The Great Christmas Tree Hunt of 2016, and Orange-Molasses Snickerdoodles

It's that time again!

Our midday view to the south in December.

Long nights, short days, and Christmas trees!!!

Every year, on the first Sunday afternoon in December, folks from our church make a mad dash up into the Hills. We spend a couple hours tromping through the woods, looking for the perfect Christmas tree, then head back to the church for a chili supper.

After many years (this is the sixth year for our family!), we've developed a method that has proven successful every time.

The first ones to arrive at base camp build a fire.

Then we gather, spending many minutes chatting and visiting. Thatcher made a new friend this year. :)

He wasn't too sure about Titus until a snack was shared between boy and dog. Now they're best buds.

But finally, all have arrived and it's time to head into the forest with our saws and high hopes of finding the perfect tree.

Thatcher has an unusual hunting technique. He runs as fast as he can until he thinks we're too far behind. Then he races back, tags one of us, and he's off again. By the end of the hunt, he was one tired Corgi!

And then - look! - can it be? The perfect tree?

It takes experience to pick the perfect tree from 1.2 million acres of forest! The one to the left looks good, until you notice the big hole on the lower right. The one in back? WAY too big! That one in the front center?

Yes, I see the hole on the right side of this one, too. Shhh! It will look beautiful once it's decorated!

The next step is to cut our perfect tree and carry it back to the car.

Before you wonder if our adventure is beneficial and legal...yes, and yes. Cutting the trees this way helps thin out the smaller trees, which can grow in thick groves, stunting the growth of all of them. The trees are much healthier if there is space between them and plenty of room to grow. Thinning the trees helps cut down on Pine Beetle damage and forest fires.

Legal? Yes, we bought our permit!

Then, finally, once everyone has chosen successfully bagged their trees, we all pose for a group picture.

With all those hungry, cold people who have spent the afternoon hiking and hauling trees, you'd think the chili supper would be a hit. And you would be right!

I took a crock pot full of my favorite chili (you can find that recipe here), and we also had venison chili, Cincinnati-style chili, two kinds of white chili, a half-dozen pots of chili of various degrees of heat, some beef stew, and Dan's chili. Dan's chili is more than spicy. It's in a class by itself!

But this year, I thought I'd share the dessert that my daughter, Carrie, brought.

Orange-Molasses Snickerdoodles

The original recipe for these cookies came from the Food Network magazine (a great magazine for people who love to cook!), but Carrie substituted candied orange peel for the orange zest. Delicious!

ingredients:

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup plus 3 Tablespoons sugar

1 large egg

2 Tablespoons molasses

1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 400°.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Beat the butter and 3/4 cup sugar in a large bowl with a mixer on medium-high speed until fluffy, about three minutes. Beat in the egg, then the molasses and orange zest.

Reduce the mixer speed to low. Then beat in the flour mixture until just combined.

Combine the cinnamon and the remaining 3 Tablespoons sugar in a small bowl. Roll heaping Tablespoonfuls of dough into balls, then roll in the cinnamon sugar to coat.

Arrange 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. 

Bake until the cookies are just set around the edges but the centers are still soft, 11-13 minutes. Let cool 3 minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Carrie added a squiggle of Royal Icing and some sprinkles to dress the cookies up for Christmas.

And how are the newlyweds doing? Getting ready to spend their first married Christmas together!

In other exciting news, "Hannah's Choice" is available in e-book for only 99 cents!!!

Go Here to get a copy for your Nook from Barnes and Noble,

or go Here to get a copy from Amazon for your Kindle.

Jan Drexler loves her family, her home, cooking and just about anything made by hand. But she loves her Lord most of all.

Stop by Jan's website to learn more about her books: www.JanDrexler.com

Winter Ramblings and Rote Kraut (Red Cabbage)

Do you remember last week when I said our Saturdays had been cold and snowy? Well that changed this week, just in time to celebrate the release of Hannah's Choice!

My husband and I have a favorite restaurant to visit when we want to celebrate - well - just about anything. Since last Saturday was a beautiful, sunny day, we headed up into the Hills to eat lunch at the Alpine Inn.

The lunch menu at this fabulous restaurant in Hill City features authentic German food. I ordered the "German Plate," packed with two kinds of sausage, sauerkraut, German potato salad, kase spaetzle and red cabbage. So delicious!

The rote kraut is hiding under the sausages. Do you see the purple
sticking out?

If you've read Hannah's Choice already, you might remember that Hannah's favorite food is rote kraut - red cabbage. Believe it or not, it's one of my favorites, too.

 Rote Kraut (Red Cabbage)
(serves one or two rote kraut lovers, about four normal people)

ingredients:
4 Tablespoons butter (or bacon grease)
1/4 cup minced onion
4 cups shredded red cabbage (The recipe doesn't make this much rote kraut! The cabbage shrinks as you cook it!)

1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons sugar

1 apple, pared and quartered

Melt the butter in a large pot (I use my 8 quart stock pot), then cook the onion in the melted butter until it's translucent.

Put the shredded cabbage into the pot. Then mix together the vinegar, water and sugar, and pour on top of the cabbage.

Season with salt and pepper to taste and mix lightly.

Place the apple quarters on top of the cabbage mixture.

Cover the pot and cook on medium-low heat until the cabbage is soft, about 20 minutes.

Note - the apple is for flavoring. You can mix it into the cabbage before serving, or eat it separately.

Serve as a side dish with any kind of meat.

We drove by Lake Pactola on our way to Hill City. All of the
lakes were covered with ice fishermen on this fine day!

After lunch we drove to Custer State Park and visited some of our favorite places. I was able to drink in the views I've missed so much during the past few months.

The grass is winter brown. Snow still lingers in places, but the sun is strong at this altitude, and all of our friends were enjoying the 50°+ weather.








We saw this little guy with his mom -

His crooked ear stands out, and I remembered that I had taken a picture of him last summer:

He's a little bit bigger and a LOT shaggier than in July, but he still has that funny lop ear.

We saw plenty of pronghorns, too.

These two were posing very nicely...

Until the guy on the left had to see what we were doing.

And we saw a lot of bison - probably close to three hundred in several different herds like this one. (Do you see the pronghorns in the lower right of the picture? They're hard to see against the brown grass!)

Last year's calves are looking good. Their horns are beginning to grow - they're between four and six inches long - and the young ones look like abbreviated versions of their mothers.

While I was taking pictures of the calves, this mama bison started walking toward our van.

It took a minute before we realized what she was doing.

She was licking the salt off the front of our van! She was a little disappointed when we backed up and drove around her.

When we were safely out of her area, I took a picture.

Bison tongue marks! That's a first!

So two questions for our chat today:

1) Red cabbage - love it, or hate it?
2) How was your Saturday - snowy in the big storm back east, or bright and sunny like ours?

Wintertime Bean Soup

This is a rerun post, but it is so perfect for this week. Bean soup is a staple at our house for these cold winter evenings. There's nothing like that homey-salty-warming aroma as the soup cooks in the crock pot all day long!

Another reason why this recipe is appropriate for this week is that the long-awaited release of "Hannah's Choice" is imminent!

You can order Hannah's Choice here (BarnesandNoble.com) or
here (Amazon.com)

I love this series, The Journey to Pleasant Prairie. It was born out of a quest to understand why my family was no longer Amish, and that quest opened a lot of doors and will provide fodder for many stories to come!

So as we celebrate the pending release (January 19th!), settle back and enjoy this post from a few years ago:

The western view from our house at 3 pm. Nearly sunset.

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” 
― Edith Sitwell

It is the turn of the year. The days are short, the evenings dark and long.

In our part of the world, the sun rises in the southeast, skims the rooftops of the houses to our south, and sets behind the Hills in the southwest. 

The mid-afternoon light throws long shadows as we explore the shore of Sylvan Lake - the summer playground deserted this time of year.

By 5:00, Orion starts his journey across the southern sky and the shades are drawn against the cold night outside.

This is the time for soup and homemade bread - food that warms the belly and the spirit.

Today's soup is bean soup. Not a fancy dish, but nothing tastes better on a cold winter night.

I have no recipe for this soup - it would be like asking for a recipe for scrambled eggs! It's been a wintertime staple in my family since long before I was born.

The main ingredient is beans. 

I always use Navy Beans, or small white beans, but you can use your favorite.

Now don't turn up your nose at the lowly bean! Just check out this nutritional powerhouse:

Beans are a good source of

1) Protein

2) Complex carbohydrates

3) Fiber - both soluble and insoluble

4) Calcium

5) Potassium

6) Folate (a B vitamin)

It's easy to prepare the beans for cooking. Start the night before by soaking two cups of beans in about a gallon of water mixed with two tablespoons vinegar. If you have hard water (water with a lot of minerals in it), use filtered or distilled water for soaking and cooking your beans.

Why the vinegar? It helps reduce that gassy side effect beans can have.

The next morning, drain and rinse the beans thoroughly. Now they're ready to use.

Beans take a long time to cook and they absorb a lot of water, so give yourself plenty of time. I always use my slow cooker, but you can also cook them on top of the stove over low heat (be sure to stir them occasionally). Either way, check the beans every couple hours to make sure they haven't cooked dry.

I use broth instead of water to cook my bean soup - it adds flavor as well as nutrition. Today I'm using ham broth and chicken broth (about six cups for two cups of dry beans), but you can also use vegetable broth, leftover water from boiling potatoes, or whatever you might have on hand.

Always add onions to your soup, again for flavor and nutrition, but from there on the soup is very versatile.

We have leftover ham from Christmas in the refrigerator, so I diced up about a cup of that and added it in. You can also add carrots or potatoes (or both). Some people add in mashed potatoes.

Let the soup cook for a good 10 to 12 hours in the slow cooker - maybe four to six hours on the stove.

Taste your soup before adding salt and pepper - if you've used ham or ham broth, you'll probably have enough salt already.

If you add salt, wait until the very end of cooking to put it in. (Salt keeps the fiber in the beans from breaking down while cooking.) 

Serve your soup with fruit or veggies, and lots of crackers.

My husband likes these little gems - he calls them "fabulous crackers" - but I like regular saltines.

Remember I said this soup has been a family staple for years? While doing some research for my next book, I found out that for the 18th century Amish in Pennsylvania (my grandparents six and seven generations ago...), bean soup was a Sunday tradition.

The Amish in those days didn't drive buggies, or wagons, or carriages to church. They walked.

It could be a six mile walk to the house where the Sabbath Meeting was being held, and before the families would start the long walk home in the afternoon, they were given a meal - something simple, warm, filling and cheap. Bean soup.

I can just imagine a log home filled to the brim with Amish families, some of them still grieving loved ones they had lost on the long journey across the Atlantic in ships called the "Charming Nancy" and "Love and Unity". Old men with gray beards, women in their bonnets and capes, children with cheeks rosy from the cold outside and the heat inside the house...and all day long smelling the fragrance from the big kettle of bean soup simmering on the hearth.

And you thought you had a hard time concentrating on the sermon!

Blueberry Buckle rerun...and a cover reveal!

Everyone who hates summer colds, raise your hands!

Mine is way up there. This one has lasted for a solid week. No cooking. Definitely no cooking. I won't go into the details...but it was a bummer week. 

So I'm posting a rerun recipe for you, inspired by The Fresh Pioneer's weekend blueberry picking pictures.

But before the recipe, I have to share this beautiful cover. In the midst of my sinus headache suffering, I received this beautiful picture from Revell - the cover for my March 2016 release.

Seeing this in my inbox made my day! I love this story, and I'm so thankful that I'll be able to share it with all of you in the spring. Here's a little bit about it:

Hannah Yoder loves her quiet life on the banks of the Conestoga Creek. In 1842, this corner of Lancaster County is settled and peaceful—yet problems lurk beneath the placid façade. Hannah’s father worries about the spread of liberal ideas from their Mennonite and Brethren neighbors. And Hannah blames herself for a tragedy that struck their home nine years ago. She strives to be the one person who can bind the threads of her family together in spite of her mother’s ongoing depression and her sister’s rejection of their family. But her world is threatening to unravel.

When two young men seek her hand in marriage—one offering the home she craves and the other promising the adventure of following God’s call west—Hannah must make a choice. Faithfully perform her duties to her family? Or defy her father and abandon her community?

I'll be sure to let you know when it's available!


And now to the recipe. I first shared this in the summer of 2013, and I love this buckle better than ever. The original recipe is from Leduc's Blueberries in Paw Paw, Michigan.

Blueberry Buckle

Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

topping:
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Cream 1/4 cup butter with 3/4 cup sugar, then add the egg and beat well.

In a medium bowl, stir together 2 cup flour, baking powder and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture alternately with 1/2 cup milk, beating until smooth.

Fold in blueberries, and pour into a greased 9-inch square pan.

For the topping, combine the ingredients and blend well to form crumbs, and then sprinkle the topping over the batter.

Bake at 375° for 35 minutes.

The buckle came out of the oven at 6:00 Sunday evening - just in time to take it to share at our Sunday evening service.

Oh yes, it was delicious.

And those who walked in at the last minute? Well, they shared the crumbs with me :)

This is a quick and easy recipe. Do you know what really makes it, though? That bit of cinnamon in the topping. Mmmm.....

Enjoy your week, everyone! But while you're still here, what's your go-to cure for the summer cold?