I am a pheasant plucker: a day [or 3] in the life of a rural minister

Along the lines of 'things they don't teach you in seminary...'
#169 Herding cows...
and
#170 How to 'dress' a pheasant...and a goose.

Conversations in cafes can be a dangerous thing.
I'd headed out of the parish and up to the local country town - pop. c. 2 000.
Happily meeting up with one of my elders for coffee, we were subsequently joined by one of her pals. Said elder and I had been having a blether about how fabby Harvest service had been, and the logistics of herding the 'cattle' created by the children of our five small primary schools from
schools to kirk, and back again
[they were awesome - way to go wee rural kiddies!].
Most of the cattle-wrangling was beautifully dealt with by my elder's hubby and a rather large pick up truck...
Meanwhile, Gertie the Highland cow, constructed by our school in the hills, was driven
down and then back up the hill by creative parent who had helped small people put her together.
All of this had been great fun, with a good buzz in both schools and the church, and with
the work of Send a Cow brilliantly flagged up and cheerfully supported.

Back in the cafe, having discussed the coos, the subject somehow changed to pheasants.
Friend of elder noted her husband was currently busy, as the season was on and he was out shooting.
I observed that I'd never actually eaten pheasant, wondered about 'shot' and
breaking of teeth [not much of a problem, apparently], and we chatted on about other matters.
Cue Saturday.
A text arrived:
'S wants to know if you would like a pheasant and a goose?'
Cue raised eyebrow, thoughtful look, grin, and text response:
'Okay. Cool. Thanks!'

Arriving home late Sunday afternoon,
I found an enormous goose and a plump pheasant hanging in a bag on my back door.
Bringing the bag in, I opened it and looked at the birds.
They met my gaze with dead-eyed stares.
The heads, wings, feathers, and legs, began to take on the feel of old still-life paintings
I'd seen in the National Gallery.
Thoughts then turned to the recent interview with Ministries Council concerning areas that might have been usefully covered when training; I refrained from responding 'a short course in the gentle art of butchering.'
Shaking myself out of my musing, I began to ponder practicalities.
Phred the pheasant should be manageable.
However, Gil, the goose, is big.
Surprisingly big.
Well, I like a challenge.

Psychological sleeves have been rolled up:
I am mentally preparing for the preparing of the birds;
I have been watching 'how to dress a pheasant/ goose' type videos on youtube;
I have gone to the iron-mongers and purchased a mean-looking cleaver and
a wickedly sharp small knife [interesting walking up the High Street with said implements!];
I am glad I'm not squeamish;
I am thankful for generous gifts that will be put into the freezer once dealt with,
and which will then come into their own at Christmas.
I am a rural minister...we're a resilient and resourceful lot.

the sacred in the ordinary...or: normality is under-rated

Today was a gift, involving a couple of friends, and assorted children.  Life has been hectic of late; routines have disappeared in the busyness.  Within both parish and the personal, lately death has felt like a persistent companion.  In the midst of it all, I'd somehow forgotten the wholesome, life-giving sacredness of the ordinary.

In conversations over cups of tea, shared meals, chats about spiders and Robert the Bruce and school holidays - along with the music of Phineas and Ferb and generous helpings of smiles and laughter - my soul was somehow restored.  The sacred ordinariness of life is a wonderful thing; time enough to be extraordinary at some other point.

Am very much giving thanks for the gift of friends today.

Friday Five: food fest

Ah dearie me, 'tis a wee while since I last played the RevGals Friday Five, but, given the circ's, how could I not?  *very big grin*
A couple of the questions were slightly trickier given my dual nationality context... and I could have cheated and answered 'haggis' to most of these.

My first ever Friday Five is dedicated to Nikki, sister RevGal, who was hungering for an opportunity to write about Haggis. With that introduction, today’s FF is all about food!

1) Is there a food from a foreign land whose reputation led to trepidation when you had a chance to give it a try? Given I grew up in a country that rejoices in having a go at eating 'weird' foods such as snake, emu, kangaroo, croc, witchetty grubs, etc.  not a lot phases me.  I did slightly baulk at snails the first time I confronted the dish in a fancy French restaurant.  

Did you find the courage to sample it anyway? Yes
If so, were you pleasantly surprised or did you endorse the less than favorable reputation that preceded it?  Bleurgh.  And again I say bleurgh.  The taste wasn't the problem - it was smothered in garlic.  The texture was just...yuck. *shudders*  And in the name of all that's good and holy, never, never again.  Actually, while you're at it, I'm quite happy to pass on the rollmops, thanks.
 
2) What food from your own country/culture gets a bad rap?  HAGGIS!! It's marvellous stuff, especially with a wee dram.  Or, nodding in the direction of Australia and Marci...Vegemite.  Wonderful if scraped thinly on hot buttered toast.

3) Of what food are you fond that others find distasteful?  Well, given some folk baulk at haggis... but apart from that, ceviche infused with Tanqueray Ranjpur gin is something I could become very fond of.

4) Is there a country’s food, not native to you, that you go out of your way to eat?  I could, of course, cheat here and say HAGGIS!!!  But as my grandparents were Scots, it's kinda in the genes.  Um, does Danish pastry count, or indeed, Haagen Daz? :) 

5) What is your guilty pleasure food?  Chocolate.  And cookie dough Haagen Daz [disclaimer: other brands are available] 

Bonus: What was your most memorable meal (good or bad), either because of the menu, the occasion, the company, or some other circumstance that makes it stand out?  This year's incredible edible event was the 'Seven Courses, Seven Gins' meal in the company of three other intrepid diners.  A pal was the common link between the four of us and thought it would be a fun experiment putting us all together in the same room to see what sort of conversation might occur.  Pal of hers - and now friend of mine as well - is an amazing cook and he offered the gin-themed meal.  A different kind of gin was used in the making of each course, and as each course arrived, a shot glass of the gin also appeared.
For our aperitif, and kicking things off in style - Edinburgh raspberry gin fizz...
Hendricks cucumber sandwiches
Tomato and Adnams gin soup
Game terrine with Brokers gin
Tanqueray Rangpur gin ceviche
Sipsmith jelly as our palate cleanser...
Pork in Beefeater sauce
Saffron gin rice pudding.

A very merry evening indeed - and remarkably not one hangover the next morning.  Which is perhaps why it is actually a 'memorable' meal.  Given I am not really a drinker, this was out of the ordinary on several levels.

Ingredients for a memorable meal...

'broiled' fish?

There are days when even my peculiar mind surprises me....
This morning in kirk as the Gospel was being read [Luke 24: 36-48] the following verse managed to gently distract me from higher thoughts:
⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence.
'Broiled fish', I wondered.
'Broiled'?
What on earth is 'broiled' fish?
I'd heard the term for years - every time that particular reading had come around the lectionary cycle once again - and it struck me that I actually hadn't a clue what it meant.
And so my tiny mind began to play around with cookery terminology, racking brain to remind self of what broiling involved.
The sermon drifted in and out of my consciousness...at times, I nodded in agreement with points made, such as our peculiar church language and how, outwith the kirk, folk would probably scratch their heads wondering what such and such a term meant. I confess, I immediately thought of the term 'intimations' - not as potentially exciting or lurid as might at first seem.  But then my thoughts snaked back to the wretched word 'broiled', with no defining joy in sight.  It's not as if I had never seen the word before, but today, for some bizarre reason, it just stood out and vexed my wee mind.
Now at home, I have just looked it up.
Aha!
Apparently it's what our American friends over the Pond mean by grilling.
So... Jesus ate a piece of grilled fish.
Further Messianic/scriptural validation for barbecues, thought I.
And so, with that scintillatingly deep spiritual insight, my mind is at rest once more.

sometimes, it's 'Dibley'

Being a visual thinker has both its good and its bad moments.

Good: in that it has certainly been a helpful way to retain information, think through ideas, re-imagine spaces.
Bad: in that sometimes the images conjured up in my weird brain are just...bizarre.

I have recently decided to take a little more control over my food intake - as in me control it, not it control me.  This, added to the fact that my next door neighbour confessed a wee while back that often, when she saw me from her window as I headed off to be about my business, she would think with a smile 'there goes Dibley'.  All meant very fondly, of course.  And I promise that I had my best cheerful smile on as she told me, whilst simultaneously inwardly cursing Dibley yet again.
On Saturday morning I began the new regime.
On Sunday evening I was visualising diving into a vat full of chocolate eclairs, crying out 'take me, I'm yours!'  Ahhh, sweet blissful way to die.
I am obviously channelling Geraldine.
I'll let you all know when the freezer filled with Häagen-Dazs is installed...
However, in the meantime, the regime is continuing.

'six minst pyes of an indifferent biggnesse'

An archivist friend of mine passed this one along, and timely and seasonal it is too.
So, here for your delight and delectation, an Early Modern recipe for mince pies from 1624, found in a file of Charles I.
Amongst the ingredients, I quite liked 'reasons of the sunn' - raisins.
History, the gift that just keeps on giving...
Let me know how you get on with the recipe, and feel free to share the results ;p

Apocalypse Bakery

My lovely friend Clare is a theologian and a cook... and has decided to jump into the blogosphere. She describes her blog Apocalypse Bakery thus:

'Every night, I dream vividly about one of two things. The first is cake, making beautiful delicious cakes of every flavour. The second is the apocalypse and the survival of the human race in the face of nuclear explosions, technological uprisings, epidemics and even zombie trees waging an environmental war against the Capitalists. Hence, whilst awake, I have an insufferable need to bake cakes and an overwhelming desire to save the world from devastation. My life’s work is finding a way of combining the two.'

An uber-scrumptious cookie recipe kicks off the blog. You'll find her over here.  She is probably one of the best cooks and theologians I know and falls into that rare category of one of life's very inspiring and gracious people. :)

Martha and Mary, the chocolatey version

This is a story about M and M,
as well as M & M's...

I'm remembering an all-age chat by my friend D in her previous charge - I was having a day off from my regular Sunday space.
And the gospel reading of the day was the same as this coming Sunday's reading, namely, Luke 10: 38-42 which contains a story of Mary and Martha.
In this particular story, Jesus has popped in to visit his pals and is sitting talking with them.

Mary sits at his feet in rapt attention...
but meanwhile a hot cauldron of bubbling resentment is brewing in the kitchen.
Martha is cheesed off -
seriously cheesed off at slacker Mary, sitting about, doing nothing, not helping provide the required hospitality.
Tsk.
And so the reading has often been commented on by way of pitting the M and M's against each other:
the pious Mary, seemingly so heavenly-minded that she's of no earthly use
and the practical Martha, so busy doing that she forgets to actually hang out with Jesus.
And the point from the pulpit, when pitting the M and M's against each other, has often been to denigrate all those faithful hard-working Marthas without whom stuff just wouldn't get done.
Well that just seems a tad unfair...
so let us now turn to chocolate to tease out this passage a wee bit more.

And back to my friend D who, when doing her all-age address, handed around a few large bowls filled with M&M's... and as she did told the M and M story.
In the end, what she concluded was that you need both Mary and Martha:
it's not a case of either/ or here...
So, as we ate the M&M's, and thought of M and M, we were reminded that while M&M's are the same inside, they are different on the outside ...
leading to the rather torturous but amusing conclusion that while M and M both loved their pal Jesus, they just displayed that love in different ways.

Well the chocolate in church was good at least  *grins*

happy Oz day...

Happy Aussie Day :)

'when the going gets tough, the tough have barbies...'

'We shall barbie on the beaches, we shall barbie on the landing grounds, we shall barbie in the fields and in the streets, we shall barbie in the hills; we shall always barbie'

'E' is for...

Epistles, expresso, elephants, entertainments of all kinds... and also:

Eating - good meals with good friends with easy, flowing, funny conversation.  I love the communal intimacy and the strengthening and nurturing of relationships of all kinds that occur when eating together.  Hmmm, and thinking of various occasions in the gospels where eating meals together feature: both the miraculous and the mundane.  And the sense of sacred in the ordinary that can occur in profound moments of conversation at the table.

Earth - this amazing robust/ fragile planet with all its colour and noise and diversity of life and loveliness.  For green and growing things, for things that creep and things that fly or climb or jump, for watery wonderfulness - creeks, rivers, streams, oceans, for gentle rolling hills or craggy snow-peaked mountains, for the sun and moon and stars that shine down upon it all.  It is good, it is very good indeed.



and Earth - the smell of freshly ploughed fields.

Exceptions that fly in the face of conformity and which refuse to be put in a box and labelled.

'Erudition' - because of its context in an overheard conversation by two very earnest, tweed-wearing young people, many years ago on a train.  They were discussing someone [and to the day I die I will never know who it was, and I quite like the delicious not-knowingness of it] who apparently 'wore his erudition like a badge.'  Ever since, I've just adored that pompous turn of phrase.


Easter and new life,
new beginnings,
new possibilities,
new ways of being:
of hope in the darkness and restoration and release.

'D' is for...

Food, academia and the occasional animal today... :)

Divine - as in chocolate as in fairly traded as in 'omigosh lovely'. Chocolate in this context is truly 'food of the gods'. Mmmmm.

Donuts - whether or not I actually eat the things they make me smile and think of the Simpsons and subversity and silliness.

Dolphins - and leaping and splashing and playing and joy.

Divinity - as in New College School of Divinity: a place where I've grown; where I've wrestled joyfully with words and concepts and occasionally some Scottish Reformers; and where I've sort of 'lived' for the last 5 years and moving into year 6 and the...

Doctorate - wow - gosh...! A little amazed that I'm doing this. Huge thankfulness and lots of joy. Maybe some tears a little later when the Latin grammar really becomes horrific and when I just can't read the handwriting on ageing manuscripts after several hours in the Archives. :)

Diversity - thankfulness for a wild, weird, wide and wondrous world in all its amazingness

Daffodils in Spring on Castle Hill, Princes St Gardens, hundreds upon hundreds of 'em - joyfully lifting their cheery heads to the sky and grinning at God. A happy sign of spring, new life, and riotous colour.

'B' is for ...

Continuing the 'gratitude attitudes'... the letter 'B' is for:

Bread - 'give us this day our daily bread'; the smell of freshly baked, just-out-of-the-oven bread... and the steam rising as it's broken; Jesus as the 'bread of life' who sustains, satisfies, nourishes and nurtures; the breaking of bread in communion, in community, at meals... and for all the 'holy in the ordinariness' of it.

Back as in 'ain't it good to be back home again'... Today was last day of training conference. It was good; it was maddening; it was hilariously funny; it was a super learning experience on many fronts - both in and out of sessions. On the 'back' of this...

Blethers and banter, bonding and building up: during pyjama parties [staying in segregated dorms which someone christened 'Mallory Towers'], as well as chats over coffee and the endless rounds of meals wheeled out, as well as in our set reflection groups at conference.

Breathing is always a very good thing and I give thanks often that I still do it!! For days when the air is just that little bit cooler and the mist of breath hangs in the air: a silent reminder of God's good gift of life.

the Bible is a cracking read:
2 Timothy 3:16-17 ... All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

Books - lots of lovely books to pore and ponder over, and the wonder of God-given desire for knowledge and wisdom througout the centuries which has left a marvellous heritage. Truly, we do stand on the shoulders of giants...

Birds and birdsong - God's airborne choir??!

Beaches for walking, sitting and playing on; as a place of space and solitude and quiet contemplation and inspiration; as a place to exhale the busyness and stress and tiredness and to inhale salt-tanged rest and refreshing.

[with thanks to Fi for the pic]


¹⁷

Calvin cookies anyone?

Cookies you're predestined to eat?
Certainly makes John C so much more palatable....
Wish I could just bake the Master's diss!!

The marvellous Theo baked these for the Calvin reading group earlier in the year. Mahvellous!