One of the absolutely cool things about being Catholic

is being able to live and celebrate the liturgical year. Even better is being a Catholic home learning family -- it gives so much more time to really celebrate!

For instance, for those who are Polish (or those who wannabe), today is known as Tlusty Czwartek (or "Fat Thursday" for those of us who are Polish but have no idea how to pronounce the Polish words!). This means that this is the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, the last week before Lent starts.

So what does any good, self-respecting Pole do today -- eat Paczki (pronounced "punch-key") or Jam Donuts! Because we live/love/learn together at home, we can't just go out and buy these ooey, gooey balls of fried dough -- nope, not us! We turn it into a "cooking math" lesson and make them ourselves!

And they are delicious! Like a jelly donut but something tastes just a bit better. We didn't use lard (I don't have any in the house) but we used canola oil and they were just fine. Here's a link to a site with a couple of recipes and another site that has just one recipe (but a bit of background on the day, too!).

And, since I'm of mixed ethnicity -- Polish, French Basque, Irish, Slavic -- and my dh is pretty much British Isles and grew up in Louisiana, we get to celebrate all kinds of different traditions for the rest of the week before Lent starts .... Mardi Gras, King cakes, Gateau des Rois ... sounds like lots of cooking math over the next few days!