You wonder if there was a moment when someone shouted "Divine inspiration!" as the production staff sat around in the scrubbed little studios of Salt+Light Television watching the playback of the pilot segment of Cooking with Saints.
The set: a kitchen — with stained-glass windows.
The culinary celebrant: Roberto Martella of Toronto’s Grano restaurant — a made-for-television natural, effusively lecturing on the risks posed by globalization to traditional food while preparing tagliatelle Frassati with Piemontese mushroom sauce from a recipe divined by the Blessed Giorgio Frassati himself.
The homilist and creator of the show (and just about everything else on Salt+Light): station CEO Father Thomas Rosica, whose vocation in the priesthood denied God knows how many other professions of a luminary (what he could have done with mutual funds can only be imagined), patting the corners of his mouth with a starched white napkin before reading from the Blessed Frassati’s writings.
Toronto-based Salt+Light went national this week, bouncing brassily into the digital universe as the reincarnation of the Inner Peace Television Network.
Think of the Roman Catholic Church with nose-studs, and you more or less get the programming rhythm: pop music, news, documentaries, talk shows, meditations, moral and theological instruction, films with a religious message and saint-food. All with a beat. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. All Catholic. [Source]
Maybe after Cooking with the saints they can do some biography’s called "Cooking the saints." St. Lawrence who was tied to a grill over a slow fire to be roasted famously said "turn me over." Don’t tell me the church doesn’t have a sense of humor since St. Lawrence is also the patron saint of cooks.
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That Fat Lady who died recently-ish used to put wee stories of the saints into her cookbooks, apparently: though since I can burn pasta I’ve never bothered to look into one of them.
http://www.aarons-books.co.uk/p/enjoy-a-celebration-of-jennifer-paterson-0747266336.html
Salt and Light is doing a documentary on Marshall Mcluhan. They heard somewhere that he liked the Tridentine Mass but since the Canadian Catholics don’t know what that is anymore, they decided they needed to show pictures, (words, generally being too hard for them,) so they sent a guy ’round to our parish to video tape the Mass. I pulled my mantilla waaay down over my face every time the wretched fellow pointed his camera at me. I think the poor little Salt and Light kiddies are going to get the impression that Trads are all rather mean looking, everyone was glaring at the camera guy. Thank goodness he didn’t film us receiving Holy Communion. I was considering going up to him and suggesting he place that camera in some place where it would be impolite to mention. After having been turned into the subjects in a nature documentary, we consoled ourselves at Teaandsnacks with the fact that Salt n’ Life is a flop and no one watches it anyway.
Ive never heard of this Salt+Light Television. It sounds interesting but that’s prolly cus I’m bored.
Mantillas. I mean, they stay on very comfortably, but they don’t really go down well at one’s NO parish (well, maybe they do, but I feel a right prune). We need to move on. Humungous pink tulle things. Flowerpot hats. Big silver fox fur or sheepskin Russian-Bond-girl numbers. Little flower-power head scarves. Big full-of-Eastern-promise (Turkish delight advert) scarves. Heavy sort of knitted cotton numbers that drape nicely. Gothy funereal black long things.
I would wear a nose-stud but I don’t have the nose for it, sadly. Hats and scarves, though: soooooo much space for improvement over the boring old mantilla. And none of this tea-towel sort of thing. And if a mantilla: then not those little plastic ones, purleeaase, but big silver Spanish lace ones. Vintage clothing shops are great for this kind of thing.
The poor old angels have probably had black lace-effect stuff up to HERE!
I remember being at daily Mass on St. Lawrence’s feast day earlier this year, and hearing the famous story of “turn me over.” The Church does indeed have a sense of humor. I did not realize he was the patron saint of cooks.
Lawrence is not the only saint of cooks. San Pasqual is also the saint of cooks and of the kitchen and has overseen my kitchen all my life.
I confess that I detest mantillas. They’re always slipping off sideways or backwards, and anyway women my age have generally met one too many weirdos who have a veil fetish and interesting views about obedience. When we attend the Tridentine Mass here, I either go without, or wear a men’s cotton porkpie hat with a grosgrain band. Think Henry on M.A.S.H., but mine doesn’t have spare fishing lures jabbed through it.
I thnk if you are going to wear a Henry Hat, you ought to get the fishing hooks. My mantilla is a really big one with long lappet thingies so when it slides sideways I just tug discreetly on the thingies hanging down over both shoulders to straighen it out. There are a lot of Philippina ladies who wear various kinds of head coverings but they don’t seem to know what they are for as they generally whip them off as soon as the priest has left the sanctuary. Not many Philippinas at the Trid Mass either. One lady at the Trid offered to give me one of those long pearl-topped pins to secure it, but my hair is very straight and it wouldn’t work. Besides, one of the fathers mentioned to me that he knows when his sermon is boring when I start fiddling with my head-thing. He said he knows it’s time to wrap it up when I pull it down over my eyes and start pretending not to be reading the commentary in the missal. All very bad behavior.
Oh, I don’t want to put anyone else off mantillas, only describing why they give me the creeps. Take a word of advice from an older woman, however: when a man tells you, “I really like your veil,” proceed with extreme caution. He may be all right, but he may not. Lace veils are one of those things, like long hair or black skirts or dangle earrings, which, although perfectly proper and admirable in themselves, nevertheless have the undesirable effect of triggering a powerful response in oddballs.
I personally like the headcoverings that the Chassidic (and other Orthodox Jewish) women wear. I have a lovely crocheted headcovering that was a gift to me from a client in the Eugene OR Chassidic community.
Berets are also nice.
As much as I love mantillas, they slide off my head way too easily even when firmly pinned. The only time I was able to keep on one through an entire Mass was at my wedding, where I draped my godmother’s antique Russian lace over my wedding veil headpiece.
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