Slow-cooked Mushroom Sherry Chicken

4 Chicken breasts
1 8 oz. package cream cheese
3/4 cup dry sherry
2 tbsp. butter
mini-bella mushrooms quartered
garlic (minced)
2 tbsp. dry italian dressing mix

Briefly brown chicken.  Lightly sauté mushrooms and garlic in butter.  Place chicken, mushrooms, garlic, cream cheese, sherry and italian dressing in slow cooker.  Cook on low 5 hours.

Teach four violin lessons...then eat.

My only mistake...I only made half of this recipe.  Never underestimate your family. We all wish there were leftovers.

We're trying to savour these sacred days of Advent....telling stories of God's provision, finding beauty and joy in our daily lives, lighting candles, waiting with expectation, preparing, trying to make space.  Celebrating our abundance with gratitude...trying to hold "things" loosely (while at the same time, frantically ordering more and more boxes to be shipped from Amazon.com to fill our dining room).  

It seems like most efforts to carve out space...are foiled...by piles of (important?) papers, busy-ness: that 'badge of honor' we wear so nobly and think it will release us eventually, by stressful complexities in our work or by the hopelessness of relational chasms, by minor disappointments, by daily irritations, by guilt, by less 'worthy' expectations that cloud the truer ones, by whining and grumbling children and adults (self included).

Now that my school concert is over, I'm trying to clear some much needed 'space' inside (my brain)...preparing my heart for advent, but I'm also expectantly waiting and preparing our house for our first overnight houseguests in our new home, so I'm trying to carve out some physical space in my house...it'll start with a place to walk in my laundry room (that room that is currently completely covered with mountainous baskets full of clean clothes).  

Well, actually I'm avoiding that task by blogging.  My excuse...a really good dinner experiment that I needed to remember.