cake for breakfast vol. 15

Hello dear readers! We’re a few days into May, and things have been pretty grey and dreary around here. I am by no means eager for summer - give me grey and drizzly over high temps any day - but I would be happy to finally put away the winter coats. Our entrance hall is a giant mess of rain coats, winter coats, light jackets, rain boots, sneakers, sandals, ankle boots… I’m ready for the weather to just pick a lane. As much as I dislike the heat, I think parents everywhere can agree that the huge plus of the warmer months is not having to harass children to put on their socks and outer layers.

A note to my paid subscribers: I have suspended payments for this Substack, so you won’t be charged after this month. I don’t know if or when I will reactivate payments, but if I do I will make sure to give some warning so you don’t get hit with a charge you weren’t expecting. Of course you can go ahead and cancel your paid subscription permanently, too.

I have been having a bit of an existential crisis about what and how I want to write online, and I’m taking a break from most writing on this platform until I figure some of that out. I’m an over-sharer by nature, and that was a big part of my decision to get off Instagram - the platform encourages constant sharing, and I found myself unable to hold boundaries about what I shared there, or even to know what those boundaries should be. Substack has been healthier in this regard in that longer form writing is less vulnerable to impulsive over-sharing, but I’m still trying to work out what is appropriate to write about here.

So while I do a bit of thinking and not a lot of public writing, I’m removing the paid tier in order to relieve pressure from myself and so that I don’t exploit the good will of those of you generous enough to pay me for my writing.

petits plaisirs

For various reasons, I find it really hard to buy things we don’t strictly need, even if money isn’t an issue. This is particularly true for household items, which means I often find myself wishing x or y thing wasn’t so drab or just not to my liking. When we got married, we didn’t register for gifts because we truly didn’t feel like we needed anything, but of course this was a mistake because people got us gifts anyway and many of them were things not to our (my) taste. Last year I finally got rid of the crockery we’d been using since our wedding which I hated afresh every time I served dinner, and also permitted myself to buy a few new mugs.

One of my goals this summer, to help me through the months I like least, is to learn how to make a few new summery cocktails, but I was aware that we don’t have any suitable glasses. With this pretext, last week I picked up four really pretty glasses that will be perfect for long drinks. I’ve used them a couple of times already for soft drinks and it’s amazing how much of a pleasure it is to drink out of a nice glass versus the ones from IKEA that do the job but are purely functional. Of course, that pleasure would probably diminish if I bought such things all the time, so the occasional indulgence in such expenditures is key.

thoughts

I loved this piece by

Elise Boratenski

at

The Commonplace Catholic

about Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, and it prompted me to start listening to it on Audible. In her piece, Elise writes “I owe my discovery of Elizabeth Gaskell to a high school senior I met when subbing for one of my coworkers. It’s nice to think that God’s providence applies to the smaller joys in life, as much as to the greater joys. For without this specific subbing job, I don’t know if, even now, I would have discovered Gaskell’s books.”

Well, that providential serendipity continued when I started listening to the novel. I happened to start it on my way to visit the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal on Rue du Bac, these things seeming, to me, entirely unconnected. But a few days later, I was reading a little about Elizabeth Gaskell and discovered that she wrote parts of “Wives and Daughters” whilst lodging on Rue du Bac! It felt like a little wink from God, a reminder that He weaves together the most seemingly insignificant aspects of our lives to remind us of His hand in all.

So thanks, Elise, for encouraging me to read (well, listen to) this wonderful novel - I’m about 1/3 of the way through and I adore it - and reminding me that God is in the apparently unimportant details, too.

From my visit to Rue du Bac

la vie en france

In mid-April, we went on a fairly last minute vacation to Crete. I guess due to timings of school vacations, the majority of guests in our (large) hotel were either French or British, and most people had kids. It was super interesting to see the difference in parenting play out in real time. The French parents were definitely more willing to give their kids a stern talking to if the children were being disruptive in communal areas. British parents, generally speaking, seemed somewhat more… overwhelmed by their children’s antics. That’s not to say the British parents let their kids get away with anything - I sometimes saw British parents offering a stern word too - but there was something distinctive in the way that French parents would make it very clear what the problem was, expect a prompt change of comportment, and then resume friendlier tones right away. I hope I can perfect the art some day.

what’s cooking

I haven’t cooked anything worth reporting lately, but I am planning to bake my favourite coffee-walnut cake for a guest over the Pentecost holiday (a national holiday here). What makes this recipe great is that it calls for ground walnuts - just 30 seconds in the food processor - rather than walnut pieces, which makes it ideal for children who complain about nuts in cakes, whilst retaining that delightful coffee/nut flavour combination. My body won’t let me drink coffee more than a couple of times per week, but I love coffee flavoured anything, and this recipe is truly superb.

things i thought were good

• This is over a month old now, but I was so heartened by this piece from

  The Pillar
  about the “boom” in adult baptisms in France and Belgium. Our current parish is so vibrant and full of people who just really love Jesus and Mary in a very pure way, but I had always assumed I just got lucky. I certainly don’t think all parishes are as alive with the love of God, but it was so beautiful to read that the Holy Spirit is moving in this very concrete way in countries that have seen so much decline in the faith for so many years. Praise God!

• I stumbled upon this piece about the pastor at the Anglophone parish where I was received into the Church, where we were married, and where all my children were baptised. I no longer go to that church, and I realised I hadn’t heard from dear Fr. Aidan in a while, so I looked him up and found this article. Not only is it always moving and heartening to read about priests who truly live their lives in a very sacrificial way, but in all the years I knew Fr. Aidan and attended his Masses, went through RCIA with him, and met with him outside of church, he never mentioned any of this except in this vaguest possible sense. I feel lucky to have been shepherded by such a humble man and grateful for such priests in our Church. Once again, praise God!

With Fr. Aidan at our wedding. It wasn’t his fault that the tiling in the church made it look “like a swimming pool”, as my dad commented.

That’s all for now, dear ones. Thanks for reading, I truly appreciate it! God bless.

Tackling tomes when you don't feel up to task

A few thoughts on (the experience of reading) The Brothers Karamazov

I’ve always considered myself bookish, but I’ve often felt a bit of imposter syndrome about applying that label to myself. In large part, it was an inherited label: my mum was a high school English teacher turned academic, and my dad is a translator who inhales books late at night, despite being reticent to align himself with a bookish identity, which he finds too smug and self-congratulatory. Although they are pretty intensive readers themselves, my parents never especially pushed a particular relationship with books on me. They certainly made sure that I had access to books, and shared some of their favourites with me. (They are wildly different people, but they both consider I Capture the Castle to be among their favourite novels, and I remember feeling a little anxious that I wouldn’t love it. Luckily, I did.) However, they didn’t push me to read when I didn’t want to, and they never filtered the books I chose for myself. We often spoke about what I was reading, but their approach was largely hands-off.

I have mixed feelings about this. I appreciate that they gave me the freedom to discover the kinds of books that interest me, so that reading always felt like leisure rather than work in my childhood. At the same time, sometimes I wish my parents had encouraged me to read more quality literature in my formative teen years - partly because I could have done with the moral formation, and partly because reading challenging literature is a muscle, and although it can be developed at any point in life, it certainly gives you a good leg up if the habit is formed in adolescence.

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Alas, I did read quite a bit, but the quality of what I was reading was highly variable, and by the time I reached my 20s and decided I ought to read more of the classics, I found it pretty hard work. I continued to pick up more challenging texts from time to time, but I wasn’t really sure what the point was, and it was rarely a rewarding experience. (The big exception was Wuthering Heights, which I fell completely in love with, and only later discovered that it is pretty widely hated…).

In many ways, my conversion to Catholicism via Anglicanism propelled me to approach the classics with a more authentic curiosity. I felt adrift from most people I knew and wider society, who couldn’t understand why I would do something so retrograde as opting into an oppressive belief system. When I turned to Western classics, I could enter a world where a Christian moral framework was taken for granted. I remember re-reading Jane Eyre - the first time had been before my conversion - and feeling a deep sense of connection to Jane, who so clearly depended on an implicit Christian moral compass to navigate her, err, rather challenging romantic situation. Although I’d never had a boyfriend who kept a wife in the attic, I could relate to her earnest attempts to do the right thing when her circumstances made it difficult to do so.

Photo by Hannah Smith on Unsplash

As a former student of Russian¹, it had long been on my list to tackle The Brothers Karamazov, and as a great Christian novel, it has been of even greater interest since conversion. This year, I decided to take Lent as an opportunity to challenge myself to read it. The timeframe was helpful in making sure it didn’t just drag on forever², and there was also an element of penance since it meant forgoing more “fun” reads. But also, I knew I had to adjust my mindset. I tend to feel like there’s no point in reading something if I don’t completely “get” it - obviously nonsense, but hard for me to shake - yet I knew that given my phase of life (three young kids including a very clingy baby), I would have to just plow on without getting bogged down in worrying that I’d missed something, or going down Google rabbit holes about characters and plot points. It was freeing to accept that I would miss stuff, that I could never grasp all the complexities of the novel, but that it could still be worthwhile.

As previously mentioned, I read it alongside the lecture series by

Jessica Hooten Wilson

, which was very helpful for giving me a broad strokes sense of what was going on or what Dostoevsky was trying to convey at key points throughout the novel. It helped me plod on when certain parts of the novel dragged, because each lecture (only 5-15 mins) provided a kind of reprieve and reorientation before the next “book” of the 12 “book” novel. My edition³ also had fairly extensive endnotes, which were really helpful for clarifying historical, cultural, literary, or religious references that would have otherwise gone over my head. I definitely think that these kind of resources can make an enormous difference when trying to navigate a novel that presumes a certain amount of historical and literary awareness.

It would be false to say that I totally enjoyed the experience of reading it - although I did sometimes - but it was a rich and nourishing experience, and I’m absolutely glad I read it. I kept showing up for it even when it was boring, and when other things seemed more appealing (there were many moments when I would have rather been folding laundry than slogging through the next 15 pages). I probably won’t remember many of the specifics of The Brothers Karamazov in two weeks, let alone two decades or more, but that doesn’t mean that the ways in which it fed me will come undone. The specifics are not irrelevant, but they’re also not the whole point. This, of course, can be said of any quality literature.

Reading The Brothers Karamazov has given me the confidence to read other works that I have been too intimidated by in the past (I’m thinking of attempting Iliad later in the year). At the same time, it has actually made me feel that trying to tackle all the classics and great books is probably counterproductive, unless you really have a zeal for it. I suspect it’s more enriching to let yourself be deeply nourished by a smaller number of great works of literature, than to force yourself through long lists of them without time to really absorb what you’re reading.

The biggest lesson I took away from reading this huge novel (about 800 pages) is that you don’t need any special qualifications or skillset to read hard books. It can certainly be worthwhile trying to find some kind of supportive resource, be it a lecture series, a podcast, an essay, or a bookclub, but all you really need is curiosity and a bit of determination.

1. It is shocking and depressing how little Russian I can now remember, considering I spent a couple of years studying it pretty intensively and spent two periods in St. Petersburg. It makes me sort of sad, but it also serves no purpose in my life and I’ve never felt inclined to pick it back up.

2. I divided the number of pages in the book by the number of days in Lent in order to figure out how much I needed to read daily to stay on task, and I stuck to it pretty religiously (so to speak, ha). I ended up finishing on Holy Thursday, which was ideal as it allowed me to spend the Triduum more focussed on Scripture. Another time, I would probably count for 5-6 days of reading per week instead of every single day, as I think it would have been helpful to have a little more leeway for the unexpected happenings of life.

3. I read the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation from Penguin Vintage, which I believe is widely considered to be the best. However, there is a very recent translation from Michael R. Katz (2023) which sounds really promising, so if I ever read it again (big *if*), I would try that one.

cake for breakfast vol. 14

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope you had a lovely, joyous day, and continue to rejoice throughout the Octave. I was going to say I hope you had a “good Lent”, but what does that mean? That seems to step into the territory of wishing that you had a successful period of self-improvement, which isn’t really the point, but I hope you felt a little closer to Jesus by the end, perhaps.

The nice thing about Easter is that it’s festive and celebratory but without all the pressure of Christmas. We went to Mass in the morning, came back to indulge in chocolate and candy, and then headed out for an Easter egg hunt at a friend’s place. We didn’t eat any special, fancy meals, but shockingly, the kids enjoy running around with their friends in search of candy about a thousand times more than sitting down to a roast dinner with family. The adults sipped wine and nibbled on (supermarket bought) snacks and enjoyed each other’s company while the eight kids aged six and under scrambled for the best eggs, and didn’t even fight. Alleluia!

I love a festive meal, but since I’m head chef these days, it does not tend to induce the joy in the Risen Lord that it did back when I got to lounge around eating chocolate eggs until I was called to the table. So, reminder for all of us that we can let go of the “shoulds” for big holidays, and just do what is actually going to be enjoyable. There will be years to come when having a sit down meal with the kids might actually be pleasant (maybe?), but for now, the focus is on the kids having fun and me not losing my mind.

petits plaisirs

I can’t really drink coffee because it just makes me feel so nauseous for hours after, but I can just about handle a weak, very milky coffee. I know, coffee purists, this is an abomination! I myself strongly judge people who say they like coffee and what they mean is creamy, syrupy drinks from Starbucks with an imperceptible drop of coffee in it. Back in the day when my stomach was more robust, I adored my afternoon ritual of making a Moka pot of coffee, drinking it with a splash of milk, and having a few squares of dark chocolate alongside. The hissing sound as the coffee brewed, the slightly burnt smell… Divine!

ANYWAY, weak, milky coffee just doesn’t really hit the spot, but a latte can be very enjoyable, so I decided to invest in a milk frother. Coffee with a lot of FROTHED milk is a whole different thing. So now I have a latte-ish coffee in the afternoon while the baby naps, and it’s quite lovely. Also, the kids are very excited about having “bubbly milk” for their goûter. (One of them once called it “fizzy milk”, which sounds absolutely revolting. Language is weird.)

Next step is to learn how to do pretty things with the milk. Jk, that is absolutely not something I am going to invest precious free minutes into at this point in my life. Photo by Fahmi Fakhrudin on Unsplash

thoughts

Look, I know, I know that it’s just so boring to talk about social media and

Substack

and what’s good and what’s bad, blah blah blah. But, I’m gonna do it anyway! Just a tiny bit. Mainly I want to rant about Notes, which has become so social media-y it is now laughable to pretend that the Substack app is very different to any other social media app. People are now using Notes to share totally inconsequential thoughts about what they ate for dinner, or some cute thing their kid said, or how pretty their nature walk was today, and it seems to me that the app is hurtling towards total social mediafication. Which should not be surprising, but it is disappointing, since for many of us, Substack was a brilliant opportunity to have a low-stakes writing platform without the pitfalls of other social media.

I particularly hate how much it tries to push accounts you don’t even subscribe to. I constantly see the same small number of people popping up in my Notes whose newsletters I have chosen not to subscribe to, and yet I still keep seeing their “content”. I don’t want to see it! I finally deleted the app last week and am enjoying Substack so much more without it, as it was beginning to induce the same kind of comparison/insecurity/snarky thoughts that led me to delete Instagram. Of course, anyone can just choose not to use Notes/the app, but it sucks that

Substack

is explicitly rewarding writers who do use them. These functionalities didn’t even exist until pretty recently, and now they’ve become the axis on which the Substack world spins. Lame.

la vie en france

Circling back round to the “bubbly” vs “fizzy” milk, and throwing in a language lesson: there are two terms to mean bubbly/fizzy/sparkling water in French, namely eau gazeuse, and eau pétillante. I always preferred to use pétillante. It sounds prettier, and “gassy water” doesn’t exactly sound charming in English. That is, until, my dad pointed out that the word pétillante come from the verb péter, which means… to fart. So eau pétillante basically means “farty water”. I’ve gone back to gazeuse.

what’s cooking

I’ve recently gotten really into cooking with lentils - specifically Puy lentils - for lunch. They have such an earthy, satisfying flavour and they make a great, filling salad base. I usually chop up some shallots, peppers, and any other veg in the fridge to add some crunch and colour, and make a dressing of EVOO, Dijon mustard, and lemon juice, and of course S+P. Then I add either feta or soft boiled eggs. It would also work well with diced ham but I haven’t tried it like that.

This photo shows the prettiest version I made - with shallots, red peppers, carrots, and soft boiled eggs - but I prefer it with feta.

(Side note: my kids asked me to make them lentils the other day because they often have them for lunch at school but I had never served them for the kids at home. So I served them with a simple dressing, alongside ham and some nice crusty bread, but I guess they eat them differently at school because the 4yo said: “yuk, these lentils are disgusting. It was really nice of you to make them for us, though!” Ha, at least he has manners. Sometimes.)

things i thought were good

I’m struggling to come up with anything here as I haven’t read much online lately and although I’ve listened to quite a few podcasts, they’ve mainly been my usuals and there aren’t any particular episodes that stand out to me as being fantastic. I most often listen to The Rest is History, and have been really enjoying their current series on Luther and the Reformation. I sometimes find their episodes have quite an anti-Catholic bias, and there are certainly some little jibes during this series, but it hasn’t been enough to put me off. (In the first episode one of the hosts said that the logical endpoint of Protestantism is atheism, which was quite a bold take for a secular podcast!)

I’m currently reading a Barbara Pym novel, which is the perfect palate cleanser after finishing The Brothers Karamazov. My mum introduced me to Pym just after I’d had a baby last April and I’ve been trying to pace myself with her novels because they’re just exactly my cup of tea: wry, observant, funny, charming, perfect characterisation. They’re easy to read and very light, but still with enough depth and salience to feel worth reading. Highly recommend.

If you have any recommendations for podcasts, books, or TV, I’m all ears. I’d love something new to get stuck into.

Make the most of the Octave to indulge in what you gave up for Lent! I’ve been making my way through a Lindt chocolate bunny as I write this, and have had a few too many alcoholic beverages in the past couple of days. Wishing you hope and joy in the Risen Lord! Happy Easter! Alleluia!

Father, forgive

a favourite prayer and a quick word for holy week

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” (Lk 23:24)

Forgiveness is at the absolute core of the Christian life, and yet it can seem so vague, so elusive. What does it really mean to forgive? How do we forgive our parents for childhood wounds? How do we forgive a spouse for sharp words said in the heat of the moment, words that still sting to call to mind? How do we forgive friends who apologise for poor behaviour, only to do the same thing again? How do we forgive politicians who seem impervious to the destruction wrought by their power-driven decisions? How do we forgive ourselves? How?

At this moment in time, I feel a lot of anger. There are no words to describe the utter hellishness of what is happening in the Holy Land, and the horror of knowing that there is so little we can do to dissuade the bloodshed. I am holding pain as old wounds are reopened by difficult events in my family. I feel crippled by the apparent randomness of suffering, as I watch people I love walk through valleys of tears, wondering why it’s them and not me, whilst also praying please, not me.

Forgiveness can seem an unreasonable ask, a sign of poorly held boundaries, or even a concession to evil. But in fact, there is nothing more powerful to stem the tide of the hatred and violence that saturates this world. Jesus’ final prayer is the perfect model, and one that we can emulate simply by using His exact words in our own prayer.

For they know not what they do. None of us do. None of us understand the depth of our sin, the ways that we hurt eachother, ourselves, and God in even our most “every day” sins. When we pray this prayer for others, we acknowledge that those who have inflicted pain do not - cannot - understand the impact of their actions. It allows us to enter into the goodness of God, who wants to offer forgiveness to everyone, and not just those we think deserve it. It is aspirational, expressing our hope that we can forgive others as God as forgiven us, whilst maintaining distance from those we wish to forgive if necessary. It chips away at hostility and self-righteousness, recognising that even the most heinous acts can be forgiven and redeemed. Perhaps most importantly of all, it breaks down our belief that they are worse than us, because it is impossible to pray this prayer for others without praying it for ourselves, too.

Father, forgive me, for I know not what I do.

At Confession last week, I rattled off the usual list of sins, painfully aware that I am unable to identify the sins that don’t check obvious boxes. “For all these sins and those I have forgotten, I am deeply sorry.” (Father, forgive me, for I know not what I do.)

I harbour bitterness and resentment, I judge others with abandon, I think I am holier than this or that person. When I pray Jesus’ words, I am changed just a tiny little bit, to see myself and my fellow sinners more as He does. Unknowing, lacking in understanding, blindly compounding the sins in the world, and in need of forgiveness.

Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.

We walked past this Crucifix at our local cathedral and my daughter sighed, saying with a furrowed brow, “poor Jesus”. Kids get it.