Tick Tock – Clifton, NJ
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Tagged architecture, buildings, food, lights, New Jersey, Photographs, Uncategorized
take pictures of course…
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Tagged colors, food, fruit, Photographs
I have to admit: I kind of love the winter solstice. Not because it’s the shortest day, or even because it means the days will begin to grow longer. I love it because I see so many of my friends rejoicing it. So many of us lighting candles and trying themselves to be a light in the dark. It’s also a day that’s been recognized and celebrated for a millennia; it’s kind of profound to feel that sort of connection with so many of those that have come before us.
We missed the summer solstice at Stonehenge by a matter of weeks, and though it’s become a bit of a carnival atmosphere, it’s something I truly wish to do one year.
Last night we lit all of our candles, turned the tree lights on, and ate cookies to celebrate. Now that I think of it, I should have had some bourbon and egg nog. (Knob Creek Smoked Maple Bourbon and Homestead Creamery natural eggnog is a killer combo!)
All of my favorite things at this time of year are those that sparkle and glow.
Now THESE. These you have to make. Meringue cookies that melt in your mouth and are dead easy to make. I made the espresso ones and cocoa ones (I added red food color because I was planning on adding peppermint with the cocoa and then forgot. Tonight I’ll make another batch and won’t forget – though I’ll make them green).
The recipe is simple and straightforward. Last year I just used a spoon and plopped small rounds onto baking sheets. This year I used a pastry bag and star tip. I do like to make them a bit small so they are bite-sized.
There’s just a few days left until Christmas. I haven’t quite finished my baking, but I got all of my boxes that I am sending out packed today (they’ll likely be late, but……better than never, right?).
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Tagged food, Seasons, Uncategorized
Every year I draw up an ambitious list of cookies I plan to bake, and every year I begin to falter a few days before the holiday, having worn myself out in the process of producing so many goodies.
This year I have an ace up my sleeve: Neve.
She’s been a great help with prep work and with getting everything into and out of the oven and onto cooling racks. She’s also made up several batches of Peanut Butter Blossoms on her own.
As always, we also made a large batch of Hamantaschen.
Once again I also attempted Springerle. In the past, these cookies have consistently defeated me. This year I tried a new recipe, using King Arthur Flour’s Speculaas dough. There was a lot of chilling, rolling, chilling, molding, chilling, chilling, and more chilling. The results? Not too terrible. Not perfect, though, and I had a hard time with them. Still, I consider it progress!
We have many, many more to go, but the doughs for our butter cookies and gingerbread cookies are already chilling and ready to be cut and baked. I am going to try and get the Meringue cookies whipped up tonight to set in the oven overnight.
I also felt overly ambitious (or stressed?) and decided to make the gingerbread for our gingerbread houses this year. I used the recipe from the America’s Test kitchen cookbook and simply measured out shapes for the houses by hand. Neve wasn’t thrilled with how thick it was (and not perfectly straight-edged), but Oona was ecstatic that she had a house she could actually eat this year.
Emily and I have been stuffing ourselves with all the extra gumdrops. I am going to need a major sugar-detox after this Christmas!
Tomorrow I’ll work on getting the cookies ready for the kids to decorate, as well as trying some new recipes. That is, if I have the time. Paul is taking them out to see the new Star Wars movie so I can wrap gifts (and drink gluhwein, of course). For a few glorious hours I’ll have a Christmasy house all the myself (and the kitties).
Happy Hanukkah!
We like to celebrate with food every opportunity we can. So even though we are not Jewish, this time of year there are plenty of latkes and blintzes to be had. If I had other culturally Jewish food in my repertoire, there’d be that as well (I mean, aside from all the cookies and breads and cakes, natch).
Tonight was our blintz night. We LOVE blintzes. One of the kids usually asks for them for their birthday as well. Honestly, though there’s a lot of steps, they’re super easy. I whip up some crepes, and fill them with a cream cheese/ricotta/powdered sugar/vanilla mixture, roll them up burrito-style and pan-fry them until they’re browned and hot.
Then I top them with some pre-fab blueberry pie filling and whipped cream. Done! Happy family.
Then we eat them by candlelight. It’s really the only way to properly enjoy them. ;-)
The weather has been working against our holiday spirit – it’s been so warm that we have been sweating while trying to do our schoolwork. In the evening, once it has cooled down again, we’ve been trying to keep the holiday ambience going as much as we can.
The kitties enjoy it as well; if by “it” we mean chewing on the branches and swatting the candy canes off the tree.
“Who, us???”
We have had morning frosts, which is a reassuring sign that it really IS winter, even if it doesn’t feel so much like it.
It would be nice if the cooler weather would hang out long enough for us to wear our nice winter sweaters, though. It’s hard to stay motivated to knit with wool right now and create even more sweaters that will sit unhappy and unused all through the festive season each year. Not that my Chimney Fire sweater is growing that fast or anything.
During the week it’s usually evening before I have a chance to pick it up, and I’m pretty tired by then. As for the weekends, well…it IS gluhwein season, and you know wine and cablework don’t mix.
This weekend we’ll be hitting the holiday baking pretty hard; I’m feeling the usual ambition for lots of cookie variety and quantity. Now to figure out how to distill some of Oona’s energy for myself!
The prompt: In your photo this week, focus on the win, the victory — that moment of glory and pride you’ll remember forever.
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I don’t bake often, almost never, but when I do it’s never been from scratch… until last year when I wanted to surprise my daughter with a homemade cake that I had baked. I wrote this post on my other blog and thought I would share it here today as my ‘victory’ challenge :)
I decided to make a pound cake in a bundt pan. I mixed all ingredients, well, except for one which I couldn’t find in the pantry and figured it wasn’t all that important … how much of a difference could a tsp of baking powder make anyway.
I even melted some chocolate to add to the pound cake… thought it would give it some oomph and who doesn’t like at least of dash of chocolate in a cake.
Into the oven it went and then it was only a matter of waiting to see if it would come out of the cake pan in one piece ! Yay… it did.
Maybe the baking powder would have made it a little taller but I like to think of it as a petite pound cake.
The victory cake complete with candles :)
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/victory/
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Tagged baking, chocolate, Family, food, photo challenges, Photographs, postaday/postaweek, postaweek, postaweek/postaday, weekly prompt
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Part 4 of our trip..
This is the National Monument to the Forefathers
The monument lists the names of the Mayflower Pilgrims and also on the four buttresses are seated figures emblematical of the principles upon which the Pilgrims founded their Commonwealth; Morality, Law, Education and Liberty.
According to Wikipedia : {The National Monument to the Forefathers, formerly known as the Pilgrim Monument, commemorates the Mayflower Pilgrims
And this is the Pilgrim Hall Museum ..CLICK HERE
The nation’s oldest continuously operating public museum, Pilgrim Hall Museum houses an unmatched collection of Pilgrim possessions telling the story of brave and determined men and women building lives and homes for themselves and their children in a new world. See William Bradford’s Bible, Myles Standish’s sword, the only portrait of a Pilgrim (Edward Winslow) painted from life, the cradle of New England’s first–born, Peregrine White, the great chair of William Brewster, and the earliest sampler made in America, embroidered by Myles Standish’s daughter.
The only thing we were allowed to photograph were these beautiful stained glass windows
And that…. that’s two of the most delicious, mouth watering, , heavenly New England lobster rolls… :)
This concludes part 4 of our Plymouth, MA trip.. actually it may conclude this series all together, or it may not !! Hope it’s been as enjoyable to read about as it was to have experienced it :)
(pictures are mine and Debs)
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Tagged ancestors, architecture, Family, food, history, Massachusetts, monuments, museums, New England, Photographs
It’s Monday morning, and boy am I feeling it. I packed a lot into the last few days, and I fear that the cold Paul and the kids have been dealing with may have finally reached me.
For most of Saturday I worked on baking and spinning. That luscious Blue-Faced Leicester roving was calling to me and I couldn’t tear myself away from the wheel! I’ve got almost two spindles full; when I’ve got three I’ll ply them together. I can’t wait to see how it all blends together!
I mean, those colors!!!! When Neve and I were wandering around Rhinebeck, I realized we kept grabbing the same colors. The colors of fall! I had to make a conscious effort to look at other colors as well. There’s just something so homey and comforting about the golds, oranges, and reds of this time of year, though.
To match that coziness, I tried a recipe from King Arthur that I’d been eyeing for awhile: Cranberry-Pumpkin rolls.
I left out the cranberries this time; Paul isn’t crazy about them, and I wanted to see how they’d do as plain pumpkin rolls.
The result? Absolute deliciousness! I crammed them all into a 9×13 pan as suggested by the recipe, but I actually had dough leftover as it wouldn’t all fit. Cranberries would have been delightful in them, but in all honesty they do well enough without them as well.
That evening I met my sister out for my birthday gift from her: The Avett Brothers in Charlottesville.
It. Was. WONDERFUL.
They are so good live, I can’t even tell you. Maddie and I had such a good time; I have the best sister!
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Tagged food, Spinning, Uncategorized
Everyone in my house is sick with a nasty cold. Mike is miserable. Scout is miserable-r. And I may be the miserable-ist, although exactly who is the sickest is always a hotly debated topic around here.
Today, I grew tired of wallowing in my stuffy nose misery and decided to take matters into my own hands by making Garlic Soup. I don’t know that actually believe in the healing powers of garlic but I figure I don’t have to believe for it to work, right? And since Halloween is just around the corner, I’m sharing the recipe with all of you lucky healthy people.
You’ll need four or five heads of garlic for this soup. When buying garlic, look for heads that are firm and tight.
Separate the heads of garlic into cloves, but there’s no need to peel them Plonk them into a baking dish with a couple springs of thyme and a teaspoon of olive oil. Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and pop it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (around 180 Celsius) for one hour or until soft, but not brown.
Carefully remove the foil and allow the garlic to cool for about 20 minutes.
When the garlic is cool to the touch, squeeze the pulp into a medium pot, discarding the paper peels. This is the fiddliest part of this recipe and also the messiest. You will surely have roasted garlic all over your hands before your done! Just keep telling yourself how amazing this soup is going to taste.
Once you’ve finished squishing and washed your hands, use a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon to mash all the garlic cloves into a smooth paste.
Now throw a bit of flour onto the garlic paste- about 2 teaspoons- and stir thoroughly to incorporate the flour into the garlic. It’s really important to get all the flour into the garlic before proceeding to the next step.
Now for the liquid. You’ll need four cups of stock, either chicken or vegetable, preferably homemade but good quality store bought will do just fine if it’s all you have. If you do use boxed, adding a heaping teaspoon of Better than Bouillon will perk it up.
Using a whisk, slowly incorporate the stock into the garlic-flour paste, then set over a medium-high burner. Allow the soup to simmer and thicken for 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the pot from heat and stir in a good squeeze of fresh lemon. The lemon with brighten the soup immensely.
