Why God Made Grease and Sugar

For some, Mardi Gras means beads and a King Cake. But for me, Fat Tuesday only means one thing.


Paczki.




To call them "jelly-filled doughnuts" is to call Beethoven's Ninth Symphony a "happy tune." These are no ordinary KrispyKreme/Dunkin' Donuts pieces of fluff. These are doughnuts of substance, dammit.

Years ago my father would make 20 dozen or so to share with the relatives. He would start at 5AM, and in order to make 20 dozens' worth of dough rise he would shut off all the furnace vents in the house except for the one in the kitchen, and then close that door. Given that this was Michigan in February, the house could get a bit...chilly. But it was a sacrifice we were willing to make, because we knew what was coming. When I left for school in the morning there would be a huge balia (or baby bathtub, for those of you not familiar with the mother tongue) filled with dough. By the time I came home, there would be trays of paczki covered with powdered sugar on just about every level surface in the house. I only got glimpses of how the magic happened -- an industrial-sized deep fryer sitting on the stove and this amazing machine that shot the filling into the paczki, one at a time, using a pump-handle action.

Because making paczki takes time, I give you the recipe today so you can shop. Tomorrow you can spend the day assembling these. Tuesday you can enjoy them all, because Lent starts on Wednesday and there'll be none of that sugar and fat again till Easter.

For 4 dozen paczki:

¾ ounce yeast dissolved in ¼ cup warm water
½ quart warm milk
3 cups flour

Mix together and let rise for about ½ hour

Mix together

½ quart scalded milk (let return to room temperature)
¼ lb. melted butter
2 tablespoons shortening
½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons whiskey

Mix together above ingredients and add 6 eggs, pinch of salt, 9 cups flour until you get a dough that is easy to work with.

Let the dough rise until double in size, then cut the dough into 2 ounce pieces (about the size of a golf ball) and form balls. Place the dough balls on a well oiled flat pan, let them rise for about ½ hour to about ¾ hour.

Bring oil (traditionally melted Crisco) in large fryer to 350 degree and fry the paczki until well browned on both sides. When removing from the oil, it is traditional to drain them on brown paper bags.

When the paczki are cool enough to handle, they can be filled using a pastry bag. Use a tip that will allow a good teaspoon of filling (fruit jelly or my favorite -- prune aka lekvar) to be inserted in the paczek. Then dust the paczki with powdered sugar.


Or, you can do what I'm doing and order yours from the Sanitary Bakery, an occasion of sin I was introduced to by my friend Another Monkey.. It's probably too late for this year, so you'll just have to wait for 2008. I suppose you could order them even though it's not Fat Tuesday, but they just won't taste the same.

Mmmmm...smaczne!

Is it too early to get play-off tickets yet?

Funny how short the off-season is when you're still playing in October.

One Starfish at a Time*

So this morning's sermon was about Darfur. It's not an easy subject to understand -- so many warring factions, so many dead and displaced, no solutions in sight. And we face so many problems in our own country, in our own communities. When faced with the overwhelming complexity and enormity of genocide halfway around the world, it is natural to feel powerless to affect any change.

But, as the minister said this morning, each of us holds a power within us. And if we do not choose to use our power, it disappears when we die. Individually, we cannot change the world. But whenever we act for good, we ensure that our power will have an impact long after we are gone.

So go learn. And sign the petition. And send some money if you can. What better legacy can you leave?

*The title refers to the story of the boy and the beach full of hundreds of starfish that had been washed up on the sand. He slowly made his way down the beach, throwing one starfish at a time back into the ocean. An old man wandered by and said to him "Look at all these starfish. Your arm is going to get tired. What difference is throwing back of few of them going to make?" The boy picked one up, threw it into the ocean and said "It made a difference to that one."

A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
To stand like slow-growing trees
On a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
If we will make our seasons welcome here,
Asking not too much of earth or heaven,
Then a long time after we are dead
The lives our lives prepare will live here,
their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
The old forest, an old forest will stand,
Its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.

Wendell Berry

A Lesson Before Flying

It had been a while since I taught Religious Education (which is the Unitarian Universalist version of Sunday School) and today was my first lesson in a long time. It's a simple lesson plan -- story, crafts, everybody head outside and play -- and it's first and second graders and the day I can't keep first and second graders enthralled by a story is the day I hang up my sit-upon cushion and keep to the other end of the building with the adults. So the story is fine.

And when it comes time to crafts all the little girls get their paints and markers and beads and get down to serious Artistic Expression. Little Boys are not so easily engaged. For them, "crafts" is just a way to noisily mark time until we can hit the playground.

Today, however, I got lucky. One of the little boys created a paper airplane with a New and Improved Design. So, of course, all the other little boys had to make one just like it. So all the other little boys and I huddled around him for ten minutes while he very patiently demonstrated its construction. And then we had to decorate our planes, so that took another ten minutes. And by that time it was time to hit the playground where we conducted test flights.

So this morning I discovered my Inner Little Boy. And made the first paper airplane that I had ever made that actually flew.

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.


And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.


All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.


And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.


And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,


Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.


Dylan Thomas