Weekend Snapshots #16

Another long(est) day for me and Dom Marcus
As what the author says, ....Everybody loves weekend, it is the time for leisure, recreation and other religious activities. And when everyone is having a grand time, you want to capture it and share it with others.That’s why Weekend Snapshot is here for you.

Yesterday was the day that me and Dom Marcus were to buy the ingredients that we will use for cooking on the Solemnity of the birth of Jesus Christ: December 25th. We left the monastery at 8:00Am. Listen to my story…

According to our community’s Customary, Solemnity cooks are supposed to take charge of grocery shopping for whatever food they will prepare for the Solemnity’s buffet banquet.
So, yesterday was the day we scheduled shopping for the ingredients. We planned to bake five medium sized turkeys for the monks, for our neighboring nuns ( who usually join the monks in Solemnity banquets), and for our guests (who usually arrive in the eve of Christmas: Dec. 24th). We needed to complement the baked turkeys (as main dish) with fish escabeche for the Asian monks (mind you, as of this writing, the Whites have been outnumbered by the Asians in our community).
Dom Marcus will prepare ‘pansit guisado’, leche flan, crema de fruita, and special vegetable salad while I will take care of baking the turkeys with stuffings, brown gravy and cranberry sauce. I will sautee beans and steam jasmine rice. The banquet table presentation will be taken cared of Dom Marcus while the white and red wines, assorted beer in cans and assorted softdrinks in can will be chilled by me in two huge coolers.

The day for our shopping could have been just as simple and as fast as an ordinary Wednesday grocery shopping wherein the monk-shopper shops solely for groceries and is not asked to do other tasks like errands and drop-offs besides the main purpose of his town trip, and so gets back at the monastery around 7:30Pm. But because the day was supposed to be the day when the candidate of our community Jose Rodriguez, (whose week-long retreat and observation ended up yesterday),left the monastery, Prior Christian asked us to accommodate him and drop him off at the Franciscans of the Renewal community in Albuquerque.
Jose stayed overnight with the Franciscans and took off via United Airlines this morning for Chicago where his family lives.
On the other hand, the blood brother of our Abbot, George Lawrence, was supposed to check-in at Fairfield Marriot hotel in Albuquerque (nearby the airport terminal) at 3:00PM yesterday and stayed overnight for his 7:30Am flight this morning for Seattle.
It took us long to do all these drop offs, and so at the end: Dom Marcus and I were able to start with our shopping at exactly 4:20PM and onwards. We finally arrived the monastery at 12:05 Midnight! Very tired and sleepy, but accomplished, fulfilled and edified.

The 13 1/2 miles dirt road to civilization. Marcus offered to drive us all down the road.

Mr. George Lawrence, the Abbot's brother whom we dropped off at Fairfield Marriot Hotel in Albuquerque at 3:00Pm.

Jose Rodriguez, our vocation candidate whom we dropped off to the community of the Franciscans of the Renewal in Albuquerque an hour before we dropped George to the hotel.

First stop-over along the highway to Espayola: Georger requested for a short drop at Maya cafe in El Rito interesection for a cup of cappuccino.

On the way to the slippery snowy Espanyola road.

Second stop-over at a gas filling station in Espanyola.

Third stop-over: early lunch (around 11:30Am) at Sta Fe's famous The Pantry Restaurant as per request of George.

Fourth stop-over: We dropped-off Jose, the vocation candidate at the Franciscan's community in Albuquerque's Central District.

Fifth stop-over at Albuquerque international airport: Jeorge requested to drop-by at the airport before checking-in at his hotel to confirm his electronic ticket at Southwest airlines but failed to do so because of a long line of passenger lining up for their weekend going-home-to-their-families Christmas flights.

Sixth stop-over and the last one: After so many hours of driving and stopping by, we finally dropped George to his hotel nearby the airport terminal at exactly 3:20Pm.

Finally, the actual shopping began at 4:20Pm.
First station was at Talin Asian store in Lousiana, Albuquerque. I failed to buy fresh fish for my escabeche becuase there was no one left at the display!... (I resorted to buy tilapia fish fillets at Sam's Club instead). Note: Taking photos inside the Asian store was not allowed!

Second station was at Sam's club back in Sta Fe where most of our ingredients were bought.

Third station was at Trader Joe's in Sta Fe where we picked some good tasting Porto wines for the banquet on the 25th.

Dom Marcus was rushingly looking for Porto wines from the bunch of displayed wines at the shelves.

The last station was at Wal-mart back in Espanyola where remaining items, where we failed to get at Sta Fe Sam's club, were picked up.

The car filled with items for our Christmas cooking from the major ingredients down to the least items.

Going back home at 10:30Pm.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzz ngooorrrrrrrrrkkkkk zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.Finally reached the monastery panty parking area to unload our grocery stuffs at 12:10Am... Indeed another long(est) day spent outside the monastery...

Happy weekend to everyone... View other participants here .
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