You might be wondering, what is our favorite day of the week?
My favorite day of the week is Sunday. Sunday begins with prayer, and then with getting the kids out of bed and into their “Jesus’ house clothes” and then hustled into the car in time to go to Mass.
After Mass, maybe we will join our friends in the parish hall for coffee hour. Or maybe we come home and have coffee hour at home.
Coffee hour, you say? Do you mean tea?
Ever since Ellie got her Redwall Cookbook for Christmas, she has been getting more and more into cooking and baking. One of her signatures is Redwall Abbey Tea Scones.
Another of her signatures is never letting the camera take a picture of her normal face.
Although this is actually a pretty normal Ellie face.
As she has gotten more practice, she has become more and more independent and ambitious with her cooking.
Last Sunday she made almost an entire family tea by herself (Daddy fried the sausages. Other than that she made everything else.
This is one of the best things about Sunday. We don’t have to go anywhere new or make money to buy things, so we can take the time to enjoy the place we already are and the things we already have.
Cooking during the week is usually a race. On Sundays, we cook as much or as little as we feel like, and it takes as long as it takes. If we want to spend all afternoon perfecting jelly cookies, we can do that.
I know everyone around here talks about “Fair Scones” but as a non-native of the area, I wonder if that is really just nostalgia talking? They aren’t really that special, pretty generic, and this year they were $30/dozen. You could buy a box of the mix and make them at home in 5 minutes for a third the price. Or you could make your own from scratch, infinitely customizable, for a 6th of the price or less, and it wouldn’t take that much longer.
And what if it did take all day to perfect the making of a scone, that is going to be eaten in five minutes by an ungrateful horde of small people? Is that any different than God spending millennia to prepare a planet that will be trashed in 5 minutes (cosmically speaking) by a horde of ungrateful humans?
She is perfecting her soon-to-be-famous icy glare (a la Sister Alkinett from Taggerung).
Her ambitions grow every time she is allowed to bake or cook. She wants to cook a Redwall feast for her birthday.
And she wants to build Redwall Abbey when she grows up.
More power to her.
And what were Mommy and Daddy doing the whole time Ellie was preparing a delightful afternoon tea?
Daddy made a rich squash pie.
And then sat outside reading and getting worked up into a righteous indignation over the usury and oppression based western economic system.
Mommy was cutting out patterns and pieces for Halloween costumes.
To each their own.
Have a wonderful Sunday! (From Eleanor Songbreeze Cornflower, future Mother Abbess of Redwall Abbey).
Little Farm in the Big City 