Knitting Temperatures

January 2015

It has been a cold January with only one day getting above 0 degrees Celsius on the flip side the cold air has meant less snow and lower snow banks.  I will take the cold temperatures!

As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII William Shakespeare 1564-1616 Blow, blow, thou winter wind,  Thou art not so unkind  

As man’s ingratitude;  Thy tooth is not so keen,  

Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: 

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:  

Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.   

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,  That does not bite so nigh    

 As benefits forgot:  Though thou the waters warp,  Thy sting is not so sharp     

 As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing . . .

Knitting the temperature is the brain child of  Leafcutter Designs and is a year long conceptual knitting project.   Join me and knit the temperature in your area of the world I would like to compare projects 

Grandma Snyder

 ©2013-2015 twosnydergirls

Apple Pudding Gluten Free

Grandma I’m bored can we bake something?  

What would you like to make?  

Can we look through Great Great Aunt Marjorie’s recipes?

Apple Pudding

If you are new to this blog I have become the repository of pictures, recipes and other papers and I have a decorative box that holds the many scrapes of paper on which my Aunt Marjorie wrote and collected recipes.

Ruth and I looked through many and decided we would make Virginia Apple Pudding because in Aunt Marjorie’s small and precise hand writing was written “Good” and “Delicious with Ice Cream”

We have included the recipe as written and in brackets you will find the changes that I made to make if gluten and dairy free.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup butter or margarine (we used coconut butter)
• 1 cup of sugar (we used 2/3 cup maple sugar)
• 1 cup flour (we used my gluten free flour mix)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder (gluten free)
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon apple pie spice
• 1 cup milk (we used almond milk)
• 2 cups cooked apples

Directions:

1. Melt the butter into a 2 quart casserole dish
2. In a different bowl mix together the flour, salt, baking powder
3. Add the maple syrup to the butter and flour with the dry ingredients
4. Mix well
5. Pour your cooked apples into the middle of the dish and let the thin batter go where it will
6. Place the dish is an oven preheated to 375 °F for 40 minutes or until the batter covers the fruit and forms a brown crust

From our table to yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2015 twosnydergirls

Animals telling secrets

Wordless Wednesday 

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2015 twosnydergirls

Sauerkraut Chocolate Cake

January 27th National Chocolate Cake Day

Gluten Free, Vegan

We have been reworking all of our childhood favourites to be gluten free and vegan as we seek to live healthier in our senior years.  

In this recipe we have substituted maple syrup for 1 1/3 cups of white sugar, coconut butter and apple butter for  3/4 cup butter and ground chia seeds for 3 eggs.

We take our granddaughters to church on Sunday and so on Sunday afternoons our home is filled with the smells and sounds of children baking.  We hope that you enjoy Sauerkraut Chocolate Cake as much as we do.  Please note we do not like overly sweet cakes and we love a rich cocoa flavour so depending on your taste you may want to increase the sweetener and decrease the cocoa.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup coconut butter
• ½ cup apple butter
• ¾ cup maple syrup
• 3 tablespoon ground chia seeds and 9 tablespoons of water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ cup almond flour
• ½ cup rice flour
• ½ cup coconut flour
• ½ cup tapioca flour
• ½ teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1 cup baking cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sauerkraut, rinsed, drained, squeezed dry and finely chopped

Direction:

1. In a bowl, cream butter and sugar, ground chia seeds, water and vanilla.
2. Combine dry ingredients together.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with water. 
4. Add the sauerkraut.
5. Pour into your greased cake pan or pans and bake at 350° for 35 to 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. 

From our table to yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2015 twosnydergirls

Building Imagination in Children

All great inventions throughout human history started with one human being able to imagine its possibility. 

How do we support our (grand)children in developing vivid and complex imaginations, so they are equipped to creatively meet the challenges that are awaiting them?

Pretend play is one way and many of us witnessed this at Christmas when large boxes became castles, cars and spaceships and another way to build imagination is through books.

From the moment we offer a hard cardboard picture books to a young child we are supporting the development of their imagination and their independence.

One of the first truly independent activities that a child will embark on is reading.  In reading a book they are creating a world imagined only by them independent of us and the rest of the world.

Never underestimate the power of:

1. Reading to a child
2. Reading with a child and
3. Creating family reading time where everyone turns off all screens (unless the book is being read from a screen) and sits in comfortable chairs reading different books yet together.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2015 twosnydergirls