What’s for supper? Vol. 475: West and wewaxation wedux

Happy Thursday! I’m sorry I missed last Friday’s What’s For Supper (and I’m sorry if I caused anyone to panic by posting a WFS on a Thursday. Not that the world revolves around my posts, but I, for one, have been hurled into confusion by much smaller things).

Last week was wonderful but exhausting, and by last Friday, many of my cells refused to cooperate in anything but the most essential functions, by which I mean I fell asleep in the adoration chapel and woke myself up snoring, but don’t worry! there were several other people there. Then I went to pick up a kid and drove the wrong way down a one-way street, and then I sent myself to bed early. So I didn’t get any writing done.

A quick highlights reel of the previous week:

Last Sunday, my friend Danielle stopped by for lunch! I didn’t get any pictures of us, but we had wonderful conversation as usual, and she brought some special hybrid apricots. Anyone who’s ever looking for a gift for me, the answer is always fruit. 

Damien made smoked chicken thighs, and I made a green salad and some pasta salad. For the pasta salad, I used some of my chive blossom-infused vinegar, which has pinked up nicely. Started like this:

and ten days later, it looked like this. 

I love infusing things. I’m really big on projects that take a little effort in the beginning, but then you just have to let time pass. 

I overcooked the pasta, but the pasta salad was still good.

Salami, sun dried tomatoes, feta, basil, black olives, marinated artichoke hearts, olive oil, chive blossom vinegar, and misc. Oh, and I chopped up a bunch of garlic scapes and threw them in, and that was a good idea! They tasted like mild garlic, but with the snappy texture of fresh string beans, so that added some good texture. 

For dessert I made individual blubarb crumbles with the last of the rhubarb, and topped them with fresh whipped cream.

The flavor was good, but the texture — well, it seems I used some of what should have been beyond the last rhubarb, and some of it was so woody, I truly don’t understand how I didn’t notice that when I was prepping it. It was like eating sweet blueberry mulch. I really surprise myself, sometimes. 

But all in all, a tasty meal

and a tasty visit! 

The next day, with some help from Corrie, I culled peaches from the tree. We have thousands and thousands of peaches this year, and if you want them to grow big and sweet, you need to pick off the smallest and malformed and crowded ones. This is not an edifying job, but it gets less tragic every time I do it. It sure was a lot of peaches, and this was just the ones we could reach easily. 

I threw most of them in the compost heap, but decided I might as well pickle the biggest ones. I opted for a sweet recipe, rather than sour or spicy, but I fudged it a bit. As far as I can recall, I used white vinegar, honey, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, bay leaves, lots of fresh ginger, salt, and I guess water. You’re supposed to score the peaches to help them absorb the flavor, but they were so small and tender, I accidentally cut them in half (the pit is just barely forming at this stage). So I made one jar of whole peaches, and one jar of halves. 

Murky and mystical. I don’t do sterile canning; I just covered the jars and put them in the fridge. Gonna try them next week, probably, or the next. I’m guessing they will be good as a garnish for vanilla ice cream. Maybe with a little praline topping and fresh mint. Well, I have no idea. 

THEN WE WENT CAMPING. That’s what the rest of this post will be about! And I will warn you, I allowed myself to get a little lyrical, because it was just that kind of place. 

I spent most of the time without my phone/camera, so I could just beeeeeee there, and not be checking in on stuff, or thinking ahead, or framing stuff, or trying to capture anything, or to know what time it was. 

I gathered our supplies and Damien loaded up both kayaks and the canoe, because this site is only accessible by water. It’s about forty minutes away, and we arrived at the park around 7:00, found a pump and filled up the water tank, and then we packed most of our gear into the canoe. Damien paddled that, and I took one kayak with the second in tow.

We paddled through shallow water and golden light, everything utterly clean, globes of yellow spatterdock standing out here and there, and green lake weed folded just under the surface, rippling with the ripples. We could still hear other campers on shore from behind the trees, calling out and tending their campfires. Then we passed through a row of great rocks, “The Narrows,” and then on into the deeper part of the lake. Then it was only birds, and trees, water, and sky.

A little overwhelmed, we paddled around until we saw what must be our site, just a narrow patch of sand in the bank, and a small clearing in the trees. We landed and were delighted. They said it was a remote site and that is how it felt, with a deep, quiet smell of trees, a thick pad of pine needles underfoot, and not a thing overhead but the cooling sky. We unloaded our gear, walked around to see what there was, then set up the tent and the air mattress before it got much darker. 

And, it was the wrong mattress.

This may not sound like a big deal, but Damien is very tall, and I’m pretty wide, and this mattress was both short and narrow. And we are both old, and also the mattress had a leak. And we were staying two nights. So. 

The sun was setting, and I was distraught (guess who packed the gear?), and we could not think of a single solution other than Damien going back home to get the right mattress, while I stayed to make sure no critters ate our food. First he showed me how to use his pistol, then he went right back over the water, through The Narrows and over the other water, through the park, forty minutes home, grab the mattress, forty minutes back, see a baby moose, back over the water, back through The Narrows, and then through the other water with the right mattress. 

So, this is how you know this was a blessed spot: While I was alone in the night in the woods, I wasn’t scared at all. I was flustered, because it quickly became pitch dark, and I couldn’t figure out how to use the flashlights (I knew they had the new battery tab still on, but it was dark, and I was flustered!), and I lit a fire, but it kept going out, and I had to keep going into the black woods to gather more kindling, and the loons out on the lake were making the most otherworldly, tragical noises they possibly could. So it was a strange experience! But I felt utterly safe the whole time. Eventually I figured out how to use the lantern, and I hung it on the furthest branch of a tree I could reach, so when Damien got back into the water, he would know where to land. (Do you know that NH is 84% tree?) 

This is where something really strange happened: I couldn’t find the water. I kept shining my light at the spot where the land ended, and all I could see was pebbles and sand. I understood what I was seeing: The water was so still and so clear, I was seeing right through it down to the bottom. But I had such a hard time persuading myself the water was actually there. It was like looking straight down from the brink of the Grand Canyon, which is so incredibly deep that the distance down is further than I am used to being able to see horizontally. I knew what I was seeing, but I couldn’t get my brain to register it. Passing strange. 

I just kept relighting the fire and thinking about loons and eating caramel cremes to fortify myself, and eventually I allowed myself to tot up the time it could reasonably take to achieve all the things Damien had to do. I figured about three hours.

I checked my phone. It had been about three hours, twenty-five minutes.

Then I did worry. I allowed myself to think about him not being able to spot the campsite, and for some reason his boat sinking silently into the dark water with no one to know but the loons and the stars, and how much I would not like that to be true, but MAYBE IT WAS.

That part went on for about ten minutes. Then suddenly I heard splashing, and then there he was, with a big mattress and an extra bundle of wood. And I was glad to have him back. 

We were both every so tired and hungry, so I was glad I had splurged on a bunch of pre-sliced london broil, which I salted and peppered, and we threaded it onto the tines of a long fork, and Damien cooked it nicely over the fire

until it crackled, while I cut up some sharp cheddar and buttered some bread. And that was an excellent meal. We washed our hands and collapsed into bed to the sound of nightbirds and peepers. 

Around 8 a.m., I woke up. Haha, just kidding, it was like 4:15. I struggled my way out of the tent and stumbled over to the terlet (we got this wonderful, portable camp toilet, which made a huge difference in the entire trip!), and then went over to see what the world was doing up so early.

This is what it was doing. 

Here’s a video I took


 
and I thought that any day that started out that way could not possibly be bad. I could already feel my brain rinsing clean. 

I went back to bed and dozed for a bit, then got up and scared the heck out of a family of mergansers checking out the bits of cheese we had dropped last night. They had at least a dozen babies, and the whole lot of them whooshed out of there like they had a jet pack. The trail of bubbles they left in their wake stayed floating on the surface for ten minutes or more — that’s how still the water was. 

Damien lit the camp stove and made some coffee, and I sat in the tethered yellow kayak and drank it slowly while drifting. The water was utterly clear, and I watched salamanders and tiny fish bustling around. One big fish that I did not see made a classic “CLOOP!” as he nabbed a careless dragonfly and dropped back home. 

Then I untied the kayak and set out to see the water. There were clusters of rock in the middle of the lake, a few bare and marked with stripes from  different depths of water; some with grasses, pink and purple flowers, and pale lichens, a few with entire trees. A dry tip of broken tree branch poked up through the surface, and it was bleached and bare. I thought I saw a blue darning needle perched on it, and next to it, a green sprout. I maneuvered closer to see, and the green was a grasshopper, and with it was another, in brown, and then I saw two more bugs. In another spot, every single blade of pond grass that poked up through the surface had its one crablike, translucent insect clinging to its stalk. And birds, birds, birds everywhere. I have never seen such a place for living things. 

We kept marveling how quiet it was, and how much solitude, and how remote, because all we could hear was birds. But to the birds, it must have felt like Grand Central Station. They were all hard at work, and there were so many, and so many kinds. Everyone was busy doing complicated, intricate avian things, except for this one nuthatch, who perched near our tent and went, “Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp.” And that is what he did, all day long. 

In the middle of the lake, a round, yellow spider startled me by scuttling up my arm. I jumped and blew him off with a puff of breath. I regretted it right away, but he landed neatly on the surface of the water and skated silently beside my boat, skimming right along with me, caught up in my small current. He left a tiny wake behind him, and made ripples before him as he went.

At some point, I paddled back to camp to have some breakfast. I burned a bagel over the stove flame, then scrambled some eggs and added some smoked salmon trim, and had a wonderful sandwich. 

Then I went back out, and I saw a pair of loons. I kept carefully coming closer, and they kept letting it happen, completely unbothered. They are dark creatures with pointed bills, and between them were two fuzzy babies who paddled lightly on the water and kept up a persistent burring, wheezing sound.

 The parents were silent and unalarmed by my boat, although I know they saw me with their round, red eyes.

 

They ducked their heads and fished out goodies from the glassy water, with droplets flashing and beading on their backs. Their children were plain, but the parents were both dressed to the nines, decked out in an intricate Escher-like design of black and white. Sometimes the babies rode on their backs, then slid down into the water to bob and swim. 

I saw striped rocks; I saw uprooted trees. Nearer to the shore, I heard a flap like a waiter shaking out a tablecloth, and a huge grey heron lifted off the water and departed on some heron business, into the trees. 

Through the narrows and into the reedy, shallow water, where half the surface was dressed with lily pads, I watched a red-winged blackbird hover, then dart, over and over again, picking off a feast of bugs. His shoulders blazed and he sang his rowdy, garbled song as I floated and watched, my forearms baking in the sun, frogs calling, mounds of clouds piled in the blue. A million little fish kept cool in the dim water, and a white moth took her ease on a lily pad. 

And that is how we spent most of the day! Sometimes Damien and I paddled around together and explored; sometimes we went our separate ways. Absolutely nothing to do but paddle and float and look and listen. And not take pictures!

We spent a long, lovely time in the tent reading, and eventually I took a nap, and Damien went out to explore the forest. When I woke up, he had left a bouquet of wildflowers outside the tent. The last time I was so delighted to find flowers was when I came out of my dorm room in college and someone gave me a coffee pot filled with discarded pink flowers a teacher had thinned out of the bed by the office. That was from Damien, too, about 28 years ago. 

I went out with a journal and made some terrible drawings, mainly so I could look up flowers later. The one that baffled me the most was a tough, glossy  one on a long stalk, with five red petals and a green center like a parachute, and complex, ruffled, hairy leaves. 

I later discovered this is an immature pitcher plant, and the pitcher hadn’t formed yet. I didn’t know we had carnivorous plants in New Hampshire! There were also millions of shrubs with elegant, petal-shaped leaves and clusters of small, old fashioned-looking fuchsia blossoms.

These turned out to be sheep laurel, also new to me. 

Later in the day, I went out and in the middle of the water, I happened to look up, and there soared an eagle. He was just lazily circling, with his white tail fanned out. He made half a dozen circuits around the sky and then a little bird showed up and kept darting at him. He ignored it at first, but the little one would not give it up, and kept badgering and nippig at him. The eagle did a short barrel roll to evade him. I was absolutely bugging out and almost fell out of my boat. Then he decided he’d had enough, and glided away into the trees. Freaking birds. Freaking amazing. 

At some point, we went back and roasted hot dogs for supper, and I wrapped a Drake’s fruit pie in tinfoil and roasted that. It was fine. Much like a Drake’s fruit pie, except warm. 

I’ll just share a bunch of photos here from my evening outings.

and this final one, approaching the campsite with the moon overhead

A tiny, prickling rain was just starting to fall. 

We decided we were too tired to sit around a fire, so we just went to bed and read for a long time, gorgeously cozy. I woke several times in the night to hear more and more rain falling, and around dawn it really picked up, and that was when I realized we never put the tent fly on. It wasn’t raining directly inside the tent, but the water seeped through the walls, and by morning, my head and pillow were soaking wet. 

The stove wouldn’t stay lit long enough for coffee, so we just started packing. It was sad. Everything had wet pine needles and wet, splintery wood stuck to it. Damien loaded up the canoe and set out

and I followed with the two kayaks. So very different from when we got there! Our arrival was lucid and golden; our departure was misty, soggy, and grey. 

We made it back to the park landing site and started to unload. A mother wood duck and some ducklings were dabbling around the boat landing, looking for breakfast, and we saw one baby run right across the surface of the water like a cartoon. Then Damien experienced the pleasure of standing on wet pine needles and hoisting wet kayaks onto the top of a wet Suburban, and I helped by putting my hands in the air near the kayaks and going, “Oh! Oh gosh! Oh no!” Then, to make things worse, one baby duck came back all by himself, swimming slowly, looking around, and quacking anxiously, but his family was gone. A bit of a sad note to leave on. 

Eventually we got everything all packed up and took one final look at the water. And the mother duck sailed into view. She headed straight for the reeds, quacked sternly, and then reappeared, headed back in the other direction and muttering to herself, with her errant duckling in tow. So that was all right. 

Then we left, and then we stopped for coffee, and then we drove the rest of the way home. We’re planning our next trip already. It was wonderful. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 474: And I alone scaped to tell thee

Happy Friday! This week has been an insane mix of medical emergencies, yard work, milestones, and of course potato chips. So many potato chips. If this sounds like your jam, read on. 

SATURDAY
Panic food/hospital food

Saturday I got back from shopping and Damien was just getting back from the dump, and we found the one kid who was home crying in horrible pain. I immediately thought appendicitis. So we went to the hospital and they said oh yeah, it’s appendicitis, but we don’t do pediatric surgery here. So Damien went with the kid in the ambulance to the big hospital an hour north, and I ran home to get some extra clothes and a sandwich, and then followed in the car. 

I will spare you the tale of how many turns I missed and which new issues with the car cropped up along the way, but the rest of the evening and night and following morning were not great. So we languished in the second ER for many hours, waiting to hear when we could get the surgery. We were doing better than a lot of other people there, let me tell you. 

A kind nurse interceded for us and around midnight we finally got moved to the PICU, which was much nicer. Surgery in the morning. I went to brush my teeth and in came the attending doctor and said they had presented it to her like it was definitely appendicitis, but when she looked at the actual reports, that was far from clear. So we got an MRI at around 3 a.m. and that too was NOT GREAT. Poor kid. Back to the room, kid is all worked up and can’t sleep, everything is beeping, eventually we doze off.

SUNDAY
Wendy’s 

Around 7 a.m. the surgeon bursts in and shouts “YEAH NO THIS ISN’T APPENDICITIS NO SURGERY SORRY FOR THE BACK AND FORTH THANKS” and leaves. I was having a nice dream about a bear and had no idea what the hell was going on. Eventually the previous doctor comes back and fills us in some more. They don’t know what it is. We will be staying at least another night while they keep running tests.

Kid is really unravelling at this point, more from hospital aggravation than from pain. Every single person that comes in tells me something slightly different about what is going on and what is likely to happen next. Time passes, people keep pushing on the part that hurts, everything is still beeping, and about eleven consultations later, they say it’s almost definitely not appendicitis, but we don’t know what it is (possibly a burst cyst, possibly inflammation of lymph nodes from a virus), but white blood cell count is now normal and we can go home if we want to. Which we do! So that is what we did. Eventually. We got Wendy’s for dinner on the way home. Kid shares amazing stories of ambulance and MRI and shows off her IV bruise. Damien and I collapse like bunches of broccoli. 

MONDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, fries

Monday, kid sleeps in, naturally, and wakes up feeling so much better, thanks be to God. I did very little that day. Ain’t no tired like “home from the PICU” tired, especially when you keep thinking about how you went right up to the brink of a kid getting surgery they didn’t need. And I don’t think anyone did anything wrong! It was just an ambiguous situation.

During my afternoon errands, I did buy some ice cream sundae things to say thank you to the kids at home for being so awesome and taking care of everything while we were away.

Supper was muffaletta sandwiches. I threw a bunch of stuff in the food processor – black and kalamata olives, a few jalapeno slices, parsley, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and red pepper flakes – and made a little tapenade, I guess.

and we had soft rolls with ham and various salamis and whatnot, and cheese. And fries. 

I don’t know why my dinner looks like someone plated it with an air cannon, but it was yummy. 

TUESDAY
Dino nuggets/Italian food

Tuesday was Lucy’s last day of school, and Benny’s 8th grade graduation! I suddenly realized we were supposed to bring a dish to share, so I was very glad we had meat and cheese and tapenade in the house. I put together a little platter with all those things, plus some string beans, grape leaves, and pita, and garnished it with chive blossoms, and it was not bad.

Graduation was nice. It’s a small school and they keep it short. Benny was radiant.

And that is the ninth eighth-grade graduation we’ve been to! 

Afterward, she chose a local Italian restaurant for her graduation celebration meal. We had “gondola bread” which is just toasted bread with garlic and melted cheese on it, very yummy. I had a big antipasto salad, and some kind of cake soaked in orange syrup. All delicious. 

WEDNESDAY
Tacos

Wednesday was the last day of school for Benny and Corrie. One more kid to go. I looked at the weather report and saw that we were supposed to get rain starting on Thursday and then every day basically until the end of the world. So I figured it was my last shot to do something about the spot where all that horrible wood used to be. I figured I’d rake it a bit and then scatter some seeds, boom, done. 

Five hours later, I had cleared the scraps, tilled the soil and dug up a bunch of root balls, dragged over some felled trees for borders, mulched the edges, laid a tarp to prep a spot for a path to pave later, dug up five loads of compost from the heap and spread it on the new spot, and THEN I scattered the big pouch of wildflower seeds I had bought. I guess I had some leftover hospital angst that needed working out, and this was the perfect job for that.

This is what it looked like before the junk guy came:

and here it is after I got through with it:

Feeling fairly smug about that!

Then I dashed around doing this and that garden task. I had built up some furious sweaty energy by this point, so I mowed down a bunch of blackberry bushes on the other side of the house, and tore up some soil and broadcast the other big pouch of seeds I had bought. But I had my doubts about the soil, which has been degraded by blackberries.

So at some point during the day — and hospital confusion segued straight into end-of-school-year confusion, and I shrimply do not know what time it is, what day it is, or where I am supposed to be, but I just keep moving — I bought some humus and manure, and spread that on top of the seeds I had just planted, and rustled it around a little bit. I have no idea what I’m doing, but it sure is green around here, so probably something will grow. It started to rain just as I was finishing up, which was immensely gratifying. 

Oh, and then I made some tacos real quick. 

You can see that the tabletop is . . . somewhat improved. This is a wrought iron table that is supposed to have a glass top, and we DID have a glass top, but it broke. Then I miraculously found a free replacement, and that broke, too. At some point I made a tabletop out of wood, and painted it; then a few years later, I had the brilliant idea to use natural objects as stencils and paint it again. This looked, of course, terrible; and then the wood started to warp and splinter, and it’s been a really really bad tabletop ever since.  At some point during the week, I stormed angrily (?) into Home Depot and bought a sheet of some kind of plastic stuff that I guess you are supposed to use on walls to protect them? I don’t know. It turned out not to be stiff or thick enough to work as a tabletop on its own, so I just laid it over the existing wooden one, and it’s . . . . . . . . . . . . somewhat improved. And that’s-a my story. If you happen to have a 48″-round piece of tempered glass that you’re not using, please just roll it in my direction. I have need of it. But actually the plastic is fine. It’s fine!

THURSDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Thursday it got murderously hot. I was expecting cool rain, but guess we are alternating rain and high heat, which is not ideal, but what can one do. I had bought some PVC pipes and zip ties last week, and on Thursday I finally drilled holes in the ends and lashed them to some T posts, because I want a second and third arch for my new grapevines to grow up, so eventually we will have a little shady canopy of leaves over the entrance to the stream. 

It was not to be. It was a good idea in theory, but the way I set it up, the tension was too much, and the pipes snapped. 

Alas. The truth is, my grapevines are not going to need support for quite some time, so it’s okay that this is not done yet.

The pond (you can just see the edge of it to the left of the chair in this picture) is full of frogs and tadpoles, so that’s fun! And allll the flower seeds and bulbs and tubers I planted last week are coming up, and so are my potatoes, corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, dill, garlic, eggplant, and basil. And a few stray potatoes I planted last year and apparently did not harvest, oops. 

I heard a gardener say that it may seem obvious, but remember only to plant food you want to eat. He’s right, it’s something I need to be reminded of! I do like all those things, though. I’ve also been munching on asparagus right out of the garden, it’s so tender and sweet. We didn’t get much this year because a vole chewed up a lot of the roots, so I’m just picking a spear here and there and eating it. The strawberries also got dinged pretty bad, but we are getting a few. They are everbearing and sometimes take a while to get going. Who among us. 

Anyway, we had a bag of premade hamburger patties in the freezer, so Damien grilled those up and they were yummo. As were the chips. 

FRIDAY
Tuna and chips

Yet another super drivey morning. Honest to goodness, I cannot remember the last time I spent this much time in the car. It’s just been nonstop half days and parties and special events and rehearsals and “oops they let us out early” and job orientation and writer’s group and field day and I don’t even know what. We opted out of a lot of stuff in May, so I guess we’re paying for it now! The stuff will always get you in the end. 

Speaking of getting you, I pulled out my garlic scapes yesterday. This is my second time growing garlic, but my first time doing it right, so I’m pretty hyped. I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with the scapes yet, but aren’t they neat?

I left one growing on the plant, to see what it looks like when it flowers. I guess I need to wait a few more weeks until the remaining leaves turn brown and floppy, and then I can dig up the garlic. EXCITED. 

Lucy’s Graduation is tonight. It will be outside and we have been told to expect light rain and high heat, so maybe I’ll just save some time and pass out now. Except then I would miss dinner at Chili’s, which is the spot she has her heart set on for a graduation celebration. I have resolved to stay conscious so I can order something that comes with a side of beans. Their beans are surprisingly good, and I don’t care who knows it. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 473: O tempura! O mores!

Happy Friday! I don’t know what got into me, but we had quite an adventurous week in food. I hope you guys like hearing about food! Here is what we had: 

SATURDAY
Meatball subs, salad, cheesecake

Saturday is usually leftover day, but a friend of my mother-in-law very kindly brought over a huge amount of delicious food — so much that we ate it for two days, and I still have some fancy pasta to cook at a later date. She also brought fruit and flowers. Thank you, Marian! 

After shopping, I did a bunch of gardening. I weeded out a whole bunch of beds and planters, composted them, and got a bunch of seeds in the soil. I used almost exclusively seeds I had saved from last year, and basically if you had to choose one thing to write on my tombstone, that would be it. I’m so proud of myself. I planted zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, forget-me-nots, phlox, sunflowers, tithonia, chicory, allium, and misc. If anything actually comes up, I will be insufferable. 

Anyway, it was a ton of work and I was so delighted to sit down to a yummy and hearty meal made by someone else. 

The kids have been snacking on the meatballs all week. 

In the evening, when I lay down to rest my heavy head and watch stupid reels on Facebook, I heard a desperate peeping, just outside my window, saw that the ducklings — really teenagers now — had escaped from their pen and were trying to throw themselves into the trash. 

If I were new to ducks, I would say I hope they get smarter when they reach adulthood, but I am not new to ducks. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers, strawberry shortcake

Sunday after Mass, the junk guy came by to give me an estimate for how much it would cost to haul away all our crap. We had a dryer and two loveseats lurking about, which is pretty standard for us (we do go through loveseats), but there is also a bunch of porch and roof debris, and also a Regret Pile, which is stuff I dragged home because it was free, and now it has sat there for long enough that I am ready to admit I’m never going to use it. The estimate was fair but considerably higher than I expected! So we agreed he would just come get the Regret Pile, mainly because it is full of rusty nails, and I would pay the amount of money I am getting from a different guy in exchange for our two junk cars. I guess this is that girl math I’ve been hearing about. 

Then it was time to get some planting done! Time was a-wasting! 

I dug out a ton of compost from my heap, and spread it out and planted a long line of sunflowers in front of the house and down the road, hoping that the traffic will prevent bunnies from gobbling up all my seedlings this time. I also got a bunch more marigold and cosmos seeds in.

Then I pictured the yard without the Regret Pile, and acknowledged it still looks like crap, and when the flowers bloom, it will just look like flowers near crap. So I trotted around and did a big clean-up, including cutting up the old torn pool liner, which was too heavy for me to move in one piece. I did salvage some roughly rectangular pieces to use as weed barriers around my pumpkin garden. There are a lot of wild blackberries in that spot, so I need all the help I can get!

Here you can see the pumpkin bed in the background, with the rest of the pool liner in the foreground. 

By dinner time I was again very happy to have an easy meal of leftovers, and the shopping kid had chosen strawberry shortcake for dessert, and I was also happy to have sensibly bought a ready-made angel food cake and squirty can whipped cream. 

And everyone was happy.  

MONDAY
Spicy chicken sandwiches, raw vegetables and dip

Monday I returned to an old favorite: Spicy chicken sandwiches with peppers, onions, and cheese. I cheaped out and did not buy shishito peppers, which are nice because you can just cut the tops off and then cook them like that. Instead, I got some colorful bell peppers and trimmed the seeds and membranes and cut them in half. I cooked them in the pan I had used to cook the chicken, and they took FOREVER. Pretty, though. 

While they were cooking, the cheese was melting onto the chicken thighs, and then it was just a matter of piling it all onto toasted rolls and adding red onion and BBQ sauce. So delicious. 

Raw broccoli and watermelon chunks for sides. I am once again trying to pull away from always serving carbs for a side!

TUESDAY
Pizza

Tuesday I fell into garden despair.  Nothing I planted will grow. It will all just be arid, sterile trash dirt forever and all my efforts will have gone to waste, because I did everything wrong. This is a normal stage of gardening, at least for me, and I always feel this way at some point. 

However, Damien took a close look at the pond I dug and never finished and also was despairing about, and it is full of tadpoles! So at least one frog thought it was good enough, anyway. Damien brought some babies in to admire for a bit

Then he put them back in the pond. One summer we had a jar with a tadpole in it on the table for weeks and weeks, and it was terrible. The poor thing grew one leg and then stopped, and it was NOT GREAT. Not making that mistake again! We learn!

We had pizza for supper, plain and pepperoni. 

WEDNESDAY
Peanut chicken wraps, tempura chive blossoms, crunchy rice rolls, string beans

Wednesday, I had been planning a meal that I thought possibly only I would like, but I was pretty excited about it anyway. I made a peanut sauce from this recipe and added it to a pre-shredded mix of cabbage and carrots.

and then I went out and chopped off 3/4 of my chive blossoms.

I only recently found out that if you chop down your chives after they bloom, they will bloom again. I have a VERY hard time pinching and culling and all the things you need to do if you want more growth later, but I figured I’d be more motivated if I did something with the flowers I chopped. 

One year I put them on pizza, and that was not a hit. So I started some infused vinegar with some of them. You just wash the blossoms and stuff them in a jar, then warm up some white wine vinegar, pour it over the blossoms, let it cool, then cover it and put it away for a few weeks. 

It’s supposed to turn an even deeper pink over time. Then I washed and trimmed the rest of the flowers, and set them to dry thoroughly. For I was planning to DEEP FRY THEM. 

When it got close to suppertime, I started heating some oil in a pot, then started some chicken tenders cooking, and made a simple tempura batter using flour, corn starch, and seltzer. I was following the recipe from Woks of Life. They recommend cutting off the entire stem and using a fork to dip the blossoms in batter and fry them, but I left a few inches of stem and left that as a handle for dipping. Then I tossed them in the hot oil, just a few at a time. Tempura needs space!

This is possibly the most exciting frying I have ever done. I made a video of one batch, and the sound alone is thrilling. If you’re into that kind of thing! 

 

They fry up extremely quickly, and then I fished them out and gave them a little sprinkle of salt. 

They taste sharp. Not like onion and not exactly like chives, but just kind of brightly bitter and wild. HOWEVER, the tempura batter clings to every tiny petal, and each blossom is an exquisitely fragile, crackly little explosion in your mouth.

Absolutely fantastic. Like onion fireworks. I dipped some in the dipping sauce that the recipe calls for (except I didn’t have mirin, so I used rice vinegar and some honey), and they were excellent with and also without. Like popcorn for the emperor. 

Corrie and Damien were enthusiastic about them; the other kids, not so much. I had made a lot of extra batter, and the oil was still hot, so I made some tempura string beans for the heck of it.

Corrie was really egging me on at this point. She and I feel the same about food. We just love every single thing about it, from choosing it at the store to prepping it, to cooking it, to plating it, to eating it. She watched me intently as I tried my first chive blossom, and then breathed intimately, “Now try it with the sauce.” The upshot of this encouragement was that I started to show off a little, and so ooops, started a small to medium fire on the stovetop, and was able to demonstrate how to put out a fire with salt, so that was a win as well. Someone who loves cooking that much is going to need to know how to put out a fire. 

I cooked a whole bunch of chicken tenders, so the people who just wanted chicken on wraps could have that, and those who wanted the whole peanut slaw chicken thing could have that. 

Holy moly, it was a good meal. Enough people liked the peanut sauce that I’ll be making these wraps again. It was super easy, especially with the shortcuts of pre-shredded cabbage and frozen chicken, and the flavor and textures were very pleasant. 

I may or may not make the chives again. Maybe if Lena is over. She would appreciate them! But what a delight to discover how easy tempura is to make! Corrie and I agreed that broccoli should be our next tempura. The string beans were okay, but something with a lot more texture would be much more exciting. 

THURSDAY
Ground beef doner kebabs

Thursday I tried a second recipe I’ve had my eye on for a while: That viral ground beef doner kebab thing. Of course real doner kebab is shaved off a rotisserie-cooked hunk of meat, but people keep telling me this oven recipe is really good. So I skulked around a few recipe sites and got the general idea. I think I ended up putting in kosher salt, black pepper, aleppo pepper, cumin, green za’atar, and some grated onion and some Greek yogurt. 

You divide the meat into lumps and roll them out thinly between two sheets of parchment paper. 

Then you peel the top sheet off and loosely roll up the bottom sheet with the meat mixture inside.

I did this with about three pounds of meat, and then set them aside and made a garlic yogurt sauce and chopped up some tomatoes and cucumbers and parsley. 

Then I went outside and sternly told myself it was time to stop averting my eyes every time I pass by my potting table. It was truly disgusting, and so heaped up with miscellaneous gardening stuff that it was unusable. There were lots of pots and bins half-full of soil that I had meant to use for cold sowing and never did, and they had collected months of rain water, and then people (me) had put trash on top of it all, so it smelled TURRIBLE.

Well, I cleaned it up! Yay!

You’ll have to take my word for it that this is a vast improvement. You can see from the bare spots in the grass that the mess was not confined to the table!

Also, my pumpkins are most definitely growing, double yay! Many pumpkin yay!

I mean of course they are growing. I did everything right, and they always grow. I just thought they wouldn’t this year, that’s all. Corrie asked if I had read poems to them and sang songs to them, and maybe I did. That’s my business. 

Behind the pumpkin bed you can see the Regret Pile, which is much bigger than it looks here, and has gotten all overgrown with Virginia creepers and wild blackberries, which is another reason this is the one we are paying someone else to deal with. When that’s gone, I’m gonna mow all that growth down and turn it into a little hill garden. There are already some really stalwart irises there. Lots of possibilities! And it will be visible from my bedroom window. This is my current view:

Not unbearable, but flowers would be nicer. Not to be dramatic, but I am expecting to be in bed for a while in the fall, and I will be very grateful to myself if I can look at flowers while I recuperate. 

I trimmed the trees that had grown up in front of my protest sign, and I weeded a bit, and then mowed the heck out of the yard for a good forty minutes, and then I cleared up the side of the house where there was still some roof debris. Damien has been doing a lot of dump runs, and the yard is already so much better than it was. Feels great. My goal is to be able to go into the back yard and look around without wincing about anything I see. 

When we got home from the afternoon whatnot, all I had to do was cook the rolled-up meat for about half an hour, and then unfurl it. 

They all came out just lovely. More crisp on the edges, more juicy in the middle, and it smelled incredible. I broke the sheets of meat up a bit and put them back in the oven for a few minutes

but basically just served them as is, and people tore off what they wanted. I put out some black and kalamata olives, and oh man, it was good stuff. 

I went for store bought pita, because it was just too dang hot to make even quick-baking flat bread. I’m definitely making this meal again. (Ground beef was $2.99 a pound last week, so I bought about 18 pounds of it and put it in the freezer!) 

The only thing I would change is I would line the pan with more parchment paper, under the rolls, to make the clean-up easier. Also you are supposed to drizzle the cooked meat with lemon juice, which I did squeeze and set aside but then forgot about. Also maybe I would put a little hot sauce on top. Oh, and next time I will be sure to roll the meat right up to the edge of the parchment paper, so more of it gets crisped up. But even if I don’t do any of this, it was an excellent meal, and popular. I think only one kid had pop tarts for supper, which is a pretty good record for this vicinity. 

FRIDAY
Tuna sandwiches and chips

Damien and I are probably gonna get out for some sushi or something, while the kids have tuna at home. He has been working SO much lately, including lots of trips out of town, and I barely remember what he looks like. That is a lie. I have every detail memorized forever. Still, it will be nice to go out! 

We have declared the ducklings old enough to start spending their nights outside. They have been outdoors all day, but we bring them in at night, and everybody hates this process. Coin has very much decided that he is in charge of them, so I think they will be fine. 

Clara has moved to Boston. Benny will be graduating from 8th grade this coming week, and Lucy will be graduating from high school right after that. It’s been nonstop field trips and field days and special events, but there are just a few more weeks of school for everybody. AND, for a few weeks from now, Damien reserved a rustic campsite for two nights for us. We will be kayaking in! I am EXCITED. 

I have three, count ’em, THREE wonderfully healthy peony plants that are fixin to bloom. Probably in about a week. 

Oh the suspense! Oh the everything. 

 

Find your Bach

If you know me, you know I don’t exactly have a sunny, optimistic outlook on life. I’m a “glass half empty, and UGH, I suppose I’m going to have to wash it, so what else is new” kind of person. That’s just who I am.

But it doesn’t go all the way down. Way down at the bottom of my heart, underneath many, many layers of grousing and complaining, there is an unshakeable, bedrock belief that everything is going to turn out okay.

Everything!

EVERYTHING.

Maybe not right now, maybe not even during my lifetime, maybe not until the whole world had burned, perished, and wafted away, but eventually. It will work out.

I attribute this belief to Bach.

Maybe not right now, maybe not even during my lifetime, maybe not until the whole world has burned, perished, and wafted away, but eventually. It will work out.I attribute this belief to Bach.

When I was little, my father used to play the piano in the alcove underneath my bedroom. He wasn’t a great pianist, but he was persistent, and the music itself spoke for itself. I could hear the faltering notes and chords filtering up through the floorboards, sometimes with certainty, sometimes with longing. Many nights, that is how I fell asleep.

The thing about Bach is that everything does come out all right in the end, but he goes to some wild places before he gets there. I’m not musically educated enough to identify the technical maneuvers and intrigues that go on in his many different kinds of music, but if you listen attentively, you will hear weird, unsettling shifts in harmony, unexpected turns, strange
juxtapositions, incredibly fraught escalations of tension, and even passages verge on cacophony.

AND THEN IT ALL WORKS OUT. More than that: It works out in a way that shows you how everything all fit together all along, from the very first note, even though it seemed random or chaotic when it was passing by. It all works out in the end, and it always produces (and always was, even in the production of it) something so beautiful, so cheering, so full of love and passion and intelligence in its resolution, that when I hear it, it changes me. Bach’s music does what chiropractors or chakra adjusters claim to do: It realigns something deep inside me, and sets it right again. Sometimes it only lasts for a few minutes, but it always happens. God bless Bach.

Not everybody feels this way about Bach. I believe (though I don’t really understand) that some people find him too mathematical or mechanical or even stuffy, and he just doesn’t do much for them. Or some people don’t even care deeply about any kind of music, classical or otherwise. That’s (I say with great effort and self-control) okay. The thing to do …  Read the rest of my latest for The Pillar. (This is subscriber content.)

Booing AI is a good start. What’s next?

Here is a sentence I never thought I would write: I am kind of looking forward to this year’s graduation ceremonies. As parents of 10 children, my husband and I have attended a lot of these events, and they are almost uniformly tedious, clichéd and very close to pointless.

But this year, a theme is emerging: Commencement speakers are talking about artificial intelligence changing the world—and the graduates are booing them. I guess it is perverse, but part of me hopes we catch some of the action. Those boos give me hope for the future. 

In one clip, the vice president of a tech company is thoroughly taken aback to discover that young adults graduating from the University of Central Florida are not super excited to welcome the approaching tsunami of A.I. “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution,” she says, and the graduates respond with an unmistakably hostile roar. “Oh! What happened? I struck a chord! May I finish?,” she responds, giggling nervously. They do not let her finish; they interrupt her repeatedly as she gets more and more flustered but sticks to her script. 

At another ceremony, Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive officer of Google, seems more prepared for the boos that greet his praise of A.I., but he ascribes the crowd’s hostility entirely to fear. He offers his often-repeated advice: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” When the graduates don’t seem to like that, he appears irritated, even contemptuous.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Photo Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

What’s for supper? Vol. 472: In which I (Persephone) have high hopes

Happy Friday! I hope spring is being good to you. We’re supposed to get down into the 30’s the next couple of nights, but HIGH thirties, so I’m just gonna throw some blankets around in my garden and hope for the best. I had a wonderfully outdoor week and got tons of yard work done, and took a bunch of things too personally, and made some very good food, and some that was just okay, and now I’m gonna tell you all about it. 

SATURDAY
Pancakes, sausage, OJ

Saturday after shopping, I went to pick up one of those gliding benches that someone was giving away. It needs work (new seat slats, sanding, and painting), but nothing hard or expensive. 

Will I ever get around to this? Impossible to say. But I might! I think it will be great down by the stream. 

Damien drove over to go fishing with Moe and got back late, and I took the opportunity to make breakfast for dinner. We used to go through an entire box of pancake mix for our family, but our family is so teeny tiny these days, I figured we’d only need half. Then I realized pancake mix boxes have also gotten teeny tiny, oops. So an entire box was just barely enough! It’s also possible I ate more raw batter than I realized. I am truly a freak for raw batter, and nothing that can be done about this. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

The shopping kid chose pizza pockets for her fun food to supplement the sad leftovers, which was a tactical error because part of the leftovers included last Saturday’s pizza pockets.

But somehow we survived, and right after supper I badgered everyone into driving to Westmoreland, where there was going to be a free summer event of some kind. The details were a little skimpy, so I tried to keep expectations low. 

But even if I had hyped everyone up, I don’t think we would have been prepared for . . . EL PULPO MAGNIFICO.

As you can see, it is a giant flaming octopus! It’s tentacles, eyes, and mouth move, and the man inside the octopus manipulates the flames (which also come out of the top of its head) in time to the music he was playing. It. was. tremendous. I loved it so much. Here are some pics of the evening,

 

and I also shared a few videos on Facebook and Instagram.  One of the videos got — let’s see, 46,000 views on Instagram, and I got a bunch of followers who . .. . might have the wrong idea about what kind of account this usually is (ducklings).  

MONDAY
Hamburgers, potato salad, con on the cob, chips; strawberry rhubarb crisp

Monday was, of course, Memorial Day, so we had the day off school. I have been desperately in need of more exercise. I can feel my joints rusting together day by day. But my stupid arm just won’t get better, so I can’t really do yoga or weights or any of my regular things. So I resorted to taking a WALK, like a CHUMP. 

It actually turned out really nice.

Of course it did. Walking is nice, and I live in a nice place. This hill is up behind my house, so I didn’t have to go anywhere to get there. Got home and discovered that it was exactly one mile, half uphill, so a pretty perfect workout. I decided I would start every day this way, with a pleasant, invigorating walk.

Then I didn’t do that even one more time. But I might! 

New Hampshire is it is full of mossy stone walls meandering through woods. You might wonder why they bothered to build walls between trees, but of course they did not. A hundred years ago, they had felled all the tree, and this was all pasture — mostly for sheep. There were way more sheep than people, and NH exported fleece and wool all over the world. Then someone figured out how to mass produce cotton, and that was pretty much the end of the wool boom. The trees grew back in the pastures, the farms fell down, and all that is left is the stone walls. On my walk, I did spot some stone foundations left from the houses that used to stand off the road. Sometimes you will also spot daffodils in the middle of the woods, and that is a sign that some human once lived there. 

Anyway, the weather was wonderful all week. We have started putting the baby ducks outside during the day. They’re big enough that they don’t need their heat lamp all the time, and they love marching around in the grass, fighting with buttercups, and struggling in and out of the little wading pool. And they still like being whistled too. 

 

Then it was parade time! Our town was founded in 1776, so we’re having a big anniversary along with the country itself. I mean, relatively big. This is the biggest memorial day parade I’ve ever seen here. Also the cutest. 

Only Benny and Corrie and I wanted to go, and we were rewarded with free ice cream afterward. (Again, quite an exceptional thing for this little town!) 

Got home and made some potato salad. The last few times, I made a version that seemed extremely yummy to me, but the kids felt very different indeed! It’s not like I put raisins in it or something, or capers or something, sheesh. Anyway, I made the dressing with mayo and cider vinegar, a little olive oil, salt and pepper, celery, and hard boiled eggs. 

Then I started prepping dessert. My beloved rhubarb plant is having a wonderful year, although I have concluded that I have an evergreen rhubarb, and it’s just not going to turn red. Some of them are like that. Slightly disappointing, although the flavor and texture are great. I more or less followed the Smitten Kitchen recipe. Here it is before I put the topping on:

I baked it right before supper, so it would still be warm when we ate it. 

Elijah came over, Damien cooked hamburgers and corn on the cob on the grill, and we had a lovely, chill dinner. 

After supper, I whipped up some heavy cream, and dessert was lovely. 

If I had one rhubarb-related wish other than for redder rhubarb, it would be that I could get my crumble topping to brown up better. It always turns out pale, for some reason, and I don’t know why. Anyway, it tasted good! 

I think I will cut up a bunch of rhubarb and freeze it, so I can make a compote or something at some point. That seems like the kind of thing I would be happy to suddenly remember I have in a few months. 

That evening, I started a big pork shoulder brining with a cup of salt and a cup of sugar. 

TUESDAY
Bo ssam, lettuce, rice, pineapple

Tuesday was chock-a-block full of appointments and whatnot, which is why I planned bo ssam, which is very hands-off. I was up early and cut up some pineapples. Then I got a little sidetracked, because I keep seeing reels about propagating pineapples at home. You’re supposed to twist the tops off and then peel off the bottom leaves to expose the root nodes. I had no idea these were under there! Here is one unpeeled, and one peeled:

Look at those root nodes!

I had no idea. Anyway, I trimmed the rest of the fruit off and set the tops in water, and now we’re waiting for roots to develop. 

Dreaming about the day when, a mere four or five years from now, I might get another, very small pineapple or two from these tops.

Then I remembered I was actually really busy, oops, so I got started on stuff I actually had to do. Threw the pork in the oven around 12:30, and then had some appointments, and when I got home, I got my pumpkin seeds into the ground in my hugelkultur bed, and then made a spot for cucumbers and dill next to it. I dragged a torn trampoline mat over to keep the weeds down, then filled eight pots with compost and set them up in front of Damien’s trailer office. 

Then I planted a dozen sprouting potatoes in one bed, and then weeded and composted another bed and got most of my corn in! 

SATISFYIN’.  I think Tuesday was the day I cut things so close, I didn’t have time to take a shower before going out, so I just washed my hands feet and put on a long skirt to hide my grubbiness. By the time I got home, I just had to start some rice cooking in the Instant Pot, and then put a little extra sauce on the pork for the last ten minutes or so. I finally made up a recipe card for my cheater’s version of bo ssam, so here’s that: 

Jump to Recipe

The pork came out gorgeous and tender, juicy and wonderful, as always. 

Probably could have left it in the oven a little longer to crisp up the top some more, but I was HONGRY. 

Tasty meal, productive day. This “being outside” thing is great. 

The older I get, the more pronounced becomes the difference between winter me and summer me. I love New Hampshire, I love the ice and snow and those brilliant, glittering winter skies, and I’m deeply wedded to the idea that having real, distinct seasons is existentially important, and spring and summer are all the sweeter because of how fleeting they are. 

At the same time, phew, I am SO much happier when it’s warm out. Here is a real question, specifically for people who have moved from a cold climate to a warm climate. Does the euphoria of being able to be outside all the time wear off? Or do you get used to it, and stop appreciating the sunshine after a while? I never though I’d even consider living anywhere besides New England, but the idea is creeping in, and the Persephone thing is getting kind of old. It does help to take vitamin D and get exercise throughout the winter, but it’s a struggle still. Winters are really getting hard, and we just kind of shut down. I don’t know. 

Well, on Tuesday Damien had to go cover some kind of event, and he was gone all afternoon and evening, boo. After clean-up, I sat the kids down and started reading the new encyclical to them, so there. On Tuesday, we read the introduction, and I liked it, and they did not. 

WEDNESDAY
Not sure what to call it but wow it was good

Wednesday the plan was some kind of bi bim bap situation. But I utterly succumbed to Being Outside, and just did that all day. I must have been doing gardening and yard work, but I was so wrapped up in it that I didn’t even take pictures; so just imagine a lot of green, green, green. I think I mostly did weeding and organizing, because I was getting mad at myself for working so hard on growing beautiful flowers, and then having my own view ruined by tubs of garden tools, old tarps tumbled and flapping around, heaps of scrap wood, chairs on their sides, etc. My phone says I walked over two miles just trotting back and forth in my yard making things look better, so that tells you how much crap was lying around!

I think I also potted a bunch of stuff in the front yard — a big, deep purple lupine, some double impatiens, a clump of dahlia tubers, and two holy basil plants to frame the door. Last year I planted some cinnamon basil in my herb garden and I kept pinching the flowers off and the plants got huge and bushy. Then discovered I don’t like the taste at all, so I demoted them to a decoration and moved them to the front door. Every time we went in or out, we got a little whiff, which was very nice (I like the smell, just not the taste)! So I hope they will do as well this year. The ferns and hostas are thriving, and the daisies and alliums I put in are blooming just as the tulips and daffodils die off, so I’m pleased. 

It’s still a baby garden, but I have high hopes. 

By supper time I was tired and starving and sweaty, and truly did not want to cook. So I just cut up a watermelon I meant to serve on memorial day, and some broccoli I meant to roast on Tuesday, and then I found some leftover rice and leftover pineapple, and I cut up the leftover bo ssam real thin. And it looked very promising. 

I served everything cold. I put my plate together and then threw some bottled yum yum sauce on top, and then sprinkled some furikake over that, and went outside to devour it like a goblin. 

My heavens, it tasted like the best food possible. Just wonderful.  I may serve this exact combination of foods on purpose next time. 

After supper, I noticed that my biggest lupine is blooming! This is from the plant I dug out of Millie’s garden last year. 

As it turns out, this is the one year-anniversary of the day she died. Say a prayer for dear Millie! She would be very proud of me for my garden this year. There are actually lupine seedlings all over the place this year, front and back of the house. I don’t know if they’re from the plants I put in, or if it’s just a lupinous kind of year, but I’m not mad! 

Damien had another long dumb event to cover, and he was gone most of the day again, alas. Wednesday evening, we sat down and started to read chapter one of the encyclical, and then I basically quit mid-word. I thought it would be a good project because I know they care about AI, and the pope is no nice and whatnot, but phew, it just wasn’t landing.

Then I mildly horrified the kids by getting a little emotional while I explained my struggles in getting them educated as adults in the faith, and we ended up agreeing that I will open a new Word document and they will be added as editors, so they can anonymously contribute questions or complaints about religion, and we can start from there. WHAT CAN ONE DO. I was gonna say I am doing my best, but I don’t know if that’s true. Anyway, I’m trying somewhat, sometimes. What can one do. Tricky times. 

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, salad

Thursday I had nothhhhhhhing on my calendar. I actually did some writing for once, and then back outside I went. I cut down a bunch of saplings from the woods and got some twine and a staple gun, and made a trellis for the cucumbers to climb up. 

I also planted some dill seed in each pot. They are supposed to be good companion plants for cucumbers, and by the time the cucumbers grow, the garlic should be ready to harvest. Corrie and I plan to make pickles! 

Then I did this and that, and dumped out some old pots of soil and repotted a few things and weeded and whatnot, and, feeling competent and optimistic, I decided to finally start prepping the hill behind the patio for a big wildflower garden. I knew some wild blackberries had popped up again, and I was feeling a little grim about that, but I knew I could deal with it.

THEN
I
FOUND
SOME
BITTERSWEET. 

In my backyard, which is supposed to be my little haven. My deal (with who, I don’t know) was that bittersweet can be a menace in the front yard, and I will fight it and stay vigilant, but I will accept that it will always be with us. But this was in the back.

 
I didn’t cry, but I felt like my insides had turned to clay. Oh bad. Bad bad bad. I sat for a while, and then complained to Damien for a while, and then I found my Round Up and gloves and clippers and did what I could. I need something with a higher concentration of glyphosate, but it’s a start, anyway. BOO INVASIVES. Very boo. 

Obviously I couldn’t do any more gardening in that spot, because the herbicide was still fresh. So I showered good and made supper, which was grilled ham and cheese and salad.

I was a little nervous about serving sandwiches without chips or fries, which is pretty de rigueur around here, but nobody said anything.

I ate outside, and had the wonderful consolation of realizing that my peach tree, which yielded something like eleven peaches last year, is absolutely LOADED with tiny little fruitsies this year. 

I was hoping that would happen! Big year, little year, that’s how it goes. But I didn’t want to count on it. But yeah, we’re off to a fine start!

At some point during the day, I went to Home Depot and got some long, flexible PVC pipes, which I intend to use for grape arbors in some way. The details in my mind are still foggy, but PVC is cheap. Maybe I will paint it green or something, maybe not. I have some tall T posts and some zip ties, and all the clearance grapes from Walmart that I shoved in the ground are putting out leaves already, so I don’t see how this can fail. The vision is a tunnel of leaves at the entrance to the boardwalk over the marsh. I’m trying not to slip into “maybe they will accidentally lobotomize me at the end of the summer, but at least I will leave a grape arbor as my legacy” thinking, but it’s possible some of that has been happening, who can say. Anyway, PVC is cheap.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

I really really need to finish up some essays I started, but I want to be outside! Wah! Boo! I actually already got a considerable amount of writing done this week. But I also have a bunch of mystery bags of gladiolus bulbs I bought for a song at the town garden club sale, and it occurs to me that a long line of glads in front of the house would be gorgeous. Possibly not enough to make up for the fact that the kids saw a bunch of paper bags on the table and thought someone had brought pastries, but still, very pretty. 

This Sunday, we’re expecting a visit from an enterprising young man who went door to door letting people know he hauls junk. What it was that brought him to our door, in particular, it’s impossible to say; but I’m hoping that (a) he’ll give us a quote that’s about the same amount as the money I’m expecting to get from the guy who’s going to haul the Yukon away as soon as we get the replacement title, and (b) I have the emotional fortitude to tell him to haul away ALL the junk, and that I won’t be a crazy little freak and try to hold onto a bunch of it because it might come in handy.

Damien has to cover RFK Jr. coming to NH and talking about Lyme disease. I am crossing my fingers that a giant tick comes and eats him live on camera, but I would settle for . .. . well, I’ll settle for whatever I can get, I guess. Ain’t that the way. 

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bare bones bo ssam

If you really want to knock people's socks off, look up My Korean Kitchen bo ssam, and make all the sauces and sides. This is a pared-down version, and I use this meat in many ways. Mostly, I just serve it with lettuce and rice and some kind of simple fruit of vegetable for a side, and it's fabulous. Start it the night before, let it cook all day, and you get maximum flavor for minimum effort.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup salt
  • big pork shoulder, preferably with a a bone and a nice fat cap
  • 7 Tbso brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 2 tsp cider vinegar

Instructions

  1. Mix together the cup of sugar and cup of salt, and rub it all over the pork. Let this brine at least six hours. I usually do it overnight, and put it in a ziplock bag in a bowl in the fridge.

  2. Turn the oven to 300. Put a double layer of tin foil over a pan, to make clean-up much easier. Set the pork on the pan, fat side up, and cook it, uncovered, for about six hours.

  3. Combine the brown sugar, cider vinegar, and Tbsp of salt. In the last ten minutes of cooking, crank the oven up to 500, take the pork out, and spread the brown sugar mixture on top. Put it back in the oven and cook it until it's got a glistening crust.

  4. Serve with lettuce and rice to make little wraps.

What’s for supper? Vol. 471: Tag yourself! I’m the community goat

Happy Friday! I’m parked in the shade outside the chapel, about to down a frozen mocha coffee. That’s three or four migraine triggers in a single cup. All I can say is I woke up feeling so fuddled and monstrous, I didn’t think I could feel worse, and the craving for this one particular gas station drink was so very strong. If I can still form complete sentences by the time I get to the end of this post, we’ll know I got away with it. 

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

Saturday morning I had set my alarm, which I am privileged enough to not usually have done on Saturdays! A customer was coming to pick up a number of mini cheesecakes and mini pies; and Clara’s boyfriend was coming to patch up the siding in front of the house where the porch used to lurk.

Here is what the front of the house looked like two years ago:

and here it is now:

Poor old house! In between these two pictures, it acquired a terrible scar, over which we stapled plastic. So believe me, this is better. The patch is white because we live in Maison De Nonstandarde, so of course they don’t sell that color of siding anymore. So I need to paint, and obviously do a power wash. But that’s an improvement! She’s getting there. The little rock garden in front is filling out nicely

with more things budding. 

So then we went shopping, and in the afternoon, Clara came by with pastries, including this magnificent one, which was spicy tomato and olive with saffron.

Actually, there were two of these, and guess who didn’t want any? Everyone but me! So guess who ate both??? Only me!!! No regrets. They were incredible. If you’re ever in Keene, Fire Dog Breads makes nothing but delicious food. 

It was so nice and warm out, we took the ducklings outside and let them run around. They get a little silly, especially since their leader, Lego Johnny Cash, is half black Swedish, which is the breed Daffy Duck was modeled after. LJC gets VERY daffy sometimes. But the four of them have a strong drive to stick together, and it turns out they all enjoy being whistled to. 

What silly, lovely creatures they are. 

Also, wow, I sit weird. (Yes, I know a prolonged habit of w-sitting is associated with autism. I think what happened is, because I was born in the 70’s, I’m not autistic, but most of my kids are. It happens!)

SUNDAY
Chicago-adjacent hot dogs, chips

Sunday after Mass, I mowed a big swath of the back yard. It’s crazy how quickly it goes from “oooh, we’re finally getting some touches of green back in the world” to “I know my shoes are out there somewhere, but they belong to the jungle now.”

Then I drilled out the remaining holes (there is something existentially wrong with that phrase, but you know what I mean) for the clothesline base, and put in the rest of the bolts; and then I conscripted some big kids into dragging the whole thing over to the side leg of the back yard.

I have to attach the washers and nuts to the underside of the base, and obviously replace the ropes, but it’s getting there. I feel a little bad, because it’s in a spot that has been overgrown for several years, and now when the people in the apartment house look out their window, instead of seeing wild green, they’ll see my fatass pants flapping in the breeze. However, they (the neighbors, not my pants) invariably fill the air with pot smoke and/or cotton candy vape stink every time it’s nice out, so I guess we’re even. 

In the afternoon, Benny asked me to show her how to make flower crowns, and then Corrie came out and Benny showed her. So we all had crowns and were happy princesses of the springtime. 

For dinner, we had Chicago-style hot dogs, more or less. I couldn’t find pickled peppers and nobody really likes pickle relish, so we had them with chopped onions and tomatoes, pickle spears, mustard, and celery salt.

Gotta say, these really are excellent hot dogs. Wish I had sprung for better quality buns, but they were very yummy. As far as I know, this is the sole reason for the existence of celery salt. 

MONDAY
Pizza

Monday morning, I went to pick up a kayak someone in town was giving away!

It does have a crack, but it’s on the top, and we can use plastic welding to make it watertight again. I super enjoyed my short trip out into the dirt road part of town. 

Nothing but birdsong going on. So lovely. 

I don’t really know what I did all the rest of the day. It suddenly got hot (high 80’s, which I realize is not hot for some people in May, but we are still getting frost warnings here!). I do remember weeding around St. Joseph and fretting because I hadn’t planted any summer-blooming perennials there — and then discovering some lupine seedlings. 

So that’s settled! Probably they are purple, but I don’t really know where they came from, so they could be any color. 

For supper we had pizza. I made a mere two pizzas, one plain cheese, one pepperoni. 

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken drumsticks, pasta salad

Tuesday I did a whole bunch of weeding in the backyard, and there are all kinds of things popping up that I forgot I planted. Then it got REALLY hot. You know how candy thermometers have markings on them — soft ball, hard crack, and so on. (And of course fish donut, for my long-time readers.) Well, if I had a personal thermometer, when it gets up past 85, it would be marked “no brain.” Or possibly Wise Men of Chelm. 

What happened is, I was laying some chicken drumsticks out on a pan and thinking about clean up. I’ve been hounding the kids to do a better job cleaning, but the soft-hearted part of me feels bad about making messes they have to clean. So first I thought to line the pan with tin foil, but sometimes meat sticks to the tinfoil. So I thought parchment paper, but I knew I was running a little low. So then I thought, oh heck, I can just cover the pan with a second pan! Then it will stay perfectly cl—

oh, wait. 

Which reminded me of The Wise Men of Chelm, a story which can be found in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, which is masterfully illustrated by the great Maurice Sendak. In one story, it snows in the village of Chelm, and the elders believe silver, diamonds, and pearls have fallen from the sky. Their money troubles are over! But they soon realize they must warn the villagers not to come out of their homes and trample the treasure.  What to do? 

Silly Tudras had an idea.

“Let’s send a messenger to knock on all the windows and let the people know that they must remain in their houses until all the silver, all the pearls, and all the diamonds are safely gathered up.”

For a while the Elders were satisfied. They rubbed their hands in approval of the clever idea. But then Dopey Lekisch called out in consternation, “The messenger himself will trample the treasure.”

The Elders realized that Lekisch was right, and again they wrinkled their high foreheads in an effort to solve the problem.

“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Shmerel the Ox. “Tell us, tell us,” pleaded the Elders.

“The messenger must not go on foot. He must be carried on a table so that his feet will not tread on the precious snow.”

Everybody was delighted with Shmerel the Ox’s solution; and the Elders, clapping their hands, admired their own wisdom.

The Elders immediately sent to the kitchen for Gimpel the errand boy and stood him on a table. Now who was going to carry the table? It was lucky that in the kitchen there were Treitle the cook, Berel the potato peeler, Yukel the salad mixer, and Yontel, who was in charge of the community goat. All four were ordered to lift up the table on which Gimpel stood. Each one took hold of a leg. On top stood Gimpel, grasping a wooden hammer with which to tap on the villagers’ windows. Off they went.

Click through for the picture of me figuring out how to keep my pan clean. 

Anyway, I put down some parchment paper and roasted the chicken with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, then glopped some buffalo sauce on it, cooked it a little longer, glopped on some more and cooked it some more. 

Then I made some pasta salad. I used radiatori, and I looked it up, and it is indeed named after radiators.  I rinsed the cooked pasta to cool it down, then added . . . let’s see, olive oil, white wine vinegar, asparagus tips from my garden, chopped olives, bits of pepperoni, leftover tomatoes and onions from the hot dogs, salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic powder, leftover red pesto from Mother’s Day sandwiches, chopped sugar snap peas, leftover feta from who knows what, and some grated parmesan. 

We had some appointments in the afternoon, and the receptionist at one place said to me, “You ARE dressed for the hot weather!” Why did she say that? At first I felt bad, because why did she say that? Then I felt good, because I’m not the only one out there yapping weird stuff.

Then we came home and had cold buffalo chicken and pasta salad, and it was a very good hot weather meal. 

Looks like I ate outside, either because it was cooler outside than inside, or possibly it was so hot I didn’t want to be with anyone, so I went outside. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken burgers, raw vegetables

Wednesday Clara took me out for lunch! We had a delightful meal at the Fresh Day Cafe, which is an Eastern European-themed spot in Keene. I had avocado toast on a wonderful dark, seedy bread, with fresh cheese and pomegranate seeds, and Clara got pierogies with bacon and scallions. We both had Turkish coffee, and everything was absolutely delicious. A VERY pleasant spot, run by the absolute nicest people. 

After lunch we did a little thrifting, and both talked ourselves out of numerous foolish purchases. I did come away with two table fans and a peach pitter, which I NEEDED. 

Supper was chicken burgers, leftover pasta salad, and a bunch of raw veggies. 

This looks like such a sensible, restrained plate, except then I went back and has seconds and then thirds on pasta salad. I just find that radiator shape irresistible. 

THURSDAY
Butter chicken, rice, flatbread, kachumber salad, mango

Thursday it finally cooled down, which was good, because the last thing on the menu was butter chicken, which I was looking forward to, but I really didn’t wanna cook it (or eat it) on a hot day.

In the morning, I did all the prep. Not exactly mise en place, but I assembled the gang

and more or less followed the recipe from RecipeTinEats. I had a bunch of driving to do during the day, so I started the chicken marinating, and right before I left, I made some dough for flatbread, using this taboon recipe I have settled on.

Jump to Recipe

I hurt my arm sometime in the past few weeks, and it’s gotten worse and worse, so I was smart enough to realize I would not want to be crouching over a pan flipping naan; but butter chicken really wants some kind of bread. When I got home, I started some rice cooking in the Instant Pot. I thought I had a big sack of basmati rice, but it was actually jasmine, oh well! Then I started the butter chicken cooking, and then I made something new to me: A kachumber salad. I read a few recipes and then wung it. 

This is a mixture of chopped-up tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, cilantro, salt, pepper, a bit of fresh minced jalapeño, white wine vinegar, fresh lemon juice, a lot of cumin, a medium amount of dark chili powder, and I think that is it? It is essentially Indian pico de gallo, and wow, it’s wonderful. 

“Kachumber” comes from the Hindi word kachumbar, which means shredding or chopping. It is not, to my sorrow, related to “cucumber,” which is etymologically mysterious. I did learn this:

In 1790s the pronunciation “cowcumber” was standard except in western England dialects and “coocumber” was considered pedantic, but 30 years later, with the spread of literacy and education “cowcumber” was limited to the ignorant and old-fashioned.

To think! We could have been putting cowcumber in our choppy-choppy salad all along, but for the snobbery of nations. 

LOTS of cultures have some variety of this dish, and I’m so delighted to have found this one. Damien loved it, too. I think next time, I will try a little amchur powder and mint. Hoo de hoo hoo! I put it together just before supper, because I didn’t want it to get soggy. 

I was nervous about the bread, because usually I make taboon in one big slab, and serve a juicy chicken dish on top of it. But this time I separated the dough into eight pieces and stretched them into rounds, then dimpled them with my fingers as usual.

I had no idea if they would meld into one piece, or shrink up, or what. I baked them and they turned out so good! They kept their size and shape, but puffed up nicely (like spongy bread, not separating into a pocket like pita), and were just lightly browned on the bottom. Here they are baked, with one flipped over:

I could have brushed them with butter and given them maybe a sprinkle of herbs or something, but they were great as they were. A little chewy, quite salty, and a happy addition to this meal. 

I had some extra chicken, and because most of the kids are not crazy about butter chicken, took the extra and dusted it with flour, salt, and pepper, and fried it up in butter. Something for everyone. I also found some mint chutney and some tamarind chutney, and everything was delightful. 

Also on Thursday evening, SOMEONE TOOK THE ACADIA AWAY. This terrible, terrible car has been giving me tsuris for years now, long after it stopped running. And now it is gone! Hooray!

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, tortilla chips and salsa, salad

I picked up the kids with the half day, stopped at the thrift store for more fat pants, stopped at the town garden club sale for some dahlia tubers, went to adoration, got the kids, stopped at the store for a birthday present, picked up some prescriptions, and now I am home, feeling great. Looks like the curse of the frozen mocha missed me this time! I’m not going to tempt fate and try these all the time. But next time I’m feeling like garbage and my body is trying to convince me that all I need is a gas station drink, I guess I’ll listen! 

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taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you de-monetize that?

I still cringe when I remember this one conversation from years ago. A friend was showing me photos of some of the incredible cakes she had made—gorgeous cakes with exuberant, witty designs, skillfully executed. She made them for family and friends, and she loved the work and loved making them happy.

You know, you could sell those, I said. You could sell them and also make a book about it and sell that, too! She was polite and listened to all my ideas. But as far as I know, she is still giving her cakes away.

I wasn’t wrong, of course. But my friend did not pursue my ideas because she was already doing what she wanted to do and wasn’t looking for advice about how to monetize her talent.

At the time, the idea of simply creating things for pleasure didn’t even occur to me. Instead, figuring out how to monetize skills was a constant habit. This was necessary because my family was broke and even a little bit more cash made a big difference.

What’s for supper? Vol. 470: Glory to God in the pie crust

and peace to His people of girth. 

Happy Friday! I started off this week determined to eat sensibly and serve vegetables every single day.

That! Did not happen!

Here’s what we had: 

SATURDAY
Cuban sandwiches, fries, lemon meringue pie

Saturday, Moe was in town to see some of his friends graduate, and in the evening, we belatedly celebrated his birthday. In the morning, I made a couple of pie crusts, and made them pretty decorative while I chatted on the phone, completely forgetting what happens when you bake meringue on top of a pie. I made one crust with a braided rim and roses and leaves, and the other with overlapping discs. I amazed myself by cutting out a random number of discs, and then discovering I had made exactly the right number!

I always manage to know exactly what’s going on when it matters the least. 

I don’t remember what recipe I used for the curd filling, but there is not a lot of variety among recipes, really. I did use duck egg yolks, which are the most wonderfully yellow things in all of creation.  Then I made the meringue and piped it over the top, and, as I mentioned, of course it puffed up in the oven like it’s supposed to. 

almost completely obscuring the crust. I consoled myself by thinking about the monks who would carve beautiful details even in the backs of pews, because that would be for God alone to see; but the truth is, I also forgot to refrigerate the pie crusts before I blind baked them, so there was less secret, exquisite beauty that gives glory to God, and more just blobby, shapeless pie crust under meringue. Which gives glory to God in its own way, because it’s pie. 

I saved out one lemon, cut it in thin slices, and candied it , and left the slices to dry while I went out and did a bit of shopping. Came back and made the Cuban sandwiches. I was running very late, so I just heavily seasoned a boneless pork loin with salt, pepper, and garlic powder and roasted it. Maybe I put some cider vinegar in there, I don’t remember. I let it cool a bit, cut it up, and made them sandwiches: Bread, mustard, swiss cheese, pork, ham, pickles, more cheese, more mustard, bread. I fried them in lots of butter.

We haven’t had cubans for a long time, and they are deeeelicious. Here’s a non-Instagrammable picture of our festive dining room table these days.

Ketchup and ducklings, baby. It’s a good life. (It got even better the next day, because I requested that, as a special mother’s day act of service, they drag the loveseat out onto the side of the road. Nobody took it for several days, and now it’s been rained on three times, but one can’t have everything.) 

By dessert time, the candied lemon slices were still pretty sticky (they really need to dry overnight) but oh well. Also, I forgot that I ran out of lemon and candied some lime, but they’re so sweet, I don’t think you could tell the difference. 

Poor Moe was too tired to stick around and make us watch a musical, which we were absolutely ready and even enthusiastic to do, but it was nice to see him!

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, Doritos, Italian ices

Sunday was, of course, mother’s day. We went to Mass and Corrie made me a mother’s day hat out of the prayer card, which I allowed because I think it was an AI image. Take that, robuts!

I got home and ate a donut and then a cinnamon bun and then another donut, and then pursued my heart’s desire, which was something in my garden, I forget what, but I did take this picture of my beautiful compost heap

and THEN, Damien and Corrie and I got the floor joists up for the tree house! They were already screwed onto the tree, but I had finally gotten the right drill bit and washers, so we screwed holes and attached the wood with nice big lag bolts. The next thing to do will be to box it in and add some diagonal supports, and then I will be able to climb up there and work on it, and it should go a lot faster. (Here one must imagine my grandmother muttering, “kenahora, kenahora,” and spitting three times to ward off the evil eye.)

I don’t have a pic of the work we got done, but here is a picture of me and Corrie being absolutely useless while Damien uses power tools. 

Well, I guess I’m not in this picture, except in that Corrie let me take a picture of her solely because it was mother’s day.

Nice spot for a tree house, though, right? 

We had yummy Italian sandwiches for supper

and the kids gave me excellent, thoughtful presents — a flower pot with a water reservoir, a wooden lazy susan I can use in cake decorating, a glass hummingbird feeder, a copy of one of my favorite movies, Moonstruck; and a Swiffer Wet Jet, which I have been loudly and repeatedly pining for. Lena crocheted me a long garland of beautiful white and gray stars, and Elijah painted me a picture of an old man confounded by ducks. I also got a mug that said it was from my favorite child, which came with a mystery card with messy coloring and strange misspellings, that was signed only with a dog’s paw print. We are still trying to figure out who did this! 

They also gave me lots of candy, which I ate immediately. Then we had Italian ices and watched some Daffy Duck cartoons and I went to bed happy and absurdly full of sugar. Another wonderful mother’s day. 

MONDAY
Leftovers and potato skins

Monday I kinda had to go shopping, which I hadn’t done over the weekend, but luckily I still had the previous week’s leftovers banked. So we had that, plus stuffed potato skins. 

Those terrible frozen potato skins are really good, dang it. 

TUESDAY
Salad with chicken, strawberries, feta, almonds

Tuesday morning, the weather was clear, so I got to work on my clothesline. There were four bolts I wasn’t able to unscrew, so I buzzed away at them with the reciprocating saw, then whacked what was left with a sledgehammer, until they succumbed.

Highly satisfying.

I dragged the parts (two U-shaped pipe arrangements, and two long wooden boards) over to the swingset to prop them up while I reassembled them, and that is how I discovered, maybe for the fourth or fifth time, that there are four pipes held down with four bolts each. Last time I counted them, this made twelve bolts total; so I had gone to Home Depot and bought ten. Why? No idea. Sometimes I will spend money, spend money, spend money, spend money, and then suddenly cheap out over two bolts. That is probably what happened.

But of course, if you have been following closely, you will know that even if I had bought the “right”number, that would have brought the total up to twelve, and I really needed sixteen.

So I said a long string of Yosemite Sam things and put my tools away for the day. Good thing I can cut out exactly the right number of pie dough discs without counting them, though. 

In my defense, I did manage, with great effort and concentration, to NOT bolt the clothesline together in such a way that it could not be removed from the swingset that was propping it up. I was pathetically proud of that, too. 

The rest of the day was chock-a-block full of errands, and I didn’t really leave enough time to roast some chicken for the salad, so I put it (it was bone-in breasts) in the Instant Pot with some salt, pepper, lemon juice, and water, and pressed the “poultry” button. Did it come out delectable? No. But it was fully cooked and tasted faintly of lemon, and it wasn’t dried out, so there you go. 

Mixed greens, strawberries, crumbled feta, toasted almond slices, and crunchy fried onions. 

Looks like I had mine with ranch dressing. Oh, and I made some leftover hot dog and hamburger buns into okayish croutons. I drizzled them with olive oil and seasoned them heavily with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and just shoved them in a hot oven until they were crunchy. I usually use butter, and I usually toast them slowly in a low oven, but these were fine. 

We also had more lemon meringue pie, because I had made two pies for eight people.

WEDNESDAY
Bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwiches

Wednesday, the only thing on my calendar is Ascension vigil (Ascension Thursday is still a holy day of obligation in our diocese! One of the few places where Jesus doesn’t obligingly hang around until Sunday), but the only thing I can remember about the actual day is that we were so busy and exhausted, there was no way we were gonna do that. It was raining all day, and I do remember getting a bunch of writing done, so that was good. 

For supper, I got out a bunch of cheese, then fried up a bunch of bacon and toasted a bunch of bagels, and kept those warm while I fried a bunch of eggs in some of the bacon fat. Look how tidy they turned out! 

I have gotten very good at compensating for how tilted my kitchen is.  (These are just chicken eggs from the store. The kids do not like duck eggs.) This is also the moment where I was like, huh, I guess we’re not eating a lot of vegetables this week after all. What with the eggs fried in bacon fat, and the no vegetables. 

Maybe I was just super hungry, but I thought these were the greatest sandwiches ever. 

Or maybe I just haven’t had bacon in a while. 

THURSDAY
Rainbow noodles and cheesecake

Thursday we lurched off to Mass in the morning, and then some kids felt sick and needed to get home, and Irene had a dentist appointment, and I was so confused and off schedule by the time we got back, I completely screwed up the rest of my day. I basically just ate everything I could find, and eventually ejected myself from the house purely so as not to eat the furniture.

I thought some errands would bring me up to the time I needed to pick up Corrie, but they did not. So I ended up going to like eleven different places, including two pharmacies and two thrift stores. I was pretty proud of myself for not buying anything at the thrift stores. I did find two new packages of reusable beeswax food storage covers, and carried them around the store for a while, but then pictured myself constantly finding reusable beeswax food storage covers wadded in random places around the house with dog food and kid hair stuck to them, and that helped me decide that someone else could have them.

I also talked myself into and then out of a citrus juicer which is slightly nicer than the one I have, but not that much nicer. I also took a picture of this item

but was not even tempted to buy it. Looked it up at home and it’s a watermelon cuber. I am glad I did not spend a dollar on that!

Anyway, Damien had to be in Concord all day, and by the time I got home and thought about supper, which was supposed to be buffalo chicken drumsticks, baked potatoes, and peas, it was late enough that the realization that the chicken was still frozen felt pretty insurmountable. Much like that sentence. Go ahead, try to mount it. I’ll watch. 

I consulted with the kids, and we settled on noodles with butter, plus a mother’s day cheesecake that nobody had bought, due to man’s inhumanity to man. I was a little bummed that it didn’t sell, because it was a cute cheesecake, and also looked like it was just plain on the outside, and you don’t see the chocolate until you cut it. 

Secret chocolate! It looks underbaked in the middle, but that’s just because I’m bad at cutting stuff. Except for rusty bolts. I’m good at that. 

FRIDAY
Tuna boats, popcorn

Speaking of cheesecakes, before I go to adoration, I have an order to fill, yay! Three mini chocolate swirl cheesecakes, one mini plain, plus three mini pumpkin pies and one mini apple pie. I’m so curious about what occasion this order is for, but I’ll probably never know. Just gonna make the cheesecakes and pies.

Damien took Corrie to TWO appointments this morning, and this afternoon, he is chaperoning her and Benny at a coding competition. I hope he gets a mug for father’s day! I think he’s earned a mug. 

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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.

Real men are everywhere

Yesterday, I fell in love with my husband again. We’ve been married for 29 years. I was standing in the dining room, clearing the table for dinner, and he came in with a stuffed rabbit and showed it to our youngest. 

She said, “Oh, that’s better, Daddy.” It turns out he had already washed her rabbit once, but it got mixed in with some red fabric and took on some pink dye. So he washed it again, with stain remover, because it’s not supposed to be a pink rabbit. It’s supposed to be white and he knew that mattered to her.  

My husband does the laundry at our house. He is also the main breadwinner, and he also fixes cars, does plumbing and carpentry, lifts weights, watches football, grills meat, and shoots stuff.  

But he does laundry because I need help keeping up with household jobs, and also because he’s good at doing laundry. And also, because his identity isn’t so fragile that he’s afraid that pushing a button on a washing machine is going to make him less of a man. 

I’m telling this story because my country seems to be struggling, once again, with the idea of what it means to be masculine. Or, worse – not struggling but falling headlong for the grossest parody of masculinity without even a fight. 

I am not going to try to get into gender theory here or try some extensive analysis of cultural norms. I did actually write an essay called “The Myth of the Macho Christ,” and it’s pretty good, so feel free to read that!  

All I want to do today is remind people that, when we’re looking for examples of masculinity, we have lots and lots of guys who get it wrong. Some of it is just silly and will appeal mainly to the young – like the influencers and looksmaxxers who make a living crouched in front of a lighted mirror, pleading with their own faces to look more manly. We can at least hope that most guys will grow out of this.  

But some parodies of masculinity are too dangerous to wait out, because man-parodies have the power to destroy nations, and they’ve made it clear that they might do so if it makes them feel strong.  

If you think I’m exaggerating, just listen to our “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, proudly saying the things that only comic book villains used to say. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,” he says. “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” Or, “America is winning, decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy.”  

That’s not masculine. That’s monstrous.  

But that is not the whole picture. There are also plenty of guys who are getting it right, and the more you look for them, the more you find. Here are some who have caught my attention this week …  Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.