Christmas for Squirrels

Christmas morning entertainment in New Hampshire. These photos are not very good but I could not resist posting this cute little guy eating corn off the cob. 

Persimmon Pudding

Around the holidays my grandmother used to always make persimmon pudding. As a child I never really appreciated it. Recently I have been feeling very sentimental about it and wanted to try to make it myself. As it turns out she took the recipe from the Joy of Cooking and it is really easy.  I made a few adjustments based on what I had on hand.

Ingredients:

2 overly ripe persimmons (Diospyros Virginiana variety) 

1 egg

generous 1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

4 Tablespoons melted salted butter

1 cup whole milk

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 325

Press the persimmon pulp through a strainer then add all your other ingredients to that and mix until well combined. Grease a baking dish, or in my case I used muffin tins, and pour batter in to bake until firm, about 45 minutes in the muffin tins. Serve with fresh whipped cream. 

This lovely desert is also reminiscent of an English pudding which as a child I did not appreciate as I do now that I have spent time in England. 

I ended up freezing most of these little pudding to enjoy later. They'll be easy to heat up as a quick desert. 

Knitter Christmas Ornaments

I've tried knitting a few times in my life. The first time my grandmother taught me. I took it up again for a bit in college. I've never made more than a scarf although I often think of taking it up again… An easier task however was making this little ornament.

Here's what I used:
styrofoam ball
wooden dowels
yarn
pin
paint

Here's what I did:
Prepared the dowels - cut them, whittled points, painted them and waited for them to dry
Put the dowels through the styrofoam ball
Tie a loop by one end of the yarn, use a pin to secure the knot to the styrofoam, wrap in yarn
and that's it!

Don't want to do it yourself? You can find it in my etsy shop for the holidays.

Green Smoothie Breakfast

My latest breakfast obsession is this green smoothie I heard about from my sister that she had found here.

It's quick and easy in the morning just put the following in a blender or use an emersion blender:

spinach
strawberries (fresh or frozen)
banana
peanut butter
coconut water

blend until smooth and enjoy!

Ramen Revisited

Ramen has been a staple in my diet and different points in my life, unfortunately not a beautiful freshly made ramen but the cheap Maruchan ramen from the grocery store. I even have some in my pantry now so I decided to try to dress it up a little

Instead of using the seasoning package I made a little sauce in a pot on the stove over low heat I combined
garlic
fresh ginger
coconut oil
sesame oil
peanut butter
sriracha
soy sauce
rice vinegar
juice from half a lime

while that was warming, whisking it together periodically
I started the water to cook the ramen and washed and cut up vegetables
broccoli
red pepper
poblano pepper
carrot
mushrooms
radish

I also heated up coconut oil and cubed firm tofu and sautéed that in the oil until golden brown
I cooked the noodles and when they were about cooked I added the vegetables so they would soften slightly but I didn't want them to stay crisp.

Then I removed the ramen and vegetables and tossed with the sauce and garnished with bean sprouts,
scallions and the tofu.

Snow Globes

Last year I stopped in at an Anthropologie around the holidays and saw that they were selling 'dry' snow globes, mason jars and salt shakers with little winter scenes and glitter for snow and I thought, I could do that! So this year I decided to attempt it. 

I gathered up the following

some old jars - from salsa, peanut butter, whatever I had around

the tops of some bottles I cut

glitter - white and silver

small trees

little animals

small sled

small ornaments to use in the tops of cut bottles and to hold tree in salt shaker

styrofoam balls 

glue gun

mat board to be the bottom on cut bottles 

spray paint

first I spray painted the jar lids to cover up the branding on them, these will become the bottom of the snow globe that the winter scene will be attached to

I cut mat board to be the bottom of the cut bottles

then I laid out all the bottles and their bottoms and put together scenes for each of them

once the scenes were assembled I used the glue gun to secure them 

for the jars I added glitter and then screwed the bottoms on

for the cut bottles I used the glue gun to attach the mat board to the bottom then poured the glitter in through the hole on the top then glued an ornament in place on top to hold the glitter in

For this simple one I used a cut styrofoam  ball and two penguins

For the salt shaker I used a christmas ornament to hold a tree which adds an fun little tipsy element

Cleaning up a Cut Coke Bottle

I like the look of Coke bottles. I've repurposed them as glasses and they're up in my etsy shop  but the top of the Coke bottles is hard to use because it's got the logo on there. I tried nail polish remover and paint thinner but they had no effect.

The only thing I had luck with was scraping. Using warm water seemed to help a bit too.

Now to decide that to do with these bottle tops!