Merry Christmas - 2016

A little boy and a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh. What could be cuter on Christmas, really? He gave Pooh many big hugs today and said several times, "My Winnie! Look, jacket!" I guess he was excited that Pooh has a shirt (jacket) on.

My little buddy had his first totally dry, potty accident-free day today. Merry Christmas to me from Jerod!

Jerod doesn't calm the storm

I was pushing the kids in the double stroller on a windy day, trying to get in some outdoor exercise before fall rains set in. I started jogging at the same time the breeze picked up even more, so Jerod really had the wind in his face all of a sudden. He started yelling, "No! No!"

Zarya leaned over the partition and said authoritatively, "Jerod, when Jesus tells the wind to stop blowing it stops. But when you tell the wind "no," it just keeps on blowing."

I think this means I'm doing well at teaching her Bible stories, but might need to work a bit on the theology of faith and prayer.

An accidental great find at the library

One of the best things about life is going to a local library regularly. I get almost all of my own reading material via the library, but do it all online and get Kindle books. (People call the printing press the greatest invention of the second millenium; I think electronic books should get some award for the third one.) But for little kids, there is nothing better than having a great big stack of picture books from the library to read. We're currently at the picture book stage of life with our three-year-old bookworm - she reads through her entire stack of library books every day while I work. It takes her close to an hour, and sometimes I feel like I should start making a babysitting donation to the library on behalf of enabling Bible translation. PBS should probably also get a donation sometime, since watching PBS Kids shows feature regularly in my babysitting schedule, too. But back to books, our schedule is that when Jerod gets up from his nap and I finish work for the afternoon, I let her choose two or three and I read them aloud to both kids.

Despite the fact I'm the one who chooses all of the books from the library, sometimes what I find in the pile is still a surprise. It's not like I read every word of them when I'm picking them out! I just aim for good artwork, about the right amount of words on the pages, and a story I think Zarya will enjoy. A good friend and former librarian suggested to me to work my way through the entire picture book section in order so as to not feel overwhelmed and have no idea which books to get when we go, which had been the case. So I opted to work my way backwards through the alphabet, and we're currently in the "S" section. It's a great system and enables me to pick out books pretty quickly - I just go and park myself where I left off the last time and flip through a shelf or two. No more aimless wandering hoping a title will catch my eye.

Anyway, the other day I sat down on the couch with the kids to read the books Zarya had chosen for that afternoon's read aloud time. One of them was titled, "Mama Elizabeti," by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen. I started reading it, and thought, "This little house looks like a Tanzanian house. It must be set in Kenya or something." In my experience, Kenya gets a lot more attention than Tanzania and anything that is supposed to be East African kind of equals being Kenyan. As I kept reading, Zarya and I loved that the little girl in the story calls her dad "Baba," the Swahili name for father that Zarya uses for Andrew. When little Elizabeti has to take care of her little one-year-old brother, Zarya thought it was great, just like her playing with Jerod. But I was noticing that this little girl reminded me a lot of all of the little girls in Tanzania who do what Elizabeti was doing, carrying water and washing dishes and babysitting a little sibling at the same time. Elizabeti wasn't just playing, she was working hard! It seemed just like Tanzania to me.

So, we finished our book and went on to another. Later I went and read the about the author part on the back flap of the book, and sure enough, it seems like it really was supposed to be in a Tanzanian village! The author served in Tanzania in the Peace Corps, and apparently has also written another book about little Elizabeti. What a fun find at the little Indiana, PA, library!

July 2016... written in September

Hello, faithful followers of my neglected blog. What can I say, it's been a happy, busy summer! I've been doing things like playing outside and checking Bible translations when inside, and the blog has sunk on the priority list.

For a fly-by summary of our summer, I'll try to put up a few posts to catch y'all up. First, we will go back in time to July!

This was our third summer in a row for going blueberry picking, so I think we can now call it an annual tradition. This year we had so much fun on our first trip that I took the kids again... and again. Three times (for three of us, Andrew only went on the first adventure) this summer we tromped out in the blueberry fields and picked tons of fabulous berries!

Would you believe this three-year-old picked almost two pounds of berries all by herself? Actually, she probably picked like four pounds, but only half ended up in her pail.

We all wore blue shirts in an attempt to keep stains more hidden! 

Jerod's pail is just for show. He picked plenty of berries, but none went into the pail!

Andrew and I are um, well, "slightly" competitive people. We definitely keep track of who picks more! I'm a faster picker, but he insists that he's simply more selective and picks better berries. 

Our second blueberry trip was definitely the most memorable one. It was supposed to be a cloudy, warm morning. I looked at the hourly forecast just before we left. However,, we’d only been there for about 10 minutes when suddenly it was DUMPING absolute sheets of torrential rain! Everyone was racing out of the fields shrieking. We were slow to get the van because we had to walk at Jerod’s pace, and were soaked through. Like, SOAKED. I went to go pay for our berries, but the ladies in front of me were taking forever, and after five minutes of standing there in line, the rain stopped. So I left the line and went back to the car and took the kids back to get more berries! Zarya and Jerod both had a blast and loved the whole morning, rain and wet clothes and all. Zarya told me several times that she was having fun, and we had to haul a resistant Jerod out of the berries when we left, so I think that means he was still enjoying himself, too. When we went to go pay, we had to pour the water out of our buckets before they were weighed so the rain wouldn't end up making us pay extra! We were so wet upon arrival home that I had to towel dry Zarya’s hair and change her and my underwear, because even it was drenched. I told Zarya that we were from the Pacific Northwest and no rain was going to keep us from having fun.

My first missionary moment

I like to write e-mail. It's very cathartic for me to sit down and compose a good, long, funny, newsy e-mail to a friend. I think it's how extroverts journal. Introverts can sit down and write themselves a long letter in a cute little blank notebook and keep it all privately tucked away, but extroverts need to know somebody is going to read it if they really want to think and process and motivate themselves to write. So, in college I wrote my parents a lot of e-mails. I was in college in Michigan and they were in Washington, and since this was in the pre-cell phone days (I used a calling card on a landline to call home!), we only talked on the phone once a week. That meant that I wrote long e-mails six days a week, and my mom saved them. She printed off just about every single e-mail I wrote for four years. When I  moved back to the States in 2014, she gave me a giant folder of all of my college e-mails to her.

What do you do with a huge stack of printed e-mail? Being as I'm not a saver, I figured out a way to use them. Since they are only printed on one side, I have Zarya and Jerod use the reverse sides for coloring pages. I read the e-mails, and then hand them out for scribbling with crayons. It's kind of entertaining, kind of pitiful (did I really have to write so many details about what we did at swim practice??), and a good trip down memory lane, at the pace of reading two e-mails every few days. At this rate the kids will still be coloring on my college e-mails long after they are both old enough to read the letters themselves!

I found a particularly interesting one the other day. I wrote it while preparing to go on my first-ever missions trip. I was headed to the Philippines to visit a Bible translation project. It turned out to be a completely life-changing trip that altered the course of everything afterwards, although at the time I was rather unaware of what was to come. The evening I wrote this, March 31, 2001, I had been at the home of the local Wycliffe Bible Translators recruiters, Ed and Linda Speyers. They had been in Suriname for over twenty years, and had just returned to the States the year before I met them. They are fascinating, passionate people, and I was hooked from our first conversation on, it appears. Here's what I wrote as an 18-year-old:

"After [meeting with the Speyers] I had this retreat-like 'I want to be a Wycliffe missionary for the rest of my life' high. For about 15 entire minutes I was considering changing my major to linguistics (which would require transferring schools) and doing all that, then I became practical Michelle once again. But it occurred to me that my greatest fear (besides snakes) has always been that God would want me to be a missionary, and here I was having a little fantasy about doing just that."

I think this really was the first time ever in my life I even considered being a missionary, and about two months later, I found myself seriously considering it as a long-term career. Thanks to three more years of monthly dessert nights at the Speyers (never underestimate the power of homemade apple pie and ice cream to convince a college athlete to become a Bible translator) and another short-term trip, I joined Wycliffe. I'm so glad I did!

Father's Day

To the fathers in my life, Happy Father's Day! I got to see my own father shortly before Father's Day this year, which was very fun. We met up at Lake Cumberland, KY. Because, you know, Kentucky is where people who live in PA, MO, and WA would logically connect.

Jerod had a blast hanging out with Babu. He doesn't remember it, but he was happy:

On Father's Day itself, Jerod wasn't feeling particularly like having his picture taken, so evacuated the pre-church photo session. Zarya, however, is a total daddy's girl these days and was thrilled to pose all by herself with her beloved Baba:

Thanks, both of you amazing fathers, for being there for me and our kids! We love you and appreciate you!

NT in customs

I just saw a post on a Wycliffe friend's Facebook wall that I just have to share! His post contained some quite exciting news:

Dear Friend,

I am pleased to inform you that the Lubwisi New Testament is now awaiting customs clearance at Malaba (Uganda Kenya Board). Please pray that this will be finalised soon so that we get ready for the launch on 29th July 2016.

These New Testaments in the Lubwisi language of Uganda are the real deal, the full NT, not just individual books. They are have just arrived from the printers overseas and have to be cleared through customs before they can be transported to the Lubwisi area and have their big launch celebration on July 29. Please pray that everything will go smoothly. Praise God for everything that has gone well thus far!

Quinoa for people who don't like quinoa

Maybe your spouse will consume everything you put in front of him/her, as does mine. But that doesn't mean he likes everything I serve him! Quinoa is on his list of edible-but-not-enjoyable foods. I had a little bit of leftover quinoa in a package and was trying to figure out what to do with it, and came up with the following recipe. He had seconds!

Quinoa and Kielbasa

1 onion, chopped

1 green pepper, c hopped

14 oz Polska Kielbasa, cut into 1/2" thick slices

1/2 cup quinoa

1/2 cup rice

2 chicken bouillon cubes

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

2 cups water

In a large frying pan, saute onion and green pepper until tender. Add kielbasa slices and cook, not stirring too often, so that slices brown a bit on both sides. Rinse quinoa and rice well, then add both to the pan. Add salt, bouillon cubes, pepper, and cayenne. Stir around a bit. Add water and bring to a boil. Turn heat to low, cover pan, and let cook 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Rice Snob

We've all heard of coffee snobs, who have to have just the right kind of beans roasted a certain way. There are purse snobs, car snobs, music snobs, apple snobs (AKA Washingtonians), seafood snobs, and other sorts of people who cheerfully make fun of themselves for their particular exclusive appreciation of certain fine products.

Y'all want to know what I am hiding in my closet? Rice. Oh yes, I'm a rice snob. In my overflow-pantry closet, I've got RICE. The current occupants of the rice closet are three 20-lb bags of rice and one 10-lb one. I've got Thai Jasmine, Indian Basmati, Mexican medium grain, and Japanese short-grain. There are other kinds I like but don't currently own, and yes, I do think they all taste different! I admit it, I'm a ricaholic rice snob.

Kids!

I laugh a lot these days, thanks to these crazy kids. Zarya (3) and Jerod (1) are just plain funny. Here are a few recent moments that I actually managed to get a picture of. Some of them are a little blurry because, well, kids just don't freeze in place when they see the camera!

She loves burritos...

Curious George got his arm stuck in an elephant

He was dancing, something that I think he thought was a cowboy shuffle

Preschool fashion involves a lot of accessories

Zarya says really hilarious things. She's quite articulate, so it's an unusual window into the mind of a three-year-old that not everyone gets to enjoy with their preschooler. I've been reading her Bible stories recently and sometimes we act them out. She loves this activity, but sometimes a few facts get jumbled. Here are a few of her most recent Scripture-themed quotes:

Zarya: "Mama, you're Mary, I'm Joseph, and Jerod can be Baby Jesus." She then picks up a play phone and starts pushing buttons on it.

Me, confused: "What are you doing, Joseph?"

Zarya: "Texting the wise men about the gold."

Zarya and I were pretending to be Zacchaeus and Jesus eating lunch at his house. Zarya/Zacchaeus was giving me tons of pretend food to eat, but not eating any herself/himself. I asked, "Zacchaeus, aren't you hungry? Here, have some lunch," and handed her/him a few items. She/He shrugged and said, "No, I'm not hungry, I had a big breakfast with," and she pointed at Jerod, who was sitting  nearby, "this old woman who lost her coin."

While in the bathtub one evening, Zarya splashed around a bit and casually commented, "This water used to be wine."

Translating it is the easy part

"Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God." - Rev. 3:12

Sometimes I talk about how difficult Bible translation is, and yes, it certainly is! But you know what's more difficult? Being a pastor. Take the sentence above, for example. It's actually pretty easy to translate. We've got words for everything in that sentence. But what on earth does it mean?! Hey, don't ask us, we just translate it; it's the pastor's job to explain it!

*Take this post with a few grains of salt. Yes, at times we do try to help readers by making some implicit things more clear and helping with unknown concepts. But when it comes down to it, we don't add to the Bible, and when a verse is clearly worded, there's not much which is appropriate to change.

Baked Sister

Jerod was recently browsing through my cookbooks and he must have found a recipe for Baked Sister. I think it probably promised the cook that while your sister is baking to a nice well-done crisp in the oven, an hour's peace of getting all of the toys to yourself is guaranteed. Jerod somehow talked Zarya into cramming herself into the (play kitchen's) oven, and was about to saunter away for his promised hour of alone time when I stumbled upon the scene...

Dumb boats

Cutting loose the anchors, they left them in the sea and at the same time untied the ropes that held the rudders. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and made for the beach. (Acts 27:40, NIV)

Just about every verse has a difficult bit to translate - it might be a word, concept, or an idiom that made great sense to the original readers that is lost on those of us from another culture. But come on, let's face it, the entire chapter of Acts 27 (Paul's shipwreck) is just plain obnoxious agony to translate unless the people group happens to be a sea-faring one.

Take the above example for instance. It has a few problems for people who stay on dry land and grow corn and millet, and occasionally wander by a little stream or lake to get a bucketful of water. This verse assumes readers know the following:

• What an anchor is
• Anchors are tied to ships with ropes
• Sailors had a knife or something handy to cut the rope
• What a rudder is
• Why a rudder would be tied
• What happens when you untie the ropes holding the rudders
• What a sail is
• What it means to hoist a sail to the wind
• How one would head for the beach when in a boat

Shoot me now. I first worked through this chapter years ago, and am now going over it again for a spell-check. Just seeing it once more gives me the heeby jeebies!

Easter Egg Hunt

The kids participated in their first Easter egg hunt today! It was a little crowded and crazy, but they had fun. Zarya was much too timid to push her way into the mass of preschoolers (and their parents and siblings) who were grabbing eggs as fast as they could, but she enjoying gleaning behind the throng. She actually had to search for the ones she found!

As for Jerod, just picking them up and putting them in the bag was exciting for him. He held his own amongst the toddlers. It's a lot for a one year old to take in, but he didn't seem too fazed. He'll be racing around collecting them next year.

It must be easier if it's your own language

bhiikumaniirye

bhiikumanirye

If I were a native speaker of Zanaki, the two words above might be easy to distinguish. Context within a sentence likely helps, too, so one doesn't have to rely only on whether there is a short "i" or long "ii" in a word to know it's meaning. 

I'm not a Zanaki person, and when I came across these two words in back-to-back verses in Acts, I thought that perhaps one of them was simply misspelled. It looked like a typo had happened, but I could come up with a linguistic explanation of why there might be a difference (I'll spare you that one). The context seemed the same to me, though, so I wasn't sure why one would be different than the other, even though I could theoretically figure out how an extra "i" had ended up in one word. 

I gave the translators the benefit of the doubt and wrote a polite note in Acts asking if these really were two different words. The answer came back saying yes, in fact, they were! I'm glad I asked in a friendly way and didn't assume they had made a mistake!

If you're curious, the difference is that the top word, the one with the long "ii", means that people gathered indoors somewhere. The bottom word means they gathered outside in an open place. Languages are fascinating and complicated!

Father Melancholy's Daughter

Way back when I was a young thing in grad school, I read Gail Godwin's novel "Father Melancholy's Daughter" for the first time. I really enjoyed it - there is nothing as gripping as a book that is all about interesting characters and how they develop, in my opinion, that is. I thought, "Wow, I've found a fabulous new (to me) author! I've got to read all of her other books!" Well, I did read five more, and they ranged from just okay to good, but none of the others I tried were anywhere near great. I include that info so that you don't assume that I'm highly recommending everything she's written and go read one of the other books and then think I've got poor taste in literature.

But, back to the one exceptional book of the lot. What I can say without giving anything away that you won't learn in the first few pages of the book is it's a coming of age book, and the title character is the daughter of an often-melancholy Episcopal priest, and her mother has recently departed the scene. You follow her from age six to age 22, although more accurately, you learn about her at age six and at age 22, and not much between.

For fans of books in which the plot involves the inner workings of minds and dialogue, try it, you'll like it!

Home Assignment in Australia

This lovely family is the Archers from Australia. They are friends of our from Tanzania, where they are still currently residing. They recently spent some time back in their home country on what their mission organization calls home assignment. (Some call this period "furlough" or "secondment return period.") I'm pretty sure if you're reading my blog, you have some idea of what home assignment is - lots of traveling around speaking at various churches and events, catching up with friends, family, and ministry partners, eating food you don't get to enjoy for another few years, and going to see doctors, dentists, and hair dressers so you look and feel decent for a little while, at least.

But just in case there are any readers out there who think home assignment equals lots of R&R, let me tell you what my friends the Archers recently tallied up: When they arrived back home in Tanzania, they had been away from their beds there for 221 nights. During those 221 nights, they had slept in 49 different beds! That's an average of 4.5 nights in one bed before changing to another for 7.5 months!

I'm not saying they didn't have a lot of fun and good times during those 222 days, but I know they were excited to get back home to their own beds in Tanzania, mosquito nets and all!

Little boy and his balls

Get thee behind me

I grew up reading the NIV, but for whatever reason, the phrase "Get thee behind me, Satan," from the King James Version stuck in my mind. Jesus had been talking about his death and resurrection, and Peter took him aside and told him to stop saying these things. The NIV's translation of Mark 8:33, says: "But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. 'Get behind me, Satan!' he said."

In one of the Swahili Bible translations (Habari Njema) and the Ikizu translation, however, the phrase is a little different: "Get out of in front of me." When I was checking this verse earlier today, I had to decide if it was accurate or not. What did Jesus mean when he said that to Peter? Did he actually want Satan to get behind him? No, of course not!

Jesus was telling Peter that his thoughts were from Satan. Peter was tempting Jesus to not follow God's plan, and Jesus was not going to have any of that! He used an idiom Peter would have understood to be quiet and rejoin the group. In Ikizu, the idiom that means that is "get out of in front of me." I deemed it to be a correct translation.

As an interesting side note in thinking about temptation, it seems that you can flee temptation, or you can tell temptation to flee you. Some modern English paraphrase probably has the phrase, "Get lost, Satan. Out of my face!"

Little Judas

Jude. It's a great name! It's been pretty popular lately, being in the top 200 for US boys for the past several years. It's delightfully short, easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and comes from the Bible. Judas was one of Jesus' brothers (biological son of Joseph and Mary - a "real" brother).

Wait - Judas?! Yes indeed, our dear friend Jude is actually Judas. Not Judas Iscariot, but Judas nonetheless. It was a popular name back then, too, thanks to the Hebrew forefather, Judah. In the Greek New Testament, there is no Jude or Judah, just Judas. In English, we like to have the good Judas distinguished from the bad Judas, so the former goes by his nickname.

Oh, if you're interested in the stats, Judas is ranked in about 5,000th place for popularity.

Happy boy

Jerod is now 14 months old, and he is one happy little boy. This fellow thinks every day is a great day! Here he is, having a good laugh just because, well, why not laugh?

Hakuna Matata

So, do you think the idea of learning another language is rather overwhelming? Are you impressed by the fact I know Swahili? Well, guess what, you probably know some Swahili too.

Do you recognize the above picture? Is the song "Hakuna Matata" playing in your head already? If you need a little refresher, here are some of the ever-so-catchy lyrics:

Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase

Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze

It means no worries for the rest of your days

It's our problem-free philosophy

Hakuna Matata!

Now that you're doomed to have that stuck in your head for the rest of the day (assuming you were born sometime in the 80s and watched the movie as a child, that is, for others it might be only somewhat familiar), let me show you what I just saw while checking 2 John:

This is a partial screenshot of a note I made in the wee epistle of 2 John and the Tanzanian translator's response to my question. Notice his words? Just when you thought Swahili was something you'd never even attempt to learn, here you are, discovering you already speak it!

And that's not all! How about these words: safari, simba, and kompyuta? They are honest-to-goodness the real deal Swahili, meaning trip, lion, and, you guessed it, computer. Cool, eh? You're practically bilingual, and you didn't even know it!

Now, how about this one? Wazungu wanapojaribu kujifunza lugha nyingine wanajionyesha kuwa ...

Okay, maybe you're not quite there just yet. :-)

I hereby grant you permission to speak by ...

Acts 24:10 starts off with a pretty basic phrase. It certainly did not appear to be difficult to translate. Take a look in a few different translations:

NLT: The governor then motioned for Paul to speak.
ESV: And when the governor had nodded to him to speak...
Swahili Union Version (my English translation of it): And when the governor waved his hand for him to speak...

In this little opening there are no theological words here, no out-of-chronological-order sentences to restructure, and nothing at all that should take more than a minute to translate into Zanaki, really. However, it took us a little while and quite a few questions to make this verse sound good in Zanaki, believe it or not.

The Zanaki translators had followed the Swahili translation that says the governor waved his hand to show Paul that he was to speak. I asked if when there is a roomful of Zanaki people, if the person in charge would wave his hand to someone as a "You there, your turn now to talk," gesture. The translators said that yes, if he did this, it would be understood. Our goal, however, is not just that it would be understood, but that it would be natural and clear. What would a Zanaki chief do to tell someone to speak up and say his piece? After some more pretend scenarios and discussion, finally one of them said that it would be his finger, not his whole hand. Whew!

So we ended up with this translation:
At that time the governor showed Paul with finger so that he should speak.

It might sound strange when translated literally into English, but it is great in Zanaki!

Snow play

We played outside in the snow today! We haven't played outside in several weeks, due to rain and/or cold. But today it was just beautiful snow outside, and so we spent the 10-15 minutes required to get the three of us into snow gear and trooped outside. Miracle of miracles, nobody had to go to the bathroom right as we were walking out the door or anything, either. (I've always heard the surest way to get your child to suddenly need to do #2 is to put them in a snowsuit, coat, boots, and mittens.)

Zarya had a blast building "snowmen" (piles of snow), and snow angels and "snow Marys." We had made a few snow angels, and then she flopped back in the snow and announced she was making a snow Mary. I think her reasoning went that if you could make one Christmas story character, why not another? She didn't suggest that Jerod make a snow baby Jesus, which is a good thing, because as you can see in the picture above, he was slightly less than enamored by the snow. He was probably also thinking, "Please don't take my picture right now; this snowsuit makes me look so fat!"

New Year's Resolution

Extending the Table: A world community cookbook: recipes and stories from Argentina to Zambia in the spirit of More-with-Less 

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime: comfort classics, freezer meals, 16-minute meals, and other delicious ways to solve supper

One of my easiest, and yet most-disliked chores is figuring out what to make for dinner. Menu-planning sounds like it should be something I'd enjoy - I love planning and thinking ahead and being organized, and I usually like cooking, but somehow menu planning is just not my thing. Who knows why, but sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and writing down what we're going to eat the next week, so that I can figure out what to buy at the store, is just awful.

In the spirit (but not much else) of "Julie and Julia" (a movie, one well worth watching), I'm going to cook my way through two cookbooks in 2016. Unlike the true story in which a woman cooks her way through Julia Child's French cookbook and makes herself do it every single day and does every single recipe and blogs about every one of them, I plan to do this project a little more sanely. Each week I'll choose one thing from each cookbook to make for one of our dinners that week. I'm not going to go in order and I'm not going to make every single thing from either book, but I do plan to try to stretch myself a little bit and try things I might normally skip.

I received both cookbooks as Christmas gifts this year, and they are very different from one another, so we should have plenty of variety. And since these will take care of 2-4 (I figure we'll have leftovers sometimes) meals per week to figure out, and Andrew plans to cook dinner once a week, I'm down to only having to deeply ponder my options for another 1-4 meals. Since I'll probably have to buy some ingredients for my cookbook dishes, then it makes the others easier to figure out; I'll just think about something we like that involves those things I'll have around. Meal planning in 2016 is looking a lot brighter!