I don't really remember when it started, but it's been a long established habit of TMUs and mine to try and theme each month around the holiday that inhabits it. Probably it grew out of our Christmas traditions. The decorating, the food that only comes out that time of year, and overloading on non-stop Christmas music and movies. At some point it just slid over into the other holidays. Partially at least, we don't decorate big time until fall hits.
For TMU this mostly means just what movies we watch. For me it's about the food and the crafting too. There's just something fun about soaking up the holiday and the season with the projects around you. Course, I need to get better at working on my holiday crafting for sale a whole lot earlier then three weeks beforehand, but we'll ignore that for the moment. ;;) We haven't been as gung-ho about it as we used to be, but it's fun.
Usually we'll try to watch nothing but whatever type of movie fits the holiday, if we have enough of them, starting with Charlie Brown. Christmas is well covered, TMU hardly ever wants to take The Santa Clause series out of the computer and I usually have several versions of A Christmas Carol on rotation amongst all the other Christmas movies we have. I watch horror all October long (Freddy!) and while July doesn't have too many we see plenty of ID4. Months that don't have a holiday we theme as well. We figured we get the urge to watch nothing but other themes of movies sometimes too, so why not?For example, January is disaster movies, the cheesier the better.
February, of course, is romance movies. Except for rom-coms, at least for me. I've always kind of hated them. I'm sure it's weird, but I don't like watching people humiliate themselves. Instead of laughing at them, I cringe. I'm known to fast forward through those parts in some movies. A habit that makes watching Glee really hard sometimes. We intended this year to watch our top favorites first and then work our way through our whole collection alphabetically, any movie where romance is the main plot would count. Much to TPUs boredom. ::P He still gets his time though.
We didn't actually get too far, being...somewhat preoccupied...with Supernatural and re-watching Downton Abbey on DVD (both of which TPU has much more enthusiasm for) but we got to a few.
Julie and Julia was first. I like how Valentine's Day is its focal holiday, so few movies focus on that as opposed to romance in general. Then it was Return to Me and The Love Letter. What is it about timey whimey stuff that's always so romantic? Sadly that was kind of it, though since St. Patrick's Day has even fewer movies then Independence Day we might just keep working at the romances. Or there's always Dracula 2000 for Mardi Gras.
I did pop Legend in by myself (TMU can't stand it) but the fantasy outweighs the love story. I keep forgetting this is one of the few directors cuts I don't like. I love directors cuts and extended editions, I just love more in general with movies, but this one sorta sucks. Not the extra story, more the music. It's really distracting, jarring. The soundtrack in the theatrical version is much more magical, it fits better.
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The FOOD!
Once a week I try to do a bit of mass baking so we have cookies/pancakes/snacks/whatever to munch on easily the rest of the week. It's easier then baking every day, and makes for quick, convenient breakfasts when we don't really feel like cooking. Back on the fourth was one such day, and since I thought the Olympics would be dominating our lives over Valentine's Day I threw in some of the more basic VDay ideas I had wanted to try from Pinterest. It's become a challenge to see what I can pull together for a theme with mostly only food coloring and the occasional cookie cutter for supplies. You'd think I'd be better at planning ahead. ::P
I started off with two different kinds of heart themed pancakes. It turned out I didn't actually have to make pancakes that week since we still had two bags in the freezer that I'd forgotten about (though half were the buckwheat, they don't count) but you can never have too many pancakes stashed away.
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| My workspace. |
First was heart shaped pancakes. Just our usual pancake recipe cooked in a heart cookie cutter I managed to dig out.
I didn't think these would turn out as well as they did, but I was happy I was wrong. I'm no great cook. I tend to not fully plan ahead and totally forget about the little things that make life easier. Like oiling the cookie cutter so the batter doesn't stick to it. ::P
For the most part I pulled it off early enough that not too much stuck to it, but sometimes I didn't and had to stomp it out.
Of course, those were the best shape wise, but I really didn't want to spend that much more time for prettier pancakes when we were hungry.
The other ones were regular round pancakes, but with fruit laid in in heart shapes as it cooks. As simple as it is, I didn't think of it till I saw it on Pinterest. Here is the source. I used blueberries as well as strawberries for some variety. They doubled as hidden mickeys. ::P
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| Mine weren't as pretty, but they still tasted good! |
Paired with sausage and homemade cinnamon apple jelly, we had a pretty Valentine themed breakfast.
After recharging, I moved on to cookies. Started with chocolate chip for TMU, then cinnamon oatmeal, then regular oatmeal. Nestles came out with these awesometastic cinnamon chips back before Thanksgiving, one of the recipes on the back is the cinnamon oatmeal, and it's easily one of my top favorite oatmeal cookies of all time now. Once we tried them we grabbed a bunch more bags, though not nearly enough. Sadly we're almost out. ::( Maybe regular red hots might work....
The one problem is that they don't melt like chocolate chips do in the oven, which makes it hard for TMU to eat them currently. Each time I've made them I've tried a different way of adding them to make them softer, but nothing has worked. Only one left to try is melting them outright. This last time I tried breaking them up into smaller bits. I'll have to remember this whenever I need to work out some anger issues, because dayum these suckers are hard. I thought I'd break the counter before smashing the chips.
That bag was not reusable after I was done. ::P The end result, while unfortunately still not soft enough for TMU, was nonetheless as tasty as always for TPU and I.
The regular oatmeal raisin didn't turn out as good, though it was still good enough to eat. Just more like granola then cookies. OO_o
Not sure what I did wrong with the recipe, but they didn't cook normally and I had to leave them in a lot longer, so they were really dry when they finally weren't doughy anymore. Ah well, I like granola too! I might play with the additives and make it even more granola like.
I ran out of steam soon after that, but finished the cookie list the next day with heart shaped peanut butter and sugar cookies.
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| They tasted a whole lot better then they look in picture form, I swear. |
I wasn't at my cookie baking best those two days. ::P The peanut butter cookies couldn't be as crunchy as most recipes make them, but it meant they didn't hold the decoration properly. Here is what they were supposed to look like, the pressed fork ones. The sugars were not only a fail!pin also, check out the intended prettiness here, but I messed up the baking part too. Wanting to make them softer, I rolled the dough thicker, but forgot to keep that in mind when I baked them. So they would up a little weird in texture, and still too close to normal crunchiness when they were baked long enough.
Isn't this such an inspirational blog?? ::D
The pink ones were pretty though. The sugar on these is that edible glitter recipe found everywhere. Sugar and food coloring baked in the oven. It's leftover from last Easter, actually.
But despite the dubious cookie results, we still wound up with plenty of ready to bake dough in the freezer. I always freeze most of the dough of any cookie I make, it's so convenient to have them already made up and ready to pop into the oven at a moments notice.
Part two will hopefully come tomorrow, and then on with the randomness. This weeks mass baking is looking to be a mix of cookies and muffins, I think.
Here endeth the post.
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