Christmas is FOUR days away. Are you ready? I’m feeling good. Shopping and wrapping are done, I just need to make a lot of food this week. The kids are off on break now, so I'm sure they'd love to help me. 🙂- What are your family traditions for Christmas? One of ours is that we always have a special Christmas Eve dinner with just the six of us, including non-alcoholic wine for the kids (or Kefir Soda!) served in real wine glasses, which the kids love, of course.
- For our family Christmas get-togethers I’m making the Stuffed Mushrooms recipe I posted Friday and also these: Jeanne’s Pinwheel Crescents. They’re made using this recipe for Crescent Dinner Rolls.
- I’m toying with the idea of changing my posting schedule again in the new year. (Or I may even post more beginning this week since I have a lot that I want to share with you. Spreading it out may be better than overloading you all on one day…?) I’m always trying to find just the right groove for how often to post. It’s interesting to see how my stats change each day, and for some reason not as many people are online on Friday as they are Monday through Thursday. (Saturday & Sunday’s low stats I understand, but Friday's have me baffled.) So instead of posting M-W-F, I may go to a M-T-W-Th schedule. If you don’t subscribe yet, please do, that way it won’t matter to you what I do with my posting schedule, and you’ll get all the new stuff either way. (Subscription buttons are under this post or up in the sidebar.) I’d love to hear your thoughts on this… Does anyone care which days I post?
- On a much more important topic, please take a look at this short video on the raw milk issue in Wisconsin.
- I have a friend, Deb, who plans to open up a health food store with a gluten-free focus in the near future and she wanted me to ask you guys for help coming up with a catchy name for her store. (I didn't realize it was mostly GF oriented when I Tweeted/Facebooked about this recently.) If you have any store name ideas OR tips to help her be successful, either comment here or contact Deb: [email protected].
Have a great week!
KitchenKop says
Elizabeth, good point! (LOL) I just noticed your picture, cute!
Elizabeth from The Nourished Life says
Oh, and Kelly, about the Russian crab: I’m sure you know how Weston A. Price reported that inland peoples went to extraordinary lengths to get seafood. So I guess seafood is one item that definitely doesn’t have to be local because its benefits are so pronounced. Plus, but maybe Russia isn’t too far away if you just went straight over the north pole? Okay, okay I’m laughing at myself for putting it that way, but my point is maybe Russian crab isn’t too bad, considering. 🙂
Martha says
Thanks for the reply, Kelly!
We do the clue hunt for birthdays. My mom did it for us, so now I do it for my kids. Should ask my siblings if they do it as well. Good memories.
KitchenKop says
Aw, Melissa, we do that tradition, too! My Mom started it when we were all home, now Kent & I do it on Christmas Eve with our kids. 🙂
Melissa @CelluliteInvestigation says
I’m excited that we revived an old family tradition this year. When my brother and I were little, my dad would send us on a scavenger hunt for our gifts. Each stop had another clue leading to the grand prize. The gifts I received this way were always extra special and I still remember each one. Now that my brother’s oldest daughter is 4, we decided to send her on a hunt for her Christmas gifts this year.
I mentioned this when visiting my uncle yesterday, and he said he had started doing it with my cousins after my dad told him about it several years ago. Now my cousin does it with her children, too. My dad had no idea he had started such a tradition. Can’t wait to see my niece in action, looking for her gifts this year!
Soli says
And in other news, meat standards for fast food companies are more stringent than those for school cafeterias. https://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-12-08-school-lunch-standards_N.htm
oy. kinda glad I don’t have kids yet so they don’t have to deal with such things.
KitchenKop says
Hi Martha,
Your questions about the phytic acid seem right on to me – my guess is that very little would be broken down without the whey or yogurt or whatever, especially in a cold fridge.
My method was really easy, though!
Kelly
Martha says
I agree with Beth and Elaine. 🙂 Thanks for posting the crescent roll recipe too. It reminded me of one I have so I will make them for Christmas dinner. The dough gets mixed up and can be refrigerated for up to 5 days before shaping a baking. I think I read somewhere that having it sit for a long period neutralizes some/many of the phytates. Would you know if that is correct when the dough contains no acid medium? I guess I could add whey when I mix the dough, but I wonder if that does any good in a cold fridge.
Merry Christmas to all!
Soli says
Traditions: My family is Swedish,so Jul is a pork-heavy affair. Ham, sausages of various sized, rodkol (red cabbage), cucumbers in vinegar (I am now sure that was once a lacto-fermented dish), dark breads, peppakaker, and for appetizers sill (herring), bondost (farmer’s cheese), and leverpastej (pate). The last came back last year at my request, as I wanted to try to eat liver. This was RIGHT before I received Nina Planck’s Real Food as a gift and thus started my journey into traditional foods.
The morning is simply spend drinking coffee and eating cardamon bread (I know! Bad! It’s got sugar on the top… and yeah, coffee) and relaxing, then off to see some cousins then an English style Christmas dinner with family friends.
Also, I have a question for the holidays. Codex Alimentarius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alimentarius is going to effect on 1 January. I know there are some up in arms about it, but mostly there is NO discussion whatsoever. Does anyone reading here know anything? I suspect some of those standards could have a real impact on some of the foods we love.
elaine says
what Beth said. 🙂
Merry Christmas!!
Beth says
Kelly,
Your blog posts are a blessing no matter what your posting schedule is! I just thank you for sharing all of your hard work.
Merry Christmas!
Beth
Tara says
This is my first Christmas hosting my in-laws and I’m a little nervous. Although my side of the family celebrates for the whole month of December it seems, my in-laws have only one dinner so I want to make it special. We’re having roasted beef tenderloin (not grass fed, I’m afraid), garlic smashed potatoes, tomatos stuffed with mushrooms and herbs, veggies, applesauce, and of course pie with homemade ice cream (thanks for the delicious recipe Kelly!). We did away with appitizers so we can enjoy the full meal. Peace and love to all of you!!
Elizabeth from The Nourished Life says
Shopping? Done. Wrapping? Not even close. 🙂 I guess I need to go work on that…
Our kids are little, so we are just beginning to explore Christmas traditions with them. So far we have going to a local garden that has a beautiful Christmas lights display that you can walk through. This is the first year we’ve gone and the kids were enthralled – so enthralled they didn’t even want the free hot chocolate and cookies they were giving out. :p We also like to go out for ice cream (a rare treat) and drive around the neighborhoods looking at lights.
We just had made crab legs with butter last night, Kelly, and it was divine! I used to have a distaste for seafood but I’m finally coming around, especially knowing how healthy it is! Of course, being free to smother it in grass-fed butter makes it even better. 🙂
Local Nourishment says
This is our first Real Food Christmas, so all our old traditions are junk-food related. Time to make new traditions, right? 😀 I have bacon jam to spread on homemade muffins Christmas morning, Jenny’s recipe for Potted Cheese with Bacon for our Christmas Eve snack by the fire, some freshly juiced pomegranate kefir brewing (also in fancy wine glasses) and a steaming bowl of soup from local winter roots planned for Christmas lunch. My mom has asked for jars of soup for days when she isn’t feeling well enough to cook, so my kitchen has been hummin’ the last few days. I love winter for so many reasons, but food is a big one!!