Easter: Time for Eggs

Stephanie and Ashley already have an impressive collection of Ukrainian Easter eggs. Lindsey and I basked in their expertise on Good Friday afternoon, and we decorated eggs and ate innumerable zwieback drenched with butter and jam. I made this:


Stephanie's, far from finished:


Lindsey, drawing about a hundred and fifty perfectly straight lines (seriously, she has a gift):


Also, I have no pictures of the making of them, but these are called cascarones. Take a raw egg, remove the end of the shell as if it were soft-boiled, pour out the innards, wash the shell and pop the membrane at the end, dye it, let it dry, fill it with confetti, glue a square of tissue paper over the hole, and on Easter, break it over someone's head for luck.

On Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, Chloe and I invested innumerable more eggs in a quadruple batch of waffles and a big pan of scrambled eggs for Saturday dinner and 20 muffin-sized quiches for Sunday pre-lunch, and we ate and were well-filled. He is risen! Alleluia!

françois schuiten

"Bibliothèque"

"The Mirror"

"Les Naufrages"

Clearly, I need more walls.

I Will Wait for You

The most amazing thing I've seen on the internet in a long time.

tomato-basil-feta

I love sauce, I really do, but for some reason, none of the pizzas I make these days have sauce on them. Anyway, today's was pretty straightforward. (As always, I used the dough recipe from smittenkitchen; usually I double it for a nice thick pizza, but today I used just 2 cups of flour and adjusted everything else accordingly. Which is to say, I vaguely remember how much of everything goes into the normal recipe, but I didn't look, and didn't measure any of it aside from the flour. Live dangerously.)

4 roma tomatoes
3 T white balsamic vinegar (nice because it doesn't mess up the color; also has a lighter flavor than regular balsamic)
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper
I sliced the tomatoes about 1/4 of an inch thick and layered them up in a bowl, drizzling a little vinegar and sprinkling salt and pepper over each layer, then let them sit while I grated up a big pile of feta and ripped a package of fresh basil into smaller pieces. I'd never stopped to just smell fresh basil before. It was enchanting. Fresh cilantro is still my favorite plant smell, though.

With the roma slices each cut in half, and including the heels, I had just the right amount of tomato to cover my crust comfortably. I sprinkled some of the balsamic left in the bowl over them and threw on a tiny bit more salt and pepper before adding the cheese, then baked the whole thing at 375 for probably 20 minutes. (Writing recipes out would be easier if I paid more attention to what I was doing. Oh well.) When it came out, I threw on the basil, and we devoured the whole thing in record time.

For next Tuesday, Kathleen is planning something with zucchini... I'm excited!

"On the twofold sense of the soul."

Now the rational soul was on this account equipped with a twofold sense, that it might grasp visible things without through the flesh, and invisible things within through reason, so that both visible and invisible things might excite it to praise of the Creator. For God would not be praised in all His works by the rational creature, if all the works of God were not known by the rational creature. Therefore, that the praise of God might be perfect, the works of God were shown to the rational creature, so that it might admire Him within and without, and through admiration advance to love.

One creature was made whose sense was wholly within, and another creature was made whose sense was wholly without. The sense of the angels was within, and the sense of brute animals was without. [...] And man was placed in a middle position, that he might have sense within and without; within for invisible things, without for visible; within through the sense of reason, without through the sense of flesh, that he might go in and contemplate, and might go out and contemplate; that he might have wisdom within, the works of wisdom without, that he might contemplate both, and be refreshed from both, see and rejoice, love and praise. Wisdom was a pasture within within; the work of wisdom was a pasture without. And the sense of man was permitted to go to both, and find refreshment in both, to go by cognition, to be refreshed by love.

Wisdom was a book written within; the work of wisdom a book written without. But He willed afterwards that it still be written otherwise without, that wisdom might be seen more manifestly and recognized more perfectly, that the eye of man might be illumined to the second writing, since it had been darkened to the first. Therefore, He made a second work after the first, and that was more evident, since it not only pointed out but illumined. He assumed flesh not losing divinity, and was placed as a book written within and without; in humanity without, within in divinity, so that it might be read without through imitation, within through contemplation; without unto health, within unto felicity; without unto merit, within unto joy. Within, "In the beginning was the Word,"" (John 1:1); without, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," (John 1:14).

- Hugh of St. Victor, De Sacramentis Book One, Part Six, Chapter V