What’s for supper? Vol. 408: Are we cumin? or are we dancers?

Happy Friday! Let’s hop to it, she said, while propped up in bed. Here’s what we had for supper this week, which turned out to be a combination of quite good food and fair-to-bad life management otherwise:

SATURDAY
Domino’s, cheesecake with strawberries

A belated birthday celebration. I made my top secret cheesecake recipe, the details of which I have been sworn to secrecy about; but the general advice for this mile-high, lusciously creamy megalith (or I guess megaτυρί) of a dessert is:

Put the cheese out the night before, so it’s really truly at room temp; mix it only lightly, so as to introduce as little air as possible, and scrape down the bowl often, or else stop mixing and drop the bowl a few times, to knock the air out; wrap the pan thoroughly in heavy duty foil and bake it in a water bath, and then, without opening the oven, turn the oven off and let the cheesecake sit in the cooling oven for a few hours before you take it out and chill it; and chill it overnight. So essentially you need to start two evenings before the day you eat it. 

What I do NOT recommend is: Press the graham cracker crust into the pan, but forget to bake it before pouring the cheesecake batter on top; forget to grease the pan before adding the batter; and bake it way high up in the oven so the top gets absolutely roasted brown. Also do a poor job wrapping the pan, so a little water leaks in.

But I did all these things. 

So, NOT MY FINEST WORK. But, still, cheesecake, and lots of it! I cut some strawberries into some sort of non-specific flower shapes and pressed some sliced strawberries onto the sides. Forgot to take a pic of the whole cake, but here is a wedge

and here is a piece with a scoop of strawberry sauce on top:

I made the strawberry sauce by cutting up two pounds of strawberries and heating them in a pan with the juice from one lemon, plus the lemon zest, and 2/3 cup of sugar. I simmered this for about twenty minutes, then got annoyed and threw it in the food processor and pulsed it a bit. Then I put it back in the pot and stirred in a roux of about two teaspoons of cornstarch. Simmered and stirred for another five minutes and then I chilled it. 

This cake was a bit of a mess, so I was glad for a little bit of zing from the lemon in the topping. Really not as bad as it might have been, with all my errors. Everyone liked it, and it was pretty. 

SUNDAY
Leftover buffet

Sunday we were back on our leftover grind. Looks like we had some rotisserie chicken, chicken biryani, pasta salad, and something in tinfoil that I can’t quite make out; plus lots of pizza pockets. 

I have clearly been making too much damn food, but it’s just not an area of self-improvement that I have the will to take seriously right now. 

It was the first weekend in a long, long time that we weren’t both crazy busy and sick, so didn’t plan anything, and happily spent a lot of time carving wood for no particular reason. I’m really, really enjoying this hobby that I have no plans to monetize or make useful in any way.

It’s a creative and artistic outlet like drawing, but since I’m a rank amateur, I have very low expectations for myself (unlike with drawing); and it feels great to use my hands and muscles, which is something I really miss over the winter when I’m not building anything or working in my garden. 

I had so much free time on Sunday, I looked ahead and made a double recipe of pie crust for Tuesday’s dinner. Here’s my pie crust recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I take the “do not over handle” advice for pie crust really seriously, and honestly don’t even completely incorporate all the flour until I roll the dough out. I mean I leave it slightly disorganized in the bowl, and only use the rolling pin to finish making it into actual dough, if that makes sense. It would be more satisfying to have a neat round ball of dough to start rolling out, but I do get really flaky crust this way. 

MONDAY
Meatloaf, baked potatoes, peas

Ground beef was on sale in a way that makes me think there is some sports event coming up? I’m not being coy; I’m genuinely 100% out of the loop. But ground beef prices are a sign of sports just as surely as little birdies are a sign of spring. (If little birdies were on sale, I would buy a bunch of those, too.)

So I made a ton of meatloaf, which we haven’t had in quite some time. This is strategic, so my family still continues to think of meatloaf as a treat. When I was growing up, we had meatloaf so often that my father made a little song about it (“Meatloaf on Monday”), which my mother did not like.

HOWEVER, my meatloaf recipe is quite delicious, so I could probably make it a little more often. If ground beef were on sale more often! Come on, football! Shake a leg! Shake a foot! Shake a ball! 

Here’s my recipe:

Jump to Recipe

and it came out absolutely monstrously yummers, which is how meatloaf should be

I buy fatty ground beef and then cook it in such a way that I drain out the fat. Does this make sense? I don’t know. I feel in my heart that it’s the most virtuous thing to do, but there is no actual evidence for this. Good meatloaf, though. 

I was somewhere or other in the afternoon, so I left directions for one of the kids for when to put the meat and potatoes in the oven, and it worked out swell. Served with microwaved peas from frozen, which I also try not to serve too often, but honestly I could probably get away with more. Peas are something else I love now, but hated as a kid, because I’m so old, we had canned peas, which are the color, consistency, and taste of mud. Happy to report my kids like and appreciate frozen peas. 

TUESDAY
Chicken pie, roast carrots

Tuesday morning, I smugly pulled the pre-made pie crust out of the fridge, and made the chicken pie filling. This is a wonderful and lavish dish which i made because, I don’t know, it was Tuesday and I like pie. 

I used red onions because I was out of yellow, and dried thyme rather than fresh, and I used a bunch of leeks rather than the celery I used last time. Leeks are what the original recipe, which my friend Rebecca Salazar wrote, calls for, and YES, I took a joke picture of the leeks under the bathroom sink. I’m not made of stone. 

Jump to Recipe

Anyway, this is a joyfully delicious dish. How could it not be, with these ingredients?

I got a little cute with the top crust, and used a cookie cutter and one of those cut-out rolling pins to add some detail

Then I took a kid in for a driving test, and let’s just say that through a combination of said child not listening closely to instructions and then not wanting to ask anyone for clarification, and me driving a car that I haven’t super duper gotten around to putting the bumper back on, we . . . did not do the driving test. And went away sad. 

But how sad can you be when there is chicken pie?

Last time I made this, I was very impressed at how well the pieces held their shape. This time, the gravy turned out a little thinner, for some reason. 

Possibly if I had let it sit for a bit before cutting it open, it would have been more cohesive. I’m not really convinced this was a flaw, though. It was truly heavenly. 

The potatoes were actually a little under done, but this didn’t even slow me down. Next time I will give it an extra ten minutes in the oven, though.

You can see that I made roast carrots for a side dish, because that’s what I wrote on the menu, and apparently Corrie had been looking forward to this all week. I was planning to follow this recipe, but got my wires crossed and did the wrong one, and then realized it was wrong and tried to finesse it, so we ended up with slightly underdone carrots roasted in olive oil, brown sugar, garlic powder, and pepper that were ALSO DELICIOUS. 

Corrie thought the carrots were great. Damien and I thought the chicken pie was great. THE REST OF THE KIDS HAD RAMEN. I don’t care! I’m making it again, and soon! Might make a smaller one, though. Might not. 

WEDNESDAY
Oven fried chicken, Prongles, more peas

Wednesday morning, I threw a bunch of chicken drumsticks in a bowl with milk, eggs, salt, and pepper, and then I drove over and dropped off the relics of St. Helen and St. Peter at my local church!

 

I figured someone in the area once owned them before they ended up at the Salvation Army, so it makes sense to keep them local. The pastor will be displaying them for veneration on their holy days, and I think they’re going to be incorporated into the high altar at some point.

My brother-in-law built a reliquary and my sister made a glass fronted case for them, and my niece sewed a beautiful cloth to drape over it.

I got them authenticated by Sacra Relics (and fervent thanks again to everyone who pitched in to fund that!) and it turns out the St. Helen one is a first class relic, but the St. Peter one is a piece of his altar. I will be talking with Sean Pilcher more soon, to get more information. All in all, it was sad but a bit of a relief to have them out of the house. We had them in the living room and it was a little too easy to forget they were there! But I am grateful for our extended visit. What a to-do. 

Wednesdays are a little snazy in the afternoon, and I generally spend three hours in the car, just going back and forth over the same 15 miles or so. So I prepped the seasoned flour for the chicken ahead of time. Here is my oven- fried chicken recipe: 

Jump to Recipe

and I just asked Benny to pick up where I left off, and she did great!

I served Prongles, as planned (that is store brand Pringles, which I can never remember the actual name of. Don’t ask me why I can remember “Prongles,” which isn’t the name of anything), and searched around for a vegetable and lo, I found more frozen peas. So much for not serving them too often. Hey, Three Things, and One Not Brown. We did it, folks. 

I also put my bumper back on. Basically.  

THURSDAY
Tacos

Thursday we had a big medical appointment for a kid an hour an a half away, and I left feeling (accurately) like I was kinda dropping the ball, and then I missed my exit, and then, as we were driving through Plainfield and I was yapping about how, when I was growing up, we always hated Plainfield because the Plainfield track team had a wonderful track made of these sproingy rubber nubbins, and our track was just dirt with grass growing on it, I got pulled over.

IT WAS WEIRD.

(Not the above sentence. The sentence works out, if you read it carefully.)

The officer explained that we were being recorded, and then said that someone had been following me and called 911 to say that I crossed the center line and almost hit a truck. That. . . didn’t happen, which is what I told him. He then said he was watching me and I was weaving all over the road, and he asked me if I was tired, drunk, angry, distracted, upset, on medication, lost, or driving a car that was making me drive erratically. The absolute truth is that I was all of those things, except drunk, because it’s Thursday, and this is what peak performance on a Thursday looks like for me: Everything but drunk. But I truly don’t think I was weaving, and I most definitely did not cross the center line. 

So I just kept doing the “Gee, I don’t know!” thing, which was accurate, and then he asked for my license, and here is where I started to feel a little bad, because my license has expired. I did have an appointment to renew it, though. You can renew your license online, but I had a desperate desire to get a new picture, since my old picture was when I — look, I’m not exactly trim and slender now, but I had an entire additional chin five years ago. So I made an in-person appointment, which had not happened yet.

For some reason I don’t understand, he did not give me a ticket for this. I think he didn’t like the look of my car, which was absolutely whiskery with zip ties (I had to add a few more in the hospital parking garage), and was looking for a reason to pull me over. But I turned out to be just this lady drinking Coke Zero and yapping at her kid, so he just told me to be more careful, with the result that I was just about hysterical with nerves all the way home, and drove way, way worse. 

Not gonna lie, I really thought by the time I was fifty years old, I would have my shit together more than this. But I do not. I do have a little bit of life insurance, and I bought myself some new socks the other day. I’m trying. Maybe I should go get those relics back. 

Then we had tacos, and then we went to Lucy’s art show, and I forgot to take pictures! But she good at art. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Thank goodness for spaghetti. I mad an appointment for both cars to get inspected, and I rescheduled the driving test for today, and if they give me a hard time about the car, I’m going to take it pretty hard. But not learn anything! Never learn anything, that’s my motto. 

Oh, I forgot to explain the title. See, I got a bee in my bonnet and reorganized my spice shelf. It doesn’t look any nicer, but it’s ORGANIZED. The categories are: Indian, Indian Overflow, Middle Eastern, Asian, Mexican/Peppers and Spicy Blends, Herbs and Seeds, Baking, and Everyday.

These categories are fairly bogus, because there is a lot of overlap. I put the Scezhuan pepper in “Asian,” rather than in “Peppers;” and I put cumin in “Indian,” when it arguably belongs in “Middle Eastern, “etc. etc. Cinnamon could go in almost every category! But I organized them according to how I tend to actually USE them, and so far, it’s been really hlelpful. Also, I have SO MUCH CUMIN. And have spent a lot of time with Lucy lately, and she plays a lot of The Killers. So that’s the title. 

5 from 1 vote
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Basic pie crust

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

5 from 1 vote
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Meatloaf (actually two giant meatloaves)

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground beef
  • 2 lbs ground turkey
  • 8 eggs
  • 4 cups breadcrumbs
  • 3/4 cup milk OR red wine
  • 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

plenty of salt, pepper, garlic powder or fresh garlic, onion powder, fresh parsley, etc.

  • ketchup for the top
  • 2 onions diced and fried (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450

  2. Mix all meat, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and seasonings together with your hands until well blended.

  3. Form meat into two oblong loaves on pan with drainage

  4. Squirt ketchup all over the outside of the loaves and spread to cover with spatula. Don't pretend you're too good for this. It's delicious. 

  5. Bake for an hour or so, until meat is cooked all the way through. Slice and serve. 

5 from 1 vote
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Rebecca's chicken bacon pie

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 425.

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

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

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

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

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

5 from 1 vote
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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.

What’s for supper? Vol. 407: Model citizen

Happy Friday! Today has been my week to slowly come back to life. A little yoga, a little writing, and actually, in retrospect, kind of a lot of cooking and baking. As I was reviewing my photos for the week, I noticed the theme was ORANGE, plus yellow and red. You could do worse in the middle of January. 

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, chips

Usually Saturday is Leftover Buffet, but I had some thawed boneless skinless chicken thighs that needed to be used ASAP, I forget why; so after I shopped, I made these sandwiches from Sip and Feast. 

It’s a few steps, but doesn’t take any particular skill, and you get a tremendous payback in flavor and texture. You season the chicken thighs, brown them in oil, and lay sliced cheese on them and cover them. While the cheese is melting, you cut the tops off a bunch of shishito peppers and blister them quickly in a pan, and slice up some red onion. Serve it all on soft brioche buns with BBQ sauce. Just delicious and delightful.

Saturday night, I made a double batch of King Arthur Flour Chewy Cranberry Orange cookies, which I made for the first time before Christmas. They are super easy (everything just gets dumped into one bowl) and very cheery, friendly cookies. Doesn’t look like I took any pictures, but they turned out very similar to the pic on the site, which tells you how easy they are! I did end up baking them for a slightly shorter time than recommended, based on past experience.

SUNDAY
Rotisserie chicken/Chili’s 

On Sunday, we were supposed to go to my sister’s new baby’s baptism.  The kids were too sick to go, so I bought a couple of rotisserie chickens, fries, and raw vegetables for them, and planned for me and Damien to go to the baptism, then go out to eat. But I woke up with a rotten sore throat, which is no kind of gift to bring to babies across state lines. Boo! I want to see my family!

However, I soon realized that we were actually sitting pretty for the day. Damien and I had gone to the vigil Mass on Saturday, so — get this, people with little kids: On Sunday morning, my son got everyone up and dressed, and took them to Mass in his car, and what I did was stay in bed, not get dressed, and slowly sip coffee.  Incroyable. 

I milked this situation as long as I possibly could, and then realized that, because I was home on Epiphany, I could mess around with some king cake. Baking when you really don’t have to and you’re not in a hurry is a very different experience from, well, every other kind of baking.

We usually have some kind of cream cheese-filled king cake on Mardi Gras, so I tried something different: Rosca de Reyes. I’m on a King Arthur Flour jag, so I used their recipe, which is supposed to look like a crown with jewels. 

I made a double recipe of the dough, and then decided we really needed candied orange peels, so I made up a bunch of those, using this Epicurious recipe. You cut the ends off, score it into quarters, and remove the peel and pith.

Then you, uh, eat all the peeled oranges. Because you are sick, and need the vitamin C. 

I actually used a ruler to cut the peel into 1/4-inch slices, because I have made peace with the fact that I shrimply cannot eyeball fractions of an inch.

You simmer the sliced peels in water, rinse them twice, and then simmer them in sugar water for 45 minutes. 

Pretty pretty. Note: I doubled the amount of oranges, but used the same amount of sugar and water for simmering, which worked fine.

Then you drain the peels again and toss them with more sugar and spread them out to dry. At this point, I finally read to the end of the recipe and discovered the peels are supposed to dry for 1-2 days, which, oh well. I did pop them in a low oven for half and hour and they turned out great. I LOVE candied citrus peels. Gotta make more. 

Back to the sweet bread! You let the dough rise, then roll it out, slather it with melted butter, and fill it with cinnamon, sugar, orange or lemon zest, and whatever else you like. What I had was some slivered almonds, dried cranberries, lemon zest, and something called tutti frutti that I got from the Indian section of the International Market

and I was pretty pleased with the combination.

You roll the dough up like for cinnamon rolls, and form them into a ring around a center, like greased ramekin, to keep the shape.

I put most of the candied orange peel on, but then decided to take most of it off before baking. You are supposed to snip vents all around, which I did, but didn’t make them big enough, so they partially closed up. I did stuff some candied orange peels into the vents, which was a good idea. And don’t forget to add a baby, or a dry bean, or something for someone to find!
Then you brush the bread with egg wash and bake.

And they turned out great!

Very pretty, shiny, and bright. 

Would have been absolutely splendid if I had some candied cherries to decorate them with, but I was pleased. 

I overbaked them a tiny bit, which I always do, and it was pretty finicky getting the piping hot bread rings off the piping hot ramekins, but overall, a success. I strewed the rest of the orange peels over the top when they came out of the oven. 

Tender inside, halfway between bread and cake, rich and medium-sweet. 

Nobody found the dry bean I hid inside, and then I went back for seconds before bed and found it in the last piece, so that was a little anti-climactic. The person who finds the bean (or baby or whatever) is supposed to throw a party on Candlemas, and if anyone does that, it will probably be me, so there you go. 

Oh, so for supper, Damien and I figured we had already been planning to eat out, so we splurged and Door Dashed Chili’s, and then locked ourselves into our room and ate it without taking any pictures. Long live Chili’s.

Cheers Beer GIFfrom Cheers GIFs

Not gonna lie, the rosca de reyes was a lot of work, and I probably won’t make it again. I guess when it comes down to it, sweet bread isn’t really my favorite. I’d rather either have regular bread, or else something much sweeter. I do want to try one of those star-shaped epiphany cakes, though, because dang, those are pretty. 

MONDAY
Pork nachos

I had made a double recipe of king cake just out of sheer habit, but we only ate one, so I brought the other one to Clara’s place, which gave me a chance to finally see her apartment. It’s very nice. Full of light and pretty things, and it smelled good.

But otherwise, Monday was super duper vacation is really really over now day. It began with my car inexplicably falling off itself.

What appears to be blood in the grass is just spray paint from some Halloween costume project. But it fits. 

I’m pretty sure this is a job for zip ties, but it’s been too freaking cold outside to really deal with it, so I’ve just been driving like a model citizen, so as not to attract any unwanted police attention, because you are required to have two license plates in this state. Also because my driver’s license expired. I’ll deal with it! I’ll get to it! Model citizen!

In keeping with the general tone of day, I grimly hurled a hunk of pork into the Instant Pot and added, I don’t know what, cider vinegar, cumin, salt and pepper, chili powder, and pickled jalapeños and a bunch of the juice, and pressed the “meat” button. When the meat was done

I shredded it and made two pans of nachos, one with just chips, meat, and cheese, and one with cheese and also some kind of horrible melty jar cheese stuff, more japapeños, and a bunch more cumin and chili powder.

and served it with salsa and sour cream.

And it wasn’t that good! The kids ate almost none of their special mild weenie tray, and I just bundled it all up in tin foil and put it into the fridge until it’s time to throw it away this weekend. And so Monday passed. 

I see from my camera roll that Monday was also the day I locked myself in my room and tried out this lip plumper that I ordered right after having hernia surgery and turning fifty. I won’t be sharing the pictures, but my conclusion is that some lips are probably fine as they are. Especially if you’re otherwise a model citizen. 

TUESDAY
Beef barley soup, artisan bread

Tuesday it was still cold and horrible out, and I sure wasn’t making much progress with the million looming deadlines I have, so it seemed like a soup and bread day. I had bought a bunch of beef when it was on sale, so I made a huge pot of beef barley soup

Jump to Recipe

which is always nice. Then, although I’ve had no success with this in the past, I decided to make some of that “artisan bread” (which always sounds like a euphemism to me, like “sandwich artist” or “sanitation engineer”) which you don’t have to knead and which you bake it in a dutch oven, which I don’t have. I thought it might work out this time, though, because I discovered that Nagi of Recipe Tin Eats has a recipe, and Nagi is the last honest person on the internet, and writes out her recipes so they are actually useful. Stuff like “Dough will be wet and sloppy – not kneadable, but not runny like cake batter” and she tells you in the recipe where to look in the video, to make sure you’re doing it right. I feel like Nagi is on your side, in a way that no one else is. And she has such cute little hands.

Anyway, I made the dough, and it was wet and sloppy, not kneadable, but not runny like cake batter

and let it rise for about three hours while I went out to do the afternoon school run and errands. When I came back, it had doubled in volume and was wobbly like jelly and the top was bubbly, just like Nagi said. 

I did the alternative to the dutch oven instructions, where you flop the dough onto a hot pan and then immediately fill another pan, below it in the oven, with boiling water, and then slam the oven shut and let it steam while it bakes. 

Turned out great!

Crusty and crunchy on the outside, tender and chewy on the inside

Everyone liked it. Nagi does it again! Next time I’ll form the dough so it’s piled up a little higher and I get a slightly rounder loaf, but it was great as it was. The flavor is plain as can be, but it’s so simple and easy, and you can’t beat piping hot homemade bread with a big pot of savory soup.

This recipe fit in perfectly with my typical weekday, where I have a little time in late morning, and then I’m out of the house for several hours, and then I’m home about forty minutes or half an hour before we want to eat. She also includes instructions for making the dough the day before and refrigerating it overnight before you bake it. 

I made a very large pot of soup, intending to enjoy it again over the weekend, but tragically, it got left out overnight. Memory eternal, soup. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken biryani, naan 

Wednesday I had an irresistible urge to make chicken biryani. I was planning to open Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni, and see how it matches up to the recipe I usually use, but couldn’t find the dang book. So I went back to this basic, reliable one from Simply Recipes , but I goosed it with some of the wonderful biryani masala mix my friend Marissa sent. Normally I make the recipe as directed and then transfer it to the slow cooker for several hours, which is the only way I’ve ever been able to get fully and evenly cooked rice for biryani. So I got up to this point, 

which you can see has the chicken, spices, golden raisins, and liquid, but no rice yet, but also no room for rice. So I nervously took a chance and moved it to the Instant Pot, added the rice, and set it to high pressure for six minutes. 

Then I got distracted for a long time and forgot I was making supper, so I don’t really know how long it was until I checked on it, but when I did, it read “BURN,” which the Instant Pot does randomly, sometimes when it’s burnt beyond rescue, sometimes when it’s just whatever and fine. So I released the pressure with great trepidation, and . . . it was PERFECT. 

Dang. This is such tremendous food. So fragrant and comforting. I had bought some naan on the way home, and brushed a little melted butter on top and warmed it up in the oven, and topped the biryani with chopped cilantro and both toasted almonds and chopped up salt-and-pepper cashews, it was delightful.

Looks a little off because I was eating it by the light of the Christmas tree, but believe me, it was top notch. At first it seemed like it might be too mild, but the flavor built and warmed with every bite, which tells me I did it right! Biryani forever. 

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, salad, pasta salad

Thursday I finally got Christmas packed up. I stripped the tree and threw it out the window (this was more fun when we used to live on the second floor, but it’s still a satisfying little ritual) and got everything all wrapped up and packed away, and vacuumed up forty metric tons of pine needles, and ruthlessly threw out a lot of tacky crap that we never use.

It was a good day to be busy all day and have an easy meal for dinner: Chicken burgers! Yay. 

I didn’t really have a plan for a side dish, but there was enough this-and-that in the fridge

that it was pretty easy to throw together a decent pasta salad. 

Cilantro, back olives, canned diced tomatoes, shredded parmesan, diced raw peppers, and salami, and then some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

A very pleasant meal. I had my chicken with horseradish mayo. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

I can just feel how much cheese is in this house, so we really need to have some lavish mac and cheese. I don’t really have a recipe; I just make a bunch of white sauce and then throw in whatever cheese I have, plus some hot sauce and sometimes some mustard. I mix that with cooked macaroni, pour into a buttered casserole dish, and top it with buttered panko bread crumbs and bake until you can hear it sizzling, and you cannot deny, that’s good stuff. 

And now I have to actually do that, and then run off to adoration. I’ll pray for yez all! Model citizen over and out. 

5 from 1 vote
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Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

  • olive oil
  • 1 medium onion or red onion, diced
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 3-4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
  • 2-3 lbs beef, cubed
  • 16 oz mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
  • 6 cups beef bouillon
  • 1 cup merlot or other red wine
  • 29 oz canned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
  • 1 cup uncooked barley
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened. 


  2. Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.

  3. Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley. 

  4. If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes. 

  5. Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary. 

God loves me, full stop.

Follow my story as I pondered a great and baffling mystery, and then solved it—and then discovered a whole new mystery.

I was having some strange, inexplicable symptoms. I was sluggish and lacked energy. I wasn’t moving well, and I had lots of reflux. But mostly, and most strangely, my pants felt a little tight. What could it all mean?

I thought about it for a while, analyzed the content of the past several weeks, assembled and studied the facts at my disposal, and after a while, I arrived at the conclusion: Me eat too much food, and so me get little bit fat.

That’s it. That’s all that was going on. I had been super busy and distracted, so I stopped paying attention to what I was eating. That’s what happened.

Perhaps you are wondering why this whole situation was in any way a puzzle me. Most people, when faced with a clue like “tight pants” would pretty quickly arrive at the answer “more belly.” Most of my life, I would have done the same thing. So why didn’t I figure it out?

Because one thing was missing: The crushing shame and self-loathing that has always come along with a little bit of weight gain, my entire life. I was just a little bit bigger, and it was because I was eating a little bit more. There wasn’t any “YOU USELESS VERMIN” about it; but without that special ingredient of self castigation, I genuinely didn’t recognise what was going on.

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago. I had to get up and do something, but there was something wrong with my arms and legs. They hurt and felt weak and sore and unready. I didn’t understand what was happening to me for several minutes, but eventually it dawned on me: I was tired.

Same story as the weight gain: I didn’t recognize what was going on, because I wasn’t dragging myself through that familiar wretched landscape of second-guessing and guilt, where I accused myself of being lazy and interrogated myself about why I was so unwilling to do such an easy thing. Without this extra burden of self-loathing, I literally could not identify what I was feeling as simple tiredness. I was very, very used to being tired; I was completely unfamiliar with being tired and just accepting that as an objective fact, without tarting it up in an ugly disguise of self-blame.

If you had asked me, “Is it the worst sin in the world to eat cookies for snacks several days in a row?” or “Should a working mother of ten feel ashamed for being tired?” I would have answered: “What? No! Goodness, of course not!”

But deep down, I believed it. I didn’t even know I believed it for years, until I suddenly stopped believing it.

I’m telling you about my particular brand of crazy because I think most of us are like this, in one way or another…Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: Mosaic of the creation of Eve, Monreale Cathedral (public domain)

What’s for supper? Vol. 406: Charcuterie? I hardly knewterie

Hello! Happy Friday! The first day that I have been very certain what day it is, in a long time. 

I hope you had a lovely Christmas day and that you are having a happy new year so far. I have continued to roll with the “I’m RECOVERING, and it’s very important for me to REST” thing, plus with lots and lots of food. I always feel a little bad that we don’t do St. Nicholas Day or OLG day or St. Lucy’s day festivities like all my Catholic friends on social media, but then I remember we have two birthdays in December, plus we celebrate Hanukkah, and then of course Christmas, and then of course New Year’s even/day, and then we have two birthdays in early January. What this boils down to is, if we went through any more butter or sugar or fancy cheese, it would trigger some kind of federal investigation.

Every last person in the house besides me got pretty to very sick, and they’re all still recovering, so we didn’t do any day trips or sledding or anything. We just ate a lot of food. (I attribute my apparent immunity to the vitamin D3 gummies I have been taking all year, but who knows.) 

The precise timeline of what I cooked this past week is pretty fuzzy, so I’ll just do a photo dump in more or less chronological order.

Before Christmas, we made buckeyes and Sophia made fudge. Not sure what her recipe was, but when I make it, this is the one I follow, which does not require a candy thermometer. I also made a huge amount of sugar cookie dough,

Jump to Recipe

and told the kids they could do whatever they wanted with it. I was planning to make gochujang caramel cookies, but couldn’t find the gochujang; so I made these cranberry orange cookies from King Arthur Flour.  They turned out great. 

Not thrilling to look upon (although it does get you to roll the dough in coarse sugar before you bake them, and I ended up using several colors of sugar, which gave some of them some weird colors!), but they were so cheery and cozy. They were both tender and chewy, and the orange flavor came through really well. I think I was the only one who really loved them, but I ate them steadily for two weeks, or however long it’s been. When they got a little stale, I put them in a ziplock bag with a piece of bread, and they softened right up again. 

Then it was Christmas eve, time to make cinnamon rolls! I used the Alton Brown overnight recipe which is easy and reliable. I made the dough and let it rise for three hours, and then Benny and Corrie did the actual rolling and forming.

The formed rolls go in the fridge overnight, and then you let them rise again in the morning for half an hour, and then bake them. I only made a double recipe, because cinnamon rolls get stale really fast, and it’s just sad.

We decorate the tree on Christmas eve, and then go to midnight Mass. Some of the kids were too sick to go, and those of us who went were pretty exhausted, so I didn’t get any pictures! But the sermon was very affecting and I cried my stupid head off. Then we got home and set up all the presents and stockings and fell into bed around 2:30 a.m. 

Christmas morning was wonderful. Two of the adult kids came to Mass with us and spent the night, and one more came in the morning, and we just had a happy morning. A few pics here:

Damien fried up an outlandish amount of bacon, and we had that with the cinnamon buns and orange juice and some fresh fruit, plus various delicacies that Clara brought from the bakery where she works

Then that night we ordered enough Chinese food to feed our family for generations to come

and THEN it was the first night of Hanukkah, so we lighted EVEN MORE CANDLES,

and then I imagine we all went to bed, although it’s a bit of a blur. At some point during the week, I did find the baby, and added it to the nativity scene. 

I think we had leftovers the day after Christmas, and then the next day, we had deli sandwiches, and then Vermonter sandwiches (roast chicken breast, bacon, cheddar cheese, green apple slices, and honey mustard on sourdough bread), and then I remember the kids being delighted that I was serving yet a third kind of sandwich, but I forget what it was. 

Then I decided that whatever day it was was the day for the big semi-boneless leg of lamb I had bought on sale several weeks ago. I have tried many recipes for leg of lamb, and the best one is also by far the easiest. 

Jump to Recipe

Comes out so delicious every time. 

Because it was halfway through Hanukkah, I also made potato latkes. These turned out a little bit disappointing. They were just kind of dense and dark.

Next time, I will grate the potatoes by hand, rather than putting them through the food processor. (I won’t share my recipe, since it wasn’t that great! I just do potato, egg, salt and pepper, and flour, and there are a million recipes online)

I did have the bright idea to dig out a jar of tamarind chutney

and I had my latkes with chutney, which is wonderful. And then also I had some others with sour cream and a little salmon roe. And then some others with applesauce. Maybe they were pretty good latkes after all.

So yeah, it was a pretty swanky meal, and generated a lot of interest from other parties

who are currently, tragically on a dry food-only diet due to an unfortunate habit of yakking up everything else he eats. 

The next day I was planning to serve buffalo chicken salad (greens, frozen buffalo chicken, crumbled blue cheese, crunchy fried onions from a can, cherry tomatoes, shredded pepper jack cheese, and ranch dressing), but I forgot to buy salad. So we had what we had, and I sweetened the deal by making baby sufganiyot (jelly donuts). 

They were actually donut holes made with a choux pastry from the King Arthur recipe, so you don’t have to mess around with yeast or rising times. Best eaten right away, but they’re quite easy to make, and fun. I fried about eight at a time in a pot of hot oil, and they bob around and flip over on their own, which is very cute.

My dough was a little sticky, so they ended up in sort of spiky tardigrade shapes

and then you let them drain on paper towel for a bit, and then you pipe jelly into them 

and then gently roll them in sugar. 

Lavish and delicious. I like the small size, because they’re so sweet and rich, so you don’t get overwhelmed because it’s just two bites.

This brings us up to Dec. 30, if anyone’s keeping track, and the next day was New Year’s Eve. I found a last little bit of cookie dough in the fridge, and made three very specific shapes:

Then the next day was New Year’s Eve, and our tradition is sushi and dumplings. Not gonna lie, I may have overextended myself a bit by this point, and I was a little bit punchy and weepy. I made a cake for the next day, and then I made the dumplings more or less using this recipe and made a pot of good short-grain rice, and made some sauce to make sushi rice

Jump to Recipe

with Corrie to fan it while I gently sliced the sauce into the rice just like on Cooking Mama. Then we went to the vigil Mass for Mary, the Mother of God feast day, and I was fairly cranky when we got back, and maybe accidentally set the steamer baskets on fire by mistake, who can say. 

But we did have dumplings!

And we did have some raggy ass sushi! 

and then we decided nobody was really up for our traditional Marx Brothers movie, so we watched Raising Arizona instead, accompanied by ice cream sodas. This didn’t quite bring us up to midnight, so we limped up to 12:00 with the Frasier RDWRER episode where they get in touch with America

and find it beautiful, flawed, complicated, and unpleasant.

And then we went to bed! And then the next day was Sophia’s birthday! The big kids went to see Nosfertatu and I decorated Sophia’s cake, and then took the little girls to see Moana 2. Which was a perfectly pleasant and pretty movie that I forgot as soon as the credits rolled. 

Sophia’s cake turned out pretty good, though. She requested a strawberry cake with lemon cream cheese frosting, with Moomin, Hello Kitty, and Snoopy holding hands and being friends in a meadow, and this is how that turned out:

Snoopy has clearly been snacking heavily these past few weeks, and the Moomin does not look completely trustworthy to me, but dammit, I thought it was a good cake. 

I watched a few videos on how to make roses out of strawberries, and I can’t say I mastered it, but they turned out decent

Sophia requested calzones for dinner, which is easy enough

Jump to Recipe

and I actually only had half the amount of ricotta cheese the recipe called for, and they turned out great.

May do it that way on purpose from now on. She liked her cake and her presents, yay! Then when the younger kids went to bed, I made up the requested fancy snack platter

Thank you, Aldi.

Damien and I went to bed while the rest of them did I don’t know what. If you look closely, you can see that I had plenty of leftover edible metallic foil (purchased at Walmart) from the cake, and was not afraid to use it. 

I also had something from Aldi that is new to me: tête de moine cheese rosettes.

and since the theme of the last few weeks was Cheese Without Frontiers, I bought a pack. They look like this:

and for the life of me, I can’t remember what they taste like. Kind of like parmesan, I think. 

Then the next day, I cleared the table for the first time in two weeks. I’m really good at just leaning into the joyful mess and the happy chaos around birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year, but then in early January, I hit a wall and just start throwing shit away, and it feels AMAZING.

Still sticky, but we’re getting there. We’ll be human again, you’ll see. 

So, Jan. 2 was supposed to be the first day back at school for some of the kids, which is ridiculous. Still, I figured time to go is time to go. I had set the alarm for 6:40 and resigned myself to my fate.

At 8 a.m. Damien nudged me awake and I sprung into action. Realized I had set the alarm for p.m., not a.m. No matter! Late is better than never. So I woke up Irene, Benny, and Corrie, and they all sadly got up, but Irene was practically delirious with exhaustion, so I sent her back to bed. Then I let the dog out and fed the ducks and turned on the turtle lights and sat down with my coffee, and double checked the school website. Which . . . was kind of ambiguous. 

That’s ambiguous, right? So I was like, screw this, we’re already an hour and a half late and there may not even BE school. You kids go back to bed. So then I went back to bed myself, and then later while I was doing some gentle yoga, the school emailed me to ask if the kids were sick, which, sure. Yes.

And then I discovered that Irene (who goes to a different school, and whom I had woken up and then sent back to bed) definitely didn’t have school anyway. So I took Corrie out for a haircut and nobody had any regrets, as far as I know. 

For supper, I found a hunk of roast beef that I didn’t even remember buying, so I roasted that for supper. I sprinkled it heavily with garlic salt and pepper and seared it on all sides in very hot olive oil, and then I just chunked it uncovered in a 350 oven for about an hour, checked to make sure it was done, let it rest a little, and sliced it up. 

I served it with basically everything else I could find

which turned out to be pomegranate, leftover lamb, leftover shrimp, and miscellaneous crackers and cheese, including a round of cheap brie which I heated up in the microwave like an absolute criminal. We also had lots of baguettes lurking about getting stale, so I sliced them up and toasted them in the oven with olive oil and garlic salt. 

I think this was the best meal I’ve had all year.

And then this morning it was Damien’s turn to bring the kids to school, which he actually DID, the big show-off. 

Tonight we are having quesadillas.

And that’s my story! Thanks for joining me through what, in retrospect, was mainly a Journey Through Cheese No regrets! No regrets! And happy new year to you, every one. 

5 from 1 vote
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No-fail no-chill sugar cookies

Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.

Servings 24 large cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups flour

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.

  3. Add egg and extracts.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.

  6. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.

  7. Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.

  8. Let them cool completely before decorating!

 

5 from 1 vote
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Tom Nichols' Grandmother's Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

  • boneless leg of lamb
  • olive oil
  • garlic powder
  • garlic salt
  • oregano

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 325.

  2. Slash the meat several times, about an inch deep.

  3. Fill the cuts with plenty of garlic powder.

  4. Slather olive oil all over the meat.

  5. Crust it with garlic salt. Sprinkle with all the oregano you own.

  6. Cover meat loosely with tinfoil and cook three hours. Uncover and cook for another 30 minutes.

 

5 from 1 vote
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Sushi rice

I use my Instant Pot to get well-cooked rice, and I enlist a second person to help me with the second part. If you have a small child with a fan, that's ideal.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups raw sushi rice
  • 1 cup rice vinegar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp salt

Instructions

  1. Rinse the rice thoroughly and cook it.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt, and cook, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Put the rice in a large bowl. Slowly pour the vinegar mixture over it while using a wooden spoon or paddle to fold or divide up the cooked rice to distribute the vinegar mixture throughout. You don't want the rice to get gummy or too sticky, so keep it moving, but be careful not to mash it. I enlist a child to stand there fanning it to dry it out as I incorporate the vinegar. Cover the rice until you're ready to use it.

 

5 from 1 vote
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Calzones

This is the basic recipe for cheese calzones. You can add whatever you'd like, just like with pizza. Warm up some marinara sauce and serve it on the side for dipping. 

Servings 12 calzones

Ingredients

  • 3 balls pizza dough
  • 32 oz ricotta
  • 3-4 cups shredded mozzarella
  • 1 cup parmesan
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1-2 egg yolks for brushing on top
  • any extra fillings you like: pepperoni, olives, sausage, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400. 

  2. Mix together filling ingredients. 

  3. Cut each ball of dough into fourths. Roll each piece into a circle about the size of a dinner plate. 

  4. Put a 1/2 cup or so of filling into the middle of each circle of dough circle. (You can add other things in at this point - pepperoni, olives, etc. - if you haven't already added them to the filling) Fold the dough circle in half and pinch the edges together tightly to make a wedge-shaped calzone. 

  5. Press lightly on the calzone to squeeze the cheese down to the ends. 

  6. Mix the egg yolks up with a little water and brush the egg wash over the top of the calzones. 

  7. Grease and flour a large pan (or use corn meal or bread crumbs instead of flour). Lay the calzones on the pan, leaving some room for them to expand a bit. 

  8. Bake about 18 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. Serve with hot marinara sauce for dipping.  

What’s for supper? Vol. 405: Where I been

Happy Friday! It has been AGES since I’ve done a What’s For Supper. Sorry! First it was the day after Thanksgiving, and I just couldn’t bear to talk about food; then the next Friday I had hernia surgery so I wrote myself a doctor’s note to skip it; and then it was a week after surgery, and I hadn’t cooked anything, so didn’t have anything to say; and now it is two weeks after, and I have been so successful at allowing myself to rest and recover, I have sadly forgotten how to do that wording thing. The writing. Not to mention the cooking. 

HOWEVER, it is Friday! Happy Friday from behind a pile of Amazon and Etsy boxes. I ordered almost everything online this year (frequently reminding the children that, as they open their presents, they should keep in mind that, while their mother was shopping, she went through a whole bottle of opioids). Last night, Damien and I unboxed everything and checked it against my list.

Result: I only seem to have ordered one present twice, and accidentally thrown away a different one. This is pretty good, considering the volume! So I reordered the lost one with priority shipping and a pleading note to the seller, and Damien is going out this afternoon and filling in the gaps (because once we saw everything all piled up, it became evident that — oh, you know. We needed to rectify certain inequities. He is also buying presents for the dog and the cat, who will absolutely notice and be very hurt if they don’t get presents. And yes, he ordered special Christmas treat worms for the turtle, who will not notice if he doesn’t get a treat, but we still feel that the Incarnation is for turtles, too, in some way. Anyway, he’s getting worms. 

Sophia put up the Christmas lights inside and out, Elijah did the grocery shopping, and the older kids took turns picking kids up from school, and everyone has been cooking and cleaning and keeping the household ticking along very nicely while I just lolled. And truly, just as important and doing all the huge amount of work he did, Damien has also been tirelessly reminding me that I have to rest and I’m not being lazy or making a big deal out of nothing, and that nobody is mad at me for recuperating. I only needed to hear it 46,000 times. Maybe a couple more.

So I mostly just lurked about and showed up for meals that other people made. One such meal was Benny’s birthday, and she requested Damien’s magnificent lasagna from the Deadspin recipe

and a “dirt and worms” dessert, which she made herself, for her actual birthday. Then next week we had her party with friends, which featured a fire and hot chocolate bar outside, lots of giggling, and a parakeet cake. 

I did look up tutorials on how to make parakeets out of gum paste, and then Benny and I made some very serviceable parakeet shapes, with their beady little eyes and weird little lumpy beaks and puffy necks and everything. Then we started decorating them with melted candy melts, and this is where things went a little off the rails. 

Still clearly parakeets, but with a little dash of “you poor dear, what happened?”

I also decided it would be fun and easy to do one of those moves where you melt chocolate and use a piping bag to swirl it around on an acetate cake collar, and then just wrap it around the cake and peel the collar away, and voila, you have 

look, first you downgrade your mental image from an airy filigreed bird cage encircling the two birds, to a just sort of fancy maybe sort of bramble-like backdrop design. Then you walk away for a little bit, take some deep breaths, face reality, and get to work salvaging all the bits that broke off, and sticking them into the cake randomly so it looks like a couple of parakeets are . . . I don’t know what they’re doing. They’re being on a cake, with things sticking out. Benny made a bunch of green hearts and added sprinkles and she was happy, which is what matters. We had fun making weird birds together. 

The next day was my birthday, my FIFTIETH, when it turned out my heart’s desire was for Damien to bring home McDonald’s. Most of the adult kids came over, and Clara made some lovely key lime pies, and it was absolutely swell. 

The last couple of days, I have been actually hoisting myself out of bed in the morning, and even cooking a bit. Yesterday we had pork spiedies

which were a little bland, but fine. While I was hacking up pork, I went ahead and made a second dinner: Carnitas and beans and rice. Looks promising. 

I wrapped that up and we’ll have it on Saturday, which promises to be a bustling busy day, so it will be nice to have dinner squared away. I absolutely loathe cleaning raw meat off cutting boards and knives, so only having to do it once for two meals was irresistible. 

Today I’m going to make sabanekh bil hummus (spinach and chickpea stew) from this Saveur recipe, and serve it with store-bought pita. 

It’s easy and so savory and tasty. Damien likes it, too, and he’s not generally a big chickpea fan. 

I have not done one single speck of Christmas baking, except for a bake sale back in November. I might get ingredients for buckeyes, which are no-bake treats (it’s just basically peanut butter, butter, and powdered sugar mushed into dough and then rolled into little balls, then dipped in melted chocolate). Most definitely something the kids can do basically on their own, as you can see from this pic from a few years ago

and maybe some more sugar cookies to decorate, because after school today the kids will finally be on vacation. Here is my recipe for dough that you don’t have to chill, and that keeps its shape when you bake it. 

Jump to Recipe

We have a set of star cookie cutters in graduated sizes, which you can double up (I mean make two of each size), ice them, and then stack them to make a tree, IF YOU WANT. 

If you want to pose like this for every single photo, there is not much I can do about that, apparently. 

I don’t honestly have a lot of Christmas baking specialties — just pretty standard stuff. On Christmas morning, we have cinnamon buns, bacon, OJ, egg nog, and fruit, and on Christmas evening, we get Chinese takeout (except for one kid whose relationship with Chinese food was permanently tainted by a stomach bug, so she gets a sandwich from Jersey Mike’s).

I think I settled on Alton Brown’s recipe for cinnamon rolls, because they’re meant to be made the night before and then baked in the morning. But I’m not locked in, if anyone has a suggestion for a better recipe!

And then Hanukkah starts on Christmas evening! So at some point I will probably make potato latkes, maybe sufganiyot, maybe rugelach! 

If I don’t manage to post anything in time, I wish you all, every last one of you, even the mean Russian bots, but especially people who need someone to care for them, and people who have been wearing themselves out caring for other people, a warm and good and holy last days of Advent, and a Christmas day of peace and joy with our favorite baby boy. I love yez all. 

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Mix together all marinade ingredients. 

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

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

    Serve in sandwiches or with rice. 

 

5 from 1 vote
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Carnitas (very slightly altered from John Herreid's recipe)

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

  3. Simmer, uncovered, for at least two hours

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

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

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

 

5 from 1 vote
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No-fail no-chill sugar cookies

Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.

Servings 24 large cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups flour

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.

  3. Add egg and extracts.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.

  6. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.

  7. Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.

  8. Let them cool completely before decorating!

The bio-children of God

We are adopted children of God. What can that mean? 

Let me tell you first about a little apple tree I planted. One year, before it could even blossom, caterpillars came and devoured every leaf. I did my best to rescue it, but it was no good. Too much had been eaten.

But the next spring, to my delight, green shoots came up from the ground in that same spot, and they were raring to go. The tree came back, and I was so proud of its tenacity. It grew fast, leafed out and even made some buds.

And that is when I came to see it was not really the same tree. The tree I planted really did get eaten, and this tree was sprouting from the rootstock to which a graft of a different variety had been added. What I was seeing and caring for was some kind of ancestor resurrected from dormancy, a stubborn bud from a different, heartier rootstock. It is a crab apple, or possibly a plum, obviously very hearty, which is why it was used as a root stock. The tree I planted really is gone.

But it is also not gone; it’s here. There is a tree growing there because I planted a tree there. It’s alive because I tended it, even after it looked like it was dead. Maybe next year it will have fruit. It is not the tree I had planted, but it also is. It is there in its current form because the caterpillars ate it up.

There are a lot of places this story could go next. You are thinking, perhaps, of Advent, and Jesus as the bud on the stump of Jesse that grew in the dead of winter, when half-spent was the night. Or maybe you are thinking that the Lord has his plan all along and in his goodness will bring new green shoots out of adversity.

Those are good thoughts! I am thinking, though, about Pescha-Malke, in Vilnius, 1838.

She is my great-great-great grandmother on my mother’s side, and I just found out she exists. I knew, of course, that I had an ancestor of that generation, because, well, here I am. But I didn’t know a name or a face. But my brother turned up the name together with this photo: A dapper man with a baby on his lap, surrounded by two women, two little girls and a boy. Which one is Pesche-Malke? Maybe the one who looks like my grandmother, with her familiar amused expression, hooded eyes and broad hands. And the little girl by her side looks like two of my sisters and several of my nieces.

In the sibling chat, we speculated about which one was Pescha-Malke, a name that appears to mean “Daughter of G-d; Queen.” Anyone who might know this photo is long dead. It is the internet that has witlessly, obediently connected and preserved these old faces and names; and then my brother searched and brought them to light.

But they weren’t really ever lost; they were in the rootstock, which continues to bud.

We can recognize that little, half-formed family smile; and we recognize the thyroid problems, which still flourish. Genetics is real. Heritage is real. It stays alive under the surface, whether anyone’s keeping track of it or not, until someone brings it to light, in one form or another.

I have been thinking, then, about what it means to be someone’s child, and what it means to be an adopted child. Does genetics matter, or does it not? Is it important, or does it just feel that way?

Adopted children seem to think so. Bodies matter, not only at the moment of conception but in ways that do not manifest themselves for years. As you grow, no matter where you are, you continue to “match” where you came from, biologically. And the synchronicity with your roots continues to assert itself more as you get older. It’s true for everyone, adopted or not.

Not long ago, I looked in the mirror, and there she was: my grandmother. I had no idea the old gal was in there. Who knows what had to fall away or be chewed up, in order for her face to come to light.

God knows the people in my family photo were only a decade or so away from being set upon by a ravening swarm that devoured and destroyed. (You’ll notice my family doesn’t live in Vilnius anymore.) But the rootstock endured. The tree that’s growing now is the same tree that was originally planted.

Well, it is the same tree and it isn’t. It is something new, and it is something very old.

I am talking about everybody, now: Everybody who is an adopted child of God, which is all humankind. We are from the same rootstock as our Father, and we aren’t.

To be an adopted child of God means a lot of things…Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

It’s probably not demons

A while back, I wrote about how unfortunate it is that we often waste the time and energy of priests, asking them to do things that lots of other people could do. A priest once told me that this is the hardest part of his job, the non-priest stuff. It’s not that he thinks he’s too good to do office work or manual labour or show up at a BBQ; it’s just that he knows there are things that only a priest can do, and he wishes more people would ask him for those things.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a related phenomenon; people asking priests to do things that not only other people can do, but that priests really aren’t qualified to do. This happens a lot in Catholic online groups…someone will ask for advice, and several people respond, “Go to a priest.”

They frequently tell people seek marriage counselling from a priest, rather than from a marriage counsellor. Some priests may happen to be trained or especially gifted in this field, but most truly are not. It’s not a question of holiness; it’s just that counselling and therapy are specialised fields, and you can’t just show up and be holy, and expect good results, any more than you’d expect a holy priest to be able to give you good advice when your lymphatic system isn’t working well, or your vision is poor. There may very well be some overlap with spiritual matters, but that doesn’t mean a priest is the best person to go to. And a good priest will know this and say so to the person who requests this kind of help from them.

More and more often; and this coincides with an alarming rise in the fascination with “celebrity exorcists,” I see Catholics encouraging others to go to priests when someone is clearly suffering from a mental health crisis. A common example; a worried mother posts in a social media group for Catholics, saying her child has always been difficult, but there has been a recent, extreme escalation of erratic or violent behavior, and the child isn’t responding to any normal interventions, and she doesn’t know what to do.

The last time I saw this scenario, no fewer than 20 other moms told her to run to a priest and request an exorcism. Sounds like demons! Go to a priest.

Let me be clear: this is negligent parenting…Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

image source (Creative Commons)

Untamed territory: The iconogrphy of Emanuel Burke

“Iconography is not a science, where you follow the formula and someone has an encounter with God,” said artist Emanuel Burke.

“That’s not the way it works.”

Burke ought to know. The 33-year-old artist, who works under the pseudonym Alypius, recently saw one of his icons of Jesus shared on social media.

But far from encountering God, dozens of viewers jeered at his work and called him a fake Christian who was trying to undermine the Church. He had depicted Christ with large eyes and a small head, rather than with the prominent brow that often signifies wisdom in icons.

Burke, who is a convert to and a seminarian in the Eastern Orthodox church, found it especially discouraging to face personal attacks from his fellow believers. But he tried his best to respond with humility and a kind of radical acceptance.

“We long to be right in an argument, not to be perceived a certain way. But there’s a lot to be gained from being a fool, from being slandered and misunderstood,” he said. “I don’t know how that will shake out for me and for others, but in the end, it’ll be blessed.”

An art teacher at Canongate Catholic High School in Arden, North Carolina, Burke knows some of his icons are unusual and don’t conform to every standard of the art form. Though he doesn’t have any formal training in fine art, he’s very familiar with the traditions that dictate the spiritual significance of color, shapes and gestures in Eastern iconography. But he said these traditions have developed over time and are not as inviolable as some might believe.

“They are not dogmatics, in the same way as the Trinity or the hypostatic union or something like that is,” he said.

Burke rejects the idea, popular in some circles, that “if it doesn’t look like it was painted in the 9th century, it’s not an icon.” In fact, he thinks an icon that strives primarily to look like it is ancient fails in what iconography is intended to do.

“The thing about iconography is it’s always contemporary. It’s not supposed to be stuck in the past,” he said.

Instead, it is intended to speak to, and to be received by, the people who will actually encounter it.

Contemporary — but not modern

There’s a vast divide between the modern understanding and the ancient Christian understanding of art, Burke said, and he didn’t immediately grasp that difference. As a result, his first icons were a clumsy blend of traditional imagery and modern sensibilities. He ended up sanding down his first attempt to show the face of Christ and painting over it.

“The telltale sign (of a modern understanding of art) is the overemphasis on individualism. ‘This is the way I see things or how I feel about it,’” he said.

Then each viewer brings his or her subjective interpretation to the work, and it becomes even more individualized and fragmented in meaning, he said. “Whereas with the approach of a Byzantine or Orthodox iconographer, we do this with the mind of the Church. It’s never about me or another individual in a very rigid sense,” he said.

The artist is involved by necessity because he, too, is venerating the icon even as he paints it. Burke speaks of the work of painting as a work of self-discernment.

“But I don’t see myself as the only participant,” he said.

The viewer is just as important, and in a sense, the work is incomplete until it has been beheld. The face of Christ that got Burke so much unwelcome attention online was the 21st installment in a series he undertook during Advent, which the Orthodox treat as a “Little Lent.” As a discipline, he tried — but did not quite manage — to make an image of the face of Christ every day for the 40 days leading up to Christmas.

Some of the images were painted with egg tempera; some were etchings done while he was experimenting with a cold wax technique, which uses a combination of paste and paint. He also works in ballpoint pen or even with Procreate, the digital painting app. He sees the value in making digital art that’s easy to edit and share, though he’s more drawn to the “very human” natural and tactile materials of egg tempera.

Burke admires some of the new styles of icons being produced in the Eastern Orthodox churches, especially in Ukraine. He likes their bold colors and use of geometric shapes. But he doesn’t like everything new he sees. Some innovations in modern iconography go further afield than he’s comfortable with. However, he doesn’t feel that he’s qualified to say that they’ve gone too far.

“These things get worked out over time. The openness to do something that’s a bit different helps move things away from that sort of robotic, printing-press approach to religious art,” he said.

Journey into untamed territory

Burke recently watched “Stalker,” a 1979 Soviet sci-fi film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It deals with a man who’s gone into “a wilderness that has been taken over with the modern innovations that were brought on by the Soviet Union.” He said that the film suggests that the experience of God is like this: It’s wild and untamed territory, and “not always a pleasant experience,” but sometimes a necessary one.

Burke himself was somewhat shaken when he first encountered the faith he now hopes to serve as a priest. He and his wife were raised Southern Baptist, although his wife, who was born in Thailand, also has early memories of practicing Buddhism. They were “freaked out” when they attended their first Divine Liturgy….Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Tension and balance: The sculpture of Christopher Alles

Christopher Alles, aged 33, is the father of five kids under the age of five, including triplet girls aged 2. So you might think he was describing his home life when he said it’s “everything everywhere all at once.”

But he was actually speaking about art and how to understand it.

“You have multiple things going on at the same time, and it takes a while to get comfortable managing them: Composition, representation, abstract form, the expressiveness of the character. You have to be juggling everything at the same time,” he said.

The New York-based sculptor sometimes feels the magnitude of that “everything everywhere all at once” task on a cosmic scale, especially when he’s carving; and it’s an experience he finds immensely satisfying.

“You’re taking something that’s meaningless and incoherent, and bringing order, separating things,” he said.

He describes forming a sculpted foot, first separating it from the base of the statue, then forming the front and sides of the foot like simple walls that gradually take on definition and meaning.

“It’s like God separating the land and the water. You’re making distinctions. Gradually things come together,” he said.

But if Alles shares in God’s creative process, he’s definitely not omniscient like God, or totally in control of what he’s making.

“As you go along, things change and emerge. You feel like you’re not in charge,” he said.

There is a mysterious element to making art, and even as he proceeds along the thoughtful and laborious process from making sketches, to miniature clay figures, to full-size armatured clay sculptures, to mold, to final cast poured in resin and marble, he’s sometimes surprised at how various elements work themselves out.

He points to a recent secular commission, “Apollo and Daphne,” a startlingly explosive figurative piece that seems to fly out from a central point suspended in the air, rather than from the ground.

“The composition was just playing around. The sort of geometric form of angles and lines just sort of emerged; it was spontaneous,” he said.

It invites the viewer to feel, rather than just see, the tension between the energies of the covetous god and the hapless nymph, who becomes rooted in the earth as a tree to escape his assault.

But Alles focuses mainly on sacred art, and he recognizes that another thing that’s out of his control is what the viewer actually sees.

“It’s hard, as an artist, to see your own work in the way other people see it,” said Alles. “Other people read things into my work that I didn’t see.”

Alles recalls a statue of St. Joseph with the young Jesus…Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Image: Photo courtesy of Chris Alles 

Kitchen rosary winner! And a discount code for The Woodshop At Avalon

I’m happy to announce that the winner of the Kitchen Rosary from The Woodshop at Avalon is Kim Pepper! Her name was chosen randomly from everyone who entered. Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks to The Woodshop At Avalon for sponsoring this giveaway!

If you didn’t win, you can still order one of their beautiful abacus-style kitchen rosaries

and while you’re at it, use the 10% discount code: Enter in SMALLS24 when you check out, and you will get 10% off. The code is good until Dec. 7, 2024.

Dec. 7 is also the last day to order custom goods, so check it out! They make a variety of handcrafted goods for your Catholic home or office, for babies, and for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium. A very popular item right now is the simple but clever prayer card holder, which is only $9.99. 

This size fits on most windowsills, and you can just pop in a prayer card to display the saint of the day, or keep a memorial card in it, etc. It even has storage, so the cards you’re not using won’t get lost or wrecked. You can have it engraved with “ora pro nobis” or “pray for us,” and it comes in three different finishes and two sizes. You can also order four beeswax votive candles directly from the site. 

Don’t forget to use your discount code! Yay, small business!