ProverbsNineFive

2011-08-03T10:17:00.001-04:00

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

from my friend Theresa

2011-08-02T10:58:00.006-04:00

Consumer Food and Real Food

Much of the food that much of the population eats, even when billed as "Home Cooking", is really industrial food, and the way it is prepared and presented often is influenced more by how this can be done more cheaply for the manufacturer and how it positions the manufacturer vis-a-vis its competitors.

This competitive aspect leads to a homogenization of products; if products are very different, it's harder to compare them. A recently published article in The Washington Post makes this point about clam chowder:

Who put the flouwah in my chowdah? The thick and thin of consumer conformity
by Steven Pearlstein

One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting barefoot and shirtless on a stool at a lunch counter a block from the beach in Ogunquit, Maine, gulping down a bowl of clam chowder.

There was nothing particularly special about the chowder — it was pretty much like what you would have found anywhere along the New England seacoast: a generous mound of potatoes, onions and clams sitting in a broth of briny clam juice and whole milk. As often as not, there would be butter and paprika floating on the surface, with a few grains of sand sitting harmlessly at the bottom of the bowl.

Half a century later, however, a summer visitor to New England is hard-pressed to find such authentic chowder. Although omnipresent on menu boards in restaurants and seaside shacks, what passes for clam chowder now is most often a bowl of flour-thickened gruel in which tiny bits of chopped sea clams and overcooked potatoes wallow...
read the rest at The Washington Post.

Similarly, the way food is served is influenced by these financial and business interests. What is a meal? Well, it is a meat, a starch, and a vegetable, as if even in adulthood we were all eating off a divided plate or a TV dinner tray. Of course, a meal can be much more than that, in any number of different dishes; but by conforming our own table to the advertised format, we are easier to sell to. Dare I say, manipulated.

Last night's dinner was black bean empanadas with three different salsas and guacamole. It was delicious, nutritious and filling! Only one of the salsas (the tomato one) was purchased; Laurie made the watermelon salsa and the mango/cucumber salsa, and I made the guacamole. Some of the ingredients were from our garden, which right now has a lot more to do with determining what we're cooking and preparing for dinner than ads or newspaper features. Which has a certain rightness to it, no?

2011-05-15T10:22:00.003-04:00

The Bishops of England and Wales Reimpose Friday Abstinence

In a surprising development, but one I welcome, the bishops of England and Wales have decided to reimpose the obligation of Abstinence on all Fridays of the year. Currently, the English and Welsh church only obligates Catholics to fast and abstain on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Of course, the general law of the Catholic Church is that all Fridays of the year are penitential days, but each Episcopal conference has been allowed to determine how that should be exercised. In the U.S., there is abstinence on all the Fridays of Lent, with the extra obligation of fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. All Catholics are encouraged to abstain every Friday, but not required.

Of course, many people assume that there is a requirement to eat fish, but that is just because people envision dinner as being a plate with a protein (meat or fish), a starch (potato or rice) and a vegetable. So, if there isn't meat, there must be fish! (Hence the old nickname for Catholics--"Fisheaters".)

Those who have eaten as vegetarians realize that's a very limited menu planning option. There are many ways of arranging a meal,

For all those who are encouraged by this news from England to begin observing meatless Fridays as a penance (my family has also been doing this for many years), I would just like to remind you that meatless does not mean you have to eat fish!

Most of the monastic orders were traditionally vegetarian most of the year, and there are scores of recipes available. The Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches also observe abstinence throughout the year (on Wednesdays and Fridays), and there are cookbooks available. For those looking to take the plunge, here are a few suggestions.

From a Monastery Kitchen: The Classic Natural Foods Cookbook by Brother Victor D'Avila-Latourrette.

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups by the same author.

The Pure Joy of Monastery Cooking: Essential Meatless Recipes for the Home Cook by the same author.

A Lenten Cookbook for Orthodox Christians

A Fasting Cookbook by Rita Hanna, a downloadable Word file hosted by St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Oakland, CA.

Hat tip to Fr. Zuhlsdorf's blog WDTPRS

2010-10-07T12:28:00.002-04:00

The always interesting Bob Waldrop from Oklahoma city has an engaging and interesting series of blog posts from September on food security. Some of Bob's fears may be unfounded, but his basic concern that many families don't have any food security is definitely worth considering.

When I lived in Vermont, a coworker who was Mormon told me that part of the regular practice of Mormons was to keep 6 months of food available per family at all times. Perhaps a reflection of the difficult times they experienced in the early years after the trek to Utah?

While we shouldn't be pulling down our barns to build bigger ones, the idea of providing for a rainy day is plain common sense. On a farm, we would expect to can, put things in the root cellar, etc. Well, city dwellers need to do the equivalent. My family has always stored a good amount of non-perishables: rice, pasta, dried beans, etc. Anyway, take a look at the beginning of Bob's post below and give it some thought.

How much food is a year's supply for a family of four?

When starting a food storage program for your family, the most critical thing is to know how much food your family eats in a year. If you are going to store what you eat, and eat what you store, the first step is observation of your own kitchen.

But to give an idea as to what this could involve. . . I went to the governments My Pyramid site which describes their recommended daily consumptions of the various food groups (vegetables, fruits, oils, dairy, protein, grains). They have different recommendations for men and women, boys and girls of various ages. The plan below is based on a family of four -- a mother and father, a teenage boy age 14-18, and a young child age 4-8.

I don't know that anyone actually eats to the government recommendations, or even if that is a good idea, since government diet recommendations are heavily influenced by politics. So I caution folks against following these amounts without doing research into what your family actually eats.

With those caveats, however. . . here it is. . .
Veggies 2,084 15 oz cans
Grains 593 lbs
Fruits 1,564 15 oz cans
oils 12 gallons
dairy 251 gallons
peanut butter 13 quarts
nuts 13 lbs
beans 268 lbs
eggs 67 doz eggs
meat/poultry/fish 226 lbs
Using Oklahoma City supermarket prices, except for the meat which I priced at the levels prevailing in the Oklahoma Food cooperative. . . the price if bought all at once would be $5,453 plus sales tax, or $454/month. The dairy I priced as bulk powdered milk.

Visit Bobaganda for the rest.

2010-10-04T11:16:00.001-04:00

Garlic Soup Recipe

Well, my friends, we are into cold-flu season, so I am re-posting my garlic soup recipe. I recently had need to make it and although I'm thrilled to make this for pure enjoyment, I confess it really is a cure for sickness!

So...here you go, filed under the category of "Food I Would Serve Jesus"!
Read before beginning: The ingredients are on the consertive end; adjust to your own taste, and don't be afraid to add more garlic! (I usually add about a cup of whole cloves) I would advise using the old adage "less is more" the first time you make it, but once you have an idea as to what it is like, you can better adjust according to your own taste/needs.

* 1/3 C. whole garlic cloves (This is IMPORTANT: note that you may NOT substitute mere minced garlic in a jar!)
* 1 Tbsp minced garlic
* 1 Tbsp. roasted garlic
* 1 tsp fresh thyme, or 1/4 tsp dried thyme
* 1 tsp fresh basil or 1/4 tsp drid basil
* 4 cans of vegetable broth (or 2 32 oz boxes of Swanson's vegetable broth)
(( I recommend low sodium))
* 1 medium onion
* 1 bay leaf
* 1 Tbsp. olive oil
* 1/3 C. Half-and-Half (I use fat-free)
* 1/3 C. parmesan cheese - shredded
* Creole seasoning
* Day-Old French or Italian bread

1. Add onions and some of the garlic cloves to a large soup pan with the T. of olive oil. When the onions begin to turn clear or brownish (don't over cook!), add the broth, basil, thyme, bay leaf, and garlic. Bring this to a boil.

2. When the soup begins to boil, reduce the heat and simmer for approximately 40 minutes.

3. In the meantime, make your croutons: Cube the bread, approximately 2-3 cups, and toast in the oven at 300 degrees. Remove from heat, place in a paper sack, coat with apx. 1 - 2 Tbsp. of olive oil and season with the Creole seasoning. (This is spicy- be conservative at first!). Set the croutons aside.

NOTE: THE CROUTONS CAN BE MADE IN ADVANCE

4. When the soup has simmered for the 40 minutes, add apx 1 1/2 C. of the croutons and stir in with a wire whisk until they have mostly dissolved. At this point, the whole garlic cloves should be "mushy".

5. Remove the bay leaf

6. Add the half-and-half and parmesan cheese and immediately remove the soup from heat.

7. If you have a hand-mixer, use this to blend the soup to a smooth consistency. You may also pour the soup into a blender.

8. Serve immediately and garnish with the remaining croutons, parmesan, and creole seasoning.

SUBSTITUTIONS:

**** the half-and-half, parmesan and bread can be omitted for a thinner, healthier broth-type soup with all the great flavor!

**** You may also use large chunks of potato if you can't find the low-sodium broth or if your seasoning gets too salty. Blending the potatoes into it instead of bread may also turn it into a thicker soup. Otherwise if you do use the potatoes, it's a great and easy way to make garlic mashed potatoes if you decide to reserve them to the side.

from the blog "Adoro Te Devote".

2010-10-04T10:24:00.002-04:00

The Museum of Science (a former employer of mine) in Boston is hosting a series of events and lectures called "Let's Talk about Food". The first talk is this Friday, October 8, 2010.

See the event listings at the MOS web site.

Hat tip to the Boston Herald's food blog "Fork Lift".

2010-10-03T16:04:00.004-04:00

Family Food for Feast and Feria

This morning, Shawn Tribe who founded The New Liturgical Movement blog visited us at church with my friend David Clayton from Thomas More College in Merrimack, NH. We went out with fellow parishioner Phil Crotty before Shawn had to head out to the airport to head home.
So, having arrived home I went over to see the latests posts on the NLM blog. One of them is on resources for cooking and festival foods. One I had mentioned earlier, but the post below is a great survey of several books dealing with cooking and the liturgical calendar.

====

Liturgical Year reading and cooking is one of my favorite things to do. I admit my focus has changed somewhat since our sons’ food allergy diagnosis, but I still love reading the traditions and foods connected to the liturgical feasts and seasons, otherwise known to me as “liturgical cooking” (but just to clarify that I’m not cooking or creating “liturgy” but being inspired by the liturgy).

Why do I do liturgical cooking? Because I can incorporate symbolism, culture, history, and catechesis in all different varieties through the foods I serve at the table. Meals are natural conversation starters. They are the perfect place to start discussing the liturgical season, saint or feast of the day, the connections with the food and the liturgy of the Church...

read the rest over at Family Food for Feast and Feria.

2010-08-24T14:17:00.003-04:00

Summertime bobagandistic thoughts about the August Oklahoma Food Coop order
Summertime. . . and the living is HOT!

Bob Waldrop's been an online friend for years; his justpeace.org web site is a treasure trove of good stuff on the social teachings of the Church. But working for the poor, as Bob has done, always brings you back to thinking about food. And so his latest blog is about the Oklahoma Food Coop. His most recent post starts off below:

It’s August in Oklahoma, and as we all have no doubt noticed, it is HOT. It was 91 degrees at 11 PM last night on our outside thermometer. Today Oklahoma City seems to be getting a bit of a break, thanks to that cold front that moved through early this AM. We won’t break 100 today, yee haw. It will “only” be 95 degrees or so....

All of which is a rather round-a-bout way to getting to the point of expressing appreciation for our farmers and producers who don’t have the luxury of staying inside with the AC during this critical season on the farm. Just as they brave the freezing winds and ice storms of the winter, our farmers and ranchers continue to keep faith with their land and their animals and their production during the heat of the summer...

Read the rest of Bob's thoughts on local food, home canning, refrigerator and hot-canned pickles, etc at Bobaganda.

2010-03-18T07:53:00.004-04:00

No dispensation for this Friday (St. Joseph) is needed

From Canonist Ed Peter's web site In Light of the Law:

That the general law of abstinence from meat on Fridays (c. 1251) does not bind on "solemnities" (like the Solemnity of St. Joseph, per c. 1246.1 and the Gen. Norms for the Lit. Year and Calendar) is so obvious that few commentaries bother to say "If the Solemnity of St. Joseph falls on a Friday, even in Lent, one need not abstain from meat." Nevertheless, the exemption from abstinence on solemnities is patent, and one need not bother pastors or bishops for a dispensation before enjoying a pepperoni pizza this Friday. Nuf said.

Read the rest at his blog, with a bit of commentary.

2010-02-24T08:33:00.004-05:00

Hot-Stuff Shrimp Soup

Another cold, rainy late February night last night. So, to help warm things up, and help my wife Laurie clear her sinuses, I thought I'd experiment and try a spicy shrimp soup.

Ingredients

1 pound shrimp, raw
3 cups water
1 Tbs oil
3 scallions, diced
4 cloves garlic
2 dried chili peppers
1 sweet potato, peeled & cubed
1 zucchini, cubed
1 large carrot, peeled & diced
1 Tbs Southern BBQ rub
4-5 sprigs cilantro, minced

Put the shrimp and 3 cups of water in a sauce pot to boil.

When the shrimp is done, drain the water but save it...this will be the stock for the soup.

While the shrimp is coming to a boil, dice the scallions, peel your garlic, and in a second pot begin sauteeing the scallions, garlic, and chili peppers in the oil. After 2 minutes or so, remove the chili peppers, and add in the zucchini, carrot, and sweet potato, along with the water from cooking the shrimp, which should be done at this point.

While this is simmering on low heat, peel the shrimp and toss in a bowl with the BBQ rub. After the soup has been simmering about 12 minutes, put in the shrimp and let simmer another 5 minutes or so. Add in the minced cilantro.

Serve this with bread and a salad.

2010-02-24T08:28:00.003-05:00

Soup and Bread Suppers

Our usual fare during Lent has become soup and bread suppers, since I started following the older Latin and current Eastern discipline of removing not only meat but also dairy and eggs from the menu during Lent. In a shocking concession to weakness, I have, after the first go at it 3 or 4 years ago, allowed oil (but not olive oil) in the kitchen during this season, but the flesh is weak.

For the past year and a half, I've been meeting on Monday nights, when my wife is working a late shift, with my organist friend Fred for supper and vespers. And last Fall we included a new companion, Robert, in our weekly meals and prayer. So, this week they got treated to a typical Lenten meal, Canadian Split Pea Soup with bread and salad. I cheated on the bread, and used a garlic cibatta loaf from the local supermarket, but the soup is home-made, from a recipe in the Horn of the Moon cookbook.

Ingredients

8 cups water
2 cups uncooked yellow split peas
1 tablespoon sunflower oil (or safflower, or canola)
4 large cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup chopped onion (2 smallish onions)
3/4 cup sliced carrot (1 large carrot)
3/4 cup sliced celery
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup chopped, unpeeled potato
1 cup chopped, peeled turnip or rutabaga (or double the potato)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Bring water to boil in a 4-quart soup pot. Add split peas, lower heat to a simmer, and cover loosely. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour, until split peas are tender.
Meanwhile, set a 10-inch fry pan over medium heat. Add oil and when hot, add the garlic, onions, carrots, celery, and thyme. Sauté until tender. Add sautéed vegetables, potato and turnip to the cooked peas; continue to simmer. Add the salt, vinegar, pepper, and parsley. Cook the souop 30 minutes more, covered, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender and the peas have dissolved.

2010-02-16T21:14:00.003-05:00

Shrove Tuesday
Our family has been keeping the tradition of pancakes for supper on the night before Ash Wednesday for many years. Even though all the children are away from home now, Laurie and I still kept up the tradition this year. Since we could indulge our more adventurous tastes, I made baked apple & pecan pancakes, based on a recipe from The Inn Cookbook.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Mix:
2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Add 1 - 1/3 cups milk
3 eggs, beaten

pecans (about 1/2 cup)

peel, core and slice two granny smith or other tart apples

heat a cast iron skillet on the stove, add 2 Tablespoons butter, and brown half the apple slices. Add half the batter, then pop in the oven for 7 minutes. At the end of the 7 minutes, turn out on a plate, then slide back in the pan to cook on the other side for another 6 minutes.

If you have two cast iron skillets, you can do both pancakes at once. Otherwise, put the finished pancake on a warming plate and cook the second one.

Sprinkle the finished pancake with brown or demerara sugar and serve with maple syrup.

We added Canadian Bacon to the meal in honor of the Olympics this year : )

And that will be the last of eggs I eat until Easter!

2009-04-12T19:50:00.005-04:00

Easter Feasting, pt. 2

The day started early; I rose at 5 a.m. to start the dough for hot cross buns (which we always have on Easter morn) and challah bread, which I frequently make for feast days. Then while the dough was rising, I chanted Mattins and then enjoyed my first cup of coffee since Mardi Gras, because I gave up coffee for Lent. Then on to baking the hot cross buns and challah bread, and making the deviled eggs which I wrote about last year.

We picked up my sister Cindy on the way to Mass and spent a little time after Mass visiting with friends there, before heading home to finish dinner preparations.

We had three guests for dinner, my sister Cindy, my friend Fred, and a former co-worker Margaret. After enjoying the Easter deviled eggs and antipasto, we sat down to a dinner of baked ham, lasagna, baked-stuffed potatoes, asparagus, carrots & peas, and a new recipe for this year, Maple Bourbon Sweet Potatoe Casserole.

Mashed Maple Bourbon Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients
6 pounds sweet potatoes
1 lemon, zested and juiced (or orange, pace many commenters)
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
3 tablespoons bourbon (or Irish Whiskey?)
8 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
Pecan Crumb Topping, optional

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375° F.

Place the sweet potatoes on a foil lined baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until very soft to the touch. Remove from the oven and let cool 20 minutes. When cool enough to handle, peel them by hand and put the flesh in the bowl of a mixer. Using a paddle attachment, mix in the lemon zest and juice, maple syrup and brown sugar.

Place the bourbon in a small saucepan and place over high heat. Let it come just to the boil and then tilt the pan slightly towards you to set it aflame*. Add to the potatoes along with the butter. Mix well. Add salt and pepper and transfer to a 13 by 9-inch oven-safe casserole dish. (Recipe can be made to this point up to 2 days before, refrigerated.) Sprinkle topping over potatoes and bake for 20 minutes until the top is golden brown.

Alternatively, you may simply sprinkle the top of the casserole with a little bit of brown sugar and 1/2 cup chopped pecans.

*This method does not "burn off" the alcohol.

Pecan Crumb Topping:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
Pinch dried thyme
1/2 cup chopped pecans
5 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into bits

Mix the flour, brown sugar, salt, pepper, thyme and pecans together in a small bowl. Add the butter and work with your fingers until a crumbly mass forms.

2009-04-11T22:08:00.002-04:00

Lenten Fasting, Easter Feasting

It has been a long, thorough! Lent this year. Except for the solemnities of St. Joseph and Annunciation and Sundays, it's been no meat, eggs or cheese since Ash Wednesday.

I spent Holy Saturday splitting my time between church services and preparing for tomorrows dinner. An Altar Service at St. Athanasius in the morning, followed by preparing the chapel for tomorrow, was preceded and followed by preparing dishes for Easter dinner.

I went to the Easter Vigil at the chapel of the Sisters of Jesus Christ Crucified, near our home. I had a little extra time, since my friend told me the service would start at 5:00 p.m., and I got there at 4:15 p.m. to help set up and prepare to serve. But the time was 6:00 p.m., so I spent an extra hour in the chapel praying the rosary, singing Vespers and rehearsing the Exultet (which I didn't have to sing, as there was a cantor for that).

Tonight, after the Easter Vigil, Laurie and I dined on Indian food we prepared at home. Basmati rice, a chickpea-mushroom curry, potatoes and peas, and kashmiri kofta, a type of lamb meatball.

Kasmiri koftas
2 lb. (900 g) ground lamb
A piece of fresh ginger, about 1 1/2 inches (4cm) long and 1 inch (2.5cm) thick, peeled and finely grated
1 Tbsp. ground cumin
1 Tbsp. ground coriander
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1/8 - 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 1/4 tsp. salt
5 Tbsp. plain yoghurt
7-8 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 2-inch (2.5cm) stick of cinnamon
5-6 whole cardamom pods (take the seeds out of the husks)
2 bay leaves
5-6 whole cloves
1 cup (225ml) warm water

Combine lamb with ground spices, salt and 3 Tbsp. yoghurt in a bowl. Mix well.
Wet your hands and form 24 long koftas - sausage shapes, about 2 1/2 - 3 inches long and about 1 inch thick.

Heat the oil in a large, preferably non-stick frying pan. When hot, put in the cinnamon stick, cardamon pods, bay leaves and whole cloves. Stir for a few seconds. Put in the koftas in a single layer and fry them on medium heat until they are lightly browned on all sides. Beat the remaining yoghurt into the 1 cup of warm water. Pour this over the koftas and bring to a boil. Cover, lower the heat and simmer for half an hour. To serve, lift the koftas out of the pan onto a serving plate, leaving the whole spices behind. From Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking.

Laurie and I have done a bit more preparation for tomorrow, including the antipasto plate below which I just finished assembling.

The cheeses are parmesan, cheddar, double gloucester, gorgonzola, and feta. There are two types of salami (one rolled in ground pepper), prosciutto, and cherry peppers stuffed with mozzarella wrapped with prosciutto. The vegetables are green olives, some stuffed with pimiento, others with sun dried tomatoes; kalamata olives; marinated mushrooms; and pepperocini.

2009-02-03T20:51:00.003-05:00

Pope Benedict XVI's Lenten message focuses on Fasting

At the beginning of Lent, which constitutes an itinerary of more intense spiritual training, the Liturgy sets before us again three penitential practices that are very dear to the biblical and Christian tradition – prayer, almsgiving, fasting – to prepare us to better celebrate Easter and thus experience God’s power that, as we shall hear in the Paschal Vigil, "dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy, casts out hatred, brings us peace and humbles earthly pride" (Paschal Praeconium). For this year’s Lenten Message, I wish to focus my reflections especially on the value and meaning of fasting. Indeed, Lent recalls the forty days of our Lord’s fasting in the desert, which He undertook before entering into His public ministry. We read in the Gospel: "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry" (Mt 4,1-2). Like Moses, who fasted before receiving the tablets of the Law (cf. Ex 34,28) and Elijah’s fast before meeting the Lord on Mount Horeb (cf. 1 Kings 19,8), Jesus, too, through prayer and fasting, prepared Himself for the mission that lay before Him, marked at the start by a serious battle with the tempter.

We might wonder what value and meaning there is for us Christians in depriving ourselves of something that in itself is good and useful for our bodily sustenance. The Sacred Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition teach that fasting is a great help to avoid sin and all that leads to it. For this reason, the history of salvation is replete with occasions that invite fasting. In the very first pages of Sacred Scripture, the Lord commands man to abstain from partaking of the prohibited fruit: "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" (Gn 2, 16-17). Commenting on the divine injunction, Saint Basil observes that "fasting was ordained in Paradise," and "the first commandment in this sense was delivered to Adam." He thus concludes: " ‘You shall not eat’ is a law of fasting and abstinence" (cf. Sermo de jejunio: PG 31, 163, 98)...

You can read the full message on the Vatican web site.

Interestingly, today while working on the blog I do for work, I came across an article on fasting in the Los Angeles Times. In the article "Running on empty: the pros and cons of fasting", the author, while mentioning the support for fasting in "various religious and cultural practices around the globe", dwells on the possible scientific evidence for fasting's physical benefits. Pope Benedict refers to this theme in his Lenten message, noting that, "in a culture characterized by the search for material well-being, a therapeutic value for the care of one’s body," fasting is looked at primarily for its physical value.

But for Christians, the primary focus must remain on the spiritual aspect of fasting. The fathers of the Church noted that almsgiving and fasting are the twin wings of prayer. Pope Benedict refers to Pope Paul VI's Constitution on Penance Paenitemini, in which the earlier Pope taught:
"in our time there are special reasons whereby, according to the demands of various localities, it is necessary to inculcate some special form of penitence in preference to others.(60) Therefore, where economic well-being is greater, so much more will the witness of asceticism have to be given in order that the sons of the Church may not be involved in the spirit of the "world,"(61) and at the same time the witness of charity will have to be given to the brethren who suffer poverty and hunger beyond any barrier of nation or continent."

Interestingly, of course, there is probably less fasting in the richer nations; yet that is precisely whom Pope Paul VI singled out to be first in such disciplines.

2008-08-06T09:14:00.010-04:00

The Boston Globe had an editorial on Farm Aid, Farmers' Markets and Community Supported Agriculture in the July 28th issue. While it's a bit of a cheerleader for Massachusetts, it does highlight the importance of local farms, and the ways that people can support local farmers, particularly Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) clubs.
Natually, I'd rather grown my own vegetables and fruits, but not everyone has the space or the time (my wife would say that I don't have the time!) to do so.

The garden is certainly growing vigorously this year, although we've picked up some sort of blight in the tomatoes (at least the early girls and the plum tomatoes). The cherry tomatoes seem fine and will be huge producers over the next few weeks as they start to ripen.

We've had some good zucchini harvest, but the squash plants are definitely looking pretty sad. Even the cucumbers are already looking worn out, and they've not produced much at all yet. It may be we've had too much rain this summer...July and August are usually pretty dry here on the South Shore, but this year the rain is never far away, and I've spent very little time watering. But that's made up for by the extra time I have to spend weeding!

The green beans are the stars of the garden this year. I've had more than we can eat, and have started bringing some in to share with my coworkers. I have some neighbors that will get the next batch of extra...which should be in a day or so.

The other crops are doing well also. We've harvested some Swiss Chard already, and are getting out Mexican recipes for our tomatillos.

2008-07-12T15:20:00.008-04:00

Our garden continues to grow, and the promise of fresh provisions, a mere wisp of hope a few weeks ago, is growing more and more concrete. Here are some photos from last night.
Tiny cucumbers adorn the vines which are climbing up chicken wire. Meanwhile, there's plenty of blossoms on the yellow squash, but no squash so far.

There are lots of small peppers and tomatoes on the vine too. Quite a difference from just a month ago.

Tomatillos and chard. I planted the tomatillos about 5 years ago. They keep coming back. We've been getting ready for the harvest by collecting recipes for mole.

The first eggplant has shown up, so we'll be having baba ganoush soon!

And tomorrow should be our first zucchini of the season (although you can't see it because it's hidden beneath the leaves).

Our pole beans are already far taller than I am (the poles in the foreground are over 6 feet above ground).

Pretty as all the vegetables are, there are flowers around the yard too. Here are our glads.

Hues leaping heav'nward,
As roots, anchors in the soil,
fix them in the breeze

2008-07-04T11:17:00.002-04:00

Finally, in the matter of drink, St. Benedict has the following to say:

Of the Quantity of Drink, Chapter 40

"Every one hath his proper gift from God, one after this manner and another after that" (1 Cor 7:7). It is with some hesitation, therefore, that we determine the measure of nourishment for others. However, making allowance for the weakness of the infirm, we think one hemina [about 10 ounces] of wine a day is sufficient for each one. But to whom God granteth the endurance of abstinence, let them know that they will have their special reward. If the circumstances of the place, or the work, or the summer's heat should require more, let that depend on the judgment of the Superior, who must above all things see to it, that excess or drunkenness do not creep in.
Although we read that wine is not at all proper for monks, yet, because monks in our times cannot be persuaded of this, let us agree to this, at least, that we do not drink to satiety, but sparingly; because "wine maketh even wise men fall off" (Sir 19:2). But where the poverty of the place will not permit the aforesaid measure to be had, but much less, or none at all, let those who live there bless God and murmur not. This we charge above all things, that they live without murmuring.

Naturally, people entering a monastery bring with them habits and expectations that they formed while living in the world. And while some of the vows that monks traditionally take (not the three evangelical vows of the friars, i.e., poverty, chastity and obedience) are obvious such as obedience and stability, that of conversion of life is the furtherst reaching. Indeed, it is in some ways the heart of monastic life, because both obedience and stability can be seen to be a part of this conversion of life. In this sense, the monastic vows are the fulfillment of St. Paul's admonition in Romans chapter 12:

I BESEECH you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.

The people of St. Benedict's time would expect to drink wine...it was often the only way of drinking uncontaminated drink, especially after the disapperance of the Roman administration following the collapse of the Empire. Nevertheless, St. Benedict knew that it was all too easy to take too much wine, and that this would inhibit the life of Christ and the community for the monks. So this small amount (two glasses really) of wine per day is the allotment for well-off monasteries. Poorer ones are to go without, but most importantly, without grumbling.
This is of course, the key idea in St. Benedict's rule: that we are to be grateful for the grace of God, not grumbling about what we don't have. That grumbling may be just as much a part of human life as making mistakes, but we are supposed to learn from the example of the Israelites who left Egypt, but grumbled about the onions and garlic they left behind. Unfortunately, we all too often imitate those ancient children of Israel too closely.

2008-07-02T22:16:00.000-04:00

Let's return to the Rule of St. Benedict, to see what wisdom it contains about eating.

Chapter 39: Of the Quantity of Food
Making allowance for the infirmities of different persons, we believe that for the daily meal, both at the sixth and the ninth hour, two kinds of cooked food are sufficient at all meals; so that he who perchance cannot eat of one, may make his meal of the other. Let two kinds of cooked food, therefore, be sufficient for all the brethren. And if there be fruit or fresh vegetables, a third may be added. Let a pound of bread be sufficient for the day, whether there be only one meal or both dinner and supper. If they are to eat supper, let a third part of the pound be reserved by the Cellarer and be given at supper.
If, however, the work hath been especially hard, it is left to the discretion and power of the Abbot to add something, if he think fit, barring above all things every excess, that a monk be not overtaken by indigestion. For nothing is so contrary to Christians as excess, as our Lord saith: "See that your hearts be not overcharged with surfeiting" (Lk 21:34).
Let the same quantity of food, however, not be served out to young children but less than to older ones, observing measure in all things.
But let all except the very weak and the sick abstain altogether from eating the flesh of four-footed animals.

Each monk is allotted, per day, one pound of bread (to be split between the two meals on days when two meals are served), and one cooked dish, although fresh fruits and vegetables can also be served when in season. No “meat”, that is, no beef, veal, pork, lamb, or mutton except for the sick and convalescing. The foundation of the daily diet is, naturally enough, bread, the “staff of life.”
What would those cooked dishes have been? Well, pasta wasn’t invented yet, rice was unknown in Italy at this point, and neither potatoes nor corn (maiz for non-US English-speakers) hadn’t been brought back to Europe yet. So dishes could have been made with barley, buckwheat, millet, fava beans, lentils or garbanzos. (Most of our beans such as kidney, pinto, and green beans were also unknown in Europe at the time of Benedict. These all came to Europe, along with peppers, tomatoes, squash and pumpkins, not to mention chocolate, from the Americas after Columbus.)
This diet would have, no doubt, seemed especially bland to modern-day Americans, used as we are to a diet enriched by foods and cuisines from all over the world. But the diet Benedict laid out was one that was sufficient for a person’s daily needs, and even looked out for taste (hence the requirement of two cooked dishes) as well as for the differing needs of the sick and of children.

2008-07-01T12:39:00.006-04:00

The New York Times food blog has an interesting item titled "The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating". The foods they list are:

1. Beets
2. Cabbage
3. Swiss chard
4. Cinnamon
5. Pomegranate juice
6. Dried plums
7. Pumpkin seeds
8. Sardines
9. Turmeric
10. Frozen blueberries
11. Canned pumpkin

The idea behind the list is that many times, as was the case with the two books I recently read by Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food) the easy critique of the "industrial" eating that contemporary Americans have taken on isn't joined to simple advise on how to direct your diet in a more healthful direction.
One of Pollan's points was that in the past culture helped pass on healthful diets (at least as an ideal...of course, in preindustrial societies, famine was a real possibility at times); and that "culture" in most cases meant "Mom". In contemporary society, mothers rarely have the leisure to cook properly, and so are not passing along much in the way of accumulated wisdom. Nor do children learn how to cook from their mothers, and so we need to reforge the broken chain of food culture.
So in the Times' list there are many foods that are healthful, easy to find; they should be items commonly found in most kitchens. We use all of these regularly in our kitchen, except for Pomegranate juice. Canned pumpkin is great, not only in pies, but in rolls. Prunes are great too--we've got a fabulous spice cake that uses stewed prunes in it. We've got Swiss Chard and Blueberries in the garden. And I've liked canned sardines ever since my father introduced me to them at the bar in the Old Colony Yacht Club when I was but a "wee lad". Cinnamon is used in so many recipes, Indian foods, chili, baked items, and mixed with sugar as a topping for French toast; turmeric is an essential in Indian recipes, and one in particular that we like is cauliflower.

Cauliflower, Indian-style
One head of cauliflower, with greens removed and broken into small florets
1/2 stick (2 ounces) of butter
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1 Tbsp. Turmeric
1/2 tsp. salt

melt the butter in a heavy, large skillet or dutch oven under medium-high heat. Heat the cumin seeds in the butter, then add the turmeric and salt. Finally, add the cauliflower, stirring and turning so that it is covered in the butter and spices. Add 1/4 cup of water and cover for 3-4 minutes. Uncover, stir and serve.

Taking a second look at the list, I notice that all the items, except the Pomegranate juice, are among the less expensive items you might pick up on the grocery list, the vegetables especially when they're in season. Foods that pack a powerful nutritional wallop needn't be out of the reach of the poor. Among the "ethnic poor" I've visited over the years, there seems to be a storehouse of traditional recipes which are heavy on plant foods and rice, and which can be very healthful. But in the houses of the poor "natives", that culinary culture isn't usually in evidence, and the foods that they rely on are the kind that contribute to poor health. Because no matter what your culinary culture, you only buy what you can afford, and refined carbohydrates are cheap. In the past we've printed and distributed a brochure based on info from Bob Waldrop's "Better Times Cookbook" to help folks figure out a better way of buying food, but even that can't overcome the problem created by the gap in cultural food transmission that is evident.

2008-06-28T08:31:00.004-04:00

What wisdom has Catholic tradition passed on to us regarding eating and drinking?

We know that gluttony is classified as one of the seven deadly sins. St. Paul, in a striking phrase, comments on those who do evil as being those "whose God is their belly" (Phillipians 3:19).

St. Benedict, in his Rule for monks has a few things to say. He discusses the quantity of food and of drink that the monks should be allowed, the times for eating, special rules for Lent, makes provision for a reading during the meal, and also for those who should help in the kitchen each week and for the cellarer, an important office that oversees most of the monastery's material goods.

I begin by looking at his rule (Chapter 41) for times for eating:

From holy Easter till Pentecost let the brethren dine at the sixth hour and take supper in the evening. From Pentecost on, however, during the whole summer, if the monks have no work in the fields and the excess of the heat doth not interfere, let them fast on Wednesday and Friday until the ninth hour; but on the other days let them dine at the sixth hour. This sixth hour for dinner is to be continued, if they have work in the fields or the heat of the summer is great. Let the Abbot provide for this; and so let him manage and adapt everything that souls may be saved, and that what the brethren do, they may do without having a reasonable cause to murmur. From the ides of September until the beginning of Lent let them always dine at the ninth hour. During Lent, however, until Easter, let them dine in the evening. But let this evening hour be so arranged that they will not need lamp-light during their meal; but let everything be finished whilst it is still day. But at all times let the hour of meals, whether for dinner or for supper, be so arranged that everything is done by daylight.

Using modern time keeping, from Easter until Pentecost the main meal of the day should be taken around noon, with a light supper in the early evening (before sunset). From Pentecost until mid-September this is the same, but on Wednesdays and Fridays a partial fast should be kept, with meals delayed until around 3 p.m. From mid-September until the beginning of Lent, the main meal should be around 3 p.m. During Lent, only one meal per day, and that in the evening!

The initial reaction of a "modern" Catholic might well be "Well, that's for monks" or, less charitably, "That's nuts!" It's well to keep in mind that until the rules of fasting began to be mitigated (which for lay people in the West began in the 13th century), one meal per day in fasting seaons (Advent, Lent, Embertides, Vigils) was expected of everyone! And most of those were to be meatless too. Of course, our fasting rules now are so light as to be forgettable (and no doubt they are by the majority of Western Catholics). Even a century ago, the rules were much stricter (see here and here), and much closer in sense to the eating patterns laid down by St. Benedict.

Another thing that might slip by...no breakfast! But what about all that "most important meal of the day?" stuff. Well, that was a concept that apparently didn't occur to the ancients.

I do know that when I lived in Colombia as an exchange student in high school people generally didn't eat breakfast, and if they did, they ate very minimally...a bit of bread with their coffee (hey, in Colombia you always had coffee!). We also had a main meal around noon, and a very light supper (bread, occasionally with some cheese or cold sausage) and coffee with milk. Only on a few big feast days did we have anything more substantial for supper. Perhaps that was the Catholic culture that hadn't been diluted yet. Looking back, it was certainly very Benedictine!

2008-06-21T07:33:00.012-04:00

All cooking really begins with one of two things: gathering in the bounty of nature through foraging or hunting, or working to raise animals and plants for food. While prehistory was likely based primarily on the former, history began when we took to the garden and the pasture to tie our lives to the life cycles of the plants and animals we had domesticated.
Genesis records the oldest profession as being that of gardener. This is a profound truth which is not just a religious doctrine but the conclusion of historical research: civilization and history begin with agriculture. We could say that at its root all culture is but a flowering of agriculture.
I've read that one of the reasons that Christianity has exploded in sub-Saharan Africa, gaining millions of converts in the 20th century, is that the Africans can see themselves in the stories of the Bible. The conflict between herder and farmer (Abel and Cain), the shepherd seeking water for his flocks (Moses' bride), the struggle to coax sufficient yield from a planting (so many parables of Jesus), are all everyday events in rural Africa, in a way that hasn't been true for Europeans and their American descendants for many decades.
Perhaps it's this disconnect between contemporary life in the city and the agricultural base for civilization that helps explain why faith is so foreign to so many; having divorced their lives from any real connection to the garden and the pasture, contemporary city folk cannot see themselves as very much rooted in the earth, which makes those aspects of our being which distinguish us from the earthly stand out less clearly.
I've always been grateful to my dad for introducing me to both gardening and gathering. We didn't hunt, but we did fish (a lot) and I remember fondly the big garden we kept for several years. Even when we lived in Delaware, with a postage stamp for a back yard, we grew a few tomatoes. Ever since our first summer here in this house in Brockton in 1998 we've had a garden, which expands each year.

Pole beans have begun to snake their way up the 8-foot stakes I've driven into the ground. If this year is like others, the stakes will be too short.

Amazingly enough, I've not had great luck with zucchini and summer squash since living here, although we were never able to eat everything we'd grow when we lived in Vermont. (The joke has it that the only time people lock their cars in Vermont is during late summer. If you leave the car unlocked, you'll come back to it to find giant zucchini filling the back seat.) But last year's harvest was pretty good, and I'm hoping that the same will be true this year. The plants are looking good so far.

One of the things that living in such a highly mobile society makes difficult is growing food that isn't an annual. We planted a couple of apple trees in Vermont from which we never got to harvest an apple. But the peach tree we planted four years ago looks like it will produce a nice crop of peaches, if I can keep the birds away.

Similarly, this will be the first time we harvest some blueberries, which I planted three years ago.

We've been harvesting raspberries and strawberries for years (the raspberries actually showed up on their own, but I've been sure to water and manure them over the years).

And finally, our other crops are also doing well: tomatoes (above), eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, several herbs, a second planting of beans.

2008-06-19T12:32:00.003-04:00

I remember once being startled during a conversation with my boss, a pharmacist, because his response to my points about getting vitamins from diet was basically "why worry about that, just take a vitamin pill". To me, the idea that health comes from a pill rather than from living properly is bizarre. But to someone with a doctorate in pharmacy, which in many ways is applied chemistry, it is an obvious path.
This conversation from a couple of years ago came back to me as I read Michael Pollan's latest book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Mr. Pollan begins his manifesto by identifying nutritionism, the idea that we should "understand and engage with food and our bodies in terms of their nutritional and chemical constituents and requirements..." because "foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts."

After years of health classes in public school, learning about the four food groups (or the seven) and the USDA food pyramid, (not to mention the alternate food pyramids that have been suggested by Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and vegetarian groups), stints in restaurant and hospital kitchens, and many years of cooking and gardening, I have to admit that the obvious problem with a lot of my thinking about food and diet wasn't so clear to me until I read this book. That obvious problem is that we've let the inmates take charge of the asylum!
Science is not a body of knowledge...it's a process for adding to our knowledge. And the results of scientific investigation are, by their very nature, tentative--always waiting to be supplemented or supplanted by further investigation. Yet, we put the scientists in charge of food long before they were ready. And if you look at some of the foods that have been created since nutrition science came along, things like margarine and egg beaters, it's pretty obvious that something's wrong. Of course, as a hospital cook I had the same idea when I was working under a nutritionist; some of the stuff that was being pushed on patients was basically inedible. But it conformed to the nutrient tables and prescriptions, and so that was what counted...even if the food got sent back to the kitchen uneaten.
Mr. Pollan's book is not a book for gourmands, however. It's a plea for real food, not manufactured edibles. It's a slender volume and well worth a read. It's available at Amazon, of course, and likely most book stores. (I got mine from the library.) There's also an essay on Mr. Pollan's web site that reproduces some of the beginning and ending of his book that is a great introduction to the work.
I'm now reading his earlier (and longer work) The Omnivore's Dilemma.

2008-06-13T20:58:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I did a little shopping. Here's the list of what I got:

24 whole frozen chickens
48 1-pound packages of ground turkey
72 20-ounce cans of pineapple
48 16-ounce cans of sliced peaches
48 16-ounce cans of corn
48 16-ounce cans of carrots
60 10-ounce packages of coffee
40 1 quart cartons of “shelf stable” milk
24 20-ounce packages of oatmeal
36 packages of macraroni and cheese
36 24-ounce jars of Bush’s chili with beans
4 banana boxes full of assorted cans of tuna, ham, beans and other high-protein foods
24 46-ounce cans of grapefruit juice
24 5-pound bags of sugar

You may be thinking we have awfully big appetites here, but that wasn't for the house, of course, that was my semi-monthly shopping trip to the Greater Boston Food Bank to get food for our local St. Vincent de Paul pantry. We used to be able to go once per month, but now I go twice, plus we but some meat from the New England Serve folks to supplement this. The local bread outlet store also supplies us with a lot of "day old" bread, and we get donations each week from the parishioners. And still, we often don't seem to have enough. One week in May we had 24 families call for help! And we are one of at least a dozen food pantries in this small city of 100K.

2008-06-03T11:56:00.004-04:00

The gardens are all planted for the season. The front and side beds have 1) swiss chard; 2) pole beans; 3) zucchini & cucumber; 4) yellow squash & cucumber; 5) tomatoes (15), eggplant (4) and cubanelle peppers (6).

The back garden plots are planted with herbs and more pole beans.

The back pole beans are up, as are the cilantro in the herb garden (the basil, dill, parsley, and sage were all plantings of already started plants). In the front, the squash, cucumbers and chard have appeared. The plants in box 5 were all transplants. Pictures soon.

And the easily identified fruits, the strawberries, raspberries are in bloom. The peach tree has lots of small peaches, and I just have to find a good way to protect the tree so that the squirrels and birds don't get all the fruit, like last year...I think we only got one peach.

And we have flowers all around. The spring gave us nice blooms of crocus, daffodils and tulips, and we now have a single iris blooming and peonies in the back, along with impatiens scattered around the back yard in boxes, pots and the bed behind the house. We should have a profusion of day lilies, asian and tiger lilies and begonias later in the season.

While this garden will provide some nice fresh flavor for the table, it won't do much as a real economic force. In order to plant a real victory garden more room needs to be allocated to vegetables than to fruits (you did notice that my "vegetable garden" is mostly fruits?), especially the kind that can be stored in a root cellar so that the harvest can supply food into the late Fall and Winter: winter squash, potatoes, carrots, cabbage (though I've never been able to grow cabbage or broccoli without terrible infestations of cabbage worms). I've been thinking that next year I'll plant a big potato patch in the back yard...I can never get the grass to grow there anyway!

2008-05-13T12:52:00.002-04:00

A Kitchen Poem

Chop, chop, chop. Red peppers in slivers
pile up, under my father’s flying knife
on the scratched, white cutting-board.
Onions fill the room next with their sharp smell,
their light purple layers falling apart
from each other into neat heaps.
Behind my dad, sizzling butter
is skipping around in the black pan,
leaving a bubbling trail behind it.
Crossing the room in sure, long steps,
Dad swings open the fridge’s white door,
plastered with papers and magnets.
He reaches in for the chicken and
behind his back I snatch some pepper.
The slightly sweet, fresh taste fills my mouth
as I watch another kind of rascal
skitter across the floor, a small black ant.
His eyes noticing the tiny insect,
my dad lifts one large foot and brings it down,
barely interrupting his stride towards
the stove. With a hiss, the chicken
begins to cook, sending savory aroma
rushing through the air warmed by the stove.
Turning back to the counter, my dad
swats me away. Laughing, I watch as
his deft hands scoop up vegetables
and tip them into a blue bowl
full of lettuce. He wipes his hands and,
“Dinner’s served!”

Molly Cavanaugh, June 2005

2008-05-08T13:12:00.002-04:00

No huge surprise, but I'm not the only one who thought blogging about food, the liturgical year and the Christian life was a good idea. Fortunately, some of those who have also thought of it have had more time than I have for the past year.

Found the new site Catholic Cuisine. It is worth your time, with links to several cook books and other blogs.

2007-04-09T10:55:00.001-04:00

We hosted Easter dinner yesterday afternoon. Laurie invited her whole family, so we made a party of 14. So the planning began about two weeks early for this feast.

On the Sunday before Easter I made a meatless lasagna, which went into the freezer. This would be the main entree for our two vegetarian relatives. Thursday night my son flew in from Washington from school for the weekend, so on Friday we moved furniture around to create a dining space in our living room, setting up three tables and moving the living room furniture into the much smaller dining room.

Saturday began a barrage of cooking. Laurie made crescent rolls and I baked a loaf of Irish Soda bread. I also made the dough for a double-batch of hot cross buns, which are a tradition with us on Easter morning.

Hot Cross Buns

1 Tbsp yeast
1/3 cup water
1/3 Cup scalded milk
1/2 Cup melted butter
1/3 Cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3-1/2 to 4 Cups flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 eggs
2/3 Cup raisins or currants
1/2 Cup confectioner's sugar

Add a pinch of sugar to the warm water and add the yeast to proof.

Add scaled milk, melted butter, sugar, salt and beat together. When cooled, add eggs and beat. Add yeast and water, beat, then add cinnamon, currants and flour, beating well after each cup.

Knead thoroughly on a floured surface (about 6-7 minutes) and let rise in a warm, buttered bowl.

Punch down, and form small round balls of dough (about 20) and place in a buttered 9 x 13 pan. Let rise until doubled in size and then bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes.

When cooled make a glaze with confectioner's sugar and water (or milk) and use it to make a cross on the top of each bun.

I put the buns in the refrigerator as soon as they were rolled out, and then on Easter morning took them out before saying Mattins. After about 90 minutes they were ready to bake, and by the time everyone else was up, they were ready to be frosted with glaze.

Another, newer, tradition, is our special "Easter" Eggs. Unlike most Easter eggs, though, we don't color the shells. We color the eggs.

I hard boiled 10 eggs, and once cooled, took off the shells. Then, cutting each egg in half, I scooped out and saved the yolk, and put the halves into colored water.

To make the colored water, have four deep bowls, and add about 3 cups of warm water, with a tablespoon of cider vinegar. Then add a few drops of food coloring to the water.

Leave the egg halves in the water for at least ten minutes, then put on plates lined with paper towels to dry. Once dry, arrange on a plate and fill with the yolk filling:

10 egg yolks (hard-boiled)
1/3 cup mayonaise
1/4 cup mustard
1 Tbs horseradish
paprika

Mash together, and fill the egg cavity. This can also be made the day ahead; just cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

For dinner we had roast lamb and a baked ham, with lots of vegetables and the breads and potatoes. Recipes for those later this week.

2007-02-08T09:40:00.000-05:00

Ash Wednesday is fast approaching
and it's a good idea to begin assembling Lenten recipes. One good online source of recipes that might not occur to you immediately is Meriadoc's Miscellany. This online book from members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) has lots of recipes. Because the SCA is very interested in Medieval European customs, which included much stricter fasting practices, many of the recipes are very good for Lent.

With Lent beginning in the cold of February, meals of hot soup and bread are seasonally as well as penitentially appropriate. The first recipe we'll look at is Rapes in Potage.

The recipe in the Miscellany is:

1 lb turnips, carrots, or parsnips
2 c chicken broth (canned, diluted)
1/2 lb onions
6 threads saffron
3/4 t salt
powder douce: 2 t sugar, 3/8 t cinnamon, 3/8 t ginger

Wash, peel, and quarter turnips (or cut into eighths if they are large), cover with boiling water and parboil for 15 minutes. If you are using carrots or parsnips, clean them and cut them up into large bite-sized pieces and parboil 10 minutes. Mince onions. Drain turnips, carrots, or parsnips, and put them with onions and chicken broth in a pot and bring to a boil. Crush saffron into about 1 t of the broth and add seasonings to potage. Cook another 15-20 minutes, until turnips or carrots are soft to a fork and some of the liquid is boiled down.

To make this suitable for Lent, substitute vegetable broth for the chicken broth; and if saffron is beyond your budget, you could add 1/4 tsp turmeric, but a better idea is to look in the Spanish/Mexican section of your grocery store. The spices in that section are usually cheaper than in the "regular" spice aisle or the baking needs aisle, and saffron is a common spice in Spanish cooking. We've used Goya brand and found it quite suitable. You can also check in some of the larger dollar stores; around the Boston area, the Ocean State Job Lots have large spice areas, although I'm not sure if you'll find saffron there (but you will find the cinnamon and ginger). Also note that the original recipe from which the Miscellany's was derived, called for three vegetables: turnips, carrots or parsnips, and water parsnips. The latter are near impossible to find, but the first ingredients are plentiful, so perhaps having 1/3 pound of each would be a bit more authentic (and tastier too).

To go with this soup, a nice bread is in order. This recipe is called "Tear (as in cause a hole, not as in weeping) Bread" because it's brought to the table in a whole loaf and everyone tears off pieces.

1 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup warm water
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup warmed milk (substitute almond or soy milk in Lent)

add yeast and sugar to a bowl, pour in warm water (around 95 degrees) and let the yeast begin to proof (i.e., bubble). Add flour, salt and once mixed slightly, add warmed milk. Continue to stir and add more flour as necessary.

Knead the dough for 7-8 minutes and place in a bowl covered with a towel for about 1-1/2 hours. After the dough has risen, punch down and knead for 2-3 minutes and form into an oval loaf. Put this on a cookie sheet dusted with corn meal or on a baking stone dusted with corn meal. Slash the top of the loaf and cover to rise a second time (about 1/2 hour). Preheat oven to 375 degrees and bake for about 20-25 minutes. Let the loaf sit about 15 minutes before serving and bring to the table to be torn into ; )

If you want to use this recipe for festive occasions outside Lent, you can add 1/4 stick softened butter and an egg, and adjust the amount of flour upward as needed.

2007-02-02T12:40:00.000-05:00

You know we're nearing the beginning of Lent

when bloggers begin talking about fasting. Over at The Continuumthere's a new discussion about Orthodox fasting practices and a link to St. Nectarios Press cookbooks that can be useful in preparing food in the distinct mode that the elimination of meat, wine, dairy, eggs and oil requires.

One useful trick is to use soy milk instead of milk both for over breakfast cereal and in baking. If you want to follow fasting rules strictly and have no oil, you may have to read the ingredients label, as most soy milks have some oil. But buying soy milk is a whole lot easier than making your own almond milk, which was the solution that our medieval forebears came up with. You can buy almond milk, but it's rather pricey, and could interfere with your almsgiving, which wouldn't be a very good thing to do during Lent.

2006-12-30T08:14:00.000-05:00

A Christmas Pudding

is waiting in the refrigerator, developing its flavors and asking for nothing more, as it prepares itself to be the piece de resistance of our dinner tomorrow, than a few drops of brandy now and again to refresh itself.

I had hoped to have the pudding ready for Christmas day itself, but it took weeks to track down some suet, my local butcher being of no help to me at all, and once I had finally found it, I didn't have the time prior to Christmas to spend at home while it steamed away.

Finally on Wednesday this week I did get that chance, and so while the pudding will be a bit young, I did reserve enough suet to make next year's pudding, and perhaps even enough to make a nice Spotted Dog for Carnival.

The pudding recipe I used is from Grossman and Thomas' Lobscouse & Spotted Dog, a link to which can be found on the right. The recipe follows below.

1 Cup flour
1 Cup sultanas
2 Cups soft, fresh bread crumbs
Zest of 1/2 lemon, coarsely chopped
1/2 Cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1/3 cup candied orange peel, coarsely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 Cup candied citron, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 Cup slivered almonds
1/2 teaspoon mace
1/4 pound suet, finely grated
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 Cup brandy, plus 1/4 Cup for flaming (optional)
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 Cup raisins
1 Cup dried currants

In a large bowl, combine the flour, bread crumbs, sugar, salt and spices. Stir in the fruits and nuts (the flour and bread crumbs will coat the fruits and prevent them from sticking together). Mix in the suet, then add the eggs and 1/2 cup of the brandy. Work the mixture thoroughly with your hands.

Scrape the batter in a greased 6-Cup pudding basin (I used a small stainless steel bowl). Tie a well-floured cloth (cheese cloth works for this), allowing a little room for expansion. Place the pudding in a pot of boiling water, cover, and steam for 5 hours or longer. (Explanation: I put a small ceramic plate, face down, on the bottom of the pot, to raise the pudding basin, i.e, the steel bowl, over the bottom of the pot to keep it from burning. You don’t cover the pudding basin...have the water 1/2 to 3/4 up the side of that...you cover the pot, to keep in the steam.) You will almost certainly need to add more boiling water as it cooks. (Hint: Keep a tea kettle full and simmering along on another burner so you have the water to add to the steam pot.)

Take the pudding out of the water and let it cool. Remove the cloth and pour in the remaining 1/4 Cup of brandy. Cover tightly and store in a cool place for 3 weeks or longer.

To prepare for serving, uncover the pudding, tie it up again in a floured cloth, and steam it for at least 2 hours. Remove it from the pot, untie the cloth, and unmold onto a serving dish.

Decorate with sprigs of holly, and serve flaming as follows: Warm 1/4 Cup of brandy in a small sauce pan, pour it over the pudding, set it alight, and serve it forth accompanied by Hard Sauce.

Serves 6 to 12.

2006-11-20T08:49:00.000-05:00

Celebrating the feast days of the Church

with food made especially for the occasion is one of the reasons I started this blog. For those who have checked out A Continual Feast which I described earlier (see the sidebar for a link), the riches of Christian festal celebrations are obvious.

I recently came across another cookbook, this one an online version of a 1950's book entitled Feast Day Cookbook in the EWTN library. Like A Continual Feast, this book has lots of recipes for individual saint's days, as well as seasonal recipes, along with background information on the seasons and days.

The only problem with the book is that the formatting is a little primitive; while that wouldn't be a problem for an individual recipe, the plain ASCII file would be tough to print in full. I'm hoping to clean it up and make a PDF version to post here, but as an appetizer, as it were, I have made up a PDF of most of the December recipes, which you can download.

2006-10-10T08:39:00.000-04:00

A coffee hour brouhaha

has erupted over at the Mere Comments blog. While the original post had a very negative view of them, the majority of responses (37 at the point I looked in) were positive. It seems to me that the possible abuses (cliques forming and some people being left at the sidelines) can be avoided by becoming aware of them, and then striving to eliminate them.

In addition, if it is a problem that some people might be left on the sidelines at such events as after worship receptions, I don't see how banning such receptions will solve the problem. People who are shy and who don't easily break into exisiting social networks are not going to find it easier to do so if there are no opportunities provided to meet with people. Such folks will simply attend to worship and then go away. If fellowship outside of worship is something they need, they won't get it by banning receptions. The cure is the harder task of making receptions truly welcoming to the newcomer and the shy.

2006-07-20T08:24:00.000-04:00

Two of the legacies that I have from my dad

are a love of fishing and of gardening. Many of his friends would readily recognize the first and be astounded at the second. But for several years as a kid my dad and we kids maintained a large garden at home. Large enough so that my Mom took up canning, putting up dozens of jars of pickles and tomatoes and spaghetti sauce. It was from Dad that I learned about composting, about putting a fish carcass under corn and squash hills (which we of course got from the local lore descended ultimately from Squanto, that Catholic-Indian savior of the Pilgrims).

And both activities, fishing and planting have often given me what I hope are decent insights into many of the parables of Christ, and a definite feeling of closeness with the original disciples and apostles, who were, for the most part, men of the earth and seas.

But gardening is a topic especially appropriate for this blog. This year I added yet another vegetable bed to our gardens. One bed has pole beans and bush wax beans (and so far the pole beans have escaped the scourge of the Mexican bean beetle, which devasted my crop the last time I planted them), another to herbs and cucumbers.

In the front yard, an 8 x 8 bed holds tomatoes and peppers. Another bed has purple eggplant and a rainbow of Swiss chard. A third bed has tomatillos, and spaghetti, crookneck and zucchini squash, as well as sunflowers. And this year I dedicated two boxes to corn.

I've always thought that it was a great waste to own property, but not raise food. Aquinas posited that property is proper to man, and that because it is necessary to the maintenance of human life, at least of the civilized variety, and good order among men. And that so directly contributes to the maintence of life than the provision of food. In America today, where less than 2% of the population is engaged in farming, it can be far too easy to forget that food is the product of human labor, and not just a commodity to be purchased with money.

2006-06-21T11:06:00.000-04:00

Not much blogging time lately,

as I have been very busy with the rest of my family laying my dad, Ron Cavanaugh, to rest. Dad died on June 2, 2006, while preparing to leave Florida to come back to Massachusetts for the summer.

The only food related item from the past few weeks worth thinking about was my sister Laurie's work. Following my dad's death, I flew down to Florida to help mom out, and my sister, who also is in Mass., was calling several times a day. Like most of the family, she was upset by the sudden death, and also by her inability to do anything. Finally, I gave her some assignments, to prepare food for the Friday before the planned funeral so that the family, the six of us children, plus spouses, children and Mom, would have plenty to eat.

This calmed her down somewhat, and she set to work planning a meal of baked ziti, chicken divan, meatballs, etc. It was, on one level, just something to do, but on the other, it is very satisfying to be able to feed people. No matter what is going on, people need to eat, and providing the kind of staple foods that my sister came up with, foods both familiar and nourishing, was just what was needed as we gathered together, in the biggest get together we've ever had as a family. Preparing this meal was ministering on not just the physical plane, but on the psychological as well. An example of ministry and therapy combined.

2006-05-22T15:54:00.000-04:00

Another group that spends lots of time feeding the hungry are the Catholic Workers. They have houses of hospitality throughout the world. The "St. Joe's" column from the most recent The Catholic Worker paper from the New York houses of hospitality begins with the following:

by Matt Vogel

People sometimes joke that everything that happens at St. Joseph House has to do with food. And well, there is quite a bit of truth to that. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, we get up, cook the soup, serve the soup and clean up from the soup. Everyday, we cook lunch, eat lunch, clean up from lunch, then cook dinner (for both St. Joe's and Maryhouse), eat dinner and clean up from dinner. Sundays, we even have a wonderful brunch. (We, naturally, don't want to look out of place amongst the hip restaurants in our increasingly gentrified neighborhood!) In between, we spend time hauling around crates of food--usually donated vegetables, bread and sometimes canned goods. When we do sit around talking, playing cards or watching TV, there is usually food involved. And, of course, food is always a central ingredient at all our parties--birthday parties, holiday parties, etc There is no question, food is a major part of life here.

Anyone who works with the poorer of our neighbors could probably write much the same thing. Once shelter of some kind is secured, the biggest item of the day, every day, is securing food. A week ago our St. Vincent de Paul conference participated in the annual Postal Workers' Food Drive. It is a long day, that ultimately nets our conference around a 1000 pounds of food. That doesn't last very long (about two weeks) but it is a big help. This year several of our new members took part in the food drive, and our pantry is still full of boxes, with literally everthing from soup to nuts!

And a good thing too, as my van is in the shop (and has been for most of the past week) with some strange problem with the back axel. The mechanic finally asked if I do much hauling in the van, and when I replied, why yes, once or twice a month I fill the back with 1400 pounds of food or so, he looked rather shocked! He suggests that that could be a problem. Well, it has done a number on the shocks, that's for sure. But with the extra food from the Postal Workers, I don't have to worry about not being able to make a second food run this month.

The Catholic Worker is not available online, else I'd provide a link. Some Catholic Worker houses are online, however, such as Bob Waldrop's Oklahoma City CW house. Bob's Better Times Almanac has several great sections on food, from how to be a more frugal shopper to a great book of recipes. Parts of his Family Food Security and Casino Shopping pages were made into a brochure called "Better Shopping" which you can download from our District SVDP site.

2006-04-06T08:06:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has taken notice of the family meal

and notes that at least some some surveys indicate that the number of families sitting down for a meal together several times per week has been increasing over the last few years. That's great news! As I blogged earlier, that's something we do often, and it's perhaps the one thing I miss most from our children's younger days, when all five of us gathered around the table. No, it was not always a calm, relaxing time, but it has been formative, for both parents and children, and has been one of the principal forges of the bonds between us. Now that my son Patrick is away at school, we have fewer meals with everyone together. And while we eat together nearly every day, it's sometimes only two of us.

I also feel that it's important that the family meal consist of food prepared by the family. Take out isn't the same. This past week we had mostly restaurant meals and takeout for five days straight because of skating competitions, church events, and the usual run of music lessons and skating practice. I was notably more grumpy than usual!

Last night we got to have a (late for us) sit down meal that Laurie and I collaborated on. Finally! It makes a difference to have food prepared in the house by a member of the family. I've been happy to see my daughter Molly start making meals on Thursdays, the one day she doesn't work or have to go to her college class, not only because it gets me off the hook : ) but because she's gradually learning an important skill that will be a blessing for her own family some day.

Here's last night's recipe, Lenten fast appropriate:

Italian-style Shrimp

1 large bell pepper, chopped in bite-sized pieces
1 large yellow onion, chopped as above
6 asparagus spears, cut into 1-inch lengths

2 Tbs. peanut or canola oil

1-2 pounds shrimp, shelled

2 tsp. crushed red pepper
2 tsp. oregano

1 pound angel hair pasta

Set a pot of water to boil. Heat a wok or large skillet and when hot add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the peppers and onions, and stir for 4-5 minutes. Add the shrimp, crushed red pepper and oregano, and stir. Add 2 Tbs. water. Cover for 2-3 minutes. Uncover and stir, then cover again.

Now, add some salt to the boiiling water, then cook the angel hair pasta in the boiling water. After 4 minutes or so, drain the pasta, arrange in a pasta bowl, and spoon the stir fry over the pasta. Serve with Italian or any crusty bread.

2006-03-19T06:21:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we set up our St. Joseph's Table

at the parish church. This is the third year that our St. Vincent de Paul Society has sponsored the St. Joseph's table.

Several of us spent the week baking, and piled the table surrounding the icon of St. Joseph high with cakes, breads, cookies and candies. Most of what we bring is sold after the blessing, and that money is used to buy food for the poor of the parish; and the rest of the food is saved for the poor as well.

The blessing of the table is found in the Book of Blessings (and the Shorter Book of Blessings).

Today we honor the memory of Saint Joseph,
husband of the Virgin Mary and patron of the universal Church.
We rejoice at this table,
which is a sign of God's generous blessings
and of our call to serve the poor and hungry.
We pray that through the intercession of Saint Joseph
we too might join the saints
at the banquet of the Lord in the heavenly kingdom.

Let us pray,

All-provident God,
the good things that grace this table
remind us of your many good gifts.

Bless this food,
and may the prayers of Saint Joseph,
who provided bread for your Son and food for the poor,
sustain us and all our brothers and sisters
on our journey towards your heavenly kingdom.

We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Father David O'Donnell blesses the St. Joseph Table at Christ the King Church, Brockton

2006-03-17T09:16:00.000-05:00

Well, enough about abstinence and fasting.

and time for recipes. Our St. Vincent de Paul Society is getting ready to host our annual St. Joseph's Altar at Christ the King parish in Brockton this weekend. So, I've been baking all week. Last night after bringing my girls home from their catechism class I made a couple of loaves of soda bread. Here's the recipe:

Irish Soda Bread

4 Cups unbleached white flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1 Tbs. kosher salt (or 2 tsp. regular salt)
1 Tbs. caraway seeds
3/4 Cup dried currants (or raisins)
1-3/4 Cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Stir all the dry ingredients together. Add the buttermilk and mix together, adding a bit more buttermilk if needed. Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead for about 2 minutes. This can be formed into one large loaf or two smaller ones. Place loaf (loaves) on a greased cookie sheet, cut a cross in the top, and bake for 35-40 minutes (large loaf) or 25-30 minutes (smaller loaves). Let the soda bread cool on a rack for a while before cutting. Or go ahead and tear into it. Spread with butter, jam, or eat with your dinner in honor of the Saint himself. Here are some items you can put on the menu, courtesy of G. Thomas Fitzpatrick's Recta Ratio blog.

2006-03-17T08:10:00.000-05:00

The Corned Beef Dispensation

is a topic of raging concern in St. Blogs these days. Amy Welborn's Open Book is a good example.

It would do a world of good for many of the bemoaners of our too loose discipline to read Romans chapter 14 and apply that to today.

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him.
Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand.
One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.
None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”
So each of us shall give account of himself to God. Then let us no more pass judgment on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.
I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for any one who thinks it unclean. If your brother is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be spoken of as evil.
For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; he who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for any one to make others fall by what he eats; it is right not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother stumble.
The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God; happy is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves. But he who has doubts is condemned, if he eats, because he does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to edify him. For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached thee fell on me.” Romans 13:14-15:3

While in Boston we get this respite from the fasts of Lent today, Archbishop O'Malley has requested all Catholics to attend daily Mass and fast every day during Lent. How much support he has received from his clergy I don't know (Have there been sermons where fasting and daily Mass was suggested to the people? Have pastors scheduled early morning or evening Masses so that workers can attend Mass?) but the Lenten discipline being suggested is certainly far more rigorous than you would suspect. But because it is suggested rather than demanded, some folks think it too easy.

To put that in perspective, it's worth noting that the more rigorous Orthodox (and Eastern Catholic) fasting rules are (to quote the pirate captain in Pirates of the Carribean) "not exactly rules; they're more like guidelines." As Rev. Thomas Hopko writes:

The Orthodox rules for lenten fasting are the monastic rules. No meat is allowed after Meatfare Sunday and no eggs or dairy products after Cheesefare Sunday. These rules exist not as a Pharisaic "burden too hard to bear" (Luke 11:46), but as an ideal to be striven for; not as an end in themselves, but as a means to spiritual perfection crowned in love. The lenten services themselves continually remind us of this.

Let us fast with a fast pleasing to the Lord. This is the true fast:
the casting off of evil, the bridling of the tongue, the cutting off
of anger, the cessation of lusts, evil talking, lies and cursing. The
stopping of these is the fast true and acceptable.
(Monday Vespers of the First Week)

The lenten services also make the undeniable point that we should not pride ourselves with external fasting since the devil also never eats!

The ascetic fast of Great Lent continues from Meatfare Sunday to Easter Sunday, and is broken only after the Paschal Divine Liturgy. Knowing the great effort to which they are called, Christians should make every effort to fast as well as they can, in secret, so that God would bless them openly with a holy life. Each person must do his best in the light of the given ideal.

2006-03-16T08:09:00.000-05:00

The Communion Fast

as all Catholics know is that no food or liquids other than water can be consumed for one hour before communion. However, this a greatly mitigated form of the communion fast that was in place until the 1950s. Prior to that, the fast was from all foods and drinks, water included, from midnight until the communion. Father William Saunders, in an article writing in the Arlington Catholic Herrald gives a good short history of the communion fast and the reason for it.

As he notes, the communion fast is regulated in canon law. The canon reads in full:

Can. 919 §1 Whoever is to receive the blessed Eucharist is to abstain for at least one hour before holy communion from all food and drink, with the sole exception of water and medicine.

§2 A priest who, on the same day, celebrates the blessed Eucharist twice or three times may consume something before the second or third celebration, even though there is not an hour's interval.

§3 The elderly and those who are suffering from some illness, as well as those who care for them, may receive the blessed Eucharist even if within the preceding hour they have consumed something.

For most Catholics, it is section 1 of the canon which regulates our behavior. Note that the fast is to be for at least one hour before communion. In other words, the Church has allowed each individual to make a determination about how long the fast should be given his condition.

A person with a full night's rest, no unusual physical needs, etc. should have no problem following the ancient discipline of fasting from midnight on. Those engaged in work overnight might be placing their work and even their lives in jeaopardy by doing so, as hunger could lead to faintness and accidents, and so a shorter fast would then be appropriate. But the received tradition of the church is to fast in order to purify ourselves, and to stir up a holy hunger for the bread of life and the cup of salvation.

Each person is allowed to judge for himself, but as with any other decision, we should be informed by the practice of the Church which is not only the living but also those who have gone before.

2006-03-15T12:37:00.000-05:00

Abstinence on Fridays and the reasons thereof

With St. Patrick's Day quickly approaching, the question of "Do I have to abstain from meat?" has been raised at least across the United States. This article in the Washington Post notes that the bishops of at least 60 dioceses in the U.S. (out of 200) have granted a dispensation allowing the eating of meat on Friday, March 17 this year.

At our after Vespers coffee klatch on Sunday, one of the congregants just couldn't understand this. She was vehement that she wouldn't be serving meat on a Friday in Lent. Why not just translate the feast day to another day. I began to explain that it couldn't be moved, but as a discussion began on that I realized it was just, barely possible that my fellow congregant didn't find the minutiae of the ranking of liturgical days nearly as interesting as I do ;) So we got off that topic.

The Post article quotes one fellow who says:

If Dolan hadn't granted the dispensation, O'Leary, director of Milwaukee's St. Patrick's Day parade, said he would stick to the rules _ meaning he wouldn't prepare his corned beef brisket. But with the bishop's blessing, he plans to put a brisket in his slow cooker early Friday morning and slather it with mustard and other condiments come dinner time...

"It is being done in honor of St. Patrick," O'Leary said. "It's not as though I'm having something I would normally have. It's a special thing."...

In exchange for his corned beef meal, O'Leary said he plans to give up something else, such as chicken wings or beer on a weekend when he's watching sports on television.

"I will deny myself something and pay it back," O'Leary said.

The only problem with this otherwise admirable willingness to follow the rules is that it insinuates that the only reason to abstain from meat is to follow a rule. And of course that is not why we do it. The rule is to remind us to identify, through personal sacrifice, with the sacrifice of Christ. It's not something we do because we owe it...so that we can deny ourselves some other treat. It's that we are to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:14)

Another person, Jim Wharton, spokesman for the Sioux City Diocese, quoted in the article stated:

"For the most part, I think people understand it's really why we are who we are as a Catholic family and that's to observe some of the traditions of the church."

Again, it's great and wonderful that we have traditions that bind us and unite us, but that is also not the reason we abstain; it's a reason we all abstain on the same day, instead of being told "abstain once per week, you pick", and it certainly has value as a means of identifying with the community. But I wonder: have we, through our general abandoment of fasting and penance in the Latin church, forgotten the meaning for it to the point where even the observant are not benefitting from this ascetical practice?

2006-03-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

The Fasting Season

of the Church has begun. And confusion reigns. On the bulletin board of one local parish where I went for daily Mass today I read a notice from the pastor which read, in part, "Abstinence (i.e, no meat) is required of everyone over 14 on the Fridays of Lent, and fasting for everyone 21-59."

Well, no. Fasting is required only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and the ages are 18-59.

I also picked up a copy of a letter from Archbishop O'Malley.

The text is below:

By virtue of the power to dispense as granted by Canon 87.1 and Canon 88,
I, the Archbishop of Boston, hereby grant a dispensation from the
obligation of abstinence for all the
Faithful of the Archdiocese of Boston on
Friday, March 17, 2006 in honor of the
Feast of St. Patrick,
the Patron Saint of the Archdiocese of Boston.

Now, Canons 87.1 and 88 do give the ordinary the power to dispense from universal disciplinary laws and from local laws. Canon 1250 establishes the basic law for abstinence thus:

All Fridays through the year and the time of Lent are penitential days and times throughout the universal Church.

Canon 1251 makes this more specific.

Abstinence from eating meat or another food according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops is to be observed on Fridays throughout the year unless they are solemnities; abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and on the Friday of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, for some background, when Archbishop O'Malley was bishop of the neighboring diocese of Fall River, he was challenged on the rule of Friday abstinence for St. Patrick's Day. He initially held firm, but faced such a loud cry of opposition from people unwilling to do penance by putting off for a day their corned beef and cabbage that he issued a decree similar to the one above.

Here in Boston, there was no controversy that year, because, as the Archbishop noted, St. Patrick is the patron saint of the Archdiocese. That means that in this Archdiocese, St. Patrick's Day is a solemnity, the solemnity of the proper patron. And as Canon 1251 notes, it is therefore not a day on which abstinence is required.

What this all means is A) the rules change too often even for many pastors to keep up with and B) people are so unaware of the Church's canons and the reasons for them that they have to be dealt with more simply, such as the Archbishop's letter above (no doubt influenced by the ruckus in Fall River years ago).

And for those who are fasting in some way throughout Lent, there are two other solemnities that ought not to be days of fast/abstinence: March 19, the feast of St. Joseph and March 25, the feast of the Annunciation to Our Lady. So, from Friday March 17 until Sunday March 20 there are only 5 days when fasting need be done, since Sunday is also not a day for penance. A bit of a break mid-Lent, to remind us of the joy that awaits.

2006-03-08T16:39:00.000-05:00

Dinner at home

last night was late. My youngest daughter had her usual Tuesday afternoon figure skating practices, and my wife was working her Tuesday night shift at the library, so when we got home about 6:45 pm I started in on preparing dinner. I have, so far, managed not to give in to the temptation to use "instant foods" and lots of takeout, and so dinner took about 35 minutes to prepare. We finally got to sit down about 7:20, and my two daughters and I worked our way through a typical family meal: saying grace, listening to "that's the weirdest thing I ever saw", talking about school and people we know. Near the end, I leaned back and thought how nice it was that neither of my daughters was in a rush to go off somewhere else.

Each tried a bit more food, then we finally broke things up, started unloading the dishwasher so that we could load it with the dinner dishes, putting away food, etc.

Family meals don't seem strange in the least to me. We have always had them almost every evening since my wife and I first married; my parents did the same, as did my wife's family; and so did our grandparents. But I know from talking with my daughters that many of their friends encounter family meals as an unusual event. Maybe that's why some of their friends have eaten with us so often. (As it turns out, one of the friends turned up for tonight's dinner.)

One of the rules we have about dinner is that we don't answer the phone while at table. I remember a minister's daughter who was a friend in high school had that rule, and I thought that it was harsh...now, having a family I realize it was prudent on the part of the minister/father. We can hear any number of complaints about how family life is intruded upon if we look in the papers or magazines or surf blogdom. But no one makes you pick up the phone or turn on the TV. Leave these electronic servants where they belong: in the background, ready for our commands.

It reminds me of the many eating scenes of the officers' mess aboard ship in the Patrick O'Brien Master and Commander series. While the officers ate, each had an attendant stationed behind, ready to fill a glass or otherwise come to the aid of an officer. While few of us in the U.S. have servants like this, we all have the mechanical servants which we too often allow to rule instead of serve.

Oh, and the menu. Inspired in part by the title story from Theresa Lust's collection of writings from the kitchen Pass the Polenta, we had a bowl of polenta, with a tomato/mushroom stew along with a loaf of Italian bread I picked up at the supermarket bakery. Recipes below:

Tomato and Mushroom Stew

2 Tbs. oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
12 oz sliced mushrooms
1 14-16 oz can diced tomatoes
2 tsp. oregano
2 tsp. basil

Heat oil and add onions and garlic, until onions are limp and garlic browned. Add bell pepper and mushrooms and continue to sautee. Finally add entire can of diced tomatoes and herbs. Allow to "stew" on low heat for 20 minutes.

Polenta

4 cups water
2 cups corn meal (a nice whole corn meal like Hodgson's Mill is good)
1/2 tsp. salt

Add corn meal to cold water is sauce pot. Bring to slow boil, stirring frequently. Once this the mixture is thickened, turn the heat down and let cook for 10-15 minutes.

Optional: you can add 1/2 cup shredded cheese (mozzarella or cheddar or paremsan) to this if you're not avoiding dairy products for Great Lent.

Scoop some polenta onto a plate when done, and ladle tomato & mushroom stew on top. Serve with a crusty bread (to help sop up the stew).

2006-02-24T08:59:00.000-05:00

After Church Coffees

Catholic parishes are not known for hosting after Church coffee hours, although the two parishes I usually go to, Holy Trinity in Boston's South End and St. Athanasius in West Roxbury, both host coffee hours.

The social benefit of the coffee hour is obvious. But does it serve any evangelical purpose?

I think so. Particularly when we have evening services, which attract more non-parishoners, the coffee hour (well, it's more of a sherry hour in the evening, but heck, it is an Anglican use parish) gives the excuse to pause and converse, but also the chance to meet new people and give people the opportunity to ask questions. We're urged in Scripture to ever be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and it certainly doesn't hurt to create situations where that reason might be inquired into.

The community-building afforded by a coffee hour is also more than social. It is a time when we learn of the burdens our fellow parishoners which we can then help bear, at the least in prayer, and when we learn of their joys, which we can lift up as well.

While some churches may find the logistics of putting on a coffee hour difficult, such as having no facility other than the church building, or offering back-to-back Masses all morning long on a Sunday, there are many more that will not have these kind of roadblocks, but instead just need to get going.

What's a good way to start? I think the following formula will help:

1. Have a sexton or other person actually prepare the coffee each week. Some people find percolators difficult or just out of their experience.

2. Buy decent coffee!

3. Have another person be in charge of the cups, napkins, plates, etc. Multiple people in charge will likely result in shortages.

4. Have a rotating schedule of people to bring something to eat and drink (such as juice and cream for the coffee). If it is a large parish, have two or more families scheduled each week.

5. Commit to a regular, weekly schedule. If coffee hours are once a month, or on moving dates, people won't know about it, especially new comers.

6. At coffee hour, look for new comers and invite them into conversation. Don't keep to the same groups of people. This isn't high school--no cliques!

2006-02-09T06:58:00.000-05:00

Feeding the Hungry

I've been a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society at the local parish since July of 1999. And a major part of what we do is bring food to the poorer families of the parish. Some of the families we'll visit in the next month or so are families that I visited in 1999; and some of them were being visited by Vincentians from the parish for many years before that.

When we go on a visit to one of these neighbors, we might bring 4-6 bags of groceries: pasta, rice, instant mashed potatoes, canned soups, macaroni & cheese, canned beans, fruits and vegetables, boxes of cereal and oatmeal, canned tuna and chicken, frozen hamburger and chicken, bread, etc. We aim to provide at least 4-5 days of meals for the family, but are constained as to what we give by what's available at the Greater Boston Food Bank of which we are members, and what we collect in various food drives at the parish.

Last night we had an information meeting for people who are interested in becoming part of the group. Among the things we told them is that taking on this apostolate is going to be an emotional experience. There will be times when we feel we have made a real difference in people's lives; where we have been empowered by God to go beyond giving a handout and established some real fellowship with the people we visit. There will be other times when we are heartbroken--where our best efforts are unable to help someone, whose situation might even become worse.

But we struggle to maintain our covenant with these poorer neighbors. We continue to visit. And bring the groceries. If we can do more, help one person get their citizenship, help another find work to sustain himself and his family, we are happy to do so. But we have also learned that while it is better to teach a woman to fish than to give her a tuna sandwich, the tuna sandwiches are greatly appreciated by a mom until her catch is sufficient to supply her children's needs.

2006-01-20T08:57:00.000-05:00

Happy Ending

At the end of The Wonder Worker Alice has overcome her food addiction; finding confidence in her abilities and respect and love within her social circle has made the need for anesthetizing herself far less urgent. The healing she wondered about in the quote below had, of course, only begun; by the end of the novel, it was greatly progressed. Healing, such as she experienced in Howatch's story never finishes of course--it is a lifelong process in which God makes right what has gone wrong, where the mountains are leveled and the valleys filled in. The seemingly bottomless valley of self-hatred and despair for the future which Alice tried to fill with food and its comforts has been made a straight way by a healing.

And of course, it happened without directly attacking her eating habits, which were only a minor part of her problem, and were more in the line of symptoms than causes. This is not unusual; the way to solve a problem often lies in addressing a deeper problem that may not be obvious at all.

But what of the food that is, in a novel with a Cordon Bleu cook as a central character, a main feature? All that talk of roasts, puddings, has me wondering where to find the recipes for these dishes. When I find them, I'll report back.

I read a different series of books, by Patrick O'Brian, last year, and food was a staple in that narrative as well. If you haven't read these books (20 finished and 1 left unfinished at the author's death) do so...they are marvellous. Someday I'm planning on going back through to make a note of all the times Maturin (a Catholic amidst a mostly Anglican crowd) turns into a church or monastery to listen to and rhapsodize on Gregorian chant. The movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is also great. The burial at sea scene, with the crew reciting (in toto) the Our Father is a moving moment.

Fortunately, for those interested in things culinary, a pair of authors decided to track down the recipes for all of the dishes mentioned in the Aubrey/Maturin books like Master and Commander and The Far Side of the World (despite the movie title, these are two different volumes, 1 and 10 respectively) and have published them in the book Lobscouse and Spotted Dog. This past weekend I decided to make the eponymous Spotted Dog, which is a boiled pudding. The resulting pudding (which is nothing like what we Americans call a pudding) is something like a sweet raisin bread. It has something in common with Irish Soda Bread (which was originally cooked in a pot over a fire, but without the boiling). We enjoyed it at home with creme anglaise, and I brought some in for my coworkers who also enjoyed it. Here's the recipe:

4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup currants
1/2 pound beef suet
2 eggs (slightly beaten)
1 cup milk

Mix the dry ingredients together, making sure to separate the currants. Grate the suet (cleaned of any connective tissue or meat) and mix with the other dry ingredients. Add the eggs and milk, and stir together, finishing with a light kneading on a floured surface. Put in a greased pudding mold (I used a stainless steel mixing bowl) and cover with a floured cloth (a bar towel would work, although I used cheesecloth) tied tightly with a string. Put in a pot of boiling water (with a plate at the bottom so the mold or bowl doesn't come directly into contact with the heat), cover loosely and cook for about 2 hours. Turn out on a plate and serve slices with creme anglaise, sweetened condensed milk, dulce de leche or hard sauce.

2006-01-18T18:02:00.000-05:00

The Wednesday Fast

A couple of years ago, when I first started reading about Eastern Christianity's distinctive penitential discipline, I came across the practice of fasting and abstaining on both Wednesday and Friday. This brought to mind immediately the parable of Christ about the proud Pharisee who complimented himself on his twice per week fasts. Of course, Christ himself said that when the bridegroom had been taken from his friends, that they would then fast. In the Western Church, however, this traditional weekly fast on Wednesday has fallen off the charts; most people would probably be amazed to learn it had ever been part of the regular routine of Western Christians. Yet this fast is found mentioned in the Didache and is still kept by the Eastern Church.

However, the Wednesday fast has never entirely been forgotten in the Western Church; it is remembered in those ancient fast days of the Embertides, when fasting was enjoined on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays four times yearly; and it is remembered by some liturgists and spiritual writers.

I suppose that as I learned about the penitential customs of the past, I was drawn to take a closer look at them and try to institute them in my own life. It seems the more eager some of my peers in the contemporary Church to abandon traditions, the more eager I am to take them up. And so, as a sort of New Year's resolution for 2006, I'll begin trying to keep the Wednesday fast. Using as a model the Eastern fast, this will be a day with only one meal, observing abstinence of meat, dairy and eggs. I suppose if I'm going to write about food and eating, I better keep some perspective and fasting should help with that.

The earliest reference to the Wednesday fast is in the Didache, following its teaching on baptism and the necessity of the baptismal candidate to fast for a day or two prior to his baptism. At the head of the eighth chapter we read:

Your fasts must not be identical with those of the hypocrites. They fast on Mondays and Thursdays; but you should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.¹

The fast of the hypocrites on Mondays and Thursdays would have been the twice weekly fast of pious Jews, which the Pharisee of the parable got so mixed up about. Perhaps the hypocrites mentioned are the Ebionites, Jewish Christians of the first two centuries who continued to keep the Law of Moses and in some instances, insisted on the necessity of conversion to Judaism prior to baptism.

In the Rule of St. Benedict, Wednesday as a penitential day along with Friday is listed when deciding when and how often the monks may eat:

From holy Easter till Pentecost let the brethren dine at the sixth hour and take supper in the evening. From Pentecost on, however, during the whole summer, if the monks have no work in the fields and the excess of the heat doth not interfere, let them fast on Wednesday and Friday until the ninth hour; but on the other days let them dine at the sixth hour. This sixth hour for dinner is to be continued, if they have work in the fields or the heat of the summer is great. Let the Abbot provide for this; and so let him manage and adapt everything that souls may be saved, and that what the brethren do, they may do without having a reasonable cause to murmur. From the ides of September until the beginning of Lent let them always dine at the ninth hour. During Lent, however, until Easter, let them dine in the evening. But let this evening hour be so arranged that they will not need lamp-light during their meal; but let everything be finished whilst it is still day. But at all times let the hour of meals, whether for dinner or for supper, be so arranged that everything is done by daylight.²

And more recently, The St. Dunstan Psalter mentions the Wednesday fast in passing in its Introduction to the Office:

Then, there may be said the Exhortation and General Confession (p. 243-244), especially on the penitential days (e.g. Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year; ferial days in Advent, Lent, Passiontide; Ember Days; etc.).³

-------------------------------------------------------
1. Early Christian Fathers, Cyril C. Richardson, editor. Macmillan Publishing Company. "The Didache" p. 174.
2. The Rule of St. Benedict, http://www.kansasmonks.org/RuleOfStBenedict.html, accessed on January 18, 2006.
3. Saint Dunstan's Plainsong Psalter, copyright 2002, Lancelot Andrewes Press, p. 232.

2006-01-13T21:51:00.000-05:00

The Wonder Worker

I’m currently rereading The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch. This is the first of her trilogy (thus far) of St. Benet’s books, which are a continuation of her six Starbridge novels.

This particular book, which narrates events in 1988, has several sections, each narrated from the point of view of one of the major characters. The main character of all three of the St. Benet’s books is Nicholas Darrow, an Anglican priest who is the narrator of one of the Starbridge books (set in 1968) who is the son of an Anglican priest, Jonathan Darrow, who was the narrator of another of the Starbridge tales (set in 1944). The Wonder Worker begins from the point of view of Alice Fletcher.

Alice has a problematic relationship with food. While she holds a Cordon Bleu and has continued to hone her skills as a cook, she also uses food as a crutch. At the beginning of the book we meet Alice as her Aunt, who has raised her since she was quite young, lies dying after a stroke. Nicholas Darrow and a doctor from the Healing Centre at St. Benet’s have visited Alice and her Aunt, and her aunt, after rallying to say a crucial farewell to Alice, which is the occasion for a deep emotional healing for both, dies the next morning. Shortly thereafter this passage occurs, and gives an snapshot of Alice’s dilemma at the opening of the novel.

Apparently my healing, such as it was, had left my compulsion to eat untouched. But what had I expected? A craving for a liquid diet of a thousand calories a day? I might fantasize about losing four stone and winding up with the ideal husband, but at heart I knew this was just a romantic dream which hadn’t a hope of coming true. I did feel a little better about myself now I knew Aunt had genuinely cared for me, but how could I ever feel more than a little better when I was still repulsively fat and likely to remain so? Stress always drove me to binge, and although I no longer had to cope with Aunt I still had to endure the strain of making a new life for myself.
I knew I needed the help Mr. Hall had suggested, but still I hesitated to phone Francie. I had taken a perverse pride for so long in struggling on alone; the struggle had given me a flicker of self-esteem, and besides, I had a horror of being a burden or a bore and putting myself in danger of further humiliating brush-offs. When I was much younger I had hoped to make friends but there seemed to be no place in the world of the thin for someone like me, and in the end I’d retreated into isolation. Loneliness was painful but at least it was silent, devoid of snide laughter and barbed comments. I was used to loneliness now. I thought of it as a chosen solitude and was only occasionally aware of being unhappy.
But this was a time when I regretted not having a friend. Picking up Mr. Hall’s card I stared at Francie’s number and told myself she wouldn’t want to hear from a fat nonentity, particularly a fat nonentity with all sorts of tiresome problems.

Alice’s problem with food is unfortunately far from rare. Her addictive pattern of binging on food is a way to deal with stress, as she recognizes in the passage above. Food can be so comforting: certain foods remind us of home or are associated with particularly happy memories, like cake with birthdays. In times of stress we can cease to regard food as the God-given gift it is to sustain life and to make us aware of the infinite beauty of the world (in the tastes, texture and presentation of food) and instead use it as a pain-killer. Alice uses food in the same way many drunkards use alcohol or many people use sex: as an analgesic.

Our society today idolizes and idealizes the thin and trim (the world of the thin in the passage above), just as it now frowns on excess drinking and smoking. If those are signs of a well-integrated, balanced personality, then they are indeed admirable. But lack of obviouis physical problems is not a guarantee of such integration. As the opening quote of chapter 1 in The Wonder Worker puts it:

We all have our favourite addictions to which we turn when we are under stress. For you it is food, while for others it can range from chemical substances to spending money or constant contact with others in order to avoid alone-ness.

Gareth Tuckwell and David Flagg
A Question of Healing

2005-12-29T13:21:00.000-05:00

A Continual Feast

One of the cookbooks I often look at when approaching a holiday is A Continual Feast by Evelyn Birge Vitz. We got our copy as a gift from my youngest child's godmother, who knew the author. This cookbook looks at the place of food in Christian life; it takes into account the liturgical cycle, traditional foods from Christian cultures, and has short essays on fasting, feasting, family meals, etc.

From the Table of Contents:

DAYS OF REJOICING AND CELEBRATION

Sunday; Church picnics; Namedays; Birthdays; Baptism; First communion and confirmation; Marriage; More food for thought on occasions of feasting

DAY BY DAY

Thoughts and recipes for family meals

TRADITIONS OF CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY

Emergency recipes for entertaining (possibly) angelic visitors; Other suggestions for a warm welcome; Taking food to others; Soup kitchen

FASTING

Tips on fasting; Days of abstinence; Friday; Ember days of Advent

Advent

Baking with children; The Feast of St. Nicholas; Advent--and Chanukah; St. Lucy's Day; The Paradise Tree; Christmas gift giving; Christmas Eve

CHRISTMAS DAY AND THE CHRISTMAS SEASON

The reveillon meal; Christmas dinner; Carol-singing party; St. Stephen's Day; The Feast of St. John; The Feast of the Holy Innocents; St. Sylvester's Day; New Year's Day; St. Basil the Great; Epiphany/Twelfth Night

LENT

A Lenten sampler; A biblical dinner; Mid-Lent Sunday: Mothering Sunday; Holy Week

EASTER

PENTECOST

THANKSGIVING

WINTER

The Feast of St. Anthony of the Desert; St. Bridgid of Ireland; St. Valentine's Day; Carnival and Mardi Gras; St. David; St. Patrick; Forty Martyrs of Sebaste; St. Joseph, Foster Father of Christ

SPRING

St. Benedict of Nursia; The Annunciation; St. Benedict the Black; St. Honoratus of Amiens

SUMMER

St. Peter the Apostle; St. James the Greater; St. Anne; St. Laurence; The Assumption (or Dormition) of the Virgin Mary; St. Euphrosynus the Cook; The Exaltation of the Holy Cross; St. Ninian

FALL

St. Michael; Devil's--and Deviled--Food; St. Francis of Assisi; St. Teresa of Avila; All Saints Day; All Souls Day; St. Martin of Tours; St. Catherine of Alexandria

I recommend this book highly. It is a wonderful first addition to your shelf of Christian cookbooks, although I'm sure that anyone who enjoys your hospitality will enjoy the dishes from this book.

2005-12-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

Hospitality

Yesterday we had guests for lunch; my neighbor Theresa M. and her guest Fr. Rayappa K. from India, both of whom I expected, and Fr. Paul R., a last minute addition, who was saying Mass at the parish church on his day off, when he comes to Brockton to visit family. We had one of those unfortunately rare meals that starts in the parlor with appetizers and conversation then moves into the dining room to continue for well over an hour, with at least equal amounts of talk and food, finishing off with sweets and coffee and wondering when the next chance for such a visit will come about. It’s events like this that make me grateful for my training in restaurant kitchens; it’s much easier to cook for a group and prepare several courses after you learn to handle 180 lunch orders in the course of 2-1/2 hours.

Hospitality, whether to friends or strangers, has always been considered a vital part of the apostolate of the married. In the postcommunion prayer for the anniversary of a marriage we hear the words:

Bless their home
that all who come to it in need
may find in it an example of goodness
and a source of comfort.

In this prayer the Church both teaches that hospitality is one of the principal duties of the Christian family, and prays that the married couple will have the grace to carry out this duty that flows from their vows. As the Second Vatican Council taught:

The mission of being the primary vital cell of society has been given to the family by God himself. This mission will be accomplished if the family by the mutual affection of its members and by family prayer, offers itself as a domestic sanctuary of the Church; if the whole family takes its part in the Church’s liturgical worship; if, finally, it offers active hospitality and practices justice and other good works for the benefit of its brothers suffering from want.

Apostolicam Actuositatem section 11

Of course, Scripture has many examples of hospitality, chief of which is Abraham’s visitation by the God and two attendant angels prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The two attendants then move on to Sodom where they are hosted by Lot, while Abraham bargains for the rescue of the cities that have fallen under God’s doom.

It is not uncommon to see modern interpretations of the destruction of these two cities as being related to their lack of hospitality to these angels, who visit Lot in Sodom. Over against traditional interpretations that it is the perverted sexual crimes of the cities that have brought them under judgment (e.g., ”Homosexual acts, which threaten proper family relationships and boundaries (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Rom. 1:26-27), run counter to the divine command to procreate (Gen. 1:28; 9:1, 7), a command that is part of the order of creation.” Harper’s Bible Commentary, p. 98, copyright 1988.), it is the violation of hospitality that is identified as the sin crying to heaven for vengeance.

However, it is not necessary to adhere to an either/or reading of this passage; one of the sins of Sodom certainly was the inhospitable attitude toward strangers; but it flowed from the disordered moral life of the community. (“All the men of the town, young and old, seek to abuse sexually the two guests of Lot. There is indeed a basis for the outcry that had come up to God (18:21)! The inhabitants’ crime is twofold: violation of hospitality and forbidden sexual behavior (Lev 18:22). The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 23; copyright 1990.) The hospitality of Abraham and Sarah flowed naturally from their life together. The essence of the marriage covenant is that it should fulfill the primordial commandment of the Lord “Be fruitful and multiply.” Marriage is inherently hospitable, because it is ordered to the welcoming of children and their nurture.

And so, in this society where families are often resident in far-flung communities, Christmastide becomes a season of visiting and of hospitality with relatives, and often enough, a time to invite strangers or those who live alone to share meals and festivities. Growing up we often had visits on Thanksgiving from someone who would otherwise spend the day alone. This year, we were blessed to have found out that one of my acquaintances would be on his own, and he visited with us on Thanksgiving. Of course, it is out of such shared meals that acquaintances bloom into friendships, which is another important reason to extend hospitality. It promotes that friendship that is vital not only to a well-ordered society but which should be a hallmark of the relationship between Christians. It was within the course of that most famous of meals that Christ, having commanded his disciples to love one another, pronounced the comforting words: “No longer do I call you servants...but I have called you friends.” (John 15:15)

2005-12-27T12:08:00.000-05:00

Maple Butter Twists

This is an old family recipe from my wife's family. We have this for breakfast every year on Christmas morning, and my wife Laurie makes several to give away as gifts to neighbors.

This recipe yields two maple butter twists. May be quadrupled to make 8. After people taste it, you’ll need to make 8. Believe me.

For the dough
Soften 1 packet of dry yeast (or 1 Tbs. dry yeast) in 1/4 cup warm water

Combine 1/4 cup butter
3 Tbs sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup hot scaled milk

in a large bowl and mix thoroughly

add 2 unbeaten eggs and softened yeast and stir.

add 3-1/4 to 3-1/2 cups all purpose flour to form a stiff dough. Beat well after each additional cup. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until light, about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. You may also make the dough the night before, and let rise overnight in the refrigerator. If you do this, remove from the refrigerator at least two hours before working with it in the morning.

For the filling
Cream 1/4 cup butter

Add 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar (light or dark)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 Tbs. flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. maple flavoring
1/2 cups chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

And cream the above well with the butter.

Punch down dough.

Toss with some flour and coat thoroughly. Divide in half. Roll out one portion to make a 14 inches by 8 inches rectangle. Spread half the filling on the dough. Roll up along the 14 inch side.

Cut the roll in half lenthwise. Twist the strips together, with the cut sides facing up. Shape in a ring in a well-greased pie plate or round pan (8- or 9-inch). Repeat with the second portion of dough. Let rise for 45 minutes.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. Cool, in pan, on a wire rack. When cool, drizzle with white icing.

2005-12-23T14:24:00.000-05:00

Orange Humus

This is a great recipe for days of abstinence. You do need to plan ahead by a day to get the chickpeas ready. Humus (aka, houmus, hummus, et al.) is a Middle Eastern dish, similar to Israeli falafel, only humus usually is used as a spread with pita bread or crackers.

1-1/2 cups raw chick peas (soak overnight, discard water, refill till well covered, then bring to a boil; reduce heat and let simmer for about 2 hours. Drain and let the chickpeas cool before assembling the humus.)

1/4 tsp. each: ground cumin, ground coriander, ground ginger, mustard powder, turmeric, paprika
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup tahini
1-1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. cider vinegar
3 medium garlic cloves, crushed (or 2 Tbs. crushed garlic if you buy the crushed, bottled kind)
1-2 tsp. tamari sauce (a specially brewed Japanese soy sauce...best of the lot)
3 scallions, finely minced (whites and greens)

The easiest way to make this is to put the chickpeas in your food processor with the cutting blade, then add all of the above ingredients (except the scallions). Turn it on to whir for a minute or two. Turn into a bowl, add the scallions and mix. Ready to serve, or put in fridge. This will keep for several days in the refrigerator (not that it ever lasts long at my house; one of my daughter likes this for breakfast, so it goes fast.)

If you don't have the food processor, you can use a potato masher or just the back of a large spoon. Or some carefully washed hands can squish it all up together.

Serve with pita bread, sliced bell pepper strips and/or carrot sticks.

2005-12-23T09:13:00.000-05:00

The Advent Fast

So here we are in the final days of Advent, and preparing for the Nativity of Christ has me doing two rather incongrous activities.

On the one hand, our kitchen is a flurry of activity. I took a vacation day on Tuesday to bake cookies, and my wife has been cooking each night as well. (Today she'll help host a party for the patrons at the library where she works, for which the many homeless who patronize the library each day are especially happy.) And tonight, we'll be in full gear, baking pies, making dough for the Maple Butter Twists, and generally making a huge mess with flour, sugar, butter galore.

And on the other hand, it's my 21st day of fasting and abstinence. And yes, it can be hard fasting while cooking for everyone else.

A basic rhythym of Christian life has, since Apostolic times, to fast in preparation for feast days. Eventually, this was codified in the two Great Fasts that were shared by both East and West, Advent and Lent. In addition to these, the West added the fasts of the 4 sets of Ember Days and the East added the fasts of the Apostles and the fast of the Dormition. And of course, the weekly fasts of Wednesday and Friday.

In the West, the Fasts were gradually reduced, until only Lent and the Ember Days and Friday abstinence were left. And in the Catholic Church, only the Lenten abstinence on Fridays and the Fast Days of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are left as required days. (See here and here.)

(Well, yes, there is still a requirement in canon law for absitinence on all Fridays, Solemnities excuded, but in the U.S., this is mitigated by the option to perform some other penitential work. The canon is then mitigated, de facto if not de jure, by the almost universal absence of its existence in preaching and teaching by the clergy.)

However, the Eastern Church continues the weekly fast days of Wednesday and Friday, and a much more rigorous fast during the four periods of fasting mentioned above. I've always thought that fasting was an important element in Christian life, so for the past few years I've decided to adopt as much as possible the Eastern fasting customs, while keeping to the Western calendar. As the canons of the Eastern Church see fasting as an important part of Christian life, yet impose these practices without pain of sin, it seemed perfectly appropriate to adopt these.

So during Advent, on Monday through Saturday, I've been limiting myself to one meal, observing abstinence from meat, dairy, eggs and fish. The canons also call for abstinence from wine, but as I drink so infrequently, I've substituted coffee as the proscribed drink. On Sundays there is neither fasting (except for the communion fast) nor abstinence. I did make a small exception on St. Andrew's Day, and we had fish...it seemed wholly appropriate. And of course, we didn't abstain on the Solemnity of Mary's Immaculate Conception. Feast days need to be adorned with feasting! As it is written in the book of Nehemiah "Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” (Neh 8:10)

And, bowing to the necessary social formalities, I didn't abstain during our office Christmas party yesterday afternoon.

But for the rest of the season, my diet has been mostly evening meals of soups, bread, hoummus, and fruit.

One friend commented to me (in a phrase I've heard many times over the years): Advent is not supposed to be penetential like Lent, it's supposed to be a season of preparation and expectation. Well, yes, but honestly, how is one to prepare themselves for the Festival? Prayer and increased attendance at the Liturgy of the Church is important, but as fasting and almsgiving are the wings of prayer, do we really want to clip our prayer's wings by insisting on a fairly recent (to my mind) distinction between penance and preparation? I don't think so, and it seems that the Tradition of the Church is where I've derived this sensibility.

It's good to remember that Christmas Eve was, up until very recently, a serious day of abstinence in the Western Church, even where the Advent fast had fallen into abeyance. That's why an important part of one of my coworker's Christmas Eve dinner will be bacalao (cod fritters), a traditional Italian Christmas Eve dish, and why the Polish Vigilia is a meatless feast.

Wishing you all a happy conclusion to Advent!

2005-12-23T08:47:00.000-05:00

Why another blog?

Having really enjoyed several blogs over the past couple of years, I have often been tempted to create one of my own. However, I didn't really feel that the St. Blog's community needed to be burdened with my possibly not very interesting comments that would be variations on the many thoughtful posts of folks like Amy Welborn, Mark Shea, Phil Blosser or Fr. Neuhaus.

So what could I contribute? Well, as it turns out, when I finish reading theology, philosophy or history, my favorite books are cookbooks. I have worked as a cook at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. (which is still standing--the fact that I didn't burn it down should prove that I passed that minimal test for kitchen competence), ran a small breakfast nook at the Dorchester Yacht Club, and I also worked as a cook in a New Hampshire hospital. Most of my cooking, however, has been for my family and for church potlucks and fundraisers

Hoping that certifies my bona fides, what will I be writing here?

Well, recipes, for one, but also, I hope, some thoughtful posts on the place of food in the everyday life of a Christian, and as a part of our celebration of God's mighty works in history. There are many great cookbooks that explore the place of food in Christian culture, and there are even more less known works, including the many church published fundraiser cookbooks.