The Reasonably Clean House: Did you guess that we'd start in your bedroom?

Long ago, I challenged you to guess where I'd say you should commence your housekeeping.

Did you guess? Do you care? Do you think it matters?

I actually do!

Whether you are spring cleaning or just going through your normal routine (I know, I know -- well, let's work on it!), you should start in your bedroom.

And in the process, express your love for you husband in a hidden yet effective way!

Even if your "normal routine" seems less like a line with a starting point and more like an endless circle, I'm going to argue that you should think of the master bedroom as where you begin.

When you're a bit paralyzed by all you have to do, start there.

Random notes for the beginning of Holy Week, not exclusively about food.

In which I obsessively add "fill light" in a vain attempt to avoid completely dark pictures.

Lots of preparations for this week. Making lists is going to be my only hope...

What do you do with your palms? I would love to know how to make the beautiful woven crosses that you see in this picture of the Pope:

I still have lots of thoughts about the Pope's letter to women as well as on Leisure, the Basis of Culture. You know it might take me all year to get my thoughts down, right? I'm pretty sure it will be worth it, and if not, at least there will have been many work-avoidance diversions in the meantime, such as...
Pomegranate Molasses Butter Cake for the Feast of the Annunciation...

Last week's New York Times food section was unusually replete with interesting offerings, didn't you think?

In this same section one found olive oil matzos, which I want to try for Holy Thursday -- don't you think that would be so appropriate? How about sweet and sour stuffed grape leaves, which I probably won't try very soon, but it looks yummy; garlicky meatloaf, which just makes me think of meatloaf, which I really like; muhammara, which I might try with almonds, since walnuts make my mouth hurt; and the cake, which I knew right away I had to make, since I had gotten the syrup a while ago and enjoyed it mightily in salad dressings.

{Image a salad of romaine lettuce, red onion sliced thin, pistachios, and pomegranate seeds, tossed with a dressing of olive oil, pomegranate molasses (which is tart and sweet), red wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. Yes, it was fabulous.}

I like my heart-shaped pan, because a heart-shaped cake is always appropriate.

It's love and it's cake.

It doesn't work for a huge number of people, but it works for taking a meal to a family or dividing the batter between this and a regular pan. I've even just baked the two layers separately.  However, this recipe only makes one layer anyway, and there aren't many of us, so heart-shaped cake it is.

But, I always try to remember to line the pan with wax paper (just trace the pan on a length of waxed paper with the tip of a knife and cut it out with scissors). This pan is just terrible for getting the cake out after it's baked. Aargh.

I would say that this cake was most excellent. I might try fooling around with the recipe a bit next time, but it was very good and the pomegranate flavor didn't disappoint, especially in the glaze.

Thanks to all your encouragement last month, I've started my socks and am almost done -- with both! I'm doing them on separate needles. When I get to a tricky part, I do it first on one and then on the other. So hopefully my socks will be equally messed up. There are some mistakes, but you know, it's not so bad!

Reuben Casserole

My abject apologies to those of you reading this on Friday...it's so un-Lenten...
I can't help it...



It was a dark and stormy night, just as I told you it would be, so sorry for dark pictures! I made this casserole for the second time. And it is amazingly good.


The way it came about was that during Deirdre's spring break the week before St. Patrick's Day, she asked for Reubens. But the schedule was tight -- I wouldn't have time to stand at the griddle, flipping sandwiches.

So I came up with this recipe, since the ones I found were not sounding good (dump a bottle of Thousand Island dressing over a layer of bread topped with meat and sauerkraut? No thanks.)


Someone once told me about Reuben soup, which, sorry, I think sounds pretty gross.

(Sorry, I keep apologizing.)

The point of a Reuben is that it offers the perfect balance of cheesy, meaty, sour filling with a crisp, buttery crust.

Maybe if the soup had rye croutons... I'll think about it.

Of course, the perfect time to make this casserole is after the St. Patrick's Day corned beef dinner, but who am I to say no to the little requester...

It was so good that the other day I made it again Tuesday night, a night of cold dampness-- this time with leftovers.

It is so very good and so very handy for a supper that can be made in advance that I have to share, even though it isn't particularly Lenten (I have to say that some of you are far more abstemious than I. If I'm not actually eating ice cream, I consider myself as mortified as I'm going to get. Please don't be too scandalized by this relatively luxe offering...maybe you can make it after next week.)


Get some rye bread and/or pumpernickel. The first time I had a combination of the two, the second, just this sourdough rye I found at the supermarket bakery. Funny that it is all fancy, yet cost about $1.50 less than the Arnold Rye and has far fewer (i. e. less sketchy) ingredients.

Normally I'd use my own bread, but I don't often make rye, which is a must for a Reuben.



Cut it into good-sized cubes. For the two casseroles I made (let's say serving 6 heartily, all together, for dinner) I used 8 slices of bread, so for my friends with the big families I would say that in the past I would have gotten two loaves of this bread for one meal.

You will note the two colors of meat here -- that's because I had some red corned beef in the freezer (just a little bit) and we had "gray" for St. Paddy's. It doesn't matter. (I once made my own corned beef -- Julia, the things you make me do! -- and you know what? It tasted exactly, but exactly, like store-bought corned beef. Sigh.)

Trim off the excess fat, which will be obvious in the cold meat.


If you have it tucked away in the freezer, add some sauteed onions and peppers (about 1/3 cup here). If not, don't worry -- you could add a little dried minced onion.

Sauerkraut, one can.


Drain it but don't be obsessive.

{I wish I had my own home-cured sauerkraut, but I just don't think I know enough about fermented foods to try it yet. I know it's supposed to be ridiculously easy. I feel dumb! Soon...}

By the way, don't leave it out. Even your sauerkraut despisers will like it, if they even notice, and the trick is to present them with this completely irresistible dish and when they ask you what's in it, refuse to answer, at least until after they have had a good helping. Just say, "Lots of wonderful things. Try it!" They will love it, I promise.

Cheese.
I'm not a huge Swiss cheese fan (at least not the cheap kind -- I will go for an aged Swiss, but who would use that in a casserole! ...unless you happen to have some old dried-out stuff...), so I put maybe one cup grated swiss and one cup grated cheddar in the mix, holding back just a little to sprinkle on the top.



Now here's the thing. You need a bit of cream sauce for this, and it's not hard to make. The proper way to serve corned beef dinner is with parsley sauce (cream sauce with parsley) which, if you did (I happened not to this year), and were clever and made TOO MUCH, you would have the sauce ready to go for this dish.

I do encourage you to make a lot of cream sauce when you make it at all. It keeps for a week in the fridge and comes in handy for lots of things. Soup, for instance. Pouring over veggies that otherwise might be scorned, for another.

Enchiladas, pot pie (with some broth added), mac + cheese (if you are not making it Auntie Leila's way), scalloped potatoes...think how varied your menus would be if you had this on hand rather than making it individually for each dish.


Just sizzle up some butter -- say, 3 tablespoons in this case -- add enough flour to keep the butter from looking slick (no need for measuring once you figure it out -- in other words, get out your cookbook, make it according to directions once, and then memorize how things look for next time).



Then add milk slowly until a paste forms.



No need, either, for boiling the milk beforehand. If you add it slowly and whisk continuously, it will be "good enough for government work." I mean, we're going to add this to a casserole! It will be smooth enough. I think mine's pretty smooth.


Now, put some of this sauce into a cup to mix with ketchup and mayo (your very own "Thousand Island Dressing," only with the binder of the sauce to make the casserole moist rather than just oily).

I guess there is pickle relish in some versions, but I want to serve pickles on the side, so I omit.




The reason I don't mix it in this pot is that I know I've made too much (according to my principles, above), and I don't want to adulterate the leftovers.


Now mix everything together very well!


You want to put this into a shallow dish so that you have a good amount of crusty topping for each serving. Since there are so few of us (sniff!), I made two, one a small lunch casserole for the freezer. I'm going to see how it works to freeze it without baking. I'll let you know what happens.


Now you know that Auntie Leila is all about the menu. So here is the whole shebang:

Green beans, boiled until just crisp-tender, no butter or oil (since the Reuben Casserole and potatoes are so rich).

Red potatoes, quartered and boiled, mashed with a bit of butter. I've never cottoned to Yukon Golds -- I love the starchiness of these red guys. By the way, I highly recommend finding pots pretty enough to serve in. It makes life so much easier! I found this one at a yard sale...



Apple-rhubarb sauce, made last fall. Plain applesauce will be fine, but make a mental note to try this with your rhubarb next year. It's just fabulous.



Bread and butter pickles.




Reuben Casserole
serves 8-10 (mine was 1/2 this amount because there's hardly anyone here...)

16 slices sourdough rye bread, rye, pumpernickel, or any combination, cubed (but not too small)
As much corned beef as you can set aside after serving boiled dinner, or let's say at least a 2 lb. corned beef, boiled, de-fatted, and cut up into chunks (why not make 2 at a time?)
2 cans (14.4 oz. each) sauerkraut, drained
4 cups cheese (1/2 Swiss, 1/2 sharp cheddar)
1 onion and 1 green pepper, chopped and sauteed in butter, or 2 tbsp. dry minced onion
3-4 cups cream sauce (5 tbsp. butter, 6 tbsp. flour, 4 cups milk) mixed with
1/3 cup ketchup
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup pickle relish, drained, unless you are serving pickles on the side

Mix ingredients well, reserving a 1/2 cup cheese for the top, spread in a shallow baking dish (like a 10 x 15 lasagna dish), oiled. Sprinkle reserved cheese on top.
Bake at 350* for 20 minutes or until well browned and bubbly.

Strawberry rhubarb pie

Once upon a time it wasn't raining, and I took these pictures of my strawberry-rhubarb pie.



Later I will take pictures -- I will try -- of a casserole that you will not believe the goodness of.

But those pictures will not be sun-filled. They will be dark. This is not my fault, not that I would blame anyone or even complain, since I gave up complaining for Lent. I complained the other day about the weather, but it was a solemnity, so that was okay.

I didn't take pictures of how rainy, wet, flooded, and dark it has been, because there was no light for pictures, but I did take this picture of the Chief getting ready to do battle with the two sump-pumps in the basement:

Yes, he is wearing black plastic trash bags inside his wellies. That's how high the water was...which is why we didn't have heat or hot water for three days.

So you can see why I was so excited about making a strawberry-rhubarb pie when the sun came out! Who wouldn't be? Now it's pouring again, so we'll just re-live the pie episode, shall we?




You know, a lot of people are unexcited about pie, and that, Dear Reader, is because they insist on buying their crust pre-made.

Now, that crust you buy is not terrible, but it reveals nothing, nothing of the joys of a really good pie. I don't know how to tell you this so you will believe me, but a home-made crust is not a mere vehicle for the filling. It's a glorious, flaky, buttery, shatteringly toothsome delectability of its very own, well worth mastering. Please don't tell me the store-bought one is okay. You just don't know what you're talking about.

I remember my mother making apple pie, very rarely, when I was a kid. Maybe once a year she would be inspired to do it, often when my German uncle (my aunt had married a man she met on an ocean liner to Europe) was here on business. "I vant a rrrreeellll Amerrrrican apfel pie!" he would demand.


With an admixture of exasperation at his Teutonic presumption and flattered ego at his acknowledgment of her pastry skills, she would pull out her Betty Crocker cookbook and get to work.

However, she had learned from her mother the proper way to make a crust, and that meant that it would not really form a dough. It's true: the more flaky you want your pastry to turn out, the less water you have to use.

This fact will ratchet up your frustration level like nothing else, because by definition the crust will be hard to handle, fall apart, and generally behave as if it will never produce anything worthwhile.

The main failing of most recipes and techniques in this department is that they attempt to offer a workable crust, which is a taste/texture oxymoron. The more workable, the less like a real flaky crust it will be. You must resist the urge towards workability if you wish to succeed.

So there she'd be, up to her elbows in flour, patching up her pastry with one eye on the clock. He'd be there soon, and she was sure that this time, things were wrong. It wasn't going to be good. It wasn't holding together. It was a mess.

And each time, that pie was truly the most heavenly, crackle-y, apple-y, American apple pie you would want to taste. It had just the right amount of sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in the filling, with the completely gratuitous benediction of the little dots of butter slipped under the crust only after it was all assembled, because she had forgotten about them before putting the top on (and I still do that too; who can remember the butter when she's trying desperately to fuse little shards of dough long enough to transfer from board to dish?).

She herself would take a bite, and, with great satisfaction, say that it was almost as good as her mother's, which I'm quite sure it was and more, although I can't remember ever having had my grandmother's version. There is simply no way it could have been better. Uncle Walter would eat about a full quarter of the pie and opine that it was "Gut, but maybe not your best."

He only said that to be sure she'd be mad enough to try again next time.


At the very end of summer last year I froze some of the lingering rhubarb, thank goodness. I must say rhubarb is one of my very favorite flavors. It was 4 cups going into the freezer, but less in volume now, so I pretend it's really two cups and proceed.



Always make your strawberry rhubarb pie -- or any fruit pie other than apple, which simply must be made with flour -- with tapioca. It will be so much better that way. Use the recipe from the box (I cut it off and stuck it in with the new tapioca, as they didn't have the box kind at the store. I like this re-sealable container but I need my recipe). A pie thickened with tapioca has to have a top crust, but that's okay, since the crust is so good.



The filling has to sit for 15 minutes, which gives you time to roll out and patch up your bottom crust.



Pour the filling in, cut off the edges of the extra pastry, crimp the two crusts together very well, brush the top with cream, and sprinkle sugar (raw if you have it -- the large crystals are delightful) over all.


Place the whole thing on a pizza pan so that the juices don't get all over your oven floor.

Roll out the extra dough -- you will have enough for one quite undersized crust, which can be popped in the freezer, well wrapped in tin foil, for another day.

It would make the perfect crust for an impromptu appetizer like Spinach, Mushroom, and Blue Cheese Tart.

Or, you could sprinkle the bits with cinnamon sugar, as my mother used to, and eat them as a treat, burning hot from the oven, while you wait for the pie to cook. She'd say, "Well, I must admit it does taste good, even if it doesn't look right." Oh yes.



Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

Two batches of pie crust, which I have adapted from the Gourmet Pate Brisee recipe to use three parts butter and one part lard. (If you want me to, at some point I will give you a proper tutorial on pie-crust making, but you probably know how to do it already. I like this one for the proportions, which give you a fair amount left over. The Betty Crocker one is foundational, of course.)

The recipe from the tapioca box:
2 cups rhubarb
2 cups strawberries (whole frozen ones are fine)
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup tapioca

Mix and let stand for 15 minutes while you roll out the crust. Use plenty of flour, don't worry if you have to patch it up, just do so with a good conscience that you are sealing the tears well.
Crimp, brush with cream, sprinkle with sugar, and place on a pizza pan.
Bake at 375* for 1/2 hour (up to 400* if you have a conventional oven), then at 350* for another 1/2 hour or until the pie is bubbly and browned. Your pie can stand any amount of baking because the crust has no sugar in it. If the edges seem like they are in danger of burning, cover them with foil, but really, you should be okay if you turn the oven down half-way through.
Let cool completely. Store in the fridge if not serving that day or the crust will get soggy. Properly chilled it will stay delish for a week.

Bone of my bones.

If you would like to read the other parts of this series on What it Means to be a Woman, here are the links:
1. Lenten Reading Suggestions
2. Equality is not the deepest thing
3. In the beginning...

The last time I ever went to my beloved camp deep in the North Carolina wilderness, I think I was about twelve.

I didn’t go there as a camper –it’s a boys’ camp (very posh now, it seems to me; it was quite humble back then, or maybe I didn’t know about such things). I begged and pleaded until my dad took me for their yearly family camping weekend; we hadn’t gone there for so long, but it was a place that moved me with the love that only a child has for the places of childhood.

The deep woods, the cabins, the beautiful lake with the rope swing off the second storey of the dock, the icy plunge into the clear waters – canoeing, kayaking, even hiking which I was in no way suited for, being too scrawny to handle climbing and carrying a pack – I loved it all. Most of all the horses. The girls’ camp down the road had many horses, but this one had a few, and if you could find someone to take you, you could go on a trail with a lunch basket, riding. That was just bliss for this city girl.

Even though the counselors were too cool to notice me (and, truth to tell, probably too pre-occupied and tired at the end of summer to think much about these pesky people who kept them from going home), I revered them. They were so rugged. So knowing. So youthfully old.

The first night, as always, we were greeted with a hay-ride up to the top of the mountain for a fried-chicken picnic. I don’t remember the meal or very much else. I only remember one thing.

A woman was there with her six children.

Six. Children.

I think I had never met such a large family in person.

When I became aware of their presence at the family camp, I instantly gravitated towards them, and once I had gotten a clear look at them all in their vastness, I promptly fell passionately in love.

The mother seemed to me to be lovely: slender, pretty, with a very kind expression. Her children were all a blur as far as I was concerned, but they were shyly cheerful. They flocked around her like little chicks. On the hay-ride they nestled in together, her arms around several of them. They talked to each other; they might have made friends with other campers.

They completely and utterly ignored me, even the little girl who was my age. I could have been invisible, for all the notice they took of me, despite my best efforts to materialize in their consciousness somehow.

Yet, probably for the first and possibly only time ever, someone’s inattention to me didn’t make me feel rejected or sullenly hateful. I felt that they were perfect – just perfect – in themselves, regardless of how much they failed to notice me. I felt – again, most unusually – that they were indeed justified in acting as if I simply wasn’t in their world, because I was truly not worthy to be one of them, however much I longed to be.

I think they left after the first day. I didn’t see them again. I’m not sure what makes me remember them, except for the vision I had been left with.

Here I was, a little bundle of contradictions, all tied up in knots inside, no fun to myself or anyone else. I had a strong attachment to my mother and to my father, but things were complicated. I was getting stuffed to the gills with the kind of anger you encountered back then in the places I inhabited: protests, zero population growth, women’s rights, abortion, contraception, free love, God is dead, relativism, on and on and on.

They were vibrations that penetrated me all the time. I was too young to evaluate. I simply absorbed.

At the same time, I read constantly, almost obsessively, perhaps as a defense against this barrage of destruction. Unlike today, the destroyers of culture had not yet realized that it damages their efforts to leave the old books around for a child to find (now they simply remove them). So I read old books. There wasn’t much else to read!

In those books I encountered one particular doctrine that helped me along my path to finding God, and that is the irrefutable notion that good and evil exist and can be known, often through the wonder inspired by beauty (even though beauty is not always the most trustworthy guide. Still.)

It’s through contact with (I won’t say understanding of) this doctrine and its effects that I experienced an uncovering of faith, which took place after a certain point in my development when my mind was awakened to logic; and every step of the reasoning out of the existence of good – the Good God – was like a new layer of truth exposed for me.

And the vision that I had on that evening by a mountain lake, climbing into a truck full of hay, was of motherhood in all its tender glory. That vision fed a secret desire that I would never admit to all the career-demanding, family-scorning folks around me in those days, which was to become that person.

So, many years later, when somehow I was a wife and mother and unfit follower of God, it was with a sense of quiet recognition that I read John Paul’s explanation of the second chapter of Genesis. Not that I had had this knowledge before, but the gaining of it was a confirmation and a fulfillment.

Did you ever wonder why there are two accounts of creation? You are probably a more careful reader than I. I tend to assume that anomalies are apparent rather than real when it comes to Scripture, and don’t have the patience, very often, to weigh them. I’m sure that they can be explained, so I don’t take time to explain them myself. In any case, I hadn’t lingered on this one.

As we saw last time, the first account reveals the goodness of creation and the forming of man and woman in the image of God – a reality that bears much contemplation. So much so that, as John Paul says (starting in the third paragraph of Chapter III of The Dignity and Vocation of Women), the second account (Gen 2: 18-25) seems to provide an extended meditation on what exactly this can mean.

Because there we read that man was alone. Alone.

With all the uncorrupted beauty of the unspoiled, fresh, lovely world at his disposal to do with what he would (and remember, he had no bad thoughts as yet, so any idea that came to him would be a fitting, wonderful, and delightful one), he was alone, and God saw this.

Almost to drive the aloneness point home, God brings each and every creature to Adam for naming. Just think! Any account you’ve ever heard of the bond between man and beast pales before this opportunity for Adam to commune with nature, to embrace even a lion, never mind a dog or cat, as a bosom friend. To name; to give each thing its own identity – I think from our vantage point of disappointment and shame in the weariness of the world, this represents an astounding chance.

“But for Adam there was not found a help meet for him.” Something is missing in all this perfection. Something…something…what could it be? Adam wants to give of himself, and there is no one to give this gift to!

So God takes Adam back to a state of pre-Creation. John Paul goes much more into depth on this passage in The Theology Of The Body. He explains that by “God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept”, Scripture intends us to know that Adam, generic man (for Hebrew has such a word, where English has “man” for both the generic and the specific), is called into existence anew, as ish and isha – male and female, man and woman.

From all eternity God knew that there would come a day – our day – when people would get confused about what it means to be a man and a woman. So (among other reasons; I’m not so silly as to think this is the final word) He put this other account in the Bible to express this deep meaning about how it came to be that the human being would have two essential (as opposed to contextual, conditioned, arbitrary, imposed, or cultural) forms: male and female.

And when Adam emerges from this state, in which God forms Eve from his rib, he makes a significant statement in the form of his cry, “this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” – in other words, he says, “At last, I am not alone. Here is one like me, also made in the image of God.”

You see, we are taken, step by step, through the process of confronting the loneliness of man in a perfect world that yet does not contain another who is like and yet -- other. By himself he experiences aloneness. With the beasts he experiences aloneness. But with Woman he experiences “a fit helper” – a soul mate, if you will.

{And notice further what others have pointed out, that she comes from his side, to be at his side. Not his foot, to be beneath him, nor his head, to rule over him, but under his arm, to share in his task and to be protected by him.}

And they shall be one flesh. Here, at the beginning, we have the whole program of marriage, and we know it’s what God actually wanted, since it’s before the Fall: a man will leave his father and mother and become a unity of the two with his wife, and this is how they will make love manifest – being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth – with another person, the child, the only possible fulfillment of this solution to the problem of loneliness.

I knew there was something fundamental and refreshingly pure at the heart of it all. I had known it all along. I had seen it in a vision. But we’re not done. We’re only halfway there.