Ascension Thursday

 

As I have been reading through my journal again, I have rediscovered that many of my best and favorite stories and pictures are from May and June. The feast of the Ascension is one (not a lot of story, but quite a few pictures). 

The evening before the feast, Canon Sigros wrote the feast day schedule on the board. It was kind of a combination of a Sunday (10 a.m. Mass, then lunch on the terrace) and Thursday (Adoration), while being very much a day of its own.

Additionally, he printed the day's menu and the "functions liturgiques": a list of everyone involved in the liturgy, and what each one's role was. To my great amusement, my very Scotch-Irish name made it in:

I think Canon was taking cue from how they do things at the Institute seminary, and wanted to have some fun. He did plan a very festive lunch for after Mass. Alas, he had bought a bottle of Malibu rum and wanted us to make a cake from it, but we didn't have any eggs at that point. So we had ice cream.

A big thing for lunch, though, was the poulet au bière. Canon had given Martha a recipe, which we got started on before Mass in the morning. 

What is poulet au bière, you ask? Follow the picutres. I had the recipe myself at one point but have since lost it. I do know we had to adapt it a bit: we didn't have any creme fraiche, not enough honey, and where the recipe called for chicken legs, we only had breasts. But it turned out well. 

Chicken and onions (that's rice in the other pot, of course)

Herbs and pepper

Mushrooms

Mustard

And BEER!

I don't remember quite how the whole thing came together. But it did, and we then left it and went to Mass. 

As for all the feasts, the altar was very decorous. 

After Mass was aperitif, then a three course dinner. Where in English we use the word entree to mean the main dish, in French, they have an entrée (some little starter dish) before the plat principal (main dish). Our entree was terrine de sanglier, which translates to something like wild boar pâté.

Canon had gotten several jars, presumably somewhere in town (we did not kill any boars ourselves); we had it with bread and cornichons, mini sweet pickles, and wow, was it good!

Then was the long-anticipated poulet au bière, served on yellow rice. 

 Poulet au bière is translated "chicken with beer"; our question was, does that mean chicken cooked with beer, or chicken eaten while drinking beer?

Then answer was yes:

It was lots of fun and the chicken tasted very good. I think I came to almost every, if not every, meal with a very good appetite and enjoyed nearly everything. 

A bit after lunch, we had Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for a few hours since it was Thursday. After my Holy Hour, I decided to go spend some time practicing on the keyboard in the big chapel. To this day, I don't remember why I took my phone with me. In any case, when I was done practicing, I was trying to close the chapel doors while holding my phone (the doors were open, but the bolt on the lock was sticking out). My phone fell face down on the concrete; my first reaction was, "That's why I have an indestructible phone case!" Then I realized that the case on the back wasn't going to do anything for the screen. I picked it up -- the screen was shattered. I was very fortunate, though, that it never stopped working and its functioning was entirely unaltered. 

Dinner was a simple affair in the refrectory, then I would guess we cleaned up and went to bed -- my journal doesn't speak of anything after dinner. So one more beautiful feast day came to a close, one in a string of feasts that would occur before I left.