merry christmas

Posted on December 24, 2011 by is there any more pie?

Pookie loved his Santa suit.  We would go to the vet’s every Christmas and the staff would take turns having their pictures taken with him.

Same with the groomer.

We would also take him to the airport when we’d pick up one of our sons coming home for the holidays from Nebraska or Los Angeles.  Pookie would delight all the little girls in the waiting area, while grumpy adults gave me dirty looks.

I never understood that.

Anyway, Pookie loved clothes.  He had a tuxedo, a cowboy outfit, and several turtleneck sweaters.  His favorite was the red one.  Really.

He was a rescue from Missouri, carried around in a purse by a senile woman who often forgot to feed him.  He came to us as a terrified, deformed, starving, 4-pound little bag of bones.  He was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he was lovable and sweet and anxious to be held by anyone who sat down in a chair or on the couch.  He didn’t know much, but he considered laps his domain.

He lived to the ripe old age of fourteen.

And he always made us smile at Christmas.  Hope he does the same thing for you!

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stuffing the stocking

Posted on December 23, 2011 by is there any more pie?

My friend Sharon has a unique outlook on life.  Her observations and comments are often hilarious, sometimes jaw-dropping and always entertaining.

Three years ago she announced she was tired of Christmas.  She’d come up with a plan, informed her husband and two twenty-something daughters, and ignored all complaints:

Each member of the family would buy their own Christmas gift (something they really wanted), wrap it and put it under the tree.  Christmas morning they would unwrap their gifts and show the others what they bought.  That way, Sharon surmised, everyone would get what they wanted and would save money and time and energy.

Then they would go out for their traditional Chinese dinner and movie.

The rest of us (three out of four of our little band of writers) were speechless.  It went against every Santa-surprise-gift-giving rule of Christmas we had all followed for all of our lives.  We doubted it would work, but Sharon insisted she was finished with Christmas.  The girls were grown up and she was ready to move on.

That January, with the three of us tired and broke and over-shopped, Sharon’s Christmas idea didn’t seem quite so weird.  In fact, it might have been sheer genius.  Sharon told us her plan had gone really well.  One daughter had bought herself a ticket to Aruba for winter break, Sharon bought herself a new camera, and so on.

I confess to envy.

A few days ago she told me she was going to reinstate Christmas stockings this year.  She was going to fill her husband and her daughters’ stockings, which she’d realized she’d missed doing.  (Her gift to herself was going to be a fancy photo scanner, as she is the Keeper of the Family History in her large Irish family.)

But when she’d told her husband he had to fill a stocking for her this year, he panicked.   Really panicked.

“But Sharon, what am I supposed to put in it????!!!!!”

The poor man was freaked out, but Sharon showed no mercy.

“Michael,” she said, “You’ve known me for FORTY-ONE YEARS!!!!!!  How hard can it be?”

Ah, yes…

After 40+ years we are still a mystery to our husbands?

I think that’s a good thing.

2005: Son #1 contemplating Christmas stockings

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loving the cranberry dip

Posted on December 22, 2011 by is there any more pie?

We’re all stocking up on cranberries, right?

I found a great new website a few weeks ago: www.jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com.  You could spend all day drooling over her recipe collection.  The cranberry dip was so gorgeous I had to try it.

Jamie’s recipe called for a jalapeno pepper, which is a little scary.  I have friends who go with “the hotter the better” adage, but Banjo Man and I are wimps.

So I divided the cranberry concoction into thirds before adding the chopped jalapeno (which I handled while wearing rubber gloves).  I put a bare teaspoon in the “mild” bowl, 2 tsp. in the “medium” bowl and dumped the rest in the “for crazy people” bowl.  After mixing, I put them in small containers–making sure to add labels–and froze them.  The mild spread is really tasty with cream cheese and Wheat Thins.  And it looks festive, too.

Here’s the recipe:

1 12-oz bag of cranberries, chopped (I used the food processor, something Banjo Man bought and I forget is there).
1/4 c. chopped green onion
1/4 c. chopped cilantro
1 small jalapeno
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 tsp cumin
2 Tbs. lemon or lime juice

Mix it all together and refrigerate for several hours.  Serve over cream cheese or by itself as a dip (drain the juice before serving so it’s not a mess to eat).  I’ve been keeping a batch of this (the “mild” version) in the refrigerator so I always have something to serve to last-minute company during the holidays.

And I ate it for dinner Sunday night.

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nantucket cranberry pie cake

Posted on December 21, 2011 by is there any more pie?

I’ll bet you ten bags of cranberries that this is the easiest dessert in the world.

I first learned of it from Pioneer Woman (one of my favorite blogs).  She calls it a pie.

She adapted it from Laurie Colwin (one of my favorite authors).  She also calls it a pie, but admits it’s a cake.

It really is a cake.  But it looks like a pie.  And when you serve it to your friends they will really, really, really like it.

my arty nantucket-cranberry-pie-with-poinsettia photo

It’s so easy I just made four of them.  The directions call for a 10″ pie plate, but I usually double the ingredients and divide them between all sorts of pyrex dishes.  After you make it the first time, you realize it’s not an exact science.  This time, because they are gifts, I baked them in 6 1/2″ disposable foil pans.  But they look much lovelier when in glass pie plates.
(Everything does.)

So, here we go:

2 heaping cups of cranberries
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup chopped nuts (almonds, walnuts or pecans)
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 stick of butter, melted
2 eggs

First you butter the pie plate.  Be generous.
Then put the cranberries in the  plate.  Sprinkle with the nuts and the 2/3 cup sugar.

For the batter:  Mix 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, melted butter, eggs and vanilla (if you like almond extract, feel free to use that instead) and gently stir until it is blended.  Pour (it will be thick) over the berry combo in the plate.

Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.  Sprinkle the top with sugar and bake another 5-10  minutes or so.  The nice thing about baking in glass pans is being able to see the cooked bottom of the cake.  Check to make sure it’s done (insert toothpick, yada, yada).

Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream or plain.  It’s really good warmed up.

I love it for breakfast with Greek yogurt.  You could serve it in parfait glasses with a dollop of yogurt on top for a buffet brunch.

Here’s Laurie Colwin’s version (with thanks to www.themailifiles.blogspot.com, who found the original recipe by  Colwin):

“When people feel they must make a REAL dessert they are usually looking for something simple and wonderful, two qualities often seen as mutually exclusive.  I like a cake that takes about four seconds to put together and gives an ambrosial result.  Fortunately, such cakes exist and are generally found at someone else’s home.  You then purloin the recipe (because you have taken care to acquire generous friends) and serve it to other friends who in turn, pass it on to yet others.  This is the way in which nations are unified and relationships are made solid.
My candidate for an easy, spectacular dessert is something called Nantucket Cranberry Pie, which is not a pie, but a cake.  It was served to me in the country by a friend who lives on a dairy farm;  she got the recipe from her mother, who can no longer remember where it originally came from.  It is now a staple in their family, and the buck stops there.
In an effort to find the true roots of this cake I looked in The Yankee Cook Book by Imogene Wolcott, a classic tome that contains just about everything anyone needs to know about traditional New England fare.  In the index was Cape Cod Cranberry Pie, but it turned out to be a real live pie.  Our Nantucket Cranberry Pie is definitely a cake;  furthermore, it is a snap to make, and, last but not least, it is delicious.  If you wanted to try your hand at lily-gilding, you might put vanilla ice-cream, creme fraiche, or (if you have tons of time) custard on the side, but my friend serves it straight, which is, I agree, the best way.
Nantucket Cranberry Pie
1.  Preheat oven to 350F.  Chop enough cranberries to make 2 cups and enough walnuts to make 1/2 cup.
2.  Put the chopped cranberries and walnuts and 1/2 cup sugar in a buttered 10-inch pie plate or springform pan.
3.  Mix 2 large eggs, 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) melted and cooled butter, 1 cups sugar, one cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon almond extract.  Stir the batter until it is smooth and pour it over the cranberry walnut mixture.  Bake the cake in the middle of the oven for 40 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
There is something about the tartness of the cranberries and the smooth, sweet, buttery taste of the cake is irresistible.  This dessert is so easy a child could make it, and so, if you happen to have a child or two around, I suggest you set them to work for your next dinner party.”
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ask mac & oatmeal cookies

Posted on December 20, 2011 by is there any more pie?

“Ask Mac.”

I heard that a lot when I was growing up.  My great-uncle Mac was the only man in the family who could actually fix something.  Build something.  Take apart something and put it back together.

Imagine the joy when he joined our all-thumbs-no-mechanical-aptitude-what-does-a-wrench-do family of readers and thinkers and singers and sailors.

Uncle Mac (center) delighting in one of his games, 1967.

Back in the early 1920’s, a young farm boy from upstate New York made his way to the big city, Providence, RI, to attend refrigeration school.  He rented a room in my great-grandmother’s boarding house and fell in love.

My Aunt Laurabel had previously eloped with “a bad man” (that’s all anyone in the family ever said) and, sadder and wiser, returned home with her young child.  How could she resist the gentle, sweet, shy and kind Donald MacKenzie?

Every December 20 I would call him for his birthday.  He loved those calls, but Aunt Belle would fret in the background and worry about how much the call was going to cost me.  I’d spent many hours learning about woodworking and power tools and the joy of Elmer’s glue in Mac’s basement.   He loved to teach me how to make things, but was deathly afraid I would hurt myself with the saw.  The only major tool he’d let me run myself was the jigsaw and even then, he hovered.  The coffee table he made me for in junor high is still in my living room.  The cart he made for my then 2-year old son sits under my Christmas tree.  When Mac made something, it was built to last.

He always wanted to know what was going on in Idaho.  I would beg him to visit, especially after Laurabel died, but he was deathly afraid of flying even though he wanted to see our home so badly.  I still have all of his letters, typed neatly on 1/2 sheet of white paper.

In honor of Uncle Mac’s birthday, I’m going to share Laurabel’s secret oatmeal raisin cookie recipe.  She uncharacteristically never shared the recipe*, but baked tins and tins of cookies for everyone in the family.  No one ever left her house without some to take home and hoard.

Happy Birthday, Unk.

Aunt Laurabel’s Secret Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Cream together:

2 sticks butter (or 1 stick butter and ½ c. shortening)

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 TBS molasses

2 tsp. vanilla

Combine:

2 cups flour

1 TBS cinnamon

1 ½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

Gradually add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture.

Stir in:                         2 cups oatmeal

2/3 cup raisins

1 cup (or less) chopped nuts

Drop by TBS on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

*this is the late Barbara Beshir’s recipe; when I first tasted her cookies they were exactly the same as Aunt Laurabel’s.  Lucky for me Barb was always willing to give out her recipes!

1953: Laurabelle, Uncle Mac and my grandmother

p.s.  See those dining room chairs?  Yep, those are the ones I’m recovering.  Wish that tablecloth was still around.  I think there are peaches on it.?

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christmas spirit, note by note

Posted on December 19, 2011 by is there any more pie?

We’ve been invited out to dinner on Christmas Day.  There will be music.  We are to bring the banjo and the fiddle and maybe even the lap steel.

I was begged to bring the karaoke machine and both microphones.  And the amplifier.

(I knew there was a reason I bought that “Karaoke Christmas” cd at Walmart last week.)

Our host plays the guitar.  Our hostess has a sense of humor.  No one cares what the in-laws and cousins and nieces and nephews will think.

All will be well.

We even came up with a song list.
Excuse me, I must go practice now.  I hear a Christmas carol in my head.

Merry Christmas.

Love.
MorePie

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december birthdays

Posted on December 17, 2011 by is there any more pie?

My grandfather’s birthday was December 17.  He died in 1969, when he was 71 and I was 17.   He loved to fish and read Mickey Spillane novels.  He tolerated the antics of his three sisters and adored his son, daughter-in-law and lucky grandchildren.

Even though I supposedly take after the most antic-filled sister of them all, he still spoiled me rotten.  I sneaked him strawberry shakes from the local Dairy Land (where I worked in high school).  He just about had a stroke when he saw me in my first bikini and called my mother to voice his displeasure.  I gave him a kiss and went to the beach.  We spent a lot of time together, because my grandparents’ house was in walking distance of the high school and my job.  If I stayed after school for clubs or meetings or work (okay, and detention, which I had *once*) I’d visit Grandpa, share a snack and wait for my father to pick me up on his way home from work.

He collected clocks, but when I spent the night he’d turn them all off because the noise bothered me (delicate little flower that I was).  I still cringe when I think about what he must have gone through the next day as he reset them all.

December 17 is also the birthday of the newest soon-to-be member of our family, our future son-in-law Mike.  Happy Birthday, Mike!  I hope it’s a great day!

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decking the halls

Posted on December 15, 2011 by is there any more pie?

This year I decorated the tree all by myself, which hadn’t happened since 1972.

1972.  The  year our first child was born.  He was still in the hospital (he wouldn’t come home until New Year’s Day) and we had no money for ornaments.  Hospital and phone bills had wiped out an already meager bank account.  I found several boxes of ornaments in a closet underneath the stairs of a little guest house we were renting and thought–after a week of soul-searching–that it would be okay to borrow them for a week or so.  Our landlords were wintering in Florida, after all, and these simple glass ornaments looked like the rejects no one wanted.  Within an hour–seriously, an hour–after hanging the lights and ornaments, I received a call from the owners’ son who wanted to know if I’d seen any tree decorations in any of the guest house closets.

“Well,” I said. “Let me look around.”

He lived only minutes away, so I stripped that tree in record time, boxed the stuff back up and handed them over when there was a knock on the door.

And then I stared at my naked tree and burst into tears.

The following year I started making my own.

Over the years Banjo Man’s sister, who worked at Hallmark, showered the children with special ornaments. GL, who lived in Washington, DC, sent gorgeous, detailed White House ornaments.  And we collected our own, plus those the kids made themselves.  Our trees could barely hold the bounty.

It was an odd feeling on Saturday, looking at my tree.  Not so much because I had decorated it alone in the living room, but because I had hung only a small portion of the ornaments.  The Hallmark collections have been distributed to those grown children who have their own trees to decorate.  Others have disintegrated or broken.  I hung the treasured White House ornaments and some others that have special meaning.  But I left a lot of them nestled in storage boxes.

Maybe they’ll have their turn next year.

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all is bright

Posted on December 14, 2011 by is there any more pie?

Not the best photograph in the world, but you get the idea. This year we used my mother’s old artificial tree. Yeah, we wimped out. None of the kids are coming home, daughter Nancy has to work, and no relatives are flying in over the holidays so… we’re forced to keep it simple.

Simple’s okay, once you adjust.

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lessons from austin, texas

Posted on December 13, 2011 by is there any more pie?

25 things I’ve learned in austin, texas

1.  People are friendly and love their music and their food and their unusual coffee shops.

2.  You can eat great food from the trailers, which are everywhere and quite wonderful.  If you are at Torchy’s, order the fried avocado taco and your life will never be the same.

3.  You are always 3 seconds away from a car accident.  Drive defensively.  Texans text, so be extra careful.

4.  It is safer and faster to drive the toll roads.  Keep quarters with you at all times.

5.  Groceries are cheaper than back East, and in the supermarkets they make tortillas while you watch.  You will see a lot of peppers you have never seen before, so be careful what you buy in the produce aisles.

6.  Muscle Milk is a staple.  As is beer.  And tequila.  And lots and lots of bottled water.

7.  People walk everywhere.

8.  Dogs are welcome in many places and are very well-behaved.  Musicians love their dogs.  Dogs love their music.

9.  Supermarkets have live music shows.  Take the kids and your grandparents.

10.  No one knows how to make real gumbo (my sons want me to move to Texas and open a gumbo business in a Silverstream trailer–not gonna happen).

11.  Young people really love the old folks’ music and have great respect for the history they represent unless you are in a huge outdoor venue and then everyone talks while the show is on.

12.  There is no rust on the cars (says the New Englander who lives in the Rust Capitol of the World).

13.  If you drink diet soda and not alcohol in the bars, no one cares as long as you tip the waitress and the band.  And *always* tip the band.  It’s good manners, especially if there is no cover charge.

14.  Men of all ages still hold doors open for ladies of all ages, and they say “excuse me” frequently.

15.  Western boots look cute with short ruffled skirts if you are under 30.  If you are over 50, it’s a look that’s a bit tricky to pull off.

16.  There is a Goodwill, Salvation Army, thrift store or consignment shop on just about every other block.  These Austin folks love vintage clothing, vintage boots, vintage furniture and vintage jewelry.  They recycle and love bargains.

17.  When out on the town, be clean and be polite and don’t block anyone’s driveway when parking your car.

18.  Always try to snag a chair at any music event.  Get there early.  If the venue is crowded, but you spot an empty chair,  you can always ask the people at the table if you can sit there.  Chances are they will say yes and then your feet won’t hurt for a while.

19.  Never go anywhere without ear plugs in your pocket.  Babies in strollers at loud musical events should wear headphones.

20.  A fun night out is at the Alamo Drafthouse, where you can watch a movie, have dinner and a glass of wine/beer all at the same time.   The food is great and the specials are often coordinated to match the movies.  Buy your tickets ahead of time (online) and get there at least half an hour before the movie starts.

21.  Check out the Highball, where you can bowl, dance, sing karaoke and have–you guessed it–a highball.

22.  The traffic lights–red and green–last forever.   But remember the “Texans text, so be careful” rule of defensive driving.

23.  Beware of people walking at night.  They rarely wear light or reflective clothing and will cross busy streets whenever the mood strikes them.  Same with cyclists.

24.  There is no dress code so jeans are always appropriate, but…

25.  …if you wear your jeans so low that your pubic hairs are mightily exposed, you run the risk of the 60-year old woman (waiting near you in the restaurant lobby) telling you to pull up your pants or buy some underwear.

Pubic Hair Police

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