I've mostly been letting everyone else do the cooking for Christmas. That was nice.

For New Year's, I am debating whether or not to make my big Polish feast. It's pretty time-consuming, but it's also pretty delicious. And might be a good way to ring in the new year and have one last hurrah before the big diet. We'll see.

If I do, this will be the menu:
Kluski with kielbasa and cabbage
Cabbage rolls
Pierogi

Just typing it out makes me hungry. The good thing about being a Pole is that we are not a wealthy people, and it wouldn't take much to make this. I have eggs, flour and potatoes, so I'd just need a pack of sausage, a head of cabbage, some sauerkraut. I think cabbage is on sale at Kroger this week.

Oh, who am I kidding? I am totally going to do it, and it's totally going to be delicious! Stay tuned for recipes, although these will definitely be Grandma's "throw a little of this in" kind of recipes.

Holiday gifts

Last year, I bought a whole bunch of Christmas bread pans at Michael's on sale and baked bread for all my coworkers for an inexpensive homemade Christmas gift. Everyone seemed to like it, but it was a lot of work.

This year, I bought Christmas mugs on sale and made everyone a little packet of mulling spices for cider or wine. People seem to have reacted well. I tried the spices in some leftover cider here at the office and they were pretty tasty. They smelled amazing. I had to buy a few spices (translation: I bought orange peel because no way was I peeling that many oranges), but it maybe cost $20 to give everyone in my office a little gift.

I wanted to share a link to the recipe. The website where I got it is chock-full of ideas for crafts and such. Which is good, because I have no idea how I will top it for next year.

Check out the recipe and then poke around the site for some great ideas. It makes a pretty big batch, but there is also a spreadsheet where you can type in what size gift you want to do and how many people and it tells you the proportions to make a batch that is just the right size. If you have kids, it would be cool to save baby food jars and fancy them up as packaging. I used ziploc bags and just put them down inside the mug.

Sometime before New Year's I am going to post my favorite Christmas recipe: the cheese spread my Aunt Rita made every year that we all missed very much until I started making it a couple of years ago.

Happy Holidays!

Holiday baking

This is my list of Christmas baking that I will start this weekend.

Am I missing anything?

For the work cookie exchange: pumpkin drop cookies with icing.

Candy: snickers fudge, potato candy, caramels

Cookies: snickerdoodles (red and green), thumbprints, chocolate chip, oatmeal scotchies, chocolate crinkles, Mexican wedding cakes, rum balls, peanut butter blossoms, cut-out cookies.

Shepherd's pie?

I made some great shepherd's pie tonight. But, I think it could be better.

Since it's great winter-time food, I am going to play around with it and see if I can come up with an even better version (think sour cream in the mashed potatoes, for example).

As soon as I have the best spinach pie ever, I will post the recipe.

I guess that gives you incentive to keep checking back, doesn't it?

I am also going to try my hand at inventing my own Christmas cookie. Did I tell you that? I'll be experimenting with that next weekend.

Coming attractions

The best thing about being on vacation and just sitting around my mom's house doing nothing but playing with my nephew is that I got to watch some Food Network and Cooking Channel today. I got some great ideas for some goodies from Giada deLaurentiis, and I got to watch 30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray. And today's topic on Rachael's show was warm-weather foods, which means yummy sandwiches (which I could hit her for calling "sammies," but other than that I love her...) and soups. So I am definitely making the grilled cheeses with watercress and the stuffed cabbage "stoup" (is it stew? soup? No one knows!). However, on her sandwich recipe, I think I am going to use chow-chow relish, because it seems like what a southern person would do. Not that I am southern, but I do live in the south and I do love southern food.

I am heading back home tomorrow, which means supper in a sack. I hate it, but since it's about to get phased out of my diet, I guess we should enjoy it while it lasts.

No idea what I'm cooking Saturday. I do know that I am going to be cleaning and starting to decorate for Christmas. I am thinking maybe take-out is in my future.

Sunday is shepherd's pie for our all-day Colin Firth movie marathon. Something English only seemed right.

Hard candy

Candy is one of those things that intimidates me. Like gravy, waffles and homemade biscuits, I just see making candy as this mountain that I can't climb armed with my culinary skills.

But tonight we got this brilliant idea to make hard candy, and it wasn't that bad. The ingredients we used were the ones from this cooks.com recipe, but we the instructions were a little different. I added my commentary in parentheses.


HARD CANDY

2/3 c. white corn syrup
2 c. sugar
1/4 c. water
1 tsp. flavoring (we used cinnamon oil)
Several drops food coloring (we used red, obviously)

Combine sugar, syrup, and water; cook until it comes to a hard ball stage or until it reaches 300 degrees on a candy thermometer. Add flavoring and food coloring. Pour into iron skillet that has been in freezer (we put it in a buttered cake pan). Cool at room temperature. Take knife handle and crack into small pieces.

Cookie exchange

I know you all come here for recipes, but do any of you have a great recipe to use for a cookie exchange? There is a prize for most original/creative, and I want to win. The "old standbys" aren't going to work for that!

Pumpkin Praline cake

I think I have mentioned this before, but if I could only have one cookbook in my kitchen and I was expected to make meals out of it every night to survive, it would be Betty Crocker's red cookbook. It was the first cookbook I owned, and still holds many of my tried-and-true, favorite recipes, including my pumpkin pies (which I was told on Thanksgiving were like what a grandma makes), my linguine with clam sauce, and a whole bunch of other yummies I am forgetting right now.

So, when I was looking for a recipe to take to my work's Thanksgiving potluck and ol' Betty e-mailed me a recipe for Pumpkin Praline Cake, I decided to give it a try.

Here is the recipe. The only change I would make is to make my own cream cheese frosting and then add the spices. I don't like the canned stuff. I also might try it as a 9X13, because the layers were a little rough to deal with.

1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1 box Betty Crocker® SuperMoist® yellow cake mix
1 cup (from 15-oz can) pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 container (1 lb) Betty Crocker® Rich & Creamy cream cheese frosting
Caramel topping, if desired
Additional coarsely chopped pecans, if desired

Heat oven to 325°F.
In 1-quart heavy saucepan, stir together butter, whipping cream and brown sugar.
Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, just until butter is melted.
Pour into 2 (9- or 8-inch) round cake pans; sprinkle evenly with 3/4 cup pecans.

In large bowl, beat cake mix, pumpkin, water, oil, eggs and 1 teaspoon of the pumpkin pie spice with electric mixer on low speed until moistened.
Beat 2 minutes on medium speed. Carefully spoon batter over pecan mixture in each pan.

Bake 43 to 45 minutes or until cake springs back when touched lightly in center. Cool 5 minutes; remove from pans to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 1 hour.

Stir remaining 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice into frosting.

To assemble cake, place 1 layer, praline side up, on serving plate. Spread with half of the frosting. Top with second layer, praline side up; spread remaining frosting to edge of layer.

Drizzle with caramel topping and additional pecans. Store loosely covered in refrigerator.