What’s for supper? Vol. 403: Nagi knows

Happy Friday! Since it is apparently indeed Friday. There has not been one single day this week when I knew what day it was, so why start now? 

I will begin with an abject failure from last Friday, which I hadn’t yet made when I wrote last Friday’s post. It was French onion pasta, and the recipe included fresh thyme, white wine, tons of freshly-grated cheese, and all kinds of lovely things. How could it go wrong? 

I still don’t know, but wheeee-ew. The recipe said to make sure you measure the liquids carefully so it didn’t turn out soupy. So I did, and it did. So I spooned off quite a bit of the liquid before baking it, and apparently that’s where all the flavor was? But also, it was still soupy. 

Doesn’t look terrible in this picture, but believe me. It was terrible. It tasted like the water you use to wash actual food. Man! Oh well. 

Anyway, on to what we had this past week: 

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet

In the morning, I drove into Nice New Hampshire and picked up a ton of windows from a guy who was converting a porch into a room.

The windows themselves are great (I think I got fourteen total), and also — and this may be something only cheapskate DIYers will understand — it was encouraging to get in on these materials so early in their life. Lots and lots of free and cheap windows are described as “collected to build a greenhouse but decided to go another route,” and that is . . . a little alarming. Because I am building a greenhouse/porch/solarium. But things will be different for me! I will collect windows, but I will not go another route! Probably!!

Then I went shopping, and we had leftovers for supper. I added taquitos, but there were so much leftover food, we didn’t really need them, and then Clara stopped by with some day-old baguettes from the bakery she works at. I myself mostly had the Middle Eastern Meatballs with yogurt sauce and Jerusalem salad, and also more day-old bread than you might think one person could even want.

Open photo

I’m amazed at how well this planned leftover day is working out. Much less food waste, obviously, and the fridge is much tidier; and people are actually looking forward to it, either because you get a second shot at a nice meal, or because of the frozen food I add. Most of all, it’s super helpful to have a stress-free meal to count on after shopping on Saturdays.

SUNDAY
Nachos

Sunday we had nachos (I make really subpar nachos, and I just don’t care. They’re just chips, seasoned meat, jalapeños, and cheese. Salsa and sour cream on the side. It’s fine. 

I also made Monday’s meal on Sunday. For whatever reason, I’ve been building up a supply of lamb shanks for the last several months, one or two at a time whenever they went on sale, and it was finally time to drag them all out of the freezer and do something. I decided on this curry recipe. 

I will tell you ahead of time that it was a tiny bit disappointing. It had all the right spices in it, but the end flavor was just kind of muddy, and the lamb was not nearly as tender as I hoped. It was good, just not great!

Anyway, I had fun making it. First I browned up the lamb

much to the dog’s interest. And I do mean MUCH

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and then I made a paste out of all the spices

then browned up some onions and other spices

then you add a bunch of chopped tomatoes and the spice paste

and also chicken broth and coconut milk, and then you put the lamb in. I let it simmer for several hours and then packed it into the fridge for the night. 

MONDAY
Lamb curry, rice, pita, pomegranates

Monday, the kids had the day off, and I think Moe and Clara stopped by for supper, but I can’t even remember which day that was. I started the lamb heating up a few hours before supper, and made a big pot of basmati rice. I soaked it first, and that really added to the light, feathery texture of the rice, so I’ll be doing that going forward. Gosh, I love basmati rice. 

A few hours before supper, I started some naan. I am not entirely happy with the various recipes I’ve tried, so this time I went with the Recipe Tin Eats version, which doesn’t include yogurt, but does include a little egg and ghee. 

Friends, Nagi was right again. It turned out so good. Much fluffier than any other naan I’ve made, and it had a nice flavor, too.

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I couldn’t find my iron frying pan, but this double-walled steel one worked fine. I wish I had been a little more assiduous about wiping the burnt flour out of the pan in between naans, but I will still very happy with the results. 

So then it was supper time! Rice was ready, naan was ready, and I had cut up some pomegranates and some cilantro, and all I had to do was combine the two pots of lamb curry into one very large, brimming pot and carry it into the dining room without–

never mind. I sloshed a little bit out, slipped in it, and sloshed a lot of it out. But didn’t drop any actual meat! But sheesh, what a mess. You can see, this is a fairly greasy recipe, which is one thing I wasn’t crazy about. I think you can see my actual slipping toe marks, which is kind of funny. 

ANYWAY, it was good, though!

Pretty good. Like I said, a little muddy, and just not as flavorful as I was hoping, considering how many THINGS went into it. There was a lot left over, and I cut the meat into pieces and returned it to the masala sauce, and I’m kind of looking forward to Saturday. It was fun having some of the big kids over, anyway. It’s very jolly when they’re here. 

TUESDAY
Bagel, egg, cheese, sausage sandwiches; OJ

Over the weekend, Damien pushed really hard and got the porch debris to the dump, which was a huge relief. On Tuesday, I got out there with a rake and got the small bits, so it looks much more respectabiggle out there. I found a very old bone which I’m about 87% sure is a chicken bone. 

In the late afternoon we had the pleasure of watching Moe read some of his short stories at an event at the college. He won a creative writing award and also recently got an internship with a publisher, and it was hard to say what was more gratifying: Hearing his excellent work, or hearing everyone say nice things about him!

Then we got home and had bagel sandwiches. I tried the oven rack toasting method again, and had slightly more success with the bagels than I did with bread, because they are more rigid

Turns out the kids are much more willing to eat duck eggs if you scramble them than if you fry them! Good to know. 

I don’t really blame the kids for feeling a little icky about eating the duck eggs. You spend enough time witnessing the ducks’ personal habits, and you start to feel a real need for some kind of buffer. I get it. Lucky for me, the main thing I care about is eating, so I love duck eggs, despite What I Know. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken drumsticks two ways, vegetables and dip, chips

In the morning, I drove into Sticksville and picked up a beautiful heavy door, only $20. The lady says, “I’m sorry I can’t help you lift it; I’ve hurt my back” and I said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m just rushing around lifting as much heavy stuff as I can before I have surgery myself” and she says “What kind of surgery?” and I said, “Uh, hernia.” and we just kind of looked at each other like, well, bitches be crazy. 

Then I got home and tried to do some writing, and then got an irresistible urge to, uh, plant a bunch of marigolds for the turtle to eat. 

I have an awful lot of seeds hanging around, and seeds go through my kitchen constantly. Last year I did some winter sowing (starting seeds inside jugs outdoors, like miniature greenhouses, so they are somewhat self-watering and are already hardened off and start to germinate earlier), which is a nice way to get through the dark part of winter. But I’m having fun finding edible plants I can grow right now. The turtle has been very active and adventurous lately, and is enjoying the geraniums and pansies I put in his tank. 

I roasted a bunch of chicken drumsticks with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then I made two sauces: One with honey, mustard, and lemon juice, and one with buffalo sauce and melted butter. Then I divided the chicken and mixed half with one sauce, half with the other. 

I did this in the morning, and then I had the kids start heating the chicken up in the evening while I was out, and by dinner time, there were two tasty chickens from which to choose. Also veggies and dip and chips. 

Pretty popular meal. It was only a tiny bit of extra work to do the two kinds of sauce. 

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, tomato soup with rice

Thursday is an absolute blur. In retrospect, I was starting to hatch a migraine (WHICH, I should mention, are much rarer than they used to be! Emgality has really made a difference), and it was one of those days where I had to think about where to put my foot for every step I took, etc. You know, just living is a lot of work sometimes. 

So for supper, we just had grilled ham and cheese on sourdough bread, and I heated up some condensed tomato soup with milk, and I put leftover basmati rice in mine. 

I absolutely love cream of tomato soup with rice in it. Makes you feel like you’re sitting in someone’s lap.

FRIDAY
Ravioli?

I feel like it might be ravioli. For lo, the migraine has come into full power and I don’t know much. But at least we have windows! Lots and lots of windows, and surely everything will work out, one way or another. Or maybe we’ll go another route. 

Speaking of which, I stopped interacting with Twitter about a month ago, and yesterday I finally started up with Bluesky. It’s nice! It’s like Twitter used to be, and lots of people are making a conscious effort to be friendly and pleasant and not horrible. If you’re there, let’s connect! 

What’s for supper? Vol. 402: I see what your problem is

Happy Friday! I have had a week full of strange and not strictly necessary projects, and now I’m getting ready for a CAT scan for hernia surgery. Hoping they take a look inside and immediately realize I have a deviled egg in my carburetor, and that’s what’s been causing . . . everything.  

In the mean time, here’s what we ate this week!

SATURDAY
Pork ribs, mashed potatoes, salad, apple pie

Clara’s boyfriend Wesley came over to tear down our porch! Which wasn’t actually the plan for this month, but when someone offers to tear down your porch as a favor, you don’t say no (if your porch looks like our porch did, anyway). 

Here is the before:

and here is the after:

I am now working on plans for a new porch, which I’m currently thinking of as an unheated lean-to sunroom with a brick floor and possible stained glass window accents, but talk is cheap. We shall see. I don’t think there will be any building until spring; we’ll just cover up the scars for the winter. 

Anyway, the least we could do was make a nice meal, so Damien slow-cooked three racks of ribs in the oven, and I made a salad and mashed potatoes, and a few apple pies. 

This is his method for cooking ribs in the oven:
Slather them with mustard, and cover that with a sugar rub

Jump to Recipe

Turn the oven to 250 and put the ribs in, covered with tinfoil. Cook for three-and-a-half hours. Baste the ribs with BBQ sauce (I think he used Sweet Baby Ray’s), turn th oven up to 400 and cook, uncovered, for half an hour. Then turn on the broiler, baste on more BBQ sauce, and finish the ribs to a slight char. 

Absolutely magnificent. The meat just dropped off the bones. 

I made a ton of pie crust and made two apple pies. One was a basket weave with little squares and stars on it. I was going for a sort of American quilt look, but it didn’t quite come off. 

The other one was more successful. I made a braided edge, then added a bunch of roses and another braid down the middle, and then some leaves made with a wiggly vegetable cutter, and tiny balls of dough here and there. 

If you see it from the top, it looks a tiny bit like the back of an alpine maiden’s head, which isn’t really what I was going for! It was fancy, though. 

I made the filling with a mixture of Empire and Macintosh apples, sugar, cinnamon, a little salt, and some flour, and then dotted with butter. I also glazed the top with an egg wash and sprinkled it with a little sugar. I think I baked it at 425 for ten minutes and then at 350 for another 35 minutes or so, but my memory is hazy. 

Fine pies. 

I like Macintosh for the flavor, but Empire keeps its shape, so the pie doesn’t collapse. Cortland is also good for this. 

SUNDAY
Leftover buffet, peach crisp  

Sunday after Mass I went shopping, and then we had our customary weekend leftover buffet, plus pizza pockets. 

I had already taken a bag of frozen peaches out of the fridge yesterday, before I decided to make apple pies; so I was more or less forced to make some peach crisp. I made the King Arthur cheater’s streusel again (a box of cake mix and most of a stick of melted butter, scrunched into clumps and spread in a pan and baked for twenty minutes or so. For this one, I added in some cinnamon before baking), and I mixed the peaches up with uhhhhhhh I think brown sugar, vanilla, maybe cardamom, butter, and cornstarch? It seems like so long ago. I simmered and stirred it until it was thickened up, poured it into ramekins, and topped it with the streusel, and then baked it for . . . I’m going to stop pretending this is a recipe. I baked it until it was done

and served it warm with vanilla ice cream. 

Stupendous. 

MONDAY
Kofta meatballs, Jerusalem salad, yogurt sauce, pita

My memories of Monday are vague at best. I do remember making a ton of meatballs, and thinking, “This is too many meatballs” but being unable to stop.

The plan was koftas, which are supposed to be on sticks and are supposed to be roasted, but I couldn’t find any skewers, so I just made meatballs more or less following this recipe

Jump to Recipe

except not really. I just dumped in an insane amount of za’atar, sumac, aleppo pepper, cumin, and then I forgot how far east I was going and put in some garam masala. And salt. No regrets! They were absolutely delicious. 

I made some yogurt sauce with lots of fresh garlic and fresh lemon juice, and a Jerusalem salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, flat leaf parsley, fresh mint, lemon juice, salt, and a little olive oil. 

and we just had store-bought pita. 

Excellent meal. Really tasty and fun. 

Also on Monday, I made my first attempt and hanging up gourds to dry and cure them. This was neither tasty nor fun, and I shall never forget the look my three teenage daughters gave me when I tried to pick up the wire rack with seventy gourds dangling off it on rubber bands, while they were trying to watch TV. Anyway, now we have gourds all over the house and I don’t care. 

TUESDAY
Chicken quesadillas, chips and salsa

Tuesday was, of course, election day, and I have nothing to say about that. Well, except that I was about 80% ready to vote American Solidarity Party, but I’d been having more and more qualms all week, and then when I got into the voting booth, I suddenly realized I’d have to write them in and I couldn’t remember the candidate’s name. I AM VERY TIRED. So I voted for Harris and then went home and made a nice hot meal, which. At least we have that. 

I did prep in the morning. I heated up some oil and thickly seasoned some boneless chicken thighs with Tony Cachere’s seasoning (again with some geographical confusion) and slowly pan fried the chicken until it was done. I had my quesadilla with chicken, cheddar cheese, and spinach and it was delicious. 

WEDNESDAY
Beef stir fry and rice, pineapple

Wednesday was the first day the dump was open, so Damien did a ton of rubble clearing, and I did something or other, I forget what. This whole week has been so full of weird tasks and confusing errands, I just don’t even know. Oh, I think I finally go the bulbs in the ground. I ended up with KIND OF A LOT OF BULBS, so I planted them all together dumped white pepper in the holes, covered them, doused that with red pepper, and then put cedar mulch on top.

Let’s see ’em make a canoe out of that!

I got home super late and hadn’t done anything but start some rice cooking in the Instant Pot, so threw together the world’s most distracted stir fry, and it honestly turned out a little weird, but it wasn’t bad. 

 I had Corrie partially brown up some sliced beef while I made a sauce.

I heated up some sesame oil and browned some fresh minced garlic and ginger, then added some brown sugar and whisked that until it darkened. Then I added some mirin, then a roux of corn starch and soy sauce. I whisked this all together until it was thick, then added it to the meat, and threw in some broccoli and water chestnuts and cooked it until the meat was done and the broccoli was lightly cooked. 

It really was too sweet, and I wish I had added more soy sauce and less corn starch, but it was hot and truly not bad. 

THURSDAY
Pizza

Thursday morning I rented a cargo van and Clara and I drove a few towns over and picked up eight enormous windows! This was so nice, because what happened was, this woman on Facebook marketplace was offering windows and doors and frames from a solarium, which of course I wanted. But I was so tired, I told her I would come the next day, instead of the day we agreed upon, and someone beat me to the materials. But a few days later, she messaged me to say she had more windows, and wanted to give me first shot at them! Wasn’t that nice? So I went over speedily and picked them up . . . less speedily. Mofos were heavy. They are 77-3/4 by 48 inches, and had two layers of glass.

I threw as much padding as I could think of into the van: Yoga mats, cardboard, styrofoam, and towels, plus ratchet straps, and gloves and masking tape, which I did not end up using. We hoisted the glass up into the van and stored them on end, with padding in between, and strapped the whole thing together, and it didn’t budge an inch all the way home. 

I used a roller to help get the glass back out of the van,

LOOK HOW BIG THESE WINDOWS ARE. 

So now they’re propped up against the house waiting for me to do something amazing, which may or may not ever happen, but at least we have glass now! 

That evening, Elijah was working and Damien drove Sophia, Lucy, and Irene to an Orla Garland concert, so I found myself alone in the house with Benny and Corrie, which rarely happens! I took the opportunity to make exactly the kind of pizza we all wanted, which turned out to be plain cheese for the girls, and Hawaiian for me. Then we watched old Mickey Mouse cartoons and yelled at each other until bedtime. 

FRIDAY
French onion pasta

The recipe I was going to use is on a supermarket website that is down, and I had to do an interview and now I have to go see if my abdomen is haunted or what, and MAYBE this isn’t the best possible day to try a new recipe anyway. But when did I ever [gestures to giant stack of glass and wire rack full of dangling gourds for no apparent reason] claim to be a good judge of that kind of thing? 

Oh, I forgot, one more thing: We did have BLTs last Friday, it being All Saints Day, which is a . . .  Solemnmeaty. Pretend I didn’t say that. Anyway, I tried that trick for making lots of toast in the oven in one batch, where you put the two oven racks close together, put a pan on the bottom one, and then prop the bread through the top one. Like this:

And it. . . sort of worked, basically. The problem was that, when I slid the racks into place in the oven, some of the bread slithered down from between the wires of the rack and lay flat on the pan. But it was still somewhat better than just laying them down on and remembering to flip them over before they burnt,  and definitely better than making round after round of toast in the toaster, so we’ll call that a success. We’ll call it all a success! 

Oh, if you happened to notice everything was on red plates this week, that’s because I bought a big package of them for Benny’s Hellboy costume, and we had a lot of leftover plates. I tell you, this is why you come here: For gripping narratives like this. 

I will leave the final word with Corrie, who didn’t like the kofta meatballs or the jerusalem salad, but she did make this:

and that has made all the difference. 

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sugar smoked ribs

the proportions are flexible here. You can adjust the sugar rub to make it more or less spicy or sweet. Just pile tons of everything on and give it puh-lenty of time to smoke.

Ingredients

  • rack pork ribs
  • yellow mustard
  • Coke
  • extra brown sugar

For the sugar rub:

  • 1-1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 2 Tbsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp white pepper

Instructions

  1. Coat the ribs in yellow mustard and cover them with sugar rub mixture

  2. Smoke at 225 for 3 hours

  3. Take ribs out, make a sort of envelope of tin foil and pour Coke and brown sugar over them. close up the envelope.

  4. Return ribs to smoker and cook another 2 hours.

  5. Remove tinfoil and smoke another 45-min.

  6. Finish on grill to give it a char.

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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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koftas

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground beef
  • 3 onions
  • 1 head (head, not clove) garlic
  • 2 bunches parsley
  • 5 slices bread
  • salt and pepper
  • 1.5 tsp nutmeg
  • 2 tsp paprika
  • 2 Tbsp zataar

Instructions

  1. Put the wooden skewers in water to soak for about thirty minutes before you plan to form the kebabs.

  2. Put the onions, garlic, and parsley in a food processor and chop it.

  3. Put the meat in a large bowl and add the chopped onion mixture to it.

  4. Toast the bread, then put it in a bowl with warm water to soften it. Squeeze the water out and add that to the bowl with the meat.

  5. Add in the seasonings and squish it up with your hands until all the ingredients are well combined.

  6. Using your hands, form logs of meat around the skewers. They should be about an inch and a half in diameter.

  7. Grill over coals if you can. If they fall apart too much, you can cook them on a hot oiled griddle, or broil them. Turn to brown all sides.

Ethical shopping: What does it really accomplish?

My mother used to go to great lengths to be an ethical shopper. Some of this happened organically, because she had very little money to spend, and would buy second-hand whenever she could, and the money would stay right in her little town, no problem.

But some things need to be purchased new, and she decided that she would not buy anything made in China. She did not want to materially support the human rights abuses so rampant in Chinese factories. So, she simply stopped.

This wasn’t merely inconvenient; it forced really broad changes in how she shopped and lived, because she didn’t have the luxury of just spending more money (and more time) on goods that were ethically produced.

So, she ended up wearing clothes she didn’t like, just because they weren’t made in China, and having to budget very severely so as to be able to afford domestically made goods for the house. She even had to give up the satisfaction of buying some presents that she knew her beloved grandchildren would love, and settling for something that wasn’t as perfect, because the perfect ones were made in China. It was a sacrifice.

It’s not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I am pretty maxed out just keeping my kids in clothes and supplies, and most times, I don’t even look at the label. We do buy used goods whenever we can; but for the most part, I’m looking for something in my budget that isn’t overtly offensive in appearance, and that keeps me busy enough.

I do have a few rules, though; I swore off shopping at Temu or Shein (or other retailers that are so cheap, they cannot possibly be paying their workers actual wages), and I swore off buying anything that says Nestle on it, because they’re so openly evil toward the poor in developing nations. Sure, it’s kind of random, but it’s what I’m doing right now.

My approach is not actually that much different from my mother’s, although she was stricter with herself. We both have a very clear idea of what we’re trying to achieve…Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Vaccines and other victims of their own success (like Jesus)

The one-two punch of the Covid-19 pandemic and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s return to the national stage have revived the perennial topic of vaccine denialism. There are many reasons this skepticism remains so popular, some more understandable than others. A friend was recently freaking out about vaccines. She had just vaccinated her daughter, and now the kid was having some unpleasant symptoms. My friend was sure of two things: The symptoms were a reaction to the vaccine, and they were horribly dangerous, possibly lethal.

No, three things: that this was evidence she had made a mistake. Her kid was suffering, and therefore she should not have vaccinated her.

I know where she was coming from. My kids and I are all fully vaccinated with every recommended vaccine, and I have done enough research that I understand more or less how they work, what is in them and why they are so important. At the same time, I am old enough to see that just because something is backed by science does not mean it is infallible. What I am not old enough to remember is what life was like before vaccines. I have a single chickenpox scar on my chin, but I never saw mumps, never saw rubella, never saw polio. My childhood friends all survived childhood.

And it may seem, because of this basically healthy world we live in, that the choice we face is between deciding to take the risk of bad side effects or refusing to take that risk. But really, the choice is between taking the risk of massive suffering from horrifying diseases or taking the much smaller risk of much lesser suffering from vaccinating. That is the real choice.

But vaccines are the victim of their own success. Because they have been so effective, people forget what they are protecting us against, forget why they are necessary.

Salvation is the same.

If we have grown up Catholic, or even if our conversion or reversion was a few years ago, it is very easy to start taking salvation for granted. Even people who are not Christian themselves have been marinating in Christianity for so long, they don’t recognize it for what it is, which is the very air we breathe. Honest historians do know this and will point out just how much Christianity has permeated and permanently transformed the world we live in.

But because Christianity is so familiar, we simply see it as the norm rather than as something novel, amazing and transformative. This is partly because we don’t clearly understand what life was like before it—or without it.

Jesus Christ, too, is a victim of his own success.

Because we can’t remember or conceive of life without Christ, we may start to think a Christless life wasn’t so bad, that the real threat of entering into the waters of baptism are the side effects that may come along with it: things like the dullness of having to do all those churchy obligations or the embarrassment of living in ways our friends or family don’t understand or the real pains of self-denial. Or that you might have to make big changes in your life.

So is it worth the risk? Is it true that the immense benefits of being Christian outweigh its likely risks?

Before I answer that question, let’s return to the original analogy. I used to think that vaccine skeptics were just people who hadn’t done their homework or who did not understand very much history or science. Now I see…Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Photo by Steven Kamps on Unsplash

What’s for supper? Vol. 401: Hot, fast, cheap, and salty, just like. . . someone else

Happy All Saints Day! It is a solemnity, which means it’s a meat day! But most of all, it is a candy day. I mean most of all it is a holy day. With candy.

But even more than that, it was a monstrously (not in the spooky fun way, but in the very adult boring way) busy week. Because I have the time management skills of a much stupider person, I left myself a ton of writing deadlines for the week before Halloween, and I wrote something like 12,000 words this week, which is a lot for a slob like me! So I planned meals accordingly

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet plus taquitos and burritos

Left over from last week  was zuppa toscana, squash muffins, and bo ssam. Someone had put the soup in the fridge in its original pot, covered it with plastic wrap, and then put two pies on top of it, but you do what you gotta do (which is eat leftover soup, and it was delicious). 

SUNDAY
Kids spaghetti; adults Indian food

On Sunday Damien and I did our belated anniversary outing in two parts. First we went kayaking on Meetinghouse Pond, then we came home and I worked on Halloween costumes and Damien worked on . . . I forget what, he always has ten projects going. Probably cars or heating ducts or possibly 12,000 words of his own, which he just does, and does not make an ungodly fuss about.

Then we went out for Indian food. We had a vegetarian sampler plate which had pakora and various other fried delicacies that I forget what they’re called, with a trio of dipping sauces. I ordered beef rogan josh (which sounds like a podcaster, but is actually delicious). Having nothing to prove, I requested “medium spicy,” and it was perfect. Damien had I think lamb chettinad with full spice, and he had no regrets. We both had rice and garlic chive naan. 

I was so hungry and it was so good, I didn’t take any pictures. Wonderful food, though. Royal Spice in Troy does not miss, and their staff is super friendly. Then we went to Target, I forget why, and we also checked out a new-to-us store, Five Below. We both kind of loved it. We are what’s wrong with America today. I barely restrained myself from buying ten $5 himalayan salt lamps. $5!! My goodness.

We did take pictures kayaking, and it was lovely.

 

I somehow never realized before that pond weeds and water lily leaves turn color in the autumn, too.  We also hadn’t really thought about the dangers of falling into chilly water, though. Pretty dangerous, oops! We’ll be staying on land in cold weather until we get some better gear, so as not to court death and whatnot. 

MONDAY
Monday I truly do not remember what we ate. It was my turn to clean the kitchen, even, and it’s just not ringing a bell. Oh, I think it was tacos. 

TUESDAY
Oven fried chicken, baked potato, roast butternut squash, pomagranates

I guess I felt like I should cook at least one meal, so I did! Here’s my oven fried chicken recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I started the chicken soaking in egg and milk in the morning, and, following a premonition, pre-baked the potatoes and prepped the squash. I stabbed it all over with a fork and hacked off the ends and microwaved it for four minutes. Then it was easy to peel, so I peeled it, cut it, scooped out the seeds and pulp, and cut it into cubes. I spread them on a pan and drizzled them with hot honey, olive oil, salt, pepper and cardamom. 

Later in the afternoon, still trusting the premonition, I dredged the chicken in seasoned flour and cleaned the kitchen and then headed out for the afternoon driving. It’s not an interesting story, but it does involve two trips to Home Depot and one trip to the Home Depot bathroom and a leetle bit of screaming, and by the time I got home, boy was I glad I had prepped all that food. 

Cooked the chicken and threw the potatoes back in to warm them up, and then added the squash into the oven halfway through the cooking time. Cut up some pomegranates I forgot I had, and boop!

A really nice meal, and not even super late. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken burgers, chips

Just chicken burgers and chips. Then Benny, Corrie and I made treats for their school parties on Thursday. I bought a bunch of pre-made rice krispie treats and heated up candy melts in the microwave, and we made 40 weird little Frankensteins. 

It took me 27 years, but I’m finally figuring out how to chill the heck out over kitchen projects with kids. Unfortunately, my new zen attitude has been paired with a type A child who thinks you’re yelling at her if you happen to blink in the wrong manner, but I suppose I had it coming. Anyway, everybody liked the Frankensteins. 

THURSDAY
Hot dogs, french fries

Thursday was, of course, Halloween. One thing I haven’t learned, in 27 years, is that it takes half an hour to get home from the school costume parade, so 4:00 at the soonest, and you really truly have to eat some kind of protein, and then trick or treating starts at 5:30, AND SO, it would be better not to plan costumes that involve a lot of face paint and spirit gum. Also, by about 5:10 I was plum out of zen attitude. So there was a wee bit of tension in the old Fisher household, but I, at least, ate a decent dinner 

by which I mean I bought hot dogs but not really hot dog buns, so much. 
And I DID get those kids out the door basically on time (we were supposed to meet someone, is why we had a specific time), and we ended up having a super fun night.

My older kids were totally in charge of their own costumes, and they did me proud with hot glue and spray paint, paper mache and tin foil. 

We had a Furiosa: 

A Frankenstein (she had a purple blazer and black shirt, but had already worn this ensemble twice on previous days, so she just decided to chillaxulate with the head for trick or treating) 

A very specific Robin, but I forget which one (and it’s a shame you can’t see her shoes, which were VERY detailed), paired with a very specific Batman

And then the costumes I made were Hell Boy

and *sigh* a vampire warrior princess, who had fang issues, backup fang issues, belt issues, cloak issues, bag issues, boot issues, and of course face paint issues, not to mention mother issues, but ENDED UP HAVING A REALLY GOOD TIME, whew. 

I must indulge myself and show a separate photo of her boots, which I thought were awesome.

Duct tape and disposable plastic plates, and they did not fall apart. 

When we got home, I did my best to convince the kids there had been a massive Laffy Taffy recall and I would be happy to help them dispose of it, but they were onto me. I would have fallen for that! 

FRIDAY
BLT’s 

Because it’s All Saints Day, and today we eat bacon! And I just now realized I forgot to buy rye bread. We let the kids stay home from school because some of the kids had a hike, which is bullshit, and some of the kids were tired from staying up and watching silly movies, which is just plain solid parenting. 

And me, I’m working at my desk which is my bed, setting up laptop and cords and pillows to make me sit up straight.
Now where is my phone?
Yanks away pillows and blankets and more pillows.
Ah, there it is!
Puts pillows back on top of phone. 
Tries to start laptop.
Won’t start.
Now where is my phone?

I also wondered why I was so cold, and then noticed I had my robe slung across my shoulder so I wouldn’t lose it. Like I said, it’s called “time management,” look it up. I did set an alarm so we don’t forget to go to Mass. Don’t forget! And then eat some bacon if you can. 

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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.

Memento vivere

At our house, there are no skeletons in the closet. All our skeletons — well, all the decorative ones — are outside, zip-tied to the trees, holding up the mailbox, and popping up between dead sunflower stalks. We are officially One Of Those Skeleton Houses, and they are there year-round, not just during Halloween.

This is hardly an edgy aesthetic these days. Lots of people set up elaborate skeleton displays at this time of year, investing hundreds of dollars in the deluxe 12-foot ones that loom over suburban streets. Lots of people never take their skeletons down and simply add Santa hats or Valentine hearts or Easter bunny ears, as the season demands.

But I’m different. I have a unique personal reason for keeping my skeletons up all the time, and it is this: I like skeletons. I always have. I think they are beautiful, charming and fascinating, tragic and dear. I also have a painting of a skull on our family altar and a painted, tin-winged skeleton Sacred Heart in the dining room, and I’m working on carving a melancholy little skull out of scrap cedar for my cold weather hobby. In elementary school, I obsessively drew skeletons dancing, climbing ladders and raking leaves. In college, I startled the chef by running a load of leftover ham hocks through the industrial dishwasher because I wanted to sketch those elegant bony curves and undulations. I just like skeletons! I think they’re neat.

For a while, I tried to persuade myself that this was a good old Catholic memento mori-type fascination. I was keeping all these skulls around as a reminder of my mortality, just like St. Francis or St. Jerome. Do all your work and live all your life as if it’s your last day on earth because you never know: It might be. Make your peace with death while you still have the choice, because it’s coming either way.

I wish this were my motivation, but it’s not. The last time death came to collect someone I cared about, I fell to pieces, as if no one had ever died before, and this was some new, monstrous means of torture designed specifically to make me, in particular, unhappy.

So I can’t claim to be particularly comfortable with death. Instead, I have made my peace with a related concept: not the fleetness of life, but the perseverance of the living, even after death. The tenacity, the sheer, dogged refusal of the human body to go completely away.

The German word sitzfleisch, which translates, as you might guess, “sitting flesh,” means the kind of single-minded persistence you need to, well, sit on your bum until you get the job done. And, in fact, sitzfleisch also means your bodily bottom, your “sit meat.”

Sometimes, it means not so much the meat you park in the chair as the patience you will need to sit in one spot until things resolve themselves, no matter how long it takes.

So here we arrive back at skeletons. There is nothing more patient than a skeleton. Osteogenesis, the process of growing bones, begins in the first few weeks after conception. Tiny little skeleton, bitty little pretty bones, raring to go, gratefully, eagerly borrowing calcium from the mother’s bones and teeth, with no intention of giving it back. Single-mindedly intent on adding to itself and not collapsing back into nothingness, while the mother, knowing or unknowing, steadfastly releases herself into building someone else.

This, too, is sitzfleisch…Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 400 and other milestones

Happy Fr–

wait. It’s Friday, seriously? AGAIN? ALREADY??

Yes, all right, fine, happy Friday, then [fetches head which has fallen off shoulders in dismay and rolled under the bed; dusts it off, glues it back on neck with hot glue, ouch, hot, ouch].

Here is what we had this apparently past week:

SUNDAY
Leftover chili, egg rolls, apple pie and ice cream

Saturday Leftover Buffet was a bit of a bust this week because the kid on refrigerator duty forgot it was a thing, and threw all the week’s leftovers away. But you know what, guys. I was like, “The chili, too?” and she was like, “Yeah, sorry” and I was like, “Wait, is this it, in the trash?” and she was like, “Yeah, I threw it away” and I was like, “BUT IT’S THE ONLY THING IN THE TRASH.”

A brand new trash liner, with no trash in it, just chili.

So,,,

when you think about it, really all that happened is that she moved the chili from the pot to an unused plastic bag.

So,,,

I moved it back from the bag onto the stove and heated it up again. I’m not sorry! I’m not sorry!!! It was a brand new liner! And I was really looking forward to that chili! 

To my credit, I did tell Damien what happened before I served it, and he said it was okay. Then 

DAMIEN DON’T READ THIS PART

I found out that actually the kid had also thrown out some leftover fried rice, and poured the chili on top of it, and I didn’t notice, and just heated it up all together.

And this, I did not tell anyone. 

It was still good chili! Had a little more rice, pork, and scrambled eggs in it than absolutely necessary, but who among us. 

Anyway, for some reason I had blurted out that we never had any apple desserts from all those apples we picked the other week, and then I blurted out that I would make some pies, so, I did. 

Truly, they were not the finest-looking pies known to mankind. I made a cute little extra pie for Millie but then ran out of crust for the second of the two big pies, so I went back to that cake mix streusel recipe that I made several weeks ago for the peach whatnot. 

Here is my apple pie dough recipe:

Jump to Recipe

and then I just mixed up the apple slices with a bunch of sugar, a tiny bit of salt, some cinnamon, and a bit of flour, and then piled it onto the crust and dotted it with butter. No recipe, just vibes. I brushed the top crust with egg white beaten up with water, and then sprinkled it with sugar. Baked at 450 for ten minutes and then turned it down to 350 for another 35 minutes or so, covered with tinfoil toward the end. 

I used Macintosh apples even though they cook down really flat and mushy, because Macintosh apples are the best tasting apples, no question. So the pies kind of looked like someone had stepped on them, but they were fresh, hot pies from fresh, local apples! Good stuff. 

The streusel topping was a little weird. I used yellow cake mix and only had a few tablespoons of butter in the house, so I hastily sloshed in some vegetable oil, scrunched it up, and baked it until it was firm. It was actually fine that way. I sprinkled the baked streusel on top of the unbaked pie, sprinkled some cinnamon on top, and baked it that way. It’s not my absolute favorite – it’s very sweet, as cake mix is, and has a tiny bit of a starchy taste. But it’s a great trick to have up your sleeve if you’re unexpectedly short of pie crust. 

And then we went to bed earlyish! Big day tomorrow! 

SUNDAY 
Park food and McDonald’s 

We missed the Cheshire Fair over the summer, so we decided to go to The Big E fair in September, but we were down to like .75 of a car at that point, so we truly had no choice but to go to  Screeemfest at Canobie Lake Park in October. And there was screeeming! It’s all the regular amusement park stuff, minus the water park area, but plus weird Halloween decoration, lots of music of varying scariness, fog machines, and people stomping around in costumes. I guess there is a parade, and probably some other stuff as it gets darker. They also have four themed haunted houses, which I stayed out of completely because I don’t like being scared. 

Bunch o’ pictures here:

In food news, before we left the house around 11:30, I dry brined two enormous, fatty pork shoulders, wrapped them up, and stowed them in the fridge. It takes a little less than two hours to get to the park, and we had some sandwiches in the parking lot first, according to tradition. 

We had such a nice time at Canobie. I love that place. All the lights — the colored lights on the rides, and the little globe lights dotted all over the park — started to come on just as Benny and I got on the Ferris Wheel, and oh, it was lovely. 

We stayed almost eight hours! Life is just so much more POSSIBLE when your kids aren’t all little. We stopped for burgers on the way home and then collapsed into bed. 

MONDAY
Bo ssam, rice, pineapple and mango 

The next day was a school day and, well, you can take the Fishers out of homeschool, but you can’t take the homeschool out of the Fishers. I told everyone they could stay home on account of we were tired. Poor Irene had a dentist appointment, but not first thing in the morning, and the kids devoted the rest of the day to lounging about.

Around 11, I put both hunks of pork in the oven at 300, on pans double wrapped in tin foil. 

About six hours later, I slathered a paste of brown sugar, cider vinegar, and salt on top and cranked the oven up to 500 for ten minutes or so. (More detailed recipe here, with lots of delicious extras, but I have pared it down to the bare minimum, and all I do is the salt and sugar brine and then the glaze at the end.)

I made a big pot of rice, prepped some lettuce leaves, and cut up a bunch of mangoes and pineapples. 

Out comes the pork roasts:

Lovely. It was collapsably tender and juicy like you wouldn’t believe. Everyone just pulls off however much meat they want, and we eat it in little bundles of lettuce with rice. 

Fruit on the side to refresh the mouth after the intensely salty meat. Good stuff, everybody happy. 

TUESDAY
Bibimbap

In the morning, I prepped all the fixings for dinner: I chopped up some sugar snap peas, sliced up a bunch of cucumbers, and quick-pickled a bunch of thinly-sliced carrots in rice vinegar, water, a little salt, and some sugar. 

I had a busy, busy day, doing interviews and driving here and there, and poor Millie is having a bunch of medical problems again, so please pray for her. I love her dearly and she is feeling really poorly. 

I got home on the late side and started another big pot of rice and cut up all the leftover pork and heated it up in the microwave.

This is actually what was leftover after dinner. There was SO much pork. No regrets, though! I was just so pleased with myself for planning this all out: I started it on Sunday morning, cooked and ate it on Monday, and heated up the leftovers on Tuesday, so we had yummy full meals even though I was running around all three days. 

I fried up a bunch of eggs, and we piled it all up in bowls. My egg got overcooked. Sad. It’s amazing when the yolk is runny and soaks down into the rice where it meats the meat juice. 

So it was rice, then meat, then cucumbers, sugar snap peas, pickled carrots, and also crunchy noodles and fried onions if you wanted them, then a fried egg, and then I put some yum yum sauce on top. I wasn’t really sure what it was, to be honest, but I suspect it’s what we used to call “pink stuff” when I was little and my mother made tuna noodle casserole. Pink stuff is mayonnaise, ketchup, and vinegar, and I guess it probably tastes normal if you’re used to eating it in the context of Asian food, but my context is tuna noodle, and it was a little bit like I had just put marshmallow fluff on a croissant. Not completely wrong, but definitely not right. Oh well! I was super hungry and it all tasted good enough. 

I was a little worried the meat would be dried out on the second day, because it’s SO salty, but it came through just fine. 

Also on Thursday I finally acknowledged that we are all done with collard greens for the year, possibly forever.

I pulled them all out, trucked over a bunch of compost, planted a few dozen garlic bulbs, and tucked it in with a ton of used duck straw. And that’s that! It’s supposed to take root before a hard frost comes, and then start up sprouting in the spring. Same for the carrots, which are in the other half of that bed. 

WEDNESDAY
Zuppa Toscana, squash muffins

Wednesday I got the soup cooking in the morning. I made Zuppa Toscana

Jump to Recipe

which really only Damien and I like, but we like it quite a bit. He got back from his morning run in the cold drizzle as I was frying up Italian sausage with garlic and onion, and I think he would have proposed marriage if we weren’t already, you know. It is quite a nice soup. Tender red potatoes in thin slices, plenty of kale, and a savory, cozy, cream base. 

Here is my recipe, which I have tweaked a bit since last time I shared it.

Jump to Recipe

I considered adding a bit of instant mashed potatoes to thicken it up, but the broth tasted so nice, I decided to leave it alone.

I was gonna make some crusty french bread, but realized I would be out of the house too much to supervise the rising. Somewhat disappointed, I decided to make pumpkin muffins, which might mollify the kids a bit. So I stared making them, and you’ll never guess: We didn’t have any pumpkin. SO, I decided to make squash muffins, using acorn squash from my garden. 

Sounds so thrifty and commendable, right? It wasn’t. I could have easily run to the store down the road to buy a can of pumpkin, or even more easily sent Elijah to do it. Instead, I did it this way because my frame of mind was such that, when I saw we had no canned pumpkin, I snarled, “Oh??? Two can play that game!!” and started hacking at the squash.

Two who? What game? I don’t know. It wasn’t very fascinating womanhood of me, though. 

I cut four acorn squashes in half, scooped out the seeds, and then inadvisably cooked them in the microwave, which took so long, I might as well have used the oven; and they came out really unevenly cooked, too. Then I burned the hell out of my fingers scooping out the flesh, and jammed the pieces into the Ninja blender.

It came out quite a bit more liquid-y than the canned pumpkin you buy, but I was running out of time and also still pretty angry at the shadowy forces that had forced me into this corner, so I just slapped it all together and baked it. I put it in the oven right away so at least the dog wouldn’t eat it this time. 

They came out . . . low.

They tasted fine and normal and they were very soft.  Just kind of humble, I guess. And at least you can tell it’s all organic and home-grown and whatnot, because some of the peel made it into the muffins. 

Hey, great soup, though! And so we move on. 

THURSDAY
Hamburgers and chips

Thursday, two of the kids didn’t have school because there were parent-teacher conferences, and then one kid wasn’t feeling well, and the final kid and I kinda looked at each other, and we agreed that she probably had a stuffy nose. So we all went back to bed. Listen. I pay the tax dollars, I get to say if we get our money’s worth or not on any given day. 

So we did get the two kids in for their conferences, with varying levels of enthusiasm

and stopped at a thrift store on the way home, and Corrie found a mini sewing machine she fell in love with, and Benny found a hand-knit squid hat (we really do have pretty great thrift stores), and then NOBODY HAD TO GO ANYWHERE.

I have ever so much writing this week, so I tappa-tappa-tappa’d for a while, and took some time to deal out breathtaking injustices toward my children, then I showed Corrie how to use her new sewing machine, and then we decided they might as well carve pumpkins.

I told Cub Scouts we would just have to see them next time. The kid who is a bit young to be using such a big knife did, in fact, cut her hand, but it wasn’t too deep and we even had some of those giant bandaids in the house. Then I made hamburgers, and then spent several more hours writing while Damien folded clothes with the kids, and . . . that’s how twenty-seven years go by, folks. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti?

Yes, today is our ANNIVERSARY. 27 years!

We’re gonna go out and do something nice on Sunday, probably involving kayaks and Indian food. I think the bigger kids have a library lock-in tonight, which means it will just be me and Damien and Corrie home for dinner, which sounds really nice! Perhaps pizza and a movie. 

Also, I just found out Millie is home from a short stay at the hospital and feeling much better! 

In conclusion, did you notice that this is What’s For Supper Vol. 400, including some chili I got out of the garbage, and that my very first blog post ever, a free Blogger blog that I started something like 17 years ago, was about my toddler eating spaghetti out of the garbage? Did you know that sometimes people ask me for tips on how to live a good life? It really makes you think. 

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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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Zuppa Toscana

Ingredients

  • 1.25 lbs. sweet Italian sausages
  • 1-2 red onion(s), diced
  • 4 medium red potatoes, sliced thin with skin on
  • 8 oz mushrooms, sliced (optional)
  • 3-5 cups kale, chopped
  • 4 cups half and half
  • 8 cups chicken broth
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • olive oil for cooking
  • pepper
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • instant mashed potato (optional!)

Instructions

  1. Squeeze the sausage out of the casings. Saute it up in a little olive oil, breaking it into pieces as it cooks. When it's almost done, add the minced garlic, diced onion, and sliced potatoes. Drain off excess olive oil.

  2. When onions and potatoes are soft, add flour, stir to coat, and cook for another five minutes. 

  3. Add chicken broth and half and half. Let soup simmer all day, or keep warm in slow cooker or Instant Pot. 

  4. Before serving, add chopped kale (and sliced mushrooms, optional) and cook for another ten minutes (or set Instant Pot for three minutes) until kale and mushrooms are soft. Add pepper. Add salt if necessary, but the sausage and broth contribute salt already. 

  5. This makes a creamy soup. If you want it thicker, you can add a flour or cornstarch roux or even a few tablespoons of instant mashed potato at the end and cook a little longer. 

 

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Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

  • 30 oz canned pumpkin puree
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup veg or canola oil
  • 1.5 cups sugar
  • 3.5 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • oats, wheat germ, turbinado sugar, chopped dates, almonds, raisins, etc. optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans or butter or line 18 muffin tins.

  2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients except for sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture and mix just to blend. 

  4. Optional: add toppings or stir-ins of your choice. 

  5. Spoon batter into pans or tins. Bake about 25 minutes for muffins, about 40 minutes for loaves. 

How to vote like a Catholic

It’s almost time to vote! And it’s no fun at all! Political discourse has become so profoundly degraded and debased, there’s truly nothing left to enjoy, other than the occasional Twitter joke. Election season used to feel like a party; now it feels like going to the morgue to see if you recognize anyone.

That’s actually a good thing.

When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, we treated politics like a game. The sport of political engagement was a good way to get young people like me and my siblings involved; but it also gave us the impression that political parties were like teams, and that it was normal and healthy to ally yourself completely with one side or the other, and to root wholeheartedly for that one side, and to wholeheartedly reject and despise the other. It was very much like Red Sox vs. Yankees: A clear-cut case of good vs. evil. 

Now politics has become dysfunctional to a degree I never could have thought possible in this country. Rather than pushing my kids to get involved in politics like I did when I was young, I’m teaching them, until they’re tired of hearing it, that neither political party is my side. They’re not with me, and I’m not with them. Can’t be. 

I am a Catholic, and neither major party represents the things I know matter most. Both parties get some things right, but both have profound flaws which make them unsuitable for my full allegiance. Because I am Catholic, I am obligated to keep my eyes open to these flaws, and not to get in the habit of talking myself out of taking them seriously because they’re not as bad as the other side. I have an obligation to remain Catholic first, and a political ally second or third or maybe not at all.

The Church and its teaching are strong and reliable when and because they remain independent from politics; and when Catholics blur the lines between faith and politics, their faith always gets shoved down out of the top spot. This is what politics does: It degrades and eventually subsumes other things. This is what it always does. 

This is not a new state of affairs; it’s just more obvious now. Pope Benedict XVI said in 2007, in a speech to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean:

“Respect for a healthy secularity—including the pluralism of political opinions—is essential in the Christian tradition. If the Church were to start transforming herself into a directly political subject, she would do less, not more, for the poor and for justice, because she would lose her independence and her moral authority, identifying herself with a single political path and with debatable partisan positions. The Church is the advocate of justice and of the poor, precisely because she does not identify with politicians nor with partisan interests. Only by remaining independent can she teach the great criteria and inalienable values, guide consciences and offer a life choice that goes beyond the political sphere. To form consciences, to be the advocate of justice and truth, to educate in individual and political virtues: that is the fundamental vocation of the Church in this area. And lay Catholics must be aware of their responsibilities in public life; they must be present in the formation of the necessary consensus and in opposition to injustice.”

So, no, you won’t win my Catholic vote by telling me which pocket to tuck my conscience into while I protect “reproductive rights,” and you won’t win my Catholic vote by shouting “Jesus is King!” through a MAGA megophone, either. You will clarify for me who you really rules you, though. 

But let’s be practical. What do Benedict’s words mean, in actionable terms? Do they mean that we, as Catholics, cannot register as Democrat or Republican, or that we can’t in good conscience vote for candidates of either party, because they don’t perfectly align with Catholic values?

They do not. The Church recognizes that the question of how to vote is thorny, complex, and sometimes downright revolting, and that people of good conscience may come to different conclusions. 

This year we just don’t have any good choices, and we either have to make do with what we think is the least bad; or we may discern, for various reasons, that our consciences tell us to vote for a candidate who cannot win. These are both legitimate courses to take, and any Catholic who tells you that it’s clearly a sin to vote one way or the other for any reason is just making stuff up. Catholics sometimes try to flog each other into voting Republican, claiming that Benedict XVI said it was a mortal sin to vote for a pro-abortion or pro-euthanasia candidate, even if you’re doing so for other reasons. Actually, he said the opposite (emphasis mine):

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

So there you are. The church is not going to tell you how to vote, but it is going to tell you that you can’t stuff your Catholic ethics in the trunk of the car and let your political desires take the wheel. Yes, we still have to figure out whether proportionate reasons exist, but if that were obvious, he would have said so. 

What we should do, as Catholics, — and make sure our kids see us doing — is to ruthlessly reassess our political values frequently. Do a little examination of conscience and compare the things that motivate us as voters, and the things we are supposed to value as Catholics. Which things make us angry?   Which things do we make excuses for, that we used to find indefensible? What do we spend our time getting worked up about? If that’s changed, why has it changed? It’s not a matter of whether there will be discrepancies between our faith and our political situation, but of how many, and how grave. How defensible are our primary political talking points? What’s really driving our political desires? Could we defend those talking points if everyone else on the face of the earth went silent, and we were alone before God? 

Answering these questions may not change the way we actually vote, but it will probably alter the way you speak to and about other people, and the way you treat other people, especially people who are voting differently from you.

It’s not easy! But this is where our lives are actually lived: Not in the voting booth, but literally everywhere else.

This is what we will bring with us on judgment day: Not our ballots, but our words and deeds. Imagine how insane it would be to stand before God and argue that, sure, Lord, I treated other people like garbage idiots, but look at my voting record.

Yes, how we vote affects people’s lives, indirectly. But for every one vote we cast, we will have countless millions of chances to do good very directly. So that’s where our energy should go. Once every four years, we have the chance to be the best Americans we can be, but every single day, we’re supposed to be like Jesus. 

How? One way is by acts of charity. And another is by accepting how homeless you will feel. 

Recall that after a full day of healing people — a leper, the Centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law, and many who were possessed — Jesus, in Matthew 8, hears Peter say that he will follow him. Peter and the others have seen Jesus care for everyone who comes to him for help. He understands what they need, and when they come to him with faith, he heals them, because he is God, and he can do this. He is also preparing to give this power to his disciples: To pass along, through the Church he founds, the power to save souls. To be the one hope for humanity.

But what is the cost?

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

This is what it means to follow Jesus, and this is what it means to be Catholic: It means you will be homeless. You will never be comfortable. You will never feel right and you will never fit in, and if you do fit in, that should worry you. It means that politics is wearing down the hard edges of your conscience, and down the hole you will slide, and right at the bottom is the worm that dieth not.

So, don’t do that. Instead, be Catholic. 

It’s not as much fun as joining a party! When you become a follower of Christ, no one is going to pull a string and release a shower of balloons on your head. But you can hope for eternal life. Overall, I think we’re coming out ahead.

___

Image by Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

(A version of this essay first appeared in Parable Magazine in 2023.) 

All that matters is what’s in your heart, right? Not so fast

Many Catholics will tell you that taking the Lord’s name in vain doesn’t mean using it as a curse word when someone cuts in front of you in traffic. Instead—they argue—taking the Lord’s name in vain is when you use it to justify ugly human behavior.

They will try to convince you that taking the Lord’s name in vain is when you declare you are pro-life—because humans are made in the image of God—but then you refer to immigrants as sub-human. They say that taking the Lord’s name in vain is when you hold a protest sign that says, “God hates gays,” or when you insist that real Catholic women never ever say  “no” to their husbands.

The truth is, of course, taking the Lord’s name in vain is both these things.

What we say ought to reflect what we believe, and what we believe ought to be shaped by what we say. We are what we do, and we are what we say. We are what we believe, and we are what we hold in our secret hearts that only the Lord can know.

If we are in the habit of being gentle and loving and generous and self-sacrificial toward others, then why would we not make the extra effort to also control our tongue? Why would we not use our voice to be gentle, loving, and generous towards our fellow humans and also towards God?

Using God’s name in vain is what you were taught in beginning catechism class; and it’s also something more subtle and more comprehensive.

Here’s another example of an updated understanding of virtue that corrects one error but makes a new one: It has become common for enlightened Catholics to insist that modesty is entirely an interior disposition and has nothing to do with the clothes we wear.

I understand how we got here  … Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly (and for context, recall that, in Australia, their hot season is just beginning!).

What’s for supper? Vol. 399: In which my flan is flerfect

Happy Friday! I have zero introductory quips, so let’s just get to it. Here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with burritos and fried rice

Busy-busy! Damien picked up Corrie from a sleepover and took the kids to the Pumpkin Festival while I went shopping, and then he picked up other kids and brought them to their friend’s house and took other friends from that house to their own house, and I don’t know what all. I was a little sad to miss the festival, but the appeal of just plain going home by myself was pretty overwhelming, even if it meant bringing the groceries in by myself like some kind of peasant. And then I put them away like a SANE PERSON, which is more than I can say for, nevermind. It’s fine. 

We had our now-traditional “leftover plus something frozen” Saturday meal — this week, frozen burritos. And a Frankenstein head, as you can see.

We turned out to have some leftover char siu as well as leftover rice, so I chopped it up and made some fried rice. 

I minced up a bunch of garlic, onion, and ginger, and browned it in sesame oil, then added a bunch of brown sugar and stirred that over the heat until the sugar was bubbly and darker. Then I put in the meat and rice, and dumped on a bunch of soy sauce and a little fish sauce. Couldn’t find the hoisin sauce. Then I stirred in scrambled eggs (I pre-scramble them) and some chopped scallions and there it was. 

Quite yummy. 

I think we watched Signs that night. Very solid scary movie, weird and interesting and perfectly paced.

SUNDAY
Domino’s

Sunday after Mass, we had been planning a trip to the apple orchard for weeks, but it was raining. But it really was the only day we could go, so we forged ahead, and the rain held off!

 

Clara and her boyfriend met us there, and we did all the things: Hayride, apple picking (and the timing was perfect. We got some HUGE wonderful fruit), petting zoo, donuts and hot cider. It started raining as we were finishing up, so we made a little side trip to Runnings, which is basically Redneck Walmart, and then met some more family members at my parents’ grave. 

Looks like everything I planted is dead except for one little stub of a rose bush, so I guess I’ll just start over. My sister and her husband built a truly spectacular reliquary for the St. Peter and St. Helena relics (which are still being restored and documented), and it was a strange and good visit. We all agreed it would be nice to meet again soon, maybe not in the rain in a graveyard, even. 

The kids wanted to make caramel apples when we got home, and I had bought those quick caramel sheets you just stretch over the apple and heat up.

I had a sudden memory of how I used to save those paper squares, because FREE PAPER. Feeling pretty rich these days. I buy my paper in the paper aisle!

I also started some caramel for the next day’s dessert, which I will explain in a moment. 

MONDAY
Chili con carne, fry bread, flan with mango and pecans

Monday we had a little lull because the kids had the day off for what our legislature apparently decided must legally be referred to as “Columbus Day” in official communications. If I had that much time on my hands, I’d . . . make even more chili for Indigenous Peoples Day than I actually did, which was quite a bit of chili. (We used to celebrate Columbus Day as Eat Italian Food day, but we transferred that to St. Joseph’s day, which makes as much sense as anything else.) 

Anyway, I made a big pot of chili. I basically followed this recipe from Recipe Tin Eats, except that I tripled it, and used two pounds of ground beef and one pound of ground turkey; I used two cans of kidney beans and one can of black beans; and I couldn’t find the paprika so I subbed chili powder. 

Turned out great. Pretty standard recipe, but there’s nothing wrong with that. 

I decided I wanted to make some kind of dessert, and I was 900% sure my kids would not eat anything made with hot blueberries and cornmeal, so I decided that flan was indigenous to somewhere (Spain if you use egg yolks, Mexico if you use the whole egg, and my backyard if you have a bunch of ducks), so flan it was. I honestly mostly wanted to use up eggs. 

I followed this recipe from The Spruce Eats, which I’ve made once before. Last time I made one big flan, but since then, I got my hands on a set of twelve ramekins, and could still find eleven of them! Not a bad record for this vicinity. 

Like I said, I made the caramel the night before. It’s just heating up and stirring white sugar until it’s liquidy, and then pouring it into the ramekins. I was so afraid of burning it, it took forever, but I didn’t burn it! I poured it into the ramekins, where it hardened very quickly, and then I just covered it and left it out overnight. 

Monday I made the custard and poured it on top of the caramel, and then poured water into the pan for a water bath.

Then you just bake it, let it cool, and then chill it for a few hours. BUT I FORGOT TO COVER IT. So much of the purpose of the water bath was defeated. Boo. But I got it into the fridge in plenty of time. 

I also decided I wanted to try something new to go along with the chili, so I made some fry bread, which many native peoples have a version of. I followed this very simple recipe and I don’t know what the heck happened, but it was really sloppy and sticky, really batter and not dough. So I kept adding and adding and adding flour until it was thick enough to handle, and fried that it hot oil. 

I continued adding flour as I went, and by the end, they were turning up more bread-like. 

The kids did not actually mind that the first several pieces were all crunchy and crinkly. I had mine as a side to the chili, but some of the kids put powdered sugar on theirs. 

No argument from me. 

Then it was flan time! You run a knife around the edge, then flip them over onto a plate and give them a shake or a tap, or maybe a thump, and they schlorp out onto the plate. The caramel has turned back into a syrup, and it pools on what is now the top, and runs down the sides. 

Nice, right? I was so pleased. I cut up a few mangoes and chopped up some leftover sugared pecans for the top, and oh, it was yummy. 

The custard was, as I was afraid, a little on the gummy side because it baked without a cover, but it wasn’t a disaster. Still rich and creamy, and a beautiful yellow with the duck eggs. 

I am unreasonably fond of custards, and would probably eat them every day if not for, well, various reasons. And it’s good to know I can totally make the caramel part ahead of time! 

TUESDAY
Shepherd’s pie

Tuesday I hustled to make a shepherd’s pie in the morning (and a shepherd’s pielet for Millie). I have a sort of vague recipe, which uses leftover meat, but obviously you can just cook the meat specifically for the pie. I’m sorry, I’m extremely tired and I’m probably babbling. Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Jump to Recipe

And here’s the pie: 

It should have been in the oven maybe eight more minutes, to the top could finish browning up. Oh well. It actually held together really nicely as individual pieces, but I kind of dropped it into the bowl, where it fell apart. 

Tuesday we had a frost in the morning

(not the first frost, but the first one that hit everything, not just shadowy spots), so I decided to go ahead and harvest that wild mob of gourds.

I dragged them in, washed and dried them, and counted them, and now they’re drying on the porch for a while, and pretty soon I’ll move them into the attic or something, to cure.

GUESS how many gourds. 

Sixty nine! And yes, when I told my husband how many there were, he said “nice.”

Well, they are nice! They will take several months to cure and completely dry on the inside, and then I can make all kinds of things with them. I’m thinking of vases and bowls, birdhouses, ocarinas, and maybe Christmas decorations, although they may not be ready by Christmas. 

I also got another six acorn squash and another four large pumpkins. And half a dozen eggplants that I forgot about and they look pretty wretched, so I think I’ll just throw them away. It’s going to be warm this weekend (high 60’s), so this may be my last chance to get my fall stuff in the ground. I have a bunch of striped red Gregeii tulips to intersperse with the daffodils that are pretty well-established in back, and then a bunch of random bulbs I got on clearance that I honestly might just put in planters, to simplify things. And I might get some garlic going, which I haven’t ever tried before. Goodness knows we do go through garlic. 

Oh, on Tuesday I also dragged myself to the doctor and had the immense pleasure of showing them what my inguinal hernia was up to, and we all decided it was time to show it who is boss (some stranger I just met who says she is a surgeon). So that’s something to look forward to.

WEDNESDAY
Muffalettish sandwiches, fries

Wednesday I had a nutty day. I was up all night and then slept late and basically rocketed into an interview, which actually turned out great. I really love doing these artist interviews! Then I had to shuffle a kid off to work and get a mammogram, stopped at the store for milk and whatnot, and while I was out, on the spur of the moment I ran to Supercuts, quickly googled “short wavy haircut,” and got me a short wavy haircut. 

Phew! I like it. Then picked up kids, dropped one off at catechism, picked up other kids, brought them home, went back for the catechism kid, and was very grateful to myself for planning a simple meal: SANDWICHES. And fries. 

I threw two cans of black olives, one jar of green olives, and one jar of kalamata olives, and a handful of banana peppers into the food processor, and then sloshed in a little red wine vinegar and olive oil. Sometimes I get fancier than that, but this was fine. 

I just had some prepackaged deli meats and cheeses and soft rolls, but gosh I was HUNGRY, and it tasted amazing. 

The fries also tasted amazing. The ketchup tasted amazing. I guess I was really hungry. 

Also really tired! Benny and Corrie were working on some kind of Tell-Tale Heart related project, and I fell asleep on the couch and Benny wrote “tired” on a little piece of paper and taped it to my face, so that was helpful. 

THURSDAY
Roast pork ribs, steamed broccoli, rice

Thursday was another crazy-go-nuts day, and I can’t even remember why. I considered various Asian options for dinner, and then just decided to go super kid friendly, because they’re tired, too. I made a bunch of rice in the Instant Pot with chicken broth instead of water, steamed a few bags of frozen broccoli, and roasted the pork ribs with just salt and pepper. 

Not a thing wrong with it. I had peach butter with my meat, but most of them had bottled BBQ sauce. 

One kid had PSAT, and Corrie had cub scouts in the evening, but it was (heavenly choir singing) Damien’s turn to take her; and then he also went and picked up Elijah. So I stayed home and had a little tantrum over how much TV the kids had been watching, so we all hung around and gloomily read books, and I of course fell asleep. But then I woke up insisted that we all drive over to the pond and see if we could see the comet. We saw Venus and decided that was impressive enough, because it was cold out. So we went home and I read a chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring to Corrie, and it was the part where Galadriel is tempted by the Ring, but passes the test. That was fun to read out loud!

And then I diminished and went to bed. 

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

Yep, that’s the plan. Elijah and Damien are gonna go look at a used car after adoration, and at some point Corrie is going to get home from her field trip the Polar Caves, which I just realized I forgot to pay for. But I will. I’ll do everything, eventually. And make Halloween costumes!

I still plan to be beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night, fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain, dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning, stronger than the foundations of the earth. But first I need to get some sleep. We all need to get some sleep. 

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Leftover lamb shepherd's pie

This recipe uses lots of shortcuts and it is delicious.

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350.

  2. Prepare the mashed potatoes and set aside.

  3. Heat and drain the corn. (I heated mine up in beef broth for extra flavor.)

  4. In a saucepan, melt the butter and saute the onion and garlic until soft. Stir in pepper.

  5. Add the flour gradually, stirring with a fork, until it becomes a thick paste. Add in the cream and continue stirring until it is blended. Add in the cooked meat and stir in the Worcestershire sauce.

  6. Add enough broth until the meat mixture is the consistency you want.

  7. Grease a casserole dish and spread the meat mixture on the bottom. Spread the corn over the meat. Top with the mashed potatoes and spread it out to cover the corn. Use a fork to add texture to mashed potatoes, so they brown nicely.

  8. Cook for about forty minutes, until the top is lightly browned and the meat mixture is bubbly. (Finish browning under broiler if necessary.)