Month: June 2016

What’s worse than being dreadfully confused? Being dreadfully confused, and not even knowing it.

I ran across this audio clip (followed by a second video with part 2) of an LP my sister and I used to listen to over and over again when we were little. It’s Danny Kaye performing a collection of familiar and obscure fairy tales, complete with sound effects and brilliantly crazy voices, and it’s one of those rare childhood favorites that really holds up.

The first one is Clever Gretel. I can still recite it from memory: “She liked nothing better than to eat. So? She worked as a cook . . . One day Gretel’s master came to the kitchen and said, ‘Gretel! For dinner we are having tonight a guest. And you will be so kind as to cook for us two chickens as niiiice as you can.'”

Only, with the ridiculous, corny accent he uses, “chickens” is “shick’ns.” My oldest sister Devra apparently heard this record a million times, too. When she first travelled to Liechtenstein for graduate school, she had already been on the go for many, many, many hours, and was completely exhausted and loopy, and didn’t really know German yet. She found herself alone on a train at dinnertime, way too far from home, and the menu was full of impenetrable German. Then she saw Schinken listed, and  . . . her Danny Kaye training came back to her. Yes, she would like a little Schinken! Just the thing! A few slices of white meat, maybe a little salad on the side.

Of course, Schinken doesn’t mean “chicken.” It means “ham” — specifically, a vast, shimmering slab of greasy, rosy ham staring up at her with unmistakable menace. Welcome to your new life! Poor Devra. False cognates can be so cruel, especially when mixed with ideas formed in childhood.

My mother grew up with Yiddish-speaking relatives, and she says that when she heard the verse, “You anoint my head with oil; my cup runneth over,” she heard “cup” as “kop” — which, of course, means “head.” Makes sense. Drip, drip, drip.

This next one isn’t really a false cognate, but just a kid trying to make sense out of a confusing world. We used to listen to the soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof all the time, too. When the daughter who’s travelling to Siberia is waiting for the train, she says in an anguished voice, “Papa, God alone knows when we shall see each other again.” I puzzled over this for a long time, and finally decided she was saying, “Got a long nose when we shall see each other again.” I figured she would be very old when they saw each other again, and the oldest person I knew was my grandmother — and she did, indeed, have a very long nose.

Two last stories of language confusion, which I love because they demonstrate how kids are so ready to believe that they alone are intelligent, and the rest of the world is just nuts. These are from the website “I Used to Believe”:

Not knowing the word “yield” as a child, I initially thought this was how one spelled “y’all”. I figured the signs on the road were put there by the city to be welcoming to tourists, though it seemed like a poor strategy to me personally.

And finally:

When I was about 7 or 8, we had to look up lists of words for homework. One of my words was ‘infiltrate’ and the definition I found was ‘To enter secretly with an unfriendly purpose.’ Somehow I misread it as ‘To enter secretly with an unfriendly porpoise’ and I wondered why somebody had made a word for that, as it couldn’t be that common.

Silly adults.

Now you tell one!

***
Ham hock photo via Wikimedia Commons

[img attachment=”98244″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”whats for supper aleteia” /]

Okay, so remember my pathetic lamentations about how horrible I felt the other week? This past week, you could ratchet that aspect down about 20%, but then ratchet up the big events about 50%. I discovered that, digestionwise, I got the same systemic response if I ate two saltines and a sip of electrolyte water, or miso soup and raw octopus with pickled ginger, so what the hell.

That being said, I didn’t do a lot of cooking this week. So if you’re looking for inspirational recipes, then look away, look away.

FRIDAY
Graduation!

We have a high school graduate! A high school graduate with honors in Mandarin.

[img attachment=”108172″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”lena graduation honors” /]

This is where the octopus and such came in. Behold:

[img attachment=”108171″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”sushi boat” /]

SATURDAY
Chicken cutlets with basil and provolone

Birthday!  Every year, my second oldest daughter requested Tuna Noodle Casserole with Pink Stuff (mayo, ketchup, and vinegar dressing) as her special, ask-for-anything birthday meal. That’s what her heart desired. Except for last year, when she asked for meatloaf. I did put candles in the meatloaf, because we are a birthday people and meatloaf is our song.

This year, she turned 17, and hallelujah, she asked for chicken cutlets with fresh basil and provolone and homemade sauce. Double hallelujah, this dish is my husband’s specialty. So all I had to do was go shopping, then convalesce as the house filled with marvelous smells.

[img attachment=”108168″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”sauce cooking” /]

This is one of those insano recipes where you have to whack the meat with a mallet. Then you bread it and fry it, lay a large basil leaf and a slice of provolone on top of it, and then ladle a ladle of hot sauce over all, which melts the cheese and rocks your world.

[img attachment=”108178″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chicken basil provolone” /]
Magnificent. See the little basil leaf sticking out?

SUNDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, salad

On Sunday, we survived Mass, and then my husband took ALL TEN KIDS TO THE MOVIES while I just slept and slept and slept.

MONDAY
Hot dogs; Potato salad

Daughter made supper, using this basic potato salad recipe from Fannie Farmer.

TUESDAY
Tacos, chips

Another graduation! This time it was for the eighth grader. With an eye to manageable precedents, we established a tradition of feting the eighth grade graduate with some gas station flowers and a cheeseburger. This was our first male 8th grade graduate, so he opted for two burgers and no flowers.

I can’t seem to find a decent picture of my son, so please enjoy this photo of a giant goober instead. No particular reason.

[img attachment=”108174″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Giant_peanut_in_Plains,_Georgia” /]

The kids at home made the tacos.

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti with meat sauce

Wednesday was finally finally the last day of school for the last of the kids. It was a half day, so we went to the beach in the afternoon. When we got home, I fried up two pounds of loose sausage meat, added two jars of sauce, and glugged in a bunch of cheap red wine. Good, hearty, after-swim meal.

THURSDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches with red onions; Cole slaw

Pork cooked at 185 with salt, pepper, and a can of Naragansett Beer. Hi, neighbor!
Oldest kid made the coleslaw. She suggested it on the way home from work, but then scoffed at her pie-in-the-sky fantasies of just happening to find a cabbage casually lying around. But we did have such a cabbage. Also some radishes, for some reason, which she added to the coleslaw. They turned the dressing pink!

She’s very proud of her recipe, so here it is:

1 cup Mayo
1 cup White vinegar
Half cup Lemon juice
Half cup Sugar

1 head cabbage
5-6 Baby Carrots
4-5 Radishes

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle

Guess who asked for tuna noodle?

Oh, I forgot! 
In the week that I was very confused because everyone was sick, we had Cobb Salad at some point, but it got left off the list somehow. I’ve never had a Cobb Salad before, so I just followed the most basic recipe I could find, and made tons of it.

[img attachment=”108176″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”cobb salad” /]

Bacon, lettuce, avocados, grilled chicken, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, and chives (which grow wild in our yard), and bleu cheese dressing, I think. I feel like there was cheese in there somewhere, but I don’t see it in the picture.

Huge hit, very pretty. This is definitely going on the rotation.

You know that guy who is so amazing and so accomplished and so intimidating that you absolutely, without fail, are going to say something completely moronic in front of him? The Dalai Lama is that guy. Here’s the latest edition, from Bret Baier of Fox:

h/t Gawker 

Okay, that was dumb. BUT IT GETS DUMBER. Check out this clip from 2011, when an Australian interviewer, apparently under the thrall of some irresistible urge, tells a joke that has zero percent chance of landing:

The poor man just wants to escape the neverending cycle of clueless news anchors so he can go back to his hotel room and order a little Nirvana in peace.

***

Image by Christopher Michel via Flickr (license)

There are fifty people dead. There is lots to be angry about.

One thing doesn’t belong on this list, though, and that’s the rules about gay men donating blood. In several places on social media, folks are outraged at the FDA, because the FDA says that men who have had sex with other men within the last year cannot donate blood. “It’s just bigotry!” they say. “It’s just another way of making gay men be ‘the other.’ Gay men have as much right to donate blood as anyone else.”

Let’s untangle these objections. . .

Read the rest at the Register.

***

image by By Staff Sgt. Stephanie Rubi, U.S. Air Force [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Fifty years ago today, Pope Paul VI abandoned the notorious Index of Prohibited Books — or, rather, he issued a notification that it “no longer had the force of ecclesiastical positive law with the associated penalties.”

The Index was established to warn the faithful against books that could harm their faith or morals. Catholics were forbidden to read these books without permission, under pain of mortal sin. Twenty different versions of the Index were promulgated, the first in 1559 and the last in 1948, and they included works of science, philosophy, and mathematics, as well as fiction and certain translations of the Bible that were considered unreliable. A good many of the books that appeared on the Index are now considered foundational scholarly works, and are taught in Catholic schools.

When Pope Paul VI made the Index into a guide, rather than a prohibitive law, the titles on it were not suddenly declared blameless and worthy of reading. The Church simply told the laity that it was now their responsibility to figure out which books they should and should not read. Pope Paul VI said that the Index “remains morally binding, in light of the demands of natural law, in so far as it admonishes the conscience of Christians to be on guard for those writings that can endanger faith and morals.”

A few things you might not know about the Index:

–The Divine Mercy diaries of Sister Faustina were, at one point, placed on the Index (at least in part because there were some unreliable translations circulating), but were later taken off.

–Catholic authors were given the chance to correct, edit, or defend their works if they didn’t want their books to be on the list.

—The Church was not the only entity to maintain a list of forbidden books:

In France it was French officials who decided what books were banned^[48] and the Church’s Index was not recognized.^[49] Spain had its own Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which corresponded largely to the Church’s,^[50] but also included a list of books that were allowed once the forbidden part (sometimes a single sentence) was removed or “expurgated.”^[51]

…

In the Holy Roman Empire book censorship, which preceded publication of the Index, came under control of the Jesuits at the end of the 16th century, but had little effect, since the German princes within the empire set up their own systems.^[48]

Retroactive outrage over the Index is similar to when modern progressives are shocked, shocked at the brutality of the Israelites in the Old Testament — as if the Babylonians or Assyrians were tolerant and peaceable, and it was only those awful Ten Commandment types who got hung up on sex and religion and war. Maintaining an index of forbidden books was a fairly terrible idea, but it wasn’t nearly as shocking to contemporaneous people as it sounds to 21st-century readers.

One final thought: We love to guffaw at the cowering sheeple of the Church, so oppressed and fearful that they would let their intellects be hobbled with such brutal censorship. Imagine, letting someone tell you what you can and cannot read! Imagine, being so fearful of words on the page that you’d refuse to even lift the cover, for fear that what was written inside would taint or warp your moral standards and your intellect.

Imagine being too prejudiced and intellectually blinded to read Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness, or even something called I Dared to Call Him Father. Imagine passionately arguing that an entire class of writers should be rejected.

Nah, that would never happen. Nowadays, we think for ourselves! We’re open minded! We’re not afraid of books anymore.

[img attachment=”107768″ size=”thumbnail” alt=”Benny skeptical” align=”aligncenter”]

Image by Christos Loufopoulos via Flickr (license)

Once again, the hashtag “#dontpray” is trending after a tragedy.

Please remember that the people who use that hashtag are as scared and angry as anyone, and feeling helpless makes it worse. Why not blame religion for massacres? If the only religious people I knew were politicians who use God as a tasty bit of voter bait, I’d be angry at them, too. If the only religious people I knew were verse-quoters whose lips constantly moved in prayer as they stockpiled ammo, I’d be angry at them, too.  If the only religious people I knew were the ones who say that Starbucks hates Jesus, and who then call for assassination, I’d be angry at religious people, too. If the only religious people I knew were people who said that God told them to kill, I’d be angry at religion, too.

If people like this were God’s true spokesmen, then I’d be saying “don’t pray” with the rest of them.

But I know that these are not God’s true spokesmen. And I do believe that it’s always time to pray, always.

So let’s acknowledge this one more time: no, prayer doesn’t “fix” things – not directly or obviously, not most of the time, and not right now. When we pray, we don’t expect God to prick His ears up and go, “Yessir! I’ll make the gun violence and terrorism stop ASAP. Gosh, I thought you’d never ask.” If “God isn’t fixing this” — well, He never said He would, not yet. He gave us free will, which we may use for good or for ill. He gave us free will, and He Himself personally suffered because of it.

God won’t “fix” gun violence or terrorism by fiat. If we expected that, we could also reasonably expect that He’d fix Zika and starvation and weevils in my vegetable garden. But we do tolerate many kinds of evil, large and small, because we understand that it is humans who bring it into the world voluntarily. If we believe that God gave us genuine free will, we have to accept that people are free to abuse it.

But isn’t it true that we shouldn’t be content to just pray? That we should take action of some kind?

Of course it is. “Ora et labora,” wise St. Benedict told his monks: “Pray and work.” We have the duty to work and we have the duty to pray, neglecting neither one.

What does “work” look like in the face of a massacre, though? That’s the real question. Many of those who are now “prayer shaming” think that the only meaningful work or action at this moment is gun control. I think it’s reasonable to restrict the legal sale of the kind of gun that makes it very easy to slaughter 50 people in minutes. Beyond that, I’m not sure how to strike the balance between freedom and safety. I see a grotesque fixation on guns in some quarters, and I see an equally grotesque trust in the power of government in other quarters, and both fixations lead to their own kind of murderous disaster. I don’t know what the legislative solution is. Neither presidential candidate has a solution, I know that.

So what other kind of work or action can we take, besides legislative action?

When someone asked Mother Teresa what we can do to promote world peace, she said, “Go home and love your family.” This from a woman who left her own home, who emptied herself out for people who had no home, who suffered monstrous attacks on her character all during and even after her life’s work. This from a woman who did promote world peace in a tangible way, working with John Paul II to bring down Communism. She was not given to speaking in platitudes.

So how will it help to go home and love our families? How will that prevent gun violence or terrorism?

Again: not by fiat. It is true that people who were raised with love are less likely to fit the profile of mass murderers, who have in common a burning desire for stability and meaning in their lives. It is true that people from stable, loving families are more likely to have the strength of character and confidence to sacrifice themselves for other people, both victims and perpetrators. People who are fluent in love do sometimes disarm the violent, talking them down from harming anyone, or using their own bodies as shields, as some of the LBGT clubbers in Orlando did. These are actions that can only come from love. There is no evolutionary reason to behave this way.

But also again: free will. People can come from the stablest, lovingest family in the world and still succumb to mental illness, or they can be perfectly sane and simply choose evil. People do this every day and then some.

And every day and then some, my job is the same as it was yesterday and the same as it will be tomorrow: to go home and love my family. If we go home and love our families, we will be doing what we can in our small, personal worlds, in our “inner rooms,” for the sake of the world as a whole. The only sensible way to behave is to go home and teach love. Increase love. Model love for your children. Pray for love. This is the only thing we can do. This is the one thing we must do.

A family praying together is like the marrow deep inside a bone, working away to produce red and white blood cells. It may seem like the hands and the brain and the muscles are doing all the work, but there in the marrow – there is where the necessary work is done.

Prayer  gives us the courage to act in the face of panic. Pray gives us the wisdom to stay calm in the face of fear. Prayer gives us the strength to love in the face of evil.  Prayer binds us to Christ so that, no matter if we live or die, we will find our way to Him, and to our true home in the end.

This is why we pray in the face of massacre.  Not because God will fix things, but because we are asking God to fix us.

If you encounter someone who angrily rejects your prayers, then go pray in your inner room, where your Father, who is unseen, will hear you. Prayer that insists on being heard by other humans isn’t prayer at all, it’s just using God’s name to boost your signal.

Some people are still searching for their sons and brothers, hoping against hope that that endlessly ringing cell phone just got left in a taxi, and isn’t in the pocket of a shattered corpse. That’s where we’re at right now.

My friend Liz Schleicher calls us to ask ourselves:

Is my first action to pray for the living and the dead, and mourn the fact that FIFTY souls that God loved and died for are no longer on this Earth? Or is my first action to make a big figurative pile of the dead, lumping them together and standing on top of them so I have a better platform for broadcasting my pet political and religious issue? One of these is exactly how the terrorist treated people. One is not.

Truly, if you consider yourself a praying person, yet the death of 50 people is your cue to start crowing about your pet cause, whatever it is, then I have to agree: #dontpray.

***
This post includes portions of an essay that first ran in December of 2015.
Image adapted from Praying Hands by George Hodan 

[img attachment=”98244″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”whats for supper aleteia” /]

You may have noticed I didn’t put a food post up last Friday, and I haven’t blogged a lot this week. This is because, right in the middle of the end-of-school frenzy, Corrie got a terrible, horrible stomach bug that landed her in the ER twice, so nobody got any sleep and nobody got anything done. (She’s much better, thank goodness.)

I don’t even remember if this is what we actually ate last week, but here’s what I wrote on the menu:

Grilled pizza sandwiches
Hamburgers and chips
Greek pasta salad with chicken
Hot dogs, corn chips, beans
Pancakes and eggs
Korean tuna and rice
Spiedies; potato salad; corn on the cob

Maybe we even had a vegetable at some point, who can say? I’m sure I would have made up some nonsense, but the only thing really worth talking about was the spiedies. We used pork, and o my brothers and o my sisters, it tasted almost like steak. Amazing.

Because I’ve never had spiedies before, I used this recipe from the NYT (I know, I know. If they ran a recipe for Corn Flakes and milk, it would involve a Gruyère crema with arugula chiffonade. (Those are all real words; I checked.) But it turned out so well, I’m willing to live with my elitism.

Confession: the main reason I like cooking is because you get to play mad scientist with the marinades, like when we were little and my mother would let us make “experiments” with anything in her pantry. (If you’re looking for a weird, funny kid’s book that begins with a kitchen experiment like this, check out William Steig’s Gorky Rises.)

Here’s my magical concoction:

[img attachment=”107141″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”marinade” /]

How could something extraordinary fail to follow? So I marinated the pork chunks overnight, and then stuck them on skewers for Mr. Husband to cook on the grill. We had about six pounds of meat, so there were dozens and dozens of skewers.

You guys, this did not taste like 99-cent pork. It was fantastic.

[img attachment=”107144″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”spiedies” /]

Served with corn on the cob and potato salad that my daughter made.

We also decided to make a strawberry rhubarb pie, but we didn’t have enough fruit for two pies; so I made one big one in a square pan (and discovered why people don’t usually make pie in square pans, even though pi r squared, har har har). The kids used cookie cutters to make dough flowers, which we tossed on top. Kind of a 70s nonskid bathtub effect, but who are we trying to impress?

[img attachment=”107147″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”strawberry tart” /]

Served with whipped cream. No complaints!

***

Here’s what we had this past week:

MONDAY

Chili and corn muffins. 

The recipe really isn’t worth sharing. Just your basic meat, various beans, spicy spices, peppers, onions, tomatoes, whatever. Hardly anyone ate it, which is great because I made enough to fill Trevi Fountain in memoriam of all the martyrs of Mexico. Aw, boo, was that in bad taste? I can’t help it, I’m sick.

Yep, the terrible, horrible stomach bug found me next. Just as Corrie was starting to turn the corner a little bit, but still needing lots of extra attention and wanting to nurse all day to replace the fluids she had lost, I was knocked flat. I could not even believe how sick I was. Fever dreams about Shinzō Abe and everything. On the good moments, I felt like a sock in a puddle on the side of the highway. On the bad moments, I found myself thinking, “I must be at least 9 cm by now!” But no.

Thank goodness we had all that chili.

***

TUESDAY

I have no memory of Tuesday. I think chicken nuggets. Husband stayed home from work and made supper.

***

WEDNESDAY

Kielbasa, sauerkraut, pierogies

This is where the whole meal plan advantage breaks down in a spectacular way. You buy food that sounds good on Saturday, and then Wednesday comes, and you’re just barely strong enough to move your jaws up on down to make a little headway on a Saltine. You drag your eyelids open at 5 PM, vaguely aware that people will want to eat dinner, and there’s a big, bad kielbasa staring you in the face with obvious malice.

I remember whimpering and lurching in the direction of the couch while the kids made supper.

***

THURSDAY

Pizza

I actually felt well enough to make supper, but then had to go lie down again. That cheese was heavy.

***

FRIDAY

Crunchy jalapeño grilled cheese

Again with the ideal food for those very slowly recovering from gastroenteritis. You use Colby Jack, and add sliced jalapeños and broken-up corn chips to the cheese before grilling. I haven’t been this angry at my past self since I woke up with a tattoo of Roy Orbison on my bum.

I haven’t had any coffee since Monday. I’m living on Gatorade and Saltines.

The washing machine broke several days ago and flooded the laundry room floor, which was covered with clothes.

I haven’t had any coffee since Monday.

I cancelled so many appointments. We skipped portfolio night and are bad parents. My daughter’s high school graduation is tonight, and I really, truly want to care.

I haven’t had any coffee since Monday.

I am a wet sock in a puddle by the side of the highway.

But there is still plenty of leftover chili!

Atanacio Rosas, one of the Mexican policeman credited with saving a young man’s life by offering him some tacos, says he “simply treated him as a son.”

The seventeen-year-old was threatening to jump off an overpass, reports Mexico News Daily, saying he “had neither friends nor family there. He had no job, no money and was hungry.” So the policemen who responded offered to take care of at least one problem, and brought him to a nearby taco truck, where he ate five tacos al pastor.

Once the immediate crisis was averted, they were able to bring the young man to a health center to be evaluated and treated for his more complicated problems. And he did not jump.

A few weeks ago, Hallie Lord wrote the following message on Facebook:

Last week when I was up in NYC co-hosting the Jennifer Fulwiler Show on SiriusXM The Catholic Channel, Sister Bethany Madonna, a Sister of Life, said something that has stuck with me ever since. She told us that when a woman walks into their home facing a crisis pregnancy, the first thing they do is ask if she’s hungry and make her some eggs. That’s the starting point.

There is no more perfect starting point. Not because feeding another person is a kind thing to do, or because it shows you care, or because it helps put them at ease — though these are all wonderful, important things — but because it destroys fear.

Did you know that? That scrambled eggs destroy fear? Because they do. Or at least the act of making them does.

When a frightened woman approaches them and they stop everything to feed her, they are pouring love into that moment and since love and fear cannot coexist, the fear immediately begins to dissipate. Once that fear is out of the way, they can start to look for ways to help her. How brilliant and beautiful is that?

Here’s the truth: we’re all a little scared of something. Fearlessness is a myth. We can overcome fear and we can find peace, absolutely, but we’re all a little afraid. And that’s okay, because we’re not helpless and we’re not powerless. We can cooperate with God, we can flood our world with love, and we can force out all the fear. We can scramble some eggs.

Our bodies can be so troublesome to us, so uncooperative and unreliable. But it is a great gift that we have these bodies, along with our appetites, because they are yet another way that God has given us to show love to each other.

Tacos al pastor by Jeffrey Beall (creative commons)

“Consider this your life’s library,” says Good Housekeeping in 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40.

As a worn out, dried up, almost totally useless and indescribably ancient 41-year-old, I always get a little itchy when age 40 is presented as a drop dead lady deadline for anything the world considers useful, meaningful, or good. Here I am, a good 17 months past my expiration date, and yet my brain hasn’t completely fossilized into immobility. Also, I just recently figured out how to use eyeliner. Cut me some slack, jack!

Well, here’s their list, along with my microreviews:

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume

Yeah, I’ve read Judy Blume. She’s not a writer. She’s a third-grade-level word assembler with some masturbation sprinkled on the top. Pass.

“A Visit From the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan

Never heard of it.