Dad in the kitchen: Just a man baking bread

The kitchen. The one room where my drive for creativity, making things, tasting things, eating, pleasure, adventure, even peace, join in blissful union.

I finished my 20-month Master's degree program in Communication through Purdue University in December. Since then I've gone on a "creating and making" bender. Perhaps it's pent up creativity that was suppressed in a 20-month grind of studying. Maybe it's a joyful release of completing something that at one time seemed so unattainable. Could be both. Whatever it is, I'm enjoying this splurge. And so is my family.

Quite simply, I make things. And bake, cook, and build things.

Food, soup, photos, cutting boards, an office desk bread ... well, lots of bread. Bread is my new jam. Especially once I discovered King Arthur Flour and its fantastic website. I might bake six or nine loaves a week. With 10 kids in the house and a two sons and two daughters-in-law and one grandson who drop in frequently, plus two more sons who live nearby, nine loaves of bread a week is nothing around here.

There's a simplicity to bread. An honesty. A beauty. A pleasure. An ease to it. And everyone loves it.

The smell that fills the kitched and brings kids in wondering when the bread is going to be done.

The warmth you only get from baking bread on a frigid winter day.

The taste of life, because bread is life, right?

The satisfaction of how bread pleasingly fills the empty spot in my belly.

Am I going a bit overboard, eh? Nah. Bread is just really good. On so many levels.

Today I decided to add a bit of zest to my standard three loaves of bread. Here's my base recipe I found in The New York Times: Simple Crusty Bread. I always use King Arthur Flour and Diamond Kosher salt, which is something I picked up from Samin Nosrat and Salt Fat Acid Heat. My philosophy is if something works, stick with it. I had some lovely, fragrant leftover springs of organic rosemary and thyme in the fridge and chopped them up.

I added them to my yeast and Diamond kosher salt. Then added lukewarm water. Stirred. Then I added the King Arthur unbleached bread flour. Stirred some more and slightly kneaded to make sure that flour, thyme and rosemary are all snug together.

I covered and let the yeast do its thing for a few hours.

Then I made three distinct loaves. I added grated Swiss Gruyere cheese to one loaf and added grated Asiago cheese to another. Then sprinkled corn meal on them. Can you guess which one has the Swiss Gruyere and which one has the Asiago?

Then I baked them on our Pampered Chef baking stone we've had for years. The ol' Pampered Chef baking stone. Trusty, reliable, simple. A wonderful design, so functional and authentic, so steady. Just an absolute rock. It's been so good to us for so long. God bless my baking stone.

And there they are. Or rather, there they were. My experiment was a rousing success.

It's just hard to go wrong with a good loaf of bread baked from the heart. Especially when there's a dozen or more kids and grandkids around.

Hey Millennials -- and myself for that matter -- don't be the selfie generation

That's me, the guy with glasses on the right, taking a selfie at a roadside food stand in Bauchi, Nigeria. 

Earlier this week I had the honor and privilege of speaking to about 50 students from Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College at a Baptist Collegiate Ministries gathering in Farmville, Va. We studied through a passage of 2 Chronicles 20 in which King Jehoshaphat calls for a nationwide time of prayer and fasting when a group of nations gathers to take out the Hebrews. I spoke on several aspects of the text we can apply to our lives and looked at how King Jehoshaphat led his nation at a time of crisis.

One of the things we talked about in regard to leadership is humility. I listened to a podcast last year in which the interview subject was a decorated Navy Seal, a mountain of a man of great courage, strength and abilities who I concluded could kill with his bare hands or at great distance with a sniper's rifle. Either way it would not end well for his foe. During the interview the host asked him an interesting question about the defining quality of a leader. The Navy Seal answered, after a period of thought, with one word: "Humility." It's a low view of one's own importance, or humbleness. Do you see that in any of our leaders? Let alone in the generation of Millennials.

It is a trait that, I fear, has been lost in the morass of American self-expression and self-exaltation. Face it, we're a nation of narcissists, especially in the younger generation of the Millennials. Although us older folks are not exempt; just watch Donald Trump, the chief narcissist of narcissists.

It's no secret either, our obsession with self. The whole world knows America is the "Land of the Free, Home of the Narcissists." Here's what the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology had to say (Link: We be narcissists): "Americans and non-Americans alike perceive other Americans as highly narcissistic. This finding does not simply reflect perceptions of higher levels of agentic traits but instead reflects the belief that the typical American is grandiose, callous, and self-centered. Although an inflated view of narcissism of a typical member of one's culture is shared across a diverse set of regions and cultures, the effects are generally smaller in other regions of the world."

New York Times Op-Ed Writer Arthur C. Brooks, in a piece headlined, "Narcissism Is Increasing. So You're Not Special" (Link: Narcissism on steroids), described the rise of narcissism and how social media serves as an accelerant. I wholeheartedly agree.

Somehow us children of the '70s and '80s have produced a generation of children, the Millennials, that seems to communicate solely by the selfie. The entire world is viewed through the lens of their selfie that they post ad nauseum on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Kik and whatever other medium they are using. It's almost as if nothing exists beyond the borders of themselves.

So who's to blame? Parents. Our generation has told these kids over and over again how great they are at everything, given them trophies they didn't earn just for being a part of a team -- even if all they did was pick flowers on the field the whole time -- celebrated every inconsequential feat (Since when did going from 5th grade to 6th grade become such a big deal that it basically calls for a graduation ceremony?) and given them drugs for "ADHD" and "ADD" and whole host of other "diseases" and "disorders" instead of being parents and dealing with behaviors with love and discipline. (Which sends the kids a message there's a drug to cure everything, real or imagined. How on earth for thousands of years -- even as recently as my generation -- did kids thrive and survive without medication for ADD and ADHD and everything else?)

And I'm not immune. I may not post many selfies, but I sure see how many likes I get on Instagram photos or stuff I post elsewhere on social media. It's probably time for a social media fast ...

The world doesn't revolve around self and it's a frightening place when it does. Imagine if social media existed at the time of King Jehoshaphat. Would he have taken a selfie and posted on Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat that it might well be the last selfie anyone will be blessed to see because he's likely going to get slaughtered by the Ammonites, Moabites and their henchmen?

A world that exalts "self" is a world that will devour itself. It goes against the very nature of Christianity, of following Jesus who came to serve and not be served. Who had compassion and abundant love for all. Who died that all may live. That world of love and compassion doesn't exist in narcissism. Here's what I told the young men and women when I spoke to them a few days ago when I talked to them about being leaders and being followers of Jesus. I said, "Don't be the selfie generation. Be the selfless generation."

I hope we all take it to heart.

Our Secret To Driving Long Distances With Kids

These kids are stoked to drive 400 miles without stopping

On Saturday morning, Team Sabo featuring a 9-kid lineup piled into our Chevy Express 15-passenger van, minus the back bench seat for additional cargo space, and left Myrtle Beach, S.C. After 400 miles of driving we arrived home here in the sprawling metropolis of Gloucester Point/Hayes/Wicomico in just under 6 hours. We did not stop once.

I posted this trip recap as a status on Facebook and sensed some doubts among some folks. I sensed some people were asking things or responding along the lines of:
--Was he actually serious?
--Did he really drive that far without stopping?
--Did he really have a van full of 9 kids? Or were they photoshopped in?
--What kind of drugs did he use on those kids? Where can I get those for my kids?
--Were they all wearing diapers, including him?

Yes, it's true. Um, not about the diapers part, though. Only Seth, age 2, was reppin the Huggies. What is true is that we had nine kids in the van between the ages of 2 and 16 and drove 400 miles in six hours without stopping. No potty breaks, no stops for fast food, no accidents, no relieving oneself via artificial means such as peeing into an empty milk jug or other device.

So what's our secret? Well, let me ask you something if you are a parent of children and every car trip threatens to leave you, your children and your spouse mentally unhinged and the inside of your car looking like a cross between the scene of a food fight and the gnarly insides of a restaurant dumpster.
How much are you willing to pay for this secret? Because for just $14.99 we have a limited-time offer through Amazon.com where you can get my New York Times-bestselling book, "We Drove Across The U.S. Four Times With 10 Kids -- And Survived." Plus, for just $10.99 more you can get our bestselling DVD called "Driving With Kids 101" with live footage and handy action sequence tips that is a must-have for every parent. Act now and we will throw in for free our special limited edition of "Sabo Silly Songs" CD that makes the miles pass effortlessly.

Just kidding. No book, no DVD, no silly songs. Sorry to disappoint you because I know you had that wallet out and were on Amazon.com frantically searching. In fact, to be completely, totally and perfectly honest with you, we have no secret. I asked MerriGrace, our 16-year-old featured prominently in the photo above about our "secret" to van traveling with kids. She was pretty much stumped and said that basically when she gets in the van she gets calm because it's something we've always done. We've always driven long distances and it's just something they're used to. Yes, she said when she gets in the van she gets calm. That's your experience with your kids, right?

Now don't get me wrong. Portable DVD players have been a game changer. Showing "Frozen" at 77 miles per hour down a North Carolina freeway has some sort of soothing, or maybe embalming, effect on the nature of our wee lads and lasses. Our "Frozen" DVD actually broke just before we left for South Carolina and we made an emergency pit stop at a Wal-Mart on some South Carolina highway to get a new one to take the edge off of our 2-year-old's traveling angst. Or else we were all going to die because he was so out of sorts. Seriously.

We packed coolers and I believe Julie made sandwiches for a stretch of around 23 miles. We disposed of one box of Cheez-Its, a package of cookies, six bananas, a bag or two of Sour Patch Kids (affectionately called "Sour Cratch Kids" by our youngest verbalists), a couple of apples and assorted other edible items. We watched "Frozen" twice and our family has the unique ability of being to quote the movie verbatim from beginning to end. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

Here's the big thing, though. The one thing that made a difference between us stopping or not.

I had no pop. Or soda. Or Coke, Pepsi, soda pop, whatever you call it.

I confess. The reason we usually stop is because Dad has to go. I'm the weak link in the bunch. On this trip I manned up though.

My next goal is 500 miles without stopping.