Hij blijft trouw aan alle generaties

My grandma says she started playing organ in church around age 14. She is certainly talented and I sneaked a little video of her playing the piano a few days ago on her 82nd birthday that I will post later.

My dad took this "Koraal" (Chorale) of Psalm 100 from Grandma's falling-apart psalm book and framed it with music notes made from piano hammers. It will have a special place in my music room.

What Child is This?

The reading: many possibilities where those genes came from. But the dancing...is a mystery.

Pretzel Rods

There is nothing new under the sun, or on Pinterest: others have already done a good job of listing and photographing all the picturesque and tasty things one can do with pretzel rods. My 3 tips to emphasize are:

1. Make sure you don't have too much chocolate on the pretzel or the toppings will drip off.
2. It helps to work as a team: one person rotates the pretzel over a dish while the other sprinkles.
3. For the white drizzled over chocolate (or vice versa) it was easiest to spoon up some melted chocolate, and pour it out in the thin stream from the spoon while passing the pretzel underneath. Move the pretzel, not the spoon.

We used toffee bits, crushed peppermints, various sprinkles, coconut flakes, and the ones with a lumpy "spiral" around them have a stretched-out caramel (think play-dough snake) wrapped around them before dipping. The styrofoam tray was our cooling rack. We barely snooped at all, so I'm going to have to make a few for myself at home with the leftover ingredients.