A Mystery In The Garden

This flower has appeared in my garden. It looks like a tiny daisy on a delicate stem, and it is growing on a plant that is about three feet high. It is one of the 3 mystery plants that have popped up, literally, in my flower beds. I love how suuny and happy it looks but it makes me wonder. What is it? Where did it come from? How did it get into my flower bed?

I'm not a zealous weeder. Or even a dedicated weeder. Or even a weeder, really. I kind of admire the lush growth of June and July, the exuberant will to grow and live that plants display in the summer. I have a hard time bringing myself to rip them out just because they took root in my yard. Especially if they are as pretty as this one.

Still, I would like to know what it is. If anyone has any ideas, or suggestions about how to figure out what it is, please leave me a comment. Tomorrow and the next day I'll post pictures of the other two mysterious plants who've shown up to live at our house. One of which is 6 feet tall and referred to affectionately by the kids as "our weed".

Riding the Range Once More

The kitchen range, that is.

The bread baking is going along nicely. I'm starting to get a handle on how much we need each week. It seems like making a loaf every other day is about right for now. The breakfast foods are still a work in progress. I still need to figure out when to start the bagel dough. It seems like right before bed, which, of course, is just about right after I've cleaned the kitchen from dinner. I'm starting to understand why bakers are early risers. Even if the dough is ready when you get up, you're still almost an hour away from bread or bagels. Biscuits are definitely the quickest way to go!

In other baking departments, we're having more success. I've never been one to buy a lot of packaged sweets, and now that school is out I'm avoiding packaged snacks almost entirely. As a result, I've been trying to bake the occassional treat a little more reliably. I'm aiming to serve dessert on Sundays, and I'm letting the kids do some baking too. So, desserts are moving right along. In fact, now that the summer's in full swing, I'm trying my hand at making pies! This week I chose to make this.





If you opened it up, inside you'd see it looks like this.







If I'd been quicker with the camera, I could have shown you a picture of how it looked when it was baked. But, the pie knife was quicker than the camera in our kitchen Monday night, so you'll just have to imagine how delicious warm peach pie with vanilla ice cream was.

The Good Samaritan and Me

This past Sunday at mass, we had the gospel reading of the Good Samaritan, from Luke 10:25-37. I've been thinking about it and working on this post ever since. I've got the first part of what I want to share written and up on the blog. Part II is a work in progress.

Anyway, on to the Good Samaritan.

Here's how it opens.

'"There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it? He said in reply, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." He repiied to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will live." But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" '

To answer that question, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. We learn that our neighbor is not just the person like us, but any person. We are to love everyone as we love ourselves. But what about the other part of the law, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind?" The scholar doesn't ask how to do that part, and Jesus doesn't address it.

This passage in Luke's Gospel is not the only time we hear of this law. In Matthew 22:35-40 we find Jesus with the Pharisees and "one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?' He said to him, '"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.' " And so here we have what for Catholics is the Great Commandment.

Jesus tells us in the parable of the Good Samaritan who our neighbor is. We can look to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy to guide us in our dealings with our neighbor. But what of the first part of the greatest commandment? How do we love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of all strength?

I don't know if Jesus answers that question anywhere in the Bible. I do know that I have been trying to answer it for myself for many many years. In fact, trying to answer it has been one of the driving forces in my spiritual life.

I am not a trained theologian. I am a Catholic woman, and wife, and mother. I experienced a great conversion to the faith I was born into while I was in my twenties. Up until that point, I had been a faithful Catholic. I believed in my faith and it meant a great deal to me. But I didn't think deeply about it, and I certainly didn't try and learn anything about it. In fact, I foolishly believed that because I went to all my CCD and confirmation classes (in the eighth grade!) and was subsequently confirmed I had been taught all there was to know about Catholicsm.

I knew, for example, that I was supposed to love God with my whole heart, mind and soul, and love my neighbor as myself. I just never knew how , exactly, I was supposed to do that. By going to mass and trying to do good and avoid sin, I figured. But was that loving God, really? Wasn't it just loving my neighbor? And, frankly, although I felt like I loved God, it wasn't taking up my whole mind or soul or heart. Moreover, it seemed like my experience of God was confined to weekly mass and saying my prayers. Most of life was taken up with, well, living. Taking classes, buying groceries, doing homework, I didn't see a place for God in my daily decisions and actions, beyond trying to live as a good person.

Somehow, though, I started to think, "Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there is a way to love God with your whole heart and mind and soul, and I just don't know how. Maybe only people who have vocations to religious life know how." And since my vocation was to the married state, religious life was not to be in my future. I didn't know it then, but that little glimmer of a question, "how do I do this?", was pointing me in a new direction. In graduate school I was blessed with an experience that woke me up and sent me on my journey.

I had started attending daily mass and one day a visiting priest giving his homily mentioned St. Francis de Sales and his book Introduction to the Devout Life. Somehow, I knew I had to read it. Right after mass I went to the bookstore and bought it. I read it and was captivated. It was as if St. Francis de Sales reached his hand out to me across the centuries and said "I understand what you are looking for and can teach you how to find it".

Home Again Home Again

Whew! We've had a busy 3 weeks around here. Since my last post we've happily thrown our annual summer party (complete with tiki torches and cotton candy machine), bought a new minivan, traveled to a conference (my DH and me) visited one grandmother for a week (the kids and the van), visited another grandmother and grandfather (me and the kids, and on the 4th of July my husband too) for a week, gone whitewater rafting (my husband on one son), and had 5 days of tennis lessons, at two hours a lesson, for my younger son and older daughter.

Now we are back and trying to settle into a summer routine. The luandry is under control, the house no longer looks like a tornado struck it, and we've even manged to get a homemade dinner on the table every night for the last 4 nights.
My goal for today is to make a menu for the week and then go to the grocery store. And just maybe download some music onto my ipod to jumpstart my rowing routine. If anyone has some great workout titles to share, I'd love to hear them from you.

I hope you all are having a good summer too. Now that I'm home I will be tending this little blog more faithfully!

Making Our Own Fun

Summer is officially here! It came earlier this afternoon, and I for one could not be happier. The sun is out, my roses are blooming, a warm breeze is blowing, and best of all, my kids are home with me for long stretches of unstructured time. During the school year, I spend a lot of time driving my children to school and to after-school activities. On top of that, there are homework assignments to supervise, tests to help study for, lunches and snacks to pack, clothes to lay out, baths to give, and in general a lot of real tasks that we need to fit in between the hours of "school's out" and "lights out".

But then comes summer, glorious summer, full of long sweet sunny hours when we can dive into the kinds of fun adventures that don't always seem to fit into the school-year calendar. You already know we're happily baking bread and bagels and everything else we can dream up. But maybe you didn't know we all are art lovers too. We like painting and drawing and even coloring (some of us love coloring!) and we especially like art supplies. In fact, we like them so much that we decided to try and make some of our own.

Inspired by Trish Kuffner's fabulous book The Preschoolers' Busy Book we set out to make our own crayons. Well, "make" may be too ambitious of a word, perhaps "mold" is more accurate. At any rate, this is what we did.

First, we got out the mini-muffin tin and greased it with canola oil. Then, we rounded up all our old broken crayons. Believe me, we had a lot. We peeled them, broke them into small pieces, and then dropped the pieces into the cups of the muffin tin. We set the tin in the oven at 350 degrees for 3-4 minutes. When the crayon wax melted we pulled the tin from the oven. We let the tin cool and then popped our new cool round crayons out.

And....They really work! When you color with them they make very cool varigated swirls of color on your paper. They are just the right size for little hands. And they come with great "Look what we made!" bragging rights, proudly exercised upon all visitors.

Two Breads Are Better Than One

This time I made enough dough for 2 loaves of bread, the night before we wanted it. I also made dough for bagels, but that's my next post. I used Mark Bitman's recipes for both doughs. Measure, mix, whir in the food processor, and presto-gorgeous, smooth, pliable dough! I have to say I love making bread dough. It's so simple and so satisfying.

I put the dough in bowls, went out for a board meeting, and punched it down when I returned. Then, I went to bed, letting it rise overnight in the bowls. This morning, I took it out, put ithe bread dough into loaf pans my little son had proudly greased for us, and had to let it rise AGAIN, because it has to go into the over risen. Otherwise, you end up with brick, not bread. (Trust me, this is the voice of experience). So, add another 45 minutes to the moring baking plan, over and above the 45-50 minutes I'd already planned for the baking. (We waited patiently though, and used the waiting time to form our bagels.) So, here's the lesson learned. If you make bread dough the night before and it goes through its first rise before you go to bed, punch it down and put it in a loaf pan. It will have its second rise overnight and be ready for the oven in the morning.

When the bread was ready, we slid it into the oven. Pretty quickly, the kitchen filled with the yeasty aroma of baking bread. It lured my older son down the stairs. He looked around the kitchen hopefully and then, not seeing any asked "Did I miss it?"

Well, no. Unlike the bakers at real bakeries, our baker has not gotten the knack of when to do what steps to put bread on the table for breakfast. When it was ready, at 10:50 am, here is what breakfast looked like.



What we make is delicious, but it sure takes a while.

Bagels!

After our success with the bread we decided to dive right in and tackle bagels. My kids love bagels. I usually buy frozen Lender's ones, but, wouldn't fresh ones be somehow nicer? Well, these enquiring minds wanted to know.

Here's what we've learned so far.Bagel dough and bread dough are pretty similar. Both contain flour, yeast, salt, a sweeetener (we use honey but sugar or maple syrup are also good), butter, and a liquid. The 3 main differenced between our bread recipe and our bagel recipe (both by the famous Mr. Bitman) are

• our sandwich bread dough uses milk, our bagel dough recipe called for water
  
• the bread uses 2.5 tsp yeast per 3.5 cups of flour and the bagels only need 1 tsp per 3.5 cups of flour
  
• the bread uses 1Tb of sweetner, the bagels take 2Tb
  

Like the bread dough recipe I use, the bagel dough can be (and is, at our house) made in the food processor. It is so simple and quick, you can have dough in about 4 minutes. Bagels, though, take a while.

After you make the dough, you have to let it rise. Punch it down, let it rest 10 minutes, and then separate it into little equal balls of dough. I used 3.5 cups of flour, which gave me 28 ounces of dough. So, 14 little balls, er, bagels-in-waiting.



Next step. Form the little balls into little bagels, either by flattening them and poking a hole in the center, or by rolling them into little logs and joining the ends to make circles.


Then-you guessed it-let them rise again. For about 30 minutes.

Next comes the famous 2 stage cooking process, boiling and baking. Bring a pot of water to a full boil. Drop a few bagels in, watch them sink and then float to the surface.
Cook for one minute, flip, cook one minute longer.

Then, fish them out of the water and place them on a rack to dry.

This step will make the bagels puff up and take on a funny consistency that is firmer than the dough but also sort of gluey. Don't panic. This is also what makes the bagels chewy.

Last but not least, put the bagels onto a cookie sheet and slide them into a PREHEATED 400 degree oven. I'm capitalizing to EMPHASIZE this, because otherwise you will do MORE waiting around. You've had plenty of time to preheat while you were rising, forming, and boiling! Bake for 20-25 minutes, and enjoy.

Which we did. My kids all happily tucked into the bagels, with butter and cream cheese. I heard "Delicious!"
and "Oh Mama, these are so good!" and "Thank you!" My favorite compliment, though? "These taste just like real bagels".

Why yes, they do. And they look like them too.