Some of it is fine, as far as I can see. I can think of instances where people were bullied or harassed for openly expressing their faith in the workplace, and where they were made to feel inferior for being religious.
Some people have taken the Establishment Clause of the Constitution to mean that to mean that religious expression is sort of vaguely illegal, and should be quashed. So this new guidance says federal employees are allowed to have Bibles and crosses and so on in the workplace. (It’s notable that all the examples it gives are either Christian or Jewish, explicitly mentioning tefillin and rosary beads, for example, but it avoids any mention of Islamic, Buddhist, or Hindu practices of faith. Which is a clear violation of the Establishment clause. Note this. Note. This.)
Some of the guidance makes me extremely nervous. You can click through and read it for yourself if you don’t trust me to summarize—it’s just five pages—but it essentially says that federal employers and employees can display signs of their religious faith, pray and organise prayer groups in the workplace, and talk about and argue for their faith with others in the workplace, as long as they’re not aggressive about it and respect requests to stop.
Here is what I promise will happen: Decent people will adhere to the guidelines, and indecent people will not. People who are good Christians will quietly wear a cross and pray sincerely at lunch and be welcoming and inviting to others; and people who are bad Christians will bully and harass and intimidate people they don’t approve of, and they will point to these guidelines and say they’re entitled to do it.
This is not just a Christian thing; it’s a human nature thing. If people think they can get away with bullying other people, they’ll do it.
I just wanted to establish that the guidelines are absolutely guaranteed to be abused. They were deliberately written to give cover to people who will abuse them. That is how this administration functions, on every level, and it is what we have come to expect from them.
But let’s assume for a minute that it’s all been done in good faith. Let’s pretend that all they want is for Christians and a few docile Jews to be able to keep worshipping God all day long, and not have the government forcibly stripping away their religious convictions and expression.
It sure sounds like that’s what they’re calling for. The first paragraph says:
“The Founders established a Nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government.” President Trump is committed to reaffirming “America’s unique and beautiful tradition of religious liberty,” including by directing “the executive branch to vigorously enforce the historic and robust protections for religious liberty enshrined in Federal law.”
And the fourth paragraph says:
“The First Amendment to the US Constitution robustly protects expressions of religious faith by all Americans—including Federal employees. The US Supreme Court has clarified that the Free Exercise Clause “protects not only the right to harbor religious beliefs inwardly and secretly,” but also “protect[s] the ability of those who hold religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life.” Indeed, “[r]espect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic[.]”
Happy Friday! In haste! In ultra haste! For I gotta do this and that and these and those, and then get a kid to a party and go to adoration. Here’s what we ate this week:
Oh, but first, last Friday Corrie made her first pie dough. She is a giant rhubarb fiend and wanted to make something with it, and everybody should know how to make a pie.
includes freezing the butter for at least 20 minutes, then grating it into the flour. Which is great work for people who enjoy complaining.
And then you scrumble it around with your fingers until it’s just barely incorporated, then sprinkle cold water on top and encourage it to become a ball.
SATURDAY Leftovers and hot pretzels (?)
Strawberry rhubarb pie with streusel topping
Saturday we had our usual leftovers, and honestly I was pretty sick that night, which leads me to believe we need to be a little careful about how long we keep leftovers around. Duh.
But anyway, Corrie picked some rhubarb from the garden, washed and cut up a bunch of strawberries, and made the pie filling using this recipe.
Then she rolled out the pie dough on parchment paper and laid it in the pan, and trimmed the edges
filled the pie shells
and then opted for a streusel topping. She had wanted to make a woven crust, but we ran out of pie dough. So for the streusel topping, we just took a package of yellow cake mix, poured a stick of melted butter on top, and scrunched it into big crumbs, and sprinkled those on top of the fruit filling.
baked ’em and they were great! Very successful.
and you can trust that she really truly did it herself, because boy did she get mad at me when I tried to help. This is the secret to raising independent children: They get mad at you.
SUNDAY Beach day (PBJ for me)
Sunday I was really feeling terrible, so Damien took the kids to Hampton by himself. We’d been planning this beach trip forever, so even though the forecast was for rain, they forged ahead.
Hardly anybody else was there, because honestly the water is pretty dang cold even on a hot day. The kids did eventually go in the water in their swimsuits, because they are New England kids. Then they went to the arcade, and then to McDonalds. Moe sent me this pic of Corrie waiting for her burger, wearing one of her arcade prizes.
I myself had a PBJ sandwich, which I have once a year or so. Pretty good!
MONDAY Buffalo chicken wraps
So all summer I’ve been telling myself I have two big writing projects, and one was due in July and one was due in August, so as long as I paced myself, it would be okay.
In fact, one was due July 28 and one was due August 1. Also I did not pace myself. So I was not okay. I spent the week writing furiously, and one project turned out really well, and one did not, and also I didn’t finish it. So I am feeling like a giant loser moron, but what are you gonna do.
On the bright side, everybody likes buffalo chicken wraps. I had mine with buffalo chicken, shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, crunchy fried onions, and blue cheese dressing.
That night, I pitted six pounds of cherries, in preparation for some long-anticipated visitors the next day!
When I have a lot of cherries to pit, I always start out by putting them on top of a bottle with a narrow neck, and stabbing the pits out with a chopstick.
After a pound or so, I get annoyed with this technique and just start ripping their hearts out with my fingers, which is honestly just as fast.
I also made two batches of vanilla ice cream. Two eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 cups of heavy cream, and one cup of milk per batch.
Tuesday afternoon our guests arrived! My oldest sister, her son, one of her daughters, and her three kids, whom I have never met! Absolutely lovely kids (ages 3, 2, and 3 months) and we had a really wonderful visit.
Damien smoked three racks of pork ribs, I made a bowl of simple cole slaw, and we had chips and watermelon, and corn grilled in the husk. Absolutely scrumptious.
I never get good pictures of the best foods, because I’m in such a hurry to eat it up. So this is the best pork photo I got, but take my word, it was smoky, spicy, sweet, juicy, and insanely tender.
I bought something called a black watermelon, which turned out to be just a watermelon with a dark green outside, and inside it was extra juicy and had a kind of vanilla taste? Interesting, not outstanding. The kids had fun watching what happens when you offer watermelon to a duck (mayhem).
I didn’t get a pic of the cherry-blueberry crisp with ice cream, but it was yummy. I used this recipe, except I omitted the coconut from the topping. I, uh, made a quintuple recipe.
My nephew, who is a very good sport, especially where goober dogs are concerned, spent the night, and the rest of them stayed in a hotel.
WEDNESDAY Oven fried chicken, raw vegetables, chips, fruit salad
The next day my visiting family had a complicated day of other things to do and places to be, but we saw them again in the afternoon, this time with the addition of another niece I also haven’t seen in quite a while!
raw vegetables, chips, fruit salad (watermelon, strawberry, and mango)
I had been planning mashed potatoes and maybe biscuits, but it was tooooo hot, and a simpler meal was the right call. Nephew spent the night again, and they all left in the morning.
So at one point I said to my niece (remember, she has three kids aged three and under) that she is doing such a great job, and she is such a natural mother. She said, “Oh, well you are seeing me with lots of adults around me to help” — implying that the way she REALLY is as a mother, when she’s alone with the kids, is not so impressive.
Hey! Hey mothers!!! You are supposed to have help! That’s supposed to be the normal thing! Mothers are not supposed to be alone with little kids all day long, doing everything themselves without any other adults! I don’t know what can be done about it, and I sure wish I had had some help myself when I was drowning in babyland. But if that’s you, at least you should know that it’s not how it’s supposed to be, and if you’re struggling, it’s because it’s ridiculously hard. Of course it’s so rewarding and we love our kids so much and we have no regrets, but it’s HARD, and doing it mostly by yourself isn’t what’s best for anyone. So there.
THURSDAY Sloppy Joes, Psych fries, banana splits
Thursday was the day we had the third installment of Kids Make Supper, and Lucy opted to make the crazy stuffed twice-fried pub potatoes they had on Psych, which they’ve been watching this summer. (Which I have never seen, and which turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining show.) I guess they are called “Fries Quatro Queso Dos Fritos,” and I haven’t actually seen the episode, but SOMEBODY ELSE WAS MAKING SUPPER, so I was in favor of it. She found the recipe on Reddit, I think.
Here’s the potatoes with their insides scooped out, stuffed with cheeses:
and I guess you fry them once, and then coat them in something and fry them again?
She forgot to add bacon to the insides, but she did serve them with some kind of peppery sour cream dip.
She wasn’t sure what to make for the main course, but the general vibe seemed to call for Sloppy Joes. Now, Damien and I both grew up avoiding Sloppy Joes with all our might. It was a cafeteria food that you’d see on the weekly menu and decided to bring a bag lunch that day. But I guess Lucy had it at a friend’s house, and was smitten. So I got a few cans of Manwich Sloppy Joe Sauce (HAD TO GO TO THREE STORES FOR THIS DELICACY) which is, as far as I can tell, ketchup. Anyway she fried up some ground beef and mixed in the sauce, and we had kaiser buns.
and I had to admit, it was a . . . .well, it was an insane meal, but actually quite tasty!
I still don’t think I would ever seek out a Sloppy Joe, but it’s not terrible that I know the kids like it, and would be happy to eat it for supper again.
I will be honest, the Psych potato things were kind of underdone, which is an achievement, because of the “twice fried” thing. The concept was there, and they looked good, but the execution was a little off, which is understandable, because it’s an insane recipe. I don’t know if she will make them again, but, hey, KIDS MADE SUPPER.
We don’t usually have dessert during the week (well, unless we have guests), but I suggested banana splits, just because the rest of the meal seemed so absurdly American. So we had chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, topped with something Aldi was calling “Neapolitan bark.”
And that was that!
FRIDAY French toast casserole and eggs?
We have lots of leftover bread in the house, so this seemed wise.
OH it’s so late and I have to go! Goodbye! I love you!
Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.
Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.
In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.
Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.
If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.
If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!
If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.
You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.
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:
1-1/2cupsbrown sugar
1/2cupswhite sugar
2Tbspchili powder
2Tbspgarlic powder
1tspred pepper flakes
1tsppaprika
2Tbspsalt
1Tbspwhite pepper
Instructions
Coat the ribs in yellow mustard and cover them with sugar rub mixture
Smoke at 225 for 3 hours
Take ribs out, make a sort of envelope of tin foil and pour Coke and brown sugar over them. close up the envelope.
so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat
Ingredients
chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
flour
your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
oil and butter for cooking
Instructions
At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.
About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.
While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.
Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.
Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.
Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.
Facebook has only recently started allowing anonymous posts and comments, and several groups I’m a member of are taking it hard. Is it good or bad for the group to let people post without revealing their true names? Not everyone agrees.
The benefits are pretty obvious, especially if it’s the kind of group meant for support and advice. For reference, I’m in groups for mothers of large families, women using natural family planning, Catholic women in perimenopause, women trying to exercise more, parents of diabetic kids and people with backyard ducks. People who post anonymously will frequently open by saying why they’re doing it: because friends or family are in the group, and their situation is private, or often because there’s something they really need to know, but they’re embarrassed to ask. There is a situation they need some insight on, but they’re ashamed that this is their life right now. Or they just need a prayer.
The drawbacks of anonymity are harder to define. Most of the groups I’m in don’t have a problem with people being overtly nasty or threatening while hiding behind anonymity, but the use of anonymity, even for more polite conversation, is still not popular with everybody. Why?
One woman explained it is because people still post asking for support, advice, clarity and prayer, but you never get to know them. You get little snippets of their lives and little fragments of their stories, generally in a time of crisis—and that’s it. Even if there is a follow-up, it won’t include the kind of details about their lives that help us bond with one another. You never get to enjoy one of those indisputably real online friendships that lasts years and years as you learn more and more about each other, and you certainly never win that cherished prize of the internet age: meeting online friends in person. One woman who was arguing that the moderators of one group should disable anonymous commenting said that it is preventing her from building community. The group had the potential to become a band of friends, but it was staying a loosely associated bundle of anonymous problems.
It is an understandable complaint! It is hard to spend the intellectual and emotional energy answering someone’s question when you know the relationship, such as it is, is not going to go anywhere. Interaction with other human beings takes something out of us, and it is normal and human to be more invested when you get something in return—not anything sinister or grasping, just wholesome goods like friendship and camaraderie.
But if you are going to be a member of a group—especially a group that explicitly calls itself Catholic—I think it is good spiritual practice to humbly accept other people’s anonymity, if that’s what they choose. It dovetails very nicely with our doctrine of the Communion of Saints: We are all bound together and responsible for one another, even in situations where there is no obvious or immediate reciprocity. Think of it as social asceticism: praying for the intentions of someone whose name you’ll never know; praying for an intention whose details will never be fleshed out, simply because praying is good and we want to be good.
More than that: I think it is good spiritual practice to accept the idea that, even as we are all bound together as brothers and sisters in Christ, we are all, to one degree or another, strangers to each other. … Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.
The other day, we had a heck of a time getting to Mass. The boring details included three cars, a sick kid, a kid who got sick in a different way on the way to Mass, and multiple texts and multiple trips back and forth to pick up stragglers.
When I was finally headed back to Mass with one final kid, I said I hoped we would make it on time. I had been taught you have to be at Mass for the Gospel reading for it to count as fulfilling your Sunday observation.
“Kind of a weird thing to have a rule about,” the kid said.
I said, “Well, it’s because if they don’t make a rule, people will pull some kind of nonsense like sticking their heads in the door for a minute, and saying they technically went to Mass.”
I told her that, when I was little, I had heard that you couldn’t spend a dollar bill if more than half of it were missing; so I spent a clownishly long time trying to work out how I could cut a bill in two in such a way that each part would be bigger than half, so I could spend them both. (Yes, I was kind of a dumb kid.) I wasn’t thinking about it having some particular value; I just wanted to get away with something.
Well, when we got to the Mass, it was almost the end of the sermon. We didn’t make it in time. And then yet another kid bailed out for complicated reasons, and my husband went to check on her, and the upshot is that very few Fishers were truly at Mass for very long at all.
The more I thought about it, the less it made sense that I could tell by looking at the clock whether or not we had fulfilled our obligation. It is a true obligation, and obligations come with rules; and yet it didn’t feel right to be looking for a rule that had nothing to do with our intentions. So I looked it up and discovered that in fact there is no “cut off” time that makes it “count” or not.
The rule, such as it is, seems to be: “All of the Mass is very good and very important, so get to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation unless you can’t; and be there for all of it, unless you can’t.”
I thought about it some more. (I am still kind of dumb, to be honest.)
I thought, when I was little, I couldn’t solve the riddle of the magically doubling dollar bill because the rules of geometry and the rules against counterfeiting are both pretty inflexible. They have to be, because they were made to protect something that is, in itself, perilously close to nothing. A dollar is just a piece of paper; it’s just an idea in the mind of an economist. It needs rules to make it actually be something. The rules are like an exoskeleton helping to define an amorphous blob.
Happy Friday! Let’s hop to it! Here’s what we had this week:
SATURDAY Leftovers and pizza pockets
Just a regular Saturday, chores and leftovers. I will say, first I had to spend fifty years being an undisciplined slob, but I am finally, finally learning the charms of doing little mundane things the same way at the same time every day — just stuff like feeding the animals, watering my garden, lifting weights, saying my prayers — rather than letting everything slide and then scrambling to catch up in a panic. Not that everything is neat and tidy and under control around here. But I guess I’m feeling like I’ve hit my stride a bit, and it’s really nice!
SUNDAY Tuna noodle for kids, pub food for grownups
For my birthday back in December, Damien gave me tickets to see the incomparable Samantha Crain, and Sunday was the day! So around noon, we took off, and set up a tent in a campground in the DAR State Forest in Goshen.
Actually we set up the tent, started driving to the concert, suddenly realized we had set up in the wrong site,
and sheepishly dragged the tent over to the right spot.
And THEN we went to the concert. It was at The Iron Horse in Northampton, MA, and we had a great dinner. I had some kind of tasty pulled chicken sandwich and fries, and then the show was SO GOOD. The photo I took made it look gross, though, so instead, here is a picture of the wall.
Samantha Crain is the greatest. She is just a tremendous song writer, a tremendous musician, a tremendous singer. She rocked pretty hard for the first part of the show,
and then the drummer and bassist left the stage and she switched gears into a more indie mode.
Both halves of the show were great, just banger after banger. And she sang “Elk City” for the encore, which is the first song I ever heard by her, and it just about wrecks me every time.
I really enjoyed the way The Iron Horse is set up. It’s spacious enough so you don’t feel stifled, but small enough that there aren’t, I don’t think, any bad seats. Acoustics are great, but you also feel like it’s okay to move around and eat your food without being disruptive.
So then we got back to the campsite and decided to walk down to the lake and look at the stars, maybe catch some Perseids. We did see a lot of stars, and then we heard a weird kind of blowing/screaming noise coming from the trees. We weren’t even sure what animal it was, but it was very clearly saying “GO AWAY OR ME KILL YOU” so we scuttled back to the tent! (Pretty sure it was a buck.)
Then we went to bed, and this is the part where we are fifty years old, and I hadn’t been tent camping in about thirty years, and Damien had never been tent camping before, and we were both like, Boy, we are really lying on the actual GROUND, here. The hard, hard, really, really hard, hard actual ground. We had brought three yoga mats and an extra sleeping bag to lie on, but we had underestimated . . . how necessary beds are, I guess. So not a lot of sleep was gotten. But it was still extremely pleasant to start the day in a cool, breezy tent with leaf shadows drifting back and forth overhead, and birdsong all around.
We had brought a coffee machine and battery pack, but couldn’t get it to work, so I sat in the car like a bleary, smelly princess while Damien packed everything up, and we drove off in search of coffee. Stopped at Shelburne Falls and got coffee and muffins, and Damien and I both felt like if we stayed there a minute longer, some crusty old-timer in bib overalls and crinkly smiling eyes was gonna give us a life lesson whether we wanted it or not, and there was a good chance we would get welcomed right off the premises with garden shears or possibly a falling church tower. Good coffee, though.
Despite the terrible sleep, we both enjoyed it enough that we want to go tent camping again soon! As soon as we get a really good air mattress.
MONDAY Cobb salad
Good thing I took pictures of Monday’s meal, because the whole day is a blank to me. We apparently had Cobb salad: Roast chicken in chunks, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, red onion, hard boiled eggs, and avocado in chunks. I substituted shredded cheddar cheese for blue cheese.
Very popular meal.
I think I had mine with ranch dressing, but possibly blue cheese dressing. Keep reading for more thrilling details like me not quite remembering what kind of salad dressing I chose!
Tuesday Damien had to get up early to do his weekly radio spot, so he started a pork shoulder smoking in the morning. I think he ended up smoking it for six or eight hours, and my dears, it was TREMENDOUS.
Sadly, there is not a recipe for this; he just followed his heart with some kind of sugar spice rub and a spray bottle of cider vinegar. He used charcoal and apple wood chunks and babied this thing all day, and it was SO juicy and tender and packed with spicy, smoky flavor inside, with spicy, sweet, sticky charred crust. Amazing.
I had mine on a sandwich with red onions and just a tiny bit of BBQ sauce, which I was hesitant to use because I didn’t want to miss the flavor of the meat.
He grilled a bunch of corn in the husks, and cooked a bunch of tater tots, and this was a VERY popular meal.
That evening, we made the world’s smallest s’mores: Mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and Teddy Grahams, carefully toasted over a birthday candle.
Irene came out, saw what we were doing, and goes, “Okay, be honest. How poor ARE we??” Irene has been making me laugh since before she was born.
But the tiny s’mores party was lots of fun! Clara came by and it was lovely.
and the s’mores were indeed tiny.
I don’t even like s’mores, but gosh, and I love my backyard, and I love my family.
Later in the week when I was at the store, I got normal sized marshmallows, regular graham crackers, and regular chocolate bars, so we can proceed on to normal sized s’mores.
Naturally, the kids are now expecting the next week to feature the world’s biggest s’mores, and there is a very big part of me that wants to pull it off somehow. We did get one of those surprise EBT cards in the mail (even if you don’t qualify for food stamps, they send you a card for summer food expenses if you qualify for free or reduced lunch at school, even if the school your kids go to doesn’t offer lunch anyway, which ours doesn’t!) But the state of the country is such that I kind of want to blow the whole thing on enormous s’mores. Waste, fraud, and abuse s’mores. Abus’mores, if you will. I know there are recipes out there for homemade marshmallow, and a giant graham cracker can’t be too hard to make. Not sure what to do about the giant chocolate. Probably I could just melt a bunch of chocolate into a baking sheet, actually. HMMMM.
WEDNESDAY Pork quesadillas, pico de gallo
The pork shoulder I bought was so big, I knew we would get at least two meals out of it, so meal #2 was pork quesadillas. It turned out only Damien and I and two of the kids actually wanted this. Which is nuts, because it was SCRUMPTIOUS. The melted cheese with the smoky meat was just meltingly delicious.
As you can see, I made pico de gallo. Diced tomatoes and onions, lots of cilantro, lots of fresh lime juice, some minced jalapeños, and some kosher salt. So good.
I cut up a whole onion, but only used about 3/4 of it, so I put the rest in a sandwich bag and thought someone could use it later. Then I put the rest of the ingredients in, and then I was like, “Oh look, there was a bag of onion already cut up! I should have just used that instead of cutting up a whole onion.”
I tell you, life is full of surprises when you spend every day playing hide and seek with your own brain.
THURSDAY Stuffed shells and french bread
Thursday I had a million things to do, but it was also the day we had planned for Benny to do her Kids Make Supper turn. Last week, Corrie made oven fried chicken and mashed potatoes; this week, Benny picked stuffed shells and french bread. She did so great! We started off the bread dough in the early afternoon. Here is my recipe
and let me tell you, when you are watching a novice use one of your recipes, it really brings home how terribly written your recipes are. I guess they are really more suited for people who are used to kind of winging it in the kitchen. Sorry about that!
Anyway, like I said, she did great anyway.
Got four nice long loaves rising, and only one of them was shaped really weird, which is about my record, as well.
Then we started on the stuffed shells, and dang, the way I wrote the recipe was messed up! I fixed it (I hope), so here is that:
She did use fresh basil instead of dried, which is vastly preferable.
I showed her how to stuff the shells, and then I ran out to pick up Corrie from her friend’s house. I didn’t want to be late, so I didn’t stop for gas, even though the “empty” light was on. Smart! So I get there, and it’s further out in the country than I remembered, so I’m like, hmm, I should get some gas. So I ask the map app where there is a gas station, and it’s even further out in the country. At this point, I’m coasting, and I finally get there, and . . . .there is no gas station. It’s just someone’s house. So I retrace my steps, coasting like CRAZY, but at this point Corrie is in the car, so of course we’re talking about what it might mean to switch bodies with a dog, so I was a little distracted and suddenly realized I was in Gilsum. Which is a very pretty town, but really falls down in the area of having gas stations.
But it was gorgeous weather, I don’t have a baby, my phone was charged up, and I was just . . . so unbothered. We did actually make it to a gas station in Keene eventually. I guess this isn’t really a story, huh? It’s kind of an anti-story. Ten years ago, something like this would have ended up with lots of crying, several people wetting their pants, and some kind of encounter with law enforcement, if not a murderous deer. But as it was, we just got home late.
And Benny was just finishing up stuffing the shells! So I cranked up the oven and we baked them for half an hour instead of 45 minutes, and it was absurdly late by the time we ate, but it was very delicious. And she was rightly proud of herself.
Bread was great. We have a pressurized water sprayer Corrie uses to keep up the humidity levels in her turtle tank, and it’s very useful for putting some moisture into the oven when you’re baking french bread. Check out this lovely little fragile crust on the bread.
She did so great! The cheese filling was rich and creamy. The other kids are starting to get enthusiastic about their meals, coming up. I’m very happy with this plan.
FRIDAY Pizza
Just regular old pizza.
Last Friday, though, I made macarona bil laban and I loved it. I think one of the kids liked it, and a few thought it was okayish, and everyone else had plain noodles. So I probably won’t make it for the family again, but I thought it was so tasty, and it came together in like twelve minutes.
Most of the recipes I found called for meat, so I just read a bunch and winged it. I cooked a few pounds of farfalle, and browned up a bunch of minced garlic in a lot of butter. I added the garlic butter to the yogurt sauce and stirred in some lime juice, aleppo pepper, and green za’atar, which is kind of a weird combination, but it worked! So I drained the noodles and mixed them up with the yogurt sauce, and then topped the whole thing with the toasted pine nuts (dry toasted in the microwave) and more chopped mint.
Absolute comfort food. So yummy.
My mother would have adored this dish. I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t really get into experimenting with cooking until after my parents died, because they really would have liked some of these dishes! We did have my father over for dinner shortly before he died, and we had some kind of shrimp scampi, which I remember him loving. You can have a really complicated relationship with someone and still get a lot of pleasure out of cooking them a meal.
Heck, you can get a lot of pleasure out of cooking a meal that a dead person with whom you’ve had a complicated relationship would have enjoyed, for some reason. What do you know about that? Oh death. O life! Mehr licht. S’more licht, if you will.
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
4-1/2cups warm water
1/4cupsugar
2Tbspactive dry yeast
5tspsalt
1/4cupolive or canola oil
10-12cupsflour
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.
Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.
Just a basic recipe. You can add meat to the sauce or spinach to the cheese, or anything that strikes your fancy. Serves about 10.
Ingredients
212-oz boxesjumbo shells
232-oz tubsricotta cheese
8ozgrated parmesan cheese
4cupsshredded mozzarella, divided
4eggs, beaten
1Tbspgarlic powder
2Tbspdried basil
1Tbspsalt
1tsppepper
1/2tspnutmeg
4-5cupspasta sauce
Instructions
Cook the shells in salted water, drain, and rinse in cool water. Mix them up with a little olive oil so they don't stick together. Or if you will be using them soon, let them stay in the pot of cool water.
Preheat the oven to 350. Mix into the ricotta cheese all the seasoning, the beaten eggs, the parmesan, and 3 of the cups of mozzarella, setting aside the rest of the mozzarella.
Spread a little sauce in the bottom of an oven-proof pan or dish. Spoon a few tablespoons of the cheese filling into each shell and lay the stuffed shells close together.
Top with the rest of the pasta sauce, and sprinkled the remaining mozzarella on top of that. Cover loosely with foil and cook for 45 minutes or longer, until it's bubbly.
We have four adolescent ducks who have grown out of their brooder box and it’s warm enough outside that they can play in the yard during the day.
They’re getting along well with the older ducks, and it’s great to see them having a bit more freedom, growing bolder, and discovering the wonders of the wider world.
Also, last night my husband ended up wading through the still-frigid stream to rescue these same imbeciles, who somehow managed to cross to the other shore by themselves but couldn’t cross back.
They got back indoors, wet, upset, and decidedly lacking in affectionate feelings. Back in the box they went, with fresh cedar shavings and a nice heat lamp to take the chill off, a bowl of their special food, and a little tub of water, which they immediately stomped through and pooped in.
I don’t know if we would have been better parents if we had tried to raise ducks first, but I do know we’re better duck handlers because we’ve raised so many kids. Here are a few of the things we’ve learned, that could apply to raising young’un in both the family anatidae or the family hominidae.
Don’t go it alone. Ask for help from people with more experience, or at least listen in while they talk to each other. There’s no reason to assume you just naturally know how to do this. Why would you?
But also, there’s no reason to feel bad for not knowing how to do this. There definitely some wrong ways to do this, but there are lots and lots of different kind of right ways. …. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Happy Friday! This week, we launched something I’ve been wanting to do for years: Kids Make Supper. That’s the snappiest name I can think of, but the concept is sufficiently thrilling to me. The kids all kinda sorta know how to cook and bake, but I wanted them know how to to plan and make an entire meal for the family. So this week, we started! With Corrie, whose natural habitat is the kitchen.
SATURDAY Leftovers with French bread pizza
I honestly have no memory of Saturday. I suppose we went shopping. I remember making like three extra stops, but I forget why.
Oh you know what, we had a great dessert, though, because I planned in advance! We had cherry-blueberry crisp with rhubarb ice cream.
It never turned red, but it was definitely ripe. I made two batches of rhubarb ice cream more or less following this recipe from Zoë Bakes, except rather than reserving some of the rhubarb mix as a sauce to pour on top, I just folded it in to the ice cream after it came out of the machine.
I also pitted a bunch of cherries. I had bought something like eight pounds of cherries because they were $2.49 a pound and I was powerless to do otherwise.
Here’s what your hands look like if you’re having a good July: Garden dirt under your nails, cherry juice on your fingers.
In retrospect, maybe I should have cleaned my nails before I started pitting cherries, but ah, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? (P.S. this line expresses one of the dumbest ideas ever. I just want that on the record.)
So I did those things on Friday night, and then on Saturday afternoon, it was super quick to put together a cherry-blueberry crisp. The last few times I attempted a fruit crisp, it was definitely fruit, but definitely not crisp; so I tried a recipe with oats, and it turned out GREAT.
The recipe calls for shredded coconut on the topping, but not everyone here likes coconut, so I skipped that. It was perfect as is. Mayyyybe a tiny bit too sweet, but nobody was complaining. The tart rhubarb ice cream really set off the juicy, syrupy fruit, and it was truly everything a summer dessert should be. I was very pleased.
There’s enough rhubarb left on the plant to make one other thing, but I haven’t decided what, yet.
I see from my camera roll that we also went to the pond on Saturday! Here is Benny catching a water lily I tossed to her.
Oh what a life.
SUNDAY Grilled pork chops, smoked chicken wings, grilled corn on the cob
Damien is still learning the ropes of his new (to him) grill, which has a charcoal part, a propane part, AND a smoker. AND it’s next to the patio, which is nice! His old grill (the late great Interchangeable Cinder Block Meat Altar Situation) was marooned way off on the other side of the yard under the trees, and it was lonely.
It’s under a tarp here, but you can see the new location. And see my pretty patio! Lots of stuff blooming, including a bunch of violas that seeded themselves in the cracks between the bricks; and lots about to bloom.
Sunday we were supposed to go to the ocean, but one kid after another got sick. And each one was sick with a separate thing! Amazing. So we decided to be smart and stay home, and Damien grilled and smoked a bunch of meat and corn in the husk.
I don’t think I’ve ever had grilled pork chops before. Man, they were delicious. Excellent spicy crust outside, juicy inside.
For the pork, he made a marinade of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and a few tablespoons of brown sugar, garlic powder, salt an pepper.
For the chicken wings, he made a sugar rub with lots of cayenne pepper and paprika, and then smoked them for a few hours; then he slathered them with BBQ sauce and grilled them long enough to make them sticky. SO GOOD.
On Sunday, we also set up the tent Damien got last year for $5. It hadn’t been out of the bag yet, so we had no idea what to expect.
It’s very nice! Much more spacious on the inside than it looked like it would be, and it’s just a very pleasant design, and does not smell weird or anything.
It does have a rain fly; we just hadn’t put it on yet in this picture. Damien and I have both been tent camping before, but not together, so we’re going to do that this weekend.
MONDAY Oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes MADE BY CORRIE
Corrie’s big cooking day! She really did it 90% on her own. I just supervised and clarified, and occasionally demonstrated.
First she made an egg, milk, salt, and pepper mixture for the chicken, and let that soak for a while.
Several hours later, she peeled a bunch of potatoes, cut them into smaller pieces, and left them in a pot of cool water. Then she preheated the oven and put a stick of butter and a cup of oil in it.
Then she added spices to flour and dredged all the chicken in it
and carefully added the floured chicken, skin side down, to the hot pan of butter and oil. Then she started boiling the potatoes.
About half an hour later, when it was sufficiently browned on the bottom, she flipped it.
She did need some help for this part, because we were making so much chicken that you really had to get your whole arm into the hot oven, and it was tricky.
While the other side of the chicken was cooking, she drained the cooked potatoes (again, I helped with this, because she’s just ten and that was a big pot!) and added milk and butter, salt and pepper to the potatoes, and mashed them.
And then the chicken was done, and she served her meal!
She was very proud of herself, and rightly so. Everything was delicious. And because it was her meal, we had No Vegetable.
We went to the pond Monday evening, too! Lovely spot, and there was only one other family there, and for some reason they left when it started raining.
TUESDAY Koren beef bowl, cucumber salad
Tuesday we somehow had three separate medical appointments that couldn’t be rescheduled, so we divode and conquered. More or less.
Got home, made a quick and tasty meal of Korean beef bowl
and it was nice. I did take the time to use fresh garlic and ginger, which really pays off.
This photo was taken on top of the hamper in my bedroom, which leads me to believe I was hiding from my family.
WEDNESDAY BLTs, salt and vinegar chips, sharky fruit salad, ice cream pie
A birthday! A birthday for Lucy. She and Sophia and Irene made a couple of ice cream pies. One was a pineapple, for the TV show Psych (?) and I guess one was Homer
and because she didn’t want a cake this year, I decided to make the most festive fruit salad I could think of:
I tried to make those banana dolphins, but the bananas were so ripe, the snouts kept falling off. She still liked it, though.
All the kids got her weird and thoughtful presents and feted her throughout the day, and it was a nice time.
Happy birthday, my deary dear.
Wednesday night, we had a little tragedy, though. Bebe the duck never came home with the others. We tromped around in the dark for a while looking for her, but there was no trace. We hoped maybe she just wandered too far and was holing up under some leaves somewhere, but it did not seem likely.
THURSDAY Caprese chicken burgers, chips
Thursday we looked again for Bebe, but I guess she’s just gone. Probably a coyote took her. Poor Bebe, she was my favorite. All ducks carry on and make a ruckus for no reason, but Bebe elevated this to incredible levels. She was the loudest, rowdiest, silliest, bossiest, nuttiest duck ever, and I will really miss her!
Here she is, executing a classic Bebe move of wandering off from the flock, yelling at them, getting stuck in some branches, and then falling into the water.
I hope she bit the hell out of whatever caught her.
So on Thursday, I drove out to Spofford to pick up some SLATE. I am still a brick girl at heart, but gosh, slate is beautiful.
I am going to use it to pave the area in front of the front door. It’s a similar process to laying bricks for the patio, but it’s a much smaller area, and the pieces of slate are much bigger than bricks, so I’m lying to myself that it’s going to be a simple and fast project.
While I was gone, Damien and the kids got supper together. My garden is making SO much basil, it’s wonderful.
I thanked Damien for always being so supportive of my projects, and he said, “I love your projects. Everything you do either increases the property value, or makes it completely unsellable.” And he’s right! Sounds perfect to me.
I forgot to put the fruit salad away overnight and it’s been incredibly hot in the house all week, so I just fed the leftovers to the ducks. They were understandably slow to warm up to it., but eventually they ate it. The thing about ducks is, eventually they will eat everything.
FRIDAY Macarona bil laban
Something new! I saw a reel of this and it looked tasty. I haven’t settled on a specific recipe yet, but it’s pasta in a garlicky yogurt sauce with fresh mint, with toasted pine nuts on top. It’s often served with spiced ground beef, but I’m just doing the meatless version for today. Prolly gonna make some plain pasta, too, so people have options.
We had an exciting moment when my daughter texted us about a lost duckling at a local store
but by the time we texted back to say we would take it, Fish and Game had located the rest of the flock and reunited the family. Which is obviously the best outcome, but we’re a little disappointed. But then Damien pointed out that it’s a wild duck and would just fly away when its wings grew in, anyway! Our domesticated ducks are not built to fly, so we don’t have to clip their wings or anything. So, all for the best. Still. Le sigh. That is the other thing about ducks: Ducks come, and ducks go. Le sigh.
Anyway, I think I’m gonna try digging up my garlic and see if it’s done yet. If it is, I’ll make supper with it! What a joy to cook with home-grown food.
Also, wish us luck for our camping trip on Sunday! And look at us, trying new things in our old age! I didn’t expect that, but I’m digging it. But yes, we are going to bring a power pack and a coffee machine. Because we are old.
so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat
Ingredients
chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
flour
your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
oil and butter for cooking
Instructions
At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.
About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.
While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.
Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.
Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.
Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.
A very quick and satisfying meal with lots of flavor and only a few ingredients. Serve over rice, with sesame seeds and chopped scallions on the top if you like. You can use garlic powder and powdered ginger, but fresh is better. The proportions are flexible, and you can easily add more of any sauce ingredient at the end of cooking to adjust to your taste.
Ingredients
1cupbrown sugar (or less if you're not crazy about sweetness)
1cupsoy sauce
1Tbspred pepper flakes
3-4inchesfresh ginger, minced
6-8clovesgarlic, minced
3-4lb2ground beef
scallions, chopped, for garnish
sesame seeds for garnish
Instructions
In a large skillet, cook ground beef, breaking it into bits, until the meat is nearly browned. Drain most of the fat and add the fresh ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the meat is all cooked.
Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes the ground beef and stir to combine. Cook a little longer until everything is hot and saucy.
Serve over rice and garnish with scallions and sesame seeds.
What would you do if you knew the world would end tomorrow?
Some people would probably go the “orgy of worldly pleasures” route. Loot the stores, max out all the credit cards, drink yourself blind, and bed anyone you can, because tomorrow we die. I hope nobody reading this finds that even vaguely appealing.
Some people would probably say it’s best to head to the church, go to confession, receive Communion, and then spend your final hours in penance and fasting, using up your last chance to stave off God’s just punishments. I can’t really argue with this, but I also can’t claim this is what I would do (except for the confession part. Always go to confession!).
So what would I do?
The other day I read a post on social media that said: “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.” This is a paraphrase of a quote often attributed to Martin Luther, but there’s not really any evidence he said it, and it doesn’t really sound like him to me.
What it did sound like is the kind of whimsical, glitter-tossing sentiment that generally makes me roll my eyes. Something along the lines of “Dance like nobody’s watching” or “Angels are just teddy bears with wings” (an actual bumper sticker I saw one time, which still haunts and baffles me).
But the more I thought about it, the better I think it is. Possibly the best possible answer to the question, “What would you do?”
Don’t think of it as a statement of brainless optimism, sassily tra-la-laing in the face of reality because you are a magical being that dances like nobody’s watching and then posts about it on Instagram before everything goes black, and we are supposed to find this in some way beautiful.
Don’t take it that way. Think of it instead as doing your Father’s work.
Happy Friday! This will be the shortest WFS post known to man, because I have had and continue to have SO much to do. But I just had to share something.
This morning, I woke up, started the coffee, let the dog out, fed the ducks, collected eggs, fed the dog and the cat, cleaned up a mess the cat had made, looked at an oil bill, and then went into the kitchen to take my meds. And here is what I saw:
and I laughed so hard the dog came over to see what was up. DEAL W/ UR OWN BEANS, said the child who cleaned the kitchen last night. And you know what, they were my beans, and I hadn’t dealt with them! I was rushing around and looking for some quick protein for lunch, so I had half a can of beans, and I forgot to recycle the can. It happens that I overheard this child complaining about this last night, and they also has some pretty hard feelings about the way I bought fruit, even though fruit attracts fruit flies.
And that is how it came to pass that a teenager who lives in my house had the inconceivable experience of having to clean up someone else’s mess. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THAT WOULD BE LIKE, CAN YOU????
They don’t realize it now, but I’ve given them a great gift: The chance to feel self-righteous. That really is what makes the world go ’round. I get annoyed that my husband doesn’t turn off lights, and he gets annoyed that I don’t put towels in the laundry. I snap at my kids for leaving ice pop wrappers all over the place, and they roll their eyes at me for not dealing with my own beans. We’re like the island where the entire economy is based on taking in each other’s laundry, except everyone is mad about it. And then the cat throws lentils all over the place, because he’s just trying to do his job.
The good news is, there’s plenty of summer left! I just asked the kids what they were doing on Sunday, thinking we could do a day trip to the ocean if they were free, and they answered with such hostile suspicion that I decided . . . well obviously we’re going to the ocean. I love the ocean. Maybe they’ll have beans there.
Anyway, how are you? We had a big, superfun party here last Friday, which is why I didn’t do a WFS that day. In the morning, I went to Millie’s memorial service, and her sister, who is also a tiny, wiry, white-haired, bright-eyed taker of no crap, got up and told a story about the time Millie went to meet her boyfriend’s family and went to cut a pickle, and it flew off the plate and landed right in the grandfather’s lap. I brought a little bouquet with the peonies I had stored in the fridge as buds during peony season, and that was that. Requiescat in pace, my friend.
Then the party! Lots of family and friends came, Damien grilled hot dogs, hamburgers, smoked chicken thighs,
and brats, and we had millions of chips and millions of sodas, Benny made square brownies that looked round
and I made 18 cups of Shine, Perishing Republic Jell-o
I also made 15 pounds of this potato salad from Sip and Feast and ate most of it myself. You have to brine it overnight before adding the mayo, and it was a pain in the tuchus, but I gotta say, that was not a bland potato salad, and the texture was great. Would make again. I did add hard-boiled eggs and chopped celery, because I like that.
We had vegetable platters with dip, and tons of watermelon, and people brought fruit salad, a more German-style potato salad, and a lovely tabouli salad. And we had ice cream, and I bought uhhh 10.5 pounds of candy. And we rented the cotton candy machine again! I got sticky all the way up to my armpits, but it was so much fun. Couldn’t find temporary tattoos OR face paint, so I got edible paint meant for cakes, and it certainly does cling to the skin, it certainly does! My sister brought sparkler and fireworks and we had glowsticks and pool time, the little guys enjoyed the sandbox, and maybe best of all, people brought musical instruments.
And it didn’t rain! It almost always rains on our July parties, but this day was sunny and breezy, just perfect. A lovely day, including THREE babies. Here’s a bunch of pics on Facebook if you’d like to see.
We dearly missed family that couldn’t make it, but like I said, there’s plenty of summer left.
Then the Sunday we had leftovers, and then Monday, Damien cooked some food I bought that we didn’t cook; and then Tuesday, we had Aldi pizza. On Wednesday, I shredded up the leftover chicken and made quesadillas, and on Thursday, I went shopping and got ingredients for Italian sandwiches. Which I did not take a picture of, but I did take a picture of the lovely basil I gathered from the garden.
I have been assiduously pinching off any hint of a blossom, and it’s paying off! Or maybe it’s just a good year for basil. Either way, usually my basil gets all leggy, but this year I have four lovely basil bushes.
What else is new? I got a haircut. One of the ducks (Faye) died. We saw Superman and the kids liked it but I thought it was meh. The 10.5 pounds of candy are mostly gone, except for a few Tootsie Rolls and seven or eight mini boxes of Dots.
Today we are having spaghetti and Damien has promised to take the kids to the pond. I have so so so much work to do (I’d been telling myself I had one big project due in July and one in August, which is true; but it turns out one is due July 28 and one is due August 1.
Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit.
Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked.
Anastassia Cassady doesn’t have one particular style of painting — and that’s kind of her style.
Cassady, 35, who sometimes goes by her childhood nickname of “Tess,” is a painter, iconographer, mother of three young children, part-time high school art teacher, and something of a hurricane of words and ideas.
“I don’t have a personality disorder!” she said. “But I feel like there’s so much going on in my life, that to sit down and be in the same headspace every day would make me feel like a copy machine.”
Instead, she leans into what she calls her “erratic nature of switching styles.”
Her sister, a photographer and co-owner of an art gallery, says she can always spot Cassady’s work, though, because of her trademark color palette.
“The deep colors, the reds, the golds, that would have been in pysanky and in icons” are in all of Cassady’s works.
Cassady grew up in South Bend, Indiana, in a house heavily influenced by her Ukrainian mother.
“We had icons everywhere, in an age when icons weren’t cool,” she said.
She and her five siblings grew up making pysanky, the intricate, jewel-toned traditional wax-resist Ukrainian Easter eggs, every year.
“All Lent, that was our penance on Fridays: water, bread and pysanky,” she said.
Cassady, an Eastern-rite Catholic who is a parishioner at both the local Ukrainian church and the cathedral in South Bend, has worked hard to instill a sense of Ukrainian heritage in her own children — and also to retain a sense of humor about the faith she learned from her parents. She recalled the evening when her father, a convert, once again tried to corral his kids to say family prayers, waving away their excuses and hollering at them to sit down.
“He played in the NFL; he was a big guy. But he had a soft reading voice, and he would say, ‘And the angel of the Lord declared to Mary –‘”
A sudden burst of flatulence, courtesy of her brother, interrupted the angel’s words. Their father finished the thought: “WOULD YOU SHUT THE H*** UP?”
“He tried so hard to push this piety on us. We ate him alive,” she laughed.
This push and pull between the sacred and the lighthearted seems to be another hallmark of Cassady’s work. A family portrait she painted is something of a puzzle, including dozens of references to various artists. Her watercolor of St. Benedict, one of the illustrations from the 2023 book “Saints: A Family Story,” shows him relatively young, his head mere inches away from the feathers of an incoming raven. Even her icons, which she writes with careful adherence to tradition, have a blithe feel to them.
Fresh it may be, but her work is not careless; it is born of hard-won skill. Cassady teaches her students at Trinity School at Greenlawn, where every student learns art history and studio art, how to master tools and techniques in a methodical way, and how to put them to use with intention, with a thorough foundation of art history.
“It’s not just about ‘expressing themselves,’” she said. “If you want to express yourself, you have to understand the process, the technicalities.”
Cassady wishes some priests, especially those choosing artwork for their parishes, had taken art history in seminary. They have good intentions, but many have never been formed aesthetically.
“People just kind of streamline one style as beautiful. They just want to go back to neoclassical,” she said. But that just won’t work if the building is more suited to cubist art, or art deco.
She will argue with potential clients if she doesn’t like their ideas, and has turned down some large commissions because experience tells her the project as requested would look awful.
Cassady has high standards for herself, as well. One rule she keeps: As long as she’s working on a piece of secular art, she also has to be working on an icon.
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