I thought you said you don't bake?

I'm a baking machine this fall. I've been doing a pie a week (although not this week--I'll make a quiche to fill that promise this week). Yesterday I threw together some cheesy baking-powder biscuits, and I'm planning a cake for my "Housiversary" (25 years in our house on the 16th!) and a chocolate raspberry cheesecake for dinner with friends next week.

Thank goodness my daughter makes the bouche for Christmas!

Here's another use for those Thanksgiving leftovers!

Cranberry-oatmeal cookies
 2 sticks butter
1 ½ cups light brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
½ cup cranberry sauce
½ teaspoon orange extract

2 cups oats
1 ½ cups wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ salt

1 cup dried cranberries, plumped

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350F/176C. To plump cranberries, place in a pyrex or other microwave-safe container, cover with water and heat on high for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Combine and whisk the dry ingredients. Set aside. Cream the butter, about 5 minutes. Add the sugar and cream until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and beat until smooth, add the cranberry sauce and beat until fully blended. Add the dry ingredients about 1/2 cup at a time, blending fully each time. When done, fold in the fruit using a fork or spatula.

Spoon onto cookie sheet in small teaspoonfuls (about 1" across). Bake for 13 minutes.

Leisure Time

I spend at least one day a week cleaning.

No, wait, cooking I mean I spend a day a week cooking.

It just seems like it's a day spent cleaning.

Make the bread dough, wash the dishes. While the bread is rising, make cookies, scones or crackers; while they're baking, wash the dishes. Make stock items- baking powder or trail mix or mayo, and then lunch. Wash the dishes. (As you may have realized by now, I don't have a dishwasher. For my soapbox on appliances, see here.)

I'm not sure what it was I used to do with my "leisure" time. Did I go shopping? Walking? I never had a dog so it wasn't that. I suppose I used to spend this time with my kids, but doing what? Shopping? Playing? Commuting from lesson to lesson (not so much, actually- we never got caught onto that particular treadmill, thank heaven).

Once upon a time, we didn't have "leisure" time-- all of our time was spent householding. The cooking and washing and making and growing. The funny thing is, these activities are not unenjoyable. Yes, there's drudgery. The fourth time I have to wash the dishes, I'm thinking a little true recreation might be just the ticket. But cooking, and gardening, is fun, and everything has some level of drudgery to it. Humans are simply not designed for non-stop fun, Charlie Sheen notwithstanding.

What we have done in our society is replace these creative activities with so-called "leisure" where we do nothing but consume. Leisure time now is intimately associated with spending money: movies or shopping or water park or theme park. It's about gratifying personal desires that are disconnected from personal, family or community needs

Our leisure time is now spent consuming and extracting instead of creating and nurturing.

So here's your next challenge: next time you have "free" time, don't go to the mall, or flick on Netflix. Make some crackers.

Sourcream-honey crackers with cranberry
1 cup plain flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 teaspoon seasalt
2 tablespoons softened butter

1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup honey
2-3 tablespoons of cranberry sauce

seasoning: 1 teaspoon each seasalt, white peppercorns

Preheat oven to 150'C/ 300'F.

Grind the seasonings together in a mortar; whisk the milk, sour cream, cranberry sauce and honey together to form a little more than a cup of thick liquid. Add the salt to the flour, and in a mixing bowl or food processor, cut the butter in until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. (I start this with a knife or pastry cutter, then finish it with my hands.) Slowly mix in enough liquid to form a soft, but not sticky, dough.

Divide the dough into three to four portions and roll out one at a time, until paper thin. Some people recommend a pasta press, but I did it fine with a rolling pin. Keep turning the dough over, and lightly coating it with flour so it doesn't stick to the pin or the board.

Lightly brush the sheet with oil, then grind sea salt onto it. Using a sharp knife or pizza roller, cut the dough into crackers. Line cookie sheet with parchment (or just put them directly on an ungreased sheet), then transfer crackers to the cookie sheet if you rolled it out on a board.

Bake for 20 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp. Allow to cool on the tray and then store in an air tight container for up to a week. This recipe made about 200 1" square crackers.

Thanksgiving

As our reduced family (two uncles and a daughter couldn't make it this year) sat around dessert yesterday, I vowed I would remember all the family stories that came up so I could include them in this post today. Naturally, when I woke up this morning, they were all gone from my head. There are psychologists that make a case for forgetfulness. There's the problem of the internet, which saves everything. I have thought about this often-- the value of the ephemeral--and applied it in our lives by not documenting every moment of our children's journey, as American parents do.

So meals like yesterday's become important, when everyone brings the stories out and you compare notes and hone the details. As I write I can't even remember the subjects of the stories. Did we talk about Seng Lim's time on the cruise ship? About moving the shop down the street? Did Uncle Lajos come up? I can't remember.

Nga Jee called from England after dinner, and we described the meal to her. Mary  had made the traditional meal, and described its provenance-- a complete Thanksgiving menu published in the late 70s in the old Betty Crocker magazine Sphere. Mary  and I have been making this meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas (and sometimes both) for more than 20 years. I have the old recipes that Mary wrote out for me long before the kids were born, I finally laminated them.

Turkey with apple-raisin stuffing

1 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. butter
1 quart chopped apples (I use Granny Smiths)
1 c. chopped celery
1/2 c. golden raisins
1/4 c. fresh parsley
1 egg
1/4 c. apple cider
1 1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Saute onion in butter over medium heat until transparent (about 5 minutes); stir in apples and celery, simmer uncovered over medium heat sitrring occasionally (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat, lightly beat egg and stir in, stir in remaining ingredients. Stuff bird. Oops. Find a recipe/instructions for roasting a stuffed turkey. Do that.

World's Best Cranberry Chutney
1 lb cranberries (these used to come in 16 oz bags, now they've reduced bag size to 12 oz, so just deal)
1 cup white sugar
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 c. golden raisins
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground clove
1/4 tsp allspice
1 cup water
1 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped apple (Granny Smiths)
1/2 c. chopped celery

Simmer cranberries, sugar, raisins and spices in 1 cup water, uncovered, in a saucepan over medium heat, just until the cranberries release their juice (about 15 minutes). Keep heat low, and stir in remaining ingredients. Simmer until it thickens, about 15 minutes. Can be served warm or cold. I think it's best when made the day before and stored in the fridge, then served at room temperature for the actual meal.

Finished up with pumpkin pie, but enough with the pumpkin recipes already.

Cranberry sauce

Wonkette : Wonkette’s Actual Awesome Real Cranberry Business

This is how I am going to write all my recipes from now on. (Seriously, this looks delicious)

Posted using ShareThis

Still had some cranberries left over

Another original recipe, although there are other similar ones on the web (there's probably a web law for this-- if you can think of it, there's already a website).

Porkchops with cranberry gravy

1 pork chop per diner

1 yellow or Vidalia onion, sliced
1 1/2-2 T butter
6 oz fresh cranberries
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1/2 cup white wine
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
add'l liquid as needed

Season the porkchops by sprinkling salt, pepper and parsley on each side. Let sit about 10 minutes. Over medium heat, melt the butter in a large saucepan, then sear the pork chops on both sides allowing the pan to brown a bit. Add the onions and sauté until they just start to go translucent. Add the cranberries and heat until they start to release their juice (about 5 minutes). Add the white wine and the sugar and cook the liquid down. When the pan starts to sear again, add the broth.

Continue simmering, turning the chops occasionally, adding liquid (water, broth or more wine) as the gravy reduces. Cook until chops are cooked all the way through, about 15 minutes more or less depending on the thickness of the chops.

Serve over egg noodles or fettucini.

With the cheese bread, this was a beautiful holiday meal. If only there had been someone here to share it with me!

Testing for the holidays

I couldn't make the promised cheese crackers because I realized I don't have a full-sized food processor anymore. My 40 year-old antique finally gave up the ghost last winter. Now I've only got the little 3 cup one.

But I've been jonesing for cheesy things lately, so I didn't want to give up on the cheese, not to mention that I have a fridge full of cheese because I thought I'd be making cheese crackers.

We'll be spending Thanksgiving at my brother- and sister-in-law; I'll be using the last of pumpkin palooza to make some recipes from this site as my contribution. In the meantime, I picked up a couple of bags of cranberries earlier in the week to try a cranberry syrup (it's delicious). Only used one bag for the syrup, so I tried my favorite google search today-- recipe: Random Ingredients.

The Random Ingredients of the day were cranberries and cheese. Yes. There are recipes that use both cranberries and cheese. This one looked like the winner:

Cranberry Cheese Bread
from Baking Bits

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
a 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

3/4 cup fresh orange juice (forgot to get oranges, so I used the cranberry syrup, 3T in a measuring cup, then filled to 3/4 cup total liquid)
2 teaspoons grated orange rind (I used some dried that I had)
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 egg, beaten
1 cup chopped cranberries

Sift dry ingredients. Cut in butter until mixture looks like coarse cornmeal.

Combine orange juice (or whatever), rind, and egg and pour into dry ingredients. Mix just to dampen. Fold in cheese, cranberries and nuts. Pour (BakingBits said "pour" but it was more like "glop." Batter is quite thick.) into greased and floured loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until toothpick in center comes out clean. Cool and store overnight before slicing.

I wish I could take a picture of the smell, because it is indescribably delicious. Ditto the taste. Sweet crust, salty cheese, tangy berries.