Holiday Goodies

Thanksgiving is my favorite national holiday. It is not focused around the obligatory(bad) gift, it’s secular, and the abundance of flavors, color, and creativity in the food and recipes cannot be beat.

I started creating my Thanksgiving menu over 25 years ago, in a 2 bedroom duplex with a very small kitchen.  The size of my kitchen didn’t matter, nor did the fact that I only had one oven.  I was organized, made lists, prepped and did as much as I could in advance. My pumpkin soup and this cranberry sauce remain the two constants on my holiday table. Today, I may have a slightly larger kitchen, two ovens, an extra fridge, but the joy of this holiday remains the same.

Regardless, making a Thanksgiving meal requires organization, lots of prep, and time management. I do as much as I can in advance. This cranberry sauce can be made a week in advance, Pie crusts are made and frozen, soups are made 2 days prior, and all veggies are cleaned, blanched, and chopped the weekend before.

From the New York Times

“The Widow Clicquot,” Tilar J. Mazzeo’s sweeping oenobiography of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, is the story of a woman who was a smashing success long before anyone conceptualized the glass ceiling. Her destiny was formed in the wake of the French Revolution when, Mazzeo suggests, “modern society — with its emphasis on commerce and the freedom of the individual — was invented.” Barbe-Nicole, daughter of a successful textile maker turned Jacobin, is portrayed as someone whose way of doing business helped define the next century.

Fate cursed or blessed her with the mantle of early widowhood. Her husband, a winemaker from whom she learned the craft, died when she was 27, leaving her a single mother — the veuve (widow) Clicquot. Officially, the cause of François Clicquot’s death was typhoid, which was then commonly treated by feeding the patient Champagne, believed to strengthen the body against what was known as malignant fever. “To think that a bottle of his own sparkling wine might have saved François!” Mazzeo writes, going on to speculate that it is also possible he killed himself because business wasn’t good.

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Each year just before Christmas, we had a holiday gathering for all the children and their families at the campus child care center I worked at for several years. Each family contributed a plate of holiday treats.

One year, as I moved around the Center visiting with parents and siblings of the preschoolers I spent time with each day, I happened upon a conversation between two preschoolers. They each held one of those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss in the middle.

“Kiss me,” said the little girl as she looked at the confused little boy in front of her. “You can’t take a bite of your kissy cookie until you kiss me. That’s what my mom and dad do,” she said sweetly. I pictured her young parents sitting on the couch in their living room at home with a tin of Kissy Cookies resting on their laps, sharing a quick little peck as they ate cookies together. I held back a little giggle.

I have been making dream bars since 1990.  It is a recipe I discovered in my Rose Levy Beranbaum Rose's Christmas Cookies (still, one of my favorites).

Prior to making these I had made a bar similar to this one, called a “7 layer bar”.  It had butterscotch chips and white chocolate chips plus other things.  And they were good, but I am not a huge butterscotch fan.

When I came across this recipe I had to try them. They immediately were a hit. I make them all year round and 75% of the time you can find some hidden in the back of my freezer.  They were always and still are included in my holiday baking which I have done every year since 1990.