December 26, 2010 by shaggerty
My first thought when I saw the recipe for tiny Glittering Lemon Sandwich Cookies on Serious Eats, one of my favorite food sites, was that I would rename them Princess Cookies and present them to my princess-crazy nieces, thus fulfilling their royal aspirations without giving any money to the manufacturers of inane, princess-themed junk.
Now, I’m convinced that these cookies are much too complicated for toddler tastes. No offense to toddlers.
The end result of a dough heavy on powdered sugar and corn starch (we’re talking 2/3 cup of corn starch) is a crumbly cookie that, to me, resembles shortbread.
I found them much too tart right after I made them, so I figured the recipe was destined to be forgotten. But when I popped open the box Wednesday morning for another taste (first person to ask why I was eating cookies at 9 a.m. gets blocked from comments), they were simply delectable, with just the right amount of lemon flavor and a light, satisfying crunch from the sugar coating.
I’m still not convinced they’re entirely worth the effort (it’s outrageously difficult to balance the cookies after you’ve spread on the filling so that they don’t slide apart), but they’re on the list of favorites this year, at any rate.
Posted in Christmas, Eats | Tagged children, Christmas, cookies, cooking, food, glittering lemon sandwich cookies, Hipstamatic, lemon, lemon cookies, nieces, princess, recipe, recipes, Serious Eats, shortbread, sugar coating, toddlers | 2 Comments »
December 23, 2010 by shaggerty
I have a ramshackle collection of holiday decorating accessories — when you don’t put up a tree due to extraordinarily inquisitive cats, you make do with whatever fits on the fireplace mantel. You also don’t buy many new items, since that mantel’s not getting any bigger.
I couldn’t let this golden burst of sparkle sit on the shelf, however, when I found it at the New Leash on Life Marketplace today. Only 25 cents, too, since all Christmas items were half off.
I’m not entirely sure it’s going back in the Christmas box after the holidays are over.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Christmas, Home, Huntsville, Photographs | Tagged accessories, animal rescue, cats, Christmas, Christmas tree, collection, decorating, fireplace, golden, Hipstamatic, holidays, home, Huntsville, iPhone, mantel, New Leash on Life, New Leash on Life Marketplace, photograph, sparkly | Leave a Comment »
December 22, 2010 by shaggerty
I found this little guy (or girl) traversing my front sidewalk today. Given the usual behavior of caterpillars and beetles in my front yard, I expect him to be in my kitchen tomorrow morning, ready to scare the sleepy out of me at 5:45 a.m.
He could at least stay for a chat, a la Alice in Wonderland.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Home, Huntsville, Photographs | Tagged alabama, alice in wonderland, animals, caterpillar, Huntsville, iPhone, photograph, sidewalk, TiltShift Generator, TiltShiftGen, wildlife | Leave a Comment »
December 18, 2010 by shaggerty
We were going to spring for a new fireplace insert this year to heat the first floor so we wouldn’t have to move the TV upstairs for the next few months. Turns out that, like so many renovations we attempt to undertake, this one’s going to require a lot more work and money than we had planned on.
Rather than lugging the TV upstairs, however, the husband came home with the
Presto HeatDish Parabolic Electric Space Heater. It is quite simply amazing, putting out enough heat to keep us warm and toasty on the couch. It’s made it onto my list of Favorite Things (it’s kind of like Oprah’s, but with more Apple gadgets and a salad spinner), a list that’s pretty difficult to get on.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Home, Photographs | Tagged cold weather, favorite things, fireplace, fireplace insert, heat, Hipstamatic, home, husband, iPhone, Presto HeatDish, remodeling, renovations, salad spinner, space heater, TV | Leave a Comment »
December 16, 2010 by shaggerty
Kids love routine. You may think it’s exciting that you never know what you’re having for dinner until you pull it out of the freezer or the drive-through worker’s hands, or that you can make it to work/school on time only if you miss that first critical red light, but trust me, children want a degree of predictability.
Growing up, my brother and I had a few entirely predictable Christmas gifts, and I, for one, loved the routine. They were all candy items, and they didn’t stop until we had probably grown too old for some of them:
- DeMet’s Turtles: Our maternal grandparents would give us each a box of these rich goodies every year. They were pretty basic: caramel-covered pecans coated with chocolate, in a vaguely turtle-like shape. They were also huge: If you ate more than two at a time (and just try to stop us), you could potentially suffer from that mythical stomachache that adults always warned us about. Meh. We were hardy children. No candy-induced stomachaches for us.
- Chocolate mint patties: My paternal grandmother used to wrap up a box of these for each of us every year. You’d think that, given the popularity and year-round availability of the York Peppermint Pattie, these wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but they were thinner than Peppermint Patties and just more Christmas-y. (My in-laws still give my husband a box of them every year.)
- Chocolate-covered cherries: My mom always made sure I got a box of these – not sure if my brother ever liked them. I loved biting through the thin chocolate shell to release the liquid surrounding the cherry. Looking back, I’m not sure how I ever ate so many — they may be the richest, sweetest Christmastime treat I remember.
- Lifesavers Storybook: It was just a little cardboard box, hinged to resemble a book, but it held six or eight rolls of Lifesavers in different flavors and I was ALL about different flavors. Imagine. My favorite flavor was pineapple. I recently stumbled across a Lifesavers Storybook filled with gummy Lifesavers. We would have scarfed those down in minutes — maybe our paternal grandmother knew it would take us awhile to get through a box of hard candy.
We had other holiday traditions. We always went to my paternal grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve to unwrap presents, and left when the weatherman announced that Santa was getting close. My maternal grandmother always put walnuts in our stockings hung by the chimney with care, and we always dumped them back into the walnut bowl on Christmas morning. At some point, my grandmother started making fruitcake cookies every year, despite the face that nobody seemed to like them.
It’s funny that the goofy little things are the ones you remember the best. I can’t recall the “big gifts” that I got from year to year, but I can assure you that I would trade them all for one more Christmas with all my grandparents, swapping turtles and chocolate-covered cherries around the tree.
Posted in Christmas, Eats, Family | Tagged brother, candy, caramel, childhood, chocolate, chocolate mints, chocolate turtles, chocolate-covered cherries, Christmas, Christmas Eve, DeMet's Turtles, dinner, family, freezer, fruitcake cookies, gifts, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents, gummy Lifesavers, holiday traditions, husband, in-laws, Lifesavers, Lifesavers Storybook, mother, pecans, presents, routine, Santa, stockings, stomachache, York Peppermint Pattie | Leave a Comment »
December 14, 2010 by shaggerty
From Jean Georges in Manhattan: Warm sweet potato cake with a cranberry compote and cranberry foam.
When the husband and I go on vacation, we tend to plan our itinerary around food. We’re not the only people who do this, but I get mixed reactions from a few folks, some of whom apparently expect to hear more about the shows we’ve seen in New York City (most recent count: 0) than our sake-tasting and evaluation of the freshly made tofu at EN Japanese Brasserie (evaluation: awesome).
Some people get it: After a recent photo documenting our pilgrimage to the Doughnut Plant, one Facebook friend noted, “You take the best doughnut vacations ever!” Indeed, we do.
So what’s with our vacation food obsession? Honestly, we eat like monks at home. We have old-fashioned oatmeal (or steel-cut oats, if there’s time) with walnuts and raisins for breakfast every day. I almost always have a fresh salad and quinoa or hummus for lunch, while the husband consistently has a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Dinner might be homemade lasagna or something easy, like a cheese sandwich pressed into submission on the Foreman Grill with a bowl of leftover Cowboy Stew. We rarely go out to eat. We’ve found that one of the consequences of cooking your own healthy, delicious food at home is that your average restaurant food doesn’t measure up anymore.
What does measure up, however, is your above-average restaurant food. And this is what turns our vacations into the pursuit of destination dining. So while I can’t be bothered with a 10-minute drive to Krispy Kreme for Hot Doughnuts Now (trust me when I tell you that growing up with a Krispy Kreme within easy driving distance makes their doughnuts way less of an attraction later), I am perfectly willing to make a 15-minute hike to the subway station, stand on a crowded car for five minutes, make a 10-minute hike to the Doughnut Plant and stand in a long line for a Valrhona chocolate doughnut. I deem the calories worthwhile.
And that’s how my photo albums end up filled with pictures of doughnuts, ice cream, cheeseburgers and steamed shrimp, while we forget to take pictures of ourselves. Sorry, Mom.
Posted in Eats, Photographs, Travel | Tagged breakfast, cooking, cowboy stew, cranberry compote, cranberry foam, destination dining, Doughnut Plant, doughnuts, eating out, EN, EN Japanese Brasserie, Facebook, food, Foreman Grill, hummus, husband, Jean Georges, Krispy Kreme, lasagna, Manhattan, New York City, oatmeal, quinoa, raisins, restaurant, sake, salad, sandwich, steel-cut oats, subway, sweet potato cake, tofu, travel, vacation, Valrhona chocolate, walnuts | 6 Comments »
December 9, 2010 by shaggerty
Freezing near the Rockefeller Center, I ungloved one hand long enough to get this shot, because I knew I just HAD to run it through the TiltShift Generator.
If I make any more trips to Manhattan in December, I’m getting a pair of those iPhone-friendly gloves.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Christmas, Photographs, Travel | Tagged Christmas, cold, December, decorations, iPhone, Manhattan, New York, photograph, Rockefeller Center, TiltShiftGen, TiltShiftGenerator, travel, vacation | Leave a Comment »
December 3, 2010 by shaggerty
It should not be this easy to satisfy a chocolate craving, and yet it is.
It’s not pretty by any means (thus the lack of a photo for this post), but this recipe for Gooey Chocolate Mug Cake actually makes a pretty passable one-serving instant brownie, using only powdered sugar, cocoa and an egg. Best of all, you mix it and microwave it in a coffee mug, leaving little mess behind.
Posted in Eats | Tagged brownie, chocolate, chocolate fix, cocoa, coffee mug, cooking, cravings, food, microwave brownie | Leave a Comment »
November 30, 2010 by shaggerty
Let’s face it: Thanksgiving is entirely too close to Christmas. It amazes me that people put so much effort into Thanksgiving, flying across the country or driving across the state, only to do it again four weeks later.
Having moved a good eight hours away from my mom and the in-laws, I’ve discovered that I just can’t do it anymore. There will be visits, but they will not necessarily occur on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day — I’ve moved past obsessing over dates. I’ll be just as thankful to have dinner with my family on any random day as I would on the official holidays. Happier, really, seeing as how I will likely have skipped the pre-holiday epic traffic jam that is Birmingham, Alabama.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alabama, Birmingham, Christmas, driving, family, flying, in-laws, stress, Thanksgiving, traffic, traffic jam, travel | 1 Comment »
November 21, 2010 by shaggerty
True confession: I have never liked sweet potato casserole, that impostor of a side dish that shows up on the table every year at Thanksgiving. It always seemed more fitting as a dessert, but it in no way could compare to the pecan, egg custard or chocolate pie that sat in the kitchen waiting for the turkey to be cleared.
Sweet potatoes are put to much better use in pies; sweet potato pie, after all, tastes astoundingly like pumpkin pie.
Continue Reading »
Posted in CSA, Eats | Tagged chocolate pie, cookbooks, cooking, cooking for two, CSA, dessert, egg custard pie, holidays, homemade bread, kitchen, pecan pie, pies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, recipes, side dish, sweet potato bread, sweet potato casserole, sweet potato pie, sweet potatoes, Thanksgiving | 4 Comments »
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My first thought when I saw the recipe for tiny Glittering Lemon Sandwich Cookies on Serious Eats, one of my favorite food sites, was that I would rename them Princess Cookies and present them to my princess-crazy nieces, thus fulfilling their royal aspirations without giving any money to the manufacturers of inane, princess-themed junk.
Entirely Adequate 