Fantastic Plastic Christmas, with a Crispy Treat!

The dolly with her scintillating blue sleep eyes, $1.50 at the Third Sunday.


Someone carefully pinned rayon faux fur to her, making her into a snow baby.

Here is the grungy meets fantastic plastic display. I love rusty wire, old baskets and bears, but would they like some plastic? My grandmother's tree fascinated me. She had these little ornaments with fans in them, spinners they are called. I stared at them for hours, you had to do something with that sugar cookie high! Her lights were big and chunky, and the heat generated by them made the fans whir, and they glittered hypnotically in the light. You can buy back your whole childhood on eBay. So here it is, all the plastic I had, tiny umbrellas, cribs, sleighs, angels, its all on my mini plastic feather trees.

a knitted bunny, so sweet.

The dolly and above her another of the West Germany Snow Angels from the thrift.

The blue tree has spinners and a white plastic sleigh at the base, and white plastic reindeer. See the pink plasic umbrella?

There are a few tiny pink and blue rattles, plastic, and they do rattle. How many times do you have to read the word plastic?? Ok I'm done lol.

It's no secret I like to cook. I like to experiment, however, I seldom write down the artistic substitutions made during my culinary adventures. Hubby says, this is good. Write down the recipe before you forget so you can make this for me again! Baklava is one treat that I didn't change the ingredients, at least, not much! I mainly changed the consistency of the filling.

Baklava

from the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer nee von Starkoff, 1877-1962

You need: one package of phyllo dough sheets, take out one package and let thaw

first: add these ingredients to a small heavy saucepan to make a syrup, I put on the back burner over a heat diffuser and let simmer:

1/2 lemon

1/2 C honey

3/4 C water

This takes a while to make a syrup which coats the back of a spoon, when it does, remove from heat and cool.

Put in food processor: 3/4 C hazelnuts and 3/4 C almonds

2T sugar 1/8 t ground cloves and 1t cinnamon

whirl this until it is a course meal. I don't like the traditional chunky nut filling, so this is my twist.

melt one cup of unsalted butter.

Butter your cake pan and begin laying out sheets of phyllo, one at a time, buttering with a pastry brush each layer. Caution, if your dough is still frozen it will shatter, and if you let it get too soft it sticks together, and gets stretchy! Layer 12 sheets, then add the filling. Layer and butter the remaining 12 sheets. Cut the baklava into diamond shapes, and put into a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, turn up heat to 475 and bake about 15 more minutes, watch so it doesn't burn!

Here is the dough on the right, unfolded and you can see the filling on top of the 12th layer on the left.
Right from the oven! Before pouring the syrup over it all. Pour it evenly all over the top!
Remove from oven and pour your cooled syrup all over your hot baklava. (discard the lemon )

Enjoy, watch it disappear like magic.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you from Kingfisher Farm!