Time for my Christmas dinner. I know that little seed in front of me doesn’t look like much, but there are more in the jar.
I’m just saying grace before I eat this special meal. See how I put my hands together to say grace? I don’t care for turkey so I’ll stick to sunflower seeds for this Christmas. All you turkeys out there, you can thank me later.
I put my hands together
And say a little prayer
Of thanks that in this weather ,
My dinner’s always there.
I know that I could look for,
And find my food alone,
But no one needs to cook for
This lad; I’m on my own.
My dinner is a yummy seed,
I’ve many in the jar,
My hostess knows just what I need,
She’s never very far.
So merry Christmas holiday,
Be thankful for your lot,
Appreciate your meal today,
Be glad for what you’ve got.
Here I am eating my Christmas dinner. Seasons greetings to you all.
Anneli sends her apologies for the last few seconds of blur when she tried to zoom in and messed things up.
But in the Christmas spirit, I forgave her because, in the first part of the video, I think I look pretty cute.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, my sister-in-law sent me this recipe. As it happens, it’s a great recipe for any time of the year and any occasion. It was my first time making this cake, but it wasn’t that hard to do, and because it tasted SO GOOD, I have to share it.
I used my Kitchen Aid mixer but it occurred to me that it might have been even easier with a regular handheld mixer because you can just stick the beaters into a different bowl rather than wash the bowl and reuse it to do the two steps of mixing (you’ll see what I mean).
Step One
Take an 8″ square cake pan and put two tbsp. melted butter in the bottom of the pan. Then spread 1/2 cup of brown sugar over the bottom of the pan.
Set this aside to put in the oven at 350 degrees for a couple of minutes just before it’s time to add the batter. (You need to have time to make the batter before heating the butter/sugar mixture).
The recipe says to add about a cup and a half of fresh cranberries(or even two cups) to this butter and brown sugar mixture. I always have frozen cranberries for my baking so I put them into a big measuring cup and add hot water to thaw them, draining and replacing the hot water a couple of times to thaw the cranberries. These will be added later to the heated up sugar/butter combination.
About 1/4 cup of pecans will also be sprinkled onto the bottom of the pan after the cranberries are added.
** I heated the oven and put the pan in to melt the brown sugar into the butter when I was finished making the batter in the next step.
Step Two
Now let’s make the batter.
Put these ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix after each addition:
3 tbsp. softened butter
1/4 cup white sugar
2 egg yolks (save the whites in a little bowl for mixing later)
1 tsp. vanilla
Step Three
In a separate bowl, put the rest of the dry ingredients together:
1 1/3 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp.
Step Four
Add the flour mixture to the batter, alternately with 1/2 cup of milk, ending with the flour mixture. If the resulting batter seems a bit too stiff, add a couple more tbsp. milk.
The second time I tried baking this cake I did add a bit more milk (say, almost 3/4 cup altogether) and it was better.
Step Five
This is about the time when I put the pan into the preheated oven, because the next step takes about the right time while the brown sugar is melting into the sugar.
In a clean bowl, put the two egg whites you have saved from when you put the egg yolks into the batter. Beat the egg whites until they are stiff.
Fold the egg white mixture into the batter. (Don’t stir it in. Gently fold it in.) The batter should look slightly foamy.
Step Six
Take out the pan with the heated butter and brown sugar, sprinkle the warmed up cranberries evenly over the brown sugar. Then sprinkle a few pecans over the cranberries. If you have a nut allergy you can easily skip this step.
Pour the batter over the cranberries in the pan and spread it evenly.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
When it is done, let the cake sit for a few minutes; then loosen the sides by running a knife along the sides of the pan. Put a plate over the pan upside down and invert the cake onto the plate.
Step Seven
Make a pot of tea or coffee and cut the cake. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream or just have it plain. It’s really good all by itself.
The photo below is from my second try, where I added a tiny bit more milk and used 2 cups of cranberries rather than 1 and 1/2 cups. Better, I think.
I want to add that my five novels are now available on Amazon for Kindle for only 99 cents in time for the holiday season. Just click on the cover images on the side of the blog post.
If you have another kind of e-reader, you can visit smashwords.com where you can download my books for the same price of 99 cents for your type of e-reader.
I think I see him. I hope he’s got my bag of grubs.
Yes, you’re right! And I see the big sack full of hazelnuts for me.
Er, ah, HERE I AM, Santa. OVER HERE!
Where? I don’t see anything.
When he does come, I hope he brings me a lot of rosehips. Wonder what they’d taste like. In the winter I get tired of these holly berries and mountain ash berries. But maybe the rosehips are too fuzzy inside. They look good though.
Oooooh! Look! He’s got sleigh troubles. His reindeer are conking out. Should’ve got a Tesla Sleigh. With inflation, the price of reindeer food today is high, even for Santa. But even so, the cost of the Tesla Sleigh itself is enough to break the bank.
Yeah, he’s in trouble all right. Look! He’s turning around. Sniff… there goes that box of dog biscuits I asked for.
I see that. Hmm … I think I hear them complaining about being hitched up so close. Something about social distancing.
Sigh! No herring for supper tonight. Not by special delivery, anyway.
Well, I never! He’s going back to the North Pole. There goes that bunch of tree bugs I asked for.
I’ll go round up some recr-hoots.
Hey, you. Santa’s looking to hire you, Al and the Paca, to be his reindeer substitutes.
What’s that you say? You don’t play second fiddle? Huh! You’d think that in the spirit of Christmas, you’d oblige an old man. I see you are related to those llamas next door with all their llammering. You’re just lazy, the All Packa ya. Well, see if I give a hoot.
Here’s a likely crew.
Say, would you pronghorns like to save Santa’s bacon tonight?
But we’re in Montana.
That’s okay. He’ll have to go by there when he limps home with his rainydeer crew and drops them off. Maybe you can hop on and help get them home before the nightshift begins. Thanks a lot.
I’ve been watching and I don’t see him coming back yet. Must be in the workshop, adjusting the harnesses to the new team.
I think I see him now, with his fresh crew of pronghorns. Funny-looking reindeer. Better than nothing, I guess.
Oh, this is so exciting. We just can’t sit still.
Children, children, not so loud,
Reindeer’s nervous of the crowd,
Send a delegation out,
Find that sleigh, and kids don’t pout.
Let’s go meet him.
This way! This way!
Santa’s big sleigh.
Sliding, gliding,
Santa’s riding.
Now settle down or Santa will think you’re all quackers.
Look how well behaved we are; black and white, eating at the same table together. One big happy flock. We’re a “blended flock.”
Oh, listen to you guys. You think it’s easy being the black swan of the family?
Whaddaya mean? You think you’ve got it bad? You try being a rat. All I did was chew on a few of those lovely black licorice cords in the truck and WHAM! They lifted the trunk and exposed me to the elements. But they won’t see me hiding in the corner. Bet you can’t see me either. I’ve got a really good hiding place in the door well too. I’ll just wait there until Santa brings new wiring for me to nibble on.
One thing we all got for Christmas – not sure if Santa had anything to do with it – was darn cold weather. So when Santa had to fly back to change his Rainydeer tires for the more heavy-duty Pronghorn brand, he asked the North Wind to provide some Puddle Puzzles for us to play with while we await his return.
Actually, I thought the puzzles were more like A-maze-ing. You just try it. See if you can find a path out of this maze.
I hope your Christmas holiday time is amazing too.
Did you find the rat in the truck? Look on the far back right-hand corner of the picture (actually the left side of the truck).
With Canadian Thanksgiving coming up this weekend, I decided to read some background on the origins of this holiday and found that the information was a jumble of ideas and beliefs, historical evidence, and a lot of surmise. This holiday celebrated everything from a reunion of Martin Frobisher’s scattered windblown fleet in northern Canada in 1578 to Champlain’s feasts of thanksgiving for the harvest with the Mi’kmaqs and the French in 1606 (at which time the Mi’kmaqs introduced cranberries to the pioneers’ diet and helped prevent scurvy).
The American influence brought the North American turkey, pumpkins, and squash to the Thanksgiving feast in the 1750s.
On January 31, 1957, the annual harvest time feast became an official holiday. In Canada it was to be held on the second Monday of October. An earlier November date was changed so it would not interfere with Remembrance Day on November 11.
Whatever the historical reasons for dates and for celebrating, it is commonly accepted that it is a time to give thanks for our many blessings.
These blessings may differ from one person to another, but the feeling of gratitude is the same.
Some traits to consider, one for each letter of Happy Thanksgiving:
Humble
Aiding
Providing
Patient
Yielding
Thankful
Helpful
Active
Noble
Kneeling
Satisfied
Gracious
Inviting
Volunteering
Innovative
Natural
Goodness
I hope you all have a million things to be thankful for this year. I know I do.
Father, Mother, and Junior have egged me on to do this post about them. My ideas were a bit scrambled and I didn’t know eggzactly what to do, but I poached this idea from a long eggo post.
The sunny side up about this whole thing is that the yolk is on them because I’m the one having the fun.
You may notice that the big daddy of all eggs is green with envy. He wanted to be like the others, but his wife, the mother egg, got browned off with all his complaining. Her baby is browned off too, but as it turned out later, he was all bluster on the outside and runny guts on the inside. Father Egg always said Junior was coddled too much, but he still gave him his benedict – shun.
“Remember that we’re all the same on the inside. Our outer shell may be different but, for better or worse, we’re all whites on the inside,” Father Egg said.
“Yeah and a bit of yellow belly. That comes from being destined to be a chicken,” Mother Egg said.
Father Egg said, “I know I should never have left Denver and the other omelettes. You are the most deviled egg I’ve ever met. I know you think that was a wise crack you made, but in the end that crack will be your demise.”
“Fiddle faddle,” said Mother Egg. “Trying to be so hard boiled. You really are just a shell of a man.”
“Be careful, Mother,” said Father Egg. “You think I’m just over easy, but I know egg-I who was too eggcitable, and was always foaming at the mouth until his people had the idea of whipping him up into a lemon meringue pie.”
“That won’t happen to me,” said Mother Egg. “I’m just going to set here and write my memoirs. Someday omeletters will be in the museum archives and I’ll be famous. Junior can help me.”
“Oh no,” clucked Junior. “I’m too much of a chicken.”
“All right,” said Father Egg, “It’s time for some more yolks. Did you hear the one about the guy who went into the restaurant and asked what the specials were. The waiter said, “I recommend the cold tongue sandwich.”
“What?!” the guy said. “Me? Eat something that someone else has had in their mouth?”
“Oh, pardon me,” said the waiter. “Well, let’s see. How about an egg then?”
And so it went until they all cracked up and took a flying leap into the frying pan.
It turned out that big daddy turned out to be twice the man anyone thought he was. Here he is in the bowl. He had an eggstra yolk to tell, but we never got to hear it.
One day a year we remember to honour our fathers. You may say, “My dad died years ago. I can forget about Father’s Day.” But don’t we owe it to our fathers to think of them for one day out of 365, even if they are no longer with us?
I understand that there are many unfortunate people out there who had a father that was less than ideal, but if we think hard, there is probably something in all our growing up years that is a good memory of him.
The bottom line is, without them, we would not be here.
Just in time for Father’s Day, my Oriental poppies opened up …
It seems to be snowier this year, but only in dribs and drabs. It snows, and the next day it rains and the snow is gone. But the wind is bitter cold and the air is raw. I hope all the little birds and squirrels find warm places to spend the night. I know they’re out and about even in terrible weather, looking for bits of food to keep them warm enough. Even the hummingbirds that didn’t fly south are sipping at the cold sugar water in the feeder. Poor little things.
I hope you are all helping to keep the birds alive this winter by putting out suet or bird seed. Please don’t feed them bread. It’s not going to do them any good. They need proper bird seed and sunflower seeds. And if you have a cat, be sure not to put the feeder where a cat could get to it. On second thought, if you have a cat, don’t feed the birds. Let your neighbour do it.
I hope you all have a happy time over the Christmas holidays. Be good to your friends, neighbours, and families. There is probably not enough of that kindness in the world.
With so much Covid fear, it seems that we are losing the closeness we had with friends and family. Everyone is afraid of this monster illness. But maybe we need to work harder at keeping up our friendships by writing, or phoning, or having more over-the-fence visits, until we get a handle on this virus.
Let us try not to forget that humans are meant to hug, and smile without masks, and love each other. I worry about the toddlers who are not learning to read their parents’ facial expressions as they grow up. Somehow, someday, we need to get back to the way things were.
Have a healthy and happy Christmas time. I wish you all the best for 2022.
PS. I noticed I said, “I hope” several times in this post. I was going to change it, but then I thought, “No, I DO hope a lot.”
Just when you think things are so bad that you have nothing to be thankful for, along comes the Thanksgiving holiday to remind us of so many blessings in our lives.
I won’t begin to name any of the thousands of things we have to be thankful for. Each of us has a perspective uniquely our own. Some might be thankful for good health, while others in failing health are thankful for other things that they have come to appreciate. Some might be thankful for having lots of money, while others are just as happy with much less. My own thought on that is ,”Money isn’t everything, but it sure helps.”
Whatever your circumstances allow, it’s important to make the most of the good things in life.
If you are lucky enough to be with friends or family on Thanksgiving, why not share some of the things you are truly thankful for.
H Home for holidays is fine,
A Appetizers, and some wine,
P Pie dessert is understood,
P Pumpkin’s always pretty good,
Y Yams and taters fill the plate,
T Turkey dinner would be great.
H Happy family, sisters, brothers,
A Aunts and uncles and their “others,”
N No one needs to be left out,
K Kinship’s what it’s all about.
S So much to be thankful for,
G Guests and family we adore.
I It’s a happy time of year,
V Valued friends that bring us cheer.
I It’s a ritual affair,
N Nothing else can quite compare,
G Giving thanks for all we share.
In case you have trouble getting a turkey this year with all the supply chain problems just choose one of these Merriam’s wild turkeys I “shot” for you by the Missouri River.
To all my American friends and family, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving holiday.
wordsfromanneli 