Does God really expect us to be perfect? (subscriber content)

If you like a good insult, you’ll love today’s readings.

First, Moses tells the people to keep God’s commandments perfectly, and God will reward them. It is the kind of reading that might drift along unheard right over our heads because we’ve heard this message so very often in Scripture. But the fact that we’re hearing it in Lent makes it a bit more uncomfortable. The entire context of Lent is: This is what happened because people didn’t keep the commandments.

The Old Testament is the story of people who got very clear directions about how to behave. Like us, they heard it over and over again, and they just couldn’t hack it. So God had to turn up in person.

And when he was there, he made things crystal clear, telling the disciples directly:

You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you.

And then he gives one of those rare and uncomfortable flashes of insight into his actual personality…Read the rest of my Lenten reflection for today’s reading at America. 

Image via pxfuel.com 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 286: Sauce on your face! You big disgrace!

Hey! Who’s fasting? Ready to suffer? Let’s look at some delicious food pictures. Here’s what we cooked and ate this week: 

SATURDAY
I think Aldi pizza? 

We went to see Moe in The Winter’s Tale and needed something fast to throw at kids. 

SUNDAY
Chicken cutlets with basil; dinosaur cake

Sunday was Elijah’s birthday. Another (alleged) adult in the house! He requested Damien’s wonderful breaded chicken cutlets with the provolone on top and a little secret basil tucked inside,

with a hot scoop of slightly spicy marinara sauce over it all to melt the cheese onto the chicken.

So good. 

I once again reassured Damien that this meal was totally worth the hours and hours he spends in the kitchen. I’m the only one who thinks this is funny, but I keep saying it anyway. 

Elijah was reminiscing about the dinosaur cake with a volcano and blue Jello gazing pool I once made him when he was little, so Clara decided to recreate him. 

And a very dinosaur birthday it was.

MONDAY
Rigatoni alla disgraziata

I knew there would be lots of leftover sauce and probably some leftover chicken, so I planned a new-to-us pasta dish for Monday to roll things over, and it was all very tasty.

Rigatona all disgraziata is not only the most delicious food you can have while still keeping meatless, it’s the most fun you can have pronouncing a dish while making reference to being wretched. That’s what the “disgraziata” part means: It’s “poor wretch” food, because it calls for mozzarella, but if you don’t have that, you can just use breadcrumbs. 

If you do have mozzarella, though, you . . . well, first you toast up the breadcrumbs in a little olive oil (I used breadcrumbs from a can, but I do want to try homemade a some point), then you brown the eggplant in a lot of olive oil,

then salt it and add in the sauce that your husband has made yesterday (he used this Deadspin recipe).

Cook and drain the rigatoni, add in the saucy eggplant, mix in the toasted breadcrumbs, throw in some shredded mozzarella, and warm it all up together, and sprinkle some parmesan on top.

Fabulous.

Here’s a more detailed recipe:
Jump to Recipe

I undercooked the eggplant a little bit, so it was a tiny bit too chewy, but this was still a monstrously delicious and filling meal, even without the addition of the leftover chicken, which I heated up and served on the side. Definitely going into the rotation for meatless meals. We also thought it would be nice if some crumbled Italian sausage happened to fall in. 

TUESDAY
Hot dogs, french fries, corn

I have no memory of Tuesday. Corrie has been packing cold, leftover hot dogs in her lunch all week, though, so I know it happened. 

WEDNESDAY
Garlic ginger chicken with mint; coconut rice; garlic string beans

My second foray into Indian cooking. This one was mildly disappointing, as the marinade for the chicken seemed exciting and tasted intense,

but the finished chicken came out much more mild. The ingredients are: Fresh ginger, fresh garlic, fresh cilantro and mint, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, coriander, turmeric (which I know I have somewhere, but I couldn’t find), and amchur, which is dried, unripe mango powder, and is super tart. 

Here is the recipe from Bon Apetit. I must warn you to save the recipe if you plan to use it, because they now limit the number of free views. 

You marinate the chicken, then brown it in oil, then cook it at a low temperature in a pan for ten minutes, then turn the heat off and let it finish cooking for fifteen minutes in its own steam. 

This worked well enough, and the chicken came out extremely moist and tender. But I could tell that it wasn’t as flavorful as I had hoped, so I cut it up and tossed it in the pan with the drippings, to coat all the pieces with as much flavor as possible.

And it was good! Just predominantly garlicky and gingery, and the rest of the flavor was harder to discern. I put plenty of fresh mint and cilantro on top to help it out. 

I had some misadventures with the rice, as well. I used this straightforward recipe and made a big pot of coconut basmati rice in the Instant Pot. The second time I got a burn message, I transferred it to the stove and finished it there, where it cooked somewhat unevenly. Not terrible, but I don’t know why I’m struggling so much with rice! Maybe I need to try another brand. I’ve been buying basmati rice at Aldi. Anyone know anything? Tell me it’s not my fault. 

For the string beans, I just drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled them liberally with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, spread them in a shallow pan and shoved them up under a hot broiler until they were a little blistered.

Easy and tasty. 

It was a good meal, just a little tamer than I was expecting. Onward and upward. I still have a shelf overflowing with Indian spices and I’m not discouraged. 

THURSDAY
Regular tacos

None of my funny globalist tricks. No lemon grass or fish sauce or tree ears or balsamic reductions. I even got the crunchy shells that come in a box, which the kids think are a treat because I don’t usually get them because they’re noisy. Everyone was happy and loved me. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

And there’s plenty of rigatoni left over, too. IN THIS HOUSE [extremely lawn sign voice] we eat five-day-old rigatoni. 

We also add hot sauce and sometimes mustard to our otherwise pretty pedestrian mac and cheese. 

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Rigatoni alla disgraziata

A hearty, meatless pasta dish with eggplant, breadcrumbs, and mozzarella

Ingredients

  • 2 lg eggplants with ends cut off, cut into one-inch pieces (skin on)
  • salt
  • 3/4 cup olive oil, plus a little extra for frying bread crumbs
  • 3 cups bread crumbs
  • 3 lbs rigatoni
  • 6 cup marinara sauce
  • 1 lb mozzarella
  • grated parmesan for topping

Instructions

  1. In a very large skillet or pot, heat up a little olive oil and toast the bread crumbs until lightly browned. Remove from pan and set aside.

  2. Put the 3/4 cup of olive oil in the pan, heat it again, and add the cubed eggplant. Cook for several minutes, stirring often, until eggplant is soft and slightly golden. Salt to taste. Add in sauce and stir to combine and heat sauce through. Keep warm.

  3. In another pot, cook the rigatoni in salted water. Drain. Add the pasta to the eggplant and sauce mixture. Add in the toasted breadcrumbs and the shredded mozzarella. Stir to combine. Serve with grated parmesan on top.

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 285: Best I can do is no lobster

Every year, I tell the kids how strict the orthodox are in Lent, compared to us. No meat, no fish, no dairy, no cheese, no eggs, no oil on Fridays and most but not all Wednesdays, no brown or yellow or oblong grains, no oily fishies, and very few whiskered or blue-eyed mammals on the final week, which is known as Full On Horrendoustide. You can eat wax. I researched this rigorously and I don’t want to hear about it. The upshot is we westerners have it very easy, with our little meatless Fridays, and I also don’t want to hear about that. So every year I give my little speech, and then I go ahead and cook like I always do throughout Lent, except I feel bad about it. I try to avoid lobster, even if it’s on sale, which it is not. 

So here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
I don’t know. Oh, Saturday was Corrie’s birthday, so we had calzones. I feel like I already wrote about this. I’m confused. Here is a picture on my phone that says “Saturday” on it:

My little cupcake. Now she is seven. 

SUNDAY
Beef stroganoff on skinny egg noodles

But her birthday was a different day from her party. Was the party Sunday, then? I’m so confused! I think the party was Saturday, but I did the food post on Monday, so I included Saturday’s food? Anyway, Damien cooked on Sunday. He used a Deadspin recipe for stroganoff and it came out fragrant and luxuriously creamy with very tender strips of beef.

But he forgot-a the mushrooms! These things happen. Still delicious. There was some kind of run on regular noodles and there were none to be found, so we had fancy skinny noodles. Don’t tell the ecumenical patriarch. (Actually it wasn’t even Lent yet by this point.)

MONDAY
Tacos al pastor with pico de gallo

I’ve tried a few different recipes for tacos al pastor, and I like this one the best. It takes a bit of work on the front end (you have to blister up the guajillo chilis, then de-seed them, then simmer them

before adding them to the marinade, which itself has quite a few ingredients, especially if you have to make a substitute for achiote paste, which I did).

I complain, but I will admit, I adore spending a morning making a marinade. If I have nothing else to do and there aren’t a lot of people climbing over me making mountains of toast and complaining about the kind of popcorn I got, it’s so pleasant, simply messing around in the kitchen.

I also made a big bowl of pico de gallo, although I forgot to buy any peppers, so it was just tomatoes, onions, lime juice, kosher salt, and cilantro. Actual recipe:

Jump to Recipe

Here’s how pico de gallo should look, if you’re not lazy:

I, however, got lazy and did it in the food processor, so it was a little pulpier than necessary, but still sharp and tasty. 

We got a big dump of snow, so we’re still cooking exclusively indoors. When it was time to cook, I got a big skillet nice and hot with oil and cooked the marinated meat in batches, to make sure it got a little bit seared, rather than basically simmering due to being squished.

The pineapple juice in the marinade made it so tender.

While I was cooking the meat, I broiled the chunks of pineapple on an oiled pan right up under the broiler, and heated up a stack of tortillas. My land, it was all so tasty. I can never get over what wonderful things happen to pineapple with a little high heat, the hot nectary insides right under the delicate trim of char. Amazing.

The marinade is not too spicy, just kind of smoky and warming. It was a popular dish altogether, and so pretty. 

Tacos al pastor is one of my favorite Mexican dishes (and it apparently has a Lebanese shawarma influence, so that’s no surprise).

I wanted some lime cilantro rice to go with it, but we were low on rice. It was really a fully satisfying meal on its own, though, with some sour cream and cilantro thrown on top of the meat and pineapple and pico de gallo.

Your choice of corn chips or lime plantain chips on the side. Good stuff.

TUESDAY
Actual Restaurant

Fat Tuesday! We’re terrible at Mardi Gras. Nobody around here is doing anything remotely debauched, and nobody in this house would be excited about pancakes, so we went out to eat. Appetizers and everything! Corrie only went under the table one time. I got a bunch of photos of the teenagers looking away with an annoyed expression, so I’ll spare you those. 

I decided to go ahead and have a steak, which turned out to be so huge, I could only eat half (I had the second half for lunch on Thursday). And a very fat Tuesday was had by all. 

WEDNESDAY
Marcella Hazan’s red sauce on spaghetti

It was suggested to the cook that, because it was Ash Wednesday, we could just go ahead and open a jar of Aldi spaghetti sauce, but it was counter- suggested that just because it’s a penitential day doesn’t mean we have to eat dirt. So in the interest of family harmony, we had Marcella Hazan’s miraculous three-ingredient sauce, and it was, of course, wonderfully savory and delicious.

Jump to Recipe

I would say the penance came in when I could only have one helping, but actually I went back for another little scoop because nobody stopped me.

THURSDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, Pringles

Nothing to report. Fell asleep sitting up on the couch, and then Corrie came down after bedtime, sobbing because there are three kinds of matter and they all take up space, but what about the ones that donnnnnn’t? People think they want smart kids, but this is a mistake. 

FRIDAY
Fish burgers, french fries, broccoli slaw

I just got some frozen breaded fish and and some fresh dill, and I guess we’ll have fish burgers with some kind of homemade tartar sauce, assuming I can stay awake. I don’t seem to have a broccoli slaw recipe saved, but I like it with all kinds of stupid things in it, sunflower seeds and dried cranberries and all kinds of bird food that nobody else wants. I’m sure they’ll all be gracious about it, and so will I, I’m sure. And a blessed Horrendoustide to you. 

 

 

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Pico De Gallo

quick and easy fresh dip or topping for tacos, etc.

Ingredients

  • 2 large tomatoes, diced
  • 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced OR 1/2 serrano pepper
  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 1/8 cup lime juice
  • dash kosher salt

Instructions

  1. Mix ingredients together and serve with your favorite Mexican food

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Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce

We made a quadruple recipe of this for twelve people. 

Keyword Marcella Hazan, pasta, spaghetti, tomatoes

Ingredients

  • 28 oz can crushed tomatoes or whole tomatoes, broken up
  • 1 onion peeled and cut in half
  • salt to taste
  • 5 Tbsp butter

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients in a heavy pot.

  2. Simmer at least 90 minutes. 

  3. Take out the onions.

  4. I'm freaking serious, that's it!

Go ahead, give up chocolate for Lent

An old woman asked a young girl—her name was Cassidy, if I remember right—what she planned to give up for Lent. Cassidy said she was going to give up popcorn.

“Popcorn!” the old woman scoffed. Pathetic! In her day, girls used to do real penances, make real sacrifices, she said. Cassidy should give up all desserts, at least. Or chocolate. When she was a child, she gave up chocolate, she said.

Cassidy mumbled that her dad would make her popcorn every night and she ate it while they watched basketball on the couch together. It actually sounded like a large and meaningful sacrifice, but the old woman’s message had hit home. Her Lenten practice was not good enough. It was childish, not meaningful.

The moral of this story? If someone asks you what you’re giving up for Lent, run away!

Or, an even better moral: When you’re deciding what to do for Lent, be childlike, not childish.

Here’s what I mean. When someone argues “Don’t just give up chocolate for Lent” they are using shorthand for the idea that giving up some little food treat is a cheap and childish way to sneak through the season. They’re saying that it means we’re just checking off the “sacrifice” box and skating by, and if we expect some kind of true spiritual growth, we should be seeking something more meaningful and profound. Rather than giving up chocolate or something else, we should be adding something, some spiritual practice, some good works, some new and challenging way of approaching the day or each other or God.

And this may be true. Sometimes when people “just give up chocolate for Lent,” it’s because they’re doing the easy, thoughtless thing. Sometimes it makes sense for us to urge each other to dig a little deeper, look a little harder at our spiritual lives, and think a little longer about what the Lord is asking from us.

But this year, in particular, feels different. And I think it calls for a different approach.

We’ve all been through the wringer, in one way or another. Lots of people have had their faith shaken, and we may find ourselves facing Lent 2022 with especially low enthusiasm and especially ramped up cynicism. Many of us are grieving. Many of us are physically healing, or still suffering. It has been a soul-crushing, exhausting time of constant risk assessment, constant weighing of expectations against reality and the constant wretched need to question other people’s trustworthiness—all while still trying to keep alive some spark of hope and good will toward our fellow man. When is the last time it hasn’t been Lent? And now you’re telling me I need to impose some new wound, this time self-inflicted?

That’s how I feel. But in my heart of hearts, I know that is not what Lent is meant to be. So I find it helpful to ask myself, when I’m discerning some spiritual practice: Is this childish? Or is it childlike?

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image by Marco Verch via Flickr (Creative Commons) 

What’s for supper? Vol. 284: Ghee! Your chicken smells terrific

Gotta quick get this food post in before Lent starts! It was February vacation this past week, and we were pretty busy doing this and that (especially that. OH, the that we did) including Corrie’s birthday party and my first foray into Indian cooking. Let’s begin!

SATURDAY
Bacon cheeseburgers, chips

Damien made supper

while I did a gazillion errands, including checking out a wonderful little store in the area, Keene International Market. It’s not huge but it has an impressive variety of goods, including frozen foods and fresh produce. I had very little in the way of Southeast Asian spices in the house, so I stocked up

I actually made two trips, and the second time I got some saffron and coriander and I forget what else. Always wanted to buy saffron. 

Damien and I were both so excited about the Indian meal we had a few weeks ago. The first great thing about Indian food is, of course, how ridiculously delicious it is. The second great thing, though, is how excited Indian people get when you tell them you’re trying Indian cooking. What a delight! I got so much profuse encouragement and enthusiasm from so many people, including the cashier at the store. Lovely. 

I started marinating the chicken for the main dish, chicken biryani, on Saturday night. The marinade tasted pretty exciting, and we both thought that, if I just added more yogurt to dial down the intensity a little, it would make a fantastic dip. 

SUNDAY
Pakora with tamarind sauce, chicken biryani, naan

Okay. So I started out knowing this was going to be a learning curve. But even so, I had SO MUCH FUN cooking this food. I really took to it, and it felt very natural and enjoyable. That being said, nothing I made turned out exactly right, and some of it turned out . . . pretty wrong. The flavors were all great, but everything needed improvement of some kind or other. But we all liked it so much, I’m definitely going to try again. It was just a super fun meal to make and eat, and somehow seemed to produce family happiness. This may have been because I was so upbeat about it, and my good cheer rubbed off on the kids, but that does not automatically happen by any means, so I think it’s just Indian food magic. 

First, the pakora. I went a little bit rogue and just started stuffing all kinds of vegetables into the food processor. I used spinach, string beans, carrots, red onions, and cabbage.

I ended up chopping everything a little bit too fine, so I ended up with small, fluffy wads of fried vegetable, rather than spiky bundles. (You let it sit, squeeze out the excess liquid, mix it with spices and chickpea flour, and then deep fry it.) Just didn’t have enough substance.

But as I said, the flavor was great (I added salt, coriander, garam masala, and ginger paste), and I liked the tender, vegetable-y inside with the lightly crisp fried outside.  Next time, I will just cut everything more like matchsticks than shreds. 

Next, the naan. I planned to make this recipe, which my friend Tom recommended, but I started too late, so I defaulted to King Arthur. It calls for both regular flour and bread flour, and yogurt, but it’s quite simple, and I thought it turned out well enough, if a little tough. I forgot to brush ghee on at the end, and they definitely could have been more tender, but heck, they looked and tasted like naan, so, thumbs up, white girl! I made sixteen of them.

Where I really stumbled was the biryani. Here’s the recipe again. The chicken part came out divine. In this recipe, you start — well, first you start by marinating the chicken well in advance, as I mentioned above; but when you’re ready to cook, you start by by roasting a bunch of whole spices in ghee

then fry up some onions in it, then add in the chicken that’s been marinating in yogurt and a bunch of spices overnight, and let that cook for a while.

At this point, your house smells like heaven.

Then you add more yogurt and more spices, and then you have to spread your raw basmati rice, add the liquid, and cook the rice on top of the cooked chicken, with salted water and coconut cream infused with saffron and whatnot.

Here I got confused, and I ran out of room in the pot, and I started making substitutions and panicking a tiny bit, because I realized the rice was cooking very unevenly, so I transferred everything to the Instant Pot; but I still didn’t use enough liquid, so it started to burn, and it was just not gonna work out, so I just served it as it was. So the rice was rahther crunchy, which is a shame, because it was expensive!

But all those delightful ingredients and all that layering of flavor was not in vain, because the chicken and sauce part was so delicious that everybody ate the biryani anyway, crunchy basmati rice and all. It was just . . . creamy and fragrant and a little earthy and warming, with lots of layers of flavor. I dialed down the spiciness quite a bit to make it as accessible as possible, because it was already very different from what the kids are used to eating. It was not bland! Just not spicy. 

I also attempted to make some tamarind sauce using a slab of tamarind paste. I more or less followed this recipe, but it juuuuust didn’t turn into something I was excited about eating.

Damien liked it, but I thought it was too tart and too chunky, even after lots of extra honey and some time in the food processor. I’ll just buy a jar of readymade sauce next time, because I’m cuckoo for tamarind. I did buy some mango chutney and some mint chutney and we used all three sauces and just dipped everything in everything.

I believe that’s how you’re supposed to do it. 

Oh, and I also grabbed something called Soan cakes, 

which turned out to come sealed in little plastic cups like fruit cups, and they were so strange! They tasted somewhat like halvah, but sweeter and fruitier, and the texture was kind of . . . splintery? And it sort of melted in your mouth. Several of the kids mentioned that it was like they always imagined pink insulation tasting. 

MONDAY
Pizza

Homemade pizza, but nothing special, just a bunch of pepperoni and olive and whatnot. I was still kind of in a daze from all the cooking I had done on Sunday, and was drained of creativity. 

TUESDAY
Pork ribs, suppli

Lucy wanted to try her hand at making suppli, and after I warned her that it was a fairly complex recipe with several steps,

Jump to Recipe

especially if you’re planning to make the risotto on the stovetop and all, darn it if she didn’t go ahead and make the best suppli I’ve ever had. 

Look how lovely they turned out, outside:

and in:

Great savory, creamy risotto inside, and I did spring for some good fresh mozzarella, so that melted very well. 

For the meat, I threw some salt and pepper on some pork ribs and roasted them, and we just had the pork ribs and suppli for supper, that’s it. A slightly barbaric meal, somehow, but very tasty.  

WEDNESDAY
Chicken fajita bowls

I’m just going to go ahead and quote my Facebook status for the day:

Today after I got some writing done, I had to drop Benny off at her friend’s house and take Sophia for a haircut and pick up a few party things, so I decided to take Corrie with me for fun (????), and we got some groceries and I ran in for a final birthday present and we had to get some fireworks, and then I guess that was too many errands, because she got EXTREMELY ANGRY ABOUT HOW THE REVOLVING DOOR WAS BEHAVING, and had a bit of a meltdown. And this continued for several miles until I realized the shortcut I was taking brought up right past a farm, so we stopped to visit some horses and cows, which calmed Corrie down, but I myself leaned on the electric fence, which was not ideal! Then we picked up Benny and went home, and I got pulled over for various reasons, and made supper, and finally got my boots off, and I was reading to the girls when I heard Corrie quietly say, “oopth.” I turn around and she has . . . a mouth full of broken glass???? Because I guess she found a Christmas ornament and decided to put it in her mouth, and then accidentally bit it? Anyway nobody died and we finished the chapter, and I just

But oopth nothwithstanding, I was fairly proud of the dinner I got on the table, just in terms of sheer minutes-per-raw-food-to-hot-food-ness; and it was pretty tasty, too, if not luxe. I cut up some chicken breast with green peppers and onions and fried it up in oil with plenty of chili powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and — not cumin, because I used that all up in the Indian food. 

I set some rice cooking in the Instant Pot and heated up some black beans, chopped up some cilantro and scallions, and put out sour cream, salsa, shredded cheese, lime wedges, salsa, hot sauce, and corn chips, and forty minutes after we got home, there was a happy little dinner ready. 

The only thing we didn’t have, besides cumin, was bowls. Nobody knows what happened to all the bowls. So we had chicken fajita plates. 

THURSDAY 
Pizza

Thursday was the day we All Got Out Of the House. We tried something new: The Fitchburg Art Museum, which is small but worth driving an hour to see. They have an immersive Ancient Egypt exhibit that was very effective and memorable. I made the kids pray for the mummies, because a dead old man is a dead old man, even if his organs are in a jar.  You can see some of my photos on Facebook. Then we went back to town and did some thrifting/antiquing and picked out some silly stuff (and the owner sized up Benny and Corrie and pointed out the giant basket full of used dance costumes, whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho!), and then, because it was vacation, we stayed out got pizza. 

FRIDAY
Calzones

Yes, after pizza on Monday and then pizza on Thursday, we had calzones on Friday, which was Corrie’s request for her birthday dinner. I ended up asking Elijah to make them

Jump to Recipe

while I finished making the cupcakes for her party on Saturday. She wanted cupcakes decorated with ancient Greek motifs, and filled with Nerds (just like our house, har har har). I sliced the cupcake tops off, used a vegetable peeler with a digging end to gouge out a little hole, poured the Nerds in, and stuck the top back on with icing. My hands have not gotten less shaky over the years, but she was happy with her cupcakes. 

Which is pretty remarkable, considering that she also asked Clara to make her a Greek god cookie birthday cake, so obviously Clara made her one. 

The cupcakes were for her party on Saturday, but the cake was just for the family on Friday.

I know you want to see those cookie gods close up, so here they are:

Everybody says “They are too beautiful to eat!” and that’s probably true, but we ate them anyway, because we are monsters! And Clara just keeps making more outstanding cookies, so we never learn.

Okay, that’s it! I usually keep doing food posts throughout Lent because, as previously discussed, I’m a monster. Happy Fat Monday!

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Suppli (or Arancini)

Breaded, deep fried balls of risotto with a center of melted mozzarella. 
Make the risotto first and leave time to refrigerate the suppli before deep frying. 

Ingredients

  • 12 cups chicken stock
  • 8 + 8 Tbs butter
  • 1 cup finely chopped onions
  • 4 cups raw rice
  • 1 cup dry white wine
  • 1 cup grated parmesan cheese

To make suppli out of the risotto:

  • risotto
  • 1 beaten egg FOR EACH CUP OF RISOTTO
  • bread crumbs or panko bread crumbs
  • plenty of oil for frying
  • mozzarella in one-inch cubes (I use about a pound of cheese per 24 suppli)

Instructions

  1. Makes enough risotto for 24+ suppli the size of goose eggs.


    Set chicken stock to simmer in a pot.

    In a large pan, melt 8 Tbs. of the butter, and cook onions slowly until soft but not brown.

    Stir in raw rice and cook 7-8 minutes or more, stirring, until the grains glisten and are opaque.

    Pour in the wine and boil until wine is absorbed.

    Add 4 cups of simmering stock and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally until the liquid is almost absorbed.

    Add 4 more cups of stock and cook until absorbed.

    If the rice is not tender by this point, keep adding cups of stock until it is tender. You really want the rice to expand and become creamy.

    When rice is done, gently stir in the other 8 Tbs of butter and the grated cheese with a fork.

  2. This risotto is wonderful to eat on its own, but if you want to make suppli out of it, read on!

  3. TO MAKE THE SUPPLI:

    Beat the eggs and gently mix them into the risotto.


    Scoop up about 1/4 cup risotto mixture. Press a cube of mozzarella. Top with another 1/4 cup scoop of risotto. Roll and form an egg shape with your hands.


    Roll and coat each risotto ball in bread crumbs and lay in pan to refrigerate. 


    Chill for at least an hour to make the balls hold together when you fry them.


    Put enough oil in pan to submerge the suppli. Heat slowly until it's bubbling nicely, but not so hot that it's smoking. It's the right temperature when little bubbles form on a wooden spoon submerged in the oil. 


    Preheat the oven if you are making a large batch, and put a paper-lined pan in the oven.


    Carefully lower suppli into the oil. Don't crowd them! Just do a few at a time. Let them fry for a few minutes and gently dislodge them from the bottom. Turn once if necessary. They should be golden brown all over. 


    Carefully remove the suppli from the oil with a slotted spoon and eat immediately, or keep them warm in the oven. 

5 from 1 vote
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Calzones

This is the basic recipe for cheese calzones. You can add whatever you'd like, just like with pizza. Warm up some marinara sauce and serve it on the side for dipping. 

Servings 12 calzones

Ingredients

  • 3 balls pizza dough
  • 32 oz ricotta
  • 3-4 cups shredded mozzarella
  • 1 cup parmesan
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1-2 egg yolks for brushing on top
  • any extra fillings you like: pepperoni, olives, sausage, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400. 

  2. Mix together filling ingredients. 

  3. Cut each ball of dough into fourths. Roll each piece into a circle about the size of a dinner plate. 

  4. Put a 1/2 cup or so of filling into the middle of each circle of dough circle. (You can add other things in at this point - pepperoni, olives, etc. - if you haven't already added them to the filling) Fold the dough circle in half and pinch the edges together tightly to make a wedge-shaped calzone. 

  5. Press lightly on the calzone to squeeze the cheese down to the ends. 

  6. Mix the egg yolks up with a little water and brush the egg wash over the top of the calzones. 

  7. Grease and flour a large pan (or use corn meal or bread crumbs instead of flour). Lay the calzones on the pan, leaving some room for them to expand a bit. 

  8. Bake about 18 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. Serve with hot marinara sauce for dipping.  

Praying for Ukraine

This week we are praying for Ukraine, of course. I keep circling and circling the news like an anxious animal at a closed door, looking for a way in.

My great grandparents were from Ukraine, from somewhere around Kyiv. That is pretty much all I know. The photo above is them, about halfway through their migration. 

Their names were Zelda and Feivel, and the children in this visa photo are Gosel, Hana, and Schloima. Hana, the little one in the hat, was my father’s mother. It took years for the family to finally get off the continent — so long that my great grandmother had a whole other baby before they made it. I believe this photo was taken in Bucharest, partway through their escape. 

My great grandparents shed their old names and became Jenny and Philip, and the children became Jerry, Anne, and Sammy. They also left behind most of their physical possessions. My great grandfather was rich, a fur merchant. The story goes that he hid in the root cellar while the bolsheviks pounded on the door to conscript him into the army, so his wife told them he had deserted the family. Then they escaped Kiev and sold my great grandmother’s jewels, and just about everything else they owned, to buy boat passage.

So our family now has very little in the way of heirlooms. There are two brass candlesticks that one of my sisters claimed, which I assume are from the old country. I always thought they looked like someone had dropped an egg down inside them, but that’s all I know about them. There is a framed piece of yellowed cloth with a scene embroidered faintly on it, a girl leaning on a fence to face a young man in a cap, loose pants, and high boots, with a gun and a pack like a soldier. It has Cyrillic letters picked out along the bottom, and someone told me it says “Give me a kiss before you go.” (My mother wanted me to bring it in when our third grade class was supposed to bring in very old objects, but I chose instead a German beer stein carved like a bear that I had found at a yard sale.)

We have other little scraps of information and pieces of stories. My great grandparents were Jews, but the boat they boarded to cross the ocean was named the S.S. Madonna, and of course about eighty years later, my parents were received into the Catholic Church — at St. Mary’s, in fact. That’s the nice part of the story. The less lovely part is that, according to family lore, Gosel the little baby kept crying and the captain said that if they didn’t shut him up, they would throw him overboard. They eventually made it to Romania and then to Ellis Island. But any time that kid (my great uncle Jerry) made trouble, his mother would say, “I SHOULD HAVE THROWN YOU OVERBOARD LIKE THEY TOLD ME TO.”

Two more girls were born, Beatrice and Miriam, and there was another baby brother, who died in a freak accident, when an older brother was throwing him in the air and he hit his head. My great grandfather also died, and the family struggled to keep afloat, and they moved a lot. Once, when they moved to a new apartment, they sent my great aunt Beatrice off to camp so they could pack up, and she assumed they were just getting rid of her, just like that.
 
But what she’s still mad about is the lost jewelry. My great grandfather replaced some of the jewels his wife had to sell, but it was pawned over and over again, and then lost. Aunt Bebe is in her late nineties, still angry about the lost rings. Or I guess just the loss, in general. I don’t know. 
 

So you can see, you leave the furniture and the jewelry and the furs behind, but the trauma travels light, and always comes with you. It always translates well. It takes a few generations to decide whether or not to laugh at these stories. I say terrible, murderous things to my dog; I try not to say them to my children. 

I’m not trying, as my friend would say, to “me-planet” the news, but as I say, I’m circling it anxiously, looking for a way in. It feels wrong that I don’t have more of a sense of connection with the Ukrainians than I do. I probably have relatives, actual family there right now. But my family who did leave Ukraine tried so hard to leave the old country behind and be 100% American, and they really succeeded; so all the connection I have is the story of how we fled. And as my brother said, when I see the photos of Ukrainians fleeing, they look familiar. They look like my grandmother. 

I am just praying that the Ukrainians don’t have to leave their homes. I have seen the pictures of the families sheltering in subway tunnels and I just want them to be able to come out again, to move back into their houses, to pick up the books they were in the middle of reading. To find that the milk in the refrigerator has not spoiled yet, and their great grandmother’s jewels are still in the box in the bedroom.

I cannot fathom the trauma that has already been imposed on them. There have already been deaths, heroic sacrifices, senseless losses. People say, “Ukraine matters to us all! Look how much wheat they produce! Look how much uranium ore!” Uranium ore? People have already had to flee with their lives packed into a suitcase. Dreadful things have already been demanded of children, of old people. I just don’t want them to have to lose it all. I’m praying that they can keep their homeland. Everyone ought to be able to keep their home. 

 

Showing up empty-handed

We were at Mass. Christmas Mass, in fact, but that doesn’t really matter. I felt, as I do every Sunday of the year, that we had arrived unprepared.

If I only had one more week of Advent, I could have gotten into the proper frame of mind and organized an acceptable habit of preparedness. If only I had a bit more time, we could have done more. But at least most of the family was there. And that was not nothing. It’s certainly not the inevitable thing to be taken for granted, that I once thought it was. 

Being there doesn’t feel like a bare minimum, these days. It feels like everything possible. That’s not because it’s so incredibly hard to show up for Mass. It’s really not. It’s just that I’m so much more aware than I used to be that any preparation I might do is mostly for show, and doesn’t mean much to anyone besides me. Being there isn’t the minimum; it’s the only thing, the only thing I have to give the Lord. 

When I was a new parent, it really was very physically challenging to get all my little ones minimally ready for church. I had to start very far in advance to make sure everybody had a full tummy and a fresh diaper (and more packed up just in case), presentable clothes and shoes, clean hands and face, tidy hair, and toys and books to occupy them but not distract other people. People who aren’t parents may not realize just how much physical and metal labor it takes to make such a simple thing work, especially if you’ve been up all night the night before taking care of those same children. It’s just a lot of work, and it’s exhausting (and that’s before the hour-long gymnastics session even begins).

There’s a reason parents are always carrying so many bags. You need to bring a lot with you, wherever you go. 

Then, as your kids get older, there is less physical, hands-on labor involved, fewer supplies to carry, but getting them to Mass involves a different, more complex and nuanced kind of work, which is just as exhausting in its way. You must work to teach them what to do, how to follow along and engaged, how to pray, how to think of God as a loving, welcoming Father, but also to take seriously their own responsibility to avoid sin, to repent when they have sinned, to approach the altar with humility.

That’s a lot of work, too, and it’s harder to tell when you’ve accomplished it. When a face must be washed, you wash it, and then it’s clean. But when a child’s conscience must be formed, it’s not only a continuous process, it’s very easy to do it wrong, and hard to tell when you’re doing it wrong, and, when things are clearly going wrong, hard to tell if it’s because of what you’re doing, or because of some other influence entirely. It’s just hard.

Well, you try showing up at Mass without some of your kids. Try showing up and knowing that some of your kids aren’t there by their own choice, after being raised by you. This takes no work whatsoever on your part, but it’s the most exhausting of all. 

Literally exhausting, as in, it takes everything from you. You stand there and you are left with nothing, nothing but yourself to drag before the altar and present to God. Here is what I have to show, Lord: Just me. Just my helplessness; that’s all I have. All I have is my mouse strength, my pale shadow, my feeble heart, my shallow breath, my almost-nothing. My failure, which is nothing. Every time I go to Mass now, this is what I bring: Pure uselessness. 

It’s so hard, it’s easy. All you have to do is show up. What could be simpler?

It wasn’t wrong, to be so busy and burdened before, when my children were all young. Somebody had to do it! Things have to get things done. Somebody had to carry all those loads.

But hiding at the center of all forms of human labor is a core of pure uselessness, and it’s good to know that this is so. Because sooner or later, no matter what it is you do, that’s all that will be left: Just you and your helplessness. This is what we all have to present to the Lord. It’s easy to convince ourselves there’s more to it than that, but there isn’t. 

We don’t go to Mass because of what we can bring to the table. I know that. We go to worship, and we go hoping to receive. They say that, when you find yourself empty handed, what’s when God will fill you up. That is what they say! Now we find out. 

A version of this essay was originally published in The Catholic Weekly on January 19, 2022.

Photo by Thomas Vitali on Unsplash

How dare you speak that way?

A few months ago, a bunch of Catholics resurrected a funny tweet by writer and comedian Daniel Kibblesmith:

 

The joke was very well received. But a few people, to my gratification, were offended by it. Not offended because someone dared to make a joke about God, but offended in an older sense, as in wounded and dismayed, aware of a trespass, maybe even alert to some kind of danger because a line has been crossed.

That was how I felt, to my surprise.

The joke is funny because, when you try to sum up what God says in the book of Job, it doesn’t add up. Surviving unbearable agony versus inventing the hippo comes across as nonsensical and absurd, out of context. But in the context of Scripture, God is revealing to Job his ineffable immensity, his unanswerableness, in such a way that, well, if you read the whole thing, the fact that he made the hippopotamus does answer Job’s suffering. But you have to be willing to put yourself right there in front of the bellowing hippopotamus and feel his hot breath and smell his smell and think of who made him.

You have to be open to the idea that the Book of Job tears off a veil and reveals a relationship between God and Job. That is, at least, how Job himself perceives it. And so do many people who have read it deeply. They can put themselves where Job is. And maybe that’s why, at least to some people, the joke came across not as a light-hearted spoof but as something ugly. Because, for people who have felt that hot breath of suffering, the flippancy trespassed on something real—a specific, painful, precious, hard-won relationship that exists between actual people and God. At least, I think so. Humor is tricky. So is God.

So why did so many Catholics, who presumably know something about submission to the will of God in the face of profound suffering, share the tweet? Or, more broadly, why do we often have the almost rebellious impulse to make jokes about sacred things?

When I worked for conservative outlets, readers regularly took me to task for my irreverence. I was told I had no business making jokes about holy things like prayer, church, priests, saints or, of course, sex. There are some people who really do live like this: They believe that jokes are all very well and good, but they must be sequestered strictly away from anything remotely spiritual.

This approach makes no sense to me. I wouldn’t even know how to have a spiritual life without laughing about it sometimes. Scripture is very plainly full of jokes, and even if you set aside the possibility that I’m projecting, I would swear God teases me.

And I tease back, when I’m feeling up to it. My husband and I were alone (well, not alone, but you know what I mean) in the adoration chapel a few weeks ago, and he was deep in the Gospel. I nudged him and whispered, “Anything good in there?” He flipped a few pages back and forth, lifted an eyebrow, and said, “Meh.” I laughed so hard I almost broke the kneeler. That was a good day because I was buoyed up with the certain knowledge that of course there was good stuff in there. The joke, in other words, was on us. It was irreverent, but ultimately, it was directed at us and our habit of behaving as if the Gospel is, indeed, meh.

Another day at the chapel, not so good ….Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar via Flickr Creative Commons

What’s for supper? Vol. 283: I’m light as a feather!

I’m the Bake-o-Lite girl. 

Here’s what we had this week: 

SATURDAY
Italian sandwiches

Always a favorite.

When I was growing up, my mother used to cook during the week (and in fact my father would do the shopping, and would choose all the groceries, and she would come up with a menu based on what he happened to bring home, which is . . . certainly a way of doing things!), but every Saturday, my father would make grinders (which is what more people in this area used to calls subs back in the 70’s). He used to work at a sub shop calls Subs ‘n’ Such, and at first –well, at first, he would bring home leftover, sometimes dubious meat to feed the family with, but then things stabilized a bit, and he started buying meat at the deli; but he continued making subs for everyone in the family on Saturdays. But eventually he realized he could just bring stuff home and we could make our own dang sandwiches. This was every single Saturday, and he would also make pizzas every Sunday, and it was a great system. The world underestimates the charm of predictability.

SUNDAY
Superbowl!

Damien made his tasty hot wings and drumettes with blue cheese dip,

Jump to Recipe

and I made a big batch of guacamole.

Jump to Recipe

And we had hot dogs.

Not terribly inventive, but what is, these days?

The Superbowl halftime show was aimed directly at people our age, and I got to feel that old familiar “everyone knows this song except for me” feeling again, just like the old days, wooo. 

I spent most of the day working on valentines with the little girls. Corrie focused mainly on literary efforts. Benny wanted to do something homemade, but I wasn’t feeling super creative, so I got a bunch of silicone molds from Walmart, and we smashed a bunch of Jolly Ranchers and spooned different colored bits into the molds, melted them in a low oven, let them cool, and popped out a bunch of neat little shaped candies — hearts, roses, and of course some Star Wars shapes, and some dinosaurs.

The dinos were especially charming. They came out very sleek and appealing. 

Benny spent, I don’t know, eleven hours putting her valentines together. 

Then we realized Corrie was supposed to bring in a Valentine mailbox, so she came up with this, uh, Hill of Love, with a cave where Aphrodite lives. 

And that’s the true meaning of Valentine’s Day. 

MONDAY
Korean beef bowl

Back to an old standby. I made it in the morning and kept it warm in the crockpot all day,

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then made some rice in the Instant Pot when it was dinner time, and snipped some scallions off the windowsill jar, which is I think the fourth generation already. 

I forgot to make anything heart-shaped. There is brown sugar in the sauce, so that was Valentine, I guess.  

TUESDAY
Greek(?) chicken skewers, pita, yogurt sauce

This was a really tasty meal, and very cheering and summery on a dreary February day. Easy, too, as long as you have time to put things on skewers; and kid-friendly, with bright, pleasant flavors like lemon and honey. I threw some fresh mint and fresh oregano leaves in there, too.

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I decided to string the chicken, onions, and tomatoes (fancy multi-colored cherry and grape tomatoes) on skewers and then marinate them, which is not really ideal — they get less marinade that way, unless you have absolutely tons of it — but it always takes so long to do, and I wanted to get it over with. 

I just roasted them on a rack over a pan right under the broiler in the oven, and they turned out perfect. Gosh, I love hot roasted tomatoes, especially. 

Served with plenty of pita bread and some nice yogurt sauce.

Lovely bright, sweet, juicy, cheerful meal. I had these cold for lunch a few times during the rest of the week.

WEDNESDAY
Not enough chicken (or too much chicken; you decide); pasta salad

The store had no chicken burgers, so I got chicken strips, thinking we could just put them on rolls like burgers, but apparently the size of the bag was deceiving, and there weren’t enough chicken to go around. Luckily, we had leftover chicken skewers, plus leftover chicken wings. Not exactly a loaves and fishes situation, but there certainly was a lot of chicken. 

The pasta salad was okay.

I don’t know what it is with my pasta salad. I load it up with all kinds of good things and tasty flavors and seasonings, and I keep adding to it throughout the day, but I almost always end up with something bland anyway. 

This pasta salad had olive oil and red wine vinegar, sun dried tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, black olives, thick-cut pepperoni, diced red onion, and grated parmesan, plus plenty of salt and pepper, oregano and garlic powder. I know you’re thinking it’s because I didn’t use fresh garlic and fresh herbs, but even when I do, it’s still bland. I don’t know why I keep making it. Yes I do. It’s so I don’t have to serve chips. 

THURSDAY
Pulled pork, coleslaw, homemade hot pretzels

The pulled pork had beer, apple cider vinegar, half a jar of sliced jalapeños with the juice, and a bunch of salt and pepper and garlic powder, and I let it go in the crock pot all day. It was okay. I had to fight with it to shred it. I served it with rolls, but skipped the roll myself

because I also made hot pretzels! Yay!

The hot pretzels were a King Arthur recipe I meant to make for the Super Bowl but ran out of time. Quite easy, it turns out! It just takes one rise.  I mixed all the ingredients for a double recipe in the standing mixer, let the dough rise for half an hour, divided it up (look how uneven! they would toss me out of the Great British Baking Show so fast)

made 16 pretzels, doused them in water that had baking soda dissolved in it,

let them rest, salted them, baked them, and then brushed them with butter.

I very slightly undercooked them, because I planned to re-heat them for dinner (which several people assured me works beautifully), but then forgot to do so. 

Ironically, they came out somewhat lighter and fluffier than I had hoped. I have the world’s heaviest hand in baking, and normally I couldn’t produce a light and fluffy baked good if you put a gun to my head. So this time, I wanted that characteristic chewy, doughy texture, and they came out tender and airy. Whatcha gonna do. Still delicious! and the flavor was exactly right, salty and buttery and a little bit sour, and I really liked the very fragile, flaky little crust on the outside.

 

I got a little confused about how to twist them, so I found a helpful video here (skip to about 20 seconds in). My pretzels had a more . . . vertical thrust than you often see in pretzels. They looked like. . .  hmm . . . nests. Yeah, that’s the ticket. 

They did not resemble piles of anything.

They did not appear to be waiting in line for the ladies’ room.

And they definitely did not remind me of anything else. Not at all. 

Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!

I guess I didn’t stretch the snake parts enough, or pinch the ends down firmly enough! I’m just delighted I baked something that turned out looking nice and tasting normal, though. Yay me! Yay pretzels!

For future reference, my friend Kim helpfully asked the King Arthur people on my behalf how to handle it if I wanted to make the dough early but bake the pretzels right before supper. The recommendation was to make the dough up to step 4, and then put the kneaded dough in the fridge, and then before dinner, take the dough out, form the pretzels, and bake. I’ll definitely be making this recipe again. 

FRIDAY
Lo mein

Tonight I intend to make a lovely shrimp and scallop lo mein with sugar snap peas, asparagus, and fresh ginger. I have made lo mein with all kinds of noodles, including rice noodles and fettuccine, but today I have some skinny pho noodles (which are also made of rice, but I guess a different kind?) that were on sale at Aldi. 

It’s super easy to throw this together. Just mix a few ingredients for the sauce, boil the noodles, cook your mix-ins, deglaze the pan, and boop it all together. 

Jump to Recipe

Here’s a lo mein I booped as a side for roast pork. 

It’s completely filling as a main dish, though, especially if you get some proteins in there. 

And that’s my story. My story about food. 

Print

Hot chicken wings with blue cheese dip (after Deadspin)

Basic, tasty hot wings with blue cheese sauce

Ingredients

  • chicken wingettes
  • oil for frying

For the hot sauce:

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/8 cup tabasco sauce
  • 1/8 cup sriracha sauce
  • salt
  • vinegar (optional)

Blue cheese sauce:

  • sour cream
  • blue cheese
  • optional: lemon juice, mayonnaise
  • celery sticks for serving

Instructions

  1. Fry the wingettes in several inches of oil until they are lightly browned. Do a few at a time so they don't stick together. Set them on paper towels to cool.

  2. Melt the butter and mix together wit the rest of the hot sauce ingredients. Toss the wings in the hot sauce.

  3. Mix together the sour cream and crumbled blue cheese. Use a food processor or whisk vigorously to break up the blue cheese. You can add lemon juice or a little mayonnaise to thin it.

  4. Serve with blue cheese dip and celery sticks.

 

5 from 1 vote
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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

 

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Korean Beef Bowl

A very quick and satisfying meal with lots of flavor and only a few ingredients. Serve over rice, with sesame seeds and chopped scallions on the top if you like. You can use garlic powder and powdered ginger, but fresh is better. The proportions are flexible, and you can easily add more of any sauce ingredient at the end of cooking to adjust to your taste.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown sugar (or less if you're not crazy about sweetness)
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 3-4 inches fresh ginger, minced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3-4 lb2 ground beef
  • scallions, chopped, for garnish
  • sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a large skillet, cook ground beef, breaking it into bits, until the meat is nearly browned. Drain most of the fat and add the fresh ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the meat is all cooked.

  2. Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes the ground beef and stir to combine. Cook a little longer until everything is hot and saucy.

  3. Serve over rice and garnish with scallions and sesame seeds. 

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Greek chicken skewers

Serve with yogurt sauce. Add pita and rice pilaf or stuffed grape leaves for a nice meal.

Ingredients

  • 4 lbs chicken, cut into bite-sized chunks
  • 3 pints grape tomatoes
  • 5 red onions, cut into wedges

For the marinade:

  • 4 lemons zested and juiced
  • 4 tsp oregano
  • 1-2 cups fresh mint, chopped
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • kosher salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Mix together the lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, honey, mint, oregano, salt, and pepper. Add the chicken chunks and let it marinate for at least three hours.

  2. When you are ready to cook, thread the marinated chicken onto skewers, alternating with tomatoes and onion.

  3. Grill over coals or broil in a pan in the oven until slightly charred.

  4. Serve with yogurt sauce.

 

Print

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 5 tsp sesame oil
  • 5 tsp sugar

for the rest

  • 32 oz uncooked noodles
  • sesame oil for cooking
  • add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
  • 2/3 cup rice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)

Instructions

  1. Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.

  2. Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.

  3. Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.

  4. Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.

  5. Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

Habits we’ll keep after covidtime

Bright side! Who’s ready to look for the bright side? I am.

Everyone in the world is at different stages of the pandemic, so it’s hard to tell if it’s the right time for this essay or not. But from where I stand, things are . . . maybe sort of kind of wrapping up? At least they look a lot more hopeful than they did this time last year. It’s been a while since anybody I know has DIED, so that’s awesome. 

Here’s what I did. I made a little list of good things that came to us in this awful time, along with all the dire things we know so well.

The vaccine technology itself, for one. We’ve made huge leaps forward in mRNA technology, and we’re looking at being able to treat cancer, Zika, rabies, HIV, malaria, cystic fibrosis, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, and more, because we got pushed into developing this line of research. Of course half the population is choosing to put their own aged urine into humidifiers instead, but never mind! The technology will be there for those who aren’t . . . like that. 

And there are other, less earth-shattering but nonetheless pleasant changes the pandemic has brought about. So many businesses finally figured out how to make online ordering and curbside pickup work, which is great for busy single moms, people with disabilities, people who don’t drive, etc. It sounds silly, but so many restaurants figured out that they actually have space for tables outside. It’s just nice. 

Doctors and therapists have figured out that there really are some things you can do remotely just fine, and your patients do not need to schlep themselves across town and spend hours in a germy waiting room. Nobody wants to live their whole lives via Zoom — that was awful — but sometimes it’s awesome, like when you have six parent-teacher conferences, or when you’re a sick college kid and don’t want to miss a lecture, or when you’re a Catholic who’s never going to leave the nursing home alive, and you’re awfully glad the parish didn’t stop broadcasting Mass when the churches opened up again.

How about the idea that it’s lazy and selfish to stay home from work just because you’re sick? Did COVID kill that off? Time will tell, but I hope so. And of course we’re waiting to see if employers in general are going to be okay with continuing to let their employees work from home. And it’s been amazing to see essential employees flex their muscles, now that the world was forced to realize just how valuable they really are. 

That’s all big, society-wide stuff. What about in our own family? Some things — like drawing pictures together, baking together, saying the Angelus together — was nice, but it came and then went when the novelty wore off. But the pandemic also foisted some changes on us that seem to have become a permanent part of our family culture, and I’m not mad.

Crowd-dodging skills. At the height of the pandemic, when we really didn’t know how contagious the virus was or how it was transmitted, I started doing errands at weird hours, chasing empty stores. It was a hassle, but it was more manageable than I realized, and the payoff was enormous, because it opened up huge swaths of free time on the weekend. We could actually relax and have fun on the weekends. It was like a fairytale. My goal is to do this every summer, and any other time I can get away with it.

Masks. Yes, masks. My family is 100% acclimated to the things. Of course it was COVID we were trying to avoid, but we dodged a lot of other viruses and germs at the same time — and avoided passing them along, as well. I do realize there’s a downside to having everyone wear a mask all the time, and I’ll be very glad when we can just leave the house with bare faces again; but now that it’s no longer socially odd, we plan to mask up every year for flu season when people are bunched together. (And yes, they are downright cozy in the cold weather. Sometimes people gather on the town commons to protest mask mandates. It’s hovering right around zero, so every day someone gets frostbite to own the libs.)

Bird-watching. I don’t know which I enjoyed more: Watching birds at the feeder, or watching my husband and adult kids charge over to the window to get a glimpse of a new bird at the feeder. We ended up with something like seven feeders by the end of one lockdown period, and it’s been immensely rewarding. We recognize not only the bird’s coloration and food preferences, but their songs, their eating habits, their manner of approaching the feeder and each other, and their general attitude toward life. I also took to making rich, hearty seed cakes that incorporated leftover stale snacks, which feels thrifty and satisfying. It’s been a great addition to our family culture.

Landscaping. We didn’t have a lot of strict quarantines, but we sure did spend a lot of time in our own yard, and that made me look for more and more spots to beautify. However else we remember the pandemic, it will be marked with hundreds and hundreds of tulips and daffodils that I planted obsessively when the world seemed very dark, in the fall of 2020 and again in the fall of 2021. Having that burst of color in my own little world next spring gave me such delight, I plan to keep adding to it. There’s never going to be a bad year to plant bulbs. My goal is to plant 100 every year from now on.

Being deliberate about friendship. Many people have had the painful experience of losing friendships because the pandemic and its politicization has polarized people so radically. There are some people I used to think were basically decent and sensible, and it turns out that, under the right conditions, they are actually . . . not. And I don’t want to be friends with them anymore, because it turns out they are terrible people. And there are others who have shown themselves to be valiant, patient, sacrificial, humble, and kind, and I will never forget it, and I want to be more like them.

And there are still others that I disagree with very vehemently about Covid, but we‘ve both been very careful not to talk about it with each other, because we value our friendship. That in itself has been sort of weirdly illuminating and heartwarming: Knowing there’s someone who cares about you so much, they refuse to talk to you about important stuff. Strange times. Anyway, for better or worse, the pandemic has given me new parameters for how to decide how close to remain to people, and while it’s not necessarily information that makes me glad, it’s useful to know. It’s been a sort of painful maturity.

How about you? Did you pick up any pleasant or valuable hobbies or habits because of the pandemic, that you plan to hang onto? I’m more than ready to find the bright side. 

A version of this essay was originally published in The Catholic Weekly on January 13, 2022.