Dr. Louise Cowan: A Heart that Sees

Although she smiled warmly and spoke gently (and, if I remember rightly, barely cleared five feet in height!), I was somewhat abashed, not only by her chic southern elegance, but by the dark sunglasses she wore at all times. Dr. Louise suffered from a thyroid disorder which left her nearly blind, and after a series of surgeries, her eyeballs protruded and were discolored, and her face was scarred.

Another student went into her office after me. For several reasons, this girl was on the outs with the community in our small school, and she was difficult to live with.  What private sufferings she endured, I don’t know, and never cared to consider at the time. The young woman said that Dr. Louise talked with her for a while, and then took her sunglasses off, exposing the part of her that she hid from most of the world. I don’t know if they talked about literature at all, or just about life, but the girl came out radiating peace. Dr. Louise did not, I believe, acknowledge such a thing as an “outsider.”

Read the rest at the Register.

What’s for supper? Vol. 12: O mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra

whats for supper

 

We left for Syracuse on Friday around noon. The first thing I did that morning was say, “What kind of paint?”

What kind of paint, that is, did the dog spill, o son who is knocking on my bedroom door first thing in the morning? And was there any possible way I could wait until the sun was up before I got up and started cleaning up the dog paint tracks that covered four rooms as he dashed around in a guilty panic? Was it, perhaps, tempera paint? Or even watercolors?

It was wall paint. Expensive wall paint, which I had been storing in a cabinet, behind which our dog apparently heard a mouse. And there had been damn near a full gallon of this paint left, and the whole can was lying on its side in a giant puddle while the kids stood around in open-mouthed horror.

dog prints 3

dog prints 2

dog prints 1

The way you clean a giant puddle of paint up, by the way, is with a dustpan. You use it like a scoop, and then you sop up the rest with your worst bath towel, and then with a second towel that is wet and soapy. Then baby wipes. You crawl around the house with baby wipes, scrabbling at the floor like an insane woman and thinking, over and over and over again, “He didn’t even catch the mouse. He didn’t even catch the son of a mother-grabbing mouse.”

And I wasn’t even packed yet, for the five-hour-ride I was planning to take with an eight-month-old baby who hates being in her car seat.

We got going kind of late that morning.

But eventually we did get there. I didn’t get much in the way of pictures from the conference, which was wonderful; but here is one of Corrie in the hotel room, trying to figure out how much to tip the pizza guy:

food blog corrie hotel

My legs only look fat in this picture because I have fat legs.

 

SATURDAY

Kids had Chinese food cooked by my wonderful mother-in-law, Helen Mary. In Syracuse, Damien and Corrie and I had a fabulous meal on Friday, hosted by the conference organizers, of zucchini cakes in a spicy sauce, pea and crab risotto, and salmon with mango and asparagus. The lunch served at the conference itself was really nice, too. Grilled chicken on greens with apple and almonds, potato salad, and a scrumptious chocolate mousse with raspberries. The presentation was just gorgeous, and everything was very fresh.

I mention this because, if you’ve ever been to a women’s conference, you may or may not have found yourself muttering, “Well, I guess I came here to feed my soul, after all, but still . . . ”

 

SUNDAY

Got home just before dinner; picked up some Aldi pizzas.

They are good.

 

MONDAY

Hot dogs; chips; ice cream sandwiches we forgot to tell them they could eat on Sunday

Hero mother.

TUESDAY

I don’t even remember. I did finally get around to roasting all those pumpkin seeds. It’s tragic that we only get these once a year.

food blog pumpkin seeds

In Rome, many of the bars serve little bowls of pumpkin seeds for free. I had it in my head that there was a funny Italian phrase about pumpkin seeds, but instead I found this:

O mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra: You eat this soup or you jump out the window.

This, friends, is what you call “foreshadowing.”

 

Then came the muffins.

 

WEDNESDAY

Turkey meatball soup; pumpkin muffins

I had signed up to bake 48 pumpkin muffins for a school fundraiser. I chose an easy recipe, made sure I had all the ingredients on hand, put several reminders into my online calendar, and preened myself on having a special baked goods carrying case for just such an occasion.  I used to bake all the time, and would bring in fruit kabobs cut into heart shapes for Valentine’s Day parties, and cupcakes topped with rose buds cunningly fashioned out of fruit roll ups. I recently made a Cinderella coach out of bread and stuffed with onion dip for a princess party, and when my kids want a cake with a three-dimensional volcano spurting candy fire in one corner and stegosaurus taking a cooling drink from a pool made of blue Jell-o in the other, I do not bat an eye, but I smile, and I make with the dinosaur cake.

So a bunch of muffins? No sweat, daddy-o. I could make them with my eyes closed.

Well, the muffins.

Proceeded.

To ruin.

My life.

It’s hard to even describe how this happened, but this is pretty much what it looked like:

I feel like I have described this pumpkin bread recipe as “idiot proof” or “impossible to screw up.” It turns out the exception to this rule is when you . . . well, again, I don’t exactly know what happened, other than that I definitely forgot the baking powder, and I definitely burned the hell out of them, and I am definitely an idiot. And also, there was no food in the house, because we had been gone all weekend. The place was trashed, because we had been gone all weekend. It was raining. There were mice. The baby screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemed whenever I put her down. We had doctor appointments, and drama club, and babysitting. I was trying to save money, so my plan was to “whip up a quick soup with the ingredients I have on hand, after I whip up some muffins.”

And I was just having one of those days where I had idiot hands. The only way you know how to do anything, suddenly, is the idiot way, and you lurch around your idiot kitchen with your idiot brain, like a poorly designed robot set to “IDIOT LEVEL:  HIGH.”

I thought I would salvage things by asking my three-year-old (who may possibly have gotten unjustly yelled at earlier in the day by . . .  somebody) if she wanted to help. She did want to. She wanted to help by anointing all her limbs with flour.

food blog benny flour

When questioned, she explained, “I am not doing anyfing.”

So, did you catch the part where I made a triple recipe (and a single recipe makes two loaves, so this was, like, a bathtub worth of batter) but forgot the baking soda? And then burned it all anyway? Yarr.

food blog burnt muffins

Here are my muffins, school! Now sell them, and make money!

And it took all day. ALL DAY to  make these misbegotten, inedible, gelatinous, pumpkin spice doorstops. (The dog thought they were great.)

But wait, I have to make supper, too, and it’s almost time to go pick up the kids! I shall throw together a soup! What kind of soup? Oh, I don’t know.

I don’t know.

It tasted like hot, angry carrot with a chaser of canola oil.

The good news is, I made TONS of it.

I also made a salad, which they ate. I tried to make the soup nicer by adding some fancy striped noodles we got on sale, but it just kind of made the whole thing sadder, like when the put a festive bow tie on a corpse. One kid complimented me on the soup, saying, “I really like the broth, Mama. It’s so oily, and salty. Nice broth.”

Let us draw a veil over Wednesday.

 

THURSDAY

I consult my meal plan, which I have designed to save myself time and anxiety, and what do I see? This is the day that Idiot Robot has ordained would be Try an Exciting New Recipe Day!  So I took a look at the recipe, which is too spicy for most of the family to eat, and which involves not only ingredients I do not have, but kitchen implements I do not own.  

Right. What’s in the freezer?

On the twelfth day of November, my freezer gave to me:

6 bean burritos,
5 limp taquitos,
4 chicken burgers,
3 mini pizzas,
2 crushed pierogies,
and a lonely miniature chicken pot pie.

I fit them all on two pans, too. Thanks, Tetris!

And yes, I made more pumpkin bread and muffins. With baking soda. I only yelled at everybody a little bit, and it only took about four times as long as it should have. And they turned out fine. See?

food blog good pumpkin bread

Look at that designated baked goods carrying case! Look at it, damn your eyes! *sob*

Oh, so here is my recipe for pumpkin bread. It’s really easy; practically idiot proof, really.

 

FRIDAY

Pepper jack quesadillas; rice.

If you saw me doing anything weird on Facebook on Friday evening, it was because I was drinking a lot. Okay?

O mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra. Run around the house in that, you useless, hairy, muffin stealing son of a bitch.
***
Hey, I’m doing a real link-up again! Click the button to leave a link to your “what’s for supper?” post, and please don’t forget to mention my blog when you’re writing.

 

The hardest part of being a woman

caitlyn jenner

When I was a zygote, I was female. I was as feminine then as I am today at age 40. When I do something — anything at all — I do it as a woman. There is no such thing as me doing something like a man. I’m just me, doing things, and I’m a woman. I’m just me, feeling things. I’m just me, acting and thinking and feeling and behaving like me. And I am a woman.

It sounds stupid because it’s stupidly simple; and it’s so stupidly simple that most people don’t want to hear it. This nutty “you are whatever you say you are” nonsense is just the ugly cousin of “you are whatever I say you are” which conservatives have been trying to push on women for millennia. Same song, different verse.

Read the rest at the Register. 

Photo credit: Alberto Frank via Flikr

How fancy are we?

We’re so fancy, our leather couch has built-in cup holders for my evening wine.

cup holder couch

 

How fancy are you?

Should we smile, smile, smile?

Mother_Teresa_of_Calcuta,_portrait_painting_by_Robert_Pérez_Palou

What’s the difference between feigned joy that cult members are required to display, and a suffering saint’s determination to smile at everyone she meets; and what does it have to do with the awful client with the beautiful blue eyes?

Read the rest at the Register.

***

image: By Robert Pérez Palou (http://www.robertperezpalou.com/) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Pretend you’re Starbucks.

Plastic_cup-2

So far, I have met zero Christians who are mad at Starbucks. My Facebook feed has, however, been overrun by Christians who don’t care what Starbucks puts on its cups, and are embarrassed by the few noisy meat heads who say they feel persecuted by having to drink their $11 lattes out of a red cup rather than a red cup with a light red reindeer on it.

Which leads me to believe that this is one of those Big Fat Nothing stories, and the more noise we make about denouncing it, the closer to Something the story becomes. Cameramen at ballgames turn away when there’s a streaker on the field, so let’s do the same, eh?

I do wonder, though, what you would do if you were Starbucks, and you really did, for whatever reason, want to make “the holiday season” (Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/What Have You) more pleasant or meaningful for the world. Let’s say you have tons of money and nothing but good intentions. What gesture would you make, big or small? Could be something commercial, or something for your customers, something for your employees, something secret, something global, or whatever. What would you do?

Best answers will be read on the air this evening at 5 Eastern, as I chat with Mark Shea on his show Connecting the Dots. You can listen to the show live on Breadbox Media here. I’m Mark’s co-host every Monday, and you can hear podcasts of previous shows with me and Marks four other co-hosts (one each weekday) here.

What’s for supper? Vol. 11: Here comes the quiche, doot-n-doo-doot

whats for supper

SATURDAY
CANDY
HAM and CHEESE
CANDY
CANDYCANDY

Halloween was Saturday, you’ll recall! No sense in making dinner when there’s trick-or-treating to get done. They had some cheese sticks or something before they left, then got home and ate their way through a mountain of candy. After a few hours of this, I offered them ham and cheese. A few of them declined; a few didn’t even bother to respond; and a few behaved as if it was the food of the gods, because it was so refreshingly not-candy.

For your delectation, here is my three-year-old, who was extremely pleased with her costume(?) of Toadette(?) from Mario Kart:

cabbage cruz

 

SUNDAY
CUBAN PICADILLO; RICE

Everyone in the house was super, super, super excited about this dish. It smelledso savory and wonderful. How could it not? Beef and chorizo, fresh garlic, cinnamon, cloves, olives, and raisins!

The verdict? “It’s not like anyone was retching or anything,” one food critic was heard to muse.

food blog picadillo

Believe it or not, it only looked about this good in the original NYT recipe page, too, and I still went ahead and made it anyway.

Ah, well. At least I got to feel like a good sport, trying new things for these ungrateful savages. But seriously, it just wasn’t all that good.

For dessert we had those Play Doh cookies that come in a tube and you slice them up and there’s a picture in them.

 

MONDAY
QUICHE; ONION SOUP

My daughter goes, “I like how this onion soup is just a bunch of onions.” I know. It’s like, “Hey, have some onions!” Oh boy.

I use beef broth instead of water, but more or less follow the Fannie Farmer recipe. They are not kidding when they say leave plenty of time to let the onions cook. Count on at least 45 minutes, if not longer — but the rest comes together in a few minutes. This soup is great served over croutons, with cheese on top – and it’s pretty great just as is, too.

My quiche is really just serviceable (and I use milk instead of cream, which basically makes it scrambled egg pie), but it’s bright and cheery-looking, which is more and more important to me as it gets darker and colder. That moment when you open the oven and pull out four brilliant, glistening, golden, sunny, fragrant pies . . . it makes up for a lot.

cabbage cruz

Here comes the quiche, doot-n-doo-doot . . . here comes the quiche, and I say . . . it’s all ham. (Actually, two ham and cheddar, two sausage and mozzarella. I forgot I had feta in the house, or I would have done at least one feta and spinach.)

 

TUESDAY 
PASTA WITH MEAT SAUCE; SALAD

Nothing to report. Ground beef in jarred meat sauce. Again, it wasn’t candy, and it wasn’t those awful cookies that I couldn’t seem to stop eating.

At one point during the day, I hauled out the massive bag of pumpkin guts and sorted seeds for about an hour. I got about a fifth of the way through.  I do love roasted pumpkin seeds. Looks like the kids have a project for the weekend.

food blog pumpkin guts

WEDNESDAY
CHICKEN WRAPS

I’m probably the only person in the world who has attempted to make a copycat recipe of Burger King’s awful little chicken wraps. It’s just a hunk of white meat, a slab of iceberg lettuce, some shredded cheese, and some kind of orange salad dressing, wrapped indifferently in a cold flour tortilla and hurled out the window without even offering a receipt. You may or may not get a straw.

I took this photo thinking, "Maybe they don't know what chicken looks like!"

I took this photo thinking, “Maybe they don’t know what chicken looks like!”

I remembered about the feta this time, so we also had feta, plus some hummus. But no ketchup.

THURSDAY
WAFFLES; SAUSAGES; MASHED BUTTERNUT SQUASH

I like how squash tastes, but I really, really like how it looks like those enormous gaudy wall hangings they put in hospitals. Check it out:

food blog squash 3

 

food blog squash 1

 

food blog squash 2

Do I have a follow-up joke here? No, I do not. Squash is pretty, the end.

FRIDAY
TUNA SANDWICHES; CHIPS

And we are off to Syracuse! I believe Mr. Husband and I (and Corrie) will be attending some sort of banquet when we get there. The kids will no doubt dine upon strawberries, sugar, and cream. And roasted pumpkin seeds, maybe!

Question of the week: Still got candy? I ate the last piece of Starburst this morning.

Thanks, Mom.

twopenny starvers

Does she cook and clean for us and do our laundry? Oh, yes, she does. She feeds us with grace, with the Word of God, and with Eucharist, and she invites us to throw our smelly old sins down the chute and — okay, here the analogy breaks down. I guess she washes, dries, and folds our consciences for us, and leaves them in a tidy stack on our bed? She bustles around, caring for our needs, even anticipating our needs, telling us what we need and making sure we have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of what she has to offer us, from birth to maturity to death.

She knows us intimately, cares for us personally, never stops thinking about us, never stops loving us, never stops desiring everything good for us. But the Church is about more than us — and she’s about more than giving us stuff, too. Mother Church isn’t just a sacrament dispenser, who fades into existence for an hour here and there, whenever we need something; and we should be careful not to treat her that way.

Read the rest at the Register.

***

image by Paul Townsend

(And I realize it’s some obscure Anglican tradition in the photo, but I found this image so charming, I couldn’t bring myself to find something else.)

Is it easier for rich people to have big families?

Heart of money

David Mills is doing a little self-examination at Aleteia with A Marxist Lesson for Breeding Catholics: What is romance to the comfortable can be a burden to the poor and sick. Mills is a good and honest man, and has a knack for prodding our weak spots without excusing himself. I think he’s only half right in this essay, though.

His main thesis: Most of the Catholics writing about Catholic sexuality are resting comfortably in a place of privilege — and they should knock it off. For a Catholic middle class couple, says Mills, having another child

 may mean giving up a vacation if the family’s wealthy, or the Thursday family dinner out if the family’s middle class. Her arrival won’t mean giving up food, or rent or the parochial school that can make all the difference to his older siblings’ future.

It’s easy, he says, for a financially secure couple to let their marriages be fruitful, and to see Catholic sexual teaching as a lovely and liberating thing. But, says Mills, the poor do not have this luxury, and may face genuine hardships that a middle class couple never even considers.

Mills says,

 The affluent for whom the Catholic teaching is not a great burden can fall to the temptations of their class, one of which is to think of their children as lifestyle accessories … You can feel that God rewarded your obedience and sacrifice by giving you more “toys” than your friends have.

He concludes:

We the comfortable, who speak so romantically of being open to life—because for us, with our privileges, it is a romance—could find ways to make it a romance, and not a terror, for others too.

Overall, he has a very good point — and truly, the main reason my book about the struggles of NFP sold so well was because there was such a glut of “perky” public discourse on the topic. About a decade ago, just about anybody who talked about the Church’s sexual teaching talked about how lovely, how fulfilling, how empowering, how enlightening, how life-changingly, marriage-buildingly, blindingly awesome it all is. So the world was pretty ready for a book that said, “Yes, but it’s also really hard, and sometimes it stinks on ice. Here’s why it’s still a good idea.” (And if you’re interested in making my life a little more romantic, then for goodness’ sake, buy my book!)

It’s a bad idea to present Church teaching as a golden ticket to happiness. But more specifically, I have a quibble with the idea that material wealth usually makes it easier to be “open to life” (a phrase which Mills uses to mean “ready to have another baby,” which is really only a part of what that phrase means — but that’s a post for another day!). Depending on what crowd you’re in, you can get very different ideas about who’s struggling with what. I mean no disrespect, but Mills, a white-bearded male scholar, most likely reads about Catholic sexual teaching in books and journals, where one is unlikely to hear anything candid, raw, unpolished or, frankly, honest. For some more useful research on the topic, try hanging around in the back of the church with other women who can’t sleep because they’re not sure if they’re pregnant or not, and they can’t make up their minds how guilty to feel about the way they feel about it.

He does acknowledge that the poor aren’t just helpless saps, too anemic to grapple with the headiness of solid doctrine:

The poor are not merely victims but moral agents who can teach the comfortable, not least about the good life and the place of children therein. As Pope Francis said, “For most poor people, a child is a treasure. … Let us also look at the generosity of that father and mother who see a treasure in every child.”

I wish he had said more about this. In truth, it’s often wealthy couples who struggle more with the notion of having another baby.  Poor couples can be so accustomed to uncertainty, and so used to making the best out of whatever happens, that the notion of having yet another child is less terrifying to them than it would be to a wealthy, secure couple who feel like their material lives, at least, are under control. A couple with an empty checking account and a fridge full of government cheese can laugh hilariously when they read that it takes $245,000 to raise a child; but a couple who actually has $245,000 in the bank might gulp and think twice before taking that kind of plunge.

Poverty is (or at least can be) a great teacher, because we are (as Mills points out) allpoor in one way or another — if not materially, than maybe physically, or emotionally, or in our relationships. Being poor in any of these ways makes it obvious that we are not in control, but that we still need to work very hard to get more in control — which is an excellent model for how to approach parenthood, and marriage, and life in general. Try really hard all the time; realize, all the time, that a lot of what happens is not up to you.

Is it easy to trust God, with your sexual life and otherwise, when you’re poor? I’m not going to say yes! Poverty is no joke, and being poor and pregnant can be twelve different kinds of miserable. But I’m not going to say that money makes it easier to trust God. There’s a reason Jesus warned about getting bogged down with riches.

As for why it’s mainly the secure and happy who write about sex, there are two reasons. The first is legitimate, and it’s that people who struggle don’t want to reveal private things about their marriage to the world.  It may be comforting for Jack and Joanne to read that Alyssa and Aaron had a big fight about sex; but Aaron probably won’t appreciate it if Alyssa spills all to the Huffington Post.

The second reason is less defensible. We faithful can be loathe to speak publicly about our struggles because we’re afraid that we’ll scare away the undecided — that our suffering will be the final nudge that tips an on-the-fence couple the wrong way.  So we Happy Face it up, thinking we’re helping the Holy Spirit out with one of His less-successful PR campaigns.

Poverty comes in many forms, as Mills acknowledges; and so does faith in God. I am working on learning how to put more trust in the truth when I write about my faith. It’s not up to me to paste a happy ending on the word of God, and that is true no matter how much money I have in the bank.

Robin’s Handmade Goatmilk Soap! 18 new varieties

robins soap header

You’ve heard me sing the praises of my friend Robin’s handmade soap. Her Etsy shopis now open for November, and has listed a whopping eighteen new soaps — many molded into lovely designs.

soap home sweet home madonna

Robin’s soaps are just beautiful — especially the multi-colored bars. They are like little works of art.

soap chocolate orange

They smell wonderful, they are creamy and lush, and they last much longer than any soap I’ve ever used. The ingredients are great for people with sensitive skin.

I have my favorites (I’m partial to Sunshine Yuzu — so cheerful! — and my husband likes the plain goat milk bars for his winter dry skin)

soap yuzu flowers

but I’ve never hit a bad soap from Robin’s workshop. Here’s a list of the new varieties:

1.) Cedar Bay
2.) Spiced Mahogany
3.) Sunshine Yuzu (a favorite of many!)
4.) Eucalyptus Mint (100% essential oils)
5.) Lemon Cake
6.) Energy!
7.) Blackberry Sage
8.) Chocolate Orange (LISTED 2 November)
9.) Frankincense & Myrrh
10.) Lemongrass (100% essential oils)
11.) Mahogany (is like the Men’s Cologne)
12.) Chocolate Mint
13.) Rosehip Jasmine
14.) Patchouli Lavender (100% essential oils)
15.) Summer Lilac
16.) Home Sweet Home (was my #1 best seller among friends and family between 2002 and 2012, before I opened up Robin’s Soap Shoppe. I finally made it again, after several years)
17.) Lavender Madonna & Child only
18.) 100% Goat Milk Madonna & Child

Robin’s a single mom who’s treading a long, difficult road. She’s a hard-working, proud Army vet who really wants to support herself, despite her many health problems. Please consider checking out her Etsy shop. Her soaps make wonderful stocking stuffers or little gifts for friends, family, teachers . . .