Through the Fog: A Giftmas 2017 Blog Post to Benefit the Edmonton Food Bank
Rhonda Parrish has organized the Giftmas Blog Tour to benefit the Edmonton Food Bank. You can also enter to win loads of prizes! Scroll down to find a Rafflecopter giveaway.
The theme of Giftmas this year is to “Shine a Light.” Therefore, I am sharing a memory of foggy darkness… and the light of home that awaits.
I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California, a broad swath of terrain that was once grassland and marshes, now converted to agriculture. Each winter, a phenomenon called tule fog occurs often from November through February. Think of horror movies that feature fog–a completely impenetrable cloud where the world ceases to exist beyond five feet, where driving at night requires that a car door be held ajar so that the driver can follow the painted lines directly below.
The fog is at its worst soon after a rain, though it can happen any time through the winter, as the land remembers it once was swamp and radiates moisture. The fog often lingers into the morning, too. When I went to school, I never experienced a snow day, but I often had foggy day schedule, where school didn’t start until about 10am. Sometimes the fog was still awful at that time, too. Those are the kinds of days where people avoid driving, if they have any choice. Car accidents are inevitable. Every few years, there are disastrous pile-ups on I-5 or Highway 99, some involving as many as a hundred cars.
As a child, the fog both awed and terrified me. Driving through it was the stuff of nightmares. The car rolling along at a mere ten miles an hour, Christmas lights and street lights nonexistent. Hoping that no one was walking in the fog, that no cars flew at us out of the ether.
Waiting, praying, for the faint lights of home to glimmer at the end of the driveway.
Home felt especially welcoming on those cold, isolating, foggy nights. It provided a refuge where my heart could resume a placid rhythm, where I could warm myself by a crackling fire. Where I was safe, supper awaiting in a hot crockpot.
Not everyone has that refuge, that hot food to await them after the strain of the day. That’s why I’m asking for you to contribute to the Giftmas fundraiser–and to your local charities, too. Everyone everywhere needs some help and hope. We need that faint light that penetrates the fog.
#SFWAPro
Read MoreGiftmas Wrap-Up: Donate to the Edmonton Food Bank!
Today is the final day of the Giftmas Blog Tour. Last Monday, I shared my Cake Batter White Chocolate Fudge recipe to bring attention to Rhonda Parrish’s organized tour to raise funds for the Edmonton Food Bank. Please donate if you can! (Funds are shown in Canadian dollars.) 2016 has been a cruel year, and 2017 doesn’t look much better.
Let’s share some food and love.
Snowed in: A Giftmas Guest Blog from Jennifer Crow
One of the first things anyone learns while growing up in Maine is that winter weather means preparing, adjusting plans, or else spending some quality time stuck in a snowdrift. For us kids, a blizzard brought adventure and welcome days off from school, an extra morning or two of sleeping in, or an afternoon sledding and sneaking extra marshmallows into the hot chocolate. Snow usually meant extra fun.
But even Christmas wasn’t off-limits for those polar blasts that swept down out of the northern forests to whomp my hometown. One Christmas morning we woke up to a foot or two of the white stuff and more still falling. My sisters and I were in a frenzy of frustration because Grandma and Grandpa were supposed to join us after breakfast—already way too far in the future—and between Grandpa’s slow driving speed and Gram’s nervousness with regard to his driving and the weather, it looked to my siblings and I like the vital present-opening part of the day might get pushed back until the January thaw.
Dad stepped in to rescue the day, and his in-laws, by heading out in his truck to pick them up. While he was gone, Mom called our elderly neighbors and honorary grandparents to see if they’d weathered the storm. Yes, they were warm in their little farm house, but they wouldn’t be driving to their son’s home while snow was still flying.
“Go get them,” Mom told Dad when he’d returned from fetching the grandparents. “Patience and Karl won’t be able to get to Norm’s in this weather.”
“Okay,” Dad said.
“Patience will tell you not to bother,” Mom added. “Do not listen to her.”
“Right,” said Dad. (I think he liked knowing he and the truck could not be defeated by a little blizzard.)
So that was how we ended up eating Christmas dinner with both the grandparents we expected, and the adopted grandparents we hadn’t planned on. I always thought of that as the ‘Kidnap Christmas,’ but the truth is, that meal which we stretched a little farther, that table where we squeezed a little more, was one of the best holiday dinners I remember. The pictures from that day still make me smile.
Today the world seems a little colder, a little more unsteady than it did when I was a kid. But I haven’t forgotten the lessons of the Kidnap Christmas, and how little it took to make the world a better place for someone in a time of need. If we can help, through the Giftmas Blog Tour, to provide for families who are at risk, that will be one small way to keep the darkness and the cold at bay.
Light a candle. Add an extra leaf to the table. No matter the strength of the storm, there’s always something we can do to make a difference.
This year, the Giftmas Blog Tour is raising money for the Edmonton Food Bank. The link to our page is http://bit.ly/Giftmas2016.
Please help us to make sure some needy families have what they need for the holidays. No one should be going without a warm, wholesome meal.
Jennifer Crow has been writing speculative poetry for almost twenty five years now, which is probably a sign that her judgment is not to be trusted. Her collection of fairy tale poems, The First Bite of the Apple, was published in 2013 and nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Elgin Award. She lives near a waterfall in western New York.
Read some of her recent poems in Uncanny Magazine, Mythic Delirium, and Mithila Review.
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Giftmas Bready or Not: Cake Batter White Chocolate Fudge (Microwave)
I’m offering a holiday-favorite Bready or Not recipe again to help kick off Rhonda Parrish’s Giftmas Blog Tour. Rhonda lives up in Edmonton, Alberta, and she’s hoping to raise funds for the Edmonton Food Bank. I’m all about helping to feed people! Please donate if you can. Note that funds are listed in Canadian dollars.
Rhonda is also doing a giveaway as part of the tour. She’s making a crocheted throw. The winner gets to choose the color, and she is shipping it anywhere in the world!
Wander around to other stops on the tour over the next week. I’ll post another favorite recipe at Eileen Bell’s site on the 10th!
This is a sweet cause, so here’s a recipe to make something especially sweet: microwave fudge that uses cake mix!
Eating this fudge is like licking the paddle after mixing up cake mix batter. If you prefer savory over sweet, this recipe isn’t for you. This is for the people who love fudge and frosting and all things sweet.
I didn’t limit myself to sprinkles in this. I had some Christmas candies, the type for topping cupcakes and such, that had been sealed away for a year. It had been a great post-holiday clearance buy. I wanted the containers GONE, so I pretty much dumped the contents into this fudge. That’s why you see little light bulb shaped candies in there.
This is obviously a great Christmas recipe, but it’s an easy one to customize year round depending on the colors you mix in. Make fudge to support your favorite sport team, or pink and red for Valentine’s Day, or pastels for spring. Cake mix goes on sale all year round, too, making this a pretty cheap recipe to throw together.
Whatever you add in, I’m sure it will be pretty. And delicious. So very, very delicious.
Modified from Sally’s Baking Addiction.
Bready or Not: Cake Batter White Chocolate Fudge (Microwave)
Ingredients
- 2 cups + 2 Tbsp white or yellow cake mix any brand, sifted
- 2 cups confectioners' sugar sifted
- 1/2 cup salted butter cut into chunks (or use unsalted and add a pinch of salt)
- 1/4 cup milk almond milk works
- 2/3 cup white chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup rainbow sprinkles/non pareils/jimmies
Instructions
- Line an 8×8 baking pan with aluminum foil or parchment and spray with nonstick spray. Set aside. Measure the white chocolate chips and the sprinkles in separate dishes so they are ready to add quickly.
- Mix sifted cake mix and powdered sugar in a large bowl. Add milk and butter, without stirring, and microwave for 2 minutes.
- Promptly mix ingredients until the butter is fully melted and incorporated. The batter will be very thick. Fold in white chocolate. Add the sprinkles last and stir gently so they don't leak too much color.
- Scoop into prepared baking pan. Level it across the top. Chill the fudge in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before cutting into small blocks.
- Fudge will keep upwards of a week in the fridge, if it lasts that long.
OM NOM NOM
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