Hello! Happy Friday! It is upside-downy day. I slept later than I meant and then spent the whooooooole rest of the day writing until it was time for dinner. Made some spaghetti, THEN did yoga, then cleaned the kitchen because Lucy wasn’t feeling well, then cleaned the dining room because I suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore. And now I am finally writing my food post, which I usually do first thing after yoga on Fridays.
So! Here is what we had:
SATURDAY Leftovers and Aldi pizza
I absolutely trapped myself into going to confession while we were out shopping, and that was a relief. (No murders or anything; it’s just been a while.) I don’t remember much else about Saturday, except that hardly anyone was home. I think Damien was helping Moe with something. Oh yes, and he took Corrie along for the ride. Sadly, the hedgehog shop below Moe’s apartment (yes) was closed for the day, but they had a nice day anyway.
SUNDAY Beach food!
Sunday we finally got to the ocean, on the very last day of summer vacation. Poor Damien hurt his back and couldn’t go, and the older kids all went together in a separate car with friends to belatedly celebrate Lucy’s birthday. So that left me, Benny, and Corrie. We were pretty far away from the hurricane, but the ocean was still feeling it.
Bunch more pictures here.
Since it was just the three of us, we hit the arcade and then picked a beachside restaurant. Corrie got her very first footlong hotdog
and Benny got a burger and I got some ridiculous cheesy bacon fries. We don’t have a lot of outings with just the three of us these days, and it was fun! We got home purty late, showered the sand off, and fell into bed.
MONDAY Grilled ham and cheese, chips, fruit salad
First day of school! The younger kids just had half days (not the same half, of course), so we were pretty much driving all day. A fine day for ham and cheese.
I cut up a watermelon and a bunch of strawberries and threw in some grapes and called it good.
TUESDAY Chicken genovese, bread
This past weekend I got fed up with my cinnamon basil, which I bought accidentally, and which has been flourishing like nothing else I’ve ever planted. I don’t really like cinnamon basil, though. But I kept telling myself I was going to make something with it, so I kept watering it and picking the blossoms off every few days, and getting madder and madder as it got bigger and bigger. Anyway, I finally dug it up, chunked it in holes in the front of the house, and declared it flowering plants. I used the open garden space, plus the space where the potatoes were, to plant some cucumber seeds. I don’t know if I’ll really get a harvest before the frost comes, but I might!
I ran out of pine nuts, so I toasted a bunch of almonds and then forgot to put them in. OH WELL. Pesto still turned out great, if a bit pale.
The recipe is actually for chicken genovese, which is chicken roasted with pesto on and under the skin. It was whole chickens that were on sale, and it turns out most of the kids don’t like pesto (THEY DON’T LIKE PESTO), so I just roasted one with basic seasonings (salt, pepper, garlic powder, I think maybe paprika) and olive oil, and one with the pesto. One of the kids came in when I was shoving pesto under the skin and got permanently creeped out, and I have to admit, it was a little creepy!
Delicious, though. I honestly can’t tell if this looks yummy or grisly, but it was, in fact, yummy.
When I cut it open, the layer of interior pesto looked so fancy.
Again, not really sure if this looks gross! I’m tired, and just can’t tell!
I just cut up a bunch of baguettes and dumped a bag of fresh spinach into a bowl, and it was a nice meal. Something different.
WEDESDAY Weird tacos, tortilla chips
Wednesday I made some really terrible tacos. I couldn’t find the garlic powder, so I used garlic salt, forgetting that I had already added quite a bit of salt. Then I was out of cumin, so I decided to put a whole extra lot of chili powder, which doesn’t even make sense. I guess I was kind of distracted. Anyway, we had tacos.
THURSDAY Salmon, risotto, roast butternut squash
Thursday I was planning to try my new-to-me air fryer, and a few people told me salmon was a great thing to make it in. So I bought some frozen salmon at Walmart, and then for some reason at the last minute I decided to try a slightly more complex recipe than just, you know, salt and pepper and lemon juice. This calls for cutting the salmon into chunks, rolling it in a mixture of spices and brown sugar, and then air frying. Which isn’t that hard, except that I could not get the air fryer to heat up, at all. The light went on, the timer ticked and binged, but no heat, no matter how I set it. UNFORTUNATE.
So I pan fried the salmon in hot oil, and they turned out pretty okayish.
Salmon is already on the sweet side, so I think next time I’ll stick with a simpler recipe next time, with no sugar. I guess I was hoping maybe the kids would eat it if it had sugar on it. Don’t tell that shaved ape who runs the health department.
I also cut up a couple of butternut squashes and roasted them on a pan with honey, olive oil, uhhhhh salt, cinnamon, and chili powder, I think.
That, too, turned out okay.
The last part was risotto, and I made it in my new-to-me pressure cooker. My Instant Pot kicked the bucket, and what I really wanted was another 8-quart Instant Pot, but those are hard to find (it’s mostly 6-quart ones); so I settled for an 8-quart Instant Pot knockoff. I got it on the day we went to see the petroglyphs. And immediately realized it was, in fact, 6-quart Instant Pot knockoff, and kind of smelled like cigarettes.
NO MATTER. I wiped it down and there was juuuust room in it to make a triple recipe of risotto. I followed this recipe, except without the sage and squash, and also I shoved a stick of butter in there before adding the cheese. And I doubled the cheese. And I used regular rice instead of arborio. Well, I guess I didn’t really follow the recipe. But it was good!
A good meal altogether, if a bit Ship of Theseusish.
FRIDAY Regular spaghetti
I already told you about Friday. What I didn’t tell you is doing yoga after eating a hearty bowl of spaghetti is not highly recommended. But you probably didn’t need me to tell you that.
So tomorrow, my SISTER is coming, and she and some of her kids are going to spend TWO NIGHTS here! (Okay, yes, that is why I cleaned the dining room. But really, it was out of control anyway.) I am very excited. Thinking about trying out our new-to-me rotisserie thing, since we’ve had so much success lately with new-to-me appliances. I think I’m gonna finally pick my first round of corn, too.
If you’ve spent any time with adolescents, you’re familiar with one of their more endearing traits: disproportionate development. They wake up one morning 4 inches taller, but it’s all in the legs, and their torsos are still the same size. Or maybe their arms and legs are the same length as they were last year, but their hands and feet have suddenly gotten huge. It’s adorable, and a little bit pathetic.
Some kids grow so fast and so unevenly, they end up careening around, bumping into things and bouncing off the walls. It looks like they’re being careless and intentionally disruptive, and maybe they are; but a big part of it is that they literally don’t know what size they are.
It’s not only their bodies that are growing quickly but disproportionately; it’s their minds and their hearts and their consciences. So you may find them careening around the house not just physically, but intellectually or morally or socially. Their thoughts and feelings and desires and sense of self are developing fast, and not at an even pace. They are disproportionate, and it’s adorable, and a little bit pathetic.
And sometimes infuriating. Disproportionate development leads to some truly insane inconsistencies in their opinions and behavior. They often come across as wildly hypocritical, requiring the highest standards for other people and (apparently) the lowest for themselves. They can be self-righteous, and they can be very harsh, as well as emotional and ludicrously sentimental, sometimes in the same breath.
The standard explanation for this behavior is that their hormones are fluctuating mercilessly, so they’re under assault from the inside; and at the same time, the world is bombarding them from the outside with nonstop information, nonstop stimulation and nonstop nonsense.
These are all solid explanations for why adolescents act the way they do. But I find it easier to look at them with kindness when I remember that their most irrational behavior is not as senseless as it looks. In fact, it is a sign they are growing. It’s just that the growth is disproportionate.
The best thing you can do, for your own sanity and for their current and future good, is to look for, name and praise the parts that are getting big and strong and well-developed, and to be patient while the rest of them (it is to be hoped) catches up.
Here’s an example. When the Space Shuttle Challenger was preparing to launch, our class got copious lessons about Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who’d been selected to join the crew through the NASA Teacher in Space Program. She taught high school not an hour down the road from us, and the whole school followed her exploits enthusiastically.
Of course she never made it. The whole class was all glued to the screen as the ship exploded. It was horrible in many different ways.
But in the aftermath, very shortly after, a bunch of us complained to our teacher, Mrs. Blanchard, that we were tired of hearing about boring old Christa McAuliffe all the time. … Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.
Balestrieri was the final defendant in de Laire’s epic lawsuit against Gary “Michael” Voris and his Church Militant news outlet. According to court records, Balestrieri is the author of a 2019 defamatory article which caused de Laire emotional distress as well as the loss of his position as judicial vicar in the Diocese of Manchester.
Church Militant and its parent organization, St. Michael’s Media, shut down as a result of a settlement agreement with de Laire reached last year. The Michigan-based nonprofits that Voris founded 20 years ago to spread his weird version of Catholicism also paid de Laire $500,000 as part of the deal to avoid a worse fate at the coming jury trial.
Voris managed to stay out of a trial by apologizing in writing to de Laire last summer. Suzanne Elovecky, de Laire’s attorney, told us Voris also paid a “substantial” amount of money as part of the settlement. Voris later denied he paid any money to de Laire, and blamed a former staffer for the defamation.
While de Laire wanted Balestrieri to pay $100,000, United States District Court Judge Joseph LaPlante wrote in his Aug. 25 order that $50,000 was appropriate given the undisclosed settlement cash he’s already received from St. Michael’s and Voris.
Balestrieri and de Laire knew each other professionally, and Balestrieri represented people involved in a New Hampshire annulment case that de Laire presided over. When that case did not go his way, Balestrieri complained to Rome about de Laire, according to court records. The Vatican does not seem to have responded to Balestrieri’s complaints.
Balestrieri also represented Voris, various Church Militant staffers, and the Richmond, New Hampshire Feeneyite group, the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But it was Balestrieri’s side gig as an anonymous reporter for Church Militant that caused the problems for Voris, the Slaves, and de Laire.
Voris went to New Hampshire in 2019 to interview the Slaves after the Diocese of Manchester disciplined the group. As the judicial vicar, de Laire was the diocesan point man on dealing with the Slaves. Church Militant then outlet published videos and articles calling de Laire ‘emotionally unstable,’ stating de Laire is incompetent, and implying he’s corrupt, according to the lawsuit.
Voris initially took credit for the reporting when de Laire brought the lawsuit, and kept Balestrieri true authorship secret. At the time the original article came out, Balestrieri was involved in the Slave’s canon law defense. Both Voris and Louis Villarubbia, the Slaves leader also known as Brother Andre Marie, claimed they had no knowledge of Balestrieri’s conflict of interest.
Voris placed a large chunk of the blame for the articles on his failure to properly vet Balestrieri’s work.
“As CEO of St. Michael’s Media and Church Militant.com, I did not ensure the proper vetting the article as I should have. Mr. Balestrieri did not substantiate, and has not substantiated in the lawsuit, his claims regarding Father de Laire by identifying sources. Prior to publication, SMM should have questioned this lack of substantiation, and should have assessed Mr. Balistieiri’s and his story’s objectivity. I did not ensure that SMM did so,” Voris wrote.
Court records show Voris worked to keep Balestrieri’s identity secret for months after the lawsuit was filed. After Balestrieri’s connection came to light, Voris supplied him with an interest-free $65,000 loan as Balestrieri dodged process servers. Balestrieri was finally ruled in default and liable for the defamation for failing to respond to the lawsuit.
As the case moved closer to a fall, 2023 trial, court records show de Laire’s team learned Voris and his Church Militant staff had been hiding evidence sought in discovery, including messages with Balestrieri. Balestrieri then made a surprise appearance at a June, 2023 hearing in the United States District Court in Concord seeking to get out from under the default judgement.
Weeks before, Balestrieri denied to Villarubbia that he had written the original article. At the June hearing, Balestreiri agreed to sit for a deposition scheduled for July, 2023 during which he was likely to repeat that denial under oath. However, court records show the day of the June hearing, Voris sent Balestreiri a text message warning.
“Marc – you are committing perjury. You know you wrote that article. What you don’t know is this morning we found proof – your digital fingerprints – all totally documented – on that article. Remember the email address – TomMoore@Churchmilitant.com.? We have all the receipts. You go through with this and we will rain down on you publicly. You are a liar, and a Welch,” Voris wrote.
Balestrieri cancelled his deposition 24 hours before it was to start, and again disappeared from the scene for a time.
Balestrieri made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to get the default judgement lifted. But after two damages hearings this summer, at which Balestrieri was surprisingly present, LaPlante issued the $50,000 order this week.
Happy Friday! This was somehow both the fastest and longest week all year. I am going to make a stab at fasting and praying for peace today, especially in Ukraine and Israel, at the Pope’s behest. Don’t forget, you can fast all kinds of ways. It doesn’t have to be like Good Friday; you can fast from sweets, or from TV, or from being a big whiny baby (impossible).
Also today Elijah is moving out. Our fifth kid to move out. A fine day not to be able to eat one’s feelings, humph.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s artist profile, Our Sunday Visitor magazine is shuttering, as well as several other OSV publications. Of course the Lord will provide, so we are just praying that he provides until he provides, and all will be well. I truly did love writing that art series, and pretty much loved writing my monthly column for them as well, so it’s just a shame. Lots and lots of great writers were there. Although I suppose if we can survive the loss of a picture of a barrel on a sign, we can survive this.
Anyway, this past weekend we saw Benny and Clara in a production of Alice, and they were both great. Here are just two of the roles they played: Clara as the Red Queen, and Benny as Shrunken Alice.
This is an ensemble that Clara put together with her cousin and a bunch of friends, which is very cool!
SATURDAY Leftovers and mozzarella sticks?
On Saturday, two unlikely things happened: One is I found three giant, handmade, high quality pillows with a really neat menagerie pattern for the living room
and the other is that I donated three bags of clothes to the same thrift store. I donated them, I tell you! My usual technique is to sort clothes into bags, then leave them under the dining room table until they get enough macaroni stuck to them, then put them in the back of the minivan and drive around with them for several months until the bag gets stepped on and ripped, and then put them in a second bag and bring them to the thrift store, who politely and reasonably declines; and then I throw them away. BUT NOT THIS TIME.
The we did the rest of the shopping, and then for supper we had leftovers and, as far as I can recall, mozzarella sticks.
SUNDAY Hamburgers, chips
Sunday I absolutely splurged on ground beef. I remember when ground beef was $1.29 a pound. Now it’s $1.29 to smell it, and if you actually want to buy it and take it home, you have to fax proof of income to the loan officer, and they don’t even give out lollipops anymore. We used to be a proper country, with hamburgers, and lollipops!
But before supper, Damien and I went kayaking! First time this summer. Boy is it hard to do all the things you want to do in the summer. But we went, and it was absolutely lovely. We explored this placid little river for about an hour, surrounded by a chorus of buzzing grasshoppers and the splash of irritated turtles as they turned their backs and fled.
We paddled until we met a beaver dam on either side, and I did not fall in the water while getting out of the kayak OR while getting in. Absolutely gorgeous and perfect afternoon. And then we got ice cream, just us two grown-ups.
MONDAY Pizza
On Monday, Benny and Corrie and I dug up our potatoes. This was kind of an experimental crop, which I invested zero doll hairs in. Just shoved a bunch of sprouting potatoes from the supermarket into the ground in the spring, added plenty of compost, and kept it watered.
Wow, it was fun and exciting to dig them up! I had planted at least three kinds of potatoes, and we really didn’t know what we would find.
I mean, we found potatoes! It was a very pleasant little treasure hunt. Here’s our haul:
They would have gotten bigger if I had left them in the ground longer, of course, but I was very happy with new potatoes.
Also on Monday, Corrie started some pork butts dry brining for bo ssam. She is the one who is most excited about continuing to cook, and this is a very popular meal, and quite easy (you just have to start well ahead of time). For this first part, you just mix together a cup of salt and a cup of sugar, rub it all over the pork
and wrap it up and let it brine overnight. The salt draws the moisture out of the meat fibers but then back in again, or something? I don’t know how the magic works, but it works.
Oh, and we had pizza for supper. One plain, one pepperoni, and one with black and kalamata olives, feta, fresh basil, and fresh garlic.
Kind of ghastly picture, but it was very yummy pizza.
TUESDAY Bo ssam, rice, pineapple; world’s biggest s’mores
Tuesday, we double wrapped a pan with heavy tin foil and started the meat cooking in the early afternoon. It needs five or six hours to cook. When it got close to being done, we made a pot of rice and then Corrie made a little sauce of brown sugar, salt, and cider vinegar and slathered it on the meat.
This caramelizes on top and gives it an extra sweet and tangy punch and a wonderful crackly crust, with impossibly tender fat underneath. It came out spectacular.
We got it in the oven later than I meant to, and had to turn up the heat a little higher than usual, so I was afraid it might not be shreddy and moist, but it sure was
I cut up a few pineapples and even though I forgot to buy lettuce to wrap the meat it, it was an excellent meal. If not an excellent photo or presentation.
Here’s the recipe we use, although we do only the most basic parts of it. And now Corrie knows how to make another meal!
Also, I was afraid the graham crackers were going to be stale as heck since they were almost a week old, but in fact they got really soft. I put them in the oven for a while to firm them up, and it didn’t help at all. So I just lit the propane fire pit and FORGED AHEAD.
What I ended up doing is putting the marshmallow on a metal baking rack and toasting it over the fire that way. Which meant I couldn’t really flip it and toast both sides, but I did anyway, and of course I got burnt and sticky and all the dumb things you might expect. After a while I just kinda dumped one graham cracker on Corrie, dropped the chocolate on that, flopped the marshmallow on that, smacked the other graham cracker on that, and then topped it with another pan like a clamshell and held both pans over the fire until I thought maybe it was hot.
Then I carved it into Big Mac-sized pieces and gave them to the understandably skeptical kids.
Who ate as much as they could and then escaped inside to watch TV. So, this project was a success in that I finished it! I am trying really hard to finish projects instead of abandoning them, and I did finish it. So there.
WEDNESDAY Pork fried rice, frozen egg rolls
Wednesday we had a sort of complicated little outing: First I went to buy an off-brand Instant Pot from some lady on Marketplace, and then we went searching for ANCIENT PETROGLYPHS. They are in Bellows Falls, VT, and it seems like they are being deliberately kept on the DL to avoid a lot of tourist fuss? So I will abide by that! You can find them with a little sleuthing.
Not knowing exactly where they were, and spending a lot of time clambering up and down on the slippery boulders of a gorge with a hydroelectric dam nearby
made it all the more exciting when we finally found them!
I think I’m gonna write a whole separate post about this, but it was a wonderful experience, very beautiful and moving, somehow. These petroglyphs were carved probably by Abenaki people, several hundred or maybe a few thousand years ago, and nobody really knows why. A signpost for souls in the afterlife? A family portrait? An elaborate doodle? We just don’t know, except that they are clearly faces, and someone knew what they are — just not us. Real Richard Wilbur vibes:
A lark, because I’d been wrong Burst rightly into song In a world not vague, not lonely, Not governed by me only.
Yeah, that’s what it was.
I was there with only three of the kids, and everyone really enjoyed it. Then we went to the fabled nearby Dari Joy
where the people are friendly and the ice cream cones are enormous. And then we drove home, and then I remembered we were out of milk, and then I remembered we were out of duck food, and by the time we actually got home, it was late o’clock.
I made some quick fried rice with the leftover pork
and heated up some egg rolls. And then I took the leftover s’mores, of which there was about 43 pounds, and cut it into squares, wrapped it in tinfoil, and heated it up in the oven until the chocolate was actually melted.
This is, in fact, probably the best way to make giant s’mores: In the oven. But the whole point of s’mores is that you make them over a fire, so that’s why we did it the dumb way that didn’t really work.
It was still a mess and still kind of overwhelming! And that’s why people don’t make giant s’mores! I left the pan in the kitchen and it made great food for teenagers to pick at while yacking about whatever. And then I bundled up the tinfoil and dumped it all in the garbage, and that felt great. Better than dropping off used clothes, even.
THURSDAY One-pan chicken, brussels sprouts, and new potatoes
Thursday I gave all our lovely homegrown potatoes a good scrub.
I cut up a bunch of brussels sprouts and put them in two big greased sheet pans with the potatoes, then nestled some chicken thighs in among them, and doused it all with what is meant to be a marinade,
but I forgot about making supper until it was too late to marinate anything, so I just splashed it on top and then added extra garlic powder and salt. (This recipe calls for summer squash and zucchini, but obviously you can improvise.) It came out nice and sharp and garlicky.
The potatoes were delightful. The skins were just tissue-paper thin and the insides were tender as heck. Many of them were only bite-sized or smaller, so I left as many whole as I could, and it was a treat.
Delicious.
FRIDAY Fish tacos, tortilla chips
Just batter-fried fish from frozen, shredded cabbage, avocados, I think maybe jalapeños? and salsa and sour cream. I’ll have to look it up. I do have some non-radioactive shrimp in the freezer, so maybe I’ll stir things up a bit (by cooking shrimp).
And this is our last weekend of summer vacation. The kids are at a magic show at the library, and we are going to squeeze in one last playdate on Saturday and an ocean trip on Sunday, and maybe we can get to the pond on Monday. I’m going to plant some cucumbers in the empty potato bed today and see if I can get a quick harvest before the frost comes.
Yesterday, I had the kids buy TV time by picking apples from Marvin
so I guess I’ll be making some apple sauce soon. Still haven’t picked my first round of corn, so I’m looking forward to that. And the grape vine continues to ramble around everywhere, so I added a new little trellis (well, a bendy stick) and it’s going along with it.
Some day you’ll be able to pick grapes with your teeth while swimming in the pool. Who knew New Hampshire could be so decadent.
One thing I do feel good about is that I have practiced yoga every single day this month, and almost every day I lifted weights, too. I made myself a motivational sticker chart, and although I haven’t been getting a lot of gold stars in food, I have been getting lots of flowers in yoga, and birds in weights.
It’s not stupid if it works!
This is your periodic reminder that I have an extremely low-key private exercise group on Facebook, where people just check in and note what exercise they have done, aiming for three workouts or more a week, and we encourage each other and share information about workouts we recommend. I’ll probably be starting another thirty-day challenge in September, so if you want to hop on, this would be a good time.
I just now took this picture:
even though I just took this one of us a couple days ago:
This is a very loose recipe, because you can change the ingredients and proportions however you like
Ingredients
cooked rice
sesame oil (or plain cooking oil)
fresh garlic and ginger, minced
vegetables, diced or shredded (onion, scallion, peas, bok choy, carrots, sugar snap peas, cabbage, etc.)
brown sugar
raw or cooked shrimp, or raw or cooked meat (pork, ham, chicken), diced
soy sauce
oyster sauce
fish sauce
eggs
Instructions
In a very large pan, heat up a little oil and sauté the ginger and garlic for a few minutes. If you are using raw meat, season it with garlic powder and ginger powder and a little soy sauce, add it to the pan, and cook it through. If you are using shrimp, just throw it in the pan and cook it.
Add in the chopped vegetables and continue cooking until they are cooked through. If you are using cooked meat, add it now.
Add the brown sugar and cook, stirring, until the brown sugar is bubbly and darkened.
Add in the cooked rice and stir until everything is combined.
Add in a lot of oyster sauce, a medium amount of soy sauce, and a little fish sauce, and stir to combine completely.
In a separate pan, scramble the eggs and stir them in. (Some people scramble the eggs directly into the rest of the rice, but I find it difficult to cook the eggs completely this way.)
If you are using cooked shrimp, add it at the end and just heat it through.
One-pan garlicky chicken with potatoes, summer squash, and zucchini
Ingredients
12chicken thighs
1/2cupolive oil
1/4cupbalsamic vinegar
1/4cupcider vinegar
6clovesgarlic, roughly chopped
2tspground pepper
1Tbsponion powder
1Tbspgarlic powder
1Tbspsalt
fresh basil, chopped
more salt, garlic powder, and onion powder for sprinkling
4lbspotatoes, scrubbed and sliced thickly
6assorted zucchini and summer squash, washed and sliced into discs with the skin on
Instructions
Combine the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, garlic, garlic powder, onion, powder, salt, pepper, and fresh basil. Marinate the chicken thighs in this mixture for at least half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Grease two large baking sheets. Arrange the chicken, potatoes, and vegetables on the sheet with as little overlap as possible.
Sprinkle additional salt, onion powder, and garlic powder on the potatoes and vegetables.
Cook about 40 minutes or until chicken is completely done and potatoes are slightly brown on top.
Some parts of the church will last for thousands of years; some of it is designed more for the here and now. That’s true for church buildings and for the Church as an institution.
“Even if you’re going to have a church built out of marble, you can’t do it without the use of wood,” Coleman said. You need both, and there’s a wider lesson about complementarity there.
This meeting of the eternal and the temporal gets played out throughout salvation history: Some of the things God does are permanent and unchangeable; some of them are meant for a specific time and place. Coleman, who founded the company with his wife, Ashley, four years ago, tries to keep both the temporal and the eternal in mind as he works.
After studying in seminary for a year, Coleman discerned he was meant for married life — specifically, marriage to Ashley, whom he’d known since they were kids growing up in Baton Rouge. His main goal, early on, was just to support a family, so he took a job as a salesman at a septic company owned by a fellow daily Massgoer. The job wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills.
But he did long to serve the Church more directly. He’d always been interested in woodworking, ever since he built a kneeler in shop class, and gradually he began to spend more and more time woodworking as a hobby. When his pastor at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Baton Rouge said the church’s altar rails needed restoring, he made the time to get it done.
That part-time project changed his life. A friend of the pastor who was visiting saw his work and was so impressed that he asked Coleman to build the entire sanctuary for a new church they were building in Alabama.
“It was a jump! It was like two years of work, and I was like, OK, well, I’m quitting my job to do that,” he said.
He was ready to take the leap, but Ashley was less certain. She considers that caution part of her job, along with managing the business end of the company, including social media accounts and their newsletter, The Whittler.
“That’s our dynamic. Andrew is the dreamer and the idealist, in a very positive way. Andrew is like, ‘Let’s go!’ and Ashley is like, ‘How are we going to do this?’” she laughed.
As the couple described the complementarity of their business dynamic, they took turns managing their toddler son, who spent the interview playing with his favorite toy, a calculator. Ashley is expecting another child in March.
Since that first big leap into full-time woodworking, the Colemans have been busy with commissions for churches, mostly in and around Louisiana, where both Catholicism and family ties are deeply seated.
“We’re very, very embedded in our community,” Andrew said. Much of the work they do is for priests who were friends with the Colemans before they were even ordained.
Mixing business and friendship has the potential for awkwardness, but the Colemans are overwhelmingly grateful their work is so personal.
“These different pastors are willing to trust us with these big projects that maybe they wouldn’t have trusted to someone they didn’t know personally,” Ashley said.
Happy Friday! I ASSUME some of you are going to Mass today, har har. We went yesterday for the vigil, and now I can’t even remember why. The plan for this weekend has changed so many times, it’s like the scene in Airplane where the announcer is like, “Flight 209, now arriving at Gate Eight. Gate Nine. Gate Ten . . .”
Coincidentally, I also spent much of this week sweating my head off like Ted Striker landing a plane.
SATURDAY Leftovers with tater tots
It was Corrie’s shopping turn, and that is a kid who enjoys a thrift shop, so we added that to the shopping routine. One item found and left on the shelf:
No thank you please.
Corrie used her own money to buy a game called “Farting Sheep,” and it’s actually not a completely terrible game. It comes with a whoopee cushion and you can play it without consulting the instructions ten million times.
While we were doing that, Damien drove Benny into Boston go to the big comic con with her friend. She had a great time, found some cool merch for her obscure fandoms, and MET CATHERINE TATE. Who was so charmed by her sheer Bennyness that she gave her a free autographed photo.
Benny said she was really nice and called her “darling” several times. Benny told her she liked Donna better than Rose, haha.
Back home, I was pooped and asked the kids to heat up supper, which was leftovers and tater tots. And you know what?
There’s nothing more delicious than food someone else made while you put your feet up.
This weekly planned leftover purge has been working really well, at least for me. We just heat up everything that’s still edible, and the Shopping Turn kid gets to choose one frozen food to supplement it, and anything that doesn’t get eaten gets thrown away. I’m way less neurotic about waste than I used to be, but it super duper helps me to have a system, and this system of “you get one last chance and then we throw you away, because that’s the system” is great.
Speaking of things I’m less neurotic about than I used to be, I gave Lucy her first driving lesson on Saturday evening.
She did great. This is the seventh kid I’m teaching how to drive, and I hardly even pulled a muscle slamming on imaginary brakes in the passenger side.
SUNDAY Pho
You know, I don’t remember what the people at home ate. I did not exactly cover myself with glory on Sunday. It was extremely hot, and the heat makes me feel like things are out of control, and I respond to this by taking control by tackling huge projects, which makes me hotter, etc. etc.
So on Sunday I decided I had no choice but to start digging a pond for the ducks. They have a kiddie pool and of course the stream, but these both freeze over in the winter, so we’re making a little pond in a spot where we can run a horse trough thawer into it, and also easily fill it with a hose and drain it with a pump, either into my vegetable gardens or into the swamp.
Anyway, it was a lot of friggin diggin, and SO hot, and I got absolutely coated with mud and pretty mad about various things, then went inside and had a medium-grade mom tantrum and briefly turned into Zuul.
Happily for everyone, Lena had already invited me out for the evening, so I cleaned up and stomped off, and got to see her new apartment, and we tried the new noodle place in town. I have somehow never had pho before. I’m a fan!
It tasted great, and also had two of my favorite elements: Arriving half-assembled, so you can mess with it as you eat it, and arriving in an absolute basin.
Then we went to see The Fantastic Four. I have zero knowledge of this franchise and I have a generally low opinion of superhero movies, but I really enjoyed this one. They went to a lot of trouble over the aesthetic, without being too precious about it. The characters were interesting and even showed some development over the course of the movie, and the casting was very solid. I could tell what was going on during the fighting and action sequences. And a few scenes were really wonderful, just gorgeously set up with some real emotional punch. Good stuff! And a very winsome baby, which never hurts. There is some bad language and some fleeting mentions of people being sexy or desirable (Silver Surfer is a woman in this movie), but it’s a really solid family movie for kids who aren’t super sensitive. (It does make a point of calling something “ethical” which is decidedly unethical, but the overall thrust of the plot overrides that.)
MONDAY Chicken drumsticks two ways, fruit salad
I had big big plans for writing on Monday, but instead I took Corrie to the doctor because her foot was still hurting from a swing injury last week. Maybe I’m biased, but I think this is the cutest foot x-ray I’ve ever seen.
Look at those little toes. Anyway, happily it looks like just a sprain, so the world’s most fabulous patient
just needs to rest that foot. The x-ray tech recognized us, which is always a sign you’re having a wonderful summer.
Then I roasted a whole bunch of chicken drumsticks, and made two sauces: Honey mustard lemon (as described, plus some pepper), and buffalo (hot sauce, tons of melted butter, and a little sriracha). Very popular main course right now.
Then I made a kind of weird fruit salad with watermelon, grapes, and something called a crunch melon. Which I bought 100% because I thought the name was funny. (I may start a whole series of reels just cutting up fruit and telling dumb jokes.)
It was . . . fine. It tasted like a rather bland cantaloupe, and it was indeed crunchy, like very crisp cucumbers or I guess an apple. Not something I would seek out again, but now I know!
Now you all know.
In the evening I went to see what I had actually done when I was digging the duck pond, and I was very gratified to see that it was (a) bigger than I remembered, (b) already filling itself with water from the surrounding marsh, and (c) already beloved by the ducks.
When it cools off a bit, I’ll dig some more and then put in a pond liner and set up the hose and pump. Yay! It’s really easy to make ducks happy, and I guess that’s why I like them.
TUESDAY Chicken caprese sandwiches, fries
Tuesday, I was like, okay, I didn’t get any writing done Monday, and that’s okay, but today I really really have to get some writing done. So I began by sorting through all my shirts and pants and throwing out half of them and then when I was putting the survivors back, the mop handle I use for a closet rod collapsed, and all my skirts and dresses fell down.
So I was like, oh no, this is terrible! I better make some cheese.
I made a nice hunk of mozzarella with a gallon of milk (I have this kit), and I discovered I haven’t been heating it up quiiiiite enough in the last stage, and that’s why my last few batches have been kind of grainy. But now that I know better, it comes out much smoother! Yay!
Then I was like, okay, that’s done, and now I really must get some writing done. So I made some giant graham crackers
using this recipe; and I turned my marshmallows out of the pans
and then I started on the giant chocolate bar. Which I don’t have a picture of, because I asked Corrie to make a video of me pouring the melted chocolate into the pan, and now I have a video of a split second of melted chocolate and then a splash and a scream and then nine minutes of footage of the kitchen floor with crying and soothing noises in the background.
Man, I felt terrible. (I was using a jerry-rigged double boiler, and my hand wobbled and I splashed her with boiling hot water as I pulled the top pot out.) Luckily, we still have Desitin in the house, which is great for burns. And Benny cheered her up by telling her about the various times I burned her when she was little. So she is okay.
So then I picked some basil from the garden and cooked some chicken burgers. I may be the kind of mother who scalds her kids while trying to launch a cheap TikTok career, but I do serve them homemade cheese with homegrown basil
so it all evens out.
Perfectly fine meal of caprese chicken burgers and fries
with a generous side of guilt (not pictured).
WEDNESDAY Mexican beef bowls
Wednesday it was Elijah’s turn to make supper! He opted for Mexican Beef Bowls, which everybody loves.
One of the funny things about this project, where the kids plan and make supper for the family, is finding out which parts of various meals they care about, and which they do not. I serve a lot of meals that have lots of little things in bowls, so people can customize their plates. When I made this meal, I make rice, marinated beef, sauteed peppers, roasted corn, black beans, cilantro, shredded cheese, and sour cream. Elijah opted to add the corn to the meat as it cooked, and just stuck to basic cheese and sour cream for toppings. He would have served corn chips but I forgot to buy any.
On Thursday the heat finally broke, thank goodness. We had a soaking thunderstorm, and while it got hot again afterwards, the air feels so much cleaner and fresher. I did manage to get quite a bit of writing done on Thursday, which makes me suspect I just plain can’t write when it’s hot, which is unfortunate.
I also got some fruit macerating for ice cream.
I meant to also make the ice cream, but when it got down to it, I thought I would just not. I was following this recipe for peach ice cream. Note that every last single ingredient except for lemon juice is some candy-ass fancy-pants expensive specialty item, which I complained about on Facebook while macerating.
The thing is, I truly understand that good ingredients make better food than mediocre ingredients. I get that. But having a recipe where every last damn item is the Elevated version is somehow tacky. It’s like when you go to someone’s house and all of their furnishing are in good taste, like every last single one, down to the carefully curated curtain pulls. I can’t explain why, but that’s bad taste.
Anyway, I actually didn’t have enough peaches to make a double recipe, so I added a few nectarines and plums. Then I amused myself by putting all the peels and pits and other kitchen scraps onto a tray and bringing them out to the compost heap, which happens to be behind the pool, which happens to be where the kids were hanging out and brooding over the terrible fate of having to get out of the pool soon so we can get to Mass, and then not even eating supper until afterward, and they were so hungry! but wait! Here comes our mother with a serving tray piled high with snacks for us! Here she comes! But oh noooo, it’s actually just kitchen scraps for the compost heap! Ha ha, if only our mother understood how she looked with that tray, and how devastated we felt when we realized she wasn’t actually coming out with snacks for us!
Heh. heh. heh. heh. heh. If someone had told me how entertaining it would be to see your kids assuming you’re a complete moron and that you have no idea you appear this way in their eyes, I would not have believed you. I don’t even know why it’s so funny. I guess it’s because they’re not really wrong, but I am fifty years old and I just don’t care anymore.
Oh, anyway, we had spaghetti and meatballs. A very pedestrian recipe, just ground beef, eggs, and basic seasonings, and I baked them in the oven. I omitted the bread crumbs and bulked up the meat with leftover rice and got no complaints.
Clara had stopped by to pick up Benny and to drop off her car for Damien to work on, and she brought some nice baguettes from work, as you can see.
FRIDAY Tuna?
As I said, our plans have shifted many, many times in the last 24 hours. But either tonight or tomorrow, we’re going to see Benny and Clara in Alice In Wonderland, so that will be fun. Clara and her friends founded a little theater troupe, and they’ve put in SO much work making costumes and finding theater space and so on. I’m impressed!
So I do now have giant marshmallows, two giant graham crackers, and a giant chocolate bar. (I made it by melting six bags of chocolate chips in a double boiler with two scoops of vegetable shortening whisked in to make it smoother and more stable, and then I poured it into a pan lined with parchment paper and put it in the freezer to set.) Obviously the world’s biggest s’mores will be happening at some point before vacation ends. It’s harder than you might imagine, finding time to make the world’s biggest s’mores! Or maybe you can imagine. I really don’t know what you can imagine.
WP Recipe Maker #145454remove
Beef marinade for fajita bowlsenough for 6-7 lbs of beef – 1 cup lime juice – 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce – 1/2 cup olive oil – 1 head garlic, crushed – 2 Tbsp cumin – 2 Tbsp chili powder – 1 Tbsp paprika – 2 tsp hot pepper flakes – 1 Tbsp salt – 2 tsp pepper – 1 bunch cilantro, chopped 1) Mix all ingredients together. 2) Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.
Pour over beef, sliced or unsliced, and marinate several hours. If the meat is sliced, pan fry. If not, cook in a 350 oven, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. I cook the meat in all the marinade and then use the excess as gravy.
Happy Friday! Hope this finds you well. It finds me listening to Mozart Piano Sonata No. 5 in G and then suddenly AN AD FOR FREAKIER FRIDAY, which is essentially a war crime. Not to mention the Lay’s potato chip ad, which features someone loudly chomping on a chip right into the microphone. WHO WANTS THAT?
Anyway, so, here’s what we had this week. Some pretty good summer meals, a new recipe, and another successful kid-made meal! To wit:
SATURDAY Leftovers, onion rings
Saturday is a blur. I vaguely remember angrily cleaning the refrigerator out. Don’t know if I’ve ever cleaned the fridge out without being angry.
SUNDAY Parking lot pizza
Sunday we went to Canobie! I got an unexpected royalty check and it was enough to pay for most of the trip, so I was feeling pretty triumphant about that. I was riding the migraine train all weekend, but I medicated and caffeinated myself to the max, and when we got there, Damien gave me his sunglasses, sent the kids away, and put me on an inflated tube, and we floated around the lazy river together until I felt a little more embodied.
We stayed for seven hours and it was a pretty great day. I have no regrets about having all those babies, but DANG life is easier without babies.
I posted some pics here if you want to take a look.
We left the park at nine and chose the nearest pizza spot that was still open, which turned out to be the elegantly-situated Salem House of Pizza.
All your bodily needs, from the lashes of your eyes to the soles of your shoes, catered to in one spot. I was kind of fascinated by “Bread Makery.” If only there were a word for that! We have a local business called “Jenna’s Butcher” and we used to have a “The Barbery.” I feel we should RETVRN to . . . I don’t even know, whatever. Just, everyone, before doing anything, ask me.
On the other hand, I’m the one who was very excited to have found this very old penny with a rare misprint on it. It says “ONE CENT” backwards!
So I posted about it on Facebook and started thinking about how valuable it might be if it were cleaned up, and maybe it would even pay for a new roof, and I showed it to Damien, and he gently pointed out that it was a regular penny that I was holding upside down.
Yeah, well. I’m still starting a roof repair fund. So far, I have one cent.
Anyway, this pizza place closed at 10 and we got there at 9:15, but they were still pretty mad! So most of us skulked outside while the pizzas cooked, but Corrie opted to have a seat inside, and have a chat with her favorite person
and I have to admit, that pizza was frickin delicious. Possibly because it was the freshest possible pizza imaginable, as they essentially pulled it out of the oven and threw it at us. But it was also very late and we had all logged our 10K steps and then some; but it was also just good pizza. We ate it on the car hood and it was fab.
I fell asleep a few times on the way home. Sadly, I was driving. But I did wake up again right away, and filed the experience away to my “maybe we are getting too old for this kind of thing” folder.
MONDAY Salad with chicken, blueberries, almonds
Monday was a bit of a blur, but I did get supper on the table. Roast chicken breast over salad greens, with blueberries, minced red onion, crunchy onions from a can, and sliced almonds (toasted in the microwave).
This salad is good with feta or blue cheese, but I didn’t buy any. I think I had blue cheese dressing on mine, and it was good. The blueberries are sweet this year. As you can see, we also had watermelon, and it was another massively juicy one.
TUESDAY Grilled ham and cheese, chips, pickles
Tuesday the new swing I ordered (after the old swings broke mid-swing) arrived, and Corrie put it together herself,
and now she lives on the swing.
Seriously, I thought she would probably like it, but I did not anticipate she would be on there 23 hours a day. We had a tire swing when we were growing up, and it was The Place, so I get it. I still remember the smell of the rubber tire, the sound of rainwater sloshing around in the bottom, the prickle of the frayed rope, the sway of the ground passing by. Dragging your fingertips over the roots of the tree as you drift through leafy shadows. Ah, summer.
We had a blessedly easy dinner of grilled ham and cheese, with chips and pickles.
Last night I dreamt I was in college again, and it was pretty terrible. I was carrying hay-bale-sized rolls of toilet paper upstairs for the whole dorm, and nobody even said thank you, and my friend Dena from elementary school was there, and she didn’t like me anymore.
The dream did not include one of my actual greatest college experiences, which was getting drunk as a skunk at Penuche’s, and then staggering next door to Jesus Grocery and asking for a hot dog, and the polite Pakistani cashier gently explaining they didn’t have hot dogs, but he could make me a chhham and cheese for a dollar twenty-five. Best chhhham and cheese I’ve ever had. But this one was pretty good, too.
Tuesday evening, Sophia started prepping for her marvelous Kid-Made Meal of the week. First she shopped for and then made tiramisu, following this recipe, and she made the exact same mistake I made last time I made tiramisu, and mixed the egg custard and the cream parts together, rather than having them as separate layers. I was happy to be able to reassure her that it wasn’t a disaster and everyone would love it anyway.
I also showed her how to skin and bone chicken thighs, and she did that and made the marinade and got the chicken marinating for the next day. And cleaned up!
WEDNESDAY Shawarma, pita, tiramisu
AND OH WHAT A SHAWARMA IT WAS. Here’s my oven shawarma recipe.
Sophia also made pita, using this recipe. Guys, it was so much better than any pita I’ve ever made. I’m so impressed. Also, her yogurt sauce was better.
Also, the shawarma was better! I don’t know what she did (and when I asked, she said she just followed my recipes!), but it was a completely fantastic meal.
Served with tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, black and kalamata olives. We lost the parsley, but didn’t miss it.
Amazing. I know shawarma is supposed to be in little bits, but the chicken was so tender, we didn’t bother.
The tiramisu was also splendid. I didn’t get a picture, because I was too busy arguing with myself that I would rather have tiramisu than get a gold star in food today (yes, I have a sticker chart, and yes, I give myself a gold star if I stick to my calorie goal. And yes, the tiramisu was a good trade).
New recipe! I ended up using just ground beef, rather than beef and pork; I had lemon zest rather than lime, and I didn’t make the sauce. Still super delicious, very flavorful, with all the good stuff: Fresh garlic and ginger, cilantro, fresh mint, fish sauce, and of course the citrus zest, plus red pepper flakes and scallions. And eggs and panko crumbs, as long as I’m listing all the ingredients. I made a double recipe and ended up with about 75 meatballs, which means I made them smaller than they were supposed to be, but I thought it was a good size. The fish sauce makes them quite salty, so smaller is good. They are baked in the oven, so that’s easy.
I made rice on the stovetop like an absolute peasant, because I completely forgot about fixing my Instant Pot, which just flashes and beeps and does nothing else. We had just plain peas, which some of my kids are weirdly enthusiastic about, and cherries.
So kind of an odd but satisfying meal. I’ll probably make the meatballs again, and will probably make the spicy sauce, which calls for peanuts, yum.
I also started phase 1 of Project Enormous S’mores, which was homemade graham crackers. I made a triple batch of dough from this recipe, and put it in the fridge to chill
and I was going to make a giant slab of marshmallow, but the recipe was pretty adamant that you don’t want to make homemade marshmallows when it’s humid out, which it sure was. I think I’ll try again on Saturday. Benny is the chief S’mores lover, and she will be out of town on Saturday, so it would be fun to have all the stuff ready for Sunday.
For the giant chocolate bar element, I just keep buying bags of chocolate chips (not all at the same time, because that would be expensive. Instead, I am buying them a few at a time, which is thrifty. In some way), and I’m probably gonna melt them in a double boiler with some Crisco, and then spread that in a pan lined with parchment paper, and put it in the fridge to set. That should work, right?
FRIDAY Spaghetti
Or, as one of my kids used to call it, “pigsnetti.”
What did your kids call spaghetti? Tell me cute things! Right now, I don’t have anyone in my house who mispronounces things in a cute way. I do have a bunch of teenagers who started out saying things like “kway-sa-DILL-a” and “GWACK-a-mole” to be funny, but now it’s just habit and they just say it that way automatically, and some day they’re going to be very embarrassed in front of someone they care about. But that’s not my problem!
The summer really is wrapping up, and I didn’t do a lot of the things I wanted to, yet. I have to get back to Corrie’s treehouse (which is still just two planks bolted to a tree!), and I haven’t made any progress on the front walkway at all. I honestly wouldn’t feel bad if I just set that project aside for the spring, but I do want to make that treehouse. We are planning one more ocean trip, but man, it went by fast! So fast. We have a kid starting college in a few weeks, and, sighhhh, also a kid moving out into their first apartment. Yeah, I gotta get that treehouse done.
Anyway, tell me the cute way your kid says spaghetti.
Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 425.
Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more.
Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.
Some of it is fine, as far as I can see. I can think of instances where people were bullied or harassed for openly expressing their faith in the workplace, and where they were made to feel inferior for being religious.
Some people have taken the Establishment Clause of the Constitution to mean that to mean that religious expression is sort of vaguely illegal, and should be quashed. So this new guidance says federal employees are allowed to have Bibles and crosses and so on in the workplace. (It’s notable that all the examples it gives are either Christian or Jewish, explicitly mentioning tefillin and rosary beads, for example, but it avoids any mention of Islamic, Buddhist, or Hindu practices of faith. Which is a clear violation of the Establishment clause. Note this. Note. This.)
Some of the guidance makes me extremely nervous. You can click through and read it for yourself if you don’t trust me to summarize—it’s just five pages—but it essentially says that federal employers and employees can display signs of their religious faith, pray and organise prayer groups in the workplace, and talk about and argue for their faith with others in the workplace, as long as they’re not aggressive about it and respect requests to stop.
Here is what I promise will happen: Decent people will adhere to the guidelines, and indecent people will not. People who are good Christians will quietly wear a cross and pray sincerely at lunch and be welcoming and inviting to others; and people who are bad Christians will bully and harass and intimidate people they don’t approve of, and they will point to these guidelines and say they’re entitled to do it.
This is not just a Christian thing; it’s a human nature thing. If people think they can get away with bullying other people, they’ll do it.
I just wanted to establish that the guidelines are absolutely guaranteed to be abused. They were deliberately written to give cover to people who will abuse them. That is how this administration functions, on every level, and it is what we have come to expect from them.
But let’s assume for a minute that it’s all been done in good faith. Let’s pretend that all they want is for Christians and a few docile Jews to be able to keep worshipping God all day long, and not have the government forcibly stripping away their religious convictions and expression.
It sure sounds like that’s what they’re calling for. The first paragraph says:
“The Founders established a Nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government.” President Trump is committed to reaffirming “America’s unique and beautiful tradition of religious liberty,” including by directing “the executive branch to vigorously enforce the historic and robust protections for religious liberty enshrined in Federal law.”
And the fourth paragraph says:
“The First Amendment to the US Constitution robustly protects expressions of religious faith by all Americans—including Federal employees. The US Supreme Court has clarified that the Free Exercise Clause “protects not only the right to harbor religious beliefs inwardly and secretly,” but also “protect[s] the ability of those who hold religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life.” Indeed, “[r]espect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic[.]”
Happy Friday! In haste! In ultra haste! For I gotta do this and that and these and those, and then get a kid to a party and go to adoration. Here’s what we ate this week:
Oh, but first, last Friday Corrie made her first pie dough. She is a giant rhubarb fiend and wanted to make something with it, and everybody should know how to make a pie.
includes freezing the butter for at least 20 minutes, then grating it into the flour. Which is great work for people who enjoy complaining.
And then you scrumble it around with your fingers until it’s just barely incorporated, then sprinkle cold water on top and encourage it to become a ball.
SATURDAY Leftovers and hot pretzels (?)
Strawberry rhubarb pie with streusel topping
Saturday we had our usual leftovers, and honestly I was pretty sick that night, which leads me to believe we need to be a little careful about how long we keep leftovers around. Duh.
But anyway, Corrie picked some rhubarb from the garden, washed and cut up a bunch of strawberries, and made the pie filling using this recipe.
Then she rolled out the pie dough on parchment paper and laid it in the pan, and trimmed the edges
filled the pie shells
and then opted for a streusel topping. She had wanted to make a woven crust, but we ran out of pie dough. So for the streusel topping, we just took a package of yellow cake mix, poured a stick of melted butter on top, and scrunched it into big crumbs, and sprinkled those on top of the fruit filling.
baked ’em and they were great! Very successful.
and you can trust that she really truly did it herself, because boy did she get mad at me when I tried to help. This is the secret to raising independent children: They get mad at you.
SUNDAY Beach day (PBJ for me)
Sunday I was really feeling terrible, so Damien took the kids to Hampton by himself. We’d been planning this beach trip forever, so even though the forecast was for rain, they forged ahead.
Hardly anybody else was there, because honestly the water is pretty dang cold even on a hot day. The kids did eventually go in the water in their swimsuits, because they are New England kids. Then they went to the arcade, and then to McDonalds. Moe sent me this pic of Corrie waiting for her burger, wearing one of her arcade prizes.
I myself had a PBJ sandwich, which I have once a year or so. Pretty good!
MONDAY Buffalo chicken wraps
So all summer I’ve been telling myself I have two big writing projects, and one was due in July and one was due in August, so as long as I paced myself, it would be okay.
In fact, one was due July 28 and one was due August 1. Also I did not pace myself. So I was not okay. I spent the week writing furiously, and one project turned out really well, and one did not, and also I didn’t finish it. So I am feeling like a giant loser moron, but what are you gonna do.
On the bright side, everybody likes buffalo chicken wraps. I had mine with buffalo chicken, shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, crunchy fried onions, and blue cheese dressing.
That night, I pitted six pounds of cherries, in preparation for some long-anticipated visitors the next day!
When I have a lot of cherries to pit, I always start out by putting them on top of a bottle with a narrow neck, and stabbing the pits out with a chopstick.
After a pound or so, I get annoyed with this technique and just start ripping their hearts out with my fingers, which is honestly just as fast.
I also made two batches of vanilla ice cream. Two eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 cups of heavy cream, and one cup of milk per batch.
Tuesday afternoon our guests arrived! My oldest sister, her son, one of her daughters, and her three kids, whom I have never met! Absolutely lovely kids (ages 3, 2, and 3 months) and we had a really wonderful visit.
Damien smoked three racks of pork ribs, I made a bowl of simple cole slaw, and we had chips and watermelon, and corn grilled in the husk. Absolutely scrumptious.
I never get good pictures of the best foods, because I’m in such a hurry to eat it up. So this is the best pork photo I got, but take my word, it was smoky, spicy, sweet, juicy, and insanely tender.
I bought something called a black watermelon, which turned out to be just a watermelon with a dark green outside, and inside it was extra juicy and had a kind of vanilla taste? Interesting, not outstanding. The kids had fun watching what happens when you offer watermelon to a duck (mayhem).
I didn’t get a pic of the cherry-blueberry crisp with ice cream, but it was yummy. I used this recipe, except I omitted the coconut from the topping. I, uh, made a quintuple recipe.
My nephew, who is a very good sport, especially where goober dogs are concerned, spent the night, and the rest of them stayed in a hotel.
WEDNESDAY Oven fried chicken, raw vegetables, chips, fruit salad
The next day my visiting family had a complicated day of other things to do and places to be, but we saw them again in the afternoon, this time with the addition of another niece I also haven’t seen in quite a while!
raw vegetables, chips, fruit salad (watermelon, strawberry, and mango)
I had been planning mashed potatoes and maybe biscuits, but it was tooooo hot, and a simpler meal was the right call. Nephew spent the night again, and they all left in the morning.
So at one point I said to my niece (remember, she has three kids aged three and under) that she is doing such a great job, and she is such a natural mother. She said, “Oh, well you are seeing me with lots of adults around me to help” — implying that the way she REALLY is as a mother, when she’s alone with the kids, is not so impressive.
Hey! Hey mothers!!! You are supposed to have help! That’s supposed to be the normal thing! Mothers are not supposed to be alone with little kids all day long, doing everything themselves without any other adults! I don’t know what can be done about it, and I sure wish I had had some help myself when I was drowning in babyland. But if that’s you, at least you should know that it’s not how it’s supposed to be, and if you’re struggling, it’s because it’s ridiculously hard. Of course it’s so rewarding and we love our kids so much and we have no regrets, but it’s HARD, and doing it mostly by yourself isn’t what’s best for anyone. So there.
THURSDAY Sloppy Joes, Psych fries, banana splits
Thursday was the day we had the third installment of Kids Make Supper, and Lucy opted to make the crazy stuffed twice-fried pub potatoes they had on Psych, which they’ve been watching this summer. (Which I have never seen, and which turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining show.) I guess they are called “Fries Quatro Queso Dos Fritos,” and I haven’t actually seen the episode, but SOMEBODY ELSE WAS MAKING SUPPER, so I was in favor of it. She found the recipe on Reddit, I think.
Here’s the potatoes with their insides scooped out, stuffed with cheeses:
and I guess you fry them once, and then coat them in something and fry them again?
She forgot to add bacon to the insides, but she did serve them with some kind of peppery sour cream dip.
She wasn’t sure what to make for the main course, but the general vibe seemed to call for Sloppy Joes. Now, Damien and I both grew up avoiding Sloppy Joes with all our might. It was a cafeteria food that you’d see on the weekly menu and decided to bring a bag lunch that day. But I guess Lucy had it at a friend’s house, and was smitten. So I got a few cans of Manwich Sloppy Joe Sauce (HAD TO GO TO THREE STORES FOR THIS DELICACY) which is, as far as I can tell, ketchup. Anyway she fried up some ground beef and mixed in the sauce, and we had kaiser buns.
and I had to admit, it was a . . . .well, it was an insane meal, but actually quite tasty!
I still don’t think I would ever seek out a Sloppy Joe, but it’s not terrible that I know the kids like it, and would be happy to eat it for supper again.
I will be honest, the Psych potato things were kind of underdone, which is an achievement, because of the “twice fried” thing. The concept was there, and they looked good, but the execution was a little off, which is understandable, because it’s an insane recipe. I don’t know if she will make them again, but, hey, KIDS MADE SUPPER.
We don’t usually have dessert during the week (well, unless we have guests), but I suggested banana splits, just because the rest of the meal seemed so absurdly American. So we had chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, topped with something Aldi was calling “Neapolitan bark.”
And that was that!
FRIDAY French toast casserole and eggs?
We have lots of leftover bread in the house, so this seemed wise.
OH it’s so late and I have to go! Goodbye! I love you!
Freeze the butter for at least 20 minutes, then shred it on a box grater. Set aside.
Put the water in a cup and throw an ice cube in it. Set aside.
In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Then add the shredded butter and combine with a butter knife or your fingers until there are no piles of loose, dry flour. Try not to work it too hard. It's fine if there are still visible nuggets of butter.
Sprinkle the dough ball with a little iced water at a time until the dough starts to become pliable but not sticky. Use the water to incorporate any remaining dry flour.
If you're ready to roll out the dough, flour a surface, place the dough in the middle, flour a rolling pin, and roll it out from the center.
If you're going to use it later, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for several months, if you wrap it with enough layers. Let it return to room temperature before attempting to roll it out!
If the crust is too crumbly, you can add extra water, but make sure it's at room temp. Sometimes perfect dough is crumbly just because it's too cold, so give it time to warm up.
You can easily patch cracked dough by rolling out a patch and attaching it to the cracked part with a little water. Pinch it together.
the proportions are flexible here. You can adjust the sugar rub to make it more or less spicy or sweet. Just pile tons of everything on and give it puh-lenty of time to smoke.
Ingredients
rack pork ribs
yellow mustard
Coke
extra brown sugar
For the sugar rub:
1-1/2cupsbrown sugar
1/2cupswhite sugar
2Tbspchili powder
2Tbspgarlic powder
1tspred pepper flakes
1tsppaprika
2Tbspsalt
1Tbspwhite pepper
Instructions
Coat the ribs in yellow mustard and cover them with sugar rub mixture
Smoke at 225 for 3 hours
Take ribs out, make a sort of envelope of tin foil and pour Coke and brown sugar over them. close up the envelope.
so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat
Ingredients
chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
flour
your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
oil and butter for cooking
Instructions
At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.
About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.
While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.
Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.
Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.
Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.
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.
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