Xmas is definitely over!

As promised, I finished decorating my husband's xmas stocking before I really said goodbye to the season. I finished the stocking at the end of last week, and today gathered up all the last bits of wrapping paper and decorations in one place so that they can be put away with the rest of the decorations and not thought of again until the end of November.

I embroidered the letters of my husband's name in chain stitch on one side and used satin stitch for the holly leaves. The picture below shows a side seam where I put liberty bells (the same on the other side seam).

I was thrilled to find the red berry bells, which are quite jangly, especially as the liberty bells are soundless! There were plenty of berry bells so I sewed them on the top of the stocking trim. My husband was quite delighted with the result, as am I.

Before xmas season ends...

In early December 2015 I picked up a much-needed new stocking for my husband, planning to personalise it for the big night of hanging and filling. December, however, is always a busy month and I never had a chance to decorate it. When the decorations got put away in early January 2016, so did the stocking. So it wasn't really a surprise to find the impersonal stocking with the onset of xmas preparations at the end of last November. Once again, December was just too busy to personalise the stocking, but I promised that it would take priority in the new year and would not be hidden away until it had something personal on it. With that promise in mind, I headed to the notions shop where there was even a sale on xmas stuff - so I picked up red berry bells (ah - jingly holly berries!), some tiny liberty bells and a few skeins of green embroidery thread.

The fuzzy faux fur at the top of the stocking made it difficult to draw out the name first, so I just had to wing it. I haven't finished the last two letters, so I think the "e" will appear a bit closer to the "m" when I am finished. I plan to put 3 liberty bells down each side of white trim, and embroider holly leaves with bell berries on the other side of the white trim.

Generally I am embroidering 3 rows of chain stitch to give thickness to each letter, but the faux fur sometimes finds its way in between threads and opens the space up. This is just part of the material, I am letting it have its way! Hopefully I will be finished it soon and can be satisfied that next xmas won't show any tasks undone.

Christmas tree!

The xmas tree was picked up this morning, and we'll be decorating it on the weekend, so we are definitely feeling like the season is in full swing. I didn't take any photos of the tree selection process, but thought I would celebrate "tree-ness" by sharing some pix of cards I made in previous years which included a tree in them. I mentioned in previous posts that I had re-discovered a grey box full of small artworks and cards earlier this year, and also a huge selection of cards that my Mum had held on to over the years were returned to me. So these images are from the Grey Box and my Mum's archive. 

This was my card from 1986. The lino print image was printed on different coloured papers. At the time I was living in a bachelor apartment in Toronto, and the image depicts my hanging planter disguised as a xmas tree, my favourite armchair (from my family home) and a squiggle of lights that I had hanging across the window in my room.

Originally I was going to do this as a lino print, but then decided I wanted to use specific colours (gold & green) so made stencils. This card is from 1989 and at the time I was basing a number of paintings on dreams, in which dolphins featured. I stylised the dolphin pair such that their combined inner outlines formed the shape of a tree.

In 2000 I simplified the card by using collage and stencilled elements in my very stylised triangular trees.

In 1994 I was living at Darby's Bridge, Kells Bay, Co. Kerry, and decided to feature the nearby humpback bridge, which gave me my address. It was a Christmas card so I added a tree to my lino block design!

Happy Christmas!

Very busy these past few weeks getting prepared for our biggest occasion of the year. Still a few more things to do, will be spending all day in the kitchen tomorrow, but I don't think I will be posting again until 2016. So I will take the time now to wish everyone a happy, healthy and above all, safe holiday and all the best for a wonderful new year.

More Christmas Cooking - Gingerbread Cookies!

Back in 1999 I returned to Canada for the last xmas and new year's of the 20th century, spending two weeks with my sister-in-law's family in snowy Prince George, BC. Arriving a few days before xmas, my husband and I had the opportunity to help out with the decoration of the gingerbread cookies. We thought the cookies were so delicious and the family evening so much fun that we decided that gingerbread cookies would from then on be part of our annual tradition too. Though we no longer try to decorate the cookies individually (for instance, transforming the gingerbread ladies into a recognisably Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield) we still enjoy the tradition and take pride in our creations! This recipe has been tried annually and remains true.

6 cups self-raising flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder

4 tsp ground ginger, 4 tsp cinnamon, 1 1/2 tsp ground clove, 1 tsp salt

1 cup butter (NB for some reason the past 2 years we have added an extra 2 oz butter as the mix seemed dryer than usual); 1 cup dark brown sugar (packed)

2 large eggs, 1 cup molasses (or treacle) 

First mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.

In a separate large bowl mix butter and brown sugar.

 

Creaming until fluffy...

Add eggs and molasses

Gradually add dry ingredients to wet mix, 

stirring after each dry addition.

Divide mixture and form into several balls.

Wrap in cling film (Saran Wrap) and refrigerate for an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C. Roll out dough on floured surface and cut into shapes.

We use dinosaur cutters as well as Winnie-the-Pooh and traditional xmas cutters. Make the most of the rolled dough! Bake 8-10 mins.

Cool cookies -

- before decorating! The icing I use for decorating is a simple glace - icing sugar mixed with a bit of boiled water and various food colourings. I use sandwich bags with a tiny corner cut as decorating bags (discard when finished). This recipe makes well over 100 cookies (I think I counted 180 this year) depending on the sizes of your cutters. Store in a cookie tin or freeze some for later. They are great holiday treats but we also include them with our xmas gifts.

Christmas Cooking - Cranberry Clementine Conserve with Brazil Nuts

I have been very busy with college work, so am behind in my annual Christmas cooking. But finally, last weekend I got started when I saw that cranberries were available in the grocery. At this point I no longer follow the original recipe, but do everything by eye. However, if you have never made this before, follow the recipe and then make your own adjustments for flavour, sweetness, yield, etc. So here is the recipe:

3 clementines, 1 lemon

1.75 -2 cups water

6 cups cranberries (2 standard packages)

3 3/4 cups sugar

1 cup chopped Brazil nuts

I used 3 x 250 g pkgs this year. It helps to spread the berries on a cookie sheet and pick through them, discarding badly blemished and/or mushy berries. My rule of food: if it doesn't look like you'd be happy to pop it into your mouth, you don't want it in your cooking.

It's easy to just pop berries that you're happy with into a bowl of water to give them a little wash.

This year I used between 100-125 g of Brazil nuts, and just gave them a quick whizz in the food processor to chop them finely. Put in a bowl and set aside.

 It's easiest to peel the lemon and clementines before juicing. Cut the zest finely in slivers. Juice the citrus fruit and set aside.

The citrus zest slivers are added to the water in a heavy bottom cooking pot. Cover pot and cook over low heat for about an hour. Check on pot during this time as the water should not be boiling madly, but simmering and you don't want the water to boil away.

Add the cranberries and cook gently. Berries will start "popping" after about 20 minutes; stir regularly and you can help them get jammy by squishing them with a wooden spoon.

Stir in the nuts.

Add juice and sugar and bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly until conserve thickens. A tip I got somewhere years ago is to warm the sugar before adding to jams. I do this by putting into a bowl and sitting it in the top part of the oven (in Ireland the grill part, not turned on, but getting the heat from the main oven which is sterilising the jars).

There are different ways of sterilising jars. After washing and rinsing, I bake my jars for at least 20 mins at 200 C. Primarily I am using standard jam and mason jars that I brought with me from Canada, so the lids are being sterilised by boiling for at least 5 mins while I am doing everything else. Another tip: only add a small bit of hot conserve to hot jars at first to ensure that the glass doesn't crack. When it is apparent the glass is not going to break, fill jar leaving some headspace and seal using matching lid. If using recycled jars and paraffin, let the conserve cool a bit before pouring in wax; twirl jar a bit so that wax crawls up the sides of the opening, creating a full seal.

The yield for the recipe above is about 6 fancy jam jars. The one with the tin foil, is actually a larger jar, so I would have had 6+ jars. As a matter of fact, I used more berries than the recipe called for and I could have added more water than I did, which would have increased my yield. I have found that I can add more water and the conserve sets pretty well, though the colour can lose some of its intensity. This batch that I made last weekend is quite thick, but still spreadable. It is quite tasty and tart -- a fantastic accompaniment to turkey and turkey leftovers in sambos (mmm, toasties!) but I have also given this conserve as gifts to vegetarians, it is wonderful on toast too, just used as a jam.

Happy Christmas!

The Irish Times had a competition about Christmas baubles, and after we did the tree decorating, I entered this picture. My Mum had given me the pink ball, along with a number of other family decorations, when she and my Dad returned to Ireland in 1983. She had initially received the decoration from her Mum when she emigrated to Canada in 1958 and remembers the decoration from her own childhood -- it has certainly stood the test of time! I brought the decoration with me in 1993 when I firmly moved to Ireland myself and it has been on my tree annually since then. I didn't win the competition, but must have been a runner-up as my picture and blurb were printed in the newspaper on Monday with only a few of the other entries.

Every time I bake something for xmas, I think it is the last thing I have to bake. My traditions though seem to never end! Yesterday I made the butter tarts, which have become an annual taste event for a few years now.

As if we don't have enough Christmas traditions in our house, I have watched a number of candy cane making videos and am seriously thinking of co-opting this as a tradition for future years! I thought this video particularly good as it gave the recipe and the woman is making them in a regular kitchen. They are truly home made!

"Ingredients: (this made 15 decent size candy canes, filled one jar with small candies, and still had some left over)

700g sugar
300g glucose syrup (corn syrup)
1/3 - 1/2 cup of water
1 teaspoon of cream of tartar (can be left out if you can't find it)
1-2 teaspoons of peppermint extract/essence
Red food colouring

Will keep for a couple of days. Keep away from humid spots. I stored mine in the fridge :) "

Happy Christmas and a Healthy & Safe New Year!

Pre-Christmas Cooking!

While technically I began my xmas cooking in September, as I made quite a bit of damson chutney and knew I would be giving some of it away, the idea of xmas cooking really begins when I start the puddings - once Hallowe'en is over and done with. My husband was also decanting the plum liqueur around this time, so with all the leftover fruit, I made a few jars of plum vodka jam. The alcohol cooks off, but there is a nice bitter flavour left, which makes the jam more like a marmalade.

Two large and two small finished puddings. We always have a pudding for my husband's birthday (Dec 8) instead of cake.

Before the end of November I made the annual tried and true apricot-pineapple with almonds jam. A couple of them will be wrapped and given away.

Quite a lot of damson liqueur was made, the by-product being lots of alcoholic fruit. Since the plum vodka jam was very tasty, I knew exactly what to do with the leftover fruit! Again, some of this will be given away at Christmas!

There was a teacher's strike day on Dec 2, which was great timing for us as we had our family day of making gingerbread cookies. We decorated them the next day and sorted out everyone's rations!:)

I was thinking that the cranberry clementine with brazil nuts was the last pre-xmas item on my list...

...but then I remembered I had to make the custard to go with the birthday pudding (and put some in the freezer for New Year's). Since egg whites don't go into custard, they are used to make coconut maccaroons, an annual Christmas treat that stays at home!

Xmas preparations begin!

I have been very busy this past week or so! I started the new triptych (next post?) but I have also been busy preparing for xmas and other events coming soon.

I did a large batch of apricot-pineapple jam with almonds. I have been making this jam for xmas presents since 1983, I think. Actually, I only started adding in the almonds for excitement about 15 years ago. I have to source more paraffin though, as I used the last I had on these non-mason jars. I will make up the cranberry-clementine with brazil nut jam when I can get hold of cranberries.

I also made some puddings, a few people get them as gifts too.

Another event is coming up, so I have set out to make another gift book. This is a picture of all the prepared pieces; I started sewing the signatures to the leather cover last night, so expect to be finished that before the weekend is out.