Holiday Baking...

My mom loathes baking. I think it's from years of forced holiday cookies, breads, pies, etc.

I'm the opposite and love the holiday baking season. It's all the puttering...just makes me happy.

Admittedly, amongst the shopping, wrapping, decorating and eating, not everyone may have the time for mass cookie production. Here's the easiest cookie recipe ever that has never failed to impress a single soul who's benefited from their buttery goodness...

Whipped Shortbread

1 cup room temperature salted butter
1.5 cups all purpose flour
0.5 cups icing sugar/confectioners sugar
0.5 tsp vanilla
maraschino cherries

Cream your butter into a bowl. Mix vanilla in.
In separate bowl, whisk your flour and sugar together.
Add dry mixture into the butter in 0.5 cup batches and cream all together.
When mostly mixed, use hand mixer on low to whip.
Keep whipping. Keep on whipping for about 5 minutes (trust me...really).
Drop by the teaspoon onto a cookie sheet and top with a 1/4 of a cherry for color.

Bake at 350 for about 8-10 minutes until lightly browned.

Easy!

Happy holidays all!

Getting the Most of your Local Produce

There were a couple of great articles on AZ Central this morning. The first was a quick article with Chef Payton Curry of Caffe Boa on how to best navigate a Farmer's Market and shop for fresh produce.

http://www.azcentral.com/style/hfe/food/articles/2009/11/02/20091102shopchef.html

The other was a very convenient listing of all our local markets and their hours.

http://www.azcentral.com/style/hfe/food/articles/2009/11/02/20091102shopcheflist.html

This may bode well for still coming up with a last minute rhubarb pie.

The Brilliance of Dessert on a Stick

If it's on a stick, it's got to be good right? (Deep fried, even better).

The experimental apple pie pops resulted from the great rhubarb crisis of October '09. I've never made an apple pie and experimenting with a lollipop form seemed to be a great way to cover up that deficiency. The end result was proclaimed as brilliant at work (though I felt my filling was a bit too sweet).

The fast and easy version: makes about 20 pops.

1 package pie crust (two sheets)
pie filling of your choice
1 egg white
20 cookie sticks

Preheat oven to 375
Cut out circles in your pie dough (I used a 2 inch glass)
Place circles on parchment papered cookie sheet
Add sticks to each circle (more than 1/2 way up)
Add about a teaspoon of filling to each circle over stick
Press top circle onto each (I used a spare stick to make cool crimpy lines)
Brush all with egg white for shiny texture

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until tops are browned.

Let cool and enjoy.

If I were a more technologically advanced person, I would have had photos for you all.

Happy munchings!

What happened to all the rhubarb?

My little personal monthly challenge is continuing well, though I don't think I've ever spent so much on chicken before. Rosy is certainly a pricey bird. And I'm enjoying my more frequent excursions to Whole Foods and Sprouts where it is much easier to find grass fed, cage free, etc.

To add to my grocery challenges of this month, I have a double birthday to contend with. And one is not so much into the birthday cake thing. In fact, his favorite thing is rhubarb pie. (Really, it might be gooseberry, but there's a snowballs chance in hell of finding one of those in Arizona.).

Have you tried to find fresh rhubarb lately? I remember seeing it everywhere last Fall. This year, produce managers everywhere are whimpering about some California happenstance wiping out the early and mid season rhubarb harvest.

Where does that leave my pie adventures? I can always go with a nice solid apple, for who doesn't like apple? I can go high end with pears and cranberries. Or the iffy cream pie route with a key lime (for some reason, dozens of those suddenly made themselves available).

So, what's the pie equivalent of a straight up rhubarb?

This Month's Personal Food Challenge

So, by now most people have figured out that ocean conservation is a subject dear to my heart and I'm a big supporter of the Seafood Watch program.

A couple of nights ago, while out grocery shopping for dinner (Stone Crab claws with tarragon butter) I was pondering steaks, chicken and the like and realized that it's very unfair for me to be discriminatory in my choices of protein. What makes fish more necessary to be sustainable than cows and poultry? This whole thought was rounded out by Borders giant display of vegetarian cookbooks all supporting the ideal of a Meatless Monday. I don't think I need to go that far though. So, for this month, I'm going to see if I can enact a lifestyle change with the following rules:

1. Meat (chicken, beef, pork, seafood, turkey) must be from sustainable sources, free range, grass fed, etc.

2. The only bread I'm eating will be that baked by me...or a friend who so happens to have a bread maker.

3. No pre-made, frozen or packaged meals.

4. No fast foods that don't follow rule number 1 (thankfully there's Chipotle).

5. Try to make a weekly trip to the Farmer's Market for vegetables and beef.

So, there's a simple start with five things to follow. We'll see how it goes. In the end, if I get totally frustrated with natural meat shopping - there's always sweet potatoes.

Happy munchings all!

A Carnivore's Dilemma

So, I know I'm not really a true carnivore, but coming from a province that really was the equivilent of Texas in Canada, I've been finding it really challenging to cut down on my protien intake.

Cutting down on red meats is not too much of a challenge - grass fed, all natural tends to price itself out of a regular meal fairly easily. Chicken, turkey and seafood leave an awful lot of options after that though.

Challenge for this week - can I cut down on meat to only one meal each day?

Do crustaceans count?

The State of Seafood Report

Just out today is Monterey Bay's "The State of Seafood" Report.

I really recommend a skim through it for anyone even vaguely interested in conservation or seafood. For all of us who do the dorky thing and pull out our wallet inserts in every grocery store, spend an embarrassing evening not quizzing a new date but the waiter instead on the sources of their main dishes - it's a brilliant document that reassures you that your dorkiness is absolutely necessary.

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/report/