Fire and Ice

Well, not too much to blog about while we're under a Stay-At-Home order especially now that we've gotten more snow and temperatures have dropped.

I've been trying to eat better and not have processed food so I've been finding simple recipes but ones that are still tasty and sometimes even somewhat elegant.  One recipe that I had intended to make while camping last summer was Sambucca Shrimp, but I forgot the shrimp.  I made it again just this month and this time I was ready to video when I flambeed the shrimp.

You can have this as an appetizer with crusty bread or as a meal served over rice or pasta. I'm trying to do low carb meals so I had it over steamed cauliflower.

I'm not a crafty person and other than agility I don't really have any hobbies so keeping busy has been a bit hard and I have to say I've been lacking motivation too. Yesterday, however I came across a blog about ice suncatchers and I thought that's something I could easily do. So I did. I cut a couple tips from the pine swag at the front steps, some berries from the Burning bush out front and gathered some cedar tips that had broken off when we got the heavy snow last week. I went through the plastic bin I have of Christmas decoration from various wreaths and swags and got some fake berries and a piece of ribbon.  All I had to do was put them in a pie plate with a little bit of arrangement, then poured boiling water into the pie plate. A friend had suggested boiling the water so it would be clear; I don't know if it helped or not but it sure made things smell nice. I added bird seed (the black and white bits) at the end, I'm hoping the birds will find them and enjoy it.

The shot glass was an idea to make a hole that I got from a blog about making ice suncatchers. The blog said to use a plastic glass and to weight it down, I thought the shot glass would be heavy enough that I didn't have to weight it down. It wasn't; so when I took it out, I had to chip out the ice underneath to make a hole for the ribbon. I put the whole thing outside overnight to freeze. 

You don't need to grease the pie plate or use plastic wrap, the ice sun catcher will come out of the pie plate. You just need to bring it in where it's warm and let it melt a bit. I had to wait about half an hour before it would come out.

I threaded through the ribbon and then hung it outside so it wouldn't melt while I got dressed this morning.  Then I went out and hung it in a tree where I can see it from my family room. It's so cold today that I couldn't get it as high as I would like it. My fingers were freezing just in the time it took to tie the bow.

This would be quite a fun craft to do with kids, just gather leaves, small evergreen bows, berries, nuts and other things. One blogger used grapes and orange pieces for colour. 

Anyway it was something fun to do, didn't take long, wasn't hard at all and it's pretty to look at.

Stay safe, stay home!