Celebrating the Feast of the Archangels!

Last Wednesday was the Feast of the Archangels. On the old calendar, they each had a different date, but now they are all combined and remembered on September 29, which was formerly just the feast day of the Archangel Michael. I read somewhere that it is traditional (in some country) to eat waffles on this day. So, we mixed up our make-ahead waffle batter and stuck it in the fridge the night before. I love when feast days make meal planning easy... I don't have to think that way! ;)

We topped the waffles with blackberry topping, which I made by boiling frozen blackberries in a bit of water with a squeeze or two of honey. Blackberries are no good to eat after this date each year, according to legend. The reason is because the devil landed in a blackberry bush when St. Michael tossed him out of heaven, and then he spit on the fruit. Well, our blackberries were frozen and thus avoided devil saliva, but the legend is fun, anyway. ;) We also had blackberry Kashi breakfast bars as a snack later in the day!

We also had some whipping cream which I had purchased for some other recipe that never materialized... so I whipped it up just for fun so we could go all-out with our waffles. Usually it is just waffles with a bit of butter... I also give the girls plain yogurt and applesauce to dip them in, and sometimes maple syrup. Caroline always eats a ton of waffles, blackberry topping and whipped cream or not. I think she ate SIX of them on this morning!

Caroline colored this picture of the Archangels... I wanted to do an angel craft of some sort too, but we didn't get to it what with cupcake-baking and getting ready to go out of town the next day.

Here is Caroline's coloring page of the Archangels... and a drawing she did of them as well. You can see their initials written beside each one for identification purposes! God is the huge one in the middle with the curly hair (I guess that is what that is! ;).

An oh-so-flattering picture of the girls helping to make the cupcake batter. We made devil's food cake cupcakes from the King Arthur whole grains baking cookbook.

Here is dinner, a wonderful suggestion made by others in Catholic Mom Blog-land (because again, I don't have to think about it and can reuse it each year): angel hair pasta (no explanation necessary, right?), steamed carrots (Rafael is the patron of eyesight), and apple chicken (harvest of apples associated with this time of year).

I quickly printed off a few images of St. Michael defeating the devil and taped toothpicks to the backs so they'd stand up in the cupcakes...

...and then the girls reenacted St. Michael's defeat of the devil using cocktail swords! This time, Cecilia did not injure her mouth on the swords. Learning from natural consequences at work. ;)

Here they are with their swords in the "devil" cupcakes

The cupcakes were enjoyed by all - yum! We also took a few over to our elderly next door neighbor who we hadn't seen in awhile. I had high hopes to turn a couple of them into lion cupcakes the next day, but it literally took me all morning to pack, and we headed on our trip in the early afternoon. How did it take me less time to pack for a week at the beach than it did to pack for this trip?? We didn't even take much!

So, no celebrating for St. Therese and the Guardian Angels since we were out of town for both of their feast days... so we did as much as we could for the Archangels instead!