Outside my window…

There is an awful lot of snow and it is still falling fast and furious. The weirdest part was looking out the window in the middle of the night (up feeding the baby) and seeing that everything outside was glowing orange! It was so bright I had to close the blinds. I guess it’s from the snow falling in a big city with lots of lights—the light reflects off the snow in the air, making everything glow orange. I should have gone to the grocery store yesterday; then this snow wouldn’t bother me at all!

From the Kitchen…

This week is Cheeseweek, meaning the last week we eat dairy before Great Lent begins a week from this Monday (this Sunday is the last day for meat). This is our last week of preparation. I think this week will include homemade ice cream (dark chocolate with homemade toffee and almonds and maybe cookie dough ice cream too), fettucine alfredo with mushrooms and broccoli, pizza, red onion-gruyere quiche, and a fontina-mushroom bread pudding for breakfast.

I have fallen in love with my ice cream machine, given to us by my dear friend’s mom for our wedding. Paul got me an ice cream cookbook for Christmas, by the former pastry chef at Chez Panisse. I made a chocolate custard ice cream using dark chocolate with 72% cocoa solids and then mixed in Trader Joe’s miniature peanut butter cups. It was amazing.

I’ve had a lot of fun in the kitchen lately, making all kinds of rich, yummy things. It makes me grumpy that the fast is starting and I have to stop just when I got the hang of things like Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguingnon (I made the classic version, and then made a version with Guinness for St. Brigid’s Day) and fancy homemade ice cream. Which probably means it is exactly the right time for the fast to start. Oatmeal and beans, here we come!

Towards rhythm and beauty…

I feel like I’m finally getting a schedule and rhythm that works. I tried putting in a weekly schedule into iCal about five times, and it just never worked with having a newborn that I couldn’t predict at all. But now that I’ve started working two days a week (see below) I’ve divided up everything among the remaining days, and divided the days into blocks. It helps that James is old enough now that he just tags along with me throughout the day, sitting in the kitchen while I cook, playing on the floor while I fold laundry, etc.

The best thing I’ve done to organize my time is to set aside Mondays as cooking days. I have nothing else on my list but cooking and taking care of James. My shopping days are Saturdays, before which I plan every detail of the following week’s menu. Our monthly Costco run is always on Sunday afternoons after church. On Monday, I clean the kitchen thoroughly, and then look over the week’s menu to see what I could possibly make ahead. It helps with the grocery budget too. For instance, I go through a TON of canned tomatoes. I already buy them for pretty cheap at Costco, but the giant can of San Marzano tomatoes is like $.35 a pound, and they’re better tomatoes anyway. So I buy the giant can and make all the tomato-based sauces I need for the near future (last week I made a giant pot of spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce for three pizzas, and a pot of koshari sauce). I freeze the ones I don’t need that week in ziploc bags or small tupperwares. I also usually double a casserole recipe (like this one) and put one in the freezer, make a batch of bread and granola, and cook up a batch of beans for future use or for hummus. I also take out my Cuisenart and do all the chopping for the week (slice vegables for pizza, chop vegetables for soup, etc.) so that I only get it out and dirty once instead of almost every day.

I am reading…

The Bible. But not just parts here and there this time. Even though I grew up Christian and went to Christian school or was homeschooled until high school, and went to a Christian university, I have never read the entire Bible in one go. I’m sure there are some parts that I have never read, and the Orthodox use the full Septuagint canon, and so there are parts of that I have not read yet. So I’m following this schedule and reading through the complete canon, hopefully in a year.

I am also, embarrassingly, not finished with The Iliad yet, although I am very close.

I am listening to…

Just in time for my yearlong Bible reading project, I discovered a fantastic podcast by an Orthodox biblical scholar and priest’s wife, Dr. Jeannie Constantinou, called Search the Scriptures. It is quite in-depth; I’ve already listened to 20 episodes, and still have 13 to go before we get to Genesis 1! Her series on the development of the canon, both Jewish and Christian, was fascinating. She had a series on interpreting the scriptures according to the Fathers of the Church, a few episodes on Biblical manuscripts, the history of the Septuagint, oral tradition, the concepts of inspiration and inerrancy, and much more. She is a fascinating teacher and very sensible in her approach. It is basically a expanded, Orthdodox version of her Bible course she teaches at the University of San Diego. She also used to teach New Testament at Holy Cross Orthodox Theological Seminary. I highly recommend her talks.

At the moment I’m listening to Cappella Romana’s The Music of Byzantium, which makes my 450 square foot Philadelphia apartment sound like the inside of a giant Byzantine cathedral. It includes a hymn to St. Thomas Aquinas (in Greek, no less), which gives my husband no end of glee, since most Orthodox disdain him but Paul has great admiration for him.

On keeping home…

Just keeping up with the aforementioned schedule. It makes our little home a lot more pleasant to have everything cleaned on a regular schedule, rather than one day realizing the bathroom hasn’t been cleaned in two weeks.

One of my favorite things…

A snow day with fresh scones and hot coffee is pretty great.

This week in the Church…

Food aside, this is the last week of “preparing to prepare”: preparing to begin the fast, which in turn prepares our souls for the great celebration of the Resurrection. Two Sundays ago we remembered the Publican and the Pharisee, to remind us in what spirit we must fast in order for it to bear any fruit. Last Sunday we remembered the Prodigal Son, to remind us how greatly the Lord desires we return to him. This week we will remember the Last Judgement and soberly prepare ourselves to spend these next weeks in humble repentence. And a week from Sunday we will ask every member of our church community individually to forgive us, and offer our own, before we begin this period of repentence together as we anticipate the celebration of Christ’s holy resurrection.

The Prodigal Son

The Last Judgement

A few plans for the rest of the week…

Well, I guess we’ll start by being holed up in the house due to snow. I doubt we’ll even make it to church on Sunday. Tuesday and Thursday I’ll go to my new friend Melanie’s house. I’ve just starting watching an adorable 21-month old girl in downtown Philly named Melanie two full days a week. She has bright red curly hair and is very smart. She also has a very funny way of talking. I am still technically a stranger, so she is understandably upset when her parents leave in the morning. (Tuesday will be my third full day.) She has decided that the only way to make things better at this point is to “Go sleep, Mel!” So she rounds up her “friends” (stuffed animals) and her three precious little cat toy balls, marches upstairs with me, all the while saying, “Go sleep Mel! Go sleep Mel!” and curls up in her bed for a while. I sit there and read stories out loud with James until she is smiling, and then we go about our day. When she wants me to keep doing something, or do something again, she gives me an impish grin and says, “More yes? More yes?” And when she wants to know what is on the docket for the day, she asks, “How do day?” Three o’clock is a very important time in Melanie’s universe: it is the time either Mommy or Daddy come home. My first day, when she kept asking about “Mommy come home?” I told her three o’clock and showed her where that was on the clock. Little did I know she would then spend the rest of the day watching her digital clock intently, gleefully annoucing as the numbers turned, “Four! Five! Six!” I had to distract her lest she really spend the entire day in this manner.

James Benedict this week…

Baby James is growing up quick! He now sits up and plays with his toys, which is quite a technological breakthrough, since he can entertain himself for a while now. We also broke out the high chair, even though he won’t be eating food for a while yet, so he can sit somewhere other than Mama’s lap during meals (although Mama’s lap is definitely still the preferred place). He likes sitting in his high chair right next to me in the kitchen while I cook, since he’s up at counter level instead of on the floor in his bouncy seat. He is just as cheerful and giggly and playful as ever!

James in his new high chair!

This was the last time James was allowed to sit in the big easy chair . . . because then he fell off of it and gave his Mama a major heart attack. (He was just fine.) He is apparently more mobile than we thought!

UPenn baby!

He started out the month sitting all propped up, but now he can do it all by himself! (The balance is still a bit off, so we put a pillow behind him for the inevitable topple.)

Wrapping paper is always more fun than the present, right?

Very first shoes!

What are these things on my feet, Papa?

Cousin Canyon gave us this awesome snow suit and he wears it almost every time he leaves the house these days.

More pictures to share…

James hung out in the wrap for a while this morning so he could practice major 7th chords on the piano with me. I’ve been using the Ergo carrier below since the New Year, but he looked so excited to go in his old carrier when I got it out. :)

This is the carrier we mostly use now, and we all love it. It’s super comfortable and easy to use. And it was very exciting when I figured out how to get him on my back by myself, since it solved a recurring problem: the fact that James has his one major meltdown of the day right when I’m trying to make dinner and Paul isn’t home yet. So he gets piggybacked onto Mama, she goes about her business, and he usually takes a little nap back there, making him nice and cheerful for when Papa gets home!