Christmas Holiday



EGGPLANT CASSEROLE



SPINACH FETA CASSEROLE





APPLE CAKE WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING



SALMON CAKES

 

Christmas to me should only come every three years. Does anyone else feel this way? I mean before you know it Christmas has come and gone and come around again and I just took down the decorations and put them away. Or so it seems this way.

My children live out of state on opposite coast lines, so dilligent coordination must happen before any semblance of a holiday materializes.  We have phone call after phone call trying to coordinate the flights,
the times, the pick ups and the schedule of who is staying where and when we are eating and shopping and
wow I'm tried all ready.

I am not saying I don't like the holidays I just wish they came around lets say as often as leap year! It seems I need that long to deliberate over the Christmas dinner and Christmas breakfast. I have one child that it
a vegetarian and one that only wants one dish, because she will eat to much of everything else and I of
course want to make a huge glorious, elegant meal that would befit Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse.

Needless to say I start planning and thinking weeks ahead of time scouring the recipes I have, looking through all the new magazines, food websites and food television shows, hoping to find the perfect recipe
for my two wonderful adult children and all their requests.  I believe this has become just a hobby or should
I say an obsession though, because the "kids" are fine with one or two things. Macaroni and cheese and
eggplant casserole. I suppose I could make this numerous times and they would not complain.
But alas I have some figment in my imagination that Christmas dinner should be full of granduer and splendour and full of awe.  Did I say that? Yes I did. Who am I kidding. Maybe if you are the Queen of
England, but in this day and age even she may be saying Bah Humbug to Holiday dinner, pass me the
fries and vinegar.
Well maybe that is a little extreme. My dinner was somewhere in between, way in between. I finally decided on a menu that would hopefully satisify my dream and my children's distinguished appetites.
My menu started with crab cakes, eggplant casserole, macaroni and cheese, spinach casserole, stuffed grape leaves. Now I know this does not sound like your traditional or even a Christmas dinner, it looks like a buffet of casseroles, but you see I had to make a vegetarian meal, and lacking in meat but big on substance.


Well needless to say I cooked for days, and loved every minute of it. This menu was what I made to please
the kids, who are not so kiddish any more, they are more kids when home and adults when away.
My idea of Christmas dinner is far from what I made to make them happy, but on we go into the world of
home cooking. It really doesn't matter what you make, it is the atmosphere in which you eat it together that
counts. So cook a christmas pizza for your kids if that is all they will eat, but make it the tradition of sitting together that they remember. Make it along with your other dishes you love and as they grow up they will
surprise you and ask you to make them for these special holidays! That is how I ended up with this crazy menu, it is all of the dishes they love and relate to the happy holiday times!

Wow where did the holidays go?

As soon as the fall hits it seems like before we know it, it is January and we are standing in the midst of our slightly droopy  holiday decorations saying what happened to the end of the year?

Well I believe everyone has some kind of feeling like this the first two weeks of the new year.  Any way I certainly did, with children flying in and out of the state to come home, family and friends calling, I barely had time to look at the computer.

So what I am going to do is provide a recap of the meals and dishes I prepared through out all of the decorating, shopping, cleaning, airport trips and gift wrapping. And hopefully by next year I will have this
blogging thing down so well that I can blog while I am shopping or cleaning!!!

Thanksgiving............

Thanksgiving is my favorite holilday, and I love to cook for this holiday.  This year I ate at my dear friend.s
house. She was newly married a year ago and wanted to host thanksgiving with her husband. The dishes I prepared were, a brussel sprout au gratin, a cranberry cream dish, and an apple-pear praline pie.

The day was, should I say fabulous,  despite the turkey that had not been done on time, because of two major disaters that would be a newly married couple's worst nightmare!!! Actually it would be anyone's nightmare for Thanksgiving!  What were these disaterous events! ? The unspeakable, a fire in the oven!!! Not once but twice!
First a beautiful breakfast with your newly blended family, to start the day off perfect. Wrong!!!!  Somehow the breakfast casserole caught fire and boom the oven was on fire with everyone in a frenzy, smoke alarms going off and kids and babies running everywhere. Who knew you couldn't put bacon under the broiler for very long!!! Wow no turkey in the oven yet, only two hours behind!!
Okay, everyone recovered and no one was rethinking the day yet. That came later in the day after the second fire in the oven and the dishwasher flooding the kitchen floor!!!! Yes I said the dishwasher flooding! But like the true foodie and calm, levelheaded woman my friend is, she was walking in cirles and totally  frieked out like a new bride should be, after all we can handle anything(superwomen and all). Who said that anyway?
 That is when I arrived not knowing what I was walking into, expecting to see all the sides made, the turkey cooling on top of the oven, not still raw and in the oven. I thought it would be Thanksgiving bliss!!
What dream was I in? I have never seen my friend so happy to see me in all the years I have known her!  She promptly and with complete command, slammed the magazine recipe into my hand and said "here finish this! I can't think now."
I with complete surprise at here out of control demeanor, quickly sat her down on the kitchen chair where
she looked like a bewildered bird, who couldn't find it's nest and told her to stay there. She did not know what hit her!!  The kitchen was an example of a cooking class gone wrong and the instructor walking out on the student. Her husband was frantically and continually adding ingredients to the gargantuan pot of mashed potatoes on the stove and asking everyone if they would taste them and decide if they needed more cheese. No! Please no more cheese, enough all ready, as the potatoes were dripping over the side the pot that must have been 30 inches tall and big enough to feed the entire team of Red Wings Hockey players a dinner of just mashed potatoes! Who are we anyway--the world's biggest mashed potato eaters in the state of Michigan!!! During all this I kept thinking-the turkey, the turkey. My friend and her husband are great foodies and love exotic dishes and spices. They were experimenting on new dishes and didn't realize this is the biggest no no in Thanksgiving history, especially with 20 guests arriving all at once. It was like Dr. Suess
the Land of Whoville. Yes who is going to make all these unkown dishes and who knows what they will
taste like. Cindy lou where are you. Welcome to crazy holiday 101.
Dinner was only four hours away, no problem, the troops have arrived.  Moms from both sides came in just on time to restore the fantasy. I was dilligently trying to follow the recipe that was shoved into my hands upon arrival, and trying to scour the kitchen for the ingredients. Her mother was immediately made kitchen captain and head executive chef, and got everything going on track like she was elected to office and saving the troops, making the gravy with one hand and filtering through all the cooking paraphenalia to see the bottom of the kitchen counters. We all worked on getting everything prepared including my friend who was quickly restored to her usual self, after the cooking artillary arrived.  Heaven knows ,who could be normal through all of that on the first Thanksgiving you were hosting as a new couple for all those people!

Well at about 8pm we all sat down to a beautiful candlelit, well cooked turkey and an over abundance of
Thanksgiving sides and listened to my friend and her husband recount the events of the day that we all indeed can somewhat be familiar with even if ours were not as traumatic.  They were now officially iniated into the Thanksgiving Hall of fame, after experiencing all of this and hoping they can take a Thanksgiving hiatis, for maybe the next five years.
 We all decided we had so much to be thankful for, especially my friend, she was
just glad that dinner was over and they didn't burn the house down or wash away the cats in the flood!

I hope your Thanksgiving was less eventful, peaceful and happy!

The Everlasting apple pie!

Is there anyone out there in the United States of America that does not like apple pie?  Well I am
sure there may be someone, but as far as I know,
apple pie says home!  But what kind of apple pie?The good old fashioned, golden two crust pie. The scumptious vanilla ice cream on top kind. The  cinnamony, sweet, juicy pie we all know and love. 

Pies are something that come in all flavors of sweet
and savory foods. Everyone has a favorite.  But
today the apple pie is the one I will feature here.

Did you every notice the apple pie war silently
going on with Mom and Grandma and friend an
neighbor or anyone obssesed with the fact that they make the best tasting, best looking and the biggest
apple pie of all. For some reason the apple pie becomes the test of baking and competition to all avid
home bakers and maybe professional bakers too.  What is it about the apple pie that stirs this innate
primal competition to bake, and rebake to prove that "our pie is better than yours"?  Is it the fact that
the apple was the fruit that Eve took the first bite from and offered it to Adam. Hence the forbidden
fruit, therefore the obsession of making it into the best pie to win over the next Adam? I don't think
so, actually how primitive and maybe should I say how 1950's is that. 
Well whatever the reason, you never see anyone competing over the best rhubarb pie, yuk in my book.
(sorry to all you rhubarb lovers).  Well you all know the saying "As American as Apple Pie". So
let's get baking and see if your competitive spirit breaks free
Let's start with that golden brown crust. Who can make a crust that comes out perfect? Maybe our grandmothers or great grandmothers?  Well not today, I know so many of you are afraid of the "made
from scratch pie crust", but I have a recipe that is so easy, once you try it you will never buy a pre-made
crust again.
Following is the recipe for this fabulously, flaky crust and lucious apple pie. I hope you like it!

FABULOUSLY FLAKY PIE CRUST
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
16 TBS (2 sticks) cold butter
4-6 TBS cold water

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder. Cut butter into tablespoon size squares and add
to flour. Coat with the flour mixture. Mix with a pastry cutter or two forks till very crumbly. Add the water
tablespoon by tablespoon to keep it moist, so that the mixture can form into a ball.
Cut the dough ball into two pieces and flatten each one to a round disc, wrap each one in saran wrap
and refrigerate at least one hour.
On a floured surface or on a large piece of saran wrap place one of the dough discs, cover with either
flour or saran whichever you choose to roll the dough on.  I have just started rolling on the saran wrap
because it is mess free and easier to place in the pie plate.
Roll with a rolling pin in one direction but in a outward circular motion around the disc to flatten it and make it about 1 inch larger than the pie plate. Roll consecutively around the disc until it is the desired size. Example,
roll it like you are rolling out to each number on the clock, clockwise until it is the right size.
Now remove the top layer of saran wrap, and gently lift the bottom saran wrap, lifting the pie dough at
the same time. Lay the dough on top of the pie plate and remove the saran wrap. Gently fit the dough
into the pie plate to fit, pressing the edges onto the edge of the plate. You can use either your fingers
or a fork to press the edge onto the plate to form to the pie plate.

For the Apple Pie filling:
10-12 Cooking apples (I like Empire, but you can use Granny Smith,  or Ida Red or what you like)
1 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of flour
1 tsp of ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp of ground allspice
1/8 tsp of ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp of salt
3-4 TBS of butter
3TBS of melted butter
1TBS sugar
Peel and cut apples into thin slices. Place in a very large mixing bowl. Add the sugar and mix well.
In another small bowl mix together the flour, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt then add to
the apple and sugar mixture and mix together well till apples are coated with the spice and flour mixture.
Pour the apples into the pie plate with the prepared bottom crust. Place the 3-4 TBS of butter on the apples
in 3 or 4 different spots.
Go back to your second dough disc and roll out like described above.
Place that crust on top of the apple filling. Seal the two crust together around
the edge of the pie plate using your fingers or a fork to make a decorative edge.
Cut slits into the top of the crust with a sharp knife about an inch long in three or four places.
Melt the extra 3TBS of butter and brush along the edge of the crust and the top of the pie.
Place the pie on a large baking sheet to protect your oven from spills. Cover the edge of the pie crust
with foil for the first 25 minutes of baking.
Bake in a 350* oven for 25 minutes, remove foil and bake for 25 to 30 minutes more until golden and
bubbly.
Yummy!!! Hope you love it!!!

Dining in at home

This is definitely the fall. The leaves are all turning and the wind is blowing. Usually when this happens everyone wants to start getting cozy and comfy in their homes. What automatically seems to
go along with this, is cooking those comfy ,cozy foods we all associate with home and a warm blanket
on the couch.

I love the fall, but most of all I love fall cooking. I am one of those people who love the preparation and the final outcome of my cooking, the table setting and the atmosphere. I love the experience more than I actually like the eating.  I know that sounds silly, the creating is the enjoyment for me and seeing the end result and how it makes everyone feel that sits down at my table makes me happier than eating my own food! 

I have been obsessed for years with collecting recipes, going through cookbooks, making menus,
reading cooking magazines and now watching all the food  and cooking channels that are available. I am always looking for a recipe that I can emulate or change or create.  Collecting dishes and table lines is another obsession for the avid at home entertainment cook. You may never seem to have enough.

Dining at home can be a great experience, if you don't stress about it. You may begin to enjoy it so
much that you actually prefer to stay in rather than go out!

I am going to try to help you with the whole eating at home thing.  I have great recipes
that will surely keep you and your family, friends and significant other in for the evening.

I am hoping to share the entire experience with everyone and transfer some of my love
of cooking and dining to everyone interested. Eating at home and creating the ambiance and
setting for the great home experience is truly an easy art to learn.

Here's to dining in and loving it.
Lizzie