A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

So I'm a Year Late But All the Richer

I know that Mark Bittman's No Knead Bread from Jim Lahey's bakery appeared in the NY Times a little over a year ago. I know that every blogger on the planet has already tried this wondrous little recipe.  I know I'm a little slow on the uptake when I'm skeptical about a recipe.  But then again, what do you expect? I am from the "Show Me" state.

Let's just say I got "shown".

This recipe is great.  It's not the bread I want to make every single time I make bread but for an extra bread at the holidays that I can fix and forget with the greatest of ease, or for work stretches, or for times when I want homemade bread but I'm feeling a little under the weather, this is the recipe.  But it is not for the patience-impaired since the bread takes just under 24 hours to make.  From the article in the Times the key seems to be either kneading or time to make the glutinous fibers build up to make great bread.  Most of us choose the work method but in the recipe it uses simply time. 

The recipe starts with a simple bowl of globby flour, water, and a very small amount of yeast that sits covered on the counter for 12-18 hours.  My kind of lazy.  Then the dough is formed, rolled in cornmeal or wheat bran (which I didn't do, by the way) then allowed to rise for a couple of more hours, and baked off.

What the hell, I thought to myself. The furor is over. I'll give it a whirl now and see what happens. What happens is that at Christmas dinner, this bread disappeared before the traditional rolls.  Everyone loved it.  My cousin Paul smeared it with the braunsweiger pate and when I tried that trick I agreed with him that it beat the hell out of the Triskets that I actually am very fond of.

So my point here is that if you're one of the three people besides me who hasn't tried this recipe, try it.  I'll be making it again very soon and quite often just for the fun and to have something a little different but still home-made around the house.

CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE NURSES' SOUL: SECOND DOSE

Just FYI, my Chicken Soup book is now available at Barnes & Noble.  I've been told by a couple of people now that they got it there.

This is so exciting!

Auntie Miranda made me autograph her copy last night which gave me the giggles but it was fun. Thanks, Auntie! You always know the perfect thing to do to make me smile.

The Christmas Cake

Back in early December, when the Christmas spirit fairy upchucked all over my house, I had the compulsion to bake Christmas cake.  I'd been reading about all the Brits and their Christmas cakes for a month and it occurred to me that no matter my aversion since childhood of sawdusty baquette-ish slices of old lady fruitcake, I must bake one from scratch and see if that makes all the difference.  I only had a very few weeks to "feed" my cake on Southern Comfort between baking and cutting but by the time it came under the Christmas slicing knife it was an aromatic wonder to sniff and gobble down.  My scrawny little late fruitcake became the adult hit of the party.  The only problem with it was there when it came time to send dinner leftovers home with everyone, there was none left to share.  My fruitcake motto for next year?  To bake bigger and sooner.  I now understand several references in the blogs I read last fall.  I do need to bake by the first of November to give plenty of time for the weekly feedings.  It will be a temptation to get into next year prior to Christmas.  AND.  Fruitcake is only dry and nasty if you don't do it right! Next year I'd like to do one without the raisins, though, with only cherries, cranberries, and apricots.  That just sounds yummy to me.

For the recipe and the whole story on the Christmas cake, click the link in the first sentence.

I do have to Christmas brag. Guess what my baby got me for Christmas?  Well as I opened them he said "I"m not so sure this is the perfect gift to give a woman..." but the rest of whatever he said was drowned out by my squeals.

By the way, when you get a few minutes, run by a new blog called "Aunt Sally" just started by another southwest Missouri foodie. Her premier posts introduce you to her Christmas "carriage" and her first recipe is for Italian Turkey Kale soup.  Looks delicious!  So does that ride.

Merry Christmas: Buche de Noel

This will be a new Muse tradition.  I just love this cake: the way it looks, the way it tastes, and the tradition.

The Buche de Noel, or Yule Log, was this month's Daring Baker challenge.  The rest of the group and their links can be found by clicking here: Daring Bakers.  Be warned, though.  Like I said yesterday, I didn't exactly follow all the rules.  The two I stuck with were using the swiss meringue recipe given and making marzipan mushrooms.  After the click I've posted the recipe I used for the pumpkin genoise from Paula Deen and noted the alterations I made to the swiss buttercream for maple flavored and how I came up with cardamom buttercream for filling.

I do have to tell one Gene story. I had the roll cut and laid out and was frosting it when Gene came into the kitchen and deadpanned "Are you going to be baking that again or cooking it in some way?"  I said "Uh. No, of course not.  I'm frosting it now."  He said, "Then you need to have gloves on because that's a health code violation to handle any food barehanded that won't be cooked afterwards."  Smartass bas***d.  :-)  I knew I taught him too much about the food business when I was in it.

The whole family loved it although next year I might try for a different filling. The buttercream on the outside was so rich that it made the buttercream on the inside overkill. One small piece will do you and with a table full of other desserts, including fudge, it was almost too much, too rich.  As a stand alone dessert it would have been perfect but as one of many, next year I'll change the filling but I haven't quite decided to what yet.

You know, really this is an easy cake.  It looks very impressive, is a wonderful holiday dessert table centerpiece, and makes people ooh and ahh, but in reality, it's not nearly as hard as it looks.  That's a winner in my book.

Here's a close up of the mushrooms and poinsettia.

I do have one great family party story.  Auntie Miranda made the suggestion at Thanksgiving that we draw names, a children's group and an adult group, for Christmas, set a limit of $5.00 and make it "a fun gift" however each person interpretted it.  Some of the gifts were fun, some funny, and some nice.  My brother Kenneth is the "fun gift" high master.  He had drawn our sister, Suzanne's, name and bought her a box of chocolates.   Except that the box of chocolates he bought totalled more than $5.00...hmmm..what to do?  So he calculated the cost per chocolate, by hand and showed his math work on the front of the box, and then proceeded to eat chocolates until he was down to a gift worth $5.00.  Oh, okay, there was one more little thing. Every time he bit into one he didn't care for or didn't want to finish, he left that half in the box, subtracted the half from the total and moved on.  So not only were there empty chocolate holes, there was half a turtle, half a caramel, half a peanut butter cup, etc.

We all bow to your greatness, Sir Joke-A-Lot.

Merry Christmas '07

                                            ...A child is born...

NORAD Tracks Santa

             

For those of you with small children, check out www.noradsanta.org.  NORAD tracks Santa every Christmas Eve by satellite and not only do they have maps showing kids where Santa has been spotted, they have tons of You Tubes loaded up to coordinate that show video of Santa circling St. Peters Basilica, The Eiffel Tower, etc.  It started a little bit ago. Santa's already made it to the Great Wall of China.  You can also access just the videos by search www.youtube.com for "Norad tracks Santa".

Check out www.wildcrazy.com

Merry Christmas Eve!

Happy Christmas Eve and I'm just barely started!  I was a big slug yesterday and laid around most of the day watching Stephen King's The Stand, okay well I've read the book so I watched and napped while Gene watched--all four parts in one afternoon!  Felt good to slug out especially since my knees have been killing me.  Whine whine.

But today I will bake in earnest and post all weeks about the things I've learned and succeeded and failed at.  Hee hee.

I did have great luck with a new cranberry bread recipe from "The New Best Recipe" cookbook from Cook's Illustrated.  We had a smaller party of just my brothers and sister and their kids on Saturday night and that was a huge hit with requests for more for the big family Christmas evening party. I think it's the combination of the orange zest with the cranberries that really swings that recipe into something special.

Since our Mom died many years ago, it's a big thing with us kids when i make the old-fashioned cookies and dishes we grew up with--it's the memories that help make our holidays special so in the depths of the closet I finally found the cookie press I bought years ago and reworked Mom's recipe for cream cheese almond star cookies like we grew up with.  Our mom would make dozens of a dozen kind of cookies every year but but I'm not quite that motivated! They'll take what they get and they'll like it. :-)

I'm also a day late and a dollar short so I will be making the Daring Bakers Yule Log but not until today and, unfortunately, not in accordance with the directions.  I told my family about it and they were all excited except they didn't like the flavors in the challenge and whined and cried until I promised to make the yule log as a pumpkin roll, something my sister used to do every year until she lost her favorite recipe, and they want the pumpkin to be topped with maple instead of cappuccino buttercream.  Nothing like the folks who are going to be eating it making their desires known, eh?  :-)  But in the meantime (I'll be baking today) check out all the lovely yule logs already having been constructed by Daring Bakers all over the world:  Daring Bakers Blogroll

And now for those recipes for today...

Let's Whine a Moment, Shall We?

First, Merry Christmas to me, as if I didn't already know it, as of yesterday I am officially old.  An old lady. Not only have I now had knee surgery this year and had to get hearing aids, (eh? What did you say?) I went to the optometrist yesterday and was told that I'm on the borderline for bifocals because my current prescription is great for up close but bad for far away. I had two choices:  go with larger lenses and bifocals or keep the smaller lenses that I love and have TWO pairs of glasses.  When I have my new distance lenses on I'm told I'll have to hold reading material out farther away than normal to be able to read clearly.  Lovely.  I am so excited.

Shame on Frosty

Brought to us by a reader nearby in Rogersville:

Baking Makes Me Happy

I don't have anything to show yet but today is my big Christmas baking day and I'm very excited.  There is something about baking that soothes my spirit in a way nothing else can. 

This is one of my favorite Christmas cakes from years ago. I made it for the family party and I remember my Uncle Andy hugging me and saying "Sis, it's almost too pretty to eat."  Ahhh.  It's a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream smoothed down as smooth as I could get it and then the poinsettias are outlined in black buttercream and filled in with colored decorating gel.