Merry Christmas

Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.
God bless you everyone.

A Strange Thing

Christmas is my favorite season. I love the joyful anticipation of the coming of the Lord. I love thinking about what everyone on my Christmas list might want and trying to devise presents that they will like. I love to send out Christmas cards and keep contact with close friends and friends I rarely see but care for. I love to decorate my house for Christmas, gathering the outdoors to bring into the house--Berries! and greens! I love to see my family at Christmas. To me Christmas is about everything that I treasure in life--that makes life worth living,. The coming of the Lord, this infant babe, brings us back to the deepest chords of love in our own life. It is celebration of the Great News that Christ brings--of the joy of love in our hearts and of our redemption through this love for God and for others, this joy of love that unites us all in God's love for each of us.

So it was with deep disappointment that this year I had to forgo many of my Christmas pleasures, because of the exigencies of work. All plans to make presents for all the ladies on my list crumbled to dust. Trying to get a weekend day off to drive out to the country and find berries proved impossible. Present buying? Feeling ashamed, I did the simplest and easiest online shopping and assigned the rest to my daughter. This is not what I had planned.


A candle of penance, a mirror of self-reflection. Detail of Magdalene and Two Flames by Georges de la Tours, 1638-39.


But maybe God plans things to bring us back to Him. At the mass of the first Sunday of Advent, our priest reminded us that Advent is a season of penance, not partying, that in Advent we are called to penance, to prepare our hearts for the Lord, and charity to others. It seemed that it was because of lack of time that the only lights I could put up were the candles in the window. I found that I wanted less decoration in the house, the trees with lights only and no ornaments. I bought cream poinsettias to make up for the lack of berries and found I loved their quiet serenity. But most importantly, this lack of ability to do all the Christmas things I love forced me to contemplate more the preparing of my heart, the starkness of penance, the suffering of all humans--no matter how young or old or rich or poor, and my deep unconditional love for my family.

So I will only have the lights in the window til Christmas eve, and then perhaps put out more outside in celebration of Christ's birth. I am so far from being free of sin and fail so miserably in most of my resolves. But there is beauty in starkness and in penance and withdrawal and in thought, knowing that our Savior will be soon be born--the infant child lying in the manger, the Prince of Peace.

Blessed be the hour and the moment when the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold.

Woman's Work

Please see A Mother's Journal for a lovely description of woman's work from Caddie Woodlawn.

Advent Thoughts on Housekeeping

Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, 1476-78.

There is no reason to keep Christmas house for only oneself in the present, only for those we love.

There is reason to keep Christmas house for the memory of the past and to honor that past.

There is a reason to keep Christmas house for the future, so the traditions of civilization and comfort and love for our beloved future generations are ever alive.

Christmas and all the housekeeping that it brings to the lady of the house is what housekeeping is all about: the celebration of love, family, and redemption through love and sacrifice for others.

And so Advent is a time when we prepare our house -- our hearts -- for the birth of Christ.

Winslow Homer: Watercolor Genius

Here is Winslow Homer's watercolor, For to Be a Farmer's Boy, again. Aside from using this painting for a Happy Thanksgiving post, I also sent it out to some friends and family as a Thanksgiving email. Numbers of people sent replies about what a beautiful painting it is. I have always found it mesmerizing. But when I chose it about a month ago as the painting for Thanksgiving greetings, I was stunned by looking at the cabbages--the middle row of turquoise in the painting. As far as I know, watercolor is an unforgiving medium. How Homer managed to paint these cabbages, which somehow convey the essence of growing cabbage, is beyond my imagination, since the light (white space) seems to fall on them perfectly in their dance across the page. Then there are the colors themselves. Evidently some of the red pigment has been lost from this painting, and the sky originally contained a beautiful sunset. This must have made this painting breath-taking. It is a painting that conveys God's bounty, especially against the blue of the hills of the behind. This boy looks proud to be a farmer, but he is also in harmony with the nature of his space.

(Click on the paintings to get a better view of them.)

Here are two other watercolors that Homer painted in the year, both of them remarkable. In the first, the corn takes its turn to come alive.

Among the Vegetables, also known as Boy in a Cornfield


At the Well

In Praise of Edna Lewis

Edna Lewis's books are among my favorite cookbooks. I have three:
In Pursuit of Flavor
The Taste of Country Cooking
The Gift of Southern Cooking, which she wrote with Scott Peacock.

All of these books are fascinating and filled with good but relatively simple recipes. Among her achievements, Mrs. Lewis brought to the American table the great African American culinary tradition.

In a 1989 interview with The New York Times, Lewis said: "As a child in Virginia, I thought all food tasted delicious. After growing up, I didn't think food tasted the same, so it has been my lifelong effort to try and recapture those good flavors of the past."

She was ahead of her time in emphasizing the importance of the freshness of food and food in its season. With a foreword by Alice Waters, The Taste of Country Cooking is organized by season, with recipes and menus for each one.

Lewis's books not only are filled with wonderful recipes but her essays on foods, the food traditions that we hopes to revive and enable to survive, and the best way to make simple food delectable, her reasons for using non-double acting baking powder, and fascinating reminiscenes.
Ms. Lewis was a professional chef, who made the came to New York at a young age and first worked as a seamstress. Then, she became the chef for the new Nicholson cafe and helped make this watering hole for the cultural literati famous. She began writing up her recipes when she was forced by a broken leg to suspend her career as a chef. After A Taste of Country Cooking was published she became the chef of the famous Gaye and Bollner restaurant in Brooklyn, until her retirement in the mid-1990s.

Over a period of time she became friends with Scott Peacock, another Southern chef, but with an Alabaman culinary tradition, whereas Edna Lewis came from farther north--Freetown, Virginia. They eventually began cooking and Peacock took care of Ms. Lewis in the years before her death in 2006. Their co-authored The Gift of Southern Cooking is a real treasure. Just now looking at this book, I was surprised to see how few of the recipes I have actually made. I guess this is because I have read it from cover to cover so many times, I feel very familar with every recipe. Very simple and very good recipes that I have made are Shrimp Paste, Puree of Pumpkin Soup, Thyme-Smothered Chicken, Baked Pork Chops with Cranberries, Salmon Croquettes, Baked Eggplant with Peanuts (quite something), perfect Macaroni and Cheese, Asparagus and Scallion Pie, Chicken Hash, White Loaf Bread, and various corn recipes.

Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Pie is a documentary on Lewis that you can see right online.

Although I come from Pennsylvania, a state I have nearly religious adoration for, I love Southern cooking the best. I first learned about it in the November 1988 Food and Wine special issue on "Southern Food Rises Again." You bet. I immediately made the Greens in Potlikker, which was delicious and intrigued my family. Here is an essay by Ms. Lewis on southern cooking.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

For to Be a Farmer's Boy by Winslow Homer