good cold morning my beautiful friends. yes, it's cold this morning and getting colder today. it was 46 degrees at midnight and it's been dropping ever since. it's now 27 degrees. I think winter has officially arrived. have I told that I'm ready for spring? well, just in case I haven't, "I'm ready for spring!!" hahaha we have had a lot of rain overnight with the temps dropping and then snow and the temps are still falling as I type. we are not gonna have temps much above what it is right now, for the next 10 days or so. oh yeah, I'm looking forward to spring. I'll get my seed catalogs, seeds, calendar and notebook out and hunker down and make plans for my garden this year and then in Feb, I'll start my seeds. that's my plan, if the Lord blesses it. I prefer to have some kind of plan to keep my mind occupied on the hope of a garden than to fret over the cold, frigid temps. God is good!!!! Lord bless my efforts. that's always my prayer when I'm gardening, even in the planning stages.
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picking up with my Bible Reading and study at Genesis 33. it seems to me that Gods people are always looking for something tangible to worship. when they go other places, they latch on to the gods of the other people. they always have the trinkets or what ever they were, and God's people always always always take on their ways. it seems to me that even today, God's people take on the characteristics of the world instead of the godly attributes that God desires for us to have. we may not have the little gods, what ever they were then, but we still have the things that we worship and put before our El Roi, God. what do we put before God? tv, sports figures, politicians, cell phones, money, finances, jobs...............and I could go on and on.
there's lots of genealogy in a couple of chapters and that's important. having said that, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around all of it. when I have done study's on one person, I can get into genealogy and understand some of it, but it's overload, like it was with a couple of chapters, my brain hurts. I ask the Lord to help retain what I'm going to need and hopefully, the next time I read it, I'll understand more.
next, we are starting to get into the fascinating life of Joseph. we'll see lots of jealousy, but we see Joseph remain faithful to God thru it all. he never lost hope or his faith in Yahweh!! on the human side of this, we can see how one sibling, or in this case, 10 siblings grew to hate their brother, when a parent shows more love for one than they do for all, then there will be resentment. that's a common thing even today, in 2025. one thing that we have to keep in the forefront of our mind, is that all of this was God's grand design. God meant it all for good!!
when the brothers threw Joseph in the pit, along came some Ishmaelites. right about now would be a good time to think about some of the genealogy. Ishmael, the forefather of the Ishmaelites was the brother of Isaac, the grandfather of Joseph and all his brothers.
Ishmael and Isaac were brothers, sons of Abraham, with different mothers. it's in this situation that the warring and hate of the ages started and has been taking place ever since and will continue to take place till Jesus comes and puts a stop to it all. if you'll remember, Ishmael was said to be wild as a donkey and fight with everyone. he lived up to his name and so has his descendants. this is just some of my thoughts and musings about my Bible study this morning and thinking deeper than just what I'm reading.
in Chapter 39 is where we see the fulfilling of some prophecy that was early on in Genesis, when God told His people that they would be in slavery for 400 years. this is the starting of that and we'll see just how Joseph fulfilled his part of that prophecy. the Lord was with Joseph and prospered him through it all. God meant it all for good!!
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Garlic Garlic Garlic!!!!! who smells garlic? ME, I smell garlic!!! I got garlic!!!!!! such a lovely aroma!!
woohoo!!!!! my garlic is done, for now!!!!!! yay!!! I know every fiber of my being smells like garlic and that's totally fine by me, yes it is.
let's do a little nerdy dehydrator math. now this won't be right down to the bare bones numbers, but it will be close enough that you can see where I'm coming from. garlic is a really dense food. it has very little moisture in it, even when it's fresh. it's just a dense and heavy texture. some things when we dehydrate it to the point of being as dry as we can it (which is what it has to be to make powder and also to keep it from molding) it loses a lot of weight. some will lose well over 90 % of it's original weight.
now on to the nerdy math. I had 4 - 6 oz bags of already peeled garlic. each bag weighed 170 grams. 170 x 4 = 680 total grams. the finished weight of the garlic that you see in the jars is a total of 223 grams. again, that's the finished weight of all 4 bags. because of the density of the garlic, it actually lost a little bit mor than 2/3rds of it's original weight.
why is the nerdy math important? in the grand scheme of things, it isn't. hahaha but I do like keeping up with the beginning and ending weights when I can remember to do it. I'll even be able to take some of this and make powder when necessary, simply because I got it as dry I could possibly get it.
oh, I almost forgot, I dehydrated this at 120*, simply because I wanted to get it dry as quickly as possible. I loaded the trays 2 times in the course of about 36 hours. it is a tad darker than I prefer, but I'm ok with it. when I do my minced onions, I may do the same thing. I don't know. I do prefer my onions to be as beautiful as possible and a high temp will make the sugar content turn dark. I'll just have to wait and see what I decide to do.
if you haven't made minced garlic, I would suggest it as something to put on your "to do" list. I may get another couple of bags. I hope this is the last year I'll have to buy garlic, but we'll have to wait see if what I planted survives this cold weather and ice. last time I looked under the frost protection, the garlic was about 3 inches tall. I have since put another layer of frost protection on the tower.
something else, I have saved all my garlic jars over the years because I save all my jars, even those. I now have a great use for them. I can put all my minced garlic in them and not mess up any other jars with garlic smell. I'll get my label maker out and make labels for the lids and the jars. I think I'll have enough jars to even put my minced, dehydrated onions in them too. I can label them for minced onions and then those jars will be designated, in the future for the onions and garlic.
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I don't know what the plans are yet for the day. we had plans of getting our walk in this morning, but the freezing ice and snow has halted that for the time being. I may get some onions minced up and get them on the dehydrator. at lest I will have done something useful and constructive.
I pray that we all have a great day. keep God first place in it. remember that He loves us enough that He provided a way for us to be in relationship with Him thru the shed blood of Christ, our Messiah.
stay warm and be careful if you have to be out. blessings of warmth, mercy and grace be ours today. hugs and love, patty
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