On Point Articles
We feature articles from our growing community each month.
Our hunger for God is the focus of March. Tiffany Turner shares her passion in and out of the kitchen.
I was so honored and thrilled when my friend and sister (not actually related, although we look just alike), Jasmine, asked me to share through Human Arrow. I know the amazing Vision Nuggets that she has been sharing are impacting not only my life, but plenty of others, regardless of their spiritual walk/background. I knew immediately what I wanted to share.
At the beginning of the New Year, I had a pressing feeling to plan a brunch with several of my girlfriends so that we could all catch up and share what’s going on in our lives, while eating some good food and being in great company. After a few days of mulling it over, this idea began to grow larger than just having a brunch– let me tell you why:
I love food. Like…I really love food. My obsession with it began when I moved to New York City. I always had a love/hate relationship with food – knowing that I had to eat it (sustenance) but wishing that I didn’t have to eat it (calories!). Shortly after settling in New York, I began dating a man (we’ll call him Peter for now) who had lived in New York his whole life but only frequented the same five restaurants. That got old really fast. I read an article one day that said there were so many restaurants in New York City that you could go to a different restaurant everyday and not repeat a restaurant for seven years! WHAT?!?
Needless to say, I set out on a mission to try as many restaurants as I could and of course made it a goal for Peter and myself to do this together. We traveled to just about every borough to try different places, sometimes ordering similar dishes we tried at other places so we could compare notes. We found favorites, we found not-so-favorites, and we found those amazing spots that you wanted to tell the whole world about. This was one of our favorite pastimes.
While I was dating Peter, I realized that we weren’t on the same page when it came to having a relationship with God. All the while, I was feeling stagnant and complacent in certain areas of my life and I knew that part of it stemmed from this relationship. I was just too scared to admit it. I found myself justifying certain behaviors and attitudes just to keep us together, saying things like But he’s such a good man, He’s really sweet to me, He takes really good care of me, He’ll get a hold of this God thing, I’ll teach him how to lead me. I was trying to make it work as I best I knew how and was feeling like the very backbone of the relationship rested on me, and I was beginning to recognize the exhaustion of carrying our relationship.
A month after our three-year anniversary, we broke up. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I had been praying (crying out to God) for God’s best in my life and started wanting more of what He wanted in my life. I kept meditating on Matthew 6:33 “But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” The word “seek” here means to crave, to inquire into, to strive after. I wanted to change everything in my life to crave all things God.
As I was praying (crying) about what to do in regards to our relationship, I kept hearing the Holy Spirit say, “Take your hands off of my son.” At first, I wasn’t sure what that meant but repeatedly I would hear, “Take your hands off of my son.” I would hear this walking down the street while thinking on how I could convince Peter to do something that I thought he should be doing. “Take your hands off of my son,” is what I would hear whenever I asked Peter if he’d read his Bible that day.
“Take your hands off of my son.”
And then it hit me. God, in His loving way, was telling me that I was controlling too much of my relationship with Peter. I was trying to control every part of the spiritual walk of a grown man, thinking that the way that I was handling him was causing this great and everlasting change. I was out of place. Not only as a girlfriend, but as a friend. I needed to learn what being a helpmate truly meant because I was completely mistaken.
I underestimated the sovereignty of God, and the power of His sanctification and love for His children. I underestimated the power of the cross and what His sacrifice means in the lives of His people. I grew to understand that I had a very limited understanding of how God could handle and take care of every intimate and minute detail in our lives. I needed to back up and let God be God. I was allowing my own selfish pride to get in the way of, not only my boyfriend, but my brother in Christ’s growth.
That’s when we felt the shift. As I backed up from offering so much of my opinion, my brilliant insight (that was not so brilliant), and my hand orchestrating just about everything we did, he got increasingly nervous because he felt the shift of responsibility. He knew something was happening on the inside of me and he didn’t know how to handle it. After talking it out, we knew we needed to go our separate ways. More importantly, I knew I needed to do some work on myself and learn how to fall in love with Jesus all over again.
Eventually I moved into a new apartment in Washington Heights and began living out the reality of my prayer list. Literally. Every single thing that I had petitioned God for, I got – minus laundry in the building. It was such a blessing and one of the first steps God made and honored when I sought after Him. I was living with two extremely beautiful, intelligent, gifted women of God. Our community of friends and love grew over the course of two years of living together and God used these two women, along with some other amazing sisters to help aid in the healing process of not just a breakup but a deeper understanding and love for my Savior.
People handle their breakups differently. Many people go out and spend time with friends, spend time with “randoms” for one-night stands, turn to drugs or alcohol, etc. But I turned to Jesus in my kitchen.
One Sunday morning, I had an inkling to make some food. I didn’t know what to make so I jumped online and started looking for quick and easy recipes that I could make. In my previous apartment, our shared kitchen was really small and I never felt comfortable cooking in it.That day I managed to make a mean grilled cheese, and lots of quesadillas. Afterwards I made a small notebook of things I wanted to try cooking, then made a grocery list accordingly.
Upon returning from the store, I grabbed my laptop and headed for the kitchen, playing praise and worship music while cooking. I did this over the next few months. I would make three dishes, including a breakfast item that usually included an egg popover dish and two other main courses. I would take breakfast and lunch to work, and then come home for dinner. There were nights where my roommates and I would put our ingredients together and make dinner for each other. We would sit and swap stories about our lives and about our days and fellowship. Thus my love affair with food crossed another boundary in my life.
The time that I spent with God in that kitchen laid a deeper foundation for truly becoming acquainted with who God is to me. I asked God to show me facets of His character that I did not know about. The time in the kitchen helped me to realize that Jesus really is my friend. Just like I have sisters that I can call on, Jesus wanted to be apart of that circle in a whole new way. I saw a quote recently that read, “Until you become strong being alone with just God, you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness.” So, as you can see, I equate a lot with food - my growth with God, and growing in companionship with people.
So back to that brunch I first mentioned. When I started putting it together, I wanted to try a restaurant that I had never been to, and I was hoping that none of the other girls had been to it either. I emailed a group of 25 women and had the idea in my head that this would be a great catch up session. Then the idea started growing from there and that is how Eat to Love|Feed to Love started.
Eat to Love|Feed to Love has a two-fold mission: Eat to Love is comprised of a group of women that will gather together several times throughout the year, experiencing and tasting different restaurants around the city of Los Angeles. Not only is our coming together about our love of food, but about our priceless fellowship. My goal is to bring together new food and new friends. Feed to Love will allow these same women to take the time to volunteer with different organizations to help feed those that are homeless, sick and shut in.
And we’ve launched! Our first restaurant visit was to BLD on Beverly Boulevard. Here is where my inner restaurant critic tells you that the service was a little shoddy (having to wait almost an hour for our reserved table). Our server was kind enough to offer us an extra dish for us to share as an apology. It turned out to be my favorite part of the meal, Blueberry and Ricotta Pancakes. We had an amazing time sharing stories, laughing and stuffing our faces with food and dessert, while making new friends and catching up with old ones.
I thought it would be fitting, seeing as I shared details of my life with you, to share the recipe of the item we shared at the table during our first ladies brunch. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you Eat to Love.
Total Time: 45 minutes
Servings: 8
Note: Adapted from BLD. The restaurant recommends using a dryer ricotta with large curds such as Gioia (a wet ricotta will make the batter too grainy)
Ingredients:
3 eggs, yolks and whites separated
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups milk
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 pints blueberries
Directions:
1. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and ricotta cheese so that there are no large lumps of cheese, but make sure the mixture does not become too smooth (this will make the pancakes wet and grainy). Whisk in the sugar, salt and vanilla, then the milk.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder. Fold this into the egg batter just until no lumps remain.
3. Separately, whip the egg whites to medium-stiff, shiny peaks, about 4 minutes. Gently fold these into the batter just until uniformly combined.
4. Ladle a generous one-fourth cup of batter onto a medium-hot, lightly greased griddle for each pancake. Place 10 to 12 blueberries on each pancake and cook, about 2 minutes per side. You’ll start to see little bubbles form on the top. That’s when you know it’s time to flip them over. Cook on the other side until the cakes are golden-brown and cooked through. Serve immediately with warm maple syrup on the side.
Each serving: 276 calories; 10 grams protein; 41 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 8 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 98 mg. cholesterol; 369 mg. sodium.
If you live in the Los Angeles area and are interested in joining Eat to Love|Feed to Love, contact Tiffany Turner through her blog at http://knifeoutonthetown.blogspot.com/
Got an interesting perspective on a topic you're anything but lukewarm about? Let us know at beahumanarrow@gmail.com.