Let the holiday baking begin
Published November 20, 2011, 08:09 AM Let the holiday baking begin The day after Thanksgiving, when many people have shopping in mind, I enjoy a relaxing day of holiday baking. I sleep in that morning. As I sip my first mug of hot, dark coffee, I chuckle about the silly people who wake up before the crack of dawn to be sure to get in on all the bargains of the day as they wait in long lines and fight their way through crowds.By: Sue Doeden , Bemidji Pioneer
The day after Thanksgiving, when many people have shopping in mind, I enjoy a relaxing day of holiday baking. I sleep in that morning. As I sip my first mug of hot, dark coffee, I chuckle about the silly people who wake up before the crack of dawn to be sure to get in on all the bargains of the day as they wait in long lines and fight their way through crowds.
I gather ingredients, mixing bowls and my favorite wooden spoon for stirring up cookie dough. I turn on the Christmas music. The season I look forward to all year has begun – holiday baking season.
Maybe it’s the memories that are stirred up when I get busy with measuring, mixing, rolling and dipping that make it such a meditative activity for me. Or maybe it’s because the cookies on my baking list are created only this time of year, making them a special treat.
The baking day after Thanksgiving is a day I prepare for ahead of time.
I keep my favorite holiday recipes printed out, each recipe held in a plastic page protector in a notebook. This keeps the recipes clean and all in one place. I make notes on the recipes about where to buy special ingredients and specific brands.
A few months before Thanksgiving, I begin watching for sales on things I will need for holiday baking. I buy butter and store it in the freezer. The price of sugar and flour has risen considerably, so I buy extra bags when they are at reduced prices. I stock up on parchment paper that I use for lining my baking sheets and I buy sprinkles and other cookie adornments as soon as I see them in the store.
How To Use A Pastry Cloth - News
--A pastry cloth keeps dough from sticking to your work surface and prevents a stressful cookie-making experience. I use a round lefse board with its pastry cloth cover. It even has markings for 10-, 12- and 14-inch rounds. --A pastry bag or two with
Use a soft cloth dampened with the mixture and rub over the furniture. Afterward, polish with a clean cloth. Caution: Do not use this mixture on lacquered furniture or antique pieces. NOTE: Make sure you buy linseed oil that is labeled as "boiled.
The event now features folk dancing, music and food, including lefse, a soft flatbread; puff pastry; rice pudding; sotsuppe, a sweet soup, steamburgers -- sloppy Joes to non-Norwegians; rommegrot, a sour cream porridge; polse, a boiled sausage;
Then the most experienced lefse-makers roll them out on a pastry board, using special grooved rolling pins covered with a cloth sleeve, which absorbs some of the moisture and helps keep the lefse from sticking. Getting the lefse to come out round
Shell beans spill out of a cloth bag onto her big kitchen island, topped with butcher block and a green stone from England. Nearby are squash and Buddha's Hand citron. Half a dozen pears sit in an oval clay dish. In the center of the island are the
Dehydrating Sweet Potatoes and How To Use Them « Oklahoma ...
I heard something pretty neat yesterday in an Adrian Rogers sermon. I sure miss him. His “Adrianisms” are just priceless. The quote yesterday concerned those who are married and he referred particularly to us women. He said that “the woman’s job is to love her husband. It is God’s job to make him good.” Of course, that goes ditto for the husbands regarding wives, but I pondered on that for a moment and had to look at where I try to take on God’s job with Mr. Fix-It. We women are really good at trying to “fix” our husbands into the men that “we know they should be.” Yikes. Now don’t get me wrong…Mr. Fix-It is close to perfect – but I am the normal woman who can find that tiny loose thread in any sweater and unravel the whole thing trying to make it right. And so, the next time I decide that I need to tell Mr. Fix-It what he “needs to be doing” I think I’ll shut my trap. Perhaps my focus needs to be on what I need to be doing! He is awfully sweet and treats me like a queen. And speaking of sweet, I’ve been dehydrating sweet potatoes! Yep. This is the time of year when those tubers start going on sale and with our new organic grocery stores, I am hoping to cash in on some really nice ones. The sweet potato is one thing I hadn’t tried dehydrating, but last week I decided it was something I should try. What a success!! And when I served them for dinner the other night, Mr. Fix-It smacked his lips and commented on how good they were. “There were dehydrated,” I crowed. “I figured as much,” he said as he chomped on another mouthful. He has gotten used to my dehydration experiments and is pretty impressed with the results.
Brenda, I know people have done that, but the only thing I have tried in the oven is beef jerky. I like the dehydrator because it isn’t just heat, but also air. There is a fan that rotates air around the food and it dries it faster and more evenly than with just heat. I have dried apples in the back window of the car too! On our hot days, it doesn’t take long, but again, they don’t dry as pretty as they do in a dehydrator. If you are interested in one, you can go to Nesco.com and click on dehydrators. They are having a sale right now and there are many that are quite inexpensive!