Fr. Z’s Kitchen: Of Roman snails and of medieval cherries

A boy stealing cherries from a tree, with an angry club-wielding man coming to punish him, the Luttrell Psalter, Add MS 42130, f. 196v

I found at the blog of the British Library a fascinating story about a recipe for cherries in the Medieval period in England.

There is a recipe for chyryse in a manuscript of Forme of Cury, a recipe book of Richard II’s cook from around 1390.

I’m going to try this.  The blogger worked out a recipe based on the sketchy indications in the manuscript:

The recipe

Take almaundes unblanched, waisshe hem, grynde hem, drawe hem up with gode broth. do þerto thridde part of chiryse. þe stones take oute and grynde hem smale. make a layour of gode brede & powdour and salt and do þerto. colour it with sandres so that it be stondyng, and florissh it with aneys and with cheweryes, and strawe þeruppon and serue it forth.

Take unblanched almonds, wash them, grind them, draw them up with good broth. Add a third part of cherries, take out the stones, and grind them small. Make a layour (thick sauce) of good bread and powder (spice mix) and salt and add. Colour it with sandalwood so that it is standing (thickened) and flourish it with aniseed and with cherries and strew on top and serve it forth.

Method

To make this recipe, I mixed together 100g ground almonds and 150ml red wine (the recipe calls for ‘gode broth’, i.e. animal stock, but some alternative versions use wine instead, which seems like a better option). I heated them gently in a pan. After removing the stones, I roughly pureed a large punnet of cherries with a hand blender and added them to the pan. I grated a slice of wholemeal bread to make breadcrumbs, which I added to the mixture along with a spice mix of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, sugar and salt (the recipe does not specify which spices, but this is an authentic medieval blend). Not having any sandalwood to dye it, I left out that step. I gently simmered the mixture for about 20 minutes until it thickened, then refrigerated it overnight. I served it with a garnish of aniseed and halved fresh cherries.

Hmmm… I have some sandlewood shaving soap.  I don’t think that will work.

A “punnet” is a measure unit for things like berries and mushrooms.  In volume it is 400 cubic centimeters.  For berries it is about 250g.

I have some cherries in the fridge that need to be used up.  I’ll adjust.  Contrary to popular opinion, I’m flexible.

So, later today, let us sit upon the ground and tell glad tales of the desserts of kings!

More later.

 

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St. John’s Birthday Feast, Midsummer Snails, and You. “Perdonamose!”

Your planet once again is whirling its way towards your solstices, Summer in the North and Winter in the South.  Since the emphasis in Western Civilization has been northern, I’ll stick with that.

In the Northern Hemisphere the June solstice is the day with the most daylight and the shortest night.  It falls every year between 20-22 June, this year on 20 June.  The solstice marks the end of Spring and the beginning of Summer.

On Holy Church’s calendar we celebrated the Vigil of John the Baptist yesterday, 23 June, and the Feast of his Birth today, 24 June.  The reason we celebrate John near the solstice, both because we count the months of Elizabeth’s being with child, and because John said “He must increase, I must decrease”. The ancients knew that at this time of year the length of days began to decrease.  The Nativity of the Lord falls near the Winter Solstice, when the days – at last – get longer and light comes back to the world.

There are lots of fine traditions from different cultures which you might incorporate into your own observances.   I post this some days in advance so that you can prepare.

First, each year consider having a bonfire (and cookout) on the Vigil of the Nativity of the Baptist.  Invite your priests!  There is a special blessing in Rituale Romanum for fires on the Vigil.  After the usual introduction, the priest blesses (it should be done in Latin) the fire saying:

Lord God, almighty Father, the light that never fails and the source of all light, sanctify + this new fire, and grant that after the darkness of this life we may come unsullied to you who are light eternal; through Christ our Lord. All: Amen.

At this point the fire is sprinkled with holy water and everyone sings the hymn Ut queant laxis which is also the Vespers hymn.  I have more about that beautiful – and historically important hymn – HERE.  You might practice the hymn and sing it.

In some places the bonfire is used for the burning of witches… in effigy.  That could be fun.  The witch connection probably comes from the fact that the satanically inclined or possessed hold the solstice as one of their important annual moments for their vile rites.

Also, I recommend the eating of snails.  This is very Roman. 

Romans traditionally eat snail of the Feast of John the Baptist, and so should you.

If you call yourself a traditional Roman Catholic…well… there’s no excuse.

Also, there is a witch connection with the snails and what Romans ate.

Romans would gather certain plants that were mature by this point, such as what we call St. John’s Wort, along with onions and garlic, which they thought drove off witches and demons.

Near St. John Lateran (named after both the Baptist and Evangelist) there was a little hill Monte Cipollario or “Onion Hill” that was eventually razed in the time of  Papa Lambertini – Benedict XIV.  It seems that lots of onions and garlic were cultivated in that zone.    In any event, the Romans gathered at St. John’s and ate lumache al sugo and greeted each other with the Roman dialect “Perdonamose!” (from “perdono… forgiveness”), a sort of way of mutual apologies and peacemaking.  It may be that the eating of snails comes from the fact, first, that at this time of year there are a lot of them and, next, they have horns, which could have symbolized discord and strife.  Hence, eating them did away with strife and promoted reconciliation.  “Perdonamose!”

To make and mess of lumache al sugo alla romana (aka ‘na ciumacata), you need well-purged snails, of course, along with tomatoes, olive oil, hot red pepper, onion, garlic, (preferably wild) fennel and/or mint. A couple versions I saw included anchovy.  Make your sauce and then add the snails, cook for a while, and serve hot with good bread.  This one is instructive HERE.  And, HERE. For wine …. why get fancy?  Stick with cold Frascati or another dry white from the Castelli Romani – even Velletri!

If you can’t get your hands on some snails, or enough snails, there’s always THIS… for lots of fun and conversation.   I am not making this up…

EDIBLE SNAIL ACTION FIGURE!

US HERE – UK HERE… nope, sorry!

Meanwhile get your canned or jarred snails and start planing: US HERE – UK HERE… nope, sorry again!

Finally, I sure would like to make some snails tonight.  Anyone want to pitch in?  HERE

Click!

There is also a very cool Medieval recipe I just found for cherries for St. John’s Day.

More on that later.

UPDATE:

Thanks for donations: KD, DL, DH

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Twitter and Parler

A while back I discovered how Twitter imposed with algorithms what my “interests” are on my account. An astonishing list of things I’ve never even heard of, much less had interest in. I understand that Twitter uses these checked boxes and “interests” to shadow ban certain users. I now daily uncheck all the boxes using a script.

The latest imposition of a warning on a tweet from Pres. Trump reveals the malicious mendacity of the Left.

I have an account on Parler

fatherz

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Contacting Fr. Z by email.

Folks, if you have questions for me, please use the ASK FATHER Question Box link in the top menu, or HERE.

If you have other business, use the Contact Fr. Z by EMAIL link in the top menu, or HERE.

I get a lot of unsolicited email.  Should you not use either of those, there is a strong probability that I won’t even open your email and it will go unread to deletion.

Thanks!

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“But… but… the traditional ways are… are… toooo haaaard!” Wherein Fr. Z rants.

I blocked out the name of the nut job who posted this tweet, lest he get traffic.

It couldn’t have been closer to “Pò sì jiù!… Down With The Four Olds!”

The tweet is the less eloquent contemporary version of a “big character poster”.

The twit who tweeted this has a page which says that his political party is Black Lives Matter.  I didn’t know they were a political party now.

This is from the About page of the official site of Black Lives Matter:

Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.

I am not entirely sure how destroying religious art (which the property of others) “centers Black joy”.   How does that create an “immediate improvement”?

Any person, anywhere, and really for any reason, sincere or not, could claim that is why he did X.

Also from that page:

We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.

Big-business abortion, Planned Parenthood was created for the elimination of black lives.   They exploite black lives in the worst ways possible.

Has Black Lives Matters denounced and attacked big-business abortion?  I really don’t know.

From the Black Lives Matter “What We Believe” page:

We acknowledge, respect, and celebrate differences and commonalities.

We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people.

We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.

We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.

Is that what we are seeing across the country?  Are differences being celebrated? Are commonalities being celebrated?  Is freedom and justice for all people being promoted?  How beautiful has Black Lives Matters been for the 1500 buildings destroyed or damaged in Minneapolis, including low-income housing?  How restorative has it been for the people who owned those buildings?  How are the immediate improvements for those who lost their livelihood over night?

How about this?

We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer?affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).

I don’t have a clue about who wrote this, but I can’t grasp how “patriarchal” things can be when a huge percentage of families in this communities don’t have full-time, life committed fathers in their homes.  I don’t know how much more disrupted the nuclear family structure could be.  And … “comfortable”… what does that mean?  Not having to overcome any obstacles?

“Queer-affirming”?  “Homonormative thinking”?

This stuff is way out there.

Take a look at their “Co-Founders” page.  HERE

My great fear is that this movement, as it becomes radicalized among those who are enthusiastic but maybe not very bright, will cause terrible backlashes.

Yesterday I was cursed at and given the finger by a young white woman driving a car with sheets of paper taped to her windows scrawled in black marker with “Black Lives Matter”.  Her penpersonship was as finely crafted as the rest of her skills in communication.

I suspect that this poor young thing is so doped up on left-wing talking points, so irrational because of years of lousy public education, that she has not a clue about the meaning of or consequences of her actions.  Vast swathes of our young people live consequence free lives.

A small slice of the leadership of this and of other groups want purposely to drive people to recklessness and anarchic violence because they want to spur a harsh counter-reaction from the Right.

They want counter-groups to form with which they can have open war in the streets, all as a prelude to tearing down society.  

They destroy public memory through, for example, destruction of statues.   

They want a Year Zero.

Everything promoted by the Father of Lies … is that too patriarchal?…, the Serpent… is that too speciesist? …, the Enemy of the Soul has grains of truth which make the susceptible person liable to latch on and to swallow the hook with the lie.

And there is always the technique of telling the lie so often that it punches through incredulity.

A tree is known from its fruits.

As I write this, I am in S. Minneapolis where I grew up, near to where there are blocks of wrecked buildings and damaged lives.

How indifferent to the sufferings of those who will be trampled under the feet of the looter, arsonist, and anarchist are those greater powers with the deep money and the long-term goals?

There is a proverb in French and English, the chilling, “On ne fait pas d’omelette sans casser des oeufs… You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”  This is famously attributed to both Lenin and Robespierre.   “So, lots of people die and suffer.  If you want to make an omelette, you’ve gotta break some eggs.”

I don’t expect many people younger than I am to know who those two people are, Robespierre and Lenin, given the state of education for the last decades.   That’s scary. George Santayana said:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Meanwhile, we had better think through the implications of a growing movement of mindless destruction. That’s what the loon at the top of this post really wants: destroy everything.

Do you suppose it is a coincidence that neighborhoods and communities purposely targeted by the Planned Parenthood death-for-profit machine for de facto genocide are where the howls of rage and violence now rise?

Is it a surprise that young people whose minds have been turned to slime by the acid flowing from their little screens should buy into the hollow rhetoric of revolution?

Are any of you really puzzled that the confluence of COVID-1984 and the well-orchestrated eruption of anarchy has overlapped this summer, before a Presidential election and an important cycle for the Senate?

The implications to me suggest we priests had better get really serious and stop fiddling around with the half measures of complacency and the easy path of minimal challenges.

If we stick to the squishy path rather than the rocky upward climb of our Tradition, we will sink out of sight in the slow-drowning quicksand of the world.

“But… but… the traditional ways are… are… toooo haaaard!

I keep talking about our Catholic identity.

If we don’t know who we are, as Catholics, and if we cannot articulate who we are and what we believe, then why should anyone listen to us?

In the public square, powerful catholic politicians make a mockery of the Church in the eyes of the world by their support for things precisely contrary to the precepts of nature and teachings of the Church.

Why should the Church have any influence in the public square?

A lot of people and groups of people have lost their compasses.

Meanwhile, crux stat dum volivitur orbis.

This is where we have to re-orient ourselves, at least we Catholics.

If we want to have any influence in the present state of affairs, we have to reclaim our identity.

If we want to save souls, we have to reclaim our identity.

Posted in Hard-Identity Catholicism, Liberals, Pò sì jiù, Semper Paratus, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, Turn Towards The Lord, What are they REALLY saying?, You must be joking! |
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ASK FATHER: All who enter a church must sign a visitors book, include name, contact details

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

In my home diocese (in Australia) our Bishop has decreed that all people who enter a church must sign into a visitor’s book and include their name, contact details and the time of entry and departure.

This is supposedly in accordance with the civil law of Corona Virus tracing – however the civil law makes it clear that the visitors book can be used “if the person chooses”, and is hence voluntary. The diocese is as a result stepping beyond the civil law.

I have concerns about the broader privacy issues, but principally I am concerned about the security of secret confessions. The civil jurisdiction in which I live has officially abolished the legal protections of seal of confession. Can and should churches compulsorily record the time and presence of people if confessions are being offered? And where such a record is being collected for the Civil governments purposes.

GUEST PRIEST RESPONSE: Fr. Tim Ferguson

Invalid laws do not require compliance. We read in the Regulae Iuris of Pope Boniface VIII, for example, “Ea quae fiunt a iudice, si ad eius non spectant officium, non subsistent.” (n. 26)  That which a judge does if it is outside of his competence does not stand.

It is beyond the scope of a bishop’s authority to require the revelation of conscience that is forbidden by the universal law.

Canon 983 establishes that the sacramental seal is inviolable and uses the rare canonical construction “nefas est” to show the gravity of this inviolability. The confessor may not reveal the details of the confession under any circumstances.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent is even clearer,

“The faithful are to be admonished that there is no reason whatever to apprehend that what is made known in confession will ever be revealed by the priest to anyone, or that by it the penitent can at any time be brought into danger of any sort.”

Were it me, I would sign the register with the name: John Nepomucene, or Mateo Correa Magallanes, or Peter Marielux, all saints who suffered martyrdom rather than violate the sacred seal of the confessional.

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Daily Live Streamed Mass – NO MASS MONDAY during the day.

Folks, I am on the road today and cannot live stream Mass during the day. Perhaps in the evening after I return from my trip.

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Your Sunday Sermon notes – 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (12th Ordinary) 2020

Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard at the Mass for your Sunday, either live or on the internet? Let us know what it was.

Also, are you churches opening up?  What was attendance like?

For my part…

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It’s Father’s Day!  Gift idea!

It’s Father’s Day!   Do your own father, or grandfather, and your parish priests a kindness.

Send them some wonderful beer made by the great traditional Benedictine monks at Norcia, Italy.

HERE

This is terrific beer.  Tell them Fr. Z sent you, and I could get a case too!

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ASK FATHER: Seeing devout people kneel to pray before statues

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

During these troubled times living in Northern Wisconsin I have found my faith thru you and now through Our Lady of Good Help in Champion Wis. I noticed praying before Our Lady, Mother Mary, the faithful, mostly Hispanic after confession pray on their knees and make their way towards the alter. I know it is pure and understand their devotion and have been so moved but still do not understand the devotion of the faithful of the Hispanic faithful? I also watch a young lady pray with a statue of Jesus, carry, kneel and pray before the alter and statues before me. Can you expand?

GUEST PRIEST RESPONSE: Fr. Tim Ferguson

I’m not quite sure what the question is…

How do we explain the devotion of the faithful? They love God. They love Jesus. They love Jesus’ Mother Mary and go to great lengths to demonstrate that love. As human beings, creatures composed of bodies and souls, we use both to express our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. Physical gestures mean things – watch a silent movie. With few words on a screenshot, actors and actresses were able to display a whole panoply of meanings just by using their eyes. If a man were to stand, stockstill, hands at his side, and say to his wife in a monotone, “Penelope, I love you” would it have the same effect as if he were to get down on one knee, throw a dozen roses at her feet, and look up at here with pleading eyes and cry out with passion, “Penelope, I love you!”? (Presuming, of course, that her name is, indeed Penelope. If it weren’t, he would be in for a world of hurt).

We show our love for the Lord not just by cold, emotionless words (although our words are powerful, and the Lord knows that we all express our emotions differently, and some more naturally than others). We show our devotion to the God who created us by falling on our knees before His Eucharistic presence. We lower ourselves physically in order to remind ourselves of His prominence over us. We kneel in humble appreciation of His great gift of forgiveness. We embrace physical reminders of God and the things of God – statues, pictures, rosaries.

To understand the meaning behind a particular person’s expression of his or her devotion, it would probably be best to ask that person directly. “I was moved to see how lovingly you carried that statue of the Sacred Heart to the altar and knelt there in prayer. Could you explain what that meant to you?”

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