Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls

We don't have a lot of food-based traditions in my family apart from Thanksgiving, and even those are mostly the same ones that everybody has: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, the souls of children, that sort of thing. But one that we do have is that my mom always makes cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. She usually gets the Pillsbury rolls in a can, and that's fine, I don't judge, but for the man-panion & I's first Christmas as a married couple, I decided I wanted to try from-scratch cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

(Then I woke up Christmas morning and realized I was out of flour, so we had cereal and I made Boxing Day cinnamon rolls instead. But no matter, they were still tasty.)

I started out where so many of my culinary adventures start, in the Red Plaid Cookbook. It yielded a fairly straightforward recipe for cinnamon rolls, which I followed pretty closely, with the exception of halving it and omitting the raisins (raisins are delicious, and they belong in many baked goods, but not cinnamon rolls).

If you've never made any sort of yeast bread before, it might seem a little intimidating, but I promise, it's not. It helps to have an electric mixer with a dough hook...

Not least of all so you can play pirates in the kitchen.

...but with only slightly more effort, you can make these suckers by hand, and it's still totally worth it.

Winter Comfort Food: Roasted Brussel Sprout & Chicken Sausage Pasta

It's no secret that I love the resource that is Pintrest. I can scroll through the foodies' delight corner when I'm bored, tag the dishes that look tastiest, and make them later when I'm in need of a new meal to shake things up. The best part is, it's gotten me to try things that I never ate growing up.

Like brussell sprouts.

There are certain things I just never ate as a kid, given my mum's aversion to them. Beets, any kind of seafood (at least at home. Like father like daughter, I would always eat fish when we went out to restaurants!), and most definitely brussell sprouts. But I've heard such good things about them, usually along the vein of, "Oh, you just haven't had them MADE the right way! Have you tried roasting them?"

So when I found Cait's Plate's recipe for Roasted Brussell Sprouts & Chicken Sausage Pasta, I thought I would give it a try! Zac and I would be in big trouble if either of us gave up gluten - pasta is definitely our go-to answer for "what should we have for dinner?" That being said, we both have the bad habit of calling a bowl of pasta with obscene amounts of cheese/butter/garlic oil/etc "dinner." While it's certainly hella tasty, it doesn't rank too high on the "did I eat my veggies today?" scale.

I think my favorite part about this recipe is how few ingredients it requires. I'm not a big fan of giant shopping lists...inevitably, I will forget that one item. And then I kick myself all the way back to the grocery store...which is no fun on your bike in Chicago winters! Anywho, this dish requires 5 whole ingredients.

Ends & Bits: Little House-Inspired Bean Soup

Refrigerator empty? Cupboards bare? Need to stretch the wilty remains of last week’s grocery run until next payday? Toss all those little ends and bits in a pan and make something delicious! This series explores the skill set of just “throwing together” a meal by looking at what you have available to work with and going from there. This takes a willingness to experiment and a bit of a knack for knowing what will taste delicious together. It also helps to have plenty of practice and exposure to a wide varieties of recipes with potential variations. It is in this spirit that we run our regular Ends & Bits series.

Hi, my name is Andrea and I'm obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie series. I own all the books and two complete spinoff series; I've been marathon-ing the show on DVD from the library; I even own the goddamn cookbook.

I have literally read this cover-to-cover.

I tend to re-read the original series just about once a year, and so a couple days ago, I finished The Long Winter for the umpteenth time, in which the whole town is snowed in for like 7 months straight and the trains stop running and everybody pretty much almost starves. But early on in the book, it talks about how Ma makes bean soup and how very tasty and warming it is when it's so very cold outside.

Meanwhile, back in real life, for various reasons, the darling husband and I are trying to see if we can make it until next week without going grocery shopping, which means we're digging into the bottoms of the cabinets and fridge to use all the stuff we've been pushing aside because there were other, easier things to cook. And yesterday, I found half a bag of dried beans that have probably been in the cabinet for over a year, and it all clicked: I would follow the example of Ma Ingalls, make do with what we have, and whip up some tasty bean soup.

This recipe is not directly from the Little House Cookbook, mostly because they had rather less on hand than I do and their bean soup would have been pretty terribly bland, and also because I don't have salt pork. (Is that even a thing anymore?) Rather, it is simply bean-based and inspired by the use-up-and-make-do-with-what-you-have attitude so often found in the Little House series.

Spoiler: 2014 Is Pretty Great!

Happy New Year from this side of the international date line! Thank you everyone for your support and contributions as we got this project off the ground this year. Looking forward to a wonderful 2014 full of lots of delicious food and fun collaboration. Check back later today for a delicious traditional New Year's Day meal from Andrea.

Here's to hoping everyone has a wonderful and safe time ushering in the new year.

Sydney wishes you a happy NYE, too!

Brittany's Epic Christmas Cookie and Dessert Round-Up

So pretty much everyone knows the best part about Christmas is the cookies, right? Well, okay, I'm willing to concede non-cookie desserts are pretty good too. But Christmas cookies are probably the most important part of the holiday tradition to me, and it doesn't really feel like the holidays until I've gotten myself covered in flour in the pursuit of deliciousness. (It's also one of my three acceptable use cases for Christmas music.)


Last year, I had just moved to Australia and had only made a couple of friends to date. I didn't start work until January, so I had a lot of time on my hands. It was also my first Christmas ever away from home, which was a mixed bag of emotions. Since I'm totally good at processing feelings and shit, I squished all those to the side and buried them in mounds and mounds of Christmas cookies. I seriously made an absurd amount of Christmas cookies for someone who only knew about 5 people in the entire continent she was on. The Boy and I ate a tremendous number. I took about a third to his family. We froze another third and ate on them for months. I think I even ended up throwing out some when I moved house in April.

This year, I still have a bunch of time on my hands because I don't start my new job until January, but I also have a wonderful big group of friends and am psyched to be hosting my first ever Christmas Day at my own home. (I have a giant ham and a wafflemaker. BRING IT ON, CHRISTMAS.) I also run a nerdy social group in Sydney (because of course I do), so I decided to have a giant cookie-making party with those fine folks. So without further ado, may I present...

BRITTANY'S EPIC DAY OF COOKIE MADNESS!

The tastiest of all the task lists.

Fancy Foodie Friday: Macarons, Part 1 (Macaron d'Amiens)

Feel like a treat after a long week? Splurge on a special ingredient? In the mood to spend a little longer in the kitchen? Got a hot date to impress with your culinary prowess? Check out the recipes in our ongoing Fancy Foodie Fridays series. These recipes might be a little too complex, time-consuming, or expensive for the every day, but are a nice challenge or treat for a fancy evening in. 
  
So I'm currently taking a bit of time off of work until my new job starts and my visa transfer escapes bureaucratic purgatory. While I'm (f)unemployed, one of my plans for the downtime had been to learn lots of new things. I'm learning to play the ukulele. I took an awesome sailing class. I even painted a painting that didn't totally suck!

Although that hill behind the bird is the grave mound of his misshapen brother who had to be eaten by the earth and replaced by a less terrible bird for it to reach that stage.

Last week, I took an awesome macaron-making class at the Paris International Cooking School in Sydney. It was an intro class/demo, and we rushed through making 5 different styles of macarons in just a couple of hours, did some generous sampling, and then got to take home a box of our creations. (Side note to my Sydney friends: I'll probably go back for one of their longer weekend workshops early next year--let me know if you're interested in joining me!)

Testing the consistency of the meringue in class.

I've never attempted macarons before, because I've heard they're very finicky, but after this class, I've undertaken the adventure. I thought I'd do a short series on my adventures.

I thought I'd start with the easiest and least finicky macaron I learned, Macaron d'Amiens. These macarons are the regional variety from Amiens, a small city in the Picardy region in northern France. They're apparently not very popular or well-known outside of the region, which is unfortunate because they are delicious. They're a super chewy, heavier honey and apricot macaron. Serious amounts of yum.

Homemade Yogurt

Confession: around the time Brittany created this brilliant blog, I developed some serious stomach/nausea issues. Thus, I have been unable to cook for the past few months (unless you consider cooking to be combining a can of condensed soup with water in the microwave, then hey! I've become a pro at that!). This recipe is for creating homemade yogurt, something I had been doing on a monthly basis.

So although I didn't make something specifically for this first blog post, I’m still excited to share this with you because it’s been a part of my repertoire for a very long time. Sadly, I only have a few photos of the yogurt-making process to share (and apologies in advance to Facebook/Instagram friends…you've probably seen these photos before!) My fingers are crossed that by my next post, things will have resolved and I will have something new (with way more awesome pictures) to share.

So why make your own yogurt? Because it’s insanely easy and tastes about a million times better than the store bought stuff. And (ok, here’s my real reason) making it yourself is cheaper than buying it pre-made. Even when I use organic, grass-fed, local milk it is still cheaper, per quart, than the generic brand stuff available at Wal-Mart. For a family like mine, that loves its yogurt, that money saved can make a difference in the grocery bill.