How Cold Is It???

Edmonton, Alberta, has lots to brag about...our beautiful river valley, our music, heritage and arts festivals all summer, our world-class university, and much much more (not to mention being the home of most of our family ;))

However, this past weekend we gained more bragging rights...check this out. For those still on the Fahrenheit temperature scale, keep in mind that 40 below zero F is the same as 40 below zero C.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/edmonton/2009/12/13/12141366.html



Second only to a city in Siberia, Edmonton was the coldest place in North America. I feel so proud...NOT. Luckily, I stayed inside all weekend, not venturing out from Friday night till this morning when I went to work. It was 'only' minus 32 C this morning....still bitterly cold. But, hey, we chose to live in Edmonton so we tough up and take the good with the bad. Luckily by Wednesday we'll warm up to minus 6C.

Needless to say, Arizona is looking pretty good right now.

Homemade Christmas

Back in 1978 I found instructions in a magazine for making Christmas tree ornaments out of eggs. It involved carefully blowing the centers out of the eggs, leaving them hollow, painting them, decoupaging pictures onto them and turning them into lovely, and surprizingly strong, christmas ornaments. I made a bunch every year for 8 or 9 years, putting the kids' names on some of them so they'd have their own personal egg ornament. I don't have many of them left because as each child has grown up and left home, they've taken 'their' ornaments with them. It's nice to visit them at Christmas and see these treasures on their own trees. Here are a few that I have left.

I stored them in styrofoam and cardboard egg cartons and discovered that in the humidity of Nova Scotia, the styrofoam and cardboard stuck to the eggs and ruined a number of them. Now I wrap them in tissue before storing them.

I used to look for Christmas gift wrap that had small motifs on it that I could cut out and use to decorate the eggs.

I had made so many eggs that one year our tree was decorated entirely with the eggs. One year a child crawled under the tree and knocked it over. Not one of the egg decorations was damaged (and neither was the child).

After awhile I used other mediums for my homemade ornaments.


There was the cross-stitched ones...

...and the knitted bells...

...knitted socks...there were also knitted mittens but I don't have any of them left...

...and beaded stockings....

There were also plastic canvas ornaments, thimble angels, and others, that haven't lasted through the years.

These days I prefer the old fashioned blown glass ornaments like we used to have on our tree when we were kids, but there's always at least one egg, one knitted ornament, and one cross stitch treasure hanging on my tree.

Traditions are great, especially at Christmastime.

Christmas Cherry Balls

These few ingredients make Sara's favorite Christmas treat - Cherry Balls. Every year she asks me to make her a batch of them. So this is what I did today. This recipe is easy enough for the kids to help with, as you'll see.

The first step is to drain the cherries on a paper towel covered plate, and cut them in half (each batch makes about 24 cherry balls)

2. Combine the icing sugar, coconut and dash of salt in a mixing bowl.

3. Add one stick (1/2 cup) softened butter. Mix well. I start out using a fork to break up the butter but end up mixing it with my fingers.

4. Flatten about a tablespoon of the coconut mixture in the palm of your hand and center a cherry half on it.

2-year old Elly got into the act by placing the cherry on the coconut mixture.

5. Roll the mixture around the cherry forming a small ball.

6. Drop the ball into a bowl of crushed graham wafer crumbs.

7. My 7-year old granddaughter, Kenzie, was in charge of rolling each cherry ball in the crushed graham wafer crumbs and placeing the finished product on a plate.

8. Our production line.




9. The finished product. Refrigerate to let them set, then eat. Delicious.

Enjoy

Nuts 'N' Bolts

What happens when you toss these ingredients together with butter in the oven?

Just the yummiest snack food ever..........Mum's Nuts 'N' Bolts.

Nuts 'n' Bolts

9 cups Cheerios

4 cups Shreddies

4 cups pretzels (I only use 2)

2.5 cups peanuts

1.5 cups butter

1 tbsp. garlic salt

1 tbsp. celery salt

2.5 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

Melt butter, add salts and worcestershire. Pour over remaining ingredients which have been mixed together in a large roaster. Cook for 1.5 hrs in open roaster at 250 degrees. Stir often. Cool and eat.

I usually end up making a couple batches of this before the holidays are over.

Max, on Manners

Yesterday 5-year old Max told me he knew what good manners were.



"You say excuse me when you burp around girls. When you burp around boys you don't need to say it".



He's learning.

Antipasto

Click to enlarge.

This is one of those recipes that, when you look at all the ingredients separately, you'd think would taste fairly yucky. But, when they're all chopped, blended and cooked, the result is something you'll find yourself craving throughout the year, not just at Christmas when you make your batch.

I got the recipe from the best cook I know, my sister Wendy. She gave me a jar of her home-made antipasto for Christmas one year and I immediately followed up with a request for the recipe. There's a lot of ingredients and a lot of chopping to do but the end result is worth the effort.

Here's your step-by-step process.

1. Cut the cauliflower into tiny floweretts - small enough to perch on a Ritz cracker along with other veggie bits when it's done.



2. Cook for 7 minutes, drain and dump into large pot into which you'll add the rest of the ingredients.

3. Chop up the rest of the vegetables and put them into the large kettle with the cauliflower. Don't these red and green peppers look festive!

4. Olives - one of the few foods I really don't like, but in Antipasto they're good. I cheat and buy canned sliced black olives. The green stuffed ones still need to be chopped.

5. Add the green beans - I chop these ones up a bit too. If you don't like green beans, put them in anyway. They won't taste like green beans any longer - just delicious antipasto tasting.

Just look at that wonderful One-Touch can opener work it's magic - press the button and let it do its thing.

6. Sweet pickled onions and my favorite pickle, gherkins. Chop those babies up and add them to the pot. Add the juice from the gherkins too for added flavor and juice.

7. The best part - add the two cans of small shrimp and three cans of solid white tuna.



8. Pour in 20 oz. of tomato juice and 1 litre (or quart) of ketchup, salt, vinegar and oil.

This is what it looks like when all the ingredients have been added.

9. After it boils for 15 minutes it's ready to be sealed in your pint jars.

10. The finished product. Now sit and listen to the sound of the jars lids popping as they seal. The one that doesn't seal (there's always one!) becomes the taster jar that you keep in the fridge and sample from whenever you happen to open the fridge door for any reason at all.

Good stuff.

Christmas Cooking

For Christmas 2001 I compiled and scrapbooked a selection of my favorite Christmas recipes and made copies for each of the seven kids and gave it to them for Christmas. I don't know if the kids use theirs, but every year I get it out and start making our favorites. I find it very convenient to have my favorite Christmas recipes all together in one place.


Now that I've begun my Christmas cooking, I'm going to blog (if I remember) the preparation of some of the recipes in this book.



But first, I'm going to share the book with you. On some of the pages there are pictures of my kids and grandkids when they were much younger - nice illustrations for the pages.

The Title Page

Emily making snow angels was the perfect accompanying picture for Angel Bites. I stopped making them though because the kids decided they didn't like them. Strange people!

This picture of Mike (now an old man of 31) is a family classic. I found him in the kitchen after breakfast one day sitting on the table scooping Nestle Quik out of the can and making a great mess of it. Luckily I had the presence of mind to take a picture of him before cleaning him up. The recipe - Death by Chocolate - has become our Christmas dinner dessert and is very easy to make.

The Marshmallow recipe is a time intensive one because the mixture has to be beat for 15 minutes, but it's such fun to have these treats. It always surprises people that you can actually make real marshmallows from scratch. After I cut them I roll them in crushed almonds, shredded coconut and/or colored sugar and cake decorating candy. Everyone loves these.

I prefer the sour cream cookies featured here to sugar cookies - they're easier to roll and make a softer cookie. Auntie Cath's Shortbreads are my favorite.

The thumbprint cookies are Lloyd's favorites. I put green, red and purple jelly in the centers of them.

I love the pictures accompanying these recipes. With the Cherry Ball recipe is a picture of our baby Emily on her first Christmas (1986). I have to make a batch of these treats for Sara every year. The little guy with the cracked gingersnap recipe is our first grandson, Jonah. He's now 13 years old. This page is even more special now because at the family Christmas party last week, one of the treats was these Cracked Gingersnaps made by Jonah. They were delicious.

The Antipasto recipe here is a labor intensive project, but well worth the effort. It makes 11 pints of the most delicious stuff - great for eating with crackers. Last year Jenny's request for a Christmas gift was a whole batch of Antipasto. She got it too.

To help celebrate the new century almost 10 years ago now, I made the Shrimp Surprise Spread. It's my favorite party dip and I always eat way too much of it. The glasses everyone is wearing in the picture are in the shape of 2000. Remember Y2K?

Mum's recipe for Nuts 'N' Bolts is a family favorite. She doesn't include peanuts in the recipe here but I always add them, because I love them. And the Nanaimo Bars are Mum's recipe too. Everyone loves them. Amy has already made hers and brought me a sample yesterday - yummy.

The turkey stuffing is a very casual recipe. If I have leftover mashed potatoes I'll put them in the dressing too. When Rob was still at home he used to stuff the turkey for me. He liked carving it too and Lloyd sure didn't mind relinquishing that honor to his son.

And that's my Christmas cookbook.