Every morning is a “Good Morning” in South Carolina!

I don’t wake up every morning and say, “I have to workout.”   I wake up every morning and say, “I get to dance!”

I teach Zumba fitness at a local gym here and I love it.

I love that the Latino dance Zumba-craze hasn’t run its course here in our small town. In fact, I think the Z-volume is just starting to get pumped up around here. In class, we cumbia, salsa, merengue, machete and flamenco. We stomp, kick, punch, twist, jump, and dance like crazy. To the tune of about 800 calories. And Pitbull.

Because I teach at 9:30 in the morning, I occasionally get some home-schooled kids in there as their “P.E”  period.

This week, a mother-daughter team approached me. The mom said, “I need to speak to you about your music.” Uh-oh, I thought. It is really super hard to get good booty-shaking music that everyone can agree on.

I have found contemporary gospel singer, Mandisa’s Good Morning, and it is upbeat with a great Message.

Mandisa was the ninth-place finalist in the fifth season of American Idol. If you haven’t downloaded her to your iPod yet, you’re missing out.

But what this sweet woman at the gym wanted to know was, if I would be willing to incorporate her music, that she has written and recorded herself, into my routine. Of course! Thank heavens! No scolding! So she handed me a CD, (for free!), and thanked me for my consideration.

Her name is Elizabeth Simon and my favorite song, which I did incorporate into my cool down, is “Cast Your Burdens.”

Here are the things I learned from this transaction: this woman is doing what she feels the Holy Spirit is telling her to do, and she is listening. She is not afraid to record the music or to spread the Word. Her CD is wonderful. It is inspired. Isn’t that what God asks of us? To listen, and do our best every day? She inspired me to start this blog. It’s not perfect. But it is inspired.

Something Southern: We live on a farm in a rural area. We have 3 beautiful children: 2 daughters and one son. My son, Jacob, just turned 11 years old. To say he is “all-boy” would be the understatement of the year. In Jacob’s 5th grade class, he is reading “Where The Red Fern Grows.”

Wholesome fun found in ‘Where The Red Fern Grows.’ Evidently, in this book, “Billy” tries to trap a coon with bait made of a shiny bit of tin. Needing the coon’s skin to train his dogs, Billy makes and sets the traps along the river.

So Jacob decided he needed traps like Billy in the book. Luckily for us, they sell such Havahart traps at the local feed and seed downtown. But Jacob had no funding for aforementioned traps. Then he came up with the bright idea of picking up pecans and selling them for cash. This is grassroots, down home, country fun. And you gotta love the entrepreneurial nature of a young boy on a mission.

Jacob picked up three drums-full of pecans. When I say drums-full, I mean old, plastic buckets that used to have sheetrock mud in them. You can usually find these on the side of the road, if you’re lucky. And oh, my husband is lucky!

Now around Darlington County, you can take these drums-full to any number of “We Crack & Shell, We Buy & Sell” pecan venues. So we did. And he made enough cold, hard cash to buy an entire set of traps, which he quickly placed in the woods behind our home, baited with a smelly, dead bird. Lucky again. On our farm, the dogs and cats drop off smelly treasures at our doorstep frequently.

Pecans fall like pennies from heaven in our neck of the woods!

The first thing he trapped was an opossum. Score! Like any good mom, I told him that anything he killed, he had to eat. So he released the opossum without hesitation or argument.

But he plans on catching raccoons, like they did in the book, and hopes he can skin them and use them for hunting. Don’t ask me how. You can YouTube anything nowadays on how-to skin a snake or any other varmint.

Jacob has it all figured out. And I admire his planning. I’m just not going to be available to help. The best I can offer is to Oxyclean his clothes afterwards. I think that’s plenty.

Since it was his birthday, my girlfriend asked what would be appropriate to give an 11-year-old as a birthday gift. And I explained the traps and the pecans. And then I said, but what he reeeeeally wants is a Beginner’s Tanning Kit. To which she replied, “Oh, your son is into self-bronzing?” Yeahhhh, noooo.

You hafta have boys to understand.

The only tanning my son is in to…

To quote from the F & T Fur Harvester’s Website:  “Rittel’s Trapline Tanning Kit is an excellent kit for tanning light skins such as weasel, squirrel, muskrat, raccoon, fox, coyote and domestic rabbits.  This is the kit Rittel’s recommends for teaching youngsters how to tan.  It’s extremely safe, easy to use and incorporates all the basic principles of basic tanning.  Each kit will tan 3 lbs. of wet skin weight.” Mmmmm. Yummy. Teaching youngsters about taxidermy. Now, who’s hungry?!

What’s Cookin’: Since it’s SuperBowl Sunday, I’m making Souper Bowl White Chicken Chili. For a printable version of this recipe, click HERE!

A family favorite for Super Bowl noshing for over a decade!

You start with Great Northern Beans soaking overnight. So do that part on Saturday before the game on Sunday.

Place beans in a heavy pot with enough cold water to cover at least 3 inches over and soak overnight.

Hardly any fat at all! You could use this broth instead of packaged chicken broth…

Place chicken in large saucepan and add cold water to cover and simmer. Cook until just tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and cool. Cut chicken into cubes.

A clean kitchen is a key to a happy me. Fill your sink with hot, soapy water before you start cooking every time.

(The soapy sink is a tip from the Fly Lady, whom I love, for offering a system for organizing and managing a home, with daily routines broken down into time- and space-limited tasks.)

Drain beans. Heat oil in same pot over medium high heat. Add onions and sauté about 10 minutes or until translucent. Stir in garlic, chilies, cumin, oregano, cloves and hot sauce and sauté 2 minutes.

I love fresh garlic. I love my garlic press. I love everything about it. But I do also keep the jar of garlic in the fridge for emergencies. And it comes in handy sometimes. Just in case you were wondering, this is 4 cloves of garlic. I do have friends that are unclear on this, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Add beans and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until beans are very tender, stirring occasionally, about 2 hours.

Add chicken and 1 cup of cheese to chili and stir until cheese melts. Season to taste. Serve with remaining cheese, sour cream and salsa.

I admit it, I cheated. I put it in my slow cooker to simmer. I gots stuff I gotsta do!

(Okay, I cheated again, I made homemade pico de gallo to go on top of mine instead of salsa.) Yum! Enjoy!

Keep It Smart: I just found out that we will spend more money on Super Bowl snacks than we did on Christmas dinner. That’s right, Thanksgiving is our number one stuff-ourselves-full day, and Super Bowl Sunday ranks #2! This Sunday, wings, pizza and dip will take the place of turkey and mashed potatoes in the center of our feasting. How can we possibly stick to our New Year’s Resolutions to eat healthier?

I’m reading The Happiness Project, in which Gretchen Rubin describes that in order to lose weight, we need to: Eat Less. Exercise More. And Eat Better. I like that last one. Eat better. More whole foods. Less chemicals. No pop-tarts for me (or my kids). No diet drinks with aspartame. No gum with aspartame, either, which has been a huge problem for me. Try Glee gum. So far, I’m a fan.

Glee gum is as “close to organic” as they come. It’s made with sustainably, harvested rainforest chicle. And, you can buy it on Amazon, too, by the case, and it’s cheaper than the gum at the checkout line at the grocery store. A case of 12 packages is just $11.

Scripture of the day:  Thanks to Tim Tebow for handing me today’s inspiration from Ephesians 2:8-10 NIV

Ephesians 2: 8-10 Thanks to Tim Tebow for fearlessly attesting to his faith.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”