The man who founded a right-wing Catholic media mini-empire was forced to resign Tuesday, telling the public that he needs to work on the ugliness inside himself.
The stunning news that Michael Voris was pushed out from Church Militant, the media outlet he started almost 20 years ago, came out Tuesday when the Church Militant board issued a statement that Voris had breached its morality clause.
In a video he released on social media Tuesday evening, Voris said in a way he’s thankful for the “dark grace” of his fall, so that he can start healing.
“Sometimes it takes very horrible events, even at your own hand, to surface certain things that need to be faced,” Voris said.
Voris’s longtime on air sidekick, Christine Niles, released her own video on Tuesday, confirming she’s the one who alerted the board to problems at Church Militant. Niles resigned on Nov. 9 with a lengthy and detailed letter to the Church Militant board about what had been going on behind the scenes, she said.
“There were lots of troubling things over the past year, but especially over that past several months, about the direction Church Militant was heading, and some of the decisions Voris was making,” Niles said.
Niles is not saying what Voris did to be pushed out of the business he started, but said there has been a distinct personality change in Voris.
“He is not the man I came to work for in 2014,” Niles said.
The one red flag Niles would share is that Voris had stopped praying with staff in the last couple of years.
“Somewhere along the line over the past several years it became less and less of a priority,” she said.
Niles reminded people watching her video that Voris himself had said many times that a lack of prayer almost always came before someone had a public fall from grace.
Voris also did not want to discuss the “ugly actions” that lead to his resignation, but said it is due to “deep, deep, deep” wounds that were too terrible for him to even consider. With whatever he’d done out in the open, at least to Church Militant board members and staff, Voris said he’s seeking professional help.
“I need to conquer these demons,” Voris said.
Voris did offer his “deepest apologies” to the people he’s hurt with his behavior.
“There is nothing I can say to make it good,” Voris said.
Niles said Voris has hurt people in Church Militant, including herself.
“To say that I am heartbroken and furious is an understatement. There’s a lot of anger, there is a great deal of anger over this,” Niles said.
She won’t judge Voris, and said she’s ready to forgive him, but the harm he has caused is real.
“That doesn’t mean though that it hasn’t hurt a lot of people, that it hasn’t scandalized a lot of people, that it hasn’t hurt a lot of good people still at Church Militant,” she said.
While some commenters called his video “tremendously moving” and “humble,” others incredulously pointed out that Voris and Niles have made a living for almost two decades out of exposing and decrying the most private details of the lives of others, in the name of investigative journalism on a crusade to expose corruption in the church; but now that a scandal is in-house, they are asking for prayer, support, and privacy.
I reached out to Simon Rafe, Voris’ longtime Church Militant factotum, this afternoon, but was told he no longer had a phone on his desk. The media company went through a round of layoffs and expense cuts this year which saw employee phones removed, among other austerity measures.
Sources have said since that Rafe, too, is out at Church Militant.
Church Militant operates under the banner of St. Michael’s Media, the non-profit apostolate Voris started. According to tax returns, St. Michael’s media has been running major deficits for years, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Part of the problem has been Voris’ media strategy, which got him sued for defamation.
Voris saw his two original lawyers on the case quit this year. His replacement lawyer, Richard Lehmann, did not respond to a request for comment. If St. Michael’s Media, and its donors, are not longer footing the bill for the legal defense, it’s unclear what will happen next.
This summer, DeLaire’s attorneys accused Voris of hiding evidence and threatening a key witness in the case. He also reportedly claimed attorney-client privilege for his conversations with Niles. While Niles is a licensed attorney, she is not a lawyer for Voris or Church Militant, according to an affidavit she signed in the case.
Voris has been no stranger to strangeness. He was forced to change the name of his news outlet from Real Catholic TV to Church Militant in 2012 after the Archdiocese of Detroit told him he didn’t have permission to use “Catholic” in the name.
In 2016, Voris outed himself as having lived as a homosexual in his 20s and 30s. Voris is now 62. At the time of his previous disclosure, Voris claimed powerful enemies within the Church were about to use his past against him.
At the end of his video, Voris said he might return to Church Militant at some point in the future, once he’s dealt with whatever he is dealing with. He asked viewers for prayers, and to continue supporting Church Militant and its 40 or so employees. He also offered advice for anyone suffering.
“If you’ve got some ugliness in your past, don’t let it control you,” Voris said.
SHOPPING TIME, INNIT? As you can see, graphic design continues to be my passion. My other passion is sharing gift ideas for kids, and so here I present the 2023 list.
Use the little bitty Lego-like parts to build three different styles of robots, which you can then control. We did have a few missing pieces in our set, but the robots still worked without them. Good for a kid with patience!
Eye-catching, elegant sturdy polished wooden hair sticks with shiny metal flowers dangling from the ends. They come in several colors and styles, and the shop also has jewelry and other items. Sophisticated and a little bit punk.
If you have to go to school, make it better by being Boba Fett. I was afraid this would be flimsy and rinky-dink, but it’s actually quite sturdy, bigger than I expected, and full of lots of little pockets and compartments.
I honestly don’t know anything about Pathfinder, except that it’s the other role-playing game. This gift was well-received (because it was the exact item on a wish list).
A set of three walkie talkies so your fates or musketeers or stooges whatever you have three of at your house can keep in touch. These are real walkie talkies, not toys, and they are easy to use and clear, and they don’t gobble batteries. Very handy for people without phones, or just for fun.
I truly know nothing about banjos, but this one did the trick of helping a kid learn to play for the first time. Comes with a case and extra strings, pick, and polishing cloth.
Little portable moon lamp. It’s a bit smaller than the pictures in the Amazon ad make it look, but it’s still cool (and it does come in larger sizes). The remote that controls the color and settings (flash, fade, etc.) is small and maybe loseable for a young kid. Comes with a little wooden stand so it doesn’t roll off your night table, or you can carry it with you.
I was afraid these would be cheesy, but the (adult) kid who got them really enjoyed the calming, detailed activity of placing the little “diamonds” one by one with the provided tool. You stick on a corked back and they make nice coasters, or just decorations.
We’ve bought a couple of these. They really work. Gotta move your puzzle off the table for dinner time? Roll it up and put it away, and then pick up where you left off.
We got this at Walmart for $5 and my eight-year-old LOVES it. She puts it together several times a day and . . . now she knows the states. I think the list price is more like $10, so there are probably higher-quality map floor puzzles out there, but I’m including it more as an inspiration. I also adored floor puzzles at this age. Very satisfying.
Kind of a weird item, but neat. You turn it on and the satiny sand swirls around in the liquid inside the ball, making a mystical effect. You can set it so it goes continuously, or allegedly so it starts up in response to a sound, like a clap. We have not been able to get it to do the sound activation mode, but it’s still quite cool. Runs on batteries.
Everything you need to get going with little resin projects. It’s not a huge kit, but it’s handy to have everything together for beginners, and then you can buy more of what you need and branch out if the kid likes to use resin.
Pretty nonstick pan to make apple-shaped treats cakes, or you could use it for gummies or candies. I like how there are four different designs in one pan. Nordicware has tons and tons of designs.
Weird and captivating. Lots of detail in the illustrations, lots of thought went into the descriptions. Caveat emptor, some of the fairies are a little topless, but they’re not sexy or anything, they’re just fairies. We like Brian Froud! Probably not for young kids, as some of the illustrations can be a little creepy.
We did not actually get fifteen experiments out of this, but we got quite a few, and it really hit the spot for a kid who likes science. The seven-year-old did quite a few of them on her own, and she really cherishes the rock specimens. It has plenty of informational guides to explain what you’re doing with the experiments, but you can also just mess around with them.
Really nice quality, very impressive. Fold-out Dungeon Master screen so you can make your nefarious plans in privacy. It comes with pre-printed cheat sheets that are decent, or you can use your own, and slide them into the four clear plastic pockets, and you can make notes on them with dry erase marker.
The exact one we got is sold out, but this is pretty close. Walk into a room and instantly find out who the other Lord of the Rings fans are. Comes in two styles of shirt and many different colors, from TeePublic.
You’re gonna hate me, but your kid will love this thing. It gets tons of play. It’s basically Dance Dance Revolution in a self-contained mat you can unfold and start up, and there are three different modes of play: One where you follow the moves as they light up, a Simon Says-style game, or just free mode. You can use the preset tunes or use Bluetooth to play your own music. It does have a volume control and it’s not TOO loud, and it has held up really well under lots of use. Good for parties or just dancy kids.
This is another one of those things that I don’t know if other people’s kids want, or if it’s just my kids. It comes in several colors and has held up well all year. A spring or fall jacket, so not super warm, but not flimsy.
A little bundle I put together: Beginner chain mail jewelry
A neat little device that holds your project for you while you work on it, with the help of a magnifying glass. Not 100% necessary, but it’s not expensive and it really makes a kid feel like a serious artisan when they use it. Works as described once you figure out all the various joints and nuts.
Clear, straightforward, copiously illustrated instructions for the beginner. My 11-year-old opened it up and went right to work without help.
Tackle box organizer I highly recommend some kind of bin to keep everything together! We got one at Walmart, and I think it had more compartments than this, but it did have the fold-up trays, which my kid was very impressed by.
The famous portable water filter, for the person who is always wandering off into the hills and maybe forgot a water bottle. Just a little present, but thoughtful for the right person. Currently on sale for $9.99.
We usually buy costume dresses from The Little Dress-Up Shop, which has very well-made, non-itchy, machine-washable dresses with sparkles that don’t shed; but we had a hard time finding a Merida dress in a big enough size. Or maybe it was just that we needed the fast Prime shipping? Anyway this one did the trick and the kid was delighted. A decent quality costume.
The black one we got is sold out, but they still have this lovely little blue leather bat to gallantly hold your hair in place, or many other beautifully crafted leather items — barrettes, masks, key fobs, and more — from River Gypsy Arts, very reasonably priced for the workmanship.
This is more than I ever expected to spend on a beanbag chair, to be honest, (we got the four-foot one for $85) but the cheaper ones from other brands are really garbagy, so you get what you pay for. It’s huge and comfortable and hasn’t gone flat in a year, and it has a comfy microsuede cover and is filled with memory foam beads. It’s big enough for a teenage boy. They come in bigger and smaller sizes, and many colors, as well as sacks in other shapes and configurations.
Sadly these wooden parakeet earrings we got are sold out, but there are many, many other animal and other cute and beautifully-crafted wooden earring designs at The Odd Giraffe. Truly outstanding customer service, and the earrings are light and comfortable.
A jolly, ridiculous card game that truly takes about ninety seconds to play one round. It’s a truly family-friendly game designed to be played by people of all ages and/or a people of assorted ages, that just about anyone can learn instantly, and that doesn’t have a lot of pieces to lose. It would make a great cheerer-upper if people are gloomy, or an ice breaker at a party of shy folks. The actions are silly but not humiliating. It really strikes the perfect balance of simplicity and entertainment value.
And that’s it! I’ll add to this if I remember more stuff. Don’t forget to check out the monster list for hundreds of other present ideas, including lots for younger kids, such as we used to have. The list is organized by category:
Little guys’ toys (besides dolls) Games and puzzles Building and tactile toys Kitchen Sciencey stuff Electronics Art and journaling supplies Jewelry, pins, accessories (+makeup, sunglasses) Music and musical instruments Crafts, kits, knitting, sewing Dolls and stuffies Outdoor and active toys Weaponry and knives Costumes Hats and hair accessories Bags and wallets Miscellaneous
You guys know I’m not any kind of doctor. This is just advice from a mom who knows how to Google stuff and type. So:
Vitamin D deficiency is incredibly common worldwide. Vitamin D is a hormone your body produces when it’s exposed to sunlight. If you don’t get enough sun, because you’re indoors a lot, or because you wear sunblock and protective clothing outdoors, or if you live north of the Mason-Dixon line, or you’re overweight, or you have dark skin, or you’re old — so, most people I know — your body is almost certainly not making enough Vitamin D, and you may be feeling a little or a lot garbagey because of it.
The best thing to do is ask your doctor to get tested. The second best thing (assuming you don’t have kidney problems, or other health problems! Ask your doctor!) is to do is to just buy a bottle of vitamin D3 and start taking some, and see what happens. I got a giant vat of D3 50 mcg (2,000 IU) gummies from Walmart and I started taking 3 of them (so 6,000 IU) with dinner. This is kind of a lot, and is more than is recommended, so I’ll ask to be tested next time I go to the doctor, and I’m keeping an eye out for negative symptoms like nausea and constipation.
But my story is: In about a week, I started feeling better. I feel more alert and less brain-foggy than I have in a long time. I don’t have to struggle against falling asleep every afternoon. I’m feeling more energetic and upbeat in general. And I have been sleeping SO WELL. Like, my nighttime is not made up of series of confused, unhappy memories of getting up and lying down again and struggling with my sheets. I’m just unconscious.
This is not the only thing I’ve been doing to try to have a different kind of winter. I really struggle in the cold months, and I also have various moderate but intractable health problems that get discouraging. I have PMDD and a little bit of arthritis and chronic migraines, and my birthright is a heaping helping of gloom. So I’ve been doing yoga, which helps a lot; I’ve been taking Prozac, which helps a lot, especially with the PMDD; and I’ve been working on resetting the way I eat, which helps a lot. I also have committed to making a morning offering before I check my phone, and that helps a lot. I’ve been using those nose opening sticky strips, which helps a bit. And I stopped drinking, and I don’t want to talk about it. But anyway, I have been trying to feel better, so I can do better, and I was starting to think, “Welp, I guess I’m just old, and this is how it is.”
Turns out you can just eat a few gummies in the evening, and it helps a lot! I have bought vitamin D pills in the past, but I’m so burnt out on taking pills and keeping them straight, I just wasn’t motivated enough to add more. It’s a little silly, but gummies are sweet and easy, so it turns out that was enough to actually make me eat them every day. It’s not dumb if it works, right? Or even if it is dumb, it still works.
I’m making a whole big post out of this because I know (a) how much information there is out there about fixing yourself, and how overwhelming it can be and (b) how helpful it can be to get specific advice from someone you already sorta know and (c) how hard it is to make even one tiny little easy change when you feel like crap all the time. It’s probably true that it’s a combination of things that is helping me; but it’s so rare that something this easy makes a difference.
What kind of improvement am I talking about? I got up this morning, flicked on the overhead bedroom light, saw the bulb had blown, and just . . . went and got a new bulb, climbed up on my bed, and put it in. I also cleaned off the light fixture, and while I was up there, I went around and wiped away all the cobwebs and dust on the ceiling and wall corners. Then I put the wipes away and threw out the used one, threw out the old lightbulb, and put the empty box in recycling. And I’m on my period right now.
So no, I’m not running marathons suddenly! Let the reader understand. Some of us struggle with everyday stuff, especially in the dark months. If that sounds like you, maybe get some Vitamin D gummies. Put the bottle next to something you are definitely already going to do every day, so it’s easy to remember. Just try it. If you start feeling better in about a week, you’re probably taking the right level. If you do get tested, your levels may be VERY low, and your doctor may recommend taking high doses by prescription for a while, and then backing down to a maintenance dose. Do ask your doctor! Do not take mega doses without asking your doctor! It is possible to take too much Vitamin D and that will hurt you!
Again, me no doctor, so check with your doctor, especially if you have any kidney issues. (I asked a pharmacist to check for me and make sure it was compatible with all the other meds I take.) Take the vitamin with a little food or milk or something with fat for best absorption. Some people think it interferes with sleep, so maybe take it in the morning. (I don’t have this issue, so it works to take it in the evening.) And yes, I’m encouraging the rest of the family to take it, too.
Good luck! Winter is hard. Life is hard. This might help.
Happy Friday! Happy Veteran’s Day, sort of! My kids have the day off and they are celebrating by standing around in the kitchen, shouting. HOWEVER, my trip to the neurologist last week was very fruitful, at least potentially. He took me off one of my “feel terrible” drugs, confirmed that another “feel terrible” drug was stupid and useless and I was right to stop taking it, and gave me a prescription for monthly injections I can do at home. The insurance company is still consulting their in-office oracle to see if I’m worthy, but SOON I should be able to start. So I’m excited! I also started using those no-snore nose strips at night, so Damien and I are both sleeping a little better, and I finished Alba Avella’s thirty day yoga for flexibility challenge, and it only took me like ninety days. And I went to confession and I bought a giant bottle of Vitamin D and I’m actually taking it this time, and basically I’m kicking November’s ass. Potentially.
The cold weather has started in earnest, brr. We’ve had some frost and snow, but I managed to get some last final bulbs in the ground and get my perennial beds prepped for winter before the ground froze, which makes me feel amazing. I trimmed my strawberries and asparagus and covered them with straw and secured it with plastic fencing and bricks, and I made a lovely compost ring around my baby rhubarb.
This is my first time digging into my compost heap, and I didn’t know what I was going to find. I didn’t do anything you’re supposed to do – no turning, no mixing, no careful layering. I just dumped soil and kitchen scraps and duck bedding on it, and sometimes drained the duck water into it.
So, inside toward the bottom, it is SO RICH. I was afraid it would be, like, just some banana peels and eggshells just hanging out undisturbed, looking at me, like “What?” But everything has decomposed really nicely, and the soil is like chocolate. Amazing. What a world.
I also gathered up the last of the marigold, cosmos, and sunflower seeds. I’ve been saving, drying, and storing flower and vegetable seeds for a few months, and it feels better than money in the bank.
Which is good, because there is no money in the bank. But I’m going to have a wonderful garden!
Anyway! Back to food. I did make a lot of yummy cold-weather food this week. Here’s what we had:
SATURDAY Pork ribs, rolls, green beans
Church basement ass kinda meal, but I got home super late from shopping, so we get credit for putting hot food on the table. I thought I was buying frozen peas, but they turned out to be green beans, oh well.
Ribs just seasoned with salt and pepper and roasted quickly under the broiler. The green beans were delicately flavored with salt. No complaints.
SUNDAY Quiche, challah, onion soup, pomegranates
Sunday, nobody had to GO anywhere, and Damien and Moe were working on Moe’s car, and the kids were yakking about challah, so I offered to show Sophia how to make it. We each made one batch of dough, and we did a little John Henry thing and I made mine with the dough hook in the standing mixer, and she mixed and kneaded hers by hand. Here’s the recipe:
I ended up using more flour in mine to get it to the elastic texture I wanted, so my loaf turned out a little bigger. I’m not sure if that was the only reason it was bigger, or if it also rose differently? Anyway they both turned out good!
Sophia put sesame seeds on hers
Isn’t it lovely? Not bad for her first challah!
and I just left mine plain
Like I said, it was a little bigger, and I wish I had let it bake longer because it was a little damp inside.
So hers actually turned out better! I do love challah. I’m not about to start kneading stuff by hand, though. Gotta save my wrists for Crow Pose.
I also made a couple of quiches. I used to make quiche all the time, and people got pretty burnt out on it, but it’s been years, so I figured it was time. I bought premade pie shells, which I blind baked. Then in one I put baby spinach, crisp bacon and . . . some kind of cheese, which I tragically cannot remember the name of. It was flavored with rosemary.
In the other quiche, I put crumbled hot sausage and sauteed mushrooms, and more cheese.
I basically followed this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, except it calls for half milk and half cream, so I used .. . half and half? I’m no mathemagician, but I think that makes sense.
They did turn out lovely.
The bacon and spinach one was vastly more popular than the mushroom and sausage one, because bacon. Next time, I’ll just make two bacon.
Then I decided it was cold enough that we really needed soup, so I made some simple onion soup.
So we had the soup, the quiches, and lots of challah, and it was a cozy, cheerful meal for a cold day.
As you can see, I had a few pomegranates to serve, as well. Pomegranates have many good qualities, not least how you can frighten people who wander into the kitchen and not instantly realize you’re just prepping dinner, and not settling scores
Moe and Eliora came over, and Benny and Corrie made appetizers out of a Halloween kit I bought on clearance.
Very chic:
I’ll tell you, I got invited to some kind of fancy salon dinner thingy in NY, and if they’re not serving sticky clearance ghost pops, I’m leaving.
The key is using fresh ginger and garlic, and you can make these with beef, but I vastly prefer the lighter texture of turkey or chicken. This is a great, easy dish to prep in the morning and then quickly cook before dinner.
So I made meatballs, and then used the leftover pork to make pork fried rice, which I don’t really have a recipe for. I just chop up whatever aromatics and vegetables I’m using and saute them in sesame oil, then dump on some brown sugar and let it get bubbly and dark. This time I threw in some shredded cabbage and carrot and some leftover diced red onion from something or other
Then the diced up meat, then you add your cooked rice, slosh on a lot of oyster sauce, a medium amount of soy sauce, and a little fish sauce, and then I stir in the scrambled eggs.
Is this how you make fried rice? It’s how EYE make fried rice, and it was pretty popular. I thought it was to sweet, but people liked it.
I cut up some kiwis and put out some sweet chili sauce for the meatballs, and it was a great little meal, and I used up a lot of leftovers.
TUESDAY Salad with beef, pears, and goat cheese
Tuesday’s meal was a bit of a disappointment. I had a big hunk of roast beef and I meant to cook it rare and slice it up to serve over salad. I started off okay, by seasoning it heavily and searing it in hot oil, but then I got confused and, rather than roasting it in the oven in red wine where I could keep an eye on it, I chucked it in the Instant Pot and let it cook for way too long. I forget why I did this. Original sin, no doubt.
So it came out kinda stewed, which is not what I was going for at all. Oh well. So the salad was just mixed greens, your choice of feta or goat cheese and sliced pears, plus some buttery croutons I made with the leftover challah.
It wasn’t a bad meal, but I grieved over what could have been. I adore rare roast beef with greens and pears and cheese.
WEDNESDAY Batter fried fish sandwiches, coleslaw, chips
Wednesday I had to face the tilapia again. They keep having this insanely cheap tilapia at Walmart, and I keep trying to find a way that the kids will like it. I figured everyone likes batter fried food, so even though it was a bit of a hassle, I made batter fried tilapia using this recipe . It’s quite simple and if you don’t crowd the pan, it comes out crisp and golden
I even got nice brioche buns to sweeten the deal, and I served the sandwiches with coleslaw and chips, with lemon and mayo for the fish
I think four people ate it. OH WELL.
I had a lot of leftover batter, so I decided to fry it up as a wad,
and one child who shall remain anonymous sat there eating the fried batter wad despite all warnings that human tummies were not made for such things, and then said child did indeed throw up. On the stairs. This is honestly my fault, because why would I fry a wad so nice and golden and crisp, and then tell people not to eat half of it? Anyway I cleaned the stairs.
The good news is, I still have plenty of tilapia in the freezer!
THURSDAY Nachos, beans and rice with collards
Thursday was just plain old nachos. I made one pan with chips, unseasoned beef, and cheddar cheese, and one pan with chips, seasoned beef (I think salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, and paprika), cheddar cheese, pepper jack cheese, jalapenos, scallions, and a little chili powder on top.
I noticed we had some leftover plain cooked rice from the fried rice, so I decided to make beans and rice
Just very quickly, but I thought it was tasty. I just used the Instant Pot to saute some chopped onions in oil with salt, pepper, garlic powder, some chili powder and lots of cumin, and then I threw in the rice, a can of black beans, and a can of tomatoes with chili peppers. Then I remembered I still had some collard greens in the garden, so I chopped up a bunch of those and threw them in as well, along with a little liquid smoke, and just let it mingle for a while. Not bad at all.
I’m not crazy about nachos, at least not the way I make them. They’re kind of “neither fish nor fowl” food. I like either having a readily identifiable portion of food, like a chicken thigh or a stuffed shell or something; or else if it’s going to be just a sort of food area that you can scoop from, I want it to be the same all the way through, like soup or casserole. But nachos are so disorganized and variable. They’re just a mess. I’d rather have a taco, and I don’t even like tacos that much. I did like that beans and rice with collards, though. I’m totally sold on liquid smoke. I used to feel like it was cheating somehow, but now I just feel like I like liquid smoke.
FRIDAY LOBSTAR?
LOBSTAR INDEED. Dora is the manager of the fish counter at the supermarket, and she’s been promising anniversary lobsters, but her roommate got covid, so it got postponed. But this morning, she delivered! They’re scrabbling around in the fridge right now. The kids will have tuna boats and potato puffs, and Damien and I will have steamed lobsters and let’s face it, potato puffs. Potato puffs with drawn butter and fresh lemon, how bow dah.
Oh, so I gathered up the last of my butternut squash.
We do like it mashed, and we do like it roasted with other vegetables (maybe brussels sprouts, which is the very last thing left in my garden still to be harvested). I haven’t made butternut risotto in a while, but that’s good stuff. Maybe this year is the year I’ll finally make butternut bisque. But I would love to hear your suggestions!
poppy seeds or "everything bagel" topping(optional)
corn meal (or flour) for pan, to keep loaf from sticking
Instructions
In a small bowl, dissolve a bit of the sugar into the water, and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir gently, and let sit for five minutes or more, until it foams.
In the bowl of standing mixer, put the flour (starting with six cups), salt, remaining sugar, oil, and eggs, mix slightly, then add the yeast liquid. Mix with dough hook until the dough doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl, adding flour as needed. It's good if it has a slightly scaly appearance on the outside.
(If you're kneading by hand, knead until it feels soft and giving. It will take quite a lot of kneading!)
Put the dough in a greased bowl and lightly cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm place for at least an hour, until it's double in size.
Grease a large baking sheet and sprinkle it with flour or corn meal. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll three into "snakes" and make a large braid, pinching the ends to keep them together. Divide the fourth piece into three and make a smaller braid, and lay this over the larger braid. Lay the braided loaf on the pan.
Cover again and let rise again for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350.
Before baking, make an egg wash out of egg yolks and a little water. Brush the egg wash all over the loaf, and sprinkle with poppy seeds or "everything" topping.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the loaf is a deep golden color.
Serve with a piece of toasted baguette at the bottom of each bowl. Finish with cheese on top.
Ingredients
4Tbspbutter
4cupsonion, thinly sliced
1Tbspflour
1tspwhite sugar
4-6cupsbeef broth(can also use chicken broth or a combination of water and white wine)
pepper
parmesan or mozzarella cheese
Instructions
In a heavy pot, melt the butter and then add the onions. Cook very slowly over a low heat for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the onions are very soft and somewhat darkened.
Stir in the sugar until dissolved. Stir in the flour and mix to coat.
Add the broth (or water and wine). Add pepper to taste and simmer for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer.
Serve with a hunk of toasted bread in the bottom of each bowl. Sprinkle cheese on top, and if you have oven-safe dishes, brown under the broiler to form a skin on top of the soup.
Very simple meatballs with a vaguely Korean flavor. These are mild enough that kids will eat them happily, but if you want to kick up the Korean taste, you can serve them with dipping sauces and pickled vegetables. Serve with rice.
Servings30large meatballs
Ingredients
2.5lbsground beef
1sleeveRitz crackers, crushed finely
1/3cupsoy sauce
1/2 headgarlic, minced
1bunchscallions, chopped (save out a bit for a garnish)
1 tspkosher salt
1Tbspground white pepper
For dipping sauce:
mirin or rice vinegar
soy sauce
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425.
Mix together the meat and all the meatball ingredients with your hands until they are well combined. Form large balls and lay them on a baking pan with a rim.
Bake for about 15 minutes.
Serve over rice with dipping sauce and a sprinkle of scallions.
Last week, we heard that our college philosophy professor, Brian Shea, had died. He was an immensely powerful man, in his mind, in his body, and even in his voice. One time, I was in the kitchen and someone commented that some water had hit the grill, and Mr. Shea said, “Yes; you can hear it, sizzling.”
It took me several minutes to realize that this was a normal, mundane comment to make. His voice was so deep and penetrating, and he said everything with such profound assuredness, it came across like a pronouncement for the ages. And lo, 27 years later, I remember him saying it.
I wish I remembered more of the more important things he said. My fault, not his. I took several of his classes, including the philosophy units of Humanities, and also Ancient Greek and possibly Metaphysics; but even students who were more academically suited for those subjects were bowled over by his incredible intellectual prowess. He would hustle to the lectern, smile and say good morning, open his notes, pause for a moment with a fixed expression, like a raptor over its prey, and then he would begin to speak; and the ideas he wanted to impart would unfurl smoothly from his brain for the next fifty minutes like shining steel ingots rolling off a factory line. No stumbling, no backtracking, no scrambling to express what he meant. He always knew exactly what he wanted to say, and he always said exactly that. I have never since met a more articulate human being. And he was passionate about it, and sincere. He loved what he taught, and he loved teaching.
One day, he came into a seminar room when he was sick, and he opened his notes as usual and began to teach. Several minutes passed by before one of the students gathered the courage to tell him he was speaking in German. He apologized, got up, and went back to bed.
He was, to be honest, terrifying. You did not want to be on the wrong end of his scorn. My memories of him are from when I was nineteen or twenty, very skittish and foolish; but I think even the students who made their way to his inner circle remember how intimidating he could be.
He was physically tremendous. Not tall, I don’t think, and he was immensely fat, but mostly he was just huge. His body was huge, his head was huge, his eyes behind thick glasses were huge, and when he grinned, as he often did, his mouth was huge. And he was strong. A student once saw him encounter a small fire on campus, and he grabbed the fire extinguisher, and, apparently forgetting to pull out the safety pin, he simply squeezed the nozzle hard and made it work.
He seemed to have a special gift for witnessing students at their dopiest moments. If you were going to do something stupid, chances were good you’d turn around to see Mr. Shea in his chair, watching you and grinning from across the caf’, Dunhill cigarette smoke curling around his head like the vapors of an oracle; and if you were unlucky, he would make a pronouncement about your fate. Nobody was safe from his terrible wit, and so when you did become a target, there was no shame in it. It was almost a mark of honor: You’ve joined the club. You got noticed, and extinguished, by Mr. Shea.
For all this, he was kind. Most people figured this out sooner or later, despite his best efforts. One hapless freshman showed up for the semester with only one pair of pants to his name, and Mr. Shea quietly went out and bought him some pants. One unpopular girl was homesick and friendless in Rome, where every sophomore class spent a semester, and he — a man who prized his routine and his privacy more than most — invited her out to dinner and treated her like a sought-after guest. There are dozens of stories like this. He spent hours in the caf’, smoking endlessly and gossiping with Chef Pat and laughing his resounding, smoke-pickled laugh, and coughing like thunder, telling stories, and watching. You could hear his voice, and his laugh, and his cough, rise up through the floorboards when you went to the chapel, which was built over the caf. His voice penetrated everything.
He was the Director of Student Life as well as a professor, and he seemed to know about everything that happened on campus (and in the nearby woods). I remember him saying how apt it was when students described getting drunk as “getting wasted.” He deplored waste, wasted time, wasted effort, wasted intellect. It grieved him to see people being foolish with their lives.
Miscellaneous other stories are coming back to me, like how someone called him because there was a bat in the dorm, and without hesitation he said to my then-boyfriend, with menacing sang froid, “Damien, get the rake.” Nobody ever questioned his directions! Mr. Shea always knew what to do! Now I’m almost fifty years old and a few months ago, a bat got into our house, and the first thing I thought was, “Damien, get the rake.”
I remember a Mardi Gras party when the students had a traditional pancake fight, which was all fun and games until somebody (me) fired off an errant pancake, and watched in frozen horror as it missed its target and smacked Mr. Shea square on the side of his head and knocked his glasses off. I died that day. My heart stopped and didn’t start again for several seconds. I literally fell to the floor and scuttled away across the room before he would know the assassin was me.
But another student, who often played chess with him, said that he played like he lived: He started off with a huge amount of bluster and intimidation, attacking on several fronts at once; but if you put up even the slightest bit of offense, his strategy would collapse and fall apart. I didn’t see this side of him often, but I believe it. I know he was gentle when he needed to be. I know that, for all his prodigious intellect and encyclopedic knowledge of many subjects and his master’s from Oxford, he was Mr. Shea, and not Dr. Shea; and I know he lived in a room or two upstairs in the creaky, drafty “White House” nestled in the trees on campus, apparently surrounded by shelves with hundreds of video cassettes of every kind of movie, which he would lend out to students if they promised to clean out their VCRs first. He only rarely left the little college grounds. He didn’t like travel (and got testy when anyone in Rome spoke to him in Italian!). I don’t know what he spent his money on, besides Dunhills.
Every once in a while, he would startle people by making reference to how fat he was. I remember him complaining about how hard it was to find shirts in his size that didn’t have Winnie the Pooh or Donald Duck on them, as if being fat meant you were a child. Just one of the many indignities endured by the long-suffering Brian Shea.
Another: One Thanksgiving or Christmas Vacation, he had the task of calling every single student who had just arrived home, and telling them that one of the kittens on campus (there were not supposed to be kittens on campus) turned out to have rabies, and so everyone who came into contact with it (which was everyone) must get a rabies shot. I thought of him making the rule against kittens, knowing there were kittens anyway, and then grimly making his way alphabetically through the list of students, informing them one by one that now we’re all going to die unless we get our shots. I think probably all he wanted to do was sit in a sunbeam, smoke, and talk about philosophy, but somehow he was also very good at doing all the other things he was responsible for.
I just remembered one more story. After I graduated and got married and started having kids, I took a temporary job doing some work for the school admissions office. When I was at school, I was incompetent in a thousand ways, and hadn’t yet learned how to drive; so when I was leaving the grounds years later, I spotted him on the porch of the White House, sitting and smoking as usual. My great chance to show him that I did grow up after all! I rolled down my window and shouted, “Mr. Shea, look! I finally got my license!” He smiled and nodded. Then I drove directly into a tree.
Someone told me he said that, after students graduated, he forgot about them. Fair enough; there were so many of us. I don’t think anyone who ever met him forgot him, though. A powerful, gracious, frightening, practical, strangely humble man with a great heart and a white hot intellect like no other I’ve ever encountered. You can still hear it, sizzling.
Happy Friday! Gevalt, what a week. Today, in just a little bit, I am going to a REAL NEUROLOGIST. I am very excited. And we had a busy little week, full of candy and screaming! Here’s what we ate this week:
SATURDAY Tacos for kids, Indian food for adults
Saturday was the last installment in our rolling 26th anniversary celebration. Damien and I took the kayaks out on the Ashuelot River down by one of the covered bridges. We paddled upstream as far as we could until an uprooted tree blocked the way, and then we floated gently back down again among the yellow leaves.
We took a little detour into — I don’t know what you’d call it, the equivalent of a cul-de-sac for a river. It was SO QUIET in there, and the buggies were jumping around on top of the water because no one would bother them, and a giant blue heron lifted off and flapped away. By the time we got back where we started, it was getting chilly and a little dark, and it really was time to go, but we didn’t want to leave quite yet, so we paddled under the covered bridge. I howled a little bit, because of the acoustics, and then as soon as we popped out the other side, I SAW AN EAGLE. I’ve never seen one before. Absolutely unmistakable. What a wonderful trip.
We stopped off home to change out of our damp clothes, and make sure the kids tore themselves away from that new Mario whatnot to get some tacos started, and we went to Royal Spice in Troy. We got an appetizer of assorted vegetable thingies, and then Damien got lamb saag and I got lamb biryani. Very, very fine.
I also had a laugh because the waitress (who was very nice) asked us if we wanted “Naan? Nyaaaayn? Bread?” We had all three, thank you very much. Also papadum.
SUNDAY Grilled ham and cheese, tomato bacon bisque
Sunday the plan was grilled ham and cheese, but it was so gray and drizzly, and there was this stray pound of bacon in the fridge, so I got the idea of tomato bisque in my head, and couldn’t get it out even after I looked up the recipe and discovered I was missing, like, five ingredients.
Not that it’s a complicated recipe, but it does have more than bacon and a can of tomatoes in it. But I realized if I had to run to the store, that would be an excuse to go pick up Clara and bring her to the house for pumpkin carving. So that was nice.
And dinner was very nice indeed! Perfect for a chilly, rainy day.
I also realized it really was getting cold, and this was a trend that wasn’t likely to reverse itself soon, so if I was gonna pick some mint for the winter, then today was probably the day. So that’s what I did.
I still haven’t fixed my food processor, so I made do with the Ninja blender, and blended it up as best I could with a little olive oil. My best wasn’t very good, and I lost a little enthusiasm for the project at this point, and then squunched the kind of uneven results into an ice cube tray,
and lost at least another 20% of enthusiasm when I saw what I had done. I dunno. I just wrapped it up and chucked it in the freezer, and next time I want some mint for a marinade or something, let’s see if I remember it’s in there.
I also have these ghost peppers in my garden. I don’t know what to do with them.
Why did I grow them? I don’t know.
I spent the rest of the evening putting the next-to-last last touches on the Halloween costumes. And I remembered to take the pizza dough out of the freezer!
MONDAY Under-over pizza
My pride at remembering to defrost the pizza evaporated when I realized I had forgotten that the oven was still broken. So I did what any red-blooded American would do (?): I broiled the pizzas until the top was bubbly, and then put them on the stovetop, carefully rotating them over the hot burner, in an attempt to firm up the underside of the crust.
It . . . didn’t completely not work.
Good effort, edible pizza. And anyway, we had Halloween costumes to finish.
TUESDAY Hot dogs, popcorn
Tuesday was, of course, Halloween, so we had our traditional quickie meal, at a table graciously decorated appropriately for the day:
and then we were off trick or treating! Here’s some photos from the evening:
A successful night, and boy am I old and tired. Got home, lit the jack-o’- lanterns just to see them lit (nobody comes to our house because we don’t have sidewalks), and put on Army of Darkness, which I slept through.
I had just snuggled in under the covers of my bed when I suddenly remembered I was planning bo ssam the next day. And that means getting the meat going the night before. SO I DID. Hero! I’m a dinner hero.
WEDNESDAY Bo ssam, rice, kiwi
Wednesday was All Saint’s Day and we let the kids stay home from school because, not because of the saints at all, we were just tired. So tired! And there was a real hard frost. The nerve. We made it to the noon Mass with just a little screaming.
Wednesday I did remember the oven situations and was prepared to make the bo ssam in the Instant Pot and finish it up under the broiler, but Damien, who is the other hero around here, fixed the oven in the morning. I was so excited about it being fixed that I put the pork in right away, so it was done cooking at like 4 PM. So then I moved it to the slow cooker (not the Instant Pot, because I needed that to make rice) so it would stay warm but not dry out, and then back to the oven about ten minutes before supper with the little finishing glaze of brown sugar, sea salt, and cider vinegar that gives it that opulent caramelized crust. I use the My Korean Kitchen recipe, but I just do the salt and pepper overnight part, and then the brown sugar glaze part at the end. Very basic and easy, big return.
Everybody likes bo ssam! We had lettuce to wrap up the rice and shreds of meat it, and I added some sweet chili sauce to mine, which was tasty.
I also cut up a bunch of kiwis because I like to have something cool and juicy with this meal, because the meat is so outrageously salty.
A very fine meal.
THURSDAY Shakshuka (eggs in purgatory), soul cakes, pomegranates, pumpkin seeds
Thursday was All Soul’s Day and I must have my little joke and serve eggs in purgatory, which is basically shakshuka, and soul cakes.
In the morning, I dropped off all the kids and spotted a ton of free fencing on the side of the road, but got a text from Moe that his battery was dead. So I started stuffing fencing into the car as fast as I could, sincerely wishing I had remembered to take the Dalek out of the back. A crusty old Yankee stopped to help, and we fit all but two rolls of fencing. I explained that I have a little duck problem , and that’s my story. He understood. The Dalek goes in front. I drive into town, locate Moe’s car, annnd discover my jumper cables are missing a clamp. So we decide to drive to Harbor Freight, but first we have to put the Dalek into Moe’s car so there’s room in my car for Moe.
I can’t just go into the store myself because I am wearing bright pink pajamas.
So he buys the cables, I Google instructions, we fearfully hook it up, wait five minutes, and it works! Moe goes off, I go home with the alarm
going off the whole time because the back door is slightly open, and unload the fence, which I’m 80% sure is terrible fence and useless, and all is well. I may need a tetanus shot from getting poked with fence wires. I forgot the Dalek.
I sat there for a few minutes on the couch trying to figure out if I was an idiot or not. Then I just had some coffee and wrote two essays and made some dough.
and prepped a bunch of pumpkin seeds, and then it was time to go again, and I had to stop at Walmart, and then I went to the school, and GUESS WHAT?
There was still some free fence on the side of the road! And there was no Dalek in my car anymore, due to me having forgotten. So this time, there was plenty of room. Sort of.
So then we got home, and the kids cut out the soul cakes. This year we did skulls, ghosts, and angels. There’s some silly little theological allegory there but we’ll just skip it
I added some detail with this weird dried fruit I had in the cabinet, that I got on clearance at the International Market a while back, and then I sifted some powdered sugar over them when they came out of the oven.
The fruit is called Tutti Frutti Mix, which implies in not one but two ways that there are two or three kinds of fruit in there. Right? “Tutti” and “Mix,” not to mention that “Frutti” is surely plural.
It turns out it’s just papaya!
It tasted fine, and the texture was pleasant. I was expecting a kind of gummy consistency, like those red and green cherries that go in one of those yucky fruitcakes, but it was chewy with a little edge, almost nutty. So there you go. I have a lot more of it (IT WAS ON SALE).
So first I made the pumpkin seeds
and I remembered to save a few dozen out to dry, rather than roasting them, so we can plant some nice big pumpkins in the spring. (I just tossed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with kosher salt and spread them in two shallow pans in a 350 oven, stirring them up every twenty minutes or so, for maybe forty minutes or an hour.)
When those were done, I baked the soul cakes, and when those were almost done, I started poaching the eggs in the shakshuka sauce
You’re supposed to have parmesan or feta, and parsley, for the top; but I didn’t have either. It was a nice sauce, though, with plenty of vegetables, and rather spicy.
I cut up the pomegranates I’d been withholding all week
and we had ourselves a weird little meal for All Soul’s Day
Fry the bacon until crisp. Remove from pan, chop it up, and drain out all but a a few teaspoons of grease.
Add the diced onion and minced garlic to the grease and sauté until soft.
Add tomatoes (including juices), bay leaves, rosemary, and tomato juice, and simmer for 20 minutes. Save some rosemary for a garnish if you like.
With a slotted spoon, fish out the bay leaf, the tomatoes, and most of the rosemary, leaving some rosemary leaves in. Discard most of the rosemary and bay leaf. Put the rest of the rosemary and the tomatoes in a food processor with the 8 oz of cream cheese until it's as smooth as you want it.
Return pureed tomato mixture to pot. Salt and pepper to taste.
Heat through. Add chopped bacon right before serving, or add to individual servings; and top with crispy fried onions if you like. Garnish with more rosemary if you're a fancy man.
raisins, currants, nuts, candied citrus peels, etc.
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350
Put the flour in a large bowl. Grate the chilled butter on a vegetable grater and incorporate it lightly into the flour.
Stir in the sugar and spices until evenly distributed.
In a smaller bowl, beat together the eggs, vinegar and milk. Stir this into the flour mixture until it forms a stiff dough.
Knead for several minutes until smooth and roll out to 1/4 thick.
Grease a baking pan. Cut the dough into rounds (or other shapes if you like) and lay them on the pan, leaving a bit of room in between (they puff up a bit, but not a lot). If you're adding raisins or other toppings, poke them into the top of the cakes, in a cross shape if you like. Prick cakes with fork.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until very lightly browned on top.
Hola, amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. I actually wrote quite a bit this week, but ended up doing whatever the digital version is of crumpling up the paper, and whatever the sitting on your ass version is of stomping off to go stand in a corner and sulk. This has not been a wonderful week for (a) a Jew who (b) has been following the Catholic sex abuse scandal closely for years and (c) lives next door to Maine. You know what doesn’t help? When the 12-year-old public radio host who is reading the headlines suddenly puts on her raggedy, tormented sad kitty voice and says, “Hope you’re taking care of yourself today. Deep breaths, everybody,” before abruptly perking up and announcing that it will be sunny this weekend and there will be a punkin festibal. I’ll sunny you! Good heavens.
Anyway, I’ve been making steady progress with Halloween costumes this week, so I’ve got that going for me. I managed to almost completely avoid sewing this year. LOTS of duct tape, lots of hot glue, and a tremendous number of zip ties, though. Corrie is going to be Dalek Sec, with a light-up helmet
and Benny is going to be Classic Green Goblin.
They both needs more work, but we’re in pretty good shape for Oct. 28.
The oven broke on Sunday (just the bottom heating element) and we haven’t had a chance to fix it yet, but I lucked out and happened to have planned a menu that can be made with the broiler, the stovetop, and of course the Instant Pot. Here’s what we had this week:
SATURDAY Pulled pork sandwiches, chips
On Saturday we went to a rummage sale in the morning. We love rummage sales. Corrie has been losing just dozens of teeth lately, so she had a glass jar stuffed with bills to spend. The first thing she bought was, practically, a wallet. She then transferred her money to the wallet and went on an incredible spending spree. She was buying Crayola Glow Domes, she was buying Christmas earrings, she was buying t-shirts bragging about our Bernese Mountain Dog. Zero regrets.
I myself bought a leather motorcycle jacket for some reason (well, the reason was that it was $12) and a bunch of kitchen wares. The duality of mom.
Then we came home and I got some pulled pork going in the Instant Pot
and then we all went to the Pumpkin Festival in Keene.
it was raining, but we had a pretty good time. The theme this year was “Please Do Not Light Any Cars on Fire” and with an undertone of “How Much Can We Charge For Fried Dough and Still Sleep At Night?” and they nailed it.
We all got home pretty wet and tired, so I was mighty pleased to have a hot pot of pulled pork waiting. We had sandwiches and chips.
I made up a new card for the new way I make pulled pork.
I like the flavor so much, I don’t even put BBQ sauce on my sandwich. You definitely can, but it’s plenty flavorful by itself. This is a rare recipe of mine that doesn’t have any garlic in it! Behold, it can be done! It has a wonderful, warming, autumnal taste with the apple cider, apple juice, cumin, and cloves. You can remove the jalapeño seeds and/or membranes to make it less spicy, but it’s not overpowering as is, just perky.
SUNDAY Chicken burgers, nacho chips
Sunday was when we noticed the oven was broken, and also when we discovered you can broil frozen chicken burgers and they turn out fine.
MONDAY English muffin pizzas
We used to have this alllllll the time. It’s been several years, I think, and it’s a meal a few of the kids have been agitating for. Damien was going to be out of town, so I took the opportunity. I even got little bitty mini pepperonis to make it cute
I don’t really miss this meal, but it wasn’t terrible. I feared and hated the sourness of English muffins when I was little, and I still have to consciously flip a switch in my head to enjoy the taste of them.
calls for cooking the raw chicken directly into the broth, and I wasn’t going to do that, so I added extra chicken bouillon to make sure it had some flavor. It also calls for chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, and I couldn’t find that at all in the three stores I went to. So I just added more of all the other ingredients.
The result was . . . honestly, pretty bland soup.
Pretty, though. Aldi had these fancy tri-colored crunchy tortilla strips for toppings, so I grabbed a bag of those, and I also topped mine with avocado and cilantro. I made a bunch of quesadillas. It was fine. Not an amazing meal, but it wasn’t the recipe’s fault.
WEDNESDAY Mexican beef bowls, pineapple
On Wednesday, I re-burnished my reputation somewhat with a meal everybody likes: Mexican beef bowls.
Roast beef was on sale, so I made the lovely, piquant marinade in the morning and sliced the meat thinly, and let it marinate all day
When it got to be close to supper, I made a pot of rice, sliced up a few pineapples, shredded some cheese, roasted some corn, chopped some cilantro, cut up some limes, and dug up some sour cream, and then I broiled the meat
Honestly I overcooked it, because I forgot how thin it was, but it was fine.
So yummy. Tons of flavors.
Earlier in the day, I also made a pot of black beans. Actually I only had one can of beans and one can of kidney beans, so that’s what we had.
Only a few people like beans, so I added as much spice and garlic as I wanted, which was a lot. I’m a huge bean fan. (I realize that’s a slightly ambiguous sentence. I mean it all the ways.) So much so that the kids stored the leftovers in a ziplock bag, and I ate cold bagged beans as a snack the next day and managed to feel guilty about the opulent luxury of it all.
THURSDAY Blackened shishito chicken sandwiches; veggies and hummus
This is one of my favorite sandwiches, quite popular at our house. This time I had Tony CHachere’s seasoning, rather than some kind of generic “cajun seasoning,” and I forgot how salty Tony CHachere’s is! So they were a little overly aggressive, salt-wise. Still so tasty, though.
(this pan is one of my rummage sale finds! A lovely multi-ply stainless steel pan, very sturdy. I love stainless steel the best)
and then you top them with American cheese and let that melt
and while those keep warm, you quickly blister up the shishito peppers in the pan that you cooked the chicken in
and serve it all on toasted or untoasted brioche buns with barbecue sauce and red onion slices
and it’s just a damn fine, sloppy, tasty, delicious sandwich, even if you burn the buns like I did.
FRIDAY Regular spaghetti
On Friday, we had already been a million places, and we had a million places to be, so all signs pointed to spaghetti with sauce from a jar. And that’s my story! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with some Dalekanium and a hot glue gun. I suggest taking shallow breaths and being hard on yourself, and writing legally actionable hate mail to your local public radio host. But you know yourself.
Adapted from twosleevers.com. This is a very flavorful chicken soup. It has a little hotsy totsy burst of spice with the first taste, and then the more complex flavors come through slowly. Magic.
It's fairly brothy, and then you heap up all the garnishes you want on top.
Cut the onions and tomatoes into chunks so they will fit in the blender or food processor. Put the onions, tomatoes, jalapeño, chili pepper and sauce, garlic and cilantro into a blender or food processor and blend it until it's a thick sauce. You may need to do it in batches, or just keep poking the big pieces down so everything gets blended in.
Add enough oil to the Instant Pot pot to cover the bottom. Press "sauté" and let the oil heat up for a few minutes.
Pour in the tomato mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes, until any liquid is mostly absorbed. You may need to press "sauté" again to keep it hot.
Cut the chicken breasts into pieces and put them in the pot. Add six cups of water.
Close the top, seal the valve, and press "pressure cook," then the + button until it goes to 20 minutes. When it's done cooking, let it naturally release for 10 minutes, then release the remaining pressure manually.
Open the top and fish out the chicken. Shred it and return it to the pot. Add salt to taste.
Serve the soup with garnishes: avocado slices, sour cream, tortilla strips, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro, and chopped scallions.
Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.
Put olive oil pot of Instant Pot. Press "saute" button. Add diced onion and minced garlic. Saute, stirring, for a few minutes until onion is soft. Press "cancel."
Add beans with liquid. Add cumin, salt, and cilantro. Stir to combine. Close the lid, close the vent, and press "slow cook."
Happy Friday! Today I am knee-deep in Dalekanium. This week, we had our big anniversary party (our anniversary is Oct. 25, but we had a party on the 15th), and now I’m buckling the heck down with Halloween costumes. First I managed to get incredibly sick for 24 hours, but I’m working my way past that now and made some progress on Dalek Sec:
This may look primitive to you, but I think my budget is roughly the same as what the BBC had to work with in 1963, so it’s fine.
This is for Corrie. Last year, she was Duck from Sarah and Duck, and Benny was Sarah.
Benny is a little fed up with being civil and well-behaved, and this year she’s going as Classic Green Goblin. More on that later!
So this week, we kinda front-loaded all the good food, and then I collapsed like a bunch of broccoli. We did not, however, have any broccoli. I just don’t like it very much, except one time when I was litle, my father took us to to a Japanese restaurant in New York City, and I didn’t know what to get, so they picked a tempura dish for me, and there was a single piece of each thing. I shall never forget that tempura broccoli.
Here’s what we did have:
SATURDAY Aldi pizza
Saturday I was busy cracking the whip, forcing my poor beleaguered children to do foolish things like sweep the hallway and clean under the couch cushions even though the guests might not even look under the couch cushions.
On Saturday I made two kinds of ice cream, the panna cotta, and the suppli.
I was planning pistachio ice cream, and I followed this recipe, which is a copy cat Ben and Jerry’s recipe. I only made one teeny error: I uh bought cashews instead of pistachios. In my defense, “cashew” has an “sh” in it, and “pistachio” has a “ch.” I honestly think that was what confused me. It doesn’t take much, on a good day, but on Saturday I had a migraine and I was more than half zombie. (Did I tell you I finally got a referral to a neurologist??)
They actually have three chocolate ice cream recipes. This one uses both unsweetened baker’s chocolate and cocoa powder.
Then I made the panna cotta, and I made my second dopey move. I used this vanilla bean recipe, which I had made last time and it turned out so nice. So I infuse the cream, I make the special vanilla-rubbed sugar, I slowly bring the cream to the right temperature, I bloom the gelatin, I chill the cream, I’m going along, I’m going along, and I’m tasting it from time to time as one does, and every time I taste it, I think to myself, “Wow, it’s not very sweet, is it?” And every time, my entire response to this is, ” . . . . huh.” So I clear out the fridge and pour the panna cotta into styrofoam cups in muffin tins and close the door and feel very acccomplished, because that’s done . . .
. . . and then I see the bowl of sugar, still sitting there. That’s why it wasn’t very sweet! Light dawns on blockhead. I was in quite a panic, because I didn’t know what could be done; but a Facebook friend clued me in that you can re-heat gelatin, as long as you do it gradually. So I put the sugar into the pot, added one or two of the cups of cream mixture and made a little slurry and heated that a tiny bit, and then slowly added and very slowly heated and stirred the rest of the cream back in, until the sugar was dissolved. Then I put it back in the cups and back in the fridge. Whew.
Then the suppli!
Suppli, also sometimes called arancini, are breaded, deep-fried balls of risotto with a center of melted mozzarella. We ate them just about every day in Rome for lunch, where you could get them for 1,000 Lire (about a dollar) in 1995, which is when I spent a semester in Rome (Damien’s class was a couple years after mine).
It’s a time-consuming recipe, but eminently worth it.
I sprang for arborio rice, which I don’t always do, and the risotto came out so mild and creamy, I could weep. I let it chill, added egg, and then formed it into balls with little cubes of fresh mozzarella inside, then rolled them in panko crumbs. They sort of slumped because the risotto was so creamy; but I chilled them overnight and by the time it was time to fry them, they held together nicely.
Then that was enough for one night.
SUNDAY Antipasto platters, suppli, fettuccine and ragu, bread, ice cream, panna cotta with berries
I started the other two kinds of ice cream in the morning: The cherry vanilla (just vanilla ice cream with maraschino cherries thrown in, plus some almond extract and a little of the syrup from the cherries), and the grape sorbet. I had frozen some grape mash from when we processed all those millions of Concord grapes and all week I have been trying to think of a joke for this picture, but I got nothing
Feel free, like if you want to show it to your doctor or something, I don’t know.
Anyway I managed to make the grape sorbet and the cherry ice cream without incident, and stowed them in the freezer to firm up for evening. Then the only thing I had to still make was the bread. Easy! I can make bread!
I decided four loaves would probably be enough, so I made a big batch of dough, and, because it was a little chilly in the kitchen, I turned on the oven for a few minutes, then turned it off and put the dough in there to rise.
Then I forgot I had done so.
Then
I asked Damien
to preheat the oven for me,
so I could bake the bread.
AND THAT IS NOT HOW YOU MAKE BREAD. I realized ten minutes into it what I had done, and it was definitely too late. The only good thing I could think was that this was the third idiotic thing I had done (first the cashew pistachio ice cream, then the sugarless panna cotta, and now the half-baked bowl of dough), and three is the magic number, so surely I was done being stupid!
I had a tiny little bit of stupidity left in me, though, so I thought, “Well, as long as I have this dough, it couldn’t hurt to try baking it and see what happens.” So I clawed out the part that was still dough-like and made it into balls and baked it like rolls.
When I say “like” rolls, I mean . . . well . . .
In my defense, that’s about what I expected. And I did throw them away! Didn’t even feed them to the ducks.
By this time, it was starting to smell pretty great in the house because of the ragù, and it was time to sit down and have some fun making antipasto trays. I don’t even know what-all I got. Just this and that, some cured meats and olives and fresh and pickled vegetables and various cheeses.
and breadsticks, and a bunch of grapes and clementines
and I made a bunch of bruschetta out of store-bought bread, and all the kids came and brought more bread just for eating, and they brought flowers, too.
The suppli fried up REAL nice (I think I ended up with about 30)
Our friends Sarah, Tiffany, and Theresa came and we all got to just sit around and eat and talk and laugh and it was so nice.
Oh, and the panna cotta turned out fine! Everyone liked it. I meant to macerate the berries, but I forgot, so I just threw them on top, and it was great.
So, happy almost anniversary to us. I wish I had gotten more pictures!
As long as I’m going on and on and on, I might as well tell you about my patio chairs. I got them FREE on the side of the road, and then I found cushions at Walmart on clearance, and don’t they look nice?
Whew.
MONDAY Leftover pasta and ragu
Monday, naturally, we had tons of leftover food, so I bought some more pasta on the way home and we had ragù again, which no one was mad about, believe me. It’s so good.
TUESDAY Aldi pizza again
Tuesday was when I had to admit I wasn’t just tired after the party, I was really sick. I dropped Corrie off at school and realized I wasn’t in any shape to drive home, so I parked in the school lot and fell asleep in the car for forty minutes, then crept home and slept most of the next 24 hours. Damien got pizza and managed everything else.
WEDNESDAY Rotisserie chicken, salad, and leftover antipasto
Wednesday I felt half human, so I just napped a bit and then picked up some rotisserie chickens and cut them up, and pulled the rest of the leftover antipasto elements out of the fridge
and I had a nice little girl dinner
Do you see how thick they cut the prosciutto, though? I forgot about this. I wasn’t watching, and they cut it like ham! I was so annoyed. I had been planning to make some kind of prosciutto-wrapped fruit slices for the party, but when I opened the package, it was impossible. Oh well. Pickled vegetables make everything better.
THURSDAY Burgers and chips
Thursday I was like, oops, the person who is me has still not gone shopping this week; so I got some hamburger meat, and we had burgers.
Look at me, I had sugar snap peas instead of chips. I’m kind of furious at how slowly I’m losing weight, but it is coming off. Slowly. (Don’t ask me how I can eat panna cotta and prosciutto and still be furious about how slowly I’m losing weight. I just can, okay?)
FRIDAY
I have no idea. Noooooo idea. I don’t even know what food is. I should have saved those rolls.
I would seriously rather eat those than come up with something new for nine people to eat. Take that, Fürst-Pückler.
Oh, you know what? I never said, but the cashew white chocolate ice cream was really good. I may make it on purpose sometime.
Breaded, deep fried balls of risotto with a center of melted mozzarella. Make the risotto first and leave time to refrigerate the suppli before deep frying.
Ingredients
12cupschicken stock
8 + 8Tbsbutter
1cupfinely chopped onions
4cupsraw rice
1cupdry white wine
1cupgrated parmesan cheese
To make suppli out of the risotto:
risotto
1 beaten egg FOR EACH CUP OF RISOTTO
bread crumbs or panko bread crumbs
plenty of oil for frying
mozzarella in one-inch cubes (I use about a pound of cheese per 24 suppli)
Instructions
Makes enough risotto for 24+ suppli the size of goose eggs.
Set chicken stock to simmer in a pot.
In a large pan, melt 8 Tbs. of the butter, and cook onions slowly until soft but not brown.
Stir in raw rice and cook 7-8 minutes or more, stirring, until the grains glisten and are opaque.
Pour in the wine and boil until wine is absorbed.
Add 4 cups of simmering stock and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally until the liquid is almost absorbed.
Add 4 more cups of stock and cook until absorbed.
If the rice is not tender by this point, keep adding cups of stock until it is tender. You really want the rice to expand and become creamy.
When rice is done, gently stir in the other 8 Tbs of butter and the grated cheese with a fork.
This risotto is wonderful to eat on its own, but if you want to make suppli out of it, read on!
TO MAKE THE SUPPLI:
Beat the eggs and gently mix them into the risotto.
Scoop up about 1/4 cup risotto mixture. Press a cube of mozzarella. Top with another 1/4 cup scoop of risotto. Roll and form an egg shape with your hands.
Roll and coat each risotto ball in bread crumbs and lay in pan to refrigerate.
Chill for at least an hour to make the balls hold together when you fry them.
Put enough oil in pan to submerge the suppli. Heat slowly until it's bubbling nicely, but not so hot that it's smoking. It's the right temperature when little bubbles form on a wooden spoon submerged in the oil.
Preheat the oven if you are making a large batch, and put a paper-lined pan in the oven.
Carefully lower suppli into the oil. Don't crowd them! Just do a few at a time. Let them fry for a few minutes and gently dislodge them from the bottom. Turn once if necessary. They should be golden brown all over.
Carefully remove the suppli from the oil with a slotted spoon and eat immediately, or keep them warm in the oven.
This is the more textured chocolate ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's ice cream recipe book. It has a rich, dusky chocolate flavor and texture. Makes 2 quarts. This recipe requires some chill time before you put the cream mixture into the machine.
Ingredients
4ozunsweetened chocolate
2/3cupcocoa powder
3cupsmilk
4eggs
2cupssugar
2cupsheavy or whipping cream
2tspvanilla extract
Instructions
Melt the unsweetened chocolate. I used a double boiler, but you can use a microwave if you're careful. Whisk in the cocoa and continue heating until it's smooth. It's okay if it's clumpy. Continue heating and whisk in the milk gradually until it's all blended together. Remove from heat and let cool.
In another bowl, whisk, the eggs until light and fluffy. Gradually whisk in the sugar and continue whisking until completely blended. Add in the cream and vanilla and continue whisking until blended.
Add the chocolate mixture into the cream mixture and stir to blend. Cover and refrigerate for about three hours, or until it is cold.
Use the cold mixture in your ice cream machine. I used my Cuisinart and let it churn for thirty minutes, then let it cure overnight.
Makes four long loaves. You can make the dough in one batch in a standard-sized standing mixer bowl if you are careful!
I have a hard time getting the water temperature right for yeast. One thing to know is if your water is too cool, the yeast will proof eventually; it will just take longer. So if you're nervous, err on the side of coolness.
Ingredients
4-1/2cups warm water
1/4cupsugar
2Tbspactive dry yeast
5tspsalt
1/4cupolive or canola oil
10-12cupsflour
butter for greasing the pan (can also use parchment paper) and for running over the hot bread (optional)
corn meal for sprinkling on pan (optional)
Instructions
In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.
Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.
Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.
Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).
Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.
Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.
Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.
Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.
Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.
Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.
Without really meaning to, I seem to have adopted adoration as a mainstay of my spiritual life. It’s the thing I keep coming back to in all seasons, and I’ve done so since I was in college, and I hope to keep it up until I’m one of those creaky old people who makes everybody hold their breath while they shakily lower themselves down for a little genuflection, possibly never to get up again.
I have been to all kinds of adoration chapels: ornate, baroque ones and glossy, minimalist ones, ones that feel like waiting rooms of some kind (waiting for what?), ones that feel like a Polish grandmother’s rummage sale, and ones that feel like raves.
The funny thing is, the people you meet at the adoration chapel tend to be the same, no matter where you go.
Everybody knows, for instance, about the classic Jesus Whisperer: The adorer who simply cannot pray without whispering. Maybe it’s how they keep track of how many Hail Marys they’ve said, or maybe Sister Mary Scrupulosa back in 1952 actually taught them it somehow doesn’t count if it’s not audible; but by gum, as long as they’re there, everybody else in the room is gonna hear about it. Some people can simply smile and shrug and say their own prayers, but for others, the Jesus Whisperer is a good reminder that earbuds are cheap and there’s nothing wrong with Googling “one hour of rain sounds” before you pop in to pray.
But there are a few other adoration regulars who turn up almost as reliably.
For instance:
The Juicy Mouth. A close cousin to the Jesus Whisperer. These folks seem to realize that it might be disruptive to others to actually whisper prayers, so instead, they simply mouth them. And for some reason — and I’m willing to admit that the reason is that I’m crazy — this is far, far worse than whispering. It’s just an hour of barely audible, faintly wet, somebody-else’s-mouth noises, and it’s the absolute worst. Yes, I have heard of offering things up. No, it’s not getting me anywhere.
The Accessorizer Supreme. Many people bring rosaries, chaplets, Bibles or other prayer books, maybe a journal, perhaps a chapel veil. The Accessorizer Supreme brings THE WORKS. She (and it’s generally a lady) sits down, unpacks her tote bag that says “this is the day the Lord,” pulls out a binder that says “has made,” unzips it, flips it open to the correct page, whips out a little box that says “let us rejoice” that holds dozens of miniature color-coded Post-it Notes and starts applying tabs to the chart in the front so she can get caught up on which color highlighter she’s supposed to be using today.
The highlighter has a little bespoke leather tag tangling off it that says “AND BE GLAD.”
Once she establishes that the color of the day is pink, she pulls out the retractable matching pink bookmark to note the spot where she started reading for the day, and then smartly tears open the Velcro on the little fanny pack where she keeps the thematic hand puppets, with which she acts out the Bible verses. This can occasionally be a little distracting for the people around her, and once somebody complained when she got up to the Song of Songs puppets, but this is HER SPIRITUALITY and she is a TACTILE LEARNER and also if you are interested, she knows where you can BUY THIS EXACT KIT and she will EARN A SMALL COMMISSION.
There was a gargantuan Eucharistic procession through New York City a few days ago, led by a bishop and joined by hundreds of habited sisters and clergy in flowing vestments, replete with candles and incense and song, and followed by thousands of lay people. It was immense.
I love Eucharistic processions—not because they trigger some kind of fond nostalgia for the good old days (how old do you think I am?), but because it is literally Jesus and people following him. What’s not to love?
Plenty, it turns out. I found out about the procession by scrolling through social media, and then instantly found out how many people didn’t like it.
Let me pause here and say that I don’t know much of the context of the procession. It was, I gather, organized by the Napa Institute as part of the National Eucharistic Revival. I have been avoiding learning very much about either the Napa Institute or the Eucharistic Revival because every time these topics come up, people start getting nasty. I’m a slow student, but one thing I’ve finally learned is that Jesus and nastiness do not mix. If I can’t stop being a jerk, at the very least I can try not to be a jerk to people about Jesus. So I stay away from certain conversations. I have made a choice to de-contextualize certain spiritual things. This means I’m less well-informed about some current events, but my prayer life is stronger, and I’m okay with that trade-off.
That being said, I was taken aback by just how mad people were about this Eucharistic procession. I like processions so much, I guess I naively assumed everybody did. I had forgotten that sometimes, people use processions as a power move, as sorties in the culture war. Apparently, people will sometimes organize a Eucharistic procession as a way of saying “This is the old school church, and we’re taking back this space from you filthy modernists” or ”suck it, secularists; we’re gonna stop traffic and you’re gonna take it” or . . . something. And that is not very Christlike.
And I gather that some people objected to the procession because it strikes them as tone-deaf for the church to do something so showy and ceremoniously, publicly pious while several dioceses in New York state have filed bankruptcy because of lawsuits from victims of sex abuse by priests; but there they go, walking by slowly in their pretty white robes. So if you look at it in a certain light, you might think, “Why are these rape apologists who have dug themselves so deep into such an ugly hole getting dressed up in fancy clothes and parading slowly through the streets with candles and music, as if they have anything to be proud of?”
