Feast Day: St. Elizabeth of Hungary

Today is the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the daughter of Alexander II of Hungary.  At the age of 4, she was sent to live in the court of the Landgrave of Thuringia since she was betrothed to his son.  At 13, she married Louis and they had three children.  In spite of her position at Court, she was dedicated to helping the poor, the homeless and others unjustly accused.  When her husband died in the Crusades, Elizabeth left the world and became a tertiary Franciscan, continuing to help the poor and destitute, building the Franciscan hospital at Marburg.  She died at the age of 24. 

St. Elizabeth of Hungary, even though you had all the power and prestige of the world of your day, you renounced it all to take of God's poorest.  Help me to always help others with a willing spirit, punctually.  St. Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for us!

FYI:  the image in the prayer card above is from a painting done by Marianne Stokes  (1855-1927).  Titled St. Elizabeth of Hungary Spinning for the Poor, this picture not only shows St. Elizabeth's youth but her tireless working for the poor and destitute. 

Dinner tonight?  Red Bean and Rice Soup from Br. Victor-Antoine's Twelve Month of Monastery Soup (with a bit of a tweak ... adding leeks with one onion, mixed peppers in lieu of the carrots, but otherwise ... I'll do the recipe!) and kalacs (a Hungarian sweet bread) to eat with the soup.  Charlotte over at Waltzing Matilda led me to the recipe, but I'm tweaking that a bit too.  Here's my version:

KALACS (Hungarian Cinnamon Bread) with slight revisions from moi!


Ingredients:
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour (+ scant 1/4 cup if dough too sticky)
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 tbls envelope active dry yeast
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• melted butter for brushing
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2/3 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/3 cup brown sugar

Directions:
1. Place flour, white sugar, salt, and yeast large bowl; stir to combine. Measure milk and butter into a microwavable bowl and heat till butter melts. Add egg and vanilla and stir till all combined. Pour liquid into the flour mixture. Stir until dough clings together. Continue to knead in the bowl until comes off the sides; add up to 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour if needed.
2. Place dough into a greased bowl, cover, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.
3. Punch down dough, turn out onto a floured work surface, and divide into 2 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a 1/3 inch thick rectangle. Brush each square with melted butter. Mix together cinnamon, walnuts and brown sugar in a small bowl, then sprinkle evenly over the two rectangles.
4. Roll each firmly into a log, pinch the ends closed, and tuck them underneath. Place each into a greased loaf pan. Cover, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 45 minutes.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
6. Brush the tops of the loaves with melted butter, then bake in preheated oven until loaves are golden brown, and sound hollow when tapped, about 30 minutes.

mmm... the smells in the kitchen are amazing!


 

Just doesn't get any better than this ...

for helping live the liturgical year: Tan's 2011 Mary and the Saints wall calendar.  I REALLY like this calendar and am anxious to start 2011 so that I can post it in a central spot in our living room.

Published by Tan, this is not just a work of art calendar but also a great way to track (and celebrate) the liturgical year. The calendar (a nice sized 12x12) has a different Marian art picture for each month, with a 12x12 monthly calendar filled with saints' feasts (both Novus Ordo and Tridentine), liturgical year information and other information. This is not the type of calendar for use with tracking schedules -- this is a calendar to exhibit in a central spot in the home or classroom to remember whose feast day or how best to celebrate. I particularly like the image for December -- a large image of Our Lady of Guadalupe -- one of our family's patronal images of the Blessed Mother with a quote of the message of Mary to St. Juan Diego.

The images are beautiful and would make lovely, framed pieces for my husband's classroom -- he does a collage of holy cards, and this would be a great addition to these collages. But he'll need to wait until next December to get his hand on these!

The final page of the calendar includes info on how to pray the rosary and Fatima prayers. This is just a wonderful calendar: printed on quality paper with large classic images of the Blessed Mother. The images also include a scriptural verse, hymn or prayer from the collect of the main feast for that month. I also appreciate that the publishers included more than one saint for each day, rather than limiting the choice to one saint. Each day, as appropriate is marked for fasting, feasting or ember days.

I highly recommend this Catholic calendar -- I can't wait to see next year's edition!

I wrote this review of 2011 Mary and the Saints Wall Calendar for the Tiber River Blogger Review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods. Tiber River is the first Catholic book review site, started in 2000 to help you make informed decisions about Catholic book purchases. I receive free product samples as compensation for writing reviews for Tiber River.  For more information and to purchase, please visit Aquinas and More Catholic Goods.

 

Happy belated birthday ...

...to Mary, Mother of God!  Yesterday was the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary ... a celebration in the Catholic Church and a Marian feast day.  We had a wonderful day ... morning Mass, van re-check (I HATE getting my car hit as it takes FOREVER for things to be right), library run, grocery run and home for school-work, read-aloud, and playing time.

Lest you think I forgot the Blessed Mother in all this fun and frolicking, I didn't ... instead I whipped up a tasty treat that will be used often for Marian feasts (and there are many and since my name is "Mary", I claim 'em all). 

I call this treat "Cool Mint Pie" ... 

Ingredients:

• 1 chocolate cookie crust (I used an Oreo one but you could certainly make your own; make a graham cracker crust recipe, just substitute chocolate wafers or oreo cookies)
• 1 bottle of Smucker's Magic Shell (Chocolate Fudge)
• 1 16-oz container Cool Whip, thawed
• 1 cup Breyer's Chocolate Chip ice cream, softened
• 3 cup Breyer's Fat-free Vanilla ice cream (which is amazingly healthy AND tasty!), softened
• blue food coloring -- about 5 drops or more, depending on how blue you'd like it
• pure mint extract -- 1 tsp

Prep chocolate-cookie crust by spreading the Magic Shell (I used about half the bottle) on bottom and up sides of crust.  Place in freezer while mixing up the other ingredients.

Place whipped topping, ice creams, mint extract in a bowl and mix together completely. Add blue food coloring, a drop at a time, until the mixture is  a cool-blue shade (think toothpaste). 

Whip all together completely and pour into chilled crust.  Squirt remaining Magic Shell across top of pie -- I used just about the whole bottle on this, but you can certainly use less if you're not as into chocolate as we are!

Chill pie for at least 4 hours, or till solid.  Remove from freezer about 5 (if a WARM day like we had) or 10 minutes before serving and serve up slices. 

It is SOOOO good .... guess what I'm having for lunch today?

So Happy Birthday, Blessed Mother and please pray for us all!

 

 

Where should we go today?

The Beffi Triptych (early 15th century)

Well ... the PLAN was to go to the Diocesan Pilgrimage up at the National Shrine -- in honor of Our Lady Cause of Our Joy, getting there in plenty of time at attend Mass with our good Bishop Loverde.  We love going to the Shrine and Mass with the Bishop is always a delight.

However ... we didn't count on Saturday traffic on I95 -- it took over two hours for us to get into D.C. which would make us miss at least half of Mass!  Bummer. 

But, famous for making lemonade out of lemons, my dh suggested we make our own pilgrimage to the National Gallery of Art ... visiting the amazing (and quite varied) Marian art from the 14th to the 18th century.  We're talking Fra Lippi, Della Robbia ... gorgeous stuff.  We prayed the Rosary in the van, coming and going, and prayed especially for the intentions of Bishop Loverde.

In addition, there is a traveling exhibit, here until November 1st, that the boys have been wanting to see:  The Art of Power.  This exhibit has armor from 1500-1675 from Imperial Spain.  But more than just armor, the exhibit includes tapestries and paintings that link the real armor to other pieces of art.  It's hard to imagine the glorious art and craftsmanship in the armor, the skill of the metal-craftsman that could make the armor look like cloth!  Wow!

We were also able to get inches away from the Beffi Triptych on loan from Italy to the United States as a thank you for our helping when they had the horrible earthquakes in the Abruzzo region in April 2009. 

A quick trip to the Cascade Cafe in the basement (between the East and West Buildings) and our absolute FAVORITE lunch spot on the Mall ... and we were home in time to catch most of the Alabama/Ole Miss game ... and prep for the BIG game tonight Florida at LSU!

Life is good!