Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Happy December everyone and happy first day of Hanukkah!

I don't know about all of you, but I am extremely ready for December. November wasn't a bad month per say, but it's definitely time for a new one. November ended yesterday with waking up to my car being towed from guest parking and a $250 charge to free it from the devil itself....Retriever Towing Co. So Jeremy and I have decided December is going to be better, and how could it not be? December means Christmas, Hanukkah, pretty lights, snow, and all the holiday food!

As excited as I am about the coming weeks, I also wanted to look back and share a bit about my Thanksgiving weekend. Although Jeremy and I couldn't be together, Buoy and I had an amazing trip up north to visit his grandparents and aunt Brittany. :) Thursday morning we dropped Jeremy off at PDX and headed for Bellingham. About an hour north of Portland it began to snow...beautiful light snow flurries accompanied me all the way to Seattle. Then things really picked up and it started to snow much harder, the plows weren't keeping up, and the lines dividing lanes transitioned into mountains of snow that marked where each lane's edges were. When I finally arrived at my parents' house there were about 5 inches of gorgeous powdery snow covering everything! They live up a smallish mountain, so they were hit pretty hard by the sudden snowstorm. Everyone loves a White Christmas...but we loved our White Thanksgiving!

The highlight of the day was without a doubt playing with Buoy in the snow. Below you will find some of the pictures of him discovering how much fun snow can be! I hope you enjoy them.

Dinner itself was also wonderful. My whole family was together, including my grandparents. My grandmother had a special treat for me as well. She gave me my paternal great-grandmother's cookbook. It is particularly special because my grandpa's mother died when he was only 6 years old. It's one of the only things we have that can tell us a bit about her. It's filled with her handwritten recipes and a number of recipes cut out of newspapers. The dates range from 1901-1927. Pretty incredible! Although most of the recipes aren't for meals most people today would enjoy eating...we've come a long way from the North Dakota farm she lived on...there are a few that I will be experimenting with just for fun :)

I tried to pick out one to share with you that I found in tact and might actually be delicious! The other challenge...finding a recipe that doesn't use ingredients we can't really get anymore (i.e. suet...don't look it up, but it's in most old recipes). I finally settled on a recipe for ginger snaps...pretty appropriate for this time of year! So I haven't tried this yet, but here ya go:

Recipe: Great-Grandmother Carrie's Ginger Snaps

Ingredients:

1 cup of molasses

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of lard and butter mixed (I would sub shortening)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground pepper

2 tablespoons of ginger

1 tsp of soda mixed in molasses

Directions:

Most of my great-grandmother's recipes don't include directions...just ingredients, but because this is a pretty straightforward list of ingredients I would just combine the dry ingredients and then add the molasses and shortening. She does say to mix the ingredients with as little flour as possible, roll out the dough thin, and then bake in a "quick oven". My guess is 350 degrees for 6 or 7 minutes. (Depends on what shape and how thick you cut your ginger snaps!)

Aside from Thanksgiving itself, the whole weekend was a blast. Spent time down in Seattle with my Mom and Britt doing a bit of Black Friday shopping. It's a bit of a tradition for us. Britt and I realized we have braved the Black Friday crowds all over the country...Orange County, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle! We are going to make it our goal to hit-up Black Friday in every major city!

The last thing I wanted to share with you all was what we did on Saturday. Britt and I drove down to Burlington, WA to the big movie theater. We saw Love & Other Drugs and Burlesque. Both were incredible! I highly recommend seeing them. I just purchased some of the songs from Burlesque on iTunes...definitely going on my workout playlist!

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Now it's time to prep for the upcoming big holidays! Top of my holiday to-do list...go chop down my own Christmas tree! One of the perks of living in Oregon...you can go pick and actually cut down your own tree out in the forest :) I'll make sure to share that adventure with all of you as soon as it happens :)