Story Time Part two

There is difference of opinion in our house on the two different styles above. Let us know what you think.

Read more...

Story Time

Read more...

Christmas Eve German Style

Like most families, ours has it's share of family traditions. One of those traditions happens on Christmas Eve, where we have a traditional German Dinner. This dinner always consists of Bayrischer Weißwurst (Bavarian White Sausage) Along with this sausage we have Brazen (pretzels), Bayrischer kartoffel salat (German potato salad served warm), and rote kohl (similar to sauer kraut only red and sweet). It's funny that this has become on of those must do family traditions (even though Mom and Dad says no one likes it, which is not true.)

What I like most about this tradition is the reminder of our heritage (my father is half German my Grandmother on my fathers side came here as a child from Germany and my Grandfather and Father both served a mission there and my even my mother's side of the family came from Germany in the 1700's .) So for me it is an opportunity to reconnect to my families past and share the experience with my children. Plus I really do enjoy the dinner, well not the rote hohl but everything else. Below I have attached some photo's of the different dishes and a video on how to cook Bayrischer Weißwurst. Let us know what you think and what are some of your family traditions at this time of year.


Bayrischer Weißwurst (Bavarian White Sausage)


rote kohl (similar to sauer kraut only red)

Bayrischer kartoffel salat (German potato salad served warm)


Brazen (pretzels)

yummy

Where to buy: Bayrischer Weißwurst (Bavarian White Sausage)

Original Bavarian Sausage (Tigard Oregon)
or
Edelweiss Sausage and Delicatessen (Portland, Oregon)


How To Cook And Eat Bavarian White Sausages(This is not an endorsement just a funny video my Father found and made each of us watch this year before we could eat dinner.)

Read more...

Someone likes the snow

We thought it was part of every child to want to play in the snow. Well we were wrong. Looks like only one of our three kids will play in the snow. One after two minutes went to hide in the car to stay warm and the other one said she would rather shovel the sidewalk over making a snowman. Boy did we get odd looks from the neighbors when they saw this poor innocent child shoveling (by her own choice), while mom and little man built a snow man. I was amazed that he was even able to roll that big snow ball. Finally I convinced our sidewalk shoveling child to take pictures and the first two are the ones she took. Then a nice neighbor with a broken arm came over and finished shoveling our sidewalk one handed. I guess he didn't want to build a snowman either.

All are glad to see the snow go away. I know winter just started a week ago, but an early spring would be welcomed.

Read more...

C is for Candy

With kids home, they need something to do. Otherwise they will fight or become part of the television. So we now have played in the snow and shoveled the drive way and sidewalk. The girls have painted ornaments at grandma's house and yesterday they baked lots of sugar cookies and decorated them.

So today the girls wanted to make candy. We started out with the Authentic French Meringues. Yes, we cooked them for 3 hrs. We made some of them with mint and some plain. The plain ones were not a winner, but the mint ones tasted fine in small quantities. Over all I would not make again.

Next we made fudge. You know the good old fudge recipe we make every year. Can we go wrong with this one? I hope not, after all it is called Foolproof Chocolate Fudge.

Now we could not stop there. I headed over to the website of Eagle Brand to see if they had any other recipes of interest. Wow, did they. So next we made Peppermint Chocolate Fudge. This one uses both milk and semi-sweet chocolate.

Next we decide to live on the edge again and try Peppermint Patties. These also are time consuming. Hopefully they will be tasty, since New York Peppermint patties are Shaun's favorite candy. First you make a fondant like mixture and scoop out 1 inch balls and flatten. Then you let them dry on each side for an hour each. It took a little bit for me to figure out how to dislodge them from the wax paper. I learned it was just easiest to turn them over and peel the wax paper off verse try to peel them off the wax paper. Lastly after all that waiting they are ready to be dipped. We did a pretty good job keeping a nice appearance with the creme filling. When it came to dipping we lost the battle and beautiful was no longer a valid description. I guess I would try this again and do it a bit smaller and thicker next time and would hope to have better looks, more like the picture I copied from the website. Taste not too bad. The minty flavor is a bit off from the New York patties.

Next we found a recipe, we could not resist. Chocolate covered brownie Bites!! Okay so mine don't like nearly as beautiful as the picture, but they taste great and don't look too bad either. I even did a white decorative touch too.

Finally the girls wanted peanut butter balls. We got this recipe from V. Watkins at church. They only have four ingredients in them and they are great as a treat or dipped in chocolate.

At last, Shaun is home and we send him back out in the cold to get more ingredients to make the following fudge recipes for a platter to go to his work for a work holiday party. Three stores later and a stop at his parents we are back in business. I guess most of the baking items are sold out. I guess everyone has the same idea to bake on snow days.

Peanut Butter Fudge, I am all for these type of recipes. Easy prep and hopefully great results. It called for white chocolate bar or squares. The store had none, so we had to use white chips. I know that chips are a bit more waxy, but that should be fine.

Lastly, we had a child insist we had to make these ones, so why not. We will just add it to dad's platter of goodies anyway. It is Cookies 'n Cream Fudge. The bad part is that both of these take lots of white chocolate and the store only had one bag of white chips. Luckily Shaun's parents saved us on the other. Their food storage is handy too. The recipe calls for cookies to be broken coarsely. The reason I learned is to avoid the fudge from getting a gray tint. Ours was just starting to get that grayish tint, luckily it is not too bad.

Read more...

Cookies Gone Wrong

I was so excited this year to make baked goods with my kids. It started off I found a website that does the 25 days of Christmas cookies from all around the world. As many of you know I really like to try new recipes. You never know when you will find a good yummy one like Brown Sugar Cookies that aired on America's Test Kitchen.

So each day or two I look to see what new cookie has been revealed.

Here is a few that we have tried in order tried:

Rosenmunnar, A Swedish filled cookie. Yum!

Finnish Cookie Sticks, from Finland of course. This recipe was okay, we would try it a bit different next time with a little less almond extract. It seems to over power the sticks not rolled in almonds.

Greek Butter Cookies, these are pretty rolled in an S-shape, other than that they taste like a standard butter cookie.

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies Day, on this one we tried to do the painted frosted glazy look. The cookies are good and the glaze is pretty, but not as tasty as butter cream frosting.



So since we had church canceled yesterday, I decided to search for some new recipes. The above recipes were not too bad and I wanted to try some old world ones from around the world. So these four are the ones we decided to try partly, because of the ingredients we had on hand. All in all we were disappointed with our baking adventures. The worst part is my husband took them to all his HT families and gave them to our HT. How embarrassing, now everyone will be afraid to try anything we cook again, and probably for good reason. But here they are so you know what to avoid.

Scottish Shortbread IV, I liked this one best of what we made.

Old German Honey Cookies, mine don't even look like the picture, and these were a huge let down, especially after wasting a cup of honey on them. After the first batch was cooked, I added chocolate chips in hopes to improve the flavor to no avail.

Scottish Lace Cookies, also not a winner in our house.

Oatmeal Lace Cookies, One picked out from a cooking show on tv by Abigail. Better of the last two, has some potential, if we were to try again to press cookies better and more uniformly.

So after all that work. Not one real winner to add to our collection. So today I looked at today's cookie revealed at the 25 days of Christmas cookies. It is Authentic French Meringues, part of me wants to try it and the other part of me remembers yesterday and does not want to go through that again. After all if takes four egg whites. So a few more days and we will perhaps give it a try or perhaps find something else that catches my eye.

Read more...

For Unto Us A Child Is Born

This version contains the original color. Often I adjust the saturation and various other aspects of the color however, this one I thought was fine how it is.

For the second picture I used a layer mask and softened the color to create more of a pastel version of the picture. When I posted this picture I noticed how the color adjustments I made also adjusted the white matte. I am a little disappointed that I didn't notice this earlier. I will fix it on the original.

Obviously the third version is in black and white. I felt the Nativity was a good candidate for some of the new techniques I have been playing with. Let me know which version you like best. My wife finds it very interesting that the reflections are more vibrant in color than the actual subjects.-SG

Read more...

Praktica Nova B

This camera is a Praktica Nova B. It was bought by my father while on his church mission in Germany during the late 60's. The camera is still functional and I hope to post some pictures taken with it soon (as soon as I figure it out). I consider this to be a great family treasure (even though it's not worth a great deal). I had fun taking and editing the above picture. I am practicing some new techniques.


About the Camera:
Pentacon Praktica Nova B, 35mm SLR camera, 1965-1968
East German made 35mm SLR. Pentacon benefited from German know how after the forced break up of Zeiss following the cessation of WW2 and the division of Germany between the allies, consequently these Nova series Prakticas are very well made. With Domiplan f/2.8 50 mm. auto lens -SG

Read more...

For Sale

As many of you know, there is always a season for everything.
Some things are well thought out over a period of time and others just seem to happen over night.
We lived in our last house 4 years before we got the itching to move.
This time it looks to be only 3 1/2 years.

So you may ask, " Where do you plan to go?"

We really don't know. We haven't thought that far ahead.

Infact we weren't even convinced on moving until we woke up this morning to a sign in our yard, that used to be across the street in our neighbors yard.

Well some thing just seem meant to be, so we will just wait and see.

Read more...

Medical Procedures R-US

Well November was quite the month for us and general anesthesia. Denise got the ball rolling with having her "Wisdom Teeth" removed. She was quite the trooper and was back serving in the nursery 3 days later.

Next Anna had her tonsils removed remember that gross picture several posts back? You guessed it Anna's tonsils. She took real initiative on this one, she had us document the experience with photos, she took careful notes and kept a journal of her recovery. Why you ask? Well extra credit for science class. She made a collage, wrote a paper, and brought her teacher her tonsils (she really has figured out the way to a teacher's heart).


Lastly, the day before Thanksgiving I underwent the Cervical Facet Joint Nerve Block procedure, which required general anesthesia. My headaches are greatly improved but I feel the procedure was a real pain in the neck (literally my neck still hurts). We are not sure how long the improve headache state will last best guesses are from 3 weeks to 7 months (could be shorter could be longer who knows.) The good news the fact that it has brought relief means we are on the road (step 1 of 3) to a permanent solution.




-SG

Read more...

You are Special

This is one of my favorite children's books. I think it applies to all of us. I love reading the book better than listening to it, but this is better than not at all. - DG

You are Special, by Max Lucado

Read more...