‘Tain’t very sanitary: Some songs I know by heart for no reason at all

People have been passing around an article about how some people don’t have a constant interior monologue going in their heads. You can count me as part of that group. That don’t, I mean. There are definitely words sprinkled in here and there, but unless I’m writing in my head, or praying, or thinking about a conversation, it’s mostly it’s sensations, patterns, images, and image-blobs, and I have to deliberately turn them into words. 

ANYWAY, there is one exception, and that’s miles and miles and miles of stupid song lyrics I have memorized and can call to mind at a moment’s notice. I may not know how many children I have, what their names are, or where I was supposed to pick them up half an hour agao, but if you ask, I can instantly tell you:

Then all Palyatchee finds the guy he’s seekin’
Cheek-to-cheekin’ with his wife,
He grabs a knife
And stabs the louse
Who stole his spouse
And then he stabs the lady and himself.
‘Tain’t very
Sanitary.

Useful! Steve Greydanus asked about this on social media the other day: You are in a random group of 10 people taken prisoner by gunmen. At gunpoint, you must pick a song NO ONE IN THE GROUP BUT YOU can sing with no mistakes. Succeed and you go free. What do you sing?

Well, let’s start with “Pal-yat-chee” by Spike Jones

Full lyrics:

When we wuz in the city, we wuz a-wond’rin’ where to go.
A sign spelled out PAL-YAT-CHEE up in lights above a show.
We thought ‘twould be a Western till the stage lit up with lights,
An’ ninety seven people sung without a horse in sight.
We couldn’t understand ’em ’cause they spoke a furrin tongue,
But we can give you some i-dee of what we thank they sung:

Ridi, Pagliaccio, Sul tuo amore’in fronto!

All at once there’s a fat guy in a clown suit.
Ain’t Haller-ween, that’s for shore.
Then this here feller, this Punchy Neller,
Begins to beller — Like we all was deef.
“Ha ha ha ha ha!”
That was PAL-YAT-CHEE an’ he sung:

Invest in a tuba an’ somthin’ or other ’bout Cuba,
He sung about a lady who weighed two hundred and eighty.
When she takes a powder, he just starts chirpin’ louder
And he don’t do a gol-durn thing ‘cept to stand up there an’ sing.

When we listen to PAL-YAT-CHEE, we get itchy an’ scratchy.
This shore is top corn, so we go and buy some popcorn.
We hate to go back, but we can’t git our dough back.
There ain’t no use complainin’, ’cause outside it’s a-rainin’. [ooga! ooga!]

Seven hours later, we’re still in the dern the-a-ter,
Takin’ turns at nappin’, a-waitin’ for sumpin’ to happen.
PAL-YAT-CHEE he ain’t hurryin’, but the folks on stage are flurryin’
And it sounds like Kat-chee-tur-ry-in’s Saber Dance.

Then ol’ PAL-YAT-CHEE finds the guy he’s seekin’
Cheek-to-cheekin’ with his wife, he grabs a knife
And stabs the louse who stole his spouse,
An’ then he stabs the lady and himself – tain’t very sanitary.
They all collapse, but ol’ PAL-YAT-CHEE sets up,
Then he gets up, sings “I’m dyin’,
I am dyin’, I am dyin’.” We start cryin’
‘Cause to tell the truth, we’re dyin’ too.

As the footlights fade out
we see PAL-YAT-CHEE laid out.
But the dagger never caused it.
PAL-YAT-CHEE
was plumb
exhausted.

I could probably also come up with long sections from “Carmen,” including the very important passage that goes:

“Carmen, darling, please marry me.
Oh, be my little bumble bee.
You’re the honey that’ll sweeten our lives.”
“Instead of children we’ll both have hives.”
They’ll both have hives!
“I can not marry you, my Don,
‘Cause I’m in love with another one.
He fights the bull in the arena.”
“I could do that if I ate Farina”

“Oh, no, you couldn’t”
“Oh, yes, I could”
“Oh, no, you couldn’t”
“Oh, yes, I could”
“Oh, no, you couldn’t”
“Oh, yes, I could”
“Oh, no, you couldn’t”
“Oh, yes, I could.”

How about a change of pace? I have here right in my hippocampus the full lyrics for the anti-World War I song “Stay Down Here Where You Belong” by Irving Berlin

I chose the clip below because this song is so stupid, Irving Berlin was apparently horribly embarrassed at having written it, and Groucho used to follow him around at parties, singing it just to annoy him. AND IT IS A VERY STUPID SONG. Thank goodness I know it instead of my bank password. 

Down below, down below
Caught the devil talking to his son
Who wanted to go
Up above, up above.
He cried, “It’s getting too warm for me down here and so
I’m going way up where I can have a little fun,”
The Devil slowly smiled and then he answered his son:
“Stay down here where you belong
The folks above us don’t know right from wrong.
To please their kings, they’ve all gone off to war
And not one of them knows what they’re fighting for.
Way up above they say that I’m a devil and I’m bad.
Kings up there are bigger devils than your dad.
They’re breaking the hearts of mothers, making butchers out of brothers.
You’ll find more hell up there than there is down below.”
 
Yeah. 
 

Apparently I was on an Irving Berlin kick at some especially malleable stage in my development, because I also have firmly memorized:

“I’m Down In Honolulu Looking Them Over.” This is one of those songs that always gets a grave warning from historical archivists about how it may include references now considered culturally insensitive. 

You know my Uncle Jeremiah,
Who disappeared a month ago;
We got a letter from Hawaii,
And I declare my uncle’s there.
The atmosphere set him on fire,
It simply went right to his head;
What do you think he wrote
In his little note?
This is what he said.

I’m down in Honolulu looking them over,
i’m down in Honolulu living in clover,
Try and guess the way they dress.
No matter what you think it is, it’s even less.
Their language
Is hard to understand because it’s so tricky,
I’ve got them teaching me to say “wicky wicky.”
I don’t know what it means
But it’s the best that ever was,
And if it means just what I think it does,
I’ll be in Honolulu looking over them for a long, long time.

Well, “In the Bath” by Flanders and Swann has the special charm of including cultural and historical references that I can’t be offended by because I don’t understand them all. But I still have them memorized. 

Oh, I find much simple pleasure when I’ve had a tiring day,
In the bath,
In the bath

Where the noise of gently sponging seems to blend with my top A,
In the bath,
In the bath

To the skirl of pipes vibrating in the boiler room below,
I sing a pot pourri of all the songs I used to know,
And the water thunders in and gurgles down the overflow,
In the bath,
In the bath

Then the loathing for my fellows rises steaming from my brain,
In the bath,
In the bath

And condenses to the milk of human kindness once again,
In the bath,
In the bath

Oh, the tingling of the scrubbing brush, the flannel’s soft caress,
To wield a lordly loofah is a joy I can’t express,
How truly it is spoken one is next to godliness,
In the bath,
In the bath

Then there comes that dreadful moment when the water’s running cold,
In the bath,
In the bath

When the soap is lost forever and you’re feeling tired and old,
In the bath,
In the bath

It’s time to pull the plug out,
Time to mop the bathroom floor.
The towel is in the cupboard,
And the cupboard is next door.
It’s started running hot, let’s have another hour or more,
In the bath,
In the bath

I can see the one salvation of the poor old human race,
In the bath,
In the bath

Let the nations of the world all meet together, face to face,
In the bath,
In the bath

With Verwoerd, and Kenyatta, and all those other chaps,
Nkrumah, Nabbaro, we’ll get some peace perhaps,
Provided Swann and Flanders get the end without the taps,
In the bath,
In the bath

My final entry is one I can’t explain at all. Here it is:

“Meine Mutter Schmiert die Butter”

Now your turn! What do you know perfectly by heart, that would probably baffle a random group of 25 people? There is absolutely nothing at stake here. I just want to talk about something that doesn’t matter for a while. 

***
Image via Wikimedia commons (Creative Commons)

Those people who leave the Church over little things

People leave the Church for all kinds of reasons. Usually it’s more than one reason; but sometimes people will be able to point to the one thing that tipped them over the edge. Very often, it’s the sex abuse scandal. But also fairly often, it’s something that sounds less serious. It sounds like something that people should be able to get past:

“I was going through a rough time in my marriage and a priest gave a jerky sermon about divorce, so I walked out and never came back.”

“I was trying to organize my grandmother’s funeral, and the parish secretary was so rude, and even mocked the music I chose. That was the last time I set foot in a church.”

“I was in the back with my crying baby, and an usher angrily told me to control my kid. I decided if they didn’t want me, I didn’t want them either, and that was that.”

These things are upsetting and demoralizing, and can legitimately make us angry. But are they worth leaving the Church over?

When someone tells stories like these, other Catholics will often respond: Well, if you’d leave Jesus and the sacraments for something small like that, it shows that your faith was weak and shallow to begin with. If you leave the Church because of sinners, your faith was in man, not God.

I used to believe this. I no longer do. Or at least, I see a bigger picture of why humans — including me — do what they do.

Don’t get me wrong. When someone decides to leave the Faith, there couldn’t be more at stake. It’s one thing if someone decides they’re quitting their tech job and taking up weaving, or they’re tired of Twitter and they’re giving up social media. I may think they’re making a mistake, but they can live with the consequences.

But when you hear that someone has had enough of the Church, it’s so hard not to say, “Yes, but . . . don’t you want Jesus? I know that one Catholic you met was so cruel and awful, and I’m so sorry that happened, but are you really prepared to give up Jesus, just because of that? This is your immortal soul we’re talking about! Eyes on the prize! Get over it!”

But it occurs to me that everyone’s priorities are skewed — people who leave the Church because of the sins of other humans, but also people who stay in the Church because of the goodness of other humans.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image via Piqsels (Creative Commons)

Committees are no substitute for true community

We used to belong to a parish that was a true community. It was genuinely diverse, with rich and poor people, old and young, able-bodied and impaired, and racially and culturally varied; but there was a sense of unity that I rarely experienced elsewhere, in any group of people of any kind, Catholic or otherwise.

When we got on the parish mailing list, we started to get regular emails: So-and-so needs a ride to the doctor on Thursday; So-and-so needs help changing the oil in his car. I didn’t happen to give birth while we attended that church, but I can easily imagine the landslide of casseroles and hand-crocheted booties that would have come my way if I had.

There was a very clear spirit of love present, and it was concrete and immediate, not abstract. They did have programs and official groups, but there was also a constant exchange of help and concern between individuals, one to one.

It’s tragic that this parish stands out in my head, rather than being the norm. Part of the magic was, of course, that it was small.  Of course little parishes aren’t automatically kind and generous and warm and giving, but they can be. But more and more in the 21st century, they don’t have the chance, because smaller churches are shuttered and de-consecrated, to be transformed into condos or pubs, or just bulldozed; and their former congregations are shunted into high capacity consolidated churches that can serve a wide community.

This is partly because of poor attendance. You can’t pay for lights and heat and insurance if hardly anyone is turning up. But it’s also because astronomically huge gobs of money are going to pay off sex abuse lawsuits, and there’s none left to pay for things like, well, keeping lots of little churches open.

Don’t get me wrong: Victims should be paid. Pressure on parishes is not their fault. But this slow-moving avalanche of the sex abuse scandal is largely crushing other innocent people, and because of the sins of some perverts in pointy hats, people who depended on the Church for help can no longer get it.

And so it goes. Each time a little church closes due to financial strain, there’s one less opportunity for a little gem of a parish to become a warm, busy little hub of charity in the name of Christ.

In big parishes, of course, it’s still possible for the church to care for needy people, whether what they need is food or clothing or help with their electric bills or help finding a job. But what often happens, if the money is there at all, is that there’s a program for everything: A program to feed the homeless, a program for divorcees, a program for widows, a program for youths.

It’s a good thing for needs to be served. Sometimes it’s a matter of life and death. But there are grievous drawbacks to the “there’s a program for that” model. . .

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Movie review: Jojo Rabbit made me laugh, but not cry

“Comedy is a red rubber ball,” said Mel Brooks, “and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively.”

With this quote in mind, I went to see Jojo Rabbit, which has been nominated for six Oscars. It is the latest applicant to an exclusive club: Movies that laugh at Hitler.

The film’s premise is, if anything, more audacious than anything by Brooks. It follows Jojo, a sweet and manic 10-year-old German boy who is absolutely wild for the Führer. In fact, he has made an imaginary companion out of him and spends his days palling around with a goofy, benevolent Adolph, who eggs him on and encourages him through every woe. One day, Jojo and his buddy Hitler are both horrified to discover that his mother has hidden a Jewish girl in the walls of their house.

What to do? Who to trust? Who to fear? From the very first scene, the movie puts in balance two monstrously weighty forces: Life and death, good and evil, loyalty and rebellion, hope and futility. It whipsaws back and forth between slapstick and horror, comedy and tragedy. I watched, enthralled, to see where it would land.

As a Jew, I am ready and able to laugh at the darkest of jokes. That’s how you make it through the dark. Mel Brooks managed this feat handily in his lesser-known “To Be Or Not To Be,” which contains one scene that shatters me every time.

Until this scene, “To Be Or Not To Be” is pure comedy; but then the weight shifts, and for a terrible moment, everything hangs in balance. The bumbling crew of actors must smuggle Jews out of a darkened theater bristling with Nazis. In desperation, they disguise the refugees as clowns, and it’s actually working—until one poor old babushka, her wrinkled face pathetically smeared with greasepaint, freezes. So many swastikas, so many guns. It’s too much. She’s weeping and trembling, and the audience realizes something is wrong.

So the leader of the actors looks the Nazis straight in the eye and shouts merrily, “Juden!” He slaps a Star of David on the old woman’s chest, whips out a clown gun and shoots her in the head. POW.

And that’s what saves them all. The Nazis roar with laughter in the dark, and the innocent make it through.

This scene carries the whole movie, because it has the nerve to set aside comedy and make the audience sit for a moment in naked peril: These men are killers. They do laugh at shooting an old woman in the head. The terror is real. “To Be Or Not To Be” earns the right to make Hitler jokes, because it doesn’t flinch away from knowing and showing what is at stake. The ball of comedy bounces because that hard surface is there to hit, however briefly.

There is no such hard surface in “Jojo Rabbit.”

Instead . . .

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image: Still from movie trailer 

Asking couples to use NFP is asking a lot. Can’t the Church help more?

It is no secret: Natural family planning has its discontents. A number of studies have shown that few Catholics use it, and it is not hard to see why. N.F.P. can be difficult, it can be frustrating, and occasionally it is impossible. I am a discontent myself, albeit a stubbornly faithful one, which is why I wrote a whole book about how ordinary, non-saintly couples can learn to navigate the spiritual, emotional and marital problems that N.F.P. sometimes brings into sharp focus.

N.F.P. is worth learning well and sticking with, despite all the trials it can bring. When we were first married, my husband and I did not know how to communicate well. We did not understand what sex was really about. We had no clue about how God’s will actually works in our lives. Sacrificial patience, generosity and transformative suffering were mysteries to us. They are not mysteries now but are daily practices, thanks in part to the rigors of N.F.P. I wrote my book to let other struggling couples know they are not alone, and that their suffering does not have to be in vain.

But one thing my book did not cover was the logistical obstacles to using fertility awareness based methods of family planning successfully. (Most now shy away from the more colloquial label N.F.P.) These obstacles are not negligible. It was not long ago that we desperately wanted to switch to another fertility awareness based method that would work better with my body, but we simply did not have the money; so we were stuck with an unsuitable method that caused frustration and confusion. Some struggling is inevitable and can bring about growth; but some is avoidable and causes only pain. A small cash grant would have made a world of difference for our family.

I wondered how common our experience was; so I designed some surveys and shared them on social media and on my personal website, targeting women who use or have used a wide range of different forms of fertility awareness methods. Nearly 700 women responded. Here is what I learned.

Some women love N.F.P. Some of them find it cheap and simple and empowering. Some of them find it pricey and labor intensive, but well worth the cost. Some of them say it healed their bodies, enriched their marriages and drew them closer to God.

But for others, N.F.P. brought one trial after another. The church teaches us to forgo birth control, and so they did, whether out of obedience, love of spouse or a desire to understand their own health better. But even if they were willing to take on the spiritual and psychological challenges of N.F.P., they found themselves stymied by logistical problems beyond their control—things that could easily be solved with something as mundane as money, or better marketing, or better organization or even something as simple as a babysitter.

Oddly enough, even as the church struggles to interest its flock in fertility awareness based methods for spiritual reasons, fertility awareness is having a moment in the secular world. Cosmopolitan gave N.F.P. some positive press, and so did The New York Times. The interest is fuelled partly by a slow but growing disenchantment with artificial contraception among women of a variety of backgrounds and faiths. There are now countless fertility awareness based methods (usually paired with targeted condom use in secular circles) on the market; and women, religious or not, are snapping them up. You can buy bluetooth-enabled super-thermometers for $300 and compact fertility monitors straight out of Star Trek that smile at you when you are fertile. It is a far cry from the days of a scrap of graph paper, a thermometer and crossed fingers.

There are dozens of slick fertility apps, many free, some with millions of downloads. Women who have no idea that the church pioneered fertility awareness are turning to fertility awareness methods because they cannot seem to get pregnant or because they are thoroughly sick of birth control side-effects like migraines, blood clots or mood swings and wandering I.U.D.s; and they are ready for something else, something natural.

Here is the frustrating part. The church has something natural and effective to offer, and it is not some antiquated calendar system. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has approved a number of fertility awareness based methods: Marquette, Creighton, Billings, Sympto-Thermal, Boston Cross Check and N.F.P.I. The church is, in theory, delighted when a couple want to manage their fertility naturally. And many of these methods offer some level of personal instruction, which greatly increases their effectiveness. But because they can also come with some psychological, cultural and logistical baggage, women who have powered through the judgment of the secular world find themselves facing obstacles from within the church itself.

What Women Want

Given the church’s desire for couples to practice fertility awareness based methods, you might think every parish and diocese would offer numerous, easily accessible and affordable ways to learn these methods in order to use them consistently and reliably. You would be wrong.

It is a long history, and it would be funny if it were not so maddening. Back in 1932, Leo Latz, M.D., of Loyola University Chicago wrote his slim volume The Rhythm of Fertility and Sterility, outlining the basic principles of calendar-based family planning, so couples could learn to chart their fertility cycles quickly, easily and cheaply. It sold 600,000 copies to a readership ravenous for information.

Dr. Latz, for his trouble, was booted out of the university, a decision some historians attribute to his attempt to put dangerous information in the hot hands of so many married Catholics who might make decisions without the blessing of a priest.

Read the rest of my article for America Magazine. 

 Photo via Good Free Photos (Public Domain)

What’s for supper? Vol. 200! Let me not be misconstrued: All I really know is food.

“What’s for supper” was this thing
I started on a whim.
I thought it would be nice to take
A weekly break from grim
And ghastly stories all about
The Church and sex and stuff,
And write, instead, about meat loaf
And peanut butter fluff. 

Well . . . 

Let the happy news be thundered:
“What’s for supper” turns two hunderd.

SATURDAY
BURGERS AND CHIPS

“Burgers and chips,” the blackboard says.
So I guess that’s what we had.
Burgers and chips are always good.
They really can’t be bad.

I didn’t take a picture, though.
You know what burgers look like, bro. 

SUNDAY
PEPPERONCINI BEEF SANDWICHES, MEYER LEMON MERINGUE PIE

Pepperoncini beef is great
Chunk it in the crock pot, then you wait. 

Shred the meat and serve on rolls,
Dish some nice jus up in bowls,

Top with cheese and mayonnaise,
Then enjoy the songs of praise.

Finish up with lemon pie!
Sweet meringue piled nice and high.

Two cheerful pies for gloomy weather.
They took six years to put together.

MONDAY
FISH TACOS

♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
Fish tacos is the meal for me!
Fresh cabbage shredded cheerfully!
Lime wedges waiting plump and green!
Keep the salsa, just gimme that sour cream.

Fish tacos is an easy dish!
Fish tacos are all made with fish!
Aldi has avocados cheap!
Darling, I love you, but, oh, that cabbage heap. 
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬

TUESDAY
SHAWARMA, FRIED EGGPLANT

Sometimes life is very dark.
Joys are feeble, pains are stark.

Wherefore all this shuck and jive?
What’s the reason we’re alive?

It’s shawarma

Cease your weeping, wipe your eyes.
Marinate those chicken thighs

In garlic, cumin, cinnamon.
Filthy eastern ways are fun

With shawarma.

Slice some eggplant, salt it well
Dredge in batter, what the hell. 

Fry ’til crisp and serve it hot
With yogurt sauce. Yes, please, a lot.

And shawarma.

WEDNESDAY
PIZZA

Somewhere in my kitchen, 
Is a missing ball of dough. 
I had it Wednesday morning
But by noon it had to go. 
I made four pizzas with the rest
And looked both high and low
But dough ball number five skipped town
Like Barry Manilow.*

*I don’t know, what do you want from me

THURSDAY
ONION SOUP, BEER BREAD, BRATS

It’s only melted butter,
Melted butter in a pot
Cuddled up with onions
And some beef broth, not a lot. 
Salt and pepper and flour
And a drift of parmesan.
But it smells like heart’s desire
And it tastes like supper’s on.

 

FRIDAY
MAC AND CHEESE

You know what, you write a poem about mac and cheese. 

***

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Beef pepperoncini sandwiches

Ingredients

  • 1 hunk beef
  • 1 jar pepperoncini
  • several glugs Worcestershire sauce (optional)
  • rolls
  • sliced provolone

Instructions

  1. Put the beef in a slow cooker with a jar of pepperoncini and the juice. If you like, cut the stems off the pepperoncini. If there isn't enough juice, add some beer. Add the worcestershire sauce if you want a slightly more savory juice.

  2. Cover, set to low, and let it cook for several hours until the meat falls apart when poked with a fork. 

  3. Shred the meat. If you like, chop up a few of the pepperoncini. 

  4. Serve meat on rolls with mayo if you like. Lay sliced provolone over the meat and slide it under the broiler to toast the bread and melt the cheese. Serve the juice on the side for dipping. 

 

5 from 2 votes
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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

  • 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
  • 4-5 red onions
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 2 cups olive oil
  • 4 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces

Instructions

  1. Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

  4. Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.

  5. Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

 

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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. 

 

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Fried eggplant

You can salt the eggplant slices many hours ahead of time, even overnight, to dry them before frying.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium eggplants
  • salt for drying out the eggplant

veg oil for frying

3 cups flour

  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 2-1/2 cups water
  • 1 Tbsp veg oil
  • optional: kosher salt for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and slice it into one-inch slices.
    Salt them thoroughly on both sides and lay on paper towels on a tray (layering if necessary). Let sit for half an hour (or as long as overnight) to draw out some of the moisture. 

  2. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, add the water and teaspoon of oil, and beat into a batter. Preheat oven for warming. 

  3. Put oil in heavy pan and heat until it's hot but not smoking. Prepare a tray with paper towels.

  4. Dredge the eggplant slices through the batter on both sides, scraping off excess if necessary, and carefully lay them in the hot oil, and fry until crisp, turning once. Fry in batches, giving them plenty of room to fry.

  5. Remove eggplant slices to tray with paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt if you like. You can keep them warm in the oven for a short time.  

  6. Serve with yogurt sauce or marinara sauce.

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Beer bread

A rich, buttery quick bread that tastes more bready and less cake-y than many quick breads. It's so easy (just one bowl!) but you really do want to sift the flour.

This recipe makes two large loaf pan loaves.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups flour, sifted
  • 2 Tbsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 12-oz cans beer, preferably something dark
  • 1 stick butter

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375

  2. Butter two large loaf pans. Melt the stick of butter.

  3. I'm sorry, but you really do want to sift the flour.

  4. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients, and stir in beer until it's all combined and nice and thick.

  5. Pour the batter into the loaf pans and pour the melted butter over the top.

  6. Bake for about 50 minutes until it's crusty and knobbly on top.

Veronica among the pro-lifers

My mother, at her best moments, was Veronica.

When she could still write and speak, she was wonderfully articulate, even brilliant. She cannot speak now. But here I am, learning from her how to be a Catholic—not so much from what she said but from what she did and what it showed me.

My parents were pro-life activists. As adult converts, they had already spent several years among evangelicals, some more earnest than others. They had encountered true holiness and Christian simplicity; and they had also encountered people like their landlord, who preached the Gospel and then told my mother she must hang her hand-washed cloth diapers up to dry in her tiny kitchen all winter because wet clothes on the porch just looked too poor. Blessed are the classy, for their property value will not depreciate.

Eventually, they made their way into the church, and once their Howard Johnson swimming pool baptism was conditionally repeated, they waded ashore as Catholics around 1978—right in the thick of liturgical silly season. I remember a Snoopy-themed catechism, altar balloons and some of the most Caucasian dancing known to mankind. My mother, praying in her makeshift chapel in the darkened back stairs, would wrestle with the homoousion late into Saturday night and then wake up early for Sunday Mass, which turned out to have clowns. And sometimes actual heresy.

I was young and only dimly aware of what my parents faced as they tried to anchor their spiritual boat in such choppy waters. They did try. My mother wrote about some of her efforts in this short, hilarious essay, “How I Wrecked Two Parish Ministries,” that you will skip at your peril. As I remember it, she struggled to keep her own massive hunger for truth in proportion with the equally urgent mandate to treat other human beings with love. Yes, even those who sneered and raged at her for giving up everything to follow Christ. Yes, even those who said they loved him and then told lies in his name. In all her many spiritual incarnations, my mother was always a personalist, long before I knew there was a name for it.

She was, as I say, a pro-life activist, which took many different forms. She prayed peacefully outside abortion facilities. She wrote letters to the editor. Shy as she was, she manned the booth at community health fairs and showed teenagers accurate models of fetal development. I think she tried sidewalk counseling but decided it was not right for her, so instead worked with agencies that helped new mothers with clothing, housing and food. She fielded her share of profanity and abuse from abortion activists. And she irritated her conservative friends by insisting we acknowledge the chastity of Jesus, not just the purity of Mary. She knew what so many of her fellow Catholics seemed to have forgotten: That Jesus was a real man, a virgin, and that how he behaved in his actual human life meant something.

She believed that you could touch his face.

Our minivan had a bumper sticker that said, “One abortion: One dead, one wounded.” My mother especially liked this message because it was not about society or politics, but it reminded us that every single abortion represents a massive failure toward some particular woman.

One day on the highway, we passed another car, and my mother thought she saw a short vignette play out: A woman saw the bumper sticker and began to cry, and the man at the wheel tried to comfort her as he drove.

Who knows what really happened. But as soon as she got home, my mother peeled the bumper sticker off the car. The last thing she wanted was to wound someone. That was the whole point: It does not matter how right you are. What you do has to be about the human person. You cannot just go around wounding people who are already wounded and call it “Christian.” It is our job to heal, not to wound.

My mother was so socially baffled at all times. She could talk about ideas, but petty chit-chat left her stymied. As if they realized this, the needy and disabled who were too weird and smelly for everyone else were drawn to her in droves. I always imagined her in paradise, followed, like Sarah Smith in The Great Divorce, by an adoring, jabbering crowd of all the hapless, gormless outcasts she awkwardly welcomed and comforted, fed, clothed. Social pretensions she understood not at all, but a person in need or a person in pain claimed her entirely. It was always about the human person, the real human person. When no one else would touch their faces, she would.

My mother had a drawer where she kept her pro-life materials—her posters, her pamphlets, her reams of purple mimeographed facts and resources. In the back of the drawer was a box, and in the box was an envelope. This was where she kept some photos of aborted babies . . .

Continue reading the rest of my latest for America.

Image: Holy Hill Station VI: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus, photo by Sharon Mollerus via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Graphic abortion images have their place, but they don’t belong at the March for Life

Are you going to the March for Life, either in DC or in your state?  If so, are you planning to display graphic photos or videos of aborted babies?

If so, I’m begging you to reconsider.

I understand why people use them. Many Americans are still somehow ignorant about what abortion really is — what it really does to real babies.  They believe the lies about a “clump of cells” or “fetal pole activity,” or let themselves get confused in a cloud of euphemisms about “choice.” Many pro-lifers remember seeing those bloody images for the first time, and can recall being shaken out of a vague, fuzzy support for the pro-life cause into the realization that this is a life-and-death struggle — real life, and real death.

These images have their uses.

But a public place is not the place to use these images — ever, I’m convinced.  These images are like a terrible weapon which should be used with fear and trembling, and only as a last resort.  Ideally, they should only be used in the context of a relationship. Why?

Those are real babies.  Christians are almost alone in affirming the dignity of the human person.  The human body is sacred and always worthy of respect.  When we use pictures of real babies as a tactic or a tool, we are allowing ourselves to forget that these are children with an immortal soul, and who have a name that only their Father knows.  They have already been killed.  Let us treat their poor bodies with respect.

There will be children at the march.  Do you let your little kids watch slasher films or play gory video games?  No?  Well, those things show us actors with fake blood, pretending to be tortured and killed, or computer-generated images.  It’s bad enough when it’s fake. Why would you let your kids see the real thing?  The pro-life cause is about protecting innocent life, and that includes protecting the innocence of young children.  Violent images stay with us for a lifetime, and they damage us.

There will be post-abortive women at the march.  Imagine their courage in being there at all.  Then imagine what it does to them to see, once again, the dark thing that keeps them from sleeping at night — the thing that often keeps them in decades-long cycles of self-loathing and despair.  We don’t ask victims of rape to look at videos of rape in progress.  We don’t ask holocaust victims to look at huge banners showing the piles of emaciated bodies.  As pro-lifers, we must remember that every abortion has two victims:  the child and the mother.  We must never be on the side that hurts mothers.  Never.

Women who have miscarried will be there.  Thousands of the women at the March are mothers — mothers who have already given birth, mothers who are pregnant as they march, and mothers who have miscarried, delivered dead babies.  For many of them, the grief over a miscarriage never goes away entirely.  Many women stay away from any public march for fear of being subjected to these images so similar to the thing that caused them so much pain.  Motherhood makes a woman’s heart tender.  The pro-life movement should be a shelter that protects that tenderness — because the world needs it desperately.

Public image matters.  Some people’s only contact with obvious pro-lifers is with people who shout and condemn and terrify.  It’s just basic psychology:  if you want people to listen to you and have sympathy for your cause, don’t come across as a lunatic.  You’re not a lunatic — but to people who don’t already agree with you, you sure look that way if you’re out in public with an oversized photo of gore flapping in the wind.  Yes, your cause is worthy.  No, you’re not helping it.

They’re not an unanswerable argument that pro-lifers imagine, because people see what they want to see.  When the apostles begged the Lord to send the dead to persuade people to repent, He said that if they didn’t listen to the prophets, then they wouldn’t be impressed by the dead coming back to life, either.  Many pro-choicers speak as if it’s a foregone conclusion that pro-lifers use photoshopped images — that the tiny, mutilated feet and hands and heads are a hoax that’s been thoroughly debunked.  It’s a lie, of course.  But people believe it all the same, because they want to (and pro-lifers don’t help their cause by being sloppy about things like identifying gestational age on photos).

Desensitization is a real danger — even among pro-lifers.  It’s just how humans are made:  see something too often, and you stop really seeing it.  I thank and bless those who work so tirelessly for the pro-life cause, including those who had to spend time up close with the heart-rending remains of babies, rescuing them from dumpsters and photographing them.

But to those who use these images routinely everywhere, indiscriminately, I beg that they to stop and consider that, like policemen or like soldiers, they are human, and are in danger of becoming hardened out of self-preservation. People who have become hardened must never be the public face of the pro-life cause.  If you, as a pro-life activist, see a bloody image and you don’t flinch, then it’s time to take a break — move into a different segment of the ministry, perhaps one that emphasizes prayer and reparation.

*****

These are all arguments against using graphic images indiscriminately, in a public place. Does this mean they should never be used?

Absolutely not.  Bloody and shocking images have their place.  Pro-life activists are right when they say abortion depends on silence and darkness, and that truth must be exposed.  Too many people who are pro-choice because they somehow still don’t know what fetuses actually look like, or what happens to them when they are aborted– or because they’ve simply slipped into a comfortable shelter of euphemisms.  These lies, this comfort must be stripped away.

So when should you use graphic images?  When a teenager shrugs and says, “My health teacher says it’s not a person until 25 weeks.”  When someone who works in the front office of a clinic says she’s doing a gentle, compassionate work of mercy.  When your boyfriend wants you to get rid of “it” before it becomes a real baby.  When a college girl likens unborn babies to tumors or parasites.  Then you can respond to the actual situation, to the actual person.  Then you can take out the picture and say, “Is this what you’re talking about?” And let the poor, dead child speak for you. 

I believe that everyone should see an image of an aborted baby once in their lifetime.  And I believe that, like any traumatic image, it will stay with you.  Once or twice in a lifetime is enough. 

Abortion is violent.  Abortion is cruel.  Abortion inflicts trauma and pain on the vulnerable.  Abortion is dehumanizing to mother and child. As pro-lifers, we should have no part in any of that.  Let use those graphic images with care and respect, as a weapon of last resort. 

***
Photo used with kind permission of the photographer, Matthew Lomanno, from his photo documentary of the March for Life 2014.

 

In praise of litanies

When my spiritual life needs a shot in the arm, I sometimes turn to litanies. Many Catholics only encounter litanies on All Saint’s Day, perhaps leaving Mass with the impression that a litany is a prayer for when you have a short amount of time and a giant crowd to propitiate, sort of like a spiritual credits page that scrolls past in tiny print to fulfill your contractual obligation. St Key Grip, pray for us! All rights reserved, Amen.

But there are so many more litanies, and more kinds of litanies, than the litany of saints — which, by the way, is itself so much more than a list, and which has been prayed in one form or another for over 1500 years. The Litany of Saints was first recorded in the time of Gregory the Great around the year 600. According to one source,

“In 590 Pope Gregory was moved by the occurrence of a great pestilence that followed an inundation, and ordered a Litania Septiformis (‘sevenfold procession’): clergy; laity; monks; virgins; matrons; widows; and the poor and children. It was in one of these Litania Septiformis, in celebration of the end of the plague, that the Litany of the Saints was introduced.”

I’d like to see that! Imagine processing down the streets invoking the names of all the blessed — many of whom would have been martyrs — proclaiming to the world that you’re grateful to them and to God that you’re still breathing. That really brings home how personal the communion of saints truly is.

Of course the form of a litany is older than the Catholic Church. Every year at our Passover seder, we recite the sort of wellspring of all litanies, Psalm 136, and it is very good indeed to say the words that the children of Abraham have been saying faithfully for thousands and thousands of years: His mercy endures forever. I love how it slides so casually from the cosmic to the specific. We say:

“To him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that by wisdom made the heavens: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:
The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:
The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.”

and then later in the same prayer:

“To him which smote great kings: for his mercy endureth for ever:
And slew famous kings: for his mercy endureth for ever:
Sihon king of the Amorites: for his mercy endureth for ever:
And Og the king of Bashan: for his mercy endureth for ever.”

Poor Og of Bashan! That’s all I ever knew about him, but I’ll never forget him. Even Og could have the mercy of the Lord, if he wanted it.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: By Byzantinischer Maler um 1020 – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148590

What’s for supper? Vol. 199: Exit, pursued by lion’s head

So! Next week is Vol. 200 of What’s for Supper. You know what that means, don’t you?!?!?!

I don’t know. It means what it means. If you have any neat ideas for how to mark the occasion, I’m at least partially ears. In the mean time, thanks for playing along for two hundred weeks! I have all these tabs open with upsetting stories about troubling new violations of bioethics and stuff like that, and I love having a little section of the internet where we can just talk about dang ol’ food.

Here’s what we had this week.

SATURDAY
Lasagna, garlic bread

I wasn’t sure what to make when I got home from shopping, so Damien was all, “Hey, how about if I shop for and make my special homemade lasagna?” You know, I argued a little bit, but eventually I let him. You have to let husbands have their way sometimes, for the health of the marriage. This is called “dying to self,” and it’s delicious.

I still don’t have an actual recipe, but here is his description of how it’s made:

For the meat sauce: You take some cut-up onion and garlic and cook it in olive oil with a few red pepper flakes. Then you add the meat [we had ground beef] and brown it up. Then add a can of tomato pasta and a can of whole tomatoes crushed up a little, and a splash of red wine.

For the cheese mixture: You put a shit ton of shredded mozzarella in the [three tubs of] ricotta cheese, a bunch of garlic powder, salt and pepper and oregano, and some cinnamon [couldn’t find the nutmeg]

He cooked up a few boxes of pasta and layered that with the meat sauce and the cheese mixture and lots and lots of sliced mozzarella and parmesan and chopped Italian parsley. Then he sprinkled parmesan cheese and olive oil on the top, and baked it. 

SUNDAY
Carnitas with guacamole

Jump to Recipe

Pretty mediocre carnitas, to be honest. I started the meat in the slow cooker somewhat late in the day, so it didn’t get very tender, and then I had a kid shred it and I seasoned it okay, but then I overcooked it, so it was dry and chewy. Boo.

Avocados are still 69 cents, so I made another big bowl of guacamole, but it, too, was nothing to write home about. I couldn’t find the cilantro. The refrigerator is out of control. I can’t find anything. I also forgot to buy tomatoes, and made the dubious chose to use canned diced tomatoes. I was just kind of guacamediocre, I guess. You don’t even want to know how long I thought about which was funnier, “guacamediocre” or “mediocamole.” I decided they were both stupid and maybe we can just move along. 

Here’s my guac recipe that’s really good if you actually follow it. 

Jump to Recipe

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, fries, carrots and broccoli with hummus
Chinese food for adults

So I was supposed to review Jojo Rabbit but, like a dummy, I missed the local viewing. So I threw some frozen food in the kids’ general direction we drove about an hour to Amherst, MA, which turns out to be a pretty neat little town.  We picked out a Mandarin Chinese restaurant Formosa, that looked, let’s face it, quiet. We didn’t want a place that looked fun or cute or neat or awesome. We wanted one that looked quiet. It turned out to be a pretty serious Chinese restaurant! By which I mean there were a lot of Chinese people eating there, and there were lot of intestines on the menu, and, like, salted fish heads.

Now, Damien and I really diverge, here. When we are away from home, he wants to know exactly what he is in for, so he ordered crab rangoon, miso soup, General Gao’s Chicken, and white rice. I, on the other hand, feel like this could be my one and only chance to open a whole new door to a whole new world and what if I’m afraid to take a chance and I miss it!!!!!!!

This has never worked out well for me, not even one time. I always end up with a giant portion of something weird and upsetting. Nevertheless, I went ahead and ordered Lion’s Head Sizzling Pot. I mean, how can you not? It said it had shrimp in it, and it was called LION’S HEAD SIZZLING POT. 

The waiter tried to talk me out of it, and showed me two other items which were also called Lion’s Head; but I pushed back pretty hard, and I got my Lion’s Head Sizzling Pot. It turned out to be . . . I really can’t call it a bowl of soup. It was a tankard of soup. A tub of soup. A basin of soup. A CASK of soup. I could have soaked my feet up to my calves in this dish.

Note not only the diameter of the dish, but how far away from the table the spoon is.

It had soft, grey pork meatballs the size of softballs lurking around in it. There were veritable rafts of scrambled eggs adrift in the bowl. Also some kind of leafy greens, maybe bok choy, although it seemed leafier than that; comb-shaped bamboo shoots; vast logs of tofu, squares of ham, chewy, bulbous, dark brown mushrooms, vermicelli, and a few lonely shrimp. It was kinda bland, to be honest. I ate as much as I possibly could and barely made a dent in the volume.

They packed the leftovers up for me in several containers and I exited, pursued by Lion’s Head.

Jojo Rabbit was interesting, but boy oh boy, I have thoughts. Review should be up soon in America if they like it. 

TUESDAY
Spaghetti and meatballs

Damien kindly offered to make dinner again, as I was freaking out about something or other. He makes very fine meatballs. I don’t seem to have a picture of them, though.

Here’s my meatball recipe

Jump to Recipe

He likes to pan fry his and add lots of diced onions. My recipe is less exciting but way easier, as they are made in the oven. (Whispers: ***It doesn’t really matter. If you put them in sauce the end up tasting the same.***)

Dora also invited a friend over and they made knishes, reasons unclear. Not that you need a reason to make knishes! I’ve just never woken up on a Tuesday morning and thought to myself, “Hey, I know what!” and ended up with knishes. 

WEDNESDAY
Ginger garlic chicken kabobs, string beans, pineapple

New recipe! I more or less followed Damn Delicious’ recipe, so I won’t make a new card just yet. This was pretty tasty and easy, although the fresh ginger I bought vanished without a trace, so I had to use powdered. I must say, it was plenty hot without fresh ginger. It’s a zippy, warming dish, and attractive. I over cooked it a bit, oops. 

It’s an easy marinade (oyster sauce, ketchup, honey, chili garlic sauce, dijon mustard, garlic, and ginger). I let it marinate for about five hours, then stuck the chicken on skewers and put them on an oiled broiler pan right under the broiler. I turned them once, slathered on some reserved marinade, and cooked the other side. Sprinkle on some sesame seeds and scallions, and there it is. 

Surprisingly filling. 

THURSDAY
Gumbo, brown rice

I more or less followed this recipe from The Spruce Eats.

I actually started prepping this Wednesday night, because I took a look at my Thursday schedule and did not like what I saw. So I cooked chicken thighs in the instant pot, browned up some sausage, and then sautéed the shrimp in the sausage pan; and Clara diced a bunch of celery, peppers, and onions.

(Shh, don’t tell anyone, but I bought Italian sausage because I live in NH and I don’t know anything.)

I thought I was sooooo smart, and cooking day was going to be soooo easy because of the prep work we had done. I’ll tell you what, this dish was still a pain in the ass to make. I was stirring that freaking roux for an hour, and it never did get “chocolate brown.” And it turns out I don’t have any cajun seasoning in my pantry (by which I mean two old taped-together clementine boxes on top of the microwave) because I live in NH. So I made some cajun seasoning, but by this point, I was feeling awfully cranky about the whole project, and there was really no way this gumbo was going to taste good enough to make up for the pain in my ass. 

I mean, it was good? Sometimes it’s hard to tell how good something tastes when you’re already full of resentment. 

Damien and I ate it, Corrie and Moe tried it, and the rest of them went straight for frozen pizza. And I mean frozen pizza, as in they did not cook it. They are complete degenerates and I don’t know why I bother. And yes, I brought this entire debacle upon myself by choosing to make gumbo for no reason at all. My Saturday morning ambitions do not always mesh well with my Thursday afternoon realities. 

I had delusions of making some french bread, since it turned out so well last week.

As the day flew by, I downgraded my ambitions to beer bread. But it turns out I was out of flour. This is not because I live in NH; it’s because I forgot to buy flour. Anyway, I’ll put the beer bread recipe card at the end and Imma make it soon. Beer bread is great! It only uses one bowl, and it comes together as quickly as any quick bread, but it’s much more bready and less cakey than most quick breads, and it has a wonderful yeasty, honeyed taste, and the knobbly cobbled crust is very nice. The secret is a ludicrous amount of melted butter.

Anyway, this was all in my imagination. In real life, I made a big pot of brown rice, which the kids also did not eat. Benny tried to comfort me by remarking on how chewy it is, and how funny that is. 

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese

I don’t have a recipe, really. Just make a white sauce until it looks like enough, then dump in a bunch of shredded cheese and plenty of pepper and SOME HOT SAUCE. Then you mix this with the cooked macaroni, pour into a buttered dish, top with buttered panko bread crumbs, and bake until you can hear it. 

My kids eat it with mustard. I told you they were degenerates. 

Okay! Don’t forget to comment with ideas about what to do for Vol. 200! If it were the summer, I’d make a whole week of greatest hits, or a whole week of reader-suggested recipes. But it’s not. 

4 from 1 vote
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Slow cooker carnitas

Serve on tortillas with sour cream, guacamole, beans and rice, salsa, cilantro, or whatever you like.

Ingredients

  • 1 pork shoulder
  • 1 can beer (or soda)
  • cumin
  • chili powder
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Put pork shoulder in slow cooker with beer. Cook on low for five hours or more, until pork falls apart when poked. 

  2. Preheat broiler. 

  3. Shred meat, mix together with spices, and spread in a thin layer on a shallow pan. Broil for a few minutes until meat is slightly crisped.  

  4. Serve on tortillas with whatever additions you like. 

 

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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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. 

 

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Beer bread

A rich, buttery quick bread that tastes more bready and less cake-y than many quick breads. It's so easy (just one bowl!) but you really do want to sift the flour.

This recipe makes two large loaf pan loaves.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups flour, sifted
  • 2 Tbsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 12-oz cans beer, preferably something dark
  • 1 stick butter

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375

  2. Butter two large loaf pans. Melt the stick of butter.

  3. I'm sorry, but you really do want to sift the flour.

  4. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients, and stir in beer until it's all combined and nice and thick.

  5. Pour the batter into the loaf pans and pour the melted butter over the top.

  6. Bake for about 50 minutes until it's crusty and knobbly on top.