Merry

My mother is incredibly handy with the sewing machine. When I was a little girl, I wanted fancy dresses (preferably with lacy petticoats) to come off that machine. These days, my sewing requests are less complicated, but no less satisfying. She's made curtains for the windows in my house and a number of pillow covers, she's met all of JT's costume needs (and in his case, that's saying something) and lately she's been in the business of making holiday banners to hang in my living room.

It's a circumstance of ask and you shall receive the perfect item. And that's how I ended up with this festive Christmas banner that I hung in the doorway between the living and dining room. Between the bright bunting and the advent calendar (more on that tomorrow), I'm feeling like we're well on my way to some festive holiday decor in Sassafras House.

Memo to Santa: One of us has been very, very good.

Photoshop This, Mama

I'm firing up production of my Christmas cards and that meant making an effort to take a picture of JT suitable for mailing to far-flung friends and relations. I take lots of pictures of the boy, but I wanted this one to be especially nice. He's in desperate need of a haircut, but I thought I'd settle for clean instead. So I ordered him to wash up, comb his hair, and put on some clean clothes (all of this on a day off from school......I am so mean).

Then I sat him on the couch and tried to snap some photos. I met with limited success but did get one shot that embodied the boy in a nutshell:
Look for it in a Christmas card coming your way soon.

Thanksgiving Food: Corn Bread Dressing

Though a turkey filled with stuffing is the center of many Thanksgiving meals, I can't say that I am a fan. The very idea of stuffing served out of the bird's carcass makes me queasy.

So if you come to Thanksgiving at my house, you won't be getting any stuffing from the bird. Instead, I make cornbread dressing. It's simple to prepare but tastes amazingly good. And it doesn't come out of the bird's backside, a big plus as far as I am concerned.

Corn Bread Dressing
corn bread (see below) ---- you only need two-thirds of the recipe so you will have leftover cornbread for your 8-year-boy *
½ cup onion, chopped finely
½ cup celery, chopped finely
2 tablespoons pickled jalapeno, finely chopped, plus a teaspoon of juice from the bottle
2 cups chicken broth, warmed
2 teaspoons black pepper

Heat oven to 350 degrees; grease 8x8 baking dish.

Using two-thirds the baking of corn bread, crumble it into a bowl. Mix in the chopped veggies. Stir in black pepper. Stir jalapeno juice into the chicken broth. Pour over cornbread mixture and mix well. Cornbread will absorb much of the broth but should remain wet. Pour into the prepared baking dish and bake for 30 minutes, until top is browned.

* If you don't have an 8-year-old boy, I'd highly recommend that you get one. They are loads of fun.

I should have taken an up-close picture of the cornbread dressing when it was fresh from the oven, but we ate it instead. So I am re-producing a picture of my Thanksgiving table......corn bread dressing is in front, to the right. It's golden brown and all sorts of yummy.

Corn Bread
You can make your favorite corn bread for use in the dressing. I use this recipe, which is unbeatably tasty and a staple in Sassafras House.

1 ¼ cup flour
¾ cup cornmeal (I prefer yellow, but white also works fine)
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten well.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare 8x8 baking dish or muffin tin (this recipe makes 6 large corn muffins).

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Stir in milk, oil, and egg, mixing well until dry ingredients are moistened. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Serve warm (JT recommends plenty of honey and butter).

Thanksgiving Traditions: Cranberry Sauce

I am a fan of tradition and no meal features more tradition than Thanksgiving. I happen to have my own way of getting those food traditions to the table. Today and tomorrow I plan to write about two of my favorite Thanksgiving foods.

First up: cranberry sauce. Growing up, my family actually served the stuff that came from a can. Perhaps because of that, I never enjoyed the cranberry portion of the meal. It looked dreadful.

Living in Tennessee taught me the beauty of homemade cranberry sauce. It's so good, that it's hard to believe that it only take 15 minutes to prepare. Sure, that's more time than it takes to open a can. But I guarantee that it's worth the effort.

The recipe is simple:
½ cup water
½ cup orange juice
1 cup sugar
1 bag of fresh cranberries

In a saucepan, mix the water, juice, and sugar. Bring to a boil. Add cranberries and stir. Watch the pot carefully; when it returns to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. The cranberries will sizzle and pop in this stage. It's quite satisfying to watch the pot as it bubbles.
Pour into a serving bowl and let it cool. Cranberries have a natural pectin and the sauce will gel up as it cools. Serve with your supper and feel incredibly smug about how much better it looks (and tastes) than that nonsense from a can.

Process

One of the things that I enjoy most about holiday cooking is the process of planning a special meal. Selecting the menu, organizing the day's cooking, chopping, measuring, and stirring together the food, getting out the serving dishes, and setting the table are all details that must be planned out. For me, it is this process that helps to make a holiday meal special. I enjoy planning all of it.

What I love about the process is the way that it combines my appetite for organization and details with my sense of history and family.
When I plan for holiday cooking, I organize all of the food to be prepared before I get started. It takes a lot of practice to set an entire meal on the table at once. I wash and chop, measure and plan so that once I start the actual cooking it's a seamless process of moving things into and out of the oven and the stove and then setting food out on the table to be enjoyed in one big meal.

But cooking is only half of the process. For me, good food is made better by the way it is set out on the table.
I have a collection of antique dishes that I like to use for special meals. The core of the collection is a few large bowls that belonged to my grandmother. She used them everyday and I can still see (and taste) the green salad with red wine vinegar dressing that she would set on the table when our family came together for supper at her home. She gave me some of her bowls; auctions and antique stores rounded out my collection. Now I have a set of dishes worthy of serving a feast.

And if any meal should be a feast, it's Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving!

In Which Our Heroine is Reminded that She Lives in New Jersey

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the union, a fact that I frequently forget. My morning commute doesn't feature too much traffic. And I usually drive home at 3:30, well before the roads are busy. I work on a wooded school campus along the banks of a river that is under the protection of the state's historical commission. I do live on a sometimes busy street in a small town; but sometimes busy is a relative term here....we're talking about maybe a dozen cars passing by at the commuter witching hour. And my house is set back on from the road, with a lovely secluded backyard.

For all of these reasons, it's easy for me to forget that the state is jam-packed with people. And these aren't just regular people: they are New Jerseyans.

I was reminded of this fact when I turned up at my local Wegmans Market this afternoon. I needed some groceries for the Thanksgiving feast. It would seem I wasn't alone in this need. Wegmans is my regular market and it's frequently busy. But busy doesn't even begin to describe it today. The aisles were filled with people who were apparently unaware of the universal imperative to stay to the right. At one point, when yet another fellow shopper left their cart in the middle of the aisle while wondering in search of mini-marshmallows, I threatened to have them vaporized. And I must have been loud in my announcement, because JT looked shocked at my bad manners.

I believe that I had released my inner New Jerseyan. Though I've grown quite fond of the state, it's certainly fair to say that Garden Staters are a loud and impatient crew, prone to creative and loud swearing; telling you exactly how they feel and, at times, what they intend to do about it. Traffic brings out their worst.

I can usually zip out of the Wegman's parking lot in 1 minute or less. This afternoon, it took us 20 minutes to get out of the lot and back to the highway. It would be fair to say that my fellow drivers were an aggressively dissatisfied lot of people, most of us armed with tiny frozen cranberries that could reasonably serve as impromptu bullets if it came to that.

I made it home, obviously. JT has retreated upstairs to the playroom where a large-scale Viking invasion is underway. The groceries have been unpacked into the cupboard. And I have settled down with a large glass of wine to soothe my frayed nerves.

Fine Dining

As a result of spending far too much time watching those dreadful twins Zach and Cody on the Disney Channel, JT has been after me to order room service when we stay in a hotel. We don't actually stay in very many hotels, so it's been easy to resist this campaign. But Friday night, as the students were at their Model Congress sessions and I was gripped by my chronic end-of-the-week exhaustion, I caved in and said we could have supper from the room service menu.

JT ordered a hot dog and fries, not exactly the most elegant of dining options, but one of the essential ingredients in the JT food trifecta of hot dog, chicken fingers and pizza.

As he admired the fancy glass for his ice water and the miniature bottle of ketchup he announced, "this is the life."

Return of the Big Daddy

Last Christmas, there was a large package under the tree that JT dubbed "the Big Daddy." The Big Daddy came from his cousins in California and after it was wrapped and placed under the tree, JT admired it so much that the wrapping was worn at the corners from being much-handled.

He's allowed to open one package on Christmas Eve; the Big Daddy was the obvious choice. And the Big Daddy certainly delivered.

Auntie KO has determined to continue the tradition and this year's Big Daddy arrived on Wednesday. JT spotted the box on the porch as soon as we got home. I distracted him so that he couldn't see the brand on the box and when he went to his attic playroom, I snuck Big Daddy II into an undisclosed hiding place. Soon enough we'll have a Christmas tree and one morning when JT comes downstairs he'll find Big Daddy II, stacked behind the tree and taunting him with its promise of toy joy.
In the last few years, Christmas has been hard for me. But I still love this part, with its secrets and temptations. For me, JT's joy and excitement is the real magic of the season. And I love the fact that the Big Daddy has become one of our family traditions.

Thanks, Auntie KO.

Adrenaline Surge

JT and I are in Washington D.C. for the weekend. I'm supervising my school's Model Congress team. JT is helping Congress with the Bailout.

The hotel is nice and all, but at 5:30 am, JT leaned out of his bed to fetch his blankets and whacked his head on the very pointy corner of the nightstand. I awakened to his announcement that, "Mama, I'm bleeding."

Way to get the Mama adrenaline surging.

We headed to the bathroom to staunch the flow. He has a nice wound on his head and I'd forgotten just how impressively heads can bleed. But we're basically no worse for the wear, and now have a handy head wound to attract all sorts of interest.
Please note that the chin is not bloody, but does carry the remnants of a few bites of pumpkin gingerbread cake.

Fiscal Stimulus

Like many Americans, J.T. has been deeply concerned about the economic recession. He has determined that the appropriate course of action is some massive public spending. To that end, he has created his own currency.

J.T. currency is colored green and will be familiar to those of you used to trading in U.S. dollars. What may prove unfamiliar is the face value of the money. The boy deals exclusively in million dollar bills and two million dollar coins.

As you can see, production has been limited. Still, that's several million sitting on the dining room table with the pirate-costumed boy and Tiger the cat.
Major corporations in need of a J.T. bailout should drop us a line.