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Christmas Morning Drinks- Eggnog and Hot Chocolate

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Christmas morning, we have sourdough cinnamon rolls or sticky buns.  I make them the night before and allow them to rise overnight in the fridge.  I also make these two drinks and stash them in Mason jars in the fridge.  Christmas morning, when everyone gets up, I pop the cinnamon rolls in the oven and pour the hot chocolate into a pan and put it on the stove on low.  By the time we’re done opening gifts, breakfast is ready to eat.  I really prefer it this way because it doesn’t require time in the kitchen to get a memorable breakfast made, knowing I’ll spend the afternoon in the kitchen cooking our big meal to eat around 1pm.  The kids feel like they’ve gotten a special treat but it didn’t put me behind and make lunch late and we got to eat breakfast instead of a hurried brunch so the big meal could be served in time.

The Christmas Mailer, including these recipes and the recipe for GFCF Cinnamon Rolls/Sticky Buns is available for purchase here.

[Read more…] about Christmas Morning Drinks- Eggnog and Hot Chocolate

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Preparing for Winter Storms

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The road in front of our house after the December 2009 snowstorm.

This morning, I was much less than thrilled to hear the local forecasters predicting a major storm.  We often joke in this area that the local chain supermarket pays the weather man on the only Asheville TV station to forecast much more snow than we’ll wind up getting in a bid to sell extra milk, bread, eggs and bottled water.  Historically, they predict worse weather than we wind up getting so many people cook French Toast in their warm homes the morning after the storm, but this year that has not been so.

This could potentially be our second major storm this winter, with the prediction that we might get large amounts of snow beginning on Thursday.  We did see snow Monday and it’s been quite cold this week, so I won’t be surprised if we do wind up with another big storm. We went through an extended storm in December that dumped 15 inches of snow with 2-3 foot drifts with the power out for a few days and three downed trees on our house.  Some people in the immediate area went without power for a week.  Due to icy conditions on our roller-coaster road with no curb and sudden drops off the sides and multiple trees downed across the road, we were stuck in our house for a week.  We have one ‘hill’ at the top of our road that if you drive over at any real speed, you get the sinking feeling in your gut that you’ve just gone over the edge, like cresting the big hill at the beginning of a roller coaster.  We knew that getting out would be difficult at best since none of our vehicles have 4WD.  You might notice in the picture above that we’re living on a 3:1 slope and there are steeper places in our neighborhood.  The snow from that storm took over a month to melt on our little patch of the wooded mountain.  These storms are quite unusual for our area, but we must be prepared for them in case it does get bad.

Here is a list of what I do to prepare for a Winter snow or ice storm that could involve an extended power outage. [Read more…] about Preparing for Winter Storms

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