MM MM MM MM Can you smell it???

Oh the smells of Christmas! Is there anything better than the wide variety of Christmas smells all around us?

Wassail, peppermint, ginger, sage, cinnamon, coriander, pumpkin pie. Candles burning with their new and various scents. Can you smell snow in the air...me either, but I can smell the Christmas trees, wreaths and greens all around.

I love the smells of Christmas!

Sunday afternoon Ed took over the kitchen for "Ed Bread Day". OH MY....Christmas really hits home when the first batch of Ed Bread hits the oven...the house smells so wonderfully yummy and Christmasy!

The first year we were married my DMIL sent us a bread recipe and insisted we try it, well...Ed and I thought the mix of ingrediants were just too way out there for our tastes so we passed on making it up. (DMIL always had a MUST try recipe up her sleeve!!!). Finally Ed made up a batch just to tell his mom that, yes we tried it (we knew we wouldn't like it). LOL doesn't it figure that it has become Ed's specialty bread, and our pal Bruce dubbed it "Ed Bread". We love this bread!

Each year Ed bakes many many round loaves of this bread, varying the size of the loaf to match the size of the family we give them to. A small round for our widowed neighbor, a large round for our friends who travel to Wilsonville each year to spend the holiday with a group of family members, medium loaf for others. In years past Ed has baked as many as 30 loaves...the list has narrowed and he doesn't bake nearly as many now.

When the boys were little we would pack all the bread in boxes...I would make a list of who was to get what size and off we would go ~ delivering bread all over town, one of the boys would run to the door hand the bread over with a hearty "MERRY CHRISTMAS" shouted as they ran back to the car and off to the next house we would go...how fun to share the gift of giving with our children. After getting their licenses the boys would go through the list and pick a few people they wanted to deliver to and off they would go bread and list in hand to deliver a bit of Christmas cheer and their dad's Ed Bread, Ed and I would deliver the rest. While the boys were in college, and home on break, they would grab the list and boxes of bread and would be gone for hours and hours as they delivered bread and visited with those they had not seen for months, frequently we would later hear from the recievers how much they enjoyed visiting with the boys (oh the pride of a mothers heart).

It's Christmas at our house...no tree, no lights on the house but can you smell it??? Ed Bread, yummy!!!