Holiday 2015

OLEAN TIMES HERALD

Holidays 2015

Associated Press

Carrie Brown, author of “The New Christmas Tree,” adjusts a Popcorn, Peanut, Pretzel and Pickle Tree that is featured in her book at the Jimtown Store in Healdsburg, Calif. Brown is the owner of the Alexander Valley country store that dates to 1893.

Craft a unique holiday tree this Christmas

By MICHELLE LOCKE Associated Press

O

h Christmas Tree, oh Christmas Tree . how boring are thy branches?

If you’re in a bit of a holiday rut when it comes to seasonal decorating, Carrie Brown’s recently released “The New Christmas Tree” (Artisan Books) may be just what you need to get that creative sap flowing.

Brown, owner of the popular Jimtown Store near Healdsburg, Calif., a country store and café, has been re-inventing trees for years, from the “blue tree” she made one Christmas to reflect her mood (which magically improved the more she got into the project) to the “bonfire ready” trees she came up with one year — manzanita branches studded with plump marshmallows.

Her book presents 24 ideas for rethinking the tree, starting with the basics: picking the tree, what types work best with certain designs and caring for your festive foliage.

Some of the trees are quite simple, like a silver tree that’s a skinny branch strung with silver jewelry and other found objects. Some are aimed at keen crafters, like the paperwhite tree decorated with all kinds of ornaments made from different weights of white paper.

A stunner of a tree — and the one that made the cover — is the bees’ tree, made of rosemary branches arranged in a vase and decorated with felted bees, beeswax ornaments and tiny vials of waxdipped honey, among other things.

Beautifully photographed and coffee-table ready, the book is also practical, containing detailed instructions on how to recreate the featured trees along with website references for downloading templates.

Brown would like it to serve as both blueprint and inspiration.

“I decided that it would be a wonderful thing to share, because there’s a lot of commercialism for Christmas, a lot of the sameold, same-old,” says Brown.

“I think young people particularly feel that some of the old commercial ways don’t reflect them. I wanted to

Associated Press

The Reflector Tree sits atop a shelf at the Jimtown Store in Healdsburg, Calif.

present something that could give people the opportunity to express themselves.”

Personalizing your tree is one of the trends of the season, says Ann Blevins, senior editor of Better Homes and Gardens’ “Christmas Ideas,” an annual publication on newsstands.

“People have become much more comfortable making their tree personalized, whether it’s ornaments from your vacations or framed letters to Santa,” she says.

ALTHOUGH MANY people stick with traditional red and green in their tree décor, a new twist this year is faceted metallic ornaments, which go hand-in-hand with the homedecorating trend of faceted metal lamps, says Blevins.

New takes on lighting include Edison lights, which look like old-fashioned bulbs with a visible “filament,” as well as tiny fairy lights designed to be woven deep in the tree and used in abundance.

Getting your tree together can be one of the best parts of the season (unlike, say, pre-party house cleaning) and some of the ideas in Brown’s book could be the basis for a trimming party.

A tree decorated with gingerbread cookies and other sweets, Brown’s “deconstructed gingerbread house” might be a good choice for a child with a December birthday. Partygoers could help decorate some of the simpler cookie ornaments and go

home with treats from the tree.

Several of the trees are inspired by collections. For instance, Brown used her collection of decorative pin cushions in a tree that includes the cushions studded with decorative pins as well as homemade bugle and sequin balls.

The Giving Tree, one of Brown’s favorites, turns the tables on the typical advent calendar. Ornaments include envelopes holding ageappropriate “good deed” slips. Children get to open an envelope every day in the countdown to Christmas, but instead of getting chocolate they have a chance to exercise their generosity.

Brown offers lots of ideas for home-made and inventive ornaments, including copper “bonbons” made with copper plumbing floats, available in hardware stores, covered with unraveled copper kitchen scrub pads.

And she suggests taking the decorating theme down to the floor, placing interesting objects beneath the tree and skipping the storebought tree skirt in favor of an interesting throw or length of material.

Finding an alternative to old-fashioned skirts comes with a hidden bonus, notes Blevins. “We’re wrapping the tree in a throw — a fur throw or a sweater throw — which is nice because when Christmas is over and it’s January, you have a new afghan, and it’s perfect.”

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2015

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OLEAN TIMES HERALD

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2015

Associated Press

This photo shows cranberry sauce, oat and flax pancakes. Making your own cranberry sauce this holiday is incredibly easy and it allows you to cut the sugar content in half without anyone missing it.

DIY or canned, leftover cranberry sauce makes great pancakes

By MELISSA D'ARABIAN Associated Press

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n their natural form, cranberries are quite healthy, full of vitamin C and fiber and packing just 4 grams of sugar per cup.

In fact, they only become nutritionally worrying when they get doused with sugar around the holidays.

My answer, of course, is to make your own cranberry sauce this holiday. It's incredibly easy and it allows you to cut the sugar content in half without anyone missing it.

So instead of heading down the canned food aisle, pop over to the produce section (you're going there to buy potatoes and green beans, anyway, right?) and pick up a bag of fresh cranberries. Follow the recipe on the bag (usually something along the lines of boiling the berries with water and sugar), but cut the suggested amount of sugar in half (or by a quarter if you can't come to terms with half).

For extra flavor and natural sweetness, I sometimes add orange zest or segments to my cranberry sauce, as well as a vanilla bean. But frankly, it almost doesn't matter what I do to the cranberry sauce, as its presence on the table is merely symbolic to my family. My French husband didn't grow up eating cranberry sauce, so he never developed a taste for it. And my kids aren't fans, either.

The result? I always have leftover cranberry sauce.

Forever a budget cook, I feel

compelled to give those leftovers new life. I'll add it to my favorite apple crumble or muffin recipe, spoon it over yogurt or into oatmeal for breakfast, or use it as a base for a spicy-sweet salsa or chutney.

Perhaps my kids' favorite way to rework cranberry sauce is in pancakes. I mix cranberry sauce with oats and flax seeds to make a tasty treat that my family loves on winter weekend mornings, when I let a little extra sugar slide. I use my leftover homemade cranberry sauce in this recipe, but it works just fine with the canned stuff, even the jellied variety (complete with can-shaped grooves on the sides).

CRANBERRY SAUCE, OAT AND FLAX PANCAKES This recipe is easily made gluten-free by substituting a gluten-free flour mix for the all-purpose flour called for.

Your best bet is with flour mixes labeled as a "1-to-1" substitute for wheat flour.

Start to finish: 20 minutes Makes 10 pancakes n 1/2 cup oat flour (or 3/4 cup oats, pulsed in food processor until finely ground) n 1/4 cup almond flour (also called almond meal) n 1/3 cup all-purpose flour n 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder n 1/4 teaspoon baking soda n 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt n 3 tablespoons flax meal

(ground flaxseed) n 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon n 1/4 cup plain low-fat Greek yogurt n 2/3 cup prepared cranberry sauce (whole berry or jellied) n 1 teaspoon orange zest n 1 egg n 2/3 cup low-fat milk (dairy or non-dairy) n 1 teaspoon vanilla extract n Heat a nonstick griddle over medium while preparing the batter. Heat the oven to 200 F. n In a medium bowl, whisk together the oat flour, almond flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, flax meal and cinnamon. n In a second medium bowl, briskly whisk together the yogurt and cranberry sauce to break up the cranberry sauce. Add the orange zest, egg, milk and vanilla and whisk until smooth (not counting chunks from any whole cranberries). Pour the wet ingredients into the dry mixture and gently stir with a whisk, incorporating all the ingredients, being careful not to overmix. n Lightly mist the hot griddle with cooking spray.

Using a 1/4-cup measuring cup, scoop batter onto the prepared griddle, being careful not to crowd the griddle. Cook until the pancake batter is nearly dry, 2 to 3 minutes, then flip and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a heat-safe plate and set in the oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve with desired toppings.

The tradition of the Yule log The custom of burning the Yule log goes back to, and before, medieval times. It was originally a Nordic tradition. Yule is the name of the old winter solstice festivals in Scandinavia and other parts of northern Europe, such as Germany.

The Yule log was originally an entire tree, that was carefully chosen and brought into the house with great ceremony. The largest end of the log would be placed into the fire hearth while the rest of the tree stuck out into the room. The log would be lit from the remains of the previous year's log which had been carefully stored away and slowly fed into the fire through the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was considered important that the re-lighting process was carried out by someone with clean hands.

Nowadays, of course, most people have central heating so it is very difficult to

burn a tree.

In Provence, France, it is traditional that the whole family helps to cut the log down and that a little bit is burnt each night. If any of the log is left after Twelfth Night, it is kept safe in the house until the next Christmas to protect against lightning. In some parts of Holland, this was also done, but the log had to be stored under a bed. In some eastern European countries, the log was cut down on Christmas Eve morning and lit that evening.

In Cornwall, in the United Kingdom, the log is called “The Mock.” The log is dried out and then the bark is taken off it before it comes into the house to be burnt. Also in the UK, barrel makers gave their customers old logs that they could not use for making barrels for Yule logs.

— www.whychristmas.com

OLEAN TIMES HERALD

Associated Press

In this 2014 photo, Theresa Starta and her family host guests from other countries at their home in Dubai, serving a traditional turkey dinner on Thanksgiving and sharing the history of each dish. Spending the holiday season far from home can be challenging for American families living overseas. One solution: Invite friends in your host country over for a holiday meal, sharing your family’s traditions with people who may never have learned about them before.

Americans abroad celebrate holidays by tweaking tradition

By MELISSA RAYWORTH Associated Press

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small, artificial Christmas tree and a few familiar decorations from home. Hurd plays Christmas songs and bakes cookies with the kids using family recipes, and they sometimes attend holiday events on the military base where they live. Then they’ll fly south, celebrating Christmas at a Club Med in Singapore, with a visit to Malaysia’s Legoland theme park.

After four years overseas, Hurd’s kids (now 8, 11 and 13) have come to embrace holidays on the road. They’ve hunted for Easter eggs in Taiwan, and worn their candy-cane Christmas pajamas everywhere from Hong Kong to Indonesia.

n our global world, you can easily buy a Thanksgiving turkey for roasting in Dubai or Beijing or Tokyo. You can shop for Christmas trees in Bangkok, where stores play Christmas carols throughout December, a constant reminder that Santa Claus can come to town even when you’re 8,000 miles from home.

And yet, if you’re an American family living overseas, the availability of these holiday touchstones doesn’t change the fact that you’re not really home for the holidays.

November and December bring a bitKEEP A FEW tersweet mashup of TRADITIONS holiday cheer and GOING homesickness.

Creating new tradiSome families do fly tions is important for back to the U.S. for the many American expat holidays. But that can families. Bush spent be expensive and chalmuch of her childhood lenging, especially with in California, and her school-age kids. husband, Nathan, grew “During the first up in North Carolina, few years when our so their holidays in kids were younger, we those warm places tried to travel back to didn’t involve sledthe States to visit with ding or building snowour families,” says men. But they were Melindah Bush, who filled with extended lives with her husband family, Thanksgiving and three children in turkeys in the oven and Singapore. “But the Christmas mornings at cost is expensive. And home. jet lag with children Now, in Singapore, Associated Press eats up the first week they’ve kept their This Dec. 25, 2012, photo provided of the holiday and our by Pam Hurd shows the Hurd chilThanksgiving tradifirst week returning to dren, Sarah, from left, 8, Ethan, 10, tions going while Asia.” and Ryan, 6, on Christmas morning in discovering new ones When going home during potluck suppers Okinawa, Japan. isn’t a good option, with friends. how do families stay connected to their “We and our American friends make the holiday traditions? traditional foods like turkey, stuffing, sweet Some Americans living in Asia share potatoes, green-bean casserole and pumptheir strategies for making the season as kin pie,” Melindah says. “We also invite cheerful as possible: our non-American friends to join and share their traditional foods. So we have had EMBRACE ADVENTURE Chinese and Asian friends bring noodles For Theresa Starta, the holidays used to and dumplings. Scandinavian friends have be easy. She and her husband, Dan, both brought various appetizers — often hergrew up in the Pittsburgh suburbs, and ring. Our Aussie friends make pavlova, and were used to seeing both sets of in-laws on British friends bring a variety of salads and major holidays. They got stuffed having breads.” two Thanksgiving dinners every year, but Theresa Starta did the same in Dubai last it was good: They had football on the TV, year on Thanksgiving; guests came into the familiar dishes in the kitchen and loved kitchen to see the perfectly roasted turkey ones all around. emerge from the oven, and she explained After they relocated to Dubai for Dan’s a bit about each dish. She told her internacareer, they flew home for several holidays tional friends that green-bean casserole is with their two children. It’s about a 20-hour “sort of like everybody’s crazy uncle who trip, with an 8-hour time shift. Then this has to be there,” but most family members year they moved to Shanghai, and the even don’t really want to have any. longer Christmas flight home just wasn’t She loves “the giving aspect of preparing practical. this meal for somebody who’s never had it So this Thanksgiving weekend, the fambefore,” and was delighted to find that the ily will decorate their Shanghai apartment casserole, of all things, turned out to be the with a tree and other decorations to congroup’s favorite: “Everybody came back for nect with the Christmas spirit. Then, when seconds.” school ends in late December, they’ll head off on a National Geographic adventure DON’T TRY TO REPLICATE THE PAST trip to Antarctica.

Lauri Barrett’s childhood memories of Theresa says her kids will miss being holidays in New Hampshire are Christmashome with relatives and friends. But their card perfect: lots of snow-covered pine trees excitement at trekking around Antarctica and holiday lights twinkling in the chilly surrounded by penguins is enough to keep air. But she’s learned that trying to replithe homesickness at bay. cate those memories with her very global family (her husband, Lincoln, is from New BUILD A FAMILY OF FRIENDS Zealand, and they are raising their 9-yearPam Hurd’s family, now based in old daughters, both adopted from China, in Okinawa while her husband serves in the Thailand) just doesn’t work.

Marine Corps, takes a similar approach.

“If you try to recreate it, it’s just going to Christmas has become synonymous with fall short,” she says. “You have to make it travel, and for the past three holiday different, so you don’t have that nostalgia.” seasons they’ve traveled with American Barrett’s daughters attend an American friends who have become like a second school but don’t have Thanksgiving off. family.

So earlier in November, she’ll host a “We are so looking forward to spending Thanksgiving potluck lunch for members of this Christmas in Singapore and Malaysia the American Women’s Club of Thailand. with our friends,” Hurd says. “We are there For Christmas, the family will travel to for 12 days and are calling it our ‘12 Days South Korea for a ski trip. Barrett says she’ll of Christmas.’” bring as many gifts as possible, and Santa Like the Startas, in early December the will make an appearance at their hotel, as Hurds kick off the season by putting up a will the Elf on a Shelf.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2015

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OLEAN TIMES HERALD

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2015

Associated Press

This photo provided by Lazy JV Ranch of Owensboro, Ky., shows Cottonball, a purebred Nubian goat, with her shepherd in a nativity scene at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Owensboro. Rented farm animals and reindeer are in high demand during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas for Christmas pageants and other seasonal celebrations.

Christmas bonus: Farm animals in demand for Nativity scenes

By MELISSA KOSSLER DUTTON

vide sheep, donkeys and goats for live Nativity scenes, said Powell, whose mother started the business about 15 years ago ome farmers have extra reason to with a pony that she rented for birthday rejoice at Christmas: Tis the season for parties. “It really took off and she started renting out animals for live Nativity adding animals.” scenes and other holiday events.

Rentals start at $325 an hour for a group Growing up in rural Burlington, of animals, depending on which ones are Wisconsin, one of Larry Squire’s favorite requested and for how long. In most cases, Christmas traditions was helping to set up Powell said, visitors are allowed to touch a Nativity scene in and pet the animals. his uncle’s barn.

“We do have a “We borrowed camel,” she said. the animals from all “But we only have over the neighborone — so he goes hood,” he recalled. really fast.”

So several years Few petting zoos ago, Squire brought and traditional the tradition to farms raise camels, Cargill United and they are harder Methodist Church to incorporate in his current homeinto programs and town of Janesville, exhibits, said Bob Wisconsin, renting Hudelson of Lost animals from petRiver Game Farm in ting zoos and small Orleans, Indiana. He farms. The church raises foxes, skunks rents two pens’ and other exotic aniworth of animals mals. to stand next to a “There are a lot of makeshift stable camels out there — alongside volunjust not a lot of tame teers dressed as camels,” he said.

Mary, Joseph, angels Many churches Associated Press and the three wise want them, howThis photo provided by Kyle Wilson shows men. ever: “The three reindeer on his farm in Knoxville, Tenn.

“It’s a beautiDuring the Christmas season, Wilson travels kings definitely had ful thing. There’s a all over the south with the reindeer he raises camels on their jourcalm and peaceful- on his farm. Malls, hospitals, zoos and many ney to see Christ,” ness that comes other businesses love to include the animals Hudelson said. from having the ani- as part of their holiday displays, he said.

“With the camel, mals there,” Squire you get more of a said. feel of the story.”

Farm animals, reindeer and camels are Customers also want reindeer, said in high demand between Thanksgiving and Powell, who does not raise them but has Christmas, said Megan Powell, event coorthought about it. dinator at Honey Hill Farm, a mobile pet“The demand for reindeer is really ting zoo with locations in Berry, Kentucky, high,” she said. and Utica, Ohio.

From his farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, “We will do 25 to 30 events in one week- Kyle Wilson rents reindeer to malls, end,” Powell said. “It’s not uncommon for Christmas tree farms, zoos, hospitals and us to sell out.” other businesses throughout the South. His Renting animals for Christmas programs prices start at $1,500 for a pair of reindeer helps pay for their food and upkeep, she for four hours. said, and has been a huge growth area for “I currently have 21 reindeer but that’s the business. not enough,” he said. “I started 15 years “Churches love it,” Powell said. “We ago and each year I have had a record didn’t create the demand. We just became year.” overwhelmed by it.”

Families love to see Santa arrive with Jodi Collen, an event planner at reindeer, said Amy Boyles, marketing Augsburg College in Minneapolis and manager of Kingsport Town Center in president of the International Special Kingsport, Tennessee.

Events Society, explains it this way: “As “It’s an added thing for our community event professionals, it doesn’t take you and kids,” she said. “How many people get long to say, ‘I’m organizing a Nativity and to see a reindeer? It gives them a bit of a I can get a donkey — why wouldn’t I get a wow factor.” donkey?’”

She has already booked “Dasher” and Honey Hill works with dozens of “Dancer” to appear with Santa during the churches, schools and businesses to promall’s Black Friday sale.

Associated Press

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