Author Archives: Janell

Hi-Lo and Ritz

31 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

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Each week brings highs and lows that keep everyday life from growing stale.    

And last week’s high arrived as low flying sparklers at the Overholser Mansion.  I wanted to shout — Hip, hip hooray!  —  the fireflies are back.  Because after a two year absence, the east lawn of the Overholser Mansion had once again become the best neighborhood spot for firefly gazing.  By sheer happenstance, we caught two repeat performances of their latest firefly ballet.  And it was worth the wait.  I was captivated; I could have parked myself in their midst and watched their flickering lights pirouette across the dark expanse for several encore performances. 

But sometimes we’re moved to be still and sometimes we’re moved just to move.  And when it comes to church these days — the scene of my most recent low-life moment —  we do both.  One Sunday we’re on the move, off visiting some local church, while the next we stay put at our current church home.  This alternating practice serves to cleanse our palate  —  in the way crackers cleanse the palate for wine tasting — by allowing us to sample new worship experiences without one running into another.  Last Sunday was our Sunday to stay put — and without need of wine or crackers —  my husband and I came home to Holy Communion.  

Our church usually serves this sacramant by intinction — where communicants dip a small portion of bread into a communal cup of grape juice —  which typically takes 20 to 30 minutes to serve.  But last week, the service had us moving between a standing line for bread to the kneeling rail for thimble-size containers of grape juice.  And with a thousand communicants facing a church altar built for forty kneelers,  the communion rail quickly became a bottleneck, which sent sinners in a Christian-like free-for-all as we jostled for an open space at the rail. 

Perhaps this new method of distribution was chosen to minimize the spread of infectious diseases. I don’t know.  But what I do know is that I observed one woman take her thimble of juice to go, just like she was going through a McDonald’s drive-through window.  Meanwhile, my husband and I joustled amongst the masses for an open spot at the kneeler, where we stayed only long enough to drink our juice.  Figuring God could hear our prayers just fine from our seats, we were making our way back when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a few souls leaving the sanctuary early.  Questions began whirling through my mind.   Had they decided to fast?  Had they chosen to eat and run?  And then came the question to end all questions:  Who am I to ask these questions?  Then, in a flash, I  knew who I was.  I was one who was ready to join their exodus; and with the taste of grape juice still on my tongue, I looked at my husband and whispered, “Let’s go.” 

The irony that my low point should come in the midst of Holy Communion is not lost on me; nor for that matter, that my week’s high should come from low flying bugs.  I fumble within the mystery and the hi-los of it all.  What was it about the firefly dances that made me want to stay and what was it about Holy Communion that made me want to flee?     

Whatever it was, my reaction has more to say about me than it does about either event.  For some unknown reason, I did not experience God in Holy Communion.  Maybe because I was preoccupied by looking for room at the inn altar.  Maybe because I felt lost in the sea of humanity washing up on the communion rail.  And for Christ’s sake, where was the lighthouse to keep us from crashing into one another? 

At the Overholsers there was no need for a lighthouse.  There was plenty of space and light for all who wished to partake of this lowly unconventional means of grace.   And for me, this lowly means of grace was just what I needed last week.  Maybe because I had just expressed a longing to again gaze on firefies.  One moment it was a wish.  And then all of a sudden, here they were.  Just like that.  Just  light that.

And just light that, God was there too.  And there on a dusk-tinted lawn — with no bread, no crackers, no wine, no juice, no confusion, no sea of humanity, no rails to rail me in — stood me and God in a sea of fireflies “puttin’ on the ritz where fashion once sat.”  Just light that.      

Polish Stir-Fry

28 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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In spite of owning many lovely cookbooks, most of my everyday cooking is drawn from my forty-year collection of personal recipes.  Some of my recipes are neatly typed on index cards and others are hand-written by the good cook themselves; but most are in my or my husband’s hand — from the barely legible, scrawled on handy slips of scrap paper from busy days of four children at home—to those carefully preserved on notebook paper in early school-girl cursive.

These recipes are not only a source of good life in the present but they also keep my past alive.  To see a recipe is to see the friend or family member who shared it, even when distance and death separate us.  When I make egg noodles, I remember Granny and her helpful hint– “Cut them nice and thin now, Jan.”    When I make hash-browns, I remember Mom and all those wonderful breakfasts she and Daddy cooked together.  When I make Dilly Spoon Rolls, I think of Betty and how my husband came home from a church dinner bragging about Betty’s cooking.  And as ironic as it is, when I make a brisket, I give thanks that my friend Laure wasn’t always vegetarian.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever get around to organizing my recipes into a family cookbook.  But I thought it might be fun to begin sharing them in a regular Friday post.  Sort of like Monday, Wash Day; Tuesday, Ironing…  Friday, Recipe  Day.  For now anyway.  We’ll see how it goes.

Today’s recipe comes from Carol Sampson, an interior designer I worked with in Lake Jackson.  One day Carol and I were sitting at my big kitchen island working on my kitchen redesign.  And I looked at Carol and said, “Carol, what’s your favorite family recipe.”  And without any hesitation, she began describing this polish dish that her mom use to make when Carol was growing up in Wisconsin.   The recipe didn’t have a name, so I christened it “Polish Stir-Fry”.  It’s a no frills dish, from a woman who came to love frills, and even shared  them with HGTV television viewers on one of my mother’s favorite shows, Design on a Dime.  The kitchen redesign is no longer mine.  But thank goodness Carol’s recipe is.

Polish Stir-Fry

(Serves 2 – 10 mins prep, 30 mins cooking time)

Ingredients:
1 lb. Polish Kielbasa
2 medium potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced in rounds
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and Pepper to taste (I use about 1/2 tsp. of salt per potato)
Canola or Olive Oil
Pre-cook Sausage over medium heat (15 mins)
In medium saucepan, boil sausage in water to remove some of the fat.  Drain and cut into bite-size portions.
Cook Onion & Garlic over low heat (6 mins)
In a large skillet, heat 2 T. oil.  Saute onion until softened, about  5 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for 1 more minute.  Stir often to keep garlic from browning.  Take up onion and garlic and place on a plate.
Cook Potatoes over medium heat (20 mins)
In same skillet, heat 2 T. oil.  Add potatoes, season and brush top layer lightly with 1 T. oil.  Cover and cook.  Avoid turning potatoes but occasionally lift up a few potatoes to ensure they do not over-brown.  Half-way through cooking time, turn potatoes with a spatula.
Combine, simmer and serve
When potatoes are done (test for doneness with a fork), add onion/garlic mixture and sausages.  Lower heat to simmer and let flavors blend for 5 mins.  Serve with toast.

The Garden of Good and Evil

27 Thursday Aug 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Soul Care

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GAILLARDIA IN BLOOM - Sundance Bicolor

The sowing of seed satisfies my deep need to participate  in the quotidian mystery of life.   As I  scratch the surface of soil and scatter my few precious seeds I’m practicing the ancient art of propagating beauty in the canvas of soil.  One moment seed.  Days later, with the nurture of earth and sun and water, something green reaches for light from the dark recesses of the earth.  Where else but the garden can one so easily witness an everyday miracle of God?   

The snake in paradise is that I forget which seeds I’ve sown.  The old adage — out of sight, out of mind — describes my gardening practice to a tee.  Some tender green shoot springs up from the garden’s surface.  And for the life of me or it, I can’t identify it.    Weed or flower?  No snap judgments will do, as life hangs in the balance.  

The discernment process is never easy.  I wait leaf by leaf for answers to be revealed.  When will it unfurl its true leaves and colors to offer me a hint?  Too often impatience causes me pull out what I judged as weed to learn later it was flower.  My hasty hand has executed more poppies than I care to count and just last week, one of my new tender Gaillarida flowers pregnant with bloom.  To an unfamiliar eye, flower foilage can look an awful lot like weed. 

Gardening teaches me that answers are rarely black and white.  Flower or weed.  Good or evil.  Even the good book teaches that God makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  One gardener’s flower can be another gardener’s weed.  Red and yellow black and white, they are precious in his sight.