Christmas cooking thread

by: desmoinesdem

Fri Dec 25, 2009 at 07:15:32 AM PST

I got a kick out of this cartoon by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune: a Christmas card from the Republicans (NOel).

What's cooking at your house today? If you missed it last week, read AAF's amazing diary about Christmas dinner in Provence.

I'm not that ambitious, but the kids helped me make gingerbread yesterday. I use the recipe from the Laurel's Kitchen cookbook: 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp salt in one bowl. 1 egg, 2/3 cup blackstrap molasses, 1/3 cup honey, 1 cup buttermilk (or kefir), 1/3 cup melted butter mixed in another bowl. Combine wet and dry ingredients, pour into greased 9 x 9 pan and bake at 350 F for about 40 minutes (a few minutes less in my oven).

My husband used to request noodle kugel every Christmas, but I just made that last week for Chanukah, so tonight we're having roast chicken instead. After the jump I posted my noodle kugel recipe, adapted from my mother's to include more protein and less fat and sugar.

UPDATE: Kids came in from playing out in the snow and requested popcorn. So that's popping up in grapeseed oil on the stove, to be served with melted butter. Mmmm!

The New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show

by: Eddie C

Thu Nov 26, 2009 at 07:49:26 AM PST

Next Wednesday the most famous Christmas Tree In New York City lights up where there was once a Botanical Gardens. Up in the Bronx at the New York Botanical Garden it is already beginning to look a lot like Christmas. On Saturday The Eighteenth Annual Holiday Train Show pulled into town and you can enjoy the delights of a miniature Rockefeller Center Christmas tree already at this favorite for children of all ages.

The star of this New York holiday favorite may seem like the model railway trains chugging through a glass house but children also get to experience the architecture of New York, past and present. Children are inspired by handmade art that is created from plant materials such as bark, moss, twigs, berries, and pine cones.

Below the fold is a photographic guide from start to finish of this year's Holiday Train Show for your children to enjoy and a few old New York stories for you. It's a family outing that definitely has GreenRoots.  

A Merry Christmas from New York City (a photo diary)

by: Eddie C

Thu Dec 25, 2008 at 07:20:28 AM PST

I really don't have much of a clue what Christmas is like in other places in this nation. I travel but I've never been out of town during the holiday season. I'm sure that many of the good things about the season are the same, the giving nature that the season brings on is universal. But I am very fond of the New York sights and sounds. So I'll share a few photos from here.

Of course Rockefeller Center is the most familiar.

But there are a few other things to see in the big city.

I'm going to start off with something that I think is unique to New York and I hope you have time to fill the comment area with Christmas traditions that you find unique to your area.

Christmas, in my neck of the woods.

by: Asinus Asinum Fricat

Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 10:30:43 AM PST