Food Archives - Jacaranda Living

Christmas Traditions Begin with Jacaranda Living – Start Yours This Year!

Does your family have Christmas Traditions already in place? For many, the holidays are a time to start new Christmas traditions that will be enjoyed and treasured by your family as it grows! A few of our favorite traditions include:

Reindeer Gifts

If your family attends church on Christmas Eve, the reindeer can stop by the house to leave Christmas pajamas, slippers and robes for the whole family. Include a little note from the reindeer with a few tips

get to bed as soon as possible
leave Santa some cookies and maybe chocolate milk this year
thank them for taking care of their assigned elf (if your family enjoys the christmas traditions of Elf on a Shelf)

While superhero and princess inspired pjs are great for the little ones, consider our comfortable Kelsey Pajamas for the ladies of the household. Finish the outfit with our sweet scuffy slippers embroidered for the season with wreaths, snowflakes, and even a Christmas Tree! We’ve got 10 Holiday designs to give our slippers a true Christmas Eve touch.

Christmas Traditions include the Twelve Days of Christmas — sweet embroidery designs that feature favorite Christmas Carols, another of many Christmas Traditions

Sweet Twelve Days of Christmas embroidery options for slippers!

And don’t forget robes! Light cotton or cozy waffle or willow weave with satin trim. Robes from Jacaranda Living are the perfect Reindeer Gift and will be used all year long.

EL280 Bath Robe** - Cotton, Long Sleeve

Cookie Traditions – Making Holiday Cookies Can Be an Annual Event!

And speaking of cookies for Santa, why not make Christmas cookies a tradition? Whether yours are a family tradition, like Pizzelle, pfeffernusse, or pepperkakor, making the perfect Christmas cookie takes time and can become a fun competition each year with other family and friends. Who has the best cookie? Sites like allrecipe.com and bettycrocker.com have 100’s of recipes to choose from if your family doesn’t already have a favorite. Ours would be this recipe for Soetkoekies (sweet cookies) from South Africa which can be found on food.com.

South African Traditional Soetkoekies (Sweet Cookies)

Yield: 80-90 cookies. The dough should be rolled out really thinly — about 1/6th of an inch — to get a crispy cookie.

INGREDIENTS
- 5 cups cake flour
- 2 cups brown sugar or 2 cups yellow sugar, if available. (yellow sugar is very light brown sugar)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1tsp ground cloves
- 1TBS ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (optional)
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1/4 lb butter, soft
- 1/4 lb rendered pork fat (or Crisco)
- 1/2 cup sweet sherry or 1/2 cup muscatel or 1/2 cup madeira wine or 1/2 cup port wine, but you may need up to 3/4 cup of the sweet wine
- 2 large eggs, whisked well
  Fun aprons for adults and kids from Jacaranda Living

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 380 F
Grease cookie sheets.
In a large container mix first eight ingredients very well.
Cut in the butter and Crisco/fat with your hands until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Whisk the eggs, add just 1/2 cup sweet wine to the eggs, then stir into the dry mixture until well-blended. Add more wine sparingly if too dry. Mix until it forms a fairly stiff dough. The dough should be easy to handle.
Remove dough from bowl, kneading until smooth, then, on a floured surface, roll out to a thin sheet (1/6^th of an inch). This will need to be done in batches.
Using your favorite holiday cookie cutters, cut cookies and place carefully on the greased sheets. Bake in batches in the preheated oven.
Use the center rack in the oven, as cookies burn easily on the bottom, especially if you use dark sheets.
Check cookies after 5 minutes being careful not to let them burn. Cooking time can vary depending on oven and size of cookie but is usually about 7 minutes.
Remove with a spatula, and let cool on wire racks. Store in airtight containers.
Can be made and stored weeks in advance.

There are so many recipes for holiday cookies, and so many different ways to make them your own. Make the search for this year’s recipe part of your holiday fun! Have young chefs in the household? Consider Kiddie and Ladies Aprons from Jacaranda as a pre-holiday gift to help everyone get in the mood.

Take Out as Part of Christmas Traditions – Explore Take Out Options on Christmas Eve

Many households celebrate both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and it can get pretty hectic preparing two celebrations with food, dishes, planning, and cleaning up! Why not make Christmas Eve the time to get takeout. Whether you go Chinese, Mexican, hearty soups and fresh baked bread, or try something entirely new, researching menus, and deciding what you’ll share this year can become an annual ritual in the weeks leading up to the big day.

Whatever you do for the holidays, make sure to enjoy the time together with family and friends. Life is stressful and at busy times, when to-do lists seem endless, it can be easy to forget the reason for the holiday, and get overwhelmed with making certain everything is perfect. Give yourself a chance to sit, relax, and savor those you love. It’ll give you a chance to breathe, and to create memories that will sweeten over the years.

Get your orders in now for the holidays!

At Jacaranda Living we’d love to help create your Christmas Traditions and make your holidays a time to remember. Get your order in now while there is still plenty of time to embroider and ship your gifts wherever you’ll be celebrating this year!

Sources

http://www.parenting.com/gallery/christmas-eve-traditions

http://www.food.com/recipe/south-african-traditional-soetkoekies-sweet-cookies-187261

http://allrecipes.com/recipes/841/holidays-and-events/christmas/desserts/christmas-cookies/

http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/01/the-mystery-of-the-missing-pig-fat-and-how-to-render-lard.html

Creating a Simple, Elegant Tablescape

Thanksgiving is almost here. Families will be joining together around a table to share in a meal and that table will be the focal point for the entire day. Here’s some tips on how to make your holiday table beautiful and functional:

1-Linens:
Fresh, clean linens create a beautiful canvas for your tablescape. Keep it elegant by using white table cloths and beautifully embroidered napkins like the ones from Jacaranda Living.
White linens can be multi – use as you can use them over and over again throughout the year for other holidays and celebrations.

2-Charger Plates
Use a Charger Plate instead of a place mat like this glittery orange one from Pier 1 Imports. This will help to protect your white linen tablecloth, but also provides a pop of color. The glimmer in this charger makes it look subtly elegance and reflects a bit of that table ambient lighting.

3-Candles
Candle lit dinners aren’t just for romantics. They make everyone at the table relax and who doesn’t look great in candle light! Use these silver plated candle stick holders from Pottery Barn with simple, white candles to create an luxurious look that you can reuse throughout the year.

4-Centerpiece
Create a centerpiece with natural elements. Seasonal flowers or even fruits and vegetables (like the persimmons in the photo below) or in our previous blog post about a DIY Centerpiece here.
Make sure your centerpieces are kept away from flames and are low enough so that your guests can see each other from across the table.

4-Proper place settings
Nothing completes a table more than a proper place setting. Can’t figure out which fork goes where? Use Pure Wow’s guide to place setting here.

5-Napkin rings and place cards
Use natural elements like wheat stalks and a pendant to create pretty and reusable napkin right that can also help your guests find their seats.

6-Leave room
Be sure to leave plenty of room on the table for platters of all that delicious food you slaved away making!

7-Use a Sideboard
There’s a reason why many dining room sets come with a sideboard. This can be used as a buffet, to stow dirty plates, or display your desserts. If you don’t have a sideboard, use a simple pop up banquet table and place a nice matching table cloth over it.

8-Have your cleaning kit nearby
Spills happen, but don’t fret! When you set your table, create a bin full of fabric stain remover, carpet cleaner, and plenty of paper towels nearby.

9-Use a Chalkboard for a Menu
Display your menu to guests by using a simple chalk board or vintage sign. This will help them prepare by not over indulging on apps while they wait for the star of the show. Check out this DIY Chalkboard Menu from House on the Way’s Blog.

10-Enjoy yourself!
As a host, you need to make sure you enjoy yourself as well. Your guests aren’t there just for your catering, they want to enjoy some time with you as well. The dishes can wait, relax and have fun!

5 New Things to Try in 2014

It’s a New Year and that means, inspire yourself to try something NEW!

We tried some non-traditonal trends in exercise, food and home management (and yes we even tried them) for you and wanted to write a blog post and inspire you to try some of our recommendations and if none of them are for you, try something new and tell us about it.

Exercise Trend – Bikram Yoga

It’s a growing practice in Yoga, called Bikram Yoga. Founded in the 1970’s by Bikram Choudhury from Hatha Yoga, the practice was designed to heal your body using 26 poses and did we mention a very hot (usually 108 degrees) room.

The Daily Mail just featured the practice noting many celebrities and athletes who swear by the practice including Lady Gaga (and we all know what her body looks like). We can’t guarantee yours will look the same, but you will certainly have fun trying if this heated workout is for you.

This grueling class takes 90 minutes, involves 26 poses and requires you to sweat your you know what off. It’s claim: move fresh, oxygenated blood to one hundred percent of your body. The claimed result proper weight, muscle tone, vibrant good health, and a sense of well-being.

What we found – increases energy, mental clarity, tones and detoxes the body along with helping with joint and back issues. We recommend talking to your doctor before trying. Find out more about Bikram Yoga here: http://www.bikramyoga.com/.

Drink Trend – Kombucha Tea

Kombucha Tea is an ancient and controversial tea that people swear has many healing properties but experts say there is no real proof to its benefits and not to bother drinking it. Made by brewing tea and using a specific bacteria to ferment the tea, the result produces probiotics that help fight bad bacteria that cause havoc on your body. It has a bubbly property similar to soda but tastes almost like apple cider and water. We like it but many people think it’s just plain “gross”.

What we found – helps with digestive issues, reduces sugar, alcohol, food and coffee cravings. We don’t recommend you make it, just buy the commercial blend we like this one. http://www.synergydrinks.com/.

Home Trend – Decluttering and Reorganizing Spaces

People love to collect and people hate getting rid of things. Because stores like Target and Home Goods encourage buying on the cheap we tend to buy more than we really need for our homes. After doing this for a few years, you will find, things begin to collect and clutter…all of a sudden there is nowhere to put anything, you can’t find anything and you have just too much stuff.

Well, 2014 is time for a cleanse in your home! There are so many resources on the Internet about how to declutter and reorganize your home it’s hard to know where to start, but we have found what we think is one of the best sites out there to help you get a handle on how you can nicely design and organize your spaces. A Bowl Full of Lemons has step by step guides on how to tackle the different areas of your home.

What we found – we loved reorganizing and designing the pantry, also found other great sites to follow and pictures to see through this website. http://www.abowlfulloflemons.net.

Cooking Trend – Steaming VS. Roasting

Steaming vegetables and fish is both low fat and one of the best ways to keep vitamins and nutrients in your food. But it is also boring, messy and can even be tasteless. If you want to keep variety in your healthy diet try roasting! Roasted vegetables, fish and meat is another excellent cooking method to keep your foods nutrient rich.

Roasting makes your food more tasty. Try spreading any vegetables out on a pan with salt, olive oil and roast away! Our favorite roasted vegetables include brussel sprouts, red peppers and carrots (yes, stop boiling the carrots please!) You can even add spices, cook using healthy coconut oil (for a sweeter taste). You will really notice the difference in taste as roasted vegetables almost become richer in taste.

What we found – winter vegetables are delicious, but try summer vegetables too such as tomatoes and summer squash. These are vegetables your kids will eat! Here is a great article on how to roast your veggies. http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2013/09/19/how-to-roast-vegetables/.

Diet Trend – Go Gluten Free

So many health experts are recommending this now, that gluten-free menus and foods have become common place. Elisabeth Hasselback brought Celiac disease and the gluten-free diet to the American forefront with her book the G-Free diet and of course talking about it daily on the View. But many health experts agree, that going gluten-free is the way to go whether you have Celiac disease or not.

What we found – the gluten-free diet is a bit hard to follow, we recommend using non-processed foods so no processed gluten-free grocery items, sorry! If you don’t have Celiac and still want to eat bread the Ezekial Bread (whole sprouts) is low-carb and full of protein and tastes delicious (especially cinnamon with almond butter). One of the best recipe websites is the Gluten Free Goddess.

Please tell us about some new trend you have tried and what you would recommend to inspire our audience to try something new!

Good Luck and Happy New Year!