Sunday, February 25, 2007

Our Lenten activities today..And the Loveliness of Baking!


Thomas and I are making pretzels.

From A Continual Feast ~ " The pretzel is a very ancient bakery item, which traditionally was eaten only during Lent. It appeared each year on Ash Wednesday and disapeared on Good Friday. It goes back at least to the fifth century: there is a Roman manuscript in the Vatican Library dating from that period which shows a Lenten pretzel. As to the shape: it is made in the form of two arms crossed in prayer. The word bracellae, 'little arms', became in German Bretzel, then Pretzel. These early Christians ate no dairy products in Lent, so the pretzel was made of only flour, salt, and water: it was as simple as it could be."

And Anthony and I are making a salt dough wreath for the Lenten table - a Crown of Thorns. Similar to our Advent Wreath.

Elizabeth shared her ideas on this at the 4 Real Learning Forum.

We are hopefully braiding three ropes of salt dough, forming them into a crown, adding toothpicks or similar for thorns, and then varnishing. On Easter Sunday, we will fill the crown with flowers.

This will be extra nice for our Easter Sunday, as that day we will be celebrating our wedding anniversary !

I'll try to post pics of our products later...

I realized, too, that this post fits in with the new Fair - the Loveliness of Baking.

I don't do a lot of baking but I do cook with my sons - mostly with Thomas and Anthony. Looking at our blog, I see that these have been some of our recent baking activities -

St Basil's Bread - recipe here.
Fruit Buns
Damper
Irish Soda Bread for the Feast of St Brigid
A picture of our home baked St Lucy's bread or crown...
Coconut Macaroons for the feast of St Thomas a Beckett
Cinnamon Crown Cake
Devil's Food Muffins - Feast of the Archangels

The Loveliness of Baking in our home is that a) it is rare and therefore special; b) it is often tied to the liturgical year and gives us a chance to remember the saints and the feasts, the Ordinary Time and Lent and Advent; c) it is a time for me to spend with one or two sons, doing an activity and chatting and laughing ( at our failures!); d) it passes for school work in my log!

Check out Cheryl's blog for the Loveliness of Baking Fair.

5 comments:

Karen Edmisten said...

Leonie,
We love to make homemade pretzels during Lent, too. Thanks for the recipe. It's just a little bit different from the one we use, and I'd like to try it. Lots of other great ideas, too!

Leonie said...

We ended up using whole wheat flour and adding sesame seeds to some....

Elena LaVictoire said...

I have that book but I never tried to make my own pretzels before. Maybe I'll give it a try now. Yours looked great!

Anonymous said...

These look great. I still need to make these sometime during Lent. I love sesame seed too.

Leonie said...

You'll love them, Ruth.