Simply Cooking

I love to cook. Preparing delicious food for my family and friends is one of my greatest joys. Very often, my husband will say, “Make it easy on yourself and just buy it already-made.” That makes sense to him, because he doesn’t even like to get too close to the grill. I’d rather prepare it myself.

Furthermore, people think I’m a pretty good cook. In particular, my daughters-in-law frequently tell me what a good cook they think I am. They tell their children that Nana can make ANYTHING.

One day I walked into our son’s house and was greeted by my 5-year-old grandson with, “Nana, can you make eggnog?” No “hello Nana,” just a culinary dare of sorts.

I looked sort of blankly at him since the question came without context. “Say yes,” said my daughter-in-law. She told me they had been talking about cooking, and she had told him that there wasn’t anything Nana couldn’t cook.

“Well,” I said to him, “if I have a recipe, I really can cook just about anything – even eggnog.”

That apparently resonated with him. On a recent Saturday morning, I arrived early at their house to watch the kids while Mom and Dad did a long early-morning run in preparation for a marathon. My grandson was the first one up that morning. I asked him what he would like for breakfast, and he immediately answered, “banana bread.”

“Well, I don’t think there is any banana bread,” I said.

“Then make some,” he answered simply.

I appeased him with peanut butter toast with bananas, and promised him some banana bread very soon. I kept my promise yesterday and delivered a loaf of freshly-made banana bread, with instructions that he must share it with his three sisters.

Cooking touches some very inner part of me and makes me feel like I’m connected to my family and friends and to the planet on which we live. Perhaps I learned this from my mother, who was a good, simple cook who prepared a full evening meal nearly every day, after putting in a full day of work outside the home. She made it seem simple. I do not.

But that’s okay. I want to help people know and understand that cooking doesn’t have to be flawless preparation like we see on the cable cooking channels. It just needs to be taking ingredients, putting them together in a way that makes sense, and serving loved ones. It’s that simple.

Treasure Hunting

A few weeks ago, as Bill and I were driving to REI to pick up a gift card, my cell phone rings. It’s my sister from Fort Collins.

“What are you doing?” she asked. I told her, and she laughed out loud. Will wonders never cease, she said.

She had just met with one of her clients, who had told her about an activity called geocaching, and my sister was intrigued. She was calling to suggest I go to REI to purchase a geocacher, or to at least learn more about geocaching. (My sister has intuitive powers, but that’s another post.)

Having never heard anything about it, and being intrigued myself, I subsequently proceeded to learn as much about geocaching as I could. Now I’m hooked.

Simply speaking, geocaching is treasure hunting using the technology of satellites, via a GPS of some sort. And the word “treasure” is used lightly. With geocaching, it’s about the hunt and the find, and not about the cache itself.

So now, as often as several times a day, I take my phone (which now has a geocache program on it) and hunt for hidden treasure, 21^st century-style. I like it because it challenges me to think creatively, it offers me the opportunity to be outside and get some exercise, and it provides me a sense of accomplishment (provided I’m able to find the geocache).

I’m finding that it also forces me to confront and overcome some of my scaredy-catness about God’s, shall we say, less-desireable creatures, such as insects, snakes, and so forth. The treasures are generally hidden off the beaten path amidst trees, long grasses, and pine needles. I can’t say I fearlessly pursue the treasures yet, but I’m trying.

I think God’s human children are very creative to have taken advantage of satellite technology and used it to pursue something fun. Geocaching is a group activity. Even if you don’t actually hunt with others (though it is much more fun to do so), it is almost impossible to not call someone and tell them about your success. And I can’t wait to hunt with my 7-year-old granddaughter. She will be excited about the mystery.

Loving God

Today is the last official day of Lent, and therefore, the last official day of my Lenten blog. Tomorrow is Holy Thursday, which begins the Tiduum – the holy days leading up to Easter Sunday.

I have enjoyed writing this blog, but I will admit that it has been challenging. Some days I was bursting with ideas of what I wanted to share. Other days I had to work harder to be inspired.

My goal was to try and become more in touch with my faith. I wanted to be able to look around me and see God’s hand and how it touches my life every day. In that, I think I was successful. I am much more aware of how blessed I am, and less willing to take things for granted.

Ultimately, my hope is that building my relationship with God will make me a better person. Building that relationship is not something that I will ever complete. Just like I can’t look at a relationship with a friend and say, “Well, she’s my friend so I no longer have to communicate with her,” I have to continue to work on being close to God.

I will continue to write this blog, but only when I feel inspired.

Happy Easter to everyone who has followed my Lenten journey.

Appreciation

This morning I was at my occupational therapist appointment and my OT Molly was working on my right hand – the one on which I’ve been wearing the splint for three-and-a-half weeks. I was whining about the fact that my wrist just doesn’t seem to have gotten any better, and I’m sick of wearing that splint, and it doesn’t seem like I can do anything without feeling some discomfort, and ……. Well, you get the point. I was being a big fat baby.

I’m happy to say that I was able to see what I was doing and stop myself (in other words, it didn’t come down to Molly saying, “Will you please shut up and quit complaining you big fat baby?”). I apologized, saying that I have to really work at reminding myself that I have a wrist injury and not breast cancer (for example).

Molly was nice about it, and told me about a video that someone had sent her entitled “The world is so amazing but nobody’s happy.” A comedian appearing on Conan O’Brien does a four-minute stint about the amazing things that technology has given us, and how it doesn’t matter because we’re still not happy. For example, instead of recognizing the fact that we can fly in an airplane across the entire country in five hours, “sitting in a recliner in the air,” as the comedian says, we complain that the seat doesn’t recline far enough or the plane was delayed by an hour. This video is worth viewing if you are able to do so.

It really is true that we take so much of our wonderful life for granted. My grandparents immigrated from Switzerland on a ship, residing in steerage because that’s all they could afford. It took them a very long time to get here, and my poor grandmother was incredibly seasick the entire way. She would send her five-year-old daughter off alone to get food and milk because she was too sick to do it herself. When they left their families in Switzerland, they knew that it was very unlikely that they would ever see them again because they wouldn’t be able to afford it. In fact, while they did eventually go back to Switzerland for a visit many, many years later, they never did see their parents again.

Now it takes us eight or so hours to get from the United States to Europe. We can fly back and forth over a long weekend. And if we choose to travel on a ship, we have clean quarters and constant food and entertainment.

Travel is just one area that we take for granted. It would be a very long blog if I tried to say everything that I have for which I should be amazed and instead take for granted.

So I will put up with my wrist discomfort and try not to complain.

Blessed are the Poor

My Lenten reading today was from St. John’s gospel, and told about Jesus visiting once again with his BFFs Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. In this story, Mary is anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive oil.

Poor Mary just can’t get a break. If it isn’t Martha complaining that Mary is neglecting her work and making her do it all, it’s Judas Iscariat pointing out the costliness of the oils being used to anoint Christ’s feet.

At the risk once again of a bolt of lightening coming through my roof, I must say that I always kind of understood what Judas meant. After all, Jesus preached again and again about helping the poor. And yet, he allowed Mary to use this expensive oil on Him. I always thought it was kind of extravagant.

Phew. So far, no lightening.

But today I thought further about it. Perhaps what Jesus was saying was that we should help the poor all we possibly can, but don’t forget to spend time nurturing our relationship with God. Sometimes it may seem extravagant to sit quietly and pray when I could be cleaning the house or folding the laundry. But in order to have the desire, the will, the strength, the ability to help those in need, I need to work on my relationship with God.

Passion

Palm Sunday is one of my favorite Masses of the year. I love the tradition of the palms, and the priest’s blessing upon them. I love singing King of Glory during the processional, as we recreate Jesus’ joyful entrance into Jerusalem only a week before He is put to death.

In particular, I am always moved by the reading of the Passion, which Catholics (and probably other denominations) traditionally listen to on Palm Sunday. This year we listened to St. Mark’s passion story. I think it is particularly beautiful.

And this year, I was more emotional than usual. I could almost feel Christ’s fear as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking God to free Him from the horrific hours ahead. I could understand His frustration when He asked the angry crowd why they had to make such a production about arresting Him. “Day after day I was with you teaching in the temple area, yet you did not arrest me,” Jesus said. And as I listened to the priest cry out Jesus’ final words, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani (my God, my God, why have you forsaken me), my heart broke as I imagined His mother below, wanting to take it all away from Him, as any mother would.

When Bill and I were in Rome, we visited the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (the holy cross in Jerusalem). That church contains a number of passion relics supposedly brought back to Rome by St. Helen, the mother of Constantine. Included in the relics are a piece of the true cross on which was inscribed Jesus, King of the Jews; some of the nails and some of the thorns; and a part of the cross on which hung the good thief who died next to Jesus. Also located in that church is an exact replica of the Shroud of Turin, which is believed to be the shroud that covered Jesus in His tomb (the original is located in Turin, Italy).

The thing in that church, however, that impacted me most was a crucifix that someone made using the image on the Shroud of Turin, thereby exactly duplicating the way that Jesus hung on the cross. The body on this cross was twisted, with the arms clearly broken and the shoulder obviously out of joint. The body was covered in blood. I have looked at crucifixes all of my life. Jesus always hangs on the cross in the same way – His arms stretched out and His face hung to the side. When I saw the image on this crucifix, I realized that almost without a doubt, this is what Jesus must have looked like. Of course his arms broke and his shoulders buckled. Death by crucifixion is supposed to be one of the most horrifying ways to die. The crucifix in this church literally took my breath away, and I unexpectedly began to cry.

It reminded me that Jesus’ death for our sins must never be taken for granted.

White Lies

This morning in my Lenten booklet, the author talked about the meeting held by the Jewish leaders shortly after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. At this meeting, according to John’s gospel, they made the decision that Jesus needed to be killed. They justified this decision based on Caiphus’ argument that should the Jewish masses proclaim Jesus to be the Messiah, the Romans would overtake them and they would lose their freedom.

The real reason? Caiphus’ argument was probably partially true. But there was likely a lot of jealousy and fear. After all, this Jesus fellow preached a lot of things that didn’t necessarily follow Jewish teaching, and he had the ability to get so many people so excited. This fear caused the leaders to use Caiphus’ argument to justify Christ’s crucifixion in their minds.

I began thinking about how easy it is to justify doing bad things. You only have to read history books to see that. Lots of bad things have happened throughout history that were justified by someone. The holocaust is only one example.

But I also do that it my everyday life. White lies, for instance. I probably tell a white lie at least once a week. Generally I do it so that I don’t hurt someone’s feelings. Sometimes I will think afterwards, “Why didn’t I just tell the truth. I was trying to not to hurt her feelings, but now everything is more complicated.”

I also occasionally will get mad at Bill (my family, I know, is SHOCKED to read this), but I can always justify it in my mind. “He can be so difficult!,” I will tell myself. “He’s practically asking for me to give him the silent treatment.”

I realize that my sins are small compared to things like murder. But I can only control myself. I will work on trying to stop justifying things that are just wrong, no matter how small.