I have no idea who came up with that phrase, but it comes around on my socials seasonally, it seems.
It always reminds me of Be Still and Know that I Am God (from Psalm 46.) Be Still and Know. Be Still. Be.
Are you still doing Eating Liturgically? People ask me this, and I say, YES, the spiritual practice for sure. In the mornings I still check in on what “day” it is. (Today is a Fierce Day.) I still mindfully eat and meal plan around the Episcopal Liturgical Calendar. I still make fun things for feast days, or at the least, on a feast day I enjoy a special treat and smile and nod heavenwards towards whichever saint we’re honoring.
But, I then say. But I’m struggling with when and how and, honestly, why I’m doing the website and social media stuff. I’m not trying to build a brand. I’m not trying to make money. I started all this because I thought it would be interesting, and sometimes, when you’re making creative work around something you learn as you go, and I had so much to learn.
So, if you all don’t mind, I’ll keep doing…I mean being…Eating Liturgically. I’ll share when I can, imperfectly. It will be what it will be. Still. With and through and for God.
And so, I wanted to share my attempt at Bartlemas Beef for the Feast of Saint Bartholomew a few days ago. It felt very FEAST day since, with the increased cost of beef, the 3 lb roast I bought was 20% of my total grocery bill this week. Yikes. It felt audacious to be playing around with a recipe from The Cook’s Guide by Hannah Wolley, printed in London in 1664.
First, why Beef? Well, Bartholomew is the patron of butchers, among other things.
Hannah’s recipe is this: Take a fat Brisket piece of beef and bone it, put it into so much water as will cover it, shifting it three times a day for three dayes together, then put it into as much white wine and vinegar as will cover it, and when it hath lyen twenty-four hours take it out and drye it in a cloth, then take nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and mace, of each a like quantity, beaten small and mingled with a good handful of salt, strew both sides of the Beef with this, and roul it up as you do Brawn, tye it as close as you can; then put it into an earthen pot, and cover it with some paste; set it in the Oven with household bread, and when it is cold, eat it with mustard and sugar.
If you don’t have three days and “some paste,” at hand, here’s what I did:
3lb Beef Roast – which I salted and then seared in a Dutch Oven. I made a spice rub of equal parts (1 tsp) nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and all spice. I used a spoon to cover and then smear the roast with the spice rub. Filled the Dutch Oven with broth (we had just made chicken broth, so I used that – but I bet beef broth would be great.) to a little more than halfway up the roast. Baked in a 325 oven for 2.5 hours, rotating the roast once halfway through. I took it out when the roast was 210 degrees with the thermometer.
It turned out a little dry, and the spice-rub infused broth worked on the beef but didn’t smell like somethign you’d want to make a pan sauce with. I can see why letting it cool and eating it with mustard would be a good idea…but we let it rest and sliced warm, and put a little A1 on it, and all was well. If I do this again, I’ll play around with temp (both of oven and beef) to have it hot enough for the collagen to break down but not so hot or long that it dries out.
It was wild to taste familiar flavors – the beef, and then the fall/winter “pumpkin spice” vibe – in a way I never had, together. We had a good talk at the dinner table around what seasonings they had available in the 1600s, and why this would have been what they’d use.
This is my favorite kind of Feast meal – connected to the past traditions and the saint, new/different to us, sparking slower dinner time with longer conversations. It was a good Bartlemas indeed.
