Category Archives: church

Spicy and Colorful Stew

church, food and cooking, ,

I’m trying to use up some things in the cupboard and freezer. So this afternoon I started defrosting a gallon bag of cooked garbanzo beans, which had been prepared that far and stashed away some months ago as the first step in using up a big bag of the legumes that had been acquired “way back.”
There are usually a few boxes of frozen spinach around, so I set one of those out, and sat down at the computer to search online for recipes that would use both items. The first recipe I found was a Spanish stew with North African influence, but I scrolled on down the search results to an Indian dish, which I noted would also use up the lime I’ve had around for a couple of weeks.

Coriander and cumin were sautéed in oil along with onion and garlic.

Lucky me, I had just bought the tomatoes this week. Of course, the dish could be made with canned garbanzos, fresh tomatoes, etc. I don’t know about canned spinach, though….it sounds nasty. Frozen spinach, by the way, has been found to retain more nutrients than bunches of fresh spinach, as it is processed so quickly in our modern world, while fresh spinach often sits around for days losing vitamins. If you are going to cook it anyway, you might as well use the frozen and convenient product.


One recipe said to use lime OR tamarind juice. I don’t know anything about tamarinds.

 

 

 

You can see that the spinach also was not completely defrosted when I added it along with the tomatoes, after the onion and garlic had browned.

As soon as I put those two items in, it came back to me that cast iron + greens + tomatoes can have a color-deadening chemical effect, so I quickly spooned the mix into a stainless steel kettle. After about 10 minutes of simmering I added the garbanzos and remaining seasonings, and simmered the lot until the beans were soft and had absorbed some flavor. (Canned garbanzos would likely have already been more salty than my frozen ones were.)

Spicy Indian Chickpea and Spinach Stew

About 10 cups of cooked garbanzo beans
1 large yellow onion, chopped
10 oz. frozen chopped spinach
3 cloves garlic, diced
About 1/4 cup oil
1 large can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons mild chili powder
2 teaspoons cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
2 teaspoons sugar

This recipe made about 3 quarts of stew, plenty to freeze and some to eat later in the week. I can see it being the basis for elaborations and extensions into pots of soup as well. One could add lamb or chicken, more tomatoes or spinach, other vegetables, etc., and perhaps purée a portion to add back in.

Lucky again, I had some fresh coriander, a.k.a. cilantro, in the fridge, to pretty things up, as the spinach, of course, was no longer bright. This is a vegan dish that fits right in with this season of the church, The Apostles Fast, when we abstain from animal products generally. The flavor was a nicely complex balance of the various spices with just the slightest heat. A bowlful of this dish would be good with some chewy bread for dipping–but that was something not to be found in the house!

A Few June Days

books, bread, church, ,

It’s been a busy week so far, too busy to philosophize about and too busy for much picture-taking. A couple of the days were primarily taken up with not being busy, actually.

This June has been cool, so far. But it was warm enough to go to the beach with a friend for her birthday on Monday. First we went down this steep switchbacked trail…

 

 

…then settled against a log and drank some hot cocoa, ate our snacks, and shed layers of clothing as the sun got higher and broke through the mist. Lack of wind makes for a relaxing time on the sand.

 

 

A Japanese family was so photogenic, I tried to sneak photos of the children. This is the best I could do.

 

 

 

When I got home from the beach,

Mr. Glad was reading on the patio and being struck by the miniature roses in a pot nearby. He grabbed the camera and took this photo, which I am humbly posting black spot and all.

The next day was my turn to help make Communion bread at church. In the Orthodox Church it is called prosphora, which means offering, from the ancient tradition of the people bringing bread to offer for the service.

I’d like to write and show more photos sometime about the different breads we make, but for now I’ll just show you this one I accomplished, called a Lamb.

When the bread was done, just outside there were garden plots to be weeded and watered, and flowers to be deadheaded. Always something new is blooming or changed from my last visit, and I have to take a picture or two.

This morning I made it over to visit a bookworm friend who’s always giving or lending me books. This stack shows:

1) on top, the video we watched together, of poet Richard Wilbur reading some poems and being interviewed at University of Southern California in 1990,

2) Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer; D. said that when she read it she thought of me.

3) Three books by or about M.F.K. Fisher, which D. is lending me. Friend K. has been wanting me to read Fisher for some time, but I never dreamed the books could be small paperbacks I might read in bed!

4) A Gentle Madness, a book about book lovers and collectors, which I ordered online, not dreaming how big it is, and

5) The Outline of Sanity, a Life of G.K. Chesterton, also bought online recently.

I know it looks a bit ambitious, considering the other stacks of books around here. But I’m hopeful of having more reading time soon, while recuperating from foot surgery and in the car on several trips we have planned.

But I’m ending with one more picture from church, of hollyhocks and a gladiolas, because I couldn’t get the photo to go into the right spot above!

Oh! Addendum: Just before the close of this third blessed day of this week, Dear Daughter sent me this howling link for any of you/us who don’t just love to shop.

Joy in the Holy Spirit — Pentecost

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Today the church is decorated with green–ferns, birch branches, palm fronds, hanging from the chandelier and draped over everything. Lilies frame the icon that portrays the pouring out of the Holy Spirit 50 days after the Resurrection. The vestments and other cloths are green now as well. This passage from Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World explains why we Orthodox take so much trouble for the sake of the appearance of our temple:

The liturgy [Communion service] is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with Him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole “beauty” of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional” or “useful.” And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is Heaven on earth, according to our Orthodox tradition; it is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned, and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world. In our adult, serious piety we ask for definitions and justifications, and they are rooted in fear–fear of corruption, deviation, “pagan influences,” whatnot. But “he that feareth is not made perfect in love “(I John 4:18). As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will “represent” it and signify it, in art and beauty. And the celebrant of the sacrament of joy will appear in a beautiful [robe], because he
is vested in the glory of the Kingdom….

Today is Pentecost, or Holy Trinity Sunday, so named because all the Persons of the Trinity are remembered–Christ sent the Holy Spirit from the Father. This event is, as our rector reminded us, the seal and crown and joy of Pascha, and our salvation. It is a feast second only to Pascha, to the Resurrection itself, and there is so much to celebrate that we have another Divine Liturgy tomorrow, on Holy Spirit Day.

During the time between Pascha and Pentecost, we withheld the prayer about the Holy Comforter from our daily selections, as we entered into a period of “waiting” for the Spirit to be given. Now its restoration imparts the reality of Pentecost as a historic event which has been given to us in Christ, and we pray:

O Heavenly King,
The Comforter, The Spirit of Truth,
Who art everywhere present and filleth all things,
Treasury of Blessing, and Giver of Life,
Come and abide in us,
And cleanse us from every impurity,
And save our souls, O Good One.

Remembering the Dead

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Our family has never tried to analyze what draws us to cemeteries. But our photo albums and memories are full of pictures from wandering through many such places all over the world. Last December I snapped this photo of our soldier son at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, near San Francisco. We had some time on our hands and we noticed this vast military cemetery nearby, so we decided to stop in.

In England, Pippin and I visited ruins of St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury and the 8th Century graveyard where some Orthodox Christians just happened to be visiting a particular grave that day. I took it as a special gift from God that they could show us the marker where St. Theodore (AD 602-90) had been buried. He came from Tarsus at the age of 67 and was one of the most important archbishops of Canterbury, and a link between East and West.

We also visited the grave of Winston Churchill near Woodstock, Oxfordshire. How wonderful to be able to put flowers on his grave (My daughter thought to do this, not I), to be close to him in a quiet churchyard with no crowds pressing.

But most of it is just history of everyday nobodies like us. Even in “historical” cemeteries the dignitaries who are buried there become less famous with every passing year, as the generations also pass and the descendants don’t remember very far back. So perhaps it’s not just history that is appealing. I can’t speak for anyone else in my family, but for me there is some blessing in being reminded of the death that lies ahead for all of us, and a feeling of connection to those who have “passed over” to where they know a lot more now about Who God is and what Life and death are all about.

Aries Clifton Bradshaw Jr. (photo above) is buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery. In the Orthodox Church we pray for the dead that their memory would be eternal. Considering how people are not good at remembering, it appears that if anyone is going to remember us eternally it will have to be God Himself.

This fact was referred to today at a Memorial Day celebration I attended, where in a prayer given by a creaky-voiced elderly man I caught a few words about those sailors who have sunk into the deep “where only Your Name goes.” We were at the rural cemetery, and this year the historic societies were dedicating a new flagpole. There were things for sale: homemade pie with milk–how homey!–and rosebushes propagated from vintage varieties that have grown in the cemetery for many decades.

Women dressed in Civil War era costumes laid wreaths in honor of those who had died in service to their country. For over a hundred years Decoration Day (the previous name for Memorial Day) has been kept by similar ceremonies in this place.


So many of the graves here are old and abandoned, and the historical association has set up a program by which one can adopt a grave. At least 40 of the gravesites now have been adopted by people who keep the weeds down and might also plant some native plants for beautifying. I would love to do this! It is a rural cemetery, with headstones and crypts scattered all over hilly terrain covered with oaks and wild grasses. Not the sort of place with acres of lawns and flat markers that can be easily mowed over.

Headstones are not allowed in most cemeteries nowadays. This picture of a lawn is where my paternal grandparents are buried. It is a nice “memorial park” surrounded by orange groves and with shady oaks. My grandmother died 20 years before my grandfather, and he planted and tended roses by her grave, until they were banned in favor of the flat look.

All through history, Christians have buried their dead. The incinerating of human bodies, dead or alive, has most often been done in desecration of one’s enemies. I don’t like the flat and somewhat boring grave markers, but they are better than having one’s remains scattered to the four winds. They are at least marking a grave, where those left behind have honored their dead by making a place for their bones, planting them in the earth as the Bible describes it, as our Lord was planted.

(This infant headstone is in Jacksonville, Oregon.)

Those who will to have their own selves cremated–well, as my former landlady would say, they aren’t going to escape being raised to Judgment. Or as I would say, God won’t have any difficulty in remembering them.

Today’s ceremonies ended with the playing of “Taps,” whose words (unsung, except in my mind) made the closing prayer that always brings me to tears of thankfulness and hope:

Day is done,
Gone the sun,
From the lake,
From the hills,
From the sky.
All is well;
Safely rest;
God is nigh.