How a day at the beach changed Reagen Robinson’s life

Exeter toddler Reagen Robinson’s life will never be the same after an outing to a private beach near Grand Bend in August. Soon after arriving at the beach with his parents Brad and Katrina and brother Jordon, Reagen ran toward an extinguished, but still hot, firepit and suffered third degree burns to his hands and second degree burns to parts of his legs.

As told to Casey Lessard

Katrina Robinson: We’re lake people. It’s nice to live next door to one of the most beautiful places in the world, and we take advantage of it. We have two small kids and two dogs who enjoy to swim. We’re beachgoers. It’s a fun, inexpensive day to have family time.
It was a Friday afternoon, and after Brad finished work we decided to go to the beach.
We were at a private beach. We had just sat down and I noticed he went toward the fire pit and I literally just about had him. I couldn’t catch him fast enough. He fell into a fire pit full of ashes that were still fairly warm. I picked him up and threw him in the water with me. I didn’t know what else to do. Brad came down and took one look at him and said we had to go to the hospital. It all happened so fast. It seemed like we got there one minute, and the next we were driving back down the road with a screaming baby.
Shock took over. Usually I’m a very queasy person, but for some reason I was the pillar of strength. I carried him into Exeter hospital and they took him from me so I could give them information. I went back and all you could see was his skin was charred. It was all grey. I don’t know how else to describe it because I try not to think about it; it’s so horrific.
I remember having to stand in the hospital room and hold cold cloths of saline solution over top of him. They explained what they were going to do and gave him a drug called ketamine to knock him out. Before I knew it, he was being taken to Victoria Hospital. We dropped Jordon off at Brad’s parents’ house in Ailsa Craig, and it felt like forever to get from Ailsa Craig to London. We got lost and finally found where we were supposed to be.
I don’t think the severity of it sunk in until the next morning, Saturday. Having been brought up to speed by his team, the plastic surgeon came in and had a look and said flat out that Reagen had to have skin grafting. He said he would wait until his normal surgery days, which were Wednesday and Thursday, but then he came back and changed his mind. He said if it was okay with us, he would do it the next day, Sunday.
On his first surgery, they skin-grafted up his forearms, the back of his hands and the fronts of his fingers. They placed pins in his fingers to keep them straight so he didn’t move any of the skin grafting. It takes between three and seven days for the skin grafts to be fully attached.
Originally they thought they would have to skin graft his palms, a spot on his knees and a spot on his toe. But after two hours, the surgeon came to us and was excited, saying he didn’t think his knee or his palms needed the surgery.
We were in the hospital for four weeks. They were shocked at how fast he healed, and Dr. Scilley was calling him his Superhealer. They were pleased enough to let us go home, but reminded us that we would have to have home care come in every day because he had sores that would need dressings. We went home with some dressing instructions and we were to wrap Cobans (a type of compression bandage) to add some tension into form before we got into gloves. We were home doing that for about a week before we had to go see Dr. Scilley. The Coban, because it wasn’t wrapped properly, started to cut into the bases of the fingers and added new wounds. Unfortunately, because of the way the health system works, no one from the hospital could come out and teach our home care workers how to use them properly, and you have to be a pro at it for it to work properly.
The physical therapist, surgeon and a couple of nurses went to a conference in Montreal, and discovered gloves that had some tension in them with silver to help the healing. These were eventually replaced by the full pressure gloves he uses now. His left hand was burned worse than his right hand; he has about 95 per cent use of his right hand, and we’ve had issues with his left hand. His web spaces grew in a bit and the gloves are cutting into the web space. We’re trying to get it to heal, but you need pressure on it to keep it functional. It’s just getting better now.
The body is still trying to repair its own skin because it doesn’t understand skin grafting. The blood vessels are still up at the surface, so if he were to pick his finger, it would bleed like crazy. The gloves help put pressure on his blood vessels and add form to his fingers. His fingers will never look like yours and mine, but he’ll be able to bend them.
With the home care workers, I hold on to him and we go through six exercises to bend his joints and stretch the skin to its maximum potential. Even in a 24-hour period, you can have a lot of contraction, so you have to manipulate it while it’s still not completely healed.

Inflicting pain daily
They’re hopeful that he will have full mobility. With his left hand, he doesn’t do a whole lot because it’s still sore. He favours his right hand, and we hope the mobility’s there in his left hand, but he can’t talk so we don’t know.
It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s not an easy thing to watch a child go through pain. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t have to assist in inflicting pain on him. I honestly thought when they first taught me how to do the exercises in the hospital that it would get easier. It doesn’t. In fact, it gets worse because it’s been four or five months continuous.
When you have a burn, you have a burn for life. He will require surgeries until he is fully grown because his fingers and arms will grow but his skin won’t grow with them.
It has its downfalls for being as young as he was, but it has its upside, too. He’ll never remember what happened, and he’ll never know any different. He’ll just have to adapt. It’s life. You can’t go back and it’s never going to get any worse than it was that day. We just have to teach him that everyone is different, and you can do anything you want as long as you set your mind to it.

A November fundraiser in Parkhill raised almost $20,000 to offset the medical costs. Reagen needs gloves, which are covered 75 per cent by OHIP every six months, but the family has to pay for any additional gloves in the interim. Medical supplies and other expenses, such as parking for regular visits to the hospital, also come out of their pocket.
Donations are still being accepted. Cheques made out to the “Parkhill Lions Club in trust to Reagen Robinson” can be sent to the club at P.O. Box 207 Parkhill, ON N0M 2K0. Tax receipts will be issued.

By Casey Lessard

The end is near for Crediton’s only retailer, and its owners hope that end refers to construction on the town’s only bridge and main road, not the end of their 15-year business.
“There are no guarantees,” says Diane Faubert when asked if the business will survive to the January bridge repair completion date. “We don’t know. We’re going to try.”
Jordy’s Gas Bar, one of the few businesses in the village, has been hit hard by three years of road construction caused by sewer installation; this year’s discovery that the bridge had a crack was the straw that threatens to break Jordy’s back.
“I’ve taken a leave of absence from my bus,” Faubert says, “I’ve laid off my (three part-time) employees, I’ve unplugged a couple of fridges and freezers to cut back. We’ve cut back our hours because there just isn’t enough business. It’s pretty tough.”
“We became aware in late 2006 that it’s the same type of bridge that collapsed in Laval, Quebec,” says Acting Director of Public Works Dave Laurie, who notes they’ve been keeping tabs on the bridge since then. Repairing the bridge was Huron County’s least expensive option, estimated at $430,000.
“The bridge was built in the mid-50s, and it was a design that was popular, the cantilever beam design. We had done some repairs earlier in 2006 to address other issues, and early this summer realized there’s a crack in one of the beams critical to supporting the bridge. It probably was a flaw in the bridge from the time it was built. Luckily it’s the only one of that type we have in Huron County.”
Traffic is rerouted around Crediton at Parr Line until next month. Consolidated Sign & Lighting is at the Parr Line end of Crediton’s main street, and its lit sign is visible from the detour.
“It’s not an issue for us,” says Consolidated’s Larry Eveland. “I’d rather see it happening rather than not happening.
“We’re just lucky our bridge isn’t the one that collapsed and killed somebody. It had to be fixed before someone got hurt.”
The discovery of the crack is important to public safety, but an unlucky case of bad timing for Faubert, whose business has already suffered from construction that deters traffic en route to Grand Bend and the Motorplex.
““We used to get a lot of Motorplex traffic, but they don’t want to go over rough roads,” Faubert says. “After three years of this, I don’t have any financial savings or extra money to tie me through. I have another month and a half to go. I’m taking it day by day and hoping that I’ll survive this.”

Exeter writer Rick Hundey set his first novel Death at the Bend in Grand Bend. It was released in November by Faux Pop of Goderich.

As told to Casey Lessard

I’ve been playing around with writing for years. I didn’t get serious about it until about six or seven years ago. I joined a writers’ group and we would share our writings and critique. I sent short stories to various contests, and I finally won one in the summer of 2005, and that was the Alice Munro writers’ festival and short story contest. It made me feel I was on to something.
I had been working as a management consultant and had enough contracts to keep me going, and I had some wonderful clients, but I wasn’t as interested in what I was doing as I should have been. I was working on manuscripts, and I got to the point where if I got a phone call from a client while I was working on a manuscript, I saw it as an interruption. That’s when I thought it was time to get at it full-time. That was a year and a half ago, when I was in the first draft of Death at the Bend.
I worked at it quite steadily and did seven or eight major rewrites; some authors do 20. Realistically it was two major rewrites with the rest fine-tuning.
The last few drafts were the result of the review process I went through with a couple of people in the writers’ group, a friend of mine who judges short story contests, and a couple of author friends. Then I linked up with Faux Pop in Goderich and decided to go with it.

In a nutshell, it’s about a coffee shop owner in Grand Bend who used to be the town’s police chief. I know they haven’t had one in recent memory, but I made up an amalgamation story where he turns down a job offer with the OPP and decides to put up his shingle to run a small consulting business and buying a small Main Street coffee shop with his girlfriend.
An ex-girlfriend reappears and she was a major problem in his life; yet here she is, needing help, having been charged with the murder of her spouse.
I found that the characters would end up telling me what was next. I always knew the ending and the main events, but the shifts along the way added more suspense. I’ve read a fair number of books on writing, and these people tell you that this happens to you. One writer in particular said to write biographies of your main characters. I did, and they’re fairly detailed biographies. You find yourself getting to a point where you know what your plot outline says but you ask yourself, what would he do? If he did this, what would happen?
I was done in the early summer and I was hoping to have something by the end of the summer, in time to catch the Grand Bend cottagers. I discovered that my expectations were unreasonable. There’s a copy editing process where revisions can affect other parts of the book. There was also a fair amount of work regarding decisions about the cover.
We weren’t ready for a launch until three weeks ago, and we’re thinking for our first stage that we’ll print three blocks of 300, and two-thirds of that first block are spoken for. That part has gone pretty well when you think that it’s only been two or three weeks.
Most of the sales have been by word of mouth or through library readings. After this stage we want to go to independent bookstores and possibly the chains. I think this is the more common approach than it used to be.

This is fun. Especially the writing part, and I really enjoy interacting with people at readings. If you’re a painter, you either sell your painting or you hang it on your wall. Either way people are going to look at it, and that’s your goal. When you write a book, it’s not just for you. Your only proof of its merit is that people buy it and tell you that it’s good. It will make a little bit of money, but that’s not the goal; if that’s your goal, there are better ways to do it.
For more, visit: http://rickhundey.fauxpop.tv/

Rick Hundey’s writing advice:

Just do it
I was writing when I was working full-time. This is as much a lifestyle decision as anything else. If you can write short stories with success, then you can do it part-time and it’s a great leisure pastime. I don’t think working on it full-time is required.

Hone your skills
I now think it’s more a skill than a talent. There are a lot of good books out there, and good courses. I took a fantastic course at Fanshawe with Susan Regier, who is this sister of our fire chief John Morgan.

Find others
It also helps to get in with some people that write. Talk to them, and exchange your work.

Write, write, write
The other thing you have to do is write a lot. If this was the old days, I would have a cedar chest full of manuscripts. My computer’s full of stuff. Just write and keep trying. Throw stuff out that doesn’t work or that you’re not happy with.

Favourite authors: Walter Mosley, Robert Crais, Tony Hillerman, and Elmore Leonard

By Casey Lessard

Capture action
Like our cover photographer Kelsey Brand’s photo of her sister Logan, your photos will be better if you capture life in action. Experiment with fast shutter speeds (like the cover) or slow ones, in which case you should move with the subject or stay perfectly still (i.e. use a tripod).

Find a great venue
Darlene O’Rourke’s photo of the McCarthy family shows that sometimes a portrait is as much about the venue as it is the people. Build a database of great places to take photos, remember when the light is good there, and bring your subjects when the time is right.

Be ready
Great moments like Jenn Moxham’s photo of her son Grayson aren’t waiting for you to pull out your camera. Have it ready, then shoot until you get the picture you want. It might take one shot, or it might take 50. Don’t let your guard down if your instinct tells you something great is going to happen.

Look around
Lea James’ detail of a knot is one of those shots you don’t see every day, yet it’s there every day for you to see it. Look up, look down, look around. Often the best photos are the ones you can’t see because you’re too busy looking at something else.

Change your schedule
Want to get a photo like Brenda Parsons’ of the wind turbines near Ipperwash (#1)? Brenda was up at 5 a.m. Now that’s taking photography seriously. By the way, bring your tripod and leave the shutter open as long as you can. You may need to use a night setting or bulb depending on your camera. Make sure the flash is off.

Use existing light
Andra Brand’s photo of her daughter Logan (#2) looks great because she’s using the light from the Christmas tree. You could use window lighting or really any light, even a street light. Just watch your white balance setting to make sure the colour looks the way you want.

Bring in several layers
Thinking of shooting another sunset? The reason Lynn Wilbur’s sunset (#3) is so beautiful is that she brought in several layers: a foreground (sand), middle ground (water), and background (sun). Try looking for those three elements, and then incorporate people.

Composition rules
Emily Marks’ photo of two people walking down a wooded road (#4) takes advantage of one of several composition rules, including balance, rule of thirds, dominant colour, leading lines. Wondering what these are? Visit http://www.grandbendphoto.com

Don’t be afraid of people
Karen Brown’s photo of the South Huron senior concert band in action (#5) requires the photographer to overcome the fear of being embarrassed by getting close to the action. If you get a good photo, and the subject is okay with it, it’s usually a good idea. See also Jane Miklovic’s photo to its right (#6).

Macro for flowers and bugs
Shooting flowers? Find the macro setting, which looks like a flower. Use it for bugs, too. Maggie Brennan used it for both (#7).

Frame within a frame
Look for opportunities to shoot people framed by an object such as a window or other frame, like Anita Deline did (#8). The frame acts as a foreground element, as discussed earlier.

Make your subject comfy
Once your subject is comfortable with you photographing them, interesting things happen, as Judy Jewell discovered (#9). Just tell people to pretend you’re not there, and act as comfortable as you want them to act. It takes a few photos for people to do that, but keep shooting and don’t draw attention to yourself.

Look for abstract details
Vreni Beeler was carving a pumpkin when she looked closer. She’s glad she did (#10). The closer you get, the more abstract everyday objects become.

Use your tools
Mies Vandeleygraaf’s photo of sunbeams through smoke (this page) incorporates several of these lessons. The more you bring together, the better your photos will be.

Keep your sense of humour
Martin Page’s raccoon photo and Paul Maguire’s photo of his granddaughter share a sense of fun that forces the viewer to smile.

To learn more, call Casey Lessard at 519-614-3614 or visit
http://www.grandbendphoto.com.
Future classes will also be posted on this website. Special thanks to the Grand Bend Art Centre and to the students who shared their work with the Strip.

Story and Photos by Casey Lessard

They may not have won the national championship Vanier Cup, but the University of Western Ontario Mustangs football team continues to win the hearts of boys and girls at East Williams Public School in Nairn. Several of the team’s players are taking part in a mentorship program to help the children improve their literacy while learning the fundamentals of football.
“One of our students wrote in his journal about his love for football,” says principal Vivienne Bell-McKaig, who spearheaded the program last year.
“We asked if he would like to meet (a player), and he was quite excited about that opportunity. So we wrote a letter inviting the Stangs to our school, and this has grown from a one-buddy opportunity to a whole school mentorship program.”
“It started off small with a couple of guys,” says linebacker and long snapper Conor Elliott, who is a friend of Bell-McKaig’s daughter and leads the program. “It’s blown up and been going strong ever since.
“I love it. I love seeing the kids. Their reading has gone up. It brings you back to why you’re doing what you’re doing. It makes you work harder and when you see how well they’re doing. I’d always wanted to pursue education, but this made it clear in my mind.”
Inspired by Elliott’s commitment to education, left guard Matt Norman is now interested in pursuing education as a career.
“I love helping them learn and it’s a great pleasure,” Norman says. “These kids really look up to us, and I was taken by surprise how they welcome us. It’s a great feeling.”
And it’s a great feeling for McKaig, who has seen progress already.
“There is a gender gap in learning and it really shows in the Grades 4-6 age groups,” she says.
“This shows that boys, and even football players, like to read. We already have seen big, big improvement in our reading and writing scores since these guys have been coming out. It’s improved the motivation and purpose for reading and writing.”
Plus, it brings a smile to the faces of the students.
“It’s really fun,” says Grade 5 student Adam Galloway, “because they’re really smart and it’s fun to play with them and read with them.”
The program also reminds the players of the importance of school.
“It makes us realize we have to buckle down at school,” Elliott says. “It’s a good reality check.”

View from the Strip
By Casey Lessard

What a rollercoaster ride of emotions Canadians have been on this month. The scene in Ottawa has polarized the nation, with the Governor-General putting the brakes on a government takeover bid by a Liberal-NDP coalition (let’s be honest, the Bloc is in there, too, even if no one will admit it; however, I think they have less power than the Conservatives want us to believe).
Post-crisis polls say Stephen Harper has more support than he did in October. Personally, the prospect of Stephen Harper winning a majority scares the heck out of me; right now, it’s a real possibility.
Conservative supporters paint the Prime Minister as the victim in this battle, but his economic statement was tailor made to start a fight: he planned to drop the $1.95 voter subsidy, attack labour unions, and eliminate gender pay equity. Coming into a confidence vote armed with an economic statement no one in opposition could support only weeks after the election, Harper seemed genuinely surprised that anyone would stand up to him, especially Stéphane Dion, whose Liberals let him pick on them for the past two years.
I can’t understand when people call the coalition a team of schoolyard bullies. It’s more realistic to call them the victims, and Harper the bully who has been pushing them around for too long. Nothing has changed because he ran to the teacher, who tells them all to cool it.
It seems as if the coalition is doomed, but we’ll see if that’s true. Harper’s support has grown only because Dion’s has dropped (dramatically), and with him out of the way, it will be new ball game come January. Time will tell whether the coalition will emerge stronger or weaker after the prorogation period ends six weeks from now.
More importantly, time will tell whether Canadians will realize that more of us voted for a party other than the Conservatives, which means that if they work together they have the right to run the government. That’s how it works here.
At least this crisis has helped make one thing happen: Canadians are certainly more engaged in politics than they were a month ago. Perhaps next time there is an election, more of us will stand up and be counted. We got ourselves into this mess, after all.

Alternative View
By Lance Crossley

One of the most intriguing aspects of the recent struggle for power on Parliament Hill was the propaganda war. Nowadays we call it public relations, but it still amounts to the same thing: the conscious and intelligent manipulation of public opinion.
In the dramatic lead up to the Governor-General approving Stephen Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament – thereby saving his political career – the country witnessed an ugly battle for the hearts and minds of Canadians.
The anti-coalition propaganda was particularly disgraceful.
The source of this propaganda came primarily from two very well oiled machines: the Harper government and big business.
Let’s start with the Harper government. It is to be expected that politicians with power will try every means to keep it, but the Conservatives resorted to outright lies to prevent the fall of their government.
They relentlessly repeated that this was a separatist coalition (it’s actually an NDP-Liberal coalition that has the Bloc’s blessing) and shamelessly implied this was a coup d’etat (when in fact it is perfectly democratic – Canadians elect a Parliament, not a government). The problem with the Conservative propaganda is that it is manufacturing a national unity crisis and spreading ignorance as to the kind of democratic system we have.
Big business was also against the coalition, although for a different reason: the fear of a government friendly to progressive labour policies. This view was reflected in the corporate-friendly editorial boards at most of the major newspapers. The Globe and Mail said it was “dangerous” to have members of a “left-wing, labour-beholden party” in cabinet. It even demanded Harper resign just to avoid this scenario, even though it endorsed him for leader during the recent election campaign.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce (CCC), a huge business advocacy group, originally criticized Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s pathetic economic statement, saying it lacked a real economic stimulus plan. But the powerful lobby group was clearly more worried about the prospect of a coalition. The reason was plainly stated by its president, Perrin Beatty, during an interview with CBC Newsworld where he brought up Bill C-257: a private member’s bill put forth earlier this year by the Bloc Quebecois that would have strengthened Canada’s labour rights. The bill failed but the fact that Beatty used it to explain his opposition to a coalition accurately revealed his motives. Conversely, it also explains why the coalition was so heavily endorsed by the Canadian Labour Congress and so many unions.
Even the Liberals were aware of big business’s opposition, as they went out of their way to tell corporate Canada the NDP would have no significant financial role in a coalition government.
The first casualty in public relations is truth. All the fear mongering by powerful interests prevents Canadians from acting in their own interest. It’s not that everyone has to agree on the idea of a coalition, but the winning idea should not belong to those with the biggest propaganda machine.

Lance Crossley is an award-winning journalist who has worked for The Ottawa Citizen, The Haliburton Echo, and The Prague Post.

Advice from Mom
By Rita Lessard

Since I won’t be writing another column until the New Year, let me take this opportunity to wish all my friends and relatives a very Merry Christmas and all the best in the New Year. Also thanks for your support to Casey’s Grand Bend Strip. I’m sure this has been a very challenging 20 months for Casey but in the long run, quite rewarding. I hope next year we’ll continue providing fun news that will entertain you and make your days lighter and brighter.
As I venture out to do my Christmas shopping, I have to stop and wonder why some mothers insist on taking their young children shopping with them. These little darlings don’t seem to like these excursions too well, or at least that’s the impression I get when I hear these kids crying and rubbing their eyes. Whatever they want, they have to wait for Christmas to come. If they stop their crying, they may get it, but if they keep driving their mothers nuts, perhaps they’ll get something they don’t want.
And what’s up with these mini shopping carts for the kids? Here the little ankle biters have a vehicle to ram into the backs of your legs. And then the screaming and the crying starts again, only this time, it’s the mothers doing the screeching.
I recall when I would go shopping with my mother, and sure enough she’d bravely lead the way while I pursued her with that big shopping cart. You can bet I never missed an opportunity to get her in the legs. The funny thing was, it always seemed to be her bad leg. I guess I wasn’t smart enough to do it on her good leg. For some reason, I was the only one that went shopping with her. I’m sure I don’t know why I was the chosen one. Then again, nobody said you had to be smart to be in my family; I guess my brothers and sisters knew better.
For the longest time, I truly wondered if I was “The Chosen One” because every time my mother was upset, she’d call me “Jesus Rita”. Like the time she tripped and fell on her long fur coat and I had a tough time helping her up. She said, “Jesus Rita, would you stop your laughing and help me up?” A Catholic woman and all! Whew!
I can see where one would get confused with their names. When Casey was young and I got annoyed or excited with him, I said, “Oh Casey! What are you doing?” I guess I called him Oh Casey quite often. One time Casey’s friend Tracy Price came calling on him, and when I answered the doorbell, Tracy said, “Hi Mrs. Lessard, can Oh Casey come out to play?” And like a dummy, I didn’t correct her. I just said, “Oh Casey, Tracy’s here for you.”
Happy birthday Casey on December 16, and Merry Christmas to one and all.

Keeping the Peace
By Tom Lessard

On the 16th of December, 1974, at the South Huron Hospital maternity ward, a cute little guy named Casey Kyle Baxter Lessard was brought into this world. In those days the mother and baby stayed in the hospital for a few days. In the interim, Father Moody visited Rita and Casey and inquired as to his names. Rita told him and his reply was, “They aren’t saints’ names!”
“No,” said Rita, “but we are going to baptize him with the name John,” to which the good Father asked, “Which Saint John?”
“Why Saint John the Baptist,” replied mom. This pleased the priest very much because that was the name of the saint from which his name was derived.
I went to pick up Rita and Casey on the fourth day. We bundled into the car for the trip home. There was a detour along the way because I had promised the staff and customers at the Club Albatross that I would stop in on my way home. Well, they were ecstatic at seeing mom and baby.
I believe it was Alice who suggested that someone phone in the birth announcement to the Times-Advocate newspaper. When asked what the baby’s name was, she gave a list of all the staff and patrons’ names. The girl at the T-A said she couldn’t print that many names for a baby, so we settled on his given ones.
This boy grew up quickly with a super personality and a quick and generous smile. His brothers Tom, Glenn, Mike and Bill were very good to Casey and helped us much in teaching him all he needed to know.
Following grade school at Mount Carmel and high school in Exeter, he entered the University of Western Ontario. While there he became interested in radio, television and journalism. Moving on to study journalism at Fanshawe College, he started developing his interest in photography. A few years later, he returned to school for photojournalism at Loyalist College in Belleville.
His last job as an employee was with the Haliburton and Minden newspapers, at which he was praised for his professionalism. “Enough of working for someone else,” he said, and set up a small business of his own, which everyone now knows as the Grand Bend Strip.
I hope you will all join me and my family in wishing Casey a very happy, prosperous 34th birthday and future. Keep up the good work, and as Santa would say, Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. P.S. that includes you, too, Anjhela. Love Tom and Rita.

December is a festive but busy month as we begin the holiday season. Crowded stores, shorter tempers and just a lot to get done in one month. Let’s not forget that December is a month to celebrate with friends and family and remember what we are thankful for. These two recipes work great together to help warm your spirit and soothe the mind. Very easy and great to share with Christmas guests or alone, just to take the edge off.
Cheers,
James Eddington, Eddington’s of Exeter
527 Main St S., Exeter – 519-235-3030
“Your Christmas headquarters”

1 cup – softened butter
2/3 cup – granulated sugar
1/2 tsp – almond flavouring
2 1/4 cups – flour
1 cup – shelled pistachios
1/2 tsp – ground cardamom or cinnamon

(Note: Food color can be added to first step for Christmas theme or melted white or dark chocolate can be drizzled over cookies at the end.)
Mix softened butter and sugar in large bowl. Add almond flavouring. Stir. Add flour, cinnamon/cardamom and 1/2 cup pistachios. Dough will be dry; mix with hands until flour is blended. Pack and form into 2 rolls, each about 1-2” in diameter.
Spread 1/2 cup pistachios over wax paper. Roll dough in pistachios to coat completely. Wrap in wax paper. Cover with plastic wrap. Chill for a min of 4 hours.
Cut into 1/4” slices. Arrange on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake on centre rack in 350F oven for approx. 10-15 minutes, until edges are golden brown. Let stand five minutes then remove onto open racks to cool.

4 cups – natural pressed apple juice
1 – large cinnamon stick
1 tsp – sugar (honey can be substituted)
2 bags – Orange Pekoe tea

Combine apple juice, cinnamon and sugar in pot. Bring to boil and remove from heat.
Add tea bags and cover. Steep for seven minutes.
Remove tea bags. Strain liquid into coffee mugs or decorative glasses.
Serve with orange slice and garnish.
Enjoy with your shortbread.