Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

In the spirit of simplicity, this will be my only blog post this month. If you'd like to read more about our Christmas this year, check out my Farmwife at Midlife blog where I've posted today about "Less is Always More" at the holidays. I'm deliberately not going to blog any more this month on any of my three blogs––even if I have to sit on my hands!––to save up time and room for a simple, relaxing holiday––and to spend more time with my family: how, may I ask, do we do that if we're always on the computer? Also, there is a link back to some Christmas cookie recipes on this blog and you can always search In the Pantry (see column at right) for more holiday and food-related blogs from Christmas Past. As this blog is now over six years old, there is plenty of fodder in that department.

Father Christmas visiting Stan Hywet Hall, c. 1940. 

[That's my grandmother on the right.]

If you are in the Akron, Ohio area this season you can visit this 

historic manor during the holidays and enjoy their decorated Tudor Revival-era 

rooms and beautifully lit grounds. Click here for more information.

Also, please remember that I still have copies of The Pantry–Its History and Modern Uses available for sale at my website. They make excellent gifts and I am happy to sign, and inscribe, copies and even ship them directly to anyone on your list. Hardbound, and filled with beautiful color photography, the book is an affordable addition to your home library. And still only $16.90, including shipping! Order today in time for the holidays ~

Blessings to you and your family this holiday season, and always,

Catherine

My father, left, admiring the Yule Log in the Great Hall of Stan Hywet Hall, c. 1940.

PS For more great images of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens––at Christmas and through the years (both archival and promotional)––check out this new blog by architectural historian Michael Henry Adams, a fellow Akronite who now resides New York City.

Happy Thanksgiving from My Larder to Yours!

Happy Valentine's Day from my Pantry to Yours!

 


A World War II era Valentine that I could not resist on eBay! So I wanted to share with all of you, too.

Thanks for stopping by, as always, here in the pantry. I will continue to post on occasion here, with pantry-related tidbits, but you'll find me most of the time now at Farmwife at Midlife.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Catherine

How to "Pie Up!" in the Pantry

From my vintage postcard collection.

Yesterday I cooked another large second turkey, just because it was at the bottom of the freezer. Time to "pantry up," as my friend Edie recently said (and "freezer up," too). Throughout the busy week ahead the juicy 25+ free ranger, from an Amish farm last winter, will be transformed into turkey salad, turkey soup, turkey pie, creamed turkey and sandwiches. [One reason is because I have an article deadline on December 1st and many book orders to process].

Today I'll be making turkey tetrazzini, with roasted beets and parsnips on the side and more rhubarb and pumpkin pies. We're having our Mennonite friends Melvin and Anna Hurst over for a Sunday supper of "leftovers" (well, not really, but that was the premise) later this afternoon and I'm looking forward to a nice leisurely "catch up" as I haven't seen either of them in a month. I'd even intended to host a "leftover" potluck for friends last night but it just never materialized.

As for food this Thanksgiving, back to our "simplicity" kick. I didn't make homemade cranberry sauce this year, or homemade rolls, or even cranberry nut bread. But the stuffing was arguably my best yet––from a recipe I came up with in college that I've been tweaking for the past 30 years. This year I added dried cherries and chopped pecans, as well as the Italian sausage, chopped apples and fresh cranberries that I have always included.

© Anne Taintor, Inc.

But we also had P I E! Homemade! By me! I say this so enthusiastically, and with great unabashed pride in my heart, because I've always had pie phobia–big time. The fillings are never the problem, it's the crust. Usually it is the one thing I ask guests to bring at Thanksgiving: dessert (and dessert at Thanksgiving usually equals pie). A few weeks ago my friend Rosemary back in New Hampshire sent me a pie dough recipe she had tweaked from Joanne Chang's Flour Bakery in Boston. It was the best pie dough, and easiest, I've made yet. If it sounds like there is a lot of butter, there is: but you're worth it (Rosemary also added a few more tablespoons to the original recipe). Rosemary, I should also add, was the frequent pie lady at our house (as well as my friend Linda, but I don't want to start a pie war between these two friends!).

Rhubarb pie awaits baking on Thanksgiving morning.

Rosemary's Second Amazing(ly Simple) Pie Dough

[Here is her first recipe: click here for blog archive!]

• 1 cup flour

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 10 Tbsps cold butter

• 1 egg yolk

• 2 Tbsps milk

Eli loves to help.

Put flour and salt into food processor, with blade (I used my plastic blade). Add cold butter, one tablespoon at a time, while pulsing. I combined the egg yolk and milk in a bowl and beat it quickly before adding to the flour-butter mixture in the food processor. Pulse all ingredients a few times until mixed and turn out onto floured board. Knead and flip several times and press with the back of your palm. (Rosemary said this is called "fraisaging" the dough–rhymes with "massage" and that's exactly what you are doing.) Then pat into a disk, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour. The chilling is absolutely essential for ease of roll and a resulting flaky crust. [I doubled this for a 2-crust dough and you can also freeze your disks of dough for another day.]

A perfect pie trifecta!

When sufficiently chilled, roll out dough disk on a floured board to the desired size. You will find, having chilled it, that it will roll very nicely and should feel all satiny to the touch. After it bakes, your pie will have the flakiest, melt-in-your mouth flavor and texture. I can't wait to try it with turkey pot pie later this week! As much as I like Rosemary's other pie recipe, I might just be a convert to this one.

Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie is akin to sacrilege.

The Afterglow

A locally-made wooden painted turkey kit from nearby Bear Wallow Farm and a lovely pumpkin from Casey County, just a bit nibbled on by our chickens. The kit would be an easy thing to make with your children if you are crafty. (Alas, I am not.)

Here's what I love about Thanksgiving–it just extends into a nice, long weekend of leftovers and doing whatever it is that we want to do. Like hunker in on our ridge: playing games, watching old movies and family programs on television, chopping wood, general puttering around. Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday, even though this year it was just our immediate family (minus our daughter, for the third year in a row, who works at a ski resort back in Vermont where the holidays are a blur of accommodating skiers and their families). Our boys even had an entire week off from school, which we appreciated, even though we didn't travel anywhere. [And who wants to these days?]

This little fellow has the right idea after a hearty bowl of slop.

Henry chops pumpkins for the pigs.

We were thinking of going to the Liberty Christmas parade last night, and to the Clementsville Variety Show later on today (MCed this year by our friend Joberta Wells: and check out her new blog at The Casey County News where she is a columnist–she is our local "hoot" and deservedly so, as well as having coined the phrase). We were even going to see the new Harry Potter movie (which would be Henry's second time in a week). But we're not.

A late fall bull calf, born just before Thanksgiving on our farm.

Instead, our entertainment over the past few days has consisted of moving some cattle (including some of the neighbor's that had escaped). We watched our great friend, Chuckie Willard, back in New Hampshire, and the coverage of his trebuchet-building for Science Channel's On the Road to Punkin Chunkin [on the link, click on the "Tired Iron" video]. We also watched The Fabulous Beekman Boys first-season marathon on Planet Green (what a joy they are, and their animals, friends and Farmer John, who lives on the premises, and we can't wait for their Christmas special on December 8–on so many levels this is a worthwhile new reality series). Oh, yes: my husband's favorite actress of all time, Marjorie Main, had several feature movies on TCM this week, too. And who can not watch the annual reshowing of The Wizard of Oz? I still cry each time that Dorothy goes home again and it is delightful to experience this movie with our own children.

A daily reminder on my mantel.

Our wine glasses!

This year our holiday mantra will continue to be "simplify." Our Thanksgiving set the tone for that: we were all clean and well-scrubbed but changed into our comfortable pajamas after feeding the animals on the farm. Our boys wanted a "Jammy Thanksgiving" and they got it. If you are not entertaining anyone but yourselves, I highly recommend it! I didn't even pull out all of the decorative stops that I usually do. And we used paper towels for napkins! (OK, so I haven't ironed in a while.)

Part of my "Country Fare" in the hutch in NH.

We did pull out our silver and paired it with our Country Fare–my favorite every day pottery, made by Zanesville Pottery from the 1940s-60s (eventually bought out by Louisville Stoneware in Kentucky). Who knew one day that I–an Ohio girl, born and bred, raised in New England–would eventually be living in the state that adopted my favorite Ohio pottery?! Those are our farmer friends Peter Sawyer and Eric Tenney in our kitchen in Hancock in early December 2007, when we had another Thanksgiving dinner all over again, but our last in New Hampshire. [Our dear bull mastiff, Lucy, is curled up for a nap: she passed away here in Kentucky almost two years ago now.]

John, Tom and Patch in January 2009. Today was their second birthday (but Patch disappeared when he was six months). This is my favorite photo of them altogether, on my favorite chair.

Our former Hancock home in a Wallace Nutting print.

Thanksgiving is time to give pause to our many blessings, the love of each other, and memories of holidays past. I'm glad that I am at a point in my life now where I can remember the magical holidays of childhood and beyond without a full immersion of bittersweet sorrow, or even a tinge of it–where I can be in a memory or a feeling or a place in my mind and linger there, a bit, but not dwell too much in what has past. It's not always an easy thing for me. ["Dwell, Stew, Obsess!" in the words of cartoonist Roz Chast.]

Edward Henry Corbould (1869), Cold

I know why the holidays can be the hardest time of year for some people: I have been in that place. I now embrace the winter months like a warm, cozy throw. It is admittedly less wintry here in Kentucky but still just as dark, cold and bleak as any mild winter we have experienced in New Hampshire. Winter is now something I am happy to put on and to wear, like a shroud, as I tuck in for a few months of reflection and repurposing. It's a necessary system reboot for the soul.

What Sting said so poetically about the winter season of darkness in his notes for his beautiful album, If On a Winter's Night, captures what I feel about winter now:

Peter Ilsted (1861-1933), Woman Reading by Candlelight

Walking amid the snows of Winter, or sitting entranced in a darkened room gazing at the firelight, usually evokes in me a mood of reflection, a mood that can be at times philosophical, at others wildly irrational; I find myself haunted by memories. For Winter is the season of ghosts; and ghosts, if they can be said to reside anywhere, reside here in this season of frosts and in these long hours of darkness. We must treat with them calmly and civilly, before the snows melt, and the cycle of the seasons begins once more. 

A Footnote:

Seeing the credits roll past at the end of On the Road to Punkin Chunkin, we realized it was Chucky's tractor trailer driving out of town, east on Main Street in Hancock where we used to live in New Hampshire. But seeing it, in such a blur, we were able to stop the frames with the slow motion feature of TeVo, and there was our old house, in the top photo (at left, with the brick end). A strange encounter, indeed. The whirring of the sped up film also reminded me of how I process memory: that it flies through me in a blur and then it is gone again, like the wind. But where does it go?

Holiday Fare, Part Deux: Easy Bûche!

I have a huge magazine problem. I keep telling my husband it's "market research" as I do, from time to time, sell an article to a national magazine. [Sheer laziness keeps me from doing that more intently and nor do I have a lot of patience with non-responsive editors, even those I have worked with before. Blogging, while it doesn't pay the bills, can be just as gratifying.] But being a foodie and loving lifestyle imagery in that "jump in the pavement painting" Mary Poppins-y way–even though I know from experience how staged these photos can be, at least those rooms look magnificent and inviting for that magazine moment–I would buy them any way. I also have a huge "can't-seem to throw-the-magazines-away" problem, but that's a blog post for another day. So is finding the answer to the question of "why do you even buy food magazines when most recipes are on line today?" I suppose for the same reasons that I will never buy an Amazon Kindle® (and I stand true to what I wrote in that blog post at Cupcake Chronicles two years ago). But it's a rhetorical question in our household and fortunately my husband doesn't even realize this fact or he would likely complain about my hundreds of cookbooks and the magazines.

So here's what's fun about piles of magazines, especially during a quieter holiday week at home like this or on winter evenings or when your husband and kids keep flipping back and forth between The Three Stooges and Looney Tunes marathons on New Year's Eve and you are feigning "quality time" with your family. Occasionally I will sit in my comfy chair and go through them, clipping recipes or ideas (my good artist and writer friend Edie uses them for her collage art). Many magazines actually survive "my cut" unscathed or missing only a few pages and I hate to just toss them. I used to give them to friends or the "swap shop" at the town dump back in New Hampshire and this might be one reason I've let them pile up here these past two years. [Yes, I have no friends! Well, or at least sensible friends here who don't read a lot of magazines...]

Seriously, if anyone reading this in Kentucky would like my magazine cast-offs, let's meet for coffee and they're yours! I will gladly meet you somewhere: Lexington, Berea, Frankfort, Midway (I'm always looking for new restaurants, too). I'll also be traveling back to New England by way of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Woodstock, New York and possibly northeastern Ohio in mid-February with a big empty Honda Pilot. If there are a lot of you, let's use this as a reason to meet up in the New Year: there are plenty for all. Old copies of Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Victoria, Country Living, Country Home, Paula Deen, Old-House Interiors and the occasional O Magazine or MS Living in the mix, and oh so many random lifestyle and shelter pick-ups...I do keep all copies of King Arthur's Baking Sheet, Cook's Country, and Mother Earth News (and any magazine with an article of mine in it, of course). In sum, I do my darnedest to keep the foodie and shelter magazine trade flourishing.

When Gourmet suddenly went under this fall, I returned to Bon Appétit and might, I said might, even subscribe again. I can understand why Condé Nast kept that magazine over Gourmet (although there is so much about Gourmet that I enjoyed: Ruth Reichl's editorials, the essays about food from writers, Jan and Michael Stern's column on "Road Food") as the recipes are more user-friendly and there are great theme issues.


I could have bathed in this easy espresso cream, it was that delicious.

All of that was my usually lengthy preamble to a recipe from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appétit. I wanted to make a Bûche de Nöel this year but time, as always, was my enemy and it just looks, well, so needlessly involved (even though I, one day, will make meringue mushrooms). Also, when you have a friend who is an extraordinary baker, and could easily be, and has been, a professional, and who made the most magnificent bûche a few years back for your husband's birthday, the same one who makes amazing pies (Rosemary, sorry, I have to give you credit here), it's hard to imagine even coming close.

So when I saw this easy variation on those fabulous old "Famous Chocolate Wafer" icebox cakes–did your mother make those in the 60s with whipped cream?–I said, "She's gotta have it..." It was the perfect Christmas Day dessert which we brought to the Hursts for supper after Temple got his "Friendship quilt" (and yes, that will be my next blog post in the New Year: that marvelous quilt!). I would happily make it again for just about any occasion. [And kudos to King Arthur Flour Company for shipping out their espresso powder the very next day, along with some other ingredients, without my paying an additional surcharge. I used to get to their store and bakery several times a year when I lived in New Hampshire and now return from annual treks to New England with large sacks of their flours.]


Before I served this, the boys and I scattered fake candy "rocks" around it...and I forgot to bring some holly! But you could certainly make yours look more festive than in this picture!

Super-Quick Mocha Yule Log from Bon Appétit (December 2009)

Chocolate wafers. Coffee. Whipped cream. Does it get any better than this? [NOTE: I used chocolate wafers sold in bulk at our local Mennonite bulk foods store (for ice cream sandwiches). They were almost as good as Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers® but certainly more readily available. And no, I did not make the meringue mushrooms, either...next time!]

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar plus additional for garnish
• 1/4 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder [This would also be good in any chocolate cake.]
• 2 cups chilled heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 9-ounce package chocolate wafer cookies
• 8 purchased vanilla meringue cookies [I couldn't find any...]

1. Sift 1/2 cup powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and espresso powder into small bowl. Using electric mixer, beat cream and vanilla in large bowl until soft peaks form. Add cocoa mixture and beat until stiff peaks form.
2. Spread 1 side of 1 chocolate wafer with 1 rounded teaspoonful mocha cream; top with another wafer. Continue layering wafers and mocha cream for stack of 5 cookies. Place stack on its side on long platter. Repeat making stacks with remaining wafers and some of mocha cream; form log on platter by attaching stacks with mocha cream. Using offset spatula or rubber spatula, spread remaining mocha cream over outside of log to coat. Cover; chill at least 2 hours. Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled.
3. Place platter with yule log on work surface. Using fork, gently pull tines of fork along length of frosting on log to create design resembling tree bark. Sift powdered sugar over log to resemble snow. Arrange meringue cookies or Meringue Mushrooms (click for recipe) along sides of log. Cut log on diagonal into thick slices. Serve immediately.

Et voila! Bonne Année et bonne santé!

New Year's Resolutions-Why Not?

I'm trying to resolve to do things all the year round but I love a clean slate so why not go public about it?

• Children–More present and in the moment with our boys and more letters and visits with our daughter.
  
• Communication–I want to be in better touch with people and I don't mean via email or Facebook: a letter or note, visit, tea, lunch, dinner party, or phone call (will take some work as I hate the phone). Consolidate: two basic cell phones and no land line more practical? (especially with satellite internet expense)
  
• Computer–I will try to be on the computer for work or play only when my children are at school or asleep.
• Cupcakes–Be a better book group (and blog) participant!
• Exercise–More of it. Enough said. And let's start with walking all over this beautiful farm of ours as much as possible.
  
• Family/Friends–See Communication, above.
• Farm–Develop a working plan with my husband. What are we doing and when? A girl's gotta know these things.
  
• Farmhouse–Same deal, even if it will be on paper for a while.
• Food–Continue to eat only when hungry, not depriving myself but not going overboard, either. Balance indulgences with sprees of great health and limits. Be more proactive about menu planning.
  
• Garden–Plan what can easily be tended and managed and remember the bounty in the next county. [No, I did not intend for that to rhyme!]
• Hormones–Need I say more? Can't live with them, can't kill them. Continue to explore this new realm of sight and sound.
  
• Houses-in-Order–This is a literal as much as figurative goal of mine...and on-going, always. Pick up, put away or pitch. Repeat. Clean often (yes, more often than I think).
  
• Laundry–Laundry, laundry, LAUNDRY! And while we're on the subject, how about those two baskets full of ironing? (I should see it as a chance to catch up on all of those taped Barefoot Contessa and Dr. Oz episodes...)
  
• Marriage–More time to pause and plan together.
  
• Past Issues–Burn 'em or bury 'em; reconcile 'em or write about 'em.
• Photos–Organize, copy, scan, duplicate, share (same with all family archives).
  
• Recreation–Literally, "recreate": more reading and day trips and family pauses together.
• Restaurants–Once in a while, like once a month in Lexington. Really. Home cooking so much better (and cheaper) and we have all of those freezers and stuff.
• Sleep–While I seem to require less these days, no one is well served by my regular 2-4am bedtimes. So, I will try to be more of a morning person by going to sleep before midnight!
  
• Song–Join the Pleasant Hill Shaker Singers in March and sing my little heart out several times a year, and maybe dance a bit, too (even if in costume).
  
• Spirit–More "morning time" and find a church that moves and inspires and is good for the family.
• Volunteer–Do more for others and more often. Find a niche and commit to it.
  
• Writing-for-Blogs–More often or when inspired, but don't let it get in the way of other writing, too. Be more bloggy, if possible, and less of an essayist! (Save that for the books.)
  
• Writing-in-General–Pick a project and work on it. Make a year plan. Prioritize. Enough of these ADD-driven snippets. Follow through!
  
• Writing-for-Hire–Generate regular articles in a variety of new and old media and while we're at it, let's market those cases of books that are in storage to some museums and gift shops.

So there it is, everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask. It helps to write it all down and be accountable, even if I forget to check the list from time to time.

Thank you, always, for visiting me here in the pantry!

Happy New Year to you and yours and may 2010 be all that you hope and dream.

Enjoy the rare New Year's Eve "Blue Moon" wherever you are. A great way to start a new decade and by New Year's Day it will already be waning again.

Catherine

Holiday Fare: Roast Beef 101

A hearty plank of roast beef served with Yorkshire pudding, oven roasted potatoes, and creamed spinach–all holiday traditions in our combined families.

I have to really crow about our roast beast this year. First of all, it was recently excavated from the bottom of our chest freezer on the back porch. That alone is something to crow about. Allow me to recap the scene here about a week ago:

SCENE: A small doublewide kitchen on a ridge in Kentucky, a few days before Christmas.

Tired Old Wife: "Remember, hon, when we got that huge roast at Kroger's last year on sale and we cut it in half?"

Tired Old Husband: "Um, I think so." (reading the paper, feet propped up, sort of not really listening)

Tired Old Wife: "Well, I'm almost positive it's in that freezer somewhere..."

Tired Old Husband: "I take it that means you would like me to look for you?"

Tired Old Wife: "Yes, but only when you have a minute..."

Tired Old Husband: "You mean, like 'right now,' don't you?"

Tired Old Wife: "Well, yes, that would be nice...thank you so much. You know, before I forget...I would go myself, but you know I'd fall in if I start reaching into the very bottom, being of gnome stature and all..."

Tired Old Husband tromps out to back porch. Fusses because freezer is covered with Tired Old Wife's cookie doughs in various covered plastic containers and a bunch of items that won't fit in the kitchen refrigerator, and a box of apples in various states of decay. Rummaging and fussing can be heard for several minutes.

Tired Old Husband: "Found IT!"

The old couple examines the 12 pounds of solid, boneless Delmonico roast. The old label was still on it and they'd paid about $110 for 24 pounds (about $4.58 a pound for excellent meat–at half price), which saved then about $120 with the use of their Kroger® card (the original roast was well over $200). It was double-wrapped in foil and had been placed in a zippered freezer bag (one of those really large ones). After a year in the bottom of their chest freezer, dread overcame the Tired Old Wife.

Tired Old Wife (somewhat vexed): "Do you think it has freezer burn?"

Tired Old Husband (somewhat annoyed but aware that his wife is generally prone to needless fretting): "We'll see–There's no sense getting yourself all worked up about it...yet."

Tired Old Wife sets up coffee maker and pats roast thawing on the counter for good luck before turning on nightlight and heading to bed.

Loud applause as kitchen set goes dark.

+ + +

We were supposed to have had it on Christmas Eve, late in the evening "Le Réveillon-style," after our deliveries of baskets of food and banana bread. But we were exhausted from that and my sensible husband suggested we have it Christmas Day at noon instead (our traditional Christmas dinner is usually served around 5pm but we were going to the Hursts for singing and the quilt-giving so I thought, this year, we'd have a French Réveillon, but served well before midnight).

When it thawed and I looked it over, there was not one bit of freezer burn to be seen or felt and the meat was still a lovely fresh pink. Maybe it had somehow "dry aged" itself in the freezer or maybe it was our "Christmas miracle" of the season. Either way, you'd never have known it had been frozen for twelve months. Vive le boeuf!



About ten years ago, after years of struggle and occasional blind luck, I finally asked a restaurant chef how they always managed to get pink, juicy roast beef straight through. "First I braise and raise (the temperature) and then it's slow and low," he said. All you need, apart from a really good roast, is a reliable roasting pan and an even more reliable meat thermometer. Here is my recipe for succulent, juicy, fool-proof roast beef (that is, if you follow the directions!).

Christmas Roast Beef

1. Get the best cut of beef you can, ideally on sale: Delmonico is great but there are others. [Don't hesitate to ask the guys behind the meat department at your local box store, either. They love to be asked and will tell you all you want to know about meat and what the best cut is for the price you want to pay. Make sure it has some fat on it, but not too much. That marbling is what gives it the flavor.]
   
2. Put the fresh, or thawed, meat in the pan, fat side up, to come to room temperature, several hours before roasting.
3. Slather the meat all over with coarsely ground pepper, sea salt and fresh minced garlic and dried rosemary, if desired.
4. Heat oven to 450 degrees and place meat thermometer in the middle of the roast, piercing it towards the center. Put just a bit of water in the bottom of the pan, perhaps 1/2 inch.
   
5. Place roast in center of oven and cook roast at 450 degrees for 20 minutes (make sure you set your timer).
6. After 20 minutes at 450 degrees, turn oven down to 250 degrees (without opening oven).
7. Cook until meat thermometer registers "rare" for beef or 60 degrees Celsius (or 140 degrees Fahrenheit), about 2 hours.
8. Take beef out of oven, remove from pan to platter and put tin foil all over it. It will continue to cook slowly to "medium rare" while you make the gravy and/or Yorkshire pudding. [Transfer juice to another pan to make gravy if you plan on using roasting pan for Yorkshire pudding and return pan, with suet or lard in it (several tablespoons) to oven and turn up to 475 degrees, for 8 minutes**]
9. If there are those who want more "well done" pieces of beef, give them the ends or stick a piece or two back in the oven for a few minutes.
   

**For Yorkshire Pudding recipe: follow the recipe for "Uncle John's Popovers" but triple the ingredients, as found in this blog entry, but put batter in the roasting pan (instead of individual cups), after you've melted a bit of suet or lard in it first. PHOTO–The Yorkshire Pudding should be suitably puffy and egg-y, as it crawls up the sides of your roasting pan. Slightly crispy on the bottom, and somewhat glistening on the top is also good. But never, and I mean NEVER use bacon fat as I did this year: always always use suet or lard in the pan before pouring in the batter–butter if nothing else.

NOTE: This dinner would also be a great option for New Year's Day or Eve. We traditionally do a big brunch on New Year's Day after just sort of lolling around at home on New Year's Eve with various hot and cold appetizers.

Afterglow

Christmas Eve in the doublewide–yikes, the tree really looks like it's ablaze!

An easy, quick centerpiece: some pomegranates, a cheap red candle, some potpourri and a pie dish from Tater Knob Pottery outside of Berea, Kentucky on top of a Zanesville "Country Fare" platter.

With every parcel sent to friends and family this Christmas, I included a sprig of mistletoe from a large cluster that my boys brought to me a few weeks ago from our own farm. The white berries grow only on female plants.

Christmas was a quiet and special time for us–our second here on the ridge. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care and organic carrots from a Mennonite friend were placed out with a cup of milk and some cookies and a letter to Santa. (One year Santa got a glass of Bailey's® and some leftover cocktail shrimp...that was high-end living, I'll tell you what.) PHOTO–A gold-lipped, but inexpensive, trifle bowl is filled to the brim with old vintage glass ornaments.


My husband got me a "Sugar Devil" for Christmas (and some lovely silver bracelets and a pile of good books and cookbooks). This unusual tool was used to dig out dried stuck sugar or fruit in old store barrels. I'm convinced that every woman needs one! In fact, I could have used it a few days before to tackle a bag of brown sugar for my banana bread that had caked.

We were also finally able to pull off a surprise, six months in the making. On Christmas Day, after our roast beef dinner, which I was to have cooked on Christmas Eve but our elfing and gift-basketing got away from us, we headed over to the Hursts for hymn and carol-singing. Let me say that sitting around on benches and gathered around the woodstove and kitchen table in a cozy, well-kept farmhouse with about thirty other people (many who are closer friends) singing their hearts out, a cappella, is a magical experience (even if there are a few sour notes on occasion). The singing was the only sign of Christmas as Old Order Mennonites do not decorate or have a tree like we do. But their spirit is willing and, as with everything else, they pare it right down to the essence of the season. PHOTO–A snowman at a Mennonite farm the day after our "big snow" on December 19th. He didn't last long.


View of Hopeful Church: The weekend before Christmas we had a good bit of snow on the ridge but it didn't stay long.

It's odd but I was reminded of the Whos in Whoville who gathered on Christmas morning to sing, "Welcome Christmas!" For it arrives whether we are ready or not or whatever our circumstances. [I have recently been reading about the Appalachian tradition of "Old Christmas" but that's another blog: in fact, in this period of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" I plan to linger longer in the holiday reveling, so please bear with me. I like to stretch things until Epiphany, or "Twelfth Night," which is also the date of "Old Christmas" on January 6th.]


This log barn still stands in one of our fields and in the snow, for the first time, it reminded me of the kind of humble stable where Christ was born.

When someone started in on the birthday song (and it's a much different, more lovely and easier to sing version than we are accustomed to singing), Anna and I snuck off to get Temple's Friendship quilt which she had put the finishing touches on since our "quilting" in late October (here is my blog entry about selecting the fabric for it back in July). We walked in during the birthday song and he was truly surprised and delighted. He even nudged Melvin and asked, "Whose birthday is it?" (Temple's birthday is today, actually). [My satellite Internet access has been giving me fits for several weeks but I will post more this week and photographs from our "Quilting" now that it has been given and there is no chance of ruining the surprise! Just tonight I was able to upload photos with ease after increasing my bandwidth....ergh! DSL it is not!] PHOTO–Last year in the fabulous post-holiday sale at Gooseberry Patch I was able to score two Christmas Raggedy Anne dolls quite inexpensively: one for my mother and one for me!


My dear friend Beth-from-the-Crib (right) and I, taken summer of 1980 when we both painted cars in her backyard in Akron before I went off to college. We might be 47 now, but we feel 25! Right, Beth?

This weekend we were supposed to travel to the 50th anniversary celebration of two dear friends in South Carolina. It was not meant to be: exhaustion, a bit of a flu bug, and just needing to rest precluded our trip. (This Mom knows her limits, especially at the holidays.) So we sent lovely thoughts and wished them well from afar. "Aunt Sally and Uncle Dale" have known me all of my life, or at least since I was a babe in arms, and I grew up with their daughter, Beth, from the crib back in Akron. My own parents would have celebrated their 50th in 2011 but that will never be so I really had wanted to be a part of their celebration. We are also not used to traveling at Christmas and that is clearly another component of the "holidaze" that I had not anticipated! PHOTO–"Aunt Sally and Uncle Dale" who just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday, sent us this ornament this year that I had sent to them in 1990. What a great thing to do one day: go through all of our ornaments and give them to children and dear friends whom we have known over the years. We put it on our "Kitchen Christmas Tree" (believe me, I have enough ornaments for trees in every room...but our two trees this year have our most special ornaments on them.)


This lovely red berry grows on bushes outside of our doublewide. The woman we bought this part of our farm from was a great gardener...but I have no idea what these are but they're festive!

This weekend we just did what we wanted to do and I did a lot of reading, catching up on needed sleep and recovered from the "wobblies", with the occasional movie; Temple split wood over at the shop intermittently with the boys; and the boys are endlessly happy and involved with creating large Lego things while listening to country music on Henry's new CD player (I never thought I'd hear country music in my home, but there it is: much more tame than what I used to listen to and still do in the car...or when alone. But Henry enjoys U2 and Talking Heads and Kings of Leon and The Killers as much as I do, so there's that.) Our daughter is working up in Vermont and we miss her but she sounds busy and happy and received all of her gifts in time for Christmas.

So this is the way I remember the Christmas afterglow: warm and cozy and that family spirit of harmony lingering still.


I enjoy collecting vintage Christmas items. I painted the "Noel" board years ago on an old barn board with stencils and the five angel bells were in my father-in-law's collection. The snowmen, below, were given to us from a friend's mother-in-law's extensive Christmas collection. [We've gone from nine mantels over nine fireplaces in our former historic home to just one so it does limit the Christmas decor I can put around now...]


NOTE TO MY FAITHFUL READERS: Here In the Pantry I try to keep things upbeat, but I do have the occasional introspective lapse. It is with that spirit of levity (and reality) in mind that I want to provide this link to another Christmas-related blog I posted this morning over at our virtual book group, Cupcake Chronicles. Kind of a point-counterpoint to this entry but of equal truth and measure to my Christmas experiences of recent years.]