Preparing for St. Patrick’s Day

A very good friend of mine is a transplant from Ireland. She and her husband have lived in the States for over 30 years, but I imagine that they miss some of the comforts of home. Last year, my daughters and I wanted to do something special for them for St. Patrick’s Day, so I decided that we would make them some Irish Soda Bread and take them a potted shamrock plant. Super cute, right? The thing about it is, though, that I have NO IDEA what a traditional Irish Soda Bread should taste like, and when I looked on the internet, there were about a bazillion different recipes, all claiming to be “just like grandma used to make.”

From what I could gather, soda breads vary from family to family. Some recipes use caraway seeds. Some recipes call for raisins, others for golden raisins. After about 15 minutes of searching, I wasn’t any closer to finding the “perfect” soda bread recipe. So I did what any good cook would do… I blindly chose one. It seemed easy and didn’t have any caraway seeds, which have a strong flavor, but it did call for golden raisins, which seemed a little more exotic than just plain purple ones. During Violet’s nap, Mazie and I set up a bread-making station in the kitchen and went to work. It’s great cooking with a 3-year-old. No, really. But after the flour incident that left the kitchen dusted in soft, white powder, we threw our loaf in the oven and waited. It plumped up nicely and cooked to a golden brown, and while it was still warm, we wrapped it in a tea towel, woke up the baby, and headed over to Gemma and Ed’s.

I was so pleased with myself until about half way over to their house. Then, I was seized with panic. I remembered that I have NO IDEA what soda bread is. What if I had made this one completely wrong? I only made one loaf so I didn’t even taste it. What was I thinking?! I was instantly transported back to my first year living in Austria, when friends of mine took me out for “Mexican” food. After a long winter away from Southern California, the idea of Mexican food literally brought tears to my eyes. I needed a burrito. My soul was calling out for some beans. And salsa. When the waitress brought my chicken burrito with beans, on my plate sat a cold flour tortilla, open, with strips of grilled chicken and green beans. Green. Beans. No salsa. No refried beans. Cold tortilla. What if my little warm bundle of soda bread was just like that cold un-burrito? Well, I thought, at least my kids are cute and wearing green shirts. That has to count for something, right?

As luck (of the Irish?) would have it though, Gemma said that our soda bread was great and very authentic. She made us tea and shared the bread, and even brought out the good Irish butter. So this year, again, we’ll make our little bread and deliver it to our friends. If you’re a fan of a good, homemade bread, try it this St. Patrick’s Day. Set your Pandora station to Irish music, and enjoy!

Irish Soda Bread

1 package (1/4 oz) dry yeast

3 Tablespoons sugar, divided

1/2 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)

1 cup warm buttermilk

2 Tablespoons butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3 1/2 – 4 cups flour

3/4 cup golden raisins

Directions:

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add 1 tablespoon sugar; let stand for 5 minutes. Beat in the buttermilk, butter, salt, baking soda, 1 cup flour and remaining sugar until smooth. Stir in raisins and enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.
Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 40 minutes.
Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; knead for 2 minutes. Shape into a round loaf. Place on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. With a sharp knife, cut a 1/4-in.-deep cross on top of loaf.
Bake at 350° for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pan to cool on a wire rack. Yield: 1 loaf (12 slices).

The Pieces of My Heart

Yesterday our pastor, Father Mike, came to talk to the adult formation class. He was supposed to have a list of questions to answer, but he left it at home. So instead, he asked “Does anyone have anything they want to ask?”

One of the dads said “Sure” and opened up the can of gay marriage.

At which point, most people screwed themselves down into their seats. I know I did. When religious folk start talking about gay marriage, I listen fearfully, waiting for them to say the thing that means I have to get up and walk out, the thing that breaks tiny pieces off my heart.

Those pieces have names, children I have known and taught. Most of their faces blend down into one specific child, bullied into cutting precisely spaced lines up both his arms.

Three of those pieces belong to good friends, married almost as long as Shea and me, and their sweet son, who they had to fight to get baptized in a Catholic church. They are good moms, with a strong devotion to Mary, like most Catholic moms. They try to go to Mass every week, but sometimes the tension is too much.

Two pieces belong to distant cousins, together for almost fifteen years.

And two to the couple who have lived next door to my parents for over twenty.

Four to the family down the street, with their sweet and wonderful daughters.

One to a dear friend who is a fierce defender of our faith and also gay and drinks far too much to reconcile those two truths in his life.

So when people of God rail angrily against the dangers and threats of gay marriage, I want to hold these pieces of my heart up and say “But what about them? They are beloved children of God too. And we are hurting them in God’s name. We are turning them away. How can this be right?”

But it wasn’t like that yesterday. No fire and brimstone. No black and white. And best of all, no anger.

Father Mike explained the church’s position clearly, and the biblical basis for definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. He delineated between legal marriage and sacramental marriage. He revisited the church’s position on the sanctity of life and the way we are called to treat all people with love and kindness.

But then he said the thing that I have been waiting for a priest to say. I don’t remember his exact words but here’s the gist:

“This is a tough issue. And we have to struggle with it. It’s not enough to simply say one thing or the other. We have to engage it and pray over it and look to the Word of God.

Because we have these people in our lives who are good and we love them. So we have to understand that it’s messy.”

It’s messy.

Shea and I stand apart from our church on homosexuality. We struggled with it. We prayed. We saw the people that God walked through our lives and we know that love does not come from evil. We contemplated leaving the church. We walked out of Mass when priests preached hellfire and brimstone and sanctioned bullying. We wrote letters to the bishop to complain.

We decided to stay.

We decided to choose love.

Love for our friends and family and their relationships. We witness and support their commitments, and share the struggles of marriage and parenting.

Love for anyone searching for who they are. I always tried to be a safe and soft place for my students to land when they were wrestling with life. Now we try to be safe and soft as a family.

Love for the goodness of the church, for our faith and traditions.

Love for the humility of Pope Francis and Father Mike who remind us that it’s messy.

I asked Father Mike yesterday if my friends would be welcome to sit in his church, as a family. To raise their son as a Catholic.

And he said yes. Because of the sanctity of life. Because we shouldn’t keep anyone from a relationship with God. Because Jesus called us to love.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I think Father Mike has the right idea.

You Can Take It With You!

We’re celebrating two years by looking back on some of our favorite posts.

My very first post on Full of Graces was “Here”.

This is part of what I said:

And now…I know this: my life is not a highway anymore. Once I slowed down, I noticed that I had arrived. I was Here.

This is not about being a stay at home mom. That’s not what I mean by Here.

Here is a place for which my husband and I hoped, prayed and worked.

Here is a destination to be savored and explored.

Here there are graces and blessings and peace.

Here is what I wanted; I need to stand still, right Here and live it.

The journey is important. The journey pushes and strengthens us. But every journey needs a destination, or it’s just wandering.

When I wrote those lines, I was more hoping they were true than knowing for sure. But that’s kind of how I roll. I think about how life would be if and then I set out to make it happen.

Sometimes, I succeed. Sometimes, I don’t. And sometimes, a better truth comes from all that effort.

When I made my life still and calm and prayerful, into the stillness came a loud awareness that we needed to make a change.

Let me tell you, it wasn’t very long either. Makes me wonder what other stuff I missed in my loud and busy previous life.

So we made a journey. And the journey taught me a lesson about Here.

Here is a lot like Truth. Static AND dynamic. Here is more about heart and people than it is about place. My Here is here, same as it was there. The same graces and blessings and peace. Same God. Same gratitude.

We just picked it up and moved it 750 miles.

But if I had never learned to stand quietly and still, I wouldn’t have recognized my Here. And then either we wouldn’t have moved or I would have left my Here behind.

Then there would be no Here here.

Or there.

Holy Dr. Seuss.

My point is that first we have to learn to stand still and quiet in our Here, filled with graces and blessings and peace. And then it doesn’t matter what happens next because the Here is portable.

We can take it with us.

Still Planting, Still Growing

We’ve just passed up our two-year anniversary here on Full of Graces. Last week, Jen and I were talking about some of our favorite posts that we have written. Immediately my mind jumped to the post I wrote about Planting Trees. I remember that we had just moved into our new house and the kids were so little. My husband’s parents gave us a bunch of trees, nine to be exact, to plant in the bare landscape of our back yard and I had purchased three beautiful lavender bushes and a jasmine to plant as well. As we (and by we I mean my husband) were planting all of these lovely things in our yard, it really felt to me like we were planting roots. It felt monumental, like this was now our home. We were both so eager to have a big yard for our kids to run around in, to have a safe neighborhood to Trick-or-Treat in, and we were sure that this place was it.

Two years later, now, our roots are definitely taking hold. The trees are growing slowly, and beginning to show signs of giving fruit this year. The lavender and jasmine bushes grow like crazy and fill our evenings with their beautiful fragrance. We’ve added a vegetable garden that nourishes our family. And as I sit out on the patio, rain or shine, morning, afternoon, or evening, I am so thankful for all of our roots. I’m thankful for this beautiful place to raise our girls, but I’m also thankful for the intrinsic roots that ground us all together. I’m grateful for the family and friends that have graced our home at Christmas parties, birthday parties, and dinners together, and that fill our lives with everyday laughter and love.

Our roots are beginning to run deep. And our lives are beginning to truly flower. Thank you for being a part of that.

I Suck at Cakes

Vanessa, from Suburban Mama Goddess, posted before Christmas that she baked an ugly cake. I felt her pain.

I was ten the first time I made a cake all by myself. It was from a box, but I still took it very seriously. While it was in the oven, I didn’t go outside and play with my brothers. I sat on a chair in the service porch and read my book.

When it was done, I took it out and turned it upside down on a rack to cool. There was a nice breeze coming through the back door, so I set the cake on the chair to cool faster.

Then I set the timer for 30 minutes, grabbed my book and sat down on the chair to read.

Girlfriend, yes I did sit on my cake.

Ten years later, I was home for winter break from college, and my mom asked me to bake a cake for my grandfather’s birthday. I got all fancy and tried to make two layers. I had no Food Network to tell me to even the layers before I tried to frost them. It was crazy lopsided. I honestly thought that a good thick buttercream frosting would make it look even. But I used margarine, and the frosting broke and slid all over the top of the cake. Then I left it in a spot on the counter that takes afternoon sun, so when I came back, the frosting had melted down the cake, over the plate and onto the counter.

In desperation, I dug through the baking cupboard and in the way back found a shelf-stable tube of green frosting that had only expired the month before. I tried making green roses on the pink cake.

When my grandfather saw it, he wanted to know who let the green owl in the house.

A few years later, I decided to make an egg nog cheesecake for Christmas dinner. I will admit to not being 100% sober when I made it, so I was pleasantly surprised when it came out of the oven with nary a crack. I stenciled some stars on the top with grated nutmeg and carried it off to my parent’s home.

After dinner, I carried my cheesecake proudly to the table. I cut my brother a slice and passed it down. He took a bite and chewed. Then he started laughing.

Which of course made my other brother dive for the cheesecake with a folk and scoop a big bite into his mouth.

Then they both were laughing. By the time my dad took a bite, my first brother had spit it out: “It tastes like playdough!”

In fact, it did. I was mortified. “What happened?!” I wailed. My aunt asked me about the recipe. I didn’t remember it exactly, because Coors Light, but when I got to “three cups of flour” she stopped me. “Three cups???” she asked. “Are you sure?”

When I got home, I double-checked. Turns out, Coors Light and I misread 3 tablespoons as 3 cups and never looked back.

Every now and then I try again. For Father’s Day a few years back, I tried to make a scratch lemon cake in a sunflower cake mold for Shea. When I turned it over to pop it out, only the petals came. The center of the flower stayed in the pan. You better believe I cobbled that thing together, frosted it and served it up, gaping hole in the middle and all.

And for this past Valentine’s Day, I decided to bake a Paula Deen coconut lime cake for the family.

It was a three layer cake, but I only have two cake pans, and had to pick the kids up from school. So I tried to remove one of the cakes way too early to bake the third one, and this happened:

Shea came home and saved it, thank goodness. It tasted amazing:

I can bake a cookie that will make your heart melt. I perfected that egg nog cheesecake, and cheesecakes in general—you should try my key lime cheesecake. Pumpkin pie. Pecan pie. Gingerbread. Nutmeg sugar cookies. Last Christmas I made a chocolate cinnamon loaf with a whole dang pear in the middle:

But I suck at cakes.

Well. Somebody has to.

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