I’m going to interpret the word “drink” in this prompt to mean “cocktail,” because nobody wants to read about how much I like water or Diet Coke, and I’ve already posted about my love of coffee and white wine.
When it comes to mixed drinks, I’m a vodka person. During the pandemic lockdown, I perfected my Cosmopolitan (Cosmo) recipe. Here it is:
1.5 oz Absolut Citron Vodka
1 oz Cointreau
1.5 oz unsweetened cranberry juice
Fresh squeezed juice of half a lime
Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. After shaking, pour into chilled martini glass with lime wedge.
It’s not crazy strong, which I like. It’s especially good in summer. I keep a martini glass and a bottle of vodka in my freezer at all times.
Lately I’ve been making soups and stews. I’ve been trying out some recipes from NYT cooking. Their instagram feed always sucks me right in.
I use either my slow cooker (a.k.a crockpot) or my 4.5 quart Le Creuset Dutch Oven. I have a green Le Creuset, which I received as a gift from my mother decades ago. Le Creuset Dutch Ovens are a big investment, but in my opinion, every kitchen in a cold weather climate should have one. I can’t believe how many colors they come in now!
Recently, I made the NYT “Old Fashioned Beef Stew” in my Le Creuset. It was delicious. (I got the stew beef at Whole Foods and it was high quality.)
Beef stew underway in my Le Creuset
I also made the NYT Tortellini Soup in Le Creuset, which I really liked and will definitely make again.
Here’s the finished Tortellini Soup. The green is baby spinach. Also, it’s garnished with fresh basil and Parmesan.
Last night, I tried the NYT Slow-Cooker Chicken Stew with Spinach, Lemon and Feta. Obviously I made this one in the slow cooker rather than Le Creuset. I liked it. It has a Greek vibe. It’s very garlicky and has a real kick to it. I might try it again with a few adjustments.
Here’s the chicken stew garnished with crumbled feta and pita chips.
I have not yet let go of Christmas. My tree and all my decorations are still up. I’ve never left a Christmas tree up this long. Maybe I’m delaying because I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. People keep congratulating me on my “retirement,” but maybe that’s just what people say when you’re around 60 and leave a job you’ve been doing for decades. In any case, a couple of favorite family traditions are Christmas-related, so I’ll write about those.
My husband always makes his mother’s scallops for the first course of Christmas dinner. He uses her original handwritten recipe cards and serves them in her giant scallop shells (surprisingly, they’re dishwasher safe). My mother-in-law Duilia was a tremendous chef. She kept careful notes. I’m just now noticing the reference to “Claiborne & Franey” on the recipe cards. At first, I thought they were friends of hers, but Google tells me they were high-end food critics and cookbook authors who had “a lasting impact on culinary literature and culture.” Sounds about right.
My mother-in-law’s meticulous recipe card with some of my husband’s notes added in pencil. (Their cursive is so similar.)
Page 2 of the recipe card, which references (I think) Claiborne & Franey’s 1983 recipe for stuffed clams, which she adapted for scallops
Duilia’s Scallops, as served on Christmas 2023. They were insanely good this year.
Another Christmas tradition we’ve kept (this one from my side of the family) is “one present on Christmas Eve.” Kids get to open one present on Christmas Eve and it’s always some type of sleepwear. My son got slippers this year. He really liked them. He wore them around the house for the rest of his winter break and took them back to school when he left last Sunday.
Today was my deadline to take down my Christmas stuff, but I can already tell it’s not gonna happen. I’m giving myself a one-week extension. I will put away Christmas by February 1. I promise.
It’s 7am here and I’m drinking cofee, as usual. Any snack I had right now would be breakfast. It’s way too early for real food (like eggs). The only thing I’d consider eating now would be something sweet. If I still had leftover Christmas cookies, those would be an option.
I did a lot of baking for Christmas 2023. I don’t know if it was because I had more time due to not working or I was just happy to have my son home to help eat them, but I tried a couple new recipes from sallysbakingaddiction.com and made some old favorites too.
These frosted gingerbread bars with white chocolate chips were delicious. And it’s not just me saying. My son and husband loved them and said they were the best cookies I’d ever made! They’re like the moistest molasses/ginger/spice cookie you ever had, but as a bar, and frosted with homemade cream cheese icing. They’re amazing with either a cup of coffee or a glass of milk. (Thanks for the recipe Sally.)
Our top 5 grocery list items are usually milk, pasta, eggs, bananas and yogurt.
This time of year, I buy a lot of butter because I like to bake holiday cookies, especially when my son is home to help eat them.
A few years ago we were gifted a large jug of real maple syrup from a friend’s farm in Vermont and I discovered a great maple cookie recipe on sallysbakingaddiction.com (a wonderful website for free baking recipes). These maple brown sugar cookies are delicious and moist. (I’m allergic to tree nuts, so I make them without the pecans and they’re still delicious.) The icing is reminiscent of maple sugar candy. If you grew up in New England, you probably remember begging your parents for a maple leaf like this from a tourist gift shop in New Hampshire, Vermont or upstate NY:
The dough needs to be chilled for a few hours before baking and highly recommend the parchment paper method she describes, including banging the cookie sheet when first out of the oven to get these nice crinkles.
The only catch is that the recipe calls for maple extract (in addition to vanilla extract), which is not available in most grocery stores. I had to order some from Amazon. I’ve never made these cookies without the maple extract. I think it may be a key ingredient. The other key ingredient is, of course, real maple syrup. It’s in both the cookie dough and the icing – a third of a cup in each.
I got two of these for Christmas last year (one light, one dark). April’s Maple is a family-owned American (blue state) small business. Check their website for gift ideas: https://aprilsmaple.com/
A year ago, I would not have anticipated being unemployed (or very possibly, I’ll just say it: retired) by December 2023, although I had been thinking about it.
I had worked in a job I really loved for nearly 20 years, but it was definitely getting repetitive. ALL my requests had been honored (full-time status; remote status, etc.) except ONE. And the one was that I really didn’t want to report to my toxic supervisor SuzanneDanielle (her real name) any longer. But I thought I’d put up with Danielle until I turned 60 (at least). The salary was quite good and the benefits were great.
Well, a “last straw” event led to my resigning and leaving just after Thanksgiving. As of today, I think I made the correct decision. I’m so happy to never have to deal with Danielle again – ever. We’ll see how I feel about being unemployed/retired once the excitement of the holidays has passed.
In the meantime, my son came home from college yeserday (yay) and I made an attempt at one of NYT Cooking’s top 50 recipes of the year. They call it “Marry Me Chicken.” Supposedly, if you’re single and you make this for someone, they’ll put a ring on it fast. Here‘s the recipe. Here’s how mine came out:
I have no notes. I followed the recipe as written and it’s a winner.
I make a pie that can be eaten for breakfast, dessert or snack. It was a hit at Thanksgiving yesterday and my son just had some for breakfast. I recommend buying some whip cream to spray on individual slices. (I like it better than the traditional “sweet potato casserole” with mini-marshmallows on top.)
I use Pillsbury pre-made pie crusts (in the red box); Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour
I am not a great cook, but I am in possession of several good and reliable recipes that I make a lot and sometimes get asked to make. These include my swiss & mushroom quiche, my carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, and my blueberry muffins. Even with those, I will use short cuts like pre-made pie crusts. Let’s face it, those Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts (in the long red box) are really good!
Speaking of short cuts, I have discovered what I think is the single best cake mix in the world. I had read about it somewhere and put it on my grocery list, where it stayed for many months annoying my husband. He kept wanting to cross it off, but I would not let him. I had heard it was really good and wanted to try it. I asked the staff at Trader Joe’s about it and they said it was “seasonal,” but the season never seemed to arrive. Was it a holiday item? A summer item?
Finally, one day, there it was on the shelf: Trader Joe’s Meyer Lemon Cake Mix with Lemon Icing. There were two boxes left. I bought both. It did not disappoint. If you like lemon cake, you really need to try this. It smells so lemony and is so moist and delicous. It’s both very easy to make and very “special” looking when it’s done and glazed. It’s good for company or family, breakfast or dessert, summer or Christmas. Be sure to use an 8 x 4 loaf pan, like it says on the box. My only additional recommendation would be to lightly flour the pan, after you grease it, to be sure the cake comes out easily. After it’s on your cake plate and completely cooled, drizzle on the lemon glaze. Trader’s Joe’s also makes a “Blood Orange Cake Mix with Icing,” which I’ve tried. It’s also very good, but not quite as good as the Meyer Lemon. So, don’t pass this up if you see it on the shelf at TJs. It may not be “in season” again for a very long time.
Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
You know it’s a truly epic fail in the kitchen, when you not only have to throw out the food, but also the cookware.
I have a recollection of chucking a roasting pan, filled with burnt-on mess, into the garbage can. I cannot remember what I was trying to make, but it was clearly an epic fail. Perhaps I was angry with the pan and it could’ve been cleaned, but I deemed it unsalvageable at the time. Poor pan.
By the way, I successfully made The Silver Palate’s Chicken Marbella last night, with some assistance from my husband. (Chicken “quartering” was required.) This was my second attempt at this classic 80s dinner party entree.
The final resultAre you even GenX if you didn’t have a Silver Palate cookbook?
I don’t enjoy cooking much, or even really eating. I’m not a big foodie. I didn’t cook at all until I became a mother, and then it suddenly felt like part of the job description. One day, after my husband was back at work and I was home all day with the baby, I remember thinking, “I should really cook something for dinner.” Going to the grocery store with a baby was an adventure all its own. It could take hours just to get out the door with the grocery list, car seat, and well-rested, pre-fed, happy baby, dressed in appropriate clothing for the weather. Picking out the items, while seeing all those people, could be a fun morning activity, if everything went smoothly.
Despite not caring all that much about dinner, I’ve always loved desserts and sweet foods in general. As a kid, I would always order french toast in a breakfast restaurant – never eggs. When I was pregnant, I craved baked goods and had lengthy dreams about cakes, pies, brownies, cookies, congo bars and other bakery items. I’d wake up and have apple pie or carrot cake for breakfast, if we had it.
Now that I’m an empty-nester, I’ve been trying to make something a bit interesting for dinner about once a week–something beyond our usual standbys (roast chicken, turkey meatloaf, pasta and meat sauce). I’m finding I still gravitate to the recipes with a sweet ingredient or two. I made the NYT Cooking’s Skillet Meatballs With Peaches, Basil and Lime (weird, but good) and this week I will be attempting (for the second time), the Silver Palate’s Chicken Marbella. It contains both prunes and brown sugar, thereby addressing my sweet tooth.
If ever there was a GenX/Baby Boomer crossover recipe, Chicken Marbella is it. Many people love it. I’ve had it and liked it. But the first time I tried it, something went horribly wrong with the oregano. Wish me luck.
My version of Skillet Meatballs With Peaches, Basil and Lime
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