Moohoo New Year.

More or less clockwise, beginning at lower left:Fruit salad prepared by TOPWLH.

Topping for fruit salad.

Scoops.

Fat fritos.

Clam dip (clams mixed into French onion dip by TOPWLH).

Emily's cheeseball.

Guacamole prepared according to the old family recipe.

Canned baby oysters (an acquired taste).

Shrimp and cocktail sauce.

Smoked salmon and two kinds of crackers.

There are only three of us here. We might have a bit too much food.

German Near Beer

Buy beer.


Open, pour, and drink.



Easy.

Quiche for Christmas

First, Merry Christmas to one and all! I was responsible for the Christmas morning brunch, so I decided to go with one of my fall back, no fail dishes - Quiche. Here's how it starts:

The bowl on the left is a mix of eggs and 1/2 & 1/2, then the fillings I chose for the two separate quiches.

Step 2: Put the filling into the quiches. Quiche #1 (right) was broccoli, red pepper, and cheese. Quiche #2 was ham, onion, and cheese.

Me, putting filling in quiche number 1. Note my extremely large Twins Tshirt from the best sporting event I've ever been to.

Step 3: Add the egg mixture to the quiches until the come up to the top of the crusts.

Gracefully poured by yours truly. Or something. Special thanks to my photographer.

Here they are, ready to put into the oven:

Finally, bake them for about an hour or so.

Don't they look lovely? I think everyone enjoyed them. Here's the recipe for those who are interested:

Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 3/4 cup half & half
salt
pepper
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
4 ounces grated swiss cheese
4 ounces grated mozzarellla cheese
1 pre-made pie crust (I like the refrigerated ones from Pillsbury)

Equipment: 1 pie or quiche pan

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
2. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and half & half. Season with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. (Sometimes I also add a little garlic salt. Up to you).
3. Place the pie crust in the quiche/pie pan. Add any filling (ham, broccoli, etc.) and the cheese.
4. Pour the egg mixture over the filling.
5. Bake in 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat in the oven to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 25 minutes or until crust in golden and the filling is set/no longer runny.
6. When set, take out of the oven and allow it to sit for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Orange Juice

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Cross Post

NOTE: My dad made it obvious that this needed to be cross-posted to the food blog. So here it is.

As reported elsewhere in the family blogosphere, I spent all of yesterday over at my parents house getting prepared for the Christmas festivities. I very artfully arranged the Nativity Scene and we even made lots of progress on the Christmas tree. No family Christmas tree is complete without our old favorites, the sheep:

They're looking a little sad in their advanced age, aren't they? Then Mom and I got down to the real business of the day: making a metric ton of cookies. I had a cookie exchange at work today and needed to make 10 dozen cookies to exchange with my coworkers. I chose to make Spritz, which was going to more of an ordeal than originally anticipated. See, Mom got me this fancy new cookie press which we were all excited to try out. Except it broke (faulty, cheap plastic thing) after the first 2 dozen. 2 dozen! So I ran frantically to Target while my Mom searched frantically for her old school metal press. She won the race:

Then they go in the oven for about 6 minutes or so, at least in my mom's oven. Looking good...

Then they sit on the counter to cool. There were lots and lots and lots of cookies:

Finally we packed them up into these nifty tins that I got at Walgreens for $1.09 each. They were a steal!

Full disclosure: the original recipe for the dough said it would make 6 dozen cookies so we doubled it, thinking 12 dozen instead of 10 wouldn't be so bad - that way we could keep some for ourselves. Yeah, that turned out not to be necessary: by the time we were done, we ended up with 20 DOZEN cookies. So yeah, I gave everyone at work 1.5 dozen, left a bunch with Mom and saved 2 dozen for Andy. I may have to carefully monitor my cookie intake or I am going to be on a major sugar high for the next week and a half. Not that that would necessarily be a totally awful thing... I would have to go to the gym a lot more to compensate though...

P.S. - The recipe in full:
1) Cream together 1.5 cups butter and 1 cup sugar.
2) In a separate bowl, combine 1 egg, 2 TB milk, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp almond extract. Then add to the butter/sugar mixture and beat well.
3) Mix together 4 cups flour and 1 tsp baking powder, then gradually mix into the butter/sugar combo until you have an even dough.
4) Preheat the oven to 400. Using a cookie press (quality can vary), shape cookies onto a baking sheet, spacing evenly. Bake in 400 degree oven for 6ish minutes, being careful not to burn them. The bottoms burn very quickly.
5) Allow to cool on a counter after removing from oven.
Recipe makes approximately 8ish dozen cookies.

Toasted cheese sandwich and homemade Navy bean soup

Today's hearty lunch after cleaning up the mess left by the first big snow storm of the year.I had some Velveeta left from the last time so I prepared a toasted cheese sandwich following the old family recipe with the exception that this time I only had actual bread instead of the cheapest white bread in town.

Yesterday while out and about I stopped at Roundy's and got a one pound package of ham steaks and a one pound bag of Roundy's Navy beans.

Prepare Navy bean soup more or less according to Roundy's package directions. Soak beans overnight. Drain and rinse. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, the directions call for about an hour and a half.

Hold the onions out until near the end so they don't overcook. I think they should go in after about an hour. Also add some carrots and celery at this same time.

Season with a 30 year old bay leaf and Sel Marin Ile de Noirmoutier, French sea salt from Ile de Noirmoutier. Here is how you get to the island, the Passage du Gois at low tide. When the tide comes in the sea rises and covers the road. If you are unwise enough to be out there when that happens you must take refuge on that tower next to the road and wait for the sea to recede.And this would be an excellent place to acquire the ingredients for the soup, the town market in the village of Noirmoutier.Anybody want to go to France?