Back to Work Lunch

Dear Reader,

I have had a letter to which many of you will relate.  See for yourself:

Heather,
I had to go back to work today after almost two weeks off, spent at home, with my family.  I couldn't be happier!  My office is cramped, I share it with Julia who breathes really loudly and wears too much perfume, but anything is better than the exhaustion - both emotional and physical that I have from too much family time.  What should I have for lunch to celebrate this fine, if frigid, day?
Yours in Chicago,
Ted

Well Ted, congratulations on surviving the holidays.  I am also suffering from the kind of deep-seated exhaustion on which four cups of coffee have apparently no effect.  What we need are some B vitamins!  Enjoy!

Back to Work Lunch

You will need:

lunch hour
barbecue sauce
bourbon
turkey or other burger

Grab your office mate, cause for this lunch you need a partner.  Head to local establishment that provides the most tasty burger and get two, to go.  Head back to the office and nonchalantly pour bourbon into a cup and drink.  Pour additional bourbon into a separate cup for office mate to drink.  Do not share cup as it is flu season and you stupidly used up all of your sick days to spend time with parents over holidays.  Pour more bourbon into cups and mix with barbecue sauce.  Slather over burger and enjoy with enough additional bourbon to lull you into the deep sleep which is essential to not only your productivity but also your health!  Take turns napping for rest of afternoon, then return to blissfully empty home where you may watch television in underpants or as desired.

Happy New Year!

Dear Reader,

This New Year's Eve finds me sick to death of holidays, coming down with a cold and feeling appropriately reflective.  On the first day of this decade I woke up at 6 PM with a crashing hangover, ordered a pizza from Domino's, watched Jurassic Park on television and went back to sleep.  So many horrific things have transpired in the years since, to be sure. But so many spectacularly awesome things, too.  Things I could never have imagined on that day, even if I had gotten out of bed.  I met my husband, got married, had children and published a book.  Tonight I will celebrate, not with all-night parties fueled by gin and irresponsibility - that's kid's stuff.  Tonight I will be with my family and copious amounts of champagne, because now I am a grown up and can't get a sitter.  Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve 2000

New Year's Eve 2009

Santa's Favorite Christmas Cookies for Know-It-Alls And Their Families

Dear Reader,

This recipe comes at the request of Erin, who is visiting her family in Ohio.

Enjoy!

Santa's Favorite Christmas Cookies for Know-It-Alls And Their Families

You probably already know you will need:

4 1/2 cups of flour

3/4 cup sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

1 stick butter

1/4 tsp. each cream of tartar, baking soda and salt

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup milk (as needed)

Chocolate filling:

16 oz. milk chocolate

16 oz. semi-sweet chocolate

large can evaporated milk

1 tsp. vanilla

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar.  Sugar comes from the sugar cane and your body changes it into glucose.  Certain varieties of chicken can produce up to 300 eggs per year, but we only need three.  Beat them into the butter and sugar.  Add vanilla, which was originally harvested by the ancient Totonaco Indians of Mexico, but now either comes from Madagascar, Indonesia, Tahiti or Mexico.  If you have been to these places, provide family with points of local interest or aspects of their culture.  In a separate bowl mix together  dry ingredients including Potassium bitartrate, more commonly known as cream of tartar, which is a byproduct of winemaking.  Mix dry ingredients into wet.  Add as much milk as necessary to roll into a dough, divide in two and wrap in plastic wrap.  Put it in the refrigerator.

In the top of a double boiler mix the ingredients for the chocolate filling.  Chocolate, which comes from the Cacao tree, was disovered over 2,000 years ago in the tropical rainforests of the southern Americas.  But everybody knows that.  The chocolate chip was actually invented by Ruth Wakefield who ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts.  Massachusetts became a state on February 6th, 1788.  Steve Smith, the drummer from the band Journey, is also from Whitman, Massachusetts.

Roll the dough out to the size of a baking sheet.  Pour on the chocolate and then roll out the second piece of dough, to make the top layer - like a pie crust - and put that over the chocolate.  Brush with an egg wash - another interesting fact about eggs is that a chicken egg has about 17,000 tiny pores on its surface.  Also when you boil a duck egg, the whites turn a bluish color and the yolks reddish-orange, which is really gross.  Emu eggs range from medium green to very dark green and weigh 3/4 pound.  They are mostly yolk, and very mild in flavor.  Place in a preheated oven set to 350.  Cook for about 20-25 minutes.  Wonder where the heck everybody went.

Damn Ham For Angry Family Dinners

Dear Reader,

There are, of course, many differences between the traditional Hanukkah and Christmas feasts, but perhaps the most notable is ham.  This year my sister, who has boldly stormed out of restaurants all across this great nation and a few in Europe, and evokes the passion of Christ in her tears and tantrums to cap off the festivities, is coming to my house for dinner.  So here's something for Christmas!

Enjoy!

Damn Ham For Angry Family Dinners

You will need:

Half smoked ham

1/4 cup spicy brown mustard

1 cup brown sugar

whole cloves

3 Tbs. honey

1 can pineapple rings

Maraschino cherries

Preheat your oven to 325.  With a large knife score skin of the ham, then quickly hide knife from youngest sister who has been drinking gin all day and ranting about how someone threw away her prom dress.  Hope she does not notice that you are now decked out in the finest Jessica McClintock the early 90's had to offer.  In a sauce pot, mix together mustard, brown sugar and honey.

When brother arrives with his three perfect and perfectly annoying children, count seconds until he enters kitchen to tell you a better way to make ham.  Tell him he's a big ham and to get the hell out.  When he says to watch your language, tell him that language is inanimate and cannot be watched, stupid, and that he should watch his own kids who are now pouring candle wax on the cat.  Smear sauce over ham.

Every time Mom takes a drink, entertain yourself by sticking a clove into the ham.  Stop if you can no longer see the ham under all the cloves.  Place pineapple rings over ham and stick a cherry inside each.  Secure all over with toothpicks and stick in oven for 12 minutes per pound.

Invite Dad and his girlfriend over for drinks and a fun round of The Blame Game.  No family dinner would be complete without one good storm-out and this would be your chance!  Seize the spotlight with your tears and hoarsely wail about your thirteenth birthday party when all your presents were bought at CVS and wrapped in newspaper.  Run to the driveway, grabbing a pillow as you go just in case they throw things at you when you return, or alternately, nobody comes to get you and you have to sleep in the car to prove your point.

When ham is ready, remove from oven.  Strategically leave near Mom so she can hit Dad over the head, getting the whole business over with so you can go to bed.  If Mediator or Interventionist has arrived, bring them with you to get them on your side.

The Very Last Word About Gingerbread, I Promise

My son thought that our gingerbread house needed a neighborhood, so he made a store to go with it.

He wanted it to say, "Trade Your Unwanted Jewelry For Cash" but it wouldn't fit.

Gingerbread Part II

Dear Reader,

     I touched yesterday on the seemingly insurmountable task of making a gingerbread house in which I have been mired all week.  I'm happy to report that, with a little tweaking, I have finished the job!  Here's how it went down.
     I don't have cupboard space for a standing mixer, and my husband goes mental if there is stuff all over the counters, so every year I make gingerbread dough using a hand mixer.  And every year, I blow it out, the dough being so thick, the mixer starts to smoke and then just conks out.  But thanks to my Black and Decker Power Pro mixer, this year did not find me making a late night run to Rite Aid for a replacement.  Even through the three batches of dough needed to replace all the walls that kept breaking.
     The recipe I followed is from the original Martha Stewart Entertaining.  I adore her, but let's face it, I am no Martha Stewart.  Her recipe creates what she calls a "Gingerbread Mansion" and it is supposed to look like this:

     The first problem I encountered was evident upon removing the front piece of my mansion from the oven. 

A CRACK!

And another CRACK!

     I thought that, perhaps, the crack would improve once I put in the windows, which I did with the aid of a Google search for how to make gingerbread house windows.  I used butterscotch, and Martha should really try it, as her method of boiling sugar and pouring it onto a sheet and then affixing the windows with royal icing is not only stupidly time consuming, but downright dangerous.

Alas, the cracks were only made worse by the addition of the glass.

     So I remembered what Martha advised in the introduction to her recipe:
      "Except for the exterior shaping, a memorable gingerbread house calls for last minute decisions and spontaneous invention."
     I heeded Martha's advice and made what seemed only reasonable with all my cracked pieces.

A gingerbread crack house.

Gingerbread Hell House Part I

Dear Reader,

I am not able to write much at this time, as I have spent the past five days making gingerbread.  Way back when my children were really little, I thought it would be fun to make a gingerbread house.  If you have ever taken on this thankless and tedious and arduous task, you know what I'm talking about.  A word of warning to those of you without children, or whose children are very young:  think long and hard before initiating any activity that threatens to become tradition! Last night, at half-past midnight, my head pounding and eyes watering from inhaling noxious clouds of allspice and molasses, I had a vision wherein my daughter, now grown with children of her own, asks me to come over to make gingerbread houses with my grandchildren.  I weep as I tell you I fear I will be making these houses for the rest of my life.  The irony is that the houses I make aren't even very pretty.  Now I must rush back to the kitchen where three walls are sliding all over each other with royal icing, and I have to stand there, holding them, arms shaking, until it dries or I throw in the towel and get out the duct tape.

More on this tomorrow...