Chinese New Year or the spring festival celebration lasts for 15 days starting with a parade headed by a large size red dragon dancing its way through the streets and businesses of Chinatown. In Boston, the New Year started with a bang! Firecrackers were exploding loudly echoing on the narrow street, lettuce leaves and orange peels were littering the pavement in the wake of the dragon,tossed to symbolize prosperity and good fortune.
The date for the new year changes every year. It is based on a combination of the Chinese lunar/solar calendar. Chinese New Year is always celebrated on the second moon after the winter solstice. That is why the date is never the same. Chinatown is decorated with red lanterns (red for good luck). Bright red packets with gold writing hang from all the trees outside and plants in restaurants symbolizing lucky money and everyone has been sweeping and cleaning their houses, sweeping out any bad luck from the past year.
Holiday Goodies
Holiday Goodies
Classic Cheese Log
This is a fantastic and easy recipe from my friend Pat Loud which was passed down from her mother. She serves it at nearly every party that I’ve attended and it’s always a big hit.
As with most good recipes, the amounts are somewhat flexible – in other words, feel free to use more or less of any of the ingredients. Key to success, however, depends upon quality sharp cheddar cheese. I used Cabot Private Stock Extra Sharp Cheddar.
Any favorite bleu cheese will work – Roquefort, Danish Bleu, or English Stilton. Make sure that the cheeses are not too cold, or the mixture will not blend in the food processor.
Una Festa Italiana
Probably one of the best ways to sample Italian wines is in a pairing with Italian cucina especially when chefs of note are involved in the preparation and choices, and so it was one evening. To celebrate the Holiday season this very special event took place at Market City Café in Burbank, California. Together the Executive Chefs from the MCC Hospitality Group joined forces to produce a superb repast – seven courses of fabulous Italian food paired with Italian wines from Tuscany, Umbria, Asti and Friuli Venezia Guilia near the Slovenian Border. The bustling restaurant on the edge of the Burbank Mall was bright and shiny with Christmas decorations and sparkling lights, and a lot of excited and happy people, all looking forward to a very eventful evening and willing to forget all their dietary conditions and the no-nos that many nutritionists and doctors want to place on food loving folks!
The opening course was a delightful array of three cheeses, a pressed goat’s milk Garroxta produced in the Catalonia region of northern Spain, a creamy white New York Camembert and a lovely Fourme d’Ambert which is one of France's oldest cheeses dating as far back as Roman times. Slices of bread, grapes and the slightly sweet pochettes of date preserve and onion marmalade offset the cheeses perfectly. Servers came round pouring a subtle Santa Marina Pinot Noir from Venezia and if I had not known there were many more different wines to be poured, I would have spent the evening with this!
Holiday Traditions
It’s not easy being Jewish during the Christmas season, especially if
you’re a kid. Chanukah is great, don’t get me wrong. Presents for eight
nights in a row. Lighting the candles and watching them flicker in the
menorah until they gradually fade away. And I’m a big fan of the latke.
But compared to Christmas? Really?
Imagine, then, what my son Luke had to contend with, growing up Jewish
and having an older brother who got to celebrate Chanukah and Christmas
while he celebrated only the Festival of Lights. And it was all my
fault. I married a non-Jew, had a son with him and got divorced. Then I
met my true love (Luke’s father) and created our modern nuclear family.
Three Jews and a mixed-breed (sorry, Craig), who marched in a Christmas
pageant at his father’s church wearing the robe of a king – the same
year he was deep in preparation for his bar mitzvah. Holiday time in
our household was always a bit fraught.
Spicy Nuts
There’s lots of good news about these spicy nuts:
1. You can bring them to a party as a hostess gift and they will love them and not really compute how little effort went into making them.
2. You can make them way in advance, as much as two weeks. Just don’t do what I have been known to do and forget that you made them two weeks ago and go tearing around on the day of the party making them all over again.
3. Everybody likes them.
4. You can put them on a salad with dried cranberries and feta and everyone will think you are a genius. (Or break them up and put them on top of ginger ice cream—yum.)
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