angry chicken

happy holidays!

I wanted to cross-stitch a little stuffed linen ornament for the tree this year, but didn't get to it. So, I changed the 2008 to a 2009 and will be ahead of the game for next year. It's a crazy snowland here in Portland—so there has been a lot of down time, which has been lovely, to be honest.

I hope everyone has a lovely holiday, a safe and fun New Year's Eve, and a grand start on the New Year. And Happy Solstice! We have solstice gifts, candle lighting, and a late night shadow puppet show on the schedule for tonight. Excitement!

Click here to get the pattern for this.
Download hoilday.pdf (0.0K)

Enjoy! See you in 2009 and thanks for being rad, people.

cookies and the like

I have been baking. I made a chocolate gingerbread and it was heaven, but was slightly overcooked by me. The recipe was in our local paper in FOODay, but the link won't work, sorry. Today I made these linzer style cookies with raspberry jam. This is a standard sugar cookie type dough with an egg yolk and the addition of allspice and cinnamon. It's one of those doughs you can use for like, 101 types of cookies. I have a huge lump of it in the fridge and am making different types of cookies with it in between unpacking boxes.

And here's a little group in martha's scalloped cookie boxes that are so stinkin' cute. You can see the same boxes here as well, looking even dandier. Just two kinds are in this box—some Russian teacakes (XL-style) and some milk chocolate marshmallow fudge. Simple and sweet. I actually have yet to give any away. The weather has been dicey causing holiday visits to be spotty. The post office has been hard to get to as well. So, they are being eaten in-house. The dark chocolate salted walnut fudge is totally gone. Oh, well.

I need to point out the holiday goodness over here, which caused much envy and made me both super inspired and wishing for a clone.

the tomten

I love this ornament. I think it came from Macy's last year, part of the Martha line, I think. Pete got it for me, so I don't know much. It's become very important to Delia, who calls it The Tomten, which is her night time alter ego.

This book is behind it all. It's The Tomten, one of our all time family favorites. It's a thin paperback copy, I'd love to find a hardbound version. It's a quiet story about a little bearded troll type man who walks the farm after midnight. Delia is our night owl, like her father, so she becomes the Tomten late at night. A Tomten costume is what she has requested from Sadie as her handmade solstice gift—which is so sweet and mildly stressful for me. Didn't we just do Halloween? But, I have to help with this, because she wants a white beard. For real. I saw this and am in awe. Now I have to start the pine cone smock. Wow.

chocolate hazelnut spread—a case study

This is not salted caramel sauce, which is what I had planned to put in these swell jars. (They came from the Meadow, here in Portland, and are super heavy and very pleasing to hold.) I opted for this chocolate hazelnut spread instead because 1. Grammie made some and it was delicious. 2. My kitchen mojo isn't good right now and couldn't face using a candy thermometer 3. I had all the ingredients already *sort of.

I realize looking at this photo now that it looks a bit—turdy. Like turd in a jar. Well, nothing like homemade gifts. Moving on—

I found 3 different recipes for this homemade nutella type stuff. All pretty different. Here's the lowdown:

1. This recipe is what Grammie used. It's basically a chocolate ganache with hazelnut paste in it. The flavor is excellent. You actually use melted chocolate, not cocoa powder, and heavy cream, not oil, so the mouth feel is really nice and smooth. (Mouth feel? Sorry, that sounds pretentious.) It's from a New Seasons flier, which I can't find online so here it is:

1/3 cup toasted hazelnuts (use the toasting directions from the next recipe)
3 oz chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt

Pulse hazelnuts in a Cuisinart forever. Like a long time, about 5 minutes, until it makes a butter. Then add the chopped chocolate and pulse again. Meanwhile, heat up the cream, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a saucepan until just boiling. Add this to the pureed nut and chocolate mixture and pulse again until it's super smooth. It will firm up as it sits and then you can store it in the refrigerator.

2. This recipe is what I have photographed here. This version is the easiest to find and seems the most common. It uses cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and a little oil, blended with hazelnut paste. It's fine—but really, doesn't compare at all to the recipe above. The chocolate flavor just isn't there and the powdered sugar taste is too sweet. It is vegan and because there is no dairy it might be a better candidate for shipping. It is good, it's not like I wouldn't eat it, it's just not as smooth and powerful as recipe #1.

3. This version uses melted chocolate and sweetened condensed milk, much the same way my favorite fudge recipe does. I think it's my favorite because I do always have a can of sweetened condensed milk on hand, but not always heavy cream, and it uses honey, which tastes really good, I think. I really like using melted chocolate in recipes rather than cocoa powder. I always think the taste is much better.

A few tips:

-Don't overcook your hazelnuts when you toast them. It will make a burnt tasting spread.
-Don't try to substitute half-and-half* for heavy cream in recipe #1, it won't ever set up.
-Don't try to use hazelnut flour (like what they have at Trader Joe's) instead of grinding your own. The flour is too dry and won't make a paste when you pulse it, so it will always stay a bit grainy.
-You might try a little less salt if you use recipe #1.

Yum. Thanks for your help, grammie!

much improved

This was one of those impulse purchases that I made, without trying it on, and never wore. Just a simple pullover sweater. I never wear pullover sweaters. They make me feel me claustrophobic. This wasn't always the case, but after kids, I realized I need to only wear cardigans. I also haven't worn a turtleneck in over 6 years for the same reason—too much fabric on my neck. Anyhoo, before it went in the donate pile I thought I'd give it another chance.

I shortened the sleeves, cut it up the middle, added velvet ribbon and 2 vintage buttons. The buttons are only decorative, I sewed little snaps underneath. A little ironing on the reverse side helped straighten out the ribbon.

Much better. Now I will wear it for real. I love changing sweaters.  What's funny is every time I do it, I think I am being so clever, not remembering that I have done it before. Several times.

Snowstorm alert 2008!

We might get snow here this weekend, very exciting for our sad children who never see snow unless we drive 45 east to go sledding at the mountain. I feel like I have more to say regarding cooking, baking, and homemade gift giving, but haven't had enough coffee to gain clarity. Our dishwasher (new!) is broken, so that is awesome. I am cutting out fabric for the girls solstice gifts—nightgowns. Sadie's is white with tiny pink polka-dots and Delia's is deep red. I pre-washed them together. Oops. So now Sadie's is light pink with polka-dots. Our family tradition is that the solstice gifts have to be handmade. The girls' ideas are amazing—and challenging. A glue gun may have to be employed. More developments soon.

**update

Okay, the edges are not finished.

This is okay because I dig the frayed/ratty look of worn sweaters—having said that I am lying slightly here because the stitching on the green ribbon keeps the edge from fraying too much. The edges are raw on the arms as well, so I encourage them to roll a bit during the day—so far, so good. I'd run a stitch around the cut edges if it were a chunky sweater (but then it was also ruffle and stretch a bit, which would bug me.) I probably will wash it in hot water one time to slightly felt it, and then stretch it out while it's damp. I hope this isn't too random, but there you go. It's not an exact science, depends on the sweater, the fiber content, and my willingness to wreck it. Whenever I add buttons, I use snaps underneath because trying to make new button holes would be a swear-fest.

not a tooth breaker, I swear.

I am not on my A-game this week. I have made a coffee cake forgetting 3 cups of flour (Oops. I threw it back in the mixing bowl and added the flour when I noticed the batter seemed to be the consistency of water, and no one was the wiser, thank god.) and then I botched a half-batch of gingerbread cookies today (forgot salt and was crazy/metal with the oven timer. Curses. I blame my new kitchen.) However, I did successfully make this candied ginger orange biscotti last week and it turned out great. Better than great. I changed the mix-ins but it's based off of this lemon anise recipe. So, I think I will be making more of these. Hopefully no recipients will chip a tooth, which has actually happened before. Not with my cookies, but I think with my fudge. I know that sounds really bad.

We got our Christmas tree at Loch Lolly this weekend with my brother (toting an amazing pocket chainsaw!) and Grammie. It was really fun and we magically missed the rain. Here's my husband-woodsman cutting down the tree with the pocket chainsaw and the impervious-to cold little helpers. They have a very strong jacket aversion. (It covers up their outfits, which is lame, they tell me.) The tree is up and decorated and hasn't fallen yet. Woot!

During tree activities we put on a little of John Fahey's Guitar Soli Christmas Album and it felt nice and cozy. And how rad is this cover art? Rad.

Thank you so much for all your very informative comments on the last post. So, I will say yes to adding the moonshine to the homemade vanilla extract and adding a vitamin D supplement to my body. It's good to have a plan. Also, for you bloglines folks, I have a new holiday banner up.

settling in and ruminations on gift ideas

During my previously mentioned outing with the eggplant I found this vintage lawn ornament mushroom over at the wonderful shop ink & peat. It's amazing. It's got a wood base and a metal top and is about 20" high. The girls love it and are bummed I won't let them sit on it. These mossy steps are ours now. They lead up to an old play house that is in our new-to-us backyard.

I am making biscotti today to see if it will be a good contender in the cookie/holiday treat bags. Ideas for holiday gifts in my head right now are cookies, caramel corn in little baggies, biscotti, salted caramel sauce (this is a brilliant idea from eggplant—we already bought the jars) and possibly a make-your-own-vanilla-extract gift, where I supply the bottle and the vanilla beans (with recipes) and the recipient would supply the hooch (vodka.) My concern is that this might seem a little too frugal. "Here's an almost empty bottle for you with weird looking beans in it. Now go buy your own liquor. Happy holidays." I worry that people won't ever fill the bottles and the vanilla beans will sit, sadly, in the empty jar and then get thrown away in 2 months. So, I think I need to just make only a few bottles of this complete with the alcohol, so it seems more like a gift and less like potential garbage.

More about making homemade vanilla extract here. Warning, possibly too much information, but it's great to have such a comprehensive source.

chocolate and such

I was shopping with the eggplant yesterday and we found ourselves in a salt/chocolate shop (The Meadow) and she persuaded to get this chocolate bar. I am typically a dark chocolate person. Not crazy painful dark—just a nice 60% cocoa style dark. However, this bar is milk chocolate flavored with cinnamon and is absolutely amazing. I am eating it now for breakfast with some black tea and all is right with the world.

In between discussing various handmade holiday gift ideas (we had a ton of fun with these last year) she proceeded to tell me I was vitamin D deficient (as she believes all people are, including herself) and I have no clue if I am or not. Living here in the land of little/no sun, I think it's highly probable. In the past when I have taken vitamins, I usually try to take a food source pill, not a synthetic. Is there such a thing for vitamin D? I need to research this. If you all have the answer, let me know.

When is someone going to put vitamin D in a chocolate bar like this? That's the obvious right answer—plain and simple.