🥗 Homemade Salad Dressings, Sourdough Bread, a Good Book, and Homemaking Encouragement!
Intentional Inspirations Newsletter - 3/15/25
Whew! Has it really been over a month since I have sat down to write you? Life has been full and my time has been taken with my family. My youngest daughter is graduating this year, so we have been cherishing every moment with her. She had her last basketball tournament of the season and her high school career last weekend. It was so much fun watching her play, being a leader on the court, and setting an example for the younger players.
She was actually sick the morning the tournament started, but was able to get to feeling good enough to play in the game later that afternoon, and then play in two games the following day. We are so thankful she didn’t have to miss her last games.
You will see below, that I am continuing to learn and play around with sourdough. I have to admit that it has surprised me how easy it really is. I think the key is having a good starter. When I tried sourdough years ago, I tried making my own starter. My loaves of bread turned out like bricks! It was so discouraging that I gave it up. I am so glad my sister convinced me to give it another try!
Can you believe it is the middle of March already? I am so ready for Spring though! Our bulbs are coming up, the grass is turning green, and I’m excited for the new life. God’s creation always is such an encouragement and brings so much joy.
Well, I better wrap up for now and let you get to the links below. Hope you find something you can use. Praying each of you have a blessed weekend!
Take care. Don't fear. Trust God!
Blessings,
❤️Sheri
I love making a big salad for lunch, so I thought I would share some homemade salad dressing recipes that I have on my blog!
Dorothy Lynch Salad Dressing - My husband LOVES Dorothy Lynch dressing, so it was fun to find this recipe to use.
Ranch Salad Dressing - I love Ranch dressing, so this recipe gets used a lot! I also use milk kefir in place of the buttermilk and that works great too.
Lora’s Famous Homemade Salsa - This is my sister’s recipe. If I am making a taco salad, I love using just salsa as a dressing.
Salad Tip - This kind of relates to dressings, so I thought I would share this tip here. I try to go easy on the dressings when I make salads, so one thing I do to add more moisture to my salad is adding in some cottage cheese. Not only does it add moisture and flavor, but it adds even more protein!
A friend of mine from church recommended this little book, so I decided to check it out. I love it! It has short sections to read which makes it nice when I have snippets of time and they are filled with thought provoking content to help my apply the Gospel to my life. Highly recommended!
My sister convinced me to try sourdough again! I found a local lady who had some sourdough starter she was willing to share. I had a couple flops, but I am finally getting the hang of it! My goal was to make mostly sandwich bread because that is what we eat. The round sourdough loaves never really appealed to me and I didn’t have the dutch oven needed to bake them. So I went in search of a recipe for sourdough sandwich bread that used a method that was doable and didn’t seem too time intensive (you know, all the “stretch and folds”, etc.). I found one! This is the recipe I am using and I love it! Yesterday I made my second batch of 4 loaves of bread. Here is a picture of the two I baked into loaves.
As you can see, I only made two loaves of bread and the other two I put in ziplock bags in the refrigerator to use for pizzas last tonight. They turned out great, but the crusts were a bit too thick. Next time I will make 3 pizza crusts out of the leftover dough and roll it thinner. It should be perfect! What I love about doing the crusts this way, is that I can make them earlier in the week and put the dough in the refrigerator. Then they are ready to just pull out on Fridays when we have pizza!
The other night, my daughter stayed up late so she could photograph the eclipse. She got some amazing pictures! She made the above graphic using one of the images. Enjoy!
I have mentioned Amy’s website before, her Youtube channel, and her free homeschool curriculum. She has been such an encouragement to me personally. Recently I started reading through this book of hers where she shares 52 things you can work on throughout the year to focus less on “stuff” and things you don’t have, and focus more on what you do have and the life that God has given you. You can purchase a softcover version on Amazon here, or go to her website to download a digital copy for only $5.
Another one of Amy’s books that I am enjoying is her brand new 52 Weeks to an Organized Home and Balanced Life. You can purchase a copy here on here site. Amy is also working through the book for free on her Youtube channel here.
I wanted to share again my personal experience using God’s Story for my daily Bible reading. I have the free Kindle version on my Kindle Scribe and I absolutely LOVE it! I am reading longer and reading more than I ever have, and I think it is because my eyes don’t get caught up in all the verse numbers and formatting. God’s Story is only marked by book and chapter, so you feel like you are reading a story — God’s Story! See below for details on how you can purchase softcover versions and Kindle versions, OR simply download the free digital versions to print or load on your devices. I can’t encourage you enough to get into God’s Word this year!
Click here to go to the book series page on Amazon! You will see links to each of the softcover volumes, as well as the link to the Kindle version of the complete book.
Click here to grab God's Story as a free EPUB or PDF file! I am so excited to see so many of you downloading the free version! I pray it is blessing you and encouraging you to be in the Word daily!
Happy reading!
Just a quick reminder that you can find all my weekly newsletters archived over on Substack here. Feel free to click on over and browse through past newsletters and posts. If your Inbox gets overloaded, you can always just go to my Substack page to find them.
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