A busy Week Preparing for Winter Solstice

It has been quite a busy week preparing for the upcoming sabot of Winter Solstice. Today I am baking goodies in the kitchen as gifts. Last night Tom made 2 double batches of his old fashioned style cocoa fudge. All I can really say is that his fudge is demanded every year. ;-) So is my peanut butter fudge that my grandmother used to make. My dad says I'm the only one that can pull it off to be just like his moms. Makes me feel good when he says that. I remember being a small child in grandmas kitchen. We made candies, cakes, pies and so many other goodies. She was known in Ashland county as the Candy Lady.

Right now I have 18 homemade bread rolls rising and soon I will bake them. The dough for the focaccia bread is currently rising as well and I just sautéed the garlic, basil and other herbs for its topping. Yum it is smelling and sounding so good.

I made 8 giant chocolate chip cookies as well. They are about 15 inches in diameter and SO good! Of course all is cooked from certified organic and natural ingredients... and all is entirely from scratch!

I've spent most of the week preparing and preppy for today and tomorrow. Tomorrow we head up to my parents and other family to celebrate Winter Solstice with a nice gathering and meditation.

We darn near ran out of dried wood earlier in the week. The weather has been so cold. Tom had to go pick up a load and Destiny spent a couple hours helping him unload and stack. Here they are working as I watch and tend to the kitchen off and on.

Destiny wasn't too happy about me standing there taking pictures.

A friend of the family has recently come in from Bakersfield California and is staying here in Ohio. I invited him to come stay the week with us as I could use an extra hand or two around the house this week. We've had fun visiting and chatting. I think I am spoiling him with my homemade dinners and sweets! One night it was homemade sausage gravy with drop biscuits. Man oh man were my biscuits & gravy good. There wasn't hardly a drop left! Another night I made some pizza dough and decided to make a stromboli. Our friend had never heard of or tried stromboli, let alone my from scratch pizza sauce. He was tickled to say the least and well we didn't have a single bite left over. Everyone chowed as usual. Here is a pic of my special stomboli that everyone seems to love. This one is fresh out of the oven. The cheese that leaked is still sizzling on the baking stone. I placed large pepperoni and charizo from the Whole Foods Market inside. Delicious!

Yum! Can't you just smell it?

We had a small bout of freezing rain earlier this week and today. Destiny was off of school one day becasue of the roads. This morning she had a two hour delay. Tonight we are letting her open her gifts for Solstice as we will be gone the rest of the weekend with family. I'm looking forward to seeing her face on some of them.

I hope to come back after the weekend and resume the Weekly Lunar Readings & Magical attributes. I honestly didn't have time this week to post so I promise to do so next week.

Wishing all of you a blessed & sacred Winter Solstice! Tis the birth of the sun in the sky and the longest night out of the entire year. ;-)


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