Event: Ocean Beach Holiday Parade

last weekend (Saturday December 7th, 2013) was the Ocean Beach Holiday Parade. Every year it is so much fun to get together with friends & family and celebrate the holidays within our community. The parade takes place down & around Newport street. This year the holiday parade starts at 5:05 PM. I'm having friends come over around 4 PM for hot spiced wine.

HOT SPICED WINE
Ingredients:
3 bottles of dry red wine
3 cored and sliced apples
2 cinnamon sticks
3 whole cloves
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon zest

this recipe is made for a crockpot. All you need to do is add all the ingredients to your crockpot and stir. Let cook and marinate for a few hours.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PARADE
* Geriatric Surf Club float
* Savannah being in the parade
* Santa on the fire truck
* seeing the OB tree at the foot of Newport

Until we blog again, Enjoy December, XoXo, Connie & Jenn

Holiday: Our Christmas Traditions

This month our blog will be full of holiday activities and traditions because we LOVE Christmas!!! Over the years our Decker family has many traditions that we look forward to each year. If you are just starting a family it is always nice to have traditions to look forward to. Some of ours are:

• Decorating our Christmas Tree while listening to Christmas music and enjoying hot coco or egg nog from Santa Mugs. When we were younger we usually did this on our Mother Kristy's birthday (December 2nd).

 

 

 

• Tamales - We make and enjoy for dinner on Christmas Eve. This tradition started when Connie married her husband Godwin. His family creates yummy homemade tamales and his mother Maria taught us how to make them as well, but we always make them with her!

• Go to Midnight Mass (if we can stay up).
• Wake up Christmas morning in our PJ's and open stockings and a few presents each then we all get dressed and have Christmas morning brunch.

• A yummy breakfast casserole & champagne on Christmas Day.

• Have Honey Baked Ham for Christmas Dinner.

What are some traditions you & your family celebrate?

Until we blog again, Happy Holidays, XoXo Connie & Jenn

SNOW!!!

Snow!!

 

It has been freezing cold lately up in Nor Cal, near Sacramento and it actually snowed yesterday!

 

It rarely snows here (last time was about 4-5 years ago).

 

Didn't stick and melted pretty quick, but still it was SNOW! So cool :)

 

 

 

A little further North it stayed on the ground.

 

 

 

 

Winter is here!! Enjoy it!

 

XOXO,

Double Decker Sister Cooks

Craft: Advent Calendar

25 Days of Christmas Cheer

Saturday November 30th, 2013 is the perfect day to create a holiday Advent Calendar. You will start the 1st day of December and count down the 25 days until Christmas. There are many ways to celebrate each day of December. You may have an activity to complete for each day of December or a litte gift each day or you can even do a candy advent calendar and have a little candy treat for each day.

Examples of Holiday Activities for December:

1. Start a family Advent Calendar (easy enough right?)
2. Go Christmas tree shopping
3. Decorate your Christmas tree and home while listening to holiday music
4. Enjoy hot coco and a Christmas Movie ("A Christmas Story", "Polar Express", "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"...)
5. Go look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood 
6. Be a secret Santa to someone
7. Take a family trip to the snow
8. Go Christmas shopping
9. Donate old coats or canned food to charity
10. Take a picture with Santa
11. Send out Christmas cards
12. Make paper snowflakes from coffee filters
13. Bake holiday cookies and decorate them
14. Host a Christmas party (gift wrapping party, ornament party, cookie party etc.)
15. Go to a local holiday parade or tree lighting
16. Snuggle up next to a fire
17. Create homemade ornaments
18. Go Ice Skating
19. Make gingerbread houses
20. Go to a holiday play (The Nutcracker, The Grinch...)
21. Make a sand snowman at the beach
22. Go to a holiday gift exchange party
23. Go Christmas Caroling ("Silent Night", "Away in a Manger", "O Come All Ye Faithful", "Jingle Bells")
24. Sleep under the Christmas Tree
25. Kiss under the mistletoe
26. Holiday game night
27. Have a holiday photo shoot
28. Attend midnight mass or holiday church service
29. Leave cookies & milk out for Santa
30. Write a letter to Santa

Craft: Advent Calendar

The Advent Calendar Jenn chose to make is a Christmas Tree of gifts with clothespins and construction paper. You will need:

• 25 Clothespins
• Paint brush
• Red Paint
• Printer and green paper
• Heavy duty construction poster board
• Green poster board paper
• Elmer's glue
• hot glue gun
• foam glitter sheets
• white or gold bow
• 25 gift tags, envelopes and/or pouches

The first thing you should do is paint all of your clothespins red. In a large area (outside on the ground, on a table or the floor inside) lay down newspaper and get all of your painting supplies ready. Paint each top of the clothespins let dry, flip each clothespin as you paint and paint the bottoms and insides.

Next, create a MS Word document of letters 1 - 25. Print out the numbers on green paper and glue to the dry clothespins. Set aside.

Take your large heavy duty poster board paper & lay it down. Decide how large you want your green poster board tree to be and cut a tree out. (see photo below for example). Create your tree and glue to the black or white heavy duty poster board. Let dry for about 30 min.

Next heat up your glue gun and glue each clothespin to your holiday poster board tree. You can add decorations as well. I added little gems and glitter to look like ornaments.

Next get your 25 little gifts/activities or candy to add. I chose to do a mixture. Add to the clothespins, hang up on the wall and you have your own custom Advent Calendar.

Until we blog again, Cheers to December XoXo Connie & Jenn

Holiday: Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

This year Thanksgiving Day falls late in November. If you read our blog from last year then you know all about our family traditions for Thanksgiving. It is a fun day starting with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Family, Football and Food, Food, Food.

http://doubledeckersistercooks.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html

The main dish for Thanksgiving is always always always TURKEY!!!

This year Connie & Jenn both decided to make "Turkey" appetizers.
Jenn made a Turkey out of fruit...

"Turkey" Fruit, Cheese & Veggie Platter

You will need:

• 1 pear (for the head)
• 1 cantaloupe or melon (for the body)
• red grapes (for the tail feathers)
• cheddar cheese chunks (for the beak and tail feathers)
• red bell peppers (for the feet and side feathers)
• toothpicks
• bamboo skewers

First you will need to cut a slice off the cantaloupe so that it is stable. Set it on a serving platter. Then attach the pear to the melon with a bamboo skewer as shown below. Then attach raisins as the eyes with toothpicks. Once finished with that cut a red pepper as the gobbler and a triangle cube of cheese as the beak.

Next, attach grapes and cheese cubes to a bamboo skewer and attach them to the cantaloupe as the tail feathers. then using toothpicks attach the peppers to the cantaloupe as side feathers. Finally create feet using the bell peppers. See my finished product below. It took me under an hour to create this festive appetizer dish. I hope everyone will enjoy it as much as I do.

 

 

And we both made rolls, with a special twist.

Thankful Rolls

 

 

As your family gathers around the table to give thanks these "thankful rolls" will help spread thanks.

You will need:



• Pillsbury crescent rolls (1 can)
• Foil or Parchment Paper
• A page of thankful notes and/or questions, cut to fit inside rolls

This is so easy! There are many ways to do this, you can have everyone write a note of what they are thankful for on a piece of paper. Everyone will have a 'thankful" note to read at the table. BONUS: make a game out of it & try to guess who wrote the note you got.

We chose to make a list of thankful statements for guests to read or questions to answer. Here are a few of the ideas we used:

• I am thankful for _____________ . (have the guest answer)
• My favorite part of Thanksgiving is _____________________ .
• My favorite food at Thanksgiving is _____________________ .
• We are thankful for ________ the wonderful host.
• We are thankful for the Pilgrims & Indians celebration of good harvest in 162.
• Thank you for the food before us, the love between us and the friends & family beside us.
• Happy Thanksgiving!

When making your rolls cover the "thankful" paper in foil or parchment paper before rolling.  Then follow the directions on the crescent roll package or you can create a homestyle roll.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving!!
Until we blog again, Happy Thanksgiving Day, XoXo Connie & Jenn

Food: Pumpkin Spiced Oatmeal

First off we want to say happy Monday and week of Thanksgiving. This blog post was inspired by wanting a change to our morning breakfast. We often get sick of having the same thing over & over so we always look for new recipes. We found a way to spice up your normal oatmeal recipe and wanted to share with you all. This is perfect for the week of Thanksgiving. 

Pumpkin Spiced Oatmeal

Ingredients you will need:
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup of Steel Cut Oats (Trader Joe's)
1 LARGE Tbsp. pure pumpkin, canned
1 Tbsp pecans toasted & chopped
1 tsp ground cinnamon
a pinch of  nutmeg
a pinch of ground cloves
1 tsp brown sugar





In a saucepan over high heat bring water to a boil, add in oats and lower heat to medium stirring for about 90 seconds. Then stir in the pumpkin and the remaining ingredients. Keep stirring for about 6 more minutes. Once done, pour into serving bowl, let cool and enjoy your fall morning oatmeal treat.

Until we blog again, Happy Fall, XoXo Connie & Jenn

Event: The Fit Foodie 5k

The San Diego Fit Foodie 5k is a 3.1 mile race along the Bay. This was the first year of the race and I'm really happy I signed up. Doing a race is such a great way to start your Saturday morning. The view was amazing all along our run because it was along the waterfront.

 

 

 

After the race we got water, breakfast yogurt, granola, mini smoothies, beer and wine tastings and a lot of other food samples at the "finisher's village". Which is a mini San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival area. That area was at the Hilton San Diego Bay Front. We got A LOT of goodies! The shirts are awesome too, "will run for food".

 

 

Cooking Light and Health Magazines were there providing cooking demonstrations, Yoga, Dance & Fitness Exercises and food tastings.

 

 

Citi, Health Magazine & Cooking Light Magazine were the main sponsors of the event and they had a booths set up for all the racers. One of our favorite booths was the Cupcake Vineyards booth. Here is a photo of my friend Kelly & I after our race.

For more details & if you want to do it next year visit their website: http://www.sandiegowineclassic.com/thefitfoodie.html

I always feel good running and knowing the race is benefiting a good cause. This race benefits Big Brothers, Big Sisters.

Until we blog again, Stay Fit, XoXo Sister Cook Jenn

Food: Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Are you wondering, "What the heck is bread pudding?" Well it's basically an old fashioned dairy based dessert. This is a yummy recipe is perfect for the week before Thanksgiving. To make the Pumpkin Bread Pudding you will need:

• 4 cups of white bread cut into cubes
• 4 eggs
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp Brandy or Rum
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 Tbsp butter

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Dry bread cubes on cookie sheet in oven 10 - 15 minutes, then place bread cubes in pan.

In a large mixing bowl stir together everything except butter & bread crumbs. Once creamed pour mixture over breadcrumbs. Let sit for 10 minutes until bread is fully soaked.

Dab butter slices over top. 

Bake 40 - 50 minutes until the bread pudding mixture is set in center. Make sure you do not cook too long or it will be dry. You may add whip cream & cinnamon to top for added sweetness.

Until we blog again, Enjoy your bread pudding, XoXo, Connie & Jenn

Food: Cheesy Broccoli Soup

Cheesy Broccoli Soup

A scrumptious winter soup.

 

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1 stick butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/3 cup flour
• 2 cups half & half
• 1 large head broccoli or 1  frozen package 
• 3 cups cheddar cheese
• 4 cups broth
• salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper

 

1) First things first, pour yourself a glass of wine!

Personally, I love to cook while enjoying a glass of my favorite vino.

 

2) Steam or boil broccoli until just cooked.

Then chop into smaller pieces. This is where a mini food processor comes in handy.

I also did this with the onion because my husband likes the flavor, but will only eat anything with onions if he can't see them.

3) Next, heat butter in saucepan.

 

4) Add onion & cook until translucent.

 

5) Mix in flour.

Then add broth and half & half, heating until just boiling and thickened. 

Then add broccoli.

 

7) Next, add cheese, stirring until melted.

 

 7) Lastly, season with a pinch of nutmeg, salt, pepper and a dash of cayenne pepper (if you like).

 

Enjoy!

 

Until next time, XoXo

Sister Cooks Connie & Jenn