jim henson

I've discovered a great blog--Budget Bytes.  They post great, inexpensive recipes *and* the cost per recipe and per serving.

I think this is a great idea!  Not all of us have the money to go out and buy expensive ingredients and few of us want to eat the same thing every day.  Budget Bytes wants to prevent both.

It has a section on stocking your kitchen.  This section is very basic and limited, which, when cooking on a budget, is nice to see.  Each item, from individual types of spices, to plastic storage containers, is listed by category and by price.

The website recommends portioning out your recipes to avoid overeating and further stretch your budget.  They have a variety of recipes including desserts and drinks.

Stop by and take a look.

Happy cooking!

I wanted to catch you all up on some additions to the blog.

On the sidebar under the Catholic New Media Advent calendar, there is a St. Andrews novena prayer, said between now and Christmas.  Under that, click on the Advent Wreath picture for a daily meditation on Scripture.

Our December Devotion is focused on Advent and the coming of Christ.  Click on the Our Lady of Advent icon for a peek at an Episcopalian blog, The Advent Door done by artist Jan Richardson.

Underneath that, our virtue for December is Union with God.  Click on the beautiful Saint Gemma holy card to go to http://www.stgemmagalgani.com and read about how she achieved this union. There is so much valuable information there about this wonderful saint!

YIM Catholic is a wonderful new site that posts about positive things happening in the Church around the world.

Take time from your busy Christmas preparations to check out some of these sites.

I found a powerful and challenging blog--Homeless in America.  It is a Catholic blog, complete with quotes and inspiration on the sidebar by Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa and Saint Bernadette.  Yet, it does not (that I've seen) argue or pontificate about what style of liturgy is the "right" style.  It doesn't wring its hands about the minutia of daily worship.  It doesn't spend its time and waste its space complaining about how horrible things are in the Church.

Instead, it challenges its readers to think about the "least" in the world; in America.  It reaches beyond a particular political fashion du jour and gets to the meat of Christianity--seeing God in the poor; living our faith in Jesus by getting out of our spiritual and financial navel gazing and putting our values where our faith is.

This is where Catholicism excels--although not nearly as much as it could.  The Church built the first schools.  The Church built the first hospitals.  The Church has nurtured men and women who have literally given up everything to serve God's people year after year for their entire lives.

We are being made impotent as a church by infighting about things that even Jesus admitted would not last. It is time we wake up.  It is time we live our faith.  It is time we become Christian.