Holiday cheer and a recipe!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

 

We've been busy little elves-- rolling beeswax candles, making Christmas cards, opening windows on our Advent calendar, and hanging up decorations.  Mary and Joseph have made their appearance along with our nightly reading materials that take us through Advent: The Light in the Lantern and Mary's Little Donkey.  I can't imagine advent without these books, they really lend so much heart to our home, and the children still light up with every telling.

Another long-standing tradition for us, our felt Advent stockings.  Each one holds a different holiday carol.  We sing our nightly song before we light the Advent candles and read our story.  Singing with my grandmother is one of my favorite memories from childhood, and it touches my heart to see what joyous little singers I have.  There is no sound more precious than the sound of little voices rising up in song!  And we are discovering that at five, Kitty Bill has quite a good memory for song lyrics!

And as always, the girl elves have been busy knitting away.  There are projects going in every corner of the house and lots of whispering going on.

Not all the projects have been started yet, nor the baking, but there is time yet, still plenty of time... or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

It's cold outside, blustery and snowy with lots of ice!  We're trying our best to stay warm and toasty, and when the winter winds blow, our thoughts turn towards food.  The kids have made an unusual request for Christmas dinner-- soup!

I made the mistake of playing around with our pumpkin soup recipe the other day.  Around here folks serve it with cream.  We've always made it with coconut milk.  This time I decided to forgo the milkiness altogether and add in my soup protein standby, ground nuts, and top it with a heavy hand of nutmeg.  Now, my kids are generally very enthusiastic eaters.  And they love pumpkin anything... but this soup?  They went crazy for it.

We finished off the leftovers for lunch today, and there was a general echo of sadness until one of them piped up with the idea of soup for Christmas Eve dinner.  When I acquiesced, they actually cheered.

Best Pumpkin Soup Ever

one medium winter squash (pumpkin, kuri, butternut, etc.) cubed
2 Tbs olive oil
1 large onion
2 cloves fresh garlic
2-3 cups vegetable broth (depends on size of your squash)
1/2 cup ground almonds
sea salt, to taste
ground nutmeg

Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil.  Toss in the squash, add enough broth so that it reaches the top of the squash, but doesn't cover it completely.  Bring to a boil and simmer until tender (or alternately cook in a pressure cooker for 7-10 minutes).  Puree this, stir in the ground almonds and add sea salt to taste.  Serve with a heavy sprinkling of nutmeg.

It's dairy-free, animal-free, gluten-free goodness... unless of course you serve it with fresh, homemade bread.  But I know you clever folks have got the homemade, gluten-free bread down pat already.

A wee bit of sewing (and muffins!)

Though it's still raining, we got a bit of sunshine in the mail this week when our order arrived from Superbuzzy. There's nothing like pretty fabrics to cheer a girl up!

We're all having serious trouble focusing this week. So as an impetus for us all to get our work done, I promised the girls I would sew up a couple of skirts for them after lessons. I've never seen kids work with so much gusto! I might have to order more fabric for our next rainy spell.



I made these from half a yard each, but because of the design layouts, they're different styles. Sunburst helped me pick out the fabrics, and Moonshine was extremely pleased and surprised with her Matryoshka pattern. When Sunburst picked out the mushroom pattern for herself, I had to laugh. After we finished the lower plants, she begged for a break from Botany so we could do more history together. Since that break she has done nothing but talk about plants. I even caught her embroidering fly agaric mushrooms onto a pair of jeans the other day-- and not just mushrooms, but soil and mycelium as well. She is too funny!

As an extra treat we made pumpkin muffins from our fall freezer stash. The weather certainly feels like fall, so why not?!! They're packed with yummy seeds, which really makes me smile. I'm trying to be better about writing down recipes as I make them up-- you can imagine the kind of trouble I get into when Einstein or the kids ask for a repeat and I have no clue what I did. So since I remembered to write it down, here's the recipe... with yet another clever title. ;-)

It's Raining Vegan Pumpkin Muffins
1 c whole wheat flour
1 c all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1/4 t ground cloves
1/2 c evaporated cane juice
1 1/2 c pumpkin puree
1/2 c oil
2 T water
1/4 c pumpkin seeds
1/4 c sunflower seeds
1/2 c raisins

Preheat over to 350 F. Mix the dry ingredients together. Add in the wet ingredients. Stir until just mixed. Bake in greased muffin pan for 25-30 minutes or until done. Makes 12.

Let the Good Times Roll

Blessings that are bright.
May our hearts always be light.
Blessings on our bread.
May we all be healthy fed.
Blessings on this day.
May Spring not be so far away.





Today was a great day. We're really back in the flow, and boy, does it feel good.

Yesterday Sunburst and I sat down and had a talk about how things are going. She's been lost in a reading zone lately-- just completely obsessed with two different series she's working through (The Fairy Realm and Rowan of Rin.) It has been really hard to capture her attention, and I get it. Who wants to put down a good book? Or in her case, a good pile of books? She hasn't seemed all that interested in anything I suggest lately, namely, our Waldorf lessons.

So I asked her if she wanted to continue with them or not. She looked at me like I asked her if she wanted to eat a porcupine. Stop. Doing. Lessons? So we came up with a plan to fit in lessons AND reading time, and today's execution went off without a hitch. We got so much accomplished, both in work and play, that I just want to bronze this day and hang it on the wall.

We even managed to sneak in some Saints work, recalling a story of St. Brigid's Cloak, that we read over the holidays. Plus a couple more St. Brigit stories from this site.

We had a good mix of Groundhog's Day, Candelmas, and St. Brigid's Day revelry, and even whipped up an Irish soda bread in the shape of a cross for afternoon snack.

St. Brigid's Bread
2 1/2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 T sugar
1/2 t sea salt
1/4 c raisins
1/4 c dried cranberries
handful of nuts or seeds (we used pumpkin seeds)
1 c soy milk
1 T apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all dry ingredients. Add milk and vinegar and stir gently until mixed. Spoon mixture onto a greased cookie sheet in the shape of a cross. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Multiculturalism through cooking

Tonight Einstein brought to the table the most exquisite salad I have ever tasted. It wasn't your typical salad, it was weird, and it seemed to have a bit of everything in it. The girls and I oohed and aahed over how pretty it was and how great it tasted. Moonshine, our pickiest eater, didn't have any complaints. Her mouth was too full to complain!

Immediately I thought of some dear little friends we know that have a bit of difficulty when it comes to trying new and/or mixed dishes. Their mom has had to get creative in the past, including finding an endearing bunny story to go along with The Yoga Cookbook's carrot soup recipe. Maybe her kids would like this salad, too. But what story would she tell them?

As I stirred it around in my bowl, it occurred to me that really it was a melting pot of many nations. She, I, or anybody could make this salad (or any other recipe, really) with our kids and tell a story as we go along. A story about some children from different nations all over the globe who somehow come together and create a meal with what they have brought from home-- sort of a Stone Soup without all that trickery involved.

How do these children come together anyway? Maybe they're on a boat ride traveling around the world picking up passengers as they go along. Maybe a child from each nation has been beckoned by the Fairy Queen. Or to borrow a theme from the Seven-Year-Old Wonder Book, maybe these children from different nations all just lost their first tooth and meet along the way to visit Prince Frey.

Anyway, they meet. They're hungry, and they decide to look in their satchels and share what they've got with each other to make a fine meal. Sakoto from Japan puts her rice into the big pot. Pedro from South America gets out his knife and slices up a ripe and juicy mango. Susan from America looks in her bag but all she has is a handful of rasins.... and one by one they take their turn looking for what they have and adding it in.

And at the end of it they have a grand meal fit for the Fairy Queen herself. Or maybe that's their task, to make a meal of love for the Fairy Queen to save her from a horrible spell? Whatever the case, it simply tastes good.

Einstein's International Salad1 can garbanzo beans
cooked rice ~ 1/2 cup
chopped mangoes ~ 1 - 1.5 cups
some toasted almonds (sliced) ~ 1/2 cup
some raisins ~ 1/3 cup
finely chopped onion ~ 1/4 cup
cilantro
mint
a touch of rice or white wine vinegar
salt and pepper