Is it winter, already?

Yesterday afternoon, it started snowing, and it continued throughout the night. This morning we woke up to 30 cm. of snow. The trees are so ladened that they are breaking under the weight.

We're lucky to have electricity. Many of the small towns around us don't have any at all, and haven't since yesterday evening. The cold is supposed to continue and will drop to -6°C tonight.

To put my down-time to use, I've been madly writing Christmas cards getting them ready to send by Dec. 1st.
I'm only sending out about 15 cards. But they are going all over the world.

How many cards to you usually send out each year?

I also made a yummy Pumpkin Orange Cake because I was bored and because Monsieur Titi wanted a dessert. I doubled the recipe because I still had 2 cups of pumpkin purée in the freezer from last year. I also used chopped dates instead of raisins and put the batter in a rectangular cake pan instead of the loaf pans suggested.

Pumpkin Orange Cake

Ingredients:
1 large orange (peel and all except seeds)
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 1/3 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup water
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chopped raisins

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

Cut orange into wedges, and remove seeds. Place orange, peel and all, in a food processor. Pulse until finely chopped; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the pumpkin, water, and the ground orange. Mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and cloves. Stir into batter just until moistened. Stir in nuts and raisins. Spoon into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes, then remove from pan, and cool on a wire rack.