Darienne

Here it is, December 22, the days are getting longer again...and just a few days to Christmas, that other time of year when all the goodies you might ever want to eat are being made and eaten. Who has a good strategy for getting through it all without putting back pounds or saying 'no' to everything?

Potato Latkes. My favorite of all time. First had them at my Bubbi's house when I was 7 years old. We will be having them very soon here. Followed in a day or so by Luchen Kugel. Heaven on earth. Oh, for a Montreal bagel to go with it all.

I suppose that problems arise in traveling because of the area you may be traveling in. We travel across the USA twice a year and it works out quite well for us, even with two large dogs. We start out with certain foods...we can't take any meat across the USA border...salmon, container of homemade hummus, and go from there. On the other hand, we have decided not to eat at certain 'useful' salad-providing chains anymore for political reasons which has added to the problem. But along the routes there are grocery chains which mean salad bars or made salads or salad fixing, augmented by tortillas, red salmon, hummus, etc. A plastic bag with pecans and 70% chocolate discs for desperate munchings. Breakfasts are granola for DH with yoghurt in our plug-in cooler and a shake for me using powdred protein isolate and my BlenderBottle (such a neat utensil). It's not exciting, but the chocolate and pecans help a lot and we don't a) get sick or oogy, and b) don't snack on calorie-laden 'crap'. But that's by land and in the USA. And really the above was our last year's resolution which we kept this November totally! First time. I'll get back with a new one...perhaps. Not this week.

Navajo Fried Bread. Get it once a year. Yummm.

Using for the first time this year was the Buddha's Hand citron. I had known about them for a few years but our trips to the Southwest were never in the season. Bought one in Albuquerque. Candied the flesh. Baked some of it into Shortbread cookies. Still have the syrup and next thing will be to try and turn the syrup into hard candies. Otherwise, the rest of the syrup will travel home with us.

We are sharing Christmas dinner with a friend and his cousin far from home. We are far from home, that is. Ed is making his traditional French Canadian Tortiere...for for the dinner and one for the Christmas Eve Potluck...and I am making a Lemon Cream Cheese pie with Chocolate ganache topping (finally found the recipe). I'll bring Brussels Sprouts and I'll be the only one eating them. The other two will be making whatever they decide to make. Going to attempt some small candies using the Buddha's Hand syrup.

I'm wondering it I can cook it to hard candy stage. I think I'll try it.

Delighted to say that I finally found the soft pieces of candied Buddha's Hand which I thought were lost. And made another batch of the Orange Peel Cookies and they are tremendous. Now what to do with all that wonderful syrup?

Made some cookies, Chocolate-dipped orange peel cookies from Use Real Butter, subbing the candied Buddha's Hand bits for the orange peel. Absolutely delicious. Except for the candied citron pieces. Cut every piece one by one into little bits to make sure each was soft enough, but the baking seems to have undone all my hard work and there were just too many hard bits in them. We aer eating around the bits. Decorated them with chocolate ganache swirls anyway and the photos of the cookies are lost somewhere in my picture albums which I can't seen to control anymore. Arrghh. (I don't have a love/hate relationship with my computer...it's more like a despair/madness relationship. I'll make these cookies again, but with candied lemon peel I think. Bought my one Buddha's Hand and that will be that. I still have all the wonderful syrup.

Thank you KayB. Just might try that one. No, I am not wedded to the egg. Whipping a couple of things together and sticking them in the fridge sounds pretty good sometimes. Yes, do try the chocolate. The lemon and the chocolate complement each other beautifully.

Hi PanaCan, I looked through the offerings at Amazon.com this morning to see if I could spot the book but the older books on cheese, which this is, mostly had 'no image available', so that was a no go. Lots of old cookbooks have the same title: The Complete Cheese Cookbook, The Cheese Cookbook. It's one of those and I can't recall ever looking at the author's name. I've had it forever. Probably purchased second hand somewhere. It's a quite thin hardback, tall and wide, ochre coloured edges. Like a thousand other nondescript old cookbooks. No colored photos (I think.) I normally have the recipe with me, but this time I forgot about it. Still it's hardly the end of the civilized world as we know it. I am not without many resources. It's just that, well, you know, you decide what you want to make in some emotional response...and then you can't find the recipe or get the ingredients or whatever. Thanks for your offer.

Not the same, but sounds as if it might work very well. Thanks for your trouble.

My experience in free-form baking is very limited and I would like to make my traditional Christmas pie for guests this year. The recipe is from a very old cheese cookbook and this book is currently 2,000 miles away. I've looked up a number of recipes online but none of them use enough lemon juice to make the pie interesting. They all seem to call for 2 T of juice only. Phooey. This isn't something I am comfortable fooling around with. Oh, then I always top the pie with a bittersweet chocolate ganache. Delicious. What do I recall? 9 oz of cream cheese (inconvenient), one egg only, either 1/4 or 1/3 cup lemon juice, lemon zest and then flour, sugar, butter (I think), vanilla, ??? And it's set in a cracker crumb crust which I'll have no problem with. Can anyone help me to reconstruct this or a similar lemon cream cheese pie. The salient detail is the larger amount of lemon juice and also zest. Thanks so much. (I'd settle for two eggs, etc)

Looks delicious, Xilimmns. No photo here of last night's "Dessert as Dinner" mostly because it looked a tad like a dog's dinner...but was a great success. Mark Bittman's Free Form Apple or Pear Tart. Biggest problem making it was finding a suitable apple in Moab. The produce manager said: Use Rome apples. They were really uninteresting. Friend said: Use Honeycrisps. Ditto for taste. So bought Granny Smiths and they were fine. Miss Spies from home. But on the other hand...red cliffs, blue skies, sun and low humidity. No contest. We ate said pie with 5-year aged Cheddar brought from Ontario. Strange that in his recipe, Bittman makes no suggestion of eating the tart with cheese...

Lovely, Rwood.

Could you try to describe what camel milk tastes like...although it is very hard to 'describe' taste.

Hi Ilana, How wonderful for you all especially in a country which is so beset by bombs from those who choose to define themselves as enemies. Do write as much as you can about the Bedouin culture. We all need to understand and appreciate each other better. (Don't mean to sound preachy, but my words have just come out that way.)

I've been monitoring this topic, hoping for some input from an experienced ice-cream-butter-user. I'd never heard of using butter in ice cream although I might try it in my next batch...not for some time however...mu ice cream churner is 2000 miles away. Sounds interesting and I hope that someone who has tried it will come forth. My usual recipe is half&half, (milk), cornstarch, sugar, invert sugar, salt and whatevers in flavors and inclusions.

DH is with the Ambassador. I'm with you at this point, although I'm not crazy about fonts with serifs. That may be my old eyes... I do like the large caps with the much smaller miniscules. What font is that, please?

Great advice. Cbread is correct. We have two fonts on our own stuff, a fancy and a very plain for the contact info. Cbread has a good eye. And about the lid too. I remember when we were using a font with a horrible capital "I" and "J". I substituted those caps from another similar font which was legible and very similar. Worked well, but it was just one too many things to deal with. Picked a new font completely in the end. Good luck. It is all looking very good.

Sounds like something to try soon. I get a bit unhinged by trying new things under deadlines.

Didn't know where to put this tip, a tip which all the rest of you out there may already know. Getting the chopped nuts to stick well to the chocolate has been a problem at times for me and DH came up with a solution last night when the chocolate was already to set to receive the nuts. Put the pan under the broiler for a few minutes...keeping a sharp eye on it at all times...and the chocolate will remelt and accept the nuts big time. Thanks, DH.

Hooray for the talented...and courageous...Lior!

Thinking it over from a quiet perspective, I realize that ScoopW and Lisa Shock were on the mark. It would have been less work simply to make larger batches on the stove than smaller in the microwave. However, that would have necessitated somewhere to spread the brittle out and this I do not have away from home. I'm now making on the stove arger batches of Buttercrunch toffee...2.75 finished product per batch...and completed two batches lickety-split. Each batch spreads to only one half-sheet and this I can accommodate. Still next time, I'll bring a second sheet with me if I plan to make lots of brittle.

Ditto from me. And I would be thrilled to have a good persimmon ice cream recipe.