Well, I have always loved to cook. I learned to cook by watching mom, and my grandparents. They were all marvelous cooks (mom still is!), and we really have a family of great cooks. My favorite thing is when I get to cook with mom and my sisters: what we come up with is always so much better than anything we’d do all by ourselves. Plus there’s a lot of grace that happens around the stove, and while you’re chopping things. I think everyone should teach their kids to cook.
I keep an archive of family recipes on our family’s home page, mulcahy.net. That’s important to me because I don’t want all the old family favorites, all the traditional holiday recipes, to die out over time. An archive of recipes is just as important as a collection of family photos, because the foods we eat portray who we are and where we’ve been.
Cooking for me is sacramental with a small “s.” Again, grace happens around food: at the stove, at the counter, around the table. Jesus was the one who taught us that very plainly. This blog is named for the Gospel vignette in John 21. Jesus has died and risen, the disciples have received the Holy Spirit, but they don’t know what they’re supposed to do yet. So they go back to the thing they know; the thing they did before they met Jesus: they go fishing. And – of course – they catch nothing, because they never catch anything unless they are with the Lord. After a long night, he tells them to drop the nets again, and they haul in a huge amount of fish. When they get to the shore, they find he has been cooking fish and bread for them, and he says to them, “Come, have breakfast.”
This is a healing meal for them, and it is meant to get them back up on the horse and into the mission for which they had been chosen. The same is true for us: we are nourished in the Eucharist, and healed by its grace, and strengthened by its power to go out on the mission for which we have been chosen. Grace comes for us at The Table and the table, and please God all of it leads us together to eternal life.
I hope you enjoy the recipes and reflections and cool gadgets and links. Feel free to comment and suggest, but be nice. And stay on topic. If you need to communicate with me in a ministry-related way, you know how to do that. I have a phone and an office, and I’m glad to hear from you: I don’t do ministry electronically, sorry. Actually, that’s not completely true, because I do publish my homilies, but that’s it!
So enjoy the site, and let me know if you’ve got something great cooking!
Blessings!
Father Pat
