Orange Rolls

Recently we took a survey of our kids. It looked something like this:

Family Interest Survey
1. What is your favorite thing to do as a family?
2. What is something we’ve only done once or twice that you’d like to do again?
3. What is your favorite vacation memory?
4. What is your favorite family tradition?
5. What is your favorite holiday memory?
6. If you could have two hours with just Dad, what would you do?
7. If you could have two hours with just Mom, what would you do?
8. What is something new you’d like to try?

There were a few other questions, but you get the idea. The results were quite interesting, actually, and revealed to me something I really knew at heart, but absolutely confirmed to me afterward. It’s not the big things we do that make the best memories. It’s the little ones. Between ‘holiday memories’ and ‘family traditions,’ for example, every one of our five children said one of their favorite things was to have Orange Rolls on Christmas morning.

That tradition started with a coupon for Rhodes bread about eight years ago. I decided how nice it would be if, on Christmas morning, I could simply pop some ready-made bread into the oven that had been rising all night and not have to worry about making a big breakfast. I bought a package of orange rolls and the kids loved their special treat. I loved its simplicity. Now about a week before Thanksgiving, each child in turn will say, “Mom, don’t forget to buy orange rolls.” Somehow, I guess it wouldn’t be Christmas without them.

But I’ve recently been watching my food budget, and somehow it seems a bit extravagant to be buying two or three bags of frozen dough when I have a recipe that makes roughly three dozen cinnamon rolls for about $2. A quick look at my all-purpose cookbook enlightens me to the idea that the only difference between cinnamon-sugar and orange filling is, well, cinnamon and orange. Cinnamon-sugar is made by combining ½ c. sugar with ½ T. cinnamon. Orange filling is made from ½ c. sugar and one grated orange rind (which came to about a tablespoon).

Time for another experiment.

I got out my trusty cinnamon roll recipe that my aunt, Susan Smith, gave me when I got married. With her permission, I share it here:

1 T yeast
½ c. warm water
Place in bowl and let yeast rise.

½ c. sugar
5 T oil
1 t. salt
1 t mace
2 c. scalded milk (I microwave for 2-3 minutes)
3 eggs
7 c. flour (I’ll sometimes make 2-3 wheat flour)

Put sugar, oil, salt, and mace in large bowl. Pour hot milk in bowl. When lukewarm, add eggs and yeast. Add part of the flour and beat together. Then add the rest of the flour and mix well. Grease inner side of bowl and let rise until double. (About 1 hour). Spread dough out on floured surface (I use oil—just something so that it won’t stick to the counter). Spread into a rectangle. Spread dough with butter, and brown sugar & cinnamon. Roll up and cut into slices and place on greased baking sheet.
Let rise ½ hour. Bake 10-12 minutes @ 400. Frost and serve.

As of last month, I’ve also decided that homemade frosting is almost as easy, a little cheaper, and far superior to the store-bought tub variety.

4 oz. cream cheese
2 T butter
2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla
2-3 t. milk (next time I’ll try O.J. if I’m making orange rolls—I think it will give it the right color & flavor) Whip on high in mixing bowl.
Needless to say, my children were absolutely ecstatic about having our traditional Christmas fare before Thanksgiving. On your average Wednesday night, no less. I did freeze seven of the orange roll slices though. I’m still working on one more experiment before Christmas to keep one of my favorite traditions alive.

http://intuitivehomemaking.blogspot.com/

Pruning

I’m not much of a gardener. Generally, I plant every year out of obligation—I tried leaving our garden space fallow one year, only to come back from vacation to find weeds four feet high. It took longer to pull them all out than it would have been to tend the garden all summer. And we’ve never quite negated that year’s effects. Lesson learned.

Similarly, I should have been tending my fruit trees with a little more care. Last summer, we noticed how dead some of the branches were looking, but pruning them ourselves was a task more daunting than any of us could take on. We hired a professional. But a professional can only do so much when your trees are already dying. The peach tree didn’t make it. Despite our best efforts last year, we got no fruit and only a sad stump remains. I missed having fresh peaches this year.

Our apple tree, on the other hand, did a little better. The pruner topped the tree and took off all the dead wood, but warned us we may not have many years left with it. Half of what was left died, but the portion that remains bore the sweetest, best, and biggest fruit we have had in the decade we’ve lived here. Sixteen quarts of applesauce and numerous pies and cobblers resulted from half a tree. All thanks to a little pruning.

So this year I got braver. Not wanting our apple tree to suffer the same fate as its cousin, I read up a little on how to prune a tree. It was a lot simpler than I thought, though considerably time-consuming. I’ve pruned back our raspberry patch every year, so I wondered why it never occurred to me that I could use the same clippers to do the same thing for my other fruit-bearers. I spent a couple of hours cutting away all the unnecessary wood that would inhibit fruit growth. By the time I finished with the raspberries and grapes (this year’s permanent garden addition), I could barely move my right hand. But I’m hoping for payoff next year.

The thing I always forget during the times in between dreaded bouts of yardwork is how it provides me a chance for self-reflection. Over the years, I’ve become much like my trees. In many ways, I’ve become overgrown—allowing unnecessary things to crowd out the good things simply because I haven’t taken a little time to cut them back. How many interests and hobbies do I have that, while they are enjoyable, are not really profitable? How often do I have half-finished projects because there wasn’t room in my schedule to accommodate their completion? The ground below my apple tree is often cluttered with fruit that didn’t quite make it. Sounds like my workroom filled with unfinished sewing jobs, almost-done or ready-to-be-started crafts, and piles of things to someday be added into a scrapbook.

Pruning is hard work, and even a little painful sometimes, but then again, so is everything that gives us the best fruit. Pruning allows more light and space for growing fruit to reach its full potential. And it applies to human beings as well as plants. How many of my “projects” crowd out room for scripture study and prayer? How many evenings spent browsing the internet could be more profitably spent actually catching up on those scrapbooks or doing family history? And how often do I spend time around my children without really connecting with them simply because I think dinner or dishes need to be done first? I’m beginning to see now that it is time for me to prune back the things that clutter my life and do not bring any long-lasting results so that I can make room in my life for the things that will.

http://intuitivehomemaking.blogspot.com

Sunny Day

I guess I'm feeling a little juvenile now because sometimes I don't have any more attention span than a three-year-old and get easily distracted. While doing a google search, this is what came up:
Being the Jim Henson fan that I am, (I was actually listening to John Denver & the Muppets earlier today), I clicked on Cookie to see what I could see. The following article was the first on the engine search.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gALnZVPAopb8hS40R1AgFXIrWyZA

This article is about Caroll Spinney, the man inside the costume. I marvel that a man who is 76 years old still loves his job after 40 years as an 8-foot-tall-6-year-old canary and a grumpy old green grouch named Oscar.

Despite my short attention span, sometimes I lose touch with the child in me. I carry the weight of such grown-up responsibilities like mortgage payments, grocery shopping, car repairs, and utility bills. My knees hurt if I kneel on the floor too long. And I find myself set in my ways and not always willing to learn or try something new. But this was a healthy reminder that we are never too old to sing the alphabet song or count to 40 just to know that we can. (I'll never be a decent mother now or grandma someday if I forget that entirely.) Like all of us, I occasionally just need a reminder that it's OK to be a kid at heart.

http://intuitivehomemaking.blogspot.com/