Feast with St. Paul Miki on Feburary 6th

Want a tasty idea for a meal with the saints? 

Make or order Japanese-inspired food.

February 6 is the Memorial of Saint Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs, who was born in Japan, educated at a Jesuit college, known for his eloquent preaching, and, sadly, crucified with twenty-five other Catholis during the presecution of Christians in Japan in the late 1500's.

If you are unfamiliar with this saint, this brief video can be a good one to watch:

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Last year, before and during our St. Paul Miki dinner, we watched this video, read about Saint Paul Miki and Charles Lwanga in Once Upon a Time Saints, prayed grace, prayed in thanksgiving for the courageous faith of martyrs and the way they often inspire others in faith, and prayed for all those persecuted for faith around the world.

A red tablecloth reminded us of the martyrs...

... and we laid our food out in a cross shape to remind us of how the martyrs met their death.

Our plates and chopsticks were a hodge podge of authentic Japanese ones from my time in Japan years ago. And all of our food was Japanese-inspired - and happily devoured!

Perhaps you and yours can enjoy celebrating the liturgical year at home with a similar saint day inspired meal this year!

St. Paul Miki and Companions, pray for us!

Easy Eats with St. John Bosco

What's for dinner on January 31? 

Italian food!

January 31st is the Memorial of St. John Bosco, and a great day to whip up some easy eats for celebrating the liturgical year at home by focusing on the saints.

You might go green, white, and red to remind you of the flag of St. John Bosco's homeland, Italy. 

We did this a couple years back with a simple dinner of gluten-free pasta,  sauce,  salad greens, tofu balls for our vegetarians, and meatballs for the rest. (The balls reminiscent of St. John Bosco being the Patron Saint of Jugglers.)

Or, like we did last year, you could go with chickpeas instead of tofu balls as "juggling balls".

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To decorate the table, the wonderful Boy Saints for Little Ones - reviewed here - can provide a focal point.

Or, the Encyclopedia of Peg Saints - reviewed here - can be a focal point and offer fodder for a quick oral game of St. John Bosco trivia.

After grace, the Picture Book of Saints can offer a prayer and short bio to share. Or, you can enjoy a longer story about St. John Bosco in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints.

Then,  if you like a movie after dinner - as we sometimes do - Formed has one about St John Bosco.

Simple eats, stories, prayers, a movie...observing St. John Bosco's feast day at home can be filled with delights.

St. John Bosco, pray for us.

Know Someone Sick? Make Oil-Free 10+ Vegetable (Chicken) Soup to Boost Immunity!

Do you know someone who is sick that could use a meal dropped at the door? 

We've known a number of people over the past few months who fit this description, some who - Praise God! - have already begun healing and others who are very much in need of prayers.

Thus, I've had my children helping me to wash and chop vegetables and cook up chilis, soups, stews, and other dishes to share.

Among them was an Oil-Free 10+ Vegetable (Chicken) Soup to Boost Immunity that we came up with after looking at a bunch of recipes online and seeing what was available between rummaging our fridge and cupboards and making a run to a local store. The result, I thought, was delicious. So, in honor of it being National Soup Month - and as inspiration for you to gift forward a meal to someone you know in need - I am sharing the recipe below and also as a free printable.

I will warn you that this recipe has a lot more ingredients than many others do and is a bit labor-intensive with all the washing, peeling, and chopping of vegetables. So, it definitely makes a good Sunday service / Work of Mercy project rather than a quick weeknight help. That said, it is chock full of nutrition and wonderfully tasty, so don't let the long list of ingredients and extra prep time scare you away from it.

Further, I want to suggest that, if you are short on time, you simply whip up you favorite easy soup recipe, because most soups make a wonderfully nutritious, warming, and flexible meal to share.

If brought over hot, soups can be enjoyed right away.

If the recipient is not up to eating or has been gifted ample food by others, soups can be refrigerated or frozen, then, portioned out and reheated easily on stovetop or in a microwave. 

Most soups are forgiving, too. So you can add and drop ingredients according to availability, taste, food intolerances/allergies, etc.

Oh, and speaking of intolerances and allergies, I often ask about those before making meals to door-drop, and, if I don't have a chance to do so, I typically will avoid ingredients that tend to be common allergens. So, for example, in the soup below, I would not add the corn. (In fact, in one of the batches we made, we purposefully left out the corn due to the family allergies.)

Similarly, because some folks are vegetarian or vegan, unless I know everyone in a family is a meater, I tend to make vegan options that meat and/or dairy can be added to. (So, for example, I cooked chicken, onion, and herbs separately when cooking up our 10-Vegetable soup and, then, packaged it in another container and wrote a note that suggested that family meat-lovers might like to add the chicken to the soup or eat it on its own.)

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Oil-Free 10+ Vegetable (Chicken) Soup to Boost Immunity!

Veggies:

1 yellow onion, diced

2 carrots, sliced 

2 celery, sliced 

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 yellow bell pepper, diced

1 poblano pepper, seeded, diced 

4 garlic cloves, minced

Spices:

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon paprika

1 tablespoon rosemary or marjoram

1 tablespoon basil

1 ½ teaspoons white pepper

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon thyme (or a bay leaf or two)

Other ingredients:

2 tablespoons tomato paste 

4 15-ounce cans fire roasted tomatoes (or 2 28-ounce cans)

4 cups water (or veggie broth or chicken stock) 

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons liquid amino acids (or low sodium soy sauce)

1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups frozen corn or 15-ounce can frozen fire roasted corn (optional)

1 cup frozen green peas 

Up to 3 cups fresh spinach, sliced (or a small package of frozen spinach)

Add in before serving, if desired:

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice 

chicken (pre-cooked with garlic, onions, and fresh oregano or just canned chicken)

Directions:

Put a very large pot on medium high heat and add just enough water or broth to cover the bottom. Heat until it starts to steam, then add the veggies.

Sweat/water saute the vegetables until they have softened, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add all the spices except the thyme or bay leaves to the pot and stir constantly for 30 seconds to activate the spices.

Add the tomato paste, cook for 4 to 5 minutes, and keep stirring until the paste begins to darken and starts to caramelize.

Add 1/2 cup of water or broth/stock and scrape the bottom of the pot with a spoon to scrape off any flavorful bits that are stuck to the bottom.

Add the rest of the ingredients except the spinach, lime juice, and optional chicken. Stir to combine. Cover and bring to a boil, which should take about 10 minutes. Then, reduce the heat to medium low, add the optional chicken in, and simmer for 30 minutes.

Uncover the soup and add spinach if you like more al dente veggies and call it done. Or simmer for another 45 minutes for softer veggies and, then, add spinach. Let the spinach wilt for a minute while continuing to stir.

Taste the soup and adjust any spices if needed, or add salt to your taste. Add lime, if desired, and enjoy!

Notes:

You can add any other meat, bean, or lentil that you like and/or “stretch” the soup by adding up to four more cups of broth or water.

You can also add up to 2 tablespoons chia seeds for a bit of protein and to gel-up the soup some.

***

Whether making this soup or not, I encourage you to cook up your favorite soup and bless someone forward with it this week! It would be a lovely way to live a Work of Mercy.

Get a FREE Spiritual Reading Log Set

What's a new year for if not failing forward?

This year, I am failing forward with many things, including my plans for getting my middle and highschoolers into a daily spiritual reading and me into a habit of discussing their reading with them.

Part A of the plan has been going fairly well since the fall. In fact, one of another of my children had ead through each of the Select Spiritual Reads that I highlighted here last September, and all have read more in addition.

Part B, though - the part where I would chat with each of them after they finished each book. That's where the failure has happened.

Praise be to God, there have been few spontanous, organic, and fruitful chats that I appreciated. (These were about books in the C.S. Lewis boxed set, the Miracle of Father Kapaun, and Mother Teresa: Lessons of Love and Secrets of Sanctity all of which I recommend.) And, there have also been some more planned or prompted chats about other spiritual reads during minivan rides and walks.

However, I have not been able to keep up with all of the kids' spiritual reading, my own, and life in general - and the kids have not bubbled over with spontaneous sharing with some reads as they hae with others, so some of their spiritual reading selections have yet to be discussed.

That is where the failing forward comes in!

Upon entering the new year, as I thought about all this, I decided that we all might do well with a tool to help with future discussions. Thus, I made a simple set of Spiritual Reading Logs.

On these logs, we can record thoughts, ideas, and questions as well as think about if we'd recommend the spiritual books we dig into.

My hope is that with notes from these logs in hand, it will be easier to go back and chat about different reads even if I keep getting behind my kids with them (which seems inevitable since my children sometimes select things I have never read before and there are three of them, each reading separately, and only one of me trying to keep up.)

In case th  ae logs might benefit you or your children, too, I am sharing them freely.

I hope you can use them and would love to hear what spiritual reads you and your children are diving into and what discussion points they bring up.

God bless!

Did You Miss One of Our Top 10 Faith Posts of 2021?

Happy 2022!  May the new year bring joy and peace to your heart, home, and homeschool.

As my family and I look forward to all the opportunities ahead of us, I am also taking a look back at some of the ways we've lived, learned, and celebrated our faith. As I do so, I thought I would share forward our Top 10 Faith Posts of 2021 in case you would like to revisit a favorite post for inspiration, find one you missed, download a free printable, etc.

I pray that as you scroll through our Top 10 Faith Posts, you will find inspiration to continue to live and grow in faith with your family in 2022. 

Top 10 Faith Posts of 2022

~10~

This is the time of year when Advent/Christmas books are often on sale. You might like to pick these ones up. We enjoy them - and have shared a short list for each week of Advent.

~9~

Is it me or does it seem that some years the liturgical season of Lent seems to creep up so quickly after Christmas?

These 15 Ways to Prepare for Lent with Kids - and the ideas and traditions they include - might inspire you to be ready this year!

~8~

We had such fun putting together and performing a semi-spontaneous Christmas Epiphany Play last year and enjoyed doing so this year, too.

If you'd like a no-rehearsal, audience-participation play for next Christmas and Epiphany, feel free to use the one we shared.

~7~

Advent traditions are a beautiful thing, but as kids grow and life changes, some traditions seem to get forgotten, lost, or, at the very least, tweaked. Others, hold fast. 

This year, I asked my kids what their favorite traditions are so we could be sure to honor them this year - and to share them to, perhaps, inspire you.

~6~

Celebrating All Saints Day has been a long-time living-the-liturgical-year tradition here and we've ended up trying out a lot of games, activities, and themed-eats. This year, we shared our favorite five. Maybe they will become favorites for you, too.

~5~

Sometimes a motto read in a book for a Catholic mama's book club ends up getting passed along on a hike in the woods and, then, gets passed along in a blog post, which, oddly, becomes a top 10 in popularity for the year. This was one of those times. 

What mottos or tidbits from mama-reads have you passed onto your growing kids?

~4~

It was a delight to end up being asked to be on the judging panel for this past year's Mary Garden Contest put on by the Museum of Family Prayer.

The contest is an annual one, so you can look for it this year, too. Winners from last year can be found on the Museum of Family Prayer Facebook page.

~3~

It always surprises me what posts find their way into the top 10. Sometimes it's the ones where I am simply passing forward information, like in this one with it's prayer too beautiful not to share. 

It's truly a lovely, little short prayer taht I think you will appreciate.

~2~

As my children get older and our school-work-life balance gets even fuller, our efforts to live the liturgical year sometimes slip. Simple eats like the ones we enjoy on Saint Padre Pio's feast day draw everyone to the table to celebrate though.

What simple eats bring your teens to the table on feast days?

~1~

Have You Read Counsels of Perfection for Christian Mothers? You Must! It is truly a gem! I am so glad a local Catholic mama book club I sometimes participated in introduced me to it. It's an inspiring and practical read that you can access for free!

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As I've said before: Please never be shy about making any requests for content you'd like to see here! Like many folks who share online, I have more ideas in my head than focus and time to share about them all. So, I like to tailor what we share about here to what you'd most like to see. I can only do that if you let us know.

Please leave a comment here, let me know via social media, or just tell me next time you see me (since some followers here actually know me in real life, too!)  We love feedback! 

Oh, and if you'd like to browse past Top 10 collections, find them here.

May God bless you a yours 2022 unfolds.