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Tonight's recipes:

Curried Potatoes and Peas - this is tasty but a little spicy for me. Perhaps I was a little casual with the doubling of the spices. I used waxy potatoes - I think fluffier ones might have thrown off some starch and thickened the gravy. Still, popular and nice for a snowy evening and a worthy basis for further refinements.


Cranberry Relish:

Combine: 16 ounces fresh cranberries (that's one bag plus some) rinsed and picked over; 2 cups sugar; 1/2 cup fresh orange juice; 1 tablespoon orange zest; and a tablespoon of fresh grated ginger. Put all that in a sauce pan, and heat over medium heat until the berries pop open, about 10 minutes. Skim the foam off the surface with a spoon and discard. Cool to room temperature. Refrigerate, covered, up to 3 months. Apparently, you can freeze it too, though we have never tried that.

This is an adaptation of a Sheila Lukins recipe from Parade. It's really hard to screw up.

We buy cranberries when they're cheap and keep them in the freezer.

"Kalamity!" Kry Kiddies

HOW DID IT GET TO BE DECEMBER?
HOLY LORD!

We are playing are annual Christmas game - no, not "Replace the Sound Operator for the Christmas Eve Service which is in SEVEN DAYS OH MY LOVING GOD HELP ME" - but instead, "Who Would You Cast in Miracle on 34th Street if you were making it This Year?" I always try to work in serious method actors like Daniel Day Lewis and John C. Reilly.

Every year, I suggest making the Shelhammers a male couple. Those refined, well-dressed men with their bow ties and hats, who speak so precisely and work in retail management - it's not much of a stretch. So I'm forever trying to figure out what man should stand in for Mrs. Shelhammer - you know, the lady whose husband has plied her with triple-strength martinis to get her to consent to have Santa move in? It's my favorite part. This year, I am stumping for Steve Carrell as Mr. Shelhammer who works at Macy's. I haven't decided who the other Mr. Shelhammer should be.

Eric always tries to cast West Wing people. Well, that's just silly.

As for me, I am a writing fool and a knitting fool, and tomorrow I will be a cooking fool as well. Oh - and a Cricut-ing fool, too, like last year. We (I) cut paper shapes, and people use them to make ornaments for the sanctuary Christmas trees. (Plus I cut a bunch of stars and snowflakes for our house.)

Last weekend, Ian seemed to have made HUGE leaps forward in terms of being not merely obedient but actually agreeable. This week, in response to all our praise and irrational exhuberance, he has made Barishnokov-worthy leaps in the other direction.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

Some companies actually could benefit from random drug testing.

Ian and I sat around in our pajamas all day watching TV (we're resting up for a party tonight.) (Ian is currently resting by smashing his forehead into my shoulder. Excuse typos.)

Anyway. ABC Family (which retains a decided lead in the wtf race, since just about every program, promo and even sponsor I see on the channel makes me say "WTF is your programming philosophy, mission statement, target demographic...i just totally don't get it." ) was running a slew of Rankin-Bass stop-motion Christmas specials, including Nestor the Christmas Donkey, Rudolph's Shiny New Year, and the bizarrely fascinating Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July.

Here is Wikipedia's plot synopsis. (You may be wondering if this is one of those instances when Wikipedia was pranked, like the person wrote that Senator Ted Stevens was 108 years old, or the Wonderpets! entry that is all about your mamma. Because that couldn't actually be the narrative of a children's program right? RIGHT? Maybe a Dickens novel (specifically Bleak House) or perhaps an unproducer Lars Von Trier screenplay.

Plot

Long time ago, the evil wizard king Winterbolt has caused havoc upon the people who have entered his domain. He is then punished by Lady Boreal when she places a spell that puts him in a deep sleep.

Years later, Winterbolt is awake. In her final act of magic, Boreal transfers the last of her power into Rudolph's red nose, which will stop glowing if it is ever used for evil. Winterbolt learns of this and plans not only to dispose of Rudolph, the only power capable of stopping him, but also to reclaim his territory from Santa Claus. To achieve this, Winterbolt plans to take advantage of Frosty and his family. At the same time, Rudolph's ice cream man friend Milton arrives and tells Rudolph and Frosty that he plans to attract the heart of Milton's girlfriend, the high-wire act Laine Loraine.

Winterbolt offers Frosty magic amulets that will keep his family from melting and enable them to attend a Fourth of July Circus in which Rudolph is to star, but they will only be protected until the end of the event. Santa agrees to pick up Frosty and his wife Crystal before the magic wears off, but Winterbolt has his ice dragons blow up a blizzard to prevent Santa from arriving on time. Winterbolt also recruits an evil, unintelligent reindeer named Scratcher to try to get Rudolph to turn, or at least appear evil in the eyes of his friends. With the blizzard keeping Santa from getting to them, time was not on the side of Frosty and family. When Scratcher arrives, he forms an alliance with Sam Spangles during the parade.

Scratcher, taking advantage of Rudolph's kindness, steals money from the circus and sets up Rudolph to take the blame. Rudolph agrees to appear guilty after making a deal with Winterbolt, to extend the powers of the amulets Frosty's family wears for an infinite time in exchange. Frosty's family, friends, and the circus' owner and Laine's mother, Lilly Loraine, are upset when Rudolph lies to them about how he stole the money and his nose stops glowing. Only Frosty knows the truth and wants to restore Rudolph's glowing nose. Winterbolt takes advantage of Frosty as well by lying and agreeing to do it in exchange for Frosty's hat, with intention to use the magic powers of Frosty's hat to create an army of snowmen. Rudolph manages to steal back the hat, and his nose regains its glow.

After Rudolph returns to the circus with Frosty's hat, Winterbolt attacks which ends with him turning into a tree when Lilly throws her iron guns onto his scepter destroying it. Once Winterbolt is vanquished, Scratcher has not been seen again, and Sam is arrested, all the spells he has cast are negated and Frosty and his family are in danger of melting once again. However, Jack Frost, the villain from the previous Frosty's Winter Wonderland (but in the "animagic" form from another Rankin-Bass special called Jack Frost), arrives on Big Ben, who's Rudolph's whale friend from the previous Rudolph's Shiny New Year, to rescue his former enemy and family as they are whisked back to the North Pole by Santa, but Rudolph stays behind to help the circus out of debt. The special ends with a rendition of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", sung by the entire cast.

Well! How was it, trying to follow that? That was a summary. The author chose not to mention that:

1. Milton the ice cream man delivers his ice cream from a hot air balloon.

2. Winterbolt the wizard learns of Rudolph's magic powers by talking to an ICE GENII, which is a mountain of ice with stelagtite teeth and glowing eyes.

3. Along with his fierce and deadly TWO-HEADED ICE DRAGON, which moves in slow motion (watching it brought to mind the earlier stop-motion animation in films like 7th Voyage of Sinbad)

some villianous personage (I assume the wizard, I was a little addled by this time) has at his command GIANT FLYING SNAKES which can fly over, warp around you, and then fly off with you in their coils.

4. Frosty and Rudolph sing an extended version of "Why Am I Such A Misfit?" There are a great many musical numbers to break up the relentless driving action.

5.The lady who runs the circus is Ethel Merman. In a cowboy hat.

Whales? Armies of Snowmen? Sam Spangles, who is in fact indistinguishable from Professor Hinkle, the magician in the animated Frosty the Snowman? Ian noticed that one.

Anyway, I sat there with my jaw on the ground, through this, and Rudolph's Shiny New Year, which features Ben Franklin and a cave man. By that point, I had kind of given up.

better

everything is much better. Ian and I had a grand day at the art museum, although we spent so much time discussing Cyclops (the Greek monster, not the X-Man) and the Hydra that I am braced for nightmares. His, not mine.

Updates:

1. Ear infection: Seems to be getting worse. 2 days of Zithromax left. What it if doesn't go away? It's like having a seashell against both ears for hours at a time. Except it hurts.

2. My bad attitude: I did absolutely nothing but complain all day long to anyone who would listen.

3. My black cardigan: we're reunited! OF COURSE it was at church the whole time I was looking for it. It's just, you know...black. Anyway, I've got it back. Yay.

4. knitting project: frogged. BUT the yarn survived the process better than I expected, and will be something eventually. But not exactly what I thought it would. And not for Christmas.

5. Phineas and Ferb all-weekend-long marathon: Disney does not actually have enough episodes of this cartoon to run it exclusively for 48 hours. AT ALL. Nonetheless, we watched a great deal of P&F this weekend, and sat through a couple of episodes twice, and I still think it's the best thing on TV. Plus this uses my superpower - identifying cartoon voices. Still the champ. (Though I would never have gotten Riff Raff without reading it on the internet.*)

6. church today - excellent. Excellent message, SHOCKINGLY excellent participation in the art project.




*from a comment on Amazon: "But series creators... must be big-time Rocky Horror fans because the voice of P & F's clueless dad is none other than Richard O'Brien, one of the "Rocky Horror" creators as well as "Riff Raff" in "Rocky Horror". Performing other voices in various shows are Rocky Horror alums Tim Curry and Barry Bostwick"

How have I missed this???

AWFUL LIBRARY BOOKS!!

via my local library's twitter!

Dinner Tonight: Fast, easy, delicious and fattening.

I was reading my email over lunch today (Homemade pad Thai! Go me! I'll tell you how I made that another time.) Anyway, my brother sent me something that led to something else that linked to something else and eventually I was reading this. And so when I got home, I did this:

Set a huge pot of salted water to boil.

Heat up a cast iron deep skillet or dutch over on the other burner over fairly high heat. Into that, drop 2 slices of bacon and stir them around to keep them from sticking. Once they are very floppy, and some bacon grease is rendered, drop 3 cloves garlic, smashed, and about one-third of a huge sweet onion, thin-sliced. Cook that until the onion starts to get soft. Drop in some sliced mushrooms. Keep moving the stuff around the pan. (You can add some butter or olive oil if it seems to be getting too dry.) Add salt and pepper. If it seems like just a little too much - that's the right amount.

Take you kitchen shears in your hand, point the tips down into the pan, and clip the bacon into small random pieces, right there on the bottom of the pan. Lower the heat a little (from about 9 to about 6.)

At this point, your pasta water should be boiling like crazy. Cook about 8 oz of pasta (I used whole wheat fettuccine) in the water until it is ALMOST as 'done' as you like it. (Don't forget to stir the bacon mixture. You don't want it to stick irreparably.)

Is it almost done? Good - now throw half a bag of frozen peas into the water with the noodles and put a lid on it.

Back to the bacon pot. Lower the heat again, to about 2. Splash in some cream or whole milk and stir. Drop in some grated parmesan - say a quarter cup - and stir until it's smooth.

Drain the pasta and peas. Turn off all the burners, mix the pasta and peas with the stuff in the cast-iron pan.

This is really, really delicious, and takes very little time or technique.

(After) Dinner Tonight: P Party cake

We have our challenges, we parents. We parents of shockingly willful preschoolers. (At least, I am shocked. Oddly, no one else seems particularly shocked. Hmm.) Anyway, when he almost-willingly used a public restroom this afternoon, I declared that we would have a party. With cake.

This recipe is a cake I grew up with – it was a staple at class parties and church suppers, usually with no icing. The recipe is in plenty of places; I noticed it’s even in the most recent issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food, where it mentions it’s in a new cookbook called “Mad Hungry.” It’s called Busy Day Cake there, which is a good name, and cooks.com calls it vinegar cake - but to me, it was always Crazy Cake. (Until today.)

This recipe has a ton of advantages. You mix, bake and serve it in one dish, so all you have to wash today is a measuring cup and 2 spoons. It’s vegan, it’s natural, it’s very cheap. But the reason I made it today – we were out of eggs. I felt that taking the little darling to the supermarket would be, um, pushing my luck. It’s definitely a ‘pantry staples’ dish.

Crazy Cake can turn out heavy, but the one I made today was quite light and flavorful and had nice textures - chewy outside, tender inside and a little touch of gooey at the center.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a pyrex cassarole or an 8-inch square baking pan, whisk together:

1.5 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and half teaspoon salt. You can also throw in a little cayenne pepper, chili powder or nutmeg…I thought I was being all clever and sophisticated, but I couldn’t taste them.

Make a well in center of dry mix and pour in 6 tablespoons vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 tablespoon white vinegar, and 1 cup cold water. Stir till smooth. This is when I threw in a couple handfuls of semi-sweet chocolate chips. These are a great addition, but some sunk – if I had thought of it earlier and put them in with the dry ingredients, it would have been better. Bake until a chopstick inserted in center comes out clean. In a square pan, this will be about 40 minutes. – with the cassarole dish, which was deeper and smaller, it took about an hour. You're supposed to let it cook completely, but it's really good while it's still a tiny bit warm.

Bonus tip: Best Icing Ever, I am completely serious:

I improvised some buttercream the way I always do – cream soft butter (regular, not unsalted), add a drip of vanilla, and confectioners sugar by the spoonful, scrape down the sides of the bowl, keep tasting…but today, I threw in a chunk of cream cheese. Whip until fluffy. This is more definitely the best icing I have ever made, and it may be the best icing I have ever eaten.

Watch this (don't let the thumbnail scare you)

This was on Lifetime last night, during Project Runway (which I am kind of...over, sad to say. It's been a beautiful relationship, but we've grown apart.) The black and white and the intercutting is just so ravishing. I don't know if I'll like the film (I admired Rob Marshall's work on Chicago, but I'm concerned that he's returning to those same ideas...exactly those same ideas.) but certainly do like this.

this made me smile.

Got a little time in a bookstore yesterday, where I wrote completely non-memorable things in my journal and also look at some very fine knitting books.

That is from this one:

but this one is also good:

Anyway, a little cairn cozy for you on this gross rainy day.

here comes the feeling you thought you'd forgotten

I made pie!

I made pie crust, more noteably, which I had never done before. I found a butter pastry recipe in my beloved and completely unbound Easy Basics for Good Cooking.

Put 1 cup of flour in your food processor.
Add 6 tablespoons of cold butter and a small amount of salt.
Pulse the food processor a few times. In much less than a minute, you'll have a bowl of even, uniform tiny lumps of buttered flour.
Break 1 egg into the food processor, and pulse a couple more times until it comes together into one smooth lump.

Wrap the lump in plastic wrap and stash it in the fridge for a while. (The recipe calls for one hour, but I had it in a lot less than that.)

I filled this with 3 chunked apples and 2 handfuls of frozen cranberries, tossed with sugar, cinnamon, allspice, a splash of apple cider, and a spoonful of cornstarch. Ian helped me gently place the top crust on, and was very happy to poke holes in it. Baked at 425 until the top was brown and crispy, the filling was bubbly, and you can pierce the apple with a table fork. Like 40 minutes or so. (I had to cover the top with a piece of foil for the last part of the baking.)

I thought I had rolled this crust out way too thin, but it came out great! It took a lot for me to not STAND THERE AND EAT THE ENTIRE PIE.

I also made a great apple dessert last night, which I'll tell you about some other time.

moderately ashamed of myself

i will be laughing about this for the next 3 days.

um

via Jesus Needs New PR.

what I will bring to the bonfire:

These which I saw on the always-delightful SnackReligious.
EDITED TO ADD: These were a huge hit at the Guy Fawlkes festivities, and also with the babysitter. I'm thinking the second pan will get a similar reception at the potluck Sunday. Recommended.

And, no, we haven't made pretzels yet, and it doesn't look like it's going to rain tomorrow, which means that there will probably be a limited amount of kitchen time.

I have a video to put together, but my laptop does not have a big enough brain to handle it. (This would be a REALLY bad week for the servers at work to crash, incidentally. They've been kind of dodgy lately, randomly refusing to print docs and other occasional hiccups that we've been working around. Anyway, not this week, please, is all I'm saying.)

Knitting news: I am almost done with the famous entrelac stroller blanket. I had plans to work on it at various times this weekend - car trip, kid's nap, now...but I've made a lot of progress and feel like the end is in sight. If I can just remember how to do the bind-off triangles...

playdate news: If the week shapes up the way the national weather service seems to think it will, we may have one more backyard party on Friday, before daylight savings time ends.

they look depressed. But I'm excited. More at Pedestrian.

Dig this:

Another Day, Another Monster is an excellent blog by a woman whose name I totally cannot find because the computer is cloggy and I am lazy. The woman makes snarky comments to accompany her photos of her pretty excellent little amiguri monsters, of which she creates a new one every day. I found this through the Lion Brand blog

[as most of you know, Lion is a brand of yarn, available at a discount at all your better Ben Franklins and Hobby Lobbys. I am a completely unconvincing as a yarn snob, so I'll admit that I have knit several of my fav projects with Lion Brand yarns, such as the much-aligned Homespun.

I just Googled "Homespun is the Devil" to see if I could find some examples of such maligning to share with you, but SHOCKINGLY "Homespun is the Devil" is a Googlenope.

BUT NOW IT WON'T BE! Now I'll be a unique hit on Google, should anyone ever try to Google that phrase again.)

(Anyway, I digress. Many people hate Lion Brand yarns; while they aren't my favorite, I find many of them quite serviceable, especially at markdown prices.]

MY POINT IS that this blogger apparently works at the Lion flagship store in NYC, and I was pleased to see Lion promoting a blog that is written in a normal venacular, including the occasional mild curse word. Go Lion Brand! Go boldly through these squeamish times. Yay.

New Recipe - That's Better.

So I made this chicken paprikash for dinner on Monday night. And it was fine. It had some decent flavors, and it kind of 'grew on us' as we ate it.

But tonight I looked into the fridge and said "I can do better."

Better Quick Chicken Paprikash:

Heat the oven to 450, and at the same time warm some olive oil in a cast iron skillet on the stove top. Take 5 boneless chicken thighs - salt and pepper them and brown them - about 4 minute on one side, 3 on the other.

During those 7 minutes, wash a pint of grape tomatoes, and squish them (I guess you could cut them in half, but I just used my fingers.) into a baking pan with olive oil.

When the chicken is a little brown on both sides, remove the pan from the heat, and remove the chicken from the pan. Put the chicken pieces on top of the tomatoes in the baking pan and pop that all in the oven.

Slice half a large sweet onion and several cloves of garlic. Throw those into the stovetop pan - it will still be pretty hot and oily. Return that to heat and cook until the onions are soft and brown. Drop in some slices of red pepper and some sliced mushrooms and cook some more. (You may need to drop in a bit of olive oil or butter with the mushrooms.)

Take the pan out of the oven; assuming the chicken is done, put the chicken on a plate and cover it (with foil or another plate.) Pour the rest of the contents of the baking pan (oil, tomatoes, juices) into the stovetop pan and stir.

Now add:
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
a tablespoon of paprika
a tablespoon or more of those chopped hot peppers they put on hoagies
and a quarter to a half cup of heavy cream.

(You will want to shake that cream before you pour, in case it's separated.)
(You will want to make sure the little cardboard carton is really totally closed before you shake it. Maybe pinch the foldout spout.)

It's all bubbly now - slip some of the chicken into the sauce (it's probably won't all fit) and turn down the heat, and simmer it a little while - like 6 minutes or so, which is how long it takes to make egg noodles.

Seriously, this is good. Don't use canned tomatoes when there are fresh ones around. And seriously - hoagie peppers.

AND it took 36 minutes from walking into the kitchen.

Go me.