Stitches and SNPs

Friday, January 6, 2012

Christmas in Kansas

I love, love, love Christmas with my family! It is far and away my favorite holiday. Inevitably, I end up stressing myself out with last minute work projects and overly ambitious homemade gifts. But once we arrive at my parents' house, it all melts away. Over the last several years, my parents have taken to waiting for Kevin and I to arrive home before we decorate the tree.

We aren't much for white lights or themed ornaments. While we have some gorgeous blown glass ornaments, the tree is mostly covered in hand-made ornaments and ornaments of all shapes and sizes we collected over the years. I like it so much better than perfect but impersonal trees.

On Christmas morning, we got up at the crack of 9:30 for our traditional breakfast and then opened our stockings. Dad and I then get the turkey in the oven before we open presents. It's been a long time since I was around children this time of year, but I get the impression that children don't take well to this sort of schedule. I'm basing this largely on the phone call we got from Geoff's dad at 8am his time - all the presents had already been opened! Almost all of my gifts this year were handmade and I'll post more about them soon. I'm so lucky to have a family of people who appreciate the love and effort that goes into a handmade gift!

Dad and I prepare nearly the same meal every year, with small tweaks in herbs and techniques. But generally it is turkey, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes (this year I made them with candied pecans on top), green bean casserole, and cranberry relish. Tradition is so yummy. After dinner, we frequently play board games. Kevin brought a few new ones, but we also played Rummikub, which we have played since I was little.

We saw lots of family and friends while we were in Lawrence including Christmas Eve brunch with Summer and dinner with my mom's sister and her family. It was a wonderful trip and a great way to relax before our crazy New Year's Eve in State College!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

2011 on Stitches and SNPs

I have lots of posts in the works about our Christmas and New Year's trips and my DIY gifts, but first I wanted to take a look back at 2011 (as seen through the very narrow prism of my blog).

January

We moved to San Antonio, but I didn't blog about it until March.

February

Geoff turned 32 and I made my first dress to wear to my cousin's wedding in Houston.

March

We watched KU get knocked out of the Elite Eight and ate vegan for a week.

April

I ran a birthday 10K with two awesome friends and then headed to Minneapolis for the AAPA meetings.

May

I made Mothers' Day cookies and we celebrated Memorial Day with a cookout.

June

Geoff started back to school, while I spent most of the month in Seattle for a statistics course.

July

A fireworks-free Fourth of July and home-made pretzels for the World Cup.

August

A super busy month: my parents and grandma came to visit, Geoff's band debuted their album, and then I completed my first triathlon!

September

This month was all about cooking including a week of dinners for less than $5.

October

The middle of the month was dominated by two fun work trips - to Virginia and Montreal - and ended with a costumed night race for Dia de los Muertos.

November

We took a wonderful trip up to see family for Thanksgiving and then up to Wichita for my high school reunion.

December

It was hard to get into the Christmas spirit with the thermometer hovering around 70, but making gingerbread houses and yarn trees helped.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Feeding Friendship: Candy Cane Cookies

When Sarah picked peppermint as our ingredient, I knew immediately that I was going to make my Grandma’s candy cane cookies. She’s made these every year for as long as I can remember. The cookies themselves are a basic shortbread-like cookie, but what really makes them are the bright red stripes of peppermint frosting.

I took a few liberties with the recipe for the dough. I didn’t have much shortening on hand so I replaced half of it with butter (which I had tons of after overbuying for making gingerbread). I also increased the amount of vanilla extract and left out the butter flavoring (since I don’t have it and I had added butter). The result of subbing in the butter was a more puffy and tender cookie than the crisp one I’m used to. The butter added a nice flavor that I liked, but I missed the crunch. Next time I may sub only ¼ of the shortening for butter.

Once the dough is made, Grandma uses her cookie press to make cane shapes using a circular die with jagged edges. I was excited to use my cookie press for the first time and had the dough loaded before I realized that of the twelve dies mine came with, none of them was the one I needed. Luckily, I own a huge star tip for my piping icing. Unluckily, my hand gave out after piping about three dozen of the candy canes that way. I understand now why cookies presses need metal parts – that dough is stiff! I decided to freeze the rest of the dough for other applications in January.

I went ahead and baked the cookies that I had while I made the frosting. The key is to add enough peppermint extract to get a strong enough flavor to stand up to the plain cookie. Remember that you will only be putting a small amount of frosting on each cookie. Once cooled, I piped on stripes and took them to a Christmas party where they were promptly devoured to rave reviews! It’s so nice to be able to have a taste of my childhood at Christmas.

Candy Cane Cookies

adapted from Grandma Cris
Makes 5 dozen

Cookies:
3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. Crisco
1/2 c. butter, softened
2 eggs
1/4 c. milk
2 tbsp. vanilla

Icing:
1 c. powdered sugar
1 tbsp. butter, softened
1.5-2 c. milk
1/4 tsp. vanilla
Red food coloring
Peppermint extract to taste

1. Cream together butter, Crisco, and sugar. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Add remaining ingredients.
2. Transfer dough to a piping bag and pipe into candy cane shapes onto a lightly greased or lined cookie sheet.
3. Bake at 375 for 6-8 minutes.
4. To make frosting, sift powdered sugar and mix in all other ingredients.
5. Once cooled, pipe lines of frosting onto cookies.

Monday, December 19, 2011

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (inside)

The only gingerbread I had ever made before this year was graham crackers and store-bought frosting, but I set out to make one completely from scratch. I mentioned this to Veronica and Mike on our trip back from Thanksgiving and we all started brain storming what sort of things we could make - trailers, lighthouses, outhouses, post offices....

In the end, Mike stuck with the unconventional theme and made a replica of the Alamo (see also, their chicken coop).

I went a more conventional route, but I love it.

We used a rather bland gingerbread recipe so when I made the leftover dough into gingerbread men, I followed Veronica's request for chocolate gingerbread men by dunking them in ganache.

They didn't all make it out of the ganache unscathed.

With the house smelling like Christmas, it was time to get the decorations up. I've been slowly growing our Christmas decorations over the years and they are almost all handmade. I decided to add a pompom garland to the tree this year following the instructions from One Pearl Button. I used some scrap yarn I had lying around so I ended up with a pink, blue, green, and silver garland. A bit unconventional, but I like it. Plus, the non-Christmasy colors mean it can reappear for other festive events. Birthday garland anyone?

For the past five years, I have made a photo ornament of Geoff and I. This reindeer is for 2011 - just waiting for a nice picture of the two of us. Here's the whole tree:

I made a few more decorations with scrap yarn. I get my craftiness from my mom who made all of the decorations for she and dad's first several trees. A few years ago, she made me a set of red crochet snowflakes like the ones that decorated their trees thirty years ago. I had more than would fit on my tree to I made another garland to show them off.

This is all the snow we will be getting in Texas this year - highs in the 60s and 70s all week! With the house decorated, I wanted to make a little something for my desk at work. I used this tutorial that I spotted on Craftzine. So easy. So quick. So cute.

I've also been hard at work making Christmas gifts. I'll be sharing most of them after Christmas (so as not to spoil the surprises), but I did want to point any knitters out there still looking for last minute gifts towards this scarflet. I knit it up in some luxurious Malabrigo Rasta in about three hours. It is sooooo cute in this yarn that it was really hard for me to give up. They had a gorgeous mustard skein too that I am thinking about heading back and getting. Maybe a hat for me?

Christmas is also a great excuse to get out of the house and spend time with friends. We went to the McNay Museum of Modern Art (which is just around the corner from us) to see their Nightmare before Christmas exhibit last week and this weekend we attended a Christmas party at the head of my department's house and then donned our Christmas jammies for another party hosted by some friends we met through Veronica. And now it is just six days until Christmas!!!