the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

 

 From this blog we read:"In being immaculately conceived in the womb of her Mother, Ann, Mary more or less received an "advance payment" on the grace of Christ and was preserved from the original sin of dis-integrity, or the "disintegration" of her capacity to fully assent to God's call for her life. This is alluded to in today's Gospel from Luke, when, after receiving the Angel's invitation to conceive Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary responds with the simple, straightforward response of, "I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word."

Mary's Immaculate Conception, as an "advance installment" of the grace of Christ, prefigures precisely the grace and call that is extended to us. By virtue of an ongoing commitment to saying "yes" to new life in Christ, we are undergoing a radical "Immaculate Re-Conception" of our lives in order to ultimately say, along with Mary, "we are servants of the Lord, may it be done unto us according to your word." Mary's Immaculate Conception is the beginning of the promise of our "Immaculate Re-Conception" in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit!"

For the Feast of the Immaculate Conception we celebrated with the following meal:

·      White meal – chicken schnitzel, garlic potatoes, cauliflower

 

     WHITE CHOCOLATE CAKE

INGREDIENTS

250 g white cooking chocolate, chopped

250 g butter, chopped

200 ml hot water

1½ cups caster sugar

1¾ cups plain flour

1 cup self-raising flour

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Frosting

100 g white cooking chocolate, chopped

¼ cup cream

250 g softened cream cheese

(can be softened in the microwave for a few seconds)

SERVES 10–12

TO MAKE

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 22-cm round cake tin and line the base. Combine chocolate, butter, water and sugar in a saucepan and place over medium heat. Stir continuously, until sugar has dissolved and chocolate has melted. Set aside to cool. Sift flours into a large bowl, add chocolate mixture, eggs and vanilla and mix well. Place mixture into prepared tin. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours or until cake is cooked (it should be golden on top). Leave in the tin to cool for about 20 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack. To make frosting, stir chocolate and cream over low heat until chocolate is melted and smooth. Allow to cool a little. Beat the cream cheese until light and fluffy, then add the cooled chocolate mixture and beat until soft and smooth. Set aside to cool completely, then spread evenly over the top of the cake.

It rained a bunch

These pictures show a very non-typical weather for this time of the year in Adelaide.

Rain in  bucket loads. And rain inside is not good.Rain is not good also when you are packing things for storage in cardboard boxes...think wet mush.







 However rain has made our bean/holly-hock house grow tall enough to almost reach the land of giants(Jack and the bean stalk?) and everything is green so swings and roundabouts....

and it sure rained a bunch!

And finally no photos but lightening and thunder put on a spectacular sky show before we retired for the night!

Saint Ambrose

SAINT AMBROSE COOKIES

           Ingredients
       4 cups flour
       1 tsp cinnamon
       1/2 tsp each cloves,ginger,nutmeg
       1 cup icing sugar
        2 tsp baking powder
        2 extra large eggs
        1 cup honey
        2  tablespoons finely chopped orange rind

Directions:

·      Sift together flour, spices, icing sugar, and baking powder.

·      Add eggs, honey, and orange peel to make a stiff dough.

·      On a floured work surface, roll out dough about 1/2 inch thick.

·      Cut shapes with cookie cutter, place on non-stick baking sheet, and brush with glaze.

·       bake in preheated 350 degrees oven until done, about 15 minutes.

·      Cool on racks.

·       Store in tightly covered tins.

We used the idea from this site to turn our biscuits into bees. 


Whenever I here the words Ambrose and bees my thoughts always go to that wonderful book by Elizabeth Gouge "The Runaways" and Uncle Ambrose and his bees. Apologies here to Saint Ambrose but for our family those marvelous readalouds by said author are engraved on my memory lino-cut hard!
Oh and re Saint Ambrose and bees: this is all I could come up with so feel free to add more if you know more!" The title Honey Tongued Doctor was initially bestowed on Ambrose because of his speaking and preaching ability; this led to the use of a beehive and bees in his iconography, symbols which also indicate wisdom. This led to his association with bees,beekeepers,chandlers, wax refiners".

Our Saint Ambrose meal

HONEY-CURRY CHICKEN

In a 9x13 pan, mix the following:

4 TBSP butter (optional)
1/2 Cup honey
1/2 tsp curry
1/4 cup mustard
1 tsp salt
2 cloves garlic
Soy sauce to taste (about 1-2 TBSP)

Now throw some chicken breasts , into the pan and mix it all around and bake it at 180Cdegrees for about an hour. I covered  it for the first 45 minutes and then  uncovered it for the last 15 minutes. We cut our chicken into smaller pieces when cooked and  served over rice, as the sauce is VERY tasty and is great over rice with some veggies!!  We used brocolli for our vegy.Yum!

NB: if this is your recipe please take this as your acknowledgment as dd looked at lots of sites for this feast day before finally settling on  choosing this recipe. It is sure to become a firm family favourite!

Our Saint Nicholas meal

 Saint Nicholas was Bishop of Myra which is in part of modern day Turkey. But  Myra was at the time of Nicholas, Greek so our meal we decided would have a Greek flavour!

Greek Rissoles

Ingredients

·      800g lamb mince

·      2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano leaves(we used dry as we didn't have any fresh and adjusted the quantity)

·      4 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind(this added a lovely smell to the kitchen before the cooking meatball odor took over)

·      4 tablespoons sliced black olives, chopped

·      200g Greek feta, cut into 24 cubes

·      steamed rice, shredded baby cos lettuce leaves and tzatziki dip, to serve

Method

·      Combine mince, oregano, lemon rind, olives, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Using clean hands, shape mixture into 24 balls. Using the palm of your hand, flatten balls. Wrap around feta cubes and shape into 1.5cm-thick rissoles. Place on a plate.

·      Cook rissoles, in a large frying pan sprayed with oil, over medium-high heat, for 3 to 4 minutes each side or until cooked through.

·      Combine rice and lettuce. Serve rissoles with rice mixture and tzatziki.

Tzatziki

·      260g (1 cup) Greek  yogurt

·      1 Lebanese cucumber, halved, seeded, finely chopped

·      1 tbs fresh lemon juice

We really enjoyed the  Tzatziki with the rissoles. It made the meal more refeshing and was cleansing to the palate. This amount served our family of 6 with enough left over for lunch the next day.

And afterward there was time to add some wonderful pictures to our coins to be put in shoes while all the house slept early in the morning when dd reminded me!

Saint Nicholas cookies

Saint Nicholas Cookies:
We always use the recipe by the von Trapp family. Their tradition has become one of our traditions.Why reinvent a wheel that works perfectly?
Unfortunately the untypical humid hot weather we have been having(tropics in Adelaide?!?) meant that ds had too use an even larger quantity of patience to roll them out and cut the shape.

The two youngest had a great time decorating them!

Speculatius

1 cup butter

1 cup lard

2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 tsp. soda             4 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. cloves

4 1/2 cups sifted flour

1/2 cup chopped nuts

Cream the butter, lard, and sugar. Add sour cream alternately with sifted dry ingredients. Stir in nuts. Knead the dough into rolls. Wrap the rolls in waxed paper and chill in the refrigerator overnight. Roll the dough very thin and cut it into shapes. Bake in moderate oven 10 to 15 minutes.

And the result tasted delicious, especially eaten from one of my Johnson plates with a drink of marshmallow topped hot chocolate. (yes even with our unseasonal weather)

Picture Book Advent :"The Stone" by By Dianne Hofmeyr, Jude Daly

"The Stone" by By Dianne Hofmeyr, Jude Daly : 

 A retelling of the story told to Marco Polo about the Magi of Saveh, three wise men from a town in Persia, who followed a strange star and find a special child. Marco Polo described the tombs of the Magi in his travel book, Il Milione:
"In Persia is the city of Saba, from which the Three Magi set out... and in this city they are buried, in three very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And above them there is a square building, beautifully kept. The bodies are still entire, with hair and beard remaining."

Love this book! The story of the three kings but told in a less usual though in my opinion highly acceptable way! 

It fits in/ties up so neatly and profoundly our geography study of the middle east.Leaves us with thoughts to think on and actions to take! Highly recommend it!

Evocative images add to the Persian atmposphere. I love the ending. A great take on the impact of Christ’s light within us shing out to the world:

"then each person carried the flame away,back to all the faraway places of the earth,for all mankind to share.”

Copybook:

Balsar’s eyes shone:”The child accepted all three of our gifts. He must be all three things..”

“What three things?” demanded Jasper.

“The true king. The true healer and the true Holy One.”

Advent Homily

 I have just finished looking at this interesting blog post on forgiveness. Leave a comment or thought on it
 and here are thoughts from this Saturday night's homily   which Father gave on Repentance:

Turning around physically 

….a complete change of perspective…

turning from the boredom of the small way we see ourselves and looking towards how God would see. 

Yes we need to do this in the way we see the world and how we see others(ie the looking outwards) but also  in how we see ourselves (which must impinge on the later anyway!). 

We limit what we can  or are in God’s reality by holding on to  a self limiting view of “me” in our subjective unreality. 

Dare we believe we are made in the image of God, can we truly trust that he has chosen us as a daughter/son of the King of kings. 

How can I begin to see things with God sight and not my own eyes(which in my case have always been impaired anyway)…to think on waiting for the King.

Saint Nicholas comes to the hills

Saint Nicholas came early to the Adelaide Hills this year. Important to remember I suppose that he does have a busy schedule! Of course some of us will still be putting out our shoes in a few days time, but for an actual sighting of the man this hills visit can't be beat! The car (is it a Morris?), was a unique feature this year.






Of course a greater part of this season is "the waiting" as our two youngest families members show.

Now Mathilda can you recognize your dad?

And your brother?

Or your sisters who sang so beautifully "Silent Night"

Picture Book Advent :Through The Animals Eyes by Christopher Wormell

Day Two:

Through the Animals Eyes by Christopher Wormell

what can I say? I often choose picture books and will continue to do so for their art. And this is no exception. The moment I looked at the cover I knew this would be a book that would "grab my boys in". Seriously if you enjoy good art, and love nature you will be the same!

This is a book to be studied long after advent and Christmas seasons are over. The book gives us more than the "simple" story too but adds to our knowledge of middle eastern animals.A further "rabbit trail pending.

We read quite a sizeable biography at the end of the book about the author/ illustrator, delighted to find that he "cut his teeth" on an assembly line of lino-cut Christmas cards before developing his own particular style of wood-cuts.(wood-cuts? lino-cuts? already a study to come back too)

Finally ds9 was delighted to learn that the Mr Wormall had been chosen as the illustrator of the 2004 Christmas stamps collection in Britain.(more stamp/artist study to follow!)

 ACTIVITIES:

Copybook or calligraphy the following:

"Her child would be the Son of God whose kingdom would have no end”

“So a humble manger became blessed with the light of life."

 CRAFT:

Lino cuts for cards

O Night Divine

Every year since we have been attending our parish, part of our Advent traditions is the Christmas Carol Service our choir hosts. This year we wondered. The service was very early in December, did we feel ready for it? But two boys had offered to serve so off most of us went. We were not disappointed.Firstly two of our favourite priests lead the celebration , one who is  now 82 lead us into the church a few years ago and the other quite a number of years younger (shall we say  couple of generations!) is like us, a convert to Catholicsm and one of its strongest supporter.

The music was as always superb. We started with Advent hymns including one of my favourites by Eleanor Farjeon and moved through to ones of a more Christmas feel, including Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,Noel Nouvelet, But the most memorable carol(see title of post) came right near the end. It started as a solo, a "mature voice", a little hesitant and we all journeyed with her as we wondered is she going to get there, can it be done. While at the same time we marveled as each second built on the preceeding as we realized we were truely witnessing something amazingly powerful, fantastical in its strength of message.While the number of those attending was not large I doubt any will forget and we are hopeful for an equally magical Midnight Mass on Christmas .

Picture Book Advent :Little One We knew You’d Come

Wonderful book. Love the lyrical way it is written and the illustrations which beautifully match the theme. We shouldn't have been surprised as the author writes one of our favourite children's Bible

And do check out the web site of the illustrator. she has some beautiful images there. I love the hint of something medieval, almost make-believe in them.

Little One we knew you’d come.

We hoped. We dreamed. We watched for you.

We counted the days till you were due. We waited. How we longed for you,

 And the day that you were born.

Little on we know you’ll come.

We hope . We dream. We watch for you.

We count the days till you are due.

We wait. How we long for you.

And the day that you were born.

 ACTIVITIES:

Copybook or calligraphy the following:

And every year, we remember you, our miracle child, our dream come true.

Oh how we thank heaven for you.

And the day that you were born.

Little one we’re so glad you’ve come.

                  From Little One We knew You’d Come.    By Sally Lloyd-Jones illustrated by Jackie Morris.

MEMORY WORK:

 memorizing our scripture from Luke Chapter Two:

MUSIC:

Learn + play some hymns:

specifically we will learn these carols; "Joy to the World',"We Three Kings","God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" on violin

we will also listen to and revise the words of "People look East""O Come Emmanuel""Lo he Comes""O Jordan's Bank""On this Holy Mountain""Lo How a Rose"

CRAFT:

Make angels for gifts

Make advent box

Sew stars to hang on noticeboard + on tree. Use buttons + sequins: need lavender/purple/red/lime green felt,       need purple + green thread  + need needles + templates