Wintry weather

Hot organic chamomile tea from Trader Joe's in the thermos we got from IKEA...very nice when you're sitting in cold snow!

We went across the street from our house and built snowforts!  A beautiful sunny (but very cold wintry) day.

 

 Down the street from us...I like how these people stacked up the ice.  It wasn't a normal snow, more like tiny bits of hail...and ice in the end!

My mom on her 69th birthday yesterday, a wonderful day...started it off with going to Liturgy for St. Xenia of St. Petersburg.  After, a potluck lunch and homemade carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, my sister made lemon bars, and an apple cake that a woman from church made and chocolate chunks, but most of all being with those we ♥ love...

Preparing for the feast...

Tonight we will go to church and again tomorrow morning to celebrate Christ's Nativity, the incarnation of God, out of His love for mankind!  ♥

We have been preparing by reading spiritually uplifting literature, fasting, confessing our sins and will partake of Holy Communion on the feast.  Our girls have requested homemade macaroni and cheese (they've missed that MORE than meats) and so I will bring that to church and will share that with everyone in a potluck celebration after the church service:

Homemade macaroni and cheese (from my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, with a few of my own changes, like adding nutmeg & using cheddar cheese, I doubled this recipe)

• 8  ounces  dried elbow macaroni or desired-shape pasta (2 cups)
• 2  tablespoons  butter 
• 1/4 cup chopped onion 
• 2  tablespoons  all-purpose flour
• 1/8  teaspoon  ground black pepper
• a dash of nutmeg 
• 1 1/2 whole cups  milk
• 12  ounce package cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions

 

Cook macaroni according to package directions; drain. Meanwhile, for cheese sauce, in a large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat and add onions. Stir in flour and pepper. Add milk all at once. Cook and stir until slightly thickened and bubbly. Add cheese, stirring until melted. Stir macaroni into cheese sauce in saucepan, stirring to coat. Cook over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes or until heated through, stirring frequently.  Makes 4 servings.

*I've done the above and will bake it at church:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake, uncovered, for 25 to 30 minutes or until bubbly and heated through.

Some wine, ingredients for a delicious salad with feta and macaroni...

My sister and her husband and 1 year old daughter (and his younger brother and their mother) in their beautiful church in Ottawa, Canada on Nativity.

My dad with almost all of his granddaughters. 

Juliana got a china doll for Christmas!  And new socks.  Olivia picked those out for her.

 And Olivia dancing with Natasha in my parents home after the Nativity Liturgy...

Sledding

We got more snow this week!  That's our car covered in it...

There is Olivia in the midst of shoveling Peepaw and Grammie's driveway.

Afterwards, we went to pick a friend up and go sledding...

We packed 2 stainless steel flasks with hot chamomile lavender tea...and some dark chocolate from Trader Joe's for a mid-sledding snack.

I blanched my own almonds (4 cups of them, I got a 16 oz. bag of them at Trader Joe's for $4.99), by letting them sit in a bowl of boiling water for a minute and then pouring the water out and removing the skins.  It took me a full hour!

My old Hamilton Beach food processor (which was given to us USED by an elderly man from church, after his wife passed away), which was probably 15-20 years old, stopped working a couple of months ago.  Finally, this past Saturday, we got a NEW Hamilton Beach one for $49.99 at Target...it shreds, slices and purees.  I use it to shred cheese & carrots often and also want to use it like a blender to make smoothies. 

The snowballs were good, but still too wet and squishy, didn't set up nicely.  I just used vanilla extract instead of amaretto, maybe that's why they didn't seem great.

I made a second batch and used "Just Cashew Meal" ($5.99/16 oz. bag of simply ground raw cashews) from Trader Joe's in place of the coconut in this recipe (I like that it called for maple syrup instead of icing, and I think the coconut oil helped it firm up a bit better)...I rolled those in confectioner's sugar, instead of shredded coconut so they looked the same. 
 
Cute new flannel bedsheets with Russian matroshka dolls on them, from Target!

Super scrumptious pumpkin stuff...

Last week we went to a farm near us to pick some pumpkins...we bake them to make pumpkin pie and bread. 

This Pumpkin Spice Rooibus tea (no caffeine) is really good, just $3.99 for a pretty tin.  I like it best with a bit of honey and cream.  And we made cookies and spread Nutella in the middle to eat with the tea.

Trader Joe's has so many good pumpkin treats. 

 And for some homemade goodies:

My sister made these pumpkin pie cupcakes 2 weeks ago.  We ate them with whipped cream on top.  They are SO good.   Here's the recipe from the blog (link above, with my notes in parenthesis):

1 15 oz can pumpkin puree (use 1 cup freshly baked pumpkin flesh, pureed)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup evaporated milk
2/3 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (instead, use 1/2 teaspoon each, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 cup muffin tin with silicone liners, foil liners sprayed with cooking spray or just spray the cups with cooking spray.  Either of these three methods will make it easy to take the cupcake out after it’s cooked. Paper liners make it difficult to remove the cupcakes.
Mix the pumpkin, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and milk.  Add the flour, pumpkin spice, salt, baking powder and baking soda to the mixture. Fill each muffin cup with 1/3 cup of the mixture. Bake for twenty minutes and let cool for twenty minutes.  Remove cupcakes from pan and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Top with whipped cream and sprinkle more pumpkin pie spice on top and serve. ♥ Makes 12 cupcakes.

Baked acorn squash with chopped apples

It's almost fall...the autumnal equinox is Sept. 22nd, just a few days away.  The weather has turned cooler and I'm ready for homemade bread, warm soup and baked squash.

We harvested just 4 acorn squash from our backyard.  I cut 2 in half and scooped out the seeds, filled them up with chopped apples, butter, brown sugar, all spice and cinnamon and baked them.  Mmmm!  I used this recipe as inspiration:  http://www.simplybloomblog.com/2011/10/baked-acorn-squash-with-cinnamon-apples.html
We still have quite a few apples...so juiced 8 of them (about 2 apples yields a cup of cider) for lunch yesterday.  Olivia doesn't like the froth on top, so I spooned it off and ate it.  To complete the meal, we had chicken and carrot salad.

 

 

Yesterday, we did a fun activity inspired by this culinary lesson, since my printer is out of ink, we used the paper bags from Trader Joe's to get "silverware" and make a placemat of proper setting...

 This morning I'm making prosphora as the girls work on their homeschooling lessons independently. It's the first time I've made prosphora in 3-4 months!  As I knead, I'm thinking of the little girl, Salome, who died last February, her parents left us flour.  I'm using that to make prosphora for our church.  I pray that her family, who is now back in Ukraine, is doing well.  ♥  

For lunch today, I am going to make borscht...a soup made with beets and cabbage.

Yarn along: primary colours

I just finished Chapter 2 (and I ♥ it already) of We The Living by Ayn Rand.  So far, Kira and her parents and sister have returned to Russia, after being away for 5 years.  Her father's textile factory was "nationalized."  I see bits and pieces of Orthodoxy, Kira's sister Lydia wants to go to church and she and her mother cross themselves.  This is the first novel she had published (1936).  I've read several of her other books (Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged), which were published later.
I'm trying to use up the yarn I have by crocheting little critters.  To see more of what people are doing with their yarn, check out this week's "Yarn along."
We're still getting tomatoes from the backyard.  Beets and carrots, too, but as you can see, the chickens like to eat the greens!

Hannah and Olivia are wearing the aprons my parents got for them while in the Ukraine 7 years ago.  I'm so glad they go to go there and also to Russia, before my Dad's Parkinson's disease got worse!  And on Monday, Labor Day, we had a cookout...Aaron, the girl's cousin really liked the mini-vanilla cones from Trader Joe's. 

Tea on Myrrhbearer Sunday...

These are some of the macarons we made...they were scrumptious, but didn't have a "foot" and I'm sure it's because we overbeat them, after reading this:  http://kitchenmusings.com/macaron-faqs/

Sunday afternoon, we had a little tea party.  It was Myrrhbearer Sunday, the day we celebrate those who came to Christ's tomb to anoint his body with myrrh and found that he was gone...and risen!!!  Christ is Risen!  ♥  It was my namesday, as I'm was named after St. Martha and my sister is named after St. Mary, the sisters of Lazarus.  My sister, Susanna, is also named after a myrrhbearer (she would've been Lazarus, if she were a boy) and my littlest sister, Andrea is named after Bishop Andrei Rymarenko of Novo Diveevo, NY, (my parents were very close to him and he passed away in 1978),  her patron saint is St. Andrew the Apostle. 

I got a new teapot for $11.99 with an infuser basket, because I've been making loose leaf tea.  This Rose Petal black tea from the Republic of Tea (given to me as a gift from a friend), with some honey and a little milk, is my favorite!

Our homemade poutine (a French Canadian speciality), turned out well.  I used frozen french fries from Trader Joe's.  The cheese curds I got at Country Fresh Market, on Vine St.  $3.89 for an 8 oz. package and I made the gravy, as this recipe says... 

We had hamburgers with it...they were still on the grill, but we had to dig in...

Hannah climbed our fence to reach over and pluck a few roses from the neighbors wild rose bush...there are SO many, I'm sure they won't mind.  They smell wonderfully!