This year is different. David, Raquel and I are not travelling for the holiday. It is our first Christmas together at home. It is wonderful. A few days ago, we made our environmentally conscious Christmas tree purchase. We drove a few miles down the road to the Christmas tree farm and cut down our Christmas tree. That's about as local as you can get, short of growing a tree in your back yard, which we tried to do (thanks for the tree last year, Dad, it was doing good until about three weeks ago and it started to die :(. We walked/ran around the field of trees. David said that Raquel was going to choose the tree, but what he really meant was that she was going to say "I want that one" and we were going to say, "I think that one is too big". It was a joyful time and no one got hurt with a hack saw! It helps that the trunk of the tree is only about 4 in. in diameter. I have to say that I feel good about our purchase. It doesn't smell as good as the trees that we had growing up in Minnesota (said with a Minnesota accent), but it is beautiful.
Another thing that I am trying to do this season is bake. I love to bake. I love the feel of the dough in my hands. The only problem is that I am trying to bake "healthily". (Is that a word?) I made an exception to my healthy baking kick when Raquel said that she wanted to bake ginger bread cookies. Actually my first thought was "No way!" because who actually eats those things! But then I said, "Ok" because I love her and I want her to be involved in the holiday traditions. I got my recipe ready, all the ingredients out and little one in her helper position on a chair next to me. All was going well until I put in 1.75 teaspoons of cloves in the mix instead of .75. Now, I have never made ginger bread cookies before, but I smelled that cloves stuff and I knew that either it would be fine, or it would taste terrible. And let's face it, ginger bread cookies taste pretty terrible to begin with. After an internal fit of frustration, I put R in front of Netflix and started over. Who knows if the cookies would have tasted terrible or not, but I wasn't about to go through the whole rest of the process to find out. I am not a "trial and error" sort of person. I want to get it right the first time. One final thought about baking ginger bread cookies is that molasses is a bit disgusting. It smells gross, it is incredibly difficult to clean up and maybe it is the reason that I don't like ginger bread cookies, although I can't be sure. After R's nap, we are going to roll them and bake them so maybe my mind will be changed about these cookies forever. Finger's crossed.
Until next harvest.
2 comments:
I love your pictures and your happy demeanor when working the soil. I had always thought that I would love the farming life but never turned that direction. Your blog title reminds me of that song from the holiday season. I truly believe you are the god spirit incarnate. You are destined for things greater than you realize. Love you.
I read your gingerbread cookie story over again and want to comment that you are an average person. People feel exactly as you do, do exactly as you do, and react exactly as you do. You are a typical mom, with typical wishes and dreams, and live a very typical life. I love how you express yourself. Save your blogs in a folder on your computer. One day you may want to write a book. I know I would buy it if I were a typical mom.
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