Today’s guest post comes from one of my good friends. She’s a pharmacist, and also a very healthy eater. She saw the lasagna recipe I posted last week and wanted us all to consider a healthier version. Thanks to her, we now have a terrific and tasty option. 🙂 Her sharing continues now…
Category: Italy
I was in the public library the other day, and as I walked past a display of fall cookbooks, one caught my eye.
Entitled An Everlasting Meal, it was the subtitle which led me to pick it up: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Wow, if I could just master that. 🙂
A few days after Christmas, some of my family came together again for a simple dinner.
My mom had asked Deirdre, my brother’s wife, to make this tart, which she found in The Tuscan Sun Cookbook by Frances Mayes. Dierdre did a superb job, and the tart tasted as good as it looks 🙂 I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did. Grazie mille, Deirdre!
Ah, olive oil. Years ago, I took a group of young people over to Italy. For months afterwards, a group of them and I would sit around doing a Bible study, all the while dipping pieces of bread into a mixture of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Heavenly.
Over the years, I’ve grown to love olive oil, and have tried many different types.
This is a shot of my mom and sister on their last visit to Maryland a few years ago. I’ve had the chance to take mom to Assateague Island to see the famous wild ponies a couple of times, and that’s where this photo was taken.
Gabriel’s Message
If you were in a Catholic Church today, you heard the story of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), where the Angel Gabriel told Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus.
Talking about a whopper of a conversation! In the end, however, Mary’s yes set the stage for an event that would radically change the world forever.
Earlier today, I was reminded of the song Gabriel’s Message, sung by Sting for a Christmas album several years ago. Unfortunately, my favorite image of the Annunciation (this one above), painted by Fra Angelico and residing in the Diocesan Museum in Cortona, Italy, wasn’t used in this video clip below.
Emmanuel is one of the most profound titles of Jesus. The Hebrew word means God is with us. When St. Francis of Assisi set up the first Nativity scene, he wanted to show simple, uneducated people that God chose to come down from heaven and be like us in all things but sin.
Following in the footsteps of St. Francis, people all over the world bring out their own nativity sets each year, but for many, the little scene is just another Christmas decoration, its real meaning obscured amongst all the other decorations.
The Devil Is Always Around
You probably didn’t pick up on this today. Most people wouldn’t, but since I love Italian art, the news story caught my eye. It seems as though an art historian recently found an image of a demon hanging out in a fresco painted by Giotto in the 13th century (middle part of the cloud on the right. Look for the hooked nose).
The image above is from Reuters. The scene is from a cycle of frescos in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.