Thanksgiving in Holland 2012

A couple weeks ago, we hosted our 8th Annual Thanksgiving dinner. 31 adults and children shared a sit down dinner. The children outnumbered the adults. The food was awesome. Our potluck is a bit more involved, maybe more formal than a standard American potluck. Instead of a a buffet table, we have a seated dinner. Before that, three or four plated, passed hors d'oeuvres. This year, there was even a passed soup. Salads are assembled on site. Sides are passed from table to table. There were four pies and as many cheeses for dessert. Thanksgiving with our friends here in The Netherlands is nothing like the family Thanksgivings we had growing up. I loved that. I love this.

My job is mainly logistics. Um - chair? plates? forks? glasses? tables?! I take a lot of notes and keep them in my house binder for the following year. It includes a task calendar for the month before, week before, and day of. This year I added contact information for the butcher and the Gelderse Wijnbeurs as well as recipes that will return next year. All those notes keep me feeling a bit sane, or like sanity might be within reach.

I also cook a bit. I love pork, so we have Ribbe, Norwegian style pork belly. It's a two day process, prep the night before and then bake the day of. There are great instructions at My Little Norway. The plate under the meat is key. This dish is so good that should you accidentally have your pork ready two hours early (ahem), it will still be fabulous. A prep ahead Bourbon Gravy makes the perfect accompaniment and keeps kitchen time to a minimum when guests are waiting. A single recipe (no doubling) made more than enough for our entire group! This delicious Crispy Cream-Braised Potatoes and Fennel premiered this year. Cook the potatoes and fennel the day and pop everything in the oven just before dinner - easy peasy and yum.

Our standard dessert, the one we make every year and eat with lots and lots of whipped cream (remember this picture?), is Pumpkin Cheesecake. This recipe came into my family when I was in high school. It now holds prized place in our family cookbook and is a huge hit wherever it goes. I haven't been able to locate a copy on-line, so here it is for one and all.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

serves 12

crust (for springform pan)
1 1/4 cup (300 g) digestive cookies, crushed
2 Tbsp (30 g)butter, melted

filling
16 oz (450 g) cream cheese at room temperature
3 eggs
1 cup (225 g) sugar
1 can (425 g) pumpkin (you can also roast your own in the oven)
1/2 c (120 ml) amaretto
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon

Makes one 28cm springform pan, one 30cm fluted dish, or two 9 inch pie pans

1. Mix melted butter into crushed cookies with a fork. The mixture should be damp but not sticky. Add butter if necessary.
2. Pat mixture into bottom and sides of oiled pan. The crust should come to the top edge of either a fluted dish or pie pan. It should be about 2 cm high in a spring form pan. Set aside.
3. Beat eggs, sugar, and cream cheese until smooth.
4. Add pumpkin and spices. Beat until well combined.
5. Pour filling into pan. The filling should be just shy of the top of the crust.
6. Bake at 350 F (180 C) for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Share and enjoy!

Checking in

It seems that I've been away from this space for a while. Well, the plan is to start attending more regularly to share a bit of what we've been up to. Things are actually settling down a little bit in our lives. Kids go to bed easier and earlier. But perhaps more importantly, I promised myself to start working on me again after Pumpkin turned one. We passed that milestone a couple weeks ago, so the time is now! For now, a bit of catching up...

I've made some big changes in the way I cook - most of which involve enthusiastic use of our freezer. My research on-line turned up mostly batch cooking (meals in the freezer), up to a month at a time. That wasn't what I was looking for, so I've been working on developing my own system. The goal is to prep meal parts that I can put together to make fresh meals, but in less time. I've developed a few tricks over the past few weeks and will share more in the future.

I've also done some making. Here's a peek at a couple projects.

These bears (there are five) were made from a friend's favorite childhood sheet. It's my first foray into designing and crafting stuffed animals/pillows. The best part was Peanut helping me stuff them and telling me he was filling them with clouds.

There's an elephant costume in a drawer that never made it to a good picture. Must fix that soon - but believe me, it's fantastic. Mainly because of the little elephant wearing it!

Pumpkin got a beautiful wool dress of her very own - just in time for the weather to get really warm here in The Netherlands. It will make a wonderful vest next year. It's the Little Sister's Dress by Tora Froseth in Cascade 220. I modified the pattern successfully and must post notes on Ravelry.

I also revisited an old pattern of mine with new ideas. It's basically a drawstring backpack. Works up in a snap and made a cute handmade birthday gift. I love how much a little bit of lace added to this project. Must keep that in mind for future projects.

Beyond that - Peanut is heavy into writing. I'm trying to keep up with him. Got myself copies of The Write Start and Playful Learning in order to try to keep up with him. Pumpkin turned one. We like to say she's developing a personality. Standing up, making her wishes known, and still giggling like crazy once in a while. She and her brother have started playing together and it's wonderful to see how much fun they have.

And so life goes on - whether I'm writing about it or not. I've missed this space and this work. I'm looking forward to being around a bit more... ta!

Rhythm: Meal Planning

I'm a stay at home mom. That's five days a week full-time at home with two kiddos and all the joys, diapers, naps, spills, breaks, laughs, quite moments, hugs, and nursing that go with it. Rhythm – reading about it, learning about it, and finally trying to practice it – become a guiding principle for planning our days. We are slowly building more rhythm into our family life. One way we've done that is with a weekly dinner plan.

Actually implementing a dinner plan in our house came about after realizing that dinner planning could be loose, a pasta day, a Mexican day, and so forth. This approach limits my options just enough to inspire creativity. Within a set of parameters (it must work on a pizza crust), I get to find an interesting way to feed our family. This is the plan we are using now:

Monday: one pot meal

Tuesday: soup

Wednesday: leftovers

Thursday: pasta

Friday: pizza

Saturday: Chinese

Sunday: chicken

Within this framework, I plan a menu for the week, in pencil of course because there is a lot of readjusting! Friday pizza is a hit. We have crust and sauce recipes that are great. Making both has gotten easier every week. I made a quadruple sauce recipe to freeze for future use. Soup night has just moved to Tuesday because that's my new bakery day (German bakery around the corner – yum). Sunday chicken in the oven is always good. We usually have two days of leftovers instead of one. Recently leftovers has meant either a savory pie or ribollita.

It's a work in progress, our dinner rhythm. But even at this early stage, I find it simplifies my life and helps keep cooking more pleasure than pain. Since Papa started his new job, we start cooking when Pumpkin goes down for her afternoon nap. It's a nice part of our day together and Peanut looks forward to it. It's really something when he asks me what we're going to make for dinner. These are special moments – and learning moments for Mama. We have to eat, we love too cook, and we can enjoy it together, too. What are your tricks for feeding your family?

In other news: we should be getting a replacement dishwasher on Wednesday - hooray!

Eat: Pear Cardamon Sauce

Staying with the in-laws in September meant we got to pick pears from the same trees my husband picked from when he was a kid. Watching father and son go pear picking is just too sweet, especially because Peanut tends to stand in wooded areas and shout out with delight “we're in the forest!” Never mind that adults see a little strip of trees and bushes squished between a residential parking lot and a horse pasture. As far as Peanut's concerned, it's a forest, and he's right.

I quickly discovered that I had a bit of a problem on my hands. Say you convince your husband that taking a 2-year-old pear picking is a great way to spend an hour or so. Say they come home with a bucket full of pears. What does one do with the pears? It's a lot of pears. How about pear sauce? If apples make applesauce, pears must make pear sauce. So I gave it a shot and wow – the results were delicious! So good that they came back a couple days later with two buckets of pears.

Basically, it came down to peeling pears and putting them in a pot with a tiny bit of water, a few lemon peels (preserve color), and a few cardamon pods (my inspirational moment). They were fairly hard and took a lot longer to cook than apples, but when they were soft I ran a hand blender through it and called it quits. It would be nice to try it with a food press to get more texture. I'm also planning to cook it down a bit next time so it's less damp when it comes out of the freezer.

Pear Sauce with Cardamon

2-3 lbs pears

lemon

3 cardamon pods

Peel, core, and cut the pears into chunks. Put the pears into a good sized pot. Use a vegetable peeler to cut three thin slices of peel from the lemon. Add lemon peel and cardamon pods to pot. Cook on low heat for about an hour. Blend or mash as you wish. Cook down a bit more if you want a thicker sauce. Eat warm or cold. Freezes well.

Kitchen List

After Sunday breakfast (Eggs Benedict and good hash browns at Medici), a visit to the playground, and a trip to Hyde Park Produce, we came home to enjoy lunch and the rest of our Sunday quietly, at home. I made a list of kitchen projects for the day.

*Bread Pudding
*Bread
*Applesauce
*Freeze pancakes
*Freeze pasta

My life has changed so much over the past six months and this little list reflects back to me the changes and the accomplishments. The kitchen has become the center of my activities at home in a pretty big way and I'm more at ease there than ever. These are changes that represent something I wanted for myself and to create for Peanut as he grows up as well.

The bread pudding was a way to use up a couple left over loaves. One is homemade from late last week and the other is from the grocery store. The grocery store loaf was an attempt to give myself a break from baking, but it turned out to be a dry, unpleasant loaf of bread. I recall a few years ago searching for a perfect bread pudding recipe. Yesterday, I found some notes, decided that the eggs and milk must just be a ratio and made it up as I went. The result was a delicious bread pudding. Probably the best we've had at home.

Making bread for our family is an old dream of mine and it's slowly becoming a reality. A good recipe book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhardt, and a new KitchenAid mixer have made it easier to make bread at home. During a normal week, we eat two or three loaves. Our standard is a Swedish cafe roll recipe adapted for a loaf. It's a good heavy bread made with white, whole wheat, and rye flours as well as oatmeal and flax seeds. I like that it's full of healthy stuff as well as being delicious and fairly easy to make.

At the grocery store, I picked up six or eight pounds of bruised apples that were begging to be made into applesauce. After Mama, Papa, and Peanut snacked on them during the peeling and slicing, we had enough left for dessert and two big jars. It's going to make for delicious eating over the next couple weeks.

Finally, we had pancake leftovers from Saturday morning. Since finding a good whole wheat and honey griddlecake recipe, we usually make a double batch and keep some for snacks or breakfast. I also made up a Lamb and Eggplant Pastitio that is scrumptuous, but enough for at least six people. The leftovers sat in the refrigerator overnight, which made them perfect for cutting into squares and freezing. It will come in handy when life gets super busy around here in a couple months.

Sometimes, I get good and angry about not having time for myself or my PhD work since we've moved to Chicago. But yesterday I look at my little list and marvel at how this move has made it possible to start building a lifestyle that I've wanted for a long time. All the things on my list take half as much time now as they did a few months ago when I was just getting started. They have also become a part of our lives here. We all expect more homemade and for things to go a bit slower. It leaves more time for smiling and enjoying. Who can complain about that?

Blood and Collard Greens

December has been a busy month for this little family. In addition to the expected holiday fun, we went away for 10 days to Miami and the Dominican Republic to get some sun before the Chicago winter settles in earnest. We also got to enjoy a visit from my parents, who spoiled Peanut and myself with plenty of attention and help around the house, all while making our holiday extra-special.

Yesterday was our first semi-normal day at home and it was an adjustment. It's quiet in Hyde Park and our attempts to get out of the house to the playroom or story hour failed as both were closed. Peanut and I eventually retreated to our favorite cafe for our favorite treats, a latte for mama and a toasted bagel with cream cheese for him. Picture below is the "where's the bagel" shot taken with my iPod, so fuzzy. At home he did some painting (which really must happen more often) and mama got some time for a nap and studying while he napped.



Dinner was another adventure. One of the consequences of being spoiled is that this mama had no plans or ideas for actually cooking a meal for the three of us. Luckily, I keep emergency chinese dumplings in the freezer and also bought a bunch of collard greens in one of our grocery trips over the past week. The great discovery was that collard greens cook up as yummy as kale. I used Chinese sausage instead of bacon this time, which made for a more complex flavor and some sweetness as well, both welcome and pleasing.

While I was cooking, Peanut announced that he had an "ow." He's pretty funny about announcing his injuries and often decides they aren't bad enough to need any kind of parental attention other than acknowledgment. This time, though, he wanted me to look. To my surprise, he was not only in pain, there was blood smeared on his hand and the floor. Poor Peanut cut himself somehow and ended up getting his first band-aid. He was pleased with the band-aid at first but eventually decided it just got in the way. He then discovered that soy sauce and cuts don't go together well at all. Thus ensued a program of eating with fingers and asking us to suck on his thumb to make the soy sting go away.

So we're home an on our own again, ready for the new year and all the adventures it will bring - big or small!

No picture lavash crackers

We made Lavash crackers last night from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. They were cool enough to eat just after Peanut fell asleep. The Great Plan was to take a picture this morning once the sun came up. Impossible. We ate them all. Needless to say - a great recipe! We'll be making more again soon.

Kitchen Monday

I don't have any pictures of Peanut wet up to his knees from the massive puddles at the playground. Neither do I have pictures of his buddy who one-upped Peanut by crawling through the puddles. We do have a child who doesn't mind a shower instead of a bath nowadays, so at least the bathing before lunch scenario is a bit less traumatic now.

I do have pictures of our afternoon kitchen session, though. We got quite a bit done and had fun doing it as well. Finding ways to include Peanut in cooking without causing either a major mess (his) or a major breakdown (mine) still requires creative thinking, but we're getting better. Baking bread together involves him dumping large quantities of flour into the bowl, and creating proportionately large cloud of flour. I tried to do the mixing myself and managed to break a wooden handled spatula in the process (sigh). As soon as we figure out where we're moving next, a red KitchenAid stand mixer is coming into our lives ASAP. Breaking spatulas are a sign from the kitchen gods.

We also made musli. Our version is mainly inspired by this homemade granola recipe. We used rolled oats, flax seeds, whole almonds, sunflower seeds, honey, and raisins. The trick is to make sure it's good and toasty before taking it out of the oven. Last time, it didn't brown enough and went soft too quick. Musli is yum. Stale musli is not.

The last project was pure fun - play dough. The recipe came from a friend. Instead of using food coloring, I used the water left from boiling beets for salad last week. The dough turned out a purple/red color with a very soft consistency. It might have gotten thicker if cooked longer, but thicker dough seemed like it might put the wooden spoon in danger. The dough was a huge hit with Peanut. He spent nearly an hour standing at the counter playing with it. Well - it felt like an hour. That could mean 15 minutes in real time for a toddler mama!

This last picture is awful - but illustrative. Everything in our house, on the street, generally falling into the hands of Peanut is an instrument. Here we have play dough as violin. You never knew, did you?

Live from the Windy City

We've moved to Chicago.

This project has been in the works for quite a while and has kept me far too busy to post regularly for a while now. However, seeing as how I recently encouraged friends and family to start paying attention to this blog, it seems only appropriate to start writing again.

We'll be here for at least one year while my husband works at the University of Chicago. I'll be busy trying to find a way to combine full-time mama-hood (for now) with PhD writing and all the crafting and other things I love to do. It is going to be an interesting year.

Getting here has already been good fun. We sold our house and car in Haarlem, sold or stored all our household goods, and packed suitcases to move. Our first stop was three weeks in North Carolina. We spent most of the time recovering from the shock of our move and not enough time at all seeing friends (sorry!).

Last week we packed up a car and U-Haul trailer to drive to Chicago by way of a visit with wonderful friends in Kentucky. We arrived in a huge thunderstorm and have been busy installing ourselves in our furnished apartment in Hyde Park. Things are starting to quiet down a bit here and we're quite happy with things so far.

Now, if I can find the cable for getting the pictures off our camera - pictures next time!