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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The ABCs of Thanksgiving (and Black Friday)

Apples in boxes, waiting to be canned  (more on this soon)
Boys being goofy
Cinnamon rolls ( A Thanksgiving breakfast tradition) and Coffee, and Cranberry salad
Daddy looking through sale flyers
Esther's ringlets
Fancy Forks
Grateful hearts, Greenbean casserole
Hats on place-mats (pilgrim hats)
Indian costumes ( Joel and Leah were dressed as American Indians)
Joel's tepee (made out of blankets and bows)
Kids dressed up
Markers in a container (Washable markers make great war paint for Indians)
Notebook pages of lists
Oranges and cranberries as decorations (see last post)
Pumpkin Pie, covered Pretzels, Pilgrim outfits (Sarah, Hannah, and Esther were dressed as Pilgrims)
Quiet (nothing quite like it)
Rolls, topped with butter
Sprinkles on covered pretzels, Smoked turkey
The Farming Game
Undistingishable Utterings (Read: Esther gibberish) 
Very early morning (this was Black Friday, after I stayed up all night)
White board drawings (Leah was trying her hand at this, the results were quite entertaining)
eXtra caramel dip
Yellow m&ms
Zebra cakes (the people across from us in line at Cabela's went and bought snacks, including Zebra cakes. I think this may have been the first time I had heard of such a thing.)


Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Thanksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving, I was cramming to try to get everything done that needed to be accomplished that day. While I was working on making pies, Esther joined me in the kitchen. Together we finished the pies, and then make caramel apple dip.
It was such a joy to have her "working" with me, even though it made it take longer. How often to we slow down to make memories and take pictures? Surely not often enough.


I didn't get any pictures while we were making pies, but did while we were making apple dip. Even though she probably won't remember this, I'm sure that later she'll enjoy seeing what she was part of.


I tried to get as much work done as a I could before Thanksgiving, so that I would be able to relax and hang out with my family on Thanksgiving. The result was that I worn myself out the day before, but it was well worth it.

While I was chopping oranges and cranberries for the cranberry salad, I noticed how pretty the two were together  and decided to use them to decorate the top.

We didn't go anywhere for thanksgiving,m or have anyone over, but even so, we had a full table! (and that's only half the table!)

We had our big meal at lunch, and then had snacky stuff at supper.

I had fun with some of the food arrangements :).


The center of the 'Apple Flower" is an apple  that I cut the top off, hollowed out, and filled with the caramel apple dip that Esther helped me make. An edible dish :).

The day before Thanksgiving, I had fun idea to remember what I was thankful for this Thanksgiving: The ABC's of Thanksgiving (and Black Friday)
This is a whole 'nother post however, and I'll save it for tomorrow.



Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Birthday Cake

Sunday was my sister Esther's second birthday, and I thought that y'all might like a picture of the cake that I decorated for her.


I have only decorated a few cakes before, and those only for my siblings, but I really enjoy it.  
I don't think that I will probably ever take the time to learn how to properly use all the different icing tips, as I don't plan on ever decorating cakes professionally, but I still really enjoy doing a couple each year for my siblings.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Baking Day

Friday was baking day at our house. When we have baking day, I make up a triple batch of gluten free bread dough, and make it into rolls, bread sticks, loaves, and sometimes other special treats, most of which get put in the freezer to be pulled out and baked later.

I thought I would show a series of pictures, showing some of the different steps in my baking day.

Here are the bowls of  wet ingredients, yeast mixture, and dry ingredients.

  After everything was mixed together well. I dusted the counter well with tapioca starch, and dumped the dough onto it. Then I kneaded  it several times.

After kneading the dough, I divided it into three sections, as it was a triple batch. Each batch makes two loaves of bread, two pans of rolls, or two pans of bread sticks.
Of course, if I want to make a bigger batch of any of these, I use more dough.

I made a special treat, using my dough press, I patted the dough out flat (I would have used a rolling pin, except that I couldn't find it) and used the bottom of the press to cut out circles. Then I laid the dough on the top pf the press, put a peach slice in it, and folded it over. 

I then put them on a greased pan, and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. They were a great hit.

While the peach pockets were baking, I washed the dishes (our dishwasher isn't working).

This baking day produced two pans of rolls, one loaf of bread, one large pan of apple butter filled rolls (made with two loaves worth of dough, and not pictured) and one pan of peach pockets.



Friday, November 9, 2012

A Failed Experiment?

Last night, while the crust was in the in the oven for pizza, I decided to try making Pumpkin Spice Bark. Mama had seen it at a store, but it wasn't gluten free, so I decided to make some.
 Now this sounds all lovely and good, except that I didn't have a recipe.

I pulled a bag of something out of the freezer. I'm still not sure if it was pumpkin or some other squash.But     they're close enough to generally use interchangeably, provided that they're pureed well.

I melted half of the almond bark, added the spices (cinnamon and nutmeg) and pureed squash, and mixed them all up together. At that point, I decided that it was too strong of a flavor, and added more almond bark. Then, I dumped it all into a pan lined with wax paper, and melted the rest of the almond bark. When it was melted, I swirled it into the pumpkin mixture.


I then set it in the freezer, expecting it to set in a very short amount of time, as almond bark typically hardens quite quickly.
The picture above is what it looked like when I pulled it out of the freezer this morning. Still not completely hard. I decided at that point, if it wasn't solid after sitting in the freezer overnight, it probably wasn't going to be solid at all. So I decided to rescue it.
It is still in question as to whether the rescued edition is good or not.


To "rescue" it, I worked powdered sugar into it to make is a little more solid, and rolled it into little balls.
The rescued edition is now sitting in the freezer, in attempts that it will solidify a bit more before the taste testing.

If I were to try this again,  think I would use much less pumpkin, so that it didn't interfere with the almond bark hardening. I would also use less nutmeg, as I put in a little bit more than was really needed.




Thursday, November 8, 2012

Snowflakes

Over the past few weeks, I've been doing some Christmas crocheting. Not much, but a little bit. I've also been working on gifts for my two littlest sisters (not for Christmas), so I hope to be able to post pictures of them soon.
About all I have done for Christmas is crocheted snowflakes.Other than looking on Pinterest for ideas. But I don't think that that counts.

                                  This is the only style of snowflake I'm doing this year.

 I didn't realize how much time I would need for all that I wanted to make this year, so I didn't stat until October. I'll have to start making things for Christmas much earlier next year. January maybe?

If you notice at the top  of the page, you'll see that I've have been busy doing some other things as well. Two more pages have been added, "Christmas Specials" and "Clearance". I hope to have a "For Sale" page up soon as well, which will have some things that y'all haven't seen yet.