Thursday's Child: Rental Cars

We wouldn't have made it to our remote Pyrenees hotel
without a rental car

Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, "Life is a journey, not a destination".  And many of our most vivid vacation memories are from travelling from one place to another.  We've journeyed in planes, trains, and automobiles, and used funiculars, ferries and our own feet. This month I'll focus on some of the interesting ways we've gone from point A to point B.

We’ve always believed that part of seeing a country means getting out of the cities, and over the years we’ve rented many a car to do just that.  Our first rental experience was before the girls were born.  Andrew and I had flown to England a year into our marriage to meet his English relatives, most of whom hadn’t been able to attend our wedding.  Andrew gamely mastered using a stick shift with his opposite hand and my role was to chant “left, left, left” every time we started the car, to remind him to stay on the left side of the road.  Our biggest challenge on that trip, however, were the one-lane roads in Wales, where we competed with local sheep for supremacy of the street.

As much as I love to travel, I am stunningly poor at reading maps.  Over the years, Andrew has developed saintlike patience in interpreting my cryptic directions.  It doesn’t matter how much I peruse them before we set off.  The map always looks different in the hotel room than it does in the passenger seat.  This summer, as we headed north from Paris in our little rental car, Andrew remain unflustered as I shouted, “Oh no!  We’re on the road to Rouen!”  (This line is funny only if said out loud, in a poor French accent.)

As a result, you’d think we’d be fans of using a GPS on holidays, but our experience proved otherwise.  A few years ago we drove from Munich to Prague, and missed the correct entrance to the autobahn.  Although we quickly recovered and found the next entrance, the GPS spent the rest of our trip telling us to drive back to Munich and take the correct turnoff.  Three hours later, she was still barking at us – in German – to drive all the way back and do it correctly.  We felt like four-year-olds with our hands in the cookie jar.

We’ve recovered from all our rental car experiences, but the most eloquent one came courtesy of someone else.  Upon leaving Mont St. Michel in France this summer, we were reminded of the importance of always reading road signs, particularly when they refer to changing tides:

Mont St Michel parking lot, high tide

Prints in the Sand

My husband’s day job is in marketing, but his true love is music.  Andrew has earned his Associateship in Music in piano performance, and still loves to relax making music.

A few days before Christmas, he went into a recording studio to make some of his music into a CD.  Our talented friend Laura McAlpine accompanied him on vocals.  We know Laura from the time they played together in the church rock band at Islington United.  She has a glorious voice, and we have a tremendous amount of respect for her talent – and her friendship.

Together they recorded three original compositions and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.  I think the finished results are so amazing that I wanted to share them with you.  The most polished piece in the collection is “Prints in the Sand”, based on the well-known poem “Footprints in the Sand”.  Andrew and Laura played this many times in the past and everything just clicked in the studio.  I think this version sounds absolutely perfect!  You can listen to it here.

But the song I’m proudest of is “Bouquet”.  That’s because my 16-year-old daughter wrote the lyrics for it!  At Andrew’s request, she gave him lyrics for his birthday gift, and he composed the music to go with it. I may be slightly biased, but I think it’s sensational!  Here’s the link.

Christmas Traditions

One of the best parts of the holidays is spending time with family and friends.  And between Christmas and New Years', we were lucky to spend a couple of days at the cottage of our friends, the Jay family.

After living in China for three years, the Jays were back in Cincinnati for all of twelve months before moving to Switzerland.  With all this traveling, you’d think we’d lose touch with each other.  But we see them at least three times a year, on their visits to Canada in the summer and at Christmas.  And each time, our girls and theirs pick up their friendship as if they’d never been apart.

This trip was full of traditions, as we went tobogganing, sang Christmas carols and made stone soup over a campfire.  And we enjoyed our first annual tournament of Tailgate Toss – a tournament won by Andrew and me!  This victory owed much more to Andrew’s good hand-eye coordination than my, uh, good sportsmanship.

Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars were the perfect squares to take along to the Jays’.  There’s nothing pretentious about them; they’re full of great things like chocolate and peanuts with an oatmeal base.  They were as fun to eat as they were to bake.

This recipe comes courtesy of Dorie Greenspan’s wonderful cookbook, Baking: From my home to yours.  A wonderful Christmas was made even better because my sister bought me my very own copy. Thanks, Gwen!

Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars

(from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From my home to yours)

For the oatmeal layer

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground cinnamon

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

3 cups old-fashioned oats (not instant)

1 cup salted peanuts, coarsely chopped

For the chocolate layer

1-14 oz can sweetened condensed milk

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

2 Tbsp unsalted butter

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 cup raisins (I didn’t use these, due to family preferences)

¾ cup coarsely chopped peanuts, preferably salted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

To make the oatmeal layer:

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  In a separate bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until it is soft and creamy.  Add the brown sugar and beat for 2 minutes, then add the eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after each egg is added.  Beat in the vanilla. The mixture should be light and fluffy.  Add the dry ingredients and stir to mix, then stir in the oats and chopped peanuts.

Divide the mixture into two bowls, setting aside 1 ½ to 2 cups of it until later.  Turn the remaining dough into the buttered pan, evenly pressing it down.  Set aside while you prepare the next layer.

To make the chocolate layer:

Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Put the condensed milk, chocolate chips, butter and salt in the bowl and stir occasionally until the milk is warm and the chocolate and butter are melted.  Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the vanilla and peanuts (and raisins, if you’re using them).

Pour the warm chocolate over the oatmeal crust, then scatter the remaining oatmeal mixture over the top.  Don’t try to spread it, and don’t worry about getting the topping even.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.  Transfer the baking pan to a rack and cool for about two hours.

Run a blunt knife between the edges of the cake and the pan, and carefully turn it out onto a rack.  Turn right side up and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before cutting.  Cut into 32 rectangles and serve.

Thursday's Child: The Night Market in Beijing

This month I’ve written about markets around the world.  You’ve seen how to buy saffron in Marrakech, peppers in Ljubljana, flowers in France and wooden toys in the German Christmas markets.  But my blog wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t tell you how to buy centipedes in Beijing.

Edible centipedes.

The night market in Beijing is like no other market I’ve visited.  It opens late in the afternoon and runs through the evening, selling delicacies to locals and tourists.  Wares range from the mundane (candy, tofu, meat) to the unusual (starfish, anyone?).

I think I’ve discovered the outer limits of my family’s taste habits.  None of us sampled the snake, bought the beetles or scarfed down the silkworm.  My youngest daughter, the one who averts her head when she walks by a butcher shop, had to be guided through most of the market with her eyes closed.  I’m not sure if that helped, though, as the pungent aroma was almost as overwhelming as the sights of the market.

Don’t get me wrong – I love fully experiencing the places we visit.  Even if (especially if!) we’d never see anything like it at home.  But if you are what you eat, it’s a good thing we laid off those centipedes.

Baking for Santa

I finally have a working oven, as of 5:00 pm on the 23^rd.  And that means I got to bake cookies for Santa in time for Christmas!

So where are the photos?  Well, in the chaos inspired by our kitchen reno, the cable for my camera has gone missing.  And as much as I love my readers, I’m not willing to brave Boxing Day madness to buy a new one.  You’ll see a photo of these squares on our cute Santa plate as soon as the crowds dissipate, or the old cable turns up.  (Note:  I found my cable, so now you can see the squares, and the new oven!)

In the meantime, let me tell you about Hello Dollies.  Probably every one of you has this recipe in some form. These squares are so easy that even people who never bake can master them.  I remember making Hello Dollies in university for a bunch of grateful friends – and those were the days when spaghetti and tomato sauce from a tin were haute cuisine.  I’m sure my friends were surprised as well as grateful.

It was the ease of these squares that made them a perfect choice for Christmas Eve baking.  I’m still getting used to my new oven, so I needed a recipe that wasn’t going to fail if I didn’t get the oven temperature or timing quite right.  And on a busy day before Christmas, it had to be as quick as possible.

New oven, decoratively offset by (temporary) plywood counters

It seems like this recipe has been around forever, but my mom said she first got it about forty years ago from my Grandma Bustin.  In this variation, I used chocolate crumbs rather than graham wafer crumbs.  I left out the pecans because my kids aren’t big on nuts, and they tell me Santa isn’t either.   So I upped the amount of the other add-ons and they were terrific.

Why are they called Hello Dollies?  Maybe there’s a clue in the song lyrics.  They’re lookin’ swell, and when you take your first bite you’ll feel the room swayin’.   Thanks to Grandma Bustin for passing along a recipe that still tastes great, forty years later!

Hello Dollies

(adapted from Grandma Bustin’s recipe)

½ cup butter, melted

1 ¾ cups oreo cookie crumbs

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup butterscotch chips

1 cup coconut

1 cup chopped pecans

1-15 oz tin sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line the bottom of a 9” x 13” pan with parchment paper.  Mix melted butter and crumbs, and pat in the bottom of the pan.  Pour the other ingredients on top in order, finishing with the condensed milk.  Bake for 25 – 30 minutes.

Thursday's Child: European Christmas markets

I’ve been writing this month about some of the beautiful markets I’ve been fortunate to visit around the world.  This week, it’s wishful thinking: I’m posting about the wonderful Christmas markets in Europe, one of which I’d love to visit someday.  The Christmas markets appeal to me in the same way that I love attending a carol-filled church service, or building a snowman on the front lawn – a beautiful reminder of a simpler time.

Dresden Christmas market, photo courtesy of Tom Smith travel

How could anyone pass up the Christmas market in Dresden, Germany, which boasts a four-ton fruitcake?  I like fruitcake, but even by my standards that's a lot.  The cake is carried through town by a procession of pastry chefs before being brought to the central market to be divvied up and sold.  The Dresden market also features the world's largest nutcracker and a host of carved wooden toys and puppets.  This festival has been running continuously since 1434, making it the oldest in the world.

Munich Christmas market, photo courtesy of Marriott,
Renaissance Munich hotel

Munich has one of the most famous German markets.  Imagine a hundred-foot tall tree, decorated and standing in the middle of the Marienplatz, the main city square.  A brass band and carolers entertain the crowd nightly from the town hall at the front of the square.  And craft markets abound, featuring the most beautiful of German handiwork.

Christmas at Tivoli Gardens, photo courtesy of Tunliweb

The German markets are the most traditional, but could anything be more magical than Christmastime at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens?  As at most of the markets, native crafts are sold in small booths.  But Tivoli also offers a lovely outdoor skating rink and a toboggan run for the young, and mulled wine for the adults.  Stunning ice sculptures in holiday themes adorn the park for everyone to enjoy.

This is my last post before Christmas.  I’d like to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season, whether you spend it far from home or in your own living room.  May you be blessed with the peace, joy and love that come with the true meaning of Christmas.

Blogger Recognition

Today’s post is meant to thank the wonderful bloggers who have recognized me, linked to me or gifted me!

As someone who doesn’t normally win anything, I’ve been delighted to have won two blog giveaways in the past month. First, Angela Ackerman, of the terrific writing blog The Bookshelf Muse, co-sponsored a contest with several other bloggers and I was lucky enough to win three signed books by author Tina Ferraro.  If you’re a writer, don’t miss The Bookshelf Muse.  Angela regularly posts informative and unique tips about writing – not an easy thing to do.   I'm looking forward to reading Tina's books over the holidays!

And on Monday, I found out that I’d won a second giveaway, this one from Jess at Falling Leaflets.  Jess is incredibly tuned into the writers’ blogging community, and generously shares this information with her readers.  Her links on the right-hand side of her blog include almost everything you’d need to know to write a manuscript.  Honing your craft, how to write a memorable character, building tension – it’s all there.

Thanks to Angela, Tina and Jess for their generosity!

I’d also like to thank Emma, of the adorable Sunflower Days, for giving me The Versatile Blogger award.  One of the best parts of blogging is the friends I’ve made from all around the world.  Emma lives in Australia, and I love reading about her changing seasons which are the opposite of mine.  She’s new to blogging, but her posts are always cheerful and informative.  And she takes the loveliest photographs.  Check her out!

Finally, for those of you who remember my Orange Chocolate birthday cake, I’m thrilled to say that it was reprinted on the Florida Citrus Growers website. Thanks to Rebecca of Chow and Chatter for submitting the recipe, and to Ina Garten who inspired it!