Eileen on Him . . . at least, I try!

Our St. Lucy Christmas Traditions

When we first started celebrating St. Lucy's day four years ago, Junie wore a paper wreath and served Pillsbury cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate to Daddy in bed.  The Chief had been out of town on business earlier in the month, and had missed Step 2's Christmas band concert, but the school was putting on a shorter version of the concert as a student assembly on the last day of school before Christmas break.  The Chief took off the day from work so he could at least attend that; and kicking off our Christmas week with St. Lucy had been so special that we knew we'd be doing it again!

Since then, St. Lucy has become one of our most cherished Christmastime celebrations.  We celebrate St. Lucy's breakfast, not on her feast day (December 13), but on the 4th Sunday of Advent.  Step 1 & Step 2 stay overnight the night before, and Junie B. dresses up and awakens the family, candle in hand, to invite them to a special breakfast of a sweet wreath of homemade braided bread, hot cocoa and sausage omelets.  The omelets are made by our family professional chef, Step 1, and one of the highlights is watching her awesome omelet-flipping skills!

Taz loves to be Step 1's Sous Chef -- he took it upon himself to set up all these individual omelet ingredients for her!

We don't neglect the actual feast of St. Lucy, however.  That, too, has a very special place in our Advent buildup toward Christmas.  Every year on December 13, we plant a large dish of winter wheat seeds -- which grows so fast you can almost watch it happen! -- and use the cuttings (about 8" tall, 10 days later) to line the front porch Creche in a special enthronement ceremony on "Christmas Eve-Eve" (December 23 -- that's the night Santa also comes to our house.)

This year, little Taz was excited to get in on the action, in his first appearance as "Star Boy!"  I made a cone-shaped hat for him using these directions.  We painted it blue and studded it with glitter (I don't really know why; it just seemed "right").  His special job was to carry our Tinkertoy Jesse Tree as he led "St. Lucy" to wake up the rest of the family.  (I don't care what the tradition is "supposed" to be; we do what we love!)

Every year, we've used a different recipe for St. Lucy's bread, none of them "authentic."  This year, we used the same recipe we'd used to make St. Nicholas bread figures from the St. Nicholas Center website --  except I added a half a cup or so of candied fruit to the dough (next time, I'd use more), shaped it in the traditional braid, and topped it with a simple glaze of confectioners' sugar and cream.  (This recipe is quick, easy even for the kids to handle, and very tasty!)  Finally, we sprinkled the glaze with finely-chopped almonds.  Mmmm!

Later in the day, we even made "Swedish Cookies" -- a special tradition from the Chief's family (via a Swedish tenant of his German grandmother's, way back when!), and a perfect extension to our Swedish-inspired celebrations.  (I'll have to add a separate post with some of our favorite cookie recipes -- this one definitely makes the cut!)  They are a simple cream wafer, rolled in granulated sugar with a special notched rolling pin before baking -- light, flaky and delicious!

(Note the St. Lucy Braids.) :)

When you add something new to your family's most cherished traditions, you don't know for sure if it will "take" -- especially when it involves waking up 18 and 21 year olds at the crack of dawn and putting them to work as part of the deal!  Step 1 sealed it for us this year, though, when, on her way out the door this year she said, "I love that we celebrate St. Lucy!"

Me, too.

Busy Second Week of Advent

Lots of Feasts and Fun in the Second week of Advent this year!

Sunday:  Feast of St. Nicholas!

Shoes, placed expectantly outside bedroom doors last night, now full of gold coins and other sweet treasures!  (That's a plastic cup inserted in a clean sock to hold the treats and keep them, er ... fresh)  :) ... and kicking off the Christmas baking season with St. Nicholas Bread! 

(This bread dough is so easy and tasty that I think, with a little candied fruit added, it'd make an awesome St. Lucy's braided wreath!  More on that later, though!)

 Monday:   More St. Nicholas Baking with Speculaas!

We weren't as fancy with cookie molds, etc., as we were last year -- cookie cutters and free-form cookies were the order of the day.  On a whim, the children kneaded some slivered almonds into the dough and crushed and sprinked some on top of their creations, too -- I actually think this made the cookies seem more "authentic" in flavor, even if they weren't the "prettiest" cookies of the year!  We use the recipe found in this cookbook.

Tuesday:  Feast of the Immaculate Conception

... a little Marian art project from That Artist Woman.  "Official" Advent activity of the day:  Thinking of others -- Gathering a few toys to clean and share.

(This was hard for them -- they are unbelievably attached to their hoards of stuffed toys.  The little collection we amassed cleaned up nicely in the washing machine, and actually holds a few potential treasures for the right child, I think.)

Wednesday:  Feast of St. Juan Diego

Mmmm -- Mexican Wedding Cakes!  One of our favorite "Christmas Only" cookies.  And another quick & fun Math/baking activity! :)

Thursday:  More Cookies! 

We have two favorite thumbprint cookie recipes.  This is the Raspberry-Pecan version ...

... and this is an Apricot Cream Cheese treat, dusted with confectioners' sugar.  SB and I made the dough while the older two did their school work.  Then Junie B. weighed and evenly divided the dough, and figured out how many cookie balls each person would have to make in order to come up with the total called for in the recipe. (Math!) :) Then everyone rolled balls and pressed thumbprints.  Easy. quick and very successful as an activity with little ones!

Friday:  Getting ready for some serious cookie baking next week!

(We went shopping for ingredients.  And then we went shopping for presents!  The weather was very cooperative -- one of the few Christmas shopping trips we've ever made, especially at this point int he season, when we we weren't taking our lives in our hands with nasty road conditions.  Definite advantages to a "green Christmas"! :)  No photos, though.)

Saturday:  Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Mmmm -- burritos!  I've been making it easier on us at dinner time by layering all the basic ingredients that we use -- seasoned ground beef, refried beans, rice and cheese -- in a casserole.  One spoonful makes a whole burrito, needing only a few extra condiments!  I also limited the condiments to sour cream, chopped tomatoes and lettuce.  Much easier than trying to put burritos together for multiple little ones from multiple serving dishes! :)  And whipping up a batch of fresh, homemade tortillas really makes it special!

[Ed. note:  Better late than never? :)  I'm going to experiment with the dating of this post -- I want it to be filed in Dec '09 in the archives, even though I'm actually not getting to it until January '10!  If it works, my other Advent & Christmas posts (numerous and unfinished in the drafts folder -- where does the time go?) will also be posted this way.  Last year when I ran out of time I just gave up and never posted them at all ... and I don't want to do that again.  Think I'll ever actually get caught up?? :) ]

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate ...

My little boys love to help me in the kitchen.  So when a task made for little hands, like scrubbing potatoes, comes along, I put them right to work -- they have fun, the potatoes get scrubbed, and I can turn my attention to something else, perhaps the chili on the stove (chili over baked potatoes!  Yum!), for a minute or two. 

Usually.

Mmmm.  Cleanest potatoes in town! 

(Good news:  The soap rinsed well and left no discernable residue.  And the boys enjoyed rinsing them almost as much as scrubbing!)

Torta de Cacao and a Cuppa for St. Peter Claver

As part of the study of South America my children and I are currently sharing, we're including an introduction to its Saints.  And, of course, what better way to get to know a people than through its food? :)

In honor of St. Peter Claver, then, whose life's work led him to Colombia along the northwest coast of South America, my children and I made a Torta de Cacao, or  Colombian Cocoa Cake.  We were inspired by this delightfully simple cupcake recipe at epicurean.com, but decided to make a bundt-style cake instead, enhanced with a cup of chocolate chips and drizzled with a simple glaze of powdered sugar and cream.

Torta de Cacao

Ingredients:

1 stick softened butter

1 c sugar

3 eggs

¾ c cocoa powder

1 T baking powder

1-1/2 c flour

2/3 c milk

1 t vanilla

1 c semi-sweet baking chips

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. 

Prepare a standard bundt pan by greasing it well with butter-flavor shortening; dust well with flour.  To avoid having a whitish coating on the finished cake, follow the flour dusting with about a tablespoon of cocoa; dust over the flour until completely covered, and tap out the excess.

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl, and beat on medium speed until creamy; add sugar and continue to beat until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well with each addition.  Combine cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt in a sieve; sift into a separate bowl, then spoon into the egg mixture while beating at low speed.  Continue beating until combined.  Add the milk and vanilla, and beat until smooth.    Stir in the chocolate chips by hand, then spoon & spread evenly into  the prepared bundt pan.  Bake 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted halfway between the center and the outside of the pan comes out clean.  Loosen gently and remove from the pan after about 10 minutes; continue cooling on a wire rack.  Glaze, if desired (I used about 1 c of sifted confectioners' sugar, with maybe 1 T of half & half -- added a few drops at a time until I got the consistency I wanted).

And, since no discussion of Colombia can be complete without mention of one of its main exports, we enjoyed our cake with our own version of Colombian Coffee Smoothies!  This recipe can be adapted easily to your own preferences, being made entirely to taste; but these are the proportions we used:

Iced Coffee Smoothies

Ingredients:

3/4 c Freshly-made Colombian coffee (regular or decaf)

1/4 c Sugar (could substitute chocolate drink mix for a mocha smoothie)

3/4 c Half & Half (you could use milk – but, hey, it’s a feast day!)

3 c Ice cubes (ours were 1" cubes, prepared from about 2 c of water)

Put all of the ingredients in a blender and whirr at high speed until thick and creamy.  Pour into serving glasses or cups and enjoy!  Makes 3 one-cup servings.

And now for a word about our honoree of the day.

St. Peter Claver (d. 1654; feast day Sept. 9) was a Spanish missionary priest assigned to work with the victims of slavery as the ships came in to the port at Cartegena, Colombia.  This port was a major gateway through which the enslavement of Africans gained its hold in the New World.  While the efforts of the Catholic Church were unsuccessful at stemming the tide of the lucrative slave trade, Catholic missionaries devoted themselves to alleviating the suffering of its victims.  St. Peter Claver became a major source of comfort and kindness to the thousands of horribly mistreated, sick and often dying captive people who were brought into that port.  Calling himself a "slave of the slaves," he dedicated himself to improving their lot, enjoining slaveholders to treat them kindly, and advocating for laws that would allow them to marry and to keep their families together.  He offered them the faith of the Church as well, and is credited with baptizing more than 300,000 African captives over the course of his nearly 45 year ministry.

This particular Saint's feast day comes at an especially apt time in our family's history studies:  We are currently reading about Harriet Tubman's life and the role of the Underground Railroad (a leg of which ran through the very area in which we live!)  We have been discussing the horrible indignity and injustice of slavery and the God-given yearning of all hearts to be free; and observing how people like Ms. Tubman in the US, William Wilberforce in the UK, and others ultimately led the way to end the acceptance of slavery in our own country.  It's a very hard subject to discuss with young children, actually; it doesn't occur to them to discount others on account of something as trivial as skin color, and it breaks my heart to have to introduce the notion to them at all.  At the same time, however, those who have opposed such injustice and changed the world for the better are a great source of inspiration, challenging us to size up the age we live in today -- and maybe even calling us to action.

Will we dare to be like St. Peter Claver, spending our lives exposing injustice through our insistence on the humane treatment of those who are oppressed?  Will we shine the light of truth on the accepted practices of our day, as did William Wilberforce, boldly challenging unjust and inhumane laws even as others dare call them a "right"?  Do we have the courage to even risk our own freedom for the sake of others, as so fearlessly did Harriet Tubman?

Who ever said education was easy?

You never know who will ultimately inspire your children to live up to whatever it is that God is asking of their lives, of course.  By celebrating these heroic people, especially those whom the Church acknowledges as Saints, we can open the door to their hearts in untold ways.

And -- who knows? -- igniting the tiny spark that ultimately sets their hearts on fire may be as simple as sharing a recipe for chocolate cake!

A Yummy Toolbox for St. Joseph!

Check out my post at Catholic Cuisine, on how to make a gingerbread toolbox in honor of St. Joseph the Worker (feastday:  May 1)!

Pretzels!

I really love this recipe, which I've used repeatedly to make pre-baked crusts for Make Your Own Pizza.  I keep meaning to post my adaptation to that recipe and method -- I think I even have a draft waiting for me to find the time to add a picture or two!

Anyway, here is yet another variation of that recipe:  Pretzels!  This dough is low-fuss to make, and the kids enjoy participating.  Plus, it's a very "handle-able" dough -- easy to shape, not too sticky -- perfect for eager little hands.  And when used for soft pretzels, we discovered this morning, it's just delicious!

This is a four-step process:  Making and raising the dough; Forming the pretzels; Boiling, brushing with egg wash and salting; then baking.

Here's how it went down for us:

1.  Making and Raising the Dough

• 3/4 c warm milk
• 1/2 c warm water
• 2 T vegetable oil (for pizza, I use olive oil)
• 1 T honey
• 1-1/2 t salt

Whisk together in a large bowl, then sprinkle with

• 1 (1/4 oz) pkg active, dry yeast

Stir in the yeast to moisten completely, then set aside.  Meanwhile, measure out and sift into a separate bowl

• 3-1/2 c all-purpose flour

Sprinkle about 2/3 of the flour into the yeast mixture, and stir until smooth.  Add enough of the remaining flour to form a dough ball you can handle.  Knead the dough, adding additional flour as needed, for 6-8 minutes.

Grease the empty flour bowl with more vegetable oil (2-3 t should be plenty -- again, for pizza I"d use olive oil.  But I'll get to that in another post, I promise!)  Place the dough ball in the greased bowl, and turn once to grease the top of the ball.  Cover loosely with a sheet of plastic wrap, then cover the bowl completely with a clean dish towel.  Set in a warm, draft-free place to rise for 1 hour.

Now is the time to prepare for step 3 (boiling):  In a large stock pot, place

• 10 c water
• 2/3 c baking soda

and set it on the stove to boil.  This will take a long time (15-20 minutes or more), so you'll be glad you started it now! :)  (If it comes to boil too early,  set it on simmer and cover.  Then bring it back to a full, rolling boil when you start forming the pretzels.)

2.  Forming the Pretzels

Prepare the baking pans:  Line 2 flat cookie sheets with parchment, and spray lightly with vegetable oil.  Set on or very near the surface where you will be forming the pretzels.  At this point you should also preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Using a dough scraper or a sharp knife, cut the dough into 8 equal wedges, directly in the bowl.  Each wedge will make one large pretzel (the equivalent of about 2 slices of bread). 

Take one wedge, and roll it into a rope of at least 24" in length.  Lay it in front of you in the shape of a large "U."  Take the two ends and cross them about 1/2-way down; then twist the crossover one more time.  Bring the ends toward the bottom of the "U" and set them on it to make a traditional pretzel shape.  Place on one of the baking sheets, leaving plenty of room for 3 more pretzels without touching!

3.  Boiling, Brushing with Egg Wash and Salting the Dough

This step should not be skipped!  It adds flavor and texture to the pretzel -- and, except for the fact that it takes next to forever to bring 10 cups of baking soda water to a full, rolling boil -- it's very simple and quick.  (It also stops the dough from continuing to rise and helps the pretzels hold their shape.)

Place 1 or two pretzels at a time into the aforementioned fully-boiling water, and boil for 30 seconds on each side.  Lift out carefully with a wide, slotted pancake turner (a spoon may cause your hard work to fall apart, so use something flat!), and return to the parchment-covered baking pan.  Continue until all 8 pretzels have been dunked.

Next whisk together

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 T water

and thoroughly paint the surface of each pretzel with a pastry brush.  Then sprinkle each pretzel with

• Kosher Salt or Pretzel Salt

to taste.  You may wish to lightly press the salt into the dough, but it may not be necessary. 

4.  Baking

Place the prepared pretzels into the hot oven, and bake until a deep golden brown -- 14 minutes seems to do the trick.  Cool for several minutes on a wire rack before serving.

It is remarkable to me how different this tastes from the results when we use this dough for pizza!  Just delicious, and perfect for soft pretzels.  You're gonna love it!

Add a few cheese cubes, some fruit & veggies and a glass of milk, and you've got the perfect Lenten lunch.  Mmmm!

A Day in Lourdes

[She] was clothed in a white garment with a blue sash.  There were golden roses at her feet. Her face was sweet and full of smiles.  A rosary was in her hand. -- Rev. Edward Lodge Curran, Great Moments in Catholic History

The children and I enjoyed a number of fun activities in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes today, inspired mostly by ideas offered at Catholic Cuisine.

We began our day reading The Miracle of Lourdes chapter in Great Moments in Catholic History, a sweetly-written gem of a book from days gone by.  The quote above was so descriptive that the children were inspired to make drawings of Our Lady!  While they were drawing, I put together the ingredients for Jessica's Blueberry Muffins, with the idea that we'd discuss and re-enact some of St. Bernadette's story as we made -- and then, later, ate -- them, inspired by a few creative comments on that recipe post.

It turned out to be a lot of fun!  We used the crumb topping to symbolize the dirt that St. Bernadette dug in at Our Lady's command, looking for the famous healing spring; and made a filling of sugared berries to hide in the center of the muffin.  This made for a very fun lunch, as the children "dug" into their muffins looking for the juicy spring!

Our muffin lunch was rounded out with more berries atop freshly made yogurt, and a treat of blue kool-aid to drink (I keep this stuff around for making brightly-colored playdoh; but for an occasion like this, why not indulge?) :) 

Later, I saw another post by the awesome Jessica, this time on making a grotto of rice krispie treats!  Amazingly enough, there were marshmallows in the cupboard -- so we put other plans aside and got right to it.  Jessica used fruity pebbles -- and if you haven't seen her results, you should click over there right now and take a look.  She is truly amazing!  We had no fruity pebbles, but we did have grotto-ish looking Cocoa Puffs and Jumbo Rice Krispies on hand!  Our treats did not hold up as well as Jessica's -- the poor Blessed Mother had to be rescued from a falling grotto roof more than once -- but it was still fun to make!

Bernadette is digging in the dirt, looking for the spring.  We actually tried to get her to kneel, but her skirt wouldn't allow it!  She is not doing push-ups. :)

Junie B. had the brilliant idea of putting her Polly Pockets to work as actresses, portraying St. Bernadette and the Blessed Mother to fine effect.  Ms. Pocket-as-St. Bernadette took time from her busy hair-teasing schedule to pose for a photo shoot.  The Chief pointed out that she appeared to be auditioning for her next role as Joan of Arc ... :)

 

Bedtime snack of Sweet Grotto Rocks to the strains of Immaculate Mary, for a delightful end to our day.

A Little Something for the Feast of St. Juan Diego!

St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe are two Advent feasts we particularly enjoy celebrating at our house.  Maybe it's, at least in part, because of the influence of simple-to-prepare Mexican food in our regularly-enjoyed repertoire!

To that end, I've just posted a few of our favorite, mostly kid-friendly recipes over at Catholic Cuisine.

Check it out, and have a blessed Feast of St. Juan Diego tomorrow!

Jolly Old St. Nicholas (and Yummy, too!)

Let the baking begin!

With St. Nicholas Day right around the corner, we opened our Christmas Baking Season 2008 with a bang!  Inspired by this post at Catholic Cuisine, we decided to try our hands at two St. Nicholas Day traditions:  Speculaas (a mild gingerbread or spice cookie), and St. Nicholas Bread.

This was really fun, and all three of the youngest kids were able to participate!

During Sunny-Boy's naptime, Taz, Junie B. and I were dough-prepping machines.  First we started with the bread dough:  Junie tried her hand at grating fresh lemon rind, while Taz expertly cracked the eggs and lightly whisked them.  I sifted the flour, and Taz added the yeast, while Junie B. warmed the milk in the microwave and set the butter to melt on the stove.  Taz whisked the sugar, butter, eggs and lemon rind together, while the yeast proofed; then I blended the wet and dry ingredients together.  Satisfied that we had achieved the right texture for "playdoh-like" fun to come, we set the dough aside to rise and moved on to ...

Speculaas!  We used the simple recipe we found in Evelyn Birge Vitz' A Continual Feast.  The smells were wonderful, and delightfully "Christmas-y!"  Since the dough needs to be chilled overnight, we set it in the fridge, and then took a break while I cleaned up the (considerable) mess.  (Yes, it's nice to have the kids participate, but with SB soon to awaken from his nap, time was of the essence -- I figure we'll have ample opportunity to work on that connection another time!)

We'll be baking our Speculaas tomorrow, in stoneware cookie stamps we received as a gift several years ago but have never actually used.  I'm really excited about this -- even Sunny-boy will be able to make a respectable, edible-looking cookie without much help! :)

As I cleaned up, Junie B. decided to decorate the Christmas Tree -- which didn't get put up until Monday night, after all, and won't be "officially" decorated until Wednesday -- with Little People Nativity and Noah's Ark figures.  Taz, who has been under the weather all week, took the opportunity to fall asleep.  And in the quiet that ensued, I actually had a rare moment to myself!

Being singularly unprepared for such an eventuality, I decided to go ahead and try my hand at making a bread dough St. Nicholas.  Junie came in as I got well underway, and decided to get to work on her own.  Then SB woke up, and had a blast squishing and forming dough, and liberally painting the dough with egg yolk.  It all had a natural, easy feel to it, utterly lacking the craziness that can sometimes accompany a baking activity, no matter how well thought-out the original game plan.

The St. Nick figures we created baked up in about 25 minutes, and for a first try, I'd say they came out pretty nicely!   This is the first time I deliberately started our Christmas baking as part of a feast day preparation.  What a nice way to begin.

And what a beautiful extension to our St. Nicholas Day family traditions!

About That Carousel I Mentioned

Carousels are a very big deal with us.

Because The Chief and I met in front of one, almost 12 years ago.  (The meeting went exceptionally well.  Hence today's celebration!) :)

Junie, Taz and I spent a little time this week on little "carousel" projects in preparation for today's big event.

I downloaded pictures from this carousel coloring book sampler, and printed both a regular and a mirror image of each one the children chose to color. (There's also some great links about carousel history and construction, if you're interested!)

Then we colored them with cra-pas, decorated them with glitter and sequins, pasted them front-to-back on cardstock, and hung them from ...  the ceiling fan!!  (It is so silly and adorable that it actually made me cry!)  (Well, that and the fact that today's our 10th anniversary.  I'm sentimental like that.)  They've been airborn (on low speed) all day, dancing and twirling  as they fly, and I smile everytime I look at them.

Yesterday, Taz, Junie B. and I baked two chocolate cakes -- one in a tube pan, and one in a bowl.  We put them together last night with fudge filling, and then today we frosted and decorated it to make a cute carousel!  (The animals came from the kids' toy collection, and the poles are cut-up birthday candles.)  We're just so pleased with ourselves over how this came out!

Anyway, it feels a little like Christmas around here, with all the decorating, baking and celebrating. The Chief even took the day off from work!  We're having a wonderful time sharing memories and fun with our children.

"Our" time comes later.  I'm so excited to be having an "at home date night!"  We don't ever really do this -- partly because we're usually so dead tired by the time the kids are all settled, it's hard to even think about.  But no excuses -- tonight, we're night owls!  I can't wait.