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

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!

O Happy Fault: A Feast for the Triumph of the Cross!

If I asked you what you thought was the most fondly remembered, most frequently talked about and most looked-forward to dinner tradition in our home, you probably would never guess it.

No, not the wonderful feasting at Easter; not Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner; not even a favorite birthday meal.

It's the one meal we eat on Good Friday.

I kid you not.

For the past two years, on Good Friday, we have had for our evening meal our own family's version of Alice's Lenten Tea II.  (Yes.  That Alice.)

So when I mentioned to my family that this coming Sunday we would be having a special dinner in honor of the Cross of Jesus, I should not have been surprised when Junie B. piped up, "Can we have the same dinner we have for Good Friday?  That is so much fun!  And we could put out the Crown of Thorns for a Centerpiece!"

I have to admit, at first I wasn't so sure that a meal and centerpiece intended to recall the horrifyingly sad events of Holy Week should be an appropriate choice for a day designated by the Church as a Feast.

Yet ... isn't that really exactly what we're celebrating here?  I'm thinking Junie B. knows more about this than perhaps I give her credit!  It also occurs to me that this Feast Day is, give or take, just about 6 months away from Easter.  It seems right, somehow, to experience -- on purpose! -- the happy side of Good Friday at this point in the year!

And the dinner is beautifully solemn -- long on variety while also being appropriately reserved of food for a Good Friday meal -- and is remarkably easy to pull off.  I'm with Junie.  It's really special ... and adding this tradition to our family's experience of the Liturgical Year has been a sort of triumph all its own.

So, with a few adjustments -- including the addition of Fetuccini with Pesto, an Onion-Basil Foccacia with Fresh Mozzarella and Tomato Slices, and a Crown Cake for dessert -- and no mention at all of fasting, thank you very much! -- allow me to present a few scenes from the newest addition to our family's Liturgical Year Traditions:  Not Just for Good Friday Dinner ... Extra Joy, Hold the Sorrow!

Note:  Please be sure to go to Cottage Blessings to see how her beautiful tea is laid out, with all the themes and scriptural references.  It's really beautiful (does Alice ever do anything that isn't?!), and I am so grateful to her for coming up with so special a tradition that in turn means so much to our family!

Entering in for dinner:  A Simple Procession using the Crucifix we received as a wedding gift, singing Lift High the Cross.

The King's Crown (a crown of shrimp cocktail and homemade tortilla chips is always the centerpiece of our Good Friday dinner)

Out of Envy (we use green beans with ranch dip)

The Purple Cloak (This bowl is filled with vinegar and water; the children squeeze in drops of blue and red food coloring to make purple, then place in the hard-boiled eggs, which are then set aside for the Golgotha reading--see below) 

The Crown of Thorns (Ritz crackers with peanut butter; the "thorns" are chocolate jimmies)

Golgotha Eggs (The hardboiled eggs are prepared by drawing a "skull and crossbones" (to commemorate "The Place of the Skull") in hot glue, so that when they come out of the purple dye there is a "ghastly" surprise!)

The Seamless Garment (We used a Gingerbread Girl cutter to make the garment out of soft tortillas, trimming the arms and head.  In the past, we've used a large heart cutter, turned upside down.  The "cast lots" are cheese cubes)

Two Robbers (Here is where Basil is mentioned -- in the past, we've sprinkled dried basil into the vinegar for the next activity; today everyone dipped in a small slice of foccacia from a tiny 4" loaf, which was pulled off from the main loaf before it was baked)

Vinegar to drink (we dipped a piece of the basil foccacia into a glaze made by boiling together aged balsamic vinegar and honey)

The Roman Centurian (usually everyone counts out 2o grapes, which are then pooled together to make 100, but tonight we only talked about that and everyone ate just a few grapes)

 Laid in the Tomb (these are hollowed-out Grands biscuits, which had been quartered and baked in mini muffin tins).  We paused here to turn out the lights except for a single candle burning in the middle of the Crown of Thorns centerpiece, and sang Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.

... and then the Feast!  This is where we broke out the Fettuccine with Pesto and the Foccacia, Singing Jesus Christ is Risen Today, Alleluia! (the midi tune linked here is not the one we sing.  Betcha know the one we did, though!)

(I was really pleased with how this bread came out.  If I can remember exactly what I did (!) I'll post the recipe.)

Exchanging the Crown of Thorns for a Crown Cake (... to the tune of The Old Rugged Cross)

Be sure to visit Catholic Cuisine to see many more great ideas for celebrating this feast in your family!

The next From Thy Bounty Fair will focus on Angels:  Our Guardians and Defenders.  Please join in!

Let Them Eat Cake! (First Communion Cake, That Is!)

First Communion celebrations can be a very big deal -- with parties that sometimes rival wedding receptions in their size and elegance.

In my family, though, First Communion parties were almost always a home affair, with lots and lots of family present -- and plenty of home-cooked food.

But the one thing that stands out in my memory above all else is the ever-beautiful First Communion Cake.

Our dining room table was long -- long enough to accommodate the 11 of us for dinner every night!  The room itself was adorned by three huge, floor-to-ceiling picture windows filling the entire wall, overlooking a rustic stone patio and pink-flowering crabapple tree; and the table was positioned lengthwise along that wall.  On First Communion Sundays, there would be only two things on the table that morning:  A white tablecloth, and a huge, bakery-made sheet cake.  If you looked closely, you'd see that several of the little lumps of frosting along the bottom of the cake were missing.  I won't point any fingers lo these many years later, but you can be sure I wasn't the only culprit! :)

I don't eat sugar anymore, but I must say that the flavor of a traditional white-frosted bakery cake is among my favorite flavors in the whole wide world.  They can be hard to find these days; grocery stores have moved in as the biggest supplier of cakes, and mom-and-pop bakeries seem to be few and far between, at least around here.  The alternatives don't even smell the same.

(I had a hard time finding a bakery for our wedding cake, especially since I couldn't taste it myself, and The Chief was far less picky about such things than I am; we finally settled on a bakery that touted sugar-free cakes, and had them put a small layer of that sort on top of the regular cake for the cake cutting ceremony.  It was ... not what I remember.  No one else would eat it.  But our guests made short work of the rest of the cake, so I guess it must've been fine!)

One of  my sisters, however, has a tradition that has allowed me to make my peace with this new reality, and Junie B. got to be a part of it when we had a three-family First Communion party for Junie and two of her cousins last year!

In my sister Sharon's family, the First Communicant creates a picture, which the (in-store) bakery then transfers to the cake via an edible photocopy.

Here's the picture Junie B. drew and watercolored (it was her first venture into using blue as a shading to indicate white -- and look how she transferred that concept to the chalice and the host!):

(I also scanned the original into the computer, and printed a smaller version to make thank you notes -- which were certainly put to good use!)

And here's the cake with all three of the cousins' pictures!

(A note on Tradition:  If you look very closely at the lower right corner, you will notice that one of the little frosting shells is missing from the border.  I just want to state for the record that I didn't do it.)  :)

I just love this idea -- the cake couldn't have been more special or unique!  This is something we will definitely want to do again.

Join the New Fair on Catholic Cuisine!

Catholic Cuisine -- your source for great recipes to enhance your liturgical celebrations all year 'round -- is putting together a series of Fairs called, "From Thy Bounty" !  The first one, coming up next week, will focus on First Communion celebrations ... and your recipe ideas and family traditions are wanted!

Get all the information at Catholic Cuisine, at this post -- and share in the celebration!

Deadline for submissions:  May 14, with the Fair posting on May 15.