facebook – SIMCHA FISHER

What’s for supper? Vol. 488: Tappa, tappa, tappa

Happy Friday! Before I forget, some blog business: I will soon be deleting my Simcha Fisher, Writer Facebook page.

This one:

NOT my personal Simcha Fisher page, which is this one:

(at least not yet, ugh), but just the “business” page. I have to look into it more, but it looks like they’re implementing a “we own all your stuff and will swirl it up with AI however we want, and will use the ungodly mixture to sell stuff, and if anything bad happens, you will be legally responsible, not us” policy; and you can’t opt out. This is, for now, just for business pages, not personal pages.

These days, I just use my business page to post links to this site. SO, if you get to this page primarily through links on my Simcha Fisher, Writer page on Facebook, and you want to keep getting notified of my dumb little whatnots, your best bet is to subscribe to this page directly, so you will get an email alert whenever I post. The “subscribe” field is on top of the right sidebar:

I think it actually emails you the entire post, so you don’t even need to click on anything, other than opening the email.

Or, you can follow me on LinkTree, which is nothing but a list of links to everything I post here, no frills. You can even scan this QR code

and it will . . . do something. I guess it will take you to my LinkTree page, which looks like this:

My tech prowess is such that I usually remember that LinkTree is different from LinkedIn, but not always.

I also post links to everything I publish on Bluesky and Twitter, and most of it on Instagram.

Okay! That’s enough of that. Back to what really matters: What we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Pizza?

Usually I go shopping on Saturdays, but we’re still hobbling along on one car, and I didn’t want the kids to miss the pumpkin festival. So we went, and, as our pastor (who is new to the area) mentioned at the beginning of his sermon the next day, “You people really like pumpkins.”

Sufficiently boring. Live music, expensive food, some pretty good dogs and babies out and about, and lots and lots of pumpkins. The bigger kids had plans with their friends, so Benny and Corrie and Damien and I strolled about, then went home, and I made some boring pizzas.

Corrie and I also unmolded the gummies we made from grape juice we made. This was purely a “there is only one way to stop thinking about this stupid thing, and that is to do it” project, so I had low expectations, which were made lower still by the fact that I ran out of unflavored gelatin, so I mixed in some orange Jell-o.

So here they are:

And they were pretty bad! The end. Now I have that space back in my mini fridge.

Another thing taking up room and making me mad was these ridiculous pickled baby peaches I made back in June, when I was culling the peach tree and couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away all those poor baby peaches. (Relatedly, yesterday, the older kids were hanging out in the kitchen shouting, as they like to do in the evening, and one of them mentioned that perhaps she had told a co-worker that her parents would gladly take in an orphaned duckling they had; and another one said, “These people cannot turn down a baby.” Honestly, when there are a bunch of teenagers hanging around in the kitchen and shouting, and the topic of me and Damien comes up, it’s usually a lot worse than that! And yes, of course we will take a baby duck, or a baby whatever.)

Anyway, I had made two jars of sweet pickled green peaches. One had whole fruits, and one had halves, but I pickled them both in vinegar, sugar, honey, cloves, bay leaves, and cinnamon sticks, more or less like this recipe. They were so young that the pits are still soft and edible.

Tried a few of each, and they were . . . certainly edible. I couldn’t think of one single person besides myself who would eat them, though, and even I wasn’t very excited about it. So I thought possibly I could make a sort of chutney out of them, like for . . . mince pie or something. I don’t know. So I put them in the food processor

Tasted it again, and threw the whole thing out. And now that’s done with! In 3-4 years, I will have forgotten all about this, and that will be me out in there in early June, thinking what a shame it is to throw out all these perfectly good little green peaches, HMMMMMM.

It was a nice day out, so gathered up the last round of salvageable seeds from my cosmos, marigolds, and zinnias. When I got in, my whole sweater looked like this:

which is just cute. “Me! Me! Take me inside! Pick me up!” (These are probably Queen Anne’s Lace seeds. It was a big year for Queen Anne’s Lace!)

SUNDAY
Leftovers and Hot Pockets

Sunday, after Mass, I did the shopping, and we cleared out the leftovers and had Hot Pockets. I vaguely remember being mad about something, but I don’t remember what. It must have been important.

I am taking the year off planting any bulbs in the ground this fall, but I did have a weak moment and bought a bunch of bulbs anyway, and stuffed them into the terra cotta pocket planters I got on the side of the road. Purple and white muscari for the sides, and a big bunch of daffodils, tulips, and ranunculus for the top, in white, yellow, orange, and magenta. So we’ll have a pretty little spring area in front, anyway. Or the world will come to an end first, and that will be pretty in its own way.

MONDAY
Buffalo chicken drumsticks, rice, veg and dip

Monday I faced the three packages of drumsticks I got on sale. My kids really don’t like oven fried chicken much, which I can’t understand, but oh well. So I just seasoned and roasted them

then melted some butter in some hot sauce

and then slathered the drumsticks in that and re-heated them. Made a pot of rice and cut up a bunch of vegetables

Serviceable meal.

TUESDAY
Chicken quesadillas, chips and salsa

Tuesday I sternly sat myself down and counted up how many weeks I’ve been dealing with severe vertigo, and finally called the freaking doctor. I had been putting it off because I was sure they were going to say I needed to race to Lebanon and get six MRIs and eleven brain surgeries, and I did not want to DO that. I was pretty sure it was a lingering respiratory virus inner ear dealio, but also, you know. My braaaaain. So I went, and they said I was the third person that morning to come in with vertigo, and yeah, it’s probably a virus. But they did all the neuro tests and blood tests and whatnot, and it really does not look like a brain thing, whew. I got some Meclizine (which I incorrectly remembered as being called “Meducin,” which, if I remember correctly, is good for whooping cough, blisters on the feet, German measles and a pea that’s got stuck in the nose, and polishing furniture) and a PT referral, and a sheet of paper with a maneuver on it.

which I have not yet tried, because looking at the paper makes me dizzy. But I did go to the doctor!

Oh, I forgot, I seasoned some chicken breast pieces with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and cumin, and browned them in oil

then shredded the meat and made quesadillas. I had cheddar, chicken, and jalapeños in mine.

I virtuously ate salad rather than tortilla chips. And that was the very last day I stayed on the wagon with my stupid freaking calorie count, which is absurdly low and has been doing nothing but maintain my weight, which is UNFAIR.

WEDNESDAY
Sheet pan Brussels sprouts, bacon, and eggs; biscuits

Wednesday was a meal I was looking forward to. I more or less followed this recipe from dear old Damn Delicious, except I used three pounds of Brussels sprouts, a pound and a half of bacon, and eight eggs. I made a double batch of the sauce (honey, balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper).

I considered making hot pretzels or pretzel rolls for a side, but it didn’t feel like a day to mess with any baking soda baths, so I made biscuit dough and cut out eight big biscuits. I made half this recipe.

Jump to Recipe

I haven’t made these in a while, and ended up having to use quite a bit more flour than it called for, and the biscuits still turned out almost like drop biscuits, rather than cut biscuits. They were great, though! Lovely fragile buttery crust, and soft, steamy insides.

For the sheet pan meal, you cook the saucy Brussels sprouts and bacon for a while, then take the pan out, make little wells, and carefully crack in your eggs, then top them with a little parmesan cheese and hot pepper flakes, and then finish cooking.

Extremely tasty.

She has this listed as a breakfast, and that would work, but there’s no reason not to serve this for dinner!

THURSDAY
Beef barley soup, french bread, pomegranates

Corrie had a parent-teacher meeting in the morning and then the rest of the day off, so it seemed like a good day to teach her how to make her favorite soup, which is beef barley.

Jump to Recipe

Cooking is one of the few things she acknowledges I know more about than her, so I was able to show her the claw grip for safer cutting

but she really did know everything else. We had a pleasant discussion about the different results you get when you crush, mince, dice, or slice garlic, and she opted to mince it. There go the carrots!

The only part I did was cut up the onions, which is much easier for me because I wear contact lenses. After we got the vegetables softening up, I retired to my bed of vertigo, and just mumbled directions to her step by step as she popped in. The original plan was to make bread, but I was feeling too bleh, and she was feeling too much like watching terrible cartoons, so Damien just picked up some french bread and warmed it up, and Corrie cut up the first pomegranates of the season, and it was a lovely meal.

I spent much of the day napping (I had also gotten a flu shot, and between that, and the nauseated dizzy whatevers, and what Damien is valiantly insisting is me doing a STILL NORMAL AMOUNT OF SURGERY RECOVERY, AND NOT ME BEING LAZY AND USELESS, I just, well, like I said, I napped), and some time attempting to invite a bunch of Corrie’s friends for a D&D campaign. Then, in the evening, my head began to tick. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m intermittently hearing a distinct, rhythmic ticking, tapping, or light snapping sound which is coming from inside my head. So that’s fun. It pairs nicely with the tapping sound that comes from inside the walls in the cool months, which I never did figure out what it was. Soon I will be nothing but white noise, inside and out. I am not going to do to the doctor and pay $50 to tell them my head is making noise. I’m just not.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Possibly Damien and I will sneak away and get a pizza or something. It is our anniversary (29 years, hooray!) on Sunday, but I think we may end taking the kids apple picking or corn mazing or something, because things keep happening, and we haven’t managed to do many traditional fall things this year.

The kids have requested to make a stop at the town rummage sale on the way home from school. Normally we hit this rummage sale on day 2, when things have been picked over pretty badly, so they have high hopes for an early attack. But first, adoration! I will pray for yez all.

And don’t forget, the “Simcha Fisher, Writer” page is going away! I’m a little sad about deleting the header image with one of the worst photoshop jobs I have ever done, which is saying a LOT.

My favorite part is the little watermarks that show I stole the tree picture from someone. Sorry, whoever you are! This picture is so old, I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that.

I also had a little giggle over the page description: “The official Facebook page of Simcha Fisher, author, blogger, blabbermouth, selective pedant, drinker, failed homeschooler. Open to life; losing my mind.” Author who hasn’t published a book since 2014; blogger I guess; blabbermouth yes, more blabbery than ever since my cheek and tongue are still numb; selective pedant less and less, drinker no longer, failed homeschooler and now also failed public schooler, failed charter schooler, failed parochial schooler, and failed private schooler. However, we will accept baby ducks, so we’ve got that going for us.

moron biscuits

Because I've been trying all my life to make nice biscuits and I was too much of a moron, until I discovered this recipe. It has egg and cream of tartar, which is weird, but they come out great every time. Flaky little crust, lovely, lofty insides, rich, buttery taste.

Ingredients

6 cups flour
6 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp + 2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cream of tartar
1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, chilled
2 eggs
2 cups milk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450.
In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cream of tartar.
Grate the chilled butter with a box grater into the dry ingredients.
Stir in the milk and egg and mix until just combined. Don't overwork it. It's fine to see little bits of butter.
On a floured surface, knead the dough 10-15 times. If it's very sticky, add a little flour.
With your hands, press the dough out until it's about an inch thick. Cut biscuits. Depending on the size, you can probably get 20 medium-sized biscuits with this recipe.
Grease a pan and bake for 10-15 minutes or until tops are golden brown.

Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)

Makes about a gallon of lovely soup

Ingredients

olive oil
1 medium onion or red onion, diced
1 Tbsp minced garlic
3-4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
2-3 lbs beef, cubed
16 oz mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
6 cups beef bouillon
1 cup merlot or other red wine
29 oz canned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
1 cup uncooked barley
salt and pepper

Instructions

Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened.
Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.
Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley.
If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes.
Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary.

The anonymous communion of saints

Facebook has only recently started allowing anonymous posts and comments, and several groups I’m a member of are taking it hard. Is it good or bad for the group to let people post without revealing their true names? Not everyone agrees.

The benefits are pretty obvious, especially if it’s the kind of group meant for support and advice. For reference, I’m in groups for mothers of large families, women using natural family planning, Catholic women in perimenopause, women trying to exercise more, parents of diabetic kids and people with backyard ducks. People who post anonymously will frequently open by saying why they’re doing it: because friends or family are in the group, and their situation is private, or often because there’s something they really need to know, but they’re embarrassed to ask. There is a situation they need some insight on, but they’re ashamed that this is their life right now. Or they just need a prayer.

The drawbacks of anonymity are harder to define. Most of the groups I’m in don’t have a problem with people being overtly nasty or threatening while hiding behind anonymity, but the use of anonymity, even for more polite conversation, is still not popular with everybody. Why?

One woman explained it is because people still post asking for support, advice, clarity and prayer, but you never get to know them. You get little snippets of their lives and little fragments of their stories, generally in a time of crisis—and that’s it. Even if there is a follow-up, it won’t include the kind of details about their lives that help us bond with one another. You never get to enjoy one of those indisputably real online friendships that lasts years and years as you learn more and more about each other, and you certainly never win that cherished prize of the internet age: meeting online friends in person. One woman who was arguing that the moderators of one group should disable anonymous commenting said that it is preventing her from building community. The group had the potential to become a band of friends, but it was staying a loosely associated bundle of anonymous problems.

It is an understandable complaint! It is hard to spend the intellectual and emotional energy answering someone’s question when you know the relationship, such as it is, is not going to go anywhere. Interaction with other human beings takes something out of us, and it is normal and human to be more invested when you get something in return—not anything sinister or grasping, just wholesome goods like friendship and camaraderie.

But if you are going to be a member of a group—especially a group that explicitly calls itself Catholic—I think it is good spiritual practice to humbly accept other people’s anonymity, if that’s what they choose. It dovetails very nicely with our doctrine of the Communion of Saints: We are all bound together and responsible for one another, even in situations where there is no obvious or immediate reciprocity. Think of it as social asceticism: praying for the intentions of someone whose name you’ll never know; praying for an intention whose details will never be fleshed out, simply because praying is good and we want to be good.

More than that: I think it is good spiritual practice to accept the idea that, even as we are all bound together as brothers and sisters in Christ, we are all, to one degree or another, strangers to each other. … Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Image via PxHere (public domain)

WWJD about AI? Be more human.

All of humanity needed help. All of humanity cried out in earnest, “I want to die!” And He responded. He saw history as a whole, as a single story of humans warring hard to blot ourselves out with whatever technology we could put our hands on, from the stick Cain used to bash his brothers head in, to the lithe, latex limbs molded with precision by the techs at the RealDoll lab. He saw us and He conceived the strange and fearful answer: to become more human.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Image by Edgarodriguezmunoz (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

How to stay human while arguing on social media

If our friends are all angry at Fred for that awful thing Fred said, we should find out if Fred actually said it, or just something like it, or something that could be skewed to imply it. Or maybe Fred said the opposite, and someone with an axe to grind knows that the internet doesn’t read carefully, and a misleading headline is good enough. Or, maybe it was some totally other guy, also named Fred, and the Fred we know is now holed up in his basement watching a frenzied mob slash his tires for something he didn’t even do.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Image via Maxpixel (public domain)

The Ascension (and the follow-up)

I’ve heard from the bereaved that death anniversaries can be brutal. Everyone else is the world has long since moved on, but the grief is rekindled. A kind word and the promise of a prayer can make a huge difference in how painful that day feels.

It’s a profoundly Catholic impulse, the follow-up; and, like every virtue, it was modelled by Christ.

Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.

Too much time online? Here’s an extension that’s helping me get control

This is not a paid endorsement; I’m just passing along something that’s working for me.

I spend way too much time on social media, especially Facebook. Some of my friends suggested tips like “Just uninstall it!” or “Try spending more time outside!” My problem is that I truly need to be on social media to promote my blog and podcast, to interact with readers, and to get a sense of what people are interested in. I also use social media as a way of keeping up with the news, with culture and entertainment, and with spiritual reading. And, most of all, I like social media, because it lets me to spend time with friends and family, and to admire their pretty babies and show off mine, and to see and hear any number of things that make my life richer and nicer. AND BABY HIPPO VIDEOS!

So if I just quit, or cut it down to fifteen minutes a day, my life would change drastically for the worse. And it’s not always obvious when my work ends and my goof-off time begins; and anyway, goof-off time isn’t always a bad thing. I needed something that would help me get control without cutting me off altogether.

After scoping out dozens of apps and extensions, I tried out StayFocusd, which is a free extension for Chrome. It has done everything I was hoping it would do. I set it to let me be on Facebook for a certain number of minutes every day. (You can set it to block any site, or parts of any site; but Facebook is my main problem.)

A tiny angry eyeball is now on the top of my browser. When the Facebook tab is open, the eyeball is red;

and if I click on the eyeball, it shows me a counter counting down how much time I have left.

When I have a different tab open, the eyeball turns a less-threatening blue, and the counter stops.

If the Facebook tab is open for a long time without any activity (as often happens, because I get pulled away from the computer by some kid emergency), it asks me if I’m still there, and pauses the counter until I answer it.

It gives you rather sassy messages designed to make you feel guilty if you try to access blocked sites after your time has run out:

If you have time left and set it to increase your allotted time, it tries to dissuade you:

and if you click “OK,” it tries again:

It also praises you for decreasing your allotted time:

It has a lot of features that I am not using, such as restricting which days and which hours of the day I can access sites; blocking sites altogether; requiring a difficult challenge before I can change any settings; and sensing up to five differently-timed warning messages when your time is close to running out. There is also “The Nuclear Option,” which “will block sites for the number of hours you indicate, independent of your Active Days or Active Hours. There is no way to cancel this once you activate it.”

Useful if you have a big deadline and can’t afford to goof off at all. You can also block just certain subsets of sites, like just logins or just images.

You can choose more than one site to time, but the timer keeps track of time spent on all timed sites (so you can’t give yourself, say, an hour on Twitter and an hour on Facebook; but you can set the timer for two hours and use it as you will). It says the guy is working on making an option for different timers for different sites.

StayFocusd doesn’t work on other browsers or on iPhones or iPads, but there is a paid app called Freedom that does. I haven’t tried it, so can’t review it; but if you use StayFocusd, you get a code for 40% off Freedom.

Now you know everything I know! It’s ideal combination of good technical design and a good understanding of human psychology. It’s easy to use, and has anticipated every way that people can cheat (as well as ways that people accidentally restrict themselves more than they meant to).

Every time I notice the little eyeball, I remember that I’m being timed, and I have to decide whether or not to keep using Facebook. It puts external controls on my behavior, but it also helps me remember to control myself, by doing things like deliberately leaving my devices behind when I move from room to room, not checking Facebook first thing when I get up or when I get home, and so on. Eventually, I’d like to establish such good habits of self-control that I won’t need an external controller, because it will have become so obvious that life is better without tons and tons of Facebook.

The first week, I gave myself more than enough time, and I aimed to change my behavior so that I had unused minutes at the end of the day. (Some days I succeeded, and some days I didn’t.) The second week, having gotten used to a few good habits, I decreased my allotted time, and I may do that again next week.

This could be a real boon for Lent.

Do you have a problem spending too much time online? Have you gotten control of your habit? What has helped you? I’m especially interested in hearing from folks whose work and leisure online activities overlap, as mine do.

Is Your Facebook Feed the Sea of Galilee or the Dead Sea?

I don’t have non-Catholic and secular Facebook friends merely because I want to proselytize them (although I try to answer any questions they have about my faith, and I’m delighted when I hear that they have learned something about the Church through me!). Instead, I have non-Catholic and secular Facebook friends because I like them, and find them interesting — and yes, I learn from them. Of course I do.

Read the rest at the Register.

P.S.: I heartily recommend the book I mention, Peter Kreeft’s Your Questions, God’s Answers. I’ve been reading a section a day with the kids ages 9 and up, and it does a good job of answering questions, reviewing stuff they already know, or opening up discussions about things they really wonder about. (And the rule is 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. Not every last section is a whizz bang success, but it’s a painless way to keep a regular conversation about God open, and some of the discussions we’ve had have been really memorable.

***

So you want to be friends on Facebook?

It’s okay with me. But before you commit, you should read over at least one typical thread that came about this afternoon.

It began with a criticism of the theology department of Notre Dame, briefly touched on the complimentarity of men and women as professed in Catholic doctrine, progressed to making fun of the name “Candida Moss,” leapt into a discussion of Christian Domestic Discipline (or what we, in spiritual circles, refer to as “spanky-spanky”), then someone brought up St. Paul, and then things got bogged down on the topic of whether men can or should lactate. There were Princess Bride AND Monty Python references. Then two Notre Dame alumni realized they were in the same hall, and it ended “Go Bullfrogs!” forty minutes after it started.

I just felt you should know what you are getting into.

Just in case plain old Facebook wasn’t utterly destroying your productivity

. . . now we have What Would I Say? — the app that sifts through your old Facebook statuses and comments, scrumbles them around, and makes them into new statuses which sound almost human, and almost just like you.

A couple of my favorites from SomechopBot (“Somechop” is my Facebook name because never mind):

“Benny has tucked her halfeaten apple inside my shirt and her hand in a bona fide theologian!”

“Update he’s lost four new tires, and a skirt, two separate solutions, if possible.”

“We’re just too stupid tired”

“I too have children, we do the corrections I ask for, but never overreact, that’s me.”

“Im just trying to persuade us NOT to make fake blood”

Honestly, I laughed even harder when I plugged in my husband’s Facebook statuses. It sounds just like him having an angry fever.

“No one but a giant, mustached man in a serious argument against sobriety.”

“At 13, he was apprenticed to kill some maggots.”

“The worst To be sure, if Herman Cain were the second helping on potato chips? Daddy Supper.”

“Killed 97 zombies, not the next best day in some cases like the opposite of deodorant.”

“Wonderpets, what do not support the current Pope.”

“I need to find a 2002 Taurus station wagon and a shoot out”

Aw, go ahead, try it. All the cool kids are doing it, somewhat with a brittle and sticky anniversary, anyway.