Cinnamon Apples

 

 This year I made a little tweak to the cinnamon apples I usually prepare for our annual December breakfast tradition with four of our local grandkids.  I have most often used a skillet recipe for cinnamon apples.  

This year I tried a slow cooker version suggested by a friend, and really liked it.  There were also a couple of flavor tweaks that made a huge difference.

FAVORITE CINNAMON APPLES

1 3-pound bag apples (I used Cortland), cored and sliced but not peeled
2 Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all in slow cooker and cook on Low for 3 hours.  

So yummy and they smell so good while cooking!  My other version uses cinnamon only -- I found that the nutmeg and the vanilla made such a difference in the flavor.  This will be my go-to from now on.

It might make a delicious addition to Christmas breakfast or brunch at your house!

Christmas Eve Soup, take two or three

 

 For decades we have used the same recipe for Christmas Eve Soup.  I've tweaked it a bit over the years so it is never exactly the same.  In 2021 I tried a recipe that I actually like a lot better, that tastes just the same only better.  I'd forgotten that I had posted about this over on my other blog in 2021, so having started this post I am just going to copy and paste here, and hope no one minds.  (That one had no comments on it, so it's possible no one even read it! 😀

"Our Christmas Eve Soup is just a simple creamy potato soup with some carrots and celery included, and with crumbled bacon and shredded Cheddar cheese to sprinkle on top.  We used to always serve it with biscuit, rolls, corn muffins or some other type of bread.  In more recent years we have often served it with pizza.  You can find the recipe here: Christmas Eve Soup.

This year I am going to tweak it just a bit.  A month or so ago, I tried a recipe from a Gooseberry Patch cookbook, Sunday Dinner at Grandma's.  This happens to be a cookbook which I received for free in exchange for having a recipe published in it.   You can also find it here at  Gooseberry Patch.  (Interestingly, it was a soup recipe that I had published in this book -- Cream of Broccoli Soup!)

The recipe I tried recently, though, is Grandma Jo's Potato Soup.  Interestingly, the ingredients are almost exactly the same as our Christmas Eve Soup.  But this soup was much tastier!  What is the difference?  I've scanned the page from the cookbook to show you.

 My usual recipe calls for light cream; this one calls for evaporated milk.  The only other difference is that this calls for "onion and garlic seasoned salt".  I didn't have any of that, but I did have a container of garlic pepper seasoned salt, so I liberally added that to taste.    This added zesty seasoning, plus the creaminess from the evaporated milk, has to make the difference."

So this year, when we celebrated "Christmas Eve" for adult granddaughters last night,  I again served Grandma Jo's Potato Soup instead of my usual.  And I tweaked it even more in that I used a can of carrots instead of cooking fresh carrots along with the potatoes, celery, and onion.  I added the carrots near the end, at the same time as the evaporated milk, so they wouldn't break up too much, being already cooked.  I like this much better than fresh carrots, and it's so easy. 

* The illustration at top is a scan of one of my very favorite Christmas cards, which features the Fred Swan painting Walking to Town.  To me it just says "Christmas Eve".  I actually have a cross-stitch kit of this design.  Maybe this year I will actually get to it! *

A festive breakfast

  Prior to our candy making and craft adventures,   these four of our grands -- three teens and an 8-year-old -- came to our house for breakfast.  (The photo is from the fall.)  Astute readers will notice a resemblance (but not an exact one) to last year's menu.

I kept breakfast simple but hearty with breakfast sliders and a Hash Brown Casserole.  The hash brown casserole is always a big favorite with this crowd.  The little one wasn't sure ... but she tried a serving and came back for more!

The sliders were from Jamie at My Baking Addiction.  I had made these for our friends Syd and Cyndy back in November and we all loved them, including some of these very same teens who snacked on the leftovers.  I made homemade sausage patties instead of using purchased sausage.  I used sliced cheddar for the cheese component.

Photo by Jamie at My Baking Addiction

I imagine some readers might like to have the homemade sausage recipe.  I have posted it here before, but it's been a few years.  So here it is:

HOMEMADE SAUSAGE PATTIES

1/4 cup water
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. rubbed sage
1 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/8 tsp. ground ginger
2 lb. ground pork

In a bowl, stir together water and seasonings. Add pork and mix well. Shape meat mixture into eight 4” patties (or a larger amount of smaller ones). In a skillet over medium heat, cook patties for 5 to 6 minutes on each side or until no longer pink in the center.

This is such a yummy recipe for homemade sausage! I often cut the amounts in half to make a smaller batch. This sausage is very lean and not at all greasy.  For these sliders, I used about 1 1/4 pounds of ground pork, which is what I had, and used half the amount of seasonings specified here.

 Along with the sliders and hash brown casserole, I also served some Cinnamon Fried Apples.  This is a recipe which my Nevada daughter sent me.  It tastes similar to, maybe better than, the Cracker Barrel fried apples.

As before,  every scrap was eaten.  I just made a couple of changes to the recipe as written: rather than cut the apples in bite size pieces, I sliced them; and I used only 2/3 the amount of cinnamon called for.  I used three Ginger Gold apples and 2 Cortlands, all a little on the soft side.  I didn't peel them.  A good use for apples that are on their way out.

That was our breakfast!  It fueled us up for a fun and busy day.

The traditional ice cream sundaes

 Once again this year we took four of our local grands for ice cream sundaes.  This is a tradition of some years' standing.  (Photo at top is an older one.)  For a number of years we did a meal out, Christmas shopping for their parents, and the ice cream smorgasbord at Kellerhaus, with 3 of the kids.  Their little sister joined in for December 2019.  In 2020 we tweaked the tradition, serving both breakfast and ice cream sundaes at home.

In 2021 we changed it up again, skipping the shopping trip and having breakfast, craft and candy making, all at home before heading off for ice cream sundaes.  We followed that same general format this year.  Maybe tomorrow I can post our breakfast recipes.

Josiah with spoon poised for a first taste!

Sam, Josiah, Grampa and I were at this table.

Julia and Ari had their own table.  The tables are fairly small.

I was a little disappointed in Kellerhaus' Christmas decor this year.  It wasn't as festive as of old, and the player piano still isn't working.  But the homemade ice cream is better than ever, and there are many more flavors to choose from.  Most still prefer vanilla, though, as there are so many toppings.

And that was this year's ice cream extravaganza!

This year's Christmas mini-miracle

 

 It seems like every Christmas season there is at least one mini-miracle that occurs.  I'm sure there are actually many more that we just don't recognize.  But here is one from this season.

Last year we tried tweaking our annual Christmas tradition with four of our local grands.  Above you see a photo from that event.  Of the candy recipes we tried, we were disappointed with a couple of them.  In the linked post above, I declared:

Did you catch that last sentence: "I've already made a plan!"?  But just what was that plan, and where had I written it down?  A very good question.  

I searched both blogs.  I searched my Christmas notebook.  Nothing.  No scrap of paper, no plan of any sort.  I certainly hoped I had not entrusted the plan to my aging brain alone.  But the time for the event was drawing closer, and my plan was not surfacing.  I had pretty much decided I would start over and make a new plan.

Until.  I went to pull out a much smaller Christmas notebook which contains our Christmas card list.

It has a plastic spiral binding and that binding had gotten tangled up with the handle of a reusable shopping bag stored on the same shelf.  So I had to work to free the two.  Once I was able to pull out the notebook, two other items came with it.  This was one of them:

Thank You, Lord!  I immediately recognized this as a Christmas mini-miracle.

(I stuck that sticker on it after discovering the plan, to make the paper more easily findable next year.  And of course now it is here on my blog, as well.)

The plan worked well, and here is the proof:

A sweet mini-miracle for sure!

Oranges in Christmas stockings

 

Oranges are so often associated with Christmas.  Did you ever wonder why?  

As a kid, I always received an orange in the toe of my Christmas stocking.  I thought it was because of a family story from the 1930s or so, but I guess I will never know for sure now just why my mother made sure there was an orange there every single Christmas.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't just for some added vitamin C.

Nowadays, we often see clementines in stores just in time for the holidays, and those often wind up in stockings.  My grandkids often receive a chocolate orange in their stockings  --- and, indeed, there is something so festive about the flavors of chocolate and orange together.  I've mentioned this before and will likely do so again.

Tomorrow, I'll share some festive orange recipes, but for now, I just wanted to share a little bit of my research with you all.  At the Kitchn, I found this article: Here's Why We Put Oranges in Stockings at Christmas.  It's very interesting and doesn't give a single definitive answer, but rather four possibilities.  

You will want to go and read the article for yourself, but basically the four possibilities are: 1) Oranges symbolize the gold St. Nicholas placed in stockings; 2) Oranges were once scarce, especially in the north; 3) Oranges were a treat during the Great Depression; and 4) Oranges, with their easily divided segments, remind us of the importance of sharing what we have with others.

I grew up hearing the story of how my grandfather, a very generous man (who, I now know, had a very challenging childhood), as an adult and a father handed out oranges to less fortunate families.  I was only four when he died and I will never know how he came by the oranges or the specifics of his generosity.  I seem to remember hearing that he tossed the oranges to children as he encountered them in our rural area of New Hampshire.  

And so I always figured that was why the oranges in the toes of our stockings.  Whatever the reason, I carried on that tradition with my own kids. 

More about oranges at Christmastime tomorrow!

Some of our candy making with the grands

 

Back when Christmas was still weeks away, we set a day, as previously mentioned on both blogs, to make some candy, do a bit of crafting, and go out for ice cream sundaes.  It turned into trimming the Christmas tree as well, which was fun, and singing lots of Christmas carols in the car.

I promised to share some of the candy recipes we used, so I will mention two here and two over on my regular blog.  We made Creamsicle Fudge, Chocolate Dipped Orange Slices, Rocky Road Fudge, and Candy Cane Fudge.

Creamsicle Fudge is, as you might guess, a fudge with the orange and vanilla flavors of a creamsicle.  

It is a little too sweet for many people,  although I must say that a younger friend of mine for many years in high school and college had a little holiday fudge business, and found that the Creamsicle was one of her top sellers.  But Mr. T had wanted to make it this Christmas anyway, so it seemed natural to have the grands help with it.  Josiah took on that project, and may have wished he hadn't when, near the end of the process, we discovered we had no red food coloring (only yellow) to tint the orange part of the fudge.  The best we could do was to use green and pretend the flavor was lime, not orange.  It does look pretty and  slightly Christmasy, I will say that for it.

The other candy recipe I will mention here is Rocky Road Fudge.   

Julia and Ari made this fudge together.  Below is Ari stirring the peanuts and marshmallows into the chocolate fudge mixture.  This is one of those easy fudge recipes that just use chocolate chips, a bit of butter, and a can of sweetened condensed milk.

Julia prepares to spread the Rocky Road while Ari licks the chocolate pan!

You can check my kitchen table blog sometime this week for the other 2 candy recipes.  Enjoy these if you try them!

A few photos from Friday

 

Yesterday we got together with four of our local grands for a fun day, much of it taking place right here at our house.  I'll only share a few photos now in the interest of having a December 11 post here in the Christmas kitchen, and will hope to write a more detailed post for Monday, likely on my Kitchen Table blog.

We ate breakfast together, which I failed to get any photos of.  Then the boys got the lights on the tree, and we spent the rest of the morning decorating, making fudge and candy, and working on a simple craft.

Ari stirring Rocky Road fudge

Julia preparing to place Rocky Road in the pan; Ari scraping a chocolaty saucepan

Josiah measuring sugar for Creamsicle fudge as Sam looks on

Oops!  No yellow food coloring, so we couldn't turn the Creamsicle fudge orange!  Green to the rescue; we'll pretend it's lime.

Julia, Ari and Josiah working on crafts

 It was certainly a festive mess around our house yesterday, but we all had a good time!

Around 1 pm we headed out for Kellerhaus, a favorite traditional Christmas destination of ours, for the ice cream buffet.  Photo is from a previous year, but it is no less magical today.

After getting home, we cut and packaged the fudge and other candy so they could take a good portion of it home.  While Mr. T and I worked at this, the kids finished up their craft projects.

And that was our Friday!  What a wonderful day it was!

December 27

 

Today is the birthday of my wonderful daughter in Nevada.  She's the fourth from the left, wearing pink, pictured here with four of her seven children. It really seems not all that long ago (though it's been over four decades) that I was expecting her.  The due date of December 11 came and went and I was very sure I'd end up spending Christmas in the hospital that year.  I was so thankful she waited until the 27th to make her appearance!

It was a bit of a challenge at first having a child with a birthday so close to Christmas.  Then we read a book that really helped us make her birthday more special.  In the book, the main character, Betsy, had a little sister, Star, whose birthday was on or around Christmas, I forget which.  Star always had her own special birthday tree.

So we began doing that for Joanna, as well.  Often she even helped to pick out the tree and help to cut it down.  It was often a smaller tree than our regular Christmas tree.  Joanna had her own special ornaments for that tree, and all of her birthday gifts were piled under it.  This eliminated the dreaded possibility of relatives making one gift do for both Christmas and birthday.  It worked out so well.

Joanna as a teen with her birthday tree

 Joanna has often had a birthday tree even after marrying and moving away.  Sometimes she and Clay traveled for Christmas, and the birthday tree has even been set up in hotel rooms at such times!

I will close with a prayer request for a dear man in Joanna's life -- her honorary dad, Jim, the father of her best friend.  He is in a hospital with covid pneumonia as I write.  If you think of it, prayers for his recovery would be much appreciated.  Thank you so much.

So thankful for this dear and godly woman who is my daughter!

A fun Christmas baking idea to file away

Earlier I mentioned the December 1962 issue of Woman's Day magazine, where I found a lovely poem.  Today I'm back with a smaller snippet from that magazine.  It's a helpful hint having to do with family baking at Christmas time.

I've mentioned before how my local daughter Carrie has a cookie-baking day with all four of her kids at some point during each Christmas season.  This is a tradition that I love so much, and I know that the kids do also.  The photo at top, though it's a few years old now, seemed to me the perfect illustration for this post with its simple idea.  (I loved this photo so much, in fact, that I had a Shutterfly ornament made from it and gifted the ornament to my daughter and hubby.)

One of my very favorite parts of Woman's Day magazine was always their Neighbors feature, where readers sent in ideas, hints, tips, etc. to share with others.  I've found many an inspiring idea there over the years.  This idea from December 1962 was so much fun I just wanted to share it.

A Woman's Day reader named Agnes Listinsky, the mother of seven children ages 2 through 13, wrote about their family baking traditions:

"Before Christmas last year, all the children helped make the cookies, 160 dozen, 18 varieties.  Though I mixed and rolled, the kids cut, trimmed, put them on and took them off the tins, licked and taste-tested.  Ours may not have been the most beautiful cookies, but none were given as gifts or passed to guests with more pride.

"The fruitcake is a special family project.  Even Daddy gets in on it ... We make the no-bake kind of cake.  Around the table we set out the proper equipment for each different task: rolling graham crackers, cutting dates and marshmallows, grinding nuts, etc.  Each child selects a job and the oldest selects a song.  On completion of the song, they all shift to the left and another song is begun, and so on.  This way, we have fun, and Mother gets her baking accomplished with a minimum of effort!"

Sounds like a really nifty idea for those who like to bake any kitchen gifts that require a number of different steps or tasks in the preparation.  I might have thought of singing Christmas songs while the kids work, but I would not have thought of rotating the tasks with each song.  File this one away for use with kids or grands in December!

A few of my favorite red, white and blue Christmas cards

So Christmas in July finds me on vacation in Nevada this year.  I'm blogging from my tablet, without access to my iPhoto library or my collection of graphics.  I thought that an easy way to do a July 4th post might be to simply share some of my favorite red, white and blue Christmas cards.

The card at top is one such example.  I like the simple design of bells, the red ribbon and the scattering of stars.  The black stars at the right seem to be issuing from the bell, which is sort of interesting.

• Above is the inside of this card.  The greeting reads: "When the Christmas bells are ringing with their sweet and merry chime, may they fill your heart with gladness and the cheer of Christmastime."

Below is probably the favorite red, white and blue card in my vintage card collection.  I love this vintage ski jumping scene! 💙

The card below was sent to me along with other vintage cards by a friend from New Zealand.  Love it!  I think the white snowflakes on a blue background are especially fun.

 Love the card below as it prominently features the American flag.

 I like the lantern card below.  Such a classic Americana look.

 Below is the interior of the snowflake "Noel, Noel" card.

The sweet red and blue holly sprig below is from the inside of the ski jumping card.

Patriotic cards seem especially meaningful this year, in light of all that our beloved country is going through.  Hope that this simple post has encouraged someone today!

A few photos from yesterday

I will take just a moment tonight to share a few photos from our annual outing with several of our local grands.  I can't take time for a long post, as I am trying to finish up the local Christmas cards. 

We always begin our day with breakfast or brunch at a diner or, often,  McDonalds.  Yesterday it was a diner.  The older kids all ordered biscuits and gravy ("almost as good as Mommy's" was the verdict!) and Mr. T and I had omelets.   Little Arielle had a pancake and some bacon and apple juice.

Then we go shopping at Ocean State Job Lot where the kids buy gifts for their parents and sometimes for each other.  Photo below from a previous year ...

Lastly, we end up at Kellerhaus for the ice cream buffet, browsing the toys and other rooms, and getting a small amount of candy to take home.

This year the five-year-old joined us:

A highlight is always the player piano.  25¢ plays one of a marvelous lineup of Christmas carols and songs.

 Photo below is also from a previous year.  The kids love to see the piano play.  Sadly, last year it was not working, so this year I didn't even think to bring quarters.  But we got a dollar bill changed so they could have the fun of seeing it again.

A fun time together, as always.  Lots of memories made every year.  Two of the kids are teenagers now, but in no way do they seem too old for this sweet tradition.