T Stands for More This and That

 Hi everyone. It's the last T Day before the Christmas holiday. I hope everyone who celebrated Hanukkah had a lovely celebration. This month seems to be slipping by me, and I think I might have missed it. 😕 I always think I have so much time in December, and then here we are, it is already the 18th of the month.

Monday we  had a lot of heavy rain and strong winds.    The power went out just after 7AM on Monday morning, and  unfortunately the  generator’s easy start battery was dead. Not that I like to play with generator as it’s not one of those automatic starting ones   You have to switch things in the circuit box and follow about 10 steps to start it. Long story short, I spent a lot of the day in the dark  (since there wasn’t much light coming from the outside today).  My husband did come home early, and he had the new battery so  we are now running on generator power.  There’s  many outages  and my road is closed to do flooding, so I’m not sure we’ll have power back before sometime Tuesday. We'll see.  

We had a little break in the rain, and I went down to get the mail and check on the condition of the driveway.  (It's gravel and a hill, and  the good news is it held up.😀) This first photo is the water running down the side of the road and going through the culvert that goes underneath the end of my driveway.

And right above this you can see the rushing water as well as water that is leaching out of the ground.

We've got a bit of water in part of the basement too, not a lot, but just enough to make the laundry room floor wet.  I have every extra towel I own on the floor soaking it up. Luckily it's not tons of water, and this rain should be stopping soon after I write this Monday evening. 

That's enough about the rain. Last week I went out to lunch twice. Here's my 2 views for T over at   Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for this week. 

One day it was a friend's birthday, so a few of us went out to help her celebrate.

Another day I was going for a long afternoon walk,  and I managed to talk my hubby into taking me out for lunch before I went. (He didn't need a lot of arm twisting. 😏)

I was craving a tuna melt. Every now and again I just have to have one of those sandwiches. 

I had a quiet weekend so I started some holiday cookie making. 

It was marathon cookie dough making season. Some of the doughs had to be chilled so they didn't get made into actual cookies right then. Even though I washed the mixer bowl and other cooking supplies as I went, I still managed to take over the kitchen. 

For those of you who like kitchen tools, back in November I bought this nifty little zester. ( I wrote this before I saw Elizabeth's post, but I guess great minds do think alike- 😏-hee-hee.)

It fits nicely in the palm of your hand and has a small well to catch the zest. I finally tried it out when I was zesting some oranges for my ginger cookie recipe. I give it high marks for being easy to use, making  zest, and not letting my fingers get scrapped.👍

I also want thank those of  you who I received holiday cards from.  I’ll share cards  next week. I am behind on making my cards, and without light nothing was done today.  I am planning on New Years cards at this point. 

And finally, my latest sweater view as I work my way row by row around the yoke. 

I haven't gotten quite as much done this past week since a couple of nights I was too tired to knit.

That's all for me this week. For those of you that only visit for T, not only have a great T day and week ahead, but if you celebrate, have a lovely Christmas holiday too. And of course, for everyone, had a wonderful T day and week ahead. 

T Stands for More Pre-Holiday Chit Chat

 Hi everyone. It's time for T day once again where we share our drink and other things over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

What have I been doing?

For the last few weeks the upstairs of my house was an absolute mess. Every time I would start to pick up parts of it there would be a reason I couldn't finish. The worst of it was my daughter's room. Maybe you remember this photo?

I still had those boxes to take care of along with my clothing seasonal change over, some clothes I was donating, as well as my Christmas gift pile,  so I had quite a mess. I didn't think to take any photos, so you will just have to believe me. The good news is that last week I got that all picked up and sorted, and my daughters room is now back to normal. 😀  I'm happy to have removed that mess-finally. ❤  And I'm happy to get my clothing change-over finally done too.

I also did some baking last week and made a non-marzipan stollen. In fact the cookbook*  I used  said

this is a Bavarian style stollen, and I know some of you would know about this much more than I do. If my cookbook is wrong could you let me know.

I had all the dried fruit the recipe called for except on the day I went to bake I could not find the dried currents I bought. Instead I substituted some dried cherries. When I soaked the cherries in orange juice they of course made a dark liquid, which, when I added them to my dough, made it darker like a whole wheat loaf. (It is  made with white baking flour.)  The cherries added a great taste, and I'm  glad I used them. And still haven't found the package of dried currants I bought.

 I've also done a bit more decorating. I have a collection of Santa's that my daughter gave me through her childhood and that I usually put out, but this year I decided not to. 

However, I remembered I had this set of jolly snowmen that I haven't put out for a few years, and I decided this would be perfect in place of the Santas.

In fact I really like them, and I wonder why I haven't put them out for awhile.

I also managed to get the living room fireplace mantel decorated.

In the living room we have a live tree, but in a dark corner of my dining room/kitchen area I have a thin artificial tree. I usually put this tree up right before Thanksgiving and leave it up until the end of January/early February because it helps light up a dark space.

 This year I bought myself a new ornament that I liked. We finally finished  winterizing my bees so this ornament (I hope) is my good luck charm that they'll make it through the winter. 

And some of you probably know I get a kick of Bigfoots and Yetis, so here are my  toppers on this tree.

They have names; they are Eddie and Betty Yeti. 😉

Before this post gets too long, let me share my actual T day drink. How about another take like last week only with a different mug and different tree decoration.  My mug is not empty; I partially drank some of my tea before I decided to take this photo.

 My mug has some Bigelow ginger-snappish tea in it once again.

Before I sign off, I want to share my latest sweater knitting update. I like sharing my progress, and it  also makes a great week by week timeline for me to see how far I have  gotten during the previous week.

I'm still knitting away on the yoke. The first several rows had the most stitches of any part of the project since it is body and sleeves. I'm now slowly decreasing to make it more narrow around the neck. I'm more or less following the pattern for this sweater, but I'm also throwing in a few pattern changes as well as picking my colors (from what I bought) as I go. 

That's all for me this week. Have a super T day and week ahead.

*Here's the cookbook I got my stollen recipe from ( and no, it's not a formal citation): The New German Cookbook:More Than 230 Contemporary and Traditional Recipes Hardcover – October 13,1993 by  Jean Anderson (Author), Hedy Wurz (Author)

T Stands for Shopping

 Hi everyone. It is time for T, when we share our drink related posts over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. And in my case, my post  probably has a bit of babbling too. (hee-hee)

Last week on one of our sunny days, I decided to take a drive over to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont. It's a bit of a drive, just under 2 hours from my house, so I don't go very often. I figured since I wanted to start my holiday baking  I'd stock up on a few items I knew I needed and that were hard to get at local markets.

It was also a gorgeous day for a drive, chilly but sunny. I could enjoy the sun through my car's sunroof and listen to my book. These short December days are making me long for sunshine, and since my house is dark a lot of the time during this season, the car is a great place to get some sun therapy. 

 I left  early. When I arrived at King Arthur the parking lot was pretty empty, but when I finished shopping, it was pretty full. What I didn't know until I arrived was that this particular day was King Arthur's friends and family holiday discount day. All your purchases were 20% off.  Wahoo! That made the drive even more worth it. ❤

I snapped a few photos when I first arrived, but then I got wrapped up in my shopping list so I failed a bit on the photo taking end.

Outside their main entrance they had some festive decorations.

And in the windows to their bakery, they had some festive gingerbread.

King Arthur used to have that cool logo:

Now, like so many places, they've redone it and have a more streamline crown.

I didn't get a lot of store photos, but it is a baker's paradise. They carry all of their mixes and a wide variety of other items that change over the course of the year. 

And of course you can buy their flour(s), which is what they are known for.

I managed to fill a bag (or 2) with  a few items. After I put those in my car I went back inside to their bakery/cafe. At their cafe they sell a few breakfast and lunch items, as well as a full range of bakery items of whatever the bakers have on their daily schedule. It was just about lunch time, so I grabbed a small salad to go. They also had this yummy gingerbread bundt cake, and I bought a slice that was big enough I decided to bring it home and split it with the hubby for dessert after dinner. And for the road home, I picked up a hot chai tea, which is my link to T this week.

That's my post for T this week. Happy T day and I hope you have a great rest of your week.

T Stands for Ranch Dressing

Hi everyone.

Happy first day of winter (or if you're down south of the equator happy first day of summer) to you.  I'm never excited about the length of winter here in New Hampshire, but after today, at least the days start to slowly get longer. 

Can you believe that Christmas is just a few days away? 

I need to do some meal planning this week for the holiday, wrap a few last gifts due to a change in the holiday situation (more about that in a minute), and I have a bit of holiday baking I want to finish. Writing it here it doesn't sound like much, but I feel like I have a busy schedule this week.

I'm hoping I can finish knitting this hufflepuff Harry Potter hat for my daughter by Christmas, but I'm not certain that will happen.

I've been knitting every night for the last few weeks, but this hat is made on really small needles (US size 2, UK size 12 and European size 2.75 mm) so several rows of knitting only amounts to a small amount of hat increase.  The checkerboard part is easy because it is a pattern, but the hufflepuff insignia is not a pattern and takes more concentration as every row is different. Plus, it has to be perfect in order for the insignia to look like it is supposed to look.  I'm having fun knitting it though, and I'm really happy how its coming along. 

And if I don't finish it, then she'll just get it after Christmas.

During our Saturday snow event I did bake a few more cookies:

sugar cookies for my husband and

gingerbread cookies for my daughter and myself.

I also tried these chocolate crinkles just because I've seen photos of them, and they look so yummy. (They taste it too.)

I wish cookies didn't have any calories or sugar so I just keep baking and eating them. Smile.

For T this week, I have this photo and a little story behind it.

For Christmas our daughter was supposed to be coming home. Well she still is, but her fiance is most likely coming also. I feel bad for him because he planned to be with his immediate family for Christmas, but at the end of last week his sister was diagnosed with covid. He wants to postpone his family Christmas get together until after his sister is past her quarantine period, which makes sense, but his Mom sounds like she doesn't want to do that. 

Luckily last I heard his sister isn't very sick, but his mom is not vaccinated ( as his sister wasn't either), and his mom doesn't seem to understand that just because his sister is only mildly ill, she could catch covid and get very ill. Of course there's no way of knowing that, but the situation is causing all kinds of issues for his family. My daughter's fiance's dad is vaccinated, and he wants to postpone their Christmas celebration also. 

I don't know what will happen yet, but right now we have to plan that her fiance will be joining us. That is not a problem at all for us. The only thing we want to do is to be sure he feels included. That means we want him to have a Christmas stocking on Christmas morning as we still do stockings with little gifts for each other (like candy, chapstick/lip balm and and maybe a new toothbrush), and we want him to have a couple more gifts under the tree to open as we open ours.  

This put us into last minute shopping mode. We already had him a big gift, but we needed small things. We know him pretty well, but not well enough to know, for example, what kind of socks he likes or what little Lego set (he and my daughter are huge Lego fans) he might like.

My daughter is taking care of some of the shopping, but one thing she told us he loves is Chick-Fil-A ranch dressing, which he's had trouble finding. One place she knew we could buy it was at the Chick-Fil-A food truck. As we don't have any Chick-Fil-A's fast food restaurants around us, there is a food truck that comes to various shopping areas and has a limited menu.

Anyhow, to shorten this novel, this past Saturday the food truck was in Kittery, Maine. Since the hubby and I didn't have a lot we needed to do, we decided to drive down and get the fiance some sauce for Christmas.

Kittery isn't too far away, and as you can see, we were successful getting him his sauce. 

We also grabbed sandwiches for lunch, which we can see in my photo still in its wrapper with the Diet Coke I brought from home.  That's my photo for T this week.

Don't forget to stop by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for this week's T.

Now I just need to wrap his few gifts, but I'm waiting a few days so that if he doesn't come with my daughter on the 24th, we can  put aside his small gifts until his birthday or do something else with them.  Except the Ranch dressing, which we will give him anyhow.

Thanks to all of you who sent me a Christmas card too. I still need to photograph and post those, but I was out all day today and didn't get a chance to do that.

 For those of you I only "see" on Tuesdays, I wish you a wonderful Christmas and week ahead. And of course that goes for everyone who stops by also.

Happy Holidays! 

T Stands for Baking

 Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday.

For T this week (don't forget to stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog  with your drink related posts), I thought I would share a little of this and that. 

Last week was a mostly quiet week. We had some rain and some wind, and even when it was nice out the low tides at the beach weren't very convenient to walk.

I did a bit of baking instead.

I made an asparagus and cheddar cheese quiche, as you can see in the photo. I also made a pulled pork pizza, but no photo of that.

Finally I decided to try one of those braided Easter breads with the colored eggs included. I know it was not Greek Easter this past weekend, nor am I Greek, but the King Arthur Flour Sunday newsletter included this loaf of Greek Tsoureki bread, and I was not only curious about trying an Easter egg loaf, but I also wanted to try out this spice mahlep or mahleb. I also saw it under the name Mahalepi too. It is made from ground cherry seeds, not the whole seeds but the inner kernel. 

I ordered some  of this spice from Amazon, and it came in time for Easter weekend baking.

The dough also contained crushed anise seeds and orange zest and smelled wonderful.

Here's my plaited bread just before the second rise.

After my second rise.

The recipe called for 2- 2 1/2 hour second rise, I stopped after an hour because I still had some good definition to my plaiting and quite a bit of volume.

Most of my plaiting disappeared during the bake. I was a a little disappointed as I am trying to get a more distinct plaited loaf. I guess this just gives me more reasons to try another loaf.  Smile.

The recipe also mentioned (in an afterward) using uncolored eggs and switching them to the colored ones after the bake. I don't really mind the little bit of red that spread into the dough, but if you didn't want that, you could switch out eggs after baking.

Here is the recipe I used: King Arthur-Greek Tsoureki.

I was also curious about the red eggs since here our eggs are often pastel colors for spring.  The red stands for the blood of Christ. I found this nice little write up about them online. 

Red eggs (kokkina avga) are a traditional part of the Greek Easter Sunday celebration. They are lovingly made, either with onion skins or dye and then woven and baked into a tsoureki (three-braided Easter bread signifying the Holy Trinity), used as table decorations, and are the key piece to a fun game called tsougrisma, which tests the eggs' strength—and perhaps the players' strategy.  You can read more if you are interested here: Red Eggs

I made the red for my eggs with a bit of vinegar, water and a couple of drops of deep red food coloring, concentrated not the type you get in  4 pack at the grocery store. For that you would probably need more red. I would like to try the onion skins sometime though.

So how about a slice of bread with some tea? Or coffee?

I will definitely make this bread again, leaving out the   hard boiled eggs when Easter is over.  It tasted delicious.

Thanks for visiting. And have a great T day.

T Stands for Christmas-Almost

Hi everyone. 

Tuesday is here again. I can't believe the Christmas holiday is just about here also. It is definitely going to be a bit more low key for me, as this whole season has been. I am guessing  that is true for many of you who celebrate also. I am happy my daughter is coming home on Thursday, and since she is on vacation until early January, will to be spending a few days with us. 

I think of this page as my Christmas card page for each of you. 

The background was some paper marbling I did this summer, and light colors spoke to me to keep it light. I stenciled the poinsettias with some pink paint.

I kept my stamped imaged in black (and white) as I just love how delicate the background is. 

As I once again never got Christmas cards made, this is my Christmas card to you.

FYI. I used to get brutally criticized for my penmanship on my Christmas cards every year by a cousin, my mother and a couple of other relatives. I know I have bad penmanship, but it wasn't funny even if they thought they ( my dear relatives) were just joking around. I swear I am scarred when it comes to Christmas cards. I just see a box, never mind making them, and get the cold sweats. Not joking  either. I keep saying I am going to make them, and then just can't do it.  Sorry to go on about one of my phobias. I wonder if there is a word for Christmas card writing fear. Smile.

I am my journal page linking up to Tracey's, the meaning of challenge at Art Journal Journey.

For T this week I am sharing a new tea I ordered off of Amazon while doing some holiday shopping.

Has anyone else watched the Mandalorian? My daughter is totally taken by the child (Grogu), and this tea came up when I was searching for some little fun "toy" for her. It is green tea with a slightly "floral" scent. Very nice. 

Don't forget to visit with your T day drink at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog.

I've also done a bit more baking, so please, enjoy a non-calorie, no fat taste. I made some sugar cookies and also some gingersnaps or the Swedish word pepparkakor as we have always called them.

I just sprinkled some colored sugars on my sugar cookies instead of frosting them, and I like my gingersnaps plain. I'm not a big frosted cookie person.

It was a fun afternoon rolling and cutting my cookies. Something good to do on a snowy afternoon.

I also made a few other cookies as well as some holiday sourdough bread. You should have seen the mess my kitchen was in after a day of baking.

The kitchen is now clean; baking pans are all put away, and good thing I have extra freezer space.

 I will be posting tomorrow and Thursday, but I know some of you are only by on T Day. 

Sending you all the happiest wishes for the holiday.

 

T Stands for Christmas Cookies

 Hi everyone. Another December T Day has arrived. I dawned on me next week is Christmas. Wow.

It also dawned on me that I haven't wished anyone  a Happy Hanukah either. Happy Hanukah to those who celebrate.

I'm starting off this post with a pretty silly tag for Tag Tuesday for their Anything Goes or Christmas theme.

I am making a little tag book about this year's holidays. Not sure I really want to remember 2020 or not, but it will be one to talk about in the future. 

After coloring my background and adding the paper tape along the left side border,  I die cut the gingerbread baker and used white paint to outline her. Then I added the google eyes, as well as a heart sicker. I created the apron from some  scrap paper too.  I have a sheet of baking stickers, so I used a few of those .My penmanship  on the quote is not the best and overall this is not my usual style, but this tag has a silly feel. In a good way of course.

Like this gingerbread lady, I've  baking cookies lately. 

WARNING: this is a high calorie post!

These sables are easy and buttery. I rolled them in some red and white sugar to make them festive. Then they are sliced and baked once the dough is chilled.

And jam filled thumbprints became hazelnut rolled and chocolate kiss cookies instead.

I've been trying lots of new recipes, as well as some much loved ones. So far I've made 8 kinds. I've been freezing many, and leaving some out to eat. I can't leave them all out though because I my husband and I would weigh an extra 20 pounds otherwise. Smile! I'm not a binge eater, but for some reason with this variety of cookies, I have been munching a lot. Guess I need to do a taste comparison. Smile!

These (above) are a new recipe for me that I pulled off of the Nordic Ware site. They are called biscochitos and are the official cookie of New Mexico. Since they sounded interesting and I love New Mexico, I gave them a try. They are not super sweet and are flavored with crushed anise seeds and orange zest.  I definitely am adding them to bake again list.

These pecan balls (Mexican wedding cakes) are a favorite of mine, not so much the hubby.

I also have some doughs in the refrigerator that I need to roll out. My husband requested sugar cookies, and for me, gingerbread and a  shortbread to roll out and cut. 

Let me offer you a cup of milky chai tea as well as a "healthier" (ha-ha) plate with a few snack cookies. A sable, a brown sugar cardamom shortbread , and a chocolate chip cookie where I replaced the chips with Cadbury holiday chocolate candies and some peppermint M&Ms. 

Be sure to visit  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog for T this week.  Hope  you join us with your drink related post.

Enjoy. 

Sunday afternoon I got ambitious and put up new lights on my tree. 

For those of you who might not have read, but first all the middle lights went dark and then the top ones. It didn't take me very long because even though the tree is tall, it is really thin.  Glad that is done, and  hopefully, it will stay bright.

Thanks for visiting, and have a great T day!