Monks and nuns provide edible gifts by mail
Top ingredients and a touch of prayer make this mail-order food worth giving
Your gift is in the giving, the old holiday nostrum goes. But you also can get a feel-good gift in the buying, especially if you tap the monasteries, convents and hermitages scattered around the world. Many specialize in making food products, the range of which goes way beyond the usual fruitcake to include spice blends, jams, cheese, truffles and even coffee.
And no matter whether they're Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, they do it while pursuing what they say is their main mission: prayer.
"Prayer and labor have been in the monastic tradition from the very beginning," said Sister Gail Fitzpatrick, a member of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, known popularly as Trappistines. She is based at Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa.
The nuns there make candy, including their signature Trappistine Creamy Caramels. Fitzpatrick is up every day at 3:45 a.m. By 5, she's at the candy facility tempering chocolate. Then she goes back to the abbey to pray, read and celebrate Mass before returning to tend the chocolate.
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