The Dear Christ Enters In.

Merry Christmas

I won't be talking to you for a couple of days, so I thought I would pop in and say Merry Christmas now!

Beautiful choral O Come O Come Emmanuel

Chatty. With a wee Advent meditation at the end.

We are crafting, which is nice. Because often we want to craft, but because I'm feeling too pressured by all the chores that need to get done, we don't.

Finished adoption quilt

{Love my creativity with the post title there.}

How is Advent going? Little by little I'm getting decorations out. Little by little I'm gathering presents...handmade and thrifted, for the most part, God willing. I vow not to go into the mall. After all the years of going and finding nothing, I've sworn it off -- for three years now! It's dead to me.

I'm also trying to square away the non-Christmas projects. Life is never cut-and-dried, is it? Babies come at unexpected times. People get sick. It snows. That's okay. Did you ever think that God gives us a day, and we just have to try hard to accomplish what's meant to be accomplished in that day? No more, no less.

Take a deep breath and enjoy the day.

I'm not sure about the ribbon...unlike bias binding, it's not very forgiving. Wright's is the same, though. If I had gotten a color, I might not have had to double and re-double, and that might have been easier, but as it was, the colors of the fabric showed through the white material.



Still, it has the luscious flannel side and the cheery smooth side, and the satin is a nice texture as well. Every baby needs a quilt. Don't get hung up on particular sizes or anything. If women on the frontier could do this, so can we!

A blessed feast day!

And where sin abounded, grace did more abound. Romans 5:20

I didn't want you to think we didn't celebrate today's glorious feast!

So I don't have a particular dish I serve on this day.

No special foods to represent Our Lady's purity, or anything like that. But...how does BBQ pulled pork sound?

For breakfast after Mass we had bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Since I was clean out of my baking mix, I whipped up a batter but lost my concentration at some point. The pancakes were okay, but not great.

So I took the leftover batter and made it into dough for sandwich buns! It was your basic sweet dough recipe -- just add yeast, warm water, more salt, and more flour (in this case, white whole wheat).

Hence was born the bbq pulled pork supper idea, a feast indeed for such a cold night... to think that a few days ago it was almost 70*!


I got a pork roast out of the freezer -- I use boneless shoulder roast -- and defrosted it a bit in the microwave, then roasted in a covered dish, salted, with a bit of water, for an hour at 350*, then two hours at 200*. Dee--lectable. Pour off the fat, put the juices in a pan to reduce, and pull the meat apart.

That's the BBQ sauce down on the left...tomato paste, molasses, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a good dash of liquid smoke. You can tell it's a special day by the pretty dishes :)

Are you getting tired of seeing our trusty sides of homemade slaw -- such a nice alternative to salad -- and guacamole? I had an avocado from last week that didn't really ripen all that much, so I decided to make it a sort of salsa with sweet grape tomatoes, lime, coriander (I'm all out of cumin, boo), red onion, and salt.

When you have the lime out, and you have some simple syrup on hand, and there's a can of club soda in the pantry, and it's a feast day, well --HECK!

How about a little cocktail? Yes! Please! A little Jack Daniels and that sounds lovely!

Don't forget the oven fries, can you see them back there? Nice Idaho russets, sliced into fries, tossed with plenty of oil, and roasted in a 400* oven. Toss with salt and remove to a paper-towel--lined basket. Really, I could say that they can be better than French fries...

Happy Feast Day! Ice cream for dessert! Chocolate sauce if you want it! With whipped cream!

If you would like to read more about the Immaculate Conception, go here.

Tick another project off the list.

See this?

Supper and an adoption quilt.

More on the quilt below, but first...





Last night the Chief insisted that I take a picture of our supper.