Saintly Snacks

Annie's Little Flowers group celebrated an "All Saints" party this month.  I was able to make the snack, and as I was thinking of what to make, it came to me to make a couple different small finger food snacks that symbolize a few saints.  It was fun.  So, we ended up with...

Saint Lucy's....eyes.
Saint Lucy is a martyr who had her eyes plucked out for being a christian.

Saint Therese's....Little Flower cupcakes.

Saint Therese is known as the Little Flower and promised to send a shower of roses down from heaven after her death.

Saint Clare's....eclairs.

There is no correlation here, it just sounded good!

Blessed Mother Theresa's....caring heart mints.

Mother Theresa walked the streets of Calcutta India caring for the homeless, dying, and the sick.

Saint Blaise's....candlesticks.

On the feast of St. Blaise which is in February, the priest will bless every one's throat at mass with candlesticks.  It is said that St. Blaise saved a young boy who was choking on a fish bone.

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Them O Lord....

The feast of All Souls is celebrated on November 2nd.  It's a day we remember to pray for those who have died.  We remember and pray for the poor souls in purgatory, all unborn babies, and our friends and relatives who have passed away.  It's a good reminder how short our life is here on this earth and that heaven is for all of eternity.  

This year on the actual feast day, we had some crazy weather.  It started with a mix of lightning and thunder, rain, and then ended with a beautiful snowfall.  Needless to say, I wasn't going to be able to surprise the kids again and take them for pie at the cemetery.  I'm glad that we waited, because the very next day it was a lovely, chilly, fall day.  The sun was shining, and although it was cold, it was perfect.   

I had the kids called out of class again and we went over to the cemetery where Joseph is buried.  We ate a yummy, warm, fall lunch among the babies who have died and then wandered over to the older part of the cemetery.

I walk around quietly, watching the kids run from headstone to headstone to check out who can find the oldest grave there.  They are running and loud amongst the stillness of the cemetery.  I don't mind it at all.  It makes me grateful that they are full of life, even though I am reminded that we will all die one day.  

"Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and perpetual light shine upon them.  May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen."

The Feast of St. Therese

For the past month I've been thinking, preparing, mixing, baking, cutting, wrapping and planning to celebrate a very special feast day.  It's the feast of St. Therese, who is also the patron saint of our children's school. The girls can dress up like St. Therese for mass and school, there is Eucharistic adoration all day, they do fun activities/projects instead of their regular school work, and they get a special treat to eat during lunch.  I was in charge of many of the preparations for this beautiful day!  So...I came up with the idea of serving chocolate eclairs to the students and teachers for their treat.  Chocolate eclairs were a favorite treat of St. Therese......perfect!

I began calling around town to see who could bake 365 chocolate eclairs for the cheapest price, since I had a budget, of course.  To my dismay, I couldn't find a bakery that even made eclairs, let alone cheaply.  I finally called a small bakery shop and they would do it, except it would be for an outrageous price.  Thus, the idea to make them all was put into action.  I figured if I made four batches of 15 eclairs every day for six days, I could bake them, freeze them, and then the evening before the feast day fill them with pudding and frost them.  So, for the next week and a half, my kitchen turned into a french bakery, we had eclairs popping out of everywhere! 



The dough itself was incredibly easy to make.  You boil water and a stick of butter on the stove.  Mix salt with flour, turn down the heat and add the flour to the butter mixture.

You stir it until it becomes a thick, sticky paste.  Remove from stove, and dump into a mixer.  Add four eggs on at a time.



Then you fill a large piping bag with the dough and pipe out fifteen hot dog looking logs.  Bake for 30 minutes at 425 degrees!  Once they had cooled I popped them into Ziploc bags and stuck them in the freezer.



This is about half of them, the other half were in the freezer inside the house.



Then the night before I had four dear friends come with me to the church kitchen and we filled, frosted, and tagged them all.  We soon had a great assembly line going and it was fun!

Setting up the teachers lounge with goodies for them to enjoy!



I love that our school makes such a beautiful day for the celebration of St. Therese.  Seeing all those little girls dressed like Therese is just darling.



The children at school were so grateful for the treat.  I had thought to myself earlier how wouldn't it be awful to spend so much time making these and then nobody liking them?  To my surprise many children asked if they could have seconds, and many of them came over to me on their own thanking me for the treat.  It was so worth all the time spent preparing for this day to see how grateful the teachers and students were!

Then on Saturday, which was the actual feast of St. Therese, we had our titular mass celebrated and the girls were able to process into church and also out to the garden after mass where we were showered with doughnuts! 

"St. Therese, you who are called the Little Flower, pray that I may always live as a good child of God.  May I always do the little things of life extra well for the love of God.  St. Therese, you love flowers and you wanted to give to Jesus the flowers of many, many souls.  Now that you are in heaven, let fall upon earth a shower of roses by your prayers.  Bring many more souls to Jesus.  Pray to the Mother of God for us that she will smile on her children here on earth.  Amen."

Celebrating the Feast of St. Anne

July 26th is the feast of St. Anne.  She is the mother of Mary and the grandmother of Jesus.  She is patron of many things, but two in particular are grandparents, and bakers.

TJ and I decided that when we had Thomas, we would name our children after a saint, that way they would have their own special saint to turn to and get to celebrate their "name days."  It's been such a beautiful thing to watch them each take ownership of their saint.  When Thomas was little and we would be in church, if the priest would quote something from St. Thomas Aquinas, his little face would look up at me all excited that he just heard the name of his saint!  We try to make their name days special for them in small ways.  Usually we read about the saint, maybe do a little craft, make a special dessert, and they get to pick what to have for dinner.  Simple things to make them feel special and learn more about their saint. 

For the feast of St. Anne,  I thought going on a tour of a local bakery would be a treat!  And, Annie's good friend Abby, shares St. Anne's feast day, so we celebrated with the Vacek's.