Today has been eventful in many ways. Mass was very prayerful- before, during, and after. Sometimes it’s just like that, especially on days when we pray the rosary before Mass starts. After Mass, we had Symbolon faith formation. It was wonderful to spend time learning and talking with everyone. So I spent the first half of the day in church and the second half of the day cooking and baking because it was the feast day of Pope Saint John Paul II.

For dinner, I made Polish Braised Cabbage and Dumplings from the Polish Your Kitchen blog and an apple coffee cake (Przekladaniec Jablkowy) from an old Polish cookbook I have called Treasured Polish Recipes (1949). The coffee cake is more of a coffee roll- basically, yeasted egg bread dough rolled flat, sprinkled with thinly sliced apples, sugar, and spices, and then rolled up.

In Which Jessie Gushes about Cary Elwes

I found a movie about Pope St. John Paul II on Formed, a Catholic streaming service, and begged Stuart to watch it with me. My cause was helped by the fact that the movie has one of our favorite actors, Cary Elwes. He was great in Robin Hood: Men in Tights and is, unarguably, the best Robin Hood. I loved this movie as a teenager. Actually, I still love this movie. It is entirely likely we’ll watch it again later this week.

We can’t forget The Princess Bride which is objectively a better movie than Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Still, neither of these are my favorite Cary Elwes movie. That title belongs to The Cat Returns in which Elwes voices the Barron. A Studio Ghibli film and Cary Elwes? I’m sold.

A Return to Our Subject: Pope St. John Paul II

Anyway… Pope St. John Paul II. So for the love of Cary Elwes, Stuart agreed to watch a movie about the life of Pope St. John Paul II. It is a three-hour movie so we started yesterday and will finish it tonight. We’re about halfway through and I’m struck by how much violence, suffering, and tragedy Karol Wojtyla endured, and yet he was still committed to following Jesus and not giving in to hate. He practiced radical forgiveness. He forgave people who tried to take his religion, his culture, and his homeland. He forgave people who tortured and murdered his friends. What an example!

I was also struck by how much he risked to train to become a priest and how much those who trained him risked. How much people who even just wanted to go to Mass once a week, risked. It wasn’t just death they were facing, it was torture and the death of their whole families. I knew that Jewish people were persecuted when the Nazis invaded Poland, but I never learned about the suppression of Catholicism. Then, when communists took over, things seemed to be little better. Karol Wojtyla was appointed Cardinal of the region and his efforts to preserve people’s right to worship were so heroic and clever.

I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the movie tonight.

Dinner and a Bird

The time I spent cooking dinner was well worth the effort. The noodles turned out really well. I ended up adjusting the recipe to fry the cabbage instead of broiling it and I just put the noodles in directly with the bacon, cabbage, and onions after I boiled them. We had it with sour cream and it was very yummy. I don’t think I’ll buy pre-made egg noodles again. Making them from scratch is so easy and they taste so much better. The apple coffee cake turned out well too.

After dinner, when I went out to put the ducks up for the night, there was a little bird in the run which later Stuart told me was a Hermit Thrush. It had gotten in when the door was open and couldn’t find the way out. I was able to carefully pick it up and take it outside but then it wouldn’t fly away, so we sat together for a bit. I was worried maybe it was in shock or had internal injuries but thankfully just after I took this photo it flew away. It had a cut by its beak from trying to get through the wire. I hope it will be okay. Poor thing.