Holy Saturday - Preparing for Easter!

We spent some time on Saturday preparing for Easter Sunday. We planned to go to Mass in the morning and then have my parents over for a big meal. First, we died eggs. Although I have four dozen eggs in my fridge, I still had to go buy a carton of white ones... our hens lay brown eggs, and I figured they wouldn't really dye very well!

Cecilia enjoyed watching and choosing which colors to put "her" eggs in.

Isn't it odd that in these dye kits, they always include 12 dye tablets, yet there are only 9 spots on the back of the package in which to set the eggs to dry?

Caroline dyeing her own six eggs on the other side of the table.

Waiting for the colors to darken...

And here they are! I thought it was funny that the kit included "teal, denim, and blue." But after pulling the eggs out, it was clear which color was which!

After dyeing eggs, we made resurrection rolls. This has become a tradition since this is the third or fourth year of doing it. I just make a basic whole wheat roll dough and then we use it to wrap around the marshmallows...

... the Wal-Mart brand marshmallows that had already been opened and were in the pantry for a couple months... and perhaps this is why they didn't melt down completely inside the dough as they typically do?

The marshmallows get dipped into melted butter and then cinnamon-sugar before being rolled up in the dough. The marshmallow represents Jesus, the butter and cinnamon sugar represent the burial cloth/spices, and the dough represents the tomb. When they are served for Easter Sunday breakfast, the rolls are hollow, just like the empty tomb!

Caroline dips a marshmallow.

Cecilia shows us how greasy her fingers are after handling the buttery marshmallows!

Now they wait until the next morning to find the "empty tomb!"

Good Friday

I have mentioned these wonderful Liturgical Teas before that Alice at Cottage Blessings has created and shared... we did one at Candlemas as a luncheon, and on Good Friday we did the second Lenten tea as our dinner menu. It is kind of snack-y and meatless and sweetless, so it works well as a Good Friday meal, heavy enough to be the main meal of the day yet not over-indulgent. You can see the link for all the scripture references and explanations.

I lifted the Mount of Olives from the first Lenten tea because my children are obsessed with olives, like any good Nadolski descendant (except you, Tim!). And it went well with the next item:

The King's Crown, referencing Pilate questioning Jesus if he was a King. I made ours with a mixture of cream cheese, sour cream, and taco seasoning as the base layer, then a layer of refried beans mixed with cilantro, followed by a tomato layer, and then topped with cheddar and Monterey jack cheeses. The tortilla chips form the points for the crown. Yummy!!

This is purple (boysenberry) fruit leather. It represents the purple cloak they put on Jesus when they were mocking him.

And here are mini Crowns of Thorns: round crackers, sunflower seed butter, and broken rod pretzels.

These look weird, and that is because they are made with our chickens' brown eggs rather than with white ones. They are Golgotha Eggs, for the "place of the skull" where Jesus was crucified. They would be much more representative of skulls if they were white, I realized after the fact!

The muffins were a simple recipe so as not to be like a treat: basic whole wheat muffins from the LLL cookbook. They have cloves and cinnamon in them, and a couple tablespoons of honey. I cut the tops off and hollowed them out to represent the tomb. Then the girls placed a bit of food in the tomb when we read about Jesus being laid in the tomb and covered it with the "stone," the muffin lid.

These tortillas are for Jesus's seamless garment topped with mozerella cubes for the dice, standing for when the soldiers cast lots to see who would win the garment.

We also had grape tomatoes (100 halves, from 50 tomatoes) to represent the centurion, and we had balsamic vinegar for the vinegar offered to Christ on the cross.

Chris read from our children's Bible as Caroline and Cecilia tried to identify the foods that stood for certain events. After dinner, we prayed the Stations of the Cross from this CD (it's still on sale!) as a family.

When we read about placing Jesus in the tomb and said that the girls could put a piece of food in their tomb muffins if they wanted to, we found that Cecilia tried to stuff all of her hard-boiled egg pieces into hers!

Here's Caroline finishing up her dinner (she had to have her photo taken as well after we took the one of Cecilia with all the egg in the muffin!).

Holy Week 2010

Here are a few things we did during Holy Week. This year, we made our very first family Paschal candle. This is the candle that is lit at Easter and then used throughout the year at Masses for baptisms. We will light ours throughout the fifty days of Easter and then maybe light it on special occasions throughout the rest of the year.

So here's how we made it: I bought a white pillar candle and was wondering what i could use to decorate it, not having any prior experience with candle-making... cutting shapes out of beeswax sheets? Too complicated for this year. Then my mother in law (who was with me when I bought it) suggested painting it. Perfect! The acrylic paints I have worked great!

There are really good Paschal candle-making instructions here and here... and I forgot to look at them again to refresh my memory. Traditionally, it would appear that the four numerals for the year are placed in each of the four quadrants formed by the cross, but we didn't do that... the Paschal candle at our church just has the year at the bottom like I made it on our candle.

Then we stuck five cloves in for the incense, in the shape of the cross. I got a great tip on how to do this: get a large metal paper clip hot and then poke the end into the candle, repeating until the hole is deep and wide enough for the clove to be inserted. Of course, I got this info too late, so mine are just stuck into shallow holes with superglue, and already one has fallen out. Next year...

Here's Caroline with the finished candle.

Holy Thursday is sometimes called Green Thursday, so we had a green dinner: spinach and chive fettuccine from Trader Joe's with pesto, and grilled asparagus. Easy!

We also continued with our Lent calendar, and we pasted a picture of the crucifixion on the calendar for Good Friday. A Good Friday post is coming up next!