Yard To Table

Yuletide Yards and Tables at Stonebrook House

• Trevor Crafts and Ellen Scherer Crafts • Season 1 • Episode 7

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It’s all holiday yards and tables in this episode of Yard to Table as Ellen and Trevor discuss their winter holiday traditions during the coziest season in Connecticut – Yuletide! They talk about their garden's winter preparations, the joy of decorating with greenery and family treasures, and honoring the winter solstice.  And it’s all about bringing in the light for the holidays at Stonebrook House and they will talk about how they do that with the tradition of lighting Bayberry candles, making a Feuerzangenbowle, and burning a Yule log and share all their other Christmas Eve rituals. The episode concludes with their excitement for the upcoming holiday season and the joy of being together with those you love. Happy Holiday Yardists!

Message us at the link below for the our Glühwein recipe and for more info on any of our celebrations! 

And to see what's happening with Ellen and Trevor at Stonebrook House follow @stonebrookhouse on Instagram today!

Questions? Ideas? Things you need to say? Message us!

Trevor:

Music. Well, hello Ellen.

Ellen :

Well, hello Trevor.

Trevor:

Here we are back at the table for a winter episode of yard to table.

Ellen :

Shall I say, Happy Holidays.

Trevor:

It is a holiday episode. This is the good stuff we're getting into some really fun times.

Ellen :

Well, it's cozy season.

Trevor:

It is cozy. It's cozy sweater season, yes it is cozy house season, yes

Ellen :

it is mittens, it's sweaters. It's, as our child likes to say, it's cozy, cozy, cozy, cozy, cozy, cozy. Yes,

Trevor:

no, it's, it's soups, good food, getting in from out from the cold. And it is cold. It is very cold here in our wonderful seven a Connecticut,

Ellen :

finally, yes, it's very cold, and the forecast has a chance of snow tomorrow.

Trevor:

Yes, it does,

Ellen :

which is exciting.

Trevor:

It feels both late and early. Somehow, at the same time, we've had kind of a mild fall, we have, and all of a sudden, Ska-boom,

Ellen :

yeah, you felt a little underprepared for the shift. But I'm here for it, 1,000%

Trevor:

100% here for it. We need it. It is necessary, correct? It's interesting, because we have put our wonderful gardens at Stone Brook to sleep, yes, to hibernate like bears.

Ellen :

Beds are tucked in, literally

Trevor:

covered up with their little cover crops and their little organic elements that keep them all happy for the winter, for the winter, and keep the soil healthy over the winter. And I think it's well documented that we love gardening based on these episodes,

Ellen :

And it is a big part of our life outside of the podcast

Trevor:

and but I'm also happy to take a little rest, a little break. Well, it's

Ellen :

the natural cycle of things. Yes, you know, obviously, we know lots of people grow through the winter and greenhouses and pots in their kitchens and things like that, but it is sort of what you're supposed to be doing right now is taking a rest,

Trevor:

taking a rest, taking stock. Night comes early, very early. That's very don't like that.

Ellen :

I don't. Yeah, no,

Trevor:

you like it... You like it light late, and I like it light late also. But what it's that middle period of time that I'm not a big fan of between Daylight Savings starting and it actually getting late, because then you're sort of in that weird, well, it's, oh, it's 7am and it's pitch black outside,

Ellen :

or, like, it's, you know, five o'clock, and you think it's midnight, yeah, yeah. Berkeubane land of eternal night, very difficult. But it is what it is.

Trevor:

And then it comes and then, and then it comes up to actually, because we're not even in winter right now. Here we are beginning of December, and it's not even winter.

Ellen :

The days are getting shorter and shorter and shorter until we get to December 21 which is the winter solstice. And then we're flipping around. Night starts to come back. Days get longer and longer and more light. And I have to say, that is happy times for me,

Trevor:

that is happy times, that is good times.

Ellen :

But the things that get us through this time is, for us, we are big into decorating and celebrating the holiday season.

Trevor:

That's right. And it's interesting because we've talked about on the podcast before, having an urge for a thing, a need for a thing. And it's interesting because this time period, I think, Historically and traditionally, as people decorate for this time of year, greenery is always a big part of that, and that's happened for millennia. And it's interesting, because it's almost like a little Summer Fest in the middle of winter, because you don't see green. You know, the trees are bare, the fields are bare, very stark outside,

Ellen :

yes, and bringing in the Greens makes the House have that warmth and color that you love from from the summer, from the warmer months. Yeah, absolutely was it just it was a couple years ago that our child started watching, we all started watching Victorian farm, Victorian farm. It was old Public Television. Edwardian Farm, Edwardian farm, it was so monastery.

Unknown:

we were always so excited to watch the holiday episodes and see what people did years ago about celebrating this, this time of year and the Greens was a huge part of it, making big bowls of pottage, you know, to eat.

Trevor:

I would say we're fairly close to those at. Episodes in what we do. It's funny because the

Ellen :

we have turned the great room into like a great hall.

Trevor:

It is a great boughs of our boughs of holly and greenery,

Ellen :

medieval Hall, bringing in the fresh greenery has always been something that we've loved. But obviously, now that we live in New England, it's a heck of a lot easier. Oh yeah, we were living in Los Angeles, which I will say even then, yes, people used to call our home the Christmas cottage. It's

Trevor:

true. We went all out even then, when we were living in the middle of beautiful Studio City with palm trees all around us.

Ellen :

Yes, and we gotta, we gotta. We got enough coldness in the air to put a sweater on, and we were thrown sometimes, sometimes, if it rained, we were happy, but you walked in the door of our house and it was the Christmas cottage.

Trevor:

Now we basically have the Christmas castle. A lot more space. We've upgraded.

Ellen :

Unfortunately, we have so many collections. We are collecting family. Yeah,

Trevor:

that's inherited. Yeah, that's more my side. Yeah,

Ellen :

our child has inherited that as well. But, but we do have some really cool collections.

Trevor:

And some of the collections are actually family collections. That's things from family. Have a lot of history. I have a lot of nutcrackers? You do. Some of those are from my childhood. Some of those are from things that I've been given.

Ellen :

I have given you some nutcrackers. Our child has made you some nutcrackers, which is really fun.

Trevor:

Yeah, so it's a growing collection.

Ellen :

How many do you think you have?

Trevor:

Yes, probably 50. He's lying. It's maybe 60. It's a lot, but there's a huge, giant place for them above our fireplace in the great room. So they kind of line up by scale. The tallest ones are in the middle, and then the smaller ones go cascading down.

Ellen :

It's a bunch of happy soldiers. They're all in a row,

Trevor:

and they're from so many different countries and so many different places. So I have ones from Hungary, and I have ones from Germany, and I have ones from all over.

Ellen :

And you what's your favorite? Do you have a favorite Nutcracker?

Trevor:

My child would make me say that the one that was made by her for me and painted is my favorite, and it has a wonder, and it is a wonderful one. It's very adorable. It's a little it's a little Christmas elf, and he's very, very cute. But I think the way so many of us feel around this time of year, you go towards your childhood and your nostalgia of the things that you had when you were a kid, and there's a very small little Nutcracker, only about four inches tall, three inches tall. And that was the first one that I ever got. And he's just been repaired multiple times. That moves and things. You have a little bit of a damage here and a little bit of a break there, but he has, yeah, he has soldiered on, as it were, so that's probably my, one of my favorites. There's a lot

Ellen :

Well, and the other collection that you have that's pretty extensive came from, I mean, what our listeners don't know is, growing up, your parents traveled and lived extensively all over the world, and so when your father was a professional opera singer, yes, he was. And so and is, and is correct.

Trevor:

I think in their 55 years of marriage, which is pretty awesome, as it is very awesome, they have moved 25 times, or some globally, bananas amount of times globally. They don't like to stay put for too long,

Ellen :

from Japan to Hungary to Germany all over. Yes, Nebraska,

Trevor:

oh boy, everywhere in between indeed.

Ellen :

But that collection is that you also have yeah

Trevor:

of creche that's from a lot from my dad, things that he had when he was a kid. And for some reason, I got into it as a just a unique art form, to see how all these different artists have created all of these different small creche scenes. And

Ellen :

for people who don't know whichever what is a creche? A creche is a

Trevor:

small visual representation of the birth of Jesus and all of the trimmings with the three kings and Mary and Joseph and sometimes elephants, elephants or

Ellen :

camels coming to the party.

Trevor:

Yeah, the fun, the fun elements that are that surround that story.

Ellen :

what I love about the collection is exactly what you said. It's the global aspect of it. It's so wonderful to see how different countries interpreted the vision of that creche and the artistry. I mean, there's some beautiful pieces that you have in that collection, and I, my family, even contributed one, because we have an old German Bakelite, Bakelite creche, right from what I

Trevor:

was growing plastic. Kind of formed. It was, it's

Ellen :

The angel has fallen off. And I think there's like a one arm donkey. No, that doesn't make sense. One Legged, one legged.

Trevor:

There you go.

Ellen :

But it works in that. And again, this is something that our child has, really. We have a bookshelf in our great room that we because we are, we produce everything at a very high level in our lives. This is a kind of a superpower and a sickness, but we take everything out of those shelves, and we put all of the collection of crushes on those shelves, and it's just beautiful again to see this global art represented. And our our child has taken taking it over, really. She set everything up this year. Beautiful. Watch the work that she did. It looks

Trevor:

from Guatemala and Peru and Germany and Austria and literally, Mexico, every part of the globe has contributed to this unique art form. Some are made of clay, some are pierced tin. Some are carved out of wood. They're all hand painted. They're handmade. Some are stone.

Ellen :

And we have a beautiful one that was painted by your grandma. Louise, right, yeah. So

Trevor:

my grandmother did in the 1930s a wooden creche that was all very Art Deco and very specific. They were both. My grandparents were big artists, and so we have a lot of pieces from them, in various ways, shapes and forms that also extend into this holiday season. And that was one that I actually we just found recently, yes and and set it up and put it together. There

Ellen :

are a lot of boxes. There are many family items, things. Yes, that's true. You're right to that listening today what we heard, but we love it. It's gorgeous, and I think it's so amazing because we have both have this wonderful tradition of things that were made by our families that we continue to use as part of our holiday decorating. And I think we have to talk about Christmas stockings, since we were talking about your grandma, Louise,

Trevor:

and that is a very unique story. Yes,

Ellen :

so Trevor and I were dating. We lived on opposite coasts. When we were dating, I was on the East Coast in New Jersey, and he was on the west coast in Los Angeles, and we dated for about a year by Costa Lee, got engaged, got married. And when you know you know. But the first time we were together for the for the Christmas holidays, and you came to my my condo, what happened?

Trevor:

I was taken aback.

Unknown:

It was significant.

Trevor:

I remember turning around you closed the door, and I saw the back of the door, and there was this stocking that was hanging. It was my childhood stocking. Ellen's childhood Christmas stocking that was done in a stitched felt custom style with her name on it, and a little angel brown hair and, of course, naturally, and some little toys that were stitched on and all done in sequins,

Ellen :

embroidered beading, yeah. Now

Trevor:

I had an almost identical stocking style

Ellen :

of stocking, yes, right? Yours, yours is green, but mine was green too. Yes, that's right. And

Trevor:

I was really blown away, because I'd never seen someone else that had that kind of stocking before, even if they were it was if, you know, you know, you know, you know, if it was a stocking that had been bought in the store or stitched or, you know, there's a lot of people have their names, you know, embroidered onto the side of the stocking. But this was very different. This was a fully handmade stocking. And

Ellen :

you know, as you are, when you are in love, and just we're like, oh yes, it's just another sign. And then when I finally, and it was, and when I finally got to see your family stocking, so I was like, Okay, wow. It was very,

Trevor:

very similar, but your grandmother

Ellen :

had created the so there were. It's a felt stocking that is handmade and cut out of felt with felt characters on top, and again, with that embroidery. And

Trevor:

she had done one for my dad back in the 50s when he was a kid. Yeah, and then when my mom came along, she made one for my mom. It's absolutely beautiful, with shells that are stitched very personal, very personalized. Cats that they had at the time were hand cut. And then when I came along, I got one too,

Ellen :

yeah, and it was so fun because, of course, I had them growing up as well. And I saved my mom stocking because she wasn't putting it up as much anymore, but I kept all the family stockings. So that was my my collecting. And so it was so fun, because again, when our family came together, putting up my mom's stocking, and my dad had passed away, but my my stocking, your stockings. And then when our daughter came along, my mom made. Her stocking in the same style, in the same style. So plum fairy. It's so awesome to look at the mantle and to see what

Trevor:

I think is funny is that your stockings, you your mom and our kiddo, all face to the left. My stocking, my mom stocking and my dad stocking, all face to the right. Actually works out. It looks amazing. It looks fantastic. Three on one side, three on the other. But

Ellen :

it's fun every year, because our daughter will look at the stockings and pop up. Stocking is a little special because it was built with a his

Trevor:

was built with essentially a pleat in the bottom that would open up so it that's a

Ellen :

major it is all huge stocking. Yeah, it gets it's

Trevor:

very hard to fill, by the way, because it's so gigantic that you just there's so it just keeps going. Is that it's an endless stocking.

Ellen :

But we hear it because she's always like, that stocking can hold more things. Oh,

Trevor:

yeah. But she does fine. She

Ellen :

does fine. She does fine. By the way, Santa, Santa takes care of her and mommy and daddy, and the stockings are a big thing. And you know, my mother also is an artist, and from sewing to painting to ceramics, she's made so many things. And the things that I love, I think all of us feel this way, is when you open up those boxes at the holiday of all the things that you've put away, and you just go through memories and that warm feeling of the memory of where that was in your previous Christmas, or the Christmas of your childhood. It just is so lovely and connecting us through time and through our families. And my mother has painted so many beautiful things I have, but the one that I really love the most is our Santa with who is on our mantel place. You know, he's just,

Trevor:

it's amazing. Ellen's mom has done a specific sort

Ellen :

of in the format of toll painting, like German toll painting,

Trevor:

and it's so detailed and it's so intricate. And some of my favorite parts of Christmas come from things that your mom has made and things that my grandmother made. Yeah, and it's these family heirlooms. I mean, that's the word for it. They are family heirlooms. You cannot replace these stockings. You cannot replace Santa on the mantle that is this beautiful wooden, hand carved folk art Santa that is just every year, it's so breathtakingly beautiful because it's so detailed. It's

Ellen :

joyful. He goes on the mantle in our our family room. Yeah, you know, we, we have started creating garlands with dried oranges that I put around it. It's just wow. It makes me so happy to see it. And she's also painted little sleighs with hearts that we hang on the tree. And I have a cute little Mr. And Mrs. Claus candle holders that are in the kitchen and in the style of our stockings, this incredible embroidered felt mobile that I hang over the kitchen table, it's just makes you happy. These are the things that are, like you said, treasures that you can't replace and are just priceless and full of just wonderful memories and love. I have

Trevor:

one more thing to add to that. Oh,

Ellen :

what else is it? The

Trevor:

other thing to add to the list is something that we found in Ellen's mom's house in Las Vegas when we were moving, yeah, from Vegas to here, yeah. And it was in a pile of other frames and other things. Oh, you'll know it in a second. Yeah, like, Oh, of course. And it was a painted frame, sort of long oval. And I said, What's this? Oh, I know what you're talking and Ellen's mom said, Oh, that's no good. It just, you know, you don't need to. That's nothing. And I and I look at it, and it's this awesome, amazing painting of Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim on his shoulder in a beautiful folk art pattern, Germanic toll painting style, yeah. It's just with little fruits around it, and it's just awesome. And it is we put it up every year, and it's just so funny how artists of all sorts think about their work and see their work, because here this amazing piece of art, and your mom is

Ellen :

kind of self depreciating about it. I'm like, please. It is so amazing. It's so good. Yes, I know standards,

Trevor:

and so do we. And so I think we win, though, from a from a who knows what's good standpoint, because that is awesome.

Ellen :

Well, and you've made an heirloom for our child. Oh,

Trevor:

yeah, in in Los Angeles, I carved an entire mantle piece because we did

Ellen :

not have a mantle in this just tells you how into the holidays we are and how addicted to production we are. Our child was born in October. Christmas was coming in December, and Trevor had this incredible, large wood that he had gotten to make a. Mantle in our house there, and it was once our child, it was gonna be, it was, it's enormous, heavy. And I think every we had so many friends that was a fun part for those too much. We had so many friends that came over and put some time in, because

Trevor:

I wanted to do finishing the mantle only so you could I, you know, should I could hang the stuff, yeah. So it was all done with a chisel and a hammer. And that was always cool business. That was that was hard,

Ellen :

but I was talking about the advent calendar. Ah,

Trevor:

yes, the advent calendar, yes, something that I made for, something that we could have for a long time. Our kiddo loves advent calendar. And opening, she

Ellen :

grew to love it. That's true. Her first Christmas. That's

Trevor:

true. That was one of her first when she was functional with fingers that would actually open and close things. Yeah, maybe not the first Christmas, first one, because she was a little bit of a love for that one. He's a cute lump, but this Advent Calendar has a small scene on top of Santa and some forest friends that that I built out little houses, and it's just this adorable little that's a little, it's kind of big, yeah, and it's got 24 little wooden drawers and with little red berry handles on them, and and each evening, we all sit around and open up this little music box. I did add a music box to it. So that's right, it plays the 12 days of Christmas, and I wind it up each night, and we get a little, a little musical accompaniment to opening the advent calendar.

Ellen :

Again. We we like production. We like traditions. Everything is so busy this time of year. There's so much going on, but just even having those five minutes of connectedness and centered around the AVID calendar. It's lovely. It's just a breath in a crazy holiday day, I would say, Yeah, but it gets us into the Yule of it, all right? The Yule tied, yes, Yule tide season.

Trevor:

That's a lot of what we do is, is sort of Yule based, I think, yeah,

Ellen :

I mean, I think people are not aware table,

Trevor:

it's Yule. Yes, it's gardens, it's the outside coming in,

Ellen :

and it's about bringing light in from the darkness. Yes, so I don't, I think, you know, we were doing some research for the episode, just on our traditions and where they came from. And I think this was so interesting to realize that 1000s, millennia years ago, when folks started celebrating Yule Germanic cultures nurse Norse cultures, it was all about bringing light in in the winter and from the cold, and celebrating with greenery and light and so many of those things have morphed into our current holiday traditions,

Trevor:

yes, and have been added to our current holiday traditions. Obviously, history is full of people trying to connect in lots of different ways, and one of those is sort of merging very old traditions in with newer traditions, which is how we get Yule and Christmas on the 25th that was all really based around the winter solstice,

Ellen :

that's right. And Yule is a Norse word, and it was, I had to look it up because I wanted to know the orange, yeah. Well, here comes the accent this,

Trevor:

by the way, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna stop everybody just a second here, from this point on in this episode, there may be accents, no, no, no, no, no. There will be accents because there's some German stuff coming up. There's some business. So just move on,

Ellen :

continue. Well, Yule is a Norse word for wheel because it reminds us of fresh starts, the cyclical nature of the planet, and it's a time of year, where we naturally reflect on what has passed and what's to come. And it's our moment to recognize, as the days get longer and more light comes into our lives, that all of the preparation of you'll center around this idea of light again, which is merged into our modern holiday tradition, correct?

Trevor:

And a lot of what we do, especially on Christmas Eve. Oh, Christmas Eve, for sure, is there's a lot of fire in our house,

Ellen :

a lot of light, lot of light of fire. Yes, we've created

Trevor:

our own tradition, both before and during our time at Stone Brook, where Christmas Eve feels like the right time to do all of this. It's

Ellen :

my favorite night of the holiday. Yeah, it's everything is decorated. It's quiet. It's really a time for closeness with family. It's cold, and everything is beautiful, and you're just really taking a moment to take it all in. There's

Trevor:

anticipation for what's to come. Love anticipation, but we always start our Christmas Eve celebration when the sun goes down. And one

Ellen :

of the traditions we've emerged from my family is the lighting of the Bayberry candles. And for those of you don't know, Bayberry candles start in the colonial times. Obviously, at that time, candles were. Huge. I think the average house used something like 400 kilos, a lot a year, yes, and the tallow that was used in those candles was from livestock, and it was very waxy,

Trevor:

and created a lot of a lot of smoke, a lot of a lot of carbon.

Ellen :

And so what happened for Colonial folks that came to New England area is that they started collecting the berries of the Bayberry bush, and that was along the coastline of New England. And they were able to turn these berries into a very special wax that had a small amount of tallow, and then it produced a candle that had a much nicer smell, and it burned cleaner and slower without smoking. And there was a lot of work that went into them. I think it was something like 15 pounds of bayberries that takes to make a pound of wax. It's

Trevor:

kind of like maple syrup, right? You've got all of this, 40 gallons of one jar, 40 gallons of sap to one one gallon of syrup. And

Ellen :

because they were so time consuming and expensive, it became something that they saved for things like a holiday, and it was either Christmas Eve or New Year's. And in my family, we did it on Christmas Eve. So our tradition with the bay berries is kind of similar to what I've read about with the colonial tradition is, but we take it always a little bit extra. I can remember this as a kid with my mom, when we had newspapers, we had looking in the newspaper so we knew exactly the time that the sun was gonna set. Now we use Google

Trevor:

correct less, less fun,

Ellen :

but faster. But I remember circling it in the newspaper and putting it on the counter so we had it because that was a very big deal. And then exactly at the time that the sun sets, you light the candles. The youngest child in the house, the youngest child in this house, youngest person in the house, youngest person in the house, helps to light the candles. The other important thing before that is the tradition of bayberries is they are supposed to be a gift. And again, I remember as a kid, my grandmother would buy bayberries for my mom, and my mom would buy bayberries for my grandmother and so and then as my my brothers and I get older, my mother would buy bayberries for each of our households. It was it's important. There is something about the gift of it that also brings because ultimately, the bay berries are to bring you luck and fortune and good health into the new year. So we would light them. It's very important to make sure that you have a good candle holder, that you trim that wick, because they have to burn out to the very bottom in order for it to bring you luck into the new year. Can't

Trevor:

blow it out. It's

Ellen :

not a birthday. Once you light it, it's got to stay and so many times every year you've got to put those candles in the sink, put

Trevor:

them in the sink, or you have the metal tray or something, because what you don't want is, middle of the night the fire alarms to go off because the wax has dripped out and caused them that's

Ellen :

not Christmas. Santa

Trevor:

may come sometimes on a fire truck, but you don't want it to actually be to your house. Not a good holiday, not a good plan,

Ellen :

not a good holiday. And we usually take a moment when we light those candles to make a wish, to reflect and again, to think about the things that we want for ourselves and for our family in the upcoming year. And there's a poem that goes along with baby candles, which is these baby candles come from a friend, so on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, burn it down to the end. For a baby candle burned to the socket will bring joy to the heart and gold to the pocket. It's so good.

Trevor:

I like that. That's adorable.

Ellen :

But that's not the only thing we light on.

Trevor:

This is just, I said, this is the beginning of a lot of fire in our house,

Ellen :

and this tradition is when we started for our family. We started it Yes, mostly because I like lighting things on fire, exactly. And then we found it had more meaning as well. That's true,

Trevor:

but it also is just just about fire, and also delicious. Yes. Here comes the accents, oh boy, yeah.

Ellen :

So what are going to talk

Trevor:

about German? We are going to talk about foyer, sang and bola. Yeah, I

Ellen :

don't think you can say it without an accent. You

Trevor:

can't actually say Fauci and bola without an accent. So here it comes. This is a traditional German drink that served at Christmas, and

Ellen :

it literally means fire tongs, right? So

Trevor:

yes, now bola yes is actually you would think, Oh, it's a foyer fire tongs. Bola is not bowl,

Ellen :

no, it's punch. Fire tongue,

Trevor:

tongue, punch, delicious. It is delicious. So it is a traditional German drink. It's 200 some odd years old, so it doesn't date back as far as Yule or a Christmas tree. It doesn't go back that far. But we are glad that it was invented. Because essentially it's a flaming pot of goodness that tastes like Christmas. So

Ellen :

you take your variation of a traditional glue vine, right, which is Christmas wine, Christmas

Trevor:

wine like a sweeter Christmas wine. And essentially, how you make it is you take red wine the glue vine is a traditional sweeter, spicy German mulled wine. And in order to make that part of it, we start off with a nice Merlot. That's usually what we use. Bottle of Merlot, put it into a pot, and you want to start simmering that, getting the heat up on that. You don't want to boil it. You want to just keep it in a nice, low simmer a slow heat. Yeah, slow heat. Add a lot of orange slices, 678, orange slices, lemon slices, cloves. You can stick the clothes in the lemon slices. If you want to. You can put the cloves in directly, just fish them out later. Not a big deal. Cinnamon stick. Better to use cinnamon than to use powdered cinnamon. You know, you want to use the stick so you get same thing, so you can get it out. There's a bold, it's a good seeping of the flavor. You want to start getting all of those Christmas flavors in, right? Especially with the clove and and the oranges.

Ellen :

Did you do star anise? I can't remember if that was No, no, I did not you start, no star anise. Okay, no star anise.

Trevor:

But you could use juniper. You could put little juniper berries in there. You could add a little bit. You just go for whatever your whatever you like. It's all, it's all going to be acceptable. Cup and a half orange juice, half a cup of lemon juice, and you just continue to heat that and make it nice and delicious. Now here's the tricky part. It's not tricky, but in order to make this drink the fantastic thing that it is, and there is a traditional, exactly, there's a traditional cauldron called hot for the Fauci bole, which is essentially a could be copper. You could there are glass versions of it that you can find online. We have a copper pot. Ours is copper with copper tongs and mugs, copper mugs, but you can find a lot of different versions. You can even use a fondue pot if you have one kicking around. If you're celebrating your 70s and you want to have some cheese and then pour some wine in there, all melted together. That's not the right but once all of that is hot and delicious, then pour it into one of these cauldrons, these Fauci cauldrons, and then on top of it we add, we're going to add the zuka hut onto the top of it, bless you. No, no, no. This is not like a good type of a no, this is not correct. Azukahoot is also called a Sugar Loaf or a sugar cone. And everybody might not know about a sugar cone or a Sugar Loaf, but essentially, that is a dried conical shape of sugar you can find them online. You can also make it yourself. You've done that. I have done it. I would say it's a little bit tricky when you try to make it yourself, because it doesn't set immediately. You need a couple of days to let it all dry out. But essentially, you would mix a little bit of water, like one teaspoon of water for every cup of sugar. Mix that together so it kind of creates, like a wet, Sandy, kind of a feeling, and then pack it really hard into a glass, like a pilsner glass, or something like that, and then you have to let it sit for a long time. When I first made my first zucchit, I didn't realize how long it would take to dry, sorry, and I think I did it that day? Oh, I'm sure you did it that day. And I was like, Uh oh. But what you can also do is add a I found out this is a pro tip. You can add a heated fan right next to your zukahoot, and you can blast it with hot air for the entire day, and that will essentially dry, hydrate and dry it out. There

Ellen :

you go.

Trevor:

I don't recommend that. No, I don't recommend more stress. You don't. But for your Fauci sangambola set, most likely it'll come with a little sugar cone holder, which clips on the top of the bowl right, goes right on the top of the bowl. Because the idea here is, you want to coat this delicious with a high proof rum. See,

Ellen :

it's getting sacred ingredients getting better and better every

Trevor:

minute of the day. So we use 151 it has to be a very high proof. So you want to fire, drizzle all of that onto the sugar cone, set the sugar cone down, and then light it on fire, which

Ellen :

is pretty spectacular. Is

Trevor:

very awesome to look at. It is

Ellen :

and it's safe, because it's in the bowl

Trevor:

safe ish, we've had some high, uh, some high high flames one year. But I think that's really where all the magic happens, yeah, because then the. Rum starts burning down the sugar. The sugar starts melting, and it starts dripping hot, molten, delicious sugar, rum sugar down into which sounds like a German word, but

Ellen :

I did not do an accent by the way. I'm

Trevor:

sure that's totally wrong, but that's really where all the flavor comes together, is when you have all of this deliciously warm sugar that's all melted together with the glue vine, and it's all coming together. And that's you just

Ellen :

label that and ladle it

Trevor:

into your cups, and we toast, we toast, and we drink it. And it can be very potent. Oh, yes. It also depends on how much rum I put onto the sugar cone, because sometimes that can be a little excessive. So then you've got wine. And 151 is not, not fooling around rum. So

Ellen :

no. And I mean, so we, you know again, it's fire in our house, it's Bay berries, it's the full its Ebola. And then we do our yule log, which is also more

Trevor:

fire. That is a lot more fire, actually. And

Ellen :

we're not talking about the Yule log cake, obviously, which is delicious and is in homage to the traditional, I guess consuming it brings you luck makes you

Trevor:

happy, because it's beautiful chocolate cake filled with cream and deliciousness. Yes, so all the good things, nobody, nobody's going to complain about any of that.

Ellen :

But traditionally, the Yule Log was burned in a hearth over the 12 days of Yule. But how do we do it at Stone Brook Trevor? Or how we always done it, because we did it in LA. We did it

Trevor:

in LA too. And by the way, it is much harder to find evergreens in LA than it is in Connecticut. Yeah, I'm just going to put that one out there. It's, I have a much wider variety of in my own yard, in your yard here in yard to hearth, podcast regard to hearth. Yeah, this having a Yule Log, having something that you bring in from outside, is traditional all the way back to Celtic times, and it so for us, the way that we do it is, I go out with the kiddo and we identify a log, traditionally, finding of the log, the finding of the Yule Log. Traditionally, the Yule log is Oak. That's pretty much the standard, because it burned for so long, and that was the goal to try to keep it burning for 12 full days.

Ellen :

I can't imagine the size of the medieval yo log in those giant Hall, cars, hearths.

Trevor:

Big, big, yikes. Yeah, no. And also awesome, it took three or four people to lift it. It took three or four people to set it in. And it was a constant. There was somebody that would check and tend and make sure that it would continue to burn. So for us, our Yule logs are nowhere near that big because they would not fit. So I'll go out with the kiddo. We find a log, something that is usually pretty gnarly, has lots of knots in it. That's a character, lots of character and lots of fun. It should be fairly dry because it does need to burn down, much like our baby candles, it also needs to burn completely out entirely once we found the log, then we go and we find the greenery that we're going to connect you dress it, we dress it up. And a lot of that greenery has its own meaning as you go through so

Ellen :

and let's be real, when we first started this, it was about greenery and it was pretty and then we started to research the meaning of the green Absolutely. And

Trevor:

you find out that there's different things. So when you add pine boughs on top of your yule log, that is about prosperity and growth, or Holly is about visions of the future. So there's these different old meanings that are fun, that kind of connect us to these rituals that we do, that we have done for a very, very long time. So we wrap the Yule Log and end those greens in little ribbon that's either gold or red again, trying to bring in those outside

Ellen :

colors from a present from the year before. Because I like the same ribbon. Ellen does say for him, and she has a an extensive used ribbon collection, because I like to be sustainable, yeah, in all that.

Trevor:

And then we'll bring that log in and it's with us during the day, and then we put it on the fire. And that's a moment that we all have where everybody's quiet, and we all just sit and watch and listen to the different evergreen boughs catch in different ways with the showers of sparks and color, color and sound, and we're all just very quiet. Sometimes it's hard for our family to be quiet. Sometimes it's hard for kids. And parents alike to be quiet, but we do our best, and sometimes I'll give a look. It's happened before. Trevor

Ellen :

is the giver. Happen again,

Trevor:

but it is actually, in truth, one of the only times that we are all together and are totally quiet, yeah, and it's just about trying to think about our intentions for the year, and thinking about our intentions for each other, and just having a moment with our family that is really transports us to another place of peace.

Ellen :

Yeah, a place of peace. You know, again, as we go through sort of how our night goes, It's so lovely, and our family looks forward to it, we know, and our and our kiddo, now that she's older, loves to make sure we're staying on task for how the evening is going to roll out, and then what happens with the log at the end after it burns out. So

Trevor:

then for luck, the next day, more luck, we will take a little of the ash and put it in a little jar that goes under our bed.

Ellen :

And that's like an ancient that's an old tradition, tradition,

Trevor:

yeah, for luck for the new year, so you have a bit of that yule log. Now, it is weird sometimes, if you're cleaning and you're What's this jar of dirt under the bed, but then you Oh, yes, yes, nice, true. And then we tell stories around the fire as the yellow log goes.

Ellen :

So much fun. We everyone picks a story or a poem. Again, our kiddo is in on it too. She reads The Night Before Christmas or picks a different last year she read something new. It's just everybody takes a turn. It's so fun. It's always a holiday story of some kind, and it's quiet. There's no TVs, no phones. It's just lovely. And then we put some cookies and milk out, because the big guy's got to come. Oh

Trevor:

yeah for sure. And my mom has a sugar cookie recipe that I don't even know by the way,

Ellen :

I would love to be able to share it. It

Trevor:

is literally a secret recipe, simple,

Ellen :

I'm sure, but it's so good.

Trevor:

It is hands, friends. I am a cookie connoisseur. I will eat a cookie.

Ellen :

You and your dad are cookie monsters. We

Trevor:

are cookie monsters, for sure. I have met the real cookie monster, and he thinks I'm pretty awesome, so from the amount of cookies that I can eat, but I will say that my mom's sugar cookies are pretty fantastic. They're they're the best, and I think some of it is the nostalgia of the flavor of what I've always known. But they are pretty there's a there's a slight saltiness to them that comes through.

Ellen :

And she makes the very traditional icing with the confectionery,

Trevor:

balanced flavor of sweet cookie with a little just a hint of saltiness, which just brings it all together. And they are delicious. And

Ellen :

they're just so traditional and fun because she uses all the great cookie cutter shapes, and it's all we've done it as a family, decorating cookies. You know, our daughter has done it just with her grandparents, with decorating cookies. And those plates of these crazy colors cookies are just everything you want to put wrapped up in a boat for Christmas. So it's super fun. And then we put that plate out some milk, some carrots.

Trevor:

Magic happens, and

Ellen :

the magic happens. The

Trevor:

Santa magic occurs. And then the next day, we all have fun with presents in the morning, and then we'll start eating.

Ellen :

There is a sticky bun that we have on Christmas morning that none of us make. Again. Is a tradition from my family, which was not easy to do on the West Coast, although I did have a very good friend ship them to us one year. It's a tiny little bakery that is in southern New Jersey, and they make these honey buns. They call them, which they're sticky buns. And some come with nuts, and some come without. And we buy them over the summer, and we freeze them, and we keep them in the freezer, because this bakery is about three plus hours away from us, three or three and a half, yeah, but we have this at breakfast time while we're opening presents, which is so fun. And then Christmas day for us, of course, then is about playing with the things that we got, spending time with our family and making Christmas dinner.

Trevor:

We are big on Turkey. For Thanksgiving, we had a delicious bird this year. Oh my gosh, absolutely fantastic, yes

Ellen :

and but great, shining job. My love, my,

Trevor:

thank you, my, thank you. Usually we'll go more towards a roast filet, or we've done porchetta in the past with just that's an amazing, very delicious, delicious dish.

Ellen :

That's a great recipe too, to share.

Trevor:

We'll do that this year. Are

Ellen :

we doing Christmas Eve? Yeah,

Trevor:

we'll do Christmas Eve anything with pork. I'm I'm sold, sold American. And

Ellen :

then we each have a and it's very traditional mashed potatoes and sides that go with that. And we put out the good china and sit around the table. And really have a nice meal and desserts. Cookies from Oma. We make a traditional cranberry cake that we do at Thanksgiving, but we call it the Christmas cake at Christmas. And then I've gotten very into our Christmas pavlova, and

Trevor:

it is a delicious I make

Ellen :

a wreath, yeah, with berries and pomegranates and all mint and a little, you know, yogurt in the pavlova. And it is just so pretty and delicious at the same time,

Trevor:

I was very amazed the first time you made it, because it came out so well. Yeah, it was photographically perfect, and you had never made it before.

Ellen :

I'm, you know, I say this all the time. I'm not a baker, and

Trevor:

yet, every time you bake something like the turkey pot pie that you just baked was delicious, leftover turkey, I don't believe you anymore. I'm done with that. I'm done believing you.

Ellen :

I can, I know I don't really like following directions when it comes to cooking is much more of like a science. You've got to live to the recipe. Yeah, yeah. I do like the results, and I'm very task focused when I'm following the recipe so well documented. So talking about all of this makes me excited. It's coming up. The season is coming. It's a year for the holidays to come the solstice and celebrating all our Yuletide traditions and being together and being together as our family,

Trevor:

that's really why Stonebrook is such a special place for us, because nobody has to travel, nobody has to get on a plane or a train or an automobile, great movie, but we all just get to be close and together houses and do a little Christmas parade around each house. We've done that on the day, and everybody gets to have a little bit of time in their house.

Ellen :

Yeah, it's really lovely. And for all of you listening, we hope that this season brings you the light and the love and the good health and happiness that you want and all of that as well that come to you in New Year.

Trevor:

Happy holidays. Everybody. Happy

Ellen :

holidays. Thanks for being with us and having a seat at our table.

Trevor:

Your to table is a production of macrocosm entertainment. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and for tips and more information, follow us on Instagram at Stonebrook house you

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Ellen Scherer Crafts

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Trevor Crafts

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