Author: simchajfisher

What’s for supper? Vol. 426: You may want to write this down

Happy Friday! I didn’t have anything extra on my calendar this week, and it was sunny every day, so I was able to just . . . do the things I am in charge of, and it was immensely satisfying. 

You know what else is satisfying? Food! Especially when you are hungry! I don’t know if other people have made that connection, or if I just invented it.

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Delite and taquitos

Looks like some bo ssam, spiedies, chicken pie, and pizza pockets, plus of course taquitos. 

Note the peppers! A bona fide vegetable!

The family is not nearly as enthusiastic about Leftover Buffet Saturday as they were when I inaugurated it, but I still absolutely love it as a weekly staple. It saves money (I generally spend less than $10 on Saturday meals), it saves time and mental energy (I always know what’s for supper!), and it doesn’t force me to clean out the fridge once a week, but it sure encourages it. And I have a much easier time throwing out Perfectly Good Food if it’s been given a second chance and still didn’t get eaten. Very Marie Kondo, with a lot fewer nameless ziplock bags of sludge lurking in the back of the fridge. So I’m pretty proud of this new thing I invented: Eating leftovers. Feel free to copy this idea. 

SUNDAY
Omelettes and hash browns

Sunday I did the thing I’ve been threatening to do for weeks now: I cleaned Corrie’s room. First I sent her up to bring down one big bag of trash and as many clothes as she could find, and try to put all the books in one spot. Then she went to a birthday party and I went in and did the fling zone method I invented, and I listened to the first two of “The Fall of the Aztecs” episodes of The Rest Is History. I’m not a big podcast person, just mainly because I’m a late adopter in general, and don’t want to rush into any new fads. But The Rest Is History is FANTASTIC. Incredibly entertaining and compelling episodes about people, places, and events you may never even have thought to wonder about, and all rigorously researched and frequently very funny. Damien often plays it in the car when it’s his turn to bring the kids to school, and it is not exactly PG, but in general I would be comfortable playing it for kids ages 10 and up. 

So that took probably three hours, including removing the old bunk bed and putting a single bed in. Well, first I had to repair the bed, because it was Millie’s old bed (it’s a really pretty white wooden bed with spindles at the head and a sea shell carved on it), and I couldn’t get it out of her house, so I ended up uh sawing it in half. The actual repair was fast, but it took me FOREVER to figure out which piece went where, somehow. (There were four pieces. I’m just. . . not good at some things.) 

I knew this would take all day, so I planned a quick meal: Frozen hash browns and omelettes with your choice of cheese, Canadian bacon, and mushrooms. Nobody picked mushrooms. 

I use about three eggs per omelette, but I speed it up by cracking all the eggs into a bowl and beating them, and then measuring out about half a cup of beaten egg per omelette.

They were not delicate and beautiful, because I was TIRED, but they tasted fine. 

Perfectly fine. I lay down for a while and kept thinking about how tomorrow, I was going to put together a pen for the new ducks, so they wouldn’t keep getting stuck in the stream and need Damien to come get them, but then freak out like lunatics when he does come get them. Eventually I realized I was expending so much mental energy thinking about it, I might as well go ahead and do it.

We have an old trampoline frame, which I put together upside-down and then stretched chicken wire around it and fastened it with zip ties. Easy peasy. By the time they ducks are big enough to jump over the fence, they’ll be big enough to roam freely but still come home at night, and we won’t need the pen. I highly recommend having an old trampoline frame in your yard! You can use it to make an enclosed garden, too. 

MONDAY
Pizza

Monday I planted a ton of flower seeds finally, and I potted a bunch of pansies in hanging buckets from Aldi, and made a little flower area — a garden, I suppose you could call it. This week, you may have noticed, I’m in the business of inventing things that definitely haven’t already existed for millennia — in front of the deck

Daisies and day lilies transplanted from elsewhere in the yard, and clematis seeds in the pot on the left. I feel like I also planted some kind of seeds between the lilies, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see. Life is so exciting when you routinely hide your own actions from your conscious mind. Either way, it won’t matter, because any seedlings I plant will get eaten by rabbits.

But I had fun. I finally got to use my new Japanese weeding sickle I got for Christmas, and dang, that thing is useful in about six different ways. It’s also one of the few tools I put the little plastic sheath back onto when I’m done, because dang, that thing is sharp. (Yes I cut myself.) I’ve also been using my hori hori knife a lot. I really think the Japanese are onto something. 

Monday I also found a NIB electric rotisserie on the side of the road, plus a vinyl countertop in great shape! Corrie also got some kind of wooden shelf thing that she feels will be useful. I don’t know where she gets these garbage-picking ways. Some people are just born pack rats. Probably a recessive gene. 

So, a ROTISSERIE. Just think of the meat we can slowly turn. We can eat like Hobbits! We can eat like Henry VIII! I can make SHAWARMA WITH THAT LAMB I’VE BEEN SAVING IN THE FREEZER. I remember when the kids were little, we would go shopping, and the three exciting things were: Free cookie, lobster tank, and “the chicken ride.” And now we shall have a chicken ride of one’s own. 

I also remember going shopping with my son, who was so incredibly terrible in the store that every time I got back I would tell my husband “I am never taking him out of the house again.” And now he is a children’s librarian. You never know. 

TUESDAY
Musakhan and taboon

On Tuesday, I got some chicken marinating in the morning and measured out the ingredients for bread, wrote a ton, and then did some extensive cleaning out of old flower beds. Then, with the gracious permission of Millie’s family, I dug up a white peony and a purple lupine from her yard and moved them into my yard.

The peony is doing great, as peonies tend to do. The lupine is not super happy about the move, but I think it will pull through. I had bought a bunch of crazy cheap perennials from the local garden club, and added those to this garden, so now it has tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and crocuses in the early spring, and then alliums, speedwell, some asiatic lilies, purple lupines, white and pink peonies, pink dianthus, purple garden phlox, siberian blue irises, and shasta daisies for the late spring/summer. I hadn’t really planned a pink, white, and purple summer garden, but it just worked out that way, and soon it will have a background of goldenrod, so that works out! 

The chicken was mousakhan, or Palestinian chicken. I use this Saveur recipe and I was a little sad because I was a short on sumac, which is an important flavor in this dish, giving it a wonderful sour-bright tang. I subbed in a bunch of lemon pepper seasoning, and it wasn’t quite the same, but not a terrible idea. 

Got home from the afternoon run and made the taboon dough. Here is that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

It has to rise for an hour, so while it was doing that I put the chicken in the oven and did a little more gardening. Then I rolled out the dough and stretched it onto a giant pan and baked it for about 12 minutes.

It was a little bit gummy, to be perfectly honest. I think I rushed mixing the dough. But still, piping hot bread with savory chicken on top, sprinkled with sizzling hot pine nuts and fresh parsley. Pretty, pretty good.

You just tear off what bread you want and then help yourself to chicken, and the juice from the chicken seeps into the bread and it’s pretty great.

I had mine outside. 

And then I went inside and had some more!

WEDNESDAY
Regular tacos, chips and salsa

Wednesday I decided to mow, and gave the pull string thing a mighty yank, and yanked it right out of the lawnmower. So instead of mowing, I tackled the area with the potting table (or, as I absentmindedly called it much to Corrie’s delight, “my plant desk”), where I have just been flinging basically everything yard-related all year. I threw out three bags of rotten crap, tossed some disreputable wood onto the scrap pile, organized my extensive collection of empty flowerpots, dragged a lot of old chickenwire out of the tall grass, and reconfigured the whole thing using that countertop I picked up. 

Pretty swanky! I need to slap something on the underside of the counter to seal the wood and make it last a little longer. There is, in fact, wood sealant in this photo, and it is a thing I may actually do, because it’s June, which is the month when I actually do things. 

Then I quickly made some very boring tacos. I had a “chub” of ground beef — the kind that is wrapped in plastic printed with a photo of meat, which is not as reassuring as they think — and added salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, and cayenne pepper, and we had shredded cheddar, salsa, and sour cream, and tortilla chips. Basic but fine. I was HONGRY. 

THURSDAY
Chicken enchilada rice bowls, black beans with spinach

Thursday it suddenly got quite hot. When I get hot, I get angry, and suddenly the things I’ve been ignoring become intolerable, so I often end up doing gross and heavy jobs on the hottest days. Hey, it’s an ethos.

This time, I cleaned out the fire pit, which was all overgrown and kind of foul (SOMEBODY had pulled the old straw off the strawberry bed and just dumped it, and it was rotten and stinky and full of slugs); and then I was so sweaty and grubby I figured I might as well face the six tubs of broken bricks and gravel that I had deserted on the side of the patio when I made the patio uh two years ago and have been avoiding thinking about ever since. 

I thought maybe I could use the sand to fill in some eroded spots in the driveway, which is unfortunately uphill and on the other side of the house. So I did one load, then another, and then another, and then decided, you know, death comes for us all eventually, things fall apart, the driveway will erode, and what can one do, really. Definitely not drag any more of this shit up that hill, I don’t care what Kate Bush says. 

I complained about this problem I had invented until Damien suggested maybe the fire pit could use some gravel and sand, and that happens to be downhill. That man is brilliant. 

I also dragged the old plastic play house out of the blackberries and across the yard to the duck house

and was extremely proud of myself for inventing a system where you could store hay in a special little house that’s sheltered from the rain and conveniently located next to the animals, until a friend pointed out that this what’s commonly known as a “barn,” and I didn’t actually come up with it. Then Damien reminded me of the time when I was pretty, pretty tired and came up with the idea of plastic bowls.

Whatever! I am living life fully over here, enjoying my specially curated grass-adjacent flower area, my outdoor plant desk, and my weather resistant hay house, and if you people keep pushing me, I won’t tell you about the incredibly convenient portable food I once invented, which you can carry with you by, get this, affixing it to a piece of bread. It has lots of protein in it, because it is made of nuts, of all things, that you process in some way. I haven’t worked out the kinks yet, but I am thinking they could be blended up into something almost resembling butter. So it would be spreadable! Wouldn’t that be handy? I bet it would taste good, too. 

(This is a faithful rendition of an idea I actually had one time, when I was, yes, pretty tired, and invented peanut butter. You’re welcome.) 

Anyway, on Thursday I invented chicken enchilada bowls. I took some chicken breasts and seasoned them with Tony Cachere’s seasoning, on the principle that, if it’s orange and sprinkly, it’s probably more or less Mexican or whatever. I browned the chicken slowly in oil in a pan, and then shredded it in the standing mixer. Then I sliced up a ton of onions in the food processor and browned them slowly in the pan that I had cooked the chicken in. Then I mixed the chicken and onions together with a can of red enchilada sauce and put that all in the slow cooker. 

I also made a batch of black beans, and I threw some spinach in there, and left that to cook all day. 

Jump to Recipe

Late afternoon, I made a big pot of rice, and we had rice with the saucy, oniony chicken, beans, shredded cheese, sour cream, and corn chips, with lime wedges. PRETTY GOOD. 

I was pretty pleased with myself for inventing this entirely new dish. As I was writing it up just now, I went to add the new tag “chicken enchilada rice bowls” and discovered that I had already used that same tag.

Do you know what this means? I INVENTED IT TWICE. Science should study me. That’s how good I am. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle casserole 

Sophia volunteered to make dinner and this is what she wants to make, so I am not arguing. 

And that’s my week! Last night I dreamed I had signed a contract for a new book, and I came up with this brilliant plan of taking every essay I had already sold to this publisher, and just billing them for it again. Toward the end of the dream, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that this wasn’t how you do it, and then I woke up. 

I tell you, between me and the ducks, there’s just not a lot of brain action around here lately. But it is Friday!

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taboon bread

You can make separate pieces, like pita bread, or you can make one giant slab of taboon. This makes enough to easily stretch over a 15x21" sheet pan.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups bread flour
  • 4 packets yeast
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.

  2. While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.

  3. Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.

  5. If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.

  6. Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.

  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

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Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 16-oz cans black beans with liquid
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1-1/2 tsp salt
  • pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Put olive oil pot of Instant Pot. Press "saute" button. Add diced onion and minced garlic. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes until onion is soft. Press "cancel."

  2. Add beans with liquid. Add cumin, salt, and cilantro. Stir to combine. Close the lid, close the vent, and press "slow cook."

John Wayne was scared

It was John Wayne’s birthday last week. You probably missed it, because Americans are not so madly in love with John Wayne, the ultimate masculine American man, as they used to be. I’m a moderate fan, at best; but on his birthday I read something that made me like him a lot more than I used to.

It’s a short excerpt from a book called “Miracle of Molokai,” and describes what happened when the famous actor visited the once-notorious Hawaiian island where victims of leprosy were segregated, and largely left to fend for themselves, for decades.

Here is an account of how Wayne’s appearance went:

As the plane touched down and taxied toward the welcome committee, hundreds of leprosy patients surged enthusiastically across the rope barrier and almost engulfed the plane. Their disease-scarred faces stared up at the little windows, searching for their famous guests.

Their crippled hands were extended and applauding. At last, the door was opened and John Wayne, America’s original man of macho, the strong, silent champion of little people, the fighter who used his fists and guns against incredible odds at Iwo Jima and in the wild, wild West, stepped out to greet them.

One of the residents of the island describes what happened next: “He took one look at all us lepers staring at him, then turn right around, got back into the plane and closed the door. He said he not coming out, seeing the patients, eh? Was scared. So he went back in.”

What a rotten, bitter end to the story that would have been. But that is not how it ended.

Instead, the other American manly man on board, actor James Arness, who played Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke,” apparently had a little talk with Wayne. I don’t know what he told him, but after a few minutes of suspense, while the crowd waited in silent confusion, the door of the plane opened again and the two men stepped out. The crowd cheered, and Wayne walked up to the microphone and said something extraordinary.

“I came to give you courage,” he said, “but I took one look at what the disease has done to you and I knew I couldn’t do it. I wanted to go right back home. I was scared, but my buddy here, James Arness, talked to me and helped me get my wobbly legs out the door and down the ramp. I’m sorry I was scared and I wish you well.”

It’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard. He acknowledged what happened and why, he gave credit to the man who set him straight, and he apologized for the offense he caused.

I don’t want to make more of this story than is really there. John Wayne was not an especially virtuous man in general, that I’m aware of, and he certainly didn’t claim to be some kind of model Christian.

But when we hear a story of a widely admired man who comes down from on high to bring strength to the lepers — well, you tell me who springs to mind!

(It’s Jesus.)

The problem seems to have been that John Wayne, in this story, thought he was Jesus, who could bring about healing just by virtue of who he was. It turns out he was actually one of the lepers, one of the victims, one of the ones who was afraid and in need of being strengthened.

But here’s the neat part. … … Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Image by Hugo van Gelderen / Anefo, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, via Wikimedia Commons

What’s for supper? Vol. 425: Two pies for Millie

Happy Friday! Before we get to the food, I want to acknowledge the passing of my beautiful friend Millie, age 90.

She had a rough couple of last months, but rallied so much at the end, everyone thought she was getting better. She visited her grandchildren and ate a lobster, and then she died in the night. 

I really loved her, and she loved me. I don’t know if you could say we knew each other deeply, but we felt strangely sympatico and enjoyed each other a lot. Please pray for Millie and her family! 

Okay, Millie would totally agree it’s time to talk about food now. Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

We had tons of leftover chicken because two of my brothers and two of my nephews had been over on Thursday. In fact they came back in the evening after dinner on Saturday, so we had them a total of three nights! I haven’t seen my brother Jake or his kids in years, and it was pretty great. Sonny has literally never been happier. I don’t know what it was, but he feel hysterically in love with Jacob and stayed dialed up to eleven the whole time he was here. They were incredibly good sports about it. 

The cat was not. I guess he felt left out, and sulked in the bathroom much of the time, and only started gracing us with his presence again a few days ago. It’s so funny. When I was growing up, cats were mainly decorative creatures that you didn’t interact with much. I was not prepared to even be aware of this much of the emotional life of animals! 

SUNDAY
Pork spiedies, fries, berry crumble

Sunday of course we all went to Mass, and then after we had some final donuts and the fellers started their long drive home, I got some pork marinating for supper,

Jump to Recipe

then roped the kids into moving some rocks around for me, and I started rearranging the garden in front of the house. This involved excavating and moving a giant granite post and digging up many dozens of day lilies, and I don’t really have a clear plan yet, but I certainly did dig up a lot of day lilies. 

The plan is to make the path diagonal to the door, rather than perpendicular to the house. I thinnnnnk I’m going to build a sort of permanent stone wall/planter under the double windows on the right, and then fill everything in with shade perennials. We do have a lot of rocks. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this.

Supper was spiedies. The pork is cut into chunks and marinated — and if you do this recipe, do try to get fresh mint, because it really makes a difference! — and then you roast or grill that along with a bunch of pepper and onion chunks. 

Actually I made two pans, and roasted the meat in one and the veg in the other, and then combined them. I mention this so you don’t think it’s okay to crowd the pan. 

Then you toast some rolls and spread them with mayo, and pile on the meat and vegetables. 

Ohhh. So good. 

It was ice cream sundaes for dessert, and I got a little offended at how much they wanted for a little bottle of caramel sauce, so I tried that Instant Pot recipe for caramel sauce. You take the labels and tops off the cans of caramel, cover the tops with tinfoil, put them on a trivet, and add water around the cans, halfway up. Then you close the lid and pressure cook for 40 minutes. You’re supposed to do a quick release, but I forgot I was making caramel, so it did a natural release. 

So, the important thing to know here is that one of these cans turned out to be fat free sweetened condensed milk. God alone knows what that could possibly be made of, but I certainly didn’t buy it on purpose. But when I read that you were supposed to take the labels off anyway, I surrendered to my fate and just cooked them both. 

When I took the tinfoil off, it was pretty obvious which was which. 

Or, it was pretty obvious that they were two different kinds of condensed milk. Hmm. 

Anyway, you let them cool for a bit, then add some vanilla and beat it up until it’s smooth. One was a little lumpier than the other and wasn’t getting smooth fast enough with fork beating, so I threw them both in the Kitchen Aid and whisked them together. 

And that was the most delicious caramel I’ve ever eaten. It tasted like Werther’s. I guess probably I’ll be just buying regular sweetened condensed milk, but I’ll definitely make this again. 

Note: When it cools, it gets a little blobby, so if you want caramel that oozes, you should warm it up. 

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, vegetables and dip

Monday I sat myself down and sternly reminded myself that, harsh and unjust as it may sound, someone who wishes to call herself a writer, and in fact who wishes be paid for writing, must actually write something at some point. So I wiggled and whined and complained and got up to clean a bunch of stuff, but eventually ground out a couple of essays. 

It was Memorial Day and the kids were home, and there was lots of fresh whipped cream left over from the sundaes, so I figured I might as well make dessert with all the berries I got because they were on sale. I can’t find the recipe I used, but I seem to remember I fudged it anyway, and then I got confused with the struesel topping and didn’t use enough flour, and by the time I figured that out, it had already gone pasty, and was not going to be streuselly at all. 

However, you can’t really go wrong with blueberries and strawberries with something sweet baked onto the top. 

It turned out just about every person living in that house had been helping themselves to the big bowl of whipped cream in the fridge, which I can’t complain about because I didn’t tell them not to, and also because I ate about half of it myself, so there was only a little bit of fairly deflated cream left, and it was actually the perfect companion to my hot berry splat

It was splatty and DELICIOUS. Man, I love berry season. 

TUESDAY
Fish tacos, guacamole and chips

Tuesday we had a meeting, and it turned out that Damien and I were not actually needed, so we ended up just chilling in a waiting room for an hour, and it was actually lovely. 

Got home and made some quick guacamole 

Jump to Recipe

and we had fish tacos with batter-fried fish from frozen, sour cream, salsa, guacamole, cilantro, lime wedges, and — not shredded cabbage, because they didn’t have cabbage (#aldistyle), so instead I put out one of those bags of chopped Asian salads, which is mostly cabbage. 

We haven’t had fish tacos for a while, and they were great. 

Didn’t even notice the rogue carrot shreds. 

And yes, I wrote another essay. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken pie with bacon 

Wednesday was the day I found out Millie had died. I had been meaning and meaning and meaning to go see her, but I wasn’t even sure if she was home or at the nursing home, so I called her house and no one answered, so I called the nursing home, and they put me through to her room, but no one picked up. So I figured I would just go. But I didn’t want to come empty handed, so I made a couple of mini pies for her, hoping she’d be well enough to eat them. She loves chicken pie. 

Here’s my chicken pie recipe. It really outrageously savory and tasty. It has bacon, leeks, potatoes, and chicken. (I’ll put my recipe for pie crust below the chicken pie filling recipe.)

Jump to Recipe

I cut out little feathers for the top of the crust, brushed them with duck egg yolk, and baked them up. Very pretty. 

Then I went to the nursing home and they were like, yes, she’s here, no, we can’t find her name, no, she’s not here, we’re sorry, we don’t know. And I got a pretty bad feeling, so I called Millie’s daughter, and that’s when I got the news. She was so apologetic that they hadn’t called, if you can imagine — I’m just the neighbor! — but I think they actually did, and I didn’t pick up because I didn’t recognize the number. 

So, well, I pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and bawled for a while. Then I went to the chapel and said a decade for Millie. I still had time before I had to get the kids, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I mooched around a thrift store and found a Lady and the Unicorn tapestry pillow which I was pretty sure Clara needed, and I was right about that. 

It turned out she was still at work, so I traded her the pillow for a bunch of fresh baguettes, a day-old sourdough loaf, and some pastries. She went with me on the school run and I was pretty glad to have some company. Then we all went home and, well, ate bread steadily until it was supper time. Like it says in the Bible, when you are sad, eat bread, and then pie. I think it’s in Proverbs. 

The pie was gorgeous. 

The potatoes were a tiny bit underdone, though, so I put it back in the oven and finished it up. Man. Really nice crust, too – thin and flaky. 

It didn’t exactly hold together as a solid, but I don’t know if that’s what you want in chicken pie anyway. 

That evening, I was potting some flowers and some of Millie’s children came over with some beautiful handmade items from her house — a quilt, some sets of placemats, and two quilted bags. Lovely. They invited me to come in and pick out anything else I might want. So I went over and it turns out she had an entire room I didn’t know about, and it was absolutely stuffed with every conceivable kind of fabric. I had to laugh because she always talked about how cluttered her house was, and I always said it didn’t seem that cluttered to me; but I guess the whole time, even if she didn’t go in there, she could FEEL that other room. I know she had plans for all of that fabric, too. Quilts, bags, clothes for her grandkids, clothes for her grandkids’ dolls, and so on and so on. I have never met a more hardworking person in my life. 

Really wish I had gone to see her one day sooner. I really do. If there is someone you have been meaning to visit, please go ahead and do it now!

THURSDAY
Bo ssam, rice, steamed broccoli, pickled carrots and radishes

On Wednesday, I got a hunk of pork brining for bo ssam. On Thursday morning, I took a look at the schedule and realized it was going to be a DOOZY, so I started the pork cooking in the Instant Pot, rather than in a low oven. I also threw a bunch of carrots and radishes in the food processor and started them quick pickling. 

Then I duct taped myself to my computer and wrote another essay. Also got the kids to Mass (Ascension Thursday is still on Thursday in our diocese!), took a kid to a meeting at the school she’s transferring to, got cash for a field trip, went back to Millie’s house and got a dresser, and picked up the kids, and we had a schedule complication where a kid had to be at a place and she was okay with being early but not THAT early, so we launched Operation Kill Time Without Spending Money, and lurked about at the park for a while. I did lose Corrie, because of course I did, but then we found her, and got home. 

My friends, that house smelled of FEET. Very bad feet, like malevolent. Feet that want you dead and damned. I was kind of baffled, because the windows are open and yes, we have teenagers, but we also had teenagers yesterday and it didn’t smell like this yesterday. So I did some sniff-sleuthing, and figured it out. 

It was the pickled radishes. 

I have made pickled radishes before! They just smelled like vinegar! I have no idea what happened here, but BLURGH. 

I mean, yes, I ate them. In the car, on the way to the art gallery, because goodness knows it didn’t already smell bad enough in my car already. 

Also I had two hampers full of canned goods from Millie’s pantry, because I am gonna bring them to Vincent de Paul, but first I have to make sure they’re not eleven years old. 

Oh, so the bossam was actually not that great. It came out of the IP kinda dry and tough, and I was a little low on brown sugar, so when I put the last little topping on and put it in the oven to glaze up, it was a little lackluster

and I mean that literally. It usually comes out of the oven absolutely GLEAMING. And I forgot to get lettuce to wrap the meat and wrice in. But it was fine. 

Oh, I forgot to link to the recipe. Here it is. I don’t usually make the extra sauce; I just do the salt and sugar brining, and then the brown sugar-cider vinegar-salt thing for the top. And usually it turns out great! 

Poor Damien has been driving around all week and went straight from Concord to the court house in Keene to the art show. Anyway, Lucy’s work was extremely cool, as usual. 

 

Blessedly, Sophia took the other kids to see the art show after they ate, and stayed to bring Lucy home afterward, because Damien and I were just about deconstructed with exhaustion. Damien’s been doing a million extra things this week — getting the pool into shape, performing minor surgery on one of the ducks, fixing the lawn mower, and so on. And just cheerfully agreed to figure out how to move the hose spigot to the outside of the house, so I don’t have to go in the scary basement. 

The baby ducks have been spending their whole day outdoors this week, and only coming inside for the night. They get along great with the big ducks! Coin immediately recognized them as Guys He Is In Charge Of, and busily herded them toward the pen where the food is. So I have no worries that they’ll do fine when they start spending their nights in the duck house. They need to grow some more grownup feathers, so they stay warm and dry enough. 

They still pile themselves on top of each other all the time, which cracks me up. They have NO concept of personal space, and basically live on top of each other as often as they can, despite having an acre of land to roam around on; but they are also apparently completely oblivious of each other. 

I am so very fond of these dumb, dumb creatures. We don’t know yet if they’re girls or boys, though. If there is one boy, that will be fine, in proportion to the number of females we have — but if there are two or more boys, we’re gonna have to figure some things out! 

Right now, Shaq and Tulip (the pekins) are still yeeping, and only Zippy has learned how to quack. Hilarious. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Today, I’m gonna go back to Millie’s house and get her bed, which feels A LITTLE WEIRD, but it’s a beautiful little carved wooden bed, painted white, and Corrie really needs a bed. Millie would be so absolutely delighted to know that she’s getting it. 

And we shall have spaghetti for supper. One of the kids mentioned that we are having spaghetti a lot lately. And she is right! We are. 

5 from 1 vote
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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

5 from 1 vote
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pork spiedies (can use marinade for shish kebob)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup veg or olive oil
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup red or white wine vinegar
  • 4 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup fresh mint, chopped
  • 8-10 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 4-5 lbs boneless pork, cubed
  • peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, cut into chunks

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

    Mix up with cubed pork, cover, and marinate for several hours or overnight. 

    Best cooked over hot coals on the grill on skewers with vegetables. Can also spread in a shallow pan with veg and broil under a hot broiler.

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

5 from 1 vote
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Rebecca's chicken bacon pie

Ingredients

  • double recipe of pie crust
  • 1 pound bacon, diced
  • 4 ribs celery, diced OR one big bunch of leeks, diced
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 bunch thyme, finely chopped
  • 3 chicken breasts, diced
  • 2-3 potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 6 Tbsp butter
  • 6 Tbsp flour
  • 3 cups concentrated chicken broth (I use almost double the amount of bouillon to make this)
  • 2 Tbsp pepper
  • egg yolk for brushing on top crust

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 425.

  2. In a large pan, cook the bacon pieces until they are browned. Take the cooked bacon out and pour off most of the grease.

  3. Add the onion and celery to the remaining bacon grease and cook, stirring, until soft. Return the bacon to the pan.

  4. Add the thyme, pepper, and butter and cook until butter is melted. Add the flour and whisk, cooking for another few minutes.

  5. Whisk in the chicken broth and continue cooking for a few more minutes until it thickens up. Stir in the chicken and potato and keep warm, stirring occasionally, until you're ready to use it.

  6. Pour filling into bottom crust, cover with top crust, brush with beaten egg. Bake, uncovered, for about an hour. If it is browning too quickly, cover loosely with tin foil.

5 from 1 vote
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Basic pie crust

Ingredients

  • 2-1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
  • 1/4 cup water, with an ice cube

Instructions

  1. Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.

  2. Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.

  3. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.

  4. Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.

  5. If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.

  6. If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!

  7. If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.

  8. You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.

5 from 1 vote
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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

For the brine (make double if pickling both carrots and cukes)

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved. 

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.

 

Finding the sweet spot: Courtney Eschbach-Wells on singing at Mass

Courtney Eschbach-Wells has a “do not play” list for her funeral. Eschbach-Wells, 44, is not facing the grim reaper just yet, but as a lawyer, she likes to have her affairs in order. She’s also of Slavic descent, so she’s “morbid by nature,” she said.

Most importantly, she is a Catholic cantor, and over the last 20 years singing at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, she’s had abundant time to form strong opinions about hymns.

Eschbach-Wells, who has a clear, bright soprano voice, can’t remember a time when she didn’t sing.

“It’s as natural as breathing for me,” she said.

She sings in her garden, she sings to her chickens and her bees, she sang to her baby (now 14), she sings while commuting to work as a bill drafter for the New Hampshire General Court, and she tries not to distract her co-workers at the State House by singing at her desk.

She also has some strong opinions about that age-old question: why (other) Catholics don’t sing.

“We’re not a singing culture,” she said. “We don’t have a sporting culture where we sing; we don’t have a going-out culture where we sing.”

The one exception is karaoke, but that’s mainly something to do with a group of friends who have had too much to drink. Americans simply don’t readily sing in groups with people they don’t know, and that includes at Mass.

The popular recorded music people hear every day is so highly produced, it’s intimidating, Eschbach-Wells said, and makes them think they can’t sing unless they sound like that.

“But a good choir does not need a ton of Taylor Swifts. It just needs people who can try, and who can try to learn.”

That doesn’t mean any liturgical music will do.

“You’re trying to find that sweet spot where the choir serves two functions: song leadership, singing the hymn so you have voices to follow; and also providing something where, at certain points in the Mass, your active participation can be just listening. So the music works two ways,” she said.

And music does work, in a way that nothing else can.

“Music takes you out of yourself. It reaches a different part of your brain,” Eschbach-Wells said. For her, it’s old English hymns that hit the mark.

“There’s something about it that always plucks that perfect chord in my heart, like when you hit a tennis ball with a racket in just the right spot: ‘Ahhh, yeah, that’s it,” she said.

But the words of the hymn are important, too. Hymns are a wonderful way to learn Scripture; and sometimes they can hit an unsuspecting ear with surprising sharpness…. Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

This profile first appeared in OSV Magazine. Photos by Michael Richards.

What’s for supper? Vol. 424: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Fire Cherry Bomb Pop eXtremes: Spice to Nice

Happy Friday! We are having a COUSIN day, which happens all too infrequently. My brother is up with two of his sons, and they and Corrie are happily working out the rules of some complicated board game. 

SATURDAY
Japanese food

Saturday was an uncharacteristically sociable day for the Fishers. Corrie had a birthday party, Lucy had her senior prom, for which she dressed in the way she saw fit:

and Damien and I went Out. Lena had bought tickets to Stephen Malkmus, but couldn’t make it, so she gave them to us. First we went out to eat at the new Japanese restaurant in town, and had some very delicious steak tips

then we got gelato and strolled around

and then it was concert time! Super fun. 

It has taken me almost 30 years, but I have finally warmed up to Stephen Malkmus/Pavement (whereas Damien has been a longtime fan). I do think about an hour was as long as I want to hear it at one time, though. It escaped me, previously, how sad some of the songs are. Being there live and letting the layers of sound reverberate around and seep in was really quite moving. What do you know about that!

Lucy’s prom was on a boat on a lake (they opted to spend their money on boat tickets, rather than on a bunch of balloon arches and streamers and bubble machines, and I think that was brilliant), and it rained and thundered the whole time, but they had a good time. We all had a good time! 

SUNDAY
Chicken on salad, strawberry rhubarb pie

Sunday I had to go shopping, and also did a bit of gardening. The original plan was to make a salad with chicken, almonds, and strawberries, but I had the first rhubarb of the season from my garden, so instead, I made some croutons to bulk up the salad (greens, chicken, toasted almonds, feta cheese, and croutons)

and then used the strawberries for a pie. I never have the proportions that any strawberry-rhubarb pie calls for, but it doesn’t really matter. I can’t find the recipe I followed, but it was a pretty simple one. I think it just used flour to thicken it. 

I made a big batch of pie crust

Jump to Recipe

and made one really big pie, with a very sloppy lattice crust

Not bad! I took this picture to show that you can leave the rhubarb in much smaller pieces than I previously realized, and it still tastes good. 

I love rhubarb so much. 

MONDAY
Pokish bowls

I had shrimp from something or other that I had defrosted but didn’t cook, so I wanted to use it today; but most of the family (bafflingly) doesn’t like shrimp. SO I bought some ahi tuna for poke bowls, which just about everybody does like. 
BHUT, I realized that the kind of tuna I’ve been serving raw is maybe not super duper the kind you are supposed to eat unless you’re trying to acquire a really close and personal group of friends, by which I mean parasites. Oops. 

So I looked up how to cook tuna, and it turns out you’re just supposed to sear it really quickly. I truly do not understand how this is safer than eating it raw, but this is what all the pictures looked like. (The kids requested just plain, no seasonings crusting the outside.)

However, I don’t see any signs that we have worms or anything, so I guess it’s fine? I don’t know. 

I also sauteed up the shrimp really quickly with a little Taijin seasoning, and I made a big pot of rice, and we had the fish and shrimp and rice, plus salt and pepper cashews, sugar snap peas, and mangoes, and sesame seeds. 

Delicious. I see that I also got some frozen pot stickers, which I don’t really remember, but that’s why I take pictures!

TUESDAY
Bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches

Tuesday was the day I decided to Do Something About The Egg Situation. We have a huge backlog of duck eggs, which the kids will eat if they’re baked into something, but if they’re still eggform, they don’t like them. 

So I cleaned out an old broken mini fridge, set it up on the side of the road with an ice pack, printed out and framed my PayPal and Venmo QR codes, and painted a big sign:

I am selling them six for $4 and $7 for a dozen, which is pretty cheap considering how big they are, but I sure have a lot of eggs! I’ve gotten a few sales, and I feel pretty good about it. 

For supper, Corrie helped me fry up a few pounds of bacon

and I fried up a bunch of chicken eggs in the iron frying pan. I rustled up a bunch of mason jar rings and sprayed them with cooking spray, just to keep the eggs a little bit contained. It worked pretty well!

I let them cook most of the way, plucked the rings off, and then flipped them briefly. 

Yummy sandwiches. 

Mine had American cheese, because sometimes that’s exactly what you want. 

WEDNESDAY
Carnitas, tortilla chips, beans and rice

Wednesday I made the fastest carnitas ever. I used this great recipe

Jump to Recipe

except I used Diet Cherry Coke and tangerines, and it’s such a great recipe that it still turned out great. I actually just let the tangerine peels cook right down and then mashed them into the meat, rather than fishing them out, and it was great. I spread the meat out on a tray and threw it under a very hot broiler for a few minutes, and oh man. Good stuff. 

We had a bunch of leftover rice from the poke bowls, so I sauteed up some garlic and onions, then a whole bunch of spinach, a can of kidney beans with the liquid, and a bunch of jarred salsa, plus cumin and chili powder and maybe some paprika. It was excellent. 

I had my carnitas with sour cream, salsa, and plenty of cilantro, and it was such a nice meal, I skipped the chips. 

THURSDAY
Oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, chips, strawberry shortcake

Thursday two of my brothers came over! I haven’t seen them for such a long time. 

We had oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, chips, and strawberries on angel food cake with whipped cream. I forgot to take any pics of dinner, but it turned out pretty great. Very satisfying on a cold, drizzly day. Here’s the chicken recipe:

Jump to Recipe

and it was definitely the right call to do store-bought cake and canned whipped cream, so I could use up all my energy yucking it up with my brothers. 

I also got a fairly insane alternate dessert from Aldi: 

Fire Cherry Bomb Pop eXtremes: Spice to Nice. I don’t even know what this could be, but I’m anticipating some kind of cinnamon situation, like Atomic Fireballs? We haven’t eaten them yet, so I will report back. I am grateful that I don’t have the job of coming up with completely new kinds of food every six weeks, though. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

My brother and his kids were very good sports about camping out in the living room with the dog, who is hysterically in love with them, but mostly my brother, and the dog is . . . well, he’s getting confused about what kind of emotions he’s feeling, but they are quite intense. So that’s exciting for everybody. 

And in the time it took me to finish this post, the game has gone the way of so many board games, alas. Maybe we need some Fire Cherry Bomb Pop eXtremes: Spice to Nices to smooth things over. 

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Basic pie crust

Ingredients

  • 2-1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
  • 1/4 cup water, with an ice cube

Instructions

  1. Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.

  2. Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.

  3. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.

  4. Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.

  5. If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.

  6. If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!

  7. If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.

  8. You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.

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Carnitas (very slightly altered from John Herreid's recipe)

Ingredients

  • large hunk pork (butt or shoulder, but can get away with loin)
  • 2 oranges, quartered
  • 2-3 cinnamon sticks
  • 4-5 bay leaves
  • salt, pepper, oregano
  • 1 cup oil
  • 1 can Coke

Instructions

  1. Cut the pork into chunks and season them heavily with salt, pepper, and oregano.

  2. Put them in a heavy pot with the cup of oil, the Coke, the quartered orange, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves

  3. Simmer, uncovered, for at least two hours

  4. Remove the orange peels, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves

  5. Turn up the heat and continue cooking the meat until it darkens and becomes very tender and crisp on the outside

  6. Remove the meat and shred it. Serve on tortillas.

Print

Beans and rice

A good side dish, a main course for meatless meals, or to serve inside carnitas, etc.

Ingredients

  • 3 cups uncooked white rice
  • 1 15-oz cans red or black beans, drained
  • 1 20-oz can diced tomatoes with some of the juice
  • 1 diced jalapeno
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 small red onion, diced
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • chili powder
  • cumin
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Cook rice. Add rest of ingredients, adjusting spices to taste. If it's too dry, add more tomato juice. 

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Oven-fried chicken

so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat

Ingredients

  • chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
  • milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
  • eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
  • flour
  • your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
  • oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

  1. At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.

  2. About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.

  3. While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.

  4. Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.

  5. Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.

  6. Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

 

If you’re doing the work, why give credit to God?

Humans of New York is a deservedly popular photoblog featuring people on the street, along with excerpts from conversations about their lives. The other day, it featured a young woman who looks frankly at the camera and packs a tremendous amount of life into her statement.

She begins, “I was feeling frustrated.” She had been volunteering at a food pantry and hated how they were “meeting people’s physical needs, but not their relational needs.” Because she is pro-life, she prayed about what to do, and she and a friend started a group for new moms at her church.

“That first night nobody showed up, but by then I was convinced that God wanted me to do this,” she said.

So she kept promoting it, and before long a pregnant mother with two toddlers needed help desperately, so her group stepped up and helped her through the birth and beyond.

“She later told me that she’d never experienced that sort of unconditional love. And that’s exactly what we wanted. To create a place where people could feel known and loved,” she said.

The group grew in strength and size, meeting weekly and continuing to have intense conversations in the parking lot after the group closed for the night.

She says: “We’d been meeting for about eighteen months when I had my miscarriage…. I remember how much I was looking forward to the next meeting, because I knew that people were going to, like—love me…. I remember thinking: ‘Wow. I’m not sure what I would do without this group.’”

This extraordinary witness garnered the standard things people say when someone calls themselves “pro-life.” Pro-lifers loved her and said that they knew lots of people like her. Some pro-choicers admired her work and praised her consistency. A few pro-choicers snarkily tapped out because the phrase “pro-life” gave them an insurmountable ick.

But there were also several iterations of a different comment that worried me: They liked her work, but criticized her for giving credit to God. Here’s a typical example:

She’s amazing. But something that gives me pause about this post is that this woman cares deeply for her community and was inspired to help them through her humanity, but chalks it up to God wanting her to do it. Like, no. Celebrate your ability to feel empathy and act on it. It has nothing to do with God. It’s so ingrained in religious communities to think so poorly of yourself that you can’t recognize your own successes as your own.

I reread the passage a few times, thinking I had missed some uncomfortably fanatical passage where the woman in the photo says she is a mere worm or nothing but a useless vessel through which God works. But all she said was that she was convinced God wanted her to do it.

She barely even mentioned anything spiritual or divine. Her whole statement was about understanding that it is her duty to build human relationships because that’s what people need. She was elbow-deep in the nitty-gritty human end of her faith from day one, and by the end of her remarkable short witness, she showed how her work, meant to benefit other people, ended up serving and saving her, as well. She doesn’t “think poorly of herself” at all, that I can see. She does, however, recognize that there is more going on in her life than, well, her.

Why do we have trouble believing people who say they do something because God called them to do it? When a star athlete says he owes his victory to his grandma, who always believed in him, nobody complains. When a groundbreaking researcher credits an elementary school librarian who said he could do great things one day, that is universally considered nice and good and heartwarming. But when a Christian says, “I did this because God wanted me to,” then suddenly it is psychologically unhealthy or a sign of poor self-esteem. Why?

The obvious reason is that people don’t believe in God. So hearing “God wanted me to do it” comes across as, “I did it because The Octopus King, mighty are his suckered arms, hath willed it.” It sounds nuts.

But I think it also points to something possibly even sadder than not believing in God: They don’t realize that what we are supposed to have with God is a relationship. A real, literal relationship, something with give and take and affection and humor, sacrifice and insight and gratitude, something that any normal human being would recognize as a relationship. This is what we are supposed to have with God.

And yes, sometimes he asks us to do things. Very often, the things he asks us to do end up being the things we ourselves need.

Why do so many non-Christians fail to see this? Partly because of the hypocritical example of famous Christians. There’s no doubt about that: If you’re on TV and you make a point of saying you’re Christian, there is a chance you are about to do something vicious and cruel. That doesn’t help.

But the other reason is that Christians also don’t see it.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image source (public domain)

What’s for supper? Vol. 423: A week of winging it

Happy Friday! I remember the days when I used to huddle on the toilet with my laptop, getting as much writing done as I could while the kids were occupied in the bath. Now my kids are older, my time is more and more my own, and I’m sitting here drying off from the incredibly rowdy sink bath I just gave the ducklings, trying to get some writing in before, I don’t know what, the end of the month, or the end of the world. 

The whole week has been something of a rowdy sink bath, which I guess means it got the job done, but it wasn’t necessarily the kind of thing that would make people want to eat in my kitchen.

Actually I ended up with some pretty tasty meals, considering the lack of planning. And the surfeit of ducks. 

Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Aldi pizza

Damien is slowly recovering, but he’s been SO sick with bronchitis, and dang, that man does a lot around the house. Which I try to notice when he’s doing it, but I REALLY notice it when he’s not doing it. So I made the executive decision to skip the dump run this week and just do the Walmart shopping, and then we went to Moe’s college graduation! Summa cum laude, with a special award in literature!

The speakers were truly terrible (Jodi Picoult, who basically just bragged about how some people couldn’t handle it when she wrote “erection” in one of her books, so thanks for that, Jodi), but we’re extremely proud of Moe. The next day he moved to his new apartment, and the next day, he started his new job as youth librarian at a public library! But on Saturday, we went and got yummy Chinese food with the graduate, and the kids at home had Aldi pizza.

SUNDAY
Burgers, chips

Sunday was Mother’s Day, Damien (still quite sick!) was rushing to finish fixing Moe’s brakes, and the kids were helping him move, so I had a very satisfying afternoon uprooting some chokecherry trees that were threatening a baby lilac

and then we had a tasty meal of burgers and chips, with coconut custard pie for dessert. 

Yeah man. Nothing like a burger after yard work. Like I said on Facebook, the kids gave me truly excellent presents, not least of which was seeing everybody pitching in to help each other out because they love each other. 

 

Good stuff. Good kids. Good day. 

MONDAY
Pasta with spicy spinach sausage sauce (?)

I went shopping again on Monday and picked up a little food without a clear plan. Got home and made a sauce with what we had.

I squeezed about a pound of hot Italian sausage out of its casings and browned that up, then added some diced onion and a lot of roughly-chopped garlic. Then I added oregano, a lot of paprika, and a little cayenne pepper, a can of pureed tomatoes and a can of crushed tomato and a big slosh of red wine, and then I cooked in a big bag of baby spinach until it was all cooked down.

I mixed it up with a few pounds of cooked penne, and served it with freshly-grated parmesan on top. I wasn’t really sure if people would like it, even though it smelled fantastic, so I made four big loaves of french bread. 

Here’s my recipe for that:

Jump to Recipe

I proofed the dough in the slow cooker set to “keep warm,” and it came out super puffy, which is fine with me.

People scoff at puffy fluffy American-style bread, but you know what? It is puffy and fluffy, and some people are into that! You know, one time someone referred to me as “that great whale of a woman,” and it really stuck in my head. I guess I have a certain sympathy for sort of loosely-shaped, warm and blobby creations, be they whales or women or loaves of bread. Or be they whatever.

Anyway, it was a nice meal, although a little spicier than I meant it to be.

I did like the combination of the paprika and the spinach. I started abruptly loving spinach during my first pregnancy, and I have never looked back. 

TUESDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, chopped salad

I had a bunch of chicken thighs and decided it would be worth my while to skin and bone them to make these wonderful sandwiches, so I prepped that before we had to get a kid to not one but two medical appointments. Which turned out to be mighty frustrating, so I was glad we had a delicious supper.

The recipe calls for whole shishito peppers, but I had a bunch of red, orange, and yellow bell peppers instead, so I just cut them into big slabs, browned them up a bit in the seasoned oil that the chicken had cooked it, and then finished them under the broiler. 

Isn’t that beautiful?

The sandwiches were tasty as always. I used Tony Cachere’s seasoning on the chicken, and I guess some kind of bulky rolls, and we had the roast peppers, raw red onion, melted American cheese, and BBQ sauce. 

One of my all-time favorite sandwiches. 

I had a couple of bags of some kind of Southwestern chopped salad kits that were on sale that I kept forgetting to serve last week, and they turned out to be kind of a coleslaw-style mix of chopped cabbages, with crunchy tortilla strips and some sort of shredded cheese, and I guess chipotle dressing. They were fine. 

WEDNESDAY
Sausage potato asparagus soup, french toast casserole

Wednesday I had a bit of a dilemma: I had to make supper, and yet I had not gone shopping for supper, and the only reason a moth didn’t fly out of my wallet was because I couldn’t find my purse. So I mooched around the kitchen a bit and found: Sausage I bought for pasta but didn’t cook, some very old potatoes, an old onion, and some more asparagus from the garden,

and a leftover loaf of fluffy puffy french bread. And a stray pouch of instant mashed potatoes. And a lot of duck eggs, of course. This felt PLAUSIBLE.

It wasn’t exactly soup weather, but it’s not hot yet, either, so I settled on soup. 

I browned up the sausages and cut them into coins, then added some butter and threw in a bunch of garlic and diced onion and cooked that until it was soft. Then I fixed the mashed potatoes with milk, rather than water, plus extra milk, and added that, plus a bunch of chicken broth and a lot of pepper. Then I threw in the potatoes and the asparagus (chopped into pieces), and kept it simmering until the potatoes and asparagus were soft. 

Really very fine soup! Hearty and full of flavor, and the asparagus made a nice herby counterpart to the spicy sausage, and added some good texture, too.

I knew the kids weren’t gonna go for it, and they also don’t like duck eggs that are identifiable as eggs — i.e., they will eat them baked into things, but not scrambled or fried or as omelettes. So I tore up the french bread

and made a french toast casserole with milk and duck eggs, vanilla and sugar, with butter dotted on top, and more sugar and some cinnamon. Baked until firm. (Actually I baked until the top was firm but the inside was still a bit gooshy, so we just popped it in the meekrowahvay. 

All good! We got home quite late on Wednesday, because a kid needed a prom outfit, which we miraculously found at the Salvation Army. Well, it’s maybe less of a miracle and more of a situation where the kid has a very specific style, which perhaps I cultivated in her by shopping a lot at the Salvation Army, and also she’s a bit of a weirdo. Anyway, I really liked the soup. 

I cut up the potatoes that were too sprouty even for soup, and set them to dry so I could plant them the next day. I also saved out the sprouting eyes I cut out of the firmer potatoes, and I planted those, too, plus another sprouting onion I found. I’m not sure what-all will come up. We will see!

THURSDAY
Roast pork ribs, corn on the cob

Thursday I did a ton of gardening. I carted around so much compost, and I got my pumpkin seeds and corn and potatoes planted, and I repaired and added a bunch of fencing. 

The fence is constructed more or less in the same way as I put meals together this week: It may not be pretty, but it does the trick (in this case, the trick of keeping hungry ducks and wild rabbits out). I also confirmed that I have THREE peach seedlings growing! Last fall we extracted the seeds from inside the peach pits from my tree and planted six of them in pots in the ground, so I’m really happy with this. I have been keeping an eye out to see if any of the HUNDREDS of peach pits that fell to the ground had sprouted spontaneously, and they haven’t! I guess they’re like the ducks: They can probably manage to reproduce on their own under the right conditions, but a little help comes in handy. 

Then I had a medical appointment I was kind of dreading, but it went better than expected, and then I charged into the supermarket on the way home and brought home a truly random assortment of foods that I thought could be served quickly.  Thursday ended up with a pretty coherent meal: Roast pork ribs (salt and pepper them heavily, put them on a pan with drainage right up under a hot broiler, and flip them once) with BBQ sauce, corn on the cob, and salt and vinegar chips. 

Maybe not the most nutritionally balanced meal known to mankind, but it took about 20 minutes to throw together. Really sweet corn, yum. 

FRIDAY
I don’t really know

What I have is frozen shrimp that was on sale, and some cucumbers. I always think that surely, surely the kids must secretly like shrimp, because who doesn’t like shrimp? But they really just don’t. Damien is also neutral on shrimp at best. I think I might saute shrimp for myself and cook rice in chicken broth to pacify the kids, and they can have ramen or peanut butter or whatever. And cucumbers!

It’s a half day because of Teacher Appreciation Week, so I gotta change out of these wet duck bath clothes and run and get the kids and pick up a present for a kid’s friend, and then we have, you’ll never guess, a medical appointment, and Damien is gonna cover adoration while I take the kid to that, and then he will pick up the other kids who have a full day because nobody appreciates their teachers. I feel pretty strongly that I am forgetting something, but I guess it will just have to be a surprise! 

Tomorrow I gotta go shopping, and we gotta get caught up on the dump, and I gotta go to confession, and Lucy is going to the prom, and Corrie is going to a birthday party, and then Damien and I are seeing Stephen Malkmus! Lena gave him two tickets and he asked me out on a date, and I said yes even before I remembered I had a bunch of coupons for free frosties at Wendy’s. So, quite a Saturday for the Fishers. I may or may not be driving to Rhode Island on Sunday. 

And that’s-a my story! If you’re a teacher, I appreciate you, even if I didn’t even briefly consider signing up to bring in finger sandwiches or mini cupcakes. 

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French bread

Makes four long loaves. You can make the dough in one batch in a standard-sized standing mixer bowl if you are careful!

I have a hard time getting the water temperature right for yeast. One thing to know is if your water is too cool, the yeast will proof eventually; it will just take longer. So if you're nervous, err on the side of coolness.

Ingredients

  • 4-1/2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
  • 5 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive or canola oil
  • 10-12 cups flour
  • butter for greasing the pan (can also use parchment paper) and for running over the hot bread (optional)
  • corn meal for sprinkling on pan (optional)

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.

  2. Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.

  3. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.

  4. Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).

  5. Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.

  6. Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.

  7. Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.

  8. Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.

  9. Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.

  10. Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 422: Habemus papam! Let’s eat!

I can’t even think of a lame food pun for the title, that’s how excited I am! But before we get back to chattering about the pope, here is what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and french bread pizza

Not a very sumptuous collection of leftovers,

so I splurged a bit on these frozen pizzas that everybody likes. Damien and I also polished off the last of the butter chicken, and I can report that it used its time in the fridge very well, just getting more delicious. 

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, vegetables

Honestly it says “vegetables” on the blackboard menu, but I don’t think that really happened. My personal vegetable consumption has gone way, way up, but I haven’t managed to drag most of the rest of the family into that, yet. 

I did have my first asparagus harvest, though! 

You’re supposed to wait three years before you start to pick it, so that’s what I did. Now I’m wishing I had planted more! But I’m very glad I got this started. When I first started gardening, I was all about bright, showy annuals. Then I started investing a little more in perennials. A few years ago, I started thinking about what I really wanted out of life, and laid in some long-term beds. It’s just a garden, but, yanno. 

Also Sunday, I spent a few hours lopping off blackberry canes and brambles. Of which we have thousands and thousands. Wicked, wicked things. 

I comforted myself by making some rice pudding. We had quite a bit of leftover basmati rice from last week, so I excused it from Leftover Day and basically followed this recipe except I skipped the raisins

because the kids don’t like cooked raisins. I should have left them in, because I DO like cooked raisins, and I was the one who ate most of the rice pudding. I mean I ate so much that I think I shouldn’t make it again for a year or so, until I grow up. But it was wonderful pudding. All four adult duck ladies have been laying every day, and duck eggs are SUPERB for baking. 

Speaking of superb, the new ducklings have been doing just great. They’re growing insanely fast — I mean like I leave the house for two hours and they’re visibly bigger when I get back.  Lots of videos on my Facebook page if you want to see their shenanigans! 

MONDAY
Chili verde, tortilla chips

Monday was Cinqo de Mayo, which is something I didn’t even know anything about until I was in college, and it felt very global and cosmopolitan to celebrate this exotic holiday by going to Applebee’s and encountering my first avocado. Then I started to hear about how “uhhhh, no, it’s not Mexican fourth of July, STUPID” and I was like, oh, sorry. Now apparently it’s considered kind of culturally gauche to mark it at all? I truly don’t know. I saw this and felt a kinship:

The moral of this story is, cultures may shift, but ham is forever.

We had no ham or cigarettes or Aquanet in the house, but I did take May 5th as an opportunity to make chili verde, which Damien and I love and no one else does, oh well. I roasted up the tomatillos,  peppers, onions, and garlic, and then put them in the food processor with cilantro, and because I hadn’t put on my contact lenses yet, I REMEMBERED TO WEAR GLOVES. 

This is half-dumb, because yes I protect my fingers from getting peppery, but if I’m not wearing contact lenses, my eyes water because of the onions; but it’s also half-smart, because if I’m wearing glasses, I can take them off and actually read the recipe. You may THINK that the solution would be to put on contact lenses to protect eyes from both peppery fingers and oniony fumes, and then to add reading glasses to I can also see small print. However, this is not taking into account that I have lost every single one of my reading glasses, and I’m really just not ready for a beaded lanyard tethering me to the necessary glasses nestling on my bosom all day like some kind of cartoon librarian. I’m not ready!

Anyway, here is the recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I made a slight tweak: I roasted the garlic in its skin, and then just squeezed the soft insides out into the food processor. It was a bit faster than peeling all that garlic before roasting it, and the taste was great. 

I cooked the chili all day and it turned out fab. It’s been chilly and rainy all week, and this wonderfully spicy meal was very warming, and produced a decent amount of broth without me having to add any beer or extra broth. 

Served it with cilantro, shredded pepper jack cheese, sour cream, lime wedges, and tortilla chips.  

Yum. I think the kids had Spaghetti-o’s. 

TUESDAY 
Pizza

Tuesday were two rather draining appointments and then day 2 of digging out blackberry root balls. Again, I say: HORRIBLE plants. See how bare the dirt in in the area where I was digging? 

That’s because blackberries won’t let anything else grow! Even wild mint, which is every gardener’s invasive nightmare, got chased out of this area. 

However, eradicating blackberries is great for working out any pent-up emotions you might be harboring. I had my shovel, my Japanese gardening knife, my pickaxe, and my heavy duty tarp, and by the time I put them away for the day, I was way to tired to feel anything except hungry. 

Happily, I had made three pizzas in the morning: One plain, one pepperoni, and one black olive. Sooner or later I will have to face the fact that we’re on the cusp of becoming a two-pizza family. I used to make SIX extra large pizzas. I do make more than we will eat for one meal, because the kids like leftover pizza; but we’re not keeping up, harrrrooo. (That was just a crooning sound of sorrow for the march of time.) 

Tuesday I also made a new garden bed! Look at that tremendous soil. 

This area is near the stream and also next to the compost heap, so you could probably live off the soil alone, without even planting anything. However, I am going to plant corn this weekend. 

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, cheezy weezies

Wednesday I cleared out my pumpkin patch and heaved a bunch of compost onto it,

and then I worked on the new fence a bit, and then I dug out more compost and ferried that over to the soon-to-be corn patch. 

I would apologize for filling a food post with so many photos of dirt, but I know you guys! You like looking at pictures of dirt! Also you can see that my wattle fence held up just fine over the winter. I would like to add more this summer, but I don’t know if I will have time. I suddenly have lots of projects planned. 

Speaking of projects, of course Wednesday was the beginning of the papal conclave! I got to watch the cardinals all taking their oaths in the Sistine Chapel, and that was very cool. We Catholics are so good at drama. 

On the way home from school, one of the kids wanted to open a bank account, which always takes a million years longer than I expect. But at least we finally got it done. And I did snap this attractive photo of the bank office, with a somewhat disconcerting corporate poster. 

They’re as stable as a squirrel, great. I couldn’t really complain, because it turned out the kid didn’t have any actual cash for the $10 minimum deposit to launch the account, and neither did I, and then they said well maybe it only needed to be $5, and then they said probably a dollar would be okay, so I found some change, and she deposited that. I made sure she understood that was her Christmas present this year. 

We just had hot dogs and cheezy weezies for supper, and again I had worked up quite an appetite with my pickaxe and my buckets! Crazy how delicious a hot dog can be when you’ve been working outdoors, not to mention watching a conclave and looking for spare change. 

Wednesday night, I started marinating the meat for Thursday’s dinner, because I knew it was gonna be a busy day. Damien has been sick all week, and when I say “sick,” I mean he’s LETTING ME DO THINGS FOR HIM and SLEEPING and TAKING MEDICINE. So you know it’s pretty serious. I think it’s bronchitis, and he’s starting to feel a bit better, but it’s rough. 

THURSDAY
Chicken shawarma, fresh pita, tiramisu

Thursday was when we were celebrating Moe’s birthday, which was actually the day before. In the morning, I started the tiramisu, which is usually one of Damien’s signature dishes. I followed the  recipe he uses, except maybe I can blame the conclave, because I got distracted and mixed together the custard and the whipped cream! So rather than six layers, there were only four. Gutted, as the brits say. 

All I could do was sift some cocoa powder over the top, put it in the fridge, and hope for the best. Then I prepped all the shawarma fixings, made some garlicky yogurt sauce, and that’s when the white smoke came out! Most of the kids were at school and Damien was still conked out, so I made the ducks watch with me.

This is very exciting for Shaq, Zippy, and Tulip, because they were born in that time period when everyone was briefly a sedevacantist, so they’d never had any pope before, much less one from Chicago with Hatian grandparents and a special affection for the poor in Peru!

I did drag Sophia, Elijah, and Damien in before Leo appeared on the balcony, and wow, that was exciting. Wow, wow, wow. Here’s my camera roll, when I found it needful to take multiple photos of the TV screen, because where else am I going to find a blurry picture of the pope?

Anyway, boy, that was a thrill! Still had to make supper, though, so quick quick I started the pita dough before I had to run out for the afternoon drive (and you can see I got a couple more pictures of our local church, which had already switched from black to yellow and white bunting).

I still haven’t really settled on a good pita recipe. I ended up using this recipe from Food By Maria, and no, I didn’t read it all the way through, what do you take me for. So I was a little dismayed to find that you have to let it rise twice, and the second rise is a full hour, and that each pita bread takes six minutes to cook. Actually I think I’ve made this recipe before, and probably found it by googling “simcha fisher pita,” but I still had no idea what it said. 

I started the meat cooking about an hour before dinner, and Moe and Clara came over and chatted with me while I fried the pita, and honestly, everything turned out great. 

Shawarma was delicious. I was out of red pepper flakes, so I put Aleppo pepper in, and also I couldn’t find the garlic press, so I put the garlic cloves in a bag and hit them with a meat tenderizer, and put in big smashed chunks. When I took the chicken out of the marinade, I fished out all the garlic and strewed that over the top, along with the red onion quarters. I think I’ll do all those things from now on! 

It was completely delicious. The chicken was so tender, it didn’t need to be cut up, but had turned itself into lovely little bite-sized chunks, and the generous onion quarters sort of cuddled themselves around the chicken, and it was just a real treat all around. 

The pita was also quite good. It did not separate into two layers, but it was chewy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and had a good, rich flavor. 

I’ll probably use this recipe again, even though it was a bit of a hassle. I did two pans at once, so it took me about half an hour to fry up twelve pieces. 

Supper was very jolly! I wish everybody could have made it, but it was a good crowd. 

Then we had the tiramisu, and it was not a failure! I was afraid that, because the cream was mixed into the custard, the sweetness would be too diluted and it would taste bland; and I was afraid that I had mixed it so much that all the air would be knocked out of the cream and it would be thick and dense. Neither thing happened!

Pictures of tiramisu always look a little ghastly, for some reason, but here’s the inside:

Just so you can see how the lack of layers worked out. But it did set up nicely. Anyway, everyone liked it and I was so relieved.

Today is Moe’s awards ceremony, then tomorrow is his graduation, and then Sunday he’s moving to his new apartment, and Monday he starts his new job! Glad I got one last shawarma into the boy before off he goes. Harrrooooo. 

If you couldn’t tell by the Frog and Toad shirt and the Ferdinand the Bull tattoo, he’s going to be the new youth librarian at a public library. That was my father’s first professional job, too. He would have been very proud of Moe! I am. I’m proud of all my kids. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

I have already made the mac and cheese, and we are out of milk so I made it with leftover heavy cream from the tiramisu, and I used so much cheese, I think it may be illegal. 

So, like I said, habemus papem! I don’t like every last thing I’ve heard and read about him, but I like an awful lot of it, and overall, I’m incredibly hopeful and excited. The way he speaks and the way he has comported himself so far is immensely appealing. I’m so ready for some good things to happen. And if it doesn’t, well, at least we have food. 

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Spicy Chili Verde

You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs pork shoulder
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for cooking
  • 2 cups chicken broth or beer (optional)

For the salsa verde:

  • 4 Anaheim peppers
  • 2 habañero peppers
  • 4 jalapeño peppers
  • 4 medium onions, quartered
  • 12 tomatillos
  • 1 head garlic, cloves peeled or unpeeled
  • 1 bunch cilantro

For serving:

  • lime wedges
  • sour cream
  • additional cilantro for topping

Instructions

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.

  3. When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want. If you roasted the garlic in its peel, just squeeze the insides out and discard the peels.

  4. Put the tomatillos, peppers, garlic and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.

  5. In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.

  6. When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.

  7. Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.

  8. Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

  • 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
  • 4-5 red onions
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 2 cups olive oil
  • 4 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces

Instructions

  1. Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

  4. Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.

  5. Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

A hymn for the conclave

Come Holy Ghost, Creator Blest,
And in our hearts take up Thy rest;
Come with Thy grace and heav’nly aid,
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made,
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made.

[DEEP BREATH. MAKE SURE DOOR IS LOCKED AND CARDINALS CAN’T HEAR. DOUBLE CHECK THE DOOR. TURN ON WHITE NOISE MACHINE.]

O Comforter. You know the deal
No man is worthy to wear that seal.
Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ
That’s a big deal, any way it’s sliced.
That’s a big deal, any way it’s sliced.

O Comforter, to Thee we cry,
We need a pope who is just the right guy.
One who is wise, and not insane,
And always naps when he’s on a plane
And always naps when he’s on a plane.

Come Holy Ghost. We’ve been so lucky
John Paul was great and Ben 16 was ducky
Francis’ church….. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Beauty in every body: The portraits of Igor Babailov

To paint a portrait, you first have to fall in love. This is what Igor Babailov believes, and he should know. The Russian-born artist, who’s made his home in the United States for 35 years, has painted hundreds of portraits, from George W. Bush to Nelson Mandela, from Patriarch Kirill of Russia to Akira Kurosawa to Hillary Clinton, and not one but three popes — John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis.

“I have to fall in love with the person I paint, otherwise it will never happen. It has to come from my heart,” Babailov said.

The artist, who is also a teacher and speaker, remembers unveiling Francis’ portrait to the pope, who listened attentively as he explained, through an interpreter, the composition of the work and all the details he had included.

“His eyes lit up when I pointed at the children,” Babailov said. “He loved children.” Francis pointed toward his own heart and murmured that he was touched.

The portrait is titled “The Holy Cross” and shows Francis standing under the Holy Family. Behind him, a faint rainbow traces a bridge between Hagia Sophia and the dome of St. Peter’s, which is lit from inside, with a line of pilgrims making their way toward the door. The composition of the entire piece is essentially cross-shaped, with Pope Francis at the center, covering his silver pectoral cross with his hands in a gentle, protective gesture, and looking heavenward with his characteristic placid smile.

Below him we see Francis in two vignettes emblematic of his papacy: in one, sheltering and embracing poor children, and in the other, about to press his lips to the newly washed foot of a dark-skinned person in a wheelchair.

“A portrait is not just a visual likeness; it’s the story of who the person is. That’s why I incorporated him washing feet. That was him in his heart. That was his nature,” Babailov said.

In fact, visiting prisoners — although he was too ill to wash feet, as in former years — was one of the last things Francis did. On Holy Thursday, he visited inmates at Regina Coeli prison in Rome; on Easter Monday, he died.

Photography vs. portraiture

It’s a tricky business, faithfully portraying a real human being with a complex life and legacy. But Babailov insists that a thoughtful painting is better than a photograph for preserving someone’s likeness for future generations.

“For some reason, we trust the camera. But a camera is a cold-blooded machine,” he said. It flattens everything, and it can’t make any decisions about what is and is not important in an image. An artist can make these distinctions and can organize a work to draw the eye first to what is most meaningful.

“Everything is important to a camera,” Babailov said. “But an artist can select.”

Babailov said that, although the three popes whose portraits he painted were very different, they all had in common a palpable sense of holiness. Not so with everyone who sits for one of his portraits! Babailov has accepted commissions for all sorts of people.

Although he spends hours gazing into the face of his subject — trying, in a sense, to read their souls — he never feels the need to edit out anything he sees or to flatter his subject.

“That never, ever, ever comes to my mind. Just the opposite: I see beauty in everyone,” he said. “That may sound strange. People have contradictions. But as a portrait painter, I have to fall in love with the person I paint.”

Trained to observe the human form

He is in love, in fact, with the human body itself, from the inside out. Babailov, whose father was a painter and whose mother was a teacher, painted his first portrait at the age of 4….Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.