Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

What’s On My Stovetop

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Yesterday, we talked books!

Oh how I love books!

But there is something that rivals my love of books: COOKING! AND BAKING!

I love to be in the kitchen and I’ve had a lot more time to be in the kitchen. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, we baked a lot.  I also gained a lot of weight.  While we tried a number of new recipes, hand’s down my favorite recipe was Ina Garten’s cheesecake.  It is fail proof.  You do need a springform pan – ours didn’t get a lot of use before because I was terrified of cheesecake.  And you do have to do the bit about letting it sit with the oven door open at the end.  We didn’t do raspberry though.  We made her base and the first time we topped it with fresh strawberries (YUM!) and the second time we topped it with a lemon curd I found through Southern Living (also yum and another new technique, CURD!).  Bray never hands out compliments and he said this cheesecake was amazing!

(We also tried out a lot of cake recipes, I have a strawberry lemon cake and a carrot bunny butt cake recipe if you’d like it!)

As temperatures have heated up though, I’ve wanted cool things for dinner.  So less of my chicken enchiladas and pot pie (though those still make appearances, it’s just rarer) and more salads and crisp dinner features. 

I love gazpacho.  So I started with that.  You know I’m obsessed with the Pioneer Woman, so I started with her gazpacho recipe, but I also added a couple of adjustments from Ina Garten’s recipe, and I added more cucumber because it’s the freshest, and I added a little red pepper to add some more spice. 

On the salad front, I’ve tried several, but nothing beats a cobb salad.  They are simple but spectacularly delicious and everyone in my family gobbles them down.  They’re all avocado/egg/tomato/bacon enthusiasts.  The only adjustment I make for the kids is the blue cheese which Bray and I love.  I follow the Pioneer Woman’s suggestion down to the letter except I did not make our own salad dressing (wah-wah, but in the summer you just want to be outside). 

To round out my summer cooking list, I’ll highlight my deviled eggs and potato salad. 

I never have enough deviled eggs.  I sit them out before lunch or dinner and they are gone before we can even fill our plates.  We all five LOVE deviled eggs.  I use a pretty basic recipe.  I boil a half dozen eggs, which makes 12 deviled eggs, but clearly I need to boil an entire dozen instead.  However, this base is for a half dozen total eggs.  I don’t have exact measurements but I use a little less than ¼ cup of real mayonnaise and a more than a tablespoon of yellow mustard – you’ll see this theme in my potato salad too – I like them more mustard-y than mayo-y.  Then I add dill pickle relish to taste, at least a tablespoon.  I pour in a splash of dill pickle juice and then salt and pepper and mix together.  After filling the eggs, I top with paprika.  MMMMMM!

For potato salad, it’s not very exact either.  I make big batches when Bray’s family gets together.  I use, big surprise here, the Pioneer Woman’s recipe as my template.  Except I use more potatoes, less mayo, and more mustard.  She calls for 1 ½ cups of mayo and 4 tbsp of yellow mustard.  I would say I don’t use more than a cup of mayo, and I use more than 4 tbsp of yellow mustard as well as a splash of Dijon mustard.  I absolutely love dumping in a bunch of sliced small dill pickles (never sweet for me) and because I add more potatoes I also add more egg.  Further, I only partially peel my potatoes because I like some skin on and I prefer red potatoes to russet.  Finally I just cut and mash them after they come out of the pot because I prefer there to be some chunks in my potato salad rather than just having it smooth. 

So that’s what I’m cooking right now. 

What about you?

I love new recipes!!! Please share what you are baking or cooking over the pandemic and we’ll take some pictures of us making it!

What’s On The Nightstand

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Hello friends!

There’s been a lot of heavy stuff with talking about the pandemic and racial injustice and parenting.

But there is good too and I really wanted to focus on that today.

What tops my good list?

Reading.

Cooking.

Rinse, repeat. 

Today, let’s talk books.  Books, books, and more books.  Fiction and nonfiction. Kids and adult.  I’ll even throw in podcasts!

I love to read, but I wasn’t getting nearly as much read as I had hoped to until the world stopped. 

Because I was curled up in my hidey-hole, I focused on fiction for March – May.  Fiction is my favorite.  Well, good fiction.  I love it so much!

So let me first recommend some of my favorites:  both The Huntress and The Alice Network from Kate Quinn, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle, The Dutch House by Anne Patchett, and I’d Give Anything by Marisa de los Santos. 

Those last two are some of my favorite modern authors of all time so if you haven’t read them already, start with Run or Bel Canto by Patchett and with Love Walked In by de los Santos. (I also started The Parisians and hated it so much that I promptly stopped after Chapter 3.)

And while it is neither fiction nor a quarantine read, I tell everyone they have to read Educated by Tara Westover – I am still obsessed with this book.

In the nonfiction camp, I was rereading Present over Perfect by Shauna Niequist which I love, The Book of Joy by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. 

I just read nonfiction slower, so I have not finished the last two yet.  (Because I pick up a new fiction book when things slow…)  I do like them both and would recommend. 

For the kids, we are ALL over the map.  I was reading the Harry Potter series out loud to the boys which we all loved, but now we have finished.  Sniff sniff. 

We have started both Artemis Fowl and Gregor the Overlander series together but haven’t finished either of the first books yet.  They are okay.  It’s no Harry Potter.  When we finish both of those, we’re going to read the Lord of the Rings series, and start with The Hobbit.  We’re hoping to find something to carry us away like Potter and his pals.

For little bit, she just does not love to read as much.  When we read together, she likes period fiction or mysteries.  We read several Great Depression era fiction books in the spring and she enjoyed those (like R, My Name is Rachel). 

I went through my mom’s storage unit and we pulled out all my old books.  So I have a huge collection now of Nancy Drew books, including my mom’s original books from the 1950s, so I’m hoping those may grab her attention.  And we’re reading through a Janette Oke series together because she has decided she wants to be a pioneer woman. (Not the chef, a real one, with a covered wagon.)  We’re part way through the Love Comes Softly set, and then will move on to the When Calls the Heart set because the Hallmark series based on the book has utterly captured her imagination. 

As a family, we’ll read Where the Red Fern Grows for 5th grade.  That and Wonder were required reading but we finished Wonder before third grade (and loved it!). 

Now, what’s on my nightstand now? 

I decided after months of fiction, I needed to be thinking about some important issues.  On the issues of racial injustice in our country, I’m reading White Fragility by Robin Diangelo and have Be the Bridge and Between the World and Me up next.  On the issues of parenting tweens, especially focused on technology rules of the road and conversations about their bodies and sex, I’m reading The Tech Wise Family by Andy Crouch and Teaching Your Children Healthy Sexuality by Jim Burns, both loaned to me by one of our ministers, as well as 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter (and companion book for Your Son) recommended by a good friend.  On the faith front, I’m reading The Eternal Current by Aaron Niequist and Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport by Richard Mouw.  (I also have about a half dozen books on the faith front I really want to get to stacked by my nightstand!) On the leadership front, I am reading The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and rereading Plan B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. 

(And I have Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also on my nightstand, because I need at least one fiction book at all times…)

Now that I’m driving again, I’m getting to listen to podcasts again! Hoorah!  I just finished the compelling and eye-opening NPR investigation podcast called White Lies about the murder of a minister in Selma, Alabama during a 1965 civil rights protest.  (If you like this mini podcast format, I also highly recommend The Dropout about Elizabeth Holmes!)  I listen to Elevation to get my sermons from Steven Furtick, but I was also recently introduced to Miles McPherson at The Rock Church and have added him to my playlist. 

I keep Jen Hatmaker and The Daily in the queue, and I listen depending on topic.

For the kids, we are loving Wow in the World with Mindy Thomas and Guy Raz! Little bit has listened to dozens because four out of five days of the week they are super short!  I would really love some more kids podcast ideas! We’re about to try Smash Boom Best because little bit is obsessed with debate.

Okay.

Whew!

And to think I was going to try and combine recipes in this post! 

Cooking is tomorrow! 

And Friday we’ll return with some Fashion Friday after a long hiatus.  I’m back!

Reentry

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Depending on where you live, you may or may not be going through what we are here in Houston.

We are open for business. That means reentry for some of us, in some capacity.

This opening up has come with some scary statistics.  More than just the escalating COVID-19 case numbers, the hospital beds and ICU occupancy numbers are up.  Way up (as of yesterday, each day for the past week has set a new one-day high). 

Because of this dichotomy, I’ve got friends in my circle who have responded in a number of ways. 

FROM: Embrace the openness, do as much as they can, and don’t live in fear.

TO: Completely terrified of the dangers the virus can wreak and the escalating numbers so they are nearly agoraphobic, unable to have social interaction even with family members outside their home. 

And then everything in between. 

We’re in between.  (And where ever you land, I feel you. This is all brutally hard to navigate.)

The kids have been fortunate since we have a family farm and ranch that they have been able to get out of the house and ride horses or work cows or bail hay in very remote locations. 

But we have begun reengaging.  The slow process of reentry.

A week ago, we spent the weekend with our friends at the lake.  It was wonderful to visit a new area of Texas and the kids absolutely adored tubing. 

We ate out at a restaurant to celebrate 4th grade graduation.

We’re doing more with friends outdoors – swimming, backyard drinks, biking, etc. 

I went to one of my dearest friend’s house in Fort Worth and hung out with her crew in the backyard for two days.

I took little bit to run a couple of errands with me this weekend, in our masks, her first outings to stores since pre-Spring Break. 

I’m far more comfortable doing things outside so we maximize those activities (of course with 100% humidity and feels-like numbers topping 100, it’s getting tricky). 

Next week, I go back to the office full time.  A fact over which I’m really sad. 

But as I’ve said previously, there’s a lot from our time in quarantine I want to keep. 

We’re all reading so much (I’ll talk books and cooking tomorrow!).  I can’t keep the baby and me in books (I really need to move to Kindle, because our house has stacks of them everywhere).  We’re less scheduled.  We have interesting conversations about topics that range from challenging to silly. 

We have gotten a ton of work done on our backyard remodel.  The deck and corner trees are gone, the flagstone is laid, the pergola has been ripped out, and the turtles have been relocated back to Louisiana (more on this later).

Things will not be “normal” for a very long time, I believe. 

My guess is things might not even look “more normal” until next summer. 

So this gives us the opportunity to rethink American life. 

This gives us a chance to evaluate how we can give back more authentically and connect more meaningfully.  How we can extract value from our time instead of wasting it on television or technology. 

We’re still in the reentry phase.  And I’m in no hurry. 

I’m willing to let this move forward at a pace that both protects the most vulnerable in our community and allows our family and our church and our companies and our communities to set important guardrails.  Guardrails which I hope will serve our children well.  Ones to give them a pace and lifestyle that is less rushed and more meaningful. 

Praying for your reentry, and for all of us, as we navigate the unknown.

Hard Conversations: The Ugly Internet

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Yesterday, I talked about one of the hardest conversations we’ve been having as a family.  The one where we discuss racial injustice in our country. 

But it’s not the only hard conversation I’ve been having. 

This one, I haven’t had with the kids yet because, quite frankly, they are 10 and I have no idea how to have it. 

Bray and I have discussed for a number of years allowing the kids to have a phone in 6th grade (that’s just over a year away now), primarily to be able to reach us during after school sports practices and events.  No social media or data plans, simply a phone that enables contact. 

Let me start this particular hard conversation by saying I know parents are ALL over the map on this one.  In fact, there are very few issues where people are MORE all over the map than this one.  Some kids got phones in kindergarten and some didn’t ever get them.  This is a personal decision, and this is not a judgment zone, merely a seeking zone. 

The kids have long accepted this even though many of their friends (certainly the majority) got phones this past year.  One even commented to me on how useless the social media talk was at school because he knew he was never getting it.  (Ha!)

Now that we are approaching this period, I am talking to parents who have gone before me and seeing ways they have implemented protective rules and guidelines.  I have some ideas but I love hearing what has worked. 

I recently had one of those conversations with a mom of two teens.  I have known her a long time and she’s educated and involved with her kids.  But her question to me rocked me and I’ve been sitting with what’s next ever since. 

I told her we were delaying phones and then prohibiting social media for even longer.  She started talking about a free porn site where anyone can pull up images of porn on the internet regardless of your phone controls.  She suggested that if my kids hadn’t seen it yet, they surely would, as even if they didn’t have a phone, one of their friends would thrust it in their face. 

Then she said this, “You have to get to the point where you ask, do I want my kids to be popular or do I want to keep them from seeing porn?”

Let’s just sit with that question.

One I’m sure my parents friends never posed.

Let’s tackle the first bit. It has NEVER been a goal of our parenting to try to advance the kids popularity.  Both my husband and I were affirmatively unpopular and we survived.  Yes, it was painful, but we’re better humans for it (I like to think).

Our parenting goals are ambitious, but popularity is not on the list.  On the long list of parenting goals, we are seeking to build curiosity, a strong faith in Jesus, diverse interests, healthy practices, optimism, hard work, resilience, and a sense of love and security from their home base.

I want them to embrace their uniqueness and not feel compelled to conform.  That likely stands in direct opposition to popularity which feels a lot like an exercise in conformity. 

Further, in a world gone mad, whose priorities are utterly askew, I believe it could be incredibly challenging to “hang with the in crowd” and prioritize the actions Jesus compels us to take.

So, if we set the popularity piece aside, we are left with ready access to porn. 

And if not porn on their device, then porn shown from someone else’s device. 

So now what?

I do not know. 

I can tell you this – I do not want to have conversations about porn with my 10 year olds. 

I realize the ages of all these hard conversations are advancing, and we’ve had talks about boys and girls and babies and bodies and what God tells us and what science tells us every summer for three years.  Each summer, becoming progressively more informative as their maturing brains can process.

However, I’m in my 40s and cannot process porn, so I’m not sure how to tackle with children what’s out there electronically. 

Of course we have had safety conversations.  They are familiar with the concept of online predators.  But what about what just pops up? On the internet.  In movies.  In their ethos. 

And even if they don’t have data on their phones, we all know that they can get online with internet access most places now. 

So Bray and I have started this hard conversation with each other.  And then we’ll have it with the kids before they ever receive a phone. 

We are reading resources like Screenager about conversation starters and guardrails.  But I would welcome your insight.  You parents of teens who are a few years ahead of us on the road.  Within those conversation starters, whether on social media or here, I would ask for no judgment of other parents.  We’re all doing the best we can. 

On the spectrum, we are going to be at the stricter end.  If you’ve walked that path, and fought those fights, and had those hard conversations, I would love to learn. 

This is uncharted territory.  And it makes me sad.  Sad for innocence lost.  Sad to live in an age when there is so much BLECK thrust in our faces.  But we will chart this course and pray for wisdom.

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8-9

Hard Conversations: Racial Injustice

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2020 has been a hard year.  But this weekend hit me particularly hard. 

In my house, we have been having some hard conversations.  Discussing heartbreaking topics, without having any answers.  I’ve been torn about writing.  Wanting to share our hearts and our confusion with this community, but also struggling to know what to say. 

So today, I decided to write.  There are many others who will write more eloquently and with better strategies than me.  Still, on balance, more voices, even halting imperfect ones, are better. 

Today, I will share some of the conversations I have been having with the kids about the death of George Floyd and racial injustice in America.

While at a dear friend’s with little bit this weekend, she saw a news clip of Nashville on fire.  It started our conversation about the protests and the basis for them. 

First, I showed her a picture of George Floyd.  Then I showed her a pictured of Mr. Floyd with a police officer’s knee on his neck and I explained what happened.  Eight minutes and 46 seconds.  “I can’t breathe.”  Calling for his mama.  Then I opened Facebook and I showed her pictures of my friends standing alongside their handsome black sons.  And we talked about how scared they must be.  All the time. 

We talked about prejudice that people hold.  Some police officers, but some not.  Some just regular people, including us.  How people make a decision about someone because of the way they look on the outside. 

We talked about leadership and how some officials are trying to start a conversation of understanding between people in their communities, while other leaders are sowing even more division and terror.  We talked about some of them by name.  It was not a political conversation.  It was a human conversation. 

She prayed.  She prayed specifically that “police officers would not think that black people are dangerous,” and she prayed for mothers who were worried and she prayed for leaders to lead better and she prayed for everyone who has suffered for years who were lamenting on the streets of our American cities. 

When we returned home and the boys came back for the ranch, then we had more conversations. 

This time, I sat in the boys room with all three of them. 

Little bit explained what she understood and expressed her outrage.  She said she wanted to be President because she wanted to say things to people who were scared and worried and she wanted African Americans to be treated better. 

The boys had more questions.  We talked about their black and brown friends, naming all the people we know who must be so angry and sad and scared.  I asked them how could it be that the eldest could walk through our neighborhood in a black hoodie every day and never worry, but if his friend was walking in those same clothes on those same streets, then his friend might get reported to police or stopped, or worse, hurt. 

They don’t move immediately to empathy like she did, they move to action.  What can we DO? 

If you present them with a problem, then they want an solution. 

I explained we can’t change other people’s hearts but we can do some things.  We can support those who seek to lead our communities who want to hold people accountable and ensure people of all colors are treated fairly.  We talked about how they could be an advocate, and what that means.  I read from my friend Karen’s post who reminded us, “We can’t wait for police reform entirely because that takes time… we need to be heard and seen when we see black or brown people being questioned by the police. Just stay close, your presence might make the difference.”  We talked about what they could have done if they were there on that street.  How do you speak out? 

We talked about how we have all judged someone based on their shape or size or color or accent. 

And then we prayed.  Because in light of all this heaviness, what is there except to cry out to God?

We prayed for the family of George Floyd.  We prayed for our friends who have been singled out and hurt or bullied or treated unfairly because of the color of their skin.  We prayed for forgiveness for where we have assumed or judged or not seen others as God sees them, His unique creation.  We prayed for our world and our country and our city. 

We will continue to pray. 

We will continue to listen. 

We will speak out.

And I will run my daughter’s campaign, when she is old enough to run for office and add her clarion voice to the chorus demanding change.

I have been reading so much over the past few days, and here are a few excerpts that struck me. 

This one from inCourage:

We need to feel the pain of lives lost to the inhumanity of racism.  We need to feel the tension of how our privilege can distances us from wanting to feel the pain. We need to lean into the fire and know the flame with our sisters. We need to do the hard work of listening, of learning, of loving well. We are many parts of One Body, connected in and by and for Christ. Our hearts are on fire, and as on Pentecost, we need to let them burn so that we may be filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered by Him to come together as many parts of one body.  Romans 12:4-5: Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

This one from Esau McCaulley:

The first is to recognize that the problem is not just out there.  It’s in our hearts. The problem isn’t just that there are racists in the world. The problem is that we all live in rebellion against God and his will for us. The gospel demands a decision from each of us about our own sins. If Jesus had a theme for his ministry it is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand… We do have a message for a city and a world on fire. There is a God who loves you and died that you might know him.  This love is sufficient to gather the divided peoples of the world when all the politicians and philosophers fail. There is a God of justice who sees and acts on behalf of the beleaguered peoples of the world, people like George Floyd.

From my dear friend and prayer partner and active social justice advocate:

I believe a revival and Awakening is coming, greater than ever before. Yet those have always started with laying down one’s own pride and understanding, to travail in prayer. They have begun because what is impossible for us is only possible with God. It’s going to take a level of sacrifice never before yet seen.
‘Thou Christ of burning, cleansing flame, Thy blood-bought gift today we claim, Look down and see this waiting host, We want another Pentecost, Send the Fire.’ [From hymn, Lord Send the Fire]