#I would kill for a fresh sourdough loaf
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Fighting the Good Fight [Ch. 13]
Alec Lightwood just wants to run his Institute in peace.
This is the story that could’ve unfolded if Jace didn’t exist.
Rating: Mature
Pairings: Magnus/Alec, Clary/Izzy
Tags: Jace doesn’t exist, transgender alec lightwood, retelling of the TV show, Internalized Transphobia, Panic Attacks, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fluff, Lightwood Siblings Feels, Izzy and Alec are parabatai, Family Dynamics, Homophobia, top surgery, Trigger warnings in chapter notes, in depth trigger warnings
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Anxiety/fear: Simon has to come face to face with Camille, who obviously killed him. Additionally, Magnus is very anxious around Camille, and it’s clear that he bears some emotional scars from his time with her. Clary sort of switches off from anxiety in the last section of the chapter because of the fight with Valentine and his shadowhunters. Alec also experiences some anxiety, but is distracted from it by Magnus.
Violence: Camille lashes out at Raphael and knocks him unconscious. Alec beats the ever loving shit out of Hodge, which is immensely satisfying. There’s a fight scene towards the end that has some mild gore including tongues being bitten out and achilles tendons being severed, but none of our heroes get injured too badly, so all is well. There’s some violence between Izzy and Valentine as well, but nothing too severe.
Emotional abuse: Camille employs several tactics to break Magnus down, including body shaming, belittling his feelings, gaslighting and slut shaming him. Magnus is upset by it but not devastated. Camille also tries to tear Alec down but he shrugs it off. Valentine tries to get inside Clary’s head by insinuating that they’re the same kind of person, while simultaneously insulting her ability by referencing Ragnor and Simon’s death.
Sexual Assault: Camille kisses Magnus against his will, and pierces his lip with her fangs. Magnus is almost immediately reassured by Alec after this happens.
References to racism: Alec and Magnus talk about how shitty the shadowhunters used to be in centuries gone past. It’s canon-typical but it’s there.
Sexual tension: Nothing happens but Magnus and Alec have a Moment™ in the third to last scene.
Previous Chapter
Episode 13: Morning Star
Raj had been walking around the city for hours. He’d been on worse missions, but there was nothing as mind-numbingly boring as wandering aimlessly around a ten block radius looking for a fugitive. This morning he’d spotted this deli that made his mouth water every time he passed it, the smell of sourdough and cured meat making his stomach rumble. He’d promised himself a break at 1pm, and when he just happened to walk past the deli at 12.53, he shrugged and decided it was close enough.
The last hour of his patrol he’d been considering what he’d order, so he already had ‘pesto ciabatta with salami and prosciutto’ on the tip of his tongue, but then he saw this huge crusty loaf come fresh out onto the display shelf and he had to start from square one all over again. As he weighed his options, he glanced out the window.
His eyes met the pale blue ones of Hodge Starkweather, who was standing looking in through the window.
Hodge ran for it, and Raj grunted, abandoning his place in the queue as he stumbled out the door to sprint after the traitor. “Fuck you, man! Fuck you!” Raj shouted, activating his speed rune.
As Hodge skidded around a corner, Raj pulled out his phone to call Alec, stopping in his tracks as he turned the corner after Hodge and found himself standing in a dead end. Raj groaned, letting his head tip back as Alec answered the phone.
“Report?” Alec asked, and Raj sighed.
“I saw Hodge. He was headed west, nearing the park. I almost had him, but he disappeared in a dead-end alley. Guessing he infiltrated a mundane’s home and got out the back.” Raj explained, running his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Lightwood. I fucked it.”
Alec sighed. “It’s alright, you did all you could. I’m calling in the wolves to help us,there’s no way we can track him through the city with the manpower we have. Get up on the roof and see if you can find him, keep me updated. Well done spotting him, at least we have a lead now.”
“Just doing my job.” Raj answered, and after a brief goodbye, hung up. He kicked the wall next to him, embarrassment making him want to scream. First Hodge uses his sexuality, which he’d stupidly revealed on a night out to the Hunter’s Moon, as a way to con his way past Alec, and now he just let him slip away through his fingers. He wouldn’t be surprised if Alec sent him back to the academy for this.
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“Alright, everyone. Here’s what we’re going to do.” Alec raised his voice to get everyone’s attention, standing at the front of the ops centre with his hands behind his back. “Raj spotted Hodge just east of the park, heading west. We could try and predict where he’s going, but Hodge is clever, he was most likely taking a route to throw Raj off. I’m going to liase with Luke Garroway of the New York pack, he’s promised us the help of the wolves. Lydia, I want you to stay here and triangulate communication. I need to know of any new developments, I’ll instruct everyone to report to you every half hour, it’ll be in your discretion to keep everyone updated. Anyone doesn’t report back, send back-up to check on them. Everyone else, I want you out on the streets, checking big empty spaces in the city. If Valentine’s creating an army he’s not gonna be hiding in a downtown loft. Everybody understand?”
There was a hum of affirmation among the shadowhunters, and Alec nodded, dismissing them.
“I’m going to take Clary to the Hotel DuMort to retrieve the Book of the White,” Izzy took Alec aside the moment the attention was off him, “Camille has it. Simon’s promised us an audience with Raphael to get it back from her.”
“Don’t bother reporting to Lydia, just keep me updated. Magnus is creating portals to get our people out faster, I’m sure he won’t mind making one for you and Clary.” Alec told her, heading towards the door. “I’ll see you later.”
“Be careful, Alec. Hodge is dangerous.” Izzy insisted, and Alec shrugged.
“Always am.”
“Did he okay us going to the Hotel DuMort?” Clary asked, appearing at Izzy’s elbow. She had daggers strapped to her thighs and a seraph blade in her hand, and if they weren’t in the middle of a crisis, it might have distracted Izzy.
“I don’t think he even registered what I was asking, honestly, but he did, yeah. Let’s go. Is Simon in good standing with Raphael?” Izzy grabbed a wooden stake to put in her hip holster, she and Clary falling into step together as they made their way towards the entrance.
Clary shrugged sheepishly. “I’m assuming so; in all the excitement I haven’t been able to talk to him much. He sounded happy enough on the phone, though.”
Magnus was standing next to a portal that was bigger than average, monitoring the shadowhunters passing through it. He’d cast a flexible portal rather than a one-destination one; it meant less magic consumption, and he had a feeling he’d need to call on his magic a lot more before the day was done.
“How are you holding up?” Clary asked him as they approached, and he shrugged.
“I’m the High Warlock of Brooklyn. I’m fine.”
“Do you think you can keep it up long enough for us to use it?” Izzy checked.
Magnus held out his arm towards the portal, inviting them through just as the last shadowhunter hopped through to their assigned area. “You’re the last ones I need to transport.”
“Thank you, Magnus,” Clary smiled at him, tugging Izzy through the portal and staggering on her feet a little as they came out the other side, right on the doorstep of the Hotel DuMort. Simon and Raphael were waiting just inside the door, out of the reach of the sun. Simon rushed forward to hug Clary once the door was shut, his face turned carefully away from her skin. Raphael and Izzy nodded at each other in greeting.
“So you want me to let Camille go?” Raphael drawled, leading them up to a reception room. The windows were all boarded up with bricks, and it was decorated so lavishly that Clary couldn’t help but wonder if all downworlders were filthy rich. It reminded Isabelle of the tombs of the Pharaohs of Egypt, full of wonderful things but without that life-giving touch of sunlight.
In the vampires’ case, she supposed, it would be the opposite of life-giving.
“We need to know where she hid the Book of the White,” Izzy explained, remaining standing as Raphael sat down on a hard-looking leather sofa. “No doubt she’ll want something in return for it.”
“She’ll want her freedom,” Raphael insisted, “there’s no way she’ll accept anything less. And I can’t afford to give that to her.”
“She kills mundanes, Isabelle,” Simon reminded her, “people will die if we let her go.”
Clary put her hands on her hips. “Can we trick her? Make her think we’re going to let her go and then recapture her?”
“It took a hundred vampires to subdue her the last time,” Raphael pointed out.
“We need the Book of the White to wake up my Mom.” Clary explained, pushing her hair back from her face. “She knows Valentine better than anyone, she can help us defeat him.”
“Or she’ll just run away again and leave you all to deal with it.” Raphael replied coolly.
Simon shook his head. “Jocelyn would do anything to protect Clary. That’s the only reason why she ran before. Now Clary’s involved in the fight, she’d never abandon it. She was like my Mom, too. She’s a good woman.” He insisted.
“Can we at least talk to Camille? Maybe we can offer her a plea bargain with the Clave?” Izzy suggested.
Raphael pursed his lips, considering it. “You can speak to her. But I will not allow her to leave these walls. Not until the Clave arrests her and takes her away.”
Clary and Izzy looked at each other for a long moment. Simon glanced at Raphael, who was watching a silent communication pass between the two women. Suspicion rose in him, and he raised his chin.
“Alright, let’s do that.” Izzy answered, “we agree to your terms.”
Camille’s casket was so thickly covered in chains that Izzy couldn’t tell where they begun. Raphael pulled a string out from under his shirt, revealing a key that had been hanging around his neck. Clary and Izzy watched as he bent down to grasp the padlock that hung down underneath the table the casket was sitting on, and with a flick of his wrist it fell away. He and Simon moved the chains slowly off the ivory coffin, letting them drop to the ground at their feet.
“If she makes a move to escape, do I have your permission to stake her, Raphael?” Izzy asked, her fingers wrapping around the stake at her hip.
“I’m way ahead of you,” he admitted wryly, pulling a stake out of his back pocket.
“Are you ready, Simon?” Clary asked, rubbing his back.
Simon looked paler than usual, and that was saying something. “The last time I saw her was when she killed me,” he said quietly, straightening his spine. “I’m ready.”
Raphael and Clary opened the coffin, and Izzy readied herself as the lid lifted up to reveal Simon’s sire. She’d never seen a vampire at rest before, and she was surprised to note that Camille didn’t look as dead as Izzy had expected her to. She wasn’t breathing but there was colour in her cheeks, and it was only when Izzy noticed the IV drip in her arm, attached to a blood bag strung up next to the coffin, that she understood why.
“Keep your guard up,” Raphael urged, his eyes fixed on Camille’s still body, “she can probably hear us, she’s waiting for an opening.”
“Let her wait forever,” Simon muttered, “I’m never relaxing around her.”
Camille’s eyes snapped open, smirking when she saw Izzy raise her stake threateningly. “My, my, my, what on Earth do we have here?” She drawled, her dark eyes looking at each of them in turn. “Have you brought me some angel-flavoured snacks, my little caramel?”
“They’re not snacks,” Simon snapped, his voice trembling despite himself, “and I wouldn’t bring you anything!”
“Tell us where you hid the Book of the White.” Clary demanded.
“The what?”
“Don’t act smart. The only reason this coffin is open is because the shadowhunters need something from you.” Raphael insisted. “The second we deem you useless, you get chained right back up again.”
“It’s a warlock spellbook,” Izzy explained, “Ragnor Fell gave it to you.”
Camille’s eyes lit up, and she started to sit up slowly. “It’s only taken him a hundred years to notice it was gone, he must be taking his vitamins.”
“We need it for my mother,” Clary raised her chin, “to help stop Valentine.”
“Valentine? My goodness, you really do need me.” Camille laughed, pushing her hair over her shoulder. “Well, we’ve got no time to lose, then. Step aside, Raphael, there’s a good boy.”
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere,” Raphael chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re going to tell them where the damned book is or I’m going to let Isabelle here stake you through the heart. It would save us all a lot of time and energy.”
“Are you really going to let them kill me? I made you. I’m your sire.” Camille said to Simon, her eyebrows furrowed.
Simon put his hands on his hips. “You say sire, I say murderer. You can rot in hell, Camille. I bet you don’t even remember my name.”
Camille pressed her lips together, and Clary clenched her jaw.
“You really don’t remember? You’re sick.” She spat. “Tell us where the book is!”
“What, so you can just put me back in this box?” Camille shook her head. “No. What you’re going to do is, you’re going to let me go and I’m going to lead you to the book. Otherwise no deal. If you kill me, you’ll never find it. I promise you that.”
Izzy bit her lip, considering their options. If they let Camille go, it would be difficult for the Clave to recapture her, but not impossible. They’d wake Jocelyn and save countless mundanes and downworlders from Valentine’s plans. If they left Camille here, they’d have to find a way to get to Valentine without Jocelyn, which would make everything a lot more difficult. Thousands of downworlders and dozens of mundanes could die.
“We have to,” Izzy murmured, making eye contact with Clary.
“You are not taking her.” Raphael warned them, his fangs dropping.
“What choice do we have?” Simon asked miserably, “we need to wake Jocelyn. Alec will catch her. We know he will.”
“She’s too dangerous,” Raphael insisted, grasping the coffin and beginning to close it.
Camille rolled her eyes, and moved as quick as a flash, diving at Raphael and ramming him into the wall behind him, his head knocking into the brick. He slumped to the floor as she let him go, unconscious. Straightening up, she flipped her long hair over her shoulder and flashed the others a smirk. “Let’s go.”
“Is he alright?!” Simon asked, his eyes wide. Camille grabbed his wrist, dragging him towards the door.
“He’ll be fine,” Camille shrugged, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Clary and Izzy were following. “And I’ll need one more thing from you, my little caramel.”
Simon blanched. “What?”
“I need a written agreement that you asked me to turn you,” she explained. “That way I can go free to start again, far far away, without the Clave yapping at my heels.”
“No way, that’s too far. Simon isn’t signing anything.” Clary growled, catching up to them. “You killed him, he isn’t giving you a damned thing.”
“If you don’t, I’m not helping you find the book.” Camille warned. Simon swallowed hard, and nodded.
“You don’t have to do that, Simon,” Izzy insisted, but Simon wrenched his hand out of Camille’s grasp, falling into step next to her.
“Yes I do. Jocelyn’s like a Mom to me too, Iz. I’ll do anything to save her.”
“Excellent!” Camille purred, “I know just the warlock to draw it up.”
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It hadn’t taken too long for Luke’s pack to locate Hodge. They cornered him near the docks in just over an hour, keeping him pinned down, quite literally, until Alec was able to reach the scene. Hodge looked pale with terror, on his back underneath a shifted werewolf, and Alec felt a twist of satisfaction to look at it.
“He doesn’t have the mortal cup. He must have already given it to Valentine. Maia, let him up.” Luke ordered as Alec neared them, and the beta wolf growled in Hodge’s face before reluctantly getting off him, padding over to stand next to Luke as Alec yanked Hodge to his feet.
“Thank the angel you’re here,” Hodge muttered breathlessly, gripping onto Alec’s jacket with wide eyes. “The Clave are trying to frame me, because of Raj-”
Alec punched him in the nose, flooring him in an instant. He didn’t even feel the anger, he just fell to his knees and rained down punches on Hodge’s face and chest, and it was only when Luke rushed forwards to grab him did he realise he was shouting, roaring in anger. As Luke pulled him up, the beta wolf, Maia, tilted her head to the side, and bared her teeth like she was smiling.
“Alec, we need him. Get a hold of yourself.” Luke reminded him, though he patted Alec on the shoulder.
Hodge didn’t move a muscle, totally unconscious, and Alec sniffed, wiping his hands on his trousers.
“He got past me, Luke. Just ‘cause he said he was gay. And then he has the nerve-”
“I get it. I get it better than most.” Luke soothed, squeezing his arm. “Valentine was my parabatai, I understand betrayal and I understand the drive for revenge.. Just sit down for a minute. He’s not going anywhere.”
Alec nodded, lowering himself to the ground with shaky knees. “You’re right. You’re right.” He turned his face away from Hodge’s prone form, looking out over the water.
“You stay here, alright? I’ll deal with this.” Luke promised, backing away from him, and Alec frowned.
“What are you talking about? I’m not going to just sit here while you take him back to the institute; they wouldn’t let you in, for starters.”
He glanced over at Luke to see him dragging a barely conscious Hodge to his feet, slapping him a few times to wake him up. As Alec moved to get up to help, Maia and another wolf rounded on him, Maia putting a warning paw on his chest.
“This is between me and Valentine, Alec. It’ll take too long to interrogate Hodge, I have to go after Valentine now before he creates a rogue army. We don’t have time. I’m sorry, Alec.” Luke said, pulling Hodge away. Alec growled under his breath, looking up into the faces of the two wolves holding him there.
“You’ll need backup!” Alec shouted, but Luke didn’t look back. He sighed and let Maia push him back down to sit. “You know, I could arrest the two of you for interfering with Clave business.”
Maia huffed, and Alec pressed his lips together.
“I’m just saying I COULD.”
The two wolves looked at each other for a moment, and then back at Alec.
“Can I at least use my phone?”
Maia took her paw off Alec’s chest and sat next to him on the curb. Alec glanced at the other wolf, who looked a little more antsy, but who turned their head when Alec slowly pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Hey, Iz, where are you?” Alec asked as she answered the phone, crossing one ankle over the other.
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“Alec’s gonna meet us at Magnus’.” Izzy told the others, tucking her phone back into her pocket. “He’s got a couple of wolves tailing him. Luke took Hodge and went after Valentine himself.”
“They have unfinished business,” Clary nodded, glad that Luke was in control of the situation. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Alec to do his job, but she knew Luke’s stake in this was more personal than anyone’s. He wouldn’t let Valentine go again, not this time.
“Shadowhunter drama is exhausting,” Camille sighed. “Don’t you ever just take vacations?”
Clary, Izzy and Simon glared at her, and she shrugged. The door of Magnus’ loft opened before Simon could knock, Magnus standing in the hallway looking pensive.
“What do you want?” He asked, his uneasy eyes on Camille, who just smiled sweetly at him.
“Magnus, you look just as lovely as I remember. A little heavier, perhaps, but…”
“What do you want?” Magnus repeated, closing his robe a little tighter.
“She wants a contract saying Simon asked to be turned.” Izzy answered, giving Camille a little shove into Magnus’ loft. “She won’t give us the Book of the White without it.”
Camille and Magnus were looking at each other like they were having a silent conversation, and Simon felt uncomfortable just watching them. He was terrified of Camille and he’d only been on the receiving end of her manipulations for a couple of weeks. He couldn’t imagine how Magnus was feeling at that moment. Clary and Izzy sheathed their weapons, satisfied that Raphael hadn’t managed to follow them.
“I’m going to go and wait for Alec outside, check the wolves aren’t giving him too much grief.” Izzy murmured, glancing at her phone.
“Simon, can I talk to you for a minute?” Clary tugged Simon out to the balcony, leaving Magnus and Camille alone.
“How long has it been, hmm? One hundred? One hundred and fifty years?” Camille asked, reaching up to run her fingers across Magnus’ cheek. He flinched away from it, and led her into the apothecary.
“One hundred and thirty eight,” Magnus answered, lifting his chin. “And oddly, I haven’t missed you at all.”
Camille glanced around the room, laughing lightly. “Of course you have, my love.”
“I thought I was done with you.” Magnus muttered, reaching for a piece of parchment.
“We’ll never be done with each other, you and I.” Camille purred, perching on the desk next to him.
“Oh, I put you in my past years ago. That is never going to change.”
Camille leaned closer to him, giving him a whiff of that same perfume that she used to wear all those years ago. “Don’t be like that. We had so much fun together. Besides, it’s petty to hold grudges.”
“You may have had fun picking me apart piece by piece, but it’s not one of the highlights of that century for me, let’s just put it that way.” Magnus snapped, contorting his fingers over the parchment, making the contract appear on the sheet.
“You’ve always been sensitive.” Camille sighed, trailing her fingers down his arm, “that must have been why I left you, I can barely remember.”
Magnus hated himself for letting that sting, but he couldn’t help it. How could she not remember the show of strength, decades overdue, when he finally left her? When he finally packed his bags and told her that he was done? How could she have forgotten?
“Oh, yes. Now I recall.” Camille mused, shaking her head with a smile. “You were upset by my dalliance with that short-lived Russian. Always with the monogamy unless it was you in the middle, hmm?”
“That’s not why I left and you know it.” Magnus replied coldly, his eyes on the parchment. “I feel nothing for you or for anything that happened between us. Gave that up over a century ago.”
Camille smiled. “You see? I was right. Love is fleeting.”
“And yet true love cannot die,” Magnus shot back. He regretted it as soon as he let it escape his lips, and with a glance at Camille he knew that she had figured it out.
“Oh, my darling. Have you fooled yourself thinking you’ve fallen in love… Again?”
Magnus clenched his jaw, finishing up the writ with a flick of his wrist. “That is none of your concern.”
“True love may not die,” Camille smirked, “but people can.”
“If only you’d do us all a favour and prove that yourself-”
“So touchy.” Camille cooed, stroking his chest. “So I’m right. Two hundred years later and you’re still as naive as the day I met you. It’s almost endearing. But we both know what lurks underneath this pretty shell, Magnus. What kind of darkness hides in your heart. You wouldn’t know what to do with a true lover if you found them.”
Magnus pursed his lips, snatching up the writ from his desk. “You know nothing about me.”
“Oh… Oh, Magnus, my love.” Camille tutted. Her red manicured nails wrapped around his cravat. “I know everything about you. Including…” She sniffed the air delicately. “Oh, darling. You stupid, beautiful boy.” She laughed, grasping his chin with her free hand. “A shadowhunter. You’ve given your heart to a shadowhunter.”
“He’s everything that you are not.” Magnus snarled, his eyes gleaming amber.
Camille flashed him her teeth, and tugged him in for a kiss, the sharp edge of her fangs catching his lip and making him gasp. She hummed into it, and Magnus shoved her back, wiping at the swell of blood on his mouth. He felt a little sick at the satisfaction on her face, the hunger in her eyes at the taste of his blood, and he turned his face away from her to see Alec standing in the doorway.
For a moment, Magnus and Alec just stared at each other, Magnus’ heart going cold in his chest. Camille must have smelled Alec and Izzy coming, must have timed it just for this. Alec turned his attention to Camille and glared at her, rolling his eyes when she smiled sweetly at him.
“You certainly have a type, don’t you, darling? Brunette, tall… A little… Sassy. He’s cute.” She drawled, looking Alec up and down. “Too bad it won’t last.”
Izzy’s face was cold with anger, and Magnus shrank away from the Lightwood siblings, shame crawling through his veins. “Say that again,” she warned, her eyes intent on Camille, “and you won’t last.”
Alec snorted, and walked past the vampire, going to Magnus’ side. “You alright?”
“She pounced on me, I didn’t-”
“I know, it’s okay. Exes can be a lot, huh?” He murmured, and Magnus smiled, sucking his lower lip into his mouth to soothe the sting lingering from Camille’s fangs.
“A lot.” Magnus agreed, the tightness in his chest easing a little. “Now, Camille, we’ve fulfilled our end of the bargain. Where’s the Book of the White?”
Simon and Clary wandered in, the two of them looking a little less depressed after checking in with each other. “Yeah, I’ll sign your stupid contract once you tell us where the book is.”
Camille rolled her head on her neck, pulling a hairpin from her head and walking over to Simon. “Sign first, book later.” She pressed, and Simon looked to Alec for advice.
“Just do it, she’s not getting out of here with all five of us ready to kill her.” Alec shrugged, and Camille smirked at him over her shoulder, pricking Simon’s finger with the hairpin and making him yelp.
“Oh, that explains it. You’re a murderer. Magnus never liked virtue in his lovers.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Clary snapped.
Alec didn’t bother to grace her with a response. He knew her type, he’d been bullied throughout his time at the academy in Alicante. He’d been called a lot worse than a murderer.
“Where do I sign?” Simon sighed, holding out his bleeding finger with a grimace on his face. Magnus took his shoulder and showed him, handing him a quill to make it easier. The moment Simon finished writing the ‘s’ of Lewis, Camille snatched it from the desk and rolled it up, tucking it into her dress.
“Excellent.” She purred, cupping Simon’s chin. “Now we’re both free to live our lives without fear of the Clave.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Alec sing-songed, tangling his hands together behind his back. “I’m still the head of the institute, and if I get a whiff of you in New York after today I will send my entire staff after you.”
Camille glanced at Magnus, who looked nervous, and tilted her head to the side. “Then I suppose we’d better hurry, hmm? The sun will be up in a couple of hours.” She looked at Clary, adjusting her dress. “The book is at my apartment in Manhattan.”
“I’ll drive,” Simon volunteered, and everyone looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. It took him a moment, but he smiled when he remembered, “portals exist.”
Magnus chuckled and turned towards the wall to cast them a portal. “Still the same place?” He guessed, not looking at Camille.
“Of course, darling. I’m a creature of habit.”
Izzy scoffed, and put her hands on her hips.
The room was tense and silent as Magnus finished creating the portal, everyone except Camille looking serious and withdrawn. They were so close to retrieving the Book of the White and waking up Jocelyn. Izzy and Clary went through the portal first to keep Camille from running away, followed by Camille and Simon, and finally Magnus and Alec. Alec reached out to grasp Magnus’ sleeve as they stepped through the magic gateway, and Magnus twisted his wrist to take his hand, squeezing his fingers gently.
“I’m fairly sure it’s in the drawing room, but it could be in the library. It’s been a long time.” Camille sighed, gesturing at the walls of books around them. “Better get looking.”
“Are you kidding me?! You don’t even know where it is?” Izzy demanded, shaking her head. “This is not a fair deal!”
Clary was walking towards Camille to give her a good punch again when her phone rang, her heart leaping into her throat as she saw Luke’s name flashing on the screen. “Luke? Did you get him?”
“No, there were too many of them. Still got Hodge, though.” Luke panted, “He’s heading for you, kid, you have to get out of there. He knows you’re trying to wake Jocelyn.”
“We can’t leave, we have to find the book.” Clary insisted. “We have to wake up Mom.”
“Clary-”
Clary hung up the phone, and turned to the others. “We haven’t got time to deal with Camille, we have to find that book now. Valentine’s on his way.”
“We’ll check the library, there’s more books there.” Magnus suggested, gesturing with his head for Alec and Simon to follow him. He was sort of familiar with Camille’s library; it hadn’t changed much since he was last here, and he’d spent a lot of time reading in here while Camille had her way with whatever mundane she’d picked to cheat on Magnus with that week.
“What does the book look like?” Alec asked. His head was tilted back a little to look up at all the shelves.
“It’s white and gold,” Magnus told them, striding over to the sliding ladder to start checking the higher shelves. “On its spine is the word ‘album’.”
“Album?” Simon repeated, “what, does it have photos in it?”
“Album means white,” Alec explained before Magnus could open his mouth. “Why is a warlock book bound in the shadowhunter colours?”
Magnus pressed his lips together, scanning the shelf in front of him, “Because originally it was meant to be a reference for shadowhunters. But Ragnor’s mother, or adopted mother, decided against granting the shadowhunters access to the spells and potions in there. The shadowhunters were too big a threat back then; the angel blood in them wasn’t as diluted and they had access to a touch of magic.”
Alec hummed, his fingers running along each shelf in turn. “I heard that. About our ancestors having magic. I don’t blame the warlocks for wanting to keep their secrets. Shadowhunters back then were savages.”
“Like Valentine?” Simon pressed tentatively, and Alec nodded.
“The only thing that kept them from totally wiping out downworlders was the fact that they enjoyed hunting them for sport.” Alec said quietly, his eyes darting up towards Magnus. “They were animals.”
“Seems Ragnor did his job of teaching this generation the truth of their lineage,” Magnus mused, his tone light to break the macabre tension in the room. “Any luck down there?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Magnus said before that the book is white and gold.” Clary explained, “most of these books are brown or black, so it should be easy.”
Izzy nodded and went to the opposite side of the room. Camille had scarpered the moment Magnus left the room, and neither Izzy or Clary made a move to stop her. They’d get her another time. “What’s the plan for when Valentine shows up?”
“No idea,” Clary admitted, “but we can’t let him get this book.”
“Alright,” Izzy chuckled, shaking her head as her eyes swept along the shelves closest to the door, “I guess that’s worked for us up until now.”
“I got it!” Clary yelped, plucking the Book of the White off the wall. “This is it! Look, it has the Latin for white on the side, this must be it!”
Izzy turned to cross the room to see, but ran into a solid chest. With a glance up, she saw it was Valentine, but before she could flick out her whip, his seraph dagger was pressed to her throat. One of his new shadowhunters grabbed Clary, and to Izzy’s dismay, Alec, Magnus and Simon were marched in too, all held like her with blades to their necks.
“Well done, Clarissa. You came so close.” Valentine sneered, yanking Izzy around to face Clary by her hair. “You’ve done well. Assembled a little army, figured out the problems that arose. You did lose one soldier,” Valentine smirked at Magnus, who clenched his jaw, “and of course, you let a dangerous vampire run free, but… You are promising.”
“What do you want, Valentine?” Clary spat, meeting Magnus’ eyes, who tilted his head just a little, as if to say ‘keep him talking.’
Valentine pulled Izzy along with him as he walked over to Clary. “That’s very simple. I want you by my side, helping me lead our army. It is your birthright, after all.”
“She’s not interested!” Simon insisted, making Valentine turn to look at him, Izzy hissing in pain as the dagger dug into her skin.
“Oh, yes, I forgot about you. You really should have kept a better eye on your little mundane friend, Clarissa. Letting him get turned into a filthy vampire. Should’ve let him die, he would have been better off.” Valentine mused. “Ah, well, there’s always a chance to right our wrongs.” He nodded at the shadowhunter who was holding Simon. “Kill him.”
The shadowhunter holding Magnus, next to Simon, collapsed to the ground, and Magnus burst free from his arms, sending a shockwave from his body and knocking everyone in the room to the ground. Alec had his seraph blade out before he even hit the floor, and lunged back up to his feet before the shadowhunter that had been holding him, cutting his achilles tendon and incapacitating him. The shadowhunter that had been holding Simon was quicker than his friend, and bore down on Simon. Alec only just reached him in time to block his killing blow, and the two of them started exchanging swings of a sword, Alec putting his back to Simon to protect him.
“Simon, run to the institute and bring backup,” Alec ordered, glancing over at the others between blows.
Izzy was trying to get Valentine’s blade from his hand, but he had years of experience on her. Clary was standing over a dead shadowhunter looking shell-shocked, and Magnus was on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. Izzy cried out, and Alec’s stomach lurched to see Valentine grab her, abandoning his fight with the shadowhunter to run towards them.
“Wake your mother, Clarissa. Soon we’ll all be together again,” Valentine smiled, smashing a portal stone into the ground and dragging Izzy with him.
“No!” Alec screamed, sprinting for the portal, but Magnus caught his ankle and sent him flying. “Magnus, let me go!”
“If you go through that portal,” Magnus panted, squeezing his eyes shut as it closed, “you’ll be lost. You don’t know where it was coming out, you’d have been stuck in limbo.”
Clary screamed in rage as the last shadowhunter, the one that had been fighting Alec, went for Magnus, and stabbed him through the stomach. The moment he hit the ground, Clary dropped her seraph blade, hands shaking. Magnus heaved himself up off the ground, and pulled her into a hug.
“It’s alright, Biscuit,” he told her, “you had to.”
Clary stared at Alec over his shoulder, and Alec stared back, both pairs of eyes empty and lost.
Izzy was gone.
Alec got up silently, stepping past Magnus’ offer of a hug and walking over to the shadowhunter he’d incapacitated, dragging him to his feet. “Where did they go?” He demanded, but the shadowhunter said nothing, opening his mouth in a bloody grin. His tongue fell out and onto the floor, and Alec dropped him, recoiling. He’d bitten out his own tongue. He looked over at Magnus, who looked grim but unsurprised.
“We’ll find her, Alexander. I promise.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Luke was waiting for them back at the institute, his clothes torn and blood-spattered. “Werewolf healing, I’m fine,” he assured Clary as she checked him over for signs of injury, “Hodge is in custody.”
Alec walked right past the two of them once he’d handed the mute shadowhunter over to Raj, going up to Lydia. “Have you sent a team to the docks?”
“Yes. We think that Valentine has access to a cargo vessel. He’s gone over water to avoid our tracking.” She explained. “I’m so sorry, Alec.”
“Izzy’s fine,” he replied, “she’s unharmed, she’s just trapped. If he planned to kill her he would have done it already.” Alec was trying to convince himself more than anyone else, forcing himself to think rationally so the panic clawing up his throat wouldn’t overwhelm him. Magnus came up behind him, and took his elbow gently.
“You need to get out of your binder, Alexander,” he reminded him, and Alec nodded, letting Magnus lead him to his room. Magnus hesitated in the door when they got there, but Alec pulled him inside.
“Stay?” Alec asked, “just for a while?”
“Of course.” Magnus answered, “do you want me to turn around while you-”
Alec pulled his shirt over his head, quirking his eyebrow at Magnus. “Do you want to turn around?”
“I…” Magnus’ mouth open and closed a few times. “Alec, I…”
“How about I turn around?” Alec suggested, sucking his lower lip into his mouth before turning his back to Magnus and peeling off his binder, his toned muscles bunching and relaxing as he lifted his arms. Magnus swallowed hard as Alec reached for his sports bra. “You doing okay back there?”
“I’m great.” Magnus insisted, wringing his hands together as Alec wriggled into his clothes. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry that you had to see me kiss Camille. I didn’t want to.”
Alec turned back around, settling his shirt back over his hips. “Anyone with eyes could see that you didn’t want it. It’s fine. She seems… Well, I don’t like to use the word insane, but…”
“Something is definitely off in that twisted little brain,” Magnus agreed.
“She was right about one thing, though. This won’t last. At least, not for you.” Alec sighed, walking over to his dresser and picking up the framed picture of he and Izzy that sat there. He looked at it hard for a moment. “My whole life will go by in a flash for you. What’ll happen when-”
“Alexander,” Magnus said softly, putting his hand on Alec’s waist. “I may be the High Warlock of Brooklyn, but even I can’t tell the future. We’ve only just met. Who knows what’s going to happen between us in the weeks and months to come, hmm?” He stroked Alec’s back soothingly. “Besides, right now we need to focus on Izzy.”
“I don’t know where to start,” Alec confessed, putting the picture down. “I have no idea what to do. It feels like I’m staring at a brick wall.”
“Well, we can start by waking Jocelyn. She might have a better idea about what Valentine’s plans are than we do. And now he’s made himself an army of shadowhunters…”
“There’s no telling what his endgame is,” Alec finished. Magnus was right. Jocelyn could provide insight into what Valentine was up to, and if they could just get ahead of him, there was a chance of them getting Izzy back. No doubt Izzy was doing her best to escape too; Alec had faith, deep down, that she was strong enough to come through this. Still, Alec hated the thought of her all alone, surrounded by Valentine and his army of new shadowhunters. “Let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clary sat in the infirmary with her mother and Luke, staring at Jocelyn’s sleeping face. Her mind was totally blank, as blank as the look on her face, as she saw the lifeless bodies of the shadowhunters she’d killed, over and over again. There was an awareness in her that she should feel something. But she just… Didn’t.
“What happened back there, Clary?” Luke asked softly, touching her shoulder. “Come on, kid, talk to me. I’m here.”
“I’m alright,” Clary answered, tearing her eyes from Jocelyn’s face to look up at him. “We just have to wake up Mom so we can get Izzy back.”
Saying her name hurt, and Clary was somewhat relieved to know she could still feel something.
She should have been quicker; if she hadn’t been so absorbed in that dead shadowhunter, she could have helped. She could have stopped Valentine from grabbing Izzy. Maybe Valentine would have been just another dead body slumped at her feet. Maybe Izzy would be sitting there next to her, squeezing her hand. But she’d hesitated, and now Izzy was gone.
“Biscuit?”
Clary looked up at the sound of Magnus’ voice, but she couldn’t quite summon a smile. “We’re ready,” she told him, giving he and Alec space beside Jocelyn’s body.
Magnus nodded and opened the book, flicking through the pages deftly. He swept his hand over Jocelyn’s body, and frowned when his magic fizzled. “Must still be a little low from the fight,” he muttered, glancing at Alec. “I don’t suppose you could…”
Alec offered him his hand, but Magnus tilted his head a little, a small smile on his face. “What?”
“A kiss would be more efficient.” Magnus told him, and Alec snorted through a reluctant smile, leaning in to press his lips to Magnus’.
“When did this happen?” Luke muttered to Clary, who smiled weakly at him.
Magnus hummed into the kiss, feeling Alec’s energy fizzle through his veins, and pulled away. “Thank you, Alexander.”
“You are very welcome,” Alec murmured, eyes warm.
“Luke, put your arms under her ready to catch, or she’ll fall.” Magnus instructed, waving his hand over Jocelyn once more and nodding when it took, the blue-silver magic crackling in the air. He said the incantation, his magic rumbling and sinking into Jocelyn’s skin in thunderous bursts, and after the third burst, the green energy surrounding her dissipated, and she tumbled gently into Luke’s arms.
“Mom?” Clary stepped forward, and Magnus tugged Alec back to give the family of three a little space.
Jocelyn’s eyes fluttered open, and she smiled to see Luke holding her. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Yeah, it’s me.” Luke’s eyes filled with relieved tears, and he lifted her slightly, cradling her close to his chest. She kissed his cheek gently, resting her forehead on his temple.
“Mom?” Clary repeated as Luke let Jocelyn down. As Jocelyn turned to look, Clary fell into her arms, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder. “You’re alright.”
“And so are you,” Jocelyn sighed, clutching her close. “Oh, Clary, I am so…” She noticed the runes on Clary’s arms, and pulled back. “You’re…”
“A shadowhunter. Yeah.” Clary nodded, squeezing her hands.
“A pretty good one, too.” Alec supplied.
Jocelyn looked between Alec and Clary, and then to Magnus and Luke. “How long was I asleep?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Izzy was thrown careening onto the deck the moment that the portal closed behind them, barely catching herself. She turned over to see Valentine standing over her, three shadowhunters jogging over to them. Not one of them was familiar to Izzy, and her heart sank. Valentine really had created an army.
“Take her to the cells.” Valentine ordered, smirking at Izzy as she was dragged to her feet. “You’re lucky that you look like your mother, Miss Lightwood.”
Izzy spat in his face. “Traitor.”
“You’ve got her fire as well,” Valentine chuckled, wiping his face. “How nice. Take her away.”
“You don’t have to listen to him,” Izzy insisted, digging in her heels as the three shadowhunters pulled her below deck, “he’s not what you think!”
Valentine turned to watch the sunrise, leaning on the railing in front of him. “A new day begins,” he muttered, raising his chin.
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a case against jam
squelching and slopping and squishing
〄
crunch
I bought a jar of raspberry jam from Trader Joe’s the day of the last away game.
Football season is a nightmare in Athens. If you aren’t getting day-drunk and sweating through your boutique clothes at the games or a bar broadcasting the game, you are trapped inside the entire day, unable to travel fifteen feet down the road without being stuck in insufferable bumper-to-bumper traffic, sharing the roads with clammy tailgaters commuting up from Durham and legacy ticket holders.
On the first game day of my undergraduate career—a very exciting and frenetic time for a first-year—, my car got towed. I spent the first half of the day making a fool of myself in a sweat-soaked grey T-shirt and the second-half in tears.
Away game weekends were an absolute treat—I could spend my Saturday afternoons outside of my disgusting room and not worry about my car getting fucking towed again.
I took to spending a lot of my Saturday mornings at Independent Baking Co., the smallest of bakeshops half a mile from where I lived. I would wake up at seven in the morning and walk half a mile to the bakeshop in the early-morning sunshine, stopping to take pictures when golden hour hit and enjoying the stillness of the Five Points suburb.
There are no sets of tables and chairs inside of the bakeshop, only a bar mounted against a glass brick window on either side of the door. I would order a sweetened latte and buttered croissant and read for hours by the door, watching dog-walkers and townies in athleisure peddle by in troves. I typically left when the bakery began to buzz with activity and a line formed outside of the door.
One afternoon I was possessed by the idea of having bread and jam for breakfast.
This was a strange decision on my part. I have never liked jam all that much—I began leaving out jellies in my sandwiches during high school because I got sick of the taste of concord grape after puberty and wanted nothing more to do with it. But for some reason I began daydreaming of gliding warmed strawberry or raspberry preserves across toasted sourdough bread and stomaching the soured, punchy taste of sweetened jam.
The next Saturday morning, I sleepily walked to Independent and approached the counter to order toasted sourdough bread with jam. They served me a plate with a croissant.
I’m not sure why I opted for a croissant instead of what I came there for—I think I was too shy to ask if they had jam or butter and too nervous to order something outside of my comfort zone. So I ate my croissant and stirred my Splenda into my latte and read my book in my spot by the window, defeated by my inability to order two basic things.
I left Independent and crossed the street to the bookstore and spent twenty minutes roaming around and trying to decide if I should go back and order the fucking bread and jam. I went back, but I was still too shy to ask for jam. I left with a levain roll and a plan to eat it for breakfast the next morning.
I’d get my own jam—and I bought a jar of raspberry jam from Trader Joe’s the day of the last away game.
After leaving the store, I felt consumed with guilt after spending $3 on something I knew immediately that I would get four uses out of. I am a creature and a consumer of habit—I love eating and trying new things, but a lot of what I eat day-to-day is the same shit over and over, safe foods that I know will not make me anxious or flare up my funky and frenetic digestive system: cereals and granolas and ripened bananas, greens and grains and Gummy Vites. I knew that I would plunge a spoon into the jam, put the lid back on, and never open it up again.
During this time, and still now, having something else for breakfast other than a bowl of cereal would make me very anxious. Consistently eating the same thing for breakfast every morning meant that I knew what I would feel like for the rest of my day—there was no question that I would not have a stomach ache, nor be slowed down by big, indulgent portions. Whether it was an appendage of my disordered eating habits or actually motivated by an inability to function on a full stomach, I was reticent to eat anything else.
Even having lattes and croissants for breakfast—innocuous, gentle foods, nothing oily, flash-fried, or insufferably large, even blander in taste than the cereal—was chancy. I would often return home from Independent nervous about what I would be eating for lunch to balance out the milk sugar and butter I had with breakfast. It was best just to stick to my guns.
I didn’t end up eating the bread and I didn’t end up eating the jam.
An hour after buying the roll, I was consumed with nervous energy that it would be stale and hard the next morning, but I couldn’t allow myself to eat it with lunch or later for dinner—it had to be for breakfast. But I didn’t have a toaster at that time, either. I couldn’t possibly eat it untoasted and lukewarm.
I spent the rest of the day making excuses for myself to not enjoy the palm-sized levain loaf that cost me less than fifty cents, demonizing the sourdough to be dense and bitter enough to make my stomach roil, that having a croissant for breakfast and the levain with lunch would make my thighs or my stomach swell—enough so that the roll sat on my counter for three days until it was as hard as a rock and I tossed it into my trashcan with enough sorrow to spoil fresh bread.
splat
I first opened the jam jar the night I found out my great-grandmother died. There was no correlation between the two, other than it was the first time I’d eaten jelly since I saw her last. Strange happenings.
I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner that night, bringing my cooled unopened jar and a sachet of creamy peanut butter in a tote bag to the dining hall. I’d dreamt of having the gooiest sandwich with baked apple slices and slimy banana coins oozing out from under the crisped edges for days, and I was going to satisfy my fleeting bread-and-jam fantasy if it fucking killed me.
This was big for me—eating bread! This was new for me—eating sugar! I dug my knife into both jars and scraped their contents across the flash-toasted Nature’s Own and squeezed the pieces together to hear its guts squelch and slop down the sides.
I ate it too hungrily and greedily to truly taste the sandwich, but I don’t remember anything profound about it. It was the blandest of dinners, but it was the sweetest to me—the sickly and syrup tartness of the pectin-preserved jam punched me in the gut and satiated my wild and gluttonous sweet tooth. The soft, sagging bread slid down my throat like butter, and I ate the warm carbs as quickly as I could.
I have not had a spoonful from the jam jar since, partly because I am allegiant to peanut butter toast and have no interest in eating jelly on or with anything else other than toasted bread. Jam is too sweet to me now and a poor, pointless spread to smear across my toast—I’d rather eat the whole fruit instead and save the sugar and pectin for dessert. I no longer fear bread, nor butter, nor spreads of any sort—jams, jellies, marmalades, preserves, powders, and pastes, but I cannot be bothered to eat the latter.
Yet I dream of it in waves—of Mama’s Boy house-made raspberry jam on burnt slices of Luna bread, of the familiar Uncrustable sandwiches that I stopped eating during my freshman year of high school, of the pictures of chia seed jellies that crowd my Explore page, and the other half of PB&J best friend charm bracelets—, but mostly of the appearance of jams, in its viscous and glassy and gelatinous consistency. As butter knives cut hunks of gemstone out of jam jars, I am filled with wonder—how is it fair that such a sour-tasting spread is given the most dazzling of forms?
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How to Make Your Own Sourdough Starter
Flour and water. That’s all you need to make your own yeast in the form of a homemade sourdough starter. With just a little bit of patience and this simple recipe, you’ll have a starter that will decrease your dependence on the grocery store and help you make the most amazing sourdough breads, pancakes, crackers, brownies, and more.
Sourdough captured my imagination way back at the beginning of my homestead journey.
I actually found a little post-it note in one of my old recipe books that said the date of my first sourdough starter: October 11, 2010, which was right at the beginning of my homesteading adventures here on this blog.
I’ve been doing sourdough off and on since then and have learned plenty along the way. I’ve written about sourdough in my cookbook; I showed you how to make sourdough bread in my heritage cooking crash course; I’ve even talked about sourdough a bunch of times on my Old Fashioned on Purpose podcast.
(If you’re wanting my full in-depth video tutorials for sourdough, fermentation, canning, gardening, and more, I’ve bundled them together for a short time for an extremely low price!)
I’ve had some massive sourdough failures over the years. I’ve made the classic brick loaf that you can use as a paperweight or a doorstop. I’ve had loaves that taste way too sour or have an odd texture that no one wants to eat.
I’ve killed plenty of sourdough starters. I’ve cooked a sourdough starter by accident. I’ve let the sourdough starter die on the counter. I’ve neglected it in the fridge.
Through trial and error over 10 years of sourdough making, I’ve failed many times at sourdough, but I’ve also learned plenty of handy tips and methods to make successful sourdough recipes.
Today I’m going to show you how to make your own sourdough starter with nothing more than flour and water.
You don’t need a purchased starter and you don’t need to add extra ingredients like yeast, fruit, or sugar. This is as easy at it gets, my friend.
What is a Sourdough Starter?
Sourdough is simply naturally leavened bread that is made with wild yeast captured from the air. This method has been around since the beginning of time.
Using a sourdough starter does not mean your bread has to end up being super sour. Much of the sourdough bread you find at the store isn’t true sourdough. It’s often made with regular yeast and has other flavors added to make it sour.
So even if you dislike the taste of grocery store sourdough bread, there’s still a good chance you’ll enjoy homemade sourdough bread.
A real sourdough starter does not require commercially-bought yeast to get started. A true sourdough starter is simply made by combining flour and water and letting it sit for several days to either “capture” wild yeast in the air or to get the wild yeast already in the flour to become activated.
(There’s a LOT of passionate debate as to whether the wild yeast is present in the air or in the flour. I suspect it’s probably both…)
After a few days, your newly-formed sourdough starter will start bubbling, which tells you that the wild yeast is starting to become active and multiply. In order to keep that wild yeast happy, you have to feed the sourdough start with fresh flour and water over the next few days.
After about a week, your sourdough starter will be super bubbly and ready to be used.
What is Wild Yeast?
Wild yeast is all around us. It’s in the air, on your hands, in your food, in your bags of flour…yeah, it’s everywhere. Since the very first humans who discovered you could make bread from water and ground grains, wild yeast has been used for leavening.
The commerical store-bought yeast we are accustomed to seeing in grocery stores only replaced wild yeast for making bread because it’s easier for companies to make and sell. It’s also easier for bakers to store and use commerical yeast.
So, if store-bought yeast is indeed a little easier, why make your own sourdough starter with wild yeast?
Not only do I love making my own sourdough starter because I think old-fashioned living and homesteading is awesome and worthwhile, but I think that bread made with wild yeast is all-around better…it makes a superior tasting bread with a better texture that is easier for us to digest.
Not to mention, yeast isn’t super easy to find at the grocery store right now…
Fortunately, capturing wild yeast is super easy to do. If you prepare to watch rather than read, here’s my video showing how to capture wild yeast and start your own sourdough starter.
youtube
The Health Benefits of Real Sourdough Bread
Real sourdough bread has impressive health benefits for your family. The biggest health benefit with real sourdough revolves around the fact that sourdough is a fermented food.
Like other fermented foods, sourdough bread is wonderfully nutritious. As your sourdough bread dough ferments, proteins are broken down into amino acids for you, so your digestive system’s job becomes much easier.
As a result, your body is able to snag more nutrients out of the bread, since it’s easier to digest. It makes your bread more digestible, and sometimes folks who have issues with regular bread can tolerate sourdough.
Fermentation also helps to preserve food, meaning sourdough bread often has a longer shelf life than homemade breads made with commercial yeast. That’s because the fermentation process creates all sorts of organic acids that resist fungus. Basically, it’s harder for mold to grow on sourdough.
The fermentation process also breaks down the phytates, or anti-nutrients, present in wheat. This allows your body to absorb more of the vitamins and minerals in the flour.
So the fermentation process creates all kinds of beneficial nutrients in your bread, then it also makes those nutrients extra easy for you to digest. It’s one of the reasons why I love eating fermented foods (by the way, if you love fermented foods, check out my tips on how to use a fermenting crock.)
How to Make Your Own Sourdough Starter
Ingredients:
Whole Wheat Flour* (*see notes)
All-Purpose Flour
Non-Chlorinated Water
Instructions:
Step 1: Mix ½ cup whole wheat flour with 1/2 cup water. Stir vigorously, loosely cover, then let sit for 24 hours.
Step 2. Add ½ cup all-purpose flour and ¼ cup water to jar, and stir vigorously. (You want the starter to have the consistency of thick pancake batter. If it is too thick, add more water.) Loosely cover, and let sit for another 24 hours. You should hopefully begin to see bubbles in your starter at this point, but if not, don’t give up yet.
Step 3. Discard half of the starter, then feed again with ½ cup all-purpose flour and ¼ cup water. Stir, loosely cover, and let sit 24 hours.
Keep repeating Step 3 until the starter doubles within 4-6 hours of you feeding it. If you still aren’t seeing any bubbles after several days of this process, it’s probably best to dump out and start over.
Once the starter is bubbly, active, and doubling consistently after each daily feeding, it’s ready to use in your recipes! (This usually happens between days 7-10.)
Sourdough Starter Notes:
Using whole wheat at the beginning gives your sourdough starter a jump start (it contains more microorganisms and nutrients, which will make your new starter especially happy).
Keep your sourdough starter at least 4 feet away from other cultures (like kombucha or sauerkraut) to avoid cross-contamination.
Don’t use chlorinated water to feed your starter. If you have chlorinated city water, you can work around this problem by allowing a jar of water to sit out overnight (uncovered) for 12-24 hours. This will allow the chlorine to evaporate.
The key to successful sourdough bread is using the starter in the proper stage of activeness — this will prevent you from ending up with sourdough bread bricks. Most people run into issues because they try to use barely active starter to make full-rise breads.
How to Care for a Sourdough Starter
Storage For Frequent Use:
If you plan to use your starter every day (or every other day), it’s probably best to keep it on the counter and feed it daily. To do this, discard half of the starter each day, then feed it a 1:1:1 ratio — 1 part starter to 1 part water to 1 part flour (in weight).
You can get super technical and weigh this out with a scale, but I prefer to keep it simple. I usually discard all but about ½ cup of the starter and then feed it with 4 ounces flour (a scant 1 cup) and 4 ounces water (½ cup).
Storage For Intermittent Use:
If you’ll only be using your sourdough once or twice a week (or less), you can keep it in the refrigerator. This will prevent you from having to feed it daily (and ultimately using a lot of flour!).
To transfer a starter to the fridge, first feed it as you normally would. Let it sit out for one hour, then pop it in the fridge (covered). It’s best to continue to feed it weekly in the fridge, if you aren’t using it much. However, I will confess, there have been times I’ve sorely neglected my starter for many weeks and even months and I was still able to revive it.
To Wake Up a Cold Sourdough Starter:
To prepare a dormant sourdough starter for baking, bring it out of the refrigerator at least 24 hours before you need to use it. Discard half of the starter, and feed it the 1:1:1 ratio explained above — 1 part starter to 1 part water to 1 part flour (in weight).
Repeat this every 12 hours or until the sourdough starter becomes active and bubbles within 4-6 hours of feeding (this likely will take 2-3 rounds). If you need a larger quantity of starter for baking, or you’re planning on doing a big baking day, you can bulk it up by skipping the discard step in each feeding.
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How to Make Your Own Sourdough Starter
Making sourdough starter is super easy because it only takes a few simple ingredients: flour and water. With just a little bit of patience and these tips, you are gonna end up with a happy and healthy starter that’s going to make you some of the best tasting sourdough breads, pancakes, crackers, brownies, and more.
Author: Jill Winger
Category: Sourdough
Method: Baking
Cuisine: Bread
Ingredients
Whole Wheat Flour* (*see notes)
All-Purpose Flour
Non-Chlorinated Water
Instructions
Mix ½ cup whole wheat flour with ¼ cup water. Stir vigorously, loosely cover, then let sit for 24 hours
Add ½ cup all-purpose flour and ¼ cup water to jar, and stir vigorously. Loosely cover, and let sit for another 24 hours. You should hopefully begin to see bubbles in your starter at this point, but if not, don’t give up yet.
Discard half of the starter, then feed again with ½ cup all-purpose flour and ¼ cup water. Stir, loosely cover, and let sit 24 hours.
Keep repeating Step 3 until the starter doubles within 4-6 hours of you feeding it. If you still aren’t seeing any bubbles after several days of this process, it’s probably best to dump out and start over.
Once the starter is bubbly, active, and doubling consistently after each daily feeding, it’s ready to use in your recipes!
Notes
Using whole wheat at the beginning gives your sourdough starter a jump start (it contains more microorganisms and nutrients, which will make your new starter especially happy)
Keep your sourdough starter at least 4 feet away from other cultures to avoid cross-contamination.
Don’t use chlorinated water to feed your starter. If you have chlorinated city water, you can work around this problem by allowing a jar of water to sit out overnight (uncovered) for 12-24 hours. This will allow the chlorine to evaporate.
The key to successful sourdough is using the starter in the proper stage of activeness — this will prevent you from ending up with sourdough bread bricks. Most people run into issues because they try to use barely active starter to make full-rise breads.
Sourdough Starter Troubleshooting: Your Questions Answered
Here’s some of the most common questions I get asked about sourdough. Feel free to add your own questions to the comments below.
How do I know when my sourdough starter is ready to use?
Here are the top signs that a sourdough starter is ready:
It is doubling in size
There are bubbles in it
The texture is fluffy and foamy
There is a pleasant tangy, sour aroma
If you place a teaspoon of start in a cup of cool water, an active starter will float on top
Why do I discard part of the sourdough starter?
By step three of the sourdough process, you start to discard half of the starter. This might cause alarm for some of you, and I understand, because I don’t like wasting things either. However, at this point, if you keep feeding it without discarding some of it, the starter is going to get enormous and start taking over your kitchen.
If you don’t discard some of it, you end up having to add more and more flour to make the ratio correct. Since we don’t want to waste flour, it’s actually less wasteful to discard part of the early sourdough starter. At this point in the process, the starter isn’t super sour and it’s not very fermented so you aren’t get those fermented food benefits either.
You can make some small sourdough pancakes if you want, or you could give some to a friend to get some more people passionate about making bread. Otherwise, you can feed it to your chickens or put it in your compost pile.
What do I do with my sourdough starter discard?
Once your sourdough starter is active and bubbly, you’re gonna end up with sourdough discard. Besides making bread, I’ve got a bunch of sourdough discard recipes in my Prairie Homestead Cookbook. I also talk a bunch in my podcast about my favorite ways to use sourdough discard.
Help! My sourdough starter isn’t bubbly and active yet!
Sometimes you might feel panicky if you’re on day 4 or 5 and you’re not seeing bubbles in your sourdough starter yet. My first tip would be to be patient. Wait at least 7-10 days before you decide if your sourdough starter isn’t active. Sometimes it just takes time.
You can also look at the following things to help your sourdough starter:
Warmth. Check if your kitchen is drafty or cool. If it is, try moving your sourdough starter to a warmer location. You don’t want to put it in direct sunlight or on the stove where it can scorch, but try to move it closer to a heater or warm source in your house.
Flour. If you’re not seeing bubbles after a week, try using a differenty variety or brand of flour.
If you’re still not sure if your starter is active enough to successfully be used in baking, place 1 teaspoon of the starter in a cup of water. If it floats, you’re good to go! If it sinks, it’s still not active enough and needs more time.
Help! I’m getting sourdough bricks instead of bread!
I’ve been there. Most likely you’re doing what I did. I always had this problem when I was impatient and didn’t let my starter get active and bubbly enough before I tried to make my bread. If that doesn’t solve your problem, there is another factor to consider: your dough may need a little more water or a little more time to rise.
Also, my sourdough tends to be a bit “heavier” than my other breads. By its nature, sourdough a hearty bread, but I like it that way. If I’m in the mood for a light, fluffy loaf, I’ll make an easy sandwich bread recipe with more yeast and a shorter rise time.
Can I use a different flour for a sourdough starter?
You can use whole wheat, all-purpose flour, rye, einkorn, and many others for a sourdough starter. If this is your first time making sourdough, I suggest using whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour in the way I wrote in my recipe. This ratio tends to behave very well for me compared to other techniques I have tried in the past.
I have not personally made a gluten-free sourdough starter, but I know it’s possible. This gluten-free recipe from King Arthur flour looks promising.
Should I use buy a sourdough starter or use part of my friend’s sourdough starter?
Generally, I just go with the simple method mentioned above and skip the commercial sourdough starter packets, but you may go ahead and purchase a starter online if you like.
If you have a friend with a starter, you can absolutely grab a little bit of culture from them as use that instead of starting from-scratch.
Help! I am so overwhelmed with the different methods mentioned online for starting sourdough!
I would suggest that you pick a method and you just go with it. Whether that’s my sourdough starting method or someone else’s, you will drive yourself crazy trying to take something from all of them. So just pick one and odds are you’ll be just fine. They all kind of work out the same.
In the end, we just all have different preferences and little things that we do. I personally use flour and water to start my starters. There are also dehydrated sourdough starters that you can buy online and those are an option if you want. There are other people who suggest sugar and grapes and potato flakes, and I’ve just never ever found those things to be necessary.
So I just keep mine super simple and I personally have not had issues with it. Will you have some bumps along the road in your sourdough experimentation? Probably. But just shake it off and keep going. The end result is worth it– and quite tasty.
More Heritage Kitchen Tips:
Simple Bread Dough with Commercial Yeast
The Ultimate Guide to Canning Safety
A Guide to Quick Pickled Vegetables
Tips for Cooking From Scratch With Limited Time
How I Find Meal Inspiration When I’m Stuck in a Rut
The post How to Make Your Own Sourdough Starter appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.
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So I Have Something Left
Link to ao3
A/N: I like this? So i’m posting it here? Anyway follow for more sad amelie stories. The title is from this poem.
Warnings: None? Besides some ANGST, given it is Amelie. Oh there’s two swears
Maybe, Amelie thought, things will be better.
She lay on her side in a hospital bed, monitors beeping, an IV in her arm, Angela’s notes scattered across one of the bedside tables.
And flowers. From everyone. A bouquet of white lilies from Ana and Fareeah, hospital daisies dyed blue from Jack (he was always shit with gifts, she remembered), a tall bough of orchids from the Shimadas, fresh cherry blossoms on the branch, dark purple tulips, multicolored roses, garish orange somethings from Lena and Emily, someone’s herbs from their garden, even three yellow puffs of dandelion from the bastion.
She reached out for the pills Angela left on the table, and caught a glimpse of her still-violet skin, though it was fading. Soon, they promised, she would be back to her rosy pallor.
She took the pills, and settled in for sleep.
--
Gabriel was gone, she’d seen it in the scope. Olivia had disappeared, and now Moira and Akande were hiding just underneath her nest in the Talon laboratory.
Widowmaker raised her gun and sucked in a breath, aiming for a little girl who’d just hopped out of a large mech -
“Don’t move, Lacroix.”
She felt the barrel of a gun, cold against her neck, and hissed, letting the gun fall to the floor. “Jack. I’ve waited for this.” She turned and smiled coldly. He’d evaded capture too long. “Here to kill me?”
“No, sadly. Angela sent me to save you.”
--
At some point, Olivia visited, leaving nothing but a holographic picture frame and a note. Sorry.
The frame cycled through the photos, five of Amelie and Gerard, the sixth of a press release for Giselle, with Amelie in the title role. My last, she thought, then corrected herself. For now.
Angela said the ballet would come sooner than later, but it wouldn’t be easy. “Still, you’ll be back on the stage before you know it!”
--
Widowmaker was held in a small prison cell while her fate was decided.
“No, no trial!” Angela insisted. She pulled her coat tighter around her. “Not until I can save her!”
“Angela, there’s nothing left to save!” Jack was pacing. “They stopped her heart, took her emotions, Angela. She’ll die before Amelie comes back.”
Angela sighed, looking into the cell. That woman had once been her friend, someone to share lunches with, someone to talk to about the horrors of doctoring and the terrible patients she’d get. Someone to tell about dates, plans for marriage. Now…
She studied the woman in the cell. Pale, nearly-purple skin, yellow eyes… she didn’t look human.
“I have to try. She can’t stay like this.”
--
The doctor herself stopped by. She didn’t say much, only took vitals, but Amelie was pleased nonetheless. Angela’s bedside manner was far better than Moira’s.
--
She rested on Hanzo’s shoulder during her release, her skin nearly its old porcelain.
“The guilt takes the longest,” he said, watching his brother and Angela talk over the doctor’s desk.
“I know.” Amelie tried to smile. “They always say so.”
Each of them knew something of guilt. At least she wasn’t alone in that.
--
“Amelie!”
The youngest Guillard snapped her head up from the barre she practiced at. “Oui, mama?” she called.
“Come meet your new nephew!”
Amelie sighed and bent to unlace her pointe shoes, then left the studio she’d finally convinced her father to add onto the chateau.
She tiptoed through the long hallways and shadowed arches, hurrying to the dining room, where she heard her family chittering.
“Amelie! You spend too much time in that studio,” her father reprimanded.
“Sorry, papa.” She hung her head. Some ballerinas spent twelve hours in the studio - fourteen-year-old Amelie was lucky to get twelve uninterrupted minutes.
“Amelie, come meet little Luc! Oh, Camille, he’s a delight.”
Amelie sighed to herself, but approached her sister and her sister’s new baby. One day, she thought, one day I’ll be out of here.
--
The chateau had never felt like home.
Now, with dust clinging to every surface, it felt even less so, but she unpacked what little she had and put it in her childhood bedroom, still painted a lush velvet pink. Not the mater bedroom, in its somber blues and heavy curtains.
She went to the wine cellar and found a good year, then drank in the kitchen from an untouched glass.
Unbidden, a tear came, then several, each for the lives she’d taken, the lives she’d lost, the lives she might have saved had they left her anything of herself.
There, at the head of her family’s ancient oak dining table, Amelie Lacroix wept for the first time in a decade.
--
“Oh, pardon me!” Amelie, for all her grace on the stage, had no peripheral awareness - tunnel vision, her directors called it. She bent to pick up the papers she’d knocked from the small table.
“Quite alright,” a man said. “It’s noth-”
She’d stopped, too, staring at the man in a crisp black suit, a little Overwatch pin on the left lapel. “I… hello.”
“Amelie Guillard?”
He knew her? “Yes?”
He laughed. “Sorry, I saw your performance last night. You were a vision!”
She was just Snowflake #3 in The Nutcracker, but if he said so… “Well, merci, monsieur.”
“What are you doing on an Overwatch base?” He took the papers from her hands, rearranging them in his own stack.
“Signing up for the entertainment corps. I heard it’s good money, you know…”
“I’ll get you there. Gerard Lacroix, by the way.”
--
Dancing came soon after her release, but it was infinite in its frustrations. The medicines made her weak, she’d forgotten the steps, the barre broke under her weight the first week. She’d had to fix it herself.
But it was the last thing she had. She kept going, because what else could she do?
--
It took weeks, but she began to garden again. At first, it was just upkeep, but soon, she had a vegetable garden, then something showier, colorful flowers everywhere, and the apple tree started bearing fruit again. Herbs and chickens came next, and climbing roses, and soon, she spent hours reading amongst the high walls of the garden.
--
Blood, not hers, on her hands.
She kept running, down the stairs, away from the apartment, away from the body of the agent she’d killed.
She didn’t run fast enough.
--
Baking came with the garden, almost second nature once she had chickens laying and fresh rosemary at her fingertips. But she kept most of it, at least at first.
When Angela visited for Amelie’s wellness checkups, she went back to Switzerland with a basket full of breads. Jesse, Ana, Satya, they all left with sourdough from her mother’s starter. Jack insisted he didn’t need any, but they ate a loaf together anyway, with fresh greens from her garden. Lena and Emily came with Christmas gifts and left with holiday breads.
--
Widowmaker had no emotions, she feared nothing, and yet Olivia Colomar got under her violet skin.
It was the little things, the taunts, the girl’s lack of discretion. Stealing food from the fridge, her insufferable puppet shows.
--
“I want to live here,” Olivia said.
“You don’t like me.” Amelie set a plate of biscuits, frosted yellow, on the table.
The ‘former’ hacker grabbed one and bit into it, chewing while she spoke. “I didn’t like Widowmaker, but now you’re a sweet French widow with a nice house and a killer internet connection. I make money, I can pay the rent.”
“‘Sweet French widow?’” Amelie smirked.
“Yeah, you’ve got chickens, you’re not a monster anymore.” She took another biscuit. “You down?”
Amelie thought. She probably needed more company than once-a-month visits from Angela and whoever happened to be in France at that moment, if anyone. She knew from years of experience that Olivia largely kept to herself. “Fine. But no police. If you get caught, I’m not involved.”
--
They visited Gabriel’s grave together, in the middle of a hot Los Angeles winter. Olivia was quiet for a long time.
“He was like a father to me,” she finally said.
Amelie said nothing. She hated cemeteries.
“Funny right? He’s this, like, terrorist, but he was the only dad I’ve ever had. He’d get on me if my quarters were messy, you remember his bad coffee I’d always drink? He-” she sniffed. “Damn, I told myself I wasn’t gonna cry.”
Amelie placed a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “You can cry here. It’s a graveyard.”
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Chag haMatzot Sameach!
This was written as part of a series of letters to my family explaining the appointed times of Yehovah in a way that would be (hopefully) easy to understand. I will send these letters out on the date of each day in question, to help them understand the Messianic perspective of all the “Jewish” holy days.
If I have kept up with these as I planned, then you should be getting this on Aviv 13—that is, thirteen days after the biblical New Year’s Day. That is actually the day before Passover (Pesach); I will explain why I’m a day early soon. We have a lot to cover in this section, so I will do my best to keep it within four pages.
As you all have grown up in church, my hope is that you already know the story of the Exodus. For brevity, I won’t recap that story, except for the parts directly related to the Passover.
The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt for 215 years. God used Moses as his mouthpiece to free Israel from Pharaoh, but Pharaoh refused to let them go. God cursed Egypt with ten terrible plagues, each of which was an attack on one of the gods of Egypt. The final plague was the death of every firstborn son and male livestock in Egypt. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, and Pharaoh agreed to let Israel go.
When God described this judgment to Moses, he told him that he would bring it upon all of Egypt, even the Israelites, unless they performed a certain act of obedience. You can read the full story in Exodus 12, but God told them to bring a yearling male lamb without blemish into their homes on the tenth day of the month. After four days, they would slaughter it in the afternoon; then they would eat it that evening (the evening meal marked the beginning of the 15th day). They were to paint their doorframes with the blood of the lamb. When the angel of death came to kill the sons, he would see the blood over the houses and pass them over. Any Hebrew or Egyptian who obeyed this command was saved.
Israel spent the next week running, finally reaching the Red Sea on the 21st day of the month. In Leviticus 23, God gives the most detailed instructions of his holy days that we find in the Bible, and there he tells us to observe the entire week following Passover (the 15th through the 21st) remembering his deliverance by eating unleavened bread, since baking with leaven is a day-long process, and Israel didn’t have time to sit around waiting for leavened dough to rise during their escape.
In addition, he gave us another command, that of the Day of Firstfruits. Unlike Passover and Unleavened Bread, this isn’t a holy day; it’s the day Israel begins to harvest the barley crop. It falls on the first Sunday after the Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It always falls on a Sunday (although remember that in the Bible, days begin in the evening, so technically Firstfruits begins on Saturday evening and ends Sunday evening). This day is part one of a two-part command to remember how God spared the firstborn sons of Israel. Before Israel could begin harvesting their barley, the high priest had to cut down the first bundle of barley and present it before the altar as an offering. It symbolizes the firstborn sons of Israel being set apart for God. The second half of this command regards individual offers that every family must make for their firstborn son. Since we don’t have a temple today, we can’t really do either of those things, but this commandment is why Joseph and Mary offered two little birds as a sacrifice when Jesus was forty days old (Luke 2:22-24).
There is so much depth in these mo'adim, I will do my best to condense it all. The history of it is pretty straightforward, but this is where the events in Jesus’ life become extremely important.
To start it off, John the Baptizer was born on Passover. There is a long-standing Jewish tradition that Elijah the Prophet will appear to Israel on Passover to prepare them for the Messiah, and that is exactly what John the Baptizer came to do. I won’t go into it here, but when you do some calculations regarding Gabriel’s visit to Zechariah in Luke 1, the most likely date for John’s birthday is Passover.
Next, the 13th and 14th days of the month are considered days of preparation. Yes, the 14th is the Passover, but the Passover meal was eaten at the beginning of the 15th day, at sundown. Now if you compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it is difficult to figure out the exact timing of these events. But the outline below pieces them together accurately.
Since the four Gospels are somewhat tricky to understand, here is the breakdown of the events of the last week of Jesus’ life:
Saturday, 10th – Jesus enters Jerusalem on the back of a donkey foal. This took place at the same time as the spotless yearling lambs entered Jerusalem. For the next several days, Jesus is grilled by the religious authorities, who are desperate to find a flaw in him somewhere. They can’t. Also during this time, the same religious leaders also examine the Passover lambs to make sure they’re perfect. Did you catch the symbolism there?
Tuesday, 13th – Jesus instructs two of his disciples to prepare for the Passover.
Tuesday evening, 13th/14th – This is the Last Supper. It is not the Passover, even though some of the Gospels give this misleading impression. After dinner, Jesus leads his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he is betrayed by Judas.
Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, 14th – Jesus is tried by the Jewish leaders in an illegal trial. In the morning, they take him to Herod and Pilate, who sentence him to death.
Wednesday afternoon, 14th – Around 3:00 p.m., Jesus has been on the cross for six hours. He cried out, “It is finished!” and gave up his life. This is the same time as when the priests would begin to sacrifice the Passover lambs.
Wednesday evening, 14th/15th – Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus.
Thursday, 15th – This was the first day of Unleavened Bread, which is considered a High Holy Day. No work can be done on it, just like the Sabbath.
Friday, 16th – The women buy and prepare the spices to properly bury Jesus’ body.
Saturday, 17th – This is the weekly Sabbath.
Saturday evening, 17th/18th – Jesus is resurrected.
Sunday morning, 18th – Mary gets to the tomb early and meets Jesus. He tells her not to touch him yet, because he has not yet ascended to his Father and God. Later, he meets the other women and most of his disciples, and he allows them to embrace him. Something significant happened between those times…
As you can see, his Wednesday crucifixion and Saturday evening resurrection don’t match the Christian holidays of Good Friday and Easter. Because of this, I have chosen not to celebrate those holidays, in favor of the holy days which God gave us in the Bible. I don’t say that to be boastful, but there is value in reconnecting with the faith practiced by the saints in the Scriptures. I hope you will consider joining me in this next year.
At the beginning of this letter, I said this is a day early. Tonight is the memorial of the Last Supper, and there is a lot going on at this meal that we can overlook when we read the stories.
Every year after the Day of Firstfruits, Israel would begin harvesting barley. From this barley, they would make a soupy concoction of fermenting flour called leaven. Leaven is what you use to make sourdough bread. As the flour soaks in a bowl of water, yeast from the air begins to digest the sugars in the flour. As the yeast eats, it turns the flour into leaven. When you bake sourdough, you mix some of that leaven into your fresh flour and oil. Then you set your dough somewhere warm, and the yeast release gases that cause the dough to expand. This is how we get loaves of fluffy bread.
Now leaven can survive for centuries if maintained well, but God commanded us to throw out our leaven every year on the day or two leading up to the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In the New Testament, leaven is likened to pride (1 Corinthians 5:6), sin (ibid. 5:8), and bad doctrine (Matthew 16:5-12). This annual ritual was clearly meant to be an object lesson for Israel.
At the Last Supper, we see that Jesus and those with him ate leavened bread. This means the meal had to take place on the 13th/14th, not as the Passover meal itself (14th/15th). This loaf of bread was probably made from the last leaven in the house. Jesus told them that the bread represented his body, which was broken on our behalf. Fast forward a few decades, and Paul referred to Christians as the “Body of the Messiah”. I will go into more detail on this in a couple of months with my next letter, but for now, just know that the bread from the Last Supper and us being the “Body of the Messiah” are closely related.
At the Last Supper, Jesus shared a cup of wine with his disciples. This is a Hebrew engagement custom. A young man offers a glass of wine to a young woman (after getting her father’s permission). If she accepts, then they both drink as a sign of their engagement. He returns to his father’s house to begin building a new room for them to live in. Once his father says it is ready, then he returns to his fiancée and takes her to their new home. When they arrive, they hold a week-long wedding feast. This kind of marriage language is all over in the New Testament. I won’t go into it now, but feel free to ask, and I can explain it more in depth. Maybe you even picked up on some of it yourself.
Moving forward, Jesus died at 3:00 p.m. on the following Wednesday afternoon. This is important because he is called our Passover Lamb. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul instructs the Gentile church in Corinth to keep Passover and the other feasts that fall during this time. When we choose to faithfully follow Jesus, his blood is figuratively painted over the doors of our hearts so that God’s anger for sin will pass over us on the day of judgment. And the unleavened bread we eat during the next seven days reminds us to remove sin, pride, and false teaching from our own lives.
You may recall that Matthew writes a spurious remark in 27:52-53 that at Jesus’ death, graves around Jerusalem broke open, and after he was resurrected, the bodies within them came out and preached around Jerusalem. After this, they are never mentioned again. It is my belief that these people were the Firstfruits offering made to God by Jesus in his new role as High Priest (more on this in six months, Lord willing). When Jesus told Mary not to touch him, it was because the high priest was not supposed to be touched from Passover until after he presented the bread offering to God. So sometime early Sunday morning, Jesus apparently took those resurrected people up to heaven. Throughout the Bible, we are privy to several descriptions of the throne room in heaven, but from Revelation 4 and onward, we see twenty-four elders who haven’t been mentioned before. I believe these are the saints whom Jesus presented before the Father before returning to greet his disciples that evening.
There is so much more I could say. These spring mo'adim are so important to us today because of what they tell us about Jesus and the hope of the Gospel. I greatly abridged the information and left out most Scripture references to cut down on space. But I do want to end on the End Times importance of these days.
Ezekiel 40-48 describes Israel during the Messianic era, aka the Millennial Kingdom that we discussed in the note about the Sabbath day. When Jesus reigns as King, there will be a temple in Jerusalem that dwarfs the ones that came before it. Jesus himself will be its high priest, and the descendants of Aaron the priest will serve under him.
When there was a temple in Jerusalem, all the nation was required to go to Jerusalem for Passover, as well as two other feasts (which I will discuss later). It will be no different in the future. Since Paul tells us to celebrate Passover and Unleavened Bread now, and Ezekiel tells us that we will do so during Jesus’ reign on Earth for 1,000 years, we ought to begin practicing now. You can begin by removing all the bread in your house and eat unleavened bread for a whole week. You can buy it at the store, but last year I made my own by mixing flour, water, salt, and olive oil. Next, take a day of rest on Saturday the 31st and Saturday the 6th. If I’m right (as of February 9), those are the first and last days of this feast. Take these days to remember the history of God’s redemption of his people—whether Israel from Egypt or all of us today from the curse of our sins.
The Catholic Church has set up its own holidays to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection. However, these holidays have been bogged down by many traditions that have dubious origins, some of which even come from other religions. I don’t begrudge anyone for celebrating Good Friday and Easter, but I urge you to consider giving up those man-made traditions in favor of God’s Appointed Times. There is such great worth in them that no human holiday can ever match.
#passover#unleavened bread#pesach#chag sameach#matzot#matzah#yeshua#death#resurrection#lamb#mo'adim#mo'ed#feasts#holidays#holy days#leviticus 23
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Little Christmases #5: Leaven
One of my Christmas days, back early in my childhood, started with a pan of fresh cinnamon rolls. Unlike my other little Christmas stories, this one actually happened on Christmas day, but like the others it was a seemingly inconsequential event with outsized significance.
Every week, my grandmother used to make bread. For years upon years, my father’s mother took a day of the week to bake six loaves and a pan of cinnamon rolls. My father likes to remember her this way, perhaps because it’s a little comical to think of such a small woman wrestling with such a large pile of dough, and perhaps because there’s something about providing bread for your family that connects us to countless generations of people before us.
By the time I knew her, she had given up the breadmaking, but would still make cinnamon rolls for special occasions. She preferred to make a quick-rise baking powder recipe. As dough gets much of its flavor from its leaven, the smell of baking powder rolls or biscuits often puts me in mind of her. My brother learned that it wasn’t hard to persuade her to make them more often than just Christmas and Thanksgiving. He visited her for a week on his way into the Marines, and I’m told that he had her made a pan of cinnamon rolls every morning.
As I’ve turned my hand to baking, I’ve tended to avoid baking powder recipes, though. There’s nothing wrong with baking powder—it makes excellent chocolate chip cookies—but there’s something about yeast that’s more fulfilling. Jesus’s shortest parable is about yeast, but to an audience that intimately understood the meaning of the phrase “our daily bread,” it was more than long enough. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour,” he told his disciples, “until it worked all through the dough.”
Germophobes don’t like to think much about yeast. Yeast is a single-celled form of fungus that’s all over our world, and is responsible for many of our favorite foods. It lives on sugar and starch, converting its food into alcohol and carbon dioxide as it eats, a process called fermentation. Yeast can be bought in jars and packages at the store, but wild yeasts can also be cultivated right in your kitchen. Homemade sourdough starter typically begins with a bowl of flour and water left out on a kitchen counter for a few days until the right kind of yeast wins the war for supremacy with the other local microbes.
While Jesus liked to use everyday examples for his parables, he typically exaggerated something about the story to make the familiar ideas unfamiliar and remarkable for his audience. Think of the sower, for example, who spreads his seeds so recklessly that they end up all over the rocks and weeds. The woman in the parable of the yeast is doing something weird here, as well: she’s using a ludicrous amount of flour. She’s working with sixty pounds of flour, which would be enough to make ninety batches of the cinnamon rolls I like to make.
I think back to my grandmother, struggling in her later years to make her usual batch of six loaves and a pan of cinnamon rolls, and it’s just funny to think of one woman trying to knead all that dough.
Kneading is a more muscular affair than many people realize. A standing KitchenAid mixer will take care of that work, but I typically prefer to knead by hand, especially when working a small batch of dough. The yeast responds well to human contact, and there’s no way to really learn what the word “dough” means without getting your hands messy. A dough is a singular entity, an individual created mysteriously from a sloppy bowl of flour, yeast, and water. As a baker kneads the dough, a protein in the flour called gluten slowly relaxes and starts to stretch. This elasticity is necessary for the dough to rise. When the dough forms, it starts behaving differently. When stretched and pulled, it starts to pull itself back into shape.
Once you have a dough, breadmaking becomes a waiting game. The yeast needs time to eat the sugar and starch in the dough, and all manner of things affect how long this will take, like humidity and temperature. If the dough is appropriately stretchy, though, the carbon dioxide released by the yeast will start to make bubbles, and the dough will rise and grow.
Waiting was something that my grandmother knew all too well, the most constant companion of her final years. Her husband, a man whose influence in our family extended far past his years, died before his seventieth birthday, leaving her widowed for the better part of thirty years. She was no stranger to death, and lived more bravely than any of us had a right to expect. The last time I saw her alive, though, she seemed to be dwelling more in the next life than in this one. No names were on her lips more than the name of Jesus and the name of her husband.
Breadmaking is a cycle of life and death. The period of rising has one purpose, and the purpose is foiled if the yeast is allowed to rise too long. The dough will reach a point where it has risen as much as the dough can handle, and the dough will collapse if it’s left too long after that point. Some recipes have you deflate the dough and do a second rise, but at some point the yeast will consume all the available food and the dough will be unusable.
The whole point of dough is bread. Baking bread kills the yeast inside, but the yeast has to die for the loaf of bread to finish. I struggled for a long time with the knowledge that one of my most significant moments with my grandmother happened after she’d died. I know I’m not alone in carrying that particular kind of guilt, but that knowledge hasn’t made the weight easier to carry.
When it comes to death, my father’s immediate family takes care of its own. My grandmother’s death was my initiation into this. I found myself on a September morning out in the family burial ground, taking turns digging her grave with my older brother and my father, learning a lesson at thirty years old that my father learned at fifteen. As the hole deepened, and each shovelful became more difficult to throw out onto the growing pile of dirt on the nearby grass, I slowly learned that digging that hole was one of the most important things I’ll ever do in my life. My grandmother’s one desire was to be with her husband, and there, two feet away from where my father had dug a similar hole thirty years before, we helped her reach that place.
The yeast inside the dough dies when the bread is baked, but bakers know better than to use all of their yeast in one batch. Part of the joy of sourdough, in particular, is that it’s more than possible to keep one batch of yeast alive for years, if not decades. The yeasts used by fermenters of alcohol, for example, and closely-kept and guarded secrets, kept alive and passed down from generation to generation. A remnant is always kept out, and regularly fed with new flour and water.
The parable of the yeast is ridiculous in that one woman couldn’t possibly handle that much dough all at once, but it’s not ridiculous as concerns the yeast. The yeast doesn’t care how much flour it’s mixed with. It’ll happily work through as much dough as it’s given. What started as a single cell on a wheat berry can easily become a lifetime of bread. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus reminds us, is like this yeast, a seemingly insignificant thing that fundamentally changes everything that it touches.
This morning, there’s a pan of cinnamon rolls on the counter here at my in-law’s house. There’s more than a little pride in my heart as I watch my famously-finicky children eat a couple, but a share of sadness, as well. Considering all the trouble that I go through to keep my sourdough starter alive, I should probably use it and it alone for making cinnamon rolls, but I keep using a recipe that uses both yeast and baking powder as the leaven for the dough. The smell of baking powder rolls reminds me of the cinnamon rolls my grandmother made, and making them as she did, but with my own addition, helps me keep my grandmother with me.
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Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Panzanella
We now have a three- and a one-year-old in the house as of a week ago. Two toddlers…OMG, save me. It’s loud, and crazy, and some nights cereal or smoothies for dinner feels like a major culinary accomplishment.
But, oh, do I adore my little monsters and this crazy family.
Lately, these are some of the questions I ask when I attempt to cook:
Can I cut out an ingredient (or four) while still enjoying the dish? Is this step absolutely necessary to the overall dish? Why is there so much screaming going on? If I do something the night before, will it save time the next day? Adriana, can you please stop tackling your brother like a football!? Lol.
And probably one of the questions I ask the most: Why is there no OSG delivery service yet, damnit!?
Goals ;)
I’m learning more often than not that the answer to my “can I save time” question is a resounding YES. I’m learning tricks along the way. I’m cutting corners. And you know what? Almost always, the food still tastes great. (And if it doesn’t, Arlo will eat anything.)
If you follow me on Insta Stories, you may have seen how excited I was to dig into Laura’s beautiful plant-based cookbook, The First Mess Cookbook, this past spring. I’ve been following Laura for years (#TFMfangurrrrrl); she’s a seriously talented writer, photographer, and cook. I’m constantly amazed by the beauty she captures in her food, and the warmth and passion with which she shares it. Laura is one of those cooks who seems to truly adore the process of cooking. I personally don’t always enjoy the process (real talk: sometimes I loathe cooking), and often don’t slow down enough to find it uber-relaxing, but Laura has a way of inspiring a certain intention and gratitude for the process. I love that. Her plant-based recipes and photographs are truly works of art, and I’m so glad she shares them with us all. Her cookbook would be a delicious addition to your collection if you don’t have it already!
Months ago, I made a mental note to make the Thanksgiving Panzanella, and I couldn’t wait to make it once the cooler temperatures had set in. Because the recipe has quite a few steps, I started it the day before, and ended up creating a fun, make-ahead version. As you can tell, I’m all about make-ahead situations these days! By doing most of the prep work in advance, it became a practical option for our Thanksgiving meal. The prep work the day before is a half hour (and it’s a bit kitchen-destroying, tbh), but the next day, the effortless prep will only set you back a mere 10 minutes. Pretty sweet, huh?!
Oh, and it’s a looker. And tasty…duh. As my hilarious recipe tester, Nicole, wrote, “Yield: 6 side servings or one big serving for me ha ha ha!” LOL! Love her.
Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Panzanella
Vegan, nut-free, refined sugar-free, soy-free
Since this is quite an involved recipe, I like to prepare a few aspects of this panzanella the day before to save time and mess on the day of a special event, such as Thanksgiving. By doing a bit of advance prep (about 30 minutes the day before), all you have to do on the day is bake the squash and bread, then toss it all together just before serving. I like to serve this recipe warm, so I time the cooking so that the squash and bread come out of the oven just before our planned mealtime. This recipe is adapted from The First Mess Cookbook (2017) by Laura Wright. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.
Yield
6 side servings
Prep Time
40 Minutes
Cook time
35 Minutes
Total Time
1 Hour, 15 Minutes
Ingredients:
For the dressing:
2 tablespoons (30 mL) balsamic vinegar
1 small garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons (10 mL) pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Dijon mustard
1/4 cup (60 mL) extra-virgin olive oil
Generous pinch of fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the salad:
4 cups (175 grams) cubed sourdough bread (about 1/2 a loaf)
2 medium (800 g) delicata squash
1 tablespoon (15 mL) minced fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons (10 mL) minced fresh thyme leaves
2 cups (40 g) stemmed and sliced lacinato kale
2 medium/large celery stalks (210 g), thinly sliced (1 1/4 cups)
1/3 cup (80 mL) pomegranate seeds
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons (25 mL) extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Handful of celery leaves or fresh parsley leaves, for garnish
Directions:
The day before (steps 1-4): Make the dressing: In a small jar, place the balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, maple syrup, Dijon mustard, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Screw on the lid and shake to combine. Chill in the fridge.
Slice the sourdough bread into 1-inch cubes until you have 4 cups. Place into a large bag or container and leave it on the counter.
Slice each squash down the middle, lengthwise. With a spoon, scrape out all of the seeds and discard them. Slice the squash into 1/4-inch “half-moon” slices, and place them into a large zip bag, bowl, or container. Mince the rosemary and thyme and add it to the squash. Chill the squash and herbs in the fridge (covering, if necessary).
In a separate zip bag or container, place the sliced kale, chopped celery, and pomegranate seeds. Chill in the fridge (covering, if necessary).
The next day (steps 5-8): About 15 minutes before you begin, remove the dressing and squash from the fridge and place them on the counter so that they can come to room temperature. Position two racks near the centre of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C), and line two extra-large baking sheets with parchment paper.
Spoon the squash and herbs onto one of the baking sheets. Add a tablespoon of oil and toss until the squash is thoroughly coated. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast the squash for about 30 to 38 minutes, until nicely brown on the bottoms. (There’s no need to flip halfway through baking unless you want them evenly browned.)
While the squash is roasting, spread the cubed sourdough onto the remaining baking sheet and toss it in a couple teaspoons of oil. When you have 10 to 15 minutes left of the squash’s roasting time, place the sourdough in the oven with the squash and continue roasting for 10 to 15 minutes. The bread should feel lightly toasted when it’s ready, but it shouldn’t look brown.
While the squash and sourdough are roasting, place the kale, celery, pomegranate seeds, and dressing into a large serving bowl. When the squash and bread are finished cooking, add them into the bowl, and toss well, until combined. Season the panzanella with more salt, to taste, if desired. Serve warm with a garnish of celery or parsley leaves scattered on top. This recipe is best enjoyed immediately, or within a couple of hours of preparing.
Below is a photo of what the prep looks like the day before! On day 2, all you do is roast the squash and bread, and then mix it all together. *slow clap*
On the cusp of our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, THANK YOU for your amazing love and support, even when this blog is a virtual ghost town. I’ve been chipping away at some big behind-the-scenes blog changes and can’t wait to share more. Also, Eric recently started a new career venture, which has been wild. I’m thrilled for him, and grateful to be able to return the support and encouragement that he’s given me all these years. But, holy hell have we been struggling to stay afloat. The juggle of parenthood and “careerhood” is no easy feat. I’ve been trying to make it work with a lot more on my plate. Some days I feel like I’m doing a crappy job at everything, and other days, I feel like I’m killing it. We’ll get into a groove…it just takes some trial and error. Just know that I love and appreciate your support more than you know.
I hope my fellow Canadians have a relaxing and delicious Thanksgiving weekend with loved ones, and if you try out this recipe, I hope you enjoy it—and my make-ahead tricks—as much as we do. I’ve also added this recipe to The Oh She Glows Recipe App, so keep your eyes peeled for it on there.
Last but not least, I’d like to pass along Arlo’s nursery tour over on HGTV! It was so much fun (and such an honour) to be featured. (Just know that the nursery never looks this put together in real life….it actually looks like a tornado blew through it most days.) A special thanks to the lovely Brittany Devenyi for the feature!
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Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Panzanella
http://ohsheglows.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/065A8272.jpg
We now have a three- and a one-year-old in the house as of a week ago. Two toddlers…OMG, save me. It’s loud, and crazy, and some nights cereal or smoothies for dinner feels like a major culinary accomplishment.
But, oh, do I adore my little monsters and this crazy family.
Lately, these are some of the questions I ask when I attempt to cook:
Can I cut out an ingredient (or four) while still enjoying the dish? Is this step absolutely necessary to the overall dish? Why is there so much screaming going on? If I do something the night before, will it save time the next day? Adriana, can you please stop tackling your brother like a football!? Lol.
And probably one of the questions I ask the most: Why is there no OSG delivery service yet, damnit!?
Goals ;)
I’m learning more often than not that the answer to my “can I save time” question is a resounding YES. I’m learning tricks along the way. I’m cutting corners. And you know what? Almost always, the food still tastes great. (And if it doesn’t, Arlo will eat anything.)
If you follow me on Insta Stories, you may have seen how excited I was to dig into Laura’s beautiful plant-based cookbook, The First Mess Cookbook, this past spring. I’ve been following Laura for years (#TFMfangurrrrrl); she’s a seriously talented writer, photographer, and cook. I’m constantly amazed by the beauty she captures in her food, and the warmth and passion with which she shares it. Laura is one of those cooks who seems to truly adore the process of cooking. I personally don’t always enjoy the process (real talk: sometimes I loathe cooking), and often don’t slow down enough to find it uber-relaxing, but Laura has a way of inspiring a certain intention and gratitude for the process. I love that. Her plant-based recipes and photographs are truly works of art, and I’m so glad she shares them with us all. Her cookbook would be a delicious addition to your collection if you don’t have it already!
Months ago, I made a mental note to make the Thanksgiving Panzanella, and I couldn’t wait to make it once the cooler temperatures had set in. Because the recipe has quite a few steps, I started it the day before, and ended up creating a fun, make-ahead version. As you can tell, I’m all about make-ahead situations these days! By doing most of the prep work in advance, it became a practical option for our Thanksgiving meal. The prep work the day before is a half hour (and it’s a bit kitchen-destroying, tbh), but the next day, the effortless prep will only set you back a mere 10 minutes. Pretty sweet, huh?!
Oh, and it’s a looker. And tasty…duh. As my hilarious recipe tester, Nicole, wrote, “Yield: 6 side servings or one big serving for me ha ha ha!” LOL! Love her.
Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Panzanella
Vegan, nut-free, refined sugar-free, soy-free
Since this is quite an involved recipe, I like to prepare a few aspects of this panzanella the day before to save time and mess on the day of a special event, such as Thanksgiving. By doing a bit of advance prep (about 30 minutes the day before), all you have to do on the day is bake the squash and bread, then toss it all together just before serving. I like to serve this recipe warm, so I time the cooking so that the squash and bread come out of the oven just before our planned mealtime. This recipe is adapted from The First Mess Cookbook (2017) by Laura Wright. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.
Yield
6 side servings
Prep Time
40 Minutes
Cook time
35 Minutes
Total Time
1 Hour, 15 Minutes
Ingredients:
For the dressing:
2 tablespoons (30 mL) balsamic vinegar
1 small garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons (10 mL) pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Dijon mustard
1/4 cup (60 mL) extra-virgin olive oil
Generous pinch of fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the salad:
4 cups (175 grams) cubed sourdough bread (about 1/2 a loaf)
2 medium (800 g) delicata squash
1 tablespoon (15 mL) minced fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons (10 mL) minced fresh thyme leaves
2 cups (40 g) stemmed and sliced lacinato kale
2 medium/large celery stalks (210 g), thinly sliced (1 1/4 cups)
1/3 cup (80 mL) pomegranate seeds
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons (25 mL) extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Handful of celery leaves or fresh parsley leaves, for garnish
Directions:
The day before (steps 1-4): Make the dressing: In a small jar, place the balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, maple syrup, Dijon mustard, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Screw on the lid and shake to combine. Chill in the fridge.
Slice the sourdough bread into 1-inch cubes until you have 4 cups. Place into a large bag or container and leave it on the counter.
Slice each squash down the middle, lengthwise. With a spoon, scrape out all of the seeds and discard them. Slice the squash into 1/4-inch “half-moon” slices, and place them into a large zip bag, bowl, or container. Mince the rosemary and thyme and add it to the squash. Chill the squash and herbs in the fridge (covering, if necessary).
In a separate zip bag or container, place the sliced kale, chopped celery, and pomegranate seeds. Chill in the fridge (covering, if necessary).
The next day (steps 5-8): About 15 minutes before you begin, remove the dressing and squash from the fridge and place them on the counter so that they can come to room temperature. Position two racks near the centre of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C), and line two extra-large baking sheets with parchment paper.
Spoon the squash and herbs onto one of the baking sheets. Add a tablespoon of oil and toss until the squash is thoroughly coated. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast the squash for about 30 to 38 minutes, until nicely brown on the bottoms. (There’s no need to flip halfway through baking unless you want them evenly browned.)
While the squash is roasting, spread the cubed sourdough onto the remaining baking sheet and toss it in a couple teaspoons of oil. When you have 10 to 15 minutes left of the squash’s roasting time, place the sourdough in the oven with the squash and continue roasting for 10 to 15 minutes. The bread should feel lightly toasted when it’s ready, but it shouldn’t look brown.
While the squash and sourdough are roasting, place the kale, celery, pomegranate seeds, and dressing into a large serving bowl. When the squash and bread are finished cooking, add them into the bowl, and toss well, until combined. Season the panzanella with more salt, to taste, if desired. Serve warm with a garnish of celery or parsley leaves scattered on top. This recipe is best enjoyed immediately, or within a couple of hours of preparing.
Below is a photo of what the prep looks like the day before! On day 2, all you do is roast the squash and bread, and then mix it all together. *slow clap*
On the cusp of our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, THANK YOU for your amazing love and support, even when this blog is a virtual ghost town. I’ve been chipping away at some big behind-the-scenes blog changes and can’t wait to share more. Also, Eric recently started a new career venture, which has been wild. I’m thrilled for him, and grateful to be able to return the support and encouragement that he’s given me all these years. But, holy hell have we been struggling to stay afloat. The juggle of parenthood and “careerhood” is no easy feat. I’ve been trying to make it work with a lot more on my plate. Some days I feel like I’m doing a crappy job at everything, and other days, I feel like I’m killing it. We’ll get into a groove…it just takes some trial and error. Just know that I love and appreciate your support more than you know.
I hope my fellow Canadians have a relaxing and delicious Thanksgiving weekend with loved ones, and if you try out this recipe, I hope you enjoy it—and my make-ahead tricks—as much as we do. I’ve also added this recipe to The Oh She Glows Recipe App, so keep your eyes peeled for it on there.
Last but not least, I’d like to pass along Arlo’s nursery tour over on HGTV! It was so much fun (and such an honour) to be featured. (Just know that the nursery never looks this put together in real life….it actually looks like a tornado blew through it most days.) A special thanks to the lovely Brittany Devenyi for the feature!
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Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Panzanella
We now have a three- and a one-year-old in the house as of a week ago. Two toddlers…OMG, save me. It’s loud, and crazy, and some nights cereal or smoothies for dinner feels like a major culinary accomplishment.
But, oh, do I adore my little monsters and this crazy family.
Lately, these are some of the questions I ask when I attempt to cook:
Can I cut out an ingredient (or four) while still enjoying the dish? Is this step absolutely necessary to the overall dish? Why is there so much screaming going on? If I do something the night before, will it save time the next day? Adriana, can you please stop tackling your brother like a football!? Lol.
And probably one of the questions I ask the most: Why is there no OSG delivery service yet, damnit!?
Goals ;)
I’m learning more often than not that the answer to my “can I save time” question is a resounding YES. I’m learning tricks along the way. I’m cutting corners. And you know what? Almost always, the food still tastes great. (And if it doesn’t, Arlo will eat anything.)
If you follow me on Insta Stories, you may have seen how excited I was to dig into Laura’s beautiful plant-based cookbook, The First Mess Cookbook, this past spring. I’ve been following Laura for years (#TFMfangurrrrrl); she’s a seriously talented writer, photographer, and cook. I’m constantly amazed by the beauty she captures in her food, and the warmth and passion with which she shares it. Laura is one of those cooks who seems to truly adore the process of cooking. I personally don’t always enjoy the process (real talk: sometimes I loathe cooking), and often don’t slow down enough to find it uber-relaxing, but Laura has a way of inspiring a certain intention and gratitude for the process. I love that. Her plant-based recipes and photographs are truly works of art, and I’m so glad she shares them with us all. Her cookbook would be a delicious addition to your collection if you don’t have it already!
Months ago, I made a mental note to make the Thanksgiving Panzanella, and I couldn’t wait to make it once the cooler temperatures had set in. Because the recipe has quite a few steps, I started it the day before, and ended up creating a fun, make-ahead version. As you can tell, I’m all about make-ahead situations these days! By doing most of the prep work in advance, it became a practical option for our Thanksgiving meal. The prep work the day before is a half hour (and it’s a bit kitchen-destroying, tbh), but the next day, the effortless prep will only set you back a mere 10 minutes. Pretty sweet, huh?!
Oh, and it’s a looker. And tasty…duh. As my hilarious recipe tester, Nicole, wrote, “Yield: 6 side servings or one big serving for me ha ha ha!” LOL! Love her.
Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Panzanella
Vegan, nut-free, refined sugar-free, soy-free
Since this is quite an involved recipe, I like to prepare a few aspects of this panzanella the day before to save time and mess on the day of a special event, such as Thanksgiving. By doing a bit of advance prep (about 30 minutes the day before), all you have to do on the day is bake the squash and bread, then toss it all together just before serving. I like to serve this recipe warm, so I time the cooking so that the squash and bread come out of the oven just before our planned mealtime. This recipe is adapted from The First Mess Cookbook (2017) by Laura Wright. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.
Yield
6 side servings
Prep Time
40 Minutes
Cook time
35 Minutes
Total Time
1 Hour, 15 Minutes
Ingredients:
For the dressing:
2 tablespoons (30 mL) balsamic vinegar
1 small garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons (10 mL) pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Dijon mustard
1/4 cup (60 mL) extra-virgin olive oil
Generous pinch of fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the salad:
4 cups (175 grams) cubed sourdough bread (about 1/2 a loaf)
2 medium (800 g) delicata squash
1 tablespoon (15 mL) minced fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons (10 mL) minced fresh thyme leaves
2 cups (40 g) stemmed and sliced lacinato kale
2 medium/large celery stalks (210 g), thinly sliced (1 1/4 cups)
1/3 cup (80 mL) pomegranate seeds
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons (25 mL) extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Handful of celery leaves or fresh parsley leaves, for garnish
Directions:
The day before (steps 1-4): Make the dressing: In a small jar, place the balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, maple syrup, Dijon mustard, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Screw on the lid and shake to combine. Chill in the fridge.
Slice the sourdough bread into 1-inch cubes until you have 4 cups. Place into a large bag or container and leave it on the counter.
Slice each squash down the middle, lengthwise. With a spoon, scrape out all of the seeds and discard them. Slice the squash into 1/4-inch “half-moon” slices, and place them into a large zip bag, bowl, or container. Mince the rosemary and thyme and add it to the squash. Chill the squash and herbs in the fridge (covering, if necessary).
In a separate zip bag or container, place the sliced kale, chopped celery, and pomegranate seeds. Chill in the fridge (covering, if necessary).
The next day (steps 5-8): About 15 minutes before you begin, remove the dressing and squash from the fridge and place them on the counter so that they can come to room temperature. Position two racks near the centre of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C), and line two extra-large baking sheets with parchment paper.
Spoon the squash and herbs onto one of the baking sheets. Add a tablespoon of oil and toss until the squash is thoroughly coated. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast the squash for about 30 to 38 minutes, until nicely brown on the bottoms. (There’s no need to flip halfway through baking unless you want them evenly browned.)
While the squash is roasting, spread the cubed sourdough onto the remaining baking sheet and toss it in a couple teaspoons of oil. When you have 10 to 15 minutes left of the squash’s roasting time, place the sourdough in the oven with the squash and continue roasting for 10 to 15 minutes. The bread should feel lightly toasted when it’s ready, but it shouldn’t look brown.
While the squash and sourdough are roasting, place the kale, celery, pomegranate seeds, and dressing into a large serving bowl. When the squash and bread are finished cooking, add them into the bowl, and toss well, until combined. Season the panzanella with more salt, to taste, if desired. Serve warm with a garnish of celery or parsley leaves scattered on top. This recipe is best enjoyed immediately, or within a couple of hours of preparing.
Below is a photo of what the prep looks like the day before! On day 2, all you do is roast the squash and bread, and then mix it all together. *slow clap*
On the cusp of our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, THANK YOU for your amazing love and support, even when this blog is a virtual ghost town. I’ve been chipping away at some big behind-the-scenes blog changes and can’t wait to share more. Also, Eric recently started a new career venture, which has been wild. I’m thrilled for him, and grateful to be able to return the support and encouragement that he’s given me all these years. But, holy hell have we been struggling to stay afloat. The juggle of parenthood and “careerhood” is no easy feat. I’ve been trying to make it work with a lot more on my plate. Some days I feel like I’m doing a crappy job at everything, and other days, I feel like I’m killing it. We’ll get into a groove…it just takes some trial and error. Just know that I love and appreciate your support more than you know.
I hope my fellow Canadians have a relaxing and delicious Thanksgiving weekend with loved ones, and if you try out this recipe, I hope you enjoy it—and my make-ahead tricks—as much as we do. I’ve also added this recipe to The Oh She Glows Recipe App, so keep your eyes peeled for it on there.
Last but not least, I’d like to pass along Arlo’s nursery tour over on HGTV! It was so much fun (and such an honour) to be featured. (Just know that the nursery never looks this put together in real life….it actually looks like a tornado blew through it most days.) A special thanks to the lovely Brittany Devenyi for the feature!
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How to Get Over Your Fear of the Gym and Crush Your Health Goals
I know the story. You want to be about that fitness life 24/7, but you're ashamed of something everything, and you're paralyzed by that.
I get it. I've been there too. But to hell with that! Being terrified to walk into a gym is no reason to miss out on the unlimited value of being active. It's time for you to live up to your full badass potential! Here are my four foolproof ways to overcome guilt and shame associated with the gym so you can strut in there like you own the place and throw down on your health goals like a boss.
1. Ignore the 5 Percent
We have a tendency to assume everyone is worried about our perceived shortcomings—weight, age, gender, appearance, whatever. They must be saying, “I’d kill myself if I were as fat as her," "Gross, all these gay dudes are trying to take over the weights," and "God, there are just some things women shouldn’t do!”
You’re right. People do think these things. Some even have the audacity to say them. But what’s wrong with this line of thinking is that it leaves out what actually matters.
Let’s say your gym has 100 people in it. Because the universe hates you that day, five people say some extra foul sh*t to your face. You take their words to heart and run away from your health goals. But hang on. Do you hear what the other 95 people are saying?
*Silence*
They aren’t saying anything. They’re too busy fantasizing about waffles to care about you. They don’t hate you; they hate the StairMaster. Those evil looks are because you aren’t a pile of Five Guys fries (f*cking delicious-ass fries, BTW). Does it make any sense for the ignorant 5 percent to dictate 100 percent of your activities? (The answer is no.)
2. Ask for Help
Gym machines are on crack these days. Not only can they track your workout stats, but they can also guestimate your credit score, discover new dinosaur bones, and bake a fresh loaf of sourdough. It would be damn near impossible for a newbie not to be confused. And where there’s confusion, there’s embarrassment.
Gym machines are on crack these days. Not only can they track your workout stats, but they can also guestimate your credit score, discover new dinosaur bones and bake a fresh loaf of sourdough.
Lucky for you, most gyms have a great solution: a personal trainer. Before you start bitching and moaning about how much they cost, hear me out.
Option one: You bust it alone for months in all the wrong ways and seriously damage your body.
Option two: You schedule two or three sessions with someone who actually knows what a triceps is. They also teach you how to use equipment properly and efficiently. Wow! You’ll be amazed how much a little bit of knowledge can drive your confidence.
Hell, many gyms even offer a session or two for free with your membership. But even if they don’t, spending $200 on a trainer versus $20,000 in corrective surgery? C’mon, son. Hire a pro.
3. Get a Squad
There are three essential players you need in your get-fit squad: an asshole friend, a cheat-meal friend (CMF), and a you’ll-always-be-hot cheerleader.
The asshole friend is your trainer. And even though they'll be a pain, trainers are awesome (refer back to point No. 2).
Your CMF is your homie who drags themself to class with you and brings an extra hair tie. They’re also right next to you in line at Chipotle after class. You don’t go all the time, but when the carnitas call, your CMF doesn't throw shade. Extra guac and cheese? Only to balance out the extra five reps you both put in. Would your trainer approve of it? Nope, and that’s why you don’t have cheat meals with your trainer.
Just as important as the CMF is the you’ll-always-be-hot cheerleader. Mine is my boyfriend. He understands even divas aren't confident 24/7, so he’ll randomly snatch a big handful of ass to remind me that he loves that thang just the way it is. Until I meet said boyfriend, I throw on my highest pair of heels and marvel at my quads in the mirror. Dayum.
4. Be Someone Else’s Umbrella
Actor, singer, and poet Daniel Beaty once said, "Be all of you, so all of us can heal."
When all else fails, here's another reason to be yourself: Somewhere out there is someone who needs a role model. They desperately want permission to be their beautifully flawed selves, but they don't think they can withstand the sh*tstorm society throws at them.
You can be the person someone else looks up to. Don't dilute your personality to make it more palatable. F*ck that. Be all of you. Someone—maybe even someone you've never met—needs to see you in your circus freakhood and circus-freak struggle. Your freakhood is someone else's umbrella. Let them stand under it.
Above all, never forget your inherent value; the fact that you—right now, for real, no lie—are worthy of anything, especially getting to the gym and crushing every one of your health and fitness goals.
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How to Get Over Your Fear of the Gym and Crush Your Health Goals
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