Thursday, June 14, 2007

New Cookbooks

Summer equals very busy around here. We have a lot of traveling planned. This weekend we will be going out of town to a wedding. My Feasting menu ideas will be scarce over the next couple of weeks, but I just bought two new cookbooks which I would highly recommend. They have planned menus for feasting occasions. They are A Return to Sunday Dinner and A Return to Family Picnics.They are great books. If you cannot do both at this time, then get the picnic book. The recipes are just special enough to make a great feast, but they call for simple ingredients which the entire family will enjoy. You can purchase them from Abondante Living. Let me know what you think.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Liturgy #2

So, in my last post I encouraged you to let the head of your home take the lead in the liturgy at your feasting. Today I would like to encourage you not to stress. So you try something and it seems awkward, than try something else. Your liturgy does not have to look like mine. Our best traditions just happened naturally. I will go through our liturgy.It has taken two years for it to come together for us and sometimes it is hard. Sometimes we have grumpy disobedient children and it is a chore to just get through the meal. Other times we have an exhausted mother who would rather climb in bed by 7. SO, realize it will not always be easy, but the reward of starting the tradition and developing a love of the Sabbath in your home is well worth the work involved. So, our night goes something like this (it is subject to change on occasion)My husband reads the scripture text for our sermon the next day. Our pastor emails worship notes on Thursday of every week. He then does a Lord's Day Catechism question from the Heidelberg Catechism, then he gives a toast. I suspect as Our children get older, we will discuss the sermon topic and opinions on it as we eat dinner. After dinner we just do something fun with the children. Anywhere from game night to playing outside to going out for ice cream or a game of miniature golf. After everyone is bathed and ready for bed we do a family worship time. It is a little different from our week day worship times. We use the week to train for Sunday worship. This means sometimes discipline can occur if a child refuses to participate, sit still, or remain quiet at the appropriate times. On Saturday we are a little more laid back. The children prepare presentations of different things we are working on memorizing. They like to be creative and silly with it. We let them have fun. They love doing it American Idol style. Bruce and I will then have fun giving our opinion. They have never actually seen the show, so maybe it is Bruce and I that have the most fun with this:) Remember I have young children, as they get older things will change. Isaac already looks at us as though we are nuts sometimes. But, because it is a tradition that he is used to, he enjoys watching his younger siblings have fun. Bruce has started to include Isaac more in the Scripture reading and some of the other leadership aspects of Sabbath feasting. As Sarah grows I will include her in more of the planning and cooking. We like the idea of Bruce speaking a blessing over everyone, we have just not done it yet. Our church does a Psalm of the month. We have talked of singing that at the table before we eat. I would love to hear what others are doing. It is always fun to share ideas.