Here we are at the start of a new month😊. I dived into the week by meeting, over breakfast, on Monday morning, with my friend Jenna, from Christian Direction. We had a good conversation, despite plenty of barking from Thomason, and enjoyed a Maple-Walnut Bread Pudding (recipe below 😊)
Jenna is a great supporter of the Day Camps ministry and it was blessing to share my current worries with her. I respect Jenna’s wise counsel and truly appreciated her praying for me. It does make a difference to meet with someone in person, still a rare treat amid the ongoing Pandemic restrictions.
Tuesday evening was our monthly Day Camp Committee meeting. We are excited to have 2 new members, one of whom was able to join us for this meeting. Jeff has been a long time Day Camp Coordinator at All Saints Two Mountains, a church that served for many years as a Training Day Camp location for Teams. His daughter Geneviève was on Team in 2019. Annie will also be joining the committee, she served 3 summers on Travelling Team, once as a Team Member and latterly twice as a Team Leader, she is currently a university student in Ontario.
Wednesday I sent out a number of follow-up messages and emails from the meeting and also did more prep work for last evening’s virtual Team Gathering. Over the week a couple more people also purchased Come Together, so we have now sold 15 copies, woot woot!! Thursday morning I sent an email to a number of the purchasers, who do not have a previous connection with CTM, outlining the Day Camp Programs we have prepared for the coming summer and directing them to the new fillable application form that Guylaine has created, here on the Day Camps section of the website. I also sent out notices about the next Cook-Along series as we now have two of our three chefs in place and so feel confident that we will be able to pull it off.
Planning for the Lenten Study program for Team Alumnae is coming along too. I still need to decide which episodes of the “Artful” videos should be used. There are, I think, ten episodes in the series so it will take a while to watch them all and make a decision. It’s more than a year since we first watched them at the Pod and so it is important to take a close look at which episodes will best fit our program. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon there will be time to watch a few more videos from the series.
Of course yesterday there were messages flying back and forth as we did the final prep work for the Team Gathering and sadly a good portion of my day was also spent shovelling after another storm passed through the city overnight on Thursday. We received another 15cms of snow and since there were strong winds there were some deep drifts to tackle. Hopefully the next dew days will be clear and thankfully we didn’t lose power, as that would have thrown a wrench into the Team Gathering plans.
Once work was done on Wednesday afternoon, I sadly packed away all my Crèches, as it was the day of Candlemas, but thankfully my celebrations were slightly extended until last evening when I hunkered down at the computer to (virtually😊) welcome 15 Team Alumnae into my living room for a Candlemas Team Gathering. How wonderful it was to connect with these people who joined in from across Canada and from the USA. Josiah spoke so well. I have known him since he was born and welcomed into the church family at St. Matthew’s. He is a true example of a Day Camps groupie, having been a camper, local helper, team member, team leader, training leader & committee member. His parents are also dear friends, I had the privilege of attending his wedding and he, his wife Alicia and little daughter, Effie, now live in Windsor Ontario where he is serving a Curacy as a Deacon at St. Alban’s Church, ANiC.
Josiah spoke so well, as I knew he would, and Miriam and Donna had done a fine job pulling together some lovely Taizé songs, despite both their families having only recently recovered from COVID.Annie read the Candlemas Scripture, Mae Anne coordinated a time of prayer and there was a true feeling of community, despite being physically far apart, altogether a very blessed evening 😊
With office time stretching into a couple of evenings this week I haven’t got as much knitting done as I would have liked but I am now on the patterned yoke of the Finnish pullover I’m making, with the hopes of completing it while I’m still wearing my winter wardrobe. Tomorrow is the birthday of my dear friend Pippa and I did have time to complete a small crocheted gift for her She was able to drop by very briefly one afternoon to pick it up on her way home from picking her son Tighe (one of my Godsons) from school 😊.
Today is my usual round of “Bake and Blog”. I shall be making some baguettes for myself, a chocolate cake to store in the freezer and some biscuits for Mr. T. So I had better add the bread pudding recipe and then get busy with my baking.
Maple Walnut Bread Pudding
- 1 1lb. loaf of bread (preferably Challah)
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups light cream
- 2 cups milk
- ½ cup chopped toasted walnuts
- 1 Tbsp. cinnamon
- ½ tsp. nutmeg
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ½ cup raw cane sugar
- ¼ cup maple syrup
Slice the bread into 1 ½” thick slices and layer in a greased a 3 quart slow cooker. Combine the eggs, cream, milk, sugars, syrup and spices in a large bowl and whisk well. Pour over the bread and cook on High for 3 hours. Serve with: –
Maple Sauce
- ¾ cup maple syrup
- ¼ cup raw honey
- 2 tsps. cinnamon
- ¼ cup chopped toasted walnuts
Bring ingredients to a boil in a small saucepan then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Serve warm with bread pudding. Yum 😊