Christmas is almost over

So the tree is down and the decorations are packed up, but I found the pictures of the Christmas cookies I baked.

I invited Mom, Chris, Sara & Julia over for our first (and hopefully not last) Banach cookie baking.  I got ambitious and baked five different kinds ahead of time. 

First up were the Snickerdoodles.  They are a basic sugar cookie rolled in cinnamon and sugar (green & red sugars for the holidays).

Next up were the labor intensive Candy Cane cookies.  These are a pain to dye (the red always turns pink) and difficult to twist.  They are sprinkled with sugar and crushed peppermints.  In the end they are so festive I just have to make them every year. 

I made Dad’s favorite, Pecan Fingers, and the easy peasy chocolate pretzels with red and green m&ms. 

Sugar cookies are always needed for Christmas.  I think I finally figured out how to bake them correctly.  The deal here is to roll them out thick (when you think you need to roll them one more time, stop) and freeze them for 15 minutes before baking.  They keep the same shape as the cookie cutter this way.

These are the cookies after baking, don’t they look just like the cutter?

When the girls came over I had them help make Peanut Butter Kiss  and Spritz cookies.  They turned out great!

Last up was decorating the sugar cookies.  I made royal frosting which Julia helped me dye different colors.  We all enjoyed decorating them, but I think Julia got tired of trying to stay in the lines at the end. 

Mom brought fudge to share and everyone got to take home one dozen of each kind of cookie.  It had been a while since I made these many cookies for Christmas.

A New Year

Well, it’s almost the end of the first day of the new year.  I usually don’t make resolutions because I hate to be a failure, but this year I decided to make a couple.

Resolution 1:  Blog more often.  I haven’t blogged very often these past few months, so I will try to do better.  I hope to blog at least once a week so we will see how that goes.

Resolution 2:  Take more pictures of my baking.  I baked a lot last year and I hope to continue, however, I noticed that I didn’t take many pictures or if I did I can’t seem to find them.  This will probably help out with resolution 1 above so that I have something to blog about, I just need to find the time to bake and blog.

Resolution 3:  Print off my digital prints.  I’ve been doing a pretty good job at downloading my digital pictures, but I rarely print them out.  So, today I printed about 350 pictures at Walgreens.com.  Now I just have to figure out what to do with the prints :)

That’s all I’m going to write for this year.  The traditional ones like lose weight, save money, relax and enjoy life are always in the background so they aren’t new. 

2010 in review

Today is the last day of 2010.  I would have to say that this year has been about change, and I’m not talking about the Obama kind. 

Jake had his 1st birthday in January and has changed tremendously,  from learning to walk to learning to talk.  He is still hard to understand sometimes, but we can usually figure it out.  He has become a bit bossy though.

A post I wrote back in February talked about how overwhelmed I was feeling.  That is when work started to go downhill.  One day I had enough and I finally told my boss and his boss that I needed to move to a different position.  It took until August for the new position to begin, but if I never said anything it wouldn’t have happened.  That definitely falls into the Seize The Moment category.   And I am so much happier at work and one of my co-workers even called me on my way home from work to tell me that she likes working with me.  It feels great to be appreciated.

The house has changed with some remodeling.  The two upstairs  bathrooms have new tile, we repainted the garage, front hallway and Jake’s room, we replaced the hot water heater and dishwasher and bought a new refrigerator earlier this month.  Most of this was mandatory due to leaky toilets and appliances breaking, but some was in need.

Jamie has continued to do well at his new job.  He seems to really enjoy it since he gets to drive around the state and be home every night.  He started working on-call early this year and that brings challenges but also extra income which is always good. One big change that happened for Jamie this year was when his good friend, Brian, moved to Germany. Jamie won't admit to it, but he really misses Brian.

I’ve had a couple health issues that I was trying to work out.  I had an endoscopy and colonoscopy and also swallowed a pill camera to see how my insides were doing.  Turns out everything is in good working order but I did find out I am anemic and have to take iron supplements (which means I have to take fiber supplements too), but now I can donate blood again.

I’ve also accomplished a lot this year.  I received a check from the USBC bowling championship tournament.  Apparently I took 1069 place for something!  I received my first patent in July and also just found out that my first manuscript was accepted for publication after some minor editing.  I’ve been baking a lot this year: cake pops, star sugar cookies for the troops, all sorts of cakes that I brought into work, more cupcake brownie hamburgers and sugar cookie fries for a bake sale and of course Christmas cookies. 

To finish out the year I had the girls over for Christmas.  We went to dinner at the Fox & Hounds and came back for dessert: Dark Chocolate Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.  We also had our traditional ornament exchange and then the picture in front of the tree. 

I could keep rambling on with 2010, but Becky pointed me to a website that took all the common words from this blog and put it into a shape.  Here is my blog’s handprint :)

Happy New Year Everyone!

 

How many ways can you cook cauliflower?

Jamie is currently on his “Atkins” diet.  It’s in quotes because he doesn’t follow it but has his own rules.  Anyways, we have been eating a lot of meat lately, I mean a lot!  And no carbs which is painful to both of us since Jamie does all the cooking.  Recently, Jamie heard about mock mashed potatoes using cauliflower.  So we tried it out and it was pretty good.  It has an off flavor, but if you add enough garlic you can’t really tell its cauliflower. 

In addition to the mashed potatoes Jamie found a recipe for mock mac & cheese (which is more like cauliflower casserole), mock twice baked potatoes and a cauliflower, chicken & bacon bake that I didn’t try but Jamie seemed to enjoy.

The most interesting recipe is cauliflower pizza crust.  It sounds weird but it wasn’t too bad, or at least I don’t remember what pizza really tastes like anymore.  Here’s the recipe if you are ever inclined to try it out:

1/2 head cauliflower chopped finely in food processor

1 egg, beaten

1 1/4 cup mozzarella cheese

italian seasoning & garlic powder

Boil the cauliflower for 5 minutes, then drain well using paper towels.  Mix with egg and mozzarella cheese.  Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray and press mixture onto pan, spreading evenly and sprinkle with italian seasoning and garlic powder.  Bake at 400F for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.  Top with any pizza toppings you like and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until cheese melts. 

You can also broil instead of baking which might keep the crust more crispy, we baked it and it wasn’t very crispy.

I am hoping Jamie’s diet ends soon so we can get back to normal meals.  Or even have a real potato again!

EDIT: Don't broil the crust, it became soggy and not good at all. But, Jamie's off his diet now and he just brought home two Jack's Naturally Rising Pizza's :)

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Okay, so Thanksgiving was only three days ago, but I have the Christmas bug.  Friday was spent shopping and napping, so Saturday and Sunday I spent decorating inside and out (Jamie doesn’t decorate, but he will help when I need him). 

First I put up the tree.  I bought a pre-lit tree from Stein’s a few years ago and I love it!  It goes up easy and being pre-lit makes it so fast to decorate.  There was a minor situation with the lights where half of a strand wouldn’t light.  It was driving me crazy, but after about 30 minutes I figured out the problem.  After that it was a breeze.

While shopping on Friday I found 50 count LED lights on sale at Home Depot for $1.98 each.  I bought 24 boxes!  I put 150 lights on each of our six arborvitae plus two strands of lights to connect them, 50 lights on the wreath outside the entryway window, 50 lights on the support beam on the porch, snowflake lights up along the porch and 500 lights on the tree on the corner.  So in total I hung over 1600 lights! 

The lights outside look good and bad.  The LED lights are so white and bright compared to the regular lights I put on the tree in the corner and in the snowflake lights.  I may end up taking the snowflake lights and the lights on the tree down just so they all match. 

The only problem is that the tree in the corner was the hardest since it has grown so much.  I had to use our little giant ladder and climb up as high as I was comfortable, then one more step up and using a hanger I was able to reach the top.  I am half thinking of not taking them off just so I don’t have to do this again next year.

Now I just need it to snow to hide all the extension cords!

Art

Earlier this year, around Mother’s Day, Jamie decided to clean off the front of the refrigerator. He took a lot of what I had put on there and threw it away.  When he finished with that he cleaned out the coffee maker and threw the grounds away.  A couple hours later I came by and opened the trash can and stood in horror.  There, right in the trash can, covered in coffee grounds, was all of Jake’s art projects that I had hung on the refrigerator door that I was planning on keeping.  It was all ruined!  Jamie just didn’t understand why I was so upset.

A few days before this all happened I gave Debbie one of Jake’s art projects that I thought she would like to have.  I told her she was lucky to have it and told her the story of what happened.  Then for my birthday, Debbie framed and wrapped that art project and gave it back to me.  I now have it hanging in the bedroom above my nightstand Since then Jamie hasn’t thrown any of Jake’s art projects away.

 

Today I finally got aroun d to scanning in some of Jake’s art projects.  They aren’t spectacular, but it is still meaningful to me.

View Full Album

Red Kettles

Every year I see the red kettles with bell ringers outside local establishments.  I usually give a dollar when I see one but if I don’t have any money with me I still say hello to the bell ringer.  I know a lot of people try to avoid them and walk in through a different entrance.  This year I’ve decided to give $1 every time I see a kettle and I’m going to try to keep track of how much I donated at the end of the season. 

Red Kettle History

In 1891, Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee was distraught because so many poor individuals in San Francisco were going hungry. During the holiday season, he resolved to provide a free Christmas dinner for the destitute and poverty-stricken. He only had one major hurdle to overcome -- funding the project.

Where would the money come from, he wondered. He lay awake nights, worrying, thinking, praying about how he could find the funds to fulfill his commitment of feeding 1,000 of the city's poorest individuals on Christmas Day. As he pondered the issue, his thoughts drifted back to his sailor days in Liverpool, England. He remembered how at Stage Landing, where the boats came in, there was a large, iron kettle called "Simpson's Pot" into which passers-by tossed a coin or two to help the poor.

The next day Captain McFee placed a similar pot at the Oakland Ferry Landing at the foot of Market Street. Beside the pot, he placed a sign that read, "Keep the Pot Boiling." He soon had the money to see that the needy people were properly fed at Christmas.

Six years later, the kettle idea spread from the west coast to the Boston area. That year, the combined effort nationwide resulted in 150,000 Christmas dinners for the needy. In 1901, kettle contributions in New York City provided funds for the first mammoth sit-down dinner in Madison Square Garden, a custom that continued for many years. Today in the U.S., The Salvation Army assists more than four-and-a-half million people during the Thanksgiving and Christmas time periods.

Captain McFee's kettle idea launched a tradition that has spread not only throughout the United States, but all across the world. Kettles are now used in such distant lands as Korea, Japan, Chile and many European countries. Everywhere, public contributions to Salvation Army kettles enable the organization to continue its year-round efforts at helping those who would otherwise be forgotten.