Christmas crafts, recipes
Need some new recipes for the Christmas season? I have a wonderful resource to share with you. The Golden Touch Cookbook was created to celebrate Blue Cross MSI’s 50th anniversary. Current and previous staff members submitted over 550 home-tested recipes.
Culinary delights from appetizers to main dishes, treats and recipes suitable for heart-smart and diabetic diets are all in this cookbook. Also included is a kid’s stuff section, and helpful hints to make each dish perfect.
Proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit the Children’s Health Foundation, an organization that improves patient care and enhances education and research into childhood-related disease.
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The books can be purchased at the MSI offices in Saskatoon or Regina, or by mail. Call 1-800-667-6853. Here are three teaser recipes.
Spiced tea
2 tea bags 2
1 cinnamon stick 1
1 teaspoon whole 5 mL
cloves
1 teaspoon whole 5 mL
allspice
2 tablespoons Sweet 30 mL
‘N Low or 1 cup (250 mL) sugar
1 can orange 180 g
juice, frozen
1Ú2 cup freshly 125 mL
squeezed lemon juice
Place first four ingredients into a quart (1 L) of boiling water. Steep one hour. Pour into a container with one quart (1 L) of water and Sweet ‘N Low or sugar. (With Sweet ‘N Low, calories are reduced to 20 per cup.) Mix orange juice with three cans of water and add lemon juice. Pour all together and heat.
Serves 15-20. Can be kept in refrigerator for indefinite lengths of time. Can be used cold with ice, if desired.
Pumpkin muffins
3Ú4 cup bran cereal 175 mL
3Ú4 cup non-fat 175 mL
buttermilk
1Ú2 cup cooked, 125 mL
mashed pumpkin
1Ú4 cup vegetable oil 50 mL
1 egg, lightly beaten 1
1 teaspoon grated 5 mL
orange rind
3Ú4 cup all-purpose 175 mL
flour
3Ú4 cup whole wheat 175 mL
flour
1Ú2 teaspoon baking 2 mL
powder
1Ú2 teaspoon baking 2 mL
soda
1Ú3 cup sugar 75 mL
1 teaspoon ground 5 mL
cinnamon
cooking spray
1 tablespoon sugar 15 mL
1Ú4 teaspoon ground 1 mL
cinnamon
Combine cereal and buttermilk in a bowl; let stand five minutes. Add pumpkin, oil, egg and orange rind; stir well. Combine all-purpose flour and next five ingredients in a bowl. Make a well in the centre of mixture. Add buttermilk mixture. Stir until dry ingredients are just moistened. Batter will be fairly thick. Spoon batter into muffin pans coated with cooking spray until 2Ú3 full. Combine one tablespoon (15 mL) sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over muffins.
Bake at 350 F (180 C) for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Taffy pull
1 cup sugar 250 mL
1 cup corn syrup 250 mL
(light or dark)
1 tablespoon butter 15 mL
1 tablespoon vinegar 15 mL
Combine all ingredients in a big pan. Bring to a boil and boil to hard ball but not quite crack stage, 260 F (130 C) on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat when done and pour onto a greased china platter. Roll it around while it cools. Butter your hands and test a bit from the edge. When cool enough to handle, pull it, stretch it, twist it for about 10 minutes or until white in color.
Trim your budget
Did you know Christmas decorations, cards, gift wrap, tree and gifts account for about three-quarters of your Christmas budget?
There are lots of ways to reduce these costs that are also fun, creative and give you a feeling of satisfaction.
- Why not make your own Christmas cards? Children love to help in this sort of activity and people love to get homemade Christmas cards. Pressed flowers and leaves, potato or lino prints, kids’ drawings and cutouts, glitter, old photos and Christmas cards are all materials that can be used. Remember to make them the right size to fit into the envelopes you found on sale.
- Why buy wrapping paper? There are lots of other materials at hand, and creative ways to use them. The colored comics from the newspaper, paper bags decorated with glitter and Christmas cutouts and colored tissue paper are all either free or inexpensive.
- Outdoor Christmas lights add a lot of sparkle but don’t feel you have to overdo it. A single strand tastefully wound around a supporting post or trellis on your house or strung through the branches of a shrub is all you need to say “Merry Christmas” to passersby.
- Instead of outdoor lights, try twining metallic Christmas tree garlands in interesting places outside. The street lights and your porch light will make them sparkle.
- The decision to buy a real or artificial tree is largely a matter of personal taste and tradition. A real evergreen will cost anywhere from $25 to $50 depending upon its height and whether it was pruned. The price of a realistic-looking artificial tree can be $60 to $200 and will provide years of service.
- Young people just starting off in their own house can establish their own Christmas traditions and budget. It’s a good time to make your own decorations. The popcorn garland is fun to make and looks attractive on the tree. Children love to make ornaments out of play dough and glitter, foil, paper mache, pine cones, sea shells, popsicle sticks and various bits and pieces to be found around the house and yard.
- Usually before Christmas, community centres, libraries and other community organizations offer excellent mini-courses for adults and children in making Christmas decorations for the tree and home. Ornaments can be made with wheat straw, copper foil and yarn, pine cones or bread dough art.
- To get ideas, go to your local library and look up previous years’ September to December issues of home-making, decorating and craft magazines.
- A gift idea for parents or grandparents that is sure to please and is easy on the budget is to sort through your family photos (see if you can find some real old ones, too) and mount them in an inexpensive photo album. Write up a brief story or caption and mount it under each photo.
- Those little gifts for your kids’ teachers and others do add up. How about making a big batch of fudge and packaging it up? Other homemade gifts in the food category that are appreciated at Christmas are cheese balls, pate, fruit cakes, liqueur, preserves, jams, jellies and herbed vinegars. You can put them in attractive second-hand china bowls or plates, tins, bottles and jars.
- Tags for gifts can be unnecessarily expensive. You can pay more for the packaging than for the tags themselves. Your imagination is the limit here. You can use everything from simple notepaper with little hand drawn designs to old Christmas card cutouts, to shapes cut out of construction paper. This is another project that children would enjoy and be good at.
- Give the gift of time. Make up coupons for things you do to make someone else’s life easier and slip them into your homemade Christmas cards. For example, you could offer to walk a dog, shovel a sidewalk, wash a car, do the shopping for an elderly friend, or babysit.
- Thousands of toys are given to children each year that are played with on Christmas day and then are ignored. It’s a real problem trying to please a child and get lasting play value for the money spent.
Try to keep your children’s expectations simple and they will be happier with what they receive. Toys that inspire creativity and imagination in children will far outlast the mass-produced ones they see advertised on television.
The Christmas Pledge
Believing in the true spirit of Christmas I
commit myself to:
- Remember those people who truly need my gifts.
- Express my love in more direct ways than gifts.
- Examine my holiday activities in the light of my deepest values.
- Be a peacemaker within my circle of family and friends.
Source: Unplug the Christmas Machine