An “old-fashioned” Christmas is closer than you think: just find a general store or a country store. John Brown’s Store on Highway 66 north of King, for example, has a lot of traditional items that are hard to find in “big box” stores.
Our favorites include several on Main Street in Mount Airy, where there are hardware stores, candy stores, specialty shops and plenty of good eating places!
Further up Highway 52, across the state line at Cana, is Virginia Produce, an old country store where you can buy fruits and vegetables by the pound or box. Old-fashioned candies are displayed in wooden barrels and you can bag your own or buy it already packaged. (There is just something especially old-fashioned about picking them out from a barrel and dropping them into a brown paper bag!)
They have all the goodies that your parents and grandparents used to fill your Christmas goodie bags when you were a kid: orange slices, BB Bats, ribbon candy, bon-bons, gum drops, stick candy, Toosie Rolls, Root Beer Barrels — all the favorites that bring back Christmas memories.
There are two general stores in Winston-Salem, Mast General Store on Liberty Street and W.G. White (aka Ronnie’s Country Store) on Cherry Street (where there feature White Country Hams and other fresh-cut meats). And of course, area Cracker Barrel stores offer a lot of these old favorites.
The sights, sounds and smells make these special stores a place to bring kids and grandkids to let them see what an old-fashioned Christmas is all about. You may even find a bottle of soda pop that you can pull out of an ice box!
A little touch of green: Frost has not yet taken control of the garden in mid-December, so there is still plenty of production in The Garden Plot thanks to the blankets of crushed leaves you’ve provided for protection. The greens of Siberian kale, spring onions, turnips, broccoli, collards and curly mustard not only provide one of the colors of Christmas but also good tastes during winter. Another green bonus is Carolina jasmine, with its amber blooms. And as much as we dislike wild onions, we’ll leave them for now just because they add a welcome shade of green.
It’s great to have something green inside the house during winter. You can start a narcissus in December from a kit that can be found in most garden sections of local stores, with most everything you need in the kit. Amaryllis can also be purchased in kits.
For an extra touch of green, drop a sweet potato into a vase of water and let it sprout. If in a sunny spot in the house, they will run out over the vase.
Weather lore: There is a bit of weather lore that says “When winter stars don’t twinkle, snow will start to sprinkle.” Because of cold temperatures aloft, stars always twinkle in the winter months. In the summer, when temperatures are warmer, stars don’t seem to twinkle as much. Whatever the lore says, when the temperature is cold aloft, conditions are ripe for some serious snowfalls, like the hefty 14 inches we got in December 2018.
Natural Christmas décor: Decorations from Mother Nature often speak louder than store-bought, and certainly show a lot more thought and effort. Many can be found in your own backyard. Now that leaves are off most of the trees, bird nests can easily be spotted. Some make more artistic and durable decorations than others. The best seem to be the ones that are woven with straw and grass. Clean out the inside and spray the nest with several coats of clear varnish. (You might add a few plastic eggs from a hobby/craft store.) Other good choices are the red nandina berries, honeysuckle vines, pinecones, boxwood greenery, even large acorns.
The smells of Christmas, continued: On Christmas Eve mornings growing up, a wood fire of oak blazed under the huge black cast iron wash pot. In the pot was a Peanut City, Virginia, ham that would cook all morning. As morning turned to afternoon the ham would be removed from the pot to cool, and my father would fill the pot with fresh heads of collards from the winter garden. The “ham water” was the perfect seasoning for our collards. Christmas Even supper traditionally consisted of fried oysters, collards, cornbread and coconut cake; the ham was for Christmas Day!
‘FAKE’ CHAMPAGNE
This is a good recipe for Christmas and easy to prepare:
1 gallon apple or white grape juice
1 pack Kool-Aid, pink lemonade flavor
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 2-liter bottles Canada Dry Ginger Ale
Mix Kool-Aid and sugar in water, then add juice. Chill in the fridge overnight. To serve, add half of the juice mixture to one bottle of ginger ale. (If serving in a punch bowl you can make an ice ring by pouring a third bottle of ginger ale into a tube pan and freezing overnight.)
INSTANT HOT CHOCOLATE MIX
This recipe also makes a great gift idea for Christmas:
3 cups non-fat dry milk (such as Carnation)
2 cups instant cocoa mix (I use Nestle’s Quik)
½ cup non-dairy coffee creamer (such as Coffee-Mate)
¾ cup sugar
Mix ingredients and pour into jars with an air-tight lid. To serve, mix one-third cup of chocolate mixture in a cup of boiling water. To make these into gifts, dress up the jars with bows. (Another neat trick is to place some miniature marshmallows into a zipper bag and attach to the jar with tape; that way your recipients can enjoy marshmallows in their hot chocolate if they choose. You can write out the serving instructions on the bag as well.)
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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