This past year has been one of growth: for me personally, for this blog, and for me and my counterpart culinarily speaking. The year started off with the acquisition of a new camera and a commitment from me to this blogging endeavor - to improve the quality of the content and to attempt to find a voice.
Read MoreNew Year's Cassoulet, a Crowning Acheivement
Cassoulet is a slow-cooked dish of beans and fatty meats with a rich sauce originating in southern France. There are many variations on this dish, depending on the neighborhood and the year. The traditional cassoulet contains white beans and a variety of meats that include pork, sausage, mutton, and duck or goose confit, cooked in a casserole dish with a hearty sauce.
Read MoreSurprise Chicken Thighs
Sometimes I get caught off guard, and I am completely unprepared for what comes out of the kitchen. Sometimes I really have no idea what is going on in there. Tonight was one of those occasions. When my counterpart asked what I thought of chicken and mushrooms over pasta (with a little leftover lamb to round out the two chicken thighs in the house), I assumed I would be getting a fairly workaday dinner - tasty, to be sure, but nothing extravagant. Well, that is never a safe bet at my house.
Read MoreHoliday Baking: Mary Cherry Christmas Pie
When my counterpart and I started discussing Christmas dinner a few weeks back, I knew I wanted a cherry pie. I grew up in Northeast Wisconsin, and we spent our Christmases with my grandparents and cousins in Sturgeon Bay on the Door Peninsula, where orchards of tart cherries littered the landscape from Brussels bordering Kewaunee County in the south up to Gills Rock on the northern tip of the mainland where a ferry could take you to the islands on the very northern tip between Upper and Lower Michigan. Every Christmas, every holiday, ended with a tart cherry pie.
Read MoreNothing as Pleasant as Pheasant
This afternoon my counterpart asked me why I was fascinated with small game birds. He then proceeded to answer this question by preparing roast pheasant for our annual pre-Christmas dinner. This has become a tradition of ours over the years. The day or two before Christmas are hectic and harried, filled with forgotten tasks and last-minute cleaning. You need more than cookies to get through. How much better we are at these preparations when we feel well loved and appreciated. And nothing does this quite as well as a special quiet dinner between me and my spouse.
Read MoreHoliday Baking: Fig and Date Pinwheels
Last weekend's Holiday Baking Marathon resulted in some lovely cookie baskets, including a couple for the office. The baskets included my traditional shortbread and my mother's butterscotch brownies, plus cocoa chocolate chip, honey ginger, Chinese Five Spice, and my first attempt at pinwheel cookies - anise-scented fig and date swirls. It was this last variety that inspired a comment from a coworker that captures the spirit of holiday baking. He said that his grandmother had made those cookies, and he remembered eating them every Christmas when we was a kid. And that's really really the reason for the holiday baking season - to summon cherished childhood memories from years long gone and recapture a little of that magic.
Read MoreSurviving the Holiday Baking Marathon
Despite my optimism back in September and the very best of intentions, I did not start my holiday baking until about four days ago. This is late, even for me. I usually get going shortly after Thanksgiving. This gives me sufficient time to try out new recipes and to just start over if I need to. I manage to produce two successful varieties of cookies a weekend for about three weeks and end up with a nice variety of offerings that I package up and deliver to work and friends. This year, I had a bunch of new recipes and just a single weekend to make everything work out. This weekend, I executed my first Holiday Baking Marathon.
Read MoreHoliday Gifts
During the latter years of my grandmother's life, after I had moved out to Maryland, my counterpart always made sure I made it back to her doorstep for Christmas. This is not out of any love for winters in Wisconsin, but out of genuine love and fondness for both me and her. To hear him tell it, she made him promise to do just that as a condition to agreeing to my moving so far away to begin with. I like to believe this as it fits with my concept of being her favorite grand-daughter. We shared a birthday, me and her, and I always felt that this set me apart from my siblings and cousins. When my grandmother met the man who would become my husband, I felt as if she let him into our special relationship.
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