Living Christmas

Happy day Read.cash Community, wishing you a happy week and having a great time. We have been having a lot of fun these days, we recently created a parranda group to celebrate Christmas, we went out to sing and play at the neighbors house, you can see it here Christmas Parrandon, I have been a little late with the article because I needed to buy some ingredients to give a little flavor to the challenge of #ChristmasChallenge2021 of @TengoLoTodo, this is my entry, I take the opportunity to invite @CoquiCoin and @Eylz2021, so you can see what I have prepared.

Christmas for my family is a very special reunion, you can visit throughout the year and celebrate, but December is filled with splendor, streets decorated with lights, festive music from the month of October, in the month of November the Christmas bagpipes from the State of Zulia, specifically on the 18th corresponds to the day of its patron saint, with the descent of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá, also known as "La Chinita". Most of my brothers lived in the state of Anzoátegui, but another one was in Monagas and I was in Sucre, so every year I alternated the days of visit, for the 24th of December in Anzoátegui and the 31st in Sucre, because my wife's family is from there, for the following year we did it the other way around.

Christmas at home

I have two children, which have an age difference of 8 years, their gifts would always be different, we have kept the tradition of the baby Jesus forever. I got used to buy their gifts in October or November, I never liked the shopping sprees in the days of December, if the gift was too big we hid it in some other house, they could not find out at all. They used to write their letters that we still keep.

For the second week of December we buy the ingredients to make the hallacas, ham bread, dulce de lechosa, black cake, baked pork leg, chicken or hen salad. From the 21st we begin to clean the banana leaves for the hallacas, a beer or a whiskey to start, music can not miss. For the 22nd we have ready the hallacas and the candy, for the 24th we prepare the ham bread, the black cake, the salad and the pork leg, now we wait for dinner, we meet with the family, sometimes with the neighbors and we place the tables in the street and there we have fun until the next day.

The long awaited day arrived, December 24, from the morning is music, toasts, calls to distant relatives who can not attend or we have not been able to travel. What we did to place the gifts so that the children did not see us, my house has 2 entrances one through the kitchen and the main one, approaching 12 o'clock at night we were always caught, but we all left the house to walk, in an oversight I went to the house placed the gifts and returned with them, at other times it was my wife who did it, or we sent someone else to place the gifts, how impressive their faces when they opened the door and see their gifts, it was wonderful, I regret not showing photos of the moment I have lost it on a hard drive.

Anecdote: I apologize to my favorite daughter @ArteFM, because this gift has been karma for her. In one of her letters she asked for Kreissel Ice Cream Parlor, "because it makes real ice cream, in a few minutes" according to the advertising, as the baby Jesus pleased her for being a good girl and having achieved her goals for the year, she had her gift on the tree. The next day we are going to eat real ice cream, HOHOHOHO.....

You can't imagine the trauma of freezing salt water, apart from all the ingredients you need and then getting tired turning the crank so you never get an ice cream, the bad expense of milk, sugar, coloring, flavoring, I apologize again, because she didn't want to remember any of this, but I can't stop showing it, it's so funny....Jajaja... for your consolation I can tell you that you are not the only one who was frustrated, I found a video and some comments about it, but it's very long. This was one of the biggest scams I have ever fallen for. We managed to make ice cream, of course we did, but it is not a toy for children, nor is it as easy as the advertising says. I had to put the aluminum container with ice and salt in it to freeze and barely a layer of ice cream came out.

Now comes what my friends are waiting for, when I replied to TengoLoTodo that I was going to kill two birds with one stone, I meant that I would make the article for the challenge and my Pan de Jamón in the same article.

My original bread has smoked pork chop as an ingredient, but due to the high price it is discarded, I have been varying the recipe and this is one of the ones I liked the most.

Ingredients for the dough

500 g Wheat flour

4 g Granulated yeast

5 g Salt

50 g Sugar

260 ml Milk

50 g Margarine

3 Egg yolks

Ingredients for the filling

450 g Smoked ham

200 g Bacon

150 g Olives stuffed with paprika

100 g Raisins

25 ml of Rum or red wine

To paint

1 Egg

50 g Papelón

80 ml Water

Procedure

Put the raisins to macerate in 25 ml of liqueur in a container with a lid.

In a large bowl, place 260 ml of warm milk together with the yeast and 20 g of sugar, mix with a whisk and let it stand for 15 minutes at a temperature of approximately 21 ºC (70 ºF).

Once the yeast is activated, add 30 g of sugar, 150 g of sifted flour, the 3 egg yolks, mix with a whisk and let stand covered with plastic wrap for 45 minutes.

Then mix 5 g of salt with 350 g of sifted wheat flour, add it to the yeast and finish kneading with your hands until you make a ball, then stretch it on a counter to incorporate air to the dough, as shown in the video. Let it rest for 20 minutes.

Now incorporate the 50 g of margarine in two parts, knead with your hands until it is fully integrated, if necessary you can add a little more flour. Let it rest for 1 hour, so that it doubles its size.

Place flour on a table and stretch the dough with a rolling pin until it is about 1 cm thick, a rectangle of about 35 cm x 48 cm.

I have previously fried the bacon to remove a little fat and let it cool (if you had smoked chop would do the same procedure with the bacon), apply the fat obtained from the bacon to the dough, if you want you can put a row of olives on the edge of the rectangle and cover it, Then place the smoked ham, making sure that it comes out a little from the edge of the dough, add the fried bacon, the rest of the olives cut in circles, the raisins previously drained and roll up loosely to a third. Make cuts of approximately 1.5 cm and roll the ribbons up to the bottom of the bread. Then prick it with a fork so that the excess air from the fermentation comes out and let it rest for 50 minutes on a tray, you can use baking paper.

Preheat the oven for about 10 minutes before putting the bread in at a temperature of 170 ºC.

Beat an egg and paint the bread before baking. Bake it in the oven for 30 minutes at a temperature of 170 ºC. After the time is over, take it out of the oven, paint it with the mixture of Papelón and put it back in the oven for about 10 minutes.

For the papelón mixture, boil 80 ml of water together with the 50 g of papelón to make a syrup and let it cool.

I hope you enjoy making this bread and delighting in it, it is delicious.

Thank you for coming this far.

All content is original

The information obtained from the Web is indicated

The photos were taken by me

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December 20, 2021