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Crock-pot white bean and spinach soup.

We had this crock-pot white bean and spinach soup for dinner last night and it was so good and easy, I had to share.

I altered the recipe a bit to suit my schedule for the day, cooking it longer, which is never a problem with bean soup if you ask me.  I did it in two parts.

While I was cooking dinner the night before:

• Sauteed 2 chopped yellow onions in olive oil till soft.  Added 3 sliced cloves garlic and a bay leaf and sauteed a little bit longer.
• Put onions, garlic, and bay leaf into small crock pot with 6 cups of water and 2 cups dried navy beans (unsoaked), plus a ham hock.  Turned on high and let cook till bedtime (about 3 h).
• Stuck in the fridge overnight.

In the morning:

• Took the crockpot out of the fridge.
• Added 2 tsp ground fennel, 1 tsp red pepper flakes, and 1 tsp salt.
• Turned it on low and went away for the rest of the day.

When I got back home 15 minutes before dinner:

• Added about half a bunch of fresh, washed spinach leaves and let 'em wilt in there.

Then it went into the bowls with a drizzle of olive oil.  No blending or mashing of the beans, no correcting of spices.  It was great -- the fennel and red pepper flakes gave it lots of flavor.  I served it with grated raw carrots dressed with lemon juice and salt, plus some sourdough toast.  

This one is a winner that may replace the classic "Senate bean soup" in my repertoire.  It was at least as easy.  I think you could have done it without the ham, if you were looking for a vegan version, simply by adding a little bit more garlic and salt, and maybe a dash of Worcestershire sauce to boost the umami a bit.   As it is, it's gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free.

I would probably have enjoyed twice as much spinach stirred in, but my children prefer their soup not quite so green, and so I kept the amount kind of low.

 

Tuesday, 2:50 p.m.

Hannah teaches prepositional phrases to the two 4th-grade boys.

The girls, having had Bible stories and narrated them back, are producing illustrations.  Hazel is about to ask me to write on this one, "Noah built this boat and his sons helped him.  And THE END."

They also finished pictures and narrations of the burning bush.

Milo, not currently being taught, asked for paper and glue and went off to another room, where he produced this snowman.

Meira finished the Latin translation exercise I gave her and Ben and Oscar, and went off to do her own thing.

 
 
 
  

Chai buns and a fruit salad suggestion.

I wanted to make yeasted cardamom-raisin buns for breakfast this morning but discovered last night, after loading all the other ingredients in the bread machine, that I don't actually have any ground cardamom.  Only pods.  Mostly I'm happy to have cardamom pods, but in a bun -- rather than in a curry -- I thought that might be a bit crunchy.  

(Of course, you can soak pods overnight in the liquid you're going to use to make the buns, scenting it, and that's probably preferable to ground cardamom anyway, but I couldn't do that and still get the pods back out, what with the bread machine and all).

The solution was not long in coming:  Chai spices!  (I still have quite a lot of this wonderful chai tin left).  

Just a half teaspoon of chai spices, plus a standard yeast-bun recipe (with apple juice as both sweetener and liquid), plus half a cup of raisins, and we were in business.    The resulting buns were tender and lightly scented.   I drizzled them very lightly with the sort of icing you would put on cinnamon rolls.  Very nice.  Currants might have been even better.

You have to spice yeast buns lightly, because some spices -- cinnamon is infamous for this, cloves too I think -- suppress the yeast growth.  Good to know if you've got a Candida infloration, not so good if you want spiced yeast buns for breakfast.

In other recipe news, while I was visiting friend and commenter Christy P in Utah, we had lunch with the little girls at a Thai restaurant, and were mutually inspired with a possibility for the autumn fruit salad problem I mentioned before.

  So, I know this is no good if you have allergies, but what say you to a salad of lots of thinly sliced crisp apples and pears, grated carrots, and either seedless grapes or raisins, dressed with a non-garlicked and extra-citrusy version of a Thai peanut sauce?  Maybe with coconut?  I plan to try this later this week.  (Maybe the peanut-phobic could try a sweet tahini-based sauce?  Dunno.)

The Nobel Peace Prize.

Even though at first I really, truly thought I was reading an Onion headline when I saw "Barack Obama Wins Nobel Prize" yesterday...  and even though I'm really thankful that skepticism about this particular honor appears to be largely (if, as is to be expected, unequally) bipartisan and not another cause for major, ugly division...

I think the Nobel committee are demonstrating that they're rational actors here.  It's just that their motivations aren't the motivations that people expect them to have, and the power they have to act is less (and more) than people realize.

The people of the Nobel committee do not, actually, possess a special power to identify individuals that have accomplished extraordinary feats to reduce world conflict and promote peace between peoples.  Even less do they possess the power to recognize less fruitful but no less heroic efforts toward that goal.  Any of us can do the same with a decent Internet connection.

Nor is the ability to give away a chunk of cash to a deserving recipient particularly special.  Lots of organizations and individuals do this every year. 

What they do uniquely possess -- and I am sure they are aware of this -- is a peculiar power to send a message of approval, a message that will be repeated in the world's large media outlets and so be sure to be heard.   And that's the power they are deploying every year:  the power to say "We approve of this person or this organization." 

They also possess -- again, this is a unique thing -- a certain moral authority that commands respect.  I don't know what the worldwide "approval rating" of the Nobel Peace Prize committee would be if you took a poll, but I have to think that it's pretty high and pretty evenly spread out, compared to other similarly visible global groups. 

The power to send messages will continue, I think.  But the moral authority, the worldwide respect, can be lost, or diluted, or restricted to a smaller group of sycophants.  I expect that it depends largely on people's perception of whether the messages they send are consistent with the group's stated purpose.

So anyway, I suspect the Nobel committee was (rationally, and in accord with their actual rather than imaginary special powers) trying to do this with the Prize:

(1) To send a message to the people of the United States that the committee approves of our selection of Barack Obama as president.   (Remember, they don't care that much about our domestic policy of any kind.  It's not really on their radar.  Think foreign policy alone.)

(2) To send a message to Barack Obama that they expect him to promote the Nobel committee's visible and stated and public purpose of promoting peace.

Nothing unexpected here.  Since we are dealing with an organization, of course, and since some sort of law states that every organization's first purpose is self-perpetuation, we can probably add this third purpose:

(3) To increase their organization's world stature and moral authority, by associating the name "Nobel Prize Winner" with President Barack Obama, a name they are betting will continue to be regarded highly on the world stage (not the domestic stage -- remember, you have to separate the two, we're talking about people outside the US here) for a long time.

Whether their actions actually give them the results they hope for ... we'll have to see.   But let's not forget the opportunity cost here.   They could have used their power to draw attention -- and attention means funds -- to some little, unknown organization that's doing great good somewhere, somewhere where attention and funds could make the difference between success and failure.  They chose a different path, a glitzier one to be sure.   The world rarely remembers the choices that could have been made, but weren't. 

(Next time I'll complain about the Nobel Prize in Physics.  I promise.)

Fruit salad bleg.

Please help me find an autumn fruit salad.  Preferably one with no Red Delicious apples or mayonnaise in it.

Look, this is my favorite fruit salad:

• cantaloupe chunks
• sliced strawberries
• halved grapes
• sliced kiwifruit
• dressed with a dressing of lime juice, honey, and chopped fresh mint.

Can anyone help me out for something kind of similarly fresh and enjoyable, only with fruit that's plentiful and inexpensive in the fall?

History and poetry.

In honor of yesterday's Feast of the Holy Rosary (née Our Lady of Victory), Donald McClarey of The American Catholic reposts part of Chesterton's classic poem Lepanto and links to a book review (by Victor Davis Hansen) of a one-volume history of that October 7, 1571 battle.  

Why not celebrate a feast day by reading history, and dabbling in poetry?  Sounds appropriate to me.

As I noted in the comments on McClarey's post, I first encountered Lepanto in the form of these four lines:

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath


(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)


And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,


Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain...

which were printed as part of the foreword of a paperback edition of Don Quixote that I read at age 14.  I didn't remember who wrote them, and I didn't know who Don John was, but they stuck in my memory and years later I was delighted to discover that Chesterton was the author, and with that discovery the rest of the poem.  I am a sucker for anything written in such a steady meter, I suppose.

I haven't disappeared, but I had a busy weekend.

With the help of a phalanx of volunteers, I ran the homeschool co-op's annual children's clothing swap this weekend.  It's a nice service for any parish that has lots of growing families.  Here's how we do it:

• People have two days to drop stuff off at the church -- used kids' clothes mostly, but also maternity clothes, baby stuff, unopened formula and diaper packages.  Shoes too, and coats.   No damage, no stains -- only good condition things.  
• Then volunteers come in and spend a few hours sorting the clothes by size and folding them and displaying them on tables.  
• People can come in and look over the clothing when they drop things off, while the folding is going on; or they can come before and after Mass on Saturday and Sunday.   Anyone can take anything they want, for their kids or grandkids or friends' kids or even for their favorite charity, for free.
• After the last Mass on Sunday, more volunteers bag whatever's left and tote it to charities.  Little kids' stuff and maternity clothes go to a local crisis pregnancy center.  Most of the rest goes to whatever charity happens to be open and accepting mixed donations on Sunday afternoons, usually Goodwill.  This year someone offered to keep things overnight so she could take them to a different local charity, which was fine with me.

I scored 6 boxes of clothes for my kids and myself (yay maternity swap), including snow pants and rain boots and some really great sweaters.  After a few years of this, I know which labels of clothes are going to last, and I take lots of those, always thinking several years ahead.  Oh, AND I GOT A WHOLE BOX OF CLOTH DIAPERS.   I can't believe someone else didn't take them first.  (There were two boxes, and one went right away, but the other box was still there at the end.)

I'm not sure which part of the service is more important to the families in the parish -- the free clothes, or the incentive to clean out their closets every year.  Maybe this year, with the economy how it is, it really was the free clothes.  Normally about two-thirds of the total haul goes to charity; this year it was more like one-third.  On the other hand, this year I stressed "please don't donate damaged stuff" much more firmly in the pre-swap bulletin announcements, and perhaps the overall quality of the goods was higher.  We didn't throw nearly as much stuff away because it was too damaged to donate.

How's that sourdough baking going?

Let's put it this way:  I am getting really good at making Melba toast.

I think my running days are over.

For now anyway. I tried to run on the treadmill yesterday evening and couldn't manage it even for a few minutes -- far too much round ligament pain. I had to settle for a brisk walk -- but even 4.0 miles per hour was too fast for me to sustain for more than about 20 minutes.  I backed down to 3.5 and completed my workout, really sore.

 Swimming's much more comfortable, but I have a feeling it would be good for me to keep on trying to do something weight-bearing, like the brisk walking, at least once or twice a week for the rest of the pregnancy.

Gratuitous belly shot for ya, complete with messy living room:

Not too shabby for 23 weeks, eh?  Mark says by the end of this pregnancy I'll need a trolley to cart my front end around on.

Thought my tea-drinking friends would like this.

Today's Wondermark.