{pretty, happy, funny, real}
Little Dog Edition

{pretty} This is Brody, dog of many nicknames.

Sometimes we address him as "Cockapoo," which is what we were told he is. We think he has some terrier in him too, though. He has some big troubles for such a small dog, both epilepsy and behavioral issues. From this comes other nicknames, including Mr. Grumpypants and Dr. Teeth. But he is often affectionate and playful, and so darn cute. That curly hair and those big brown eyes make it a lot easier to deal with the bad days. It does, unfortunately, make strangers want to come up and pet him, though. Dog rule #1: always ask if it's ok to pet the dog, and don't start bending down and wiggling your fingers before you hear the answer! I totally understand the temptation. He is adorable. Even I have a hard time not petting him when he is in Mr. Grumpypants mode.



{happy] Brody LOVES toys. And being indulgent pet owners who have no children to spoil, we sort of spoil him with toys. It doesn't stop him from shredding tissues or stealing socks, but it generally does help hold his attention away from the furniture and shoes. He is a happy dog when playing with Little Red, or Turkey, or Rabbit, or an empty water bottle, or that purple puzzle toy where he has to spin the top part to get it loose enough to stick his tongue inside for peanut butter, or keep flipping it over so it dispenses kibbles. That's the one I use to distract him while I'm cooking. Training him not to jump at the counter top didn't work so well, but a food-dispensing puzzle keeps him well occupied and VERY happy. If my camera did movies I'd show you the wagging tail.



{funny} The first picture is Brody in the music room. He hangs out on the rugs in there while I practice. After I practice, he wants attention. Stop playing the piano and pay attention to me! Rub my tummy! He loves tummy rubs. For several months he would not let my husband rub his tummy, though. I think he felt too exposed. Now he sometimes allows it. It's a good sign that his trust is growing. He looks pretty funny when he rolls over on his back, though, because as you can see the hair on his chest and belly is kind of sparse. He is not fun at every minute of the day, but for at least one minute every day he makes me laugh.




{real} Excuse the view of the bathroom, but I guess that's pretty real, right? Brody has some separation anxiety issues, to the point where he wants to follow me into the bathroom. He's ok with me being in a different room, but not if I close the door or even the shower curtain! He has even tried to get in the shower with me.
One time I replaced the dirty towels in the bathroom right before I was going to shower. I left the dirty towels on the floor, intending to take them to the laundry room after I got dressed. The dog didn't scratch at the door! Instead, when I opened the bathroom door after my shower, there was Brody happily curled up in the pile of towels. We've reduced the pile to one hand towel, now, but this how I find him whenever I come out of the bathroom--patiently waiting for me rather than freaking out. It's a bit odd, but it's a really simple solution and now I won't have to repaint the bathroom door anymore, so who cares?

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Church Architecture

I was browsing around looking at lists of colleges here in North Carolina today, and I came across before and after pictures of the Abbey Basilica of Mary Help of Christians (Belmont Abbey College was founded by the same Benedictine monastery).




Why do we allow this butchery of historic buildings? This church building was the first cathedral in North Carolina, before the Diocese of Raleigh was created, and remained a cathedral until the Diocese of Charlotte took over its territory. This is a really significant building, not just any old parish church. Who decided that it was ok to do this to its interior? As if I needed to see more examples of ecclesiastical interior design heavily influenced by Original Series Star Trek sets, besides my current parish, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes in Spokane, and a few others. I've posted pictures of Lourdes Cathedral before, and won't do it again. The carpet makes me feel ill. Here's the best I could find of my current digs:



At least in defense of my current parish, the building was built in the '50s and was ugly already, so the '70s renovation didn't ruin much. The Spokane Cathedral is of an age with the Abbey, late 19th-century, and used to be beautiful inside. The exterior has the superficial similarities of being red brick buildings with two towers.




The Abbey Basilica's towers are of different sizes, though.




This may be one of the rare instances of the Jesuits doing something better than the Benedictines. Take the case of St. Aloysius, the church that serves the Jesuits and students of Gonzaga University; it's a parish church of the diocese of Spokane, but always staffed by Jesuits and is in the middle of campus. The interior was renovated, and there are elements of the renovation that could be better (I wish they'd kept the altar rail, for instance), but they certainly didn't ruin the church. It wouldn't be too hard to put St. Al's back the way it was.

Read This Blog

Not my blog, Appian's blog. He's a very cool guy. His post from 29 May reads like Chesterton, if Chesterton were less enamored of his own one-liners. I can hardly believe that someone can be as smart as this and not older than me. It makes me feel slightly old, actually. But he's brilliant, so go read.

ETA: Link fixed.

Yesterday's Lunch



Cold leftover salmon, orzo tossed with olive oil and rice vinegar, lettuce. Garnished with feta and basil. The basil is the first harvest from our own vegetable-growing attempts. The feta acted almost like salt, as a flavoring rather than an independent element of the dish.

We've found ourselves eating out a lot lately--aka wasting money--because I either had nothing planned for lunch or what was available was boring for DH. He's a bit picky, and isn't keen on leftovers, which often lose something in texture. I'm trying to do better, both in the organization and imagination departments, and I think we could hardly do better than salmon salad!

Awesome

I observed this exchange in my Facebook feed today (names redacted):

Proud Dad: Little Girl: "I'm baptizing him (pointing to a stuffed animal). "He's not a little heathen anymore."

Friend Dad: Little Boy is still available for early betrothal if Little Girl doesn't end up at a convent.

Proud Dad: I might be able to scrounge together some used books as a dowry.

Friend Dad: That should be sufficient.


I am so pleased to know people like this!

On Forgiveness

I am proud to call Rosario Rodriguez my friend. She is an amazing, beautiful, strong woman who has been through a lot, especially in these last couple of years. Rosario was our neighbor in L.A., and we regularly gave her rides to church, and sometimes my husband gave her a ride to work. She was part of the little group of us who sometimes had dinner together after Mass. One day we gave her a ride to a friend's house less than a mile from our own place, where she was going to house-sit. She went out again later that night to run an errand. The next day we got a terrible, shocking text message from a mutual acquaintance--"Rosario was shot last night"--and went to see Rose in the hospital.

She looked so small and fragile, almost childlike in that hospital bed. She has come a long way since then, but don't believe those cop shows where someone gets shot and shows up back at work a couple of weeks later. Rose is still not 100%, a year and a half later.

Here is Rosario, talking about forgiveness, and the consequences of not forgiving:

St. Philip Neri



When I was a sophomore in high school, my parents asked me to abandon my beloved little classical Catholic prep school in favor of the big Catholic high school in town, for a period of one year, basically to see if I could hack it. They weren't sure about how the little school's academic standards would compare. As it turned out, they needn't have worried--I did very well, and was actually quite bored in English class. The biology and French classes were good and useful (I couldn't have had that at little Trinity), and I also learned a lot of non-academic things that I sort of wish I hadn't learned until college, if ever. It wasn't a fun year, and I was thrilled to return to Trinity the next fall.

One oasis in that purgatory was study hall. I had a free period twice a week in the spring semester which I spent in the library under the watchful eye of an elderly Christian Brother whose name I don't remember. He was probably 80 years old and apparently had something wrong with his throat, perhaps emphysema, because he coughed a lot and could hardly speak above a whisper. He was suspicious of the students generally, and I was no different, at first. That was until he noticed that I always sat at the table near the shelf with saints' biographies, so I could read them without checking them out and hauling them home in my already over-stuffed backpack.

One day he pointed out a biography of St. Philip Neri. "Try this one," he whispered. I did. I was enchanted. If I hadn't already been reading The Interior Castle and decided that my confirmation name would be Teresa, I might have taken the name Philippa. I wouldn't say that I developed a great devotion to St. Philip Neri, but I still get a warm, happy feeling whenever I think of him. It pleased me greatly to encounter his name when I was studying 16th century polyphony of the Roman School.

Reading about St. Philip Neri again today, I see that he is the patron saint of the U.S. Special Forces. In previous years this would not have meant much to me, but now I live not far from Fort Bragg, which is home to a Special Forces group. There are a number of current and former Special Forces officers who attend our parish. May God bless them through the intercession of St. Philip Neri, and all others who are under his patronage.

Aquaponic Adventure

Have you ever heard of aquaponics? It's a food-growing system that combines hydroponics with aquaculture (fish farming). The problems with hydroponics and aquaculture are that you have to constantly add nutrients to a hydroponic system, and remove waste products from aquaculture systems. Aquaponics, however, is a closed system: the waste from the fish provides nutrients to the plants, and the plants filter the water to send back to the fish. You do have to make slight pH adjustments and top up the water, but that is pretty much all the maintenance that needs to be done once the system is up and running.


We've started building a small aquaponic set-up in our garage. We mounted the frames from which we'll hang the grow lights this morning. A couple of weeks ago, our re-purposed food-grade barrels arrived, and we cut the top off the barrel that will hold the fish, and cut the other barrel in half to make two grow beds. This is a common first aquaponic set-up, and when we have a frame built for the barrels it will look something like this. For fish, we will start with inexpensive goldfish. That way, we won't be heartbroken if things go wrong and the fish die. Once we have things going, we will introduce an edible fish like tilapia or another variety of perch. These fish are omnivorous, so they'll eat trimmings from the plants as well as fish food, and they are tolerant of the water temperatures we'll be able to achieve without a heater or very deep water (unlike trout, that require colder water). They also grow to eating size in about six months!

But when we get the plumbing together, we'll just have goldfish. They'll feed the veggies well enough. There are two ways to grow the veggies--on floating rafts, which requires the solids to be filtered out of the water, or in grow media like gravel or clay balls. We'll be using grow media, so we don't need a filter.

There are all kinds of extensions to the system that people have posited, if you want a more comprehensive food-growing operation. One that was proposed in a recent, interesting TED talk by Charlie Price of Aquaponics UK posited a system that included chickens and two sets of worms or grubs. One set of worms is fed to the chickens. Chicken waste is fed to the second set of worms. The second set of worms are fed to the fish. Fish waste feeds the plants, and waste from the plants (old plants that are no longer fruiting) are fed to the first set of worms. So now you get eggs and meat as well as fish, fruits, and vegetables. If you could work in a goat or two you'd have a farm and all food groups represented.

The main advantage of aquaponics over traditional vegetable gardens is growth rate, fruit production, and in an indoor system, protection from insects. We planted our lettuce, tomatoes, basil, carrots, beets, chives and parsley outside weeks ago. They are still tiny little sprouts, and many of them died because the weather has been unfavorable (high winds and alternating heat with torrential rains). We also have an infestation of strange little white ant-like insects who are eating the peat pellets that we started the seeds in, and damaging the seedlings' roots in the process. This won't be a problem in the aquaponics system. We'll probably have to deal with fruit flies, but that's easy to handle. Aquaponically grown plants grow faster than traditionally farmed produce, as well. The grow lights help with that. Check out the pace of growth in this aquaponics system: comparison pictures. The tomato plants that I started indoors in February and transplanted into pots rather than into the outdoor beds have taken twice as long to get that big.

So, here we go! Fresh veggies in another couple of months.

"Dad may try to ruin your style..."

Has anyone seen the new Tide commercial with the white mini-skirt?


In the commercial, Dad, who is fixing a rusty gate, spies a white mini skirt hanging on the clothesline. He takes it down and uses it to wipe his rust-covered hands, dropping it into the hamper inside the house. Teenage Daughter comes along and digs out the skirt, is appalled to see its condition, and takes it to Mom. Mom knows what to do--Tide will get the stains out. Mom also clearly knows that it's Dad's fault the skirt is stained. Daughter parades through the house in her white miniskirt and Dad is appalled that his ploy has not worked.


Leaving aside the unrealism of Dad actually putting the skirt in the hamper (apologies to any men out there who are tidier than the ones in my life), this commercial ought to be a shocking portrayal of the disintegration of family life, albeit not a surprising one. Dad apparently cannot just have a discussion with Mom about Daughter's immodest attire, and agree that the mini skirt should go by the wayside. He has to take an underhanded approach. This would never have happened in the house where I grew up. First of all, a natural sense of modesty was inculcated from an early age--I would not have worn a skirt that short, even if my mother allowed me to own one. Second, Mom and Dad would have discussed something, and my Dad would not have had to sneakily plot to get rid of an objectionable piece of attire.


I suppose it's meant to be a lighthearted look at fathers who don't want their daughters to grow up too fast. But it's right for fathers not to want their daughters to dress like tramps, and the daughters and their mothers shouldn't want it either.

Baking Disasters



I thought that I would be very clever and bake pretzels for our fasting "snacks." I've never made pretzels before, but I looked through several similar recipes and it seemed easy enough. I am a novice bread baker, but I have done a bit of bread-baking before and am starting to get the hang of dough textures, etc. So, I thought I could handle this. The recipes promised beautiful pretzels like in the picture above, like the kind you'd buy at a mall pretzel stand, or, more familiar to me, at a German music and beer festival.

Perhaps my mistake was improvising slightly. The uncooked pretzels are supposed to be dragged through a bath of baking soda and warm water, which kick-starts the chemical reaction that gives them that beautiful brown, soft crust. The recipe I used called for just a warm water bath, but more traditional recipes use slightly boiling water (really traditional recipes call for lye instead of baking soda, but I don't trust myself around strong chemicals; the last time I used oven cleaner I burned my arm quite badly--twice--so if I were to use lye in an edible application I'd probably inadvertently poison us both, if I didn't burn through the skin on both my arms first). So I used simmering, slightly boiling water with the baking soda. I don't know whether I left them in the bath too long or not long enough, or whether I should have used an oiled instead of a floured surface to roll them out, or whether I miscalculated regarding the consistency of the dough (it was sticky, hence needing to flour my hands and the board I rolled them on). They came out looking like this:




Vaguely pretzel-like, but hideous. Ignore my lack of dough-twisting skill (that especially deformed one was fine until it was in the water bath, but it came untwisted)--that's not the real issue here. They are lumpy all over and not smooth. They are slightly brown in some places, but mostly not. I promise I did cook them long enough--they're the right texture both inside and out, they're just ugly. My husband really likes them, but to me they taste awful, like they've been dusted with baking soda instead of sea salt. Oddly enough, the taste exactly reminds me of a bad batch of waffle batter I made a couple of weeks ago, when I tried a new recipe that called for a teaspoon of vinegar (note: add the vinegar to the milk to sour it and make it like buttermilk, do not add directly to the batter). So, husband will eat another one or two later in the day, and the rest I'll put in baggies for him for the rest of the weekend. I guess I'll have to stick to the store-bought bread for my own needs today. Clearly I need a lot more practice at bread baking.

Do any bakers out there have an idea of what I've done wrong? Should I just forget about the baking soda bath and use an egg wash to make them brown? Should I use both? Was it wrong that the dough was sticky--insufficient flour? I'm sure there's more than one place where I took a wrong turn. I'd like to try making pretzels again, but I'd like to make ones that look pretty and taste nice!