Christmas Crinkle

So my family is asleep and even though I made rows and rows of jars of vanilla sugar in October to share with friends and neighbors so I wouldn't have to bake as much this year, I can't stop. I can't help it. I've made batches of different cookies every day, shortbread, madeleines, choc chip toffee, and a boiled peanut cookie out of my new favorite cookbook that was at best baffling. Tonight it's quiet, finally and my shopping is done (hopefully). I peeled the apples and sliced them and will let them sweat all night in sugar and cardamon and the blueberries are having a bath in sugar and lemon rind. I'll make the pie crust and set in the fridge overnight to chill and then when I'm almost all done, I'm making Chocolate Crinkles.

You know this cookie. Your mom or grandmother made it out of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book, or the Joy of Baking.

I've been thinking about this, the compulsion to bake, why we make things that we know will make people happy. It's not just to show off, although I'm kinda good at that too. It's more than that. It's more than food, or ritual or community. If you have someone's old cookbooks, or recipe cards in your attic of garage and the pages are still sticky with sugar and smeared with flour-- if you flip through their casseroles and pastry dough recipes and see the neatly lined handwriting, blurred with watermarks, bent with use... it means one thing, you were loved.

It may be primal. They wanted to fill you. Maybe it wasn't a perfect family and maybe you didn't always (or ever) get what you needed, maybe you weren't greeted at the door with a hug and kiss or even embraced every time you needed it, but I promise you, you were loved, not flawlessly, but absolutely. Flip through those old books, the old recipes and remember the sights and smells. It will all come back to you. And Happy Christmas. Here's to a sweet, sweet, sweet New Year.

Frenzy of Butter

Don't miss this article in the NYT's today all about the butter. I completely agree. Kerrygold salted is the best. It's the closest we can get to toast in England. (Collective sigh) The toast is always amazing in England.

And it is weird to me that the article would appear the same day I decided to tread the hallowed ground of shortbread. I had one of those fall-apart days, in which nothing really went right and I only got about three things done on a list of 100's. Anyway, I started my day by finishing up these little buggers for Afton's friends on their last day of school before the holidays. I started them in October but finished them the morning we were handing them out. I then decided to tackle shortbread and when I had a tray in the oven and one in hand, realized I was late for Afton's Christmas "program". The air quotes are to pay homage to the usually mild mannered toddlers who decide upon taking the stage to sing to scream in panic and claw their way off. It's amazing that Jingle Bells can sound like a funeral dirge. Anyway, I missed it. I missed the program. I baked my way through it and barely had enough time to pack up the people packages, the pizza for the potluck and get out the door. The kid, for all my panic, could have cared less. The rest of the day just kind of flopped around. We tried to get a Santa pic at the mall, but after standing in line patiently she would go nowhere near him. We're of the "no pressure little dude" school, so we went to get a pretzel instead. Santa said, "See you next year, kid." Maybe dude. Maybe.

The Shortbread kinda rocks and I'm going to make another round tonight as thumbprints. First I'm going to head into the kitchen and make breakfast for dinner, pan friend potatoes and scrambled eggs. Yum.

The Opposite of Christmas Cheer

I don't want to bum you out, but this is amazing.
This is from today's Epicurious' Epi-log.

Dumb Food Crime: Adolf Hitler's Birthday Cake
by Michael Y. Park

This food crime deserves a whole post of its own.

A New Jersey ShopRite refused to decorate a cake for a Holland, Penna., three-year-old's birthday because it didn't like the look of the kid's name.

What was the toddler's name?

Adolf Hitler Campbell.

A ShopRite spokeswoman called the idea of making a cake with a birthday wish for HItler inappropriate.

Little Adolf's parents, who named their other children JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie, didn't take up the market on its offer to leave space on the cake and let them inscribe the name themselves. Instead, they went to Wal-Mart, which had made cakes for the kid's first two birthdays.

"ShopRite can't even make a cake for a 3-year-old," Deborah Campbell, 25, told the Lehigh Valley Express-Times. "That's sad."

Responded a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League: "Might as well put a sign around (their kids') neck that says 'bigot, racist, hatemonger.' What's the difference?"

Wal-Mart has a policy against putting illegal or profane inscriptions on cakes, but says it respects its customers' viewpoints.

"Our No. 1 priority in decorating cakes is to serve the customer to the best of our ability," a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said.

According to the Campbells, Adolf's birthday party was attended by about a dozen people, including people of mixed race.

Should ShopRite have made the cake, or was it right in taking its stand? What about Wal-Mart?

Company Christmas Party

These days primary employer is a three year old and I'm not sure if you know this, but toddlers are notorious cheapskates when it comes to throwing big holiday shindigs. Now I would never look a gift macaroni necklace in the face, but I'm not holding my breath for the typical eggnog party or even a gift certificate for a turkey at Vons. Maybe I should organize... In the meantime, I did get to go to the Amoeba Music Party here in LA and it was SO FUN and SO cool. If you haven't been to Amoeba, you should run there before the holidays. I bet you could get all your shopping done in one shot. The party was awesome and I loved every minute.

Here's a couple of fab highlights.
1. Absinthe Bars (I didn't get to partake, but my pals did)
2. Massage Chairs (unlimited visits)
3. Yum, yum, yummy buffet
4. Gigantic Bowls of Various Nosh, strategically placed
5. Karaoke-- In the name of edging out of my comfort zone, I sang backup on my first song ever, "Livin' on a Prayer", but my husband offered a rousing, "I love you more today than yesterday" which was fantastic.
6. Agave Lemonade spiked with Chlorophyll. Non-alcoholic, tasty and as green as the grinch
7. Great DJ. Can't go wrong mixing Bollywood with Snoop Dog.
8. Watching all the sweet Amoeba hipsters, with their hair and tattoos and getups. Fun, interesting people.
9. Freelancing is isolating and so is motherhood, being included in the Amoeba family made my heart happy.

Julie's Julia, My Julia, Your Julia

So I was a huge fan of Julie Powell's earth-shaking blog, Julie/ Julia. It was in the early days (for me) of blogging, and I was fascinated at how someone could dig their way out of crap-ville towards fulfillment, or some semblance of. I was also fascinated at the hutzpah to approach the holy grail of recipes, and Julie's husband's very cool support of her endeavors. I thought I had read the whole thing, having read the blog, but decided to grab a copy of the book, Julie/ Julia at Tattered Cover last week. I imagined it would be like hanging out with an old friend and it was. If you read the blog, the book is the bigger/ lovelier version. Julia was a feminist, adventurist and the kind of woman who grabbed at life. Gotta love a 6 feet tall girl from Pasadena with the kind of gusto to hang out the window on roo-de-loo.

I have an old copy of Volume One of Mastering the Art of French Cooking that I bought years ago, used at Moe's Books in Berkeley. It has sat impressively on my shelf without any love at all for years. When I dove into Julie's book, I wondered why I hadn't made some of the simpler recipes. So last week, I tried it. I know I've mentioned that our CSA has gone potato crazy. We've got potatoes coming out of our ears...Er. Seriously, I had to do something with the little guys threatening to take over my cabinets. I grabbed some leeks and made Potage Parmentier, or Potato-Leek Soup, the first recipe in the book. I'm kind of ashamed that it had never occurred to me that the easiest, most approachable recipe would be the first one. The soup is "simplicity itself" made from leeks, potatoes, water and butter. The only trick was mashing the ingredients so that they were not "baby pap" as Julia warned. I used my hand blender with the lightest touch. It was fantastic and I got rave reviews from the other folks I live with, especially the kid. I love it when a recipe turns the corner from "that was nice" to "make that again" in the first go round.

I'm off to make cookies for the first go-round of Christmas wing-dings. I love the holidays.

Stay tuned for Onion Soup...

Natalie Dee is a Friggin' Genius

nataliedee.com

Click on the link above to read her comics, buy her t-shirts, basically enhance your world.

Perfect Gift for Foodies

We're all feeling pinched from the bleak financial outlook. Consider just for a moment, not having your own kitchen, or even your own stove to cook with.

Jewish World Watch is committed to protecting refugee women and girls from rape and other forms of violence, and helping them to rebuild their lives. Women and girls fleeing the genocide in Darfur, Sudan are placed in extreme jeopardy when undertaking the simple, but vital, task of collecting firewood for cooking fuel. We are reducing the vulnerability of these women by providing the Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad with solar cookers, and reducing their need to collect firewood. Our project protects these women and provides them with income opportunities that include: manufacturing solar cookers, training others to use the cookers and making carrying bags to increase the life span of the cookers. JWW is also developing other companion projects aimed to keep the women inside the relative safety of the camp.

This isn't just about going "green" by using solar power to cook. Solar cooking can reduce the need for frequent firewood collection reducing the risk of violence towards women and girls. Two solar cookers can save one ton of wood each year. There is no need to tend a fire so women are free to do other tasks. Manufacturing solar cookers provides income opportunities for female refugees.

You, you, you can do this. For only $30. That's probably less the price of one moderately nice dinner and glass of wine. It's the perfect gift for your foodie friends, the ones you commune and cook and eat with all year long.

You can have a direct impact on the lives of the women and children in refugee camps. And you can do it, without getting up from your computer... unless you have to grab your wallet. And if I was there, I would do that for you. I promise. Thanks, and Happy Holidays.

Here's the link to donate.

Thanksgiving redux...

Thanksgiving was fabulous. I was worried about not having a traditional meal and ended up having two. We had a mini-feast at home the night before we left for Colorado and another in main street bar in Winter Park after we landed. It was kind of funny, all nine of us crammed into tables with bar stools, televisions on left and right, the ambiance would have been lacking except that we were all so grateful to be there. My family drove 14 hours. Yep. That's right. 14 hours. There wasn't much snow when we arrived, but it started snowing the next afternoon and didn't stop for four whole days. Anyway, we were all off the plane, out of the car and packed in to the pub. I expected a run of the mill, turkey dinner, edible but nothing special... and instead had a rocking four course meal. The chef must have been a hard core ski buff, but they knew what they were doing in the kitchen. The soup was butternut squash, which if done wrong can be mushy baby pap, but instead it was light and flavorful and sprinkled with toasted pistachios. There was a great salad with homemade dressings, or as Afton says, "Scratchy" dressings. And the main course was awesome, roasted turkey, sweet potatoes with a honey glaze, mashed potatoes and turkey gravy and stuffing. The pumpkin pie was served with homemade whipped cream and we all had to roll ourselves out of the place. We spent the rest of the weekend eating, cookies, candy, soups and of course, snow ice cream. It was wonderful.

Here's the recipe I made up before we left...
Thai-Pumpkin Pie!

Big can of pumpkin (not pie filling)
Half cup of sugar
One egg
Half a can of Trader Joes, Light Coconut Milk
Juice of one Lime

Pour it into a pie crust and bake for around an hour. This recipe makes two 8 inch pies. Let me know if you try it. I'd love to hear what you think!

Don't turn your nose up at those tins from the grocery store. One of my chef friends swears by them, loves them more than any color coordinated, fancy-pants ceramics or glass deally-bob from Williams Sonoma.