Cookie Day

For Thanksgiving, most everyone has traditions related to food. Usually they are related to the Thanksgiving meal itself.  For me it's to go over the top and make some fancy dessert. For Joe it's the unfulfilled desire for marshmallows on the candied yams (because I refuse to make it that way). But for my friend Jacey the best part of the holiday is the day after. In her family they have been baking cookies that day, all day, for...I dont even know how long, but it's a long time.

Jacey and I used to be housemates, and cookie day was something that was looked forward to pretty much as soon as the weather got cold and talk turned towards the holidays. The cookies probably never lasted more than a week. Tops. More like only a couple of days.

The best were the peanut butter buckeyes. Those things are awesome.

Anyway, this year I got invited to cookie day. So, I headed down to Jacey's parents' house in Olympia for the afternoon last Friday to hang out, eat cookies and let Lilli work her magic on a grandpa just out of the hospital.  On the way I had a road buddy, Copper, who was also our housemate back in the day. We were pretty excited to see the magic in action.

Once we got there it was immediately clear that I would not be baking any cookies, but instead that I would be following Lilli around while she dismantled all their Christmas decorations. It worked out OK though, since I was totally unprepared and didn't actually bring any cookie recipes to make. I had been thinking of chocolate crinkles, but I'll have to save that recipe for another day.

Copper however, was very well prepared. After a recent trip to Germany, she had been inspired to get traditional wooden cookie presses. She made a dough and kneaded it for a while, then painstakingly pressed each cookie, dusting the press each time. She manually cut around each one, placing them on baking sheets to dry for a bit before baking. In the end I had to leave her there to get a ride back with another friend who was coming back to Seattle a little later than I. The cookies took longer than expected to bake and I had to leave kind of early to attend another Thanksgiving dinner. 

Even though I left early I did not return empty handed. The rest of the ladies had been busy since 8 o'clock that morning and there was lots of things to sample and bring home. I ended up the proud owner of a box piled high with goodies and a whole batch of peanut brittle. (If you ever find yourself with a whole batch of peanut brittle and some vanilla ice cream, please mix them together. You can thank me later.)

Just before leaving, I did finally help by make royal icing and even managed to decorate a couple of sugar cookies, but then had to go back to toddler corralling. 

Today, Tuesday, we have only a few cookies left of what I brought home, and about 1/2 of the peanut brittle. Lilli is partial to the peanut butter blossoms and the ginger cookies, but my favorite are the cardamom crescents, which come from a recipe in a magazine that Jacey's mom had saved. 

We might have drunk a little champagne, discreet tumbler style.

I'm a sucker for cardamom, and they were at once buttery and light. I didn't see how many the recipe made, so you'll just have to make them for yourself and find out!

Cardamom Crescents

2 ½ cups flour

¾ tsp ground cardamom

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp kosher salt

1 ½ cups powdered sugar, divided

1 cup pecans

1 cup unsalted butter, room temp

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350ºF. 

Whisk 1^st four ingredients in a medium size bowl and set aside.  In a food processor, pulse the pecans and 1/2 cup of the powdered sugar just until a coarse meal forms, and set aside.

Cream the butter with the vanilla. Add nut mixture, blending until just combined.  Add dry ingredients, blend well (dough will be moist but still crumbly).  Transfer to a work surface and knead until the mixture forms a ball, about 4-5 turns.

Measure 1 rounded tbsp of dough, and form into a ball. Roll into a log about 1½” long.  Gently bend into a crescent shape, pinching ends to taper (cookies may crack slightly).  Repeat with remaining dough, spacing about 1 inch apart on cookie sheets.

While baking, be sure to rotate sheets halfway through. Bake until bottoms are golden, 12 – 15 minutes.

Sift remaining 1 cup powdered sugar into a shallow wide bowl.  Working in batches of about 8 cookies each, roll warm cookies gently in powdered sugar to coat and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Getting Ready

Fall is definitely a food lover's season. I mean, along with summer and spring and winter of course.


In this crisp, cool season, there is much to look forward to as a person who enjoys spending time in the kitchen and at the table. There is the promise of a warm kitchen when the oven is on to bake or roast. There is the beauty of a steamed up window when you are cooking a hearty soup or a big pot of pasta sauce.

There is the smell in the air when you step outside, the crunch of leaves underfoot. The dirt under your fingernails when you put your garden to bed, and the warm mug that awaits you when you step back inside. 

Maybe all of these things aren't directly food or eating related, but they all play a role in how we experience the world around us, and they all, eating included, help us to connect with that world. 

In our family, keeping kosher is also meant to help us connect in a deeper way, through our food, to our environment, and of course, to God. But you can do that even if you don't keep kosher. You can do it just by being present as you savour a meal, or enjoy a brisk walk in the glow of a late afternoon. 

As you prepare your tables for the feast that many of us will be sharing with loved ones next week, take some time to remember those connections. Try for a day or a week to take them out of the I-take-these-things-for-granted closet in the back of your mind, and embrace them. 

It will make the food taste even better.

Heading South for the Winter

We spent most of this last week vacationing in San Francisco, which might be about as far south as we get this year. (I'm still going through the 600 or so photos we took in 4 1/2 days, so this post is going to be just a recipe.) It was beautiful and so much fun and I really hope we get to go back soon.

We've been trying to get there pretty much since we met, and now, 6 years later, we finally found an excuse to go. We have lots of friends down there, and Joe's been several times, but I'd never been. Then, in August, some very close friends of ours moved there and we decided to head down for a visit pretty much as soon as they could be settled in. 

Since the plane ride was pretty short, having Lilli in tow wasn't a big deal, but we were on the plane right at lunchtime. We all know how abysmal airplane food is, if you are even lucky enough to get any, so I wanted to prepare some good snacks ahead of time. If only I could have had more time! I guess hastily made peanut butter sandwiches and sliced apples are better than nothing. Oh, plus I was a little bit hungover. Turns out I'm getting to old to mix champagne and tequila and then pack until midnight. 

I made some peanut butter cookies, as a sweet treat. Mostly because I saw that post and COULD NOT STOP thinking about how good those sounded and how long it had been since I'd had a peanut butter cookie. But, I forgot them. I did remember the present I made for our hosts, green tomato bread. I made a gluten free version since Mathew is gluten intolerant.  

I used a recipe for zucchini bread, and added extra spices. I didn't take pictures, because it was that kind of weekend. 

The bread is spicy in a very subtle way. It's got a moist, tender crumb, like most quick breads, but it also sports a nice crunchy exterior. It's superb with butter of course, but try it with almond butter or sharp cheddar and then you really have yourself a snack. Apparently it is some of the best gluten free bread our friends had ever encountered, because they were raving about it. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it as much as they did.

Green tomato bread with Yogurt and Ginger

adapted from Bon Appetit, makes one large loaf or two smaller loaves

2 cups grated green tomato, excess liquid drained off

3 large eggs or 4 smallish ones

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup greek yogurt

1/2 vegetable oil (you can use all yogurt if you like)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour or gluten free all purpose flour mix (if you used GF mix, add 1/2 tsp xanthan gum to the dry ingredients)

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp allspice

Heat oven to 350ºF. Coat your pan or pans with butter or a non-stick baking spray.

Combine the last 7 ingredients and whisk to combine. Set aside.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, or with an electric beater, whip the eggs until foamy, then slowly add the sugar and continue to whip until the mixture is thick and light in color, about 4 minutes. Add the yogurt, and oil if you are using it, and mix until completely combined. In 3 batches, mix in the dry ingredients on low speed. Fold in the tomatoes and pour into your prepared pan(s).

Bake for about 35 minutes then check, rotating if necessary. Continue baking until your loaf or loaves pass the toothpick test. The top will be a nice golden brown, and look sort of dry and crusty. Cool on a rack for about 5-10 minutes, then turn out of the pan and cool completely. Store wrapped in foil.

A bumper crop

Next week we are going to be out of town, so of course, this week is the week that I have two largish orders for custom cakes, a bushel of tomatoes to deal with and 75 lbs of fruit coming on Saturday.


The cakes are easy--they require a bit of work, but should come together smoothly and almost without thinking. That's my job, after all.


The fruit, 50 lbs of apples and 25 of pears, will probably keep just fine in the cool basement for the 5 days we will be gone, so long as the cat doesn't suddenly develop a taste for tree fruit. I just hope those raccoons don't figure out how to get in the house...

The tomatoes, on the other hand, can't wait. It's been very rainy here this week so they all had to come in out of the downpour one way or another.  There were about 10 lbs of green ones, 5 or 6 lbs of ripe ones, and a couple of lbs that are halfway in between. Those ones, I don't know what will happen to.  And I'll have no problem getting rid of most of the ripe ones. Even Lilli eats at least a tomato a day.


But the rest, I found uses for with just a little bit of research and brain power.

I made tomatoes 5 ways this week, over the course of 3 nights.


First, I put up 4 quarts of green tomato mincemeat, made with honeycrisp apples and some asian pears I helped harvest from a neighborhood tree last week. Plenty of currants and spices, some lemons and sugar, and sometime this winter this delicious mix will meet it's match in philo or pie dough. 

Next, I started a couple different batches of green tomato pickles. One that needed 24 hours; and one only 12. One that had curry seasonings and mustard and sugar; one that was laced with garlic and mint and basil and chili.  One that is a simple refrigerator pickle and one that needed to be processed. I think the 2 probably couldn't be much more different from each other, but each will be much appreciated in their own way. 

Wait, let me take a step back. The very first thing I did, even before the mincemeat, was start some oven dried tomatoes. And tonight I finished that project, a tomato pesto that I borrowed from Ashley Rodriguez who writes one of my favorite blogs, Not Without Salt. I have never met a recipe from her that I didn't like, so while I didn't have time to test out this particular one beforehand, I knew it would be great. I decided to make a much larger batch than her original recipe calls for, because of the amount of ingredients I had. I altered it a bit also, so that I could freeze it and use up what I had instead of procuring new things.


Drying the tomatoes turned out to be a frustrating thing for me, because I lack patience. They took much longer than I thought they would, so I got them most of the way there and then gave up. I figured since they weren't being kept as a dry ingredient anyway, it wasn't a big deal. 


The pesto turned out amazing, but, as with all things gooey, the pictures did not. Especially not in my night kitchen. 

Chatting with the cat.

She likes to be part of the action.

And after all was said and done, I still have a few nice green tomatoes to make into a tasty quick bread as an airplane snack. 

Green Tomato Mincemeat
makes 4 quarts

4 quart jars full of whole green tomatoes, rinsed

1 ¼ cups vinegar or 1 cup vinegar and ¼ cup lemon juice
4 cups currants or raisins
2 lemons seeded and chopped up fine in a food processor
2 quart jars full of apples or apples and pears, quartered, skins removed, and sliced thinly
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp allspice
2 tsp salt
2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar

A note about the fruit measurements. To measure the tomatoes, I packed them into a quart jar as I cleaned and de-stemmed them, stopping when I got to 4 jars worth. For larger tomatoes, I halved or quartered them to make more fit, but there was quite a bit of space in between the them, so don't worry about packing the jars too full.  For the apples I filled the jars as I sliced the apples, and for these I did pack them in rather tight.

Chop up the tomatoes in a food processor, pulsing so that they don't just turn to mush. You want the pieces to be roughly the size of a large lima bean, give or take. Pour into a large nonreactive pot.

For the apples and pears, I used one of those handy apple core turning machines. It peels the apples, cores and slices it all in one motion. (If you don't have one and ever find one at a thrift store, buy it. You will thank yourself the next time you need to do anything with apples in large quantities.) I just cut the whole apple in quarters after putting it through the machine. If you don't have one of these, peel the apples, quarter them, and slice them thin. 

Add everything else to the pot, stir it up, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium and cook for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick and the fruit has softened. The color will be much more uniform at this point as well.

Clean and sanitize 4 quart jars, and fill using a canning funnel, leaving 1/2" headspace. Remove air bubbles with a thin rubber spatula and adjust filling level. Wipe the rims clean with a damp paper towel and seal. Process in a boiling water bath for 25 minutes. You might have more or less filling, depending on how long you cook it down. As long as your jars are completely full you can process them. Otherwise store the jars in the fridge and use within a couple of weeks.

And in case you didn't see this floating around the internets, here's my real motivation for canning and preserving:

The Easiest Challenge of the Season

I am going to come right out and say it. I really really love fall. I love all the spices, I love drinking hot things, I love soup. I love the leaves changing, I love the pumpkin patch, I love windy rainy days. And I love pumpkin. 

A week or so ago I challenged myself to something that I knew wouldn't be very challenging at all. I went with it anyway, because sometimes you have to let yourself cheat. I ate something pumpkin flavored everyday. Sometimes more than once a day, because I'm an overachiever like that. (Bonus points for being an overachiever and a slacker at the same time.) I also cheated by letting myself use canned pumpkin. Mostly because it has better flavor than freshly made pumpkin puree. I don't know how they do that, but there it is.


Anyhow, every recipe was a success, except for one. Turns out, it's hard to make a pumpkin coffee at home with only a french press. 

Here are all the things I made, in no particular order:

• Cottage pie with Pumpkin gravy
• Pumpkin spice challah french toast (made with a thick pumpkin custard and of course, cream)
• Pumpkin molasses waffles (just add pumpkin and spices to the batter, and sub sugar for molasses)
• Pumpkin curry soup
• Pumpkin mac'n'cheese (I left out the maple syrup and topped it with panko before baking)

I just discovered another way I cheated. I didn't make a new thing every day. Somedays, we ate leftovers. No big deal. I think tomorrow I will make pumpkin oatmeal for breakfast to make up for it.


Anyhow, you should try an easy challenge like this. It's guaranteed to be more fun than my current challenge at which I am so far failing miserably (because I haven't even started), the 200 sit-up challenge. 

Cottage Pie with Pumpkin Gravy
Serves 4-6


1 lb lean ground beef or other ground meat
1 cup frozen peas
2 or 3 carrots, cut in 1/4" coins
fresh ground nutmeg, to taste
salt and pepper, to taste
pinch sweet paprika (optional)
vegetable or chicken stock, about 2 cups
1 cup pumpkin puree


About 3 or so cups of your favorite mashed potatoes for the topping. Depending on your casserole dish you might need more or less. You want it to be about an inch thick. I think I used 3 russet potatoes for my 9" casserole dish.


Preheat oven to 350ºF. Brown meat thoroughly in a shallow saucepan and set aside. Drain on paper towels if it's greasy at all. In the same pan, add carrots and a pinch of salt, and enough stock to loosen the browned bits from the meat. Add peas. Stir it around for a minute, then add the pumpkin and the rest of the stock. You want it to be about the consistency of a thick soup, because I didn't add any thickener. It will cook down a bit in the oven. At this point taste for salt and pepper, add paprika if you're using it, and add nutmeg to taste. I might have added some onion powder or allspice too, I can't remember :(


Once the mixture comes to a boil and the carrots have softened a bit, about 5-7 minutes, add the meat back in and let heat again for a minute or so. Pour the whole mixture into your casserole dish and top with the mashed potatoes. Grate a little bit more nutmeg over the top. Bake for about 35-40 minutes, until the mashed potatoes are browning around the edges and the gravy is bubbling out a bit. 


This casserole is something I made in the morning and then had my husband pop in the oven in the afternoon while I was out, so I know that will work too if you need it to. I would say you could make it a day ahead if you wanted.