I hope that you've had a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate that.  I hope that you've had a wonderful rest otherwise.  My rest is truly beginning now that all of the Christmas obligations are done.  Christmas itself was wonderful - lots of food, lots of laughs, lots of family.  Exactly what it should be I guess.  The kids are happy, we haven't had any returns to make, we had power outside of the 36 hrs that we didn't and in general we are thankful and content.  My uniform for the next week will be yoga pants and tee shirt - when I choose to change out of my pj's.
I made my traditional 'Cappuccino Flats' for the holidays which we hoard selfishly as a family because they are amazing.  I decided to make peanut butter balls with rice crispies, icing sugar and chocolate... nasty.  Nobody wanted to eat them.  Totally disgusting.  They are going in the bin and I won't be sorry about it.


Then I made these cookies.  I made them really because they are the only thing that I remember my Grandma making.  Well, she also made christmas pudding.  I can't tell you exactly what it was because I never ate it.  As a kid it sounded disgusting.  It was brown, it was steamed, it had carrot in it.  Probably contained dates and molasses too.  Either way, as a kid not even caramel sauce could entice me to eat it.  So I didn't ever eat any of it.  The honest truth is that I never ate these cookies either.  Maybe a couple.  They weren't my favourite because they didn't contain chocolate.  I don't know why kids are so hooked on chocolate.  It's weird.  I'm sure that if only she had thrown in 3 tbsp of cocoa powder I would have downed them like there was no tomorrow.  So I had a few cookies and left the rest to my brother and sister to eat.  Each year my Grandma made them.  Always at Christmas.  Sometimes she used green cherries and sometimes red - sometimes both.  They look 'festive'


So after making these cookies in honour of my Grandma and just because I felt nostalgic, I realized that I had no interest in eating them.  Seems that I'm a stickler for tradition after all.  This left me relying on the other three people living in the house. D? Nope.  He's about as interested in sweets as I am.  The kids?... ummm, where's the chocolate?  Not touching them.  I should have known.  Fortunately, I was able to take them to our Christmas dinners (we did have more than one).
As a result, I can't tell you whether the cookies taste good but they sure do look festive.


Shortbread Cookies with Cherries and Pecans adapted from my Grandma and Kuntal's Kitchen
makes about 2 dozen medium sized cookies

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup maraschino cherries, quartered
1/2 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped

Combine the flour and salt and set aside.
In a large bowl beat or mix the butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy (I used a hand mixer here).  Add the vanilla and mix until well combined.
By hand, add the flour mixture and mix until fully incorporated.
Add the cherries and pecans and mix.
Form two logs (about 3 inches round each) cover each log with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight.
Preheat oven to 350°F
Line a cookie sheet with parchment or a silicon liner
Remove the logs from the fridge.
Slice one log into about 12 cookie rounds and place on the cookie sheet - leave a little space for them to spread.
Bake for about 10 minutes or until the edges are just barely turning brown.
Remove and cool on a wire rack.

Things I'm super jazzed about right now:

I'm loving all of the 2012 recipe round-ups/top recipes of/etc that seem to be occurring all over the web. In fact, all of the top ten lists that seems only to be applied to movies and celebrities are simply abundant right now.   It's the best.  Not.

I'm super jazzed that it's already January.  This means we are whittling our way through winter at a reasonable speed.

I'm very jazzed that my friend T will be in town once a month for the next 3 months.

I'm hyper-jazzed that December is now behind us and we can focus on the future.  I'm hoping that it's a brighter, wiser future.

I'm not so jazzed about all the snow that fell over the holiday time (a 'White Christmas' is not necessary for me to have a memorable time) not because I don't like snow but because I have stuff to do and snow makes it 10x harder to do if not impossible (cycling, hello).  It's winter though so I'm not bitter.

I'm super jazzed that my friend and artist has agreed to participate in my next body art (aka tattoo) experience.

I'm hesitantly jazzed about signing up for my first half-marathon since my awful bout of plantar fasciitis last year.  The reason I'm only 'hesitantly jazzed' is that I'm still really nervous about pushing things with my foot.  I have until May to work up to being super jazzed.

I wish I were more jazzed about going to Rome in April.  If I weren't going for work I would be super jazzed.  As it stands (a lot of work is involved) I'm only moderately jazzed.


I'm definitely super jazzed about this salad I've been eating.  Ontario grown spinach, clementines - our seasonal import, and pecans.  Drizzled with a lemon juice/olive oil, parmesan cheese mixture.  Divine.


I've been jazzed about these nuts since I first tried them last week.  I made a big jar of them for my Dad for Christmas (he got some other stuff too - don't worry).  I had never tried them before and they are... well, AMAZING.  Not too sweet, not too spicy and it allows the nuts to still be the star.  When you are someone who makes a lot of your own ice cream you've got a lot of egg whites knocking around.  Great way to use up... 1.  Yeah - just one.  Unless you want to do an industrial size batch then I guess you would use two.  The recipe that I used as my inspiration called only for walnuts.  I used mixed nuts and it works very well.  I'm a mixed nuts kind of girl anyway.


Sweet Roasted Mixed Nuts adapted from 'Family Bites'
makes 4 cups

4 cups mixed nuts (pecans, cashews, brazil nuts, walnuts, peanuts - I'm not kidding, I literally threw in handfuls)
1 egg white
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cayenne
2  heaping tbsp sugar

Preheat oven to 300° F.
Line a baking sheet with parchment (ok) or silicon liner (better).
Combine all the ingredients in a big bowl and toss until everything is well coated.  Pour onto the baking  sheet and spread out evenly and hopefully in a single layer over the entire sheet.
Bake for about 30 minutes or until everything looks golden brown but not dark brown.
Cool completely and then break up and place in jars for gifting or in bowls for eating.

It still happens.  I learn stuff.
Here are some of the things that I've learned this week:
1.  If I boil old, nasty smelling kitchen wipe rags then they're good to go and they won't smell.  Very Handy.
2.  Don't go food shopping when you have a head cold and are craving comfort food.  Very Bad.
3.  Doing a long run when you think you might be getting a cold might just bring it on.
4.  I can make my own saline solution to spray up my nose so that my head cold feels a little less wretched.
5.  Sometimes it can be 26 degrees on October 8th in Toronto but if you have a nasty sinus cold then you might not enjoy it as much as you wish you could.

As you might have been able to deduce by now... I HAVE A COLD... and it BITES.
So, yeah, I had all these plans for my Thanksgiving weekend and the only thing that I'll really be digging into is doing a whole lot of nothing and spraying crap up my nose, praying that by tomorrow I won't feel like every crevice above my teeth has been stuffed with socks (I don't know why socks... it just makes sense to me right now).  This truly bites because it is uncommonly warm here.  I'm not going to go into how it makes me feel about the state of our climate these days because it makes the knot in my stomach a little tighter.  I'm going to do my best to live in the moment and stare at the sun through my bedroom window, feeling just a little bit sorry for myself.


However, doing nothing isn't all bad, I caught up on some movie watching that had been badly ignored over the last few weeks.   Secondly, I had to make this cake.  I had to make it because we were having dinner with my parents.  It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada.  That means dinner with family and I had to make stuff to take.  I can't show up at someone's house (even my own parents place) without something in my hand to give them.  I volunteered to make a dessert and a veggie dish.  I still haven't figured out the veggie dish yet but I'll be sure to take pics and get it up here when I do.
This cake has been sitting in my 'must try' bookmark for a long time and for some reason I just haven't gotten around to it.  It sounds easy and looks great in the blog picture.  As usual, I don't have the exact ingredients but I figure that anything with honeyed pecans and glaze on the top will be pretty forgiving, so I'm forging ahead.



The cake rises beautifully, this tempting, bubbly brownness that makes you want to put your finger into it.  Once you add the stuff on the top... it's a beautiful thing.
We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves...
except for kid #1 who declared that he doesn't like nuts... so he got gross rolo ice cream instead because apparently that's what kids get when they are at their grandparents place on Thanksgiving.  Another thing that I learned this week.


Pear and Apple Cake adapted from 'In Praise of Leftovers'
makes 1 9x13'' cake

2 cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
4 med apples (or pears or mixed), cored and sliced thin
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
3 cups all purpose flour

Glaze:
1/2 - 3/4 cup candied pecans or walnuts, chopped (optional)
4 tbsp melted butter
1 cup icing sugar
2 - 4 tbsp milk or cream

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Lightly butter or grease a 9x13'' cake pan.
In a large bowl combine the sugars, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, vegetable oil, eggs and vanilla together.  Mix until well combined.  Add in the fruit and mix until the fruit is incorporated well.
Add in the nuts and the flour.  Mix until the flour is completely incorporated.  The batter will be pretty thick.
Pour into the prepared pan.  Bake for about 1 hr 10 min but start checking after an hour.  I gave my cake a quarter turn after about 35 minutes too.  Once the cake looks good and a tester comes out clean (test the cake in the middle of the pan please people) then remove from the oven and cool for about 20 minutes.

In the meantime:
Mix together the butter, icing sugar and 2 tbsp of the milk or cream.  If you need more milk or cream then add it until the glaze is the consistency that you like.
Sprinkle the chopped, candied nuts over the 20 minutes cooled cake and then pour the glaze over top of everything.