Eggnog Pie and Champagne (Updated 1-1-2013)

A Christmas specialty for my family as I grew up was having eggnog pie for Christmas Eve or Christmas. I am pretty lazy, and if I could have found something comparable in a bakery or as restaurant take-out, I would have bought it. This isn’t a family secret recipe, but I have never seen or tasted any pie like this anywhere else. My twin sister and I liked this pie so much that eventually we requested it instead of a cake for our birthday. I don’t know why it is called eggnog pie since there is no eggnog in it, but it is the color of eggnog.

Although I enjoyed the pie on visits “home” for the holidays, I felt apprehensive about making it myself. The results very much depend on doing the right thing at the right time at the right temperatures. However, I decided to make it for New Year’s Eve this year which is also my husband’s birthday. It would have been better to make it with the supervision of my mom or sister who have kept the tradition going. Just what does “thick and creamy” look like? (Not as thick as what I was picturing.) How “hard” is too hard for the  gelatin and water? (Apparently harder than mine because my gelatin incorporated into the milk/egg mixture just fine with a wire whip.) How does one determine that the mixture is “cool enough” to fold in the whipped cream? I am including my sister’s “version” of the recipe as she made notes about critical steps and procedures that my mother’s recipe does not have. The only note on my mom’s version is that if the gelatin is too hard to stir in, one can beat it in with an egg beater.  Despite going solo, the end product tastes and looks like what I remember. Hurray! A toast to me. I discovered today that this pie goes great with champagne.

Eggnog Pie (Serves 6)

1 baked pie shell (I used Keebler Ready-Crust shortbread)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. plus 3/4 tsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. salt
3 egg yolks, beaten
1/2 pint whipping cream
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. unflavored gelatin
Toasted almonds for garnish

Scald 1 cup milk in top of a double boiler ( a skin forms).
Combine the sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add mixture to scalded milk.  Soften 1 tsp. of gelatin in 1 Tbsp. of cold water. Set aside gelatin.
Cook milk mixture until thick and creamy, stirring occasionally. (Water in double boiler pan should be barely bubbling.) After reaching this stage, cook 15 minutes more. Remove from heat and stir (drizzle) in the beaten egg yolks. Return to heat and cook approximately 5 minutes for egg to cook.
Remove from heat and add softened gelatin, vanilla, almond flavoring to the milk/egg mixture. Cool in pan of water or sink, but do not let it get cold and set up or it won’t fold into whipping cream properly.
Whip 1/2 pint whipping cream until stiff. Fold into cooled mixture and pour into pie shell. Refrigerate.
Serve with slivered or whole toasted almonds. (About 1/2 cup).

Some post-pie-making thoughts
1. This took much longer than I thought it would. I waited and waited for the milk to scald and for the cooking mixture to thicken up. Maybe I had the water in the bottom of the double boiler not hot enough as I was really concerned about scorching.

2. Most of the recipes in my mom’s 1940s cookbook start out with scalding the milk. I remember being curious about this and learning that unpasteurized milk has enzymes that can affect ingredients being added to milk in cooking. I think one could just gently heat the milk in this recipe before adding the dry ingredients since today most of us use milk in which these enzymes have been destroyed thru pasteurization.

3. The mixture looks creamy rather quickly, but it never got thick in the way I think of thick. It did reduce down as it cooked and got a little denser, but for me thick would have meant stiffer and more effort to stir.

4. The dominant flavor of this pie is from the vanilla and almond. If you have high standards about the flavor of your extracts, be sure to use quality ones.

5. It does need some “crunch” so don’t skip the almonds. I “cheated” and used packaged roasted almond slices, but without almonds the pie is rather unexciting though yummily rich. I think I actually prefer the honey roasted almond slices to the home-toasted whole almonds.

6. I am going to skip the almonds the second time around on New Year’s Day and use Duncan Hines Comstock Limited Edition Berry Medley that I bought at Walmart. I’ll have to let you know how that tastes.

Added 1-1-2013  The topping was OK with the pie. It overwhelmed the delicate flavor though. I prefer it with the almonds alone. 2 pieces left to savor in the next day or two.

7. I appreciate even more the time and effort my mom and sister spent to create and continue this tradition. Love you both.

When I searched the internet, I found most of the eggnog pie recipes did indeed have eggnog. Some quickie versions used vanilla pudding which can't be nearly as tasty as my family's recipe. One recipe that came close to mine had rum and nutmeg. It did have an interesting crust recipe which I will put here. The Keebler shortbread was excellent though.

Stir together cookie crumbs from about 18 crushed Pecan Sandies with 1/4 cup melted butter; press firmly into a greased 9-inch deep dish pieplate. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes. Remove crust from oven and sprinkle 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate morsels onto warm crust. Let stand 5 minutes or until morsels melt; carefully spread chocolate over bottom of crust with a spatula.

Have a Wonderful Christmas

Sweet Potato Casserole

Northerners and Mid-Westerners tend to like marshmallow topping on their sweet potatoes. Southerners prefer to go for sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and pecans. I like either, but I now usually make my holiday side dish like the South. Thanks to Mrs. Lanier (Kathy) Burns for sharing this recipe in Food for Thought the 1988 Dallas Theological Seminary cookbook. I plan to serve this Christmas day.

 

Sweet Potato Casserole

 

4 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup butter

1/3 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

Topping:

1/3 cup melted butter

1 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

1 cup chopped pecans

 

Combine the ingredients for the casserole (not topping) and pour into a greased casserole dish. Combine the ingredients for the topping and sprinkle over casserole. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. (Can be made up in advance and refrigerated, but it will take longer to heat through.)

Choucroute

We have family coming to our house Christmas Eve. We will exchange gifts, play games, work on a jigsaw puzzle. (No, not the new one with kids dancing around the Christmas tree; I already did that one!) I will serve a simple supper of choucroute, spinach salad with oranges, dried cranberries, red onion, honey roasted almonds and poppy seed dressing, rolls, cookies and peppermint ice cream.

Choucroute is a dish from the Alsace-Lorraine area of France. It typically is made with pork, sausages, and sauerkraut, reflecting the German influence in the region. It can be prepared before hand and refrigerated, then baked about 1 hour. It is a very forgiving recipe. I first made this when our church in Dallas had an early Christmas Eve candlelight service. Since I sang in the choir, I always had to be there early. I put the choucroute in the oven before I left the house, but baked it at 325 degrees and used a bit more apple juice so it wouldn’t dry out. It would bake almost 2 hours and still come out fine. It was nice to walk in the door from being at church and have a delicious wonderful-smelling meal ready to eat. I have also cooked this in a crockpot (browning the meat and onions first), and it also turned out well.

This recipe is from Betty Crocker’s Easy Entertaining (c1992). Using this cookbook reminds me of my trip to New York City where I bought the cookbook from Strand, the famous used-book store. I have several photos from Top Of The World lookout atop the World Trade Center which of course was destroyed in the September 11th terrorist attack. So many things have changed, but this recipe has endured thru the years.

Choucroute (Serves 8)

4 Polish sausages (about 3/4 pound) I have omitted this in recent years, and served a whole brat to each person instead
4 bratwurst sausages (about 3/4 pound)
4 boneless pork loin chops, cut in half (about 1 1/2 pounds)
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup dry white wine or apple juice
2 tart red apples, cored and sliced
1 jar (32 ounces) sauerkraut, drained I use canned Bavarian sauerkraut with caraway seeds

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Sauté sausages in large skillet, pricking to release fat; drain. Add pork and sauté until brown. Stir in onion and sauté. Mix all ingredients in Dutch oven (or casserole dish); cover. Bake 45 to 55 minutes (longer if it has been refrigerated) or until pork reaches 160 degrees on meat thermometer. Stir occasionally.

Christmas Joy

These cute little kids put a smile on my face. Maybe on yours, too?

Sprucing Up the Closet

Ever since high school, I have liked padded hangers. You know how you go along pretty oblivious to your every-day surroundings, until one day you take a close look and realize things are a little shabby. I have some pink-checked padded hangers that must be over 40 years old. I had noticed that the ribbon covering up the padding had separated some time ago, but only recently did I see the discoloration and stains. Time to replace these faithful old things.

  But have you tried finding padded hangers in recent years? I thought I would find some pastel ones like the one at the top of this post. I had been given this set of pastel satin padded hangers awhile back. I looked at Walmart, Kohl’s, Penneys, Bed Bath and Beyond, Burlington Coat Factory, several department stores. Nothing. Then a few weeks ago, as I was going thru KMart, my eye caught some white padded hangers. Only one color choice, but at $4.99 for 4 hangers a good price.

I have since looked on ebay. Some new pretty printed hangers there and not too expensive. Maybe I will look again after the holidays.

The deluxe “Cadillacs” of hangers are on etsy. Beautiful fabrics, but at $9 per hanger a bit rich for my pocketbook.

 

I have considered some of those velvet flocked hangers for light-weight knit tops. Supposedly, they keep the items from slipping off. Do they cause shoulder sag or stretching though? Anybody tried those? How do you like them? My closet needs a little TLC I decided.

Weeping

The skies above Winona Lake weep today in concert with our country at the great tragedy of Sandy Hook. Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted. We have no words, just the prayer that those who suffered great loss will be comforted.

 

 

Is an e-reader in your future?

More and more people, including seniors, are buying and using tablets. As the prices fall, the trend will grow. The Nook Color I bought last January is already about $100 less than what I paid. Our retirement community purchased 4 Kindles thru a grant, and they will soon be available at the front desk to check out for reading books. My literary club which mainly has members in the 60-90 age bracket will have an e-reader panel in April for those who have e-readers to bring and share how they are using them.

The first thing one needs to determine before purchasing a tablet is how one will use it. In my case, I wanted something that would connect thru Wi-fi so I could check my email and Facebook while away from home. The book reading was almost secondary. Many magazines now offer parallel delivery; i.e., those who subscribe to the paper issue can receive a digital issue on their tablet for no extra cost. We receive Time that way. Though I mostly read the paper issue, I have at times taken the tablet with me to doctor’s appointments to read while waiting. While away from home for several weeks this winter, the digital copy will be delivered and read on the tablet. I will be able to keep current.

If one is going to read magazines on the tablet, then a color tablet is best. Also, if you want to read art books or cookbooks, or children’s illustrated books, a color version is essential. So you need to consider what type of reading you will do. Another issue is the depth of selection. Amazon has Barnes and Noble beat in the amount of choices available. If you want to use apps, Amazon also has more to offer. The Nook Color handles pdf files well if you are going to upload such files from your computer to take with you. The Nooks often have more storage capacity as well. My Nook Color will take an extra storage card to handle more titles. I am curious to compare my experiences and device with others so I am looking forward to my club’s panel.

I am not into apps. Obviously, Amazon sells more apps than Barnes and Noble.  A little known fact, however, is that because Nooks are Android based, there are cards that you can buy on the internet to insert into the extra storage slot that make it possible to load apps available for Android smartphones onto a Nook. Barnes and Noble sales people will tell that you void the warranty, but they have no way of knowing what kind of card you have inserted. The card must be inserted before turning on the device; then, removed again before using the company’s installed standard features, but it does not change the guts of the device in any way. Tech people can hack into the operating system and make permanent changes to avoid having to remove the card, but that will void the warranty. Since I am not big on apps, I haven’t tried this card, but for people coveting more apps this is a possible way to increase the choices.

I was amused when I read an article by blogger So Many Books where she describes that her husband likes his lighted device so he can read in bed. If he nods off, the device eventually shuts itself off but of course remembers where he left off in his reading. This is better than dropping a heavy book onto the floor and losing one’s place. Actually, her blog is a discussion of the physical book versus the digital book. Like her, I would miss the physical feel of a real book if none were available. You can follow the discussion at http://somanybooksblog.com/2012/12/05/the-physicality-of-books/ . It certainly removes “clutter” and frees space in the home to replace physical books with digital ones, but I do have an emotional attachment to the physical book.

Maybe a tablet e-reader will be under your Christmas tree this year. It certainly has many advantages including the ability to increase the size of the font and the portability of many titles to read. If the prices continue to fall, you may have to treat yourself to a gift.

Jigsaw Puzzles

When my husband and I were courting, we discovered that both of our families had a history of enjoying jigsaw puzzles. My family did them in the summer sitting on the porch of the Big Bear cabin. His family did them around holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas; his mom often put a tablecloth over the unfinished puzzle on the dining room table so they could eat and then removed it so the puzzle workers could continue.

Most people probably look for a pretty or interesting picture. We have arrived at certain criteria before adding a puzzle to our collection. Because we like to do puzzles together with family (usually around the holidays), we look for puzzles with “zones.”
This puzzle my sister-in-law brought to our house for Thanksgiving is a good example.

Though there is some repetition of color, there are distinct areas an individual could work on while others worked on other zone areas: the embroidered towel; the small blue and white plate; the medium plate which has a distinct pattern; the garlics; the wooden board and knife; the eggplants in the bowl.

I liked this puzzle so well, that I searched ebay to see if there were other Ceaco Culinary Classics puzzles. There are, but the only one zoned as well as this one is the fruit puzzle.
We have started stocking up on smaller puzzles (less than 1,000 pieces) which gives us a better chance of finishing in one day.

Puzzles with extensive unbroken portions of one color (sky, grass, snow) don’t make it to our house these days either. I will never forget the puzzle I worked on one Christmas at my parents-in-law. Grayish white sky, snow-covered ground with the only “anchor” being a fence that ran thru the middle of the scene. Not at all enjoyable. Yes, I want a challenge, but I want to enjoy it. Complicated puzzles like the one I gave my husband while dating consisting of a pizza means studying the picture extensively to see if the pepperoni lies next to a green olive and a mushroom at a certain angle and are also troublesome. I have experienced plenty of puzzle sessions with box hogs who insist on holding the box lid in their hand or turning it towards his/her self. In this case, that was the only way to do the puzzle.

One Christmas we met in the fellowship room/dining area of my mother-in-law’s senior apartment complex. We had 3 puzzles going at the same time (some claimed we were in competition to see which table finished first, but I never signed on to that), but when we came down to the last half dozen pieces they didn’t fit, and even the colors seemed somewhat off. Turns out we had a roving family member who decided to surreptitiously move pieces from one table to another. All 3 tables of puzzlers found themselves with a conundrum, but we finally figured it out.

Searching ebay for the Culinary Classics got me hunting for a Christmas puzzle. We have a 1,000 piece village scene, but I was hankering for something smaller. Ta-da! I found it, and it arrived Wednesday. The sky will probably be the hardest part, but at least some of it is straight-edged border and there appears to be a shaft of light breaking it into parts. We’ll find out next week when we unbox it and lay it out on the card table.

P.S. The hardest part turned out to be the tree. So many ornaments and candles look alike.

My husband has incorporated puzzle making into his woodworking hobby. He affixes posters or calendar pictures on birch plywood and then creates “figurals” (special shaped pieces relevant to the theme of the puzzle) before cutting the pieces. Many of these have been gifts to family, and he houses the puzzle in special boxes he makes.

 There have also been some free-standing puzzles.
  

  Yep, we are definitely a puzzling family.

Looking Like Christmas

I have almost finished decorating. It is time consuming, but I get to think of all of the memories associated with my Christmas items. This Bavarian Nativity joined us fairly early in our marriage. One Thanksgiving my husband joined his brother at a Lions football game. My sister-in-law and her two children were going to drive me up to Frankenmuth, Michigan. The kids both woke with ear aches. I decided I would go by myself with my sister-in-law’s blessings. This was my purchase at Bronner's, a famous Christmas retail warehouse.

                               

We downsized to a tabletop tree even before we moved to Indiana. Now it is just the right size for our sunroom.

 But I had accumulated lots of ornaments thru the years that wouldn’t be the right scale for the little tree. I have experimented thru the years how to display my favorites from trips and craft fairs and that had graced my gifts. I used a lot of them as package toppers, but I couldn’t part with these yet. This year I put them in the wooden compote dish my husband made last year.

The painted gourd ornament from Santa Fe, New Mexico found a close-by niche.

There are other things though. A collector’s plate that my father had and never used that I was unable to sell on ebay has become central to my lighted bookcase display.

  

 

My mom had a really cute tissue box cover at her house one year when I visited. She asked my cousin to make one for me for the next Christmas. This cousin did these on her long bus ride to work and home.

I have tried a few new things this year. The little pillow my sister gave me one year at her house now sits on the loveseat next to the new wine sherpa throw.

         

My Debbie Mumm plates scooped up at after-Christmas sales at Mervyn’s are too reflective to photograph well. I have some hanging in a plate rack in the sunroom and some in the kitchen cupboard with mugs to use throughout the season.  Here is a photo of one of them from ebay. She sure was popular for awhile. I haven’t heard of her in years; have you? 

 

 

There are a few other touches, but I have rambled much too long. Enjoy your own decorations and memories.

 

 

 

 

 

Mild Day Ends in Pretty Sunset

Up to 63 degrees today. Saw the pretty sunset and went out without a jacket and snapped a few photos. Loving this unusual Indiana December.