bethsblog

May The Joys of the Season be Yours!

Merry Merry Gingerbread!

A few days before Christmas I always make gingerbread cookies; cozily alone in my kitchen, my favorite holiday CDs playing on the stereo. Mom's classic recipe, just the right combination of butter, flour, sugar and molasses makes the best gingerbread cookies in the whole wide world.

She always cut the cookies out in bird shapes—Danish Ginger-Birds she called them, then she'd decorate each cookie— carefully outlining the bird's silhouette with a thin ribbon of pure white icing, embellishing it with a few tail and feathers, finally dotting a tiny white "eye".

 

Danish Gingerbread Cookies – Libby Peterson
Makes 6-8 dozen
(Have all the ingredients at room temperature.) 

½ cup (1 stick) very soft, Land O’ Lakes unsalted butter
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup packed light brown sugar
1/6 cup (2T. plus 1½ tsp.) Grandma’s Original Unsulphured Molasses
⅓ cup light corn syrup
2¼ cups sifted, all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. ground ginger
¼ tsp. ground cloves

Place the butter in a large bowl. With an electric mixer, cream the butter with the sugars. Add the molasses and corn syrup and beat the mixture until light and fluffy.

Sift the flour into measuring cups and level it with the flat blade of a knife. Place the flour with the rest of the dry ingredients in a small bowl and whisk until well-combined. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in a couple batches, stirring by hand after each addition. When the dough is thoroughly combined (it will be dry and lumpy) dump it onto your counter top or pastry board and gather it together as if you were packing a snowball. Knead the dough until smooth. Divide it into 3 portions. Form each portion into a patty about 1" thick. Wrap each patty in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until the dough is firm.

When ready to roll out the dough, remove the patties from the refrigerator, and let them stand at room temperature for 10-15 minutes until they warm slightly.

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Unwrap one patty; between floured hands begin flattening it into a larger circle, taking care not to split the edges of the dough. Place the circle of dough on a floured pastry board or counter top. Working quickly, so the dough stays fairly cold, roll the dough with a floured rolling pin into a large circle, ⅛" thick. Lift the dough frequently and sprinkle additional flour beneath it as it expands, to keep it from sticking to the work surface. Cut the dough with floured cookie cutters and transfer the cut-outs carefully to cookie sheets that have been lined with parchment paper.

Gather the dough scraps into a ball, flatten the ball into a patty, then roll and cut out cookies as before. If the dough becomes too soft to work with, return it to the refrigerator until it firms up. Repeat the rolling/cutting procedure with the other two dough patties. When you have completed two roll-outs of each dough patty, combine all the scraps together for a final rolling, until the dough is gone.

Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for 7-9 minutes or until they are just starting to brown at the edges. Cool the cookies on the sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer them to wire racks. They will crisp as they cool. Decorate the cookies with “Royal Icing,” below.

Royal Icing

2 T. meringue powder (available in cake decorating departments of larger grocery stores)
4 T. cold water
2-3 cups powdered sugar
a pastry bag fitted with a small decorating tip

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the meringue power with the water until soft peaks form.

Beat in the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, until the proper consistency is attained—thick enough to hold peaks but still soft enough to put through a small decorating tip. (You may add a little more water or powdered sugar to adjust the consistency.)

Beat the icing on high for 5 minutes.

Decorate the cookies and place them on a clean surface to dry. Let the frosting set for several hours until completely hardened.

Store the cookies airtight, stacked between layers of wax paper.

This wonderful recipe is from Beth Spencer's 

Pea Soup: Recipes for Body, Mind, and Spirit from a
"Kitchen Table Gourmet " 

A beautiful, 116 page cookbook, chock-full of delicious,

wholesome recipes 

you can wrap your mouth around and savor;

appetizers to desserts and everything in between.

Bon Appetit!

What's this blog about anyway?

I got an email from a friend yesterday. He noted that my blog has mostly been about food lately: "I think there’s now more food in your blog than “philosophy.” True. So for those of you who read bethsblog, I hope that's not too annoying. I mean, I've been all over the place with my writing for the past 3 years. Not much philosophy, really, but grandparenting, travel, foot and knee surgery, art, anxiety, religion... all the things that interest me or that have been thrown at me have been post material.

But what's with this food and body image fascination? Two cookbooks in one year*... a period of food fixation that put the final nails in the coffin of my eating disordered past... probably not what anyone wanted to hear about, I mean, you'd probably rather I post tips on how to lose those pesky 10 lbs., but I can't help but write about the things that fill my heart and mind with such joy. I'm well. I'm free. I cook. I eat. I thrive.

One of the great things about a blog is just that... it’s a "blog," short for "web log" an online, up close and personal journal. A blog changes and grows with its author. Flexibility and immediacy are the appeal. Plus the informality. And the ability to get into a little more depth than a “Tweet” or a Facebook post allow.

For 2012, I can't say how bethsblog will go... but for now, food and healthy body image is very much on my plate. Check out these pages, Let's Eat, if the topic interests you. Now I have to go get something out of the oven.

 

*links to my cookbooks, Pea Soup and Turtle Soup (gluten free), are in the sidebar.

"leo's locomotive" - part 5

Nothing like a good afternoon with the paint brushes:

To see all my images of this work in progress, click here.

Sticky Rolls

I made a batch of these sweet, buttery sticky buns yesterday, wrapped them in foil, and popped them the freezer until Christmas Morning. But before they went into hibernation for a couple weeks, Gary and I couldn't resist sampling one. They're truly heaven on a plate!

Ready to bake:

All done and turned out of the pan:

Yum!

The "Sticky Rolls" recipe is from my cookbook Pea Soup: Recipes for Body, Mind, and Spirit from a "Kitchen Table Gourmet, which includes recipes for all the delicious goodies that I bake every year. It just wouldn't be right not to...

Chocolate Chip Macaroons

These are a holiday family favorite, and so easy:

Chocolate Chip Macaroons
Makes about 6 dozen

14 oz. sweetened condensed milk
2 tsp. vanilla
14 oz. Baker's Angel Flake coconut
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325° F.

In a small bowl, combine the milk and the vanilla.

In a large bowl, combine the coconut and the chocolate chips.

Pour the milk mixture over the coconut mixture and stir with a fork until well-combined.

Drop the mixture by heaping teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheets that have been lined with parchment paper. 

Press each macaroon together a little with dampened fingers.

Bake the macaroons, one cookie sheet at a time, for 11-13 minutes until they are golden-brown at the edges.

Remove the parchment paper with the macaroons still attached, to a counter top to cool. The macaroons will firm up as they cool.

When the macaroons are completely cool, peel them off the
parchment paper and store them in an airtight container between layers of waxed paper.

They will keep for several weeks in the freezer.

This wonderful recipe is from Beth Spencer's 

Pea Soup: Recipes for Body, Mind, and Spirit from a
"Kitchen Table Gourmet " 

A beautiful, 116 page cookbook, chock-full of delicious,
wholesome recipes
you can wrap your mouth around and savor;
appetizers to desserts and everything in between.

 

Reinventing Christmas

This year Christmas is going to be a little different. For the first time in 16 years, instead of the whole family coming to us for the holiday, we’ll be celebrating at my daughter’s, on the other side of the state. Last spring, they moved into a bigger house with plenty of room for entertaining... the grandkids have been clamoring to have their presents under their own tree and Santa bounding down their own chimney. I must admit that in spite of feeling relieved of a huge load of responsibility, I’m feeling a little melancholy too. I’m sure it will be a wonderful Christmas. My daughter and her family are warm and welcoming and fun. We are happy to be invited and included... she wouldn’t want it any other way.

And I vividly remember the year we decided that it was just too much hassle to haul our 2 kids and all their loot the 8 hours to my parent’s house... the year we invited them to come to us instead. My mom didn’t mention the melancholy that sets in when you face yet another change to Christmas The Way It’s Always Been... and with her tendency toward depression, I’m sure she felt it.

I didn’t even want to put up the tree this year. All that decorating and for who? Just the two of us? The boxes of decorations sat in the living room, staring at me for a week. Yesterday, Gary talked me into it. He, who never cared much about Christmas in the early years of our marriage—he, who barely tolerated my Christmas obsession, my need to get the house decorated on the Sunday after Thanksgiving—he knew just what I needed. He made me do it. We put up our tree. Decked the halls. Listened to Christmas music all day. And talked about how to reinvent Christmas, in our empty, cozy nest.

The year our first grandchild was born, our oldest daughter put the kibosh on adult Christmas stockings. “Now that we have a child of our own let's just do stockings for kids,” she announced. So I wistfully put that tradition away. I had spent years joyously filling stocking for my daughters, and when my son-in-law joined the family, I did the same for him. And for years our kids delighted in filling stockings for us. Two little red ones labeled “Mom” and “Dad” hung between the kids’ stockings... stockings that I needle-pointed for them when they were babies.

I always saved the Stocking Stuffer Shopping Expedition for the week before Christmas, and I’d find all kinds of tiny treasures with which to fill them, lip balm, little bottles of scented lotion, goofy toys, a sparkly pencil, a pair of earrings, silly Christmas socks, a candy cane, a tangerine, a chocolate Santa, and always a package of thank you notes (to remind them to write them).

Anyway, while unpacking the various boxes of decorations, I found Gary’s and my stockings... right where I put them 4 years ago. And I hung them by the fireplace. Got a little teary-eyed. Then I turned to him and asked, “How about we do stockings for each other this year?” “Of course we can,” he replied. (My one stipulation—don’t fill my stocking with cheap junk from the dollar store, like that year you got me blue bubble bath that turned me the color of a Smurf!)

Then I put the Christmas table cloth and centerpiece on the dining room table and planted red candles in the poinsettia-shaped candle holders. I thought... we should have our own quiet, candle-lit dinner the weekend before we travel to our daughter’s. Maybe invite a couple over to share it with us. Gary asked, “Will you make lasagna?” (I have always wanted to make lasagna for Christmas dinner.) Then I called my sister. Asked if she and her husband would like to join us.

She’s bringing the salad.

 

 

 

 

Turtle Soup: Review

Today, Raman Prasad at SCD Recipes, posted a terrific review of my new cookbook, Turtle Soup: Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet^TM from an SCD Mom. He has been so supportive through the whole process, from way back almost 4 years ago when my daughter, Amy, and I first learned about the SCD, through the publication of Turtle Soup this past November. He even read my manuscript and made some very helpful suggestions during the final editing process.

Many thanks Raman!

Women's Lifestyle Northshore: Pea Soup

There's a nice article this month in Woman's Lifestyle Northshore. It's all about my Pea Soup cookbook and my journey toward a healthy relationship to food and body image. (Page 14-15.)