Child molesters groom the whole community (and they don’t need Troll dolls)

Here in the US, conspiracy theory-minded folks recently convinced themselves that a new doll was deliberately designed to groom kids for sexual abuse.

When you push a button on the doll’s bottom, it makes happy noises. One mother posted a video saying that she thought the noises were sexual, and her message quickly went viral.

The company said that any sexual connotations were unintentional, and they’re happy to replace the doll, and are “in the process of removing the item for purchase.”

Is it possible that someone in toy design deliberately made a toy for the purpose of teaching kids to associate their private parts with pleasure? Anything is possible (although most kids figure that out easily enough on their own).

There is certainly a lot of blurring of lines between sexiness and cuteness in toys, and it’s gross. It’s worth while, for any number of reasons, to limit your kids’ exposure to dolls and toys and books and shows that constantly show them sexual things.

But this woman’s concern was based on a misunderstanding of what active, targeted grooming often looks like. The whole point of grooming is that it doesn’t start with private parts and sexy noises.

Grooming of children and other victims starts with things that are objectively innocuous and non-sexual: Offering rides, being friendly and helpful, giving little gifts, accustoming them to non-sexual physical touch. So when we get the impression that grooming of children looks like sex plus children, we’re setting ourselves up to miss actual red flags, and that means missing actual sexual abusers.

And there’s another important idea: When someone wants to sexually abuse a child, he doesn’t just groom the child. He very often grooms everyone around the child.

He grooms character witnesses. He grooms an entire community, so that nobody thinks twice about letting him spend time alone with the child, and so that, if the child does speak up and say something is weird, no one will believe the child or the whistleblower, because everyone knows and loves Awesome Coach Steve or Holy Fr. George or Helpful Uncle Andy or Venerable Grandpa Henry, and it would never cross their mind that the guy everyone likes would do such a thing.

Having everyone on your side is vital, and abusers know this. They work to make everyone around the child will be unwittingly complicit in the child’s abuse.

This reality hit home when I was undergoing training to teach catechism class for my diocese… Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

 

Image: minanfotos via Pixabay

What’s for supper? Vol. 223: But what does democracy smell like?

This is our second week of school and I decided that was enough excitement and/or agony, and I didn’t need to try any new or tricky recipes. Here is what we had:

SATURDAY
Burgers, I think? I don’t seem to have photographic or written evidence.

SUNDAY
Ham, peas, mashed potatoes; stone fruit cobbler

Corrie’s platonic ideal of dinner. 

I made twelve pounds of mashed potatoes, and it was too much mashed potatoes! Didn’t know there was such a thing. 

The ham was pre-cooked, which is great, but do you know what’s even better? Slice it up when it’s cold, then put it in a dish with some water or Coke, cover with tinfoil, and then heat it up when it’s dinner time. So much faster than heating and then slicing.

We had tons of peaches, plums, and nectarines that were getting a little gooshy, so I got it into my head to make a cobbler.

I can’t find the recipe for the life of me. I’ll keep looking if people want it, though! As you can see, I diverged from it pretty severely anyway. 

The recipe called for corn starch for cooking the fruit before putting the cobbler topping on. Isn’t it lovely? The fruity jewels of late summer. 

I knew we had corn starch, but I couldn’t find it. So I crankily swooped over to the convenience store and bought a small canister for $423.99, and then promptly lost that, too. I had already put water, brown sugar, and butter in the pan, so I added a can of sweetened condensed milk, on the theory that I would like the fruit to be more . . . condensed. I don’t know. I just didn’t want to go back to the store. 

I simmered it for a while until the fruit was soft, and the sauce/syrup/whatever got kind of clotty, but not too clotty.

Then I drained most of the liquid off and put it in the pan, and covered it with the cobbler batter. The top turned out lovely, with a good crisp, slighty crumby crust and a tender, cakey inside. Not especially cobbled, but it tasted nice.

The fruit inside tasted fine. You could discern that faint vanilla custard taste from the condensed milk, but it wasn’t too sweet. It didn’t exactly hold together, but nothing I make holds together. It wasn’t soupy, anyway. And I didn’t have to go back to the store! 

Would have been nice with some vanilla ice cream or unsweetened whipped cream. But I sure wasn’t going to the store to get some. 

MONDAY
Hot dogs of a limited number of nations, onion rings

We haven’t had Hot Dogs of Many Nations for a while. Hot Dogs of Many Nations is when we set out a dizzying array of toppings, so people can have a Chicago dog. or a buffalo dog, or a chili dog, or a dog of any nation!!!! 

This was a pretty lackluster display. It was about as international as when the Girl Scouts have a cultural fair but nobody’s keeping track of who’s dibsing which country, so Kayla and Kylie and Cayley and Kaeleigh all just end up doing Canada. 

I had one of those nice natural casing hot dogs with chili, cheddar cheese, and scallions. It was okay. And we had onion rings.  

TUESDAY
Chicken burgers and chips; pizza for election reporters

Damien sometimes makes some extra cash gathering election results for various news outlets, which means he has to drive around like a crazy person going from school gym to community church to other school gym, trying to persuade Pierre, the town manager who is up too late, that this is all public record and he can SO take a picture of it. Anyway he had one town too many, so I covered one. There certainly was a lot of sitting around. People think democracy looks like either marching with torches and shooting, or else dancing to Bruce Springsteen with balloons falling out of the ceiling; but actually it looks like sitting around.

Anyway the kids made supper and Damien and I got home late and got Domino’s. Democracy also looks like Domino’s.

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

Nothing to report. Ground beef was $1.99 a pound, so that was fairly exciting. 

My basic meatball recipe is here.

Jump to Recipe

I added diced onions and crushed garlic and a lot more oregano than I usually add, and they came out perfectly fine, like they always do. 

THURSDAY
Turkey bacon wraps, raw veg with hummus

An unexpectedly popular meal. I got some sliced buffalo turkey and Swiss cheese, and Damien fried up a few pounds of bacon. We had spinach and sun dried tomato wraps and an assortment of sauces and toppings. I had mine with chicken, bacon, spinach, salami, and spicy sweet mustard, and it was pretty swell.

Look, here’s another picture.

I love wraps. We also had sweet pepper and snap peas with hummus. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

As I was making the cheese sauce, I remembered a twinge of guilt I had felt the other day when a teacher remarked to another mom what healthy snacks she always packed. My own child, while clearly very healthy and robust in general, toddles off to school with a lunch box full of pre-packaged Sparkleberry Melon Tango Yogurt Tubes, X-Treme Salt Kracker Snackers, and to drink, a foil pouch of Purple Madness Corn Syrup Punch Sploosher. And an apple. So I tweeted out:

It got some pretty good response, and I smiled to myself as I stirred the cheese sauce. “I am helping,” I thought. “I am making the world better.”

Then I thought, “Hey, what is that?” For there was a dark patch in my cheese sauce. I poked around with the wooden spoon and then fished out not one, but two entire pieces of American cheese, still in their wrappers. 

I am helping. I am making the world better. Sometimes democracy looks like American cheese?

Even after this, someone asked for my mac and cheese recipe! I’ll go ahead and write it out here, even though it’s very vague and never turns out the same way twice. The only thing special about it is you put in tons of pepper and hot sauce. This doesn’t make the cheese sauce spicy, but it gives it some depth of flavor, and makes the whole thing more interesting. I also top the casserole with shamefully buttery panko bread crumbs.

Oh! I also have a video of Corrie explaining how to make garlic toast. It’s adorable (she watches a lot of food videos, and she has the patter down), but way too long, and I’m too dumb to figure out how to edit it. I’ll keep trying, though. 

Well, goodbye! 

***

5 from 1 vote
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Baked macaroni and cheese

This is a vague recipe. You can change the proportions of the ingredients to make it thicker or thinner, more or less cheesy. I don't care!

Servings 12
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Meatballs for a crowd

Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs. 

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground meat (I like to use mostly beef with some ground chicken or turkey or pork)
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 8 oz grated parmesan cheese (about 2 cups)
  • salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, basil, etc.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400.

  2. Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.

  3. Form meatballs and put them in a single layer on a pan with drainage. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or more until they're cooked all the way through.

  4. Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve. 

 

 

 

Mental health according to Mel Brooks

You know the phrase “It’s never your successful friends posting the inspirational quotes?” This is a pretty elastic concept. I would posit that it’s never your sane friends who are constantly posting insights about mental health.

Let’s take it even a step further. You know who knows the most about good mental health? That’s right: Mel Brooks. Specifically, Mel Brooks at the absolute apex of his powers, when he made Blazing Saddles. You might think of the film as a one hour and thirty-five minute spoof of westerns that skewers racism and includes more than the average number of fart and uh schnitzengruben jokes, but it’s actually also rich treasure trove of good role models for mental hygiene. Shut up, it is. I’ll tell you all about it.

Then, because my friend Nora asked me to, I’ll include which drinks pair well with each concept. Nora is a nurse, and you have to do whatever nurses want.

Read the rest of my latest for the Catholic Weekly.

Why do we pray for healing from saints who were not healed?

Every once in a while, you’ll come across someone who giggles at the Catholic practice of honoring a saint on the day of his death, rather than on the day of his birth. They assume this means that Catholics are creepy and morbid (which, okay, is kind of true) or that Catholics are metal and hardcore (which is also sometimes true). Or that Catholics are just kind of weird (which is definitely true).

Of course the real reason we venerate a saint on the day of his death is that it is his birth day: The day of his birth into eternal life.

I was thinking of this when someone posted a prayer request for a friend battling cancer. She mentioned the name of the patron saint of cancer patients, and it suddenly occurred to me how strange that is:  The patron saint died of cancer, and that’s how she became the one we pray to when we want someone to survive cancer. Kind of weird!

There is not, as far as I can tell, any official system for how a saint acquires patronage, but it’s common for them to become the patron saint of the thing that killed them (or of people dealing with the thing that killed them). They’re often portrayed with the thing that killed them — a wheel, a sword — perhaps giving the impression that that thing is what they set out to make their life about. “Hey, it’s-a me, the axe in the head guy!” they seem to say.

But of course it’s the Catholics left behind after their death who decided that that would be Their Main Thing. This is clearly related to the idea that their feast day is the day they died. If it was cancer that killed them, then cancer is the thing that freed them from mortality and let them enter into eternal life. If it was leprosy that killed them, then leprosy was their ticket to heaven. And so on.

Or is that it? I think this view misses the mark and makes Catholics into the morbid, death-loving ghouls we’re sometimes accused of being. If Catholics were 100 per cent on board with the idea that the thing that kills you is the best thing that ever happened to you, then why would we, for instance, ask the patron saint of cancer patients to intercede for the healing of cancer patient?

Because that is what we do: We don’t pray, “O dear Saint Mervintrude, patron of wheelbarrows, my friend is in the hospital after having been run over by a rogue wheelbarrow. Please let him die soon.” Instead, we pray, “Please restore him to life and health.”

So which is it? Do Catholics yearn for a holy death in the company of saints who also died that way, or do Catholics look for escape from death through the intercession of saints who didn’t escape?

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image of Peter of Verona, the axe-in-head guy via Wikimedia Commons  license

What’s for supper? Vol. 222: Back to Zuul

Sorry, there will be no follow-up Ghostbusters reference in this What’s For Supper. I just ran out of title ideas. We did go back to school, though. 

If you look closely, you’ll notice that all the food photos this week were taken either outside, or in my bedroom. This is because I’m spending half my time pining for the kids because they’re at school, and the other half hiding from them because they’re home.

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Pork ribs, mashed potatoes, corn

Damien made his lovely sugar rub for the pork ribs, and cooked them on the grill. Scrumptious as always. Great little char, great caramelization, a little sweet, a little hot, nice and juicy inside.

You could make a big batch of this sugar rub and have it on hand in a baggie for just about any kind of meat, and it really makes it special. 

Jump to Recipe

I made seven pounds of mashed potatoes, and it wasn’t enough. Next time, a full ten. I also remembered too late about garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, where you boil the garlic cloves right along with the potatoes and then mash them in, then embarrass yourself with how much cheese you add.

 

Jump to Recipe

Next time! 

SUNDAY
Spaghetti carbonara

Always popular.

Damien made dinner while I languished or something. Oh, wait, I was doing school supply shopping! Really down to the wire this year. I remember the first year I did school shopping, when we were SO broke and having SO much culture shock after years of home schooling. I remember being so heartbroken and outraged that I was expected to buy a thumb drive for my innocent sixth grader. It seemed like they were trying to turn her into a faceless drone, enslaved to technology and commercialism. So, this year, Corrie got a P.J. Masks backpack and Frozen II water bottle and a shiny gold Wonder Woman dress and Lion King socks and whatever the hell else she wanted. And all Crayola, no Rose Art at all. You can judge for yourself if that’s progress or not. Anyway, Damien made dinner.

 

Jump to Recipe

MONDAY
Aldi pizza

For the first day of school, a nice, easy meal was in order, especially since I had somehow made myself believe school was still a full week away, so we had zero acclimatization to the new bed times. 

School is . . . okay. The kids are okay with masks. The school has set up tents for outdoor classes and lunch, and the kids sit on yoga mats, and no one spends more than 45 minutes in a room with other people, and they have fans going all the time. They do temperature checks every morning. They ask my five-year-old if she’s been out of the country (and I always listen closely for her answer, because you never know). It is okay. I have no idea if they’re learning anything. Corrie has learned a dinosaur song and a fishie song and has a friend named Greta. She has a classmate named Oliver who is silly. We have no idea how long this all will last, but for now, it’s okay. 

Mirabile dictu, no one in the school has life-threatening allergies this year, so we can pack whatever we want for lunch, so there’s that. In a few weeks, we’ll add in hybrid public high school and Catholic high school, and eventually the college kids will go back to college. Moe is in quarantine. It’s been several days since anyone called Clara “Hitler” for enforcing mask rules in the store.  Walmart is selling unscented hand sanitizer again, so you don’t have to go around smelling like fermented cranberry fart. It’s okay. How are you?

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, carrots and hummus, broccoli salad

I cleaned out the cabinet and discovered I’ve been diligently stocking up on sunflower seeds and dried cranberries, for some reason. So I poked around and found a recipe that uses both of them, along with broccoli and a basic dressing (mayo, white vinegar, sugar, pepper). 

Everyone liked it well enough, and it was a nice change from coleslaw. Vaguely autumnal. Some people also add bacon, but I was trying to pretend it was a vegetable. You could also put minced red onion.  Maybe a little blue cheese. But it was nice in its simple form. 

WEDNESDAY
Steak teriyaki stir fry, white rice

Feeling unambitious, I bought two bottles of ginger teriyaki sauce. I’m often unhappy with my stir fries because they are watery and the vegetables are overcooked, because I crowd the pan and overcook some ingredients while others are catching up. So this time, I cooked the food in batches and in stages. I heated up some sesame oil and cooked the strips of beef in batches until just barely not pink, then took the meat out of the pan. Then I cooked the broccoli in the meaty pan until just barely done, and then I added the red peppers and cooked them just a little. Then I put the meat back in and added the sauce and just stirred everything up quickly so it was heated through, and served it over rice.

Good results! The vegetables were crunchy, the meat wasn’t chewy, and the sauce did not get watery. I made a bunch of rice in the Instant Pot, and it was a tasty, pretty meal. 

Steak continues to be cheap, and I’m running out of ideas! We’ve had steak and cheese, steak salad, steak steak, and tortas. What else do you make with steak? Never thought I’d have this problem. 

THURSDAY
Carnitas with guacamole, corn on the cob

Not the very fine carnitas from J.R.’s Art Place that you cook in a pot until the meat’s all lacquered and lovely, but still not bad. I put a giant bone-in pork picnic in the Instant Pot with a can of Coke, some cinnamon sticks and bay leaves, orange quarters, salt, pepper, and oregano, and cooked it for 35 minutes on high. It wasn’t really tender, so I gave it another 35 minutes. It still wasn’t as tender as I wanted, but I was out of time, so I pulled the meat out and shredded what I could, and cut the rest off. Then I spread it in a pan and sprinkled it heavily with chili powder and salt, and crisped it up under the broiler.

I flirted with the notion of beans and rice, but it seemed hard, so we just had the meat with guacamole, and cheese, sour cream, salsa, lime wedges, and cilantro. 

I made some rather tomato-heavy guacamole with the few avocados that didn’t turn out to be all sad and grey inside. What the heck is wrong with avocados lately? They’re not overripe, they’re just blighted or something. What do you expect: These are Joe Biden’s avocados. Ask yourself if you’re really prepared for four more years of Joe Biden’s avocados.

FRIDAY
Tuna burgers, cheesy tomato soup

This may just be a fantasy. Most likely, people will request plain tuna with mayo. But I will offer the option of tuna burgers.

 

Jump to Recipe

And I will offer tomato soup from a can, and they can put cheese in it. Or they can act like it’s not even exciting that it’s finally almost soup season. But it is exciting! It is. 

 

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Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups brown sugar
  • .5 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsp chili pepper flakes
  • salt and pepper
  • 20 chicken thighs

Instructions

  1. Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit. 

  2. Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked. 

 

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Garlic parmesan mashed potatoes

Ingredients

  • 5-6 lbs potatoes
  • 8-10 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
  • 8 Tbsp butter
  • 1-1/2 cups milk
  • 8 oz grated parmesan
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Peel the potatoes and put them in a pot. Cover the with water. Add a bit of salt and the smashed garlic cloves.

  2. Cover and bring to a boil, then simmer with lid loosely on until the potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.

  3. Drain the water out of the pot. Add the butter and milk and mash well.

  4. Add the parmesan and salt and pepper to taste and stir until combined.

 

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Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs bacon
  • 3 lbs spaghetti
  • 1 to 1-1/2 sticks butter
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • lots of pepper
  • 6-8 oz grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon until it is crisp. Drain and break it into pieces.

  2. Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. If you like, add some bacon grease to the boiling water.

  3. Drain the spaghetti and return it to the pot. Add the butter, pieces of bacon, parmesan cheese, and pepper and mix it up until the butter is melted.

  4. Add the raw beaten egg and mix it quickly until the spaghetti is coated. Serve immediately.

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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Tuna burgers

Ingredients

  • 1 can tuna
  • 1/2 cup bread crumbs
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • seasonings, minced onion, etc.
  • oil for frying

Instructions

  1. Drain the tuna.

  2. Mix tuna thoroughly with egg, bread crumbs, and whatever seasonings you like. Form into two patties. 

  3. Heat oil in pan. Fry tuna patties on both sides until golden brown. 

How to act when you’re downstream

Guess how I spent my morning? Making phone calls, and worrying.

Well, first I got up, got dressed, made coffee, fed the cat, woke up the kids, crammed breakfast into them, and accounted for everyone’s backpacks and lunches and shoes and masks and reminded the kids at home that they had a dentist appointment later. Then we piled in the car, I dropped off one kid at work, and I dropped off one kid at one school. Then we drove to the other school with the other kid, and then . . . I had doubts. 

Last night, my son said a co-worker at his restaurant casually mentioned she had had COVID symptoms for four days, and she had also been exposed to someone who had tested positive. And she kept on coming to work! So my son told his manager and then went straight into isolation at home until we get more information. 

It’s a fairly distant level of exposure, and there may not even be a virus. No one in our family has symptoms. So I read a few guidelines and I thought it was okay to bring the kids to school? But then I started tracing a hypothetical in my head: Server takes her mask off to vape, and breathes a virus cloud at my son; son comes home and grabs some crackers from the family box; other kids also eat crackers, then go to school and accidentally drool on a class ruler or something;  classmates use the ruler, then go home and kiss their parents; parents need toothpaste and go to Walmart, where they paw through the $2.88 DVD bin without wearing a mask because last they heard, they woke up in a free country . . . yeah, that’s what a pandemic looks like. Even with hand washing and sanitizer and masks and temperature checks. Some people are responsible and some are not. Some get away with it and some don’t. 

So, holding my masked kindergartner’s hand, I stood on the playground six feet away from the school’s director and described the situation, to get her verdict. Then I called the dentist; then I called the pediatrician, where we are supposed to be headed for check-ups with three kids tomorrow; then I texted another mom, whose house one kid was supposed to be going to after school for an outdoor, socially distanced birthday party this afternoon.

I can’t even tell how worried I’m supposed to feel right now! I can’t tell if I overreacted or under reacted. At least I work from home and don’t have to deal with daycare or complicated commutes, so it could be much worse. We just have to wait and see whether the gal at work actually has COVID or not.

But it’s almost noon and I haven’t gotten a damn thing done today, except make a bunch of phone calls for what may or may not be a problem, just because some waitress I’ve never even met apparently just opted out of taking a pandemic seriously. She wasn’t even going to tell anyone she had symptoms! She happened to mention it to my kid, and he’s the one who had to tell the manager. She was completely irresponsible, and that means that all the rest of us have to go into responsibility overdrive. I guess I still have to call the health department and make a report. I can feel myself returning again and again to a well of annoyance at her, and at everyone like her who isn’t taking this stuff seriously. That’s what a pandemic looks like: People who are PROBABLY NOT EVEN BAD PEOPLE are also PROBABLY RESPONSIBLE FOR PEOPLE DYING. And I can’t even tell how worried I’m supposed to feel.

So. What we have here is one of those “two job” situations. The first job we have is to be as responsible and sensible as possible, according to our abilities and circumstances. Make all the phone calls, change all the appointments, disclose all the situations, wash all the hands, etc. This is going to be everyone’s lives for the foreseeable future: Doing the best we can after someone else didn’t.

The other job is to guard our hearts. This is the hard part. This is always the hard part. 

We can keep ourselves and everyone we meet as safe as possible, but still allow our hearts to be completely overcome with resentment, rage, and disgust for the people who put us in this position. And it’s reasonable to do so! And it’s so easy! But it’s the part that can really hurt us. This is the part that will linger with us forever, making us weak and compromised long past this virus season. 

I can’t control anyone else’s behavior. I can’t make people take something seriously if they don’t want to take it seriously. All I can do is control my own behavior to try to mitigate the spread caused by careless and selfish and foolish people. In a pandemic, all I have is my own little portion of the river that runs through my property, as it were. I can’t control what kind of risk and contagion come to me and my family from upstream, but I can control what goes downstream from us.

And while I do it, I can control what I allow to happen in my heart. I have a choice to be as safe as possible while being angry, or to be as safe as possible while . . . being like Jesus, a little bit.

That’s really what it comes down to, you guys. This whole original sin thing? And all the actual sin that happens every minute of the day and night? Not His fault. Not His deal at all. All the muck and disease and pollution and contagion that came to Him from upstream was from other people. None of it was His. It was all from careless and selfish and foolish people like you and me. He was absolutely safe in Heaven from contagion. But He deliberately parked himself mid stream and let himself be exposed. Then, being Immaculate, He not only purified what came out of Him, He looked with pity and kindness on the people upstream, the ones who screwed everything up and hurt Him. That’s what He did. That’s who He is. 

THIS IS THE HARD PART. And . . . this is what we’re supposed to do. 

Can we do this? I am trying. I fail every day, even while the stakes are relatively low, and we’re mostly just dealing with hassle and anxiety, not ventilators and organ failure and financial ruin. I still get so mad. But I am trying. When I start to ruminate on other people’s lousy attitudes, I can take a breath, let it out slowly, and come up with something else to think about, because other topics besides COVID are still important. When the news is making me dig my nails into my palms with frustration, I can turn it off and put on Schubert, instead, because Schubert is real, too. When I realize some rando on Twitter is not interested in having an honest conversation, I can step away and mute him while there’s still some whiff of civility in the air. And I can pray, not only for health, but for peace. And I can make an act of faith that prayer is efficacious even when I don’t see it. 

This is the hard part. Trying to be like Jesus is always the hard part. But when you consider the alternative, what else can we possibly do? We can’t step out of the stream, but we can stand with Him.

 

 

Duty and salvation

When my oldest kid was about four, she happened to wake up around midnight to go to the bathroom. She stumbled through the living room, where my husband and I were sitting.

On this particular night – which was not a typical night! – we happened to be watching Daffy Duck cartoons and eating candy. She didn’t say a word, but just nodded to herself and kept walking. She was clearly thinking, “I KNEW it!”

It was, as I say, not a typical night. A typical night would be more likely to find us filling out insurance paperwork, trying to get stains out of someone’s favourite overalls, or simply trying to muster up the strength to get up, brush our teeth, struggle our way under the covers, and get a few hours of sleep before the baby woke up for her first feeding, so we could catch another few hours of sleep before it was time to get up and do it all over again, take care of everybody and everything all over again.

But what she saw was burned into her brain, and she thought she had found the real secret of adulthood: As soon as the kids’ bedroom door closes, you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT.

She wasn’t really wrong. Adults CAN do whatever they want. The catch is, if they DECIDE to do whatever they want, they’ll almost certainly ruin their lives and the lives of everyone around them, and go to hell when they die. It’s kind of a big catch.

What I tell my kids is that, when you’re a child, people make you do things you don’t want to do. But when you’re an adult, you have to make yourself do the things you don’t want to do. You have to be the unwilling worker and the strict taskmaster, both!

It occurs to me that we, even as adults, often fall into thinking of God as the strict taskmaster: the one who descends from on high, telling us what we can and cannot do. Every time we feel the urge to do WHATEVER WE WANT — uh oh, here comes God, saying “no, no, no.” Get up, take care of the thing, don’t do the thing you want to do, do the thing you don’t want to do instead. Then, tomorrow, do it all over again, even though you’re tired.

Following the ten commandments can feel very much like this, some days, or some years. And then we go to confession and admit, “I didn’t do the thing you told me to do. I failed.” And God forgives us, which is nice.

I’ve been teaching my faith formation class, over and over again, that Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are the sheep. We are the silly ones who need to be saved, and He is the saviour. We are the wandering ones, and He is the one who finds us. We are the ones who fall into the hole, and He is the one who pulls us out again.

So I was making up my lesson plans and I realised that, with all this talk about sheep, I had not yet introduced the kids to the idea that Jesus is the paschal lamb. And boy, the strangeness of it hit me right between the eyes. God is not only the shepherd, but also the lamb.

I know you know this. You’re a Catholic, so you’ve heard it all before. But have you ever thought about how strange it is?

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

The cracks in the wall of the church

Have you been to one of those churches that is tidy and fine and in good repair, but the architectural style is . . . ongepotchket? A little of this and a little of that, and it all adds up to much too much.

Church buildings like this have clearly gone through countless renovations. Some parts are neoclassical, some are vaguely nautical. The light fixtures are from the 80s; the stations of the cross from the 50s, and the tabernacle is from who knows when. When was it okay to put those particular colors and textures together, and when was that shape ever anything but grotesque? And that’s where we keep Jesus.

It’s not just church buildings, but the Catholic Church itself that is this way. It has undergone more renovations that we can imagine. What we think of as Catholicism is not a coherent, uniform, elegant whole carefully curated by the Holy Spirit, but a sort of yard sale arrangement patched together out of whatever is made available to us in our era, in our region, in our budget, in our tradition.

That goes not only for architecture and decor, but also for styles of worship, for what we emphasize in how we incorporate our faith into our life, and for which virtues and which sins we emphasize, and for how we think about God.

The indispensable core of what unifies us as Catholics is smaller and more basic than we may realize, and so much of what feels normal and even central is actually just cultural, and may very well someday be renovated away.

Does this thought cause some discomfort? It should. The Church is not just about us or our times, and never was meant to be. Even the things that appeal to us and nourish us and give us comfort and support are not as central as we might imagine.

But wait, it gets worse! For some Catholics, living the faith is like coming into their old familiar ongepotchket, hodgepodge, yard sale church building, and one day they spot not only some aesthetic incoherence, but an actual crack in the wall.

And suddenly, they can’t shake the idea that the crack isn’t just a crack, but a portent. That everything they see around them, the things that appeal to them and the things that don’t, are an edifice built over a sinkhole. They feel they must tread carefully or the whole thing will cave in. That the cracks are structural; that there’s a yawning abyss under our feet.

Sometimes that emptiness seems like the only real thing, and every part of the church that has been built over it looks like it’s moments away from tumbling down into gehenna.

What’s for supper? Vol. 221: You can count on food

Gah, I missed another week! So first, here are the food highlights from last week:

Oooh, bibimbap!

I cooked some sliced pork in a gochujang sauce 

Jump to Recipe

and made a big pot of rice, and set out the pork, pea shoots, crunchy noodles, spinach, and whatnot, and everybody put together what they wanted and then reported to me for a fried egg. I like to put the spinach under a layer of something hot, so it wilts a bit. The egg seeps down and the meat sauce seeps up, and it’s pretty great.

I also sprinkled something called “balsamic crispy beets” on top of mine, along with hot sauce and sesame seeds. They were maybe a little too sweet and balsamic-y for this dish, but I liked the taste in general, and will probably get them again. They would be great on top of a salad with chicken. I always felt like I am destined to enjoy beets, but I never do, so this beet form is a little bonus.

Uhhhhh clams steamed in beer, chicken and pepper fajita deconstructobabs, bread, and more spinach

An incoherent but tasty meal 

I sautéed some onions in lots of butter, then added red pepper flakes and a few cans of beer and then the clams, and let them simmer for a bit until the shells opened, then squeezed some lemon over them. Yum yum yum. 

The plan was to make fajita chicken kebabs, but when it came down to it, I did not feel like threading anything on skewers, and Damien did not feel like grilling. So after I marinated the meat and peppers for a few hours, I just spread them on a pan and broiled them in the oven, and it was most definitely good enough.

The marinade was, I don’t know, oil and lime juice, chili powder, cumin, garlic, salt, etc. Just standard “weakly Mexican.” Served with salsa and sour cream to dip. 

Drumsticks, potato salad, and peach salad
Two salads, no greens! The kids were very impressed.  Or possibly they were mocking me. 

So, here we have an odd duck: a recipe that didn’t really need the prosciutto. It was sliced peaches, chopped fresh mint, crumbled feta cheese, and torn up prosciutto dressed with a honey lemon sauce, and it was super summery, fresh and full of vivid flavors.  

So vivid that the prosciutto didn’t really stand out, and therefore wasn’t necessary. What do you know about that.

I thought the potato salad was also nice, not too gloppy. Potatoes with the skin on, hard boiled eggs (which I cooked in the same pot as the potatoes, much to the amazement of one easily-amazed kid), and scallions, with a dressing of mayonnaise, cider vinegar, salt, and plenty of pepper. 

Dora was supposed to stop by for dinner, but she had car trouble and Damien had to rescue her, so she got here. She’s no longer in our bubble, and we needed to keep the visit outdoors, so to prolong the outdoorness of the evening, I made a fire and we toasted marshmallows, which I have apparently been buying every week for the last five weeks, intending to someday have a campfire. 

Here is Lena telling Corrie a ghost story. 

Just the right amount of funny and scary. This particular spooky story was about a green, hairless gorilla who lives in the sewer.

And Friday was pizza with fresh basil and slices of garlic, and ricotta, and red pepper flakes, WHICH. I. RECOMMEND. I want to make this same pizza except with also eggplant, or possibly even broccoli. 

And now for this week, here’s what we ate:

SATURDAY
Party!

Irene’s birthday was back in April, right when everything started closing down, so we finally had her party last weekend at the town pond before school starts and everything closes down again.

I did not cover myself in glory with birthday cakes this week. She wanted a Gravity Falls cake with Bill Cipher made of rice krispies. I got off to a bad start by referring to him as Cyber Bill, even though I am not 67 years old. Then his arms kept falling off, and then it was kind of downhill from there. Please don’t give me any advice on how to do it better. I know how to do all things well, and sometimes I just choose to do them poorly, for personal reasons.

But she liked it! And there were thunderstorms right up until an hour before the party, and then the sun came out. The party kids had deli sandwiches; I forget what the people back home had.

SUNDAY
Party!

Lucy’s birthday was back in July back when everything etc. etc. so we finally had her party while etc. She asked for a cake with All Might from My Hero Academia on it. This was pre-doomed to failure even before I discovered we don’t own any food coloring and I would have to color everything with sugar and leftover icing. All Might is a weird looking dude and this was a weird looking cake, so, there you go. 

But, she liked it, and there were thunderstorms that stopped before the party.  

And they got their parties in before everything gets locked down etc. etc. etc.  The party kids just had snacks; I forget what the people back home had.

MONDAY
Koftas with yogurt sauce, pita, Jerusalem salad

The first time I made koftas I thought they were SO tasty, but they kept falling off the sticks when Damien grilled them. So this time I just made a bunch of big meatballs and broiled them, with yogurt sauce to dip them in. Good stuff, with the added bonus of not looking so much like giant turds.

Oh, I also made a big bunch of Jerusalem salad while tomatoes are still king. Cucumber, tomato, red onion, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, salt. A cooling, easy side dish to lighten up a savory main dish.

If anyone makes koftas on the grill and knows how to keep them from falling apart off the stick, I’d be glad to know it.

TUESDAY
Chicken and salad, fruit

I got home soooo late from shopping. I just sprinkled the chicken with olive oil and Italian seasoning and broiled it, then served it in pieces over greens with Caesar salad dressing from a bottle. We had strawberries and blueberries, plus some pineapple that I forgot to serve last week. 

WEDNESDAY
Dino nuggets, chips, veg and dip for kids, restaurant for adults

Many months ago, maybe even a year ago, Damien was out of town and my car was in the shop and OF COURSE somehow Lucy ran out of insulin. So we had to call Dora and get her to leave work and go the pharmacy for us, and bring the insulin home, and then it was somehow the wrong insulin (“somehow” meaning CVS, which we briefly used because it has a 24-hour drive thru; but also does stuff like gives you the wrong insulin and then lies about it), so she had to leave work again and get the other insulin and bring it home and then go back to work, and she was very nice about it. So, we said we would take her out to dinner. 

And we did!

Like a year later.

I myself had an insane amount of food: Fried calamari, minestrone soup, and veal piccata, not to mention a bit of Dora’s bruschetta and a bit of Damien’s gondola bread; and some kind of cocktail with bitter orange. It’s actually getting nippy here at night (hence the soup), so they had these neat patio heaters among the tables with a giant flame enclosed in a glass pillar. I guess I’m a country mouse; I was impressed. I’m not saying I would follow it into the desert, but it was a very nice flame. 

THURSDAY
Philly cheesesteak

I don’t know what is going on with cows, but steak is still $2.99 a pound. One of the fringe benefits of my kitchen reno (which is still not done. I have to finish painting and then install the ceiling tiles, and then I will take pictures!) is I finally found the little column that holds up the disc cutter on my food processor, so I sliced a ton of peppers and onions and then the steak. 

IS there some way of shredding steak in a food processor without having to constantly stop the motor, take the top off, and drag out the meat that gets wrapped around the central pin thingy and caught between the blade and the cover? I did freeze the meat a bit first, but it was still very soggy going. It took a long time, but the results were good. Nice and shreddy, just like in Philly, as far as I can recall. 

Honest to goodness, I took pictures of my sandwich, but they look gross. You all know what a good cheesesteak looks like, so picture that. 

FRIDAY
Eggs migas with refried beans

Here is a picture of the migas I made last time. SO GOOD. 

Did I share a recipe for simple migas? I cut a bunch of corn tortillas into strips and fried them in oil until crisp, then scrambled a bunch of eggs into them, and served them with hot sauce and standard taco fixings. I love this meal. You know who would have loved it? My mother. Heck, maybe I can actually make it for her at some point, once the nursing home stops being locked down, etc. etc. 

And there it is. School starts on Monday. We’ll see how long it lasts, etc. 

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Gochujang bulgoki (spicy Korean pork)


Ingredients

  • 1.5 pound boneless pork, sliced thin
  • 4 carrots in matchsticks or shreds
  • 1 onion sliced thin

sauce:

  • 5 generous Tbsp gochujang (fermented pepper paste)
  • 2 Tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 2 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 5 cloves minced garlic

Serve with white rice and nori (seaweed sheets) or lettuce leaves to wrap

Instructions

  1. Combine pork, onions, and carrots.

    Mix together all sauce ingredients and stir into pork and vegetables. 

    Cover and let marinate for several hours or overnight.

    Heat a pan with a little oil and sauté the pork mixture until pork is cooked through.

    Serve with rice and lettuce or nori. Eat by taking pieces of lettuce or nori, putting a scoop of meat and rice in, and making little bundles to eat. 

 

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koftas

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs ground beef
  • 3 onions
  • 1 head (head, not clove) garlic
  • 2 bunches parsley
  • 5 slices bread
  • salt and pepper
  • 1.5 tsp nutmeg
  • 2 tsp paprika
  • 2 Tbsp zataar

Instructions

  1. Put the wooden skewers in water to soak for about thirty minutes before you plan to form the kebabs.

  2. Put the onions, garlic, and parsley in a food processor and chop it.

  3. Put the meat in a large bowl and add the chopped onion mixture to it.

  4. Toast the bread, then put it in a bowl with warm water to soften it. Squeeze the water out and add that to the bowl with the meat.

  5. Add in the seasonings and squish it up with your hands until all the ingredients are well combined.

  6. Using your hands, form logs of meat around the skewers. They should be about an inch and a half in diameter.

  7. Grill over coals if you can. If they fall apart too much, you can cook them on a hot oiled griddle, or broil them. Turn to brown all sides.

 

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

 

Baptized, confirmed, and ordained in two weeks: My interview with Fr. Matt Hood

For a man who had just been baptized, confirmed, ordained and catapulted into the headlines in the space of two weeks, the Rev. Matt Hood of St. Lawrence Parish in Utica, Mich., sounded remarkably relaxed. I caught the 30-year-old priest on the phone while he and his father drove to Minnesota, where they were going to pick up a puppy named Sherman.

Father Hood’s story is no shaggy dog tale, though. It was only a few weeks ago that he discovered by chance that his baptism in 1990 was not valid, and therefore neither was his ordination in 2017 nor were many of the sacraments he presided over in the past three years, when he thought he was a priest but was not.

Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit issued a letter on Aug. 22 informing his flock that in light of a recent statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Father Hood’s baptism and ordination had been invalid because the presiding deacon at his baptism in infancy had said, “We baptize you” rather than “I baptize you.” Once that was discovered, the archbishop explained, Father Hood had been properly baptized, confirmed and then ordained as a deacon and a priest.

Father Hood’s situation has been remedied, but the revelation of his invalid baptism and speculation about what that means for all the people he interacted with as a priest, are still rippling outward. This record of our conversation, which continued over Facebook, has been shortened and lightly edited.

Read the rest of my interview with Fr. Matt Hood in America Magazine.