Through the Year With Tomie dePaola GIVEAWAY!

Note: I am now an Ignatius Affiliate, and earn money when readers purchase books through my links. 

When Tomie dePaola died a few years ago, I had just recently gotten up the nerve to ask him for an interview, and it’s an everlasting regret that I missed my chance. I don’t know how likely it is that he would have agreed, but he certainly was generous with his work. 

That’s one reason it feels like such a gift to have this new book, published posthumously: Through the Year With Tomie dePaola. Ignatius is sponsoring one copy for me to give away! Read on. 

Through the Year With Tomie dePaola collects the “art mail” he used to send to family and friends (and sometimes post on social media), and it is lovely. 

Each page features one of his bright, fluid illustrations of a saint or other depiction of a holy day, and is decorated with dePaola’s characteristic clouds, stars, leaves, flowers, and doves, and the pictures are accompanied by text written by Catherine Harmon and John Herreid. It feels like a beloved journal or sketchbook by someone in love with celebration of the liturgical year.

There is not an entry for every single day, but each month features between eight and fourteen little pictures and passages, and each month also ends with a list of “other important feast days.”

Some are well known

some are more obscure

some include prayers

a few are specifically American, while still staying grounded in the faith

and a few include history lessons, and are also just cute

It is a small, solid hardcover that comes with a ribbon bookmark, so you can keep your spot and dip into it as you move through the calendar. 

This book would be an easy enrichment for evening prayers, or would be a pleasant way to start the day with little ones. It would make an appealing baptism or first Communion gift (or confirmation gift, depending on how old kids are when your diocese confirms them). The reading level makes it completely appropriate for older kids, maybe through age 12 or even older, but they may look at the cover and think it’s aimed at younger kids. I would not hesitate to make it part of family prayers, though, even if you don’t have younger kids in the house, because dePaola’s art is for everybody.

AND NOW THE GIVEAWAY! Just leave a comment on this post and I will use a random number generator to chose a winner in a few days. U.S. and Canada only, please. And please o please be sure that the email you use when you comment on this site is a real email address! I will be using it to contact you if you win. If the winner is “nicetryfeds@biteme.edu” then you won’t get your lovely book. 

If you just want to buy the book, which is $18.99, you can order it here. Go ahead! I get a commission! Mama needs a new set of teeth. 

This is the second book that John Herried has produced, and I’m delighted to see him using his considerable creative powers in this direction. If you haven’t yet checked out his Catholic Home Gallery, also from Ignatius, do take a look! It’s an excellent collection of contemporary Catholic artwork in all different styles, and the book is designed so you can pull the prints right out and hang them in your home. I interviewed John about it here. 

And thank you to Ignatius for sponsoring this giveaway!

What’s for supper? Vol. 342: Sandwiches! Sandwiches! Barely even human

Happy Friday! Full disclosure, this is the second time I’ve used this title. I was pretty sure I had used it before, so I Googled it, and sure enough: Vol. 183, and it was August 30. So that makes me feel a little better about having served sandwiches all week long this week. This is clearly the time of year when that’s just the thing to do. 

The funny thing is, I didn’t even notice that’s what I was doing until about Thursday. This is partially because my beloved menu blackboard kicked the bucket

I knew it was useful, but I didn’t realize until it was gone that I consult that thing about forty times a day, because if you know what’s for supper, at least you know one damn thing. 

Anyway, I finally got around to making a replacement. I bought some finished wooden planks already stuck together and mounted with a little hook in back at Walmart for like $4, and then I added a line and the names of the week with hot glue.

Here I would like to point out that I could find two hot glue guns. One was full sized, and the part where the glue goes in was misaligned so it doesn’t actually heat up; and one was mini and low temp, and the trigger was broken, so you have to continually push on the end of the glue stick to feed it into the gun. Also I have a chronic hand tremor that gets worse when I try to concentrate. I was aiming for “basically legible,” and I think I nailed it. 

So I went outside with this marvelous piece and a can of chalkboard spray paint, and when I started spraying, the ducks all came over to see what I was doing. I can tell who is EJ and who is Coin, but Fay and Ray are indistinguishable to me, and there I was with a full can of spray paint. I was tempted for a minute, but I pulled myself together, because sometimes you have to remind yourself that you’re at least theoretically smarter than a duck and you should act accordingly. 

I let the thing dry in the sun for a while, peeled the hot glue off, and here it is:

Perfectly fine. I touched up the thready parts with chalk, and it seems to work just as I hoped. The chalk does not wipe away easily with a fingertip, like it would with a slate blackboard, but you can wipe it away with a damp cloth. 

Oh, the “+cheese” is not a blessing from His Eminence, Bishop Cheese. It’s a nod to the time I got to the supermarket and discovered that Damien had added “and cheese” to every single item on my list. Makes me laugh every time I think of it. Marriage is about communication! And cheese!

Okay, so here’s the sandwiches we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Buffalo chicken wraps

Damien and I did a quick getaway on Friday night, and got home Saturday pretty zonked, so I just did a quick shopping for just one meal. Flour tortillas, buffalo chicken (from frozen), spinach or maybe lettuce, shredded pepper jack cheese, and I think ranch dressing. 

Frozen buffalo chicken is always about 40% more expensive than it should be (it’s just chicken tenders sloshed around in hot sauce), but I bit the bullet and got three bags, and it was a nice easy meal. 

The little trip we went on was so nice! We rented a spot through HipCamp, which is like AirBnB just for camping, but by “camping” they mean everything from a spot to pitch your tent, to an RV, to a cabin, to a yurt, to what we got, which was a tent with beds in it on a platform, with a kitchenette, camp toilet and camp shower, and a little yard with a hammock and outdoor couch under a tarp with string lights, etc. 

Here is my view from the hammock on Friday evening, where I lounged under mosquito netting while Damien prepared dinner:

And here is the dinner he made:

Baguettes and garlic butter, strawberries and cheeses, and some truly excellent grilled steaks. He also got gelato, but we were too full to eat it. 

And here I am lounging some more the next day:

trying to figure out what bird it was that I heard at 5 a.m. in the yard. Pretty sure it was some kind of owl. (If it had been saying “who cooks for you?” I would have known it was an owl, and I would have said “my husband!” but it was just going “Ohhhhhhhhh!” in a tragic way; but I think it was still an owl.)

Anyway, this stay was cheaper than a cheap hotel and I loved it. Gonna be obnoxious and mention that you can get $10 off your next HipCamp stay, and I will also earn a $10 credit, if you use this code: 

hipcamp.com/i/simchaf

OR, if you want to become a host on your own land through HipCamp, use that same code and we both get $100 cash after you host your first guests.

We (okay I) briefly considered the fact that we Fisher own land, a full 1.25 acres of really quite beautiful property and could probably . . . . . . . . 

. . . . . . mmmm, nah. 

Anyway, we packed up our stuff (and checkout was at NOON, which felt quite luxurious) and drove to Spofford Lake, which has a tiny little island in it, which is NH’s smallest state park.

We paddled over in our kayaks and landed, walked all the way around the island and checked out its mushrooms and such, and then paddled back under a blue, blue, blue sky, and then drove to a place we’ve been driving past for decades, but never stopped into: Stuart and John’s Sugar House in Westmoreland. Damien and I are not big breakfast people these days, but we decided to go ahead and carb it up, so he had pancakes and I had waffles, and they were great. This place also has a dairy farm and a sunflower farm. We’re gonna go back on Labor Day weekend with the kids (the island and the farm). Just overall a lovely little time away. (More pictures here if you want to take a look.)

Oh, this is my pitch for you to look on Craigslist or FB marketplace for a kayak or two! If you live anywhere near a body of water, a kayak is a wonderful thing to have. You can definitely get better at using a kayak, but you can be competent at kayaking in about three minutes. It’s much easier than canoeing, and people are selling kayaks for about $100 all the time, at least around here. You don’t have to do anything in a kayak. Just get out on the water and bob around for a while, and then go home again. I got the book Quiet Water for NH and VT, but there are several editions for different regions, and will tell you where to go for easy kayak and canoe trips. Good stuff. 

Saturday I also started this stupid pie that I saw a recipe for and decided I needed to make, for some reason. More about that in a bit. 

SUNDAY
Sandwiches and strawberry pretzel icebox pie

Sunday was the last day when everyone was on vacation. Some kids started school on Monday, some started Tuesday, and some started Wednesday, and I had been promising Benny we would do the “stay at the beach as long as you want and eat a meal and a lot of candy there” thing, so Sunday was our last possible day. And we did it! 

First of course we went to Mass, and I had to go do the rest of the shopping, and it rained the first part of the day, but then the sun came out and we got there. 

“As long as they wanted” turned out to be about three hours. We had chips and sandwiches, soda and of course candy. 

And that was summer vacation. Fastest one ever, oh me oh my.

Oh, so when we got home we had this strawberry pretzel icebox pie. I’m only linking to it so you can know what recipe not to make. It was fine, and everybody liked it, it turns out I, a New England innocent, got suckered into making some insanely fancy-pants, labor intensive version of what is supposed to be a simple, quick, Midwestern potluck recipe you can throw together in a few minutes. 

Here I am, ladling unflavored gelatin mixed with fresh strawberry puree over strawberry slices arranged on a layer of cream cheese and whipped heavy cream, which rests on a crust made of pretzels, butter, malted milk powder, and brown sugar.

It has you putting things in and out of the oven and in and out of the freezer more than once. Like I said, it was good, but in retrospect, you can get nearly the same effect with Kool Whip, strawberry Jello, and pretzels. 

Also, I effed up the crust, because I was low on a few ingredients and had to make a 1.5X recipe, rather than a double recipe, and guess what happens when I try to do that in my head when I’m still exhausted from camping and kayaking and going to the beach! You are correct, I eff up the crust. Oh well! Everyone liked it. 

MONDAY
Chicken caprese burgers and corn on the cob

Nothing to report. 

I knew people were going to be a little down about school starting, so my goal was to make popular meals all week. 

Monday was just the first day for the two Catholic high school kids, and Benny and Corrie were still off; so we fulfilled another summer promise: BARBIE MOVIE. It was pretty good. I felt they could have easily cut 25 minutes out and ditched the narrator and it would have been stronger, but I liked it fine. The kids liked it. That’s my entire review. 

TUESDAY
Steak and cheese subs, store brand Funyuns

Tuesday was the first day for the public school high schooler, and for the college guy (he is commuting, and living at home this year to save money). I also had my echocardiogram, finally, basically just to check all the boxes, even though most of my symptoms have passed by now. I think I had . . . secret Covid + unmanaged high blood pressure + anxiety + ???. But my heart looks fine! And it was super fun to watch it popping away like a little teapot for half an hour on the screen while the tech checked everything out. I guess your heart actually has its own internal pacemaker, and actually makes itself beat, which is exactly what it looks like it’s doing.  It was lovely to see.  Good old heart. You love to see something just . . . doing what it’s made to do. 

Anyway, I celebrated with steak and cheese.

I had an big old eye round roast, which I sliced thinly and pan fried in oil with salt and pepper, along with sliced bell peppers and onions. 

I toasted the roll lightly, then spread it with mayo, then piled on the meat and veggies, and then put some American cheese on top and toasted it again. Freaking delicious. 

WEDNESDAY
Vermonter sandwiches, watermelon

Wednesday the final two kids started school, and we had yet another sandwich: The much-appreciated Vermonter, which is roast chicken (or turkey), bacon, green apple slices, sharp cheddar, and honey mustard on sourdough (or ciabatta). 

I have tried various methods for cutting up a large number of apples for this ssandwich, and there’s no good way of doing it quickly. I have one of those hand-cranked apple peeler-cutter-corer things,

which definitely makes it go fast, and it’s great for pies or cobbler, but it cuts the apples thinner than I want for this sandwich, and it peels them, and for this I prefer the peels on. I have used a pineapple cutting device, but apples are so small that by the time you get it situated and turn the crank, you’re through and need to set up the next one, so it doesn’t save you much work. So I just sliced the apples up and then cut the core bits out with a sharp knife, feeling very put-upon the whole time, even though, like most things in my life, it was my idea.

(I kept them from getting brown before dinner time by putting them in water with a little lime juice sloshed in.) 

We were supposed to have broccoli on the side, but it had gone bad, so I cut up a watermelon.  

Just an excellent sandwich.

THURSDAY
Chicken, spinach, jalapeño quesadillas, chips and salsa

On Thursday, the novelty of school had worn off and certain people decided that getting up in the morning two days in a row was absolute bullshit and they just didn’t want to do it. (I am not talking about myself here. I knew it was bullshit from day one.) Nevertheless, we got there on time (we make five stops in the morning this year! Five!!!!) and nobody died.

I had a little extra time (by which I mean I was avoiding writing), so I pan-fried the chicken thighs in oil with lots of Tajin seasoning

and then shredded them. 

I asked Corrie to be the waitress and take orders for dinner,

and this was when the penny dropped that the German word for cheese (Käse) is basically the same as the Spanish word (queso).  I don’t know why I found that so amazing, but I guess I just never thought about it before. 

(“Kasadea” is presumably Esperanto, but it gets the job done.)

Oh, here is my quesadilla:

Not strictly a sandwich, but not entirely not, either. 

FRIDAY
Bagel, egg, and cheese sandwiches

This was the plan, but one of my kids now works at the co-op, and she tipped me off that oysters are going to be 99 cents today, AND I happened to spill a can of seltzer directly into my purse (uhhhh some time ago, which is why the check I paid for lunch pizza with smelled kinda funky, sorry Nicole) and finally got around to cleaning it out last night, and I found a gift card to the co-op! So I think we are having bagel sandwiches for those who don’t like oysters, and then oysters and whatever else is on sale at the co-op for those who do. 

In other news, ladies, if you have been taking 200 mg of progesterone two weeks out of the month to help even out your mood swings with PMS, and you feel like it’s probably not doing that much, and you forget to take them, and then you suddenly decide that you built this patio with your own two hands so you could sit in the SUN and whose idea was it to have this FREAKNG AWNING UP ALL SUMMER, and you do this?

Maybe take your progesterone. It may be helping more than you realize.

P.S. Having an awning up was my idea. 

P.P.S. I also take Prozac, but it turns out Prozac + progesterone is the magic combination. Just telling you in case you, too, have been a little rampagy. I also decided Old Crow Medicine Show should be deported, and absolutely refused to compost anything this week. Also spilled some coffee and just kept walking. Insanely rebellious behavior, out of control. Somebody make me a sandwich. 

It will be so much easier if they make their own lunches

Our kids pack their own school lunches. 

There are several reasons for this. First, it fosters self-sufficiency and independent thinking. It also gives them some awareness and appreciation of how much work goes into planning and preparing a meal. More importantly, a child who’s chosen his own food is much more likely to actually eat those foods than a child who is surprised and disgusted by the choices someone else has made for him. No food is nutritious if it goes uneaten!

Best of all, it’s so much easier for the parents. Packing lunches is a lot of work, and this way, I get to just put my feet up and relax.

Of course, first I have to remind the kids to make their lunches. I have the choice of doing this as soon as they get home, when they are exhausted and cranky, or later, when they are cranky and exhausted. Either way, there is occasionally a bit of resistance; but this can easily be overcome with some firm, cheerful reminders. Here is a sample dialogue:

Parent: [Child’s name], please make your lunch now.
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: [Child’s name], will you please make your lunch now. [Child’s name.]
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: [Child’s name], please make your lunch now [Child’s name.] [Child’s name.] Make your lunch.
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: LUNCH. LUNCH. LUNCH.
Kid: What???
Parent: Please make your lunch.
Kid: Okay. Sheesh! You can’t just say “Lunch!” and expect me to know what you want!
 
The child will now need to locate his or her lunch box. If by some miracle the child has not left the lunch box at school, on the bus, or in the Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom where you stopped for an emergency poo, you will be able to easily locate the lunch box by the cloud of fruit flies hovering overhead.
 
Your child may notice that their lunch box “smells funny for some reason” but may need some assistance in identifying that reason as last week’s tangerine peel collection that it seemed like too much work to throw away, so they brought it home because surely their mother needs some elderly tangerine peels.
 
No matter, you can easily wipe down today’s modern wipeable lunch box with a damp cloth, perhaps give it a once-over with some baking soda to ameliorate the stench, possibly douse it with kerosene, pat it dry, and you’re ready to pack the lunch. I mean your child is ready to pack his lunch all by himself, while you put your feet up.
 
He will accomplish this by packing one snack pack of chocolate pudding and then going to lie down under the table. Why is he lying down under the table? Because there isn’t any food in this house.
 
You will point out to him — possibly waving your arms a bit, as you point it out — that there is so much food, in such vast quantities, and in such an array of varieties, it would have rendered Mansa Musa instantly insane as his brain tried to comprehend the sheer opulent luxury of it all.
 
But no dice. All you ever buy, it seems, is dumb boring things that are barely even food, like fruit and meat and cheese and yogurt and crackers and trail mix and cookies and pudding and hummus and chips and vegetables and fruit snacks and pumpkin seeds and bagels, and meanwhile all the other moms are buying Flamin’ Hot Sharkleberry Pop Tarts with Limited Edition Rockin’ Sockin’ Tropical Holographic S’mores Drizzle Pods, because other moms love their children.
 
At this point, you may be tempted to remind your children that, when you were in elementary school, you used to bring in a baloney sandwich, an apple, and a couple of store brand graham crackers with jelly on them, and you considered it a special treat if the jelly had seeds in it. And there certainly weren’t any insulated bags or adorable mermaid-shaped mini ice packs to go in those lunches! We got salmonella and we were grateful for it! We considered it an honor!
 
But this approach is an error. Your child will consider the fact that you ate graham crackers just further evidence that you are some kind of defective moron who is incapable of judging right eating, and he will make fun of you on TikTok. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is. 
 
Eventually, with some persistent reasoning and bargaining and a little bit of screaming, your child can be coaxed to continue adding food items to his lunch box, until finally he discovers that it is nearly full. He will have achieved this all by himself, with only a little bit of help from you, who will by this time have spent the last forty minutes standing there with your head deep inside the cabinet, mumbling, “How about Triscuits? okay, then how about Ritz crackers?okay, then how about Goldfish crackers? okay, then how about Wheat Thins? okay, then how about Saltines?” and all the while you can actually feel your bones wearing down and turning into dust inside you. How about Wheat Thins with the bone dust of your mother on them? How about that? 
 

But your untimely demise aside, the good news is, your child will finally have a hearty, nutritious lunch. Well, a hearty lunch. Well, it is mainly chocolate pudding, but at least you know the little creep is going to eat it. And best of all, he made it all by himself, and saved you so much work. Looks like this generation is off to a fine start, and you can go put your feet–
-Oh no, wait. This pudding was produced on machinery that also processes nuts. I guess junior needs some help after all. 

 

_________

PBJ Image: JefferyGoldman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What’s for supper? Vol. 341: You’re tellin me a pork bought this dresser?

Friends, it is the end of an era. This blackboard that has served me faithfully for many years has finally gone irreparably kablooey.

It was in pretty tough shape already, and half the black part was scratched up and hard to write on, and the “wood” frame was all puckered and horrible. But I loved it so! It marked the moment when I first started to really plan my weekly menu out, and that meant making a detailed shopping list, and that meant looking hard every single week at my calendar and my bank account and the weather forecast and my energy levels, and it’s been an excellent lynchpin for organizing my life in general.

Luckily, I can just go out and buy another blackboard. I really liked this one, though, and I haven’t found one that’s set up the same. Pour one out for the menu blackboard, friends.

And here is what we ate on this, the last week of summer vacation: 

FRIDAY
I’m including Friday because although belongs to last week, I started making Saturday’s food then: specifically, mango ice cream

Jump to Recipe

and a batch of Indian candy called coconut ladoo. 

The mango ice cream I’ve made a few times, both with canned mango and with fresh mango. People liked both, but I vastly preferred the fresh. Canned mango has that syrupy, cloying taste that made me think I didn’t like mango for much of my life, because I only had mango flavored things, and never fresh mango. Anyway, this time I made it with the canned puree. I’ll give it this: The color is much more vibrant, and it’s definitely easier!

The coconut ladoo was a recipe I stumbled across by accident, and it had so few ingredients, I could’t resist. This one is just dried coconut, condensed milk, milk, ghee (but I used butter), cardamom, and red food coloring. The recipe says you can do it in the microwave in just a few minutes, but it took many, many minutes before it finally thickened up into the doughlike texture required. Probably the stovetop would have been faster. Possibly it took longer because I used butter instead of ghee, I dunno. 

But you just heat and mix the stuff up and roll it into balls and then roll the balls in more coconut, and chill them. The perfect activity for when your big sister is staying up late to watch The Mummy and you’re too young for that but you can’t sleep without your big sister, but your mother is doing something interesting in the kitchen around midnight, and it’s still summer vacation, so nobody ever goes to bed, ever. 

We made a double recipe and got a few dozen ladoo, and refrigerated them. 

SATURDAY
Green lamb curry, rice, fried eggplant, watermelon; mango and coconut ice cream and coconut ladoo

Saturday I woke up SO much later than I meant to, and zoomed around the house and yard with my mug of coffee, picking mint from the yard and eggplant from the garden and getting a marinade made for the curry I was planning. I still had some lamb breast plate left over from that amazing sale they had a while back, and I had made this green masala curry with goat meat a few weeks ago and it was divine; so I thought it would be scrumptious with lamb, too. 

I haven’t had a chance to glue my food processor pitcher back together yet, but my $20 thrift store Ninja blender did just fine with some pretty hefty ingredients:

and then I washed off all the eggplants I could find. I had two Ichiban ones that had been nibbled a bit by buggies, and a two Black Beauties that were small but pretty. 

Got those sliced and salted to sweat, and got the lamb marinating. 

Then, moving faster than I thought I could, I made a batch of coconut ice cream.

Jump to Recipe

And then juuuuuuust before I left the house, I chucked the lamb in the oven at a low temperature, I think maybe 250, and then I zipped up to Claremont to meet some of my siblings for our annual cemetery party. We are fun! 

The lilac I planted is doing fine; the rose bushes are not thriving, but they’re not dead, so that’s nice. If I can get up there again before winter, I’ll bring some crocuses, which my mother always enjoyed. I think. I don’t know, I don’t remember anything. 

I got back to the house around five and the lamb was heartbreakingly tender and succulent.

This is a VERY fatty cut, so there was more fat that you may want to see in your meat, but there was plenty of meat; you just had to be discerning. The curry is medium spicy, just enough to be entertaining but not too challenging. I love it.

I cut up a watermelon and found some mango chutney and mint chutney. I was planning to fry the eggplant, and briefly considered tweaking my recipe to make it more Indian, but it’s so tasty as is, with a more middle-eastern bent, I thought it would go well enough, and we’d just call it fusion.

Jump to Recipe

It comes together very fast, and as soon as I had the eggplant fried, we ate. 

I also made a lovely tub of yogurt sauce, fresh garlic, freshly-squeezed lemon juice, kosher salt. Bu-huh-huh-huht, I give it a little taste to see if there’s enough salt, and . . . it was vanilla yogurt. So we did not eat that! But we ate everything else, and it was so good. I highly recommend this fried eggplant. The batter has baking powder in it, which gives it a kind of crisp, glossy little crust with a puffy inside. They turn out so well every time. 

The REASON I was making a big meal on a busy day was because my sister Sarah came over, and spent the night! I didn’t get even one single picture, but we had an excellent time just hanging around and yacking. Everybody likes Sarah and it was just a delight to have her over without having to rush somewhere else, for once. 

For dessert, we had the mango and coconut ice cream and the coconut ladoo. 

Looks like the mango is melty, so I’m thinking maybe I made the coconut on Friday night and the mango on Saturday morning. That seems likely. 

Anyway, I really liked the ladoo. They were chewy and creamy and buttery, and the addition of the spicy cardamom saved them from being overpoweringly sweet. Will definitely make again. Next time I will add more food coloring! There are all kinds of ladoo, apparently. 

SUNDAY
Hot dogs, party mix, root beer floats

Sunday I was supposed to go shopping, since I didn’t do that on Saturday, but I didn’t get to sleep until after 3 a.m., and it turns out I am too old for that. So I got some hot dogs and called it a day. 

MONDAY
Cheeseburgers, fries, raw veg 

Monday I was like, huh, I am still extremely tired. Corrie had a friend over and that quickly felt like the main thing I could accomplish that day. So I bought some hamburger meat and Damien made burgers, I made fries, and we had that with some raw vegetables.

 

INCLUDING two cucumbers from my garden!

I completely forgot that I had planted cucumbers, so that was a surprise. Gardening is thrilling when you don’t really know what’s going on. 

TUESDAY
Aldi pizza

Tuesday, I forget why, but I had big plans to check out a thrift store in Troy (a small town which is not named after the ancient city of Troy. It is named after Troy, New York. That seemed more interesting when I was writing it than it does now, so I went to Google to find another fact about Troy, NH, and the only other thing I now know is that somebody rated it one star. Pretty good thrift store, though), and the kids, who may not have had the most thrilling summer thus far, enthusiastically joined in. Then we picked up Elijah, got ice cream, and went to another thrift store, and then I dropped everyone off and finally went shopping for the rest of the week, and heated up some Aldi pizza.

WEDNESDAY
Blueberry chicken salad

On Wednesday I did the one other thing I’ve been meaning to do all summer: I cleaned out the middle room upstairs. Clara moved out of the house, Lucy moved from the middle room into the room Clara formerly shared with Sophia, and now Benny and Corrie have the middle room to themselves. Let me tell you, it was not . . . it was not nice, up there. I generally follow the policy of never, ever going upstairs, and if I can’t avoid going there, I don’t wear my glasses; but on Wednesday, I bit the bullet, found a bunch of trash bags, and implemented my just get it done protocol. It took four and a half hours, but I moved all the furniture and cleaned under it, threw out three full bags of trash, put hundreds of books back on the shelf, and generally made it look like a bedroom instead of a crime scene. High fives all around.

Lena grilled some chicken for me and we had salad greens with chicken, walnuts toasted in the microwave, your choice of leftover feta or leftover goat cheese, and blueberries. 

I had mine outside, because I couldn’t stand to look at anybody or be with anybody or know about anybody. 

The ducks came over to see what I was doing, so I threw some blueberries to them, and they were like, “What? What?” and the blueberries just rolled into the cracks.

They are so very dumb. 

THURSDAY
Pork fried rice, egg rolls, rice rolls

Thursday we once again had to do, among other things, more back-to-school shopping (we usually do it all in one fell swoop, which is horrible and torturous, but this time I elected to do it in three separate trips, which was torturous and horrible) but then get home early to get to Clara’s play, so I threw some rice in the Instant Pot and threw bunch of sugar and salt on a boneless pork sandworm and put it in the oven at 325 before I left the house. 

Got home and cut the pork into chunks, realized we didn’t have eggs, sauteed some diced onions and minced garlic in oil, put the pork in, put the rice in, threw in some frozen mixed vegetables, doused it with a ton of soy sauce, a medium amount of oyster sauce, and a little bit of fish sauce, and you know what? It basically tasted like pork fried rice, more or less. 

We also had egg rolls and crunchy rice rolls, both from Aldi. 

The fried rice thing needs refining, but it tasted fine, and I’m super glad to have another fast, easy meal that can be thrown together without a recipe. 

Clara did great in her play! She was Ariel in The Tempest. 

Very funny, and she has such a lovely singing voice. Corrie loved the part with the bees. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

Friday was a supremely silly morning wherein we discovered that a kid who had paid for a dresser and needed to pick it up today had actually bought two dressers, one of which he didn’t actually want; and also, I had the foresight to borrow Damien’s car, which is bigger than mine, to pick it up, but not the foresight to remember that the back door to that car doesn’t super duper open. And then while we were finding a measuring tape and scratching our heads, both the dresser kid and another kid were like, oh hey, I have to be at work now. And it was raining. And the lady at the store was like, “Don’t mix up the drawers! You have to keep them in order, or else you won’t be able to tell which one is which!” and I was like, I HAVE BEEN TO COLLEGE, I WILL FIGURE IT OUT.

Which we more or less did. I gotta make some mac and cheese, though, and get to adoration, then Damien and I are, going camping? I’m looking forward to it, but if there is some way we could arrange for another two hours per day, that would be helpful! 

Oh, one more thing, Clara gave me some dried lotus seeds, and I haven’t had a chance to figure out what to do with them yet.

Who has an idea for me??

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Mango ice cream

Ingredients

  • 30 oz (about 3 cups) mango pulp
  • 2 cups heavy or whipping cream
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 mango, chopped into bits

Instructions

  1. In a bowl, whisk the milk, sugar, and salt until blended.

  2. Add in the mango pulp and cream and stir with a spoon until blended.

  3. Cover and refrigerate two hours.

  4. Stir and transfer to ice cream maker. Follow instructions to make ice cream. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes.)

  5. After ice cream is churned, stir in fresh mango bits, then transfer to a freezer-safe container, cover, and freeze for several hours.

 

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Ben and Jerry's coconut ice cream

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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

  3. Pour in the milk and cream and coconut cream (discarding the waxy disk thing) and continue whisking to blend.

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

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Fried eggplant

You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium eggplants
  • salt for drying out the eggplant

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2-1/2 cups water
  • 1 Tbsp veg oil
  • optional: kosher salt for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
    Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture. 

  2. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming. 

  3. Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.

  4. Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.

  5. Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.  

  6. Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

 

Blessed are the amateurs

In the last few decades, it’s become easier and easier for folks to turn a little talent or skill into a business. You like baking or decorating cakes? You can sell those! You enjoy woodworking? Take it on down to the Saturday market! You have a knack for knitting? We can whip up a website in no time, and you can turn that into a full-time job.

For some people, especially moms, this has been a godsend. It allows them to make a little money, or a lot of money, doing something they love, and it means they have flexibility and satisfaction that they’d never find in some workaday office job.

But for some people, it just turned into yet another ball and chain. Monetizing their talents just sucked all the joy out of it and made the thing they used to love into a slog. The activity that once relaxed their frazzled nerves and restored their psyches turned into a new source of anxiety and frustration, and robbed them of anything to fall back on in their free time.

So there is now a well-established backlash against turning everything you love into a side gig. This is a good and healthy thing, and it’s gratifying to see talented people making beautiful things simply because they want to, without hoping to turn it into a profitable empire.

However! (There’s always a “however.”) Maybe it’s a 21st-century disease, or maybe it’s a specifically American thing, but I’ve noticed that the “you can monetize that” pressure has given way to something superficially different, but just as insidious: The pressure to become super knowledgeable about anything you happen to like. You can be an amateur, but you have to be an expert amateur, or you will pay.

This is undoubtedly a fruit of the internet and social media (and maybe mostly a problem for people who are very active on social media; but it’s bled into “real life” as well.). Folks like to share little scenes from their everyday life, and other folks like to chip in bits and pieces of knowledge they happen to have (or think they have) about it. Sometimes they’re right; sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes they’re helpful, sometimes they’re interesting, sometimes they’re just trying to show off. But it has become standard to know a lot about just about anything you share about your life, even casually.

If you mention there’s a bird at your feeder, you better know the exact species and subvariant, and whether it’s acting normally or unusually, and whether it’s common in your area, and if that’s good for your environment or bad; and if there is any bird seed included in the photo, it’s almost certainly going to be the wrong kind, and you’re going to hear about it. These days, you can no longer buy a packet of seeds, dig a hole, and put them in the ground. It’s not that simple! Long before the actual plant ever pokes its shy head above the earth, the discourse about it will flower, including hot debates about native vs. endemic vs. indigenous vs. invasive species, diatomaceous earth vs. natural zeolites, and whether or not you’re doing enough to support your local bees.

It’s gotten to the point where people are genuinely afraid to share anything at all, because they know that someone, somewhere, is going to be more of an expert about it than they are, and they are going to get yelled at. … Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.

Photo of “Image of Smiling Man Looking Up” by Homer page, from The Family of Man by Edward Steichen 

Baritus Illustration: A war cry in stickers and T-shirts

Chris Lewis believes in preserving tradition, up to a point.

It was the ages-old, rock-solid history of the Catholic Church that first grabbed his attention and made him take his adopted faith seriously. The Georgia-based graphic artist and illustrator at Baritus Catholic Illustration had joined the Church as an adult. He was raised a Bible Christian and drifted into functional atheism; but when he met his wife and her Catholic family, he had to take another look.

“If you love somebody, you’re going to be interested in what they’re interested in,” Lewis said.

So he began asking questions and was astonished to find out that Catholics had answers.

The first thing he wanted to know was who the first pope was. When his mother-in-law told him it was Peter in the Bible, he said it was a “wake-up slap in the face.”

“Within one question, I had a connection to history in Jesus’ time, and that led to all kinds of subsequent questions. So I picked up the Bible and started reading again,” he said.

He also spent time just staring at the massive, soaring, overwhelming architecture and stained-glass windows of the church he and his new wife attended, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

He internalized the lesson: You can teach with images.

At the time, Lewis was making his living as a graphic designer. Like so many Americans, he had begun his artistic life as a kid producing copious comic book superheroes and then shifted to crafting pixel art, square by square. These were both decent training for his eventual career in corporate branding, producing polished images and logos to sell products for his clients.

But as his new faith started taking root, it became more insistent, and he began to think, “If this is what I’m staking my belief on, I’m going to take it and put it in my art.”

“I kind of took the very formal polished approach of graphic design, but the more storytelling approach of comic books, and the simplicity and limited color palettes of pixel work and made the style that fused all my beginnings,” Lewis said.

The result is a look that’s dynamic and accessible like comic books, but with more heft and dignity; it’s polished like graphic design, but infused with authentic emotion; and yes, it’s designed to fit into a square with only a few colors, so it prints well.

So along with doing design and illustration work for various authors, publishers, archdioceses and more, Lewis also has a thriving retail business for stickers, T-shirts, cards, posters and phone cases. Some of them are iridescent; some of them glow in the dark.

How does this popular, accessible work jibe with the history and tradition he found so compelling in his own faith journey? Read the rest of my latest Catholic artist interview at Our Sunday Visitor. 

Previous artists featured in this series:
Kreg Yingst
Sarah Breisch
Charles Rohrbacher

If you know of (or are) a Catholic or Catholic-friendly artist you think should be featured, please drop me a line! simchafisher at gmail dot com. I’m not excellent about responding, but I always check out every suggestion. 

 

The male priesthood points men toward service

The Southern Baptists have been ousting all their female pastors. It’s been a long-standing policy in the Southern Baptist Church, which is the largest protestant denomination in the US, that women cannot be leaders, but some churches, including a few powerful and prominent ones, have bucked the teaching. But this year, presumably in response to recent culture wars over gender and gender roles, there has been a crackdown, and the organization voted to expel some churches that hadn’t been following these guidelines.

I haven’t been following this news closely. I don’t think I know any Southern Baptists, except on Twitter and such. But I have been hearing snippets of their genuine struggle, and it’s gut-wrenching to hear people make arguments that boil down to: God says women cannot teach men, and God says women cannot be in authority over men, and God says women need to understand their place.

I thought to myself, “These poor women. They should get the heck out of that church and come be with us Catholics.”

And then I realized, “Oh, that’s what most people think Catholics are like.” They see the all-male priesthood and think that we also teach and believe that women can’t be priests because they need to be subservient to men; that they need to learn from men, and not teach; that they need to cede all power to men; and that all men are born leaders and all women are born followers. They think women can’t be priests because men are more like God than women are…Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

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Image: baptism in Järfälla via Pxfuel

What’s for supper? Vol. 340: Happy new sandwich to me!

Friday again! It’s Friday again. I remember when the weeks were long, but they ain’t long now. 

Here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Sausage and pepper sandwiches, raw veggies and dip

Satisfying little meal. Fried peppers and onions, sausages in jarred sauce. Easy peasy.

Aldi didn’t have any sausage-shaped rolls, so we had kaiser rolls and did not die. 

SUNDAY
McDonald’s

Sunday we went to Mystic Aquarium! A wonderful place with some very personable belugas. 

We also fed the cow nose rays, who have the most alien faces I’ve ever encountered on a creature that size. Their noses are bifurcated, sort of like a cow’s, and then when they want to eat, the bottom of their face sort of unfolds like origami;

but their actual mouths are  underneath this part, and you can feel them avidly vacuuming up the food between ridged plates of teeth. Freaky!

We also caught the seal show, and we saw the jellyfish that light up, and the octopus with his toy, and the leering sharks, and the little tiny baby sharks thrashing silently around inside their egg cases, and everyone had fun. We packed sandwiches for lunch, and grabbed McDonald’s on the way home.

I’m still getting used to having family outings that are so straightforward, because everyone’s so grown up. No diapers, no nursing stops, no need to pack three changes of clothes and a plastic bag to sequester the pants that have become unspeakably soiled; no constant terror that someone’s going to wander off and drown; no random meltdowns because small people are having too much fun. We didn’t even have drama in the gift shop, because some people have their own spending cash, and others have started to catch on that a smushed penny really is a cooler souvenir than a stuffie that you could get at the dollar store back home. I am somehow managing to feel sad about this, because I have the superpower of turning any experience into melancholy, hooray. 

Anyway, our family is still big enough that a family membership is cheaper than buying individual tickets, so we hope to go back within the year! It was extremely hot, so it would be nice to go back on a day when it’s less tempting to dive into the pool with the sea lions and take your chances. But if you’re within driving distance of this aquarium, I recommend it. Mystic Seaport is also really cute and fun to explore (they have a drawbridge in the middle of town), but we didn’t have time to go there this time. 

MONDAY
Korean beef bowl, rice, crunchy rice rolls, sugar snap peas

Monday, I suddenly couldn’t stand the mess in the dining room for one more second, and I sorted shoes and threw out about 1/3 of them. This isn’t even the most Converse we’ve ever had at the same time, and all but one pair was in absolutely disgraceful condition.

So I swept and wiped and organized, and now you can actually walk through the room, rather than dodging and sashaying and squirming your way through a clear path down the center.

Won’t last long, but it feels good for now. 

Supper was quick and easy: Some rice in the Instant Pot, and some Korean beef bowl on the stove.

Jump to Recipe

Aldi had those yummy crunchy rice rolls in stock, so I bought several packages, and we had raw sugar snap peas. 

Sugar snap peas are one of the few vegetables that really do satisfy the craving for something crunchy. Love ’em. 

It was also my turn to clean the kitchen. I have Mondays, Damien has Tuesdays, and the kids who don’t have jobs do the rest of the days, and the older kids fill in as needed. There were so many fruit flies and I was so hot and aggravated by the time I was done, I set my phone to play some Bach guitar music, slithered into the pool, and just sloshed around by myself in the dark until I felt human again. 

Also on Monday, Clara moved out! Oh me oh my. She’s still close by and we’ll see her soon. 

TUESDAY
Oven fried chicken, peach salad

Chicken wings were 99 cents a pound, and everyone liked the oven fried chicken from last week so much, I figured I’d do that again. Tuesday was the Assumption, so I quietly told myself we would have wings for the assumption, ho ho ho. Got to the noon Mass. 

The oven fried chicken recipe: Make a milk and eggs mix (two eggs per cup of milk), enough to at least halfway submerge the chicken, and add plenty of salt and pepper, and let that soak for a few hours before supper.

About half an hour to 40 minutes before dinner, heat the oven to 425. In an oven-safe pan with sides, put about a cup of oil and a stick or two of butter and let that melt and heat up.

Then put plenty of flour in a bowl (I always give myself permission to use a lot and waste some flour, because I hate it when there’s not enough and you have to patch it together from whatever’s left, and it gets all pasty) and season it heavily with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and whatever else you want – chili powder, cumin, etc. It should have some color in it when you’re done seasoning! Take the chicken out of the milk mix and dredge it in the flour. 

Then pull the hot pan out of the oven and lay the chicken, skin side down, in the pan, return it to the oven and cook for about 25 minutes. Then flip it and let it continue cooking, probably for another 15 minutes or more, depending on how big the pieces of chicken are. 

It turned out fine. It wasn’t as good as last time, probably because last time all I had in the house was olive oil, but this time all I had was canola oil and margarine, which I haven’t used in years.  

The side was a peach salad, which I had qualms about, and I should have listened to my qualms. I follow this recipe except I skipped the corn, because that just didn’t sound right. I don’t know what the problem was. The goat cheese just kind of went pasty, and the peaches were maybe overripe, and –oh, one big problem was I used real maple syrup in the dressing, and discovered too late that it had gone rancid, which I forgot syrup can do! 

It looks okay, but it just wasn’t great. The whole meal was just a bit disappointing. It was STODGY. 

What I really want is to recreate this amazing peach burrata dish with cherry tomatoes, prosciutto, and a balsamic reduction that I had at a restaurant a while back:

Man, that was outstanding. Oh well. 

Anyway, we had fried chicken and fresh peach salad with goat cheese and toasted almonds on a Tuesday, so I did try! Sometimes it just doesn’t come together, oh well. Excelsior. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

Wednesday we had to hit urgent care with Lucy with a possible broken foot, but happily it’s just a sprain. The doctor recommended, rather than an ice pack, filling a bucket with cold water and soaking it for 20 minutes while spelling the alphabet with your foot. So on the way home from the hospital, I bought a bucket, and also some other things we needed: milk, half and half, and a sack of duck food. Lucy said that sounded like a tasty bucket of breakfast. And that’s why I’m in charge of the menu and she is not. 

Got home, made some pizza. All they had at the store for dough was wheat dough and something called “bac’n dust,” neither of which are food words. It tasted okay, not bad, but not something I’d ever make any effort to recreate. I made one plain cheese pizza, one olive, and one with pepperoni and leftover sausage. 

Here we see one of Van Gogh’s less known sunflower works, in which he experimented with both a limited palette and leftover meat.

Look, these are the jokes. Excelsior. 

THURSDAY
Spicy chicken sandwich with peppers, chips

On Thursday, the big kids all had plans, so I decided to take Benny and Corrie out school shopping. We usually do this with everyone at the same time, at the last possible minute, to create the maximum stress, but apparently you don’t have to do it this way.

So we got school supplies, and also TMNT shirts, unicorn headbands on clearance, new shoes, a fuzzy pink hoodie because we’re still planning to go see Barbie, and so on. We also stopped at a thrift store I like, and I got a Ninja blender for $20, so we’ll see what smoothies may be. 

We have this very wimpy Oster blender that can only manage, like, chocolate milk. Looking forward to pulverizing stuff. Also Corrie got a recorder at the thrift store, which I said yes to. 

Supper came together fast, and it was an absolute triumph, as far as I’m concerned. I followed this recipe from Sip and Feast, which has so far never steered me wrong. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was what he calls “blackened seasoning.” I thought I had some Tony Chachere’s, but couldn’t find it, so I used a stray bottle of McCormick Perfect Pinch Cajun seasoning. 

First I blistered the shishito peppers. You just cut the tops off and blacken them quickly in a hot pan with oil and a little salt, turning once. 

You’re supposed to do this after you cook the chicken, but I did it first and just kept it on the stove on the plate, and it stayed warm enough.

Then I took boneless, skinless chicken thighs (one per person) and seasoned them heavily with the Cajun seasoning, and cooked them slowly in hot oil on medium heat, turning once. 

When the chicken was almost done cooking, I put a slice of American cheese on each one and covered the pan, and let the cheese melt for a few minutes. 

Then I toasted some brioche buns (he recommends putting them in the pan to toast, but the rest of the food seemed greasy enough), put a little BBQ sauce on the bottom (we like Sweet Baby Ray’s), then the chicken with cheese, then the blistered peppers, then some sliced red onion, more BBQ sauce, and the top bun.

Guys, this is one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had, at home or anywhere. Sweet, tangy, spicy, with the little crunch from the peppers and onions and the melty cheese . . . wow. The whole thing was just a treat, and I would absolutely serve this to guests.

 Of course you can grill the meat and peppers, if you don’t want to pan fry them. Definitely spring for the brioche buns. The shishito peppers (which I’ve never had before) were great, mild and sweet, like bell peppers in jalapeño form. If you can’t find them, the guy suggests poblano for a substitute, or you could go with jalapeños if you really want it spicy. I loved having whole peppers with their skins on piled onto the sandwich, though, so it was nicer than bell peppers; and it was very easy to just wash them and chop the tops off and chuck ’em in the pan. I also didn’t bother trimming the fat off the thighs, so it was just simple all around. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle for kids; for adults: ??

The kids wanted tuna noodle casserole (canned tuna, cream of mushroom soup, and egg noodles in a casserole dish, topped with toasted corn flakes and potato chips, served with “pink stuff” dressing, which is ketchup, mayo, and vinegar) and I didn’t want to make it, but then they said they would make it, and I’m no dummy. But I think Damien and I may run away and get some supermarket sushi and take the kayaks out. What with one thing and another, it’s been a hell of a week, and the urge to just  . . . paddle away . . . is strong.

But we always come home again. That’s the deal. You can leave, but you have to come back. 

Hey, my garden is finally getting going. I’ve had a bunch of big hearty butternut squashes so far, but that was it; but suddenly there are cucumbers, four or five eggplants, some bitty little ghost peppers, and a watermelon the size of a gumball. And more collard greens, and some cute little Brussels sprouts, and a steady trickle of strawberries. Asparagus and rhubarb are just getting started this year, but in a few years, I expect a nice little harvest from them. 

And grapes!

We’re just going to make juice this year. UNLIMITED JUICE. 

 

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Korean Beef Bowl

A very quick and satisfying meal with lots of flavor and only a few ingredients. Serve over rice, with sesame seeds and chopped scallions on the top if you like. You can use garlic powder and powdered ginger, but fresh is better. The proportions are flexible, and you can easily add more of any sauce ingredient at the end of cooking to adjust to your taste.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown sugar (or less if you're not crazy about sweetness)
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 3-4 inches fresh ginger, minced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3-4 lb2 ground beef
  • scallions, chopped, for garnish
  • sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a large skillet, cook ground beef, breaking it into bits, until the meat is nearly browned. Drain most of the fat and add the fresh ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the meat is all cooked.

  2. Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes the ground beef and stir to combine. Cook a little longer until everything is hot and saucy.

  3. Serve over rice and garnish with scallions and sesame seeds. 

Yoga review: Alba Avella

It’s been almost two years since I first discovered yoga. As I said, I started practicing it because I hurt my hip and had to stop running while that healed; but I quickly realized that I like yoga so much more than running as a primary form of exercise. (A fine thing to discover after I finally broke down and invested in good running shoes!) I still endorse everything I said in this initial post, which I wrote when I only had experience with one instructor, Julia Marie Lopez. I still think if you’re looking to start yoga, she’s a great introduction. 

I did get a little bored after a while, but I wasn’t ready to start paying for real classes; so I started hunting around for someone else free. There are LOTS of free yoga classes on Amazon Prime, YouTube, and anywhere else you stream videos, and some of them are amazingly terrible. There are instructors who literally don’t know their left from their right, who say mean things about you if you’re struggling, and who seem to know about three poses and just want you to do them over and over and over again. 

There was one chick I followed as long as I could, because her routines were challenging; but, my friends, she said “bref” instead of “breath.” Even when I’m doing yoga regularly and breathing in a controlled fashion and so on, I’m still always right on the brink of murdering people just as a matter of course, so I just couldn’t deal with hearing “bref” several times in thirty minutes. 

Finally my friend Theresa clued me into Alba Avella, and that’s who I’ve been following for quite a while now. The worst thing she does is say “stagnant” when I think what she means is “static.” She also has a habit of reminding us frequently to “notice the difference,” and I truly don’t know what she means by this. What difference? The difference between what? I guess she just means “think about how you feel,” so that’s what I’ve been doing. 

But truly, those are the worst things she does. The good things are:

-She tells you exactly what you’re supposed to be doing most of the time, so if you aren’t looking at the screen, you can still follow. She also always knows left from right, which is very important!

-Her voice is agreeable, and she is articulate. She doesn’t play music during her classes, and I don’t miss it at all. 

-She is chill and encouraging without being condescending or overly therapeutic. I am at a point where, if I can’t do something, I just give it a shot and move along, so I don’t need a lot of “It’s okay to fail! It’s a yoga practice, not a yoga perfect!” pep talks, but she is reasonably friendly and does remind you that if you fall down, you can just get up again.

-Her routines are interesting and varied. I’ve done dozens of them and I haven’t yet found that “ugh, there’s that Alba Avella combo she always reverts to,” which other instructors all seem to have. She has a background in dance, and this may account for why the flows have a certain beauty and symmetry to them, which I haven’t noticed in many other instructors’ routines. She seems to be aiming to produce something beautiful in the whole act of the practice, from start to finish, rather than just making sure a certain group of muscles gets worked. (Which would also be okay, but I find the elegance of it is motivating for me, and keeps me coming back.) 

-The routines that say “power” in them are hard! I am sweating pretty good at the end of thirty minutes. But she also has plenty of routines that are gentle, or focused on stretching, etc., and the written descriptions are accurate and useful. 
-She doesn’t do a lot of quasi spiritual/mystical stuff. At the end of each session, she has you bow to your practice and I think maybe she mentions your third eye, but otherwise it’s all nice and physical. When I’m done, I put my hands together, bow my head, and pray “Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal one, have mercy on us and on the whole world” and then add in any prayer that arises naturally, if any. Easy peasy. I’m actually fairly scrupey about spiritual mixing, so if you’re someone who has qualms about yoga as a spiritual influence, here’s my quick take on that, cut and pasted from this post: 

I was joking when I said earlier I was afraid I might get a yoga demon, but I am also Catholic and do not want to participate in something that could be an expression of a different religion, whether that’s Hinduism or Buddhism, or some kind of nameless New Age spiritual practice. What I have learned is that yoga, as it’s practiced in the United States, is actually a quite recent invention, and not an ancient religious practice at all. However, modern or not, there is most certainly such a thing as yoga that invites you to participate in spiritual practices that are foreign to Christianity. What we do with our minds matters, so I get a little annoyed at Catholics who scoff at the idea that any yoga class could possibly be spiritually harmful or inappropriate. I would not take a yoga class that included a spiritual element. (That includes yoga classes that try to be explicitly Christian yoga, because that’s just weird. Just exercise! Or, do whatever you want, I don’t care.) 

-Also, this is barely worth mentioning, but some instructors wear outfits that are just so silly-looking, and Avella does not. I don’t remember what she wears, which is probably her goal: Not to be distracting. The only down side to this is that I can’t make a mental note about videos, like, “Oh, I remember I really liked the one where she’s wearing that weird strappy red thing” or “uh oh, purple pants! I don’t have the energy for this one today.”

I think that’s everything. I subscribe to her channel on YouTube and have been working my way through the copious number of 20- and 30-minute free videos there. I would like to do one of the thirty-day challenges, but it’s hard to track them down in order, so I usually just scroll around and find something that seems appropriate for the day. (She also has ten-minute routines, and some 40-minute ones which I haven’t tried yet.) I’ve run across a few with poor sound quality, but that’s the rare exception. 

The first video of hers I tried is this one: 30 minute total body reset flow.

It’s not the most entertaining routine, but it’s a pretty good introduction to her style, and as promised, it does use your whole body. Some of her videos are a lot more challenging and elaborate, and many of them are filmed in some kind of ski loft or something, which is visually interesting (you can sometimes see snow outside; I believe she lives in Colorado) and has better lighting, and some are in other studios. I believe some are shot outdoors, but I haven’t tried those yet (although I have done yoga outside myself, when I forgot I told the kids they could use the TV for a Mario tournament. I figured if the neighbors wanted to watch me get up and get down and get up again, that was entirely their problem). 

All the benefits of yoga I discussed before are still continuing, as long as I keep doing it (and I sometimes fall off the wagon and don’t do anything for a couple of weeks, and I always regret it). If I do yoga several times a week, I sleep much better, my digestion is better, it’s easier to stand up and sit up straight, which in turn improves my whole outlook on life. My back doesn’t hurt, my hips don’t hurt, and I’m just calmer and more in control of my person throughout the day.  I’m still fat, but that’s because I eat too much. 

Here’s a thing I wrote about how I’m applying some yoga principles to life beyond the mat, and these all still apply, as well. 

In conclusion: Yay yoga! I do recommend Julia Marie (and for quite a while spent the $6.99 for Wellness Plus to access a larger library of her videos on Amazon) and obviously Alba Avella, but as I said, there are tons of instructors out there. Lots of people love Adriene. I find her irritating, but you may not! So do look into it if you’re feeling blah. I love being able to do a full workout in my small living room without putting shoes on, and it’s been a real gift to me overall. 

 

Microdosing catechism

When I was growing up, we had catechism classes at the church, occasionally at school when one of us was going to Catholic school, and also at home—and those were real, formal lessons. Sitting on the couch in the evening, we would go over the reading and do a question-and-answer section, true and false and multiple choice, and sometimes my mother would even set up little games to reinforce what we had learned—bingo and catechism baseball.

We had memory work and little practice sessions and occasionally prizes for good work. My mother was an incredibly organized person, and dedicated one or two days a week to catechism.

This is not my style. My style is more to be in a constant state of freaking out over how much my kids don’t know about their faith. But my life is very different from my mother’s, my family is different, and I am different. So I do things differently. Sometimes I’m even able to convince myself that it’s not a bad system.

Of course we avail ourselves of the faith formation classes offered by the parish when we can. Sometimes we can’t, for various reasons, and sometimes it’s just not what our kids need right now. But there is a method we’ve found that consistently yields some kind of good fruit. I’ll call it “microdosing theology.”

Silly name, simple method: You just do a tiny bit almost every day, and you don’t stop. Or if you do, you start again as soon as you can. That’s it. That’s the method. The theory is that it doesn’t overwhelm anybody, because it’s just a tiny bit. You can keep it up because it just takes a few minutes; and the kids can hardly complain, because it’s just a few minutes.

And even if they do complain? Well, it’s just a few minutes.

When you keep a constant, steady stream of words and ideas about theology in the family conversation, it no longer feels like some kind of uncomfortable, rarified activity that it would be weird to introduce. This way, even if the topics you’re introducing are not what they’re interested in, it’s not such a big leap to begin talking about the things they do want to talk about.

It works the best if you already have an established routine. We do have a pretty firmly entrenched habit of evening prayers (and that, too, follows the “just a little bit every day” model, because someone once told me to pray as you can, not as you can’t, and how we can pray is a little bit), and after prayers, we read a little bit.

Two books we recently used for microdosing, that have worked very well:

Saints Around the World by Meg Hunter Kilmer. We had the kids take turns reading aloud the short, punchy biographies of saints, one a day. I had never heard of most of them, and have been fascinated and occasionally incredibly moved to learn about the vast variety of saints, from ancient to modern times, all finding a way to follow God’s will in circumstances that could not vary more widely.

The tone and reading level is aimed at maybe grade 3, but the material is more than interesting enough to capture the attention of all ages; and although it doesn’t go into gory detail, it doesn’t sugarcoat the facts of martyrdom or persecution. It is thought-provoking and frequently made me want to learn more about the saints we met in these pages. Really good for a child preparing for confirmation, and it just provides a good, natural overview of what holiness looks like in action, in real life, which is the entire point of studying theology.

The illustrator has gone to a lot of trouble to include historically and culturally accurate and meaningful details in the pictures, which are briefly explained in the captions.

When we finished the saint book, we switched gears and began Michael Dubruiel’s The How-To Book of the Mass. This is less entertaining, but it’s an intensely practical book, written by someone who really understands the obstacles and temptations that beset the typical Catholic, and offers actionable advice about how to deepen your relationship with Christ and to enter more deeply into worship at Mass.

It is systematic and thorough and extremely clear. It is probably aimed at teens and older, but some parts of it are extremely simple and easy to understand, so I’m comfortable with the “take what you can manage, leave what you can’t” approach. Did I mention, it’s short? It’s broken up into very short sections, just a page or two, so you can easily read for just a minute or two per day and work your way through the Mass that way.

When we’re done with that, I’ll probably return to a book we read some time ago: Peter Kreeft’s Your Questions, God’s Answers. I recall that it did answer many of their questions, answered questions they already knew the answers for (which counts as review, which is fine), and opened up discussions about things they didn’t realize they had questions about.

And here is one of my important rules, vital to the whole microdosing operation: Always let the discussion happen! Doesn’t matter if it sticks to the original topic or not. If they ask a question about God, then right now is the right time to answer it, period.

The segments are short enough to read in five minutes or less. It’s intended for teenagers and is slightly goofy but not pandering. It’s theologically meaty and profusely studded with scriptural references, but written in a clear and chatty style that is easy to understand. Some sections are better than others, but some are very good indeed.

In general, I try to remember what several people told me when I signed up to teach faith formation one year: No matter what else I did, I must remember that it is not about me. It is about being there and letting the Holy Spirit do what he wants to do with the hearts of the children in that room. Yes, I had to do my best, and I have to put the effort in. But my efforts, my performance, are not what will make the difference. I have to remember to stand aside and make a place for the Holy Spirit.

That is harder than it sounds. Sometimes—most of the time, even—you really don’t know how good of a job you are doing when you teach your kids. All I can tell you is to keep going. Just a little bit at a time is good. And if you stop, start again.

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A version of this essay originally appeared in The Catholic Weekly in May of 2023.
Image sources: eyedropper ; Bible (Creative Commons)