Category Archives: holidays

2024, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Uncategorized

Kransekake

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While my parents have predominantly British and German ancestry, you wouldn’t know it from my upbringing.  No culturally relevant foods,  no traditions, no nothing.  It wasn’t a void that I ever looked to fill, but it does mean I’m a bit of a tabula rasa where culture and tradition are concerned. 

There are just a few things that I’ve carried from my childhood to my adulthood; most of the traditions that YA and I observe are things we made the decision to do, not things that I did growing up.  I was going to list a bunch, but the list is too long!

I’ve lived in the heart of Scandinavian culture here in the Twin Cities for 44 years.  I’ve taught myself how to make aebleskivers and Swedish pancakes, visited the Swedish American institute.  One year we did a Saint Lucia observation at our church (UU); I made YA  a white dress and we fashioned the candle wreath for her head, although none of the kids actually had their candles lit (phew!).  We have a nisse watching out over our garden and I have a few heavy Scandinavian sweaters. 

But for some reason, I have never gotten around to making a kransekake, the stunning tower of cake/cookie rings that you see on the covers of many Scandinavian cookbooks.  It’s called a crown cake and sometimes a wreath cake as well.   Well, this turned out to be the year.  I knew our Anna had the rings/pans that you need to make the individual rings/wreaths and she graciously offered to let me borrow them.  I found several recipes and decided on one that I could pipe out of a bag rather than roll out the dough in log forms.  It turned out to be ridiculously easy… truly the hardest part was figuring out which of the two largest pans was actually the biggest one.  My recipe made way more dough than I needed… next time I attempt this, I’ll have a plan for this.  Maybe save it until after the first batch is baked and make a smaller tower.  I know purists would not have added sprinkles but I just had to. 

It made a lovely party centerpiece and if I do say so myself, tasted really good.  The only problem is that people were afraid to mess with it.  I’ve had this problem before with pretty cakes or rice krispy trees; I usually end up cutting them up so they don’t look too daunting.  I did this with the kransekake as well.  About ½ of it got eaten at the party and I’ve been nibbling away at it since then.  This turned out to be a fun attempt for me; it may get added to my stable of traditions.

When was the last time you pushed yourself to try something new?  How did it turn out?

2024, animals, Family, Gatherings, holidays, Uncategorized

White Elephant

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Today is our agency Holiday party. I wrote last year about the festivities and “planned” fun. This year the powers that be had the sense to scrap the door decorating contest, opting for a noon potluck, trivia game, and white elephant gift exchange. I am bringing cookies, and cranberry-orange glazed chicken thighs.

I am too burned out to come up with a white elephant gift. We found out yesterday that a beloved extended family member is probably going to be placed in Hospice care, which makes holiday festivities seem somewhat more frivolous than usual. I see, though, that the weather may be good when we travel Monday to Brookings, SD. It will be healing to be with family members.

My mother always had a hard time at Christmas, having lost a 7 month pregnancy in 1949 when her appendix ruptured. She did her best to keep Christmas cheerful, but it was hard. Tragedies are bad enough, but seem worse during the holidays.

What would you try to get rid of at a white elephant gift exchange? What holiday tragedies, frivolous or serious, have you had to contend with?

2024, Gatherings, holidays, Music, Uncategorized

Whew!

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Yesterday was tiring but satisfying. We played in the bell choir at both morning church services, came home and packed up seven boxes of Dresden Stollen and cookies (one box had a Bremer Klaben instead of a stollen) and got them to the UPS store. We then played bells and sang at the annual Lessons and Carols service at our church in the afternoon. I got to read the Bidding Prayer again. By 5:00 PM we were done and free. We are heartily sick of being town musicians at Christmas.

By town musicians, I mean some of the few people who are active in the musical community in our small town. The majority of town musicians are affiliated in some way with our Lutheran church. Our local college had a vibrant and active music department with a band and a choir. They had music festivals for high school students and hosted lots of concerts. The recent college president decided that the music and theatre departments didn’t have enough student majors, so he closed them down last year. The Education department has enough music education majors and they need to have some sort of music going on, so they have a band of one person and a choir of six singers. Our bell choir played with them two weeks ago at a Christmas concert in the college student center. Had our bell choir not been there, it wouldn’t have been much of a concert. I should add that the decision by the college president was so unpopular he quit. I don’t think they will reinstate the music department, though.

The Lessons and Carols service was lovely, and our church music director had a local classical guitarist, someone I had never heard of, play the following piece.

The guitarist appears to be Spanish. I have no idea how he got to North Dakota, but it was delightful to hear him. We have only one more vocal choir performance next Sunday, and no rehearsals this week, so we are free to relax and chill. Christmas hysteria is over, at least in our house. I may need to order more classical guitar recordings, though.

What musical instrument would you like to hear more of? How is the Christmas hysteria at your abode?

2024, books, Family, holidays, Nature, Uncategorized

Poinsettias!

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When I was growing up, we were not a poinsettia household.  I think a lot of it stems from money; my dad didn’t really come into his own, career-wise until I was almost out of elementary school.  There are plenty of memories of my mom saying “don’t ask for that in front of your father” kinds of things.  We weren’t destitute by any means, but there wasn’t a lot of disposable income for seasonal house decorations.  We always had a tree and a wreath on the door, but no little villages, no strings of lights on trees in the yard, no dishes of holiday candy and no poinsettias.

I’ll admit I’ve gone a little overboard in the other direction, but I never thought much about poinsettias until I was working in the bookstore and came across The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola.  This book became the first in my collection of children’s holiday books. 

When YA was little, I would bring them all down and we read at least one a night during December.   And it was then that I first added poinsettias to my holiday décor.

But red is really the only color for poinsettias in my book.  I have a close friend who adores all things pink and she would always have a pink poinsettia on her desk during the holidays.  Bleech.  I do own a silk white poinsettia; I probably got it back when I had quite a few silk plants – a very silly phase I admit.  I still put it out although YA doesn’t like it and it’s not my favorite either.

We usually get two big poinsettias for the mantel.  Some years, if the spirit moves us, we get another one for in the dining room.  AND for many years we got a teeny one for Nimue.  She would happily munch her little one and leave the big ones alone.  Not sure why.  (I DID THE RESEARCH… a cat would have to eat hundreds of poinsettias to be affected by the toxin.  We’d ALL have to eat hundreds.)  This year, since Nimue has slowed down a bit as she ages, she no longer jumps up on the mantel.  Since the big plants are safe, we skipped the kitty-poinsettia.  She gets enough treats.

Poinsettia shopping happened at Gertens this year; YA has decided she really likes Gertens.  As we were walking through the greenhouse, we came upon some truly hideous specimens.  Purples, pinks, turquoise, blue.  And glitter.  Ick.  YA knows I don’t like these so she has to tease me.  This year she suggested we get one of each color to “celebrate the rainbow”.  I’d have to be sedated every time I came into the room!

Poinsettias?  Yes or no?  Red?  White?  Pink?  Colors of the rainbow?  Glitter (I promise I won’t judge)?

2024, Family, holidays, Technology

Gifting

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I can’t remember the last time I set out of the house to go shopping for Christmas presents for our family and loved ones. I spent much of my morning yesterday scrolling through the Amazon lists and other lists of things our son, daughter, and daughter in law wanted and conveniently sent to us. A few clicks, and their gifts were on the way. Later this week I will fill the treat boxes for our far flung friends and family and get them to UPS to deliver.

Husband and I told the kids we didn’t want any presents this year as we don’t want more possessions that we will have to move. I don’t think either of them listened to us, and we will get books at a minimum. I also told daughter that bubble bath and toiletries were good options for me if she really wanted to get me something.

Right now I don’t have the time or the energy to go physically from store to store in a mall or in a big box store shopping for people. Is that a sad commentary on our current state of affairs, or something to rejoice over? I am not sure.

How does your family gift one another? What are you hoping for this Christmas?

2024, Family, holidays, home, Uncategorized

I Wouldn’t Have Bet Any Money

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Sometimes I surprise even myself.  I would have thought that I would go to my grave as a “real” tree person.  There have been real Christmas trees every year of my life, even the two years living in a teeny apartment (we had a very small table top tree that we placed on the piano).  For many years, including up until YA was in high school, the tree was chopped down at one of the many tree farms around the Twin Cities then dragged back to the house atop the car.  One year I borrowed a friends pick-up truck; that made it easy – just tossed the tree into the bed of the truck and off we went.  Once YA didn’t want to make a day-long ordeal of getting a tree, we moved to the two-minute-drive-to-Bachmans selection process.

YA has been talking about an artificial tree for a couple of years now.  She doesn’t like getting sap on her hands and she really doesn’t like the needles on the floor.  Since we usually have the tree up from the day after Thanksgiving until New Years, there are always needles.  Every time she mentioned these problems, I completely blew her off.  Until last year.

For many years Bachmans offered a nice discount to fresh trees on Black Friday.  This ended during pandemic, so my wallet had felt that pinch already.  Then last year, when we trundled down to see the trees, the sticker shock just about knocked me off my feet.  And the selection was pretty sparse as well.  It was do bad in fact, that we were actually about to leave to go look for a Boy Scout or Church lot.  We found the white pines outside on the lot – sitting on their own.  I love white pine but YA does not; they are harder to decorate as they are so thick and the branches are not strong.  But the pricing was much better, so we chose one and headed home.

I spent months thinking about YAs arguments in favor of an artificial tree and was finally swayed to “think about it” when she offered to cover at least half of the cost.  I had seen the space allotted to artificial trees at Gertens.  It was huge, so in October, when we saw the first holiday sale, we headed on over.  Honestly I didn’t think this was going to end well.  I figured we wander around for about 20 minutes, have a fight and then go home. 

I’ve always had lights that fade on and off; I was expecting to be sad that I was losing this option with a fake tree.  YA wanted a tree that looked real.  I was worried about the whole “fluffing” thing that I’ve heard people talk about.  YA was worried about plugging everything in.

Then we met Bonnie.  She works the artificial tree lot at Gertens and boy, is she good at her job.  She knew EVERYTHING about all the trees but was very good at parsing out her knowledge as you asked and didn’t overwhelm us.  We learned quite a bit.  First off, many of the trees have rubber tips, so they look quite authentic (just the tips though, the inside branches are paper needles, otherwise the tree would weigh a ton).  Many trees now have power poles; you don’t have to mess with plugs.  You attach each section and the tree figures it out.  AND… although when you look at the trees sitting on display, they all have either white lights or multi-colored lights, it turns out that most trees these days have multiple options.  The tree that we liked has six setting.  None of them are fade on/fade off, but there are three twinkle settings. 

YA wanted one particular tree a lot – enough that she decided she could cover even more than half of the cost.  So despite my expectations that we wouldn’t find anything we both liked, we ended up coming home with my first artificial tree.  It takes about 8 minutes to put up, from start to finish.  I don’t have to put on the lights, we don’t have to water it.  Six settings of lights, as I mentioned.  And I think it’s lovely. 

We had friends over last night to trim the tree and it was easy to decorate and the branches are all strong enough to even the heaviest of our ornaments (a little torito from Peru).  I’m really happy with the new tree.  Guess you can teach old dogs new tricks every now and then.

Have you ever surprised yourself by changing your mind?

2024, Art, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Music

RIP Alice

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When Alice’s Restaurant Massacre by Arlo Guthrie was recorded in 1967, I was 11 years old.  I remember it clearly and saved up to buy the record album pretty quickly.  I couldn’t find any little clips, so this is the whole thing.

I loved folk music – it made me feel quite part of the times.  Not quite rebellious – I didn’t have much to be rebellious about.   My folks were quite liberal for the times; once when I was in junior high they excused me from school so I could protest against the war with the Webster College kids (college was between our house and the junior high).  Although I don’t know if either of them ever listened to Alice’s Restaurant, I’m pretty sure at least my father would have thought it was quite funny.

In looking up the dates I discovered that the song, sometimes referred to as “talking blues” is also known as a “shaggy dog” story.  Wikipedia defines it as “an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax. In other words, it is a long story that is intended to be amusing and that has an intentionally silly or meaningless ending.”  Mark Twain, Gogol and Isaac Asimov were all cited as contributors to this “genre”.  Who knew?

Arlo was adamant that he used the name Alice’s Restaurant because he liked it, not because the restaurant in the song was anything like the actual restaurant, owned by a friend of his, Alice Brock.  

Alice was an artist, a restauranteur and a writer.  She thought the song was funny but did not like the movie.  She felt that she was wildly misrepresented in the movie and was fairly vocal about it, hence Arlos’ comments that it wasn’t HER restaurant in the song.  One of the movie’s producers apparently made it possible for her to publish a cookbook.

As the years went by she came to appreciate how her role in the song and movie had somehow catapulted her into a 60s icon.  Brock even recorded a series of custom introductions to Alice’s Restaurant for stations that regularly play the song on Thanksgiving.  She and Arlo also combined their talents for a children’s book, Mooses Come Walking, and they remained friends until her death.

Alice passed away last Thursday, just a week from Thanksgiving, the holiday that inadvertently shoved her life into fame and recognition.  I will have to play the whole Massacre tomorrow while I’m getting my vegetarian sourdough sage stuffing ready.

Stuffing.  Inside the bird or out?

2024, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Mysteries

In a Tizzy

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I’m having a mental disconnect this week.  It’s like my internal clock knows that Thanksgiving is WAY late this year.  I’m itching to bring out my holiday movies and ask Alexa to play some of my silly holiday tunes.

Normally I do a lot of my holiday stuff early but the Friday after Thanksgiving is my official “get going” day.  That’s when cookies start, that’s when I assemble the cards for mailing and wrap anything that has to get shipped.  This year, because Thanksgiving is so late, I’m doing some of my tasks ahead of time.  Cards are all done and got assembled for mailing last night.  Eggs are all packed into their cartons.  All gifts that have to shipped are wrapped.  Today I will sort out boxes for each address I have to ship to.

Although I know what cookies I’m making this year and have a list of ingredients I need, I haven’t started baking yet.  That just seems sacrosanct before Thanksgiving.  But I will be doing the shopping run for those ingredients today so I’m ready to go early on Friday morning.  My goal this year is to get all the cookies done in 7 days.  Fingers crossed.

But all this normally-after-Thanksgiving frenzy is messing with me.  I’m dreaming about my spreadsheets and what order I should do the cookies.  And I’m spending a lot of time going through things in my head. The dreams aren’t bad by any means, but it is a little weird.  Assuming by next weekend, my disconnect will be re-connected!

Thanksgiving doesn’t engender any of this for me.  We go elsewhere and I only have to do two things which can be done that morning.  YA has one dish to make as well.  So no spreadsheets, no lists and no dreams.  Guess I can be grateful that I only have big prep for one holiday at this time of year!

What holiday prep needs to be done at your place but you’d prefer if brownies came in at night and did it for you?

2024, Art, Family, holidays, Kids, Uncategorized

Bah! Humbug!

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Continuing with a Halloween theme today. I notice that the people around town who are really into Halloween have their yards decorated, their inflatables inflated, and their pumpkins carved. Then there are the houses like ours that sport no pumpkins or decorations of any kind, We typically don’t do much for Halloween. In any event, I will be away in Dallas on the 31st, Husband will be home with the dog, and we have decided that he will close the blinds, leave the lights off, and not hand out any candy. It would be too hard with only one person at home to hand out candy and manage a hysterical terrier whenever someone came to the door. We will be Halloween Scrooges. This weekend I plan to bake frosted pumpkin cookies and brown-butter maple muffins for the children next door. They always come over to trick or treat, and we will give them the goodies on Sunday.

Last weekend we saw the most gruesome, yet remarkable Halloween decoration in the parking lot at the grocery store. A really rugged looking guy drove up in a red pickup with an enormous skeleton taking up the whole bed of the vehicle. The skeleton was seated, and yet its head and shoulders towered at least five feet over the roof of the truck. The feet stuck out over the back gate of the pickup bed, and there were dog skeletons lying across the main figure’s ankles, looking as though they were leaping. A smaller, human skeleton lay draped over the big skeleton’s arms. The whole tableau was held in place by thick orange straps. The guy was driving all around town with this. It could have been a float in a parade, if there was a Halloween parade in town. I would love to know what prompted him to do this.

What sorts of Halloween decorations are you seeing? Do you decorate for Halloween? What kind of tableau would you imagine constructing in the back of a pickup?

2024, Food, holidays, Kids, Seasons, Uncategorized

To Corn or Not to Corn

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It’s another time of year for polarization.  Candy corn or no candy corn!  Hamlet said it best:

To corn, or not to corn, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of autumn candy treasure,

Or to take arms against a sea of sugar

And by opposing end them. To gorge—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand sugar shocks

That taste buds are heir to: ’tis a corn consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d.

I’ve always loved candy corn.  I know that many folks do not – in fact really really do not.  It took me a few years after I became a vegetarian to realize that my fall favorite is not a vegetarian product; the Brachs autumn staple is made with gelatin.  So sadly at about the age of 22 I gave up candy corn.  

About 15 years ago I discovered a few smaller companies who make candy corn (and also the little pumpkins) with no gelatin.  You kinda had to hunt for it.  For the last five years I’ve been able to find it at Hy-Vee but this is dangerous.  I drive all the way to Hy-Vee and then can’t seem to just get the candy and go; I always spend way to much at Hy-Vee.

This year Target is carrying a non-gelatin brand of both the plain candy corn as well as the pumpkin mix.  Woo-hoo.  I got a container of each (and didn’t end up spending a small fortune on other items).

When I got home YA gave me grief about buying candy corn and disparaged candy corn in general.  But I’ve seen her dip her hand into the candy bowl more than once since then.  Guess she’s on team candy corn whether she admits it or not!

Do you have something you just can’t stand? (Besides VS hi-jacking Shakespeare to validate her yearning for candy.)