Stevia Marshmallows - total FAIL

I'm going camping this weekend with my boyfriend.  We are heading to campsite near Oneida, TN that I went to for a week with my Pensacola Youth when we served with Confrontation Point back in 2006!  He picked Bandy Creek Campgrounds because it's supposed to have very little light pollution - for night time photography!

I'm excited to go hiking and find waterfalls AND make yummy smore's!!!

I decided to try to make homemade sugar free marshmallow's this morning with stevia. I'd like to keep eating less sugar but still enjoy things that I love to eat.  Last year mom and I made Orange and coconut marshmallows around Easter.  They were really yummy... so I thought it wouldn't be too hard to figure out how to do the same thing but with stevia.

I borrowed a stand mixer & kosher gelatin from my friend, Michelle yesterday.

Then I found a couple different websites that had recipes for sugar-free marshmallows. I decided to try this recipe on Purely Twins website.  It doesn't sound too hard!  I don't have liquid stevia at the moment - so I looked up the conversion of liquid stevia to powdered and added the powdered to the water that I boiled on the stove.

I have no idea if it was the powdered stevia or if I didn't let the water come to a full boil. But when I started mixing the water/stevia solution with the water/gelatin solution - it just got frothy like this:

And that never changed.

I mixed it for 10 minutes.  For another 2 minutes.

And then another 2 minutes.

Then poured the mixture into my prepared pan. And watched all of the bubbles pop and slowly settle into a slightly caramel color water.  Water that has gelatin and stevia and vanilla in it.

I'll probably have jello later.

It's too bad - my boyfriend can't eat marshmallows because they may have msg in them and msg gives him HUGE headaches.  So I was hoping to succeed at the sugar-free version for me and then find a way to make sugar marshmallows without gelatin for him.

But I think I'm going to let it go for now and just enjoy jet-puffed marshmallows out of a bag this weekend.

Whoops...

I struggle with my blog for a couple of different reasons...
~Why do I want others to know my thoughts?
~Why would others want to know my thoughts?
~I have a tendency to guard what I write so that I never really say what is on my mind. Which kind of defeats the purpose of what I am trying to express. Way too much of a people pleaser.

I am getting better about this last one - if you read my 2003 AT blog and then hear me tell some of the stories - then you would know that I a lot more honest these days. I just wanted everyone to think I was having an amazing time out there! Which I was...but it was also the hardest thing I have ever done. So I haven't written much this year, because I don't really know how to say where I am. Or what I am experiencing. But I guess I want to try again cause here I am.

2009 has been a hard year for me so far. Even as I read "hard year" I want to change it. I don't want you to think that I am complaining. But dang it, often life is hard. This has been a hard year. Personally, physically, mentally and spiritually. I have been with friends in some of their darkest hours, questioned my own calling, had two friends pass away unexpectedly and so much more.

I have also had the opportunity to take 7 students to Nigeria and help bring clean water to a remote village, been running most mornings at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for a marathon and the 2010 Disney's Goofy race and a half challenge, as well as share my heart and life with my students and friends.

And I tried to hold on. Hold on with out calling out. Without letting go. About a month ago - I read Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth". And I thought I was being still...for a second. But I spent some time reading more about what being still really means.

Be Still comes from the Hebrew word - raphah.

abate, cease, consume, draw toward evening, fail, be faint, be wax feeble, forsake,

A primitive root; to slacken (in many applications, literal or figurative) -- abate, cease, consume, draw (toward evening), fail, (be) faint, be (wax) feeble, forsake, idle, leave, let alone (go, down), (be) slack, stay, be still, be slothful, (be) weak(-en).

To fail? Slack? Slothful? Weaken? Man, I have failed this year. Been slothful and am weaker than ever before. I have tears in my eyes as I type this. I fail so that God can be glorified. I fail so that in my brokenness I can no longer feel justified to judge others. I fail so that my story is real. I fail so that I can get in the trenches with others.

It's hard. It's breathtaking.