Category Archives: food and cooking

Blessings with gingerbread and Flour.

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Grandson who is now married.

By the time the book was ready to pick up at the library, I’d forgotten that I’d ever put it on hold; there must have been a good reason for me to look beyond the hugely generic title of Flour. Probably it was back before Christmas when I was still looking ahead, to Christmas baking, whereas now I’ve moved on.

Normally I am more drawn to provocative titles like Samarkand or Bravetart, two other cookbooks on my shelf at present, though I also have had plainer in my possession, such as The Onion Book, and Salt and Pepper — or was it Pepper and Salt? I gave that one away. The Moosewood Cookbook from my youth comes to mind, named after a restaurant, and Mollie Katzen followed it up with The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I guess she had a knack for evocative names!

Before I leave the subject of Katzen, I have to tell you that one of her own three favorite cookbooks has an ambitious title: Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades, and Apulia, by Patience Gray. I definitely need to check my library to see if I can borrow that one; it has several words that arouse my imagination. Katzen’s latest published work has the lovely title, The Heart of the Plate ❤️

I did bring  Flour home, and leafed through its pages a bit. It turns out that the word is in this case a reference to a very specific thing, and place, the Flour Bakery that the author Joanne Chang owns in Boston. Chang graduated from Harvard with honors, and degrees in math and economics, and also studied astrophysics. But even while she was in college she was selling cookies to her classmates.

today’s flour

All these facts make me start wondering about different personalities and how they use language; I’m fairly certain no one whose mind works like mine would ever come up with such a name for a bakery or anything. Her more recent book is titled Flour, Too, which is even more puzzling. In spite of all this distracting analysis, a recipe for Deep Dark Spicy Gingerbread caught my eye, and I decided to make it to serve after my house blessing that was today.

It’s not as though I needed another gingerbread recipe. If you are fond this kind of cake you might explore the other versions I’ve written about here over the years, like the vegan Gingerbread Pear Bundt Cake and Wheatless Gingerbread; I’ve made chocolate chip gingerbread many times but evidently never shared it here.

For the house blessing, we began our prayer downstairs, not far from where I had displayed the air clay owl that my granddaughter Ivy made for me last year. This year someone made a clay sloth for me. Not long ago I was also given a sloth tree ornament. Is there something about me that makes the family think of sloths? Now the sloth has joined the owl, and what they mean together, I am still pondering.

Knowing while sleeping last night that I would bake a cake in the morning, attend my friend Gwen’s house blessing, and drive back here for my own — all that made me wake up earlier than ever, and I had the cake in the oven before 8 o’clock! I was not channeling my sloth friend today.

The cake was not that special. I think it had too much butter — a full cup for a 9×13 cake — which bogged it down; the gluten-free flour probably contributed to its heaviness, and it included a whole 12 oz jar of molasses. It was not as spicy as I expected considering the fresh ginger and lots of black pepper that went into it. If I make it again I will use half the butter, and more egg. And maybe try another sort of flour.

But it was easy to eat
with a dollop of whipped cream on top,
and I sent a big chunk home with my priest,
because it was his birthday.

I begin the year with Christmas Day.

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Before January is half over, I will share the last of my Christmasy activities and images. I don’t want to wait until next year to tell of the occasion shown above, when my grandsons Raj and Rigo were quick to lend a hand moving decorations into the church, the Sunday before Christmas.

I went back to having a freshly cut tree this year; it only required getting help from a friend and a son. But I had no time to trim it before family started arriving, so Raj and Rigo helped me with that, too, almost as soon as they walked in the door.

One toy I bought in advance of figuring out whom I would give it to, was these Magnet Men. They turned out to be the perfect toy to give to the whole bunch of (nine) kids to play with together, and in my house they provided hours of fun. For most people, I think, the refrigerator might be the only object they could interface with, though I heard of children using a set of dumbells for a Magnet Men playground.

They are very acrobatic, and hold on to each other, as you can see, but my entry and stair railings made the perfect equipment to show off their gymnastics. I sent all the cute toys home with the grandchildren, but maybe I should have kept some here, where they are the most fun.

I had a friend over for tea one day and used some of my Christmas gnome placemats for the last time, serving up the last of the Christmas cookies I’d baked, and four little pieces of rose-flavored Turkish Delight that I’d bought especially for Christmas. That rose candy was so beautifully flavored, to me it seemed the exotic star of every plate of sweets. If only it weren’t so, so sweet…. but then, it wouldn’t be Turkish Delight.

We Glads have a few Christmas traditions that we return to, not always every year, but when the combination of people and days aligns properly. I’m thinking of oyster stew, which came through Mr. Glad’s German and English families. Or was it just the German side? I have made it many times using the recipe in the Joy of Cooking that my mother gave me at my marriage. This year son Soldier volunteered to make the stew, which is really a bisque or soup, and he began to read the recipe in that book.

Soon everyone in the kitchen was laughing uproariously as he read aloud the amounts of some ingredients. For example, 1/4 teaspoon chopped onion, and “a sliver of garlic.” I didn’t see how much onion Soldier put in, but I heard that several cloves of garlic were minced and added. From my garden I brought in chives and parsley, which were used in generous quantities. After all 18 of us were seated at two tables, the oysters were dropped into the broth, and soon the glorious stew was served into bowls and set before those who were willing or eager to try it. I found it to be the best I’ve ever eaten.

I have another “Overthrow the Tyranny of Months” calendar from Beauty First Films, which leads me in joyful anticipation of upcoming weeks, often several more than four at a time. Here is the page I’m looking at now:


How sweet is it, to have my 2025 calendar start with Christmas Day?? I’m waiting until February 2 to take my tree down, and will wait until next December to write any more about Christmas. More feasts and seasons are upon us, the days full of good things.

One of those that happened in our family recently was the birth of my son “Pathfinder’s” first grandchild, my second great-grandchild. I may need to meet him before I will think of a nickname, and he lives a good distance from me, so you will have to wait for details. The Whole Glad Family welcomes Little Guy ❤

Rejoice Evermore!

 

Moussaka Traditions

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In former times I used to make moussaka at least once a year for special occasions, like my late husband’s birthday. I hadn’t made it at all in the last ten years or so, until last week when I decided to bake up a double batch for an event. I buy a half a lamb every year from a local farmer, and usually have ground lamb in my freezer as a result. So I kept with my tradition and made the moussaka with lamb, though beef also works.

Does any of you my readers make this dish? My version is a small-print clipping from an unnamed magazine, glued into my oldest, messiest personal collection of recipes; tiny notes in the spattered margins tell of adjustments I have made based on other cooks’ ways. This time another unique result was the product of my efforts. Eggplants are not symmetrical and vary in size and weight; my packages of meat were whatever amount came from my particular lamb; I used a combination of whole milk and evaporated milk to make the custard sauce that goes on top; and I forgot to include the breadcrumbs. I ended up with one 9×12 pan and one 8×8 pan, and leftovers of the meat mixture and the sauce to pour over.

Going into the oven with custard sauce.

As is too often the case, I was in a hurry in the end to get the dish to the event, and forgot to take a picture when it came out of the oven. In looking through my files to see if I had by any chance had an old moussaka-from-the-oven pic, I found a whole series of shots of preparing it, ten years ago, also lacking the triumphant final pose. So here is an example from the internet, which looks like it has cheese on top instead of the custard, and the eggplants I used were larger, my slices wider — but it looks somewhat similar.

Moussaka picture from the internet

Maybe I will get in the habit of making this dish again, and refine my recipe so that I don’t end up with leftovers. If that happens, I’ll share it with you. In the meantime, I know you can find many moussaka recipes online to work with if you like? I am still wondering, Do you like?

The Julian Christmas cookies are my favorite.

Christmas, food and cooking, , , , ,

Many of us have completed the Twelve Days of Christmas, but I haven’t finished telling about all my activities connected to the Nativity Feast. My fellow Orthodox Christians who are on the traditional Julian calendar have just begun to count the days, however, so if we keep them in mind it won’t seem strange to muse a while longer on Christmas cookies. Plus, they are only Christmas cookies because I bake them at Christmas; you could enjoy them at any season of the year.

These are my favorite because of their chewy texture, the flavors of citrus and almond, and because my friends and family who are gluten-intolerant can fully enjoy them.

Last year I made two batches of this invention, but I wasn’t completely settled on the amounts of a couple of the ingredients. This time I made only one batch (so far), but after my latest tweaks I’m confident that if you try them, you are likely to be happy with the result. There are no grain flours in the recipe, so they are gluten-free.

Dried (sweetened) mandarin oranges

MANDARIN ALMOND COOKIES

7 oz. almond paste, in pieces
4 oz. cold butter, salted or not
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup powdered sugar
scant 1/4 teaspoon salt

Combine the above ingredients in a food processor until evenly mixed. Add and process:

4 large egg whites, one at a time.

Remove from processor to a bowl and add:

2 3/4 cups finely ground almond flour
6 oz. package of dried mandarin oranges (found at Trader Joe’s), finely chopped

Put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour.

Put 1/2 cup granulated sugar in one bowl, and
1/2 cup powdered sugar in another bowl.

Drop heaping tablespoonsful of dough into the sugar; gently coat and shape into 1 1/2″ balls. Repeat in powdered sugar.

Set 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake until golden or golden brown, at 325 degrees, 22-25 minutes. Remove to racks to cool. Cookies will be crumbly until thoroughly cool. They keep well in the refrigerator or freezer.

The amount of sugar here is a reduction from my original experiment, and I might try cutting back a little more next time, hoping that the chewiness of the cookie won’t be affected too much. The recipe that inspired me was an Italian Orange Fig Cookie that my son had made in 2022. I tried that last year with disappointing results, and created this one instead because I had the mandarin oranges on hand. I hope Trader Joe’s continues to carry that item!