In honor of the Christmas holiday, we would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy holiday season.
We appreciate all of our customers and wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.
Here’s to a wonderful 2014!
If you’re stuck on ideas of how to elegantly decorate your table this holiday season, we have a couple ideas to wow your guests.
Seeing the incorporation natural elements in a tablescape is always lovely. We suggest using foliage of the season like pine leaves, mistletoe, pine cones, or even cranberries! Use your imagination, but a run of pine tree branches up and down the table, with a sprinkling of cranberries for a pop of color is very festive.
That’s where another idea comes into play: use the colors of the season as well. Plenty of red, green, gold, and silver. These can be incorporated most easily with the linens. The look of elegant gold napkins at each table setting is always eye-catching.
Hopefully these few quick tips will come in handy and spark more table decor ideas! Be sure to share with us your favorite holiday decorating ideas.
Happy Holidays!
Leftover pumpkins from the holidays? Don’t throw them out! Those gorgeous orange beauties are waiting to be transformed into pumpkin bread, pasta fillings and soup to name a few! Pumpkin puree is perfect to keep all year round and is a cinch to make. Follow this easy recipe to learn how to cook up your leftover pumpkins!
Select a couple of small-ish pumpkins. Cut the pumpkin in half. With a spoon or a scoop, scrape out the seeds and pulp from the center. You don’t have to be too thorough with this.
Place all the seeds into a bowl (you can roast them later and make pepitas). Repeat until all the pumpkin pieces are largely free of seeds and pulp.
Place pumpkin pieces on a baking sheet (face up or face down; I’ve done both) and roast in a 350-degree oven for 45 minutes, or until pumpkin is fork-tender. They should be nice and light golden brown when done.
Peel off the skin from the pumpkin pieces until you have a big pile of the stuff. If you have a food processor, throw in a few chunks at a time. A blender will work, too, if you add a little water. Or you can simply mash it up with a potato masher, or move it through a potato ricer, or process it through a food mill.
Pulse the pumpkin until smooth. If it looks too dry, add in a few tablespoons of water during the pulsing to give it the needed moisture. (Note, if the puree is overly watery, you should strain it on cheesecloth or over a fine mesh strainer to get rid of some of the liquid.)
Dump the pureed goodness into a bowl, and continue pureeing until all the pumpkin is done.
You can either use this immediately in whatever pumpkin recipe you’d like, store it in the freezer for later use.
To store in the freezer, spoon about 1 cupful of pumpkin into each plastic storage bag. Seal the bag with just a tiny bit of an opening remaining, then use your hands to flatten out the pumpkin inside the bag and push out the air. Store them in the freezer until you need them.
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