Christmas Nibbles

Alright, I'm planning my Christmas baking, and more or less, I realized that all the baking I do is "Canadian".

Butter tarts, Nanaimo Bars, and possibly shortbread (which is Scottish, but whatever).

Which makes me wonder.

Umm, what do you do for Christmas baking, in your part of the world?

C'mon, fess up, are you a fruit cake fanatic?

Monday Miscellany

• Saturday will be spaghetti sauce saturday, because I now have 5 kitchen garbage bags of ripe tomatoes. (Should you be interested, you can find my recipe here)
• I'm making Shepherd's Pie to use up the last of the left over potatoes from Thanksgiving, but Mr. Spit and I are having one of our charming little spats discussions. I want to use up the left over green bean casserole, as the middle vegetable layer, and he thinks I should stick with corn. What do you think, oh wise internets?
  
• I meant to tell you all, I made Julia's jello salad for thanksgiving, with the cottage cheese, and I think that jello salad is every good and perfect thing. I think I will have to make some more of your suggestions. (The rest of my family thinks that I have become a resident of Mullet-ville, but that's ok, more Jello salad for me!)
  
• The food for the people I wanted to impress turned out quite well, the Spit Spinach Dip never fails to impress, Bluebird's idea of 2-bite brownies with strawberries wowed them, and so did Erin's tortilla roll ups! I have done my hostessing duties for a while, and they were impressed.
  
• And also, on the food note - I tried Miss Vickies roasted garlic and honey potato chips, and I have to say, not so amazing.
  

In Which I Solicit Opinions

Dear Blog Readers:

I have decided to mine your brains for information, because my brain is decidedly empty. Completely empty. There is the sound of whistling between my ears. A good stiff breeze, well it will go right through me.

So, 2 things, both to do with food.

Thing the First - Bring on the Jello Salad.
Another blog got me started on this, but really, I miss Jello salad. We had it every holiday at my aunt's and I have to say, there's nothing to help my mother's soggy stuffing go down more than a bit of jello salad. My mother is coming with the soggy stuffing, so I need some salad. Any suggestions? (No carrots in the salad, I have some standards)

Thing the Second - Impressing people I probably don't need to worry about
I have people coming on Saturday night, and I am responsible for foo - well appetizers. I need food to feed about 10 adults who are not likely to be very adventurous. I will do our amazing spinach dip, but I also need some other things. Just to make life more exciting, you must remember, we have no oven. All things must not require an oven. Hummus and pita? Veggie tray? What for sweets?

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to stop typing and take myself out for french onion soup. Which, no I cannot make, because I have no oven.

How To Make Spaghetti Sauce

For Jen.

This recipe seems to be rather time intensive. You may be able to further refine it, and make it a bit more simple.

*********
I have to confess, I don't really have a recipe, but here goes.

Order Roma tomato seeds from Vesseys in December. Also order beefsteak tomatoes. (You might as well order about another $200 in plants and seeds while you are at it) Start tomato seeds indoors in February. Water, thin, fertilize. Bring them outdoors in mid-May. Plant them in early June. Water, fertilize. Develop welts when you weed around them, because you are, in fact, allergic to tomatoes. Decide in August that the best of the summer is over, and prune ruthlessly. Laugh at Franken-tomatoes.

Give beefsteak tomatoes away to co-workers as your free-with-zucchini-gift because Mr. Spit is out of town. Take ripe Roma tomatoes from the garden. Throw them whole in the freezer until they are all ripe. Finally, in late September, when you have pushed it absolutely as far as you can, tear home from work, carefully picking all remaining tomatoes into boxes. Wipe carefully. (Bonus points if you are doing this wearing a suit, in a snowstorm.) Tomatoes take over kitchen. As they ripen, throw them into the freezer with their vine ripened buddies. Sometime in November, when Mr. Spit is shrieking about having no room in the freezer for dog food, plan to make spaghetti sauce.

Haul everything out. Grab single big stock pot. Debate about grabbing second stock pot, decide not to.

Fill pot with water, set to boil. When water is boiling, throw tomatoes in for about a minute. Peel off skins. Finish task, swear and itch madly, remember that you are allergic to raw tomatoes, go upstairs, find box of Benedryl that expired 5 years ago, put box back into cupboard for discovery next year, and run out to store, to buy Benadryl.

While at grocery store, also buy mushrooms, celery, gasp at price of bell peppers, buy orange and yellow anyway, carefully forgetting to buy Italian sausage or ground beef: your choice. Buy iced tea, take Benedryl in the middle of store, and stare in amazement at the welts on your arms.
Go home. Throw sodden mass of semi-thawed tomatoes into stock pot. Go and get second pot at this point, just because it is really obvious that you did, in fact, need it. Put enough water in to cover the tomatoes in both pots. Walk away for several hours.

Find wooden spoons by allowing the tomatoes to boil over at this point, and have your burner short out. Drive to the appliance repair shop, purchase a new burner and drive all the way back home to install it. The stove will still not work, and you will be asking for the nice repair person to attend your house. Pull stove out from wall, locating all wooden spoons that have fallen behind stove. Also, enough fur to make a good sized schnauzer. Get stove fixed.

Resume making sauce. After the tomatoes have boiled down into a thick mass, run them through the tomato mill. Marvel that you used to push them through a wire sieve, and that your arm would feel like it is going to fall off. Your arm still feels like it is going to fall off, but at least, you will console yourself, this is technology, and must be better. Return remains - sans seeds and other bits- to the stock pot. You may wish to feed the English mastiff that is trying her level best to trip you, the pulp from the tomatoes.

Wash out second pot, return to basement for next year. Better yet, leave it at the top of the stairs so that you can trip over it while bringing down a load of laundry.

Into remaining pot of tomatoes, throw in several tablespoons of minced garlic from Costco, diced celery, ground zucchini (what, I have to use it up somehow!), a cup of olive oil, diced onion, salt, cup of brown sugar, oregano, cinnamon, rosemary, thyme, sage, Worcestershire sauce. Boil for another hour or two. Make sure the pot splatters a lot, so that you are still wiping up spaghetti sauce on Christmas eve.

When the spaghetti sauce is starting to look quite thick, get ground beef or Italian sauce that you have forgotten to purchase out of the fridge. Swear. Drive back to grocery store.

Brown sausage, chop peppers, mushrooms. Throw the lot into the pot. Smile at your husband as he indicates that he is looking forward to spaghetti. Cook longer.

Parcel out into Ziploc bags, make labels. Freeze flat on cooky sheet.

Go to serve remaining sauce over spaghetti for dinner, realize that you don't have any spaghetti, decide that neither you, nor Safeway will be safe from a breakdown in the middle of the pasta aisle, open up several boxes of Kraft Dinner, placing cheese powder packages in cupboard next to those from the last several years. Boil macaroni. Serve sauce.

Ahem

Dear Internets:

It's one week from American thanksgiving. Which, ordinarily wouldn't matter to me, but it seems that I am doing American thanksgiving this year.

It all started when we renovated the house (you know the bookshelves you saw on Monday?) starting in August of 2007. (I howled with laughter at the wonderful and delightful Alicia who thought we got this done in a weekend!)

Anyway, with no dinning room, I didn't host Canadian thanksgiving, but I rashly told my mother we would do American thanksgiving. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and Christmas was a total write off last year (Christmas? What Christmas? Oh, that thing that happened 15 days after my son died? That was Christmas?)

Anyway, I was talking to one of our consultants, an American, who was a bit down that she couldn't go home for thanksgiving this year, and I volunteered our spiffy new dinning room for the celebration of American thanksgiving, except on the Sunday, the Thursday not being a holiday in Canada.

Anyway, to my ahem thing. The American consultant had only one request, that we have the sweet potato casserole.

Which leaves me with 2 questions:

1. What is the sweet potato casserole? Does it have a recipe? Is it safe to simply type "sweet potato thing" into google? She mentioned something about mini marshmallows. If it has marshmallows, does that mean it's dessert?

2. Is a sweet potato the same as a yam? I can find yams. No sweet potatoes. Safeway knows not of your sweet potato casserole.

Please, dear Internets, help a girl out. She needs her casserole, and I have no idea what she's talking about. She has expectations of me, and I don't want to disappoint. It's hard enough to be away from home on the holidays, but really and truly, it seems like the sweet potato thing is really important. I have visions of making her day with it.

I remain your humble, obedient, faithful and committed servant,

Mrs. Spit

Confession Time

I can make a souffle. Kick butt risotto, with the homemade chicken broth and hand grated Parmesan and all that stirring.
Made from scratch cakes. A wedding cake.
Curry, pasta by hand.
Bread, buns, strudel.

Yea, all those goodies, and more. But I cannot make rice.

I have tried the rice cookers (three have died horrible deaths on my counter). I have tried the boil in the bag. I have tried the microwave. I have tried the finish cooking it in the oven. I have tried the stove method. With a pot with a glass lid. I have tried minute rice, which turns out mushy or crunchy, and always needs to be strained.

Currently, I buy the Uncle Ben's plastic packages of rice that you microwave in the package. They aren't bad. Or at least better than the alternatives.

Erm, anyone got any help?