The Christmas season is always my favorite part of the year. The lights, ornaments, decorations, food, music, family time, the tree, the movies and of course snow. Sadly I never get snow on Christmas here in AZ, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing for it!
Several weeks back, Local First Arizona hosted their 4th annual Fall Fest in downtown Phoenix. It was a wonderful day filled with local food vendors and craftspeople from around the valley. My friend Dusty joined me, and together we got to sample lots of great local food and check out plenty of other awesomeness (like some amazing handmade, vegan and organic soap from Strawberry Hedgehog!). One of the food samples that stood out to me was the pistachio gelato from Grateful Spoon. Up until then, the only pistachio ice cream of any type I’d ever had was the passable version from Ben & Jerry’s. Grateful Spoon’s gelato was thick and rich, with none of the overabundance of almond flavoring so often added to pistachio products. It was chock full of little bits of roasted pistachios, so their flavor was front and center. I knew after I tasted it that I wanted to make my own at home!
One thing I always associate with Christmas is almond extract. More specifically, almond extract flavoring some old fashioned spritz cookies that my mom would make with her awesomely vintage cookie press. Have you ever seen one of these things? They’re pretty rad. Of course you can buy newer, less sturdy options, but my mom’s was the real deal with all metal parts. It belonged to my grandma when my mom was just a little kid in St. Louis.
Every Christmas season, my mom would grab the cookie press from its ragged cardboard box and she and my sisters and I would make red and green spritz cookies flavored with almond extract. Even if we halved the batch, it’d still make what seemed like a mountain of cookies! We’d be snacking on green Christmas trees and red (well, pink) wreaths well into the new year.
While those spritz cookies hold a nostalgic place in my heart, I think it’s high time I graduated to a more sophisticated sort of Christmas cookie. Enter the pistachio snowball cookie!
What do you think of when you think of Christmas time? I think of my mom’s homemade cranberry bread, twinkly little lights around the windows, Mickey’s Christmas Carol on TV, and Nat King Cole singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”.
I also think of all things peppermint. There’s no better time of the year to break out the peppermint extract! Any other time of year, and you’ll just look like a weirdo. Since it’s December, you’re safe for the time being.
I think it was during a classroom Christmas party in the 3rd grade, that I first ate puppy chow.
No, not that kind of puppy chow! I mean the kind usually made with Chex cereal, chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar!
Its a really tasty snack that only seems to pop up around Christmas time, and when I first heard of it as a wee little kid, I was ultimately confused. I thought that this kid in my class had actually brought in dog food to share with the class. Silly me!
Let’s talk a little bit about pumpkin, shall we?
Pumpkin is good. It’s good in pie, it’s good in savory dishes, it’s good in soups, it’s even good in coffee as Starbucks would have you believe. Carving pumpkins is awesome, too.
How about pumpkin in lasagna? No, that’s not a typo. “But wait,” you say, “lasagna is supposed to have meat and tomatoes and lots of cheese! How can you fit pumpkin into all that?” Well, dear reader, I encourage you to branch out from your usual ideas of lasagna, cause this stuff is damn good.
Isn’t Halloween one of the best parts of being a kid? It’s like that old Seinfeld bit, “What is this? What did you say? What did you say about giving out candy? Who’s giving out candy? Everyone that we know is just giving out candy?!”
Going trick-or-treating as a kid was one of my favorite times of the year. My mom would help me and my sisters touch up our costumes after wearing them at school all day, and when the sun started to go down, we’d pile into our neighbor Eric’s mom’s van and go through our neighborhoods in search of glorious, free candy! Armed with plastic pumpkin buckets and green glow sticks around our necks, we’d get out of the van every so often and get candy from a few streets worth of houses before getting back in and repeating it down the next few streets. You dress up, and people give you free candy. What a time to be alive!
Oh, glorious Halloween. I have such fond memories of you from when I was a kid!
When I was in elementary school, everyone would dress up. Probably even the bus drivers, if memory serves me right. As if trick-or-treating candy wasn’t enough, we’d also get treat bags at school. I know there must have been candy in them, but I can only vaguely remember Saf-T Pops, info on trick-or-treating safety, and (for some reason) packets of chocolate Malt-O-Meal cereal that kids would just eat plain from the packet. Gross. I guess it was meant to be breakfast for the day after Halloween, so we could get a somewhat nourishing meal after gorging ourselves on candy the night before.
I love a good three day weekend. Aside from the obvious (not going to work on a Monday!), there’s the bonus of having more time to get things done, or more time to be lazy if you choose.
It’s the 4th of July, and what better way to celebrate than with food? Holidays + food = ‘Merica! If you need a salad to offset all the grilled meat you’re sure to ingest, this quick and tasty Brussels Sprout Salad with Radish + Feta should fit the bill nicely. It’s chock-full of fresh brussels sprouts, spicy radishes, crunchy pistachios, salty and creamy feta, and … Continue reading Happy 237th Birthday, America!
oven + apron 