Happy 2011!

Wishing you good food, good health, and good fortune for the coming year! Happy 2011 to all!

Colonial appropriation

I have cherished an ambition to make my own mince pies ever since I was first introduced to them way back in December 1998, the first year we were living in England. My office Christmas lunch was my initiation to several iconic English Christmas traditions (chipolata sausages served alongside the roast turkey; flaming Christmas pudding; drinking copious amounts of alcohol at an office lunch), but the mince pies was the one that really took hold of me.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all who celebrate a peaceful, joyous, and very Merry Christmas!

Christmas baking

The Christmas season has been characterized by feelings of upheaval for me since we first moved overseas, 12 years ago. Since then, we have travelled to Boston for six Christmases (two of them stopovers in the midst of long-distance moves), packed up and left Boston immediately after another, fit two more in between trips for a job where I was travelling 50% of the time, and stayed put for one that was spent largely in the hospital with Miss B. By my reckoning, that leaves two relatively peaceful Christmases since 1997. Possibly an underlying reason for my reaction to seeing astronomical airfares to Boston and deciding that staying put again this year was the way to go.

Multiple influences

The plus side to reading as much about food as I do is that you are always coming across new ideas, techniques, food combinations, etc., that spark your imagination.

The minus side is that all that stuff is really hard to keep track of and try out in any kind of systematic way.

Lessons learned

Late last Friday night I made a large chocolate sheet cake for a graduation party we were hosting for DP’s students on Saturday afternoon. I used my mum’s chocolate cake recipe, and baked it (for the first time ever) in an 11” x 14” pan, because I thought that would be easier to slice and serve to a large group of people (and maybe even to write “Congratulations!” on if I got really ambitious).

I love that recipe: it only uses one bowl, and as always it came together really quickly and baked up beautifully. I put it on a rack on the counter to cool while I got on with some other party food prep.

Happy Hanukkah

...to all my friends and fellow bloggers who celebrate!