Seven days of Christmas treats

To celebrate finishing off the semester and taking advantage of the time I'd set aside before the real studying for my first comprehensive exam (last weekend in January) begins, I decided to try out a new recipe for something sweet each day as we count down to Christmas. Making something for the first time always entails some challenges, but the bigger challenge is consuming all this stuff, as freezing anything really isn't an option at the moment (see previous post)

Friday, December 18 - Cinnamon Rolls

I halved the recipe and it still filled three pans...


Saturday, December 19 - Red Farm Animal Sugar Cookies
This was actually the first time I'd made simple sugar cookies. Luckily, I got a family recipe from our friend Seleta so I had some direction.

There was a bit of a baking pan fiasco after the first batch - this is our sole baking pan (a gift from our friend Lakshmi when she lived in a NYC apt with an oven that was too small for it) and it's used for everything from cookies to flank steak to granola to sweet potatoes - it's seen better days - days when it actually still functioned as a non-stick pan.

Luckily, Owen's taught me that there is nothing that some butter can't fix...

Sunday, December 20 - Mint Snowtop Cookies




Monday, December 21 - Molasses Cookies
(Recipe from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion)

a good excuse to finally buy a bottle of molasses...

They don't quite taste like the molasses cookies I loved from the co-op in Vermont, but they were good for a first try


Tuesday, December 22 - Red Velvet Shortbread Cookies Dipped in White Chocolate
before being baked, they sort of looked like beets


Wednesday, December 23 - Reindeer Cookies (but I used this recipe for the chocolate dough instead)


These were really fun to make
Thursday, December 24 - Caramel Apple Sticky Buns (for a late night Christmas Eve treat)


Merry Christmas!

Venison

As I'd feared, once the semester took hold, updating this blog fell by the wayside. As of last Friday, the fall semester was officially over for me and one thing to share about this past fall is that Owen got his hunting license, some gear, and went out for two weekends with our friend Ethan during the season. I honestly didn't have incredibly high hopes of ending up with any venison, but they proved me wrong...bringing home a small doe (about the size of a big dog) the first weekend and a 5 point buck (much bigger) the next. Owen field dressed each on site (autopsy skills coming in handy) and then they brought it to one of the many local farmers who make some extra cash during deer hunting season by processing your deer. One thing's for sure, we'll be eating venison through the spring...

Our Freezer:

Not really room for anything else at the moment...

Defrosted ground venison

Some ways we've enjoyed our deer so far....

Venison meatballs

Served over pasta with a red wine and pan juices cream sauce

Venison breakfast patties

Annie's Mac and Cheese with brussels sprouts, ground vension, and bacon...

Marinating some venison steaks (from the doe...so these are the smallest steaks we have)

Grilled venison steaks, potato-turnip gratin, and spinach salad. Neither of us finished our steaks, but they will make great steak sandwiches in a couple of days...

Keeping Cool 2009

Last summer in Hangzhou was extremely hot and humid. On par if not worse than Singapore but without the air-conditioning and with more pollution. So, we were constantly ingesting food and drinks to try to beat the heat and posted an entry at the end of the summer showing some of the things we ate or drank in an attempt to keep cool.

At the beginning of this summer, I thought it would be a good idea to make a 2009 version of that post, keeping track of what we ate and drank this summer to keep cool. What I didn't realize back then was that we were going to have a lukewarm summer. There was maybe a week right at the end of May and then another set of arguably uncomfortably hot days a couple weeks ago, but otherwise I can't claim that we were ever searching for something to keep us cool. I'd been holding off for an Indian summer or something to try to get more photos for this post, but as I sit in our dining room with sweat pants, a fleece, and socks on Sept 1, I am beginning to worry that it will be snowing by October and I'd better get this post up before I am buried under both books and snow.

So, below is a collection of some of the things that we ate and drank in an effort to keep cool, or as was more likely the case this summer, just cause we wanted to (and really like ice cream)...

Homemade dark chocolate fudgesicles. Super rich and creamy and probably too big. About half way through they are the best things ever but if you finish the whole thing on your own, it's a bit sickening cause it's so dark and rich.

Fruit-infused ice water

Abbott's Chocolate Custards (with almonds or with sprinkles)

The best "healthy" chocolate-banana shake (pictured along with its ingredients)

This actually was cooling - ice cream at Chase Farms after a morning of strawberry picking

One of several trips to Bill Wahl's Microcreamery, Pittsford:

Cotton Candy Ice Cream and Grape Ice Sherbert

Shortstop, Ithaca:

Two-berry twist (raspberry and blackberry)

Classic chocolate and vanilla twist with rainbow sprinkles

Finally, I didn't actually have the pleasure of eating this, but I saw it in a food court in Manila and am posting it for my family and other supporters of the Milo industry:

Milo dinosaur, meet Milo soft serve

Back to the Books

I had my first class of the new academic year yesterday. It was the field seminar in comparative politics. The professor attempted to cajole all of us non-first year, non-majors out of the course since there a few too many people in it for the government department's liking (>15) only to welcome us all back this morning realizing that we really didn't have much of a choice about having to learn the material from the course. The mandatory part aside, he does seem to have it structured in an interesting way, bringing in several colleagues to co-teach the themes that are their specialty. I am torn now because last night I'd resigned myself to helping him out and agreeing to just audit it; the upside for forgoing getting credit would be one less paper to write...which would hopefully mean less December stress. With the Chinese language fellowship (= no need to TA), I could still get enough credits by May to be done with the minimum course requirements but that would potentially mean less flexibility in the spring to take courses outside the department that they wouldn't credit towards the government requirement or to take a slightly lighter load...anyways, this has just been an overly wordy tangent to get to the main point which is that school is back on. Back to the weekly (or perhaps bi-weekly this semester) commute to Ithaca and the already-piling up pages of reading, which unfortunately means less time to spend in the kitchen and on the blog (I found out last year that I not really that good at multi-tasking).

Earlier this week, as a final little kitchen project before going back to the books [non-cookbooks that is], I made some whole wheat french bread (using whole wheat flour that Owen had just ground up from wheat berries using our hand mill) and yogurt cheese (which is so easy that it's definitely going to keep being made throughout the school year). Oh, and some undocumented sweetened condensed milk was also made.

Yogurt cheese (app. 48 hours out of the yogurt container)

Fruity cheese for breakfast (yogurt cheese mixed in with homemade and hand-picked black raspberry jam)

Hopefully, we'll still be able to meet our goal of cooking through the weekly CSA bag before the next delivery and have enough energy to keep experimenting with new ways to do it to document and at least sporadically upload. But for now, it's back to working hard for the money... (is it bad that I already can't wait for next summer??)

Meatless mixed grill

The idea of being a vegetarian didn't seem all that bad tonight. Not with fresh eggplant, golden beets, and zucchini, among other goodies to play around with.