Christmas Stuff - Part 2 - 2013

Food is Christmas ‘stuff’ as much as ornaments on the tree. Every December there are foods that stand out. Some are new for the year and some are part of the family tradition. Here are the December 2013 special foods for my Christmas.

Red Velvet Cake - The food with the most tradition this year. My mother use to make it from scratch. Now I buy it at the grocery store - making sure that it had cream cheese icing (not the icing that is mostly butter).

Pumpkin Ginger Scones - The food that is new this year and destined to become part of the tradition. I’ve already modified it to use butternut squash in place of the pumpkin!

Cranberry orange relish with plain yogurt - The food that joined the tradition a few years ago. It had good color, is healthy compared to so much Christmas fare, and has a welcome tangy taste.

Kale - The food that I started experimenting with last fall but only decided belonged in my refrigerator when winter weather got serious. I include it in every soup and stir fry I make! It is loaded with good nutrition - and lends a green color to winter meals. I buy a large bag of pre-washed Kale and keep it in the freezer. It crunches easily into small pieces when it is still frozen and cooks up the same as fresh when used in soups and stir fries!

Popcorn with pumpkin seed oil - The food that will go beyond Christmas now that I’ve learned to make it. I pop the corn in a paper bag in the microwave. No more not-good-for-you additives from the packaged microwave popcorn! And then drizzle it with pumpkin seed oil which turns a nice green color on the white corn…..green and white for the season. Add some apple slices for nutritional balance and to achieve the full Christmas color scheme!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 30, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Early Uses of Chili Peppers in Mexico - Capsicum residue found in different kinds of vessels…showing that chili peppers may have been used in a variety of ways in the centuries before the time of Christ.

Mind the Clock - Inforgraphic about the various ‘clocks’ in the human body.

Feathery Fungi - I almost enjoy finding shelf fungi…and these turkey tails seem particularly appropriate for the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Cataract Surgery Saves $123.4 Billion in Costs, Delivers 4,567% Return to Society - I hope that this kind of analysis is done for more kinds of medical interventions. Cataract surgery may be a bright positive star compared to other procedures.

Washington: A world apart - There are a lot of Super Zips (zip codes where the average median household income is $120K and 7 in 10 adults have college degrees) around Washington DC. The graphic at the beginning of the article is interactive - put in your zip code to find out the income and education for your zip code.

The Unsung Women of Tech - 13 women highlighted by Computerworld as part of the celebration of Ada Lovelace Day back in October.

Stunning Macro Details of Uniquely Beautiful Snowflakes - Just in time for winter….some snowflake photographs.

Maps of What the Earth Would Look Like If All Ice Melted - Lots of coastal population centers would be underwater.

Glaciers Sizzle as They Disappear Into Warmer Water - Audio recordings may be a viable complement to other measurements of ice melt.

Sour Cream Pumpkin Bundt - Yummy Bundt idea…and I still have lots of pumpkin in my freezer.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - November 2013

Over a year ago I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and the habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations;’ here are my top 10 for November 2013 - grouped into themes.

Seasonal Food

Pumpkin bake. One way I celebrate fall is to bake a whole pumpkin. It happens almost every year. The one this year was a little larger than usual - purchased at Home Depot; it was a bright orange decoration for our front porch for a few weeks before I decided to cook it. The color deepened after it baked for an hour or so. I cut a wedge, scooped away the seeds and stringy part from the center, and enjoyed it drizzled with butter and cinnamon. Then I divided the rest of the usable pulp into smaller portions - half for the freezer and half for more immediate pumpkin related celebrations.

Pumpkin and Yogurt Custard. It’s worth celebrating when a culinary experiment works; this one did although I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to duplicate it. I roughly followed the pumpkin custard recipe but used plain non-fat yogurt rather than milk, a non-calorie granular sweetener, and more eggs than usual. It developed a sugary crust that was very appealing!

Pumpkin and Ginger Scones. I had never made scones before but decided to try the recipe I posted in my gleanings a few weeks ago. There are two causes to celebrate: these particular scones are really good and scones are incredibly easy to make in a food processor (why did it take me so long to discover this?).

Pumpkin seed oil. It’s green! It’s yummy! I’ve started drizzling it over a mini-pita - making a fancy design like they do in high end restaurants.

Pomegranate. In the past few years - pomegranates have become part of the Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration for me. It is their season to be plentiful in the stores and I like to think of them as the ‘jewels’ of the season.

Outdoors in the Fall

Foliage. The play of colors in the forest is the grand celebration before winter starkness.

Hike to the Patapsco. Walking through fields and forest on a crisp fall day is a more active way to celebrate the season.

Elementary School Nature Field Trips. I celebrated during every hike I led for elementary school field trips over the past month. What a privilege it is to share their first experiences: milkweed, black walnuts, wooly caterpillars, maple leaves changing color, the rocks of a stone wall between fields.

Raking Leaves. I prefer raking to blowing the leaves that fall too thickly on the ground. Raking is quiet work so I hear the birds and squirrels while I enjoy the leaves that still retain their color. They smell like rich forest tea the leaf mulch will become over the winter. There is a nostalgic celebration in raking leaves since the activity is the beginning of the end for fall.

Amanda Cross mysteries. I always celebrate finding a new author. All three Cross books I’ve read so far area already favorites….and there 11 more to go!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 2, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Pumpkin and Ginger Scones - New York Times Recipes for Health - Yum! The prospect of the melding flavor of pumpkin, ginger, and maple syrup seems to suit my mood for this season. Since I cooked a whole pumpkin this past week, I have plenty of pumpkin to make these scones.

London’s Health - There is a new website that organizes historical ‘Medical Officer of Health’ reports for London from 1848 and 1972. There are several ways to search. I looked for ‘smallpox’ references as my first search.  

Inside the American Kitchen - An infographic about kitchens. Did you know that the three most popular features for kitchen projects are: islands, roll-outs/pull-outs, and drawers?

Cornell Lab FeederWatch - If you get the urge to enjoy birds at a feeder but don’t have one of your own - enjoy the one at Sapsucker Woods near Ithaca NY. There are almost always birds around (and if they aren’t at the feeder there are bird noises that indicate they are nearby).

Massive 80-Room Tree House Stands Almost 100-Feet-Tall - I enjoyed visiting this Tennessee tree house in summer of 2012….and took some very similar pictures (the one below is mine). It is so large that it is hard to capture the entire structure!

Thawing Permafrost: The Speed of Coastal Erosion in Eastern Siberia Has Nearly Doubled - Coastal erosion in areas there permafrost and sea ice were the norm for large parts of the year until recently is increasing rapidly. The materials used for the article include more graphics about how it occurs.

Take a trip over the surface of Mars - A 4 minute video presentation of images from Europe’s Mars Express that has been orbiting Mars since 2004.

The World's Strangest and Most Magnificent Gardens - I love gardens so couldn’t resist including this on the ‘gleanings’ list for the week.

Message From a 50-Year-Old Flamingo - A conservation success story - for now….but there is a lot that could still go wrong for the flamingos left in this world.

Restoration: Another Layer of History - Some examples of industrial/military areas that are repurposed into more public spaces.