7 A Liberty Christmas

Having a big move right before the holidays isn't easy, although I'm hard-pressed to pick a time of year that would be "easy" to move your entire lives- two humans, two dogs, one cat-dog, five checked bags, four carryons, one anthropomorphized Element named Watson, 10.5 crates of junk crap necessary items (luckily Paul doesn't come around these blog-parts often!- across the ocean.
Anyway, all that was just to say that it's a good thing we're not super-holiday people. We're more likely to take advantage of some days off to either do a bit of traveling or to just have some nice relaxation at home. Paul does enjoy a real Christmas tree, though, so when we first got married I began slowly collecting ornaments. Most of them are souvenirs from trips we've taken, but there are a few other, more traditional ones, that I got at after-Christmas sales. It's made a task I would normally see as a pain- a couple hours' work and some money spent on a mostly disposable thing that requires a lot of clean up- to be a fun time to reminisce and think about our trips and see all these bits that I've hand-selected for us to enjoy.  When we were at Lowe's a few weeks ago, I walked through the Christmas trees all lined up and thought "hmm... Paul's gonna want one this year!" despite his having denied it previously (due to the whole lack of funds thing from the first paragraph. See? It all ties in eventually.). Sure enough, as we were picking out our herb seeds we went there for, he commented that smelling the Douglas firs sure was nice...
So this weekend we're getting a Christmas tree. It'll be a smaller one, and if our stored-for-three-years lights don't work, we won't be purchasing new ones yet, (that said, we didn't bother buying new strings of lights in England and I liked it better...) but we will have a bit of Christmas in our house- even though our Christmas "presents" won't fit under a tree!!

Since December starts tomorrow and in honor of Christmas arriving at our house this weekend, I decided it's a good time to post my pictures (taken October 2) from Liberty's Christmas Shop. After enjoying Bloggers' Afternoon Tea, Selena, Becky, and I strolled over to Liberty- where we ran into several of the other ladies who were at the tea! We all wandered around the building, drooling dreaming over gorgeous fabrics, planning clever crafts, and devising just the right place in our homes for each item.

Displays of ornaments were in every nook and corner.

Despite their being lined up in rows, each one seemed delicately crafted- obviously meant to last for years and years as a cherished decoration.

Of course, Christmas crackers lined some displays!

They're just so lovely all on their own- I'd have a hard time pulling them!

These brightly colored jingle balls were tempting- but thinking of the 2AM "fun" Mia would have with them prompted me to leave with only a picture of them!

I lean towards the more natural ornaments, so these caught my eye.

Colour-schemed tabletops displayed ornaments and baubles like treats and delicacies.

I'm definitely drawn to blue ornaments, and these turquoise ones had just the sparkle!

Next week I'll show you the two ornaments I did pick up as last-minute souvenirs of our time in England, as well as some of my other favorites as I pull them out to decorate our tree!

Have you started your holiday festivities already, or is this weekend the big kick-off for your house as well?

Edit: Selena posted her pictures from Liberty today as well! Check them out here.

5 Scotland Getaway- Tomich Holidays

 I've got hundreds of pictures left to sort through from our last few Great Britain and European trips, so I'm afraid there's going to be a bit of darting back and forth across the Atlantic in my posts for a while. Hopefully my pictures will make up for the bit of non-linear confusion!

So you might remember that between our packing out, getting our move sorted, and finalizing our bits in England, I decided we needed one last "goodbye week" up in the Highlands. My love affair with Northern Scotland only grows each time we get up there, and how better to solidify Paul's commitment to my "Buy a cottage in Moray someday" fund than to have some of our last memories of living in GB made in the heart of Glen Affric?

Yep- that's a Target bag. I brought some stuff back in it after my last trip back to the States!

We packed up the car, including all of our remaining food, got both dogs in the back, and set out. While they weren't too keen on the eight-hour drive, we knew they'd be pleased with the destination!

As I googled around for dog-friendly self-catered holiday cottages, I kept coming back to Tomich Holidays. The location was perfect, the individual cottages seemed cosy for our week of getting away from everything, and the estate was dog-friendly.
The property is a working farm and is nestled cosily in a small valley with a tiny little village a short walk down the lane. It's about 25 minutes to Drumnadrochit, the main village on Loch Ness, and 45ish minutes into Inverness. There is a bus that goes into Tomich, but I don't think you'd get the full benefit of the location without having a vehicle.

We whiled away our 6 days taking walks around the property, in Glen Affric, going up to Loch Ness, and further into Inverness a couple of times. We went the whole way over to Cawdor Castle once, but didn't spend any more time in Moray, to my chagrin! Actually, as much as I'd have loved a seaside cottage in Moray there weren't any dog friendly ones that fit our budget, and in retrospect I'm grateful for that. I had a chance to fall in love with Moray two years ago, and getting to know another area of the Highlands was just fantastic!

These woods are along one of the farm roads on the property. It rained quite a bit during our stay, so we headed out with the dogs anytime there was a lull.

Of course, we got caught out in the rain a few times- but my dogwalking bag is waterproof for a reason! This gorgeous double-rainbow framed Tomich Holidays' main building perfectly!

The building to the left is the Victorian Dairy- it was my first choice of cottages, but was booked for part of the time we were able to go, so we stayed in one of the Woodland Cottages.  The setup was perfect, with a small living room, kitchen with all the bits we needed, 3 bedrooms (2 up, 1 down) and 1.5 baths (1 down, 1/2 up). We of course didn't need all those bedrooms, but the downstairs space was great for Max! I don't have any pictures of our cottage specifically, but the website has some great ones if you're curious.

Driving out of Tomich village. This view NEVER got old in our three years of living in sheep country!

Loch Ness, just after another rainstorm.

 I'd recommend Tomich Holidays to anyone looking for a Highland retreat, or just wanting to get away for a bit- it was exactly what we all needed to recharge before getting back to moving!
(Poor Mia didn't get to come along, although she didn't seem to mind the cattery!)

*This was not a sponsored post in anyway. I found it by googling, we paid for it fully, and the opinions are all mine and all positive regardless!

6 Lemon Scones

Yesterday I told you about making cranberry-pomegranate sauce to go with my fried brie- but after I snarfed up enjoyed the brie in a ladylike fashion, I had a good amount of the sauce leftover. Clearly I needed to make something else worthy of it!
Lemon and cranberry is one of my favorite flavor combinations, and lemon scones popped into mind. (See? My always-have-lemons policy pays off!) I've never made scones before, so I pulled out several of my British cookbooks and paged through to the scone recipes. I found fruit scones, cream scones, brown scones... but none that suggested exactly how to balance the recipe with the addition of lemon juice.
(I modify and change around recipes frequently, but when I'm tackling a new product I like to have a few recipes to compare and to see what's indispensable to the dough, and adding lemon juice can alter a lot in a recipe. It not only increases the moisture content, but turns any milk or cream to buttermilk or sour cream.)
I didn't want cream scones, but that set me on the path to buttermilk scones, so I hit Google. I found this recipe for lemon scones on Farmgirl Fare, and it was exactly the recipe I was seeking! Once again, I'll tell you my modifications, but out of respect to Farmgirl I'm gonna ask you to click over for the full recipe.

I didn't have Meyer lemons but I did have some nice big ones I picked up at Whole Foods. One thing I'll suggest if you're wanting to keep lemons on hand but not immediately use them- pick the firmest ones you find with very bright peels- those will last longer than soft ones. Keep them in the crisper of your fridge, but don't touch courgettes (zucchini), broccoli, or other leafy greens to them- they tend to soften the vegetables faster. I'm not entirely sure why, but I assume it is the citric acid. I just make sure my lemons are only next to other fruit or carrots (but remember, carrots are best stored fresh out of the ground with the dirt on them, wrapped in a brown paper bag in a dark, cool place- only put them in the fridge if they've been washed).  If your lemons are starting to soften before you've used them, just make some fresh lemonade! That's always a good plan to me!

Anyway, back to the recipe.

I zested way more than 2 tsp- probably closer to 1/3 cup, but I love lemon flavor.

The dry mixture on the left, no changes other than the increased amount of zest. The wet mixture on the right, and here we go: I juiced two lemons and didn't measure it- but it looked to be just over 1/2 cup. I used skim milk, because that's what I drink (I have high cholesterol). I also used 3 egg whites instead of 2 whole eggs, once again because of my high cholesterol. I rarely use egg yolks, and have developed a fairly good substitution for whites-to-whole in recipes- 1.5:1 for large eggs (there are accepted weights you can measure out if you're more particular about following recipes, though). If I'm making cookies that I want to stay soft I do 2:1; the extra white makes all the difference in soft 3-day old cookies!  Anyway- the plain yogurt I have on hand is Greek and I wasn't sure if that'd be too thick, so I used a Stonyfield french vanilla yogurt.  Cut the butter into the dry mixture like you're making pastry dough, then fold in the wet mixture as described by Farmgirl.

Top row: patting out the dough; the cut scones
Bottom row: after the egg wash, my impatient peek in the oven

I knew I wanted to cut circle scones rather than wedge-shaped ones, so I patted out my dough to be 1" thick as described, but then went to my cookie cutter drawer. I couldn't find my biscuit (American version) cutter easily and I didn't want to sort through things with my floury hands, but I did find a large pumpkin cutter so I used it instead. That's why my scones have little tails :)  Once again my egg-wash only had egg whites and skim milk.

Scones! YUM!

This was my leftover dough after I'd cut out enough pumpkins to fill my baking sheet. I balled it up and set it in the egg wash, then rolled it around and popped in on a little tray in the toaster oven, also at 400ºF. I ate it first, and the crispy edge all over it was absolutely amazing. I'm tempted to do this to all of them next time!

The regular scones were very delicious on their own- I have no complaints! I got twelve total out of the recipe, and just polished off the last three today. (Yes, I'm a piggy. It's why I started baking my own goods.)

And as for being a good match for the cranberry-pomegranate sauce? PERFECT! A dab of clotted cream would have added to the flavor, but I didn't want to whip that up as well since I knew I wouldn't want the amount that the cream I have would make, and you have to use the whole carton in 5 days.  I'm saving that for Eton mess, winter edition!

I've got just a bit of the cranberry-pomegranate sauce left now, and am debating just using it on regular toast or making an angel food cake... I generally err on the side of angel food cake, though!
Any other ideas for me? What's your favorite flavor combination? (Other than lemon-cranberry, I can't resist chocolate-hazelnut!)

Note: I got the results on Sloan's lumps' histopaths yesterday- all three were benign!! Now we just have to make it through her staple removal and we'll all have a celebration at an off-leash nature park!