IS 9:1-6

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This post is another repeat, one I usually re-post every year. I’ve made a couple of updates to ages and gifts.

The Secret Sam was my favorite Christmas present as a child. I still have it, and I will keep it, or perhaps pass it on to a grandchild. Oh, how I was excited and hoping the year I asked for my own Secret Sam. My mother told me it was a boy’s toy, but I was never a Barbie doll girl.

That was my spy year, my year of intrepid adventures around the neighborhood. It was one of my last Christmases as a child, I think, wanting toys and dreaming of adventures. Not too many years later, perhaps even the next one, my Christmas gifts would be stereos and albums, bell bottom jeans and paisley print turtlenecks.

Perhaps that is why the memory of it is such a treasure to me.

This year my grandchildren will be blessed with the breathless anticipation of what might be under the tree Christmas morning. They will be late to bed, too excited to sleep easily, and early to rise, rushing to the living room in all the excitement and wonder a child can have.  (more…)

Time to pull out the faded and stained old handwritten recipes or notes, favorite cookbooks, and share with friends who really want to offer our best dishes to family and friends for Christmas. This time of year I especially try to remember the two women who taught me to cook, and to love cooking. My husband’s paternal grandmother, and his mother taught me with encouragement, kindness, joy and pride in the making of simple meals for big families. They taught me how to make good, nourishing meals from simple, cheap ingredients. They taught me to cook with love. I was a really slow student, but fortunately God gave me such good teachers that even I learned to cook well. Eventually.

Please share old family favorites, new discoveries, and memories, of course. I especially love it when we get recipes from different parts of the country, and our international readers. Zurich Mike, where are you? Being, as we say here in the South, of a certain age, I am steeped in old Southern recipes and cooking methods, but I have loved getting new ideas and recipes from our readers in Texas and Louisiana who do meals with boldness and heat, our coastal friends who share the best seafood recipes, our Northern friends who give us so many good stew and roast and vegetables recipes. Midwesterners just seem to do such a great job with family meals and especially winter vegetables, and no telling what you might get from out west and the West Coast, but the ideas and recipes are always wonderful. (more…)

This is a favorite old post of mine, written in 2019, about my grandson, Conner. Conner was born in 2015 with two holes in his heart. When he was less than two months old he went to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville for surgery. I wrote a post asking for prayers for Conner, and he became a Treehouse favorite. For the first several years we often got comments or emails asking how Conner was doing.

He is six now, thriving, well, mean as a snake, and autistic. He has many challenges to face, but he is a fighter with an indomitable spirit. Sometimes, okay often, that fighting spirit makes things pretty interesting with him, but he is precious and loved. We think that God gave our family very special and wonderful gifts in Conner, and Mason, his older brother who is also autistic.

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Tonight my grandchildren will be here to make Christmas cookies and treats. With my first granddaughter, we began to bake together from the time I could stand her in a chair beside me. She is nine years old now, and says she is going to have a worldwide bakery chain when she grows up. She loves to cook, and is very adventurous in her recipe choices.

Sometimes that doesn’t work out well, as with the raspberry meringues she tried to make for our Thanksgiving dinner. At this point, her enthusiasm outpaces her experience and skill, but even her failures will teach her much.

Several years ago when my youngest grandson was two, we started making gingerbread men, and he so loved his “ginger-men” that he always asked to make them when he came over, and eventually his cousins were included, and Christmas cookie night got a little out of control.

Since then I’ve been able to find ideas and recipes for holiday treats the kids can make without a lot of trouble and mess. From witches’ brooms at Halloween to pilgrim hats at Thanksgiving, we’ve been able to have tasty treats, as my littlest grandson calls them, without too much effort.

These are the two treats we will be making tonight. I hope you guys have favorite recipes to share, easy or more challenging. Some of my favorite memories of making Christmas treats with my kids involve our gingerbread houses, which were actually made with graham crackers, canned frosting, and lots of candies.

Cookie cutter brownies here.

Chocolate candy Christmas trees here.

It’s that party time of the year. Although I married into a family of really good cooks in the grand old Southern tradition, and we really can put together an out of this world meal, I love party foods too. When our kids were young we used to save up so that we could order a family Christmas present of treats from Swiss Colony. Back then they had many luscious offerings, and although they were kind of pricey for us, they were sizable enough to feed a family of five generously. Now they seem to offer tiny quantities of not so appealing stuff, so we make all our own things, or put together our own charcuterie selections.

Anyhow, my husband and I still have what I consider to be party food or snacks instead of supper a couple of times during December. I like to make cheese balls and serve with summer sausage, dips, crackers, maybe meatballs, etc. Right now we have some of the best venison smoked sausage I’ve ever had.

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