Winter birthday

A couple weekends ago, The Boy and I visited the hometown for the birthday of Linlin, who had recently joined the ranks of the thirty 27 year olds. Along with a (gorgeous!) photobook masterminded by her friend Therese — with contributions from family, friends and moms of friends! — we also had (surprise! at least for the birthday girl) dinner at a fancy-pants downtown restaurant touting locally-sourced foodstuffs, and an intriguing menu.

While waiting for our table to be ready, I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the decor. The restaurant was quite small but decorated with lots of detail. The Boy in particular liked the crazy squiggly-line light bulbs over one of the tables in the back.

When I asked our waitress if the jars of preserved veggies were just for decoration or if they were actually used, she informed me that they were, indeed used, not only in the restaurant, but also next door at Ruby Eats, their sister cafe.

In order to make things a little easier on both us and the restaurant, Therese had organized for our group to have a fixed menu for dinner. Suggested wine pairings were listed, and while I enjoyed the red I had with the steak, I wish I’d opted for the port with dessert instead! Our menu was…

Ruby’s Chopped Chef Salad
Sleger’s living greens, pickled beets, A.F.G.’s cucumbers, garden radishes,
hen’s egg, chèvre noir, lemon black pepper aioli

Grilled Flank Steak with Bone Marrow Jus
Apple cider glazed white turnips, warm fingerling potato salad with onion & dill
dressing, roasted heirloom carrots & black kale with bacon & walnuts

Cendrillon by Alexis de Portneuf
Watercress & hazelnut salad

Spiced Cake with Maple Buttercream
Vanilla scented pears

I loved that they served everything (except dessert) family-style, in reasonably-sized serving platters. It made for a much more amicable atmosphere with friendly chatter, even though many of us hadn’t met previously.

The cendrillon — a flavourful goat cheese packed in ashes — was a wonderful surprise, but I have to say that I think my favourite course was the opening salad. The beets were warm, taking the vinegary edge off, and the whole salad was just really nicely balanced. The steak was also very good (although my favourite part there was unsurprisingly the potatoes).

Late in the meal, some of the girls at the table were whispering and pointing; apparently the restaurant’s owner had arrived. It turned out that our hostess for the evening was Lynn Crawford, a Food Network chef whose “thing” is chasing down food at its source! Lynn chatted a bit to Linlin about her birthday dinner and generally seemed like a nice enough lady. I’m a little sorry I didn’t pick up a copy of her book Pitchin’ In while we were there, but I have a hold on it at the library!

All in all, the night was a success — awesome planning Therese! — and we hope that Linlin felt loved and celebrated, after her initial post-tubing shock. Happy Birthday Linlin! We’re glad we could help you kick off this decade with a party… and we hope the coming years feel like one too!

Sort-of book review: Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook

I like my slow cooker. I was a little late to the slow cooking game, having never encountered one until I moved in with The Boy, but once I got the gist of it, I embraced the slow cooker for all its wonderful qualities. After all, slow cookers allow you to eat a hot meal without unduly heating up the kitchen during the summer, they make amazingly tender, flavourful work of roasts and ribs, allow you to cook stuff overnight for a warm breakfast, and — most obviously — they do the grunt work of making dinner for you while you’re out of the house during the day. It is truly wonderful to come home, exhausted from work, to a kitchen that smells like tasty food, and know that dinner is pretty much ready to go.

We actually have two cookers: The Boy’s, gifted to him by his mom when he left home, a large 6-quart oval beast that mostly we pull out for ribs or massive stews, and a much smaller round one (1.5 quarts) that I bought for $10 at a back-to-school sale on a whim. Despite the fact that I’m only cooking for two people, that small one sometimes really is too small. Thus, I regularly dither at garage sales over medium-sized ones (maybe 3.5 or 4 quarts) before deciding that I would feel too guilty owning not one, not two, but three slow cookers that I barely ever use.

That’s right. After singing the praises of the slow cooker, I come to my shameful confession: despite knowing that they are convenient and energy-efficient, and produce healthy, toothsome meals… I have to admit that aside from soups or stews (well, or ribs) I never know what to do with them. So I broke out my slow cookers maybe once a month (…maybe) to make soup on a day that I knew we’d be pressed for time in the evening. Or maybe, inspired anew to pull it out of hibernation, I’d make a beef stew. Once I tried a rosemary white bean dish that was quite good, if not really our usual style, and another time I tried a macaroni and cheese recipe that, while not bad, isn’t something I’d eagerly embrace on a regular basis. In an effort to give the small one some regular action, I tried — several times — to make overnight oatmeal. With fruit and without, with milk and without. Spices, sugar, dried fruit; it didn’t matter. All my attempts ended up in the green bin*. In the end, the slow cookers wound up back on their shelves because, really? How often can one eat stews or soups — especially when I quite like making soup on the stovetop?

* If you’re wondering, my oatmeal quest ended when I discovered baked oatmeal which, although it can not be made overnight, has the redeeming quality of keeping well in the fridge for a few days, thus making it a pretty good Sunday-brunch-and-next-week-breakfast option.

And yet, I kept reading about how versatile slow cookers are, how some people use them at least twice a week. Several bloggers have year-long slow cooker projects where they use them daily! Clearly, it was time for me to get some guidance. So I got Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook out and gave it a shot.

In all, I tried seven recipes out of the 350 in the book. Some (like the oatmeal ones!) I just wasn’t about to try (although I am considering using the slow cooker the next time I make congee). Mostly what I was interested in was recipes that weren’t primarily liquids (i.e. soups or stews). The book is helpfully broken down into chapters by food type (breakfast gruels, sauces, lentils and rice dishes, chilis, a whole host of meat chapters, etc.) and although I found there to be a fair amount of repetition (how many bean recipes does one really need?), I thought the variety of the chapter headings was quite encouraging.

In spite of that, however, I naturally started off my testing with not one, but two soup recipes. First up: Vegetarian Split Pea Soup, specifically, the split and fresh pea variation. It’s cold up here, and I quite like this staple normally, although I do usually throw a ham bone in for flavouring. Still, I stuck to the recipe and… adding in those peas at the end was not a good decision. Pea soup is great because the dried peas have a quieter flavour, letting the taste of the broth and other veggies (and ham, if you’re using it) through. Throw frozen peas into the mix and all you taste is fresh peas. Good in the summer, maybe, but really disappointing as a hearty winter soup. Fail.

Next, albeit feeling kind of grim, I could not resist trying The Easiest French Onion Soup. For this, basically you’re using the slow cooker to caramelize the onions (on high, for 8 or 9 hours) then at the end you throw some broth and maybe wine in and, while waiting for the cooker to heat those up, you toast some bread, grate some cheese, and ready your ramekins. A quick hit under the broiler, and you have cheesey, melty, unctuous onion soup. This one delivered fabulously. (The Boy’s feedback to me was: The soup is good, but next time? Way more cheese.)

Thus encouraged, I turned my experimentation to a rice dish. I was quite excited to see some recipes for brown rice, because as much as I’d like to, I do find it difficult — mostly due to the longer cook time, but also partially due to The Boy disapproving of it if he can see that it’s brown rice — to incorporate it into our meals on a regular basis. The slow cooker is actually a great way to cook brown rice though, because it’s such a slow, moist mode of cooking. So, I made Spanish Brown Rice with Spicy Sausage and… it ended up far soupier than I’d expected. In fact, I stirred in half a cup of cooked white rice before serving it just to try to sop up some of the liquid. Not sure if I would increase the rice or decrease the tomatoes in another attempt, but I would definitely change something. Flavour-wise, it was a little like a very tomato-ey gumbo. Not bad, but nothing special. The Boy stated that he quite liked the flavour, but that the texture was way too mushy. Personally, I had been hoping for a much drier, almost pilaf-like consistency. Not a fail, but definitely something that needs fine-tuning; I’m not even sure it can be done.

After that, I tried the Parmesan Risotto. I love risotto, but rarely have the time to do it properly. I simply couldn’t resist the opportunity to try a method that might allow me to eat it more often. In this case, the mushiness was okay, as risotto is generally served a little sloppily. Definitely a success (despite The Boy’s protestations of “too much Parmesan!” as if that could happen) but… this was a two-hour cook time. Definitely less work than stovetop risotto, but aside from a weekend, I’m not sure this is really all that much more convenient than making it in a pan.

After that: meatloaf. This one I was pretty excited about because I’d never had meatloaf until The Boy’s mom made us some and I’m still cursing myself for not taking down the recipe. Again, this isn’t really a weeknight recipe since you need to cook it on high for an hour before turning it down to low for the following six or seven. Still, both The Boy and I were surprised at how well it turned out. (His comments? “Next time, less ketchup. And more rice. Also, mustard.”) I admit that from a spice perspective, the meatloaf was a little bland. Personally, my first order of business would be to double the Worcestershire, and throw in some chili flakes. In any case, a success. I was hoping to try a different meatloaf recipe that has you put potatoes in the bottom of the cooker and pile your meatloaf in on top, but sadly the book reached its due date back to the library. Ah well.

I could not resist trying out some lamb chunks in the Irish Stew, and although it had way less liquid than I’m used to in a stew*, it was nonetheless delicious. As a bonus, I even overshot the timing on this one, leaving it for around 10 hours when the book called for 7 or 8. Nice to have a little wiggle room.

* In Queenstown, The Boy and I had dinner one night in an Irish pub and I’d ordered the lamb stew (it was New Zealand!) only to be disappointed by (as I saw it) a dish of chunks with just a tiny bit of broth at the bottom. Given that that pretty much describes this stew, maybe that’s just the way Irish stews are? Don’t know, but I’m upping the liquid (if only at the end, so i don’t intfere with the braise) next time I make it!

Lastly, I figured I should give something from their dessert section a shot. I’ve made a chocolate peanut butter “cake” in a slow cooker before and wasn’t impressed, but gave the Hot Fudge Spoon Cake a try. The method is something like a chocolate pouding au chomeur — a thick batter baked up in a syrup to produce a moist, spongey cake — and it worked beautifully, filling the house with a wonderful, chocolatey smell. That said, the recipe itself was not nearly rich enough for me. What I’d change? The chocolate called for and the way the syrup is made, but there is definitely potential here. As with the risotto, though, this is a two-hour (well, two and a half, if you count the “rest time” after it’s done) recipe, so… why wouldn’t I just use the oven?

One thing I did like was the authors’ comment that (for the most part), slow cooker crocks, while not good with drastic temperature changes (i.e. don’t keep it in the fridge all night, then put it in your cooker and turn it on), they are heat-proof ceramic containers — perfect for oven use. It had never occured to me to roast something in my slow cooker insert, or use the smaller one for bread proofing, and possibly even baking. I admittedly haven’t tried either, but I can see definite benefits of, for example, roasting meat and veggies for an hour or so, then putting the whole thing in the crock and adding broth to make a really flavourful soup. You get the idea.

In the end, I would say that although the book got me out of my rut, and did get me thinking about more options for my slow cooker, overall I wasn’t super impressed by the recipes. They are, like many slow cooker recipes I’ve encountered over the years, not bad, but to me taste like a compromise. (Also: like too much sugar and salt.) Yes, I get the convenience of a dinner made for me while I’m out, but the trade-off is knowing that if I could have spent the time to do it on the stove, it would have tasted better. On top of that, for many of the dishes that I did enjoy, they weren’t something I could just throw together in the morning and walk away from anyway. I may change my mind one day, but for right now, unless I’m under extreme time duress, I will always choose the tastier stovetop option.

Maybe I should have been focussing more on meat roasts. Huh.

So where does this leave me with my poor, underworked slow cookers? I’ve not given up; after all, this was only one book. I’m actually quite excited to try some of Stephanie’s recipes. After all, who wouldn’t want to come home to a Thai curry or tasty meatballs? (Although that last one confuses me — the book was quite insistent that any meats to be cooked on “low” should be cooked beforehand (e.g. sausage). I’m no food safety champion, but I don’t want to risk meaty poisoning either. I guess it’s okay if your meat is frozen when it goes in?)

Anyway, I will still be trying to cook one slow cooker meal per week (and if it happens to also be the week’s soup, as with the Irish Stew, then that’s okay), although this will mean a little more time on my part devoted to hunting down promising recipes to try, as I’m definitely not comfortable enough to wing it yet. (Except maybe with that potato-bottomed meatloaf if I’m feeling sassy.) As a bonus, if I manage to keep this up until the spring, I will give myself permission to buy a medium-sized slow cooker, should I find one at a garage sale.

Hurray for ongoing projects!

Joyous!

The year is already off to a promising start with enrollment in a cake decorating class (finally! my cakes might stop being ugly rustic-looking!), a planned celebration for a friend in the hometown, and the birth of a brand new baby!

After an email early this morning announcing the baby girl’s (unexpectedly early!) birth, I made plans to swing by the hospital after work. The Boy, who has been moping at home the past two days, snuffling and unable to breathe (!), figured he would be doing everyone a service by keeping his germy self quarantined at home. So off I went to behold the new parents (sadly I didn’t think to get a picture of the proud new dad — sorry Mike!), many a visiting friend, a happy grandma but… no baby?

Eleyna was a titch on the wee side, so the hospital has her in a separate room, although they expect to move her into the room with Jen very soon. My timing was fortuitous, as I got to be Eleyna’s second (of two!) visitors and so I got to see her in person. As most newborns seem to, she seemed more interested in sleeping than anything else, so maybe in a few days or weeks, when The Boy has recovered, we’ll get the opportunity for another visit.

Congratulations Jen and Mike — we can’t wait to really meet little Eleyna!

Food-y Christmas

This year’s Christmas was wonderful — way less rushed than it sometimes is — and although I slacked off and took barely any photos, I did document a couple things of note (to me anyway).  It turns out that most of them are about food.  Is anyone surprised?  I didn’t think so.

First off, I kicked off Christmas morning with monkey bread.  (I’m still toying with my recipe, but it’s a sort of mash-up of this one and this one.)  I’m happy to report that although I was worried a whole night out on the counter to rise would exhaust the yeast dough, it didn’t; the whole thing was delicious!

Although I didn’t get to make it on Christmas day last year with The Boy’s family, I did make it while we were up there (boxing day afternoon, in fact), and I know my list says “Christmas morning cinnamon rolls” but I nonetheless consider that my tradition is built.

After picking at these with my family and having a sugar-fueled discussion about the merits of monkey bread vs. cinnamon buns, I realized I’d rather have the bread.  The basic ingredients are the same: dough, cinnamon, egregious amounts of brown sugar and butter.  The amount of work, depending on how you want to coat the little balls in the cinnamon, is about the same.  The difference, as my dad pointed out, is that the monkey bread is a communal feast — everyone is in there with a fork yanking out little pieces and mopping up caramel off the plate to then burn their tongues on.  With cinnamon rolls, there wouldn’t be any of that.  There’d be a tray and a line-up, and everyone eating off their own plate.

So yes, I’m editing the list, and am happy to see that I am ever so slowly whittling away at it.

Shortly after the four of us, slightly dizzy from so much sugar on an empty stomach (oh, I’ll remember to pack some whole wheat flour next time!) hit up the presents and despite The Boy’s cynicism that books aren’t fun presents because they’re easy to guess, I was very happy to unwrap The Flavour Bible.

I can’t remember quite where I’d first read about  it, back around September-ish, but whatever I’d read had prompted me to swing by our local bookstore and flip through it.  At the time, I’d ended up deciding that I’d rather spend the money on yarn (ahem), but did proceed to hint heavily to The Boy when I got home.  Lucky for me, he listened!

A couple days after unwrapping it, I’d read all the intro and notes, and flipped through most of the index.  The day I got home, I even used it!  When I got back to our snowy home (just me and kitties; The Boy had headed north to be with his parents for a few days), laden down with my mom’s surplus oyster mushrooms (thanks mom!), I made myself a lazy dinner of mushroom omelet*.  While frying up the mushrooms, I idly flipped to the index for them and saw a “highly recommended; food marriage made in heavy; zOMG!” listing for garlic.  Really?  Mushrooms and garlic?  I am embarrassed to say that although I love both ingredients with fervent ardour, I have never once in my life fried them together in butter.  So I did.  The book didn’t disappoint.

* Although The Boy loves eggs, he’s not into omelets, and I’m sure I’ve documented at length my dismay at his non-love of mushrooms, so I won’t go into that again.  As I tend to feel fairly unmotivated when The Boy’s not around, most of my dinners end up being one-pot affairs: soup, quick fridge-cleaning stir-fries, omelets or hash.

More on the reading front, I was excited, while in my hometown, to be able to borrow my first ever e-book from our library!  The book in question is Blood, Bones and Butter, a book I’d actually flipped through in person at the library before, but didn’t have time to read.  When I read through David Lebovitz’s cookbook roundup for the year, however, I headed straight back to the library’s reservation system and put in my request.  (Well requests.  There was more than one book on that list that piqued my interest.)

I’m now more than two thirds through it, and have found it to be a really good read, thus far.  Despite the fact that there is a strong undercurrent of unhappiness (or maybe just of Want?) running through the whole story, I am in awe at how capable Ms Hamilton is, and I keep hoping to read up to her happily ever after.

While I was curled up on the couch knitting (and ripping back, sigh) while reading (a practice that made my mom roll her eyes), my dad was busy in the kitchen breaking a long-standing family curse.

My family, like many families, loves food.  Both my parents are able and curious cooks, and I’ve no doubt that I owe my culinary leanings pretty much entirely to my upbringing.  My mom owns many a cookbook — and keeps buying more on a fairly regular basis — but I suspect she just likes the gorgeous food pictures, because anytime she stands at the stove, she cooks freehand.  My dad (the bread baker in the family) is a little more methodical: he starts with a written recipe that he modifies and experiments with, documenting his changes, until he’s happy with it, then puts that new “master” recipe in his book.  Between them, my parents have taught me to make bread, jam, stock, a roast, a balanced Chinese soup, and a host of other things.  One thing they didn’t teach me?  Gravy.

For as long as I can remember, my parents hosted both our family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and every year that I can remember, the gravy that was served with said dinner was canned.  Oh, my dad and I tried.  We’d boil the turkey giblets and reduce the liquid to a good-smelling brown liquid that we’d then stir the pan drippings into, and stir, stir, stir, blending a spoonful of floor in and stir, stir, stir-ing again, watching, hoping as… nothing happened.  Inevitably we ended up with a thin, anemic-looking gravy that never seemed quite meaty enough.  We tried creating flavourful broths — out of mushrooms, chicken meat, even beef stock — to mix with the drippings to no avail.  We tried giving it longer to thicken up, we tried making the gravy days ahead with drippings from another roast.  I couldn’t tell you what we did wrong, but they all failed.

This year, however, my dad did it.  As we were readying pans of veggies for roasting, my dad stood at the stove stirring patiently, before quietly announcing that the gravy was ready.  No cans involved.  The curse is lifted!  Now I just need to figure out what he did differently…

My mom’s winter flower; this year amaryllis.  I don’t know why I never think to plant indoor bulbs in the fall for some mid-winter colour, but I don’t.  I really should!

In the meantime, hope you all had wonderful, restorative Christmas breaks with your families, and are gearing up for a bright new year!

(Somewhat scattered) Solstice!

Wow, it’s been hard to drag myself back to picture-editing and recapping our travels now that we’re back in the almost-frosty embrace of winter and all the rushing around that season brings!  I have absolutely nothing to report on the missing entries (and photos) for the rest of our trip, but I feel the need to point out that I have been doing other stuff.  My apologies in advance for the lack of pictures, and the abundance of side-notes via asterisk.  What can I say?  It’s that time of year.

Despite my previous statement, pictures were, in fact, edited, and to my surprise I think I actually got my Christmas cards out not only in time, but in record time this year.  (Who knew?  Panic is a great motivator!)

Haven’t been doing much cookie- or cake-baking, aside from a lone dabbling in disappointingly-dry gingerbread, but I have been canoodling in the kitchen.  Found a sandwich bread recipe that The Boy (AKA He Who Judges Bread Most Severely) actually really liked… and then I lost it.  I tried making a different recipe (one with milk in, for the much sought-after “tender crumb”) and it was an abysmal failure.  I’m going to try again today with this one and hope the results are similar to my success loaf (the ingredient list sure is…I think?).  In either case, crappy or not, there will be bread to accompany tonight’s soup!

I had declared sometime early in December that, for as long as I remembered anyway, I was declaring winter the Season of Weekly Soups.  This is partly because, as you may know, I love soup.  The other reason for this, however, is just to encourage me to bake bread more regularly.*

I kicked it off with chunky chicken rice, and this week I’m pulling out some of the potato leek I’d made (en mass) and frozen back when we were up to our ears in leeks from the CSA.  Not entirely sure what I’ll do the following week when The Boy will be up in his hometown for a bit and I’ll be by myself.  Might be a good time to test-drive a slow-cooker soup recipe.  I grabbed a copy of Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook from the library, and am interested to see if it can introduce me to more slow-cooking variety.  I heart my slow cooker, but there’s a limit to how many stews I want to be serving in a week.

* Although there are many breads that I make that The Boy is a fan of, our bread-eating seems to go through waves.  If there is a stretch of long weekend or other brunchable days, we’ll go through a fair amount in breakfast toasts.  Occasionally, The Boy will be in a toast-as-evening-snack mood for a few days.  Aside from that, however, we really don’t seem to eat much bread.  (We’re not sandwich makers; when I bring a lunch to work, especially in the winter, it’s going to be something heated.)

So I figure at least this way I’ll have a good reason to bake something once a week (I’m excited to try these oatmeal rolls one week!) and if it increases our general bread consumption, awesome!  If not, well… at least I’ll have put in a goodly effort to oust commercial breads from our house (#17).

Having said that, of course, I realize that when I made sliders for dinner last night (loosely based on this recipe and what I had in the fridge; mine had less cracker and parsley, and more onion and jalepeno), I could have baked up mini-buns for them.  And didn’t.  But I had a whole bag in the freezer that needed eating!  That makes it okay right?

About the sliders: I don’t know what is wrong with me that we don’t home-make our burgers more often.  Even though you couldn’t taste any heat from the jalepenos, it didn’t matter.  Those sliders were delicious.  So tender!  I was excited to try them as they were the first of the ground beef packages we’d bought from our beef farmer and I don’t know if it’s just the quality of the beef, or the “made with love” home-made-ness or what, but it doesn’t really matter.  The moral of the story?  Make yourself some sliders from scratch.  Totally worth it, super cute, and uber delicious.

Also on the delicious front, after I realized that I’d made myself too much yoghourt to finish before we head to my parents’ for Christmas, I figured it was a good time to christen my “new” ice cream maker**.  So I made some chocolate fro-yo.  I used less sugar than the recipe called for, and the sour tang from the yoghourt is quite noticeable in the finished product.  I’ve been trying to decide if I would want to mask it with more sugar, or if I like it this way.

** It is, of course, not actually a new ice cream maker, but merely another one that we found this summer, whilst thrifting.  It’s by the same manufacturer as my previous beloved ice cream maker — and in fact has the same awesome warnings on the bucket — but this one has a slightly different handle and lid and, in the words of The Boy, isn’t pink.  (It’s a boring-er white.)  At his suggestion, I gave my pink one to a friend, and kept the white one.  Don’t tell him, but I kind of miss my cute, pink ice cream maker.  This new one feels… kind of impersonal.  Ah well.

More on the cultured foodstuffs front: I’ve been playing around with feeding for Spongebob.  (Yes!  He survived our month-long absence!)  I still have a portion of him in the fridge that I feed weekly, but I’ve also spawned a new jar that I’ve been feeding every other day, that just sits out on the counter.  I was inspired by this post, although I’m pretty sure our house is cold enough that I can get away with my slightly rarer feedings.  I’ve been feeding The New Bob wheat flour, which wasn’t the best idea because now I can’t tell from the smell how much of the difference is the grain, and how much is the activity of the different yeasts.  It definitely smells different though.

One of the main reasons I didn’t opt for this method of feeding back when Anna first gifted me with sponge was that I felt bad about throwing out a goodly portion every time I fed him.  With my new intention of baking at-least-weekly, however, it shouldn’t be too hard to “throw out” some sponge into whatever bread is going on that week.  We’ll see how that works out!

…

Okay, I think that pretty much catches us up.  I had the house decorated for Christmas three days after we got back and have surprised myself by actually being pretty much done with presents (again: a new record for me!).  I’ve been doing a little more sewing in the evenings (can never have too many gift bags, right?) and am feeling pretty good about this year’s close.

Since tonight is the Yule, I’m going to try out one of Carley’s spice sachets for apple cider and, in an attempt to coax the thing to fruit, am going to wassail our poor pear tree with it as well.  (I know, I know, it’s a pear, not an apple.  I’m counting on the intention here.)  I’ve already put in the request with The Boy for a fire tonight, the bird feeders are full (finally!) and the last of my greenery is hung out.  I’m a little afraid to state that everything is “done” but… this is definitely one of my most prepared holiday seasons thus far.  So weird with that feeling that winter hasn’t even started here.  I’m trying to resign myself to a green Christmas.

Happy solstice everyone!  May the light and warmth whoosh back into your homes and hearths as the world slowly brightens and wakes!