Here is one of the boxes of Martha’s candy I’m giving away this season. I’m using Martha’s boxes, which I found at Walmart. I think I got the last package the store had, back in early December and I’ve never seen them again, so I think they sold like hot cakes.

Here is one of the boxes of Martha’s candy I’m giving away this season. I’m using Martha’s boxes, which I found at Walmart. I think I got the last package the store had, back in early December and I’ve never seen them again, so I think they sold like hot cakes.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. This is a busy weekend for us with family gatherings, shopping/returning trips, and lots of time needed for reclaiming the house after the hurricaine that is Christmas.  I do almost envy Martha her spa trip, which she said she and her daughter were taking over the holiday!

This is our snowman that looks like a penguin. A wind storm came and blew his hat away soon after the photo.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. This is a busy weekend for us with family gatherings, shopping/returning trips, and lots of time needed for reclaiming the house after the hurricaine that is Christmas.  I do almost envy Martha her spa trip, which she said she and her daughter were taking over the holiday! This … Read more →

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Every year I buy a gingerbread house kit and we decorate it (if you’re going to buy a kit, look for the ones that come with the plastic tray with the channels in it – this way you can assemble the house and decorate it right away since the channels keep the walls up). This year, I didn’t buy one, planning instead to make my own. That’s what Martha would do after all. Well, here we are just a few days before Christmas and I never got around to it. I did actually find and print out the recipe on Martha’s site, but I was discouraged by the fact that the template made 5 tiny gingerbread huts instead of one big house.

The great gingerbread debacle of ’08 came to a head the other night when the children complained about us not having one and how much they wanted to do it. Sigh. So Mr. MarthaAndMe made a quick stop at Bed, Bath and Beyond and grabbed a kit.

We assembled it as tradition dictates. Mr. MarthaAndMe does the actual construction. Each child gets to do a side to his or her specifications. I do some of the front and try to create some kind of uniformity. The dogs wait under the table for pieces of candy to drop.

This year, I followed Martha’s lead and made gumdrop snowmen, like she has on page  53 of December Living. I’m rather proud of mine (Mr. MarthaAndMe says he appears to be French with a beret and scarf) and mini-Martha made a fishing Cyclops.

This gingerbread house isn’t nearly up to Martha’s standards (the kit didn’t come with very much frosting, so the house seems kind of bare to me), but we had fun making it.

My Snowman

Cyclops fisherman

Every year I buy a gingerbread house kit and we decorate it (if you’re going to buy a kit, look for the ones that come with the plastic tray with the channels in it – this way you can assemble the house and decorate it right away since the channels keep the walls up). This … Read more →

Martha has a variety of homekeeping tips on page 136 of December Living.

She suggests we use fabric instead of wrapping paper and recommends making sacks. They’re reusable and can be tied with ribbon. I don’t really like this idea. It’s too homey and country looking for my taste. Somehow handing someone a cloth sack doesn’t feel as nice as handing them a wrapped gift or even a pretty gift bag.

She recommends we get kids involved in decorating, making cookies and drawing pictures. I agree with this. Our kids are definitely involved.  They are each responsible for wrapping the gifts that are from them. They do the cookie decorating and gingerbread house decorating. We also have a tree in the family room that is just theirs and they put their own ornaments on it each year. When they were younger, they would decorate the outsides of envelopes or draw pictures to give people.

Martha suggests looking for alternatives to store bought gift wrap and lists all the tired suggestions of using the comics, a map, sewing patterns, etc. I’m tired of people suggesting this and really I don’t want to get a gift wrapped in newspaper. I think it’s boring and tacky.

A green suggestion in this section is to shred the wrapping paper after the holidays and use it for packing. I like that idea a lot.

The section recommends keeping universal gifts on hand for an unexpected gift situation. I don’t do this. All of our holiday gatherings are planned in advance and I don’t have to worry about someone coming over unexpectedly.

Offering your time instead of a gift is another suggestion here. I like this, but I think it has to be something the person really will use. It’s easy to say you’ll babysit or take your grandmother on an outing, but a lot of times I think the recipients feel awkward about actually redeeming these gifts.

Another tip suggests planning ahead for holiday parties by moving coats around and making space in the fridge. Not a concern here since it looks like we won’t be hosting a single thing at our house this year. A good tip though.

Creative gift cards are another Martha suggestion. She says to buy them from unusual places like bakeries, golf courses, hair salons, etc. I usually give one uncle a gift certificate to a bakery and in the past we’ve given my mother-in-law a hair salon certificate (which I don’t think she liked by the way).  These can be good gifts, but I think you have to really know the person well enough to know what they would be interested in.

The last suggestion is to start a giving folder, where you keep a running list of ideas for gifts. I have a word document on my computer where I do this. It’s a great way to jot down things that come to you through the year which you might forget by December.

Martha has a variety of homekeeping tips on page 136 of December Living. She suggests we use fabric instead of wrapping paper and recommends making sacks. They’re reusable and can be tied with ribbon. I don’t really like this idea. It’s too homey and country looking for my taste. Somehow handing someone a cloth sack … Read more →

Batter

Yesterday I made the batter for the Meyer Lemon Lace Tuiles (page 32 of December Living). It was easy – lemon and orange juice, butter, flour, sugar, and lemon and orange zest (the recipe calls for Meyer lemon juice and zest – not attainable in my neck of the woods, so I just used regular). The recipe says to refrigerate overnight. Check.

Today I got it out and put the batter on the baking sheets as directed – 3 inch circles, 2 inches apart. No problem. I was really excited

Ready to bake

about this recipe. You bake the batter then you take each cookie and wrap it around the handle of a spoon to make a tube shape. They looked crunchy and wonderful in the photos.

This recipe seemed really simple and I wasn’t worried about it turning out at all.

Silly me. Here is what I took out of the oven:

A total unmitigated disaster. There is nothing here that is usable.  It all ran into each other and did not maintain any shape at all. I threw it all in the trash.

What makes me even more upset is that this is the second batch of lemon cookies I’ve made this year that are worthless. The first ones were from a recipe I ripped out of a magazine in a Land o’ Lakes butter add for Lemon Meltaways. There was clearly a mistake in that recipe because the batter tasted like cornstarch and it cooked into piles of crumbs.

So I am 0 for 2 on my lemon cookie attempt this year. Really, this is why you should just stick with your tried and true family recipes. And from now I will.

Thumbs down on this Martha, very, very disappointing.

Yesterday I made the batter for the Meyer Lemon Lace Tuiles (page 32 of December Living). It was easy – lemon and orange juice, butter, flour, sugar, and lemon and orange zest (the recipe calls for Meyer lemon juice and zest – not attainable in my neck of the woods, so I just used regular). … Read more →

On page 118 of the Handmade for the Holidays special issue, Martha has a recipe for granola. This seemed like it would make a great gift. I ran around buying all the ingredients and began what was a simple process.

The liquid mixture

First you melt butter and stir in brown sugar, honey, salt, water, vanilla, and cinnamon. Then you stir in rolled oats, oat bran, wheat germ, raw cashews and raw almonds. You spread the mixture on two baking sheets and bake for an hour and a half. The granola looked great – golden and shiny. It stuck together just enough. You’re then supposed to mix it with dried cherries, coconut and golden raisins. Before I did that, I tasted it.

Fresh from the oven

Oh boy. Thumbs down. It was very salty and not very sweet. It needed a lot more cinnamon and sugar and maybe something else (not sure what!). It was pretty bland, although the nuts tasted good. It did have a nice crunchy texture. The verdict was that I would not give this to anyone without some major doctoring. I’m considering trying to mix it with more sugar and cinnamon to see if I can make it edible, but as of right now, this is off the gift-giving list. Thumbs down on this, Martha.

During this whole process, my Handmade for the Holidays magazine fell into a sink full of water. I think it’s probably not salvageable (although I am trying to dry it), so this might be my last project from that issue!

On page 118 of the Handmade for the Holidays special issue, Martha has a recipe for granola. This seemed like it would make a great gift. I ran around buying all the ingredients and began what was a simple process. First you melt butter and stir in brown sugar, honey, salt, water, vanilla, and cinnamon. … Read more →

Martha has lots of great wrapping ideas in December Living. I love wrapping gifts. I only buy paper that coordinates with my tree, so that means it’s got to be pink, blue, green white, etc. This is a huge challenge for a holiday where everything is green and red.

I love to wrap creatively and always use lots of ribbons. I think it’s so boring when people wrap a gift and slap a bow on. I even know someone who doesn’t even bother with bows and I can’t imagine that.

I usually insist that my gift tags color coordinate with the wrapping paper. This year I’m cutting corners a bit and trying to use up my backlog of tags that may not exactly match (so please pardon any color faux pas you see).

Here is a gallery of some gifts I’ve wrapped – some with Martha-inspired ideas and others that are all mine.

Martha has lots of great wrapping ideas in December Living. I love wrapping gifts. I only buy paper that coordinates with my tree, so that means it’s got to be pink, blue, green white, etc. This is a huge challenge for a holiday where everything is green and red. I love to wrap creatively and … Read more →

As the candymaking cavalcade continues, I decided to make the Cocoa and Sugar Dusted Chocolate Almonds from page 109 of the Handmade Holidays special issue. This sounded very simple (always the curse of death).

Almonds after cooking

The first step is to cook the almonds with sugar, water and cinnamon in a pot on the stove. Then pour it onto baking sheets and stick it in the freezer. So far, so good. Getting it off the baking sheet was another story. I had it on waxed paper, which kept ripping as I tried to get the nuts off.

The next step is to melt semi-sweet chocolate and stir the nuts into it. Martha says to then put the almonds on a wire rack. Now, picture how small an almond is. Then picture the racks you own. Would an almond not fall through that? Definitely. Mr. MarthaAndMe came up with a solution – he

Mr MarthaAndMe's Solution

wrapped fishing line around and around a wire rack. He is oh-so-clever.

Once we had this in place, I mixed the almonds with the chocolate. Not so great. The chocolate sort of solidified and got all chunky. When I put the almonds on the rack, they looked like nasty pieces of something unpleasant

Unsightly mess

I will not name here. Not to mention, I did not need the stupid wire rack thing – setting them on waxed paper worked just as well since they were not drippy.

Because the chocolate was not nicely coating the almonds, I first stuck it in the microwave to try to soften it a bit, but that did not seem to help (and I was worried about the sugar coating dissolving). Then I put it over a pot of boiling water. This helped a little. I ended up rolling each almond by hand to smooth out the layer of chocolate on it. This was a major pain and I admit it made me complete cranky.

Next you cool the almonds and then roll half of them in cocoa powder and half in powdered sugar. This was easy.

The results

The taste test? Well, I think the almonds needed to cook longer in the sugar mixture because they were not as crunchy as I would have liked.  I’m not sure using raw almonds was the way to go here, Martha. I think regular almonds might have worked out better. I was thoroughly disgusted by this entire project by the end. What should have been simple took forever and did not turn out as I envisioned.

As the candymaking cavalcade continues, I decided to make the Cocoa and Sugar Dusted Chocolate Almonds from page 109 of the Handmade Holidays special issue. This sounded very simple (always the curse of death). The first step is to cook the almonds with sugar, water and cinnamon in a pot on the stove. Then pour … Read more →

Martha had Paula Abdul on (in all her non-coherent glory) and made Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies during cookie week (why isn’t every week cookie week in my life?) This recipe is also in December Living. I have to say, I passed right by the recipe in the magazine. It didn’t strike me as anything great. But then I saw it on-air and I knew it was something I had to make.

As complicated as Martha can sometimes make things, this cookie was actually pretty easy. First you make the cookie dough which is nothing difficult at all. It’s a basic dough with lots of cocoa powder (I used Hershey’s special dark). The dough did not firm up into a ball for me – it was a bowl of crumbs, pretty much. When I smushed it though, it stuck, so I was able to roll out the balls. You roll them in sugar then put them on the baking sheet.

Wooden spoon method

On the show, Martha suggested using the end of a wooden spoon to make the indentations in the cookies. As you can see, this didn’t work very well. The cookies ended up splitting down the sides. I used my thumb instead and it was much more successful.

Baking them should have been simple, except I chose to attempt this on a weekday afternoon. I got them halfway done, and a child needed a ride, so out they came. I got home and put them in again and another child needed a ride. Out came the cookies again. It went on and on this way. It is truly a miracle they turned out at all.

Once these are baked, you make the chocolate and vanilla ganache to fill them. This part of the recipe was unnecessarily complicated. Martha wants you to cook honey and cream and scrape a vanilla bean and cook it with the scrapings and the whole pod. I did not have a whole vanilla bean and my grocery store did not sell any. I just dumped in about a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead.

Have a cookie...

Martha then wants you to cool this and strain it and then pour it over the bittersweet chocolate in a food processor. My food processor which  has served me well for 20 years) just died – actually the bowl broke. So until the replacement bowl gets here, I’m without one. Instead I just dumped the chocolate into the pot and warmed it up until the chocolate melted. No straining or mess. Very easy. Once it cooled, I spooned it into the cookies and let them rest. I needed to refrigerate them to get the ganache to really set up so I could pack them away.

The verdict? This is absolutely delicious. A good thing.  The cookie tastes very much like a very dense brownie. The ganache is tasty too. One point of contention – the recipe says it makes 90. 90! No way. Given, the recipe says to make each cookie 2 teaspoons, but on the air Martha was using a small little ice cream scooper/melon baller thing, so I used that too. This recipe made maybe 25 cookies for me. They weren’t huge either  -they were just about the right size. If you want more, you’ll need to double the recipe.

Happy birthday to me today!

Martha had Paula Abdul on (in all her non-coherent glory) and made Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies during cookie week (why isn’t every week cookie week in my life?) This recipe is also in December Living. I have to say, I passed right by the recipe in the magazine. It didn’t strike me as anything great. But … Read more →