Busy Weekend

So, this weekend, rather than take the time to post about our dining in Reno I spent the time getting our finances together and recovering from our Christmas splurge and to do the big bulk buying/ stocking up for the kitchen. With all the crazy Nostradamus shows on and the bad economy news it seems like I'm jumping on the "oh crap" band wagon, but I'm not, really. This is just what I do. I love to shop for groceries, I know, I'm weird. I love having a full freezer of meat, ice cream, pizza dough various homemade stocks and other staples. It makes me feel safe. It must come from having parents who grew up during the depression and lived through WWII. I consider myself lucky to have picked up their frugalness.

I also felt inspired by the Homesteading Housewife's post about batch cooking breakfast burrito's which I tried on a micro level and was super pleased with the results. So after I got home from my trip to Winco/Costco/Grocery Outlet I proceeded to make 20 some odd buckwheat applesauce (used my own homemade canned sauce) pancakes and set them up to freeze for breakfasts throughout the next couple of weeks. I also engaged my bread making machine in some pizza dough creation while I was cooking up pancakes. I now have two big balls of pizza dough in my freezer just waiting to be thawed, covered in sauce, cheese and leftovers from the fridge (so much cheaper then buying the tube of dough, the Boboli things which are nasty, doing take and bake from a place like Papa Murpy's or having it delivered, which isn't an option where I live. Gotta love being rural). Then I proceeded to separate and seal up all the different meat I bought with my trusty Foodsaver so that the meat was all in manageable levels for our family. I hope to do more breakfast burritos plus some dinner burrito's. Tomorrow the slow cooker will be pulled out and readied for a pork rib roast and I'm leaning towards some kind of Mexican recipe. Something we can eat with refried beans, rice and warm tortillas, and then I can take the leftovers and freeze in burrito's or set aside for tacos for lunch.

Man! I'm on food fire!

Wo Wo! Back up a bit!

Well, I know I said I was going to post about our trip to Reno, but tonight I was playing with my new toy and trying to sync my phone to it and I forgot I had pictures of Christmas Eve dinner and a few pics from Christmas. I think I'll post those first, then share our trip to Reno with you.
So here you go:
First our candle lit dinner, then a plate of dinner. The plan was to have crab (it's crab season here right now) with boiled red potatoes and corn on the cob. Well, I ran out of time to get crab and ended up cooking lamb shanks instead. Oh darn! Not! The cake picture is a traditional Christmas Cake I made from my Mother In Law's recipe. It seemed like it was going to be like a nasty fruit cake, but it wasn't. It was actually quite good.











Then! There's Christmas! Nigella Lawson's gingered ham (recipe can be found here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/nigella-lawson/ginger-glazed-ham-recipe/index.html)
My potato, celery root and onion casserole and buttered green beans. Not a lot but YUM!
Our good friend from Eureka brought a delicious blueberry pie from Marie Calendars and some whipped cream to top it all off. An awesome Christmas at home!










































And then there is me, after a several (many) glasses of wine, holiday cheer, and popping the Christmas crackers. Wearing my golden paper crown from my cracker and reveling in my Christmas happiness.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and much prosperity in the new year.

Well, I've still been too busy to post about our trip to Reno, and I've been a bit under the weather lately and not up for any writing. But this morning I was reading MFK Fisher, How To Cook a Wolf, and I ran onto a paragraph that I just loved.


So here it is, a little food for thought.....





"Why is it worse, in the end, to see an animal's head cooked and prepared for our pleasure than a thigh or a tail or a rib? If we are going to live on other inhabitants of this world we must not blind ourselves with illogical prejudices, but savor to the fullest the beasts we have killed."





I have to agree fully!





More on "How To Cook A Wolf":





This is a great book written in 1942. Considering our recent economic and war situation, this 66 year old book has some timely advice.





How to Cook a WolfNew York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1942A series of essays on how to live and dine sanely and pleasurably during wartime and within tight budgets.



This is a great book, available at: Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-M-Fisher/dp/0865473366
And Powell's at: http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780865473362

Happy Cooking!

I'm Back! but.......

Well, made it back from a very nice trip to Reno visiting family and friends. We're not gamblers or skiers so that wasn't our reason for going. Visiting family I have not seen in years was, as was visiting my old college roommate and her family. Very enjoyable and relaxing and taking our girls ice skating for the first time ever (my second time only in 12 years) was a blast! We made it home late last night after a long drive involving stopping to play in the snow on the way and make snowmen. (And a desperate search for a pizza parlor that wasn't a chain in Redding. Don't bother,they're pretty much all chains and what there is are all in the the mall area.) Much to my happy surprise my Christmas present that had not arrived by Christmas was here. It was well worth the wait. A Mac book pro from my husband! Woo Hoo! The unfortunate part of this, other than the very gift my husband gave me is causing him neglect, is that I've been so busy trying to get it set up, and play with it that I don't have any food articles to post on my blog ready yet. I have stuff to post, but I haven't had time to get it together since I've been so busy playing with my new toy. So, please forgive me as I play with my new toy and figure it out. Pretty soon I hope to be posting all kinds of interesting stuff.
Happy New Year to everyone!

I'll be gone for a bit

Off to the biggest little city for some vacating. Won't be posting for about a week. Hopefully I'll be back with some good culinary stories.
Seeya in about a week!

Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Japanese Tea Ceremony has fascinated me, probably since Karate Kid. I'm not sure why. The discipline, the ritual, the sacredness perhaps. It's just beautiful. I guess when you don't have those kinds of rituals in your life, you're fascinated by it in others. I again became fascinated by the ritual after reading Memoirs of a Geisha. Japanese society and their rituals became even more intriguing. To top it off I love Maccha. I'm not a huge tea fan. I have lots of it in my cupboard, because I'm always trying to make myself like it. I figure it would be better to drink it in the morning rather than coffee, in order not to raise my blood pressure. I should drink chamomile in the evenings rather than wine, but I just can't enjoy it the same. But! The one tea I do enjoy is powdered green tea, or maccha. The flavor is just so intense. It's got a brightness to it that I can't explain and it goes so well with something slightly sweet. So, I began my hunt for Maccha, both here in Humboldt and on line. I had no success, until on my and my husbands anniversary we walked into a little shop called All Under Heaven on 212 F St. in Eureka CA. They had little tins of Maccha along with tea bowls and bamboo whisks. I told my husband, "that's what I want for Christmas". Well he couldn't remember the whisk, but he did remember the Maccha. Yeah Me!
So, last night I pulled out my tin of Christmas Maccha served up the girls, me and my husband an impromptu Japanese Tea Ceremony. This is what you do:

First you clean the serving bowls and boil the water. Serve a sweet treat before serving the tea (I served dried figs) You mix the Maccha and water and whisk it until it's frothy. The contrast of the bitterness of the tea and the sweetness of the treat served before represents harmony. (I just love Japanese traditions - they're so cool).

When you receive the tea or chauwan take it in your right hand, place the cup in your left palm and turn clockwise three times before you drink. When you're done, slurp loudly to express how good the tea was.

Wipe the cheuwan where your lips touched with our right hand, turn counter clockwise and return to the host.

This type of tea ceremony is called a chakai and will take from 20 minutes to an hour. (We probably squeezed it into 10 minutes - that's about all you can manage with a 10 and 5 year old.) We were no where near honoring a traditional tea ceremony. That would take years of practice, but it was fun introducing our children to another culture's traditions. One that can be centering, artful, even religious. The Japanese have so many beautiful traditions that are artful and centering. I think it's wonderful that many of them center around food and drink, such as this tea ceremony. I think our culture could use more sacredness around our food and drink. It would make eating more precious, and less of a sport, and more of a wholesome part of our lives, rather than an issue.

I think I'll consider making more of my own sacred traditions when it comes to food in my and my family's lives. Maybe you should too?

Christmas cookie frenzie

Sunday night was the night to make Christmas cookies, after a long day of decorating the house and warming up from our trip to the snow to get our tree the day before. Of course we had to have gingerbread men, so being lazy and tired I picked up a package of gingerbread cookie mix and we went to town making cookies

My oldest helped me mix the batter, roll it out with grandma's rolling pin and cut out the shapes. She's old enough now to stick them in the oven without my help. God help me the teenage years are speeding towards me like a truck with no breaks on an 8 % downhill grade!
After the first batch cooled my youngest proceeded to decorate.....

Happily my best friend "auntie" Laurie stopped by and spent a Christmassy evening with us. She seemed to more then enjoy herself helping the girls out with decorating. It was fun to talk about good times we've had with our families, and the times we've had together over the years, and to just be silly kids with the girls and make a big mess of the kitchen. The first round. Looking pretty Christmassy.

My oldest having waaaay too much fun with the sugar shaker.....The first batch, looking quite proper and fitting for the holiday season.

Then things took a disturbing turn. Maybe it was getting late, or the girls were tired and hungry, or maybe it was the beer and wine auntie Laurie and I had been indulging in. We'll never know, but suddenly Bat Wings appear!Then this thing Cece made. It looks like a character from Shreck mixed with something from Steven King. Why do I keep hearing "redrum" in my head?

Then the aliens begin to arrive.....welcome to area 51The final mass of cookies..... then we sat down to eat some dinner and sing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs. Thank goodness the neighbors don't live too close to us. Overall it was an extremely enjoyable evening. Thank goodness no one had a recorder while we were singing. I'd hate the think we all didn't sound as good as we thought at the time. Enjoying our gingerbread men, ghosts, aliens, batwings, and whatnot's and singing the 12 days of Christmas over and over until we just couldn't stand it anymore . That's what the holidaze are about.

Merry Christmas!