Cookathon

Today was an interesting day. We got to experience our first 'Cookathon' which is basically when we all gather together for a full day of cooking at St Patrick's.  Each of us cooked a different dish and cooked enough to make a few meals.  We cook everything from fresh and then freeze it so that we have some nice dishes for our lunch and dinner over the coming weeks.  Means a little less cooking everyday.  The meals that we have cooked are cottage pie, fish pie, Thai green chicken curry, tomato and coriander chicken, meatballs, roast veg, and some burgers and garlic bread as well as some cupcakes and rhubarb crumble.  Some of us have done some cooking before while as others have only been used to a little cooking for ourselves or not at all! Thankfully Della had kindly organised all our ingredients before we arrived and had our instructions written out on a page for us.



Philip, who lives at St Patrick's, also came along to help us. It was a great day and we had lots of fun and laughs.  Everything seems to have went well, except for the first lot of jam tarts which ended up in flames! We shall be nice and not name names but it wasn't us girls!

After the flames had been put out!

We are now very much looking forward to trying out our different dishes.  It will be nice to be able to say that we made them ourselves.



Open House Christmas Dinner

It's Christmas time!

Still smiling after all that cooking

There was no rest after the Advent Mission weekend for that Monday night was our all important Open House Christmas Dinner! While we had been busy evangelising over the weekend some of our amazing Open House cooks, volunteers and friends were slaving away cooking and preparing the community centre for a Christmas party to remember.





Loads of presents

After days of preparation the day finally arrived and the community centre looked great. A real Christmas tree with loads of decorations and underneath a mountain of presents for our guests. Each guest who joined us was given a present at the end of the night consisting of some of the necessities that we all need such as hats, gloves, scarf, toiletries and some sweets or chocolate. Our guests were delighted with their presents and very thankful.

While our guests enjoyed their traditional Christmas dinner they were entertained with some beautiful Christmas carols and some chitchat with the volunteers. It was lovely to see everyone in such good spirits. I think a great night was had by all.

Where have we been? What have we been doing?

Well in answer to the blog post title we have been plenty of places and doing plenty of things - except updating our blog!  Oops, sorry about that.  Now we shall fix that and bring you up to speed with all our goings on.  Hopefully over the next week we will get you all updated and back on track. 

Before Christmas we had our Advent Mission, the Open House Christmas Dinner, some community days out and a bit of fun.  We were off for 2 weeks over Christmas, much needed time for rest and relaxation.  We came back after Christmas refreshed and ready to go again - which is good since we haven't stopped since!!

Since Christmas we have had our Parish Christmas dinner, cookathon, our second assignment, and now a retreat.  Busy busy.  In the next few posts we will update about some of these events with some pictures also.

Thanksgiving

Last Thursday we were invited to join Anne and Dan, friends of SPES, to celebrate the American holiday of Thanksgiving at their home in Ascot. We were welcomed warmly into their beautiful home. A Carmelite priest from India, Father James, who is currently serving in a Parish in Florida, celebrated Mass for us in Anne and Dan’s private chapel. This was extra special because it really helped emphasize the true meaning of thankfulness which often gets lost in a secular society. So we ate the Bread of Life, and then we dug into some delicious traditional Thanksgiving food! It was a wonderful night with great food and great company. We are so thankful for Father James for celebrating Mass for us and joining us for dinner.  We are ever grateful for Dan and Anne for their hospitality and support to the school.

Pictures will follow shortly :)