Impromptu Fatima dinner party

I'm several days late with celebrating OL of Fatima with a meal at home. But better late than never, right. During the interim of my break from blogging my friend Mrs. V developed a women's group at our parish. I ended up in charge of both the social committee and the faith formation committee which are basically the same thing in my opinion. The 100th anniversary of the appearance at Fatima also occurred and my same friend made a pilgrimage to Portugal. I gave her all my Christmas money to buy me some souvenirs including a really nice, non-resin statuette. We also planned some family friendly rosary recitations; I hosted the first one at my house and we had a small potluck. I made this Portuguese Beans with Linguica recipe and I remember that Mrs. V made a sautéed linguica appetizer. I really liked the bean dish and have made it again.  I pinned this recipe for a dessert but never got around to making it. I would just run out of motivation; I think I was psyching myself out about a jelly roll type of recipe.

So, even though the 13th was Monday, I didn't get around to making dinner until Friday night. It did give me the opportunity to collect all the necessary ingredients all week long including the linguica which I can always find at Otto's. I had just finished adding the last ingredient to the bean soup when I received a text from Mrs. F wanting to know if she could arrange for the little brothers to play. The recipe does yield a lot and sharing it would be more fun than ending up with lots of leftovers so I invited them to join us and she added a loaf of crusty bread and a green salad to our menu. And I knew this would finally be the motivation I needed to make the orange dessert.

I had already decorated the table with my pretty wooden OL of Fatima statue,some rosaries, and a prayer card. To begin the meal I asked T-Bone to lead us in the prayer. The Fs are Jewish and it had not occurred to me to pre-read the prayer first so when he got the part about conversions I had to lean over to Mr. F and say, "We're not trying to convert you!" And then afterwards their oldest son asked 'What's a virgin?' so it was a very educational experience.

We promised the big boys that we would play Clue with them. And the orange dessert was so easy to make, there is no flour in it so it turned out nice and spongy. I lined the jelly roll pan with parchment paper and that made it totally easy to roll up. I sprinkled it with powdered sugar to make it pretty.