My Fantastic Friend...Focaccia

Jonathan and I made Christmas dinner this year. We didn't go the traditional route with turkey or ham or any of the regular fixin's. We went a bit Italian.

I made a spaghetti recipe that had yummy garlic and parsley mixed with an olive oil sauce. I got the recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison (side note: this cookbook is amazing whether or not you're a vegetarian, just as long as you like vegetables--it's full of seriously delicious recipes). I also had a tomato-based sauce that I cooked humongous meatballs in for the meat-eaters.

We also whipped up some homemade hot, cheesy spinach dip and everyone knows you can't have dip without bread. Which leads me to my favorite food of the evening...the Focaccia Bread (recipe also from Vegetarian Cooking...)!

I kneaded in fresh rosemary from the rosemary tree and covered the top with caramelized onions and more rosemary. I. Am. In. Love. With. This. Bread.

I hope everyone enjoyed and continues to enjoy this holiday season! And that everyone gets to eat yummy food and hang out with their favorite people!

Enjoy Yourself!

Wishing everybody Happy Holidays
and a Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

Chocolate Dips & Toffee Bits

Sarah and I made yummy treats for about 7 hours yesterday. We dipped pretzels and homemade butter cookies into all types of melted chocolate.

It was chocolate-dipping madness!!

The toppings "kicked it up a notch! Bam!" as Emeril would say.

Hooray for toppings!

We used:

• Coarsely Ground Coffee Beans
• Toffee bits
• Peppermint Cane dust (peppermint canes ground in a coffee grinder)
• Chocolate Mint bits
• Christmas sprinkles
  

Mmmmmm!

Autumn Has Definitely Left the Building!

It snowed!

And when it snows this much, we get a hankerin' for building a snowman.

Everybody meet Bob Frost. He fancies himself a bit of a poet. So, of course, his shoes have holes in their soles when he has shoes at all. Lately, he's been drinking espresso at the local coffee shop while talking about the relevance of iambic pentameter with Li Po and Charles Bukowski.

We bought him a coffee, and being a bit cold, he borrowed the Guinness scarf I made Jonathan last year. You know poets, they're always broke.

Twinkle Lights. . .

. . .and holiday cheer!

A Slow Meandering Through Entrelacville

There is one knitting project I can share: The Annetrelac Socks from Interweave Knits: Holiday Gifts.



I'm using the Shaefer Anne from before. Hopefully, the yarn will be better behaved this time.

I'm taking my time with them, knitting two or three rows a day. It will be awhile before they're finished, but I just don't want to get frustrated with the yarn or the pattern. I want to enjoy the process.

I Love Snow

It snowed during the night! One of my favorite things is waking up and finding snow on the ground. Mainly, I love it because it's so beautiful but there's probably a small part that goes back to the ol' school days when snow meant school was canceled.

I'm starting to feel a bit better! Not well enough to play in the snow outside but I can stare at it from the window. :o)

Last night I made some cornbread. I've never made cornbread before but I thought it might complement the veggie chili we were having for dinner. I used a recipe from Moosewood Restaurant: New Classics by the Moosewood Collective.

I followed the recipe exactly except that I used corn flour instead of corn meal, because that's all I could find.

I'm corn flour! Yippee!

I made the little well and poured in the wet ingredients.

Make a wish!

Presto Change-o! We've got cornbread.


It came out pretty tasty. It was moister than some cornbread I've eaten but still a bit dry. You know, the get-stuck-in-your-throat kinda dry. I don't know what can be done to make it more moist. Maybe dryness is just the nature of this bread. We did crumble some of it directly into the chili and that tasted pretty darn good.

Books!!

I have a cold. Sniffle. Of course, this makes reading much easier because you're forced to rest. I just finished an inventive book entitled The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers.

It's a story filled with white-knuckle adventure, books, heartbreaking woe, books, a colossal monster and books. Did I mention the books? There are thousands and thousands of books stacked high and low. Books that would eat you, books that could kill you and books written so well you can't eat or sleep for the reading of them! There are dinosaurs too, well-read dinosaurs who have a knack for writing prose.

Intrigued? Perplexed? Scared?

I love books. Not simply reading them but even the dusty ol' smell of them in secondhand and antiquarian bookshops. And The City of Dreaming Books is all about dusty ol' books! Hurrah!

Okay, I have to go and start reading another book now.

Scary Cheeses & Edible Trees

I can't share my knitting projects this month for obvious reasons. So, I thought I'd share some of my other interests such as cooking and baking.

So, here's my lunch today. Technically it doesn't require cooking or baking but you do have to "assemble" it. :o)



I used green leaf lettuce and fresh spinach for my greens. Then I added gorgonzola cheese, golden raisins, Bartlett pears and dried cherries. I topped the salad with a balsamic vinaigrette. It's pretty tasty.

Here's a side note about my two favorite cheeses: gorgonzola & muenster. Yes, it's true I like the flavors of these cheeses. But the real reason I love them is because they sound like Gorgon and Monster cheese! That evokes all types of mythically scary images in my head which is what drew me to the cheeses when I was a kid. So, hooray for scary cheeses!

We also purchased our Christmas tree this year. And we're going to eat it too!!!

Our tree this year is a Rosemary tree.



It smells wonderful.



I can't wait to actually use it after the holidays!