I love falafel in any form. Stuffed in a pita bread or on top of a salad or as is, dipped in tzatziki sauce. If served on a platter or a board, it is an attractive good grazing food for a family gathering.
Try the easy recipe below. With the help of an air fryer this becomes a healthy version. No oil frying at all and yet crunchy on outside and soft in the inside.
1\4 cup cilantro leaves and stems, coarsely chopped
1\4 cup flour or as needed
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1\8 tsp black pepper
1\4 tsp cayenne pepper
1\4 tsp salt or more to taste
Panko crumbs (optional)
Place the chickpeas, onion, garlic and cilantro in the food processor and pulse till ingredients are blended.
Add the rest of the ingredients to the mixture in the food processor except the panko crumbs. Pulse till mixture is blended and smooth but not too pasty.
Using a small ice cream scoop make about 12-14 one inch balls from the seasoned chickpea mixture and roll if you choose to, in panko crumbs.
Air fry 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 minutes.
You can serve this as is with vegan tzatziki sauce. You can also stuff it into a pita bread with lettuce, tomato and cucumber.
You can also prepare a platter as shown above with tzatziki sauce, tomato, olives, greens and pita bread.
Instead of blueberry cookies from a yellow cake mix, see this recipe, I decided to make blueberry Cupcakes using a brownie mix. I want to win over my chocolate loving grandkids.
I made it vegan using flax meal for eggs and applesauce for oil. I decided to add oat milk to make it cake like.
I got my blueberry into my system plus chocolate in these cupcakes. Both are good sources of antioxidants. I skipped the oil and eggs which made them healthier.
They are delicious. The blueberries gave the cupcakes a moist center as a bonus.
I did not frost it and just decorated with pretzels and M&M’s for fun.
Blueberry Cupcakes from A Brownie Mix
1 box brownie mix 18.3 oz
2 tbsp flax meal plus 6 tbsp water in a small bowl and set aside for 5 minutes
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup frozen blueberries
1-2 tbsp oat milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
Line muffin pan with paper liner and set aside
Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
Using ice cream scoop transfer the batter into the muffin lined pan.
Bake for 25- 30 minutes till toothpick comes out clean
Compassionate
God, you look upon our brokenness with mercy and kindness.Help us to extend your goodness to one
another.Hear our prayer, for you are
our God; Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.Amen
You send your
Spirit of hope into our hearts.
God of light, increase our vision.
God of wonders, you
come to us in simplicity.
You come to bring us hope and courage.
God of joy,
increase our openness to celebrating life!
Note: Inspired by Fr. Tom Miller’s heartfelt and touching sermon as he knelt to comfort the only two relatives who attended the funeral of a 90 year old woman. He also mentioned Fr. Tony Gargotta who was at this time suffering and dying from cancer. Fr. Tony died eventually as I write this piece. He is finally and always been in God’s hands. We pray for his beloved mother he left behind. Dear God please take care of her. She is in God’s hands. And so is Fr. Tony.
I don’t know when I realized how much I love, no, need to dance. I am amazed others are able to stay stock still when a “lively” tune begins. The music strums the very fibers of my being and I must move, sway, or at least tap my foot. I never took dancing lessons yet there is something about dance that lifts my heart, improves my mood, and makes my spirit joyful.
DANCING MAKES US JOYFUL!
How delighted I was to learn that in Eastern theology a Greek term, “perichoresis” (pronounced per-ee-kor-ee’-sis) is used to describe the inner relationship of God. Our English word choreography is derived from it. Perichoresis suggests a dynamic interaction, a movement of intimacy and receptivity within God and between God and all creation. God is a Divine Dance!
As Sisters of St. Joseph, we promise to “move always toward profound love of God and of our ‘dear neighbor’”. This could evoke an image of climbing a long, arduous ladder of love. The image of God as a Divine Dance suggests an alternative concept that for me more accurately describes my relationship with God.
WHO DOESN’T LOVE TO TWIRL?
A round dance of individuals weaving in and out, whirling, twirling, spiraling around and about each other to a contagious beat, responding to each other’s movements, moving separately yet not independently requires:
A willingness to let go, to focuses less on personal control and self-consciousness and more on yielding to the vitality of the dancing itself.
A creativity that flows unimpeded. There is a free expression of self that is so much more than the repetition of memorized steps. One is attune to an inner movement that itches to express itself in the outer movement of the body.
A receptivity that is open and responsive to the rhythm of the music and to the living energy and charisma expressed in the other dancers. When receptivity is at its peak, the dancers dance as one.
A surrender to joy, to laugh at one’s missteps and accept the missteps of others, allowing the delight of dancing itself, not its perfection, to be both one’s motivation and one’s goal.
WE ALL HEAR THE MUSIC
These four qualities guide me in my relationship with God.
The Image of God as a dynamic Divine Dance beckons me to listen attentively to my own heart. What God wants is inscribed in my own heart. “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart.” (Jer. 3:33) What inspires me, touches me, draws me? What is life-giving for me? There. There is found the Divine music to which God invites me to dance.
Yet I am not the only dancer. All around me are others who moving to their own inner music. Their steps may be different than mine yet to be fully faithful to the dance I must be open and receptive to the unique energy and charisma each dancer expresses. They teach me new steps. I absorb their energy. I am not the choreographer of the dance. God is. “May they all be one.” (Jn. 17:21)
DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE RIGHT STEPS, JUST DANCE!
Often my greatest concern is the “right steps”. When that is my focus I become rigid, stiff, exacting. My focus is myself rather than the rhythm and beat of God’s living music and movement. The more I am able to surrender myself to the Divine music and movement flowing in and around me and in and around all creation the better dancer I become.
God does not play dirges. “I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” (Jn. 10:10) In times of sorrow and pain God draws close with a Divine melody that is comforting, caring and attentive. When my own missteps are the source of shame and suffering, God switches to a tune that both forgiving and healing. Always God finds me where I am and plays a Divine tune that slowly beckons me back to joy. “I want My joy to be in you and in you to reach its fullness.” (Jn. 15:11).
YOU CAN ALWAYS FIND JOY IN THE DANCE WITH GOD
God longingly invites:
“Could I have this dance for the rest of your life?
Would you be my partner every day and night?
When we’re together it feels so right.
Could I have this dance for the rest of your life?”
About the Author
Sister Marcella Clancy currently lives in the Detroit area. She offers spiritual direction, serves on Congregational committees, and companions one of our newer members. She loves long walks, good movies, and leisurely lunches with friends.
4. prayer
Turn my heart towards you as I follow your lead into places of wonder and grace. Attune my ear to the music that hums beneath the surface of my thoughts and activities. Give me a lithe spirit that moves with the low of love and grace.
Richard continues exploring Francis of Assisi’s insights, pointing us beyond the “bird bath” spirituality for which Francis is too often known.
Francis of Assisi knew that the finite manifests the infinite, and the physical is the doorway to the spiritual. If we can accept this foundational principle we call “incarnation,” then all we need is right here and right now—in this world. This is the way to that! Heaven includes earth and earth includes heaven. There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments—and it is we alone who desecrate them by our lack of insight and reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it. In terms of a spiritual vision, we really cannot get any better or simpler than that.
Franciscan spirituality emphasizes a real equivalence and mutuality between the one who sees and what can be seen. What you see is what you are. There is a symbiosis between the mind and heart of the seer and what they pay attention to. Francis had a unique ability to call others—animals, plants, and elements—“brother” and “sister” because he himself was a little brother. He granted other beings and things mutuality, subjectivity, “personhood,” and dignity because he first honored his own dignity as a son of God. The world of things was a transparent two-way mirror for him, which some of us would call a fully “sacramental” universe.
As Franciscan sister Ilia Delio explains:
Francis came to realize that it is Christ who sanctifies creation and transforms it into the sacrament of God. The intimate link between creation and Incarnation revealed to Francis that the whole of creation is the place to encounter God. As his eyes opened to the holiness of creation, he came to see that there is nothing trivial or worthless. Rather, all created things point beyond themselves to their Creator. . . .
[The Franciscan scholar] Bonaventure [c. 1217‒1274] describes the contemplative vision of Francis as “contuition,” that is, seeing things for what they truly are in God. In his Major Legend, [Bonaventure] writes:
In beautiful things he [Francis] contuited Beauty itself and through the footprints impressed in things he followed his Beloved everywhere, out of them all making for himself a ladder through which he could climb up to lay hold of him who is utterly desirable. . . . He savored in each and every creature—as in so many rivulets—that fontal Goodness, and . . . sweetly encouraged them to praise the Lord. [1]
These footprints of God impressed on the things of creation enabled Francis to find God wherever he went in the world, and finding God in the things of creation led him to the embrace of Jesus Christ, for Christ is the Word of God made visible in the world. [2]
References: [1] Bonaventure, The Life of Blessed Francis, chap. 9, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 2, The Founder, eds. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New City Press: 2000), 596–597.
[2] Ilia Delio, A Franciscan View of Creation: Learning to Live in a Sacramental World, The Franciscan Heritage Series, vol. 2 (The Franciscan Institute: 2003), 15–16.
I ate lunch recently at Flowers in the Attic Restaurant located in Penn Hills, Pa where I ate their vegetarian quiche and a salad. Isn’t the restaurant beautiful and relaxing? They only serve High Tea now by appointment. The owners are selling the property. So sad. They sell all kinds of stuff like furniture, clothes, jewelry and prepared food like teas etc in their shop. Their flower shop is still open and so is the shop. Check their website for the time and days they are open.
After lunch, I browsed around their shop and bought a round wicker tray from them shown below.
I just had to make a breakfast board or tray with it. I lined the board with parchment paper and arranged whatever I had on hand to make a pretty breakfast board. I posted it for my Facebook friends to give them some idea how to prepare one. Some of the food I used were store bought and not vegan. In this blog I decided to offer vegan alternatives.
I am using vegan recipes I have published in this blog as alternatives for the pancakes, pastry, overnight oats and relish or spread I have used in the board. I have shown the links to my blog for the recipes below. For the rest of the board I used fruits, nuts and dates but you can use what you have.
Lakota author and activist Doug Good Feather is committed to sharing Indigenous wisdom and practices with nonnative audiences as a way to help and to heal humanity. He writes that no matter what our circumstances, gratitude is available to us:
Each and every morning offers us a chance to start anew, fresh, and to begin again. Each morning when we wake—should we choose to listen—is a message from the Creator to remember the privilege we were given of waking up. It’s a reminder to get up and prepare our self, to honor our self, to go out into the world, to connect with Mother Earth and the hearts of other beings, to inspire and encourage those who cross our paths, and most importantly, to enjoy life.
Good Feather highlights the Indigenous virtues of gratitude and generosity:
Gratitude and generosity are similar virtues, but they differ in that gratitude is an internal characteristic and generosity is our external expression of our sense of gratitude. Basically, gratitude is how we feel, and generosity is how we express that feeling out in the world. . . .
When we engage with the world from a place of gratitude, it’s the difference between trying to make something happen and allowing something to happen. The defining difference between effort and effortlessness is the virtue of gratitude. We see the quotes and memes from the sages and gurus that talk about gratitude. But why is gratitude such a core concept of joy, contentment, and well-being in our life? The ancestors tell us there are two primary reasons. The first is that a person cannot exist in a place of fear and true gratitude at the same time. The second is that gratitude is the doorway to divine intuition, which allows us to be guided by our connection with the Creator.
Gratitude moves stagnant energy when we’re feeling stuck in life. The simple act of practicing gratitude disrupts negative thoughts and changes our mindset to see the world in a positive way. Not only are we more attractive to others when we live in gratitude, but the most ordinary things can become extraordinary, creating a fuller, more beautiful expression of our life.
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Things don’t happen to us, they happen for us.” Gratitude is the foundation of that adage. It means that our mindset has to be that the universe is generally conspiring and working in our favor. Frequently, when something that we perceive as “bad” happens to us, we let it affect us in a highly negative way. But if we interact with the world from a place of gratitude, when something happens that others may perceive as “bad,” we just see that experience as “interesting.” We are curious about why something happens the way it does, and in expressing that curiosity, we’re actively seeking the part of the experience that we’re grateful for.
Doug Good Feather, Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World, transcribed by Doug Red Hail Pineda(Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2021), 27, 30, 31. Emphasis in original.
4. Prayer
A Prayer of Gratitude to God Father, dear Father, I am so grateful for everything that you have given me. Thank you so much for the loved ones in my life, For the many ways in which I am cared for and supported. Thank you for the many ways I can serve and give to others. Thank you for the rich tapestry of colours in creation, For the beauty which is all around me, For the skies and the ever changing cloud formations, For the breathtaking sunsets and early morning mists. My heart is so grateful and brimming with thanks. I could write a thousand books about your great goodness, And still have many stories to tell. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I thank you with everything I am. All my being cries thank you Lord! Amen. (a short prayer of gratitude to God from www.lords-prayer-words.com)
