Last week I was in Colorado to give a speech for the Restore Tradition women's conference, and I got to visit with Suki and family for a few days.
The conference went really well, and I say that as someone who doesn't really love such events for some reason* — it's a lovely, lively gathering of women; lots of babies, and the priests are so supportive, as are the organizers!
It has the virtue of being in a hall next to the church (Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Littleton — do check it out), so the beautiful Masses are right there. I discovered that our friend David Hughes, amazing organist and choir master, is there! The music was heavenly. I hope to soon share the link where the recording of talks is available.
During that time, and pondering the comments on the last couple of posts here, I wanted to just to follow up on my homeschooling advice and give a note about having confidence in general.
We women have, as sort of the darkish underside or obverse of our beautiful nature of nurturing and relating to others, a tendency to doubt ourselves and to seek affirmation from anyone and everyone.
Whether it's thinking about your relationship with your husband or running your household or educating and disciplining your children, I would love for you to remember that everyone is on a path that takes them through the universal three-fold pattern of discovery, figuring things out, and glimpses of wonder, peace, and happiness.
Discovery entails things we would rather not confront: frustration, vexation, sorrow, a sense of desolation even (“I cannot do this! I'm not good enough! I've made so many mistakes!).
Figuring things out in the sense of pondering them in order to internalize understanding can feel like work we'd rather avoid, though it is accompanied by hope (“maybe I can do it! Now I see!”).
The glimpses of joy and wonder and their possession are gifts. You can't force them. They will come! You can't hold onto them…
Wisdom is realizing that this pattern repeats and will repeat for as long as we live and we have to take responsibility for it. It's the universal pattern of life.
The spiritual masters called it Purgation, Illumination, and Union. Sometimes we can get the idea that it's a once-and-for all three-step mastery program, but no.
It's just a recurring, hopefully upwards spiraling (but not always), rhythm of life. It's how we learn and grow — and pick ourselves up after a setback — and it's everywhere and in everything in this world of ours. It's God's plan to bring us, ultimately, to Him!
Anyway, if you can understand this pattern, I hope you will find confidence.
A wife and mother is truly the queen of her realm, the household. She doesn't automatically know everything. She works hard and thinks very hard about things so she can figure out what she needs to do and how she can meet others' needs. She does philosophize, even if it's at the kitchen sink or late at night while feeding the baby, and not in an ivory tower (but remember, the Blessed Virgin is called “Tower of Ivory” though she was a mere mother in her home).
She has confidence in her grace of state — in other words, that the “office” of “queen” brings a supernatural power (grace) that meets her effort and raises it.
You can have confidence in the rightness of your vocation and its ultimate goal, keeping a home and helping those in it to be virtuous and loving; the rest will fall into place, even in great difficulty and seeming failure.
You don't need someone to tell you every single thing!
Well, sometimes it helps for someone to say, “Try this” or “I wouldn't do that.” Listening is a good skill to have. Absorb the good things and make them your own, rather than try to turn over this inner wisdom to others.
No one can live your life for you, however expert they seem to be. Don't let that defeat you, but see it as the call to true personhood. You have the capacity to live your own life very well!
It's a paradox, because the more confidence you have in your position, the more open you are to improving; contrariwise, the more doubt you have, the less able to make use of help you will be.
If you have confidence that nursing the baby is the right thing to do, you'll find a way to do it and not be swayed by the expectations of those who reject it. You'll absorb others' good advice and learn to do it your own way.
If you have confidence that your husband will provide and protect your family if he knows he has your unconditional affirmation and wise counsel, you won't be discouraged by lean times or apparent failure.
If you have confidence it's your duty to educate your children (in the broad sense, where you delegate part of the task to others, or in the particular sense, where you undertake the bulk of it at home), you will be patient and resourceful in figuring out what your children need and want.
We can learn a lot from what others are doing; many people have fantastic ideas. We need to remember to have the confidence to identify and reject silly or harmful things.
Have the confidence to stay away from what shakes your peace when you have a clear conscience. There's a difference between someone validly making you examine yourself and someone just disturbing you with novel thoughts when you know you're pursuing the good.
Gravitate towards people and “content” — books, articles, and what have you — that build your sense of freedom to follow what you know to be good and true and not discourage you in apparent setbacks, but encourage you in cheerfulness.
Be bold, be confident! Trust God.
*One reason I don't often enjoy conferences has to do with being terminally outgoing and consequently stressed by having so many people to interact with — a sort of inverse of being an introvert, as if I'm so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that I end up meeting up with all the recluses!
Sourdough Bread Corner
Because I care deeply about you and am continually embarrassed by my inability to provide detailed instructions and recipes due to having made bread for more than forty years and so have morphed into this absurdly intuitive baker who is no help at all–
And because I must, for your sake, overcome the thought that myriad experts who do nothing BUT bake bread have offered you detailed instructions all over the internet so why would you come to me for any of it–
And because, truth be told, busy moms with lots of kids simply cannot and should not make one measly loaf of bread at a time, so maybe I do have something to offer–
And even though I got my starter from Suki years ago, so I have not been in the position of answering the burning question of how to get one going–
I have made a new starter from scratch and kept careful notes, or what passes for careful notes for me.
And I baked some bread with it!
I'm not ready to take you through step-by-step (of course I'm not! but in my defense I wanted to talk about Confidence), but if you are thinking you want this sort of info from me, stay tuned.
Get your kids settled into their school routine and mentally prepare yourself to bake sourdough the Like Mother, Like Daughter, Large Batch, Save-A-Step, Low or No Discard, Mostly Foolproof, All Kinds, Hasty Yet Demanding Way.
Gardening Corner
As usual, my garden has gone directly from “mildly photogenic” to “hopeless jungle” but I have a nice tomato harvest!
Every day I bring in this amount, and while I was gone, the Chief did it! — and now my freezer has about 30-40 lbs of cooking tomatoes and the Amish Paste and San Marzanos haven't even really hit their stride.
That's my current method: I chuck the ripe ones into ziplocks and throw them in the freezer. The less-ripe ones I leave to ripen on the counter.
Soon I will make and can some sauce!
How about you? How's the garden coming?
bits & pieces
- On the subject of having confidence in your husband, and if you are into watching something a bit edgy, I recommend the Chef's Table episode about Ivan Orkin. The whole time I alternated between feeling sorry for him for his lack of affirmation from his family and disgusted by his jerky behavior, honestly. But wow, he gets it: it's his wife who saved him by dint of her admiration and faith in his ability when things seemed pretty bad. I wonder what her family and friends thought of him in the seemingly endless times of failure and how often they recommended that she just ditch him? I think I'd have been tempted! Can we be as confident as she?
- This article, An Incredible Family of Saints and the Secret of Their Homeschooling Program is not about St. Thérèse of Lisieux as you might think at first, but about “eight saints, one of whom is a Doctor of the Church, Basil the Great – all belonging to the same family. As I said from the beginning, it is impossible to know this family of saints without wondering what their “secret” was. This question is crucial, especially for those of us who are parents and grandparents. I will return to this question. For now, I draw attention to an equally astonishing fact. The homeschooling program for educating Basil and Gregory was created by their educator and inspirer, their sister, Saint Macrina.”
- Mary Jo Anderson analyzes the 10 battlegrounds in the abortion fight in the states. Now is the time to engage politically if you live in one of them!(Florida is especially acute.)
- Robert Keim on why rhetoric matters and must be rooted in truth: “An Art Which Leads the Soul by Words”: Sacred Rhetoric in the Roman Liturgy
from the archives
- To prepare for our sourdough school coming up (see above), get out a trusty cookbook and make yeast sandwich bread as many times as you can. (Or go here or here. You can double the recipe without doubling the yeast, and make two loaves.) But — greatly enhance its slicing ability and sturdiness by braiding that same dough! Here's my tutorial from back in the old days when the pictures were not as good!
liturgical living
Saints Joseph Arimathea and Nicodemus and St. Raymond Nonnatus
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Dixie says
This is one of your best posts yet, Leila, and that’s saying something! We so need to develop the confidence to stand in our discernment and not give into constant self-doubt. The second-guessing is the worst part of any decision for me…I am well able to make decisions, but resting in them in peace is not my forte. I think if we could do a little better at considering the advice of others instead of absorbing all the advice, willy-nilly, we’d probably be able to make much better use of good advice as well as our own wisdom. And we’d probably take things that don’t fit us less personally, too. We could get past the constant demand for caveats.
Discerning between that which is prudential/subjective and that which is morally fixed/objective is really hard in a culture that is divided between voices that say “everything is relative!” and voices that say “nothing is relative!”
Leila says
Thank you!
Blayne Royse says
I have a great sourdough starter that has been giving me wonderful bread, but I am hating how I can really only make two loaves at a time. In my mind I’m thinking I should just feed it and avoid discarding” for awhile—I’ve heard this is not the answer, because I would need to increase the amount I fed the starter every single time. (This doesn’t sound so bad lol). Looking forward to your advice!
Leila says
Yes, we will go over this! I never discard (once the starter is made).
Morgen says
Hello! I am so looking forward to a more in depth post on bread, thank you for working on this! Right away I tried a recipe from the ones you recommended and it mentions that you should always only use King Arthur flour because it works so much better. I bet that’s true but have you used less expensive flours with good results? I’m hesitant to spend the extra on flour, especially since I’m baking specifically to try to stretch our budget. Thanks for any advice!
Sarah says
I’ve used King Arthur and enjoy it, but my everyday flour is Sam’s all-purpose or bread flour. We buy the 25 lb bags and go through them quickly. I’ve been pleased with the taste and with the amount of gluten in the bread flour. I don’t do much sourdough, We bake a lot of challah-style bread for daily loaves and French bread when I have time. I loved Leila’s advice to see what your oven can hold. I’ve been experimenting and can fit 9 loaf pans at a go! That sure saves on sanity. I use my 5 quart mixer, make three batches of dough, throwing each into a huge canning pot from my dear grandmother, fold the dough a few times, shape into loaves, and put my feet up and smell the baking!
Leila says
I do use KA (and of course they will be touting it on their own site!) because it’s the best quality flour I can get — I don’t have a Sam’s Club or what have you here.
However, I also buy wheat berries and grind my own.
You can buy flour from a co-op (like Azure) but I’d see if I could bum/buy some off a friend before committing to 25 or more pounds. From what I can see, it’s not white flour? IMO you do need some white flour, preferably high protein, for successful bread, though you can add a lot of whole wheat too. We’ll go over that.
Personally, I just don’t enjoy all-whole-wheat flour, but if you did, you could grind your own very easily.
But remember — even using KA, a loaf of homemade comes nowhere near to the cost of a decent (grocery-store) loaf. Bread is so expensive!
Blayne Royse says
Our grocery expense is so high, that I just can’t afford to use anything besides the cheapest flour. The bread is great. Maybe it would be even better with higher quality flour, but until the day comes that I’m not going through a 25 lb bag every month, I’ll have to stick with the cheap stuff! We’re all still alive lol.
Vera says
Thank you for the uplifting words!!! I have confidence in me, to quote Froline Maria. Thoughts on how humility fits in to the picture?
I am eagerly awaiting bread baking instructions. I don’t know how. Please teach me!
Gloria says
This is so true….thank you for reminding us that we don’t need everyone agreeing with us in order to be correct.
I wonder if this was part of the curse of Eve? Almost like she made a decision against what God said, and so the sin of that damaged our decision making faculties so to speak and now we can’t ever make a decision with confidence again, unless we’ve purified ourselves and developed the virtue of humility.
(TRUE humility! For anyone who’s wondering, Humility is accuracy, not self-deprecation. It’s a subtle form of pride to be constantly focusing on ourselves and going “Oh I’m so awful…I’m so awful…everyone else is better than me.” )
Anyways-Thanks for the post! This was really enlightening and YESS PLEASEEE TEACH US YOUR SOURDOUGH WISDOM!! Everyone on social media says to throw out half your starter every day, but I looked up old 70s bread cookbooks on Archive.org, and no one said to do that. So I think it’s a social media, “telephone” (like the game, you know?) problem. Interested to hear your upcoming thoughts on that!
Leila says
So true about humility!
Vera, we have to be brave (have fortitude). It’s totally compatible with humility. “For they got not the possession of the land by their own sword : neither did their own arm save them. But thy right hand and thy arm, and the light of thy countenance : because thou wast pleased with them.” Psalm 44
For instance, thinking about last week’s post and not scheduling every day, it’s important not to be paralyzed by the state saying “School for 180 days.” You have to decide what that means (to them! in their own schools!) and how you will go about it.
You have to have confidence in yourself to do what’s best for your children and not be slavishly devoted to a rule that has little meaning other than “be diligent in educating your children.”
Marie says
Perfect timing again. It is as if you have been listening to my nightly conversations with my husband. He is always reminding me to ask, “what am I called to do? What does God say about my role?” Is my decision to, for instance, homeschool rather than use the parish school or vice versa, a sinful one? No. So then I don’t need to worry about what other people think I should do or want me to do.
Whitney says
I did not know you could freeze excess tomatoes! I made a garden summer before last for the first time and was overwhelmed.by the demand of feeling like I had to cook eggplant that very evening because they were all ripe right then. Do you have other advice for how to meal plan but also actually use the vegetables in the garden?
Leila says
A ripe tomato really does have to be dealt with, but in a small garden like mine, I rarely have enough ripe ones at once to get anything made with them.
So I toss them in a bag and freeze, collecting enough to make a big batch of whatever it is. If they are large tomatoes, I usually cut them in half first (sometimes things aren’t right inside!). The juilette ones you see there (they look like a cross between Romas and cherry tomatoes) I just freeze whole.
I will try to post what I do when I’m ready!
Eggplant will keep in the fridge a few days at least. Most vegetables do not have to be processed right away. Yes, things would be at their peak if you could instantly take them from garden to canner or freezer, but it’s okay to keep cucumbers in the fridge until you get enough to make a batch of pickles, etc.
You can also put a tray of tomatoes in the oven while you are cooking something else. The resulting roasted tomatoes will keep very well in the fridge for a week, or you can freeze them as well!
Nicole says
Ok, so since a few posts back when I commented about scaling up bread baking, and you recommended doing sourdough, I’ve been doing research on making my own starter and well, getting started! Of course there are too many online tutorials and they all sound hopelessly complex to me and I get analysis paralysis! So the fact that you’re about to divulge your no-discard, make-enough-for-six plus-kids method is SO EXCITING!! Seriously, waiting with bated breath here! 😁
Nicole says
And, I feel that I will be even more well prepared since you mentioned baking a lot of yeast bread. I’ve been doing this for years now on and off and like you said, it’s gotten to where I do it by “feel.” So I think I can tackle leveling up!
Emily says
The switch to sourdough from yeast goes surprisingly well if you have intuitive bread knowledge from yeasted baking!! I did yeasted for maybe 5 years before sourdough, and I actually find sourdough way easier to manage than yeasted baking now! But so many principles of proofing and shaping, etc you will have a head start on.
Ellen says
I agree this is true for me too I baked yeasted bread, growing in confidence, over 8 years. There is a feel to dough that is right. My sis in law gave me some starter and Walked me through getting started. I was zealous about feeding the starter and all of that. Then she revealed to me she never discards. She just bakes more bread if she has a lot of starter. And freezes the loafs. She also doesn’t feed her starter very regularly at all it sits in the back of the fridge till she remembers it. This starter is from her grandmother so it’s been going a long time. It’s very forgiving. If I forget about it I just pour off the liquid on top which is a kind of alcohol I think. Then I mix in a little bit of flour and maybe equal lukewarm Water And leave it on the counter to warm up and start to bubble then back in the fridge it goes unless I bake with it that day. I keep it in a pint or a quart jar, And if it seems like it’s getting too big I either use it or put it in the bigger size jar. Very occasionally I have fed some extra to the chickens.
Leila says
Oh yes! You will be able to!
Ann says
Thank you so much for this post as a new homeschooling year begins. Just what I needed to hear!
Looking forward to hearing more about your bread making process. I have baked bread a bit here and there, but would really like to make bigger batches and not have to buy it, as the prices of baked goods just keep rising.
Spooz says
My husband bakes all our loaf bread from our sourdough starter. He has also experimented with muffins, Chelsea buns and other things. I make sourdough pizza from time to time.
Discarding is a BIG SCAM. Totally unnecessary! Why not just throw the flour directly into the bin?! It is the cult of the foodie trying to make everything difficult for the ordinary person because it makes them feel superior!
He basically keeps the starter in a tupperware in the fridge. When he wants to bake, he takes it out and stirs in a tablespoon of flour to wake it up with food and warmth.
A few hours later he mixes up the dough using about 90% of the starter, then scrapes the 10% into a fresh tupperware and adds a cup of flour and a cup of water then back it goes into the fridge. (When he reused the same tupperware, it eventually went mouldy, so now he alternates between two.)
All those “discard recipes” make me really angry, because they make it seem like sourdough is this huge life commitment that can only be undertake if you are willing to throw 50% of your flour in the bin or spend hours every day innovating in the kitchen to use up all this mysterious “discard”. Who has the money or time for that?!
And don’t get my started on measuring hydration or whatever techno-babble nonsense the bearded hipsters claim is essential to functional sourdough… We people living real lives in real families just need a simple, flexible way to make bread, not absolute artisanal perfection. Not every loaf my husband makes is the best loaf on the planet but they hit the sweet spot of effort to reward without needing to advance to every greater extremes.
Can you tell I feel strongly about this? 🙂 I just feel that the sourdough molecular biologists are putting people off what was a normal housewifely practice for centuries. If they in the entire past could do it, so can you!
Spooz says
Leila, I would love to hear what you do to store your larger batches while you are eating it all up. My husband makes two loaves at a time, and by the time we get to the end of the second it’s a bit hard and sad.
I know some people add milk or yoghurt to their loaves to make them stay soft, but I cannot eat dairy.
Leila says
I let the bread cool for at least 6 hours and then I freeze it (usually in a ziplock or other plastic bag).
Sometimes I slice it in half and freeze it in halves!
But back when I had so many mouths to feed, I always tried to put two loaves in the freezer (leaving 2 out). At least!
Nicole says
I just wanted to say I feel heard with this!! I have been avoiding sourdough for YEARS because of the over-technological babble and fuss around it. It appears so complex on the internet! It’s great to hear that it really could just be exactly like Ma Ingalls describes it in Little House (basically throwing a bit of leftover dough and water from baking day, letting it get bubbly, and then using it!!)
Ellen says
Farmhouse on boone blog has really simple directions. I feel like she is a normal lady who has gotten good at sourdough by much trial and repetition. Agree with disliking all the extra fanciness of it all
Elizabeth says
I agree. I haven’t baked much bread and I’m just starting out with sourdough, but I’ve made her sourdough sandwich loaf a few times. I definitely did it “wrong” today, didn’t knead the dough very much at all, and it still turned out pretty good!
Spooz says
“Kristin Lavransdatter got out her scales, weighed her starter, and tutted. She only had 287g of it at 89% hydration. There was no way she would be able to bake today, even though she had a hungry household of farm labourers to feed. It would take several days of intense attention in order not to ‘shock’ the starter in order to bring it up to the perfect weight and ratio. What would they eat in the meantime? Well, that wasn’t important right now.”
“Ma Ingalls looked at the field of golden wheat with a sigh of satisfaction as Pa turned the mowing machine into it for the first time. Mentally, she divided it up. That was the half they would eat all winter. And that was the half they would mow, thresh, winnow, store, grind and then chuck in the bin. Yes, truly God had blessed them this year.”
😉
Leila says
I agree!
Gloria says
I completely agree with you! I’ve always thought the distinction between “discard” and “real” starter was silly and arbitrary. Like is it really “discard” if you can still bake things with it? Come on now, people.
And making something, only to throw away half of it every day is just wasteful. I think someone on social media started convincing everyone to do this (probably some hipster foodie like you said) and now everyone is following along like lemmings.
It’s a perfect example of one of the main drawbacks of learning from social media.
Anamaria says
It’s in books too!
Cirelo says
I am so confused about this “discard” venting going on. I’ve never heard of discarding a mature starter; only when you are trying to startle one new? Which do you mean? I always thought discard recipes were things you didn’t need a big rise with because the starter wasn’t mature yet and you didn’t want to waste it?
I like gnowfglins sourdough recipes a lot ( haven’t seen her mentioned) She helped me build up an enormous vat of sourdough starter so that I could whip all kinds of instant soured bread products. I don’t make bread as much but love my instant sour quick breads!
Elizabeth says
I just finished St Basil’s “Address to Young Men on Greek Literature” with my son and we will be starting “The Life of St Macrina” this week. Our plan is a (somewhat) chronological booklist and both texts seem very useful when moving from ancient works to Christian writing and trying to understand the context/connections.
Shannon says
Hello lovely ladies!
Help me understand, is sourdough preferable just because of taste and that you’re set if yeast is hard to get at some point? Or is there a sizable nutritional difference?
I’m truly curious because I just find yeast bread so easy but obviously want to give the healthiest option I can to my family.
Leila says
All of this I will cover! But yes, it’s much more digestible, nutritious, and healthy. Fermentation breaks down the indigestible parts of the flour and makes them much more fit for our bodies to assimilate.
It stays fresh longer and tends to just get stale vs. losing its integrity and molding as well.
Stale bread we can work with! So many uses! Crumbly deteriorating moldy bread, no.
Once you get into the swing of it, naturally fermented bread is much easier than using yeast! It’s not faster, though… or as fast… so there’s that.
Spooz says
We like the taste. We like the flexibility on recipe timings and quantities. We like not having to buy another industrially processed product for cash money (packet yeast). We believe in its improved digestibility.
another Sarah says
Great post! I’ve dabbled with baking yeast bread in the past but I don’t own a stand mixer and I found it hard to knead by hand well enough to get a really nice bread texture. I know that one doesn’t need a mixer for making sourdough boules, but would it help to have one for making sourdough sandwich loaves (especially for scaling up to big family-batch baking)? If so, can anyone point me towards what kind of KitchenAid mixer I should look for? I live in an area where there are tons of them on FB marketplace but I don’t know what I’m looking for, aside from the fact that maybe the Artisan models are lower-powered (i.e. not as strong for bread dough) and maybe the bowl isn’t big enough?
Annie says
I have the Professional 6 quart mixer- I registered for it for my wedding 7 years ago and it is still going strong! I like it! If you can find one of those near you, get it for sure. One big difference with the Professional vs the Artisan is whether you use a crank to lift the bowl up to the mixer (P) or whether the top part pivots up/down to go into or out of the bowl (A). I think the hinge wearing out or breaking is one weak point for the artisan.
Ellen says
I got the artisan for a wedding gift and it lasted 10 years. My husband rebuilt the motor but it was not strong enough to mix bread. It lasted 3 months then died definitively. I got a new professional 7 qt. And it can mix 6 loaves at once! The motor is just stronger. Kitchen Aid brand
Melody says
I am very excited about the bread corner! I am curious: what kind of grain mill do you have? (Anyone who has and uses one, please! It’s a jungle out there in review land.)
Thank you, Auntie Leila, for your constant encouragement to us doubting mothers!
Leila says
I have the Fidibus mill — I posted a highlight here: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18022221835348880/
Elizabeth says
I’m excited to learn the no discard method too.
I will say that if you do end up with a lot of “discard”, I have found many recipes from Farmhouse on Boone that are wonderful. The sourdough pancakes uses only the sourdough starter, eggs, butter, honey, and baking soda. So sometimes I feed my starter a lot in order to have enough to make this recipe. Also, the sourdough skillet recipe is a quick and adaptable dinner idea.
Thank you for your thoughts on confidence. That topic has actually been a strong one between my husband and I over these last couple years. I have found that dealing with a lot of unsolicited advice and expectations from family/friends to be the most difficult part to navigate in our first couple years of marriage. I know that most of this is due to my own internal lack of confidence.