Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

I was in an all-chocolate mode – chocolate spritz and world peace, but somehow it just wasn’t a good night. I didn’t feel so good, and got a bit of late start because I went out Waisman’s to pick up our pork. David & Molly & their kids raised two pigs, Mazel and Tov, and I went in with Anna & Terese on a half, divided into various cuts such as ham and roasts and sausages.

Anyways, it’s probably not possible to wreck the world peace cookies, but the spritz gave me a hard time. I think maybe I’m going to have to retire my aluminum cookie gun that’s almost as old as me. Every time I had to touch the plunger part that pushes the dough out, grey aluminum crud came off on my hands. That part doesn’t touch the dough, but still. And nothing’s tight on it anymore – the extruding end wanted to fall off, and the handle is loose, and my hand hurt by the time the cookies were made. I checked the Madison Recyclopedia and evidently I could chuck the whole thing in the bin, box and all, because that’s cardboard – but I probably won’t. I’ll probably put it back up in the back of the high closet where I’ve been storing it, along with my cookie buckets, steamed pudding molds, and TidBits lunch box. And maybe get myself a new one, too. The spritz cookies make a lot of rejects – I always break a bunch just taking them off the pan. And the last 10 or 12 went weird – the color on the M&Ms melted and flowed into the cracks in the cookies – which was worrisome, because it made me wonder if my oven temperature is getting unreliable – did it just go wack after being set to 400° for an hour, and get so hot it melted the candy paint!?

I intended to make the Rose’s crescents, too, but it just became a 2-kind kind of night. It was after midnight by the time I was cleaned up, and went to bed. I did get a chance to take a few more pictures in the morning, so I filled in with a few kinds baked early, that had not posed for their portraits yet. I’ve decided I like the light in the sun room better than the kitchen. I think it’s more North.

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So I have the ovens all full of meringues – Mark’s, too – since they’re the required gluten free cookie kind for my cookie demo at the Monona Public Library, thus getting a little bit of time for some cookie catch up.

I guess it was a productive weekend – but that didn’t stop me from waking at 5:30 on Monday morning fretting about how am I going to get everything baked.

On Saturday, Rach & I organized a going away brunch for DB & Chris. Since they are heading to Atlanta, the food was Southern-themed. The main dish was a sausage & egg strata, that I made with good Willow Creek sausage and the surplus bread cubes that didn’t go into the Thanksgving stuffing. It’s kind of homage to DB’s mom’s breakfast casserole, that uses wonder bread and Velveeta and Special K. There was ambrosia – I used fresh pineapple and oranges and sweetened coconut, and even though oranges were the 1st navals, and not as good as they should be later in the season, it was a dish that was greater than the sum of its parts. A big green salad, and I put out the roasted beet, blue cheese, and walnut salad that had been a Thanksgiving side dish (so more using up leftovers – since it was a non-paying crowd, I felt free to do so!) And pecan sticky buns and the fruit cake gems for dessert.

Really nice, but an interruption in cookie season.

Cinnamon Stars (Zimtsterne); Ginger creams; Moravian Ginger Thins & sugar-topped snaps made with the leftover UN-rollable dough

I had to run a few errands after the brunch, so I didn’t get down to cookie baking until 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. I made the above – the cinnamon stars, and a big batch of the ginger thins, because they are going to be the required vegan cookie for the demo at the library. I had a memory lapse, and started greasing the cookie sheets with butter, but fortunately remembered vegan requirement. I separated the baked on buttered sheets ones out, and baked the rest on sheets greased with vegan shortening. I frosted the ginger creams, and made all the ruggelach dough.

Sunday was ruggelach day. I spent 3 hours rolling out mine, and then about an hour and a half making the Lora Brody ones. I took a break to watch the Boardwalk Empire season finale, and then made a bunch of the slice & bake doughs, the windmill cookies and the pistachio cranberry slices.

I tried to do four kinds on Monday and just couldn’t so it. I made the cranberry-orange-chocolate chip cookies that I liked a lot last year, and I kept thinking as I scooped them out that the dough was different somehow. I finally realized that I had made them with dried cranberries last year. This year I used the fresh called for in the recipe – the moisture in the cranberries made them a much cakier cookie – almost like muffin tops, IMHO. They’re for the library cookies thing. Then I made the almond cookies with the chocolate stars glued on top – it was the dough that ate New York. I have almost 200 of them.The whole batch of dough wouldn’t fit in my mixer and I had to divide it and recombine – and I had a vague recollection that last year the same thing happened. I made a note on the recipe for future.

And I made linzer thumbprints. Last year I made them as an extra. I made Nutella sandwich cookies with a Dorie Greenspan hazelnut sable dough, and with the dough that couldn’t t be rolled out anymore I made the thumbprints. I liked them better than the sandwiches, so i just made thumbprints this year, but I think that next year I will do my own linzer dough instead of Dorie’s. I’m also going to do a plain butter sable with the Nutella.

Maybe if I had not had so many almond stars I could’ve gotten to four, but tonight I couldn’t do it either. I made the Hootie Swirls ( peanut-butter chocolate brownies) and the chocolate chip meringues for the library cookie event – (they’re the gluten free variety), and the pine nut macaroons. But I just couldn’t make it to four kinds in one day – at least starting after work – I think I can do four kinds easy on a Saturday. I counted and I have 18 kinds left to go, and six days, which means I only need to do three per day and make it. Whew.

rolling ruggelach

Ruggelach brown sugar topping

almond stars

Linzer thumbprints

Tonight the trouble began when I couldn’t find the anise extract that I bought on Monday morning. To make it even more irritating, the receipt was still in the bag with the extra flour also acquired on that shopping trip, and the anise extract was clearly listed there – and it cost $4.33, so on the expensive side for disappearing before I could use it. Or maybe it was when I broke the 8-cup glass pitcher measure that I inherited from my mom’s kitchen. I never used it, only moved it out of the way in one of my more over-stuffed cabinets to get at other stuff, and tonight it just fell out and smashed.

I guess cookie season is just getting off to a slow start. Tonight I had a meeting, so didn’t start in with cookie production until 8:00, and all that I accomplished was the springerle. I used Sambucca to eke out the scant teaspoon of Anise extract in my old bottle. And, even though I have much better molds now, one my last year’s Xmas present from my brother, the designs I pressed into the cookies are only a fraction less ghostly than they were last year.

There are 4 cookie kinds out in the vestibule, and the jam cookies are safe in the freezer. I guess I’m doing OK, but I seem to have more interruptions than usual – like the meeting tonight, tomorrow night Bill McKibben, Friday Madison Symphony. Not to mention the trip to Chicago the 7th, 8th and 9th. Agggh.

This year we had our Thanksgiving on Black Friday instead of Thursday. It was a little weird; feeling out of sync with the rest of the world – I went for a walk on Friday while the bird was in the oven – as I often do on the Thursday – and I knew that all the other people I was seeing were out shopping or doing other holiday weekend stuff, but not waiting for turkey like I was. But otherwise it worked great. We had a relaxing Thursday, puttering. I made Primanti Bros. sandwiches for dinner, because it was the most UN-Thanksgiving like thing I could think of – and I checked with  John, and the Steelers weren’t playing on Thursday, so no danger of rending the fabric of the universe. I made the apple slab pie, and pumpkin mousse, on Thursday, then I got up on Friday and made the turkey cookies and stuffing and got the beast into the oven, just like other Thanksgivingses.

We had 17 at the table – here’s the annotated menu, before I forget –

For apps, there was of course the traditional chex mix. Lea texted me on Weds. for the menu, so I know they were eating it, too, at the goat farm in Southern Oregon where she & Chad & their daughter Liz all live now, and where my bro & family went for Thanksgiving. And pickled carrots. And leftovers from last week’s dinner for the Hospice workers – onion dip, veggies and wheat thins, augmented with a nice little piece of Willi’s Gouda, and Brie and crackers that Susan brought. But I only used the carrots to go with the dip; the beauty heart radishes were too dried out and went into the compost, and the broccoli had to be added to the cooked broccoli, see below –

The turkey of course, a slightly over 17-pounder from Matt Smith

Chestnut & bread stuffing – a ton, per Al’s request, but I didn’t make extra of the sausage kind, I just heated up the small pie dish full from last year that had been frozen since then (which means I have the makings of a breakfast sausage strata – bread cubes, green peppers, celery and Willow Creek sausage – for Chris & DB’s going away brunch next Saturday)

I put Mark in charge of the mashed potatoes, and we used most of the white taters I got from Tipi, along with some small purple ones – I was hoping for lavender-colored mashed potatoes – they were a little grey, instead, but tasted wonderfully of potato, garlic, butter and cream.

Chipotle-lime sweet potatoes, but I topped them with meringue this year instead of brulé

Corn pudding – kind of the best veggie dish, in my opinion, sweet crunchy corn and not too much custard – I used whole milk and slipped in the extra yolks from the sweet potato meringue

Roasted Beets with Walnuts & Blue Cheese, marinated in the lemon vinaigrette leftover from the Mark Bittman pear-fennel salad of last week

Broccoli with garlic butter and cashews – we picked what we thought was the nicest broccoli at the 1st indoor market, but when I cut it up, there were lots of heads that were black inside – I think it had been frosted too much (a little makes the broccoli sweet) so I threw in the couple of handfuls of dip broccoli left from the 16th – and good thing, too – there are only a tiny bit left. The broccoli gets the prize for being the most-consumed dish at Thanksgiving dinner.

Pumpkin mousse that didn’t set quite right – I think it’s because I didn’t whip the egg whites stiff enough. I got a little yolk in while separating that I scooped out with a shell, and was feeling smug for getting the whites to whip as well as they did, disregarding the scare talk of most recipes, that say any amount of yolk will doom your whites. They seemed meringue-y, but they didn’t give the mousse its proper bubbly consistency.

Turkey cookies – I could really taste the honey & molasses in this year’s batch. I made the last bit that couldn’t be rolled out anymore into little gingersnaps with sugar crusts.

Apple slab pie – a real hit, and looked more like a pie after cutting – the shots of it whole look a lot like focaccia

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