Recipes to Remember #alittleQC

Good morning, good morning. Hope you all are doing okay. So y'all, let me know if you can hear me before I turn the screen on. If you can hear me, give me a thumbs up. That'll be super helpful. So excited to be with you this morning. I have something to share with you. Okay, here come my yeses and my thumbs up. Okay, I'm really nervous. I'm really nervous because I have something I want to show you. Okay, are you ready? Ah, good morning! Surprise! I'm not in my closet. One of the girls who— she doesn't even really work on the team, she's kind of like a mama bear for all things Chrystal Hurst. She was like, You should get on live and bake. And I was like, what? I don't have time for that. But then, because y'all know I'm a geeky girl, I was like, hmm, maybe I could do multiple camera angles, and maybe I could bring my light into my kitchen, and maybe I could do that. And so, like, I don't have other things to do. Last night I was fooling around with trying to set stuff up And I thought what I will do is to come on live and to talk about a few things and to actually cook for you and to show you. Now y'all, I'm in here by myself. So, so y'all have to keep talking to me. And if something goes wonky with the technology, just tell me. Okay. Um, I'm not as close to my microphone as I normally am. So, Let me know if you can still hear me okay. And if you're still getting pretty good sound. Somebody said, I can't hear you. So you can't hear me. You can hear me or you can't hear me. I saw one person. You can't hear me, meaning you can't hear me at all, or meaning it's just low volume. You gotta tell me, 'cause I know you can hear me when I talk like this. Okay. All right. Well, I brought my microphone as close as I can bring it. I'll bring it a little closer. Okay, great. So I will talk as loud as I can, 'cause normally the microphone is right in front of my face and y'all, I have all the stuff, I have all the gear, but I ain't never hooked it up before. I was like, my luck, I hook it up wrong. So we're just going to go with,, you know, my trusty mic. Y'all can see it in the frame, the mic that I normally use. And then, uh, I will talk loud so that you can hear. Okay, so it's almost Christmas, and of course that means that— and y'all, I never wear an apron. I'm wearing an apron for y'all. I'm wearing an apron because, um, my mother in the kitchen would always wear an apron because she was always dressed like a million bucks. And so, of course, as December has rolled in with my mother's birthday and of course the celebration of Christmas, we're thinking a lot about her. Priscilla and I got together yesterday to make one of her Guyanese dishes, pepper pot. It's kind of this multi-day thing because you got to do the meat and then you got to skim off the fat and then you've got to cook it and then you've got to warm it up 3 days before. I mean, it's this whole thing, but it is a dish that we grew up eating amongst others. And so Priscilla and I got together yesterday to cook it. It was a fun fiasco of sorts because neither one of us regularly use a pressure cooker. So if you know anything about a pressure cooker, you know that you need to know how to use a pressure cooker or else stuff can go everywhere. But I digress. Uh, the bottom line is we left with her kitchen clean. So, um, another thing that you all have probably heard me talking about, if you followed me for any length of time, is pumpkin bread. And pumpkin bread is something that we've grown up making. It's, uh, it's more like cake. Than it is bread. And you'll see that by the ingredients that I put in there. But I'm going to make it for you. Like, I literally have y'all multiple camera angles. Look at me. Look at me. I have multiple camera angles so I can show you how to make this. All right. So I'm going to show you. And I'm so excited about it. Kind of like now that I'm set up because I have— y'all should see my kitchen. There's just wires everywhere. Okay, so here's the first thing I need you to do. I need you to share this video, um, because always Facebook and YouTube make it hard for other people to find it if you don't share it. Um, and comment like nobody's business because I have my computer right here and I can see your comments. Okay, so I'm going to show you how to make pumpkin bread, but before I do that, as we get ready for Christmas, there's something else I want to tell you about. I'm really excited about sharing it with you. So many of you already know— let me grab this real quick— you already know that I wrote a book called The 28-Day Prayer Journey. You may know about that already. If you don't, you should grab this. It's not too late to get it on Amazon. It'd be a great Christmas gift. But you may or may not already know that there is a Bible study that goes along with that. And by Bible study, I mean instead of reading and praying and practicing your prayer you actually do a Bible study. It comes with a DVD, if you can see that, and everything with me teaching. Um, I'm on a beach, Chrystal Hurst, California, beautiful scenery to talk about prayer. And so if you've read the book and you want to go deeper, what does God's word say about Bible study? This is something that you definitely want to add to your arsenal. And here's the cool thing, okay? The cool thing is that there is a Bible study coming up with Faith Gateway. It is an online Bible study. It starts January the 18th. It's free. And if you want to sign up, you simply need to go to faithgateway.com/obs. That's faithgateway.com/obs. And you'll join a group of other women that are coming to Faith Gateway to go through this study together. So you can, yes, get the book, because people always ask us this question. You can get the book and read it. The book is for you, for you to actually practice your prayer life. The Bible study is for you to dig into God's word and see what does God's word say about studying and, uh, or about praying and why it's so important. So two different things that help you to practice the presence of God in your prayer life and study about prayer so that you are undergirded by the word of God in your life. So I'm going to leave that up there for just a second. I wanted to make sure to tell you about that. I'd love to know, as I get my act together here, um, what is your biggest struggle with prayer? Is your biggest struggle with prayer consistency? Is it knowing what to say to God? Is it remembering to pray? Is it falling asleep when you pray? Is it feeling uncomfortable? Are you wondering if God even hears you? So I'd love to know. So if you want to share that in the comments, I'd love to hear that. And listen, I'm seeing your comments about the book and how you have it. Many of you have it and you're enjoying it. Listen, that is really, um, I really appreciate that because you need to know that book originally wasn't a book. It was just posts on Instagram. And then somebody said, you should put that into a book. And I said, I don't think I have enough words for a book. And I counted and lo and behold, there were a lot of words. Um, I covet your prayers because one of the things that happens when writers are writing is you wonder if the words that you're writing are helpful. And I'm in the middle of working on another book right now. The due date is the beginning of the year. So I am furiously wrapping gifts and baking and doing all things Christmas and then sneaking, you know, 2,000 to 3,000 words in a day so I can wrap this project up too. And the whole while I'm thinking, why am I doing this? There's not another person that needs another book from me in the world. And so hearing your feedback, is super helpful. So let me look at some of the comments that you're sharing about your struggle with prayer. Okay. I see that you struggle with being consistent. I see that you struggle with everything I just said. You don't know what to say. You want to know if there's a strategy, um, staying focused during prayer, finding a spot where you can be alone. Understood. Understood. Uh, I don't know if God hears me. Um, I don't know what to say. Well, here's the thing. I want you to know that you're not alone in your struggle for prayer. And I feel fairly confident talking to God. I believe that he hears me. Sometimes I'm like, do I need to speak louder? Do you hear me enough? Because I'm like, shouldn't this be answered by now? Hello? Is this thing on? That's what I want to say to God sometimes. But consistency for sure was a problem for me. So that's where the 28-day journey came from, um, my desire to do a better job with showing up regularly to talk to God. Now here's why I'm talking about prayer and pumpkin bread, because one of the traditions that my mother has passed down to us is cooking. We have great recipes. I've got a big old recipe book back here. Let's see here. I mean, this is my recipe book, you know. And so it's full of things. I actually have two of them. I have another one in front of me and I print things off and share things and, you know, use all the fun things to, to, to, to keep up with my, with my prayers. I was going to show y'all something else. Let's see if I can show you this too. Oh, let's see here. I was going to show you Plan to Eat, but I don't know if I have what I was trying to show you. In my arsenal here. I don't think I have it. Oh no, here it is. One of the tips that I have for organizing my food now is Plan to Eat. So that was my old binder. I'm gonna get back to Tradition in just a minute. That was my old binder, and I have a new binder in front of me. It's just a white 3.5, a 3-inch notebook, just white, plain. But sometimes, you know how you're at the store and you have a recipe and you need to know what the ingredients are for that recipe, but you don't have the recipe with you. So Plan to Eat is the way I digitally save all of my recipes. So if I'm in the store, I have the recipes in my hand. So that's really cool. So I'm sharing that because we plan our menus here in this house a week at a time, and, um, I print it and post it on my refrigerator, but it's in Plan to Eat. I bought my daughter a year subscription, not even for Christmas. I should have saved it for Christmas. And then when the people that you know, you can actually share recipes. So I love, love, love, love, love Plan2Eat. That's an easy gift to give and you don't have to go to the store if you're looking for something to give. So anyway, that's my little tip for you this morning that has nothing to do with pumpkin bread directly or the Bible study, which I want you to sign up for because it's free. But my mother with traditions and passing things down, I feel like our legacy as a family is rich because our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents were super intentional about passing things down. So my mother passed down recipes. She passed down a ton of things besides cooking. But that reminds me of my grandmother's legacy of prayer. Anthony has a song about my grandmother's praying for us. Priscilla in Fervent, she wrote that book about praying and developing a prayer strategy. Many of you have probably had that, heard about that, or read it, or at least seen War Room. And she dedicated that book to my grandmother because we know our grandmother prayed for us. And I wanted to be that kind of prayer warrior because, you know, I want my— I don't want my kids to not be covered in prayer, my grandkids, but I had to get my act together. I mean, that's the bottom line. I was like, if I'm going to be a prayer warrior, I got to get my act together. And so my grandmother didn't do anything fancy. She had a spiral notebook. She would write her prayers down in her notebook. And she might ask you every now and then, you know, how's the job going? Or did you get the raise? And I would say, Yes, Grandma, I got the raise. And she'd say, well, then you have to tell me, because if you don't tell me, it's still written down in my notebook. And if you don't tell me, then I'll still be praying about it. Like, her thing was, I am fervently praying for you and asking you, how can I pray for you? I know that my mother prayed for me. She told me so many, many times. She prayed for us. Our parents prayed for us together. And I really believe that prayer makes a difference. Many of you know that if there wasn't a person praying for you, a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a youth worker, a pastor, that they were praying for things to be opened up in your life. And it's because of their prayers that you know that God is at work in your life the way he is today. And the prayers that we pray for other people, that is a legacy. Okay? And it is a recipe for living. So the recipes that I choose to remember are, yes, the pumpkin bread, but the recipes I choose to remember are also the prayers. The prayers, the pattern of prayer that my grandmother and my mother taught me, the pattern of studying God's word, the pattern of being faithful to your family. I literally called a couple of months ago, I called a woman who goes to our church who's a business owner, and she's raising her grandchildren. And I called her because I said, I'm really struggling as a business owner, my balancing of work and home and home office and managing people and managing children and all these different things. I said, but I see you and I see you cooking for your family. And I see you balancing life with yourself. I see you taking vacations every now and then. You go golfing with your girlfriends. I see you celebrating with your husband. I know that you have a home office. I mean, she's, she's done a lot of things just where I've been able to tap into her business prowess. So I was like, can you help me? Can you help me? And I talk to my mother a lot about balancing life, but I'm looking at her and I'm saying, you're leaving a legacy. You know, I'm watching your pictures and I know that you made that you made gumbo. And I know you're from Louisiana, so I know you know what you're doing. So I know you're cooking for your family and leaving a legacy. I saw you decorate for Christmas. I see the traditions that you're doing with your kids. And I also see you building a business, and I also see you managing your home and taking care of your husband. And all of those things are part of your— they're part of your legacy when you are operating and want what you do for Christ to last, because really, that's all that will last anyway. That's what my grandmother on my dad's side used to tell me, only what we do for Christ will last. And so while I want to share with you a recipe this morning for cooking, I want you to understand that the lessons that my mother, my grandmothers passed down to us were recipes not just for putting something together in the kitchen and making something that's finger-licking good, but also recipes for living. That when you are— when you either have been taught by a mother or grandmother, an aunt, a godmother, or when you have to learn because you're the first. It's okay to be the first. My grandmother on my dad's side was the first. She didn't get saved until she, you know, had all of her kids. And it's possible to leave a legacy. I'll tell you one other quick thing. So a friend of ours, Priscilla and I, my mother's friend, Debbie Titus, we love her. We went to go see her because she's ill. And after going to see her, Priscilla noticed in her closet something that piqued her interest. And Debbie decided to send it to Priscilla as a gift. And it came as a set. So she gave Priscilla one part of it and she gave me this. Now, is this not the most beautiful cake dish you've ever seen? Isn't that gorgeous? It's gorgeous. Okay? Let me tell you why I was so excited about that. I was so excited about that because when I would go into my grandmother's home in Baltimore, Maryland, Every time we came over, she had a cake in the cake dish. Every single time. And if we didn't eat it after we were gone, I saw her do it later after guests left. She would take the cake, she would cut it up, she would wrap it, each piece in a Saran Wrap, and she put it in the deep freezer in the basement. But when she had guests, she always had fresh baked goods in the cake dish. Legacy. It's not about the cake. It's about the hospitality. So I was so excited because I actually have a beautiful crystal cake dish that I got for a wedding gift. Rarely use it, and I love it, but it doesn't have a top. And I've been saying I would love to have a cake dish with a top. So this is my first cake dish with the top. I've been married for 20 years and I got a cake dish with the top. Okay, so here's the bottom line. Recipes to remember include the recipe I'm going to show you today, pumpkin bread, and then also the recipes for living. That either have been given to you by your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, your godmother, your father, or the recipes for living that you are learning right now as you study God's word. Which is why the 28-day prayer journey Bible study, uh, is so important. Because if you want to leave a legacy of prayer for your people and for yourself, to build that for yourself, then you have to put in the time and the energy. So if you came in late, then just go to faithgateway.com/obs. It's a free Bible study that starts January the 18th. Okay, y'all, now y'all just pray for me, ah, because I'm like, am I actually going to cook on camera? I think I am. All right, so let me get started. Now, I already cooked my pumpkin. You do not have to cook your pumpkin. You can buy canned pumpkin from the store, but because every now and then I like to be extra, I cooked my pumpkin. So let me show you a picture of my pumpkin cooking. I actually cooked some last night, but this is the last time that I cooked pumpkin. Um, Ellie and I, all I do is take pie pumpkins and I put them in the oven and I cook them until my finger dents in real good. I don't want them juicy and watery. I want them soft and malleable. Okay, soft and malleable, just out of the can. When you cook your pumpkin fresh, then the, um, the pumpkin bread is more moist. Okay, it's just, it just retains all that moisture. So I literally had them outside as decor And then little by little, I would go outside and, and bring them inside and cook them as I needed them. And then you can cook a bunch and then you, you basically cut it in half. Okay. And then you— let me see, I could show you. It's kind of gross, but I'll show you in just a second. You can cut them in half and then you just scoop the seeds out with a spoon. Super, super easy peasy. So let me show you the mess. That I made last night. Turn this off and I'll switch cameras here. So this is the mess, okay, that I made last night cutting up the pumpkin. I literally took each one— oh, did I leave one out? I forgot one. That's what it looks like when you cut it in half. So you just take a spoon and scoop all that out, and this part right here around the edge, that, that flesh is what you use for your pumpkin filling. I can't believe I left one. I'm gonna taste it. If it's still good, I sure am gonna use it. Okay, so that is that. So I took it and I cleaned— I did maybe 4 of them last night. So then here it is, it's here in this container. And I know that some people are like, it's plastic. But you know what, if I don't— I don't heat foods in plastic because if you didn't know, plastic can be super carcinogenic. You know, that's not a rule I live by like ridiculously purely, I'm just saying, most of the time, that's what I try to do. So basically, you got to mix your wet and your dry ingredients. Okay, so here's the pumpkin. You can see it's super fleshy. And this is not what it looks like coming out of the can. Coming out of the can, it's darker. It is a lot smoother. It's been pureed. Now, you could puree it if you wanted to. I mean, you know, you can do that. You can do all the things. You can see back here I've got a mixer. You can also use a hand mixer. Um, but I mean, it don't make a difference. I mean, by the time you mix it all up in this recipe, it doesn't even matter. All right, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do my wet ingredients first. So let me get this going here, switch my camera back. Yes, acorn squash. See somebody's comment, that's another grand— a great one. Spaghetti squash. Did you know that you can make spaghetti with no carbs? Because you take spaghetti squash, you cook it, and when you take a fork and you scoop out the spaghetti, you see how this is kind of stringy, like right here? It's a little stringy here. See if I can get this back on the camera. This is a little stringy. Can you see it's a little stringy? Well, spaghetti squash is, is more— it's stringy, but it's also more substantive than that. It's more substantive. So, all right, so let me get my measuring cup. I'm going to switch this around so you can see better. Okay, all right, so I'm gonna take my— you know, it's 1 cup, and for this recipe you need 2 cups. And y'all, I'm a hand cooker, so my hands are clean already. I already washed them. All right, I just believe you turn around and wash your hands. It's just— it's too much work, too many dishes. So anyway, 1 cup. All right, make it 2 cups of pumpkin. Okay, push it in there-ish-ish. Y'all know I'm an ish kind of girl. So there you go, your 2 cups of pumpkin. Okay, okay. And then I got my little rag here to wash my hands off. All right, so the next thing you're going to do for your wet ingredients is you're going to mix, um, your pumpkin and your oil. And because I have a slightly big family I believe, in Costco. So yes, the big old oil. I actually usually keep this on hand, this big one, and then I also— if I can find it, did I throw it away? Nope, here it is. Okay. I also just always keep a little one of these on hand and I just keep refilling it. So this is— this is not— this big old thing isn't in my pantry, it's in the back pantry. So in my back pantry, that's where my kids are not supposed to go, but this this was empty. So in the back pantry, or you know where I keep the Pop-Tarts that they get to have once a year, and it's also where I keep the snacks for school lunches and stuff like that, but they don't go in there, so I store big things in there. Okay, so we're going to use a cup of oil. Now I want to tell y'all in advance, this recipe is the worst. This is not for the faint of heart. This is not if you're trying to lose weight. This is not if you're trying to watch your sugar. None of the above. I use too much here. None of the above. Okay, all right, so you've got your cup of oil right here. I'm gonna put that in there. All right, next we're gonna put in sugar. Now here's where it gets really dicey because y'all, I'm telling you now, this is not a recipe that you're supposed to eat when you're trying to lose weight. I'm about to put in 3 cups of sugar. Bam! It is what it is. Okay, so we've got our sugar going in. Mm-hmm, don't judge. All right, now we got to beat some eggs, and it says beaten eggs. I didn't really do that ahead of time, so I'm gonna do it now. And the only reason why I didn't beat these ahead of time is because I had a friend who literally said to me, girl, I don't know how to crack an egg. I said, what? She said— this was a long time ago— she said, you should cook because you, every time you do stuff on Instagram, I learned something. I was like, okay, I guess. So I take my eggs, y'all. I used to crack them with a fork. I don't do that anymore. I literally just tap it twice. On the counter, or 3 times, and then it puts this little dent in there. It's a little dent, okay? And then at the little dent, I just put my thumbs in and just gently break it apart, and the egg comes out. Done. Easy. Alright, so a couple taps, and I just do it like that. So And honestly, putting a— I used to do it with a fork, but doing with a fork, I get more remnants of the egg in here with— without a fork than I do with a fork. All right, so let me turn around here and get a fork. Did not prepare properly. All right, and then we're just going to beat the eggs. Alright, alright, and we're gonna put it in there. So there go the eggs. Yeah, I know, I mean, but here's the deal. If you have— I mean, now in this day and age you can watch YouTube, you know, right? And you can learn anything you want to learn on YouTube. This is my recipe. This is in Karris's handwriting, and I have it everywhere, but I still like cooking from this one because Karris copied it out of my mother's cookbook. So, um, alright, so this is it, and all you're gonna do is mix this up. You're gonna mix up your wet ingredients. Now my mother did not cook with a whisk. Now I own a whisk, but she was the whisk. She just would stir really, really fast. I mean, she would, she would, and I can't do it. I don't know if I can do it this way, but that's how my mother stirs food. That's how she stirred pancake batter. Okay, so you don't have to do that here. I'm just showing you. Um, so Almad04 on YouTube says, uh, I, I just imagine you having a gas stove. So I had a gas stove 2 houses ago, and that was one of my actual sad things about this house, that I did not have a gas stove. Uh, maybe one day I'll put one in. Um, we got a gas line, but for right now, y'all, I'm still trying to unpack. Still trying to unpack. It is what it is. Look at y'all sharing the recipe. This recipe is actually on my blog. So if you're on my email list, I want to encourage you, um, if you're not on my email list, to get on my email list. Just go to chrystalevanshurst.com, and right underneath the picture you will see, um, a box to put in your email because we'll make sure that we send out this recipe, um, to everybody. So you can write it down here, that's awesome. But also, if you don't want to and you're stressed out like, oh my God, I'm gonna have to go back and watch it, No, no, no, no. We'll send you the email. While I'm also thinking about this, I want to remind you that the Inner Circle opens January 1st, and I made a decision, y'all. It's open January 1st to January 4th. Let me finish my thought before I jump to the other thought. And we'll be doing a 90-day journey. Um, it is a journey that is designed to help you set goals and reach them. Every time we do this 90-day journey, we get better at it, and we're super excited. About the ways we're going to be able to connect you with people who are working on similar goals to yours. So in addition to community and tools, um, you're also going to experience time with me, time from friends in my circle, really, really excited. And those who are in the inner circle can tell you, even though we do these over and over again, every time they're different and they get better and better. So if you've been thinking about joining the inner circle, now is a great time to join. Now the doors for the upper levels don't open until January the first. Okay. However, you can join anytime. If you're just like, Chrystal, I don't even want to do a 90-day journey. I just want to support what you're doing. You can join anytime. ChrystalEvansHurst.com/innercircle. I think it's $5 a month. And it's just like, we like what you do. We want you to make sure we can hear you, get the equipment, make sure we can see you, get the lights, make sure the videos stay up there, have the people. That's what that's for. But if you want to do the work, if you're like, I actually need to work on me, then that's what you do when you go to the higher levels, because the higher levels actually have the teaching, the training, the tools, the things that we send you in the mail, like all that kind of stuff. But the doors for the upper levels open January 1st, so you can join today for $5, but you can also— and then level up later, or you can just wait January 1st to January 4th. And here's the deal: when the doors close this time, they're closed until the end of March, beginning of April, because we're going to hunker down to do our 90-day journey together. And, uh, and we're just going to focus on the girls who are in the group. So we've mixed our wet ingredients, and let me tell you, for this recipe, that is a lot of sugar. I have tried it with other things. I have tried it with applesauce to sweeten. I have tried it with less sugar. Instead of oil, I have used, um, I mean, I've used everything. I've tried everything. I've used a little avocado because, as you know, if you put avocado in things, you can't really taste it. Just adds a mellow— I put avocado and beans in the kids' smoothies. They don't even know. So, um, you can definitely substitute. If you go and look at, you know, baking substitute for sugar, there's a ton of things you can do. And the bottom line is sugar is sugar. So let me just say that sugar is sugar. It is sweet. Now, it may not have as high of a glucose index, meaning it won't shoot your blood sugar up as fast. But if you substitute with maple syrup, okay, that's a natural sugar, it's not bleached, so that's great. You can substitute with agave nectar, that's a natural sugar, that's great. I've got some, some natural sweeteners that we use for our smoothies. It's a mix of stevia and erythritol. That we've— I've been able to lessen some of the sugar in it. So I'm just giving y'all the recipe like my mother gave it to me, but I would love to encourage you to play with it. This is a super, super easy recipe, because the bottom line is it's flour and sugar with a little pumpkin bread for color and taste. Okay, so now this is my— if you're just tuning in, I have faithgateway.com/obs on the screen because the 28-day prayer journey is a Bible study, and that Bible study will commence on January 18th for free. So if you've got the book, great, but there's a whole DVD, whole video series to watch. And a Bible study notebook, and you can join that Bible study for free on January 18th and join a bunch of people who want to have God work in their lives for them to develop their prayer. Okay, so that's that. Now here's what I'm going to do now. So I have my flour. We're going to do our dry ingredients. And let me put this out of the way. Here's my flour. Okay, now here's what's cool about my flour. The sun is coming in. Here's what's cool about this flour, okay? I made this flower last night. And you're like, Chrystal, you made the flower? What? What are you talking about? You made the flower? Listen, y'all, I'm a homeschool mom. So when you homeschool, if you bring yourself in the way of homeschool people, you learn some stuff. So let me show you this video. I took a video last night because I didn't want to do all that this morning. Let me just show you the video of me making flower last night. Hold on, let me see if I can make this work. Let's see. Okay, this is a bucket of wheat and it lasts forever. I'm taking a cup at a time and putting it in my grinder. That's why I buy wheat. All right, so I'm all done. Put the COVID on and grind. Okay, just finished, and see if we can take a look. Oh, it's full. I needed two hands. Basically, you've got flour, so I mean, it's fresh, it's whole. Okay, so it's possible. So I have a wheat grinder. I have a friend, my friend Michelle, some of y'all know about Shelly, uh, she's been on her health kick. She's been learning how to make bread, and she was like, can I just come over there and get some wheat from you? It's like, sure. So I do use white flour when it's needed, but this is a Prairie Gold wheat, which is pretty, uh, pretty light. And so I substituted— my mother used white flour, I substituted um, wheat flour, uh, the wheat flour that I made. And here's the deal, when you get wheat from the store— no shame— but when you get wheat from the store, it has had a lot of the stuff that is good for you stripped out to make it shelf stable. So, uh, you know, you know, vitamin E oil, wheat germ oil, those kinds of oils, they are in the cracked wheat. And once you crack it open, that oil goes rancid. Remember the story of Joseph and how for 7 years, they stored up wheat in the plenty years because in the famine years there was no wheat that was growing. Okay, well, that bucket of wheat I've had for years, y'all, for years. I used to go through it a lot faster and then I haven't had as much time to do as much baking. So, um, but it lasts forever. I have a literal bucket o' wheat and, um, this, that 12 cups of that probably made, I don't know, 18 to 24 cups of flour. And so I took the rest of the flour and I put it in a freezer bag and I labeled it with the date and put it in the freezer. So now anytime, because of the oil in the wheat and all the other parts of the wheat that get pulled. So when you eat, when you have white flour, I mean, again, I'm not, I'm not mad at you. You know, here's my wheat flour bag and I've got some white flour here because sometimes for color or for whatever, you know, but, um, I just wanted you to know that, that even when you buy whole wheat flour, it's had some of the parts of it stripped out because it cannot sit on the shelf with all the parts or it wouldn't last. So if you have a crunchy friend who has a wheat grinder, you should start paying her to grind you some wheat. That's it. And if I know you in real life, don't call me to grind you some wheat. You can come over and visit me and I'll show you how to do it. Then you can use my machine. I remember when I bought that machine at the book fair and my husband was like, "Now you want to buy what?" Oh y'all, oh Lord, it's always something. I forgot to, um, plug my computer in. I have 2%, so stand by. When the people come on and say, where is she, tell them she went to go get her charging cord for her computer. It's always something. Hold on, I'm coming back. It's not far, but I'm coming back. Cuz I don't want to lose y'all. All right, 1%. Plug it in, Chrystal, plug it in. Oops. Okay. Saved by the— Okay, let's see here, y'all. Okay, this is a bucket of wheat. Okay, hold on, I'm coming. Can y'all hear me okay? Let me know if you can hear me okay. Making sure that you can hear me okay. This is my life. It's my whole stinking life. Okay. Now, can you see me? We're back. Can you see me? Sorry about that. Lord Jesus, I made it. The computer said charging and it still turned off. It is what it is. We're doing the best that we can. Okay. So if you're just joining me because you're seeing the second half of the video and you didn't know that I was even live for the first half of the video, It's Chrystal Hurst. I'm making pumpkin bread. So far we have— let me switch cameras. We have— let's see here. So far we have made— we have put together our wet ingredients. So here they are. Did I lose my situation? Okay, there we go. There's our wet ingredients, and now we're about to put together our dry ingredients. And I want to make sure you can see because I think something changed with my camera. It zoomed in a little too much. Let me back this up a little bit. Hmm. There we go. Okay, so we've got our dry ingredients and I just shown you how to grind wheat. Somebody said the devil thought he had you. It's not the devil, it's just me. Remembering to bring the computer cord over. Okay, so, um, here we go. Um, where was I? Let me get my brain together. Okay, so we have wheat, and I wanted to show you how to put the ingredients together, but I'm also trying to find— hold on a minute. Hmm, all my settings kind of messed around and went away. Yep, the sunlight is coming in. Okay, so we'll work with this. It took my— it made my view smaller, but y'all can still see, so we're going to move on. Um, so I showed you how to make wheat, so here we go, we're going to do the dry ingredients. So if you're just joining me because you just logged on, you're seeing faithgateway.com/obs because I had talked about the fact that A 28-day Bible study is coming up. It is for free, faithgateway.com/obs. It starts January the 18th. Join many other people as they seek to grow in God's word together. Um, it's different than the 28 prayer book. All right, so now let's keep going. So now you've got a teaspoon of all the things I was showing you that I have my mother's recipe here for pumpkin bread. So there it is. So this is what I'm following. All right, so first of all, we've got cloves, okay? And I'm in the process, y'all, of trying to organize spices. So we're going to put a teaspoon of clove in there and making all my jars the same, slowly but surely. Then I bought these labels off of Amazon. Isn't that cool? So I can see all of my stuff from the front or from the side. I used to buy my Used to buy my spices in bulk, and so then I would peel off the store label, write mine on like that, and then the store that I buy bulk from, they stopped selling in bulk, so now I've gotta order online, but I haven't graduated to that yet. So this is nutmeg. Alright. And because I believe in the power of cinnamon, I buy my cinnamon in bulk and put it in this big ol' thing. I just buy it in bulk. Just scoop it out and buy it in bulk. I think you can still buy in bulk maybe at Central Market, maybe, but I don't go there often. You can also buy in bulk online. So here's our cinnamon. Okay, um, your other dry ingredients are going to be 1 teaspoon— well, let me start with the salt. There's 2 teaspoons of salt. Do it this way so y'all can see. That means I have to cook other-handed because I'm right-handed. So there's 1 teaspoon, 2 teaspoons, okay? And then we need 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Do it the other way, I keep forgetting. Okay, teaspoon of— and I use aluminum-free baking powder, better for you. Teaspoon of that. And then we're going to get a teaspoon of baking soda. Y'all, I buy a big vat of baking soda from Costco, and then I normally keep a small container of that in the fridge, um, but because of today— so this is my baking soda that I got from my local mom-and-pop health food store, and The reason is I use baking soda in my laundry. If you didn't know, baking soda can help your laundry go further faster. Alright, so we've got our dry ingredients. I think that's it. Your flour, baking powder, baking soda, clove, nutmeg, salt, and cinnamon. So like Rachael Ray would say, I'm just gonna give that a little toss. Just to mix it up. Okay, all right. And so after you do this, super simple. Um, let's see here, I can get some— get a better view here. My camera changed and I'm not quite sure what happened. I was going to try to make sure y'all can see a little bit better. Okay, there it is. Let me see if I can move these things out of the way and make sure y'all can see a little bit better. Um, is there a zoom on here? Zoom. Let me zoom out a little bit. There we go. A little bit. Okay. That's a little better. All right. All right, y'all, so back to cooking. So all you're gonna do is mix in your wet and your dry ingredients, okay? Somebody said, "You're doing great!" Y'all know I'm totally unnerved about it going dead, but anyway. All right, so we're gonna take our wet ingredients. Now this, you know, I know that sometimes if you're making biscuits, which also, maybe one day I'll have to make biscuits for y'all, Listen, the ingredients of life are biscuits. They don't do anything for your gut flora, but they sure do taste good. Okay, so I'm gonna pour in. We don't need to well or anything like that. Just pour in your mix, and then I'm gonna use my spatula to get the last, the last of it all in there. You can get all that stuff out, you know. Okay. Yes, pink salt is better. And I have some of that, y'all. But listen, when I'm baking pumpkin bread with 3 cups of sugar in it, there's only so much intentionality that I want to have, you know, about getting, getting the ingredients right. You know what I mean? I mean, I only want to work so hard to do the thing because, you know, who are we kidding? All right. So let me see if I can switch back to my other camera. I think I lost my— hold on, y'all. Hold on a minute. Let me see. Did I lose my scenes? I think I lost my scenes. Okay, hold on. This is what happens when things go right. I'll do this so that way I can do both. Technology! Okay, so yes, I have all the healthy things, y'all. I really do. I have been vegan for 6 weeks of my life. I have, um, I bake bread from scratch, obviously. I know how to not use, um, Pam. There's other things that you can use for non-stick so you're not using the propellant in your food. I know how to buy a quarter of a cow from a rancher instead of getting my meat from the grocery store. All of those things. But listen, I'm the kind of girl that after I finish shopping at Whole Foods, when I do, because I don't do that often, I, uh, I'm tired, so then I have to go to McDonald's for refreshment. So I go to Whole Foods, buy all the organic stuff, and then I go to McDonald's. So it is what it is. The bottom line is, you know, you got to have balance. And I know that some people, because of health issues, balance is not is not an option because if they eat, you know, things flare up. I understand that. I do understand that. But I just want to say that you can have the pink salt in your pantry and use the white salt for the pumpkin bread because after all this sugar hits your system, your body's not going to know what to do with the pink salt anyway. Oh my goodness. Renee said, for being a one-woman show, you're doing excellent. I was doing great until I didn't plug in my computer. I mean, I went around, I checked everything. So here, let me, let me show you a little bit about what's going on here. Well, I might not be able to do that easily. Let's see, I'm gonna lift this camera up and show you. So here's what's happening. Let's see, lift this up a a little bit. So I've got my mic stacked on a book, my computer. Y'all can see me talking to you right there. I've got a light right here, and you see there's just wires going everywhere. But you know what? We're making that thing work. How about that? How about that? All right, let me bring that back down here. So you're not distracted by all the things in the background. Andonia, you missed a whole bunch of stuff. Hey girl, some of y'all, it's so cool to see you on because I remember you. I saw you in person at the Sister Circle Retreat, and like, I feel like I know you. Oh, Belinda said now we have a split screen. That's better. This is my— somebody's asking about my bowls. This is my Big Daddy Bowl from Tupperware. It's not called a Big Daddy Bowl, that's what I call it.. And this is my favorite because it has a thumb holder here. So when you're holding things, you have a place to put your thumb. Super cool. That's my favorite bowl. But I also sometimes when I want to be fancy, I picked up a set of bowls from Costco. Let's see here. This makes me feel like I'm actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing in life. And they're stackable. They're great. And they have these rubber bottoms. Can y'all tell I love Costco? Alright, so we're at the point in our program— so if you're just joining in, again, I told you about the prayer gateway, Faith Gateway, January 18th, and I want you to join that and join a community of people who'll be going through that, and it's free, so do it. Put that on the screen. I also mentioned to you all that the Inner Circle is going to be opening again on January 1st, and it will only be open for a few days. January 1st through January 4th, we'll be going through a 90-day journey, setting goals and reaching them together. Community is awesome. So is accountability. But you can join the Inner Circle anytime and just support the work we do. $5. And then if you want to work on you, that's the difference. One is you're helping me do the work for you. The other one is you're doing the work for you. And so content and tools and tips and community, the doors for the higher levels for the inner circle will be open January 1st to January 4th. So mark your calendars, make sure you're on my email list, chrystalhurst.com, and then you'll be in the know and then check your email. I hear that you should make sure that people you want to get emails from, that you actually put them in your address book so that way Google or AOL Google doesn't think that, you know, somebody's spamming you. Now, my mother made these— this pumpkin bread like bread, like full-on bread, right? So I can show you when I'm making pumpkin bread for real and I want— and I have the time, you know, I'm gonna make these. I've got some different kinds. These work really great. Stainless steel is, is a good friend of mine. I also believe in stoneware and glass. So I've got this great stoneware bread thingy that I got. I'm sure I got this from Pampered Chef. And you can kind of play with things. I've got a glass bread situation. You will find as you play with things when you cook what you prefer. Because breads— baking is chemistry, and what you cook in actually does matter. It can, it can affect the way the heat is distributed in your food. So that's just a hint. But I'm not doing any of that today because when I started making pumpkin bread for my kids during the fall, it took too long for it to cook. So I decided— I mean, it takes like an hour for pumpkin bread to cook. So when you follow the directions as my mother gave them, you know, you've got to have time for that to cook and for it to cool and all that. So what I did is I took a shortcut and I'm using, you know, a muffin tin. It's quick, it takes 20 minutes, and so it's a great thing that you can do for breakfast and then your fam will be happy because it cools quick and it cooks quick. So I'm using Kirkland's brand canola oil cooking spray. That's what I'm using, but that's only because I shop at Costco and because who wants to then go to Walmart after that? So I'm gonna spray this pan. But what you can also do is just use olive oil, and there's this thing called liquid lefthysin. It's like an oily— it's like molasses, kind of, and not in texture or taste. I mean, I didn't taste, but in texture. And a little bit of liquid lefthysin at the bottom with a little bit of oil, and you just rub it with your fingers, is a way to totally not use propellant and a way to use, um, good stuff as the, as the way that you make sure that your food is nonstick. All right, so that's my little lesson for that. So what I'm going to do is you can either use a large spoon or you can use— I use a ladle for everything. I probably need another one. Like, this one has seen its better days, but anyway, it gets the job done. Or even like a large spoon, like a large regular spoon would work like this. You could use this. Um, the bottom line is to only have to dip in one time. That's my philosophy in life. I only want to dip in one time. So I literally grab, you know, a ladle full-ish, because ish is the way I live my life, and then I literally just go to town putting those in there. You don't want to fill it all the way to the top because remember, we put in baking soda and baking powder. They will rise. And normally, you know, when I'm doing this, I'm— I have the, the pan over. I guess I could still do that over this because then if it drips, it doesn't drip on your counter, it drips back into the bowl. So I'm just going to fill these up and then they're the perfect size because then, you know, when you make a big loaf of bread, then you got to cut it. My secret for cutting bread is get an electric knife. Oh my gosh, it's a game changer. If you don't have a bread knife, which you should have a bread knife to cut bread, that's different than cutting with a steak knife. An electric knife, whether you're baking bread bread or whether you are making pumpkin bread or, you know, zucchini bread or banana bread, an electric knife just zips through that stuff. And then it's evenly— you can cut evenly because most electric knives have a, like, a little measure so that all of your bread slices are equal. So as you can see, this ladle makes it super easy. To put the muffins in here, and I literally am going to cook it, and then I'm going to come back and just talk to y'all a little bit and maybe answer some questions. I cooked some pumpkin bread as an example, y'all, so that I could be like the cooking shows, and as soon as you put it in the oven, you're like, this is what it looks like. And y'all, they ate it. So I was trying to be— I was trying to be extra. And they ate it. So it is what it is. All right, so that's the one way we're going to cook it. I'm actually going to go ahead and put this in the oven so it can get going, and then I'm going to show you— because normally I do two of these, two pans. This recipe will make two muffin pans worth of muffins, maybe with a little leftover. But I'm gonna go ahead and get in the, uh, and put this in the oven so I can get going and then show you another way I make it. Give me one sec. Fitness in the oven! Okay, and normally that takes about 20 minutes to cook. All right, so here's the other way that I do it. I love these things, they're so stinking cute. Aren't these cute? So cute. So these are my little baby muffin tins. Okay, I love these because it's a way to give people a loaf, right, without the drama of a big loaf. It's a way to give people a loaf without the drama of a big loaf. So when I'm giving gifts, um, like we have— I think they're over here. I can— you can buy little bags from like, um, the, like, Michaels and Hobby Lobby. I'd had some for years. I just used some to give them away. You can— where did it go? I was gonna show y'all my little bags. Hold on one second. So these are these little zipper bags. Aren't they cute? So you can put muffins in here. Or one of the girls on the team got these the other day. So these are super cute because these are boxes like you would have cupcake boxes. You can put the muffins in them and deliver them. But the way my mother used to do it is just wrap them in foil, just wrap them in foil. And if she was feeling extra festive, she would tie it like the little curly ribbon. She would tie a red bow around them and then deliver them. And so We had a Minister's Wives luncheon on Saturday, and I'm not one of the Minister's Wives at our church, but my mother used to host that. So Priscilla and I hosted that this past Saturday, and we made sure that all the Minister's Wives got delivered to their door a couple of gifts, and one of those gifts was pumpkin bread. So basically you're going to take this, and it's the same song and dance. I'm going to spray it, make sure you get the sides. You know, if you, if you miss If it doesn't spread, don't be afraid to use your hands, right? Just use your hands and reach in there and make sure that it's everywhere. Okay? Don't be afraid. That's what Rachael Ray used to say. Put your hands in it. Put your hands in it. You make meatloaf, put your hands in there. So it's the same song and dance, y'all. You just get your ladle, okay? Put this over here. You just get your ladle. And— or whatever you're going to use, and you just fill it up. Not all the way to the top, but far enough where it'll make you a little loaf. So maybe a little bit more. So obviously this won't go as far as the muffins will, um, but there you go. So you're putting this in the oven, like so, like that, like Tabitha would say. Okay, so these are super cute, and I have like 8 of them. I bought a set of 8. So, and then I'm just going to keep, keep at it until I'm done. I think I'm going to get 2, maybe 3 out of these. We'll see. Move this back where y'all can see it. So, like so, like that. But Tabitha is not talking about that as it relates to sugary pumpkin bread. Um, I want you to know that if you're not a cook, don't let that stop you from trying things. Like anything else, like everything else— I'm breaking up a baking soda bubble. Like everything else, practice makes perfect, right? So I want to encourage you— oh, I can probably— I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a third one. I'm gonna do a third one, get one more. So I guess we could say this recipe would make 6 little dishes, 6 to 8 little dishes, or 24, 24 muffins. So what I need you guys to do is start thinking of your questions because I really would love to to stay on with you a little bit while these muffins cook, 'cause I mean, I'm normally on just chatting and talking about nothing anyway. So what I'll do is I'll take— do some Q&A, and then hopefully I could take a hot muffin out and eat it right in front of you. I have a feeling though my children they may smell it. Isn't it interesting how they can sniff that stuff out? But these are the, you know, these are the sights and the sounds and the smells of home. Yesterday, when my sister and I were making that pepper pot that I told you about in part 1 before we got cut off, my brother— when she makes it with a pressure cooker, you can hear it, you know, in the house. So my brother, he was around and he came around the hallway and he had tears in his eyes and he said, "This sounds the way it's supposed to sound." He said, "Yay, girls!" He said, "This is the way it's supposed to sound. You're making it feel like home." Because of the pressure cooker. That was the sound he was talking about. How have the kids left me alone so long? Because they're asleep. I, you know, we're gonna go and actually work at a shelter today. It's been really hard for me to find over the years places where I could take my kids and have them serve others with me, but we're going to a shelter today that's going to let us come for 2 to 3 hours. My kids are at that age where they really don't want anything, and the stuff they want, they really need to get themselves. Um, and we've done a few trips, um, this year, and I'm like, Merry Christmas. So I'm trying to figure out actually what to get my kids for Christmas. I mean, I know the boring stuff. I get them underwear every year. We get a new puzzle. We get some games, like board games. Um, they don't want me to buy them clothes. They could care less about that. They want video games. I told them I'm not doing that. I'm done. I'm done buying video games. I was like, y'all can buy that with your own money, with the money that other relatives give to you. I refuse to continue to be accomplice an accomplice to this horrible bad habit. And then my kids say to me, "But you're on your phone all the time." And then I say to them, "But I'm working. If I'm on my Instagram, I'm working." Y'all know that ain't true all the time, but whatever. All right, so here we have our 3 little cute mini pans on my flat top electric stove that I really wish was gas. But you know what? I'm not complaining. I'm grateful to God Almighty. And there you have it. That's how you make pumpkin bread. So let me go put these in the oven so they can start cooking. And then I would love to take your questions. So I tell you what, if you will go ahead and start dropping your questions— hi, Kelly Reese— in the chat, by the time I get back, there's a little bit of a delay from the time I ask you something to the time I see your answers.. So by the time I put these in the oven and get back, then I can stand here and talk to you for a little bit. So let me turn off this camera because you don't want to just look at a dirty, a dirty stove. And then let me stack these up like so, like that, so I can take them to the oven. I'll be right back. Okay. Coming back, coming back. I'm not gonna lie, what took me so long to come back is because I decided to make myself a cup of tea. I actually heated up water this morning And then I must have forgotten about the tea at the same time I forgot about the power cord. All right, so here we go. Whoops, I didn't mean to do that. Whoops, I didn't mean to do that either. Hold on. Okay, okay, there is like equipment that you can buy to make this easier. I just was like, stop, you don't need another gadget, you don't need another tripod. You don't need another light. Apparently, maybe I do. All right. Oh, she's like, we want to see the fridge. I don't know if I could get it. I don't know if I can make that happen, but it's just a stainless steel fridge. The most basic one. The most basic. I didn't get the one with the camera and the lights and the photography and the Spotify and the, and the, and the frame so that you can see what's in your fridge. I didn't do all that. Maybe in another life. All I could see is kids breaking it. That's all I could see. I was like, they're just going to come in here and break this. All right, so I'm going to take a look at some of your questions. All right, let's go back to where you started asking. What is the name? Okay. Yes, yes, Brenda. She said, I'm telling my kids to break their bad habit as I upgrade. But listen, I've had the same camera. This camera right here, I think I've had this now for 5 years. It really is time. I don't even need another camera, I just need another lens, a better lens. So that's like on my wish list. I have a wish list of things that, you know, um, just as time passes and as we grow that I want to get. But you grow slow, right? You grow slow. Um, so yes, I do believe in upgrading. I did get a new computer because y'all remember when I was doing the pandemic and it used to keep dropping. It was because my computer was 5 years old and couldn't handle the— the streaming takes a lot of power from a computer. So I did get another computer. I was due for one and then also needed one that could handle all the video stream. Apart from Do Hard Things, any recommended books for teen boys? So because we have been on a video fast, much to my children's chagrin, they are currently on a, uh, on a break. And they just look at me all that— I figured out, I knew that I could, but I actually looked into it, controlling their screen time from my phone. And, uh, I turned everything off, everything, even Spotify. And they wanted to know why did I turn Spotify off. And I was like, well, because then you put your AirPods in and you don't hear me when I'm talking to you, and we just need to live in the house and listen to each other. That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna live in the house and listen to each other. And if you want to listen to something, turn it on in the main room, in the living room, so we can all hear it. Thank you, Jesus. So they are miserable right now. They are absolutely stinking miserable. So I have one boy who's just mad, mad at the whole world, uh, constantly and all the time. And then I have another boy who's decided to just give in, and in the last 2 weeks he's read like 3 books. I wish I could see the books that he's reading because these were books of his choosing. He went to Barnes Noble and bought some books. I was like, what? So in terms of reading, like at the age my boys are, I believe that they can read adult books. So we are reading Know Why You Believe, Know What You Believe. We have been reading What Am I Here From? That's the new version of The Purpose Driven Life. We will be reading or have been reading He Chose the Nails by Max Lucado. So my middle son who was doing all the reading, he read Kingdom Man. We wrote, we read, is that book over there? Hold on, let me show you this one book. Okay, now this book has been redone. It's called How to Ruin Your Life by 40. Uh, I was looking for it because I wanted to buy another copy, and I actually had to buy it used because I wanted the boys to have their own copy. It's now called How to Ruin Your Life by 30, and it has a red cover. So we read this this year. Um, now I don't want them to be, you know, mad at the world because I only make them read like life stuff. And so, you know, judge me if you want to. My oldest is reading The Hunger Games series because he came and he asked me, hey Mom, I was thinking maybe I should read more. Can I get The Hunger Games? And I was like, you sure can, go right ahead. You want to read, you go right stinking ahead. And he's almost 18, you know, whatever. So, uh, so he's reading The Hunger Games series. Bottom one, he devoured it. So last year for Christmas, uh, we got him the rest of them. Um, we have not read Harry Potter. I've been contemplating that. I didn't really know what I thought about it. I still don't really know what I think about it. I just know that the boys are older Um, so we'll see. Um, they've been reading— my middle and my youngest son have been reading the Percy Jackson books. I got that last Christmas for them, that series, and so they're about finishing that up. But really, when they're older, I just believe that, you know, if you want to read it, let them read it. There are books that we read because we homeschooled using sunlight that are on my list, like, uh, Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express. It's a great mystery reading. It's a classic. So that's on the list to read this year. I basically just look at our homeschool curriculum. We use a combination of Sunlight and My Father's World, and Sunlight recommends great books, and I pick from, I pick from their list. So hopefully that's helpful. Let me go down the list. What's the name of the substitute pan again? Pam again. So basically you mix olive oil and something called liquid lecithin. Let me show you how it spells. One sec. Go over here in the pantry. Okay, so this is liquid lecithin. If you can see that, I know we've got a glare because of the camera. L-E-C-I-T-H-N. It's like lessy thin. Lessithin. Liquid lecithin. And it has the consistency of molasses, but it helps stuff to be nonstick. So you just mix those two, a little, little, little dab And sometimes I just mix them like in a little bowl and then I just dip my fingers in there and just, you know, run it through a little bit. So somebody taught me that, and when I'm trying to be fancy, that's what I do. What vitamins do you take? Listen, a whole bunch, a whole bunch. Because I started taking some and then I took— I went to the doctor and had blood work done and my vitamin B was like 10 times higher than it should be. Um, and I mean, that's not a problem for your vitamin B to be high, but they were like, what are you taking? And the problem is, is that a lot of the vitamins add vitamin B in it. So I'm taking different things, like I have a multivitamin, and then I have, you know, I take a vitamin E pill, and then, um, there's an iron pill that I take, but it has vitamin B in. So they all add vitamin B, and it's just a mess. But, um, I don't— and I don't have it handy, and I'd have to go away too long to grab it for you, but I think it's on my Amazon list. Like, I think if you got your Christmas list and you poke around in there, I think I have it in there. I'm trying to remember what it's called. I'll have to, I'll have to think about that and get back with you. Maybe I'll give y'all a list of my vitamins. Okay, but I do take a multivitamin. I take vitamin E. I take iron. I take vitamin D, especially right now. Take garlic. I don't think there's anything else that I take consistently. I've tried, y'all, just because iron, you know, girls and iron and anemia. I've tried desiccated liver and desiccated spleen. I've done all kinds of things. Things. Desiccated means dried out in a pill. All right, um, all right. Am I doing turkey and dressing for Christmas? No, we're gonna have Christmas dinner at my sister's. It's a potluck, and I still don't know what I'm making. I actually need to call her and ask her what she wants me to make because I kind of was like, I'll just fill in, you know, whatever nobody else makes, I'll, I'll do it. I've only done turkey for Christmas, uh, turkey and dressing for Christmas and I do the most to my turkeys. I bathe them, I soak them, I rub them down, I inject them. Because one Thanksgiving I was like, I don't know how to make a turkey. And then I realized it's just like a chicken. But there were so many different recommendations for how to do it. I did them all. And then everybody was like, oh my gosh, this is the best turkey ever. So now every year I have to do all the things because I don't know any other way to make a turkey other than to do all the things. But I'm not doing that for Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, y'all. I don't know what I need to like look and see what people have for dinner for Christmas. I would love to know what is like your special breakfast or your special dinner for Christmas because we went to my mother's house and ate her food. So now we're just going to do that. But I don't have traditions. We would have 3 days of Christmas. We used to have the eve of the eve, my husband's family would come over. Then the eve of Christmas, our nuclear family would have Christmas. And then on Christmas Day, I would go to my mom's house. Now what I would cook on those days, I'd cook a big breakfast on Christmas Eve, and I would cook like this family dinner on the eve of the eve, like a big spaghetti casserole that I make and a Caesar salad. But I don't know if you're supposed to— I don't even know what special Christmas foods are supposed to be, so y'all can tell me. All right, let me see. Can any suggestions for egg substitute? Um, ground flaxseed. Y'all hold on, somebody's at the door. You can grind up flaxseed and mix it with water and use that. Okay, ground flaxseed is a good substitute for eggs, but if you can just Google it, but I know for sure flaxseed is. Okay, you can come around this way. Yeah, uh-huh. Just watch that plug. All right, let's see. We talked about 6 Week Vegan. There's a book that I had heard about called Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman. I might have my copy right here. And let's see, is it right here or did it get put away? It may have gotten put away. It's supposed to be— oh no, here it is. Somebody had recommended this book to me, Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, and he believes in a mostly vegan diet. You can eat meat, but in moderation. And so I was like, let me just try it. My kids were at the church's summer camp, and so I had some extra time, and I was like, I'll just try it and see what happens. I lost almost 30 pounds in 6 weeks. I was not hungry. My brain was clear. It was great. But that was not realistic for my life, like, because it took a lot of preparation. You couldn't be caught dead hungry anywhere. And the amount of preparation for food was just tough. So I'm prob— Charis has been saying she wants to do it at the beginning of the year. So maybe we'll get together and food prep together. Maybe that will help me. But I think what I'm looking to do right now in my diet is to do something that's sustainable. So yes, eating a lot of raw vegetables and salads is super important, but I also want to do things that are sustainable because ain't nobody got time to only think about food all the time. I do not have an air fryer. Uh, I won't tell on Monique, but she has more than one. And I asked her to borrow one of them to try it. So we'll see. I just am like, I don't need not yet one more appliance. I don't need an Instapot. Chrystal Hurst tried to send me a bread maker. Uh, Monique was like, try the air fryer. I was like, I can't I can't do it. I can't do it. But we'll see, we'll see. All right, what temperature for the bread? Great question, 350. So I'd say 20 to 25 minutes when you're doing muffins and about an hour when you're doing the actual full loaf. My camera is a Canon 70D, so it is a crop frame camera. My goal for the next camera is is to get a full-frame camera because apparently it takes better pictures. And my main goal though is to get a better lens. Lenses on a not better camera body, a better lens is a better buy than a new camera. Okay. Oh, look at y'all giving each other tips. Vegan butter, Miss Nina says, can be used to grease your pans. Yes, I want to make cookies with Ellie. I have a cookie thingy, a little shooter with the shapes. Um, but I need to get the little sprinkle things. So I've never done that before, so we're going to try that. Okay, does your husband comply with what? With me cooking for y'all or with eating the pumpkin bread? All right, what's the name of my book? The name of the book that I'm working on— am I supposed to tell it? I have to let Monique tell me. Am I— can I, can I say what the book is, Monique? I'm not sure. Can I say what it is? I think I can, because I've already said it. It's called The Gift of Letting Go. Have any of you read the Prince Warrior series? Like, it needs to be a movie. It should definitely be a movie. All right, let's see if y'all have any other questions while this bread is still cooking. Ida Yancey says, "I take lethisin pills." I did not even know that you could do lethisin pills. So you'll have to tell me what you're taking the Lethalism pills for. Okay, do I have a list of recommended equipment that I'm using? You seem to have a home studio with several persons on camera. I don't have a list. I probably should put together a list. When I was teaching podcasting, I had a list of my podcasting equipment. So Monique, maybe an intern or maybe one of the girls in the office can do that. We can take a picture of what I used. Normally when I, like this mic is close to me, this is a Zoom H5. It's not the best mic, but it's easy and it's light, so I used it. If I'm close to my camera, I mount this on the top of my camera, but I'm not close to my camera today. It's just zoomed in. It's a Rode— what do you call this— a boom, boom mic. So I use that. But I mean, people are waking up, here they come. Okay, so I don't have a list, but we'll work on that. What book do you recommend on angels? I don't have a recommendation. But you know what I do when I need a book recommendation and somebody hasn't given it to me? I go on Amazon, I look at the reviews because the reviews— people are actually very good about sharing things on the reviews. Ooh, gumbo, Anita Merchant says. You said you have turkey or ham or both. Christmas dinner is corned beef. We don't do a huge dinner. Tamarill says— you can come around, nobody will see you. Tamarill says, we don't do a huge dinner, we pick up breakfast from Waffle House and steak and potato with salad for dinner. Okay, and then Andonia says, I'm doing surf and turf this year. Look at you. I'm at my house this year, I overcooked for 2 people on Thanksgiving. I had 12 people at my house for Thanksgiving and overcooked because I'm used to having like 25. We do breakfast casserole. Pancakes, all the stuff with bacon and bacon wraps. Look at y'all, great ideas. Homemade cinnamon rolls, that sounds wonderful. I have a great recipe for homemade cinnamon rolls, maybe I should try it. Priscilla actually makes the best cinnamon rolls, but she uses a sourdough starter, and I have got a— I haven't been willing to add an additional thing in my house that I have to feed, remember to feed every day. Baked glazed salmon in an air fryer, shrimp oven pan, and fish. That's cool. Oh, Melanie says the Audible version of Murder on the Orient Express is very good. Thank you. Cause maybe we'll all listen to it. I love the ideas of food that you all are sharing. Lasagna. I was thinking about that. That's a favorite around here, lasagna. And I don't make it often cause it's a little bit of work. Uh, Joel Fuhrman makes perfect sense. I tried it and yes, not realistic. Yeah. But I think that there's a way to be moderate about it. I mean, even in the back of his book, I did the pure vegan situation. And so in the back of his book, he has, um, here's what to do if you want to eat meat. And I just think if you're gonna— the main thing is he says, this is the basic rule: a pound of salad, a pound of raw vegetables a day, a pound of cooked vegetables today, at least a cup of beans every day, at least a tablespoon of flaxseed. I mean, you can Google it and find his recipe. Recipe. The point is, I think if you're eating mostly vegetables and you're using meat as a garnish, you'll be fine. And you need to be eating just as much, if not more, raw vegetables as you are cooked vegetables. And that just means you have to get creative because most of us just throw, you know, we heat up some green beans on the side of our chicken and we don't put effort into the green beans. And if you'd actually put effort into them, then you would eat more instead of just kind of treating like a thing on the side. But there is a way to make it realistic. I've just got to get back into my mindset of doing For Christmas we order out. Maybe that's what we should do. Okay, so let me go check on the— Vache, I guess your name is. 350 is the universal Black family temperature. Any tips for baking with kids? I would say make sure you have prepped your ingredients because when you're cooking with kids, they don't have the patience to wait. So kind of like cooking show, like I had my things already measured out, if you are ready for them and you can keep that thing moving, then it helps to deal with, you know, their level of impatience for getting things done. Okay, the greatest challenge you have overcome as a writer? Writing. It's— you just want to stop. Let me go check on the muffins. You just want to stop. You get tired of the book. Okay, we're almost there. I opened it. I may have to take it out and show y'all before it's done so I don't keep y'all another— I'm gonna leave it another 5 to 7 minutes and see what happens. Um, it's just because you want to— you're— by the time you get to 40,000, 50,000 words, you're tired of talking about it. You just want to be done. So it's kind of like a marathon. Um, you just keep going until you're done, even though you really want to quit. All right, um, what about books for teen girls? Honestly, my girls were reading the same books I just told you about for my boys. Not the Percy Jackson part, but, um, they read some Jeanette Oak books, but those were romance books, and I just don't think— I don't think teen girls need to be reading romance books. I'm talking about the Christian romance books. I'm not talking about the sex part. I'm talking about just setting up unrealistic expectations to what to— for what to expect from men and what to expect from marriage and how every story is a love story that has a great ending. I mean, I just think it sets— expectation is just the killer of so many things in relationships. So I don't know that I would do that again. I had my girls read when they were younger, and as they got older, Anne of Green Gables. Um, I think we read The Hobbit together. I'm trying to think of what else. If something else comes to mind, I'll let you know. Ooh, somebody said the juice— hey, Jesse, I'm streaming live, just letting you know. Somebody said the juice in your cans of garbanzo beans is a great egg substitute. Who knew, Kwani, you were gonna come through with that kind of suggestion? Okay, so just check your comments because in the comments There's a ton of suggestions of what to eat for the holidays. Baked spaghetti is good. Glad you enjoyed listening to the audiobook for She's Still There. I'm happy about that. Crock-Pot ribs. Listen, I am pro-Crock-Pot because I am all about putting your food in at the beginning of the day and not thinking about it until later. Okay, so I just want to remind you, because I know people come and go, that Faith Gateway is doing She's not— she's still there, Lord. They're doing the 28-day prayer journey as a Bible study. So if you've heard about the book and you didn't know that there was an actual Bible study, now you know. But the good news is you can do it for free with Faith Gateway by signing up at faithgateway.com/obs. Okay, I want to encourage you to do that. It starts June 18th. And I also want to remind you that the Inner Circle is going to open up on January 1st, and it, the, it will be open until January 4th. And when we close this time, we close until the end of March, beginning of April, so that we can focus on our 90-day journey, which is going to be different and even better than the last time we did it. Okay. So looking at these comments and then I'm going to take it out of the oven because I think there's one smaller one that might be done before the other ones., and I think you'll get the general idea. I wanted to eat it in front of you and make you jealous, but I also don't want to hold y'all and keep y'all from living your life because I've been on now a while. Okay. What surprise ingredient would you put into the recipe to make it a little spicier? Yeah, I would say probably the cloves, um, to give it a little, little more kick. Um, also, um, you know, you can add a little chili. To a lot of things, just a little bit, because before you get the flavor, you get the kick. And it just add a little bit of kick. You'd be surprised how many things chili is actually in. So just a pinch, you know, try it until you decide you like it for sure. Uh, Kimberly Poindexter said, like Hallmark movies. Listen, I have been making the boys watch Christmas movies. They are miserable every day when I say that until they start watching it, and within the first 15 minutes they're fine. But I've also tried to make it fun. We've popped popcorn, and I'm not talking about the microwave popcorn. I'm talking about I get a big pot, I put coconut oil to cover the bottom, I put one kernel in, and then as soon as that kernel pops, I know it's ready. Then I layer the rest of the kernels on the bottom because, you know, why not? And then I cook a big pot of it, and y'all, we call it butter pop. That's what my nephew started calling it. Because I take it, I salt it up, I shake it up, and then I pour a whole stick of butter on that. It's awesome. And we only have it for Christmas. All right, yeah, Brenda Dawson said, I agree with you about the romance books. Yeah, just, you know, you got to watch those expectations. Okay, Brenda Maxwell says, Kingdom— Kim Cash Tate's books are awesome for girls too. Um, yes, she's Excellent author, excellent author. If you've never heard of her, check her out. Um, how about a non-traditional meal like steak? My thing on Christmas Day is I want to relax, like I want to enjoy my life. So I'm trying to cook things that are fairly easy that can involve some prior prep. And I know steaks can be easy, like depending on how you cook them, but I'm just always trying to get, get them right, you know, make them sure they're tender enough and all that. And Crock-Pot ribs would be super easy. Elizabeth George, yes, her books are great. Faith Williams says she signed up. Awesome, awesome. Okay, I'm seeing a lot of you all who signed up for the Bible study. That makes me happy. Yay! Okay, I'm gonna check it one more time. You said— Kelly said, you're not holding us, we're here voluntarily. I know, but you know, my thing has always been to do this and then let y'all do your day, but trying to do this and cook and talk about stuff, I mean, it's hard to do that efficiently when you also have to plug in your computer after it dies. Okay, air popcorn machine and makes it the best. Hmm. It's harder to be vegan, Miss Nina says, if you love meat. And the thing is, is I actually can do without meat. I don't I don't need meat. And in fact, I don't really like dirty meat. And by dirty meat, it's not dirty. I like clean meat. I like white meat for breast, for chicken. I don't eat pork. If I eat steak, it's a good cut. I don't want super fatty ribeye, all that. I like filet on the bone because it gives it more flavor. Um, ah, and maybe I'm getting old because I don't want the meat to be stuck in my teeth. Don't want McDonald's meat, but I don't mind Chick-fil-A meat. The Butter Pot recipe. Okay, so the Butter Pot recipe, I take a big pot. I'm gonna— like this. If I can get it out. A big pot like this. I put coconut oil on the bottom. Put one kernel of popcorn in there. Put the top on. One kernel of popcorn. When that one kernel pops, it's hot enough. So I'm heating it up on medium-high heat. Once that one kernel pops and I know the heat is enough, I take the rest of the popcorn, enough to cover the bottom of the pan, just enough to cover the bottom of the pan, and then I put the top back on and it pops and it pops and it normally fills up the pan. It might raise the lid up, you know, maybe an inch or so, uh, and then I take it and I dump it into my big old white Tupperware bowl that I was I was just using for the popcorn. Okay, I sprinkle it with a little salt. If you want to make kettle corn, you can sprinkle it with a little sugar. And then I take melted butter, um, and then I pour melted butter over it. And I literally just shuffle. And sometimes I have to leave a little bit back in the pan because it's too much for the bowl, but I'd leave a little room in the bowl because I shuffle it and raise it and shuffle it and raise it. Like, I flip it like you would flip a pancake, and I just do that until it mixes in. And it is not good for you at all. You could just do salt. You don't even have to do butter, but the butter just takes it over the top. And the nieces and the nephews are like, are you gonna make us some Butter Pop? So that's the recipe for that. All right, chicken pot pie. I have a recipe. If you're on my email list, you just got that. Yay. Okay, I love your Christmas cooking show. Thank you. All right, fajitas are the plan, Gwen Baker says. Awesome. Jesse, you want to come say hi? Hi. Come say hi. Just peek in on the side. Okay, bye. No, just come peek your head in like right here. Put your head right here. Just say hi. Just come, but you have to come right here. Come right here. Keep coming, keep coming. Lean in a little bit. Just lean in, lean your head in. Lean, no, lean your head in. Lean your head in. There he is. Look at the camera right there. Hello. There you go. All right. Thank you. What are you doing? Boys didn't take the trash out last night. No, they did not. I told them to. Oh, okay. I thought about the trash after they had already gone to sleep and I was like, I'm not doing it. All right. So there you go. All right. Yay, yay, yay, yay, yay! Every now and then I'm not a cook. Like, I'm not trying to be, you know, Tabitha Brown. I'm not trying to be Rachael Ray, but I do, um, like sharing things as I do them. I'm going to share this because I think some of y'all missed it at the beginning because I need more time, and then that'll give me time to go get the stuff out of the oven. So here's the video I shared earlier of me making flour. So let me get this off the screen first, and then let me share that cuz I know some of y'all missed it. Okay, this is a bucket of wheat and it lasts forever. I'm taking a cup at a time and putting it in my grinder. That's why I buy wheat. All right, so I'm all done. Put the COVID on and grind. Okay, just finished, and see if we can take a look. Oh, it's full. I needed two hands. Basically, you've got flour. I mean, it's fresh, it's whole. Okay, so for those of y'all who missed it, and let me put back on my camera with the food view so that you can see. All right, so here are the muffins fresh out of the oven. They're actually— they didn't rise as much as I would have, or maybe they did. Anyway, they're super easy to get out. So let me get a little plate here so I can be extra and move this over a little bit. So they're pretty easy, and when these come out of the oven, y'all, they don't last long, okay? They don't last long at all. I'm gonna show you, give you a close-up view of them. The pan is still pretty hot. So there you go. And so you can see how they rise a lot. So some of these, I mean, I actually could have put a little less in there so that they'd be a little cuter, 'cause we want cute muffins, alright? But you just take a little knife. Let's see, let me bring this over so you can see. Now, in, you know, in theory, you should let it cool. You should let it cool. But let's see. Let's see what happens. Happens. I can get one out. There you go, comes out easy peasy. And then what I do is my little cutesy butter dish— that's not cutesy, it needs to be cleaned— makes me feel fancy to have a nice butter dish, right? So I just serve these up for the kids. I just break them in half, take a pat of butter. My kitchen is cold, so it's Nice and firm. Just put it in the middle, smush it back together, and there you go. Pumpkin muffins. And they don't take, you know, and you can— you don't have to wait forever for them to cool because they come out of the pan pretty easily. So this is what my kids will be eating for breakfast this morning. I hope you've enjoyed the Christmas cooking show, uh, and who knows, maybe I'll get better at this and do this every now and again. It and be more efficient about it. So I know what I'm doing. But yeah, this is, this is what I'm having for breakfast. Flour and sugar and a little pumpkin. And it is so good, y'all. See, this is what I wanted to do. I kept y'all all online just so I could do this. Mm. Mm, mm, mm. Mm, mm, mm. Mm. 'Cause it's not a complete cooking show if you don't take a bite of your own food after you've cooked it. Mm. Mm. So, mm. So good. Now, I've made this recipe with regular white flour. I prefer it with— even if I don't have freshly made flour, I prefer to mix the white and the wheat together. There's some— there's a, there's a difference in the texture. It's kind of gummy and, um, I don't know how to explain it. I, it's just, it's good both ways. But if I had to give you a recommendation, I would say mix a little wheat in with your white to give it a little stand up, you know, and then we'll go from there. So y'all, I'm going to finish my muffin and I'm going to finish my, uh, what tea is this? Hibiscus tea. And I'm going to wake my kids up and we're going to go serve at the the place down the street that is gonna let us come and help out. And then I got to figure out what I'm getting these kids for Christmas that really don't want anything that I'm gonna get them. Anyway, Merry Christmas to you, and I want to make sure I'm not missing anything. Yeah, you said make the good— oh yes, sour cream. You can add— I mean, I don't It's just the whole thing. Basically, here's the bottom line with cooking, and it's the bottom line for you to remember for recipes. You just keep trying stuff until you find something that works for you. That is the recipe for the pumpkin bread. That is the recipe for prayer. You just have to keep trying stuff until you figure out a rhythm and a recipe that works for you. Don't say I tried it once and it didn't work. Don't say, "I tried it a few times and, you know, that's not our fa—" Okay, try it a different way. Try it with a different flavor. Try it with a different, you know, a different something. Maybe you don't want pumpkin. Maybe you want sweet potato. Sure, it would work with sweet potato. I mean, you know, figure out— and that's a part of the trial and error for a lot of things that we don't like. I don't like the trial and error with gardening. I tried it, the birds ate my tomatoes, and I was like, "Never again!" And sometimes with cooking, you try a dish and nobody likes it or doesn't come out right. You try it again. And the same thing with prayer. If you've been trying and it hasn't been working out the way you'd like to, let me just encourage you to keep praying and keep baking pumpkin bread. The bottom line is you just keep going with life, and that is a recipe for living that I never want you to forget. Just keep trying, and I'm here to help. The girls in the office are here to help. Sister Circle's here to help. Inner Circle, definitely there for you. For you to be helped by that. And then at the end of the day, um, you got to put in the work. So last, last reminder: Inner Circle, chrystalhurtz.com/innercircle. And don't neglect to sign up for the Bible study, faithgateway.com/obs. It's free, so why not? Have a great day, and I hope you enjoyed this and that you make some pumpkin bread. All right, y'all, talk to you later. Bye!