I have been popping into the kitchen almost daily to make up some wonderful concoctions for Christmas. So far, I have raspberry bars, oatmeal butter cookies, raw whole foods fudge, chocolate covered peanut butter balls, triple ginger gingersnaps, dark chocolate coconut bark sprinkled with sea salt, spiced candied nuts, caramel corn, and now turtles with homemade caramel. This picture was taken a couple days ago, which means it was after the caramel corn and oatmeal cookies were gifted away and before the turtles and coconut bark had been made. It’s been an entertaining affair, as only about half of those have involved recipes.

Our first Christmas guest arrives tomorrow, so I will start laying them out to sample. I’ll let you know what the biggest hits are and hopefully give some directions here for you to make some of the highlights in your kitchens! Speaking of which, I still have dreams of a wonderful shortbread. Does anyone have a recipe?

Hungrily,

L

It took a bean pie to get me back here.

It started with the beans themselves–heirloom Christmas beans splashed with maroon and cream. They are the size of giant Lima beans. Broad and flat, with  rich, chesnut flavor and creamy texture. These are the beans I wanted.

I soak them, cook them, whir them into a nutty cream with vanilla, eggs, agave nectar, and barley malt, and pour the fragrant mixture into a flaky cream cheese crust. I sprinkle the top liberally with pecans and bake the pie for the better part of an hour.

I wait.

The house smells delicious. And soon, I will be trying a recipe from Native Seeds that I have been wanting to try for literally years.

I just had to wait for the perfect beans. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Things have changed drastically around here, beyond the new job that kept me hopping. The Unicyclist and I moved to Wisconsin in August, a move we had been talking about for more than a year. Southeastern Wisconsin certainly has no shortage of food adventures, however, and now that we are as unpacked as we will be for a while, I’ll be posting here again more regularly. Farms and orchards and CSAs and co-ops are plentiful here, not to mention family and community gardens. Plus, we folk like to eat.

In the meantime, Jessica tipped me off to this very fun map of regional recipe searches for Thanksgiving, which illustrates that regional food is not entirely dead…though it is sometimes odd. Why is Nevada devouring mac and cheese and a virtual desert of cheesy carbs, for example? Who can say? Take a peek and let me know, if you did up a Thanksgiving feast for the holiday–what are your must-have staples, and where did you try something new this year?

(I do still promise to give the details on the rest of that Colorado trip…that cholocate is still pretty vivid in my mind. But for now…it’s just about lunchtime.)

Early this morning, awakened by the dulcet tones of one Mr Hippo singing to the sunrise, I got up, got dressed, and headed to the farmers’ market to see what I could scavenge for our Dark Days Challenge meal.  The fridge was a little bare, since our CSA pick-up last week was canceled due to the holiday.  However, the Unicyclist and I had an inkling of what we wanted: kabobs.  Rich and savory kabobs to slather with the leftover muhammara from our Christmas Eve shindig.  Last night over dinner, just as we’d decided this, the Unicyclist was struck with a bolt of inspiration.

“What about dessert kabobs?”

Brilliant.  And timely.  As everyone knows, nothing makes a party like food on a stick, so consider these recipes my belated Christmas gift to you.  Both the savory and the sweet kabobs we made would be a wonderful, healthful addition to any New Year’s Eve fiestas.

Let’s get into it.  First: the ingredients.

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Christmas at our place was rich with stuffed squash, soup, pies, ambrosia, and fresh bread; all the usual suspects.

Unlike past Christmases, however, this one also contained something more out of the ordinary. Specifically, we had ourselves a hippo this Christmas. No, not on the table.  In our living room.  He’s pretty cute, actually.  This hippo is likely to eat up quite a bit of my time in the coming weeks, which is why I’m breaking from my usual postings about food and policy to tell you about him. If postings are sparser than usual, I can guarantee you that his skinny shoulders carry a good part of the blame. So, who is this hippo? Well, he’s a bit unusual, as hippos go.  First, this hippo is not especially fond of water.  Second, he’s neither as corpulent nor as leathery as you might expect.  This hippo—rather, this Hippo—is a tiny, terrified little creature who accidentally found his way into our lives, and who now has a spot in our home.

All evidence thus far suggests that he’s okay with that.  Here you can see our Hippo exploring the basil in the garden.

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Audience, meet my Darkest Mint Stars:

And have you yet made the acquaintance of my diabetic-friendly, cinnamon-sprinkled, maple-kissed mixed nuts?

Did I mention yet how delicious December was going to be?  Mmmm…

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Apparently last week over at Urban Hennery, some murmurings started sneaking in about how many of the Dark Days Challenge recipes people had been submitting seemed…well…complicated.  It seems some of the folks taking the challenge for the first time were taken aback by the ambitiousness of multi-course dinners and fancy sauces created by those who have been local fooding and cooking from scratch for a good long while.

I’m sure you all know my stance on that.

I dig fancy-pants meals sometimes.  I really do.  But simple is also good.  Very good.  And tasty.

I can do simple.

So, this week, I decided to keep my Dark Days meal extra-simple and use some ingredients that more folks would be able to find without, you know, having to move to the desert.  With the exception of the orange, I think I done good. Basically, I am excited that so many people did sign up at Urban Hennery for the challenge, and I hope they keep it going.  You know, sometimes you have scrambled eggs for dinner  or squash and a salad.  That counts, too!  And so does this week’s project: sweet potato apple bake with a side of wilted winter greens.

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Thursday is fast-approaching.  Welcome to Thanksgiving 2008.  Or, as it’s also known, Turkey Day.  Is it just me, or is that an odd nickname?  It makes it sound like of fun, poultry-based activities intended to honor the noble turkey, even though it’s more like “The Day All Turkeys Must Die.”

Imagine if the same was true of other holidays so named, like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Yeesh.  Okay, extreme, but do you get the aforementioned weirdness now?

If you’ve not seen the video of Sarah Palin pardoning a turkey for Thanksgiving while others are being slaughtered on camera right behind her, perhaps you should take a gander.  While it’s rife with irony (and innuendo from the interviewer at times—”programs on the chopping block”?), it does bring up an issue that I want resolved. And no slight on Governor Palin, here.  This is far bigger than either this interview or the governor herself.

Can someone, ANYONE, out there please explain the whole “pardoning a turkey for Thanksgiving” thing?  I know how it started—that’s not my question.  I really don’t get the rationale.  Frankly, making a PR opportunity out of pardoning a specific turkey while encouraging the deaths of countless others seems to smack of a sick sort of humor.  It’s only because so many birds will wind up on dinner tables for the holiday that marking one to have the chance to die a natural death is remotely noteworthy.  This is particularly true when you consider that the president/governor/other public figures in question fully intend to have a turkey at their family dinners, just not that particular one.

“Heh heh heh.  Yous guys is all invited over for dinner, if you know what I mean.  But hey, I gots a heart, so…you there, with the feathers and the red bobble on your noggin, you gets to go free.”

Seriously, wha?

Watch the drama of the pardon unfold on an episode of the West Wing, shown here.

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The Challenge: Pull off Christmas dinner for seven in a one-butt kitchen without tripping over any one of the five dogs underfoot

The Menu: Lentil soup, roasted root veggies, green bean casserole, fresh bread, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, mixed greens salad with goat cheese, cranberries, and pecans, pumpkin and pecan pies, and the requisite turkey and gravy for the omnivores in the group

Mom and I had a pretty elaborate choreography going on in the kitchen.  As mentioned, it’s a one-butt kitchen, and there were two to three human butts in it at most times, never mind the doggie butts…or the extremely hopeful doggie faces.  Despite the occasional butt bump, everything went extremely well.  So, ready for the skinny on a couple of the dishes?  After the jump, find out how I modified some classics for vegetarians and those concerned about blood sugar.

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