Author: simchajfisher

What’s for supper? Vol. 337: So bbomb

Happy Friday! I genuinely thought it was Saturday, and went around this morning talking about how it was the weekend, and nobody corrected me, but apparently it is Friday. So here is what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Italian sandwiches, chips, and OPERA NITE

Saturday (actual Saturday) of course I went shopping, so we had a quick, easy meal of sandwiches and chips, and then we had our long-anticipated annual OPERA NITE, which requires elaborate snacks at intermission. 

We watched Tosca, which I will review next week. It turns out I was the only one in the room who knew how it was going to end! 

Right before bed, I started some pork brining for tomorrow’s bo ssam. I guess “brining” is the word? You mix a cup of sugar and a cup of salt and slather it all over the meat, then cocoon it up in plastic wrap and leave it overnight. And that is what I did. 

SUNDAY
Bo ssam, rice, kiwi, chopped kale salad

Sunday after Mass, we went to a wonderful spot called Trap Falls in Ashby, MA. It was just a lovely as I remembered it, and we had a beautiful afternoon wallowing around and clambering up and down and in and out of the falls.

More pics (kind of a lot more pics) here:

Then we stopped at Kimball Farms, quickly took out a second mortgage, and got ice cream. Very good ice cream! I had peppermint stick.

Before we left, I had started the bo ssam cooking, so when we got home, all I had to do was start some rice cooking in the instant pot, cut up some kiwis, and tear open a few bags of chopped salad, and then slather a little sauce onto the pork and finish it off

and we had an excellent meal. (I just do the bare bones of the recipe at My Korean Kitchen, although the sauce and sides she includes are also very good.)

The chopped salad was I think kale, red cabbage, sunflower seeds, and dried cranberries, or something along those lines. I squirted a little Polynesian sweet hot sauce on my plate, but I didn’t really need it. That bo ssam is *ahem* so bbomb. 

MONDAY
Chicken strawberry salad

Monday I can barely remember. I guess I roasted some chicken breasts and toasted some almonds and sliced up some strawberries and crumbled some feta cheese, and served it on mixed greens.

It seems like we just had this meal, but I guess that’s no reason we can’t have had it again. The strawberries are very sweet and juicy this year, so we’ve got that going for us. 

Cute Pinterest-y Bananagrams background courtesy of my unwillingness to clear the table. 

TUESDAY
Green masala goat curry, samosas, rice, pork dumplings

They started selling goat meat at the International Market, so I was more or less compelled to make this curry. I used goat instead of mutton and black cardamom instead of green, and it called for “green chilies,” which is a little ambiguous, so I just threw in a big jalapeño; but otherwise I pretty much followed the recipe exactly (I used my Instant Pot and pressed the “meat/stew” button for the cooking part), and it was magnificent. (If you’re not aware, when a recipe says “nos” it means “numbers,” as in “that many,” so “cashews 8 nos” just means 8 cashews.)

You make a paste with a ton of herbs (cilantro and mint) and spices and a few cashews that you grind into a paste, then add turmeric and yogurt and that’s your marinade.

I let the meat sit with that for a few hours while I was driving around doing this and that. 

Then you wake up some cinnamon, bay leaves, black cardamom, and cloves in hot oil

and then brown some red onions in there,

then brown the marinated meat in the spicy oil and onions, add a little water, and then you pressure cook it. And that’s it! Here it is:

Tender like you wouldn’t believe, and this dish goes right straight down the middle of my favorite kinds of Indian food. Spicy enough to keep you on your toes but cause no pain, and just green and fresh and glittering with flavors. 

The goat was quite expensive, so I only got a little bit, and filled out the meal with some frozen vegetable samosas with tamarind sauce from Aldi, which were very good. A little spicy and nicely crisp on the outside. 

The dumplings, I made in my pretty little bamboo steamer.

They didn’t really go with the rest of the food, but some people don’t like Indian food at all, but they do like dumplings. 

Definitely gonna make this curry again. I loved the goat, and I even like the neat little bones. I find little goaty bones pretty entertaining. But it was sad to have a small portion of something so delicious. And that’s why I’m fat! Whatcha gonna do. Oh but anyway, I was going to say I’ll just have to buy some kind of cheaper meat and make a larger amount of this same curry again, because goat is great, but that green sauce was the real star. So good, and it took no real skill to put together, just a bunch of bashing with the mortar and pestle, and then the Instant Pot does the rest. 

WEDNESDAY
Burgers and fries

Wednesday I drove over to Portsmouth to do a really neat interview that you guys are going to like very much! When I was done, I thought, “I’m not going to drive two hours to the seacoast and go home again without seeing the ocean.” So I figured, well, I’m on a hill, I’ll just drive downhill until I see water. This never works, but I always think it will. I didn’t work this time, either, and before I knew it I was on a four-lane highway with, like, Rite Aids on both sides. Clearly not any kind of historic seaport situation. So I asked my phone what to do, and it said I was 8 minutes away from Rye Beach. So I went there, and it turned out to be just a big dirty parking lot where people were waiting to get on board a whale watch, and you had to pay to park there. 

So I was just kind of sitting in my car staring at the guy in the shack with my mouth hanging open, and he says, “What’s your plan?” So I said, “I, I’m just here for work, I don’t come to the ocean a lot, is there a way, do you think, is there a place, could I just kind of sit here for a few minutes and, you know, ahhh, look at the ocean?” So he just kind of sighed and said, “Five minutes, next to that trailah” and pointed. So I went and parked next to the trailah, I got out of the car, I looked at the ocean for five minutes, I took a picture, and then I left. 

I was going to pass this off as one of those “When you get to be my age, you just don’t care what people think and you just go for what you want!” but it wasn’t that, exactly. Anyway, I saw the ocean.  

Anyway, Damien made burgers.

And very good and juicy they were. 

THURSDAY
Sandwiches of darkness

Thursday we had a big giant sudden thunderstorm, and we lost power for several hours right before dinner, so I took the kids out and we got a bunch of sandwiches and stuff at Walmart. Last time we lost power, it didn’t come on again for three days, so I also bought a game called Happy Salmon; but as soon as we got home, the power came back on, so we just watched Frasier. Anyone know this game? It looks promising, and you never know, maybe I’ll have the willpower to turn off the TV at some point this weekend. 

FRIDAY
Pizza, TMNT cake

Today is Lucy’s birthday celebration, and I’m going to make a TMNT cake. I baked the cake last night using this coconut cake recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, and it came out very tender and mild. 

We have discovered that many theaters in the area will let you rent out the entire place for two hours, and play a movie that you bring, for about the amount of money I usually spent on throwing a party with decorations and games and whatnot, so that’s what we’ve been doing for older kids. Worth checking out, if you’re having a hard time figuring out how to do birthdays for teenagers! I think they are watching Renfield, which I understand is absolute disgusting. Listen, I just bake the cakes. 

Speaking of which, I guess I need to decorate a cake! I have been instructed that the 80’s TMNT cartoon turtles are the definitive ones, so that’s good to know. Hey, did I ever do a post about Corrie’s under the sea cake with the gelatin water and the fish and seaweed suspended in it? That was a very cool cake. I can’t remember if I ever got around to show it or not. 

Oh, also, hey, look at this:

Vol. 242 on Feb of 2021, and then Vol. 242 on March of 2023. If that don’t beat all. 

 

Love of God is something we can learn

When I was little, I pored over the stories of the saints, especially the martyrs. I was morbidly fascinated by stories of little 6-year-old Conchita of the Drooping Veil who loved God so passionately that, whenever her wicked pagan stepmother would torment her and put tar in her hair and report her to the governor for being Christian, she would simply smile and pray for them all, because she just loved God so much. (Please don’t look Conchita up; she is just an amalgam, but you get the idea.)

I was enthralled. I was captivated by the exoticism of the setting (saints all seemed to live in a time when people wore robes and carried things around in clay jugs, which sounded amazing) and the exoticism of the spirituality itself; but even more compelling was how every story carried a clear message: This is what I was supposed to be like. I was supposed to imitate this girl in my own life, right now.

I was savvy enough to figure out that a lot of the details of the story were adaptable. You could wear shorts and a shirt with a purple unicorn on it, like my own favorite shirt, and be a saint. You could pursue holiness by not fighting with your sister or by cleaning the living room like your mother said or by putting your whole allowance in the basket at church instead of spending it on nail polish. I understood that.

The part that was not clicking was the part where St. Conchita loved God. And I, myself, did not. And boy, did I feel bad about it.

It actually shows some pretty good self-awareness that as a kid I even realized I didn’t love God, and loving him is the main point of the stories of the lives of the saints. It wasn’t my fault that these stories were presented in a grotesque and melodramatic way that made them seem foreign to my own life, and it also wasn’t my fault that I didn’t automatically and naturally feel a great love for my creator and savior by the time I reached the age of reason.

It would have been nice if someone had told me how to go about learning to love God, though. Because I have discovered that, for most people, it is something that they have to learn. We may be created to love God, but that doesn’t mean it happens on its own….Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

 

Photo by Bicanski on Pixnio

What’s for supper? Vol. 336: Aubergine positivity

Happy Friday! All this week, a certain child has spent most of her day at farm camp, and I’m not going to say I’ve gotten a tremendous amount done and slept extremely well all week because of that, but I will say I’m marking next year’s calendar to make sure we get a slot. Some people need farm camp, and that’s a fact. 

Here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Gochujang smoked chicken thighs, rice, raw string beans

Usually Saturday meals are pretty feeble because I’m shopping and not cooking, but we had chicken thighs in the freezer, so I started marinating them in the morning and Damien started smoking them around noon.

The marinade was, more or less:

About 1 cup gochujang
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup soy sauce
about a head of garlic, minced 

marinated several hours, and he smoked ’em good. I made a big pot of white rice (I made extra, anticipating a meal later in the week), and just served fresh string beans raw, which is my favorite way to eat string beans.

Very good indeed. 

I looked into making my own gochujang, because it’s a little expensive to buy around here. I am growing ghost peppers in my garden, because, I don’t know why, and I thought maybe I could make gochujang with them. But it’s not the right kind of pepper (you want something sweet as well as hot), and you also need other ingredients which would also be expensive to buy around here, and maybe I’ll just . . . not. I like the little red tubs gochujang comes in, anyway. 

SUNDAY
BLTs, root beer floats, strawberry galette with candied basil

Sunday was Lucy’s birthday (party and cake later), and she requested BLTs and root beer floats. Can do. 

The strawberry basil galette was just something I wanted to make. I spotted the recipe on America’s Test Kitchen, and if it interests you at all, save the recipe on your first view, because they will want you to register for a free trial and you know how that ends up. For dumb reasons, I ended up going to a second site to find a recipe for the dough, and it’s a fine recipe, but I was extremely hot, which make my IQ and reading comprehension plummet; result being that I chilled the dough way too long, and when I tried to roll it out, it got VERY RUSTIC INDEED. I think the recipe was fine; I just should have let it warm up more before I tried to manipulate it. 

The galette really is an easy recipe, though, albeit with several steps. You  hack up the strawberries and then microwave them with strawberry jam and few other things, and the dough is also just a few ingredients, mostly butter. You heap the filling on the rolled-out dough and then bundle up the sides. A trained bear could do this. 

The thing that makes this recipe special are candied basil leaves, which you also make in the microwave

and a sweet balsamic reduction drizzle

None of this is hard, per se, but I am telling you that I was extremely hot and getting dumber by the minute, and I still had to fry six pounds of bacon. So by the time it was time to put dessert together, I made a few poor choices,  including but not limited to leaving the balsamic reduction in a little glass on the counter, without telling anyone what it was. And of course it looks like motor oil, so the kid on dish duty just went “ew” and washed it out before dessert time. 

SO, tragically we had Rustic Overheated Trained Bear Strawberry Galette Without Any Balsamic Reduction Drizzle

Actually I made two, and the other one looked even more like it had been dropped out of a high window. But the pastry was flaky and buttery, the strawberries were tender and sweet, and the candied basil was so good with the fruit, it made me mad that I’ve spent my whole life not eating basil with strawberries. Will definitely make again, although probably when it’s cool enough that I can retain my human form. 

MONDAY
Blueberry chicken salad

Monday I ended up running around all day doing I don’t even know what, so Damien roasted the chicken breast and cut it up, and we had mixed greens with chicken, blueberries, toasted almond slivers, crumbled feta, and diced red onions.

I had mine with balsamic vinegar. This is a great salad, with A#1 Hearty Salad Debris left at the bottom after you’ve dutifully eaten all your greens. 

TUESDAY
Regular tacos

Tuesday was another crazy-go-nuts day, and we have some minimalist tacos for supper, without even chips, because I forgot to buy any

but then we got the kids going on a Doctor Who and Damien and I finally took our new-to-us kayaks out, which we haven’t had a chance to do all summer.

The sky was hazy with humidity and some wildfire smoke from Canada, but the air over the water felt clear and cool, and we zooped right out to the middle of the pond. 

Fish were leaping, loons were lamenting, and water bugs bopped and skated everywhere.

We could nose right up in among the waterlilies and weeds to see what was going on on the other side (just pond things, plus more frogs).

And we had about an hour out on the water, just doing nothing at all, besides being in boats.

Kayaks are so good. I know you can learn a lot about kayaking and get really good at it, but you can get competent at kayaking on still or calm water in about ninety seconds. 

So that was pretty sweet! Must do that again soon. 

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs, chips

Wednesday I set up a meat race, and whoever defrosted first got to be supper. 

I know there are ways to defrost meat quickly, but my actual goal was to put off having to think about dinner for a while, so this was the way to go. 

Hot dogs won. What a surprise! Oh well, I guess I just have to make hot dogs for supper. 

THURSDAY
Roasted pork ribs, stuffed grape leaves, fried eggplant

Thursday I finally hauled out the extra rice I had cooked earlier in the week, and Benny and I harvested a few dozen of the biggest, juiciest grape leaves we could find, and a big bunch of wild mint.

There are many theories on how to make stuffed grape leaves, and generally you will not start with already-cooked rice, but I wanted to see if I could go from untouched kitchen to finished grape leaves in as short a time as possible, so that’s what we were trying this time. So we just started throwing stuff in a bowl of cold rice. We added a ton of chopped mint, quite a lot of salt, and oregano, freshly-ground pepper, a generous amount of sumac, a diced onion, and several glugs of olive oil. 

Then I tried what would happen if we rolled up the rice in uncooked grape leaves. What happens is the leaves crack when you roll them, and sproing open when you put them down. So I boiled some water, dunked the leaves in for a few minutes, and then put them in ice water, and then we rolled them. Or I rolled a few and then dashed out to pick up Corrie, and Benny rolled most of them. 

First we consulted this video we made a few years ago, when we made dolmas for the first time. (If you have an ad blocker on, you will not be able to see the video, because it does make you watch a short ad first, sorry!)

Anyway the method is: You place the leaf on the table face down (veins up), with the point toward you. Put a scoop of rice in the middle, fold in the sides, and then fold up the bottom over the rice, and continue rolling it up to the top, and put it on a pan, seam down, to be cooked later. Easy peasy. 

It was definitely trickier working with cold, cooked rice than with a warm, sticky rice with cooked onions and such, but it was possible to do it this way. I lined a pot with parchment paper (you can also use a few layers of grape leaves), stacked the grape leaves in it, and added a few cups of chicken broth and threw some slices of lemon in there, and simmered it for about half an hour. 

While that was cooking, I broiled the boneless pork ribs with salt and pepper. I had been planning something a little more mediterranean, some kind of kebabs or something, but I was straight up out of time, and sizzling hot pork ribs with salt and pepper are never a bad choice as long as you don’t overcook them. 

Earlier in the day, Benny and I had prepped the eggplant. I had two eggplants, one from the supermarket

and one ichiban eggplant from my garden 

Now look, ichiban eggplants are supposed to look like that. They are sweet, the skin is thin and tender, and they grow quickly and you get several on a plant. But the two together did kinda look like I was setting up some kind of MLM photoshoot. 

Hey bestie! These days are gettin hot hot hot, sun wearing sunglasses emoji! that’s why I’m so grateful I have GloVolve CLEEN/ION LYFEpowdr on my side, heart eyes emoji! Just shake up a little tasty breakfast dust for myself, dynamite emoji, and this trim mama is ready to go, running woman emoji! DM me for details if you want to get in on this disgusting bullshit.

RESULTS DON’T LIE GIRLFRIEND 

Anywurrrrr, we cut them both up, skins on, salted both sides, and let them sweat it out between layers of paper towels. (This is to get the excess moisture out, and you can do it the night before or in the morning or just half an hour or so before you plan to fry the eggplant.) 

Right before supper, I made some batter, dragged I tweaked the recipe a bit, and I’m very happy with it. The texture is fantastic, very light with a crisp, shiny or knobby shell on the outside, depending on how hot the oil is

and it tastes mild at first, but has a nice spicy kick. 

The only difference I could discern between the two kinds of eggplant was that the big one was big and the little one was little. Both had their charms!  

I was very proud of myself for steaming grape leaves and frying eggplant while the meat was broiling, and I unironically consider it one of the major accomplishments of my life, to produce three hot foods cooked three ways at exactly 6:00. 

It was just such a good meal. I set out more lemon slices to squeeze over everything, and it was fab. 

Okay, YES, some kind of spicy tomato-based dipping sauce would have put it over the top and tied everything together, but it was still an excellent meal. 

Oh, so the cheater’s grape leaves were good! I’ll probably go back to consulting a recipe and doing it in some approved way next time, but just crashing everything together worked well enough and I feel like I have officially made stuffed grape leaves for the year. And it was pretty nice to have a meal with three ingredients from our own yard.

FRIDAY
Pizza

Just reglar ol pizza. No complaints from me!

Oh, our local little market is now selling goat meat! It’s pricy but I can swing a few pounds, anyway. I love goat meat. Who has ideas for what to make? Something juicy and Indian. My mortal and pestle want to know. 

 

Print

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.

At a certain point, all you can do is provide a space

When my kids were little and we were house hunting, the one thing I promised them was that we would find a house where we could hook up a hose. The place we’d been renting before had no hose spigot, and even though we went to the pool and the beach, I always felt like an important part of their childhood was missing.

So we found a house, and we did hook up a hose and filled up a little wading pool. The kids loved it, and they loved the sprinkler I set up and the little water slide we had on the grassy slope. They spent a lot of time out there every summer, gleefully playing as all kids play in a small amount of water.

One month we found ourselves with all our bills paid and a little leftover money, so we splurged on something else I’d always wanted for my kids: A wooden play structure. It had swings and a slide and a climbing net and a little tower with a wheel, and they had endless active time and pretend games, swarming up and down and on and over it; and as they grew, they nailed things to it and painted it and switched out swings and made it more and more their own.

Kids growing up

Several years passed, the kids were getting older, and I again found myself looking for something to make our yard richer for them, more exciting and entertaining, and something to draw them outside and keep them active. We got a trampoline, the biggest one we could find, and it was wonderful. Kids of all ages could use it, from the toddler who got bopped up and down like a piece of popcorn when the other kids jumped, to the teenagers who needed to work off some angst and frustration with a furious solo jumping session in the evening.

The other day, I looked in the shed, hunting for some pruning shears, and I saw so many toys that no one has played with in years. Bikes with silly little miniature wheels. A beloved backyard ride-on roller coaster that we took apart and brought with us in move after move but that hasn’t been assembled for a while. There’s a red and blue playhouse, once in constant, hot demand, and now it’s faded with the sun and occupied only by blackberry brambles and a few spiders.

It’s the same on the porch, and in the attic. So many roller skates and stilts and baseball gloves and bow and arrow sets, games and activities that I gathered and brought home for my kids to try to make them happy, to make them healthy, to make them into well-rounded people who could do a lot of things and knew how to enjoy themselves, and were strong and determined and capable. I wanted our home to be the place they would want to be, and the place they’d want to bring their friends to, so I constantly worked hard to fill their life with everything rich I could manage, and I constantly encouraged them to use them. Sometimes I even insisted they use them.

Have I mentioned that my children are growing up? 

Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.

Why is RFK Jr. gaining popularity? Everyone is afraid, and everyone is traumatized.

It was a bit of a shambles inside the dim, noisy pavilion. I was at the annual Free State Project-sponsored camping festival, PorcFest, to see presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and had snagged a seat, but it was a close call. The steamy, garage-like structure was filling up, and the line to get in still snaked through the campgrounds in the foothills of the White Mountains. (The speech was in late June, before the latest accusations that Mr. Kennedy shared racist and antisemitic claims about Covid-19.) 

I have a peculiar relationship with libertarians and, in particular, with Free Staters, a loose affiliation of libertarians who have moved to New Hampshire to establish a stronghold for their ideology. I strongly share some of their values: their emphasis on liberty, civil rights, small government and the freedom to teach one’s own children and to worship without restriction. But I loathe others: bodily autonomy and self-reliance that extends to the point of callous disregard for the poor, the unborn, the disabled and the underage—and their obsession with guns, guns and more guns.

Still, there is a tiny part of me that understands libertarians and sympathizes with their cause. Who isn’t sick to death of the government? I think it was P. J. O’Rourke who once said that, when you’re poor, the government seems to simultaneously control every aspect of your life and care nothing for you at all. You could apply that idea to most citizens today and get a pretty good picture of the lumbering, blindly malicious, wasteful yet horribly necessary behemoth we are all languishing under. No wonder libertarians look at our country, look at the solutions both Democrats and Republicans offer, and say, “No thanks.”

Libertarians are usually right about what is not working. The trouble is, they generally think the answer is to hunker down in whatever self-made kingdom you can cobble together, and to hell with everyone else. This attitude alone makes libertarianism incompatible with Catholicism, because we are obligated to care for one another. That’s where I land.

But these are strange times. Every election in recent memory has been difficult for me as a Catholic. I cannot remember the last time I voted for someone. It has simply been a matter of voting to do the least damage, or to stop someone else from doing more damage.

So there I was, waiting to hear what R.F.K., a Democrat, had to say to a crowd of Free Staters, many of whom are so extreme that even the Libertarian Party disowned them. I was ready to hear anything and curious about his appeal. A Newsweek poll showed that 31 percent of those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 support Mr. Kennedy’s presidential bid. That is extraordinary, considering how thoroughly Mr. Kennedy has earned his reputation as a conspiracy theorist.

I wanted to know what my fellow Catholics, in particular, thought about R.F.K. Jr., and I had spotted a few by the miraculous medals around their necks. We made plans to meet up after the speech.

We waited. Half an hour later, an organizer stood up and began to shout, “Some of you don’t belong in here!” I froze, thinking she was on to me. I had voted for President Biden (albeit gloomily), and I think the Second Amendment is O.K. (at best). But it turns out 20 to 30 people had mistakenly jumped the line and were sitting in a section that rightly belonged to the folks who had been waiting in the hot sun for hours. She acknowledged that it is a “voluntary society” and no one can force them, but she hotly pleaded with the line-cutters to do the honest thing and leave.

Two people left.

Maybe half an hour later, the last seat was filled and the speech began….Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Below: Some more photos from PorcFest XX

Give your barely-things-at-all to Jesus

Toward the end of Lent, I wrote about offering up penances and sacrifices to God. I often forget, even after being a Catholic for most of my life, to take this final step.

I tend to get so hyper-focused on doing the thing I’ve decided (or am obligated) to do—abstaining from meat, fasting, leaving the radio off or leaving my phone in the other room, or maybe not salting my dinner, or not getting in line first for dessert—that I forget to offer these little sacrifices up to God, even though that’s allegedly why I’m doing it in the first place.

“It’s just the same as if you were buying a present for someone, and then left it in the car. What’s the use in that?” I wrote.

“It doesn’t matter how thoughtful or expensive or beautifully wrapped it is, if it never gets to them. You have to actually deliver it, put it in their hands and tell them it is for them, from you.”

This is how it is with spiritual sacrifices. We must remember to complete them by actually deliberately putting them in the hands of God, just as we would do with any gift.

Now that we’re solidly into ordinary time, let’s stay with that metaphor, but wake it up a little. Let’s imagine that you are giving someone a present, and this time you do wrap it, and you do give it to them, and you do let it know it’s from you.

You remember to do all the stuff I remind you to do, above. But what’s inside is almost nothing.

Good news! I have reason to believe the recipient (and we’re talking about Jesus, here, if I didn’t make that clear) will be delighted. Delighted! There’s even a parable about this: The widow’s mite. She brings her two little coins to the temple because that’s what she has, and the Lord is delighted with her gift.

All of scripture is pretty clear about this: The God who cares about the sparrow and about the number of hairs on your head is not going to be snooty about being offered a small gift. It is sincerity he cares about, not volume.

Ah, but the two coins was the best the widow could do. What if you make some kind of small, feeble offering to the Lord and you’re capable of so much more? What if you do have much and you only give a little, because you’re weak and a little selfish and lazy, and you kind of want to love God, but you only love him a little bit? What will he say to a paltry little gift like that?

I think something like: “Thank you, my lovely love, my dearest dear, my sweetest sweet. I love it. Please come back again soon so I can see you again, and we will see what we can do together.” I think making a small effort despite weakness and selfish and laziness is a kind of widow’s mite, as well, and it will be received as such. 

He’s not stupid and he’s not a sucker. But he knows love when he sees it.  He IS love, and when something is given, he is there, and he seems to find love irresistible, even in tiny little amounts.

This is what Jesus does when we offer something to him. Remember, he doesn’t need anything. He isn’t lacking in anything, in any way. The only reason he wants you to give him things is so he can grow them and give them back to you.

Not like an investment bank, where you put in a cold, hard coin and get back two cold, hard coins, but like a seed, a little dry speck that you give to the ground and somehow, unreasonably, it becomes a living, growing, thriving tree and all the birds of the air come and roost in its branches.

This is a real thing that happens. I’ve seen it. You give little things, dumb things, lazy things, half-selfish things, paltry things, barely-willing things, barely-things-at-all to Jesus, and he makes them huge and thriving and alive. Not always overnight! Not even necessarily in your lifetime. But you can be sure that anything you turn over to him will not languish there, because letting things languish is not what he does. It is not who he is. But he does wait for you to decide to do it, because that’s what makes it a gift.

What else is there to say? All we have to lose is our dry little specks. Praise Jesus, who makes all things live.

___

Photo credit: Chiara Palandrani (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu) (Creative Commons)
A version of this essay was originally published in The Catholic Weekly in April of 2023.

What’s for supper? Vol. 335: Cushioning where it matters

Happy Friday! Here is a picture of a happy Friday:

More on that in a bit!

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Chicken burgers, chips

I took a picture just so I would remember what it was we had. Here is that picture:

Is there a name for when you always think photos of sandwiches are making rude noises at you? {Clutches wedding guest’s sleeve:} Is there a name for that??

SUNDAY
Pulled pork, spicy fries, corn on the cob

World’s okayest pulled pork. I seared it in hot oil with salt and pepper, then threw it in the Instant Pot with apple cider vinegar and water, lots of cumin, some jalapeños, and I forget what else, maybe some cinnamon sticks. Oh, a quartered onion. I wasn’t really paying attention, which is what the Instant Pot is for. I pressed “meat” and just like magic, a few hours later I opened the lid and there was meat inside! I pulled it out and shredded it and put some of the broth back in with the meat to keep it warm while the fries and corn were cooking. 

Not a very pretty meal, but a tasty one. 

MONDAY
Chicken caesar salad

Monday I was running around like a maniac, but supper came together quickly. I drizzled some chicken breasts with olive oil and seasoned them heavily with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano, and broiled them on both sides, then sliced them. 

I set out dishes of chicken, chopped romaine lettuce, freshly-shredded parmesan cheese, croutons, and a beautiful creamy yellow dressing

which I made in the food processor.

Jump to Recipe

I forgot to buy anchovies for the dressing, but it still came out incredibly tangy, and I didn’t really miss anything. Very pleasant little meal with lots of sharp, rich flavor.

Last time I made this dressing, I used duck egg yolks, which are heavenly, –or, not heavenly, but earthly in the best way. Our ducks haven’t started laying yet, but they have started . . . acting like they’re thinking about it? I don’t know. Who knows what a duck is thinking. Very little, I’m sure. 

Corrie made the croutons. We always have leftover hamburger and hot dog buns hanging arounds, so she cubed those, then melted a stick of butter and poured it over the bread and seasoned it with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano. 

They’re supposed to toast slowly for a long time at a low temp, and we didn’t really have time for that, but nobody complained about salty, buttery croutons with soft middles. I’m a little salty and buttery and soft in the middle myself, and I’ll just go ahead and end this sentence right here. 

Hey look, a truck full of me. 

Speaking of which, has anyone ever made those croutons out of grilled cheese sandwiches? I read about them in the NYT one time and I could never decide if they sounded good or disgusting. Maybe if you cut them up small enough. 

TUESDAY
cold cereal or whatever

Tuesday was KITTEN DAY.

In this house, we are poor, deprived, neglected waifs who have no pets, no pets at all, just a dog and a bird and a lizard and four ducks and some sea monkeys, and we don’t even have any kittens! So on Tuesday, Damien took some of the kids out to get a little gray kitten. (I think I mentioned before that our poor other cat died, so it’s been a plan to replace him.)

May I present to you: FRIDAY.

He is a fine fellow. Actually he has fleas and an eye infection and possibly worms, but that’s not his fault, and of course we’re treating him for all those things,

and his personality is awesome so far. He’s just valiant and fearless and cuddly like a kitten should be, and he and the dog are getting along pretty well.

 

I’m happy Sonny will have someone to pal around with when the kids go back to school (and I’m happy we didn’t have to get a second dog for that purpose).

Friday is definitely not a purebred, but he looks like he has at least some Russian Blue in him, which is nice. They have good personalities, and he seems to be settling in really well. Good little kitty cat. 

You can see his eyes are still cruddy, but they’re improving day by day, and if the antibiotics don’t work, we have a vet appointment lined up. Also haven’t spotted a flea in over 24 hours, so WHEW. 

Oh, about dinner. Enough people were gone around dinner time that I just couldn’t get myself to cook something, so we just scrounged. I had a giant mug full of Honeycomb, which is the best cereal. 

WEDNESDAY
Koftas, Jerusalem salad,  pita, yogurt sauce

Wednesday I allegedly had nothing to do, and yet somehow still got home excruciatingly late, but luckily I had this easy meal planned. 

I do have a recipe for koftas

Jump to Recipe

but I make them a little different each time. This time it was about five-and-a-half pounds of ground beef, six eggs, two or three cups of bread crumbs, and then I just started dumping in spices. Lots of green za’atar, lots of garam masala, some cumin, some cinnamon, and a decent amount of Aleppo pepper, and some salt. I think that’s mostly it, mixed thoroughly with my hands. I have an unholy appetite for raw ground beef, so I didn’t mind tasting it while it was uncooked, and it tasted pretty lively. I meant to add mint, but I forgot.

I formed the meat into logs and then inserted a skewer into each one. These are, of course, supposed to be cooked over a fire, but they’re still pretty good cooked under a hot broiler, which is how I cooked them. 

I made a bunch of peppy yogurt sauce with Greek yogurt, fresh garlic, salt, and bottled lemon juice (keep forgetting to buy lemons), and a Jerusalem salad of cut-up Roma tomatoes and cucumbers with a little diced red onion, tossed with chopped fresh mint and parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. And I had store bought pita.

Served with a little more chopped fresh mint on the side. This is just a lovely summer meal. Savory but not too heavy, with the bright, cool flavors of mint and lemon throughout; and I guess it’s even pretty low carb if you’re into that.

Sometimes I make koftas in meatball or patty form, but you really can’t beat sizzling hot meat on a stick. 

THURSDAY
Tacos al pastor, black beans, plantain chips

I was actually kind of dragging by Thursday, but there was a hunk of pork and two rapidly-aging pineapples staring balefully at me, so we went ahead. I usually make this recipe for tacos al pastor which is a little bit complicated, but well worth it, with really explosively delicious flavors. 

However, I was in a hurry, so I made this simpler recipe, and skipped a few ingredients I had forgotten to buy:

tacos al pastor: Jump to Recipe

So it basically had two flavors (pineapple and chili powder), but that’s not such a bad thing! It marinated for 3-4 hours and then I broiled it in one pan and broiled chunks of the second pineapple (the first pineapple goes into the marinade) in a second pan.

Served on tortillas with sour cream and cilantro, with lime plantain chips on the side.

I also made some black beans in the Instant Pot, and they weren’t my very best, because I started them late, used too many beans and not enough seasoning, and didn’t drain enough of the liquid. Here’s my basic recipe, that I fiddle with and add all kinds of things as the spirit moves me (including egregiously white lady stuff like KALE) 

Jump to Recipe

and they were truly perfectly good beans.

And I got to eat it outside on the patio I built, with my jubilant yellow Mother’s Day hibiscus in bloom, and I was feeling pretty, pretty good about my life!

FRIDAY
Shrimp and summer squash lo mein

Shrimp is pretty cheap right now, for some reason, especially if you know only about half the family is going to eat it. I picked up some fetuccine for the noodles, and a summer squash and a zucchini squash. I don’t know what the difference is between zucchini squash and zucchini, to tell the truth. I’ll probably throw some fresh minced garlic and ginger in there, and possibly some radishes.

Jump to Recipe

We have had rain rain rain this week, and I wish I could send some of it to you guys in the parched states! My garden is not unhappy, though, and we have had bursts of hot sun in between. This year I have Brussels sprouts, ghost peppers, basil, collard greens, eggplants, watermelon, butternut squash, and pumpkin, and in my perennial beds, strawberries, asparagus, and rhubarb. It sounds like a huge garden, but it’s actually tiny, and I squashed everything all in together because that’s how I live, so who do they think they are? Sorry, can’t stop being crazy, won’t stop. Anyway, I saw a recipe for candied basil, which you use in a strawberry galette. MAYBE. MAYBE. 

Print

caesar salad dressing

Ingredients

  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 12 anchovy fillets, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about two large lemons' worth)
  • 1 Tbsp mustard
  • 4 raw egg yolks, beaten
  • 3/4 cup finely grated parmesan

Instructions

  1. Just mix it all together, you coward.

 

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koftas

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

 

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Tacos al pastor

Ingredients

  • 8-10 lbs pork butt or loin

For the marinade:

  • 2 pineapples, cut into spears (one is for the marinade, and set the other aside for cooking separately)
  • 3 onions quartered
  • 1.5 cups orange or pineapple juice
  • 3/4 cup white vinegar
  • 1/3 cup ancho chili powder
  • 1 entire head garlic
  • 3 chipotles in adobo
  • 1-1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp oregano

For serving:

  • flour tortillas
  • sliced red onion
  • chopped cilantro
  • lime wedges

Instructions

  1. Thinly slice the pork.

  2. In a food processor or blender, combine one of the pineapples and the rest of the marinade ingredients. Blend until smooth. (You will probably have to do it in batches.)

  3. Marinate the sliced meat in the marinade for at least four hours.

  4. Pan fry, grill, or broil the meat and the spears of the second pineapple. Roughly chop cooked meat and pineapple.

  5. Serve pork and pineapple on tortillas with sliced red onion, chopped cilantro, and lime wedges.

 

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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."

 

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basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 5 tsp sesame oil
  • 5 tsp sugar

for the rest

  • 32 oz uncooked noodles
  • sesame oil for cooking
  • add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
  • 2/3 cup rice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)

Instructions

  1. Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.

  2. Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.

  3. Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.

  4. Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.

  5. Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

What is custody of the eyes for?

The phrase “custody of the eyes” always gets a lot of play in modesty discussions (which always ramp up around swimsuit season). In general, the phrase just means “watch where you look,” and it usually has to do with not staring at somebody else’s body parts. This is just good old, practical Mother Church teaching us how to behave so we don’t get into trouble: if you’re a man who is tempted into lustful thoughts by a woman’s cleavage, then keep your eyes on her face. If you’re a woman who’s tempted into lustful thoughts by shirtless joggers, then keep your eyes on the road. Don’t want to get burned? Keep your hands away from the fire. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with fire; it just means that you have to know what your weaknesses are, and act accordingly.

But the phrase “custody of the eyes” is used in a non-sexual context, too. This etiquette guide for Mass says,

After receiving Communion, keep a “custody of the eyes,” that is, be conscious to not let your eyes wander around. Instead, it is proper to keep your focus in front of you, with your head toward the floor … A “custody of the eyes” is also important for those who are in the pews who have yet to join the Communion line. It is not proper to stare at those who have received Communion. The time of Communion is a very intimate, personal and for many an intense time.

Isn’t that interesting? The purpose of custody of the eyes is to help us focus on what’s important at the moment — and also to preserve the privacy and dignity of other people. That latter aspect — preserving the dignity of the other person — is often missing when we discuss custody of the eyes.

We often talk about how important it is to keep custody of the eyes when we see some stranger who turns us on. The most basic purpose of this is just to protect ourselves. It’s not sinful to feel attracted to someone attractive, but we don’t want a simple and natural attraction to transform itself into lustful thoughts that corrupt our hearts; and so we avert our eyes when necessary.

But the other purpose of custody of the eyes, and the more profound one, is to protect the person we’re looking at — to avoid turning him or her into an object, something to be consumed, something to be subjected to our own needs and ideas. Something, not someone.

And so I’d like to introduce the phrase into yet another less-common context. Many of us, men and women, could use practice keeping custody of the eyes when we’re looking at someone to whom we are not attracted, lustfully otherwise — someone whose dress or behavior we don’t approve of, someone whose appearance repels us.

Lust isn’t the only passion that needs reining in.

Here’s an example. When I was shopping yesterday, I saw an enormously fat woman wearing short shorts and a cherry red shirt that was cut so low, it was hardly a shirt at all. I mean, gravity was being disrupted. Light was going there to die. Whatever you’re picturing right now, it was more outrageous than that. I mean!

So, as someone who does care about modesty, what did I do? I thought bad things about her. I jeered at her in my head. I imagined how annoyed I would be if I had had one of my young sons with me. I compared my weight with her weight. And I concluded that she — not people like her, but she herself — was what was wrong with America today.

This was all in a matter of a split second, of course. I didn’t stand there gawping and scowling at her; and pretty quickly, I caught myself. I heard what I was thinking, deplored it, and made a conscious effort to think about something else, and I moved along.

But if I had been practicing custody of the eyes, I would have moved along much sooner, because I need to protect myself — not against lust, but against the sins of nastiness, cattiness, and disdain. If I had been practicing custody of the eyes, I would have just moved along automatically when I realized my weaknesses were being exposed.

But that’s not the best I can do. How much better would it have been if I focused on protecting not only myself, but this woman. How much better if, by long, well-established habits of charity in my thoughts, words, and deeds, I had found it very easy to see this woman simply as another child of God.

This should be our goal whether we’re gazing at someone who is immodest, or sloppy, or whose style is too trendy, or too pricey, or too pretentious, or old fashioned, or bizarre, or pointedly too modest, or too anything. We should be accustomed to finding Christ in every face.

It’s common and understandable to feel anger and frustration when someone makes life harder for us by presenting us with temptations. But this is an immature spiritual stage we should strive to outgrow, as we begin to recognize more and more that our behavior is about us, period. It’s about us and God, and we’re not going to find God if we despise other people. Period. There’s no point in fighting lust if we’re just going to dive headfirst into hate! That’s like curing your crack addiction by switching to heroin.  Lust is a sin because it crowds out love. Custody of the eyes is a tool for achieving this end, and is not an end in itself. Its purpose is to help us to love.

That must be what true holiness looks like: not just snapping my eyes away from some no-good tart who can’t be bothered to look decent, but practicing custody of their eyes for so long that it’s easy to see the actual person in, to paraphrase Mother Teresa’s phrase, “the distressing disguise of the slut” (or the slob, or the fatso, or whatever). It’s not enough to think, “Oh, how trashy; better look away.”  I should be learning to look at anyone and see Christ.

This is, after all, something Catholics should excel in. We are well trained in seeking out and affirming the unseen. If we can see Christ in a round, white wafer, then surely we can see him in a woman wearing short shorts. Surely we should try.

Custody of the eyes shouldn’t, ultimately, make us see less of a person. It should help us see more.

***
This post originally ran in a slightly different form at the National Catholic Register in 2013.
Photo: Craig Finlay via Flickr (licensed)

What’s for supper? Vol. 334: Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Happy summer! This is the week that always starts to feel like real summer to me, because the big family party is over and we get going on all the other stuff we haven’t quite had time for, mainly lounging around, eating ice pops, and watching Buffy. 

I didn’t get a WFS out last week, because of all the running around, so the quick version is: I don’t remember. Probably really easy, fast, boring stuff; except one day we had 

Kielbasa, Brussels sprouts, and potatoes sheet pan dinner with honey mustard sauce

I have stopped consulting a recipe for this meal.  (Here is one if you want, though! Jump to Recipe

I had three ropes of kielbasa cut into chunks, three pounds of Brussels sprouts halved, and probably three pounds of potato wedges with the skin on, tossed with salt and pepper and olive oil and spread on a sheet pan, and I cooked them at 425 for about 20 minutes. I mixed up a sauce from a bunch of dijon mustard, honey, balsamic vinegar or maybe wine vinegar, and pepper, kosher salt, and crushed garlic, then drizzled the sauce on the food

and stirred it up, and slid it back in the oven for another maybe 10-15 minutes until it was a little browned.

Sorry, not really a recipe, but you can just make it according to your taste and then cook it until it looks done. 

I used to make this meal with wedges of cabbage, but the kids vastly prefer Brussels sprouts. I also used to make it with the sauce to dip, but now I do the “cook, then add sauce and finish cooking” thing, and it comes out flavorful and keeps everything from drying out. Great summer meal, easy and hearty. 

And another day we had

Taijin chicken with scallions, mango, hot pretzels

This was supposed to be a NYT recipe, buuut I forgot to buy oranges, and you’re supposed to add orange zest and juice. So instead, I looked around furtively, opened a can of mandarin oranges, smushed up the contents, and dumped it into the sauce. 

The original recipe calls for 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sea salt, 1/2 cup honey, 1/2 cup orange juice, 1 tsp orange zest, 3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce and 1/4 cup adobo sauce, 6 garlic cloves, 2 Tbs. olive oil, and 1 Tbsp Taijin, which is the ingredient that caught my attention in the first place, but which we turned out to have two almost-empty bottles of, along with only a small can of chipotle chiles and only a little honey.

I also broiled this in the oven, rather than grilling it; so it was basically a Ship of Theseus recipe at this point.

But honestly, it still tasted fine. Kinda citrusy, quite spicy. If you like the taste of Taijin, you will like this chicken. It didn’t knock my socks off, but it was easy and tasty.

(I threw in some scallions, as directed, but those didn’t fare very well under the broiler, and weren’t terribly appealing.) For sides, I cut up a bunch of mangoes and served the hot pretzels I was too tired to cook the other day.

A decent if slightly weird meal.

SUNDAY
Independence Day Party!

I spent most of last week scurrying around finishing the infamous patio, (which I am sitting on right now, and let me tell you, it is birdy and lovely)

and getting all the other stuff ready for the party, knowing all along that it was going to rain all day. I did have the option to change the party to Saturday, which was supposed to be sunny and hot, but not everyone could make it. Argh!

Eventually I decided it made more sense to have a family party with rain and all the family, then a family party with sun and lots of people missing. It was a good choice! It did rain quite a bit, but we had two canopies and a tarp, 

and my sister brought another giant tarp which two of my brothers-in-law set up like a giant tent. 

Easy for me to say it was the right choice, since I didn’t have to drive home long distance in soggy clothes, but it seemed like everyone had a nice time. I love my family and I’m so glad we get together like this every year. I didn’t put up my father’s monstrous (in size, I mean) American flag, because of the rain, and we forgot to read the Declaration of Independence, but it was still a very good party.

Glow sticks, snappers, sparklers, fireworks, shiny necklaces, and the dog got bossed around by so many little girls, which is his heart’s desire.

Our July 4th menu is not very exotic; we go for volume, rather than novelty. Damien cooked hamburgers and hot dogs, veggie burgers and tofu dogs, and three racks of pork ribs

Jump to Recipe

This year, in addition to the rub he usually puts on them before smoking, he sprayed them with cider vinegar as they cooked. They were done a long time after the rest of the food,

which actually worked out great, because it had gotten a little chilly by then, and we were all ready for a second course, and it was pretty great to sit by the fire gobbling up sizzling, tender ribs

I made potato salad and bought I think 18 bags of chips, and made several big platters of raw veggies. My brother’s BF also brought some delicious spicy peanut noodles, which everyone loved. We had watermelon, which we shared with the ducks, and for dessert, the traditional red and blue Jello cups with Kool Whip

as well as ice cream cups and brownies, which Benny made.

And then candy after the fireworks, to ease the pain of the party winding down. 

Bunch more photos here if you want to take a look.

MONDAY
Leftovers

Monday we were all smooshed into a paste of exhaustion, so I cooked the leftover hot dogs and set out some cold ribs and that was perfect. The town fireworks we were planning to go to got rained out and postponed until July 28, to my great relief. 

TUESDAY
Burgers

Tuesday we went with some friends to The Caterpillar Lab, which we’ve been meaning to do forever. If you’re anywhere in Southwest NH and looking for a way to spend an hour or two, this is an excellent little free visit, fascinating and educational for kids and adults.

We saw amazing things unfolding right before our eyes, on the counter at eye level, and also magnified on a big screen; and the staff was very chill and well-informed and ready to answer questions and chat about what we were seeing. There were lots of things for the kids to touch, and I liked how it was set up in a beautiful way, including a long wooden table set with decorative bottles, each holding a green branch with a different kind of caterpillar living on it, with an informational card on the table. Sort of reminiscent of a Victorian curiosity cabinet, but with things you could handle. A very pleasant and exciting way to spend a rainy morning. 

(I actually have a bit of a moth and butterfly phobia, which I have been working on, but there was nothing flapping around being horrible and out of control, so the experience was well within my tolerance zone. Very different from a butterfly garden, for instance, which is a nightmare for me.) 

Then we came home and played Forbidden Island, which I reviewed here.

Damien bought more meat and cooked more burgers.

We ate late and they were absolutely scrumptious. Definitely starting to get that vacation feel. 

WEDNESDAY
Aldi pizza

Wednesday Benny hosted a tea party, with animal crackers topped with Kool Whip, hot dog ends on toothpicks, and candy, and of course tea

and then we went to the library, and Damien brought home Aldi pizzas. Then I went on the library website and looked up their actual policies, and discovered that, newp, I’m not imagining it, the librarian is actually being a jerk to our family and possibly breaking the law. So we’ll see about that. Humph. (This is why, don’t talk to me about “ohhh, if only WXMYN could be in power, THEN we would see an end to all this terrible CORRUPTION! You give women a teensy tiny bit of power and they will find a way to abuse it. Which is not to say that women shouldn’t have power! Just don’t expect it to magically fix corruption.)

THURSDAY
Italian sandwiches

Thursday it was HOT HOT HOT (for New Hampshire), so I finally broke down and put in the air conditioner

Then I couldn’t put off shopping any longer, so I got some sandwich ingredients, and then when I got my other work done, I took four of the kids to the town pond, ahhh.

They swam for a while, and played Parco Molo, and then we had Italian sandwiches, cherries, and cheezy weezies. 

What a lovely spot it is. I opened my Merlin app and it picked up something like twenty different birds. I did some actual reading from an actual book (The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, who is so unkind to some of his characters), and wow has my life gotten easier than it used to be. 

FRIDAY
Fish tacos

Moe and his lovely GF and I think Dora are coming by for dinner, and we’re having fish tacos (just frozen batter fried fish fillets) on tortillas with shredded cabbage, sour cream, limes, salsa, and I guess guacamole.

Jump to Recipe

Am I forgetting something? Maybe I will make some lime crema. 

Jump to Recipe

I started some ice cream this morning, but it was so hot in the kitchen, the first batch (made with that Neopolitan trail mix from Aldi) didn’t freeze properly, so I turned on the AC and I’m currently making the second batch (strawberry with a little lime) in the cooler room. 

The ducks are frolicking in the sprinkler

the birds are singing, lots of things are blooming, I’m sitting in the shade in my own yard for the first time ever, and if this ain’t the life, I don’t know what is!

***

Print

sugar smoked ribs

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

Ingredients

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

For the sugar rub:

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

Instructions

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

  2. Smoke at 225 for 3 hours

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

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

  5. Remove tinfoil and smoke another 45-min.

  6. Finish on grill to give it a char.

 

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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

 

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Lime Crema

Keyword Budget Bytes, crema, lime, lime crema, sour cream, tacos

Ingredients

  • 16 oz sour cream
  • 3 limes zested and juiced
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. 

Recipe Notes

So good on tacos and tortilla chips Looking forward to having it on tortilla soup, enchiladas, MAYBE BAKED POTATOES, I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

 

5 from 4 votes
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One-pan kielbasa, cabbage, and red potato dinner with mustard sauce

This meal has all the fun and salt of a wiener cookout, but it's a tiny bit fancier, and you can legit eat it in the winter. 

Ingredients

  • 3-4 lbs kielbasa
  • 3-4 lbs red potatoes
  • 1-2 medium cabbages
  • (optional) parsley for garnish
  • salt and pepper and olive oil

mustard sauce (sorry, I make this different each time):

  • mustard
  • red wine if you like
  • honey
  • a little olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • fresh garlic, crushed

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400. 

    Whisk together the mustard dressing ingredients and set aside. Chop parsley (optional).

    Cut the kielbasa into thick coins and the potatoes into thick coins or small wedges. Mix them up with olive oil, salt, and pepper and spread them in a shallow pan. 

    Cut the cabbage into "steaks." Push the kielbasa and potatoes aside to make room to lay the cabbage down. Brush the cabbage with more olive oil and sprinkle with more salt and pepper. It should be a single layer of food, and not too crowded, so it will brown well. 

    Roast for 20 minutes, then turn the food as well as you can and roast for another 15 minutes.  

    Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish. 

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Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

  • 1 pint fresh strawberries
  • 1-1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

For the ice cream base

  • 2 eggs
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 cups heavy or whipping cream
  • 1 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Hull and slice the strawberries. Mix them with the sugar and lemon juice, cover, and refrigerate for an hour.

Make the ice cream base:

  1. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.

  2. Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.

  3. Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

  1. Mash the strawberries well, or puree them in a food processor. Stir into the ice cream base.

  2. Add to your ice cream maker and follow the directions. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes, then transfer the ice cream to a container, cover it, and put it in the freezer.)