The Farm's First Christmas!

It's really beginning to feel like the holidays for me now. It never did before. In college, I felt that being home was a burden, a hazy one that either ended with me moping in my room, or texting my college friends with small details of how "annoying" my family was. In California, as I've talked about before, it never felt like Christmas, wearing shorts and driving the interstate to find fast food restaurants that would stay open for us. Or, some years, we split the burden--one of us would stay with the dogs while the other spent Christmas with family back in Pennsylvania. Lonely is all I remember for three years then.

I didn't keep up with the traditions; I never bothered to try. Maybe it was too painful, or maybe I just didn't really care that much. Those in-between years of settling and resettling, in rented houses and backyards that were too small, I never thought I had anything to celebrate. And, as always, I was wrong. And, as always, I'm learning.

We moved into our house just after the holidays last year, so this is the first time we're really experiencing it all. The tree, the fir, the snow-packed dog paws that melt on the hardwood floors. Old ornaments from second-hand stores and our mothers' attics. Wooden ones, broken ones, ones that hang on paperclips instead of hooks. Things we've never done before, experiences that I've been wanting to create.

And it was good. Rushed, but good. Haphazard, but good, to look back at a year of questions and answers and understand that sometimes the most fun we're going to have in a week is doing the mindless, repetitive tasks that we used to hate as kids.

And the same goes for cookies. It used to be a tradition, one that I seemed to forget about until I'm hungry for something sweet. But this year, as I shared with Modern Farmer, it's turned into something I love doing. Decorating, baking, cutting shapes and dipping them in coffee. I can't wait to give them out as gifts this year. And below this recipe is a special surprise for your pup as well!

Iced Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg (of course, we used our girls' fresh eggs!)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup AP flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

1. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla and mix together
3. Sift together dry ingredients and gently stir into your butter mixture
4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc. Wrap and chill for 1 hour
5. Preheat oven to 400*F
6. Roll out and cut dough into desired shapes (about 3/4 inch thickness worked best for me)
7. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes, or until edges are just browned

For decorating: Use dyed royal icing (my ratio is 1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar for each 1 egg white, plus a 1/4 teaspoon of water or so, mixed with your dyes) and a bit of patience for the decorating. I always remind myself that the more handmade it looks, the more love I put into it--so I never stress too much about perfection!
 

And here is an alternative for your best pal! Make these dog treats (recipe was shared here) and give them away to all your dog loving friends!

Heaven in the Form of a Peppermint Pavlova

Heaven in the form of Terminal One. St. Peter’s gate with a metal detector. I came prepared, I didn’t wear any shoes. No obols on my eyes. No eye contact in general. I keep my head down, my headphones on. I think I listened to a podcast. Ambient noise. Women talking about war or famine or how to make the best gravy in the world for her family of five. Ambient noise, it drowned out the kids circled around their mother. It drowned out the loudspeakers of any changes, the subsequent groans of tired passengers who didn’t want to move three gates over.

Heaven in the form of stretching, getting my luggage, seeing the way the blue velvet of morning frays into a grey threadbare against the trees. A layover in North Carolina for two hours. I bought a McDonald’s coffee and I think the last time I drank coffee from McDonald’s was when I moved to Texas. When I tried to run away from a tether that choked a little sometimes. I think it’s all still a little raw, a little real. The coffee smells like motor oil and my fingertips smell like cigarette smoke. It’s all a little sensorial; I threw the coffee away. I think I was living in a dream. It was only 5:30 in the morning when we hit the tarmac.

Heaven in the form of silence. Solitude. Grey light and warm hand dryers in the mens room. The metronome of my breathing. It’s too early for kids to scream, too early for television sets. It’s too early for the world to start and I like it this way. I feel an otherness to it. My being here isn’t disrupting any order, any regimen, any existence. I threw the coffee way. I sat behind a column, charged my phone, rubbed my head until I couldn’t feel my pulse behind my eyes anymore. I sat alone and I liked it that way.

Heaven when I saw the yellow porchlights expand and grow into a thousand sunbursts along the rivers. How the shadow skipped across the fields like creek pebbles. How the jolt in the landing meant I was there. I was alive. I wasn’t dreaming. I was home. I met my dad at the baggage claim, he had a hot coffee waiting for me. He hugged me with one arm, he grabbed my luggage with the other. We didn’t say much on the way home. But I felt alive. I felt good. It all felt like home.

I’ve tried to create home in so many different boys, in so many different houses, in so many different recipes. But nothing beats the windows down in my parents’ “new to them” SUV. Nothing beats the cats that watch me, owl-eyed, from the stairwell while I bring my bag up to my old room. I see my mom’s knitting in a basket by the fireplace. I see boxes of Diet Coke by the fridge. All the lines in my mother’s face are new, but the same floorboards creak reassuringly that I haven’t missed too much. I haven’t been gone that long. The world here hasn’t forgotten me just yet, my dad hasn’t forgotten me yet. No matter how prodigal his son has been.

Peppermint Pavlova

Simple, eye-catching, and stunning for a last-minute dessert for a holiday party. Makes one large 9-inch pavlova or three 3-inch pavlovas.

Ingredients for Meringue:

• 3 egg whites, cold
•  1 cup sugar
•  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
•  ½ teaspoon peppermint extract
• 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar
• ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
• 3 teaspoons red food coloring (gel preferred)

Directions for Meringue:

1. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper and draw either a 9-inch or three 3-inch circles for your meringues.
2. Preheat oven to 300*F
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites on medium-high until they become stiff and peaks form (may take a few minutes—don’t rush and continue at the foamy stage)
4. Add sugar, a little at a time, with mixer still running. Peaks will continue to stiffen and egg whites will appear to have a glossier sheen
5. Turn mixer down a speed or two. Add extracts, vinegar, and tartar. Beat for about ten seconds to incorporate.
6. Meringue should be stiff and hold a peak on the whisk attachment
7. In a piping bag, or a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, drip a thin line of red food coloring on three sides of the bag. Use the tip (or a corner if using the Ziploc) as your vertex.  These will provide the coloring for the peppermint swirl of the meringue base.
8. Carefully spoon egg whites into bag (if using Ziploc, cut the tip of the corner), making sure not to disrupt the food coloring lines
9. Work from the center of the circles and pipe outwards, raising the outer side slightly to create an edge. Be generous and use entire egg whites, but be slow and steady with piping, as you don’t want the red lines of coloring to begin to mix and your whole meringue turns a more homogenous pink instead of a mixed red and white striped appearance.
10. Bake for one hour and continue on with making the whipped cream while meringue is baking.
11. When finished, gently remove from oven. Cool for ten minutes before transferring to a wire rack to continue cooling.

Ingredients for Whipped Cream:

• ½ pint heavy whipping cream
• ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract 

Directions for Whipped Cream:

1. In a mixing bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, beat heavy whipping cream on medium-high until thick and peaks begin to form.
2. Add vanilla and sugar and continue to beat until thick, glossy, and holds a peak

Assembly: Place meringue on plate, dump a generous amount of whipped cream on top, smoothly slightly. Then, top with crushed Ghiradelli’s peppermint bark (or a similar brand) and a few crushed candy canes for added texture and flavor. ow go enjoy your holidays!

And while I did the 9-inch pavlova for the shoot, here are a couple shots of the three-inch pavlovas!

Remembering Rome: Fruitcake Biscotti

This week marks five years since I rode a carousel of gilded horses somewhere in the middle of Rome. I had too much wine and the piazza was celebrating Christmas early. There were witches on strings sold for seven Euro and small keychains where the gold was peeling off. They were one Euro. I bought five for everyone in my family. Good enough. They’d appreciate the sentiment. A week later, I found all five in the trash. All the gold scratched off with fingernails and spare change.

The lights of the carousel swirled manically in my memory and we weren’t even going that fast. We all seemed so much happier than I think we really were. I think it was raining then. I think I had forgotten my coat at the bar we went to later. I think we bought roses from a beggar and gave them to a nun cleaning when we got back to the dormitory (it was attached to a monastery). I think that memory sticks with me now because I felt both so vertiginous seated on the carousel and so grounded to the holiday season. I felt like I was home in a country where I had to carry my student visa to get into any of my classes.

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But it has been five years. Two of those years I didn’t celebrate Christmas. I haven’t done much of anything since I’ve come out to California. But I think about that day, that night, that moment I felt so connected to a world where I still had to nod eagerly and point to order a pastry.  Not too much eye contact, ask a stranger for directions.

I still feel like a foreigner sometimes, like a fraud. There’s a personal dissonance for me when I see strands of lights wrapped around palm trees. I feel like I’m betrayal some primal Appalachian roots being in the West during the holidays. It rains in California more than it snows. So I try to make the best of it, to recreate the moments when I felt most festive. When it felt wholesome and good and I felt worthy to enjoy Christmas.  I’ve felt like a necromancer, resurrecting all those memories back to the surface, those feelings of nostalgia, of carousel rides and white Christmases. This week I made hot chocolate the way my mother does—full of cream and chocolate chips melted in the microwave. I made the sugar cookies my brother likes for a potluck at work. And with the help of West Elm, I made fruitcake biscotti for that night in Rome. And while the memories keep fading away, while they aren’t as bright in my mind as they used to be, I keep trying. 

Fruitcake Biscotti, makes 12-16

Ingredients:

•  1/2 cup flavorless oil 
•  2 whole eggs, plus one yolk
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon molasses
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons dried cranberries
• 2 tablespoon dried oranges, diced
• 2 tablespoon candied ginger, diced
• 2 tablespoon heavy cream

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Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325.  Prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper
2. In a measuring cup, measure out and whisk together oil, eggs, extracts, and molasses and set aside
3. In a mixing bowl, sift together sugar, flour and baking powder
4. Create a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and slowly pour wet mixture into well, mixing with a wooden spoon until it begins to come together
5. Dump out onto a floured work surface and sprinkle dried fruit on top of dough. Work dough by hand, kneading five or six times until it has come together
6. With a sharp knife, cut dough in half and shape each piece into an 8-inch log that is about 1 inch high. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Coat each log with a small amount of cream.
7. Bake logs for 30 minutes, and take out of the oven.  Using a serrated knife, slice both logs into ½-inch segments
8. Lay all slices evenly onto baking sheet with one cut side up.  Reduce oven to 300 and bake on each side for 6 minutes, until crisp
9. Allow to cool before serving. 
10. Buon appetito!

Traditions and Tahini Gingerbread Men (in collaboration with West Elm SD)

We are cookie makers and pie bakers. Stepsons and second marriages. We grew into these roles through years of calloused hands that held the hands of distracted women in the back rows of church. You can trace my family back to the 17th Century and they’ve always held the same thing close to heart: tradition for tradition’s sake, tradition to anchor themselves to some higher meaning than the myopic, the provincial. The utterly human qualities of my family that are somehow inescapable in our genome. My family is built on a tradition of never valuing what they have.

We are cookie makers and pie bakers. Bread bakers, too. I had a grandfather who drove trucks and brought home a crate of oranges that fell off a truck once. He said he liked being on the road, how it gave him an obligation to run away every week. He said he only came home to get his paychecks; he didn’t care much for his family then. My other grandfather was a farmer and described how to properly collect eggs one Christmas when I was rolling out some dough. He told me how to keep the hens from getting restless. Sometimes he played them music and sometimes he whistled to them. He said he wish he knew how to keep himself from getting restless, so he kept the radio on at night.

My uncles were called the Tanglewood Pretenders when they got it in their heads that they were descended from a lord in England. They were named so after the Baptist church on their grandfather’s farm. They told people in their town they were kings to some degree. They rode horses to help their own grandfather with his store in town and one fought in a war instead of being crowned. Now he’s married and works a desk job and the other hasn’t been seen for almost six years.

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Tradition. How we all grew up in the same chain link lots as our parents before us. Tradition when the fruit salad falls out of the fridge and the turkey is a little too dry. Tradition when the cake is eaten before the meal. Tradition is when we fight over scorekeeping during card games. Tradition so engrained in us that we can never seem to escape it. And we want to escape so bad sometimes.

This will be the first time I’m going home in four years to celebrate Christmas. The first time I’ll wake up to presents again. The first time I’ll see a tree decorated with the papier-mâché angel on top. The first time in four years that I’ll appreciate the tradition for what it is, for who we are, for what it all means to come from a long line of men who put food on the table and women who wanted to run away from it all. There is comfort in that inescapable reality and I’m facing it head-on next week. I’m ready. I’m waiting.

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I wish I knew how to keep myself from getting so restless.  So I’m trying to keep my home as enticing as possible. I’ve been baking cookies this week to keep busy, to keep distracted, to stay inside and not feel the need to run away. I created a hearth. I baked in that hearth. I made gingerbread cookies. Painted faces with crooked smiles from my shaky and unsure hand. I made a home this week, attempted to bring some holiday cheer while I think of all the traditions I didn’t value when I was younger.

I kept busy by making this cold bungalow in California feel like home.  I needed some help from West Elm. And while I’m still waiting for Christmas to get here, they’ve made the wait a little easier. I’m a little less restless. I’m a little more comforted by the traditions that I didn’t understand before.

Tahini Gingerbread Men (makes 36 cookies)

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Ingredients:

• 3 cups AP flour, sifted twice
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of pepper
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened 
• 1/4 cup shortening, softened
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, tightly packed
• 2/3 cup molasses
• 1/3 cup tahini
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg + 1 yolk
• 1/4 cup candied ginger, finely chopped
• Royal Icing (I added a little orange blossom water to mine)

Directions:

1. Sift together flour, soda, and all spices in a large bowl and set aside
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, mix butter, shortening, and sugar on medium-high until light and fully incorporated (will be lighter in color)
3. Add molasses, tahini, egg and yolk, and vanilla to the butter-sugar mixture. Beat for a minute
4. With motor running on low, gradually add dry ingredients in thirds. Allow one third to fully incorporate before adding the next. Dough should be a homogenous browned color
5. Turn out onto a floured work station and shape into a round disc. Cut into quarters and shape into discs again. Wrap and refrigerate for half an hour
6. While dough is chilling, make royal icing, preheat oven to 350*F, and prepare a couple baking sheets with parchment paper
7. When dough is finished chilling, take one disc at a time from the fridge and unwrap. Roll out onto a floured work surface into a rectangle (helps with sizing and spacing) to be about 1/4". Cut into desired shape and place on parchment-lined sheets, about 1 inch apart from one another. If making gingerbread men, you may want to use a spatula. Repeat for remaining/desired dough
8. Bake for 12 minutes or until browned and crisp around the edges. Allow to cool before decorating.

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Christmas Eve.

The anticipation used to kill me, trick me, tease me.  Christmas break would start on a day before Christmas Eve and last all the way through to January 3rd.  I would cry when I didn't get what I wanted, I would cry when I had to go back to school.  I would eat turkey and ham and lasagna and seven different types of fish with my family.  We would play cards, pretend to like each other.  It was tradition and now I realize how ephemeral it really was.  How days moved like molasses, and then quick like warmed syrup.  From a small flurry to a blizzard, we wrapped ourselves in fleece blankets and wondered how the cold got into our old, old house and made our bones feel just as old.

That's what I remember about Christmas and I used to envy how others described it as magical, mystical, something worth looking forward to.  All those years, it seemed like a chore and how greedy I was to ask for more, to count the dollar value or my gifts compared to my siblings'.  How sad it all seemed the next day, anticlimactic and messy.  I always wanted more, but I could never articulate what I wanted the most.  I think all I wanted was to feel loved, held, a part of a larger family than the small nucleus that was mom, dad, brother, sister.

Lately I've been feeling nostalgic and hungry, grateful and like I lost something and can't remember where I put it.  These feelings don't often hit me in such full force.  Going home last week to Pennsylvania (more on that later) brought something out of me that I didn't know was in me:  the power to create magic.  The ability to create peaceful, loving memories with my mother.  Instead of remaining bitter, remembering how a week before Christmas in 2010 I got tested for HIV and then threw a fit when I didn't get the new iPhone, I could laugh with my mom and hug my dad tight.  I was invited to spend the night at my sister's first place, I called my brother and congratulated him on his new house.  I was creating, making, forging, and shaping a future with my small nucleus to last longer than the one day a year we forced upon ourselves for tradition's sake.  And that's what Christmas is about, that is what my parents wanted all along.  And I want to return that favor to all of you.  Bake this cake, forge those memories, make someone smile and discover that all you needed was there all along.  It's one part Christmas and two parts mountain dessert, Appalachian baking.  A moon pie, a whoopee pie.  Whatever you call it, it's a survivalist attempt at decadence.  It's delicious and light, moist and dense.  A mile-high contradiction where you can splurge a little, if it helps you remember your care-and-calorie-free childhood a little easier.

I received a lot of presents this year -- marble and ceramics, wood and paper -- but the best gift I could receive was knowing that I'm loved by someone, and I can return that love to anyone who will let me.

Peppermint and Eggnog Whoopie Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 2/3 cup eggnog, divided
• 1 cup cold water
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (mix it up with smoked salt)
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso mix
• 2 cups flour
• 2/3 cups cocoa powder
• 4 oz butter, softened
• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cup confectioner's sugar
• 1 teaspoon gelatin, bloomed in cold water
• 2 candy canes

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare two 9" cake pans with butter and parchment paper
2. In a mixing bowl or measuring cup, whisk all wet ingredients (1 cup of the eggnog) together and set aside
3. Sift together soda, salt, espresso, flour, and cocoa in a large mixing bowl and create a well in the middle
4. Slowly begin combining wet and dry ingredients, mixing with a rubber spatula to scrape all sides
5. For an added level of smoothness, pour wet ingredients through a sieve and scrape sides with spatula into a clean mixing bowl
6. Divide batter between two cake pans
7. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean
8. Allow to cool
9. While cake is cooling, prepare the icing.
10. In a small bowl, combine 1 teaspoon of gelatin with a tablespoon of cold water and set aside while gelatin blooms
11. In a large mixing bowl, use a mixer to combine butter, confectioner's sugar, cream cheese, until combined.  Whip in the remaining eggnog and vanilla.  Add a pinch of salt, if desired
12. When gelatin has stiffened, put in microwave for 15 seconds or until melted and whip into icing mixture
13. Allow to set for 15-20 minutes
14. When cake is completely cooled and icing is set with the gelatin, you can assemble the cake
15. Put one cake onto the plate, then scoop and smooth icing using a wet icing spatula or butter knife.  Of course, this can be messy, so don't stress too much
16. Top with remaining cake
17. Pulse candy canes in a food processor until a fine dust
18. Brush VERY lightly with water on cake to allow peppermint to stick
19. Pour peppermint crumbs onto cake to taste's desire
20. Enjoy with your family!

Merry Christmas, everyone!