Merry Christmas Eve!

Good morning, my friends. We're expecting high winds today. The weatherman is predicting downed trees and power outages. All is calm right now, but we're bracing. I have some baking to do, and so I need the power to stay on. Erik called yesterday with concerns about the weather. After talking it over, we agreed to stay on the side of safety and postponed our family dinner until tomorrow, on Christmas Day. 

Yesterday started with the usual slow stitching. This is Tiny Treasure #35. It has a chain fill, a stem fill, stem stitch, and fly stitch.

There's just one more of these to stitch this morning. I've already decided to start on the nativity stitchery next.

From there, I got busy with my baking. Starting with two loaves of this Cranberry-Orange Bread with Grand Marnier Glaze. (Don't tell anyone, but I substitute triple sec for the Grand Marnier.)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've been making this for more decades than I care to think about. It's a family favorite. It can also be made using dried cherries in place of the dried cranberries. In that case, amaretto is substituted for the Grand Marnier. 

While that baked, I went to work making the gods' own Christmas candy, Divinity. My mother made divinity, and I have loved it my entire life. I wish I had her recipe, but I found one online that I like. This is Mrs. Floyd's Divinity. I have no idea who Mrs. Floyd is, but I'm sure I would like her if we met.

Oh, and did I say I didn't know who Mrs. Floyd is? Well...The Google to the rescue. According to AI, Mrs. Floyd is a quintessential Southern grandma figure, not a specific famous person, whose simple, perfect recipe for fluffy, pecan-filled divinity candy became a staple in Southern kitchens and magazines. So there you go.

Okay, and I thought I might bake some cookies, but I'd already dirtied every bowl and measuring device in the kitchen by then, and so I called it a baking day. Instead, I decided to pack up my sewing supplies. Smitty helped me as I sorted through things.

And that's one packing category checked off the list. There's no food to eat, and there are no clothes to wear yet, but by gum and by golly, the sewing supplies are on board. We have our purriorities.

With our schedule changed, I've rearranged my to-do's a little bit. Today I'll bake some cookies, and I'm trying out a new cheesecake recipe. We have a small ham to take along with us and enjoy on New Year's Day. I'll make some baked beans in the slow cooker, and we'll bake up some Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Hot Honey Browned Butter. I've scaled the cheesecake recipe to make it a cheesecake for two (or probably more like six). It's a no-bake cheesecake, but I'll still make it in a 4-inch springform pan. I've read that cheesecake freezes beautifully, and I happen to know that even the Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes are "deeply chilled" on their journey to your plate. I figure this will work out fine. 

It's made with a couple of new-to-me ingredients. First, these Lotus Biscoff cookies. I'd never heard of these before, and I despaired about finding them in the grocery store. They were plainly visible in the bakery section of our store. These will be used to make the crust.

The cheesecake filling uses this related product. It too was plainly visible right next to the cookies. There's also a "crunchy" version, but "creamy" seemed right for a cheesecake.

I'll use the whole of the cookie package (mine is the smaller 4.4 oz. size), but I'll only use about half of the cookie butter. Apparently it's also good as a spread or a dip. I can imagine it might be good spread on slices of apple...like peanut butter, only not.

Also, I'm doing laundry today, and I'll probably start the odious job of cleaning out the refrigerator. I need to sort through what we'll take along and what we'll discard. If I'm feeling really energetic, I might actually clean the refrigerator while I'm at it.

So that's a full day right there. Time to get moving. Stay safe and warm my friends. There's stormy weather in our future. I'm wishing you a day of less-threatening weather.