Gingersnaps

My mother-in-law, who lives nearby in an assisted-living facility (by her own choice), put in a request for gingersnaps recently.  Though I could have bought some, I wanted to make them because I think it's a shame if a person never gets homemade goodies.  I'd never made them before, so I turned to my trusty BHG cookbooks.  I amd currently in possession of three of these cookbooks: a recent one published about five years ago, the 1987 edition which was a wedding gift, and a vintage 1953 edition.  The recent and vintage ones belonged to Dave's mother, but since she never cooks anymore, I'm putting them to good use.  I used the recipe from the vintage edition because, well, just look at this illustration!

How could I resist??  The cover~

And the cookies~

The recipe was easy to follow and resulted in delicious, crispy cookies.  However, I reduced the baking time from fifteen minutes to twelve, and I'm glad I did.  They would have been too brown otherwise.  Here's the recipe~

BHG Old-fashioned Gingersnaps

3/4 c. shortening

1 c. sugar

1/4 c. light molasses (I used dark because I already had some.)

1 beaten egg

2 c. sifted flour (Sift first, then measure.)

2 t. baking soda

1/4 t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

1 t. cloves

1 t. ginger

     Cream shortening and sugar; add molasses and egg; beat well.  Sift dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture; mix well.

     Roll in small balls; dip into sugar; place 2 inches apart on greased cooky sheet.  Bake in moderate oven (375 degrees) for 15 minutes (I reduced this 12).  Makes four dozen cookies.

I didn't dip mine into sugar because my mother-in-law doesn't like things too sweet.  They are delicious nevertheless!

Hannah's Birthday

Hannah's 20th birthday was yesterday and we no longer have teenagers.  I'm not exactly sure when I got old enough to have two children in their 20's.  I think it happened last week, because the week before I was still 25.  Or at least in my mind I was.

Hannah has relaunched her Etsy shop and has some lovely quilted and knitted items.  She will be adding embroidery at some point as well.  Her prices are reasonable.  Click on the picture in the sidebar to visit.

At Hannah's request, we had a quiet celebration at home with Elizabeth and her family and a big bucket of chicken from KFC (plus sides).  Our family tradition is for the birthday person to choose what's for dinner.  Some years have required a lot of preparation and cooking, and other years, like this one, I get off easy. :)  Some highlights~

A new computer!  Necessary since this 6yo one is dying. . . 

You can never have too much Tolkien.

Two candles for two decades

An excellent father and his two girls (Photo credit: Elizabeth)

Instead of cake, we had low-carb cookies and frozen yogurt.  I followed this recipe.  They were very easy to make.  Each cookie has about 1/4 teaspoon of confectioner's sugar, so they are not super sweet, but the almond flour has a good flavor and there was plenty of butter.  The texture was excellent, too.  I used sugar-free apricot preserves for the jam.  Definitely a keeper!

Advent

A glimpse of Advent happenings at our house~


Advent is all about preparation.  This week I've been preparing by baking Christmas cookies.  Here, shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate and pecans or chocolate and sprinkles (for the kids!)~

It snowed last week and the pond froze over.

The grandgirls spent the night and helped us decorate the tree~

Hannah took them outside to play in the last of the snow.  I stayed inside and took this through the kitchen window where I could keep an eye on the baking cookies. :)

Hygge

Have you heard of hygge?  I first read about it this time last year.  I loved the idea and started a Pinterest board for inspiration.  Here's what the BBC says about it:

"The Danish word, pronounced "hoo-ga", is usually translated into English as "cosiness". But it's much more than that, say its aficionados - an entire attitude to life that helps Denmark to vie with Switzerland and Iceland to be the world's happiest country."

In reality, our family has practiced hygge for years without knowing there was a term for it.  I think of it as highlighting what is best about each season and making the most of it in our homes and lives.

Something about autumn magnifies my desire for hygge.  It must be the falling temperatures, lengthening darkness, and need for coziness.  Today, it manifested itself in my trying a new recipe to munch during our family movie night:  pretzel bites with cheese sauce.

Oh. My. Goodness.

The pretzel bites were awesome and they weren't even hard to make.  I didn't use the cheese sauce included with the recipe but instead used my old standby~ white sauce with cheese melted into it with a little garlic.

Dave pointed out how hygge-ish it all looked, so I snapped a quick picture.

Homemade pretzels and cheese sauce, a bottle of Sam Adams (for him, not for me or Hannah), and X-Files (which we interrupted to watch the presidential debate).  Good times!

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ April 12, 2015

Happy Second Sunday of Easter!  Here's to celebrating the Easter season~ all 50 days of it! :)  I have lots to share this week due to my missing last week entirely and the trip we took to West Virginia to visit my daughter and her family. 

{Pretty}

Here are two of the prettiest things I've seen in a long time.  Verity, 7 months, is a replica of her mother.  Those blue eyes! *sigh*

 Arane, who will be three in two months (!), looks so sweet and grown-up with her newly bobbed hair.

The smudge on her forehead is from our game of "no-boys baseball."  The term comes from
Best Friends for Frances, and I don't think Arane really understands what
"baseball" or "no boys" means, but we were playing it, whatever it is.  And we had fun. :)

{Happy}

I can't let a {phfr} post go by at this time of year without showing what's blooming around here.  All in all, it's been a warm spring so far.  The yard and woods are surprising us by blooming in places we had no idea would bloom.  Since we moved here last summer, we didn't know what spring would look like, but it's been fun to watch.

These shouldn't have been a surprise because, well, I planted them last fall, but I forgot about them and so was surprised anyway! lol  They are on the edge of the woods and can only be seen through the windows in the back of the house, but I think it's especially nice to have flowers framed by windows and that were put there expressly for the edification of anyone who cares to look out a window. . . if that makes sense, which I'm afraid it doesn't, but hopefully you get my drift. :)

These are sweet miniature daffodils.

Redbud.  We have some wild and some cultivated, but no matter how much there is, it's never enough to suit me.

I

(I neglected to take any pictures of the forsythia, but we were delighted to find that in the yard too.)

I don't know that I can say the moss is blooming exactly, but whatever it is doing, it's lovely.

{Funny}

Arane and Verity's mommy and daddy, in the interest of producing non-picky eaters, encourage their daughters to eat all kinds of foods.  This sometimes results in funny faces from Verity, who is relatively inexperienced in the food department.  

{Real}

My Good Friday hot cross buns minus the raisins because I didn't think ahead.  They were good anyway. :)

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{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ December 14, 2014

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{Pretty}

Not long ago, we had some very cold weather and the pond formed a thin skin of ice that remained for several days. One night the pond frosted over and was lined with long shadows the next morning. It is wonderful to watch the pond transform with the changes of weather and season.  Each stage is beautiful in its own right.

{Happy}

I've been busy since October making Christmas gifts and still have two to go (though both are in progress).  I really, really enjoyed making these finger puppets for Arane.  Each one took one and a half to two hours from start to finish, and I made a total of ten, one for each chubby, little, two-and-a-half-year-old finger.  I borrowed, and in some cases adapted, the patterns from this book.  I haven't worked with felt since I was in grade school and I was surprised and pleased by how enjoyable it was.  I plan to make more things from felt in the future!

I whipped up a little storage pouch with a velcro closure~
easy for little fingers to open and close!

Though I like them all, for some reason this little guy is my favorite!

*~*~*~*~*

Coming up with gifts for second babies is hard, don't you think?  Mostly they use hand-me-downs from their older siblings, especially if they are the same sex, as with my two grandbabies.  Books and toys are always good, of course, and we have bought some for Verity, but I wanted to make her something.  I found this carseat blanket on Pinterest and thought it looked practical and cute and fast.  I made it in a couple hours.  I will cut and sew the holes when I have access to her carseat so I can get them in the right place.  I found the fabric at Jo-Ann.  So sweet!

{Funny} and {Real}

I spent Tuesday morning making Dave's favorite Christmas sweet~ fruitcake.  This is the first time I have attempted it in this kitchen with this oven and using parchment paper instead of a paper bag, so I was a little nervous.  The recipe calls for dousing the half-cooked cake in whiskey at fifteen minute intervals during the last hour or so of the baking process.  The house came equipped with a double oven, one large and one small.  I chose to use the small oven despite the little niggling doubt that bounced briefly around in the back of my mind.  After the last dousing and with fifteen minutes of baking left to go, I went out to get the mail.  I came back in to a smoky house and a husband asking me if I had heard the explosion outside.  

!!!!  

Explosion?  What explosion?!  Apparently, the whiskey-soaked parchment had ignited and the explosion had blown the oven door open!  There were bits of ash floating in the air.  I feared for my fruitcakes, but they were miraculously unscathed, if slightly singed around the edges.  Here's the evidence of the mishap:

The black bits are mostly the burned-up parchment paper.
When I peeled the paper off, the cakes looked pretty good!

Dave thinks the smallness of the oven contributed to the ignition, and I think the parchment was more flammable than a paper bag.  Next year, I'll use the big oven and a paper bag.  Ah, well, live and learn.  Christmas 2014 will be remembered as the year Martha caused an explosion while making fruitcake!

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ August 24, 2014

Whew, is it ever hot around here!  It looks like summer decided to show up after all.  Most kids have returned to school, but we still have two weeks of vacation left, sometime during which granddaughter #2 should make her grand entrance. Anticipation mounts!

*~*~*{Pretty}*~*~*

This corner is between a bedroom door and an outside door.  Though I do not love the color of the walls, this quilted wallhanging Hannah made me goes there very well, does it not?

*~*~*{Happy}*~*~*

We were happy to have out-of-town friends stay with us while they were getting their son settled in at college.  It looks like we will be seeing a lot more of them over the next four years.  That's one of the benefits of our moving to a college town.

Here are some of the goodies I made for while they were here~

This is the first time I've used this cakeplate to actually hold a cake. . .

Blueberries have been on a terrific sale
 lately.  They made yummy muffins!

In other news, Hannah's Etsy shop (see sidebar) is gaining speed.  Here is her latest WIP~

It makes me happy to see her being so industrious and creative.  I wonder what this will be. . .

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{phfr} inspiration!*~*~*

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ August 17, 2014

I made these muffins last week and even took pictures . . . or so I thought.  I can't find them anywhere.  They were going to be my {happy}, and now I am rather sparse in the picture department this week.  Alas and alack.  Trust me when I say they were delicious!

{Pretty}

We've been in this house for two and a half months, and I haven't really shared photos yet.  That's because I'm still deciding what to do about hanging pictures, etc.  Not only are there our own pictures to think about, but there are also my in-laws' pictures, which consist of my mother-in-law's parents' artwork.  So I can't go about it willy-nilly and still do the job justice.

I will show you this, however.  I didn't stage this.  It is just how I found it.  One of the good things about moving is that your books end up in different places and the reshuffling means that forgotten titles are rediscovered.  That's the case with this one, which I bought on clearance after the excitement about the new millennium died down round about 2001.  It hadn't been read in years, but Hannah pulled it off the shelf to read while she ate a snack.

Once again, I cannot claim credit for the flowers, but I am happy to reap the benefits! :)

{Happy}

Every day, we video chat with our darling granddaughter and her wonderful parents for about half an hour.  It keeps us connected even though we are hundreds of miles apart.  One of the highlights of our time is reading a few books together.  This is the pile that has accumulated.  Current favorites are The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Farmer Duck.  ("How goes the work?" we ask.  "Quaaaaaaack!" says Arane.)  If you don't know Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell, it is worth looking for.  I've never read it to a child who didn't love it and who didn't join in with "quaaaaack!" after a few read-throughs.

{My Husband's Happy}

Dave brought home a truckload of manure from the local stables, which has mountains of it, as you can see, all free for the asking.  It will go a long way to making this Missouri soil a medium that plants will like living in . . . next year.  I don't think anything makes Dave happier than hauling around heavy things in the back of his old, dented pick-up!

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