Transmitting light: Stained glass and painting by Patrice Schelkun

The thing about stained glass is that the artist doesn’t know how it will look until it’s installed.

“There’s an element of surprise along the whole process,” said Patrice Schelkun, who works in glass and also in paint.

When Schelkun works on stained glass, she pieces her windows together on a huge table and solders it tight, planning out every element, every color, every piece of glass. She must choose between clear or opalescent glass, and sometimes she adds more than one layer to create a sense of depth.

But it’s not until it’s completely done and held up to the light for the first time that she really knows how it came out.

Schelkun likes to add texture and detail to her glass pieces with paint, and this, too, yields unpredictable results. The paint, which is made of pigment mixed with finely ground glass, is applied with oil or water and fused to the glass surface in a kiln, eight hours at a time. Sometimes five or more layers of paint are applied, and fired in between each application. Sometimes the paint changes, and sometimes the color of the glass shifts in the kiln.

Or sometimes a piece turns out as designed, but then it’s not displayed for greatest effect. This was the case with “Adorned,” a panel with a sun-dappled face peering out from a crush of jewel-toned chrysanthemums. The piece was designed to be hung in direct light, but it was displayed too high up in an exhibit in Chicago, and the light didn’t shine through as Schelkun intended. When she retrieved that piece, she opted to install it on a light box, to display it at its best.

But sometimes this variability inherent in glasswork is an asset. Natural light, in particular, brings out the potential of glass to shift in appearance.

“It’s almost like the window is alive,” Schelkun said. “It’s the same thing if you’re walking by a window. It changes as you walk past it. It projects colors onto the floor. It’s kind of a living thing.”

Schelkun, 65, now concentrates more on oil painting and portraiture than she does on glass, but she wasn’t always an artist of any kind. She studied science but soon put that aside to raise her children. The family bought a house in Pennsylvania in the ’90s, and Schelkun got to work decorating it. She began in her oldest daughter’s room, which she festooned with a mural of flowers and bunnies, turning it into a little secret garden.

Friends who saw her work said she was good, good enough to start a business. She began decorating homes, and then businesses, and then a church.

A church bathroom, that is. The pastor gave her free rein to redo the ugly little room in the vestibule.

“I did a stone wall and a little niche, and he was like, ‘Whoa,’” Schelkun said. She was welcomed onto the committee for the parish’s building project and worked on choosing colors and furnishings.

At the same time, she started to study drawing and painting in earnest, taking private classes with artists when she could spare the time. She also took a class on stained glass at a local community college.

“I knew nothing about stained glass. Basically [the class] was teaching you how to cut glass and piece it together, and I said, ‘No, I want to paint on glass,’” she said. “My first love was painting.”

But there is something about glass, and its potential to capture, transmit and refract light in different ways. Her studio, Immanence Fine Art, shows works in both paint and stained glass. What they all have in common is an emphasis on light.

“Immanence is evidence of the divine throughout the material world. We can interact with God’s presence through the beautiful things we see in nature, and the way light strikes things. That’s evidence of God, to me,” Schelkun said.

When she paints portraits, she often composes them with strong lighting from one side, but even more often with “rim light,” light that bleeds out from behind the subject.

“If someone is standing in front of a sunset, the light halos around their head,” she said. “It’s the light I’m attracted to.”

She has seen firsthand how the light can attract other people, too….Read the rest of my latest artist profile in Our Sunday Visitor.

What’s for supper? Vol. 416: San Salami

Happy Friday! I went HOMEMAKER BERSERK this week. I know it’s Lent, but I can’t help it. It’s spring, there are a ton of feast days and birthdays, and I’m just being muscled around helplessly by the general optimism in the air like a mouse by a cat. Look, if you didn’t like that sentence, you can have your money back.

Last Friday I collected the last of the sap from the maple trees, tromped around in our tiny woods and collected a ton of dead branches, and started boiling sap. 

And I do mean started. I was using Damien’s little wood stove that he used to have in his “office” (a converted ice fishing shack), and I guess it would work to heat up a small, enclosed space, but it did not do a great job boiling sap.

I sat out there for over three hours feeding dry wood into the stove, and I never got the sap to boil. (I know it has a large surface area, which makes it slower to boil, but that’s the point: You’re trying to evaporate as much as possible, so that’s why it’s in a pan instead of a pot! I did cover it until it started to steam.)

It was pretty nice out there, anyway, but I was a little disappointed. I packed the remaining sap into some snow and put the batch I had heated into the fridge. 

SATURDAY
Leftovers?

Saturday Damien and the girls were still in NYC, so I was pretty busy doing chores. I actually went a little crazy (by which I mean I attempted to reach levels of cleanliness that other people consider a baseline) and took apart the recycling bins and scrubbed them out, scrubbed the wall and floor in the kitchen where they sit, and also took two large baskets of rusty ice skates to the dump. I had put them on the side of the road in the fall when we tore down the porch, but astonishingly, nobody wanted two large baskets of rusty ice skates, and while I was working on admitting this to myself, it snowed and kept on snowing, soooo they’ve been frozen in place until this past week. Phew, that felt good. 

On Saturday the door to the duck house fell off. We knew it was going to happen eventually, so that was a bit of a relief, too. But I forgot to buy bigger hinges, so we had to just sort of barricade the door back on in the evening

creating the impression that we are terrified of ducks. Which is not completely off base. 

SUNDAY
Chicken Caesar salad

Sunday after Mass, I took Benny and Corrie to the second largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the state, which was, well, it’s a small state. It was a cute parade, and it even stopped raining for most of it. 

Then I made my second attempt to boil sap, this time on the propane fire pit on the patio. This was equally unsuccessful, and then I ran out of propane anyway, and it started raining again, so I put the sap back in the fridge again, and worried about the outdoor sap buckets because it was getting pretty warm and some of the sap was getting pretty old. 

However, we got an egg! Our first duck egg of the year. They started laying MUCH sooner last year, but who knows why a duck does what she does. Definitely not the ducks.

First egg was a doozy:

It was a double-yolker, and I used it to make caesar salad dressing.

Jump to Recipe

I roasted some chicken breast and grated some parmesan cheese, and made a bunch of croutons with stale bread cubes toasted with melted butter, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. 

A fine meal. That dressing will wake you up!

MONDAY
St. Patrick’s Day and Syrup Day!

Monday was actual St. Patrick’s Day. We decided to do corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes this year, rather than the full breakfast for dinner we do sometimes. This meal is more Irish American than Irish Irish, but so is St. Patrick’s Day, so there you go. (Apparently in Ireland, it was common to have cabbage with bacon, and the corned beef was for export, I think? But when they came to America, the Jews had lots of tasty corned beef brisket for cheap, so they went with it. Likely the Irish immigrants were eating imported Irish beef. 

I, for my part, decided to do this:

This is me wanting desperately to boil my sap, but also not wanting my newly-scrubbed kitchen to get all sappy. People will fight me and say that it’s not sap that condenses on the walls and runs down in light brown rivulets; what’s in the air is water vapor, and what I’m seeing is rivulets of my own kitchen filth. And they’re probably right! but either way, I didn’t want to see it; so I put up plastic and set a fan in front of the window and got to berlin’.

Actually first I strained the sap through some cheesecloth, to get the bugs and scraps of bark and whatnot out. Here you can see how clear the fresh sap is. It looks just like water.

And here is the bucket I was worried about:

If you are serious about syrup, you will not boil old, cloudy sap. It’s not dangerous (although the cloudiness is caused by bacteria); it’s just not gonna taste right. Some people will mix a little old sap in with new sap, and that masks the flavor. I decided to hang onto it and boil it separately, to see what happened. 

So here is the good, clear sap, after about eight hours of boiling. You just boil and boil and boil it, and keep adding more sap in as it evaporates and makes space:

Here is the finished syrup:

Lovely and absolutely delicious. It thickened up as it cooled. The dark spots are just coagulated syrup, which serious people strain out, but I do not. 

Then I boiled the bad sap up (I only had about five gallons, so it only took about three hours), and it did thicken up and get sweet, but has a faint, I don’t know, library paste taste to it? I am going to use it to make sticky maple walnut buns, I think. 

I didn’t get a good pic of the final syrup, because it was dark out by that time. But I decanted it into six jars, four for the older kids, one for us, and one for Millie, about four ounces each; and then about six ounces of second-rate syrup in a big jar. It needs to be refrigerated, because I didn’t do the whole sterile canning process. 

SATISFYING. So satisfying, altogether. I frickin did it. From tree to jug to bucket to pan to jar. I will probably make waffles this weekend for the nice syrup. Or, it’s, sigh, supposed to snow today and tomorrow, so maybe we will do sugar on snow. 

ANYWAY, I eventually got around to making dinner, and didn’t want to give up the stove space, so I made it in the oven. I just hunked the meat, five pounds of red potatoes, three pounds of carrots, and one cabbage in wedges, into a giant pan with some water, covered it loosely with foil, and cooked it at like 400 for about an hour and a half, which is not long enough, but corned beef is corned beef. 

There is plenty of leftover meat, so I will probably make Reubens this weekend.

TUESDAY
Chicken spinach quesadillas, chips and salsa

On Tuesday, I decided to prep Wednesday’s dessert. Wednesday was St. Joseph’s Day, and St. Joseph is our family’s patron, and I love him, and wish to cook and bake for him (us).

I decided to try a new-to-me recipe for Zeppole di San Giuseppe from Sip and Feast, a site which has given me so many great recipes. I remember the first time I made a choux pastry (this is before I ever saw The Great British Baking Show), and I was sure I had messed it up, because it’s so rubbery. 

But that’s how it’s supposed to look! I’m very glad to know you can make this ahead of time. I put it in a ziplock bag and tossed it in the fridge. 

Then I made the vanilla custard, and I used duck eggs, which are so rich and bright. 

Covered and refirgerated that, too. Duck eggs are big, and the yolks are proportionally bigger compared to the whites, so you can easily use two ducks for three large chicken eggs. 

Zeppole, if you are wondering too, is probably ultimately from the Latin “zippulae,” a little treat. There is a legend that, in Egypt, Joseph supported the family by selling nice little pancakes. There’s also a theory that “zeppole” comes from “zeppa,” meaning “stump,” or wedge of wood, and Joseph, carpenter, I dunno. Or possibly from “serpula,” like a coiled snake, and you make these pastries in a coiled pattern. I actually kind of love how etymology is often just a bunch of educated guesses, because people are weird and go wandering around the world making pancakes as they go, and talking about it to people who may or may not speak the same language. 

We were having chicken quesadillas for supper, and I made the chicken thighs in the Instant Pot. Just threw them in with some water and pressed the “poultry” button. When the meat was cooked, I drained and shredded it and added cumin, paprika, chili powder, and salt. 

I had my quesadilla with chicken, cheddar, and spinach. 

You can see how I was rushing – the cheese is barely melted! But I was starving, so they tasted great. Do you know, I had my first quesadilla when I was over twenty years old. I remember saying, “What’s THAT?” in a loud, obnoxious voice. It was guacamole, and I thought it looked horrible.  I hate to think what would have happened if I had been hanging around Abu Simbel and this bearded guy with a cute baby tried to sell me some pancakes. I would have been so rude. 

WEDNESDAY
St. Joseph’s Day!

The feast day began with three dentist appointments. We have been going to this dentist for something like eighteen years and I love her to pieces. I think it’s so smart to put a fun-house mirror in the waiting room. The kids find it very entertaining, but nobody has to touch it with their grubby hands. 

When we got back, Benny and Corrie helped me pipe the zeppole. 

The recipe says: “Pipe 3-inch circles in two layers, starting from the inside on the first layer. Leave a hole in the top of the second layer for the pastry cream. Make sure to leave at least 3 inches of room between each because they will expand during baking.” We made ours a little too small, but that just meant slightly daintier zeppole, and more of them!

While the zeppole were baking, the kids went to play outside WITHOUT JACKETS, because it is SPRING, and I got out the cheese-making kit Lena gave me for Christmas. 

I was a little nervous about the milk. It doesn’t have to be fancy organic milk or anything, but it’s not supposed to be ultrapasteurized, which is when they bring the milk to a higher temp than just for pasteurizing. I had one gallon of Aldi whole milk and one of Hannaford, and they just said “pasteurized.” They both turned out to be fine. 

And cheese-making turns out to be easy! There are a lot of steps, but nothing difficult. You just need to pay attention with the timer and the thermometer. Basically you heat up some milk, add some rennet (a tablet dissolved in water) and some citric acid at some point, I forget when; heat it up some more, and then let it sit. While it’s sitting, it magically separates into curds and whey!

Then you cut up the curds  

and slowly stir it while heating it again. 

drain the whey off

and heat and drain the curds it a few more times. I did it in the microwave, but you can also use a water bath. 

And then YOU HAVE CHEESE. You’re supposed to add salt and then stretch it like taffy and then shape it and put it in cold water, but I got confused and put it in cold water before I shaped it, so the first batch was shaped, uh, like this:

But very clearly cheese! Magic!!!!

Meantime, the first batch of zeppole came out of the oven and I was DELIGHTED with the results. So light and puffy! 

and they left these cute little rosettes on the parchment paper. 
 

I made a second batch (bigger ones this time) and put them in the oven, and then started a second batch of cheese. This one turned out prettier!

I think I needed to be a little faster stretching it, to get those little bumps out, but I was still delighted with the results. 

Benny and Corrie made some antipasto platters, and I showed them how to make salami roses. You just fold the slices of salami over a narrow-mouthed drinking glass, overlapping the slices, and then gently upend the glass and slide the salami rose off. 

If we have another baby, I shall name her Salami Rose. 

Didn’t they do a lovely job with the platters? Benny did the green ones and Corrie did the red. 

Damien, meanwhile, made probably the best sauce I have ever had. And I lived in Rome for three months. I truly cannot tell you how savory and delicious it was, and I’m very sad I didn’t get good pictures. He also made some tremendous meatballs, using this recipe, and sausage, and we had that with spaghetti. 

Dang, it was so good. A sauce to savor. Meatballs to remember. A dinner to dwell on. 

Lena and Moe came over for supper, which was super fun! Those big kids are turning out so great.

After we ate, I filled the zeppole with the cream filling, dusted them with powdered sugar, and topped them with fancy cocktail cherries, which were dark red and had a somewhat sour taste, very nice. 

I was pretty proud of these. 

For comparison, here is my first attempt at zeppole, a few years ago:

 Getting a star tip for piping sure makes a difference. And the Sip and Feast recipe is vastly superior to whatever I did the first time. I think those ones were also filled with instant vanilla pudding. But you know what, I remember being way to busy and tired to make zeppole, and I did it anyway. Yay past me! Yay present me! (Future me is on her own, though.)

I had some leftover pastry dough, so I piped this rather silly St. Joseph logo

and dusted that with powdered sugar, and we ate that, too! Buona festa! It was all great, all of it. Oh, I also made five loaves of garlic bread, because we are not savages. 

THURSDAY
Hot dogs and chips

Because Mama needs a break.

I actually love hot dogs. Mustard and sauerkraut, mmm. 

FRIDAY
Pizza

I’m a little torn with the pizza, because we have lots of yummy things in the fridge left over from St. J day — marinated peppers, artichoke hearts, fancy olives, nice parmesan, not to mention that wonderful mozzarella. Obviously I won’t be putting meat on, but I’m conflicted about the rest of it, because despite appearances, it is a Friday in Lent. 

Oh, but that reminds me, I didn’t tell you how the mozzarella tastes! It tastes great! Fresh and flavorful and creamy and light. You can make it firmer or softer, and you can skip the salt, and you can add all kinds of things to it (basil, prosciutto, etc.) when you’re shaping it, and make a log, or little pearls, or even cheese sticks. I’m so delighted with this kit. It comes with five or six rennet tabs, and you only use a quarter of one per gallon of milk. A gallon of milk makes, well, I forgot to weigh it, but it looked like over a pound of cheese to me. Anyway I see soooo much cheese in my future. The whole thing took like half an hour to make, and it was easy and entertaining. You can also make ricotta with this kit, which I haven’t tried yet. 

And that’s-a my story. Oh, except also I just ordered sighhhhh an incubator, because a certain child once missed seeing an egg hatch at school because of Covid a few years ago, and this has been an enduring and understandable sorrow, so Promises Were Made. I think if we do manage to hatch out some ducklings, we’ll have to name at last one of them Salami Rose. The rest can all be Joe.

Print

caesar salad dressing

Ingredients

  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 12 anchovy fillets, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about two large lemons' worth)
  • 1 Tbsp mustard
  • 4 raw egg yolks, beaten
  • 3/4 cup finely grated parmesan

Instructions

  1. Just mix it all together, you coward.

What’s for supper? Vol. 415: O bagels! O fortuna!

And a happy Friday to you! It was all fortuna, no tuna, this week. Just now I changed out of my pajama pants into my yoga pants, and I’m working in bed. I am grounded for the day because Damien got up revoltingly early to drive the girls to the train station, whence they (including Damien) are headed into NYC to see famous J-Hope’s famous solo concert; and they are spending the night. But while we were on our way to school, the universe, sensing that my husband was out of town, playfully lit up all the lights on my dashboard 

I’m no expert, but I interpreted this as “turn around and go home,” so I tried to, but the car started losing power, so I turned on the hazards and tried to go to the mechanic, but it died at the fence company which is just down the road from the mechanic and also from our house and which, in fact, GPS claims IS our house. Like Instacart will send groceries there and everything, unless I make a really big fuss.

So Damien called AAA from the train in NY and I called Elijah at home, who is driving Damien’s car because his car is broken and Damien drove Sophia’s car to the train station, and I emailed the schools and said we were having a Fisher Flop-out, and I begged for an adoration substitute, and eventually everyone got where they belonged, but not before I vented a little emotion at the poor tow truck driver, and expressed how frustrating it was to break down so close to the mechanic. I said I considered pushing my car, but seeing as it was uphill, I didn’t think I would make it; and he said, and I quote, “Pawbly nawt.” 

But I’m on a gratitude kick lately, so I thanked God that I had remembered my phone (which I forget about half the time), that it wasn’t horribly cold out, that we had AAA, and that Elijah was home so he could rescue us, and that I had decided to change out of my robe and into a jacket this morning, so when the fence guy came out to find out why we were parked there, I only looked like a partial nutcase. (On the fact that I was still wearing my fuzzy pink flowered pajama pants, I was prayerfully nuetral.)

Anyway, poor old lady. Off she goes. 

It may be the alternator. But it may just be the battery! Pawbly it’s the battery. 

Well, here’s what we ate this week. And please note, we’re not really great at eating simply and frugally for Lent. We have other skills, like accumulating cars. We now have six cars parked in front of the house most days, and you’d think that would mean we always have a way to get where we need to be!

AND YET. 

SATURDAY
Lasagna, cannoli dip

On Friday night, Damien made a stupendous lasagna, following this labor intensive but incredibly rewarding recipe from Deadspin. Look at this gorgeous beast. 

He also made a mini lasagna for Millie. 

(It’s not actually as tiny as it looks here!) The lasagna was a delayed birthday dinner for Elijah. SO GOOD. 

and let me tell you, I made an attempt to calculate the calories for this thing, but my phone started shaking and sweating, so I just called it a day. 

Eljah requested cannoli for dessert. Actually he requested Cosmic Brownies, but I said he could aim a little higher for his 21st birthday dessert. (Recall he had a cake last week, on his actual birthday.) Then I couldn’t find cannoli shells anywhere in town, so I got cannoli chips, ricotta cheese, AND cosmic brownies. (This is important later.)

I blended together what cream cheese I could find, a bunch of ricotta, a bunch of powdered sugar, and some almond extract, and served that in ramekins with the cannoli chips, along with maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles. I swear I took a picture, because I arranged it nice and fancy-like, but it has vanished. 

SUNDAY
Leftovers featuring lasagna; taquitos 

Sunday we had probably half the lasagna still left over, so that was the star of the show. I also bought frozen taquitos and the served a few leftovers, but mainly we were all there for Lasagna, Continued. 

I brought Millie’s lasagna over and she gave me a bowl of bread pudding with raisins in it.

It tasted exactly like the bread pudding my mother used to make, and I haven’t tasted it since I was a kid. This gave Millie much delight, and me too! It happens that this is a few days after the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death, so if you think of it, please send up a prayer for her. With raisins!

In the afternoon, on a whim, I decided to make bagels. I have only tried making bagels once before, and I grievously misread how much water to use when boiling them, so they turned out pretty rough. But I did get from that day one of my favorite pictures ever: 

Just . . . look at us. The chair with the back broken off. The laundry basket full of pots and pans. Something that appears to be an inflatable foil rocket on the floor. And the toddler who is having the BEST DAY OF HER LIFE, AGAIN. It just needs a chunky couple making out in the corner and a dog furtively lapping out of a mug of beer, and it could be one of those Flemish peasant paintings where people are doing whatever the hell they want. 

This batch of bagels, we didn’t have QUITE that much fun with, but they turned out somewhat better. We followed the King Arthur Baking recipe, except I had light brown sugar instead of dark. You make the dough, let it rise for 90 minutes, cut it into lumps, 

let those lumps rest for half an hour,

and then shape the bagels and boil them,

add toppings, and then bake them.

Benny helped me shape the bagels, which you do by rolling the dough into a ball, poking your finger through the center, and then twirling them around in the air. We quickly learned that it is possible to twirl them too long, and/or too violently! Luckily, the floor is spotless. Just kidding, we threw that one away.

We made a double recipe and made sixteen (well, fifteen) bagels, poppy seed, sesame seed, plain, and salt. 

They were not as puffy as I would have liked — hard to imagine slicing these to make a sandwich! —

— but still pretty great piping hot from the oven. I love doing a little baking on a Sunday afternoon.

You can see they were fairly flat, but the texture inside and out was great, and everybody liked them and said I should make them again. Not sure how to make them puffier. Any ideas? 

MONDAY
Kielbasa, potato, brussels sprouts sheet pan dinner, oatmeal bread

For supper, we had an easy peasy one pan dish with red potatoes, brussels sprouts, and kielbasa. I cooked it halfway, then drizzled it with a sauce made of honey, mustard, minced garlic, and red wine vinegar, and finished cooking it. This is two pans’ worth heaped into one pan:

This looks faintly Flemish, too, come to think of it. 

I usually just serve one-pan dish on its own, but for some reason I felt it really needed a side dish, so I made this quick oat bread, which I chose because it was simple, but which you could make if you’re looking for gluten-free recipes (it uses ground-up oats instead of flour). It was . . . fine. 

I undercooked it (the missing chunk in the middle is where I cut a piece to see if it was done), but for some reason decided to finish it in the microwave instead of the oven., which . . . worked . . . but there is a reason people don’t do that. But I don’t know how much better it would have been if I had baked it properly. Pawbly would have been decent with some butter or jam on it. 

Honestly, I look back on this week and it’s like watching an old home movie, and you watch your past self careening around and you’re like, “oh, wow, look how crazy and silly we were back then!” Except this was four days ago. I’m not complaining! It’s been so beautiful out, with a thaw every day, and I’ve been getting fresh air and feeling pretty lighthearted, actually.

But I’m not being . . . streamlined, in my activities. Not streamlined at all. 

Anyway, you really can’t argue with hot fresh bread, and it was a decent meal. 

Monday is also the day we discovered we had several desserts in the house. See, usually we have dessert on Saturday and Sunday, but in Lent, we just have it on Sunday, and spend the extra money bumping up the food pantry donation. But we got confused and bought two desserts for the weekend, and then we realized Elijah needed a birthday dessert, and then I also bought those previously mentioned Cosmic Brownies as a birthday bonus. And then we forgot to eat them. So there we were on a Monday with Klondike Bars, some kind of ice cream things, and Cosmic Brownies in the house, in Lent. 

So I told the kids if they could come up with a liturgically plausible reason, we could just eat it anyway. So Lucy looked up some saint that starts with a C, I forget who, and then they ate Klondike Bars. It’s called the Domestic Liturgical Living and it has ice cream in it. 

TUESDAY
Vermonter sandwiches, fries

Everybody likes Vermonter sandwiches! Roast chicken breast, thick slices of sharp cheddar cheese, sliced green apple, bacon, and honey mustard dressing. The kids like this on ciabatta rolls, but they didn’t have any, so we had sourdough bread. You can see I was in a bit of a hurry because I was so hungry, so I kind of clobbered mine together, and also skimped on the honey mustard, sadly.

A tasty freaking sandwich. 

Then, incredibly enough, it was St. Seraphina’s day or something. Here is Benny, making the case. 

So obviously they had ice cream cones. 

WEDNESDAY
Gochujang pork ribs, rice, sesame broccoli 

I knew Wednesday was going to be a busy day, so I actually got those pork ribs marinating on Tuesday; and then in the morning on Wednesday I cut up the broccoli and set up the rice in the Instant Pot. So Wednesday afternoon, I got home late and just pushed the rice button, started the ribs roasting, and threw the broccoli in the oven right at the end, and everything finished cooking at the same time. Just about every other single thing in my life is out of control, but gosh darn it, I know how to plan a meal. 

The ribs were marinated in gochujang, honey, brown sugar (why both? I forget), roughly chopped garlic, and soy sauce. The broccoli was soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Good freaking meal. 

Wednesday evening, Irene pointed out it was the one-week anniversary of Ash Wednesday, so we had Cosmic Brownies. Listen. It’s a fine balance. 

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, chips, raw veg

Thursday I took Millie to the eye doctor and the DMV so she could get her license renewed. She is 92 and not the worst driver I’ve encountered, not by a long shot. The worst driver I’ve encountered is from Massachusetts. Really just anyone from Massachusetts. 

I had made some kind of mistake when buying bread, and we only had a little sourdough, so I made half the sandwiches with sourdough and half with regular sandwich bread, and then also I used pre-sliced Aldi provolone, forgetting that that ish just does. not. melt.

So they were not the world’s greatest sandwiches, but friend-os, when you are counting calories and it is dinner time, even the worlds not-greatest sandwich tastes pretty freaking good. Also, pickles don’t count. Have some pickles!

I also made a big vegetable platter which I don’t think anyone even touched. 

It looks pretty good to me right now, though. Do I recommend processing a bunch of food photos on a Friday in Lent? Not really! Well, it depends what your goals are, I guess. 

Thursday night I more or less finished a captive ball carving. I didn’t make measurements or anything, but just winged it, so the “ball” is pretty blobby-shaped, but the kids were impressed anyway. It makes a pleasant “slock-slock” noise when it slides back and forth. I cut myself three times and had to sand a blood stain off part of it, so you could say the whole carving thing is going pretty well. 

FRIDAY
Pancakes? 

Damien, Sophia, and Lucy, as I mentioned, are off living the high life (?) in New York and won’t be back until late Saturday, so I figured no one could stop me from making pancakes for supper. I guess maybe I could make waffles.

The timing is a little silly because I don’t have any good maple syrup in the house, but I hope to later this weekend! Sonny and I have been collecting sap every afternoon and should have at least twelve gallons by Saturday, which should boil down to about a third of a gallon of syrup. Nights below freezing and days above freezing are when the changing barometric pressure really pushes the trees to start getting their sap flowing.

This is five gallons of sap:

It tastes like water, but you can discern the sugar if you focus! 

Damien dragged his old wood stove out of his office for me before he left

and yesterday, on the way to pick up the kids from school, someone had put three pots on the side of the road with a “free” sign. Really BIG pots, all with lids! Note the seltzer can for scale. 

So they just need a good scrubbing and I’ll probably use the smaller two for boiling sap. I am not sure what the biggest one with the heavy duty spigot was used for. Any ideas? I’m thinking of turning it into a heated water dispenser for the ducks, but I haven’t decided yet. 

In closing, yes, Corrie fits inside the big pot

and yes, she still looks like Baby Hermes. 

Well, goodbye! 

 

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One-pan kielbasa, cabbage, and red potato dinner with mustard sauce

This meal has all the fun and salt of a wiener cookout, but it's a tiny bit fancier, and you can legit eat it in the winter. 

Ingredients

  • 3-4 lbs kielbasa
  • 3-4 lbs red potatoes
  • 1-2 medium cabbages
  • (optional) parsley for garnish
  • salt and pepper and olive oil

mustard sauce (sorry, I make this different each time):

  • mustard
  • red wine if you like
  • honey
  • a little olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • fresh garlic, crushed

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400. 

    Whisk together the mustard dressing ingredients and set aside. Chop parsley (optional).

    Cut the kielbasa into thick coins and the potatoes into thick coins or small wedges. Mix them up with olive oil, salt, and pepper and spread them in a shallow pan. 

    Cut the cabbage into "steaks." Push the kielbasa and potatoes aside to make room to lay the cabbage down. Brush the cabbage with more olive oil and sprinkle with more salt and pepper. It should be a single layer of food, and not too crowded, so it will brown well. 

    Roast for 20 minutes, then turn the food as well as you can and roast for another 15 minutes.  

    Serve hot with dressing and parsley for a garnish. 

Creative destruction, violent creation: The art of blacksmith Evan Wilson

“I hit, beat, torture, manipulate, crush, squeeze, twist, punch holes in and hammer all those pieces of metal into shape,” said Evan Wilson, artist and blacksmith.

This is how he turns copper, bronze, iron and steel into furniture and firepits, leaves, berries, wings and hands, and, sometimes, the body of Jesus.

“It’s a mixture of brute force and finesse,” he said.

Wilson, 37, said his work is an emotional experience, and sometimes a spiritual revelation.

“For me, it’s become a way of understanding my own, and our universal, coming back to God. Of relating to the God who calls us to suffer and to grow,” he said.

At times he’s focused on being the smith who shapes the metal, but other times he feels more like the thing being shaped.

“I hit this material like I mean it. I really clobber it. But every hammer blow is at just the right angle, just the right amount, the right temperature, the right location,” he said.

What he’s doing is bringing about a “loving transformation.”

“But from the perspective of the metal, it’s like ‘Oh my God, stop beating me!’” he said.

Wilson isn’t just using his artistic imagination; he has lived it.

Wilson was received into the Eastern Orthodox church in 2023, but was raised evangelical Protestant. Wilson was all of 7 years old when he began to note the logical inconsistencies of a “sola scriptura” approach to doctrine. As he grew, he kept finding more questions than anyone in his community could answer, and the faith of his childhood had less and less of a grip on him.

“It left me with a lot of angst,” he said. “I never threw away Christ, but I always wanted to figure out what the deeper value of this story was.”

As an adult, seeking a life of meaning, he spent time in Afghanistan working for a nonprofit that taught literacy and offered pregnancy care.

“I lived in a mud hut with an ex-Taliban member, had a dog, rode my bike to work. It was an awesome time, but very difficult to reconcile the God I was told about as a child with what was occurring there,” he said.

He saw so many people, especially women and children, who seemed trapped and forgotten.

When Wilson returned to the United States, he took up with Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a nonprofit that serves the homeless in Austin, Texas.

“I could tell there was something embodied or incarnate in the faith that was in action there,” he said.

That something wasn’t picturesque. He recalls working surrounded with what founder Alan Graham called “the bouquet of Christ,” the aroma of incontinent and unbathed bodies, and crack smoke.

“We served them as we serve Christ,” he said.

Wilson still struggled with his faith, but Loaves and Fishes is where he began to use his hands. He ran a workshop teaching the homeless to build wooden bird houses and tree swings, so they could have some shot at supporting themselves. His program invited journeymen to come and host workshops, and this included a dozen master blacksmiths from around the world.

“They were super generous, and I learned a ton,” he said.

That is when blacksmithing began to compel him, and it eventually became his main focus. It was not a smooth or graceful transition.

“My wife and I had our first son in 2020, I lost my job, and I got my first commission all in the same year,” he said.

That first commission was a Stations of the Cross. He calls it the beginning of his salvation, as he carefully crafted the tiny bodies acting out the suffering and death of Christ.

He first made the figures out of plasticine clay and shaped them with wooden replicas of his smith tools, to make sure he’d be able to form them from metal without using his hands. He literally wrestled with the little bodies as he worked.

“Pushing Christ’s arm just so, not thinking but feeling that; the tilt of the head here, the Roman soldier hammering the nails in. That’s how I was converted,” he said…. Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Image: Evan Wilson in his studio with the Face of Christ (Mandylion) in chased bronze

Note: I’m expanding the scope of this monthly artist feature! If you know of a Catholic musician, composer, dancer, or other contributor to the arts who has an interesting story to tell, let me know. Shoot an email to simchafisher at gmail dot com. Thanks!

 

 

Fisher Family Mandatory Lent Film Party returns! #1: The Rabbi’s Cat

As we limp our way through another Lent, we’re continuing the annual tradition of gathering the kids for a movie on Friday nights. (This goes along with our other Lent and Advent tradition of going screen-free from 7:00-9:00.) The movie doesn’t have to be overtly religious, but it should have some spiritual theme (not necessarily Christian). We aim for movies we have reason to believe are well-crafted (a “good message” is not enough!), but if we miss that mark, we can at least talk about why it was bad, and whether there were any good parts. 

For reference, the kids at home are now ages 21, 19, 17, 15, 13, and 10. In a pretty naked appeal to the masses, I started this year’s Mandatory Film Party with a 2011 animated French film called The Rabbi’s Cat, directed by Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux, based on Sfar’s comics series. It is set in 1920’s Algeria, and is mostly in French, with nicely clear English subtitles.

Here’s a trailer:

Okay, so this is not a kid’s movie; but it’s also not quite as goofy as the trailer makes it look. It has some pretty graphic murder (although the victims had it coming), a little bit of obvious but not graphic nudity and sex (between married people who are dizzily in love), and I was a little taken aback at how horny the animators clearly were for the rabbi’s daughter, Zlabya. There is also a short, disturbingly slapstick interlude where one character explains through illustration how he escaped violent pogroms in Russia and stowed away to Algeria inside a crate of sacred books. 

I just mention all this for full disclosure, but the general tone of the movie is . . . well, the main character is a cat, who is very cat-like in his worldview. He leads a comfortable life as the coddled pet of the rabbi’s daughter, and gains the gift of speech after eating their parrot. He becomes obsessed with being bar mitzvah’d, initially for ignoble reasons, and the rabbi grudgingly agrees to teach him what he needs to know.

Through a series of friendships and encounters, the rabbi and cat end up setting out through the desert, with the starry-eyed Russian painter, an evil Russian exile, a learned Moslem sheikh, and a warmly self-assured black African waitress, under the combined flag with the Mogen David nestled into the Imperial two-headed Russian eagle, because the painter has a dream that, somewhere in Africa, there is a glorious city of black Jews where everyone lives in peace and harmony. 

This turns out not to be accurate! But you can’t help but feel that they have sorta kinda meanwhile made a brotherly city in their weird little caravan, where everyone ardently believes what they believe, but makes room for other people’s lives? That makes it sound preachy, which the movie definitely is not. If anything, it is a little too comfortable sort of shrugging its cinematic shoulders and casually wondering who can say what’s possible. 

It’s odd, because it very explicitly brings up hugely contentious questions, like “Which is better, Islam or Judaism?” and “Who is a Jew?” and it just . . . shrugs. The people who can shrug survive, and those who can’t, don’t. But it does it in a way that feels real for the characters. It’s super comic book-y, but also hits on something very familiar and relevant: The question of how to sort through what is and is not indispensable about their identities, and their relationships with God and with each other.

The movie also has something on its mind about speech and language, but it’s not really developed, unless I’m missing something. The cat learns to speak, then loses that power after he obstinately invokes the name of God, who he doesn’t really believe in, to help the rabbi pass his French language test. Then the cat can mysteriously speak Russian, so he converses with the painter; and eventually he gets his speech back, and I forget whether this is before or after he has some kind of epiphany about God. It’s hard to say whether God is real in the movie or not, but he’s definitely real to some of the characters. 

I honestly can’t say whether my vagueness on various plot points is my fault for not paying close attention, or just because the film is so hard to pin down. But if it sounds like I didn’t like it, I’m telling it wrong. I cannot overstate how charming and entertaining and gorgeous and exciting the whole thing was, from start to finish. We absolutely just went with the ambiguities, because it was so fully a pleasure to see and hear, from the opening credits to the end. The music, the animation, the dialogue, the COLORS, and the way so many sequences were framed, were all a nonstop feast. And the colors! 

It was also very funny, with the whole family laughing out loud several times. There is also a completely unexpected cameo which I don’t want to spoil, but it was one of the funniest things I’ve seen on screen for some time. 

Was this a good Lent Film Party film? Ehh, maybe not so much, but it was definitely a movie worth watching. Best for kids high school age and up. (My kids are irreversibly corrupt already, so I didn’t feel terrible that the younger kids watched it.)

***

Next: We are thinking of watching A Hidden Life, but last year we watched The Tree of Life and every single one of us conceived a seething and enduring hatred of Terrence Malick. I have never been so disappointed in a film in my life. It had so much promise, and so much skill went into it, and it got such fervently great reviews, and it turned itself into a ludicrously trite and ambiguous vehicle for stock images that would have been at home in a commercial for Charles Schwab. Boy, did we hate that long, long movie. We bonded over how much we hated it.

And A Hidden Life is also very long. What should we do? Is this one more narratively cohesive? It is Tree Of Life-y, or is it different? If Tree of Life is 10/10 Malicks, how many would you rate Hidden Life?

I also bought a DVD of the miniseries Pope John Paul II, with Karol W(I ain’t lookin that up) played by Cary Elwes, about whom the kids broke my heart by saying, “Oh, he was in Saw!” rather than, “Oh, he was in Princess Bride!” (I told you they were corrupt.) So, tell me what you know about this miniseries, because it would probably be a two-nighter because of its length. It’s okay if it’s not a cinematic masterpiece; it just can’t be a turkey.

***

Oh, we watched The Rabbi’s Cat on Kanopy. Looks like you can also rent it on Apple TV+.

Here’s a list of the other movies we’ve watched for Lent in past years, with links to ReelGood so you can see where to stream them, and my review (if any):

Noah (2014)
where to stream 
My review

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
where to stream
My review 

Lilies of the Field (1963) 
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Secret of Kells (2009) 
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Saint Philip Neri: I Prefer Heaven
available via Formed
 (My longer review here)

The Miracle Maker (1999)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

The Jeweller’s Shop (1989)
available via Formed
 (My longer review here)

The Reluctant Saint: The Story of Joseph of Cupertino (1963)
available via Formed
(My longer review here)

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

Boys Town (1938)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

Fatima (2020)
where to stream
(My longer review here)

The Song of Bernadette (1943)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Ushpizin (2005)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Calvary (2014)
where to stream

I Confess (1953)
where to stream
(My longer review here) 

The Robe (1953)
where to stream
(My longer review here)

The Trouble With Angels (1966)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Babette’s Feast (1987)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Passion of the Christ (2004)
where to stream
(My full review here)

There Be Dragons (2011)
where to stream
(my longer review here) 

The Prince of Egypt (1998)
where to stream

 

 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 414: EVIL Friday to you

A few years ago during Advent, I found this in among Corrie’s papers:

And ever since then, every time I feel like I’m not quite hitting the right tone for some particular occasion, I think to myself, “Ah, evil feliz navidad.”

So, evil Lent to you! Or, wait, Evil Cuaresma! Here, on this, the very first Friday of Lent, is an illustrated list of all the food we ate, including Fat Monday, Fat Tuesday, and honestly Fat Thursday, including some incredibly juicy and delicious steaks! YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT. EVIL CUARESMA! 

SATURDAY
Leftovers with corn dogs and bulgoki empanadas

On Saturday, the kids were helping one of their siblings move, so I had no shopping buddy, which meant that EYE got to pick out the dessert, the weekend “silly cereal,” and the frozen food accompaniment for the leftover buffet. For dessert, I picked something called Lepre-cones

just strictly for the name. I myself would not try to market a quiescently frozen treat with “LEPRE” in the title, but that’s just me. My father used to sing a song about leprosy, with the line “there goes my eyeball, into your highball,” but that is all I can remember, and it seems like enough. 

To go along with the leftovers, I picked corn dogs, which most of the kids don’t like, but which Damien and I do; and something called “bulgogi empanadas,” which sounds like something I would make. So I had those two things for supper, plus some leftover rice, because it was Saturday and there are no vegetables allowed. 

The bulgogi empanadas tasted like school cafeteria beef stew stuffed into empanadas. Very sad. The corn dogs were great, though, because corn dogs are great. 

SUNDAY
Oddly sweet pizza

Sunday after Mass, for the last day of February vacation, we drove to Salem, MA to the Peabody Essex Museum, mainly to see the Flemish Masterworks exhibit. It was FANTASTIC. Lots of variety, nicely organized into sacred art, portraits, silly stuff, and landscapes, including sculpture, which I don’t usually associate with Flemish art. I just about passed out looking at a Rubens shoulder up close. Here’s some things that caught my eye. 

 

The rest of the museum was weird but good. They have a very wide variety of art, and they tend not to organize it by date, which is a little disorienting, but thought-provoking. Their art cards were not great, and I really wished for more information sometimes, but they weren’t too editorial, anyway. It is an extremely confusing building with not enough signs, and I spent about a third of my time lost, but I did keep accidentally wandering into interesting rooms, including lots of unexpected animals. Overall highly recommended – the museum, and especially this exhibit. It will be at PEM through May 4 and is traveling around the country. 

The Museum is in Salem, MA, which is THE Salem, of witch trial fame, and long ago, they decided that they were going to squeeze every drop out of that history in the tackiest way possible, which you have to admire. I mean it has all the gorgeous hand-carved colonial architecture and preserved cobblestone and quirky bay windows and whatnot, but also every last damn thing has a witch on it. Right next to the museum was the Witch City Mall, and we briefly considered getting pizza at the pizza place that was (witchily?) decorated with skeletons and a giant Frankenstein head, but it had such a heavy feeling of apathy and ennui, even for a mall, that we decided to look elsewhere. Those who are familiar with the Witch City Mall can tell me if we missed out on anything!

We ended up going to some pizza place in nearby Beverly, which serves NY style pizza. I think it was Siciliano Pizza or something along those lines. Anyway, we don’t get NY style pizza too often, and the kids were rather shocked by the thin crust and extremely sweet sauce. Is that typical? I was expecting the thin, crisp crust, but the sauce was SO sweet. 

We got one plain, one pepperoni, and one with tomatoes, feta, and spinach. The feta was also very sweet!

However, we were all Museum Hungry, so it was fine. Got home and collapsed, broccoli-fashion. 

MONDAY
Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans amondine

Back to school! And Damien reminded me that the heating element in the oven, which we replaced kind of a short time ago, broke again; so my plans to roast the giant eye of round roast beef I splurged on were foiled. (I asked about it on Facebook, but accidentally called it a rib eye, which is too splurgy for me, even for Fat Monday!)

ANYWAY, the upshot was that Damien just cut it into steaks and pan-fried it, and it was INSANELY DELICIOUS. 

Everybody got their own thick little juicy little half-pound steak, and I also made mashed potatoes and green beans amondine. I basically followed this recipe, which has you boil and blanch the string beans, and then in a pan, you melt a bunch of butter with thyme, garlic salt, and dijon mustard. I didn’t have dijon mustard, but I did have some of that stone ground whole mustard with the little popping seeds in it, and it was great. You add the string beans back into the butter and heat them up along with toasted slivered almonds (reminder that you can easily toast almonds in the microwave!) and a little more thyme. Yum. 

I really messed up the mashed potatoes, though. I just didn’t boil them long enough, but didn’t realize it until I had already drained the water out. So I tried to make up for their undercookedness by running them through the food processor; and when that didn’t go so great, I moved them to the Ninja blender and whipped the hell out of them. They did end up more or less smooth, but there was definitely Something Wrong with the texture. Oh well!

FAT TUESDAY
Dinner at the Winchester

Tuesday was Mardi Gras, and we have somehow established the tradition of going to Chili’s for Mardi Gras, so that’s what we did. I had some kind of chicken rice bowl thing and just about everyone else had some form of bacon burger and fries; and then we decided to do a “choose your own ice cream” adventure at Price Chopper. 

I picked Dulce de Leche Churro ice cream

and it was amaaaaaazing. 

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti

Wednesday of course was Ash Wednesday, and also a dentist appointment, and also time for certain people to freak out in for no apparent reason in a pretty spectacular fashion. Then we went home, had spaghetti, and remembered we were dust. 

THURSDAY
Chicken burgers, chips, vegetables and dip; birthday cake

Thursday was Elijah’s birthday, and he graciously postponed his birthday meal (which will be Damien’s special elaborate lasagna) until the weekend, but he and Sophia did make a cake. 

Twenty-one candles, count ’em. My stars. Between that and the thing at the dentist where we went to schedule Lucy’s next six-month check up and discovered that, in six months, she will be too old to see the pediatric dentist anymore, is. . . quite a thing. Last I checked, all my kids were either four, or nine, or possibly 11. But not older than that! (The other week, when Corrie turned ten, I said, “Wow, you’re a whole decade old!” and she said, “That sounds so old! Probably because ‘decade’ sounds like ‘decayed.'” So you can see she’s inherited my cheery outlook on life.) 

On Thursday I also had my very first stress test, just to rule out cardiac issues since my body is still being kind of a weird guy. My heart looks great, and the visit notes said I was in good shape for my age, which, I’ll take it.

But I was chatting with the nurses as I was on the treadmill, and of course we got to talking about kids, and I mentioned (and simultaneously realized) that I have four teenage daughters. And that was also pretty good to hear (even from my own lips) because I’ve been going around feeling like such an absolute LOSER lately, and I didn’t really know why. But that explains it! I have an acute case of teenage daughters. Who are delightful and beautiful, funny and smart and helpful, interesting and creative, but . . . it would be developmentally inappropriate for them to spend a lot of time thinking about whether they are constantly making their mom feel like crap, and I am happy to report that they do not do this! So we’ve got that going for us. Anyway, my heart is fine. I chased each kid down and hugged them individually the other day. That’ll show ’em. 

And soon it will be spring, for real. We’ve had quite a bit of thawing here, so the morning drive is full of brilliant fog banks as the snowbanks evaporate, and what’s left is a grimy, tired snow without much fight left in it. Most likely it will snow again, but it really is truly actually kind of almost spring, finally, almost.

I tapped my maple trees on Tuesday, with only the finest, most high-tech equipment

and they’re actually running really slow, for some reason. Some of them are not running at all, and I have no idea why. I tapped above a root, on the south side, with a slight upward angle, when the nights are cold and the days are warm. Nothin’. But I am getting some sap from a few trees, and I’ll boil what I get, and that will be that. Maybe next week will be better. Maybe they’re taking a gap year. A sap gap. I don’t know. 

FRIDAY
Grilled cheese, tomato soup

And I am super duper looking forward to it. I love grilled cheese and tomato soup. Also I have been using My Fitness Pal to track calories for just over a month now, and let me tell you, something has happened to food in general in that time, because it tastes amazing.

I have tracked calories before, but not using an app, and for some reason, the little ring that shows how many calories I have left in the day is very motivating. Check back in six months and I’m sure I’ll be writing another affirming essay about how good it is to learn to be comfortable in a large body, rather than worrying about calories all the time. You know, I’m fairly full of sap myself. 

Look up!

One day, I was pushing my then-toddler on a swing while we waited for her big sister to get out of school. One of the dads was doing the same thing, idly pushing a swing and waiting for the bell to ring. As he pushed, he looked up at the sky.

“Look at the clouds,” he said. “They’re so cool! I never really looked at clouds before.”

I didn’t know such a thing was possible, to never look at clouds.

Clouds are some of my favorite things in the whole world to look at and think about. I sometimes tell my kids that God could have come up with so many ways of making the world function, but he seems to have chosen the beautiful and interesting and dramatic way, over and over and over again. He could have designed some other mechanism to move water up and down and around the water cycle — something dull or unchanging or even invisible — but he chose to design this system that’s so elegant, beguiling, ever-changing and recklessly beautiful. Clouds! And all we have to do is look up.

The same is true for so much of the natural world: the way seeds turn from tightly closed secret chambers into brave, tender little beings standing on their own; the way rocks and soil are ceaselessly churned up through the relentless jaws of continental plates. Heck, God could have made the world colorless. Soundless. Scentless. He could have organized the food chain so that birds are not necessary, but he chose to fill the world with strange, beautiful, sometimes nutty and hilarious creatures who not only hop and fly and swoop around, they make music as they go. Are you kidding me? And all we have to do is look up!

And that’s just the stuff we know about! That’s just the stuff we can see with a quick glance around us as we hustle from the car to wherever our next appointment is. There is also an immense natural world that is hidden from us, unfathomably busy with its own designs, that we don’t even know about: things working under the surface of the ground, things too small for us to see, things hidden within our own cells; secret signals between trees, arcane signs passed from species to species and generation to generation. Fungal kingdoms, pheromones, neural memories. Things under the sea; things under the ice; things beyond our atmosphere. The sheer liveliness of the world is too much to comprehend.

I’m lucky that both my parents taught me it was normal and rational to look at the natural world with fascination and delight, because it is fascinating and delightful. To have been raised this way is a gift, and for a moment, on the playground that day, I was crushed by the thought this man had been denied that gift for decades. In maybe 40 years, no one had taught him to look up.

But then I thought: How wonderful that it’s not too late. …Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

A Lent for this specific year

Lent is one of those seasons when the “Both/And” nature of the Catholic Church really asserts itself.  

The practices and purposes of Lent are ancient, timeless, universal. It’s a season when we’re invited to step into an ancient, continuous tradition of fasting, praying, self-denial that would not be completely foreign to Catholics who lived centuries ago. 

It’s also a time when we’re supposed to ask ourselves, “What am I in particular, in this specific year, at this specific time in my life, supposed to do so that I can come closer to God?” 

I have some ideas! Here are my suggestions for how to spend Lent in the year 2025. 

Refuse to dehumanize. Not even a little bit.

Undeniably, there are evil people in the world doing evil things.  These people are our brothers and sisters in Christ, with no exceptions at all. They are not trash, not termites, not scum, not excrement, not parasites, not a waste of skin.  

Dehumanization paves the way to oppression, every time. We must not participate, even for the sake of rhetoric, or our hearts will follow the lead of our lips.  

It is becoming more and more socially acceptable to refer to our opponents as less than human, because we see them behaving so abominably, and because they’re calling us even worse names. But as Christians, this should impel us to work harder to recall their humanity, not to give in. Christ did not despise us, and we’re obligated to pass that mercy on.  

Refuse to enjoy being angry.

There’s a lot to be angry about. But when we’re angry at another human being, we should steel ourselves against relishing that rage and delighting in our disgust.  

We can follow the example of Mr Dimble in the final pages of That Hideous Strength, who has just discovered how thoroughly Mark Studdock has given himself over to evil: 

“He seemed to Mark to be looking at him not with anger or contempt but with that degree of loathing which produces in those who feel it a kind of embarrassment—as if he were an obscenity which decent people are forced, for very shame, to pretend that they have not noticed. 

“In this Mark was quite mistaken. In reality his presence was acting on Dimble as a summons to rigid self-control. Dimble was simply trying very hard not to hate, not to despise, above all not to enjoy hating and despising, and he had no idea of the fixed severity which this effort gave to his face.” 

Relatedly:

Give up, or at least cast a critical eye on, doing things that will score us points with our crowd 

That’s one of the worst and most perilous reasons to do or believe something: For applause. Our foundational ideas can so easily shift along with the crowd without us even realizing it, and the crowd tends to demand more and more debasement.  

Times like these are a wonderful opportunity to halt, assess what our core values are, and ask ourselves: Why am I doing this? Why am I saying this? Why am I speaking to or about this person this way?  Just check in and see if anything has shifted in your heart since last year, or since a few years ago; and, if it has, consider whether our new personal standards make us a better witness to the Gospel, or worse. 

Swear off hate-socialising…

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

What’s for supper? Vol. 413: Erasmus B. Dragon

Happy Friday! Sorry for the interruption with the website last week, and thanks a lot, OBAMA. 

We have been on February vacation all week, and there has not been one single day when I’ve been sure what day it is, except I knew for sure that the month was almost over and I had cleverly arranged for all my writing deadlines to cluster together in one giant, unfortunate . . . cluster.

But, food! I’ll just do a few quick highlights from the previous week, because I tried a few new recipes. 

One day we had
Bacon potato soup and french bread.

The french bread is, of course, not a new recipe

Jump to Recipe

but I got cute and made sixteen little personal loaves, rather than four big ones. 

Because it’s such a simple recipe, I ventured outside my comfort zone and just added flour until the dough looked right, rather than meticulously measuring it. I’m trying to give myself credit for knowing how to do things I’ve done a thousand times before.

Turned out great! At least with bread.  

The soup was more or less following this recipe from Sugar Spun Run, and maybe it’s the My Fitness Pal talking, but I had a really hard time feeling like a recipe that includes bacon, all the bacon grease, milk, heavy cream, sour cream, butter, AND CHEESE (and additional cheese, bacon, and sour cream for the top!!!!!) really truly needed as much butter as this recipe called for. So I used a little less butter. I turn sideways, people question where I went. 

It’s one of those soups where you cook it for a while, then put half of it in a blender and puree it, and then add that back into the soup. I’ve only recently become familiar with this technique of soup made out of itself, and it’s pretty good. Quite a rich, thick soup. 

I did add a bit of cheese to the top, along with a little chili powder and chopped scallions, but mostly to add color, since it was quite beige.

I’m not gonna lie, this is a ridiculously delicious soup. The kids did NOT like it, though. They really resent when I serve bacon in any other form besides, you know, baconform. Which I understand! But also, sometimes I want to make things that I like.

We also had, let’s see, meatball subs, tacos, cuban sandwiches with beans and rice, and another new recipe: Ginger chicken from a site I haven’t used before, The Woks of Life. He gives very specific instructions for each ingredient, and it was pretty easy to follow, although I fudged a few things (mirin instead of Shaoxing wine, one kind of soy sauce instead of two, and onions instead of shallots), and my sauce didn’t come out as dark as his. Most likely I rushed it, which is the story of my life. 

But YOU GUYS, it was still SO GOOD. 

Tons of flavor, tender and gingery, wonderful comfort food. I think just about everybody liked it, which almost never happens. Corrie even requested it for her birthday meal (although she later recanted that in favor of . . . well, you’ll see). 

I also made some quick sesame broccoli, which is just broccoli sprinkled with sesame oil, soy sauce, salt, pepper, ground ginger and garlic, and sesame seeds, and then roasted. Very easy and popular. 

We spent part of the week getting ready for Corrie’s party (I have now decluttered every single room downstairs, and one room upstairs!). I made a paper mache pinata in the shape of a dragon egg (which, if you’re not familiar, is the same shape as a balloon) and some kind of half-hearted decorations (a “mystical cave entrance” in the living room doorway largely made of brown shipping paper twisted into vines and tacked onto the wall, with some green and purple foil easter grass thrown in).

The big thing was the DRAGON CAKE. I’m proud of this one. 

First I baked the cake layers. I almost always use box cake mix for younger kids’ birthdays, because they care a lot more about the look of the cake than the flavor, and their parties include so much candy and snacking that, by the time we get to cake, no one’s palate is especially fine tuned. 

So then I made a batch of rice krispie treats, and smooshed it together as compactly as I could, and formed it into a dragon-ish shape. I was very proud of remembering to form it on top of the pan I had baked the top tier of the cake in, so I knew it would fit onto the finished cake. 

It would have been smart to put a layer of parchment paper under it to keep it from sticking, but I didn’t think of that! It did stick a bit, but not disastrously. 

I made the dragon on Thursday for a party on Saturday, so it would have plenty of time to dry and get stiff. I also put a cup under his chin to prop it up while it dried, because it was droopy.

On Friday, I attached edible gold foil to the belly, chest, nose horn, and tip of the tail with frosting, and then I used hardening cookie frosting (comes in a pouch at Walmart) to attach a row of spikes from the top of his head to the end of his tail. The spikes are black candy melts cut into triangles. I made a feeble attempt to put them on in size order, but mostly just shoved them in there.

Then I made the wings! I had the bright idea to use fruit rolls. I cut up some plastic straws, laid them out, stretched the fruit rolls over one side and then flipped them over and stretched another layer on the other side, and trimmed each wing into scallops; and then I used a kitchen torch to seal the edges up so they wouldn’t come apart.

I put a wooden skewer inside the long straw, to make it more rigid, and to make it easier to anchor in the dragon’s body. These also got laid out overnight to stiffen and dry out, so they wouldn’t droop. 

I tried several different ways of covering the dragon’s body, with frosting, scales, etc., and finally reluctantly settled on fondant, which I haven’t used much before. This was nerve-wracking, because at first it looked like he was just wearing a big red sweater.

and truly, I say unto you, it took KIND OF A WHILE to get him all covered and smoothed. But I kept going, and when I molded it a bit and added claws and some details with black icing, it looked okay!

I iced the cake with black and grey frosting, carefully set the dragon on top, and added more gold foil, gold coins, and gold chocolate eggs, and also a bunch of vanilla Oreo cookies that I had sprayed with gold spray.

AND HERE HE IS.

Five guests were able to make it, the pinata worked perfectly (didn’t fall apart too soon, but wasn’t completely impenetrable) and she had a wonderful time. 

Phew! We had Walmart pizza for supper and then collapsed like bunches of broccoli, respectively. 

Sunday, I had a profound desire to not go shopping, so we had our customary leftover buffet, plus a charcuterie board of whatever I could find in the fridge, which included some fancy things we got for Christmas, that I recently rediscovered when I cleaned my room. I sliced up the leftover french bread, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled it with flaked kosher salt, and toasted it

and it was a damn fine meal.

For reasons I can’t explain, I decided to make cake balls for dessert. I have never made or eaten cake balls before, and I found the process slightly gross (you bake a cake, let it cool, crumble it up, and scrunch it into dough with big gobs of frosting. Then make balls, chill them, and dip them in candy melt), but they did turn out looking cute and cheery.

I had one and was underwhelmed; but to be fair, I may have underbaked the cake, so maybe the whole thing was a little more damp than necessary. WHO AMONG US. Anyway, the kids liked them okay. 

MONDAY I finally went shopping, and we had
Buffalo chicken salad

Salad, buffalo chicken from frozen, shredded pepper jack cheese, crunchy fried onions from a can, grape tomatoes, and blue cheese dressing. I’m being tiresome about calories, so I skipped the dressing on mine.

That night, Corrie made ice cream pies for her CALENDAR birthday, which, according to Fisher Rigamarole, is a distinct holiday from your birthday PARTY. 

She requested graham cracker crust, black raspberry ice cream, mini marshmallows, skittles, and gummy worms. She didn’t want any whipped cream or cool whip or cherries or anything. 

Tuesday
Market Basket subs, Doritos, bloomin’ onion, ice cream pies

On Tuesday we went to get her EARS PIERCED. Which was not fun, but she’s been wanting it done forever, and she’s very happy with the results. Then we went to get Market Basket subs. 

Are Market Basket subs especially good? Not especially! But we often get them when we’re going to the beach or on a day trip, so I guess they spell T-R-E-A-T. I have to admit, they’re cheap. They taste like Subway subs and cost what Subway subs should cost.

So we had that and chips and then I guess I felt weird not cooking anything, so I made some bloomin’ onions. You can use a knife to cut an onion into a blossom shape, but it’s way easier if you have an onion cutting device, WHICH I DO.

I made an attempt to take a soulful, romantic photo with one of my beautiful onion lotus blossoms, but I just ended up looking exhausted, which, by strange coincidence, I was.

I lost the recipe booklet that came with my onion machine, so I followed this recipe, which includes a nice zippy recipe for dipping sauce. 

Turned out pretty okay! I crowded the pan and was a little short on oil, but hey, the onion, she blooms.

Corrie had yet another wonderful day with most of her siblings over and lots of presents, including these incredible Bender fingerless mittens made by Lucy

And that was that! Whew!

WEDNESDAY
Instant Pot pork ribs, glazed carrots, cole slaw

Thursday I tried another new recipe: This Amy + Jacky Instant Pot recipe. Easy peasy. You mix up apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a few spices, and marinate the pork ribs in that for a while. Then you throw them in the IP and cook it on high pressure for 15 minutes, then let it natural release for ten minutes. Mine sat for somewhat longer than that because I was driving around (not to and from school, though! It’s vacation, so I was driving them to and from their friends’ houses), so they turned out a little unsightly

but I was excited, because I could tell how tender and juicy they were. You slather BBQ sauce on top and broil it up for a bit, and there it is.

I had made cole slaw in the morning (cabbage and carrots, mayo, cider vinegar, sugar, and pepper) and prepped some carrots to cook, so I put the carrots in the oven just before the meat went in, and it all came out at the same time.

The carrot recipe I used was this simple one from Recipe Tin Eats. This is a rare RTE recipe that does not turn out exactly as she describes, and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Hers are shiny and sticky, and mine are just kinda toasty. They’re easy and popular, though, so it’s worth making them even though they’re not spectacular. I wish I had remembered a sprinkle of cardamom, though. 

Anyway, I thought it was a great meal. 

and the ribs really were juicy and ready to fall apart with a slight nudge from the fork. 

For sure making this recipe again, at least until it gets warm enough for Damien to use the smoker again. 

THURSDAY
Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins

Thursday the older kids had their own plans, so I took Benny and Corrie out for an outing of our own. We hit a thrift store, a local place that does giant baskets of fries, the pet store, and a fancy candy store, and when I say my dogs were barking, I really mean it! I still had to make supper, and it was so late already, I figured I might as well forge ahead and make the meal I had planned, which was beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins. 

Yes, this is a weird combination, but I made it one time and certain people decided it was 100% ideal, so we’re locked in for a while. 

Here is my beef barley soup recipe:

Jump to Recipe

which I threw together in record time. I was kind of puzzled as to why it looked wrong, but when you’re FORGING AHEAD, you simply don’t have time to fret over these things!

Anyway, it was tomatoes. I forgot the tomatoes. They’re more important than I realized, and the soup was a little sad without them! Oh well. 

When the soup was simmering, I started pumpkin muffins,

Jump to Recipe

and discovered I had used all the oil for frying the bloomin’ onions, so I used melted butter. They turned out with a nice, more textured top

but the inside had a slightly waxy feel that I wasn’t crazy about. So now I know.

(I took that picture because, as I was pulling the twenty-four muffins out of the pan, I reminded myself that there would be a grand total of four people at home for dinner, and WHAT IF THERE’S NOT ENOUGH FOOD. Waste! Fraud! Abuse! Somebody alert Department Of Gnawing Everything so they can come over and fix things by clogging up the toilets and shooting the dog.) 

FRIDAY
Poke bowls

Today I am facing a rash promise I made to take the kids ice skating this week, which you may or may not have noticed is almost over, and yet we have not gone ice skating yet. There are two ice rinks around here (one ten minutes away, one forty), and neither one seems especially interested in . . . letting people ice skate on them? So we are aiming for the 7-9:00 spot, forty minutes away. Yes, in the EVENING. Maybe the world will come to an end before that happens. Of course I was counting on that to rescue me from having to do the FAFSA, and that didn’t work out, so probably we will have to go ice skating.

Anyway, first we will be eating something approximating poke bowls. Gonna cook up a bunch of rice and probably sear some Walmart tuna steaks, and I have chili lime cashews from Aldi, mangoes, some kind of green sprouts, and various pink and yellow and brown sauces. 

Saturday will be a regular day, and then Sunday we are going to a museum and will be getting back very late on the night before the first day back at school! Which is a great idea! It was my idea! Hooray! Somebody call the department of paste, frog, and caboose! I have a fever and the only cure is more measles!

I actually think I do have a fever, so. We’ll see who’s ice skating whom. 

5 from 1 vote
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French bread

Makes four long loaves. You can make the dough in one batch in a standard-sized standing mixer bowl if you are careful!

I have a hard time getting the water temperature right for yeast. One thing to know is if your water is too cool, the yeast will proof eventually; it will just take longer. So if you're nervous, err on the side of coolness.

Ingredients

  • 4-1/2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
  • 5 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive or canola oil
  • 10-12 cups flour
  • butter for greasing the pan (can also use parchment paper) and for running over the hot bread (optional)
  • corn meal for sprinkling on pan (optional)

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, put the warm water, and mix in the sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let stand at least five minutes until it foams a bit. If the water is too cool, it's okay; it will just take longer.

  2. Fit on the dough hook and add the salt, oil, and six of the cups of flour. Add the flour gradually, so it doesn't spurt all over the place. Mix and low and then medium speed. Gradually add more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl as you mix. It should be tender but not sticky.

  3. Lightly grease a bowl and put the dough ball in it. Cover with a damp towel or lightly cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until it's about double in size.

  4. Flour a working surface. Divide the dough into four balls. Taking one at a time, roll, pat, and/or stretch it out until it's a rough rectangle about 9x13" (a little bigger than a piece of looseleaf paper).

  5. Roll the long side of the dough up into a long cylinder and pinch the seam shut, and pinch the ends, so it stays rolled up. It doesn't have to be super tight, but you don't want a ton of air trapped in it.

  6. Butter some large pans. Sprinkle them with cornmeal if you like. You can also line them with parchment paper. Lay the loaves on the pans.

  7. Cover them with damp cloths or plastic wrap again and set to rise in a warm place again, until they come close to double in size. Preheat the oven to 375.

  8. Give each loaf several deep, diagonal slashes with a sharp knife. This will allow the loaves to rise without exploding. Put the pans in the oven and throw some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven, or spray some water in with a mister, and close the oven quickly, to give the bread a nice crust.

  9. Bake 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. One pan may need to bake a few minutes longer.

  10. Run some butter over the crust of the hot bread if you like, to make it shiny and even yummier.

5 from 1 vote
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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

  1. 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. 


  2. Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.

  3. 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. 

  4. 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. 

  5. Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary. 

5 from 1 vote
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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

  1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter two loaf pans or butter or line 18 muffin tins.

  2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients except for sugar.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients and sugar. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture and mix just to blend. 

  4. Optional: add toppings or stir-ins of your choice. 

  5. Spoon batter into pans or tins. Bake about 25 minutes for muffins, about 40 minutes for loaves. 

 

Artist and teacher Monica Dix walks the walk.

Monica Dix believes that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

That’s why the 53-year-old artist and teacher will sometimes tack up one of her in-progress drawings where her room full of eighth-graders can see it, saying, “Okay, five things. Critique my work.”

At first, they praise her art, and tell her she’s the best artist ever.

“Then they dig in,” she said.

They always find mistakes she didn’t see, and they’re not shy about letting her know she didn’t properly measure the space between the nose and the upper lip, or that something was off about the eyes.

“It’s great for my pride,” she said.

It’s also great for her students, because it shows them not only how to look critically at the objective elements that make or break a piece of art, but it shows them what it’s like to be an artist. Sometimes you can fix a mistake, but sometimes you have to start over.

“It’s that whole ‘walk the walk.’ I let them see that,” she said.

Sometimes, a kid will point out an error she’s made, and she realizes she’s not only executed something wrong, she’s been teaching it wrong. It’s like when one person raises his hand and asks a question, and it turns out there are ten people who also had that question, but were too self-conscious to ask.

“It helps everybody,” she said.

Dix has been teaching art to teenagers at Naples Classical Academy, a charter school in Naples, Florida, since 2021. In many ways, it’s an extraordinary school, where kids leave their cell phones behind and nobody aspires to be a TikTok star. The classical curriculum, provided by Hillsdale College, tends to attract families with a certain mindset, she said.

But in other ways, they bring the same attitudes and assumptions to her class that many Americans bring to art in general. Part of the curriculum includes modern art, and every year when she introduces abstract expressionism, someone will say, “I could do that!” or “A kindergartener could do that!”

She responds, “Then why didn’t they?”

She asks her students to learn what was going on in the artist’s life and what was going on in the world. They study art on the same timeline as they study history, so they begin to make connections and understand why some artists chose to break with tradition, and why we still remember their work today.

“I come at it from a historical standpoint, from a cultural history standpoint. (These things are) worth looking at,” she said.

She also gets her students to do more than just look. If they have time, she invites them to re-create art that baffles them — for instance, the intricate, dynamic layers of drips and splashes in a Jackson Pollock action painting.

It’s harder than it looks. Her students are allowed to say whether they like or dislike a piece of art, but first they should know what they’re talking about.

Dix makes herself walk the walk, too. …

Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor.

Image: Sunday Afternoon At the Porch House Pub by Monica Dix (image courtesy of the artist) 

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Also, a note: I’m expanding the scope of this monthly artist feature! If you know of a Catholic musician, composer, dancer, or other contributor to the arts who has an interesting story to tell, let me know! Shoot an email to simchafisher at gmail dot com. Thanks!