Isn’t this a good time for a cheerfully post-apocalyptic novel?
There is a scene from such a novel I think about frequently, and have done so for decades—the scene in Walter M. Miller’s excellent sci fi classic, A Canticle For Leibowitz, where the guileless Br. Francis finally makes his way to New Rome to deliver a precious relic of his order’s founder to the pope.
The “relic” is a fragment of an electrical engineer’s blueprint for a “transistorized control system,” an artifact from so long in the past of this post-apocalyptic, mostly post-literate world, that no one knows what kind of information it is, much less what it was for.
They do know it was made by the hand of someone they consider a martyred saint, and the order’s entire charism is to preserve knowledge in a hostile world; so Br. Francis has spent the last many years lovingly and laboriously transcribing the mysterious blueprint into a highly decorated illuminated manuscript.
But on his way to New Rome, he is waylaid by bandits, who assume the beautiful piece is actually the main treasure Francis wanted to guard, and they steal it. They leave him the original blueprint, though, which he presents to the pope. The pope thanks him and then says that he heard the copy was beautiful. Francis responds:
“It was nothing, Holy Father. I only regret that I wasted 15 years.”
The way I remember it, the pope responds that it was not wasted, because it was done in love, and that he can offer that up to God. But I looked it up, and that’s not quite what the pope says. He said:
“Wasted? How ‘wasted’? If the robber had not been misled by the beauty of your commemoration, he might have taken this, might he not?”
The pope asks Francis if he knows what the relic means, and then admits that he doesn’t, either. He then reverences it and says:
“We thank you from the bottom of our heart for those 15 years, beloved son,” he added to Br Francis. “Those years were spent to preserve this original. Never think of them as wasted. Offer them to God. Someday the meaning of the original may be discovered, and may prove important.”
Two of the overarching themes of the book are that knowledge is worth preserving . . . and that man inevitably uses knowledge to destroy himself. This happens repeatedly in the book, which is divided into three parts, each recounting a different era.
The book is not anti-intellectual, by any means, but it does ask you to question the value of human progress, when progress apparently inevitably leads to apocalypse.
The pope thought Francis’ effort was not in vain because it helped save the original manuscript, which may someday aid the whole world. But is that really the reason it was worthwhile?
Like many of my friends, I’m nervous and upset about what’s going to happen next in my country.
The newly-elected president has already put into practice some disastrously ugly policies which may or may not be enforceable, and seems hell-bent on stuffing the cabinet with a rogue’s gallery of people who are laughably unqualified for their professional appointments, and horrifically dishonorable in their private lives. As I said, I’m nervous. I’m upset.
Not all my Catholic friends feel this way! Lots of them are jubilant and are anticipating the next four years with glee and delight. The president has promised them all kinds of things they have long wished for—a return to greatness, a return to goodness. A return to strength, and a return to power.
So I am going to do something I haven’t attempted in many years—I’m going to address Trump supporters directly.
If you’re Christian, and you’re looking forward to the next four years, then this is for you. It’s not for people who voted against Trump. They will have struggles of their own, and I have other words to say to them.
But if you have ever once thought that I occasionally, even accidentally, hit upon a solid or useful idea, then please listen to what I have to say.
Hello! Happy Friday! The first day that I have been very certain what day it is, in a long time.
I hope you had a lovely Christmas day and that you are having a happy new year so far. I have continued to roll with the “I’m RECOVERING, and it’s very important for me to REST” thing, plus with lots and lots of food. I always feel a little bad that we don’t do St. Nicholas Day or OLG day or St. Lucy’s day festivities like all my Catholic friends on social media, but then I remember we have two birthdays in December, plus we celebrate Hanukkah, and then of course Christmas, and then of course New Year’s even/day, and then we have two birthdays in early January. What this boils down to is, if we went through any more butter or sugar or fancy cheese, it would trigger some kind of federal investigation.
Every last person in the house besides me got pretty to very sick, and they’re all still recovering, so we didn’t do any day trips or sledding or anything. We just ate a lot of food. (I attribute my apparent immunity to the vitamin D3 gummies I have been taking all year, but who knows.)
The precise timeline of what I cooked this past week is pretty fuzzy, so I’ll just do a photo dump in more or less chronological order.
and told the kids they could do whatever they wanted with it. I was planning to make gochujang caramel cookies, but couldn’t find the gochujang; so I made these cranberry orange cookies from King Arthur Flour. They turned out great.
Not thrilling to look upon (although it does get you to roll the dough in coarse sugar before you bake them, and I ended up using several colors of sugar, which gave some of them some weird colors!), but they were so cheery and cozy. They were both tender and chewy, and the orange flavor came through really well. I think I was the only one who really loved them, but I ate them steadily for two weeks, or however long it’s been. When they got a little stale, I put them in a ziplock bag with a piece of bread, and they softened right up again.
Then it was Christmas eve, time to make cinnamon rolls! I used the Alton Brown overnight recipe which is easy and reliable. I made the dough and let it rise for three hours, and then Benny and Corrie did the actual rolling and forming.
The formed rolls go in the fridge overnight, and then you let them rise again in the morning for half an hour, and then bake them. I only made a double recipe, because cinnamon rolls get stale really fast, and it’s just sad.
We decorate the tree on Christmas eve, and then go to midnight Mass. Some of the kids were too sick to go, and those of us who went were pretty exhausted, so I didn’t get any pictures! But the sermon was very affecting and I cried my stupid head off. Then we got home and set up all the presents and stockings and fell into bed around 2:30 a.m.
Christmas morning was wonderful. Two of the adult kids came to Mass with us and spent the night, and one more came in the morning, and we just had a happy morning. A few pics here:
Damien fried up an outlandish amount of bacon, and we had that with the cinnamon buns and orange juice and some fresh fruit, plus various delicacies that Clara brought from the bakery where she works
Then that night we ordered enough Chinese food to feed our family for generations to come
and THEN it was the first night of Hanukkah, so we lighted EVEN MORE CANDLES,
and then I imagine we all went to bed, although it’s a bit of a blur. At some point during the week, I did find the baby, and added it to the nativity scene.
I think we had leftovers the day after Christmas, and then the next day, we had deli sandwiches, and then Vermonter sandwiches (roast chicken breast, bacon, cheddar cheese, green apple slices, and honey mustard on sourdough bread), and then I remember the kids being delighted that I was serving yet a third kind of sandwich, but I forget what it was.
Then I decided that whatever day it was was the day for the big semi-boneless leg of lamb I had bought on sale several weeks ago. I have tried many recipes for leg of lamb, and the best one is also by far the easiest.
Because it was halfway through Hanukkah, I also made potato latkes. These turned out a little bit disappointing. They were just kind of dense and dark.
Next time, I will grate the potatoes by hand, rather than putting them through the food processor. (I won’t share my recipe, since it wasn’t that great! I just do potato, egg, salt and pepper, and flour, and there are a million recipes online)
I did have the bright idea to dig out a jar of tamarind chutney
and I had my latkes with chutney, which is wonderful. And then also I had some others with sour cream and a little salmon roe. And then some others with applesauce. Maybe they were pretty good latkes after all.
So yeah, it was a pretty swanky meal, and generated a lot of interest from other parties
who are currently, tragically on a dry food-only diet due to an unfortunate habit of yakking up everything else he eats.
The next day I was planning to serve buffalo chicken salad (greens, frozen buffalo chicken, crumbled blue cheese, crunchy fried onions from a can, cherry tomatoes, shredded pepper jack cheese, and ranch dressing), but I forgot to buy salad. So we had what we had, and I sweetened the deal by making baby sufganiyot (jelly donuts).
They were actually donut holes made with a choux pastry from the King Arthur recipe, so you don’t have to mess around with yeast or rising times. Best eaten right away, but they’re quite easy to make, and fun. I fried about eight at a time in a pot of hot oil, and they bob around and flip over on their own, which is very cute.
My dough was a little sticky, so they ended up in sort of spiky tardigrade shapes
and then you let them drain on paper towel for a bit, and then you pipe jelly into them
and then gently roll them in sugar.
Lavish and delicious. I like the small size, because they’re so sweet and rich, so you don’t get overwhelmed because it’s just two bites.
This brings us up to Dec. 30, if anyone’s keeping track, and the next day was New Year’s Eve. I found a last little bit of cookie dough in the fridge, and made three very specific shapes:
Then the next day was New Year’s Eve, and our tradition is sushi and dumplings. Not gonna lie, I may have overextended myself a bit by this point, and I was a little bit punchy and weepy. I made a cake for the next day, and then I made the dumplings more or less using this recipe and made a pot of good short-grain rice, and made some sauce to make sushi rice
with Corrie to fan it while I gently sliced the sauce into the rice just like on Cooking Mama. Then we went to the vigil Mass for Mary, the Mother of God feast day, and I was fairly cranky when we got back, and maybe accidentally set the steamer baskets on fire by mistake, who can say.
But we did have dumplings!
And we did have some raggy ass sushi!
and then we decided nobody was really up for our traditional Marx Brothers movie, so we watched Raising Arizona instead, accompanied by ice cream sodas. This didn’t quite bring us up to midnight, so we limped up to 12:00 with the Frasier RDWRER episode where they get in touch with America
and find it beautiful, flawed, complicated, and unpleasant.
And then we went to bed! And then the next day was Sophia’s birthday! The big kids went to see Nosfertatu and I decorated Sophia’s cake, and then took the little girls to see Moana 2. Which was a perfectly pleasant and pretty movie that I forgot as soon as the credits rolled.
Sophia’s cake turned out pretty good, though. She requested a strawberry cake with lemon cream cheese frosting, with Moomin, Hello Kitty, and Snoopy holding hands and being friends in a meadow, and this is how that turned out:
Snoopy has clearly been snacking heavily these past few weeks, and the Moomin does not look completely trustworthy to me, but dammit, I thought it was a good cake.
I watched a few videos on how to make roses out of strawberries, and I can’t say I mastered it, but they turned out decent
Sophia requested calzones for dinner, which is easy enough
and I actually only had half the amount of ricotta cheese the recipe called for, and they turned out great.
May do it that way on purpose from now on. She liked her cake and her presents, yay! Then when the younger kids went to bed, I made up the requested fancy snack platter
Thank you, Aldi.
Damien and I went to bed while the rest of them did I don’t know what. If you look closely, you can see that I had plenty of leftover edible metallic foil (purchased at Walmart) from the cake, and was not afraid to use it.
I also had something from Aldi that is new to me: tête de moine cheese rosettes.
and since the theme of the last few weeks was Cheese Without Frontiers, I bought a pack. They look like this:
and for the life of me, I can’t remember what they taste like. Kind of like parmesan, I think.
Then the next day, I cleared the table for the first time in two weeks. I’m really good at just leaning into the joyful mess and the happy chaos around birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year, but then in early January, I hit a wall and just start throwing shit away, and it feels AMAZING.
Still sticky, but we’re getting there. We’ll be human again, you’ll see.
So, Jan. 2 was supposed to be the first day back at school for some of the kids, which is ridiculous. Still, I figured time to go is time to go. I had set the alarm for 6:40 and resigned myself to my fate.
At 8 a.m. Damien nudged me awake and I sprung into action. Realized I had set the alarm for p.m., not a.m. No matter! Late is better than never. So I woke up Irene, Benny, and Corrie, and they all sadly got up, but Irene was practically delirious with exhaustion, so I sent her back to bed. Then I let the dog out and fed the ducks and turned on the turtle lights and sat down with my coffee, and double checked the school website. Which . . . was kind of ambiguous.
That’s ambiguous, right? So I was like, screw this, we’re already an hour and a half late and there may not even BE school. You kids go back to bed. So then I went back to bed myself, and then later while I was doing some gentle yoga, the school emailed me to ask if the kids were sick, which, sure. Yes.
And then I discovered that Irene (who goes to a different school, and whom I had woken up and then sent back to bed) definitely didn’t have school anyway. So I took Corrie out for a haircut and nobody had any regrets, as far as I know.
For supper, I found a hunk of roast beef that I didn’t even remember buying, so I roasted that for supper. I sprinkled it heavily with garlic salt and pepper and seared it on all sides in very hot olive oil, and then I just chunked it uncovered in a 350 oven for about an hour, checked to make sure it was done, let it rest a little, and sliced it up.
I served it with basically everything else I could find
which turned out to be pomegranate, leftover lamb, leftover shrimp, and miscellaneous crackers and cheese, including a round of cheap brie which I heated up in the microwave like an absolute criminal. We also had lots of baguettes lurking about getting stale, so I sliced them up and toasted them in the oven with olive oil and garlic salt.
I think this was the best meal I’ve had all year.
And then this morning it was Damien’s turn to bring the kids to school, which he actually DID, the big show-off.
Tonight we are having quesadillas.
And that’s my story! Thanks for joining me through what, in retrospect, was mainly a Journey Through Cheese No regrets! No regrets! And happy new year to you, every one.
Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.
Servings24large cookies
Ingredients
1cupbutter
1cupwhite sugar
1-2tspvanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
1egg
2tspbaking powder
1/2tspsalt
3cupsflour
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350.
Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.
Add egg and extracts.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.
Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.
Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.
I use my Instant Pot to get well-cooked rice, and I enlist a second person to help me with the second part. If you have a small child with a fan, that's ideal.
Ingredients
6cupsraw sushi rice
1cuprice vinegar
1/2cupsugar
1Tbspsalt
Instructions
Rinse the rice thoroughly and cook it.
In a saucepan, combine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt, and cook, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.
Put the rice in a large bowl. Slowly pour the vinegar mixture over it while using a wooden spoon or paddle to fold or divide up the cooked rice to distribute the vinegar mixture throughout. You don't want the rice to get gummy or too sticky, so keep it moving, but be careful not to mash it. I enlist a child to stand there fanning it to dry it out as I incorporate the vinegar. Cover the rice until you're ready to use it.
This is the basic recipe for cheese calzones. You can add whatever you'd like, just like with pizza. Warm up some marinara sauce and serve it on the side for dipping.
Servings12calzones
Ingredients
3ballspizza dough
32ozricotta
3-4cupsshredded mozzarella
1cupparmesan
1Tbspgarlic powder
2tsporegano
1tspsalt
1-2egg yolks for brushing on top
any extra fillings you like: pepperoni, olives, sausage, basil, etc.
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400.
Mix together filling ingredients.
Cut each ball of dough into fourths. Roll each piece into a circle about the size of a dinner plate.
Put a 1/2 cup or so of filling into the middle of each circle of dough circle. (You can add other things in at this point - pepperoni, olives, etc. - if you haven't already added them to the filling) Fold the dough circle in half and pinch the edges together tightly to make a wedge-shaped calzone.
Press lightly on the calzone to squeeze the cheese down to the ends.
Mix the egg yolks up with a little water and brush the egg wash over the top of the calzones.
Grease and flour a large pan (or use corn meal or bread crumbs instead of flour). Lay the calzones on the pan, leaving some room for them to expand a bit.
Bake about 18 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. Serve with hot marinara sauce for dipping.
Happy Friday! It has been AGES since I’ve done a What’s For Supper. Sorry! First it was the day after Thanksgiving, and I just couldn’t bear to talk about food; then the next Friday I had hernia surgery so I wrote myself a doctor’s note to skip it; and then it was a week after surgery, and I hadn’t cooked anything, so didn’t have anything to say; and now it is two weeks after, and I have been so successful at allowing myself to rest and recover, I have sadly forgotten how to do that wording thing. The writing. Not to mention the cooking.
HOWEVER, it is Friday! Happy Friday from behind a pile of Amazon and Etsy boxes. I ordered almost everything online this year (frequently reminding the children that, as they open their presents, they should keep in mind that, while their mother was shopping, she went through a whole bottle of opioids). Last night, Damien and I unboxed everything and checked it against my list.
Result: I only seem to have ordered one present twice, and accidentally thrown away a different one. This is pretty good, considering the volume! So I reordered the lost one with priority shipping and a pleading note to the seller, and Damien is going out this afternoon and filling in the gaps (because once we saw everything all piled up, it became evident that — oh, you know. We needed to rectify certain inequities. He is also buying presents for the dog and the cat, who will absolutely notice and be very hurt if they don’t get presents. And yes, he ordered special Christmas treat worms for the turtle, who will not notice if he doesn’t get a treat, but we still feel that the Incarnation is for turtles, too, in some way. Anyway, he’s getting worms.
Sophia put up the Christmas lights inside and out, Elijah did the grocery shopping, and the older kids took turns picking kids up from school, and everyone has been cooking and cleaning and keeping the household ticking along very nicely while I just lolled. And truly, just as important and doing all the huge amount of work he did, Damien has also been tirelessly reminding me that I have to rest and I’m not being lazy or making a big deal out of nothing, and that nobody is mad at me for recuperating. I only needed to hear it 46,000 times. Maybe a couple more.
So I mostly just lurked about and showed up for meals that other people made. One such meal was Benny’s birthday, and she requested Damien’s magnificent lasagna from the Deadspin recipe
and a “dirt and worms” dessert, which she made herself, for her actual birthday. Then next week we had her party with friends, which featured a fire and hot chocolate bar outside, lots of giggling, and a parakeet cake.
I did look up tutorials on how to make parakeets out of gum paste, and then Benny and I made some very serviceable parakeet shapes, with their beady little eyes and weird little lumpy beaks and puffy necks and everything. Then we started decorating them with melted candy melts, and this is where things went a little off the rails.
Still clearly parakeets, but with a little dash of “you poor dear, what happened?”
I also decided it would be fun and easy to do one of those moves where you melt chocolate and use a piping bag to swirl it around on an acetate cake collar, and then just wrap it around the cake and peel the collar away, and voila, you have
look, first you downgrade your mental image from an airy filigreed bird cage encircling the two birds, to a just sort of fancy maybe sort of bramble-like backdrop design. Then you walk away for a little bit, take some deep breaths, face reality, and get to work salvaging all the bits that broke off, and sticking them into the cake randomly so it looks like a couple of parakeets are . . . I don’t know what they’re doing. They’re being on a cake, with things sticking out. Benny made a bunch of green hearts and added sprinkles and she was happy, which is what matters. We had fun making weird birds together.
The next day was my birthday, my FIFTIETH, when it turned out my heart’s desire was for Damien to bring home McDonald’s. Most of the adult kids came over, and Clara made some lovely key lime pies, and it was absolutely swell.
The last couple of days, I have been actually hoisting myself out of bed in the morning, and even cooking a bit. Yesterday we had pork spiedies
which were a little bland, but fine. While I was hacking up pork, I went ahead and made a second dinner: Carnitas and beans and rice. Looks promising.
I wrapped that up and we’ll have it on Saturday, which promises to be a bustling busy day, so it will be nice to have dinner squared away. I absolutely loathe cleaning raw meat off cutting boards and knives, so only having to do it once for two meals was irresistible.
Today I’m going to make sabanekh bil hummus (spinach and chickpea stew) from this Saveur recipe, and serve it with store-bought pita.
It’s easy and so savory and tasty. Damien likes it, too, and he’s not generally a big chickpea fan.
I have not done one single speck of Christmas baking, except for a bake sale back in November. I might get ingredients for buckeyes, which are no-bake treats (it’s just basically peanut butter, butter, and powdered sugar mushed into dough and then rolled into little balls, then dipped in melted chocolate). Most definitely something the kids can do basically on their own, as you can see from this pic from a few years ago
and maybe some more sugar cookies to decorate, because after school today the kids will finally be on vacation. Here is my recipe for dough that you don’t have to chill, and that keeps its shape when you bake it.
We have a set of star cookie cutters in graduated sizes, which you can double up (I mean make two of each size), ice them, and then stack them to make a tree, IF YOU WANT.
If you want to pose like this for every single photo, there is not much I can do about that, apparently.
I don’t honestly have a lot of Christmas baking specialties — just pretty standard stuff. On Christmas morning, we have cinnamon buns, bacon, OJ, egg nog, and fruit, and on Christmas evening, we get Chinese takeout (except for one kid whose relationship with Chinese food was permanently tainted by a stomach bug, so she gets a sandwich from Jersey Mike’s).
I think I settled on Alton Brown’s recipe for cinnamon rolls, because they’re meant to be made the night before and then baked in the morning. But I’m not locked in, if anyone has a suggestion for a better recipe!
And then Hanukkah starts on Christmas evening! So at some point I will probably make potato latkes, maybe sufganiyot, maybe rugelach!
If I don’t manage to post anything in time, I wish you all, every last one of you, even the mean Russian bots, but especially people who need someone to care for them, and people who have been wearing themselves out caring for other people, a warm and good and holy last days of Advent, and a Christmas day of peace and joy with our favorite baby boy. I love yez all.
Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.
Servings24large cookies
Ingredients
1cupbutter
1cupwhite sugar
1-2tspvanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
1egg
2tspbaking powder
1/2tspsalt
3cupsflour
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350.
Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.
Add egg and extracts.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.
Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.
Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.
Christopher Alles, aged 33, is the father of five kids under the age of five, including triplet girls aged 2. So you might think he was describing his home life when he said it’s “everything everywhere all at once.”
But he was actually speaking about art and how to understand it.
“You have multiple things going on at the same time, and it takes a while to get comfortable managing them: Composition, representation, abstract form, the expressiveness of the character. You have to be juggling everything at the same time,” he said.
The New York-based sculptor sometimes feels the magnitude of that “everything everywhere all at once” task on a cosmic scale, especially when he’s carving; and it’s an experience he finds immensely satisfying.
“You’re taking something that’s meaningless and incoherent, and bringing order, separating things,” he said.
He describes forming a sculpted foot, first separating it from the base of the statue, then forming the front and sides of the foot like simple walls that gradually take on definition and meaning.
“It’s like God separating the land and the water. You’re making distinctions. Gradually things come together,” he said.
But if Alles shares in God’s creative process, he’s definitely not omniscient like God, or totally in control of what he’s making.
“As you go along, things change and emerge. You feel like you’re not in charge,” he said.
There is a mysterious element to making art, and even as he proceeds along the thoughtful and laborious process from making sketches, to miniature clay figures, to full-size armatured clay sculptures, to mold, to final cast poured in resin and marble, he’s sometimes surprised at how various elements work themselves out.
He points to a recent secular commission, “Apollo and Daphne,” a startlingly explosive figurative piece that seems to fly out from a central point suspended in the air, rather than from the ground.
“The composition was just playing around. The sort of geometric form of angles and lines just sort of emerged; it was spontaneous,” he said.
It invites the viewer to feel, rather than just see, the tension between the energies of the covetous god and the hapless nymph, who becomes rooted in the earth as a tree to escape his assault.
But Alles focuses mainly on sacred art, and he recognizes that another thing that’s out of his control is what the viewer actually sees.
“It’s hard, as an artist, to see your own work in the way other people see it,” said Alles. “Other people read things into my work that I didn’t see.”
I’m happy to announce that the winner of the Kitchen Rosary from The Woodshop at Avalon is Kim Pepper! Her name was chosen randomly from everyone who entered. Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks to The Woodshop At Avalon for sponsoring this giveaway!
If you didn’t win, you can still order one of their beautiful abacus-style kitchen rosaries
and while you’re at it, use the 10% discount code: Enter in SMALLS24 when you check out, and you will get 10% off. The code is good until Dec. 7, 2024.
Dec. 7 is also the last day to order custom goods, so check it out! They make a variety of handcrafted goods for your Catholic home or office, for babies, and for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium. A very popular item right now is the simple but clever prayer card holder, which is only $9.99.
This size fits on most windowsills, and you can just pop in a prayer card to display the saint of the day, or keep a memorial card in it, etc. It even has storage, so the cards you’re not using won’t get lost or wrecked. You can have it engraved with “ora pro nobis” or “pray for us,” and it comes in three different finishes and two sizes. You can also order four beeswax votive candles directly from the site.
Don’t forget to use your discount code! Yay, small business!
It’s Small Business Saturday, and I want to introduce you to a new-to-me store: The Woodshop At Avalon. This is a family-run business and I really like their simple, dignified goods that are designed to work with everyday Catholic living.
Much better than letting them float around in the bottom of your purse indefinitely, which in my current system. These would make nice stocking stuffers, or little gifts for any Catholic.
Very cool way to observe Tenebrae in Lent. It comes in walnut, cherry, or a combination.
The discount code! Enter in SMALLS24 when you check out, and you will get 10% off. The code is good until Dec. 7, 2024.
Now for the giveaway! Yay, I love a giveaway! The Woodshop At Avalon is giving away one of their pretty handmade cherrywood kitchen abacus-style rosaries.
When daily life is full of hands-on tasks, it can be hard to find the time to sit down and pray. And when we somehow manage it, an interruption often makes us lose our place and grow discouraged in the practice. This abacus-style rosary can sit on your kitchen counter or the window sill above the sink to help you keep your heart focused even as your hands are going every direction. It helps us realize the goal of making all our daily work into a prayer. Or it can hang at eye level for children who might wish to say a Hail Mary in the middle of their play, contributing to a family rosary for a shared intention. However you choose to place it in your home, we hope it is a reminder of our Blessed Mother’s ceaseless intercession on behalf of your family.
I love the idea of people passing through and adding a Hail Mary or two to the collective family rosary. A great habit to pick up during Advent.
This piece is priced at $45.99, but to take us up to the beginning of Advent, the folks at The Woodshop At Avalon are giving away one as a gift to one random winner. Here is how to enter the drawing:
-Sign up for their mailing list (click here, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and enter you email address)
and/or
-Share a link to their store or one of their items on your social media
and/or
-Share this blog post on social media
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You can do any or all of these things to earn entries. For each thing you do, leave a comment on this post (not on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, but right here, on my site!). So if you do two things, please leave two separate comments; etc. This is using the honor system, because I know you are all honorable people and I am really fed up with Rafflecopter.
The contest will be open Saturday and Sunday, and I will use a random number selector to choose a winner on Monday morning.
Good luck! And if you order, don’t forget to use the discount code SMALLS24. It is good until Dec. 7, 2024.
The time has come! It’s the 2024 Christmas present idea list. These are items we actually bought and enjoyed. I think this is the tenth year I’ve written this list up. I deeply wish I had also kept track of the things the kids give each other, because some of them are absolutely brilliant. But this is a start.
This year, we became fascinated by paper marbling videos, and I bought this kit on a whim so we could try it at home. Caveat: You have to prepare the ink mixture and then wait six hours before using it, so plan accordingly. But once it was ready to go, it was fun and easy and satisfying.
Just a cheapsky little fidget toy, but it has a million little articulation points and is fun to handle. Comes in several colors, and people are selling lots of different 3D printed animals and creatures.
I myself hunted down the version with the bearded evil genius seated in a swivel chair and tenting his fingers while his glamorous companion in a futuristic white dress gazes inscrutably at the camera, but YOU can just get the normal version, which is the same in a more boring box. This game takes about ten minutes to play. One person sets up four colored pegs behind a little shield, and the other person has to guess what they are by setting up four pegs of their own on their own side. The first person responds with up to four coded pegs: Black for “right color, right position,” and white for “right color, wrong position.” That’s it. It’s mostly logic, but a little bit of psychology, too.
and peg boards to make your designs on. I bought these to take with us on vacation, and the teenagers used them all week long, making up all kinds of goofy designs. I think this is the only thing I’ve actually ironed in the last decade.
There are, in this world, Hawaiian shirts with every possible thing printed on them. Perhaps your household has a tomato lover in it, who would enjoy this shirt.
I actually got this for myself, because I like magnets. It comes on a lonnnnnnng cord, and gloves to help you keep your grip. I haven’t found anything in the water yet (I got a little spooked out, to be honest, dragging that thing in the dark water; but I’ll be braver next time), but there are plenty of things to be found on land. Magnets! How do they work!
In all these years, I have still never sat down and watched a full episode of Teen Titans, but all my kids will gather together and watch it and laugh, so how bad could it be?
This is a dog toy, not a kid toy, but I’m mentioning it because our super gnawer has been super gnawing on this for a solid year, and it’s still in one piece.
You definitely know someone who would needs this on their desk. And if you want to roll up a $20 bill and stuff it in the secret compartment, you can do that, too!
This is fun and works well. It makes little fish-shaped waffles with a space inside, so you can fill them with whatever, Nutella or bean paste or ice cream or whatever you like.
The store we got this from doesn’t seem to be open anymore, but it’s a neat idea, and there are several other styles made by various other people. It holds your game controller or remote (or whatever you want), and you can mount it on the wall or set it on your desk.
This is kinda dumb, but you can have any photo printed on a pillowcase that’s covered with those sequins that you can flip. You know what I mean. Those flippy sequins with the secret picture underneath, but it’s some silly picture that you chose! Comes in several colors. Make sure you order a pillow insert, not just the pillowcase.
I actually love this game. It’s so stupid but lots of fun, and it’s quick and portable. It’s also a game where younger kids actually have an advantage over adults, because their reflexes are faster.
Laser cut wooden or acrylic earrings in bright, cute designs. I can’t share the specific earrings we bought, although we’ve bought several over the years, because she’s always turning out new designs. All our Odd Giraffe earrings always fetch lots of compliments, and the customer service goes above and beyond.
Ah, Thanksgiving, when everyone’s kitchen goes into overdrive, turning out goodies and sweets to keep the nation’s tummies merry and bright.
But sooner or later, every busy baker and clever cook is bound to hit a snag: The recipe calls for an ingredient you simply don’t have. You thought the bottle of vanilla was fresh, but it’s almost empty. You could have sworn the carton was full, but only one or two eggs remain. What to do?
You could send your husband to the convenience store to get gouged. Everyone enjoys that, especially Yogi, who is doing the gouging. (This is not racist. His name is Yogi and boy does he gouge.) Or, you could put on your thinking toque and rustle up a substitute.
A substitute! Good kitchen sense means thinking on your feet, and substitutes are the backbone of baking, unless you are, in fact, cooking a backbone, and you are out of backbone. Then you’re out of luck.
Here are some of my most-used kitchen substitutions:
Short on eggs? Substitute 1/4 cup of unsweetened applesauce for each egg you’re missing. Or you could swap in half a mashed banana. Just don’t think too hard about why it’s okay to use banana, which is stuffed with sucrose, but the substitution guides always specify unsweetened applesauce. Baking is a science, okay? And science means you shut up. If you don’t have apples or bananas or eggs, you could always use arrowroot powder. I won’t tell you how much, because we all know you don’t have arrowroot powder. Dude, you don’t even have eggs.
Recipe calls for buttermilk but you’re fresh out? The next best thing is a scant cup of regular milk with a tablespoon of vinegar stirred in. Let it sit for five minutes before stirring, to give the ghost of your grandmother a chance to sidle in and make that sucking noise she makes when you did something stupid; then continue cooking as normal. *kshhh*
Sour cream and yogurt are very often interchangeable, so feel free to swap them in and out. In and out! You could even use cottage cheese. In and out, up and down, side-side-side-side-side! You could even try mayonnaise, as long as there are enough other strong ingredients to mask the flavor. Few people know this, but mayonnaise is actually made of cheese. A dairy product, if you will. Yes it is. Why is it cheese-colored, then?
Recipe calls for unsalted butter, but all you have is salted? Get over yourself. No one cares. What is this for, cookies? Your cookies are rubbery little wrinkled dough puddles with hair in them. Gray hair. People are buying them at the bake sale solely to remove them from public view. The salt ratio being marginally out of balance is not what’s going to make or break your project, bunky.
Springform pan gone missing? Try taking a normal pan and lining it with tinfoil, then putting little pebbles from the stream all along the inside. Crimp the tinfoil along the top end and fashion little vents with a melon baller, then pour the batter over that with a wry little twisting motion of the wrist while looking in the other direction and pretending not to notice what is happening. It won’t do anything, but at least you could try. Try putting your husband’s car keys in there. Put Meow Mix, see if I care.
A little low on flour? Try this trick: Slowly tear the pages out of your most infuriating cookbook with all the precious details about a frugal but free-spirited childhood in Soho, and stuff them into the food processor. Add a little truffle oil, pulse two or three times, and boom. You’ll have an excuse to go to the Salvation Army and pick yourself out a new food processor. While you’re out, you can get some flour.
Voris settled the federal defamation lawsuit de Laire brought in 2021 over articles based on the reporting of nomadic canon lawyer and erstwhile Voris confidante Marc Balestrieri.
The apology Voris finally offered came this summer, after his online news outfit, Church Militant, shut down and his non-profit, Saint Michael’s Media, paid $500,000 to de Laire.
“I offer my full and genuine apology to Fr. de Laire for any hurt or emotional distress he suffered as a result of a news article titled ‘New Hampshire Vicar Changes Dogma Into Heresy’ on the St. Michael’s Media website churchmilitant.com on January 17, 2019,” Voris wrote in his apology letter.
Suzanne Elovecky, de Laire’s attorney, said Voris’ apology came with a “substantial” monetary payment to de Laire. Elovecky called the settlement a “complete victory” over Voris.
“It’s a good thing for Fr. de Laire and really shows Voris was on his heels,” Elovecky.
The lawsuit isn’t done, though, as Balestrieri’s end of the case remains unresolved. Already deemed liable for defaulting in the lawsuit, Balestrieri is currently trying to get out of paying damages to de Laire. The priest wants Balestrieri to pay at least $100,000, according to court records.
Marc Balestrieri
Voris’ outlet published videos and articles starting in January of 2019 calling de Laire ‘emotionally unstable,’ stating de Laire is incompetent, and implying he’s corrupt, according to the lawsuit. The articles came in response to the Roman Catholic Diocese of New Hampshire disciplining the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a fringe traditionalist group with a compound in rural Richmond, New Hampshire. At the time, de Laire was the judicial vicar for the diocese and the front man for dealing with the Slaves.
Voris placed a large chunk of the blame for the articles on his failure to properly vet Balestrieri’s work.
“As CEO of St. Michael’s Media and Church Militant.com, I did not ensure the proper vetting the article as I should have. Mr. Balestrieri did not substantiate, and has not substantiated in the lawsuit, his claims regarding Father de Laire by identifying sources. Prior to publication, SMM should have questioned this lack of substantiation, and should have assessed Mr. Balistieiri’s and his story’s objectivity. I did not ensure that SMM did so,” Voris wrote.
As the case moved closer to a fall, 2023 trial, court records show de Laire’s team learned Voris and his Church Militant staff had been hiding evidence sought in discovery, including messages with Balestrieri. Balestrieri then made a surprise appearance at a June, 2023 hearing in the United States District Court in Concord seeking to get out from under the default judgement.
Weeks before, Balestrieri denied to Villarubbia that he had written the original article. At the June hearing, Balestreiri agreed to sit for a deposition scheduled for July, 2023 during which he was likely to repeat that denial under oath. However, court records show the day of the June hearing, Voris sent Balestreiri a text message warning.
“Marc – you are committing perjury. You know you wrote that article. What you don’t know is this morning we found proof – your digital fingerprints – all totally documented – on that article. Remember the email address – TomMoore@Churchmilitant.com.? We have all the receipts. You go through with this and we will rain down on you publicly. You are a liar, and a Welch,” Voris wrote.
Balestrieri cancelled his deposition 24 hours before it was to start, and again disappeared from the scene for a time.
Balestrieri also reappeared this month, filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the legal theory he cannot be sued in New Hampshire for defamation since he never went to New Hampshire when writing the article, and the article was published by Church Militant’s Ferndale, Michigan office.
