Easter weekend

We've had a bit of a crazy weekend due to illness and getting ready for the holiday. I was able to run errands on Saturday and put out some Easter decorations. I found this nest on the sidewalk at some point during my childhood in Irvington and have been saving it all these years. I haven't used it to decorate in almost as long, but decided it would look cute in the Longaberger wreath basket filed with some moss. I added some faux birds and eggs to complete the spring scene and some tulips from the garden. It has been raining so much recently I was a little afraid the tulips would all be destroyed before Easter.On Saturday night I made a quiche for Easter breakfast and the lamb cake for dinner. I used the quiche Lorraine recipe from Mr. W's Glorious French Food by James Peterson and it was much more of a white custard than the mini quiches from Costco et al that I'm accustomed to being served. I added Canadian bacon and asparagus to the recipe. Since I made it the night before, we were able to reheated it briefly in the oven giving us ample time to get to 11 o'clock Mass.After Mass and brunch with the family at my uncle's house we returned home and Mr. W set about preparing our Easter feast. Rack of lamb with, potatoes fried in goose fat, and sauteed asparagus. Again I think all the recipes are found in Peterson's French cookbook. I set the table with my great aunt Frances' pale green lily of the valley table cloth and her Lu Ray dishes. The pastel colors seem so very appropriate for the spring. Most of the pieces I inherited from her, but I filled in a few of the serving pieces thanks to ebay. We were too full to touch the cake after our day of continuous feasting.There was a plastic Easter egg hunt that my aunt put together after brunch, but last year I decided that it would be best to have our own egg hunt on Easter Monday. Easter Sunday is such a busy day as it is and since I hope to send our children to parochial school, I know they'll always have Easter Monday off. For simplicity, I dyed the eggs myself Sunday night and then hid them in the garden so the littlest W could do his hunting. He enjoys it so much and both years I have been able to get it accomplished between rain showers. Then we have colorful egg salad sandwiches for lunch. The only downside is that Mr. W doesn't get to watch both egg hunts. Maybe in the future he'll decide to take Easter Monday off too.

Catching up to Holy week

I've been a little remiss in updating. Between all my nervousness about infertility injections and illness running through the house I have been preoccupied. Last weekend we went to the Lincoln City for a surprise 75th birthday party for my great aunt. (There was an 80th birthday party for my other great aunt this month too.) I'm so grateful that we went, not only was it nice to visit with cousins I don't often see, but also because the boy and I spent a little time on the beach before hand. It was a gorgeous day! It was warm at the coast in March!! I ought to have headed down earlier in the day so we could have spent more time playing in the sand. As it was I had to bribe him with the promise of cake at the birthday party.
It's a good thing we did have our moment in the sun because we've been cooped up the rest of the week with illness. Mr. W has been sick for two weeks now and the littlest W got his first 100+ degree fever which lasted for 3 days. We're still not feeling better, but thankfully his temperatures have returned to normal.
Mine on the other hand are high. I hope that is a good sign. In addition to all the injectables I did this month, I was also prescribed progesterone suppositories. Fun. Hopefully these will help encourage some growth in my ute. My first beta will be Monday. I will not be taking a hpt before then; I don't want to deal with disappointment over Easter weekend.
Which brings me to my light Holy Thursday supper. I read in Feast Day Cookbook by Katherine Burton that it was traditional to have greens for Holy Thursday. Perhaps a bit of a nod to the bitter herbs of the Passover meal, or perhaps because life was finally returning to the earth and there were green things to eat again. The cookbook mentioned the Germans ate spinach and dandelions and included a 1950s type recipe which didn't sound great to me. I decided to instead make a salad with it because I knew I would find dandelions in my yard. I threw in cherry tomatoes, and since I had them on hand, croutons and shelled some sesame seeds.
Since today is Good Friday I am fasting but will be making Hot Cross Buns. I am using a recipe from The Tasha Tudor Cookbook. It calls for currants but not saffron. Hopefully they will still turn out even though I substituted soy milk and margarine for the milk and butter so they'd be vegan. Can I tell you how excited I am for Lent to be over? Delicious animal fats are just two days away!

Rest in Peace

I went to parochial school; class sizes are usually smaller than in public schools, but my class was exceptionally tiny. I graduated 8th grade with 13 other students! Last year we celebrated our 20th grade school reunion at the school's alumni luncheon. We had a respectable turn out and it made for a wonderful way to reconnect with each other. Many of us had lost touch after college. I will credit Facebook with being instrumental in finding as many people as we did.
The bizarre thing about our little group was that of those who attended the reunion, 8 of us had lost a parent or sibling. My best friend since 3rd grade, Mrs. H had lost both her sister and her father. Three deaths had occurred in the months leading up to the reunion. We were only 33-34 years old last year, how could we have suffered so much loss already? Aren't our 20s supposed to be about weddings and our 30s about breeding? Last week we lost one of the 5 boys from our graduating class.
I feel like I am living under a cloud of death. In the year that my father died I attended, or should have attended, 8 funerals. And the crazy thing was that this wasn't just older people dying. Nearly each decade of life was represented, from a teenager to an octogenarian. The next calendar year wasn't much easier, there were more funerals for me to attend, including that of my parish priest. Only two of my closest freinds can relate to this. Most people my age don't go to as many funerals as I do. I realize that I'm in the Altar Society and that predisposes me to a higher likelihood of funerals, but it is much more than that. In the 9 years that I have known my husband he has only had 3 deaths that I can think of. Isn't that wonderful? I could only wish for 1 year to be that light! It is only March 21st and yet already this year I have been to two funerals, both of whom were Central Catholic boys. What is going on?
My classmate struggled with addiction for over a decade. It began with an injury to his back that allowed for doctors to prescribe pain medication to him. The funeral, at the same church where we received ourearly sacraments, performed Christmas programs, graduated, and for many of us later received the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, was heartbreaking. Seeing the pain of his sisters, who acted as his pall bearers, was difficult. Seeing his father in tears reminded me of my own father and I could feel his loss of his only son. Seeing his mother being supported down the aisle was more heartbreaking than one could imagine. We aren't supposed to bury our children. As a mother you instantly place yourself in another mother's shoes; I cannot begin to imagine how devastated she is. When you think of all you go through to get pregnant, carry the baby, nurse him, comfort and teach him and then to lose him at 35? It's not right. No matter how much pain he has been in all these years it is hard for me to get to the place where I would think at least he is at peace now.
Which is dumb, because that is exactly what I was thinking in January when my Uncle died, having lost his battle with cancer. Of course he is gone too soon, but now he IS at peace. He can stop fighting his demons. I regret that he was unable to be in a place where he wanted to join us at our reunion last year. I don't have any false hopes that somehow, we could have saved him. It is obvious that his family was working their asses off to save him. There is a plan for the life of Mr. S. I hope that his family finds comfort in that. Sometimes it isn't readily obvious, but for me I know that his passing has opened up my eyes to how serious our problem with prescription drug addiction is and how susceptible we all are to it.
Rest in Peace, Mr. S.

St. Joseph's Day

Last year I celebrated the solemnity of St. Joseph for the first time. I had found several recipes and an introduction to the traditional celebrations in Italian Holiday Cooking by Michele Scicolone. I wanted to put together a St. Joseph's altar too. I made the St. Joseph's Day soup and my first attempt at pretzels.
This year I had bigger plans for the menu. I prepared the soup again which is meatless and full of lentils and legumes. I also decided to try out the stuffed artichoke recipe since it is also vegan. A Friday dinner can have a few more courses, right? And even though it isn't vegan, I decided I had to have cannoli for dessert this year. It is a traditional item for St. Joseph's Day and since it is a feast a little dairy wouldn't be frowned upon. I knew better than to try to make them myself though. I had visions of way to many leftovers ruining my Lenten quest to be good. Mr. W checked online and read that Di Prima Dolci bakery in Overlook has the best cannoli in the city. They had 3 options and I decided to get each kind.
The Virtual St. Joseph's Altar provided all the instruction for me last year when putting together my own altar. Some of the key items are breads, flowers, fava beans, fruits, fish, pastries, wine, and an image of St. Joseph. In my own interpretations I include photographs of our own father's since St. Joseph was the stepfather of Jesus and the patron of fathers.A bread shaped like a staff would be ideal, but I have yet to tackle this project. Instead I have been purchasing loaves from local bakeries and also some breadsticks. My daffodils have not been great this year so I purchased some hot house tulips and added in some of my own Lenten roses.
The soup calls for fava beans. Last year I was able to find a canned variety, this year my search at two markets turned up unsuccessful. The great thing about this recipe is that there are so many lentils and beans in it, the idea being that it is the end of the season and you could use up the last stocks from your pantry, which is probably running rather low.The stuffed artichokes have anchovies in the mix, I am generally not a fan of this fish, but it was a very mild flavor. I was very please with the artichokes, if I do this recipe again I'll remember that two people could easily split one artichoke...these ones were enormous!For pastries we have the cannoli offering from Di Prima Dolc: pistachios, chocolate chips, or cherries.
My sister brought a very nice French wine. It is called Saint Joseph so she felt she couldn't pass it up for our dinner party.When I was little my grandmother would purchase statues of the saints for me when I received my sacraments. I loved going to The Grotto with her to pick them out. This St. Joseph statue makes a perfect centerpiece to my altar.

The memorial of St. Patrick

St. Patrick's Day has forever been my island in the sea of Lent. In my twenties when I consistently gave up drinking for Lent I'd participate in the secular St. Patrick's Day bar hopping. Now my big thrill is enjoying Guinness beef stew at home. I got this recipe from my Mother; I'm not sure which one of her Irish cookbooks is the source. Since my father was Irish American, and my Mother is Catholic they had annual St. Patrick's Day parties for as long as I can remember.
In recent years I have been going to the All Ireland Cultural Society's celebration. It is a family friendly party with pipe bands, live music, and ceili dancing. When I was young I did Irish dancing. In those day's we wore our own hair and our dresses were hand made and hand embroidered. My mother, grandmother and aunt made my dress. When he gets a little older I'd like to sign up the littlest W to continue that tradition.
But this year I decided I'd rather stay home and make dinner. I planned to make Irish soda bread in addition to the Guinness Stew, but my mom had a loaf of Irish potato bread with caraway seeds leftover from her party. I started the stew early in the day so it would be nice and incorporated by dinner time.I set the table with an Irish linen tablecloth in the chrysanthemum pattern, a Belleek bowl and an oxalis plant. Since stew is hearty I felt my green everyday dishes would be appropriate. In these photos you can see that we finally hung one of the antique stained and leaded glass windows from my father's collection. This hung in his shop for years and I had intended to commission him to make a window for our tv room using this as inspiration. Things did not work out exactly as I had hoped. In any event the Macintosh roses of this panel work with the roses in the dining room's wallpaper, lace curtains and the portiere. My hope is that the rose motif is subtle and not overwhelming.Our friends the Fs joined us for dinner and we followed up our meal with a few rounds of Mah Jongg. Not exactly an Irish American tradition, but anytime is a good time to Jongg in my opinion!
The littlest W took a longer nap than anticipated yesterday, so I didn't get to have a St. Patrick's Day tea with him. We'll do that today instead.

Firefighters' Memorial Park

I read a post on the AHC blog that there are plans to relocated the firefighters' park from W. Burnside to the east end of the Morrison bridge. There is concern that much of the historic fountain will be lost. I'm always looking our for opportunities to take the littlest W on a bus ride so we went down to take some photos of our own.
This newer bell enclosure certainly isn't historically significant. My understanding is that they use this bell during their memorial ceremonies for those brave firefighters who have died in the line of duty.The bell is quite nice.The lanterns would be moved but not their pedestals I'd imagine.
Lantern with the new Civic condominium Tower in the background.The fountain, designed by E.F. Tucker and Paul Philipe Cret and built in 1927.

Bronze work by Avard Fairbanks

My Lenten Projects

"In these days of Lenten journey..."
Everyone knows that one is supposed to make sacrifices during Lent, but there has been a recent push for people to do good works too during Lent. I decided to add in doing something this year. Probably not the typical or most generous things, but something to help me deal with my infertility in the hopes that I can find some peace in my journey, where ever it may lead.
I know that God isn't this petty, but during some of my moments of despair I have wondered what is going on (or not going on) in my life that would lead God to believe I'm not yet ready for another child? Am I not focusing enough on the child I have now? Can I not handle the terrible twos and pregnancy simultaneously? Do I have too many unfinished projects? Would a pregnancy make me too backed up with things that I'd never be able to catch up? I don't know what God has in store for me or why, but I knew it would make me feel better, like I had some control, if I added two special Lenten projects to allow for a clean slate with a future pregnancy.
I made a baby quilt for my godsons, who turned 6 this month. My mom and I miscalculated the fabric needed so I ended up with enough left over to make another quilt. I finally finished piecing it before Lent started and I have been hand quilting it in the evenings while I watch television. Here is the top:
And the bottom fabric. When I made the original quilt I used a fabric nearly identical to this, but it was more Americana with children waving flags. This one is more cowboy than I'd like, but still cute.The other unfinished project was a baby album. I am hesitant to use the word scrapbook as it has become something totally crazy in the last decade or so. When I was a child Mrs. Y, the mother my best friend since 3rd grade, made scrapbooks for us. She saved everything and used her own "scraps". Nothing was store bought. Now scrapbook has become a verb rather than a noun. I am working on a scrapbook, I am not scrapbooking!
I ordered 2 personalized red leather photo albums from Exposures after our son was born. That is as far as I got with the project. Most of our photos are digital which I had been organizing on our website (thank goodness!) A few weeks before Ash Wednesday I went through all the old photos so I could place an order for prints. It was bittersweet; I miss the baby experience and long to do it again!
Now that all the photos are here I have been arranging them in the album with a few little scraps here and there. I have completely taken over the dining room table. How lucky the ladies who have a home large enough to have a dedicated craft room!