Snow and the Full Moon

What is it about being snowed-in that requires baking? I made some dreadful cornbread yesterday, when the snow first started to stick outside.

I should tell you about my cornbread fixation. As a good Southern woman, I naturally love cornbread. But I can't stop experimenting with it--trying new recipes, tweaking recipes that I know work.

Last New Year's Day, I had a cornbread tasting. Plain, made with buttermilk. Bread with cracklins. Bread with whole wheat flour and niblet corn. Bread with extra eggs to make it rich.

We had a good time. In addition to corn bread, we had black-eyed peas and collards.

Yesterday, I discovered some white corn meal in the freezer and tried out the recipe on the back of the bag. It's very cake-y and tangy.

Not bad, exactly. But not corn bread.

My favorite recipe for cornbread is called Perfect Corn Bread and it's in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that I've had since grad school.

Crispy on the outside, moist on the inside, draped with fresh butter.

Maybe I'll go make some right now.

Tsk, Tsk. Neglectful Wench

Greetings, all. And welcome to a glorious new year of Pagan gardening, cooking, eating and food preservation.

Most of us are doing our bit for Haiti relief but I really must commend one of our local vegetarian restaurants. Rosetta's in Asheville does a marvelous cauldron of soup benefit most Sunday evenings. There's an enormous cauldron on a tripod, set over a gas flame. And there's fresh cornbread.

All of this is for a donation and it is an odd and wonderful group of folks, never the same from week to week.

Last week and this week, Haiti relief was the recipient.

So it is possible to do good, eat right and have a happy tummy.

I am sorry to report that the sub-zero weather here destroyed my fall-planted greens a couple of weeks ago. And now we are having The Deluge. So my dreams of early spinach, kale, collards and lettuce are a little thin on the ground--quite literally--these days.

Still, we soldier on, don't we?

What are you cooking and/or eating these days, hmmm?

Ginger Creams: a lovely holiday cookie

I just shared this recipe with a friend on Facebook, whose partner tried it this summer and raved about it. These were my favorite cookies growing up, and that says a lot, considering how often my mother baked cookies from scratch.

She made the usual chocolate chippers (that was what the recipe in the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook called them), and her roll-out sugar cookies at holiday time are still the best recipe I've found (it's flavored with fresh lemon juice and nutmeg,a nd so not bland like many sugar cookie recipes). She also made chocolate crinkles (my younger brother's favorite, and pressed cookies, and bow-ties (a bit like fried dough rolled in confectioner's sugar), and cookies known as Never Fail Cookies, a vanilla cookie with cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on them.

But Ginger Creams were my favorite. So here's the recipe. It comes from my mother, but since it's Scandinavian in origin (a Finnish bakery in Boston sold them for a while and they tasted identical to what I remembered from childhood), I think she may have gotten it from a friend of hers who was Swedish. In any case, I hope you will try baking them and enjoy them.

Ginger Creams

Dough should be chilled for at least one hour before baking.

Mix together thoroughly:
1/4 cup shortening (butter or margarine)
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses (light or dark, not blackstrap)
1/2 cup water

Sift together and blend in:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Chill dough.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Grease cookie sheets.
Drop by spoonfuls about two inches apart on cookie sheet.
Bake for about eight minutes (do not use bottom rack or cookies may burn).
While still slightly warm, frost with lemon or vanilla frosting. (I make a simple vanilla buttercream).

This wonderful cookie blog has a Raw Ginger Cream recipe that looks worthwhile.The photo above is what they more or less look like before frosting; thanks to food blog Two Frog Home for the nice photo.

By the way, I have been compiling my mother's dessert recipes (mostly cookies) and am going to put them into a cookbook. I also want to include some of my Dad's recipes (though most of his were not written down). A sort of memoir with recipes (wish I was the first person to thin of this, but apparently it has already been done before I got off my ass. Still, it's a good format for what I want to do, which is tell the stories of the prominence of food and food-related activities (cooking, growing, gathering, fishing, hunting) in my upbringing. Tentative Title: Pickled Garlic and Sweet Milk.

Alone Again. Naturally.

I've had some time on my own this week. I've gotten some stuff done but I've also gotten to eat whatever I want.

As it turns out, I've eaten pretty high on the hog.

After a long day at work on Sunday, I came home and baked fresh cornbread. I ate it with some fresh bean soup that I'd made the day before.

I've eaten salads and collard greens, lean chicken breasts and sauteed cabbage.

My main vice--if one can even call it that--was buying a grocery store bakery pumpkin pie on Tuesday evening. It has allowed me to have a cup of coffee and a sliver of pie, any time I want.

Now, that feels like a luxury to me.

I believe I'll have an apple, a banana and some organic peanut butter for dinner.

And a sliver of pie for dessert.

Turkey and Garlic

I am one of those folks who thinks that most anything can be sauteed in olive oil and garlic and thus rendered edible. The past few days that has been the turkey treatment here at the urban famrstead. Instead of merely plucking a gout of turkey flesh from its plastic fridge container, salting it liberally and munching on it as I write or work, I've been making a little more effort.

Okay, not much more. I start heating the olive oil in the cast iron pan, get the garlic from the fridge and toss in rather a lot. Then I chop the turkey--dark meat--into the hot oil, stir it up and get a bowl.

Turkey, garlic, oil.

Very good.

Tonight, I lobbed a couple of tablespoons of cooked sweet poes into the mix.

Also good.

We're near the end of the turkey leftovers, though I did freeze a lot of turkey. We'll bring that out for future meals and remember the juicy, orangeness of our Thanksgiving friend.

Now, I must decide if I am doing a dinner on the 25th. I have often done a big formal dinner, but this may be a relaxing year instead.

I'll keep you posted.

No Open Fire

...so the chestnuts were roasted in the oven. So much for romance.

But chestnuts are really yummy, especially roasted. You make little Xs on one plump side, so they don't explode in the oven. I roasted them at 425 for about 15 minutes. Because of the X, each succulent nut is easy to peel and the shell color is this rich warm brown.

They are good chopped and baked into dressing but we prefer to eat them out of hand. My husband's Italian family always has them after the big Thanksgiving meal, with wide slices of fresh fennel and assorted nuts-in-the-shell.

The turkey also spent time in the oven, being basted with olive oil and orange juice. Sweet and tender and very moist.

What did you have on your Thanksgiving table?

Cakes, Pumpkin Cheesecake and...The Day of Much Food

It's a hedgehog cake--my sister-in-law made it a couple of days ago and I was called in to be Icing Woman. She has a lovely Kitchen Aid mixer (for which she just got the pasta-making attachments) and it made quick work of the frosting adventure. We also did a nice smooth two layer cake for my niece. So when it came time for this one, I picked it out with the icing spatula.

Tomorrow is that problematical American holiday, Thanksgiving. Problematical because we were raised on some peculiar mythological stories of pious Pilgrims and docile Natives that bore little resemblance to what really happened when Europeans came to this continent.

But many of us love those stories and the guilt we feel about the Empirical adventure that is America is often too much to bear. I want to suggest something to you.

Enjoy tomorrow. Enjoy the food, and the life we live here in America. Try to enjoy your family, try to be kind to those who aren't always kind to you.

Remember the people in your community who don't have enough to eat. Don't worry about the whole wide world--there are certainly lots of hungry folks everywhere. Focus instead on those in your town.

And, if you can afford it, buy some extra non-perishable food items and donate them. To your church or temple, to the food bank, to the homeless shelter.

You can't feed every hungry belly, but that can of tuna and that bag of dried beans will make a tummy in your town feel better. You can do that much. We can all do that much.

Ditch the guilt, be kind to your family and enjoy life for a change. And if you can do even a small thing to help another person, then do it.

Life is sweet and sometimes we forget that. Try to remember it tomorrow.