decorate for the holidays

With a low-country boil of potatoes, kielbasa, corn, and shrimp followed by a dessert of homemade strawberry ice cream. Delicious!

I’ve been working on my holiday cooking plan for next year. Have decided on one yeast bread, one quick bread, and one dessert each month in addition to holiday and “ethnic” meals/feasts.

I cooked greens and black-eyed peas for luck on New Year’s, made chocolate turnovers for MLK Jr. Day, prepared a Chinese meal for lunar New Year, consumed a homemade chocolate feast for Valentine’s, celebrated President’s Day and Washington’s B-day with cherry desserts, made soda bread with clotted cream for St. Pat’s, prepared a Spring tea with 3 types of sandwiches and homemade orange sherbet, cooked an Easter meal on Good Friday, tried a flourless chocolate torte and charoset for Passover, missed Derby Day while on vacation in Miami, and celebrated Cinco de Mayo with a Mexican feast. Lots of good new recipes!

Took the tree down on Sunday 1/6 and put everything away today. Bought some knickknacks to take their places when I was shopping today because the house always looks bare to me when the decorations come down. Bought a clear oil lamp with colored oil and a quilted table runner. Both seemed cozy and wintry to me.

along with “undecorating” appointments. I also added shopping notes to remind myself what holidays I need to buy knick-knacks for and when. Somehow the times have a way of getting by me, and it’s not as though I have a store of stuff already around the house which could be used. I haven’t lived on my own that long, so some purchases are necessary.

I finally got it the way I want.

The Thanksgiving crescents weren’t that good. They don’t hold their shape and they tasted bland—not sweet and not hearty, just blah. I betcha there’s a good recipe out there, but this one isn’t it.

I got my small tree up the day after Thanksgiving. I keep tinkering with it as inspiration strikes, but it hasn’t really come together in the way I would like. It’s okay; I’m enjoying the twinkle lights anyway.

I’m not decorating, but I am going to make some yeast rolls (crescents) to take to my Mom’s house. My brother loves those squishy sweet brown ‘n serve dinner rolls, and I think this recipe will be comparable (but with better ingredients since it’s homemade). The dough is stirred together, shaped, then frozen. The crescents need to be thawed overnight in the frige and rise for an hour or so at room temp before cooking. Since it’s done in stages, it won’t take too much of my time and I can fit it around my schedule. Let’s just hope they taste good!

That’s the color of my kitchen so I’ll just do the tree in the same (and put the tree on the kitchen table) to avoid a lot of packing and unpacking or purchasing of knickknacks. I think it will work out fairly well.

and definitely plan to decorate for the 4th of July next year (2008). I have a navy sofa so with a little work, it could really come together.

I am not planning to decorate for Fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving this year.

As for Christmas, I’m not especially inspired. I won’t finish with my class until Dec. 7th (the day that shall live in infamy) so I don’t have a lot of time to get organized for this year. I’ll probably resort to last year’s decorations, but I’m not real impressed with that solution either. Hmm. Instead of putting the tree up in the living room, I’d like to put it up on the kitchen table and go with a cooking/tea theme but I hate shopping at Christmas time—the traffic makes me insane—and I don’t have the stuff I would need. I’ll have to think about it.

Instead of a kit with little dye tablets. It worked great—some lovely vivid colors. Two didn’t turn out so brilliant so I ate them (deviled egg style). Tonight I want to try the natural dye versions. I’m going to use red cabbage and beets to hopefully get pink, light blue, dark blue, and lavender. It’s been fun. I got so involved I even dyed a few fingernails and fingertips. It’s already worn off though, thanks to washing the dishes.