Christ is born! Glorify Him!

I hope everyone is enjoying Christmas as much as I am so far. After being in a bit of a winter funk this year, it has been wonderful to celebrate the joy of our Lord's incarnation and spend time with family. We are now smack dab in the middle of the twelve days of Christmas, and we are still firmly in the throws of celebration at our house. We have spent time with my family in Southern Indiana and Cincinnati and as well as a day with James' family in Ohio. Today his parents and sister will be arriving to spend several days.

I have been on vacation since Christmas Eve and don't go back to work till the 4th. It's lovely to have most of the Afterfeast of the Nativity off of work. I generally don't have as much time off and find it kind of sad to feel like the holiday is done well before Theophany. It's easy to feel a bit robbed of the feast when the radio stops playing Christmas music on the 26th, and all the Christmas decorations disappear by January 1st. (It must feel even more off kilter for those on the old calendar.) This year I'm looking forward to enjoying several more days of delicious holiday food, games, movies, hanging out with family and several more chances to attend Holy Liturgy in the next week.

Pascha is far and away my favorite holiday, but I love all the family time at Christmas. The Nativity of the Lord is also special at our house because we were Chrismated three years ago on December 23. It both seems like a lifetime ago and also just a blink of an eye. This year we were blessed to attend the Chrismations of some friends of ours the weekend before the Nativity, which was a beautiful reminder for us of our own Christmation. Blessed feast to everyone!

Happy Feet, Happy Fingers

I wanted to share these with you to prove I don't have second sock syndrome. I've been loving them so far! I've worn and washed them several times. They are warm and cozy, but very breathable and not too hot. In fact, I'm enjoying them so much I've cast on yet another sock in another colorway, and I'm flying through it. I got a lot done in the car on the way to and from Southern Indiana for a family wedding reception, but I slowed up a little this past week fighting the flu. I seem to be totally recovered now, so I'm hoping to pick up the pace again.


I promised to show the other project I've been working on, and it's off the needles, so here it is. (It could still use some blocking.) This is a Christmas gift for a special someone, but I haven't told her about my blog, so I feel pretty safe sharing it here. I chose this yarn especially for her, because she doesn't like wool. Good knitter that I am, I've lost the ball bands at this point, so I don't remember what the yarn is. I'm pretty sure it was a cotton blend. Maybe cotton-nylon? This color is totally tailored to the intended recipient too, so I hope she really likes it. I adapted this from the Cross-Stitch Scarf pattern in Designer One-Skein Wonders. I loved the stitch, and I thought it would be good and warm for a non-wool scarf, but I wanted a wider scarf than in the pattern. I checked the book out from the library, so I don't remember the pattern exactly, but I think mine is about two inches wider. I had three skeins of this yarn, so I didn't have to worry about making a skinny scarf to keep it to one skein. I really liked this stitch. I think it showcases the variegated yarn really well, and it looks interesting on both sides.


I know I'm getting into prime knitting season now, because James has built the first fire of the fall. However, I have a sewing project in mind which I think will keep me busy for the next week, and I'm on a deadline for that one. It involves a melding of East and West, and I'm hoping it will be part of a family tradition for many years to come. Hopefully I'll be able to post the results in about a week.

Hello, Fall

It feels like fall has come on really hard and fast. We have been having unusually cold weather, and every day I revel in seeing the leaves changing a little bit more. I am particularly enjoying the burning bushes, because they seem especially vibrant this year. I love spotting those bursts of scarlet red everywhere I go, and my drive to and from work has been my favorite part of the day lately. This week has been sunny, and everything has been bathed with golden light. I'm savoring it, because soon the world will be grey and bare.

At the end of the year, I start to feel like time is coming unspooled. For most of the year it seems to come at a measured pace, but in November and December everything seems so hectic and busy that time just seems to slip away. This year that feeling has come early. October has flown--I can't believe it's two-thirds gone already. It's been lovely. My parents and brother came to visit the first weekend, and the next we spent the whole weekend working in the yard. We had perfect, beautiful weather for it. We planted two boxwoods, a hydrangea, a couple of mums, and lots and lots of bulbs. Something to enjoy in every season. We also transplanted a bunch of hostas from various parts of the yard, mulched everything and tore out the stump of a big juniper bush that James chopped down this summer. We were really sore afterward, but it was well worth it. We had a good time doing it, and it's nice making our home a little more ours.


This past weekend was even more fun. We went to Grand Rapids for a special event. I will share more about that later. For now, I will leave you with an autumnal soup recipe that I made up last week to use the odds and ends I had in my refrigerator.

Autumn Leftovers Soup

1/2 cup diced onion
1 Tbs olive oil
3 cups baked winter squash, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
4 cups water
Vegetable bouillon concentrate for 1 cup
1 14 oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup cooked brown rice
1/4 tsp dried rubbed sage
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp paprika
1 cup chopped, steamed kale

In a large saucepan, saute the onions until translucent. Add the water, squash and bouillon packet. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium and blend with a stick blender until fairly smooth. Stir in the rice, tomatoes and seasonings, and simmer for 20 minutes or so. Add the kale and serve when it's heated through, about 5 minutes.

You could easily vary this based on the odds and ends in your refrigerator. I think white beans would be a really good addition.

Farewell Summer

I'm a warm weather kind of girl, and I'm not too keen on winter. But I must admit, I enjoy living in a temperate climate with four distinct seasons. I like the changing of gears, the refocusing that occurs at during the seasonal shifts. We start to focus on new pursuits and eat different foods. I like being a little more aware of the passing of time.

That's one of the things I love about the liturgical cycle as well. It establishes a rhythm of life, daily, weekly, and seasonally. I like noting the shift of tones from one week to the next and singing the different Resurrectional troparia. The feasts of the Church mark the passing of the year. While the Nativity of the Theotokos on September 8 still falls firmly into summer to my mind, by the Exaltation of the Cross one week later on the 14th, I can't help but start to think of fall. St. Thekla is the patron of our ladies society, so this week our parish celebrated liturgy on Wednesday evening for the Feast of St. Thekla. On Wednesday evenings our parish has vespers, dinner, and Bible study. We usually take a short break from this during the summer, and this Wednesday also served as sort of a kickoff for the fall inquirer's class and adult Bible study. The Feast of St. Thekla on September 24, falling as it does so close to the autumnal equinox, has become one of the markers of autumn to me.


So we're saying goodbye to summer around here. We got the last box from our farm co-op last week, and we're savoring the last of the warm weather vegetables. We recently enjoyed this "snacky dinner" as we call it at out house. (It doesn't sound quite as sophisticated as calling it tapas or meze, but it tastes just as good.) Snacky dinner is very simple, and we both love it. It feels very relaxed. It involves setting out a variety of snack-like foods. For us, it almost always includes hard-boiled eggs. Often it means cheese and crackers, olives and fruit, and usually something dippable. It tends to be seasonal--in the winter there is often dried fruit and citrus. On this night it was sliced tomatoes with feta and basil, a very delectable local pear or two, and the usual hard-boiled eggs. The unappetizing looking grey stuff was the star of the show. That's baba ganoush. I had a lot of eggplants hanging around. Mmmm, it was yummy. It would have been lovely with some fresh pita, but even with the last of the bag of tortilla chips it was delicious. It was a really good way to say farewell to summer.

Soup, Salad & Bread

I love soup. The combination of soup, salad and bread is my favorite meal. There are infinite variations on the theme, and we eat a lot of different soups. Three seasons of the year we eat it at least once a week. I especially love to make it for fasting days, and I have several in the rotation. Minestrone is a good, basic vegetarian soup for those nights. It's one of those soups that takes well to variation. You can throw in whatever vegetables you've got, but this is my standard version. It's based on a recipe out of the Betty Crocker Vegetarian Cookbook, which I bought when I was in college and still getting my feet wet in the kitchen. It's quite quick to make, and is based around some of my favorite vegetables.

Minestrone

1/2 Tbs. vegetable oil of your choice
1 cup diced onion
1 bell pepper, diced
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
2 cans diced tomatoes (or equivalent chopped fresh)
4 cups vegetable broth or water (Water actually works just fine, but the flavor is a little richer with broth.)
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed (Home-cooked beans are fine too, of course. Any white bean or chickpeas are also good in this. )
1 small zucchini or summer squash, cut into half moons (or quarters if you use part of a bigger squash)
1/2 cup small pasta (like shells or ditali--I usually use plain old elbows)
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat the oil over medium heat in your soup pot. Add bell pepper and onion, saute until onion is translucent and veggies are tender. Stir in spices--you could substitute a tablespoon of Italian seasoning for the individual spice if you want. Add tomatoes, broth and beans; bring to a boil. Simmer for twenty minutes or so. (If you want to make this a day in advance or to freeze, stop at this point and add the pasta and squash when you reheat. The water version is better if you make it ahead to let the flavors meld overnight.) Bring to a boil again and add the pasta and zucchini. Boil for the time required to cook pasta. Season with salt and pepper as desired. You can double (or even quadruple) this recipe if you have a larger crowd to feed.

And now my very own recipe for Flax Seed Fridge Rolls. We love these. They are yummy, and they are so easy and convenient. And I made up the recipe myself! Several years ago my grandmother gave me a recipe for refrigerator rolls. I loved the idea, but the recipe was not really my style. So I came up with this recipe, which bears no resemblance to the one that inspired it. We eat these all the time. If I ever cook more than a couple of meals for you, you will likely eat these.


Flax Seed Fridge Rolls

2 cups lukewarm water
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1/3 cup oil--sometimes I use olive, sometimes canola
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt

Put the water, yeast & sugar in a large bowl. I usually use a 2.5 quart Pyrex. Let it sit about 5 minutes until it gets bubbly. Stir in the rest of the ingredients. It's important to make sure you scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and get it well mixed. You will have a really wet, sticky dough. Cover your bowl with a damp dishcloth/towel or plastic wrap.

If you make this in the evening and you want to eat rolls that night, leave the bowl out on the counter to let the dough rise while you make the rest of your dinner. Otherwise, stick your bowl in the refrigerator to let the dough rise overnight, or all day if you make it in the morning. The photo above shows dough which has been in the fridge for a couple of days and has had some of the rolls baked.

When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 400. Grease a muffin tin (for however many rolls you wish to make) and fill them about 3/4 full with the batter. Bake about 20 minutes, until they're a nice golden brown. (As seen in the top picture.) There you go, fresh homemade rolls with dinner! So easy! I usually bake six at a time for us. This makes around 16-18 rolls, and you can keep the batter in the fridge for up to a week, baking rolls as needed. At the end of the week the rolls tend to have a kind of sourdough tang to them. I hope you find this recipe as useful as I do. We love to have fresh bread with dinner, and this makes it really easy to do.