A Margarita for Martina

Today we celebrate the feast of one of the Roman martyrs, Saint Martina. Her story is similar to that of many other Roman virgin-martyrs: she was a steady witness to the Faith, devoted to the poor and a life of prayer, who endured multiple torture methods before finally returning Home via the removal of her head. There is, however, one interesting twist on the story: Legend has it that during this removal, her body bled milk, which is why she is one of the patron saints of nursing mothers.

On that appetizing note, here is a delicious beverage recipe to toast St. Martina while we await the land of milk and honey:

Honey Margarita

1 lime wedge
Salt
2 ounces anejo tequila
1/4 ounce Cointreau or other orange liqueur.
1 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 ounce honey
1/4 ounce simple syrup
1 ounce pineapple juice
1 thin jalapeno slice

Salt the rim of a cocktail glass.  Add tequila, Contreau, lime juice, honey, simple syrup, pineapple juice and jalapeno in shaker filled with ice.  Shake well.  Pour into glass.  Garnish with lime wedge.

(This recipe came from Joanne Weir's great book Tequila: A Guide to Types, Flights, Cocktails, and Bites)

Cheers!

Madonna and Child With St. Martina and St. Agnes; El Greco, 1597

St. Anthony of the Desert

Our family has always felt an intimate attachment to St. Anthony of the Desert.  This is, perhaps, odd. In one sense, it would be hard to imagine a personage more remote from our own lives than Anthony: He lived in the 3rd and 4th Centuries on the fringe of the world in the Nitrian Desert, battling demons and consuming insects, and his brief interactions with others were primarily restricted to those who were at least as mad as he was.  However, perhaps it is this very remoteness which finds such a kinship in our lives.  Perhaps we need such reminders of what madmen we in fact are called to be, in the very radicality of our Faith.  As for consorting with the insane, several members of the family fit the bill.

In his colorful and much too short account of the great desert saint and father of monasticism, St. Athanasius describes the last moments of St. Anthony's life:

"Having summoned those who were there--they were two in number who had remained in the mountain fifteen years, practising the discipline and attending on Antony on account of his age--he said to them, 'I, as it is written, go the way of the fathers, for I perceive that I am called by the Lord, And do you be watchful and destroy not your long discipline, but as though now making a beginning, zealously preserve your determination. For ye know the treachery of the demons, how fierce they are, but how little power they have Where fore fear them not, but rather ever breathe Christ, and trust Him. Live as though dying daily. Give heed to yourselves, and remember the admonition you have heard from me. Have no fellowship with the schismatics, nor any dealings at all with the heretical Arians. For you know how I shunned them on account of their hostility to Christ, and the strange doctrines of their heresy. Therefore be the more earnest always to be followers first of God and then of the Saints; that after death they also may receive you as well-known friends into the eternal habitations... Bury my body, therefore, and hide it underground yourselves, and let my words be observed by you that no one may know the place but you alone. For at the resurrection of the dead I shall receive it incorruptible from the Saviour. And divide my garments. To Athanasius the bishop give one sheepskin and the garment whereon I am laid, which he himself gave me new, but which with me has grown old. To Serapion the bishop give the other sheepskin, and keep the hair garment yourselves. For the rest fare ye well, my children, for Antony is departing, and is with you no more.'

 Having said this, when they had kissed him, he lifted up his feet, and as though he saw friends coming to him and was glad because o them--for as he lay his countenance appeared joyful--he died and was gathered to the fathers. And they afterward, according to his commandment, wrapped him up and buried him, hiding his body underground. And no one knows to this day where it was buried, save those two only. But each of those who received the sheepskin of the blessed Antony and the garment worn by him guards it as a precious treasure. For even to look on them is as it were to behold Antony; and he who is clothed in them seems with joy to bear his admonitions."

St. Anthony has been the inspiration of many, and we are especially fascinated by the artwork throughout the ages that depicts various moments in his life. Artists seem to be especially interested in his battles with demons (and understandably so). Here are just a few of the paintings of these momentous desert battles, from Michelangelo to Dali:

"The Torment of Saint Anthony"--and Michelangelo's oldest known painting, c. 1487-1488

"Temptations of St. Anthony" by Bernadino Parenzano, c. 1494

"The Temptation of St. Anthony"; Jacopo Tintoretto; c. 1577

"The Temptation of St. Anthony"; Paul Cezanne; 1875

"The Temptation of St. Anthony"; Salvador Dali; c. 1946

And it appears that these epic encounters are also inspiring to cooks. In Spain, it is the tradition to cook "Olla de San Anton," a soup that uses virtually every part of a pig that is available in butcher shops, including the blood. This tradition is based on the legend that the devil often appeared to St. Anthony in the form of a pig. Here's a traditional recipe we would like to make some day, when blood sausage is as common as it should be in American meat markets and grocery stores. Forgive the awkward translation; its from a Spanish site:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Kg of dry broad-bean
• 200 g of white beans
• 1 onion
• 1 sweet pepper
• 1 garlic
• 1 bone of marrow
• 1 bone of ham
• 200 g of pork ribs
• 200 g of fat streaky bacon
• 1 pork ear
• 1 pork tail
• 1 thyme branch
• 2 fennel leaf
• 2 rice glass
• 3 potatoes
• salt
• blood sausage

Preparation:

Soak the broad-beans and the beans the day before. 

Peel the onion and cut it in two parts, wash the bones of marrow and ham, and put the ingredients (except the bloody sausage, the rice, and the potatoes), in a pot full of water. Let it cook slowly for one hour and half. 

During this time, peal the potatoes and cut it in pieces, drop it in the pot with the rice and the bloody sausage.

Let cook twenty minutes more and serve it hot.

For those of us who don't have easy access to pig ears, feet and blood, here's a tamer recipe that we make from the book Monastery Soups. The original recipe is vegetarian, but we like to add pork sausage or chorizo on this particular feast day. 

INGREDIENTS:

3 tablespoons oil of choice
1 cup barley
1 carrot, finely grated
2 leeks, sliced
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup fresh parsley, minced
salt to taste
7 cups water
1 bouillon cube (or you can use broth in place of the water)
chopped mushrooms
1 pound pork sausage or chorizo

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat the oil in a soup pot and add the barley, stirring continuously for one minute. Immediately add the carrot, leeks, bay leaf, parsley, salt, and water.

2. Cook the sausage in a separate skillet and add to the soup.

3. Cook the soup over low to medium heat, covered, for 40 to 45 minutes, until the barley is tender. Add more water if needed. For extra taste, add the bouillon and the mushrooms during the last 20 minutes of simmering. Remove the bay leaf. Serve hot.

St. Anthony the Great, Pray for Us!

Final Brewing Day

I remember a professor in Belgium telling a class about how much Belgian culture had changed during his lifetime.  "Look," he said "you cannot possibly see it, but it is the fabric... the substance that has changed.  When I was young the women, when they made bread, they would cut crosses into every loaf's crust and bless each.  Daily bread was treated like a eucharist.  Can you imagine such superstitions now?"  Actually, we probably cannot imagine such inherent piety.  Even if our devotion as Catholics extends beyond Mass once a week, confession once a month and adoration once in a blue moon, how often do we bless our children, the food that we cook or even ourselves?  I believe that this would make us embarrassed, even in the privacy of our own homes. Arguably such blessings, relics, sacaramentals etc. are embarrassing if we view them as superstitions.  But our Catholic heritage has always been saturated with such things.  It is inextricably intertwined, bound up in them.  Are we losing ourselves?  Are we embarrassed by our forefathers?  We need a renewal and the location of this renewal is the family, the household.  Here we must be proactive.

One of the Opas (Grandpas) in the family was present during a papal visit by JPII years ago.  This simple Texan became immensely excited when the Holy Father passed by, and began to bless the pontiff vigorously.  He has, of course, been teased for this ever since.  Imagine blessing the one man in the world who, more than any other, ought to be the one bestowing blessings!  Yet I am not so sure he had the wrong idea.  Certainly we must not see the Church as an outside entity that grants us special blessings.   A Catholic cultural renewal is going to come from the domestic Church, from our tables and from our beds.  We have a unique blessing to give to the rest of the Church and to the rest of the world.  As priests, prophets and kings of our own households, as icons of Christ to our families we must actively engage what Christ has given to us.

Today, Christ has given us ale: the final brewing day has arrived and it is time to bottle the beer.

Here is what you need: Capper, 50 empty beer bottles (non-screwtop), bottle  caps, racking (siphon) hose, springless bottle filler, auto siphon.

1.)  Sanitize (bottling bucket, racking tubes, bottles, bottle caps, brewing spoon)  Sanitizing the bottles can be enormously time consuming, or you can simply put them facing down in the dishwasher without any detergent.  The heat will sanitize the bottles.

2.)  Rack (siphon) the ale into the the bottling bucket.

3.) In a saucepan, dissolve 3/4 cup of corn sugar  in 2 cups of boiling water for 5 minutes

4.) Stir in the dissolved corn sugar into the ale.  This primes the beer and is what will cause the carbonation to occur within the bottles.

5.)  +Bless the Beer+ (See below)

6.)  Using the siphon hose attached to a bottle filler, fill each bottle.  In order for the ale to fill the bottle, the filler must be pressed against the bottom of the bottle.  To stop the flow of the beer, just lift filler from the bottom.  It is important to leave about 1" of space in each bottle.  However, because the filler is displacing the beer, you can fill the bottles relatively close to the top, and when you lift the filler out there will be just about an inch of space left.

7.)  After filling each, cap the bottle and place in dark, cool location.

We found the following beer blessing at the Catholic Beer Review blog:

Blessing of Beer:

V. Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.

V. Dominus vobiscum.
R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

Oremus.

Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi, et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti; ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corpus et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.

R. Amen.

Et aspergatur aqua benedicta.


English translation:

V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R. Who made heaven and earth.

V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.

Let us pray.

Bless, + O Lord, this creature beer, which thou hast deigned to produce from the fat of grain: that it may be a salutary remedy to the human race, and grant through the invocation of thy holy name; that, whoever shall drink it, may gain health in body and peace in soul. Through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen.

Sprinkle with holy water.

Eating Lucy's Eyeballs

St. Lucy Queen of Lights

As Catholics (especially cradle Catholics) we are admittedly macabre.  I do not say "perceived to be" or "seemingly" macabre.  You cannot be a true Catholic if you are not authentically macabre.  The fact the most people have a purely negative association with the term only serves to demonstrate that most people are not Catholic, or, at the very least, that we have relinquished any level of Catholic vocabulary.  The word "macabre" is itself macabre.  It stems from Old French and is derived from the originary meaning 'dance of death', a miracle play depicting the slaughter of the Maccabee Brothers.  This hidden origin of the word is a perfect example of the traditional Catholic acquaintance with the gruesome.  We have churches composed of bones (Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic or Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome for instance) statues of saints proudly bearing their own murder/torture implements (my favorite perhaps being St. Bartholomew with his flayed skin) and of course the stories are endless (think St. Lawrence: "Turn me over I'm done on this side"-patron saint of Barbeques).  Most obviously, we Catholics proudly bear the death instrument  which mangled Our Lord as our most evident symbol.  Indeed, we refuse to tidy this image up by removing Christ from the cross.  Give us a chance and we will likely try to paint on a bit more blood.   We are macabre, and I do not think this fact should be lost upon us.  Of course we wish to instigate a culture of life, but always, in defending life we find ourselves defending the potential beauty and meaning within suffering.  Truly, our celebration of the macabre is always a dance of hope.


December 13 is St. Lucy's day, a macabre celebration, second in some ways only to Dia de Muertos.  Lucy was martyred during the reign of Emperor Diocletion.  A Sicilian, she is yet another example of a beautiful Christian virgin who is set on causing trouble for her suitors.  In one version of the story a suitor complimented her on her beautiful eyes.  Never a timid creature, Lucy cut her own eyeballs out and sent them to the suave fellow so he would kindly leave her be.  The tamer version has Diocletion's soldiers doing the deed, but either way she has consequently become the patron saint of eye diseases and blindness.  She is portrayed happily toting her eyeballs, sometimes on a plate or other times (such as in the image above) between her fingers.


Lucy is especially popular in Scandinavia and Italy, where her feast day is celebrated with torchlight processions and bonfires. Italians make and eat cakes or biscotti shaped like eyeballs to honor St. Lucy's memory. Sicilians abstain from anything made with wheat flour on her feast day and eat potatoes or rice instead. This practice is in honor one of Lucy's many miracles. In 1582, during a severe famine, Lucy made a fleet of grain-bearing ships appear in the harbor.  The people promptly ate the grain without preparing it in the normal fashion. In Palermo, a dessert called cuccia is made out of whole-wheat berries and ricotta.
 

 

The Scandinavian celebration of St. Lucy's day revolves primarily around the meaning of her name, which makes sense considering the country's dreadful, dark winters. As parents, we particularly appreciate this custom: According to tradition, the oldest or youngest daughter wakes up before sunrise to serve her family a delicious feast of treats like lussekatter (Lucy cats), saffron-flavored buns, ginger biscuits and cross shaped pastries, as well coffee or, even better, hot spiced wine with aquavit. She dresses in a long white gown with a red sash and wears a crown of greens topped with anywhere from four to nine lighted candles.


 

 Glögg

Yield. Makes about five 750 ml bottles
Preparation time. About 90 minutes

Ingredients
1.5 liter bottle inexpensive dry red wine
1.5 liter bottle inexpensive American port
750 ml bottle inexpensive brandy
10 inches cinnamon stick
15 cardamom seed pods or 1 teaspoon whole cardamom seeds
2 dozen whole cloves
1 orange peel, whole and washed
1/2 cup dark raisins
1 cup blanched almonds
2 cups sugar
Garnish with the peel of another orange

Directions

1) Crack the cardamom seed pods open by placing a pod on the counter and laying a butter knife on top of it. With the palm of your hand, press on the knife. They will crack it open so the flavors of the seeds can escape.

2) Pour the red wine and port into a stainless steel or porcelain kettle. Do not use an aluminum or copper pot since these metals interact with the wine and brandy to impart a metallic taste. Add the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, orange peel, raisins, and almonds. Cover and simmer.

3) Put the sugar in a pan and soak it with half the brandy. Warm over a medium-low flame and stir occasionally until it becomes a clear, golden syrup and all the sugar is dissolved. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes until the little tiny bubbles become large burbles. This starts caramelizing the sugar and adds a layer of flavor.

4) Add the sugar syrup to the spiced wine mix. Cover and let it simmer over a low heat for an hour.

5) Taste. If you wish, add more sugar or brandy to suit your taste. If you do, go easy, 1/4 cup at the most. 

6) Just before serving, strain to remove the spices, almonds, and raisins. You can serve your glögg immediately or bottle it and age it. A month or two of aging really enhances the flavors. A year is even better. If you are going to age glögg, use wine or whiskey bottles and make sure they are clean. Bottle glögg while it is still warm. Fill the bottles as high as possible and seal them tight. You don't have to lie them down to age, and if you use used corks, they might leak where the corkscrew entered if you lie them down.

7) Fringe benefits. Do not discard the raisins and almonds when you are done, they are impregnated with flavor! I put the raisins in a jar in the refrigerator to use in pannetone or other desserts, or toast the almonds in a 225F oven for about 90 minutes and eat them as snacks.

8) Serving. To serve glögg, warm it gently in a saucepan over a low flame or, better still, in a crockpot. Serve it in a mug and, don't skip this, garnish it with a strip of fresh orange peel, twisted over the mug to release the oils. 

Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe

One of the most striking aspects of the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is its simplicity. Juan Diego is a humble farmer, recently converted to the Catholic Faith. The task that Our Lady asks of her "dear little son"--to build, in Our Lady's words, "a church in this place where your people may experience my compassion"--is a relatively simple request. When I read the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe I am always amazed at the momentous impact it has had on the Catholic world. Centuries later, the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is so well-known that you can purchase candles bearing its likeness at major superstores.

And yet the story also reveals a strange paradox: simplicity is not always easy. It is not merely a lack of effort. To accomplish a simple task can, as in the case of Juan Diego, require the miraculous. In our age of modern convenience, we must be especially aware of this paradox. Too often we settle for the easy way out with the illusion that we live "the simple life." Perhaps the most obvious example is in the realm of food. Easy, convenient food is not the same thing as simple food. Easy food can be warmed up in seconds in a microwave. Simple may food take hours, days, even years to stew, roast, brew...it is often inconvenient and rarely quick.  May Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego give us the persistence to "keep it simple," even if it requires a bit of extra effort.

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To celebrate this feast day, here is a simple (and easy) recipe for Mexican hot chocolate that also makes a delicious winter treat:


3 cups hot cocoa mix
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 teaspoons cinnamon
Pinch of cayenne pepper

Mix all the ingredients together. Warm some water, or use milk for creamier hot chocolate. Use about 3 heaping tablespoons per one cup of liquid. Serve with a cinnamon stick, whipped cream and grated Mexican chocolate or mini chocolate chips.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Empress of the Americas and of All Unborn Children, Pray for us.

Brewing Day Two

"I should like a great lake of ale, for the King of the Kings. I should like the family of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal." ~ St. Brigid.


Saint Brigid (feast day February 1) is one of the many patron saints of beer and brewers.  She is usually remembered for her important role during the early moments of Christianity in Ireland and her founding of the monastery of Kildare.  Of greater interest to me, however, is her deep respect and love of beer.  Indeed many of her miracles directly involve ale.  Once, for instance, she was able to supply eighteen churches with beer from Maundy Thursday to the end of the Easter Season with one barrel of her private stock. Another time, while visiting a leper colony, she found to her great dismay that the lepers were so wretched that they did not even have any beer.  With an abbess' great sense of economy, she used dirty bathwater as the medium for her miracle: "For when the lepers she nursed implored her for beer, and there was none to be had, she changed the water, which was used for the bath, into an excellent beer, by the sheer strength of her blessing and dealt it out to the thirsty in plenty." This is not the only time that she utilized bathwater for this very same purpose.  Brigid is said to have changed her own dirty bathwater into ale for visiting priests when she   found her supply exhausted.   

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The Christmas ale has, for all intents and purposes, finished fermenting in the primary fermentor and now it is time to transfer the ale to a carboy for the secondary fermentation process.


1.)  Sanitize your carboy carefully, as well as your racking hose.

 2.)  Fill your racking hose with water so as to begin the racking (siphoning) process.



3.)  Rack into a separate container until the water has cleared the hose.




4.)  Rack the beer into the carboy.




5.)  Add two vanilla beans, two sticks of cinnamon and one tablespoon of shaved ginger.





6.)  Put lid and airlock 
in place.




7.)  Store in dark cool area for about five days.

A Toast to Saint Nicholas

Toast Saint Nicholas tonight with a glass of warm mulled wine,or "Bisschopswijn." It's easy to make and a pleasure to drink. For 2 to 3 servings you will need:

1 liter of wine
An orange
A lemon
20 cloves
2-3 tablespoons of sugar
1 or 2 cinnamon sticks

To make the mulled wine, pour a bottle of wine into a big pot. Take one orange and one lemon and stick ten whole cloves in each. Add them to the wine, along with a cinnamon stick or two and a few tablespoons of sugar. Bring the wine to a gentle boil, then lower the heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer for about an hour. Serve in a heat-proof mug or glass.

Happy Feast Day everyone!

St. Nicholas Eve

December 6th is the feast day of one of the Church's most popular saints: St. Nicholas. This feast day always brings me back to one of the many memorable moments I had while living in Belgium. I was in the town square one day doing some shopping and walked into a Walgreens-like store called "Hema." It was the first week of December. I was astonished at the first thing I saw when I walked in the doors. In the middle of the aisle was a display rack with St. Nicholas puppets, just like these. They were the featured item for sale. Old St. Nick was ornately adorned in his bishop's mitre, cross in the center, with a removable staff and several changes of liturgical garments. And not only was St. Nick the featured and fastest-selling toy for sale, but each puppet set also came with his politically incorrect companion, Black Peter.

I was absolutely enchanted. Had I not been a poor university student, I would have bought them right then and there. The legend of Saint Nicholas may be one of the most forgotten and dramatically altered traditions of the Church. Although there are many variations of the St. Nicholas legend, none of them makes any mention of a North Pole or Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. Like many altered legends as well as fairy tales, I have to admit that I find the changes quite baffling and even irritating. Why should families have to trade their devotion to this noble and generous Saint for a highly dubitable character in red polyester? The answer: they don't. Aside from social pressure or a sense of childhood nostalgia, I can't think of a reason you would.  Here's a quick summary of a few of the Saint Nicholas stories:

"When an impoverished father was on the verge of selling his three daughters into prostitution, Nicholas came to the rescue with sacks of gold to provide dowries for each of them to be able to marry. When innocent men were condemned to death, Nicholas intervened with the authorities and secured their release. When a wicked innkeeper killed three lost boys, chopped them up, and pickled them, Nicholas discovered the crime and restored the boys alive to their mothers. When a ship was floundering in a storm and about to sink, Nicholas calmed the storm and saved the lives of the sailors. Whenever possible, his good deeds were performed in secret and, needless to say, they have continued long after his death."

Worlds apart from elves with pointy shoes making toys in the world's coldest regions for a jolly man who eats too many cookies. The first story about the girls being sold into prostitution is what inspires the tradition of setting out shoes on St. Nicholas Eve. Legend has it that St. Nick threw the bags of gold through the girls' open window, where it just happened to land in their stockings. Children all over the world set their shoes out tonight in anticipation of St. Nick's generosity. St. Nick fills our daughter's shoe with gold chocolate coins, candy canes, and sometimes a small present (last year it was a holy card of the Saint himself). He also reappears on Christmas Eve to fill stockings with small gifts.

Baking is another St. Nick tradition. We plan to make traditional speculaas cookies today for our St. Nicholas Eve feast. Someday we want to buy these amazing speculaas molds for our St. Nicholas cookies (not to mention Christmas, shortbread, etc.). For now, we'll just keep it simple. I'm using a recipe from Catholic Cuisine, a great blog for anyone interested in Catholic cooking. Here's the recipe:


Speculatius

Mix in order:

• 1 cup shortening (I'm using butter)
• 2 cups white sugar (or you can use half brown and half white)
• 4 eggs
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 cups flour
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons allspice
• 2 teaspoons nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cloves

Mix all ingredients and turn out the dough onto a floured board. Knead in about one cup additional flour or as much as you need until dough is no longer sticky and is easy to handle.

Put into a plastic bag and refrigerate until chilled and stiff. Then you are ready to roll out and cut the cookies. Cut off a manageable piece and keep the rest cool until you are ready for more.


For the larger, hand decorated St. Nicholas cookies, roll the dough to about ¼ inch thickness. Cut out cookie around paper pattern. Place on greased baking sheet.

Bake at 350º F. until golden-brown.


To conclude, here's a short prayer entrusting our children to this great Saint:

God our Father, we pray
that through the intercession of St. Nicholas,
you will protect our children.
Keep them safe from harm
and help them grow
and become worthy in your sight.
Give them strength
to keep their faith in you;
and keep alive their joy
in your creation.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
We call upon your mercy, O Lord.
Through the intercession of St. Nicholas,
keep us safe amid all dangers
so that we may go forward without hindrance
on the road of salvation. Amen.

St. Nicholas,  Pray For Us!

A Christmas Brew

It would be difficult to underestimate the the difference between the way households are run today and the way that they were run not so many generations ago (especially prior to the Twentieth Century).   Traditional households acted as whole societies, with a responsibility to invest their labor, resources and time in themselves, and to obtain a certain level of self-sufficiency.  This was not an attitude which was opposed to their nation (or earlier still, their kingdom), but was seen as a genuine responsibility and proper participation  in this larger society.  To put it differently, the family was seen as the fundamental political unit, the building block from which a healthy organic society must be built.  The revolution which has taken place in our pantries and cellars is one reflection of how much our notions have changed.  Today, families go to the grocery store to fill their pantries once a week or perhaps sometimes even more often.  Special occasions (say Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving)  mean that we go to the grocery store a day, perhaps a few days, in advance to stock up on everything that we will need for a full day of cooking.  This manner of pipeline buying and consuming, however, is an absolute anomaly from a wider historical and cultural perspective.  For one thing, we have lost any sense for the importance of food.  We easily purchase our food nearly ready made and rarely need to think of it at all.  It is always at our disposal and for most of us it is never scarce (except when we run out of snacks).  We have a fast food mentality.  Our food has no meaning.  People speak of the rampant sense of entitlement that so many people seem to suffer from in our society.  My thought: it started with food.  

Contrast this situation with traditional ways of treating food:  Pantries were a matrix of different foods being prepared at different rates.  Meat would be curing, herbs drying, cheese fermenting etc.  Strategy had to be utilized.  At a basic level, a well rounded diet needed to be assured but, beyond that, feasts had to be prepared for, traditional meals of particular seasons and times planned and of course, a different availability of various foods (the gift of Providence, out of the palm of God) structured all of these considerations.  My point is that food was meaningful.  For the Catholic family-society all food preparations were engendered by the yearly liturgy, giving food a sacred meaning.

In the past Catholics have prepared for Christmas all year long, not just during Advent.  Even in early spring, for instance, there was brewing, distilling and other preparations that anticipated the coming Christmas.  The brewing of special beers, wines and the like is a perfect example of this.  Ale would be brewed, weeks or more in advance, wines for months or some years, meads for much longer still.  Fermentation is sacred... beer, cheese, sausage, yogurt... Bread and Wine: there is something holy about these foods. There is a living transformation, a turn, a blossoming, a true metamorphosis, which is itself an icon of the Incarnation, of the Eucharist.  In other words there is something sacramental about the process of fermentation.  No wonder so many monasteries have had fermentation at the heart of their holy work.

The brewing process is intrinsically appropriate for the Advent season.  The anticipation of the ale coming into its own parallels the coming birth of the Messiah and feast of Christmas, when we will toast the birth of the newborn king.

Does it sound like I am proposing a Theology of Beer? Yes, yes I am.

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How hard is it to brew beer?  Not much harder than making soup from scratch.  You will need to buy a basic beer making kit (including a thermometer, a primary fermenting bucket with lid, a bottling bucket, an airlock, a racking cane, 4 foot hose, springless bottle filler and a bottle capper) which you can easily find for about $70.  You will also need 50-55ish 12 ounce non-screwtop beer bottles.

Homebrewing is divided up into two or three stages (the second stage being optional), each taking place on a separate day.  Stage 1 is the brewing and primary fermentation stage. After a week or so comes optional stage 2, when the beer is transferred to a secondary fermentor.  The purpose of this stage is simply improved quality.  The beer is siphoned (racked in beer parlance) into a secondary fermentor for about 5 days to purify the beer's flavors.  You can skip this stage and move right into stage 3.  Stage 3 is the bottling day. 

Note: if you do decide to follow stage 2, you will  need to buy a carboy (plastic or glass) and a carboy plug. 

Brewing may seem intimidating but, at the end of the day, it is quite simple, without getting into the science of the art, to make extremely high quality beer on your first try.  The best homebrewing book I know of is  The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (3rd edition), by Charles Papazian.  This book is a great reference, although honestly if you just follow the directions below you will be just fine.

The following is my recipe for a Christmas Ale.  It will yield about 5 gallons, or 50 12 ounce bottles of beer, give or take.

DAY 1

I am excited to brew this ale, which is completely experimental.  I have no doubt that it will turn out as a good solid brew.  In my experience, as long as you stay within a few basic parameters, home brewing produces consistently decent beer.  What is experimental here is to what extent it properly expresses the season.  Worst case scenario, it will either be just a good basic beer or it will be a tad bit too spicy.

Ingredients

A.  Malt or Fermentables

1.)  6 LB 6OZ Light/Pale Malt Extract Syrup

2.)  12 OZ, 1 3/4 Cups Brown Sugar, Dark

3.)  8 OZ Crystal 60L

4.)  8 OZ Crystal 40L

5.)  4 OZ  Victory Malt

6.)  2 OZ Roasted Barley

7.)  1 cup molasses (optional)

Aside from the molasses and the brown sugar, you should simply go to your local brewing store and give them this list of ingredients.  They will likely give you a brown bag with all of the grains and a tub of the liquid malt.  

B.  Hops

1.5 OZ Cluster (an item for the brewing store)

C.  Yeast 

Nottingham Ale Dry Yeast (an item for the brewing store)

D.  Other 

1.)  1tsp. Cinnamon

2.)  1 tbsp. Ground ginger

3.)  1 tsp.  Irish Moss (probably most easily found at your brewing store)

4.)  2 vanilla Beans
5.)  5 gallons of water (for the sake of quality, I purchase gallon jugs of spring water)

Directions

Day 1

1.)  Sanitize.  This is a very important step that you will not want to skip.  There is nothing worse than producing 5 gallons of waste.  You can get sanitizing solution for brewers or you can make your own sanitizing solution: 1 tbsp of bleach mixed with 2.5 gallons of water.  Carefully wash all surfaces that will come into contact with your beer (thermometer, fermentor, fermentor lid, stirring spoon, cooking pot, airlock).  Rinse and then let air dry.

2.)  Heat 2.5 gallons of Spring water to between 150-165 degrees Fahrenheit.

3.)  Place grains into steeping bag, put bag of grains into brewing pot and steep for 20-30 minutes.

4.)  Remove steeping grains and discard.

5.)  Bring Wort to gentle rolling boil

6.)  Put liquid malt, molasses, brown sugar and hops into boiling wort.

7.)  Stir very carefully as the molasses and malt like to stick and burn on the bottom of the pot.

8.)  After 45 minutes from having added stir in 1 teaspoon of Irish Moss

9.)  After 55 minutes from having added the hops stir in cinnamon, ginger powder, allspice, nutmeg.  Be pretty strict about the timing on these spices.  They are volatile and will cancel out if they are boiled for over 5 minutes.

10.)  After 60  minutes from having added the hops, remove from boil.

11.)  Place Pot into ice bath in sink.

12.)  Pour wort into primary fermentor.  Try to pour it from as a high a distance from the fermentor as you can safely manage.  This aeration will help to cool the Wort down.

13.)  Add 2.5 gallons of cool water, also from a distance.

14.)  This is the trickiest stage to my mind in the brewing process: chilling the wort down to 60 degrees.  You can purchase a wort chiller and perhaps I will try to make one at some point.  For now, I place the primary fermentor in a large Tupperware and pack the space around it with ice.  Then I stir.  And stir.  And stir…  Yup, still stirring.

15.)  At some point when you might want to take a stirring break, you can hydrate your yeast.  All this means is mixing your yeast with water.  Simply follow the directions  on the back of the yeast packet.

16.)  When the Wort reaches 60 degrees, add the yeast.  I have been told it really does not matter whether or not it is stirred into the wort.

17.)  Close the fermentor.

18.)  Add airlock.  I use vodka in the airlock which keeps the fruit flies away.

19.)  Within the next 24 hours the airlock will begin to bubble excitedly, signifying an active fermentation process.  This should continue for 5-14 days.  Whenever this process ends, is when it is time for the secondary fermentation (day 2) or, if you want to skip the secondary, it is time for bottling (day 3). 

To keep the fermentor cool:  If you are keeping your fermentor in an environment which is a bit warmer than is ideal for ale (60-70 degrees), you can keep it about 10 degrees cooler by wrapping it in a wet towel.  You can keep the towel saturated by wrapping a rubber tube around the top of it with small holes punched into it, which you pump cool water through with an inexpensive indoor fountain pump.