Eating & Drinking Liturgically: Getting Started
By Sarah White,
Beginning to eat and drink liturgically can be really intimidating. The options to choose from are available, literally, daily, so it’s something you may feel inclined to jump into immediately. And it’s something that people refer to very vaguely––“oh yes, we have frequent meals planned alongside the liturgical calendar year-round”––without ever giving away how they began this way of cooking and eating.
As a family, we do not always have weekly or even monthly meals planned out to celebrate the saints and feast days. It ebbs and flows. Some months, I look ahead and write days down in my planner, and other months…well they go on by! I am still getting the hang of consistency. What initially inspired me was all the fun you can have throughout the entire year with the different celebratory meals, but what has kept me going is the beauty that lies within the Catholic calendar.
So, whether you just joined the Church this past Easter or you’ve been Catholic for over a decade, whether you have friends over for dinner or little babes running around the house, you can make liturgical eating something fun for yourself and the people in your life. If you have no idea what the liturgical calendar even consists of, this is still something for you and your family. Eating and drinking liturgically allows you to bring more of your faith into your home beyond Sunday Mass. There is no age range, bar to reach, or expectation to uphold––one of the many beauties of liturgical living is that you get to make it your own.
A big help to getting started is cookbooks. Oh, the beloved cookbooks. My go-to stack includes The Catholic All Year Compendium, The Vatican Christmas Cookbook, Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, Drinking With The Saints, and Cooking With The Saints. Below are three other tips that gave me the courage to start living more liturgically in our kitchen and also the freedom to learn as I go.
1. Start small, start basic: If you are a confirmed Catholic, you have a confirmation saint. When is their feast day? Mark your calendar this year to celebrate it with a special meal dedicated to that saint. Or simply choose a saint you really like. Do the same for your spouse and any children, or invite some friends to do this with you.
Start fasting from meat every Friday (something done during Lent, but also year-round by some Catholics) and put more of a focus on the Sunday dinner as a feast, to celebrate the heavenly banquet you get to partake in during Mass. It adds some rhythm to your week and, at least for me, helps me to stay more present day to day.
2. Plan ahead: Maybe that’s one or two weeks ahead or, if you’re a super-planner, a whole month ahead. But, whenever you make your grocery list, check the liturgical calendar first. See what feast days or seasons are coming up and if your grocery list could be tailored to help celebrate these liturgical times.
You don’t have to plan out the entire Lenten or Advent season all at once, it’s whatever works best for you and your schedule! For me, planning for the month ahead is most helpful. Not because I’m a super-planner but because my husband’s work schedule is set one month in advance, so I just do it all at the same time.
3. Don’t do it alone: Meals are supposed to be shared, always. Invite friends or family into this experience! Make it a group effort. It is so helpful to have other people reminding you it’s Friday, or that a particular saint day is coming up, or that next month is full of some really cool saint days.
In the spirit of sharing the Gospel, include those who aren’t Catholic. The liturgical preparation behind the meal may be more understood by your Catholic friends, but don’t let that hold you back from sharing feast days with your secular friends. At the end of the day, people love sharing meals together. Holidays like Christmas, Easter, or Saint Patrick’s Day are great places to start. Regardless of one’s religion, people enjoy gathering around the table to celebrate together. And there is, in my opinion, no better way to spread the Gospel than through how you live your life in your home.
Recipes
Saint Patrick, March 17
Saint Patrick was the apostle of Ireland in the early 400s. At the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped and sold into slavery, and for six years was a shepard. It was during this time that he converted to Christianity and began praying. He was ordained a priest after he escaped, and, before his death, baptized thousands of people, ordained many priests, and aided several women as they entered into religious life.
Today, his life is celebrated by millions of people around the world by wearing green and drinking a Guiness. Although his life was much deeper than a mere beer could ever commemorate, it’s a fun day to remember his sainthood and his widespread evangelization. To celebrate his life and his impact on Ireland, you can make a celebratory drink or traditional cottage pie:
Irish Ale Cocktail
2 oz. Irish whiskey
3 oz. Ginger beer
3 lime wedges
Combine whiskey and ginger beer, shake with ice, and pour into a glass.
Add lime wedges.
*To make this non-alcoholic, simply omit the whiskey and drink the ginger beer with some lime wedges.
Cottage Pie
(similar to a Shepherd's Pie, but uses lamb in place of ground beef)
Ultimately, there are going to be a ton of leftovers, so invite friends over to help you eat it. Set some aside for that couple that just had a baby, or your friends who have had a tough week. Share the wealth, and offer up a prayer to Saint Patrick to intercede in spreading the joy of the faith within your circle. There are many different recipes for Cottage Pie, and all tend to be rather lengthy (but not too intimidating to actually execute!), so I’ve included links to a few of my favorite versions below.
Here is a vegetarian recipe (in case you gave up meat entirely for Lent!) by one of my husband’s favorite chefs, Jamie Oliver
Here is a meat-full recipe by one of my favorite chefs, Chris Morocco
Here is another version of the recipe from a wonderful UK chef, Gordon Ramsay
Saint Joseph, March 19
Especially in this year dedicated to the foster father of Jesus Christ, the protector of the Holy Family, and the patron saint of the Catholic Church, March 19th is certainly a day worth celebrating. In Cooking With The Saints, there is an entire five-course meal dedicated to him. You can celebrate his sainthood and his patronage with a prayer to him, a prayer for all fathers and protectors of families, and a prayer for personal growth in patience, which is a virtue we can look to him for. One of the courses is the must-have pastry:
St. Joseph’s Day Fritters
2 ¼ whole milk
1 cup short grain rice
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons pine nuts
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons golden raisins
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Grated zest of 1 large orange
Vegetable oil for deep frying
Confectioner’s sugar for sprinkling
Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the rice, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Cook until the rice is cooked through (about 30 minutes). Cool the rice for a couple hours, or overnight.
Toast the pine nuts in a skillet in oil over medium-low heat until they start to turn golden brown. Remove them from the heat, and set them aside to cool. Mix the rice with the eggs, raisins, pine nuts, flour, baking powder and orange zest.
Heat the oil to 375 degrees for deep-frying. Drop 1 tablespoon of the mixture at a time into the oil and fry until golden brown. (You can cook multiple fritters at a time, just keep them apart so they don’t stick to one another.)
Let them drain on paper towels, sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar, and serve!
