Five Favorites

by Shannon

I love...

~1~

... this link up! Sooo easy and simple. Thanks, Hallie!

~2~

... this post from Apartment Therapy on Tuesday. It makes me want to actually finish the kitchen upgrades we started years ago. We're in style! We've got the butcherblock counter, the open cabinetry and the subway tile. The rest of the cabinets need painted (green on bottom, white on top), and we need to install the new hardware that's no longer new because it's been sitting in a box for three years. 

~3~

... Cruncher's new Easter outfit, which I bought a full month early!

And the children's consignment shop where I found it. I will be returning. Monthly. 

~4~

... sushi! Ryan and I have been abstaining from meat on Wednesdays, so we went out for sushi last evening. Doesn't much feel like a sacrifice, now does it? Oh, but it was sooooo gooooood...

~5~

... the Way of the Cross book I ordered for Cruncher, and the very patient bookstore owner and parishioner who helped me find it!
 

Go visit the rest of the ladies who are appreciating the small things!

Seven Quick Takes

by Shannon

"I have not been called to be successful, but to be faithful."

~Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

This is our blog's first dive into "Seven Quick Takes" with Jen Fulwiler at Conversion Diary. Knowing me, they won't be quick.

~1~

First off, this:

source: Catholic Memes

We will dearly miss him so, but he will continue to be an inspiration, which is such a blessing.

~2~

So, this happened tonight:

Yes, there was beer involved, but not nearly enough beer to justify it.

Speaking of beer, this is my companion tonight as I blog.

Ryan picked it out for me, this being his inspiration. Cruncher pretty much knows all the words to "The Saga Begins," because every 5-year-old Catholic boy should. 

~3~

This week is a break from school, so the before-and-after-school program asked us for $30 extra if we wanted Cruncher to attend a few field trips. I was thinking zoo (if we had a warm snap), art museum, science center. You know — the educational stuff.

Instead, he has gone to an animal shelter (not bad) and Build-A-Bear (pictured), and tomorrow is GattiLand. I repeat — GattiLand. For serious? It's the ghetto Chuck E. Cheese, and they call that a field trip? [Insert snarky comment about the public school system here.]

At least Cruncher likes his new bear, Nolen. (Yes, with an E.)

~4~

Got my boots! The brown ones are going back. But I'm getting the same pair. You see, I'm the type who examines things before I buy them, picking the item that looks least touched, and I refuse to buy something if there's anything that needs fixing. I always pull my groceries from the back of the shelf. So there are a couple things about the brown boots that aren't Just. Quite. Right. So, I'm going to give it another whirl. Kind of a gamble, but here's hoping. 

The black ones are great, though. 

Deets:

Cape: Vintage, consignment shop in town

Skirt, H&M, consignment shop in town

Tights: Target

Boots: Report, Zappos

Since it's the end of the season, I also bought a new coat. It's actually more of a fall-jacket weight, but I prefer my coats light for layering. 

I'm pleased as punch with it, and I've been able to test it out in the cold this week, since we had flurries twice! I was perfectly warm.

Deets:
Coat: Daughters of the Liberation, consignment shop in town

It was $30, and I gather the brand is sold by Anthropologie, so I'm pretty sure I got an amazing deal, especially since it looks as if it's never been worn.

~5~

I'm ahead of schedule on Easter prep because I'm actually using my planner this year. I'm usually scrambling through Holy Week, so I'm feeling pretty confident. We do a family basket instead of individuals, and I always fill it with books, so I went ahead to our favorite local book store yesterday to pick up everything. I can't enter that store without spending at least $20, and I found a couple additional non-religious books to give to Cruncher yesterday:

Cruncher's teacher has encouraged non-fiction stories since November, so the Ben Franklin book for $1 was a good find. Also, Ryan's had his eye on the Merriam-Webster Pictorial Dictionary for Cruncher, but thinks he might yet be too young for it. When I found this Mother Goose in Hieroglyphics book for $1.50, I knew Ryan would get a kick out of it. He actually said, "Oh, yay!" when I showed it to him. There's a key in the back to answer the picture riddles, so it'll be fun to see if we can guess the right words for the rhythms and rhymes. Also, Cruncher should be able to read most of the printed words on his own.

Next items on my Easter Preparation List: Cruncher's outfit (he wants a mis-matched suit), DIY plans for a door wreath and some sort of sacred artwork. I'm hoping for a new Stations of the Cross picture or a vintage icon of the Last Supper. I'd also like to get our front door painted before spring and start working on the garden around St. Patrick's Day.

~6~

It's Friday afternoon, and you realize you didn't plan head for your meatless meal. No worries — if you have a carton of eggs, you can make a frittata! A frittata is a fantastic way to clean out your fridge, getting rid of anything and everything that's about to go bad, or known as "borderline" in our house (commence singing Madonna here). Ryan and I love to serve frittata with tasty things, though, as we did this past Sunday. Here's the step-by-step, but you actually can use just about any combination of cheese, veggies and meat (or no meat) that you please.

Ingredients: Italian mix of shredded cheese, spinach (1 bag frozen or fresh), 9 eggs, 4 or 5 green onions, 4 oz. of goat cheese, 1/2 a cup of sun-dried tomatoes and 4 oz. of mushrooms

Heat an oven-safe skillet with a couple tablespoons of olive oil on a medium heat, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Wash the mushrooms, and slice them (unless you're lazy — ahem! — resourceful like me and bought the pre-sliced ones). Chop the white and light green part of 4 or 5 green onions and about half a cup of sun-dried tomatoes. 

Throw the veggie mixture in the skillet, and sauté until the mushrooms are a little soft. At this point, I added some pre-cooked breakfast sausage, but it's optional. Sauté until everything was warmed through. While this is going on, chop up the rest of your green onion, then throw the spinach and green onion in the skillet. The spinach is fluffy, so I threw a random lid on top to help steam the spinach. 

While the spinach is shrinking down, crack nine eggs in a mixing bowl, and pour in 2 or 3 tablespoons of half and half, milk or cream. Then throw in about 4 oz. of shredded cheese (I prefer white cheeses when including goat cheese), and whisk it up until mixed. 

The spinach should be shriveled up, so pour the egg mixture on top. Use a spatula to pull up the fried mixture so the eggs can seep underneath. No need to mix and swirl it. Crumble the goat cheese all along the top, like your dressing a pizza, and sprinkle some pepper up top. As it cooks, run your spatula along the edges of the skillet to keep it from sticking. When the entire thing is about halfway set (to where it's no longer liquidy, but the mixture still jiggles like jello when you shake the skillet), throw it in the oven for 13-15 minutes. 

Ta da! You'll know it's finished when it's a little brown around the edges and no longer jiggly.

Since our frittata was dinner for guests (though it would make a fantastic breakfast), we served some local truffles and caramels, toasted French bread, blueberries and cheeses. 

And a few pictures of our Sunday guests, Isaac and Tenille with their sweet children:

Our most recently baptized Godson, Little Bear.

I think Isaac was more than a little pleased to see Boo-Boo so enthralled with Cruncher's Star Wars toys.

A couple years back, we first met Isaac and Tenille was with Boo-Boo at our favorite bookstore. As all six of us hung out in the Catholic section, Isaac turned to us and said, "Do you go to St. Martin"? Why, yes we do.

Visit again soon!

~7~

I was talking about veiling with Ryan today, and it's just ridiculous that I care so much about what people think. I'm judging people for judging me, when I should be giving people the benefit of the doubt. After all, "You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could only know how seldom they do" (source). I need to remove the pressure to be successful in everything I do and not claim the power to control things. Trust God, and be the best version of me I can be.

"Blessed is the servant that does not think himself any better when people make much of him and exalt him than when they consider him worthless, ordinary and contemptible. For what a person is before God, so much he is, and no more."

~St. Francis of Assisi

A Sorrowful Christmas

by Ryan


One of the litany of stereotypes against Catholics is that we are joyless and even that we make a funeral out of our religion. Ironically, I just deleted a post trying to defend against these ideas, but it never felt like it came together. Maybe there's a reason for that ... perhaps a topic for another time.

What may strike the (practicing) Catholic as interesting is that tomorrow, the beginning of the Christmas season for us, also coincides with the Sorrowful Mysteries as prayed in the Rosary. These include: The Agony in The Garden, The Scourging at The Pillar, The Crowning with Thorns, The Carrying of The Cross, and The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus Christ. These are probably among the last things the average person observing Christmas wants to think about on what has came to be known as a joyous day. Even the likes of Penn Jillette recently chimed in on why Christmas is for everyone, even the non-religious:

"And I don't care if you're talking about Walgreens, if you're talking about sending out Christmas cards or your setting up something on a town square. Why do you want to leave people out? ... Why do that? What's your motive? And trying to turn around a 'we want to leave you out' into 'why are you forcing us to not have our joy' is insanity. It's backwards"

Personally, I agree quite a bit with Jillette, though there are plenty of other non-believers that are not friendly to the season in any capacity. And, sure, there are some believers that would like to draw a line in the snow (what snow?) between their observance and the observance of the non-religious. This observer often thinks that how the average Christian and the average Atheist celebrate Christmas are just about one and the same, in terms of their real reason for celebrating at all — to get some really cool gifts and to spend time with loved ones, with just the slightest reference to religion.

In getting back to the matter at hand: Why would one want to make a season like Christmas the least bit sorrowful? I have no answer for the non-believer in this regard — they have liberty to celebrate the season as they will. But for the Christian, we cannot forget the very serious reason why Jesus "was made flesh, and came to dwell among us" (Jn. 1:14) — to save us from our sins.

The text of the Exsultet, found in the Church's readings for the Easter Vigil, contains a text that sums up the joyful and sorrowful aspects of Christmas perfectly:

"O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!" or "O happy fault, that merited such and so great a redeemer!"

This "happy fault," resulted in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ at conception, continued at His Nativity, or birth, and was fulfilled with His death and resurrection. The Nativity is just one in a chain of events that led to the redemption of mankind. And, indeed it is a happy fault — a paradox, as is true with many things in the Christian religion. The Venerable Fulton Sheen illustrates this beautifully in his Life of Christ, which is worth obtaining a copy to read this passage in it's entirety:

"In the filthiest place in the world, a stable, purity was born ... He, who would call Himself 'the living bread descended from Heaven,' was laid in a manger, literally, a place to eat ... the stable would be the last place in the world where one would have looked for him. ... No worldly mind would ever have suspected that He Who could make the sun warm the earth would one day have need of an ox and an ass to warm him with their breath ... that He, from Whose hands came planets and worlds, would one day have tiny arms that were not long enough to touch the huge heads of the cattle ... for God to be homeless at home- that could only mean one thing to the worldly mind: the Babe could not have been God at all. And that is just why it (the world) missed Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it." (pp. 13-14)

My Christian friends, take time to meditate on the paradox of the Christmas season. Find the quietest place, and the quietest time, at the least important hour for your meditation. Take a moment to be cold, hungry and forgotten, even if only in your mind. In short — reflect on the first Christmas, reflect on your Christmas, and discover the meaning of meekness from your God at his most helpless moment in life.

Albrecht Altdorfer- Nativity (1513)

Pope-pourri No. 3

by Ryan

I spent four days on an article that I decided to scrap, so I thought some "pope-pourri" might be useful to freshen things up. (Ba-dum-chhhh...)

———

I recently bought my friend Isaac a drink the other evening and, as always, had an interesting conversation. Isaac is a new homeowner, and he bought a fixer-upper with plenty of character. Besides the more obvious task of cleaning the place, some repair and maintenance has been performed to get the house in good shape for moving day. The house has two chimneys, and neither has been used for years (the house itself was abandoned for two years previous to their purchase). When a chimney sweep came out to check the place, he discussed the possibility of a certain species of birds that might live in Isaac's chimney. They love to latch onto stone, and old fireplaces are a perfect alternative. Thankfully, no nests or eggs were found — thus, no birds.

What Isaac was told next is enough to make anyone (with a functioning conscience) cringe: If the birds had eggs in the chimney, and one of the eggs were moved, the fine would be fifteen ... thousand ... dollars.

"And yet, abortion is legal," Isaac's singular comment sucked the air out of my lungs.

Welcome to earth in 2012: where human life is regarded as so much trash, but the life of a bird is sacred. Isaac's (currently) inactive blog is full of great, heady reads. I recommend it highly.

Do these eggs have more value than human life?

———

Since my summer reading days are dwindling down, I have been trying to fit in some extra reading lately:

• Heaven, The Heart's Deepest Longing By Peter Kreeft. I am only in the introduction thusfar, but I hope to report back on this one soon.
• Meno by Plato. For those not familiar with the work, it is a typically formatted Platonic dialogue, the subject being "What is virtue?" The reader, Chiquito Crasto (what a name!), provides a fascinating introduction that includes changing philosophical views on virtue, the soul (thought by Socrates to be immortal) and Greek thought in general.
• The Bad Catholic's Guide to Wine, Whiskey and Song by John Zmirak (recipes by Denise Matychowiak). This encyclopedic guide looks at world history, food and drink from a Catholic perspective, and contains many humorous moments from it's primary author John Zmirak: 

We're told that in Ethiopian homes, a hostess traditionally balls up the food for each of her guests and pops it in his mouth. ... How many of us have wished, while serving dinner to various crank friends we've collected like lint balls over the years, that we could interrupt someone's monologue about the Middle East, Vatican II or "the aliens frozen in the cellars of the Vatican" by stuffing their thundering pie holes with a bread roll. ... The next time you find yourself faced with hosting cantankerous cousins, or conspiracy theorists from your charismatic choir, you should announce: "Tonight, we're eating Ethiopian style!'" (pg. 297)

Truly one of the funniest, but more informative, books I have had the pleasure to read. Thanks to Bobby and Gwenny recommending the book! Zmirak is also an occasional columnist for Crisis Magazine.

———

Count our household among the many that have been adversely affected by Firefox no longer wishing to play nice with OS 10.4 and below. Many of the links I used for reference are now lost to me, and I am slowly piecing back this collection on Safari. One of the blogs that I was overjoyed to remember is by Edward Feser. If you are wishing to tell Edward Feser that Aristotelian-Thomistic is somehow dead and no longer valid, well, you are probably looking to get schooled. Skeptics read his website at their peril. His most recent topic? Teleology, or the idea that final causes exist in nature. He has also written several books, including Aquinas, which purports to be a primer on Aquinas, and The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. 

———

Cruncher preparing some corn for grilling.

Oude Geuze Boon: nice and dry, but a little too acidic.

Dinner on July 4th, including grilled corn, homemade potato wedges 
and chicken brats.

Found at a toy store in Columbus, Indiana. 
Everyone looks so happy to be in the Coliseum! Yay!