A busy 7 days of food food food! Did i mention food?

The december holidays are a day away (if you count advent), and we have kicked off the season with 3 dinners for thanksgiving, and our own tomorrow afternoon.

What started out as a relatively small family get together has morphed into dinner for 13 (yeah, i know the superstition, but i don’t think it will bother anyone.)  So we are having it at e&T’s, which can easily accommodate that many, whereas our tiny abode would not.

In the past, I have made big dinners for Das and the moth that last all day, starting with salads around 11am, and culminating in something sweet around 9p.   One year i served 18 courses, but it took that long to eat them.

This year, i’m going as traditional as i can bring myself to do so, turkey was out of the question, i didn’t talk to many people who really actually liked it other than on thanksgiving, so I’m making game hens and a pork shoulder, with cranberries, sweet mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, and stuffing.  I’ve never made 3 of those, so im awake and nervous, a little bit.

The only person i really really want to impress is Das, and then after that is the moth.  Ideally, i would like everyone else (starting with the rest of the quad) to enjoy it immensely as well.  For Das’ birthday, i cooked for a lot of the same people, so I know i can do it : )

One thing that is hard is distinguishing a good dish when you don’t really eat it.  I don’t eat cranberries except in juice, and i don’t even like sweet potatoes, so those go by how well emmie likes them.   She was asleep when i made the cran, so let me share my recipe with you for that

4c cran

1c sugar

1c water

1tsp lemon zest

1/2 tsp pepper

Make a simple syrup by dissolving sugar in boiling water.  Add cran and zest and pepper, stir.  Return to a boil then simmer for 10 mins or til cranberries burst.

That’s it!

Here’s the simple steps to the smashed sweetatoes.

5lbs sweet potatoes, baked til they peel easily.

*i have found that this takes waaay longer than an hr at 350: i baked an extra 30 mins on 400, and then they were perfetto*

2tsp vanilla extract

several handfuls of brown sugar

splash of cream (maybe 1/3 cup)
put together and then Mash.   I am hoping to whip them in a food processor if there’s one available tomorrow, but if not, it will be no hardship, they are very soft and not terribly lumpy.

I have been having quite a time figuring out the stuffing.  I didn’t want it to sit all assembled overnight, so i put the chopped veggies in one container and the bread crumbles in another, and will combine tomorrow before baking.  I am thinking about using bacon grease for sauteeing the veggies, to add to the sausage flavours.  I haven’t decided

I am going to refrain from including this recipe til I know how it comes out.  I hope it does well, it’s going up against some serious stuffing competition (m of m & W; Master O, i mean you!)

One of the things i love about this holiday is the tradition of sharing it with friends.  And it means so much to me that so many people have touched our lives in the last year, and that i had a hard time keeping this list reasonable.  The community (and my only vanilla, the moth) has been so supportive of us, and has reached us in so many ways.  Thank you to all of you who will break bread with us, again, and here is to many more meals and warm hearths together.

mitda

Rule Britannia

emmie and i threw Das a surprise party for his 40th birthday.

we started planning it on monday, and by wednesday, he totally knew what was up. Except for the company

and the food.

My darling Das is from England, and once introduced me to the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. Which i did enjoy, very much. Even one superbowl sunday, that’s what we ate. Forget hot dogs and hamburgers w/ football (american). We had these pork pies. And, if i’m not mistaken, Canadian beer.

So, Das’ birthday approaches (it was on Sunday) and i knew i had it in mind to make Melton Mowbray pork pies. And then, in chatting with someone from the community, to throw him a surprise party. And then discussing with someone else from the community, i realized that we could do all English pub fare.

So, along about Tuesday, maybe wednesday, Das figures out there’s a party afoot. I burst into tears, because i really wanted to surprise him, really a lot.

I can’t keep a secret from him for anything, though.

But i managed (with brave help) to perform this feat:

Melton Mowbray Pork Pie

Welsh Rarebit

Scotch Eggs (thanks to Scarlett)

Bangers and Mash (with thanks to e&T)

with chips and queso, watermelon, and (drum roll) Cheez Whiz on Celery!

Melton Mowbray pies are very weird, and a bit more difficult than Cornish Pasties, but i don’t know how to make those either, and dove into discovering a good recipe, one i could get my head around without too much sturm und drang. My mother aided by preparing the stock the night before, and roasting waaay too much pork (i can’t convert in my head, clearly.)

When i do them again, i won’t roast the pork beforehand, but it was much easier to manipulate already cooked. Here’s the recipe from which i bounced:

Melton Mowbray Pork Pie

And the rarebit

Could be this:

“Rare bit of eating” or

a slur against welsh, who were, by different ideas, either very poor (so no meat) or very poor at hunting.

(i’ve always heard it pronounced “rabbit”, but i heard otherwise sunday.)

I had lots of compliments on the rarebit, which was pleasant, but Das eating two pork pies was enormously meaningful to me, as i have never said i could bake worth a shit.

thanks to everyone who came, and ate, and talked and had a really good time.

love, mitda

Iced Coffee Invitation

There is a simple trick to iced coffee perfection: brew double strength.  To wit: if there is a 12 cup coffee maker, put 6 cups of water with and the normal amount of grinds.  One could just brew twice into same pot in order to have 12 cups of 2x strength coffee.

Simple, right?

Das likes iced coffee, double strength or no, in the afternoons.   If my mint plant had made it, i would have minty water or minty lemonade on hand, i’m sure, but the mint didn’t live, alas, and so for refreshing delicious, there’s a good chance you’ll be offered an iced coffee should you decide to drop by.  Please, do, by all means, drop by.

I remember iced coffee being very popular at starbucks when i worked there, especially in afternoons, especially in the summers.   I hadn’t thought i would like it all that much, but i gave it a try, of course with a little cream and sugar (sweet and creamy in our parlance), and discovered quite a treat.

(Psst: At Starbucks they make their Iced Coffee with Italian Roast, unless they’ve changed it– Italian is nearly as dark as French.)

I have thought about making Sun Tea but don’t have an appropriate vessel on hand so to steep, so haven’t quite jumped on that Southern refresher just yet.  I feel sure that before too long I’ll find something.

potato salad. really?

When i asked the moth (my mother, for future reference) what she would like to eat on Mother’s Day she thought about it for a while and finally said she wanted potato salad.

I was thinking of doing game hens and trappings of that ilk.

Potato salad never appealed that much to me, it was mushy and bland. But, lo, i went hunting up a recipe for potato salad, one i re-did last night to go along with grilled bratwurst and sausages.

Cube 1-2 lbs of potatoes (i use red skinned potatoes because they look better)

-i cut mine into easily bite size bits, not unwieldy chunks. the result is much nicer.

Boil for 13-15 minutes (so they are cooked but firm and not easily mashed)

in large bowl:

3 stalks of celery, very finely cut

3-5 green onions, including green bit

handful of chopped dill

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 c (or so) mayo

(careful not to overdo it on the mayo. it’s hard, i know.)

when potatoes are done, drain and blanch, mix all together

-mods

adding bacon crumbles. by this i mean not those processed bacon bits, but go through the trouble of making it and crumbling it. Why? because you can then add the fat to the mix, of course.

It occurs to me when i made this the first time, and again last night, that pride can get in the way of a really good dish. Potato salad isn’t fancy, it isn’t showy, but the people around me wanted it, and it was easy enough to make. Being able to create something lovely from what my judgment held to be kind of “beneath” me to make is an exercise in humility, even if it’s just the revelation itself teaching me.

formal variation on informal theme

I don’t have a picture of this.   We were all going to a MAsT meeting and i wanted to take something good for canapes.  One of my biggest downfalls is my pride in my cookery.  That’s a different discussion.
Das and i had found a recipe for “Bacon roll-ups” which involved white bread, cream cheese, garlic powder and, of all things, bacon.

Sort of went like this:

Cut white bread into squares, smear garlicky cream cheese on them, roll a strip of bacon around, stick toothpick through, bake 10 minutes to crisp bacon.

It sounded good in theory, but we thought to dress it up some.  Here’s what we ideated and i eventually prepared:

1 loaf english toasting bread

2 10 oz packages Dry Coppa

2 cubey things of Chavrie (one herby one, one mild)

capers

cut crusts off bread, cut into 2” squares (like a one-bite appetizer).

mix up chavries and smear a bit onto each square

pinch a bit of coppa over the chavrie, so it sticks.  mine were like little bridges

under each bridge of coppa, place a caper

i tried it with 2-3 capers, but they were too strong.  One each was better.

-mods:

you could use prosciutto.  a pitted olive (kalamata, i’d guess).

*

Berries and Brie

I found a recipe using puff pastry to make something like these, but phyllo is sold in already-baked shells!!  i currently suck at manipulating phyllo, so i was quite relieved to see this.  i am told the key to handling phyllo sheets is a whole lot of butter.   no, more than that.

The recipe from which this was derived involved hot pepper jelly.  I don’t know what that is or what it tastes like, but i like berries, so i came up with this.

30 pre-made phyllo shells

raspberry preserves

raspberries

brie (with rind!)

in each shell spoon a bit of preserves, place a small square of brie, top with berry.   This is a very labor intensive bit of appetizing, even with pre-done shells, but it’s really worth it.   i would’ve added a bit of pepper over all of it if i had thought about it.  pepper really makes berry flavor pop.

bake 5-8 minutes.

serve warm.

i took a bunch of these to a small gathering of lifestyle women, in which there was much good conversation and a whole night was talked away.  we didn’t really eat that many, but there was also pizza and cake and cupcakes.

it occurred to me that i’ve always had the kinky bend, since sexuality meant anything to me, as well as a bottomy, if not totally submissive kind of being to the expression of that sexuality.  I was always with men and women who were older and taller, for instance.

In making tiny appetizers which use both hands to create, i find that i am expressing my desire to serve those i love with the very best i have to offer.  Even when not serving Das directly, i indirectly do him honor by presenting a lovely little dish that wasn’t put together begrudgingly.

I like to say that dishes come out better when you add extra love to them.  Even cheese sandwiches.  (Sometimes mayo=love, you see   )

love, mitda