Maple Doodles with an Amazon Gift Card Giveaway for #ChristmasWeek

Pure maple syrup sweetens these seasonal treats. Rolled in a maple sugar and cinnamon coating, this refined sugar free version of the classic Snickerdoodle celebrates the bounty of a northern winter. A perfect recipe for #ChristmasWeek.

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Regular readers will notice that I've taken leave of my senses a departure from my usual recipes celebrating farm share produce. It's #ChristmasWeek, hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Kiss My Smoke, and I'm sharing 6 days in a row of sweet treats.  If you came here looking for some local produce recipes, please check out my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

I went on a cookie quest for "something maple" at my library. I had a small jar of granulated maple sugar from my daughter's French class trip to Quebec. I associate maple with winter, so I wanted a maple contribution to #ChristmasWeek. Since I like to support local business and keep my cash in my local economy, I buy my maple syrup at the farmer's market. It's delicious and affordable. If you don't live in a place that produces maple syrup, I'll recommend Barn2Door where you can buy direct from the producers and have maple syrup delivered to your door!

Spiked Hot Cocoa Gift Mix and Giveaway for #ChristmasWeek

Give the gift of hot cocoa to the entire family with this allergen-friendly mix. Add a bottle of the spike of your choice so that the entire family can enjoy a treat. This post is the start of #ChristmasWeek, a sweets-filled extravaganza hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Kiss My Smoke. 

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Note: I am taking a break from my usual routine of posting recipes using local produce from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, the farmer's market, and the garden. If you've got a pile of veggies you're looking to use, may I suggest checking out my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient? 

Does this photo look like the chaos that ensues during tree trimming time?  It's supposed to. Or maybe that's just my house.

I'm going to come across as a total booze hound in this post and I apologize in advance. I know that turning to alcohol will not solve any of life's petty little annoyances nor cure any chronic behavior issues. I know that alcohol is not a long term coping solution for any of life's stressors. If you are concerned about giving a gift with alcohol, please feel free to substitute any of the flavored syrups posted below as your spike of choice. Those flavored syrups are going in our Christmas stockings (and hopefully my kids aren't reading this).

With that caveat out of the way . . . it can be pretty damn hard to solo parent teens, or really kids in general, and the extra activities of the holidays make it doubly hard. Please consider giving the gift of a jar of Spiked Hot Cocoa Mix to anyone you know who would enjoy it--even yourself. What a wonderful way to unwind after a busy holiday than with a cup of hot cocoa--spiked with a little something for mom & dad, [mom & mom, dad & dad, solo parent] left plain for the kids. I've had such fun working on this recipe and I looked forward to my nightly recipe testing!

You'll notice a couple of subtle changes from the standard hot cocoa gift mix recipe. First off, there is no powdered milk in this recipe. That means you need to get to mix it with the milk of your choice. An extra step to be sure, but I have my reasons. I grew up drinking the occasional milk-stretched-with-powdered-milk and personally can't stand the taste of reconstituted milk. I'll bake with it no problem, but I will not drink it by choice. I'd rather literally walk a mile down the street to pick up a gallon of organic milk for me and my kids. [It's good exercise for the dogs, too.] If you have a dairy allergy or are avoiding cow's milk, this mix is for you as it is dairy free. Please feel free to mix up your hot cocoa with the rice, soy, or nut milk of your choice.

Amazon Gift Card Giveaway for #ChristmasWeek

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Welcome to Day 1 of Christmas Week. This annual event was started in 2012, and is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic. This year we have over 35 bloggers sharing festive sweet recipes for the event. 

Participants for Christmas Week:

Cravings of a Lunatic

Desserts Required

Poet in the Pantry

The Redhead Baker

Pineapple and Coconut

All Roads Lead to the Kitchen

Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks

Cupcakes & Kale Chips

Cooking on the Front Burner

The Little Ferraro Kitchen

Crumb: A Food Blog

The Bitter Side of Sweet

Amee's Savory Dish

Comfortably Domestic

Food Done Light

Flour On My Face

Mother Would Know

Food Lust People Love

My Catholic Kitchen

Daily Appetite

Try Anything Once Culinary

That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Savory Experiments

Cooking In Stilettos

Food Babbles

Mind Over Batter

Rants From My Crazy Kitchen

Lauren Kelly Nutrition

Big Bear's Wife

Everyday Southwest

From Gate to Plate

Karen's Kitchen Stories

Savoring Italy

Dixie Chik Cooks

The Tomato Tart

Aloha Flavor

CopyKat Recipes

The winners of the giveaway are:

$500 Gift Card-> Ruth Deaton (her entry was via Kate of Food Babbles, Pinterest Follow)

$250 Gift Card-> Jeanna Schirm Massman (her entry was via Christie of Food Done Light, Pinterest Follow)
$50 Gift Card-> Michele Behlen (her entry was via Stephanie of Daily Appetite, Pinterest Follow)

Congratulations!

Are you looking for recipes using seasonal produce from the farm share, the farmer's market, or your neighbor's prolific garden? Check out my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me wondering what to do with Swiss chard, beets, and that case of oranges from the band fruit fundraiser. Follow me on Pinterest, on Instagram, and on my FB page for even more recipe ideas and behind the scenes snapshots. Want to know How to Use This Blog? Thanks for stopping by!

Beet, Pickled Herring, and Potato Salad

Roasted beets and blue potatoes from the farm share, mixed with pickled herring chunks and red onion in a potato salad perhaps only a Scandinavian would love.

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My family Christmas Eve tradition is a Scandinavian style smorgasbord reflecting our Norwegian and Swedish heritage with Danish and Finnish influences and the occasional Icelandic cheese. It is not an official competition, but you get bonus points for all the various ways you can serve herring at your table. [None of the ways involve dessert, ease your mind.]

When I got blue potatoes in the last Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share of the year, I thought it would be fun to add another herring dish to the spread by making a beet & potato salad with pickled herring. I already know beets and pickled herring go well together from my Quick Pickled Beet and Herring Salad. I've enjoyed a shockingly pink sildesalat which combines smoked herring, potatoes and beets. So this combination is not a stretch--if you're used to the above--which is why I thought it appropriate to serve at my family celebration last year. With so many herring lovers around the table alongside me, my spouse and kids were in the minority and the salad was seen as a normal addition, not something far out.

Eggnog Sourdough Waffles

Tangy sweet waffles made with eggnog and sourdough starter. A fun way to enjoy eggnog during the holiday season--and marked down eggnog after the new year!

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I'm a sucker for magical markdown stickers. Where some people see 'oh it's about to go bad' I see opportunity. I picked up a half gallon of eggnog with no clear purpose. Buying food not on a previously thought out list is NOT a good way to Reduce Food Waste, however it is a source of inspiration to me so I'll keep on doing it. Within reason. Walking to the grocery store as I have been for the past 2 months when all I need is a gallon of milk has really cut down on impulse purchases.

I've used eggnog in waffles before--my Pumpkin Eggnog Waffles with Chocolate Chips made it onto the blog, but the Pumpkin Effnog waffles I never did find in my earlier photo searches, even though I was pretty sure I'd made some before. [Note to bloggers, when pulling photos off your camera, check the spelling as you add labels.] Eggnog in French toast? You bet I went there. What about oven pancakes? Yes, I've used eggnog in my Finnish Oven Pancake. Heck, I've even used eggnog in savory pizza dough with butternut squash. I do drink it, though it may not seem that way by all of these recipes.

I have to interrupt my flow with a behind the scenes photo--Robert Barker eyeing the bacon. Don't let the short legs fool ya. He swiped a piece of coconut cream pie off the counter last month. He's a dickens and I love him.

Cream and Cereal Muffins #Muffin Monday

Got leftover cream? Got leftover cereal? This is milk and cereal with an edge. Save money and eat well by shopping your pantry first and combining your leftovers in a sweet-yet-wholesome breakfast snack.

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The idea behind these muffins is to make a warm breakfast bread out of something you've got on hand after the holidays. After countless pre-Thanksgiving trips to the grocery store [where every year without fail I overhear some confused man on the phone asking his spouse about the difference between heavy cream and whipping cream--while his harried spouse is probably thinking 'I should have just gone but these pies won't bake themselves'] the last thing I feel like doing is yet another run. One way to Reduce Food Waste (link to my recent post about reducing food waste) is to shop your fridge and pantry first. That's how these muffins were born.

Deep Dish Easter Leftovers Pizza

A deep dish pizza with ham, green beans and sweet potatoes sandwiched between a mashed potato-spread pizza crust and a layer of provolone cheese. Turn those leftovers into a Friday Night Pizza!

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You may be wondering why, the day after Thanksgiving, I'm talking about Easter. It's quite simple--last year we had multiple Thanksgiving celebrations and I ended up with leftovers of both ham and turkey. I used the turkey, cranberry, and stuffing in my Deep Dish Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizza and made a different version with ham & green beans. I'm calling it Easter Leftovers Pizza because for Easter we usually serve ham, green beans, sweet potatoes and of course no holiday is complete without MA's Make Ahead Irish Mashed Potato Casserole.

Finding ways to repurpose your leftovers into something the family will enjoy is one way to reduce food waste. For more ways, please check out my Food For Thought--Reducing Food Waste post.

I must say I preferred this pizza, with ham & Alanna's World's Best Green Bean Casserole, to the turkey, cranberry, and stuffing version. I'm not sure why, taste is subjective after all. Perhaps it's because I just really love my turkey leftovers in sandwiches spread with Cranberry Salsa.

As an aside, I had my first Thanksgiving Leftovers sandwich last night, on a Buttermilk Potato Roll--recipe from Donna Currie's Make Ahead Bread: 100 Recipes for Bake-It-When-You-Want-It Yeast Breads (Amazon affiliate link) spread with both cranberry salsa and sweet potato casserole. Yum. This book was an early birthday present to me from my daughter, and I'm really looking forward to baking more from it. Consider it as a Christmas gift for the baker--or wannabe baker--in your life!

For more pizza recipes, arranged in categories like Pizza Dough recipes, Savory Pizzas with Fruit, Pizzas with Meat and Vegetarian Pizzas, all alphabetical with thumbnail photos because that's how I roll--please check out my Visual Pizza Recipe Index. I've also got a Friday Night Pizza Night board on Pinterest, if you follow me there. I suppose I ought to include here that I'm now on Instagram. And, as ever, I'm sharing stuff that catches my eye on my FB page. Would you like to know how to Use This Blog best? 

Food for Thought: Reducing Food Waste

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George Mertz of Patchwork Gardens CSA, delivering my Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, including a turkey grown by the Filbrun family of Maker's Meadow

Today's post is a tangent from my typical 'how to make the most of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share produce' recipe posts, but it is equally important to me: reducing food waste.

Recently I attended the Montgomery County Food Summit [in Ohio. I grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland and went to school in Montgomery County, Virginia. There are lots of Montgomery Counties. Montgomery sure got around]. This was my 3rd year attending. The theme Hunger and the Local Food System didn't immediately make me say 'Wow! I don't want to miss this!' but I figured I'd learn something. It's always good to learn new things.

Source

I was delighted by Barb Asberry's talk on The Perspective of Value: Food Waste in the Desert. The last time I'd listened to someone talk about municipal solid waste--part of a series of composting classes--I was NOT taking notes as fast as I could. Barbara hooked me with this:

Let's feed people. Not landfills.

Boy that sounds so simple. It's too easy to forget, when you set out your cans on trash pickup day, that your trash doesn't magically disappear. It has to go somewhere, and that usually means a landfill. My county is pretty average in the U.S., and 31% of the overall food supply is wasted. That's 133 billion pounds that could have gone to feed someone or some thing.

In our county waste stream, a bit more than one third of the solid waste is made up of pure trash, a bit more than that are things that can be recycled, and a bit less are things that can be composted. Most of the compostable material is food--it makes up 15% of the overall disposed municipal solid waste. [How do they determine this? Analyzing truckloads of trash. Fun!] Other compostable items include tissues/paper napkins, yard waste, and wood. As the pounds of food waste increase so do the pounds of trash and compostable food containers.

Only one of these is really too far gone to eat--the smoothie that languished forgotten in the fridge.

In my kids' lifetime, the amount of food waste in Montgomery County has more than doubled, from 6.25% in 1996 to 15% in 2014. That's crazy! It's not like people aren't going hungry here, either. We're all paying for this waste--paying by needing to buy more food, paying more people to pick up the waste, paying companies to dispose of it using more fuel and more vehicles, paying environmentally by landfills reaching capacity at a faster rate. What can you do, in addition to the obvious (menu plan, buy what you need, compost at home)?

Start at home. Do the things in front of you.

This quote, from Mother Teresa via Ambassador Tony Hall who delivered the keynote, resonated with me. One person can make a huge difference.  While composting is a good idea--what about before you get to that point? Before the arugula has yellowed, before the cilantro becomes slimy? If you have usable food, feed a living thing with it.

Source

You are probably donating to food drives this time of year. Know this--for every 24 bags of food assistance handed out in food pantries, soup kitchens, churches, shelters, etc across the United States, the federal government provides 23 of those bags [Michelle Riley, The Foodbank]. Vote to keep hungry people fed. Keep donating food. Don't forget to donate in January, April, July! Hungry people need food year round, not just during the holidays. 

• Want to donate food? Click here for food safety guidelines.

• Want to know where to donate? Click here for Hungerpedia, a resource which matches agencies-in-need with food donors.

• Food banks accept fresh food, too. Click here to find a local food bank.

I'll close with the following image. These cards were handcrafted by a Susan J of Chicago, IL. She sent them on to From Our Hearts, who sent them forward to where my spouse is deployed. To all the paper crafters who donate blank handmade cards to the troops--thank you.  It means a lot and I appreciate your talents. Happy Thanksgiving!

Simple Creamed Spinach from Scratch

A vintage recipe for creamed spinach using just 6 ingredients and a bit of time on the stove. Make this while you've got other pots-needing-stirring on the fire, and you'll have a fresh green side dish to add to your holiday table in 15 minutes or so.

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Forrest Gump had the way of it. Life--with a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share--is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. Some things are a given--you won't get tomatoes in May. You won't get corn in October. You will get turnips and beets . . .

Yesterday I learned what would be delivered in the Thanksgiving farm share box. On Tuesday I'll get my fresh turkey and a bunch of veggies. Now that I have a clue what I'll be working with, I can finalize my menu. Of course we'll have potatoes. My kids ask for MA's Make Ahead Irish Mashed Potato Casserole year round. No green beans this year--my spouse and I are the primary eaters of Alanna's World's Best Green Bean Casserole and I just don't have it in me to eat an entire batch alone.

I will make a corn pudding--dairy free and vegetarian--to share with a neighbor who is hosting folks with a variety of special diets. I will use a bag of Multigrain Sourdough Bread cubes from the freezer to make a small batch of stuffing. I've already made a half batch of Apple Cider Beet Cranberry Sauce--substituting dried pineapple for the dried apricots and grated raw beet for the roasted beets--and updated the photos for that post.

I'll need something green, though, and as a salad probably won't happen I plan to make creamed spinach. This recipe, from my 1950 edition of Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook, listed as Spinach (French method) "makes most anyone enjoy spinach". It's easy to make if you're already at the stove for something else. Last year, when my spouse took the action shots below, I was making Alanna's World's Best Green Bean Casserole and my Apple Sausage Cornbread Stuffing. Why not add a third recipe while I'm multitasking?