The holidays are special in part because of the memories they evoke. True memories or not we all remember something from childhood that says Christmas or Thanksgiving or whichever holiday it is to us. The things I remember and miss about childhood Christmas are midnight mass where Val would always lean over, hug me and say ‘merry Christmas’ right as mass started; she would be the first person to wish me a merry Christmas every year. I miss Christmas Eve at Karen’s mom’s; big Italian family Christmas Eve where. Christmas at Grandmom’s in Philly. Everyone gathering there, the abundance of food and the coffee chiffon cake. Whenever I think of Dad’s mom I think of that cake. The flavor, the texture and the mocha icing. This year, I wanted to try to recreate the cake for Dad. We always cook from Mom’s side of the family and we tend to see that side of the family more often, so I wanted something from Grandmom”s Christmas this year for Dad.

I started with a chiffon cake recipe. Separated the eggs (2) whipped the egg whites with a half cup of sugar (a little at a time) until they formed a nice fluffy meringue.

Next I beat one cup of a sugar, 2 1/4 cup flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt together then add in 1/3 cup oil, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and 1/2cup strong coffee. Mix really well then add two egg yolks and another 1/2 cup strong coffee.

After it is all mixed, fold in the egg white/sugar mixture. Carefully.

Pour into two 8″ pans that have been buttered and floured and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

In order to really get Grandmom’s cake I needed to also fold in about a quarter cup ground walnuts, but I didn’t have any and wasn’t totally sure about the type of nut. But, Grandmom did make the cake without nuts too, so I’m still following tradition.

Now the icing. My nemesis. I have tried for years to get this right. Grandmom showed me how to make it, Aunt Maryann sent me a recipe at one point – I never got it right. Usually the icing was just a total disaster, but I was determined to try again. I took 1/2 cup of strong coffee, 1/3 cup coco powder and mixed them together. I added one stick of unsalted butter and a pinch of salt. I mixed these until they were very well incorporated. I added a teaspoon of vanilla and then confectioners sugar. A lot of confectioners sugar. Probably a half bag of confectioners sugar which is all the sugar I had in the house. (3-4 cups more than likely) I beat, mixed and stirred until I had icing. It was a little thin (I thought) initially, but I wanted to try it.

I took a cooled cake and iced it. Then came the moment of truth … did it taste like Grandmom’s?

I thought it was perfect. Minus the nuts. But the texture, the flavor and the icing were exactly what I remember from childhood. The real test would come when Dad tried it Christmas Day. So the final verdict? Dad asked if I had a seance; it was the cake, and the icing, from Grandmom. I actually managed to get it right. I sent Dad home with the second cake.

I was also not the only one thinking about Grandmom this year. Mom made some of the almond cookies and picked up ….

a box of Andes mints. It was a very merry Christmas.

I’ll post the dinner pics later. Including the one of us eating dinner on the back patio – it was gorgeous here. Merry Christmas everyone. May you recapture a little of the magic from childhood this year.

Usually by the Solstice I am fully prepared for Christmas. I have the cards written and mailed, presents bought, wrapped and mailed and holiday baking well on its way. This year? Not so much. I haven’t looked at the boxes of cards, no presents have been wrapped or mailed yet and I have zero baking done. I’m pretty fortunate that I made it to the last day of school (in a week with a full moon) before break intact. Hopefully I will manage to get a few things done Monday, but I’m thinking New Year’s cards and presents maybe.

In our on going discussion about what has to get done around the house with two people who work full time, Bob came up with a possible partial solution to getting dinner on the table. He listens to podcasts and one had a new sponsor he thought I might want to check out. Hello Fresh takes some of the meal planning and shopping out of cooking, but still let’s you cook at home. Interesting concept, so I checked out the website and decided to give it a try. Three meals for two people, portioned out and ready to cook; quite literally everything you need to make the meal except salt, pepper, oil and the hardware. Now, I love to cook. I love to experiment with recipes, but I hate the rush of the weeknight dinner and do I have …. Did I forget … Darn it, I needed … that often goes along with it. And honestly, some days after work, I can’t think coherently enough to plan and execute dinner. So how did this go? Well, I signed up and picked three meals for the week. I got a “welcome” email and then a “your food has shipped” email and then a “was there any issue with your delivery” email. The last one included a little survey to determine if everything was ok, which I thought was a nice touch. Wednesday afternoon the box arrived.

Everything was well insulated and cold and packaged to make knowing which ingredients were for which meals very, very clear.

Everything is portioned so there is no waste (except for the box and ice packs, but no food waste.) Every meal has a recipe card with it with step by step instructions.

The cards are really nice but I do think you need a little kitchen knowledge with these. If you don’t know the difference between dice and chop and slice you may have an issue. But that wasn’t an issue for me, so I got to work last night on recipe #1 – Ginger chicken with parsnips and carrots.

I chopped everything up toasted the almonds and browned the chicken.

I sautéed the onions, ginger and garlic then added the veggies while the chicken went into the oven. Final meal took about 40 minutes, start to finish and came out …

I’m going to say, beautifully. The flavors were good, the quality of ingredients were great, the meal was easy to cook and it was as good as I could make on my own. Bonus for having everything I needed right there. Plenty of food for both of us and no leftovers to store. I have to say, I am pretty happy with this little experiment.

Gracie also got a box to play in which makes her super happy.

Today was a day for puttering; a day for relaxing and just doing things I want to do, not that I have to do. So Mom and I met up early and headed to the nursery to find some flowers. I wanted something in reds and white for the holidays, which proved a little more difficult than I anticipated. There were some beautiful blood red velvet petunias, but not enough to do the front garden. But they were gorgeous so I picked them up for the back patio.

The pictures don’t do these justice, because they are just a deep, deep red and a perfect color for Christmas.

For the front we went with begonias. White and red begonias with beautiful green leaves. We moved the bougainvillea to the back so it can get sun since Bob doesn’t want the tree on the side taken out (more on that in a second) and then alternated the begonias.

My hope is that these will grow together and blanket the front garden.

But the bougainvillea. My poor, poor plant. I bought it a few years ago because I though it was so beautiful. Variegated leaves and salmon flowers. So stunning, but it never did well in the front. And I didn’t want to add pots to the back so we kept it in the front and just hoped. Well … I finally found a pot I wanted to actually have in the back.

I still can’t describe the color exactly, but the blue is just stunning. Mom and I saw it as soon as we pulled into the nursery and that was it – this was the pot for the bougainvillea. So … We picked it up and replanted it in the back. It get lots and lots of sun so my hope is that by the summer it will bloom.

On the food front, I think I mentioned the pulled pork last post. I woke up Sunday really wanting pulled pork for some reason. So I hit the store and picked up a half picnic. I cut it in half (since there are only two of us) and seared it

with cayenne pepper and chili powder. Nothing else, just those two. After it was seared I added a bottle of hard cider and a cup of vegetable broth. Into a 250 degree oven for three hours (covered). In the meantime, I made up a batch of grandmom’s BBQ sauce

and some focaccia rolls.

I wanted to do something a little special for them so I added some fried shallots to the top before baking them.

To balance this just a little I made an apple, cucumber and celery slaw – just those three ingredients with salt, lemon and a lint bit of white balsamic vinegar.

the final result …

This was one of my best pulled pork sandwiches ever. I’m not exactly sure why, but this is what happens when you don’t write down what you do.

Happy Fourth of July! I am finally finished with the house painting! Bob sanded the bookcase today so I can work on that and get the front room totally done. Also waiting for the new bed set to come in to finish up the master bedroom. Good news – I love the way everything came out and don’t feel the need to move. Oh – I had some very cute helpers with the painting:

On the food front I went for a few experiments. I made a braised pork that was ok. Braised in red wine and beef broth, but still only ok. Not much different than my usual apple cider braise and more work. But the side dish … Lemon curried corn cakes.

I got the basic recipe from the FoodNetwork website but of course didn’t follow it. I made the paste, but wasn’t sure if the lemon was juice and zest or just zest … so I used both and figured that probably was wrong when the paste was more marinade. But I went with it. I had some pretty corn in my veggie basket so I took the kernels from those three ears and used them.

I also added grated yellow squash (drained) since I had it one hand. And I didn’t have shallots so I improvised with chopped onion and garlic. This, of course, meant I had to add more flour to the mix, which was just fine. I also added a hot pepper mix in place of regular pepper to up the spice. The end result was really really good. They don’t look pretty but they have a ton of flavor and it’s not a profile I use (ever) so it was also a nice change of pace.

Best part is I have about half the mix left so I can freeze it and make them again without having to make them again.

But the oh-this-is-dangerous part of my day came after Val sent me a link and said “how about these?” How can I resist a new dessert? So … I made the graham crackers

with my Winnie the Pooh cookie cutters since they are pretty much the only ones I have. Then moved on to the marshmallow fluff. Let me just say this is really, really sticky stuff. I should know that anything that calls for a bottle of corn syrup is going to be sticky, but somehow I always forget.

Getting everything put together was the tricky part. I did manage to pipe the fluff onto the cookies, but … well … by the time I finished they were already oozing.

But they did look cute, and after they were a little frozen I was able to push them back together a little and then dip them in the chocolate – which I should have heated a little more and probably added a little corn syrup to as it got thick really fast.

They are dangerously good. Seriously good. I’m not even sure there will be any left when Val gets in town tomorrow. Possibly new favorite dessert … Although it is hard to beat vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream.