It's Time For Tea...

And tea bread with thyme!

Thyme is a herb known from ancient times, and it has a lot of health benefits. It can be added to a variety of dishes; or, as in this recipe, to a cake.

You will need:

3/4c milk
1tsp dried thyme (1tbsp fresh thyme)
1/2c soft butter
1c sugar
2 eggs
2c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1tbsp lemon juice
1tbsp grated lemon peel

and for the glaze:
1/2c powder sugar
1tbsp lemon juice

In a pan, combine milk and thyme, bring to a boil and cook for 1-2 minutes, let stand for ab. 5 minutes, covered. Cool.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar, add eggs, one at a time. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt and add to the mixture alternatively with milk. Stir in lemon juice and peel, transfer to a greased loaf pan ( I used a pan for cake), and bake at about 175*C for 40 till 45 minutes.

For the glaze, combine powder sugar and lemon juice and drizzle over the cake. You can eat it for dessert or with a cup of tea.

Feminine Clothes Don't Have To Be Expensive

Feminine clothes don't have to cost a fortune!

The result of my visiting a Goodwill store last week - the cardi and dress together cost under 20 euros.  The cardi is made from mohair blend, and it is very warm and cosy. If you have always wanted to dress more feminine but lack money to buy expensive stuff, a goodwill type of store is a real solution, and since it's basicaly recycling, it's environmentally friendly, too!:)

The Dangers Of Alcohol

Some time ago I wrote a post discussing health benefits of alcohol, which probably cost me some readers, so today I'm going to write another one, this time about the dangers of (excessive) alcohol consumption.

While moderate drinking can probably have at least some health benefits as I mentioned before, there are several problems with alcohol. First, it is addictive, and because it is legal, people tend to overindulge, and many are not aware that alcohol withdrawal may be fatal.

Another problem with alcohol is that it removes inhibitions and makes people do stupid things they will most certainly regret later, like getting into fights or sleeping around. I think we all have heard about "beer goggles" (I think this song gives a pretty good summary of why you shouldn't drink) which make every woman beautiful, but while Western men were getting drunk for centuries, until recently the only females who kept them company, were "ladies of easy leisure".

However, nowadays drinking among teenage girls and young women seems pretty much the norm, and as this blogger points out may be one of the reasons of increased female promiscuity. It's a good idea to teach your daughters not to get drunk, especially in company of (strange) men.

More On Decoration

With the 12 days of Christmas officially behind us, I finally took away all the Christmasy decorations, with the exception of the Christmas Angels which you still can see in the picture. I didn't get rid of the tree until after Epiphany though it appears that officially the Christmas season doesn't end until the 2nd of February! I agree with Will S. that we should celebrate winter, but here in Holland we haven't had much of it this year:)

My husband brought me this hyacinth from work. Isn't he sweet?:)I thought it would look nice with the white candles and the green tablecloth. Sometimes just adding a little detail can make your house cosier, and it will feel more like home. After all, it's often the little things in life which matter most.

Home Decorating Ideas

Found this interesting video on YouTube:

Even in the 3rd century women got preferential treatment

Feminists always come up with sob stories about eternal female victimhood, and unfortunately, modern education is often so bad that people believe them. However, in real life women were often treated better than men. The story of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra who reigned in the end of the 3rd century proves it.

Zenobia was the second wife of Septimus Odaenathus, the King of Palmyra, and had a son from him and a stepson, Septimus' child from his first marriage. After her husband and stepson were assassinated, she began to rule Palmyra on behalf of her son who was then only 1 year old. Zenobia was that creature  so many men seem to idolyze,  'a warrior queen' and wiki article informs us that she was so tough that sometimes she would walk the whole of 3 miles alongside her soldiers. She also could ride a horse and would occasionally drink together with her officers.

The Queen was well educated and her interests included philosophy, poetry, and literature. And, of course, she was extremely beautiful, which is important for a queen. She and her generals were successful in conquering Egypt, which was then a Roman province. Romans were not amused and the Emperor himself led his armies against hers and won. He then proceeded to execute an awful lot of Palmyrian soldiers and military advisers (all men), except Zenobia herself who was brought to Rome and paraded through the city in golden chains.

I forgot who first coined the phrase 'she will look beautiful in chains', but Queen Zenobia certainly did, and it produced such an impression on the Emperor, that he not only freed her, but also gave her a nice villa to live in and a handsome income so that she enjoyed all possible luxury. I want to draw your attention to the fact that Emperor Aurelian showed clemency to Zenobia, which she had not shown to the Roman prefect of Egypt, and he had been beheaded on her orders. 

Zenobia's son died on his way to Rome, but she remarried and had several daughters from her new husband, a Roman senator, who all married into nobility.

So you can see for yourself that women were not treated equally to men. They often got preferential treatment.

January 2014 Links

Lady Lydia writes about tea and health:
A quiet Morning in January

Will S. posts some beautiful pictures of winter in Ontario:
Eastern Ontario Winter

Vox Day discusses Global Warming:
The perils of global warming

Thinking Housewife talks about Stay-At-Home dads:
My Dad Is a Mom

Matt Walsh answers a college professor who claims that monogamy is unnatural:
Monogamy is unnatural

And folks at Taki Mag laugh at the latest insanity of feminists (warning: language + explicit content):
PIV-negative

Is Housework Real Work?

Is the work which women traditionally do around the house real work? I think the question is easy to answer. If you have a child, and hire a babysitter or bring him to daycare, do you have to pay? If you hire a cleaning lady does she clean for free? If you go to a restaurant, does it cost you any money?

Apparently, when you outsource parts of what traditionally was considered woman's work to others, they consider it "real work" and expect monetary rewards for doing it.

The next objection to the existance of housewives is that due to the modern conveniencies, housework has become so easy that  women "really don't work as hard as their grandmothers used to." The answer to this is that most men also don't work as hard as their grandfathers used to, but nobody tries to denigrate men's work (that is, except feminists, but we are talking about normal folks over here).

The problem with housework is that too many women slack and do the bare minimum of chores necessary for the family to survive. The fact that there are such women, or even that a majority of women is like this (I personally don't believe it, but let's for a moment suppose that it's true), doesn't make the role of housewife obsolete, it just means we should raise our daughters to take their domestic responsibilities more seriously.

By the way, even if women's work in general is easier than men's work in general, it doesn't mean that the woman's role in the home should be denigrated. The Scriptures call the woman a weaker vessel, so it's only logical that she is more suited to easier work.

Were there some women who worked in the coal mines and in the fields in the past? Yes, there were. There were also some women who were prostitutes, but it doesn't mean that it's OK to be one. Those who attack housewives always come with some extreme example of a woman forced into an unnatural role through extreme poverty or other unfortunate circumstances and pretend that it's an ideal to follow, or that because some woman somewhere is forced to perform hard labour, housewives everywhere should seek out employment in solidarity.

As Christians, the Bible is our guide and it's clear on the role of the (married) women:
1Timothy 5:14 says "I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully."

It's a quite clear instruction, imho, and one must be willfully blind to disregard it. Lady Lydia has a great post on her blog about the distinction between rules and principles, which is applicable in this situation. Married women being housewives is a principle, which means that there always will be some exceptions, but we should strive for the ideal, not the second best.

If as a woman you want to be a homemaker, search for a man who appreciates the traditional female domestic role, not the one who dismisses it as unimportant and wants his kids to grow up in a day care.

Happy New Year

A song from more innocent times when people still believed that it was possible to have a world where every neighbour is a friend...