our homestead: merry christmas

Photos from our family Christmas shoot

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! I thought I'd post some of our family Christmas photos we had taken this year, including photos of our furbabies, Oswald and Banjo. These photos are the work of my sister-in-law, Rachel, of Nickel Images. You can check out the rest of her photo projects at the Nickel Images Blog.

For a while there we were living in a land cloaked in a thick fog, as you can tell in the photos. My husband and I took our photos on the train tracks I used to sneak down to play upon when I was a kid. I'd leave coins on the tracks and come back later to find them smashed into smooth roundish disks.

Anyway, hope everyone is staying warm and spending time with loved ones and may the eggnog overfloweth in your mugs!

DIY almanac: Homeground cornmeal and corn husk angels

Last night I tried using my coffee grinder to turn my dried corn kernels from the previous post into cornmeal. Success! I just cleaned out my coffee grinder with a dry cloth and then ground one small batch of kernels at a time until I'd achieved my desired consistency. The coffee grinder worked very well. If I wanted to make full on soft and velvety corn flour, I could have made it with the grinder, but I decided to create a coarser meal. The meal I ground is the color of eggshells, speckled with bits of blue, red and gold. Very pretty. I tried baking my first loaf of cornbread with it- another success. Very good flavor and the the colors of the speckled cornmeal became richer.

I also had a bunch of dried corn husks leftover in colors of gold, green and ruby red, so I decided to make a corn husk angel to top our Christmas tree this year. I made her a red and green dress, a husk halo complimented with red corn kernels and even braided her hair. I'm going to try and see if I can make some corn husk ornaments in different shapes to gift to loved ones. Anyway, here's the recipe I used for the 'painted mountain' cornbread:

Painted Mountain Cornbread

1 cup homeground cornmeal

1 cup flour

1/8th cup brown sugar

1/8th cup white sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup of milk

1 egg

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly grease a small loaf pan. Combine dry ingredients, combine wet ingredients, then gradually mix the two together. Bake about 20-25 minutes.