We had a festive Sunday here. It started off with candy making. I'm not totally sure why but when I got up I really wanted to make some candy. I started with the candied orange peel - which I've made before - and moved on to the peanut brittle and sugared almonds - both recipes I discovered just the day before when we couldn't find any candied nuts at the grocery store.

The peanut brittle was by far the easiest; I don't know why I've never tried it before. Melt two cups of sugar in a heavy pan stirring constantly. I used my cast iron fry pan but something with higher sides would be a little safer and less spill prone. Add one cup of shelled roasted peanuts and pour the whole thing onto a rimmed cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil (for easy clean up and because my sheet was open on one end). Break it into piece once it's cool. It's really yummy but gets stuck in your teeth.

Rob's sister came over to meet Abby in the afternoon. She's been away since June and it was nice to see her again. Abby was (somehow) on her best behaviour and did a minimum of jumping around crazily. Carolyn brought over some vinegar so we could try making sponge toffee. This was the only candy I made that involved the thermometer and, therefore, the most intimidating. We managed to get to the right temperature and not beyond though and added the baking soda to make everything foam up. It look pretty cool but apparently requires a very specific amount of stirring: enough to mix all of the soda into all of the syrup but not enough to deflate the foam. I erred on the side of caution and our candy is more like a thin layer of sponge on top of some clear vinegar flavoured candy. Interesting flavour. Rob says we should try again while we've still got the vinegar.


Sunday was the day we had set aside to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We were both ridiculously excited to be doing this in our new car; it warms up so nicely and the windows don't frost over (doing this in our old car involved stopping after a little while and scraping off the insides of all the windows so we could see again). Our light-viewing tradition involves going to the convenience store and getting weird hot milky drinks (mine was "two bite brownie" and Rob's was "cinnamon sticky bun") and hot dogs (last year there were hot dogs but no buns - so disappointing). We drove all over one of the neighbourhoods and even managed to pick up a little local radio station (range is only about 2 Km) playing all sorts of cool Christmas music.
When we got home we set up our tree. We'd been procrastinating on the tree to limit the amount of time Abby will have to get at it. We had a garland with lights and a few ornaments and some other things (high) up but it really made our house look cozy and Christmasy to have the tree up. You can see the lights through the front window so our house looks festive from the outside too. We kept the actual decorations on the tree to a minimum - just the lights, a garland and a few sturdy non-chewable ornaments that will survive if the tree is pulled over or if Abby manages to pull something off. We sat around admiring it for a bit after we put Abby in her crate for the night. Zeke came out to see what we'd done and rubbed his cheeks all over the lower branches - I guess this is his tree now.

This was dinner on Tuesday night. It was so yummy. I'd just finished shovelling all the snow off our porch (it was clear Monday night and as deep as my hand by the time we got home on Tuesday!) and I wanted something warm and filling and really, really easy.

The bread is a one-hour French bread recipe I found here. It's not quite as fluffy as a true French loaf but it's very easy and really does only take an hour. I used roughly half and half whole wheat and white flour to give it a little more substance and flavour. It smells so good while it's rising and baking. I can never wait until the loaf is properly cool to cut it so the first few slices get a bit squished.

The soup was in the freezer. We made it on Sunday and it is fantastic. It was made of leftovers which makes me feel so thrifty and clever. We had more than we could eat on Sunday so we froze the leftover soup (leftover leftovers?) for sometime when we were feeling a bit lazy. The meat and vegetables in it were from dinner the previous Tuesday: roast beef and root vegetable fries. We'd already gotten three meals out of that roast (dinner on Tuesday and two days of sandwiches for lunch) and had just the bone and some of the fries left. Here's how we made our soup:

Leftover Soup

Ingredients(-ish):

1 can plain soup (beef broth, chicken both or whatever plain soup you find in your cupboard; we used onion soup)
half an onion cut up
leftover roast beef bone
leftover roast vegetables

Instructions (sort of):

Caramelize the onions in some butter and a bit of brown sugar until they look brown and yummy. Add your soup (and whatever water it may require). Cut up about a third of your vegetables and puree the rest (I like pureed vegetables in soup; skip this part if you don't).  Add them to your soup. Cut as much meat as you can off the bone. Cut the meat into bite site pieces. Add it to your pot and toss in the bone (might as well get as much out of it as you can). Add stuff like salt and pepper and any herbs or spices you like. Cook your soup until it's hot and you're hungry. Eat it with a nice slice of crusty bread or toast with cheese cooked on top (this is really good for soaking up the broth).


It took a while for the soup to warm up from frozen and every time I tried to help it I splashed myself so I found something else to do in the mean time.


I started spinning this yarn a while ago when I lent out my lace spindle and then immediately wanted to spin a lace weight. I decided to see how finely I could spin on my wheel. The wool is left over from a felting class I took a couple of years ago and is so soft and pretty. I had one piece of a very soft grey and another of the blue-purple colourway. I wanted to get as much yarn as possible so I decided to spin both into singles and then ply them together (you can see the bobbin of grey all ready and waiting on the kate).


I managed to spin some pretty fine yarn (probably a bit too fine in places since I had several breaks and spit-joins as I was plying) and love the result of the plying. The grey mutes the colours and makes everything look so soft and pretty. I'm calling it Whisper and I've got about 155 m (170 yards) of it. I'm not sure what it is destined for yet but I think it would look nice as a delicate cowl or a smoke ring.

This was our breakfast this morning. Apple ginger muffins and home made ricotta cheese. Yum.

The muffins have chopped up candied ginger in them so every once in a while you get a little zing of ginger next to the sweetness of the apple. I got twelve large muffins from the recipe but you could probably squeeze out fifteen smaller ones.

My sister and I made this cheese yesterday as an experiment. It's quite creamy tasting and a bit tangy. Jane thought it would be good with a bit of salt but I wasn't sure how that would go with my muffin so I left it plain. The recipe made quite a lot of cheese (roughly two cups tightly packed) which we divided in half. We also made a paneer but were a little unsure about the flavour (ie. none). Neither of us have ever had paneer so we weren't really sure what it should taste like or how it's supposed to be eaten. It seems like the sort of thing that might absorb flavours if it's cooked in something strong like a curry.