Thank you all so much for another fabulous online year. This whole blogging thing continues to amaze and surprise and delight me. I just love it—and I love how many wonderful people I've 'met' from all over the world. Here's hoping to find even more time to share photos, stories, and recipes from my crazy country life with you next year!
Anything you'd like to see more (or less) of in the coming year? Do speak up! I'm constantly fine tuning what I post according to your feedback and am always open to ideas and suggestions.
Happy, Healthy, and Plenty to Eat—the Best Gift of All
Okay, So Maybe Some of Us Could Always Use More Treats
Little donations made in the name of friends and family can add up to a whole lot of help. In case you don't already have a favorite needy charity, I thought I'd share some of mine (besides our always struggling and overcrowded local animal shelter, of course, where we rescued Topaz, Sarah Kate, and Mr. Midnight last year). All of these worthy causes are dedicated to helping provide good food and lives for people and animals. Most of them offer gift ideas with some sort of 'interactive' opportunity.
Menu for Hope 6 The annual Menu for Hope fundraising raffle is going on now through December 31st. During the past five years, food bloggers from around the world have raised nearly $250,000 to help feed people around the world. This year all monies will go to the United Nations World Programme's Purchase for Progress program, which assists low-income farmers to raise crops and support their local economies.
For every $10 donated, you earn a virtual raffle ticket for any one of the dozens of fabulous food related prizes (seriously, they just keep getting more and more amazing). One year I bought a ticket for a gluten-free goodie basket from Shauna for a gluten-free friend, and she won!
Kelli's whole wheat 'bread for the people,' as she calls is, is made from locally purchased organic ingredients and costs about $2.50 a loaf to produce. Why not creatively break bread with others for the holidays? Bake up a batch of Kelli's Pain aux Raisins Secs et Noisettes ou Pacanes recipe (Bread with Golden Raisins and Hazelnuts or Pecans) which she shared with us over at A Year in Bread, and give a homemade loaf to friends and loved ones, along with a note explaining how you also made a four loaf/$10 donation (or eight loaf/$20 donation) in their name to the Blue House of the Gainesville Catholic Worker. You can read more about their projects here and find support information here.
A Place to Bark. . . and Meow Bernie Berlin is one of the most hardworking, kind hearted people on the planet. Each year she singlehandedly saves hundreds of homeless dogs and cats from being put to death through her non-profit rescue project, A Place to Bark and Meow—and also somehow finds the time to blog about it.
Bernie is desperately trying to finish building a new shelter for the dozens of animals always in her care, and now through December 31st, all tax-deductible donations will be matched by the Zoline Foundation. Donation information is here.
Kitchen Gardeners International Kitchen Gardeners International is a 501c3 nonprofit organization founded in Maine, USA whose mission is to empower individuals, families, and communities to achieve greater levels of food self-reliance through the promotion of kitchen gardening, home cooking, and sustainable local food systems. Their network of friends and supporters now includes over 19,000 kitchen gardeners from 100 countries, with new ones signing up each week (it's free to join, so go sign up!). KGI led the successful campaign for an organic White House Kitchen Garden—which now has a 'First Hoophouse' to extend the growing season!
KGI coordinates International Kitchen Garden Day, publishes a free e-mail newsletter, offers all sorts of online educational resources, and has a partnership program to help small, community-based groups start or scale up kitchen garden projects. There's also a kitchen gardeners' forum where you can connect with kitchen gardeners around the world. Donation information is here.
The Wild Animal Sanctuary Established in 1980, The Wild Animal Sanctuary is a 320-acre state and federally licensed zoological facility and 501c3 nonprofit organization located 30 miles northeast of Denver, Colorado. It's home to more than 200 rescured carnivores—who eat a lot. The Wild Animal Sanctuary's mission is to rescue and provide life-long homes for large exotic and endangered captive wild animals, and to educate the public about the causes of, and solutions to America's captive wildlife crisis.
Kiva Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. This person-to-person micro-lending website provides microloans to unique entrepreneurs around the world. You decide who gets your loan money (I love supporting other sheep farmers), and you can reloan it over and over each time it's paid back. Learn more about what kiva is here and how their lending program works here. Printed and emailed kiva gift certificates are even available.
Farm Aid Back in October, I was invited to attend the Farm Aid 2009 concert in St. Louis and do some live blogging for the FarmAid website. What an inspiring experience! (And of course the music was amazing.) Farm Aid is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to keep family farmers on their land.
Over the past 24 years, Farm Aid has raised nearly $36 million dollars to support programs that help farmers thrive, create and strengthen connections between farmers and eaters, take action to change the dominant system of industrial agriculture, and promote food from family farms.
Farm Aid’s mission is to build a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America. Farm Aid artists and board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews host an annual concert to raise funds to support Farm Aid’s work with family farmers and to inspire people to choose family-farmed food, but donations are accepted throughout the year.
A Farm Aid membership makes a great gift, with or without some cool Farm Aid gear (a holiday sale with free shipping is going on now). Members can even watch this year's concert, along with past shows from Farm Aid's history. You can also take action here, learn more about the Farm Aid community here, connect to the land and each other at Homegrown.org, or follow Farm Aid on Twitter here. Or simply go text FARMER to 90999 on your cell phone to give $5 to Farm Aid and help keep family farmers on their land.
A great big thanks to all of you who have so generously given to these and other causes I've written about over the years. Wishing you a joyful, fulfilling, and delicious holiday season!
Heat Seeking Missile Molly Doodlebug on a Pile of Still Warm Jeans
I love my laundry line and use it all year round. Line dried clothes and sheets always smell so nice and fresh. And since our dryer only seems to have one heat setting these days—flame—using a clothesline not only saves electricity but severe disappointment as well. Who knew it was possible to shrink all your favorite t-shirts in one five minute stretch?
Around this time of year, though, my hardheaded determination to avoid the dryer means that a mountain range of dirty laundry starts slowly taking over the bedroom thanks to endless days of rain and/or snow and/or temperatures down in teens. There's nothing more disconcerting than a flannel bedsheet hanging frozen and stiff on the line (just ask my confused California foodie mom who is always willing to help whittle down that annoying laundry mountain when she visits, no matter what the season).
And while I'd rather let the laundry pile up and simply dress from the bottom of our clothing storage tubs (The Shack has a grand total of one little closet) than take a chance turning my favorite tees to size extra extra small, once in a while a pile of towels or Joe's jeans does emerge warm from the dryer—and The Doodle is on it faster than you can say snuggle up.
Cranberry Christmas Scones are Tasty any Time of Year (Recipe here)
Having my Cranberry Christmas Scones recipe featured on Sew Mama Sew's Third Annual Handmade Holidays series was the perfect excuse I needed last month to mix up a batch and finally take a more festive photo. (Any reason to bake, right?)
I enjoyed a few of the warm scones with butter and a hot cup of tea, then tucked the rest away in the freezer to save for my foodie mother's upcoming Christmas visit (because she'd rather brave the winter cold than show up for spring lambing season again). If you want to bake up fresh scones for breakfast or brunch, you can save a little time in the morning by mixing up the dry ingredients and cutting in the butter the night before.
Handmade Holidays is a month-long assortment of ideas to make the holidays unique, fun, and handmade, but you'll find enough crafty tutorials, gift suggestions, recipes, and shop features to carry you all the way through next year. The entire month is wrapped up on the Ultimate Handmade Holidays 2009 Master List.
If your skills tend more toward the kitchen than the crafts room, you might be inspired to do some holiday baking with these sweet recipes from the archives, all of which freeze beautifully.