A Time of Sacred Leisure ~ Jen

Did you know that the four weeks of Advent were originally known as the “little Lent”? And that the season was marked in the same ways: prayer, fasting and preparation? It was a joyful time, but quietly joyful. No parties, no feasts, no overindulgence. The Christmas tree wasn’t even decorated until December 24.

And let me introduce you to this little gem: Sacred Leisure—“According to an ancient (and practical) tradition, by Christmas Eve the house is to be thoroughly cleaned, all tasks finished or removed from sight, all borrowed items returned, and no task allowed to be begun that cannot be finished by nightfall” (www.holytrinitygerman.org)

Friends, Sacred Leisure is God sanctioned quiet time.

Why did we ever give that up for what we have now? A holiday season that starts October 1 and marches on through the New Year, fueled by cleverly manufactured stress and anxiety. Here’s what I have already noticed this year: if you ain’t got Elf on the shelf, you ain’t got Christmas. At $24 a pop, that’s pretty brilliant marketing.

It aims right at the desire of lots of moms to “make” perfect Christmas memories for their kids. So we don’t go to Lowe’s and buy a tree. We drive everyone an hour down the highway to cut one down. We don’t take pictures with the Santa at the neighborhood party. We dress everyone up in matching sweaters and pay way too much money for the same picture at the mall. We haul our kids to every single Christmas parade in a 20 mile radius, book into every single Santa breakfast and accept invitations to an endless number of cocktail parties, gift exchanges, cookie parties and Secret Santa extravaganzas. And we Facebook and Pin it all to keep up with our other mom friends who are furiously Facebooking and Pinning their own made-up perfect Christmas memories.

What in the world are we doing?

Christmas has gotten loud. Bright. Expensive. But it’s not holy. I know I am not the only Christian mama who wants to turn the children’s faces away from the man in the red suit and towards the humble manger. And I know I am not the only mama who’s ready to throw in the towel on the Christmas mompetition.

A few years ago, Shea and I decided to make a change. We need our kids to understand what this season is really about. I’m sharing how we do it, not to increase the mompetition or make anyone feel like they are doing it “wrong”. But sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to get off the merry-go-round. So take it or leave it, for what it’s worth.

First, we under-schedule December, which means we don’t commit to much. If we wake up and decide we want to spend the day at Disneyland or ice skating in Old Town, then off we go. But we aren’t obligated to be many places.

Then I finish shopping before Advent begins. This year I finished before the Thanksgiving week sale juggernaut. I still got everything on sale. Shopping is fairly easy for us. The kids pick two presents from us and one from Santa. Only the grandkids and the grandparents get gifts, so the list is fairly small and has a dollar amount attached to it. Mostly. Sometimes grandmothers and great aunties are hard to control.

We have an Advent calendar. A real one, not those Santa countdowns they sell in the stores that have nothing to do with Advent. We have a wreath that lives on the dining room table for the season. Every Sunday we sit down to a small but formal meal with a group of friends and the Advent candles. We have a scripture reading, say a blessing and sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”.

As we get closer to Christmas, we focus on the giving. We shop together for our Giving Tree family. I take the older ones out alone so they can purchase gifts for their siblings with their allowance money. And the week before Christmas, we clean out our stuff, making three piles: trash, recycle, donate.

In between these things, we bake and make home-made gifts for our friends and listen to Christmas music and drink hot chocolate. We get our tree from Lowe’s. We do a Santa picture, but on a whim, and in casual clothes. We already did it this year, for free at Disneyland.

This will be our fourth year of really focusing on Advent and these years have been some of the most calm, reflective, loving celebrations in our home. I’ll be honest, the first year I felt like maybe I was missing something as I watched our neighbors and friends Facebook about performances and cocktail parties and parades and Santa breakfasts. That’s because we’ve been programmed to believe that we have to go-go-go from Halloween to January 1.

But we don’t. The only thing we have to do is prepare our hearts and gather round the candles to wait for God to send the Light into the world.

Prayerful quiet. Joyful anticipation. Sacred Leisure.

Advent resources:

About Advent: http://www.holytrinitygerman.org/adventcustoms.html

Manger Advent Calendar: http://www.holydepot.com/kurt-adler-wooden-nativity-advent-calendar-with-24-magnetic-figures/

Advent wreaths: http://www.catholiccompany.com/traditional-holly-berry-wreath-12-p3001243/

Advent prayers: http://www.churchyear.net/adventwreath.html

Suzanne’s Spicy Pumpkin Pie* ~ Jen

We hope that you are feeling calm and ready for tomorrow. We got this. We all got this.

Happy Thanksgiving from our families to yours. We are so thankful to count you among our many graces!

*Courtesy of www.simplyrecipes.com

A few years after I conquered cranberry sauce, I decided to take on pumpkin pie. “How hard could it be?” I asked my cousin over a bottle of wine the night before Thanksgiving. Are you sensing the theme here?

My first attempt was to buy the giant can of Libby’s Pumpkin Pie Mix and a Pepperidge Farms frozen pie crust. I took it to my mom’s house and proudly called it homemade. The truth is that it was bland.

Then I found a recipe that called for canned pumpkin. I added the spices. That was the year I met and got engaged to the World’s Best Pie Crust Maker, so no frozen crust needed. I also decided to make whipped cream myself. We took it to my mom’s and called it “really homemade”. It was not bland. Everyone loved it.

But then I read that most of what’s in those cans of pumpkin is not really pumpkin as we think of it. In fact, Libby, the world’s leading producer of canned pumpkin, uses a variant of a Dickinson pumpkin called a Libby Select. It’s a GMO.

The jury is still fighting with itself on GMOs, but just to be safe, last year I decided to make a pumpkin pie from scratch starting with the dang pumpkin because (say it with me) “How hard can it be?”

Not hard. All you have to do is buy a pumpkin, cut it in half, pull out the seeds and roast it in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes or until the skins are soft. Let it cool, scrap the pulp into your food processor or blender and hit puree. One medium sized pumpkin will give you at least four cups of puree, which is enough to make 2 pies, plus Vitamins A, C, K and E, good carbs and healthy fiber, magnesium, potassium and iron. And antioxidants, those beloved cancer fighters.

Plus, the pulp freezes beautifully (Lesley, that one’s for you!).

Now I make my pies from scratch. I use Suzanne’s recipe because it makes a spicy, tasty pie.

Suzanne’s Old fashioned Pumpkin Pie

2 cups of pumpkin puree

1 ½ cups heavy cream or one 12 oz can of evaporated milk

½ cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

½ teaspoon salt

2 eggs plus the yoke of a third egg

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of ground ginger

¼ teaspoon of ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon of ground cloves

¼ teaspoon of ground cardamom

½ teaspoon lemon zest

1 good crust

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Mix sugars, salt, spices and lemon zest in a large bowl. Beat the eggs and add to the bowl. Stir in pumpkin. Stir in cream. Whisk together until well incorporated.

Pour pie into shell and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees. Bake 40-50 minutes or until a knife inserted in middle comes out clean.

Cool on rack for two hours.

Whipped cream: using the whisk on a stand mixer, or a handheld mixer, blend one cup heavy cream, 1-2 tablespoons sugar and 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla until light and fluffy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

PS: Nine years ago today, I made the best decision of my life and married Shea. It was Thanksgiving weekend, it was raining AND it was the Notre Dame-USC game. Folks showed up anyway. It was awesome. Love you honey! Thank you for this wonderful life!

Swiss Beans ~ Dana

I just had to make this dish early to take photos. And yes, that is cajun-spiced chicken, pan frying in butter. Don’t be mad.

My very best memories of Thanksgiving are from my childhood, when nearly all of my family from my mother’s side would gather at the home of Nana, my great-grandmother who lived to the ripe old age of 105. On any given Thanksgiving, we had anywhere from 25 to 40 people gathered together, the men watching football on the small television on the covered porch, the women hovering near the kitchen, the children playing in the yard, running through the neighborhood. It was always a pot luck, and each family brought the same dish every year. My great-aunt Mazie, whom I named my daughter after, always brought the dish I will share with you today: Swiss Beans.

A few words about this recipe: 1.) If you’re cooking for a large number of people, you’ll have to double, triple, or quadruple this recipe. I doubled it to take the pictures for this blog and it would probably serve 6 if you have lots of other sides. The dish in the picture is a round 2 quart casserole. 2.) This is an older recipe so the proportions are a bit off. It was written when canned vegetables were 17 oz. Today, they are 14.5 oz. If you do double or triple, maybe add another half-can or can of green beans. 3.) I’ve also made this in the crockpot. It frees up space in the oven, and then stays warm throughout the meal, ready when you are for seconds.

If you decide to try this recipe, either for Thanksgiving, or maybe just a Monday night, I really hope you enjoy it. It’s really easy to make and it’s nostalgic for me, bringing me back to a time surrounded by love and family. Happy Thanksgiving!

Swiss Beans

1 17oz can French-Style Green Beans

2 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. onion powder

1/8 tsp. pepper

1 cup sour cream

1/4 lb swiss cheese, grated

Directions:

In a small saucepan, heat green beans in their liquid. In a separate sauce pan, melt butter. Once butter is melted stir in flour until thoroughly mixed, and add seasonings. Gradually add sour cream and cook, stirring until thick. Drain beans and add to mixture. Pour into casserole dish (or Crockpot), sprinkle cheese over top and either place under broiler for 5 minutes, or cover and heat on low, until cheese is melted.

Not Your Mama’s Sauce ~ Jen

Cooking while drinking = blurry pictures... — Cooking while drinking = blurry pictures…

Fires, Family, Football and Food! We love Thanksgiving here at Full of Graces.

We’re coming at you lots this week: Cranberries today, swiss beans tomorrow and spicy pumpkin pie on Wednesday.

When I decided that I could be a scratch cooking diva in the kitchen, cranberries were my first throw down.

“How hard can it be?” I asked my cousin over a bottle of wine the night before Thanksgiving, 1998.

Well, you can buy a can of cranberry sauce—or worse, that jelly stuff—that may have been fresh six months ago. Or you can buy a bag of cranberries, throw them in a pot with a cup of water and a cup of sugar and cook for ten minutes. Viola! Cranberry sauce.

That’s all it takes. To make it more exciting, I recommend you ask someone in the house if they want to taste a raw cranberry. Those shiny red berries are hard to resist. My cousin is still mad about that one.

Since then, I found two go-to cranberry sauce recipes. I make one or both every year, whether we do turkey or ham. And it turns out that cranberries are super healthy and cancer fighting. Bonus!

The first is a cranberry apricot sauce to serve as a side dish:

California Apricot Cranberry Sauce

½ cup dried apricot halves, cut into strips

¾ cup cranberry juice cocktail

1 12 oz bag fresh cranberries

2/3 cup sugar

1 tbsp minced ginger (use fresh for a strong taste, dried for a lighter taste)

Soak apricots in cranberry juice in a saucepan for ten minutes to soften. Add cranberries, sugar and ginger. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to medium and cook uncovered for ten minutes until cranberries pop and sauce thickens.

Cover and refrigerate until well-chilled, about 3 hours.

The second is an orange cranberry Dijon mustard to serve as a relish. This is unbelievable on a slice of ham or a turkey leftover sandwich:

Cranberry Mustard

12 oz bag fresh cranberries

½ cup sugar

½ cup water

½ cup orange juice

2 tsp grated orange zest

¼ cup Dijon mustard

2 tbsp unsalted butter

Place cranberries, sugar, water, orange juice and zest in saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat and then reduce heat to medium low. Cook until berries pop and sauce thickens.

Remove from heat. Stir in mustard and butter. Cool and serve.

You could even make these tonight or tomorrow and put them in the fridge. They keep!

Holiday Preview

Dana and I have had a heck of a last few weeks. Rough waters. We love the holidays, but this time of year comes with its own set of rules.

Dana may check out for the next six weeks. Or she may not. It’s her first year without her dad and as far as grieving well goes, I’d say she’s doing a bang up job. But that’s a relative statement. Grieving well means that she wakes up waist deep in memories and sadness on a daily basis. So we decided together to change her status from “Active” to “Write as Needed”. Which means that she may show up here once a week, like normal, or she may take a break. She may post on a Sunday, instead of a Friday. She may just put up pictures of things that make her smile. As needed. If you don’t mind, please keep her family in your thoughts. This first year will be the hardest.

I’ll still be running my mouth, though, because that’s how we do. If you would like to join us, if you have a guest blogger desire in your heart, let us know!

Here’s a taste of what’s coming down the pipeline:

Thanksgiving recipes! Dana and I have some doozies. No canned cranberries, pumpkin pie filling or cream of mushroom soup necessary.

Advent Ideas! Such an important time of year, and we do it BIG.

Our favorite things! We’ve each made a list of things and places that we love and are so excited to share. Alas, not Oprah style, but there’s a dream for the future.

Healthy Home Giveaway! Dana and I are putting together homemade gift baskets this year, with detergent, dryer balls and deodorant. Of course, we’re going to give one away! Maybe more than one, but I have wound so many balls in the last few days that I might coin a new medical term: dryer ball elbow.

And of course, Christmas time favorites: my great Aunt Honora’s sugar cookies with sour cream that sound strange but are so stinking good, and Dana’s Austrian Vanilla Kipferl.

Don’t forget to see Tuesday’s post for a crazy good discount on a wonderful photographer, and have a peaceful weekend!

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