Bread, Wine, Salt

"Breathe in and out." That's what I'd tell them, the parents who woke this morning, if they slept at all, still living the nightmare from yesterday, if I had occasion to speak with them, if they asked me how they should go on. But they are many states away, and I don't know them. I'm fairly sure they don't want my opinion. But you are here, which means you probably know me, and might care about my opinion.  I've written about grief a good deal. I don't have any new insights since my last bout of sermonizing. So here is a run down of what I've written already: I don't know what to say , reprint, originally from December 2009 How the story of Job teaches us what to do when our friends are hurting. On the Phone , August 2010 What to say to people who are grieving. What it means to Pray , August 2010 If prayer doesn't come easily, or if you think you can't pray, this is a simple way to start. When the Lid is Taken Off...

Luke 21:25-36 Jesus said, "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." Then he told them a parable: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with...

While the headlines are fading, the recovery work continues. JHL of A Half-Baked Life is hosting a bake sale/auction , with proceeds going to the United Way for Sandy relief. Take a look at all the yummy things available. My oatmeal cookies are part of the auction, and the winner can customize them any way they choose . mmm...cookies

I had this idea in my head that I wanted pumpkin granola muffins, with the granola acting as a less-sweet streusel topping. I borrowed Maud's pumpkin bread recipe. (It's not on her blog. You should harass her about that.) The muffins weren't a disaster. Muffins rarely are. But they weren't great. No one loved them. The recipe uses one half of a can of pumpkin, so then there was a half can of pumpkin in my refrigerator, mocking me and my failed muffins. (We'll ignore what else might have been mocking me recently. This is about muffins. Whatever else is wrong it seems only fair that I should be able to produce a decent batch of muffins.) So I went back and tried again. I swapped out some oatmeal for some of the flour, added in crystallized ginger and walnuts. In the process I discovered what might have been a critical error in the last batch.) And then I put it in oven, told facebook all about it, and waited.     Unlike the other things I've been wai...

Summer tastes like a bruised peach before breakfast, eaten over the sink while juice runs down your arm. ...like watermelon straight from the refrigerator, cold to the core, eaten while your skin is still hot to the touch, still shining with sweat. ...like ice cream that melts down onto your fingers no matter how many napkins you grab or how quickly you eat. ...like chlorine and sugar and red food coloring when it sounds like the bells and growl of a refrigerated truck. ...like gazpacho sipped from paper cups while you sit on a blanket on the lawn, waiting for the breeze to blow and the music to start. ...like iced coffee in the heat of the afternoon, as you sit with the shades drawn and the fans blowing. ...like salt spray when a wave tosses it in your face as you bend to fill a plastic bucket. ...like a garden grown tomato sliced onto a piece of bread with a smear of mayonnaise and a sprinkle of salt and basil. ...like a burger from the grill, with cheese melting into...

We sit facing each other. You keep telling me it's hot, but I have goosebumps on my arms. You have a knife so finely honed that I don't see it, don't feel it, not even when you've cut me, until suddenly I am bleeding on the lawn and the darkness is falling and you are gone. We play encore like it's a game. The man at the piano winks and urges us on until you return, your arms wide. It is beautiful but it doesn't matter. I am bloodless and breathless, and you never saw me at all. (I'm throwing this against the wall to see if it sticks. Don't worry it you don't like it. I probably won't like in the morning either.)

We've been having a pretty low key summer. I signed the boys up for one session of swim classes, which fizzled out when someone got a fever and someone else didn't want to go anymore (not that he could have gone when his brother had a fever anyway.)  And the rest of the time I've just been doing whatever occurs to me. So we went to a minor league baseball game and sat so close we needed a net to protect us from foul balls. We learned some new chores. We watched a movie at an Aunt's house. We've built a lot of things. We played in the sprinkler. We ate healthful snacks. And then there's this: Homemade Kettle Corn I could pretend its good for us, since it's whole grain and all, but I won't. It's delicious and doesn't need to be justified. You'll need a stove-top popcorn maker, or an electric version that stirs. Ingredients 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter 1 Tablespoon high heat oil such as sunflower 1/3 cup popcorn ke...

In June we had house guests. Since the last time we'd seen them they converted to the paleo diet. (Short version: no grains, no dairy, no legumes, lots of meats, veggies, nuts, and fruits, limited raw honey, dark chocolate.) We had to feed them, while also feeding my older son who won't eat meat unless it's bacon. Almost as soon as they were gone I had vegetarian friends come over for a play date, and I had to feed them lunch. And then the next day my mostly vegetarian friend and her utterly carnivorous husband and son came for a visit and I had to feed them, too.  I say "had to feed them" as if it were a trauma, which is wasn't. I like feeding people. I say "had to" because they were in my home over mealtimes so I was required by the laws of hospitality to offer them sustenance. Basic hospitality also required that I provide food that was acceptable to them. Hospitality doesn't say anything about judging their dietary choices. Why they ea...

On Monday morning I got a call from a client, warning that my services would be needed soon. The threat of labor makes me pretty efficient. I filled and ran the dishwasher, cleaned the sink, took the boys grocery shopping, got the groceries put away, fed the boys lunch, emptied the dishwasher, made snack and dinner for the boys, filled the dogs' water, cleaned the dog' ears, and put the flowers in the vase. I spent the rest of Monday at the birth, watching a skilled nurse-midwife facilitate the VBAC my client wanted despite circumstances that might have sent some providers running for the operating room. It was a great birth, the baby was perfect and I'm glad I was there to witness it. But it meant that I didn't get to bed until 2:00 in the morning. When I say that I am a morning person, I do not mean 2:00 in the morning. A mere five hours later the sun was up and my children were up and my husband was getting ready to leave for work. I had a follow-up scheduled for...

This last week of light posting has been brought to you by a failed oatmeal muffin recipe. I am working on an oatmeal muffin recipe for Lunch in the Park , because we learned last week that Kate makes oatmeal muffins which are so good as to earn her good karma. My last attempt was utterly meh, though my boys ate them happily. I will go back to the drawing board and tweak the formula again.  That is what recipes are, of course, they're chemical formulas and when I try a new baked good I'm doing a bit of science. My last experiment did not produce the expected results, so I have to go change my procedure. I should note that I'm doing all of this work myself and not relying on my mother to do it. That's how science experiments are supposed to be done.  There's a mother at my sons' preschool who doesn't seem to grasp this, and so she weekly regales me with the tales of woe that result from her older son's science project in which she, the mother, must be u...

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for many Christians. (In which we read about making our prayers private and then smear oily ashes all over our foreheads where everyone can see them.) I haven't had ashes in years because my kids are not yet old enough to manage the meditative noon service and my husband sings in the choir at the last service, and someone has to actually be in the house while the kids are sleeping. I didn't expect to be able to go this year anyway, since I knew I'd be spending the day at a hospital offering up my patience, my compassion, my arm strength, and my ability to not roll my eyes at hospital staff in service of a client. As it turns out, I received ashes from the hospital chaplain who was visiting the maternity ward, and I go to explain the whole praying in public/ mess of ashes contradiction to a Jewish doctor who was sitting behind the desk while I received the ashes. The preparations for Lent started before today. On Sunda...

My Husband is the very best of husbands and I wouldn't trade him for anything. He unloads the dishwasher, after all, a task I find tedious, and he never takes it personally when I completely rearrange things he has put in the dishwasher.  I don't like to complain, so we'll say that a feature of his unloading of the dishwasher is that things sometimes go to unexpected places.  So this morning as I was searching for my little blue boxes to pack the boys' lunches I could find the lids but not the bottoms.  I looked in the drainboard, the container drawer, and the other drawer where things seem to go, but they were not in any of those places.  The lunch I wanted to pack didn't fit neatly in the Ziploc lunch containers and I was in a rush, so I shuffled things into containers for sharing and headed out the door. Ravioli and veggies (green bowls for them, glass bowl for me), blood oranges,  blueberry muffins .

Sleep is surprisingly necessary for the proper functioning of my body.  Most of the time I get enough sleep and I wash my hands often enough I can avoid most of The Yuck, the nasal/sinus/chest phelgm monster that travels the preschool circuit.  But my job sometimes gets in the way.  I was up all night on Sunday, so what had been an annoying thing at the back of my throat, easily vanquished with gargling and tea, became a full blown head cold, complete with that most undignified of symptoms, the runny nose.  This morning, after dropping W at preschool and humoring A through a toddler art class I walked to the grocery store to pick up the extra soft tissues, and the ingredients for this soup. This is potent stuff.  You have to be dedicated to garlic and ginger to eat it made with the full amounts.  But it's just the thing when you can't smell and you need something to give you a boost.  It won't cure the common cold, but it will make a lovely companion...

Some Valentine's Week love from my very talented friend Chenoa.

This is from my personal archives, and was published in my parish newsletter in November, 2009 Many years ago I went to the funeral of a young man. He was my boyfriend's friend, and I didn't know anyone there, certainly not the young man's family. As I walked through the receiving line, the man's mother pulled me into a tight hug. I said the only thing I could think of: “I'm so sorry for your loss.” It felt inadequate. Surely there was something else I should have said. There are plenty of guides for people who are grieving. There are fewer resources for the friends and acquaintances. Well-meaning and loving people are often at a loss for what to say and what to do. Afraid of doing something wrong, they don't do anything at all. The result is that the bereaved feel abandoned, which adds more pain and sometimes anger to an already bad situation. So what should we do when we are called to support others? Most people are familiar with the story of Job, a righ...

If you were to invite me over to your house and then leave me alone, to chase after some child who is raiding some other child's couch full of animals , for example, then I will eventually end up digging through your cookbook collection. You're welcome to come over and dig through mine as well. They're in the cabinets above the stove. I borrowed Maud's copy of Avoca Cafe Cookbook (more correctly the Irish version thereof, a couple of weeks ago, because I wanted their baked lamb with cumin, cardamom and coconut milk recipe, thinking it might be similar to a dish I ate in an Indian restaurant years ago. I cannot resist an interesting bread recipe, so when I saw the lovely picture of round loaves of seeded bread on page labeled “Multiseed brown bread with fruit” I knew I had to try it. Now, as it turns out the picture had nothing to do with the recipe, but I liked the ingredients in the recipe too, so I decided to give it a shot. The first four ingredients...

Everything was eaten eventually, even though there was no dip for the cucumbers. The blue boxes are  Sassy boxes  that I bought in the kids aisle at Target. They're also on Amazon and you can probably get them at most places that sell kid stuff. They're really the perfect size for the preschool/early elementary set. They come with a variety of internal containers, most of which have been scattered, and which I never found hugely useful anyway. The main downside is that none of the compartments is water tight, so these aren't great for messy things.

I found this through my friend Amelia.  I've known her since she was two and somehow she's grown up into an awesome person.

Sunday: Cheeseburgers with roasted potato wedges Monday: White Beans and Cabbage Tuesday: Red Bean Peanut Stew Wednesday: Seitan Stir-fry Thursday: Black Bean Soup Friday: Pizza Saturday: Stuffed Peppers What are you eating this week?

Are you on Pinterest? I got on Pinterest a few weeks ago and have been pinning happily since then. One of my boards is titled “Intriguing Recipes” and it's there that I stick the recipes for things I might want to try, if only I can remember that I want to try them. One of my early pins was a recipe for Butter Chicken without the butter from Julie at Dinner with Julie. I love Indian food and Julie's recipes are always solid, so I knew I'd like it. I'd just have to remember to make it. I probably wouldn't have remembered, except that the pin generated some discussion with a friend, first on pinterest and later by email about cooking with chicken thighs. I know some people have a problem with chicken thighs because they're greasy and dark and have a flavor. (And don't tell me it's a weird flavor. It's a chicken flavor and we've all been beaten into blandness by the industrial chicken breast.) My chicken-thigh-averse friend asked if I...

We've been having unseasonably warm weather here. Yesterday and today were in the 60s, so the playgroup decided to obey the weather rather than the calendar and meet outside.  My boys were very excited about this both because it was a beautiful day and because being outside meant plenty of playground equipment for everyone, instead of a limited number of toys which are inevitably the cause of much angst. Yesterday my younger son rejected his lunch in favor of begging for bites of my salmon burger and broccoli, so today I made salmon for everyone.  The boys ate all of their lunch, albeit in two shifts because it's hard to focus on food when there's playing to be done. Everything but the pears came from the freezer.  The boys like their peas cold so I just poured them into the containers straight from the bag. I heated my veggies in the microwave (in a glass dish because I have a no plastic in the microwave policy.) The salmon burgers were cooked in a skillet and then...

Sometimes the births I attend as a doula are intense, and there is no talking beyond simple phrases (come here, drink this, press here, turn that off) sometimes there are long stretches where my role is to keep people's minds off of their worries. I never discuss politics or religion with a client unless they specifically ask me a question, and then I answer as briefly as possible.  I will discuss food, but not the politics of my food. The other day I sat with a client and waited, and waited, and waited for a planned cesarean to happen.  There was a lot of time to talk and eventually we had each other's who histories including my undergraduate degree in animal science.  The father asked me if I was a vegetarian, so I explained about free-range, humanely raised meats.  He wanted to know what that cost, so I told him.  And he made a face, which is fair, because it's a lot of money.  I explained that we compensated by eating less meat (which is easie...

Is it a tea cake? Is it a bread? A young visitor insisted that my freshly baked offering wasn't cake at all as there was no frosting. So we offered it as vanilla bread instead, like banana bread, without the banana. He agreed that he might like banana bread without banana, and tried a bite. Where is the line between cake and bread. Is a muffin something in-between or is it something altogether different? What should we call muffins that are really sweet, fluffy cakes sold in paper wrappers in coffee shops? Are there lines at all, or is it just a continuum of floury goodness? Should we worry less about what we call things and more about making them wonderful, and then offering them up to guests, even skeptical guests? Should we go bake up this moist, flavorful cake and then brew a pot of tea? Absolutely. Banana Cranberry Bread, Vanilla Tea Cake, Gingerbread I used vanilla bean seeds because it adds great vanilla flavor and the specks of bean add an inter...

Mary Bailey: Bread so that this house may never know hunger. Salt so that life may always have flavor. George Bailey: Wine that joy and prosperity may reign forever. Bread, Salt and Wine are traditional housewarming gifts.  We all know this because we've seen "It's a Wonderful Life." Perhaps some of us assumed that it exists because of "It's a Wonderful Life."  But the tradition goes back to a time before Frank Capra, and it's a lovely idea, one I'm in favor of keeping alive. Depending on who you ask, the tradition is either Russian, Polish, Jewish, or Italian, unless it's Lithuanian, or something else.  Of course it's possible, that similar traditions grew up in different places.  Many cultures value bread, salt and wine. It was a Russian folk custom for local merchants to present the gift of a round loaf of bread covered in salt to the visiting emperor as a sign of hospitality. In many cultures bread, salt and wine are given ...

The men of the household are at the barber shop getting haircuts.  I am home making menu plans.  (No, come back.  I swear I am still a feminist.  I have righteous indignation and everything, just not about menu planning.  My husband does the grocery shopping!) Here is the plan for this week: click to embiggen The page numbers with no initials are from Supermarket Vegan . Menu planning is not commandment carving and sometimes things from last week get shifted to this week.  The pages marked "sne" are recipes from  Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks .  Heidi is the cook I want to be when I grow up, and I love her cookbook.  I just haven't done much with it yet, so it made sense to pull it off the shelf this morning.  There are so many wonderful pictures, it's hard to pick.  I know this is a book I'll be going back to as the seasons change. You'll notice that I don't plan a lot of breakfasts an...

I have two methods of menu planning. The first is to sit down with my husband and decide which of our regular meals should be in rotation in a given week, and then make sure that our shopping list reflects the plan. It's easy, but it's a tiny bit boring. The second method is to pick up one of my many cookbooks and flip through it looking for recipes I want to try. A book which has been sitting on my shelf for a while, sadly neglected, is Supermarket Vegan . I picked it off the shelf last week and made a menu plan. I love this book. I am not a vegan, not even a vegetarian, but when I do eat meat it is grass-fed, free-range, humanely-raised meat, because I believe it is better for me, better for the animals and better for the planet. “But” say my friends, “that kind of meat is so expensive.” And they're right; it is. No one knows that better than the person who bought the rib-eye roast for the Beef Wellington at Christmas dinner. (Me!) Since we don't have a v...

Lunch in the Park , a novel about love and family, is available for sale in multiple electronic formats at Smashwords , for the Kindle at Amazon.com and for the Nook at BN.com Wherever you buy it, it is DRM-free . The delicious recipes that Kate and Jeff cook up are right here on my blog. I hope you'll read Lunch in the Park , you'll love it, and you'll feel the overwhelming urge to write a review on one or more of the sites above. And of course I'd love to hear from you here on the blog, too.  Have I told you the story of the “as good as store bought” lemonade? No? Years ago we were invited to a Fourth of July Picnic. We brought food of some description, and a gallon of homemade lemonade in a jug that had a previous life as a gallon of distilled water. One of our hosts was a big lemonade fan, and after drinking a glass checked the label. When I told him it was homemade he said “It's as good as store-bought.” I lifted my chin a bit and sa...