I love Christmas carols.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to go carolling this year.  Perhaps we will have time for Christmas carols at the Flaming Gryphon's 12th Night celebration in January.  Sadly, the 12th Night event is not until January 26th, a little late for most people to want to sing holiday songs, but we might be able to make it work.

I apologize, I've not blogged in a while.  The holiday season has been a bit hectic, as it usually gets.  I spent the week and a half before Christmas baking, baking, and doing more baking as part of my annual cookie blitz.  I love baking Christmas cookies and other goodies, and I give homemade cookie plates to my co-workers as my Christmas present to them.  My husband loves my baking, too, and since he gets to benefit directly from my baking (read: he gets to taste test, lick bowls, can eat any cookies I don't think come out right, and gets all of the leftovers) he does all of my baking dishwashing.  I made 13 different goodies this year, and only had one failure (I wanted to do molded shortbread in the shortbread forms I have, but the recipe I used was not good for molded cookies, and my stupid oven can't preheat correctly or hold a temperature.  I didn't like how they came out, but Jason said they tasted just fine to him!)   

The most interesting baking experience this year was the potica - traditional slovene rolled bread, usually filled with walnuts.  I bake potica every year and usually send a loaf to my Dad as part of his Christmas present.  However, he sent me a note stating that nuts upset his digestive system anymore, so I found a "new" receipe in an old Slovenian Women's Union cookbook ("Women's Glory - The Kitchen" - how non-PC can you get??) for sour cream potica.  Since the sour cream is baked into the bread, I imagined it would not cause him any problems.  First of all, since it was an old recipe it used old measures (a large cake of yeast, a box of sour cream) and imprecise directions ("once the mixture is warm enough..." Warm enough for what?).  Second, I wasn't sure if my yeast was good because the use-by date on the package was 2006.  However, I decided to try it and see if the yeast was still alive - yeast doesn't really go bad, it just won't make the dough rise if it's not good.  I found out in short order that my yeast was good and very, very lively.  Finally, the quantity of flour called for in the recipe fell far short of what I ended up having to use.  I should have known there was a problem when mixing the dough and noticing it had more of a batter consistency than dough (especially for a recipe that you needed to be able to roll out and fill).  My fears were confirmed after letting the dough rise for an hour - I didn't have dough, I had soup!  And happy, happy yeast that made the soup dough rise all the way up the sides of my big Tupperware bread bowl to the very top.  When I went to punch down the dough, my hand pretty much went straight through to the bottom of the bowl.  Good thing I had plastic wrap on top!   Wanting to make the recipe work,  I immediately dumped 2 more cups of flour in (following the recipe, I already had 6 cups of flour in there) and tried to start working the dough with my hands.  No good - it was sticky like taffy and I was in it to my wrists.  So I plaintively called upstairs to my husband to come down and help - he was already getting ready to go to bed - and had him put 2 more cups of flour in the mix.  I ended up dumping out about a 1/3 of a cup of excess flour, but at last I had something I could call dough and that would be useful for the recipe.  I turned it out on my floured tablecloth and kneaded it a bit, then realized I'd have to put it back in the oven to rise for another hour.  So much for getting to bed at a reasonable time that night.... In the end, it worked out well enough and I'm pleased with the results - although I'll be updating the recipe book to require between 9 and 10 cups of flour (not including what was needed for the rolling out).   With the extra flour, after it was all rolled, filled, and baked, I ended up with one round potica in my traditional ceramic bundt-style potica pan, one large bread pan loaf, one medium loaf, a small loaf, and a little ramekin.  It's a good thing I have some experience with making bread or this would have been a complete loss.  And since it did turn out successfully in the end, I'll do it again - maybe next time, I'll make the potica when I have a whole day to devote to it rather than an evening after I get home from work.  Just in case.

Enough of that, I guess.  I hope everyone had a Vesele Bozic~ (Slovene for Merry or Happy Christmas).  I'll return to the travelogue with the next blog entry.  And if she ever sees this, I send my best to Sheree Bozic, my friend from college who drove a Yugo and whose last name means Christmas.