The Red Light

(I am making a vain attempt to not have TLC running through my head as I compose this post.)

Recently I overheard Duece mention something about the red light at church; I think they must have had a tour or something, in any event I wasn’t really sure what he was talking about. It had never really occurred to me that there was a red light near the tabernacle. I guess in my mind it was just vestiges of the 70s when cranberry or amber glass was popular for votives. But our new priest had made a big deal about having an Irish American family move the marble tabernacle from just off the altar to front and center.

Me. W took the boys on a Cub Scout camping trip over the weekend and my mom happened to call to see if someone could spend the night and I only had Little Miss to offer her. So what did I do with my kid free weekend? I went to Mass st my childhood parish of course! 🤓 While I was there I noticed that they had also moved the tabernacle back to the center of the altar and that their free standing red light had moved with it.

I decided that it was high time that I investigate the meaning of the special red light. I went deep; I went to Wikipedia. They are called Sanctuary lamps or chancel lamps and they are placed near the tabernacle to indicate the presence of Christ. The lamps are often colored red, although this is not the law, to distinguish them from the other votives in the sanctuary. It can be suspended from the ceiling by a chain, afixed to the wall, on a ledge, or on a stand. Basically I have seen these special red lights everywhere in every configuration and never paid any attention. I’m shocked, frankly, based on my habit of noticing small details like this. But now I know thanks to my son. You learn a new thing every day. 

New Cookbooks and the Feast Day Recipe Binder

I mentioned that during my Lenten seclusion I began to compile all the recipes I use most from the cookbooks I own and the Pinterest page I have into one easy reference manual. I’m in my 40s now and cannot remember all these different recipes, or where to find them, anymore...I’m lucky if I can remember the feast day itself between the children and all their activities. For example last year when I finally got around to doing something special for St. Joan of Arc’s Day I went through Mr. W’s Glorious French Food by James Peterson and discovered a recipe of sorts for a St. Joan salad. So that goes in my binder.

After exhausting all of our cookbooks for recipes I decided to fill in some days, and cuisines, with books com the library. T-Bone, my future movie maker, is the assistant director for the school play and on rehearsal days I keep the other two occupied with trips to the library. ‘Catholic cookbooks’ doesn’t yield much in a card catalog search, but I was able to find a couple that were available at the branch. Oaxaca al Gusto by Diana Kennedy has a few recipes specifically for Lent, Corpus Christi, etc., but the bulk of it is more of a documentation of ancient recipes and obscure ingredients lest the become lost to history. The other available book was Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen. I’d like to start honoring Our Lady of La Bang and thought this might be a good starting point. From a quick perusal I could tell it had family stories intermixed with recipes which I love! It turns out the family is actually Buddhist rather than Catholic so while there are no recipes that are tied specifically to any saint or holiday I am loving the narrative within about the family’s escape from Vietnam and the journey to rebuild in Australia.

One of the books that wasn’t available at the branch was Celebraciones Mexicanos by Andrea Lawson and Adriana Almazán Lahl. For years I have been looking for a cookbook of Mexican cuisine that is similar to my go to cookbook Italian Holiday Cooking by Michele Scicolone and this  book looked like it might finally be the one. So I took a risk and bought a copy rather than waiting for a library copy to become available. It recently arrived and I am so happy with it! It is exactly what I was hoping it would be. The recipes are even arranged according to the liturgical calendar starting with Our Lady of Guadalupe! How perfect is that?!

Easter Monday- He Is Risen

It is Eastertide, Alleluia! I spent Lent in my secluded little dark hole. No social media. An earnest plan to work on long forgotten, but half finished projects, like my son’s baby quilt. My eleven year old son. Oops! That got put off for a very long time. I was inspired to reorganize all my collected Feast Day recipes. I know the trend is for everything to be digital now; it is paperless after all which is good for the environment. But I am old; I need something tangible, so I grabbed an old binder, bought a bunch of sheet protectors and dividers from Freddy’s and assembled the recipes into book form for easy reference. I thought about my long neglected blog, but decided that counts as social media. I worked in my garden. I gave up starch (the hardest thing yet so far) hence my decision to make pizza for dinner tonight. And while I waited for it to bake I decided that maybe today would be a good time to resurrect my blog. Yikes, I haven’t been here for four years! It took two attempts to remember my password.

The children are at a new school since I last posted and like a proper Catholic school they have Easter Monday off so we were able to have our traditional Easter egg hunt in the garden in the morning when it was sunny and nice. This was our only egg hunt this year so they really enjoyed it. I had them wear the left over bunny headband from T-Bone’s bunny themed 11th birthday party. So cute! I imagine my time is growing short on being able to do things like this.