How About Them Apples?

Full disclosure. This post is really an excuse to put up my favorite video clip of the season. Behold the way one chef dealt with a huge order of tarte tatins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbzw6y0pF3U

If more men knew that this was a step in the process of making apple pie we’d have a whole lot more male pie bakers. And while we are on the subject of men and food prep, you might enjoy the exploits of our favorite Russian Food hacker (the kiwi and the pomegranate hacks were news to me).

But power tools aside, this is also the right time to remind everyone of all the great things to do with apples. There are lots of them this year, though not really in our orchard, which is a mixed blessing. No hauling bushels and grain sacks full of apples to the cider maker, but no homegrown apple cider. There are, however, more apples than we can possibly use, and here are my favorite ways to approach the task.

For Snacks:

Best, of course, is just eating these crisp juicy apples, which are the ideal for taking on the road or the trail. But when you need something a little more interesting, get dipping. Peanut butter and almond butter are excellent, healthy options, as is vanilla yogurt or one of my faves, a mixture of ground flaxseed and cinnamon. If you really need to make the hard sell on apple slices serve them with Nutella or, even better, with homemade salted caramel Cholliesauce.

For Breakfast:

It’s time for apple cheddar scones. It just is. Trust me on this. For apple cheddar pancakes (thank you Doug Haney) thinly slice up some Granny Smith or Mac- like apples and cook them down. Slice up sharp cheddar. Add both to the pancake right after you pour it on the griddle and cook the cakes as usual. You know to top them with–only real stuff!

For Lunch:

Add thinly sliced apples to your sandwich, especially if it’s in turkey and cheddar or grilled cheese family. Make a frittata with chopped apples and cheddar. Make an apple/ butternut squash soup like this one , or my slacker no recipe version that I swear I will post soon.

For Dinner:

Dip them in Guinness Fondue. Serve up some pork tenderloin with homemade caramelized applesauce. See below.

For Dessert:

If you haven’t already made this Apple Cake, do it! If you don’t have the mojo to make the cake at least make the brown sugar frosting and just smear it on an apple and call it good. Really good. The frosting is totally easy and all-time delish. And, especially if your apples aren’t winning any beauty contests make a Joni Mitchell apple pie.

For Fun:

Finally, if you prefer to drink your apples, mix up some hard cider sangria and enjoy the season!

Caramelized Applesauce Plus

Rosy pink applesauce from tree to table with one little stop on the stove.

This came about as a total mistake, after I got distracted while making a batch of applesauce with the thin-skinned apples that come off my favorite tree. It appeared to be yet another burned disaster, another charred pot headed to the graveyard, but it did smell pretty good. The happy result was Applesauce Plus, which is sweet without added sugar and prettily pink. It was an instant family fave.

Ingredients:

As many tart, unpeeled red-skinned apples as you want.
Squeeze (or more) of fresh lemon juice.

Method:

Cut the cores from the apples and put them in a pot, barely covered with water. Boil until the water is thick and bubbly and the pot smells a bit like caramel. This takes a while, so you’ll want to ignore them for a while, but not be so far away that all the water boils away and you ruin your pot.

When the apples are sticking to the bottom just a bit and the pot smells really good, turn off the stove and let the whole thing cool. Smash the apples through a sieve or a food mill like this one (which is totally worth having), and add a squeeze of lemon. Enjoy it as is or on pretty much anything.

Corn a plenty! Charred and Raw Corn Salad

When you can't quite make it to your favorite Mexican food truck, try this.

Can’t quite make it to your favorite Mexican food truck? I feel your pain. But try this and you’ll feel better.

This just in: You can refrigerate fresh tomatoes with no ill effects to their taste or texture. I realize this may seem of little consequence to many. But for those of you who have pounds of luscious fresh tomatoes on your counter tops, diligently saving them from “ruin” in the fridge while trying to think of ways to use them before they rot…for you this is a revelation. Read all about the science of it here at Serious Eats, or just take my word for it and reclaim your counter space right now. You’re welcome.

And now, on to the pure gold of the late summer harvest. Fresh corn. Oooh baby do we have fresh corn and is it ever good! Around this time every year my kids ask when we are going to stop having fresh corn every night. My answer is always the same: “Until it’s gone.”

In my search for a fabulous recipe using fresh corn, I made some pretty good savory corn pancakes and explored all the “easiest ways to grill corn” including soaking and removing the silk but not the husks (got an update for you: not that easy!), but none of the recipes really seemed blog worthy. My very favorite uses for fresh corn are inevitably not recipes but impulses: adding it to jarred salsa; making it the star if its own salsa with leftover guacamole fixings; or just tossing it into a salad or frittata. It sort of becomes a happy, use-me-capriciously-while-I’m-here condiment.

Indeed, no fresh corn recipe really spoke to me until Tania, my Rocky Mountain correspondent, sent me this Charred and Raw Corn recipe from Bon Appetit, which has all the goodness of fully-loaded Mexican grilled corn without the hand-held mess. After making it four times in a week I can say it is one of my faves, in taste and in method. It features a truly easy way to grill corn, for use in salads or salsa or for just plain eating off the cob, which to me is still the best way to eat fresh corn.

So, enjoy this totally portable side/salad in the glow of Indian Summer, and get yourself some extra cilantro and peppers just in case you find yourself making it a few more times than you anticipated.

Ingredients

4 ears of corn, husked
1 large shallot, thinly sliced into rings
½ red chile (such as Holland or Fresno), with seeds, thinly sliced into rings
¼ cup fresh lime juice
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 oz. fresh Cotija cheese or queso fresco, crumbled (I used goat cheese. (*LTOYW)
¼ cup cilantro leaves with tender stems

Method

Prepare grill for medium heat. Cut kernels from 1 corn cob and toss with shallot, chile, and lime juice in a large bowl; season with salt and pepper and set aside.
Brush remaining 3 ears of corn with 2 Tbsp. oil and grill, turning occasionally, until very tender and charred in spots, 10–12 minutes. Let cool.
Cut kernels from cobs and add to reserved corn mixture along with cheese, cilantro, and remaining 2 Tbsp. oil. Toss to combine; season with salt and pepper.

Bring it

Tupperware baby! This dish all about picnics and tailgates.

*I use this often enough that it deserves it’s own acronym. Love The One You’re With. As in, embrace what you’ve got. As in don’t let a few missed ingredients spoil the moment. As in, when you live in New Hampshire you won’t find Mexican specialty cheese at the corner store.

Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Frosting

It’s apple picking season!

It’s apple picking season, hooray! I love this time of year when there are so many variations of apples and you want to try them all. To celebrate, we’ve decided to make September’s ingredient of the month apples. And so it’s time to get going with your apple tasting, apple picking, and apple recipes. I’m sure this will keep you busy for a while.

I was trying to think of what I wanted to post using apples, when on a hike a friend mentioned an apple cake he made recently. He was explaining the recipe and my mouth was watering for the next 10 minutes. I asked him for the recipe and it was from one of our favorite sites, King Arthur Flour. And so, I went home, bought the ingredients and went to work chopping, mixing, and baking. All was going well until I realized I was making this cake on a Monday night and I had no plans to go anywhere this week except driving the kids to soccer. What was I to do with a whole apple cake! I threatened my blog partner that I was going to drop it at her house under the cloak of darkness so she couldn’t refuse. Not that either of us didn’t want a piece or two – but a whole cake? You’ve seen my dessert posts – you know how much I like dessert! This was very dangerous.

I decided to see if my husband and son would dig into it for dessert that night and maybe make a dent in it. They are big fans of dark chocolate so I wasn’t sure an apple cake would trump the specialty chocolate in the cabinet. Sure enough, one piece led to two, which lead to many more slivers until much of the cake was gone. Needless to say, it was a huge success. Make this cake, but be sure you have plenty of people to share it with or you might be on a cleanse the next day to ward off the sugar coma!

Ingredients

Cake
2 1/3 cups flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
1/2 cup (8 Tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
4 cups peeled, cored, chopped apples, about 1 1/3 pounds whole apples
1 cup diced toasted walnuts

Frosting
7 Tbsp unsalted butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup milk (regular, soy, or almond)
2 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour 9 x 13 inch pan.

To make the cake, mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl except the apples and nuts. Beat until well combined. The mixture will be very stiff and maybe even crumbly. Add the apples and nuts and mix until the apples release some of their juices (I did this step by hand and squeezed a little bit as I mixed). Continue to mix until you form a thick batter, somewhere between cookie dough and brownie batter in consistency.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan, smoothing with wet fingers (wet fingers are key as this stuff will stick to you like crazy and you’ll never get it spread across the pan evenly).

Bake cake for 30-45 minutes (I give a wide range because the recipe said to bake for 45 minutes and luckily I checked the cake at 30 minutes and it was done!). Basically, set the timer for 30 minutes, check for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center of the cake to see if it comes out clean. If clean, then take the cake out of the oven and let cool. If it needs more time, continue to bake, checking every few minutes.

To make the frosting, melt the butter in a small pan over medium heat. Stir in the brown sugar and salt and cook, stirring until sugar melts. Add the milk, bring to a boil, and pour into a mixing bowl to cool for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, stir in confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Beat well; if mixture appears too thin, add more confectioners’ sugar. Spread on cake while the frosting is still warm. Serve it up.

Hakuna Frittata

Stay with me here. This will all make sense. I promise. One of my favorite food sites is Food52, but sometimes I avoid clicking on their emails because it opens a time-sucking Pandora’s box of recipes and ideas. The whole concept of spending oodles of time looking for timesaving ideas is perverse and ends up making me angry, after much time is gone forever. BUT, all that anxiety aside, one of my go-to features on Food 52 is their “How to make X without a recipe.” Learning a method vs a recipe really sets you free because you never have to worry about having exact ingredients, exact amounts or an Internet connection.

One anytime meal for which I never ever use a recipe is a frittata. I can’t be 100 percent certain on this but I read (while looking for something else no doubt) that frittatas were actually invented to use up leftovers. If that’s not enough to make them the home cook’s best friend, consider these features: they use simple ingredients that are pretty universally loved and that you usually have on hand; they are infinitely tweakable for food issues (unless you are Vegan); they are cheap, quick, comforting and tasty. Yes folks, frittatas will indeed set you free.

When you are thinking of something simple yet substantial to serve for dinner or breakfast, or of something nutritious that you can eat hot or cold on the road, or of a quick, easy dish to bring to a pot luck, or of what you can make right now (when you are not busy), to eat later (when you are so busy you can’t take time to boil water)—in all these situations you can either starve, lament your inability to plan menus, buy $60 of takeout or…you can Hakuna Frittata.

That’s right. Go ahead and sing the rest of the verse, if only to pay back your kids for years of Lion King songs stuck in your head….It means don’t worry, as long as you have some eggs.

I went ahead and looked on Food52 and sure enough they beat me to it with How to Make Any Frittata in Five Steps. If you think you can resist the rabbit hole of fabulous recipes, pictures and ideas on Food 52 check theirs out. If, like me, you thrive within Internet boundaries, check out my version here. I have purposefully not included exact amounts, but rather loose guidelines which beg to be challenged:

Ingredients:

Onions etc: 1 cup or so of diced onions or something in the onion family, like leeks, shallots, scallions. You can use a combo of them as well.
Seasonings: salt, pepper, dried or fresh savory herbs of choice.
Vegetables: Any veggies you like or have on hand: Broccoli and cauliflower–good. Leftover roasted potatoes–so Spanish of you! Fresh corn and peppers–yum. Last night’s roasted root vegetables–yep. A whole lot of zucchini from the neighbor? Bring it on!
Meat option: Cooked meat like bacon, crumbled sausage, ham, cut up chicken or turkey.
Eggs: Start with about eight for a normal frying pan. You can work up or down from there depending on what you have.
Cheese: A handful or more of your favorite. Cheddar is king here, but dollops of soft goat or ricotta works well too. Go Gruyere to pretend you’re in the Alps. If you’re feeling a little mean or lactose intolerant or both you can skip the cheese.

Method:

Saute the onions in some olive oil or butter or a mix of both. Sprinkle some salt on them as they cook. If you are cooking for someone on a low sodium diet make sure they are not looking during this step.

When softened add other veggies. Cook them up until all browned and yummy looking. Here is where to add fresh or dried herbs of choice and let them ramble around with the veggies at the end of cooking.

This is a good time to stir in the meat, if you are using it.

Whip up eggs with a fork or in a blender, and pour them into hot skillet. Lift up the edges a bit as the eggs cook so that the uncooked parts run onto the hot part of the skillet. A little omelet art is in order here.

When the eggs are getting near set, sprinkle on the cheese and put the whole shebang under the broiler until is it browned to your liking.

Serve it up hot or at room temp and enjoy realizing that there is only one pan to clean. Go you!

It’s Labor Day. So g’wan, Beet It!

End of summer yum-fest.

I don’t want to be the one to say it, but Labor Day is coming. Too soon too soon! I know. I feel your pain. School has started, signaling the best weather of the summer. That is just so wrong. And that linen you barely got a chance to wear? It’s days away from being banished to plastic bins (if you pay attention to the fashion police that is.)

But here’s the bright side, and the bright side always wins. We’ve got a whole long weekend to pretend it’s still summer, and that homework doesn’t really matter and that we really don’t have to respond right away to every work email. Instead, we will play. And then we will eat, and drink, and we will not worry about what to bring to any gathering because we have so many fabulous dishes to choose from (scroll all the way down for a list of no-fail ideas).

At the top of the list, I propose beets. My friends Ron and Lisa have the Vermont garden everyone dreams about, minus the weeds and deer. On a recent evening they served these beets along with homegrown bounty like purple and blood red tomatoes, and even home grown pork.

The original recipe serves this salad deconstructed into its various elements: greens, beets, cheese, nuts. I took Lisa’s cue and put it all together for ease and deliciousness. Feel free to sub feta for goat cheese. I’ve had both and they are both fantastic. Now, go find a good friend with a garden and beet it!

Ingredients

4 medium beets – scrubbed, trimmed and cut in half
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 (10 ounce) package mixed baby salad greens
1/2 cup frozen orange juice concentrate
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 ounces goat cheese

Method

Place beets into a saucepan, and fill with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then cook for 20 to 30 minutes, until tender. (Or, as I prefer, wrap in foil, spatter with olive oil ans salt and roast in hot oven until tender). Drain and cool, then cut in to cubes.

While the beets are cooking, place the walnuts in a skillet over medium-low heat. Heat until warm and starting to toast, then stir in the maple syrup. Cook and stir until evenly coated, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

In a small bowl, whisk together the orange juice concentrate, balsamic vinegar and olive oil to make the dressing.

Place a large helping of baby greens onto each of four salad plates, divide candied walnuts equally and sprinkle over the greens. Place equal amounts of beets over the greens, and top with dabs of goat cheese. Drizzle each plate with some of the dressing. (Or, throw it all together, toss and enjoy!)

A serious summer spread, complete with fresh caught Nantucket tuna (cooked by blow torch on a Vermont stone wall). Some things just end up working out.

An All Star Summer Revue and Review:

Beets not your bag, baby? Here are some other fabulous brings. Of course, there is THE SLAW, aka Hero Slaw, which is welcome any season at any gathering but is especially excellent as a barbecue co-star…and the lovely Funitella Bruschetta, so brilliant in its simplicity, ease of preparation and universally appreciated tastiness. Never underestimate the power of Bruschetta Deconstructed when you make your toasts from Easiest French Bread Ever. (It’s not even fair how many points you get for making your own toasts with homemade bread, and it’s soooo easy. Top them with fresh tomatoes and burrata and your point total quadruples.)

Keeping it simple you can never go wrong with an armful of fresh farmers market corn, or really anything from the holy trinity of late summer produce (corn, tomatoes and zucchini). It doesn’t get much fresher or easier than zucchini, corn summer swansong salad. Oh, and don’t forget the drinks. A pitcher of Freezer daquiris or watermelon sangria will help you and your friends achieve Hakuna Matata Nirvana one more time.

Dutch Bunny

A bunny for breakfast—isn’t that veird? Nah!

Happy Sunday! The second half of your weekend is going to be great, especially with your new weekend pal, the Dutch Bunny. Elsewhere known as a Swedish pancake or a Dutch Baby, this somehow became the Dutch Bunny in our household, and it is an all-time favorite. There are many versions of this breakfast treat, but this recipe—slightly adapted from Sunset magazine longish ago—is about as easy as it gets. Quietly whip it up and slip it in the oven while everyone is having their coffee, grab it in all its puffy greatness out of the oven, and you’ll be a welcome guest or favorite mom forever.

It is great as is or fancied up with fresh berries (like the blueberries that are still going off around here) and whipped cream. If you want to add some seasonal shmance in the fall, lay some thinly sliced apples in the pan with the melted butter, sprinkle them with sugar and brown them before pouring the batter on top. Bad a bing! A fall classic.

Yield: Serves 4, or one hungry teenager.

Ingredients

3 Tbsp butter
3 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
Powdered sugar and fresh lemon wedge for topping
Raspberry sauce (optional, recipe follows)

Method

1. Melt butter in a 10-inch ovenproof frying pan over low heat. Remove from heat.

2. In a large bowl or blender, beat or whirl eggs until light and pale. Beat or blend in milk, vanilla, flour, sugar, and salt.

3. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake in a 425° oven until pancake is puffed and lightly browned, 15 to 20 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar and squeeze fresh lemon on top. Slice into wedges and serve immediately. Top with fresh berries or raspberry sauce if desired.

Raspberry sauce

In a food processor or blender, whirl 4 cups rinsed fresh or thawed frozen raspberries until smooth. Rub purée through a fine strainer into a bowl; discard seeds. Stir 1/4 cup sugar into raspberry purée; taste, and add more sugar if desired. Makes 1 1/4 cups.

Hit the Trail Scones

Not just for tea time. These trail mix-y scones can go the distance.

Scones. They sound so proper, so fancy, so….much of a pain to make. I used to think scones were too labor intensive to consider for every day food. That was until early one morning I was confronted with the task of making something get-out-of-bed worthy and take-on-the-road worthy within an hour. Scones saved my butt.

Here’s why: They call for cold butter vs softened; they involve no eggs and therefore no separate mixing vessels; they require only one baking sheet vs muffin tins that must be greased or lined with the ever-elusive muffin liners. Scones vs muffins? No contest! And that’s before the short cuts.

I know the sermon—baking is a science, weigh vs measure, be exact, blah blah, blah. But in the real world short cuts are important. Sometimes knowing they are there, whether or not you use them, gives you the mojo you need to embark on creating something delicious. That is why I am including my own short cut version along with the legit directions.

There’s nothing really trail-like about these scones, other than the fact that I made them as I was leaving on a long hike and wanted to bring something that was sturdy enough to travel but more enticing than trail mix. I needed a way to use up some cream and incorporate the chocolate chips and nuts that were just begging for the proper vehicle. Knowing that I could use a food processor, dump the whole shebang on a baking sheet and form the scones right on that same sheet made them a possibility. Out of this scenario, the Hit the Trail Scone, and it’s slightly healthier cousin, the Almond Joy scone, were born.

“Are they ok?” I asked my son who shies away from my more adventurous creations, particularly those involving nuts. “They’re ridiculous!” he said. “Don’t put them on the blog—keep them secret!” But you know how I feel about secret recipes, so here they are.

Please customize them to make them all yours!

Ingredients

2 cups (10 oz) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (1 3/4 oz) granulated sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick butter (4 oz) (cold, cut into pieces)
1 cup (8 oz) heavy cream (cold)
*1/2 – 3/4 c miniature chocolate chips (depending on preference)
*½ cup roasted almonds, coarsely chopped

* any combo of dried fruits, nuts and/or chips will work, so use what you love or what you have on hand. Think dried cranberries and walnuts, dried figs and almonds, white chocolate and macadamia nuts, butterscotch chips and walnuts for Ron Burgundy fans, peanut butter chips and crumbled bacon for Elvis fans, etc.

Topping
1 egg, lightly beaten (or more of that cream you need to use up)
2 Tbsp sanding sugar, granulated sugar or coconut sugar.

Official Method

Preheat over to 425 degrees

Mix together dry ingredients. Cut in butter with pastry blender, two knives or your fingers.

Add chopped nuts, chocolate and cream to ingredients in the bowl and blend together quickly with a spatula. Do not overmix.

Turn dough on floured board and pat into a big square or round, 1-inch or so thick. Cut dough into shapes of roughly equal size. Move pieces to parchment or Silpat lined baking sheet.

Bake as directed below.

Short Cut Method

The short-cut method begs for artistic license.

Mix together dry ingredients in bowl of food processor. Add butter to processor and pulse until the butter is in smallish bits. Do not over process! (Butter bits give scones their flakiness. Without the bits, scones become not very excellent muffins.) Pour contents of food processor into a large bowl. Add nuts and chocolate chips to food processor and pulse several times until they are broken into bite-friendly bits.

Pour chocolate chips and almonds into bowl with other ingredients and stir until just mixed. Add cream and blend together quickly. Do not overmix.

Roughly divide dough into two equal mounds. Plop each mound onto it’s own side of one baking sheet and shape each into a round or square. Do not over handle the dough (body heat and scones do not mix! See above butter bits intel).

Score each circle deeply into 8 wedges (or cut all the way through and move pieces slightly apart to allow them to cook more quickly. If you go with the square, score or cut it into similarly sized shapes of your choice.

Baking for both methods

Brush with egg wash or with cream. Sprinkle with sugar, or coconut sugar if you want to take this tropical theme seriously.

Bake for 14-16 minutes (or more depending on size) until golden brown.

Almond Joy Scones

Make as above but substitute well-mixed, full-fat coconut milk for cream, and if you’re a real coconut freak like me mix in ½ cup toasted, unsweetened coconut flakes with the chocolate chips and almonds. These take a few minutes longer to bake.

Bring it

These grab and go babies travel well in the car, in a pack, in a picnic basket, on a boat or to any gathering anywhere.

Watermelon Gazpacho

Swimsuit season calls for your inner cool. Hello watermelon gazpacho!

When summer really heats up there comes a day when we ask ourselves, “Can we just eat watermelon all day long?” Well of course we can! Watermelon can feature in everything from smoothies to salsa to salad to soup. Yes, soup. Gazpacho is typically a tomato affair, but it has many delicious riffs.

The official definition of Gazpacho calls it “a liquid salad from the southern Spanish region of Andalusia, made of ripe tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, garlic, and bread moistened with water that is blended with olive oil, vinegar, and ice water and served cold.” Blah, blah, blah. In my mind the main criteria of good gazpacho are that it is cold, fresh and refreshing. And it cannot involve heating you or your kitchen up in any way.

This gazpacho in particular, from a long ago Cooking Light recipe, is a favorite of mine. As far as gazpachos go it is pretty easy prep, with minimal chopping thanks to the food processor involvement. I am not the only one who thinks it might be really good with a shot of vodka swirled in. Sort of a sweet and crunchy Bloody Mary, yes? Alas, I haven’t tried that yet, but let me know if you do. If you’re really taking this watermelon thing seriously though, enjoy this just before dinner alfresco, after a good siesta and some lunchtime Watermelon Sangria.

Watermelon Gazpacho à la Cooking Light

Yield: 8 servings (serving size: 3/4 cup)

Ingredients

6 cups cubed seeded watermelon
1 cup coarsely chopped peeled English cucumber
1/2 cup coarsely chopped yellow bell pepper
1/3 cup chopped green onions
3 Tbsp chopped fresh mint
3 Tbsp fresh lime juice
1Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup cranberry-raspberry juice

Method

Combine first 10 ingredients. Place half of watermelon mixture in a food processor, and pulse 3 or 4 times or until finely chopped. Spoon into a large bowl. Repeat procedure with remaining watermelon mixture. Stir in cranberry-raspberry juice. Chill thoroughly.

Bring It!

Pour this into a Tupperware pitcher, put it in a cooler with some paper cups and you’re picnic ready!

Salty Malty Krispy Treats

There’s nothing like a classic… with a twist…and a swig of milk.

Malty Salty Krispy Treats

When it comes to recipes, what makes a classic? It has to be something so good that it stands on its own with no real need for improvement. It has to feature some basic key ingredients that are critical to its identity. It evokes nostagia as well as instant gratification.

I’d put Rice Krispy treats in that category. They are easy and inexpensive to make, tolerant of heat and cold, indestructible in their creation, transport and chosen arena of consumption. They require neither utensils nor serveware nor culinary skill. Oh, and most importantly, pretty much everyone loves them.

Truthfully, they warrant no improvement. But then again, sometimes it’s fun to take you and your snack over the edge to greatness by making a brilliant twist on a classic.

That’s what we’re doing here. We’re taking Rice Krispy treats and adding chopped up malted milk balls and a sprinkling of sea salt. Joy the Baker takes this experiment over the top by using browned butter (vs margarine) and adding malt powder. This gives them a hint of sophistication, which is important because when you spike your Rice Krispies and marshmallows with Whoppers you are definitely going for some high-brow cred.

There’s not a whole lot else to say about these, except that they earned the rare teenager rave at a recent party, which in my book is enough to make something a new classic.

Malty Salty Krispy Treats

Makes 9 big squares (no shame in doubling up!)

Ingredients

6 Tbsp unsalted butter
40 large marshmallows
1/4 tsp salt
6 cups rice cereal
1/3 cup malted milk powder (or “Classic Malt” Ovaltine if you can’t find the real stuff)
1 cup coarsely chopped Whoppers candy.
Coarse sea salt for topping

Method

In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Melt butter until is begins to crackle and sizzle. Add marshmallows to the melted butter just as it begins to brown and reduce heat to low. Add salt and stir until the marshmallows are completely melted, and the marshmallows and butter are thoroughly combined.

Quickly add rice cereal and malt powder and stir to combine. The mixture will be thick and sticky.

Allow mixture to cool just slightly before adding 3/4 cups of the Whoppers candy. Stir until just combined.

Press the mixture into a 9×9-inch square greased pan. Sprinkle with salt. Use a greased piece of wax or parchment paper, or a sturdy clean plastic bag, to firmly press the mixture into the pan. The krispies will be thick. Press the remaining Whoppers pieces into the top of the treats.

Allow to rest at room temperature (or speed it up in the fridge) until set and sliceable. Slice into 9 large squares.

Three Lemonades

Pucker up! Rhubarb and lemons pack a double tang in this pitcher of pinkness.

I’ve had a nagging guilt pang for weeks, because I found this great recipe for lemonade that I made with rhubarb from my garden but didn’t get to posting it before the end of rhubarb season. Just like I forgot to post (or even enjoy) a Firefly cocktail before the little lightening buggers disappeared.

Anyway, I was in the store yesterday and what did I see? Yep! Big stalks of fresh rhubarb. I don’t know where the rhubarb stands in your part of the country, but somebody somewhere is still harvesting it, so that’s reason enough to run with it.

And while we’re at it, let’s just make this a big lemonadey post. The great thing about lemonade—other than it being delish and refreshing—is that you can flavor it with any summer fruit or even herb to make a familiar drink into something transcendent. My sister makes a mean lavender lemonade that is wayyyy cheaper than a trip to Provence.

A word here on lemons. If there is any way you can get Meyer lemons—the thin-skinned beauties that are sweet enough to eat on their own—get them! They make all the difference.

Rhubarb Lemonade

Note: This is very, very tart. Kids (and many adults) will probably prefer it with lemon-lime soda vs. sparkling water. Pucker up buttercup!

Serves 6

Ingredients

3 ½ cups water
5 cups chopped rhubarb, fresh or frozen (20 ounces)
3/4 cups sugar
2 3-inch strips lemon zest
3 sprigs fresh mint
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups lemon-lime soda or sparkling water

Method

In a saucepan, stir together the water, the rhubarb pieces, the sugar, the lemon zest and the mint. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
Let the rhubarb mixture cool, the strain it through a wire-mesh strainer set over a large pitcher. Press on the solids to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard the solids
Stir in the lemon juice and soda. Serve over ice, garnished with a sprig of mint

These next two recipes came from Joy the Baker who clearly has a thing about lemonade, which is a good thing now that she’s moved to New Orleans.

Beet Lemonade

adapted slightly from Saveur; makes about 8 cups

Edie’s note: With the unique undertone of beets, this is decidedly adult tasting. As in, the kids won’t wrestle you for the last drop AND I’m pretty sure a splash of vodka or gin would make it a swanky cocktail. At any rate it is very pretty and refreshing. You might want to put away the white dress or t shirt for this one, just in case of an errant splash. It happens.

Ingredients

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup (about 1 small) finely grated raw beet*
6 cups filtered water, divided

*You can use the fine grating side of a box grater, or a food processor with the shredder attachment. I found the box grater to be much easier.

Method

In a blender or a food processor (fitted with the blade attachment), blend together lemon juice, sugar, shredded beet, and 1 cup of water. Blend for 1 minute until the mixture is bright pink and well combined. The beets will never be fully smooth, that’s ok!

Strain mixture through a fine mesh strainer and into a medium bowl. Use the back of a spoon to press any remaining juice out of the beets and into the lemonade. Transfer strained mixture to a pitcher and discard the beets. Add remaining 5 cups of water to the pitcher and stir. Taste and add more lemon or sugar as necessary. Store in the refrigerator and serve chilled.

Fresh Blueberry and Mint Lemonade

makes about 2 quarts; adapted from The Lemonade Cookbook

Ingredients

2 cups fresh blueberries (frozen will also work)
1 cup (or one big handful) mint leaves (a few stems are fine too), coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups fresh lemon juice
1 cup granulated sugar (you can add more sugar if you have a sweet tooth)
4 to 5 cups filtered water

Method

In a blender add blueberries, mint, lemon juice, and granulated sugar. Blend until smooth and deep purple. The mixture will look a bit like a smoothie.

Pour mixture into a fine mesh strainer placed over a medium bowl. Use a spatula to press the liquid through the strainer leaving the blueberry pulp and fresh mint in the strainer. Discard the pulp. Pour the blueberry, mint, lemon juice into a pitcher and add water. Taste and add more water or sugar according to your taste.

Serve chilled.

Bring It

Bringing a pitcher or pitchers of different lemonades to a summer party or gathering will make you an instant hero. If you want extra credit bring adult (high octane) pour-ins, fruit garnishes or ice cubes made with frozen fruit or juice.

Tomato Jam, co-starring sugar and spice

Tomato jam and all the fixin’s for an alfresco summer feast. As ever, bacon helps.

Oh yeah. We’re jamming on tomatoes because it’s the ingredient of the month. It’s a little early for many of you New England gardeners, but pretty soon we’ll be in full tomato overload, so I’m getting you prepped. Tomato cheddar pie, featuring big honkin’ full-sized red bombers will be coming at you soon. But let’s ease into tomato season, and give it some sass while we’re at it, with this sweet and spicy number.

Let me first say that there’s nothing quite as perfect as a fresh tomato from the garden, so it feels a little sacrilegious to futz with fresh tomatoes in high summer. BUT, sometimes we go overboard, and just have too much of a good thing. When that happens, make this jam.

It adds some zing to a BLT (along with crunchy iceberg or romaine, not shmancy wispy greens) or any caprese type appetizer with basil and fresh mozzarella or my new best friend, burrata (thank you Jeanie!). Use it with a creamy base in bruschetta deconstructed, as an element of lunch deconstructed, put it in quesadillas, on pizza, over a poached egg or my favorite way, on a lusty piece of That’s Life Bread spread with avocado. It’s sort of like grown up ketchup, and you can dial the sweet and spice up or down as you see fit.

Ok, here we go.

Ingredients

3 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 pounds cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
3 Tbsp packed dark brown sugar
3 medium cloves garlic, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
1 small shallot, minced (about 2 tablespoons)
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp red pepper flakes (or some finely diced jalapeno for extra cha-cha)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add tomatoes, brown sugar, garlic, shallot, vinegar, Worcestershire, red pepper flakes or jalapenos, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and cook, stirring until tomatoes are softened and lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Transfer to bowl and let cool to room temperature.

Bring It!

Bring this in your mason jar of choice, is a brilliant addition to any picnic, and an excellent contribution to any summer gathering, peace offering or gift basket.

Guests Gone Wild

Here comes 4th of July and the smokin’ hot heart of summer. If you’re lucky enough to have scored an invitation to the lake or the beach or any other fabulous summer getaway, you’ll be needing some accordingly fabulous host/hostess gifts, both to show your gratitude and for the all important purpose of GETTING INVITED BACK. This is no time to show up empty-handed.

For some good ideas on what to bring, take a look at our Good Giving page, or pick your favorite recipe and bring it along with a related container or decoration that will remind your hosts of what a tremendous time they had with you.

In my mind you can’t really go overboard with non perishable gifts, especially with people who have a houseful. And I used to think I did a pretty good job of overachieving on that score. That was until my sister started swinging by Trader Joe’s before her visits.

Knowing how much I love Trader Joe’s, nutty grainy things, value and weird food in general she now shows up with several bags of Trader Joe’s Bounty. Now I have a stash of farro and pink Himalayan sea salt, grab and go trail mix packets, five kinds of nuts and enough chia seeds to make a petting zoo. Here are just some of the ways this gift is thoughtful:

We don’t have a Trader Joes, so these are things I don’t often get my hands on.
Most of it is non perishable, so I can use it at my leisure, and my leisure is a big thing in the summer.
Most of it is either a healthy pre-made snack or the whole ingredients to make healthy food.
Lots of it is ready to serve, so when she showed up the night I was hosting Book Group and I had no plan whatsoever, I was completely rescued.
Many of the things are ingredients for recipes she had told me about, or that she knew I wanted to try. (She gave me all the things for my favorite Life Bread, right down to the psylium husks.)
Instead of even suggesting that I should be more Paleo and less gluteny she simply stocks my pantry with lots of the Paleo staples that are expensive and hard to find in my neck of the woods, so now I have no excuse for not giving her recipes a whirl. Bonus: we’ll have something to bond about bicoastally.
And finally (this is nice in more ways than I can possibly list but I have to stop somewhere), she goes overboard on coconut. I have an unreasonable love for coconut and now I have coconut flour, coconut sugar, coconut milk and even coconut cashews. Actually, those last ones are so good they’re actually mean.

So, that’s one example of a guest gone wild in all the right ways. Another tactic is to bring one special something that is both meaningful and useful, for which I turn the spotlight on my cousin Tierney from California who brought me this all time favorite dishtowel.

California Dreaming on a dishtowel.

This works because:

It is pretty
It took up little space in her luggage and now in my kitchen
It reminds me of my roots in California
It will remind me of my cousin every time I use it.
I can use it every day.

So there you have it. Two examples of awesome hostess gifts. If you’re really in a jam you can never go wrong by going to the farmers market and getting a whole lot of whatever is in season, some shmancy sparkling beverages and the most killer ground coffee you can find.

Since I’m working the family angle here, I have to give a shout out to my cousin Danielle, a devoted Bring It! fan who just hosted family and friends at her amazing wedding in Mexico, and posted the best wedding dress picture ever. It sort of makes me want to renew my vows, underwater, with lots of agave. Congratulations Danielle and Eric and way to make us all want a do-over!

Happily ever after…and wedding dress storage solved!

Now go out there and be the best guest on the block this summer!

Just the Rhubarb Scones

Fresh rhubarb scones holding court, with nary a strawberry in sight.

Here it is strawberry season, so you’re probably thinking strawberry rhubarb scones would be appropriate. After all, sweet strawberries and tart rhubarb show up in the garden around the same time and perfectly complement each other. But just because the two ingredients hang out a lot, doesn’t mean they’re married. Today I’m giving some props to straight rhubarb, hoping it steals the show for breakfast this weekend.

The deal with scones is that you want the butter to remain in little bits, rather than creaming it into the mixture. Those butter bits are what gives scones their flaky excellence, and why scone recipes call for chilled butter. Trust the bakers on this. If you make scones with softened butter, or over mix the butter into the batter you’ll end up with a bunch of big muffins. It’s not a tragedy, but not what you envisioned. And once you get hooked on good scones you won’t be truly satisfied with anything but the real, flaky, crumbly thing.

These babies, known elsewhere in the cyber food world as Naughty Rhubarb Scones, are delish as is, with whipped or clotted cream (for Brits) or, of course, with strawberry jam.

Makes 12-16 scones

Ingredients

3 stalks rhubarb (roughly 1½ cups when sliced)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
8 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (if using regular sugar add up to 1 tsp vanilla with the cream)
2/3—3/4 cups heavy cream

Method

Preheat oven to 425.

Slice rhubarb stalks 1/4 ” thick. Toss with 3 tablespoons of the sugar.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together in large bowl or bowl of food processor.

Cut butter into flour mixture by hand (or pulse in food processor) until butter is the size of small peas.

Blend in 1/4 cup of the sugar.

Blend in sliced rhubarb. (If using the food processor, just pulse — you want the slices left mostly intact.)

Blend in cream until a soft dough forms. (note: you may need to add more than 2/3 cup depending on the weather,etc.)

Transfer dough to floured surface and divide in half. To make triangular scones, flatten into 6-inch disks and deeply score or cut each circle into 6-8 scones. Sprinkle with remaining sugar.

Arrange scones on ungreased or parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake about 20 minutes or until reddish-brown on top.

Enjoy and cheerio!

Strawberry Mania

Summer’s strawberry bounty in its many forms.

Strawberry season is getting off to a slow start in our corner of the world, but now the big grocery stores are full of them and with a little sunshine the farmers markets will soon be exploding with the good stuff. Of course, you’re not going to go wrong by simply washing them and letting everyone inhale them by the pint, but let’s go over just a few easy, yummy ways to use them.

Ready? Here we go…

First, a word on hulling strawberries. The frugal among us get torqued at wasting half a strawberry because SOME PEOPLE grab the stem, take one big bite and leave the rest for the compost bin. So we the frugal rush to hull all the strawberries and thereby enable maximum use of the fruit. The best way to do this of course is with a strawberry huller, and if you have one you are my culinary niche tool hero. If you don’t, here are two solutions to maximize each berry:

First, the most basic and humble vegetable peeler has a built in “potato-eye remover” at the end, which can just as well take on strawberry stems. You will quickly discover that you can’t manhandle a strawberry like a potato, but get as close as you can to the stem, plunge the tip of the peeler right in and dig out the stem. It takes about three strawberries to master this.

If that still sounds too much labor go ahead and chop off the tops, then use them to make your own shmancy strawberry water that will make you the envy of any yoga class:

Strawberry Water

After rinsing your strawberries, slice off their tops and dump them into a large jar. Fill it with water, let it sit for an hour or so and… Voila! Strawberry infused water. Drink deeply. Feel beautiful. Namaste

Worlds Easiest Strawberry Dessert

Ingredients:

Strawberries
Sour cream
Brown sugar

Method:

Grab a strawberry. Dip it first in sour cream, then in brown sugar. Eat. Repeat.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote:

This comes from the Bitten Word with inspiration from farmer Carrie at their CSA It is certified easy, very quick, kid pleasing, totally portable AND a great way to use up the rhubarb that might be taking over your garden. The guys at BW advise us not to get hung up on the amounts listed in this recipe. Depending on the amount of rhubarb and strawberries you have, the method is easily adapted.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups rhubarb, sliced into half-inch pieces
1 cup strawberries, capped and halved (if using larger strawberries, you can quarter them)
1/4 cup sugar

Method:

Place rhubarb in a saucepan. Sprinkle with sugar. Cook over medium heat until rhubarb begins to soften and fall apart (20 minutes). In the last 5 minutes of cooking, toss in the strawberries. Add a little lemon zest at this point for extra credit.

Remove from heat and let cool. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Serve over good vanilla ice cream or yogurt, top with whipped cream or just put it on a spoon.

Some Savory and Sweet Goodness

Balsamic vinegar and strawberries are a classic Italian-inspired combination. They can be served as a dessert, like in Ina Garten’s recipe below, in a salad with goat cheese and peppery greens (pepper is key to the strawberry/balsamic alchemy) like arugula or as an appetizer like on the bruschetta further down. I’ve even seen them on a pizza with bacon, but we’re not going there today.

Balsamic Strawberries à la Ina Garten

As with the compote, no need to be too particular on quantities. Just aim to get the proportions close:

Ingredients:

4 pints (8 cups) fresh strawberries, sliced thick
5 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 pints vanilla ice cream, for serving
Freshly grated lemon zest, for serving

Method:

Thirty minutes to an hour before serving, combine the strawberries, balsamic vinegar, sugar, and pepper in a bowl. Set aside at room temperature.

Place a serving of the strawberries in a bowl with a scoop of ice cream or dollop of whipped cream on top and dust lightly with lemon zest.

Strawberry Goat Cheese Bruschetta

These are gooooood, kid approved and somewhat impressive to guests. Substitute whipped cream cheese if you’re not a goat cheese fan, but do try the goat cheese on your picky eaters. You might be surprised. This recipe makes 12 big slices which can easily be cut in half for easier eating. Remember the napkins!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
12 slices Italian bread
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound strawberries, washed and diced
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, plus more for serving
1 cup goat cheese, room temperature
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Method:

Heat vinegar in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Simmer until reduced by about half, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
Prepare a grill for high heat. Place bread slices on a foil-lined baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. (alternatively, assemble bread in a baking sheet, brush slices with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and bake at 350 until toasted to your liking.)
Combine strawberries and thyme in a small bowl and set aside. (If your strawberries aren’t farm fresh and super sweet sprinkle them with a little sugar when nobody is looking.)
Grill bread on the preheated grill until browned, about 3 minutes per side.
Spread goat cheese on toasted bread. Add black pepper, salt, and reduced vinegar to the strawberry mixture. Spoon over the goat cheese topped bruschetta. Garnish with additional thyme.

These are easy to bring if you pre-bake/toast the bread. Simply bring goat cheese, strawberry/balsamic mixture and bread in separate containers and assemble on site.

Now let’s hope the sun shines on those strawberry fields so the berry fest can begin!

Cheers! Californa Chrome and the Belmont Stakes

Let the sun shine on California Chrome

And you thought I’d leave you with potato salad for the weekend. I might have, were it not for the Belmont Stakes today, and the prospect of a low budget ($10,500 all in) Californian being the first horse in 36 years to win the Triple Crown. No my friends, this calls for more than potato salad. This calls for a signature cocktail.

The Kentucky Derby has the Mint Julep, the Preakness has the Black-Eyed Susan, but strangely the Belmont has struggled for its libation identity. First came the fuzzy navelish White Carnation, then the overwrought (8 ingredient) Belmont Breeze and now the official drink is the Belmont Jewel.

See below for all the recipes, but I ask you to consider ditching all tradition, and toasting the Belmont with a brand spanking new cocktail invented for the horse of honor. I did find a recipe for a California Chrome but it involves Meyer lemon liqueur, which I suspect you may not have on hand. Not to worry–a quick look at some parameters leads us to a tasty solution.

California means citrus, freshness and a little south of the border sweetness. Chrome begs for something silver. As we learned in our last cocktology class on Derby Day drinks with citrus need to be shaken, not stirred. And Californians do not stand on ceremony so your favorite glass (or plastic champagne flute) will do. With that guidance the California Chrome practically invented itself:

The Bring It California Chrome

Makes 2 drinks, because that’s more fun.

Ingredients

Juice of 1 lime
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 orange
1 Tbsp (or more to taste) agave nectar
3 oz silver tequila

Method

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker (or a well sealed and washed salsa jar, as circumstances dictate). Add ice and shake like the the starting gun just went off in your ear. Strain into whatever glasses you like and enjoy the race!

Belmont Jewel

Ingredients

1 1/2 oz. Knob Creek bourbon
2 oz. lemonade
1 oz. pomegranate juice

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain over ice into a rocks glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge or cherry.

Belmont Breeze

Ingredients

1 1/2 ounces of a good American blended whiskey
3/4 ounces Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry
1/2 ounce of fresh lemon juice
1 ounce of simple syrup
(1 ounce of sweet and sour mix may be substituted for the lemon juice and simple syrup)
1 1/2 ounces fresh orange juice
1 1/2 ounces cranberry juice
1 ounce 7-Up
1 ounce Club Soda

Method

Shake first six ingredients with ice, then top with 7-Up and club soda. Garnish with mint sprig and lemon wedge.

White Carnation

Ingredients

2 oz. Vodka
½ oz. Peach Schnapps
2 oz. Orange Juice
Soda
Splash of Cream
Ice
Orange slice for garnish

Method

Stir liquors and soda together and pour over ice in a highball glass.
Splash cream over top then garnish with an orange slice.

Another California Chrome…

Take the basic recipe for a Chapel Hill, a simple drink made with bourbon, triple sec and lemon juice, then make it more California and less Carolina by swapping lemon juice for orange juice, and trading the orange liqueur for Napa Valley Distillery’s Meyer Lemon liqueur.

Ingredients

1 1/2 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. Meyer Lemon liqueur
1/2 oz. orange juice twist of orange peel

Method

Shake liquid ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange peel.

And a bonus drink because Lucky Dog Vodka is just plain cool…

Blueberry Belmont

Ingredients

14 fresh blueberries, 2 sprigs thyme (one to muddle, one to garnish), 3 ounces Lucky Dog Vodka, one-and-one-quarter ounces simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water), three-quarters ounce fresh lemon juice, one-quarter ounce fresh lime juice, 1 dash peach bitters, ice.

Method

Muddle 12 blueberries, 1 sprig thyme and 1dash peach bitters in a pint glass. Add ice, vodka, simple syrup and citrus juices. Shake vigorously and strain over fresh ice in a double-size, Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with the remaining thyme sprig and blueberries. Serve immediately.

Potato Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette, hold the mayo

Picnic basket-Check. Fresh fruit- Check. Potato salad-Check. Rhubarb lemonade- Stay tuned.

It’s summah! Time to take your dining show on the road. Yeah yeah, like we don’t always do that anyway. But I’m not talking about eating in the car on the way to and from sports practices and games. I’m talking about the almighty picnic. There’s something about putting a bunch of food in a basket that makes it all taste better. (Ok, the one exception is grapes at a sandy beach with kids. That never works out.)

If you’re going to picnic with purpose, you’re going to need some go-to dishes that travel well and stand up to some pretty imprecise serving times. And as it gets hotter you’re going to need a solid potato salad without mayo. This one will do it, and the bonus is that it’s originally from Cook’s Illustrated so every aspect it has been exhaustively tested. What’s even better than a Cooks Illustrated recipe is a Cooks Illustrated has been further tweaked and streamlined by a real world foodie with actual time constraints. For instance, the original version of this involves grilling potatoes. Deal killer. This version is quite easy and quick with pretty basic ingredients. It came right from the top of Food 52’s list of 10 Picnic Dishes To Know, one of many lists I am working my way through. So far it is my favorite. Happy picnicking.

Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

1/2 small red onion, peeled and roughly chopped
2 lbs new potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite-sized pieces
Salt
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp finely chopped chives
3 cups arugula, stems removed, washed and dried and very roughly chopped
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
5 Tbsp good olive oil

Method

Put the onion in a small bowl and cover with cold water (this will remove some of the bite). Put the potatoes in a large pot of generously salted water. Bring to a boil over high heat.
Lower the heat so the water is barely simmering and cook for about 10 minutes, until you can pierce the potatoes with the tip of a sharp knife and it slips out easily. Drain the potatoes well and pour them into a large bowl.
Gently toss the warm potatoes with the rice vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Add the chives, arugula and red onion and stir through.
Whisk together the red wine vinegar, mustard and olive oil in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour over the potato mixture and toss to combine. Serve warm or keep covered at room temperature for up to an hour.

Mango Jicama Guacamole

Let the Sunset fantasy begin.

We’re past Memorial Day, so you can all bust out the linen togs and start working on your guacamole recipes. You know how it rolls from here on out: Casual parties start to happen. You want to bring something that you know will be appreciated and eaten, that is homemade but not terribly taxing and that can probably be pulled off without a recipe. As long as you can lay your hands on ripe avocados you simply can’t go wrong with a good guacamole.

And you can go really right with this guacamole, because it has jicama AND mangoes, both of which (along with avocados) make me fantasize that I am actually in a Sunset magazine photo shoot. You’ve got crisp, sweet and creamy mixed in with spicy, tangy and juicy. And then you add cilantro, which makes everyone but my sister happy. And since it’s almost her birthday we can all just go ahead and substitute fresh mint for the cilantro if we want. Because it’s guacamole…and the first rule of guacamole is to improvise at will! No adobo? No problemo! Just sprinkle in some chile powder. It’ll all work out, even without a drop of tequila.

To show bicoastal reverence of a good guacamole, this recipe comes from Meracadito Cantina in Manhattan via Food and Wine, and with many thanks to our friendly local Hannaford’s where jicama is a totally reasonable $1.99/lb and where they double your refund if it turns out to be no bueno (see note below).

Ingredients

3 Hass avocados, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 medium plum tomato, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch dice
1/2 small onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
3/4 cup finely diced ripe mango
1/2 cup finely diced peeled jicama
3 Tbsp finely chopped cilantro
1 medium chipotle in adobo, minced (1 tablespoon)
1 small jalapeño, seeded and minced
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt
Tortilla chips, for serving

Method

In a large bowl, gently stir the avocados with the tomato, onion, mango, jicama, cilantro, chipotle, jalapeño and lemon juice until well mixed but still slightly chunky. Season with salt and serve with tortilla chips. Olé!

Note: Whereas in California the jicama roots make a quick jaunt from Mexico, they travel much further to get to our stores in New England. You most often find them heavily waxed…Brazilian super model before the SI swimsuit shoot waxed. We’re talking a thick coat that can prevent you from seeing the jicama’s true self. Look for jicama with no soft spots and no oozing juices (never an excellent sign of health on anything). It should be firm, crisp and mild tasting when peeled. You won’t need it all for this recipe so slice up the rest, add some lime juice and store it in the fridge for snacks… or the next party.

Shaved Asparagus Salad

Beautiful asparagus ribbons

This post is in honor of my dad who taught me everything I know about gardening…

I have been diligently working on growing an asparagus patch for 4 years now. I felt almost self-actualized the other night when I picked enough asparagus from my patch without a supplemental bunch from the grocery store. It was blissful to see all those stalks coming out of the ground in my very own patch. Alas, the ability to pick a whole meal’s worth was short lived, but it was great while it lasted and the asparagus just keeps coming so it’s all good.

What to do with this treasured vegetable? I searched websites and cookbooks and talked to friends about their favorite asparagus recipes in order to come up with something interesting. Then I stumbled upon this shaved asparagus salad recipe from a blog called The First Mess. At first I thought, what a shame to shave all those beautiful asparagus spears. Then I thought, what the heck, let’s give it a try. And oh, was it worth it. The shaved asparagus spear is such a great way to enjoy this treasured spring vegetable, and it’s always fun to try something new. As an aside, the shaving technique had a bit of a steep learning curve, but after a few spears-gone-bad, I had it down (NOTE: the key to shaving asparagus is to lay the asparagus flat on the cutting board while you shave, and not try to hold it in the air and peel it like a carrot).

So, here it is, in all it’s spring glory…a modified version of the shaved asparagus salad recipe found at The First Mess.

Ingredients

Dressing
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and minced
Zest and juice of 1 lime
2 tsp chili paste
1 Tbsp Agave nectar (or honey)
1 Tbsp rice vinegar (if seasoned skip salt below)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
2 Tbsp grapeseed or canola oil

Salad
1 bunch asparagus, ends trimmed and stalks peeled to ribbon size
1/2 red pepper, cut into very thin strips (First Mess used cabbage)
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (First Mess used mint)
1 scallion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (First Mess used peanuts)

Method

To make the dressing, combine the garlic, ginger, lime zest, lime juice, chili paste, agave nectar, vinegar, salt (if using) and pepper in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Stir to mix well, then add the sesame and grapeseed (or canola oil). Put lid on jar and shake vigorously to combine. Set aside.

Combine shaved asparagus, red pepper, cilantro, and scallions in a bowl. Pour dressing on salad and combine. Garnish with pine nuts.

Bring It!

When bringing this salad to your favorite party or event, keep nuts and dressing separated until right before serving. The asparagus can start to turn brown and get soggy if you dress too early.

Asparagus Panzanella

Spring fever in Doug and Kelley’s asparagus patch. Arm yourself with a sharp knife and a healthy appetite.

As we come up on the one year anniversary of Bring It! we’re shaking it up a little (just a little, I promise) with the Ingredient of the Month. We pick something seasonal and feature it in a few posts that month. It’s not rocket science, but it’s progress. May’s ingredient is asparagus. We’re already getting to the end of the month but the tenacious winter kept those spears in hiding for quite some time. Now they’re out and those lucky enough (and smart enough) to have their own asparagus patch quite literally have their hands full.

Doug and Kelley Lewis are among the lucky/smart ones. Doug affirms that asparagus is indeed hard to start/plant, “but after two years of waiting for the roots to properly build, the harvests every spring are awesome. We got over 100 stalks just today!!!” Their typical spring dinner is grilled asparagus (preferably a bit scorched and black) with rice and cut veggies or grilled sweet potatoes as sides. Preferred cooking method is to lightly oil the spears with olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and throw them naked on the grill. “Steaming is easy, fast and inside,” says Doug. “Just sprinkle with a bit of salt and/or a squeeze of lemon. And they are yummy in scrambled eggs.”

Too much asparagus is a good problem to have, especially when you know about Asparagus Panzanella. Panzanella is one of those genius dishes that almost makes you feels like you’re cheating by calling it a meal—like eating cereal for dinner but way better. It’s basically a salad of toasted bread and whatever combination of fresh herbs and vegetables makes you happy. Pharrell Williams dancing-in-the-kitchen happy.

Naked Guns—pure, clean asparagus ready to grill.

The Holy Grail of Panzanella’s is Ina Garten’s classic, so I used her method for toasting up the bread. Whereas hers uses cucumbers, tomatoes and basil, this one uses asparagus, ricotta salata and spicy greens. You can go peas, mint and parm, or cilantro, corn and avocados. You get the picture.

Taste-wise ricotta salata is sort of a mild feta with good structural integrity. Look at this as a way not only to eat bread for dinner but also to use whatever fresh stuff you have on hand. You can boil, roast or grill the asparagus.

Asparagus Panzanella

Adapted from Food and Wine

Ingredients

The Food and Wine version of this feast. Let’s just double the bread shall we? Now we’re talking!

4 large eggs
2 pounds fat asparagus, peeled (if using thinner asparagus just trim or snap off the tough ends)
3 Tbsp good olive oil
1 small French bread or boule, cut into 1-inch cubes (6 cups)
1 tsp kosher salt
2 cups packed young mustard greens or chicory (or arugula)
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 lb ricotta salata, thinly sliced or crumbled
1 watermelon radish or 2 large red radishes, very thinly sliced

For the Vinaigrette

1 Garlic clove (minced)
1 tsp Dijon Mustard
3 Tbsp Sherry Vinegar
1/2 cup Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Method

Put the eggs in a saucepan of water and bring to a simmer over moderately high heat. Simmer for 6 minutes. Drain the saucepan and fill it with cold water. Crack the eggs all over and let stand in the water for 1 minute. Peel and thickly slice the eggs; the yolks will be barely cooked but not runny.

Heat the oil in a large saute pan. Add the bread and salt; cook over low to medium heat, tossing frequently, for 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. Add more oil as needed. (Bread cubes can be toasted earlier in the day and left a room temp, and covered for God’s sake so nobody scarfs them down.)

Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil; prepare an ice bath. Cook asparagus until bright green and just tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer immediately to ice bath. Drain; place on a clean kitchen towel. (alternatively toss asparagus in olive oil and grill or roast). Cut stalks into fork-friendly pieces.

In a small bowl, whisk all vinaigrette ingredients together.
In a large bowl, toss the asparagus, toasted bread, greens, onion and cheese. Drizzle with the dressing, toss, taste, and adjust to desired dressy-ness. Let sit a few minutes for bread to absorb dressing. Garnish with the eggs and radish and serve.

Bring It!

This is a genius option to bring to a friend’s house, a picnic or a Drive-In. All the elements—toasted bread, veggies, dressing and cheese—can be prepped in advance, packaged separately and assembled on site.

Please do note that this is more method than recipe. Experiment with combinations that you like in other dishes or whatever fresh veggies and cheese you like and have on hand. Again, it’s toasted garlic bread for dinner. Don’t fight this. It’s all good!

Brussels Sprouts Chips

Want some taro fries with that? Localvore ski bums rejoice at the Mtn. Roots truck in Squawllywood.

You know you don’t get out much when your culinary discoveries come from a food truck at a ski area. Granted, this was a California ski area, and the truck was a tricked out Mystery Machine called “Mtn Roots.” But still. On a recent visit home to Squaw Valley my sister snagged “us” some crispy Brussels sprouts chips off the truck and a new addiction was born. And no, she did not get anywhere near her fair share.

That was a month ago, so I was beyond psyched when a post for these very delicacies came to me via Bevin Wallace’s Real Life Delicious blog. RLD is a great site for fuss-free healthy eating, and Bevin is in to the paleo thing now, so its all healthy and paleo, which is totally overachieving. But as long as it tastes good I’m good with it. If you live in the Denver area get on over to Bevin’s kitchen classes. If you don’t, hunker in for some Beviliciousness right now.

Brussels sprouts chips, New England style

There are a few things to love about this recipe, beyond the sheer yum factor. First Bevin tells you exactly what types of tools and containers to use. Less guesswork. More direction. All good. As you are trimming your sprouts you may be thinking, “Boy this is a lot of work for one snack,” until you realize that you are actually doing the prep work you have to do anyway for Brussels sprouts, which brings me to the next stroke of recipe brilliance here—it’s two-fer! You get ready-to-roast Brussels sprouts AND some yummy snacks out of the deal. (Who loves ya baby? I would never ever make you work too hard.)

I’d say the kids loved them but that would be overselling because only one kid was around. But he is a bit of a Russian judge of my food and I had to beg him to leave some for his Dad. (I ate them anyway because when Dad arrived he wasn’t quick enough.)

And now, here it is— Groovy California ski area food right in your own kitchen. My only suggested tweaks would be to up the temp to 375, expect them to take at least 15 minutes, and make a real effort to get those suckers in only one layer so they really crisp up. Now dig in!

Ingredients

1 bunch Brussels sprouts (about 2 lbs)
1 tbs. olive oil
Pinch of salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Start by getting out a cutting board, a bowl, and a lidded storage container. Trim the ends off the Brussels sprouts and then remove the darker-green outer leaves; some will fall off when you cut the ends, some you might need to pull off. Put the leaves in one bowl; cut the remaining sprouts in half or quarters and put them in the lidded container. When you’re done, put the container of trimmed sprouts in the fridge for later use.

Toss the leaves with the oil and salt (go easy on the salt; it’s easy to get too much) and spread them in a single later on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (you might need to do this in two batches). Bake for 10 mins. and check to see if they’re done to your liking. They should be somewhat crispy and brown on the edges. If not, rotate the pan and bake another 3-5 mins., watching closely so they don’t burn. When they’re done, lift the parchment with two hands and use it as a spout to pour the delicate chips into a bowl.

Now, try to eat just one.

Note: When you want to roast your trimmed sprouts, just toss them with some olive oil and salt, spread them on a baking sheet and pop them into a hot (400 or so) oven until they look awesomely roasty.

Who said it ain’t easy being green?

Ollie’s Trip Salsa

La Salsa. Prepared and photographed by the chef. #nofilter, #yeah…right!

Happy Ocho de Mayo! I know, I know. You thought I forgot about the annual excuse for midday margaritas. Not on your life! I merely saved it for a day more conducive to celebrating. God knows there are enough margarita recipes floating around so I’m giving you a healthier gift. In fact, I’m not even the one giving it—my son Oliver is.

Two summers ago we sent the lad into the wilderness in a canoe for three weeks, and he came back knowing how to make his own salsa. Better yet, he knew how to make it by a campfire armed with nothing but a cutting board, a can opener and a knife. And the very best part was that he came back loving his homemade salsa. This from a kid, who, though good with roasted vegetables and the occasional carrot, had never previously eaten a raw tomato or pepper. “That was pretty much the beginning of my salsa eating career,” he reflects.

I love this recipe because it is easy and infinitely tweakable for individual tastes. Some of us would add more onion and perhaps jalapeno, or maybe some additional seasonings. Others might get crazy and add mango or even jicama. But this is a great place to start, will be appreciated at any gathering, might just get your kids eating veggies and, if you keep your pantry somewhat stocked, will set you free from store bought salsa forever.

Ingredients

1 red (or any color) pepper, finely chopped
I large clove garlic, minced
2 cans diced tomatoes (preferable petite diced), lightly drained
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1 cup (+/-) Niblets corn (it’s gotta be Niblets I’m told), drained
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp fresh lime juice
2/3 cup cilantro, finely chopped

Method

Mix it all in a bowl. Enjoy it on chips, in burritos or by the spoonful, at home or by the closest campfire.

Note: Chop the vegetables as fine as your patience allows. Our early versions were decidedly large format, but a finer texture gives your awesome salsa more versatility.

Hello Highball. It’s Derby Day!

Hats off to highballs. And hats on for the Kentucky Derby.

There’s still time! Grab your fancy hat and buy a whole load of mint because it’s the first Saturday in May, which means it’s Derby Day. Fifteen years ago I had my first son on Derby Day, when the race was won by Charismatic. Ever since then I’ve had a thing about the derby. I even went once, and have the silver glass to prove it. Why does this matter to you? Because I’ve used the occasion to take a small google course on cocktology and share this knowledge with YOU!

It all started when I saw the Spring Highball spread in Bon Appetit’s April issue. After a winter that would bring out the seasonal affective disorder in Little Mary Sunshine, it made me so happy I wanted to cry. I LOVE spring. The sun is back, the grass is greening and it’s far enough from bathing suit season that there is no cause to panic. In other words, it’s time to party.

In my extensive research I got deterred, as often happens. Pretty soon I was reading not only about highballs but about their history when to shake vs stir a cocktail and the importance of really good tonic water. There went a precious spring morning.

Fortunately, I have distilled (get it?) much of this valuable information in to one reasonably short post that includes foolproof methods that will set you free followed by some delish recipes for those who must follow one.

In case you need more selling on highballs, they are Bring It all stars because they require minimal ingredients and simple preparation. Even the crushed ice can be prepared on site at any indoor, outdoor or on water location. Plus, if you choose to utilize homemade simple syrups like the mint one below, or our ginger simple syrup they make excellent, consumable host gifts AND fun non alcoholic drinks. As a bonus, use of the words “high” and “balls” together will be a huge hit with any middle school boys at your gathering

First, what is a highball? It is a single spirit and a non-alcoholic mixer, typically assembled in the very vessel in which you’ll drink it. Think, gin and tonic, jack and ginger, rum and coke, seven and seven, vodka and blue raspberry slurpee (did I say that?). You can even get a free downloadable cheat sheet on highballogy by signing up for the ManMade newsletter, which of course I did.

Highball 101

The magic formula: 1.5 parts booze: 4 parts mixer.

The Method: Pour 1.5 oz (a jigger, a shot) into an 8 oz rocks glass, or, if you have it, a 10-oz tall narrow highball glass, designed to retain the drink’s fizz.

Fill the glass with standard ice cubes

Fill the glass with your mixer of choice. You can measure four ounces (a half cup), but chances are that with the ice and spirits you’ll be right as rain (and look like a pro).

Shaken vs Stirred

Aspiring cocktologists will want to get friendly with Erik Lombardo who, among many other contributions to society, has an excellent tutorial on when to shake vs stir a cocktail. In it you will learn about the roles that ice size, relative liquid and liquor densities, ambient temperature, acidity, etc play in your pursuit of cocktail greatness.

To paraphrase Sir Lombardo:

Stir spirits. That is, if your cocktail is all liquor, stir it. This includes the martini, Manhattan, old fashioned, negroni, and all of their variations. The ice should be a combination of very dense, large pieces and smaller chips. See tutorial above if you care.

Shake citrus: The major difference between shaking and stirring is texture, because when you shake properly (that is, violently for 8-10 seconds) the ice cubes (five standard sizes ones ought to do it) are shattering into miniscule shards and adding tiny bubbles to your drink. When you’re using citrus as an ingredient, shaking makes it light and refreshing vs acidic and intense.

Stirring = icy, dense, and silky cocktail. Shaking = frothy, light, and crisp cocktail. Shake for citrus, stir for spirits. Ba da bing

Ice Ice Baby

You’re also going to need crushed ice at some point in your education, and you’ll find instructions and videos on the many methods here . The most reasonable is the whack method, #5, which can easily be facilitated at a picnic with a clean towel and a large rock, though I am intrigued by the simplicity and volume of the frozen soda bottle, #9.

And now, finally, here are the nuts and bolts of Bon Appetit’s five steps to…

Crafting the perfect Highball:

1. Get the right glass: A proper highball is tall and narrow, with a hefty bottom.

2. Stir, don’t shake: Add all liquids—except the bubbly one—to your glass and give them a quick stir.

3. Don’t have a meltdown:Fill the glass with ice. (Nobody likes a watery highball.)

4. Mind your own fizzness: Top off with the carbonated ingredient—use more or less, depending on desired strength.

5. Finish with a flourish: For a drink this simple, garnish matters.

The article includes a slideshow of six highballs for spring which all warrant extensive testing. However, I’m simplifying your cinco de mayo prep by offering easiest, most refreshing one that happens to be tequila based and is also known as the “working man’s margarita.” It just sounds right!

The Paloma

Ingredients

Kosher salt
Grapefruit slice
2oz. tequila reposado (as ever, love the one you’ve got)
½oz. fresh lime juice
Grapefruit soda (preferably San Pellegrino Pompelmo)

Method:

Pour some salt on a plate. Rub rim of a highball glass with grapefruit slice; dip rim of glass in salt. Combine tequila and lime juice in glass. Fill glass with ice, then top off with soda. Garnish with grapefruit slice.

And finally, its totally worth checking out Erik Lombardo’s most entertaining version of the drink of the day, the Mint Julep here that calls for an “irresponsible amount of mint tops” into which you bury your nose, and cautions you against hypothermia while drinking. It also calls for mint syrup which, while awesome, may not be a reality for you at this late date. Instead, I give you the following version of the mint julep utilizing Woodford Reserve, the official bourbon of the derby.

The Mint Julep

Ingredients:

2 oz Woodford Reserve Bourbon Whiskey
1 oz water
1 tspor cube white sugar
4 fresh mint sprig

Method:

Muddle 3 mint sprigs, sugar and water in bottom of Julep cup or highball glass and fill with crushed ice. Fill with bourbon, stir. Dust 4th mint sprig with powdered sugar for garnish. Serve with straw.

Bonus: If you thought ahead and went long on mint, here is the recipe for Erik Lombardo’s mint syrup. You’ll be wanting this for mojito season anyway.

Mint Syrup:

Heat 2 parts by volume sugar with 1 part by volume water until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is just simmering. Throw in as many mint leaves as will fit in the pan (it isn’t expensive, don’t be cheap) and turn off the heat. Stir to mix in the leaves, then allow to cool to room temp, a couple of hours. Strain the syrup off the leaves into a clean jar — it will keep in the fridge for a few weeks (if it lasts that long).

Cranberry Buttermilk Scones

Scones, coffee and the first rays of sun. It doesn’t start out better than this.

Oh the weekend. It is so full of promise, especially if you start it with hot-from-the-oven scones. It can be darned good with a box of Life cereal too, but why not bust out the extra credit points when you can?

These scones first caught my attention in a spiral bound Vermont community cookbook, and mostly because they did not involve eggs. The hacks I have made include using the food processor to cut the butter into the dry ingredients and blowing off the glaze altogether. I am sure the glaze is good, and that working the dough like Laura Ingalls Wilder has some merit but really, do we need overkill? Let me rephrase…do we need overkill in our scones?

Make these, blow off the cereal and enjoy the weekend.

Ingredients

3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup cold butter
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup dried cranberries
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
1 tablespoon milk
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

In a bowl, combine the flour, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and
baking soda; cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Stir in the
buttermilk just until combined. Fold in the cranberries and orange
peel.

Turn onto a floured surface; divide dough in half. Pat each half
into a 6-in. circle. Cut each circle into six wedges. Separate
wedges and place 1 in. apart on a lightly greased baking sheet.
Brush with milk. Combine the cinnamon and remaining sugar; sprinkle
over scones. Bake at 400° for 15-20 minutes or until golden
brown. Remove from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm. Yield: 1 dozen.

The Bread of Life, or “That’s Life” Bread

Elsewhere on the Internet (namely on My New Roots) this seedy, flourless, unleavened, barely sweet and totally nutrition-packed bread is called the “Lifechanging Loaf of Bread.” That is quite a claim and one that begs to be debunked, particularly by my own family, some of whom refer to this as my “dirt bread.”

What can I say? Haters gonna hate. That’s life; hence, the abbreviated name for this bread. But for the right person—and you know who you are—this is, if not lifechanging, at least addictive. It relies on oats, chia seeds and psylium husks to hang together and get its breadiness. Whole hazelnuts give it texture and a touch of maple syrup makes it all just right. Toast it, or not, and top it with butter, honey, cheese, caramelized onion, roasted veggies or pretty much anything and give yourself a big fat gold star for healthy eating. Go you!

I’ll leave it to Sara Britton to answer any questions about substitutions and how in the heck she came to experiment with psylium husks. I will tell you, however, to find them in CVS with the Metamucil. Be sure to get the unflavored variety, unless you want your bread to actually taste like Metamucil.

A few other notes: She uses coconut oil or ghee (which I can’t pronounce let alone find) but you can also use butter; I add chopped dates for some chewiness and sweetness; she uses a flexible loaf pan for both mixing and baking. I don’t have one of those so I just used a regular loaf pan and lined the bottom with parchment paper to ease the first turnout (totally worth the effort, unless you want a bonus botched loaf to snack on); finally, I lived large and mixed it all in a bowl, which took away the stress of mixing in tight spaces, which I hate.

And now, just to go on record, for me this is absolutely addictive and perhaps even lifechanging, on a slow day that is.

That’s Life Bread

From My New Roots
Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

1 cup / 135g sunflower seeds (or 1/2 cup each pumpkin seeds and sunnies)
½ cup / 90g flax seeds
½ cup / 65g hazelnuts or almonds, roughly chopped or sliced*
**½ cup dried dates or dried fruit of choice, roughly chopped
1 ½ cups / 145g rolled oats
2 Tbsp chia seeds
4 Tbsp psyllium seed husks (3 Tbsp. if using psyllium husk powder)
1 tsp fine grain sea salt (add ½ tsp. if using coarse salt)
1 Tbsp maple syrup
3 Tbsp melted coconut oil or ghee (or butter)
1 ½ cups / 350ml water

*update: sliced almonds are my go-to for ease of both prep and slicing
**next update: Dates or dried fruit are optional but now an essential part of my dirt bread experience.

Method

1. In a flexible, silicon loaf pan (or a parchment lined regular loaf pan), combine all dry ingredients, stirring well. Whisk maple syrup, oil and water together in a measuring cup. Add this to the dry ingredients and mix very well until everything is completely soaked and dough becomes very thick (if the dough is too thick to stir, add one or two teaspoons of water until the dough is manageable). Smooth out the top with the back of a spoon. Let sit out on the counter for at least 2 hours, or all day or overnight. To ensure the dough is ready, it should retain its shape even when you pull the sides of the loaf pan away from it it.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F / 175°C.
3. Place loaf pan in the oven on the middle rack, and bake for 20 minutes. Remove bread from loaf pan, place it upside down directly on the rack and bake for another 30-40 minutes. Bread is done when it sounds hollow when tapped. Let cool completely before slicing (difficult, but important).
4. Store bread in a tightly sealed container for up to five days. Freezes well too – slice before freezing for quick and easy toast!

Living life bread, a slice at a time.

Bring It

As mentioned above, for the right person this is the perfect host/hostess gift. If you’re bringing it to a mixed crowd you can always cover your bases (and maximize fans) by adding a loaf of easiest french bread ever or maple oat breakfast bread

Jerk Ribs

What a way to kick off the grilling season!

Okay, not the post you would expect from a vegetarian, but my meat-eating boys love these ribs. They ask for them repeatedly. And every time I serve to guests or bring anywhere, I get asked for the recipe. These puppies are good (so I’ve been told!). Plus, what is easier than mixing some spices in a jar, rubbing it onto the meat, and throwing the whole mess in the oven or onto the grill. It really doesn’t get any easier than that. You can prep these ribs in about 5 minutes and that is it.

So, this post is about as quick and easy as the recipe – enjoy!

Ingredients

2 lbs pork loin back ribs
1 Tbsp dried minced onion
1 1/2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees or preheat grill to medium low. In small jar with tight fitting lid, shake together all dry ingredients until well mixed. Rub dry mixture onto all surfaces of ribs. Make a container for ribs by taking double layer of heavy duty foil just large enough to hold ribs; crimp edges to make 1” sides. Place ribs on shallow baking pan with rack and bake for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. Or place on grill for same amount of time. Cut into 1 rib portions. Serve!

Balsamic Black Beans

Fiesta- It’s always the right thing to do. And frijoles Italiano are the right thing to bring.

Let’s be honest. It is never too early to prepare for Cinco de Mayo. If you haven’t perfected your margs, your guac, your mango salsa, your chicken enchiladas there’s still some time. But you’ve got to get on it! I’m going to take on the black bean situation for you and solve it the easy way.

Buy yourself a can of Pastene black beans (playing it incognito in the Italian section), turn the can around, and make the recipe that’s always been right there. It’s easy, fresh and the balsamic gives it a zing that makes these beans more abondanza than just plain bueno. Ok, I have no idea if abondanza is even a word, but they used it in an Olive Garden commercial so I’m going with it.

These beans are great as a dip for chips or sturdy veggies, as a filling for quesadillas, as a component of lunch deconstructed, as a topping for huevos or as something to put on your spoon as you stand in front of the fridge craving protein. By the way if you see limes on sale, go long! I hear they are in short supply in Mexico and you’ll be needing lots of those tangy babies in the weeks ahead.

Ingredients

1 15.5 oz. can black beans
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion
1Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 jar (7 oz. size) roasted red peppers, diced
1/4 cup (or more) chopped celery
salt and pepper to taste
dash of oregano
splash of maple syrup (optional, unless you are in New England, then mandatory)

Method

Saute onion and celery in olive oil until clear. Add roasted peppers and cook for a very short time. Add beans (with liquid), vinegar and seasonings. Simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Not so secret Pastene family recipe

Black Beauties

Bombproof Mac and Cheese

Still chili? A little cranky even? Crunchy-topped mac and cheese to the rescue!

Here it is, the end of March, and we’re still in search of comfort food. Well, I for one will take depressing rain at the end of March over depressing rain in February any day! All well and good, but it leaves us with depressing rain. Which leaves us with a need for mac and cheese. My kids would argue that this need is equally urgent in any season. Their gold standard for homemade mac and cheese involves the crunchy breadcrumbs on top and absolutely no green of any kind. Boys, as long as we hold the parsley your ship has come in.

This recipe comes straight from a fellow ski racer Mom in Colorado who frequently finds herself with a houseful of hungry teenagers. As she says, “The true beauty of this is that two ski race dads dumped the whole casserole in a crock pot at Winter Park and served it for lunch with a ladle into plastic cups—genius!” Dads in a ski lodge dishing out hot food into plastic cups? I am so in! Thank you Tania (who clearly knows that parsley can be a deal killer) and I hope you are seeing some sun out in Colorado.

And now, we bring you…

Bombproof No-Boil Mac and Cheese

From Bon Appetit, by way of our Rocky Mtn correspondent Tania

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter divided
1/4 flour
3 cup whole milk
3 cups water
1 Tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp pepper
1 lb elbow mac (or bigger tubes like rigatoni, medium shells, etc)
2 cups shredded cheddar divided
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 cup panko
2 Tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley (never used it)

Method

Preheat oven to 400.

Melt 1/4 c butter in a large saucepan over med-high heat. Add flour whisking constantly for 1 min. Whisk in milk and 3 c water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cook, whisking often, for 10 min. It should be a thin glossy sauce. Add salt and pepper. Remove sauce from heat.

Toss pasta and 1 1/2 cups of cheese in a 3 quart baking dish. Pour sauce over pasta. It should be submerged. Don’t stir. Cover with foil and bake 20 min.

Meanwhile, melt 1/4 c butter in large skillet over med heat. Add garlic, panko and parsley and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper.

Remove foil from dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Cover with panko mixture.
Bake, uncovered, for 10 more minutes or until pasta is tender, edges are bubbling and top is golden brown.

Mint Chocolate Milk

The first of many satisfied and non-paying customers for mint chocolate milk.

Oh to hell with it. I know Sue just posted the ridiculously decadent Peanut Butter Krispy Fudge Bars, and that we all need something super green and good for us right now. But it’s still snowing outside, and when I made this batch of chocolate milk syrup my son took one sip and said, “MOM! You should sell this!” to which I responded, “Ok, that’ll be one dollar please.” He slurped it down without a flinch.

The next day his friend came over and had at it with much approval. So, I made another batch and the rest of the family got wind of it so that, too, disappeared. By the time I was making my third batch I had the bright idea of doubling it. (Yeah, yeah…I’m not the quickest bunny). But the point is, this stuff is good! And it’s probably way better than a green smoothie for washing down a Peanut Butter Krispy Fudge Bar.

Strangely enough, this too (like the crazy-good bars) comes from Joy the Baker. I guess I am fixated on joy right now. All joys—the person, the state of being, the act of mixing chocolate in milk, which is always pure joy.

I promise—the smoothies will come in due time, as will spring. But for now and until then, let there be plenty of chocolate. Incidentally, I have not received one dime from my children, but I think they love me more than they did before this all started.

A nice, cold, swirling glass of mint chocolate milk–the antidote for a late spring.

Mint Chocolate Milk

Makes about 1 1/2 cups chocolate sauce

Ingredients

3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I have used natural, Dutch process and a combo of both)Pinch of salt
1 cup water
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract (real,real,real!)
1/2 tsp pure peppermint extract (did I mention real?)
Whole or reduced fat cow’s milk, soy milk, or almond milk

Method

In a medium saucepan, whisk together sugars, cocoa powder, and salt. Place saucepan over low heat and add water. Whisk until thoroughly combined and no lumps remain.

Bring the chocolate mixture to a low boil, whisking frequently. Whisk for 8 to 10 minutes, until mixture is thickened.

Remove from heat and whisk in vanilla and peppermint extracts. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Transfer to an airtight jar and refrigerate until ready to use.

To make chocolate milk, stir together 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup per one cup of cold milk. Stir and enjoy!

Chocolate milk vs green smoothie. Two yummy earth tones, two forms of therapy. Which would you choose?

Clean Livin’ Edamame Citrus Avocado Salad

Bring on the sun, the citrus, the color. Hello Spring, goodbye scurvy!

I was going to riff about the psychically curative powers of the Shamrock Shake yesterday, but if you know anything about McDondald’s supply chains, that ship has sailed. After St. Patty’s Day the shakes are only available on a hit and miss basis until each outlet runs out. But keep asking through the month–you may get lucky!

The intended post was actually going to be about grown up shamrock shakes, aka green smoothies. So that’s coming at you soon, in a version that is entirely drinkable thanks to some trial and error and the eventual abandonment of expensive hard to clean juicers. Yeah baby, something to live for.

In the meantime let’s stick with the green theme. In fact, we need color all the way around right about now…big time…which makes this salad from Joy the Baker the perfect candidate. Fresh, colorful, crunchy, juicy, healthy, easy to make and easy to bring. It’s got it all. Except for bacon, which probably would taste darned good in it too. But let’s give the Vegans a shout out and run with it as is.

Note: This says it serves two, but it serves more as a side salad, and if you double up on ingredients there will still be plenty of dressing.

Note Part Deux: If you want to be pro about segmenting citrus check out the Kitchn’s How to Segment Citrus. If not just peel, cut and be happy.

Clean Livin’ Edamame Citrus Salad

serves 2

Ingredients

About 2 cups leafy greens (I used arugula. Remember–just love the one you’re with)
1 grapefruit, segmented
1 blood orange, segmented (Cara Cara oranges rock as well)
1 cup shelled edamame
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 small (or half of a large) ripe avocado, peeled and sliced

For the Dressing

3 tablespoons finely diced shallots
1 tablespoon honey (for vegans substitute a bit of agave)
1 tablespoon dijon or whole grain mustard
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper

Method

In a medium bowl, combine all of the salad ingredients: greens, citrus segments, edamame, celery, and avocado.

In a small jar with a tight-fitting lid combine shallots, honey, mustard, vinegar, olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a few pinches of pepper. Place the lid on the jar and shake it up until the mixture is emulsified. Taste the dressing and season to taste, adding more salt, pepper, or acid as necessary. Pour the dressing (as much as you’d life) over the salad. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Enjoy immediately!

Bonus recipe

Shamrock Shake. Therapy in a cup.

Homemade Shamrock Shake

thanks to Epicurious and Paul B

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups vanilla ice cream
1/2 cup whole milk
10 drops green food coloring
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
Whipped cream (optional)
1 maraschino cherry

Method

In a blender, combine the vanilla ice cream, milk, green food coloring, and peppermint extract, and process until smooth, about 30 seconds. Pour the shake into a glass and top with the whipped cream and maraschino cherry.

Pain Perdu…ooh la la!

Pain perdu with warm maple syrup. Perfect for after Round 1 of shoveling.

OK, some kids out there have been making a lot of snow ghost pies, because this winter thing is not slowing down! As we head into snow day #2 of the week, I feel it necessary to post one more cozy breakfast food, just because. Yes, this has been a very carb-heavy spell on Bring It, and I promise, the green is coming. But for now we still need some comfort food to get us over the snowbank and into spring.

So, voila! Here is another episode of overnight breakfast brilliance (with a fancy French name at no extra charge.) This came from Gourmet circa 2003. Imagine yourself at a friend’s house for a weekend. Big dinner Saturday night. As you are cleaning up afterwards, finishing a glass of wine, take one of the dishes you have just washed and instead of putting it away, butter it (with the nice soft butter that’s lying around), lay the uneaten baguette slices in it, and whip up the super easy custard to pour over it. Then stash the whole thing in the fridge. Nobody even noticed what you were doing and the next morning, Ta da! Pain perdu. AKA baked French toast for those of us on this side of the pond.

If you are not at a friend’s house having a big dinner party you can still whip this up and be a hero in your own home. Use whatever bread you have (you know, love the one you’re with), and don’t be afraid to use the rest of that Maple Oat Breakfast Bread for a double shot of maple.

Pain Perdu

Ingredients

1 – 13 to 14 inch long loaf of soft-crust supermarket Italian bread (without seeds)
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) softened unsalted butter
2 large eggs
1 2/3 cups whole milk
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tbsp sugar
Handful of chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Method

Cut 12 1-inch thick diagonal slices from bread (don’t use ends).

Butter 1 side of each slice and arrange slices, buttered sides up, in 1 layer in a buttered 13 by 9 inch glass baking dish, squeezing them in slightly to fit.

Whisk together eggs, milk and 1/4 tsp. salt until combined well, then pour evenly over bread.

Chill, covered until bread has absorbed all of custard – at least one hour and up to 1 day, depending on bread.

In the morning: Take pan out of the refrigerator to bring to room temperature and preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Sprinkle bread with 3 tablespoons of sugar. Sprinkle on chopped nuts, if using.

Bake, uncovered in middle of oven until bread is puffed, and top is golden – about 20 to 25 minutes. Serve immediately with topping and syrup of choice (as long as it involves real maple).

A breakfast puzzle? Main non! C’est pain perdu. This batch was made with maple oat breakfast bread.

Mexican Lasagna

Crowd pleasing for sure!

I love Mexican food! Well, everything except for the Chimichanga – why you’d fry all that wonderful food is a mystery to me. But other than that, Mexican is way at the top of my list. This recipe for Mexican lasagna is great and super easy. Tortillas replace the normal lasagna noodle, salsa replaces the normal red sauce, and jack cheese replaces the normal mozzarella. You can add anything from ground beef to lots of veggies (that’s me!) to many different kind of Tex Mex sides….think black beans, corn, chili peppers, and lots of cilantro. Plus you can make this to bring anywhere. Don’t forget to bring a small bottle of hot sauce for those that want to ramp up the spice. I eat this lasagna with a bottle of chipotle Cholula hot sauce in one hand and a fork in the other. Bueno!

Ingredients

1 cup fresh cilantro
4 scalllions, coarsely chopped
10 oz fresh baby spinach
8 corn tortillas (6 inch)
1 can (15.5 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cup of your favorite salsa (Green Mountain Gringo Medium is the only kind I buy!)
2 cups pepper jack cheese

Method

1) Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2) Coat bottom of baking pan with oil or cooking spray.

3) Spread 1/2 cup of salsa on the bottom of the pan and cover with tortillas (they will overlap).

4) Layer with cilantro, scallions, spinach, beans, cheese, salsa. Try to divide the fillings so that you have enough for 2 layers plus some cheese to sprinkle on top. Once you’ve put down one layer, start your second layer with tortillas and then add the fillings. End with cheese on top.

5) Cover with foil and bake 25-30 minutes; remove foil and continue baking until golden 15-20 minutes more. Cool 5 minutes before serving if your crowd can wait!

Maple Oat Breakfast Bread

This recipe had me at maple. I’m a simple person really. But maple syrup, oats and melted butter all cozied up into a crusty loaf of bread (that requires minimal effort and even less skill to make) would win over even the most complex of characters. There is no more appropriate time to celebrate maple syrup than on Vermont Town Meeting Day, the traditional time to tap one’s maple trees. It also happens to be when everyone needs a little comfort food to push through the final sub-zero throes of winter.

This comes from the “no knead” family of bread recipes, which, as you can imagine, is the only bread family in my recipe box. The no knead process is very easy but does require a few things, namely time (not work time, just hang time for the dough), a heavy duty cooking crock and a really hot oven. The perfect scenario is to take 5 minutes and mix all the ingredients at night then bake up a fresh loaf in the morning. Second to that is mixing the dough in the morning and baking it up for dinner. Either way, you’ll have plenty of time to get out there to the town hall and vote on wind farms, beaver dams and moose quotas.

Recipe tweaked from King Arthur Flour via Food52

Makes 1 large loaf

Ingredients

5 cups all-purpose flour (you can replace a couple cups with whole wheat if you wish)
11/2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup maple syrup (preferably grade B)
1/4 cup melted butter or olive oil
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp instant yeast
2 1/4 cups room temperature water

Method

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and stir well until it becomes a tacky, messy dough. (You can also use your hands to work everything together.)

2. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise at room temperature) until poofed and bubbly, 8 hours or overnight.

3. Gently scrape the dough out onto a well floured surface and shape into a round loaf. Place the loaf on a well floured towel and allow to sit for an hour.

4. In the meantime preheat your oven to 450F with a 10-inch (about 8-quart) Dutch oven or baking crock with lid in it. When the dough is ready and the oven is hot, turn the dough off of the towel into the hot Dutch oven and cover with the lid. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and continue to bake until the crust is deep brown, another 15-30 minutes.

5. Remove the bread from the oven, turn it out of the pot and allow to cool completely before slicing.

A fine lunch on a sunny late winter day.

Massaged Kale Salad

I’ve been holding out on you. Not on purpose of course. But somehow, in all this time of being with each other, I still have not shared my absolute favorite, go-to, eat-your-greens-and-feel-like-Popeye kale salad. Massaging may seem like an excessive step to take with your kale (I mean really, is it that deserving?), but trust me—it is a worthwhile technique to have in your repertoire.

This recipe calls just for salt in the massaging process. Other recipes call for olive oil alone or with lemon juice or with the entire dressing. Hey, you’re massaging your kale–it’s not going to complain. Massaging makes raw kale way more friendly, and with a batch of massaged kale at the ready, your options for creating quick, delicious, deconstructed meals soar.

As with other recipes, this is more about technique than hard and fast ingredients and proportions. Live loud and large—mix that kale with something crunchy, something creamy and something sweet and the rest will take care of itself.

Before my cousin Danielle beats me to the punch, I urge those of you who dabble in organic produce to buy organic kale. Danielle, the ultimate caregiver (and least righteous mostly Vegan I know) reminds us that kale is among the “Dirty dozen” of produce items that pack the nastiest pesticide punch. Thanks Little Dan, for always having our backs! (and forgive me for all the gratuitous bacon talk.)

Without further ado I give you:

Massaged Kale Salad

Ingredients

1 bunch kale (I use curly because that’s what we get)
1 t salt
1/4 medium-small red onion, thinly sliced or diced
1/3 cup chopped toasted almonds or nuts of choice
1/3 cup raisins, currants or dried fruit of choice
1/2 large avocado, diced
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

Method

Soak kale in water to loosen any dirt. Wash individual leaves as you de-stem them (pull leaf away from thickest parts of stem). Shake dry. Chiffonade leaves (stack, roll and slice into thin ribbons) and put in a large bowl. (Edie’s note: Chiffonade if you must, but tearing the kale in pieces works just fine and sort of makes me feel like a Tuscan). Sprinkle salt over kale and, using hands, massage kale for 3-4 minutes. After about a minute you’ll notice a big difference in the leaves – they’ll start to soften and turn a dark green almost as though you were steaming them. When done, drain off any liquid that collects on bottom of bowl (may or may not happen) and set kale aside.

If you are starting with raw nuts…Heat a small sauce pan, toss in whole nuts and toast until nuts start to brown slightly. Shake pan on occasion to brown nuts evenly and to keep from burning them. Walnuts, pecans, filberts or even sunflower seeds are great in this salad too. Remove nuts from pan and give them a rough chop on your cutting board. Add nuts to bowl of kale.

Add diced avocado, onions and raisins to bowl (again, raisins, currants, your fave dried fruit in raisin-sized pieces or whatever you have on hand). Pour olive oil and apple cider vinegar evenly over bowl of goodness, then toss until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Kale salad, post massage, fully dressed.

Bring It

One of the many beauties of kale is its indestructibility (if that’s a word). You can bring this anywhere in anything, store it wherever and it will not suffer. I have transported it in everything from ziploc bags to salad bowls to recycled takeout containers and it has survived in backpacks for hours before being enjoyed for lunch or apres ski.

A Real Belgian’s Waffle

Ooh La La! A plate full of waffle happiness.

Full disclosure. My grandfather was full-on Belgian. In fact my maiden name, Thys, is like Smith or Jones in the Antwerp phone book. Nonetheless, it’s fair to say the Belgians deserve huge thanks from all of us on this side of the pond for their addictive culinary contributions. No, not eels in green sauce (they still haunt me)—I’m talking about chocolate, beer, fries and of course, the almighty Belgian waffle.

This recipe comes from Sophie, a fellow ski racer parent (and genuine Belgian) who kindly shared her cherished family recipe for “Gauffres Quatre-Quart” AKA Belgian waffles. “My aunt used to make them by the dozens, to be shared with everyone,” Sophie recalls. “We loved when she would stop by!” Sophie humbly claims her waffles aren’t quite the same as her aunt’s, but her family eats them for breakfast, snack and basically anytime. “They are favorites at bake sales, and perfect for thank you gifts! We keep them in a box for a few days—they might dry out a bit, but are still delicious.”

All of the above makes them Bring It all-stars. Sophie thinks any kind of waffle maker would work except, ironically, the very large Brussels waffle makers.

Edie’s note: The original recipe is by weight. Approximate cup measurements are my addition, which worked perfectly when I halved the recipe and used four eggs.

Sophie’s Gauffres Quatre-Quart

Makes about 20-24 mid-sized waffles, or 12-15 large ones

Ingredients

1 pound salted butter. If using unsalted, I would add some salt
1 pound sugar, or a little less (2 cups)
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1 pound flour (4 cups)
2 tsp baking powder
7 or 8 eggs, depending on their size

Method

Melt the butter.
Beat the eggs until blended (or foamy if you are ambitious)
Add the sugar and vanilla. Blend in.
Add the melted butter. Blend in.
Add the flour and baking powder, about 1/4 pound at a time.
Let it rest for a few minutes while you warm up your waffle maker. The consistency should be thick on a spoon.

I scoop the mixture with a wooden spoon and place the equivalent of a large egg on the grid. Of course you can put more or less to make different size waffles. I cook each waffle for about 3 minutes until golden. The longer they stay, the crunchier/harder they get. Let it cool down on a rack— that is if you have the patience. We always eat the first one warm.

Et voila!

Sugar? Syrup? Ice cream? Bacon? It’s all good!

More note from a quasi Belgian: These waffles are substantial and structurally sound. They can stand up to strawberries and whipped cream, Nutellla, peanut butter and bacon or whatever you care to put on them. The best part is that they turned out great on my first try with no tweaking, babysitting or special handling.

Touché, Waffle Huts!

Love and Lagunitas

How do we feel about Lagunitas? Here’s a clue!

In honor of Valentine’s Day and the Olympics, we want to give a gold medal shout out to a really cool sport and the really cool company that helps keep them flying. The sport is ski jumping. This year ski jumping is especially exciting because for the first time ever (a mere 90 years after the men started), women ski jumpers are allowed to compete in the Olympics.

In Europe top ski jumpers have rock star status. In this country ski jumpers are rarely featured between Olympics. The sport struggles to find funding for the training needed to fly, oh, a football field plus, nearly straight downhill. That’s where Lagunitas, a groovy craft beer company from Northern California, comes in. As sponsor of the US Ski Jumping Team Lagunitas has become more like family than funder. Since they are in Sochi, cheering on the team, we figure we can do our part by cheering from home, while drinking Lagunitas of course. Today happens to be a snow day here, and a Friday, and Valentine’s Day, and the day the men take to the “large” (read crazy) hill, so it seems like a good time to start.

Let’s be real. Valentine’s Day can be amateur night, sort of like New Years Eve, with a lot of undeliverable hype and expectation. What we need are options that maximize togetherness and minimize contrived, awkward and complicated situations.

Here’s a low investment/high return plan. Grab a six pack of the good stuff (might we suggest Lagunitas, which happens to be extra strength) and anything that looks good for dipping. This can be pretzels, apples, dried fruit, veggies, nuts, crackers, bread, cookies—really anything that you like at the store or have on hand. At home, open one of the beers. Make a super easy beer and cheese sauce. While that is warming up make an even easier chocolate dipping sauce.

At your final destination, or when your guest arrives, assemble the remaining five beers into Olympic ring formation. Get psyched. Arrange dips and dippers in easy reach. Turn on TV. Get cozy on the couch and let the Games—whatever they may be—begin.

Take a cold one for the team!

I Love You More Than Beer (and cheese) Sauce

From the “The Beeroness” (Don’t you just love her sight unseen?)

Ingredients

2 Tbsp butter, softened (or melted
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 cup beer (use Lagunitas IPA for highest score from judges)
2 cup shredded Cheddar and/or Gouda, do not use pre shredded
1 cup whole milk
Salt and pepper, paprika optional (and tasty).

Method

Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor. Process on high until very well blended, about 5-8 minutes. Transfer contents to a saucepan over medium high heat. Whisk rapidly and continuously until thickened, about 5 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm.

Go ahead and get cheesy. It’s all good.

Dip it Good Chocolate Sauce

From Joy the Baker

Ingredients

1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks (ore more)
scant 1 cup heavy cream
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp espresso powder (optional)

Method

Place chocolate chunks, pinch of salt, and espresso powder (if using) in a medium bowl. In a small saucepan, bring the heavy cream to a boil. Pour the heavy cream over the chocolate pieces. Let rest for 1 minute before whisking. Whisk until chocolate is completely melted. They say to serve it warm but it’s good at any temp. This sauce is pretty thin, so it also pours easily over fruit and ice cream.

Chocolate dip fantasia. Of course, cookies and ice cream work too.

Note: The potential for extra points abounds here. You can make your own Easiest French Bread Ever to bring to the party, add a round of Snowchis to the mix, or whip up some Cholliesauce for more dipping pleasure. And of course, nobody’s going to object to that box of chocolates that was Plan A!

Moveable Feasts

A fine spread for between runs, or really any old time.

We apologize for the slight delay in Bring It posts, but due to THE FREAKING OLYMPICS, our nighttime blogging hours are seriously limited. Amidst all the TV watching, however, life, and eating, goes on. We are, in fact, at the height of Bring It season with all the shoveling, snowshoeing, skiing, aprés skiing and general warming up from the cold that’s going on here in the heart of the Polar Vortex.

As mentioned in Lunch Deconstructed, prepping and toting the midday meal can take me down. But a fresh new philosophy has come to my rescue. With apologies to past presidents it goes something like this: “Ask not what you can make and bring for lunch. Ask what lunch you can make from what you bring.” Or, more simply, instead of letting lunch prep bring you down, pack all your favorite food into a bag and figure out what to do with it when you get there. This is a win all the way around. First, you minimize chafe in the morning. Second, you have lots of options for picky eaters and changing moods/appetites. Third, aforementioned picky eaters learn the essential life skill of making their own lunches.

Bringing all of the elements and prep tools sounds complicated, but as I learned recently from Bring It master (and fellow ski racer parent) Pennie Rand, it’s not that tough. You just have to have a kit. Hers is a canvas bag stuffed with a Thermos, jars, loaves, cheese, veggies, fruit and little containers of bonus quelque chose as well as cutting boards, cloth napkins, and stylish wooden knives that make her look like a Scandinavian picnic goddess. She’s like the sport version Ina Garten, who knows that part of the fun of a meal is making it a social activity.

At a recent ski race, when Pennie handed my cold, hungry parents a hearty cracker topped with brie and baby spinach (vs. the bag of day old muffins I had grabbed at Shaw’s on the way to the race), they accepted and nearly teared up. When she followed up with a slice of whole grain bread smeared with peanut butter and Nutella, I’m pretty sure they wanted to trade me in.

This past weekend I got a glimpse of real Bring It pros in the ski lodge during Dartmouth Winter Carnival. By 8 am “Carnie” parents were trouping in with plastic storage bins full of food, and assembling an armada of crock pots on cloth-clad tables. Ski lodges, when they turn a blind eye to such large scale picnicking, are a venue more suited to crock pot warmery than crock pot cookery. Things like meatballs, chili’s and stews, are staples.

When lodges forbid profit-stealing crockpots you have to be a bit more creative. One dedicated ski parent stands hot dogs in a wide mouth Thermos then fills it with boiling water. She fills another Thermos with chili and brings a baggie of shredded cheese. At lunchtime each kid fishes out a dog, puts it in a bun from her kit, tops it with chili and cheese then finishes it off with foraged ski lodge condiments.

It is with no particular fondness or pride that I recall the free saltine/ketchup/relish ski lodge condiment sandwiches from my youth. Comparatively the DIY chili dogs would have been quite a feast. But so would some salami and cheese, a few slices of turkey, avocado and salsa wrapped in a tortilla or pretty much anything dipped in Nutella. As winter wears on, get fresh, be creative and for goodness sake invite everyone to the make-your-own-darned lunch party.

Bringing it, extreme version. The chairlift lunch.

Olympic Snow Drinking. Let the Games Begin!

Stronger, colder, yummier. The Olympic credo of cocktails.

From Russia with Love…and Vodka.

The following were created in honor of the 2014 Olympics and thirsty spectators everywhere. But they are really just launching pads for your own winter-coping creations. This winter thing is serious stuff. You can either complain about it or embrace it. Being outdoor people, we of course choose the latter, though often we embrace with one hand while holding a frosty cold drink in the other. Really, when you gather round a bonfire with friends and pour something sweet and boozy over snow what can possibly go wrong?

For all the following drinks the set-up is the same:

Fill and pack your desired vehicle with clean snow (or finely crushed/pulverized ice). Mix all liquid ingredients in a separate container (*or mix and store in a lidded container for transport. All these individual recipes can be made in higher volumes, something strongly encouraged on a cold winter night). Pour carefully and evenly over snow. Stir, enjoy, repeat as necessary.

The Snowchi

(A Moscow Mule on snow. The unofficial off-site drink of the 2014 Games)

The Vehicle: For individual drinks, a small soup Thermos (It stays cold and if they think it is borscht you may be able to sneak it through security.) For high volume a sap bucket with the super long straws used in scary communal Scorpion Bowls.

¾ ounce ginger simple syrup (you know you are wondering how to use yours up)
½ ounce lime juice
2 ounce vodka

The twist: No ginger syrup? Make it with 2 parts ginger beer, one part vodka and a splash of lime juice. It will be more liquidy but will do the trick. Feel more aligned with Team Bermuda than Mother Russia? Sub dark rum for vodka. to make it a dark and stormy night.

Snowchis in formation, awarded to the worthy (or thirsty).

Our 12-year-old server confirms these are quite versatile. Try straight OJ, or the Polar Vortex sans vodka.

The Polar Vortex

As comfort to all who are freezing their butts off this winter, this elixir is white as snow with a sweet whisper of the tropics.

The vehicle: something clear to show off the frigid Polar whiteness of it all.

¼ cup light coconut milk
½ ounce Maple syrup
1½ ounce vodka

The twist: If you are trying to bulk up for your luge run use half and half or cream for the coconut milk. If you’re in training for your figure skating frock sub Coconut Dream or Almond milk for the coconut milk. It’ll be more slurpee-like than creamy but still effective. Aesthetics of clean white not an issue? Then give dark rum a shot, because we all know that dark rum goes with coconut like brooms go with curling, like Jamaicans go with bobsleds, like Russian judges go with cold hard cash.

*Coconut milk needs some serious shaking to mix evenly, so go with a lidded container and shake vigorously. Small caper bottles (see photo below) are perfect individual to-go containers.

The Alpen Pro

As a nod to après skiers everywhere, a classic rendezvous of bubbly Italian chic and sophisticated elderberry liqueur distilled in the heart of the French Alps.

The vehicle: A plastic champagne glass or something similarly shmancy. Individual servings only, unless you are drinking straight from the bottle. Above all, keep it classy!

4 ounce Prosecco
½ ounce St. Germain

The twist: Champagne is of course an option here as well, and sabering the bottle will earn you extra points among your bonfire mates.

This whole enterprise might need some exhaustive research to fine tune, but come on— it’s Olympic season and we have nearly three weeks to peak. I know you can all rise to the challenge.

The Set-Up. Some of the fixings, plus a couple of race ready Polar Vortexes to-go.

Wake up to Waffles

For the love of waffles!

What’s in a name? A classic, when it comes to Marion Cunningham’s Yeast-Raised Waffles. I was late to discover these, but after much hounding from my kids and far too many waffle huts I found these babies that strike a nice balance between Eggo convenience and professional waffle master taste. The only tweaks I added are in process, not ingredients.

There are two schools of thought on prep. The original recipe calls for mixing everything but the baking soda and eggs and leaving the batter at room temp overnight. Other versions include the eggs the night before and store the batter in the fridge. One time I added the eggs and forgot to put the batter in the fridge. The waffles still tasted great and nobody died or even got sick. Still, you’d better not tempt fate with that.

Either way you mix them yields buttery, almost sourdough-like waffles (especially if you opt for the original version and leave the batter out all night). These belong with the cardamom blender popovers and the yummy muffins in the Overnight Sensations realm because they require minimal effort in the morning. That said, there is a learning curve involved and each waffle maker has its own sweet spot. Hopefully the notes below will help minimize your trial and error, and maximize your happy waffle moments.

MAKES 20 WAFFLES

Ingredients

1 (1⁄4-oz.) package active dry yeast
2 cups milk (or, even better, buttermilk)
1⁄2 cup unsalted butter, melted, plus more for serving
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 cups flour
2 eggs
1⁄4 tsp. baking soda
canola oil for coating the waffle maker
Maple syrup, for serving

Method

1. Dissolve yeast in 1⁄2 cup warm water; set aside until foamy, 8 to 10 minutes. Add milk, butter, salt, sugar, flour, and eggs; whisk until combined. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate overnight.

2. Heat a nonstick waffle iron. Whisk baking soda into batter. It will become very thin. Pour 1⁄4 cup batter onto iron; let set for 30 seconds.* Lower lid; cook until golden and crisp, 4 to 5 minutes. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve with maple syrup and butter.

*This took some experimenting and messy overflows but I have perfected the technique for my waffle maker. Brush the bottom of the waffle iron with some oil, pour in the batter, then lower the lid but prop it open with the down-turned bowl (the business end) of a long-handled serving spoon so the top of the iron hovers over the batter. When the batter is starting to set on the top, open the lid, brush the top of the iron with oil and quickly close it all the way to cook the waffle. This assures a super crispy and non-exploding waffle.

Fi-Fi to the Rescue (with chicken taco chili)

I have a friend (and you know who you are) who refers to her slow cooker as FiFi, short for “Fix It and Fugget It.” Of course, she is on her second slow cooker because she forgot about FiFi for three months while it was filled with leftover Chicken Marbella. But let’s fuggedabout that image right now, and focus on dinner….tonight…with zero effort. This recipe comes from Amy, who I am calling right out because she deserves credit on at least two fronts.

First, Amy appreciates the vast the difference between crockpot cookery and crockpot warmery, an issue discussed in the Fast and Slow Lasagna post. Other than chopping up one onion (and some cilantro unless you are a slacker like me and blew it right off), the only effort involved here is opening cans, and FiFi is the only dish called into service.

Second, Amy offered up a recipe that is as delish as it is easy. With a whole lot of cold winter nights and aprés ski opportunities in the forecast, and with the Super Bowl right around the corner this comes just in time. We ate this for dinner, for lunch the next two days and were not the least bit relieved when it was gone.

Ingredients

Makes 10 servings

1 onion, chopped
1 16-oz can black beans
1 16-oz can kidney beans
1 16-oz can of cannelli beans (use whatever combo of beans you have)
1 8-oz can tomato sauce
10 oz package frozen corn kernels (canned works too)
2 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes
1 packet taco seasoning
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp chili powder
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (or equivalent weight boneless, skinless thighs)
chopped fresh cilantro (for overachievers)

Method

Combine beans, onion, corn, tomato sauce, cumin, chili powder and taco seasoning in a slow cooker. Place chicken on top and cover. Cook on low for 10 hours or on high for 6 hours. Half an hour before serving, remove chicken and shred. Return chicken to slow cooker and stir in. Top with fresh cilantro. Dig deep and serve with cheese and sour cream to show you care.

OK we’re ready. Bring on FiFi’s finest chicken chili!

Lunch, Deconstructed

Deconstructed lunch elements, waiting to meet each other.

Lunch can take me down, especially in winter. When we are scrambling to get out the door to training or a race, the idea of preparing lunch, after making breakfast, cleaning up and gathering/loading gear is a major buzz kill. But the penalty for not making lunch is hunger or French Fries. Lots of French Fries. NOT that I have anything against French Fries, and particularly the ones at the Dartmouth Skiway that must be double fried because they are so good. But we all know, the sad, cumulative consequence of too many French Fries.

My solution is (to try at least) to have a fridge full or delicious and healthy lunch fixings, ready to be combined the night before, or easily enough in the morning. Below are basic recipes for some essential elements, along with suggestions for the makings of the best darned lunch you can cram into a takeout container. The recipes for the beets, lentils and onions come from Stone Soup. Build an arsenal of sauces from Get Saucy With Me to have on hand and you’re good to go, to the Skiway and beyond.

Skiway Deconstructed Lunch Basics:

Baked Sweet Potatoes
Roasted Beets
Massaged Kale
Parisian Lentils
Balsamic Onions

A few suggestions for other awesome things to have on hand:

Roasted nuts and seeds
Avocado
Roasted vegetables
Cooked grains like brown rice, quinoa and millet
Hummus
Hard boiled eggs
Chopped olives or tapenade
Cooked BACON, chicken and other protein. Did I say bacon?

Salads for two, in brilliant take out containers. Dressing in a repurposed caper bottle.

Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

However many sweet potatoes you want to cook in your hot oven.

Method

Turn oven on to 400.

Wash potatoes and dry them with a paper towel. Prick all over with a fork. (One exploded potato will cure you from ever forgetting this step.) Put potatoes on a cookie sheet to catch the goo that escapes from the holes. Line the sheet with foil if you want zero cleanup.

Bake potatoes for about an hour, squeezing them to test for doneness starting at about 45 minutes. I like mine to have some structural integrity for slicing later.

When done, let potatoes cool. They can be easily peeled by hand if desired. Store covered in the fridge.

Massaged Kale

There are many methods for this so don’t worry too much about the ingredient measurements or timing. Some recipes only call for salt in the massaging, others only for oil, others for oil, lemon juice and salt and still others for the entire dressing. The point is just to break down the kale a bit so it is still raw but friendly and makes a worthy bed for all kinds of other good stuff.

Ingredients

One or two bunches kale, washed, spun dry, stemmed and shredded or torn. *
Olive oil, salt, lemon juice

*(You can easily stem kale with a big sharp knife by holding it vertically from the stem end and running the knife down the stem. Or you can go rogue and use your fingers. Grip the stem between thumb and forefinger and zip down the stem.)

Method

Put kale into a big bowl. Drizzle with a Tablespoon or more of olive oil, a splash of lemon juice and a good sprinkling of salt. Massage kale with your hands until it softens a bit and is a shinier, dark green. Store covered in the fridge until ready to use.

Roasted Beets

These keep a week or more in the fridge, so I generally make enough to fill up a large 9 x13 baking dish.

Ingredients

1-2 bunches beets, or a few large ones.
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil

Method

Preheat oven to 400.

Remove stalks from beets and scrub them well. Chop into wedges – either quarters, sixths or eighths. The smaller you chop, the faster they will cook. I like big wedges because I have more slicing and dicing options later

Splash with a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and the same of olive oil. Sprinkle with kosher salt.

Cover tightly with foil and roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until beets are tender. Season to taste. When cooled you can easily peel them by hand or with a knife, or just eat them with the peels.

Parisian Lentils

I love these any time of day, even for breakfast with an egg on top. Full disclosure: I never measure these. I just boil a bunch of lentils and add equal splashes of the seasonings at the end. And if I don’t have sherry vinegar I cut to the chase with a splash of straight sherry. Saves you the trouble of having a separate glass of wine with dinner (or breakfast in some cases). The recipe calls for topping these with fresh ricotta and parsley, which sounds awesome.

Ingredients

7 oz French style green lentils (aka puy lentils)
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Method

Place lentils in a medium saucepan and cover generously with water. Cover and bring to the boil.

Remove lid and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until the lentils are tender.

Drain lentils and return to the pan. Season with vinegar, soy and 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil. Taste and add salt as needed.

Balsamic Onions

I wasn’t going to include these but they are so good on pizza, sandwiches, salads and soups that they need to be in. If you’re over the taste of balsamic at this point just use a combo of olive oil and butter and sprinkle generously with salt. This clearly makes a ton, but they keep for a long time and are addictive so a ton is a good thing. Feel free to halve of quarter, but don’t complain when you are out of them so soon!

Ingredients

8 onions
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

(No need to use your best olive oil and balsamic)

Method

Heat oil in a large heavy based saucepan over a medium heat.

Halve onions, lengthwise, then remove the skins and slice into half moons. Adding chopped onions to the oil as you go.

Cover and cook on a medium low heat, stirring occasionally for about 1/2 hour or until onions are very soft but not browned.

Remove cover and add balsamic. Bring to a simmer and cook, again stirring from time to time for about 20 minutes or until the sauce has reduced a little and the onions are slightly brown.

Get Saucy With Me

They say taste is free. It’s darned easy too when you just add some sauce.

If there was ever a time to go long on veggies and salads, it is now, in the dim days of January when we are warding off seasonal affective disorder, flu season, sub zero temperatures and the lingering effects of holiday excess. If none of the above applies to you it’s probably because you’ve been eating your veggies all along. It’s not hard to do that if you plan ahead a bit, and it’s downright easy if you have a repertoire of go-to sauces that give even the humblest of greens and veggies some soul-satisfying mojo.

This is the first of a two-part installment aimed at getting a whole lot of fresh into your fridge and opening up Bring It possibilities like Deconstructed Lunch (coming atcha soon) instead of a boring old sandwich or sad-looking leftovers.

These sauces are all easy to prepare and most are lightening quick as well. They dress up salads, sandwiches, vegetables, grains, and pretty much anything (inanimate) that can be dressed. With any of these kicking around your fridge your meals need never be uninspired. Let’s start with the easiest and work from there.

Mi So Easy, Mi So Good…

I was afraid of miso’s new ageyness until I discovered this dressing. Now I always have miso on hand. This could not be easier, and reminds me of the strangely addictive dressing that comes on that distressingly tiny salad served at Japanese steakhouses. It is great as is, or made with rice vinegar if you don’t have lemons. As an added bonus, this doesn’t even require a food processor or blender.

Miso Tahini Dressing

from The Kitchn

Makes about 6 ounces

1/4 cup tahini
1 Tbsp red miso
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup or more warm water
freshly cracked black pepper

Method

In a small bowl or lidded jar, combine the tahini, miso and lemon juice. Mix with a spoon into a smooth paste. Add the warm water gradually, stirring or shaking (if using a jar) until the dressing reaches desired consistency. It may need more than 1/4 cup. Taste for seasoning. Add pepper if desired. Store in the refrigerator for about a week. Dressing thickens up as it sits, so you will need to add more water to thin.

Healthy and Hearty…

I got this in a roundabout way from Jane Esselstyn who lived in the schoolhouse next door way back before her brother Rip became famous with his Engine 2 diet book. This versatile three-ingredient (plus water) sauce is a healthy, Esselstyn family favorite, featured in Rip and Jane’s latest book, My Beef with Meat as well. Put it on anything from kale and quinoa to pizza and grilled cheese (and probably burgers, but don’t tell Rip and Jane).

OMG Walnut Sauce

1 cup of walnuts
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 Tbsp low-sodium tamari sauce (soy sauce)
1/4 – 1/2 cup water, for desired consistency

Method

Combine the walnuts, garlic and tamari in a food processor and blend, adding water until the desired texture is reached, (1/4 to 1/2 cup). Use more water for a thinner dressing, less water for a thicker dip.

Shalloticious…

Shallots are just plain magic. Mince them into any dressing, (like this one from Joy The Baker, also pictured above) and they make everything work. This sauce is part of the more involved Spring Roll Salad from 101 Cookbooks, which is a taste sensation. It requires roasting shallots, which is super easy and makes them even better if that is possible. As you know from roastarama. I can’t help filling up a high temp oven, so I threw more shallots and an unpeeled head of garlic onto the sheet as well. It’s pretty handy to have both on hand for anything that needs some cha-cha (dressings, hummus, stir fry’s, etc) throughout the week.

Roasted Shallot Peanut Sauce

Makes 2 cups

1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
3 Tbsp natural sugar, preferably maple sugar or evaporated cane sugar
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp shoyu
3 medium shallots, unpeeled
2 Tbsp plus 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Method

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Place the shallots on a parchment-covered baking sheet and roast until they are very tender and the juices have started to ooze out, 30 to 35 minutes. Let the shallots cool slightly, and then squeeze the pulp out of the skins. Place the shallot pulp and all the remaining ingredients in a food processor or blender, and blend until smooth. The sauce will keep, covered and refrigerated for up to a week. Heat or serve at room temperature.

And for some spice…

For a spicy girl trapped in a houseful of Yankees this sauce is money. Put it on anything that needs some zap, or just on toast or a piece of sharp cheddar. I love that it relies on jarred stuff from your pantry, and of course that it involves the blender. Oh, and it makes a great DIY gift.

Pantry Raid Spicy Sauce

From Food 52

Makes 2 cups (Where this recipe calls for ounces my guestimates are included. It’s not an exact science.)

4 ounces B&G hot cherry peppers or other pickled hot peppers, stemmed (a generous ¾ cup, or about 8)
2 ounces roasted red peppers (1/3 cup or so)
2 ounces crushed tomato (same as above, about 1/3 cup)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp chile flakes
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp sugar
Salt to taste

Method

Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender, and mix until slightly smooth.

Overnight Sensations

In our next installment of overnight breakfasts (see Overnight Blender Cardamom Popovers), we present two delish muffin options. I have long been a fan of blueberry overnight muffins (see above, and below) but the most favored muffins of both my sons are the lemon poppy seed ones from their Montessori preschool. That was the last time they got fresh muffins once a week, and because that particular recipe involves creaming butter there is not a chance my kids will get them on any winter morning. My search for an overnight version of lemon poppy seed Nirvana led me to these from Bouchon Bakery. I liked the recipe immediately because it enlisted the blender, an overnight nap AND melted butter (no need to think ahead and soften butter).

These are from a super high-end baker so of course I had to make some adjustments for the real world. First off, they are jumbo, and I am without jumbo muffin pans. Second, all ingredients are based on weight so the measurements are odd (1 cup plus 3 Tbsp, etc). I know I know…baking is chemistry and only a fool messes with it. With that in mind, I left the real instructions and noted my fool short-cuts in bold. The muffins—very dense and almost pound cake-like—turned out great, and I was assured by children not related to me that they would be much appreciated for breakfast, at home or in the car at 0-dark-30.

Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins

From “Bouchon Bakery” by Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel

Makes 6 jumbo-sized muffins or at least 14 regular ones.
*The batter must be refrigerated overnight, so plan accordingly.

Ingredients

161 grams (1 1/4 cups) cake flour (see how to make your own w/flour and cornstarch here)
3.4 grams (1/2 + 1/8 teaspoon) baking powder
1.7 grams (1/2 teaspoon) kosher salt
234 grams (1 cup + 3 tablespoons) granulated sugar
170 grams (1/2 cup + 3 tablespoons) eggs (4 large)
4.5 grams (3/4 teaspoon) vanilla paste (I really do wish I could but…1 tsp vanilla)
194 grams (6.8 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and still warm
60 grams (1/4 cup) fresh lemon juice
6 grams (generous 1 tablespoon) grated lemon zest (takes about 1 ½ lemons)
4 grams (1 1/2 teaspoons) poppy seeds

Method

Sift the cake flour and baking powder into a medium bowl. Add the salt and whisk to combine. I made my own cake flour, and whisked it all together in the same step, no sifting.

Combine the sugar, eggs, and vanilla paste or vanilla in a deep medium bowl and mix with an immersion blender or just chuck it all in the real blender.

Add the dry ingredients in 2 additions, mixing until just combined.

With the blender running, pour in the butter in a steady stream, and continue to mix until the batter is smooth. Add the lemon juice and blend again to combine.

Fold in the lemon zest and poppy seeds.

Transfer the batter to a covered container keep it right in that blender, baby and refrigerate overnight, or for up to 36 hours.

When ready to bake:

Preheat the oven to 425F.
Line a 6-cup jumbo muffin pan with muffin papers and spray the papers with non-stick spray. I used no spray, regular muffin liners and pans, and greased the pans when I ran out. The muffins released easily from both.

Transfer the batter (which has a firm, gelato-like texture) to a pastry bag, fitted with a 3/4 inch plain tip, (or use a spoon), and pipe or spoon (can you guess which I did?) the batter evenly into the papers, stopping 3/8 inch from the top (135 grams each). Rest assured, no measuring here.

Place the pan in the oven, lower the oven temperature to 325F, and bake for 34 to 37 minutes, or until the muffins are golden brown and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. I started checking at 28 and took them out at 30 minutes.

Set the pan on a cooling rack and cool completely

Luscious lemony poppyseed muffins

…and here is a much less fussy, straight up and easy blueberry version that we all love.

Overnight Blueberry Muffins

From The Inn at the Round Barn Farm in Waitsfield, VT.

Ingredients

6 Tbsp butter
1 ¼ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup milk
1 pint (2 cups) fresh or frozen blueberries
4 teaspoons sugar, divided
2 teaspoons flour
¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Method

Cream the butter and 1 ¼ cup sugar in a mixer bowl until very light and fluffy. Add the eggs. Beat for 2 minutes. Combine the 2 cups flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add to the butter mixture alternately with the milk. Place the blueberries in a bowl. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons sugar and 2 teaspoons flour. Toss gently. Fold the blueberries gently into the batter just until blended. Refrigerate, covered, overnight.

Wake up happy. Preheat oven to 375. Spoon the batter into 12 greased muffin cups, filling almost to the top. Combine the remaining 2 teaspoons sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Fast and Slow Lasagna

It’s a great day to be slaving away making lasagna…NOT!

I have a thing about crock-pots. Ok, a few things. First, I love them, so that’s a thing. They allow for Bringing It on an entirely different level which is another thing. But then, I have a thing that bugs me. I hate it when crock-pot recipes involve multiple steps and pots and pans, that take us from the realm of crock pot cookery to the realm of crock-pot warmery. So technically this recipe, which involved browning the meat before putting it in the crock, goes against my principles. However, it gives you lasagna that is ready when you walk in the door vs. lasagna an hour plus later. This can be life changing on a weeknight.

This is really more of a method than a recipe. It turns out a darned good lasagna, not a transcendent meal. We are feeding our families here people. Some days it doesn’t need to be art–it just has to happen.

On another note, everyone says lasagna is “so easy.” Sure, cooking and serving it may be easy, but making it is not. It’s kind of a pain, involving multiple steps and multiple vessels. That’s why I really like this one. You need your crock-pot and one pan to brown the meat and make the sauce. That’s it. And rather than follow an involved process you simply keep layering the same stuff until it’s all gone.

This recipe is adapted from the “Make it Fast, Cook it Slow” cookbook, by crock-pot aficionado Stephanie O’Dea. I made it this morning before we headed out a day on the slopes and it was in my crock, ready to get cooking in 30 minutes. Much of that time was browning the meat, so during that half hour I unloaded the dishwasher and made breakfast and lunch for the family (all of whom are old enough to make their own meals, but I wanted to prove a point on efficiency.)

So here it is. Mix it up with different meats and veggies, totally meatless versions or whatever. Celebrate your awesomeness by serving it with Easiest French Bread Ever.

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef, turkey or sausage browned and drained
1 (25 -ounce) jar pasta sauce
10 dry lasagna noodles (traditional, not the no-cook kind)
1 (15- ounce) container ricotta cheese
Sliced mushrooms, chopped onion, a few handfuls of spinach, sliced carrots and/or and any other veggies you want to sneak in.
2 1/2 cups grated Mozzarella cheese
3/4 cup grated Parmesan or Italian cheese
1/2 cup water

Method

1. Use a 6-quart slow cooker. Brown the ground meat with mushrooms or other veggies in a pan on the stovetop. Drain well. Add the jar of pasta sauce to the meat. Save the jar, you’ll need it later.
2. Spoon some of the meat and sauce mixture into the bottom of your slow cooker. Cover with a layer of uncooked lasagna noodles, breaking them as necessary to fit as a single layer. Smear some ricotta cheese on the noodles. Sprinkle a handful of mozzarella on top, and 1/3 or so of the Parmesan cheese. Add another spoonful of the meat and sauce mixture, and repeat the layers until you run out of ingredients, or the crock is full. Mine makes 3 layers but probably could fit four. Adjust proportions according to how many layers you think can fit.
3. Put the water into the empty pasta jar and shake. Pour the contents over the assembled ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours or on high for 3 to 4 hours. Crock-pots vary a lot on their cooking times so this is not an exact science. Check about an hour before serving, and push down the top noodles into the liquid, if they are getting too brown and crispy. The lasagna is done with the pasta has reached the desired tenderness and the cheese has melted completely and has begun to brown on the edges.

All great things start with a step…and often cheese.

Halfway there. Not a lot of precise measuring going on here.

Lasagna Finito!

Overnight Blender Cardamom Popovers

There’s a lot going on in that title, but it needs every word to do this recipe justice. First off, I am all about make-ahead breakfasts, especially in the dead of winter when rallying out of bed and getting psyched to embrace the great outdoors can be a challenge. In fact, the pursuit of easy yet yummy breakfasts is such a priority this time of year that I’m going to make it my January theme. Stay tuned for overnight waffles and French toast, but for now we’ll start with these popovers.

They are a golden example of overnight brilliance, made even more convenient by the fact that you make, blend and store the batter in the same container. (If there isn’t one already, there should be an entire cookbook devoted to blender cuisine. Anyone?) Wake up, turn on the oven, pour the batter into some muffin tins or, better yet, a shmancy popover pan and you’re good to go. Without the filling, these popovers are a perfect breakfast—barely sweet and subtly spiced. Spread them with a little butter, jam or honey and they are perfect for grab and go, eat-in-the-car-on-the-way-to-the-race scenarios. The options of storing the batter overnight or all day, and turning it into a dessert with a delish filling (the one below or really anything creamy that floats your boat) make this recipe even more versatile.

This originally came from AP Food Editor J.M. HIRSCH.

Start to finish: 45 minutes
Servings: 12

For the popovers:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

For the filling:
Two 8-ounce tubs mascarpone
2 tablespoons honey
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Sliced strawberries or other fresh berries, to serve.

Heat the oven to 400 F. Coat a 6-cup popover pan or 8-cup muffin pan with cooking spray (or be kind to the ozone and butter the heck out of said pan).

In a blender, combine the flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, salt and cardamom. Blend until the ingredients form a very smooth batter, about 1 minute. At this point you can: proceed as directed, making half now and half later; make them all now if you have enough pan space; or put the entire blender in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours.

Barely conscious? Perhaps. But popovers are on deck.

Fill each of the prepared popover pan cups about halfway with batter. You should use only half of the batter in the blender.

Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the popovers from the pan and use a knife to cut a small hole in the top of each to let the steam escape. Cool slightly.

Meanwhile, to prepare the filling, in a medium bowl gently stir together the mascarpone, honey, lemon juice and zest, and the cinnamon. When the popovers have cooled just enough to handle, carefully tear the opening in each just enough to be able to spoon in about 1/4 cup of the filling. Serve each with berries.

Almost there…a few more sips of coffee and these babies will be ready.

Ginger Ade: Simple Syrup to the Rescue

Ginger Syrup and a couple of tasty sipping options.

I need a drink. And I hate to drink alone, so you need a drink too. Oh I know—at this point in the holidays we’re all ready to detox, but hang with me. I’m going to give you a healthy, refreshing concoction that can be used in alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks. In fact, I first came upon this tasty elixir in Rebecca Katz’s awesome book the Cancer Fighting Kitchen. So I’m looking out for you here.

The concept is pretty simple. You just boil down a ton of ginger with sugar and water to make a simple syrup infused with the zesty goodness of ginger. Strain out the ginger and you can add the syrup with a squeeze of lemon to hot or cold herbal tea, to seltzer, or of course to your favorite cocktail fixin’s.

Being quite lazy, especially in the post holiday coma, I looked extensively for a recipe that featured unpeeled ginger. I was victorious with this one from David Lebovitz that gets boiled a good long time for some serious ginger sass. The caveats are a darker syrup (which screams Dark and Stormy to me, so it’s all good), and the warning that you can’t reuse the unpeeled ginger in things like gingersnaps, marmalade and ice cream. This triggered my age-old struggle between being lazy and being cheap.

In the end, I opted for lazy, and snacked on the sweet ginger afterwards anyway, proving that yes indeed you can be both lazy and cheap. Hooray! Ok, here’s the super simple recipe for super fresh ginger syrup.

Makes about 2 cups:

Ingredients

8 ounces fresh ginger, unpeeled
4 cups water
2 cups sugar
pinch salt

Method

Slice the ginger thinly, then chop it into rough, smaller pieces.

Combine ginger water, sugar, and salt in a saucepan. Heat to a boil, then reduce the heat to a steady simmer. Cook for 45 minutes to one hour.

Cool, then strain the syrup through a fine-mesh strainer. Store the strained syrup in the refrigerator, covered, until ready to use. It should keep for at least two weeks refrigerated.

There are googles and googles of ginger cocktails out there, like these ones from Tablespoon For a festive sparkler add a tablespoon of syrup and some candied ginger to a champagne glass and fill with your bubbly of choice. My quick fix is to fill a glass with ice, pour a tablespoon or so of syrup over the ice then add vodka according to your immediate need. Fill the glass almost to the top with seltzer then add a splash of cranberry juice for cha-cha and color.

For ginger soda start with 1/3 glass of syrup and a generous squeeze of fresh lemon or lime juice. Fill the glass with ice then top with sparkling water or tonic and garnish with a round of citrus or fresh mint.

The sky is the limit here so spice things up, be creative and feel virtuous about bringing a whole lot of healthy ginger into your life.

It’s honey thyme…with walnuts.

Honey. Doesn’t the thought of it just make you feel calm? We need a bit of calm right now, and that’s why I’m here. Sit on down with a mug of tea, or just take a deep breath, and read this post because first I’m going to give you an awesomely easy recipe and then I’m going to remind you of all the delicious things you can make as gifts that will be much more appreciated than whatever you’re going to wrestle from the stores in a last minute frenzy. It’s time to look to your cupboards for sanity now. Breathe in, breathe out. ‘Tis the season to give everyone a break, including yourself.

This recipe came from Bon Appetit a while back. They say to “drizzle this fragrant honey over your favorite cheese, or use it as a condiment on prosciutto panini.” I say it is also amazing with cambozola or any brie like cheese, makes a mean pizza or bruschetta topping and turns the humble grilled cheese into something you might refuse to share.

Ingredients

1 cup walnut pieces (or pecans)
3/4 cup orange blossom honey (or whatever you’ve got)
1/2 cup walnut oil or extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon fresh thyme or rosemary leaves plus 2 sprigs
1/4 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
4 whole dried chiles de árbol*

*I used Japones peppers, cut into thirds, because that’s all I could find. You can also use dried pepper flakes for more cha-cha throughout.

Method

Preheat oven to 325°F. Spread the walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned and fragrant, about 15 minutes. Let cool. Coarsely chop; set aside.

Whisk honey and oil in a medium bowl to blend. (It may seem obvious, but measure the oil first so the honey will slide right out of the cup). Season to taste with salt and pepper (I am not shy with either). Fold in walnuts, thyme, and lemon zest. Add chiles. Divide between four “take me to a party” 4-ounce jars or two “I really love you” 8-ounce jars. Cover and chill.

Can be made 1 month ahead. Keep chilled. Bring to room temperature and stir before using.

More yum…

And now, here are some other great DIY food gifts to consider. Of all the things I make and give, the most requested/addictive is crackle, which breaks up nicely into treat bags. Cholliesauce is another winner, and you may have all the ingredients in your kitchen right now. Peppermint or chocolate chip meringues are festive, tasty and pretty darned easy. And of course you can’t go wrong with roasted nuts. For savory Mediterranean types give a jar of sicilian caponata with some nice store bought crackers or (for the uber healthy friends, endurance crackers. If you’re kicking around the house it takes time but next to no effort to mix up a batch of easiest French bread ever, and you’ll have two loaves to give. Package it with a dish towel and a French bread pan and BOOM you’ve made someone a baker.

And if you don’t feel like making a darned thing that’s fine too. Just remember to relax, breathe and have some good laughs with your friends. There’s always time for that!

An arsenal of holiday cheer. Ho-ho-ho baby!

Nuts!

Nuts! What’s not to love about them? Ok, unless you have nut allergies, in which case you’ll want to skip right past this post and continue online shopping for yodeling marmots because one really can’t have enough of those this time of year. Roasted nuts are a perfect Bring It staple, because they do double duty as a host/hostess gift and a yummy contribution to any party or gathering. They beat myrrh and frankincense hands down. Also, nuts are the perfect candidates for showcasing your packaging savvy gleaned from Bringing It in Style.

Below are three favorite takes on three favorite nuts. All are easy to prepare (no beaten egg whites or fussy preparation) and all will disappear so fast you won’t need to worry about a shelf life. That said, they include butter, so those of you with a measure of restraint will want to store them in the fridge. Oh yeah, and clean up is instant if you line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

Ginger Glazed Almonds

Makes 2 1/2 cups. Active time: 10 min Start to finish: 40 min

Ingredients

2 Tbsp unsalted butter
3 Tbsp packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp finely grated peeled fresh ginger
1 1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cayenne
2 1/2 cups whole almonds with skins (9 oz)

Method

Preheat oven to 300°F. Melt butter in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat. Add remaining ingredients except almonds and cook, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, then add almonds and stir until coated.

Spread almonds in a lightly oiled or parchment-lined shallow baking pan and bake, stirring occasionally, until insides of nuts are golden (cut one to test), about 25 minutes. Cool completely.

GInger glazed almonds, pre baking

and apres baking.

Rosemary Walnuts

Adapted from Martha Stewart. Beyond the fresh rosemary you can use any combo of spices (or none at all) to suit your tastes. I went for chile powder and paprika, but many recipes call for the cha-cha of cayenne. Be bold. Be creative. Make Martha proud.

Ingredients

2 1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter
3 cups walnuts
1/2 tsp (or more) coarse salt
1 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 tsp chile powder
1/2 tsp paprika
2 Tbsp light-brown sugar
1 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Method

Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add rosemary and chile powder. Cook, stirring, 15 seconds. Add walnuts, salt, sugar, water, and Worcestershire sauce. Stir to coat. Pour nuts on parchment lined baking sheet and bake 10-15 minutes, testing for doneness. Cool completely.

Note: If you don’t want to do the baking step you can keep stirring and cooking the mixture stovetop for 4-5 minutes until “glossy and fragrant” then spread nuts on the baking sheet to cool. I prefer the fully roasted flavor you get from baking.

Sea Salt Roasted Pecans

Honestly, you can’t improve much on a plain toasted pecan, and at a certain point in the holiday season your body will high-five you for anything in its natural state. But if you want to give your pecans that little black dress of specialness try this simple recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups pecan halves
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 1/4 tsp fine sea salt

Method

Preheat oven to 325°F. Toss pecans and melted butter in medium bowl to coat. Add sea salt and toss. Spread pecans in single layer on rimmed baking sheet. Bake until fragrant and slightly darkened in color, about 15 minutes. Cool pecans on baking sheet.

The official word is that these roasted pecans keep 2 days if stored airtight at room temperature. That seems mighty conservative to me and they keep way longer in the fridge.

The Champagne of Party Tricks

Nothing says party time like a bottle of champagne, a saber and yodeling marmots.

Everyone has one somewhere along the way— that aunt, uncle, godparent or family friend who inspires all the fun and naughty stuff we get to do as kids. The one who lets you drive when you’re 12, lets you stay up late watching inappropriate movies, brings you fireworks, etc. For my kids that’s their Auntie Anne. Not to be confused with the woman who sells pretzels in the airport, this Auntie Anne brings cutting edge entertainment, quite literally.

For the past few years she has always shown up with a bottle of champagne. The first time she did this I thought it was sweet that she was marking a casual family reunion as a special champagne-worthy occasion. I soon realized she had ulterior motives. As steward of my children’s vocational training she was going to be sure they knew how to saber a champagne bottle. Not surprisingly, she found two eager students, and we had the first of many fine celebrations.

Because you need to get out and practice this well before New Year’s Eve, I’m jumping right and giving you the instructions (as well as a most informative video link), knowing full well that Auntie Anne will chime in, correct what’s wrong and contribute more tips from her vast experience.

Watch this Champagne sabering video first and then:

1. Grab your saber if you are a pirate, or a solid butcher’s knife if not. (I am not mentioning a sabering pimp ring, because if you have one of those, clearly you will not be reading this tutorial.) Have some glasses at the ready, and a few towels if you are indoors.

2. Grab your bubbly. The experts claim you must super-chill the bottle of champagne (38-40°F, tops) to “calm” the bubbly and perhaps make the neck more brittle. No doubt the experts are right, but just pop it in the freezer for a bit and you’re good to go. Remove the foil wrapper and little wire cage.

3. Grasp the bottle with authority, by the base (purists you go ahead and put your thumb in the punt, the dent in the bottom of the bottle). Point it away from any onlookers (this is key). Hold it at a 30 to 45-degree angle, as if you are holding a Roman candle (that your aunt also brought).

4. Locate one of the two vertical seams running up the side of the bottle to the lip (or, annulus if you must know). The bottle will break the most cleanly there, so that’s where you want to aim your saber stroke.

5. Making sure you have an audience, hold the knife flat against the bottle, blunt edge toward the top and sharp edge facing you. Run your saber or knife slowly back along the seam toward your body. (Take a few practice strokes to assure your motion keeps the blade flat against the bottle). Then, exuding rakish confidence, quickly and firmly thrust it back up the seam toward the bottle’s tip, striking the lip with no mercy while making sure the leading edge of the saber stays down and in toward the crook of the lip. As with every athletic/heroic maneuver, follow through is key.

6. Enjoy…both the adulation and the champagne. If you’ve succeeded, the cork (avec annulus) will fly off the end of the bottle. Any rogue shards will be long gone as well, unless you do this indoors, in which case you’ll want to break out the Swiffer.

Note that French bottles can be especially tough, and may take a try or two. So, as ever, be patient with the French and you will be amply rewarded.

Major note: Clearly there are all kinds of hazards involved with this pursuit, with reported consequences ranging from minor cuts to a shattered $3,000 bottle of cognac across the room. My best advice is to try this first outdoors, AWAY FROM PETS AND SMALL CHILDREN. (Ahem all you aunties). Disclaimers aside, it’s darned fun and yes, Anne, you are our hero!

White Peppermint Meringues

Beautifully baked meringues

This recipe comes to you from our very own Boot Camp Bonnie. She brought these tasty delights to boot camp class and we gobbled them up right after finishing our killer work out. They were beautiful when wrapped (see Bringing It In Style: Boot Camp Bonnie) and so delicious that I just had to have the recipe. These meringues are jammed packed with flavor. They are little bursts of sweet and pepperminty, soft and crunchy, light and delectable! You will love them as will everyone around you.

I’ve learned that there are 2 keys to mastering the art of the meringue…

1) Make sure the eggs are not straight out of the refrigerator (difficult for someone like me who NEVER remembers to take eggs or butter out of the fridge until right before I need them). The eggs whites should be brought to room temperature, or more optimally, 70 degrees (again not something I would ever measure, but for those of you who want more specifics, there you go).

2) Make sure there is not a smidgen of yolk left in the egg whites. This will make it difficult for the meringues to form stiff peaks.

Attaining virtuosity is not something I’m willing to strive for, especially when it comes to whipping egg whites, but I’d say I’m somewhere on the “ethereal” spectrum and getting better all the time!

Ingredients

2 large egg whites (at room temperature)
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup white chocolate chips
1/3 cup, plus 3 Tbsp coarsely crushed peppermints

Method

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar in a deep bowl with a mixer (using whisk attachment) until soft peaks form. Add vanilla and salt. With motor running and mixer on high speed, pour in 1 Tbsp of sugar and beat 10-15 seconds, then repeat until all sugar has been added. At this point, meringue should form straight peaks when beaters are lifted. Fold in white chocolate chips and 1/3 cup peppermint candies with a flexible spatula.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a soup spoon, drop meringue in rounded 1 Tbsp portions slightly apart onto the baking sheets. Sprinkle remaining 3 Tbsp of peppermint candy evenly on top of meringues.

Bake until meringues feel dry and stiff when touched but still pale. This will take approximately 30-35 minutes. Switch pans halfway through to ensure even baking. Once you feel you have reached the dry, stiff, yet pale point in the baking, turn off oven, open door, and let cookies stand about 10 more minutes in oven. Let cool completely. Makes approximately 32 cookies.

NOTE: These meringues are meant to be soft in the middle. They are not undercooked when you try one and it melts so easily in your mouth. Also, you can skip the peppermint and use chocolate chips instead of white chips for the chocolate lovers in the crowd.

Bring It

Try your hand at Bringing it in Style. You’re sure to be successful with all the options available there. Even I had success in wrapping these cookies. I put them in little plastic holiday bags and wrapped a ribbon around the top. I felt like Martha Stewart…. well….for a few minutes anyway!

Christmas giving!

Bringing it in Style: Boot Camp Bonnie

Bonnie and Sue with just a smattering of supplies.

The best defense is a good offense. I’m not talking football here— I’m talking about the holidays. All that giving and sharing and jolly spirit is a whole lot easier if you are prepared. We’re pretty good on the cooking end of it, but when it comes to presentation we went to a pro. We went to Bonnie, AKA Boot Camp Bonnie (because of her dedication to early morning sweating).

Bonnie is not only incredibly generous, but also creative, which is a killer combo this time of year. She doesn’t just show up with cookies for the group—she shows up with a candy-striped hat box brimming with individually wrapped packages of peppermint meringues. Starting with a paper bag she ends up with something that could grace the cover of Martha Stewart magazine (if Martha ever shared the stage, that is). Bonnie was kind enough to share some of her tricks, and the arsenal of staples she keeps on hand to turn humble mason jars, paper bags and boxes into gift-worthy pieces of art. Everything can be found at party stores, craft stores, department stores, pharmacies and even grocery stores. Bonnie looks out for deals year round and stocks up when the getting is good. Here are some things to look out for:

Daunting, yes, but your friendly neighborhood craft or dollar store has plenty to offer.

The Basics: Containers in a variety of shapes and sizes–these can range from cardboard boxes, wire-handled takeout containers, fancy embellished boxes and hat boxes to coffee mugs, decorative bowls, paper bags and metal pails or buckets; lots of ribbon, bows, raffia and raffia wrap; festive plastic bags and twist ties; washed and repurposed bottles or jars and the never fail mason jars.

Accent materials: Sparkly stuff like leaves, stars and snowflakes; silk flowers and greenery; fancy ribbon like moss ribbon, textured or stretchy ribbon; stray jewels, bling and beads.

Natural materials: Boxwood and evergreen sprigs; hardy fresh herbs like rosemary and bay leaves; flowers in season like hydrangeas and sunflowers; dried flowers; shells and sand dollars; feathers; pinecones, acorns, seeds, pods and whole nuts; whole spices like cinnamon sticks and star anise.

Ornaments and decorations: miniature bells, toys, figures, props; clip on birds and mini stuffed animals; seasonal cookie cutters or small kitchen novelties.

One word–Clearance!

Stamps (rubber and stick-on), seals and stickers: These are great to close up takeout containers or to write gift messages on. Get them at stationery and sundry stores.

Tools: If you have but one tool, make it the small but mighty glue gun. Use it to affix or join ribbons, put pine cones and shells on packaging. Gold and silver metallic sharpies in wide and fine tips. Scissors and both single side and double stick tape.

Gift tags and labels: You can never have enough! If you keep them on the plain side you can use them year round.

Wrapping and Tissue Paper: Again, be an opportunist and keep a good supply, especially of tissue paper which does everything from adding a decorative touch to a gift bag to protecting a stack of fresh baked cookies. Also, keep a stash of heavy duty paper for the good stuff and for gifts that need to stand up to transport.

This is just a partial list. As Bonnie reminds us, the main thing is to be creative and have fun with it. If you need a little inspiration on what to wrap here’s the recipe for some killer Christmas cookies, courtesy Bonnie our Good Gifting Goddess.