I think some of you might still be snowed in this morning in Dublin! Hope you are staying in and cosy today!

I spent yesterday afternoon sewing Christmas stockings for a few little boys in Dublin. They came out so cute!

When I wasn”t sewing (and eating lots of Thanksgiving leftovers), I spent some time browsing some of my favorite Etsy shops for holiday gift ideas. Such talented people out there. I”m looking forward to joining them in a few months!

This is a little collection of gifts for anyone who loves cooking, baking, or even just food! The shipping on nearly every one is so reasonable within the United States and even over to Ireland! Most of these Etsy artists are from either Maine or Ireland, which I think is just so neat.

These adorable tea towels are from the shop Madder Root in Old Town, Maine. They have just lovely, simple, hand printed pieces. I love the natural colors. Wouldn”t these tea towels be a nice Christmas casino online nederland addition to your kitchen?

These two prints are from BridBird”s shop (with free shipping worldwide!) in Northern Ireland, and I think her prints are so affordable and unique. I love that each item is so simple but arty at the same time.

2FreshThreads is such a cool shop – I just love those prints! I”m a sucker for that sea green background too! They also do the cutest aprons.

Lastly, I am loving the texture in the pottery from Cats Paw Pottery. So darling huh?

I”m off to do some running around visiting friends and family for the day. Check back tomorrow for lots more cute gift ideas for the (quickly approaching!) holidays. See you soon!

I lied! I told you about the famous dinner roll recipe and then things were too crazy around here yesterday and I totally forgot!

I wish I had a photo of them from yesterday, but they’re gone. Not a one left.

Here it is. My mom is famous for this recipe. Watch out, once people get a taste they’ll demand you bring them to every holiday! Good thing they’re pretty easy!

Dinner Rolls

3 to 3 and 1/4 cups flour 1 pkg. dry yeast
1 tsp. salt 3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup sugar 1 egg
1 cup milk

Combine one cup flour, yeast, sugar and salt in bowl. Heat milk and butter until butter is melted. Cool until you can put your index finger into milk and it’s hot, but bearable. Add to dry ingredients and mix with mixer, beating in egg. Mix for a minute or two, then mix in rest of flour. Knead until not sticky and ball forms. Let dough rise for about an hour in a greased, clean bowl (covered and put in warm place).
Grease muffin tin. Roll dough into small balls. Place three balls in each cup. Let rise about 30-40 minute. Then bake at 400 (200ish C) for 15 minutes OR if you want brown and serve rolls, bake at 300 for 15 minutes until barely browned, then refrigerate or freeze until ready to serve, then bake at 425 (210ish C) for 8 minutes.

Enjoy!

Check out our festive Thanksgiving table from yesterday’s feast!

It was a great day with family, friends, food, football, and so much to be thankful for.

And now, bring on Christmas! It’s even snowing here in Maine!

Since it’s truly the beginning of the Christmas season, I’ve been thinking about holiday traditions. What are your holiday traditions? I’ve heard a few neat ones in the past few months. One is the idea (great for large families with lots of kids!) of giving one clothing gift and one toy gift per child.

Another idea is to have each child make gifts for their siblings. I love this idea! I’m trying to do as much making as possible for my Christmas gifts this year. I’ll be posting some great ideas for homemade gifts in the next week.

I’ve also heard some people only do stockings for each other and their kids. This year, Michael and I are toying with the idea of planning a trip together as a gift to each other.

But I think we’ll still mix in some traditional pretty gift-giving this season! I’ll be posting a few gift guides over the next week as well, so check back for some great holiday gift ideas!

In the meantime, take a peek at this magazine, called the Pizzazzerie Holiday Gift Guide. I love these free online magazines – they always have such beautiful ideas.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Today is filled with lots of preparations for a big meal later, so I thought I’d just share a few photos of the lovely day in China Village, and a few things I’m thankful for today.

the freedom to travel to be with my American family over Thanksgiving

wonderful parents who equipped me with all the tools I need to succeed: strength, integrity and a little grit

a loving husband who’s given me (among a million other things) space to try to find what will make me truly happy

warm, supportive family and friends in both of my homes

health, faith and peace in my little part of the world. it’s rare.

To friends who are family and family who are friends. Have a truly lovely Thanksgiving day!

Hello everyone! So late today! Eek!

But, guess what tomorrow is?? Thanksgiving here in America! It is, by far, my favorite holiday. Family, friends, food, and no work for anyone!

I have to be honest though, I’m no expert on what it actually takes to pull Thanksgiving off. I’ve always helped a little, but I’ve never been in charge. So I did a little interview with my mom while she was preparing some parts of tomorrow’s big meal.

Here’s what our Thanksgiving meal usually consists of:

turkey
gravy
stuffing (one traditional and one cornbread, and this year one gluten-free)
cranberry sauce
sweet potatoes (with marshmallows melted on top!)
mashed potatoes
squash
peas
pearl onions
corn
dinner rolls
pies with fresh whipped cream

Did I miss anything? Oh, sometimes there’s birthday cake. Maybe it’s my favorite holiday because it was my first day on earth!

So here’s a little advice from my mom. She’s modest. She doesn’t think she’s an expert. But she always pulls it off, and it’s always delicious.

Me: What would you tell someone who’s doing Thanksgiving for the first time?
Mary: I think the important thing is not to be intimidated by the meal. Do as much as you can the day or two before so that on Thanksgiving you have a little less to worry about. I always make the rolls early and put them in the freezer a few days before. Cranberry sauce can be made ahead of time too.

The other thing is not to try to do anything too fancy. No one will remember the fancy things – they just want the old standards. Stuffing, gravy, turkey, and lots of different vegetables. Oh, and the rolls. I think I’d be in trouble if I didn’t make the rolls. The guests might mutiny!

Me: What about the timing on Thanksgiving Day?
Mary: Well, you really need to just make sure everything is done when the turkey is done. If you’re new to Thanksgiving, I would map it out on paper so you know what you have to do when.

Me: Have you ever screwed it up?
Mary: One year I dropped a whole pie on the floor straight out of the oven. And then there was the year your dad brought home some free range, organic farm turkey the night before Thanksgiving and it barely fit in the oven! I think it had about an inch of room from the top of the oven and it wouldn’t fit in the roasting pan! It was 32 pounds of turkey for four adults and two kids under the age of four. We were eating turkey for days!

Me: What’s your favorite memory of Thanksgiving?
Mary: Well of course the day you were born! Except that day I didn’t even have any food! I did make your dad mince pies so he wouldn’t be hungry while I was busy having you, so he got a little taste of Thanksgiving that year!

See? It’s practically my holiday.

Some of the things we have for Thanksgiving every year are standard and kind of boring but they’re there because they’re always there. Maybe even since the Pilgrims. But some of the things we have every year are just downright awesome. Dinner rolls, cranberry sauce and cornbread stuffing are my top three. So, here are the recipes for cranberry sauce and stuffing. Tomorrow, you get the famous dinner rolls. Gotta keep you coming back!

Cranberry Sauce

1 package cranberries
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tsp orange zest

Put everything together in a saucepan and turn to medium heat. Cook until the cranberries pop and start breaking down. The mixture will thicken, takes about 30 minutes.

Cornbread Stuffing with Roasted Chestnuts and Dried Cranberries

1 chopped onion
3 stalks chopped celery
1 tbsp butter
4 cups chopped cornbread
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup chopped roasted chestnuts
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 tsp dried sage
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a saucepan and saute the onion and celery until they’re soft and translucent. In a large bowl, combine the onion and celery with the cornbread, roasted chestnuts, cranberries and dried herbs. Mix them to combine. Slowly pour in the chicken broth a little at a time, until the mixture is moist all the way through. Put the soggy mixture in an oven safe dish and put it in the oven at 350 (180 C) for 30 minutes until the top starts to get crispy. Then spoon out and enjoy!

So there’s Thanksgiving, part one! Check back tomorrow for the famous dinner roll recipe (Greta, this one’s for you!), and some thankfulness.

Images from Martha Stewart and Country Living, via Apartment Therapy.

Hello from China Village!

I made it up to my hometown late yesterday afternoon. No major incidents driving on the other side of the road and I had so much fun turning right on red again!

Before I get too caught up in the Thanksgiving festivities of the week, I wanted to give you the full report of the Winter Fair last weekend. Sadly, I don’t have tons or really great photos, but these few might give you a sense of what my little table looked like.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Too bad you can’t taste the treats (and too bad I didn’t take any photos of them – that would have been a great idea!), they were yummy! I made six recipes for the fair: my very popular chocolate chip cookies, raspberry walnut bars, brownies, pumpkin cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin whoopie pies.

Then I made some baked Christmas ornaments you can see in the photo below. And remember my scavenging? Well one of those trees made the cut and came to the Winter Fair with me! I thought it was so lovely it’s going to be part of our Christmas decorations in our apartment this year.

I also made a couple of these wreaths. The photos don’t really do them justice – they are so sparkly in real life!

I printed gold Christmas trees on newsprint and covered cardboard boxes with the printed paper. The boxes gave the table a little height which I think was visually nicer. I printed mini gold Christmas trees on white cocktail napkins which I used to serve the treats, and I printed even more on small, white paper bags for those who wanted to take the treats home. Man, I wish I was back in Dublin for a minute so I could take a photo of the left-over printed napkins and bags. They were so lovely!

In the end, I did really well! After taking out the cost of having a table and my expenses, I made over 100 euro profit! So neat!

Huge, huge thanks go to my mother-in-law, Lois, for helping me get ready and for being such a great sales person on the day! And giant thanks to Naomi (and Andy, king of whoopie pie sales) for helping me behind the table as well!

And finally, thanks to everyone who came and supported me by munching on sweet treats!

Tomorrow: An interview with a Thanksgiving veteran!

*If you live in the Dublin area and would be interested in ordering batches of any of my baked treats for the holidays, please send me an email at fromchinavillage@gmail.com. Rates are very reasonable!

Good morning from dark and gray Portland, Maine!

I arrived LATE last night and am still zonked, but I am here!

I wanted to share a quick few photos with you this morning before I head off to see lots of friends and family all day long!

That was the neatest view out the airplane window last night. The cool thing about flying in the afternoon from Dublin is that you get sunset oranges and pinks nearly the whole way! (And because the man next to me was a big old grouch who said, “Ireland is worse now than it was 20 years ago when I left, and don’t you think the IMF isn’t going to suck it dry,” I spent the whole time looking out the window!)

And, the day before I left I had this view from behind my table at the Winter Fair:

Chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin cake. Yum!

More photos of the fair tomorrow, along with some lovely Thanksgiving recipes. Sorry, Irish readers, you’ll just have to drool…or start angling for an invite to my first Feb-giving in a few months! I’m thinking Ireland needs a new holiday, no?

*Those photos are a little flat, huh? Michael turned on wide angle on my camera and I can’t figure out how to turn it off! Grrrrr…

The baking for tomorrow’s Winter Fair is going full steam! Just wanted to share one little thing with you all this morning.

For all my baking this morning, I’m using homemade vanilla extract that I made a few months ago. Did you know you can make your own vanilla extract from just vanilla pods and vodka?

It’s really easy and works great!

Here’s how I did it:

I got a bottle with a tight-sealing cap (from Ikea, if you must know). I filled it with vodka. Then I added 4 vanilla pods, sliced straight down the middle.

I sealed the bottle and put it in the cupboard for 2 months, giving it a quick shake every week.

Most recipes on the internet say you need 2 vanilla pods per cup of alcohol, but mine might be a little less. The finished product is less dark than the kind you buy in the grocery store, but it smells just as strong and works just as well!

The cool thing is that you can remove those vanilla pods and add them to a canister of sugar and presto! Vanilla sugar!

I’m off to America on Sunday, but I’ll be posting a full report of the Winter Fair when I’m off the plane and over the jet lag.

Have a lovely weekend! Hope to see some of you tomorrow!

Did you think I had left you? Moved on to bigger and better things?

Not so! The internet was out yesterday, so I was cut off from the world of my blog.

I knew I was a fan of my technology (I check my google reader more frequently than I’d like to admit), but I realized yesterday how much I use the computer and television for background noise during the day when Michael is out coaching. It was quiet in my house!

So I went walking near our house in Dublin, and with the tide out, I was reminded of a story I heard a few days ago. My mother-in-law told me she was driving with a car full of my brother- and sister-in-law and a friend of theirs. They drove up the coast, tide out, and someone said how unattractive the view was without the bay full of water. Then someone said, “But Emily really likes it this way!”

We laughed when she told me that exchange. But then I thought what a funny thing that everyone knows how I feel about the tide. That’s not a common thing you know about a person. Perhaps I share too much.

As I was out today, I got to thinking about why I like it when the tide’s out. I’ve never really thought to explain it, it’s more of a gut feeling.

I think there are lots of reasons why I like it when the tide is out. It reminds me of what I think the surface of the moon might be like. I like that it’s like a sneak peek to what the rest of the ocean floor might be like. I like that we get to see the hidden treasures down there, even if it’s usually just an overturned shopping cart or those orange hazard cones covered in muck. I like watching the guys out there digging for worms they’ll use for bait. They ride their bikes to the coast and climb down the sloping rocks out onto the mud.

But really I like that when the tide is out that water in Dublin Bay feels like the ocean. The ocean in Dublin rarely smells like ocean. You can’t smell the salt like you can in Maine, and you don’t feel crusty and salty when you’ve gone for a wet walk along the coast. There aren’t lobster pots washed up on the shore or crushed mussel shells all over from where the seagulls have dropped them and plucked out the orange guts.

When the tide is out in Dublin, it means it’s not just water out there. It’s ocean, and it’s the same ocean as my Maine ocean. Low tide makes me feel a little closer to home. And that’s a nice feeling.

Now that was the sappy part, here’s the funny part. I have a habit of collecting beach stuff. Sea glass, rocks, shells. I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to do with all my treasures yet, but I keep collecting it. I mean really, it’s free and pretty. I have a hard time stopping.

Guess what I came home with today from my walk? A giant tote bag (LL Bean, baby!) full of drift wood and a weathered, whitened tree. Yes, a tree. It’s three feet tall, but yes, a tree.

And the even funnier part? The tree had to squash into the back of the station wagon because I already had another (much bigger) tree in there! I picked up a giant branch driving home earlier this morning. Little did they know they were all coming home to my house! To live, happily, until I figure out what project they’re going to be part of!

And see those shoes peeking into the photo above? Best scavenging shoes ever. Penney’s, €3. Excellent investment.

The best part of the whole day? I picked up Michael after my walk, with all my trees and drift wood in the back of the car, and he didn’t even blink! Ha!

***

No baking today because the marathon starts tomorrow for the Winter Fair! I’ve got five recipes I’m baking and doing a few batches each. I want the treats to be fresh, so it’s all getting done tomorrow!

And one last thing. Have you seen this story? 50 tweets in answer to the question “Name the good things about Ireland.” Here’s my fave:
# 33 The inability to pronounce “th” and then magically inserting it where it doesn’t exist ex. “heighth”

That, my friends, is my favorite thing about the Irish accent.

You know what the most fun part of this give-away was? Getting to hear about all the fun things you have been baking! I got one great new recipe already (thanks, Jess G!), and I’m hoping a few more of you will share your recipes because they sound amazing (doesn’t victoria sponge cake just sounds so elegant?)! You could just email me or leave a link in the comments. I love new recipes!

But, back to the important stuff this morning. The winner, generated by random.org, was Chelsey, who recently made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!

To claim your prize, please email me at fromchinavillage@gmail.com with your address. I’ll send it off straight away so you can get cookie cutting!

Now here are a few recipes I bookmarked over the last week or so. I’m saving up all my baking energy for the Winter Fair this Saturday. All the baking will be done Friday and it’s going to be a marathon! But these are a few recipes I can’t wait to try once everything settles down a little.

Honey Whole Wheat Pound Cake

Overnight French Toast Casserole

Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies – these don’t look like your typical cakey pumpkin cookies. Yum!

And here’s a very Irish recipe I’m dying to try – Caramel Slice

Did anyone try out one of the cranberry recipes from last week? Dying to hear all your baking news since I’ve been on a hiatus!

One last thing – that random.org I was talking about up there? It looks like this:

It’s genius, but guess what else? It was built and is being operated by Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin! What fun!