Author: Dora Hiers

Excited about Eating by Ernie Hiers

/ Dora Hiers / 4 Comments

This edition of Excited about Eating takes us north of Charlotte to Huntersville and to the first gastro pub in Mecklenburg County, Killington’s Restaurant & Pub. This pub located in Rosedale Shopping Center has a great atmosphere with outstanding food and covered outdoor seating. They claim to serve “high quality food in a casual atmosphere.” After our experience, we’d agree.

Exterior

As an appetizer, we ordered a cup of chili sprinkled with cheese, a smattering of onions and a few tortilla chips. This chili had robust flavor and included at least three different types of beans, chick, black and pinto, and the spice level was perfect. Dora here….coughing. Yeah, perfect for one of us. Maybe that’s why I chugged two full glasses of iced tea before the main course arrived. Yowza! 🙂 

Cup of Chili

On weekends Killington’s offers some additional brunch items to cover those appetites craving a breakfast alternative. I chose a brunch special: steak kabobs and poached eggs served over home fries with sourdough toast. The kabobs consisted of colorful red and green peppers and onions and were blanketed with salsa verde. The steak was cooked perfectly, the veggies still had a crunch, and the salsa verde was the perfect complement for the dish. Outstanding, and I’d definitely order this again!

brunch special: steak kabobs

Dora here. So many items on the menu were calling out my name, but I finally decided on the Monte Cristo, ham, turkey and Swiss cheese piled on sourdough French toast sprinkled with powdered sugar and raspberry preserve for dipping. Oh my!! It’s been ages since I enjoyed a Monte Cristo. The batter on the bread was light and subtle, not eggy, and the raspberry jam took this sandwich from ordinary to lick-my-fingers delicious! 

Monte Cristo

Oh, and the outdoor covered patio was so relaxing, not too loud or hot, the best spot to enjoy this summer lunch. 

Covered Patio

We rate this restaurant 5 forks out of 5 for a family friendly restaurant serving outstanding food.

What about you? Have you eaten at a gastro pub yet? What did you think?

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Enthusiastic about Faith: God is in the details

/ Dora Hiers / 2 Comments
So, you all know I switched to a chronological Bible recently, and I’m reading the section called The Birth of Israel which includes Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Let me just get this out of the way right now and confess that this section is one of my least favorites in the entire Bible. I was never a history buff (still not!) and I get bogged down in so many details. Exact dimensions for the tabernacle, procedures and instructions for offerings and sacrifices, descriptions of the festivals, census numbers and names from the tribes, etc. You know what I mean?

Now don’t get me wrong. Some really cool events happened in these particular books that are still applicable to life today. Like when Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law showed up to find Moses busy listening to the Israelites’ disputes from morning until evening. “Why are you trying to do all this alone…?” Jethro asked, then proceeded to lecture Moses about burnout and advised him to appoint leaders over the people to help carry the load. How many of you feel washed out, limp as a dishrag by the end of the day? Yeah, I hear you.

Every day, I pound away at the keyboard in my quiet home office, but I’m not really alone. My crazy adorable dog keeps me company inside while a wildlife parade (wild turkey, fox, ducks, geese, rabbits, turtles, squirrels, birds) entertains me outside my office window.

I usually escape the house to meet hubby somewhere for lunch, and while many miles may separate us, friends and family are just a click away. And Jethro nailed it when he talked about burnout. If I don’t schedule regular times to relax and disconnect, fatigue sneaks up and forces me to, whether through illness or just plain rebellion. And what about the 10 commandments? Who could argue that society wouldn’t be better off if more people valued and lived by these basic rules?


But over the last few days reading through these books again, I felt a little nudge.

God is in the details.

A few days later, that nudge became an audible voice as hubby’s Bible plan read aloud.

“You kept your word to David my father, your promise. You did exactly what You promised—every detail.” (2 Chron 6:15 MSG)


Cool, right? That “ahh” moment when you realize God just spoke to you!

God is in the details.

Not just the big ticket items like when you’re sitting across the desk from a doctor and you hear that terrifying medical prognosis, a look of finality and pity staring back at you. Or the day your boss calls you into his office and closes the door and the next thing you know, you’re cleaning out ten or twenty or thirty years of stuff from your desk, cramming it into a banker’s box as if all those decades of experience meant nothing, to make room for someone younger. And you better believe He’s there, His arm wrapped around your back holding you up when you’re hunched over an open grave, waiting for your loved one to be lowered into a hole and swallowed up by earth, agonizing how one second, one breath, ripped your life right out of normal and hurled it into some place unrecognizable, some place you never expected or asked to go.

But He’s also in the thousands of tiny specifics that I tend to skim over without much regard. How my body processes the foods I eat. How my stories come together, from a speck of an idea to an outline, to characters then hundreds of pages. Whether technology works on any particular day. What roads I take –or don’t take— as I drive around town. The people He plants in my path while my dog drags me around the park or while getting a carwash or my hair cut. Whether the lawn mower will crank or if I’ll have to call hubby for help.


God is there. In the details, in the minutia of everyday life, waiting for us to acknowledge His Presence just like we do during the major events.

So, instead of rushing to get to the Old Testament books I typically enjoy more like Psalms, Isaiah or Jeremiah, I’m forcing myself to slow down and savor the details.

What about you? Do you skim these particular passages of the Bible?
Which OT books are your favorites?

Welcome Ane Mulligan and Chapel Springs Revival

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Amazon Purchase Link
When I joined ACFW, Ane Mulligan was a name and face that kept popping up. As zone coordinator, she was the go-to resource for everything while I was the treasurer for our local chapter, and she’s a mentor and encourager to many. Please join me in welcoming Ane Mulligan and her debut, Chapel Springs Revival, to Fiction Faith & Foodies!

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Chapel Springs Revival is a work of fiction, and if you like to laugh, you’ll it. After all, laughter is good medicine, and we should indulge often. Best friends Claire and Patsy get in and out of more pickles than a Vlasic cucumber. It’s a little bit like Lucy and Ethel go to Mitford.

But lest you think it’s all silliness, Chapel Springs Revival is also a book with a message about faith and commitment in marriage.
And for the Foodies, there are a few recipes in the back of the book. Poor Claire can’t cook. Her expertise maxed out at jello jigglers, but her husband and friends are great cooks.
Here’s a short synopsis of Chapel Springs Revival:
With a friend like Claire, you’ll need a gurney, a mop, and a guardian angel
Everybody in the small town of Chapel Springs, Georgia, knows best friends Claire Bennett and Patsy Kowalski. It’s impossible not to, what with Claire’s zany antics and Patsy’s self-appointed mission to keep her friend out of trouble. And trouble abounds.
During an early morning discussion at Dees ‘n’ Doughs bakery with their ladies group, all Chapel Springs entrepreneurs, attention is drawn to the slackened tourist trade. With their livelihoods threatened, they join forces to address the town’s revitalization in hopes of drawing back the tourists. No one could have guessed the real issue needing restoration is their marriages.
Claire, a pottery artist, stumbles through life with her foot in her mouth. When she became a Christian, she thought life and her marriage would be included in the new creation part. But her thighs are just as big and her husband, Joel, is as ornery as ever. She’s become nothing more than a sheet-changer, a towel-folder, a pancake-flipper. Her life is humdrum and she’s tired of being taken for granted.
Patsy has plans for her empty nest, plans that include a cruise ship. However, her husband, Nathan, continues to work long hours, and he’s not talking about slowing down. In fact, he’s not talking much at all. She’s asleep long before he comes home each night. At first she thought it was just because of tax season, but now she’s not so sure. Something other than work seems to keep him late at the office every night. With the lines of communication closed, she’ll have to find another way to reach him.
With their marriages as much in need of restoration as the town, Claire and Patsy embark on a mission of mishaps and miscommunication, determined to restore warmth to Chapel Springs —and their lives. That is if they can convince their husbands and the town council, led by two curmudgeons who would prefer to see Chapel Springs left in the fifties and closed to traffic.
Chapel Springs Revival is available in print and e-book.
Ane can be found on her website, Southern-fried Fiction, Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter,
Pinterest and Google+.