Happy New Year!

To all my friends, my loved ones and everyone else in my life: Have a wonderful new year. I'm hoping that 2008 will be far better for us all!

Hobbit Food

I've written about what we'll be doing on New Year's Eve, over at Cookies to Caviar. These are some recipes that go along with that post, and a photo of what NOT to do when you're making Toad in the Hole.

Welsh Rarebit

4 T butter
2 t mustard
1 t Worcestershire sauce
dash Cayenne Pepper
2 c shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 c beer or milk
8 slices toast

Melt together butter, mustard, Worcestershire, cheddar and beer. Stir until smooth. Add cayenne and stir. Top each slice of toast with cheese sauce and place under a broiler until bubbly and browning.

Serves 4

Mushroom Blanquette

I learned to make veal blanquette in school, and there is nothing else like it. I figured the way that Hobbits love mushrooms, I'd make it with just mushrooms and no veal.

4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 lb button mushrooms - cut in halves our fourths
2 T butter
1 egg yolk
1/2 c heavy cream
10 blanched pearl onions

Cook mushrooms in butter until tender. Add stock and heat to a simmer. Combine egg yolk and heavy cream until well blended. Temper this by adding a half cup of hot stock and whisking like mad so the egg yolk does not cook. Add the cream, egg, stock to the mushrooms in a thin stream, whisking all the while. Let simmer until thickened and add the onions. Salt and pepper to taste.


As for that Toad in the Hole - do NOT try to make food for a post at the same time you're trying to get dinner for 9 in an 8ft x 8ft kitchen! Things happen - bad things - and stupid things, like forgetting to heat the casserole dish you're adding the Yorkshire Pudding to. If you miss that crucial step, you don't get a pretty crimped edge around your sausages, you get a flat I-don't-know-what. It tasted fine, but looked bad:

Beans 'n' Cornbread

In between Christmas and New Year's we try to keep the food a little lighter here. Beans are not as heavy as you may think, but heavy enough to be filling, and more than that, comforting. There's nothing better on a cold day, I assure you.

When I was a kid, my mom made beans and cornbread often. She's from the Midwest in an area that was settled mostly by people from Tennessee and Kentucky, so most of the food that mom grew up with had a heavy Southern influence. Regardless, my mom never made beans and cornbread with pinto beans; she always used navy beans.

I don't have an exact recipe for these beans, but it goes a little like this:

Cover 1 pound of navy beans with water and soak overnight. Drain and rinse them. In a big, heavy pot, cook about 5 slices of diced bacon until crisp. Don't drain that bacon grease! Leave it where it is and add a chopped onion, one chopped carrot and 2 chopped celery ribs. Add the beans and cover by one inch with chicken stock. Cook this over a low flame for just about forever, or until the beans are soft and the stock has thickened a bit. Add a generous tablespoon of salt and a healthy dose of pepper. Don't add salt while the beans are cooking or they'll get tough.

While those beans are cooking for the last half hour or so, make your cornbread. Please don't use that boxed stuff, real cornbread is so easy to make that there's just no excuse for it.

Cornbread
Makes one 8x8 pan

1 1/4 c. flour
3/4 c. cornmeal
2 T. sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. milk
1 beaten egg
1/4 c. oil

Combine flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar and baking powder
and stir together well.
Mix in milk, egg and oil.
Don't over mix this, you want your cornbread to be tender,
not rock-hard! Mix just until moistened.
Bake 20 to 25 minutes in a greased 8x8 pan at 400 degrees F
or until golden brown.

Now, you can serve this in a big bowl with the cornbread tucked off to the side, or do what we always did; smother that cornbread with beans and eat 'til you pop!

And the best gift this year is...

The fact that my husband and the father of my children was here to enjoy it. Of course. But beyond that, there is a gift that he gave me that outstripped them all, and this is that gift:



Yes, Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations had me giddy and squealing like a schoolgirl at the mere sight of the cover (which completely thrilled my husband). He's crass. He's rude. He's genius. If you push your way past the grit you'll come to truly appreciate his writing, his humor and his very different and wonderful perspective on life. He's not living it from afar; from an armchair as I am left to do, but from the darkest depths to the highest heights and everything in between and this book showcases it in all its glory and grungy fabulousness.

I'm waiting with baited breath for the newest installments of No Reservations to be aired on The Travel Channel this January. I expect to be entertained in the fashion in which Mr. Bourdain has so deftly accustomed me to. Bring it on!

My eggs have been stamped!

Look at that ... what's next? I still say the best way to go about it is to collect them each morning from your own hens.

Of birthdays and cookies and cakes

Today is my Erin Maureen's birthday--she's 11!

I made cookies for her to take to school based on the monogrammed cuties I posted about at Family.com. I thought cookies would be a nice change from the usual cupcakes that everyone sends for birthdays.

I used royal icing for the cookies and colored them with a packet of unsweetened drink mix. I did this accidentally when I made the batch for Cookies to Caviar. I needed a really red color for the cookies and was completely out of red food coloring; way to plan ahead. I searched the cupboards and found a tropical punch flavored packet of drink mix and it was the PERFECT color. Not only was the color great, my kids told me the cookies tasted like SweeTarts.

So, knowing I would be making these cookies for Erin, I decided to go with the SweeTart flavor and used cherry and orange to color and flavor the cookies. It's a decidedly delicious difference that you really should try.



Here are her cookies and the cake I made with cheated store-bought letters.

Lightning Fast Update

Marty is getting better- slowly, but surely. He is on week 5 of his physical and occupational therapy--outside the home. He has been doing both since he came home, but the more intensive work has been going on for just over 4 weeks.

PT says he should be done with therapy for his hip at the end of 10 weeks, however, they are unable to say how long his hand will take. That's the same answer we get from the doctor. It was just damaged so badly that nobody can tell when he will be better--if ever. We do have to face that fact; that he may not ever use his hand as he once did. Marty is trying to come to terms with that and the fact that he may also have permanent nerve damage to his foot and have a "dropped foot" to deal with and possible bracing etc. to help with that.

He's having an MRI done soon (Christmas Eve, ugh!) on his right shoulder to see what the problem is there. They are thinking it's most likely from inactivity, but want to make sure there is no other damage there.

He also has lost part of a tooth that was laying directly under his cheek where his face hit and where his stitches are. He'll have that looked at Friday--it's most likely infected because even with the strong pain killers he is on, it's hurting him badly.

The kids all have colds running through them, and me, and slight fevers have made the rounds this past week, as well.

Christmas is certainly coming--I wish it were to be more festive this year, but things just aren't there yet--I'm hoping we have many years ahead of us to celebrate properly.

Our landlords are OK as far as the ebola virus goes. They are all home together (there are 10 of them!) and have had very bad colds and infections they are trying to deal with that seem to be antibiotic resistant. Send more prayers for them, if you would. All they are dealing with right now will make their holiday especially difficult.

Martha Stewart Living Radio Recipe Contest

Check this out from SIRIUS Satellite Radio and Martha Stewart:

Send us your best main-dish Super Bowl party recipe and you could win a trip to the SuperBowl! That’s not all - the winner will also receive a set of Martha Stewart Collection cookware from Macy's, $1,000 to donate to the food bank of their choice, and the winning recipe will be published in an issue of Everyday Food!

Full details on how to enter: www.sirius.com/martha

**I totally love that the $1,000 prize is donated to a food bank! Get on it --these recipes are due by DECEMBER 10th--and send your yummiest recipe for your chance to win~who wouldn't love to see their name in Everyday Food?**

Please Pray

Our landlords, very dear and patient people, are missionaries to Uganda. There has recently been an outbreak of ebola there that has claimed the lives of 3 health workers, and friends of theirs. This is such sad and frightening news. Please pray for their family and team.

Read about this at ParadoxUganda.

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Wipe out!

No, despite Marty's prior fondness for surfing (when he lived in Cali during his USMC days), it wasn't a good wipe out. The bit of snow and freezing rain we got on Sunday sent Marty down the porch steps and off to the ER for x-rays. Thankfully, he's fine. Sore ... but fine.

We left the hospital just in time for me to return our oldest daughter to her college dorm an hour away.

The only excitement I want to see anytime soon will be the Christmas kind.

My Bread Towel

I love baking bread, and this is my beautiful bread towel covering dough for a Moravian sugar cake I'm making for another post. It's made from an old feedsack that my mother hemmed and added a tab to so it could be hung. It's getting old and worn thin from all the use it's seen over the years. I can't say it's a bread towel only, though-I use it to cover any yeast dough that I make and it's seen it's fair share of rolling pumpkin rolls and holding hot bread or rolls fresh from the oven.

I haven't found another print like it, and I don't expect to, but it will be replaced with another feedsack equally as pretty. I imagine when the time comes I'll wash it one last time and fold it gently to keep away in my grandmother's hope chest.