Gingerbread People

I was really excited to make gingerbread people again this year. I ripped the recipe out of a Food Network Magazine last year, and I made sure that I kept it so I could use it again. It even made it through several attempts by Camden to eat through all of my cookbooks on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. What made this year's cookies even better was that I also made my own icing, which turned out perfect! Aren't they adorably sweet and  chubby?

After mixing all of the ingredients and rolling out the (really sticky) dough, I had to chill it in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Then, after cutting out my people, I had to refrigerate for 15 more minutes before transferring them to the cookie sheet and then the oven. If the dough isn'tcompletely cold, it sticks and stretches and the people turn out having elongated heads, or oddly shaped limbs.

Last year I borrowed my mother in law's gingerbread man cookie cutter. While Christmas shopping this year, I purchased a little man and a little lady. The cookies were a lot thicker and chewier this year, not as dog-biscuit-hard as usual gingerbread cookies. I attribute that to my crappy rolling pin, which stuck so much (even when floured) that I eventually stopped trying to roll the dough thinner.


To pipe the icing I used I trick that I saw somewhere recently. I think it was Pinterest.  You take your piping bag and put it in a glass. I used a tall beer glass because I wanted to put a lot of icing in at once. Then, you fold the extra plastic at the top over the edges of the glass. With a spoon or a cup, plop your icing right down into it.

 This was my first batch, which were my testers. Testers taste especially great with a glass of cold milk, by the way. The first few did not turn out so great. I always have to get myself adjusted to the piping bag and the consistency of the icing. This was homemade royal icing, so I didn't know how well it was going to work. Luckily, I got used to it pretty quickly and it worked just fine. It dries really fast too, so I didn't need to have cookies all around the house cooling. I could stack them pretty soon after I made them.

Do you like the girls' aprons? I thought they looked really cute. I tried giving the ladies faces, but they just looked like boys with skirts. I tried giving them hair, but that was a disaster. So faceless women in aprons they were. No social message intended. 

I brought the cookies over to all three Christmas events, Christmas Eve dinner with Mom, Christmas morning with the in-laws, and Christmas dinner with Dad. I still have a handful left at home and some leftover dough and icing in the refrigerator.

Last year, with just a few cookies left, Greg decided he would try to decorate a few himself. When I came back into the room, he'd started to make these gingerbread ghettobread men. This year, I asked him, again, to create an alternate lifestyle cookie. He picked the workaholicbread man. Ok, not as funny as last year's...but the decorating was hilariously awful (on both our parts). Can you guess which one of us decorated which ones?

2010 Ghetto Boys

2011 Workaholics

Recipe adapted from Food Network Magazine December (I think) 2010 Issue

Mix in a medium bowl:

31/2 cups of flour (sifted)
1 teaspoon each of baking soda and salt
1tablespoon of ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each ground cloves and allspice

Mix in a larger bowl:

6 tablespoons of melted butter
1 tablespoon of melted shortening
2/3 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup of molasses
1 egg beaten in with mixer


Beat the flour mixture into the molasses mixture in two additions. Divide the dough in half, wrap in plastic, and pat to 1/2 inch thick. Chill for two hours. When the dough is done chilling, preheat the oven to 350. On a floured surface, roll each piece of dough to 1/4 inch thick. (Mine were slightly thicker). Cut with your cookie cutter and arrange 1 inch apart on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. (I used a silicone baking mat like this, which worked great.) Chill for 15 minutes. (I did this before transferring my cookies to the sheet, so they didn't stretch in transport). Bake until the cookies are golden around the edges. 10-12 minutes. (In my oven it was 10 minutes, even for the thicker cookies, because I didn't want them to get too hard.) Transfer them (after a few minutes) to a rack to cool. Then decorate.

The Icing: From here
3 egg whites
4 cups of powdered sugar

In a small to medium bowl, whisk 3 egg whites until they get frothy. Then, while mixing, add 4 cups of powdered sugar. Keep mixing until the icing is smooth. Use the method I explained earlier to add the icing to a piping bag, snip off the tip of the bag so you have a thin stream of icing, and then decorate!

Thanks for reading my thoughts about food! Happy Holidays!

Brussel Sprout Bandwagon

During Thanksgiving, I noticed that a certain vegetable had recipes "sprouting" up everywhere, like here and here. Being the trend follower that I am (Actually, I'm not at all... I just bought a pair of leggings recently, which came into style, what, 2 years ago? )

Well, I decided to try the brussel sprouts anyway. I have had them maybe once before in my life and it was so long ago that I don't even remember what I thought about them. When checking out recipes on food blogs, and magazines, they looked bright green, crispy, and pretty darn good, so I decided to give them a shot. Greg was not so adventurous at first, so I did what any good wife would do; I bought them and made them for dinner so when he got home from work they were waiting on his plate. Wisely, he did not complain.


To make this dish, I started by preheating my oven to 425 and taking my fresh sprouts out of the fridge.

Then I cut them in half and blanched them. To do that, get a pot of water boiling, throw in the sliced sprouts, and fish them out after about 45 seconds. They won't be very tender, but don't worry, you'll be cooking them in the oven as well.

Then, I drizzled olive oil over them (about a tablespoon) and added some salt, pepper, chunks of yellow onion and a teaspoon of minced garlic.

I spread them out on a cookie sheet and sprinkled them with white wine vinegar. Then, I baked them for 12 minutes. (I thought that Bobby Flay's recipe in the link above, which has an addition of quartered potato, looked awesome as did the one with pancetta. Anything to disguise the fact that we're eating a vegetable, right?)

Here is the end result. I especially like that the white wine vinegar cut into the very slight bitterness of the sprouts. I used about a half a tablespoon. I'm actually really happy with how these turned out. They seemed really versatile. I think cooking them with shallots or mushrooms and Parmesan would taste really good as well. So, jump on...the bandwagon is a yummy place to be!

 Thanks for reading my thoughts about food!

Holiday Cheer

Last year I had grand ideas of decorating for the holidays by cooking figgy pudding and boning ducks. This year, while still in the holiday spirit, I have been a bit more realistic, and unlike my usual procrastinating self, I've also started early. Here's a glimpse into a few of the holiday crafts I've been attempting around the house.


I made my first holiday wreath from stuff in my yard. I started with a $4 twiggy wreath from Michaels.

I cut some bay grasses from my yard that needed to be trimmed down before winter anyways.

 I added the grasses by tucking them in while going in one circular direction. A lot of the grass stuck out pretty far, but I liked it that way.

 Then, with my flashlight (it was late) and scissors in tow, I cut some sprigs off of my holly bush out front. The one downside to taking your materials from outside, and not buying them, is that you have to deal with all of the spider webs and creepy crawlies that get tangled up in your flora.

 Again, I just shoved the little holly springs into the wreath, in one main circular direction. I quickly learned that if I only decorated the "face" of the wreath, then the top, and inside would look really bare when I lifted it up, so I had to go back and do some adjusting. I also found some baby pine cones from the pine tree out front and jammed those in as well.

I wanted it to look really earthy, so I loosely stuck some grass on top of the holly.

Here are a few shots after I hung it on the front door.

 I've been "etching" to try this project since I saw this post last year. First, I printed out the words "holiday cheer" in 72 pt font, scotch taped the words to painters tape, which was on a wooden cutting board. I cut out the letters with an exacto knife. As you can see, the letters aren't perfect, but I sort of liked the imperfections.

 

 This was the scary part. The etching cream has all kinds of warnings on it. It even uses the word "fatal!" I mean, it dissolves glass, what could it do to my insides?! I was worried I would accidentally get some on my hand and then wipe my eye, and that I would get a globular shape etched into my eyeball

 

 
 I watched it from the inside to make sure it wasn't bleeding. You only need to leave it on for 60 seconds, so I was kind of anxious about making sure that I didn't over-etch.

 After washing it thoroughly and pealing off the tape, here's the result.

 Then, I cut out the word holiday and repeated the process.

 

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For this last project, I simply grabbed a square glass vase and picked pine cones from my front yard. There were lots of baby cones when I went out, and only a few that had the typical pine cone shape. They also came pre-sapped. No white spray paint needed.

I put up my tree, but one of the lights is broken, so the top of the tree isn't lit. I'm waiting until I can replace the bulb to hang the ornaments. I already broke out the Christmas music, however, and my cheese factor is getting dangerously high. You might say I'm pretty "sappy" over Christmas this year. (haha, get it?) I might have even been singing "fa la la la la to the dogs last night..."

Just throwing on some chili tonight while I grade leftover papers that I should have done over Thanksgiving. I hope you're having a great start to the Holiday season!

....And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Ok, well I'm not practicing my Christmas carols yet, nor have I slaughtered any turtle doves, but I did cook some French Hens! To be honest they were Tyson's brand Cornish Hens, but that's pretty much the same, right? I'm getting into the Holiday spirit a little bit early this year because Greg and I are going to Florida for Christmas to see his family. I have never been away from home for Christmas, so I'm becoming a tad sad and a bit out-of-sorts with the thought of not hanging lights outside, or throwing a holiday party, or even putting up a tree!

Being in the holiday spirit, I decided to take on a little project, which of course for me ended up as an ordeal because, well...it's me.

The Birds.

I made some rice and stuffed the hens. It is an odd thing - to stuff a bird, if you haven't done it before..

I scattered the rest of the rice in the pan so it would soak up some of the flavor. Then I drizzled olive oil on the hens and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I took them out once to check the doneness and drizzled some more olive oil. It gave them a nice crispy skin.

 Here's the finished product! Nice and golden brown

 I steamed up some fresh green beans on the side, but I put 3 cloves of smashed garlic in when I steamed them. The flavor was just enough. It was really good.

It was somewhat awkward to have the whole Cornish Hen on the plate at the dinner table, especially since they were still stuffed. When I had to stick my fork in to get out the rice, I almost felt like I needed a little privacy curtain. Then, eating it was no less strange. I really had to dismember the thing at the table to get any meat. It was messy, sort of like eating lobster at the table. You need a bib, special tools, and a discard bowl for the non-edible stuff. I guess that's why people eat just the lobster tails (although the claws are my favorite part). It's a lot less messy. I had a heck of a time tugging and ripping (because that's what I did) the breast meat off. By the time I was done with that, I was too grossed out to even eat any of it. I saved it for left overs, which I enjoyed two days later when the trauma of the event wore off.

 They do make  pretty picture though.

So besides the indecency of picking rice out of the cavity of a stuffed bird, or breaking wings and legs off of the poor little carcass, I also didn't think about the fact that a whole hen per person would be a bit too much to eat. I felt guilty wasting so much and didn't want the bird's death to be in vain, so while Greg studied at the table, I sat across from him picking at every last morsel to save for the dogs as training treats. After fanatically picking, deeply lost in my thoughts, I looked up and saw Greg looking at me, almost green. Only then did I realize the intensity with which I was absorbed picking the bones of the poor little thing. I'll admit, it was straight up nasty. I was up to my wrists in oil and grossness. I'll spare you the rest of the details, but lets just say, I don't think Greg will ever look at me the same way again.