I am going to be shooting a few scenes from around here this Thanksgiving morning. I will be adding more if I have the energy!

Our meal will consist of a relatively modest menu, we dont pull down the paycheck of even a minor mailroom clerk at Solomon Brothers or some other Wall Street boondoggle – we give thanks over a frugal meal happily. We will still be quite stuffed!

Menu

• Roasted Turkey – stuffed with a simple herbed stuffing
• mashed potatoes with gravy and butter
• steamed green beans
• steamed sweet corn
• freshly made cranberry sauce (sugary boiled cranberries, thats it!)
• homemade buns using this King Arthur recipe
• homemade pumpkin pie
• homemade blueberry/plum pie (seen above) used this awesome recipe for the pastry dough from the New York Times
• ice cold water to drink
• lots of messy kid hugs

We wish you a most thankful Thanksgiving!

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a beautiful New Year!

Lets hope that the new year and the new decade brings us a greater measure of happiness, resilience, and simple living.

As promised, I am writing today about the food we chose to make for the winter solstice yesterday – the yule log.

I had a very enthusiastic helper, my 5 yo daughter KD, who not only modeled eating the cake, she modeled various parts of making the cake. If you do this with your kids expect: lots of sneaky stealing of frosting when you are not watching and also some need for your help in rolling up the log.

KD looks like she rolled it up but she had a lot of help from me.

You can learn more about the yule log at this wiki page.

Things you will need include:

• one sheet of cake (I used a box mix)
• two cans of frosting
• coconut flakes
• off-set spatula
• candle

parchment paper

First, I made up a box of cake mix and baked in a sheet pan which I then let cool overnight.

I next opened a can of frosting and warmed it a bit in a 350 F oven so that it was not rock hard (its REALLY cold in our house).

Spread out onto sheet cake, making sure to not pick the spatula straight up and always spreading – otherwise you rip up the cake.

KD enjoyed this part a lot. I just let her do as much as she wanted to (without her ripping it up too badly) because this is all on the inside, doesn’t have to be beautiful.

Keep spreading so that the frosting is evenly coated across the sheet.

The next few shots are of KD rolling up the cake. Have your sheet on a sheet of parchment paper so that you can touch that as you are rolling. Go slowly and stop once you have a bit rolled to then firm it with your hands. If you use a moist cake mix this will go better. It doesn’t have to be perfect because it will be covered in frosting at the end.

This is what ours looked like when we were done rolling it up.

Next step is to trim off the ends – save the trimmed part (should look like a cinnamon roll) for a later part.

KD took a break at this point to taste test.

KD approves.

Break open the second can of frosting and put on top of the log which is now on the serving tray (that has some parchment paper protecting the plate).

Then begin to spread it gently but firmly, let the frosting know who’s the boss.

If you would like to made a smaller branchlet like many yule logs do, I recommend using a trimmed up part that you cut off the end. This shot shows how I thinned out the frosting here to make room for the branchlet.

Then add the cut-end.

Then frost it to make it look “natural”.

Pull away the parchment and then add snow (coconut flakes) that hides all sorts of sins.

Get as creative as you like with added doo-dads, what ever makes you feel yulish.

I added a big candle as we used this in our solstice observance later last night.

Let me know if you and your family make a yule log during the holidays, leave a link to photos you may have of it!

Whether you call it:

• Christmas (Natalis Domini)
• Amaterasu
• Beiwe
• Choimus
• Deuorius
• Riuri Deygān
• DōngZhì Festival
• Tōji Festiva Goru
• Hogmanay
• Inti Raymi
• Junkanoo
• Karachun
• Koleda
• Lenæa
• Feast of St. Lucy
• Makara Sankranti
• Meán Geimhridh
• Mummer’s Day
• Midvinterblót
• Modranicht
• Perchta
• Rozhanitsa Feast
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalda
• Sanghamitta Day
• Saturnalia
• Åževa Zistanê
• Sol Invictus
• Soyal
• Tekufat Tevet
• Wayeb
• Yule
• Zagmuk
• ZiemassvÄ“tki

its all about the sun and the Winter Solstice.

In our home, we tend to celebrate the astronomical and terran aspects of this time of year because we are far enough north to be seriously impacted by the effects of the earth’s tilt, namely:

• Our days are VERY short
• The sun is meek while it is visiting
• We get lots of snow and ice storms about now and they continue until spring
• Winter is JUST getting started

I have blogged on our winter solstice activities before, including:

• Happy Winter Solstice! May you have light – 2006
• Winter Solstice Stollen – 2007

We have done lots of foods and I prefer it this way because its fun and productive.

Our stollen last year was fantastic.

I am still working on this year’s concept and I am thinking Yule Log, stay tuned!

Share your Winter Solstice traditions!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope you have a happy and harmonious one. Since I never have time to blog these days and because I may likely be nuts, I thought I would try some live blogging with our turkey day.

Come descend with me into the thanksgiving chaos!

(let me know if you have any problems with this live blogging software

Unfortunately, America is starving it’s food banks. At a time when food bank demands are shooting through the roof, donations to the food banks are disappearing. The NYT is running an article in a special section called “Giving” entitled “When the Cupboard Is Bare” by David Cay Johnson where they delve into the exploding food crisis here in the US.

Surplus production, once a major source of food for food banks, is now often sold to overseas markets. There manufacturers can get more than the value of the tax deduction of a charitable donation. This and other factors are forcing some food centers to turn away the hungry. SOURCE

You might imagine that this year is the same as past when food banks make their usual annual press releases pleading for food as we near the holidays.

This year it will be different and it is really only the beginning. With accelerating job losses and the depletions of meager savings for winter heating costs (officially called “fuel poverty“) more and more people will be forced to visit desperately understocked food pantries.

In the four months since June, demand for food aid has risen 20 percent in areas of the country with the healthiest economies and more than 40 percent in areas with the weakest, leaders of nonprofit food-distribution organizations say. And they predict that the need will keep growing in 2009 if the job market continues to contract, as expected.

…

“We are getting people whose work is always up and down, and they have lived with that their whole lives because they work construction,” Mr. Sly said. “Construction here has just stopped, and so we have carpenters and masons and electricians who have not worked on a new house in forever. So it is not that they are out of work for some weeks and then they go back to work. There is nothing for them, and they cannot imagine when there will be work again.” SOURCE

There are roughly a thousand pantries and soup kitchens in New York, said Ms. Stephens. City Harvest collects surplus food from restaurants and grocers and distributes it to nearly half of these volunteer feeding operations. It also operates a twice-monthly farmers’ market in the South Bronx, providing fresh produce at no charge, part of a small but growing trend among emergency food providers. SOURCE

Please consider becoming much more involved this year with your local food security efforts. Give money, give time, plan on growing some food especially for your local banks next year.

Each dollar of donated money, many food bank managers said, can be leveraged through barters, buying surplus products and otherwise arranging for $12 or more of food. City Harvest, for example, relies on 100 paid employees and 700 volunteers who gather surplus food and deliver it. “One of the big misconceptions is that we collect waste, which we do not,” Ms. Stephens said. SOURCE

I can not stress too much how important it is to take that first step, out your front door, to do something for your neighbors while you can and to support an effort that you yourself may one day have to avail yourself of.

Please share your unique ways of helping to feed people. I would love to hear it all.

My children have had the opportunity to grow their own food and raise their own chickens and milk their own dairy goats. By no means are we affluent and we struggle like others to keep the house and feed the kids. But, while we all must eat every day, is doesn’t really take THAT much to get full and there should always be a way to share and a time to learn how and why to share.

This fall, I think its important that we share our feasting with others.

Tell me how you do this with your kids!

Recently I have been hankering to make bread. I usually make White Bread plus from The Joy of Cooking but this hankering was specific to a bread I had not made before – Challah.

Part of this comes from knowing a bit about the rich Jewish family traditions that surround this bread. Sure, its made well enough in bakeries around the world. It is also much more appreciated if it is made within the home, as part of the love that goes into the Friday evening meal. There is considerable religious context that surrounds the bread but it would be disingenuous for me to speak to that as I am not an observant Jew!

What I resonate most with is the conjuring of love, home, and hearth that comes from the making of this bread. Instead of buying a cooked loaf in a store somewhere made by strangers intent on profit, the bread baking in your own oven made by your own hands infuses it’s beautiful aroma throughout the home, embracing everyone within with its promise of fellowship and simple joy of fresh homemade bread.

When I set out to make this bread I envisioned the happiness of sharing it with my family. What actually happened was that my daughters and I had a glorious engrossing afternoon of making dough, kneading it, braiding it, allowing it to rise, and then enjoying it’s smells as it baked. What a wonderful magical afternoon! We will be eating challah for at least a week.

We used Joan Nathan’s recipe for Challah bread. It can be found in her cookbook “The Jewish Holiday Baker”. It is easy and quite forgiving! I used 5 eggs instead of the 4 called for by accident because this was the first time through this recipe (the 5th should be used as an egg wash). Do be watchful of the color of your bread as it bakes, mine was too dark before the recommended baking time, vagaries of the oven!

Now in Joan Nathan’s voice with our photos and occasional notes (Note that my 9 year old daughter did all of the steps with her own two hands. The 2.5 year old also made her own little loaf, with a bit of help from her older sister.):

Challah Bread

This recipe calls for two kinds of flour. Bread flour includes more gluten, helpful in the braiding. However, if you can find only all-purpose flour, use that. It also calls for 1/2 – 3/4 cup of sugar, because I like my challah less sweet than many challah eaters, even in my family! If you are going to use just one loaf, perform another mitzvah — give away the second. If you are making a month of challahs, as I sometimes do, double the recipe and freeze several just after braiding them. Take them out of the freezer 5 hours before glazing and baking.

Ingredients:

1 scant tablespoon (1 package) active dry yeast
1 3/4 cups lukewarm water
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
5 large eggs
5 cups bread flour
3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, approximately
1 tablespoon salt
Poppy or sesame seeds for sprinkling

Directions:

Note: Technically, the separation of challah with a blessing, according to the Talmud, refers only to dough using flour that weighs at least 3 pounds 11 ounces. If the flour weighs less than 2 pounds 11 ounces, you do not have to separate the challah at all, and if it weighs more than 2 pounds 11 ounces and less than 3 pounds 11 ounces, you can separate it without a blessing. The challah is usually blessed after the flour, yeast, water, and other ingredients are mixed.

The dough:

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Add the sugar and the oil and mix well with a whisk or a wooden spoon. Beat in 4 of the eggs, 1 at a time; then gradually stir in the bread flour, 2 cups of the all-purpose flour, and the salt. When you have a dough that holds together, it is ready for kneading.

2. To knead by hand, place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Knead well, using the heels of your hands to press the dough away and your fingers to bring it back. Continue, turning the dough, for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding the remaining 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour or as needed.

To knead by machine in an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, knead for 5 minutes on medium speed, or until smooth. You can also process half the dough at a time in a food processor fitted with the steel blade; process for about 1 minute.

3. After kneading, place all the dough in a large oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest in a warm place for 1 hour, until almost doubled in size. You can also put the dough in an oven that has been warmed to 150 degrees for a few minutes and then turned off.

4. When the dough is almost doubled in size, remove it from the bowl and punch it down — the rougher you are, the more the dough likes it. Return it to the bowl, cover it again and let it rise in a warm place for 30 minutes more. Or, if you have to go out, let the dough rise slowly in the refrigerator several hours or overnight and bring it to room temperature when ready to continue.

Braiding and baking the challah:

5. To make a 6-braided challah, take half the dough and form into 6 balls. Roll each ball with your hands into a strand about 14 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide. Pinch the strands together at one end and then gently spread them into 2 groups of 3.
Next, take the outside right strand over 2 to the middle empty space. Then, take the second strand from the left to the far right. Regroup to 3 on each side. Take the outside left strand over 2 to the middle and the second strand from the right over to the far left.

Continue this method until all the strands are braided. The key is to always have 3 strands on each side so that you can keep your braid balanced. Make a second loaf the same way. Place the braided loaves in greased 10- by 4-inch loaf pans or on a greased cookie sheet with at least 2 inches in between.

To make loaves symbolizing the 12 shewbread, the consecrated loaves placed on the altar in the Temple of Jerusalem, shape one half of the dough into 12 tight balls and press them together in the bottom of a greased 10- by 4- inch loaf pan. Repeat with the second half of the dough in another pan.

We chose the simpler method of just three stranded loaves:

6. Let the challah loaves rise another hour, uncovered. Fifteen minutes before putting the loaves in the oven, beat the remaining egg and brush it gently over them. Five minutes later, lightly brush them again. Then sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds and let dry a few minutes.

7. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the loaves on the middle rack of the oven for 10 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 30 minutes more. Turn off the oven and leave the loaves in 5 minutes longer to get a dark-golden crust. Remove and cool on a rack.

Yield: 2 loaves

I say make this bread with your family as soon as you can get it together.

Books of Note:

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I am on the Dean & Deluca emailing list and I have to say it is both a torture and an inspiration!

Everything is WAY too expensive for me but just about all of it is something I could make or have fun trying to make.

Last year I had lots of fun making a few gingerbread men as you can see in the shot below.

I had looked all over the web to see how gingerbread men are traditionally decorated and found lots of uninspiring stuff. I guess I march to a different drummer because soon I was making gingerbread designs like the one below.

Sometimes, I visit the Dean & Deluca site just for the food porn, other times I visit to salivate over the Spanish and Italian hams, the deluxe and exotic meats, the foies, and the gobsmacking cheeses!

During the holidays, Dean & Deluca shines the brightest. Take a look around and get some inspiration yourself.

Those chocolate snowballs are described as follows at the Dean & Deluca site:

Creamy white chocolate and coconut ganache truffles, generously dipped in white chocolate and finished with finely shredded coconut. From Christopher Norman in New York City, purveyors of beautifully sculpted chocolates and confections.

Twelve pieces, 5 oz. total USA

Chocolate Snowballs 5.00 Ounces
# 379519 $28 *

Do you have another favorite holiday food porn site?

Let me know what it is!

(PS: none of these are affiliate links, just appreciation links)

Technorati Tags: torture, inspiration, expensive, gingerbread, gingerbread men, food porn, Spanish, Italian, ham, exotic meat, foie, cheese, Dean & Deluca, chocolate, coconut, ganache, truffle, white chocolate, shredded coconut, Christopher Norman, New York City, purveyor, Chocolate Snowballs, holiday, food

Things were going ok and then pow, time contracted and chaos ruled the house!

I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving. We had an excellent time.

Today I am going to step through a few more shots. Food photography in our kitchen is tough so you will have to forgive the somewhat scary images, especially of the turkey!

I toasted baguettes for crostini.

I enlisted grandpa to help with the crostini. Cucumbers, caramelized onions with fig vinegar, roasted garlic, salmon, etc.

They came out beautifully!

I used asparagus fronds as greenery around the house.

Baby O had to watch from his area, drove him nuts.

The turkey was brined overnight.

Roasting pan with onions, olive oil and rosemary.

The turkey is lubed inside and out, salted a bit, stuffed with some garlic and rosemary and roasted breast down for 1 hour and then flipped and roasted until 160 F in the meat (used heat probe) Used foil toward the end.

The sugar in the brine makes for a dark roasted skin color!

While it was cooking the grandparents decorated a gingerbread house with the grandkids.

Shots of the turkey at the table, after nightfall, are always tough!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Technorati Tags: Thanksgiving, Food photography, kitchen, turkey, baguette, crostini, Cucumber, caramelized, onion, fig, vinegar, roasted garlic, salmon, asparagus, frond, brine, rosemary, gingerbread, house

9:45 AM

I am going to do a bit of semi-live blogging of our Thanksgiving. I will be mostly doing photos and some text.

As you know, I had to punt the whole turkey wellington jazz and I have brined a 16 lb turkey. Its been pulled out of the fridge and is coming to room temp, slowly.

Yesterday I baked three pies (2 pumpkin and one chess pie). I also baked butternut squash with garlic and rosemary. That will be made into soup today. I cut up a baguette for crostini and I caramelized onions for those little toasts.

In the mean time, we are cleaning the house like demons and pulling beets out of the garden.

Did I mention its 60 some degrees today and the sun is actually shining?

A couple of days ago it was snowing and the kids were having hot chocolate and building a snowman.

We will also have spinach from the garden. We will be enjoying small beet greens.

We will munch on organic baby bok choy too.

KD loves to check out the gingerbread house kit which they will be doing with their grandparents once they get here!

More later!

Technorati Tags: live blogging, Thanksgiving, turkey, wellington, pie, butternut, squash, garlic, rosemary, crostini, caramelized, onions, beets, hot chocolate, snowman, spinach, garden, beet greens, organic, baby, bok choy, gingerbread, house