Meatless Mincemeat and Peppermint Pinwheels

These are two of my favorite Christmas recipes. My mom made them when I was a kid, so they are very deeply rooted in my memories of Christmas.

The first recipe is meatless mincemeat pie. I understand that way "back in the day" mixing meat and fruit was both a flavor preference and a way to help preserve the meat. Those folks were much more accustomed to the savory flavors of meat and fruit, and in some situations I like it too. But as a dessert, it just doesn't work for me to mix meat, suet, and fruit. So this meatless mincement works just fine for me:

MEATLESS MINCEMEAT

1 large orange

1 small lemon

15 oz raisins (I mix both golden and regular)

1 cup dried apricots (add more to taste)

8-9 medium tart apples cored (peeling is a personal preference...I prefer them peeled, my mom always left the peels on)

1 1/2 cups apple cider

3 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 1/2 tspns each of powdered cinnamon and nutmeg

3/4 tspn ground cloves (more or less to taste)

Remove seeds and skins from orange and lemon. Chop orange, lemon, and apricots in food processor. Peel (or not, as you prefer) and core apples, and either chop in small pieces or send them thru the food processor, too.

Put fruit and raisins in a pot with the apple cider. Bring to a boil then simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Add sugar and spices and simmer for 20 minutes longer or until thick. Makes enough for two 9-inch pies. Can either be frozen for future use, or baked immediately in a double crust pie.

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The second recipe is for Peppermint Pinwheel cookies. The dough rolling sometimes gets a little unwieldy in this project, but the cookies are well worth it.

PEPPERMINT PINWHEELS

2 c flour

3/4 c sugar

1 egg yolk

1 c butter, soft

1/2 tspn baking powder

1/2 tspn salt

1/2 tspn mint extract

1 tspn vanilla

red food coloring

Beat butter and sugar together in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla. Mix in the flour and other dry ingredients a third at a time blending well after each. You may need to add a little extra flour to make dough stiffer and less sticky. Divide dough in half. To one half add red food coloring and mint extract. Mix until the dough is dark pink.

Between sheets of wax paper or parchment, roll out each half of the dough to approximately 16x10 inches. Peel top sheet of wax paper or parchment from each half of dough. Invert one half and place on top of the other half, then peel off the wax paper or parchment that is now on top. Tightly roll the dough, jelly roll fashion. Wrap in foil then chill or freeze dough. Take out of freezer 1/2 hour before baking. Unwrap dough and cut into 1/4 inch slices. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday, no matter how, where, or with whom you celebrate!

Inaugural Brouhaha

I'll admit that I am, generally speaking, a political junkie. I've been detoxing since the campaign and election season.

I was interested to read today, however, that Obama chose Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. My first reaction was - ewwwww. Honestly, I'm not a fan of organized religion. I consider myself to be a moderately spiritual person, I just don't like religions - I find them limiting, negative, and intolerant, for the most part, and I think that rather than bringing people together they generally push people apart.

I try not to pay attention to religious stuff, other than to notice that there's usually way too much of it in every day public life. It gets pretty tiresome.

So after I thought about the whole Rick Warren issue I came to several conclusions:

1. First, why is there a religious invocation at the inauguration at all? Isn't the swearing in of a new president a government/state/secular event? What ever happened to separation of church and state?

2. If we must include religion in yet another public event, it seemed at first glance that Rick Warren was not a very wise choice for Obama. His selection has stirred up quite a bit of controvery in socially progressive quarters. I'm not a big admirer of people like Warren who use their power to exclude, subjugate, or pass judgement on other people, and by choosing Warren, Obama seems to be condoning Warren's views and actions. Coming from a man who ran on a fairly socially progressive platform, this doesn't appear very logical.

3. On the other hand, Obama has a seriously big partisan mess to deal with and he also promised during the campaign to try to bring people together. Reaching out to a man with whom he claims to disagree on many social issues is a step in the direction of inclusiveness and healing across parties. Choosing Warren for this ceremony doesn't mean Obama is going to adopt his views. It is only a symbolic ceremony, after all.

In trying to mend the broken and bitter feelings left after 8 years of one-sided overzealous cliquishness, it will be impossible for Obama to make everyone happy all the time. He has a very difficult job to do aside from being president: he has to find a way to help peevish and petty politicians and other leaders and organizations come together and compromise, accept each other, and agree to at least listen to each other, even if they disagree.

He needs to help all of us understand that it's not us against them, but rather we're all Americans and we have to tolerate the vast variety of people who make up our social fabric. No one ideology or lifestyle or geographic location is superior or more acceptable or more valuable than any other.

I, and the majority of the country, have really high hopes for Obama and people want to believe in him. He has enormous expectations to live up to. Let's give the man some room to prove that he can do the things we need him to do. By choosing Warren for the inaugural invocation Obama is not purposely snubbing the social groups and issues that Warren disapproves of, but rather he is trying to reach out and smooth the waters.

Anyway, that's my rant for today. I guess I haven't completely detoxed from politics yet...it can be a tough monkey to get off your back.

Out of the Blue

I didn't think I'd have anything to write about today - then the phone rang.

It was a theatre company in New York telling me they wanted to produce a short play I had submitted to them a while back as part of a short play festival in January. Boy, was I surprised! I happen to be quite fond of this play, so it was exciting that someone liked it enough to want to produce it!

I try to keep up and submit plays to a couple of places every month, but over the last few months I've been focusing strictly on fiction and haven't spent much time either writing or submitting plays.

All you writers out there will appreciate how much of a boost it is to your creative drive to have your work appreciated. Angie over at Gumbo Writer posted a piece at her blog today asking readers "what inspires you?" asking writers why they write.

I'm a fairly shy person so oddly I'm very self-conscious about actually watching any of my plays being performed, or having people read my writing. However, I write because I love to write. I love language and putting it together in new and different ways. I like painting pictures with words.

But I also like to know that what I've written has had an affect on someone. Maybe it's just a need for validation, I don't know, but who ever said artists make sense?

I'm sure most creative writers feel the same way. They may feel that their words are inadequate, flat, or faulty, and by making their writing public they're opening themselves up to potential humiliation. But there's always the chance that despite your trepidation, people will like what you've written! I think that's why a lot of writers write. Because it allows them to share that vulnerability with others. As a writer you put your humanity on the line and ask people to share it with you.

So, although I won't be able to actually attend the performance of my play in New York, I am very excited to have it produced, and I hope that whoever attends the performances enjoys watching it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

I guess Santa gave me an early holiday gift....I must have been a good girl this year! ; )

Gotta Love a Northern Plains Winter

Here in the frozen tundra of North Dakota we had a blizzard last night which left us with approximately 10 inches more snow, on top of the snow we already had.

It's currently about 8:00 p.m. and the air temp is somewhere around -17, with a wind child around -45. BRRRRRR.

Hubby and I went out earlier today to check things out, and I took these pix.

Gotta love winter in ND!

Rejection Dejection

I am elated to announce that I will (finally) be graduating with my Bachelor's degree (in English) in May. This after having begun it 24 years ago.

However excited I am about this accomplishment, I'm realistic enough to know that it really gets me squat (other than a warm fuzzy feeling). So, I'm in the process of shopping for an MFA program in creative writing. Because our family is not in a financial position to be able to relocate so that I can attend a program full time, I'm looking for a low residency program.

I was excited to apply to the program at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. I have waited patiently and expectantly for several months now for an answer.

Today I got an e-mail with the news: I wasn't accepted to the program.

Like any artist, I took this rejection personally.

Despite this setback, I have several more programs on my list where I still need to apply. Hopefully one of them will see some promise in my writing.

If anyone has any recommendations for a good low residency MFA creative writing program, I'd love to hear about it.

Until I'm finally accepted somewhere (which is all each of us really wants, anyway, isn't it?!), I'll try not to feel too dejected over my first rejection.

Award

Well, Brian at New Author was gracious enough to nominate me for the "Real Blogs, Real People" award. Thank you Brian, you are most kind.

The rules of this awardarama say that you're supposed to post the logo on your blog, place a link from the person from whom you received the award, nominate 7 other people, place links to their blogs on your blog, then leave them a comment to let them know.

Well, I've done the first two, but I think all of the blogs I follow deserve an award for being real so I'm going to respectfully decline to choose only 7 of them. I love them all. And since this award seems to quickly be making the rounds, most of them probably already have it anyway!

Thanks again Brian!

Daily Giggle

Snowmen fall from Heaven unassembled.