Episode 32 - America's Worst Cooks Get Rescued by Jessica Seinfeld

Jessica Seinfeld Cooks!

Jessica Seinfeld has a new book out called Double Delicious: Good Simple Food for Busy, Complicated Lives. She's here on the Oprah show to help save cooks. Her husband, Jerry (yes, that Jerry Seinfeld) is in the audience and he says he loves his wife's food because she takes good, simple food and makes it delicious.

Oprah shows us home tapes that viewers sent in to show how terrible they are at cooking. One of them had a fire start behind her (apparently not intentionally!) and one shows us that her Crock Pot stores her scrunchie collection. As in her hair scrunchie collection. Awesome. There are six notable mentions in the studio to try Jessica's recipes and learn.

Jessica's made a super yummy looking lasagna (it was easy and done in the Crock Pot) and everyone is "mmm-ing" and I want some! Thankfully, the Oprah website has her recipes, so you can check it out there:

http://www.oprah.com/food/Recipes-by-Jessica-Seinfeld

Blurg, this is making me hungry! Definitely check out those recipes. One great thing Jessica does, too, is sneak vegetables into food wherever she can in a way that your kids (or husband... or you...) will hardly notice it and eat it. Her recipes are healthy, too, like her tostada made with ground turkey instead of beef.

Shopping
After the break, in clip, Jessica and her self-proclaimed bestie Ali Wentworth go to the grocery store and help shoppers buy better food. General tips are whole wheat, less sodium, less sugar, etc. Jessica says that she fills her shopping cart the way she wants to fill her life with food--a few treats and lots of healthier options. Jessica has a great shopping list helper on Oprah's website, so you can check that out!

Saving Victoria
A husband named Ryan sent in a video to tell Oprah that, though he loves her deeply, his wife is the worst cook in America. Jessica and Ali surprise Victoria at her home, telling her that they're bringing her to Chicago to help her learn to cook. In the studio, Victoria's son tells Oprah that his mom really is the worst cook in America! We learn that the day before, Jessica and Victoria spent time in the kitchen so that Victoria could learn a new recipe and tips. Victoria's asparagus in the tape looked like a wet noodle because it was so overcooked; Jessica teaches her how to roast it. Her roasting and seasoning method can translate into most other vegetables.

Jessica has a simple and great roast chicken recipe that she demos and you should totally check it out!

Adam Says: Shopping Tips
One of the most popular columns in O Magazine, according to Oprah, is one called Adam Says. Written by Adam Glassman, the column gives people fashion advice in a way that keeps people looking good without breaking the budget. Today he's helping the O'Connor family, as the three women are spending much more money than they family can afford. The dad is hoping they can "shop for less."

Adam takes the family to TJ Maxx. His tips are that the newest, most fashionable items are at the front of the store, other new items are around the perimeter, and the deepest discounts are in the middle. He gives great advice to the older daughter, saying, "Don't spend on trends." For example, every major designer this fall had a faux fur vest, and while it's a great trend, spending top dollar on a Chanel one that will be out of style next year would be ridiculous. Love it!

High-low Fashion Show
After a break, Adam does a high-low fashion show. He shows current trends, with twins wearing outfits that are the same look but one is high fashion and the other is much more affordable. For example, the first outfit featured a leopard-print dress and a faux fur jacket; honestly, both looked pretty great. High fashion = $6,700 (to which Oprah quipped, "You could get a car!"); affordable = $320. In the second look, Mad Men-esque 60s inspired dresses; the difference was $7,500 to $175. Oy! The final look, camel colored 70s inspired pants suits, had a difference of $7,600 to $258. Honestly, with each outfit, there was a bit of a difference--the expensive items clearly had better cuts and better materials, but really, Oprah was right. People should spend the equivalent of a good used car for one outfit!

Australia Trip Update
Oprah tells us that they are going to introduce us over the next few weeks to some of her "ultimate" viewers that are going to Australia with her. One woman describes the energy being insane, that it was probably "one of the most happiest moments" of her life.

And we're out!

Gospel Filter Review
This was a fun episode; a lighter episode was needed in the midst of so much about murder, sexual abuse, death of children, etc. I'm grateful for the lighter topic! There are two great, practical themes here: food and fashion. Very woman friendly today! So, let's hit it!

Food
Food is such a good gift from God! The best part is that He knows it and it wasn't a mistake! Did you know the word feast, or variations of it, is in the Bible 187 times? Granted, not all of those are in a positive context--some verses are about the enemy feasting on your stuff, or wanting to feast on your stuff if you aren't careful. It's a small rabbit trail, but that's people taking a good gift from God and using it for their own selfish gain. Many of the verses are about feasting on good food. Here is a great one:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
Isaiah 25:6


How great is that? One day, there will be a great feast in heaven, the marriage supper of the Lamb. It's going to be a big party following the wedding of Jesus to His bride, the Church (that means all Christians!). It pretty much lasts for eternity, because eternity is when sin and death are no more and those who belong to Jesus enjoy life as it was meant to be, without the effects of sin and death.

Here's the thing--people think heaven will be this awful, boring time in which people just praise God, but it's about as alive and fun as that one church your grandma dragged you to when you were a kid and you had to wear scratchy fancy clothes and you weren't allowed to move and the pastor spoke for 45 minutes about "whatever a man sows he shall reap" and it was scary and boring and people kept saying "amen" very solemnly every 27 seconds and the singing only had an old piano and you couldn't figure out how to follow the stanzas in the hymnal and everyone around you sang really high and smelled like mothballs and you saw that one lady give someone the stink eye for having a Bible that wasn't King James and then prayer lasted for 20 minutes but all you could think about was lunch and how badly you needed to pee and wishing you could sit down for prayer because your feet were starting to hurt.

Barf! That's not at all what heaven will be like! I'm not sure, but I wonder if heaven won't be all that different from life here--eating food, doing work, spending time with people, enjoying their company and serving them, praying and talking to Jesus, enjoying talents and hobbies and beautiful creation around us--only without any temptation to sin, always fully resting in God's character, secure in how loved we are, no enemy to lie and destroy, and the very world we live in not broken but perfect. Can you imagine that? The garden had all of the good things and none of the bad things before the fall. I don't know exactly what heaven will be like, but I don't think it will be people standing around bowing down and singing to God non-stop for eternity; if that were true, why would there be mansions, homes to go live in? And why would Jesus talk about feasting at hte marriage supper? It certainly won't be us as babies in diapers playing harps and lounging on clouds!


So, then, food. It's a good gift to be enjoyed and we'll even have food in heaven! Awesome! I loved that today gave practical tips on how to cook delicious, healthy meals that are good for you and don't require that you go to cooking school or at least spend 4 hours a day watching the Food Network to figure out! God wants us to enjoy the food that we eat. He also wants us to steward our bodies well, and he created an abundance of delicious foods that grow in the earth or, if it's according to your conscience, tasty meats that don't have a lot of fake stuff pumped into them that make you obese and tired and kill you.

That's not to say you can never have a Twinkie, or that it's sin to ever eat at McDonald's. Some Christians try to go there, but it's just not true. God does say our bodies are a temple and we were bought with a price, that the Holy Spirit indwells our body so that we should steward them well, and that God wants us to do everything for His glory as an act of worship. This means that we don't eat so carefully and exercise so much that we're worshiping our appearance, feeding our desire for a thin body over our desperate need to feast on Christ as our source of life. Neither should we eat carelessly, sinfully seeking comfort or pleasure, or eating as a way to punish ourselves or hide our body for fear of attention if it's thin, etc; also we shouldn't be lazy and never exercise.

It's not to say that if we see an obese person we get to assume they are in sin (or assume a thin person is a control freak and thus in sin); God cares about our own heart, how we are dealing with food and exercise and whether we are living for His glory in those areas. Really, someone else's heart is only our concern when we are lovingly walking through life with them and the Lord chooses to use us to point that person to His gospel. Otherwise, it's not really any of our business and most of the time we're far more worried about if someone else is worshiping God in those areas than we are asking Jesus to be Lord of them in our own lives.

So! Enjoy good food! Give your body good food that nourishes you, not only food that delights your tongue. Likewise, don't so carefully control your life such that you get to the place where you literally feel like eating one cookie would be sin. Let the Holy Spirit tell you what sin is, but don't decide to call something sin if it's not just because it meets your agenda of always fitting in your skinny jeans or losing those last 3 (or 5 or 10 or 50) pounds. Seek to know and love Jesus and let Him show you what it looks like to worship him with food and exercise.

And finally, especially for busy moms, let people like Jessica Seinfeld give you tips like a Crock Pot lasagna that takes 20 minutes to prepare and brings delight to your family because it's so delicious! What a blessing and a treat!

Fashion
I've written about beauty before, and I encourage you to read the Gospel Filter Review on this post if you haven't already. This piece about fashion will pick up where that review on filter left off. Basically, it's ok to want to look good. The Bible never says that women have to intentionally look bad to be holy. Religious people make that stuff up by taking good heart intended verses such as this one totally out of context:

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

              I Peter 3:3-4

Notice that Peter doesn't say you can't wear make-up or jewelry, nor do your hair and wear cute clothes. He commends women to let their adorning not be external but internal. To adorn means to enhance something, particularly with beautiful objects. He's not saying it's sin to adorn externally, but he's saying that what enhances a woman, what makes her attractive, should be her heart of submission to Christ. In the New American Standard version of the Bible, it says, "Your adornment must not merely be external." Basically, looks should never be our focus.

A passage that might be more confusing is this one:

...likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.
I Timothy 2:9-11

First, it's absolutely imperative that we see the hear is that a woman again is to always be more concerned with her character than her external appearance. The principal is clothes should reflect a heart that seeks to honor Jesus by dressing respectably, with modesty and self-control. A woman professing to know, love, and belong to Jesus needs Him desperately, and part of belonging to Jesus means that she needs to humbly ask Him about what she wears (including make-up and hairstyle in addition to clothes, shoes, and jewelry) and why she's wearing it. She needs to ask Jesus first if her heart is seeking Him above all else; then she can ask Him specifically to show her sin if she's not being modest or respectable.

I love these words from Warren Wiersbe from his Bible Exposition Commentary about this passage, so I'll share them with you!

The contrast here is between the artificial glamour of the world and the true beauty of a godly life. Paul did not forbid the use of jewelry or lovely clothes, but rather the excessive use of them as substitutes for the true beauty of “a meek and quiet spirit” (see 1 Peter 3:1–6). A woman who depends only on externals will soon run out of ammunition! She may attract attention, but she will not win lasting affection. Perhaps the latest fashion fads were tempting the women in the church at Ephesus, and Paul had to remind Timothy to warn the women not to get trapped.

Ephesus was a wealthy commercial city, and some women there competed against each other for attention and popularity. In that day expensive hairdos arrayed with costly jewelry were an accepted way to get to the top socially. Paul admonished the Christian women to major on the “inner person,” the true beauty that only Christ can give. He did not forbid the use of nice clothing or ornaments. He urged balance and propriety, with the emphasis on modesty and holy character.

Don't you love that? It's great to dress well and look good. That's not sinful. What's even better is that God loves us and wants us to delight in Him; when our hearts are delighting in Him then we're free to enjoy cute clothes and those earrings we love and those shoes we found on clearance that are adorable and still comfy! We enjoy them more when we're worshiping Jesus and our identity isn't wrapped up in the external, when we don't have to worry if we look fat in these jeggings or if our Nordstrom Rack shoes aren't as nice as the $700 Jimmy Choos we saw that one girl buying when we were window shopping.

Now, believe you me, I am not a fashionista. I don't spend $250 on an outfit--I spend $250, and MAYBE that, if it's because I lost 130 pounds and I need an entirely new wardrobe. My husband treated me to some maternity clothes for my birthday, and if he wasn't with me telling me how good I looked and that I "ha[d] to get that shirt!" then I would never have spent $150! As it were, though, I got 2 pairs of pants, 2 tops, jeans, and a great nursing bra for that price, including the ridiculous 10% tax we Seattleites pay. Likewise, I rarely wear make-up and, while I love to straighten it, I don't color or highlight my hair. This isn't a moral thing, nor do I pretend it's spiritual; I simply like to be low-maintenance. I can't lie--I don't wash my face at night, only in the morning, but when I wear make-up I have to wash my face at night and that's annoying! As for hair, I don't like to spend the money nor deal with the upkeep of trendy cuts and coloring. That's just me, and I'm comfortable in my femininity because Jesus cares about my heart and my husband actually prefers me fresh-faced and wearing... well, the fewer clothes the better.

So, then, just as much as a girl who loves fashion shouldn't put her identity in her clothes, neither should any woman feel like she has to be trendy and wear make-up to be a woman.

The other factor to fashion is stewardship. If you can't afford something, don't buy it. It's simple! But even more so, how you spend your money is an issue of the heart. Worship Jesus with your finances. Give generously, because God is generous and so you should be, too. Seek God's will when you form a budget, and pray about every penny you spend. If you overspend, repent! If you realize that you're being controlled by your budget, that it's not about worshiping Jesus but has become about your need to control or create a sense of security by how much you can put in savings each month, repent! Jesus will show you sin, and you can live with freedom. He'll give you wisdom when you draw near to him; I wrote a blog post all about this and I encourage you to read it!

So, today was a lot of information for a lighter episode, but this is where life is lived. We all eat and wear clothes every single day. It matters what the Bible says about these matters. He cares first and foremost about our hearts because He loves us and wants us to be in close relationship with Him. He's good and when we are in close relationship with Him it's so refreshing because we experience joy and freedom! Praise God for that!

Up Tomorrow
Legendary Icon Jane Fonda: Her Life, New Love, and Working Out