cinnamon christmas

meet mr pumpkin!

well, here's a christmas post! i must have one! i love christmas! i love december! december is my favorite month! it's full of festive joy!

there are five people whose birthdays fall in this vicinity whom i love very much! mom's birthday is on the 27th of november, so i'll just count it in! daddy, sis esther and bro isaac are all december babies! and Jesus, my Lord and savior, has his birth commemorated this month as well! december is a lovely month! (plus i'm home most decembers :D)

today was a busybusy day! attended kurisumasu service this morning at church! was nice, although i feel somehow a bit separated now from this church i grew up in...perhaps it's because i've been away so long, and many of the people i knew and loved from this church have left also, due to studies, getting married, migrating, etcetc...the church has changed so much! but change is good! it's good! lets hope the leaders of this church know that!

well, we had a lovely christmas lunch where i caught up with some old friends, many who also have just returned from other places to celebrate christmas at home. the food was awesome, cooked lovingly by many of the lovely older (but lovely!) ladies of the church who always serve faithfully behind the scenes and i believe are some of the most important strands that hold a church together.

i baked alot to-day! my feet hurt because i walked so much around the kitchen, running to the oven, the kitchen counter, the dining table, the wet kitchen...because i baked three things to-day! that's a record for me :P it was fun! and i bet the running around burnt more than enough calories for me to eat it all guiltlessly!! :D

dear all, meet mr. pumpkin (you may have seen him before)! it may be the wrong season, but that is okay, mr pumpkin is pleased to meet you...he turned into sweet, home-made pumpkin puree for the occasion. (it is sweet! very sweet! the ants in my house attested to that...we have an ant infestation @@) (i am really beginning to despise ants!)


he endured the slicing..."it's alright" quoth he "Jesus went through so much more for you, when He died on the cross for your sins! mine is but a little sacrifice"


and endured the heating and food processing...


and became pumpkin cookies!! i adapted the recipe and these weren't like cookies at all @@ they tasted like little pumpkin cakes because they were really so soft! sis thinks it's cos although the recipe called for 1.5 cups of white granulated sugar i put instead .25 cups of white granulated sugar, .25 cups of brown sugar and a tablespoon of sweet molasses! the molasses gave the cookies a very special taste, but i suppose it made the batter too wet and thus i got soft cookies instead!

i made some pretzels too, but they had nothing to do with mr pumpkin. the yeast was really active! i was supposed to glaze it with butter and cinnamon sugar...but it already tasted quite nice by itself, so i decided i better leave out the calories...haha


he sitting pretty on the pumpkin biscotti!


fat pretzels! the yeast went crazy!


and more pumpkin puree went into a pumpkin pie!
for the crust instead of .5 cup of olive oil i put in .25 cups of olive oil and .25 cups of pumpkin puree...tastes quite fine...but then i'm not too sure how pumpkin pie crust should taste like! haha

i still have loads of pumpkin puree, at least 3 cups...what to do? any ideas? :P

recipes linked below!

pumpkin cookies!!
(it says moist...i suppose the american cookies are soft! haha)

pumpkin pie!!

cinnamon sugar pretzels!!

do try them yourselves! it's really funfun!! :D