I made maple granola on Monday, as we are almost out. Our area is projected to be in line for major snow and cold for the end of the week and Christmas Eve and Day, so I will make sure that we have food available that does not require opening a refrigerator or freezer, just in case. We have seen a number of NIPSCO trucks heading north on our road, so it looks like the Indiana utilities are expecting possible outages.

I have biscuit dough chilling in the refrigerator. I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet. I also need to make some bread. We were going to leave for VA today or tomorrow but now Violet has covid and Henry may so we're staying put again. At least we had Thanksgiving. And we may try to head down for New Year's.

I gave Violet a Duff Goldman cookie cookbook for Hanukkah so whatever cookies I was planning are on hold (unless I sneak them in). She has already read through the book twice and is deciding on what to make.

Has anyone seen a set of cookie cutters for cutting out the parts of a gingerbread house? I have some friends who have a maker space - they have tools and knowledge to help you make things. It might be cool to give some people gingerbread house kits that are slabs of pre-baked gingerbread. I'll make them if I cannot find what I want.

I had lard leftover from my stollen recipe. I saw that recipe for Biscochitos in the paper and I was going to try it until I discovered the supermarket did not have anise seeds. Somehow I found a recipe for polvorones using lard and almonds. The flour and almonds were toasted in oven. The cookies were baked at 300 degrees. The recipe called for the cookies to be baked for 15min. They took a good 40 minutes. None of the reviews mentioned that the timing was off. I substituted Cointreau for brandy. My cookie taster thought they were very tasty. I then proceeded to check other recipes for these cookies. They were all over the rainbow. Lesson is: when you find a recipe you have mastered ,stick with it!

Navlys--sadly, items such as anise seed or candied fruit are no longer stocked in most supermarkets.

I'm glad you were able to make the recipe you baked work.

Tonight I made Noel Nut Balls from a Martha Stewart recipe.

My husband used the last of the bread for lunch on Thursday. I had anticipated it would run out, so I began a levain last night and today baked Rustic Wholegrain Sourdough Bread, using the Romertopf glazed bowl and the cloche top from the set I bought last year from Skeptik. (The bottom only fits bread loaves of about 3 cups flour; this recipe is 5-cups of grains.) I played with the recipe, which I had only baked this way once, by adding a tablespoon of flax meal and half a cup of the King Arthur 6-grains flakes. Although I deleted a half cup more of the bread flour, the dough needed another ¼ cup of water, and possibly could have used a little more. As I was shaping it, I sprayed it with water after each fold, I sprayed it before the second rise, and I sprayed it after I slashed it, put the cloche on, set it in the cold oven, then turned on the oven. I checked at 50 minutes, but it was only 190F, so I gave it another 3 minutes uncovered. I think that the second rise should have been a little longer, given the coolness of the house, but the rise in the oven was good, and it certainly looks rustic. I look forward sampling it at lunch tomorrow.

I am making my sourdough pan pizza for Thursday night's dinner. My plan is that we eat half tonight and the leftovers for Christmas Eve dinner. That, of course, depends on not having any power outages tonight or tomorrow. So far, the wind has not picked up, but it likely will later this evening.