Favourite Things
My last market of the year finished last weekend and after the hustle and bustle of setting up booths and greeting the crowds of people, the following quiet in the aftermath is a welcome rest for an introvert like me. While I enjoy talking to people about art and meeting new vendor friends, I also find it very exhausting and a little recharge is necessary after market days. In the quiet of this weekend, I am reflecting on all of my favourite things about the holidays and I thought I would share some with you.
Food is often a big part of my holiday memories and Grandma’s cheeseball ranks pretty high on that list. We would all meet for Christmas week’s ahead of the holiday as my grandparents would head to Florida with the other snowbirds for the winter. My cousins, aunts and uncles would all gather at the hall at my grandparents condo and we would spend the day eating and playing games. My grandmother use to make double batches of her cheeseball and put some out in the morning and then again at lunch because it was so popular with everyone.
Making the cheeseball is actually quite simple and although you can form it into a ball, for the most part, my family just eats it out of a dish. I know that I was given the recipe at some point, but I’ve worked from memory for so long, that I don’t actually have the exact measurements, so if you try to make the recipe below, feel free to measure with your heart, as I’m sure it will taste good either way.
Grandmas’s Cheeseball
250 g block of Philadelphia Cream Cheese (can be low-fat, full fat, whatever type you like)
300 g of grated Extra Old Cheddar cheese (can be more or less depending on how creamy you want the ball to be)
1 tbsp minced onion or shallot (again, go with your preference, but make the pieces small)
1 tbsp minced red pepper
A splash of Worcestershire sauce
A squeeze of lemon
Mix all ingredients together. It can be eaten right away, but often tastes better the next day when all of the flavours have had a chance to meld together.
Another one of my favourite things about the holidays is decorating. When I was little my parents planted a field of Christmas trees on their farm. As these trees grew bigger, we would head out to the field a few weeks before the holidays and select the one that we felt was best that year. Once the tree was cut and the snow shaken off of it, we would take to the task of decorating. Christmas music would go on and we would test the lights and replace bulbs that were burnt out. We would pull out our ornaments and decide which ones would go on the tree. My mom has always been an excellent crafter and her love of making ornaments is something she passed down to me.
One of the simple ornaments we made was Ribbon Snowflakes. They are made by cutting strips of ribbon into trapezoids and gluing the angled edges together to create loops. The loops and then glued down to a circle to create a star or snowflake shape. The ornaments are then finished off by adding a ribbon for hanging and a pompom or beads to finish off the centre.
I love the look of a handmade tree and it brings me great joy to pick out which ornaments to put on the tree each year. And although many frown on it, I like to put my tree up right after Halloween, so that I have a full 25 days to enjoy the twinkling lights of the tree in the dark mornings and evenings this time of year.
Which brings me to another of my favourite things of the holidays. I love driving around and seeing everyone’s Christmas lights when I travel around the city at night. The cheerful displays of light are a welcome sight when the daylight is so sparse this time of year. And we are spoiled for options to see lights in Toronto, from drive-thru and walk around displays at malls, museums and attractions to neighbourhood displays in the streets around the city, all are equally wonderful in my opinion.
While I could go on, I am going to leave it there for my favourite things for the holidays. I hope that you have an opportunity to do some of your favourite things over the next couple of weeks as well. You know I will be eating some cheeseball and viewing lights and maybe even making some decorations for next year!
All the best for the week ahead.
Laura