In the Sonoran desert area around Tucson, there’s not much in the way of snow, pine trees, or the other standard components for traditional holiday decorations for a house and yard–so you need to get creative. You’re working primarily with lots of rocks, Saguaro cactus, and other native desert plants, which can be a challenge.
I really like the little Santa caps for the cactus that this house came up with–understated, yet definitely fun and festive, and likely to put just about anyone into the holiday spirit.
They say that family-recommended recipes are the best recipes, so I appreciate this suggestion from the Savannah contingent, taken from Delish and the MSN website. I also am a lemon lover, so this cookie appeals to me for that reason as well. And any recipe that has you tying a knot with cookie dough sounds like a lot of fun. I’m definitely looking forward to trying this one this year.
Italian Lemon Cookies
Ingredients for cookies: 3 large eggs; 1 cup granulated sugar; 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil; 1/4 cup heavy cream; zest of one lemon; 1/4 cup lemon juice, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract; 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, 5/14 cups all-purpose flour
Ingredients for glaze: 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar; 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided; 2 lemons
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment. In a large bowl, beat eggs and granulated sugar on high speed for about three minutes, until sugar is incorporated and mixture is slightly fluffy. Mix in oil, cream, lemon zest and juice, baking powder, vanilla, and salt on low speed for about one minute, until just combined. Add flour and mix on medium speed for about two minutes, until a soft, tacky dough forms. Transfer dough to a work surface and divide into 3 portions. Cover 2 portions with plastic and set aside.
On a lightly floured surface, divide dough from the third portion into 12 two-tablespoon portions that are about the size of a golf ball. Roll each to an eight-inch rope. Wrap rope into a circle, then tuck one end through the center to create a knot. Arrange on a prepared sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, spacing cookies two inches apart with 12 per sheet. Bake cookies until lightly golden brown, 14 to 16 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.
To prepare the glaze, whisk powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons lemon juice in a small bowl until a thick glaze forms. Whisk in more lemon juice, 1 tablespoon at a time, until a thick-yet-runny glaze forms. Dip top of each cookie in glaze, then set on a wire rack or parchment-lined baking sheet. Grate lemon zest over tops of cookies before glaze has fully set. Let set for about 15 minutes before serving.
Today we turn the page to December, which means its time to start thinking about the upcoming holidays, and the big, important things that will be happening in the next few weeks–like holiday baking. I’m not alone in having that sentiment; one of our nieces reached out to ask if I had any of my mother’s cookie recipes, Although I don’t have specific recipes, regrettably, I do remember we kids baking sugar cookies with Mom, and then icing them. I also remember that Mom liked brown sugar, which made me wonder: what about a cutout cookie recipe that substitutes brown sugar for white sugar? A quick search found the recipe below on the Food Network website that I’m going to try this year in Mom’s memory.
Brown Sugar Cut-Out Cookies
Ingredients: 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour; 1/4 teaspoon baking powder; 1/4 teaspoon fine salt; 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar; 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, at room temperature; 1 large egg, lightly beaten; 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Beat the brown sugar and butter with an electric mixer on medium speed in a large bowl for about five minutes, until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, then beat in vanilla. Add the flour mixture and mix on medium-low speed until completely incorporated. Divide the dough in half, pat into 2 discs about 1/4 inch thick, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour, until firm.
After removing the chilled disks from the refrigerator, roll out the dough to about one-eight inch thickness, then use your cookie cutouts. Position the cut-out cookie dough on parchment paper on the cookie sheet a few inches apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees, until the cookies are brown at the edges. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet, then remove them to a rack for complete cooling.
For icing, we’ll be using the traditional Webner family method: pour random amounts of confectioner’s sugar into randomly selected cups (one for each color you want to create), stir in some condensed milk, then adjust the mixture by adding enough of one or the other until it reaches the desired icing thickness. Add different food coloring to each cup to reach sufficient color brightness before letting your icing creativity fly.
Sometimes a simple adjustment to a classic recipe yields a surprising result. I’ll be interested in taking a nibble of these brown sugar cookies this year, and will think of Mom when I take a bite.
Last Friday night, I walked over to Franklinton to meet some friends for dinner. As I turned from High Street onto Town Street, I was greeted by this too-early array of Christmas lights heading down Town Street to the river. A few steps later, as I passed the former Lazarus department store building, I saw a towering Christmas tree, fully decked out in glittering lights and ornaments, in the courtyard. Mind you, this was November 17–a full week before Thanksgiving.
What season is it, anyway? November has become a weird mix of leftover Halloween, traditional Veterans Day and Thanksgiving celebrations, and premature Christmas. It’s a month where you’ll still see trick-or-treat candy in the stores, a Veterans Day parade in your town, ads for Black Friday sales on your phone all month long, and stories about the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, all mixed together. Hallmark Christmas movies have been playing for months now, and holiday music channels have already sprung up. Hey, has A Charlie Brown Christmas been aired yet?
Where once there was a pretty clear demarcation between Halloween, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, with actual breathing periods in between, they’ve now all blended together into a rich seasonal stew of constant holidays, and November is the cauldron. You wonder what holiday is going to intrude into November next. Will the old guy with the sickle representing the old year and the New Year’s baby make an appearance? And why not get an early start on Valentine’s Day?
The folks in Moosehead Lake must keep the local taxidermists busy, because you see stuffed animal heads everywhere you go. And when the holiday season rolls around, they can’t resist decorating them with Santa caps and seasonal colors.
Beary Christmas, everyone! And a Moosey New Year, too!
We’re at the point in the holiday season where many of us have begun to experience Christmas music soundtrack overload, and we feel like we might go into a saccharine sentiment coma if we hear It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year even one more time. That’s why You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch has become such an essential part of the holiday season. You can be sitting in a restaurant, hearing a standard mix of songs like Up On The Housetop and Frosty the Snowman, and then suddenly detect the strains of You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch cutting directly through the sugar content, and you find yourself using your best super-deep voice to sing about bad bananas with greasy black peels.
Written as a key part of the TV broadcast of How The Grinch Stole Christmas that was first broadcast in 1966, the music for You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch was composed by Albert Hague, and the song was memorably sung for the TV show by Thurl Ravenscroft, the same actor who voiced Tony the Tiger and his “they’re great!” catchphrase. But it is the lyrics to the song–penned by Dr. Seuss himself–that are a hilarious revelation and a wonderful antidote to the unrelenting spun sugar sweetness of most holiday soundtracks. Here they are, in all their glory:
You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch You really are a heel You’re as cuddly as a cactus, you’re as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch You’re a bad banana with a greasy black peel!
You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch Your heart’s an empty hole Your brain is full of spiders, you’ve got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole!
You’re a vile one, Mr. Grinch You have termites in your smile You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile, Mr. Grinch Given a choice between the two of you I’d take the seasick crocodile!
You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch You’re a nasty-wasty skunk Your heart is full of unwashed socks, your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote “Stink, stank, stunk!”
You’re a rotter, Mr. Grinch You’re the king of sinful sots Your heart’s a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots, Mr. Grinch Your soul is an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful Assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled up knots!
You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch With a nauseous super “naus”! You’re a crooked dirty jockey and you drive a crooked hoss, Mr. Grinch You’re a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce!
You have to give Dr. Seuss credit for coming up with lyrics like “your heart’s a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots.” He understood that the Christmas spirit is best demonstrated with some negative contrast, before the central character is redeemed. It’s the same approach that makes Dickens’ A Christmas Carol such a classic.
And maybe I’m wrong–but doesn’t it seem that You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch becomes more popular every year?
It always produces a good, warm feeling when the holidays approach, you know lots of people will be traveling and anxiety will be high, and the inevitable dire warnings get issued about “travel hell” and disastrous weather. During this time of year, it’s great to see news stories like this one–about a huge winter storm bearing down on the Midwest that is expected to “evolve” into a “bomb cyclone,” just in time for Christmas.
I recognize that it’s got to challenging to write about the weather–how many different ways can there be to describe an approaching snowstorm?–but I have to give special credit to the writer of that piece, with the use of “evolve” suggesting that the storm is some living, malignant creature, ready to transmogrify into something even more fearsome and terrible. And, of course, “bomb cyclone” is the latest scary phrase for a bad snow storm with high winds. We didn’t used to call them “bomb cyclones” when we were hit with severe snow storms in past years; the weather people pretty much stuck with “storm of the century.” “Bomb cyclone” sounds a lot cooler and more hazardous, though.
Good luck to everyone who will be on the road over the holidays. Keep your chin up, try not to let the predictions of disaster and travel delays quash your holiday spirit, and be ready to move fast to lay in ample supplies of toilet paper and bottled water if that dreaded “bomb cyclone” goes off.
Yesterday I was walking past the former downtown Lazarus building when I noticed that two of the original display windows had been decorated for the holidays, as would have been done back when the Lazarus department store actually occupied the space. The two windows definitely give off a throwback Christmas vibe, with the ankle-deep cotton ball snow, the gold ornaments and fixtures, and the carefully placed mannequins dramatically displaying the women’s dresses and coats.
I think these are now the only two of the display windows that remain, but in the old days there was a row of them, and people would actually make the trip downtown just to check out the new goods that were featured in the the windows. In all likelihood, they would then go inside the Lazarus to see Santa and do some shopping–just like what is shown in the scenes of A Christmas Story. The display windows were a great form of point-of-purchase advertising, and a good window designer could definitely increase sales. Equally important, no kid’s Christmas list was complete until they had taken a look at the department store display windows to see whether there was something cool there that should be added.
I’m glad to see that these two display windows survived, even though the Lazarus department store is long gone and the building itself has become a kind of multi-purpose office space. I’m sure the cotton ball manufacturers are grateful, too.
The baking weekend is not over until the tins have been assembled with care, so this morning I enjoyed some quality tinning time, which special attention to layering and cookie distribution. (Fudge, almond bars, and gingerbread men bring up the load-bearing bottom, for example.). There not too much left over, either, which is good news!
All of my holiday duties have been fully and faithfully discharged, with one exception: holiday baking. So this weekend we will be working on some serious cookie creation and fudge making. We’ve got all of the ingredients (at least, until I inevitably realize that I have forgotten something) and I’ve got the Sirius XM Holiday Pops channel to give me some musical accompaniment. Let the baking begin!
I came up to Cleveland yesterday and had a chance to walk around Public Square before dinner. It was brightly decorated for the holidays, and with the Terminal Tower in the background I got the full sense of a Cleveland Christmas.
My visit reminded me of Christmases long ago, when my grandparents would take us to Cleveland to visit the department stores—Higbee’s, Halle’s, and Polsky’s—look in the display windows, enjoy the bright lights, go to the toy department, have lunch, and of course visit Santa. Our annual trips to Cleveland made the holidays even more special.
Now that December is here, and the Thanksgiving holiday is well behind us, it’s time to start thinking about holiday baking. This year, I’m going to try some new recipes to with some of my traditional favorites. I’m interested in adding a bit of international flair to my baking efforts, and in doing some poking around the internet I stumbled across a recipe for sequilhos, which are a traditional Brazilian cookie made with cornstarch. So, the cookies not only have a South American lineage, they also will be gluten-free for our gluten-intolerant friends. Even better, this recipe only has four ingredients and sounds simple to make.
Sequilhos
Ingredients: 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room temperature; 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk; 1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt; 2 1/4 cups of cornstarch
Combine the butter, sweetened condensed milk and salt in a large bowl and use a spatula to mix everything until the butter is incorporated into the condensed milk. Slowly add the cornstarch, mixing first with the spatula and then, as the process gets harder, using your hands until a smooth dough forms. (The website indicates that judgment should be used in this process, because you might not need every grain of cornstarch and don’t want to overdo it if the dough looks right.)
Roll the cookie dough (about 1 teaspoon per cookie) into balls and press each ball with your thumb. Place the balls on a two baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Using a fork, slightly flatten the cookies, then refrigerate the cookies for 30 minutes to avoid them spreading when baking.
Preheat oven to 350ºF with a rack in the middle. Bake the cookies for 15 minutes or until they begin to gain some color on the bottom but remain pale on top. Cool the cookies while still on the baking sheets for 15-20 minutes, then move them to a rack to finish cooling.
These cookies are supposed to be fairy light and addictive. Sounds like a good Christmas cookie to me! I’ll probably add some colored sugar to some, and perhaps some jam to others, just to put the cookies into the proper holiday spirit.
Last night we legged it over to Indian Oven for dinner, and on the way back we walked through Columbus Commons. It is all decked out and lit up for the holidays. The brilliant display includes colossal outlines of Christmas bulbs–which also reminded me of the “five golden rings” from The Twelve Days of Christmas–that are strategically positioned at various points on the grounds to allow for posing-within-the-ring selfies (something we saw other visitors doing while we were there) as well as nutcrackers and an assortment of different holiday objects. With some of the lights blinking and others configured to resemble dripping icicles, it’s an active light show, too.
The Columbus Commons decorators didn’t quite attach lights to every square inch of the park–as the photo above shows, they wisely left the central grassy area open for the benefit of neighborhood dogs and outdoor yoga fans–but otherwise all of the trees, shrubs, beds, fountains, and the big stage are adorned in just about every color you can imagine. Add in a giant TV that displays footage of a burning yule log, and you’ve got a pretty impressive display. If you’ve got kids and they like light shows, it is definitely worth a visit.
Merry Christmas to everyone! May this special day bring you happiness, peace, serenity, time with family and friends, a moment or two for reflection, and a visit from Santa Paws carrying the present of your dreams on his back.
Webner House 