Sunday, December 9, 2007

BLOGGING: Advent Blog Tour Welcome

I am taking a different approach to my stop on the tour. I have included a cookie recipe below, but I love trivia and quizzes, so my present for you is a riddle:


What Christmas carol is this?


1. Move hither wards, the entire assembly of those who are steadfast O Come All Ye Faithful
2. Ecstasy towards the terrestrial sphere Joy to the World

3. Hush, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds. Hark the Herald Angel Sings
4. Creator, cool it, you kooky cats God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

5. O tatterdemalion ebony atmosphere O Holy Night

6. The thing manifested itself at the onset of a transparent day It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

7. Embellish the interior passageways Deck the Halls

8. Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted metallic resonant cups. Silver Bells

9. Hey, minuscule urban area south of Jerusalem O Little Town of Bethlehem

10. Nocturnal time span of unbroken quietness Silent Night

11. This autocratic troika originates neat the ascent of Apollo We Three Kings of Orient Are

12. The primary carol The First Noel

13. Natal celebration devoid of color, rather albino, as in a hallucinating phenomenon for me I'm Dreaming of White Christmas

14. Valentino, the roseate proboscis wapiti Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer

15. Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussionistic cylinders Little Drummer Boy

16. O nativity conifer O Christmas Tree

17. What offspring abides thus? What Child is This?

18. Removed in a bovine feeding trough Away in a Manger

19. Proceed to declare something upon a specific geographic Alpine formation Go Tell it on the Mountain
20. Thoracic- Squirrel Diet Barbecue Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

21. Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of minute crystals Frosty the Snowman


And if your vocabulary is great, or even if it's not, check out http://www.freerice.com/, to improve your vocabulary and donate rice to people who need it. It is weirdly addictive, and good for you and others. The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

PS: If you highlight the space after the carol, you will find the answer, but don't peek until you know it. How many did you get right?



Christmas Cookies Too

I love to bake, and making cookies at Christmas is an important tradition to me. It's the only time I take the extra care, and add a trimming or decoration or take the time to posh them up. If I am feeling short on time, I make these shortbreads since they don't have to be rolled and cut. It's important to mix them as long as it says if you want them to melt in your mouth.

These cookies remind me of my maternal grandmother. We liked to bake together, and at one point, her son (my uncle) dated one of the authors of the cookbook. My grandmother always had many copies of these cookbooks around, and she baked from them a lot. So do I now, and it reminds me of those times.

Whipped Shortbreads from The Best of Bridge cookbooks

Ingredients:
1 cup butter (do not use margarine)
1/2 cup icing sugar (powdered sugar)
1 1/2 cups flour

Instructions: Cream butter and sugar. Add flour and beat for 10 minutes. Drop from small spoon onto cookie sheet. Decorate with maraschino cherry pieces if you wish or sprinkle with colored sugar. Bake at 350 F. for about 10-12 minutes, until bottoms are lightly browned. Makes about 3 dozen small cookies. This recipe doubles well.

Thanks for stopping by, and I wish you a Merry Christmas. I've been enjoying this Advent Tour and I'd like to thank Marg and Kaliana for organizing us. It's nice to share traditions and recipes and get to know this little community a bit better.


Here's the guide to the rest of the tour, and don't forget Chris (Stuff as Dreams are Made on), who is also hosting today.
10 December - Dewey (The Hidden Side of a Leaf)
11 December -Suey (It's All About Books)
12 December - Chris (Book-a-rama)
13 December - Jill (The Well-Read Child)/Stephanie (The Written Word)
14 December - Robin (A Fondness for Reading)
15 December - Alyssa (By The Book)
16 December - Rachel (A Fair Substitute for Heaven)
17 December - Literary Feline (Musings of a Bookish Kitty)/ Stephanie (Stephanie's Confessions of a Book-a-holic)
18 December - Dev (Good Reads)
19 December - Callista (S.M.S. Book Reviews)
20 December - Tiny Little Librarian (Tiny Little Librarian)
21 December - Carla (Carla Nayland Historical Fiction)/ Susan (Reading, Raving, and Ranting by a Historical Fiction Writer)
22 December - Carolyn Jean (The Trillionth Page)
23 December - Booklogged (A Reader's Journal)
24 December - Kailana (The Written World) / Carl V. (Stainless Steel Droppings)

23 comments:

  1. This is a wonderful post! I had so much fun guessing. Very creative!

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  2. I'm going to print out the riddle and make my husband guess now that I've played. :-) Great idea!

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  3. Great fun - thank you so much! I am laid rather low with a flu bug but your post really cheered me up. Season's Greetings!

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  4. I got seven wrong, provided that the answer you have for number one is not what you have written. (I think the real answer is "OCAYF" and not "GTIotM.") But it was a lot of fun to guess.

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  5. I loved this! Thanks so much for participating!

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  6. laura - glad you enjoyed it

    wendy - My husband likes riddles too

    juliette - hope you are feeling better soon

    sprite - You're right! I'll go fix number one. Last night it looked wrong, but I forgot to change it again.

    marg - thank you; for organizing, and stopping by

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  7. Great idea for the Advent Calendar!

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  8. I totally sucked at your song quiz, by the way, but your cookie recipe looks HEAVENLY!! Thanks for the post!

    =) Jill

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  9. How creative! I loved the game because it certainly made me think!

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  10. 3M - thanks for stopping by

    jill - The quiz is just for fun anyway. The cookies will melt in your mouth. So yummy

    ladytink - glad you had fun, and sorry for making you think :)

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  11. I'm still working on the Carols. What a fun idea. Candleman and I wish we lived closer so we could get together with you and your husband and play trivia games.

    I printed out your cookie recipe and then followed the link to The Best of Bridge. I'm trying to decide which 2 cookbooks I'm going to buy. Any help? If you know of one with a good fish chowder in that's one I want to buy.

    Also, I've been looking over the recipe of the month and printed out a couple. But I came to one that called for digestive biscuits. What are those?

    ((((Happy Holidays, Raidergirl))))

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  12. booklogged - If I was buying only one of their cookbooks, I'd get The Best of the Best. It takes all the favorites from other books, and some are updated to be a little healthier. It's the main cookbook I use, and I asked for The Rest of the Best for Christmas.

    They don't seem to have a chowder recipe, other than Just for the Halibut chowder, but I haven't tried it. Chowders are more East Coast and the Bridge girls are from Calgary. I'll look for a good one for you.

    digestive cookies? Peak Frean has digestive cookies; it may be more of a British thing. Kind of shortbread, but not as rich, rather plain as cookies go. here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestive_biscuits

    Merry Christmas to you and your family!

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  13. That was a blast! I missed two: I guessed Carol of the Bells for Silver Bells and I forgot to go back over the answer that was We Three Kings as I skipped it the first time through. A few of those had me really scratching my head but it was a blast to come up with the answers. Yay for you!

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  14. Great post, That was fun! Glad I got to share the day with you ;) Those cookies sound so good and simple enough that even I can make them! I'm a huge cookie fan, so I'll most definitely be trying those out. I love the freerice.com website. I discovered it via Neil Gaiman's website and I'm on it all the time now. It's such a great idea and you're right...it's strangely addicting!

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  15. I missed 7 (not as good as I thought I'd be), but my girls had fun with this, too! Thanks for thinking of it. :)

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  16. I got 14 of them. What a fun post! Great job!

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  17. Great post! I only missed a couple on the quiz ... the Rudolph one was HARD!!!

    Merry Christmas to you too!

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  18. carl - good for you; I use these as a time killer with my high school students as we get closer to the Christmas break

    chris(without snow) - It was great to share the day, I think we complimented each other very well. free rice seemed like a nice Christmas activity, sharing with those who don't have

    melissa - thanks for stopping by, and glad you had fun with your girls

    chris(with snow) - glad you had fun. I love trivia and competitions

    suey - Merry Christmas, you must have a great vocabulary

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  19. The quiz was such fun, thank you! I'll definitely be sharing that one. And the cookies sound yummy. Merry Christmas!

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  20. Your trivia was a complete hoot! I didn't do real well, but had to smack my forhead several times after reading the answers. Of Course!! Wonderful post.
    Merry Christmas~

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  21. That riddle game was a lot of fun, even though I got an embarrassingly large portion of them wrong :P

    The cookies sound yummy!

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  22. tinylittle librarian - I use this with my classes as we get closer to the break

    paula - you are supposed to say you got them all right - no one willl know the difference! thanks for stopping by

    nymeth - hope you had fun anyway, Merry Christmas and thanks for stopping by

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  23. I got all of them, but I had a Christmas-obsessed piano teacher as a child, and she started having me learn carols every year in the early fall, so I know WAY more carols than I really should. :)

    And a three-ingredient recipe! Great!

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Thanks for commenting, so nice of you to visit.

(I'll try without the letters for a while - so please dont be a spammer! Let's try no anonymous users)