When you've bought too much lamb for Easter

Sometimes, whether out of exuberance or in ignorance, you buy too much meat. Sometimes, it might be as much as twice as much. After the initial chagrin, that's when handy leftover transformations are great, and you can't get much more English and much more homey than shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie is of course not to be confused with cottage pie, which is essentially the same thing but with beef instead of lamb. (Although it is tempting to think that perhaps the Shepherd should actually prefer cottage pie, out of loyalty to his charges?) Traditionally, both are made with leftover roast, but rumor has it that making it with fresh, raw ground beef or lamb (dry-fried with the aromatics at the beginning) is actually better. The following is a version of shepherd's pie that I've cobbled together from Nigella's How to Eat, Jimmy Doherty's A Taste of the Country (which by the way is not only a good guide to classic British farm fare, but also one of the most quirky and literally 'down-to-earth' cookbooks I've ever read, and has inspired my obsession with owning chickens one day), and a recipe adapted from a back-issue of Cooks Illustrated for 'smashed potatoes' - the yummy peeling-free version of mash. This is a recipe that calls for a lot of judgement calls, but if you're fearless in such situations and you have any leftover lamb hanging about, give it a go!

Di’s 'Souped Up Easter Leftovers' version of Shepherd’s Pie

Filling:
1 lb. leftover lamb roast, very finely chopped or minced (can dry fry ground lamb with onions first too)
1-2 cans of chopped tomatoes in tomato sauce
1 small can of tomato paste
about 3/4 c. of beef broth
2-4 Tb. Worcestershire sauce (to taste)
salt and pepper (to taste)
3 large carrots, minced
2 medium onions, minced
3-4 stalks of celery, minced
a large handful of parsley and stalks, minced
4 garlic cloves, minced

tip: for the last 5 ingredients, using the food processor is quick and easy

1. Cook this mixture in a few Tb. of olive oil over low heat 10-20 minutes or until carrots are cooked
2. add cooked lamb and flour, stir to combine thoroughly
3. add 1 can of tomatoes slowly; add 2 Tb of tomato paste and some broth and Worcestershire sauce. Taste and add more tomatoes/paste/broth as needed to reach the desired consistency, namely moist, but not soupy, like a filling for a meat pie. Simmer until meat is heated through. Dump into 9x13 pan and finish topping.

tip: While you're waiting for the carrots to cook, you can start the smashed potato topping

Smashed Potato Topping:
2 pounds or more of large red potatoes, washed but not peeled and generally all the same size (cut them down if you have to)
3 bay leaves
8 oz. (1 pack) of light cream cheese
4 Tb. butter or margarine, melted
½ c + warm milk or reserved water from boiling the potatoes (which is actually better than milk)
salt and pepper, to taste

1. Bring potatoes to a boil with the bay leaves and then turn down to a low heat and let simmer for about 30-40 minutes, or until a paring knife can pierce the potatoes with no resistance
2. Drain potatoes, reserving some of the potato water; remove bay leaves and let the potatoes dry out back in the pan for about 5 minutes with the lid off
3. While the potatoes dry, whisk together the melted butter, cream cheese, and salt and pepper, adding ½ c. milk or potato water to create a smooth creamy consistency
4. Smash the potatoes with the back of a wooden spoon on the side of the pan. Leave lumps in: lumps taste good. Fold in cream cheese mixture. Add more milk/potato water as necessary to reach the desired consistency (not too wet - you want a chunky topping that can spread, not a gummy topping)
5. Adjust salt and pepper to taste

Assembly:

1. Top the meat filling with potatoes, and grate over a small amount of cheddar cheese if desired
2. Put under the broiler for a few minutes to brown the top

Easter feasting

For Resurrection Sunday, we invited friends over for a proper Easter feast, with all generousity and abundance in light of prudential wisdom. We wanted to celebrate together as a family with them, and so planned for a leisurely, relatively painless meal preparation that wouldn't take away from my enjoyment and their comfort by enslaving me to the kitchen. This pretty much went according to plan, minus the roast being a bit more speedy than anticipated and causing a last-minute sprint for me! But the original plan was something like this:

Come whenever after church
Nibble on cheese and crackers, nuts, delicious french pickles, while sipping Kir for a good while, listening to joyful music
Kick-start the appetite proper with pan-roasted asparagus with a warm orange-sherry viniagrette (easy to make!), quaffing the rest of the white wine therewith
Have a breather and talk
Bring out the roast lamb, peas, artichoke hearts, and green onions with lemon zest and garlic, and 'smashed potatoes' and switch to the red wines
Adjourn to the sitting room and eat carrot cake (made the day before)
Read resurrection poetry (largely dominated by Hopkins) over coffee and chocolates
Go on a walk together by the river

And that's generally what we did, resulting in a great time of leisurely fellowship and celebration of Christ's resurrection and our new life in Him.

Later that day, after the walk, friends spontaneously dropped by and we spent the next hour and a half laughing ourselves silly together. Calls to home ended the day, and we woke up on Monday for another round of enjoying resurrected life with our friends: banana pancakes with John and Di in the morning sunshine and later tacos with more friends in the evening, picked up from Cambridge's one and only tacqueria. All in all, a satisfying set of celebrations and delight, all pointing towards and participating in the great feast in New Jerusalem that awaits us and to which we look forward eagerly in hope!

Thought of Yesterday

I'm putting this here to remind myself that my thoughts are frequently lame - apologies if intentional self-humiliation wasn't what you were looking for today, and don't worry, I'll probably delete this post sooner or later. Here it is, inspired by the 'slavery to convenience' comment from yesterday:

"Pragmatism breeds slaves"

Take that, World...if you dare! Tremble and quail before my manifest brilliance!

Virtuous laundering

A recent blog extolling the virtues of the Fisher & Paykel washing machine reminded me how behind American washers and dryers are in terms of energy efficiency and convenience. They are absolute behemoths compared to my wee under the kitchen sink combination washer/dryer. Moreover, they seem to value power over efficiency, as was confirmed by a chat with a knowledgeable shop assistant at Sears over Christmas. Out of curiousity, we asked him why there were so few side-loading washers, even though side-loading was generally regarded as more efficient in its use of soap and water, as well as amazingly able to spin water out of clothes so that they come out nearly dry. His answer: habit/fashion and apparent size trump operational virtue. He particularly commented on how washer specifications fool consumers by offering them higher numbers where such numbers are generally meaningless. (By the way, the same is true for food processors: the electricity draw of the motor so touted on labels has absolutely no effect on the performance of the appliance according to the good people at Cooks Illustrated.)

The delay start feature is also pretty standard here in the UK, largely because of the way electricity is billed. For those of us stuck with storage heaters (which heat up bricks or oil during the night and then turn off and allow nature and manually operated vents to take over from there), we are billed at much lower rates from 12am-7am when those heaters are drawing electricity like crazy. As a result, the best time to do the wash is...while you sleep! Which is also better for the system as a whole, since night is usually the time of the lowest demand and washers take a lot of power to spin those clothes out.

One final cross-cultural note: a friend from Britain was visiting over Christmas while we were in California and (if I remember correctly?) wondered aloud why in such a sunny climate people didn't just hang their laundry out to dry instead of using dryers. I'd never considered such a thing before on a grand scale, even though we had routinely hung a lot of ours out during the first year of marriage due to a pretty lame dryer. It strikes me as odd that, due to soaring energy costs, I've come to hang up all my clothes as a matter of fact in a wetter climate than my sunny native turf. Now, there is a small sacrifice of convenience, it's true - about a 5 minute sacrifice in my experience when your washer can spin things nearly dry. If California is serious about energy conservation, why don't more green-leaning yuppies (like myself) hang up more of their laundry in their backyards, especially during the summer months when the system gets stretched to its limits by the demands of air conditioning? That doesn't mean never use a dryer, but to suggest that it might be a good idea regard its use as optional, or even exceptional, instead of unquestionable. Or have we truly ceded so much of our God-given agency that we have become slaves to convenience?

Parenting speculations: behaviorism, sin, and grace

Many thanks to Bourgeois Wife for her thoughts and to those participating in her carnival on parenting styles and theology responding to my forward-looking curiosity. (No, I’m not pregnant, in case you thought that was a veiled hint. Sheesh!) Bribing respected, well-heeled parents to share their wisdom over dinner was a brilliant idea of Bourgeois Wife and Burglar, and I also was heartened by her equipoise, thinking both in terms of the long-term process of nurturing another person and in terms of one stage at a time.

Two notions really struck me in reading the carnival, especially pertaining to the influence of theology on parenting. The following thoughts are the fruit of a discussion with Drumstick last night about it all.

Firstly, as Kelly reminds us, the goal of parenting is not a well-behaved child, but pointing a soul to Christ. This insight launched a discussion between Drumstick and I on the difference between parenting focused on behavior management and parenting focused on creating a space in which a child is encouraged, enabled, and reasonably persuaded to give herself wholly to Christ. Much of what Kelly said really resonated with us, but we had a few comments to add.

Aiming merely at managing behavior treats a child like a beast (à la B.F. Skinner and Pavlov). Whether that is done with threats or rewards, spanking, the “naughty chair”, emotional manipulation, or cognitive therapy (!), the mindset behind it treats the child in a thoroughly materialistic fashion by focusing solely on creating outward conformity and ignoring the soul. This attitude fails to take into account that it is an image-bearing person that you are attempting to control, not an animal. When your strategies for teaching your child manners do not differ much from those you would apply to training your dog—noble as dogs may be!—there is something seriously amiss. To be content with a well-mannered child is to aim too low and consequently to risk feeding hidden monsters of rebellion and pride prowling around the heart.

In contrast, acting in order to create a space for encounter with Christ in a child’s life cannot but presume that the child is a person who images the God who reveals himself personally to human persons. Behavior is managed not only for the ease of social relations (which is indisputably a good), but primarily because doing so can help a child to understand what it means to be responsible to the loving person who has charge over her and calls her into a flourishing relationship with him.

That said, it is still the case that sometimes a parent just has to say, “Stop that right now!” (possibly adding an “OR ELSE!” for good measure) and he cannot immediately do the soul-work part of his role. What do you do when, in the moments when you both are flying by the seat of your pants, you do not have the time or resources to deal with your child as a whole person? One idea is a later breakdown of the day at bedtime (something my parents did with me) where things whether good or bad are talked over with a parent. This could take many forms. Those who are more introverted can be asked to draw a picture of their day or to tell a story about an imaginary character or one of their stuffed animals, while the parent gently prods with questions and offers a Christ-formed perspective and a chance for forgiveness (and any apologies for parental errors!). This is all non-parent speculation of course, but I suppose it could be a way to model with the child a meditative heart before God.

In your anger do not sin;
when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.

Selah

Offer right sacrifices
and trust in the LORD.

~ Psalm 4:4-5

Secondly, Kelly’s discussion of the effect of a theology of original sin on the way a parent regard’s a child’s behavior was interesting, and I would love to hear more on this line from parents. As Drumstick is fond of quipping, “What a cute little bundle of sin!” It seems to me that while parents must begin with the recognition that a child is a gift of God in the form of a person made in his image, parents must also recognize that this little person is marred, whether by concupiscence or original sin. Marred, but not disfigured out of all recognition, and there lies the tension that informs practical decisions by parents. When has the child crossed the line from expressing a proper need to selfish manipulation?

Now add to this tension the complexity of infant persons. Very young infants are taken up with learning first what it means to be in the world and second how to act in the world: what another person is (something clearly not obvious to her, as it takes her a while to realize that pulling Mommy’s hair hurts Mommy even though it doesn’t hurt her), what her own self is as distinct from other persons, how the outside world relates to her, what toes are for, how to move arms and legs and body purposefully, how to drink, what hunger is for and how to deal with it, how to see things properly, how to give something attention, and so forth. The scope for moral action for such a person so taken up with the ins and outs of simply being and acting is highly limited, and thus her capacity for sin is likewise highly limited by opportunity. I don’t think that anyone really attributes manipulation to a three-week-old wailing in hunger or loneliness: both indicate true human needs that ought to be satisfied and she is right to look to others to satisfy those needs as God has designed. For very young infants (contra St. Augustine), it seems reasonable to suppose that sinful actions are at most a rarity and extraordinarily hard to identify, especially since parents too are learning who this little person is and how she expresses her very self. At the same time, a baby’s scope for moral action is slowly but constantly expanding as the infant comes to understand more about what it means to be a person (both for herself and for other persons) and comes to be able to act more and more significantly in the world. The problem of dealing with the concupiscence of your child then, becomes in the first year of her life largely an epistemological one: how do you know that at this instant, in this action, your child is manifesting a sinful heart? (See Rebecca’s post about an incident with her young son, Caleb, as a practical example of this that is very inspiring!)

Drumstick’s summary agrees pretty much with Kelly's: bring all the wisdom you can to each situation, and then err on the side of grace.

We often talk of teaching our children obedience, justice, responsibility, and so forth, so that they can then understand by analogy God’s relationship to them as Lord and King. Surely, then, we ought also to think hard about opening up for our children avenues of grace, for how else can we prepare their hearts to be as receptive to God’s grace as they are to his rule? The role of grace in parenting – now there’s a topic!