Happy Easter!

St. Peter and St. John running to the empty tomb

 For the past few years I've been able to go to the Holy Thursday mass, the Good Friday service and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, and they are so beautiful and such a fitting end to the struggles of Lent. 

Today was beautiful and sunny after a cloudy beginning, and gradually rose up into the fifties. We had a late breakfast around noon, since that was the only time we could, and then I got started on the dinner, while hoping we'd have enough appetite for it. For a long time, I've had lamb chops on Easter, since we like them and Jesus assuredly ate lamb on Passover. No ham! :D  Anyway, we've been having lamb more often lately and I thought it really didn't matter what we had, as long as it was a special dinner. I started collecting ideas on Pinterest but then thanks to Libby, I was perusing the British Country Living (I feel like I mention that magazine a lot here), and in the March issue was a recipe for a chicken dish with lots of tarragon, cream and some white wine. That caught my attention, and I decided to make it. 

There was a problem, though. It wanted you to spatchcock the chicken and I'd never done it. I didn't want to try. But I was afraid it would mess up the cooking time, and maybe delay the dinner, or even cause the sauce to dry up because I'd be cooking it longer. Then I thought of just getting a cut-up chicken - it should cook at a similar rate. Well, it was such a delicious recipe, that if you have that magazine, I urge you to try it, and especially if you want to impress someone with little effort, try it.

I was supposed to salt it well and leave on the counter for an hour, but I forgot that part until it was time to get going. And I skipped the salting because it was an Empire kosher chicken and I think they soak them in a salt brine first - we bought one many years ago and I didn't season it at all and it was very nice just plain. So, I skipped that part. Then, you lay the pieces on nine cloves of garlic and run the meat all over with plenty of olive oil, and roast at 465 F for half an hour, at which time it should be a little brown. Turn the heat down to 350 and take it out for a moment. Pour a glass of white wine all around the chicken and pour a mixture over it, consisting of 250 ml of heavy cream with a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, plenty of tarragon in it and some salt and pepper. Roast for forty minutes, or perhaps a little longer. (I don't like slimy chicken, and this was just past the slimy stage, but fine. Still, next time I'll leave it in longer.) Then let it rest with foil over for fifteen minutes. I can't tell you how delicious this tasted. I served it with some frozen green beans, but the very thin ones that are so lovely, with some sea salt, butter and herbs de Provence, and some small, multi-colored tomatoes with Trader Joe's Green Goddess dressing, and I sure want to see if anyone online has a recipe for making that dressing. There were some wheat crackers on the side.

I am sure it could also be made with coconut milk if you don't want dairy. 

While I was working, windows were open and I realized a mocking bird was singing nearby. He was in our neighbors hedge near the road, working very hard on his concert. I appreciated it. 

This idea was in the same magazine as the recipe, I think. 

Later, at sunset, Daisy came running into my room to look intently out the window. I wondered what she saw. It was a rabbit, just sitting there, grooming himself. I told her it was the Easter Bunny.

Christ yesterday and today,
the beginning and the end,
 all time belongs to him and all the ages.

My favorite resurrection painting, I think.

the best of Fridays

daffodil tribulations

 Right after the daffodils bloomed, it got quite cold, and I saw them one day with their heads just laying on the rocks in front of them. But now they've revived, spring is in the air again and Easter is around the corner.

a small mercy, and a great one

Annie had a checkup at the vet's today. She weighs eleven pounds and a little. We were both sure the doctor would prescribe a diet for our Annie, but he said her weight was fine! I still can't believe it. We feel badly that she is (seems?) a little heavy, but it's because Daisy just won't, or can't, eat all her food at the proper time. So, she cries relentlessly a bit later on, and if you get her some food, Annie hears you, of course, and there it all goes, downhill. You can't feed one without the other. But, I guess it's not as bad as we feared. Small mercies.

 One of the windows at church.

Now let us all with one accord,
In company with ages past,
Keep vigil with our heav'nly Lord
In his temptation and his fast.

nearing the end of Lent

 from The King's College, New York City

 "Sometimes we stop at the crosses that day by day you have in store for us. We moan and squirm like a goat caught in a bramble bush. We blame this or that, dreaming up a thousand reasons, and invent anything possible to free ourselves from the bare and harsh beams of the cross. 

But then there appears on the horizon a new and radiant dawn, and we gather the fragrant fruits you have brought to maturity in spite of our imperfect behavior. In the face of such miracles of your divine love, we understand the deepest meaning of suffering: It is the price that we had to pay.

Lord, I thank you for the existence of suffering. Had you not permitted it, we could not have followed you, nor would we know the deep joy of personal union with you.

If I close myself up in sorrow, I end up contemplating my own misery. But when I remember that on that night you too were overcome by fear, and when I pour my own drop of sorrow into your heart, then I realize that all this serves to open wide my heart to all of humanity and to shower the world with your graces."

                                                 -  Chiara Lubich, from Magnificat, March 2024

staying dry

 We had rain all day again; so much that I ordered the groceries for delivery. 

Puddles everywhere.

But we were cozy in the house, and I made broccoli soup. Which is so easy, so little effort, and while it's cooking, there's the onion, garlic and chicken broth aromas, which are very salutary when you've recovering from a headache. That, and tuna sandwiches were a perfectly fine supper.

I made the casing for the skirt today, and I've got to thread the elastic through it to see if I like the fullness. If it's too much, I'll have to re-do one of the side seams to make it narrower. Which is a relative term, since it's going to be as gathered as will look well. It's a very drapey and thin-ish rayon fabric, so it shouldn't be bulky even with a lot of gathers. We'll see how it looks.

I make small granola batches on the stovetop, which are very fast to do. The other day I was about to put away the rolled oats, when the container dropped and oats went all over the floor - I probably spilled two cups or more! Without a second thought, I scooped them off the floor and put them back in the box. Please don't imagine my floor is clean; I just could not bear to lose those oats, so I put the idea of any grossness right out of my mind instantly. But I also told myself that maybe I should make a batch every day for a while, basically to keep my eye on any unwanted somethings in the container, rather than be wondering if any crawlies are in the box. To use it up sooner than later seemed a good idea. So I made another batch today; it takes fifteen minutes or less from start to finish. And I didn't find anything unusual in the oats, so far. 

Well, Holy Week is upon us. There is a little piece in Magnificat today about Elizabeth Jennings, the poet. She struggled with mental illness, but her poetry and her faith kept her going.

Teach me how you love and have to die
 And I will try                                         
  Somehow to forget myself and give        
   Life and joy so dead things start to life   
    Let me show now an untrammeled joy     
     Gold without alloy.                                    

Something to remember for this week, I think.                           

cold and dry

 I was cooking one day, came into my room briefly, and realized I could hear a mockingbird not very far off. He was in our neighbor's apple tree! 

It's been cold the past few days - like we expect March to be - and my friend has been silent. Of course! He thought it was April, and it wasn't!

We got a new clothes dryer delivered today; I hope it will be half as good as the old one, which I hated to see go. But it was getting loud - the motor. We bought a very stripped-down model. No smart dryer for us, thanks. I have no problem telling it what to do. 

a pot full of vegetables

 It seems every year that I could never have a pot big enough to contain the corned beef, the potatoes, carrots and big cabbage wedges on St. Patrick's Day. I resent the potatoes, basically just a starch and taking up space better used by the vegetables, but what to do? 

Today I had the idea to cook the potatoes with their skins in another pot, and just mash them up, with lots of butter. Everybody would like that, and there'd be more room for the vegetables. This worked beautifully! I had cooked the meat yesterday, so I just increased the liquid and used that for the veg. I'll have to make a note of this.

We sang Be Thou My Vision at mass, and I felt very Irish singing this very obviously Irish melody.

Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true word;
I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord.

Amen

a winner

I had a package of six skinless, boneless chicken thighs, so I seasoned them well and baked them. We were going to have them like that with some veg, but I kept thinking of the cassoulet, knowing I could improve on the meal if I just had a little more time. My brother was game, so I went ahead with the recipe. There was still some pepperoni (and I'm convinced that sausage is very important to this dish), and it came out so good. I'm going to make this any time I have only enough meat for one meal, because this stretches it out to two.

a squeaky din

 A few weeks ago, we'd run into scores of blackbirds flying over the main road around eight a.m. I would bring my camera, but it didn't always happen.

This morning I heard the noise outside, and there they were out my window, in the neighbors' yards. I love hearing their squeaky conversations.

it must be spring

 Oh the day was absolutely dreamy!  Late morning as I was opening the east-facing windows, I realized the bird singing far in the distance was a mockingbird; they never sing in March. But they don't know months; they only know air temperatures. And possibly they also get Spring Fever. 

Speaking of spring fever, I was able to set up my little greenhouse.

I can put in the shelves another day, and the plastic cover when it cools off. An if we have a snowstorm - I'll take my chances.

There was a recipe in the March British Country Living for an Irish soda bread with some cheddar in it which caught my eye. I grated some whiskey-laced cheese from Trader Joe's that I bought just for this purpose, the St. Patrick's Day dinner on Sunday.

It also called for bacon, but the corned beef will be quite salty enough, so I decided on some raisins. A good decision!

How yummy it is. But when I make it again I'll have to figure out a better baking temperature. It was quite high, but the outside was getting burnt while the inside was still gummy; I turned it down a couple of times and had to guess. But it worked and now it's in the freezer. I'll cook the corned beef on Saturday, and cook the vegetables in the liquid on Sunday, as I won't have time to do the whole thing then. 

I have a better photo of my rayon skirt fabric -

I'm just going to cut two rectangles, but I have to figure out how much fullness I want in the gathered waist.

Another poem by Christina Rossetti:

SISTER MAUDE

Who told my mother of my shame,
Who told my father of my dear?
Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
Who lurked to spy and peer.

Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
With his clotted curls about his face:
The comeliest corpse in all the world
And worthy of a queen's embrace.

You might have spared his soul, sister,
Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
Though I had not been born at all,
He'd never have looked at you.*

My father may sleep in Paradise,
My mother at Heaven-gate:
But sister Maude shall get no sleep
Either early or late.

My father may wear a golden gown,
My mother a crown may win;
If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
Perhaps they'd let us in:
But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,
Bide you with death and sin.

*I did get a charge out of that.

blooming

 The so-called Christmas cactus at the library.

 A woman actually asked me one day how I was caring for it. I had nothing to tell her. I water it a couple of times a week - it's in a good spot! I don't know.

"to use this day well"

 We were out much of the day - there was a wind advisory. Well, it's March, isn't it? Oh, the wind. But when the strong winds come after a load of rain, surely it must help to dry things out. And it must be blowing in the warm air that's coming tomorrow: fifty eight, it's supposed to be! 

Along the road we noticed how high the river was - we were going to the shore to visit cousins - and next door to their place, the neighbor had what looked like a lake in the back yard.

I guess they are that much lower than my cousin's, but we saw several properties with ponds in their yards; that's how much rain we've had around here. 

I knew we might be out for a while, so I mixed up some pastry dough yesterday, and this morning was able to bake a pie crust. This made it easy to whip up a quiche when we got home. One doesn't always feel like doing these things ahead, but it would have been another half hour if I'd left it for later.

The cats, meanwhile, had to forgo lunch and I wonder what they thought about that. I suppose they just waited till we came, maybe knowing it was a longer while than usual, and just accepting it. But cats live in the present, don't they? So I may be concerned for nothing.

"...Better to live one day at a time. This is a hard task, often, for we tend to keep going to the past and trying to live it over again or looking ahead and uselessly trying to forecast tomorrow and next week and next year. But somebody has said all the time we really have is the NOW. We have today.

To use this day well, that is about the sum of it."

                                              -  Gladys Taber

living in a wilderness

 "The world, for Saint John (1 Jn 2:15), is not creation as God made it. It is what the 'Prince of this world' and the sinners who follow him have made it. It is no longer the dwelling-place of the children of God and his sanctuary, but the wilderness left by his absence, where everything is organized with a view to sin.

We have to decide first of all between the prince of this world and Christ. Humanity has gone astray by following the promptings of pride and of pleasure-seeking egotism. The new Christian is first of all someone who wants to break with this error and to follow the Son of Man, who came not to be served but to serve and give his life."

                                                             -  Fr. Louis Bouyer, from Magnificat, March 2024

a day's work

 Well, I finished Howards End; I’m relieved. Of course, it is well written. Of course, it’s a good story. But I didn’t *like* it. This may be due to imperfections in my attitude or understanding, but there it is; I’m glad to finish it.

Robins have been around.

I've been thinking of a drapey, spring skirt; I bought a rayon print in a nice strong but muted turquoise with - for lack of a better term - animal print stripes. Which sounds weird, but the colors are brown, sort of a gold, off-white and dark red. I have a brown sweater, and probably other things I can wear with it and I think an elastic waist is the simplest course.

The color is washed out in this picture, but there's something about brown and turquoise, or robin's egg blue - it speaks to me of spring. And two yards cost me fourteen dollars from denverfabrics.com. I need to figure out how wide I want the casing to be, and what size rectangles for the front and back pieces.

We were supposed to go see the new film about Mother Cabrini with some folks from church, but I've got a slight intestinal thing. I thought I'd better stay home. Three of my co-workers have had terrible bugs run through their families in the last three weeks, and how do I know if I'm a carrier? Anyway, I washed the bathroom floor and cleaned the kitchen counters, which was satisfying, and I felt better for staying home. 

When I go to the basement to bring up something, I'm usually juggling the stuff or I use a plastic bag. But there was a sturdy basket hanging down there which I suddenly remembered. I cleaned it up, and now it serves as a very handy and far more pleasant way of carrying things up from my shopping trips downstairs.

So we, when this day's work is o'er,
And shades of night return once more,
Our path of trial safely trod,
Shall give the glory to our God.

fighting words

 Another day which turned out better and warmer than expected, or predicted. My thermometer read sixty eight!! We are going to be spoiled.

I was reading in the first chapter of St. Mark's gospel this morning. Verse 1:  "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
I have Bishop Barrons' Word on Fire gospels, with loads of commentary from the past two thousand years - a lot of it is his.  He said something about this verse which I never heard before: "The opening line of Mark's Gospel.....can sound anodyne and harmlessly pious to us, but in the first century, those were fighting words.

Mark's Greek term, euangelion, which we render as 'good news', was a word that was typically used to describe an imperial victory. When the emperor won a battle or quelled a rebellion, he sent evangelists ahead with the good news.

Do you see how subversive Mark's words were? He was writing from Rome, from the belly of the beast, from the heart of the empire whose leaders had killed his friends Peter and Paul just a few years before, and he was declaring that the true victory didn't have a thing to do with Caesar, but rather with someone whom Caesar had put to death and whom God raised up.

And just to rub it in, he refers to this resurrected Lord as 'Son of God.' Ever since the time of Augustus, 'Son of God' was a title claimed by the Roman emperor."

second Sunday of Lent

 Oh, what a day - bright sun and sixty degrees out! I opened windows while cooking. I wore my sandals all day.

A Prodigal Son

Does that lamp still burn in my Father's house,
Which he kindled the night I went away?
I turned once beneath the cedar boughs,
And marked it gleam with a golden ray;
Did he think to light me home some day?

Hungry here with the crunching swine,
Hungry harvest have I to reap;
In a dream I count my Father's kine,
I hear the tinkling bells of his sheep,
I watch his lambs that browse and leap.

There is plenty of bread at home,
His servants have bread enough and to spare;
The purple wine-fat froths with foam,
Oil and spices make sweet the air,
While I perish hungry and bare,

Rich and blessed those servants, rather
Than I who see not my Father's face!
I will arise and go to my Father: -
"Fallen from sonship, beggared of grace,
Grant me, Father, a servant's place."

-  Christina Rossetti