Happy New Year! It's Resolution Time....Again....

Happy New Year everyone!  Our family had a fun weekend celebrating with friends and some folks from Dave's squadron.  One of his senior NCOs was promoted this week, so he had double reason to celebrate!

As usual, it's time for everyone to come forward with their resolutions.

"I will eat less and exercise more!"

"I will stop using foul language!"

"I will stop spoiling my children!"

I've tried 'em all.  Yet here I am, seemingly no different at the end of the year than I was at the beginning.  One of the very first posts on this particular blog was about the New Year's resolution.  Why use January 1st as an excuse to institute change?  If you want to change, just start changing, right?

This year, I resolve to better manage my time and stop wasting evenings.  I have started vegging in front of the TV and computer more and more after the kids go to bed, when that ought to be more valuable time to get productive stuff done.

In 2008 I had started knitting and crocheting more after the kids went to bed, and since we moved to Florida I'd been doing less of it -- I think the warm weather has something to do with it, but it's now wintertime and I need to get going again.  It's so much more productive than just staring at a screen all evening.


Who else made resolutions?

Happy Boxing Day! I KNOW You're Wondering....

Fox hunting is now illegal in the UK, but Boxing Day is still the country's biggest hunting day, with the hounds searching for a "dragged scent" instead of a real animal.

Happy Boxing Day!  I know for Americans, this is the day we get in lines to return gifts, and hit the mobs of shoppers grabbing wrapping paper, Christmas trees and strings of lights at at least 50% of off!  The retail industry has even termed the day "Mega Monday".  For most nations in the Commonwealth of Nations, the day AFTER Christmas is also a holiday: Boxing Day.

Have you ever wondered what exactly Boxing Day is?  Is it a day where everyone watches boxing?

According to Wikipedia, the origins of Boxing Day seem to come from a tradition where wealthier citizens would give gifts -- boxed gifts -- to their servants or other trademen in service to them (such as their cobbler or ice delivery man) on the first weekday AFTER Christmas...this is when servants would usually get an extra day off, also.

Check out the Wiki for more information.

The Santa Train and Zoo Lights!

We had a fun couple days sightseeing and enjoying some of the local holiday traditions.  Dave's finally getting his "travel legs" back after his surgery and on Friday withstood about 4 hours in the car, to and from the Foley, Alabama area.

We live about 1 1/2 hours from the Wales West RV Park...and Tourist Railroad.  Yes, if you can imagine the two businesses coexisting, that's what we have.  It's tucked deep in a rural town in Alabama, east of Mobile....

Okay, an aside here: I'm not sure what you officially call that part of Alabama that's due west of the Florida Panhandle and has the Gulf of Mexico as its southern border.  I always thought of it as a "stem".  I did some cursory research and determined it could be either "South Alabama" or "Lower Alabama".  Wikipedia didn't offer too much help.

...anyway, this RV Park offers Welsh Narrow Gauge train rides on weekends, and in December they had an adorable Santa Train experience.


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The Annual Holiday Open House...Cute Party Idea and Recipes to Share

Why invest in those complicated key-ring-like wine charms when you might have a house full of THESE?

I'd heard about it from one of the GeekMoms.  I can't remember whether it was on GeekMom itself, or one of the GeekMoms referencing another website with this idea.

I went through my kids' THOUSANDS of Silly Bandz and found some particularly fun ones that our guests would recognize.  Spongebob and Phineas and Ferb bands made it into the batch, along with some sports-themed ones.  Folks who had the wine got a laugh out of choosing what charm to put on their glasses from the 20-or-so I had set out.

Mr. Krabs from Spongebob.

Ferb from Phineas and Ferb.

Last night we had our annual holiday open house.  We've tried to do this every year...this year we almost DIDN'T do it because of Dave's back surgery recovery.  If you had asked in mid-November, the answer would have been a resounding NO.  We didn't even decide to proceed with it till after Thanksgiving.  So long as folks had about 2 weeks notice, right?

However, I think as time goes on over the years, planning for it gets easier and easier.  I set out the cookies that I'd made this week, and set out two fondue pots: one with cheese and one with chocolate.  Diced bread, fruits, veggies and pound cake all over.

I make something for my punchbowl each year too.  Last year it was a festive rum punch that was too sweet, IMHO.  This year I attempted homemade egg nog with spiced rum and I was impressed with the flavor and texture (and I was impressed with how quickly it was consumed).  I made a double batch based on Alton Brown's recipe, except with Myer's Spiced Rum instead of the bourbon recommended in the recipe.

I messed up by not taking pictures of my pretty punchbowl filled with egg nog.  So I found this picture to inspire you.

We also presented these incredible bacon-cream cheese wraps that we had tasted for the first time at someone else's holiday open house last year.  I followed the recipe linked above, except I baked them at 375F instead of 350F.  Wednesday night I hand-rolled 3 lbs. worth of bacon roll ups!  Not to gross folks out, but the bacon grease gets into the bread some and then toasts the bread up really nicely.  Yum!  Seems like a rather campy, 1950s-esque hor d'oeuvre idea, but they disappeared very quickly!

My bacon-roll-ups looked like these.  Photo by Janetishungry.blogspot.com.
http://janetishungry.blogspot.com/2008/11/bacon-and-cream-cheese-roll-ups.html 

We had a nice time -- because it was rather close to the long holiday weekend, many of our friends were out of town, but that was okay.  As usual, I made too much food, and I'm convinced we now have more wine and beer than we started with, thanks to our guests bringing so much!  Thanks to everyone who could make it.

Holiday Piano Recital

Our boys after last night's holiday piano recital.  Their teacher is in the upper right...

Last night my boys had their holiday piano recital.  In Nebraska Jacob only had one recital per year (May), but their teacher here in Florida puts on a nice holiday recital also.  They will have a bigger one in May.

This time I brought a tripod to take the video, which helped things out in two ways:

1. The video isn't wobbly at all.
2. I could actually watch my sons play, instead of watching them through the viewfinder of the camera.

The boys' piano teacher likes to give a somewhat-elaborate introduction for each student, which I could cut from Timmy's but couldn't find a nice place to cut from Jacob's.  Miss Ashley is saying some nice things about Jacob and his playing, but if you want to skip ahead (and believe me, I'm not offended, Jacob starts playing at about 1:00 into the video).

Timmy's "Jingle Bells"

Jacob's "Jingle Bell Rock"

Squadron Christmas Party -- It's Fun to Play Dress Up

It had been a very long time since Dave and I were able to dress up and go out without the kids.  A couple years, I guess.  Don't get me wrong, we go out occasionally, like to dinner or a movie, but of course we don't always dress up for those.

Last night we went to Dave's squadron's Christmas party and it was a very nice time.  Those who planned the party did a wonderful job.  Everyone seemed to leave having had a great time!

For the past couple tours, our holiday parties have been family events.  That's fine.  Last year's party here was family-friendly, and this year the squadron opted for a more formal event at a local golf club restaurant, complete with a cash bar, prime rib and grilled mahi!

I won't post ALL the pictures (remember, there was a cash bar), but here are a few.  The pictures aren't in the right order because we combined pictures from two cameras and the times are off between the two.

There was a scavenger hunt.  If there was a coupon taped to the bottom of your chair, you participated.  I think they were sorry I was part of it once I clawed at a couple folks to get Dave's Christmas tie.

There was a donation/voting contest where the "winners" dressed in costume and sang a holiday song.  Even though he didn't have to, one of our "winners" opted to remain in costume all evening.

Our MC, Todd VonAlmen.  He did an outstanding job.  Here he's reading the story for the gift exchange.  Every time the participants heard key words, they had to pass the gifts, left, right, forward, etc.  By the end, the folks only wanted the key words, we didn't really care about the story itself.

The scavenger hunt finalists.

Don is trying to pay off Glen to get out of wearing a costume.  There were 5 minutes to pay out before the "winners" were announced.

Dave and Todd are giving the final remarks and are about to give away the big raffle prizes.

I tried to get a couple nice pictures of the whole room.  This was tough -- I think our camera is done.

Cranberry Almond Biscotti: From 2008

I made these last evening also.  I didn't have enough almonds, but had plenty of almond extract so these taste SO GOOD this year!

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Cranberry Almond Biscotti. This is a recipe I've been making for over 10 years.  This is one sophisticated cookie...cranberries are always so, well, holiday! What's cool is that the only fat in the cookie is in the eggs (well, the almonds, too, I guess)!!!! So that makes them as healthy as my Holiday Surprise Cookies, right???

So here we go...

The dough mixes up pretty straightforward in the stand mixer:

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

This dough will be sticky...be prepared to keep your hands floured for the next part:

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Now, divide the dough into portions and pat it into logs of 2-3" width onto an ungreased cookie sheet, or, in my case, baking stone.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

You'll bake these in two shifts. The first shift is at 325, so don't expect the logs to be browned when they're done, just a little puffier.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Remove these bars to a cooling rack. I use two spatulas, one on each end of the bar, to move them.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

After about 15-20 minutes of cooling, you will then cut the bars into 1/2 - 3/4" wide slices.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Move the slices back to the baking stone, this is going to bake at a VERY low temperature, so don't be shy: pack 'em in!

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

These will bake at 300F for another 15-20 minutes, until super crispy-firm-dried-out. The way biscotti's supposed to be.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Unfortunately, on this batch, there was leftover sugar on the baking stones from the Holiday Surprise cookies, so pardon the green sugar on the bottom.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Happy Holiday Baking!

Holiday Surprise Cookies: Revisit of 2008 Post

Instead of recreating a blog post about one of our favorite cookie recipes, I've "repurposed" my November 2008 post.  Many of the commercial links from 2008 had to be changed, so I've updated the links to the recipe, some of the ingredients I like and the cookie-making equipment I recommend.

Similar to 2008, this will be the first cookies we make for the season, and I the kids once again have to deal with unwrapping about 150 Hershey Kisses.

What I will do differently this year is bake and store the cookies in batches according to the filling.  In years past I've jumbled everything together: Timmy doesn't like milk chocolate, Jacob doesn't like dark chocolate!

Enjoy!

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The first batch of cookies: Holiday Surprise Cookies, courtesy of the Quaker Oats company. Hit the hyperlink to go to the recipe straight from the horse's, er, Quaker's, mouth.

I gave Dave the camera tonight and asked him to document our experience so I'd have some nice pictures with which to blog. He told me, "Okay, I'm going to be like Maryann!". He did a great job, he took almost all the photos...

So, to start, we have to come up with a filling...this is the "surprise" in the cookie. In years past, we'd used Wilbur Buds, a Lancaster County, PA staple. In fact, the first time I made this recipe was to keep Dave and me from eating an entire bag of Wilbur Buds we'd gotten for Christmas in one sitting, I think. It was either 1999 or 2000...I can't remember. The beauty of Wilbur Buds is (a) you can buy a combo pack of milk AND dark chocolate together and (b) the buds aren't indivually wrapped.

If I'd had the foresight to order the Wilbur Buds ahead of time I would have. But it was much easier to pick up some assorted flavored Hershey's Kisses from my local mega mart. As can be seen in this photo, we had a lot of unwrapping to do.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

As the boys were unwrapping about 100 Kisses, in 3 flavors shown here, I was preparing the dough. It's essentially a sugar cookie dough replacing about 40% of the flour with oatmeal.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

Look at those oats -- your cholesterol is lowering just looking at it, right? Don't worry...won't happen: there's 2 sticks of butter in the basic recipe...and I doubled it tonight!

Once the chocolates were unwrapped and the dough was ready, I set up the assembly line in the dining room. The boys were great -- Jake stuffed the chocolate in the dough, and Timmy rolled the little ball of dough in the colored sugar and placed the ready-to-bake cookie on the baking stone. My job was quality control -- I pre-measured wads of dough for Jake to stuff so they'd be uniform in side, and I made sure the cookies were properly spaced on the stone.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

Does that look holiday or what?

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

We tested the cookies, of course, and everyone in the Vollmer clan gave them a thumbs up!

A Quick Holiday Craft Idea

I've been contemplating holiday crafts for Dave's squadron's Christmas party.  I'm helping to set it up.

(Oops, did I say "Christmas?"  I mean, um, "Holiday".)

I recalled doing God's Eyes in Girl Scouts and Sunday school when I was growing up.  With all these remnants of yarn hanging around from my HAP afghan rectangles, and a huge box of popsicle sticks in my craft drawer, this was an easy one for my kids!

With standard craft popsicle sticks, these are perfect size for the Christmas tree!

If you don't have popsicle sticks on hand, just march out to the backyard and pick up two sticks!

It's fun to see my kids grow in dexterity and pick up on more difficult crafts!

The kids "tested" out this craft with some multi-colored yarn, but I have a bunch of holiday colors for the party.

Timmy's alway been my "craft" kid, and he did most of one of these with a smile!

This one is Jacob's completed God's eye.  Hanging on the tree!

Because I Got a Bit Busy Today...A Review of Disney Universe for Wii

Disney Universe for Wii retails for $45-50.  Click this link to go straight to Amazon's listing.

At the last minute, I decided to stamp/crop our family Christmas cards this year.

I'm tapping into a lot of the materials I have on hand to save a little money, and I used the Splitcoaststampers website gallery to search for design ideas for the Stampin' Up sets I have on hand.  All I had to buy was some gold ribbon, clear envelopes and a gold pigment ink pad.

I guess I'll need stamps, too.

Because I got a bit busy with the cards, for today's daily post I'm just going to direct you to the Disney Universe for Wii video game review I did for GeekMom.com a week ago.  I was so pleased that the review got picked up by the BlogHer network for further sharing.  The week it was released, I wrote to Disney Interactive for a "review copy" of the game and I received one 5 days later!  Wow!

To summarize, the kids love the game, and I was a bit surprised at how twisted it is, considering it's Disney.  It's clear Disney was trying to replicate the incredibly popular LEGO video game style made popular by Travelers Tales games.

This week I'll be working on another free-game we received for review: Cabela's Adventure Camp for Wii.  I'm kinda liking this GeekMom gig :-)

Holiday Lights!

Today the family more or less was lazy around the house, every once in a while working on the holiday decorations.  I whipped together three recipes of sugar cookie dough for this coming week, and we finished decorating both Christmas trees.

This year, for the first time, we put up two Christmas trees.  We started to run out of room on the one tree we'd had for years with the kids' craft ornaments.  Yes, how "first world problem" of us, right?

But since this house had the space, and last year right after Christmas we could get a 6 1/2' pre-lit tree for about $10, we decided to give the kids a tree of their own.

Jacob chose the garland, star on top AND the bow on top!

If you look between the two tail pieces of the big bow at the top of the kids' tree, you'll see my new Pensacola Beach sign ornament, courtesy of my thoughtful husband.  He knows how much I love this sign!!!  This ornament connects to the light string and blinks similarly to the real thing.  The connection is compatible with the boys' new little tree, not the grown up tree, unfortunately.

The "grown up" tree!

This afternoon we put up the outdoor lights.  And by "we", this year it had to be "me".  Dave was considering just wrapping the lights around our small bushes, but I really really like lights on the house, so I offered to do it this year.  There was no way Dave should have been doing this stuff!

I've been on roofs of two-story houses, no problem.  But for some reason, on this one-story house, I got myself in an awkward place when I first tried to climb up to the crevice between the upper and lower roofs on the left side.  Then I freaked out and had to come down for a little bit.  I hadn't had fear like that in a really long time.  Strange...

I counted to 10 a few times, got a hug from Timmy, and went back to work.  I only actually had to be on the roof for the two transitions between the upper and lower roofs, but the rest of the time I was on assorted ladders underneath the soffit tucking the light's wires up into part of the soffit moulding.

Here's this year's finished product, courtesy of Dave's iPhone camera that worked better in the sunset than mine.  You can see the boys' Christmas tree in the window just left of the front door.

Happy Thanksgiving: A Pecan Pie to Peruse

Pecan pie anyone?  This one is extra special!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Today the family headed over to the Yurack Family's house.  Jim and Amy are friends from my dorm at Penn State way back when.  Amy lived across the hall my freshman year!  20 years ago!  The Yuracks have three kids, and let me tell you, when our two boys get together with the Yurack kids, happiness seems to abound.  They really do get along well, it's nice to see the kids play good old fashioned games like hide and seek and tag.

Amy's family enjoys a gluten-free and dairy-free diet, so when we accepted her invitation to join her and her extended family for Thanksgiving, she and I discussed some gluten-free variations on classic Thanksgiving dishes.

If you think about it, you can get away with quite a bit of the Thanksgiving dinner WITHOUT gluten or dairy, right?  Turkey, check.  Cranberry sauce, check.  Sweet potato casserole and mashed potatoes, can be check if you easily substitute soy milk or non-dairy creamer.  Amy made GF cornbread from scratch, which she made into the dressing, check!  Easy easy!

Cooks all over have experimented and perfected other GF and dairy-free variations on Thanksgiving classics, such as this version of green bean casserole that sounds really yummy!

So I offered to try out a gluten-free/dairy free pecan pie.

Geeky fact: Did you know the pecan pie is one of a culinary class of pies called chess pies?  A Lancaster County, PA classic, the shoo-fly pie, also falls into this class.  So does the Derby pie.

It was very yummy!  The crust is to DIE FOR!  BUT:

1. I wish I made more than the basic recipe for the crust.  
2. I wish I used more pecans so they didn't all float to the top.
3. I wish I had taken the pie out of the oven sooner.

I should have taken it from the oven about 10 minutes sooner.  However, the critical flavors were exactly as they should have been: pie crust, pecans and syrup-y tastes abounded!

I'll walk you through the steps...

First, the pie crust.  I had some Gluten-Free Bisquick on hand, and a simple Google search yielded an easy recipe (I only used the crust part of this recipe).  I pulsed the GF Bisquick with Earth Balance (Gluten free) Buttery Spread and ice water in the Cuisinart.  Lard or shortening would work for the fat, too.  Ball it up in a zip-top bag and chill for 3+ hours.

Here is the cast of characters for the filling.  This is from a basic pecan pie recipe on the Karo syrup label.  I used the Earth Balance spread in place of the butter.  Otherwise, everything else is the same.

The recipe doesn't specify one way or the other, so I chop 1/2 of the pecans and leave the other half of them whole....well, halves...you know what I mean!

As for the crust, I had to work VERY carefully to keep it together, I might have needed more water to hold it together, so I used the zip-top bag to keep pressing it together while I rolled it out.

I cut open the bag, peeled back the top of the plastic, and then flipped it into the pie pan.

Like so!

I think I needed more crust.  I did the best I could to press the crust up the sides the best I could.

Whisk together the filling ingredients (except for the pecans).

Toss the pecans into the crust and pour the filling on top.  But I noticed a couple things when I did this.  (1) These pecans floated to the top and (2) I wish I had more crust.

It baked up really nicely in the oven!  Smelled SO GOOD!

The verdict?  The crust was WONDERFUL!  Think about it -- no gluten means the crust has no choice but to be flaky, right?  I just wish I made more.  As for the filling, those pecans really truly did float to the top and the rest of the filling baked into a cakey-textured filling.  It was tasty, but I wish I had more pecans, more crust, and had taken the pie out of the oven about 10 minutes sooner.