Good morning! Merry Christmas, I just looked at a calendar and realized that this will be my last column for the year 2024. The year has gone by so quickly and so many things have happened, good as well as bad. We’ve lost friends and family, and added to our families as well. By the time many of you get this edition of the paper, almost everything except the memories will be over for most families.
The week before Christmas was chaotic to say the least, however, I got almost everything done that I hoped to. My daughter and her husband came here and picket me up and we headed out to Devine. I was looking forward to having a fun time with family, extended family and friends, and I hope every one of my readers had a wonderful Christmas.
Recently when I attended a Market Days show in a nearby town, one of the vendors was selling hand-made glass spider Christmas ornaments, and a book that I had seen and read quite some time ago. The spiders were made of glass beads, and if you bought the book, you got a spider free. They were truly beautiful. The book is called “The Legend of the Christmas Spider, and it is a Eastern European folk story. One of the versions that is available on Amazon says that it is the story of the origin of the tinsel that we now sometimes use on our trees today. When my daughter came in before Thanksgiving, she put my tree up for me. We used mostly antique ornaments, and for the first time in many, years my tree has the old-timey tinsel icicles as well as four antique (very early 1900s) candle holders with candles!
The gist of the story is that an old lady always decorated a beautiful Christmas tree, but one year after she had decorated, her cat got into the tree and ruined everything. The spiders that lived in the house, wove their webs all around the tree because they felt so badly that all her hard work was destroyed. It was a really cute story, and my daughter checked it out on Google and according to Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, the origins are not only German, Polish and Finland, but several other countries.
Now that Christmas is over, you are probably about ready to celebrate New Year’s Eve, so here are a couple of recipes for dips that are tried and true.
French Dressing Dip
1 package (8-oz) cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup Kraft French Dressing
2 tbs. catsup*
2 tbs. mayonnaise
2 teaspoons very finely chopped or grated onion
Beat the cream cheese until smooth, and then beat in the French dressing, catsup, mayonnaise and onion until well mixed. Chill before using to allow flavors to blend. Serve with chips.
This is a very good basic dip that also makes a great shrimp dip. For a simple and easy shrimp dip, drain and rinse a small can of shrimp, dice finely and stir in with the rest of the ingredients. For shrimp dip, I add about a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce AND in place of the catsup, I used an equal amount of the bottled chili sauce and a couple of teaspoons of prepared horseradish.
Dill Pickle Cheese Ball
1 package (8-oz) cream cheese, softened
¾ cup shredded cheddar cheese, divided use
½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
¼ cup finely chopped dill pickle, or ¼ cup well drained, dill pickle relish
1½ teaspoons pickle juice
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon salt
Coating:
4 to 5 slices bacon cooked and crumbled (thin sliced bacon)
¼ cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh dill
In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth; then add the remaining ingredients until well combined and shape into a ball.
In a shallow bowl or plate, mix the bacon, cheese and fresh dill, and roll the cheese ball in this mixture until well coated. Chill before serving.
(Make ‘mini’ cheese balls, about ¾-inch in diameter; roll in the mixture and use a pretzel stick in each one to serve. (They need to be one-bite size, I made mine the size of a walnut and they were too big and my friends ended up having to spread them on chips).
Here’s wishing all my friends and readers a very Merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year. God bless you and be safe if you’re traveling