Christmas Menu

I feel like I have so much to do before my family comes next week...I'm still menu planning and that includes the cookies I'm baking this weekend! The cookies I'm planning on making are snickerdoodles (made some this weekend so I already have the dough frozen), compost cookies, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, chocolate earthquake cookies and whoopie pies. M is a big fan of chocolate whoopie pies with peppermint frosting..he's fixated on some that his mom used to make when he was little and every recipe she thinks it was, he assures her that wasn't it. I think he's given up on finding 'that' recipe now, and is just looking for a solid whoopie pie.

I am planning appetizers for Christmas Eve but have yet to pick them. I am considering doing miniature chicken alfredo in a large shell and a phyllo dough pizza that I've made befor and is very tasty and very easy. Aside from that, I'm unsure.

The main course for Christmas Day is a standing rib roast recipe from Bon Appetit a few years ago which was excellent the last time we made it. There is a spinach and porcini mushroom stuffing that goes with it, I think I'm going to make an au gratin potato casserole (also from Bon Appetit), rolls, I need to decide on a vegetable yet...

For Christmas morning, I'm making cinnamon buns.

I've started making my shopping lists and timetables....but I still feel so scattered!

On top of the meal planning we need to:

clean the house
get liquor
iron the curtains in the dining room (we just put them up right out of the package with the intentions of ironing and of course never did)
find A a holiday outfit
get a tree
decorate the tree
bake the cookies
find the rest of the Christmas decorations

I'm sure the week is going to fly by...I can't believe one week from tomorrow the family is starting to filter in!

Santa! Cookies!

I'm ridiculously excited about taking A to see Santa on Sunday! M thinks it's silly because she obviously won't remember it and no amount of explanation (it's for us, not her) seems to get him in the spirit.

It's at the town country club which has a nice little restaurant too, we might parlay this trip to Santa into our first lunch outing with little Y since I'm sure the place will be over run with small children...I'll be ok with being out with her there if she starts to cry.

I'm plotting what outfit she should wear, I think one that Grandma Y gave her will fit the bill nicely.

This weekend we are having a couple over...I have to make some cookies and pick up some egg nog. What cookies should I make? I'm debating between our friend B's snickerdoodles or a mint chocolate cookie recipe that J's sister sent. The downside to the mint cookie is that M won't touch it if it has chocolate so the snickerdoodle's just might win.

I have to seriously get finalizing the Christmas menu..did I mention I'm cheating and making the same meal I made last time I hosted? I really don't have time to sit and pour over cookbooks at this point so I'm taking the easy road...sort of. Those recipes weren't the easiest to make. Next weekend is the annual cookie baking day with S and A and the kids, so I have to figure out exactly what I'm making. I'm excited that this year there will actually be lots of people at my house to eat them! We have to find time to get the tree also....so many things to do and not enough time!

Thanksgiving Recap and Other Assorted Tidbits

Thanksgiving was nice, M's parents came down for the holiday and it's always fun to have them. It's always a nice low key time, full of cooking, wine drinking, and now....baby ogling. We had the usual suspects: wine, turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade rolls (my contribution), green beans, cranberry sauce, and stuffing.

The next morning, I maded a buttermilk crumble coffeecake thing, everyone else liked it, I found it a bit boring and I don't think I would use that recipe again.

The inlaws left on Saturday so we decided to check out a new bookstore/cafe that recently opened in our town that really has nothing of interest. I was thinking it wouldn't be very good, a half hearted attempt at both, but we were pleasantly surprised! The parking lot has been full since it opened (this place has been listed as coming soon since we moved here a year and a half ago). It's very cozy inside, the cafe offers some sandwiches/wraps and salads and an assortment of baked goods and coffee. The cafe has a roaring fire with leather couches and chairs around it and lots of tables. People were lingering, reading magazines and chit chatting. Little Y was a trooper, she was quiet the whole time and was entertained by this little salt shaker toy that she has. We were sort of doing a trial run for actually bringing her to a restaurant and she passed. The next time we are free we might try going to lunch, like the old days!

In Little Y updates, she has now tried rice cereal and contrary to what my mother said, she is still waking up every three hours at night. There have been two times where she has eaten the entire serving of rice cereal, tonight I think I'm going to double the serving and see what she does with that. Maybe she'll sleep if the quantity is more...

We got some holiday decorations up yesterday, we bought two topiaries to go next to the front door, and a berry wreath for the door. I have some berry garland that I wrapped around the light in the barrel by our drive way and M wants to try to put some lights on the topiaries today. I need to get around to picking out this years cookies and finalize the Christmas menu so I can place an order with the butcher. Due to Little Y's arrival, both sides of the family are coming to our house this year so there's lots of menu planning to be done. My MIL had a great suggestion of having some of the other guests cook for some of the non Christmas nights since people are going to be here for a few nights before and after the actual holiday.

We aren't really doing gifts this year, although I keep teasing M that if he has the desire to buy me something, a nice new kitchen stove would make his wife very happy...and I'm sure he wants his wife and mother of his child to be happy, no? I really enjoy Christmas with no gifts, it's so much less stress and now more than ever, we just enjoy having family around, drinking holiday drinks, telling family stories for the millionth time, and laughing, laughing, laughing.

Momofuku Compost Cookie

So I was really excited to try these cookies...the premise is that you make a chocolate chip cookie dough recipe and add in some salty and some sweet and skip the chocolate chips. We decided to use potato chips and peanut butter M&Ms.

The recipe is a bit odd, asking you to mix once all ingredients are integrated for a whopping ten minutes!

We threw in the first batch and they completely flattened and burned, we had to scrape and scrape just to get them off the pan. I read the comments on the bottom of the recipe and almost everyone is having the same problem. Some people are freezing the dough (which I'm now doing), and lowering the temp to 375 and adding 1/3c more flour. We'll see if this helps. I hope so because these were going to be a thank you for the baby gifts that M's work group gave us. I'll keep you posted on how they turn out.

Make this recipe with reservations for now...

Ok new info...first I tried freezing the dough for about two hours and cooking at 375, still flat as pancakes. Then I added 1/3c flour, refrigerated for 24 hours, and cooked at 375 and that finally did the trick. After all was said and done, they are good but not great. Next time, I would just make a basic chocolate cihp cookie recipe and do the add ins instead of chocolate chips. This was just totally not worth it.

Post Holiday Wrap Up

• Classes done
• Clinical done
• Wonderful trip home for Christmas with no flight delays!
• Cookies all turned out great this year, might have some new keepers for future years. The neighbors said they devoured them
• Kitties back from boarding, did well and got good report cards!
• Back to work today but it's dead here, thank god.

Cookie Day

Another successful cookie day has been had by one and all...

The menu for this year:
Snickerdoodle Sandwich cookies
Voted the best of the day by all participating. I used a recipe I found online for the actual snickerdoodle cookies and used the sandwich cookie idea from a Better Homes and Garden magazine from last year.

Peanut Butter Bites
Also quite good and considered a keeper for next year. The dough is nice and peanut buttery too. Basically, it's an inverse peanut butter blossom but using a Reese's pb cup. You place it in the center of the dough, put more dough on top so that it's completely encased. Espcially good warm!

Sugar Cookies
This year I found a recipe that uses cake mix. Very good and moist but I think I prefer the other two.

Puppy Chow
How can you go wrong with this?

I made one batch of each. We gave a bunch to S and A and some to our neighbors so we actually don't have many left. I may just send the rest with M to work if my willpower is measuring high tomorrow morning!

Weekend Recap

This weekend, I sort of picked out the cookies I'm going to make this year but the long list needs to become a shorter list. There are several variations on a theme that will be reduced to the best on the list (hopefully).

We also put out some Christmas lights on the porch and the shrubs. We always thought we had a ton of lights until we had something more to decorate than just a tree. For next year, we will need at least 4 more sets of lights but we're going to wait until everything is on clearance before we do that, especially since we aren't even here this year for Christmas. Next year, I would like to get some more of the red berry garland I got on clearance at Pottery Barn a few years ago. We have it going up some spindles on the top of the porch but it's a little sparse. I would also like to get some kind of green garland and bow for the little lamp we have outside near the driveway.

We also decided since we are not going to be here this year, we are going to skip the tree. I'm so burned out from life and the semester that it just seems like so much energy to go and pick out a tree in the cold. This also means that we would have to buy more lights and we briefly looked this weekend and things were really picked over or we couldn't find lights similar to what we already have. Our other concern is how Clete will be with the tree, he tries to eat everything so I'm pretty sure we have our answer. If we were hosting Christmas this year, we would certainly get one but the only people coming to our house before Christmas are S and A and the kids and I'm sure eldest E would love nothing more than to go after the ornaments on the tree. Doesn't seem worth it this year.

We also did our Christmas cards this weekend, just have to get the stamps so we can send them.

In upcoming holiday plans, we have a Christmas party this weekend at one of the band members house. He has a party every year where he airs National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, no one actually pays attention to it because we're all busy eating and drinking. He has a small one bedroom condo and crams about 40 people in there so it gets loud, so if anyone is actually interested in watching the movie they best do it on their own time.

The following weekend, S and A and the tiny ones are coming over to bake Christmas cookies. We have done it 3 out of the past 4 years and it's always a good time and I definitely eat my quota of cookie batter (even though I hear my mother scolding me like a little devil on my shoulder the whole time I'm doing it).

A few days after that we fly home! We're only there for a few days and most of those will contain holiday related goodness so I only have one night to hang out with J and meet her fiance! I'm really looking forward to seeing her, it's been quite awhile!

CoCoCoCoCookie Time

In 2 weeks, S and A and the tiny ones are coming to Y manor for our annual cookie baking festivities. I'm trying to decide on what cookies to make, I usually rely on Food.com's 12 Days of Cookie but it's Day 5 and they are relatively uninspired as far as my tastes go. I guess I will have to start my search elsewhere.

Here is what I made last year:
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sugar Cookies
Ginger Crinkle
Vanilla Angels
Special K Bars

I feel like I can't not make the Chocolate Chip Cookies...that would be criminial. Then I am going to make sugar cookies using cake batter. The Ginger Crinkles were good but lots of work, so I might look for a variation on that. The Vanilla Angels were not good and I won't bother with those. If I do recall, I was required to buy whole vanilla beans at the cost of $12 and scrape out the innards to make vanilla sugar. Please. The Special K Bars were from the King Arthur Baking Sheet, those were good. I liked them more than Morgan though.

I think his work chums will benefit from the baking this year. After December 16, I won't be back at work until after the holidays. And we CERTAINLY do not need those delicious morsels sitting around the joint.

So my search will continue....I also have to make something to bring to S's party on Dec. 12th. I'm thinking of making these Salty Nut Bars that I made a few years back. They were very easy and quite a delicious morsel.

Weekend Recap

Friday-did nothing and got nothing accomplished. Whoop whoop!

Saturday-took a nice road trip to Mason New Hampshire to go to Parker's Maple Barn. As usual, it was a great drive filled with lots of pretty leaves and New Englandy quaintness. Pics to follow. I read an article in the Boston Globe about some foliage destinations and this was mentioned. They have a sugar shack and produce their own maple syrup in the spring. They also have a restaurant and gift shop, they make fresh maple doughnuts too. Of course, after our brunch we were too stuffed to think about having a doughnut. We could have gotten them to go but it seemed like the kind of thing one would want to have fresh....

We got home mid afternoon and were somewhat productive around the house. M washed the front steps with a deck cleaner because he's hoping to seal the steps before it snows. I did a few loads of laundry and did some home work. That night we watched the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was cuter and more fairy tale like than I thought it would be. Entertaining, but wouldn't call it the best movie of the year or anything.

Sunday-We ran some errands during the day (gym, Target, Lowe's, Home Good's, Hallmark store, packie) and then were invited to a Fake Thanksgiving at some friends of ours who are hosting for the first time this year. We were certainly into being their guinea pigs especially when we were told not to bring anything but wine! The dinner turned our very well and we left with full bellies!

Monday-M worked from home so it was almost like I was home by myself, he was holed up in the office all day. I did more laundry, read a little bit, worked on a few projects that are coming due in a few weeks, watched Dexter and worked on S's sweater. I have now joined the sleeves to the body and finished working the decreases. I'm about to start on the saddle around the shoulders. Won't be long now and S can wear his new forest green sweater in the crisp Vermont Fall! I also managed to make 2 fresh loaves of bread yesterday, the only thing I would change with this recipe is the addition of more salt! I think I have made this recipe before and thought that but neglected to make a note in the cookbook...but this time I did.

Upcoming week:
Class tonight
Test tomorrow night
Mom on Thursday night
Friday-nothing
Saturday-haircut
Sunday-visit to S and A to pick up our meat from the farm

Another Adventure

Tonight, my plan was to bake Lemon Cheesecake Bars with Fresh Blackberries after my trip to the gym and the grocery store. Steps 1 and 2 went well, I was just beginning to crush my graham crackers for the crust when M came upstairs telling me he smelled gas.

I went downstairs and I also caught a whiff of it, then just like that, it was gone. We thought we were going crazy, gave our noses a rest and then went back down a few minutes later. The central air had kicked on and we both smelled it again. We decided to call the gas company who told us to leave everything as is until the technician got there.

They sent someone out and he couldn't detect a leak, he soaped up the pipes three times and couldn't detect anything. So, if it happens again we're supposed to call back....

My cheesecake did get baked, with some trepidation, a few hours later than expected. It's just chilling now, no berry application tonight. If I were a morning person, I'd get up 15 minutes earlier and prep them. Because I'm not, the packaged berries will be accompanying me to work and I'll do it there :)

Happenings In Short

As usual, I have zero time to post but in short, here are the details of my life lately:

• Laptop almost died, M saved it. Hard drive #3 and still kicking
• Cellphone almost died, M saved it. He's not sure how
• Open houses last weekend,cute neighborhoods but horrible commute.
• Class today, no clinical Thursday. 3 classes left after today. Note to self: savor current and summer schedule, because Fall is going to suck the big one.
• Got new yarn from Webs from aniversary sale for 2 new sweaters for me
• S and A are having another boy
• Anniversary coming up this weekend, M has something planned but don't know what.
• New yarn came: One is camel colored, one is a burgundy/aubergine.
• Farm pick up last Sunday. Pick up switching to Saturdays for summer.
• Cookie taste test: Nestle if you like chocolate, Pillsbury if you don't.
• New running shoes this weekend. They call it persimmon, I call it bright orange.

This and That

Friday M's band played at the art gallery mentioned in the previous post with two other bands they frequently play with. It was a fun night, although driving that distance in unfamiliar territory is somethign I could have done without. Even with my GPS, I still manage to take wrong turns. I ended up getting there as they were about to go on, luckily I made it in time. I was thinking back to those high school kids that were there and how young they looked and then I dared to wonder how old they would even think I was....were they looking around thinking how much older everyone else was than them? Yikes...don't go there....

Saturday afternoon I did some shopping because I had a 30% off coupon for Old Navy and the Gap Outlet and found this:

I have no idea what possessed me to buy a sweater with a bird on it....totally unlike me. It's far too whimsical. Actually, I blame it on the art gallery show and seeing those kids, nay, children there. It made me yearn for my youthful self...so what do you do with that? You buy a sweater with a bird on it.

Saturday night, we met some friends out for bbq....he apparently won a gift certificate somehow but has the unfortunate circumstance of being a vegetarian so he invited his carnivorous friends. It was good, but bbq is not something I would ever suggest going out for. I think I'm too much of a spice wimp. I had the buffalo shrimp which was good but waaay more spicy than I would normally order. After that, we headed out to hear our band friends play another show.

Sunday I went to the gym and was hopped up on a combination of adrenaline and caffeine and decided to clean off our back deck to put up our new wrought iron cheapo outside table and chairs. Clearly, we hadn't been out there for awhile. Coolers from the party we had last September were still out there. This weekend, for the first time in a long time, I baked. I haven't really been able to rally on that front since Christmas because I baked my brains out for three full days. But, alas, a rotting banana begs to be made into a tasty bread so there you have it. It turned out well, the last recipe I used had an odd baking soda taste, this recipe is much better.

With the rest of my time, I finally took pics of my sluggish knitting progress....For your pleasure.

In school news, I have done the only presentation required of me this semester and did fine. It's always something I dread, but luckily I do well once I'm up there. I am about 3 hours ahead of my required clinical hours at this point which is good because not this week but next, my preceptor will be gone on the day I do my clinical hours. I've decided to revert back to my normal schedule for the week operating under the assumption that I will continue to do some extra time each week and that by the end of the semester I'll have enough hours without making up that day....it will be a pure thrill to leave work at 430p a full two hours before I normally do. I'll be able to go to the gym after work! Not something I would normally be excited about, but now that I can't I of course, long to.

And per request...cat's at play, cat's at rest. Boigie lacks the little white boots....

Cobblestone and Cookies

Here is the finished Cobblestone. It was actually a really easy pattern to knit...there were times when I thought a maneuver seemed irrational but I forced myself to do it exactly like the pattern and then everything made sense later. If you are new to knitting sweaters, this would be a great one to try. The pattern is very simple to follow with nothing too tricky involved. I had to use my flash to get it to photograph at all, it's much more of a chocolate brown than it seems here.

Also, in celebration of the inauguration, I decided to make Obama's favorite cookie: chocolate chunk. I tried a new recipe this time instead of my old stand by and I wouldn't use it again without attempting to tweak it in some way. This time I tried the Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from my Baking Illustrated book but there's just something missing....it's like the cookie has the essence of chocolate chip in it but the batter is very bland. The extra chewiness comes from the addition of one extra egg yolk...I'll take this tip and apply it to another recipe. This is one of the first Cook's Illustrated recipes that I was not impressed with.

Holiday Fun and Meat Farm Pick Up

This weekend was full of holiday activities. We baked, who am I kidding, I baked cookies with A while S and M drank beer and half heartedly chased E out of the kitchen, not before he could get into a giant canister of flour or drop the molasses jar on the ground as we stood around and watched it's slow creep across the kitchen floor. I made sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and oatmeal cherry cookies. I made half and froze the other half so that my family can have fresh cookies when they arrive. I still intend to make Special K bars, and no M, those are not ketamine bars. I'm also making Vanilla Snow Angels and Ginger Crinkle cookies. When? God know...I guess this coming weekend.

I'm also midway through planning the various menus for Christmas meals. My father in law was not able to come down at all, but my mother in law will be here for a few days when my family is here but then she's going home on Christmas Eve. This means there have to be 2 meals. I'm going to do appetizers for one of them and then we'll have a meal on Christmas. We're writing down some ideas for apps and side dishes and I still need to come up with a dessert for the main meal.

Anyhoo, as you can see we also got our Christmas tree and decorated that while watching Elf and drinking delicious Gingerbread Egg Nog. Here are some selected pictures for your viewing pleasure:





























In farm share news, we picked up our first month's supply. It was really cool, they pull into a parking lot at a community farm with their white van. You come and look for a cooler with your name on it, you return your cooler from last month. You have the option to purchase fresh eggs on a first come first serve basis. We got home and this was some of our booty in the cooler (see pics). In addition, we got lamp chops, pork chops, sweet italian sausage, a steak, a ham steak, 2 lbs of ground beef, and a chicken. I'm impressed so far....we'll see how it tastes. She did tell us that cooking times were much less because the meat was much leaner and muscle takes less to cook than fat, a somewhat disturbing fact, but we're glad to know it!

Thansgiving Weekend Recap

So when we parted ways I was hoping my rolls would turn out and they did! They were not the perfect little round rolls depicted in the picture but more like crescent rolls. There were a few steps that I cut out about halfway through dealing with a specific way in which to roll out the dough so that a center divet could be created to place some melted butter. The recipe called for using a tiny wooden rolling pin..of course I didn't have this. After much trial and error, I was using the end of a wooden spoon to roll out the dough before decided that that step was just creating more work because of the need to refashion some edging so the butter didn't slide right out. In the end, I smooshed it flat with my palm which kept the natural edges there. Worked fine, the resealing process left me with crescent shapes instead of a more rounded roll look, but that seemes to be the only thing that went awry. I should have taken a picture but I didn't. Next time.


Thanksgiving dinner was great, M's mom is great at making the traditional dinner. M was happy because he got his own pumpkin pie while the rest of us had a pumpkin trifle. On Friday, we went to Magog, QC which is a town just past the border of Canada. I was suprised by how little English was spoken and hence, how little signage was in English. We ate at a little cafe for lunch where the menu was entirely in French. In every store, we only heard French and were greeted this way. Once it was evident that we were speaking English, we were asked in English if we needed help finding anything. For some reason, I didn't think French would be so widely used. It was really neat though and I'd like to go back when it's warmer and I don't have to hustle from store to store. Here are some not very exciting, blurry, assorted pics from the trip.


































Oh, and here are some random not very good pics of some birds at the feeder outside M's parents dining room window:

Our journey home was uneventful except for a situation that has played itself out twice now in the exact same way. It makes me think we are cats with at least two lives at this point! We were traveling on the interstate in the right lane, basically neck and neck with a car in the left lane. Each time, the car in the left lane has hit something, at the time it's happening it's impossible to tell what, and they veer off as the thing flies in front of our car and across to the side of the road. Isn't that weird that's happened twice? The first time it looked like some kind of coyote, this time it looked like the guy blew out a tire. We pulled over to the right, they pulled over to the left. We wanted to see if they were ok but there was no way to cross the highway saefly, although M was all set to go till I sternly reminded him he'd end up on the side of the road just like the coyote or whatever that was if he tried. Another truck pulled in behind us and we all kind of sat there for a moment, since we couldn't cross we eventually left. Bizarro.

Wish Me Luck

I'm attempting something outside my baking comfort zone for an important holiday meal. I'm going to try my hand at these Dinner Rolls to bring up to the in laws as my contribution to the Thanksgiving meal.

I've had several failed attempts at using yeast, including but not limited to one ghastly pan of failed cinnamon rolls. Why did I choose this? I really don't know. Can I do it? We shall see.