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Finally, it feels like Christmas

First present of the season:  Bought yesterday

First cookies of the season:  Baked yesterday

First gifts under the tree:  Wrapped last night

First Family activity: Got jigsaw puzzle started night before last

Christmas Letter:  Written but not sent

Although the trees have been up since the week after Thanksgiving, both Tom and I have had too much on our plates to get the usual Christmas things done.  It was a little sad, seeing the trees with no gifts underneath them!  Would Christmas ever come?

But yesterday, OH YESTERDAY!  Yesterday was my first "Day Off" since November something, and what a day it was!  It is amazing how much more festive one feels when one is not fatigued by physical labor.  I finished my last project (the indoor atrium mural) and headed to Target and the other stores to do some damage.  I almost got EVERY GIFT on the list in one fell swoop, and stayed up late wrapping every single one. It was a heady experience.

My Christmas trees, though already a little droopy, look happy to be sheltering the respectable pile of gifts beneath them. THIS is what they were born for and they are relishing their final Purpose Driven days.  I am savoring the sweet success of my first day of Christmas Effort and it just feels GOOD.

Rachel Anne

Salt on a wound, baby. Salt on a wound.

I spent most of Wednesday trying to work on having a thankful heart.  I almost had it.  It took every scripture verse in memory to get to a level of near-gratefulness, but then yesterday a blow came from out of nowhere that threatened to topple the card-house contentment I had so carefully constructed.

Short background: 2006 aims to be the leanest Christmas the Ridge fam has seen in  quite awhile.  If you are a small-business owner, you know that much of the time it is feast or famine, and this season happens to fall in famine.  Meanwhile, I am working my tail off to make every extra cent to help Santa out.  Rzzzm frzzm rzzm frzzm grrrr.  Rachel Anne is grumpy-wumpy.

So yesterday, I am painting away at my client's indoor atrium, and my said client asks me to stop down and help her choose her new Mercedes. 

Agonizingly torn between a hot red coupe and a granite gray sedan, it was a real $80,000.00 nail biter.  This to add to their fleet of two Hummers, two other Mercedes, a Viper, an Infiniti and a Hemi truck.

Um, Lady, have ya seen what I drive?  A '96 Ford Explorer doesn't exactly put me in a position to tell you which Mercedes makes a better statement.

Frankly, this situation would be like asking a starving person to help you decide between a Porterhouse with baked potato and baby carrots, or a T-bone with garlic mashed potatoes and tender asparagus shoots.

Or, like a skinny girl asking her chubby friend to help her decide which bikini she looks better in.

Cruel dagger.  Salt on my wound.  I almost laughed out loud, but instead I just looked up toward the heavens and whispered, "Thanks a lot."

Bad attitude firmly in place as I drove my '96 Ford Explorer home, I became engrossed in a story on the radio of a family whose hard times make mine look like a walk in the park.  Birth defects, cancer, job loss, car accident, hurricane Katrina.....all happening to one family.  Not to be melodramatic, but I felt hot tears of shame sting my eyes. 

What an idiot I am to compare myself to a multi-millionaire, when what I take for granted is so much more than what someone else could dream of!

Health.  Children.  Food.  Clothing.  A job.  A home.  A Ford Explorer.

Phil. 4:11-13...I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.  I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity;  in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. 

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

I'm throwing out my Wish List, and re-writing my Thanksgiving List.  I'm rescinding the invitations to my Pity Party.  With one week to go before Christmas I've got some work to do, starting with plowing up my own selfish heart and asking for a spirit of gratitude to take root.

Rachel Anne

Christmas Cutout Cookies

On the heels of lefse-making, our OTHER favorite Christmas traditions is making and decorating cutout cookies.  We've done this for almost 20 years, and the kids STILL love it.  I like my sister Katherine's recipe the best, for making the rolled cookies.  They are buttery and not too sweet, perfect for topping with icing.  I believe she got this recipe from her mother in law, a truly decadent baker.

1 1/2 c butter, soft

3/4 c sugar

3 1/3 c flour

Mix in large mixing bowl at low speed.  Roll out 3/8 inches thick, cut into desired shapes Bake at 300 for 20-25 min (ours never go that long, so watch for browning).  If dough doesn't stick together, add drops of evap. milk or half and half.

Icing:  Mix about a bag a powdered sugar with 1 stick of soft butter (or less)  Add small amounts of milk until it is a smooth (not too thick) consistency.  Add 1-2 tsp. almond flavoring, the secret of cutout cookie deliciousness.  Divide up into bowls and stir in food coloring (red, green, blue, yellow, leave one bowl with white).  Have colorful sprinkles on hand, along with toothpicks and small plastic knives for swirling designs around.  Give each person a paper plate to work over, to keep the sprinkles from going EVERYWHERE.

Hint:  Toothpicks make great decorating tools: you can dip one in frosting, then touch a sprinkle and it sticks to it!  Then you can place those itty bitty sprinkles in perfect places to make stunningly perfect patterns.  Your friends will be wowed.  When you get sick of such attention to detail, then just sprinkle away.  It's all good.

Wish I had a picture to post of some our best creations--there have been some that were fit for the Smithsonian.  Then there were others that were so muddled with every color imaginable, we just had to eat them right away, with a glass of cold milk. 

Best Cookie Wishes,

Rachel Anne

Hanging with the Ornaments

I put the boxes of leftover ornaments away and I'm feeling a little guilty.  You know, they're the ones that didn't make the cut to hang on this year's trees.  Outshined by newer, flashier baubles, these guys have been boxed up for up to 10 years, hoping for their chance to hang out once again with the more popular crowd of angels, bells and gingerbread men. 

It must be disappointing to get passed over because you're the wrong color (race discrimmination) or too old (age discrimmination) or the wrong size (weight discrimmination).  Even now I can hear them plotting to get together and file a class action suit citing wrongful treatment of Christmas decor.  I didn't even give them a chance.

But really, the mauve and blue quilted kitty that looked so cute in 1985 doesn't belong here anymore.  The Victorian lace heirloom ball just looks a little frumpy these days.  Worse, the wooden cutout of Santa just smacks of "Craft Fair."  The felt reindeer with no eyes and one antler is just too shabby even for my standards.

Somehow my tastes have changed over the years, but like the outdated clothes in my closet, I just keep hanging on to those silly things.  Maybe someday they will fit again!  Maybe someday I will look at that mauve and blue kitty and fall in love all over, just like I certainly will with my stirrup pants and shoulder padded shirts.  Someday they will be back in style and won't I be glad I saved them from the give-away box!  Riiiight.

Truthfully, though I might sound like Martha Stewart, my little trees are not much more than a hodgepodge of hopelessly unfashionable ornaments.  Which makes it all the more painful, I guess, to be excluded from a group of misfits.  I've had that happen my own self, so I know how it feels to get left out.  But that's small consolation to a group of rejected holiday decorations, all dressed up with no place to go.

Guys.  I'm SORRY!  I'm leaving you in the box and you can try again next year.  Until then, you can relax and enjoy laying down in comfort instead of hanging by a hook for weeks on end, possibly at the very back of the tree where no one can see you anyway.  I'm doing you a favor, trust me.

And yes, I'm turning off the closet light.  I'll see you on January 2, when I return this year's chosen "A-List" Tree Groupies to the boxes and you can find out for yourselves just how hard it was to hang out with the presents.  Talk about a group of show-stealers!

Just be glad you aren't the poor lone ornament that never makes it off the tree at the end of the season, who accompanies the tree to the curb and never gets seen again.  See, THERE's a fate none of you would want, and I'm saving you from that possibility.  You'll be just fine in there, I promise.

And stop talking to me.

Norwegian Lefse

As promised, here is a recipe for lefse.  My grandmothers both made delicious, paper-thin delicacies, and mine is a mere shadow of what I remember eating as a child.  Their recipes called for a "little of this, a little of that," so I've had to use some trial and error to find one that works for me.  For those of you that have no idea what lefse is, it is a Norwegian flatbread like a tortilla, only made with potatoes.

Disclaimer: All amounts are approximate, and though I make no guarantees I will say that I find lefse to be very easy and forgiving to make. I recommend a generous amount of butter and sugar and cinnamon on each finished lefse for maximum enjoyment!

4 cups mashed potatoes

1/4 cup butter

salt to taste (1-2 tsp)

1-2 cups flour

Mix butter and salt into mashed potatoes.  Cool in refrigerator.  Knead in flour, without overworking.  Form into a log (maybe 3 inches in diam), wrap with plastic wrap and keep chilled until rolled out.  Cut off slices of the potato roll and roll out with lefse rolling pin.  Use a well-flour surface or pastry cloth, and keep enough flour on the potato slice so it doesn't stick to the rolling pin. 

Carefully pick up each rolled lefse piece (a smooth lefse stick is helpful), gently shake of excess flour, and cook on hot, non-stick griddle.  Flip when lefse starts to bubble, and has golden speckles.  Periodically wipe or brush flour from griddle.  Cover finished pieces with cloth, cool completely before storing in fridge in ziplock.

Spread with butter, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.  Roll up and serve!

I try to not make this too far ahead of time before Christmas, because my family has been known to polish off a batch before I've had a chance to serve it.  Lefse-making has been a great family tradition, one we always look forward to.  It's easy to make and soooo delicious!

Here is a poem I found at www.lefsetime.com.  They also carry Norwegian products and baking supplies.

Yew tak yust ten big potatoes
Den yew boil dem til dar don,
Yew add to dis some sveet cream
And by cups it measures vun.

Den yew steal 'tree ounces of butter
And vit two fingers pench some salt,
Yew beat dis wery lightly
If it ain't gude it is your fault.

Den yew roll dis tin vit flour
An' light brown on stove yew bake,
Now call in all Scandihuvians
Tew try da fine lefse yew make!

Rachel Anne