Tag Archives: Food

Build Your Dream Gingerbread House Part Two

Posted on December 6, 2010 | 4 comments

Updated for 2011.

Creating and designing gingerbread houses is a fun and classic holiday activity. It can also — let’s face it — be messy and time-consuming, what with baking the pieces for and constructing the house, gathering all the needed supplies, and having an area in your home that you don’t mind getting a little frosting-spackled.

The clever solution for would-be gingerbread architects who are a little short on time and materials? Find a spot that supplies all the needed ingredients and merely requires you to show up, be creative and pay for what you use.

One such spot is San Francisco and Mill Valley, CA’s Gingerbread Builders, which offers standard and custom houses and everything you need to create stunning ones, including catalogs for inspiration, staff assistance, plenty of time and all manner of frosting and candy decorations. And best? It’s open every day on a drop-in basis.

Other Bay Area spots offer gingerbread house workshops at specific times. These include the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, Cake Art in San Rafael, Autumn Express in San Francisco, and Spun Sugar in Berkeley.

Across the country, in Lexington, MA, Wilson Farm offers a gingerbread house workshop on a historic farm that features lots of other fun activities. In Newton, MA, Create a Cook has a two-part gingerbread house workshop, in addition to other kids’ cooking classes.

New York City’s Taste Buds offers lots of gingerbread house and holiday cookie workshops.

The Creative Discovery Museum in Chatanooga, TN, has gingerbread house workshops.

In Camano Island, WA, you can decorate a gingerbread house at the Cama Beach Nature Preserve with Gingerbread Lady Alice Blandin.

Seeking a larger project? This person in my town transforms their house into a lifesize gingerbread house each year!

So, whatever your taste, time allotment, budget and desire, there’s a gingerbread house project for you, and a place to create it!

For more ideas and how-tos, see my earlier post about Constructing and Decorating a Gingerbread House. Have fun!

Photos: Top Three – Gingerbread Builders, Kyla Eaglesham, Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Butter and Egg, Community, Crafts, Holidays, Home Ec.

Tagged Christmas Activities, Cookie Decorating, Cooking Classes, Drop-In Cooking, Drop-In Crafts, Family, Food, Gingerbread, Gingerbread House, Gingerbread Workshops, Holiday Activities, Holiday Decorating, Holiday Traditions, Holidays, Kids Cooking

Build Your Dream Gingerbread House Part One

Posted on December 3, 2010 | 8 comments

It’s the rare person whose imagination isn’t captured by the delight in creating a gingerbread house. There’s the architecture aspect, as the house’s pieces are baked and fitted — and icing-caulked — together in a variety of ways. There’s the decorating, which can be done with all manner of bright candies and objects and patterns that can recall familiar items — or not! And there’s the very satisfying, whimsical, one-of-a-kind structure that results.

Here are some tips and ideas from around the web for creating gingerbread and other candied houses.

From Wilton, comes this extremely informative and creative guide to decorating gingerbread houses that covers multiple styles.

Celebrating Christmas offers recipes, ideas, and enough blueprints for homes and landscaping (from ponds to flower-lined paths) to satisfy your inner general contractor.

Gingerbread House Heaven is another site with lots of ideas and beautiful pictures for inspiration. Think you can’t light a gingerbread house with real lights, for instance? Think again. This site shares how, in addition to offering instructions for melted-candy windows that will make the light glow realistically through. Roofing textures and various recipes for edible clay are among the many other things covered.

If you’re still seeking good gingerbread recipes and building how-tos, Simply Recipes has plenty.

Rather skip the headaches of building and just move in? Here are lots of turn-key house ideas, like using milk cartons or other bases, as a way of getting right to the decorating fun.

With small children, especially, the easiest and most pleasing thing to do is cover a short milk carton with frosting and let them stick on candies and other foods to decorate. The milk carton (or a village of them) can sit atop a piece of foil-covered cardboard that can also be frosted. And, of course, you can buy a pre-assembled gingerbread house and get right to the decorating.

Some decorating ideas include:

Gumdrops, cut in half – edging or decorations
Jelly beans – edging or decorations
M&Ms – ornaments or decorations
Fruit loops – decorations
Nilla wafers, crushed or whole – walkways
Ritz crackers – walkways, shingles or siding
Gummi bears – decorations
Chocolate soldiers – decorations
Chocolate kisses – bells or decorations
Chocolate nonpareils – shingles or decorations
Candy canes – gates or decorations
Licorice, small pieces – edging or bricks
Necco wafers, whole or broken – shingles, walkways, decorations
Pretzel sticks – fences and logs
Shredded wheat cereal – thatched roofs
Graham crackers, halved, and candy canes – sleds
Graham crackers – shingles
Upside down ice-cream cones, frosted and dipped in green sprinkles – trees
Brown sugar – dirt
Confectioners sugar – snow

And, for the modern home, orange-half barbecues and ice-cream cone satellite dishes!

Here’s hoping you enjoy a fun and creative holiday!

Photos: Public Domain, Wilton, Susan Sachs Lipman

Stay tuned for Part Two: Gingerbread Workshops

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Posted in Butter and Egg, Crafts, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes

Tagged Baking, Cake Decorating, Children's Crafts, Christmas Activities, Cookie Decorating, Cookies, Cooking, Crafts, Easy Crafts, Family, Food, Gingerbread, Gingerbread House, Gingerbread Recipes, Holiday Baking, Holiday Traditions, Holidays

How to Make: All-American Apple Pie

Posted on November 27, 2010 | 11 comments

While I love to bake, and have made my share of crisps, tarts, cobblers and other fruit desserts, I’ve always been a bit intimidated by the double-crust pie. So when my daughter asked to make a classic apple pie for Thanksgiving, I thought, No time like the present to tackle the double-crust together.

It was fun! The result was a particularly yummy apple pie, a wonderful afternoon in the kitchen, a little pride, and the desire to bake all kinds of things with our newfound double-crusting ability.

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Here’s how you can make a classic apple pie.

For the crust:

2 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 stick butter, chilled and cut in small pieces
5 Tbsp. vegetable shortening
6 Tbsp. ice water

For the filling:

1/2 – 3/4 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. lemon peel
2 tsp. lemon juice
2 lbs. apples (approx. 5), cored, peeled and cut into thin slices.
(Galas or other less sweet cooking apples are a good choice.)
2 Tbsp. butter

Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon peel and lemon juice and let sit until the crust is prepared.

CRUST

Stir flour, sugar and salt into a mixing bowl.

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Add butter and shortening and, working quickly with a pastry blender or fingertips, combine until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

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Sprinkle on ice water, approx. 2 Tsbp. at a time, until dough sticks together.

Roll into a ball and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Remove dough from refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 425.

Divide dough into pieces of 1/3 and 2/3 of the original.

On floured surface, roll large dough piece with a rolling pin until it is approx. 1/4 inch thick and large enough to fit into the pie plate bottom and sides.

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Gently work dough into the bottom of the pie plate. There should be a little bit of overhang over the lip of the plate.

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Fill with desired filling into a fairly rounded shape.

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To fill with apples, make one layer of apple slices. Slices can overlap. Then sprinkle with the sugar mixture. Add another layer of apples and sprinkle. Repeat if desired. When the last layer is done, dot at intervals with small pieces of butter.

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Roll out the remaining dough until it is approx. 1/4 inch thick and place it over the filling. Prick dough with a fork to let air out while the pie is cooking or cut out decorative shapes with a cookie cutter. (You can do this step while the dough is still on the work surface. You have to then place the top crust dough fairly evenly over the filling.) If you’d like, you can make decorative fork marks around the outside of the crust.

Bake for approx. 40 minutes or until the crust is slightly browned and the fruit mixture is soft, even liquid in places.

Serve and enjoy!

Your pie may not last long! But you’ll be such an expert that you can whip up another.

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Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Butter and Egg, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes

Tagged Apple Pie, Baking, Dessert, Food, Fruit Dessert, Fruit Pie, Holiday Dessert, Pie, Pie Crust, Recipe, Thanksgiving

Giving Thanks: Express Gratitude with Crafts, Foods, Fun and Contemplation

Posted on November 23, 2010 | 10 comments

Thanksgiving is upon us in the U.S. Even those who routinely feel and express gratitude have a sanctioned reason to pause and do so more profoundly than usual. Gratitude can transform one’s entire experience and outlook. It imbues relationships, observations and activities with awe and fullness and the realization that “this moment” — and our own unique collection of moments — is the best there is.

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The Thanksgiving holiday makes space for us to allow gratitude into our (often busy) lives in new ways and to pass that feeling on to our children. I’m very grateful for many things, including my wonderful and creative blogger friends who have taken the time to contribute their own ideas for gratitude and celebration.

While I love the smells of turkey cooking — in addition to watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on T.V. — I also enjoy getting out in nature on Thanksgiving Day. Frugal Mama shares four make-ahead traditional Thanksgiving recipes that allow you to enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, with all the trimmings, as well as some time away from the kitchen.

Pumpkin pie is a classic Thanksgiving and Fall food and, while you can make it from scratch, this recipe using canned pumpkin, is extremely easy and makes a very tasty pie.

You can bake your own crust or use one of the pre-made ones, some of which are getting better and better tasting. Epicurious taste-tested pre-made pie crusts. Among their favorites is one of mine, Whole Foods 365 Organic Pie Shells. Good Housekeeping also weighs in with their pre-made pie crust taste test.

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From Rhythm of the Home and Vintage Chica comes a beautiful Thankfulness Journal project. Of course, this well-made felt-covered book would be a wonderful project to make, use and enjoy any time of year.

The same could be said of this equally inspiring and beautiful gratitude banner from Future Craft Collective. It’s fun and lovely in itself and wonderful in the way it allows family members to contemplate and formalize their gratitude.

Shoveling snow? Why not turn it into a fun and magical outdoor activity for you and your kids? That’s what Mel at Traveling Mel did. Her photos are delightful and inspiring, as always.

Bethe, the Grass Stain Guru, shares her own wonderful list of 10 things to be thankful for in nature.

I just had the good fortune to learn about the Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley, CA, which explores the science behind happiness and gratitude and the ways that we can nurture those brain pathways that promote them. According the the folks at Greater Good, happiness and gratitude can be learned and practiced traits.

Want more information about cultivating an attitude of gratitude? Gratitude Twenty Four Seven is just that – a very inspiring site from Jarl Forsman and Steve Sekhon full of daily tips and affirmations to help you be more grateful and fulfilled every day.

Arvind Devalia gives us some ideas about embracing what we already have.

My own gratitude list includes:
A family that laughs a lot
Good friends
The smell of clean laundry
The air after it rains
Strawberries
Tulips
Clouds
Vintage anything
Old cities
Trains
Tomatoes
Beaches
Hats and gloves
Hopeful new immigrants
Energy
Creativity
Good health
A warm house
Meaningful work
Books and book stores
Holidays
Amusement Parks
County Fairs
Swing music
Colors
Babies
Curlicues
Road trips
A smile from a stranger
Daffodils
Snow-capped mountains
Starry nights
Wonder

..to name a few things

What’s yours?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photos: Farm Security Administration, Rick Audet, Bernadette Noll, Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Crafts, Holidays, Home Ec., Nature, Recipes, The Great Outdoors

Tagged Activities, Blogs, Crafts, Family, Food, Gratitude, Happiness, Holidays, Nature, Pumpkin Pie, Recipes, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Food, Vintage

Stir up (or cook down) some Colonial Apple Butter

Posted on November 9, 2010 | 17 comments

In a world of wonderful jams and butters, apple butter might just be the ultimate slow food. Comprised of just a few natural ingredients, and no sugar, the best apple butter cooks most of the day over a low flame, so that the resulting mixture is wonderfully dense and has a rich, caramel-y taste. I’d been wanting to get in touch with my inner Colonial cook and make some, when a friend happened to bring over a bounty of Fuji apples from her backyard tree, and then another friend further inspired me by making amazing dried apples from her tree. (Lucky me!)

Apples were indeed plentiful in Colonial America. Alice Morse Earle’s book, Home Life in Colonial America, lists such dishes as apple-slump (baked apples under a cake topping), apple-crowdy (a turnover-like dessert), and something called apple-mose, along with various types of pies. The book quotes a Swedish parson writing home about the Delaware settlement in 1758:

Apple-pie is used throughout the whole year, and when fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children. House-pie .. is made of apples neither peeled nor freed from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel goes over it.

I washed the Fuji apples, appreciating their pretty shapes and colors. In Colonial country homes, it was not uncommon to hold an apple-paring, in which friends and neighbors came to help peel the crop of apples for winter’s dried apples, applesauce and apple butter. The ingredients for apple butter were put into large brass kettles, which were then hung in big, open fireplaces. The finished apple butter would be stored in barrels in the house’s basement. Quince and pear butters were made as well.

My apple butter is extremely easy to make, requiring only the ingredients you see above:

8 cups apples (a cup is approx. 2 small apples)

2 1/2 cups apple cider

1 Tbsp. honey

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cloves

This recipe yields 2 jars of apple butter and can easily be doubled or tripled. I arrived at it through a combination of various vintage, Amish, and canning books, along with some trial and error.

1. Wash, peel and chop the apples into small pieces.

2. Place the apples into a large pot and cover with the cider.

3. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to a low simmer.

4. Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine.

5. Simmer on low heat, uncovered for 6 or more hours, or until the mixture cooks down to a paste. You may opt for occasional periods of slightly higher heat, if you find that your mixture remains too watery or if you want to caramelize some of the apples at the bottom of the pot.

This is the “inner Colonial” part — the long, slow cooking process and the fantastic way your house will smell and feel as you do it.

6. Using a wide-mouth funnel, ladle the mixture into jars that have been prepared for canning. (I boil them for 10 minutes in a boiling water canner.)

7. Seal the jars and boil them again, for 10 minutes. Let them sit for a day. (If you follow strict canning guidelines, you can store your apple butter for the future. If you do not, then you’ll want to eat the apple butter within a couple of weeks and store it in the refrigerator.) Please refer to the USDA canning guidelines, downloadable Guide 1, for more information on proper home canning.

Preserves and butters of all kinds make wonderful gifts and spreads, especially one like this, in which there is barely anything to get in the way of the wonderful, fresh, age-old Fall apple taste. Try apple butter on toast or crackers, with cheese, poultry, or even other fruit.

The colonial kitchen above is located at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT. If you are able to get to this museum, I highly recommend it. It’s like no other — approximately 40 buildings on beautiful grounds house collections of folk art, paintings, quilts, dolls, design, and entire detailed re-creations of such staples of the past as apothecaries, blacksmiths, printing shops, train stations, one-room schoolhouses, and homes of many eras. Look for an upcoming post that details more about the one-of-a-kind Shelburne Museum.

In the meantime, enjoy your butter and fall!

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Home Ec., Lost Arts, Nature, Recipes, Seasons, Vintage

Tagged Apple Butter, Apples, Autumn, Canning, Colonial, Fall, Food, Food History, Fuji Apples, Preserving, Shelburne Museum, Slow Food, Vermont

Make a Honey Spice Cake for a Sweet New Year and Fall

Posted on September 8, 2010 | 5 comments

Honey is one of the world’s oldest foods. Ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs from as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C. show bees being smoked from their hives to produce it. Nomads and traders helped honey’s popularity spread worldwide, while it remained a prevalent sweetener in the Middle East, where it still often, and wonderfully, appears in Mediterranean, Arab and Jewish dishes.

Jews around the world traditionally celebrate their new year (which this year begins at sundown tonight) by dipping apples in honey, and by eating honey and spice cakes, the better to usher in a “sweet new year.”

And lots of people ring in Fall by making honeyed cakes of wonderful harvest ingredients like pumpkin, and warm spices like cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves.

This terrific and tasty honeyed spice cake recipe is from the San Francisco Chronicle. The resulting cake is at once dense, moist, and extremely flavorful.

Of course, you don’t need a new year or season to make this cake. Its firmness and ease of slicing makes it a natural for school lunches and after-school treats. It’s loaded with healthy ingredients and happens to taste especially good.

Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman:
Pumpkin spice cake at the Mill Valley Book Depot

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Posted in Butter and Egg, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes, Snapshot

Tagged Autumn, Cake, Depot Bookstore, Egypt, Fall, Food, Food History, Honey, Honey Cake, Jewish New Year, Mill Valley, Pumpkin Cake, Rosh Hashana, San Francisco Chronicle, Spice Cake

Mushroom Hunting in Norway

Posted on September 3, 2010 | 2 comments

I love this video, which Kari Svenneby of Toronto, Canada’s Active Kids Club posted on the Children & Nature Network forum. Kari is an enthusiastic mushroom forager, harvester and cook, in addition to pioneering a very active outdoor play group and web resource for others. Her and her family’s joy in nature is evident in this beautiful video. Thanks for sharing, Kari!

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Posted in Nature, Sustainability

Tagged Active Kids Club, Chanterelle, Children, Children & Nature Network, Children and Nature Network, Cooking, Food, Foraging, Harvesting, Kari Svenneby, Mushroom, Mushroom Foraging, Mushroom Hunting, Nature, Norway, Outdoors, Slow Food, Video

Rhythm of the Home: Make an Autumn Leaf Placemat

Posted on September 1, 2010 | 8 comments

The Autumn issue of Rhythm of the Home came out today. I’m thrilled to have an article in it: How to Make an Autumn Leaf Placemat.

This beautiful online magazine has been one of my favorites since its inception. Each season brings lovely and inspiring ideas from a terrific array of bloggers and crafters who write about fun family craft projects, family connection and balance, nature, inspiration, and love.

The Autumn issue marks the full round of the seasons for Rhythm of the Home, and the spirit of Autumn comes through in so many of the pieces. Congratulations on the 1-year anniversary!

Every story in the current issue features something lovely. To name but a few, there’s an interview with Salley Mavor, the creator of Felt Wee Folk. There are stories about creating community with the NoCo Nature Tribe and Mothers Circles, and honoring family rhythms with a Blessing Hour.

Pieces explore Simple Living, Finding Balance, Loving with Intention, Mama Journaling, and Making a House a Home. I learned about Moroccan Babywearing and Life in a Viking Village, the tradition of Mother Roasting for post-partum women, and a creature called the Halloween Sugar Sprite. I continued to enjoy Kristie Burns‘ nice writing about the Four Temperaments, this time focusing on their relation to Fall.

There are tons of lovely and inspiring craft projects. I want to make them all! They include a Harvest Basket, a Story Table, a Playscape, yummy Pumpkin Bread and Autumn Spice Scones, Flower Pounding, Autumn Fleece Washing, a Thankfulness Journal, a Family Library Bag, and many more fiber, cooking, and other projects.

Can you tell I’m crazy about this magazine? Come on over and get inspired for Fall.

Click to Read

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Community, Crafts, Holidays, Home Ec., Nature, Play, Recipes, Seasons

Tagged Autumn, Autumn Crafts, Autumn Leaf Placemat, Balance, Blessings, Cooking, Crafts, Fall, Fall Crafts, Fall Leaf Placemat, Family, Family Rhythm, Food, Online Community, Placemat Project, Rhythm of the Home

Top 10 Vegetables for Home Gardeners

Posted on August 30, 2010 | 2 comments

Tomatoes top the National Gardening Association‘s list of the Top 10 most popular vegetables grown by home gardeners. A whopping 86% of gardeners said they planned to grow tomatoes, when surveyed.

Here are the Top Ten and the percentages of people who said they planned to grow them:

1. Tomatoes (86%)
2. Cucumbers (47%)
3. Sweet peppers (46%)
4. Beans (39%)
5. Carrots (34%)
6. Summer squash (32%)
7. Onions (32%)
8. Hot peppers (31%)
9. Lettuce (28%)
10. Peas (24%)

On the bottom of the list? The lowly Rutabaga only had 1% of gardeners’ support.

Looking for other Gardening lists? See these for ideas about:

Top 10 Heirloom Vegetables to Try

Top 10 Vegetables for the Urban Garden

10 Shade-Loving Vegetables

Once you’ve been inspired to plant, you may want to check out my earlier post, How to Get Growing if You’re a Total Beginner. Tomato season may be winding down (though hope remains for my Oregon Spring cherry tomatoes and a relatively warm fall), so the Gardening Association suggests planting fragrant fall annuals such as snapdragon, stock (below), and sweet alyssum.

Photos: Jean-noël Lafargue (top), Susan Sachs Lipman

Poster: University of N. Texas Libraries

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Posted in Deck Garden, Nature, Porch Swing, Sustainability, The Great Outdoors

Tagged Container Gardening, Food, Garden, Gardening, Shade Gardening, Slow Food, Tomatoes, Top 10 Vegetables, Urban Gardening, Vegetable Gardens, Victory Gardens

Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market

Posted on August 23, 2010 | 6 comments

We are blessed in the San Francisco Bay Area to have an abundance of farmer’s markets, many of which operate year-round. The thrice-weekly farmer’s market at the San Francisco Ferry Building provides a multiple blessing, with its huge array of fresh, local foods, and the possible added fun of a ferry ride across the bay, the Ferry Building shops, and the energy of city shoppers bustling through a farmer’s market. Here are some snaps from a recent visit: