Grateful for Gratin

In what was to prove a significant rookie error decades ago, I agreed to schedule the Hub's and my wedding ceremony in late December, over what was then his Christmas break from med school. I was a bit giddy with it all actually, so perhaps I could be forgiven for not understanding at the time that having our anniversary fall between our two mother's birthdays, not to mention just prior to Christmas followed shortly by the Hub's early January birthday would create an ongoing celebrational identity crisis.

Adding to the fun, perhaps I have not mentioned here how tricky Hub is to shop for gift wise? Planting a third gift opportunity proximal to both Christmas and his birthday was just plain dumb on my part. The ongoing gift idea distribution angst I experienced in the years that followed? I have nobody to thank there but myself.

And eventually the coup de grace was revealed. We got married during a commonly observed school break. This means, lo these years (and years!) later, when it came time to celebrate our anniversary as empty nesters, our nest was temporarily full again. Come late December, all absent students return home for the holidays. D'oh!

That last bit I mention just for effect. It really is not a downside. I love having my kids around, wedding anniversary or not. And yes, LawSchoolGirl is currently back in town. Which I am tickled three shades of pink over. So it turns out the Hub and I were observing our 35th (yes, yes, I got married when I was negative 12 years old) wedding anniversary this past weekend and as these things happen, the Hub was on call for a busy emergency room.

With no way to guarantee an uninterrupted meal time, we'd planned to celebrate our big day with a a nice quiet steak dinner at home. Including all available family members. In this case, since ChefSon was working, that meant LSG would be joining in on the fun.

LSG stated she felt a bit like she was horning in (although I promise you boys and girls, once you get to anniversary number 35, if you've been trying even a teensy bit you've already covered the Wow! bases pretty thoroughly). To alleviate that she proposed she would take over the major cooking duties. And in typical LSG style, as her gift to us, she upgraded the extremely simple menu I'd originally planned.

The first to fall was grilled steak. LSG had pan cooked steak at ChefSon's since she'd been home this year and was determined to share the technique. I had previously voiced my all too typical resistance to trying something new when something familiar was already appreciated. However, since LSG would now be doing the cooking she had the chance to gracefully overcome my objections.

It was decided: to top our dinner menu, pan cooked steak with a beurre rouge jus (and yeah I may be taking liberties with the French but come on....it is our anniversary dinner!).

Next to go were the horseradish mashed potatoes. LSG likes horseradish and she likes mashed potatoes, but she was feeling ambitious. A bit of an internet search produced a recipe for a horseradish gratin that got rave reviews on Epicurious. A quick check to see we had requisite ingredients on hand and et voila! Horseradish Gratin it would be.

I went out to harvest thyme for the steak and potato dishes, and while I was out there in the garden beds anyway, secured arugula and baby lettuce to add to organic romaine from the store for our dinner salad.

I'd already purchased a tiramisu cake (Hub's favorite hands down) and a nice Prosecco for toasting. I decided I'd make a Prosecco vinaigrette for the salad and before you could say Bob's Your Uncle! our Very Special Anniversary Dinner Menu courtesy of Preternaturally Talented Guest Chef LSG, was complete.

The gratin turned out to be pretty simple to put together.

We halved the recipe, figured out our substitutions, gathered our ingredients, and away we went. We assembled our mise en place.I showed LSG how I tie bouquet garniWe carefully sliced the potatoesLSG cooked them in cream until just tenderOnce the garni was removed (we put our garlic in the garni proper since in the comments section for the recipe site people stated they'd run into trouble removing the garlic which was the same color as the cream in the pot) and the potato cream mixture was placed into a buttered shallow baking dish, LSG sprinkled on the grated cheeseShe baked it for 30 minutes and then checked for color. It was gorgeous!Addendum: Here is the recipe as we prepared it, just to be friendly...

Potato Gratin with Horeseradish and Parmesan [printable version]

adapted from Shaw McClain's Yukon Gold Potato Gratin Recipe for Epicurious 10/06

1/2 bunch fresh thyme

1/2 tbsp fresh black peppercorns

1 bay leaf

2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed with back of knife

1 1/2 pounds potatoes peeled and cut crosswise into 1/8 inch slices

1/2 tablespoon sea salt

2 cups heavy cream

1/8 cup prepared horseradish

1 cup Parmesan cheese, coarsely grated

Place a rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Generously butter a 1 1/2 gratin dish (we used a deep dish pie plate).

Make a bouquet garni with first four ingredients.

In heavy 3 saucepan combine potatoes, bouquet garni, salt and cream. Set over moderate heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered until potatoes can just be pierced with a fork (begin to check at 10 minutes).

Take off heat. Remove bouquet garni and discard. Stir in horseradish.

Spread potato mixture in buttered dish and sprinkle with cheese. Bake until top is golden brown and potatoes are tender, 30-40 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

I chose not to share photos of the finished plates in toto, but I rush to assure you the gratin recipe was amazing and lived up to several reviews where folks stated though they were full from their meal, it was hard to resist standing around polishing off the remainders. This dish tastes that good. The pan cooked steaks were done just to medium rare, and the herbed buttery red wine pan reduction sauce elevated every morsel to perfection on the plate.

Last to appear was the tiramisu cake decorated with fresh cut flowers, one for every decade (old! I am so old!) we've been married.

A hint from an old married lady who has decorated many a cake with flowers through the years:If you want a cake decorated with fresh flowers to be a uniformly pleasing experience, be sure to use pieces of masking tape or thoroughly coat the cut end of the flowers with melted wax. If you use wax, let it sit until it cools and you can see you've achieved a good seal. This assures the stem does not stealthily share anything indigestible with your cake surface that will eventually find its way into the mouths of your dinner guests.See? Pretty enough to eat and safe to boot so your guests will live to properly thank you for your thoughtfulness.

All in all a meal to remember, with not one but two new recipes to relish repeating. Let it never be said that having talented grown children around to help their parents celebrate anniversaries is anything but a gift all its own. I am so grateful for my son and my daughter, both of whom are the shiniest reflections of 35 years of marriage I could ever imagine.

Folks, this will likely be the last blast from these quarters until after the holiday hooraw has settled. I do have plans for all sorts of familiar treats to have on hand for our Christmas day gift sharing feasting.... Crock pot chili with corn bread the night before, a routine developed years ago to accommodate last minute shoppers and other schedule crunches. Day of, Cava Mimosas, Egg Nog, sausage kolaches, banana bread, sausage cheese balls, spiced glazed nuts, Monte Cristo bake, and tortilla soup. That should be gracious plenty to keep body and soul together while our sensibilities are busy being delighted by Santa's efforts on our behalf this year.

It will be lovely. Fun and funny and amazing because it is all of us, together, doing what we do best. Eating and drinking while enjoying each other's company. I hope for nothing less for all of you, a wonderful celebration in whatever way you do it best. Happy Holidays to each and every one. See you next year!

Taking Stock

Tree up? Check!
Cat Proofed? Fingers Crossed!
Lights on the house? Check!
Gifts purchased? Check! (I think)
Gifts wrapped? Check! (I wrapped 1-2 every morning before I left the house to avoid the Christmas Eve wrapathon).
Gifts made? Nearly...
Cards sent out? I don't do that so...checkNot!
Special foods made?

Ummm. Not really. I am not planning on making special cookies or desserts or random treats of the sweet or savory variety. Been there done that, plenty of times.

We don't have any visitors this year and honestly, our family eats plenty enough on an ordinary day. No need to ramp that up for a designated holiday unless we want to do something special together. Such as...

I will make my daughter the savory spoon biscuits she loves and have them ready the night she gets home. We will doubtless have some sort of a "what can we buy in Austin that is from Spain" tapas feast home style at some point but the shopping together will be part of the fun for that one.

We will hopefully have a special ChefSon cooks for the family meal as well once GradStudentDaughter gets back to town, but again, the shopping together will be part and parcel of the fun of putting that together.

Sorry I have been remiss about posting recipes or meal reports but I've been cooking really simply lately as a response to the busy-ness of preparing for Christmas.

It has been cold here off and on so I've been braising and souping it up. Day before yesterday we had a wonderful Niman Ranch beef shoulder roast, whacked into pieces and braised with veggies and red wine. Yesterday, we happily pulled covers off the vegetable garden beds once the mercury climbed above freezing and enjoyed Potato and Onion soup, a family favorite, as our reward for braving what passes for "cold" here in Central Texas.Right this minute I am making stock from the defrosted turkey carcass left over from Thanksgiving with an eye towards soup for LawSchoolGirl using homemade stock next week.

YAY! LawSchoolGirl will be home next week! I have fun just writing that.

Tonight I will start defrosted quail marinating for a grill up on Thursday and for dinner tonight we will finish up the braised beef. Friday night, just to shake things up we won't have pizza for dinner but will finish the potato and onion soup with some grilled cheese sandwiches for extra yumminess.

So you see? Nothing much to really report on in terms of "how's about THAT" impressive food going on around here.

Saturday we do have a special night out planned to celebrate our 434th Wedding Anniversary.

Yes folks, the Hub and I have been married since before Colonial Times. We. Are. That. Old.

Yikes.

This afternoon I have more Condo/Redo standing around entertaining various appliance installation guys while they work duty.

Between us? I hate that whole - the guys come in to do something in your house and it never EVER turns out to be as simple as it should - thing. An entire post on that soon if I live to tell the story.

So, yup, taking stock, and making stock here. The Holidays, they are a comin' whether we are ready or not.

How about you? Are you ready to rumble Santa Style?

What Food Says "Holiday!" to You?

I was reading one of my favorite blogs recently - this one centered around dieting.

The ladies who post there have graciously invited others to send in their own diet blog addresses, comparing sharing weight loss adventures to a dish that can be passed along at a banquet or holiday function.

That got me thinking.All food blogs are diet blogs in the strictest sense, Technically, everybody and everything that eats is on a diet. Some folks are trying, more or less successfully however, to restrict the calories in their diet with an eye towards losing weight.

To our frustration around here, after a food binge based around our CSA baskets last Spring/Summer, we the people of the Austin Agrodolce household both managed to gain weight.Even though we were feasting on all sorts of fabulous fresh organic local vegetables, we proved for ourselves that it is not just what you are eating, but how you prepare what you are eating that will make or break your calorie count. (Little more fresh dairy butter on your vegetables, anybody?)

We are being more careful now, and with the generalized lack of willpower in this household that mostly boils down to careful shopping.Try as we might, we haven't managed to stuff our faces with cookies (Hub) or cheese (Me) that isn't actually already on the premises. And neither of us is quite to the point where we will jump in the car just to satisfy a mid-morning/early afternoon/late night craving. Not yet, anyway.

This holiday season I am trying to keep the pantry and refrigerator stocked with lean stuff, and occasionally we can be forgiven if we linger overlong, drooling ever so slightly at the food porn in the catalogs that arrive daily offering us mail order confections from around the world. I can take pride in the fact we haven't devolved to the point of licking the photos. Not yet. I am fully aware this is possible in large part because it is only the two of us in the house. Empty nest has its advantages that way. Early on, with the kids still around, totally avoiding cookies, candies or cheesy salty snack foods was impossible. Even if I didn't buy any or make any there was a constant stream of goodies coming in from school parties, team gatherings, church, scouts, you name it.

And even if we did (much!) better most of the year, there was something about a holiday break from school that lent itself to cooking together. Slowly but surely certain foods became part and parcel of our family's holiday celebrations year to year.

Do you find yourself abandoning your careful eating habits during the holidays? Is there one thing on that sideboard groaning with fatty foods out there with your name on it? What, in this season of abundance, is the particular food or beverage that for you so says "celebrating!" that you will not go without?
Cookies?
Egg nog?

Chocolate covered pretzels maybe?

Our family weakness is/was Chex Mix. We would make (and eat!) batch after buttery batch.

What about you? Come on. 'Fess up in the comments section. What is your holiday food weakness, the one thing you cannot resist despite your best intentions? No calories are consumed just by typing it out, thank goodness. If confession is good for the soul, you'll feel better, too. Your turn!

Three Things

People who know me well laugh when they see email from me with something like "Three Things" in the subject line.

They laugh because they know I wrote that to help me remember to get to everything I wanted to share in the email.  I am famously easy to self-sidetrack.

They laugh because they know I probably started out with "One Thing" in the subject line and then had to revise it a couple of times as I remembered more things I wanted needed to tell them.

This enumeration technique works fairly well for emails so I figured to try it here and we'll see if I can stay on track for what I want to do with this post.  

Three things in particular caught my eye today.  One is a some very good news I wanted to share, one is a bit of wisdom that helped me a great deal, and the last is an idea I want to recommend to you whole heartedly.

First the good news.  The Pundits of Pudge have revised how much weight the typical adult gains during the holidays.

Estimates currently are that we typically gain only about one pound (down from seven!) from our tendency to overeat during the holiday season.  Before you head to the refrigerator with a spoon to grab the CoolWhip container and celebrate, please don't forget that is one pound over and above the pound we all supposedly gain just by staying alive year to year. 

Unless you work to maintain rather than gain over the holidays, you can count on two extra pounds added on to your baseline weight for every year you survive.  

You do the math.  If you are planning on escaping an untimely (defined:before I turn 85 and subject to revision when I turn 83) death, that is two pounds for every year between whatever age you are now and when you turn 85.  

For me that is a projected additional 60 pounds.  While I may not be totally grossed out by the way I look now,  I cannot for the life of me imagine how I will manage to drag around gracefully carry another 60 pounds.  Not unless I grow another 5 or 6 inches.  And what are the odds of that?

OK.  Still.  One pound down from seven.  Very good news! Note to self - work on maintaining without gaining.  Check! Next up - a bit of real weight wisdom to share with you.  

The first time I heard this idea it made no sense to me at all.  The 4th, 5th and 392nd times I heard it mentioned, I began to pay attention to the cues my own body sends me and the light finally clicked ON.

Nutritionists maintain our bodies, like toddlers, often do not distinguish well between "hungry" and "thirsty". I suppose that is where the conventional advice of drinking a full glass of water before a meal comes from.  It is not so much that the water fills you up (not something I have noticed happening, honestly) as it is that your body may send you a signal that you are dehydrated and you may misinterpret by heading to the pantry for oh, say, I don't know, some potato chips(hypothetically).   

Throw that kind of a miscue in with a glass of wine at a holiday party, and it is easy to see how over indulging results.  The wine stimulates your appetite,  you get dehydrated to boot, and blammo, before you know what's happening there are two kinds of adorable cookies on your platewhere that pile of dry carrot sticks you headed to the buffet to get in the first place were supposed to be.  

Know yourself.If there is any chance at all that your body might be telling you "I'm thirsty!" rather than "I know you just ate a full meal but I am still hungry!", try a glass of water before you eat anything else after a full meal.  If after you are hydrated you still feel hungry, deal with it then, no harm done.

OK.  Good news, wisdom, check and double check.  Now for that idea I want to enthusiastically endorse.  

Puttering around the interweb today I saw a bit on the Gaiam Blog that caught my eye. Entitled "Be the First On Your Block To Get A Farmer!" by Leslie Garrett, the bottom line is that the very best thing you can do to help yourself and your family to eat healthier is to know who is growing your food and how they are going about it.    

This idea is not entirely new - Pollan advocates this in his own way as does Barbara Kingsolver and multiple others as part of the growing Eat Local/Eat Responsible movement.  But "Get Your Own Farmer" is such a succinct way to sum up what it is that we all need to try to do that I couldn't resist.  

Garrett orders most of her food from a local farmer.  "Her" farmer.  There are various ways to duplicate that effort. Subscribing to CSA basketoutfits like our own area's Tecolote Farm, using online organic delivery services like Greenling, shopping the farmer's market before hitting the chain grocer's are all great ways to get your own farmer.  

I would add trying to Be Your Own Farmer - growing as much of your own food in a garden as you can, will be doubly satisfying.  Healthy, too.Try as I might, I have never managed to grow anything fattening in my garden.  It just doesn't work that way.   

Here in Austin we are incredibly fortunate to have a fantastic food co-op, Wheatsville, where you can have a whole dedicated crew of produce, meat and floor stock buyers out there working tirelessly to source the best local, organic, sustainable and responsible products to fill your shopping basket week to week.  Is there a food coop in your community?  Check it out.  

If we are what we eat, then don't you want to be organic, local, and sustainable?  Well of course you do.  Think about ways to put "Get My Own Farmer" high on your Christmas Wish List this year.

Postscript:  There was going to be a fourth thing.  I was going to indulge in a mini-rant around the idea of buying an outfit that is too small to be currently worn and have that hanging in the closet as supposed incentive to eat less and lose weight.  

In the current economic climate that really feels counterproductive.  However, after some thought I decided if I want to point fingers at anybody else's closet I best weed out the clothes I never wear and already have hanging in my own closet first.  

So I will channel the energy otherwise spent on scoldy-typing and redirect that to cleaning out my closet.  Afterwards I may yet return to that rant, filled with self righteous snarkiness, but more likely I will be exhausted and opt for taking a nap.  You can thank me later.  Onward!!