A Snowy Day at Lake Mary

Just a couple of pictures to illustrate how much fun the twins had sliding down the hill at Lake Mary.  Well, their Mom and Dad and Auntie Jen and Grandpa had fun, too. 

Only in Minnesota would you swing on a tire swing when there is a foot of snow on the ground.  Red cheeks and runny noses just don't matter.

Today is packing day...we're leaving in the morning for Bainbridge Island, Washington and one of our favorite housesits.  Two sweet cats will be our charges for about a month.   As usual, I'll post along the way and while we're there. There will be a million photo ops.  I love Bainbridge Island.

The house will be battened down until we return.  The furnace will be turned down low but the security system is set up to call Jack's cell phone if it gets below a certain temperature and if that happens, the furnace guy is alerted.  How cool is that?   Mail will be collected by our neighbor.  Water turned off.

Goodbye, winter!  Stay tuned.

The Meaning of Christmas

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,

Stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons.
It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

Dr. Seuss

Much love to my wonderful family and friends and wishes for all things bright and beautiful in 2010.  I'm the luckiest person in the world.  Thank you for all you do.

The Best Caramel Corn Recipe Ever

The Best Caramel Corn Ever

I was looking for recipes for gluten free snacks to take to a party.  A good friend's mother has Celiac disease.  I don't know a lot about that except that she absolutely cannot have any foods containing gluten.  Not even a smidgen.  There's a great blog called The Gluten Free Girl and the Chef with hundreds of terrific gluten free recipes but I need something easy and I needed it NOW!

So I Googled gluten free snacks and this recipe came up from an  About.com contributor.  It looked easy; I had everything I needed to make it and I thought it was worth a shot.  Well, let me tell you...it was a huge hit.  I mean, it's so darned delicious that it's addicting.  I'm not kidding.

I've made a ton of it since then and we've put some of it in packages that we've mailed.  It's perfect for sending through the mail because it's so light weight.  Anyway, here's the recipe:

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

5 quarts fresh popcorn
1/2 cup agave syrup OR light corn syrup
2 cups brown sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) butter
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 250°

1. Pop 5 quarts of popcorn and place in a large roasting pan.
2. Put butter, sugar, agave syrup OR corn syrup and cream of tartar in a large pan. Over medium heat, melt the mixture, stirring to prevent burning.
3. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.
4. Add vanilla and baking soda and stir to mix.
5. Carefully pour this mixture over the popcorn. Gently stir to thoroughly coat the popcorn.
6. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
7. Remove and pour on a large baking sheet to cool. Use a spatula to separate the warm clumps.

To freeze. Cool caramel corn completely. Seal tightly in freezer bags. Bring to room temperature to serve.

Gluten Free Reminder: Always make sure your work surfaces, utensils, pans and tools are free of gluten. Always read product labels. Manufacturers can change product formulations without notice. When in doubt, do not buy or use a product before contacting the manufacturer for verification that the product is free of gluten.

Chocolate Covered Caramel Turtles

We're kind of going all out this year, making Holiday food gifts.  Probably because we've been away from home at Christmas for several years we're feeling like we have to make up for lost time.  So far we've churned out Grandma Verna's Sugar Cookies, Pepparkakor, Peanut Butter Fudge, Golden Fruitcake, Caramel Corn (that is to die for) and these Turtles.

One recipe at a time...today's will be Turtles.

Here's what you'll need:

14 ounces caramels
2 Tablespoons evaporated milk
1 Tablespoon butter
1 8-ounce package pecan halves
1 16-ounce package chololate almond bark
(you'll have enough chocolate for two batches of Turtles)

On greased cookie sheets arrange 3 to 4 pecans in clusters to form turtles.  Set aside.

In the top of a double boiler, melt caramels with the evaporated milk and butter.  Keep warm over hot water.

Spoon about 1 Tablespoon of melted caramel on each cluster and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, in the top of a double boiler, melt the almond bark.  Spoon chocolate over the caramel and refrigerate the candy until firm.  Makes 36 pieces.

NOTE:  When I made this batch, I thought the chocolate almond bark was too sweet so I dumped about a cup or so of tiny semi-sweet chocolate chips that I had on hand into the pot of melted almond bark and stirred until they were melted.  Much better.
 
I should point out that removing the cellophane wrappers from each individual caramel is probably the most tedious part of the recipe but worth it.

This recipe is so good that Jack doesn't want to give any of them away.  So we probably won't.  The Christmas spirit at our house will have to manifest itself through another recipe.  Probably the Caramel Corn.

The Christmas Tree

I am finally posting the photo of the Christmas tree.  I have to say that it loses in the translation...much prettier "in person."  Oh well.  One of these days I'll figure out how to actually use my camera to its best advantage.  One of these days...

We borrowed the tree, believe it or not.  It's been at least four years since we've had Christmas at home and haven't had a tree in that long.  We were trying to decide between a real tree or another artificial tree.  Pros and cons to both which I will not address at this time.  As luck would have it, the son of our good friends, Mike & Barb said that he had a tree he wasn't using if we wanted to go take it off his front porch.  So we did.  Just had to brush a little snow off the branches, load it into the car and take it home.   Perfect.

This is going to be a whirlwind week because the list of tasks is longer than the time it will take to accomplish all of them.  I had a bit of an accident at Jen's house this past weekend which won't help the situation, I must say.  Was walking down her staircase and thought I was at the bottom but I wasn't.  So the last step was a BIG one.  I might have broken a toe.

Stay tuned...

A Simple Christmas Decorating Idea

Yesterday was Christmas decorating day here at Lake Mary.  We don't have the tree, yet, but I hauled out everything else.  The first thing I do is remove most of the non-Christmassy stuff.  The worst part about doing that is finding a place to stash it all until after the Holidays.  P.S. Don't look under the beds.

One thing that I do every year that is inexpensive and effective is tie a large ribbon around the lamp bases.  The first photo shows that I did not remove anything at all from that table.  I just tied a bow around the lamp.  Jack gave me that cloisonne vase about 30 years ago and the little box looks nice with it plus they almost look Holidayish.  Christmassy & Holidayish are not in the dictionary but are just the words I'm looking for so....

Anyway, at the end of the season I just roll the ribbons up and tuck them in with the rest of the ornaments.  Just thought you might find that useful.

Tomorrow, the tree.

Crunchy Snow and an Icy Lake

 

This is the sunset as I was driving home this evening.  It's a little blurry but that's probably because I was holding the camera with my left arm sticking out the car window as I was driving.   Now THAT's point and shoot!

So this morning I pulled on a jacket and walked out to get the morning paper.  The snow was crunchy under my footsteps.  I really like the sound of snow crunching while you walk.  And it sparkled.  Crunchy, sparkly snow is a sure sign that winter has arrived.

I looked at the lake at about 7:00 a.m. and was just amazed that it was still open water - waves, even.  It's December, for Pete's sake.  Lakes are typically frozen solid (well, not solid...but a couple of feet deep) in December in our neck of the woods.  It was 14 degrees F. and that's not considered balmy by anybody's standards. 

A couple of hours later Jack announced that there was ice forming along the shoreline...sure enough, there was ice about 4 or 5 feet out...maybe more but it was just along the shore.   I looked again around noon and the ice was out at least 50 feet!  I was gone all afternoon so didn't check again and it's dark now so the lake looks just like a black hole...can't tell how much more ice has formed.  I can hardly wait until morning to see the progress it has made.

Why do I find this fascinating?  Well, partly because there's a LOT of water in a lake (duh) and Lake Mary is four miles long and probably a couple of miles wide.  The water is constantly lapping at the shore.  It's always in motion.  And yet it freezes as still as can be.

One of Mother Nature's little secrets, I guess.

A Funny Face

A Soapy Happy Face

We're back home.  It's a nine hour drive from our daughter's home in Kansas to ours in Minnesota but the roads were clear, it was a sunny day and we had the wind at our backs!  All after a very nice Thanksgiving holiday.

That silly MJ...we went shopping one day and stopped for a quick car wash.  One of those where you drive into a stall, slip a couple of bucks into the car wash "activator" (for lack of a better word) and then you have precisely four minutes to hose down the car, lather it up with some sort of soap and rinse it all off.  I stayed in the car.  You should have seen that girl move!  As she was dashing madly around the car with the soap dispenser hose, she grinned at me through the window on the driver's side and carved this Happy Face in the suds!

Luckily, I'm never without my camera and  I whipped it out of my purse and snapped this shot.  It'll be a fun memory.