My Weblog

Christmas at 10206 Colechester.......

She's home from college.......just arrived.  Now it feels like Christmas around here!

In Love with my SILPATs!

Oh SILPAT ....I am totally in love with you!  
Those of you who use these wonderful silicone baking sheets understand my deep affection for this French wonder.  I picked up 2 a couple months ago when my Beantown Boy and I took off to explore some sweet little towns in the Blue Ridge.  Just a couple doors down from our luncheon spot was a Cooks store and low and behold they had them.  I took a leap of faith and brought them home with me and until last night had never used them.  I will never bake cookies without them again!  Never, I tell you,  will a scoop of cookie dough enter my oven unless it's sitting on a SILPAT!  While we watched Julie and Julia last night(I have seen it before and now own the BluRay version) I whipped up a new and wonderful batch of cookies.  Every year I try a new recipe for cookies or cakes or desserts....something to add to the 5,829 recipes I dig through each year that have made the cut over the past 27 years and are added to my file of "keepers".  Well this year this cookie is moving up to the head of the file.  I'll share the recipe with you.....and a snapshot of them right out of the oven.  I even turned one over so you can see just how beautiful on the bottom these cookies are using a SILPAT.  Run and ask Santa to include one in your stocking this year.  Next year, Santa will thank you for leaving him the very best baked cookies to pass his lips on his 2010 Christmas Eve journey. 

Chocolate Almond Cookies

`1/2 cup of softened butter

1/2 of Nutella Spread

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar, firmly packed

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp almond extract

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. chopped almonds

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

In a large bowl, beat butter and Nutella at med. speed until creamy.  Add sugars, beating until creamy.  Add eggs and almond extract, beating until combined.  Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.  Gradually add to butter mixtures beating until combined.  Add nuts and chocolate chips, beating until combined.  Cover and refrigerate until firm, appox. 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line to baking sheets with SILPAT liners.

Using a spring-loaded 1 1/2inch cookie scoop, scoop dough.  Place dough 2 inches apart on the SILPAT liners.

Bake until edges brown and center is no longer shiney...approximately 12-15 minutes.  let cool on SILPAT sheets for 5 minutes and then transfer to cooking racks.  Enjoy!!!!

 

 

My Christmas Facts

I have received several of these from friends so far this Season.  Since I'm so lax in answering I thought I'd just post my answers here.......

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?   Both but I'm starting to lean more toward wrapping paper

2. Real tree or artificial?   Real...always Frasier Firs and 2 of them

3. When do you put up the tree?  Around the 5th of December

4. When do you take the tree down?  The week after New Year's

 5. Do you like eggnog? Love it and am thrilled that there is a light version of it now 

6. Favorite gift received as a child?  Two litle hampsters

7. Hardest person to buy for?  my pal Linda 

8. Easiest person to buy for? My baby, Jordan 

9. Do you have a nativity scene?  Yes, one that my parents saved their money to buy pieces for each week at the local grocery store when my Dad was in law school and my mom in grad school in 1959 

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?  mail

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? A sweater that smelled like moth balls...but the giver was a sweetheart of an older woman 

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?  that's a tough one

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?  The week after Christmas 

 14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?  sure...I like to give vintage items  

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?  Ruth Hunt candy

16. Lights on the tree?  lots of little white ones

17. Favorite Christmas song?  Silver Bells

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?  Home

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's?  Dasher, Vixon, Comet, Donner, Blitzen, Prancer, Cupid, Dancer and Rudolph

 20. Angel on the tree top or a star?  The same goofy looking angel I've had since the first Christmas after college when I had my own condo

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?  Christmas morning 

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Obnoxious people  

23. Favorite ornament ?  a Haitian lady made out of straw.  My husband pulled into home port our first Christmas on Dec. 23 and the ship he was on had a port call in Haiti a few weeks earlier and people were making and selling these on the streets.  It's so sweet and so is the giver!

Ole Tiger....

I'm a sick person.......sick sick sick, I tell you.  Why am I so sick....because I find this totally hysterical.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttZSjajdRd8&feature=player_embedded

and then as time moved on this week I think this is almost as funny....

http://www.hulu.com/watch/113210/saturday-night-live-tiger-woods-accidentI

It's all really rather sad........but just so damn funny!

Snow Day

IT'S SNOWING HERE IN THE 'BURG!!!!!  What a perfect day....snowing and very cold...love it!  I just took some pictures of our lab playing outside....she was going crazy trying to figure out what that white stuff was.  She's getting so gray and her sweet eyes are starting to cloud.  Labs are such wonderful dogs!  Must head back downstairs...my sweet Beantown Boy is putting lights on our trees.  We always get Frasier Firs and this year's choices were particularly good....nice full straight trees.  Happy Snowy Saturday!

A Ruth Hunt Candy Christmas

Every year before the first decoration is put out or the first card is addressed I place an order for Kentucky Cream Candy from Ruth Hunt's in Mt. Sterling, KY.  Mt. Sterling is a sweet little town between Ashland and Lexington on I-64 and has been the home of this delicious candy since Ruth Tharpe Hunt began making it in 1921.  I was a law school(Dad)/grad school(Mom) baby.  My parents had me the beginning of their second semester at the University of Louisville (much to their dismay I am a UK grad). They were both from a small town in Eastern Kentucky(Raceland...population 2,000 and I'm related to 1,978 of the town's fine citizens) and traveled back and forth between Louisville and Raceland often to visit their families.  When my mother was pregnant with me she was totally addicted to Ruth Hunt Blue Monday bars.  Blue Mondays are a square, thin, larger version of their bite size cream candies.  Once, between Mt. Sterling and Raceland, she consumed 6 in just over an hour.....her guilty pleasure during her pregnancy along with Snyder's potato chips.  So it's no wonder that I, too, am addicted to this sweet delight!  My order has been placed....a larger can this year.....and I'm now ready to start hanging the mistletoe and holly!

 

On Being a Girl

When I count my blessings....good health, great kids, spunky granddaughter, wonderful husband... I never forget to count my sex right up there in the top 5! Being born a girl is right up there with my most precious blessings!  I recently drove thru McDonald's and ordered a Happy Meal for lunch.  The voice behind the "screen" said....do you want a girl or boy toy?  I loved saying back to the screen...I'm a Girl.  The "screen" was a bit taken aback and then laughed.  I got a rubber dog with a pink bow but it was far better than any boy toy, that's for sure! I spent today with my very "girlie" second born.  We shopped for makeup and boots and shirts and antibacterial sweet smelling hand soap.....and we sipped on Skinny Chai Tea with Pumpkin Spice and we held up necklaces to our shirts and asked if the jeans we were trying on made our ass look fat. We frolicked in the world of being a girl and it was such great fun!  I came home with these....... And I decided I need this for Christmas..... Uggs and David Yurman.........yes, my friends, it's just plain wonderful being a girl!
 
  

Little Trees and a Needlepoint Ornament

I spent the day with one of my BFFs just playing at my kitchen table!  Gaye is an incredible "costumer" and there isn't anything in the world she can't do with a needle and thread.  Until today I couldn't thread my sewing machine!  She fixed that with patience and her wonderful way of teaching.  I can now thread my sewing machine, thread the bobbin, and sew both a straight and zig zag line!  Yea for me!!!  Here's what we made in between eating quiche, laughing, and drinking our favorite soft drink....Diet Dr. Pepper.  I think that's a Texas-Kentucky thing!

     And I recently got back from the finisher a needlepoint ornament I made for another BFFs daughter's wedding gift.  Their mouths look weird in the picture but they don't in person...it's a rather whimsical little ornament.  I stitched 3 this year.....not my best or worst record but need to do better next year! 
I love getting ready for Christmas....all the craft projects and pouring through cookbooks and working on gift lists.  I just need a blast of cold weather to really get me in the pre-holiday spirit!

A Playdate with Elizabeth

On Monday I took off to Hanover, VA for a day of antiquing with my new pal, Elizabeth.  Our main goal of the day was to hit The Paper Man's(as I call him) semi-annual sale.  Elizabeth had never been to his shop and I knew she was in for a treat!  We both were like kids in a candy store as he had a lot marked down 50% and the rest was 25% off!  I found lots of wonderful books with fantastic fonts to use in my latest creative venue.... I took a class from Elizabeth to learn to make this flower masterpiece(see the geometric lines in the right corner...they are from an engineering book belonging to Elizabeth's father in law) last week and now I'm collecting supplies to make more.....lots more!  Elizabeth is a wonderful teacher and an amazing fiber/paper artist and the 4 hours I was at her house went by so fast I thought my watch had stopped working!  I'm going to ask her for another class in gelatin fabric stamping!!  I love learning new things with regard to fabric and paper!   After the Paper Man we hit another antique mall full of wonderful things and added more bags to the back of my car.....such treasures we came home with!  Here's some peeks at Monday's bounty.... An aerial view of my loot! I've got several large albums but this is the first small one and I've been looking for one for a long time! I loved the Victorian feel to this cabinet card! These are candy wrappers saved in a small scrapbook.

It was just a perfect day full of great finds and wonderful company!  Let's do it again real soon, Elizabeth!!
  
 
 
 
 

Happy Halloween!

It's orange and black around our house this time of year!  Hope everyone has a wonderful, candy filled Halloween night!  Here are a few snippets from my house... I hooked this a few years ago and keep meaning to hook more pieces.  I'm always full of good intentions!  It just wouldn't be Halloween without Creepy Doll Head Girl.  I love how her eyes follow you as you move around the room.  Can't wait to decorate her for Christmas! I made these paper ma-che pumpkins a couple years ago.  I need to make more!I love my cheap Cracker Barrel soup tureen.  It gets a work out in the Fall as I serve all my soups from it!   The keeper of the candy! I always buy candy that I hate....until this year.  I don't think there's a single Reece's cup left in the bucket!  And last but not least.....my old kitchen blackboard....