after the lights are out. giving elisha a final bedtime snuggle.
me: what do you think we should name the baby?
elisha: jesus.
me: hmmm
elisha: did jesus give us juice or wine for the lord’s supper?
me: (seriously?) umm…wine.
elisha: why we have juice?
me: good question. (at this point i figured i’d use big terms and hope he’d lose interest) even before official prohibition, america became a bit hung-up on drinking and no one fought the good fight to keep wine as an accepted part of the lord’s supper.
Leaders of the 18th-century “evangelical revival” in Britain and America, though concerned about the immoderate use of alcohol, did not see wine, cider, and beer as alcoholic in the same way as distilled spirits (such as gin and brandy). However, in the 19th century, temperance became “teetotalism” or “total abstinence,” moving all alcohol (wine included) into the list of forbidden beverages. Many began to question why a beverage considered dangerous to drink was still used on the Communion table.
Motivated by these arguments, Protestant churchgoers and clergy sought a way to make unfermented grape juice. An American Methodist dentist, Thomas Bramwell Welch, and his son Charles were the first to succeed in this on a large scale. Charles Welch was a skilled marketer, and “Welch’s grape juice” became a popular beverage among total abstainers and the replacement for fermented wine on most American Protestant Communion tables (except in Lutheran and Episcopal churches).
and of course the individual cups that resulted as a fear of germs were made so as not to look like whiskey shot glasses. but my favorite tidbit gleaned from the article?
…some marketers to evangelical churches have developed disposable individual Communion cups which contain both wafer and grape juice in separate hermetically sealed compartments.
there was a lot of uncertainty this past year. but there was also apple cranberry butter. in february omar and i made our first of a couple of trips to atlanta to look at a job opportunity there. both times we went the weather was crisp and perfect and included a few visits to the flying biscuit. i remember the food being quite good, but i remember liking the apple cranberry butter so much that when i decided to make it the other night i thought i’d probably worked up the memory way too much and figured it was a good possibility i was in for disappointment.
not so. whew. it’s good. nutmeg and cinnamon and cranberry good. it was like making christmas in a pot. why in the world i didn’t think of halving the recipe, i don’t know. but now i have 4+ cups of this stuff. here’s hoping it freezes well.
here is the recipe if you’d like to give it a go. note – the recipe is a bit vague on directions but i let my apples cook down for a good hour. and unless you like to search for/chew on little shards of cinnamon stick, i’d suggest finding and removing it before you puree it. ahem.
oh, i love this. if there ever is a time that i can gush on and on about how cute these two are it’s when they strap on their buddies and run and bike around the house. and asher has this cute/funny little voice he uses to ask if bear is ok about every five seconds while wearing him.
if this keeps up i envision all of us grocery shopping with a baby or bear wrapped around us.
1. wet cake. just the thought of pouring a liquid on a warm, freshly baked cake makes my stomach churn. rum cake? out. most tiramisu recipes? sorry. and until yesterday i thought most “upside down cakes” were out, too. they just look wet, right? then omar decided to make city bakery apple-raspberry upside-down cake from apassion for baking. oh my. very good. and wouldn’t you know that the soupy fruit mixture stayed separate from the cake and it was all very un-wet. and the smell while baking? a mixture of summer with the raspberries and christmas with the apples and cranberries.
2. bad coffee orders. yesterday a woman walked up to the register at starbucks and ordered something along the lines of a large, decaf, skim milk, three splenda latte. now that is one yucky drink. in these situations i long to pull such people aside, begin a conversation with them about good fats and real sugar, and give them a book like planck’s real food.
i like:
1. almond extract. i believe you can add it to almost anything and it will make it ten times better. next time it’s going into the above mentioned cake.
2. saturday morning park visits with the boys while papi works. elisha is quick to point out that his favorite part of the morning was the dunkin’ donuts stop before the park.
the boys are getting into books that i really enjoy reading and we’ve reached the stage of library fines hitting us because the kid books go missing in the strangest of places. the boys’ current top picks: anno’s counting book by mitsumasa anno (love this book), ox-cart man by donald hall, any and all books in the bear snores on series by karma wilson, and summer by gerda muller (asher is especially fond of the the beach pictures).
i hit a reading dry spell for a couple of months but i looked over at my book stack one day and realized it was interesting again.
asher turned two. last year’s birthday was full of planned presents, homemade gifts, and thoughtful celebration. this year i woke up, realized i hadn’t done a thing, rummaged through the closet and found some lincoln logs and put a bow on top. then we went to cracker barrel. asher probably enjoyed this year’s version more. just ask the deer head over the cracker barrel fireplace. halfway through breakfast asher turned around and started talking to it, excitedly telling it what he was eating. happy twos, ashie.
october 16 ::
omar and i went to a wedding in miami that was held at the monastery of st. bernard de clairvaux (a cistercian monastery built in spain in the 12th century). i’m a bit fuzzy on some of the history, but in the 1920s, william randolph hearst decided to buy the cloisters of the place, dismantle it, and rebuild it in miami. it is beautiful. but not so beautiful when you’re pregnant, it’s beyond hot, the wedding starts one and a half hours late (no joke), the food is served over three hours later (again, no joke), and your present “condition” doesn’t allow you to drink away your hot and sweaty cares.
october 19 ::
i finished up my library stash of the bbc show mi-5. i find it interesting that the brits have no qualms in killing off/letting go of characters left and right. losing characters is seemingly always a rare tragedy on most american shows. and i also find it interesting that the token american character is always loud, brash, arrogant, and says things like “pal” a bit too often. then again, if i was cast as a british character in an american show, i think i’d always try to find ways to insert the word “mobile” when referring to my phone. it makes me giggle.
for some reason spaghetti carbonara popped into my head the other day. fortunately, i didn’t let my thoughts linger on it too long because if they had the carbonara would have been plunged into the dreaded pregnancy category of “dwelled on it too much now can’t stand the thought of it.”
it popped up again when i needed to make dinner and had few ingredients and little desire to do anything that took too much time or too many dishes. i remembered that tyler florence’s tyler’s ultimate had a spaghetti carbonara recipe. side note: go get this book. his overuse of words like awesome, brilliant, beautiful, amazing, and even ultimate irk me a bit (case in point – this carbonara is evidently the “ultimate” one), but the man has some wonderful recipes. we’ve made multiple recipes multiple times – the sign of a good cookbook.
and the carbonara couldn’t have been easier. boil some spaghetti. saute an onion with a few slices of bacon and pour that into a bowl with whisked eggs, cream and parmesan. dump the cooked spaghetti into the bowl and cover with a plate to let the eggies cook and five minutes later a great dish with only a saute pan and pot to clean. i would’ve been perfectly content to cozy up to omar and eat straight from the bowl (the romantic situation made even more so by the absence of more plates to clean) but our little boys still resort to fingers about half way through dinner and i’ve seen where their hands have been.
well, omar obviously wasn’t content with a little pot of basil, so saturday we all ventured out and bought big barrels to start a small container garden. poblanos, jalapenos, carrots, and some herbs to start with. tomatoes are coming soon. and some kind of contraption to keep out squirrels, rats, and iguanas (all of which like to hang on our deck) is in the works.
and the rats and squirrels are really the least of my worries. the iguanas are bold and don’t just sneak out in the night or when we’re not around. but even worse, we’re evidently not the only family making babies around here. mr. and mrs. iguana are being fruitful and multiplying, too. i think omar was shocked when he saw my anger burst out when i first caught one of the baby iguanas munching away on our hibiscus. babies, people. the other day someone found my blog by searching for “roast iguana.” if you’re still reading, mystery searcher, do share any recipes you found.
many thanks for all the congrats. life has been pretty slow lately. my boys would probably say boring but i’m proud to say guilt from a 2 and 3 year old doesn’t bother me too much (wink). seriously, they’ve been troopers and are loving their extra mrs. p time. and i’ve been known to cave, almost daily, to an afternoon tv session.
the tiredness/weariness is the real kicker for me with pregnancy. we had great plans for a garden this year. now? see above basil plant snatched from my in-laws’ yard. i think that’s all the gardening i can handle. i also had great plans for fall decorations. but as i stood in front of all the corn and pumpkins and squash i let my mind wander and i thought that if i bought them, then i’d have to lug them home. then i’d have to do something with them. then i started thinking about dishes people make with squash and i’m not the biggest squash fan. then the nausea kicked in and it was all down hill from there. no decorations this year.
but on the flip side, i like to think that pregnancy makes me a bit more laid back about life in general. like the house. stacks of books and little boy shoes everywhere? so what. dishes in the sink? whatever. charred gecko on the bottom of the oven? why bother when it is already ash and would just make more of a mess if i tried to clean it up.
thankfully the weather seems to be a bit cooler out in the mornings so i can stand to be outside while not in the pool without losing it. just this morning we even had the back door open for awhile and elisha wandered around out back and around the pool serenading our neighbors with a rather robust version of holy, holy, holy. so sweet. what is not so sweet is the same boy asking me multiple times a day whether we can see the baby yet. this is going to be the longest pregnancy ever if he keeps that up.
walking from one end of the house to the other makes me want to take a nap.
looking at food magazines makes me want to…hmmm…is “hurl” too graphic for this place?
drinking fizzy water is all too necessary – not that i mind.
drinking watered down cranberry juice is a must day and night – kind of random.
watching a car commercial makes me cry.
one minute eating ribs seems wonderful. the next it seems awful. five minutes later i want them again. ten minutes later i declare i’ll never eat meat again. fickle, fickle.
listening to the splendid table podcast is off-limits (see #2). sad.
planning meals makes me wonder how many times omar and the boys can just eat peanut butter or cereal before they rise up against me.
i remembered the hip italian department store where i bought this stovetop espresso maker. i go through spurts of using it but yesterday really sparked the memories. the kind of memories where you can see and smell your surroundings and remember what you were wearing. and then i remembered my italian haircut. a haircut and color i’d only get in italy. i loved it. it was the kind of haircut that made locals think i was italian and they’d stop me in the street to ask for directions. i loved that, too.
i remembered a movie as elisha stalled his way to bed the other night by walking through the house saying, “all i need is this tinker toy. and this book. that’s all.” he’d walk a few steps and then add, “and this bear. that’s all. and this horse…” and on and on. it. took. forever. but i kept laughing because it was like he’d seen the end of the steve martin movie the jerk where steve martin walks around his mansion after being told he lost everything and picks up random objects saying, “all i need is this ashtray…and this paddle game…and this lamp…that’s all i need.” i thought my dad would get a kick out of it. but i assure you – the boy has not seen the movie.
i remembered swimming as a kid while the four of us were in the pool this morning. my grandpa would grab one of our arms and one of our legs in the pool and swing us around and then let go. we’d crash into the water and ask for it again. today i wondered when i’d be able to do that with elisha. not now, that’s for sure. he would go beyond freaking out. but one day i’m sure he’ll love it.
goats::
asher likes to stand in front of the open refrigerator and look at all the bottles, cartons, and packages. he begs me to pull out the milk carton to look at the cow pictures. last week i bought a little package of goat cheese with a picture of a goat on the front and asher held it up, asking me over and over, “what does he say?” i usually answer such a question with the appropriate animal sound, but for some reason i actually thought he was talking about what words come out of the goat’s mouth. after a couple minutes of hearing the question over and over, i finally said, “i don’t know, asher, probably ‘e-e-e-at m-m-m-my ch-e-e-e-se,’” done in my best possible goat voice. the boys laughed hysterically and now walk around saying “eat my cheese” in their best possible goat voices. this video sort of captures it. if it’s a garbled mess to you, just know that the grandparents are probably loving it.
chickens::
omar and i think this has got to be possibly the strangest, most hilarious, and just plain most awkward roasting apparatus on the market: the detachable suspension arm chicken roaster.
photo from williams-sonoma
iguanas::
these things keep plaguing us, our yard, our pool, and our pool deck. i think i even saw a baby iguana yesterday so their numbers are apparently increasing. i’ve heard that some people enjoy eating iguanas so perhaps there will be an iguana-roast in our near future. i like to think i’ll try anything.
i’ve mentioned here before that i feel i transform into “ms. sunday school teacher” when i try to weave scripture into my words when i’m talking to my boys. i think i’m getting over that. practice has made it less awkward. but now i cringe when i realize i almost always use scripture when disciplining/correcting them. great. i don’t think they’re connecting joy with what i’m teaching them. i started rereading lou priolo’s “teach them diligently.” one of his overarching themes is teaching scriptures in the milieu (life’s surroundings and circumstances). this is pretty much the opposite of what i’ve been doing. i’ve been reacting rather than being proactive in teaching and leading through scripture in all aspects of our days. i love his use of the illustration of annie sullivan teaching helen keller her first word, “water,” while running her hands through it.
Why did Helen leave that flower-covered well-house with a whole new attitude about life in general and learning in particular? It was because she understood for the first time that what her mentor was trying to teach her had to do with life. When she realized that the truth she was learning on one hand had to do with the things she was experiencing on the other hand, she became excited…she saw the relevancy of what she was learning to what she was experiencing.
relevancy. love that word. my poor boys probably thing the majority of the bible is only relevant to correcting yelling, sharing (or the lack of), pinching, and the occasional melt down. working on it…
and in the midst of my self-made parenting drama, i’ve got oven drama. if you’re in the market for a new range and think that gas stovetop will make up for the lousy gas oven – walk away. i’d take my slow as can be electric range for an electric oven any day. the oven casualty count for the past 5 days is 2 recipes with a third rescued just before disaster. evidently, if you put two cookie sheets in the oven and the temp is over 400, the oven gets overwhelmed and shoots up to 600 degrees. that’s right. six. hundred. degrees. so long roasted potato salad and batch of granola. the banana bread was salvaged, though.
no sewing drama. there’s not actually been much sewing. but i finally used my purl soho gift certificate so this anna maria horner fabric will soon be made into a birdie sling. and if it goes off without a hitch, i’m hoping to splurge on some echino fabric and make up another one similar to this. love it.
last week i pulled parade magazineout of the sunday paper, and while i usually find the experience of reading parade to be nothing more than an eye-rolling seesion, that issue actually had a good book list of novels about africa. a ways back i mentioned that omar and i read several books on genocide, particularly ones on the rwandan genocide. the description of baking cakes in kigali by gaile parkin grabbed me and a few days later i’d finished the book.
the book centers around a tanzanian woman, angel, who lives in kigali, rwanda, with her husband and five grandchildren. angel has her own cake baking business and she is somewhat of the community advice-giving sage. in the book it has been six years since the genocide and the story touches on the lives affected and the reconciliation happening in the country.
it was an entertaining book that was much lighter than what i thought it would be. perhaps too light? i think parkin tries to address too many of the issues that are affecting africa today – AIDS, female circumcision, genocide, foreign workers/aid, etc. and she touches on them in such a cursory way that at times it can seem trite.
but it was an entertaining read that often made me smile, and after reading such heavy books on the topic, it was good reading one woman’s take on the years following such a horrific event.
and then parade gets me again this week. did you know about the world’s most isolated inhabited island – tristan da cunha? me neither. parade wins some more points for me for letting me know about this. quite an interesting history and the 270 inhabitants all share one of the seven original surnames from the 19th century settlers. and as a result many share a bad case of hereditary asthma. fascinating.
