Eclectic Living: Imaginary Island Pictures ~ Feast Day Cooking

What's Cookin'?

I think my new nickname around here will soon be the "the soup lady." The last week we've had bean soup, chicken noodle soup, and potato/cheddar soup. We may have alphabet soup today for lunch or dinner (I have some letter noodles). Having homemade bone broth ready in the refrigerator is a lifesaver! Soup has really helped us stretch our food plus it is nourishing and easy to make. I've also been adding a bit of gelatin from those ham hocks to every soup.

Last night I made what I dubbed Texican Grilled Cheese. I put bean dip on a sprouted corn tortilla (the only kind I can eat) and sprinkled cheese on it (which I stole from the grated cheese for the soup). Then I topped it with another tortilla and grilled in butter as if it were a grilled cheese sandwich. Mmmm. They didn't really match the potato/cheddar soup but hey (shrug). I used this recipe as the basis for the bean dip. I only had black-eyed peas on hand and I think it would taste much better made with black beans. I'll be sure to get a bag of dried black beans to make for next week!

Does liquid hand soap count for cooking if it is on the stovetop? I have 2 quarts cooling in a pot. I added tea tree oil and peppermint oil.

Here is a picture of the BBQ sauce while the onion, pepper, and garlic were cooking and my LABELED BBQ sauce that I'm freezing from the double batch:

What's Schoolin'?

The dc finished painting their imaginary islands. I will print these pictures to paste in their culture/geography notebooks. Each island has at least 4 water forms and 6 land forms:

Cooking/Celebrating Feast Days:

We not only enjoy making/eating special treats to celebrate certain Feast Days, but it also impresses upon the children the celebratory attitude (and gratitude) toward our wonderful role models from throughout Christian history. As we examine their lives we see character virtues in action, and even sometimes flaws (such as short tempers) that are overcome. We can try to emulate them in our daily lives as it applies to our lives. I'm not going to get into the theology; apologetics is NOT my gift, nor am I eloquent in those matters. Suffice it to say that it is important to us, and fun :), to celebrate saint feast days. We tend to do it more often during Advent for some reason. I guess we're in that groove of prepping (inwardly and outwardly) for Christmas and some favorites are during that time such as St. Nicholas and St. Lucia.

That said, I rarely do it because 1) I forget; 2) I don't have a good calendar; 3) I don't spend time researching who is coming before the date is here nor activities to go along with that saint; and 4) Did I mention I forget? For example, our school's name is St. Jerome Academy. You would THINK that I would at least know when St. Jerome's feast day is approaching. In the middle of the day I realized it (thanks to a daily Gospel e-mail) and asked the homeschool forum and jumped online. We ended up making open-faced lion sandwiches with whatever we had on hand. It turned out fine but it would've been nice to have been prepared.

Below are some resources that I'm hoping to look at in depth in order to choose at least one as a home resource. If I had a book on the shelf even the dc could help look ahead and plan recipes. Even if we just did one a week it would be something special (or even one a month!). The dc could take turns just like they are with the Janice VanCleave's Chemistry for Every Kid to plan and lead the week's treat/feast day of their choice. We would absolutely have to adjust the recipes to be closer in alignment with a Nourishing Traditions way of eating - our health depends upon it - but it would give us a starting point. Yes, I could do this online, and I even have a book of saints that we could use to look ahead and then research ideas online...but I haven't so far. I would love to have both aspects in one book: the calendar and the ideas/recipes. Thanks to I. for sending me the title of My Nameday - Come for Dessert! You got the ball rolling :).

I plan on coming back to this post and adding more as I find new resources. Please post any recommendations in this post's comments section. They can be for books or for links (or even just ideas for a certain saint). I'm grouping the links first and the books below for now.

Here are links that have either recipes or ideas to celebrate feast days:

http://familyfeastandferia.wordpress.com/

Here is the list of what I have so far for books (pictures/links below):

My Nameday - Come for Dessert

Book of Feasts & Seasons

The Catholic Home: Celebrations and Traditions for Holidays, Feast Days, and Every Day
The Year & Our Children: Catholic Family Celebrations for Every Season