Star of Christmas

My baking sheets have seen a lot of action these past six weeks, very likely as much as in the previous 10 and a half months.  I've reacquainted myself with the location of most of my cooking apparatus, with the exception of the still long-lost coffee grinder.

Like cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, the flavor of licorice is inextricably tied to Christmas for me. This is the time of year my mother indulged her love of licorice allsorts, an affection I believe she shared with her father and passed along to me.  I'm not a fan of bags of licorice, knowing that I'll be the only one consuming it.  Oh, I can do it ... but its better if I don't.

In conversation with Cécile the other day, I mentioned that I'd like to try my hand at making some sort of licorice cookies since cookies had kinda been 'my thing' this year.  She had some fresh star of anise that she dug out of her spice drawer ... and so, here we are.

The recipe for Star of Anise cookies comes from The Messy Witchen and I think I have to agree with her when she says "yummy."  They actually looked so good that I didn't mind making the ground star of anise or caster sugar.  What I did mind was that the recipe was in metric grams that I needed to convert to Canadian cups.  The kitchen scale that normally sees use for diet measures - and otherwise sits forgotten in a dark cupboard recess - came in very handy today.

The end result?  These cookies were worth the extra fuss.  I dyed them blue and added the white sprinkles for a snowball effect.  Blue food may look strange, but it's delicious.  I can't wait to share them with my friends.

It's Christmas Eve .. that means we're about to sit down to the annual showing of Alastair Sim in "A Christmas Carol."

Have a great festive meal everyone!

My buddy Chuck

I find Chuck Norris jokes hugely funny.  I can't help it.  They make me giggle. They probably make him giggle.

My friend Eric posted this today and I just had to share it with you .. in case.

In the comments below the youtube video .. you can find this:

• The men on the top of Chuck's head were actually skydivers who got pulled in by Chuck's gravitational force.

• The planes were also unmanned. Chuck piloted both planes's takeoff and flight.

• Who needs cruise control or autopilot when you have Chuck Control?

I am soooo amused.  Merry Christmas ..or Merry Chuckmas .. whichever!

Christmas napkin craft ...

I just had to go and ask Bruce for Christmas napkins for our dinner.

A snowgnome in a snowstorm

Creative genius strikes again!

Blowing the Wings off Christmas

Bruce sent this to me a few days ago, but I just opened it. I'm not one to get overly emotional .. unless we're talking about kittens, then all bets are off ... but this .. I found myself crying before it was over.  Crying in a good way.

Apparently, Santa dress in purple.  Who knew?

Gary the Cylon

Those of you who remember the first Battlestar Galactica might find this amusing.  Bruce and I watched every episode.

Slow down and smell the peppermint

This is how my day started ... Bruce and I made refrigerator cookies yesterday, rolled out the dough (flour everywhere, oh my!) and got these pinwheels ready for morning baking.  The green are peppermint flavor and the red are cherry pinwheels.

These will go into gifts for those people we see all year who do nice things for us .. chiropractor, my stylist, our dental office.  And of course some for friends :)

Snow Day!

We got snow!

I took the picture so I could mock my Alberta relatives and friends, because .. hey, I'm that kinda girl.  This is how snow is best enjoyed ... in wee little bits.  Bruce wore sandals to clean the driveway!  He bought a new snow shovel and just had to try it out. Ian, Liz... we miss you on days like this.  We know you and Bruce would have raced to strap on those snow sandals to clean the walk before the other got out of bed.

I shit you not, one of the school districts up-island an hour or less called a 'snow day.' No wonder the people who grew up here love the snow.  Come to think of it, I might have a greater appreciation for it as well.

This picture is of the pyracantha outside Bruce's office.  We grow it in yellow, orange and red varieties.

Gabriola Thanksgiving Artwalk

Thought I'd share a few pictures with you of our trek around Galiano Island.  I've already shared our experience with Bruce's allergies, but notwithstanding, we had a great time!

This piece was on display .. not for sale ... at one of the artist's studios.

We grabbed a coffee first thing when we landed on the island .. this was the first work of  art
that Bruce and Richard enjoyed.  It was in the parking lot beside the coffee shop.
You can see why boys fall in love with chrome on their vehicles.

The Dorothy, viewed from the wee loft in the workshop.  To the right, you can see the original
painting of the artcard I purchased, below.

 The Dorothy is Canada's oldest sailboat and she's being loving restored in the workshop of Art Grove. To see the full story and perhaps contribute to the documentary being shot during the restoration process, you can head over to dorothysails.com.  Under the stern of the boat was an area where a young Gabriolan entrepreneur was selling taste samples of his island-crafted beer and brewing up some return business.  Richard tried a porter and while I stuck with a more traditional amber.

I loved the bright orange on this boat and the simple style of the painting.

Céc was looking for a purse that she'd seen at another fair.   None of these came home with us
but the artist was generous in letting me take a picture of the colorful display.

Outside the studio of an artist whose work was done with a shopvac (I kid you not),
we ran into a delightful garden with a variety of little outdoor rooms

Lunch at Drumbeg Provincial Park.  Cécile packed a picnic!
At least, I think its Drumbeg .. could be Sandwell for all I know.  Have I mentioned I get lost
when someone else navigates?

Loved the front of this old van almost as much as the pontiac at the top.
Seems to me this old van could tell stories.  I'm still not sure what color it really is.

There's something about boobs that make men go silly.
These two are about to burst into a 12-year-old giggle fit.

Henri, Part Deux

For those of you who may not have seen this .. and for those who have, but still enjoy it, I give you Henri. Enjoy!
 

Geo-caching with Richard

One Sunday afternoon in October, after the morning outrigger paddle, Richard was looking for something to do.  I'm sure that man never sits still for more than five minutes, unless he's got a glass of wine in his hand.  In that case, he's all about the relaxation.  He doesn't do things by half measures.

Richard decided geo-caching would be fun because, like most geo-cachers that I've talked to (admittedly, not many .. decidedly less than oodles, but more than one and possibly more than two) they are keen on finding lost trinkets to the point of craziness.  

Richard finds the first cache.  Although it appears that
we're in the middle of a rough patch, we are at
the edge of a conservation area.

He knows there's a geocache in my neighborhood and enlists my willing cooperation by telling me its fairly close.  We can go for a walk .. its a beautiful fall day .. the kind that make you want to enjoy crisp air, the smell of pine needles crushed underfoot and maybe even the sight of horses - safely across a fence where you don't actually have to worry about horse pies, which might be an even bigger blight on the landscape, and therefore more dangerous, than cowpies.

So I grab my camera, my shoes and a determination to make it up Rutherford Hill before I collapse from exhaustion.  Don't laugh .. that hill is biiiiig.  Up at the top of Rutherford Hill is a park where there's a housing development with another in the works, which as you might image, is a bit of a contentious issue in the tree-hugging society where we find ourselves living.  Part of Linley Point is a designated conservation zone ... boggy marsh area .. that is home to some sort of birds and a whole lot of thistle.  

The pond at Linley Point

From our first geocache, we headed off to find the second, which was at the left end of this tiny lake.  I'm not sure if this is Cottle Lake or if this is a pond designed by the developers, in which case .. good job!  The mallards are certainly enjoying it.

Here is where the citified trail ends abruptly at a someone loosey-goosey planned crosswalk which at the moment crosses nothing except hardpacked dirt and scrubby grass.  Here's where shit gets real.  Richard breaks out the gps and we head out into the unknown.  Well .. our unknown.

The extremely dry summer is telling on this cedar we encountered alongside the

dirt trail. At the time, we wondered what would cause the phenomenon we 

were seeing.  I opined that this was likely a natural process, but as it turns out, 

the lack of rainfall has had a considerable impact on all cedars, not just

the ones in my backyard hedge.  Ha!  Good old CBC Radio to the rescue again.

Arms draped in rich green velvet reach out to forest dance partners, swaying
to the rhythms provided by capricious air sprites

By this time, the afternoon was wearing and yet we were generally within a decent range of another geocache, so we'd go tramping off to find that one too.  My feet began singing their own song .. a sort of muddled up blues number that started out just with a few basic pieces.  Later on, a horn section was added and when I didn't immediately stop and put my feet up, being many many many MANY yards away from my own house, they pulled out wailing steel guitars and other assorted stringed instruments to add to the cacophony going on in my shoes.  

Can you see a path here?  Yea, me either!

Although my sense of direction totally failed me ... Richard's gps was proof positive I was dead wrong when was saying that "this" direction was the right way to go home ... I did recognize this shed from a walk that Bev and I had taken a couple of years previous.  My feet started to get a bit happier until they remembered that we'd been driving that day.  Still, it's at the top of Rutherford somewhere .. damned if I could find it again except by accident.  We plunged off through another set of trees and eventually found the road that wound down through the trees to Bradbury Road.

I learned two things that day.  Richard doesn't mean it when he says "one hour," and despite that, he's a good-hearted colossus and I'll be making that trek with him again.