Christmas Wishes

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment.  
~ Mary Oliver

This time of year, of all the holiday seasons, is probably the most special to me.

The lights sparkling on the trees and in the streets;
The extra time with family and friends from both near and far who are dear even though I may not get to see them very often;
The tantalizing scents of cookies and oranges and cinnamon in the air;
Voices raised in carols in the stillness of the evening;
The space to pause and think about "resolutions" or fun and interesting challenges you might like to tackle in the new year;
The chance, like opening up a new notebook or journal, to open up the cover on the blank pages of a new year crackling with all their possibilities and to daydream about the sparkling gems of hidden days and joyful discoveries that might lie ahead.

As we end the year, I want to wish all of you good health and happiness and a hope that in the new year you will experience the beauty and comfort of God in fresh and special ways. Blessings to you all.

Hark the glad sound! the Savior comes. the Savior promised long...

Homemade Ketchup

 Tomato time! Late summer always brings so many memories of previous harvests with all the vegetables popping with flavor and produce waiting in pecks and bushels and crates to be frozen and canned.  Mostly I remember coming home from school to tomatoes on the stove top, steaming and simmering their way into the tomato sauce we would enjoy the rest of the year, or sitting down at Grandma Weaver's dinner table to a bowl of her canned cherries or peaches.  Summer flavors stretched round to all the rest of the year.  

This year Mom was nice enough to show me the process of canning with a water bath.  We kicked off our weekend of canning by making ketchup.  When I told my Grandma that Mom and I were thinking of making ketchup and tomato sauce this weekend, she told me about the old days of simmering and canning.  When they used to make ketchup, she and her sisters would build a wood fire in the wash house and spend all day stirring the tomatoes in a big copper kettle hung over the fire as they slowly boiled down into ketchup. Her verdict on that ketchup? "Oh, that ketchup was sooo good."  After hearing about all that hard work, flipping the switch on the crock pot for my own ketchup's twelve hours of simmering felt completely decadent and lazy.

For this ketchup we looked up several different recipes online then went with a simpler combination version of those.  On the cinnamon, you may want to add a bit more than we did, depending on the type of cinnamon you are using. We ground up a few small pieces of Penzey's Cassia Chunks Cinnamon, which is quite potent, and we didn't need to use very much at all.

Homemade Ketchup

10 lb. tomatoes, quartered and trimmed
2 onions
1 head garlic, top trimmed off

Place the tomatoes and onions in (un-reactive) pans and roast at 400 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes.

Pour the tomatoes into a colander to drain off the extra liquid (we ended up with about 3 cups of liquid).  Then run the tomatoes, onions and garlic through the food processor to puree them.



Once the veggies have been pureed, mix them into the crock pot with

1 c white vinegar
1 c apple cider vinegar
1/2 c white sugar
1/2 c dark brown sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon, ground cassia chunks

Cover, and simmer on high for 1 hour. After 1 hour, remove the lid and cover with a splatter guard.  After another 1-2 hours, turn down to low and simmer for another 8-12 hours.

Using the splatter guard allows the excess water to boil off.

Once the ketchup is the desired consistency and taste, transfer the ketchup to glass jars for processing.  Here is a half pint jar of our new tasty ketchup waiting for its turn in the hot water bath.

My verdict on our ketchup? Yum.

Addendum: Having now used the ketchup for a few weeks, I am not as certain about the recipe as I was initially.  I tend to be someone who adds ketchup to many different foods, and this is not a ketchup you can use as liberally as Heinz 57. The flavor profile for the bottle I am using seems to keep changing, and not necessarily in a positive direction. The vinegar taste is becoming a little stronger, and the garlic flavor is now a bit weaker, as is the overall seasoning.   Will need to do some tweaks next time I make this.  Perhaps more garlic, a few more spices, maybe use a different type of cinnamon... Will add more notes once I work my way into a second bottle.

"Redneck Lamp" gets a face lift

Since so many of you have given me a hard time about my shade-less lamp over the (cough) years , I thought you would like to see that  thanks to the beneficence of a friend donating a lamp shade frame to the cause and some left over yarn, the redneck lamp is finally coming into his own.  Still needs a little something (maybe some wire and beads? hmmm.) but at least he is not completely bare anymore.

Alternate Uses For a Tortilla Press

A tortilla press is a very handy tool to have on hand if you happen to be someone who needs to (or wants to) make a lot of things from scratch, don't have a noodle press, and are not a big fan of rolling things out. Maybe not the prettiest or most elegant turn out, but definitely gets the job done. So far I have come up with two alternative uses.

Along with making flour or corn tortillas, it can be used for making--

gyoza or won-ton wrappers:

or noodles, such as noodles made form oat flour or buckwheat flour:

If you don't want to repeat anytime soon, make a larger batch of any of the above and freeze the leftovers for later use.  Just make sure to really flour the gyoza wrappers or to put wax paper between the units of tortillas you think you will use at a go, or you will have to thaw the whole batch to get them apart.

Pie for Pi Day

Raisin Sour Cream Pie. Except I substituted yogurt and clementine juice for the sour cream and lemon juice because, well, that was what I had in the fridge.  The spoonful of custard I snuck as I was pouring it into pie shell at 11:59 and 45 seconds tasted a-okay.  Will enjoy a nice slice with dinner tomorrow night for the official tasting..

Of Rosemary and Teabags

It's been a quiet few days spent recovering from illness, but I am finally getting a bit of my energy back.  Was able to spend a little while in quiet pursuits this morning. 

My rosemary plant got a much needed trim.  

All his height was glorious but getting a bit unwieldy for the windowsill. Hopefully,he will grow back a little thicker and a little less tall.

Over the weekend, my parents came to visit, and my mom passed on a fascinating article on mixed media collage art titled "Tea and Entymology."  (You can get the article as part of a free download of articles from Quilting Daily if you sign up to get their emails.)  In it the artist dried out used tea bags, and then drew ink line drawings on the leftover paper after emptying out the bags.  Apparently you can then apply the paper and image to your collage using acrylic matte medium.  Who knew? A really fun use for old tea bags!

Happening to have quite a collection of tea bags collecting in a dish on my counter thanks to the "recovering from illness" bit, I thought I would give it a go. 

 Several tea bags carefully emptied of their tea leaves.






I then took a pen and made an attempt at tracing/free-hand copying a few images from a better homes and garden magazine onto the tea paper.  One word of caution, the ink does leak through the paper on heavier lines, so if you are rather fond of the photo and wanting to use it for something else, you might want to copy it first.

My new collection of tea paper drawings.

A Morning Walk

Lights on a morning walk. The sun just beginning to trace its way above the treeline.

A Little Wall Art

Birds on a Wire