Christmas Knits!

As it is the Winter season, I have found my way back to my knitting needles. I hate knitting in the Summer. The feeling of dewy hands wrapped in acrylic yarn grosses me out. I'm not a really skilled knitter yet. My goal this year is to learn to knit in the round. I want to be able to make mitts and toques so badly but every time I pick up a pattern I am massively confused. Why are patterns written in code? This isn't the 1940's. You don't have to worry about any foreign spies stealing sock patterns. Was that a concern in the 1940's? Seems like it might have been.
Anyway, this fall Roots had all sorts of awesome, sock monkey-inspired, knit wear. I wanted it but wasn't about to spend 40 bucks on a scarf (this time). Since I had more time than money that week, I headed to Michael's. Yay! It was 10 am on a Thursday in the middle of November but the place was packed! Apparently they were having some kind of sale that I wasn't aware of until a nice granny gave me an extra 25% off coupon that she had printed from her email.
Here is what has resulted

(also does anyone know how to flip these damn pics?)
I used Patrons Classic Wool. I was fortunate that they not only had a grey sock monkey colour but also the perfect red and a creamy off-white. The colours are much better in person.
I was hoping for mitts but decided I better start with a scarf. I used 6mm needles and cast on forty stitches. It's nice width but if i were to make it again I would make it wider. Wide scarfs seem more luxurious to me.
Tonight I was wrapping more presents and had to wrap a piece of jewellery that didn't come in a box (bc I shop at all the classy places). Rather than wrap it in the plain brown paper and risk loosing it, I quickly knit it a little case.

This one I did on smaller needles (but I don't remember the size). I only cast on 12 stitches. So cute! I knit it while Mike showed me the joys of the Buffy the Vampire Musical episode. Ahh the holidays.

Nicole For Food Activism

Early in December I attended an information night hosted by NEAP- Northeast Edmonton Agriculture Producers. I first came across the group in October, when buying produce from Riverbend Gardens, at the Strathcona Farmers Market. The grower asked that we help save the farm and slipped a flyer into our bag. It seems that Riverbend Gardens, along with a handful of other producers is at risk of losing their land to a large scale suburban development project. This area of Edmonton, they say, has a particularly long growing season (three weeks longer than the rest of Edmonton) and fantastic soil.
The fight for this land has been a long project. They have been fighting for it for over 4 years. The issue and its development seemed quite complex to me, which is the main reason that is has taken me so long to write about it.
It seems that come Fall 2012, the city council will be presented with a land proposal drawn up by a company which was hired by a few land development groups. These types of proposals are almost never turned down and rarely modified.
What NEAP hopes to do is have a large showing of people at city hall to oppose this plan. What NEAP would like to see is a food HUB. They want to take not only their existing farms, but the surrounding area and make it a local producer haven. In this way Edmonton could work towards sustainable eating.
This seems like a really good idea to me. I just get confused with all the politics. Here is the link if you would like to learn more and be their friend
www.friendsoffarmers.ca

Christmas Baking the Sequel

Yay! Three weeks later we got around to making more goodies! Short bread and Nanaimo Bars this time, but not all in the same day, in fact we didn't even do the Nanaimo Bars in the same day. Stupid layers make me loose momentum. First your waiting for the layer to cool then next thing you know your watching a Full House Marathon  all night. Or something like that anyway.
Again recipes courtesy of Mike's mummy.

We didn't have any sprinkles so we crushed up some candy canes to put on the top. We also decorated others with crasins. I prefer the tartness of the crasins. I feel like a grownup for choosing them over the ones with smashed up candy. I must be really mature.
Mike and I like our Nanaimo bars with a thinner layer of custard rather than a thicker one. For me it gets in the way of the chocolate. I don't despise the custard layer, I recognise it as a necessary evil. Here's how they turned out

Poor Nanaimo Bar didn't have the hope of lasting til Christmas. Taste test was perfectly executed.

Present Wrapping

For a long time I have wanted to wrap presents in brown paper because it looks so old timey. Usually I run out of time to plan this so I just end up getting paper with santas on it from a drugstore close by. This year we happened to have some brown kraft paper because we had to mail a package in September. Plain paper means we get to decorate it ourselves so the possibilities are ENDLESS! Since I'm not that artistic that limits the possibilities quite a bit. I choose to do thumbprint designs taken from one of my all time favourite books 'Ed Emberley Complete FunPrint Drawing Book'. I got this book from Scholastic book orders when I was in grade school. It has never let me down. I highly recommend finding a copy bc you never know when a thumbprint design may come in handy.
All I really needed to decorate the presents was a fine black felt pen and a stamp pad in my colour of choice. However I went to the dollarstore and went slightly crazy in the craft aisle. Now I have a nice shoebox full of crafting things. My favourite purchase was some sticker ribbon from the scrapbooking section. It looks like thin christmas ribbon but has a sticky backing. It is perfect for making sparkly collars for thumbprint reindeer.
 One of the best things about this project was the cost. A roll of brown kraft paper at Staples is 4 dollars for 40 ft. The rest of the items were about 10 bucks from the dollar store, including pencil crayons and glitter. The only downside is that the paper is slightly transparent so if I was so inclined to sit under the tree, I could trace out the words on the box beneath. I'm not so inclined and most of our presents will be opened as soon as they are received, so it is not such a huge downside for us.
Here are some of the designs

I meant to post a few more but I can't get blogger to stop posting them upsidedown. Oh well.

So many marshmallows, so little friends.

I followed through on my hot chocolate party this weekend! Best use of marshmallows, short of a marshmallow gun, of course.
My first thought was just to make the Mexican style hot chocolate that I usually make but my mom said that that kind is disgusting so probably everyone won't like it.. Well guess what mom, as it turns out, you're the only person who doesn't like it. So there.
Now that I've got that out of the way, I shall give you the recipe. It is a Nigella Lawson recipe, although I have never measured anything in it. The ingredients are milk, cinnamon, honey, vanilla extract (go for the good stuff), spiced rum and chocolate. I use a mexican hot chocolate bar, if I have one otherwise I use bakers semi-sweet chocolate. This time I skipped the rum so everyone could add their spirit of choice.
I thought white hot chocolate would be a nice contrast but i had no idea how to make it. Thanks to a quick google search I learned that most people make it from the same three ingredients- milk, vanilla, white chocolate chips. This search led me to here-
http://www.ourbestbites.com/2010/12/gourmet-hot-chocolate/
yay! Hot chocolate party post! This was a gold mine for ideas, like using my smaller cups (so you can more easily have seconds and thirds) and candy cane stir sticks.
Here is my arsenal of hot chocolate condiments:

We have our FIVE flavours of marshmallows, mini candy canes, whipped cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, caramel syrup, baileys, spiced rum and kahlua. Oh the possibilities! My favourite combination of the evening was white hot chocolate, Kahlua, whipped cream, and caramel syrup. See,

To maximize marshmallow consumption I also made these

From here http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/smores-brownie-bars/
Smore's brownies! I made a row of each of the marshmallow flavours. So far the caramel ones are my favourite but I still have a few more rows to eat through.

Tapas Pinxtos

When we were in Spain a few months ago, we ate tapas everyday. They were so tasty and cheap! I haven't found a place here that sells anything close to Spanish tapas, at any price. There are a few different types of tapas. You can have a variety of warm ones in sit-down restaurants or you can have ones served on bread. The ones with the bread base, tapas pinxtos, are often served in bars.

Pinxtos were fun to eat but it was a little challenging if you were shy. You have to stand at a crowded bar in late evening and jump up and down to get the attention of the bartender to get a plate. Once you have a plate, push in front of people and reach across other people to grab your tapas at the bar. Don't worry about offending people because others will do the same to you. Each pinxto has a toothpick in it. Save the toothpicks and hand them to the bartender when you want to settle your bill. That's how they tally what you owe. It's usually about 1.60 euros per toothpick. Don't be a tacky tourist and 'drop' a toothpick or two.  Not going to lie, it took a heroic effort for me to be so aggressive, but there is food at stake. Mike had to figure out how to get us a beer because I was exhausted by the work to get the plate. However, it is well worth the effort. These little buggers are phenomenal!

So this weekend we had a few people over for some christmas festivities and decided to serve tapas pinxtos. We made a few of our favorites.

One is a tiny croissant sandwich with Iberian ham (similar to prosciutto) and Havarti.

The other two are on baguette slices. One was brie, juicy pear, and a fig.

The last one we made was with goat cheese, tomato and basil. In Spain, this one also had olive paste on it, to make it more savory. However, we couldn't find olive paste yesterday. Anything with tomato and basil is a win anyways.

Stupid hard to find ingredients. I have no idea what was in one of my favorite pinxtos. Its in the top picture. It is the purpley-red one on the bottom row, second in. It was piled very high with a delicious cheese mixture, something like a cross between cream cheese and mascarpone. Maybe there was also some almond flavor too. The top was glazed with a dark sweet jam, like huckleberry. It was so rich that I could only eat the one, but the flavour was amazing.