The Quest For My Mom's Perfect Valentine Cookie

Spoiler alert -- I haven't found it yet.

I do have my mother's heart-shaped cookie cutter, though. This one was part of a 4-piece "bridge" cookie cutter set, circa late 1950s. There was originally a diamond, a clover/club, and a spade to go with the heart. Somewhere along the line, the other 3 shapes were lost or given away. My mom played bridge with some neighbor ladies once a month or so when I was small. I recall her using the "bridge" cookie cutters to make finger sandwiches. And of course, she always used the heart cutter to make cookies for Valentine's Day. I have several heart-shaped cutters, but I particularly like this one for its scalloped edge.

My mother never iced sugar cookies, instead preferring to sprinkle before baking with colored sugar, nonpareils, or those little rod-shaped jimmies. (I've got that covered. I used pink sugar crystals.) Her cookies were buttery, crispy, and held the scalloped edge of the cutter. Here's my problem, I have no idea what recipe she used. 

I tried 2 recipes from her cookbooks so far and neither are it. The first recipe used a lot of flour. These are soft and cake-like sugar cookies that I make when planning on frosting afterward. The second recipe I tried was from her c. 1957 Better Homes & Gardens cookbook for Cooky-Jar Sugar Cookies. The recipe indicated that these were crispy. In comparing this second recipe to others that I found in cookbooks and online, the Cooky-Jar ones had a higher butter and sugar ratio to flour. I thought that would be a good start. 

Sugar tends to add crispness to cookies and also encourages spread. A recipe higher in flour tends to produce a cookie that is tender and cake-like. Butter tenderizes the dough and aids in spreads if in high enough amounts. I wanted the crispness from the sugar, the flavor and tenderness from the butter, yet still holding the cut-out shape when baking (so, reducing spread).

I did a little reading on cut-out cookies. In addition to the right ratio of ingredients, it seems that the best doughs rest in the fridge overnight before rolling and cutting. To help maintain the cut-out shape, pre-baked cut-outs should be placed on a baking sheet and chilled for about 15 minutes before popping into the oven. So, I made sure to take both of these steps.  I made the dough on Monday and chilled overnight. Then right after cutting out the shapes I chilled the baking tray and cookie cut-outs before baking. I do think those steps helped.

The cookies that held their shape the best were the re-rolls -- those rolled out from all of the leftover dough scraps, incorporating a little more flour than the initial dough. I think the BH & G recipe was close to what I remember from my childhood. The cookies were definitely crispy. They only partially retained the scalloped edge. But the flavor seemed to be lacking. I remember my mother's cookies tasting more buttery.

One thing I believe I did differently than my mother is I used all butter. My mother likely used half butter, half margarine. I don't know how that would have affected either the flavor or the spread.

Valentine's Day is just a few days away, so I don't think I'll be baking another batch of heart-shaped cookies. But I will be thinking how I can improve the flavor for the next time I make cut-out cookies.

My question to you, have you come across a recipe for a crispy sugar cookie that held its cut-out shape? Any ideas for improving the buttery flavor?

Health

I've had some time over the last week to think about health and how it can be both fragile and resilient. The fragility. I work hard at staying healthy. I try to do all the right things for my health. Still, one day I can be feeling great and then just a few short days later, something overtakes my body. 

Last week was one such week. Early in the week I felt energetic and was getting a lot done. By mid-week, I was feeling off, tired, and maybe like something was going on with my sinuses. Thursday afternoon I was in so much pain I wound up in an urgent care facility. I went from feeling on top of my game to what was the worst pain I've felt since childbirth in less than a week. I'm doing much better now (that's the resilience part). But it just amazed me how quickly things fell apart. I didn't even have a bad cold leading into this sinus infection.

I'm grateful for family members and friends who stepped in to assist this past week. As we were leaving the urgent care facility, we discovered our car's battery was dead. A friend from church came and gave us a jump, then followed us all the way home. My daughters and husband cooked and did everything for me so I could rest for a couple of days. My gratitude abounds.

I'm bouncing back. I'm getting back to cooking, cleaning, exercising, creating, and taking my turn to be there for my family members. I'm thankful that I got a head start on Valentine's planning before this past week. It wasn't by design, of course, which makes me all the more thankful. I'll be working on a couple of Valentine family favorites over the next couple of days. I hope your week is off to a great beginning!

"Valentine's Day is a Homemade Holiday, Really"

homemade holidays
hearts that I cut from red paper, using glue dots to attach to the inside of the kitchen windows-
-a fraction of the cost of commercial window decorations

Those were the words said to me by my daughter earlier today when we took a walk around the neighborhood and talked about this new month. Many people say that Valentine's Day is a commercial holiday, created and driven by storekeepers, florists, and greeting card companies. My family has historically taken a homemade approach to the holiday.

February 13, in the year my mother was 8 years old, my grandmother sat on the edge of my mother's bed, tucking her in for the night. After her bedtime prayers, my mother blurted out, "oh, by the way, I need Valentine cards for each of my classmates tomorrow." As moms, haven't we all had one of the these moments when our child informs us at the very last moment that they need a special X,Y, or Z for school tomorrow? (Mine was a princess costume for the 3rd grade play.)

After a moment of "ackkkkk!" my grandmother finished tucking my mother in and put her mind to creating some Valentine cards. As you would guess, this was back in a time when stores closed at 5 PM, so there would be no thought to purchasing cards. Even so, this was also during the Great Depression. Purchased cards for an entire class of schoolchildren would have been prohibitively expensive for my grandparents' budget. One thing my grandmother did have was oodles of creativity and supplies to match.

Friends of my grandparents owned a shop in town and had gifted my grandmother with their outdated wallpaper sample books. I'm not sure what my grandmother did with these books, but they came in handy this winter night. My grandmother stayed up till the wee hours of the morning, clipping and snipping the floral pages into fanciful shapes. At breakfast, my mother signed each lovely handmade Valentine. To my grandmother's satisfaction, my mother exclaimed upon returning home from school that her Valentine cards were the prettiest of the class. 

My own mother carried on a tradition of homemade holiday decorations, making cards with us when we were children, and handcrafting gifts. Perhaps this is where I get my own inspirations for creating holidays "from scratch" and now share with my own children. So, it's no wonder that my daughter would say that Valentine's Day is a homemade holiday. It's a legacy that was passed from my grandmother to my mother, to me, and now on to my own children.

Happy February, everybody!

Using Up Every Last Morsel of Holiday Treat Foods

Y'all know the saying -- waste not, want not. This is something that sticks in my mind. I actively try to not waste and to salvage what I can, whenever I can. I know that this is better for our finances and leaves more resources for the next person.

Due to our illness-interrupted holiday season, we are just now finishing off all of our edible treats. I know, most of you finished off goodies eons ago. But you may want to hear how we've creatively used some of our remaining treat foods

Here's what we're been using up:

There was less than a half-cup of eggnog left, plus it was over a week past the sell-by date. I used it in a batch of eggnog scones. Basically, eggnog scones are a regular scone recipe, with added sugar, nutmeg, and vanilla to bump up the eggnog flavor. The scones were delicious and prevented the waste of that last bit of eggnog.

My daughters made frosted sugar cookies just before Christmas. We finished the cookies but had a bunch of colored frosting leftover. Tired of not having some of my glass dishes and measuring cups, I decided to bake some scratch cupcakes and use up some of this frosting. 

I mixed the red, yellow and white to make a salmon color and used the chocolate frosting as is. I didn't have enough cupcakes to use the green frosting. I may freeze that to use for St. Patrick's Day or Easter. We've been enjoying the cupcakes, I have more of my glass dishes ready for use, and we didn't allow the frosting to linger long enough to grow mold or spoil.

We de-decked the halls Monday evening. I used more of the treats as part of our snack-y dinner just before putting decorations away. I had some pot stickers in the freezer leftover from New Year's Eve, as well as peppermint bark, holiday cookies, and spiced nuts to add to the buffet. I used a can of biscuit dough that had passed it's sell-by date to make broccoli, chicken, cheese mini pocket sandwiches. A large bag of frozen broccoli was nearly empty, leaving a large pile (close to a half-cup) of broccoli bits at the bottom of the bag. Those bits (plus a couple of chopped florets from a new bag) provided the broccoli for the sandwiches. I try to use all of what's in a bag of frozen vegetables, even the small bits that don't make a forkful on their own. The "cocktail" sausages are 2 all-beef hotdogs cut into quarters, leftover from last summer's cook-outs (kept in the freezer, of course). We had about 2 cups of cola at the bottom of the 2-liter bottle, leftover from our tree decorating party in December. So that went on the table, too. To round out the buffet, I added some carrot sticks, orange quarters, and pepperoni-pineapple mini kabobs.

What's left? Besides the green frosting, we still have some Christmas cookies, spiced nuts, Christmas candy, a half-dozen pot stickers, and about 1 cup of cola that I'll be repurposing in the coming weeks. 

So, this has been my effort to waste not, so that we will want not.

My New Pajama Pants (and a little trick to make the fabric layout work with less fabric)

I often don't buy the full amount of fabric that a pattern suggests. I'm on the petite side, so I always have to alter patterns to fit my shorter stature. Hence needing less fabric than called for. So, I asked my daughter to order 2 yards of flannel for my new pajama pants (the pattern called for 2 3/8 yards).

Even after shortening the pattern pieces for my shorter legs, I still spent a good 20 minutes trying to make the pattern pieces fit the fabric to no avail. Then I had a thought. This is an all-over pattern that looks good sideways as well as longitudinally, and it has no nap. 

I opened up the fabric, folded it sideways, and voila, the pattern pieces fit just fine.

Anyway, this solved the problem and left me with about 11 inches of additional fabric. I suppose I could have requested even less fabric than the 2 yards.

My question now -- what would you do with a strip of flannel fabric 11 inches by 42 inches?

By the way, turning the fabric sideways worked for my fabric because I'm not very tall. After shortening the pattern to fit my legs, I had not quite an inch leeway in the length. The pattern pieces were about 40 inches from the top of the waist to the bottom of the leg. This would not work as well for someone needing longer pant legs.

Perhaps the Most Practical of Gifts I've Ever Received (but I did ask for them)

When it comes to asking for specific gifts, what could be more practical that giving me the opportunity to buy food and/or deeply-discounted clothing or housewares? I told my husband that I really, really only wanted a gift card to the grocery store as my gift from him. To my surprise, he was enormously pleased with what I wanted. I guess this made gift shopping super easy for him this year. I'd also say it's very easy to wrap a gift card, so I made his "job" that much easier. And what I ask from one of my daughters was a gift card to Value Village (thrift store chain). 

Now why would I want grocery and thrift store gift cards? When I'm grocery shopping, not only am I shopping for value, but I'm also shopping for items that my whole family will enjoy. Fairly often, I want something that I rarely buy, either because I'm the only one who would enjoy it, it's an expensive item for what it is, or both. I also wanted the ability to buy special foods for myself to help jump-start healthier eating in the new year. So, I'm a happy camper when it comes to grocery shopping now. As for the gift card to Value Village, my daughter knows that I love buying casual tops from there for the value (if I ruin them, no biggie), shopping the housewares departments for bargain kitchenware, and I now have a need for a new pj top to go with my newly-made pj pants (fabric courtesy of my other daughter).

How about you -- what are some of the most practical gifts you've ever asked for?

Next Practical Gift -- Silicone Oven Mitts

A few years ago, I wrote about patching and relining my cheap and worn oven mitts. Those repairs kept my oven mitts in service for a good 2 additional years with no issues, then hobbled along for a 3rd year with the occasional burn. Oven mitts simply wear out.

When my son and daughter-in-law asked what I'd like for Christmas, I said a new pair of oven mitts. Here they are. They chose silicone oven mitts, which I'd never used before. I've now used them on both pyrex baking dishes and metal baking pans, and in the oven up to 400 degrees F. (I haven't needed to bake anything at a higher temp, yet, but have read silicone is safe up to near 500 degrees F.)

Although I simply asked for oven mitts, not necessarily silicone ones, I read a little on the benefits of silicone. If the mitts are lined with fabric (in addition to a silicone exterior), they're not only insulating but easy to slide off and on. Some folks say the silicone-only mitts are a bit difficult to get on and off (skin sticking to silicone as you pull them on/off). The ones my son and daughter-in-law gave me are lined. Silicone blocks moisture from reaching your hand and causing a steam burn. That will be a good thing, as I've burned my hand with a damp mitt on numerous occasions. Not only is silicone water-proof, but the surface is bacteria-resistant. If I spill something yucky on the surface, I can simply wipe them off. And they offer a better grip on pots and pans. Whether or not they will outlast a cloth pair is yet to be seen. I'll update you later on that. The downsides to silicone oven mitts -- no cute or fun patterns/designs, and they can be pricey. 

Just sharing. Have you had any experience with silicone pot holders or oven mitts? Please share. Anything I should be aware of as I use my new mitts?

Another Practical Christmas Gift for Me

you can't see in the photo, but the pattern also makes shorts and pants

I tend to ask for and welcome very practical gifts. In addition to asking for shearling fleece inserts for my slipper-shoes for Christmas, I also asked for some flannel fabric to make myself some new winter pajama pants. My last pair has become so holey that I think they may verge on obscene. (thankful for bathrobes) 

Here's the fabric my daughter gave to me. Nice isn't it? A gray background with an all-over, white leafy-tendril pattern, She also bought the elastic that I'll need for the waistband. I have plenty of thread that will work as well as the pattern (one that I've now used 5 times). I look forward to my new sewing project for next week.

Shearling Fleece Shoe and Boot Inserts

I mentioned the other day my hoped-for new shearling shoe inserts. My daughter did get them for me as a Christmas gift. I thought I'd share with you how I'm using them and how else others use them.

I told you I've turned my old athletic shoes into indoor "slippers". I need support for my feet even for casual use and can't wear cheap slippers. I priced high-quality slippers, and those were more expensive than I'd ask for as a gift. 

So, this is one of the fleece inserts. They're sold in pairs and either cut to fit or sized. Some come with arch support or extra foam cushioning. Mine are sized so no trimming required. For a shoe insert, you take the old insole out and just place the fleece insert in its place. If your shoe is extra roomy, the insert may fit inside on top of the original insole. For a boot insert, if the boot is roomy, you simply slide the fleece insert into the boot.

I'm using these to make my shoes comfy-cozy (with or without socks) to wear as slippers. Many folks, though, use shearling inserts to make favorite shoes or boots warmer in winter. Wool fleece does a good job regulating temperature to keep feet from freezing in cold weather. It's recommended to hand-wash and line dry shearling fleece inserts periodically.

In reading reviews online, I discovered that many folks buy these to make their slippers warmer or more cushioned. I think that if one has closed-back slippers with worn fleece insoles, these would refurb the slippers for a lot less than buying a new pair. Price wise, most of what I found online were under $20 for a pair. I'd never heard of these before finding them in a catalog in fall, so I thought I'd share my info.

As for my pair of new "slippers", I'm really enjoying the fleece insoles. Soft and warm -- what's not to love?

To Repair, Replace, Just Live With It, or Make Do

As I was pulling on my sock this morning, I found a small hole over my toe. You know how holes in socks are. The first time you wear the sock with a small hole, it grows into a medium-size hole. The next time you wear that same sock, the hole grows even larger. Eventually, the hole gets so big it no longer contains my toe. I have finicky feet. I couldn't comfortably wear a sock with a large hole in it. So, this morning I grabbed my sewing tray and took 3 minutes to sew the hole closed.

One of my daughters has been wearing a couple of very holey socks for months now. When I recently asked if she wanted thread to fix the holes, she replied that she'd rather spend that repair time working on something else. I followed up with inquiring if she was planning on replacing the socks soon. She then replied that she would rather use the money toward something else. She seemed satisfied to wear her socks with holes in them for the time being.

We all live within limited means, that of our time, our money, our energy, and our abilities. And so we all have to make these choices periodically. Do we take the time to repair something or use that time on another, more important task? Do we spend the money to replace the item of have someone else repair it, or do we put that money toward a different goal? Do we have the needed abilities or training to make the repairs ourselves expeditiously, or would we spend far too much time learning the skill for one repair?

My slippers became so uncomfortable to wear that I simply stopped wearing them. As I said above, I have finicky feet. Flat, loose, unstructured slippers don't work for me. I thought about refurbishing my slippers. I also thought about buying replacement slippers. But I was not inclined to spend the time or energy bringing these originally inexpensive slippers up to the expectations of my feet. I did, however, still have last year's athletic shoes that were no longer good for extensive walking but had the support I needed to wear briefly around the house. So I took the laces out of those shoes and have been wearing them as slippers for a couple of months now. As a Christmas gift, I requested some fleece insoles to slide into those shoes to make my "slippers" more cozy. (Still waiting on opening gifts on Saturday for our family Christmas to see if I will receive those insoles.) Sure, my "slippers" look a little goofy for slippers. But they're comfy, supportive, and my feet appreciate these over my former slippers. I chose not to repair, buy a new replacement, or just live with it, but instead I chose to make-do with what I have.

One of the two hood lights above our stove burned out at the beginning of the pandemic. We tried to just live with the dimmer lighting when cooking. This type of bulb is irregular. The last time I had to replace one, I took the old bulb into Home Depot and asked for help finding its replacement. The lightbulb in my sewing machine burned out several years ago. This made threading the needle near impossible for my aging eyes. This last month, I finally got around to replacing both appliance bulbs. There was no way to repair with the stove hood bulb or the sewing machine bulb. I tried to just live with it but couldn't. I spent the money to replace these bulbs. Now, our garage fridge/freezer combo does still have a burned out lightbulb in the freezer section. This one I'm just living with and making do. When I need extra light to see what's in the freezer, I make-do by opening the fridge side (a side-by-side unit) to spill some light into the freezer.

Our clothes dryer's interior on-off button quit working about 8 years ago. This dryer is 26 years old, and we intend to keep it running as long as possible. The button that quit working is the one just inside the door that shuts the dryer off when you open the door. Now, if I open the door while the dryer is running, I have to "catch" whatever falls out and push it back in while at the same time trying to retrieve that one item that I need right away. However, the timing dial on the panel on top of the dryer does still work. That is, I can turn the time remaining all the way to zero and the dryer will stop. This is how we've been stopping our dryer mid-cycle for 8 years. My husband looked into getting the part to repair the dryer himself. But in the end, we decided that we could just live with this minor inconvenience.

So, sometimes we choose to repair, like with my holey socks. Sometimes we choose to replace, like the stove hood and sewing machine lightbulbs. Sometimes we choose to just live with it, like the clothes dryer switch. And sometimes we make do with what we've got, like the freezer lightbulb and my sneakers-turned-slippers. My thinking is there is no one, all-purpose right choice. We make our choices based on our needs, abilities, and our tolerance for the less than perfect. Just some thoughts today. . .

How about you? Do you find you tend to favor one choice over the others when something breaks down, or do you choose different approaches based on the situation and item in question?

January is One of My Favorite Months

Happy New Year, friends!

Thank you for kind words last week. We are all more or less better, now. Although my energy is still flagging. To give some reference, pre-whatever-this-was, I walked about 3 miles a day, everyday. I'm trying to build back up to that mark. For now, I'm trying to catch up on other stuff and am walking half what I used to.

This morning: 

• I made another batch of laundry soap and did laundry
• did a quick clean-out of the fridge (throwing away several containers of moldy leftovers) 
• made a large pot of rice and another of lentils then pre-made some single servings of lunch with those plus some veggies 
• opened all mail that had piled up in the past 2 weeks (I did pay bills when I received them, though), 
• started making dinner (tuna casserole, beet salad and honey-mustard carrots) 
• began the clean-up of my office (where I tossed all boxes when we received packages in December.

We have put off our family Christmas celebration one more week. Some of us were still symptomatic this past weekend. We really don't want to spread this to our son and daughter-in-law. So, in 2022, my family will be celebrating Christmas Day twice! My husband has been joking that if we keep postponing, I won't have any Christmas shopping, gift-wrapping or holiday decorating to do next fall. There are some season and time-sensitive gifts under the tree. So I I think we'll try our best to celebrate this coming Saturday.

It's now 1 PM, and my lunch break is over. Time for me to return to the enormous pile of laundry, get out the vacuum cleaner, and work on the clean-up of my office some more. One of the things I love about January is I actually have time to do things like straighten my office/sewing & craft area/back-up pantry. Those boxes that contained stuff we ordered in December? I'm using some of them as sorting bins for my organizing.

I hope you're all having a wonderful first Monday of the new year. Happy New Year!

It's a Beautiful Day to Get Out of Bed . . .

. . . after a merry sick-mas.

Our family had been working so hard to stay well for the last couple of years. But sickness found us anyways. It snuck into our household and picked us off one by one. By Christmas morning, it was clear we shouldn't be hosting other family members that day. So, we're looking at a Christmas 2.0 for this coming Saturday. Hopefully we'll all be well and so will my son and daughter-in-law. The sweethearts that they are, they brought over a stew for us on Christmas night, leaving it on the doorstep to keep them safe from us.

On the positive side, the illness we all have had or have now is very mild. Both of my daughters and I have commented that this is the mildest cold we've ever had. The most difficult aspect has been the extreme fatigue. I stayed in pjs from Christmas Eve through Monday morning. But now I feel up to being my busy self, with long, periodic breaks. We don't know if this is Omicron or a cold. But we're all recovering mostly quickly.

As you can see in the photo, we didn't need the fake snow on the window after all. About 10 inches fell in our area from Saturday night through Sunday evening. It's beautiful. I wasn't planning on going anywhere anyways. And I can enjoy its loveliness through a window from the comfort of my bed. 

I had planned for this to be an easier week for myself, buying some sandwich meat, sliced cheese, and a loaf of sandwich bread, plus making a big pot of soup (which I froze), for easy dinners. It has turned out to be especially helpful, seeing that I really don't feel like doing more than I have to right now. 

I hope you all had a merry Christmas. I'll let you all know how our Christmas 2.0 turns out after next Saturday.

Back to my cup of tea and a nap . . .

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, friends!

I wish you all a blessed Christmas with family and friends.

I've been busy this week with cooking, baking, candy-making, cleaning, and wrapping gifts. One of the gifts that I give to my son and daughter-in-law each year is a stack of tins filled with treats and snacks. I spend the week prior to Christmas making these goodies. Here's what is in the tins this year, from top to bottom:

• spiced nuts
• homemade cocoa mix in cellophane cones
• homemade candies -- dark chocolate dipped dried apricots and dark chocolate almond clusters
• gingerbread men, peppermint-vanilla swirl cookies, and nutty caramel bars
• cheese popcorn

I also wanted to show you the type of chocolate that I've been using for dipping dried fruits and nuts. Instead of semi-sweet chocolate chips, I've been buying "dark chocolate" chips. The brand I've been using is Great Value (Walmart store brand). They're 60% cacao and higher in fat, lower in sugar than semi-sweet chocolate chips -- so they're creamier and less sweet. The Great Value brand is about 20 cents more per package and the package is slightly smaller (10 oz compared to 12 oz semi-sweet). 

We hope to see our son and daughter-in-law tomorrow, weather-permitting. Wishing you all a merry Christmas!

recipes:

Spiced Nuts

Caramel Nutty Bars

Gingerbread Men

Peppermint-Vanilla Swirl Cookies

I've been busy with Christmas prep this week. I wanted to show you some cookies that I made, improvising one of my mother's recipes for chocolate-vanilla swirl cookies. It's a refrigerator cookie dough. You mix the dough, form into a log or block, chill, then slice and bake.

After making the basic vanilla dough, instead of making one half chocolate flavored, I added red gel food coloring and several drops of peppermint oil to the non-white batch. 

I can't say how much peppermint I used, maybe 7 drops, until I thought it tasted good and minty without being overly so.

These peppermint-vanilla swirl cookies will go into the stack of tins that I gift to my son and daughter-in-law each Christmas, as a way to share what I'm baking for the rest of the family.

I hope your week is off to a great start!

A Little Snow When It Doesn't Snow

In my area (greater Seattle), we have a 5 to 6% chance of a white Christmas on average. This year, they say our chances of measurable snow on Christmas Day are between 15 and 20%. Every morning when I open the curtains I feel hopeful that there will be a fine dusting. But no such luck.

To get a "feeling" of snow, I use canned snow on the large glass panel in the kitchen door. I've had the same can of snow for about 10 years, using just a touch each year to get that wintry feeling. 

For those neat, rounded corners, I cut a template from an empty cereal box, hold the template against the window loosely, then spray lightly on the glass corners of the panel. I've found that a lighter application of  snow looks most realistic. One of my daughters says she loves, loves, loves the snow on the door.

Another 5-minute decorating project that I made this week went next to the side door that we use most and where packages are left by couriers. I cut boughs and branches of cedar, holly, and other evergreens and pop them into a pot of dirt. I added a bow and reused floral pick. I happened to be out adding "snow" to some pinecones, so I also gave a light dusting of "snow" to my greenery pot. Easy-peasy done.

As you can see, I like projects that give results quickly and without difficulty. These two projects met those objectives handily.

The Menu for Our Tree Decorating Party

Growing up, my mother would decorate the Christmas tree while my siblings and I were at school. We'd  walk into the house one afternoon, surprised to see a fully-decorated tree in the family room.

This may be part my own laziness, but also wanting to share the fun with my family -- we all decorate the tree together. In fact, we make something of a party out of it, complete with party foods and beverages. Like many families, mine likes its "special" foods to be a mix what of what we've had every year and a couple of new items.

This year, I set out cheese and crackers, pot stickers and egg rolls, carrot (our garden carrots) and celery sticks plus dip, homemade peppermint bark, homemade gingerbread men, cocktail sausages, Chex mix, mixed nuts and tangerines. Not pictured -- we enjoy generic cola served in saved (from many, many years ago) glass Coca-cola bottles.

The items I bought specifically for this party were the frozen pot stickers, frozen egg rolls, store-brand lil' smokies, Chex mix, and cola. I had the other foods on hand. Earlier in the day, I made the peppermint bark and gingerbread men. 

Peppermint bark is easy to make. I microwave 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips with 1 teaspoon of Crisco-type shortening in short bursts (20 seconds to start, reducing to 10-15 seconds for final bursts), stirring in between bursts until smooth. I, then spread this thickly on a sheet of waxed paper. Next, I melt about 1/2 cup of vanilla baking chips with 1-2 teaspoons of shortening and 5 or 6 drops of peppermint oil (found in cake and candy supply areas of craft stores), again in short bursts in the microwave, stirring in between bursts. White chocolate is high in sugar and scorches easily, so I uses even shorter bursts for this step. Once white chocolate is melted, I spread this on top of the still soft semi-sweet chocolate. I "decorated" the top of the bark with 2 Starlight peppermint disk hard candies that I had crushed with a hammer between sheets of waxed paper. Once the sheet of bark is made, I chill it in the fridge for an hour, cut into squares and chill for several more hours.

Making the Yule-tide gay; for the time being, our troubles are far away.

On Doing the Next Best Thing

Perfection is a master that will never be pleased. Often, doing the very best thing or saving the maximum amount of money just doesn't happen. Either we don't think of something in time, or our circumstances prevent that singular best move. Doing the next best thing is a strategy that may be more valuable than chasing after perfection.

Thursday afternoon I was busy with many tasks. In addition to doing a bunch of holiday stuff and making yogurt, I was also baking a batch of bread and making dinner. Our main dish for dinner was a meatloaf. I actually did think ahead in one area and prepared a double-batch of meatloaf for an easy dinner later this month. However, I didn't plan well enough in advance to get both the meatloaf and the loaves of bread into the oven at the same time, thereby saving electricity and about 10 cents total. I could have used baking pans that would all fit in the oven's small space and timed the rising loaves of bread to be ready when the meatloaf was assembled. But in my slapdash, trying to get everything done, I just didn't plan it all out thoroughly. I did however do the next best thing. I got the meatloaf into the oven as the bread was coming out. This meant that I didn't need to reheat the oven twice in the day. My oven takes about 10-12 minutes to preheat, so I estimate that I saved about 4 cents by doing the next best thing.

I think there's a tendency to devalue low amounts of savings. However, if I save 4 cents every day by doing "the next best thing," I save $14.60 over the course of a year. Again, we might assume $14 is small change. But in my area, that $14.60 will buy a lot of food, such as a 25 lb bag of rice. In my thinking, there's no such thing as small change. All change adds up.

The effort spent chasing after that absolute best, whether it's being the most frugal or seeking perfection in some other area of our lives is not only exhausting, but it can be defeating when we fall short. I may even give up on trying if I can't ever reach my admittedly lofty goals. Knowing that I can still have a small win when the big win is out of my reach is reassurance that I am still heading in the right direction. After all, a small win (or 4 cents) is still a win. As the saying goes -- life is a marathon.

Silver and Gold Paint Pens for Simplified Gift Wrappings

a little silver ink dresses up plain brown paper

The first Christmas we had our cat, she seemed to enjoy the ribbons and bows on our wrapped presents a little more than she should. Not only did she chew on the bows, but she swallowed a fair amount of the plasticky ribbons. This just wasn't good for her. 

From then on, instead of adding ribbons or bows to our wrapped gifts, I simply drew designs (simplified versions of snowflakes, trees, hearts, teddy bears and snowmen) and name tags right onto the wrapping paper. I used markers mostly. The side benefit was I saved money by not buying disposable wrapping extras. As the years progressed, my budget improved, and I've been able to buy special silver and gold paint pens. The pens last for years and have been used on several different holiday projects. 

the pens can be used on many types of surfaces

Here, I've used the gold pen to personalize a couple of ornaments for our Christmas tree.

This year, I'm using the pens on the brown packing paper that I asked you for suggestions on how to reuse back in September. I'm also reusing some white tissue paper that was wrapped around an item that I ordered from a vendor online. The silver and gold seem to show up best when I make my lettering large, as I've done on the "Julia" package. (As you can see, I'm not that artistic, nor is my penmanship stellar. But that doesn't seem to matter terribly much.) 

Anyway, I have fun with it. And it's more economical than buying single use bows, ribbons, and gift tags.

Paint pens are available at art and craft supply stores, such as Michael's, Blick Art Materials (dickblick.com) and Etsy, or all-purpose retailers such as Amazon and Walmart.

My Week -- More Exhausted Than I Thought

Hi friends!

I hope you all had a good couple of weeks. I didn't post last Friday because I was simply wiped out. Thanksgiving preparations and execution did me in. I thought I'd recover by the end of the weekend. But this time, I was wrong. I'm just now getting myself back together. The foggy headedness has lifted and I'm pulling out of a funk. So, anyway, here I am with a somewhat brief post.

Our Thanksgiving

My son and daughter-in-law joined us. This was the first time we'd seen the two of them since early July. So we made the most of our time together. We were also celebrating their birthdays which were earlier in the month. The weather was just dry enough to sit around a fire outside on the patio while they opened birthday gifts, then we came inside. Still being cautious, we ate at separate tables inside. Our house is about 40 feet from the front wall to the back wall. The family room and dining room both have large doorways, separated by a hallway, and spanning the 40 feet front to back. So, I was able to set up two tables, one pushed up against the family room window and the other pushed up against the dining room window. I'd say we were about 30 feet apart the whole time we were enjoying the Thanksgiving dinner. I had two sets of serving dishes for each table instead of our usual buffet set-up. I even set up a small dessert table adjacent to each dining table. This separated dining kept us well-distanced while we were all eating and had masks off. After dinner we put our masks back on while talking together.

Our Menu

I roasted a turkey and made 5 side dishes, a relish and crudité tray, and two types of pie. Here's the whole list: roast turkey, rice pilaf, Italian mac and cheese, roasted carrots, purple potatoes and garden Brussel sprouts, a green bean casserole, a sweet potato casserole, tray of homemade watermelon pickles, cranberry sauce, celery sticks and olives, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie. No rolls or stuffing this year. Both my daughter-in-law and I are currently minimizing wheat and/or gluten. I tried to make everyone's favorites while steering clear of obvious dietary no-no's. It was all delicious and provided lots of leftovers for the rest of the weekend.

This week I've been moving more in the Christmas direction, doing some online shopping, putting up some decorations, and planning my Christmas cooking and baking.

We have a large shrub (just off the driveway in the front of the house) that we decorate every year. It's conical and looks a bit like a Christmas tree. Some of these ornaments we picked up from free piles over last spring and summer and some we bought a year ago. In between rainstorms one daughter and I got outside to put these decorations and lights on.

While decorating indoors I played free Christmas music using Spotify and made myself more peppermint mochas. Budget holidays.

Indoor Vegetable Gardening

All last month I shared with you how our radishes were doing. This week I thought I'd show you how the indoor lettuce looks. It's growing nicely and will hopefully provide part of a tossed salad on Christmas Day. I also have kale and spinach growing indoors right now, plus my tomato plant (grown indoors from a cutting) has blossoms on it!

Other Stuff

Last Friday we had our usual pizza and movie night. I made a pepperoni pizza and we watched The Bishop's Wife (1947). I found the movie on Pluto TV for free (has commercials). We really enjoyed the movie. It was highly rated as a classic Christmas movie, despite its rather lackluster title. 

I didn't record our meals this past week but I recall we had turkey leftovers, a really good turkey and pumpkin soup, a couple of yummy pasta dishes, and scrambled eggs -- all home cooked. I also made a couple of salads from indoor, home-grown veggies. Aside from the Thanksgiving meal, I didn't bake much this past week. Just too tired. I did bake 1 large loaf of French bread and a pan of cornbread, but no extra treats.

Looking forward to Christmas Day plans, we're thinking we'll do our holiday meal with our son and daughter-in-law similarly to our Thanksgiving, with separated tables for the meal and wearing masks while opening gifts. I look forward to a time when we can actually eat in the same room again. You know, everyone has different levels of what feels "safe". I'd guess that my family is on the very cautious side.I'm also doing practically all of my Christmas shopping online to be shipped or curbside pick-up. This means I miss out on a couple of stellar deals. But I also think not being in the stores prevents me from making impulse purchases.

Do you have special foods that you make for the holidays? I've been thinking through my usual list of treats and decided on caramel nut bars, gingerbread men, frosted sugar cookies (special request from one daughter), almond crèche bread (sweet bread filled with almond filling and folded to look like swaddling), chocolate dipped dried apricots, and peppermint bark. I give a selection of these goodies to my son and daughter-in-law each year so they can enjoy the holiday baking, too. For our Christmas Day meals, I think we'll go with a brunch again, as brunches feel easier to me than big dinners, and our standard homemade pizza dinner.

I know I've been mostly absent from my blog this fall. Life became exhausting for me. I continue to work on building my energy levels. The good news is I think I may be popping in here a bit more often this month. I hope you all had a wonderful couple of weeks. Are you in full-swing holiday mode yet, or is that yet to come for you?

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

My Week: A New Toy, Tree's Off the Roof and Domestic Duties

Hi friends. How was your week?

I mentioned last week that I'd ordered another light garden for starting seeds indoors. This was a birthday gift for 2020 and 2021 plus a Christmas gift for 2020. I had put off ordering something for my gifts for those occasions, telling my husband not to buy me anything, instead I wanted to choose something. I had thought I'd be buying some clothing. But had another idea. I decided to buy something that could be useful for my job here.I really couldn't get all of the seeds started that I wanted, nor did I have the luxury of letting seedlings grow until larger indoors before setting out in the slug-infested cool late winter/early spring garden. With this light set-up, I can now start as many seeds as I like and not feel like I'm rushing any of them before planting. And since I'd decided on this as my big gift for those 3 occasions, I also thought it would be a good idea to order it now and use it over winter to grow vegetables for the table indoors. My light garden arrived Friday morning. Yay! It came in 115 pieces. Boo! The website said "some assembly required." This wasn't "some assembly," this was "all assembly!" Anyway, it was a long 4 hours putting this thing together. The end result is an attractive and very functional unit for starting and growing a gazillion seeds each spring. I immediately filled 6 containers with soil and started some spinach seeds, 7 seeds per container. By mid-week, several of the seeds had sprouted already. I'm looking forward to spinach salads in another month to 6 weeks. On Friday, I also moved some struggling kale and lettuce potted plants under the lights, as well as my tomato plant that I grew from a cutting.

Friday evening was pizza and movie night again. It was Grace's turn to choose the movie and she chose an Australian animated film from 1972, Marco Polo, Jr. Versus the Red Dragon. We were able to stream it for free through our library's Kanopy streaming service. The film was entertaining and family-friendly -- a good choice.

Saturday was the day the tree guy came over. He went up on the roof and cut the tree into long lengths then moved them off the roof with a rope. Once the long pieces of trunk were down, he cut them into fireplace lengths for us to split in the future. The logs did some damage to our garden, but overall things look okay. After he left, my husband went up on the roof to put temporary patches in place. We have 2 holes in the roof that will need professional repairs. The good news is the holes are on the small side (could have been much worse) and the leaking was into attic space and not living space. While my husband put patches into place, I began the clean-up below, dragging branches to a mulch area and the logs to a place where we can split them. I worked until the sun went down then headed inside to make dinner. This was a tiring day.

Sunday is my day to recover. After church in the morning, I just do whatever I feel like for the afternoon. I went for a 3-mile walk, baked a large loaf of French bread, and puttered in the house and garden. On my walk I noticed more than a couple of houses have. Christmas decorations up, including Christmas trees in their living rooms. We're not to that point in the season yet. I'm still working on a couple of birthdays for this month, then I'll move on to Christmas decorations. 

I have been in the mood for some holiday cheer in my beverages, however. You know that I prefer to make treats instead of buying them. Doing so saves money and allows me to tailor the treats to what works for my health. One of my favorite Christmas-y treats are peppermint mochas. If I buy one at Starbucks, it'll cost over $4 for a short. I can buy a 2-pack of peppermint oil for baking for about $4, regular price (even less if using a coupon). A 2-pack of peppermint oil will make dozens of cups of peppermint mochas. These little vials contain 1 dram each. There are approximately 57 drops per dram of oil. I use 1 drop per small peppermint mocha. So, each mocha costs me about 3 cents in peppermint oil, about 3 cents of cocoa powder (184 teaspoons in 1 pound of cocoa powder), 5 cents in sweetening, 10 cents in coffee, and optional 10 cents in heavy cream when I have it, for a total of 21 to 31 cents for a homemade peppermint mocha. (If I could have regular milk, this would be even cheaper. I can, however, have heavy cream in my mochas. The sacrifices I make for my health. . .) $4 vs. 31 cents -- Starbucks has a racket going on.

I've been tackling my fall housecleaning in small chunks this year. This week, I did some detailed dusting/cleaning of furniture, washed more baseboards, and cleaned up the back door area. I finally got the last of the saved seeds into envelopes for planting next year and potted some spring bulbs into 3 pots. These are bulbs that I salvaged from 2 larger pots that I repurposed into vegetable pots for this past garden season. I had taken all of the flowering bulbs out in order to add some fresh soil and plant some spinach seeds. The dried bulbs had been sitting in a bucket on the floor by the backdoor for months.

As usual, I baked a lot. I gave up on trying to keep up with the demand for French bread when baking 1 large loaf at a time. And on Tuesday I baked a double batch of French bread (uses 8 cups of flour). I hope this will hold us for a few days. I also made another batch of yogurt this week. I make yogurt about once every 3 weeks, waiting until we run out before starting the next batch.

I've noticed that we have fewer and fewer critters coming to eat in our yard these days. I saw a larger bunny on the back lawn one afternoon and a smaller bunny on the front lawn another afternoon. My small red squirrel stills come by from time to time. He's funny, territorial, and seems to have an eating spot right outside my bedroom window. He drags a pinecone about twice the size of his head up onto the deck railing, perches on the center post, and picks apart the pinecone until he's done. He's left quite a mess of pinecone bits for me to clean up. But the entertainment value of having him around is worth the extra work. I do believe that he is the one who dug out and ate several of my spring flowering bulbs this past summer. Again, I try to be generous of spirit with these creatures and forgive what they do to my plants.

My daughters had a couple of things they wanted from Walmart this week. So I piggy-backed their pick-up order and bought carrots, cabbage, celery, bananas, and pepperoni. I really appreciated that they let me add to their order and they did the pick-up. This saved me an hour of my time to get our produce this week through them. I stick to the cheap supermarket fresh produce this time of year, for the most part, with carrots, cabbage, celery, and bananas fitting that description. I still have produce from our garden and orchard and canned veggies/fruit that I can rely on for fall meals. Currently, I'm harvesting Brussel sprout leaves, kale, Swiss chard, turnips, beets, green onions, cauliflower leaves, spinach, and nasturtium leaves from the outdoor garden and radishes (and their greens) and lentil sprouts from the indoor garden. In addition, we have a ton of frozen foraged blackberries, lots of home-dried prunes, cherries, apples, and figs, some frozen rhubarb, and many jars of preserved green figs to use for fruit and lots of already harvested garden-grown carrots, potatoes, garlic, pumpkin and squash to use for vegetables. Considering my grocery purchases of produce this time of year are fairly limited, we still eat quite a variety of fruits and vegetables. I can't say this enough -- having a garden is very beneficial. Even if all I had was a balcony or small patio, I think I would always try to grow some of our food.

I'll be picking up another order from Fred Meyer over the weekend to take advantage of their butter sale -- $1.77/pound (limit 5 with coupon). I also buy our milk at Fred Meyer now, as it's cheaper than Walmart and I think higher quality (always good results when making yogurt and freezes better than Walmart's milk). And I had a couple of birthday gift items I needed for my 2 family members with birthdays this month. I easily made the $35 minimum for a free pick-up.

It's been a good week, and I feel I was productive. What were the highlights of your week?

One other post this week. Read it here -- Cheap & Cheerful Meals.