Wordy Wednesday

I like to think of myself as a reasonably good cook but lately, maybe because it's February, there are always at least two kids walking right up to the Complaining Line, if not actually crossing over it. 

Our kids aren't allowed to say anything negative at meal times about the food. They can express preferences at other times. Like in the parish hall of the church to their friends they can say insane things like "I don't like bacon". Hey, your dislike of bacon is objectively wrong but you're welcome to be stupid. When you come to the table, however, you get to leave your negativity over there, far away from me the cook. If you have bacon on your plate and you don't like bacon, you have to eat it with a smile on your face. You don't have to say you like it, but you can't complain. If you work yourself into a froth and and actually throw up, you're in a world of hurt. And I don't mean that metaphorically. 

So they've gotten creative in their effort to let us know how they feel about the food.

"I really love this," someone will say, "I'd really like to save it and eat it on another day."

"My favorite food is just like pasta only it looks more like rice."

Stuff like that.

Of course, with your sixth child you have had your will beaten out do you and so that child will say "I don't Wanna eat this!" and run away fast while you pour yourself another glass of wine and decide you don't care anymore.

So I was really surprised when all the dinner was eaten by everyone last night without any veiled complaining and no one pushing the food around into little piles and getting thirty cups of water. I mushed some ground beef in a pan with onion, garlic, green pepper and carrot and then Matt did something to it to make it taste like tacos. Then we shoved it in 56 cent Aldi taco shells with cheese and lettuce and it was all gone. Too bad when I sweat and slave and fuss it's apparently "just as delicious as all your other food, I just love all that other food better". 

wordy wednesday: peanut sauce

It's snowing. To put it mildly.

All the children are stuffed up and whiny and suffering from deep unhappiness of various kinds. I've read thirty five blog posts on how to avoid February burnout but I think it's already too little too late. Let the children paint in the middle of the day yesterday because I'd lost my will to live. Can't tell you how much I loath a room full of children painting. The water everywhere. The paint smeared on everything. The bickering. The torn paper. The enormous stack of pictures at the end of the day that aren't really nice enough to keep that you have to smuggle out because each child is convinced their seven paintings were glorious dreams. So I made peanut sauce. Too bad I haven't made it in so long the little girls didn't know what it was and were not apprised of the fact that it's supposed to be everybody's favorite food in this house. That's the baseline expectation for membership in the family. Know I posted the recipe years ago but I can't be troubled to go find it and you'll probably be wanted to make it when you can get past the snow to a jar of peanut butter.

Peanut Sauce

One chopped onion, a couple of minced garlics, an inch of grated ginger, sweated in a deep pot. I added five little sweet peppers, diced, a couple of diced carrots, and half a chopped cabbage at this point but none of that is necessary. Then, when the onions are translucent, add a jar of smooth peanut butter (no sugar, obviously, because that would taste really strange), two tablespoons of tomato paste and probably four or five cups of stock, assuming you want to feed ten people. If you want less sauce (and I can't understand why you would want to do that because this freezes brilliantly in little cups and gets better with time) you could do half a jar of peanut butter and half the stock. Once it's going along nicely you can add chicken--thighs are best but if you have an aversion to those you could do something else. If you want to be authentic you will go kill a chicken and dismember it and add it piece by piece to your pot, but I can see the snow making that route difficult. Plus, I've discovered that modern stores provide already dismembered chicken for you, so that's probably a sensible option. There you are, when the chicken is cooked through and the rice is done (unless you're carb free and then you'll want a big bowl and a spoon) you can eat it. Actually, it's fine to just stand in the kitchen and devour it with a big ladle and not tell everyone it's supper time. Oh! It's really delicious with red pepper and lately I've been squeezing a big lime into it, just at the last moment.

Wordy Wednesday: a scene of domesticity and comfort

Finally cleaned out the fridge on Monday, after needing to do it for like a couple of years or something, while Matt baked a pizza for the kids and devised a divine chorizo, steak and egg concoction for me (and him). I took everything out of the fridge and piled it on top of the week's groceries which hadn't been put away and then poured myself a glass of wine and started scrubbing and slinging soap around while children ran up and down and smacked into my tippy piles of rotting sour cream and vegetables. Matt had on a debate between James White and some godless Arminean (just kidding, sounded actually pretty devoted to Jesus) where English people could call in and complain about godless Calvinists. Maybe I was on my second glass by that point. After I'd put everything back in the fridge I wanted there--essentially a quarter of the original putrid mess--instead of coping with throwing everything else away or flinging it down the sink, I opened the freezer and pulled out no less than twenty dead chicken carcasses and piled them on the floor. Launched into a heated marital argument about how many we actually needed to make stock. Couldn't find my big stock pot. Fussed and drank more wine. Discovered it in the garage with a frozen mound of milk curds left over from a failed attempt to make cheese with pasteurized milk. Dug out two inadequate pots and tried to stuff the goose carcass and smaller chickens in. Did locate pepper corns, finally. Collapsed in a chair with my glass and the gorgeous chorizo to freak out about the children smearing their pizza all over the couch and pouring their water on the floor. Watched three episodes of Good Eats and argued with the children about whether we should suspend all regular activities for the next month and just make everything Mr. Brown was making in exactly the same way with all the people dressed up and funny dialogue. Finally gathered all the dead birds off the kitchen floor and consigned them to the Binghamton 5$ blue bag and climbed into bed rather over come from all the activity.

What day was that? Monday. The Day Off.

spoiling children

Matt roasted a chicken on Sunday and, wonderfully, the children only ate half of it because of the potluck, so I cut the rest of it up and did it with onion, garlic, little sweet peppers, thyme, mushrooms and the rest of his gravy and then puff pastry not top. There wasn't any left. Not even a tiny speck. It's becoming so discouraging how much the children eat. There wasn't any breakfast left either--apples layered with brown sugar, butter and uncooked oatmeal and then baked for a while at 350 until bubbling and golden brown. I only made one pan. Stupid stupid. No growing child can be expected to eat only two bowls of baked apple and oatmeal (I'm sure this has already been invented, doesn't it have a name? Three layers. Apple, sugar, butter, oatmeal in that order?) and survive past ten in the morning. And because I guess I just don't have it together, I only have one tray of these for breakfast this morning.

And because I'm short sighted and foolish I've fallen into the terrible habit of heating milk for the children's tea and coffee in the morning. And me not a morning person. Matt came in shouting and waving his arms on Monday (Monday is his day for breakfast) at the request that he heat milk. "What have you done!?" He cried. 

"I'm sorry," I said, "I just think the coffee is better with the milk heated."

"Not for a seven year old!"

He's right, of course, but so am I. So, on that note, off I go to the kitchen because the piano teacher will be here in an hour and everyone will be starving to death.

st. nicholas and other matters

As I lie here, nursing a foul headache and a throbbing thumb, I can hear Elphine squishing the packages in her shoes by the front door. She has been up since 4:30, blast her. Indeed, she nearly caught me fussing over the shoes. I heard someone rumbling round upstairs (her) and shoved my bag of candy into a bookshelf and went back to bed and a minute and a half later I heard her crinkling the paper. I thought she was a baby come down to eat the chocolate and got up to yell and found her there, worshipfully kneeling before all that The Lord has done for her.

I managed to snap a picture on my way out, but it wasn't the arrangement I really long for. 

Last night they all wrote notes and discussed the existence of St. Nicholas and his relationship to Santa.

"There is no relationship," I said. "Santa is some kind of fairy or elf and St. Nicholas is a bishop."

"Is he too old to come?" Gladys wanted to know.

"Maybe he died and God lets him out of heaven to come here once a year," postulated Romulus.

"Go to bed," I said, "or nothing good will come to you."

You can see the light in her eye here--Elphine. She looks determined and, if you don't mind me saying, slightly crazed.

Anyway, back to the headache and the throbbing thumb.

The headache is from waking up at 3:30 to do the shoes because of none of the children going to sleep right away and so not being able to do it at a reasonable time like 11pm.

The thumb is from trying to beat my way into a can of tomato whilest cooking for Shepherd's Bowl.

Here I am trying to be tell enough for the pot and the stove, adjusting the flame from atop my ridiculous stool.

The soup

compared to the ghastly flesh colored satanic brew of last time turned out pretty well. Onion, garlic, carrot, green pepper, broccoli, cabbage, chickpea, lentil, ground beef, tomato, peas and curry powder are a better way to go than revolting ground turkey, kale and potato. God had mercy on me. The soup was delicious. Not delicious like any of the soup that Matt makes, but hearty and edible.

And so we come to the end of a long week. 

What with the basement slowly being emptied out, and that moment in every Homeschool Person's Life when you have to clean out the school room or you will die, and the beginning of Advent, 

[All the Prayer Cards required for three levels of Cstechesis--all the old ones mended and freshened and new ones made.]

and the sudden pressing need to eat lots and lots of salad as a way of recovering from all the pie and turkey and bread and pie.

Today I think we're going to make ugali and sauce in the afternoon and in the evening Matt is speaking at Intervarsity on the relationship between the old and new covenants. And tomorrow more basement. And a birthday party. Thus and so is December. You think you're going to sit around drinking eggnog and decorating cookies but really you hurtle through the month from one event to another eating other people's cookies and telling yourself you'll get back on your diet tomorrow. Oh...and I need to aquire unto myself a donkey costume for the pageant.

Have a great weekend!

{phfr}:blogging when i should be doing something else edition

{pretty}

Look how beautiful my house at home in Africa is right now! Miss it lots. Specially as apparently the temperature is going to fall into the 20s here over the weekend.

[picture by Miranda Jemphrey]

I hope most, if not all, of the many rooms The Lord is preparing for me look like all the rooms in this house. The cool floors, the thatch, the water jars, though not the snakes and termites and scorpions. 

{happy}

We indulged in a lovely dinner with the vestry and the bishop at a pillar of a local restaurant on Saturday. Here is His Grace having a properly good time.

Why is it that when I consider the word {happy}--a word which, in my soul, I don't really approve of, a word which is rarely applied to me, a word misused and ruined by this culture, what is happiness anyway? Here for a moment and then gone suddenly in a breath--it usually has to do with food. Well...never mind Usually. Always.

This morning I made pancakes but fell short on the subject of milk and was forced into Sour Cream and Apple Cider.

If you are able, I commend you to throw out all your milk if you are setting about to make pancakes. Walk the narrow and luscious way of Apple Cider and Sour Cream. Yea, even I tasted one of these golden orbs (self satisfied delight for finally working that into an actual sentence) though did not eat a whole stack. For, though my soul draws nigh unto the Apple Cider Sour Cream Pancake, yet in my flesh I shall hate myself a whole lot for eating one. Forced myself to eat a bacon soaked egg instead.

{funny}

Alouicious is turning out to be sarcastic and funny, and to have pretty good timing. Without humor, where would we be? Super depressed all the time that's where.

{real}

The garden is dead and dying.

I haven't been out to cut anything back or plant bulbs or anything. Can't face it. It's too cold already.

Also, my desk is a tragic wreck. So wrecked don't even know where or when to begin to cope with it or clean it or pitch it all in the rubbish heap or consign it to the fire that never dies and the worm that goes on forever. Pity, because there's actually a lot of work I'm supposed to do buried in its depth. Praying for God to do something supernatural, or for death.

Probably I'll still be here tomorrow, doing seven quick takes or something.

beef wellington and the terrible prospect of the fatness ahead

Matt made Beef Wellington on Sunday.

For Reformation Day, he said. The English Reformation, he said.

With peas and Yorkshire Pudding.

OMW (oh my word)

I'm having enough trouble with my normal every day life as it is.

I've taken a long restful two weeks away from the ghastly Jillian Michaels and her deeply offensive but also effective Thirty Day Shred. I haven't even really bothered to walk. Been too busy....and I had a cold...just wasn't time. You Know. There is just So Much to Do! Working out, which is so important as we all know, is also a big annoying hassle to me because I hate doing it. But that's no call to Matt to start wrapping meat in prosciutto, duxelles and then pastry and blast it in the oven at 425 for 50 minutes until it is golden and aromatic and then let it rest gently so that the pastry comes to be the abode of the what is essentially gravy, gorgeous rich gravy.

I mean, I know it's the Day of The Lord and so on and so forth. But heaven help me. Some things are not to be borne.

On that note, I can't possibly do the thirty day shred again for a while. What else should I do? Any suggestions? Keep in mind that I need to keep a strong core and I'm vain about my arms. And that I hate exercising at all and so it can't be longer than 20 minutes or I won't really do it, probably. I probably won't do it. Who are we kidding, I definitely won't do it.

{phfr}: devastating reality edition

I had this post up all yesterday as I wandered around the day trying to do all the stuff I was actually supposed to do while typing at the same time. But then when I was standing in the church kitchen at the end of the day, staring at the disaster of the century (see below) and the Internet cut out, I just gave up and put it away until this morning.  I'm trying to find a word for what sort of day it was--the beginning was perfectly fine, but then as it went on it got worse...there must be a perfect word for that....hmmmm...oh well....still nothing.

{pretty}

This is cosmos and lettuce gone to seed. It's so nice to walk out of the church into this delicate array of purple and white. Tragically, for me, the sun flower appears to be facing away over the fence. I hope the neighbors are enjoying it.

I'm so glad I snapped these pictures yesterday because apperantly there was a 'light' frost last night. Oh may my soul be strengthened in the time of trouble, I am not ready for any frost, light or otherwise.

Today I'm going to go out and cut all the flowers off my surprising Dahlia. 

The thing about this Dahlia is that I thought I was planting a peoni (what do I know) and then it grew to be huge and glorious and about as tall as me and to extend far out over the walk so that as you're muscling your way up the path with 25 pounds of kale and bags of paint and trays and dowels and fake flowers you have to turn and slide sideways so as not to smack into it.

And this Yellow Flowered Thing has turned out to be glorious. I thought it was going to be some sort of close to the ground yellow flowers and it turned out to be nearly a tree. Amazing. 

All these flowers have been a consolation to me in my failure to plant vegetables. No tomatoes this year but every day a fresh array of color on the kitchen table.

{happy}

Last Saturday I took Elphine out with me for the day because, well, you know, she's eleven now, and I had this vague sense that if I didn't go wander around with her for an afternoon she would come unglued. We had a good time but Gladys, here,

did come unglued at being left home. And so Wednesday morning, while everyone else got down to their school work and had a piano lesson, we went to Panera where I had a boring coffee and she had this amazing pastry and a hot chocolate. We chatted happily and then she vouchsafed to me that she wished there were only five children in our family, not six, and that if we had to get rid of someone (though, she admitted, that wasn't a nice idea) we could let Alouicious go live with our good friends who only have three children and might like another one. More digging produced the root of this desire and we talked a lot about Jesus and forgiveness. I was so happy about, it, frankly, because I knew something was wrong but not what it was. Sometimes I'm not a terrible mother (cough).

And this was my other great happiness this week: breakfast of nectarine, plum, and blueberry topped with four cups of cooked oatmeal, half cup oil, two eggs, pinch more salt, bit more sugar, cinnamon, two cups of flour, mixed together and poured over the fruit, baked at 350 until bubbly and golden, gone within 20 minutes the next morning at breakfast, fights breaking out as the dish was being scraped. Felicitous, really.

{funny}

Elphine's cat, Frances requires all the children to pet her every day, but not me. I thought she didn't like grown ups but it turns out it's just me. The person she actually loves most, besides Elphine, is Matt, whose tolerance for her is at a devastating low. I laughed for ten minutes yesterday as he stood and petted her angrily. She wants Him to pet her, not Me, and his sense of duty to all creatures meant that he stood and did it. Cats do know who love and hate them, uncannily, I've seen it again and again.

{real}

So all day long I went along thinking that I would get to the Real and write about how I've been reading both Daniel and I Samuel for the last few days and how interesting and strange is the anger of Nebuchadnezzer and Saul. I read about them in the same hour as I read about the bakery in Oregon being put out of business. We don't like anger, I think, we go great lengths to see that it doesn't bubble up, except on weird television shows. We're not used to it. But when someone is running as far and as fast as they can away from the Most High, real anger has to accompany that flight to give it energy and purpose--real distructive scary anger. We Christians should try to get used to it because its hotting up quick, the fire as it were, and spears are starting to fly, and the rage is swelling up everywhere. But God isn't surprised by any of it, and he intends for some, even some Nebuchadnezzers, to repent and believe.

But that turned out not to be the Real Reality that transformed my day.

Have a look at this steaming brew.

Mmm. Delicious.....what do you think it looks like? In the pot it had a kind of color of spam and the smell of some foul-er sections of Gehenna, and the consistency of something grossly and unfavorably meaty. 

Who made this steaming Pot o' Sorrow? you ask.

Why I did.

Me. Just Me. Wretched old me. And I had to serve it up to the deserving and patient Shepherd's Bowl crowd, apologizing all the time and encouraging them to eat more bread and salad. 

I'm not going to relate how the soup came to be this way, other than that it was very delicious the day before but then went through some chemical destruction through the night so that I spent from 3 o'clock to 5:30 desperately but ineffectually trying to make it better.

"Will anyone ever come back to Shepherd's Bowl after that soup?" Matt inquired when all was said and done, "Is our ministry In Binghamton over?"

"I don't know," I replied, "but I do know that all my works are not so much like filthy rags but more like this hideous life destroying soup."

I'm going to keep this firmly in mind as I go about the rest of my work this weekend, trying to get ready for Sunday School, remembering things like

"Unless The Lord Builds the House, Anne makes Terrible Soup"

And

"No one comes to the Father, Especially if Anne Makes the Soup."

And

"I go to prepare a place for you and Don't Worry, Anne won't be making the soup"

curried birthday meat pies

Begin with a flakey and gorgeous pie dough.

2 1/2 cups flour

Pinch Salt mixed thoroughly into the Flour

2 sticks Unsalted Butter

Hand cut the butter into the flour until its crumbled and crumbly.

Add cold water bit by bit as you mold the flour into a light but finally unsticky dough.

Form it into a nice ball and shove it, covered, into the fridge while you make the filling.

A pound or so of ground beef sautéed with onion and garlic and a big tablespoon of curry powder, enriched at the end with a generous amount of either full fat cream or sour cream. Let it mellow on the stove while you roll out little rounds of dough. Fill each little round with the curried meat filling and pinch them up into little purses. Bake them at 350 until golden and fragrant. Let them cool and heat them up gently if your party is actually the next day. I made about 30 of them and there was not a single one left when all was said and done. Happy Birthday! Or whatever day it is that requires this kind of celebration.

the laundry: that great dark cloud of despair

I really ought to be downstairs doing laundry...I feel like that line should be set to music and be playing as the soundtrack to my life...it's always down there, like Gallum, hissing at me in the dark, even when I'm up here doing nice things like making tarts for a sad goodbye to graduating seniors.

Strawberry Tarts: pie crust rolled out and baked in muffin tins and then filled first with a layer of cream cheese whipped with the juice from sugar macerated strawberries and then a layer of the berries themselves and then whipped cream.

Chocolate Tarts: dark chocolate melted in a double boiler and then whipped into the rest of the cream cheese not mixed with strawberry juice. Whipped cream on top.

I doled out a small number of tarts to the children in the kitchen before making them go play. More and more I am for all the children going to play when grow ups are trying to talk. Everyone is pretty happy this way because no one has to be bored by grown ups or annoyed by whining children.

I was also generous with the rest of the strawberries and cream. I may yell, occasionally, but the compensations for my short temper are sweet. Now Stop Screaming And Eat!

See how nicely everyone is chewing with the mouth closed? 

So really, back to the laundry. It doesn't matter what other massive jobs I undertake, the garage, for instance, the laundry is ever there, living its great dark presence in my broken and diseased mind.

Even when we flee to the great out doors, to lovely parks 

on golden warm afternoons

sitting in a heavy cloud of lilac scented glory.

And yet, for all it's wretched guilty presence, we do manage to go out clothed and mildly sane. Even on Sundays, some bows and vests can be scraped together and applied before libations of chocolate milk and cookies.

Every Sunday I'm told they look beautiful, which they do, but only by grace and not my own works, my long exasperated works of washing, folding, flinging into drawers, picking clean things up off the floors, and some cussing.

And then the inevitable Sunday Morning Fuss in which I discover that I did not pick the right dress for one child or that a vest is covered in pen, or that no one has any shoes at all.

But once they're out the door they seem to forget. And I do also, until I descend back down into the pit, or Sheol, as I've been more recently calling it, to have another go at it.

Really, I argue with Jesus, at least the Pharisees did wash the outside of the cup. At least they washed something. So they never bothered with the inside, at least they cleaned something. Whatever, says Jesus, stop complaining. 

 So I guess I will for now, stop complaining that is, and revise my school plan for next year, because just as laundry hangs over the conscience, so does homeschooling. But at least that can be done in the light and there is a vague sense of going somewhere and accomplishing something.

See. One child done, Elphine,

one nearly so, Alouicious, spurred on by the future hope of something I've been told is called Sweet Frog. 

sublime

Rhubarb Mango Crumble

I made some rhubarb strawberry sauce, but more almost jam.

Just cooked down all the rhubarb I was given, maybe four cups chopped all told, with the end of some frozen strawberries and a goodly measure of sugar until it was gorgeously pectinous and delicious.

Then I discovered some unripened mangos in the back of the fridge (? What was I thinking?) and diced them up, covered them with sugar and some of the Rhubarb Strawberry Delight and then over that a crumble mixture {two cups uncooked oatmeal, half cup brown sugar, quarter cup flour, one stick warm golden luscious melted butter} baked at 350 for nearly an hour.

Then obviously I sampled a little off the side.

Thank goodness Matt doesn't eat sugar. I don't know how this could stretch to eight people. As it is, I will probably ladle it into little prep dishes for the children. It's not good to eat too much right before bed. If you're a child....

{phfr}:gasp

In a last ditch effort to save my children from the "indifferent" education I've always feared I would give them I've dropped just about every single thing I was doing before and have directed myself towards the exercise of 'school' for nearly every waking moment, except for some moments to cook and do laundry. It could be construed as a narrow and confining existence except that, hysterically enough, I'm enjoying myself and haven't really wanted to bother about anything else. In my stock taking I discovered that Elphine is only a week away from finishing all her work for the year, whereas Alouicious and Romulus have been 'working' in the modern sense of the word which means they have been doing nothing at all. But all is not lost. They are chaffing a bit at my constant presence in their lives but at least they are Doing Something, and that is no small achievement.
{pretty}
In the small extra moments, I have been rescuing tulips out of the hand of Marigold whose great desire to pick them is driving me to abstraction.

{happy}
On Sunday we threw a Farewell Party for a friend, indeed no cause for happiness, however, I happened to make a cake (the cake itself was too dry but I loaded up the cream with a little something and no one seemed to notice) and also a golden pile of crepes. It is only a matter of standing around in the kitchen for a couple of hours on a Saturday evening drinking a modicum of cheep wine out of a box and watching something weird on Netflix.

{funny}
The children aren't suffering too much from actually having to work. No matter how much I suppress them, they refuse to be suppressed. The indomitable human spirit I suppose, thriving under adversity, or whatever.

{real}
Marigold is a fuss budget. She wanted a 'little tiny braid' in her hair but it was crusty (don't judge me) and Lord help me if I was going to muscle her into the bath on a Monday. So I bunged pony tails in and when she started crying I plunked on the big bows and took her picture. Every day it's something. Every.single.tiny.day.