Growing up Jewish, you’d think I never had occasion to bake Christmas cookies with an elder. Not so! My mother and I used to bake all sorts of shaped cookies; she had a special recipe and made her own icing, cutting the tips from plastic baggies to frost the cookies. I’m hungry to continue the tradition with my new family. Gary and I picked out some large copper cookie cutters from Chef Central: a sleigh , a gingerbread man , a nutcracker , a train, and a car with a Christmas tree on top (my favorite), as well as a set of twelve copper cutters in a smaller size. I’ve tried several recipes, even fashioning one myself out of two that looked promising, with varying results. The recipe I created rolled out perfectly, but tasted way too floury. I also made them too thick, with the resulting cookies resembling Mongo from Shrek . Going back to an old standby, I tried Cook’s Country’s Best Christmas Cookies. The sour cream adds a discernible delicious tang that wasn’t present in the other cookies. However, you must remember to keep the dough cold, otherwise it gets too darn sticky. When I made these at my sister-in-law’s house on Christmas Eve, I worked with a floured marble work surface and marble rolling pin, even with these however, the dough got too warm too fast (their thermostat is set at 70˚). I did not have access to parchment paper, it’s what I’ll be working with when I try these at home. Read more…

Ever since I first had Guinness stew at The Ginger Man I’ve wanted to know how to make it. Recently I’ve pursued this goal in earnest, and I’ve come close enough to invite some friends over for a tasting. With the stew we’ll be serving fresh bread made with beer and gruyére cheese (baked by my lovely and talented wife, Lysa), and of course Guinness Draught. To help pique the anticipation of tomorrow’s dinner, I’m posting an image of a recipe test I did this week. The Ginger Man version I’ll be attempting has much more liquid, but the ingredients won’t change; the test version was also a bit light on the beer as Lysa favors Guinness not so much as I.

Nearing the close of our first year in our new house, we’ve grown a bit wiser in the ways of energy costs, so when the time came to purchase holiday decorations, I didn’t hesitate to get something I’ve been wanting for some time: LED Christmas lights. Whereas the traditional strings of 50 mini lights consume 20-25 watts and last roughly 2,500 hours, our strings of 60 LED lights consume only one watt and should last for 50,000 hours. In fact, because our indoor tree is not near an electric outlet, we will be using only LED lights this year: our white Christmas shall be green. I’d like to eventually add more lights, but so far we have two strings of 60 LED lights along the top of our porch, and two strings of 60 pine cone LED lights around the tree. Lysa has mentioned that she likes those animated deer lights, but I’m not sure that’s the direction we want; I’m finding it tough to fight the urge to string enough lights to blind passing planes. One thing that I hadn’t realized until after stringing up the lights and viewing them from down the street– LED lights produce brighter, more intense color than minis.