely on Jesus Christ as my only salvation. As I grow older, not only physically but spiritually, it becomes my favorite time of year.

It is in Him that I find comfort. He is the well that quenches my thirst and the bread that satisfies my hunger. He bears the burdens of my sins and still gives me the deepest love that anyone can feel.

Coming home from a session meeting this evening I reflected on all the things that we talked about during that meeting. One of them being spreading the Gospel to areas that have churches that are almost nonexistant. We are called to be fishers of men, to make disciples of nations, to go forth into the alley's and gutters of this earth and spread the truth to the poor and needy and sick. It is time to lay down our pride, break free of our comfort zones, and do as Christ commands. It's time to get our hands dirty folks...it's time to fulfill the great commission.

My prayer is that God will continue to use MCC as a tool to spread these truths and to provide the means to fulfill His command. Maundy comes from the Latin word "command." Maundy refers to the command that Jesus gave to his disciples at the last supper, to love and serve one another. Jesus not only said this, but did it by washing the feet of the disciples.

Tonight we will be observing Maundy Thursday at MCC with a worship service. If you feel the desire to attend a Maundy Thursday service but don't know where to go, we'd be happy to have you at Murrysville Community Church. Service starts @ 7:00 p.m.

Iphone or Blackberry Storm

Let's take a break from worship and music and touch on technology. Coming up at the beginning of May is the end of our contract with verizon wireless (phones through our business). We are planning on going with the blackberry storm or the iphone. I've done some research online and it seems as though peoples reviews on each of them are about 50-50.


Verizon is said to have better service and At&t has a lot of dropped calls and slow data. If this is true this will be the deciding factor.

So I want to thrown this question out there. Iphone or Storm?

For those of you with an iphone, please convince me that the At&t 3G network is good enough to go with the iphone, that is probably the only thing that would keep me from getting an iphone.