Christmas Sweets to Please Me and the Children

Idea:  Make Christmas cookies and memories with the kids.

Strategy:  KISSS: Keep it small, simple, short. . . or risk the mama and kids escalating into tantrums of exhaustion and holiday disenchantment.

Implementation:

1.  Make 1 batch of gingerbread cut-outs with Genevieve and her friend, plus Ben.  Ben and I mixed them up before the girls came home from school.  No need to have so many cooks in the kitchen!  And no time for the camera, either, as I sped between kids to keep the dough pliable and the cut-outs on the cookie sheet.

2.  Another day:  ice the cookies with Italian meringue.  Let Ben do the sprinkles and the licking.  (Bonus:  TWO beaters when your sister is in school!)

3.  Make the fiddly kind myself in a small batch:  chocolate-dipped peanut-butter Ritz sandwiches.  I melted 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips with 2 teaspoons of vegetable shortening in my "double boiler" (bowl on top of pan).  I was warned by a veteran candy maker to avoid getting moisture in the chocolate and to avoid burning it.

And that's the end of our Christmas cookies this year.  Frankly, I'd rather just eat chips.  I think we succeeded in avoiding an overwhelmed-mother-tantrum while making memories, so I'm pleased. 

I didn't give Genevieve the idea that she was missing something because Ben and I did some of the fun work while she was in school.  She gets to do fun things in school without us!

Most of the cookies were eaten when our families gathered after Genevieve's school Christmas program.  We had eggnog, cookies, and candy and (thank goodness) pretzels. 

A New Cover for the Ugly Bible

I finally snagged a New Revised Standard Version!  For $3, at the used book store downtown while I was killing time before picking up Genevieve.

But it was so ugly.  My first idea was to decoupage the cover.  Three problems:  1. decoupage is expensive, even with a coupon. 2. Decoupage can, apparently, get sticky in humid weather.  Not cool.  3. And then, I couldn't really imagine what kind of images I would plaster my Bible with.  The obvious Christian symbols?  Neutral landscapes?  Yawn.

So I covered that baby with fabric, a la eighth-grade-paper-bag-on-the-social-studies-book.

I love it.  I take my Bible along to church now.  The right translation, plus a vintage patch for quirky sweet.

Dark Days 3: Simple plus Dessert (updated with pickle recipe)

Roasted sweet potatoes with lots of salt and pepper. 

Collard greens cooked long and slow with sweet onion, salt, hot sauce, and finished with a splash of vinegar.  Satisfyingly strong dill pickles. 

And then, dessert because I was using up dabs out of the freezer and keeping my family off a new batch of Christmas cookies made for later this week.   I love gingerbread with peaches!

Specifically, the Dark Days aspects:  sweet potatoes, onions, and collards from local farmers.  Gingergread made with local organic eggs, local organice whole wheat pastry flour, homemade yogurt from local milk, and locally produced molasses (but I don't know where their raw ingredients come from - that warrants a phone call, don't you think?).

Homemade, home canned dill pickles with dill from our backyard and cukes from somewhere local - I had several different suppliers this past summer.  Homemade ice cream with local cream, milk, and eggs.  Home canned local peaches.

Updated with dill pickle recipe:

Phyllis Rhoades Kosher Dills

Have ready 6 clean quart canning jars.  Wide-mouth is easier to work with.  Have lids and rings hot and ready.

Prepare brine and bring to boil:
1 c. pickling salt
3 quarts water
1 quart cider vinegar

Working with one jar at a time, put in:

1-2 cloves garlic
2 heads of dill (or 1 Tbsp. dill seeds)
hot pepper to taste (I use a slice of jalapeno)
pickling cucumbers, cubed or sliced, fill to top

Pour over boiling hot brine, leaving 1" headspace:

Immediately wipe jar rim, lay on hot lid and screw down with hot ring.  Process in boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes.  Set aside for 12-24 hours  Check for seal.  If a jar did not seal, store in fridge for several weeks.

For long term storage, remove canning ring.  For best flavor, allow to sit in dark cupboard or basement for a month or so before eating.

My Pizza IS a Vegetable

Did you hear about the new law in Congress, allowing 1/8 cup (2 Tbsp.) tomato paste to count as a serving of vegetables in school lunches, instead of the half cup required of other vegetables?  It inflates pizza's nutritional profile. 

I was musing on this as I made pizza for supper the other night.  School pizza is made of white flour crust, tomato paste and corn syrup, and cheese.  No flavor, no whole grains, just some high-sodium tomato paste and cheese product mozzarella.

Homemade pizzas are different.

Exhibit A:  100% whole wheat crust, homemade pizza sauce thickened by hours of simmering, not tomato paste, mozzarella, Parmesan, green olives, mushrooms, and onions

Exhibit B:  same healthy crust, sauce and cheese, just with lots of spinach, blue cheese, and garlic

the frailest leaves - An Anniversary

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,
Here I shade and hide my thoughts,
I myself do not expose them,
And yet they expose me more than all
my other poems.

Walt Whitman

Doesn't blogging expose us?  No matter if you blog like me, just a slice of your life and the good slice at that. . .Odd to think that I have never physically met or talked to many of you.  I feel like I know you!  I dearly love my online community.  Thank you all so very much for the conversations, suggestions, thoughts, and prayers.  This blog is 2 years old today . . . because of you.

Mixing Up More Hot Cereal

Now it's getting cold around here.  Hot cereal tastes good in the morning!  I've been eating mine savory, with cheese, spinach, and walnuts.  The rest eat theirs with raisins, brown sugar, milk, and tahini.

To keep the cost down, I excluded amaranth from the mix here.  Before mixing, I snapped a photo of the striated layers.  From the bottom, it's rye, buckwheat groats, millet, and spelt.  Sometimes I grind up some oats or wheat, or add some cornmeal for a change of flavor.

Picking and Choosing Our Christmas - the List

Finally, I am starting to enjoy hearing Christmas music and make plans - and it's only December 8.  Christmas, as done by the internet and retailers, can be so overwhelming.  It's so easy to feel like I'm missing something, or that there's still another great sale or great craft just waiting for me to search it out.  Won't my children be deprived without a plethora of cookies, crafts, and activities?  Well, they would be very deprived if their mother exploded.

So I made a little list of the Christmas essentials we want in our family.  Anything else that happens is a bonus.  I depend on the list to keep me focused.

Christmas 2011
1.  hang & (lightly!) fill stockings
2.  set up manger scene
3.  get and decorate Christmas tree - hot chocolate and candy canes
4.  Christmas breakfast - same as last year
5.  Christmas caroling
6.  make gingerbread cookies with kids
7.  make chocolate dipped cracker sandwiches
8.  Advent calendar
9.  gifts for families, teachers, friends
Still thinking about whether to send out Christmas cards or photos.

This post is illustrated with a lovely Christmas bonus: Rachel invited Ben and me to come over and handprint  Christmas balls. 

Rachel's John, who is 4, dearly wanted to try my camera.  So I helped him support it, but he pressed the shutter button.  Funny.  And very happy. 

And a real part of Christmas for us this year.

(photos by John with the exception of the white hand photo I took of John.)

Linking up with Leila and Rosie's sanity collection of pretty, happy, funny real.