I too am in awe of the things you're making. Hell, I'm just in awe that you know what you're making this far in advance. I'm thinking a rib roast. That's as far as I've gotten with dinner.
Dinner may be far off in the future, but in the meantime, I have Christmas cookies to bake. I usually bake half a dozen kinds, but there are two which I always make first, which you can tell is true because I already posted about them two years ago, but hey, now I have pictures to go with them so I'll post the recipes again. They are, in reverse order of nostalgic memory:
1. Mikie's Favorite Carrot-Orange Cookies
The first thing I like about these is simply that they're different. The cookie has mashed carrot in it-- the 60s women's magazine from which the recipe no doubt came had you use a jar of baby food carrots, because, you know, boiling and mashing your own is
so hard. While the frosting is powdered sugar mixed with orange juice and orange zest. They're bright and light and a nice contrast to all the other cookies once you've made 6 or 8 different kinds.
These are known in my family as Mikie's Favorite because I have probably had them every single Christmas for four decades or so. From the baby food shortcut to the Fiestaware color, they are childhood in the 60s incarnate for me. I never made it to the moon, like Major Matt Mason, but I sure made these cookies.
1 C shortening
3/4 C sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 C mashed cooked carrots
2 C flour
Cream shortening, sugar and salt. Add carrots, flour and BP sifted, and
vanilla. Spoon tablespoon or less onto cookie sheets and bake 17 min. at
400. Frost while still warm:
1 C powdered sugar
Grated zest of 1 orange
Orange juice as needed
* * *
2. Pfeffernüsse
You see Pfeffernüsse-- pepper nuts-- in bakeries sometimes and they're soft, sugar-dusted squares. Those are impostors. I'm sure there are as many recipes for pfeffernüsse as there are for Texas chili, but they fail the authenticity test if they're not hard as nuts-- the reason being, they came into existence as a snack you could pack your pockets with and munch on as you worked in the fields. If your pfeffernüsse can't withstand two hours in a sweaty workshirt pocket, they're not real pfeffernüsse. Real pfeffernüsse aren't terribly pretty-- in fact they have a certain resemblance to Milk-Bones-- but they're addictively wonderful.
Pfeffernüsse recipes are thick on the ground wherever you find Mennonites, as in Kansas. Daniel A. Hirschler was my great grandfather, and I make them in honor of him (who died before I was born; but I got his books) and his wife Helen (who lived to 1989 and age 103). It's a little ironic that I honor them with something so rustic, since they're the ones who left farm labor and all their peasanty Mennonite relatives far behind for life in the big city of Emporia (he was a college president, she was, therefore, a frequent hostess); they seem the epitome of the prim and proper academic couple circa 1940, though also worldly enough that their possessions included LPs of Oscar Brand's bawdy folk songs and Tom Lehrer's parody tunes (someone made off with the samizdat copy of Twain's pornographic
1601 before we got to cleaning the old house out, though).
Why, Great-Grandmother-- you were a hipster.
Anyway, I always make two colors/flavors of pfeffernüsse, starting with the same basic recipe:
1 C shortening
3 C white sugar
3 C brown sugar
1/2 C molasses, or molasses and corn syrup for a lighter, easier-to-dye cookie
2 eggs
1 C water
Blend sugar and shortening in mixer, then add eggs and other liquids and mix. Then do one of these:
2a. German Style:
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fine ground black pepper
1/4 tsp anise oil
1 tsp baking soda
3 1/2-4 C flour
Green food coloring
Add above spices and mix till well blended. Dye green if you wish, though note that it's tough to hit that perfect spot where they're a richer green than a dog biscuit, but not so greenish-brown as to look like... er... Add flour until makes a stiff dough. Wrap and refrigerate at least 1 week.
2b. American Style:
12 drops peppermint extract
1 tsp baking powder
3 1/2-4 C flour
Red food coloring
Add above ingredients (sifted) and mix till well blended. Dye pink if you wish. Wrap and refrigerate at least 1 week.
Roll by hand into ropes the thickness of your thumb, then cut into pillows about an inch long. Bake at 350 for 15-20 min. Let cool completely before you even think of eating, and they'll be better yet once they harden over a few days.
As proof that you can find something about ANYBODY on the Web by now, a Google search for my great-grandfather's name turned up
this article in which, bizarrely, you can not only see him and my great-grandmother... you can see the guy who played him in a school skit.
In 1912.
Just imagine trying to explain all of this online immortality to him.