Recipes! Holiday and other dishes....

[editorus]

After seeing the post and Countrigal's recipes, I thought what a great time to share holiday and non holiday recipes!  Maybe we can add a section in Lifestyle and a recipe database, but lets just start off by sounding off your favorite recipe.    Back when I was at my first admin job we had to think of a creative United Way fundrasier.  Our dept of about 25 people  published procedure manuals for one of  California's largest banks.   Our dept had some contacts with printers, so came up with an idea of  a cookbook.  We all contribued a few of our favorites and put them in to our "procedure" format we used for our manuals and sold them for the United Way, to make a long story shorter here are a few from my old co workers!  Ever look back and something and wonder what happened to old co workers... oh well that is a topic for another post ;-)

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

Susan (editor)

Festive Eggnog (From an old co-worker named Melssa Brown, wow that was my first admin job!) (not for kids of course)

Steps 1 - 3 maybe done the day before.  The final preparations should be done about an hour before serving:  This recipe makes about 40 punch-cup servings.

Note:  Use only FRESH, not cracked eggs

Ingridents:
1 dozen eggs
1 cup granualted sugar
1 cup bourbon
1 cup brandy
1 cup milk (optional)
1/2 teaspoon sale
3 pints whipping cream
Grated nutmeg

Step 1 Separate the eggs, putting the yolks and whites in two large bowls

Setp 2  With an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until the sugar disolves and the mixture in thick and lemon colored.  If a thinner eggnog is desired, add one cup of mile to the yolk mixture.

Step 3  Slowly add the bourbon and brandy while beating on low speed, Chill several hours or overnight.

Step 4 Beat the Egg Whites,  Add the salt to the egg whites and beat on high speed until they form a peak that bends slightly.

Step 5  White the cream until stiff peaks form

Step 6  Pour the egg yolk mixture into  large punchbowl, Fold the whipped cream into the yolk mixture, then fold the beaten eggwhites,  chill for one hour.

Step 7 Just before servering, sprinkle the top of the eggnog with grated nutmeg.

Serve and enjoy!

OH one I added..   This soup comes from Central America (Nicaragua actually) and is SOO good  especially on a cold winter day.

Beef tail can be purchased at any butcher shop and now at many popular groceries stores, It is very flavorful and inexpensive, this recipe servers 6.

Sopa de Res (Beef Soup)

Ingredients:
1 tail of beef, cut into 1-inch pieces
cooking oil
1 medium onion
1 bunch of fresh mint
1 bunch of fresh cilantro
2 med tomatoes
Salt
2 carrots
1 small head of cabbage
2 ears of corn cut into thirds
2 zuchinni
5 small taro root (in your produce dept)
1 large yucca root (or 1/2 frozen bag if avialable in your area)
1 Chayote squash
3 cloves of garlic
Lemon

Step 1 Getting soup started
Lightly brown the beef tail in cooking oil.  Place the beef in a large soup pot and cover with water.  Slice the onion, and tomatos into quarters.  Add the onions, tomatoes, garlic, add cilantro and mint (whole with stem, about 20 of each) into the pot.  Add some salt to taste and let simmer for about 2 hours over low heat.  

Step 2  Prepare Rest of the Vegitables
Clean and prepare the rest of the vegitables.  Cute the carrots and zucchini into about 1 inch log pieces.  With a potato pealer, peall the taro root,  yucca, and chayote.  Chayote squash ahs a large flat seed in the middle;  cut it out and through out the seed, slice the rest of the chayote into large chunks.  Taro root tends to be smaller so leave whole, if you get fresh yucca you will need to cut them into smaller chunks.  Cut the cabbage inot four pieces leaving the stem intact to keep the cabbage from falling apart,

Step 3 Simmer Soup Add Vegitables
After the soup base has simmered for about 2 hours, add the corn and the yucca as these take longer to cook.  Wait 15 minues and add teh rest of the vegetables, simmer until vegetables are tender.  Add lemon if desired!

I have to add, at the beginning I add about 4 boullon cubes just to start it out!  It is a different homemade soup but very very good!   Now I have to go out and buy the ingredients and go make it!

[countrigal]

My main recipe I have to make each holiday is:

Wassail (sp?)

1 gallon apple cider
2 cups pineapple juice
2 cups orange juice
2 lemons, squeezed
1 cup sugar
6-8 cloves
2-3 cinnamon sticks

Combine all the ingredients and simmer for one hour.  (I always put a few more cinnamon sticks, but that's personal preference.)


There's a few more, but that's the only recipe I know off the top of my head, and that's mainly because I just made it this weekend.  It's great to make up a batch, and what you don't drink right away can be refrigerated and then heated up a cup at a time.

At my last place, we also did a cookbook for a fundraiser, and this was 1 of 3 recipes I submitted that were published.  But I must say that I have lots of recipes that I enjoy from my days as a Pampered Chef consultant.  Recipes that are quick and easy to make, but look like they'd take hours, which is what Pampered Chef was about -- getting you in and out of the kitchen in a hurry, while providing good nourishing food for your family.  Therefore, I have many, many recipes to choose from when it comes time to share.

A good recipe for New Years Day, due to football being an all-day event then, is what they call a Savory Sandwhich Ring.  I love it and fix it often, too.

Basically it's:

2 packages of the Pilsbury French Loaf Bread (the dough that you bake)
oil/Spray Pam
oregano
basil
garlic (fresh is best)

3 sandwhich meats, thinly sliced (ham, turkey, chicken, roast beef, etc)
3 cheeses, thinly sliced (swiss, cheddar, provolone, munster, etc)
Lettuce
Tomato
onion
green pepper
olives


Take the french bread and make 1/2 a circle with each one, pinching the ends of those 1/2 circles together to form a circle.  Slice the top according to the directions on the container.  Spray (or brush on) oil on the top, sprinkle with garlic, oregano, and basil.  Bake according to the package directions.

Thinly slice tomato, onion, green pepper, olives and lettuce for sandwhich toppings.

When the bread is baked, set out to cool.  Once cooled, cut it in half, to form a top and bottom ring for the sandwhich.  Starting on bottom, layer the meats all the way around the circle.  Follow this with the cheeses, again layering them around the circle.  Add the tomato, onion, green pepper, olives, and lettuce.  On the top half of the bread, drizzle the Italian dressing, sprinkle with some more garlic, oregano and basil, then place on bottom half of sandwhich.

Cut the ring into wedges and serve.  You'll be surprised how many this will feed, as each wedge will have so much on it that you won't be able to eat much before getting full.  And it's a versatile sandwhich, since you can do various sections with different toppings to meet everyone's tastes.  You can also add and subtract toppings to best meet your tastes.  Personally I don't put olives on ours, but I put onion on my half and green pepper on my hubby's half when I make it.  (and I only make one loaf for the 2 of us, and we have 1/2 of that left over normally!)  The italian dressing works instead of mustard or mayonaise, and is quite tasty.  Even hubby likes it, and he doesn't like italian dressing.  Just something about it sets off the tastes of the various sandwhich stuffs so well.

Enjoy!

CountriGal
Peer Moderator

[gingertea]

Countrigal,
Your Savory Sandwich is ALMOST a hoagie!  I'll be going to visit family in the Philadelphia area for Christmas and I can't wait to have a REAL hoagie.  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

[msmarieh]

One of my personal favorites, which I got in high school foods class and still love to this day, and which is so easy I use it in my kid's cooking classes that I teach, is:

Holiday Cheesecakes

2 8-ounce cream cheese, softened
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup cherry pie filling
Green decorator gel
1 box vanilla wafers

Mix cream cheese, sugar, eggs, lemon juice and vanilla well (works best if you mix with a mixer until fluffy). Put a paper or foil liner in every muffin cup.  Put one vanilla wafer in the bottom of each lined muffin cup. Fill with ½ tablespoon of cream cheese mix.  Bake at 350º for 15 minutes or until firm. Decorate with one cherry and a green gel bow. Makes two dozen cheesecakes.

P.S. The easiest way I have found to teach kids how to make the bow is to tell them to draw a figure 8, then have a capital V pointing towards the middle of the 8.

8<

Don't know if there's any ingredients that are not available outside the US.

Marie