Have a great one you guys!
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Thanksgiving
Just re-blogging my post from 2008 – still feels relevant now. Hope you have a great holiday!
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My family is neither religious nor festive. We cook Thanksgiving dinner because it’s a special meal to have once a year and we never once went around the table to say what we were thankful for.
Today, for the first time in a long time, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my life.
The realities of the world we live in have been closing in on me as of late. At night when I’m trying to drift off to blissfully ignorant sleep, I have flashes of pets and the homeless shivering in the cold, abject poverty and senseless violence, and unimaginable suffering. I think of hunger and the abandoned and the cruel injustices of bad luck. Why these things flash across my mind is a mystery and it’s certainly torture but it’s good to be aware of how lucky you have it when it’s so easy to get lost in the trivial complaints of our comparatively glorious lives.
As of late, complete strangers have been noticeably nicer when I’ve gone into the world to run errands. I think we’re all feeling a bit humbled by the economy. Maybe it’s the holiday spirit. Maybe we have all been slammed by force into not taking so many things for granted like we had been. This extends into a sense that we are all in this together and if retirement plans have fallen into the dust, jobs are lost, and everyone’s just a little bit nervous and afraid, we still have one another.
I am thankful for the goodness that lies within all of us. It will carry us through.
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Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
My Thanksgiving post from last year still rings true today.
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I hope this is going to be my last food post because honestly, I don’t like them on my blog. I just really want to share this recipe with you. I don’t like keeping good things a secret. It’s catty. This recipe for pound cake has been in my family for 4 generations (at least) and it’s killer and so damn easy.
First, this is the kind of cake pan you need. It’s a two piece tube cake pan (or angel food cake pan) with a removable bottom. I have never tried this recipe in loaf pans but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. You would just have to figure the cooking time out for yourself. You can also use a bundt pan but the best part (the crunchy top) ends up getting smooshed on the bottom.
So here goes (a hand mixer is fine) -
2 sticks of butter (at or near room temp in a big bowl) (you can also use 1 stick of butter and one stick of margarine)
Cream the butter with 3 cups of sugar and 6 large eggs.
Slowly add 3 cups of all-purpose flour (sift if you want… or not) and one cup of milk (or heavy whipping cream, or 2% milk…)
Here’s the fun part: You can add a splash of vanilla extract and leave it at that or, you can add lemon extract and lemon zest, orange extract and orange zest, vanilla-almond-rum-coconut-lemon-orange extracts all together for a super tasting poundcake, any of the above flavored extracts and 1/2 cup or more of any type of chopped nuts (dust with flour first and then fold them in at the end, pour into pan and sprinkle some on top- black walnuts are weird)… really do whatever the heck you want to with this thing.
Spray the pan with some Pam (or grease however you like) and pour the batter (which should be thick) into your pan. (My pan has never leaked but you may want to put some aluminum foil on the shelf under the cake the first time.)
Pop into a cold (non-preheated) oven at 325 degrees and bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. The top will get golden and crunchy and it’s almost like candy.
Let it cool for about 15 minutes then gently run a knife along the edge of the cake. Put a plate on top of the pan and flip it. If the removable bottom part of the pan sticks, use a knife for that too. Place whatever stand or plate you want on the bottom of the cake and flip again.
This cake can get dry fast. I use a glass domed cake stand and put the lid over it and let it steam until it’s completely cool. You may want to wipe the condensation out of the lid at least once so that it doest drip down the sides of the lid and make the bottom soggy, or just edge the cake with rolled up paper towels under the lid until it’s cooled off.
If you don’t have a cake stand, plastic wrap it up on a plate.
If you want to make one well in advance, they freeze and thaw beautifully under plastic wrap and aluminum foil. They make great gifts. It’s awesome with coffee, great for strawberry shortcake in the summer… I pretty much have one baked at my folk’s house every couple weeks and amazingly, they’re not huge.
Could not be a more simple and forgiving cake. They are so hard to mess up. Hope you enjoy!
This isn’t my pic but basically this is what it will look like… only mine looks better! Ha! (photo via myrecipes.com)
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The simple concept of being nice has been popping up in my life a lot lately. I think things reveal themselves to you for a reason and I’m taking note of the signs.
Last week I had a very nice day and tweeted this:
The Checkout Girl wrote a lovely post about being nice, and the comments are worth a read as well.
I think public restroom paper towel art would be a fun way to brighten people’s days… only I would leave notes like “you are wonderful!” and “today is your chance to make the world a better place.” Kindness Girl’s acts of Guerrilla Goodness really knocks my socks off!
There was a two-part article in the NY Times called 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do. (Part 1 & Part 2) Whine Me Dine Me also recently did a post on exceptional service. I’m sure most servers don’t look at their job as something they want to do for the rest of their lives, which probably contributes a bit to the bad service we’ve all had from time to time but; I think most waitstaff truly want you to enjoy your dining experience and maybe just don’t know all the little things that would make it that much better, ultimately benefitting them in the end with a bigger tip (hopefully). If people were simply more thoughtful, less hurried, and less selfish, most of these things would come naturally. Same goes for customers.
Making a lunch for yourself or someone you love is nice. Check out these adorable Nutella and banana bunny sandwiches from Bentomom! Inviting someone over for Thanksgiving dinner who doesn’t have anyone to share a meal with is also nice.
Taking note of things people say in passing about what they want or need so that you can try to give it to them for Christmas is nice. Christmas doesn’t have to cost a thing either. Giving of yourself and your time is even nicer. Is your best friend losing her mind in a cluttered home and could use your OCD help? Do you know a couple with kids who could really use a night out? Would your grandma and her friends like a chauffeur for the afternoon?
When was the last time you hand wrote a thank you note? Finding a reason for the most mundane of things would be nice! These cards from Paper Victory would suit any occasion!
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Well, I’m doing something I didn’t want to do… a food post! I just can’t help it! It’s so exciting to try something new and apple pie was unchartered territory. I make some killer mini pecan tarts with cream cheese crusts, chewy walnut raisin oatmeal cookies, a 4th generation 6 flavor pound cake, and snackable pecan cheddar cookies that get requested every Christmas. No apple pie… until today.
The bf said he wanted one and who am I to deny giving it a shot? We browsed through my favorite recipe site – Epicurious. (It’s all the recipies from Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines.) We settled on a good old fashioned apple pie. The recipe we used was for a mix of different types of apples but I like Golden Delicious so, off to the grocery store we went. I didn’t even have a pie pan and I don’t have a food processor so, I bought a pastry blender as well. Oh, and a makeshift rolling pin was fashioned out of a wine bottle.
The changes I made to the recipe: all Golden Delicious apples, added a 1/4 teasp. of cinnamon, didn’t use graham cracker crumbs in the bottom, did not glaze with milk or top with raw sugar. There’s enough butter in this pie to kill a horse but hey, it’s the weekend, and I’m allowing myself a small break from my diet.
Just a note - before you roll your dough out, pop it in the freezer for a bit after you’ve blended it and made two separate balls. Also, flour the hell out of your countertop. The butter warms up fast and makes it sticky and brittle so move quickly. I had to learn from my mistake, ball it all up and pop it in the freezer to start over 10 minutes later. Either way, I had to do quite a bit of patch work for the bottom and top crusts.
It was pretty labor intensive but it helped to get an organized strategy down.
Measure out and freeze your Crisco first. Cube your butter and measure out the rest of the crust ingredients and put them in a big bowl and place in the fridge until you’re shortening is frozen. Get your ice water ready.
Blend your crust mixture well until it’s fine and crumbly. Form two equal balls and place in the freezer.
Mix up your filling ingredients in another bowl. Peel and cut your apples and mix with the coating. Preheat your oven and let your apples sit for 15 minutes on your countertop while it’s warming up.
Roll out your first layer of crust (tons of flour on your countertop!) and line your pie pan and pop back in the fridge until that 15 minutes are up.
Dump your filling in the pie pan, dot with that 2T butter.
Roll out your top crust (more flour!), roll it onto your rolling pin and roll out on top of your huge mound of apples. Crimp the edges with a fork, decorate and pop it in the oven, following the rest of the baking instructions.
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My family is neither religious nor festive. We cook Thanksgiving dinner because it’s a special meal to have once a year and we never once went around the table to say what we were thankful for.
Today, for the first time in a long time, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my life.
The realities of the world we live in have been closing in on me as of late. At night when I’m trying to drift off to blissfully ignorant sleep, I have flashes of pets and the homeless shivering in the cold, abject poverty and senseless violence, and unimaginable suffering. I think of hunger and the abandoned and the cruel injustices of bad luck. Why these things flash across my mind is a mystery and it’s certainly torture but it’s good to be aware of how lucky you have it when it’s so easy to get lost in the trivial complaints of our comparatively glorious lives.
As of late, complete strangers have been noticeably nicer when I’ve gone into the world to run errands. I think we’re all feeling a bit humbled by the economy. Maybe it’s the holiday spirit. Maybe we have all been slammed by force into not taking so many things for granted like we had been. This extends into a sense that we are all in this together and if retirement plans have fallen into the dust, jobs are lost, and everyone’s just a little bit nervous and afraid, we still have one another.
I am thankful for the goodness that lies within all of us. It will carry us through.
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