Month: September 2016

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What’s for supper? I thought you’d never ask.

SATURDAY
Pork ribs, roasted red potatoes, broccoli

I’m always amazed and grateful at how succulent and wonderful are simple roasted pork ribs. A little salt and pepper on both sides, roast ’em up under the broiler, and serve with bottled sauce. So delicious.

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The potatoes were made more or less the same way, except with some olive oil and Goya adobo seasoning, and on a regular baking pan instead of on a broiler pan. I wish I had a bigger oven!

The broccoli, I served raw, and no one ate.

***

SUNDAY
Beef and cabbage stir fry, brown rice; chocolate plum clafoutis

I had low hopes for this recipe, but it was really tasty. I didn’t overcook the cabbage, so it gave a good snap to the stir fry.

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I can imagine making this dish with other kinds of meat, but it wasn’t one of those “Ughhh, what is this ground beef doing with all these actual ingredients?” dishes. Recipe from Budget Bytes.

For dessert, I had a million plums (79 cents for two pounds! I bought eight pounds) that were going bad fast, so I found a recipe for chocolate cardamom plum clafoutis. Clafoutis is such a revelation to me. It’s so easy and elegant. Maybe kind of an odd pairing with spicy cabbage, but we lived.

I couldn’t find my cardamom, so I used cinnamon. I also screwed up adding the dry ingredients, and didn’t blend them properly, so the cocoa balled up a bit and wasn’t really incorporated all the way into the custard (I should have used a sifter, or maybe made a paste before stirring the dry ingredients in), but it was still delicious.

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It’s nicely weird-looking (the way I made it, the plums stick up out of the custard like Dalekanium), and warm plums baked in chocolate are even better than they sound. This would make a good dessert for company.

***

MONDAY
Grilled chicken and salad

The chicken got to marinate in olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper, the lucky thing. Roasted under the broiler, sliced, and served over salad and black olives.

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I made fresh croutons, which are totally worth it. Leftover cheap hamburger and hot dog buns make good croutons. Cube whatever bread you have lying around, mix it up with melted butter and whatever seasonings you want, spread it in a single layer on a flat pan, and bake at 250 until they are dry all the way through. I could honestly make a meal out of croutons.

***

TUESDAY
Fish tacos, corn chips

Batter fried frozen fish filets, with sliced avocado, shredded cabbage (we had plenty left over from the stir fry), sour cream, salsa, and cilantro. Actually we couldn’t find the cilantro until yesterday. Someone had tucked it away in a “things I don’t feel like putting away” basket by the window, where it turned a lovely shade of yellow. It may have been Italian parsley anyway.

***

WEDNESDAY
Pancakes, sausages, grapes

I made about thirty pancakes and then went and lay down. The next 48 hours are kind of a blur. I got sick on Sunday but hadn’t really had time to be sick, and on Wednesday my eyes started to cross.

***

THURSDAY
Chicken nuggets, french fries

I went to bed at 7:00 and didn’t get up until 8 the next morning.

***

FRIDAY
Quesadillas, maybe beans and rice

Oh, so those juju scallions from last week? I went ahead and used them in the stir fry, because I forgot to buy wholesome scallions from the land of the living. They tasted fine; nobody grew a tail and nobody’s eyeballs went all dark. Since I’ve already crossed over into sorcery, I put the scallion roots back into water again, and . . . they live.

[img attachment=”119722″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”scallions-third-generation” /]

They live again, just from getting stuck in a cup of water! So this is the third generation of these scallions, that I know of. For all I know, these same scallions saw the rise and fall of nations. Maybe they witnessed the last massive block of limestone slide into place in Angkor Wat, eh, wat? Maybe they nestled quietly on a platter in Vienna, biding their time as the city endured three months of Turkish siege. Could be they were there when Elvis first thought “blue suede” and “shoes” in the same sentence. Who knows what they have seen?

So anyway, now they’re on my kitchen windowsill thinking, “Boy, even Typhoid Mary washed her windows once or twice. Nice lady, by the way. Made a really excellent peach ice cream.”

Shut up, voodoo scallions. You don’t know me.

***

Is it getting cold where you live? Thinking about cold-weather cooking, apples, pumpkin, dumplings, something? I don’t know how much longer I can hold back before the stew takes over. What’s on your mind, cooking-wise?

In our short daily reading from The How-To Book of the Mass, we came across this thought yesterday:

We may feel that if we had walked with Jesus and been taught by him, we all would have instantly understood everything there is to know about the Christian faith. But clearly, that was not the case for the early disciples of the Lord. (91)

Clearly indeed. His disciples were slow and stupid and unreliable, but at least they knew enough to follow Him. There were an awful lot more who didn’t or couldn’t even recognize Him as the Messiah. The Jews had, of course, been hoping and waiting and praying for a Messiah for thousands and thousands of years. The central daily prayer of observant Jews includes petitions for an anointed one who will bring about

ingathering of the exiles; restoration of the religious courts of justice; an end of wickedness, sin and heresy; reward to the righteous; rebuilding of Jerusalem; restoration of the line of King David; and restoration of Temple service.

The Messiah was and still is expected, by many Jews, to be an earthly, political, temporal ruler.

Jesus did not look like that.

I have often wondered if I would have recognized Him at all, much less sold all I had and gone to follow Him. I am endlessly grateful to my parents for doing the recognizing for me. I still have to decide to remain with Him, day by day, but it’s a lot easier to keep in touch once the introduction has been made. I’m painfully aware that too much of my faith is based on habit, familiarity, and even convenience, and if these things were yanked out from under me, I may not keep my footing.

This is why I sincerely sympathize with those Catholics in canonically irregular groups who are now facing an invitation to come back into communion with the Rome — an invitation extended by Pope Francis, whom many do not even consider the true pope. Here’s a poll I saw on Twitter today:

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How very odd, to feel a stab of sympathy for that 23%. I’m sure they don’t want my sympathy! Oh, well. It happened all by itself as I scrolled down the page, eating my shredded wheat.

Here’s a little background on what’s up for debate: According to LifeSiteNews:

The Vatican has offered the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) a personal prelature and confirmed that certain documents from the Second Vatican Council are not doctrinal in nature, according to an Italian archbishop tasked with overseeing the canonically irregular group’s return to full Communion with Rome.

I have not been able to confirm that there has been an official offer of a personal prelature from the Vatican. The reports of an official offer are based on remarks by Archbishop Guido Pozzo, the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, as reported in German newspaper Die Zeit (translated by Google here.) 

LifeSiteNews continues:

The SSPX was founded by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The group supports traditional liturgy and seeks to share the truth of the Catholic faith in the modern world, a task they view as “especially necessary considering the spread of atheism, agnosticism, and religious indifference.”

[…]

In recent years, the SSPX has inched closer to canonical regularization. Pope Francis has continued negotiations with the Society that began during Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate. Pope Francis granted SSPX priests faculties to hear Confessions during the Year of Mercy — a faculty that will reportedly continue after the year.

Not everyone in the SSPX is glad for this inching. And their hesitation is nothing new. As soon as God made us and asked us to dwell with Him in the garden, we began to resist, and argue, and look for an exit.

I’m not trying to speak for anyone. I know that people in the SSPX have all sorts of reasons for finding themselves out of Communion with Rome. Some of those reasons are more noble than others, just like my reasons for finding myself in Communion with Rome. But what I am trying to do is to see that it’s hard, so hard, to accept an invitation that doesn’t look anything like what you expected or wanted.

The Jews didn’t want to hear that their Messiah was a carpenter’s son from some backwater town.

The chosen people who did follow the carpenter’s son didn’t want to hear that their Messiah planned to graft on the gentile riff-raff.

And every single day that I take breath, I don’t want to hear that that overly needy friend, that whining kid, that nasty cashier I meet are all Jesus, Jesus in disguise, Jesus looking for union with me.

It’s not what I want Him to look like. It’s not the deal I was hoping for. If the people who surround me — family, friends, generous priests and teachers — hadn’t brought me 90% of the way there, I don’t know where I would be. And this is why I am not only thrilled and joyful at the prospect of some kind of restoration to unity with SSPX, but I’m trying to take it as a reminder to keep on seeking unity with the members of the Body of Christ who don’t look the way I want them to look (and who feel the same about me).

In the past, more times than I can count, I have put pressure on the fault lines in the Church. Please believe me, I know. I wish I had not done so. The worst part is, I will probably do it again in the future, because, like the disciples, I’m slow and stupid and unreliable, and worse. I am trying to change. Please believe me, I am trying.

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, mother of us all who wants to see us in union with each other. Please pray for me, and I will pray for you, and for unity for the whole Church. Hine ma tov umahnayim shevet achim gam yachad! Behold, how good and how pleasing for brothers to dwell together.

First: I love priests. Love them. They work so hard, and they have to be good at so many different things, and they, you know, forgive our sins and feed us God. Priests are the best. Love priests.

That being said, That sermon, Father, again? That exact same sermon that you’ve given ten billion times before, using exactly the same phrases, the same timing, the same mild little joke, the same expectation that we’ll be surprised, edified, and transformed? That we’ve heard ten billion times?

Granted, sometimes there’s a good reason for the repetition — or at least an understandable reason. One summer, I worked in a little tourist town in Maine, where the population swelled about 5000% during July and August. Most of the people in the pews were only there once a year, so the priest would always turn the homily time over to the head of the restoration committee, who would give us a dour, down-home harangue about how expensive it is to keep things looking so quaint. Apparently the improperly-applied varnish had been removed and painstakingly restored to the pews, and that cost a pretty penny. “You’ll notice you ladies don’t stick to the seats anymoah,” Old Man Baggypants would intone, wiggling his picturesque eyebrows at us. Most people only heard it once, while they were on vacation, but we who lived there heard it at least fourteen times in a row. We never did figure out why only the ladies stuck to the seats, but the phrase sure stuck in my head.

Better or worse than the priests who just wing it, casually weaving a brand new amusing anecdote with a brand new heresy, so you have to glance down the pew to your kids and grimly shake your head, mouthing, “WE WILL TALK ABOUT THIS AFTER”?

Then there are priests who have tons of experience and are thoroughly orthodox, but they have put in their time over the decades, and they just aren’t going to write any new sermons. They’re just not. Not gonna do it. What’s the bishop going to do, fire them? They already retired once, and got dragged back up for service, “filling in” indefinitely, and half the congregation is just openly hunting for Clefairies or goodness knows what else during the sermon anyway.

Ideally, the homily is supposed to “extend the proclamation” of the word of God that we just heard in the readings and the Psalms, but I can’t find it in my heart to blame the old guys who are just plain done coming up with stuff. John Herreid told me,

We used to go to a parish where the very elderly retired priest who said Mass every once and a while had three sermons. That was it. And they all drew on pop culture from fifty years ago. One was based on “What a Wonderful World”, one based on an episode of the Andy Griffith Show, and one based on “Laughing on the Outside (Crying on the Inside)”. They got the job done.

Our own elderly, supposedly retired priest speaks on a variety of topics, but within five minutes he always circles back to the wooden chest set out by Vincent de Paul for food collection. Father pauses, looks us in the eye, and suggests, his white head wobbling with affectionate sincerity, ” . . . How about a can of tomato soup.” I always wonder if the food pantry workers sigh and mentally prepare for another onslaught of soup.

But really, still, how hard could it be to come up with something new, some little tidbit or insight or scrap?

Sheila Connolly recalled,

We had an elderly priest for years who had a total of one homily. Every single Sunday, same thing. Love your neighbor.
Some people didn’t like it, but I thought, heck, in a few years of Sundays we might actually get the message!

It’s hard to argue with that. How many homilies have I heard in my life? Conservatively, at least two thousand, probably closer to three thousand. How many times has the message been “love more?” Is there any evidence (aside from the occasional can of tomato soup) that I’ve received the message and don’t need to hear it again?

Don’t answer that.

Last week, Kate Bryan wrote an interesting little piece for the Washington Post. It’s titled “I’m a 32-year-old virgin, and I’m living the feminist dream.” Bryan’s a Catholic, and she hoped to be married by age 25 and have “enough kids to fill a baseball team, a hockey bench and a big house full of love.” Instead, she is still looking for the right man to marry. She is dedicated to living a chaste life, both now and if she eventually marries. She defines chastity as

a lifestyle, centered on freedom and love, that challenges all people to love themselves and to love others in the most perfect way possible.

Byran says that, as a teenager, she tried to live according to the purity culture described in Joshua Harris’s book I Kissed Dating Goodbye (which that author has now, by the way, repudiated); but ultimately, she says,

I began to understand that chastity goes much deeper than a long list of do’s and don’ts. I started researching the topic in more depth …

My thesis was based on the book “Love and Responsibility” by Karol Wojtyla, who would later become Saint John Paul II. In this book, Wojtyla explained that every human being is a sexual being, but that we’re also rational — which means we don’t have to be mastered by our physical desires.

In the case of the single person, chastity does mean not having sex before marriage, but it also means striving toward the perfection of love. We must all aim to love ourselves and to love others in the most perfect way possible — this is chastity in its fullness.

How do you like that? It’s not a terribly profound essay, and the “feminism” angle seems a bit tacked on; but I’m happy that people are saying these things in public. And I’m happy that, when the usual suspects like Jezebel’s bloggers read carelessly, misrepresent fact, and respond with the usual sneers, their readers call the sneerers out for “shaming” virgins for their choices.

The Jezebel blogger’s argument is muddled, to put it charitably, and begs more questions than you can shake an ironically sex positive cross-stitch at (to summarize: “Bryan says she wants to be chaste, but I don’t; therefore Bryan is lying”). She has done so little research, she thinks John Paul II taught “only a man and a woman who were both baptized and married within the church were able to have sexual intercourse without sinning.” To which I rejoin: Pfwhaa?

But look what else she accidentally blurts out while attempting to heap scorn on Bryan’s virginal head:

Considering Bryan’s scholarly pursuits and her immersion in purity culture, it seems likely that her choices are influenced more by her Catholicism than the fight for equality between the sexes. But hey, if Bryan feels free to disregard the needs of men to pursue goals like learning to scull on the Potomac and working a job she says is the best she’s had in her life, perhaps she has achieved her idea of equality through sexual abstinence.

Did you catch that? A blogger who purports to be defending feminism from oppressive zealots says that, when Bryan tells a male friend she chooses not to have sex with him, she “feels free to disregard the needs of men to pursue goals . . . ”

Why in the name of Susan B. Anthony should a single woman not feel free to disregard the “needs” of men? Who cares what her choices are influenced by? Wasn’t the whole point of feminism that there is a whole 51% of the world outside of the sexual needs of men? And what “men” is she even talking about? Why is that word plural? Exactly how many men is a single woman supposed to be considerate of before she is allowed to call herself a feminist?

Questions to ponder, ladies — after you’re done making sure all men in your life are taken care of, naturally. I never thought I’d live to see the day when a woman would publicly express the desire to row a boat without even stopping to consider the sexual needs of potential boyfriends. I’m shaking my fist at you, John Paul II. This is all your fault.

Anyway, Bryan makes an important point which went right over Jezebel’s pretty little head. By touching on purity culture and how she moved past it, Bryan reminds us that chastity isn’t about putting women in their place, and it isn’t about sequestering women in a high tower until they’re ready for custody transfer from dad to husband, and it isn’t about having (or pretending to have) a docile, quiet personality.

When a single woman is a virgin only because she’s terrified of being called a slut by her parents and pastor, or when a woman silently endures a miserable sex life with her brutish husband because she thinks sex is dirty and so is she?

That’s not chastity. That’s not what the Church wants for women (or for men). The Church rejects this notion of chastity, and so should we. Every virtue has its tawdry doppelganger, and Bryan is at pains to specify that she’s holding out for the real thing. I only wish the Jezebel blogger would go to such pains to hold out for true feminism.

What is true feminism? The belief that women deserve exactly as much dignity, respect, and autonomy as men deserve. Short, but not as simple as it seems. Feminism, like chastity, goes deeper than a list of do’s and don’ts, and those on the right and those on the left still have a ways to go before they feel at home with the complexities of feminism’s just demands.

I wish someone could reassure the Jezebel blogger that, working within the breadth and depth of true feminism, a woman’s brain is capable of arriving at an understanding of her own sexuality. I wish someone would remind her that, when a woman makes choices that don’t appeal to her, the world can still function — and even occasionally go rowing without having sex first.

***

Susan B. Anthony image via Wikipedia

After a long, restless night with croupy kids, I flumphed myself down on the couch with a cup of coffee and scrolled through Facebook, looking for something new and interesting in the world, something worth my attention.

I came across something I had posted on this day three years ago: an article by Jimmy Akin called “Is Pope Francis About to Eliminate Celibacy?”  As with many of Akin’s articles, the answer was, “Nah. Nothing much to see here. But now that I have your attention, here’s a little history and theology.”

Twenty-five people re-shared my re-post alone, and 88 people commented on Akin’s article. Apparently it was a big deal at the time . . . and I don’t remember it at all. And sure enough, Pope Francis has not eliminated priestly celibacy, and no one is currently worrying that he’s going to do so. The topic simply evaporated like so much angry dew in the morning, adding its little load of dampness back into the air where it will eventually become heavy enough to fall to earth again, in the form of argy bargy over annulments or argy bargy over deacons or argy bargy over who-knows-what’s-next.

The same happens to 99.9999% of stories that everyone gets worked up about. Both left- and right-wingers are prey to this hysteria, mind you. Goodness knows I am. It’s almost like a sport, grabbing for the golden ring. We put so much energy into thrust and reach that we hardly notice we’re circling over and over the same ground. It’s fun!

But look-a here. You think you know this passage, but read it again:

What do people gain from all their labors

at which they toil under the sun?

Generations come and generations go,

but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets,

and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south

and turns to the north;

round and round it goes,

ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea,

yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from,

there they return again.

All things are wearisome,

more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing,

nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,

“Look! This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago;

it was here before our time.

No one remembers the former generations,

and even those yet to come

will not be remembered

by those who follow them.

Go ahead and pay attention to what’s on the news. Go ahead and keep a close eye on what is happening in our church, in our country, in the world. Other passages from scripture warns us to be alert, to be on guard, to be ready for when the Master returns.

But never think that there is anything new under the sun.

Most of the time, the changes (or, more often, the rumors of change) that seem so startling and portentous to us are really just subtle variations in the normal that’s been normal for more millennia than we know how to count. The rise and fall of the sun, the rise and fall of empires, the ebb and flow of righteousness and perversion, the ebb and flow of blood in the human heart — there’s nothing new, nothing new.

There are only two kinds of change that deserve our full attention.

One is the change that will be so big, there will be no missing it. When Jesus comes again to conquer the world and make all things new, it will be unmistakable to those who have faith. On that day, we won’t need to keep updating our Twitter feeds, mulling phrases over in com boxes, parsing unofficial transcripts, or watching and re-watching cell phone videos on YouTube.  We’ll see something new, and it will look like something new. We’ll know it when it comes.

And the other kind of change is just the opposite: it’s so small, no one can see it but our own selves and the God who made us. It happens in the darkness inside us, and it is the tiny, creaking, miniscule, conversion of our own hearts, one cell at a time. No one wants to share headlines about this, because it’s not terribly interesting. It doesn’t get your blood pounding, and there’s nothing to argue about.

But boy, if it isn’t happening, then you are in trouble.

Everything else? All the argy bargy, hubbub, and foofaraw?  Hear what the prophet Facebook is trying to tell us, solemnly pronouncing that “on this day” several years ago, we were all upset about something that turned out to be nothing and which no one even remembers being upset about.

I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

It took a night of dreary repetitions of waking, nursing, coughing, dozing, and waking again to help me remember how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable it is to endlessly argue, quibble, and chase after the wind of the latest, newest, newsiest news. The sun has risen again, the children are still wheezing, and lo, there is nothing I can change — nothing but myself.

***

image by James Douglas via Unsplash

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Happy fiftieth birthday, What’s For Supper! Totally by coincidence In your honor, we had not one but three parties this week, with probably a literal ton of delicious food. Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Chicken Negimaki; Garlic fried rice

Mr. Husband back in the kitchen where he belongs.

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This meal was ridiculous: Japanese Chicken Negimaki from Mark Bittman at the NYT. You pound chicken breasts flat, simmer some scallions in a savory sauce, and then wrap the chicken around the scallions, baste the whole thing with a glaze, and grill it up, then squeeze some limes over everything.

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Crazy juicy and flavorful. Lots of preparation, but not too many ingredients, and not a lot of cooking time.

While he was cooking this, I made the fried rice, which I’ve never made before. I used this recipe for Japanese Garlic Fried Rice from Bear Naked Food, and, look, I added chunks of ham, because I like chunks of ham in my fried rice. I just had regular New Hampshire person’s white rice, so I cooked it up in the morning and let it chill in the fridge before frying it, hoping to keep it more firm.

The flavor was nice; the texture was acceptable, but I really need a wok. I bought mirin, oyster sauce, fish sauce, and more sesame oil just for this recipe.

The scallions, though, were FREE.

Why, you ask? Because last time I used scallions, I threw the chopped-off root ends in a cup of water and set them on the windowsill. They grew like magic. It was ridiculous. I think it’s ridiculous that anything ever grows, to be honest. I mean, where does it come from? What the heck? How do water and sunlight and time turn into new cells?  But this was even more magical, because it happened super, super fast, from little one-inch stubs to a bunch of full-sized scallions in about a week. Crazy, man!

[img attachment=”118955″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”screen-shot-2016-09-09-at-10-37-21-am” /]

Well, I bought more scallions anyway, and didn’t use the home-grown magic ones. I was afraid they would be, like, makani ma nsibila scallions, and they would make our bellies blow up with an unholy wind that comes from nowhere and drags you back there with them, if you eat the magic sorcery scallions from nowhere.

Scallions are cheap. I bought more scallions just in case, and I’m not sorry.

A few months ago, I made the mistake of telling my four-year-old how I once had a little paper umbrella from a Chinese restaurant, and my father told me not to hold it out the car window, because it would blow away. But I didn’t listen, and it did blow away, and I was so sad.

My daughter (the only person I’ve ever known who felt sorry for cartoon Bad Prince John in Robin Hood, because he was calling for his mother, and did he ever get back together with his mother???) has been worrying about that umbrella ever since then. Sometimes we’ll be folding laundry or watching a show about manatee conservation, and she’ll look up suddenly and say, with a little catch in her voice, “Mama, someday I hope you get anuvver paper umbrella like you used to have.” So I got a bunch of paper umbrellas.

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Don’t need no intergenerational tragic childhood ghosts around here, no how.

***

SUNDAY
Cookout with BACON INSANITY BREAD for lunch, burgers and chips for supper

Sunday was my little niece’s baptism! I was really stumped for a side dish to bring, until I happened upon a recipe with a really annoying name: “Cracked Out French Bread.” We called it “Bacon party bread” instead, which isn’t terribly inventive, but at least it doesn’t make me feel like I should be paying reparations every time I say it.

You make a loaf of garlic bread and toast it, and then you spread it with a topping of shredded cheese, ranch dressing, and chopped bacon, and then you bake it again until everything’s melted. We used pepper jack cheese, and made a quintuple recipe. This is a food over which to lose your mind.

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(Check out little blondie nephew on his tip toes at the food table.) This recipe is definitely going into the file for future parties.

That was for lunch. When we got home, I discovered a whole extra pound of bacon in the fridge, so we made bacon cheeseburgers. Look, we’re bulking up for winter, what do you want.

Oh, here is a picture of one of my other nieces and Corrie.

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Brr, little girls. Good thing there were more juice boxes, or there would have been blood.

***

MONDAY
Pizza

Monday was Labor Day, so we visited a wonderful gorge. I haven’t been to a gorge for many a year, so I wasn’t sure how it would go. The previous week, I had had the following conversation with a dad at the school:

Him: Hey, got any plans for labor day?
Me: Oh, we’re going to Such-and-such Gorge. I dunno, it’s a gorge.
Him: I haven’t been there.
Me: I haven’t either, but it’s a gorge, so how bad could it be?
Him: Ha ha, I guess so. Well, I hope you have a good time. [starts walking away]
Me: [for some reason shouting after him as he retreats]: IT’S A GORGE; HOW BAD COULD IT BE?

It wasn’t bad at all. We liked the gorge. Then we came home and had pizza.

***

TUESDAY
Chorizo tortellini soup; Beer bread

The leaves are changing color here, so I decided it was probably cool enough to start making soup again. It wasn’t. It was hot and stickily and swampily humid. The soup (recipe here) was pretty good, though. I used a mild chorizo, which always startles me with its oozing profusion of blood-colored grease. Anyone know if the Chorizo Promotional Council is hiring?

Anyway, the slightly nutmeg-ish flavor of the sausage went very nicely with the ricotta in the tortellini. A good soup, which I will make again when it’s not a sauna in here.

Also note my beloved Loch Ness Ladle, which my 17-year-old daughter gave me for Christmas:

[img attachment=”118956″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”tortellini-soup-and-beer-bread” /]

My 18-year-old made the beer bread using this recipe. It’s more bread-like than many quick breads, and I don’t even want to think about what kind of idiot you’d have to be to screw it up, it’s so easy. And you pour melted butter over the top before you bake it, just in case.

In other news, I’ve been watching what I eat lately. This marks a distinct contrast to my previous plan, in which I shut my eyes and use a funnel.

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WEDNESDAY
Small Group Cookout; Caprese salad

We were supposed to bring a side dish. The one thing that really grew well in our garden was basil, so I made a little caprese salad. I was too lazy to make a balsamic reduction, so I made a tray of fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil and drizzled it with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and sprinkled it with sea salt and fresh-ground pepper. I AM SO FANCY.

[img attachment=”118957″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”caprese-salad-2″ /]

I was also too lazy to make bruschetta, so I just sliced up some bread. Most of the guests were kids, and they thought the sliced bread was amazing.

***

THURSDAY
School cookout; Even Bigger Caprese Salad with Some Lami

The caprese salad from the other day wasn’t really a howling success, but I was getting a little burnt out with all the socializing and the recipe-thinking and the platter-bringing, so I made an even bigger tray of the same stuff, plus some assorted crackers and a pile of salami.

[img attachment=”118958″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”cookout-platter-2″ /]

Every last bit got eaten this time, so you never know.

***

FRIDAY
Pasta

In closing, I would like to say that “RhymeZone” suggests, as a near rhyme for “fifty,” the word “kidney.” That’s what kind of world it is.

***
Okay, let’s hear your menus for the week! Also, tell me about your favorite foods to bring to a cookout or potluck. Tell, tell! If you’re blogging, feel free to leave a link in the comments.

Only yesterday did I discover that Antonín Dvořák (whose birthday is today) wrote a requiem. You guys, it is a doozy. Here’s just a few minutes of it, the first few sections of the Dies Irae.

Here’s what they’re singing (translations courtesy of Wikipedia):

Here’s just that section (the entire Dies Irae is longer):

The baby and the dog and the parakeet were very perturbed as I checked out various recordings. The Dies Irae is the part where you really need to make a fuss (see text above). The rest of this particular Requiem is not all crashing and shouting, though.

In a review of a 2014 recording of Dvořák’s Requiem by conductor Antoni Wit, David Hurwitz notes:

One of the most interesting things about the Requiem is that, unlike almost all of its predecessors, it does not end with a vision of consolation. In fact, the conclusion is remarkably unsentimental, even grim, with Dvorák returning to the “death” motive and staying in a minor key right up to the final bar.

Because I have no powers of concentration, I was scrolling through Facebook’s “on this day” memories as I listened, and I came across this video, which I posted on Dvořák’s birthday several years ago:

Oh, boy, talk about not ending in a vision of consolation. The words are conventional hope-in-the-Gospel stuff, but you can hear the doubt piling on, shovel by shovelful. Cash died in 2003 on August 12.

It’s also worth noting that today is not only Antonín Dvořák’s birthday, but it’s also the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, undoer of sorrows, thwarter of death, healer of doubt, spoiler of doom, refuge of anyone who looks death in the face and decides there’s something else they want more.

Psst, Mary, there are some guys I’d like you to check on. Thanks.

As several people have pointed out, Mother Teresa’s canonization has brought out spasms of vitriol from extremes on both sides. From the far left, we have angry accusations that the saint was a fraud and a sadist, and that she tricked helpless victims into converting against their will; and from the far right, we have angry accusations that she was an indifferentist and a heretic, and that she neglected godless pagans who desperately needed conversion.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with Teresa, sayeth the Lord.

For a comprehensive debunking of the accusations made by Christopher Hitchens et al, see this essay by William Doino, Jr., in First Things.

And as for the critics on the far right: Even as Mother Teresa dedicated her life to caring for the physical needs of the most wretched “untouchables” whose bodies were abandoned and despised by the rest of the world, she and her sister most certainly did not withhold the Catholic Faith from anyone she met. She was directly responsible for bringing countless souls to conversion to Catholicism. She baptized those who wanted to be baptized; she baptized dying babies; she prayed ceaselessly and explicitly taught everyone about Jesus who was open to hearing about Jesus; her houses were filled with prayer and hymns; and she fearlessly proclaimed the word of God to many a hostile audience of politicians and world leaders. So I wish we could put to rest the ludicrous lie that she somehow neglected her Catholic duty to openly evangelize. She neglected people’s souls in the same way as Arnold Schwarzenegger neglected his body. Okay?

Now, I’d like to address one of the weirder complaints made against her. We’re seeing a resurgence of the ever-popular idea that God actually doesn’t want us to care for the physical needs of the poor. The body will return to dust, these folks say, but the soul is immortal, so why waste time on food? Here’s a quotation that one Catholic shared on social media to show that Mother Teresa is not a saint, but a heretic:

A portion of this essay originally appeared in the National Catholic Register in 2014.

Mother Teresa, that troublemaker, is still causing a fuss. To accompany her canonization, some folks are sharing quotes from her, not in admiration but in dismay. They say that she didn’t care enough about spreading the Gospel. They say she claimed she was serving Christ, but where was the push to catechize and convert?  While tending the suffering bodies of the poor, she left their souls to rot.

Here are a few quotes meant to bolster this criticism:

From a statement from the postulator of the cause for her canonization:

When I asked her whether she converted, she answered, ‘Yes, I convert. I convert you to be a better Hindu, or a better Muslim, or a better Protestant, or a better Catholic, or a better Parsee, or a better Sikh, or a better Buddhist. And after you have found God, it is for you to do what God wants you to do.’

Stated another way, from A Simple Path by Mother Teresa:

I’ve always said that we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.

And here’s a quote from the Constitutions of the Missionaries of Charity:

We shall not impose our Catholic Faith on anyone, but have profound respect for all religions, for it is never lawful for anyone to force others to embrace the Catholic Faith against their conscience.

(Note, in that final quote, the words “impose” and “force.” This will be important later.)

Let’s clarify: the Church has always taught that there is no salvation outside the Church — or, as the Catechism says:

Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.³³⁶

It’s not just preferable to be Catholic; it’s essential. The Catholic Church is the most direct and indispensable route to Christ.

The Catechism goes on to explain that

847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.³³⁷

Now here’s where it gets a little more involved. The Catechism also says:

843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as “a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.”³³²

It is likely that, for those who are baptized members of the Church and for those who have been seeking goodness and truth in other religions, this “preparation for the Gospel” will only culminate at the hour of death, when Christ chases away all shadows and reveals Himself to each of us, asking us to make our choice once and for all.

God can save all men, God wants to save all men, and it’s entirely possible that God will save many more men than we would, if it were up to us. When a man strives for goodness and truth, then God sees, understands, and accepts his service. How could it be any other way? The Church was made for us, because we are small and in need; but God is not confined by her walls.

All right, but even if this is the case, and even if it’s possible to find salvation without being a baptized member of the Catholic Church, why wouldn’t Mother Teresa try harder to bring people out of the “shadows and images” of other religions that only hold some small portion of the truth? Why didn’t she try harder to get that Hindu or that Buddhist to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord?

A better question: How could anyone try any harder than she did?

What did she do? She showed the face of Christ to people every single day of her life, as directly as any human being can do. She revealed the truth that God is love, and that all works of love are works that give glory to God. She revealed the truth that God made and loves all human beings, unlike some of His creatures who allow themselves to scorn or coerce each other.

And she revealed the truth that love is a choice — that God is a Father, not a slavemaster, and that He does not compel, threaten, or force. She revealed the truth that God gives us free will, that He makes us each an unspeakably generous offer, and then He allows us to take it or leave it.

These are all core truths of the Gospel which Mother Teresa taught to everyone whose sores she cleaned, whose feet she bathed, whose bodily excretions she mopped, whose abuse she endured.

If you’re a convert, or if you left the Faith and then came back, ask yourself this: what was it that brought you back? Was it someone pushing hard or threatening? Was it someone compelling, imposing on you, forcing you? Was it someone telling you that you had no choice but to be Catholic? Was it someone withholding love or attention or care or tenderness, so as to get you to do what they thought was best for you? Is that how your heart was opened?

Or was it a glimpse of love? Love directed at you, where you are, as you are, in a language you understand?

This is how true conversions happen: not when we (as Josef Ratzinger said) get “Catholic” stamped on our passport. Not when we’re terrified or tricked or guilted or argued or shoved into sitting down and shutting up in the pew. We can fulfill all of our obligations as Catholics for decade upon decade and still be closed off to God. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. It’s not real faith, and it’s not from God. Hearts like these remain unconverted.

A Catholic who only remains inside the Church because he’s never thought much about it, or because he thinks it’s the best way to work the system, or because he thinks he’s better than everyone else, or because he thinks God is out to get him if he leaves, or because he thinks it means he can tick off his sacraments from the comfort of his polished pew, and to hell with all those unwashed Hindus? — this is someone who does not know God, no matter what his spiritual “passport” says.

At the hour of death, it would be better to be a faithful Hindu than a Catholic like this, who wouldn’t recognize Jesus if He bit him. Or called to him. Or disguised Himself as the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the homeless, the imprisoned, the dead.

It’s better to know and love what Christ is like, even if you do not yet know His name.

If Mother Teresa was content to show Christ’s love to Hindus and see them depart still Hindu, then it’s because, as Ratzinger says, “Assent to the hiddenness of God is an essential part of the movement of the spirit that we call ‘faith.'” Mother Teresa did everything that was in her power to show the love of Christ to the needy. Her unthinkably strong faith allowed her to leave the rest up to the hiddenness of God.

 ***

NOTE: Simcha Fisher is not a trained theologian. Simcha Fisher is a housewife who has been keeping her ears and eyes open for forty-one years, and who thinks she has begun to understand a thing or two about Jesus. If she errs theologically, it a sincere error, and is not motivated by a desire to drag souls to perdition. She is willing to hear honest arguments showing her specifically where she has gone astray. Thanks.

Image by Funky Tee via Flickr (licensed)

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Okay! This week seems like a good time to resurrect the original purpose of this series, which was to help each other plan meals, discover new recipes, avoid hideous disasters, and so on. I’d absolutely love to hear you meal ideas — one recipe, or a whole week’s worth of dishes. What’s for supper at your house? Share in the comments; or, if you have a blog, you can add a link to this post by using the blue frog button at the bottom of the page. If it’s not showing up, please let me know so I can kill myself.

Here’s what we had this week:

SATURDAY
Bagel, egg, sausage, and cheese sandwiches

This is the easiest meal in the world. Toast a bunch of bagels, fry up a bunch of eggs, cook a bunch of sausage, and serve platters of everything with cheese. It’s so easy that I like to challenge myself a bit, by seeing how many platters of bagels I can ruin. Then, after I figure that out (it’s two, by the way. That’s twelve bagels turned into charcoal), I decide that this time, I’m gonna set the timer, so I don’t burn the next batch. So I do, and guess what? I set the timer for two minutes too long, and burned the next twelve bagels, too. But this time, it was intentional!

I also burned the sausages. The eggs were okay.

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SUNDAY
Meatloaf, Hobbit bread, salad

I cook a fine meatloaf, if I do say so myself.

[img attachment=”117891″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 8.17.56 PM” /]

I had seven pounds of beef and used the basic Fanny Farmer recipe (not in a buttered loaf pan, though! Blech. I shape the loaves on top of a broiler pan so the fat can drain off a bit). I went a little heavy on the Worcestershire sauce, and I also spread some ketchup around the outside before baking. Gorgeous and savory, if a little charred in spots.

My current favorite daughter volunteered to make her famous Hobbit Bread, which is a woven-topped loaf (or three) stuffed with mushrooms, onions, and cheese (recipe found in An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery). She used storebought balls of pizza dough.

[img attachment=”117892″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 8.17.19 PM” /]

I did set the timer for too long and they got a little burnt, so I was forced to only throw eleven pieces of this down my gullet.

And we had salad, because I am your mother and wish you to suffer.

[img attachment=”117893″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 8.18.25 PM” /]

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MONDAY
Baked ziti with sausage; salad

Ziti, crumbled sausage meat, jarred sauce, and a ton of fresh basil. Nobody really likes this meal, so I made enough to fill one of Arizona’s smaller and less famous but equally enchanting canyons. I dutifully ate it for lunch for two days, and then threw the rest out.

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TUESDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches, red onions, potato puffs

One hunk of pork, one can of Narragansett beer, lots of salt and pepper. Cover loosely with tinfoil, cook at 200 for several hours; shred with forks and fingers, mix with bottled BBQ sauce, serve with red onions.

I remembered to set aside pulled pork for my husband and daughter, who were working late. I didn’t remember to put it away. I didn’t realize the dog was watching me not put it away.

[img attachment=”117895″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”tragedy mask” /]

My husband and daughter found an empty tray on the floor and ordered pizza. I cried.

At least I didn’t burn anything this time.

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WEDNESDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, carrots with hummus

Nothing to report, except that I like my chicken burgers with some horseradish sauce. Fawncy!

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THURSDAY
Tacos, tortilla chips and salsa

[img attachment=”117896″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”taco melt” /]

I cooked the meat earlier in the day, then refrigerated it, then heated it up in the microwave, and then microwaved my individual taco. What would life even be like without these modern time-saving appliances?

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FRIDAY
Gochujang tuna with sesame seeds; white rice

Today is a very special day, for today we will try a new brand of gochujang (Korean fermented pepper paste).

[img attachment=”117894″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 8.41.55 PM” /]

You just mix it up with whatever you want and put some toasted sesame seeds on top and feel so dang smart.

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Here it is: the blue frog button! It should say, “Click to view and add your links!” Or just click on whatever’s there. I’m making my list early, so hoping to be inspired with your menus!

Greek tragedy mask photo credit: Tragoedia via photopin (license)