August 4th: Feast of St. Dominic

St. Dominic by Fra Angelico

Yesterday was the feast of St. Dominic, a big feast day for me.  Because I was taught by Dominicans, they included their students and alumnae in their spiritual family, and so St. Dominic is my spiritual father, so to speak. There are lots of stories surrounding his life. My favorite one is this:

Once Our Lady showed him a vision of the various Orders in Heaven, but no matter how long he looked, he could not find his own order. He asked Our Lady in great distress where it had gone. She opened her mantle, and underneath it he found his entire order, which had taken refuge in Our Lady's care.

For dinner, because St. Dominic was Spanish, we had Crockpot Chicken Enchiladas. They did not turn out the way I had planned. Every recipe I had seen wanted you to cook the chicken beforehand, and then just put it in the crockpot for 1 1/2-3 hours on Low, but I decided that the entire purpose of the crockpot was so that it could be a one pot meal. So there I went, layering chicken cubes, Rotel, black olives, enchilada sauce, and corn tortillas like a Mexican lasagna, and let it cook for 3 hours. Well, the chicken was cooked through, that's for sure, but the corn tortillas turned to mush, and we had something that wasn't stew, wasn't soup, but definitely wasn't anything else either. The flavors were amazing though. Even Matt went back for a second bowl without adding any extra seasoning, so that's a plus!

And yes, I'm not sure if enchiladas are Spanish, but it was as close as I could get with the food we had in the house and my limited cooking skills.