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!

Celebrating the Feast of the Archangels

Today is the Feast of the Archangels, or Michaelmas as it is also called, as it used to be only St. Michael who was honored on this day. The Church calendar now celebrates all the archangels on this date. The girls helped me make an angel food cake yesterday (well, they mostly watched... separating 12 eggs is not exactly kid-friendly work!), and today, we whipped some cream (using agave nectar - I love that stuff!) and assembled a trifle.

Legend says that when St. Michael kicked the devil out of heaven, he fell into a prickly blackberry bush and then cursed the blackberries, so it is traditional to eat the last of the season's blackberries on this day... before they become cursed by the devil. I happened to see fresh blackberries at Sam's, so I got a package and then had to decide what to do with them for this feast day! I had seen the suggestion of making an angel food cake trifle for an angel-themed dessert, and thought I'd just use the blackberries. So, we have the angel part covered with the cake, the whipped cream looks like clouds (evoking thoughts of heaven and angels), and the blackberry folklore - all in one recipe!! I took the agave whipped cream recipe and the whole wheat angel food cake recipes from two different places and then threw them together with the blackberries. It was yummy!!

I don't have a trifle bowl (yes, there is actually such thing as a container specified for trifles!), so i used the biggest semi-clear bowl we have. Caroline and Cecilia's biggest contribution was tearing up the angel food cake (which had gotten stuck and torn partway in half already) and putting it into the bowl... and licking the beaters after I whipped the cream, of course! Caroline liked sprinkling the berries in, while Cecilia just fussed that she couldn't eat all of them.

I cannot remember now where i found this pattern, but we used it to make archangel puppets. I traced the outline onto white cardstock and let Caroline decorate it however she wanted. Then I cut out the angel part while she cut out the wings - she is getting to be really steady with the scissors! She named her archangel Michael.

He is a very colorful archangel! :)

I figured Cecilia would want to get in on the coloring action, so I made one for her as well. I colored part of it and she colored the rest. Caroline named it Gabriel, and said that next year we'd have to make a Raphael.

Here are their angels "flying." Caroline wanted to take them outside in the afternoon to run and swing with them in the wonderful fall breeze that we had today! We spent a lot of time outside today on our first day that has really felt like autumn!