Author: simchajfisher

A Lent for this specific year

Lent is one of those seasons when the “Both/And” nature of the Catholic Church really asserts itself.  

The practices and purposes of Lent are ancient, timeless, universal. It’s a season when we’re invited to step into an ancient, continuous tradition of fasting, praying, self-denial that would not be completely foreign to Catholics who lived centuries ago. 

It’s also a time when we’re supposed to ask ourselves, “What am I in particular, in this specific year, at this specific time in my life, supposed to do so that I can come closer to God?” 

I have some ideas! Here are my suggestions for how to spend Lent in the year 2025. 

Refuse to dehumanize. Not even a little bit.

Undeniably, there are evil people in the world doing evil things.  These people are our brothers and sisters in Christ, with no exceptions at all. They are not trash, not termites, not scum, not excrement, not parasites, not a waste of skin.  

Dehumanization paves the way to oppression, every time. We must not participate, even for the sake of rhetoric, or our hearts will follow the lead of our lips.  

It is becoming more and more socially acceptable to refer to our opponents as less than human, because we see them behaving so abominably, and because they’re calling us even worse names. But as Christians, this should impel us to work harder to recall their humanity, not to give in. Christ did not despise us, and we’re obligated to pass that mercy on.  

Refuse to enjoy being angry.

There’s a lot to be angry about. But when we’re angry at another human being, we should steel ourselves against relishing that rage and delighting in our disgust.  

We can follow the example of Mr Dimble in the final pages of That Hideous Strength, who has just discovered how thoroughly Mark Studdock has given himself over to evil: 

“He seemed to Mark to be looking at him not with anger or contempt but with that degree of loathing which produces in those who feel it a kind of embarrassment—as if he were an obscenity which decent people are forced, for very shame, to pretend that they have not noticed. 

“In this Mark was quite mistaken. In reality his presence was acting on Dimble as a summons to rigid self-control. Dimble was simply trying very hard not to hate, not to despise, above all not to enjoy hating and despising, and he had no idea of the fixed severity which this effort gave to his face.” 

Relatedly:

Give up, or at least cast a critical eye on, doing things that will score us points with our crowd 

That’s one of the worst and most perilous reasons to do or believe something: For applause. Our foundational ideas can so easily shift along with the crowd without us even realizing it, and the crowd tends to demand more and more debasement.  

Times like these are a wonderful opportunity to halt, assess what our core values are, and ask ourselves: Why am I doing this? Why am I saying this? Why am I speaking to or about this person this way?  Just check in and see if anything has shifted in your heart since last year, or since a few years ago; and, if it has, consider whether our new personal standards make us a better witness to the Gospel, or worse. 

Swear off hate-socialising…

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 413: Erasmus B. Dragon

Happy Friday! Sorry for the interruption with the website last week, and thanks a lot, OBAMA. 

We have been on February vacation all week, and there has not been one single day when I’ve been sure what day it is, except I knew for sure that the month was almost over and I had cleverly arranged for all my writing deadlines to cluster together in one giant, unfortunate . . . cluster.

But, food! I’ll just do a few quick highlights from the previous week, because I tried a few new recipes. 

One day we had
Bacon potato soup and french bread.

The french bread is, of course, not a new recipe

Jump to Recipe

but I got cute and made sixteen little personal loaves, rather than four big ones. 

Because it’s such a simple recipe, I ventured outside my comfort zone and just added flour until the dough looked right, rather than meticulously measuring it. I’m trying to give myself credit for knowing how to do things I’ve done a thousand times before.

Turned out great! At least with bread.  

The soup was more or less following this recipe from Sugar Spun Run, and maybe it’s the My Fitness Pal talking, but I had a really hard time feeling like a recipe that includes bacon, all the bacon grease, milk, heavy cream, sour cream, butter, AND CHEESE (and additional cheese, bacon, and sour cream for the top!!!!!) really truly needed as much butter as this recipe called for. So I used a little less butter. I turn sideways, people question where I went. 

It’s one of those soups where you cook it for a while, then put half of it in a blender and puree it, and then add that back into the soup. I’ve only recently become familiar with this technique of soup made out of itself, and it’s pretty good. Quite a rich, thick soup. 

I did add a bit of cheese to the top, along with a little chili powder and chopped scallions, but mostly to add color, since it was quite beige.

I’m not gonna lie, this is a ridiculously delicious soup. The kids did NOT like it, though. They really resent when I serve bacon in any other form besides, you know, baconform. Which I understand! But also, sometimes I want to make things that I like.

We also had, let’s see, meatball subs, tacos, cuban sandwiches with beans and rice, and another new recipe: Ginger chicken from a site I haven’t used before, The Woks of Life. He gives very specific instructions for each ingredient, and it was pretty easy to follow, although I fudged a few things (mirin instead of Shaoxing wine, one kind of soy sauce instead of two, and onions instead of shallots), and my sauce didn’t come out as dark as his. Most likely I rushed it, which is the story of my life. 

But YOU GUYS, it was still SO GOOD. 

Tons of flavor, tender and gingery, wonderful comfort food. I think just about everybody liked it, which almost never happens. Corrie even requested it for her birthday meal (although she later recanted that in favor of . . . well, you’ll see). 

I also made some quick sesame broccoli, which is just broccoli sprinkled with sesame oil, soy sauce, salt, pepper, ground ginger and garlic, and sesame seeds, and then roasted. Very easy and popular. 

We spent part of the week getting ready for Corrie’s party (I have now decluttered every single room downstairs, and one room upstairs!). I made a paper mache pinata in the shape of a dragon egg (which, if you’re not familiar, is the same shape as a balloon) and some kind of half-hearted decorations (a “mystical cave entrance” in the living room doorway largely made of brown shipping paper twisted into vines and tacked onto the wall, with some green and purple foil easter grass thrown in).

The big thing was the DRAGON CAKE. I’m proud of this one. 

First I baked the cake layers. I almost always use box cake mix for younger kids’ birthdays, because they care a lot more about the look of the cake than the flavor, and their parties include so much candy and snacking that, by the time we get to cake, no one’s palate is especially fine tuned. 

So then I made a batch of rice krispie treats, and smooshed it together as compactly as I could, and formed it into a dragon-ish shape. I was very proud of remembering to form it on top of the pan I had baked the top tier of the cake in, so I knew it would fit onto the finished cake. 

It would have been smart to put a layer of parchment paper under it to keep it from sticking, but I didn’t think of that! It did stick a bit, but not disastrously. 

I made the dragon on Thursday for a party on Saturday, so it would have plenty of time to dry and get stiff. I also put a cup under his chin to prop it up while it dried, because it was droopy.

On Friday, I attached edible gold foil to the belly, chest, nose horn, and tip of the tail with frosting, and then I used hardening cookie frosting (comes in a pouch at Walmart) to attach a row of spikes from the top of his head to the end of his tail. The spikes are black candy melts cut into triangles. I made a feeble attempt to put them on in size order, but mostly just shoved them in there.

Then I made the wings! I had the bright idea to use fruit rolls. I cut up some plastic straws, laid them out, stretched the fruit rolls over one side and then flipped them over and stretched another layer on the other side, and trimmed each wing into scallops; and then I used a kitchen torch to seal the edges up so they wouldn’t come apart.

I put a wooden skewer inside the long straw, to make it more rigid, and to make it easier to anchor in the dragon’s body. These also got laid out overnight to stiffen and dry out, so they wouldn’t droop. 

I tried several different ways of covering the dragon’s body, with frosting, scales, etc., and finally reluctantly settled on fondant, which I haven’t used much before. This was nerve-wracking, because at first it looked like he was just wearing a big red sweater.

and truly, I say unto you, it took KIND OF A WHILE to get him all covered and smoothed. But I kept going, and when I molded it a bit and added claws and some details with black icing, it looked okay!

I iced the cake with black and grey frosting, carefully set the dragon on top, and added more gold foil, gold coins, and gold chocolate eggs, and also a bunch of vanilla Oreo cookies that I had sprayed with gold spray.

AND HERE HE IS.

Five guests were able to make it, the pinata worked perfectly (didn’t fall apart too soon, but wasn’t completely impenetrable) and she had a wonderful time. 

Phew! We had Walmart pizza for supper and then collapsed like bunches of broccoli, respectively. 

Sunday, I had a profound desire to not go shopping, so we had our customary leftover buffet, plus a charcuterie board of whatever I could find in the fridge, which included some fancy things we got for Christmas, that I recently rediscovered when I cleaned my room. I sliced up the leftover french bread, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled it with flaked kosher salt, and toasted it

and it was a damn fine meal.

For reasons I can’t explain, I decided to make cake balls for dessert. I have never made or eaten cake balls before, and I found the process slightly gross (you bake a cake, let it cool, crumble it up, and scrunch it into dough with big gobs of frosting. Then make balls, chill them, and dip them in candy melt), but they did turn out looking cute and cheery.

I had one and was underwhelmed; but to be fair, I may have underbaked the cake, so maybe the whole thing was a little more damp than necessary. WHO AMONG US. Anyway, the kids liked them okay. 

MONDAY I finally went shopping, and we had
Buffalo chicken salad

Salad, buffalo chicken from frozen, shredded pepper jack cheese, crunchy fried onions from a can, grape tomatoes, and blue cheese dressing. I’m being tiresome about calories, so I skipped the dressing on mine.

That night, Corrie made ice cream pies for her CALENDAR birthday, which, according to Fisher Rigamarole, is a distinct holiday from your birthday PARTY. 

She requested graham cracker crust, black raspberry ice cream, mini marshmallows, skittles, and gummy worms. She didn’t want any whipped cream or cool whip or cherries or anything. 

Tuesday
Market Basket subs, Doritos, bloomin’ onion, ice cream pies

On Tuesday we went to get her EARS PIERCED. Which was not fun, but she’s been wanting it done forever, and she’s very happy with the results. Then we went to get Market Basket subs. 

Are Market Basket subs especially good? Not especially! But we often get them when we’re going to the beach or on a day trip, so I guess they spell T-R-E-A-T. I have to admit, they’re cheap. They taste like Subway subs and cost what Subway subs should cost.

So we had that and chips and then I guess I felt weird not cooking anything, so I made some bloomin’ onions. You can use a knife to cut an onion into a blossom shape, but it’s way easier if you have an onion cutting device, WHICH I DO.

I made an attempt to take a soulful, romantic photo with one of my beautiful onion lotus blossoms, but I just ended up looking exhausted, which, by strange coincidence, I was.

I lost the recipe booklet that came with my onion machine, so I followed this recipe, which includes a nice zippy recipe for dipping sauce. 

Turned out pretty okay! I crowded the pan and was a little short on oil, but hey, the onion, she blooms.

Corrie had yet another wonderful day with most of her siblings over and lots of presents, including these incredible Bender fingerless mittens made by Lucy

And that was that! Whew!

WEDNESDAY
Instant Pot pork ribs, glazed carrots, cole slaw

Thursday I tried another new recipe: This Amy + Jacky Instant Pot recipe. Easy peasy. You mix up apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a few spices, and marinate the pork ribs in that for a while. Then you throw them in the IP and cook it on high pressure for 15 minutes, then let it natural release for ten minutes. Mine sat for somewhat longer than that because I was driving around (not to and from school, though! It’s vacation, so I was driving them to and from their friends’ houses), so they turned out a little unsightly

but I was excited, because I could tell how tender and juicy they were. You slather BBQ sauce on top and broil it up for a bit, and there it is.

I had made cole slaw in the morning (cabbage and carrots, mayo, cider vinegar, sugar, and pepper) and prepped some carrots to cook, so I put the carrots in the oven just before the meat went in, and it all came out at the same time.

The carrot recipe I used was this simple one from Recipe Tin Eats. This is a rare RTE recipe that does not turn out exactly as she describes, and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Hers are shiny and sticky, and mine are just kinda toasty. They’re easy and popular, though, so it’s worth making them even though they’re not spectacular. I wish I had remembered a sprinkle of cardamom, though. 

Anyway, I thought it was a great meal. 

and the ribs really were juicy and ready to fall apart with a slight nudge from the fork. 

For sure making this recipe again, at least until it gets warm enough for Damien to use the smoker again. 

THURSDAY
Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins

Thursday the older kids had their own plans, so I took Benny and Corrie out for an outing of our own. We hit a thrift store, a local place that does giant baskets of fries, the pet store, and a fancy candy store, and when I say my dogs were barking, I really mean it! I still had to make supper, and it was so late already, I figured I might as well forge ahead and make the meal I had planned, which was beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins. 

Yes, this is a weird combination, but I made it one time and certain people decided it was 100% ideal, so we’re locked in for a while. 

Here is my beef barley soup recipe:

Jump to Recipe

which I threw together in record time. I was kind of puzzled as to why it looked wrong, but when you’re FORGING AHEAD, you simply don’t have time to fret over these things!

Anyway, it was tomatoes. I forgot the tomatoes. They’re more important than I realized, and the soup was a little sad without them! Oh well. 

When the soup was simmering, I started pumpkin muffins,

Jump to Recipe

and discovered I had used all the oil for frying the bloomin’ onions, so I used melted butter. They turned out with a nice, more textured top

but the inside had a slightly waxy feel that I wasn’t crazy about. So now I know.

(I took that picture because, as I was pulling the twenty-four muffins out of the pan, I reminded myself that there would be a grand total of four people at home for dinner, and WHAT IF THERE’S NOT ENOUGH FOOD. Waste! Fraud! Abuse! Somebody alert Department Of Gnawing Everything so they can come over and fix things by clogging up the toilets and shooting the dog.) 

FRIDAY
Poke bowls

Today I am facing a rash promise I made to take the kids ice skating this week, which you may or may not have noticed is almost over, and yet we have not gone ice skating yet. There are two ice rinks around here (one ten minutes away, one forty), and neither one seems especially interested in . . . letting people ice skate on them? So we are aiming for the 7-9:00 spot, forty minutes away. Yes, in the EVENING. Maybe the world will come to an end before that happens. Of course I was counting on that to rescue me from having to do the FAFSA, and that didn’t work out, so probably we will have to go ice skating.

Anyway, first we will be eating something approximating poke bowls. Gonna cook up a bunch of rice and probably sear some Walmart tuna steaks, and I have chili lime cashews from Aldi, mangoes, some kind of green sprouts, and various pink and yellow and brown sauces. 

Saturday will be a regular day, and then Sunday we are going to a museum and will be getting back very late on the night before the first day back at school! Which is a great idea! It was my idea! Hooray! Somebody call the department of paste, frog, and caboose! I have a fever and the only cure is more measles!

I actually think I do have a fever, so. We’ll see who’s ice skating whom. 

5 from 1 vote
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French bread

Makes four long loaves. You can make the dough in one batch in a standard-sized standing mixer bowl if you are careful!

I have a hard time getting the water temperature right for yeast. One thing to know is if your water is too cool, the yeast will proof eventually; it will just take longer. So if you're nervous, err on the side of coolness.

Ingredients

  • 4-1/2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
  • 5 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive or canola oil
  • 10-12 cups flour
  • butter for greasing the pan (can also use parchment paper) and for running over the hot bread (optional)
  • corn meal for sprinkling on pan (optional)

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.

  2. Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.

  3. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.

  4. Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).

  5. Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.

  6. Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.

  7. Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.

  8. Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.

  9. Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.

  10. Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

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

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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


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

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

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

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

5 from 1 vote
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Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

 

Artist and teacher Monica Dix walks the walk.

Monica Dix believes that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

That’s why the 53-year-old artist and teacher will sometimes tack up one of her in-progress drawings where her room full of eighth-graders can see it, saying, “Okay, five things. Critique my work.”

At first, they praise her art, and tell her she’s the best artist ever.

“Then they dig in,” she said.

They always find mistakes she didn’t see, and they’re not shy about letting her know she didn’t properly measure the space between the nose and the upper lip, or that something was off about the eyes.

“It’s great for my pride,” she said.

It’s also great for her students, because it shows them not only how to look critically at the objective elements that make or break a piece of art, but it shows them what it’s like to be an artist. Sometimes you can fix a mistake, but sometimes you have to start over.

“It’s that whole ‘walk the walk.’ I let them see that,” she said.

Sometimes, a kid will point out an error she’s made, and she realizes she’s not only executed something wrong, she’s been teaching it wrong. It’s like when one person raises his hand and asks a question, and it turns out there are ten people who also had that question, but were too self-conscious to ask.

“It helps everybody,” she said.

Dix has been teaching art to teenagers at Naples Classical Academy, a charter school in Naples, Florida, since 2021. In many ways, it’s an extraordinary school, where kids leave their cell phones behind and nobody aspires to be a TikTok star. The classical curriculum, provided by Hillsdale College, tends to attract families with a certain mindset, she said.

But in other ways, they bring the same attitudes and assumptions to her class that many Americans bring to art in general. Part of the curriculum includes modern art, and every year when she introduces abstract expressionism, someone will say, “I could do that!” or “A kindergartener could do that!”

She responds, “Then why didn’t they?”

She asks her students to learn what was going on in the artist’s life and what was going on in the world. They study art on the same timeline as they study history, so they begin to make connections and understand why some artists chose to break with tradition, and why we still remember their work today.

“I come at it from a historical standpoint, from a cultural history standpoint. (These things are) worth looking at,” she said.

She also gets her students to do more than just look. If they have time, she invites them to re-create art that baffles them — for instance, the intricate, dynamic layers of drips and splashes in a Jackson Pollock action painting.

It’s harder than it looks. Her students are allowed to say whether they like or dislike a piece of art, but first they should know what they’re talking about.

Dix makes herself walk the walk, too. …

Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor.

Image: Sunday Afternoon At the Porch House Pub by Monica Dix (image courtesy of the artist) 

***

Also, a note: I’m expanding the scope of this monthly artist feature! If you know of a Catholic musician, composer, dancer, or other contributor to the arts who has an interesting story to tell, let me know! Shoot an email to simchafisher at gmail dot com. Thanks!

Time spent in giving love is never wasted

Isn’t this a good time for a cheerfully post-apocalyptic novel?

There is a scene from such a novel I think about frequently, and have done so for decades—the scene in Walter M. Miller’s excellent sci fi classic, A Canticle For Leibowitz, where the guileless Br. Francis finally makes his way to New Rome to deliver a precious relic of his order’s founder to the pope.

The “relic” is a fragment of an electrical engineer’s blueprint for a “transistorized control system,” an artifact from so long in the past of this post-apocalyptic, mostly post-literate world, that no one knows what kind of information it is, much less what it was for.

They do know it was made by the hand of someone they consider a martyred saint, and the order’s entire charism is to preserve knowledge in a hostile world; so Br. Francis has spent the last many years lovingly and laboriously transcribing the mysterious blueprint into a highly decorated illuminated manuscript.

But on his way to New Rome, he is waylaid by bandits, who assume the beautiful piece is actually the main treasure Francis wanted to guard, and they steal it. They leave him the original blueprint, though, which he presents to the pope. The pope thanks him and then says that he heard the copy was beautiful. Francis responds:

“It was nothing, Holy Father. I only regret that I wasted 15 years.”

The way I remember it, the pope responds that it was not wasted, because it was done in love, and that he can offer that up to God. But I looked it up, and that’s not quite what the pope says. He said:

“Wasted? How ‘wasted’? If the robber had not been misled by the beauty of your commemoration, he might have taken this, might he not?”

The pope asks Francis if he knows what the relic means, and then admits that he doesn’t, either. He then reverences it and says:

“We thank you from the bottom of our heart for those 15 years, beloved son,” he added to Br Francis. “Those years were spent to preserve this original. Never think of them as wasted. Offer them to God. Someday the meaning of the original may be discovered, and may prove important.”

Two of the overarching themes of the book are that knowledge is worth preserving . . . and that man inevitably uses knowledge to destroy himself. This happens repeatedly in the book, which is divided into three parts, each recounting a different era.

The book is not anti-intellectual, by any means, but it does ask you to question the value of human progress, when progress apparently inevitably leads to apocalypse.

The pope thought Francis’ effort was not in vain because it helped save the original manuscript, which may someday aid the whole world. But is that really the reason it was worthwhile?

Many things can be true at the same time…. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: The monk Eadwine, Trinity College Psalter, Cambridge (Creative Commons) 

Matthew Alderman finds ancient answers to new questions in church architecture

Matthew Alderman has a surprising weakness for neon haloes, the kind you might find lighting up the heads of stone saints in 1,000-year-old Italian churches.

“It can be quaint. I will take old, interesting kitsch over ’60s clip art,” he said. “At least it has honesty.”

But when Alderman works on church design, he tries to aim a little higher than honesty. Clients, weary of bland and barren sacred art and architecture, are ready for more.

“They want something transcendent that speaks to a higher order,” he said.

Alderman, 41, is a popular illustrator and heraldry expert, but his day job is with the venerable church architecture firm Cram and Ferguson, where he is the day-to-day design manager, working together with several other team members. The firm is known for its role in spearheading the revival of Gothic and other traditional styles. Its hallmark style provides a lively relief from the dreary errors of the past several decades. So much modern design is cold and sterile, bleak or banal.

But Alderman never wants to make a mere copy, or return to the past simply for the sake of returning. At the same time, he will never reject a design merely because it comes from a certain era, even a modern one.

“The artists who produced (church buildings) in the ’50s and ’60s did have a classical education,” he said.

There was a reason they made the design choices they did, even if the results come across as ugly, theologically dubious, or distasteful. But the generations that followed them were not necessarily educated or thoughtful, and the churches that came next were “copies of copies of copies.”

“They do not speak to us,” Alderman said. “It feels narrow and inauthentic.”

As he and his co-workers at the firm collaborate with painters, wood carvers, sculptors and the clients who commissioned it all, Alderman strives to see what can be learned from the past, and figures out how to make it work for the present. Rather than straining for design so artistically pure it becomes almost legalistic, or merely attempting to copy the work of great architects like Borromini or Gaudi, he tries to get inside their heads, identifying the essential principles that guided them. He asks himself how they would solve whatever problem is bedeviling him now.

“I have this particular style I’m trying to learn from, get behind it, think about what are the ideals, the first principles. It’s a wonderful challenge,” he said.

Alderman didn’t invent the idea of taking ancient principles of design and applying them in new ways. In the 19th century, portrait sculptors of great statesmen wanted to give their subjects the grandeur and nobility of emperors of the past, but they couldn’t show them wearing togas.

“They figured it out: Suits with overcoats wrapped around them,” Alderman said.

He mused that a contemporary artist could do something similar with images of modern holy men and women, like the soon-to-be-canonized Carlo Acutis.

“You have to find an ideal balance between producing something so contemporary it becomes distracting, and something not recognizable as a saint,” he said.

Hoodies have a nice drape to them, or perhaps you could show Acutis wearing the hospital gown he died in.

“The problem with images of modern saints is that we’re going off photographs,” he said, which tempts artists to slavishly recreate the exact details on record.

“They should look like them, but they shouldn’t be the only thing we’re using to recognize them by,” he said.

He’s seen a few portrayals of Acutis holding a laptop, which is a tool he used for evangelization, but he’s not sure if it works.

“Maybe the decoration on the border could look like circuit boards,” he said. “There are so many ways to attack this.”

He takes similar problems under consideration in architecture, trying to find a balance between the wisdom of the past and the actual requirements of the present. Some elements of church architecture are immutable: The overall design should always focus attention on the most important things, the crucifix, the tabernacle, the altar.

“It should be building to that crescendo,” he said.

But while you achieve that goal, there is endless room for variation. The relative newness of the Church in America is fertile ground for creativity, even playfulness — and even a chance to right some wrongs of the past…Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. This article can also be found in the most recent print edition of OSV. 

Image: St. Paul Catholic University Center, photo by Father James Bradley. (Courtesy of Matthew Alderman)

What’s for supper? Vol. 412: Food of America

Happy Friday! Happy Valentine’s Day! Damien and I are GOING OUT DANCING! Or, well, we are taking our kids to the school dance, presumably to watch the girls text each other and giggle, and the boys shove each other, and the little kids chase each other under the tables. I was discouraged (by my kids) from bringing in food, so none of this, this year:

I went to a Valentine’s Day dance in middle school, which was such a long time ago, it was still called “Junior High.” It was my first dance ever, and I had read a lot of Archie Comics, so I borrowed my sister’s bright pink dress with the flared skirt, paired with a wide, glossy, black plastic belt with a gold heart-shaped clasp, and a pair of pink heart earrings. I nervously crept through the door of the gym, and a teacher chaperone immediately cried, “Oh, don’t you look nice!” Which is how I knew I had worn the Wrong Thing. 

Thanks, brain, for remembering that in excruciating detail. So important.

Anyway, boy am I glad to be an adult. And you know what is important? Food! Here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftover buffet with dino nuggets

The forecast warned us of a big storm Saturday night, so we went to the vigil Mass. But first it was the shopping turn of a child who made me very proud by picking out the things SHE WANTED, and steadfastly rebuffing the howls of complaints from her older sisters. For her frozen food supplement to leftover day, she picked dino nuggets because that’s what sheeee wanted. 

They also gave her a hard time about the weekend cereal and the desserts she chose, but she didn’t crumple. For real, being a teenage girl and actually expressing what you want, and sticking to it when your peers don’t like it, is almost heroic.

Also heroic was the leftover coconut chicken curry. I ignored all the other leftovers and just stuck with the curry, and oh my dammit, it was amazing.

Next time, I may make curry ahead of time just to have it several days old on purpose, because it was really great the first time, but as leftovers, it was MAGNIFICENT. 

SUNDAY
Buffalo wings and blue cheese dip, Doritos, hot pretzels, raw veggies

The big snow came as forecast, and in the midst of all that brilliant white, my pesky lingering headache turned into a full-blown migraine, so I noped out of shoveling and went back to bed. Bless Damien for making me feel like this was a reasonable thing to do. 

But I was feeling better by the afternoon, and it was, of course, the Super Bowl. We didn’t care about either team, but we do like hot salty football food, so I made some hot pretzels using the King Arthur recipe.

I’ve made it before, and it’s pretty easy, and they come out delicious, although they never really look like the picture, probably because I’m too impatient to roll the dough out into long enough snakes before shaping them. (And no, I never did get dressed, as you can see.) 

Anyway, you make the dough and let it rise (I used the slow cooker on “keep warm”), then cut the dough into lumps

And by the way, this is around the time of year last year I got my new-to-me cabinet and marble countertop from Marketplace, and it’s been SUCH a boon. I set it slightly lower then the other countertops, so it’s very convenient for things like kneading dough or decorating cakes. I have short legs, whatcha gonna do. 

Here’s what my workspace looked like before the new countertop:

and here how it looks right now:

If you look closely, you will see that I have discovered PVC pipe as the universal solution. 

So I have been continuing my decluttering tour, which launched, hmm, right around the time of the inauguration, for some reason. It’s turned less maniacal now and a little more grim this week, but I’m determined to deal with all the worst spots in the house by the end of February. So far I have cleared out the landing and turned it into a playroom, cleared out the laundry room, fixed and cleared out the white cabinet/craft area, re-hung the curtains in front of the gaps in the kitchen cabinets, and done lots and lots of scouring and scrubbing in both bathrooms and the oven, and also stuff like replacing a bunch of old smoke alarms and whatnot. And, I bought my very first Swiffer. 

Yesterday, I decluttered the hutch.

Before:

and after:

I have come to loathe this piece of furniture, and will replace when I can. But organizing it it led to shifting around some other stuff in other parts of the kitchen, and I had the revelation that the kid’s water bottles can go LOW DOWN ON THE BOTTOM SHELVES, and my seltzer and Damien’s soda can go AT WAIST HEIGHT because WE ARE OLD and OUR BACKS HURT. A lot of stuff in this house is still set up to keep meddling toddlers out of stuff, and we may have some problems right now, but not that! 

Okay, so anyway, the pretzels turned out nice! You brush them with melted butter when they come out of the oven, and they’re super soft and chewy and rich. 

Damien made a big pile of his excellent hot chicken wings with blue cheese dipping sauce. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

He actually made some hot, some with BBQ sauce, and some plain; and I had the kids chop up a bunch of veggies, and I bought NAME BRAND Doritos. 

An extremely delicious meal. 

We scored some points with the teenagers by enjoying the halftime show, too, and I liked that guy’s pants. 

MONDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

Every year when I do the shopping around Super Bowl Sunday, there is, of course, lots of football-priced ground beef available(it was $2.99 a pound here), and I cleared out the freezer a bit so I could stock up on that. And something about buying all that beef shifts my food thoughts into irresistibly American channels, so we had some of the saltiest, meatiest, least ethnically diverse meals imaginable this week. The kids have been pretty happy. 

Monday, spaghetti and meatballs. Here is my meatball recipe

Jump to Recipe

demonstrating my less-mess technique of baking or broiling the meatballs in the oven on a rack, so they keep their shape, and the grease just tidily drains off. 

And very good it was, spaghetti with meatballs. 

TUESDAY
Pulled pork, tater tots, corn

Tuesday we had a thing in the morning, so I started pulled pork early. Here is my tasty pulled pork recipe:

Jump to Recipe

Came out of the pot niiiiiice and tender. 

so I shredded it up

and put it back in the pot with the juice, to stay warm, while I cooked the tater tots, and also one bag of hilariously overpriced heart-shaped potato . . . things. I guess I was planning to serve this on Valentine’s Day, but this was Wednesday, I dunno. They were actually pretty good. Basically mashed potato in a crisp skin, same as those smiley fries. 

The kids had pulled pork sandwiches in deli rolls, but I had my preferred mode: Hot Pork Heap. Tater tots, then pulled pork, then corn, then red onion, the BBQ sauce. You can spot the potato hearts over to the left. 

This is also really good with some of that disgusting melted yellow cheese stuff that comes in a jar, but some of us are watching our figgahs. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday I actually did some writing for once in my life, and completely lost track of time and had to ask Elijah to make the pizzas. Got home around 5:30 and finished them up, using, as you can see, the leftover meatballs, with pepperoni in between. 

Yum. 

THURSDAY
Burgers and chips

Just regular hamburgers, which I make in the oven on a rack like the meatballs, but right up under a hot broiler. 

On Wednesday, one of the schools called a snow day for one school on Thursday, and the two other schools said it would be a two-hour delay. Damien proposed a Fisher Flop-Out. I’m not saying I married him because of his ability to make up names that don’t quite mean anything but make me laugh, but I will say that this is the man who once called his kids “a bunch of freshwater jerks,” and THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE. So Thursday came and, while we slept, the other schools decided it made more sense to have a full snow day, so there you go. Fisher Flop-Out!

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, chips and salsa

I guess the kids at home can fend for themselves, actually, because as I mentioned, we will be out dancing our fool heads out, or anyway watching teenage girls texting each other while standing next to each other. It’s a pretty sweet life, even without the yellow melty cheese. 

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Hot chicken wings with blue cheese dip (after Deadspin)

Basic, tasty hot wings with blue cheese sauce

Ingredients

  • chicken wingettes
  • oil for frying

For the hot sauce:

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/8 cup tabasco sauce
  • 1/8 cup sriracha sauce
  • salt
  • vinegar (optional)

Blue cheese sauce:

  • sour cream
  • blue cheese
  • optional: lemon juice, mayonnaise
  • celery sticks for serving

Instructions

  1. Fry the wingettes in several inches of oil until they are lightly browned. Do a few at a time so they don't stick together. Set them on paper towels to cool.

  2. Melt the butter and mix together wit the rest of the hot sauce ingredients. Toss the wings in the hot sauce.

  3. Mix together the sour cream and crumbled blue cheese. Use a food processor or whisk vigorously to break up the blue cheese. You can add lemon juice or a little mayonnaise to thin it.

  4. Serve with blue cheese dip and celery sticks.

 

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Meatballs for a crowd

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 8 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 2 cups)
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

  2. Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.

  3. Form meatballs and put them in a single layer on a pan with drainage. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or more until they're cooked all the way through.

  4. Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve. 

 

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Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

  • fatty hunk of pork
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for browning
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 2/3 cup apple juice
  • 3 jalapeños with tops removed, seeds and membranes intact
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 2 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions

  1. Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.

  3. Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.

  4. When pork is tender, shred.

What’s for supper? Vol. 411: You can’t fufu all the people all the time

Happy Friday! The star of my week was MY NEW FRYING PAN. I love this thing. I wish it had two “helper handles” rather than one long one and one helper, but other than that, it’s everything I wanted. Tons of frying space, even heat transmission, high walls, and you can just scrub it clean with no rigamarole. Always Avoid Rigamarole, Guys; that’s my motto. AARG. 

I’ve also been enjoying the paring knife I ordered to bump up my purchase to get free shipping. Feeling very fancy in the kitchen these days. 

Here’s what we ate this week. Well, starting with last week, because it got a li’l weird:

FRIDAY
Seared lemon basil scallops on coconut rice, spicy fried eggplant, and stuffed clams 

One of my earliest memories is going to a potluck in kindergarten and barely being able to see over the top of the table, and being absolutely bewildered and overwhelmed by the array of unfamiliar foods. I vaguely felt that I wasn’t allowed to take anything that I didn’t normally eat (I didn’t even recognize some of the utensils. SALAD TONGS, what??), so I got some baked beans and brought them back to my seat. I was actually fine with this, because I knew what beans were and I liked them! But a mom came over and clucked at me for just getting beans, and loaded up my plate with a bunch of other stuff. I don’t remember what, but the important thing was that someone else was in charge. 

 Anyway, now I am fifty years old, and when I am in charge, I tend to make a bewildering array of unfamiliar foods myself. I enjoy this, but I would also enjoy a plate full of beans. 

So I seared the scallops sort of casting one eyeball at this recipe, and they turned out nice, only I used too much oil 

They do cook up fast, though, so if you happen to have some scallops, this is a very decent choice of preparation. Before I did that, I put some frozen stuffed clams in the oven, and also I fried a bunch of eggplant. 

Here’s my recipe for fried eggplant

Jump to Recipe

It’s good to start at least an hour before dinner, because you need to salt the eggplant to draw out the moisture, then dredge them in batter and fry them, and you don’t want to crowd the pan.

They’re SO GOOD, though. Totally worth it. The batter includes baking powder, so you get those crisp, knobbly, bubbles on the outside when they fry, and the inside is just melty tender. I wish I had made some yogurt sauce or maybe some kind of spicy tomato thing, but there were no complaints.

I heated up the coconut rice from last week’s Thai meal and served it with the scallops, rather than saving it for Leftover Day on Saturday, because I knew the kids weren’t crazy about it, and I was. 

So it was a bit of a weird meal, but undeniably tasty. 

The other kids were eating pizza at the library (which is what inspired me to make a Grownup Meal), but Corrie was home, and didn’t want any of the foods I cooked, so I took the leftover eggplant batter and made a fried Corrie.

And I do believe this is what she ate for dinner. 

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet, french bread pizza

A little spaghetti carbonara, a little Thai chicken, and this and that. 

I forgot to tell the kids to save the leftover leftover ham, though. Oops. 

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries

Sunday after Mass, I did something I’ve been hyping myself up to do for weeks: I cleared off the landing. For a while, it was the bedroom of a kid who would rather sleep on the landing than share a room with siblings; and then, predictably, it became a dumping area.

Corrie and I set to work (she owes me money for a book order, and she doesn’t mind being a runner for cleaning projects, as long as someone else is in charge), and three hours and six trash bags later, it looked like this:

Instagram-worthy, no. Much much much much better, definitely. A spot for the Barbie Dream House, plus Corrie’s typewriter and sewing machine. 

I bought a bunch of cleaning products and I’ve been tackling various areas of the house one at a time, lately. Because it turns out that when I feel powerless and overwhelmed for . . . . reasons . . . . it helps an awful lot to clean something! You peek your head over the tabletop, see the news headlines, and are overwhelmed by the incomprehensible and unfamiliar chaos, and you think, “Well, I know one thing I can fix.” It helps! And it’s cheaper than heroin.

I knew I was going to be working on this cleaning project all day, so I planned sandwiches for supper. Looks like we had salami, capicola, prosciutto, provolone, basil, and oil and vinegar. I had bought some tomatoes, but the kids forgot to bring them in from the car, and they froze, so that was out, bleh. 

I did buy a jar of those pickled vegetables, giardiniera? and threw them in the food processor along with a can of black olives, a little olive oil, and some red wine vinegar, and made it into I guess a sandwich spread. I don’t know if there is a name for this, but I liked it. 

We also had fries. Always a popular meal.

Also on Sunday, I discovered that the part of the oven door that I thought was permanently black because the enamel had been burnt off, was actually just coated with burnt-on grease. So I’ve been scrubbing away at that. I just … want things clean. Cleaner. 

MONDAY
Omelettes, roast squash sticks(?), spinach

Monday I tackled the laundry room. I didn’t take a “before” picture, but it was a “there’s a floor here somewhere” situation. Another few bags of trash, and here is the “after.”

You can’t really see it, but I labelled all the shelves. But I did it in CHALK, which you can erase, because there are few things more depressing than tackling a chaotic mess and uncovering permanent but irrelevant labels you put on last time you organized it, back when you were young and still full of hope. Now I am old and full of chalk. But at least I know where my sheets are. 

Also on Monday I got a little bit mad about egg prices and decided we weren’t gonna get pushed around, so I made omelettes. Look, this is a food blog, not a “life choices that make perfect sense” blog. This is the meal I meant to save the ham for, but it got tossed (because the kids were following the rules I had made; can’t complain).

The kids tried to persuade me that deli turkey and raw onion is a normal thing to put in omelettes. IT’S NOT. That’s weird. But I was making omelettes to order, so that’s what they had. 

I myself had cheddar and spinach, which is a DELIGHT. 

As is my new pan! Have I mentioned my new pan? I really like it. 

Then I had a couple of butternut squashes which I cut into thin pieces and roasted, with olive oil, cardamom, brown sugar, and cayenne pepper. This didn’t actually work very well.

The flavor was good, but I think if you are going to cut squash into such thin pieces, it would need to be deep fried to make it crisp; and if you are going to oven roast it, you should cut it into chunks. Also it took FOREVER to cut the squash into such small pieces. 

Don’t get me wrong, I gobbled it up. It was just a little peculiar. I actually mixed it up with some leftover shredded spinach and it was pretty tasty. 

TUESDAY
Hamburgers, chips

I’m a little nervous about the future of ground beef in this country, so I decided we might as well have burgers while we can. A couple of the big kids were over, and we just had burgers and chips, easy peasy. Simple pimple. Pretend I didn’t say that. 

Tuesday I also tackled the infamous White Cabinet and Environs, which looked like this:

I remember buying this cabinet NEW, which was an incredibly splurgy purchase at the time. It was going to change my life and make everything orderly and pristine. And it did, for about eleven days. Then the shelves started falling out, and the frame got all crooked so you couldn’t put the shelves back in, and this is more or less how it’s looked ever since. It looks like it has shelves, but they randomly tip forward and disgorge their contents onto the floor, and then people stack random things on top of that. Which is not my FAVORITE. 

So on Wednesday, I got a saw and a drill and this plank of wood that’s been hanging around in the kitchen, sawed that up, and built a sort of interior frame under each shelf. Then I sorted everything and threw out three more bags of trash, and now it looks like this:

THE DOORS CLOSE. Obviously haven’t gotten up to the “and environs” part yet, and my floor looks how floors look in New Hampshire in February, so I’m not even gonna apologize for that. 

But look! Over three days later, and it hasn’t fallen apart inside yet. 

The kids are pretending to be enthusiastic about having a place for everything, and that’s good enough for me. And I found eleven pairs of scissors (not a made up number).

WEDNESDAY
Chinese pork, pineapple, crunchy rice rolls

Wednesday the plan was char siu, but I was fooling myself about being home at the right time of day to baste a roast pork. So I made a marinade and put it in the Instant Pot with the pork and set it for 22 minutes. 

I have actually done something similar, with pleasant results, on days when I have enough time to take the cooked pork out of the Instant Pot, cut it, and then simmer it on the stovetop with the sauce for half an hour or so, to give the sauce a chance to thicken up and coat the meat. 

Jump to Recipe

But it being Wednesday, I didn’t have time for that, so I just cut up the meat and served it with pineapple and crunchy rice rolls.  

Tasted fine. It did have that nice char siu flavor, even if it wasn’t all glossy and sticky and lovely. 

On Wednesday morning, I realized I had kind of painted myself into a corner with the menu. My original plan was to make injera on Thursday, and you are supposed to start that fermenting at least four days ahead of time. Obviously I didn’t do that. So what I did was prep all the stuff for Thursday’s dinner on Wednesday morning. I’m just basically riding some kind of wave of nervous energy here. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but I’m trying to put it to good use while it does.

I’ve also been doing some more wood carving in the evening. I like to listen to the wonderful show Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin in the evening and use that time to whittle. Here’s a couple of works in progress:

The first one is a hair ornament, and I think I just need to sand it a bit and stain it. The leaf, I don’t know what it is. It’s a thing that helps me sleep at night. 

Makes me remember it’s almost time to tap the trees, though!  I was telling the kids how, last fall, I went around identifying all the maple trees while they still had foliage, and tying orange cloth on them so I could find them in early spring. So Irene goes, “ohhhh, so I shouldn’t have been pulling those off all winter?” 

She was kidding. Pretty sure. I somehow ended up with ten kids who are constantly kidding. I am not sure how that happened. 

THURSDAY
Kuku paka, fufu, basmati rice, ube pudding

Thursday was a snow day, so I was delighted to realize I (a) had all the time in the world to cook and (b) had already done a lot of the hard part the day before. Behold, my mise en placing:

Clockwise, that’s onion; coriander, cumin, turmeric, and cayenne pepper; and ginger and garlic. 

Here is the recipe I was following, from my new best friend Recipe Tin Eats. 

You salt and pepper your chicken thighs and drumsticks and then brown them in oil. In your NEW PAN, if possible. 

Then you take the chicken out and fry up your onion, then ginger and garlic, then the spices, then add pureed tomatoes, coconut milk, and some kosher salt. Then you put the chicken back in and let it simmer. 

I let it simmer for about an hour, and then I moved it to the slow cooker for the rest of the day. 

My dears, it smelled incredible. As Nagi points out, this could easily be an Indian dish, but it is actually North African. So I thought it would be a great time to try  that Fufu mix I bought quite some time ago. 

I have never had fufu and struggled a bit to explain it to the kids. As far as I can tell, it’s a staple in Nigeria and Ghana (which I realize is West Africa. Look, I went to public school), and it’s good for filling you up when you don’t have a huge amount of meat, and it’s also good for sopping up sauce or juices. It’s made from starchy vegetables like cassava, yams, or plantains that you boil and then pound the hell out of in a giant mortar. Or, if you are me, it’s made out this white powder from a box:

I watched a few videos and concluded that nobody in this house has had fufu before, so I could basically do whatever I wanted. So I boiled a kettle of water and slowly added it to the powder while beating it viciously with a wooden spoon, until it became a very thick dough.

Then I added more water to the pot and let it cook for a little bit, and then I took the dough and formed it into balls. This was not easy, because for some reason, when I took it out of the boiling water, it was pretty hot. But somehow I managed. 

Fufu is supposed to be super smooth and free of lumps. OH WELL.  
I decided it would be wise to also make a big pot of rice! I made basmati rice (I rinsed the rice and put it in the pot with 1.5 cups of water for every cup of rice, brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for I think 18 minutes, and then turned off the heat, fluffed it, and let it sit for another ten minutes. Turned out great.)

So here’s the chicken curry after cooking in the slow cooker all day:

Dang, you guys. The meat was incredibly tender, and the sauce was MAGNIFICENT. So savory and warming and friendly and rich, but not too spicy. (I did cut the cayenne pepper in half, which Nagi suggested might be wise.) 

I had a thigh and a drumstick and it was such a filling meal, I didn’t even eat all of it, which is kind of. . . not how I usually act. 

The kids all tried the fufu, and nobody was crazy about it, which is understandable. I thought it was super good when you pull off pieces and roll it around in the sauce.

Probably not gonna make fufu again, but it was a fun experiment. I do want to order it in a restaurant at some point, to see how it’s supposed to taste! I will most definitely make this curry again, though. Damien and I really loved it. 

While I was hunting in the cabinets for the fufu mix, I found another little international impulse purchase, and it seemed like a reasonable time to use it. 

This is just basically instant pudding. You just add hot water, stir, and pour it into molds and let it set in the fridge for a few hours. 

We opted for PURPLE HEARTS OF UBE. 

I liked it! Tasted yammy. Again, no one else was crazy about it, but at least now we know. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

The last few days were a bit challenging for the kids, so I decided to relent and serve Regular Old Spaghetti today, and they are glad. 

Oh, it turns out the plank of wood that was in the kitchen, that I sawed up to fix the white cabinet? That was a piece of Benny’s door frame that fell off. 

Look. One thing at a time. All one can do is try. 

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Fried eggplant

You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium eggplants
  • salt for drying out the eggplant

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2-1/2 cups water
  • 1 Tbsp veg oil
  • optional: kosher salt for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
    Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture. 

  2. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming. 

  3. Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.

  4. Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.

  5. Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.  

  6. Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

 

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Quick Chinese "Roast" Pork Strips

If you have a hankering for those intensely flavorful strips of sweet, sticky Chinese roast pork but you don't want to use the oven for some reason, this works well, and you can have it in about an hour and a half, start to finish. You will need to use a pressure cooker and then finish it on the stovetop.

Ingredients

  • 4+ lbs pork roast

For sauce:

  • 3/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup oyster sauce
  • 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
  • 1/4 cup mirin
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 1 tsp white pepper
  • 2 tsp Chinese five spice

Instructions

  1. Blend all sauce ingredients together. Put the pork in the Instant Pot, pour the sauce over it, close the lid, close the valve, and set to high pressure for 22 minutes.

  2. When pork is done, vent. Remove pork and cut into strips, saving the sauce.

  3. Put the pork in a large sauté pan with the sauce and heat on medium high, stirring frequently, for half an hour or more, until sauce reduces and becomes thick and glossy and coats the meat.

What’s for supper? Vol. 410: You put the child in the coconut and eat it all up

Happy Friday! Let’s hop to it! Here’s what we had this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet with frozen french bread pizza

Nothing to report, except that I finally broke down and ordered a new frying pan. I’ve had this 15″-inch paella pan from Aldi that I use constantly, because it’s so nice and big and I like how it has handles on both sides. 

But the metal is very thin (which is appropriate for a paella pan, but I almost never make paella), so it’s not great for frying; and I really cannot deny that we’ve been steadily eating little scraps of nonstick surface material pretty constantly for several years now. And it gets rusty if you don’t dry it after washing, which of course we don’t.  But it’s so big! And has handles!

So I bullied my money-loving heart into looking at a bunch of new pans and good used pans. Super hard to find a fifteen-inch frying pan, it turns out, except for cast iron, which I DON’T WANT. I know how to season them and I know how to cook with them. I just don’t want them, and I don’t have to explain myself! 

I settled on this fourteen-inch stainless steel one from Cuisinart, with a long handle and a short one. It cost five cents less than $40 you need to spend to get free shipping, so I also ordered a paring knife and used my new customer discount, so I got free shipping and a paring knife and a pan for less than the pan by itself. Yay!

Gosh, this is a boring story. Sorry. Anyway, that was Saturday. 

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, chips

Sunday I finally followed through on my dire warnings to the family (I really know how to market things) and forced everyone to sit down on Sunday afternoon and watch that 2021 Macbeth with Denzel Washington. Hoooooo boy, it was great! Absolutely wonderful. My eyes were bugging out half the time, and I gasped at least five times, and laughed several times, too, which is how Macbeth is supposed to be.

 

My only teeny tiny quibble is that the character of Macduff was not really anything special. You can do a lot with that role, and he really didn’t, unless I missed it. But overall, very thoroughly enthusiastically recommended. Most of the kids at home right now were not familiar with Shakespeare yet, but they followed it well enough, and enjoyed it. Corrie (who is nine) just straight up could not follow it, so she read Case Closed instead, which is fair enough. 

Next we are going to watch Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, which is his take on Macbeth. We watched The Hidden Fortress last week, which made me want to see Throne of Blood, but I thought we should see regular Macbeth first. (I think we did a free trial of Apple Whatever to watch Macbeth, and then cancelled it when the movie was over.) 

When the movie was over, we had supper, which I had cleverly prepped in the early afternoon. Roast chicken with salt and pepper, tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, olive oil and vinegar on ciabatta rolls; and chips. 

Actually I think we were out of olive oil. 

I forgot, I also made a sort of bread pudding in the afternoon, just for a snack. We had a pile of stale french bread from last week, and there was an unopened carton of eggnog left over from New Year’s Eve.

I know that sounds like an insanely long time ago! but it was sealed up and it tasted fine. So I tore up the bread and put it in a buttered casserole dish, mixed some eggnog together with a bunch of eggs and poured that over the bread and let it soak for a while. Then I dotted it with butter and topped it with cinnamon sugar, and baked it until it was firm, probably 35 -40 minutes.

Not stupendous, but pleasant, and I felt thrifty to have used up some old food, and the kids were surprised to have a fresh-baked little snack in the afternoon. 

MONDAY

Monday was Sophia’s driving test, and she passed! Woo hoo!

I have now taught six kids how to drive, and only four of them have hit my parked car, that I can remember, and only one of them was somehow mad at me for it. 

The next one in line to get her license is this punk

and as you can see, she already knows the basics. (SHE IS SEVENTEEN, SOB.) 

I don’t remember what we ate on Monday. Oh, ham. Plus hot pretzels and peas. No wonder I didn’t take a picture. 

TUESDAY
Thai chicken thighs, coconut rice, tomato and cucumber salad

Tuesday, I didn’t have to go anywhere besides the regular run, so I was pretty hyped to have time to try two new recipes: First Thai Tumeric Chicken (Gai Yang Khamin) from Recipe Tin Eats. For once in my life I was smart and did not tell the family that I was going to be using fish sauce, which, as we know, smewws wike cat fwow-up.

The marinade only has a few ingredients, but there are several powerhouses in there: Fish sauce, oyster sauce, crushed garlic, and turmeric, plus brown sugar and pepper. I was sadly out of white pepper (I think I used it to fend rabbits off my tulip bulbs), so I used black. 

Nice marinade. 

Then, while that was marinating, I was even more hyped to make the side dish that Nagi recommends, which is coconut rice. Now, I love coconut rice far, far more than is reasonable. I mean it’s something I think about kind of a lot. If you filled up an entire room with coconut rice and told me I had to eat my way through to the middle to rescue my child from death, I would do it, and then lovingly take her hand, ask her to hang on a second, and then go ahead and eat the rest of the coconut rice. 

The government, in its wisdom, sent me a random EBT card (which we don’t usually qualify for) because we qualified for reduced lunch at some point, but because of Covid(?), and our school (which we don’t go to; and the school we do go to doesn’t offer lunch) didn’t serve school lunch over the summer, and they felt bad about it, or something? This isn’t the first time this has happened. Anyway, I had a magic money card, so I bought a big sack of jasmine rice. I feel that the more government stupidity you can convert into rice, the better, so I got a really big sack. With elephants on it!

Here is the Recipe Tin Eats recipe for coconut rice. You have to rinse the rice, of course, and then soak it for an hour. Then you drain it, add warm coconut milk with water and some sugar and salt dissolved in it, and cover and cook it in the oven for 40 minutes, then let it rest 15 minutes before fluffing and serving. I did it exactly like she said and it turned out SO GOOD. Absolutely fluffy and light, evenly cooked, wonderfully fragrant, not sweet, but rich. Oh man. 

She also said this chicken and rice is often served with tomatoes and cucumbers, so I made up a big bowl of that with no dressing or anything, because I figured the kids might want something really straightforward. 

The chicken is simple, but it does need to be basted twice. It didn’t turn out with a thick, sticky sauce like hers did, but maybe that would have happened if I left it in the oven a little longer, or basted it more thoroughly. It was still extremely tasty, and juicy!

The turmeric was the star, and the oyster sauce and fish sauce just gave it a sort of robustness, and the whole effect was very warming and pleasant, a little bit tangy, but not aggressive or spicy; and the flavor permeated the meat. It wasn’t wildly popular with the family, but they ate it. Maybe I will experiment with the sauce and see what I can do to make it thicker. 

All in all, quite a delicious meal. 

The kids were meh about the coconut rice! Can you believe that? I was forced to eat my way through the entire roomful almost all by myself. 

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, veg and hummus, french fries

Wednesday is just always a day of shenanigans, so I planned a very easy meal. I even splurged on a few bags of those “quick cook” fries, which I was delighted with when I tried them one other time. Well, it DIDN’T WORK. They were just as slow as any frozen fry! Very disappointing. I was forced to drown my sorrows in hot dogs while I was waiting. 

THURSDAY
Spaghetti carbonara

On Thursday, my beautiful new pan finally arrived. The paring knife has yet to come, but I hope they didn’t forget, because I gotta pare some stuff. But look at this lovely pan:

PIC 

(There is no pic, actually, because I managed to crack the faucet last night, so poor Damien is in there putting a new one in, and I don’t want to bother him.) 

Sadly, it came after I already fried up three pounds of bacon for spaghetti carbonara; so the horrible old paella pan had a fittingly glorious swan song, I guess.

Maybe I posted this picture

with the caption “Spectacular new image from the Hubble telescope. This is a protoplanetary nebula with an unusual amount of infrared radiation. God is such an artist.”

and I guess today I should probably share the zoomed-out version, which is this:

I still think it’s pretty!

Goodbye, old pan. You were always terrible, but at least your handles didn’t fall off. 

Damien is making some rash statements about how now I can throw out the old pan. I don’t really know what he means by that. It’s something old and gross for which I have frequently professed my hatred, and he wants me to just get rid of it, like it’s garbage? What if I need it? 

He knows me, so when he saw me transforming into a pan goblin right before his eyes, he hastily suggested that maybe I could use it in my garden. And now you know the main reason I have a garden: So I can put old crap in it, to avoid throwing it away, which would give me a deep and personal pain that you might not be able to understand if you grew up flying to Hawaii for Thanksgiving and having a mariachi band at your First Communion party.

Anyway, I went out into the yard (which, unlike some people’s childhood yards, has neither a hydraulic pool cover nor an aviary) and got my new stock pot, which I recently bought for myself for a treat, and which was full of ice with feathers floating in it, because. . . look, it’s complicated. I had my reasons. I cleaned it very thoroughly. And I AM going to use my old, gross stock pot in the garden. It’s going to be a garden pot. With handles! 

You know what, I don’t like your tone. I’m not saving you any coconut rice. 

So I prepped all the bacon and the cheese and ground pepper and whatnot

Pretty pretty! and then this comes together nice and quick. YUM YUM. It’s fine for me to have seconds, because I did twenty minutes of pilates today. Well, more like eighteen minutes, with two minutes of shouting, “Come ON, lady!” 

And I didn’t overcook the pasta!

FRIDAY
Mussels and eggplant??

So Friday, I knew the kids were going to be at a library lock-in event, where they would be fed pizza, so I thought it was my chance to make something nice for me and Damien. But it’s Friday, so fish. Well, one thing and another, blah blah blah, and by the time I got to the fish counter, I was a little rattled, and came away with a pound of scallops, some fingerling potatoes, and two big eggplants. Because menu planning is kind of my THING. 

There are various recipes using at least two of those ingredients together, but I think I’ll probably just do something really simple with the scallops, like sear them and serve them with lemon butter with hot pepper flakes or something, and then maybe do fried eggplant slices.

Jump to Recipe

Maybe some noodles or risotto or something. And throw the potatoes out the window! Throw them in the garden. 

Have you seen my garden? This is my garden today. 

I’m growing snow. It’s going great.  It’s organic. 

Like many people, I spent a certain amount of time this week tear-assing around the house scrubbing stuff and fixing little things. By the time we get through the last confirmation hearing, this house is going to be spotless. Which is good, because at some point, I’m going to fill the whole thing up with coconut rice. The whole thing! 

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Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs bacon
  • 3 lbs spaghetti
  • 1 to 1-1/2 sticks butter
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • lots of pepper
  • 6-8 oz grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon until it is crisp. Drain and break it into pieces.

  2. Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. If you like, add some bacon grease to the boiling water.

  3. Drain the spaghetti and return it to the pot. Add the butter, pieces of bacon, parmesan cheese, and pepper and mix it up until the butter is melted.

  4. Add the raw beaten egg and mix it quickly until the spaghetti is coated. Serve immediately.

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Fried eggplant

You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium eggplants
  • salt for drying out the eggplant

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2-1/2 cups water
  • 1 Tbsp veg oil
  • optional: kosher salt for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
    Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture. 

  2. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming. 

  3. Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.

  4. Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.

  5. Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.  

  6. Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

Epiphany, continued

No matter how you calculate the length of the Christmas season, Epiphany has inarguably come and gone. But this year, it struck me for the first time that the feast we celebrate is actually composed of several epiphanies—and that comes as something of a relief.

The central epiphany we celebrate is, of course, the epiphany, the showing forth, the manifestation of the savior of the world to the wise men, who were apparently the first gentiles to recognize him for who he was; that was the beginning of the revelation that this was to be a savior for everybody.

But that was not the only thing made manifest to them. The rest of it happened before that day, and after.

First, it became evident to them—through prophecy or Scripture or tradition or maybe through revelation—that a king was going to be born in a certain time and place. So they set out to find him.

As our pastor pointed out in his Epiphany sermon, it probably was not a straightforward journey. In fact, it seems likely they probably got lost at some point because when they beheld the star, they were “overjoyed”—implying that, sometime after they began their journey, they lost track of their goal and then found it again.

That might be a second epiphany: finding their way again. They started out on the right track with the best intentions, then lost their way and then were able to get back on track and locate their guide.

Then came the event we think of as actual Epiphany: They beheld the child himself, with his mother. Matthew’s Gospel does not say that they were surprised to see that the new king was just a wrinkly, little Jewish baby born to a poor family; it just says that they knelt down, did him homage and gave him royal gifts. One way or another, they saw who he was and did what they came to do.

Finally, when they left him, they had what you might consider a fourth epiphany: They realized, with the help of a dream, that Herod had bad intentions and should not be trusted with the information about Jesus’ whereabouts; so they changed their plans and made their way home by a different route.

All of these things are what we call Epiphany. But there’s more.

I can easily imagine that they continued to have small epiphanies on their way home; and continued to do so after they got home.

Maybe they discussed different things that had struck them about the Holy Family and had to work on reconciling what they expected with what they found. Maybe they had some epiphanies about what God is really like.

Maybe, once they saw the child, they continued to walk in the light that had been revealed to them in that house, and everywhere they went from that day on, they saw people who reminded them of Jesus. Maybe they found out the whole world, past, present and future, is full of Jesus.

Maybe they told everyone they knew about the messiah they had met and were astonished to find that not everyone believed them or cared. The way the story is told, the wise men always strike me as a tiny bit naïve, assuming Herod will want to worship the new king. When they discovered he didn’t, maybe that was just the first in a long string of disillusionments about how open other people are to goodness and truth.

Or maybe they told people who did believe them, and the epiphany rippled outward. Maybe they began somewhat cynical, and their world continued from that day to open up and become more joyful and radiant, and they shared the good and great news they had received.

Maybe they realized they needed to change their lives forever and found it extremely hard and discouraging. Or maybe they realized they needed to change their lives forever and were astonished to discover how much meaning and peace there can be in life when Jesus is at the center.

Or maybe they just went back to doing the same old thing. Maybe, once that brilliant night had passed, they discovered that they were the kind of person who sees God and doesn’t change at all …. Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image: Detail of image of Bortle Scale by P. Horálek via Wikimedia Commons

What’s for supper? Vol. 409: Lucid cooking

Happy Friday! Sorry so late! I’m running so late today. First I slept extremely late, woke up, and decided to go back to sleep and try having a lucid dream; and the thing I chose to do with my powerful mind was go into the community house basement rummage sale and discover a box of antique toothpicks, and when I opened the box, I found both toothpicks and a tooth inside. Just like I planned.

Then I decided I might as well get up, and then I ran to Home Depot for some unthreaded off-white 1/2″ PVC T connectors, because Damien is at the point in his project where he know he needs one now, which means he’ll be glad to have five within an hour.

Yes, the piiiiiipes frozzzzzzze despite all our normal New England precautions, and then theyyyyyy burssssssst despite all our thawing efforts. So he has been down there in the crawl space for two days, putting new pipes in, and insulating everything in sight. Gentlemen, if you are wondering what women want, they want someone who can fix things and also be a nice guy to his family while doing it. This is what we want. 

And we want water, which we will have by the end of the day! In conclusion, winter is stupid, but my husband is my hero. 

Here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet with pizza pockets, homemade apple sauce, tapioca pudding

We had our usual assortment of reheated goodies, plus pizza pockets.

It was Corrie’s Shopping Turn, and part of the deal of Shopping Turn is that you get to pick the two weekend desserts. (You also get to pick the weekend “Silly Cereal,” and you get lunch at your choice of drive thrus; and you get to influence the snack purchases for the week, plus you get to pick the pot sweetener for leftover buffet.)

But we somehow forgot to pick dessert! But! I had done some fruit decluttering in the morning, and had started some apple sauce cooking in the morning. 

For applesauce, I quarter the apples and put them into the slow cooker along with the peels and cores, with a little water and let it cook all day. (I had a ton, so I filled up the Instant Pot, too.) 
When they are mushy, I run the apples through a food mill

(the only tool I’ve ever found that works for this job) and add a little butter, some cinnamon, and sometimes some sugar or honey, sometimes not. 

I myself would eat warm homemade apple sauce for dessert, but not everyone feels that way. But! I had also picked up a box of tapioca on a whim, and I thought MAYBE if I made some tapioca pudding, and we had warm, cozy, homemade applesauce and warm, creamy, fluffy tapioca pudding, that would be a nice dessert for a chilly, blustery day? 

Well, I WAS WRONG. Damien and I had actually signed up for an hour of adoration for 40 hours of what have you, and then we went out for pizza. So we came home as the kids were eating dessert. 

I said, “Oh, how did you like your grandma dessert?”
One kid said, “Yeh.” 
One kid said, “Meh.”
And one kid said, “Never do this again.”

So I won’t! But I ate most of the tapioca pudding all by myself, and, right or wrong, I have no regrets. 

SUNDAY
Marry Me Chicken, french bread

I ran across this recipe from Sip and Feast, and it looked incredible. I don’t think I’ve had a bad recipe from this site yet, and this one was also a win.

I could tell it was one of those dishes where you would want some bread to sop up the extra sauce, so I started some dough for this basic french bread recipe. 

Jump to Recipe

It was quite chilly in the kitchen, so I sprayed the crock pot with baking spray, put the dough in, and set it to “keep warm.”

Started like this:

and an hour later we had this:

A successful rise, I would say! It actually baked a tiny bit on the bottom, because it really ran out of room (this is a recipe for four long loaves, so it was a lot of dough). I rolled out the loaves and set them for a second rise, this time on the stove top with the oven on and slightly opened. 

Ideally, I’d bake the bread right before dinner and have piping hot bread along with the main course, but I’d never made this chicken before, so I figured I’d play it safe and get the bread baked and then focus on the chicken. You see? Wisdom. Or whatever. 

The bread turned out sightly pale, but it was baked PERFECTLY inside. Extremely fluffy and soft

with a really thin, crusty crust. Probably could have given in another, like, 2.5 minutes in the oven and gotten a crisper crust, but I’d rather err on the side of not overbaked. 

Then I started the chicken! I had such insanely pneumatic chicken breasts that I cut them into thirds, lengthwise, and beat them flat with my marble rolling pin. Which I took a picture of, so I might as well share it. 

Then you salt and pepper the chicken breasts, dredge them with flour, and then you sear the chicken in the oil you have drained off the sun-dried tomatoes. 

Oh, my mother would have loved this recipe. 
When the chicken is done, you take it out and add a little more tomato oil to the pan, and brown up sliced garlic

and then add the sun-dried tomatoes, then white wine, then chicken stock

then cream

then baby spinach

and then freshly-grated cheese

You cook this sauce down a bit to thicken it up, and then you add in the chicken, and let it all enjoy each other’s company for a while. 

And that’s it! You serve it with some fresh basil on top, and YES, I was glad to have fresh bread to sop up that incredible sauce. 

My photos did not turn out great! It looks a little bit ghastly, actually. But it was actually fabulous. Rich and fresh and just delightful, absolutely dancing with flavor. It was fun to make, too. Most definitely adding this in to the “special treat” list of dinners. It wasn’t horribly expensive, but it took a lot of active cooking time, because you have to let it cook in between each ingredient addition. Totally worth it, but not a weekday meal!

MONDAY
Mexican beef bowls, black beans

Monday was Inauguration Day, and the kids had the day off for MLK Jr. Day, and I sort of muscled Elijah into taking them sledding, which we haven’t done yet this year. I wanted a really popular, hearty meal (to warm up the kids and to cheer up the grown ups), so this was pretty good. 

Here is my recipe for the beef marinade, which I truly love.

Jump to Recipe

It’s very rich, and the little sparkle of lime juice is very pleasant. 

I also started some black beans cooking in the Instant Pot. 

Jump to Recipe

and when they were done, I moved them to the slow cooker and used the Instant Pot to make a big bunch of white rice. So we had rice with the meat and gravy on top, plus beans, cilantro, corn chips, sour cream, some corn I blackened a bit in a pan, and lime wedges. 

Always a very popular meal. I originally put my beans in a dish that a child then revealed was the dish that used to hold gerbil food, and that was less popular, with me. 

Pretty sure it was the same kid who (completely unmaliciously, probably unconsciously) did this to my kitchen candle

This is the candle I use to heat the tip of a knife to make drainage holes in milk jugs for my winter sowing. Which I’m not doing this year. But STILL. Leave my candle alone! 

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, veg and dip, cheez balls

Tuesday I listened to the news until I got the sudden urge to tear apart the refrigerator, scrub everything down, throw out half our food, and reorganize everything. 

So we had that going for us. I’m still trying to get the kids to go along with this system where produce goes in the doors, for high visibility, and bottles and jars go in the bottom drawers, for easy access, but it’s a losing battle. Which is apparently my favorite kind. 

In keeping with this sentiment, I dropped off my car for inspection, pointed out where I had put it back together with zip ties, and asked them to just do whatever was one step up from zip ties. I love our mechanic. They totally understand us. And get this: When I take my car in, and then Damien and I show up together to pick it up, they talk to me about it. Because it’s my car!

For supper, we had buffalo chicken wraps, for which some of my kids have an almost baffling level of enthusiasm. Tortillas, ranch or blue cheese dressing, buffalo chicken (or sometimes I just get regular chicken and serve it with buffalo sauce), shredded pepper jack cheese, shredded lettuce, and crispy fried onions from a can. I forgot to get tomatoes. 

It really is a good wrap. I like it as a salad, too, but there is less general enthusiasm for that in this house. 

I also made a giant, rather festive platter of broccoli and sweet peppers that I meant to serve along with the beef bowls. 

And I put out one of those barrels of Cheez Balls or whatever they’re called. Quite an orange meal, overall. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday was when the pipes froze and burst. Here’s the dog’s water dish in the morning:

The duck’s water thawing thingy also broke, and the stream is frozen over, so I gave them a big pot of hot water to enjoy, and they really did. Whatever else you can say about ducks, they do know how to enjoy themselves. The turtle’s heat bulb also broke! I got him a new one, and it was really hard to tell if he appreciated it or not. 

My car was done, and it cost sighhhhhhh a little less than $600, which is better than more than $600. I also had to get my driver’s license renewed. Last time I did this, I was half zip ties myself, so I was looking forward to getting a new picture. The old picture:

I guess this new one is better?

Making you get your picture taken after waiting at the DMV for forty minutes is the equivalent of when you go to the doctor and they take your blood pressure, and it’s a little high, so they review all the things that are wrong with you, and then they weigh you, and then they re-take your blood pressure, and GUESS WHAT? That didn’t help! OH WELL. (Actually my blood pressure is fine these days! Normal! If that don’t beat all.) 

We had pizza for supper, and I made it early in the day but forgot to cover it, so the dough got kinda crusty and unpleasant, but oh well. Pizza’s pizza. Nothing fancy, just one cheese, one olive, and one pepperoni. 

THURSDAY
Chinese(?) soup, rice, potstickers

Thursday I defrosted the pork filling that was leftover from New Year’s Eve dumplings, with the intention of making nice little meatballs with it. I have done this several times, and it usually works?  But this time it did not. 

The meat just fell apart in the pan, so I decided to just fry it up in a big slab, and then divide it into bite-sized pieces. Which also didn’t really work, but I was in too deep. 

I made a big pot of chicken broth, simmered some fresh garlic and ginger in it, then added in the pork, which was already seasoned and had cabbage and carrot shreds in it. Then I broke up some seaweed sheets in it, and shook in a bunch of soy sauce and some sesame oil, and some chopped scallions, and let it simmer for a while. 

It was not terrible! It tasted persuasively Asian. I made a pot of rice and cooked some frozen pot stickers

and it was a decent meal. But I told the kid who cleared the table not to bother saving the soup. It was fine, but I didn’t think anyone would want seconds.

I had actually bought some tofu and planned to fry it up and put some cubes into the soup, but I couldn’t get the package open. So now we live tofu another day. (This joke implies that I pronounce “tofu” like “too-foo,” which I do not.) 

FRIDAY
Grilled cheese, tomato soup, pickles and chips

And a nice, easy, pleasant meal to round off the week (or, to eat while you quickly finish up your food post; your pick).

Damien is finishing up the pipe repair, and we have water again! He’s still down there insulating the hell out of everything. (Obviously we already have insulation down there, and pipe insulation, and heat tape, but that was some cold snap.)

And now my story is all told. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see what’s inside this box of toothpicks. 

5 from 1 vote
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French bread

Makes four long loaves. You can make the dough in one batch in a standard-sized standing mixer bowl if you are careful!

I have a hard time getting the water temperature right for yeast. One thing to know is if your water is too cool, the yeast will proof eventually; it will just take longer. So if you're nervous, err on the side of coolness.

Ingredients

  • 4-1/2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
  • 5 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive or canola oil
  • 10-12 cups flour
  • butter for greasing the pan (can also use parchment paper) and for running over the hot bread (optional)
  • corn meal for sprinkling on pan (optional)

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.

  2. Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.

  3. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.

  4. Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).

  5. Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.

  6. Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.

  7. Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.

  8. Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.

  9. Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.

  10. Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

 

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Beef marinade for fajita bowls

enough for 6-7 lbs of beef

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

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

 

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Instant Pot black beans

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 16-oz cans black beans with liquid
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1-1/2 tsp salt
  • pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Put olive oil pot of Instant Pot. Press "saute" button. Add diced onion and minced garlic. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes until onion is soft. Press "cancel."

  2. Add beans with liquid. Add cumin, salt, and cilantro. Stir to combine. Close the lid, close the vent, and press "slow cook."