Fitting nicely in line with my all-time life goal of “Eat More Meals Containing the Word ‘Smothered.’ ”

This was the easiest recipe ever. You basically fry up a bunch of bacon, then saute some leeks, crumble up the bacon and put it on top. I added some ’shrooms, tomaters and a coupla snow peas, but only cuz we had em on hand and they were reaching the end of their fridge life expectancy.

Served with couscous from the box and a pair of Alaskan Amber Ales. Scrumptious.

Pre-ski trip chow, to give us energy for the EIGHT HOUR (round trip) drive to Kirkwood we’re facing tomorrow. Alarms are set for 4:35am, which isn’t really that big of a deal for me because I get up at 3:50am when I work the 5-5 shift, however Earl is in for a jolt. The smart money says he takes a snooze tomorrow while I drive
ps- Linus even got in on some bacon action.

Have you seen What’s Up, Tiger Lily? If not, you should. It’s a superb Woody Allen comedy centering around the search for a secret egg salad recipe.

Today, I lived out my own version of What’s Up, Tiger Lily. You see, every time Earl and I head up north to go skiing, we eat egg salad sandwiches on the drive up. It’s a tradition stemming back from the very first ski weekend we took to Quechee, Vermont from New York City together. Earl was coming to meet what was almost my entire family- parents, sister, brother in law and two nieces all for the first time. When I picked him up on a Friday after work in the Jeep (back when she was still spiffy and not all busted) at his apartment at 98th & West End, his arms were overflowing with not only ski gear, but a bag of egg salad sandwiches and snacks for the drive.

“Egg salad?!” I scoffed, having never tried in my life, “Yuck! That’s disgusting! Who eats that?” My father had ingrained in me (I think this was some wacky holdover from the 50s) that egg salad sandwiches were “for dweebs” and “gross.” So I’d never really gave them a whirl.

“Suit yourself, more for me,” responded Earl as he dove into his. Somewhere up the Jersey pike he offered me a bite. Practically holding my nose, I tentatively ventured a nosh. “Woah! That’s pretty good,” came my response as I chewed. Luckily, my sandwich had yet to be devoured so I got to scarf it in pleasure and have been an egg salad convert ever since. We used to eat them almost every weekend during the winter, especially when we drove up north. Later when we moved together on the Upper East Side, we still would head all the way over to Lennys Bagels on the west side (99th and Broadway, to be exact) to grab some.

I even converted a few others to egg salad afterwards! Every Friday during Lent I would bring in two egg salad sandwiches to the Private Equity Firm where I worked and share one with the admin. Formerly a strictly chicken salad gal, she RAVED over them and quickly became a convert.

Once we moved to San Francisco, Earl and I spent many sad days longing for those Lennys Egg Salad sandwiches. Out here in California, they just don’t know how to make em. There’s always too much dill, or celery, drowning in mayo, or other junk. One time I even tried one with RANCH DRESSING!!! Can you believe it!?! My theory is that San Francisco (and California in general) needs more Jews. We already went through this with Matzoh ball soup- here the same problem is rearing its head.

Today, as we were packing our bags to go skiing and I was contemplating what we would eat for dinner on the drive, I reached the end of my rope. Just like I learned with matzoh ball soup, the only way to get decent egg salad out here in this stupid city is going to be to make my own. That’s IT! I’m calling Lennys!!

I called Lennys and sweet talked the manager into giving me their egg salad recipe this afternoon. My lips are sealed and I can’t post the recipe on this blog, however I will tell you that it’s deceptively simple. Idiotically simple. I’m making them right now (the eggs are cooling as I type this) and I can’t wait to see how closely my sandwiches replicate the Gold Standard. I was a little wary with bread, but went to the hippy grocery store and got the freshest, fluffiest, thickest sliced cracked wheat bread I could get my hands on.

I will end this post by saying hopefully they come out well, and that if you are ever in New York City (or happen to be there right now) to get your butt over to Lennys on the upper west side and please scarf down an egg salad sandwich in my honor.

For dinner tonight:

Purchased at the farmer’s market this weekend- $1.25 for the bunch.  I have no idea what it is.  “Something, something choy,” said the farmer.  From what he told me, mystery vegetable is good sauteed with chicken.  We’ll see about it.  For posterity, I threw in some plain old baby bok choy, mushrooms, an onion, a green pepper and garlic (and lemongrass for seasoning).  Figured if Mystery Veg was horrible, we could at least rely on the other veggies.

Going in the pot- here we go.

I sauteed it until it was looking just a bit wilted.

Survey says…..? (served over quinoa)

Nerd Approved.

Earl provided me with much amusement when he tried to eat a piece of lemongrass which I must have missed taking out before serving. “Everything’s really good,” he said with half the piece of lemongrass sticking out of his mouth while he chewed, “but why is this so tough?” Heh. Whoops!

Hey, how do you like his new beard? It was my birthday present Every year around my birthday I ask him to grow a mustache or a beard. I think he looks particularly handsome and very rugged. He kvetches about it itching growing in, but usually complies. I figure I have a week or so left to enjoy before he gets fed up and shaves.

Verdict of the mystery veg: It was good! I wouldn’t say great, but certainly not bad. Had a pleasant crunch to it, but you could tell it was cooked through. Earl thought it tasted “generic” and “like greens” but… :shrug: Maybe next time I see that particular farmer I will try harder to find out exactly what it is called.

Sadly, we had to come back as work called for both of us But we shall return! It took us an EIGHT AND A HALF HOUR DRIVE in the snoooooowwww and crazy traffic to get home!
See here:

The skiing was incredible, my birthday wonderful and TR to follow.

In the meantime, can anyone help me understand this recipe? I feel like I am a reasonably intelligent human being, however my reading comprehension skills must be lacking right now because I can’t figure something about this recipe out.

I want to cook it tonight as it’s rainy and gross here in San Francisco and I think a “stick to your ribs” comfort dinner of chicken and dumplings would really hit the spot. This Emeril recipe has great reviews and sounds really good. However, I can’t figure out what you do with the dumplings!! Here, read it. The last thing it has you do is make the dumplings out of flour and put them in the fridge, as quoted:

Cut into long strips 1-inch wide. Transfer to a large plate or baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until ready to use.

But then, he doesn’t mention using them again until he says this:

Place the dumplings on top of the chicken mixture and gently stir into the hot liquid. Cover and simmer until the dumplings are cooked through, about 10 minutes.

Whaaa? Huh? Am I missing something? How do your refrigerated strips of dough become dumplings?? What are you supposed to do? I don’t understand! Help!

I think the recipe is missing a few steps of the instructions- are you supposed to stuff the dumplings with your chicken mixture? Just form those 1″ strips into little balls of doughy dumplings?

This is very frustrating because the food.tv recipes always seem to be so reliably good and also this particular chicken and dumpling recipe has SEVENTY SIX positive reviews! Seventy six people already cooked this and no one noticed that there’s a step missing? Or am I just being incredibly daft and completely missing it myself…

Please help!

Here is a delicious and easy 1-pan meal which E and I whipped up after we both got off work. Simple, quick and relatively healthy. We altered the recipe a tad by adding some peanut-spice rubbed grilled chicken. Quinoa has tons of protein anyway, so you don’t really need to add the critter; we had a hankering for some grilled meat.

Step 1: Get a chopping! Saute up some diced red onions and bell peppers. Unsurprisingly, chopping is the longest and most arduous part of this meal.

Step 2: Your house should be smelling reeeallly good by now. It will start to smell *even better* because you are adding a bunch of minced garlic, minced ginger, and bruised lemongrass at this point. I’d never really cooked with lemongrass before, but was happy to find some at the hippy grocery store and have been using it in soups and recipes all week. Really good!

Step 3: Here is a step I would advise you to alter. The recipe calls for you to cut a lime in half, squeeze all the juices into your sauteeing veggies and then throw the lime rinds in as well. The taste of lime *alllmost* was too much for us- I would maybe add 1/2 of the lime juice or even 1/3rd of the called for amount. Coconut and chili combined is such a tantalizing flavor that it was a bummer the lime overpowered everything else. Also, add your quinoa at this point. You are going to saute the quinoa until it is a “toasty golden brown.” Took us about 5 minutes with constant stirring.

Step 4: Now the fun part! Add one can coconut milk and a bunch of chili powder and cayenne pepper to taste. We increased the amount the recipe called for because we are sadists Doesn’t this look like it’s just going to come out delicious? You basically boil the quinoa in coconut milk instead of plain old water. Splendid!

Step 5: Boring part. Cover and simmer 35 minutes. We went and chilled in bed, taking turns every five minutes to come stir. It was fun watching the quinoa sop up the milk as smells of Thailand invitingly wafted through the house.

Step 6: When your quinoa has reached full size (and absorbed most of the liquid), uncover and fluff with a fork. This was the point where we added our grilled chicken.

Step 7: Stir in your chicken if you went that route, and also add in some thin sliced green onion for flavoring. Let sit for five minutes to let all the flavors settle. Sample generous amounts while waiting and ruin your dinner ps- remember to remove the lime rind and lemongrass sticks at this point.

Step 8: Beer me!

Step 9: Ess! or Fress, if you’re particularly ravenous Want to hear the saddest part of this tale? I was still feeling rather under the weather from my nasty cold last weekend and couldn’t even finish my one beer! Travesty. ::shakes head:: That Alaskan White beer is so freaking good.

All in all, a great healthy meal which is pretty easy, healthy and unique! I think a lot of the ingredients- onions, lemongrass, garlic, ginger and chili powder were great for helping us get rid of our colds. Just remember to go easy on the lime. Cheers.

To kick off our Winter Solstice and the holiday, Earl and I threw what I hope turns into a yearly winter bash.  Feastivus:  a big schmorgashborad of chowing down with a bunch of our dear friends.

It took a whole day of shopping, (I am NOT exaggerating here, it took 5 hours straight of shopping at four stores, Earl was about ready to kill me by the end of the day!), an entire day of prep work and cleaning and then another whole day of cooking to pull it off.  And pull it off we did!  Despite last minute fears of not having enough food, having too many people show up (do you know how nerve wracking it is to hem and haw over whittling down a guest list, finally settle on who you are inviting, and send out belabored invitations only to have 2/3 of your guests ask “I can bring a date, right?”), not having enough places for people to sit or enough silverware and more essentially NOT HAVING ENOUGH BOOZE, things went off without a hitch.

The success of Feastivus supports my theory that as long as company is true, the home is warm and welcoming and there is plenty of food and booze to go around the party will survive any major kerfluffle.  I figured worst case scenario we could dole out a bunch of tequila shots and order a couple of pizza pies. 

Blessedly, it did not come to that!  I spent approximately 12 hours net in the kitchen and by the skin of my teeth pulled off a fabulously complicated and intimidating gourmet meal which I siphoned the recipes from a secret professional chef who shall not be named.  What follows below is the photo and text documentary of how things went!  I hope you enjoy the write up as much as Earl and I enjoyed throwing the party.

Just to recap, here was the planned Feastivus menu, in all it’s arduous glory:

• Appetizers: mulled wine, devilled eggs, hummus & pita chips, pickles, jams
• Entree: stuffed pork roulande in puff pastry, ratatouille
• Sides: creamed carrots, pecan wild rice pilaf, greens & berry salad with a pumpkin vinaigrette
• Dessert: Grand Marnier bread pudding, poached pears, spiked eggnog

Going into the night before the party, the only thing I had changed on the menu was to sub in a vegan olallaberry pie for the poached pears.  Upon doing menu prep (the dreaded “do I have enough pots and pans to get all this food ready at the same time” calculation) I realized that poached pears were far too labor intensive for a dinner party and I would much rather spend my evening schmoozing and socializing with my guests than reducing and re-reducing a poached wine sauce.  So, you could say I cheated and took a shortcut because Earl and I picked up the vegan pie pre-prepared from Rainbow Grocery, the hippy grocery store.  We’d actually served the same exact pie the last time our vegan friend Dom came over to dinner, and it was STUPENDOUS- even better than a bunch of non-vegan pies I’ve had, so we knew it would be a failproof hit.

Enough chatting, let’s get to the cooking.  I actually had MAJOR problems getting started with cooking this meal.  I don’t know what it was!  I was puttering around on Monday morning, delaying the inevitable, to the point where Earl, who was at work by this time, found me on gchat and asked “what are you doing online?!?!? Shouldn’t you be cooking by now????”  My friend Tracy- the inflabbable type you can always lean on in a crisis- fielded my frantic “help I am throwing a dinner for 14 people and I can’t seem to get started!  What is wrong with me?” phone call with skill.  She pointed out the astute observation that I miss the hectic pace and pressure of the trading floor i-banking environment and therefore seek out and create these high pressure scenarios with cooking and parties so that I may sink or swim under harsh deadlines.  She has a point.  She ORDERED me on the phone to get started.  “While we are talking, you better be chopping,” she barked.  “Are you chopping?  I don’t hear chopping!”  Tracy got me out of my rut while we chatted and caught up and soon I was peeling carrots, dicing onions, grinding up oranges and on my way.  In a sense, you could say she is the Woman Who Saved Feastivus.  I owe her a thank you letter!

First thing I made was the “stuffing” to go in the pork roulade.  It is an orange cranberry reduction with herbs and spices.  The base of it is five oranges ground up, then sautéed with two bags of fresh cranberries while you add a bunch of herbs.  Because my trusty Magic Bullet blender is currently BROKEN and we have been too cheap/lazy/busy/forgetful/unorganized to order a new part for it, I had to slice, dice, cut, chop and otherwise peel and pulverize into faux-ground up mush FIVE ORANGES BY FREAKING HAND!!  This took a while- long enough for Tracy to tell me all the ins and outs of her new life in Utah while I developed a massive neck cramp from holding the phone between my shoulder and ear while I chopped.  The results of my labor:  Mush of Five Oranges (and I also threw in zest of one orange peel for taste), ready to go!

Add this to saute with two bags of fresh cranberries:

You add cinnamon and ground chili powder while stirring continuously for about 15 minutes over medium heat.  Secret Chef instructed that the cranberries should “pop naturally” as they cook, and that you want to end up with a mixture where most of the cranberries have popped and the result is “semi-solid.”   It eventually looked like this while the house started to smell sooooooooooo good:

Here is the final result, almost a gelatin, in a bowl, set aside ready to be stuffed into a pork loin roast:

Next prep work:  Toast a gazillion pecans!  You are going to need them for your greens and berries salad and also your rice pilaf.  By the way- pecans are freaking expensive!!  Despite buying all these nuts in (supposedly cheaper) bulk, they really killed our budget.  I knew the roast would set us back, but who would have expected pecans to be the next most expensive thing on the menu!  And they’re really just a freaking garnish!!

I seem to have trouble with “toasting” nuts.  I always end up burning some of them and then others in the pan not reaching sufficient level of toastiness.  I’ve tried both my toaster oven and real oven to unimpressive results.  Now when I toast nuts (and this even happened with my green apple green chili pie from yesterday!  I still can’t get this right), I expect, unfortunately to ruin about 1/4^th of them.  Add some more room to your budget to accommodate burned, inedible nuts!

Next, I got started on other things I could prepare early and then just warm up at time of eating.  Unlike the roast, I knew a rice pilaf and creamed carrots would both heat well after having been prepared in advance.

Now, holy cow, this rice pilaf.  It was SO GOOD, but I think I discoved the secret as to why restaurant food tastes so amazing.  At this point, following Secret Chef’s recipe, my jaw was agape at learning you basically BOIL THE VERMICILLI IN A HALF POUND OF BUTTER.  You know how you normally bowl pasta in WATER?  Sometimes salted water?  Or water with a bit of olive oil in it?  Ohhhhh noooooo.  Here, for the richest rice pilaf recipe in the world, you are going to BOIL YOUR RICE AND PASTA IN BUTTER.  At this point I realized poor Dom was not going to have any of the rice pilaf as it was decidedly NOT vegan!  Here is the vermicelli, broken up into 11/2 inch- 2” pieces, boiling in butter for about 10 minutes while stirring constantly, until it reaches a nice “toasty” color:

Yeah, that’s not water it’s boiling in, prep for cardiac compromise because it’s ALL BUTTER!

At this point I think I got a little into the cooking “zone” and lapsed on the picture taking.  I think it’s because I had about 4 different edible Irons in the Fire and was more concerned with not ruining any more food than photo-documenting for this blog.  I’ll just tell you what I did.

After the pasta is “toasty” looking, add rice and-surprise- more butter and boil them both in the butter for another 5 minutes while stirring constantly.  Then add three cans of Cambells undiluted chicken broth, stir for another minute, reduce heat to a simmer and cover for 30 minutes.  Open the lid only once and add 2 cups chopped and toasted pecans, fluff with fork, recover and let sit until serving time.  Good god this recipe is a heart attack in a pot.  It’s supposedly Secret Chefs’ mother’s recipe from Armenaia and it’s the first time it’s been translated into English.  Maybe something critical- like ½ pound of butter really meant two tablespoons was lost in conversion.  Regardless, it was a lucky, if unhealthy mistake because holy cow the rice pilaf tasted like a DREAM.  I was hesitant to tell my raving guests exactly how it was prepared lest they accuse of me trying to give them MIs at the party just to show off my EMT skills.

The other thing I prepared without really photo-documenting was the creamed carrots.  For them, you peel and boil three pounds of carrots until they are tender but not mushy.  This took about 15 minutes.  Secret Chef did not specify the boiling time in his instructions, leading me to frantically consult google “how long boil carrots” several times in a frenzy as I worried about overcooking them.  That’s the problem with vague Chefs.  They can be brilliant and their obscure instructions yield delicious bounties, but cause an intrepid beginner cook like myself many anxieties and headaches!!

Carrots boiled, add butter (only ¼ lb of butter in this one- what waistline watching restraint!) , cream cheese, heavy cream, and cinnamon and blend.  Or, if you are a fool like me with a broken blender, utilize some elbow grease and your Capririnia masher to get the job done.

Butter melted, cream and cream cheese blended, add four full very thin-sliced green onions to the mix.  This came out AMAZING and I really think the tartness of the green onions contrasting to the smooth creaminess of the carrots is what made the dish.  Here it is, in all its pre-prepped glory done gloriously in advance so that I could concentrate on the rest of my labors.  See those thin sliced green onions in there?  Don’t forget to add them, they are the secret ingredient that MAKES this dish.

Next!  On to the Grand Marnier bread pudding.  Chop up one loaf of French bread into 1” cubes.  Because the booth at the Farmer’s Market only had a teeny tiny French loaf (what gives??), I also threw two cubed brioches into the pudding as well to round it out.  The farmer’s market baker assured me that brioche makes a great bread pudding as well.  I figured- heck- add enough heavy cream and Grand Marnier and nobody could tell the difference anyways.

Sliced up bread:

Meanwhile you whip SIX eggs with two cups whole milk, two cups heavy cream, cinnamon and 1 cup of Grand Mariner.  You pour this mixture over the bread, then spoon and mix in 2 cups of golden raisens.  Bake the whole thing in a 375* oven “until the top is toasty brown.”  … :-/  Took me about an hour.

You are going to mix up some orange marmalade with another cup of Grand Marier, pour this over the top of the bread pudding and rebake for another 15 minutes right before serving.  This recipe was perfect for a big dinner party because it let me do the bulk of the prep in advance and then just add booze and marmalade on the top and heat right before serving.  Easy, peazy.  Screw you, poached pears!!

Onto le pork!  Ever heard of a “Z-cut?”  Me neither.  Fortunately, my butcher had.  He prepped two loins into z-cuts (to accommodate the stuffing) and even threw in a bunch of butcher’s twine for me free of charge.  This is what a z-cut looks like:

Get your cranberry l’ronge stuffing and stuff up that pig!  Use bakers twine to tie it all up, then wrap in foil. 

Into the oven these piggies go, at 375* for one hour.   Note- make sure to wrap REALLY well cuz otherwise cranberry orange mush and pork juis will drip everywhere.

Next I worked on chopping and prepping these veggies (red peppers, green peppers, basil, garlic, eggplant, tomatoes, yellow squash, green onions, yellow onion and parsley) for the ratatouille.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Ratatouille, you may be like Earl and I and expect this dish to be super complex and hard to cook.  Perhaps I had a doozy of a recipe (this one was an online find from Emeril, not Secret Chef- Secret Chef doesn’t “do” Vegan), however this dish couldn’t be more simple!!  You basically slice and dice a gazillion veggies, throw em all in a saute pan, add some spices and cook em up!  The ONLY hard thing about it is getting the order down that you throw the veggies into the mix.  Ones that take longer to cook (onions, eggplants, peppers) get added before ones which cook faster.  Guess they got it right in the movie- so easy, even a rat could do it!

Waiting to be chopped, sliced, and diced:

While you’re running around trying to clean the house and organize your nerdlove’s piles and piles of math annotations on various scraps of paper that float around your home and also HAZMAT clean up his dirty-bomb of Trident Spearmint gum wrappers, your pork roasts are done (with phase 1)!  Here’s a peak under the foil of what they look like after their 1 hour bake:

Do I have to even tell you that the HOUSE SMELLED SOOOOO GOOD??????

Next what you’re gonna do is the coolest step of this entire meal.  One of my guests hit the nail on the head.  You are basically making “fancy pigs in a blanket.”  These stuffed pork roulades get wrapped in puff pastry and re-baked.  I used Pillsbury crescent rolls.  Secret Chef calls for Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry, however Luckys only had Pillsbury crescent rolls, and 4 hours in to our epic shopping trip I was mitigating a long day and grumpy overshopped boyfriend, so that would have to do!

They did.  Here are piggies wrapped up in their crescent rolls.  I even schmanced it up using cooking cutters (actually, must give credit where it is due, E got home from work by this time and was helping out, HE decorated these piggies all by himself!) to have some little puff pastry hearts and stars on the tops.  Beat two egg whites together and brush liberally over your wrapped piggies and puff decorations to “glue” everything.  You could go as crazy as you want with the decorations.  Seeing as time was short and guests would be coming soon, we went with the cookie cutters we had on hand.

See those egg whites glisten!

By this point I had worked so hard and was so irrationally emotionally invested in these stupid pork roasts that you would have thought I had given birth to them myself!

They go in a 400* oven for 20-30 minutes, uncovered.  I waited for the guest to arrive before I even started this last step.  Who wants to eat straight away when they show up at a party?  I figured it would be more fun to give people (and myself, heh) time to leisurely chat, get to know each other (we had a mixed crowd of my skiing friends and Earl’s coworkers) and sip cocktails before the main eating event.

Speaking of booze, on to the mulled wine!  I must admit, this was my favorite part of cooking this crazy meal.  For your next winter or fall themed dinner party, I implore you to make some mulled wine.    Did you read me?  I said,  I IMPLORE YOU TO MAKE THIS MULLED WINE.  It was faaaaaaaaaaabulous.  And it looks so good!  Doesn’t it look soooo good????  Smelled superb, too:

The recipe for this mulled wine called for a lot of foreign sounding foofaraw of which I had never heard.  Cardomon pods?? WTF are cardomon pods??  To the hippy grocery store, we go!  Same deal with liquorish root.  I thought liquorish was this black candy that my mom loves (in cute Scottie Dog shapes!), not anything that came with a root.  Here is the recipe in full for you.  You basically simmer a bunch of red wine (for our drinking purposes and per people’s suggestions on TGR I tripled the amount of wine in this and halved the amount of cider.  I advise you to do the same).  Simmer some wine with a bunch of oddball spices- sliced oranges, fennel seeds, cardomon pods, black peppercorns, cinnamon sticks and a whole vanilla bean to yield this wonderful looking mixture.

Guests started to show up!

The roast was done!  Like my apron?

Sliced up the roast and ready to eat.  We didn’t even tuck into that second one.  Ratatouille is also looking nice.

The spread!

My plate.  Did I mention we served everything on paper plates?  A bit backwoods… but didn’t change the deliciousness of the food.

Some of our guests digging in.

Last stage of the bread pudding- with the extra Grand Mariner and orange marmalade mixture poured over the top and re-baked.

It didn’t last long (nothing did!)

This tired pooch is worn out from socializing.

Here’s to good food, great friends and a holiday filled with warmth and love.   We survived 2009!! Cheers until next year!

Just a quick preview of the pie I made that we’re taking to my Aunt’s house in a few minutes.  It’s a green apple, green chili pie and it has brown sugar, cinnamon, chili powder and toasted pine nuts in it.

Here it is before going in the oven.  Looks good, no?

I’m excited to see how it turns out!  That’s the problem with pies.  No way to taste them without giving away that you stole a bite!  E and I did taste test the filling, though, and that was great.  Hope it all melds well.  I am thinking served a la mode with vanilla bean ice cream.  Then again, I like *everything* a la mode.

Merry, merry to all!

Tomorrow awaits. Feastivus dawns! I still have to clean top to bottom, prep food and get a-cooking. I see why people hire caterers for this kind of stuff!

It makes me wonder how my sisters and mother successfully threw many a holiday party our our families and their in-laws over the years. They never seemed this stressed out! The older I get, the more I realize how amazing those three women are. Never a ruffled feather, those ones. I, on the other hand, have this nawing feeling that I am teetering on the brink of disaster.

Our final headcount: 12 people! Well, 13, but our friend Julie is just stopping by for a cocktail before she catches a flight out of town. So 12 eaters, 13 total.

Our table doesn’t even fit more than 6! I think I am taking a page out of this Rita Konig article, Let’s Eat In, and am going to pile a bunch of pillows on the floor and have everyone cozy up on the rug. I’ll act like this was intentional… Feastivus is an intimate, shabby chic kind of affair! Perhaps that will also explain the paper plates? (sheepish)

All stressing aside, I am just excited to see all our friends, and figure as long as there is lots of food, booze and warm company, everyone will have a good time even though we don’t have fancy plates and there are not enough chairs.

As a Feastivus preview, this is how full our fridge is after FOUR HOURS of grocery shopping today! We went to a bunch of different stores to get everything we needed: Rainbow Grocery for spices, the farmer’s market for produce, Lucky’s for cheapo basics and Guerros Quality Meats for the GINORMOUS x-cut pork loin.

Oh wait- after this was taken, I reconfigured and fit EVEN MORE in!!

So on the agenda for tomorrow is a big, big cleaning session, hopefully a 6 mile run, lots of prep work and COOKING COOKING, COOKING! Then partying

At some point, probably later tonight, I’m going to write up a little something to say to everyone for before we eat dinner. I want to convey something along the lines of how it was a rough year, but here we are, still smiling and that we got through it. About how happy and thankful I am to have all our friends who are coming, how lucky I feel to have them all enriching our lives and also some schmoopy sentiments about Earl and how amazing he has been over the past year. Then end on a hopeful note about how brighter times are ahead. I’ll probably get weepy and be over the top, but that’s how I am. Probably better that I put a little something together now than attempt it off-the-cuff tomorrow night, lest we end up with a mulled-wine infused, “laughing through tears of joy” Ceej. Oh, who am I kidding, that is probably gonna happen nevertheless

As you may remember, a while ago I found myself very frustrated with the lack of good Jewish food here in San Francisco. After sampling multiple duds, I finally got fed up enough to make my own matzoh ball soup. Here is the TR!

I decided to use a recipe from what I deemed an authentic source- Sheila Rosenbaum’s “No Fail Floaters” from my New York Cookbook (I *love* that cookbook, and am determined to attempt just over 300 recipes from it).

This is also where I got the recipe for my soup stock, New York Penicillin, which apparently was served to the NYC Subway Guardian Angels for many years to keep their spirits up and hunger at bay while they were out helping others in the grime and dirt of the five borough subway systems.

New York Penicillin is a little labor intensive, but this “miracle cure” nutrient-loaded soup base helped me through enough colds to think it’s worth it. Give yourself about half a day to get through this baby (and, may I suggest even though we don’t have one- get yourself an immersion blender if you want to save yourself some time and scald burns).

Next I was off to the House of Bagels in the Richmond district and buy some Mazoh Meal. Despite all my kvetching that there is no good Jewish food in this godforsaken city, this place was legit! I learned about House of Bagels on Oy, Bay, where they assured me would have mazoh meal no matter what time of year.

The base of my matzoh balls:

Mixing up the mazoh meal, per Sheila’s directions. I think the biggest reason Sheila’s balls are “no fail” floaters is that her recipe calls for a TON of whipped up, separated eggs.

Forming the balls- delicate hands! Delicate! No “smooshing!” Keep those babies light and fluffy! Soft hands, SOFT HANDS!! Don’t pack ‘em like a meatball. These sentiments were running through my head the entire time, per everyone’s advice on TGR.

Here they are simmering in the pot! I need another big pot. My only other big pot was taken already cooking up the NY Penicillin for the soup base/broth.

Pat those babies down and flip em around so the ones of the top also absorb a bunch of the broth.

I roasted a turkey breast to go in the soup. I got this turkey breast free when I bought $100 worth of groceries at Luckys. I ADORE shopping at Luckys. Going there is like a super fun field trip!! When you are used to crappy, cramped NYC grocery stores with no selection, the wide and variety-filled aisles of Luckys are a DREAM.

Turkey soup base looking good. In it- parsnip, New York Penicillin base, carrots, celery, onions, half a can of leftover corn I had open already and some pasta shells.

Add those matzoh balls to the soup, and let’s eat!

Served with apple cider, makes a scrumptious and perfectly filling fall meal.

Add a little salt and pepper and DANG so good. Not even that hard to make, either! Who would have thought! These are totally going into the frequent file repertoire, to be pulled out whenever anyone I love could benefit from some “love in a bowl.”

iEl fín!

So Earl and I decided to throw a Christmas Feast Party (more accurately- I decided, then Earl agreed), and the invitations are going out tomorrow!  In a stroke of spectacular brilliance, I christened the party “Feastivus,” only to find out a bunch other people also throw holiday parties also named Feastivus.  But… screw em .  FEAST WE SHALL, and FEASTIVUS IT SHALL BE CALLED!

So psyched for this!  Here are the invites I made up… to be schmanced up with some red and green glitter and Christmas-y drawings on the envelopes by yours truly.  Yes, we are going old school and actually sending physical invitations out in the snail mail for this one: evite, schmevite- simply not my style.

I must confess, it was a bit of a challenge to come up with the menu for Feastivus- mainly because my buddy Dom, who is vegan, is coming. Normally around here it’s meat, meat, and more meat, with a side of butter and sour cream.  I didn’t want to make him feel singled out with a “special” meal just for him. Hence the menu is a mish-mash of vegan and non-vegan foods.   So far (and I’m sure I’ll change this last minute as things get hectic… lol)… but here is a rough outline of what I’m thinking we’ll be serving:

• Appetizers: mulled wine, devilled eggs, hummus & pita chips, pickles, jams
• Entree: stuffed pork roulande in puff pastry, ratatouille
• Sides: creamed carrots, pecan wild rice pilaf, greens & berry salad with a pumpkin vinaigrette
• Dessert: Grand Marnier bread pudding, poached pears, spiked eggnog

In case you were curious, here is the text of our Feastivus invites… if you suspect I had a *tad* too much fun writing these, you would be correct

It’s Christmas time, and if that’s not an excuse for a slap-up meal, nothing is!

Always keen on cooking, when it comes to Christmas dinner, I’m pulling out all the stops.  To give y’all a meal to warm the cockles, I’ve scoured the city and neighboring farms for the freshest ingredients to make this festive feast.

Making our merry band of revelers earn their supper, Holiday attire (ugly Christmas sweaters, reindeer ears, Santa hats or the like) is encouraged.

We’re planning a feast to make the table groan! Here on Buena Vista West you’ll be tucking into a gluttonous roast of stuffed pork roulade in puff pastry. If that doesn’t get you reaching for the Pepto, there will be ratatouille, creamed carrots and pecan wild rice pilaf. To round off the opulent offering, we fill feature a greens and berries salad with pumpkin vinaigrette, deviled eggs, and a hearty offering of pickles, preserves, poached pears, and Grand Marnier bread pudding.

Wash it all down with some spiked eggnog and mulled wine, and it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a party.

Please bring a bottle of wine to share and perhaps an ornament to decorate our Christmas tree!

Looking forward to seeing you on the 21st!

ps- a special thank you to the Happy Medic, who pointed out a great place in SF to buy the Christmas printer paper for our invitations!