Christmas has crept over....

This weekend we bought our Christmas tree, I had planned on getting it from Costco, as the prices were stellar so that excited me.... However they were al wrapped up, and the workers didn't want us to unwrap them, so basically they wanted people to buy them without seeing what your getting... Not happening.... So we went back to the tree lot we have been going to since we spent our first Christmas in our house. If the tree falls this year (it fell last year), then I am done with real trees. I love the way they look, smell etc, but I can't have a tree fall again or I will need to be medicated. Last year our Angel tree topper bit the dust from the fall, so I stuck a punch of picks up there and I really do like the look...We didn't lose to many ornaments from the fall thank goodness...Our ornaments are just a collection of ones that my parents collected for me when I was little, and that I later got into collecting myself after my dad bought me a tree for my room when I was 13. My husband also had a collection that his grandparents bought for him every year. I look forward to seeing all of the ornaments each year.
As you can also see, I learned how to make collages with pictures, so beware in advance I will probably use this method for a while.... It's a time saver... I made them with Picasa 3.

Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving was a busy day around our household. I ran a 5k with a friend that morning, then I ate at my parents house, and then later the inlaws. The girls enjoyed seeing the family and spending the day with all of their cousins. I can't believe that Christmas is right around the corner!

The obsession continues...

I have been having way to much enjoyment looking over another Junior League Cookbook. I took a break from making sweets, to try another goodie. This book is called Southern Sideboards. It's a JL book from Jackson, Mississippi. My mom gave this book to my Grandma Christmas of 1982, and when my Grandparents moved to a Senior Community, the book was given back to my mom. I am not sure what items my Grandma cooked from here, but Grandma Campbell was an excellent cook, and I can tell this book was used quite a bit....

I decieded to make Hot and Spicy Meat balls from it today.

Here's what you need to do:

Sauce: 3/4 cup of ketchup, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1 tablespoon minced onion, 2 teaspoons worcestire sauce, 1 1/2 teaspooon salt, 1 teaspoon dry mustard, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 3 drops of tabasco sauce, few grains of cayenne pepper. (I just shook a little in)

Meatballs: 1 lb of ground beef, 3/4 cup of bread crumbs, 3/4 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of Accent (I don't know what it is, so I am just going to use more salt), 1 1/2 tablespoon minced onion, 1/2 teaspoon of horseradish (didn't have this so I used garlic), 3 drops of Tabasco Sauce, 2 eggs beaten

Mix sauce ingrediants in a bowl and set aside. Mix meatball ingrediants and form balls. Brown your meatballs in a stove top, then put in stove pan and pour sauce on top and bake in oven until done. (20 minutes or so) Stir them around some. Honestly, this last part I made up, as the book calls for you to cook them in a chaffing dish, and I didn't even know what that was... However, they were delish. They were a little spicy, but nothing crazy. My little ones ate them without batting an eyelash.

Shopping and Baking Adventures....

It's been a shopping/baking day.... I got up at o'dark thirty and picked up my niece and went out shopping for Black Friday... we went to two Targets, the mall, and a few random stores. I picked up a few things for the kiddos, and another present for someone else. It wasn't too bad, and the deals really do make it worth it. I don't have much shopping left to do for Christmas which is nice. Of course, the people I have left are always the hardest ones... I had a friend go to Walmart today, and she posted on facebook that a mini riot broke out and she almost got hit on the head with a raw egg.... I go to Walmart maybe 5 times a year, but I always make sure I never go on Black Friday....

I have been busy baking today since I got home. Nothing crazy, I just made a batch of the standard chocolate chip cookies. Those are another item that I like to make fresh, not from store bought cookie dough. Chocolate chip cookies were pretty much the first thing I ever learned to cook/bake waaaayyy back when. I mean if you buy it from the store how are you going to lick the beaters??? I also made a batch of Molasses Ginger Cookies. These are something I have never made before. I asked my mom the other day for some of her cookie reciepes. She still does quite a bit of baking during the holidays, but when I was a child my mom would have just about every cookie you could imagine. I remember the night before Christmas the dining room would just be covered in pretty platters with cookies all over them. I would go around the table picking out cookies for "Santa" and fix a Pepsi for him too, my parents would tell me that Santa plenty of milk elsewhere, and that he need the Pepsi to give him some energy....Maybe I will try that trick with my kids....

Anyways, I am after her cookie receipes to recreate some memories, and to also test out things for the cookie exchange I am going to. She told me that she actually got a lot of them from her Junior League cookbooks. She's let me borrow some of the ones I don't have. The molasses one I made today is repeated in the most recent one, called "My Mamma Made That." Very appropriate....

If you would like to give them a whirl here it is:

4 cups all purpse four, 4 teaspoons baking soda, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ginger, 1 teaspoon ground cloves, 3 sticks of butter (yikes!), 1/2 cup molasses, 2 cups sugar, 2 eggs, sugar for rolling.

Sift the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves together. Beat the butter, molasses, sugar, and eggs in a mixing bowl until smooth. Add the four mixtute gradually, beating constantly. Chill the dough for several hours.

Preheat the oven to 350. Shape the dough into small balls and roll in sugar. Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 min untill firm and brown. Remove to wire rack to cool. This makes 3-4 dozen.

Thanksgiving yummyness...

I have been busy this afternoon making two pumpkin rolls. I made my first on Halloween, and It was pretty good. I made these the same way, and it's a receipe from the same cookbook I posted about below, called Very Virginia.

Spiced Pumpkin Roll

Cake: 3 large eggs beaten, 1 cup of sugar, 2/3 cup cooked pumpkin, 1 teaspoon salt, 3/4 cup self rising flour, 2 tablespoons cinnamon, 1 tablespoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, Confectioners sugar

Filling: 1 package cream cheese, 1 cup of confectioners sugar, 4 tablespoons of butter

Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl combine eggs, sugar, and pumpkin. Set aside. In your mixing bowl combine the salt and next 4 ingredients. Add the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixure and mix well. Pour the batter into a well greased 15x10x1 inch baking pan and bake for for 15 minutes. Take out and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Coat a towel with the powdered sugar, and then invert the cake into the towl. Sprinkle a little more powder sugar on top, and then starting on the narron side roll the cake/towel up jelly roll fashion and secure with a string, or be crazy like me and use a hair ribbon to tie this up. Set in your fridge for three hours. While your waiting on that, make the filling. Combine the filling ingredients until smooth and then let then chill as well. When the chilling time is up unroll your cake, and then gently smooth the filling on the cake. Rerolland place seam side down on a serving platter.

Ok, so I am not a baker but I can handle this.... kinda time consuming but it's worth it....

My love for TJmaxx just grows and grows...

My mom and I ventured off to TJMAXX in Virginia Beach this morning, and threw down in there. This TJMaxx is about an hour away from where we live, BUT it is always worth the trip. I love Tjmaxx, but this one is a Tjmaxx/Homegoods, and it's about the size of probably three Tjmaxx's put together. All of the sections are huge, and they always have such awesome brand names. On this shopping trip I hit the jackpot for my youngest. We have been clueless what to get her for her big gift...I had wanted to get another battery powered car since the jeep that they have only hold 2 kiddos, so one of them is always sitting around looking sad. But I wasn't keen on spending a lot either. I had given up hope and was just going to can the idea. But crazy enough they had one in there... it's a pink Hummer lol, and it was super cheap....I checked to see how much it retails for elsewhere, and let's just say the price at Tj's was much less then half of the retail... They only had one, so I scooped it up immediatly. Merry Christmas Emily!

Another great deal I found were the above pictured Christmas plates. These two were priced at $3.99. I plan on making some cookies to put on the plate and then wrapping them up in cellophane with a bow, and they will either be teacher gifts or a hostess gift of some sort. Easy peasy. I bought a large Santa plate for myself to use to put food on at the house for a dollar more. These plates reminded me a lot of the kind I see at craft shows during the holidays that usually cost a lot more.

They aisles of the cuttest ornaments, wreaths, and other Christmas decorations... I easily could have gone crazy, but with my big ole' pink Hummer teetering over my shopping cart I had an easy reminder that I was going to purchase enough...

So Tjmaxx helped me make a huge dent in my Christmas shopping today, and I look forward to another trip back there soon!

Snappy Mustard Dip

Tonight we are going to dinner at a friends house, and I didn't have much notice to make something, but I didn't want to show up empy handed. So I tried out a receipe from one my league's cook books- "Very Virginia" called Snappy Mustard dip.

This is very easy, and is pretty good to munch on with some pretzels.

To make you will need
1/4 dry mustard, 2 tbl spoons of white vinegar, 1 tbl spoon of water, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1 egg yolk, and 1 brick of cream cheese.

combine the mustard, vinegar, and water in a saucepan, then add the sugar and egg yolk and stire over medium heat for about 5 minutes so it thickens. Let this cool, when cooled combine the mustard mixture, and your cream cheese and beat this until smooth. Chill until you serve, with pretzels.