December Foodie Holidays: Week 1

December is National Fruit Cake Month and Egg Nog Month.

Dec. 1: Pie Day
Dec. 2: Fritters Day
Dec. 3: Apple Pie Day
Dec. 4: Cookie Day
Dec. 5: Sacher Torte Day
Dec. 6: Gazpacho Day
Dec. 7: Cotton Candy Day

From one of my husband's aunt's:

Eggnog Bread 

3 C. flour

1/2 C. sugar

4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1 beaten egg

1 3/4 C. canned OR dairy eggnog

1/2 C. cooking oil

1/2 C. chopped pecans

1/2 C. golden raisins

1/2 C. sifted powdered sugar

2-3 tsp. eggnog

Directions: In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Combine the eggnog, egg and oil; add to the dry ingredients, stirring until just combined. Stir in the nuts and raisins. Turn into a greased 9x5 loaf pan. Bake in a 350ºF oven for 60-70 minutes. Cover with foil after 50 minutes is bread browns too quickly. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove bread from pan and cool on a wire rack. Wrap bread; store overnight. To serve, stir together powdered sugar and enough eggnog to make of drizzling consistency. Drizzle over bread.

Comments: “This is a nice bread to give away.”

National Pie Day - January 23rd

January 23rd is National Pie Day, and I would like to encourage you to seek out and share stories and memories in your cookbook. Why? Because it's fun, it adds another layer of personalization to your cookbook, it can make people who are no longer with us live on in stories and laughter, and it gives people a chance to learn things about the family they might not otherwise have known. (There are more tips for getting stories in my book, Creating an Heirloom: Writing Your Family's Cookbook.)
In honor of Pie Day, I'll share with you some of the stories from our cookbook, pie-related "disasters"...

• My uncle loves lemon pie, and my grandmother made one for him for his birthday. Unfortunately, she left out a very important ingredient: sugar. She was "mortified," according to Mom.
• My mother baked a cherry pie for a neighbor; it was his favorite. Unfortunately she inadvertently bought cherries that hadn't been pitted. The neighbor told her it was the best pie he'd ever had (while spitting out pits).
• One Thanksgiving I made a sweet potato pie. I'd never made one before, and the recipe I found called for bourbon. I had an little airplane bottle of whiskey, and substituted that. It baked forever before I finally just assumed that was what it was supposed to look like. No -- it was awful, and the alcohol never cooked out of it.

With three generations of pie mishaps, I have to wonder if it runs in the family... (I still don't like to bake pies.)

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