Uncategorized – SIMCHA FISHER

What’s for supper? Vol. 479: It is Monday, my dudes

Sorry for not getting this out on Friday! But I assure you, it is Monday. I can tell because I’m on my backup to the backup computer, and it took my all weekend to figure out how to persuade it that I UNDERSTAND simchafisher.com is a suspicious website, but I really do want to go there anyway. Hope this finds you same.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m living in a somewhat preachy folk tale where the slovenly vegetable-hating housewife gets taught a lesson by the fairies, and, through a complete deprivation of fresh vegetables, she comes to understand just how much she really actually enjoyed fresh vegetables. Except the fairy in this case is RFK Jr., and, instead of magic, he uses, well, sorry about that mental image. What I’m trying to say is, I picked some lettuce from my garden and I’m going to eat it for lunch, and I am EXCITED.

It alternated between very hot and pouring rain last week. It turns out that when it’s really hot outside, and I can’t make salads, I just make various kinds of sandwiches. Here is what we had last week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers plus pizza and loaded potato skins

‘Twas another super long shopping turn with multiple side quests and pick-ups and drop-offs, but I must have had some steam left when we got back, because I did a little harvesting of the last of the rhubarb, plus some lupine seeds from my most magnificent lupine beast, and some zinnias and wildflowers.

Big year for Queen Anne’s Lace! It is everywhere, and very tall.

I also dug up the rest of the garlic, because I was tired of thinking about it.

We lost a duck on Saturday. It was poor little Dolly, the one who struggled to get out of his egg, and who never really caught on how to live right. Poor thing! He did have lots of companionship his whole life and had a fine share of sunshine, grubs, green grass, fresh water, and butterflies. Vaya con Dios, Dolly, you little dope. Sorry we thought you were a girl when we named you.

A few days later, another duck went missing. Sometimes they go on adventures and spend the night outside, but this one hasn’t come back yet, so it’s not looking hopeful. These are the perils of having free range ducks. I think it’s still the best life for them, because they have the stream and the woods and so much mud and tasty bugs at their disposal, but there are perils!

That evening, Benny and I went paddling out on the pond. I left my camera in the car, so just imagine the New Hampshirest thing you can imagine as the sun goes down.

We were planning to explore the little St. Francis chapel on the other side of the water, but someone was doing a maternity photo shoot, which I was fairly slow to catch on to, oh well. Sorry, lady.

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, chips

Sunday after Mass I finally got the rest of the garlic hung up to cure

and chopped up and froze the rhubarb. This time I remembered to string it first!

Then I made a little progress on Corrie’s treehouse! This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to real carpentry. A treehouse built around a single tree needs four diagonal braces to support the platform, and the braces need to be cut to fit inside the corner of the frame.

This is my first one. I ended up getting better as I went! But they all seem to be doing the trick. I used my little Japanese pull saw, which I love.

It looks a little Dr. Seussy, but that’s to be expected. (I did add some nails to the bottom end after I took this picture!)

For supper, I asked Elijah to roast some chicken breasts with olive oil, salt and pepper, and Irene to cut up some tomatoes, and then I picked a bunch of basil and made a balsamic vinegar reduction — super simple, just two cups of balsamic vinegar and one cup of brown sugar, simmered until it was about half the volume.

Cut up some mozzarella and some baguettes, and it was yummo.

I hope I remember to do a balsamic reduction and grill some peaches, when the peaches are finally ripe! That will be lovely with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Gosh, I was busy on Sunday. At some point during the day, I baked some brownies and some lemon squares, because after supper, when it got dark, it was OPERA NITE. We watched the 1987 Met production of Turandot, which none of us has ever seen before. It has Luciano Pavarotti and is conducted by James Levine, with incredibly lush, intricate sets by Zeffirelli. I didn’t recognize the other names, but it was Eva Marton as Turandot, and her voice and presence were wonderful; but even with the spectacular costumes, we struggled a bit with accepting her as the most beautiful princess in the world. But Leona Mitchell as Liu was heartbreakingly good.

Unfortunately, my kids are simply too Gen Z to be able to tolerate the whole “Ping, Pang, Pong” thing going on in Turandot, and they also felt like Turandot was justified in killing everybody and keeping all her subjects in fear of torture constantly? So it was not especially well received. Oh well! They did like the snacks, and we watched it outside on the projector, which is fun. The actual moon, nearly full, was rising just as they were singing, “Perché tarda la luna?” so that was lovely.

We watched Act One, had a break for cheese and crackers

watched Act Two, had a break for brownies and lemon squares

and watched Act Three. It’s only about two hours in total. And that was Opera Nite! Another summer goal checked off the list.

MONDAY
Beach food and McDonald’s

Monday we went to the ocean! Everyone made a sandwich and I packed up a bunch of chips and cherries, cookies and soda, and we went to dear old Hampton Beach. Perfect weather, sparkly water, decent waves. Everyone went in, and Corrie and I stayed in, and then uhhhh we almost drowned. This has actually been causing me a medium amount of anguish, because I’m having trouble sleeping because my arm hurts, and while I’m awake, my mind keeps replaying the scary part in the water over and over. I’m making progress! My siblings gave me some good tips for how to integrate what happened into my life, so it’s not just this chaotic scary thing that I can’t handle, but something that happened and turned out okay. But still, yeesh.

What happened is we were out past the breakers, still shallow enough where we could touch bottom, and we were having a lovely time, bobbing up and down with the waves and periodically checking our position to make sure we weren’t getting pulled past this outcropping of jaggedy rocks. I truly felt like a little kid again, and was so happy and carefree, and Corrie was just in absolute bliss. Then suddenly Corrie goes, “Hey, the rocks are right there!” and dang, they were, and dang, we were suddenly a lot closer to them than we had been, and DANG, we COULDN’T GET AWAY FROM THEM.

Corrie had a boogie board, so I grabbed her hand and told her to hold on to the board, and we kicked together. Every time a wave came, I shouted, “Let’s kick!” and we did, but we didn’t make any progress at all. My feet and hands were hot and I started panting and swallowing water, and I was getting tired so, so fast. Corrie was just excited and having a good time, and I didn’t want to freak her out, so I just kept saying, “We need to kick!” I waved my arm in between waves while holding her hand with the other one, but I kept swallowing water, and every time I turned around, the rocks were closer.

THEN, this beautiful, serene water nymph in red appeared. She put an orange torpedo buoy in my hands and told me to hang on, and someone else was on the way. Then yes, a second beautiful, serene water nymph appeared and put a buoy in Corrie’s hands. And they just towed us right in. They kept telling me to hold on with both hands, but I could not get myself to let go of Corrie. I have had this dream, you see, probably twenty times over the last few decades, where I am with a child in the ocean, and we’re holding hands, and a wave comes, and … I let go. Then the wave recedes, and it leaves a shining empty beach, and the child is gone.

So, sorry, ladies, I did not let go, and probably that impeded our rescue, but anyway, this time I didn’t let go.

Feaking ocean. I still love you, but sheesh. I guess that was a rip current. I’ve read this sign many, many, times

but when we were in the middle of it, I wasn’t thinking “oh, this must be a rip current. Good thing I know my options!” I was thinking “AGGGGGGGGG ::splut splut:: Oh AIEEEEEEE ::spit sputter:: AUGGGGGGG.” So, thank God for those lifeguards! They really appeared out of nowhere like divine apparitions, and they were so calm and kind, and as soon as we were on our feet and made sure we were okay, they just went back to work.

Corrie just thought the whole thing was neat. I let Damien put me in a chair and wrap me in a towel and I cried a bit, then ate a bunch of cherries. I was so shaken up. I’ve been struggling a bit with “but what if I die?” thoughts lately, because of my upcoming surgery, and this did not help!

Anyway, we went to the arcade and then got some beach snacks (I opted for a snow cone)

In the pic, I am wearing the bracelet Damien won for me at Ski Ball. Then we drove part way home, stopped for McDonald’s, and went the rest of the way home. What a to-do, my goodness.

TUESDAY
Burgers and fries

Tuesday it rained most of the day, and I was so glad we had gotten to the beach while the weather was good. I spent a good long time sorting Benny and Corrie’s outgrown clothes. Bagged ’em up and immediately found someone on a buy nothing group who wanted them.

Usually we are kind of the end of the line, clotheswise, and by the time we’re done with something, absolutely nobody wants anything to do with it; but Benny had a LOT of clothes! I didn’t even recognize some of them. Clothes just flow through our house in a never ending river.

Even though it was raining, Damien grilled the burgers, and I just made a big batch of frozen fries, and I took this ultra glamorous photo

And that is finally the very last of the burgers I got for July 4th! Phew. That was a lot of burgers.

WEDNESDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps, corn and zucchini salad

Wednesday it was absolutely pouring rain all day. Tremendous amounts of rain. I had a doctor’s appointment that was like “you are taking your meds wrong and are just asking for uterine cancer, and your blood pressure has crept up again, and we are out of meds for your reflux so I’ll order an endoscopy, but not until after your brain surgery, but in the mean time, here is a PT referral for your frozen shoulder.” I didn’t even get a sticker! Oh well, at least I didn’t drown.

So I got home and heated up some chicken tenders, and for a side dish I made a little salad. I cut up a few zucchini into spears and seared them in olive oil

then did the same for some leftover corn cut off the cobs. Then I mixed it with Taijin seasoning and red onion.

Really could have used some fresh cilantro, but it was pretty good.

I took a truly terrible picture of supper (we had the chicken with buffalo sauce and pepper jack cheese on tortillas)

and that was Wednesday.

THURSDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, baked potatoes, watermelon

It being the end of the month, I suddenly realized I have a job, and spent most of the day writing furiously. In the morning, I hacked up a pork shoulder and started pulled pork cooking in the Instant Pot. Here is my recipe for that:

Jump to Recipe

I didn’t find the apple juice, so I used ginger ale, and it turned out nice. This is your reminder that you can use your standing mixer to shred cooked meat, and it takes about four seconds.

An hour before supper, I threw a bunch of potatoes in the oven. When they were done, I toasted some buns, cut up some red onions, cut up a bunch of watermelon, and we had yummy sandwiches.

Not sure if you can tell, but it was still raining. I was sitting under a tree and just decided to be wet. It is summer and I am going to eat outdoors, dammit!

FRIDAY
Pizza

I also spent Friday furiously writing, and miraculously got everything turned in that I really needed to! I did forget to take the pizza dough out of the freezer, so after adoration I just bought some thawed pizza dough and, this may surprise you, but then I made some pizza. And very good it is, pizza.

Okay, phew that’s it!

Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Cut pork into hunks. Season heavily with salt and pepper.
Heat oil in heavy pot and brown pork on all sides.
Move browned pork into Instant Pot or slow cooker or dutch oven. Add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook slowly for at least six hours.
When pork is tender, shred.

Body weight

Remember the Shake Weight? Remember the Abdominizer? Remember the Ab Roller, ThighMaster, Bowflex Xtreme?

Once we believed all we had to do was buy this stuff, set it up, and inevitably proceed to become ripped, buff, jacked, swole, or achieve buns of steel, possibly for only five easy payments of $19.99.

Maybe we tried these gimmicks for a while, and they were good for a while. Then they got boring, then they got wretched, then they went under the bed to gather dust. Sic transit gloria ThighMaster.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying equipment to help you get more fit. Some of it is actually really effective. But as someone who recently bought, failed to use, and then threw away a knock-off version of that ridiculous weighted hula hoop, I will tell you what I already knew in my heart: It’s not the equipment. It’s me.

External stuff I can buy and use is not what is going to change my life. What will change my life is (a) doing the thing and (b) continuing to do it. That’s one of the reasons why I return, again and again, to the simplest exercises: The ones that take advantage of my own body weight.

Broadly, this category of exercise is called “calisthenics,” and it just means you’re working against your own self, and gravity. It’s very easy to adjust the difficulty of the resistance you’re using, because it’s just . . . you. You vs. you; and you, as equipment, are automatically tailored to you, for better or for worse. No app or monitor or sensor could possibly do a better job of calibrating a suitable volume for you to work against, than you just being who you are, and deciding to go from there, and keep going.

Well, as you may have guessed, I’m talking about physical fitness, but I’m really talking about spiritual fitness, and there are a NUMBER of directions you could take this idea in.

You could think about how grace builds on nature, and the Holy Spirit prompts you to develop the gifts you already innately have, to become who you’re supposed to be. Or you could think about how, at the end of the protracted workout routine called human life, all extraneous gimmickry will be stripped away, and you will stand alone before God who will judge your fitness only and solely as you qua you.

Let’s instead take a gentler road. … Read the rest of my latest column for The Pillar (paid content).

Image from DoD (public domain) via Picryl

What’s for supper? Vol. 478: Accidental pork fried candy

Happy Friday! This was not an illustrious week for us, food-wise, or really in any way, but at least it’s Friday.

FRIDAY
Ice cream, then tuna noodle

Friday we did go see the Bellows Falls petroglyphs in the late afternoon, as planned. I’m more skeptical than I was that they are really ancient — at very least, I’m quite sure they’ve been touched up by more modern hands — but they’re still mysterious and beautiful, and we had a great time.

Irene, as usual, discovered a more direct route, while Benny, Corrie, Damien, and I wandered around and ended up having to scramble up a ridiculously steep rock face to see the glyphs.

We hung out for a while and enjoyed being there and seeing stuff. Benny did briefly make her Blue Steel face, but I am not authorized to share it, so instead here is us looking normal on the rocks.

Then the first group also found an easier route back up to the road, while Damien, Corrie, and I uhhhhh kind of almost died trying to force our way through a more direct path.

We all earned some ice cream, so we stopped at Dari Joy, then made our way back and had some tuna noodle or frozen pizza.

SATURDAY
Leftovers and taquitos

Saturday turned into the world’s longest shopping trip, and I forget why. I guess Benny needed clothes and Lucy needed to be picked up from work and I needed to go to confession, AND we needed food. Yeah, that’s what did it!

Leftover delite, plus taquitos. That night, I baked Lucy’s birthday cake so I could decorate it on Sunday.

SUNDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips; birthday cake

After Mass, I went on a spur-of-the-moment quest for a FREE SPINNING WHEEL.

I am not 100% sure if it’s an actual spinning wheel or a decorative replica. If it is real, it obviously has some pieces missing. But the wheel moves smoothly and it has been put together with care and without the use of metal hardware, so it’s a lovely piece regardless. This will be for Clara, so she can spin straw into gold, and/or donate it to the local theater troupe as a prop. Yay!

Then I made another batch of frozen coffee in the slushy machine. I think we have settled into a routine where Damien makes cappuccinos on Sundays through the winter, and I make coffee slushies on Sundays through the summer. This is called complementarity, and speaking of which, happy NFP awareness week to you. I am celebrating by not reading any of the articles where people daringly reveal the brand new information that NFP is HARD, because of CIRCUMSTANCES, and some people are simply brave and strong enough to choose a DIFFERENT PATH, and where is their TROPHY.

Anyway, on Sunday afternoon, fueled with plenty of caffeine and sugar, I finally got around to cutting Benny’s hair, which she’s been begging me to do. She claims this is her second ever haircut! I feel like that can’t possibly be true, but on the other hand, she sure had a lot of hair.

Turned out super cute, but am I allowed to take a picture, no I am not.

I also realized my cucumbers were languishing in their current position. Not getting enough water or light, and in constant danger of being smothered by galumphin’ pumpkins. So I dragged out that terrible bench I never got around to fixing, and now it’s a cucumber and dill bench, ta dah!

Lucy went to the beach with her friends for her birthday, and I decorated her cake, and then for supper, we had verily the worst grilled ham and cheese I’ve ever made. I don’t even know what happened. It was like one of those dreams where your hands don’t work and gravity is weird and everything keeps swooping around in front of you. It tasted okay, though.

And the cake turned out cute! Here is the pic she sent me for inspiration:

and here is the cake I made:

It’s not often that some aesthetic style you’re trying to imitate lines up perfectly with your skill level! She liked the cake, liked her presents, whew.

MONDAY
Burgers, corn, french fries, watermelon

Monday is a bit of a blur. Corrie made some banana bread, which she’s been doing a few times a week this summer. It’s honestly the best banana bread I’ve ever had. Nothing fancy, just fluffy and moist and sweet, with a nice buttery crust.

Here’s the recipe she uses:

Jump to Recipe

On Monday I went to Home Depot to buy sixteen bolts to replace the ones I installed on my clothesline, which are somehow a few inches too short, so the pipes are wobbly. I had put a sample bolt in my pocket so I would be able to compare it to the new ones, so I would definitely get the right size and not have to go to Home Depot again.

Then I changed pants, got to Home Depot, reached in my pocket, and sighed a big sigh.

A BIG SIGH.

However, while I was there, I got a sack of soil to firm up my gladioli, which had popped right out of the ground, and I also saw they had some non-poo lettuce for sale, so I snapped that up. They also had tomato plants for $1 each, and even though I swore of growing tomatoes long ago because it always just leads to heartache, I bought six of them, because, yanno, mother should I trust the government? (No.)

Got home and moved some basil around and got the lettuce in.

I didn’t quite have room for six tomato plants, so I dug up the rest of my garlic a little bit ahead of schedule, and it looked good and ready.

Certainly an improvement over last year’s garlic harvest, anyway!

I forced myself to do a little thinning on my carrots, but I know I didn’t do enough, oh well. I fed the tomatoes and made some quickie stakes for them. I had heard that you can trim suckers off your tomato plants and just stick them in the soil and they will turn into new tomato plants. So I did that, and they immediately died.

Then I checked the four shoots on my peach tree that I was trying to propagate by air layering, and they were all also all dead. I was mostly relieved, to be honest, because I got a 99 problems, but a dearth of peaches is not currently among them.

I guess we had hamburgers for supper. We’re still working our way through the frozen patties I got for July 4th. I hope I remember this when I’m shopping for next year’s party! I truly bought twice as much food as we needed, which is insane.

We also had corn, fries, and watermelon. Nice summer meal, but I’m REALLY looking forward to being able to eat the corn I grew!

Look: Tassels! We have tassels!

TUESDAY
Fire chicken, rice, roast string beans

Tuesday is “everybody has an appointment” day around here lately, so probably not the best day to try a new recipe. Definitely not the best day to try a new recipe that you don’t actually have, but which you need to buy a subscription to get, and then you get in a dumb little fight with someone about whether it’s morally worse to use AI to generate a recipe or to ask someone to give you a recipe that you haven’t paid for. The upshot is that I WINGED IT.

What I wanted to make was the Milk Street recipe for fire chicken where all you have to do is broil the chicken in the oven, then move the pan onto the stove top and keep cooking it until the sauce reduces. The technique is pretty self-explanatory, but I didn’t have the proportions for the ingredients. So I just kinda threw a bunch of spicy things into a pan with some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, then broiled it for a bit, and then cooked it on the stovetop for a bit, hoping it would get thick and sticky, which it did not.

Yes I crowded the pan. Of course I crowded the pan. I also burned it a little bit, which kind of aeorsolized the gochujang, which is not a thing you want to do unless you enjoy coughing.

I made a pot of rice and briefly considered making tempura string beans, but most of the kids said they wouldn’t eat that, and my will to live was ebbing away anyway. So I roasted them with some sesame oil, salt, and garlic powder, and threw some sliced almonds in there.

And it was not very good! The chicken was okay, and the string beans were pretty bleh.

I did not ruin the rice, hooray! And that was supper. Cough cough cough.

WEDNESDAY
Pork fried rice, potstickers

Wednesday I actually got a fair amount of writing done, and then Damien, Sohpia and I went to see The Odyssey in the afternoon. I reviewed it here.

Before I left, I prepped a bunch of stuff so I could make fried rice when I got home. I chopped up leftover string beans and some zucchini and red onion and minced up a bunch of garlic and onion, and I found a bag of frozen pork, already cooked and chopped, in the freezer. I even pre-scrambled four eggs. Packed up everything in handy little mise en place dishes, covered them, and stuck it all in the fridge.

That was a LONG movie, and then we had to stand in the parking lot and complain about it for a while, and then we had to get Corrie, whom we had dropped off at the library; so it was already after 7:00 when we got home. Turns out I forgot to tell the kids at home what the plan was, at all, so they were all in the kitchen hungrily yelling at each other, and Irene (remember what I said about Irene always finding the direct route) was grimly heating up some rice. It turns out they all thought (a) I was expecting them to make supper and (b) fried rice tastes like that because the flavors from the meat sort of seep into it, and you don’t have to add anything for a sauce.

Here is my actual recipe for fried rice:

Jump to Recipe

and my technique is to lightly cook the garlic and onion, then add the vegetables, then the meat, then brown sugar and let that bubble and brown for a bit, then add the rice, and then finish it with soy sauce, fish sauce, and oyster sauce. My technique is not to dump everything in a pan and then stand there yelling.

To be fair, it is entirely my fault for not communicating better, or at all, but I was a little distraught to have a pan full of hot, oily rice, raw garlic, ginger, and onion, and cold meat, plus cold vegetables that another sister had forcibly added to the pan despite the resistance of siblings.

So I did what any idiot would do: I told everyone to go away, then dumped a bunch of brown sugar on top of all of it, and heated it up, then shook some oyster sauce over it, and kept stirring. I thought it was working, too, until, as I sttirred, I started to hear a distinct clanking noise. Yes, there is was again: My fried rice was clanking.

And that is how I made fried rice candy. The sugar did melt a little bit, but then quickly crystallized into savory little chunks, and these got distributed all through the rice, and picked up some garlic and onion as they went. And I have to admit, the flavor of the meat sort of seeped into it!

I fished out as many clumps as I could find, and yes, I ate them. I was so hungry! Then I quickly boiled some frozen pot stickers, threw it all on the table, and ran away with my plate of food.

The kids did ask later what those rocks were in the rice, and I told them it was a lucky prize, and they didn’t ask any more questions. And that was supper!

Honest to goodness, it was not the worst fried rice I’ve ever had. I was hungry, though.

THURSDAY
Ground beef doner kebabs, pita, yogurt sauce, tomatoes

Thursday was a bunch more writing. Moe was making supper, and we had some fairly elaborate plans, but you know, the cucumbers went bad, the herbs might have parasites, we ran out of time to make pita, and it turns out I didn’t super duper follow a recipe last time I made ground beef doner kebabs, and Moe was willing to do his best, but he’s never even seen doner kebabs, so it would be hard to fake it. So I tossed this recipe at him and told him to just skip the vegetable part, so he did it and also ran to the store for pita, and we had yogurt sauce and sliced tomatoes, and it was delicious.

I am once again urging you to try the ground beef doner kebab thing, if you haven’t yet. It’s so easy and delicious.

We watched The Sheep Detectives that evening, and it was entertaining and amusing. I’m not a huge fan of let’s get kids to confront death when they don’t want to stories, but this was sufficiently warm and reassuring that they pulled it off. They did make a few irreverent jokes about God, but it’s not a huge feature of the story, and it does sort of balance it out with a plot point where the church saves babies in danger, and a priest humbly acknowledges that, because he took advantage of someone vulnerable, he considers himself “a bad shepherd.” It was a little scary in parts, with the sheep being approached in the dark by frightening animals, and then being chased by dogs, but overall it was wholesome and well-crafted, with themes of self-sacrifice and devotion, and protecting the vulnerable and the outcast. It was a decent mystery, too, and I was surprised when the murderer was revealed. No deep thoughts, I just liked it well enough! The dialogue was better than The Odyssey. Which isn’t saying much.

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, tortilla chips, watermelon

Corrie just showed me the eggplants are finally growing!

Little cuties.

We have yet another appointment to get to today. We have an ailing duck living in the laundry room. We have plans for Opera Nite and a day at the ocean coming up. And I hope we have tortillas, because we’re supposed to have quesadillas for supper. Wish someone were in charge of planning meals and buying the necessary food items, OH WELL.

Banana bread or muffins

adapted from Quick Breads, Soups & Stews by Mary Gubser

Ingredients

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
3 ripe bananas, mashed well
1/2 cup chopped nuts optional

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375.
In one bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and salt together.
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well in between. Add mashed bananas and mix well.
Gradually add the dry ingredients and blend well. If you're adding nuts, fold them in.
Grease 12 muffin tins or a loaf pan and pour the batter in.
Bake 20 minutes or longer, until the top is slightly browned.

Basic stir fried rice

This is a very loose recipe, because you can change the ingredients and proportions however you like

Ingredients

cooked rice
sesame oil (or plain cooking oil)
fresh garlic and ginger, minced
vegetables, diced or shredded (onion, scallion, peas, bok choy, carrots, sugar snap peas, cabbage, etc.)
brown sugar
raw or cooked shrimp, or raw or cooked meat (pork, ham, chicken), diced
soy sauce
oyster sauce
fish sauce
eggs

Instructions

In a very large pan, heat up a little oil and sauté the ginger and garlic for a few minutes. If you are using raw meat, season it with garlic powder and ginger powder and a little soy sauce, add it to the pan, and cook it through. If you are using shrimp, just throw it in the pan and cook it.
Add in the chopped vegetables and continue cooking until they are cooked through. If you are using cooked meat, add it now.
Add the brown sugar and cook, stirring, until the brown sugar is bubbly and darkened.
Add in the cooked rice and stir until everything is combined.
Add in a lot of oyster sauce, a medium amount of soy sauce, and a little fish sauce, and stir to combine completely.
In a separate pan, scramble the eggs and stir them in. (Some people scramble the eggs directly into the rest of the rice, but I find it difficult to cook the eggs completely this way.)
If you are using cooked shrimp, add it at the end and just heat it through.

Nolan’s Odyssey wants it both ways and gets neither

We saw The Odyssey (2026) last night. I give Christopher Nolan credit for making a nearly three-hour film that moves briskly. It was entertaining throughout. It had a few good characters, and some scenes and bits I truly enjoyed, including some that Nolan made up. It was not discernibly woke. But overall, I left the theater frustrated and sour.

I set myself to watch the movie on its own terms, and I was prepared for it to be a modern take. The whole reason we still read the Odyssey is because it is so rich, you can keep returning to it at different times in different contexts, and come away with something new. I have no issue with going to a deep well and pulling up one drink and savoring just that.

But there’s a difference between going, “Let’s look at just one facet of this immense story” and “Let’s fix this old thing up so it’s meaningful.” Nolan did the latter. But he kept butting up against the immensity of the story itself, and his retelling ended up not making even internal sense.

In the beginning and at the end, they make a point of saying that nobody will remember what really happened, and by the time events becomes story and song, the details will be forgotten. So the movie sets itself up not just to be a retelling, but to be the one that sets the record straight: Here is what really happened (including the idea that Helen was just an excuse to start the Trojan war, and the real reasons were purely political). But that’s not only arrogant, it’s cowardly, because it also plants the seed that it’s not really possible to remember things accurately, and if you don’t like it, well, maybe it’s not what really happened.

This is the movie’s main flaw: It does not commit. It wants things both ways. It wants to be a bold new telling of a dusty old story, that uncovers what was really going on in the hearts of heroes; but it also wants to hide its messy bits in ambiguity, and if you have any questions about what something actually means or why someone actually did something, well, poetry is like that, and who can say.

The other major flaw — and this one was more obviously and painfully evident — was the dialogue, which was absurdly terrible. Using modern language is fine. Telemachus calls his parents “mom” and “dad,” and Odysseus says “Ten years on this fucking beach,” and that’s fine. This kind of thing can work. The problem was that every single line in the movie — every one! — was stilted, dull, and forgettable. The worst lines were the ones that were set up to be dramatically profound. At least three times while I watched, I asked myself, ” . . . wait, what does that actually mean?” I can’t quote the specific lines for you, because I can’t remember them. If you’ve been on Tumblr, though, you can imagine the tone.

So let’s step back for a moment. This movie sets out to explore the idea of trauma. In this telling, the reason Odysseus takes ten years to get home is sort of because the gods are punishing him, but also because he has violated his own internal ethics; but he is unable to face up to the ramifications of how much evil humanity is capable of, and he’s simply not ready to go home yet. This is a valid and interesting idea for a story!

But guys. It was Matt Damon. He was just not up to it. The movie wanted to be “what if Odysseus were a tortured and guilty man with interior demons to overcome” but it was actually “What if Odysseus were boring?”

So many people were annoyed that this telling of the Odyssey made Odysseus kind of small — small in stature, pointy of face, not especially charismatic or kingly — and that the landscape is so heavy and dreary, rather than sparkling and lovely. I think that was on purpose: It was supposed to be giving us a world where self doubt, grief, guilt, and regret are what make Odysseus go (or not go). This may have been interesting! It’s not as if ancient Greece shies away from the idea tragedy or human flaws.

But this is only a worthwhile take if it enlightens anything. And nothing was enlightened.

Yet it still managed to be painfully didactic. Nolan juggles an impressive number of flashbacks and non-linear storytelling, and it is all skillfully woven together so you can easily track what happened when. In fact, it was too skillfully done. It felt like watching a movie in class, and the teacher keeps pressing pause and saying, “Ok, now pay attention, guys. This is the part where we first understand why Odysseus is sad! Okay, now let’s watch.” It was so overt, I was insulted.

The movie’s strongest points were the action sequences, and these were where I came the closest to losing myself in the movie. The sack of Troy was wonderful, engaging and frightening and horrible. The cyclops sequence was fantastic. I liked where they were going with Circe as a sort of embittered cat lady, and the way she physically labored to transform the men into pigs was truly scary.

Menelaus was fun, and embodied the character well. Antinous was very convincing as a scheming creep. Eumaus was decent and sympathetic. Telemachus was okay. Helen was fine, and her being black was not startling and did no violence to the plot, but she is by no means a major character. Calypso (Charlize Theron) is some kind of J. Crew model-turned-holistic-therapist, and she got a massive amount of screen time. This was an important part of how the movie was framed, as a time for Odysseus to come to terms with what he has done, and to decide how he wants to live going forward. Again, this is not an outrageous idea, and its’ worth exploring.

But . . . they don’t really explore it. Everything that is bothering poor Matt Damon is chalked up to Zeus’ Law, which the characters reference incessantly. Mostly it means hospitality, but it’s also shorthand for the golden rule, fair play, piety, and possibly the Geneva Conventions. It’s not really clear. I think the general idea was this is a world that works as long as people behave decently, and when they don’t, things go bad, and it turns out Odysseus is one of the guys who sometimes doesn’t behave decently. I don’t have a quibble with this, but it’s not as groundbreaking an idea as it thinks it is. It felt, in fact, dated. It was a reframing that would have seemed daring and transgressive in the mid-90’s.

They really wanted it to be more than an action movie, so they kept stealing the glory and satisfaction out of the action, to show that there was more going on than meets the eye. So you, a willing and attentive viewer, look closer . . . and there’s just not much there. Really just Matt Damon. And I’m sorry, I like Matt Damon, but the role they set him up to play was an extremely complex and contradictory man, and he just didn’t do it.

I wish they had just made it an action movie, instead of trying and failing to get clever with it all. The closest I cam to losing myself in the movie was during the action sequences. When he strings his bow and plucks it, that’s probably the best few seconds in the whole movie, and it’s the perfect spot for a turn and a massive, cathartic redemption of everything we’ve all just been through. I thought, Okay, we’re finally getting into the final part which will make everything else fall into place and redeem all the ambiguity we’ve been wallowing around in so far. And I thought it was going to! I could have done without the “rising panic of a swarm of bees” sound that they use several times in the movie to indicate (with a heavy club) tension, but the slaughter of the suitors scene really is satisfying and thrilling. They were so rotten, and he came back and put it all to rights! He killed ’em good!

And then things disintegrate again. They collapse back into ambivalence and portentous ambiguity. Penelope recognizes him, but there is no marriage bed built from a living tree. Instead, we briefly see that her throne has a tree carved into it. The best reading I can make of this is that their marriage and the kingdom and . . . I don’t know, Things That Matter, endure because we decide to make them matter. The worst reading, which I fear is the intended one, is that we use poetry and song and art to craft an appealing version of our lives and of the world, but the truth is actually always something much more flimsy and precarious.

We didn’t sit through all the credits, but I would absolutely believe you if you told me there was a little coda where Odysseus and Penelope spend some time in intensive therapy, possibly with Calypso as their gracious host, and they eventually decide that a conscious uncoupling rooted in mutual respect and accountability would be healthier for everyone involved.

Have I mentioned Anne Hathaway as Penelope? I think she does the absolute best acting she is capable of, and good for her. Her posture is excellent throughout, and her hair looks really nice.

But I have not yet talked about the gods.

Again, I was ready to accept a bold reimagining of this world that doesn’t have visible gods in it, except for Athena. In the original, they aren’t even visible that often, and frequently act by stirring up the emotions of various characters and making them overcome with fear, panic, lust, etc. The idea that the gods represent psychological realities of humans is not exactly groundbreaking.

But once again, the movie hedges its bets and ends up with something incoherent, and much lesser than it could have been. In the movie, the gods are real(ish) because the characters basically believe they are real; but it doesn’t know how to make the characters both relatable and pious. So it makes the gods not only invisible and inscrutable, but into a sort of psychological cover story for interior choices; and those are definitely real. Athena seems to appear when Odysseus needs the gods to be real.

Again, this is okay, if that’s what they want to do! This is a retelling, and they can do what they want, as long as they do it well.

And they do not.

Look. If you’re building a world, you have to be consistent. If they are going to make the gods into just a collective cultural framework that explains human psychology and ethics, then WHY THE FRACK ARE THERE REAL MONSTERS? Why are supernatural things only really real when they’re scary?

I know the answer! It’s the old Dante problem: It’s way easier to depict a compelling and interesting Inferno than it is a compelling and interesting Paradiso. So yeah, it’s easier to make a movie with an otherworldly cyclops, and giants, and witch, than it is to make an otherworldly pantheon. So he just skips the pantheon. But the great irony is, when Nolan does literally depict the inferno — when Odysseus goes to Hades to talk to Tiresius, and he meets Sinon and some of his other men — it’s boring as heck. You can’t even tell exactly when they arrive in Hades. It’s just, like, the worst beach ever, and the shades aren’t creepy. They’re unpleasant, and they’re definitely grumpy, but they’re just basically guys who are extremely dirty.

So this is a world that does have otherworldly, transcendental elements, except when it comes to mankind.

The story has no numinosity, at all. It’s not even sexy, which is crazy! It’s not just that it’s so gritty and dark and I don’t like that, and I wish they had more pretty, sparkling, glorious parts. It’s that it wants you to understand that there is more than meets the eye to this and that . . . but it never tells you what that more might be. I truly don’t think it knows.

*******

Image:
Matt Damon as Odysseys and Zendaya as Athena in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026)

All right, then, let’s talk about Catholics doing yoga

War? Schism? Genocide? Fraud, pestilence, global conspiracies? These are all child’s play. Back in my day, Catholics used to spend our days on the internet arguing about really important things, like yoga.

Oh yes. It’s finally summer, the streams are flowing, and I’d dearly like to start a fight about the spiritual dangers of banana pose.

I’ve been doing yoga, off and on, for four years now, and it has changed my life. It’s been great for my joints and my digestion, it builds muscle and helps me sleep, it’s brought my blood pressure back to normal, and I really enjoy showing fealty to false deities and demons. All while wearing revealing pants!

I kid, I kid. What is true is that I love yoga and it has changed my life, but whenever I talk about it in Catholic circles, someone freaks out and says I’m gonna catch a demon.

Believe it or not, I take that warning seriously. I think the world is full of things we can’t see, and it’s entirely possible to slide into a state that welcomes in malignant spirits, and we shouldn’t mess around with spiritual practices that are not our own.

I also believe the body has meaning. When I make the sign of the cross, I believe that it has an inherent meaning. It means something when an actor in a movie does it without any understanding of what it signifies. It meant something even when my mother, far gone in dementia, made the sign of the cross on herself out of sheer habit. When I have sex, THAT has inherent meaning, even if my thoughts at the time are not necessarily fully engaged with passages from Theology of the Body. What we do with our bodies matters.

So even if I don’t MEAN to honor Shiva when I manage to pull off a wobbly natarajasana, isn’t there something wrong with a Catholic doing the thing that was designed in ancient times to honor Shiva?

These questions bothered me. So I did what any good Catholic would do: I looked it up.

It turns out the thing that springs to mind when we say “yoga” — yes, even the kind with gongs and incense and statues of elephants — is about 60 years old. There is an ancient practice that was once called “yoga” but it was mainly concerned with interior, spiritual concepts and practices, and barely even mentions the body. Yoga as we know it, and as most modern people practice it, is physical exercise that happens to have originated in India; and some people — some eastern, some western — have done their best to grandfather in some spiritual practices.

But historically, the only common denominator between ancient yoga and modern yoga is India. The spiritual elements of modern yoga are about as rooted in ancient pagan spirituality as Totino’s Orange Chicken Pizza Rolls (WHICH ARE A REAL THING) are rooted in old Napoli. There is a connection, sort of? But not a meaningfully historical one.

However! In this essay, I will not claim that, because of this lack of seamless historicity, there is therefore no possible spiritual danger that can come from getting into yoga.

Read the rest of my latest column for The Pillar (subscriber content).

Photo by Mohamed Hassan form PxHere

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

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

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

A quick highlights reel of the previous week:

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

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

and ten days later, it looked like this.

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

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

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

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

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

But all in all, a tasty meal

and a tasty visit!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, it was the wrong mattress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what it was doing.

Here’s a video I took

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A tiny, prickling rain was just starting to fall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

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

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

and here it is now:

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

with more things budding.

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

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

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

What silly, lovely creatures they are.

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

SUNDAY
Chicago-adjacent hot dogs, chips

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

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY
Pizza

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

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

Nothing but birdsong going on. So lovely.

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

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

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

TUESDAY
Buffalo chicken drumsticks, pasta salad

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

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

oh, wait.

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

Silly Tudras had an idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Chicken burgers, raw vegetables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump to Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, tortilla chips and salsa, salad

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

taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.
While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.
Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.
If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.
Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

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

and peace to His people of girth.

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

That! Did not happen!

Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Cuban sandwiches, fries, lemon meringue pie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, Doritos, Italian ices

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

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

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

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

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

Nice spot for a tree house, though, right?

We had yummy Italian sandwiches for supper

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

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

MONDAY
Leftovers and potato skins

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

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

TUESDAY
Salad with chicken, strawberries, feta, almonds

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

Highly satisfying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY
Bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwiches

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

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY
Rainbow noodles and cheesecake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY
Tuna boats, popcorn

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

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

Basic pie crust

Ingredients

2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 sticks butter, FROZEN
1/4 cup water, with an ice cube

Instructions

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.

What’s for supper? Vol. 469: Loveseat! That’s where we eat!

Happy Friday! Every year, May takes me by surprise with how incredibly, bounteously, tenderly gorgeous it is, and also! with how many freaking events we have to go to!

Happily, both cars are currently running, so we are able to do that! And it is just swooningly beautiful out there. My peach tree burst into bloom this week, there are daffodils and tulips swaying in the breeze, the birds are hysterical with love, and the skies are the bluiest bluesty blue I’ve ever seen. I thought I saw a little patch of ice in the stream, but it turned out to be just bubbles.

Shortly after I wrote last week’s post, the ducklings started hatching in earnest! Only one had totally emerged by the time Damien and I went to bed,

so we moved the incubator into our room overnight, for fear of the cats. I did fret about them all night, but this is what we saw in the morning:

Totally exhausted, poor things, but very healthy. These are all pekins.

One more, half pekin and half Swedish black, eventually muscled its way out of the shell the next day. Two did not make it, but the remaining four are doing absolutely great. Everyone got to see at least one baby emerging from the egg, which is dramatic and excruciating, thrilling and ridiculous, just like many other births. I posted a few videos on Facebook. This is seven minutes of hatching compressed into one minute of video; this is the poor Swedish black trying to hatch while being repeatedly trampled by its three half siblings; and this is their first living room rodeo.

They grow insanely fast, and they are now living happily under a heat lamp in a tub on top of the dryer, gobbling up their food, thrashing around in their water dish, and wearing themselves out and falling asleep in a fluffy pile.

Sonny is pretty resigned to having these peeping little maniacs dashing around his living room in the evening

but he does clearly feel like it’s one of our dumber life choices. He’s not necessarily wrong! But they are so lovely.

SATURDAY
Shawarma, pita, cream puffs, strawberry ice cream

On Saturday, Lena came over for a belated birthday celebration! It was great to see her. I made chicken shawarma

Jump to Recipe

and yogurt sauce, and also gave people one final shot at the toum. The shawarma turned out great, although I overcooked the meat a tiny bit because the pita too so look to cook. I use this recipe for pita, and I made a double recipe but just make really big breads. It turns out yummy, but I always underestimate how long it will take to cook eight breads for six minutes each, even though my father did sit me down with flash cards in third grade and I did finally learn my multiplication facts. Next time, I will get two pans going.

Anyway, it was worth the wait, and it was all very tasty.

For dessert, I had made strawberry ice cream

Jump to Recipe

and some extremely messy cream puffs.

The cream puffs were actually from a Bridgerton-branded kit that was on clearance at Walmart, and they definitely made me realize that, from now on, I will be making cream puffs from scratch. They’re actually really easy. A choux pastry is very simple to make, and once you know how, you can make all kinds of fancy stuff. I really wish I had made an actual cream filling, instead of the mix stuff from the package, which had a bland, oily taste. At least we had something to stick candles in, though! Nobody complained, and we had a nice evening.

SUNDAY
Leftovers, pizza

I moved leftover day to Sunday, and supplemented it with Aldi pizza.

Those empanadas make great leftovers! It’s crazy to me that the rest of the family isn’t in love with everything pie-like. To me, that is just the standard, baseline desire of humanity: To want to be eating some form of pie.

MONDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, potato puffs, steamed broccoli

On Monday, I made the first inquiry into my compost heap. I don’t do any of the perpetual turning or sprinkling or layering you’re supposed to do for compost; I just dump organic stuff in one spot and let nature take its course, and then in the spring, I see what I’ve got. It works well enough for my purposes! I dug up four wheelbarrows full of dark, rich soil and dumped it on top of the new garden bed I made in front of Damien’s office.

The idea is to give it couple of weeks to get rained on, and think about what it’s done; and then by the end of May, which is when it’s safe to plant in this zone, it should be ready for seeds. I saved tons of seeds from that one gargantuan pumpkin last year, and that’s what this bed will be for.

Then I made one final offensive push against the blackberries, and dumped them in the pool so they could think about what they’d done. The liner is torn, so right now it’s just a big drying area, and you have to dry out wild blackberry canes before you dispose of them, or else they’ll just start over again.

Supper was grilled ham and cheese, tater tots (or possibly potato puffs. These are separate things, but I don’t know which is which), and steamed broccoli.

Corrie thought this was a hilarious combination of foods, for some reason. I forget she is still young enough that everything we do (for instance, eating chips and raw vegetables with grilled ham and cheese) gets registered as The Way It’s Done, and any other way looks absurd.

TUESDAY
Tacos al pastor

It was Cinqo de Mayo, which, as I understand it, is Mexican Arbor Day or something? So obviously we had tacos al pastor, to honor our Lebanese ancestry, which is the best we can do since we don’t drink anymore. I cut the pork up thinly and sorta kinda followed this recipe for the marinade. Then I cut up a couple of pineapples, chopped up some cilantro, and sliced up a few red onions and set those to pickling. I believe I used cider vinegar, pineapple juice, salt, sugar, and hot pepper flakes.

Then I turned my attention to . . . other things.

I don’t know if I’ve ever favored you with the Sad Tale of the Wrong Loveseat. We had this loveseat that fit our tiny living room perfectly, and even though the room is small and kind of shabby, I was really happy with how cozy and harmonious it was. But then a child accidentally saturated it, down to its bones, with a smelly lotion which gives me migraines. So we threw it out, and I’d been hunting for a replacement on Marketplace.

We did find one, and the kids loved it, because it was so spacious and comfy and plushy.

IT WAS TOO SPACIOUS. It was about eight inches longer than the people said it would be. But I pride myself on being able to tetris furniture into compliance, so we can make room for whatever we need to make room for (hence the ten children). WELL, I could not, could not figure out how to make this dang loveseat fit. And also, it was grey, and the rest of the room is warm colors.

Also, it’s not really a loveseat, but actually just the orphaned short end of a sectional.

So I started looking for another loveseat again, and I finally I found one! and this one is the right size, and it was free! It’s not, like, an amazing piece of furniture?

But it fits, and it’s brown, and I was able to put the room back the way I like it. I’m very happy. And very grateful that Damien goes along with my dumb furniture struggles.

So, but now we have the old loveseat on its end in the dining room. We couldn’t put it out on the side of the road because it kept raining. But in the meantime, the cats discovered that it’s the greatest spot in the world to fulfill their true destiny: Being High Up.

SO, I didn’t want to take that away from them. But I also didn’t feel like we needed a sideways couch in the middle of the living room. So I started looking at cat trees so I could throw out the loveseat, and I looked at a few, and I was like, HECK, I COULD MAKE THAT. So I did!

I found a dry tree in our little woods, and cut it up, and screwed the ends to a piece of wood I’ve been saving for just such a purpose. Then I used leftover pool deck spindles to make supports for the tree parts. Then I added some wooden rounds left over from some craft projects, and made little platforms; and then I used a broken drawer piece for the top platform. And it was not bad!

Level and sturdy. Then I cut a bunch of fabric off old loveseat #1 and stapled it on to the little platforms. Then we kind of forcefully placed a cat on it, and Behold: A cat tree.

Of course we still haven’t dragged loveseat #2 out of the house yet. So now the dining room looks like this:

and I think it goes really well with the ducklings in the laundry room.

But anyway, by late afternoon, I had this wonderful marinated meat to cook. I decided to broil it in the oven while cooking the pineapple on the stovetop. I just heated up some olive oil and then sauteed the pineapple until the edges browned up a bit.

Cooked pineapple is SO sweet and wonderful, and amazing with cilantro and spicy meat. So we had tortillas with sour cream, cilantro, pineapple, pickled onion, meat, and hot pineapple, with lime wedges.

Oh my gosh, you guys. This was the most delicious thing ever. I was definitely hungry from my cat tree project, but also it was just amazing food. Definitely returning to this recipe, and definitely adding pickled onions to more things!

WEDNESDAY
Hamburgers, chips, veggies and dip

Wednesday began rather whimsically with our very first fairy egg.

It’s not a true egg; sometimes a duck’s plumbing gets irritated and then it’s like, oh, I guess we’re making an egg! and builds a shell around the irritant. Because a duck’s insides are not any smarter than its outsides.

I haven’t cracked this fairy egg yet, but it is probably all egg white inside; but there may be a tiny yolk. I am going to try to blow the insides out so I can save it to decorate.

I don’t even remember what we did all day, but we had hamburgers with the last of the mysteriously cheap ground beef I stocked up on a few weeks ago. Gobbled up my burger, did not take a picture.

Oh wait, I did take a picture of my veggie platter.

Food styling is my passion.

Oh, I had leftover pickled onions on my burger, and it was YUMMO.

Wednesday night, I made pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting for staff appreciation day. We’ve been sending our kids to this school for . . . I don’t even know how many years. Ten kids’ worth, anyway, and I DO appreciate the staff, so very much, but I’ve never had my act together enough to make muffins. Until this year!

Here’s the muffin recipe

Jump to Recipe

and I used this simple recipe for the frosting: Just 8 oz. of cream cheese, 1/3 cup of sugar, and 1/2 tsp vanilla. I made a triple batch of frosting, which was more than enough, so I, uh, ate the rest. (In my defense, it was over the course of three days.)

They turned out great, and for once in my life I thought to buy disposable trays to carry them in.

I was also immensely pleased and gratified to have a separate little fridge to keep them in overnight. This is one of my great satisfactions in middle age: I have my very own mini fridge which is exclusively for baked goods I don’t want anyone to touch.

THURSDAY
Pork rice bowls

Thursday I had some cheesecake orders for Mother’s Day, and LET ME TELL YOU. I did nothing but make mistakes all day. Not even just with the cheesecakes, but with every little thing, just one dumb thing after another. I ended up having to make the cheesecakes twice, because I lowered the temperature in the oven too dramatically, for no reason, and they all cracked.

Just for fun, I did make one extra one, which turned out pretty cute:

This is about 6.5 inches in diameter and actually has a secret chocolate center. Which reminds me, I need to put up an ad and see if someone wants to buy it!

Anyway, the plan was pork quesadillas, but I forgot to buy cheese, so I just made kind of spicy pulled pork. I cut the pork into chunks and browned them in oil with salt and pepper. Then I put it in the Instant Pot with the last of the pineapple juice, some jarred jalapeños and their juice, some garlic powder, a bunch of cumin, and bunch of that Valentina’s salsa picante. I let that cook all day, and then before supper I made a truly terrible pot of rice. How do you mess up rice? I don’t know, but it was that kind of day.

But actually it was a decent meal, considering it was forged in sheer panic. I had mine with sour cream, cilantro, and lime.

Not bad at all. I may start keeping pineapple juice in the house! Very handy.

Damien has had to be out of town covering various hearings and whatnot this week, and then Benny had a fundraising event in the evening, and when I got home, I still had to remake those cheesecakes, so I switched kitchen clean-ups with Irene, made the cheesecakes, cleaned the kitchen, Damien picked up Benny, and then I fell asleep on the couch, phew.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

I just remembered that, when I went shopping for cream cheese, they had everbearing strawberry plants for $3 each, so I bought six. Yay! I forgot about that. My strawberry bed got all eaten up by varmints over the winter, so it will be nice to stock it up again. Maybe I will go back for another six plants. I’m solidifying my vegetable garden plans for the year, and have pretty much settled on corn, pumpkins, potatoes, basil, and eggplant. Might do butternut squash on an arbor this year, if I can get around to rigging it up.

I slept in this morning while Damien got the kids to school and brought one to an appointment, and then some of them had a half day, and then he’s going to cover adoration while I get one kid to her new art class, and then pick up the rest. And then we shall have spaghetti! And maybe drag the loveseat out of the dining room. Because it is chilly as heck today, but it is NOT raining. And guess what, the surgeon just called and I have a surgery date. August 20, which is absolutely perfect. We’ll have a nice summer, I’ll get my head fixed, and we’ll all be in good shape by Christmas.

For dessert, it just so happens we have a bunch of cracked cheesecakes in the house. Mom in a heart, indeed.

Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
4-5 red onions
1.5 cups lemon juice
2 cups olive oil
4 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
1 tsp cinnamon
1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces

Instructions

Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 425.
Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more.
Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins

Ingredients

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

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans or butter or line 18 muffin tins.
In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients except for sugar.
In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture and mix just to blend.
Optional: add toppings or stir-ins of your choice.
Spoon batter into pans or tins. Bake about 25 minutes for muffins, about 40 minutes for loaves.

Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

1 pint fresh strawberries
1/4 cup sugar
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

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

Make the ice cream base:

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.
Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.
Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

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

What’s for supper? Vol. 4SIX SEHHHHHHVEN

Happy Friday! A couple of days ago, I thought of a really witty pun title for this week’s post. Then I thought, “I don’t need to write that down. It’s so good, there is no way I will forget it.” Then a great river went rushing through my mind, and left behind

–okay, now here I broke away for a bit to try and hunt down an authentically ancient description of what it looked like when the Augean Stables got cleaned out, and I got as far as people singing “ting-a-ling” in praise of Herakles afterward

and I decided it wasn’t really that funny. So please just imagine that my mind is sparkling clean, and also quite empty. And I have a middle schooler. So that explains the title.

Well, here is what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets(?)

I remember being super busy on Saturday, but I can’t remember why.

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, steamed broccoli

Sunday after Mass, I did part 2 of cleaning the kid room that needed a drastic overhaul. This is the project that’s been preventing me from getting anything done outside! This task has been looming in my mind, so it’s a huge relief to get it done. We are hoping to paint over April vacation.

I have soooo many projects I have to get to outside. Gotta build Corrie’s tree house, prep the gardens for planting and start a new spot for corn, replace the grape arches that fell down over the winter, plant the new grapes I got on clearance at Walmart, maybe build a second brick step/stoop in front, finish the duck pond, finish the garden I started building on the side of the back steps to maybe prevent people from dropping crap there, and, less glamorously, finish up the new roof we put on in the fall, and take a million pounds of trash and scraps to the dump. And fix the mailbox. But knowing that bedroom inside was such a wreck was making it impossible to commit to anything outside. So now I can!

Well, the truth is, I am waiting to hear back about if I will be having surgery soon or in several months, so everything is very much up in the air. But a girl can dream.

So then we had hamburgers, chips, and steamed broccoli for supper.

I’ve been on a huge steamed broccoli kick lately. Just something very satisfying about the two different textures in each bite Nobody else is that crazy about it, so I’ve been eating leftover all week for a snack, and that is how I keep current with my fart schedule.

It snowed.

MONDAY
Turkey bacon wraps, hot pretzels, fruit salad

Monday I had a meeting and then a boring pharmacy adventure, and then it snowed. I compensated by making a very bright and cheerful dinner, kind of 90’s brunch style or something. Deli turkey and bacon, tomato, lettuce, cheese, and honey mustard wraps, hot pretzels, and fruit salad.

While the bacon was cooking, I started making the fruit salad, and it was so pretty in layers, I left it that way, rather than mixing it.

Color! Must have color!

I absolutely love this kind of meal. It’s like something your grandparents would buy you at a hospital cafeteria.

Possibly you will even get to pick out an eraser shaped like an ice cream come at the gift shop, if you are good.

TUESDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs, salad, hearth bread

Tuesday I got some lab work done on the way home from the school run, and I was so reluctant to do anything else when I got home, I ended up making a slightly more elaborate meal than I had planned. It was just meatballs,

Jump to Recipe

but I usually bake them in the oven on a rack, because it’s so much easier and less messy. This time I browned them in a pan, and it did take quite some time!

I also made King Arthur Hearth Bread. Last time I made this recipe, it was decent, and had a nice crackly crust and chewy inside, but didn’t hold its shape, and was much flatter than the picture in the recipe. So I tried it again, paying closer attentions to the rising time, and the exact same thing happened. But I did recall that you can improve the appearance of a weird loaf of bread by serving it already cut in pieces, so that is what I did.

Made a little salad with the leftovers from the wraps

and it was a yummy meal. Ground beef was $2.99 a pound, for some reason (usually that’s Superbowl prices), so I bought as much as I could fit in the freezer

WEDNESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, veggies and dip

Wednesday is when I had to admit to myself that I was really sick. I was hoping it was just allergies from the dust I stirred up while cleaning, but really I had succumbed to the respiratory ick that is circulating around the family. I really hardly ever get sick anymore since I started taking big doses of vitamin D for the dark months of the year! But this one got me. I slept most of the day and we had grilled ham and cheese for supper, and I did not take a picture of it.

THURSDAY
Bibimbap sort of

Thursday I was still sick, but I was so mad about being sick when the weather was finally warming up, I decided to pretend I wasn’t sick. This usually doesn’t work, but I got away with it this time.

It was sunny and breezy, so I hung out a bunch of laundry to dry, then started picking at the broken glass debacle in the back. To refresh your memory: Through a completely avoidable bit of stupidity on my part, one of these windows

now looks like this

and after spending two good long sessions gloomily cleaning, there are still millions of bits of broken glass on a probably 4×8′ area that is covered with small rocks that you can easily move, and large rocks that are fully embedded in the ground, and every day that passes makes it harder to clean up the glass because things are starting to grow in the cracks. The good news is, all of this is entirely my fault, so I can think about that while I clean!

I have now tried every conceivable method for cleaning up this glass, including using different sizes of soup spoons, and nothing was getting me anywhere. The only thing I know would work is if some friendly mice and sparrows got busy and, with a rush and a twitter, made it spic and span for me in no time. But I would have needed to start that several months ago (i.e. leaving treats for them so they would befriend me and come to my aid in my hour of need), and while it is true that, in a certain sense, we do routinely leave snacks for the mice, the overall tenor of our relationship remains hostile. So that was out.

So I bowed to my fate and inquired about a used shop vac on Facebook Marketplace. Then, because I had sort of done something about the glass, I felt clear to tackle the blackberry bushes that are encroaching on the spot between the patio and the house, which is where I want to plant wildflowers.

Every time I mention getting rid of wild blackberry, somebody goes, “oohhhh, I wish I had that problem!” Fine! I believe you! Please come and get them. Take all you want. We have 423 million of them, and they have sent root systems snaking around all over the property, and the one thing they hate is for anything else to grow. But maybe I’m wrong, and it’s actually quite nice to have them. Like I said, come on over.

But it really was incredibly satisfying to sit in the dirt and dig and scrabble and uproot, even knowing that it was only slowing them down at best. I listened to the last two parts of The Rest Is History series on the KKK, and started on their series about Samurai before I had to call it quits for the day.

Got a quick shower, got a CT scan (this was to confirm that I don’t have an aneurism and that the schwannoma is not strangling my carotid artery, and I’m happy to say that I don’t and it isn’t), picked up the shop vac, and went home to make supper. I was extremely proud of this supper, because I really had only a concept of a plan, and it turned out very tasty.

First I got some rice cooking in the Instant Pot. Then I started broiling some pork ribs with salt and pepper. While the first side was cooking, I made a thick sauce from brown sugar, corn start, soy sauce, garlic powder, and some hot chili paste. I flipped the ribs over and brushed the sauce on the other side and let them finish cooking. I found some spinach and crunchy noodles. and quickly sauteed some mushrooms. Then I started some eggs frying and called people to supper, and by the time everyone was assembled, the food was all hot

Ribs turned out great! The sauce was really good and sticky. Of course I didn’t write down the proportions, except that I used way more sugar and corn starch than I meant to, so that was probably the secret.

It was warm enough to eat outside — first time this year — so I had a lovely meal while my companions, the ducks, happily rooted around in the compost heap.

The table doesn’t super duper have a top yet, but it has enough decorative wrought iron that you can use it if you don’t move around a lot. Whatever, it’s on my list. Anyway, I used up the last of the fresh eggs that lady gave me in exchange for my excess toum, and it was a tremendously yummy meal.

FRIDAY
Tuna sandwiches or broiled salmon

Last Friday I ended up making tuna sandwiches for the kids, Instant Pot risotto

Jump to Recipe

for everybody, and sesame-crusted ahi tuna for me and Damien. It was very tasty, although I was sad to see that the cheapo sack of ahi tuna from Aldi now only has three pieces of tuna in it, rather than four.

As far as I can recall, I marinated the tuna in sesame oil and soy sauce for about ten minutes, then pressed them into a mixture of sesame seeds, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt, and then seared them in oil. Served it with the risotto and really needed a vegetable, but the closest I could find was some furikake. So we had that, and it was yum dot com.

I ended up sort of flaking the tuna into the risotto, and it all melded together deliciously.

So tonight we have some equally cheapo frozen salmon, and I’m not sure what I will do with it. Maybe just broil it, and serve it with, like, potato chips and an old apple. Maybe some friendly sparrows will come and help me. Maybe!

Oh, I forgot! We got an axolotl.

This is Benny’s pet. Lena knows someone who works for a vet, and they found themselves with that common problem, Too Many Axolotls, so obviously Damien went and got one. Benny is currently calling him Mordred, but she originally suggested “Ravioli,” and I like that much better, because it scans exactly like axolotl: ˘˘/˘. He’s a nice little guy, very chill.

I haven’t tried my new shop vac yet, because if it doesn’t work, I just don’t know what I’m gonna do. Pave the whole back yard, maybe. Or reroute a river and just wash the whole thing away. Ting-a-ling! At least that’s what it says here.

Meatballs

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs.

Ingredients

3 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
4 eggs, beaten
2 cups panko bread crumbs
4 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 1 cup)
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400.
Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.
Form meatballs and put them in a single layer on a pan with drainage. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or more until they're cooked all the way through.
Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve.

Instant Pot Risotto

Almost as good as stovetop risotto, and ten billion times easier. Makes about eight cups.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground sage
3 Tbsp olive oil
4 cups rice, raw
6 cups chicken stock
2 cups dry white wine
1/2 cup butter
pepper
1.5 cups grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

Turn IP on sautee, add oil, and sautee the onion, garlic, salt, and sage until onions are soft.
Add rice and butter and cook for five minutes or more, stirring constantly, until rice is mostly opaque and butter is melted.
Press "cancel," add the broth and wine, and stir.
Close the top, close valve, set to high pressure for 9 minutes.
Release the pressure and carefully stir in the parmesan cheese and pepper. Add salt if necessary.

Clovey pulled pork

Ingredients

Instructions

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Banana bread or muffins

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Basic stir fried rice

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taboon bread

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Basic pie crust

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

Instructions

Pumpkin quick bread or muffins

Ingredients

Instructions

Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

For the ice cream base

Instructions

Make the ice cream base:

Put it together:

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Meatballs

Ingredients

Instructions

Instant Pot Risotto

Ingredients

Instructions

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