Late photo - Thanksgiving feast

I have been a supreme slacker on blogging. To be honest, I haven't been cooking very much either! However, my friend Kim (who just moved to DC!) and I did prepare a feast on Thanksgiving! See below two (very tardy) photos.

The ham was made by slicing a smoked ham partially apart and putting brown sugar in each slot. The toothpicks are holding small bits of apple and pineapple each. My grandma advised that using apple and pineapple adds a slightly different flavor. It was a tasty ham (made in the crock pot) but I'm not sure it's the best it could be. If anyone makes this for Christmas, be sure to let me know how you like the addition of apple!

The other photos shows part of the feast - green beans with blanched almonds, mashed potatoes, gravy (instant, sadly) and stuffing. We also had apple and pumpkin pie (both made from scratch by Kim!), turkey breast (small group), garlic biscuits, cheeses and any number of other yummy things.

Ham in the crock pot!

Just some of the Thanksgiving feast!

Little gifties

Simple packaging and some home-baked treats make great little gifts during the holiday season. I like to give them to people I just happen to be meeting for a drink or dinner or whatever, not as gifts so much but just little holiday surprises. Alright well, I bring random food gifts all year round but during the holidays I try to step up the packaging a little. Or that is at least the idea, to which I aspire.

This year, there has been and unprecedented amount of things going on. This is the first year I've worked full-time, I'm moving, plus all the normal holiday activity. However, I actually managed to get a few things baked to give to friends I was meeting. Yeah, the friends I met up with last weekend got the shaft. Sorry, maybe next year I'll step it up. I did get Christmas cards mailed!

What do you like to pass out around the holidays? Any special recipes that your friends always request?

Holiday Baking 2: Brown sugar shortbread

The Wednesday Washington Post Food section is my guilty lunchtime pleasure. Just before Thanksgiving there was a special on Julia Child & Jacques Pepin "deconstructed turkey" that looked amazing (and required a 2 page(!) recipe). I took it home and showed my mom. Yes I stole the Food section from the paper and work and packed and flew home to Kansas with it to show my mom. She agreed that it looked fabulous and like a lot of work. There was also recently a recipe for "man crepes" that I've been thinking about making.

Anyway, about a week ago, the post did a feature on cookies - 12 cookie recipes for the holidays. Is it any wonder I love it? I decided to make the brown sugar shortbread (links to recipe at the Washington Post). You need a free account to view recipes on the post website, so I've reproduced the recipe below. Plus I'm not sure how long they archive their recipes. Anyone have any idea?


Ingredients:

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour

Directions:

Position an oven rack in the middle of the oven; preheat to 325 degrees. Have an ungreased 9-by-13-inch baking pan at hand

Combine the butter and both sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer or hand-held electric mixer; beat on medium speed for about 1 minute, just until blended. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add the vanilla extract and salt. Add the flour in 2 additions, beating just until incorporated.

Use your fingers or a sturdy rubber spatula to press the dough evenly over the bottom of the pan. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes or until the shortbread is golden brown. The edges will be slightly darker; do not underbake. Transfer the pan to a wire rack; let cool in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes.

Use a sharp, thin-bladed knife to cut the shortbread, still in the pan, into 36 rectangles. Let cool completely in the pan before serving or storing.
Source: The Washington Post, December 9th 2009

So this turned out nice, I'm taking them along with some Spitzbüben, if there are any left, to my work Christmas party. However, I did grease the pan (uh-oh) and the recipe says not to, but nothing happened so far as I can tell. Also, DO NOT bake it for 50-55 minutes, mine were nicely brown in 25-30 minutes. So you might wanna watch them.

If I make these again, I think I will try using all brown sugar and no white sugar because I thought these would be really brown sugary but they're not. However, they do have a delightfully soft texture.

Taste: B-
Cost: A
Wast: A

Holiday Baking: Spitzbüben - My favorite cookies!

These are my favorite cookies. And a complete pain in the rear to make. I have only made them myself on rare occasion due to their aforementioned pain-in-the-rearness but my grandma makes them every year for the holidays. They taste like Christmas.

Spitzbüben are a traditional cookie that came from my family's German heritage, one of about 10 such recipes. I'm not exactly sure where in Germany the cookies come from, but I have seen them in the Bavaria region. See photo below of a Spitzbüben I bought at Galleria Kaufhof (a German department store) in München last summer. Yes I took a photo of this cookie a year ago. I routinely take photos of my food and me eating. It's a small personality quirk.


This is what my final product looked like:


Ingredients
1lb butter (yes pound!)
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour

1-2 egg yokes
bread crumbs
powdered sugar
jam (strawberry, grape, apricot, or other)

Combine butter, sugar, vanilla and flour to make dough. Mix with an electric mixer and if necessary kneed together with your hands. It will make a very sticky dough.

Roll out and cut into cookie shapes. Use ample flour on the rolling surface and rolling pin because the dough will stick to everything! The traditional shape for these cookies is a diamond but it's very difficult to find a diamond cookie cutter. Whatever shape you choose, try to avoid lots of points (ie Christmas tree cookie cutters are a bad idea), circles are probably the easiest. A metal cookie cutter, rather than plastic, because they make a cleaner cut and this dough is very difficult to work with.

Arrange the cookies on a greased cookie sheet, brush lightly with egg yoke and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Grandma uses real bread crumbs - mine came from a can. Bake the cookies for 10 min at 375 degrees.


The cookies are very fragile when warm so let them cool well before moving them off the cookie sheet. Spread cooled cookies with your desired flavor of jam. I like strawberry, my sister gets mad because I always eat all the strawberry ones. Coat lightly with powdered sugar and enjoy!

Holiday gift guides from The Kitchn

Like to give and get food gifts? The Kitchn has done a great round up of food and cooking related gifts for the holiday season. Check out the full spectrum here.

There are definitely some things on the list I want to give to myself!

Thanksgiving wrap-up and fabulous baking party

Thanksgiving past in a whirlwind of eating - and very little cooking on my part. I was treated to two fabulous Thanksgivings by my grandmother and sister. Grandma cooks old school, she uses lard. Yikes! But it was so good. She even made pumpkin pie with pumpkins that my sister grew, now that is scratch! Grandma also made my favorite cookies, a German/family cookie called Spitzbueben. They are yummy but such a pain in the rear, maybe when Christmas rolls around I will get into the spirit and bake some...we'll see. It was also the first Thanksgiving that my sister and her husband hosted, and it was really tasty!

My contribution? Fairly limited. I made the pumpkin cheesecake recipe again to take along to my sister's place. This time I used the regular canned pumpkin that the recipe calls for (not the Libby's Easy) and added my own spices but I don't think it baked as nice, it was really thick.

Today, I made up for some lost time. A friend of mine hosted a holiday cookie party and we baked cookies for almost 5 hours! Ok so there was a Chinese food/Love Actually break but we still had 5 times the number of cookies that we were capable of eating. All the girls will be taking cookies to work tomorrow, at least that's my plan. It was a super cute party theme. I'm thinking of throwing something similar but just making some sugar cookies in advance and having the girls come over for decorating. A great way to get into the holiday spirit!

Turkey's not just for Thanksgiving

About a year ago, I decided, against all my childhood education, to eat less red meat. It's healthier, and cheaper. Ground turkey is about $3/lb vs a lean ground beef for $4-5/lb. My family thinks I'm nuts. My step-dad resolutely refused to eat turkey bacon last Christmas even after I expounded on it's health benefits and got my mom to buy and make some for breakfast. Yea...I'm from the Midwest, aka beef country.

So, I've converted to turkey bacon relatively easily and turkey sausage, on the rare occasion that I eat it. However, when I'm eating a BEEF dinner, I want it to taste like beef. No turkey meatloaf here. Alright, well, I don't actually like meatloaf, too bad as I'm told my mom's is excellent. It's one of her signature dishes that people always ask for, but I digress.

Solution? Mix it half and half. I buy a pound of turkey and a pound of beef, use half of each and put the other half in the freezer in freezer bags. The freezer is the single girl's best kitchen friend. If you want less than one pound, you can divide into 3 parts. I do this with lasagna and tacos all the time, throw both the beef and the turkey in the pan and cook 'em together and not only does it look exactly like beef but you can't taste the difference. Only your thighs will notice!

So on the plus side we have good health, save money and no taste loss. Single girl gourmet approved.

A fabulous fall cheesecake

Winter is coming. That means we all need to gain as much weight as possible to stay warm during the winter. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it! So it's time for cheesecake...pumpkin cheesecake!

During my pumpkin craving craze I saw a fabulous recipe for pumpkin cheesecake - I wasn't even looking, I swear. Do I need to eat an entire cheesecake by myself? I want to say yes, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. So I made this to take over to a friend's place where I was headed for dinner. I got to have a slice (or two...) and leave the rest for other people to eat.

I cheated as much as possible. I used a pre-made graham cracker crust and the Libby's easy pumkin pie filling again, so it took almost no time at all. The directions say to bake it for 35-40 mins but I think next time (oh there will be a next time) I will bake it a little longer because it was a little runny making it hard to get out of the pan. I'm already planning to take this to my sister's place for Thanksgiving!


Taste: A-
Cost: C+
Waste: B

Festive Halloween Treat

Coworker: "Hey Lacey, what are you bringing for the Halloween party?"
Me: "Dirt."
Coworker: "What's in that?"
Me: "Dirt!"

...so I made dirt this week. Do you remember dirt? I made it as a kid both at home and as a school "project," well, an elementary school project. They served it at my uni dinning hall every other week. I also made it in grad school by request of an Italian girl - she apparently lived in the US and her host family made dirt all the time. They have dirt everywhere!

So I was quite surprised that a number of my coworkers were not familiar with dirt. Have these people been living under a rock???

Dirt is perfect for Halloween! I dressed mine up with some gummy worms for a little but of fun but later I thought that I should have looked for gummy spiders or something a little more spooky, maybe next time around.


I made this recipe but I halved it, because my dish wasn't quite 9x13 and our work parties seem to have an excess of food and I still had to bring a little dirt home! Do I mind? Nope! Did I already eat some? Maybe...

I thought it was a little vanilla-y, and next time I might use butterscotch or do a chocolate-butterscotch layer to play up the dirt look. I think we did that once in elementary school, though that might be too much work...Oh and more dishes. hmmm...