This Christmas Part eleven

 

Ah, fellow Agents of Christmas, this was not an easy day to jump right out of bed. Freezing drizzle, even though it was outside does not agree with arthritis! The whole house seemed cold as well as empty. Just slave all weekend as Master is traveling. It would have been so easy to just feel sorry for myself, but that is not what the season is all about! It is not what slave is about either, So Here We Go!

A quick check shows that the turkey breast is not thawed yet. This is no reason to panic because we have planed ahead. This also gives a great opportunity to learn the proper way to speed thaw!

From the Butterball web site:

To thaw, place unopened roast (Turkey Breast) in cold tap water for 3 to 5 hours. Change water every 30 minutes to keep turkey cold!

OK, this also gives us a chance to check out how much fluid we will need for the brining we will do Tuesday night!

 

Place the pot in the sink and add COLD water. Place the unopened turkey breast in the water and keep filling for a bit after the turkey starts to float. Yes it will float. We do not want that either today to thaw or tomorrow night when we are Brining. So lets try a plate! It is not going to perfectly balance: however if it keeps the bird under, that is all we ask!

 

When thawed, keep in refrigerator until ready to cook. Cook within 4 days of thawing.

Now then Set a timer for 30 minutes (this is important!). When that goes off, remove the plate and bird. Pour out the water and repeat the process with fresh cold water. It is going to take 8 to 10 fills of the pot to get the bird thawed safely! NO NOT TRY TO HURRY the process with hot or warm water, not only can this make you violently sick it is possible you could cause someone else to get violently sick or worse. It is not worth it.

 

Note: use a ruler to measure how much fluid you are going to need by checking the level when you remove the bird. In this case the level is right at 5 inches below the lip. That way we can have a good guess how much we need each time and how much we will need for the brine!

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So while this process is going on and we have to be in the kitchen anyway: lets bake some cookies! These make great little thank you gifts for the person who does your hair, or any service person who has treated you fairly all year.

In fact it is a tradition to do this for the Postal delivery person on the day after Christmas or “Boxing Day” as it is called in Great Britain!

The other day slave got the chance to take some cookies to a friend at the Bad Dog Bar and Grill, Tiger. He was so nice in thanking me. He even shared a recipe from his grandmother for Butter Cookies and said that slave could share it on the blog! Slave always gets requests for its “dreamsicle” type of cookie, so here are both for us to make!

Easy Orange Cream type cookie

Since it has appeared before in this blog, here is an easy way to make it:

 

Ingredients

• 1 pouch instant sugar cookie mix (1 pound 1.5 ounces)
• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
• 1 teaspoon orange extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 egg
• 5 drops yellow food color
• 2 drops red food color
• 1 ½ cups white vanilla baking chips

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Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. In large bowl, stir all ingredients except baking chips until soft dough forms. Stir in baking chips.

This batter is very stiff and will take some muscle. If you aree having to much trouble with it try adding 2 Tbs of milk, but be careful with it.

2. On cookie sheets lined with parchment paper, drop dough with 1½ tablespoon-size cookie scoop or by rounded tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart.

3. Bake 9 to 10 minutes or just until dough is set (do not overbake). Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks. Cool completely.

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Grandma Roth’s Butter Cookies

 
Ingredients:
4 ¾ cups sifted all purpose flour
7oz butter (2Tbs less than 1 cup) softened
⅓ c nuts (black walnuts work the best)
½ c sugar
4 eggs
1tsp vanilla

Directions:
Sift your dry ingredients before measuring them. This puts air into the flour and you end up using less. Set aside.



Cream the butter and sugar until it is a light lemony color.

Break the eggs into a bowl, slave usually adds any vanilla or flavoring to them and gives them a quick mix before adding to the mixer bowl and blending in well. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.



Add the flour by thirds into the mixer, each time stopping to scrape down the sides. Add the nuts last. The dough should now be pulling from the sides. Slave thanks modern-day KitchenAid, because this dough is heavy. Grandma Roth had strong arms!

Roll out some wax paper on the counter and sprinkle with powered sugar.
With a rolling pin, roll out the dough till it is about ¼ inch thick. Using a cookie cutter, cut out the shapes you wish. If you have trouble moving the raw cookie, try sliding the spatula under the cutter and moving the whole thing onto the parchment lined baking tray. Collect the scraps and reform, roll out again and repeat until all the dough is used. Keep sprinkling everything with powdered sugar to keep the dough from sticking and don't forget to spread it on the rolling pin and your hands too.



When the cookies are arraigned on the paper, brush them with beaten egg yoke then sprinkle with colored sugar bits.

 

Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 to 14 minutes until they are firm, they will only brown a little so watch closely.



Slave is told this recipe dates back to the 1800's!

A big Thank You to Tiger for being so generous and allowing slave to share this treasure with you!

Don't forget You are thawing the bird.

 EVERY HALF HOUR, CHANGE the water!

Serving my Master Indy

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil,

comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

This Christmas Part Ten

Just a mater of days now. How have your traditions been going? Most of all, how many smiles have you been able to generate on other people today? Doesn’t that make you feel good?

Slave got to thinking today about a tradition that used to be very strong in this little town of Saint Charles back in the 60's. That is when my family moved here. It was called “luminaires”! These were little paper bags (usually white) that held a bit of sand and a candle. They were placed every 5 or 6 feet along the curbs of nearly all of the streets in town. After sunset on Christmas eve families everywhere were out lighting the candles. It was always very impressive. You could drive up and down most streets in town and see candles for miles!

They were to be like runway lights for the baby Jesus. Well the grown-ups put it in better terms but you get the idea. Somehow these simple and inexpensive candles and bags made so much of an impression and filled the heart with such joy to see. Now slave loves the bright different color lights that adorn the houses and trees, yet these flickering temporary feeble lights out shown the computer controlled LEDs that chased across the roof-lines.

Slave would go as far as to say they held more joy of Christmas than even the inflatable outhouses with Santa going in them! What conveys the meaning of Christmas more than Santa taking a poop? (forgive me Rudolph!)

Every year people would say: “Its a shame we don't do that anymore”. But no one would step up and do the organizing necessary. Taking orders for bags and candles, collecting the money then delivering them on time, etc. It was a thankless and expensive job. Life got in the way. People forgot how beautiful and inspiring these lights were.

Sorry, but what kind of life is it without simple joys like these little things? Lets hope this has been replaced with yet another meaningful tradition. It is in times of great stress that traditions provide a foundation and comfort for our very being. That has kept rituals alive for thousands of years. They give strength and stability in the chaos. Slave sincerely hopes these blog posts has inspired you to fill your lives this year with happiness and joy of the season. When you feel these, you become lighthouses: brightening the nights of all around you.

slave just checked and the turkey breast that has been thawing for going for 4 days now is still hard as a rock. Glad we left ourselves enough time just in case this happened!

Let us turn our attention to a much overlooked vegetable that we can use as part of our Holiday feast! Its healthy, its beautiful, and its easy to fix!

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Our Orange Ginger Cottaging Carrots

This is a low sugar version of glazed carrots draws big flavor from orange juice, honey and ginger which all go to enhance the natural carrot taste. After all is why you fix carrots in the first place isn't it?

Ingredients:

1 16oz pkg peeled baby carrots

1 Tbs orange juice

1 Tbs honey

½ teaspoon of grated fresh ginger (this is one of those rare times that slave went ahead and used bottled ground ginger – using an equivalent – a full teaspoon)

Finely shredded orange peel (optional)

NOTE: when you use grated or zested orange peel you get the taste of the orange without the bitterness that often comes with the juice.

Directions:

In a large saucepan put the carrots with enough water to cover them on medium high heat. Put a lid on the pan. When it comes to a boil, time it for no longer than 5 minutes. You don't want a mushy mess!

In a bowl mix the other ingredients well. NOTE: before you measure out a tablespoon of honey, give the measure a quick spray with the cooking spray. The honey will all come out nicely. Whisk this all together.

 

When carrots are done, drain well and place in large bowl. Cover with the orange mixture and stir it well to coat. You will immediately smell the most wonderful aroma that reassures you this is going to taste great!

For your information: fixed this way, they have no Saturated Fat, no Cholesterol, in fact no fat at all! Yet 1 serving gives 1g. Protein and 4g. Fiber, with over 200% of your minimum needs of Vitamin A! We can keep that just between us, because all they want to know is how good it tastes!

The biggest complaint slave hears about cooked carrots are they usually are overcooked and you can only taste the butter and sugar! Nothing wrong with butter and sugar but everything has its place. This is a dish that you can fix the day before and just bump in the microwave on the day of the feast. Just don't over cook!

Yes, it is OK to be excited! Just don't let it get in the way of being efficient and serving all the joy the day can bring!

Serving My Master Indy

socialslave

 

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil,

comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

This Christmas Part Nine

Kugel prepared and repaired!

 

One of the wonderful things about this season is that strangers are willing to talk! You learn so much just from light conversations. Last night at the grocery store, slave got into a great conversation with a nice looking young man sporting a rather large tattoo on his leg. After all our temperatures had stayed in the 50's and many shopping were wearing their shorts in one last attempt at pretending it was summer.

That got me in the talkative mood and at the check out several cashiers, that I hardly knew, were suddenly engaged with me in discussions on holiday dishes, traditions, and religions.

 “Fascinating” as Mr. Spock would say! 

To cut to the chase, slave heard the term “kugel” used in a strange way. Now I know this is a Jewish dish, a pudding, as I remembered from my youth, but never as descriptive term for a person. Hummmmm.

Upon returning home, I went right to the computer to do research! 

Yes, kugel was a noodle type pudding and it did look interesting and just right for this blog. The strange usage? Well it seems that the dish originated among the German Jewish homes where it was featured as a special holiday dish. They even made a kugel out of matzo to serve as an alternative at Passover seders.

Then among the South African Jews it became a derisive term used by the older generation for young women who forsook traditional Hasidic dress. Instead they would dress modern and very upscale, “putting on airs” as it might be called. Well the young girls thought it was funny and instead of being hurt, laughed at it and often used the term for each other. “just a plain noodle pudding all dressed up like a delicacy”!

With that, slave decided what was needed was a modern take on this great old tradition. This fits our criteria for being fun, tasty, and not expensive at all.

First let slave freely state that when it makes a mistake, it will admit to it. There is nothing to be gained by bluffing its way through. The recipe that it made for you today had major flaws that slave did not realize until it was cooked.

Nearly all of these recipes are ones that slave has developed all by itself. However since it has never cooked a kugel and had found a very easy recipe it thought with a few tweaks, this might be just what was needed for this blog. That was wrong. Even though the basic recipe was from the “Campbell's Kitchen”: They were wrong!

Slave prepared it with its own embellishments which produced some great tasting loose noodles, it just wasn't a “kugel”.   So now, faced with a crock pot full of noodles, another closer look at the ingredients showed what I think was the error. Those adjustments were made in the recipe.



Without making the changes, how was slave to know? How would You learn? How would yours come out for your loved ones? Slave wasn't going to guess at that.


So, to make the custard base, a can of evaporated milk was mixed with eggs. This would make a binder. ½ teaspoon of salt was added as well as ¼ cup of sugar. Then for good measure: 1 teaspoon vanilla and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon was whisked into the mixture.

Oven was heated to 350 with a pan of water in there. (always include a pan of water if baking a custard or pudding) A square baking dish was sprayed. The noodles were stirred into the milk mixture and all placed in dish. Now it was allowed to bake for 30 minutes and voila! 

 
What was good became even better and slave now had the chance to show you how to fix a problem!


The recipe below has been corrected and proper adjustments made.

So let slave present: 

The You Go Girl Kugel!

 

This is going to be fun! Make this luscious kugel that's so versatile you can use it as a dessert, a brunch dish or a flavorful side dish. And it's pretty!

Ingredients:

5 eggs, slightly beaten

1 can condensed cheese soup

1 12 ounce can (1½ cups) evaporated milk

1 can sweetened condensed milk (like Eagle Brand)

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Cooked wide noodles

1 pkg dried cranberries

 

Directions:

Put a pan, half filled with water in the oven, then pre-heat it to 325 degrees.

Cook the noodles according to the package directions but for less time. If it says boil for 9 minutes, only boil for 7.   Drain the noodles well.

Spray a 9 by 13 baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, slightly beat the 5 eggs. Then add the soup, the milks, the sugar, vanilla and cinnamon, stirring well with each.

Dump the drained noodles in the baking dish and mix in the cranberries until they are all through it. Pour the egg-milk mixture over it. 

Be sure to cover as much of the noodles as you can because any left sticking out tend to cook hard and will really crunch! 

Cover it with foil.

Carefully slide this into the oven next to or above the rack with the pan of water.

Let that bake for about 40 minutes, check it after 30. The pudding custard will finish setting in the center after this is taken from the oven.

Tip:

This versatile sweet noodle pudding can be served as a dessert, a brunch dish or a side dish all year around. Imagine it as a side for barbecued chicken or brisket.

Now isn't this fun? We are trying different things yet being true to all the traditions. We are putting in the effort to care for those closest to us. Don't forget the other touches like music, or colored lights! All of these things will make for shiny memories and warm fuzzy nights!

Serving My Master Indy

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

This Christmas Part Eight

Last night slave got to spend some time with Sir Mike, who explained a bit of the Polish traditions of Christmas.

Poles do not really start celebrating Christmas until Christmas Eve, but then the Christmas season in Poland finishes much later than in America. It may start with the end of Advent (Christmas Eve) but it doesn’t finish until Candlemas on Feb. 2.

He told of the Wigilia (vee-GEEL-yah), which literally means "vigil," or waiting for the birth of Baby Jesus, it is considered more important than Christmas Day itself. Sometimes this is also known as the Star Dinner.

On Christmas Eve, straw or hay, is placed under a white linen tablecloth on the table. 

Then the places are set, balanced on this, along with the finest plate the mother owns holding the blessed communion-like wafers Oplatki (oh-PWAHT-kee).

Sir Mike said it was a task trying to keep everything upright with all that straw under the tablecloth!

An extra place at the table is always set for any weary stranger who happens to pass by.

Again the tradition has morphed into setting a small platter holding a tiny bit of straw and a linen napkin over that. This in no way diminishes the tradition, yet it ensures that it is kept alive for more generations.

Have you been thinking of any new or changed traditions you want to try this year?

One tradition that most insist on is when serving roast turkey, you simply must have Cranberry Sauce. For years slave endured that obnoxious jelly from a can that laid there with the ridges showing. Everybody wanted to have just a bit of it. However most went into the trash latter.

Then a few years ago, maybe longer, slave stumbled onto this recipe. The difference was amazing. No more dumping into the trash! Why this is even good on the biscuits in the morning! As good as it tastes, it really is not that hard to make, so please try!

Cranberry and Cinnamon Apple Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 cups cranberry juice cocktail
• 1 (6-ounce) bag sweetened dried cranberries
• 1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 Gala apples, peeled, cored and diced
• 2 teaspoons corn starch
• 1/6 cup of orange liqueur like Triple Sec
• ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

 

Directions

First gather all the things you will need (this might sound childish – however when things get this close to the big day slave knows how easy it is to skip something important)

Peel, then core the apples and chop them into a bowl covered with a paper towel.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, mix the cranberry juice cocktail, the cranberries, cinnamon and sugar. Bring to a boil and let cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

Add the apples and continue stirring occasionally, until the cranberries have softened and apples are tender, this will take about another 5 minutes. All the while keep it simmering, not a roiling boil but with bubbles rising.

Slave uses a 1/3 cup metal measure and dips out 2/3 a cup of the liquid into a small bowl. Then add about half of that measure full of the orange liqueur, this will help it cool just a bit. With a fork, whisk in the 2 teaspoons of cornstarch (this is now a slurry!)

Slowly stir this slurry to the cooking cranberry mixture.

You want to stir constantly from this point on.  The juices have now become a syrup. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

It doesn't have to be a fast stirring, just keep it moving so that it does not burn to the bottom of the pan.

Remove from heat and pour into a medium bowl.

Take out the CINNAMON STICKS! Then stir in the nuts!

After about 30 minutes of cooling, seal the bowl and put into the refrigerator over night and it will solidify nicely. Fixing this now will be good timing for Christmas day!

NOTE: slave understands that you will want to taste it now, but remember that nothing is quite as hot as melted sugar and it will burn the hell out of your tongue. 

Has anyone noticed how well the house has smelled the last few days? With the cookies, then the pie, now the wonderful mixture of cranberries and cinnamon! Good! This is all part of our Master Plan as agents of Christmas!

By the way, if You have been hit with lots of snow and someone has been brave enough to be out there shoveling, how about greeting them with some hot chocolate and warm toast? It takes hardly any effort on your part but really makes an impression. 

Later offer to run a hot tub for them. Maybe scrub their back. Come on: it can be lots of fun and nothing conveys caring like touch.

Never neglect the power of touch this year. Touch, stroke, and keep hugging!  Its healthy, its warm, and You KNOW you enjoy it too!

Serving my Master Indy

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!