Images From Christmas In Lambersart

Orange and Gold

Cecile's Truly Amazing Truffles

Food and Wine and Dinner Conversations

Classic Sculpture with Contemporary Folk Art

Les Deux Santas Have Hung Up Their Hats For Another Year

Jamieson and Smith Arrives in France

Oh, I know - there are retailers back home in North America who sell Jamieson and Smith yarn. But none are close to Nova Scotia and it was a treat to order the 2 ply jumper weight yarn from the main Shetland Island and have it delivered to the door here in France. Knowing how bad the weather has been in Britain over the holidays, I wouldn't have been surprised if this yarn, shorn from Shetland sheep off the north coast of Scotland, didn't arrive before we are due to leave. But the mailman rang the doorbell this morning and cheerfully handed over the package. Since we are abysmal at languages, neither side in the exchange on the doorstep really knew what the other one was saying but there was much good will between parties!

I am planning to use the yarn to make mittens with Wenche Roald's lovely Winterland/Vinterland pattern.

Christmas Eve in France

It is true what they say about the French. The quality of life does seem to be enhanced by their overall approach to eating. They serve more courses with a wider selection of food in each course and they linger at the table for a long time. They understand and appreciate tradition and the pairings of food and drink.

The amount of food on the table Christmas Eve was astounding to these two Canadians - fresh oysters, foie gras, Thiery's mother's pate, cheese, appetizers with fish roe and spreads, Adam's wine and champagne, Isa's blinis with smoked salmon, bouchées à la reine, chocolate fondue, Sophie's bûche, marzipan stuffed dates - Mon Dieu!

Snowy France

The French countryside from the train window

France does not get a lot of snow but this year, Europe is experiencing an early, cold, and snowy winter. Usually, we have a good chance of a white Christmas in Halifax and the French do not anticipate any color other than green. But we may well have a very white Christmas Day here.

Yesterday, everyone was busy decorating the house. Isa and Movita would make the most dynamic design team. Too bad they are on different continents at this time of year.

Such A Long Journey

Alas, this is not the view from the top of the ferris wheel in Lille or a photo from a walk along the canal in Lambersart. It is a picture taken from a window at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near the Toronto airport!

After waiting two hours for our flight from Halifax to Toronto, Air Canada announced that our plane had mechanical difficulties and we had to wait for another one to come from Toronto to pick us up. In the meantime, our flight to Paris departed from Toronto without us! And they only fly overseas once a day, four days a week. When we finally arrived in Toronto, the ramp didn't connect to the door of the airplane and we had to wait for a technician. They gave us a hotel voucher for the night, small meal vouchers, and sent our luggage down the wrong carousal so everyone waited eons in the wrong place before one of the passengers figured out the problem and alerted everyone else!  Finally laid my head on a hotel pillow at 2 a.m.

Today will be another long day as we have to check out of the hotel by early afternoon but the flight doesn't leave (if it leaves!!!) until 8 p.m.

On a positive note, if you are a knitter, you at least have something constructive and enjoyable to do during the long waits. We spent so much time at the Halifax airport that I made a good start on a sock!

Pattern: Show-Off Stranded Socks

Designer: Anne Campbell

Yarn: Enchanted Knoll Farm Superwash Sock Yarn

Color: Cornucopia

Needles: Circular, 2.25

Joyeux Noel

Today we are starting on a long journey to spend Christmas in France. We leave this afternoon, fly to Toronto with a two hour stopover there, then fly overseas to Paris. After the overnight flight, we'll take a train to Lille.
The old city of Lille is magical at this time of year with Christmas markets in the city squares, a huge ferris wheel that reaches high enough into the sky to reveal magnificent views of the ancient city, colorful, musical, horse-laden carousels for the children, and chocolatiers' windows filled with the most amazing holiday creations - from chocolate Santas and Nativity scenes to other exquisite candy creations.

Cabled Rangoli Hat

Pattern: Cabled Rangoli Hat
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca
Color: 6285
Needles: Circular; 3.75 mm for ribbing and 4.0 mm for main part of hat

I've had a skein of dark teal alpaca/wool yarn waiting for just the right project and recently, I came upon Desi Knitter's cabled rangoli hat pattern. I am always impressed with the generosity of clever knitters who, after working hard at designing and charting instructions, share their patterns freely with the rest of the knitting community.

For Brenda - The Pound Cake Recipe

Our family altered the original recipe slightly. Here is how we make Pound Cake:

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
Prepare two loaf pans by cutting two layers of brown paper for each pan. Grease the paper well and line the pans, bottoms and sides. Cut one layer of brown paper, greased, or parchment paper (not greased) to form a tent-like topper for each pan. Have twine cut and ready to tie and hold the top paper in place.

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar
1 pound butter
10 large eggs (Separate. Beat yolks in one bowl and, in another bowl, beat whites till high, holding their shape, but not dry)
3 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup brandy
1 tsp mace
1 tsp vanilla

We beat the butter first to cream it slightly, then add the sugar slowly and cream both together well.
Add the vanilla, brandy, and beaten egg yolks. Cream further till well blended.
Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and mace together. Add to creamed mixture and beat only till smooth.
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites till the white disappears and the mixture is (again, gently) well blended.
Divide the batter between the two loaf pans. Smooth the tops evenly. Cover with greased brown paper or parchment paper. Tie in place. Place in oven and bake for two hours. For the last ten minutes or so, remove the top paper to allow the cake to brown slightly.
Lift cakes by paper lining out of the pans onto a rack to cool. After five minutes or so, carefully remove the brown paper from around the cakes. Leave on rack till completely cooled.
Wrap each loaf in wax paper, then tinfoil. Place in plastic bags and store in the back of the refrigerator for weeks on end or as long as you can bear before eating!
The cake is rich and dense but moist and absolutely delicious.

Best wishes from our house to yours.

In Which Movita and Derek Bring A Wreath

Movita makes beautiful things. She has a wonderful eye for color and design. She and Derek have been turning an already pretty house into a sweet, sweet home. For the Second Sunday of Advent dinner, they brought one of Movita's white felt wreaths. There were so many places in this house where it could have been hung but Derek and I thought the hallway mirror was the perfect location.

Second Sunday of Advent Dinner

Menu:

Prime Rib Roast

Yorkshire Pudding

Mushroom Gravy

 Dressing Balls

Brocolli

Carrots

Roasted Beets

Multigrain Loaf

Pound Cake

Yule Log

Making Pound Cake: Or How My Mother Fibbed To Me

I still make pound cake in the same way my mother and her family prepared it. The requisite pound of eggs, pound of butter, pound of sugar, pound of flour, etc. put quite a dent in their modest household budgets so the cake was made in the late fall, carefully wrapped and stored, and only enjoyed over the Christmas season. And even though our standard of living is much higher than theirs, I still only make it at Christmas - both to honour them and to ensure that it is something that remains a special treat. It is so much richer and better than its store-bought counterpart.  

My recipe comes from my mother's old Dutch Oven cookbook from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. You can tell that the book has been well used over the years.

The first year I enthusiastically made the cake, I was a tad disappointed. It was good but not as rich and flavourful as I remembered. When I mentioned this to my mother, she hesitated for a moment, and pointed out that although the recipe book calls for lemon juice and lemon rind for flavouring, she, in fact, used mace, vanilla and a jigger of brandy. So the following year, I altered the flavourings. Good but... I went back to her, expressing my view that it still wasn't quite up to snuff. Well, turns out that jigger of brandy was more in the region of, say, a CUP of brandy. Now, we're talking! The baked cake does not taste or smell of  brandy. But that amount of brandy binds with all the other rich ingredients to make a dense, but moist, and oh-so-wonderful taste that can't be duplicated in any other way. Secret revealed.

Although our baking pans are of a much higher quality than were available to those women in the old days, I still prepare them in the same way  with a couple of layers of brown paper, greased and cut to fit the pan.

The egg whites are whipped and added to the batter when all the other ingredients have been well incorporated. My mother used a Sunbeam Mixmaster to do this. She used it so much and for so many years that, growing up, we referred to all electric mixers as "mixmasters". I prefer my KitchenAid even more. Women in the neighbourhood who could not afford to have a mixer used their upper body strength to mix the heavy batters of pound and Christmas fruit cakes. Family members would sometimes be called upon to relieve them and take turns at hand mixing.

The batter is poured into the pans, levelled, and covered with a tent of either parchment paper or a sheet of greased brown paper and goes into a 300 degree F. oven for two hours. The loaves are wrapped and stored but not before an end of one loaf is cut off for sampling! After all, the baker has to be sure it is good enough for her guests!



'Tis The Season

 

Japanese Yarn For Canadian Winters

Pattern: Ann Budd's Basic Mitten Pattern

Source: The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns

Size: Ladies Medium

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Lite

Color: 2026

Needles: dpn's - 2.75 mm

It seems to me that knitters have strong love/hate relationships with many of the Noro yarns, manufactured in Japan. Everyone loves the colors. The yarns come in such a wide variety of shades that gently blend, one into the other. And when Brooklyn Tweed made his Noro Striped Scarf by alternating different color skeins and really showing off the fiber to its best advantage, the company must have sold miles and miles of the stuff! 

But there are also many complaints that the yarn is too rustic, comes with too many knots and debris, breaks easily while knitting, etc. I wanted to experience it for myself and purchased enough to make a scarf but after trying a variety of patterns, I decided that this particular color really wanted to be made into mittens. I made no attempt to unwind the second ball to find a starting point so that the color sequence in both mittens was the same. I just let it do its thing. I did come upon one knot in the two balls so it was not troublesome in that regard and it is a blend of 45% silk, 45% mohair, and 10% lambswool so there should be a good degree of warmth and insulation for cold weather.

Christmas Trees

Mittens for Kittens

Remember the three little kittens who lost their mittens and they began to cry?
It never hurts to have back ups...

Pattern: NHM #5

Source: Selbuvotter - Biography of a Knitting Tradition by Terri Shea

Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport

Needles: dpn's - 2.75 mm

Last winter, I did a few pairs of mittens from Charlene Schurch's Mostly Mittens book. Her mitten and sock books are, to me, invaluable additions to any knitter's library. Her basic instructions for garment construction are excellent so by the time I opened Terri Shea's Selbu book (also excellent in all respects), I was able to simply pick up the needles and follow the graphs with ease.

Wrapping Things Up

I always try to hand-decorate the wrapping paper when we are giving gifts. It is a chance to be creative, have fun, and produce something different in this age of mass produced everything.
The basic supplies are plain brown paper, ribbon, tape, stencils and stencil paint, rubber and foam stamps, colored ink pads, and a small foam brush or two.
I have made many tags over the years by using free Christmas graphics found on various internet websites and editing them to include names, messages, etc. I save the tags to disc for future use.

Selbu Knitting

I was besotted with lace knitting all through the spring, summer and fall. But the winter weather is upon us (the wind chill readings today hovered around -10 degrees Celsius!) and I have the urge to return to stranded  knitting. There is something especially comforting about using the same patterns and designs to produce warm clothing that women around the world have been knitting for well over a hundred years.

Pattern: NHM#5
Source: Selbuvotter - Biography of a Knitting Tradition by Terri Shea
Yarn: Brown Sheep Company Nature Spun Sport
Needles: dpn's -  2.75 mm

Chambray Blue

Pattern: Montego Bay Scarf

Yarn: Madelinetosh Merino Light

Color: Chambray

Needles: Circular, 4.0 mm

This is the first time I have used any of the Madelinetosh yarns. They get high ratings among Ravelry members, not only because of the quality of the yarn base, but because her colors are so lovely. This fingering weight Merino Light is a beautiful shade of blue. The yarn was good to work with and incredibly soft.

Steamed Cranberry Pudding

There is, I think, nothing more comforting at the end of a meal than a pudding - especially on cold winter days.

Movita was looking for a variety of recipes the other day and it reminded me that mid autumn is when fresh Canadian cranberries appear on store shelves. And it's the time to make steamed cranberry pudding.
Cranberry pudding is dark, tart, and served with a light, creamy hot caramel sauce that offsets the tartness of the berries.
Until now, I've always used a greased and floured crock bowl, with a top made of greased brown paper tied in place with twine. Last Christmas, we chanced upon a real pudding mould and I am using it for the first time today.

The only downside to the mould is that it is quite high and I can only just get the cover of the stock pot closed in order to do the steaming. One of the best features is the tight fitting lid, with a ring in the centre that allows me to safely lift the mould in and out of the pot of hot water.

And three hours of steaming later:

Here's a wonderful website that covers the history of puddings - from rice, tapioca, and bread puddings to Spotted Dog, Roly Poly, custard, and that most British of desserts - Christmas or Plum Pudding.

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpuddings.html

Send An Ark

In the last five days, it has rained, poured, showered, drizzled, and dripped. And the winds, by times, have howled. We've received 172 mm of rain. By times, part of the garden off the back steps looks like a duck pond. Thankfully, after each deluge, the earth absorbs the water and it returns to being a woodland pathway again.

Could be worse. In Yarmouth County, where my brother has a second home, they have received 223 mm of rain. Bridges and roads have been washed away.

And speaking of doggedly determined old men, I hope he has the sense to stay out of the woods in all this wet weather. We seem to be genetically drawn to the forest - he goes in during hunting season to shoot deer while I simply walk and harbour homicidal ideations because they munch on my gardens - so I understand his yearning to be in the middle of it but, since he is in recovery mode, I hope he will at least wait until it dries out again. But, alas, in this situation, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride...

The Great Pumpkin Carve Off

From Team A:

The Wolf Pumpkin

And from Team B:

Evil Pumpkin Who Eats Pumpkin Babies

My Brother's Socks

Pattern: K2P2 ribbing and K7P1 leg

Yarn: Zitron Trekking Tweed

Color: Cadet Blue (260)

Needles: Circular, 2.25 mm