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Cookies for Santa: Classic Peanut Butter

As Christmas rapidly steams full speed right at me, my thoughts naturally turn to the food. What’s for dinner? What snacks are we going to be munching on all day? Did I hide the bathroom scale for the rest of the year? Do we have enough eggnog? Do we have the basics so I don’t have to leave the house again until January? What are we going to bake for Santa?

These are the thoughts that run through my mind late at night when I’m just falling asleep. They slip through my subconcious and are forgotten again until the very last second. This year marks a milestone in our kids lives. They are both old enough to enjoy the whole spirit of the season and my son is very involved in the gifts and decorating. It was only par for the course that I get him involved in baking the cookies we shall be leaving out for Santa.

And what cookie is easier than a classic flourless peanut butter cookie? Nothing. These babies literally take 10 minutes to scrape together, then simply flatten them, pop them in the oven, bake, remove and let cool. Place them on your fanciest plate with a big mug of nog for Santa (maybe some carrots for the reindeer) and your all set to go.

Now our only struggle is whether to let an almost four year old stay up to wait for Santa….

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

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Kelp Noodles and Spicy Peanut Sauce Stir Fry

Christmas is full of traditions for most families. Caroling, decorating the house in obscene amounts of lights and garish garlands, tinsel or no tinsel, pet Santa costumes, pictures of screaming children with old Saint Nick, stocking hung by the chimney with care, Terry’s Chocolate oranges stuffed into the bottom of your stocking, tables laden with bowls of mandarins, mixed nuts and boxes of chocolate bonbons. But as a young family, we’re still struggling to find out own “traditions”. Of course we carry over many of our parents ways like stockings and trees, cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer, watching “A Christmas Story” on Christmas Eve while we snuggle on the couch and drink egg nog (and rum).

But this year I thought I would try and start something else. I’ve always baked for Christmas, whether it was for an office party or to give away as gifts. As a die hard fan of food, I like to make it and then give it away (most of it anyway). So this year I tried some gingerbread. First we made gingerbread men. Kind of a little warm up to something bigger. They turned out just fabulous. It put a spark of joy in my heart when my three year old son woke up the next day, looked at the gingerbread men and asked me when they were going to come alive and run away. Kids really do say the darnedest things. What do you say to that? Crush his imagination by telling him they aren’t going to come alive or try to distract him by telling him to bite the head off before it does come alive and run away? I chose the latter…seemed to work out just fine.

So then I thought, why not tackle a gingerbread house? So many people make them, right? Or is it really, that so many people go out to the grocery store and buy a kit for $12.99? Yeah, that’s probably what most people do. I decided my kid wouldn’t really care about a gingerbread house, but would probably be more excited about something a little more…child-like? A rocket ship? A bulldozer? Well, great ideas they may be, but I am no engineer or architect. So I looked up popular designs on the interwebs and I found that another popular rendition of the traditional shape, is a gingerbread train. Made up of mostly rectangles and circles, how could it be hard?

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Tipple Tuesdays – Barley Wine and Charcuterie

Today begins a new feature on Guilty Kitchen, which Adrian and I have been working on for a few weeks. Well, let’s be honest, since we turned the legal drinking age and could muster a not yet inebriated effort to eat something with our beer. Now that we have kids though, and we only have one drink with our weeknight meals, it’s gotten a lot more important that we absolutely love that beer, or cocktail, or wine.

So without further ado, welcome to Tipple Tuesdays with Adrian!

Elizabeth and I have all sorts of discussions about Guilty Kitchen. “What should we write about?” being the main discussion. After talking about it for far too long we’re finally kicking off Tipple Tuesdays. It will be a pairing of food with some kind of libation of the liquid variety.

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Saag Paneer

Christmas time is in full swing around our house, and the neighbour’s, and the many other denizens of these northern climes. We’re all gussied up, our stockings are hung by the chimney (electric fire place) with care, a recipe is in the works for Santa’s evening cookie and nog and presents are beginning to pile up around the base of our locally grown Douglas Fir tree. The lights are strung up outside and around the house and everyone is in full cheer mode. The joyous sounds of carols can be heard from anywhere in the house most times of the day.

This last weekend we headed to the in laws house to merry up their tree (a yearly tradition). Crates full of decorations come out of the coldest parts of the basement, stockings are hung and beer and wine is passed around for the next couple of hours as we untangle last years beads to hang (new time record: one hour standing on a stool next to the tree. Frustration level: stratospheric).