Happy First Day of Christmas

Today is the Feast of St. Catherine's which, for us, is the first day of our Christmas season. In my husband's family, it was traditional to make Tire (pronounced a bit like tear). The Acadian tradition, as my MIL told me the story, goes back about 300 years or so, when the French were colonizing the New World. Nuns had come to Acadia to build schools for the Native children. They built the schools, but had no students - the children were too shy, and would run away when approached.

When November 25th came around, the nuns celebrated the Feast of St. Catherine, and made Tire. One of the sisters went outside to pull the cooling toffee. As she worked, she noticed children hiding in the woods, watching her. She said nothing to them, but continued working. After the Tire was done, however, she took a small plate of the finished candy and left it outside. Sure enough, the watching children made their way to the plate to take some candy. She continued to leave the treats out for them, eventually earning their trust - and their attendance in the school.

We didn't end up making Tire today, but we did put up our tree. If you'd like to give it a try, however, here's our recipe.

Tire (Pull Toffee)

2 cups (300g) brown sugar
2 cups (1/2 kg) molasses
1/2 cup (1/8L) water
2 Tbsp vinegar
1 Tbsp butter (must be butter - do not substitute, or it won't work)
1 pinch baking soda
icing sugar for coating

In a LARGE pot, boil brown sugar, molasses, water, vinegar & butter until a drop of toffee hardens into a hard ball in cold water. The syrup should be approx. 130C (254F)

Take off heat and add baking soda (sprinkle). Mix well.
(note: it bubbles and foams like crazy at this point - that's why you need a really big pot)

Pour into a buttered container until cool enough to handle.

Stretch pieces of toffee until golden in colour. It's best to do this outside in the cool temperatures, if you can. When ready, snip the stretched ropes of toffee with scissors.

Roll pieces in icing sugar to prevent sticking.

Store with layers separated with waxed paper.

Enjoy.

Just as a warning, resist the temptation to have too many of these - they do have a slight laxative effect!


Here's a picture of our finished tree. It has a lot fewer lights this year. I had lots of regular lights - last year, I was finally happy with how many I had - but when I tested them out, one string wasn't working at all, and the other had about twenty working lights in the middle of the string of 60 lights. These are the type that are supposed to work, even if a bulb is removed. Well, I'd been wanting to replace them with LED lights anyways, so I ended up heading out to pick some up. They only came in packages of 35, though. I got three packages, but I probably would've done better to pick up 5. They look great, but there's empty spots! *L* The down side with the LED lights is that we can't plug in our angel tree topper. She looks awfully dark without her candle lit up!

Most of the decorations are hand made, including the very first set I made for Eldest's first Christmas. I didn't want to had to keep her away from the tree all the time, but couldn't find child safe decorations that I liked, so I finally learned out to crochet and made some! They are the spirals, as well as some crocheted balls stuffed with polyester fiberfill. Among the ones we've made ourselves is an origami garland made by our home school group that Eldest won when it was raffled off last year, and even a few that were gifted to us by our flat traveler friends. I'm not sure if you can see them, but our permanent flat guests are in the tree, too. :-) Of course, the decorations I'm still working on will be added on, too.

Next on the list - decorating the apartment.
:-)