valentine dessert genericOnce the holiday decorations are put away, things settle down, and the reality of winter sinks in, things can start to feel a bit glum. I combat this in two ways.

Decorate for Small Holidays

I decorate for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter. Valentine’s Day decorations go up right after the Christmas decorations get put away. I transition from that to St. Pat and then to Easter which carries me through until it really starts to feel like spring. I decorate my tabletop all-occasion tree for all of these holidays and have wreaths as well as a few things to set around the house for each. It helps me feel as if the house is not bare and cold.

Focus on Food Holidays

I look for excuses to cook fun food throughout the winter. These are the holidays that are reasons to celebrate at my house.

Feb 1 SuperBowl: We always have cheese nachos with guacamole for the SuperBowl and I also buy soda, which is generally banned in my house. We all watch the beginning of the game together and then kind of drift off to our separate areas. I usually make brownies as well so we can be as fat as possible.

Feb 14 Valentine’s Day: I always make a heart shaped dessert for this day.

Feb 17 Mardi Gras: I make a king cake for Mardi Gras, which is a sweet bread with frosting and green, gold, and purple sprinkles. You bake a charm or small toy inside and the person who finds it is the king.

Feb 18 Ash Wednesday: We don’t celebrate Ash Wednesday per se, but I usually buy paczki donuts for the gluten eating members of the family the day before and then I buy fastnachts sometime during Lent as well. I may make some gluten free this year because I miss them so much. Lent is also fish fry season here in Buffalo, but that’s another gluten bomb, so I’ve learned how to make my own beer battered fish fry with gluten free flour.

Feb 19 Chinese New Year: I make homemade fried rice, buy some gluten free dumplings, and make a third dish, often chicken lo mein or beef with broccoli. Unfortunately I can’t find gluten free fortune cookies which is the missing piece!

March 17 St. Patrick’s Day: St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal around here. Buffalo has the second largest parade in the country. I always make corned beef with cabbage and carrots and potatoes and cheese soda bread. Then we have reuben soup the next day with the leftovers.

April 5 Easter: I always make a ham for Easter and often serve a carrot dish with it.

What food holidays are on your calendar this winter?

Once the holiday decorations are put away, things settle down, and the reality of winter sinks in, things can start to feel a bit glum. I combat this in two ways. Decorate for Small Holidays I decorate for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter. Valentine’s Day decorations go up right after the Christmas decorations … Read more

I know I’m a few months early, but I’ve already decided what I’m making for Easter. I am in love with these carrots. There was a fight over the leftovers here.

half a bag of baby carrots

2 heaping tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp butter

1 tsp dried dill

salt and pepper

4 tbsp white wine

chives or green onions

Slice the carrots into thick matchsticks – you want to get 4-6 per carrot. Boil until just tender. At the very end, drop in the green from green onions (scallions) or a handful of chives and just cook for a minute to wilt. Drain. Make little bundles of the carrots and tie with the chives or green onions (even if you only do a few, this still will look cute). Melt butter, sugar, dill, salt and pepper, and wine. Cook for a minute or two until combined and the wine has time to burn off and it thickens slightly.  Add the carrot bundles and gently stir, then serve. As you can see, I didn’t have a lot of success with the bundles, but I didn’t have much green onion here to work with. Next time I will have more and will be prepared. I just think this is so darn cute and will look wonderful for Easter.

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I know I’m a few months early, but I’ve already decided what I’m making for Easter. I am in love with these carrots. There was a fight over the leftovers here. half a bag of baby carrots 2 heaping tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp butter 1 tsp dried dill salt and pepper 4 tbsp white … Read more

Thanks to Teresa at Homemade Iowa Life for picking this project – the assignment was to make Easter eggs from the selection on Martha’s site. I made the silk tie dyed eggs last year (#12 in that slide show if this link does’t take you directly there) and my only regret is that I used hard boiled eggs, so all my hard work was thrown out! They were gorgeous and a great project – I highly recommend them. This year I decided it was time to try blowing out eggs. The first

Making the hole

challenge was the eggs. I only buy organic, and they only come in brown, so we ended up buying regular eggs and dumping the contents (wasteful, and I am ashamed).

I read Martha’s instructions for this and her method is to go buy a egg blowing contraption. I decided I didn’t want to invest in that so we decided to do it the old fashioned way. I read some other online

Blowing the egg

instructions about how to do this yourself and we got started. Mr. MarthaAndMe went first since his hands actually do what his brain tells them to do. He used a cake tester and scratched and scratched and scratched at one end until he had a hole. He did the same on the other end and moved the cake tester around to make the hole bigger.  Then you swirl the cake tester around inside to break up the yolk.

Washing the egg

Hold the egg over a bowl, big hole down and blow through the small hole. Success! Next, submerge the egg in a bowl of water and keep blowing water out until it runs clear. Set it back in the egg carton to completely dry.

When I tried it, I couldn’t get the egg to come out. When Dude Martha tried it, his holes ended up uneven and shattered looking. Mr. MarthaAndMe decided that there had to be an easier way. He’s a man, so that meant power tools. He came back with his drill and used a small bit for the small hole and a slightly bigger one for the bigger hole. He stood the drill up

Here come the power tools

and held it stationary and then moved the egg towards the drill bit so he could control it. This worked well the first time. The next few broke, but then he got back on track. Some eggs broke as they were being blown. Out of a dozen eggs, we ended up with 8, 3 of which had nicely shaped holes. Not such a great ratio. It was fun to try this though since I had always wondered how hard it was (pretty hard). I also enjoyed making comments about Mr. MarthaAndMe sucking eggs which made him almost choke as he was trying to blow one out, so that was a highlight as well.

The next day we colored the eggs. I decided to try Marbelizing Eggs. The Attempting to marbelizedirections say to color the egg first in one bowl then in another bowl, mix up the dye and add oil. Swirl the oil and roll the egg through it to get the marbelized effect. Total disaster. No marbelizing happened at all. None. We tried adding more dye, more oil, etc and nothing working. So Dude Martha and Mr. MarthaAndMe then began to experiment (shudder). Mr. MarthaAndMe has memories of making these kinds of eggs as a kid and tried to recreate it by

Marbelized result - not so marbelized

adding drops of food coloring to vinegar and water, not mixing it, and quickly rolling the egg through it. It sort of worked. Then he started dripping food coloring directly on the egg and rolling it in the water. That worked the best and resulted in the more brightly colored eggs. Dude Martha did the same thing and the eggs really did turn out quite vibrant and interesting.

This was fun, but was not as successful as I’d hoped. I do like having blown out eggs to work with so that if you’re lucky enough to create something beautiful, you can keep it. That being said, I think I’ll go back to the Broadway Market next year (see yesterday’s post) and buy some more professionally made eggs for $10!

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Thanks to Teresa at Homemade Iowa Life for picking this project – the assignment was to make Easter eggs from the selection on Martha’s site. I made the silk tie dyed eggs last year (#12 in that slide show if this link does’t take you directly there) and my only regret is that I used … Read more

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