bearing blog

Guest posts, coming up: Topic bleg.

I was in Colorado all last week.  Did you miss me?

In the car on the way back, I had a conversation with my husband in which I think I might have convinced him to make a small series of guest posts here on humble bearing blog.  

Ostensibly they will be on the topic "Weight Loss:  How to Be (Or Pretend To Be) The Supportive Spouse," with perhaps a small detour into "Who Not To Hire As Your Ice Climbing Guide."  

Just in case any of my readers were thinking of taking up a new hobby.

Is there something you'd like to read from Spouse of Bearing?  Comment on this post with questions, suggestions for topics, etc.  I cannot make promises about what will be covered (or when, really) but I'll pass them on.

Struck by lightning.

Probably my least favorite piece of Ohio religious art  was destroyed by a lightning strike while I was on vacation.  I heard about it on " Wait Don't Tell Me" and I thought, I wonder if it's THAT Jesus statue?  And then I thought, it must have been, or it wouldn't have made "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me."

I am sorry for the congregation of the mega-church who lost their giant Jesus statue, and I hope for their sake it was insured, but oh my, lightning?  

   

I always thought the iconography was all wrong.  I assume it's supposed to be a post-resurrection image, what with the wrong-sized toppled-over cross, but the pose reminded one of Moses.   Or possibly of a football referee.

Better to stick with the traditional forms.  And the non-flammable materials.

(photos from cincinnati.com by way of Amy Welborn)

Don't get too creative.

Marybeth found an article about "super foods" and asked for suggestions to use them:

The foods they list are:Avocado, Blueberries, Oats, Salmon, Spinach, Sweet Potatoes and Yogurt.  The article discusses all the wonderful nutrients in those foods.  The one thing the article is lacking are some creative ways to get those foods in on a regular basis, but I suppose they cannot really do it ALL for us, right?  

Creativity is overrated when it comes to eating more of something.  The exception would be if it is a food you dislike and you are looking for a way to disguise it!  

Take oats, for example.  There are, indeed, many creative things you can do with oats.  Oats can go in your meatloaf instead of cracker crumbs.  Oats can be substituted for some of the flour in almost any baked good, from bread to birthday cake.  Oats can thicken soup.  But if you are determined to eat more oats, the easiest thing I can think of to do is to make oatmeal a regular part of your balanced breakfast.  Actually, the easiest thing would be to eat Cheerios, now that I think of it, but oatmeal is cheaper.  While you're at it, have a cup of yogurt.

Blueberries, spinach, and sweet potatoes can all go into many creative recipes.  But if you want to make an effort to make more of each, just buying them and eating them is probably the most effective strategy.  Spinach is just salad, after all, except that when it wilts you can cook it.  Nobody needs to be pushed to eat more blueberries.  Either can be bought fresh or frozen.  I don't tend to make plain baked sweet potatoes much in the summer, but we eat them all winter.  And you can get pretty good frozen sweet potato "fries" at the grocery store now.

Fresh salmon is beautiful, of course, but not always practical for everyone to eat weekly.  The easiest way to eat more salmon is to buy it canned and swap it for tuna, or else find a really good recipe for salmon loaf or salmon patties.    If you're going for oily fish in general, though, sardines are even easier as long as you can train yourself to like them.  Open can, eat with fork.

I guess I could see some creativity helping with avocadoes if you're not a fan.   Avocadoes are ephemeral:  you don't know which day they will ripen.    Buy a lime every time you buy an avocado and you will always be ready for guacamole.  Or put chunks in any salad.  Or slice onto a sandwich.

Simplicity is the way to go whenever you are looking to add new things to your regular menu, I think; the more you get used to an ingredient, the more new and "creative" things you will think of to do with it.

UPDATE.  Check out the Alton Brown Sardine-Avocado Sandwich Diet.

COMMENTS NOTE.  I accidentally deleted the wrong double-post and lost the first two comments, but rescued them from e-mail.  Here they are:

Bethany:  "Very true. Plus the simpler it is, the more likely you are to repeat it. How about blueberries and yogurt on your oatmeal? Yum."

MrsDarwin:  "My favorite application of oatmeal is in oatmeal cookies, but I guess that washes out a lot of the healthy benefits. :)"

Frozen flexibility.

A reader emailed me a couple of days ago to ask about frozen vegetables -- whether I thought she could rely on frozen vegetables during the winter when she had reduced access to fresh ones.  When I answered that I thought frozen vegetables were great and that I eat a lot of them all year long, she replied: "I was really glad to hear that you used some frozen too... Just by reading your blog entries I never guessed any of what you were eating was frozen."

Well!  Obviously I need to clear that up.

Yeah, I eat a lot of frozen vegetables.  If you add up all the tomatoes, beans, salsa, and occasional sauerkraut, corn, and beets, I eat a fair amount of canned vegetables too.  But I probably buy 5-8 bags of frozen vegetables every week and eat most of them myself.  Even in the summer.

I'm not sure I could have embarked on my "obscenely large portions of vegetables" kick without the help of my freezer.  There was a time when I rarely used frozen vegetables... but it was back when I just wasn't cooking and eating as many.  The easiest way I know of to go from one vegetable side dish on the table every night, to two vegetable side dishes, is to add a bag of frozen vegetables to every dinner.  The easiest way I know of to have a big serving of vegetables for lunch is to microwave one of those new steam-in-the-bag vegetables -- you know, the ones that supposedly serve four -- and eat the whole thing yourself.  Goes great with a half sandwich.

The frozen vegetables I use most are pot greens (mustard, turnip, collards, and spinach); brussels sprouts; green beans; and stir-fry mix.   But I buy all kinds.  Most of them I just microwave.  Brussels sprouts and okra seem to do best if they're boiled (briefly) on the stove top.  If I have time, I like to saute the greens:  I know it says to cook them in water (and the directions on the collard greens say to cook them for a ridiculously long time), but it's very nice to heat up some olive oil in a skillet, maybe add a little chopped onion or garlic, and then dump the frozen greens right into the pan.  Stir them a few  times, maybe add a little liquid and cover the pan; in ten minutes or so they're usually pretty good, and you can liven them up with vinegar or lemon juice or  salsa or chopped tomatoes. 

Even though I use frozen vegetables heavily all year long, I always use fresh onions and bell peppers (unless I have home-grown bell peppers in the freezer).  I strongly prefer fresh broccoli to frozen broccoli, even though I do use frozen broccoli. I like the texture of fresh greens better too, but except for spinach I don't  think the difference matters that much.  IF you need spinach for calzones or spanakopita or a quiche or something, you may as well use frozen as fresh; when it's chopped up and well-cooked inside a recipe, only the most sensitively attuned foodies will even notice.  You can save some money while still getting good results by mixing fresh and frozen pot greens -- say, 1 bunch fresh kale with 2 bags frozen collards, cooked on low 4 hours in the crockpot with a cup of broth and some garlic or a piece of ham.

A common tip is to use fresh vegetables during the first few days of the week before they spoil, and move to the frozen stuff towards the end.   I do that, except that I add frozen vegetables to my dinners all week long.  The main thing that frozen vegetables give you is flexibility.  Since they won't go bad, you can always keep extras on hand and never be without plenty of choices.

Another tip for flexibility without waste, this one for fresh food:  Never be without a head of cabbage and some carrots.  Cheap even in the winter, these fresh vegetables keep for at least a couple of weeks--so, just like frozen vegetables, if you don't get to them this week, you can eat them next week.  Either goes with almost any meal: you can put carrots or cabbage or both in an Asian stir-fry, or saute them
with onion and olive oil, or just steam them and serve plain or with butter.  And of course they can be
shredded together for coleslaw -- isn't it odd that this "summer picnic" salad is made mostly of two vegetables that are available all winter long?  Raw  carrot sticks are a favorite of many kids, and one of my favorite salads is shredded raw carrot with lemon juice and salt.  There's a sweeter carrot salad with raisins that I have seen on many a picnic table.  If you always have carrots and always have cabbage, you can add a yellow or green vegetable to any meal at a moment's notice.  And for not much money.

Hearts of flesh.

I wrote this some time ago and didn't polish it, and haven't time to do so today, but I thought I'd put it up for its timeliness, as today is the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

* *  *

I will take your heart of stone and put a new heart of flesh within you. (Ezekiel 36:26)

And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. (Luke 2:19)

And a sword shall pierce through your own heart.  (Luke 2:35)

- - -

I am fond of Ezekiel 36:26 and use its language in petition whenever I need to tap into reserves of compassion I don't naturally possess.   I think we all intuitively grasp the meaning of the term "heart" in that passage -- it's not a literal reference to a blood-pumping organ, obviously, and we English speakers are surely familiar with the word "heart" to symbolize emotions, or love, or vitality, or the embedded core of something real or abstract.  And yet...  Are the English associations the ones meant by references to "heart" in Scripture and Tradition?  Why does Mary ponder in her "heart" and not in her mind?  Why does Simeon prophesy "And your own heart" [sometimes "soul" but often "heart"] "a sword shall pierce"? .  Why is there a pious devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary?  What is this "heart?"

Set aside what we moderns know about anatomy and physiology.  The ancients knew this much:  the heart is a bodily organ, necessary for bodily life, an organ in constant motion as long as the body lives.  Even if the "heart" has a symbolic meaning, representing capacity to love, or an inner core of the self in some way -- there is something fleshly about it. 

If so, it's quite different from the mind and from the will.  We believe that even dis-embodied persons -- angels, the souls of the dead, God the Father -- have a mind and a will, and therefore are capable of knowing and of loving. So if it's the mind that knows -- how can Mary ponder the mystery of her son
in her heart?  If love is an act of the will and not a feeling -- why do we represent the Sacred Heart burning with love? 

I think when we speak of a "heart" that can ponder, a "heart" that can love, we are speaking of something natural, embodied, enfleshed.  Often we speak of the flesh as being opposed to things of the spirit.  The flesh, our bodies, tempt us to turn away from spiritual goods and crave selfish things.  But
haven't you noticed that our bodies tempt us to love as well?   We have natural inclinations (for example) to care for our offspring, hormones that surge to reward us for nursing our babies, that overflow into strength and aggression to help us defend them from harm.  Could that be the heart that
loves -- the biochemical, physical mechanisms that urge us to lay down our lives for the ones we are attached to, that urge us to attach to each other in the first place? 

A body that tempts us to love:  could this be the "heart" we mean?

If so... this is a kind of love unknown to the angels -- a kind of love unknown to the universe before the advent of the human race.  God MADE this kind of love,  the love of the human heart; He did not possess it according to God's eternal nature.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit had no heart, no body with which to love as bodies love.

At least not until the Incarnation.

It is interesting to think that upon the Incarnation the Son of God received for the first time a nature through which He could be tempted by Satan in the desert.  Through that nature He could also, for the first time, be tempted by the flesh to love.  God's love is perfect and always was perfect; and yet in
creating human beings He created a kind of love that He did not possess, and that He only made his own upon His conception.  Think of the baby relaxing into his mother's arms; of the frightened toddler fleeing to the safety of his father's side; the grown man in justified anger, driving corruption from his Father's house; oxytocin, cortisol, testosterone; the heart, the body tempted to act in love.

Odd, but true: that even though the Son of God, being eternal, pre-dates the Mother of God, in a sense is His mother's own creator; but Mary's heart pre-dates the Sacred Heart.  All that it is truly came from her.  And so to take a pious formula -- to "flee to the shelter of the Immaculate  Heart of Mary" is to say, Shelter me where you sheltered the Lord; form my heart in the womb where the Sacred Heart learned to beat.

Heart:  the body that tempts us to love.

Creativity exercise.

MJ, weeping:  The boys say I need a name for our game but I can't think of one!

Me:  Can I help you think of a name?

MJ (sniffles):  Okay, but it has to rhyme with "black."

Me:  Um, Jack?

MJ:  NO!  It has to have black IN it!

Me:  Black-patch the Pirate Princess?

MJ (exasperated):  NO! It  has to be a FOOD!

Me:  Blackberries?

MJ:  No, because Milo is already blackberries.

Me:  Black Pudding?

MJ:  Pudding is NOT black.

Me:  Umm... Blackened Redfish?

MJ (makes face)

Me: ...

MJ (brightens)  I know!  Black Coffee!

(runs off)

(returns)

MJ:  Oscar says Black Coffee is not a food.

Me:  Tell him I say it is.

MJ (gasps excitedly):  I will be Black Coffee Ice Cream!

(runs off, doesn't return)

Monk's meal.

This morning I rolled out of bed at 5:45 to get my last chance for a swim this week.  I had to get back in time for Mark to leave for work.  I can't really exercise on an empty stomach, but I was rushed, so I sawed off a slice of homemade bread, buttered it, found a cheese stick in the fridge, and ate them up.  Not my favorite breakfast -- I like having an egg -- but it would have to do.

As I chewed my bread, I thought about a post I read yesterday by Willa at Quotidian:  "Bread and Pittances," about the daily diet of Cistercian monks.  The monks (except the sick) get bread and vegetables on ordinary days, and small amounts of eggs and fish on feast days.  Willa did a nutritional calculation on the monks' meals; the results may surprise you.

If nothing else, it should be a corrective for that twice-annual fast day panic:  "OMG it's Ash Wednesday, I only get to have one normal-size meal, I better make sure it's BALANCED AND HEALTHY."

Reality check number one with this:  Fasting is not about eating healthy.  It is supposed to be a mortification.  Check out the root of that word.

Reality check number two, a corollary to the first:  Clearly if we think our TWO fast days per year should be balanced and healthy, we must secretly be thinking that "eating balanced and healthy" is a penance, rather than everyday life.  Balanced and healthy is Ordinary Time, folks.

Reality check number three:  Check out that monk's meal.  Bread and vegetables.  And?  Balanced and healthy.  In particular, it's got plenty of protein.  These guys are living simply, but they are not starving.  They live every day on something that we would be worried we wouldn't make it through ONE day on.  Clearly we are messed up.

For people who are inclined to be concerned about "balanced" meals, it is really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you need animal protein at every meal to be "balanced."  I am no vegan, believe me.  I am pretty sure humans need at least a little bit of animal fat and animal protein for optimal health.  (And the Cistercians that Willa mentions do get this, just not every day).   But the longer I have spent living and eating my new life, the more I am shedding my Fear of Bread and the more often I find myself making meatless meals.

Sequelae.

I live far, far away from the Gulf of Mexico.  I have never walked its beaches and have not seen its waters (unless you want to count a single airplane flight into New Orleans for an American Chemical Society conference some years ago).

The kind of natural getaway that's within a day's drive of my family is the north woods of Minnesota.  Also beautiful and fun for the family, but not much like a beach.

So I appreciated this:   a brief, wistful description of the immediate effects from the BP oil disaster, on a family with kids, much like mine.

Noticed this at the bottom and thought it was worth repeating:

We plan on still supporting our beach towns by returning here throughout the year. Although we may not have been able to prevent the ecological destruction caused by BP, we can prevent the economical fallout and keep our beach towns alive. If you live nearby, I encourage you to do the same.

Civil War in four minutes.

We'll be watching this today!  

h/t American Catholic and  Never Enough Homework.

UPDATE.  Got more than four minutes?  Instead of maps and figures (as exciting as they can be) take a look at a primary source, found in this post from Ta-Nehisi Coates.  "Laura Spicer was sold away from her husband while they both were slaves.  After the war and emancipation, the two considered reconciling, but the husband had remarried.  Here is a letter to Laura from her first husband..."  

Read the discussion, too.  TNC's blog posts on slavery and the Civil War have, I hope, deeply affected how I homeschool about it.

Good, sturdy back carry.

Christy P showed me (via technology, not in person) a new way to tie a back carry, just in time for some serious hiking with my not-yet-sitting-up four month old.  Check it out -- photos at the link and a link there to some Youtubitude.

I wore Leo for a few hours the other day, very comfortably.  Mark hiked with Leo on his back for a family hike today.  Worked great.  Much of the weight seems to be distributed onto my abdomen and ribcage.