Catholics In The Kitchen

"Know that even when you are in the kitchen, God moves amidst the pots and pans." --St. Teresa of Avila For over two thousand years, Catholics have been at the heart of the culinary arts. Perhaps this should come as no surprise considering the sacred feast of the Eucharist gives life to our faith. From this foretaste of the heavenly banquet, we return to our domestic churches to gather around the dinner table, where families share joy, laughter, and love. Yet as with so many other arenas of life, our relationship with food has become compromised, cheapened, unhealthy, and robbed of its wholesomeness and purpose. As we slip more and more into moral poverty, we lose the sacramental nature of eating and the sense of community that comes from a good meal. The individuals featured in this work have spent a lifetime trying to turn back the tide of this downward spiral. They are farmers, ranchers, chefs, cooks, professors, authors, moms, dads, grandparents, priests. They have appeared on the Food Network, EWTN, and the Catholic Faith Network. They come from different regions--from Colorado to rural Virginia to the Louisiana Bayou--and from difficult cultures--Latino, Polish, Lebanese, Italian, Irish. It is a wide pallet of humanity. And yet, the one ingredient found in all of them is the Catholic faith. Their faith journeys are as myriad as their backgrounds and favorite dishes, but each of them call Holy Mother Church home. This cookbook shares an eclectic assortment of dishes, from Chicken Creole to Oyster Gumbo, from Fizzy Tea to Resurrection Rolls, from Butternut Squash Soup to Polish Cream Cake, and more. But it also shares stories of faith from ordinary people striving for heaven. Readers, then, will find in this collection nourishment for their bodies and their souls.

With just a few ingredients and a few hours of time, your kitchen can become the perfect setting not only for a delicious meal but for experiencing the greatest blessings in life. In Grace Before Meals: Recipes and Inspiration for Family Meals and Family Life, Father Leo Patalinghug (yes, the same Father Leo who defeated Bobby Flay on Throwdown!) helps you make family meals a way of life. Combining more than 30 simple but delicious recipes related to personal milestones, family holidays, and faith observances, along with scriptural references and short essays offering wisdom on faith, values, and family togetherness, Father Leo shows that mealtime is the perfect setting for discussing the major issues all families face. In fact, research shows that frequent family dinners can reduce many risks facing children, including drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, depression, eating disorders, and poor academic performance. These are meals that nourish body and spirit.

This is a new edition of Herald Press's all-time best-selling cookbook, helping thousands of families establish a climate of joy and concern for others at mealtime. The late author's introductory chapters have been edited and revised for today's cooks. Statistics and nutritional information have been updated to reflect current American and Canadian eating habits, health issues, and diet guidelines. The new U.S. food chart "My Plate" was slipped in at the last minute and placed alongside Canada's Food Guide. But the message has changed little from the one that Doris Janzen Longacre promoted in 1976, when the first edition of this cookbook was released. In many ways she was ahead of her time in advocating for people to eat more whole grains and more vegetables and fruits, with less meat, saturated fat, and sugars. This book is part of the World Community Cookbook series that is published in cooperation with Mennonite Central Committee, a worldwide ministry of relief, development, and peace. "Mennonites are widely recognized as good cooks. But Mennonites are also a people who care about the world’s hungry."—Doris Janzen Longacre

J ill Ker Conway, one of our most admired autobiographers--author of The Road from Coorain and True North--looks astutely and with feeling into the modern memoir: the forms and styles it assumes, and the strikingly different ways in which men and women respectively tend to understand and present their lives. In a narrative rich with evocations of memoirists over the centuries--from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and George Sand to W. E. B. Du Bois, Virginia Woolf, Frank McCourt and Katharine Graham--the author suggests why it is that we are so drawn to the reading of autobiography, and she illuminates the cultural assumptions behind the ways in which we talk about ourselves. Conway traces the narrative patterns typically found in autobiographies by men to the tale of the classical Greek hero and his epic journey of adventure. She shows how this configuration evolved, in memoirs, into the passionate romantic struggling against the conventions of society, into the frontier hero battling the wilderness, into self-made men overcoming economic obstacles to create an invention or a fortune--or, more recently, into a quest for meaning, for an understandable past, for an ethnic identity. In contrast, she sees the designs that women commonly employ for their memoirs as evolving from the writings of the mystics--such as Dame Julian of Norwich or St. Teresa of Avila--about their relationship with an all-powerful God. As against the male autobiographer's expectation of power over his fate, we see the woman memoirist again and again believing that she lacks command of her destiny, and tending to censor her own story. Throughout, Conway underlines the memoir's magic quality of allowing us to enter another human being's life and mind--and how this experience enlarges and instructs our own lives.

A native of Italy and a splendid cook herself, Mazzoni savors the food writings and images of a broad spectrum of Catholic saints and holy women, including Catherine of Genoa, Angela of Foligno, Gemma Galgani, and the first person in the United States to be canonized, Elisabeth Ann Seton. Continuum Books

Food meets faith in the Holy Land! Jeff Young, better known as The Catholic Foodie, takes readers along on his recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land for a unique and savory experience of both faith and food. In addition to 60 original recipes, he includes stories about the history of Middle Eastern cuisine and the faith experiences you can only have in the kitchen and around the table.

Sample a delectable discourse of Faith with this collection of Catholic culinary creations and customs.