What’s for supper? Vol. 156: Cutthroat Fishers
Pretty good week of food! Here’s what we had this week:
SATURDAY
Regular-person tacos
Every once in a while, I like to treat the kids to just regular old tacos with ground beef, orange spice from a little envelope, pre-shredded Mexican-style cheese, and so on. No fish sauce or pickled carrots or Asian pears or microgreen nonsense.
SUNDAY
Drunken noodles with beef
We have taken to watching Cutthroat Kitchen (currently streaming on Hulu) on family laundry-folding night. I love this show. It’s just mean and weird enough to be entertaining, but you also get some good food ideas. Also, Irene has taken to describing anything terrible as “going for more of a rustic feel.” Their favorite episode was the one where that guy made berry muffins that were just a sticky pile of crumbs. They talk about it all the time. The only part I don’t like is where they make the winner do a little money dance at the end, and 99% of them clearly do not want to be dancing for the camera.
Anyway, Damien is a big fan of drunken noodles (which, to my surprise, are not made with alcohol. They are called that because they are so spicy, they make you want to drink a lot), so I figured I would look up the recipe by Jet Tila, who is often a judge on the show. Turns out the recipe I chose is significantly different from what Damien’s been ordering, but he absolutely loved what I came up with. I used beef rather than the shrimp the recipe called for, so I’ll go ahead and rewrite it as I made it. I also chose to make it less spicy than it might have been, because you can always add heat after cooking, but you can’t really take it away. So we just sprinkled some red pepper flakes on top, and that was good, and brought out the other flavors nicely.
There are several steps to this recipe and a certain amount of slicing, but it’s not difficult, and it was so good. Damien and I both found ourselves eating our first helping as quickly as we could so we could get up and get another helping.
Because I used regular basil instead of Thai basil, and I trimmed out the pepper seeds and membranes, it had a slightly Italian taste in combination with the tomatoes. This blended shockingly well with the sweet, spicy Asian sauce. I made a ton of it
and it got gobbled up.
Definitely adding this to the rotation, and I foresee endless variations, too. Next time, I hope I can find wider rice noodles.
MONDAY
Blueberry chicken salad with homemade croutons
Blueberries were on sale, so I chose this always-popular meal. I opted to cook the chicken breast in the Instant Pot with lemon juice, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, which wasn’t the absolute best. Roasted would have been better.
I cut the chicken into chunks and served it over mixed greens with toasted almonds (toast them easily in the microwave for two minutes), feta cheese, diced red onion, the blueberries, and some lovely croutons I made with the mountain of stale hamburger buns I’ve been collecting.
To make croutons, cut the bread into cubes, drizzle them with melted butter, and season them heavily with salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, or whatever else you like. Spread them in a shallow pan and toast them in a 325 oven for half an hour or more, until they are crunchy all the way through.
I had mine with just balsamic vinegar, and it was very good.
TUESDAY
BLTs and tiramisu
Damien made this for his b*rthd*y. Some of the January tomatoes were what Corrie would call “puffetic.”
But most of them were okay, and we had a lovely meal.
Damien made a gigantic tiramisu following this recipe,but he added grated chocolate to the top along with the cocoa powder.
WEDNESDAY
One-pan roasted chicken thighs with balsamic vegetables
A true one-pan dish, none of this “sauté this, then braise that, then toast these, then whirl that through your food processor, reduce, deglaze, make a roux, roll out crust to top, pour into springform pan, steam, release, take it for a nice walk down to the park in a sieve, perform reverse osmosis on the juices and run the resulting curds through your KitchenAid centrifuge, and then simply put in one pan!” stuff. You prep the vegetables, put them in the pan, add balsamic and olive oil, salt and pepper, mix it up in the pan, put the chicken on top of the vegetables which are in the pan, and season the chicken that is in the pan. Then put the pan in the oven. Then get one of your stronger kids to drag it out for you while following her with a camera.
(Actually I made two pans’ worth.)
It turns out so tasty. Not everyone liked all the vegetables, but everyone had something. I made this version with red potatoes, brussels sprouts, a butternut squash, and baby carrots. The vegetables draw up the sauce very nicely and take on a kind of glaze, without you having to do anything but put the pan in the oven and turn it on.
So, the butternut squash has been hanging around my kitchen for a good six weeks now, starting balefully at me and sending out almost-audible hoots of derision. So I showed it! I cut its ends off with my newly-sharpened knife and tossed that sucker in the microwave for three minutes. Then I scooped out the seeds, peeled it, and cut it into chunks.
No, I lied. First I held it against my sinuses for an unseemly amount of time.
I briefly considered sharing this as a tip for other migraine sufferers, but then I remembered what happened last time I shared a picture of myself becoming overly familiar with a vegetable
Tito Edwards unfriended me, that’s what happened. And that’s why I live at the P.O.
Oh, if you’re wondering, it’s totally fine to eat a 6-week-old butternut squash. Keep it in a cool, dry place and don’t let anyone stab it, and they keep for a really long time. In fact, they get sweeter and sweeter as they age, unlike people who live at the P.O.
Hey, who wants to talk about my kitchen ceiling? Nice, isn’t it? I think it’s nice.
THURSDAY
Beef stroganoff
I was under the impression that Damien didn’t like this dish, so I planned it for when he was going to be away covering a meeting. As it turns out, he does like it, and also I decided to go to the town meeting with him, because I like him. So I threw together the stroganoff ludicrously quickly — really, it was like a Betty Boop cartoon, except not horrifyingly sexy — and we all ate at 4:30, then we went to the meeting. Which turned out to be a dud — just another Cranky Yankee night — but we did stop for a couple of pints on the way home.
Oh, here is the strogranoff.
Not much to see, but it was tasty, if a little lacking in creaminess. I forgot to buy sour cream, so I used Greek yogurt, which should have worked, except I didn’t really have enough. It really was still tasty, though! I can’t quite bring myself to write up a recipe card for this, but the basic idea is:
Chop up a bunch of onions and fry them in oil, then add a bunch of ground beef and cook it up in the onions, crumbling it up into bits. Then glug in a ton of red wine and a huge heap of sliced mushrooms, plus salt and pepper. Then stir in a big tub of sour cream or Greek yogurt. Serve over egg noodles.
In closing: The decision to grab a little bit more cold stroganoff before heading to bed at 1 a.m. after a delayed bedtime due to diabetic nuttiness? Turned out to be a poor decision. Which I learned and re-learned repeatedly throughout the night.
FRIDAY
Tuna burgers, fries, broccoli
One of the kids surprised me by actually asking for tuna burgers. Or maybe just mentioning tuna, and me figuring out a way to make it into something the kids won’t enjoy.
Drunken noodles with beef (after Jet Tila)
This is a less-spicy version. For more heat, use jalapenos or other hotter peppers, leave the membranes and seeds in and add red pepper flakes before or after cooking.
Ingredients
Sauce:
- 6 Tbsp soy sauce
- 6 Tbsp oyster sauce
- 9 Tbsp fish sauce
- 6 Tbsp sugar
- 2 Tbsp Sriracha or hot sauce
- 2 Tbsp minced garlic
- 6 oz fresh basil leaves in a chiffonade (sliced into thin ribbons)
- 30+ oz wide rice noodles
canola oil for cooking
- 8 Tbsp minced garlic
- 8 eggs beaten
- 6 serrano chiles or jalapeños, seeded and sliced thin
- 2 lg onions, sliced thin
- 4 oz fresh basil, roughly chopped
- 2-3 pints grape tomatoes, halved
- 3-4 lbs roast beef, sliced as thinly as possible
Instructions
-
Cook the rice noodles according to directions, and set them aside.
Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.
Heat a very large sauté pan with oil and brown the minced garlic. Add chiles and beaten eggs, and scramble in the pan until the eggs are in cooked bits.
Add onion and sliced beef and cook until beef is barely browned.
Add cooked noodles, tomatoes, chopped basil leaves, and sauce.
Keep stirring and combining until everything is saucy and hot. Serve immediately.
One-pan balsamic chicken thighs and vegetables
A true one-pan dish that works well with lots of variations of seasonings and vegetables
Ingredients
- 18 chicken thighs with skin and bone
- 1 butternut squash in cubes
- 3 lbs red potatoes in cubes
- 1 lb baby carrots
- 2 lbs brussels sprouts, halved
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
- salt (preferably kosher)
- pepper
- oregano
- basil
Instructions
-
Grease a large, shallow pan. Preheat the oven to 400.
-
Mix together the olive oil and vinegar with a tablespoon of salt and pepper. Spread the vegetables in the pan, pour the mixture over them, and stir them up to coat, then spread them out again.
-
Lay the chicken breasts on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle more salt and pepper, basil and oregano over the whole pan.
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Cook for 30 minutes or more, until vegetables and chicken are cooked through and chicken skins are golden and crisp.
-
If necessary, broil for a few minutes to add a little char.
Tuna burgers
Ingredients
- 1 can tuna
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs
- 1 egg, beaten
- seasonings, minced onion, etc.
- oil for frying
Instructions
-
Drain the tuna.
-
Mix tuna thoroughly with egg, bread crumbs, and whatever seasonings you like. Form into two patties.
-
Heat oil in pan. Fry tuna patties on both sides until golden brown.
Cave Pictures is an intriguing new comic publisher with plenty on its mind
Like many parents, I have mixed feelings about comics and graphic novels, especially adaptations. I want my kids (and the rest of civilization) to be able to read through a block of text without pictures to help them along; and I want them to read “the real thing,” not a watered-down version of a classic. But more and more, I see that, while many comics are still lurid and vapid, many are not. We’re firmly in an age of comics with something on their mind. They’re not just colorful, easy-to-digest substitutions for books; they’re something different — or at least they can be. Ben Hatke‘s and Mike Mignola’s work spring to mind.
The other week, I stumbled across an ad for a serialized comic adaptation of The Light Princess. Although I adore the original illustrations by Maurice Sendak, I have always wished someone less wordy than George MacDonald had written his wonderful stories, especially for reading out loud. So I dug around to see what else the publisher, Cave Pictures Publishing, is up to.
It turns out they’re new, and The Light Princess is one of five comic titles debuting this year
— and holy cow, it’s a diverse line-up, to say the least. There’s also “Appalachian Apocalypse” by Billy Tucci (Shi), Ethan Nicolle (Axe Cop), and Ben Gilbert:
After the ancient staff of Lilith, mother of the damned, reanimates the dead, country boy J.B. and his estranged upper-crust wife Anne must come together to stop the zombie hordes and save the people of Appalachia.
and “The Blessed Machine,” a dystopian sci fi series by Jesse Hamm (Batman ’66) and Mark Rodgers
Locked in a city deep within the earth, a courageous few struggle to reach the surface, fighting not only against the minds and flesh of men but against their man-made minders.
Other titles:
THE NO ONES by Jim Krueger with art by Well-Bee
A team of superheroes, blinded by their fame and self-promotion, are forced to reckon with their destructive choices when a twist of fate erases them from both history and present memory.
WYLDE by Daniel Bradford
When a mysterious masked lawman partners with a suspicious sheriff to save his frontier town from an invasion of the undead, the sheriff will learn ancient secrets of the lawman’s past and the power of self-sacrifice. In saving his town, he will save himself.
Okay, sure!
Cave Pictures (tagline: “Great comics for the spiritually inclined”) says it intends to deliver more than mindless, two-dimensional entertainment. They’re not religious, but they hope to engage readers who thirst after spiritual meaning.
My take? I’m intrigued. The artwork and storytelling is skillful and lively, and they do seem dedicated to presenting work that’s layered, but driven primarily by story and art, not message.
The first issue of The Light Princess (the only title I previewed) is a little unsettling. For reasons that are not yet clear, they’ve invented some odd backstory for the princess’ parents
but I’m suspending judgment until future issues. The artwork leans fairy-tale-ish, and so far lacks some of the weird, jarring edge inherent in the story; but this may change as the plot progresses (the first issue ends just as the baby first loses her gravity). The overall look is professional and effective, sometimes quite lovely. The lettering occasionally gets overly pictorial and almost too ornate to read in a few places, but not disastrously so;
and the story moves along briskly and keeps the reader’s attention. In short: Not perfect, but intriguing, and definitely a publisher to watch. I’ll be asking my librarian to look into carrying these titles, and I’m more curious now to look into the other stories, which are all original, not adaptations.
Here’s a page from their free comic that frames their mission, retelling Plato’s allegory of the cave:
Earlier this week, I chatted with the president, Mandi Hart, who “manages all the moving parts of Cave.” Hart has a background in filmmaking, but got a law degree to help her manage the legal and logistical aspects of running a creative business. She soon came to realize that investors would be willing to finance a company that published what their children and grandchildren loved, and that meant comics.
Here’s our conversation:
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You quote David Foster Wallace saying “Everybody worships. The only chance we get is what to worship. ” What do you think people worship?
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It could be any number of things. In our culture today, there’s a lot of self-worship, influenced by entertainment media and also by advertising. It can be very toxic to make yourself the center of the universe. Across all of our titles, we’re trying to incorporate themes like: Is there more to life than yourself, than the material world?
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The key theme in the The Blessed Machine is about whether there is more to the world than the characters inhabit, than what they can see — and more than what the machines they depend on for life are telling them exist.
The key theme in the The Blessed Machine is about whether there is more to the world than the characters inhabit, than what they can see — and more than what the machines they depend on for life are telling them exist.
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Is it possible to live without faith in anything? We all have to exercise faith in something. It’s a question of where: Where are we going to invest that faith?
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The Light Princess is actually a little more overtly Christian than the even book itself is. Is there some particular faith background from which you’re approaching these titles?
The Light Princess is actually a little more overtly Christian than the even book itself is. Is there some particular faith background from which you’re approaching these titles?
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Across all our titles, we’re not coming from any particular faith background. We like to think of our titles as “faith-acceptable” or “faith-aligned,” not promoting any particular perspective. We’re raising universal questions about meaning and moral responsibility.
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As a Catholic, I often come across creative people of faith who say they want to do just that, but they end up producing preachy, heavy-handed stuff. Does that worry you?
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We definitely try to avoid using the art form a tool. We are really going for stories that have a lot of layers of meaning. One of the primary gatekeepers is the artists we work with. They all have extensive experience and a great reputation; they’ve won awards, and they have developed their own creative content. So that, for us, has been one of the primary mechanisms to use: That we’re hiring writers and illustrators who do really solid work and have been recognized in the industry.
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For The Light Princess, it being an adaptation, George MacDonald already imbued it with so many layers of meaning, so that helped us avoid the least common denominator. For the other stories, on the whole, it’s wholly original content. The creators that came up with those titles originated the ideas, and came at their stories as storytellers, not with a message or an agenda.
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One of our illustrators was talking about his universal approach to his own art. He said it’s much more about raising questions than about providing answers. That’s emblematic of the work we do. We want to start conversations, not feed anyone a particular message.
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The Light Princess is an adaptation, but the rest of the first round of titles are all original stories. Will you do other adaptations of books in the future?
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I can’t disclose which one yet, but we will be doing another George MacDonald adaptation. George MacDonald is in the public domain, but we are open to exploring doing other copyrighted work.
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Of all the titles coming out, which is your personal favorite?
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They’re all so different. I have a favorite aspect of each of the different titles. In our sci fi title, The Blessed Machine, it’s about a dystopian future, but it’s also a lot of fun. In Appalachian Apocalypse, certain moments in the dialogue and artwork are such a great laugh release, but at the same time, there’s a serious subject matter to be tackled. What are the implications of an army of undead attacking us? In The Light Princess, one of my favorite things is that the artwork is just stunning. It’s been such a pleasure to see how they’ve rendered this story. The use of color, light, and texture has been really beautiful. In the superhero series, what I love most is the setup. Without giving too much away, the six superheroes have been part of a team, but there’s a twist of fate, and they become pitted against each other. They all face a very stark moral choice, kind of a fork in the road, and half go one way, and half go the other. I love the way the author, Jim Krueger, has developed the story and characters for the quandary they find themselves in.
***
Each series is on a monthly release. The first issues of Appalachian Apocalypse will be out in late January, The Light Princess in February, and The Blessed Machine in March.
Hart welcomes questions from readers. You can follow Cave Pictures Publications on social media:
NH schismatics, Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, can no longer offer sacraments
The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, an ultra-traditionalist, schismatic, antisemitic group based in Richmond, NH, has been placed under sanctions by Bishop Peter Libasci after rejecting repeated chances to come back into compliance with Church teaching.
Damien Fisher (who is my husband) reported in the Union Leader that the Slaves can no longer offer the sacraments at their compound and cannot describe themselves as Catholic. These sanctions “could be ratcheted up if the group does not comply with orders by church leaders, especially orders to stop preaching the doctrine that only Catholics go to heaven.”
The Vatican ordered them two years ago to stop teaching a strict, literalist interpretation of the idea that there is no salvation outside the Church.
According to the Union Leader story:
In recent years, Manchester Bishop Peter Libasci has allowed a priest in good standing from another diocese to minister to the Slaves and their congregation, celebrating Mass in the traditional Latin rite, and administering other Catholic sacraments. According to a statement released Monday by the Diocese, the Slaves have used that allowance to imply they were an approved Catholic organization.
They were offered several chances since 2016 to come into compliance to remain in the good graces of the Church, but they persisted in disobeying the diocese, in presenting themselves as an independent congregation, and in teaching false doctrine as Catholic.
The group has been in Richmond since the mid 80’s, and they operate the St. Benedict Center, a school, as well as publications, a radio show, and websites. They are an offshoot of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart in Still River, MA, which was founded by Fr. Leonard Feeney. Fr. Feeney was excommunicated in 1953 after he persisted in teaching that no one can be saved if they are not baptized Catholic; but he made a deathbed conversion and died in communion with the Church. Many of his followers do not acknowledge that he repented of his heretical beliefs, and the Richmond group is one of the most radical splinter groups to form from the original Fenneyites.
The St. Benedict Center in Still River is not affiliated with the Richmond group, and is in full communion with the Church.
In 1958, Feeney wrote that “the Jewish race constitutes a united anti-Christian bloc within Christian society, and is working for the overthrow of that society by every means at its disposal.”
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the leader of the Richmond Group, Louis Villarrubia, who calls himself “Brother Andre Marie,” stated in 2004:
“If anti-Semitism means opposing the Jews on religious matters, opposing the Zionist state in Palestine (as St. Pius X did), or opposing the Jewish tendency to undermine public morals (widely acknowledged by Catholic writers before the present age of PC [political correctness]), then we could rightly be considered such.”
The SPLC has classified the Slaves as a hate group. It says that Richmond Selectman Doug Bersaw, also member of the Slaves, sometimes known as Brother Anthony Mary, is a Holocaust denier. The SPLC quotes Bersaw as saying:
“There’s a lot of controversy among people who study the so-called Holocaust. There’s a misperception that Hitler had a position to kill all the Jews. It’s all a fraud. Six million people… it didn’t occur.”
In 2009, the Slaves were sanctioned by the diocese of Manchester for their antisemitic teachings, and have since made those ideas less prominent.
According to the Union Leader story, the diocese of Manchester released a statement saying:
“Catholics are not permitted, under any circumstances, to receive the sacraments of the church at the Saint Benedict Center, and its associated locations, nor should they participate in any activity provided by this group or school.”
The diocese is eager to provide a spiritual home for the congregation left without sacraments because of their leaders’ rebelliousness. According to the UL:
[T]he diocese is instituting a sanctioned Latin Mass for people to attend at St. Stanislaus Parish in Winchester.
Photo: Damien Fisher
Do we ask priests for things only they can offer?
A priest who’s too busy to focus on the sacraments is either a priest who’s squandering his vocation, or a priest whose vocation is being squandered.
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image by kisistvan77 via Pixabay (Creative Commons)
Protected: Episode 63: There can be only one hole in the head
What’s for supper? Vol. 156: New youd, new food!
Hey! If your New Year’s resolution was to cook more, you probably won’t regret it. Over two years ago, I was utterly sick and tired of making the same old things over and over again. So I decided to try one new recipe (almost) every week, and to serve nothing else more than twice a month. That gives me plenty of room to serve frozen chicken nuggets or hot dogs, if that’s what the day calls for; but I don’t want to die of boredom when I look at the menu, either. The planning sucks, but it makes the rest of the week so much easier. So every Friday, I share our weekly menu, with photos and recipe cards or links for meals that aren’t self-explanatory.
If some meal doesn’t work out or someone’s unhappy with what I’m serving, it’s fine, because next week will probably work out better. The kids’ palates have expanded a lot (my basic approach to kids and food here), and I don’t feel that constant dread and misery around dinner, like I used to.
Someday, oh someday, I will organize these Friday food posts into an ebook or at least a format that’s easier to search. I know there are at least a couple of readers who follow my Friday food posts and just make whatever we make, which tickles me pink! I will give you a lot of variety, and I’m always thrilled to hear other people’s weekly menus, too. I care more about food than a lot of people, so I put a lot of effort into it. But just go ahead and try some new foods. Food is nice.
Here’s what we had this week.
I managed to get through the most bakiest time of the year baking hardly anything at all (the kids produced cookies nonstop, though). I did throw together a longed-for coffee cake on Sunday, because I felt bad we didn’t go ice skating. It turned out fine, and this recipe was very easy, with a pleasant creamy vanilla taste. Next time I will put a layer of streusel topping halfway up the batter, though, instead of just on top.
We also spent our Christmas money from my father at the local book store, according to tradition. It wasn’t cute or anything when Corrie wanted to pay for hers all by herself, with her own money.
She got a Ruby and Max book and a Frances book.
SATURDAY
Hamburgers and chips
I can’t even bring myself to sift through the calendar and figure out if Saturday was after Christmas or somehow during Christmas or three years ago or maybe Halloween or what. We definitely had hamburgers, which Damien made.
SUNDAY
Roast beef sandwiches, steak fries
The price of chuck went even further down, somehow, so I picked out another couple of likely-looking meaty slabs and Damien cooked them up. He crusts them heavily with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano, then browns them up in a heavy pot in olive oil, then puts them in a 325 oven for about an hour and forty minutes. Then he lets them rest a bit and slices them up. And brings me little bits of roast beef crust to taste while I sit on the couch.
We served the meat with provolone and horseradish sauce on rolls which I refer to as “long boys” to irritate my teenagers. Why did no one tell me of the wine-like pleasure of deliberately using outdated slang to irritate your teenagers? It’s grrrrrreat!
MONDAY
New Year’s Eve Sushi Party!
And also various fancy cheeses and crackers and chocolates and stollen and such from Aldi.
Okay, let’s see: for the DIY sushi, I made some expensive rice, and we also had sliced mango and cucumber and avocado, fresh tuna, seaweed salad, roe, spicy sesame seeds, shrimp, and wasabi sauce, soy sauce, pickled ginger, and some kind of lime sauce, I don’t know what it was, and plenty of nori for rolling, and everyone just did their thing.
I didn’t really put my heart into it this year, but it was still nice. I used this recipe for the sushi rice, and we just sort of made sushi handfuls.
Nobody’s technique really exceeded Corrie levels, but it was fun!
I had also grabbed some cleaned calamari for the sushi, but when it came down to it, I had zero desire to batter fry anything, and you really don’t want raw calamari in your sushi. So Damien cut it into rings and sautéed it in garlic, olive oil, and lemon, and we just ate it. Yum.
Oh, and we had cannoli, which Lena gamely took over, with some alert uniformed attendants to help.
Cannoli shells were impossible to find on C*l*mb*s D*y, but they were selling them now, so we took our chance. I forgot to get cherries or chocolate for them, but we had no end of sprinkles in the house. She mixed the ricotta cheese with confectioner’s sugar and a little almond extract. Perfect.
Oh, and we had some crostini with sour cream, smoked salmon, and caviar. Because it was a hard year, dammit.
Oh dammit, we had raw oysters, too!
I’m going through my photos and starting to doubt our sanity. That was a lot of food. Well, it was a hard year. Salut!
Since this is a food blog, here is a short video of Corrie saying “yellow umbrella.”
We watched Horsefeathers. Benny doesn’t remember the Marx Brothers from last New Year’s Eve, and she could not believe how rude they were.
TUESDAY
Chicken shawarma
Birthday! And now there were five teenagers in the Fisher household once more. She requested root beer floats for dessert (she’ll have a party with friends and cake later).
I just noticed someone is about to flick her head while she blows out her birthday candle. This is not a Fisher birthday tradition; my kids are just jerks.
For the shawarma, I bought boneless, skinless chicken thighs, which is by far the best and easiest kind of chicken for this dish. I’ll put the recipe card at the end. This time, I spread the chicken and onions in two pans, so one would brown up faster than the other, and when the hotter pan got a little charred, I mix it all together in one pan and chopped it into morsels, then slid it back in the oven for another five minutes.
We had it with copious olives, tomatoes, cukes, pita bread, feta cheese, parsley, and plenty of yogurt sauce (Greek full fat yogurt with lemon juice and minced garlic). So good. SO GOOD.
WEDNESDAY
Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins
Back to school already! Several of the kids have been begging for this meal, and I like it, too. Damien’s car has been in the shop forever, so he’s been using my car and, more often than not, doing all my afternoon driving. It was very difficult to stay at home in my pajamas and make soup and muffins with Corrie and listen to Cuban music while it rained outside, but I was brave.
I once again forgot to buy mushrooms, but it’s still a very hearty and tasty soup, with beef, carrots, onions, tomatoes, garlic, and barley, with a rich, peppery broth made of beef stock and red wine.
Recipe card at the end. I made it in the Instant Pot, but it’s just as easy to do on the stovetop, as long as you leave at least forty minutes for the barley to cook all the way.
The muffins (recipe card at end) once again turned out tender and pleasant. I had a bunch of walnuts left over from not baking anything, so I sprinkled them on the tops of the muffins.
THURSDAY
Vaguely Vietnamese tacos with ginger pear slaw
This is a Sam Sifton recipe, and I followed it pretty closely, so I won’t bother re-writing it as a new recipe. You make up a simple sauce and then just throw it in a slow cooker with a hunk of pork, cook all day, then shred the pork, pitch it back in the sauce, and serve it on tortillas with an asian slaw and fresh cilantro. Remarkably unfussy for a Sifton recipe. The sauce is sesame oil, diced onion, minced garlic, minced ginger, hoisin sauce, fish sauce, and sriracha sauce. It absolutely smelled like feet, you betcha. Totally worth it.
The only changes I made were that I couldn’t find my sesame oil, so I used canola; and I couldn’t find pork shoulder, so I used a pork butt. I let it cook for five hours. Next time I will start sooner and let it cook longer, so it gets even shreddier. I had to wrestle with it a bit; but the taste was definitely there, verrrrrrry savory and pungent and gingery.
Oh, and I ran out of cucumbers, so I made the slaw with just carrots, cabbage, and Asian pear, with a simple dressing of rice vinegar, oil, sriracha sauce, and fresh ginger.
The Asian pear was SPENSIVE, my gosh. I don’t know if it wasn’t properly ripe, but I was not wowed by the taste. Cross between a Bartlett pear and a water chestnut, I guess.
Damien LOVED this dish. I thought it was pretty good. The individual elements were not amazing, but together, they did do something special.
I warmed up the tortillas, which I don’t usually bother doing, and that made a difference, too. About 20 minutes in the oven in tin foil.
Oh, so to process fresh ginger, you peel it with the edge of a spoon before dicing or grating. Just in case you don’t know that tip.
FRIDAY
Here is my menu blackboard:
So that’s great. Maybe I was counting on the world coming to and end before I had to make supper on Friday.
Okay, now the recipe cards!
Chicken shawarma
Ingredients
- 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
- 4-5 red onions
- 1.5 cups lemon juice
- 2 cups olive oil
- 4 tsp kosher salt
- 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
- 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
- 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces
Instructions
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Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
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Preheat the oven to 425.
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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.
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Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
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Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.
Yogurt sauce
Ingredients
- 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
- 5 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 3 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)
Instructions
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Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc.
Beef barley soup (Instant Pot or stovetop)
Makes about a gallon of lovely soup
Ingredients
- olive oil
- 1 medium onion or red onion, diced
- 1 Tbsp minced garlic
- 3-4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
- 2-3 lbs beef, cubed
- 16 oz mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
- 6 cups beef bouillon
- 1 cup merlot or other red wine
- 29 oz canned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
- 1 cup uncooked barley
- salt and pepper
Instructions
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Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened.
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Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.
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Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley.
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If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes.
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Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary.
Pumpkin quick bread or muffins
Makes 2 loaves or 18+ muffins
Ingredients
- 30 oz canned pumpkin puree
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup veg or canola oil
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 3.5 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- oats, wheat germ, turbinado sugar, chopped dates, almonds, raisins, etc. optional
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans or butter or line 18 muffin tins.
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In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients except for sugar.
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In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture and mix just to blend.
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Optional: add toppings or stir-ins of your choice.
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Spoon batter into pans or tins. Bake about 25 minutes for muffins, about 40 minutes for loaves.
Must we seek out suffering to please God?
Fairly often, Catholics will shove the suffering soul down the path of more pain, urging her to offer it up, be strong, seek holiness. They subtly chide her for even looking for rest and healing, as if holiness can’t be reached through simple obedience, but must be sought out through self-immolation — the more wretched, the better.
The womb of the world is a private place
Somehow at one and the same time, He is the flower of all creation, the open, shining blossom of the Father’s love, and also the tightly furled kernel of blessed humanity, ready to become anything we need Him to be.
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image: Detail of Photo by Charles Deluvio 🇵🇭🇨🇦 on Unsplash
Happy new year! You’re going to die.
[This essay was originally published at the National Catholic Register in 2015.]
Happy new year! You’re going to die. And my five-year-old can’t wait.
It’s possible that this eagerness comes because I did a little bit too good of a job of helping her get over her fears about death, which were coming to haunt her every evening when she got tired. But when you’re dealing with a weeping kindergartener, the right choice is to err on the side of reassurance.
It’s a difficult balance to strike, when our kids worry about death. We want to comfort and reassure them (and stop the howling!), but at the same time, we don’t want to lie to them, and give the impression that there’s a guaranteed happy ending on everyone’s final page. Death may be a beginning, not an end — a doorway to eternity, not a trap door to oblivion — but it’s still an evil thing, something which was never meant to be in the world.
So to my daughter, I spoke mainly about the joy of the Second Coming; about the glory of our resurrected bodies; about the rejoicing as every wound will be healed, every sorrow erased, every loss restored. She and her sisters now hold enthusiastic conferences about how great it’s going to go be to see their grandfather again, to never get a sore throat again, to be able to stand on their hands as long as they want to. As long as no one’s going to go marching off to the crusades to hasten their entrance into heaven, I’m not too worried.
Soon enough, she will figure out soon enough that if death is a door, it’s still a fearful one. She will understand that yes, it really is possible for people to decide to irrevocably turn away from the good, to shut out forever God and all the good, true, and beautiful things that proceed from Him.
And she will figure out that, even if we don’t choose Hell, the end of our earthly life is often an ugly thing.Those commercials showing old men and old women ending their lives in a golden glow of comfort, security, and contentment? They are lying, trying to sell something. Almost nobody ends that way, and most of us die surrounded by pain and sorrow (if not our own, then our families’). Death is not the final word. But it is evil, all the same.
My daughter will realize this soon enough, in her own time. In the mean time, I’m telling her the brightest version of something that is true, and something that we all need to remember: that the best way to deal with death and the afterlife is to remember, always, that it’s our behavior right now that decides which path we’re on. It’s a good thing to spend some time thinking about death, not to terrify ourselves or to revel in dark things, but to shed some light on our present choices.
This is what the Pope was saying in his New Year’s homily, which he used
to stress life’s fleetingness.
The spiritual leader said, “How we like to be surrounded by so many fireworks, seemingly beautiful, but which in reality last only a few minutes.” …
New Year’s … is a time to reflect on our mortality, “the end of the path of life.”
A few secular folks will no doubt snicker over this dour, killjoy message that only a Catholic could love; but even most secular people should know better. What better time than New Year’s Day to remember that there’s really no point in making merry now — no point in making resolutions now — unless our future matters? And why would our future matter if our present life isn’t significant?
In other words, there is no gross, unfathomable divide between who we are now and what eternity holds for us. The very first thing we learn about ourselves from the Catechism is why we are here. I remember the sweet, profound formula: we are here to know God, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. It’s all part of one continuous story.
Death is an evil chapter, but it is by no means the final one. And so it makes good sense, while we are alive, still thinking, still choosing, still setting our course, to write the story of our lives like a good author: with some plan in mind. The details and the characters need to work themselves out, but the major plot points ought to be settled ahead of time.
***
Image: AnonymousUnknown author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons