“I didn’t hear you say that. Because it isn’t possible. It’s inhuman to serve the same food, day after day. The Geneva Convention prohibits the killing of our taste buds!” Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H
Happy M*A*S*H Day!
Ok, I made that up. But today is 4/07…and that’s as close as I could get to the 4077th date-wise, but that’s good enough for me! Really, I was just looking for an excuse to make a themed meal from Secrets of the M*A*S*H Mess by Private Igor, I mean, Jeff Maxwell. We started the day with “Klinger’s Section 8 Omelet,” which included spinach, mushrooms, and salami, and was crazy delicious!
For dinner, I made “Fractured Fusilli with Balsamic-Pepper Sauce” which was a nice departure from tomato-based pasta sauces. I think it will make an especially nice, light summer dinner!
For dessert, I made “Charles’ Blueblood Berry Cake with Lemon Frosting.” It’s a classic flavor combination, and it was so delicious!
Secrets of the M*A*S*H Mess is a really fun book. I was super excited when they released a new, updated 50th anniversary edition last year, because I hadn’t been able to find it anywhere. The recipes are fun (and occasionally frightening, like the “River of Liver” and “Creamed Weenies,” both dishes actually mentioned in the show), but the real draw of the book is the letters home from Igor, behind-the-scenes tales, and cast photographs. It’s perfect for a M*A*S*H fan like me!
On this date in 2063, in Bozeman, MT, Humans will meet the Vulcans for the first time…only 39 years to go! To celebrate, today I made recipes from The Star Trek Cookbook. For dinner, we had Gagh (udon noodles mixed with paprika-seasoned beef “noodles”), with homemade Grapok sauce. I’m not well-versed enough in Klingon cuisine to know exactly what kind of gagh it was, but hopefully it was none of the types mentioned here: “Torgud gagh wiggles. Filden gagh squirms. Meshta gagh jumps…Bithool gagh has feet.”–Ezri Dax
Here’s a closer look at the Grapok sauce. It featured beet juice, with a bit of soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. It was very thick and surprisingly delicious!
I also made an Icoberry Spritzer made with a blueberry-blackberry syrup…fortunately no one here suffers from adverse effects from icoberry juice like itchy spots!
For dessert I made Kalavian Biscuits, which are kind of matcha crinkle cookies. I had to make some substitutions, so the texture was all wrong, but they still tasted good!
I really enjoyed trying some new recipes from this cookbook, and I’m already thinking about a Captain Picard Day celebration this summer!
This year, in order to take a look back at our Easter celebration, we have to back way up, to before Holy Week even began! While Bunny was home from college on spring break, I made hot cross buns, and we made the paschal candle for the year, so she wouldn’t have to miss out on everything. Unfortunately, she had to go back to school the day before Palm Sunday, so she didn’t get to join us for that (or any of the church services that followed).
Our Holy Week was pretty standard, even though we were missing having Bunny at home. We went to church on Maundy Thursday:
On Good Friday, when I wasn’t teaching school, I was working in the kitchen, chopping things and making pita bread. Ladybug helped out by baking and decorating some cupcakes for me:
And then we went to church. The service was beautiful, as was the sunset we were treated to upon leaving the building:
On Saturday, I was back at work in the kitchen, making baklava, tsoureki (a Greek Easter Bread), and prepping other various components of our Easter dinner:
I also did a little work on decorating, including pairing some linens in a new way for the kitchen island and making our napkins look like bunnies!
And then it was time for the best church service of the year, The Great Vigil of Easter!
On the way home, according to tradition, we stopped at Wendy’s for Frostys and fries, and watched Rick Steves’ European Easter.
Back to church this morning for a service filled with joy and beautiful music!
It was weird taking pictures of only four of the children. Since things were already different, I decided that instead of taking my usual pictures by the font, I’d go with the Paschal Candle as the backdrop instead:
And a picture of…the Fab Four? Nope…that just isn’t right!
Also a picture of 6/7 of our family:
I planned a special Easter breakfast this year…I finally learned how to make omelettes! So we had a made-to-order omelette bar, featuring ham and smoked salmon, dill, chives, mushrooms, bell peppers, and two kinds of cheese:
We also had mixed berries, 13(!!!!) kinds of mini donuts (Seasonal varieties included carrot cake, blueberry, peach cobbler, spring sprinkles, honey bun, strawberry shortcake, plus the standards: powdered, old fashioned, glazed, frosted, zebra, crunch, and double chocolate ), pink pineapple, and the requisite Easter candy:
Here’s a look at our completed Osterstrauß, which was the centerpiece of our buffet:
I chose a smoked salmon, dill, and mushroom omelette, and it was delicious! I also really enjoyed the pink pineapple, which I thought tasted a little bit like watermelon…it might have just been a mental thing because it looked kind of like watermelon, though!
I didn’t have a whole lot of work to do this afternoon since I had prepped so much of dinner, so I had plenty of time for setting the table while we watched the first two My Big Fat Greek Wedding movies:
My family requested gyros for dinner, so I seasoned some sizzle steak with gyros seasoning we found at the international market and cooked it in my best approximation of gyros. We had all our favorite toppings: homemade tzatziki sauce, tomatoes, onions, and feta cheese:
I decided to go full-on Greek with our dinner, including a Greek salad, spanakopita, the previously-mentioned tsoureki, and because I’m still scared of making saganaki, fried feta coated in sesame seeds. The only thing missing was dolmas (stuffed grape leaves)…maybe someday I’ll tackle those!
I’ve been thinking about doing a Greek Easter dinner for a few years, so I really enjoyed it!
In keeping with our Greek theme, we had baklava sundaes for dessert:
And I found some time to stop by and say “hi” to Zipper T. Bunny!
This was our first big holiday without all of us here, which was weird and sad, but we made the best of it, and it was still a lovely Easter!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We actually celebrated yesterday, right after we picked Bunny up for spring break. I’m so glad she could be home with us for all of our St. Patrick’s Day traditions.
We still haven’t caught the leprechaun, but this year, for the first time, we did see him!
In addition to a minty treat, he left us with Lucky Charms…this time, with dragon marshmallows!1
In keeping with the theme of the day (green), I made some matcha milk boba tea, and topped it with lavender-lemonade whipped cream:
We had our traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage, roast carrots and potatoes, and soda bread with Irish butter:
And a Guinness cake for dessert!
Tomorrow, we get to celebrate Turkey’s 21st birthday (also a day early!).
On Tuesday we had Chicago Day; yesterday was STL Day (and what a day it was, with baseball-size hail and tornados not too far from us!)! 3/14 is a day to celebrate all things St. Louis, because the city’s area code is 314 (also the first area code we had when we moved to the Dogtown neighborhood of St. Louis over two decades ago). For dinner, we had some of St. Louis’ finest…Imo’s pizza from the freezer section (the best frozen replica of a restaurant pizza we’ve had!), toasted ravioli, and Fitz’s Cardinal Cream soda. And for dessert, I made another St. Louis classic, gooey butter cake:
We still have a whole slew of special days coming up, first next week, and then on through Easter, and even beyond…stay tuned!
Yesterday, 3/12, was “Chicago Day” or “312 Day” because the original Chicago area code (the first area code for my home phone number when I was a child!) was 312. It split several times over the years (I had two additional area codes as the Chicagoland area codes continued to be exhausted), and now the city itself has more than code, just like New York and Los Angeles. Anyway, to celebrate Chicago, I made one of our favorite dinners, Chicago-style pizza, and a new dessert, Chicago-style cheesecake (which has 8 oz. more cream cheese than New York-style, making it a fluffier dessert).
And I’m not done, because tomorrow is STL Day, celebrating the 314!
It’s finally time for a look back at all of the Festive Feasts we enjoyed over the holiday season, and all the baking we did!
Let’s start with Thanksgiving, which was our traditional turkey dinner with the addition of some delicious roasted fennel this year:
And a record-tying nine pies!
Our next big holiday was Nikolaustag, and it’s become a tradition for us to enjoy Döner kebab on that day (or, as was the case this time, several days later, once Bunny got home from college). We also had a gingerbread-based dessert as has become our custom…this time, I made gingerbread bars with a cream cheese frosting that were amazing!
On Santa Lucia Day, we enjoyed lussekattes for breakfast, and potato pancakes with smoked salmon and Kielbasa for dinner (a day early), plus an cranberry-orange layer cake with rosemary for dessert:
On Christmas Eve, we had a peppermint chip cake after church:
And coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas morning:
On Christmas Day, we had the best dinner of the year, the “pick out dinner.”
And then things got kind of messed up because I hurt my back. We postponed the fancy Christmas dinner we were supposed to have on the 27th, but we did manage to have our annual hot chocolate bar on New Year’s Eve:
And I also postponed the (different) fancy dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day, but I did manage to make a gingerbread layer cake with molasses mousse filling and cinnamon whipped cream frosting, garnished with sugared cranberries:
On Ryan’s birthday (which was also Epiphany), I finally made the tenderloin that was supposed to be the star of our fancy Christmas dinner, plus s’mores pie for dessert:
Yesterday, I finally got around to the turkey dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day. We also tried a new recipe for replica Starbucks’ cranberry bliss bars for dessert. I haven’t had the original, but Bunny tells me these are even better, because they don’t have that mass-produced flavor!
Before my back injury, we spent a few days baking our favorite Christmas cookies (and I put together a Bunter Teller!):
And we did eventually get around to the sugar cookies (not the gingerbread, though…we just ran out of time, but at least we had lots of other gingerbread desserts!):
I made kinderpunsch, wassail several times (not pictured), and eggnog over the course of the holiday weeks:
And then there were lots of other festive treats spread through the holiday season, from the weekend before Thanksgiving when we made soft pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to the Valentine’s Day Funfetti Bunny made for us before she went back to school (and also my first attempt at Dampfnudeln, which were amazing!):
By my count, we ended up short one fancy meal, because normally the tenderloin wouldn’t have been available for Ryan’s birthday dinner. We were also short the gingerbread cookies and the cannoli that I had hoped to make for New Year’s Day, since I simply didn’t have the strength or energy to do much the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s. It certainly wasn’t my best effort at holiday food, but at least I hit all the highlights, right?
I decided I wanted to try something really different for Thanksgiving, so I made a pineapple pie! It’s a super easy recipe, and is really fresh and unique. I absolutely loved it, and I’ll definitely be making it again!
40 oz. crushed pineapple with juice
1 cup white sugar
6 Tbsp. cornstarch
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 pie crusts
1 egg
2 Tbsp. milk
1 Tbsp. white sugar
Preheat oven to 425.
Combine crushed pineapple with juice, 1 cup sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened, then boil for 1 minute. Cool slightly.
Line a 10-inch pie plate with crust. Beat egg and brush crust with it to prevent sogginess. Pour filling into the prepared pie dish. Cover with remaining crust; press and flute the edges to seal. Cut a few steam vents on top (or do a lattice crust as pictured), brush crust with milk and sprinkle with 1 Tbsp. sugar.
Bake until golden brown, about 35 minutes. Serve with whipped cream and flaked coconut if desired.
“And that’s how Milly and Mr. Macy started a new holiday tradition. It looked a little like the old country, and a little like America, and a little like something entirely new.”
That quote from Milly and the Macy’s Parade describes pretty well how I felt about Thanksgiving this year. Our holiday was a little different, because this is the first time we’ve had a child away from home who returned to us for the holiday celebration. It was kind of familiar and kind of new, and still lots of fun!
One thing that was different this year was that instead of having “Pie Day” on Wednesday, I started my annual pie baking on Tuesday…I made three pies that day (two s’mores, another new thing because I’ve never made two of the same pie before, and a chocolate hazelnut) plus the cranberries. I got to work on baking early so that I wouldn’t have to be in the kitchen as much once Bunny returned home on Wednesday. The other six pies (plus the stuffing) were made that day, and Bunny even had time to make the caramel apple like she usually does!
Thursday was pretty normal…we watched the Macy’s Parade (Bunny and Ladybug tied at parade bingo) and the National Dog Show and some of our favorite Thanksgiving shows that we didn’t have time for on Wednesday. Chickadee took care of folding the napkins while I set our tables:
And dinner was even ready a little earlier than I expected, which is much better than it being done later! We had a fairly standard meal…turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts, green beans with almonds, cranberries, and rolls. I also made roast fennel for the first time, and it was delicious!
Another change this year involved our Lego Winter Village set. Usually, we build it the day after Thanksgiving, but Bunny had to leave pretty early that day, so we built it after dinner. I love that it looks like it was lifted right from the Alps, and it has so many lovely details…the fireplace is especially cool!
Here’s a look at the previously-mentioned pies. The pineapple pie was the only new addition this year, and it was a good one…I will definitely be making it again!
In the evening, we also played “Chandler’s Dumb States Game” for the first time. I was the undisputed champion…all 50 states in four minutes, and my children are still wondering how I did it! Of course I also had to check in with Franklin and my Animal Crossing neighbors before the day was over:
The day after Thanksgiving started with one of my very favorite traditions…pie for breakfast!
We went to see Moose march in the town Santa Parade for the last time…Bunny was able to stay long enough to see the band, which was nice. After all these years, I can’t believe he won’t be marching in it again!
Of course we had turkey sandwiches for lunch:
And more pie for lunch dessert:
Dinner was another favorite…turkey soup:
After dinner, Chickadee and I went to the town tree lighting, which is always a nice event.
We walked through Christkindlmarkt:
And checked out the gingerbread houses on display on Main Street. There are some very creative and beautiful pieces done by some very talented artists!
Back home, we had even more pie:
Last night, we had one more leftovers meal…Thanksgiving casserole (one of the few casseroles I actually like!):
And one final round of pie for dessert:
So, our celebration was a lot the same, but a little bit different. But we were together for the holiday, and that was the most important thing of all!
