Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

This is the 799th post to this blog, and it’s five years old. So, I thought it’s a good time for a new blog – up to HTML5 and responsive standards.

Take a look as things develop – right here. (https://www.debslunch.com/blog/)

Platter taken to work on Thursday

I’m “working” at home on a Monday – I’m going to call it a sick day, laptop in bed with me grading – also sleeping. I woke up with a ridiculously sore throat at 12:42 last night, choked down three tylenol, debated whether I had to go get cultured for strep, and then emailed everyone at a little before 7:00 to say I was working at home.

The party was Saturday, and although I felt really well-organized and the neighbors even came over to help move furniture and vacuum, the first few hours were pretty hectic. There were a bunch of kids, rearranging the coats by playing on top of them, getting themselves locked in the bathroom, and one little girl in a glitter dress shedding glitter absolutely everywhere.

I didn’t photograph any cookie platters – but I set up a “pack your own” cookie operation in the back bedroom – put out all the buckets of cookies and containers and ziploc bags and suggested donation amounts by size of container. I think people really liked it.

My personal theme for this year’s party was do less, don’t hurt yourself, and I think I for the most part succeeded, except there have been some scheduling unfortunate juxtapositions, like the above cold, and more that I will get to in just a minute.

Here’s the list of apps & snacks & sweets to compare with 2013 and 2014:

• King Arthur marshmallow fudge (I think the only thing I overbought on this year was chocolate chips – well, and plastic bags, but those keep – and this fudge used up a bunch of those)
• pepperoni roll, with (homemade) pizza sauce – that I forgot to put out, but we can eat it on Christmas Eve, as part of our stupid-holiday-movie and homemade-pizza traditional celebration
• Deviled eggs – these were especially good this year, a little sweet (honey), a little curry, a little lemon juice. Piped instead of scooped. I boiled 3 dozen eggs, in two smaller pots instead of trying to do 4 dozen in one large pot. While I was cooking the eggs on Friday night, the black cat seemed to have some kind of seizure – I thought she was dying – she let out some really piteous mews, and spasmed, and poop was coming out of her butt. We wrapped her in a towel, and she calmed down and I went back to the eggs. The first time I checked on her, she had moved herself to the other side of the towel and by the second time I checked, she had left the towel, and gone to her regular sleeping spot on the futon in my bedroom curled up with her sister. Although I felt like a bad mama for not paying more attention to the cat, the next day I thought some of the eggs might’ve been slightly over-boiled, but the overall tone was yellow not green.
• Squash tart just decided NOT, so I still have one large squash from my last CSA box to use in something
  
• kale-a-kopita – I used one bucket of the chopped kale that I had frozen from Tipi’s sale, and a whole pack of fresh dill I bought at the big Whole Foods by Mark’s Chicago apartment for Cookie Party South and didn’t use, and lots of Costco feta. One and about a half boxes of filo for around 45 little triangles, and I ate the last one Sunday night for a snack.
• Wienies and kosher dogs in yeasted dough, almost 60 kosher dog hunks – I wrapped each big link in dough then cut it in quarters – and about 80 little weinies. All the kosher dogs got eaten and almost all the weinies except about a dozen in a bag that the kids ate on Sunday while watching the Packers
• Two kinds of meatballs, cocktail with chili sauce and jam, and Swedish – all cocktail eaten, some Swedish leftover, enough for a casserole with noodles
• Hummus and muhamarra and pita – just enough left for us to eat for lunches
• Hot salt and pepper shrimp, 4 pounds and all eaten except for about 10 shrimps
• Layered pesto and sun-dried tomato and cream cheese, that I made as a log instead of a round, and put out half at a time – with peppadews, and olives, and marinated mushrooms, and artichoke hearts. There’s a chunk of it left but again, not more than I think we can eat for snacks. Oh, and some hunks of Reggiano Parmesan, a $16 impulse buy at Whole Foods where they had the hunks of Parm at the checkout counter.
• A few cheeses and crackers, bought the cheese at Fromagination with a gift certificate I got for my birthday last summer: Carr Valley Mobay, Roelli Red Rock, which is a cheddar with a little blue vein (although I think I still like Huntsman more), Roelli Dunbarton Blue, and Roth Van Gogh, which is an aged Gouda, Oude Gouda, “owde howda” in Nederlandse
• Caramelized onion dip – that also had goat cheese and caramelized leeks (leek confit that got too dark) in it – served with potato chips. I ate the last of it with pretzel sticks on Sunday night.
• Buffalo chicken dip – just a single batch this year, and made with Cholula sauce and Ceasar dressing, because that’s what was open, although I found the bottle of Franks at the back of the pantry after the party
• Spicy peanut dip and vegetables – could’ve had more carrots
• Salami and cheese cubes on sticks – a few of these left, but I think we can have scrambled eggs with salami and cheese for Christmas breakfast

I was up until about 1:30 cleaning up after the party.  I cut my finger on a wine glass, and then John cut his worse. Which all would’ve been OK, except we had to get up and drive to Milwaukee on Sunday morning to see our first foster kid, Kaylah, graduate from UWM. A great thing, just unfortunate timing. Cruel.

Blurry over-zoomed shot of Kaylah walking

When I got back I was so tired I just lay on the couch for a hour with cats, while the kids watched the Packers. Then I got up and finished washing platters and putting furniture back, and was just in time to watch the Sunday night cable show season finales in real time, starting at 8:00 instead of 10:00 PM, Homeland and The Affair, with a little plate of cookies.

My feet and the cat

A few years ago I had an art exhibition at my supper club house. One of the artists wanted to do something related to women’s work, and talked about endurance baking for a couple of days, which struck me as funny, since I do endurance baking for 2 – 3 weeks every year at cookie season. She did jello instead of baking for that event, although I did see her selling cookies at a Bach Dancing & Dynamite concert like a year later or so, after which she also remembered to return my Betty Crocker cookie book that she’d borrowed . 

Over the weekend, I did endurance baking – I made the two most time consuming cookie kinds – the spoon cookies and the baby rugelach that we call nukhorns. They take a long time because both types are formed by hand. I made the dough for the spoon cookies on Friday night, before the symphony, filling up one of my largest mixing bowls with a mixture of browned butter (3 pounds of butter!), sugar, flour, and vanilla. I spent Saturday night digging out little mounds of this dough and shaping them by pressing them into a spoon – and they’re sandwich cookies, so you have to make both sides of every sandwich. I had 175 cookies which means I made 350 little mounds and stuck them together with jam, which took me until 1:30AM. I mixed up the dough for the rugelach on Saturday morning, cottage cheese, butter, flour, and sugar, and formed it into disks – I think I has 11 – then on Sunday I rolled out the dough, and cut it into triangles and rolled them up like little croissants. Like last year, I feel that a great weight has lifted. I made the baby bassinet tupperware, about 4/5 full, plus two ice cream buckets.

In fact, I am considering taking a night off from cookies tonight, Monday … I just finished two hours of online class presentations, and now have to open the web conferencing software for another group to practice.

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On Saturday morning, I also made 2 kinds of slice & bakes – the ginger cookies, and the cranberry pistachio icebox cookies. I was kind of disappointed with the cranberry pistachio ones – couldn’t get the size right, and they just seemed messy.

We got back to Madison on a rainy Thanksgiving Day, and I started prepping for dinner on Black Friday. I did the pies – pumpkin chiffon, apple with cider caramel sauce and crumble top, and the most raved about cooking mag dessert from Bitten Word, the grapefruit cornmeal cake from November 2015 Food and Wine. Except grapefruit’s not really in season yet, so I made it with lemon and lime. I also pickled carrots, made two kind of cranberry sauce, and cubed up the bread for the stuffing, and crumbled and toasted the cornbread. By 11:00 when I knocked off I was feeling tired and cranky and like nothing was really coming out right – the cornmeal cake sank in the middle, the apple pie seemed a little too dark, as was the graham crust for the pumpkin, I accidentally used part white vinegar, because that’s what I grabbed first, instead of cider vinegar for the carrots, the pesto-cream cheese-ricotta cheese log seemed too bland…. And I never baked any cookies. But it all seemed fine in the morning, when I did bake some cookies. And of course that’s all I photographed, cookies and desserts, and the raw turkey in the sink.

The pumpkin pie was nice and fluffy. Seems like the Moravian ginger thins are better than last year, maybe because I used regular Crisco. The co-op stopped carrying the vegan shortening I’ve been using, Earth Balance in sticks. Instead of the shortening, they’re now carrying about 6 more flavors of the vegan margarine, in tubs (yuck) – Earth Balance has started making spreads and culinary spreads. At about 5:00 PM I realized that I was not going to make the Brussels sprouts. So all the vegetables were casserole dish types, except the mashed potatoes. When I told John & Megan and Belinda & Stephen that apologetically, Stephen joked, “well, I was told there’d be Brussels sprouts”. John and I decided that sounded like a PS Mueller cartoon – Pete would know what that guy would look like, the one who showed up at Thanksgiving dinner saying “I was told there’d be Brussels sprouts”. The casserole dish vegetables were corn pudding, glazed sweet potatoes, and creamed greens with pepper jack cheese, and crumbs on top.

On Saturday, I went out and finished the cookie ingredient shopping. Costco, Willy West, and Woodmans. I made the springerle, and set them to dry. I think I got them right this year, but we’ll see if they get spotty like last year. Mark and I went to see Brooklyn. We wanted to see it at TIFF but it only showed twice and we couldn’t get in. We both read the book and thought Nick Hornby did a good job of compressing the story into the moving, without leaving too much out. I guess Colm Toibin thought so, too. We stopped at Sentry and Whole Foods to get a few cookie things I forgot – although the quest for pistachios was unsuccessful (I bought 6 tiny bags at the co-op on Monday, along with cream and waxed paper – more stuff I forgot). We ate giant turkey sandwiches for post movie dinner, and I don’t think I did any other cookies for the day. Oh, that’s right, I worked. And sent out the party invites.

On Sunday morning I baked the springerle before brunch, which was cinnamon chip scones made with the leftover whipped cream, and potato cakes made with the leftover mashed potatoes. I made the fruit nut balls, and recorded lectures for both classes, and marinated the dried fruit for the baby fruit cakes. That I baked and glazed on Monday. I mixed up the dough for the Pfeffernuse. Oh and I made the turkey broth – 4 quarts, from our 15-pound bird carcass, a lot easier to handle than the double that amount I got from last years 18 pounder.

Tuesday was broiled tofu, finally. I had tried freezing it, as recommended by a tofu bahn mi recipe, then I put it in marinade on the Monday before Thanksgiving, thinking we’d have it in our Primanti Bros sandwiches. Which never got made, so the tofu just sat in the fridge over the holiday. And I steamed some of the also-neglected Brussels sprouts to go with – hey, it’s not turkey.

I should be frosting the ginger creams, but I think I’m going to bed and do it in the A.M. Five cookie kinds done, six if you count the UN-frosted ginger creams, 12 days until packing & shipping, 18 days until party. Not all photographed yet, but it’s too dark anyways, so sure, I can go to bed.

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Photo key:

1. Turkey in the sink, cardinal in the bush
2. cider caramel apple pie
3. pumpkin chiffon pie
4. pumpkin chiffon pie
5.  Ginger snaps made from leftover Moravian Ginger Thin dough
6. Moravian Ginger Thins
7. Moravian Ginger Thins
8. Springerle in a bucket
9. Springerle in a bucket aon the window sill
10. Baby fruit cakes
11. Baby fruit cakes
12. Fruit Nut Balls
13. Fruit Nut Balls
14. Brussels sprouts & Broiled tofu – Tuesday dinner
15. Pine nut macaroons
16. & 17. Frosted ginger creams, 2 views

At my computer at 7:28 AM on a Saturday, because we were awakened by Mark’s cat, who was trying to bury something in the bed … I will spare you the scatological details, but they involved a long-haired cat with a hairy butt, and a misunderstanding of what things really must be buried in her litter box, and not the bed.

On Tuesday, I drove out to Waisman’s farm in the rain to pick to pick up pig. It was an illustration of all the reasons why I’m glad I don’t drive to work – or commute into Madison from one of the outlying towns, like where Waisman’s is. It was raining, heavy traffic, dark and hard to see. It was also quite warm, 55°.

But worth the trip; here’s the massive list of pork I brought home:

Smoked shank
3 packs of bacon
8 brats
2 tubes liver sausage
1# bulk breakfast sausage
1# ground pork
Pack of Breakfast links
Shoulder roast
Spareribs
2 loin roasts
Giant pork steak
3 packs pork chops – 2 each
3 ham steaks

After I put the pork away, I spent the rest of the night trying to make the towel dams hold – but it was just raining too hard. I thought I had everything basically secure, with a load of wet towels in the dryer. I meant to just sit on the couch for 20 minutes and then go swap the towels, but I fell into the most delicious sleep in front of Jimmy Fallon, with Hammie all snugged up next to me – and was awakened 40 minutes later by the dryer buzzer. I went downstairs to find about 1/2 inch of water on the basement floor, coming up under the bed. I sopped everything again, using everything dry thing I could find including an old mattress pad and a flannel sheet that I’d been saving to pad furniture in a move, put another wet load in the dryer, and this time lay on the couch with Hammie and the black cat, until 2:00 AM when I went and checked everything again, added more dry towels, and finally went to bed.

On Thursday, on an only slightly colder, but much windier day, I went and got my winter CSA share – what Megan’s been calling my Thanksgiving box. Here’s what was in that:

Box “A”

Beauty Heart winter radish, 2 (I got 3, actually)
Beets, 3 lb
Brussels sprouts, 1 – 2 short stalks – 2lbs. when pulled off the stems – perfect amount for Thanksgiving dinner
Carrots, 6 lb mixed colors
(orange 4 lb, yellow 1 lb, purple 1 lb)
Celeriac
Green cabbage
Kale
Leeks, 3 lb
Parsnips, 3 lb
Rutabaga, 1 or 2

Box “B”

Butternut squash, 3-6, ~12 lb
Sweet potatoes, ~10 lb
Red Maria potatoes, ~5 lb
Carolla potatoes, ~5  lb
Red onions, 1 lb
Yellow onions, 4 lb
Garlic, 3

Then finally on Saturday morning in the snow, and about 26°, (after kitty cat cleanup), we went and picked up the turkey in the parking lots out back of the indoor farmer’s market – a 15-pounder from Matt Smith.

On Saturday night, I made a small bone-in pork loin roast from the pig – I mixed up orange marmalade, hoisin sauce, and garlic, and rubbed it on the meat. It made a delicious black crust that according to the latest reports, is probably carcinogenic. With it we had a vegetable gratin that I “leaned” quite a bit – used a pint of half & half instead of heavy cream, and maybe 2 TBLS butter instead of the whole stick the recipe called for. It sure was good – yellow and orange carrots from the Thanksgiving box, and celeriac from the last box of the regular season.

On Sunday we tried the bacon, to go with home made freezer waffles, and applesauce, and Mark made some eggs with cherry tomatoes from the indoor farmer’s market and Farmer John’s cheese. The bacon is fattier than some of the other kinds we buy, but it sure is tasty fat – and probably another  tasty carcinogen. But as Meredith said today, “It’s not like bacon was ever supposed to be good for you”.