When I saw that ketchup, I knew that it was time to stock up. Passover is not for another month, but I can tell you that the more unique items (the baking mixes, the salad dressings, the breakfast cereals and the ketchup) tend to disappear quickly. So, if you don’t see any of those items on the display, find the department manager and ask if the store will be getting any more shipments in before Passover. You might even ask the manager whether or not you can order case lots of items for personal purchase.

Not that I am advocating running around to all the stores in your area and buying up all the Passover items, but stores will order more if they think they can sell more. If you don’t see a well stocked Passover display in your area, you might wish to contact your local Jewish community and ask whether they are doing co-op buying for Passover – but do it quickly. Passover is one of those holidays in the religious calendar that is very important and Jewish families will have been planning for this for several weeks at this point.

If nothing else, tuck this fact in the back of your head: There is one time of the year when, if your supermarket has a well-stocked display, you will be able to find products that do not contain grains, corn, or corn sweeteners. And that is the month before Passover.

Eat in good health.

Well, we weren’t exactly going out to eat on a regular basis due to lack of discretionary income. And the Little Siberians (who were actually quite little at the time) dearly loved going out to eat, so to compensate, we used to encourage them to play a game called “Restaurant” (yes, I realize that the name is not exactly creative, but kids are pretty literal at that age), with all that this implies.

Together, they used to come up with a theme (‘we’re going to a French restaurant”; “we’re going to a French restaurant in Mexico” that sort of thing) and comb through the zillions of cookbooks that the DH and I had collected and would come up with a menu and a shopping list. They would decorate the table in their best “French restaurant in Mexico” sort of way; we would cook things up and then one of them would drape a wash towel over an arm, put on a crazy “Pepe Le Pew Meets Continflas” sort of accent and we would play coming to the door and being seated and so on. It was all very sweet and funny (though a little sad..sigh..but that’s a topic for another time).

One of the easiest and cheapest ‘restaurant’ themes that they came up with was “Beach Restaurant in January.” Now, on the surface, this makes no sense since no beach-front restaurant that I know is ever open in January unless you are someplace south of Myrtle Beach. But the idea was that we’d go on a picnic at a time of the year when it is beastly cold; we’re stuck inside, it’s hellishly gloomy and we’ve been eating far too much stew, chili and other hot stuff.

Now, there are many things that do not translate to ‘picnic’ at this time of the year because you just can’t get them – like locally grown tomatoes if you don’t live in warm areas. But, in our part of the world, there are things that are available, cheap, good – and we had not been eating them for several months so they seemed fun and unique and fresh.

So, if you are completely sodden with turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin everything, turkey left-overs in every permutation, combination and setting, here is something cheap and fun. The décor is up to you; truckload of sand, beach balls, and blanket optional.

Menu:

• Chicken Spiedies with rolls (or Italian bread – that is traditional)
• Potato Salad with hard boiled eggs and onions
• Cole slaw with carrots
• Apples and Oranges

How to’s:

Chicken spiedies are to our local area what Hot Wings are the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. You will need: boneless chicken breasts, and something to marinate the chunked up chicken in. If you are lucky and your local groceria carries it, go for a spiedie marinade. If not, an easy one is vinegar, oil, and every sort of Italian spice you can lay your hands on. At this time of the year, one essential ingredient won’t be found in the garden and that is mint. Here’s a good recipe.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Sandwiches/Spiedie.htm

Ordinarily, spiedies are cooked on skewers on a grill but only the truly hardy would be out doing this in the winter, so you can grill them on your stove (5 min. on a side and flip). If you are stuck with an oven with a grill that does not work, spiedies can be cooked in a frying pan; just keep stirring them around until they cook. It takes so short a time that it’s really best to get everything else done and in the fridge earlier in the day and do the spiedies at the end. To make a sandwich, take a roll in one hand and the skewered meat in the other. Put the skewer inside the roll, grip tightly and pull off meat into the roll. Voila.

Potato Salad with hard boiled eggs.

This is the classic summer picnic staple. Yes, I know there are all sorts of potato salads from all over, complete with wonderful dressings and bacon and goodness knows what else. In our house, the only fancification allowed is perhaps the addition of a couple of stalks of chopped celery, but since this is a ‘reach into the fridge and pull out whatcha got’, no celery is to be found (except for the rather limp stuff that always gets forgotten in the bottom of the drawer and ends up on the compost heap or being fed to the chickens). You will have potato salad left over; that is the essence of potato salad. But the basic recipe is:

• 1 fist sized potato (not Idaho russets – go for red potatoes or some other boiling potato) per person.
• Eggs: count up the number of people to be served and subtract 2. That’s your number of eggs. Hard boil them – that is 10 min. on the boil.
• Onions: ½ of an onion that is slightly smaller than your fist. I like red ones as they are slightly less pungent than the white or yellow ones, but whatever you have will do. Chop fine.
• Dressing. We like a pretty spicy dressing at our house, but plain ol’ mayo will do. Put in enough (and it’s always more than you would think) so that the potatoes have a nice coating but not so much that you have soup in the bottom of the bowl. Our dressing for what ends up being 6 big potatoes goes like this:
• Mayo – about a cup
• Grated horseradish (comes in a bottle – red or white doesn’t matter): 1 big honkin’ tablespoon
• Something sweet. 1/8 cup of …left over cranberry sauce, apple sauce, etc. If you have nothing else, a teaspoon of honey or sugar will do.

Mix everything together and mix into the potatoes, onions and celery (if you’ve put that in).

Refrigerate and then serve.

Cole Slaw (see photo at the top).

Again, this is the classic stuff. No nuts, no raisins, no marshmallow peeps, just shredded carrots and coleslaw. The fam does not particularly like this when I’ve made it with the food processor – the individual pieces are too small and it gets mushy. Cabbage is shredded with a knife. Carrots shredded with a hand grater.

Basic recipe:

• Carrots: One big carrot per person. Don’t get them too big – once the leaf end gets above an inch across, they get sort of woody. Shred with a hand grater and keep your fingers away from the business end. This is not potato latkes – odd bits of skin and blood are not considered beneficial additions.
• Cabbage: If you are using both red and green cabbage, use about 1/3 of a head for each. If just one or the other, use a half a big head of the cabbage. Cut out the center core. Shred with a big knife so that you end up with long strings of cabbage.
• Put the cabbage and the carrots into a big bowl and mix up.
• Dressing: There are plenty of bottled cole slaw dressings – we find them rather sickeningly sweet. Our dressing is:
• May: one cup
• Ground black pepper
• 2 table spoons of something sour – vinegar will do, lemon juice is better, orange juice in a pinch.
• 1 teaspoon of something sweet – honey or sugar will do.

Mix up the dressing and pour over the cabbage and carrots. Mix together and refridgerate.

Dessert:

No one eats too much fresh fruit at this time of the year and at this point in our house, everyone is sick of things with baked fruit in them. Washed crunchy apples or big peeling oranges are just the ticket.

Enjoy.

I’m not going to take offense at the ‘he’ business because the writer also referred to ‘flower’ when discussing someone’s gravy recipe. This appears to be a “I trusted the spell checker” problem rather than any wish to poke a stick into your Aunt Toby’s eye. Perhaps one more reading would have done the trick, though you never know. When you write something yourself, it’s sometimes hard to pick up little details.

But, enough of patting oneself on the back. ahem. The photo at the top is a reminder to NOT throw the carcass of your Thanksgiving (or Christmas or any other for that matter) turkey out. Global warming aside, a good bowl of turkey soup is not to be sniffed at (unless one is taking in the glorious fragrance of same). I poked around in the closet here at KCE and I did write about that a year ago:
Make Turkey Soup

It’s easy on these big family holidays to get into this funk at the end of the meal where all you want to do is shovel the remnants into a garbage bag, haul it out to the curb, pour yourself a glass of something, stick your feet up on a cushion and watch nostalgic films. Not that Aunt Toby is against the pouring and putting the feet up part (her “feets” appreciate cushion propping as much as anyone’s), but do take the few moments to a) read the post and b) do the deed by the turkey leftovers so that in a couple of weeks when you want a quick dinner, you can go to the freezer, pull out the container of turkey soup, warm up some rolls or bread and voila! All set.

And you are really quite fed up with it sitting there and are about to unceremoniously throw the poor thing into the garbage, scraping out the roasting pan and letting it be done at that.

“Step away from the roaster, Sir (or Ma’am) and no one will get hurt.”

Now is the time to show some restraint and respect for the poor bird who “gave it up” for your family yesterday. We’re going to turn it into soup today! You will need: the turkey carcass and hopefully the pan that you cooked it in with all the lovely stuff still in it, plus a little salt or a can of chicken or turkey broth.

Take a big pan – like a Dutch Oven – and scrape what was in the roasting pan (veggies, jellied liquid and all) into the Dutch Oven.

Break up the carcass into pieces that will fit into the Dutch Oven and put enough water in the Dutch Oven to just about cover the pieces of the carcass. (Disclaimer, because I know someone out there will remind me about this: If your muni water system adds chemicals like fluoride, chlorine, etc. or if your tap water has “smells,” then you are going to want to use another source for your water, like spring water)

If you want to put more aromatic veggies in there like onions, garlic, and celery, chop them up and add them now.

Cover and bring to a boil and turn down the heat to simmer for a couple of hours. Then, pull out the bones and pull off any meat that has not fallen off.

NOW you can throw out the carcass.

Strain the liquid through a sieve into a bowl or another pot and put the sieve aside. Now, we need to chill the liquid and get off the extra fat. You can do this by putting it into your fridge, or, if you lack room and it’s winter time, cover the pot tightly and put it outside on the porch, deck or whatever in a secure place. This is your stock.

In the meantime, go through what you separated out and take out the meat. Frankly, at this point, the veggies have given up their best flavor to the stock and you can either do what you normally do with vegetable peels, or put them on the compost heap. Chop up the meat into a smallish dice.

Once the stock has chilled enough, uncover it. The fat will have risen to the top and made a cake, which you can break up into chunks and take out. If you like to use fat with flavor in it to cook other things, then you can wash these pieces off and store in a container in your refrigerator and use it as you wish. In Eastern European Jewish cooking, this stuff would be called Schmalz (that’s sort of an umbrella term and also includes goose fat and chicken fat). There will always be a little bit of the fat still in the stock; it will have plenty of flavor, believe me.

To finish up the soup, put back the meat and new veggies that you want into the soup (more onions, carrots, celery), plus anything like barley or rice. NOW taste the soup. If it doesn’t taste as strongly as you’d like, add a little salt to it, or add a can of chicken or turkey broth. You can cook rice or barley right in the soup as it heats up; if you have already cooked grains available as left overs, then the process just goes faster.

Heat up your soup again and simmer it until the veggies and grains are tender.

Serve and enjoy; refrigerate or freeze the leftovers!

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

Once this season is over (and, one would hope, Ms. Palin and her hunting rifle will be put away to be played with some other time), fruitcake will again take its place in American humor along with jokes on wives, mothers-in-law, and George W. Bush’s prowess with a bicycle.

Frankly, I’ve never understood America’s seeming equation of fruitcake with the legs of couches, WMD and so forth – why use fruitcake when Lutefisk is at hand? (A Swedish-American co-worker from Minnesota described this traditional Swedish dish to me as “fish flavored soap.”)

Then again, I never had American commercial fruitcake until I was well grown.

I was brought up with my mother’s holiday dainties from the UK: Christmas “hard” pudding (“hard” as in soaked in brandy, lit on fire and served with an alcoholic sauce over the steamed cake-y pudding) and HER fruitcake, which is called Dundee Cake.

The problem with American commercial fruitcakes is that they seem to be prepared under the philosophy that they are cakes made out of glazed dried fruits, held together with a little bit of batter or syrup, instead of being a cake which just so happens to have some fruit in it. What people WANT is CAKE.

This is a cake that has fruit in it. It is a light batter and is a fruitcake that you will never, ever regift – as a matter of fact, I’ve seen people fight over the last piece of this stuff. My parents friends were so fond of it that the year that my mother had a heart attack and was in the hospital, I actually received a call from a concerned friend, an annual gift-ee, with the message, “Tell your mother that we miss her, that she must get better…and I guess this means we don’t get the Dundee Cake this year, eh?”

Here’s the recipe, straight from Glasgow:

Dundee Cake

As you can see, they are weighing everything out (which is what I did since I have a kitchen scale), but I’ve put approximate cup measures next for those who do not, plus a couple of suggestions.

Recipe Ingredients:

8oz Flour …………..regular all-purpose…..2 cups
6 oz Butter …………1 stick plus a couple of Tbs. Or a little more than ½ C. veg. shortening
5oz Caster/granulated sugar ………1 C. white cane sugar
4 Eggs
1oz Blanched almonds …………..1/4 cup of slivered almonds
1.5oz mixed peel ….they are talking about what we call ‘fruit cake mix’ here..1 C.
6oz each of currants, raisins, sultanas (seedless white raisins) …..I did not use this much – I used 1 C. of golden raisins and 1 C. of dried currents
Grated rind and juice of lemon …..I used ½ tsp. of dried grated lemon rind and 1/8 C. lemon juice
1 level teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons whisky ……….your choice, I didn’t use that; I used 1 tsp. of almond extract
2 tablespoons boiled milk and 1 tablespoon sugar….boiled milk? this is for the top, and I’d use a little fruit jelly cooked with 1 T. of sugar and 2 T of water

Method

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl. When it is white and creamy, slowly add the four eggs (one at a time), plus a spoonful of flour with each, beating well all the time. Stir in the nuts and fruits. Add the rest of the flour, (sifted with the baking powder) and the whisky. Make sure the mixture is stirred well – right to the foot of the bowl. If it is too stiff, add a little milk.
(Note from Aunt Toby: the batter should have the same consistency as pound cake batter – definitely thicker than a regular cake batter, should come off the beaters really slowly with a big “glop.”)

Place mixture in an 8-inch greased and lined (with waxed paper) cake tin. Flatten the top with hands which are slightly wet. Cover with foil or greaseproof paper and bake at 325F (170C) or gas mark 3 for two hours. Halfway through, take off the foil and arrange the split almonds in concentric circles on the top of the cake. Check the cake with a skewer towards the end of cooking – if it is still wet in the middle, put it back for more cooking! 5/10 minutes before cooking is finished, brush the top with the sweetened milk to create a dry glaze. Keep in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out on a wired tray. Store in an airtight container.

These are the instructions straight off the site. I have to tell you that my dear old Mum never, ever “flattened the top with wet hands” or baked it covered in foil. Something she did do was to make them at Thanksgiving then used the period between that holiday and Christmas to ‘fortify’ the cakes several times by unwrapping them, pouring several tablespoons of whiskey or brandy on the top of the cake and then re-wrapping. This makes for a very strong-tasting cake – very adult. I just poured mine into the lined pan, scattered the nuts on top and baked it. Also, I baked mine in my oven for one hour, in a bread loaf pan and it worked really well.

Take the pan out of the oven …and resist…resist…resist…the temptation to start cutting into it. This stuff needs to rest and get cold. Then it slices really nicely and you can set it out on trays for tea time. Serve with coffee and a big pot of English tea – nothing else is necessary.

Lovely grub, as my mom used to say.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

We’re back in the kitchen (you guys think I really live here, right…kicking the sleeping bag back under the table) with the thought of Christmas Day, which is usually filled with eating things that you would frankly shudder to think about on any other day, capped with a dinner (either at your house or someone else’s) that will send you waddling for the bathroom (and the antacids) later on.

Any way to stop that? Well, I’m not sure, but I’m a big proponent of getting a good slug of protein in the morning and also of the “anything you can shovel into a tortilla” form of breakfast. This can be eaten formal style at the table, or handed to a child running through the kitchen with the admonishment, “Stop for a minute and eat this.” This just might slow down the “hands in the cookie jar and fudge plate” until later in the day.

Think of these tacos as the “nutritional pre-emptive strike.” For that, nothing beats eggs. Eggs are one of your best and cheapest forms of protein. Figure two per person, unless you are trying to cut down on cholesterol, in which case, count on one whole one and two egg whites per person.

What’s in the picture:

Scrambled eggs and cooked bulk breakfast sausage (ours is lamb that we can get from a local farmer – YMMV – drain it well – omit for a vegetarian meal) garnished with sautéed colorful sweet peppers.

Tortillas, wrapped in foil and warmed in a 350 degree oven

Sautéed onions and mushrooms

Simple fruit salad of sliced kiwi and oranges

Shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Home made salsa from the garden

A lot of this can be prepared the night before (while the Spousal Unit is trying to figure out how to put something together); the tortillas, eggs and sausage can be cooked up in the morning during the first “time out” after the initial paper ripping and present admiration activities.

This literally is the sort of thing that people can wander through the kitchen and grab on their own; if you have a “hot plate” that you can keep the dish or sausage/eggs on and covered, you can keep this sort of thing going for an hour or so. It’s also the sort of thing that if you are hosting people for a morning open house, it’s cheap, good, filling and won’t make anyone feel too tight or guilty.

Merry Christmas.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

(Cue scary music; big organ sounds and the deep-voiced actor we all know and love: “It’s the holiday season; the time when friends and family…..” screech as the needle goes over the record.)

If you are like me, “holiday entertaining” are two words that rank up there with other two-word favorites: “root canal” and “emergency hysterectomy.” I hate to entertain. If you had ever met any of my family members, they will tell you that every holiday used to be spent at someone else’s house; favorite birthday party spots were: the movies, bowling, and “just give me the credit card, Mom.” (Not necessarily in that order.)

But, since it appears to be my niche to be the Martha whatshername combined with Suzy Orwhatever, I will do my yeoman’s task here and talk about how to survive the holiday season with friends and family and not have to take out another home equity loan.

First (and this is cheating, but what the heck; this whole posting is going to be about cheating), if you live in a large city, where people ARE different and have way different expectations (and expect this thing called “elegance”), then I will direct you to an absolutely lovely and somewhat hilarious article from today’s NY Times:

Big City Winter Wonderland Whizbang Holiday Affair

Second, (more cheating) if you are not, or don’t have friends who require (nay, demand) “elegance” or “fashionable” or “clever,” follow me. None of this is any of the aforementioned, but will definitely do for the holidays because what we do at the end of the year, frankly, is invite people over because…well, because it’s cold and dark and we want to get together, which is enough of a reason for anyone.

1) Whatever you do for the holidays, do that. If you decorate, decorate; if you don’t…well then, don’t. Your house, apartment, cardboard box or hovel is NOT a shooting location for Dwell, O or any other magazine. It’s your living place and whatever you like to do for the holidays, do that. Or not. If you want to go all out, check out people selling Christmas trees or a “cut your own” places for some of the trimmings. You can use the stuff at the bottom as well as anyone can and they just might sell it to you super cheap or for no cost – you are hauling this stuff away. Put the greens on the mantle. Smells great.

2) As the article above emphasizes (and I’m cribbing it here because it is such a great idea): What is important about this? Hmmm? It’s the people. What do people need: Food, a place to sit down if they need to sit down, stuff to drink (alcoholic for those who are above age; something nifty and sparkly for those who don’t drink or who are not of age).

3) Food and drink. I am a very big proponent of letting people have their way with my kitchen. (If they can cook and clean up for themselves later, so much the better – I provide pretty aprons.) Two great and simple ideas that require you to do only the prep before the party and then participate with everyone else:

a) Personal pizzas (get pizza dough from the store or make your own; spread it out on cookie sheets and mark out “territories” for people to spread toppings on. Cut up peppers, pepperoni or sausage, onions, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese, other toppings as your creativity devises, and bake at 400 degrees F for 15 min). Also a good hearty green salad, red wine (or sangria) for the adults; punch or soda water and juice for the kids. Fruit for dessert.

b) Personal omelets. This will require two pans and people willing to wield them, but the same goes: whipped up eggs, cut up stuff for the “innards” of the omelets. Nice rolls or sliced sweet breads, and perhaps some fruit salad. Good coffee and nice teas. No one will try to go home “under the influence” – always a plus.

c) The heck with this meal business; go straight to having them in on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon for tea, coffee and desserts. Don’t forget to have decaf for those who don’t indulge and go all out with the desserts – whatever “tiggers do best,” do that. You can always rationalize, by offering cheesecake or carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, that there is some protein in it (hey, it’s what I do…).

Places to sit: I don’t know what it is, but no matter where I’ve been or what the occasion is, everyone ends up in the kitchen. So, why not start there and forget this “juggling plates on the arm of the sofa with the glass” thing? Clear off the counters, set up the dining room table just in case and let people stand there and eat. It’s what they want to do – you know it, they know it and they’ll have a much better time.

Music. Ahem. I am going to reveal a secret – unless you have, sitting out in one corner of your living room, a lovely tuned family piano, with appropriate seating and music so that some amazing and wonderfully adept guest can sneak away at some appropriate point to quietly play “seasonal” and Broadway tunes, then…forget the music. Seriously. “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” et al. does not make for good digestion. Tomorrow morning, people will turn on any radio in the country and be assaulted by seasonal tunes. If you have kids that need entertaining, set up a tv and a dvd/vcr in a separate room with a limited selection of holiday classics (whichever holiday you like – I was brought up celebrating Chanukah but I can tell you that the holiday classic in our house was “White Christmas” with Danny Kaye – hey, the Jewish kid was the best part of the entire film) and a helpful teenager to keep the fighting under control.

There you have it: cheap, neat, tidy, filling and nutritious. Happy Holidays.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)