What’s for supper? Vol. 420: Get your veils ready

You may notice that today’s Vol. is 420. I was gonna make a pot joke, but, much like people who smoke a lot of pot, those tend to be lame. I decided instead to stay classy and stick with my usual highbrow humor involving dog balls. 

Well, happy Friday WITH MEAT. This is a whole week of Sundays, liturgically speaking, and I can’t say that we rested a lot, but we certainly ate well! Here’s what we had this week:

SATURDAY
Passover seder food

I’ve been wrestling with various things, and so this is the year we decided we were going to have Passover on its actual date, rather than on Holy Saturday. So I looked it up and found that the last day of Passover WAS on Holy Saturday. I took this as a little ass-pat from God, signaling that it’s ok to do our best to honor both my Jewish heritage and our Catholic faith this way, and we were going to have a nice, gradual transition into peeling them apart next time. THEN I realized that people generally have their seders on the first or second day of Passover, and not the last day. Oh well! Next year. (If you didn’t follow that, don’t worry about it. It’s just me fretting.) 

So I spent most of Holy Week cooking and baking. We did manage to do Stations of the Cross a few times this Lent, and got to confession, and on Friday I printed out an at-home Tenebrae service, collated and stapled a packet for everyone, located seven candles, and then took a three-hour nap instead. Which is just as well, because even with older kids, getting ready for Passover and the Easter Vigil on the same day is a LOT. 

Here’s the table, ready for the ceremonial part of the seder:

Elijah did a huge part of leading the seder this year, and he did a wonderful job. It was lovely.

Everyone loves the seder. It is such a gift. 

Then it was time to eat!

The menu is: Chicken soup with matzoh balls,

gefilte fish,

chopped liver,

spinach pie,

cinnamon garlic chicken, roast lamb,

and charoset;

and for dessert, store-bought macaroons, chocolate-covered jelly rings, jelly fruit slices, chocolate-covered coconut, and pistachio halvah; and I made a lemon sponge cake and chocolate-covered matzoh caramel crunch.

The recipes for everything I made are on this page, except for the sponge cake. I followed this recipe from Cinnamon Schtick, except that I forgot to add the lemon juice and orange juice; so instead, I simmered up the juice with a bunch of sugar and made a citrus syrup, and then I poked lots of holes in the cake and drizzled the syrup over it before wrapping it up for later. 

It was GREAT. I rushed taking it out of the pan, so I broke it, but that was okay because it gets cut up anyway. I think I will do it that way from now on, with the syrup drizzle. 

So, then, after everyone ate as much as they could manage, we rested up a bit and then cleared things up a bit, and Damien did a first load of dishes, and then we got dressed for the Easter Vigil! We are extremely photogenic and our house looks really nice right now!

Without naming names, the one for whom lack of sleep would have been most disastrous did sleep through most of it,

which is a good thing because it was three hours long. Gorgeous liturgy, beeswax candles, glorious music, lots of adult baptisms and confirmations. Wonderful. Exhausting. Wonderful. 

Moved the easter baskets to the dining room and conked the heck out. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers

Leftovers, of course. The best leftovers of the year.

Plus of course Easter candy. 

Later in the day, I boiled a few dozen eggs, and we colored them outside, because it suddenly got warm, finally!

 

We blew a few duck eggs and I dyed one with feathers, which are, of course, waterproof. Might make it into a Christmas ornament at some later date. 

MONDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, cheez balls

Monday I very reluctantly dragged myself off shopping. It was hard to feel the urgency about bringing yet more food into the house, but we really did need to eat dinner.

I always get a little riled at how expensive frozen buffalo chicken is, so I got a bunch of cheap frozen chicken fingers and cooked them, then covered them in buffalo sauce (melted butter, a little honey, and a bunch of hot sauce) and cooked them some more. 

We had wraps made with tortillas, ranch or blue cheese dressing, shredded pepper jack cheese, shredded lettuce, and crunchy fried onions. 

The buffalo chicken was . . . okay. I guess it needs to be batter fried, rather than breaded, in order to taste like store-bought buffalo chicken. The flavor was fine and I was so hungry, they actually tasted great to me, but the kids were less enthusiastic. 

Monday was a fairly exciting day because I forgot to tell you that, on Sunday night, as we were drifting off to sleep after that lonnnnnnnnng weekend, the smoke alarm went off. Turned out to be the lint in the dryer! Some things had come apart and the lint was everywhere and was smoking! So, but we did not burn up, hooray smoke alarm!

However, on Monday, Damien had to work on the dryer. The laundry room is a TIGHT SQUEEZE, and when he moved the dryer, the sink got knocked out of the wall, and the pipe broke and started spurting water everywhere, which tripped a fuse and put the power out. The cat chose this moment to nab a mouse and start dashing around the house with the squealing victim in his mouth, and the dog, of course, elected the follow the cat around, because he really needed to know what the cat’s butt smelled like right then. 

We’re just gonna draw a veil over the next forty minutes or so, but the upshot is that Damien fixed everything and threw the mouse outside and the dog found out the information he needed and now everything is fine, amen. For my part, I supplied stifled giggling throughout. 

TUESDAY
Muffalettish sandwiches with homemade cheese, Doritos, vegetable platter

Tuesday, Corrie suddenly remembered that I promised I would start on her treehouse over vacation, and here it was Tuesday already. So to the hideout we went, and honestly, we’re going to have to draw another veil over the part where we finally agreed on which tree it would be, but I have to admit, she picked a really good tree. 

I had bought a used copy of Tree Houses You Can Actually Build, but it turned out it was a book we couldn’t actually manage not to lose, so I found a kid whose library card hasn’t been suspended and sent her in with a sticky note with the title on it, and now we have another copy of the book! 

Then I remembered I was planning to make cheese for supper, so I did that, but I was super distracted, and something went a little amiss. It actually tasted fine — very light and pleasant in flavor — but it was quite grainy and kind of unsightly.

However, I was on a roll, so once the cheese was done I zooped off to Home Depot and bought eight pressure treated 2×6 boards and a dozen lag bolts. I had set aside some cash for the Sunroom Which Is Not To Be, so I figured I would invest a little into making the frame for the treehouse really strong with new materials, and then we can just bash the rest of it together with whatever crap we have lying around. There’s not a metaphor there; you’re wasting your time. Just keep scrolling. 

So then we had sandwiches for supper. I can’t really call them muffaletta sandwiches, but they were tasty. I made an olive salad with green and black olives, banana peppers, parsley, olive oil, and red wine vinegar, and I sliced up some baguettes and we piled on sandwich pepperoni, hard salami, mortadella, and ham, and the shaggy mozzarella I had made. 

Actually quite a good sandwich, and I sure was starving by dinner time. 

WEDNESDAY
Oven fried chicken, baked potatoes, corn on the cob

Wednesday, I prepped the chicken and also made a marinade for Thursday’s meal and got that meat marinating, and then I started right in building! And almost immediately realized that I really can’t do this myself, REALLY. I could, with great effort, trundle the wood onto the site, but that was as far as I got. So I trimmed the boards down to seven feet and then realized I needed to go to, NO, NOT Home Depot. Harbor Freight, which is Home Depot for losers. I got a drill bit that’s 75% the size of the lag bolts I want to put in, and I bought a pack of ten phillips head drill bits, because I’m an unreformed loser of drill bits. And I can’t be alone, or why else would they sell them in packs of ten? 

So it was QUITE a bit more of a struggle than I expected, but we finally got one board up in the tree, nice and centered and leveled. We just screwed it into place, to be drilled and bolted later.

Check it out: A Level Board Up In A Tree. 

It is going to be a seven-foot square platform with the tree in the center 

with a railing around the outside, and no walls but a tall post in each corner holding up a slanted, transparent plastic roof. She wants a rope ladder so she can pull it up after herself, and nobody is arguing with that. 

In the afternoon, I threw some potatoes in the oven, dredged the chicken in seasoned flour and got that cooking, zooped off to drop off Corrie for a sleepover, came home, turned the chicken and started the corn boiling, and we had a very delicious, summery meal. 

Oh, here is my recipe for oven-fried chicken. 

Jump to Recipe

The weird thing was, Sophia, Lucy, and Irene had left for a concert in Boston, and Corrie was away with her pal, so it was just a little bitty family of five at home. Naturally, I had cooked for twelve. Luckily, Clara stopped by, so I foisted some chicken on her. Lena also came by, but escaped chickenless. 

THURSDAY
Pork gyros with spicy fries and homemade pita

Thursday I had a neat interview in the morning, and then in the afternoon, Damien and I put up a second treehouse board. I guess I was thinking that the first board would be the hardest one, because it was, I don’t know, the first one.

But it turns out the second one is actually harder because . . . .you have to make it not only level in itself, but level with the first one, and flush on the ends, and also you are screwing it to a tree which is guess what? Round! And also, the world’s greatest tree house tree happens to be growing out of the side of the stream bank, so there isn’t actually anywhere to stand, per se. And I guess I assumed that all drill bits are magnetic so they don’t just randomly fall out of the drill, but guess what? They are not! And they do1

If you have any veils left, it wouldn’t hurt to draw it over the struggle we had with multiple levels, multiple pencil lines, multiple pencils, and of course multiple drill bits which are now presumably a few miles downstream.

But we got that mofo in, and it is level in every direction, and flush. And thorough!

Then we had to both get back to our actual paying jobs, and then I had to make supper. 

LUCKILY, as I mentioned, I had genius-ly started the pork marinating the night before, and I also had made some garlicky yogurt sauce.

Jump to Recipe

So in the afternoon, first I made some pita bread. I cannot even imagine what made me decide to try a new recipe at this time of day on this kind of day, but that is what I did. I made a double batch of this recipe from King Arthur Flour and it was not that great! 

Truth be told, I was rushing the teeniest bit, so I probably made multiple mistakes, so it’s probably not the recipe’s fault. It wasn’t terrible, it was just not the puffiest pita known to mankind. 

(This is obviously the underside of the pitas; the topsides were a little bit puffy.)

The meat, however. Oh.

I had a semi-boneless pork butt, and I had cut it into sort of thick, flat slabs, and then I scored them deeply, like I was cutting a mango out of its skin, and that’s how I marinated the meat. I was planning to broil it in the oven, but I forgot I would be needing the oven for french fries. So I just seared the hell out of the meat in frying pans. I had three slabs about this size:

When they were deeply browned and a little charred on both sides, I hacked it into pieces with some kitchen scissors and continued cooking it until it was cooked through, letting it absorb plenty of the juice and marinade. 

So we had warm pita, yogurt sauce, tomatoes, feta, spicy fries, and some very saucy, juicy pork, and some hot sauce on top. Too messy to really assemble into a gyro, but DANG. It was delicious, and so juicy. 

Just the best thing I’ve eaten in a long, long while. I hope I can recreate the marinade. I started with a recipe, but it didn’t taste like much, so I added a bunch of stuff. Here’s the best I can remember: 

Jump to Recipe

Although I wonder if there was some lemon juice in there. Anyway, they were the best gyros I’ve ever made. 

FRIDAY
Burgers, chips

And we’re wrapping up Meatster Week with hamburgers, which have become something of a luxury item.

I have one last picture on my camera roll for the week, and I don’t remember which day this was, but it’s proof that I did get a few workouts in

A lot of yoga is about subtle things, like how you place your feet or where you turn your gaze. And sometimes Sonny really helps me with that. What a gentleman. 

One last veil for the dog balls, folks. You know what to do. 

 

Print

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.

Print

pork gyros marinade (non-tomato)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
  • 2 Tbs honey
  • 2 Tbs sumac
  • 3 Tbs paprika
  • 3 Tbs garlic powder
  • 3 Tbs onion powder
Print

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. 

Why a cross?

Periodically, some wise guy will say, “Oh, and if Jesus had been shot by a firing squad, would you Christians wear a little golden gun around your neck? If he had been electrocuted, would you hang a decorative electric chair on the wall of your church?”

Maybe we would. What-ifs are not the same as theology, so I don’t know how it would have played out. All I know is how it did play out. It was a cross that Jesus died on. And that was not just an accident of history. 

Look at the shape of the cross: It extends up, down, left, and right, and approximately in the center, at the intersection of it all, is the heart of the dying man.

What is down? The soldiers, the rabble, the clergy, the grieving women, the few disciples who didn’t run away. The stony ground, blood-soaked soil and the whole heavy earth, burdened with its load of the living and the dead. 

What is up? The heavens, the Father who said not long before that he is well pleased with his Son. Up is where Jesus cast his eyes to ask the Father why he had abandoned him, and up is where he commended his spirit just before he died. 

What is left? The criminal who looks at Jesus and says, “Aren’t you supposed to be God? Then go ahead and get us out of this mess!” Essentially: You come here and do what I want, and do it right now (Lk 23:39).

What is right? The criminal who knows who he is and why he is where he is, but also knows who Jesus is, and how wrong it is that they are on the same level. He doesn’t ask or tell Jesus to go anywhere, and he doesn’t assume Jesus should do anything. He knows, though, where Jesus will go, and he asks to be remembered when he gets there (Lk 23:40-43).

On Palm Sunday, different people read the various speaking parts of the Passion; but really, everyone who is alive today is either the good thief or the bad thief. Suffering isn’t something we may or may not have to deal with; it’s inevitable. Sooner or later, we will find ourselves immobilized on one kind of cross or another, punished and rejected by someone or something in the world. Maybe we’ll suffer at the hands of an enemy, maybe at the hands of someone we love. Maybe we’re in pain because of our own bodies, or maybe because of our own decisions. But we will all find ourselves there: on the cross, suffering, helpless and looking at Jesus. 

Then we will have the choice. We can look at Jesus and tell him where to go and what to do, how to be God.

Or we can look at him and say, “I know who you are, and I know where you are going. Don’t forget me.” 

It’s not wrong to ask for things. It’s not wrong to tell God specifically what we want to happen, or to ask him to relieve our sufferings, whether we deserve them or not. But it is futile to tell him what he must do for us. How insane does the bad thief look, stuck like a bug to a wooden cross and still somehow thinking he has some kind of power?

The other thief was just as immobilized, just as doomed, just as powerless, but from that spot, what he chose to say to God was: “I know who you are. Remember me.” He trusted that God would rescue him — in the way that God thought best, in the time that God knew was right.

That sounds so glib. If you are reading this in the midst of some horrible, painful trial, and you read the words, “trust in the Lord” or, “God’s timing is perfect,” I wouldn’t blame you for getting mad…. Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Image: The Crucifixion by Andrea Mantegna (1459) (Public Domain) 

Holy heroism doesn’t come out of nowhere

During Lent, I have been reading my family The Hiding Place, the account of how Corrie Ten Boom’s family hid Jews in their home, were discovered, and got sent to a concentration camp.

Four of the Ten Booms died—the number of Jews they saved is something like 800.

I last read this book as a teenager, and the dramatic scenes of great cruelty met with great holiness made a huge impression on me.

I remember the miraculously multiplying vitamin drops that kept the prisoners alive; I remember the scene where Corrie’s sister was thanking God for everything they had, including a horrendous infestation of fleas.

Corrie was horrified that her sister wanted her to thank God even for the fleas, but her sister insisted. Later, it turned out these vermin were a kind of protective army for the prisoners—the guards didn’t want to come into the infested barracks, and so the prisoners were allowed to continue the prayer and scripture readings that kept them from despair.

I also remember reading an account of Corrie Ten Boom, many decades later, meeting one of the very guards who imprisoned and tortured her family, and how she took his hand and forgave him.

The flea story very often comes to mind, and I use it as shorthand for when I’m stymied by something in my life and I can’t think of any way to deal with it rationally. So I just go, “Okay, God, thanks for the fleas, I guess.”

I can’t really relate to Ten Booms’ heroic level of trust in God’s goodness, and in fact I tend to crumble under some extremely light burdens. I don’t think I’d be one of the ones organizing prayer sessions in a prison barracks.

But I understand the general concept of what they were doing. I can break off a little piece of this story for myself and carry it around for when things get hairy, by my standards.

As for the other story, the story of supernatural forgiveness of a sadistic murderer—I remember it, but it goes way over my head. It’s something beyond my experience and beyond my imagination, and all I can do is stand in my low place and behold it, like a fiery sign in the sky.

But they are both part of the account of how the Ten Booms lived, and how they died; and the entire book is hitting me very different, this time around. The parts that are standing out to me are not so much the brilliant acts of holy heroism by this family, or even the more relatable inspiring examples they set. Instead, I’m noting all the little things that got them there.

The book doesn’t begin in the concentration camp….Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: A group of German Wehrmacht soldiers in a village via Picryl (Public Domain)

What’s for supper? Vol. 419: A masterful gambit of one’s own

Happy Friday! What’s new with you? I’m making notes on how to build a tree house, and now I know what a lag bolt is! I’m carving a sleeping bat, that’s not turning out very well! I’m driving around town surreptitiously taking photos of people’s porticos, so I can figure out how to do ours, or maybe I’m just being creepy!

We started a second batch of duck eggs incubating and Damien and I both think we see something happening this time. Duck shells are pretty thick, so it’s hard to say, but Coin has literally one job and we’ve definitely all seen him doing it (ducks are not known for their romantic finesse), so I do believe we’ll have ducklings eventually. 

Until then, here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Taquitos, quesadillas

It was Saturday Leftover Buffet, but last week was already half leftovers built into the menu, so we didn’t have a lot to draw on. I got some frozen taquitos and made some quesadillas, and that was that. 

SUNDAY
Mexican beef bowls, corn bread, tres leches cake

Sunday was Lena’s birthday! She requested Mexican beef bowl, and I was happy to oblige, because it is yummy. I sliced up the meat and got it marinating in the morning (I used London Broil, but this marinade is pretty acidic, so it should tenderize some pretty tough cuts if you give it long enough). Here is that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

Made a big pot of rice, blackened some corn, shredded some cheese, chopped some cilantro, and fried up some sweet red peppers, and we had it with sour cream and lime wedges, and black beans. 

Frickin delicious.

Here is my basic bean recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I had two cans of black beans from Aldi. One turned out to be a dirty dirty lie!!  But I didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to save the can, so I guess I’ll miss out on their “twice as nice” guarantee, alas. I always make too many beans anyway, so we had plenty. 

I also made a pan of corn bread, which is probably what made me forget to serve the corn chips I got. I just followed the cornbread recipe on the cornmeal package

It was fine. I used to make corn bread CONSTANTLY, but I think mostly just Damien and I eat it, so I don’t usually bother. 

For dessert, we had a tres leches cake – or a collection of them, really, employing I don’t even know how many milks altogether. Damien and I have apparently been dealing with stress by buying half and half and also requesting that each other pick up some half and half, so we had your three milks right here:

except that this recipe doesn’t even use half and half; it uses condensed milk, evaporated milk, milk, and heavy cream. Which is four milks, tres notwithstanding. To add to the confusion, Corrie’s class baked bread and made butter at school, and she brought home some of the butter in a sandwich bag, and proceeded to extrude and devour it all the way home. We’ve been tussling over her lunches lately, and she finally wore me down enough to acknowledge that a small container of Greek yogurt does, in fact, have quite a bit of protein for a kid; and from there, she concluded that Good Ol’ Cousin Butter must be even healthier than yogurt, because it’s even thicker! I started to argue with her, but quickly realized that I don’t really know what protein is. But I’m fairly sure she’s eating the yogurt, and not just bringing it to school and throwing it away. So that’s a win. She could absolutely beat me in a wrestling match, so maybe I shouldn’t be pushing protein anyway. 

The only other time I made tres leches cake, it was extremely soggy, so this time I tried Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I made it the night before, and ended up sort of draining a lot of liquid off in the morning and then continuing to refrigerate it until evening. Then I topped it with the sweetened whipped cream and berries. It was good!

I guess this is just never gonna be my favorite cake, but this time was a vast improvement over last, anyway. It wasn’t screamingly sweet, and the cake part was very moist but not disintiningratingly wet. 

And Lena liked it, which is the main thing. 

Whew! 

MONDAY
Quiche, onion soup

Monday, I really did use some of that half and half, and also a bunch of the eggs the ducks have started reliably laying. And so it was quiche day! Quiche is something else I used to make all the time, until we got pretty burnt out on it. But it was a chilly, drizzly day, and it SNOWED, and oh boy, a sunny, fragrant wedge of oven-fresh quiche really hit the spot.

I opted for pre-baked pie shells, and I made one quiche with diced ham and provolone (left over from last week’s chicken cutlets), and one with crumbled sausage and, feeling a little silly while I did it, some sliced-up Baby Bel cheese, which is apparently approximately fontina. (It was breakfast-style sausage, and that was the mildest cheese we had in the house.) I added salt and pepper and some parsley on top to both, and they turned out gorgeous. 

I realized I’ve been over-baking quiche most of my life, so I didn’t do that this time! I just baked them until they were just set. 

Here is my recipe

Jump to Recipe

and if you can find fresh eggs, it really does make a difference. Look how fluffy:

I also made some onion soup. We still had some Italian bread from something or other, so I cut that into large hunks and toasted it. I forgot I had a recipe for onion soup, so I wung it, but here is the basic recipe:

Jump to Recipe

I only had chicken broth, not beef, and I really prefer beef, but it was still pretty great. I like it with lots of pepper, and I really don’t like the thick crust of melted cheese on top that French onion soup is supposed to have, so I just served some freshly-grated parmesan on top. Big crouton, a few scoops of hot soup, and then the cheese. Did I mention it was a chilly, damp day, and have I mentioned how I feel about soup?

Delightful. I was surprised at how popular the soup was, although I did cook the onions for a long time, so they were sweet and friendly; and I did also add sugar. 

TUESDAY
Honey mustard chicken, buffalo chicken, pasta salad, vegetables and dip

I think it was Tuesday that I finally got my car back. It needed an alternator, a transmission fluid hose, and a serpentine belt, so I was happy to have all that stuff done before I got stranded somewhere. Less happy to have to force myself to admit that, as soon as I got the car back, it started making a brand new sound. Fiddle dee dee. So I spent about 24 hours in denial and then brought the poor old thing back to the mechanic. And yes this makes the third time in 4-5 weeks I’ve had to bring it in. It’s still a good car. It is trying, I can tell. 

In the morning I roasted a bunch of chicken drumsticks in oil, salt and pepper, and then while they were hot, I divided them and rolled half in honey mustard sauce and half in buffalo sauce. The honey mustard was half honey, half mustard, with the juice of a whole lemon, and some pepper; and the buffalo sauce was melted butter, a bunch of that Valentina hot sauce, and a bunch of paprika and garlic powder. 

Then I made a big pot of pasta salad, which, and I guess this is the theme for the week, I used to make constantly, but haven’t made in quite a while. It was a real odds-and-ends salad from things I found in the cabinet: Pasta with red wine vinegar and olive oil, quite a bit of salt and pepper, garlic powder (rather than fresh, because I wanted it to cling to the pasta), and . . . let’s see. Black olives, marinated peppers, shredded parmesan, and then some things I got specifically for the salad: fresh parsley and the effusively-named “Wild Wonders” selection of multicolored cherry tomatoes. 

I tend to under-season pasta salad, so I really went nuts with the seasonings, and it was good.

Chopped up a bunch of vegetables, and when it got close to dinner, I re-heated the two pans of drumsticks.

Nice little meal, although I wish I had saved out some of the sauces to juice up the flavor a bit toward the end of reheating. 

I have been eating so many vegetables this week, it’s grotesque. (Mostly for lunch and snacks, in case you’re scrolling up and thinking, “THIS is what she considers a lot of vegetables??)

WEDNESDAY
Ham, peas, mashed potatoes

Wednesday we had the rest of the ham I had already cut into for the quiche. Wednesday is already always a little bananas, because we have STEM club and catechism after school, but everything is spaced out in such a way that I essentially have to circle the globe a few times in order to get everyone where they need to be. This week they added swimming lessons, so I also went to the Y, and I was a little frazzled, but seeing all those chipper, dripping little ten-year-olds stomping around in the locker room made up for a lot. 

The ham was pre-cooked, so I cut it into thick slices, put it in a pan, added a little water, and covered it with tinfoil, and shoved that in the oven in between trips, and when I got home, I made a giant bowl of instant mashed potatoes and heated up some frozen peas. It’s not sophisticated, but it’s an immensely satisfying meal. For best effect, garnish generously with extra tinfoil so it’s easy to wash the pan. 

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, raw vegetables

Thursday, for reasons I don’t understand, I scheduled . . . everything. I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, and then in the afternoon we had one of the most frustrating and unprofessional meetings I’ve had the displeasure of fuming through in many a year, and then in the evening was something I can only describe as a surprise science fair. I don’t know why they do these things to us. It can’t possibly be that they sent me several emails, pamphlets, and Class Dojo notifications, and I just ignored them. I also woke up at 3:30 a.m. and didn’t get back to sleep until after 6, and then my alarm goes off at 6:40, so by evening, in clinical terms, my ass was draggin. 

For her contribution, Benny threw together a game of Astronomy Jeopardy to test the wits of the elementary school kids, and it turns out there are two secrets to a successful science project: (a) a very loud button kids can press, and (b) Benny. 

I didn’t get a picture of later in the evening, when her male classmates came around to be questioned, and she made them put their hands behind their backs, kneel on the floor, and hit the buttons with their heads. I don’t know why she did this, but I believe they would kill a man if Benny told them to. 

So I texted the kids to heat up some chicken burgers, and Benny and I had a slice of cold science fair pizza and went home to do evening chores, and I was feeling a little bit like I wanted a treat, and I suddenly thought maybe there was a stray Italian ice in the freezer! I rummaged around and, to my delight, way in the back behind some bagged corn and elderly fudge, I found one!!

No I didn’t. 

So I had some dried mango and shuffled off to take a shower. Emerged to find that Damien had changed the sheets and made the bed and turned on my little lamp, so I put on my fuzzy pants and put myself to bed at 9:30. Pretty nice. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Friday Damien and Benny got up super early to get the . . . remote control submarine contest at UNH? I’m a little fuzzy on the details. This has been my experience as a woman in STEM my whole life: ” . . . Wha?” But as I said, Damien took the hit and they’re there now. I myself went and got some fasting blood work done, meaning I had to get the kids to school, go to the doctor, and THEN get coffee. No one has ever suffered more. 

Will we get to stations of the cross at the church tonight? PROBABLY NOT. We did do it at home last week, and maybe we can do that again. I found this text written by Cardinal Ratzinger, and it’s so much more thoughtful and less goopy than any other stations I’ve found. I mean it’s no “Simcha has to drive to school without coffee,” but pretty good. 

And that’s-a my story. 

Print

Simple French onion soup

Serve with a piece of toasted baguette at the bottom of each bowl. Finish with cheese on top.

Ingredients

  • 4 Tbsp butter
  • 4 cups onion, thinly sliced
  • 1 Tbsp flour
  • 1 tsp white sugar
  • 4-6 cups beef broth (can also use chicken broth or a combination of water and white wine)
  • pepper
  • parmesan or mozzarella cheese

Instructions

  1. In a heavy pot, melt the butter and then add the onions. Cook very slowly over a low heat for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the onions are very soft and somewhat darkened.

  2. Stir in the sugar until dissolved. Stir in the flour and mix to coat.

  3. Add the broth (or water and wine). Add pepper to taste and simmer for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer.

  4. Serve with a hunk of toasted bread in the bottom of each bowl. Sprinkle cheese on top, and if you have oven-safe dishes, brown under the broiler to form a skin on top of the soup.

 

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Quiche

Ingredients

  • 2 pie shells
  • 8 duck eggs (equivalent of 10-12 chicken eggs)
  • 2 cups half and half
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/4-1/2 cup meat/vegetables
  • 1/4-1/2 cup shredded cheese
  • chopped parsley (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400

  2. Poke shell with fork several times and bake on a shallow pan for 12 minutes or until slightly browned

  3. Remove pie shells and lower oven to 350

  4. Beat eggs and then beat in half and half, salt and pepper

  5. Sprinkle vegetables and/or meat on pie shell, then sprinkle on cheese. Pour egg mixture on top. Top with extra cheese and/or parsley if you like.

  6. Put the quiches in the oven, still on the pan, and bake, uncovered for about forty minutes until the middle is just set, not wobbly

  7. Serve hot or room temperature.

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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."

 

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls

enough for 6-7 lbs of beef

Ingredients

  • 1 cup lime juice
  • 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1 head garlic, crushed
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 2 tsp hot pepper flakes
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 2 tsp pepper
  • 1 bunch cilantro, chopped

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.

Everyone gets an inheritance; everyone gets a choice

What was the prodigal son’s actual sin?

That question popped into my head as I heard the Gospel reading that I’ve heard countless times. The obvious answers — essentially, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll — seemed unpersuasive this time. Is this really just a story saying that if you go and do the really common bad things that people tend to do, then God will still forgive you?

Well, yes! It’s definitely that. Jesus, in telling this parable, was showing the Pharisees and scribes that he hung around with sinners because he wants to forgive them and be reconciled with them.

But here’s something odd: The prodigal son says that he has sinned against God and against his father. Obviously, fornicating and getting drunk are sins against the Ten Commandments, and thus sins against God. But what sin has he committed against his father?

The sin of squandering. What an evocative word. His father had something good, and he gave it to his son as a gift so he could use it for some particular purpose. But, instead, he squandered it. That’s worth looking at because it also sheds light on the part of the story that troubles many people: the father’s attitude toward his other, obedient son.

So what’s so terrible about squandering an inheritance?

First, it’s clearly terrible for the son himself. He burns through his money and ends up humiliated and starving. It was a bad plan, and it bit him in the butt.

It was also bad for the father. He very likely wanted to help set his son up with a homestead of his own so his wealth would flourish and grow. A young man with a sizable inheritance could easily marry, likely have children of his own, and bring joy and delight to his father.

His sin was also bad for the community. By squandering his inheritance, he refused to enrich the land or make jobs for the next generation. I know how tediously modern that sounds — “His great sin was that he failed to engage in community development!” — but it’s true! Things haven’t changed that much. When you get something good, you’re not supposed to waste it. You’re supposed to use it to help yourself, show respect to the person who gave it to you, and help other people. That’s what good things are FOR.

But on every count, the prodigal son did the opposite. 

When we are assessing our lives (a very good practice during Lent!), it may or may not be helpful to ask ourselves, “Am I sinning?” It will probably be fruitful, though, to look at what good things God has given us, and to ask ourselves what we are doing with it. Are we using that inheritance well? Or are we squandering it?

An obvious example of an inheritance is money. If we have it, are we spending it on dumb or bad stuff that hurts ourselves and other people? That’s squandering. But using it to help other people would be using it for its intended purpose.

There are less obvious examples. Gifts of time, energy and health are all things we can either squander or use well. Even our personalities can be an inheritance. If we have been given the gift of a quick wit and sharp sense of humor, what do we use that for? For being nasty to other people and humiliating them? That’s squandering it. For making people laugh and helping them take life lightly? That’s putting it to good use.

Or maybe we’re naturally confident and charming, and we find it easy to persuade and influence others. Some people use this gift to get their way, and finagle themselves into situations they haven’t really earned and can’t really manage. That’s squandering. But some people use the gift of charisma well, buoying up everyone around them, bringing out their best and leading them down good paths.

You get the idea. Whatever it is you have in life, whatever strengths you possess, whatever talents you can claim, whatever skills and abilities you have, these are your inheritance. You can accept God’s help to get yourself set up in a thriving life that makes him proud and benefits everyone. Or you can stuff whatever gifts you have in your pocket, run far away from your father’s land and squander it all. And you see where that second choice lands you. Sooner or later, you’ll be wishing you had it as good as a pig.

So what about the elder son? In the story, he didn’t run through his inheritance. He obeyed his father and did his work, and when his loser brother comes crawling back, he’s indignant at how thrilled their father is. The elder son comes across, at first, as innocent and justified.

But listen to how Jesus tells it…. Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Image: The Return of the Prodigal Son by Maestro dell’Annuncio ai Pastori, National Museum of Capodimonte (Naples) via Wikimedia (Creative Commons) 

Missionaries for Music: Ashuelot Concerts brings global talent to rural New England

Louisa Stonehill faced a row of kindergarteners. Their eyes were closed, their necks craned forward, and each one was doing his best to feel the music she played on her violin — with their ears, and also with their faces, their jaws, their chests.

“I can feel it,” one girl said, her eyes still closed.

That is what Louisa and her pianist husband Nicholas Burns came for. They are a kind of missionary, evangelists for music, answering a call.

The couple, founders of Ashuelt Concerts, moved to New Hampshire from Greenwich, London, in 2016, with two suitcases, a 2-year-old and no real plan.

Nine years later, they’ve built a thriving international chamber music concert series, playing 18 concerts a year, bringing world-class performers to tiny New England stages — and, even more remarkably, to area schools. The couple, along with a revolving roster of musicians, will travel to any school within 45 minutes of their base in Keene, New Hampshire, to introduce kids to classical music.

Nick and Louisa, the parents of two boys, ages 7 and 10, reach something like 5,000 children a year, many of whom might never otherwise encounter classical music, much less in a concert played live and up close just for them.

“We literally put a 5-year-old from a rural area a few feet away from one of the best musicians in the world, playing one of most valuable, famous instruments in the world,” Nick said.

A visceral response

Nick and Louisa make a point of not condescending to kids. They play movements from larger pieces, from seven to ten minutes each. It’s a big ask for little kids, but they help the children understand what they are hearing.

Sometimes they wonder if they’re expecting too much. Louisa recalls a “horrendous” musical passage by Shostakovich that evokes prisoners forced to dance before their own graves. They didn’t share that detail with the kids, but the music made its point. How did it land?

“They went absolutely bananas,” Nick said. They said it was like a horror movie, and they loved it. 

He added, “We’ve been shocked to our core –“

“– at how viscerally the children respond,” Louisa finished. “We don’t dumb it down. We give it to them real.” 

Real, live music brings out an emotional, vibrational delight like nothing else.

Along with the music, the couple delivers lessons kids will need to know no matter where life takes them. 

Lessons, for instance, about talent. While some people take to instruments more readily than others, talent alone is not sufficient.

“Talent is the product of learning, practice and discipline, and the act of humility and the act of being honest,” Nick said. 

The kids are skeptical, but Nick and Louisa insist: Three weeks before the concert, they couldn’t play the piece. They practiced, they slowed themselves down and they had faith they would prevail. And once you have put in the work to learn something, it’s inside you for good, Louisa said.

“It’s really freaky. You can literally not have played a piece for a year or two, and when you open it up again, it will just take you a second to find that pathway in your brain.”

In faith as in music

Here is where the couple’s Catholic faith asserts itself, even though they do not speak overtly about religion.

“Everything we talk about has parallels with the faith. It’s a living embodiment of our faith,” Nick said.

They both emphasized how vital it is, in faith as in performance, to begin with humility, to accept how little you know and not to get ahead of yourself.

Another parallel: It’s normal to go through a stage of questioning, of rebelling against rules that seem senseless and discipline that feels tiresome. But this stage is worth conquering, because through the discipline of practice, something amazing comes about. You learn to become a vessel for something greater than yourself.

“When you stand up on stage and you’ve got a big audience and they’re all staring at you in expectation, you have to put yourself to one side. It’s not about you anymore. It’s about communicating this great piece of art,” Nick said.

Louisa, an adult convert, describes the almost mystical experience of sharing with kindergarteners the voices of long-dead musicians.

“You’re connecting these two souls in such a unique and special way. You’re bringing these composers down from the heavens, almost, into their arms,” she said.

Great musicians and Catholics share a sense of humility, self-awareness and a generosity of spirit, Nick said. And both groups recognize the flash of genius as a gift, something they’ve been blessed with from outside oneself.

Called to a new community

But even with these overlaps, the “aggressive secularity” of London’s chamber music scene was one of the things that drove the couple away. How did they land in New Hampshire?

Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Photo courtesy Ashuelot Concerts

The princess and the fig tree

Halfway through Lent, we heard the Gospel reading where Jesus tells his disciples twice, in fairly stark and violent terms: If you do not repent, you will perish.

Then he tells them a story: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now, I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’

He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.’”

If the fig tree (you and me) isn’t just failing to bear fruit; it’s exhausting the soil around it. It’s hurting the other trees and crops nearby by taking without giving back. It should be destroyed, says the owner of the garden.

The gardener (Jesus) agrees that the fig tree shouldn’t be allowed to go on this way. It must bear fruit—repent—or it should perish. But note something extremely important: he doesn’t just insist that it should repent. He doesn’t even just give it extra time to repent. He comes and helps it. He gives it what it needs so it can, if it will, turn things around before it’s too late.

This reading dovetails so nicely with a short book I recently re-read: The Lost Princess by George MacDonald. It’s not as well-known as his excellent longer “princess” books, the two Curdie books or The Light Princess, but I think it deserves more attention than it gets.

To summarize without spoilers: Two young girls are raised by disastrously indulgent parents. One girl, Rosamond, is a princess, who has become monstrously selfish and capricious, terrorising the whole household. The king and queen are at their wits’ end with their daughter’s violent temper, so they summon a wise woman to help them. She abducts Rosamond and takes her on a brutal journey of self-knowledge and self-control, with many trials and many failures.

Then we are introduced to the second girl, the daughter of a shepherd and his wife, who isn’t openly monstrous, but she is so profoundly self-satisfied, she doesn’t really believe anyone else is real. She, too, is taken in by the wise woman for cultivation, and at some point, the shepherd girl and the princess switch roles, with varying consequences. At the end, both girls are returned to their homes to live the lives they have chosen.

The story, being Victorian, is pretty openly preachy. The narrator frequently delivers little lessons about life directly to the reader, which was the style at the time. But if you think of it as a sermon with a compelling and entertaining story, rather than a story that preaches at you, it’s wonderful, and harrowing in the best way—and don’t get me wrong; the fiction stands up on its own and isn’t solely a vehicle for a message. It has some scenes and some imagery that have stayed with me for 40 years or longer, and that have not lost any of their power when I read again it last week.

One such scene … Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: Detail of painting by Julie Le Brun (1780–1819) Looking in a Mirror (1787) via Rawpixel (Creative Commons) 

What’s for supper? Vol. 418: HowBowDah Sunday

Happy Friday! This is the time of year when I recall that you can take the family out of homeschool, but you can’t really take the homeschool out of the family.

Maybe you think I mean that we’re all still hotly in pursuit of wisdom and wonder and the free exploration of the wide world of ideas, but actually it’s just that we all still feel that going anywhere is optional. So this week, we sure had a lot of no school and half school and why bother going back to school days. I just cannot bring myself to care. They can all read and some of them can drive, and I think they even brush their teeth. 

SATURDAY
Leftover delite 

Featuring last week’s chicken noodle soup and chicken biryani, and frozen buffalo chicken. 

I am really, really struggling with how much food to make these days! We have anywhere from five to nine people at dinner, and the best I can do is have plenty of snacks on hand if I didn’t make enough, or attempt to serve everything twice if I made too much, and then be at peace with throwing stuff away and/or ignoring people who are huffy about whatever. The ducks and dogs have also had quite a varied diet lately. 

SUNDAY
Steak, mashed potatoes, asparagus

They were selling whole eye of round roasts for cheap again, so I got the biggest one I could find, and thought possibly we could squeeze three meals out of it. Meal #1: Steaks. Because it was Laudate Sunday or Gaudate Sunday or HowBowDah Sunday, and Damien makes really good steaks. 

I also made five pounds of mashed potatoes and two pounds of asparagus. I made the asparagus in the oven under the broiler. I spread it in a pan and drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled it with salt, and just gave it about eight or ten minutes, until the stems were slightly soft and the tips were frizzled. Served with lemon wedges, absolutely delicious. 

MONDAY
Steak salad

Monday Damien cooked the rest of the meat and sliced it, and I served that over salad with strawberries, crumbled blue cheese, and toasted almonds. I also found a little bit of leftover homemade mozzarella, so I cut that up and served it, too. Slightly weird combination (my preferred fruit to go with steak is either pears or peaches), but I was trying to use up what we had in the house + what was on sale. 

I served it with biscuits from a can and those were pretty popular. The bag of green material you can see on the left is a sandwich bags of pepperoncini that I had in my purse for reasons. 

Sophia got home from visiting a friend in the evening, so I went to pick her up at the Amtrak station. 

And there is still nothing more exciting than hearing a train come in. Trains are one of humanity’s greatest inventions, and I wish I were on one right now. 

That evening, it was day 7 of the duck egg incubation period. They are in a sort of sci fi-looking heated dome.

The tray under them rotates occasionally, so they get turned like a mother duck would do for them if ducks were good mothers, which they are not; and they are fed by tanks of water to keep the air humid. After seven days, you set them on a light and see if you can spot developing ducklings. 

All four were duds! 

You’re supposed to be able to see veiny patterns developing, but all we could see was a shadow lump. Either these eggs were never fertilized, or they didn’t start developing for whatever reason. So we tossed them, and started over the next day. 

I was a little more upset about this than I expected to be! Things are just . . . not turning out, lately. No ducklings, no money, no sun porch, car still broken, entire country in flames, and so on. I don’t think the peach pits or garlic or carrots I planted in the fall are coming up. But of course alles fleisch ist wie Grass anyway, so what do you expect. I did get back to my weird little caryatid

She’s sadly not as zaftig as her ancient sisters. Somebody give that girl a chicken cutlet with extra cheese.  Anyway, I’m trying to actually finish projects, lately, rather than do 80% of them and then get another idea, so I’ll keep chipping away at her. Maybe I’ll make her into a creepy lamp. 

TUESDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

Tuesday I faced the reality that we had eaten all the meat, so we just had quesadillas with cheese and optional jalapeños. I guess I didn’t feel like that was photo-worthy, so one must imagine a quesadilla and me, happy to eat it. 

On Tuesday, I baked a cake for Irene’s birthday the next day! The cat did step on it a few times, but only after I had wrapped it in plastic, which I thought was very gracious of him. Damien also cut and pounded the chicken for Wednesday’s dinner. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken cutlets, birthday cake

We had yet another doctor appointment, and now we are all freaking all caught up with our freaking shots and meds and everything! While we were out, Damien made a huge batch of his magnificent chicken cutlets and sauce. You pound the chicken, dust it in seasoned flour, dredge it in egg, and then coat it in breadcrumbs and parmesan, gently fry it in oil, and then put a basil leaf on each piece, cover the basil with a slice of provolone, and then top that with a scoop of hot marinara sauce, so it all melds together into one scrumptious, savory treat. 

The sauce was absolutely tremendous. You know when marinara sauce gets that kind of purple underglow, deep down? That’s what this one had. So good. 

Irene had requested a Batman cake, and I showed her a few pictures, and she said this one looked good:

but could I make it look kind of Van Gogh?
Just kidding, she did not say that. But I did it anyway! 

I really just do not have the hang of fondant. I do okay with small pieces that I can cut or mold, but the part where you roll out a smooth sheet and lay it over a cake and it comes out looking all crisp and level? That part is so hard!

I did happen upon a new idea for cake decor, though. I wanted to have the bat logo standing up, but the cake was already starting to slump, and I was afraid it would collapse under anything heavy, and I didn’t have any candy or cookies or extra cake to build it up, anyway. We did, however, have some of those baby rice rusks in the house. They are very light, and if you’re careful, you can shape them. So I broke apart a few to form an oval

and welded it together with candy melts. Then I made the bat logo with fondant and stuck it on with water, and to the back I added a couple of supports with more rice rusks and candy melts. 

The bats are also fondant, obviously, stuck onto skewers with little blobs of candy melt. Eight bats and eight stars, because she is 16.

She liked it!

Whew. She liked all her presents and we had fun. Whew. 

THURSDAY
Leftover chicken cutlets

Thursday, oh man did we have leftovers. The plan was to make spaghetti and serve the leftover chicken on top, but there was SO much, it didn’t feel necessary to add pasta. 

I just covered them with tinfoil and heated them in the oven to remelt the cheese, and it was extremely delicious. 

Yum. 

FRIDAY
Fish tacos

So far, Friday is my day to see how many different medical supply companies I can talk to, but the catch is, nobody can help me or will admit to having heard of me. But I have plenty of other stuff to think about. I did go stomping around in the woods and figure out which trees will work for Corrie’s treehouse.

I ordered a used copy of Tree Houses You Can Actually Build, which is an encouraging title. I was talking to Damien about the DIY videos I had been watching, where guys are like, “oh yeah, you just have to dig down four feet and use pea gravel after you anchor the truss lines to equilibriate the torque, so your cantilevers are all flush with the joist retaining extrusions, and then you can start to put in the floor.” I was like, “Ohhh, these are people who DON’T want their kids to fall out of the tree” and Damien was like, “But there are lots of things I don’t want our kids to do” So yes, I bought the book, but we shall see. 

Also, now that the sun porch plans went kaput, I realized that I only wanted a sunporch in front because I felt like I needed to replace the porch we tore down. And we need a place to store a few things, and I thought it would be nice to also get a place to start plants, and maybe even a place to hang out when it’s too cold to be outside.

But when I had time to think about it, I realized there’s just not a lot of sun on that side anyway. So HOW WOULD IT BE if we just build a simple little portico in front, maybe put in a nice little path and some flowers, and then build a greenhouse in the back, where there IS sun, and where the building code would be less stringent because it would just be a little freestanding structure, and not part of the house???? Maybe I’ll do that! Maybe I’ll put a hot tub in it! Maybe I’ll fall out of a tree! Maybe the medical supply company will actually call me back. Maybe I’ll stick myself back together with candy melts. Maybe I’ll just get on a train, and that will be that. 

All seasons have their purpose: The eremetic art of Margaret Rose Realy

Margaret Rose Realy isn’t really an artist, she insists, even though her paintings of flowers, clouds and the Sacred Heart hang in houses all over the world. She isn’t a natural author, either, even though she’s written four books: “A Garden of Visible Prayer,” “A Catholic Gardener’s Spiritual Almanac,” “A Garden Catechism,” and “Planting with Prayer.” 

“The only reason I did it is because God asked me to,” she said. 

Listening to God is one of the few things Realy, 70, will admit to being skilled at. She is, in some ways, a professional: She’s a Benedictine oblate, associated with a local monastery in Michigan, who has lived an eremitic life marked by silence, solitude and prayer for many years. Realy follows the rule of St. Benedict, which she calls “a gentle rule.” 

The silver-haired, soft-spoken woman whose chronic health struggles have made it harder and harder for her to move seems like mildness personified. She is a master gardener and says that working among flowers has brought her closer to God. Her gardens are a form of “gentle evangelization.”

But do not mistake Realy for a sentimentalist. Her docile manner veils a soul on fire with passion, courage and fierce trust.

Realy speaks quietly of her physical pain, and just as quietly of her harrowing personal history of abuse and neglect; and she speaks of her desire to see her abusers again in heaven. 

“I can’t wait to know who God really meant them to be, who they were supposed to be,” she said. “I still want to love them, and I still want to know that love, and give it.”

 

Beauty and grace are like seeds that God has planted in even the darkest and most tormented souls, she said. It takes a terribly strong conviction to refuse forgiveness from God.

“I don’t think hell is as full as we might like to think it is.”

Again, do not mistake Realy for a pushover. Many of her paintings are sweet and simple depictions of the beauty of nature. But some, like her Sacred Heart series, are a disciplined exploration of something she didn’t understand and didn’t want to face. 

“I was highly repulsed by some of the older Sacred Heart images, this graphic, gory mass. It was beyond my ability to connect to it,” she said.

The images were so gruesome, they pushed her away from Jesus. So she pushed back. She prayed, pressing the Lord for an explanation of this distressing devotional. He told her to paint. 

She obediently began to depict the Sacred Heart, but “bound up in nature,” intertwined not only with thorns but with vines and buds. 

“I was drawing the Sacred Heart in a way that wasn’t frightening. Drawing closer to what it means to have a heart so sacred (that) our Lord was willing to let it stop beating,” she said. “It was drawing closer to the heart of Jesus for me, who has experienced much violence in my life.”

Realy’s post-traumatic stress disorder used to make the sight of a crucifix intolerable. Now she embraces it. That turn marks the time when she began to converse with the Lord “casually, personally.” 

She does say the Rosary and other formal prayers. But she also simply speaks God. 

“And I listen, of course,” she said. Using something like the Gestalt “empty chair” technique, she is ready to hear answers that aren’t verbal. 

‘What am I supposed to do now?’

Her faith began to grow many years before she took up a paintbrush, in a physically active season of her life, full of backpacking and canoeing. The beauty of the natural world drew her to the Lord, and she returned the favor by throwing herself wholeheartedly into gardening and teaching others how to do it. 

But her physical challenges began to mount, until a debilitating bout of pain and inflammation landed her in bed for five days. When she got back on her feet, she headed to adoration to hash things out with God. 

“I sat down in a pew, and said, ‘Lord, you made me a gardener.’ I was crying, ‘I can’t do this anymore. You know I can’t do this. What am I supposed to do now?’… Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.

Wonderful and ridiculous

Can you stand to hear a story that’s probably a little too personal for these august pages? Because I have one! And I do have a reason for telling it.

I’m 50 years old. I have 10 children, and the youngest one just turned 10. I have grey hair and wrinkles and a little arthritis, and I spend more time hunting for my reading glasses than I spend on almost any other activity. The other day, I couldn’t remember the word “fork.”

I also have a body that stubbornly continues to keep popping out ova every month, right on schedule. As far as I can tell, I could probably get pregnant again if I wanted to, which I most adamantly do not. I know the chances of carrying a healthy baby to term at my age are (unlike myself) much slimmer than they used to be, but they certainly aren’t zero. I look at my family history and I think, nah, I’m not taking any chances.

I really like walking past the diaper aisle without buying anything! I like being able to take medicine without freaking out about possible birth defects. I prefer to spend my days in agonizing worry over the 10 children I already have, thank you very much. I really don’t want another baby.

Well, maybe a little bit. I do like babies. I actually love babies. If we had another baby, I would adore him from the very first second I knew he existed, and it would be incredible. It would be amazing. It would be preposterous. It would be insane. It would be so nice.

These are the thoughts that run through my head every month.

So the other morning, I groaned as I dragged my sorry self out of bed to do what I not-very-funnily call “my chemistry experiment,” to see if I was fertile that day or not. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in my schlumpy old pajamas and thought how absurd it was that I still have to DO this. I’m so old! It’s so ridiculous! I am HALF A CENTURY OLD.

Then I thought, and how ridiculous would it be to show up at the OB/GYN with my grey hair and wrinkles and arthritis and a big ol’ pregnant belly? So I sighed, and did my dang fertility test.

I was chatting about this with some Catholic women my age, about how ridiculous it would be; and one of them said that, if I were pregnant, it wouldn’t be ridiculous. It would be beautiful!

Ladies and gentlemen, it would be both.

Two things can be true at the same time. In fact, most true things are at least two things at the same time. When we get ourselves into trouble is when we expect some human experience to be pure, unmixed, and clearly labelled as one thing or another.

Let me give you some more examples…. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image by Matthew McPherrin via Flickr (Creative Commons)