Ramble On

last minute finished monster for my youngest

Hand Knits ready to wrap

The Christmas spirit has not caught me until late and frankly, I'm a little sad that tomorrow it's all over because I just didn't get into this year. I don't know if it was the weather or what but this year has been very mellow for me and sort of shocking (meaning that I've been shocked on how late in the year it's become).

Lights!

Last night we went to see Christmas lights, something we started to do last year and have decided that this will be our yearly family tradition as we never really started any for ourselves. Tonight the kids and I are going to bake some sugar cookies from my husband's great grandmother's recipe. I think these might become a tradition as well, of course I had to modify the recipe to make it gluten free but it worked out super well. If I get his permission I might post it (of course it is NOT SCD legal). I found that I'm perfectly okay eating some of them (and by some I mean 2). I'm grateful for these small sense of normalcy that I have found this year but I'm still careful to not stray far from the diet.

Teacher's Gifts

Cranberry sauce is one of my favorite things about the holidays. The last couple of years I felt bad for myself as the dish was passed around the table but this year I decided to take matters into my own hands and come up with a recipe so I could eat some too.

I had a couple of requirements:
1) It still had to be a little tart, I wanted it to actually taste like cranberries
2) I had to be able to make it the night before.

A word of caution: this is an advanced SCD recipe. Cranberries have tiny little seeds and skins, if you don't think your gut can handle this please don't try! You could try straining the sauce through a fine mesh strainer but I do not know how that will work out. 



SCD Legal Holiday Cranberry Sauce
serves 12
2 12oz bags of fresh cranberries
2 cups orange juice
1 cup honey
1 tbs cinnamon (optional)
2 tbs orange zest (optional)

Rinse your cranberries and check for any rotten ones or stems or anything that looks like you don't want to eat it.

In a large pot combine everything and bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce to a simmer. Stir occasionally until all the cranberries have burst.

Turn off the heat the sauce will get thick as it cools. Store in the fridge until you're ready to eat it.

That's it.

You can add whatever spices you want, orange zest, cinnamon, ginger to name a few, which is why I listed the cinnamon and orange zest is optional but these things really make it taste special. 

Next week is finals week. My husband works at a university, he's also a grad student. This week he's finishing up all his projects for his masters' classes and next week he has to go into work early every  morning to make sure everything is going to work for the finals (he's in IT, the university does a lot of electronic testing in various labs around campus). It's going to be a stressful week!

I promise 100x over that I will have the cranberry sauce recipe uploaded as soon as I can get the card reader away from my husband (will probably be tomorrow or Sunday) he's taking the kids down to a Christmas party and I'm going to start wrapping gifts, I'm going to have to take breaks so I'm planning on typing and formating during my "down time".

I also wanted to mention that my pattern for the Lil' Hoot bag is now available on ravelry for download (it's free)!