Oh tiny tree ... I shall name you... Tim

There are certain advantages to growing up in the country as opposed to the city. We always had a real tree in the living room for christmas. My dad would split wood for fires in the fireplace. My mom who, as I've mentioned before, is amazing and would do massive amounts of baking. Enough pfeffernusse cookies to feed an army, rumballs that would probably get you into trouble if you were driving later, and amazing gingerbread houses with stained glass candy windows and broken after eight chocolates for shingles with the filling oozing out to look like icecicles. And this is before she'd make Christmas dinner pretty much single handed.

 I really want to carry on as many of my families holiday traditions as I can but I'm also coming to terms with the limitations of our one bedroom apartment. So sadly our tree is fake and about three feet tall but it is chock-a-block with my and my husbands ornaments. I also  intend to fully test the capacity of our tiny little galley kitchen and bake a truly epic number of cookies to give out as presents this year. So now that it's finally snowed I can really start getting into the holiday spirit.

Getting older is mandatory. Growing up is optional

Growing up I was often told that I was very mature for my age, to the point that I was once mistaken for being a freshman in collage when I was eleven. Now that I’m in my thirties, popular culture says that I should regret not embracing the magic of childhood and start denying my age. As far as telling people my age goes I’ve always preferred to defy rather than deny the number of years under my belt.  As for the loss of the magic of child hood… Who says I lost it? Being an adult means getting to do all the things kids aren’t allowed to do as well as what they can.  So with that in mind I’d love to go with my husband to Disneyland before I’m thirty five.

Because if Darth Vader can have a blast than so can we.

Travel Teabox

In spite of the fact that tea is gaining in popularity it's still very rare to find a restaurant with a descent selection of anything but generic tea bags that I could easily find at the grocery store. My husband,obviously sick of my sighs of disappointment after seeing lacklustre options when it came to an after dinner cuppa told me I should just start bringing my own tea to restaurants and just ordering pots of hot water instead.

Thus the travel tea box. I decorated an old jewellery box with layers of cut out and painted card-stock and ended up with a very serviceable container for several samples of my favorite loose-leaf teas.

Brew Me!

Brewed beverages are finicky things. Water temperature can drastically change the flavor of teas, tisanes and coffee. My kettle is a standard, push button for boiled water, type that I’ve had since my college days and I do try to take proper brewing temperatures into account but to be honest I mostly rely on rough guesstimation.

I’ve finally found a kettle that takes water temperature into account.  The Breville Variable Temperature Kettle. Sweet monkey lords, Want! 

Masks

My husband and I wanted some masks for Halloween this year and since we're on a budget I offered to make them. So we hit up our local craft store for supplies. However all the mask bases that we looked at were ill-fitting cheap plastic. Since I have a tackle box of acrylic paint and a big bag full of fabric I opted to create personalized masks instead. 

I learned a great many things about mask making, mainly involving the fact that ordinary fabric doesn't hold it's shape very well no matter how many layers of acrylic paint you layer on top of it. Next time I'll use leather. Still the masks didn't turn out too badly for my first attempt. I'd love to make more... with the proper materials.

Apple Butter

My mom is an amazing cook. She taught me a lot about food and I still have a lot more to learn. It’s thanks to her that I’ve got a very broad pallet and a willingness to try new things. I also have the understanding that, sometimes, good food takes time. This is probably why I spent six hours yesterday making apple butter.
Growing up my mom would make special things at different times of the year. Handmade chocolate covered marshmallow Easter eggs for Easter and the most amazing gingerbread houses I’ve ever seen outside a professional patisserie for Christmas... the list goes on. Like I said, my mom is amazing. 
Now that I have a place and a husband (taste tester) of my own I’m starting to try and make this stuff myself. I decided sometime this summer that I was going to make apple butter in the fall once apples had gone on sale and I wouldn’t turn our little apartment into an oven by making it. I also wanted to wait until I had pumpkin spice chai tea again to add to the flavor. 
So yesterday We bought a big bag of apples and I set to work. It took a lot longer for me to make than it normally would since I was using a crock pot to slow cook everything and I don’t have a food mill so I had to render everything down with a mortar and a fine mesh sieve. But thankfully my patience paid off. I now have enough apple butter for further kitchen experiments as well as on toast. I have plans for a spice cake while my husband wants to try it in a barbecue sauce. 
Let the deliciousness begin.


Recipe
4Lb of cooking apples (Granny Smiths are good. I used Gala. I'd love to use a mix of Pink Lady and Honey Crisp)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 cups unsweetened apple sauce (Unsweetened apple juice works well too)
2-4 cups brown sugar loose ( the amount of sugar varies to your taste I only used 2 cups)
Cinnamon, nutmeg and ground cloves to taste (I was going by the measurement of the 'Some' here)
1 large tea ball of Pumpkin Spice Chai (Entirely optional but I found it added a really beautiful note of flavour)


Cube whole apples (Skins, cores and all) and place in a crock-pot. Add spices, sugar, vinegar and apple sauce or juice, cover and cook on high for about two hours stirring occasionaly until apples are soft. 
Render your apple butter down in a food mill and return it to the crock-pot along with the tea ball and continue cooking uncovered, stirring frequently, until it reaches the proper consistency. A small bit spooned onto a chilled (in the freezer) plate will be thick, not runny.
Pour apple butter into hot sterilized jars and seal. Makes roughly 3 pints
Enjoy

Two Years

You are my

FAVOURITE

person in the 

whole world

and that includes the imaginary ones.

Introductions

My name is Theresa and I am a nut, an almond to be precise.

I love animation and film, drawing, drinking tea, baking, writing, watching documentaries and reading about ancient civilizations. As a perpetual student I believe there is always more to learn and I take great joy in both the discovery and the sharing of new experiences.

I have an amazing husband, an evil cat and enough tea to ride out a zombie apocalypse.