Debra Shapiro is using Word Press

Or at least, I'm trying to - trying to start up a new Word Press edition of Deb's Lunch - you can take a look at: Deb's Lunch ... and dinner and breakfast too.

Robyn Hitchcock is using Word Press -

- albeit a highly customized Word Press with his own eponymous theme, for his new web site. I've been toying with the notion of moving my blog, too, ever since last summer when I played around with Word Press a bunch. So I think here's what I'm going to do - new decade, new blog - I won't move this one over, but it can become the archives. After all, as Rach just pointed us, us WI state employees have a 5-day weekend coming up: Wednesday, 12/30 is a furlough day, so we're not allowed to work; New Years Eve day & New Years Day are both holidays, and we still have Saturday and Sunday. Plenty of Word Press play time, and it'll probably be good hand therapy.

Speaking of holidays, there's a very cool little stop-motion animation vid starring vegetables on Robyn Hitchcock's new site, called The day before boxing day.

More Christmas pictures

I think somewheres back there I promised more Christmas pix - I never did take any of dinner but there were some nice ones of presents & breakfast:

the present pile

I got a new pannier for my bike

Mark's dress shirt had the prettiest paper

I got Mark a waffle iron

We had waffles & bacon & fried apples and Asian pears

Dad's 89th

Today would be my Dad's 89th birthday if he was still alive. I have lots of fragmentary memories of birthday celebrations past, dinners-and-a-movies we went to - I seem to remember My Fair Lady followed by dinner at Le Mont on Mount Washington; that must've been 1964 - IMDB says the movie came out on Christmas that year.

There were also celebrations when Dad wasn't there - we went to the newly opened Grand Concourse at Station Square (now it seems to be owned by the Muer chain) when he was in the hospital - that must've been 1978 Christmas season, before he had his first heart valve replacement in February of 1979. The reservation was so hard to get, my mom wasn't going to give it up just because Dad wasn't there. And there was his memorial, on the first birthday he missed, December 1998 - speeches in Heinz Chapel, and then across the street to the Pittsburgh Athletic Association for the reception, where they let me bring in cookies, because in Pittsburgh, they're so used to that from weddings.

Not sure what do in dad's honor tonight - I bought shallots and arugula, and have a basket & a half of grape tomatoes, so I could make the Martha pasta that's on the Jan. 2010 "light" issue of Everyday Food - roasted tomatoes & shallots with arugula, on rigatoni - for dinner. It's not really such a Dad dish, though - he wouldn't have cared for the green stuff thrown in at the end. But I have lots of the Lora Brody ruggelach, and canned peaches, so we could have the Dad dessert: chilled canned fruit, cookies, and tea. He'd probably have had Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux, but he'd have liked the ruggelach, too.

Grey Christmas

White Christmas, bah humbug .... this is the view from my window today.

In Wisconsin, we're having a grey, slushy Christmas, with rain on top of about a foot of snow. The big winter storm is dumping tons of snow on Minneapolis & the Dakotas, but it's mostly north and west of us here in WI & IL, where we've been getting ice and rain and wintry mix. The National Weather Service called it a "complex" storm system; the best description we've heard so far was a reporter on NPR yesterday, who called it a "variety pack of nasty weather".

We heard that NPR reporter when we were on the exit ramp from the Beltline around 5:00 p.m. yesterday, about 10 minutes from home. Even though I stressed and worried, the travel back from Chicago turned out just as Mark (the optimist in the family) predicted - we missed the worst of it, and were driving in just plain rain, not ice. When we got to the train station in Harvard, the car was sheathed in ice, but it was so warm - 36 or 37 degrees - that the ice just slid off the car. The car was stuck in its parking spot, but because there were 3 of us, I drove and mark & Ethan pushed, and we got out pretty shortly. One of the tires was low, but 2 gas stations and 5 quarters later, we were on the road.

And we are having a perfectly nice little Christmas - waffles cooked on Mark's new waffle iron that I gave him for breakfast, with bacon & fried apples. Beef tenderloin, roasted potatoes, and trifle for dinner. And Lora Brody's ruggelach for snacks. I'll add more pix after dinner.

Corner bakery breakfast wreakage

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Christmas Eve

And trying out iPhone blogging somemore. I'm in a window seat - that should have had a step ladder so's you could climb up into easier - at our hotel, trying to make sense of the weather reports. The WI Dot road conditions is not working, of course - too many people trying to check it + the new map is not very well optomized for the iPhone.

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Waay too stressful for me

We're in Chicago to see the Addams Family, got a great room at a Kimpton & a nice dinner at Shaw's Crab House - but we're in the midst of an ice storm, and I'm over-worrying about the roads. Not much to do but wait & see.

It was just rain and slush in all the gutters walking home from theater - so maybe it'll all be OK. A Christmas miracle'd be fine by me.

Location:Chicago

Big Day

So yesterday I sold the Passat, and got my cast off.

I should be happily on winter break, but because of all the running around, I did not finish grading, even though I worked till almost 10:00 last night. I still have 8 students' work to read. So here I am sort of back at it, at 6:30 a.m.

I guess that's this year's theme - not quite what we expected. We planned a trip to Chicago - we have tickets to see the Addams Family, with Nathan Lane & Bebe Neuwirth - but a big storm is threatening the whole midwest. Weather.gov calls it "complex" - it's supposed t be snow and rain and ice all mixed up. The plan is to take the train, but we have to drive about an hour and a few minutes to Harvard IL to catch the train. And it's not just me - John & Al are flying to California today, and Ethan is coming with us to Chicago. I think Ethan got the biggest disappointment for Christmas - he was supposed to be in Mexico right now, but got a concussion in hockey - and not even in a game, at a scrimmage, just a glorified practice, and the doctor said he shouldn't fly.

Mark, our optimist, says that if all the weather works as predicted, not only will we miss the worst stuff, so will John & Al - they're flying out of Minneapolis, and it's not supposed to be so sloppy up there, all snow for the Twins. And my grades aren't due till the 29th - maybe NOT finishing can act like my library book. I always take a library book - and make the kids do this too - when I fly, because it means I'll have to get back to return it. Let's hope it all comes off as scheduled.

Deb's-busted-thumb-using-up-the-leftovers-cranberry-chutney

This was going to be called "holiday exhaustion" when I started it but did not finish it yesterday.

But, I took the day off to cook for a 50th anniversary party I have tomorrow at the dining club. The woman in the couple is the author of a series of books called "Eat Smart In [country name here]. She has done 10 books, so we're making a dish from each country. Fortunately, I am only doing Mexico, Sicily, India, Morocco, Brazil, and Turkey - other family members are bringing the other countries.

So I slept in, and hand-delivered some cookie boxes, and didn't do as much cooking as maybe I should have, but I feel somewhat recovered. My broken thumb is aching a bit, but right now it's the corollary ailments that are bugging me most - my left hand is tired & beat up from doing so much, and my skin is dry since it's too hard to lotion up with one hand.

The Mexican dish is a flan, flavored with tequila, and tomorrow it will be flamed with tequila after it's un-molded. It looks great so far. Sicily is what we used to called Spiedini at one of my restaurant jobs - little beef rolls on a stick with onions and bay leaf. I only made the filling so far - it's going to be meat stuffed with meat; the filling is onions, bread crumbs, a little tomato, and prosciutto and salami. They're served on a bed of fried potatoes - I boiled the potatoes, and will fry them tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to make a pineapple curry, orange salad, kale with garlic, and zucchini filo pie. I don't think it'll be too much of a problem, even though I am slow with the hand.

It's kind of fun to be cooking all this stuff from other countries - it's not buy fresh buy local, that's for sure, but reminds me of my youth in the 1970s, when it was fashionable to try to recreate other countries' food, and the experience of eating it. Maybe more politically correct than fashionable, or at least it was a liberal thing to do - looking for authentic experiences in the depths of suburbia, respect for other cultures and all that.

And things were certainly not as fusion-y as they are now - we never would have eaten this chutney in baked Brie - but that's how I'm going to use it.

2 TBLS olive oil
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
5 quarter sized slices of crystallized ginger, diced
1 jalapeno pepper, diced - remove some or all of the seeds to reduce the hotness
1 16-ounce bag of cranberries, fresh or frozen (no need to thaw, if they are frozen)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup apple cidar
1 tsp. coriander
2 tsp. brown mustard seeds

Heat the oil in a 2 quart or larger saucepan, and add the onion, ginger, and jalapeno - I ground them up in the food processor, to be easy on my thumb, but even if your hands are working fine, you can use the processor if you like. Cook until softened, and then add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook uncovered until all the cranberries are popped and the chutney is thickened, about 20 minutes. Use as the filling in baked Brie, or serve with cheese and crackers.

2009 cookie plattering slideshow

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Best cookie shot

I think this is probably the best cookie shot - John set my camera to focus nice and wide.

The party was last night, and I packed the first four boxes to ship this afternoon - already used up a 100-count box of ziploc sandwich bags. I'm beat. We just ordered Thai for dinner, and I'd like to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the evening.

Last cookie kind

This year the last cookie kind is the ruggelach, or nukhorns. That never happens, but I never broke my thumb halfway through cookie season before, either.

Most years, I make about 4 pounds of butter worth of ruggelach - about 4X my recipe - and I get the big square container plus a 5 quart ice cream bucket full. I usually try to make them on a Saturday, and spend half the day rolling them out. This year, I made 2 pounds of butter into the dough this morning, and just spent about 2 1/2 hours start to almost finish - I have to rubber glove my cast and go wash the cookie sheets. The big square container is full, but not to the brim, plus a small, probably 1-qt., plastic on the side.

Here's 2006 - 3 buckets - for comparison:

It will just have to be enough - maybe I'll only send them, and not put any out at the party ...

I think I like iPhoneroid better than the regular pictures - I love how it is posterized just enough, and it's got those magenta highlights - everything just comes out yellow when I shoot at night.

Last night I drank a cup of cocoa with a shot of bourbon thrown in and then took one of the vicodins with tylenol I got for my thumb pain, and I was sort hungover this morning. Tonight I'm sticking to regular tylenol, and the bourbon in a hot toddy. On to appetizers.

Snow Day

So last night we got about a foot of snow. There were blizzard predictions, tho - high winds and whiting out and drifting - most of which did not happen because the snow was too heavy and wet. It's 27° out there now, supposed to keep dropping, (it has been all day) and a high of only 7° tomorrow. Everyone freaked out and the Madison Schools and the university announced they'd be closed today by 10:00 p.m. last night. The buses aren't running, most streets are not plowed. Mark shoveled for three hours this morning - I got excused because of my thumb. I have a blue cast now; came home with it yesterday afternoon.
I made the ruggelach dough and pecan bars so far today - and waffles for breakfast at 1:00 when Mark was finally done shoveling. The cast is actually more comfortable than the splint, there's no big piece of metal jabbing my palm like the splint. It's also more secure - I feel more like it's in the right place and I won't rehurt myself. But I don't quite have an oppose-able thumb on my right hand - I can't really clamp my right index finger and my thumb together. So I am fucking awkward, or as Mark so much more kindly says, "you're not fucking awkward, your cast is fucking awkward."

Dancing with tears in my eyes

Dancing with tears in my eyes is an X song that I've always liked - I've never checked, but it could be a cover of a country standard. In an NPR interview, on the release of his album with the Sadies, I loved it when John Doe said, "Of course I've always listened to country music" (subtext being even though I'm an aging punker), "I'm a white guy."

Anyways it seems a good analogy - carrying on in the face of pain, for this year's cookie season, because this is going to go down in history as the cookie season when I broke my thumb, and carried on baking.

I'm in this splint now, and I go to see the hand specialist Tuesday. They already emailed him the x-rays of my hand they took Friday - I wanted to ask for a copy. They used a big old hunk of film to capture the image, but scanned it immediately and it showed up on the screen in the corner of the room. Kinda like John's process, with his large format camera.

So my two big worries are: 1) will I have more or less mobility after they cast me or do whatever they're gonna do Tuesday? I think I'm gonna try to make the ruggelach Monday night, and I am almost more worried about the Rose's Crescents, since every one of those center dents that makes the boomerang shape is the tip of my right thumb; and 2) when I go to this hand doc Tuesday, are they going to say I have permanently damaged myself? I mean, it's my right thumb, and I am right handed, and I'd like to have it actually work for another 30-40 years.

It also means not too many pictures - note the blurry quality in the left-hand-held iPhone picture - my camera shooting style kinda depends on a good right thumb. I'll try to get lots at the party.

Meanwhile, I'm getting really good at wiping down the countertops lefty, even my OCD wiping up the puddles under the dish drainer, that must be done as the close to any dish washing session. In fact, I'd have to say that I'm better at wiping counters lefty than I am at wiping my own ass, but perhaps that'll come with more practice.

Not a good night

So I hope that last night was the nadir of cookie baking. I tried out a new Martha recipe for little ginger cookies, rolled in coarse sugar - and the vital step that Martha left out was you have to chill the dough - it's like soup at first mix. Even after chilling overnight, the dough was sticky.

My plan was to mix up the dough for slice & bakes: the candied fruit cookies (although I used all dried, no glowing red cherries); the windmill cookies; and the pistachio-dried-cranberry that everyone raved about last year. The candied fruit cookie logs are fine, I think - we'll know after I bake them tonight. The windmill dough was much stickier than I remember it, but tasty - and I think it'll bake OK too. The real tragedy was the pistachio-dried-cranberry. The recipe list of ingredients includes egg - 4 of them since I quadrupled the batch - remember I said everyone loved them last year - but it is for brushing on the dough logs so you can roll them in sugar and it will stick. I put the eggs into the batter - so it was sticky, too. I made a test pan this morning and they are softer blander cookies, but essentially the same - I'll try to not to tell, and maybe no one will notice.

And I hurt my right thumb - caught it on a bannister and gave it a nasty wrench. I have to pull the cookie sheets out of the oven lefty, because righty hurts too much.

Sigh. Well, things'll have to get better from now. And, after all, it's only cookies....

Good thumb left, bad thumb right

Cookie fret

I went to bed in a state of mild cookie depression last nigh, fearing that nothing's coming out right - the Biberli are dented, the pine nut macaroons are too brown and there's not enough of them, the ginger creams are too hard and there's not enough of them, either - and when I work up this morning, all I could think of was should I do over any kinds. In other years, I've had a few make-overs. It also seems like my aches & pains are worse this year, too - that pain in the back of my neck is almost intolerable, and I don't seem as able to self-massage it out by rotating my shoulders as easily. Last night I gave up on baking and went to blogging, and it hurt just to sit in the chair.

But, a night's sleep and hope springs eternal - after fretting about a re-do, I went on about the day. Initially getting work there was just too much administrivia. Hadda to go meet a plumber at noon, and now the dining club house needs a new water heater - but the rebate from the lead line replacement will cover it, so it's a wash - ha!

And it's sunny and 50 degrees - which does kind of bother me at this time of year - golbal climate change fears aside, it needs to be in the 40s to make the vestibule a good cookie storage chamber - but it is nice to walk outside on a sunny 50-degree December day! I stopped in the co-op, and got mistletoed; got to kiss the co-op services manager on the cheek - and somehow, on the walk back to the office, I was happy. I know what I'm making tonight - ginger slices, gemberkoekjes, spoon cookies - a quadruple batch, because they were so well-received when I made them for the 1st time last year, Mexican wedding cookies - and I am just going to let it go - no do-overs - no apologies - it will all be just fine. And I might start taking some Advil for aches & pains.

Cookie Season. Thanksgiving. Cookie Season

Whoo - everyone said it was the best Thanksgiving ever - I haven't written about it, nor posted the pix, till today - this post is only dated Saturday because I wrote the title & saved it to finish Monday. The main thing that impressed me, when I looked at the shots of the table, was the height of the pile of meat on the platter - ably carved off the bird by my vegetarian brother, and visiting friend, Chad (Chad does have a few Thanksgivingses as the head of the household under his belt, so he should be good at carving). We did totally go into traditional sex roles - the men watched football, the women cooked. But the clean up crew was completely co-ed, so we broke out of stereotype as the night went on.

Here's the menu -
Appetizers:
Chex mix (called crack mix by my brother, for its addictiveness)
Leek confit, with goat cheese, to spread on long rise no-knead bread
some amazing cheese, that Lea brought, especially the Gouda with fenugreek
I made some little cheese & mustard crackers that were good the first day, but went soft pretty quick - served with apple butter, which seemed like a good idea, but I didn't like the sugar free variety I got at the co-op - not sweet enough. Shoulda got Smuckers
pickled carrots

Dinner:
two kinds of cranberry sauce, plain and this clementine and pomegranate variety that was my niece Mimi's offering - she also made customized name plates for everyone, shaped like her hand turkeys, with attributes, like Mark has a computer and we both had the librarian book.
Jen's cheese grits
Lea's wild rice salad
Brussels sprouts with chestnuts (the chestnuts were a little hard - they were roasted from fresh; the ones in the stuffing came in a jar)
Turkey with chestnut stuffing - I had a little container of stuffing frozen since last year, and instead of mixing it in, I fried it up and put it out on a big tray with forks while the men were watching football and it disappeared - even though I got a few gripes about putting it out on a common platter in these days of swine flu - they just came and got individual plates, to avoid contaminating each other
mashed potatoes - Dave mashed 'em in the pot, so they were less fluffy than if I'd done them in the mixer
Sweet potatoes with chile & lime
Vegetable stir fry with broccoli & daikon and peppers and Hoisin sauce

Desserts:
Pumpkin mousse with crispy spice cookies in the shape of turkeys
Apple pie with leaf cutouts on top - we all made it together on Wednesday night
Cranberry frangipane tart - it was a Martha - good in concept, not so hot in execution. I made home made cranberry jam for the bottom. Next year I will use the jam in a thinner tart, instead, something like an Italian crostata

Meanwhile, I made 2 kinds of cookies - the bar type lebkuchen and the Moravian ginger thins - before Thanksgiving, and the Simnel cake. I had to do another big shopping at the warehouse grocery for more cookie ingredients, Saturday, so real cookie production didn't really recommence till Sunday, although I made the jam cookies Saturday. So far, I'd have to say that the fruit cake types are coming out the best this year - I made the fruitcake gems last night, and they are lovely. Mollie Wizenberg's fruit nut balls are looking good. But the marzipan-stuffed spice cookies, the Swiss biberli, not withstanding that I thought they were going to be the best ever, because the dough went together so well, literally fell rather flat - the little wedges deflated on being removed from the oven - you can see the little dent in the top in the ones below. The pine nut macaroons batter tasted good, but I only ended up with about 55, and one tray was a little dark on the bottoms. And I think I must've left the baking soda out of the ginger creams - they are hard and small.

Oh well, I'm giving myself and the oven a break tonight, I only made doughs and frosted things, no baking.

Bottom of the vegetable bin rice salad

Last winter I tried to perfect the bottom of the vegetable bin stir fry, using up a carrot or two, broccoli stems, cabbage, an onion, over rice, or maybe ramen noodles. Tonight I tried it using some components from a sushi salad recipe that I tested for a forthcoming Japanese cookbook, written by Sarah Marx Feldner, who also writes about monthly for the Milwaukee Journal.

In Sarah's sushi salad, you cook some rehydrated dried shiitake mushrooms and diced carrot in water & soysauce - so this sushi salad has that, plus beet greens (where that faint pink is coming from), broccoli stems, and a matchsticked kohlrabi that cooked up surprisingly sweet.

Then I went up and polished all my mom's copper-bottomed Revere ware, that's hanging over the kitchen sink on peg board, like much of our house in the 60s & 70s and just like Julia's kitchen, too.
This is Dorie Greenspan's picture of Julia's kitchen.

Divided

There's a common recipe ingredient list instruction, where the amount of something that you need will be given followed by the word "divided"; e.g. 1 3/4 cups sugar, divided. I tend to screw this up myself, since I often kind of cook from the ingredient list without really reading the instructions, so I put in all the sugar when I was only supposed to put in that 3/4 cup. A lot of times I alter the method with my own method, because I know what I'm doing, yeah right. The idea behind the "divided" instruction is that it's better for the recipe to lay out the total amount of an ingredient needed right at the outset. There are other styles of recipe writing; Joy of Cooking tends to give ingredients embedded in the method, like the lebkuchen recipe I just followed which begins:

Cook
2/3 cup honey or molasses
1/3 cup sugar
3 TBLS butter
over low heat stirring until the butter is melted

Stir in 1 cup flour
that has been sifted with 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt

Add
1 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped almonds
etc. etc.

I made the honey butter syrup, mixed all the other ingredients in a big bowl, then stirred in the syrup. But I had to read the recipe a little carefully to apprehend the fact that it really needed two cups of flour, not just one.

Anyways, I feel kind of like that 1 3/4 cups sugar, divided, right now. I am trying to start cookie season, at the same time as planning Thanksgiving dinner, and it's making my little brain hurt. Thursday night I made my master list of cookie kinds, and yesterday I went shopping partly for cookie ingredients, and partly for Thanksgiving food.

This morning I got up and walked, then baked some scones, to eat today and to have around when family shows for Thanksgiving, and made the lebkuchen. But I'm also making the list of Thanksgiving apps, and taking time off tomorrow to clean and straighten the house like my bro's doing at his place.

The main thing I can't figure out is where to stash all the cooking mags and recipes I have pulled out for cookie season, when I go into total tidying mode tomorrow. Usually I just leave them on the dining room table for the duration, but that won't work with this year's divided cookie season, with Thanksgiving in the middle.

I am soo confused.