Yesterday The Baby Girl and I ventured out into the cold to do some “Christmas Stuff”. We went to Houses of Hope annual gingerbread display. Can I just say WOW!
Some of the houses were made by children, some by families and of course some were made by professionals. I doubt I will miss this event in years to come, very festive and sure got me thinking about our “annual gingerbread decorating night”.
These pictures make me smile. This year The First Born and Scot With One T will be joining us, we are going to work as couples.
I thought maybe this week The Baby Girl and I could do some research and be prepared! I find great ideas here, great stuff here, did you know you can buy blue prints for your gingerbread house? Check out Sweetopia she has a great house and tons of pictures like the ones below.
I found tons here, if you are braver then we are and actually want to make your own here is a recipe. You have to see this gingerbread house…wowza!
Leave me a comment and let me know about your gingerbread creations, we need ideas by Saturday.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Waning Moon
Uranus Retrograde
About to snow/cold
St. Nicholas Eve
Yes, we’re supposed to get snow today. Woo-hoo! That puts me in the holiday spirit, although I’m not going to go to storage and haul out my stuff and get it all wet. Not that there’s room for it anyway — I still don’t have the apartment completely sorted out, although I got a lot done yesterday and we’re getting there.
Had some ginger in the morning for the nausea and celery for the headache and felt human again. Had to run some errands — couldn’t find what I needed locally, so wound up at Target in White Plains — I’ve been to WP every day this week, it’s ridiculous. And here I’m trying to plan the errands so I’m not dashing all over creation! But Target had what I needed and more, so I got a lot done. Got done everything I needed at the bookstore — which is closing in January, which totally sucks. I mean, it wasn’t a great one, but still . . .
Realized I was running a fever, so I went home, rested up a bit, took whatever supplements I’m not allergic to that could pound out whatever’s trying to take me down,and got back to work. I got a lot done, sorting, purging, organzing. I’m trying to find a place for everything, and if I can’t, it either gets given away or goes to storage. The challenge is then keeping storage organized enough so I can get at things as I need them.
I’m purging a lot of clothes that either don’t fit properly and aren’t worth the alterations, or just don’t suit the way my style has evolved. I found two coats that were in storage for years and took them downstairs to the new cleaners that opened up — they are so nice! Lovely people. I considered buying a new dressy winter coat this year, but the one in storage is lovely — really well cut, full-length, navy blue — and my black pea coat, that I bought way back in college in Greenwich Village when I was caught in a snowstorm without a coat — will be fine once it’s cleaned and I put the silver buttons back on (I’d lent it to a show and took my good buttons off so they wouldn’t get lost). I also found an almost-finished dress in one of my favorite styles — very simple, tailored, slight flare below the knee. All it needs is the finishing on the hem, the neckline, and the armholes, and I can wear it in spring. It’s a lovely soft pattern in blues and grays and greens with just a hint of burgundy in it. I love shopping in my closet!
I’m putting together several bags of clothes I will then sort into stuff that gets donated and stuff that goes to a local consignment store. I’ve got some beautiful theatrical pieces like a beaded formal skirt (given as a Secret Santa gift that’s never fit me) which are nearly new, tried on but never worn, and someone could enjoy them.
I’ve sorted out a lot of my books and reconfigured the bookcases. So why do I STILL have piles of books on the floor with no place to put them? Unfortunately, a lot of them are in use in various projects.
Started work on Confidential Job #1, which seems like it’ll be really cool. Got some decorating ideas that I will start this weekend, and then, as I can bring stuff in from storage, I can add to it. I’m finding some great fabric as I’m going through packed stuff, and I’m sorting the fabric and the yarn and all the rest so I know where everything is, can complete any uncompleted projects, and actually get at everything.
The fever broke at some point in the night, so I’m feeling much better. I did an extra-challenging yoga session in the morning — swore somewhat during the process, but feel better now. I’ve got a bunch of errands to do before the snow starts, and then it’s back to trying to sort out the apartment.
I’ve got the menus for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day sorted,and I’m trying to figure out what to do for the Solstice.
I had a good writing session this morning; feels good after two days away from the page. I get cranky and more neurotic than usual if I skip a day or several days of writing. Everything is on track, writing wise, although I’m not spending as many hours at the page as usual. But, even if I can snatch a half hour here and there, I sit down and I focus and I DO IT. Every few words on the page is a few more than I had before, and it’ amazing what you can get done in 15 minutes if you don’t procrastinate and keep saying, “Oh, it’s only 15 minutes, what can I do?” You can write a bunch of words, that’s what you can do.
Tonight, we put out our shoes, in the Dutch (?) tradition, and St. Nicholas comes and fills them with treats (unless the cats get there first).
Yesterday I mixed together 2 separate batches of marinade each consisting of 1 quart of cream with a half a bunch of fresh thyme, 12 black peppercorns, to cloves of fresh garlic (smashed), 1 bay leaf, 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard. One of the batches I simply mixed everything together and added the liver, the second batch I heated to just under a boil and allowed to cool naturally. I used both beef liver and calves liver for this final test. After soaking over night I rinsed each of the eight pieces off in cold water and seasoned them with salt and ground black pepper. The first four pieces cooked (two beef and two calves, one from each of the marinades) were simply dusted in flour and seared in bacon fat. The next four were blanched in salted boiling water for 15 seconds, then dusted in flour, and finally seared in bacon fat. I have to clarify this now, the bacon fat I use is the platinum of all fats, bacon fat from rendered Benton’s bacon.
Warm infused
The results were great. First of the calves liver was far better tasting with a firm consistency than that of the beef liver. They seemed to cook better as well, keeping better form and cooking more evenly. The marinade worked better than expected with the warm infused marinade giving off a much better flavor to the liver. The blanching I found did nothing to benefit the liver at all. My theory was based on the way I like to prepare sweet breads, but like many theories proved to be incorrect. In the end the best piece of liver was from the calf and was marinated with the warm infused cream over night. Light herbs, a touch sweet, still rich with very little metallic taste or after taste, and a slight bite from the Dijon and raw garlic. Overall it was by far the best piece of liver I have ever eaten other than foie gras, which nothing can compete with anyway. Now it is time to perfect the bacon and onion jam, Dijon cream sauce, and Parmesan mashed potatoes to finish the dish with.
What to do with the last piece of the trial?
Liver sandwich
That is right, make a sandwich out of it. Our fresh made Ciabatta bread with Dijon spread on it, topped with mashed Yukon gold potatoes, bacon lardons, and seared calves liver and shallots. If only I had a fine Chianti…………………….
Dey ’s a-wokin’ in de qua’tahs a-preparin’ fu’ de feas’,
So de little pigs is feelin’ kind o’ shy.
De chickens ain’t so trus’ful ez dey was, to say de leas’,
An’ de wise ol’ hens is roostin’ mighty high.
You could n’t git a gobblah fu’ to look you in de face–
I ain’t sayin’ whut de tu’ky ’spects is true;
But hit’s mighty dange’ous trav’lin’ fu’ de critters on de place
F’om de time dat log commence a bu’nin’ thoo. Paul Laurence Dunbar, A Back-Log Song*
Slave Family
Tragically, African slaves rarely learned to read and write, it being considered dangerous to their white masters to allow literacy running rampant. And so, except for accounts left by white slaveowners and others, very little writing exists concerning the diet and cooking of slaves. Archaeological excavations of slave cabins reveal interesting material, as do oral histories miraculously recorded in the 1930s. After the Civil War, some former slaves learned to read and write and left accounts of their lives under slavery.
Like a trail of crumbs, what remains renders up clues to where dietary trends and celebration foods came from.
For slaves, the Christmas season broke the back-breaking monotony of their lives.
Cookbooks written by descendants of slaves offer one view of the slave diet at Christmas time. Or at least what they might aspire to.
In The Taste of Country Cooking, Edna Lewis, a superb African-American cook and chef, depicted in detail the Christmas foods that she and her family enjoyed in Freetown, Virginia, an enclave of freed slaves. Her grandparents were among those freed. Miss Lewis recalled making plum pudding and fruitcakes with her mother. Their larder also included “oranges, almonds, Brazil nuts, and raisins that came in clusters.” Another traditional food brought on rapturous longings: “And although we were miles from the sea, at Christmas one of the treats we always looked forward to was oysters. The oysters were delivered to Lahore’s [grocery] in barrels on Christmas Eve day … .“ The list of foods prepared clearly demonstrates abundance:
Photo credit: Matthew Musgrove
Baked ham
Smothered rabbit
Mixed small birds
Braised guinea hen
Liver pudding (recipe below)
Roasted wild turkey (occasionally)
Pickles made from cucumber, watermelon rind, crab apples, and peaches
Traditional holiday desserts also shone gloriously on the heavily laden tables: layer cakes (caramel, coconut), pound cake, fruitcake, fudge, peanut brittle, sugar cookies, mince pies, and fruit pies made with canned summer fruits.
While the women cooked, the men made wine from wild plums, elderberries, dandelions, and grapes.
It’s not hard to imagine that at least some of Miss Lewis’s ancestors served as cooks in the great houses on Virginia plantations, including that of Claiborne R. Mason, the landowner who gave her relatives the land for their town.
She invited her readers into the kitchen with her superb writing and recipes, including the following menus for meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, evocative of plantation cuisine.
Her menu for Christmas Eve Supper:
Ham Biscuits
Oyster Stew
Baked Country Ham
Scalloped Potatoes
Pan-Braised Spareribs
Crusty Yeast Bread — Ham Biscuits
Wild Blackberry Jelly — Watermelon Rind Pickles
Yellow Vanilla Pound Cake — Hickory Nut Cookies — Sugar Cookies
Dandelion Wine — Plum Wine
Coffee
Her menu for Christmas Day Breakfast:
Oysters (Photo credit: Andy Ciordia)
Pan-Fried Oysters
Eggs Sunny-Side Up
Liver Pudding
Pork Sausage
Skillet-Fried Potatoes
Biscuits
Butter
Wild Strawberry Preserves
Bourbon
Coffee
Other accounts of slave food at Christmas rely on spoken language.
According to the reminiscences of a black cook named Annie Hale, Christmas day dinner for her sharecropper family provided the biggest feast of the year. Her family ate ham — this was the only time it appeared on the table, salted-down spareribs, sliced sweet potatoes spiced with nutmeg, yeast rolls made with white flour (a luxury), and four cakes – caramel, chocolate, plain, and coconut. Neighbors came to visit, eat cake, and drink homemade wine, in a manner similar to what Edna Lewis experienced. (Evan Jones, American Food: The Gastronomic Story, p. 106)
The plethora of cakes seems astonishing. Other popular holiday cakes reflect American tastes and ingredients: Tea Cake, Stack Cake, and Molasses Cake.
Former slave Harriet Jacobs, in Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl, described Christmas festivities during slavery:
Christmas is a day of feasting, both with white and colored people. Slaves, who are lucky enough to have a few shillings, are sure to spend them for good eating; and many a turkey and pig is captured, without saying, “By your leave, sir.” Those who cannot obtain these, cook a ‘possum, or a raccoon, from which savory dishes can be made. My grandmother raised poultry and pigs for sale and it was her established custom to have both a turkey and a pig roasted for Christmas dinner.
Slaves generally received a week off at Christmas, except for the cooks and house servants. Following a custom imported from England, similar to Boxing Day traditions, the masters presented their slaves with gifts, often in the form of shoes, money, or alcohol. (1)
Tempie Cummins, Ex-Slave
But the real treasure in beginning to look at slave Christmas customs lies in precious oral history. Much of the knowledge of slavery conditions come from a far-seeing project carried out under the supervision of Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). Between 1936 and 1938, interviewers recorded the memories of over 2,300 former slaves still living in the United States.
Mary Reynolds, a former slave living in Dallas, Texas, told WPA interviewers:**
They give all the niggers [sic] fresh meat on Christmas and a plug tobacco all round. The highes’ cotton picker gits a suit of clothes and all the women what had twins that year gits a outfittin’ of clothes for the twins and a double, warm blanket.
And another former slave, Booker T. Washington, recalled Christmas-time hog butchering in Virginia:
This was one of the incidents which usually preceded a Virginia Christmas. There is another which I still vividly remember. It was at this season that the year’s crop of hogs was killed, and the meat for the ensuing year was cured and stored away in the smokehouse. This came, as a rule, during the week before Christmas, and was, as I recollect it, one of the annual diversions of plantation life. I recall the great blazing fire flaring up in the darkness of the night and grown men and women moving about in the flickering shadows. I remember with what feelings of mingled horror and hungry anticipation I looked at the long rows of hogs hung on the fence-rail, preparatory to being cut up and salted away for the year. For days after this event every slave cabin was supplied with materials for a sumptuous feast.
He also wrote about liver pudding, a dish very similar to French patés.
What none of this truly conveys is the tremendous culinary legacy passed down by slave women who cooked in the Great Houses.
How did illiterate slaves cook from cookbooks or know how to cook all those dishes that Edna Lewis lists as Christmas foods? Jane Carson, in Colonial Virginia Cookery: Procedures, Equipment, and Ingredients in Colonial Cooking, quotes an aged slave named Isaac, who was interviewed in the 1840s and said that his mother was the pastry cook for Thomas Jefferson’s household. Isaac recollected that “Mrs. Jefferson would come out there [to the kitchen] with a cookery book in her hand and read out of it to Isaac’s mother h0w to make cakes, tarts, and so on.”
Edna Lewis’s Liver Pudding
“We kept it by setting it into the spring box or the meat house on a low shelf to keep cool.” (Also called Liver Mush.)
1 ½ lbs. fresh pork liver
1 ½ lbs. fresh pork jowl or 1 ½ lbs. fresh unsalted pork middling or unsalted bacon
1 medium onion
2 cups liquid from boiled liver mixture
2 t. salt
½ t. freshly ground black pepper
1 t. fresh sage
1 heavy tin loaf pan or 1 2 ½-qt. casserole
The liver should not be sliced; leave it in one piece. The jowl should be in one piece as well, and is cooked in the skin. If fresh bacon or middling is used, the lean is removed. Place the liver, jowl, and onion in a pot with enough cold water to cover abut 2 inches above the meat. Set to cook on a medium-high burner until the pot begins to simmer. Cook gently until the jowl is tender, about two hours. Remove the meat and onion from the pot and leave to cool. Cut the liver and jowl with their skins into small pieces and put them through a food chopper or meat grinder along with the onion. Alternate fat and liver to keep the mill from clogging up. When all is ground, add 2 cups of the liquid from the cooked liver mixture. Pour off the top water and use the bottom liquid because it contains residue from the cooked meat. Stir in the liver mixture; you will have a very liquid batter. Then add in salt, pepper, and sage. Mix well and pour into the tin loaf pan or casserole. Bake in a preheated 250 degree F oven for 2 ½ hours until the pudding has completely dried down. If not cooked enough, the pudding will not slice properly. It is the long cooking that develops the fine flavor of the pudding. Remove from oven. When cool, place in cold place or the refrigerator.
The following video offers visual background to some of the spirituals sung by African slaves. Watch up to 3:20 minutes (the rest is twentieth century and a tribute to Martin Luther King). The link takes you right to the YouTube site and it takes a bit of time to load. There’s some, if brief, interesting footage of pounding grain.
*Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote in dialect, as well as classical English.
**The language in this quote is taken directly from the words of the informant.
(1) In 1850, one slaveowner — Thomas B. Chaplin — of St. Helena Island, South Carolina, wrote in his journal on Christmas day, “I only wish the Negroes were at work. I had nothing to give them but a few turnips, but they are satisfied, **pretend to be** and I suppose to enjoy themselves, though I don’t.” From: Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter : With the Journal of Thomas B. Chaplin (1822-1890), by Theodore Rosengarten (1992), p. 516.
I venture beyond the city for three main reasons: 1) to swim at the BAC, 2) to eat Shabu Shabu, and 3) to take cooking classes at Whole Foods in San Mateo.
check out how good Becky looks behind that beautiful counter
For those of you who are just venturing into no-sodium cooking, or let’s face it, cooking in general, these classes are a real deal and a steal. Most cooking classes in San Francisco are twice the price or higher.
At $35 a pop, you end up:
Eating a ton of fresh food. The classes are IN the store, so they can easily accommodate dietary needs. Don’t eat red meat, they’ll just grab you a fish fillet
Meeting a ton of friendly faces. It’s all about teamwork people.
Learning great cooking techniques and impressive nuggets of kitchen wisdom
And drinking as much free wine (or sparkling water) as you can possibly handle
Oh and I almost forgot, there is usually more than enough food for each participant to take home leftovers. Did I mention it was only $35?
While I usually prefer the hands-on classes, I ended up attending a demonstration class with Frog Hollow Farm co-owner, Becky Courchesne. This pastry chef, with a penchant for fresh food and peach farmers, really knows how to cook.
The evening’s menu was built around Frog Hollow Farm’s line of fruit toppings, a product that proved to be a true culinary chameleon. The peach, pear, and plum conserves dressed a Mesclun salad, stuffed a turkey, perked up a pork chop, fizzed in a holiday cocktail, and melted in a Filo dough, Mascarpone desert. Clearly these are not just for ice cream anymore. And what a wonderful way to enjoy stone fruit during the winter months.
For those of you with dietary needs, the Whole Foods cooking classes are ideal. In every class I have taken, from Thai to Italian, the chef de jour was more than willing to accommodate my needs. They are usually quite small and as I mentioned before, the classes are IN the store, so it is very easy for the chef to pick up unsalted products as needed.
For the hands-on classes, I usually set aside my own salt-free ingredients to make no-sodium versions of the recipe. And last night, Becky was kind enough to cook my food separately so that I could enjoy her sweet and savory creations. Just check out this sodium-free chop with pear sauce.
If you aren’t convinced yet, here are some other drool inducing shots. First, the Pear and Pt. Reyes Farmstead Blue Salad. When making this at home, I would substitute the Pt. Reyes cheese for farmer’s cheese which is now being carried at Whole Foods.
And then of course there’s the pan roasted turkey breast with plum sauce stuffing. Just make sure you buy turkey meat that has not been injected with a saline solution.
Sadly, my camera died as soon as Becky started making the “Beggar’s Purses,” a devilishly simple but impressive dessert. But do not fret, recipes and more pictures to come next week as Boy and I try to recreate the menu for a very special dinner guest. Don’t you just love suspense?
I woke up yesterday and headed straight to the gym… but to the pool instead of the machines! I swim all the time during the summer and tend not to in the winter months because I don’t like walking home in the cold with wet hair. But I need to more. It is so much better for my knees than anything else! I did 30 minutes of straight laps, some stretching, and felt great- pain-free!
I wasn’t very hungry for breakfast after my weekend of over-eating, but I was craving lots of fruit. I made a smoothie with frozen mango and berries, a banana, and peanut butter. I also had a Honey Graham Kidz Bar.
And I packed lunch to take to work. I was working from 1-9, so I needed some good snacks to hold me through the day.
I brought a turkey sandwich on Ezekial Bread with laughing cow cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mustard; a bag of baby carrots; 2 clementines; 1 string cheese; and a bag of TJ’s almonds, cashews, and whole grain crackers. It was the perfect amount to graze on during the day. The sandwich was the best part!
At 9 pm sharp, I came home to a lovely spread that Loren put together… his favorite, of course- burritos! I love them, too, so I was a happy camper. We used TJ’s whole grain tortillas and packed them full of brown rice, black beans, veggies, lowfat yogurt, and hot sauce.
YUM!
Oh, and some melted cheese in there, too….
He made a big salad on the side, too, because I requested lots of vegetables.
I actually went back for more salad. I was so excited to munch on cold, crisp veggies!
Burritos have to be one of the cheapest, healthiest, easiest weekday meals. And the tastiest!
This year we spent Thanksgiving with my mother in South NJ, which we haven’t done in quite some time. I did very little cooking, which was fine with me! Mom decided to do “Christmas” on Saturday as we usualy spend it with my husband’s family. Mom made Vincent a warm bath robe, more clothes, several chapter boooks, and gave him her ice cream maker. (We will be making some frozen yogurt tomorrow!!) I recived a home made gift bag of pancake breakfast supplies: mix, real maple syrup, jellies, coffee. Also some new sheets, new winter coat, and The Best of America’s Test Kitchen 2008 cookbook, and a box of quart canning jars. I gave mom one of my crocheted cotton “No Tie Hanging Dish Towel” which she loved, and Kevin and Poppy each recieved a crocheted “Popcorn Stitch Back Scrubber” in different colors. For Paul, Kevin took him fishing on a party boat out of
Popcorn Stitch Back Scrubber
Long Beach Island on Sunday. Unfortuantly Paul didn’t catch a thing, but had a great time reguardless. Friday we visited some friends, and Sunday we visited my Anut Cindy and Uncle Don. I gifted them a jar of my home made Organic Honey Sweetened Apple Pie Filling. Sunday, while the guys were fishing, I made my first Apple Pie from scratch, including the crust, using new “No Roll” recipe. I’ll post about it soon!
Former slave Harriet Jacobs, in Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl, described Christmas festivities during slavery:
And another former slave, Booker T. Washington, recalled Christmas-time hog butchering in Virginia:
Edna Lewis’s Liver Pudding
And I packed lunch to take to work. I was working from 1-9, so I needed some good snacks to hold me through the day.
I brought a turkey sandwich on Ezekial Bread with laughing cow cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mustard; a bag of baby carrots; 2 clementines; 1 string cheese; and a bag of TJ’s almonds, cashews, and whole grain crackers. It was the perfect amount to graze on during the day. The sandwich was the best part!
At 9 pm sharp, I came home to a lovely spread that Loren put together… his favorite, of course- burritos! I love them, too, so I was a happy camper. We used TJ’s whole grain tortillas and packed them full of brown rice, black beans, veggies, lowfat yogurt, and hot sauce.
Oh, and some melted cheese in there, too….
I actually went back for more salad. I was so excited to munch on cold, crisp veggies!
Burritos have to be one of the cheapest, healthiest, easiest weekday meals. And the tastiest!
