7 Simple Goals for 2023

1. Exercise consistently- I've printed out a schedule that will allow me to ease back into exercise. It is a three month schedule. I'll be happy if I can finish it in six, and that will actually be a great improvement from last year. 

2. No Facebook- I am wasting more and more of my time scrolling on Facebook. I shouldn't know anything about the royal family, but somehow, I am learning all about them. I find myself conditioned to go back to Facebook throughout my day even when I am in the midst of a good book. Something is definitely going wrong! When I'm online alot, I judge people harshly and envy them badly. So I'm taking a year's break from social media. Do I think I'll stay off Facebook entirely? No. But if I make "no Facebook" the goal, hopefully, days and days will go by without it, I can retrain my brain to focus on tasks for longer periods of time, and do other, better things (like pray) with my insomnia. 

3. Less podcasts- When smart, successful, articulate people disagree with the way I worship, homeschool, and even the way I read, I must be doing all these things wrong, right? Wrong. I'm Biblically literate, Spirit-filled, and well-informed, so I can remain confident in how God is leading me. My children are thriving. I have never suffered from anxiety, fear, or doubt until this year. As my time listening to podcasts increased, so did my anxiety, fear, and doubt. So I'm going to guard my heart and mind more carefully, and silence the voices that the enemy uses to discourage and distress me. I'm not going to give up podcasts entirely. Some are great! But I'm going to be much more selective about who I allow to speak into my life, my heart, my mind. 

4. Read 100 books- My to-be-read list reaches to infinity, so I'm going to strive to read even more this year. And with no Facebook and less podcasts, I'm bound to reach 100.  

5. Care for my people- God has given me a sphere of influence. It's small, but it's real. I want to continue making meals for my family. I have been enjoying that in a new way this year. I have some new recipe books that I really enjoy. I have been noting the date I try a new recipe at the bottom of the page. It might be a fun goal to try everything in my recipe books at least once (unless a recipe really doesn't sound great to me.) I'll make it a goal to double the names in my prayer journal, so I can pray for more people everyday. And I'll make it a goal to send a note a week (maybe with a gift or a baked good, etc.) to someone giving thanks or a word of encouragement or truth. In all these ways, I'll be caring for the people God has put in my life. 

6. Make more art- I've enjoyed drawing while we listen to Scripture in the morning. I'd like to keep this habit up and see what all I can make by the end of 2023. 

7. Memorize- I'd like to memorize more Scripture and poetry. I usually do some memorization every year, but this year, it might help me memorize more if I make it a goal to memorize a portion of something beautiful every month. 

Another Lovely Day

Adele and I made up a biscotti recipe today. We're calling it "Christmas Biscotti," since it has pistachios for green, and cranberries for red, also almonds and vanilla. We taste-tested the biscotti as we played some card games together. 

Her big sisters listened to a Broadway soundtrack, chatted about the storyline, crocheted, knitted, created clay figurines for Etsy, or put together a puzzle. 

Dwayne read a book, smoked a bunch of meat for several upcoming meals, and tried, unsuccessfully, to fix my kitchen drawer. (We have to take it to a professional for repairs.) 

Later, I made we ate a homemade soup and watched an episode of The Chosen while eating. We usually always eat at the table, so it's fun when we don't. Norah's been watching Season One of The Chosen with her sisters since coming home. She wanted to see it, since her sisters like it so much. She doesn't have time or opportunity to watch it at school. 

Then we all read silently from our various books and then aloud another big chunk of The Hobbit. 

God continues to give us some lovely holiday days together. Norah's home a few more days before she flies back to Tennessee for her second semester of her Freshman year at New College Franklin. 
 

2022 Goals- Successes and Failures

My successes this year often took a different form than I originally planned. 

My failures this year were constantly humiliating, but oddly fruitful, too, since humility isn't a bad thing for a Christian.

And I may have learned some lessons from my errors that will help me in future. 

So here's my goals for 2022 and each assessment of how I did, however painful.

1. Track my calories-

Failure. This happened some, but not consistently enough to create a habit. I found it somewhere between impractical and impossible to stop often enough to enter everything I ate in the record. Granted, when I made this a habit in the past, it produced greater accountability for what was going into my mouth, and I lost weight, naturally. I also built better and better eating habits with less unhealthy food and more nutritious food. But since this is so tedious, I'm prayerfully reconsidering this as a goal for the future. Perhaps there's another way to cultivate awareness and accountability and nurture healthier food choices. 

2. Take my vitamins- 

Success! I am in the habit of taking all my vitamins everyday at this point. It took most of the year to figure out that I needed to do this earlier in my day, usually after breakfast or lunch. That time of day works best, because if I wait any longer, I just forget. But taking vitamins is well established habit again.  

3. Do my exercises/ stretches- 

Success! I think I can safely say my plantar fasciitis is a thing of the past. I was consistent enough with my exercises and stretches early in the year that this condition finally healed. I can walk up and down the stairs alternating feet now. Believe it or not, I had to take the stairs one at time for a few years. I also learned by trial and error throughout this year to totally avoid the shoes that aggravate my feet. Those shoes just went in the trash bin or donations pile. 

4. 100 Bodypumps- 

Failure. I only did approximately one dozen Bodypump workouts in all of 2022. But I believe I have learned a lot from this particular failure. I know now that #1. I need to make my workout an appointment that I just don't miss. I kept waiting to either be in the mood to exercise or I kept waiting to finish my important work for the day beforehand. I realize now I will not be in the mood to exercise again until it's a well established habit and I'm fit enough to enjoy it again. Also, I will never be done with all my important work, because by the time the homeschool day is over now, it's time to prepare to tutor my classes or cook dinner or clean up from dinner, etc. So I just can't treat exercise like an option. It has to be a priority like anything else on my calendar. I need to do it when the time comes to do it whether or not I am in the mood. I keep telling God how absurd it is that our physical bodies take this much maintenance, but alas, I remain a creature in a fallen world with an ever-aging body, so I have to reckon with the time it takes to help myself. #2. I also realized by trial and error, mostly error, that I needed have a workout schedule that pre-determines which workout I will be doing that day. Knowing which workout is next eliminates the decision fatigue. #3. I also learned by trial and error, mostly error, that my body is, in fact, totally wrecked because of years of Lyme Disease and associated lethargy, so I need to totally start over. I'm ready to accept that now. So I've downloaded the Beachbody Bodypump schedule that takes a person from the couch to a full hour of Bodypump in weeks, plural. It gives a person weeks to adapt to the demand of an hour of weight lifting and cardio. That's what I probably needed all along. Earlier this year and the year before, when I was feeling well enough to start exercise again, I tried to do the full hour workout or as much of it as I could like I had done for years before, and that just wrecked an already wrecked body and continually set me back physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Here's hoping 2023 will be the year of more success in exercise, since I've failed so much, but enough to learn all these lessons. 

5. 100 Walks- 

Success! I did not take exactly 100 walks, because I took something like 70. That's far more than I would have taken without the goal in mind, so I'm calling that a win. 

6. 100 books- 

Success! I read 70+ books this year. I know that's also not 100, but it's still an outstanding amount of reading, so I'm calling this a win, too. 

7. Keep a prayer journal- 

Success! But my prayer journal took a different form than I originally planned. Instead of keeping a record of the specific things I pray for and how those things were answered, the journal I have been using for several months is very small and each page just has a list of people's names. This simply guides my prayers for that day. My prayers have been really consistent since August. The timing coincided with when our oldest daughter went to college. Having a daughter far away really changes your prayer life! Her name is the first one in my journal. But interestingly, as I pray for other people much more consistently than ever before, I find that I am the one changing. My thoughts and feelings are much more Christ-like throughout the day, and sinful heart attitudes I have struggled with for years are becoming a thing of the past. 

8. Care for my people- 

Success! I call my mom and siblings more. And I am growing in friendship with the people around me like never before. I think the daily prayer helps with this more than anything else. After praying for people daily, I tend to think of them more throughout the day and make time for them and take action towards them, sending texts, notes, giving gifts, etc. God orchestrated a beautiful, new friendship for me this year with a kindred homeschool mom in another state. She and I are writing letters. I have started cooking and baking more than ever and with greater and greater joy. That is another unexpected way "caring for my people" is manifesting itself.  

9. Read my Bible first- 

Success and failure. I got into the terrible habit of scrolling Facebook videos when I awoke early and couldn't sleep or picking up my phone first thing in the morning as I drank my first cup of coffee just to check before starting my devotional time. Once I realized this was an incessant habit that wasted precious time I could be spending with God, I have deliberately stopped taking my phone to bed or picking up my phone first thing in the mornings. But now I just need to pick up my Bible instead whatever fiction book I'm reading. I get it right half the time. The other half, I have to make a second cup of coffee, put down a novel, and deliberately pick up the Bible to have my devotions. 

10. Follow Fly Lady- 

Success, mostly. My house is staying cleaner than ever, but I have only followed Fly Lady half the time. The other half, I have just done more of the housework that I see is required. It's unnerving how much time it takes to maintain a home, but like maintaining a body, it's something that I am accepting must be done, and so, there is ever-greater joy in doing it. 

Books Read in 2022

The best book I read in 2022:

The Intellectual Life by Sertillanges 

Other favorite books this year:

Life Together by Bonhoeffer

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason

Sounding the Seasons by Malcolm Guite

The entire list of books I read (or reread) and finished in 2022:

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason

Mistobrn, Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages by Sanderson

The Silmarillion by Tolkien

Arcanum Unbounded by Sanderson

The Deep Places by Ross Douthat

Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold

The City of God by Augustine

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Fiddler's Gun and The Fiddler's Green by AS Peterson

Sounding the Seasons, Word in the Wilderness, Faith, Hope, and Poetry, The Singing Bowl by Malcolm Guite

The Tempest by Shakespeare 

The Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.

The Complete Poems of John Keats 

Another Sort of Learning by Schall 

A Heart to Know Him by Lynne Bauman

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Aeneid 

The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin

Strange New World Carl Truman

The Garden of God by Andrew Peterson

Teaching From Restby Sarah Mackenzie

Oedipus Rex 

Skyward, Starsight, and Cytonic by Sanderson 

Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh

The Green Ember, Ember Falls, Ember Rising, Ember's End by SD Smith SD Smith

The Rule of Saint Benedict

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Station Eleven by Emily Saint John Mandel

Life Together by Bonhoeffer 

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

Beauty Chasers by Timothy Willard

Doom's Day Book by Connie Willis

A Severe Mercy by Stephen Vanauken 

The Intellectual Life by Sertillanges

The Phantom Tollbooth by Jules Feiffer 

God has a name by John Mark Comer 

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen

A few Jeeve's stories and Picadilly Jim by PG Wodehouse

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Tolles

 

Orthodoxy by Chesterton 

Fierce Intimacy by Terrence Real 

Us by Terrance Real

With all Her Mind by Rachel Bulman

Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski

The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

The Body Keeps The Score by Besser van Der Kolk

Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr by Christopher Paolini 

Books I read significant portions of and just could not finish: 

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Messiah By Frank Herbert 

Books I read (or reread) significant portions of but did not finish:

Waiting on the Word by Malcolm Guite

The City of God by Augustine

Plutarch's Lives

The Great Tradition by Gamble

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Paradise Lost by Milton

The Odyssey by Homer 

Dante's Inferno 

A Christmas Vacation Well Spent

This week between Christmas and New Year is the most leisurely of my year. It's the only week without appointments and lessons. That said, I've done a lot of calling, planning, paying, etc. for the activities that are coming this season. I'm getting the regular cleaning done, and a lot of extra cooking and baking. I'm also reading for hours in the middle of the day and napping some, things I hardly ever get to do. I actually took time to simply sit in the silence and think. That never happens. I wrote a letter to a friend, and I completed some of those more random household tasks that needed to be done, like inventorying and reorganizing my pantries, closets, and storage rooms.

We started re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia (in order of their publication, of course) before our oldest, Norah, left for college. Now she's finished an entire semester of college, and she's back for Christmas break, but we've been moving so slowly though read alouds lately that she was actually home to finish the last few chapters of The Last Battle with us. We were all sobbing happy tears. I wish we had been going faster and getting more reading aloud done this season, but I also can't say that regret the fact that my oldest was home with us to finish the series that means so much to everyone. Moments like this make me consider that what I call delay may, in actual fact, be God's perfect timing. Next, we promptly started re-reading The Hobbit. When we discussed what our next read aloud should be, our youngest, ten, said she couldn't remember hearing The Hobbit read aloud, so that's a crying shame, and we all agreed resolve the problem without delay. 

We are spending the evenings beside the fire, reading, chatting quietly, playing games, or as it was last night, listening to the soundtrack from The Phantom of the Opera, recalling our recent visit to see it on Broadway, and discussing the lyrics and story in detail. While we listened, Norah worked on a holder for her dad's drinking horn that she gifted him for Christmas. She added the wire and decorative beads that will hold it to the stand. My husband still needs to cut and sand and stain some of the base, but it's coming along beautifully. 

 

Books!

 I gave the girls Barnes and Noble gift cards in their stockings, 

our very generous neighbors also gave them gift cards, 

and Barnes and Noble was having a big sale the day after Christmas since it is moving locations and wants to get rid of inventory, 

so it was a happy, happy day for these three bookworms! 

Christmas Day 2022

After breakfast and Christmas readings, we opened gifts. 

Avril asked for crochet supplies galore. We gave her one of every single size needle and this Harry Potter character kit. She's getting great at crochet and takes a lot of joy in the works she makes.  

Wearable blankets were the biggest hit with everyone.

Arcus enjoyed the festivities, too. Later, he destroyed a few of the empty boxes bite by bite. Turning boxes into confetti is his favorite past-time. 

Norah, now being an adult, now making her own money, now having access to cool antique stores and craft festivals in and around here college in Franklin, TN, bought Dwayne an awesome drinking horn!

New converse for that college life- purple for everyday, black and white pair for special occasions

Norah bought me an antique book of poetry! There are ample notes in the margins from the previous owner who was quite well-read and who loved mythology! I love it when previous owners make notes in old books! She also bought me a doily that happens to fit perfectly over the cork round where I sit my drinks. My side table is starting to look like an eighty year old's side table with this doily, my favorite hand creams, books and pencils for cross words, etc. 

Dwayne gifted the family an amazing chess set. The pieces are massive and the base is inlayed wood. The coolest thing about this gift is that the girls and I saw an antique chess piece from The Middle Ages at The Cloisters. The piece was one of the favorite things we saw (and similar to the king in this set.) We all agreed we'd love to have an entire chess set just like that piece, but Dwayne was not there with us, he did not see the Chess piece, or hear that conversation. Yet he bought this. It's uncanny. The girls promptly played a round. The moved the new chess board to the small table in the dining room where we have been keeping our old set, made of plastic. This new set looks so beautiful near the grand piano. 

The queen in this set is also holding a drinking horn, just like the one Norah gave Dwayne today, which is another neat detail. 

I got a new cookbook that I wanted! I've already read it through and I'm interested in making almost everything, especially everything in the dinner section. 

Adele made me this Christmas cross stitch (with her big sister, Avril's, help on the design) 

Arcus devouring a Lego box

CS Lewis said he didn't take naps, but, "Mind you, sometime a nap takes me." Well , a nap took me in the quiet hours of the afternoon. I pulled our Santa hat down over my eyes to block the sunlight and snuggled the Christmas pillow. It was the perfect nap. 

Our neighbors gifted the girls Barnes and Noble gift cards, which they are eager to go buy books with tomorrow firs thing. Our neighbors are the most generous people we know. 

Norah worked on some items for her Etsy shop to raise even more money for college life. This time- mushroom earrings!

Legos, legos everywhere! A treehouse and Dumbledoor's office

I made Italian Annisette cookies with anise, and we enjoyed them after dinner. I remember tasting these when we first moved to Connecticut twenty-ish years ago and I remember thinking the anise flavor ruined these cookies and that they were far too dry, etc. But these a very popular cookies around here. So over the years and years and years of living in Connecticut, these have become one of my favorite cookies, especially with hot tea or coffee. I truly love them now. 

Dwayne took a few minutes in the garage to create a holder for his drinking horn from a piece of our old upright piano. But this is a just mock-up. We're all giving input on the design. The wires holding the horn now will be replaced with something the girls will carefully form and finish. And Dwayne has to make some careful cuts and do some staining on the base. 

It was a truly lovely day, everyone working together in the same room on various things while listening to Christmas songs and hymns. 

Thank God for Christmas! 

 

Christmas Eve 2022

 

We attended Christmas Eve service in the afternoon. 

As always, we did our Advent readings after dinner and opened our new jammies before bed. 

Breakfast Casseroles at Christmas

Dwayne's company sends us a gift of ham and bacon and various, assorted, related goodies at Christmas. It's a lovely gift. 

I usually plan dinners or Sunday afternoon meals with these items in the days and weeks following. But this year, I'm planning four breakfasts for the four days we're together and home around Christmas. 

We don't often get to eat breakfasts as a family on weekdays, because the adults get up hours before the children and my husband usually prefers not to eat before leaving for work. And even on weekends, we can't have a nice breakfast together because there events, errands to run, or church to attend. 

But on holidays like Christmas, when we all just stay home together, there's plenty of time and opportunity to gather around the table in the morning. So I get to try some breakfast casseroles I don't usually have opportunity to make. 

I'm specifically trying casserole in the Foster Family's Cookbook. The Foster family was Dwayne's second home growing up and they are still friends like family to us. 

Breakfast Casseroles may need to become another Christmas tradition. (We have many.) Or I may need to add some of these recipes to our "breakfast for dinner" category if they are a big hit with my family holiday. 

Phantom of the Opera

Norah and Laura are best friends. They met in Challenge B at Classical Conversations and grew up together through Challenge 4. Now they are both freshmen at different colleges, but still staying in touch. As things go with homeschooling families, it isn't just the kids who are friends, it's the families who are friends with the other families. Ligian and I are old friends now and have taught each other's kids at Classical Conversations for years. We moms decided to surprise the girls with a trip to NYC to see "The Phantom of the Opera." It was a great night! The Phantom of the Opera is leaving Broadway soon, even though it's the longest running show in history, so we were glad to see it before it's part of history. 

Norah Made Us Dinner

Norah is home from college for Christmas break. She's been working all day to earn money for college, but she still made us dinner tonight. Her black bean soup was way better than mine or even Panera's. She's been planning meals, and grocery shopping, and cooking with her roommate since going away to school. I didn't even learn how to really do that till a few years into marriage! We are very proud! 

Christmas Break = More Piano and Reading

 I love Christmas break. The girls do more piano practice than usual, and we all do alot more silent reading.

Pajama Oscars

 Avril attended the "Pajama Oscars" at our church's youth group meeting tonight. I'll say. If there's a prize, she's sure to be in the running! 

Present Interrogations

 The girls interrogated me when I came downstairs for lunch. They asked all sorts of questions about the Christmas presents they knew I had been upstairs wrapping behind a locked door. It was all good fun. Aren't they silly? 

A Meditation on Gifts

It takes a few hours to wrap all our family's Christmas gifts. 

While wrapping today, my thoughts turned towards gifts and all that I know and believe about them. 

Gifts are good.

Not only good, gifts are even Godly. 

God is the Source of all the things we have, and He is most generous. 

It's out of His abundance the universe was created. 

It is from His being that we have our existence. 

God pours unmerited gifts on His Creation and its creatures, and all the best things in life originate in Him.  

Scripture says, "Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father in Heaven." James 1:17

Human parents are like God when we give our children good gifts. 

Jesus said, "If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him?" Matthew 7:11

I am delighted to give my kids mostly everything on their Christmas lists this year, because mostly everything they asked for is good. 

God, unlike us human parents, is a truly perfect Father, so we can ask Him for good things and trust that these things will come to us or that, if they don't come to us, God has good reasons to withhold them. 

We can pray confidently to God for what we want, knowing He has promised to give us good gifts, but that doesn't always mean that God will give us everything we ask for. 

I wouldn't give my kids everything they want, especially if I didn't think the stuff they wanted was good or if I didn't believe they would use the gifts in the right ways.

This could be why we don't get what we ask God for in prayer. 

God may withhold gifts precisely because God is good and because we are bad. 

The Bible says, "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so you may spend what you get on your pleasures." James 4:3

God, being perfect, is certainly perfect at judging what we should and shouldn't have.  

God might not give us what we want because what we want might actually hinder, harm, or ruin us. 

A cozy gaming chair ensures that a teenage son will be comfortable playing video games for hours. 

A makeup desk ensures a teenage daughter can sit comfortably applying her makeup. 

But will that dear son be too comfortable gaming to enjoy anything else?

Will that beautiful daughter be encouraged toward vanity and pride?

In our foolish blindness, by next Christmas, we will complain and fret that our sons aren't interested in anything but video games and our daughters are so self-conscious about their appearance that they are afraid to engage in life. 

We need God's wisdom when we choose gifts for our children. 

It's so easy to get it wrong. 

God would never give us gifts that would put obstacles in our way. 

We don't want to make the best things harder for our children because of our "gifts." 

Lord, may our gifts not be millstones. 

May these gifts be true blessings. 

Perhaps it's better, after all, that sons have less-than-optimal gaming set-ups. 

Perhaps it's best, after all, that daughters have to lean far, far over the bathroom counter and get an ache in their necks in order to apply their makeup. 

There are gifts I have planned and chosen for my kids that they didn't ask for, that they don't even know about yet, that I want them to have because I'm in a position to will these good things into their lives. 

It is the same with God. 

He gives to each of us as He wills. 

He divides the portions, talents, gifts, faith in the measure He ordains for each of us.

It is not for us to compare our portion with the portions of others. 

But we are to receive His gifts with thankfulness, trusting, believing we were given what we have in perfect love. 

And now we give God's gifts back to Him by using them well. 

 

Our Library Protocol

I don't let my kids go to the library during the homeschool year. 

It's shocking, I know. 

But through much trial and error, I've determined that library books can be a huge distraction from all the really great books and all the really important assignments they are supposed to be reading and completing during the homeschool year. 

One too many great novels didn't get read in time or research papers didn't get written until the night before our CC community day because of some Harry Potter or Artmeis Fowl book. 

(Actually, I'm pretty sympathetic to Harry Potter. I once let my daughter stay up till midnight before community the next day because she had finally finished all her schoolwork for that week and she only had a few chapters of the last book to read.)

So library visits are reserved for the weeks when we have official homeschool breaks. 

The library is right next to the piano studio where the girls take lessons, so after lessons and during holidays, it's a treat to go over and get some new books. 

We went yesterday, since the girls are on Christmas break and it was the day of their lesson. 

Right now, they are upstairs reading a book aloud and have been reading aloud like that for hours. 

It's a beautiful thing. 

Of course, the books they check out from the library are approved by me first. 

I've lived and learned the hard way that there's a bunch of pornography and propaganda passing for popular juvenile fiction these days. 

But most of that junk is still only in the YA section, so the YA section just stopped existing for my family after enough evidence showed it wasn't worth the drama, and we were all fine with that. 

For now, there are still plenty compelling stories that the teens and even the adults can enjoy in the Children's Section.  

So I let the girls scan those shelves and make their choices, but then they bring the books to me and I scan them and make the call whether the books will actually come home with us. 

I follow discussions by likeminded moms online to know more about the most popular titles and stay informed about what's generally good. 

Or I can usually make an informed call about an unknown book by simply scanning it for a few minutes right there in the isles.

If a book doesn't pass inspection, it goes back on the shelf. 

And my kids don't argue about this. They literally happily move on to the thousand other choices they can make that day. 

My kids know the library is a privilege and totally optional, and it's a privilege and option they won't risk by arguing with my over one book. 

And please, don't feel sorry for my kids over our library protocol. Our home could compete with any small library, so when I say the library is optional, I mean it's literally optional because we basically live inside a library. 

But the library is so magical, I'm happy to have found ways to make it continue working for our family. 

Norah's Home

 

Our oldest daughter is home from college for Christmas Break! 

We picked her up at the airport Saturday afternoon, and she got to choose what kind of restaurant we went to for dinner; She chose Mexican. So we took her to a favorite Mexican restaurant where we already have a lot of fun family memories. 

Later, we all settled in at home and instead of going to bed, she decided to come downstairs to visit with the fam. But that really just means that she just fell asleep on the couch with her feet towards the fire in the midst of us all!

We just read and talked quietly around her for a few hours, happy to have her in our midst.  

Biscotti Basics

Adele and I spent most of the day Friday making all sorts of biscotti. We gifted half of it to dear friends. 

Here's a basic biscotti recipe you can endlessly adapt. 

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons butter, cool and chopped in chunks

1 cup sugar (or brown sugar)

2 eggs 

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (1/4-1/2 teaspoon almond, anise, butter, mint, etc. extract and/or flavorings)

1-1 1/2 cups of dried fruits and/ or nuts

Directions: 

Sift the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. 

Mix together butter and sugar. 

Add eggs one at a time. 

Add vanilla and any other extracts or flavors

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet little by little by hand. 

Add whatever dry ingredients you want up to one and half cups. 

Prepare a baking sheet with cooking spray. 

Shape dough into a ball to transfer to baking sheet.  

Shape dough into a long loaf on the baking sheet. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. 

Take out the loaf and allow it to cool 5-10 minutes.

Carefully transfer the biscotti loaf to a cutting board and cut it into strips. 

Return strips to sheet and bake another 7 minutes. 

(You can lower the temperature in the oven at this point if you desire.)

After seven minutes, turn the pieces again and bake them on the other side for another 7 minutes. 

Cool pieces on a wire rack. 

Enjoy with hot coffee! 

Kitchen notes:

We made almond, cinnamon brown sugar, mixed fruit and nut, chocolate chip, and peppermint chocolate. 

I want to try the basic recipe with vanilla and almond and anise extracts, chopped almonds and pistachios, and cranberries. I think that combination will be beautiful and delicious. And the red, green, browns, and whites of that combination will be festive for Christmas.  

I need butter and mint extracts now I've run out. Butter is impossible to find in the regular grocers, but maybe I'll try a cake supply store or Amazon Prime. 

The peppermint chocolate piece had mint extract and was surprisingly good when I dipped it hot coffee. If I want the chocolate to be smooth when dipped and dry, I need to research recipes for dipping chocolate and add something to the melted chocolate morsels. But, as it was, we simply melted the morsels this time. The thick, dry, melted chocolate really caked on and this probably just made them even more delicious.