Sunday French Toast Casserole This tasty casserole is our family’s favorite way to use up old bread and avoid food waste. Hot dog buns to artisanal sourdough, it all gets chopped up and tossed into the dish! The casserole can be made ahead and stored in the fridge...
Chicken Tortellini Delivery Casserole In honor of the example given to us by Our Lady in the Visitation, I always try to take this day to prepare a meal or two for friends who are pregnant, have a new baby, or are experiencing hardship of some kind. I make a...
Crème Brûlée (aka Trinity Cream) It’s probably my favorite dessert, so any excuse for crème brûlée is a good one in my book. The feast day of any French saint will do, but somehow the torching part makes it seem perfect for Saint Joan. Also, the fact that multiple...
Croque Madame (Crispy Lady) Sandwiches The “croque madame” is a French grilled cheese sandwich with ham inside and a fried egg on top. Sounds odd, but it’s SO good. It was my very favorite meal on our pilgrimage to Lourdes a few years back. THEN I realized that the...
Alvaro del Portillo Cake Shakes The husband was raised in Chicago, and our family spent a couple years living there. Portillo's Hot Dogs is a popular local restaurant chain famous for hot dogs, beef sandwiches, and . . . cake shakes. This is—yes—a milkshake into which...
Full Immersion Cheese Fondue Also works for pouring and sprinkling. Because the Baptism of the Lord is almost always observed on a Sunday, we like to invite our kids’ godparents to join us for dinner. They are spread out all over the country (and there are a lot of...
Hey remember long rambling blog posts? Those were my JAM, y'all, back in the good old days of blogging. Let's go old school. But, because I know your attention span isn't what it used to be, here's what we're going to talk about. Feel free to scroll to what interests...
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We are on a family vacation in a cabin at Lake Arrowhead, CA and it's been so fun. Also very cold and windy, but you can't beat a hot drink and a cozy fire after a chilly adventure! Note: Jack made it in time for...
I am a generally last minute person, but the one thing I try to get done ahead of time each year is Christmas shopping. Getting the shopping out of the way before Advent means I can concentrate on devotions and crafts and baking and family activities during Advent...
A few Liturgical Living Box Subscriptions are now available, as well as limited edition Tenebrae Hearse Candelabras in two styles, new Easter/Paschal Candles, and other items from the Lent and Triduum Boxes. More info at the bottom! The Feast of St Joseph is coming up...
It's been a while you guys, since I last typey typed up a blog post. But I've had a lot in the works for you guys. First things first . . . A new book! You will probably not be surprised that I wrote another book. (There are more in the pipeline too!) But you MIGHT be...
People seem to believe that cell phone use is this new, unprecedented behavior about which there are no established customs that could govern our conduct. George Washington and I beg to differ. The technology might be different, but human desires remain pretty...
I've had something on my mind for a while, and as today is the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, I figured I'd finally sit down and type it up. I'm generally a social media apologist. The Catholic mommy blog little pond of the internet (which is also peopled with...
Lent . . . is coming. Finally. It's super late this year. Almost as late as it can possibly be. The latest since 2000 and the latest until 2030 when Easter will be on April 23 again. In 2038 it will be on April 25th, the latest possible Easter! I might be the only...
The Catholic All March booklets, plus a bunch of new printables for Lent, are available now in the shop and on Amazon. More details below. 👇 Ash Wednesday is coming up in less than two weeks! (It's super late this year.) The actual REQUIREMENTS of Catholics...
Coming up next weekend, we have two feast days that I love for the sheer weird-old-Catholic-ness of them: Candlemas and St. Blaise. Candlemas, which occurs 40 days after Christmas on February 2nd, celebrates the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. This was the day...
Hey guys! The Catholic All February prayer/devotion booklets are done! (These are companion books to the Compendium, with all the prayers, blessings, devotions, and Bible readings I recommend for the month all in one easy-to-use spot.) Check it out as a printable pdf...
Happy New Year! I got this mailbag question and typed up the response a couple weeks ago, emailed my reply to the questioner, and set the post to publish today. And then I got to thinking . . . and I ended up spending every spare moment I had since then creating the...
Happy New Year's Eve! New Year's Day, aka the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God is coming up tomorrow, and is a holyday of obligation in many countries, including the US and Canada, so get thee to Mass! The next major feast day after that is Epiphany, one of our...
We're facing a family challenge, and I'd love to have your prayers, and for you to know why I might not be around the blog as much as I had hoped to be. But then again maybe I will, I just don't know. Please click here to read the explanation. And thank you for...
We are safe and sound, as is our home. It's never even been smokey here, despite us being just a few miles away from multiple raging wildfires. The Thomas Fire has been burning for ten days now. It's named for Thomas Aquinas College, and began near there. The campus...
