The mystery cups

I am holding the family Easter and there is big emergency cleaning going on. And rearranging. And lots of what my Uncle Bob used to call "fuss."

It is amazing, the things you find.

This honestly keeps this kind of chore from being too painful. It makes things entertaining because being me, I never know what will wash up.

One thing that I found today was this little cardboard box.

It had been sent to me years ago by my friend Bonnie. I do not actually think I ever met Bonnie, which adds something to this story. She sent it to me at The Buffalo News.

I remembered thanking Bonnie. However I no longer had any idea what was in the box. I no longer blame myself for anything I did or failed to do at The Buffalo News. It was what it was. I did the best I could being the person I was.

Long story short, the box has kicked around the house, here and there. It was upstairs on my dresser for a while. Then it was in a downstairs drawer. Now it had made its way somehow to the sideboard in the dining room. It was occupying a place of honor in a high-traffic area, who knows how or why.

There is that box, I said. It has to go somewhere. It can't stay here. What was in this box, anyway? I opened it up and looked.

There were four little silver cups, tarnished but pretty, wrapped in a blue cloth. Each cup was about two inches tall.

Automatically, acting fast, I decided to put them in a cabinet I have, next to some shot glasses. Then I found the note inside. Bonnie had written me a note.

Bonnie said in the note that she had been told they were Communion cups, and understood somehow that they were stolen from a church. She had been using them as candleholders however did not know what to do with them and so she had sent them to me, as people will, knowing that I never throw anything out.

I must have read this note years ago, then put the cups aside not knowing what to do. 

Now, being in a different place in my life, I have a plan. I can take this box and bring it to folks I know at St. Anthony's and they can figure this out. I have never heard of  tiny "Communion cups" like this...

... however who knows, there is a lot I do not know. Bonnie seems to have believed they were Catholic which is why she sent them to me. We will find out.

Kind of odd, you know, that all this is happening on Holy Thursday, the day when Christ gave us the Eucharist. That did not cross my mind at first however now it has.

Anyway. One thing I know, there will be rejoicing, because the box will be leaving my house. 

It will be someone else's problem!

My Easter chocolate

 

I love that today was Easter Sunday.

Just the shadow of Lent lifting ... Yesterday I said to my brother George, that is enough for me. I do not need ham nor do I need chocolate. Although today I had both!

The chocolate I had was after Mass. Actually I had two chocolate treats after Mass. One was a milk chocolate cross that my friend Susan was handing out when we were milling about the church afterwards. Susan works in an honest to goodness chocolate shop! And she was handing out chocolate crosses.

The second chocolate was quite the experience. My friend Meghan in choir turned up today unexpectedly -- she is out of town a lot -- and we went after Mass to the Public coffee house, in the Hotel Lafayette. 

At Public I asked at the counter for the most fattening coffee they had. The clerk laughed.

He said: "This must be because of Lent ending!"

I said: "Yes!"

He said other things too but masks make things hard to understand so we will have to leave the conversation at this. Long story short, he guided me in the direction of a rich latte so I got that. Then I saw these chocolate bars. One was 100 percent cacao! And no sugar. None!

I ordered that one! That is it below. It has this great brand name, Raaka.

Meghan and I were sitting on this couch and she ate a breakfast sandwich and then I invited her to sample the chocolate which she did.

We agreed that the chocolate was rather uncompromising. However I just might develop a taste for it. I told Meghan that will be a new identity of mine, chocolate connoisseur. Next time I am at Public I am going to try another bar. It was Bourbon Spiked, something like that.

The chocolate was perfect for me at this point in time because I have been flirting with the Keto diet and it does not spike your insulin, being pretty much fat, as far as I can determine. It sustained me through a long walk on the waterfront, during which I sketched the Maumee again, and then just sat on the docks, watched the geese, feasted my eyes on the water, and just enjoyed life.

Easter Sunday.

The happiest day of the year!

An Easter worth waiting for

Mass on Easter Sunday is always one of the highlights of the year. And this year ... this year ....

I never remember the altar looking more beautiful!

What is it about the flowers? Studying them from the choir loft I wondered if it was the orange flowers in among the yellow.

Here was our opening procession. We got to sing the Vidi Aquam which is something I always look forward to. "I saw water flowing out of the temple, from the right side ..." God knows what that all means, you know? But I do not need to know exactly. It is about water and baptism and new life, is all you can think. It is from Ezekiel.

These are not my pictures. They are from Facebook. I was in such an Easter daze I forgot my camera. It is strange to forget your camera! It is like being back in Biblical times.

Not only that but I cried so much in the Gloria that I could hardly sing. I was not the only one. Half the choir was in tears. And all the bells were ringing.

It had been just such an intense Holy Week. I did the Seven Churches on Holy Thursday. I did have my camera then and I did take a few pictures. I will have to post them.

Then on Good Friday I went to Stations of the Cross and the first Good Friday service I can remember going to. For all these years I was working on Good Friday. I could not get my act together to have the day off. There was always something. This year I went. The service, or the Good Friday Office as it was called in the missal, began with the priest lying face down on the floor and it went from there. It was unbelievably stark.

Ergo, on Easter, it was like coming out of a tunnel. Into the light! That is why you have to max yourself out in the days beforehand. You feel it!

Alleluia!

Chick flick

Yesterday we went to Easter dinner at my sister Katie's in East Aurora.As soon as we walked in we heard all this chirping.

Soon we could see why.

There were all these chicks!!

Chicks as in chickens. They were in an incubator in the dining room. Howard made friends with one of them. That is Howard in the picture, chickening out!

Howard said later that once those chicks grew up, he could never eat one of those chickens. He feels too affectionate toward them and sorry for them.

He said, "They are born to be food."

Now I feel bad thinking of that. Because guess what is in the oven for dinner tonight. You guessed it, chicken!

A big roast chicken because I gave up meat for Lent and I missed it. I bought that chicken on Holy Saturday for this express purpose. At my sister's we had delicious turkey and venison and now it is time for chicken.

When Howard sees the chicken I do not know if he will think back on those chicks he met last night.

Jeoffry would not care one whit, I will tell you that. The cat in the picture with Howard is my sister's family's cat, Jinx. Jinx has no problem with the chicks. Jinx co-exists.

Jeoffry would not, that is for sure.

Meanwhile as I chew on these dilemmas everyone else in Buffalo is at Dyngus Day. I wrote a story about it in the paper. It is on the front page today! It is "A Newbie's Guide to Dyngus Day."

I should be at Dyngus Day basking in my glory and marching with the contingent from St. Adalbert's who invited me. But I am getting over a muscle sprain, darn it. I hurt my leg somehow and exacerbated it sitting for hours on end at work and then visiting the Seven Churches on Holy Thursday. I did a story on that, too! The Seven Churches tradition fascinates me.

Anyway, these are the wages of that. All my friends, and all my friends from church, and my brother, and everyone else I know, they are all at Dyngus Day. OK, there is one friend who got a bad cold and she has to sit it out, too. But other than that everyone is there.

Well, I will look on the bright side. There is this chicken. Even if Howard does not eat it, I sure will.

Plus there is just the fact of Easter week.

Is there any happier time??

Easter feaster

This year at Easter things went well!

It is a funny thing when family occasions approach. There is the battle between cooking and cleaning. This year I learned a lesson. Cleaning takes a back seat. You need your house to be not disgusting, but beyond that, don't sweat the cleaning. Cook.

With which, here is what I did this year.

In our family we cannot decide between ham and lamb and so it is fun to have both. That is what I did. The lamb came from Tops. Yay, Tops! Best price in town, $5.99 a pound. The ham came from Aldi. This was a spiral ham. I am never not doing a spiral ham ever again. So much easier, and I doused it liberally with Spirit Glaze For Ham out of my ancient Joy of Cooking. It gave it a taste of bourbon and of orange.

I thought about scalloped potatoes but you know what? Baked potatoes. With sour cream and butter. The potatoes slid into the oven beneath the meat.

My sister brought a beautiful salad incorporating cucumbers and beets and Herb Gerard.

And for dessert.... here is where my 1980s Betty Crocker cookbook, the classic edition pictured at left, came into play.

I had in mind chocolate cream pie and some kind of lemon pie. Haha... opening up this old Pie cookbook I have, I saw that was my plan last year, too! There was a chocolate pie I had made and a lemon pie I had made. I had written notes. The chocolate pie had turned out to be more like a big cookie -- good, and Howard had liked it, but it was not exactly a pie. The lemon pie had been a nice twist. Not a lemon meringue pie, but very good.

This is why you write notes! Thank you, last year's self!

So I did the Chocolate Cream Pie out of Betty Crocker. The Lemon Meringue Pie was on the next page and so, no muss no fuss, I did that.

I love Betty Crocker and here is one reason why. Both pies asked for pre-baked crusts. Normally I try to avoid those because you need pie weights, or dried beans, to fill up the crust when you bake it. I don't have pie weights. I did have dried beans dedicated to this purpose but at some point, disgusted with my overflowing kitchen, I tossed them.

Betty Crocker just had you pop the crusts in the oven!! No pie weights! No hill of beans!

Is that the greatest or what??

Both the pies were a great success. I learned a new art, of making custard. And with a few leftover egg whites I made something else new, a meringue crust. Betty Crocker made it sound easy and, sure enough, it was.

Betty Crocker suggested two uses for the meringue crust -- Divine Lime Pie or Chocolate Angel Pie. I went with the Divine Lime, in honor of Christ's divinity.

The Divine Lime Pie was the hit of the dessert table along with Apple and Elderberry Pie, made by my brother-in-law David. Even now I remember my slice of that pie with pleasure. It had just a haunting taste, perfect fruit, beautiful spice.

It was fun, at work I got to talk to our food critic, Andrew Galarneau, about our Easter table. When I mentioned the Apple and Elderberry Pie, he went, "Whoa. Whoa!"

He has as great sense for food. Because that was my thought exactly. Whoa!!

You know me, always obsessing over what I eat. But there comes a time to indulge.

This was it!

Alleluia, alleluia, let the holy cupcakes rise

I am in my second childhood and am making cupcakes for Easter.

These were from Martha Stewart February 2009 and  the issue is all blotted with butter and cocoa. When I was frosting them I decided to soar like an eagle and crack out my new cake decorating set from Vidler's. I have always wanted to pipe swirls onto cupcakes!

And it was fun. I think I get the gist of it, how to operate this frosting press. It is kind of like a German Spritz press which we used when I was little, that is to say, in my first childhood.

The only trouble was, the press uses an enormous amount of frosting!

I had made a butter cream out of this cupcake cookbook I have, and I had already doubled the recipe because I sensed that the frosting would not go the distance as written. I piled some into the cake decorator piper thing and right away I could tell that it still would not go the distance.

Sure enough, this frosting that I had doubled swirl-frosted maybe five cupcakes! Then it hit bottom.

I could not see redoubling the butter cream frosting recipe. Already I was feeling guilty over the amount of time this was taking. I am supposed to be writing about a certain concert pianist and not blowing three hours making cupcakes, you know? So I ended up using the knife the way I have before. But my vast collection of sprinkles and jimmies from Albrecht Discount make them look pretty cool anyway.

The process was messy and involved.

But fun!

My niece and nephew are in California and do not know what they are missing. I got to lick all the beaters myself and then the spatula.

By the way, for anyone wondering about the title of the post, it is a riff on my favorite Easter hymn -- well, one of them anyway, "Alleluia, Alleluia, Let the Holy Anthem Rise." After Easter Mass I extracted a promise from our organist that we could sing it sometime over the next couple of weeks. She said in two weeks. For the recessional, the only time at Mass when we sing in English.

So, two weeks from today, 9 a.m., St. Anthony of Padua Church. Downtown Buffalo, behind City Hall. "Alleluia, Alleluia, Let the Holy Anthem Rise." Followed by coffee hour.

I will bake cupcakes!