There was a gargantuan Eucharistic procession through New York City a few days ago, led by a bishop and joined by hundreds of habited sisters and clergy in flowing vestments, replete with candles and incense and song, and followed by thousands of lay people. It was immense.
I love Eucharistic processions—not because they trigger some kind of fond nostalgia for the good old days (how old do you think I am?), but because it is literally Jesus and people following him. What’s not to love?
Plenty, it turns out. I found out about the procession by scrolling through social media, and then instantly found out how many people didn’t like it.
Let me pause here and say that I don’t know much of the context of the procession. It was, I gather, organized by the Napa Institute as part of the National Eucharistic Revival. I have been avoiding learning very much about either the Napa Institute or the Eucharistic Revival because every time these topics come up, people start getting nasty. I’m a slow student, but one thing I’ve finally learned is that Jesus and nastiness do not mix. If I can’t stop being a jerk, at the very least I can try not to be a jerk to people about Jesus. So I stay away from certain conversations. I have made a choice to de-contextualize certain spiritual things. This means I’m less well-informed about some current events, but my prayer life is stronger, and I’m okay with that trade-off.
That being said, I was taken aback by just how mad people were about this Eucharistic procession. I like processions so much, I guess I naively assumed everybody did. I had forgotten that sometimes, people use processions as a power move, as sorties in the culture war. Apparently, people will sometimes organize a Eucharistic procession as a way of saying “This is the old school church, and we’re taking back this space from you filthy modernists” or ”suck it, secularists; we’re gonna stop traffic and you’re gonna take it” or . . . something. And that is not very Christlike.
And I gather that some people objected to the procession because it strikes them as tone-deaf for the church to do something so showy and ceremoniously, publicly pious while several dioceses in New York state have filed bankruptcy because of lawsuits from victims of sex abuse by priests; but there they go, walking by slowly in their pretty white robes. So if you look at it in a certain light, you might think, “Why are these rape apologists who have dug themselves so deep into such an ugly hole getting dressed up in fancy clothes and parading slowly through the streets with candles and music, as if they have anything to be proud of?”
Look, I know food posts are fun posts, but today, in response to the request of +Pierbattista Card. Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, I’m going to make some attempt at a fast, and it happens that today is my adoration hour, so I guess I’ll actually be saying a rosary instead of just sitting there like a dumbass like I usually do. Please, if you’re the praying kind, pray with me for the Middle East, for deliverance from these horrors. I don’t know what else to say.
All right, so the other thing we can do is keep on living the beautiful, safe, full lives that God has granted us here in our peaceful country.
We did have some excellent food this week, including multiple pies! I’m leaning into cold weather cooking, and I guess if I can’t just crawl into bed between warm covers, the next best thing is wrap up my dinner in a nice warm pie crust. I feel like if I worked on that sentence, it might make more sense, but I’m just going to move along. Here’s what we had this week:
SATURDAY Italian sandwiches, fries
Always popular. I got Genoa salami, sandwich pepperoni, hot capicola, and prosciutto, and we had mozzarella, tomatoes, and red pesto. I meant to pick some basil, but I forgot. And then I sloshed a silly amount of balsamic vinegar all over my sandwich, which I secretly like, even though it’s not pretty.
And that’s-a my sandwich.
SUNDAY Chicken burgers, cheezy weezies
Sunday we went apple picking. Our usual orchard did not have apple picking for the public, because that late spring frost killed off so many buds; so we ended up driving to Washburn’s Windy Hill Orchard in Greenville, which is very nice, if a tiny bit on the La Grunta end of the spectrum. We met up with another family and picked our apples and fed some goats and then Damien waited in line for literally an hour to get some freshly-made cider donuts. They had a machine that was actually called “DONUT ROBOT” just like in Homer Price, but it wasn’t nearly as fast, and there were no diamond bracelets inside. Good donuts, though. And I insisted on getting my most-of-the-family photo, and the kids retaliated by . . . I guess holding their hands like Angel in Buffy? I don’t know what goes on.
Then we got home and had an easy meal of chicken burgers and cheezy weezies.
In my ongoing pursuit of health and wellness, I decided to have stone ground mustard instead of mayo, and you know what? It wasn’t very good. I did have a donut, though.
MONDAY Tacos, tortilla chips, pineapple; apple pie
Monday was Indigenous Peoples Day, and the kids had the day off, and observed it after their traditional fashion, to wit: Implying that their parents are kinda racist, but also not wanting to eat any of the interesting food we suggested for Indigenous Peoples Day. So we had tacos.
Behold my no sour cream, no cheese, and no chips! I turn sideways, people question where I went.
Just kidding, I was just saving up my calories for pie. Benny and Corrie were in charge of cranking the apple peeler-corer-slicer machine:
while I made a quintuple recipe of this reliable pie crust:
We made three apple pies: One with a jack-o’-lantern face crust
and one with a lattice spider web crust:
The spider’s legs collapsed in the oven, but I thought he was still pretty winsome
and then I found a little pan and made a cute little pie for my neighbor Millie
Isn’t that adorable? I brought it over while it was still hot. She’s recovering very well from her broken pelvis, and is planning her spring garden.
I don’t really have a recipe for the apple pie filling — you just mix the sliced apples with sugar, a little salt, cinnamon, and little nutmeg, and mix it up, and then dot it with butter before you put the top on. I guess you can add flour if you want a thicker filling. Then you brush the top crust with egg white and sprinkle it with sugar. Bake at 425 for ten minutes and then lower it to 350 and keep on baking it for like half an hour until it’s golden brown and the filling is bubbly.
I like all kinds of pies, but apple is king.
TUESDAY Chicken bacon pie, roasted carrots
When I made the apple pies on Monday, I lined a big casserole dish with pie crust and rolled out a top and wrapped it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge, so on Tuesday, I just had to make the filling for this recipe and throw it in the oven.
You guys, it was SO GOOD. Damien said he’s never enjoyed chicken pie before, but he absolutely loved this, which is my friend Rebecca Salazar’s recipe. It’s supposed to have leeks, but they didn’t have any at the store, so I substituted celery. Amazing. Incredibly savory and just packed with happy flavors. It was also really fast to make (well, because the crust was already done). Most definitely making this again.
So first you cook up some diced bacon, then add diced onion and leeks (or, in my case, celery) and keep cooking. Then some thyme, pepper, and a ton of butter.
Then you whisk in a little flour, thicken it up, add in some concentrated chicken broth and thicken it some more, and add in cubed chicken and cubed potatoes. And that’s it. You pour this into the bottom crust
add the top crust, and then obviously you have to make it into a Mrs. Tweedy’s Chicken Pie, and brush it with egg yolk
and bake at 425 for about an hour. LOOK AT HER.
So beautiful. The filling was nice and thick, and the pieces held up well when I scooped them out, but not so well that it was gluey or gunky.
Another success! I’ve made glazed carrots before, but they have come out kind of mushy and swimming in syrup, which isn’t great. This recipe is quick and easy and the carrots get fully cooked and they’re sweet and flavorful, but not sticky or blurry.
I actually skipped the garlic and added cinnamon and a little chili powder. You just mix up the sugar and a few other ingredients and toss the carrots in it and roast them on a pan, turning them once. Easy and effective.
So yeah, it was a lovely meal.
I was quite pleased with myself.
WEDNESDAY Italian wedding soup, garlic knots
Wednesday I got up and decided to get going making meatballs for soup right first thing in the morning. So I’m standing there in my pajamas, throwing stuff in a bowl: ground turkey, fresh parmesan, some duck eggs, salt, pepper, fresh basil, breadcrumbs, milk, olive oil
and I’m making the little meatballs, thinking about Millie, making meatballs, thinking maybe Millie would like some soup, thinking about meatballs, and then suddenly I realize: HOLY CRAP, I’M SUPPOSED TO BE DRIVING MILLIE TO THE DOCTOR. I guess my guardian angel was speaking meatball that day, because that’s the only way he could get my attention. So I washed my hands and threw on a bra and got Millie to her appointment, and it was a good report! She’s healing well and has graduated from a walker to a cane.
I ended up adding quite a bit more broth than it called for, and I used kale rather than escarole and spinach, and ditalini rather than acini de pepe, and I didn’t have parsley for the meatballs.
Still a damn fine soup. Very nourishing and delicious. I did bring a jar over to Millie, which she appreciated.
I had a couple of balls of pizza dough, so I made about 18 garlic knots. I just baked them plain, then tossed the hot knots in melted butter, garlic powder, and flaked kosher salt
They were pretty excellent.
I love soup and hot bread for supper. I grated up a little more parmesan to top off the soup, and it was so good.
Next time I really need to use acini de pepe. Any bigger kind of pasta just inevitably gets overcooked and expands too much, which is a less than ideal. It didn’t ruin the soup or anything, but that’s why you’re supposed to use acini de pepe.
THURSDAY Broiled tilapia, spinach and cucumber salad, coleslaw, Prongles, pears
Thursday I kind of ran out of steam for cooking. I think I was originally intending to make batter fried fish sandwiches, but it was about 12:30 and I discovered I had not bought sandwich rolls, and also I had zero desire to fry anything.
Pictured: Zero desire, in filet form.
Then it turned out Benny had a soccer game anyway, and I didn’t even get home until 5:00, and I had only gotten as far as taking the fish out of the freezer and complaining about it on Facebook.
So I took my friend Kat’s advice and lined a pan with parchment paper, drizzled a little oil on the tilapia filets, sprinkled them with salt, and broiled them for like seven minutes
and served them with melted butter and lemon wedges.
I put out some spinach and some cucumbers from the garden, and I made some coleslaw real quick (pre-shredded cabbage with a dressing of mayo, cider vinegar, and little sugar and pepper), and put out some nice juicy pears. Not bad for zero plan!
I really like fish. It keeps on being on sale at Walmart, so I guess I’ll keep cooking it until I don’t like it anymore.
Oh, here’s a picture of one of the sillier cucumbers from my garden:
I think this is the result of uneven watering, or something. Anyway, I ate it.
FRIDAY Mac and cheese
With a little hot sauce and a little mustard mixed into the sauce.
Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.
Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
3cupsconcentrated chicken broth (I use almost double the amount of bouillon to make this)
2Tbsppepper
egg yolk for brushing on top crust
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425.
In a large pan, cook the bacon pieces until they are browned. Pour off most of the grease.
Add in the onion and celery and cook until soft.
Add the thyme, pepper, and butter and cook until butter is melted. Add the flour and whisk, cooking for another few minutes.
Whisk in the chicken broth and continue cooking for a few more minutes until it thickens up. Stir in the chicken and potato and keep warm, stirring occasionally, until you're ready to use it.
Pour filling into bottom crust, cover with top crust, brush with beaten egg. Bake for about an hour.
The other day, as soon as I got home, I looked up “oyster etymology.” It turns out the word “oyster” comes from the Greek “ostrakon,” meaning “a hard shell.” That’s the short version, but it was enough information for me. I previously had no idea, and I really wanted to find out.
I also wanted my kids to see me following through, after a question popped into my head. We had been chatting about oysters on the way home from school. Specifically, we had been chatting about what was making that unusual smell in the car. I admitted there was a seafood sale that I couldn’t resist, so that explained the odor. But what explained the word? I thought it must be Greek, but I wasn’t sure, so I said I would look it up. And I did.
I am a word hound and my husband is a reporter, and at our house, we always look things up. It has been a great gift to me to realize that my kids think this is totally normal, and something worth doing, when a question arises: You wonder something; you go find out. Not everybody does this! Not everybody even thinks to try!
It was a gift to me because half my kids are now legal adults, and I so often feel that I have failed so miserably in transmitting even the most basic truths to them. It’s not a reflection on them. They’re all actually doing quite well. It’s just that I feel like I’m only just now figuring out, myself, what’s most important, and it’s too late, too late, for me to pass it along.
But this is largely melancholy speaking. It’s fall, which is “everything is dying” season here, and it’s hard not to let that sense of desolation creep into everything I perceive. The truth is, nobody can teach someone everything they need to know. That’s not the nature of teaching. It’s not the nature of people. It’s not the nature of knowing. You telling people what they need to know, and them believing you, remembering it, and acting on it is not how good ideas get transmitted, most of the time.
But example is a very good teacher. It’s one thing to say to a kid, “This is the right way to do things,” but it’s quite another to simply do it, almost every single time, as if no other option were thinkable. It’s very good to tell kids what is right and just and wise; but it’s far, far better to simply do it in their presence. Something to think about. This is how we teach, whether we mean to or not: By how we live. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image: Oyster on ice from Wikimedia (Creative Commons)
In elementary school, we used to sing this Halloween round:
Have you seen the ghost of John?
Long white bones,
With the rest all go-o-o-o-ne,
Oooooooh!
O00-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooooh!
Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?
WELL, it all comes together in today’s post.
SATURDAY Hot dogs, hot pretzels, raw broccoli and dip
I woke up SO late on Saturday and everything got pushed forward SO far, I’m pretty impressed we had three actual distinct things for supper.
Nothing else to report, except that I suddenly remembered a kid going through a phase of playing restaurant, and one of the featured items was “pretziles.” Which makes me remember I haven’t made homemade hot pretzels in a while.
[Daphne Moon voice:] I don’t know whyyyy.
On Saturday, I also finally put up an extra little shelf that I’ve been meaning to put up, and now I officially have room for all my spices! If you’ll recall, this is what it looked like before.
Then I got a bunch of spice jars and bunch of mason jars; and now I have an extra shelf as well, so here it is:
It’s . . . sigh . . . better. I swear it’s better. Only a few things are still in sacks, and everything is labelled, top and side. And I have hooks for red and yellow onions, and a little basket for my ginger and garlic.
I haven’t organized the spices, though. There are just too many other people using them, and trying to keep them in the order I want would be asking for constant heartache.
I also still haven’t managed to re-hang the other shelf that came crashing down, that used to hold all my oils and vinegars, so that’s all crammed in there as well. It’s less upsetting if I think of it all as WEALTH, which it is. Never thought I’d need a spot just for all my various salts and peppers! My various oil! Look how lucky I am.
SUNDAY Hamburgers, chips, further raw broccoli
On Sunday I did a bunch of tragic gardening (I planted a few hundred bulbs and spent the time repeatedly reminding myself that absolutely none of them are going to come up and everything just dies anyway and what’s the point, oh boo hoo hoo hoo) and also put up some more skeletons. For, uh, self care.
We have a number of skeletons year-round, partly because it helps Instacart find our house when GPS insists on sending them to the fence company and saying that’s our house; but mostly because I have had a lifelong love for skeletons.
This one, I think the kids named Shakespeare
and this one, Insulon, is new this year (his eyes light up):
Then we have Baba Mailbox, which doesn’t really make sense, but whatcha gonna do:
and of course The Gardener:
and also new this year is Horbert, who lives by himself.
Here is a short video of The Hoisting of Horbert:
who didn’t end up as high as I expected, considering how hard it was to hold that tree down.
Then we had hamburgers for supper.
I don’t know if it’s been a long time since we’ve had burgers, or maybe I just worked up a good appetite tragically gardening and tree wrestling, but those were some especially delicious burgers.
MONDAY Chili verde on rice; corn
This is a nice recipe that I discovered a little shortcut for this week.
Normally when I make chili verde, I blister the peppers and tomatillos under the broiler, then let them sit and loosen, then pull off the skins and put the insides in the food processor, along with onion, garlic, and cilantro.
This time, I suddenly wondered what would happen if I left the skins on. I also put the onions in the oven, rather than adding them raw to the blender. Time to find out! Exciting!
I cut the pork shoulder into chunks, seasoned it heavily with salt and pepper, browned it in oil, blended up the vegetables, and then added the resulting green salsa to the pot with the pork, and let it cook slowly on the stovetop all day.
It turned out thicker than usual and quite a bit spicier than usual, a real sinus clearer. And absolutely delicious. Mayyybe a tiny bit bitter, but not in an unpleasant way. The family polished it off, to my delight. I might add some chicken broth in the future, to make it a little thinner, but I think I will stick with leaving the skins on. It made my life easier, and the flavor was great. If anyone knows of some reason why I should be taking the skins off, speak now!
I was gonna make corn bread or corn muffins, but a quick poll revealed that nobody actually wants that, so I just cooked up some frozen corn, and made a bunch of white rice, and that was what they wanted. We had lime wedges and sour cream for toppings, and we really needed that sour cream to ease up the spice!
Wish I had had a little more cilantro to top it off. But it was a good meal. Everyone either has, just had, or is about to get a cold, and it’s been damp and foggy out, so this worked nicely.
On Wednesday I also got a very subtle haircut. Usually I got to Head Whompers and pay $12 to get most of my hair chopped off, but this time I went to a Fancy Place and paid quite a bit more to get little bits here and there removed.
I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but Damien said my head looked fluffier, so I think that’s good.
TUESDAY Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins
Jubilation. This is a highly-anticipated meal (second only to ham-peas-mashed potatoes) that I hold off making until the frost is on the pumpkin or whatever. I forgot to get mushrooms, but it was still very tasty.
This is the soup I make in my head when I can’t fall asleep. I go through it as slowly and meticulously as possible, paying close attention to each detail, cleaning as I go, and if I don’t actually fall asleep by the end, I usually at least feel less anxious. Thanks, soup!
In real life, it was a soccer day, so I made the soup in the morning, except for the barley, and then put together the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients for the pumpkin muffins
and then combined them when I got home, and quickly baked them right before supper.
Full disclosure, the muffins were a tiny bit squashy (I mean technically they were 100% squashy, since canned pumpkin is actually squash; but I meant they were somewhat underdone) and the barley was a little bit chompy, because I forgot how long it takes to cook; but it was still a well-received meal.
Piping hot muffins and a bowl of soup with tender beef, lots of wine and tomatoes, plenty of carrots and onions and pepper. What’s not to love?
Next time I need to make more soup! Some people have come around to soup recently, to my delight.
This is why I stick to my policy of just making food that seems good to me, and offering it over and over and over again. People really do come around eventually, often enough. Or if they don’t, that’s also fine. I just don’t want to fight about food. There’s enough fights.
WEDNESDAY Pizza
One cheese, one pepperoni, and one Things Mother Likes. To wit: Black olive, fresh garlic, red onion, fresh basil, ricotta, anchovy.
This absolute cartoon cat got to clean out the anchovy can for recycling
and I got to eat two pieces of this scrumptious pizza
so everybody was happy.
THURSDAY Asian meatballs, pork fried rice, pineapple
I made extra rice when I made the chili verde, for the express purpose of having leftovers for fried rice. Wasn’t that smart? I feel like I am waking up out of a fog this week. I’ll probably live to regret saying this, but I stopped taking Propranalol because it wasn’t doing anything for my headaches anyway, and within a few days I felt much more awake and much less pukey; and without changing my diet, I lost three pounds. So. Go to hell, Propranalol. I have a real live appointment with an honest-to-goodness neurologist, and I’m going to insist they stick needles in my cheeks or install a skull steam valve or something. But no more stupid drugs that make me stupid! I’m already stupid enough!
Anyway, the fried rice was good. I minced some ginger and garlic and threw it in the pan with hot oil for a bit, then added pieces of leftover pork and diced red onion, and then I dumped a bunch of brown sugar on top of that and let it get bubbly and dark.
Then I added scrambled egg (I didn’t think I was up for scrambling the egg directly into the rice today), some bagged broccoli, carrot, and water chestnut, and the leftover rice, and then I dumped on a bunch of oyster sauce, a little fish sauce, and quite a bit of soy sauce, and heated it all up.
Pretty tasty!
I made the meatballs in the morning, and cooked them while I was making the rice. I used a recipe I’ve used before (it’s not letting me put the “jump to recipe” button in, for some reason, but the recipe is at the bottom of the page: Vaguely Asian Meatballs), except instead of ground beef, I used ground turkey, which happened to be $3 a pound. I cooked them at 425 for about 20 minutes before dinner
and served them with a jar of sweet chili sauce, and they were delicious. Light and garlicky and just very pleasant to eat.
I also cut up a couple of pineapples and sprinkled some more chopped scallions over everything, and it was an easy, successful meal.
When I make two kinds of Asian-inspired food, my goal is to not use the exact same ingredients in both dishes, and I achieved this by refraining from putting ginger in the meatballs. My breath was still glowing in the dark that night from all the garlic.
FRIDAY Quesadillas?
Yes, I think quesadillas. I have a bunch of spinach in the fridge that I never used, so I think I’ll make spinach quesadillas, which are very nice.
It occurs to me that one of those skeletons should be named John, or Chili Verde, or Tomatillo, or something. Well, there’s always next year.
You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!
Ingredients
5lbspork shoulder
salt and pepper
oil for cooking
2cupschicken broth or beer(optional)
For the salsa verde:
4Anaheimpeppers
2habañeropeppers
4jalapeñopeppers
4mediumonions
12tomatillos
1headgarlic, cloves peeled
1bunch cilantro
For serving:
lime wedges
sour cream
additional cilantro for topping
Instructions
Preheat the broiler.
Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.
When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want.
Put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.
In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.
When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.
Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.
Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.
29ozcanned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
1cupuncooked barley
salt and pepper
Instructions
Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened.
Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.
Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley.
If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes.
Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary.
Very simple meatballs with a vaguely Korean flavor. These are mild enough that kids will eat them happily, but if you want to kick up the Korean taste, you can serve them with dipping sauces and pickled vegetables. Serve with rice.
Servings30large meatballs
Ingredients
2.5lbsground beef
1sleeveRitz crackers, crushed finely
1/3cupsoy sauce
1/2 headgarlic, minced
1bunchscallions, chopped (save out a bit for a garnish)
1 tspkosher salt
1Tbspground white pepper
For dipping sauce:
mirin or rice vinegar
soy sauce
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425.
Mix together the meat and all the meatball ingredients with your hands until they are well combined. Form large balls and lay them on a baking pan with a rim.
Bake for about 15 minutes.
Serve over rice with dipping sauce and a sprinkle of scallions.
I once again attempted to do a four-strand braid. Last time I followed a video, and that didn’t go well (I cried), so this time I used a pictorial step-by-step guide, and I still cried. I fervently believe that if you took a CAT scan of my brain, there would just be a little missing chunk for the part for what to do when something crosses over something else. That is where everything goes haywire, whether I’m braiding or dancing or installing a light fixture or anything. As soon as one thing crosses over another thing, I just start to cry and I don’t know what to do.
But I’m an adult, and I quickly remembered it’s just bread, so I can just smoosh it together and it doesn’t matter. And I was right!
The chicken soup was good, if not terribly photogenic.
and the matzoh balls turned out fluffy! I’m going to cling to that little victory, because of what happened with the cake.
Clara asked for an Earl Gray tea cake, which I have made before using this recipe from this recipe from Liv For Cake, and it was a tremendous pain in the pants. So I looked around for a different recipe, and found one that seemed a little simpler, although it was intended for actual tea cakes — not only made with tea, but cut up into little cakes, glazed, and served with tea. The recipe is from Taste Made, and I made the glaze that goes with it, and also the vanilla bean buttercream frosting from the previous recipe.
So, now, in my defense, at this point, I was making soup, bread, cake, glaze, and frosting all at the same time, and I was about a week into a new migraine medication that quite magically made my headaches much worse and also gave me constant nausea. So when I got to the point where the frosting recipe said to whisk the egg whites and sugar over a double boiler, I was like
NOT
ONE
MORE
POT
so, I whisked the eggs and sugar over the soup.
and you know what, this did not work great.
Anyway, I don’t know what the hell else I did wrong, but that cake turned out so dense. It was absolutely GUMMY. It was CLAGGY. It was STODGY. It was all the worst things Prue could say about a cake.
But, not content with a cake that tasted weird, I thought I would go ahead and decorate it in a horrendous way as well. So I thought, Hey, Clara really used to like that Barbie in The Princess and the Pauper movie with Martin Short as the villain Preminger. So I will make a Preminger cake! AS ONE DOES.
If you’re not familiar, many of these animated Barbie movies are actually worth watching, and some of them have really good voice actors. Here’s the “How Can I Refuse” number:
annnd here’s the cake:
I . . . an attempt was made. She laughed. Hey, did I tell you how fluffy my matzoh balls were?
SUNDAY Grilled ham and cheese, pickles, chips
Sunday I still hadn’t done my shopping, but was undeniably felled with not-Covid-but-some-fwiggin-thing, and decided to do Instacart. We had grilled ham and cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread with cute little pickles on the side, and chips.
Except I had an apple instead of chips, because I looked up the serving size and it was something like seven chips, and that’s just offensive. Might as well have a fwiggin apple.
MONDAY Domino’s pizza
Monday I forget what happened, but Damien assessed my general situation and decided that sometimes being the spiritual head of the family means insisting that we order pizza. Bless.
TUESDAY Spicy chicken sandwiches with peppers; grapes, cucumbers
Tuesday I pulled some chicken breasts out of the freezer and we had these lovely sandwiches from Sip and Feast that I adore. They’re even better with boneless chicken thighs, but still pretty darn good with breast sliced in half lengthwise.
Look, if nobody else in your life is willing to say that sometimes American cheese is the best cheese for the job, I’ll say it. I’ll be that person for you.
I cooked the peppers in the same pan that the chicken had been in
and once the cheese was melted, we piled up them sandwiches.
So it’s a nice soft, sweet brioche buns, BBQ sauce, chicken coated in cajun seasoning and sauteed slowly with American cheese melted on top, some slightly charred shishito peppers, red onion rings, and more BBQ sauce.
For sides I just served grapes and cucumbers, which is a little weird but whatcha gonna do.
This sandwich is just excellent. I was afraid I wouldn’t like it as much the second time (you know how sometimes you’re just dazzled by a new recipe, and then you make it again and it turns out you were just having a nice day in general, and that food itself wasn’t that great?), but I DID. It’s yummy and everyone liked it.
WEDNESDAY Spicy penne with butternut squash, mozzarella, and spinach; garlic bread
Wednesday I was still feeling extremely punk, but at this point I was mad about being sick, so I decided to . . . show them [shakes fist migrainously at destiny] and try a New York Times recipe.
This is not uhhhh best practice. It was a bad idea. It was an okay recipe, and I’m already familiar with how much work it is to process butternut squash, so I wasn’t taken aback by that as so many of the commenters were; but it was still kind of a lot of work and just didn’t amount to much. I don’t know. I even got the nice fresh mozzarella, and I had fresh spinach and fresh jalapeños and a butternut squash from my garden, and it just tasted kind of meh.
Oh, here is the recipe, because of course the NYT one is paywalled. And here is a picture of me with my butternut squash. It’s the very first one I picked from my garden, and this is the first year I have grown squash, so I wanted to document it. Turns out it’s kind of hard for a decent Christian lady to take a picture of herself holding a butternut squash in a way that won’t get you in trouble with Tito Edwards.
Anyway the recipe started off well enough, cooking the squash in olive oil with cumin and red pepper flakes.
I prepped the heck out of all the other ingredients, so I could just throw it together when I got home.
I even had enough time to take the leftover challah, slice it up, and make garlic bread
and you know, there’s a reason people don’t do that. It was okay, just not really a texture you necessarily want with garlic bread.
The whole meal was okay. I kept thinking maybe if the pasta had crumbled sausage in it. I don’t know. I doubt I’ll make it again. It’s now in my head as a bad, sad dish, so I probably won’t go back to it. You may have other results.
On Thursday evening we were talking about apple picking, and how that late spring frost killed off so many apple blossoms, lots of local orchards aren’t even offering PYU apples this year. Our terrible little tree did manage to put out some terrible apples, though, and I realized I was planning to cook pork the next day, so we decided to go ahead and pick the apples that evening.
I suppose if I ever did even one single thing to take care of this tree, it might make better apples, but as it is, the dog and the ducks love the miserable little fruits it produces, and we have our annual little ritual of picking apples and searching for the foley mill, so it serves its purpose. I promised the kids I wouldn’t make the applesauce until they got home from school the next day.
The pork ribs were just heavily seasoned with salt and pepper and roasted under a hot broiler, and the mashed potatoes were just mashed potatoes with several cloves of garlic thrown into the water and then mashed along with it, with butter and milk.
The apples were really especially terrible this year.
A lot of them were just rotten and had to be thrown out, but I ended up with a few dozen that were misshapen but basically sound
so I just cut them in half and put them in a stock pot with a little water at the bottom, covered it loosely, and set it to simmer. You’re supposed to let it go for a few hours so the apples can really collapse into mush, but I didn’t have enough time, so we ended up kind of violently forcing the mostly-cooked apples through the foley mill
and then I threw in some butter and cinnamon, and tasted it, and decided that hmm, this was a year to add some sugar.
Some years, our homemade applesauce is a lovely, dusky rose color, and it’s fragrant and cozy and wonderful, with a faint, pleasantly smoky taste that seems to come from this particular tree. Some years it doesn’t need any sweetening, and still has a beautiful nectary flavor.
This year’s applesauce was yellowish brown and it tasted like paste.
But the kids were delighted anyway, probably because of the little red hen factor, so I didn’t clue them in that it was very bad applesauce indeed. And that’s how you do that!
FRIDAY Shrimp and fish lo mein
Friday I was very pleased with myself, because not only did supper turn out really good, but I used lots of leftovers successfully. I made my normal lo mein recipe
starting with fresh ginger and garlic, and then I added some red onions I found in the fridge, then I threw in some shrimp and cut-up pieces of tilapia (I had two filets in the freezer that I didn’t cook a couple of weeks ago); then I chopped up some leftover shishito peppers (I put them in late because they were already cooked, and just needed heating), and then after I added the noodles and sauce, I threw some leftover Italian parsley on top.
Hot damn, it was delicious.
The shrimp and fish weren’t overcooked and neither were the noodles, the veg were crunchy, the sauce wasn’t too sweet, and the ginger and the garlic were nice and sharp, and the fresh parsley really put it over the top. I was happy to end on a high note, because it’s been kind of a sucky week, and good lo mein is happy food.
Okay, that’s it! Don’t forget what I told you, about the thing!
(I’m just kidding, I didn’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything. Who wants some applesauce? We have leftover.)
poppy seeds or "everything bagel" topping(optional)
corn meal (or flour) for pan, to keep loaf from sticking
Instructions
In a small bowl, dissolve a bit of the sugar into the water, and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir gently, and let sit for five minutes or more, until it foams.
In the bowl of standing mixer, put the flour (starting with six cups), salt, remaining sugar, oil, and eggs, mix slightly, then add the yeast liquid. Mix with dough hook until the dough doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl, adding flour as needed. It's good if it has a slightly scaly appearance on the outside.
(If you're kneading by hand, knead until it feels soft and giving. It will take quite a lot of kneading!)
Put the dough in a greased bowl and lightly cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm place for at least an hour, until it's double in size.
Grease a large baking sheet and sprinkle it with flour or corn meal. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll three into "snakes" and make a large braid, pinching the ends to keep them together. Divide the fourth piece into three and make a smaller braid, and lay this over the larger braid. Lay the braided loaf on the pan.
Cover again and let rise again for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350.
Before baking, make an egg wash out of egg yolks and a little water. Brush the egg wash all over the loaf, and sprinkle with poppy seeds or "everything" topping.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the loaf is a deep golden color.
add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
2/3cuprice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)
Instructions
Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.
Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.
Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.
Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.
Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.
I’ve been bowing, I’ve been scraping
I’ve been lying like a rug
And for ten long years I’ve had to pay my dues
But today I am escaping
For the last gold has been dug
It was waiting there, so how could I refuse?
I’m returning home a hero
Who’s discovered mighty wealth
And what better husband could a princess choose?
I’m the suitor who will suit her
Bring the kingdom back to health
And I’ll wear the crown, for how could I refuse?
Raise every glass and rouse every cheer
Praise that the reign of Preminger is here
Master in charge of all that I see
All hail me
And by marrying the princess
I get all that I desire
Like a moat, an ermine coat and palace views
Even though she treats me coldly
It’s a sign of inner fire
For inside she’s thinking “How can I refuse?”
[NACK, spoken]
Right, except for this one little problem, boss
[PREMINGER, spoken]
Prince Boss to you!
[NACK, spoken]
Right, the queen decided to marry her off to the King of Dulcinea next week
[PREMINGER, spoken]
What? Making a decision without me? Who does she think she is?
[NICK, spoken]
Uh, the Queen?
[PREMINGER, spoken]
You simpering simpleton!
[NICK, spoken]
Well, she is the Queen. She’s got a crown and a scepter and sits in her big fancy chair and always—
[PREMINGER] Silencio!
No! I won’t let go!
This peasant son won’t turn and run because some reckless royal chose another beau Ah!
It’s a temporary setback
It’s a momentary lapse
But conveniently my ego doesn’t bruise
And the moment that I get back
I will show them who’s the boss
You can bet your bullion there’ll be no “I do’s”
Yes, suppose the girl goes missing
So the king says “Au revoir”
Then I find her, bring her back and make the news
Then the queen will be so grateful
That she’ll pledge the heir to moi
And I’ll humbly tell her “How can I refuse?”
When our ceremony’s over
I’ll arise and take the throne
And that nitwit Anneliese can kiss my shoes
For the kingdom and the castle
Will be mine and mine alone
If the crown should fit, then how can I refuse?
[PREMINGER, NACK & NICK]
So get ready with the roses (So get ready with the roses)
And stand by with the champagne (And stand by with the champagne) When you’ve got a brilliant plan you never lose (When you’ve got a brilliant plan you never lose)
Yes, before this chapter closes (Yes, before this chapter closes)
I’ll be big as Charlemagne (He’ll be big as Charlemagne)
It’s a thankless job but how can I refuse? (It’s a thankless job but how can he refuse?)
How can I refuse? (How can he refuse?)
There is an account on the platform formerly known as Twitter, which shares posts encouraging people to worship Greek gods. For real. At least, it seems to be in earnest. We all know that many social media platforms openly pay contributors who stir up lots of engagement, and an easy way to do this is to post crazy, provocative things.
At the same time, we also all know that people in the year 2024 will really, truly believe anything. People are uneducated in a way we haven’t seen in quite some time, and they are thirsty for meaning and direction in direct proportion to how little truth they are encountering. So it’s plausible that “The Hellenist” is making money on social media, but is also someone who thinks the Greek gods look cool and has decided: Sure, I’ll go with that.
Here is the recent post that got my attention. He wrote: “What if instead of forcing our children to become Christians, we let them choose which gods to worship. Does anyone honestly think they would choose Jesus?” And the image that accompanies it has photos of statues of Zeus, Aphrodite, and Apollo, pointing out that they are the Gods of (respectively), “the sky, lightning, thunder, law, and order,” “love, passion, pleasure, and beauty,” and “oracles, archery, healing, music, light, knowledge, and protection of the young.” And then it has a picture of Jesus hanging limply from a cross, and under him, it says, “God of loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, meekness, and poverty.”
It matters to God whether or not this fellow is in earnest, or if he’s just yakking about sacred things as a way of earning some cash; but it doesn’t really matter to me. The truth is, he’s asked an excellent question. Why WOULD we chose to worship Jesus, when he puts up such a poor show? It’s easy for comfortably established Catholics to say, “Oh, how ignorant this guy is,” and wave him away, but this is a missed opportunity, especially since he’s specifically talking about children, and what they would do if they had a choice.
Since I do have children, and since they do have a choice about whom to worship, but they also presumably have the advantage of knowing a thing or two about why we follow the man on the cross, I went to my kids, and I showed them the image. I asked, “What would you say, if someone asked you this?” Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs said her husband Andrew asked her after Mass, “Did you see the guy with Jesus hair?”
She did see him and had wanted to run after him, but she hesitated, and now she regrets it. He would have made a great model.
It was one leap she didn’t take, but only one.
Four years ago, she and her husband took a chance, and now she supports the family full-time with their home business, Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs Sacred Art. She mostly paints commissions and also teaches painting in person.
As a working mother and breadwinner, she’s something of an oddity in her community.
“In my parish, many of the mothers stay home full time, and the husband works. I try to explain to people we chose to have this small business of making sacred art because it allows us to live the liturgical year more fully,” she said.
As fulfilling as this life often is, it wasn’t easy to land there.
“To take that leap, God sort of had to put us in a situation where we lost a different job and we didn’t know what else to do. It didn’t seem prudent to try to raise a family on being an artist, but God knew we didn’t have the courage to do it without taking away the other options,” she said.
Thompson-Briggs said she looks to the medieval model of a family workshop, including apprentices who were part of the household.
“It seems like a very human life to live, that my children see their father throughout the day, and we’re always switching off with childcare and homeschooling and business duties. It’s a model I love, but it has been rare. It may be coming back, since everyone’s been working at home,” she said.
That “very human life” is a hallmark of Thompson-Briggs’ approach to art. Many of her live models, like the one with the Jesus hair who got away, are not professionals, but fellow parishioners at the church down the street from her studio.
“I will snag them and say, ‘Are you available to linger for an hour next Tuesday after Mass?’ and surprisingly, most people are amenable. I’ve gotten to have so many wonderful conversations. You meet so many people you think you know because you see the back of their head for months, and then you start to talk to them, and you’re always surprised,” she said.
The in-person conversation and time together give her visual insight an artist can’t attain by working from a photograph.
“When you’re working from a photo, you can get caught up in the detail. [But] when you work from life, you introduce the element of time. What’s the most natural way their head would tilt or that drape would fall?” she said.
As her model settles in and gets comfortable, her eyes also discern more breadth of color, more depth in shadow, and more atmosphere.
Her favorite models are good conversationalists, and she also acknowledges that talking helps keep them awake. Her studio heats up tremendously in the summer, and fans can only do so much when a model is draped in layers of wool.
Even their discomfort can be a revealing part of the artistic process, though.
“If you’re carrying something heavy in one arm, it’s going to affect the angle of the hips, or something,” she said.
But because she is making sacred art, she is not trying to paint a recognizable portrait, but to assist the viewer in prayer; and so to portray a beloved saint, or Mary, or the Sacred Heart, she often uses three or four models, combining select elements from their various faces and bodies, hands and hair.
“Using multiple models allows me to approach the idealization of the saint who is a distinct personality, who is separate from all the reference models. Sometimes, I will transform someone, make them older or younger; other times, it’s a rare person who has really beautiful hands,” she said…Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor.
Image: Detail of St. Martin de Porres by Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs
In Giovanni Guareschi’s celebrated series of stories about a faithful but very human priest, the beleaguered Don Camillo once pitifully prays to Christ to help him blow his nose in a way that won’t be offensive to the congregation. He knows that he is under more public scrutiny than any other man in the village, and no matter what he does or how he does it, someone is going to complain.
I always keep this prayer in mind when a priest gets on my nerves, and I try very hard not to criticize him. Priests baptize our children. They bury our dead. They forgive our sins. They anoint and bless and guide us. And they give us Christ. The least we can do in return is give them some wiggle room.
And so, when we are at Mass, I try to expect really only the bare minimum from these men who are only human, but freighted with a superhuman responsibility. I expect my sacraments to be valid. I expect the liturgy to be licit. And I expect the sermons to be free of heresy.
That being said, I’m only human, too! I’ve been sitting in pews listening to sermons for almost five decades. I have boundless tolerance for boring sermons, weird sermons, silly sermons, scary sermons, tiresome sermons, corny sermons, uninspired sermons, irrelevant sermons, rambling sermons, goofy sermons, and sermons that make me wonder which will come first, the end of the homily or sweet, sweet death.
But I don’t complain! Most of the time. I do, however, have a short list of things I could do without, which I offer out of sheer, self-giving generosity, as your respectful daughter in the Faith.
And if my tone is a little bit lacking in patience, well . . . I’ll see you in the box next Saturday, Father. You know the drill.
Here’s what I’d love to never hear from the pulpit again:
1. The Catechetical Dump
Alphonse Ratisbonne reportedly instantaneously received infused knowledge of the Faith when he picked up a miraculous medal, leading to his full conversion of heart. But, Father, we are no Alphonse Ratisbonne, and we need our catechesis in smaller bites. I know it’s tempting to take advantage of a captive audience, especially on Christmas or Easter or a funeral or wedding, when the church is full of folks whose butts rarely dust a pew; but please resist the urge to deliver a lifetime’s worth of exegesis during a single homily. If you want all those unfamiliar faces to come back for more, be intriguing. Be eloquent and concise. Be selective. Please don’t try and convey the entire Faith in one fell swoop.
2. Yelling At the Choir
What’s worse than preaching to the choir? How about railing at the choir because the choir is so small? Dear Father, we already know it’s important to come. That’s why we’re here. If you’d like to see better numbers, encourage us to be courageous and invite our friends and family to come next week. Give us some encouragement; feed us some lines; challenge us to reach out. Remind us to evangelize. But please don’t take out your frustration on the folks who actually made it through the door.
3. Sit, Stand, Kneel, Bow AND BEYOND
I don’t want to raise my hand if I have a Bible in my house. I don’t want to turn around in my seat and wave at my neighbor. I don’t want to be harangued into shouting “Amen” louder and louder and louder until you’re satisfied that we’re wide awake. I know that “audience participation” makes sermons more arresting and memorable, but we’re not actually an audience, and ad libbed hijinks are just not appropriate during the liturgy. We get to offer ourselves to the Father along with Jesus Christ crucified. We are here to participate in the divine mysteries. That’s the kind of participation we’re here for. You’re not gonna top that, so please don’t try by resorting to gimmicks.
4. Miracle debunkers.
Sweet fancy Moses, why? You just read us the story of the Red Sea parting, or the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, and now it’s our spiritual father’s chance to help us understand what these miracles meant in the context of salvation history and what they tell us about God’s omnipotence and bounty. But no. Instead, you’re going to snark that probably the wind was just blowing really hard that day, and those primitive, gullible Israelites mistook it for a supernatural event.
Or maybe you’ll finish relating how Jesus lovingly fed the multitudes with such abundant food that there were twelve baskets full of leftovers, and this is actually a story about … people sharing? Because folks in those days routinely walked around with twelve baskets’ worth of fish fragments in their pockets?
You fathers, if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? If your congregation turns up looking for miracles, why give them something tedious and mundane, and insinuate this is the best God can do? It’s especially destructive for our kids to hear that the Bible is chock full of Nothing To See Here. God does miracles. Please don’t trim Him down to manageable size.
5. Political rallies
There is certainly overlap between our life as citizens and our life as Catholics. We need to know what the Church teaches about matters up for public debate: Abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage, immigration, and so on. But you can educate your flock on what the Church teaches, and encourage us to vote with our Faith foremost in our minds, without giving the impression that any political party is identical with our Faith. Please don’t imply that any politician will save us. That’s Jesus’ job, and it’s your job to help us remember that fact.
6. Baby shaming
Want to make sure the pews will be empty in ten years? Try publicly humiliating parents for the high crime of bringing their children to visit the Lord. Maybe you’re just joking about that one unrepentant squawker, or maybe you’re genuinely irritated at an interruption; but either way, it can be searingly embarrassing for a parent to be singled out during the Mass. I know more than one mother who’s been driven in tears from the Church — not just from the building, but from the Faith itself, after a priest criticized her child from the pulpit. Being a priest isn’t easy; neither is being a parent. Please never, ever be hostile to children. You need them as much as they need you.
And one more thing:
Thank you. Even if you don’t listen to me, thank you for being there, not only on Sundays, not only during normal working hours, but twenty-four hours a day, for your entire life. Thank you for your service to us and to God.
Accused of hiding evidence, lying about on-air talent Christine Niles’ status as an attorney, and even threatening a key witness to keep him from giving a deposition, Voris saw his lawyers quit last month, weeks before the federal defamation trial over his Church Militant stories about New Hampshire’s fringe group Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was set to start.
(N.B. A quick recap of the lawsuit can be foundhere. This article focuses on the seeming melt down happening to Voris’ defense.)
Now, Voris wants to bring in Massachusetts-based lawyer Marc Randazza. The problem? Randazza’s record of double-dealing which resulted in guilty pleas and formal discipline in multiple courts.
Marc-randazza, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Randazza, who got in trouble for his actions in a lawsuit involving gay porno companies, fashions himself as a First Amendment crusader and is popular with Info Wars host Alex Jones, Neo Nazi publisher Andrew Anglin, and right-wing personality Mike Cernovich.
New Hampshire priest Rev. Georges de Laire, the judicial vicar for the Manchester Diocese, is suing Voris over defamatory videos and articles Voris published, and starred in. Voris operates Church Militant and St. Michael’s Media, which produces a news website and Youtube video programs.
Attorney’s for de Laire, Howard Cooper and Suzanne Elovecky, are not amused by Voris’ antics, and told the court Randazza’s hire is another tactic to try to tank the lawsuit without a trial. They now want the court to make Voris pay.
“Defendants have engaged in numerous bad faith tactics in this case. Their actions have deprived Father de Laire of critical testimony, derailed a firm trial date, and made this matter far more expensive and emotionally draining for him than it otherwise should have been. Defendants conduct has been so egregious that Father de Laire will shortly move for the entry of a judgment of liability,” Cooper and Elovecky wrote.
Cooper and Elovecky are asking the federal judge to block Voris from bringing Randazza into the case, and they might have precedent.
In 2019, as Jones was being sued by parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, he tried to hire Randazza. However, the judge in the case ruled Randazza’s record of serious misconduct was too much. Randazza was not allowed to represent Jones in the Connecticut court, though his law firm stayed on the case.
The misconduct cited in by the Sandy Hook case judge is that Randazza, while representing gay porno producer Liberty Media Holdings, reportedly also worked on the side for the company Liberty was suing. Records show Randazza even solicited a bribe from the company Liberty was taking action against.
“There needs to be a little gravy for me,” Randazza emailed an opposing attorney in a Liberty lawsuit. “And it has to be more than the $5K you were talking about before. I’m looking at the cost of at least a new Carrera in retainer deposits after circulating around the adult entertainment expo this week. I’m gonna want at least used BMW money.”
A fuller picture of Randazza’s history can be foundhere. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to violating the attorney code of ethics in Nevada. This resulted in reciprocal discipline in other jurisdictions, and the fact Randazza has to disclose his past conduct when he starts a new case.
The reason Voris is even thinking about hiring Randazza in the first place might have to do with another lawyer involved in the de Laire lawsuit, Marc Balestrieri.
Balestrieri is a conservative canon lawyer who once tried to get Sen. John Kerry excommunicated.
Marc Balestrieri https://www.facebook.com/fsspminneapolis/photos/a.380489198774900/668338999989917/?type=3
He’s also accused of being the real author of the original anonymous article Voris published attacking de Laire in January of 2019. Balestrieri represents the Feeneyite Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary based in Richmond, New Hampshire in their fight against Church sanctions.
Balestrieri disappeared this summer before he was supposed to sit for a deposition with de Laire’s lawyers. The disappearing act came after Voris sent Balestrieri a threatening text message, according to court records.
Backing up a bit, Voris kept Balestrieri’s connection to the article hidden from de Laire and his lawyers for more than a year as the case worked its way through court. It was only in April of 2022 that Voris conceded that he himself was not the author. Eventually, Balestrieri was outed and made a defendant in the lawsuit.
Or he would have been. Balestrieri dodged process servers for months, even running into the woods to evade a server who tracked him to a conference for canon lawyers, according to court records.
The process server watched as Balestrieri called a friend who picked him up near the woods so they could drive away. Finally, in October of last year, Balestrieri was found in default in the defamation lawsuit. When the case is finally resolved, Balestrieri will have to pay damages to de Laire.
Interesting side note: according to court records, Voris loaned Balestrieri around $54,000 in June of 2022. The two would later claim this money was to help pay medical bills for Balestrieri’s sick mother.
Balestrieri stayed out of sight until he made a surprise appearance during a June 15 hearing in the United States District Court in Concord, seeking to have the default judgment lifted. Balestrieri does not have a lawyer, and did not seem to understand the way courts work.
Balestrieri was surprised when Judge Joseph LaPlante told him he was not going to lift the judgment and ordered him to give deposition as a witness. However, Balestrieri told LaPlante he was eager to clear up lies that had been told about him.
True to form, Balestrieri hemmed and hawed before finally agreeing to a date for the deposition. But, Balestrieri refused to give LaPlante or court staff his address. Balestrieri claimed he lived a “nomadic lifestyle.”
The prospect that Balestrieri would give a deposition under oath, and say he was not the author, presented problems for Voris. Voris had said in his court pleadings he did not question Balestrieri’s sources, and trusted the canon lawyer to tell the truth in his reporting.
Already, though, Balestrieri had told at least one person he never wrote the articles at the center of the defamation case. Chief of the Slaves, Louis Villarubia, also known as Brother Andre, had disclosed in his deposition that Balestrieri was claiming he was not the author.
Photo of Louis Villarubia, aka Br. André Marie, at a recent town meeting in Richmond, NH; courtesy Damien Fisher
Villarubia testified that he was concerned when he learned in June of last year for the first time that his canon lawyer, Balestrieri, had written the articles. Villarubia questioned Balestrieri about the authorship and the conflict of interest.
“And I said this is a problem, that Michael Voris said you wrote the article and you’re our canon lawyer. And (Balestrieri) said ‘I didn’t write the article.’ He vehemently denied authorship of the article,” Villarubia said during his deposition. “I simply thought that that should be on the record. Obviously, Marc’s chosen not to defend himself, but I have this information, and I thought that this should be part of the record.”
Villarubia further speculated Voris wrote the article with Balestrieri.
After Villarubia’s deposition, Voris and his Church Militant teams scrambled to find evidence linking Balestrieri to the articles. This would result in Voris tripping up himself, and Church Militant co-host Christine Niles. In June and July, Church Militant produced emails and other evidence they say proves Balestrieri’s authorship.
This new evidence backing Voris’s version of events arrived three months after the discovery in the case closed. And a lot of the evidence Church Militant produced were documents they claimed could not be found when previously ordered to do so, according to court records.
Among this new cache of documents was the threatening text message Voris sent Balestrieri on the day of the June 15 hearing. In it, Voris makes it clear Balestrieri must take the credit for the article and not claim otherwise.
“Marc – you are committing perjury. You know you write that article. What you don’t know is this morning we found proof – your digital fingerprints – all totally documented – on that article. Remember the email address – TomMoore@Churchmilitant.com.? We have all the receipts. You go through with this and we will rain down on you publicly. You are a liar, and a Welch,” Voris wrote.
The “welch” insult raises questions in light of the $54,000 loan.
On July 11, Balestrieri called lawyers for de Laire and left a voice mail informing them he would not attend the deposition. He did not give any reason.
The other problem the new evidence presents is Christine Niles’ statement and work status. Along with the June evidence Church Militant found, Niles supplied the court with a signed statement on July 13 laying out the proof that Balestrieri wrote the article. She claims they were able to link him to the pseudonymous email account, tommoore@churchmillitant.com, as well as drafts of the original article using Google docs. Balestrieri had reportedly used the Tom Moore pen name for years when he wrote articles for Voris.
The excuse for why Niles and Church Militant did not hand over the information linking Balestrieri to the article as previously ordered is an oversight on her part.
“In all sincerity, I forgot that he did not email me the article, but shared it through his Google Drive under his alternate email tommoore@churchmilitant.com,” Niles wrote in her statement.
Niles’ statement is not great for Voris on another front. In it, she makes clear that she is not a practicing attorney, and does not work as an attorney for Church Militant. Niles is an investigative reporter, according to her statement. That’s new to de Laire’s attorneys who say they were given the impression Niles was in-house counsel for Church Militant.
“This comes as a surprise as St. Michael’s Media d/b/a Church Militant and Defendant Gary Michael Voris have repeatedly claimed privilege over conversations with Ms. Niles, including those that pre-dated litigation and did not include trial counsel,” Elovecky wrote in an affidavit.
(Voris’s real name is Gary.)
For the record, Niles is an attorney who is licensed to practice law in Indiana and listed as “Inactive in Good Standing,” according to court documents. Voris’ lawyers tried to refute the accusation they improperly hid Niles behind attorney-client privilege.
“Mr. Voris never refused to answer any question concerning his communications with Mrs. Niles, on the basis of attorney-client privilege, even though he could have,” Kathleen Klaus, Voris’s now former lawyer wrote.
According to the deposition transcript, it was Klaus who stopped Voris from answering a question about a conversation he had with Niles due to privilege.
By August, the new evidence was causing fallout and the trial was scheduled to start Sept. 6. Lawyers for de Laire were demanding Voris submit to a new deposition to answer under oath exactly who write the article, and that Niles also make herself available for a deposition.
Instead, Klaus and Voris’s other attorney, Neil Nicholson, quit the case. Their Aug. 10 motion to leave does not detail why they are no longer representing Voris, but gives clues.
“Recent events that have transpired in the litigation have created an unwaivable conflict between Counsel and their clients … Counsel believes this conflict bars them from taking any further action on behalf of their clients,” Klaus and Nicholson wrote to the court.
Klaus and Nicholson cite New Hampshire’s Rule of Professional Conduct for attorneys 1.7 (a). That rule, concerning conflicts of interest, states lawyers cannot represent clients when there is a concurrent conflict of interest. That’s defined as: (1) the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client; or (2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer’s responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer.
Voris does have a New Hampshire lawyer engaged for representation, Richard Lehmann.
It’s been an otherwise rough year for Voris and his crew at Church Militant. This spring, the mini-media mogul was forced to lay off 19 staffers and put the nightly program, Church Militant Evening News, on hiatus.A former staffer claims the company enacted an “austerity” program to save money.
“Phones were removed from reporters’ desks, health benefits were canceled, essential equipment such as printers were not replaced. There was a freeze in hiring and travel,” former Church Militant employee Kristine Christlieb states.
The staff cuts saved Church Militant about $1 million in salary, according to Christlieb.
I’m so delighted that the site subscription problem seems to be finally fixed! I did . . . something. I am not completely sure what. But it seems to have worked, and it looks like people are finally, finally getting emails when I publish again. I’m so sorry it took so long, and I’m very glad to have back the folks who were missing my intermittent folderol! (If it fails again, please remember that I do also post links to everything on Facebook, other Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and most of all LinkTree. I know it’s not as convenient as just getting it in your inbox, but it is a way to keep up with my nonsense if things go south again! Which of course they will not.)
Speaking of nonsense, our old friend Gary (Michael) Voris has gotten himself in not one but several heaps of legal trouble, and has decided that the best tool with which to dig himself out is, of course, Alex Jones’ old porn lawyer. I called the Pope myself and he said this doesn’t count as gloating because it rises to such a high level of bonkersness, and we’re not made of stone, here.
Damien wrote up a story where you can read all about it, but the deal is that this article goes up for 24 hours for my dear patrons only, before I publish it for everyone on this site, so you know what to do! (Become a patron.) I’m hoping to publish exclusive sneak-peak content for patrons going forward, if this works out.
Okay! Okay, so here is what we ate this week:
SATURDAY Corn dogs
Saturday we were supposed to go to the Egyptian Food Festival, but one kid. had Covid and others of us did not, but were still feeling pretty punk. But I had a lot of pent-up weekend ambition still in me, so I decided we could still slowly, slowly harvest the grapes. It’s early this year, and they’re not as big and juicy as some years, but they were already starting to wither on the vine, so it seemed like time.
Benny and I spent about an hour picking. Last year, we had to fight the yellow jackets, and pick off countless caterpillars and grasshoppers, but this year, it was strangely quiet. It’s been a strange summer.
After dinner, I washed the grapes and discovered we had quite a bit more than I realized.
It took me a couple of hours to sort through them, get rid of all the unripe and rotten ones and stems and leaves, and pack them away, but I got it done, with the help of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
and then simmered it in my giant stock pot. Which wasn’t quiiiite giant enough
and I think it didn’t really simmer properly, which maybe led to it not being as sweet as it might have been. I’m not sure. The grapes themselves were actually sweeter than they are many years, and another difference I noticed was that my hands and arms weren’t itchy and tingling after handling the grapes, like they usually are. Grape mysteries! My theory is that the weather has been weird, which affected the grape chemistry, and this . . . did stuff. I don’t know, I was absent that day.
I made an absolute Gothic horrorfest out of the straining part.
Watch out, lads.
So we got about two gallons of juice. VERY tart juice, which the kids have been drinking all week.
When that was squared away, I moved on to the sorbet, which I am actually planning to finish making later, because we are planning an anniversary party in October. The sorbet recipe is quite simple: First you puree whole grapes, seeds and all, then force that through a sieve. This is the part I did:
Then I bagged it for the freezer.
Later, I’ll make some superfine sugar and blend that with the puree, chill the mixture, and put it in the ice cream maker. This is the sorbet I made last year:
Super intense flavor, much grape.
MONDAY Pepperoncini beef sandwiches, chips
Monday I made something I haven’t made for quite some time: Pepperoncini beef sandwiches. Couldn’t be easier. Top round roast was $3.99 a pound, so I bought a few pounds, hacked it into smaller pieces, dropped it in the slow cooker, dumped a jar of pepperoncini with the juice on top of it, set it to low, and let it cook all day.
Here’s a recipe card, but it just suggests adding Worcestershire sauce to the pot, and putting cheese on top.
Supper time comes, you pull out the meat and shred it, pull out the pepperoncini and chop them up a little, and it’s a wonderful sandwich. You can put mayo on the roll if you like, but it’s juicy and doesn’t strictly need it.
You can fish out a little ramekin of the juice and dip your sandwich, too. Mmm, good sandwich.
And you can have some grape juice on the side! Because boy do we have a lot of grape juice.
Chicken wings were $1.99 and I didn’t really want to make oven fried chicken again, so even though I was in a rush, I hunted around for a new recipe, and happened upon this gochujang chicken wing recipe from Lord Byron’s Kitchen. It is so simple, I was pretty skeptical, but I tried it, and it’s fabulous.
In the morning, I BAKED the chicken. Yes, just baked it at a high temperature, just absolutely bare, on parchment paper, no fat or seasoning or anything. (It says to wash it and pat it dry, which I skipped. What am I, Jordan Peterson? Wash yourself.)
Then I made up a simple sauce on the stovetop, using oil, gochujang, soy sauce, rice vinegar, salt and pepper, fresh garlic and fresh vinegar. It also calls for sesame seeds, but my kitchen is a disaster and I couldn’t find them. It also calls for one clove of garlic and one tablespoon of minced ginger, which, my dear Lord Byron. I quintupled it. So you just mix up the sauce until it thickens (and maybe you’ve heard me moaning about my sauce issues, but it really did thicken like it was supposed to).
The recipe says to add the baked chicken to the hot sauce, char it a little, and serve it right away. But I was cooking in the morning; so I put the chicken and sauce in the fridge, and in the evening I mixed them together and then spread them on the sheet pan again and put them back in a hot oven until they were sizzling. Worked perfectly.
Gosh, they were good. They honestly tasted like fried chicken. The skin was crisp, the sauce was sticky, the meat was not dried out, and I was delighted. A big hit. Definitely putting this recipe in the rotation, especially with the morning/evening cooking tweak.
I made a pot of rice (I couldn’t find my second Instant Pot pot [told you, my kitchen is a disaster] and the primary one was full of juice) on the stove like a peasant, and made a tray of roast broccoli in the few minutes before dinner, and it was a great meal
If I could have found the sesame oil (ALSO MISSING. If someone wants to come rescue my kitchen, I would not mind) and sesame seeds, I would have made sesame broccoli
but I just drizzled some olive oil and soy sauce and kosher salt over it and stuck it under the broiler until it was steaming but still a little crunchy. Very good. Probably could have skipped the salt.
Wednesday I had to face this giant pouch of tilapia filets I had bought on sale. I was once again not excited about frying anything, so I tried a recipe someone told me about on Facebook: You grind up equal amounts of almonds and parmesan cheese, dip your fish in something for a binder, and then dredge it in the cheese-nut mixture. So I did that, and set it aside.
Then I made a big pot of risotto, in honor of it’s getting cold outside. Instant Pot risotto is one of the great consolations of autumn.
I have tweaked my recipe so it is profoundly calorific and has enough fat to get a small, plump village through to January at least, and it’s way easier than stovetop risotto.
But what about a vegetable? It so happens I have had a butternut squash on the counter since . . . last time it was butternut squash season. It sat there all though the spring and summer, just quietly, pinkly, squashily biding its time. Butternut squash endures.
I cut off the ends, poked it all over with a fork, and microwaved it for three minutes, to make it easier to cut. Then I hacked it in half, scooped out pulp and seeds, and sprinkled it with kosher salt and a little baking soda.
The theory here is that the baking soda raises the pH of the squash, so that the caramelization happens faster than it would if the squash were . . . neutral. I don’t know. I was absent that day. All I know is, when I put baking soda on, the squash seems to come out a little sweeter and a little richer in flavor, which may completely be one of those butternut placebo effects I’ve been hearing so much about, but on the other hand, who among us. It’s so easy that I’m going to keep doing it.
So I put the squash on the trivet in the Instant Pot and added a cup of water, closed the lid and valve, and set it to cook for 24 minutes.
When it was done, I scooped out the flesh, mashed it, and added some butter, cinnamon, chili powder, and brown sugar.
Hot damn, it was good. Only a few people in this house like mashed squash, but those who do feel pretty strongly about it.
So, the almond and parmesan crusted tilapia. I just dipped the fish in egg and milk, and dredged it in the almond and parmesan, and baked it until it was golden. It was . . . fine. I had used freshly grated parmesan, which tasted so strong when I tested it that I didn’t add any other seasoning, and this was a mistake. It was crunchy and nutty, but (and I feel silly for not anticipating this) extremely bland. A squeeze of lemon helped, but no as much as one would hope.
Oh well, you live and learn. The squash and risotto were top notch. And the tilapia was on sale!
Thursday was the third or fourth day in the course of two weeks that I had been planning to make this chicken saltimbocca recipe. Why? I don’t know, it just got into my head that I need to make it, and I got all the ingredients; but when it comes down to it, reality keeps asserting itself, and I keep not making it after all. On Thursday, I got home after 5:00 and the chicken wasn’t even defrosted, so that was the universe’s way of telling me to stop with the saltimbocca nonsense for the moment. I ran to the store and got some pork ribs, which I roasted with salt and pepper. I will fight you: This is the best way to eat pork ribs. Just sizzling hot and a tiny bit charred, with salt and pepper.
We also had some baguettes getting stale, so I made some quick garlic bread, and we had three pounds of Brussels sprouts that were about to become awful, so I trimmed them and spread them in a pan drizzled on olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, kosher salt, and hot pepper flakes, and roasted them along with the ribs.
Was I proud of myself for going from cold kitchen to quite good, three-piece hot meal in about 25 minutes? I really was.
And yes, that is a little lunchbox tub of apple sauce on my plate. I like applesauce.
FRIDAY ??
Possibly leftovers. I feel like we have a lot of leftovers in this house.
Put the beef in a slow cooker with a jar of pepperoncini and the juice. If you like, cut the stems off the pepperoncini. If there isn't enough juice, add some beer. Add the worcestershire sauce if you want a slightly more savory juice.
Cover, set to low, and let it cook for several hours until the meat falls apart when poked with a fork.
Shred the meat. If you like, chop up a few of the pepperoncini.
Serve meat on rolls with mayo if you like. Lay sliced provolone over the meat and slide it under the broiler to toast the bread and melt the cheese. Serve the juice on the side for dipping.
Cut the acorn squashes in half. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt on the cut surfaces.
Put 1/2 a cup of water in the Instant Pot, fit the rack in it, and stack the squash on top. Close the lid, close the valve, and cook on high pressure for 24 minutes. Do quick release.
When squash is cool enough to handle, scoop it out into a bowl, mash it, and add the rest of the ingredients.
