I’ve got a heart like a duck

The first time we almost bought a duck was 25 years ago, when my oldest daughter was a toddler, and very duckling-like herself. The one bright spot in our awful neighborhood was an agricultural supply shop that occasionally had ducklings, and they were so charming and appealing, we almost got one. But even dumb as we were, we had to admit that people who live in a one bedroom apartment with no yard whatsoever should really not own livestock. So we forebore. For 25 years, we forebore.

But look at us now! We have no end of grass, and our ducks are thriving in the back yard. It is finally the right time. I’ll tell you a little bit about it, because I’m openly pressuring you to consider whether it might be the right time for you, too, to get a duck or four. They are quite low-maintenance, at least so far, and they are a delight. 

We have four Pekin ducks that we ordered from our local Agway supply center. We ordered them in February for $12 each, and they arrived in the middle of April when they were about a week old. We took them home in a little cardboard box.

They were unreasonably adorable. They looked exactly like a plushie or a cartoon of a duckling. 

They just ran around like maniacs going “PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP” or “WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB-WEEB.” They liked being cuddled, and they would huddle up and fall asleep in your hand or on your lap, or sometimes scramble up your chest and crawl around behind your head.

They liked exploring,

but mostly they wanted to be together. If you ever separated one of them from the group, they would all set up a huge racket and keep it up until you reunited them; and then they would just huddle up together and go to sleep.

They are still kind of like that. They sleep together, and have a habit of piling themselves on top of each other, and resting their heads on each other.

As soon as we got them home, they started growing like crazy. I mean like crazy. They were visibly bigger day to day. First they were just round heads, round bodies, and little leggies and feet. Then their bodies started to get a little bigger and elongated. Then they got shoulders; they they got necks.

Then their legs and feet started to grow, and their heads changed shape. Their fuzzy yellow down started to turn whitish and real feathers started to grow in. There have been so many awkward stages in between. Sometimes the down-to-feather transition is very comical, and the new feathers look like place markers, like “tail goes here, insert tab B.”

Their feet grew faster than their bodies, just like on teenage boys.

Their feet still look a little big for their bodies, so I think they’re not quite full size yet. 

Their wings are also hilarious.  I feel guilty thinking so, but they look exactly like, well, you know, wings, like you could just snip them off and fry them up with hot sauce and blue cheese dressing. (I am not going to do this.) 

They’re starting to get some longer wing feathers now, so the shape of them is less naked, but they’re clearly still pretty useless. Every once in a while, the ducks will rear up tall and vigorously stretcccccch and FLAP-FLAP-FLAP their wings, and then fold and tuck them back behind them exactly like a fussy little man tucking his thumbs into his vest or something. It’s so funny. 

@simchafisher660 delicious protein crumbles for the ducks #ducks #pekinducks #ducklings #pekins ♬ original sound – simchafisher

 

We chose Pekin ducks because they are hearty, friendly, and relatively smart about predators (meaning they will run away, rather than just stand there going “duh” when something wants to eat them). They make good pets and don’t get sick a lot, and they’re okay in cold weather; and they’re too fat to fly. When you think “duck,” it’s probably a Pekin duck you’re imagining. 

Here is what they look like now, a little over a month later.

They have thighs and chests and everything!

Let’s see, what else might you want to know? 

Other equipment we bought for the ducks: A big sack of protein crumbles (the same brand they’d been eating in the store, about $20 that lasts about ten days), a feeder, a watering tray, a heat lamp to keep them warm, especially at night or if they got wet; several giant packs of pine shavings, and a big plastic tub. That was enough for the first month or so.

When ducklings are with their mother, she grooms them with her oils and waterproofs them; but when they’re on their own, they’re not really ready to go swimming right away, so we resisted the urge to toss them in the bathtub when they were little. But we did give them a tupperware tub with some holes cut in it for water when they got to be a few weeks old, because they needed to be able to clean their nares (nostrils) out.

These ducks are the most disorderly creatures on the face of the earth. Utter agents of chaos. You put them in a box of clean, fresh pine shavings with a little tub of a food and a little drinky-drink of water, and within three minutes, the water is gone and the tub is upside down, half the food is sprayed all over the place, and two of the ducks are soaking wet and standing on their brother, and the fourth one is running around in circles meeping his head off, and there is a giant turd on his back. What happened? Nobody knows! MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP!!!

Oh! Let’s talk about duck poop! My friends, if you are not okay with duck poop, I mean really, truly okay with duck poop, then do not get a duck, not even a little bit. They poop . . . . . . . . . . . so much. Like you have never seen any living creature poop this much, and you probably never imagined it was possible. And maybe you are thinking to yourself, “Oh, if they poop that often, it’s probably like a newborn baby, where it’s so fast and so constant and so pure, it probably doesn’t even small that bad.” NOPE. If you are indoors, it smells like Satan threw up in a microwave! It is so heinous! You (by which I mean your husband) will change the pine shavings twice a day, and it will still smell like someone has done something illegal to a corpse and then concealed it in a sauna for several months. It’s just the stenchiest, and I don’t think I would have been able to handle it if I had been pregnant.  

They do slow down with the pooping as they get older, but I’m not kidding when they say that if you have these creatures indoors, you will KNOW IT. Outdoors, it’s fine. I honestly don’t even smell them when I sit by their pen in the open air. It’s just kind of comical how fluffy and angelic and etherial their down is, and they gaze at you with this blank, innocent expression, and all the time they’re producing this criminal stank.

The upside is, their poop is so liquidy, you can put it (or the shavings or hay or water it’s mixed into) directly onto your garden, and it’s supposed to be amazing for the soil. Most animal manure has to be composted or rotted for a while, because it’s too high in nitrogen or something, but not duck manure. I quickly got in over my head with composting information, but I did mix an awful lot of duck-smelling pine shavings into my raised beds this year, so we’ll see how that works out. 

When we first got the ducks, you could hold one in each palm of your hand.

Now, just over a month later, it’s all you can do to catch one of them with both arms while they run away, squawking, and wrestle to stuff them into their duck house because they don’t WANT to go to bed and it’s not FAIR.

The kids are learning to wear long sleeves when they handle them, because the little claws tipping their webbed feet are no joke, and can really scratch you up. They like us and they know us, but they’re not especially placid creatures. I would classify them more as “hysterical morons.” 

One of them, EJ, is quite a bit bigger than the others, and I suspect he is a male. EJ has a paler, pinker bill than the rest, who have orange beaks (that doesn’t seem to signify anything in particular; it’s just how we can tell he’s EJ). Coin, the other somewhat larger, feistier one, had a bald spot on the side of his head, which has transformed into a lighter feathered spot that is fading as he turns all white. The other two, Fay and Ray, are smaller and more docile, and are harder to tell apart.

They’re much more amenable to being picked up and snuggled.

It’s actually been a while since I’ve been able to tell them apart. Today I bought some colored plastic bands to put on their legs, so that should help. 

We still don’t know if they’re male or female. The males have tail feathers the curl up and over fancily, but the female duck butts are more plain. Our ducks are still growing their adult feathers in, so it’s too soon to say.

I would be delighted if we got some eggs eventually.  Pekins lay about 3-5 eggs a week starting at about 20 weeks of age (so around August, I guess). Duck eggs are large and rich and delicious. But honestly, we mainly got the ducks as pets, and also as a way to get used to having poultry. I figured once we had ducks for a while, it would be easier to transition to getting chickens, which really would be for the purpose of having eggs. I’m not especially interested in chickens, but fresh eggs are freaking fantastic.

Oh, another change they’ve been going through is learning how to quack! EJ started quacking first, and it was just exactly like when an adolescent boy’s voice starts to crack: Startling, unexpectedly deep, and pretty funny, and clearly not in his control. Some of the other ducks have started mutter-quacking more and more, and now they “peep” and “weep” about half the time and quack the other half. Hilarious. They quack a lot, but they’re not very loud. They do set each other off, and if one quacks, they all quack. Sometimes they quack at the wind. 

When we’d had them for about a month, they were so big that they had begun to squabble with each other in their tub at night, and were panting because they were too hot indoors, but kept spilling their water so they had nothing to drink. So it was time to move them out! Damien built a lovely solid duck house. 

A duck house just needs to be a big, secure box to protect them from weather and predators, that is off the ground so their feet don’t get too cold, and had some ventilation so their humid duck breath doesn’t make it moldy in there. It has a slanted roof so the snow will slide off it, and it has a giant door in front for opening up to clean it out, and smaller door inset in that, for the ducks to go in and out on a ramp (but we need to add some kind of grips to help them get up and down). The floor is covered with hay that needs to be changed once a week. It’s painted inside, and we still need to paint the outside. 

Pekin ducks are quite cold tolerant. You mainly have to give them straw, and protect their feet from getting too cold (which is why the house is raised up on cinder blocks). When it gets below 20 degrees this winter, we’ll move them into a dog crate in the basement, which is unfinished but heated.

Their duck house is surrounded by an old upside-down trampoline frame with chicken wire zip-tied onto the legs. Ducks are not clever escape artists, so this is enough to keep them enclosed, and they’re very happy to eat grass, hunt bugs, and scrabble in the mud. They are in sight of the house during the day, so we can keep an eye on them, and we put them into their duck house at night, to protect them from predators (raccoons and skunks, and occasionally coyotes, foxes, bears, and anything else that might wander through. We have a highway on one side of the house, but conservation land on the other, so you never know what might be in the yard). 

They also have a kiddie pool for drinking, splashing around, and washing themselves, and a tray for their protein crumbles. We have also been giving them more and more kitchen scraps, like peas, kale, lettuce cores, and strawberry tops. They go absolutely bananas when they eat. Like the Cookie Monster, but even more so. It’s like they’re blind and in a panic and the food is running away and there are sirens going off. And then they just suddenly lose interest and stroll away, with a streamer of kale dangling casually off their head. They’re so entertaining! 

We don’t plan to give them meat, because it can make them a little mean, but they do love bugs and worms. Boy do they love worms.

They love to splash the water out of their pool and make mud. They are constantly making themselves filthy and then washing and fluffing themselves. It’s a full time job, which is good because I don’t think they can read or anything.

There is absolutely zero brain power in them. They’re so dumb, they’re not even dumb. Like, you wouldn’t call a bunch of dandelions or a sky full of clouds dumb, and a bunch of ducks exist in the world in the same way. They’re just a little force of nature, and they are what they are. For some reason, this makes them very soothing to watch in action. I like to just sit down on a rock and watch them duck around. Sometimes they give me a little duck side eye, which is hilarious. 

The other animals adapted to the ducks very quickly. The cat took one look at them and just decided, yeah, this isn’t happening. This was smart, as the ducks work as a team and would have beaten the crap out of him, even when they were little. It’s hilarious, though. He won’t even look at them. He goes outside and literally looks anywhere besides in their direction. 

The dog ADORES THEM. He thinks they are his AMAZING FOUR NEW BEST FRIENDS and they SMELL SO INCREDIBLE and they DEFINITELY WANT TO SEE THE COOL STICK HE FOUND and SOMETIMES THEY BITE HIS FACE HA HA GOOD ONE DUCKS and LET’S HAVE ANOTHER SMELL. He is constantly begging to go outside, and as soon as you open the door, he rushes right over to the ducks. Just can’t get enough of them. They either ignore him or jump at him and bite his face. They have never been scared of him. They don’t especially dislike him, but they’re not as impressed as he thinks they are.

The parakeet has started imitating their peeps when he wants attention. The lizard just keeps his own council. Never know what that guy is thinking. 

And I think that’s it! Go ahead and ask me anything. I love these ducks. Not one second of regret so far. 

It’s my church. I need to bring the flowers.

When I was planning my wedding, I had a very small budget, and any time I could get away without paying for something, I did.

Borrowed music, homemade cake, amateur photos. I remember carelessly telling the florist that I wasn’t too worried about flowers for the church, because there always seemed to be flowers there already.

He tactfully explained to me that the reason for this was that other people had put them there—people, in fact, who had been married in that church the previous Saturday, and had purchased flowers and decorated the church with them for that purpose.

Oh! Duh. All my life, I had been going to Mass and seeing fresh flowers every week, and it never once occurred to me to wonder how they got there.

Without realizing I was thinking this way, I halfway believed that I was the main attraction at this church, and that it was just sitting there, flowers and all, waiting for me to show up and enjoy them.

So I bought some flowers. I didn’t spend very much, but I did purchase a few pots of flowers for the side altar, and a few stems for the front, and of course a nice bouquet for myself to carry.

This memory came back to me the other day, as I happened to be in church (although not the same one) for a rare daily Mass, and the reading was a letter from Paul.

Poor Paul, even at that late date, was still a little shocked that the Christians in his care were not … better.

They weren’t acting, in fact, any different from anyone around them. He comes right out and tells them he is trying to shame them for their behavior. He reminds them of their past life, and of the baptism that marked the beginning of their new life, and how awful they used to be. And now … they’re supposed to be different! Get it together, guys! Remember who you are.

I’ve been hearing several Catholics lately expressing how much they’re struggling with something they notice: They’ve been hearing all their lives that the graces they receive in the sacraments should transform them.

And yet they look around them, and their fellow Catholics are very clearly no better—no kinder, no more generous, no more willing to make personal sacrifices, no more gentle—than any random agnostic or atheist or pagan they might happen to meet. If the Gospel is true, then why isn’t it blindingly obvious when someone is a Christian? 

There is a certain amount of comfort in realizing that this mismatch is a very old problem—one dating back to the absolute babyhood of the church, as the Pauline epistles demonstrates.

But that only takes you so far.

Here is where I have landed. I tell myself, Look. You spend your whole life going to church, and it always looks pretty, and you never really think about how it gets that way. Until one day you’re planning your own special day, and you realize the church is empty and bare. Catastrophe! What to do! Somebody do something!

So guess what? It turns out the very one who’s in charge of making the church beautiful is M-E. Just me. Nobody else.

Horrible. But what other answer could there possibly be?  

I really do think of this, every time I go into a church.  I see the flowers, and I think about who put them there. Some bride, some wedding planner, some gardener, someone. Someone who realized there was an empty vessel standing there, waiting to be filled, and decided it was up to them. 

Sometimes it’s a matter of beauty that’s needed —  literal flowers, or something liturgical, music or art or some wonderful new program that draws people in and attracts them to our faith. Sometimes it’s a matter of goodness; sometimes it’s a matter of truth. I’m definitely not just talking about programs and official groups. I’m talking about individual choices: How we comport ourselves, how we treat each other, how we respond to each other. How honest we are with ourselves about ourselves.

Sometime there is an emptiness in the church that I cannot fill, being who I am, or an injustice that I cannot fix. But I need to be there. I need to be in the church, and I need to be willing. The church isn’t a backdrop of decency and virtue, waiting for me to swan in and enjoy it as if I were the main attraction, and everyone else merely readymade spiritual scenery. I am the church. Just dumb old sorry old me, either choosing or not choosing to make it beautiful and good and true by bringing what I have, even if it’s just my presence. Even if it’s just my failure. 

Grace is the kind of thing that only transforms people if they want it to, and if they’re willing to be transformed over and over again, with constant conversion of heart. And that means realizing that the work that needs to be done is personal.

It means reading phrases like “constant conversion of heart” and thinking, “How can I, myself, turn that cliché into something real before I go to bed tonight?” What is one little thing I can do? One little flower I can bring to the Lord?

It’s such hard work. But there really is no other answer. How could there be? If I think the church ought to be good, then I need to bring the flowers. 

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Photo by Christine McIntosh via Flickr (Creative Commons)
A version of this essay originally appeared in The Catholic Weekly on March 29, 2023.

What’s for supper? Vol. 327: Yay, poke!

First, a word from Fay, Ray, EJ, and Coin: Peep! Peep-peep! Peep-peep-peepWONKpeep-peep-peep.” Yes, they have begun to quack. Just a bit, and it’s mostly Coin and EJ, and it’s more muttering than quacking, but it’s hilarious. They’re very good ducks, and I think you should get some. Or you can just check out my Facebook page which has been overrun with ducks. 

And here’s what we ate this week!

SATURDAY
Sushi, etc. 

On Saturday, Lena graduated from college! We are SO proud of her. 

 

Most of the kids had various frozen foods for dinner, and Damien and Lena and I went and checked out the newish Japanese restaurant in town, Kurama Omakase. I had a salmon skin salad and tried some of Lena’s takoyaki, which is some kind of breaded balls of I-don’t-know-what with bits of octopus inside, deep fried and topped with some other I-don’t-know-what. Terrible pictures (dark restaurant) but the takoyaki was STUPENDOUS. 

I also ordered the “Trust the Chef Lite” sushi and sashimi assortment, and it was lllovely.

Very nice place. The only other customers was some kind of gathering of a dozen or more men who didn’t already know each other, but were in the same business. Maybe car salesmen? After their meal they took a picture of all of their watches. After they left, I heard the waitress tell the bartender, “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” DO  tip your waitress!

SUNDAY
Maybe burgers? 

Sunday was fun! After a week of rain, the weather finally cleared, so I worked on digging up the ground for my patio, and Damien worked on the duck house. I paid kids to shake soil out of the sods for my new raised gardens, and there were plenty of worms for everyone

The dog had the greatest day of his life, AGAIN. 

Damien grilled burgers, if I remember correctly. 

MONDAY
Normal tacos

I didn’t shop on the weekend, because of the graduation, and did only a partial shop on Monday, because I didn’t feel like it, and came home with a wretched frozen log of beef that needed to be constantly scraped and flipped while it cooked. 

I tried to tell myself it was sort of like when they have a leg of lamb on a spit and they’re shaving bits of meat off for shawarma, but no dice. 

(I know there are various ways of defrosting meat, but honestly they’re only slightly less laborious than standing there scrabbling at the frozen wad as it fries, so you might as well suffer.)

TUESDAY
Bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwiches; OJ

Tuesday I went shopping again, for real this time. Destiny! Destiny! No escaping that for me!

Maybe by the end of the summer, we’ll have duck eggs! Or not. We don’t even know if we have girl or boy ducks yet. We definitely have ducks. Boy do we have ducks. 

WEDNESDAY
Bo ssam, rice, pickled radishes

Pork shoulders were 99 cents a pound, and I had got a big, giant one, and started it with the salt and sugar rub on Tuesday night. I put it in the oven around 10:30 on Wednesday morning, and then right before dinner, I poured the extra little cider vinegar brown sugar sauce on:

and let it finish up. Truly a grisly yet magnificent beast basking proudly in the setting sun. 

Everything the light touches belongs to you, bo ssam.

I also pickled some radishes and made a pot of rice, and cut up some romaine lettuce for wrapping. The meat shredded at the mere sight of a fork, the skin was intense and caramelized to the hilt, and it was a pretty good meal. 

And only pretty good. This is the first time bo ssam hasn’t absolutely rocked my world, and I don’t know what happened. The pickled radishes were only so-so, too. Annnnd just now writing this, it occurred to me that I’m probably sick, and the food actually tasted fine, and it’s me. Crap. OH WELL. 

THURSDAY
Poke bowls

As is our habit, we were talking about other food while we were at the restaurant, and we got to talking about poke bowls, which Damien and I have never had before. It certainly sounded like something we’d be into. Aldi carries ahi tuna steaks that are frozen at sea, so I bought a few packages of those (I think six little steaks in total), and also a pouch of raw shrimp that happened to be on sale. They also had some kind of Polynesian sweet hot sauce that looked likely, plus some chili lime cashews. I also got five ripe mangoes and two packages of sugar snap peas at Aldi.

Then at the other supermarket (when you shop at Aldi, there’s always going to be a second supermarket, and you must just accept this), I got pea sprouts and rice (Aldi rice cooks weird). 

So I just basically chopped everything up, cooked up a big pot of rice, and cut the fish into half-inch cubes. I sautéed the shrimp with some minced garlic in chili oil, and then squeezed a lime over it. 

(The glass with the root in it isn’t some exotic tincture; I’m just trying to keep a rose cutting alive after the plow knocked one of my flower beds all out of whack, and I haven’t gotten around to replanting it yet.)

I was planning to make sushi-style rice, but I didn’t have any rice vinegar, so I left it plain. I put out a jar of mango chutney and some red pepper flakes.

Here was my bowl:

Wow, it was delicious. Sweet mild fish and greens and rice, syrupy mango, and then the hot jangly sauce and nuts. Very satisfying and entertaining, kind of like the dinner version of an ice cream sundae — not in taste, of course, but in the experience. I threw some shrimp in there, too, just because I’m not gonna say no to shrimp.

I was surprised at how many of the kids liked the raw tuna! Everyone found something they wanted, even if it was just rice and mango, and I’ll definitely be making this again. Yay, poke! 

Now tell me about your poke bowls. I understand there are countless variations. What are your favorite combinations?

FRIDAY
Pizza

Today has turned into a stupidly complicated day because a bad light came on in my car, but the mechanic can’t look at it until next week, and lots of people still have to be in lots of places, and Lucy needs to be trained on her new insulin pump system at the doctor which is an hour away, and I bought tickets to Peter and the Wolf which is also an hour away, but you’ll have to take my word for it that it all just doesn’t quite work out. But I’m gonna try! But I’m gonna make those pizzas right meow. 

Ugh, I didn’t put any recipe cards. Do you want recipe cards? Tell me if you want some and I’ll put them. 

I am once again asking you to make a morning offering

Nobody in their right mind would look to me for advice on how to have a strong, consistent prayer life. All my life, I have struggled with prayer, and I have mostly won. (Think about what that means for a moment. It’s not good!)

But if you could zoom out and look over my life, you could see one thing: The times when I am most at peace and seeking God’s will most often are the times when I was consistently making a morning offering.

This is not a straight “if x, then y” causal connection, of course. It is not magic to make a morning offering. It may even be the other way around: I am more likely to make a morning offering when I’m at a time in my life when I am already feeling connected to God or when I’m already remembering consistently to turn to him to help with hope and trust. One thing I know is that there are not any shortcuts.

Nevertheless, if anyone asked me what was the one thing they could do to start off on a better path spiritually, I would recommend resolving to make a morning offering. It hits that sweet spot: It’s fast and it’s easy, but it takes a small amount of discipline on your part, which signals to you that it is worthwhile. But it also puts the ball in the Holy Spirit’s court, which, well, I am starting to think is the whole entire point of life.

It is also something you can do no matter what your current relationship with God is like. If you’re feeling distant, you can offer up your day as a wistful act of hope, no harm done. If you’re angry, you can do it defiantly: Hey, You! See this sack of garbage you left me with? How about you carry it for a while? [Flings life down at foot of cross with horrible splatting noise.] If you’re feeling lazy, you can do it because it’s quick and easy and better than nothing. If you’re feeling very connected, it can be a beautiful and profound way to begin another day with the Lord. If you’re feeling trusting, you can thank him in advance for whatever is about to come.

The big thing is, you don’t have to be…anything. You don’t have to have particular plans or expectations for your morning offering. It may even be better if you don’t. … Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

What’s for supper? Vol. 326: Wads for supper

All week long, the kids have been asking me why it is raining. I don’t know why they’re asking me. It’s not like they think I know anything. The truth is, I made it happen, partially because I like to suffer, and partly so I could make soup one more time before summer. But I didn’t tell them that; I just made the soup, so we could all suffer. (It was delicious soup!)

SATURDAY
Fried chicken caprese sandwiches, Aldi Cheetos

I bought one of those enormous sacks of miscellaneous chicken breasts suspended in frozen wads of broth, with the intention of doling them out over three meals. It actually worked, to my surprise (I was expecting doom and disaster, as usual). This chicken is actually okay, as long as you’re using it as a sort of raw material, like tofu or polymer clay, rather than as a centerpiece. 

Saturday we had chicken caprese sandwiches. If I have actual fresh chicken breasts, I will roast them with oil, salt, and pepper, but I thought these chicken wads needed more help than that. So I dredged them in eggs and milk and then seasoned panko crumbs, pan fried them, and then put them in the oven for a while to make sure they were done all the way through. 

I served them on ciabatta rolls with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and of course mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. Not spectacular, but fine. 

I haven’t really started my garden yet (we can’t plant anything but the heartiest things until May), but I’m already feeling the freedom of knowing I have decided not to grow tomatoes this summer. Homegrown tomatoes bring me nothing but grief, and hardly any tomatoes. I’m just going to excuse myself this time, and grow mostly flowers, plus a bunch of vegetables that don’t have all this weird cultural “oh yeahhhh, this here is the good life” baggage. I’m planning rhubarb and asparagus and strawberries and maybe some eggplant, probably various squashes and pumpkins, and I think some Brussels sprouts made it through the winter. And flowers! 

SUNDAY
Spicy pulled pork on tater tots with cheese

First I started some focaccia dough for Tuesday. I saw all those beautiful focaccia loaves people made over the pandemic, with little garden scenes picked out in vegetables, but I never got around to trying it. But Sip and Feast promised an easy, no-knead recipe that is best if you start it fermenting several days in advance, so that’s what I made. 

So much olive oil, goodness! I made a double recipe. 

So I put that away in the fridge, rested on my laurels for a minute, feeling domestic goddess-y and accomplished thinking about how Tuesday’s dinner was already halfway done, until I suddenly realized we also needed to eat something today. Boo.

But, pulled pork is easy. It was a bit of a strange combination in the slow cooker, but here is what I did: First I cut the pork into hunks, seasoned it heavily with salt and pepper, and browned it in oil. Then I put it in the Instant Pot with a can of Cherry Coke Zero, three clementines cut in half and squeezed, a few big dark reg, glossy guajillo peppers, a handful of little orange arbol peppers, a heaping tablespoon of cumin, and a bunch of oregano. I left all the seeds in the peppers, and just tore the tops off.

Then I pressed “meat,” which just makes me laugh. Do it! Go be meat! Away! and left it alone to think about life for the rest of the day. 

When it was almost time to eat, I pulled out most of the clementine rinds and about half the peppers, and shredded the meat.

I drained the liquid, but ended up adding some back into keep the meat moist while it was heating back up while I cooked some tater tots and shredded some cheese and sliced some onions.

I had my pile of food in this order: Tater tots, then shredded cheddar cheese, then hot pork to melt the cheese; then cool onions and sauce on top of that.

It was really good. Not a delicate or sophisticated dinner, but REALLY GOOD. I did a bunch of digging and heavy yard work on Sunday, and this was a fine reward. 

MONDAY
Cobb salad

On Monday I drove an hour and a quarter to a super Newhampshirey-ish place to pick up a free load of bricks, and let me tell you, it was a lot of bricks! A! Lot! 

I haven’t figured out exactly how many I will need for my patio, but if the answer turns out to be “quite a few,” I may have arrived. I did start digging, and I’m gonna do a lot more digging this weekend, when it stops raining. 

For supper: Chicken wads, day 2! I broiled them with oil, salt, and pepper and served them in slices with salad greens, chopped bacon, hard boiled eggs, red onions, leftover croutons from last week, shredded cheese, and those crunchy fried onions that come in a pouch.

Nice little salad, much protein. I had mine with ranch dressing. This isn’t strictly speaking a Cobb salad, which is supposed to be laid out in cute little stripes and is supposed to have avocados, tomatoes, and I forget what else — I think chives, and probably some other kind of dressing. Get off my back, man! Cobb salad  sounds better than “wadd salad!” 

TUESDAY
Sausage and kale soup, focaccia bread

Tuesday it was time to take the dough out of the fridge, that had been lurking there since Sunday afternoon. It needed 3-4 hours to rise, and then you just spread it in a pan, let it rest a little bit and then re-spread it, and then let it rise a little more, and then you can decorate it and bake it. 

I was rushing a bit and hadn’t really made a plan for how to decorate it, so I just grabbed what I could find, which was grape tomatoes, radishes, scallions, some garlic scrapes, red onions, and kale.

I thought the design turned out pretty (well, one did. The other one was kind of lame), but I didn’t know how well it would hold up in the oven. 

I actually baked it for slightly less time than it recommended, but one pan was still slightly burned, and the other was right on the verge. 

Still pretty, though! The dough is very stable as it bakes, so the design stays where you put it. I call it a success. 

Although the truth is, if you ever want me to do anything, anything at all, just offer me hot tomatoes baked into fresh bread. I will walk off a cliff with my eyes wide open, if I think there’s hot tomatoes baked into fresh bread at the bottom. 

It had a thin crust and was quite chewy, and the inside had very large air holes

(which I imagine was the result of letting it ferment for three days). I’m not a big focaccia expert, but I think this is how it’s supposed to come out. 

Guess what? Most of the kids wouldn’t even try it, because it had kale on it. Honest to goodness. Kale isn’t even that big of a deal. I feel like it’s like Sriracha sauce or Mondays or the word moist: NOT EVEN THAT BIG OF A DEAL. It’s just that people keep talking and talking about it, until everyone’s like, “oh my gosh, KALE, what is it even for, it’s garbage, only insane aliens would be in the same room with it!” Like, it’s a leafy green, it has a mildly sweet taste, and you can put it in salads or soups or whatever you want. It’s kind of dense, but who the fuck isn’t. People need to settle down about kale. 

Anyway, then I made some soup, also from Sip and Feast, with sausage, potato, cannellini beans, and kale. Very simple, easy li’l soup, tastes nice. I took a bunch of extremely blurry pictures for some reason. 

I grated some parmesan and set that out with the soup and the piping hot focaccia

and everyone stared at it and went to get some ramen or frosted flakes. I’m actually only pretending to be mad. I ate most of both loaves of focaccia myself. Can’t be mad. Too full of focaccia, here at the bottom of my cliff. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken fried rice, steamed pork and mushroom dumplings

On Wednesday, Elijah made supper, hooray! He took a cooking class last year and has a few recipes he likes. 

It was tasty if basic,with rice, onions and garlic, some frozen veg, chunks of chicken, scrambled eggs, and soy sauce. 

But nothing can beat that wonderful flavor of someone else making dinner, let me tell you. And we also got a lot of mileage out of “you telling me ELIJAH fried this” etc etc.

I stopped at the Keene International Market and picked up some frozen pork and mushroom dumplings, which I steamed in my nice little bamboo steamer,

and I served them in one of the dozens of dishes Clara brought home from pottery class. 

I’ll tell you, one minute you’re wiping bottoms, pouring juice all day long, and begging them to stop eating crayons, and then next minute you’re eating the dinner they cooked you off the pottery they made by hand. And looking the other way while they eat crayons, because you know everyone is on a journey. 

But seriously, Clara brought home some amazing pottery. 

 

and we don’t even have crayons in this house. 

THURSDAY
Koftas, yogurt sauce, Jerusalem salad, pita

Thursday I made what probably can’t really be called koftas, because they’re round instead of sausage-shaped, and broiled in the oven rather than grilled or roasted on a spit, and not on sticks. They were, however, juicy and delicious and to me they tasted middle eastern. 

I mixed about five pounds of ground beef, five eggs, and then just started slamming in anything that smelled like it belonged in a hot tent: sumac, coriander, paprika, cinnamon, onion powder, garam masala, za’atar, and salt, and a big handful of fresh mint from the yard. Then I discovered I had used up all my breadcrumbs on the chicken on Sunday, so I made about six pieces of toast, and then microwaved them to really blitz the moisture out, and then ran them through the food processor. 

When it was almost time to eat, I cooked the meatballs on pans on racks in a 450 oven for about 25 minutes.

I also made a bunch of yogurt sauce with fresh garlic and fresh lemon juice and kosher salt, and I made a nice Jerusalem salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh mint, fresh flat-leaf parsley, a little red onion, fresh lemon juice, and salt. And that was it! A simple but nicely balanced meal. 

I briefly considered making pita or maybe making taboon bread, but we still had leftover focaccia, so I just stopped at the store and bought some pita. 

FRIDAY
I think we are having quesadillas. Truly, I hated this week. Everyone was fighty and bighty, especially me, and it rained a lot, and I forgot about a bunch of forms I was supposed to fill out, and even though the sack of chicken wads worked out, it made me mad all week. The more I think about it, the more it was clearly the chicken’s fault. 

However, the ducks are growing nicely. EJ has started quacking, not just peeping, and Corrie has been great with them. They’re huge! Almost ready to live outside.

And I think the sun is going to come out this weekend. Literally, I mean, and also maybe figuratively; who can say? And I do have a lot of bricks. And ducks. Oh, and I fixed the What’s for supper volume numbering. Well, I didn’t fix it, but I got back on track. It went: 323, 324, 325, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 242, 243, 244, 245, 11. But now we’re back on track. Quack! 

How do we keep kids safe in confession (and everywhere else)?

I made my first confession in a parking lot. It was the early ’80s, and that was how they arranged things — lined up in a parking lot across from the church, with a couple of folding chairs set up on the hot asphalt, parents clustered around just out of hearing distance.

Everything was done as casually as possible at this time, as part of an overall effort to demystify and desanctify the Church. I also remember them painting over the midnight blue sanctuary with the gold stars, and making it beige instead.

As foolish and unpleasant as their likely motivation was, it wasn’t actually a terrible system for first confession. I thought of it the other day when Chris Damian asked on Twitter: “How can Catholic parents responsibly send children to confession, knowing that for half of the last century about 1 in 25 priests was a sexual abuser? And that the Church structured itself to hide this?”

You can quibble about his numbers, which he says are based on the John Jay Report; but I believe it was a good-faith question.

It is undeniable that some priests, just like some men in every profession, are sexual abusers, and that they use their spiritual authority and the privacy of the confessional to prey on vulnerable people.

So here’s my answer:

I thought first of what I taught a class of 8-year-olds when I led a confession preparation class. We learned four basic things about safety in general and not just confession. It occurred to me that these rules didn’t change for older kids. They just need elaboration.

One: My body is made by God, and I’m in charge of it….Read the rest of my latest for OSV.

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Photo by cottonbro studio via Pexels

The art of presence: Iconographer Charles Henri Rohrbacher

“An icon isn’t really an icon without a viewer,” Charles Rohrbacher said.

“Icons are looking out at us, and we complete the circuit, as it were.”

From his small, crowded workshop in Juneau, Alaska, the 68-year-old deacon and iconographer sends his icons out to be present for any viewer who’s willing to see and to be seen, whether in churches, in private homes or in books.

He painted his first icon for his grandmother when he was 8 years old. She kept the crude watercolor of Jesus by her bedside and prayed her Rosary before it every night.

But although Deacon Rohrbacher kept turning out art from that day forward, and went on to study art history and graphic design, it was not until the 1980s that he rediscovered iconography and began to understand how powerful these sacred pictures, with their ancient tradition of preaching the Gospel through images, could be.

He made friends with Dmitry Shkolnik, a Russian iconographer who brought him to the Easter Vigil at an Eastern church.

“The whole interior was painted in fresco from top to bottom, and I thought I had gone to heaven. I had this realization: This is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I’m called to,” Deacon Rohrbacher said.

It wasn’t just the aesthetic appeal. Around the same time, Deacon Rohrbacher was at a gathering at a Salvadoran church in San Francisco, where Catholics were grieving the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Someone had drawn his picture on a piece of white cardboard, and the people surrounded the image with flowers and candles as they prayed.

“Knowing next to nothing of the theology of the icon, it occurred to me that, when everyone said ‘¡Presente!’ when his name was read [a Latin American invocation signifying that the dead are still with us], these evil people have murdered him, but he is present among them. His image signified his invisible presence, along with Christ and Mary,” he said.

That urgent, undeniable sense of personal presence so many people feel when they spend time before an icon is no accident; it is deliberate, and hard won. When Deacon Rohrbacher is illuminating a manuscript or making a print, he allows himself more artistic license and personal interpretation; but when he’s painting an icon, he follows the age-old rules of the training he received from Shkolnik and from the Byzantine Catholic Jesuit Father Egon Sendler.

“What makes an icon different even from [other] religious painting is that self-expression and creativity are subordinated to the form, which is also the content, of the icon,” Deacon Rohrbacher said.

“It’s the opposite of photography. The stylization works in favor of the icon. It’s not the artist imagining what they look like,” he said.

Personal artistic style and self-expression make way for something more transcendent. It’s similar, he said, to how he serves at Mass as a deacon.

“You don’t make it up,” he said. “Every word I say is in a book. You don’t want to impose your personality on the liturgy.”

Which is not to say that you can’t tell the difference between different presiders.

“That’s a great thing; we’re not robots,” Deacon Rohrbacher said.

But individual interpretation present in icons, just as with liturgy, come about because their power works through individual human beings, and so some individuality is inevitable.

Icons are images that proclaim the Gospel. And images and the Gospel are meant to go together.

“There is something missing in our proclamation of the Gospel without images,” Deacon Rohrbacher said.

He vividly remembers visiting beautifully decorated churches in the early ’80s, and although they were glittering and grand, he was dismayed to realize that nothing visible made them discernibly Catholic.

“I was in a church where somebody had decided they would literally whitewash over the painted Stations of the Cross,” he said.

These pictures might not have been the highest quality art, he acknowledges, but some kind of imagery has always been vital to our faith. You can’t just do without pictures….Read the rest of my article about Rohrbacher’s work at Our Sunday Visitor.

***

I’m so pleased to announce that this is the first in a monthly series I’m writing for OSV featuring Catholic artists. If you have a suggestion for a Catholic visual artist (including yourself!) you think should be featured, please drop me a line at simchafisher at gmail dot com with “Catholic artist feature” in the subject line. I am interested in all styles of art.

What’s for supper? Vol. 11. Vol. 11!

It has come to my attention that I have been numbering these posts wrong. I haven’t been able to bring myself to sit down and figure out how long this has been going on, but somewhere along the line, I think months ago, I jumped the track and slipped back into the 200’s, when I should actually be halfway through the 300’s. I think. I don’t know, I don’t know! I just keep cooking food and they just keep eating it, and then I keep taking pictures of it, and they keep making fun of me, and I keep saying, “But people like it! Well, some people, anyway.”

For example:

SATURDAY
Hot dogs grilled outside

Don’t remember much about Saturday, ‘deed I don’t. 

SUNDAY
Turkey bacon wraps

Sunday I was planning tacos al pastor, but by the time I got it going, I didn’t think the meat would have sufficient time to marinate, so I decided that would be tomorrow’s meal, and for now we would have wraps. Nothing spectacular, but tasty enough: Turkey, salami, bacon, and provolone with horseradish sauce.

And I had a nice little time working on the marinade. This is the recipe I use, and it’s rather time-consuming, but fantastically delicious. First you blister up the guajillo peppers

then you scrape the seeds out

and then you soften them up

and then you blend them up with a bunch of other ingredients,

including achiote paste, which I can never find, so I also make that out of a bunch of other ingredients

which you make into a paste

and then chuck it all into the food processor. Actually, I ran out of ground cumin, so I had to grind some up in my mortar and pestle. At this point I was starting to feel like it was possible this recipe was Too Much Work, but I was in too deep, so I went ahead and pestled it. And that was the last ingredient.

And then you can marinate the meat overnight, which I did. Whew. It felt a lot like finally getting a beloved but rather dramatic child to bed. (If you are planning to eat the child later, with sour cream.)

MONDAY
Tacos al pastor; pico de gallo and tortilla chips

Monday I made a big bowl of pico de gallo out of very sweet little grape tomatoes, onion, fresh lime juice, kosher salt, and cilantro. 

Jump to Recipe

And when it was almost dinner time, I heated up a bunch of tortillas, and then set up two greased pans to broil: One with the marinated meat

and one with chunks of pineapple; and I switched them and stirred them up a bit, so they both got a little charred. (The pineapple takes several minutes longer than the meat to cook, which I always forget.)

And that’s it. I had mine with just a little sour cream on the tortilla, just the meat and the grilled pineapple, and a little cilantro, with pico and chips on the side. 

Stupendous. The marinade has so much flavor, it’s ridiculous, and you will not want to add any hot sauce or salsa or anything. It’s got a tangy, nutty, smoky kind of sweetness that’s incredibly pleasing, and the meat is of course so tender from all that marinating. The pineapple turns almost candy-sweet on the outside when you grill it, and I am completely in love with the combination of the savory meat and the juicy pineapple with a little sour cream. It was not Too Much Work. It was Totally Worth It. I have made this recipe many times and it never even occurs to me to look for another one. 

TUESDAY
Korean beef bowl with rice; cucumbers

Haven’t had Korean beef bowl for a while.

Jump to Recipe

It came out so nice. I used plenty of fresh garlic and fresh ginger, and what I’ve been doing is cooking the meat about 80% of the way through, draining the fat, and then adding the minced ginger and garlic and cooking it. The ginger and garlic bits stay really bright and pungent that way. 

I served it over white rice, and just served plain cucumbers on the side. I briefly considered one of those cute little piquant cucumber salads with the rice vinegar and the hot pepper flakes, but sometimes I like to have mercy on the kids and just serve regular old cucumbers.

WEDNESDAY
Moussakhan and taboon

Always a popular meal. This time I had some especially good sumac from the International Market, and woof, it made my nose quiver. Lovely dark plum color, in glossy little flakes.

This is quite an easy recipe with a massive return on your effort, and you can serve it over rice or just eat it plain, or with pita, or whatever you want. I do like the dramatic presentation of the enormous platter of piping hot taboon bread, with all the chicken and its juice served on top of it, so everyone can help themselves to whatever pieces they want, and tear off some taboon to go with it.

I had a long tray of drumsticks and a half dozen thighs, and you slash the meat to the bone to get the marinade really deep in there, and then just marinate it for half a day or so. 

I only had two regrets: One was that I ran out of lemons to juice, and decided to use lime juice, which wasn’t disastrous, but it’s not ideal; and the other was that I was working outside on moving my raised garden beds around and whatnot, and was so afraid I would get garden madness and lose track of time, so I checked the clock frequently and had it all worked out exactly when I had to put everything in the oven so it would be done on time, and I did work it out, down to the minute, but then I . . . . forgot to do it. And you know, it really just doesn’t cook well that way, I find, when you don’t actually put the food in the oven. Awfully slow.

But EVENTUALLY we did have supper, and it was delicious. 

I made my Giant Pan o’ Taboon, which is quite fast to make, and only takes one rise, so you can start it about an hour and a half before you want to get dinner on the table, and that’s enough time. 

Jump to Recipe

and I used the last of the big pouch of pine nuts I splurged on a while back. You toast them up in olive oil just before serving the meat,

and you put the chicken and onions on the bread, and sprinkle that with sizzling pine nuts and chopped parsley, and BOY is it good. 

Just so good. 

I decided that the taboon recipe as written had a silly amount of salt in it, so I decreased it, and you know, I just didn’t like it as much. I honestly don’t know if the amount of salt I wrote is a typo or not, but I like it that way, so I’m going back to a truckload of salt next time I made this. Salty taboon for all!

THURSDAY
Ravioli

The kids were on vacation all week, so most days this week, I have been rushing around doing a lot of pent-up yard work and gardening and whatnot. The ducks have been spending more and more time outside, and overall I like the looks of things around here, and I’m making slow but steady progress toward my patio area. Thursday Benny and I made a little trip into Massachusetts to get some used bricks,

and then she had a couple of pals over. Corrie had a friend over earlier in the week. Why is it so hard to have friends over! I guess it’s because we live far away from everything, and so does everybody. But having ducks helps. People do want to come see ducks, even if they have their own ducks. 

FRIDAY
Aldi pizza

Friday Elijah and I climbed Mt. Cesar.

This is not a very big mountain, but it was steep enough to make me wheeze like a, like I don’t know what, a big wheezer. I’m not even in bad shape, it’s just my dumb lungs. Whatcha gonna do. Go to the doctor, I guess. But Friday was also the most important day all year in our little town: Rummage sale day!!! It’s not even a very good rummage sale, but there are people crowded outside the door waiting to get in. So we went and got our weird mugs and our dubious John Le Carré paperbacks and our little glass hummingbirds and our rusty scooter and then came home and,,, had some Aldi pizza. 

And this is the kind of paragraph that makes me think it doesn’t really matter much which volume of What’s For Supper? it really is. It’s eleven. It goes up to eleven. 

Print

Pico De Gallo

quick and easy fresh dip or topping for tacos, etc.

Ingredients

  • 2 large tomatoes, diced
  • 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced OR 1/2 serrano pepper
  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 1/8 cup lime juice
  • dash kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix ingredients together and serve with your favorite Mexican food

 

Print

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. 

 

Print

taboon bread

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer.

  2. While it is running, add the olive oil. Then gradually add the water until the dough is soft and sticky. You may not need all of it. Let it run for a while to see if the dough will pull together before you need all the water. Knead or run with the dough hook for another few minutes.

  3. Put the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400. Put a greased pan or a baking stone in the oven to heat up.

  5. If you are making separate pieces, divide it now and cover with a damp cloth. If you're making one big taboon, just handle it a bit, then put it back in the bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rest ten minutes.

  6. Using a little flour, roll out the dough into the shape or shapes you want. Poke it all over with your fingertips to give it the characterstic dimpled appearance.

  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes until it's just slightly browned.

 

 

Some thoughts on the dreams of children

One day, a child came snuffling and sobbing down the stairs in the morning, and when I asked what was the matter, she said, “Mama, I dreamed that you were dead.”

Oh, poor thing. I tried to wrap my arms around her and give her comfort, but she wasn’t done.

“And . . .and I had a REALLY HARD TIME GETTING MY BREAKFAST,” she wept.

Ah. My first impulse was to be offended. Is that all I am to you? A pourer of juice? The one who knows how to work a toaster? My death makes you weep because the most important meal of the day is now compromised?

But then I considered. This is a very young child. She has barely emerged from the age when food and mother are all one thing, not to mention the age when mother and she are one thing. To such a little one, a cold, empty breakfast table really is a terrible thing, a dreadful loss.

It’s very much like the song “ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone.” You wouldn’t scoff at that man and say, “Oh, I guess you don’t really love that woman; you just care about getting your vitamin D!” To him, she is the very sunshine. To my daughter, I was breakfast. That’s how much I meant to her, in her dreams. When I thought it over, I was very moved (and I made her a nice breakfast right away).

I do love hearing about my kids’ dreams. They’re sometimes fascinating, and often very funny. And some of my kids are usually fairly tight-lipped, especially when they hit the teen years, and I am openly hungry to know what is going on in their heads, and dreams are where it’s at.

But I do have to brace myself when I turn up in their dreams.

Dream parents, when they’re not dead, behave abominably, at least at our house. We are just the worst. We are constantly missing their birthdays, telling our bewildered children they get no Christmas this year, driving them off cliffs, refusing to look out the window when they’re trying to warn us there’s a tornado made of tigers outside, and so on. Sometimes we spread a giant feast on a table and then tell them they can’t have any; sometimes we just throw away their favorite shoes.

I don’t think I’ve ever behaved decently in their dreams. I don’t take it personally anymore. I know I’m a pretty okay mother in real life, and I know the kids more or less know I love them. I also know that dreams are where people work out our feelings about things, and the emotional content of a dream is much more significant than the actual plot and characters.

Just as the very young child was unable to tell the difference between the death of her mother and the loss of breakfast, and older child may not be able to discern (in their dreams, at least) the difference between “something bad is happening to me” and “my parents are monsters.” At different stages of development, the lines between me and thee, inside and outside, are blurry and shifting, and that’s doubly true when we’re dreaming.

So when a kid dreams about parents doing unfair, outrageous things to the kid, it may very well not be a dream about the parent at all. It’s pretty likely actually a dream about the kid and how he is feeling about his life. The parent gets to be the aggressor in the dream because parents are the main doer-of-things-to-kids, so parents are the most obvious choice to act the part as the one who does something unpleasant to the kid.

Parents loom large in real life, so when kids need a way to express to themselves that they feel impinged upon in some way, it’s probably going to be the parent acting that part. But what the dream is really about is how that kid feels and responds to the unpleasant thing.

Do they feel powerless? Do they feel angry? Do they feel afraid? Do they feel energized and motivated to save the day? This is the important part. That’s what the dream is about. Kids, especially, are very self-centered (in a healthy, developmentally appropriate way, I mean), so when they dream, they dream about themselves.

It’s very common, especially as they hit pre-teen and teen years, for kids to feel that life is unfair, or that they’re the only one who understands something and no one will listen to them, or that things have gone out of control –maybe someone who is supposed to be in charge has disappeared — and they have to struggle desperately to get back in control.

And so these overwhelming feelings turn up in dreams, and the larger machinery that produces those feelings is likely to be parents. If a child is having a lot of dreams of being hunted and persecuted and tormented, and if they are disrupting sleep regularly, then it might be time to take a closer look and see if something bad is going on with the kid; but some dreams like this seem to be a normal part of growing up. Unless there is some very obvious catastrophe or betrayal or injustice in the child’s life, these are probably not actually dreams about the adult doing anything wrong. They are probably typical dreams that signify a child slowly coming into his own identity as separate from his parents and from his family, and facing very normal mixed emotions as they come of age.

Sometimes a kid will even dream that there are zombies or some other scary monster pretending to be their parents. I used to think this signified that my kids thought I was a hypocrite, and that they could tell that my patience and dedication were just a mask that could slip at any time.

But this was me massively projecting my own fears about my adequacy as a parent onto them. Dreams about something scary pretending to be your parent are most likely about things in general not being what they seem — about a child not being as secure or in control as he once thought he was when he was younger, for instance.

Anyway, that’s what I think. Probably the significance of dreams varies as much as individual psyches themselves vary, which is quite a bit. But I do think that parents shouldn’t put too much stock in the dreams of their children, or at least remember that dream rules are different from waking rules.

What do you think? As usual, my training and expertise in this matter are absolutely zero; it’s just something I’m interested in! 

***
Image: Wallpaperflare.com

What’s for supper? Vol. 245: Got any duck food?

Happy Friday! But first, a word from the ducklings:

PEEP.

Seriously, that’s what they say. Peep peep! Peep peep peep! Or sometimes, Weep weep! Weep weep weep! 

They’re terribly shy, as you can see:

and they don’t fit in at our house at all. 

It’s quite sad, how neglected they are.

They still only eat something called “protein crumbles” and they are VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT and also VERY EXCITED ABOUT GETTING FRESH WATER and then they fall asleep. AND THEN THEY WAKE UP AND PEEP PEEP PEEP!!! and then they fall asleep again.

And that’s duck news! We had something a little more elaborate than protein crumbles this week, as follows: 

SATURDAY
Burgers and chips

Cooked outside! It’s finally warm enough, hooray! Damien cooked the burgers outside and they were juicy and delicious. 

Speaking of outside, I have such big plans for our yard this year. I’m moving the garden beds I built (and really kicking myself for putting rocks on the bottom layer for drainage. I PUT ROCKS IN THE DIRT. On purpose!!!) to the other side of the yard, and planning a little patio encompassing the St. Joseph garden and the young peach tree. It is going to be so bougie, you will throw up, I’m telling you. Cannot wait. Those tacky cafe string lights and a little propane fire pit and everything. 

SUNDAY
Spinach salad with hot bacon dressing; matzoh brei

New recipe! I slavishly followed this recipe from the delightful Sip and Feast, which hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Well, I used about twice the amount of bacon it called for, actually. The salad is baby spinach, red onion, mushrooms, and chopped bacon, and you mix it with a hot dressing made of bacon fat, olive oil and wine vinegar, sautéed minced shallots, honey, dijon mustard, salt and pepper, and a little grated cheese. 

So the spinach wilts a bit when you pour some of the hot dressing on, and then you toss it and let people add on more dressing if they want. Oh land, it was so good. 

I sprang for good ingredients, thick bacon, freshly-grated cheese, actual shallots, and so on, and it was just wonderfully savory and tangy, with a fantastic array of textures. It was easy to make, and tasted like it came from an expensive restaurant. I only wish I had sliced the mushrooms thinner. They were a bit too chunky and sort of interrupted the flavor party, but only slightly. 

I also made matzoh brei for those who wanted it. Matzo brei is a weird little recipe that everyone should know: You take a sheet of matzo, break it into chunks in a bowl, and pour hot water over it. Let it sit for thirty seconds or so, and then press the water out. Then beat up two eggs, stir in the drained matzo, and fry the mixture up in some hot oil, turning once, until the edges are crisp.

People sometimes eat matzoh brei with jelly, or cinnamon and sugar, or any sweet breakfasty way you can think of; but I vastly prefer it savory. It’s so good just with salt and pepper, hot out of the pan, with the little morsels of still-crisp matzoh poking out of the egg. 

This is the best way to approach a box of matzoh:

@simchafisher660what’s in the box?♬ original sound – simchafisher660

 

Oh nooooo! That can’t be kosher! Better find another box.

(I’m not really on TikTok, not really. Just trying to figure out where to put the ten thousand little duck videos I now have. I did notice that, after finally managing to retrain myself to turn the camera sideways to take videos, I guess now you’re supposed to not turn it sideways for TikTok. Whatever! Shame on you! Where’s my cane!)

I also made some ice cream, and it turned out weird, and I don’t know why.

I made the same recipes I’ve used many times, Ben and Jerry’s strawberry ice cream, and Ben and Jerry’s sweet cream base with M&M’s stirred in. They just didn’t freeze in the ice cream maker, and so when I put them in the freezer, they came out a few hours later more like ice milk, with shards of ice surrounded by fast-melting cream. The taste was fine, but it just wasn’t ice cream. I have no idea. An ice cream mystery. The only thing I can think of was the cream was a little old, but it smelled and tasted fine. I dunno.

MONDAY
Chicken quesadillas with spinach and caramelized onions

I had four chicken legs, which I skinned, drizzled with oil, and sprinkled heavily with Tajin seasoning, then roasted. 

Then I shredded the meat. I forget why, but I found myself with a little extra time before dinner, so I sliced up about five onions and caramelized them. Then I made up quesadillas to order. Only a few people chose all the available options (chicken, cheddar cheese, fresh spinach, and onions) but those who did were rewarded with a tasty treat indeed. 

Quesadillas are something I never had or even heard of until I was in college. I realize these aren’t authentically Mexican or whatever, but they’re delicious. What do you like to add to yours, besides cheese? 

TUESDAY
Corn dogs and chips

Tuesday was Corrie’s little play, in which she was Mother Rabbit. She told Peter and the others to stay out of Mr. McGregor’s garden, but did they listen? THEY DID NOT. 

How the tables have turned, Mother Rabbit.

It was super cute, but between having to be in another town at 5 and various other people needing to be in yet another town and picked up in another town, respectively, at 5:30 and 6, it was beginning to look a lot like corn dogs. 

I love corn dogs. If corn dogs were the only thing America had ever invented, it would be enough. That and Magic Eraser. 

WEDNESDAY
Banh mi

I planned banh mi for this week because I thought we’d have leftover chopped liver to put on the sandwiches. But I forgot to tell the fridge-cleaning kid not to throw the leftover chopped liver away! It was a liver tragedy. Luckily, banh mi on its own is still delicious. 

Speaking of liver tragedies, I gained a bunch of weight when I started taking Lexapro for PMDD back in November or December. It works great for PMDD, which is actually life changing, but I gained 15 pounds, and that was a bummer, but, now I’m finally tapered off Lexapro (I’m trying Prozac) and it is time to get my punk ass in gear again, by which I mean I can’t just wander around the house eating everything I find and saying “ooh, I hate these meds, they make me gain sooo much weight.”

What I’m trying to tell you is that, I’m really trying, and by the time dinner came around, I was SO HUNGRY, so possibly that’s why these sandwiches seemed so good. 

Another possibility is that they were just damn fine sandwiches. Maybe both things can be true.

I marinated the meat for about four hours, and I cut up a bunch of cucumbers, chopped up a bunch of cilantro, did a quick pickle of some carrots and radishes.

Jump to Recipe

I actually pickled the carrots for a few hours, then just before dinner, I re-used the brine to pickle the radishes, which I had sliced very thin

but not before having a larf over the branding 

I mean, yes, I paid for them, so I should hope. Next time, ask me! I will come up with a better name! Sunny Day Radishes! Fatso’s Radishes! Chompsville Radish Farm! Mrs. Rabbit’s Radish Party! Those are all better than what they actually went with. But nobody asks me. 

Anyway, pickled radishes will turn a pretty salmon pink if you let them sit for a couple of hours,

but if you slice them thin (I used the long, flat holes on the cheese grater), they do take on flavor right away.

I set out mayo, sriracha, and sriracha mayo. I forgot the jalapeños, but nobody complained. We again had a sort of rolling dinner because everyone was going to and fro all evening again, so I toasted a length of french bread and heated up some meat in the microwave, then assembled my sandwich, and it was just perfecto. 

I only had half the amount of fish sauce the recipe called for, and you know what? It was better. So I have amended the recipe to show that.

Jump to Recipe

I also used more pepper, just because I was having fun turning the crank, I guess, so I amended that in the recipe, too. I am a whimsical food god and with a careless swipe of my finger will change the recipe of banh mi at will, just try and stop me. If you are still reading, put an X here   [     ] yes  [     ] no

THURSDAY
Fancy ramen

My plan was to serve ramen the day after the banh mi so there would be leftover pickled vegetables, but they all got eaten. Oh well. 

I had some boneless pork ribs and sliced them into strips, sautéed them in chili oil, and then doused them with soy sauce when they were almost done cooking. 

I ended up with that, some nice sprouts, plus shredded cabbage left over from last week’s fish tacos, spinach left over from the vast quantities of spinach I buy every week because I’ve become a spinach fiend, some crunchy noodles, some boiled eggs, and various sauces and some sesame seeds.

 

It’s a decent meal. 

I like to line the bowl with spinach and pour the hot ramen on top of that, so there is a tasty treat waiting at the bottom. I really am a spinach fiend.

One of these days I’m actually going to make a good ramen broth, rather than using the little packets, but I know it will spoil us all, and we won’t be able to go back, and then I’ll lose another easy meal, and I’m not ready for that! Don’t take away my protein crumbles! Peep peep peep!

FRIDAY
Mac! and! cheese!

Just because it’s been a while. 

In closing, let me say: PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP! Hope you are same.

5 from 1 vote
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Pork banh mi

Ingredients

  • 5-6 lbs Pork loin
  • 1/2 cup fish sauce
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 minced onion
  • 1/2 head garlic, minced or crushed
  • 2 tsp pepper

Veggies and dressing

  • carrots
  • cucumbers
  • vinegar
  • sugar
  • cilantro
  • mayonnaise
  • Sriracha sauce

Instructions

  1. Slice the raw pork as thinly as you can. 

  2. Mix together the fish sauce ingredients and add the meat slices. Seal in a ziplock bag to marinate, as it is horrendously stinky. Marinate several hours or overnight. 

  3. Grill the meat over coals or on a pan under a hot broiler. 

  4. Toast a sliced baguette or other crusty bread. 

 

5 from 1 vote
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quick-pickled carrots and/or cucumbers for banh mi, bibimbap, ramen, tacos, etc.

An easy way to add tons of bright flavor and crunch to a meal. We pickle carrots and cucumbers most often, but you can also use radishes, red onions, daikon, or any firm vegetable. 

Ingredients

  • 6-7 medium carrots, peeled
  • 1 lb mini cucumbers (or 1 lg cucumber)

For the brine (make double if pickling both carrots and cukes)

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar (other vinegars will also work; you'll just get a slightly different flavor)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix brine ingredients together until salt and sugar are dissolved. 

  2. Slice or julienne the vegetables. The thinner they are, the more flavor they pick up, but the more quickly they will go soft, so decide how soon you are going to eat them and cut accordingly!

    Add them to the brine so they are submerged.

  3. Cover and let sit for a few hours or overnight or longer. Refrigerate if you're going to leave them overnight or longer.