A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Christmas Eve Traditions: Mushroom, Goat Cheese, & Spicy Chicken Sausage Lasagna

 Newlywed bride Sarah made this incredilble looking lasagna for hubby Sebastian and put these photos up on Facebook--is this not beautiful looking and scrumptious sounding? I'm going to give this one a try as soon as I get through this work stretch. 

Although I will be working Christmas Eve, I love the tradition of other friends of ours, Janell and Jerry, who always have lasagna on Christmas Eve with just their kids and then get together with all the family members on Christmas Day. I've always loved their tradition. It feels right to have your immediate family home on Christmas Eve for a cozy meal and small family night and then let the holiday bloom out the next day in all of its family-ness.

Just in case I get next Christmas Eve off...this is what Gene and I will be eating.

 

Food Gifts: "Christmas Crack"

My cousin, Colleen's new recipe for the holidays is this toffee recipe. When I asked if I could blog it and said "It looks aMAzing!"  She replied "It IS amazing! I heard about it a few years ago, and for some reason I got an itch to make it for this family gathering. It's a pretty big hit!"

Yum!

Pancakes from the Wheat Kernel Up: Freshly Ground Whole Wheat Pancakes for a Cozy Family Morning Together

By Guest Blogger Robert Kesterson

It may not look like it, but this is a stack of delicious buttermilk pancakes, in kit form. This recipe makes about ten pancakes -- enough to feed a family of four. If they're really hungry you might want to make a little more.

 

The one thing my family does differently since this photo was taken is that we buy raw milk so we can churn our own fresh butter and have natural buttermilk.

Ingredients:

2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar (raw sugar or honey work great)
2 cups fresh ground whole wheat flour
2 eggs
4 tablespoons oil (olive, walnut, and hazelnut all work great)

For all the ingredients, the rule is, the fresher the better. I grind the flour myself from wheat kernels (shown in the photo). The oil in whole wheat goes rancid once it is ground, so if you're buying whole wheat flour off a grocery store shelf, you're missing out. The eggs are fresh from free range chickens, and the sugar is raw, unprocessed sugar. Honey also works well. For the oil, you can use olive, walnut, hazelnut, or any other oil you like. The nut oils will give the pancakes a subtle nutty flavor that is just great. Melted butter will also work.

 

 

Preheat a large frying pan over medium-low heat, and preheat a cookie sheet in your oven on its lowest setting. Beat the two eggs in a bowl. Separately, mix the salt, sugar and baking powder into the buttermilk, then stir it into the eggs. Add the flour a little at a time and keep stirring until all lumps are gone. Then add the oil and stir until smooth. The batter should be very smooth and creamy.

 

 

 

Using a half-cup measure, pour a pancake in the middle of the preheated pan. The half-cup measure will make a pancake about six inches in diameter. Cook until the top starts to look a little stiff, and bubbles start to form in the batter. Then slip a spatula under it and flip it over. If it won't flip without tearing, you didn't cook it long enough. On the other hand, if it is stiff as a board, you waited too long. After flipping, cook until the pancake has stopped rising, has firmed up, and no longer looks wet around the edges. Remove it from the pan and transfer it to the cookie sheet in the oven to keep it warm while you cook the others.

 

Once all the pancakes are cooked, put them on plates, optionally add some fresh butter and real maple syrup, and serve immediately.

 

 

If you're making breakfast for kids, you can be creative when pouring the batter into the pan -- there's no law that says pancakes have to be round.

 

CookBook Review: The Nordic Diet by Trina Hahnemann

Guest Blogger Terry Jones reviews The Nordic Diet by Trina Hahnemann:  

LET THEM EAT QUARK: FUNDAMENTALS OF THE NORDIC DIET

by Terry Jones

I borrowed this cookbook from my dear friend Glenna with the idea of finding a few new recipes to add to my shortlist. Unfortunately for Glenna, I liked the cookbook so much that I have flatly refused to return it and have agreed to write this review for two reasons. First, to salvage our friendship and secondly to allow me to keep aforementioned cookbook (Editorial note:  Dream on, Pal. The cookbook comes home to Momma!), Both of which are of great meaning to me but are not necessarily listed in order of importance.

The Nordic Diet cookbook is centered around the basic principles of cooking delicious and wholesome food with simple, local ingredients and eating them with family and friends. Good idea, right? Personally I'm getting tired of cooking shows that feature some pompous chef creating a magnificently difficult dish in a $75,000 kitchen using whole vanilla bean pods steeped in cognac that was warmed between the thighs of Swedish virgins. My kitchen probably looks more like yours and whole vanilla bean pods are devilishly hard to find, not to mention Swedish virgins in my immediate surroundings.

The Nordic diet cookbook uses foods that are local to the area and relies heavily on root crops and fresh fish. These ingredient are fairly easy to find in most climates, or better yet, easy to grow and overwinter in a cold frame. The foods are not only simple and fantastically fresh and delicious but very healthy and low in calories as well. This cookbook celebrates the satisfaction that our ancestors must have found in the delayed gratification that comes of only eating the foods currently in season and thereby enjoying each food to its fullest extent during the few weeks that the food was naturally available.

Not only does this cookbook provide recipes in which to use the Jerusalem artichokes which are quietly nesting underground beneath the dried and fallen leaves in my back yard, but it also validates my long love affair with the physically unappealing but inexplicably delicious celeraic roots that reside still in their snow-covered planter boxes. Kale will grow outdoors in almost any climate and shitake mushrooms can be had fresh all winter long by simply bringing a log indoors and watering. Beets and collards and chard flourish in a window box or greenhouse. I know, this is supposed to be a cookbook review and not a gardening manifesto but if you truly want to cook with fresh ingredients then you should break out some potting soil this winter and give it a try. Growing beautiful green things through the winter is nearly as cathartic as eating them.

There are a few ingredients in this book that are unavailable in some climates. Quark is used in a few recipes and is so delicate that I'm not sure that a substitute is available. An included recipe for quark would have been nice but it is easy to make and my wife's efforts were rewarded with a delicious chard tart. Most of the measurements are given in grams and that did get annoying after awhile to me using stand American cups and Tbsps but if you are one of those cooks that prepares food like you are in a chemistry lab then you better get a good gram scale...although if you fall into this category then you probably already have one.

If you are an intrepid cook and you are in the mood for a few recipes that are completely different and terrific then pick up a copy of this book and you won't be disappointed. Or just find a friend who has a copy and refuse to return it. I did.