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…and the couple that lives there.
This year Taido and I have had many discussions about buying a bigger house. We have even tried raising our house payment on our current house to see if we can afford a bigger house. We can’t.
My grandmother built a house a long time ago that has a big open kitchen that spills into a great room (it’s not a living room or a den…more a combination of the two) in which you could have just about any kind of party. My parents bought her house when she downsized to an apartment, and since then we have been giving that great room a workout. Meetings, showers, family gatherings and parties of all shapes and sizes have been pouring in and out of that house since 1980. We gather there every Sunday afternoon, eating Mother’s cooking and piling on the couches (and the trampoline out back). I was reminded once again last night that as long as Mother and Daddy have their door unlocked, I can rest easy in my 1600 square feet.
They let me invade with my crew for a great pie bake, which included but was not limited to, about 17 children. Stretching the countertops to their fullest potential we peeled apples, worked two pastry blenders, debated between butter and crisco, and baked enough gorgeous thanksgiving pies to spread homemade crust love to many a household. There was flour covering the door handle of the refrigerator, toys and legos in the crevices of the couch, a fire in the pit out back, and kids running around with coat hangers and marshmallows.
When one of my mother’s friends heard what I was doing over there, she said, Now, Julie, I think she’s a real darling gal, but she has just gone too far.
Maybe so, but they keep letting me come back. One of the many ways my parents have always loved me is to love those who come along with me, opening their doors to whomever I say needs to be let in.
I’m so thankful for them this week.
We are having a pretty low key Thanksgiving this year as opposed to the super crazy years we go to Chicago and pile like 40 of us in my sister’s house, cooking and eating until we all explode. I will miss the greater gathering, but the relative calm of this year allows me the time to think about what I would cook if there were children covering every inch of floor space in my little house.
I love to make breakfast, and it is even more fun to me when there are extra little bellies to fill and no one has to rush out the door to school. I will be making breakfast when everyone descends for Christmas, but if you have company this week, you might consider making this easy oatmeal which can be assembled the night before or these scones, which can also be made ahead. Of course you can always make pancakes or waffles, but for a special treat on a cold morning, here is one more breakfast item that is always completely consumed when I make it at our house.
I got up early this morning and made three cast iron skillets full of this yummy apple pancake. Every bite was gone by 8:30, when the last person left for the day. Cole’s skillet was already empty when I took the picture, because he has to be at school at like 5. Not really, but it feels like it! Get up and make it on Thanksgiving morning to fill your house with the smell of cinnamon and apples. Then your oven will be all hot and ready for your turkey.
Apple Pancake
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 large tart apple
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sifted flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons butter, melted (optional)
Put a 9 or 10 inch cast iron skillet in the oven. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Peel and core apple. Slice thin and sprinkle with half the cinnamon and sugar. Set aside. Mix eggs, milk, flour and salt. Beat with rotary beater for 2 minutes. Pull out hot skillet, drop one tablespoon butter in and swirl around. Pour batter on to melted butter. Place apple slices on top of batter, covering in full. Bake uncovered for 15 minutes. Puncture pancake with fork a few times, turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake about 10 more minutes. Remove from oven and pour melted butter over pancake (if using) and sprinkle with remaining cinnamon and sugar. Loosen from pan. Slice and serve immediately.
I triple this recipe and divide it between three random cast iron skillets. I could use one giant skillet but I like having the smaller ones so you get more edge pieces.
Sometimes I go to church and I am just there. Some Sundays I soak up little bits and pieces, trying to grasp with my hands the fleeting, holy moments as they pass me by. And then some precious Sunday mornings are so full that I feel like if Jesus gave me the Holy Spirit to drink in a giant soup bowl, I could not be any more filled with His presence. Yesterday was like that. I wanted to run straight home and write about watching the baptisms and singing to the Lord with gladness. I went to teach my sweet little 2 year olds with a tear streaked face. When Mary Polly and her friend complained that a particular testimony was too long, I said (maybe a little too emphatically) that it is beautiful to hear the story of how God has captured someone’s heart and sometimes he chases us for a long time before we listen and we should be willing to sit in church for as long as there are stories to be told of His faithfulness, because what else could possibly be more important! Is your mom crazy, her friend said with her eyes. Oh yes, Mary Polly said back with hers.
A couple of weeks ago we sang these words at BSF. They are from a hymn that is not even my favorite, but I guess after singing it over and over I finally noticed these phrases hidden in this one verse of this hymn, and I have sort of grabbed onto them. Writing them down. Singing them. Saying them to hurting friends.
Set up thy throne
That earth’s despairs may cease
Beneath the shadow
Of its healing peace
I love every single phrase. I have been asking God to set up His throne. I have been hoping for earth’s despairs…broken relationships, suffering children, violence…to cease. I want to crawl underneath His throne and feel its healing peace, its shadow all around me. I have come back to these words every time I have heard a sad story in the last couple of weeks, and they have been solace. And on Baptism Sunday, for a few minutes, as I looked around the room and saw families gathered to watch one person declare their heart for God or an aunt, standing with arms lifted in gratitude for the answered prayer of a sweet niece’s faith, I remembered the words Set up thy throne, and I felt that I was seeing it. His kingdom coming.
I wanted to come right home and write about it. But then I went to see The Secret Life of Bees. I cried for the entire movie, just like I did when I read the book. I had to take off my glasses because they don’t have windshield wipers. I wanted to reach out and hug all the people on the screen. I wanted to transport myself to that porch. To build a wailing wall. I cried and cried and cried. I was so glad I went with friends.
And instead of coming home and writing as planned, I walked into my house, very slowly. I ate a bowl of 44-clove garlic soup, drank a cup of honey vanilla chamomile tea and crawled into bed. At 8:30. I highly recommend the soup. And the movie.
Oh, and baptism. So glad she wrote about it last year, so I could just go on to bed last night.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Me: Hey guys, I’ve been meaning to talk to you all about Christmas this year.
Kids: What about Christmas?
Me: Well, we’re probably going to do it a little differently this year. This summer on our trip traveling around the country, we spent a lot of money. And…
Interrupted by Mary Polly: So this year instead of getting three presents like usual, we’re only going to get one present. That’s ok. All I want is…
Me: No, um, actually, we are…
Interrupted by Cole: We’re not getting any presents?
Ben: silent, eyes tearing over
Me: Well, instead of presents, Daddy and I were thinking that we could make coupons for each other. And you all get to make them too. I mean, we already have a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. Last year, I had a hard time figuring out what to get for you all because you have…
Interrupted by Mary Polly: That’s not true! I made you a list last year so you would KNOW what to get me. I wanted a…(proceeds to list off last year’s unfulfilled list from memory)
Me: Well, I think that giving each other the gift of experience instead of stuff will actually turn out to be a lot of fun. I mean, you might get coupons for things like media time. Or a special lunch out with Daddy. Or for example, there is a new crepe place in Little Rock called Lemon that is sooo yummy and…
Ben: I LOVE CREPES!
Me: Right, and it’s kind of expensive for our whole family to go there, but maybe you could get a coupon to get to go there with just Mommy.
Ben: YUM!
Mary Polly: Could I maybe get a coupon to go shopping with just Mommy?
Me: Well, I’m not sure. I will have to think about that, but in general, the coupons aren’t really going to be for getting stuff. They will be more about doing things for one another. I’m hoping that maybe you guys will make coupons to do nice things for one another. Mary Polly, you could make a coupon to do Cole’s chores for a day. Or to read to Simon.
Mary Polly: Or I could make a coupon for YOU that I will read to Simon.
Me: Yes! You are right. That would be a great coupon for Mommy.
Ben: But the coupons have to be a secret. We’re not going to tell right? Can we have envelopes to put them in?
Me: Absolutely. Then we can open the envelopes on Christmas morning instead of presents.
Cole: Can I have a coupon for unlimited time playing Madden on Xbox for all of 2009?
Me: (Ignoring currently grounded from Xbox middle schooler) Just because we’re not going to do presents doesn’t mean that Christmas isn’t still going to be lots of fun. I’m hoping we’ll even enjoy finding other things to do instead of shop for presents. Today Mommy was reading about some families who might need a goat or some chickens for Christmas so that they can have food to eat next year. Don’t you think it would be cool for you all to raise money to buy that for them?
Ben: I saw on Animal Planet’s website that you can adopt a bear.
Me: Well, we can all look around for something special that we could raise money for. There are lots of families with needs this year.
Cole: That’s the depression.
Mary Polly: Is Alltel part of the depression?
Cole: I told my teacher today that if I had 8 million dollars I would buy our house from the bank so we could own it, then I would buy an Xbox 360 and then I would give the rest away to people around the world who don’t have enough to eat.
Mary Polly: We don’t own our house!?!?
Cole: The bank owns our house.
Me: Quick explanation of the following: how mortgages work, Verizon’s purchase of Alltel and the possible ramifications on the Little Rock area and my super great idea for how the kids might raise money for a Christmas goat or something else that we will choose at a later time because it is getting late and we are getting way off track here. Ok, let’s pray.
Them: Combination of Simon’s usual clown act during prayers and the kids snickering at him and their genuinely sweet and heartfelt prayers for various other randomly discussed problems…people they know who work at Alltel, people who might not have money to make their house payment, people who don’t have food, etc.
For real. Those kids make me crazy a whole HECK of a lot of the time like when they are habitually not turning in school work, sassing me until I can’t see straight for the red flames shooting out of my eyes, hanging upside down on the bench at the dinner table and refusing to take a nap…but dang it all, there are moments that I just LOVE them so much that I think my heart might burst in two.
Here’s some cornbread to go with that soup.
My friends and I have sort of an unspoken battle going on about cornbread. When we do meals in community (also known as might as well feed all 20 of those buggers at once), we often eat cornbread, and every self-respecting Southerner has their own favorite, often passed down from their grandmother, version of this once staple food of the deep South. The gals in this group have this circulating recipe for broccoli cornbread that is frequently considered to be the best cornbread on earth. I’m pretty sure it first came from our friend Rhonda, who blogs occasionally. And I will confess, it is good. It is very good. I enjoyed eating it very much alongside my chili until one day, I accidentally saw a copy of the recipe. I say accidentally because I think I had a hunch from the taste about what actually was inside this cornbread, and I knew that I probably wouldn’t be able to eat it, much less fix it if I knew the real truth. But now that I have seen it, I have to limit myself to one small square of the stuff and completely skip dessert. No, I haven’t stopped eating it altogether. I just can no longer eat it blissfully unaware that it is pretty much half butter, half sugar and a little weensy bit of corn meal. I hear you all saying that it has BROCCOLI it it for CRYING OUT LOUD, so it must be healthy. But I assure you. The broccoli is only a disguise for the fact that what you are actually eating is a piece of cake. The problem is that I really like to have about 4 pieces of cornbread with my soup, so I would rather fix a cornbread that I know will not be causing heart failure anytime soon, one that I can feel good about dishing out by the plateful to the wee ones. And so if it is my turn to fix cornbread, I make this one. This hearty, made from stone ground cornmeal, not jiffy cornbread, browned to the perfect state of crispy-edge-ness in a cast iron skillet.
However, in the interest of full cooking disclosure, there is a small detail that you might not want to accidentally know about my version of this cornbread. It is this. If I happen to have some around, I use bacon grease instead of butter to coat the skillet. I am really ashamed to admit this, as I don’t really even eat bacon and I think that pork is about the nastiest imaginable meat. But I just had to confess. So I guess you had better measure your heart risks in case you’d rather have the broccoli cornbread, in which case you will have to hound someone else for the recipe, because I figure that at the rate my memory is going, if I don’t look at it for the next few years, I am bound to forget what it is in it.
Skillet Sizzled Cornbread
from Soup and Bread, by Crescent Dragonwagon
1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (I use half whole wheat)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup mild vegetable oil
2 tablespoons butter
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and put an 8 or 9 inch cast iron skillet in the oven to heat up.
Combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt.
In separate bowl, dissolve baking soda in buttermilk. Then add egg, sugar and oil.
Put butter in the skillet and melt in oven until sizzling.
While the butter is melting, stir wet ingredients into try ingredients and stir just until mixed…don’t overmix. Pull out skillet, swirl butter around to coat sides and pour in batter. Return to oven for 25 minutes, until golden brown.
I made this wonderfully hearty soup last week for two different events at our house and though I have no pictures, I am giving you the recipe because I’ve had several requests for it. I was introduced to this soup by my dear friend Karen Smith who I haven’t seen in oh, so long, but we shared many cold Chicago nights together and she is still shivering somewhere up there in the Midwest and I hope, still fixing this soup.
Upstate Minestrone Soup
1-1.5 pounds sweet Italian sausage (I use turkey), sliced
1 large onion, chopped
about half a head of garlic, cloves peeled and chopped
4 large carrots, sliced
2 teaspoons dried basil
3 squash (I use a combination of zucchini and yellow squash), sliced
1 small head of cabbage, sliced into ribbons
1 28oz can crushed or diced tomatoes
1 quart beef broth
2 cans great northern beans, undrained
salt and pepper
Brown the sausage in a large soup pot. (Of course, I used my new pot!) Add onions, carrots and garlic for about five minutes, until onions are translucent. Add everything but the beans. Simmer one hour. Add beans about 20 minutes before serving.
Serve with your favorite cornbread, sourdough or even dish over pasta.
I wondered if it would be as enchanting to be back in our second home for our fall camping trip. I mean how could three days ever measure up to three months? But I need not have worried. As others have already shown, it was a great time! I remembered this weekend that what was missing from most of our summer was our friends, and their precious children! Camping with loads of kids is full of the best kinds of memories. Even the battles are funny. Thanks to our friends and family for coming along with us, even in the freezing cold to fill up my heart with the goodness that is hot coffee around the campfire and no where to be for days. Even if we forgot cups and had to improvise.
My favorite quote…”HEY! It’s MY turn for the hot chocolate cup!” One hot chocolate cup among 17 children is a small inconvenience we will hopefully remedy next year!
So I’m a little bit addicted to this marmalade that is made by Stonewall Kitchens. Addicted like when I have a jar of it I will wake up insanely early to make scones for breakfast so I can have a little scone with my spoonfuls of marmalade and cup of hot coffee.
This week I think I finally figured out how to make a scone with all whole wheat flour. You have to compensate for taking out the fluffy white flour (the kind that doesn’t stick to your bones if you eat it for breakfast) by adding more butter. Like twice as much. So they’re more fattening, but in my world they are still better for you.
I have been working out my whole wheat scone recipe because in my brilliant mathematical schemes, I decided that I should save money by not driving to a store that carries this exquisite marmalade and then shelling out $7 for a jar that is so small that I have to hide it from Taido and instead spend $20 buying grapefruits, oranges and lemons and precious time and energy trying to make my own. The result is that I have about 2 gallons worth of what I am afraid is pretty mediocre marmalade. I used an orange marmalade recipe and substituted some grapefruits and lemons for the oranges, but apparently it’s not exactly an even trade. AFTER my huge pot of marmalade tasted a weensy bit like the crazy bitter flesh of a grapefruit, I got online and searched for grapefruit marmalade instructions, learning that while with orange marmalade you can use the entire fruit, with grapefruit, you only use the outer edge of the peel and grapefruit sections. Peel and discard the fleshy pith of the grapefruit. Brilliant. So the amount of sugar I had to add to salvage my marmalade was insane, because dear reader, you know from past experience that I was not about to throw it away. Hence the constant scone making as I am trying to pass off the marmalade to everyone that comes through the front door.
I still have about 10 jars left even after passing many along to unsuspecting friends, and because I can’t possibly allow myself to buy a jar of the original stuff while I am so heartily supplied with marmalade, I am tempted to leave these on my doorstep. The problem now is that while I was looking up my precious marmalade for this post, I discovered that it seems to have been devastatingly discontinued. So now I will still be tempted to try it again myself. And to keep trying it until I get it right.
Should you want to try either your own version of the marmalade or a whole wheat scone, recipes follow. You need to make something on which to put some of that marmalade I gave you. Because more is coming.
Three Citrus Marmalade
2 grapefruits
6 oranges
2 lemons
16 cups sugar
Zest the grapefruit and then peel and discard the white pith from the fruit. Then cut in half and thinly slice the fruit. Cut the oranges and lemons in half crosswise, then into very thin half-moon slices. Discard seeds. Placed the sliced fruit and their juices into a stainless-steel pot. Add 16 cups water and bring mixture to a boil, stirring often. Removed from the heat and stir in the sugar until it dissolves. Cover and allow to stand overnight at room temperature.
The next day, bring the mixture back to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer uncovered for 4 hours. Turn the heat up to medium and boil gently, stirring often, for another 30 minutes. Skim off any foam that forms on the top. Cook the marmalade until it reaches 220 degrees. Place a small amount in the refrigerator until it’s cool to see if it becomes firm. If it is runny, continue to cook it.
Pour marmalade into clean, hot Mason jars and seal.
Whole Wheat Cream Scones
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons turbinado sugar, divided
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 eggs, beaten
In large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, 2 tablespoons sugar, and salt. Mix well. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives. Add cream, vanilla and eggs. Stir just until mixed. Pat into two 6 inch circles and cut into sixths. Brush each triangle with water and sprinkle with remaining sugar. (Or if making the night before, roll dough into a cylindrical log inside of parchment paper and wrap in plastic. Then slice about half inch circles.) Bake scones on parchment lined half sheet pan for 14 minutes at 375 degrees. You can also mix in blueberries or some other fruit (about 1/2 cup), but since I am usually making them to serve with jam, I tend leave them plain.
Makes 12 scones.
it is the gift of an artist to help us see the things we don’t know are there. whitney has once again done this for me by taking pictures of my family. i flew in yesterday from LA, and the joy that these pictures are giving me is helping me adjust to the change from the california sunshine to the truly fall days we are now experiencing here in arkansas. (soup is on the stove!) and because it might be easter before i can choose one for our christmas card, you might ought to go ahead and have a look.
thank you so much whitney!
I am rereading Lying Awake by Mark Salzman for our Boxed Lunch Book Club* at church this week, and I forgot how wonderful it is. I am equally baffled this time as in my last reading at the intimacy with which this author portrays a cloistered group of nuns. First of all he is a man and secondly, they are cloistered. As in shut out from the rest of the world. Which is sounding pretty good right about now. But the cloistered life is certainly not without its struggles, and the ones that make up the life of Sister John of the Cross are beautifully wrought in this book. Though the story is in third person, the thoughts and prayers of Sister John are blocked and written in italics, interrupting the rest of the text. You can hear her thinking and praying, and the effect is powerful. Even in the middle of conversations, you are aware of her choice to bless someone with her prayers. Again, the author’s ability to both tell the story and be inside the head of a woman’s daily thoughts is amazing. Sometimes the italics are the prayers of the entire cloister, the reading of the daily offices or the writings of Sister John. In every case though, it seems to me that these words are the prayers of the saints, and that the rest of the world is depending on them. As I read them, I feel like I am riding on these undulating words, being swept up into the divine. I have been taking baby steps this fall towards incorporating just a couple of the seven daily offices into my life since reading In Constant Prayer this summer, and this story reminded me afresh of the power of allowing the The Divine Hours to interrupt the regular activities of life. Reading them or saying them or singing them can make the most mundane of moments sacred or the most harried of days peaceful.
*Our monthly Boxed Lunch Book Club meets this Thursday, November 6 at Fellowship North from 12-1pm. All are welcome.
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