Author: simchajfisher

Happy birthday, Chico Marx! I’m going out to arrange your bail.

Today is Chico Marx’s birthday. Born in 1887(!), top height 5’6″, greatest phony Italian accent ever mysteriously assumed by a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn.

By most accounts, he was as breezy and confident in real life as he was in the films. Christened Leonard, the oldest of the five Marx brothers, he picked up the 1920’s slang nickname “Chicko” (pronounced “chick-o”) because of his penchant for “chicken chasing,” meaning pretty much what you see in the movies: He liked to chase-a da wimmin.

If you’d rather preserve your impression of Chico as a loveable scamp, please do not Google “Chico Marx Tallulah Bankhead.” Someone once asked his first wife why she put up with all his outrageous philandering for so many years, and she answered that she shouldn’t; but when he would walk in the room and turn those brown eyes on her, she went weak in the knees every time.

Why is he Italian? No one is really sure. Reportedly, he always had a knack for accents, which he used as camouflage to keep various ethnic gangs from beating him up.

Here is one of the greatest monologues of all time in any medium in all of history. I won’t set it up, because the only context is: This is Chico Marx.

He would have been 130 years old today! God rest his soul.

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Image by Insomnia Cured Here via Flickr (Creative Commons)

6 sermons I could do without

I have endless tolerance for boring sermons, weird sermons, silly sermons, scary sermons, tiresome sermons, corny sermons, uninspired sermons, irrelevant sermons, rambling sermons, goofy sermons, and sermons that make me wonder which will come first, the end of the homily or sweet, sweet death.

But I don’t complain! Most of the time. I do, however, have a short list of things I could do without, which I offer out of sheer, self-giving generosity, as your respectful daughter in the Faith.

Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.

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Image: By BPL (originally posted to Flickr as Preaching) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

It was a beautiful confession

On Saturday, we went to confession. Mine was a pretty standard operation: “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last confession. I did that thing I always do, and that other thing I always do. I also did that other thing I always do, except more so than usual. And I stopped doing that thing I usually do, but then I started again.  And I was mean on the internet. For these and all my sins, I am truly sorry.”

And the priest said what this particular priest always says: “Thank you for that beautiful confession.” He says this when I have a long and sordid list, or a short and sordid list, or when he can barely understand me because my nose is running from the sordidness of it all. The point is, I am not aware of ever having made a confession that any normal human being would consider “beautiful.”

But the confessional is not a normal place. It’s the one place that no one would ever go for normal, worldly reasons. No penitent goes to confession to get ahead in life, or to make money, or to get a full belly, or to impress anyone; and no priest goes to confession to be amused or entertained. It’s where we go to unload our miseries, to show our wounds and our infections, to take off the disguises that make us appear palatable to each other.

So, not beautiful. No, not especially.

Or is it? If the ugliness, the squalor, the sordidness, and the running nose were all that happened inside a confessional, then it really would be an ugly place — just a latrine, a ditch, a sewer. But of course, the part where we lay out our sins is only the first part.

What happens afterward is more obviously beautiful. The priest reaches out and picks up the ugly little load you’ve laid in front of him. And right then and there, he pours the living water over it until the parts that are worth saving are healthy and whole again, and the parts that cannot be salvaged have been washed away entirely. What is useless is gone; what was dead is alive again.

This is beautiful!

And the beauty of absolution does one of those neat Catholic tricks where eternal things reach back in time and impart beauty wherever they want, regardless of chronology. The beauty of absolution makes the confession itself beautiful. Even though my sins are ugly, the very fact that I’m bringing them into the confessional has something beautiful in it: the beauty of trust that I will be forgiven; the beauty of believing that something real and life-changing will happen; the beauty of being willing to accept forgiveness even though I know that I don’t deserve it; and the beauty of knowing that, whoever’s turn it is to sit behind the screen, it is really Christ who is waiting to meet me.

If that isn’t beautiful, then nothing is.

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This post originally ran in the National Catholic Register in 2014.

That’s no doppel, that’s my gänger!

Smithsonian Magazine is always up to something interesting. This month, they’re putting together an exhibit of modern people and their 2000-year-old doppelgänger using facial recognition software which

analyzes your face and scans through 123 facial comparison points, such as the bridge of your nose and the shape of your mouth, before matching you with one of 60 Greco-Roman and Egyptian sculptures dating back some 2,000 years.

You can submit your own photo and see what it turns up.

Spotting doppelgängers has been my hobby forever. Sometimes the resemblance is circumstantial, but still compelling:

Sometimes it takes your breath away:

Sometimes you just have to roll with it:

Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper:

And then sometimes you dig deep and then feel bad for going that low:

And sometimes it clarifies a thing or two

as when you realize that your two-year-old daughter actually is Hermes, the god of mischief.

Of course the easiest way to find your doppelgänger is just to grow one yourself:

Oh, what’s that? You want to know who the Smithsonian thinks looks just like me? I’m so glad you asked:

And that’s why I always get pulled out of lines at airports.

What’s for supper? Vol. 74: This is why everyone needs an Instant Pot

Maybe you’re wondering what is the big deal about the Instant Pot. Is it really so great? Why does everyone go so cuckoo over it? Should I be worried that my spouse has bought a pair of spotless doves and is sharpening a knife?

And why does Simcha insist on making these embarrassingly chimpy images with very primitive software and a crying toddler on her lap?

I have the answer.  To the first question, not the second.

It’s because of risotto.

Risotto, risotto, risotto. I love risotto with my whole heart, but it is a pain in the neck to make. Hovering over the pan, stirring, adding in a little broth, stirring, waiting, simmering, waiting, stirring, adding some more broth, stirring, waiting, and it smells divine, but your entire life is passing you by while you wait for it to be done.

In the Instant Pot, it’s easy. Truly easy, and fast. And it tastes just as good as the difficult kind. This, in itself, is a reason to own an Instant Pot. All the other stuff is bonus. Now you know!

Here is the obligatory reminder that all my links to Amazon products are Amazon Associates links, and I get a small percentage of every purchase made using my links. Amazon is restructuring its pay scale soon, to the detriment of people who mostly plug books and toys; so I would be very, very grateful if you could bookmark my link and use it any time you shop on Amazon!

I’m gonna come right out and tell you: we rely on Amazon for our car payments. My husband has a 1.3-hour commute, and absolutely needs a reliable car. So! Please use my links, so my husband doesn’t have to drive to work in the Instant Pot. It’s good, but it’s not that good.

Thank you.

And now, back to risotto.

Last Friday, we had tuna fish patties and butternut squash risotto. I used this butternut squash risotto recipe from Good Housekeeping. I used onions instead of shallots, ground sage instead of fresh, and regular old white rice instead of arborio. It was fabulous. Creamy but not mushy and packed with flavor. Amazing.

I spent a good half hour wandering around the house, taking people by the shoulders, holding them with my glittering eye and quothing at them, “Do you even realize the possibilities?” Risotto with fresh tomatoes. Risotto with bacon. Risotto with scallops or garlicky shrimp. Risotto with asparagus and gorgonzola. Risotto with lemon, mint, and peas. Risotto with hazelnuts. Risotto with saffron and fennel. I don’t even know what fennel is! But I will!

The other reason for having an Instant Pot is because venting the steam is fun. Some days, it is the most fun you will have all day.

***

SATURDAY
Hamburgers, chips

Cousins over again. They responded very positively, with shrieking, to the idea of hamburgers and chips. So let it be written; so let it be done. I had planned sweet peppers and hummus, but there were just too many runny noses and double dippers in the population, so, in the interest of good health, we skipped the veg.

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SUNDAY
Chicken cutlets with basil; mushroom risotto; salad

Farewell to cousins and hello to my parents. Here is my niece with one of her favorite playthings: My father’s beard.

Damien made one of his absolute most magnificent dishes, the late lamented Deadspin’s chicken cutlets. You pound the chicken flat, bread it (Damien used panko crumbs), fry it (Damien used olive oil and butter), then top it with a fresh basil leaf and a slice of cheese (Damien used mozzarella, but provolone is great, too), and ladle some homemade tomato sauce over that.

This meal makes me go absolutely insane. It’s so good, you can’t imagine. As I ate it, I thought of starving people in the third world and then thought, “TOO BAD.” With these chicken cutlets, you could — dare I say it? Rule the world.  

Also, I had some mushroom left over from last week, when I accidentally didn’t make soup. So I went with this mushroom risotto recipe from This Old Gal. This Old Gal discourages using plain old regular mushrooms, but I did it anyway, and it was good. I didn’t have fennel or parsley, so I went with sage again, and really peppered it up. Completely delicious.

***

MONDAY
Leftovers with spaghetti

Damien had made 38 chicken cutlets, so we put the leftovers in a pan, spread the rest of the sauce over it, added a layer of sliced cheese, and warmed it up in the oven, then served it on spaghetti.

There was no leftover risotto because I devoured it for lunch.

I feel like there was salad.

***

TUESDAY
Korean beef bowl; rice; steambed broccoli and cauliflower

I just noticed that I wrote “steambed” instead of “steamed,” but I think the “b” expresses how lightly I didn’t steam them.

Have you tried Korean beef bowl yet? You won’t regret it.

It’s so easy, and it’s just spicy enough to be warming and comforting, without assailing your mouth. Wonderful use for ground beef. Also a wonderful use for immortal zombie scallions, if you happen to have any haunting your kitchen.

I used, you’ll never guess, the Instant Pot for the rice. This really is easier than stovetop rice. It comes out slightly sticky, which we like, and you just put in water, rinse the rice and dump it in, and then press a button and walk away.

Oh, I thought of another advantage for the Instant Pot. InstantPot.com has plenty of useful, simple recipes, like the rice one above. It also has a slew of completely bonkers recipes that were apparently written by a malicious robot who flunked out of ESL. Here is one of my current favorites: Beer Potato Fish!

A photo of something, who knows what?

“The Beer Potato Fish would be a challenge for a non-professional cooker,” it muses, shaking its head in empathy for the old, dark days so tragically rife with amateurish attempts at beer potato fish, “But it is now a different story with Instant Pot Programmable Pressure Cooker.”

It calls for a pound of fish, some oyster flavored sauce, a cup of beer, and a tablespoon of rock candy. Doesn’t that sound tasty? It also instructs you to push the fish button, which does not exist. I suppose someone is making money off this in some way, and I kind of feel like they deserve it.

***

WEDNESDAY
Oven-roasted pork ribs; mashed potatoes; mixed veg

The Instant Pot had acquitted itself so well this week, I thought maybe I’d try one of the many, many pork rib recipes that are available. But then I remembered that I could also sit on the couch and tell my son how to some pork ribs in a 450 oven on a roasting rack with a little salt and pepper, and I knew they would be scrumptious. And so I did, and so they were.

If there’s a better way to prepare pork ribs, I just don’t care.

I also considered making Instant Pot mashed potatoes, but the recipes all looked more complicated than stovetop recipes. So I just went ahead and boiled them in a non-instant pot and mashed them. I left the skin on, which I almost never do. To me, this adds excitement and piquancy. To others, it’s like hanging around with that weirdo who keeps on harping on the idea that, in many regions, apple cores, corn cobs, and chicken bones are considered a delicacy.

The vegetables were that good old supermarket blend of frozen peas, carrots, corn, string beans, and lima beans. This makes me feel six years old, in a good way.

***

THURSDAY
English muffin pizzas

Since our bishop has given us a St. Patrick’s Day dispensation to eat meat on Friday, we did our meatless meal on Thursday. Except I forgot, and had leftover Korean beef bowl for lunch. For my penance, I had massive heartburn all night, and dreamt I was endlessly editing and re-editing a blog post about best and worst dresses of the Oscars; only I had to do it on taped-together paper with sidewalk chalk and then take photos of it with a Kodak disc film camera.

So, I am all caught up on Lent.

***

FRIDAY
Corned beef boiled dinner; Dublin coddle

So, St. Patrick is, like, the second-tier patron of our regional arch-diacistry, or something; and my husband is tremendously Irish, so we prayerfully discerned that have no choice but to eat three different kinds of meat today.

The kids love boiled dinner, so I’ll be cooking up some corned beef with red potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and adorable little onions, and serving it with gobs of mustard, as St. Patrick himself did. It’s how he drove the snakes away.

We’re also trying a new dish, Dublin coddle (recipe from Southeast Missourian, for some reason) which is a nice little thing with bacon, sausage, sweet and russet potatoes, herbs, carrots and apples. No argument from me. The two other recipes on this page actually sound way better. Maybe when I win the lottery.

Nobody likes soda bread, because it is terrible. Last year, I looked up authentic irish desserts, and quickly discovered why people usually just go with, like, brownies with green frosting.

The lady of Medjugorje is not your mother

In the Gospels, she says, “Do whatever He tells you.” In Medjugorje, she snickers and says, “You do you.”

Forty-seven thousand times.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

HOW TO BE A HERO: TRAIN WITH THE SAINTS is fresh, clear, and useful

When Julia Harrell’s new book, How To Be a Hero: Train With the Saints (Pauline Kids, 2017) arrived in the mail, my shoulders slumped for a minute. I just didn’t expect much from it, based on the cover.

Happily, my first impressions were way off!

It’s a manual on the virtues for kids age 9-11 (although I think older kids would benefit from it, as well). In each chapter, Harrell defines a cardinal, theological, or little virtue, gives a short biography of a saint who exemplified that virtue, and ends with a short prayer and a list of questions to elicit further thought about how to apply the virtue to our own lives.

The language is plain and frank, and the ideas are much more challenging than you normally see in a religion book for kids. The saints included are:

Pope Saint John Paul II (prudence)
Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati (justice)
Saints Peter Yu Tae-chol and Agatha Yi (fortitude)
Ven. Matt Talbot (fortitude)

The Children of Fatima (faith)
St. Josephine Bakhita (hope)
B. Chiara Badano (love)

St. Joan of Arc (humility)
Bl. Dina Belanger (obedience)
St. Monica (patience)
St. Charbel Makhlouf (gentleness)

Nice list, right? And not the most obvious match-ups, either (maybe you’d expect to see St. Joan with fortitude, for instance.)

I think the book could have done just as well without the premise that virtues are superpowers that we must master to become heroes, or saints; and the drawn illustrations are lackluster. It does include plenty of black-and-white photographs of the saints, though, and overall, the presentation is brisk and accessible. Here, you can leaf through the book page by page and get an idea of how the content is presented.

We’re taking a break from The How-To Book of the Mass, which we’ve been working our way through verrrrry slowly, and reading a section of How To Be a Hero in the evening now. (I firmly believe it’s better to do even five minutes of reading very often, than to work harder and burn out faster.) I’m dragging in all the kids, including the five teenagers, because the subject matter is presented simply, but it’s not childish.

Very pleased with this book so far. It would make a good Easter gift.

 

Meanwhile, at The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous . . .

Let me give you a little background.

One time, my mother opened the front door to let in a guest. My father darted through the house, opened a window in the back, and jumped out. This qualified as a brilliantly successful social situation, because he did not have to talk to the person he didn’t want to talk to.

One time, they brought a fruit salad to a potluck dinner, but they decided to try some new recipe that included a sort of eggy custard. They said it tasted good, but it looked a lot like someone had just thrown up in a bowl and then added a ladle. No one ate it. Rather than own up to being the ones who brought a basin of puke to the potluck, they just abandoned it and slunk away. It was a nice ladle, too.

So that was how I was raised. When in doubt, run, slink, hide, just get away! And then you can go sit in the bathroom for a while by yourself until you feel better, and then maybe have lunch.

One time, my husband and I went to a wake, and I was eight months pregnant. The widow greeted us at the door and, clasped us warmly by the hands and, in hushed tones, thanked us so much for being there with her on this difficult day. So I responded in un-hushed tones, “I just need to find a bathroom!”

Why did I say this? I do not know. For some reason, my brain reads any kind of social interaction as ULTRA EMERGENCY PANIC TIME, and responds by shooing intense spurts of electrons toward the Inappropriate Response Center, and my mouth opens, and the wrong damn thing comes out, but loud.

It’s not always a catastrophe. Sometimes, I find myself in a social situation and I manage to escape unscathed, and only have to eat a few sandwiches before I’m ready to breathe normally again. Here are a few of my recent social triumphs:

While shopping, spotted another mom from school browsing through produce section; shoved past an old lady who looked like she was planning to pay in nickels, scored that red-headed bagger who does not mess around with eye contact, and was able to scoot away and rocket out of there before other mom even noticed me.

Came face-to-face with that guy who is named either Rick or Rich, and I definitely can’t ask which it is, because I already did that a few months ago, and I can’t remember what he said. So I got right out in front of it and shouted, “HEY, how’s Wendy?” Which was a not-inappropriate thing to say. Wendy is his wife. They just got divorced, actually, come to think of it. Or possibly I just feel like they ought to get divorced. Or possibly Wendy is his dog. But she does still exist, and is absolutely affiliated with Rih in some way, so it was totally normal to ask how she was. High five, Rih.

Ordered food at restaurant and was unexpectedly asked to make choice about salad dressing. Answered in appropriate fashion without stammering, freezing up, or laughing inappropriately. Ended up with very unpleasant salad dressing, but still, the waitress didn’t back away looking nervous and come back with a burly manager for back-up.

Went to party; didn’t cry until was in car.

Went to other restaurant. Waitress said, “Enjoy your food!” Was able to prevent self from responding, “You too!” Did say, “Meh heh heh heh!” like a goat for some reason, but oh well.

Got pulled out of line and received next-level pat down from TSA agent because I was very suspiciously sweating and trembling and my eyes were darting around like someone with explosives strapped to him or herself. Was able to persuade a very skeptical Janiqua that this is just how I am when I have to stand next to people, and if anything was going to explode, it was going to be my bladder because I was too shy to ask anyone where the bathroom was. But, I did not fall down.

Call it a victory and pass the fruit salad.

***

Image: Werwin15 via Flickr (Creative Commons)