Meal Train

Abby Schacter writes about Rod Dreher's book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming on the Aculturated blog, and one of the items she focuses on was the way neighbors reallied to support Ruthie (Rod's sister) and her family as she was dying and after she died by bringing meals. From there she segues into ways to do this without necessarily imitating Rod, who decided to move back to the hometown his sister never left for a place where community is a physical as well as a notional thing. One of the examples she provides is Meal Train, which helps organize groups that want to help out by providing meals.

My family as twice been the recipients of this kind of community support; when my daughter Althea was born, many neighbors and fellow parishioners brought meals and baby items. By that time, we had lived in two for four years, I was well-known at church and was teaching part-time in the village school. We were very much part of the community (unfortunately not to last, as finding steady, decent-paying work was tough, and still is, in the Northeast Kingdom).

Eleven years later, we once again found ourselves comforted with food, this time when our daughter Rebecca Ruth was stillborn. My workmates organized a huge delivery of food from a local Italian restaurant, Italian Kitchen, which one of my workmates brought to the house. I am still touched when I remember the gesture and visit, and that event and other shared experiences created bonds of friendship among my workmates which continues to this day, although the business has not been so fortunate.

A helpful web site like Meal Train (and there are other such sites) doesn't replace community, or even "physical" community; but it can help people organize their impulse to help. Here in Boston we've been seeing both that impulse and the importance of organizing, in the aftermath of the Marathon bombings that happened on April 15th. Problems, sorrows, even disasters will always be around the corner; but so, hopefully, will the impulse to come to others' aid; and what more effective way than to personally provide sustenance?

7 Reasons You Should Be Gardening

From the entertaining and informative web site The Art of Manliness comes this guest post on "7 Reasons to Become a Gentleman Gardener".

With warm weather upon us and summer just around the corner, it’s time to think about gardening. “Gardening?” you say. Yes, gardening. If the mention of it has you thinking of aged ladies in big hats and frilly gloves gently nipping blooms from their roses, then you have the wrong picture. If you aren’t already gardening, there are plenty of reasons to be doing so. It’s time to lay down your gardening misconceptions and pick up a shovel and a hoe.

Manly Horticulturalists in History

Gardening goes way back and has a good deal of manly history. Thousands and thousands of years ago, the planting of crops led to the creation of what would eventually be modern culture. The first crops were grains, as in wheat, barley, and the like. But don’t think that agriculture began just so that everyone could eat bread. On the contrary, modern theories of early agriculture show that the practice started so that the Neolithic nomads could get their homebrew on. That’s right – early agriculture was driven to produce beer. You can’t get any manlier a start than that.
Fast-forward several thousand years and you find that some of the most celebrated gardeners of our time have been men. Perhaps one of the most prolific and adventurous of them was the third president of our country – Thomas Jefferson. During his time, he was known far and wide for his gardening prowess. He would even compete with his friends to see who could harvest the first peas in the spring (manly competition has obviously changed with the invention of football and video games). He kept journal after journal of his trials and errors in the garden and has passed down a legacy that lives still today. The gardens at his home, Monticello, still function much as they did when he was gardener-in-chief. There’s even a Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.
Aside from Jefferson, we find garden pioneers like Luther Burbank, who developed more than 800 varieties of plants throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s and is the father of the Russet Burbank potato. It was his unorthodox and untidy tinkering that led the horticultural industry for decades and ultimately culminated in Congress passing the 1930 Plant Patent Act. Since he had passed away four years earlier, he was posthumously awarded 16 patents. Burbank’s contemporary and competitor was W. Atlee Burpee, who had the largest seed company in the world when he died in 1915. The company distributed over 1 million catalogs annually and took over 10,000 orders per day. The company is still in operation as Burpee Seeds.
Of course, the one horticultural hero celebrated in both song and story is Johnny Appleseed. No, he’s not just a legend of frontier America; he really did exist. Despite living as a pauper, John Chapman (his real name) became a legend during his own lifetime. He traveled westward ahead of the expansion of the growing United States, introducing apples to much of the frontier of Ohio and Illinois. This itinerant farmer wasn’t planting apples so that people could get all their fruits and veggies, however. Back in those days, apples weren’t for eating – they were for cider; as in hard cider and applejack...

Go visit and read the whole post, which is informative and a good way to rev yourself up to get out and get dirty in the yard.

Lenten recipes on About.com/Catholicism

Several years ago, the post of moderator for the Catholicism area on About.com came open, and people were invited to apply for the position. I threw my hat in the ring, and the application process was one of the most stringent and thorough I've ever gone through, certainly more difficult than for any job I've had. At the end, disappointingly at the time, I did not get the job.

The job was awarded to Scott Richert and I have to say, with every visit I've made to the site in the years since, I think the leadership at About.com made a good choice. Scott has been a very good moderator and has brought a lot of solid information to the site, which has improved in many ways since he took over.

Yesterday, I found his post on meatless meals for Lent. He starts off:

Lent is not known as a time for haute cuisine. Tuna-noodle casserole; macaroni and cheese; fish sticks: These are the standard Lent recipes of many a Catholic household on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent.

But our Lenten abstinence does not have to mean bland food. The recipes we often associate with Lent are primarily popular American dishes from the 1950's. Catholic culture in Europe and Asia, however, has been coping with Friday abstinence (and not just during Lent) a lot longer...

Scott then goes on to list many sites with recipes that will work well for a Lenten program of abstinence. He even managed to find a set of Gluten-free Lenten recipes by a fellow About.com moderator. Go check it out.

Healthy, Happy, and 100 Years Old

The Lenten regimen I follow (basically, the old Catholic one of no meat during Lent; although I do eat meat on Sundays) and fasting each Lenten weekday (meaning only one meal per day, usually in the evening) tends to make me think about food. Not obsessing about it; it's not that I'm checking my watch all day, hoping to somehow make time speed up and get me to dinner earlier. But thinking about what I eat and how food fits into life.

Yesterday, I went to a communion breakfast for the St. Vincent de Paul Society. A communion breakfast, for those who don't know, is when a group attends Mass together (the communion part) then has a meeting (including breakfast), which typically, as ours did yesterday, includes a speaker or other opportunity to reflect on the bonds that make for solidarity in the group. As one of our primary efforts in the Society is to provide food for people in need, that also is a constant prompt to reflect on food and its place in our lives.

A new prompt was my daughter's visit last week. Molly ended up visiting an extra day because a big snowstorm made travel back to NYC inadvisable. Molly was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease, and so we had to rethink how we prepared meals at home, and how our kitchen is set up. (For the record, we didn't fail completely, but we didn't do as well as we could have; we'll have to work on that for the future!) Cooking for someone with Celiac is a bit more demanding than cooking for some other special diets, vegetarians, for example (which we routinely do).

The food we buy and the food we grow are ingredients for a social activity: dining. I know that many people eat alone, but we have always tried to make dining, that is, eating in the company of others, part of our family life. And except for our four years in Delaware, where we lived in a row house, we've always tried to raise a decent portion of our summer food via gardening.

So, I was pleased and intrigued about the article below, which I found thanks to a link on the blog Acculturated, about a Greek island where a much larger than usual pecentage of the residents live into a healthy old age. The reasons for this are discussed briefly, but it is noted that diet alone isn't enough; the way eating is done, the way life is conducted, has as much to do with the way life turns out as anything.

Healthy, Happy, and 100 Years Old
by Ann Lokuta on March 8, 2013


Picture yourself hiking to your neighbor’s house, where you’ll meet to have lunch: a spread of homegrown olives, freshly made hummus, and a thick loaf of warm bread – all slathered in just pressed olive oil. You arrive at who knows what time (because nobody watches the clock here), bearing homemade wine and honey from your own bees out back. After hours of conversation over delicious food and warming wine, you’ll hike back home for a midday nap before you tend to the garden to pick wild greens for tonight’s main dinner dish. Oh and one more thing, this otherwise normal, sun-soaked day happens to be the start of your 100th year...

Read the rest at Mind the Science Gap.

The Mediterranean diet

An article in the Atlantic monthly highlights a recently published article in the New England Journal of Medicine "Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet".

Looking at the "Mediterranean diet" made me think, well, we could also call this the Jesus diet: in the realm of food and drink, what would Jesus eat? Likely just this sort of diet. Some of the evidence is explicit in the Scriptures that the foods of the "Mediterranean" diet are Biblically approved.


Olive Oil: Revelation 6:5-6: [5] When he [the Lamb] opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and its rider had a balance in his hand; and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not harm oil and wine!"

Fish: John 21:7-9: That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his clothes, for he was stripped for work, and sprang into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it, and bread.


Wine: Luke 9:31-35: Jesus said, "To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the market place and calling to one another, `We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.' For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine; and you say, `He has a demon.'  The Son of man has come eating and drinking; and you say, `Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is justified by all her children."

Others are there by inference, such as lamb which would have been eaten at Passover, and the other items that made up the diet of a typical Jew in Roman Palestine. While the articles don't mention bread in the tables, whole grains were definitely part of the diet, particularly wheat and barley. There are so many references to bread in the New Testament, I didn't think any were needed, although the New Testament version of fish and chips is right there in John 21 (there being no potatoes in Palestine at the time, since those didn't arrive in the "Old World" until after Columbus).

The beginning of the Great Fast

Many people think of Lent as a time for "giving up" something, as a time of sacrifice, in the sense that a sacrifice is giving up something. And so, over the past week, I have heard or seen references to the Lenten fast ranging from my mother-in-law (who is not Catholic and has not attend church for years) joke about giving up something to a cartoon in which there's an exclamation emerging from St. Peter's, Rome, shouting "You're giving up WHAT for Lent?".

But I think this emphasis on "giving up" is a misunderstanding of fasting. Fasting is a taking up, an engagement, not a negation. Christian theory has always held that penance consists of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and fasting and almsgiving are considered the "wings" of prayer, that is, the means by which our prayer soars above to heaven.

St. John Chrsysostom writes: "† Fasting is a medicine. But like all medicines, though it be very profitable to the person who knows how to use it, it frequently becomes useless (and even harmful) in the hands of him who is unskillful in its use.
For the honor of fasting consists not in abstinence from food, but in withdrawing from sinful practices, since he who limits his fasting only to abstinence from meats is one who especially disparages fasting.
Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see an enemy, be reconciled with him. If you see a friend gaining honor, do not be jealous of him. And let not only the mouth fast, but also the eye and the ear and the feet and the hands and all members of your bodies."

Recently my daughter Molly received a diagnosis of celiac disease. As you might know, this is an autoimmune disorder in which the body becomes unable to digest gluten, a type of protein found in wheat, rye, barley and spelt. The presence of gluten can lead to inflammation in the bowels and to all sorts of problems with the digestive tract, and the only solution known at this time is to completely eliminate gluten from the diet.

This is a good illustration of what fasting is: An elimination of food for the sake of health. The practice of non-gluten eating is really a re-ordering of how a person eats and so is not just a giving-up, but a whole new way of eating. Fasting should likewise be a whole new way of living, and for the sake of health (keeping in mind that in Latin salus means not only health but salvation).

Urban trees reveal income inequality

Trees, at least of the non-fruit bearing sort, would not seem to be a natural subject for a blog like this, but it strikes me that the story below could just as easily be about vegetable gardens, flower gardens and any type of agriculture. About the only thing I've seen where this pattern is reversed is with animals; in our own local urban scene, you'll find more chickens in poorer back yards than in well-to-do ones; but that may be a cultural dynamic and not a socio-economic one.

Wealthy cities seem to have it all. Expansive, well-manicured parks. Fine dining. Renowned orchestras and theaters. More trees. Wait, trees? I’m afraid so.

Research published a few years ago shows a tight relationship between per capita income and forest cover. The study’s authors tallied total forest cover for 210 cities over 100,000 people in the contiguous United States using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s natural resource inventory and satellite imagery. They also gathered economic data, including income, land prices, and disposable income.

They found that for every 1 percent increase in per capita income, demand for forest cover increased by 1.76 percent. But when income dropped by the same amount, demand decreased by 1.26 percent. That’s a pretty tight correlation...

Read the rest of the story at Per Square Mile.

2012 Resolutions!

Well, yes, it's been forever since I posted, but my resolution is to post more often in 2012 and to take advantage of some soon to come free time to do some more writing, blogging, and, perhaps, even thinking!

We have had the most incredibly mild winter this year, with days in the 80s in March! So, I have finally made good on a long-standing desire to get my Spring vegetables in the ground early; on Good Friday I planted several seeds in a starter kit I picked up at Home Depot. This is an old English tradition (see here and here), but I've never done it.

Swiss chard, sprouted after a Good Friday planting.

I also built new frames for two of my garden boxes, and started clearing the weeds so I could put some new soil in the boxes. The box on the left is already planted with peas, lettuce and beets, and I'll plant more peas and carrots in the second box this weekend.

This weekend we are enjoying the unique Massachusetts/Maine April long weekend (Patriots' Day, celebrating the stand at Concord and Lexington by the Minutemen), the origin of which is recalled in the Longfellow poem "Paul Revere's Ride":

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year...

of which you can read the full version here.

So, today I finished filling the second rebuilt box with soil and did some cleaning up in some of the other backyard boxes and have had a delightful couple of hours with my hands covered with dirt. One of the benefits was while cleaning out our herb box of various detritus from last season; the thyme and oregano and a bit of parsley have already come back, and the smell of the fresh oregano was simply wonderful. ¡Muy sabroso! as we would have said in Colombia.

Parlsey (lower left), Oregano (left), thyme (right)

One of the great things about gardening, especially with a front yard garden, is that in addition to being able to work outdoors and feel the sun on my neck, I get to meet and chat with neighbors. On Good Friday I met two of my younger neighbors who were intrigued in equal measure by me working in the dirt and our cat Purrfect supervising my labors. Today the young man stopped by to say hello, and having learned he's a hockey player, I offered him our street hockey equipment, which sadly gets no more use. He rode off on his bike to check with his mom, and when he arrived saying he had her permission, I walked up to their house with half a dozen street hockey sticks and a goalie stick and met his mom.

It's not Mayberry, R.F.D., but it's a far sight better than A Clockwork Orange.

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

from my friend Theresa

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?

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

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.

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".

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!