Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

 What's in a name? I am not sure I would have ever associated "Trudy Fruity" with fruit cake - it sounds far more trendy and frivolous! And are fruitcake cookies still 'fruitcake"?  Yesterday, I introduced you to Claxton in Georgia USA as the fruitcake capital of the world. Today, it's Trudy Fruity , a company also in Georgia, which is famous for "seasonally baked goods and gifts." Trudy was in fact "Gertrude" Gilliard, who was well known for her delicious Southern cooking, and especially "fruitcake" cookies. She baked these cookies every year and shared them with family and friends through the 1950's to the 1990's. In 1990, Trudy gave her son, Gary the recipe for her "fruitcake" cookies, and supervised him in the creation of this Christmas treat. Thus,  the  Trudy Fruity  company was born and  Gertrude Gilliard  has become a household name in USA, especially at Christmas. I can't say that fruitc...

http://www.ncfolk.org/moravian-cookies/ Today, 8 December, Christmas Countdown 18 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception - a Catholic Church celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary, free from original sin. I must admit that I had not heard of Christmas cookies called Moravian Spritz, or Moravian Spice Cookies  until today.  They are prepared traditionally as part of the ritual of observing the Feast of the Immaculate Conception - a national holiday in many Latin countries and significant in  the United States.  The spice laden cookies are said to celebrate the purity of the  Virgin Mary, since Mary, too, "gave forth sweet smell like cinnamon and aromatic balm and yielded a sweet odour like the best myrrh."  In the spirit of Advent,  abstinence is practised, for traditionally  the cookies must stand for ten days in the refrigerator before baking, and are then shaped into Christmas figures, especially hearts and liturgical symbols....

from : http://baking-jds.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/spectacular-spicy-speculaas.html Today's and tomorrow's Christmas food countdown are both about the celebration of St Nicholas' Day (6 December) - mostly celebrated in Europe - the Netherlands, Germany, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland...   For example, in the Netherlands St. Nicholas is celebrated on the 5th, the eve of the day, by sharing candies (thrown in the door), chocolate initial letters, small gifts, and riddles. Dutch children leave carrots and hay in their shoes for the saint's horse, hoping St. Nicholas will exchange them for small gifts. Simple gift-giving in early Advent   helps preserve a Christmas Day focus on the Christ Child. ( information from  http://www.stnicholascenter.org/)  St Nicholas Eve (5th December) is a time for family feasts. The foods include: Boiled chestnuts served with salt and butter; Hot punch; Milk chocolate letter of your first initial; Spicy ginger cookies ca...

As the saying goes, you're never too old to learn something new - that includes tearing up bits of coloured paper! I am going to share some of the "tips" I picked up this week. None of them is related to one another, but I think perhaps at least one of these might be useful. Tip 1:  Play with paper to refresh design ideas whether you usually work with paper, textiles, clay and /or mixed media. I attended a mini-workshop with Judy Hooworth (NSW textile artist) at the Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists . We started off with a postcard of someone else's art - I chose this one, called Pandanus and Pelicans Townsville Common by  Sylvia Ditchburn , I have always liked the subject, the composition and the colours. Then we enlarged the postcard to A4 size - black and white and made a tracing of the outlines on tracing paper. Here's the interesting investigative bit - divide the tracing in half both horizontally and vertically, and join up points of in...