We are parked for Christmas in the most glorious spot! The tree is up, the kid are nestled all snug in their beds, and Santa received an email telling him just where to find us. Can’t wait for tomorrow!
It’s Christmas Week! Instead of sharing our normal posts, we’ve decided to mix it up and share mostly Christmas-y stuff this week. We have really made an effort to have the most awesome, mobile Christmas EVER, and so far we are doing pretty good. For one of our activities last week, we made another recipe from Real Mom Kitchen and I thought I’d share how we pulled it off in the Airstream. First off, these are super yummy. As she describes on her website, Real Mom says that sometimes she wants the taste of a sugar cookie, without all the hastle of rolling out, cutting, and then baking. These totally nailed it. They seriously taste like sugar cookies, but are much faster and easier to make. Plus, I love peppermint almost as much as I love pumpkin.
We don’t have a mixer in the Airstream. There’s just not enough room to store something that I would only use occasionally. Enter, the Blendtec. I already posted about how much I absolutely love it for smoothies and syrup, but this recipe was partly an experiment to see if I could get another use out of it.
Here’s the recipe modified for use with the Blendtec (settings in parentheses) and limited kitchen equipment.
Ingredients
Frosting
One of my favorite stories in the Book of Mormon occurs just previous to the birth of Jesus Christ. Across the ocean on the American continent lived a people descendant from a prophet who followed the Lord and left Jerusalem with his family 600 years earlier. At the time of the birth of the Savior, most of the people had lost their faith and had become a wicked and idolatrous people. A handful, however, held fast to their belief that Christ would be born and, as the Savior, redeem all mankind.
A prophet named Samuel foretold the date of Christ’s birth and the sign of the star that would be given. As time passed, and the sign had not come, the unbelievers had set aside date, “that all those who believed in those traditions should be put to death except the sign should come to pass, which had been given by Samuel the prophet.” Nephi, the prophet living among them at the time, wept over the wickedness of the unbelievers, bowed himself before God and cried mightily unto the Lord on behalf of his people who would soon be slain for their beliefs.
I love the answer he received.
“Behold, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying: Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfil all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets.”
The Lord counsels Nephi to “Be of Good Cheer” for He was to be born in a lowly stable. A humble, yet fitting place reflective of the man He was to become.
A midst the presents, the trees, and the Christmas Carols, let us all take a moment to remember the true meaning of Christmas: to celebrate the birth of a tiny baby born long ago. Be of Good Cheer. Rejoice. The Savior of the World was born. I can’t think of a better reason to celebrate.
We’ve talked quite a bit about compound words during school. How you take two words and smash them together to make a new word. “Star” and “fish” become “starfish”. Cara has even caught on, although sometimes she makes up her own.
After spending an early evening in the French Quarter, New Orleans eating Beignets (ben-ya) and wandering around to see the architecture we were driving home in the car.
Overhead in the backseat:
Cara: Hmmmm…. You take a “been” (left hand out) and a “yah” (right hand out) and smash them together (claps her hands) to get Beignet!
And then we all laughed.
This week was a bit of a whirlwind. Gulf Island Seashore National Park, Fort Picken and Geromino’s “hotel” room, meeting new friends at a random LDS ward and being invited over for dinner, the coolest Airstream food trucks, The National Naval Aviation Museum, New Orleans, seafood, the Tabasco Sauce Factory, and finally on to Houston where we will be spending the holidays.
How was your week?
**The recipe is from Real Mom Kitchen, one of my favorite recipe sites.
I love yummy things to eat around the holidays, and I’ve never made fudge, so I thought it’d be the perfect experiment in our little Airstream Kitchen. Are we capable of making holiday goodness? Watch the video to find out!
There you have it. As far as consistency goes, I felt like it never fully set but that could be affected by the altitude? Maybe? I’ll blame it on that. And we did share it. Hopefully they didn’t die of our cooties, but they seemed pretty impressed when we showed up to our dinner invitation with homemade fudge. “You MADE this?” they said in complete awe of our awesomeness. Why yes, yes we did.