Rich and Creamy Eggnog

Even living in Singapore, when December starts, I am ready for the comforting winter items of my childhood. Eggnog tops the list. (Further down the list are hot chocolate, warm apple cider, stews, and pumpkin dishes.)

Eggnog is not common in Singapore, though, so I have to make my own. And so I chose this eggnog recipe, from Mark's Daily Apple. It has less sugar (and hence tastes less sweet) than any commercial version. This means I can drink more of it - and with abandon - yippee! December beverages are sorted and lots of eggnog lattes are coming my way.

Edible Gift: Homemade Limoncello

Each year I make small, homemade gifts for Anthony's and my colleagues. One favourite is homemade limoncello, a simple lemon liquor. It was extremely easy to make, though it has to rest for a week, so if you want to make it, get started soon! All you need is lemons (organic, preferably), vodka, and sugar.

5 Simple Recipes for Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year and welcome to the year of the horse! Why don't we all enjoy some easy Chinese food this weekend to celebrate the new year? Here are five extremely simple recipes to get started with.

Bang Bang Chicken: This noodles and chicken dish can be made ahead and is sure to appeal to anyone.

"Fish-Fragrent" Aubergines: This is a vegetarian side dish. The name is due to the spice combination that is often used on fish. The aubergines (or "eggplant" to you?) are nice and vibrant; not at all bland as they can sometimes be.

Christmas Baking Dilemma

I stalled for a long time deciding what to make for my edible gifts this Christmas. The truth is I have a dilemma. I think the gift should be something sweet, but I no longer eat a lot of sweet things and have learned to like less sweet treats. In addition, I have almost completely given up grains over the last year.

Grain-free and low sugar desserts (like grain-free honey cakes) are expensive to make. And, let's be honest, they usually do taste a little bit different than the normal versions. They taste great to me -- but I know that my tastebuds have become accustomed and happy with a less intense sweet.

Sparkling Ginger and Lime Crush

As part of Thanksgiving dinner, I made this easy drink. It's my first foray into making a "house cocktail". We also served other drinks, but everyone tried and enjoyed a glass of this sparkling beverage. It's markedly gingery with a hint of lime.

I made it with part plain water and part sparkling water (in about the ratio 1:3) to make it lightly sparkling. When sparkling drinks have too many bubbles, they just go up my nose and destroy my imbibing enjoyment. This ginger and lime crush is enjoyably bubbly.

Weekend Links #32

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--How many times should you try a food before deciding you don't like it? At least once, argues Jay Rayner in The Observer Food Monthly. And in the case of tripe, many more times. (I have not tried it so I can't comment.)
--A detailed (but readable) analysis of 23 studies comparing low fat and low carbohydrate diets (from Authority Nutrition).
--"Don't bother going out to eat all the time"... and you will enjoy it more (from Casual Kitchen). The same goes for eating chocolate.

Thanksgiving 2013

We hosted our Canadian Thanksgiving one week early this year. There were seven of us and just one Canadian (me!). Everyone was an honourary Canadian for the day. We all have so much to be thankful for. We wrote things we are thankful for on coloured leaves and stuck them up on the dining room mirror. Actually counting our blessings makes it so easy to be grateful.

The food was extensive - as it should be. We had one vegetarian and several veggie-friendly eaters. Here is the menu.

Valentine's Day Ideas

We long ago stopped debating about eating out or in for Valentine's Day. Eating out on February 14 is too expensive, with fancy, overpriced set menus. And the service always seems a little surly because the restaurant is busy and the staff would rather be elsewhere. As a result, we eat at home on Valentine's.

(The best day to go to a restaurant, we discovered, is February 15! The restaurant is much quieter and the meals are back to normal price.)

What about you? Will you or your loved one be cooking for Valentine's Day? Here are some ideas to make this romantic day easy and successful.

Starters:

Pumpkin and peach salad with lemongrass dressing

Cauliflower soup with roasted red pepper swirl

Edible Gifts: Irish Cream and Pistachio Fudge and Dark Chocolate Kahlua Fudge

These two delicious fudge recipes are from the blog Eat Good 4 Life. Irish cream pistachio fudge is made with white chocolate. Dark chocolate kahlua fudge also has almonds. Both are heavily rich! Even a small cube is luxurious.

Last Christmas I gave these as gifts to my colleagues. I wrapped up two pieces of each kind of fudge with plastic wrap and ribbons.

Cranberry and Walnut Muffins

Here are four things that make me feel Christmassy:

1. listening to Christmas carols while cooking
2. singing along to Christmas carols
3. the smell of baking muffins with cranberries and orange
4. my fingers around a mug of steaming spiced tea

Pumpkin Panna Cotta

I have been a bit slow this autumn to begin the pumpkin cooking, but I am happy to report that I am now racing to catch up. First, I present this stunning autumn dessert for a special meal: pumpkin panna cotta.

This is a ridiculously easy dessert if you have canned pumpkin on hand. And it is still very easy if you have to roast the pumpkin yourself. (Do it the day before to save your sanity.) My Hong Kong grocery store gets one delivery of canned pumpkin a year, always the week before American Thanksgiving. I squealed in the shop when I saw it last weekend! This year I have been wise and stocked up with seven big cans to take me through until next year's shipment. Prepare yourselves, readers, for pumpkin recipes to make anyone cry for non-root vegetables.

Top 5 Easter Recipes

For me, holidays revolve around food. Easter meals are a great time to share with friends and family and reflect on God's gift to us in Jesus. Here are my five picks for making this weekend's food special.


Hot Cross Buns: This whole grain version of the Easter classic is easy to make and a perfect Easter breakfast.

Edible Gift: Hot Chocolate on a Stick

I like to give small gifts to my colleagues at Christmas. I usually want to thank about 40 or 50 people at work who have contributed to my year - fellow maths teachers, office staff, and friendly colleagues. I'm on a budget, so 40 bottles of wine is ruled out as a gift idea! But handmade gifts are usually reasonably cheap to make. They involve a bit more time, though. And people are grateful for something handmade because they realise that it took time to make.

Thanksgiving Ideas

All the Americans around me are getting excited for Thanksgiving this week! Here are a few ideas for Thanksgiving dinner.

• Winter squash bread pudding (pictured above)

Weekend Links #24

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--A useful post about speeding up weeknight dinner preparation (from The Kitchn). There are lots of good ideas in the comments.
--Why you should be making your holiday cookie dough now, and freezing it (from The Kitchn, again!).
--Mark Bittman takes on the common statement that "junk food is cheaper than cooking at home" (from the New York Times). What does it cost to feed a family of four at McDonald's and at home?
--I want to get a copy of Ruhlman's Twenty - a new cookbook whose thesis is that there are twenty basic techniques to master to be a good cook. The book includes 100 recipes and lots of photos for each technique (from Michael Ruhlman).
--Furthermore, there are almost 200 cookbooks coming out before Christmas. Here's a list of most of them (from The Eater). It includes one Hong Kong book (Hong Kong and Macau Magic) and a culinary history of Canada (Canadians at Table). I bet the list has a holiday present for every foodie.

rutabaga slaw

Each year my Mum and I are asked to provide one or two side dishes for the Christmas meal. My Grammie makes the turkey and the stuffing, and each of my Dad's siblings (or spouses) prepares a side dish or two to round out the feast. Last year my Mother and I made gingered sweet potatoes. The year before that I cooked green beans. This year we have been assigned turnips and parsnips.

We'll cook the parsnips quite traditionally: sliced and fried in butter. But there is always a little leeway for an interesting side dish, too, so I decided plain mashed turnip was out. Turnip is a vegetable I have not really liked in the past, especially on Christmas day when there are so many other tasty veggies from which to choose. But it turns out that the veg I thought I disliked are not even turnips at all.

eating healthy at Christmas

Healthy eating... is so difficult at Christmas. I want to eat healthily to respect my body, but I also want to enjoy the feasting at this time of year. There are so many tasty things on offer! Here are some of my thoughts about healthy eating in December.


To begin with, I think "all things in moderation" also applies to feasting and fasting. There are some times when it's good to feast and other times when it's good to fast. I won't deny myself the chance to indulge occasionally, as long as it is only occasional. Christmas dinner, for example, is one of three times in the year when I don't think about calories, fat, ingredients, or nutrition. (The other two are Thanksgiving and Easter dinners.) Feasting is a way of marking a special day and Christmas is a day worth celebrating. Jesus' birth means a lot to me, so I think it's a great time to feast!

Gingered Sweet Potatoes

Christmas lunch this year was a fifteen person affair, hosted by my Mother. Mum is an excellent cook who regularly caters for big groups (earlier this year she put on a soup and sandwich dinner for seventy carollers at the church). She doesn't really need much help from me, except that the Christmas dinner vegetables are often quite traditional and need a bit of excitement. It's a mixed family group so the aim is to keep the dinner quite palatable for the older folks while not boring the younger generation either.

This gingered sweet potato puree was one of the vegetable dishes I was overseeing this year. I also looked after the Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower, green beans, and carrots, all of which were very traditionally prepared. We used two slow cookers for the beans and carrots (cooked side-by-side in one slow cooker) and the sweet potatoes. Mother actually picked the recipe as well and then assigned it to me for cooking, so I can't really take that much credit for the finished dish! Since it's made in the slow cooker it's very easy to do.

Edible Gift: Hermit Bars

My colleagues are a hard-working, dedicated bunch. They deserve some treats now and then. They work more than hard enough to deserve their holidays, and it's time for a rest after this busy term. I made these Hermit Bars to celebrate the end of term and upcoming Christmas.

nut bake

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving more than a month ago. But all the talk about American Thanksgiving is making me want to invite round another group of friends and cook up a feast in celebration. We have so much to be thankful for, so why only one day?


My Thanksgiving party always involves a few vegetarian guests. And I count myself when thinking about the veggie food. Although I eat meat, I just love vegetables more. Vegetarian food seems more inventive quite a lot of the time. (I think I might be a vegetarian if I wasn't married to a sausage-loving bloke.) This Thanksgiving I made the nut bake for my vegetarian and vegetarian-at-heart guests.


There are a fair few ingredients, but with a food processor or blender to whizz breadcrumbs and nuts, the preparation was easy. The vegetarian eaters loved it, and even most of the meat eaters enjoyed a portion. I was lucky enough to eat the leftovers for lunch later that week!

Nut Bake
serves 8
adapted from The Kitchen Revolution: A Year of Time-and-money-saving Recipes

Nut Layers:
4 T (1/4 c) butter
1 T oil
2 onions, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves
450 g (2 1/2 c) mixed nuts (for example, cashews, pine nuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, almonds), crushed
4 large eggs
200 g (3 1/3 c) white breadcrumbs (from 6-8 slices of bread)
8 T (1/2 c) milk

Breadcrumb Filling:
1 lemon, zested
250 g (4 c) brown breadcrumbs (from 8-10 slices of bread)
2 sprigs fresh sage, leaves chopped
4 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves chopped
handful of fresh parsley, chopped
85 g (2 c) watercress, chopped
6 T butter

Preheat the oven to 200 C/400 F.
Soften the onions and garlic in a pan. Combine in a bowl with the other nut layer ingredients.
Mix the breadcrumb layer ingredients in a separate bowl and season well.
Grease two loaf pans and put a quarter of the nut mixture in each. Press down, then cover each with half the breadcrumb mixture. Finish with the remaining nut mixture. Cover with foil.
Bake for 30 minutes or freeze to bake later. (If freezing, defrost fully before baking as directed.)