holiday – Page 4 – The Herbangardener

Here’s a recipe that I love. It’s for gingerbread, which is so warming and comforting when it’s chilly and gray outside. Serve it with tea or coffee, and a dollop of freshly whipped cream if you like, or just a simple powdered sugar heart, for Valentine’s Day — or any day!

The secret ingredient is dark, stout beer; don’t leave it out! Just as wine gives depth to sauces, the caramel-like flavor of dark beer adds the depth needed to make this cake really awesome!

Classic Gingerbread

3/4 cup dark, stout beer (such as Guinness or something fairly similar)

1/2 tsp baking soda

2/3 cup molasses

3/4 cup sucanat or brown sugar, slightly rounded

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, plus extra to dust pan

2 1/2 Tbsp dried ground ginger (yes, tablespoons!)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp finely ground pepper

2 eggs

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

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Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour an 8″x12″ pan (or an 8″x8″ if you like).

In a medium saucepan, bring the stout beer to a boil, and simmer for several minutes to allow the alcohol to dissipate. Do be present in the room while the beer is on the heat, since it can (will!) rise and spill over the sides of the pan very quickly! Remove beer from the heat and stir in the baking soda. When the foaming subsides, stir in the molasses and sucanat/brown sugar, and stir till dissolved. It will likely still be quite foamy; that’s OK.

In a separate bowl, mix together all of your dry ingredients.

Pour the beer mixture into a large bowl and whisk in the eggs and oil.

Then whisk the dry ingredients into the beer in three parts — after each addition, stirring vigorously until batter is totally smooth.

Pour the batter into your pan and tap against the counter a few times to dislodge any large air bubbles.

Bake on the center rack until a toothpick stuck into the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes (slightly longer if you use an 8″x8″ pan).

Cool the cake, slice, decorate, and enjoy!

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~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

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– A most wonderful Christmas…spent in a mountain cabin with my parents and cat~

Our view!

In town...

– Our tumbleweed Christmas tree! Now and then we rent a cabin in the mountains for Christmas, and whenever we do, our tradition is to have a tumbleweed tree. I love them!

– Doing such quintessentially Christmasy things on Christmas eve — it fed my soul deeply. We hung out together in our little cabin, played Christmas music, had a fire going in the fireplace, baked gingerbread cookies (dough rolled out with the wine bottle!), roasted chestnuts on the hearth (never mind most of them turned out to be moldy inside, haha!), drank hot mulled apple cider, gathered around the glowing ‘tree’, and opened a few presents.

– Watching Liz, my cat, have the absolute time of her life in the cabin! She had a blast! How fun it was to see her having such a great time.

And she wears her Christmas collar with such nonchalance. Pretty cute.

Christmas morning!

– The incredible night sky. OH my goodness…I’d forgotten just how the night sky looks when you’re away from city lights. OH MY. That first night, I walked outside and literally gasped out loud. I dearly want that night sky to be part of my life…in the near future!! I miss seeing an overwhelming number of stars like that.

– The smell of new soap… I love when I’m on vacation because the soap at new places smells different and really reminds me that I’m on a trip!!

– Pine needle tea.

– Giving my gifts at Christmas!

– The wonderful, love-filled gifts I received from my folks. Wow.

Christmas morning!

– Taking a family walk on Christmas, down to the sledding hill, the frozen pond where people were skating, around the dirt roads, past other cabins… it was lovely. I also loved that I felt well enough to do such a walk! And then…drinking hot chocolate and eating snacks after our walk.

– Starting fires in the fireplace…soaking split peas by the hearth…roasting a potato in the ashes…loving the atmosphere and warmth of a crackling fire…and then taking home all the wood ash for the garden. I loved having a fireplace for 4 days!!

– Going swimming with Mom and playing catch with a wiffle ball. We surprised ourselves at how much fun we had! And the view from the pool of the surrounding snow-covered Rocky Mountains was breathtaking.

– Having a break from the computer (and all other technology) over Christmas. Gosh that felt good… and I’d like to make that happen more often in day-to-day living. How nice it was to go back to the simpler times that I remember, when computers weren’t part of our daily lives, and we actually interacted with one another, read actual books, had actual conversations, took actual walks together, etcetera!

– Low-tech “family art time” that happened spontaneously — dad was doing watercolor at the table, and mom and I began making ornaments. All was quiet while we were absorbed in our tasks, and it felt good to be gathered at the table together. We definitely don’t take each other for granted, and we know those moments are so precious.

– Getting home safely, and feeling that of course I loved the cabin and the mountains, but it also felt good to be home.

– Getting home to my sweet Hubby, and glad that he got some good alone-time while I was gone. We all need alone time. 🙂

– Meeting F the next day near his office and going to lunch; I loved that.

– While driving home from the mountains, feeling a deep desire for a luxurious spa treatment…and then arriving home to find an envelope with a gift certificate from my sister for…a spa treatment!!!!!! Oh Hallelujah!!!

– Finally getting to the thrift store for some new clothes.

– Getting home in one piece after an exhausting and frazzling errands day out and about on my bike… arriving home after dark, from icy and slushy roads, with a heavy backpack and annex bag on my handlebars. Totally exhausted. And into the loving arms of my wonderful hubby (who was busy making some incredible spaghetti sauce!), and then into a hot bath with flower essences, bath salts, candles, and relaxing music. Then into bed!!

– Cleaning up and purging some stuff from our house yesterday. I didn’t realize it was New Year’s Eve until mid-day, but F and I had spontaneously launched into a perfectly appropriate activity for that particular day…purging the old, cleaning up, throwing out, organizing. And today I got out my Lillian Too’s 168 Feng Shui Ways to Declutter Your Home book which is such a great way to get fired up about purging your house if you’re lacking inspiration. I always lament the fact that I use so much of my stuff, because I’d really just like to give it all away!!

– Having help from my Hubby with the huge mountain of laundry yesterday. Our landlord bought a brand new fancy Samsung front-loader washing machine that we all hate. I won’t go into detail because it’ll just rekindle my hatred of that thing, haahaa!, but yesterday having Hubby pre-wash everything in the bathtub was a huge help, and made the task seem a lot less overwhelming.

– A relaxing and quiet New Years Eve. We even watched an entire Lawrence Welk show — they were celebrating New Years Eve 1971! We can’t help but laugh at certain acts in that show, and comment that every single person in the audience is probably dead now…but last night some good old fashioned schmaltz just felt right.

– Though I don’t normally get too excited about New Year’s, I began thinking about it last night and feeling glad for a slate that’s been wiped clean, ready for a new start!

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Happy 2012 to you!

What gratitudes have graced your week?

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