Stained-glass cookies

Stained-glass cookies are a Christmastime treat that I recall having as a child but hadn't reattempted until recently. They are a great way to use up the last of those Halloween candies, especially leftover lollipops.


Stained-glass cookies
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups flour
crushed candies, sorted by flavor/color

Cream butter and sugar; beat in egg until mixed, then vanilla and salt. Add flour until blended. Divide the dough in half, flatten each into a disk and cover in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight or place in freezer for about 20 minutes.

Remove dough. let warm slightly, and roll to 1/4 inch thickness.

Preheat oven to 375. Cover baking sheet with foil and coat with cooking spray. Cut out cookies with larger cookie cutters, then with smaller cutters (or a clean top to a soda bottle) cut shapes within each.

Place on cookie sheet and sprinkle candies inside.

You will want to make sure the candies all are inside the centers, or they will melt into the cookie. (Read: If you want a perfectly "unstained" cookie, this may not be the part for helpers!)

Bake 10-12 minutes. Let centers cool thoroughly before removing from the pan.

Gifts for the gardener or locavore

Looking for a gift for your local food lover or gardener? Look no further than your bookstore. There are several great ideas for your friends and family who love to enjoy homegrown or home-cooked local foods.

Cookbooks I'd recommend are chef Emeril Lagasse's Farm to Fork and Daniel Orr's FARMFood. Both put a priority on locally grown produce, evident in the variety of ingredients used. These aren't your boring iceberg and romaine lettuce salads here - think watermelon, feta and arugula, or a corn, tomato and lobster combination.

Gardeners will drool over the new book, Heirloom Life Gardener, by Baker's Creek's owners, Jere and Emile Garrett. You know them by the tome they produce each winter, filled with oversized photos with a rainbow of produce. My bright husband pre-ordered this gift, so it arrived just days before my birthday. He's definitely on my nice list. This doesn't disappoint.

A bit more academic in tone but great reads, Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth or Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman are great ways for gardeners who want to complete the cycle of life to better use their gardens throughout the year and save seeds from year to year.

Happy reading!

Originally published at the Green Phone Booth, 2011.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which helps support this blog.

Enough

Holiday shopping is stressful enough, but balancing a birthday in the mix can cause a bit of mommy guilt along the way. Today at the Green Phone Booth, I share my challenges in celebrating the birth of Christ and the birth of my son in the same week.

Advent season: Slowing down

Advent was a season I had never given much thought to in years past. Beyond the candles burning at Sunday masses, an evening reconcilliation service and the promise of a Nativity scene, Advent didn't really register to me.

Until I started to slow things down.

First, I cut out a lot of clutter around the holidays. Over the years, I've worked most of my Christmas shopping to where my gift buying was completed over months, not weeks or days. Instead of a mad scramble to find something that "fit" the person on Black Friday, I slowly discovered gift ideas over the seasons. Come this Thanksgiving, I really only had a gift or two left to purchase, December birthdays included.

Further slowing my life down was my husband's unemployment/underemployment the last few years. Suddenly dinners out and shows seemed like unnecessary extravagances. Would I like to see Transiberian Orchestra? Of course. And some year it may happen. Just not this one. Instead I've begun searching for Christmas activities in our community that don't necessitate a $100 outlay. Like community Christmas tree services. Or a visit to Santa. Or the free day at the holiday trains at Garfield Park. Or the Nativity show at our parish.

Putting a focus on the Christmas season has helped our family put it back in the right focus. This year, I've made an ardent effort not to schedule non-Christmasy things on our calendar. Yes, we missed Scout night at the circus, and stayed home and played games and watched Rudolph. And other than a small family dinner and treats at the daycare, my son's birthday will be celebrated with friends after the Christmas business dies down. I don't know that either will be missed.

Instead of being stressed about errands, I can focus on my family. We can bake a batch of cookie if we want. Or read Christmas stories from around the world from the library. Or bring out more Christmas decorations. Or take them to play at the park for hours on a warm day without thinking about the "I need to do" list. Or (gasp!) even focus on cleaning our house for our Christmas company.

Is it tough to make a conscious choice to slow down during the Christmas season? You bet. But trading off the calendar items, the unneccessay errands, the stressed shoppers and children, it makes it all worth it. And I hope my family is happier for it.

Ferret fun

Seventeen Daisy Girl Scouts and three ferrets. You'd think it would be the recipe for trouble.

But our first-grade Scout troop couldn't get enough of these furry little creatures at our monthly meeting last night.

As part of our journey (patch series) this year, we invited two speakers from the Ferret Rescue and Halfway House in Martinsville to share about how they care for ferrets abandoned by their owners. The group, located southwest of Indianapolis, rescues as many as 400 ferrets each year.

Personality wise, ferrets seem to have a lot in common with my 3 year old son: energetic, can't sit still, don't want to be held for long, but sometimes relishing a quiet place to hide from the crowd.

The girls were captivated by the three ferrets crawling about the room, but they absorbed many fun facts about the ferrets and their care in the process. They loved learning about how the ferret was trained to do tricks for Harry Potter, seeing how their small bodies can stretch and bend, learning how they ate bugs and other facts. I'm sure it will be on one of those meetings they will be talking about for a while -- and I apologize to any parents whose kids suddenly ask Santa for a ferret!!

This is part of a recurring series sharing ideas from the Daisy Girl Scout patch series 5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals! journey. You can read the previous installment here.