November 26, 2024
                                                                Happy Thanksgiving! 
Beloved:
          At Sunday’s Thanksgiving potluck the folks at our table talked about that joyful satisfaction of being really, really hungry, then sitting down to amazingly good food.  We marked the privilege of it, and our gratitude for it.  
          Food.  More than any year I can remember, I am preoccupied with the food memories I have around this meal:  the dishes I usually make and how I came to make them.  I read the New York Times Cooking section more closely than I read any other, and yet I rarely vary from the same Thanksgiving menu I have made for years.  We only added mac and cheese once my grown daughter started making it a few years ago.  These are a few of the recipes on my table most years.  
          Growing up, my mom dumped cranberry sauce from the can onto a small plate and sliced it into can-shaped disks.  I did the same until Donna Ritter taught this version at a Global Women’s Gathering years ago and I discovered that I love it.  To me this is exactly how it’s supposed to taste.  I wished I’d copied and kept her recipe handwritten on notebook paper, instead of retyping it to send by email.  I’d love to have that now. 
          I’ve made savory deviled eggs but my mom’s sweet ones are my favorite.  She made them at Thanksgiving and Easter.  
          The standard stuffing (dressing as some folks call it) at my house for thirty years is from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook I got for a wedding present in 1988.  My sister took it up a notch one year by adding red, yellow and orange bell peppers and we’ve kept her twist on it since.  This year I am also adding mushrooms.  When I had a big kitchen I’d cut open loaves of sourdough bread and let them dry out on a tray on the counter top.  Now I just use this.  
          I’ve made the same yeast rolls for at least twenty-five years, as much for the memory as for the taste.  Bill Littlefield had made them for church dinner one year, so I called him a couple of days before Thanksgiving to get the recipe.  He started to read off the ingredients, then stopped and asked if I was home that afternoon.  I said yes and he said, “Okay, here’s the list of stuff you need, check and see if you have everything, and if not I’ll stop and get the rest on my way to your house.  I really want to come and show you how to do this.”  And he did.  He spent several hours of his day driving in from his house in Brown County, going by the store and then coming over to show me the best way to carefully mix all this together, in the right order and ONLY EVER WITH A WOODEN SPOON, never a mixer so as not to overstir it.  Bill died of a positively hateful cancer several years ago but his thoughtfulness and generosity that day is in the scent and taste of these rolls every time I make them.  
          I’ve cooked a whole turkey every kind of way.  I’ve brined them.  I’ve massaged them with butter, olive oil and salt.  I’ve stuffed them with fruit, vegetables and herbs.  At my friend Charlotte’s advice, I once soaked a turkey in champagne.  One summer I paid a fresh, local turkey deposit at the Farmers Market then got a text in mid-November to meet the farmer in a parking lot to collect my bird.  I was told to bring cash.  It felt slightly illegal, and also exciting.  I’ve bought fresh birds from a butcher and frozen ones from the grocer.  But hands down I’ll not cook another Thanksgiving bird any way but spatchcock it.  
          All of which is to say, I’ve got good food on my mind.  No doubt you have your menu all planned out and have no need of more recipes.  So these are here just for your reading, should you ever want them.  It might be fun to make a Church Thanksgiving Cookbook some year.  If you aren’t cooking, thank the cook and wash the dishes, but not too soon.  Linger at the table a long, long time and be grateful for the gift of having a table around which to linger.  Be grateful for the people who are there in memory alone and the ones who are making the memories that will sustain us in years to come.  Let time stand still for just a little while, long enough to mark the blessing it is to be alive and be together, here and now, and be nourished by it.
~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

Donna Ritter Cranberry Sauce
* NOTE - Sauce takes a day or more to set up properly, so best made no later than Tuesday before Thanksgiving. 

• 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries
• 1 ½ cups white sugar
• ¼ cup water
• 1 tsp salt

          Combine everything in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until berries begin to pop.  Cover and reduce heat, simmer for 10 minutes.  Pour into a glass container, cover and refrigerate until serving.

My Mom’s Deviled Eggs ~ Thanksgiving Size Batch

• 18 eggs, boiled, cooled and peeled
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise
• 1 Tbsp yellow mustard
• 2 Tbsp finely chopped onion
• 4 Tbsp sweet relish
• 1 tsp salt
• paprika for topping

          Cut eggs in half, drop yolks in a bowl and arrange whites on a serving plate.  A layer of leaf lettuce will keep them from sliding around.  Combine yolks, mayonnaise, mustard and salt in a food processor, and process until smooth.  Remove to a mixing bowl and stir in relish and onion.  Spoon into eggs and sprinkle with paprika.

Good Housekeeping Sausage Stuffing

• 1 pound sweet or mild Italian sausage
• 1 stick butter
• 4 large celery stalks, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 small bell peppers, green, red, yellow, orange, diced
• 12 cups stale bread cubes, (about 24 slices torn up)
• 3 eggs, beaten slightly
• ½ cup milk
• ½ cup minced parsley
• 1 ½ tsp rosemary
• ½ tsp pepper

          Preheat oven to 325.

          In Dutch oven over medium heat, cook sausage until browned.  Remove meat from pot to a bowl but leave drippings in pot over medium heat.  To pot add butter and all vegetables.  Cook until tender.  (I usually do this a day or two ahead and keep in fridge, then reheat in Dutch oven on Thanksgiving Day and continue recipe from here.)

          Remove from heat; add cooked sausage, bread, eggs, milk and herbs/spices.  Toss together until well mixed.  Spoon into 9x13 pan sprayed with Pam.  Cover with foil and bake 45 minutes or until heated through.

Notes:
          * If I have more than a dozen people, I usually increase ingredients by 50% and use my lasagna pan.
          * Sometimes I make the whole dish the day before and then get it out early on T-giving to raise to room temp.  When the turkey comes out, I pour about ½ cup of the turkey broth into the stuffing pan and reheat it for 15 minutes or so to get it hot again.  Broth helps it be not too dry.
          * Instead of parsley, I’ve used the same amount of oregano.  But the rosemary is worth getting for this; it makes it smell so awesome in the house.

Bill LIttlefield’s Yeast Rolls

• 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
• 2 ½ cups warm water (110-115 degrees; hotter than this will kill the yeast)
• ¼ cup shortening
• 1 stick butter (not margarine!)
• almost 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 Tbsp salt
• 8 cups (960 grams) unbleached all purpose flour

          * Gently mix together the yeast, sugar and water.  Leave alone until active.  Active means it is bubbling and you can smell yeast working.  It will look foamy.
          * Melt butter and shortening together.  Cool to 115 degrees and then add to yeast mixture.
          * Stir in eggs and salt.
          * Add 3 cups of flour and stir until smooth.  Add remaining flour 1 cup at a time, stirring constantly.
          * Cover loosely and refrigerate overnight, up to three days.  The dough will double in the bowl.
          * Baking day - remove dough from fridge to allow it to warm up.  3 hours or so before baking, punch dough down and divide into fourths.  Sprinkle countertop with flour and roll each fourth into a circle.  Cut into wedges like a pizza.  Starting with outer edge, roll each wedge into a crescent.
          * Spray cookie sheets with oil, and space rolls to allow doubled size when risen.  Cover loosely with greased plastic wrap and let rise 3-4 hours.
          * Bake rolls 8-11 minutes at 400 degrees.  Remove from the oven and brush with melted butter.
          * They freeze well.
 
Spatchcocked Turkey

•  One 8-to-12 pound turkey
•  ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil or butter
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Herbs of choice; I like oregano, thyme, rosemary that I break off from garden plants.
• 1 lemon half, celery stalk, ¼ onion, carrot ~ whatever you would normally put inside a bird for aromatics. 

          * Heat oven to 450 degrees, lowering top rack to middle of oven. 
          * Put a kettle of water on to boil.
          * Put the turkey on a stable cutting board breast side down and cut out the backbone along each side of the spine.  Save the backbone and organs, along with all vegetable scraps for making broth.
          * Turn the turkey over, and press down hard on the breastbone until you feel and hear it crack.  Lay bird out on a cooling rack in/over sink and rinse thoroughly.  No need to pat dry.  Turn it skin side up on a cooling rack as flat as possible.
          * Pour boiling water gently and carefully over the skin of the turkey, causing it to contract and shrink.  This will make skin crisper.
          * Remove bird from rack to a sheet pan in order to wash and spray the rack with oil.  Place rack in a rimmed baking sheet.
          * Place bird back on the sprayed cooling rack and rub thoroughly with butter/olive oil, salt and pepper.
          * Score the skin on legs with a knife.  Cut small slits in the sides of body and insert wingtips as far as they will go.
          * Tuck garlic and other aromatics beneath the bird.
          * Place the pan in oven and pour water into rimmed baking sheet, carefully; it will steam.
          * After 20 minutes, reduce heat to 400 and start checking temp every 15 minutes until turkey reaches 165 degrees in a couple of places.  If browning too fast, reduce heat to 350.
          * Cooking time will be under 2 hours.
          * Rest bird beneath foil and a heavy towel for 20 minutes before carving.
          * Extract pan juices with a turkey baster to make gravy.

everyone knows that sand in your socks is the worst feet feeling ever.  In the evening I finished three quilt tops and backs that have been 99% done for weeks.  They are pressed and ready for the quilter.  All of which is to say I went to bed believing I’d had a good day, because it was so . . . . productive, because I got so much accomplished.
          I may have climbed in bed satisfied but I woke up uneasy.  Uneasy as I remembered the costs I’ve paid over the years on days that were not productive, when very little seemed to get done.  On those days I felt not good enough, unworthy even, almost as if I had failed, though I couldn’t tell you what I had failed at specifically.  Being good enough, I suppose, probably because I got so much positive feedback from my parents and teachers for working hard at whatever work was before me.  The feedback was even better when no one had to tell me what or how to do something, when I surprised them with my maturity, my dependability.  The feelings such feedback inspired is the high I’ve chased ever since and the tender regret I had this morning.  Because while they may be honest feelings, they are not my deepest values.        Human beings, including me, are not worthy because of what we accomplish.  We are worthy, we are enough, because we exist as creatures in creation.  We are welcome and wanted here by the Maker who made us and loves us as we are, not for how tidy our spaces are, how orderly our finances.  Living in sync with our deepest values is the essence of integrity, of being so integrated that thoughts, feelings, actions and deepest values lay one upon the other like transparencies that form the whole picture of one person, everything fitting rightly together.  Integrity is a project to be sure, not unlike making a house into a home, bringing one room at a time into sync with the rest, with much grace toward oneself as they do their best day by day.
          The dog just came in positively filthy but only on one side of herself,  while the neighborhood looks sparkling clean after the rain.  Everything to its season, don't you know.  I pray your day is fine in all the ways that truly matter.

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

*I refuse to use the term lazy susan. ​

October 29, 2024

Beloved:
​
          Bless you, Birdy!
          The dog sneezes so much this time of year I hardly hear it, not until the three-year-old blesses her so kindly.  We were sitting on the porch eating popsicles yesterday, going over the day.  She asked about my Halloween costume, suggesting I be a bat when I told her I wasn’t planning to dress up.  She’s going as a spooky skeleton, spooky being her very favorite word these days.  Spooky refers to cute bats and ghosts and witches, spiders, pumpkins and skeleton pajamas with glow-in-the-dark bones screen-printed on black fabric.  Her life and her little brother’s is so safe and calm and gentle, a glorious bubble of childhood every little kid deserves and too few ever know.  For no virtue on her part or her parents’ so much as the luck of being born when and where they were.
          The odds are entirely in their favor and yet, the very thought of something happening to them takes my breath away.  Takes my breath away in a way that was not true when my own kids were little.  Maybe I felt more in control then, or maybe I know better now just how awful some humans are toward other people’s children.  The grandmothers of Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan.  Grandmothers whose children and grandchildren are walking that terrible walk to the U.S. border, hoping against hope to be received.  Grandmothers who are raising their grandkids with too little strength, in too small a space, on too tight a budget – because for whatever reason their kids are just not able to parent.
          I wish E. and R. could be little for longer, that this idyllic time of innocence could last and last.  But I suppose those are the wishes of the privileged, that such innocence is itself a form of privilege.  Hungry kids are not innocent.  Kids whose families are hiding or on the run are not innocent of the meanness of this world.  The best that we can do is do right by every kid we can, to love the ones we’re with and work for justice on behalf of all of them insofar as we are able.
          I’m headed outside for a walk in this delightfully breezy autumn.  I pray the day is kind to you, and you have the chance to bless another creature.

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette