every little thing

I am reading a book called Christ and Apollo by William F. Lynch. Matt asked me if I liked it and I said that I liked the ideas, but not necessarily the way they were expressed. I think it's because it's something called literary criticism, which I know next to nothing about, and I don't like things that I don't know anything about. (I am aware of this fault of mine, and when I see it, I say "My dogs are barking!" in reference to Socrates' description of the spirited part of the soul as a guardian dog, who barks at people that he doesn't know, and welcomes people that are familiar to him. Once you start looking for that dog, you see him all over town, including at your front door.) I find the writing basically boring, but the ideas are interesting.

Lynch identifies two tendencies in approaches to art (specifically literature) which he says have significance for the way we live our lives. One is towards the "Christic," the incarnational embrace of the definite, of particulars, of time, of our limited experience. The other approach is "Apollonian," in that it seeks the absolute, the infinite, the heavenly, and wishes to discard or "transcend" the limitations of human experience in order to achieve, in a word, divinity. Lynch, a Jesuit, of course does not reject the pursuit of "insight," as he calls it, but maintains that it is to be found in attention to and even adoration of the details of the material, temporal human experience.

It reminds me of one of my favorite bits from Dante. In Paradiso, St. John the Theologian questions Dante on the history of his love for God and his ascent to Paradise. Dante has been drawn upwards by his love for his girlfriend, Beatrice (who is in Paradise,) as well as his veneration of his patron poet, Virgil, but St. John presses him even further to confess where he first learned to love, and Dante answers:

I love the leaves wherewith enleaved
is all the garden
tended by that eternal Gardener.

Not only does each single leaf point to the whole of creation, but in some way each part contains the whole, so that Dante's love for each Created Thing is really a love for all Creation. I like that. It is an apt description of what I think constitutes Good Art, and it seems to me to be a healthy attitude towards life as well.

I was thinking about this when I was pushing Scott in his stroller. I thought about how good it is that Orthodoxy teaches us to love Creation through the many, many "blessings" that we do for all of its parts-- people, plants, food, bodies of water, homes, even man-made things like cars. A blessing affirms and even commands the goodness of things. I wondered if there was a blessing for strollers, because I am terrified of Scott rolling into the road. I tried to remember if I had ever seen an Orthodox blessing for animals that were not currently being eaten in roasted or cured form, because I was about to pass the Episcopalian church where I had seen signs for weeks advertising the Blessing of the Animals (which prompted me to make a wicked joke in my head about not being able to tell if Pride Week came in October this year, or if it was just the Blessing of the Animals at the Episcopalian Church.) And lo and behold, as I passed the church, I came upon a circle of people with dogs, listening to a priest read the bit from the Gospel about the sparrows of the air and the lilies of the field. Scott and I rolled up to listen and watch the priest bless each animal with holy water. I was a little bit skeptical and even prepared to make more somewhat mean jokes to myself as I approached, but I couldn't help smiling and feeling my heart melt a little bit when I heard the priest say:

"Butters, be blessed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
"Peanut, be blessed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
"Coco, be blessed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

I'm not sure it's strictly Orthodox, but I said "Amen."

wheels within wheels

Yesterday I bought Scott a big box of Huggies. It cost $23.99 for 80. They are really, really good. We had been talking about getting disposables for night time because the bigger he gets, the more pee he makes, and the more he soaks the bed. We've tried every combination of cloth diapers and intensely absorbent hemp inserts, but he always prevails. He has been sleeping on a towel so that we don't have to wash the sheets and mattress cover every dang day, but I hate that because it gets all bunched up. Thinking about buying disposable diapers made me very sad, because I know that they just end up in a landfill and will never, ever decompose, not in a million years. So I put it off, and then the other day when we went apple picking, I left him in his diaper for too long, and when we got home, he had a nasty rash. All the cloth diaper configurations rub him in exactly the same place, and there was no way to make him comfortable (except just letting him go sans diaper, which I did for as long as possible.) So my sadness about hurting my baby defeated my sadness about hurting the planet and future people and animals and I bought the Huggies. And now for the next 79 nights I won't wake up in a puddle of urine. That's nice.

Women who take care of the home, especially when children are in it, are constantly dealing with the immanent, material world-- the world of chopping vegetables, doing dishes, folding laundry, making the bed again, cleaning up pee and poop and vomit and snot, giving haircuts and baths, fixing broken stuff, buying all the things that you need to perform these actions, etc, and repeating all these things often. There are so many little decisions to make and actions to take all day long, and in all of them one is trying to make the best use of material resources that she possibly can. For some, that just means doing the cheapest thing. Others add "the quickest thing." Many add "the healthiest thing," and increasingly, people are adding "the thing that least screws over the environment." I try to hit all four of these criteria and it is rather emotionally draining. Having very high ideals about eco-friendliness and health makes it awfully difficult when the money and the time are both so short. Here is a diagram to illustrate what I mean. This is just about food (which is the biggest one because I have to make choices about it like, every hour.)

Not pictured: Lenten food (don't even get me started) or tasty food, because given my preferences, I believe that it's a subset of healthy food.

There are flaws with this diagram-- when you have four or more circles, not everybody can sit next to each other, so there are some scenarios which will not fit on the diagram at all (like something that is healthy and affordable, but not eco-friendly or easy/quick, such as many meals cooked from scratch using grocery store ingredients in lots of plastic.) And obviously I had to reach for something ridiculous to illustrate food that is healthy, but not eco-friendly, easy/quick, or affordable. But it serves to illustrate my thought process with every dang grocery store purchase or recipe selection, and now you can see where most of my anxiety comes from. I think it was easier for moms when all they had to worry about was affordable and easy, because they didn't really question whether the food in the grocery store was healthy or not, and nobody cared about the pelicans. But my god, the future of the human race depends on whether or not I am too selfish to make my own glue from flour and water and Death rattles a little closer to our door with every box of sugary granola that I just keep buying these days.

I went to church today with Scott for the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, which is the patronal feast of the church we've just started visiting. I found it so peaceful and refreshing to cease my calculations and take a break from the game of hopscotch I've been playing between these circles. Peace and joy are floating somewhere above them, and I keep thinking I'll reach them if I can just build my house in that middle section, but more likely I just need to walk away.

they couldn't reach it

Οἶον τὸ γλυκύμαλον ἐρεύθεται ἄκρῳ ἐπ᾽ ὔσδῳ
ἄκρον ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτῳ λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπνεσ,
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐδύναντ᾽ ἐπίκεσθαι. 

 

Matt: You are a leaver of food! You left three spinach leaves on your plate at dinner tonight.
Me: (laughing) You were counting my spinach leaves?
Matt: I wasn't counting them, it's just that three is the smallest easily recognizable number besides two.

(We laugh some more because we think that's funny.)

Me: Oh, except for one, right, haha...
Matt: (stops laughing) One is not a number.

Haus keeping

This week I got 21 views from Romania, 19 from France, and 5 from the U (still!) K*. Be ye robots, or be ye men? I am dying to know.

I think a lot of people get to my blog by Googling little bits of Shakespeare or recipes or Orthodox buzzwords or "classical education," and they click on my posts thinking they're going to learn something. Sorry! Welcome to my brain!

Also some people might get here through Orthogals, which is terribly flattering (thanks O-gals!,) but just so you know, I'm just a 26 year old new mom with a liberal arts B.A., a keyboard, and no agenda. I'm an Orthodox Christian but this is not an Orthodox Blog so don't expect to find my podcast on Ancient Faith Radio. I started the blog a long time ago to practice writing and I kinda got excited about it again a couple of years ago. Sometimes you'll catch me writing to my friends from home because I forget that strangers are eavesdropping! I don't give a hoot about formatting beyond basic legibility and I rarely post pictures so I hope you like Garamond size 12.

My title, "Sweet beneath the leaf" is a bit from Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room.

The words we seek hang close to the tree; we come at dawn and find them, sweet beneath the leaf.

That's all! Husband is out in the glorious crisp September sun with baby, I've got to seize the day and shower.

*Could one of these ppl** be Auntie Seraphic!!!??
**When I spell "people" that way I intend it to be pronounced as the Monks of Valaam would pronounce it.

The Foolproof Soup Method

Soup, I think we can all agree, is awesome. Soup happens a lot during colder months, and for Orthies (as my little sister used to call us) especially during Lent. It is easy to make and a great way to enjoy random things in your refrigerator and to bring together enough nutrients to make a complete meal in one dish. Why am I telling you all this stuff you already know about Soup? Becaaaause, I used to have a completely distracted approach to Soup, wherein I just kinda threw stuff in the pot at random intervals and would often end up with veggies of diverse mushiness floating in a watery mess. But I got tired of that and now I have perfected a method of making Soup which I use so often that I just do it automatically, with results that everybody usually likes, even during Lent.

There are two really important flavor components in my soup routine. One is to use excellent bone broth. Chicken broth is very cheap, easy and versatile. I make mine in the crock pot (like so) with the carcass from our biweekly Sunday chicken roast. It's a cinch and hardly takes any time at all. I always include the neck (and feet if I have them, even though it makes the crock pot look like it is full of witches) as it contains gelatin. The silky texture imparted by gelatin is desirable and it is said to be a very healthful component of good broth. Of course this very important flavor Soup flavor component is not Lenten, (although I have seen on one exciting church calendar that during Cheesefare week you may cook with "meat drippings," so consult your conscience/priest on that one.) If I am cooking for fasters, I sadly forgo the broth and use water. You can make Lenten shrimp broth using shrimp shells but I have never really saved up enough to do that. I used to make vegetable broth with scraps but in the final analysis I felt that it tasted like compost.

That (what? compost?) brings me to the second very important flavor component: the spice roux. If you want your Soup to be very flavorful, it's not enough to dump paprika et al into the whole deal at the end and have them floating around aimlessly. You must first fry the spices in oil, so that each little molecule of oil becomes a flavor bomb. I also recommend grinding your spices fresh in a mortar and pestle if you have the time. Sometimes I don't have the time anymore. If you are a very observant faster you don't do oil on most days during Lent, so ... your Soup is going to be a little crappy because you can't use either of my tricks.

I do all of this in a big dutch oven that we were given as a wedding present. It's great to do everything in one pot.

Here is the order that I follow when making Soup.

1. Spice Roux
Heat your choice of delicious healthy fat (coconut oil, butter, lard, olive oil, tallow, bacon grease) in the bottom of the soup pot. Toss in any ground spices that you want to use (turmeric, paprika, cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, that kind of thing.) If you are using dried herbs, they can be fried as well, but fresh herbs you will save for the end. I stir the whole deal quite a lot over high heat (unless I'm using butter, which burns easily.) At first it will be a dryish paste, and after enough cooking it will just look like a puddle of fat again, but colored according to the spices you have used.

If you are browning meat chunks or reheating leftover cooked meat, you can just do that in this flavorful oil. The same goes for pre-cooked or soaked grains like rice or barley. If you are cooking meat that is going to give off a lot of oil, you can do that first, set aside the meat, and make a spice roux in as much of the drippings as you would like to save.

Sometimes I will put a little flour in the spice roux, so that the soup will become more of a stew. You end up with basically gravy and it's great.

2. Sauteeing/Sweating
Now turn the heat down a bit to sautee onions, garlic, celery, and/or ginger. You're coating these veggies in your delicious spice roux and then imparting their flavor to the oil. NB: I sometimes include the garlic in the spice roux, and sometimes I just dump it in with the veggies.

3. Things that need to boil
Now add your chunky uncooked vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli bits, carrots, parsnips, squash, what-have-you,) beans, uncooked grains (I recommend soaking these overnight as well if you think of it, because they'll cook more quickly,) frozen stuff, or noodles.

4. Liquid
 Add your excellent homemade chicken broth or water, salt using intuition, and bring it to a boil. You'll have to be the judge of when to turn it down to simmering and how long to let it simmer. Taste for seasoning.

5. Fragile elements
Twenty minutes or so before you need to eat the soup, throw in any greens that basically just need to be wilted, like kale, spinach, or chard. Cauliflower doesn't take very long to cook if it's chopped small. Any pre-cooked veggies can go in here as they just need to be re-warmed. Coconut milk or any dairy can be stirred in now to warm. Fresh herbs should be added right before you serve, or allow diners to garnish their own bowls.

Et voila, you will be hailed as a Divine Soup Giver.

I prefer almost every kind of soup with yogurt or sour cream. Bread is a must. (Have I talked about Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day lately? Even I can do that, and I have a baby and I'm a hopeless scatterbrain.)

Bone appletights!

For Hannah, who gave us this camera

The entrance to our apartment, in the back of the house.

Our little patio, which grows lovelier with every dead mosquito.

The front of the house.

Porch

Living room of the Man Upstairs. He is kind enough to share it with us.

The kitchen, which I am always changing. I like the galley set up.

My dishwashing view. Except I don't wash the dishes too much, since we have a dishwasher. This violates my principles of Simplicity and Elbow Grease but it does make life easier.

Um, this is out of place, because it's in Pittsburgh.

Me and bubs on the patio

The approach. I will die on the stairs, I know it,

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