May 2, 2012

Swedish Tea Ring

Years ago, we were introduced to the yummy goodness of Swedish Tea Rings at a Bed & Breakfast in Lindsborg, Kansas. This town is known as Little Sweden and has quite a rich cultural heritage.

dala horse

The Bed & Breakfast served a rather interesting breakfast of things like lutefisk and hard-boiled eggs, Swedish meatballs, and yes, Swedish Tea Ring.

This past Resurrection Sunday, I decided to revisit this wonderful treat and make a couple of Tea Rings for my family. The consensus was a hearty, “YUM!”

slice of tea ring

Swedish Tea Ring

1 pkg active dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
1 c. milk, scalded
1/3 c. sugar
1 tsp salt
1/3 c. shortening (I used butter instead)
2 eggs, beaten
4 1/2 c. flour

Raisin Filling
½ c. sugar
2 Tbsp cinnamon
½ c. raisins

Almond Glaze
1/3 c. butter
2 c. powdered sugar
1½ tsp. almond extract
2-4 Tbsp hot water

Chopped walnuts & Maraschino cherries, optional

Soften yeast in warm water. Scald milk and add sugar, salt, and shortening. Cool to 100° (lukewarm). Stir in 1½ cups flour, dissolved yeast and beat well. Add eggs. Add enough remaining flour to make a soft dough.

Turn out onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic. Place in lightly greased bowl turning dough to grease entire surface. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled (about 1 hour). Punch down. Let rise again until doubled.

Divide dough in half and round up each half. Roll each half into a 9″x13″ rectangle about ¼” thick. Spread each half with 1 Tbsp softened butter and half of Raisin Filling. Roll as for a jelly roll. Seal edge. Shape each into a ring with the seam side down. Place on greased cookie sheet. With scissors, snip 2/3 of the way to the center at 1½” intervals.

Let rings rise until doubled. Bake in preheated 375° oven for 20-25 minutes. Drizzle with Almond Glaze and decorate with nuts and cherries, if desired.

dala horse photo credit

April 6, 2012

A Weekend for Celebrating: Passover, Egyptian Celebration, Resurrection Sunday!

seder plate

This weekend is full of celebrations for many families. Our family is doing some extra celebrating as well and I wanted to share that with all of you!

As with most celebrations, food is major part of the festivities. Here is the majority of the groceries I purchased for the weekend’s events:

Passover

This year, we will be celebrating a Passover meal at home as a family on Friday night. Last year, we received the Hand-crafted Seder Plate Set (shown above) from The Jerusalem Gift Shop. I’m looking forward to using it!

Here’s the menu for our Passover:

Buffalo Roast (because I couldn’t find any lamb and decided we’d follow the tradition of not having lamb since Christ was the Passover lamb and there is no need to provide a lamb anymore)

Unleavened bread (rather than traditional Jewish matzah, we’ll be using our Lord’s Supper Bread)

Horseradish

Parsley & Salt Water

Charoset – I am making this myself and it will be non-alcoholic. Here’s my recipe:
2 lbs of apples
1/2 lb of walnuts
1/4 cup cinnamon
enough grape juice to form a paste (consistency of mortar)
Blend apples, walnuts, and cinnamon in a heavy-duty blender (I’ll be using my Vita-Mix). Add just enough grape juice and blend until it reaches desired consistency
note: I’ve never made this – so this will be a big experiment!

And a fun little FYI – earlier this week during school, our family sat in on a live Seder meal at The Homeschool Channel. You can watch the replay by clicking this link. (If that link doesn’t work, try this one and scroll down until you find it.)

Egyptian Celebration

It just happened that we finished our Ancient Egypt unit in time for a celebration supper while family would be here to celebrate Resurrection Sunday with us. We are very excited about this since it has been a very long time since we have had family attend any of our celebrations and homeschool reviews! This event will take place on Saturday afternoon. The older children have put together games, presentations, and even a quiz for the others in attendance. I’m so excited about how nicely this all flows with learning about Passover. I think all of this will really drive home the importance and Biblical significance of Egypt and the events that took place there.

Here’s the menu for our Egyptian Celebration:

Buffalo Steak (not traditional at all, but it sounded really good!)

Cucumber Salad

Palace Bread

Grapes and Cantelope
Radishes
Pita Bread
Hummus

Resurrection Sunday

We attend church in the evening, so with Listening Pages in hand, we’ll be there! However, prior to church, we’ll be fellowshipping with Ty’s mother and Granny over a traditional Resurrection Sunday feast!

Here is our Resurrection Sunday menu:

Relish tray
Ham
Cheesy Potatoes
7-layer Salad
Rolls
Fruit Pizza
Swedish Tea Ring (we used to be night managers at a Bed & Breakfast that served these…fell in love!)

So, that’s our weekend in a nutshell! What will you be doing? How will you be celebrating our being set free by Christ’s blood and conquering of death so that all who believe may live?!

Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow!

December 23, 2011

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

We’ve spent December focusing our hearts on Christ and His glorious coming!

On Saturday, we’ll have have treats and hot punch (recipe below) and have our family Candlelight Service.

Then on Sunday, we’ll celebrate Jesus’ birth here on earth with birthday cake and presents and fellowship with family.

Have a blessed Christmas!

The Light of the world has come!

Festive Hot Punch

46 oz pineapple juice
64 oz cranberry juice
4½ c. water
1 c. brown sugar
¼ tsp. salt
4 cinnamon sticks, broken
4½ tsp whole cloves

Wrap cinnamon sticks and cloves in a coffee filter and tie with string. Put all ingredients, including spices, in a large stock pot and warm. Ladle into mugs.

December 22, 2011

The Many Sounds of Christmas

I adore Christmas lights twinkling in the icy air and I love the smell of cinnamon and cedar, but there is another sense that fills me with joy even more than these…

the sounds of Christmas!

I grew up in a singing family, so once the Christmas season hit you would hear my dad belting out his favorite hymns and my mom singing Silent Night in German. I grew up with a love of music, especially the music of Christmas.

Every year I take one of our hymnals into the kitchen with me while I work and sing through all the Christmas hymns in it…several times.

I also love popping in a CD like this one:

I don’t even know how I ended up with this CD, but I love it! It truly is a peaceful part of my evening.

And then there is our family Christmas Eve service (details on how you can get your own copy can be found here). It is full of music as we sing our favorite Christmas hymns and retell the story of Christ’s birth.

And just for fun, I’ll sing you my favorite Christmas hymn…”Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel.” (Bet you weren’t expecting that!)

There are some wonderful changes going on behind the scenes here at Raising Arrows, so I’d love to have you stay up to date with all that is going on by signing up for email updates.

Have a Merry Christmas all! May Christ be the purpose and meaning behind all your celebrations this year!

December 21, 2011

The Blessing of a Buffalo

For over a year I purchased our meat in the grocery store. I didn’t enjoy it.

Our buffalo meat from 2 years ago had run out and we kept coming up short on finding grass-fed beef to purchase. So, our freezer sat rather empty as we waited for the next time Ty could go buffalo hunting.

Veteran’s Day this year, that chance came!

Some of you probably know how incredibly expensive buffalo meat is. Because of the interest in breeding buffalo in recent years, the buffalo (or American bison) is no longer an endangered species; however, they are naturally organic and we all know how very expensive organic meat is. Hunting your own is actually a great investment because you get not only the burger, but steaks and roasts all for the same processing fee.

Additionally, buffalo meat offers us some amazing health benefits!

BBQ Buffalo!

Buffalo beats almost every other meat hands down in the nutrition department. Plus, as I said, it is organic because buffalo are naturally free-ranging animals that don’t like to be messed with.

The biggest benefit for me is the high iron content! I struggle with anemia, especially in pregnancy, so eating buffalo meat (cooked in cast iron) is very good for me.

It does smell different cooking than beef and you do have to cook it low and slow because of the next to nil fat content, but those minor adjustments are well worth a freezer full of wonderful meat!

Yes, I know some people wouldn’t be okay with the buffalo head hanging on my wall (I got a lot of comments on that post about being a good woman for allowing that!) or the buffalo robe on my bed (yes, it’s called a robe and not a “rug”), but I dare you to argue with me about the meat!

So, this Christmas I am blessed to have buffalo…a whole freezer load of lovely buffalo!

December 20, 2011

Grapevine Decorating

I like to tear things out of magazines. Especially decorating tips I’ll more than likely never put into practice. However, there was a particular Christmas decorating tip I pulled out of a magazine shortly after we were married that always stuck with me as something I was definitely going to do.

A few years later, I got my chance! At the time we were living in the house that made me smile with its enormous bay windows and lovely front porch. That Christmas, I was so excited to go shopping for decorations…in the woods! My secret woodsy decorating tip? Grapevine!

This year, I once again had a home with a railing perfect for the beautiful Christmas decoration I had once enjoyed all those year ago. And there was just enough grapevine trailing along our back fence line for me to decorate our back balcony.

After I had looped the huge strands of grapevine in and amongst the spindles and top railing to my satisfaction, I added strings of white Christmas lights.

At the other house, I had also added garland to create a look that dazzled in the daytime as well, but since this is our back balcony, I decided to just garnish with lights. The result makes me smile…

I absolutely love decorating with grapevine, not only because it has such a wonderful rustic feel to it, but also because it is entirely FREE! Just make sure you don’t accidentally choose poison ivy!

Do you decorate with grapevine? I’m thinking about adding some to the inside of my home around my china cabinet with lights as well. Any other decorating ideas for grapevine and lights?