As the countdown to Christmas begins in earnest, the tempo at our little house in the big woods has gone from busy to very busy. I love Christmas, and, for me, the preparations are part of the pleasure. Last weekend, my husband, Clif, and I set up the Christmas tree and decorated it. We went into the woods by our house to gather winter berries and greenery for the window box. Clif hung lights on the hedges outside, and now the house looks all twinkly after dark, of which there is plenty to be had this time of year.

I’ve outlined a cooking schedule for myself, and yesterday I made pumpkin bread, which went into the freezer. The pumpkin bread will come out the day before Christmas, and it will be what we nibble on as we open our presents. Today, I’ll be making regular bread, also to freeze—toast and scrambled eggs will follow the pumpkin bread on Christmas morning. I expect this might even qualify as a hobbit’s second breakfast. I’ll also be making a chili for Clif to take to a work potluck tomorrow.

As the days lead to Christmas, there will be more things to bake—-additional loaves of bread, some to keep and some to give; peanut butter buddy bars; lemon-frosted shortbread; cinnamon pie knots; chocolate-covered pretzels; homemade ice cream for ice cream pie; and peanut butter balls. Phew! No wonder I had to devise a cooking schedule to keep it all straight. Fortunately, Clif will be helping me with some of the more time-consuming items such as the pretzels and the peanut butter balls.

Last night, inspired by Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal—I wrote about this book in the previous post—I decided to make a soup using odds and ends and enhanced by a mushroom broth. I had a bit of leftover turkey, 1 cup of stock, and a small amount of left over rice. Not enough for two adults, especially when one of them has an appetite like Clif’s. Adler is a big advocate of making stock from whatever is on hand—vegetables or bones—and I decided to see what I could do with a small package of mushrooms I had as well as some leftover celery. I cut the mushrooms into fairly thick slices and chopped the celery, including the leaves. (Adler would definitely approve of this.) Into a big skillet, I drizzled a fair amount of olive oil—No, Shannon, I didn’t measure—and when it was hot, I added the mushrooms and celery. I sautéed them for a few minutes then added two chopped cloves of garlic. I sautéed all of this for another minute—I didn’t want the garlic to burn—and then added enough water to barely cover the mushrooms. For some reason, it seemed to me that a bit of butter would make a nice addition, and I put some in. Again, I didn’t measure, but I probably used a little over a teaspoon full. Now, for some spicing. Believe it or not, I have some rosemary outside in a pot, and the rosemary is holding its own. I snipped a sprig and chopped about a teaspoon full of rosemary to go in the mushroom mixture. (For those of you who don’t have rosemary in a pot, it would be perfectly acceptable to use dried rosemary.) I let this mixture simmer, adding more water as needed, until the mushrooms were tender but not ridiculously shrunken. I tasted it, and then I had Clif taste it.

“Really good!” he said.

Good enough to use as a base on its own, and I began to think of the possibilities, of adding some white beans to this mixture and serving it over rice. But since I had the stock, the chicken, and the rice, I mixed them all together and had enough soup to satisfy Clif.

His verdict? “Really, really good!”

The beauty of this “dish” is that it can be adapted to accommodate personal tastes and what’s in the refrigerator.  I’m a big fan of garlic, but you might prefer onions, leeks, or shallots. So use them. I had leftover celery, but carrots would also be a good addition. As would zucchini, sweet red peppers, and any number of vegetables. I think mushrooms really add an essential earthiness to this broth, and I just used the white button mushrooms available at the store. But I bet other varieties would be delicious, too. (My mouth waters just thinking about them.)

An inexpensive meal, a filling meal, and one that we ate with pleasure.

Come, Christmas, come.

For the first time in a very long while, my husband, Clif, and I will not be hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our home. In fact, I can’t really remember how long it’s been since we went out for Thanksgiving, but my guess is that it has been 20 years, maybe even longer. But this year our daughter Shannon and her husband, Mike, have invited the family to their place, and so to SoPo we will go, with our dog, Liam.

Naturally, I am still cooking. I will be making green bean casserole—my recipe does not call for cream of mushroom soup or canned fried onions. I will be making pumpkin bread. I have already made the gravy, and it is tucked safely in the freezer.

Making gravy ahead of time is a curious combination of great effort and less stress. I use Julia Moskin’s recipe from the New York Times, and despite one criticism that I have, it is a terrific recipe. Basically, you buy 6 pounds of turkey legs or thighs and pretend you are making a soup. First you roast the turkey for a couple of hours, and then you make a stock where you let the turkey simmer in water for six hours. In between there is deglazing, chilling, and skimming of cooled fat, which basically means this gravy is a two-day event. But here’s the thing: This is the most delicious gravy I have ever—and I mean ever—tasted, and it can be made up to a month ahead of time, frozen, and then thawed for the big day.

Those who have hosted Thanksgiving dinner will immediately grasp the benefits of this gravy. No frantic last minute preparations while everyone is waiting, where you often get a gravy that’s not very flavorful and  might be too fatty, too thick, or too thin. I will admit it. I have never made a very good gravy on Thanksgiving Day.

So despite the rigmarole involved with Moskin’s recipe, it is very much worth making. Thanksgiving comes but once a year, and while the whole process might take two days, most of it is not hands-on time. My one criticism of the recipe involves the ratio of stock to butter and flour. Moskin tells you to use 3 quarts of stock, which by my reckoning is 12 cups, and a roux of 12 tablespoons butter/turkey fat and 12 tablespoons of flour.

First of all, I never get 3 quarts of stock. This year I got 2 quarts, and this is pretty usual for me. (Perhaps I don’t add enough water to the turkey during its simmer time?) But this is somewhat irrelevant because even with 2 quarts of stock, the 12 tablespoons of roux is not enough to thicken the gravy to our liking.

I know. This sounds like an astonishing amount of fat to use, but consider the average white sauce, where the ratio is often 2 cups (half a quart) of milk to 4 tablespoons of butter and flour. While this white sauce might be a bit thicker than you would want for a gravy, it is not very much thicker. Especially not for someone like Clif, who likes soups, sauces, and gravies to be very thick.

So here is what I did this year. I used 10 tablespoons of fat—a combination of turkey fat and butter—and 10 tablespoons of flour to one quart of stock. The gravy I got was not overly thick, and not surprisingly, Clif’s comment was that even a little thicker would have been good. But the taste was utterly delicious, and I left the gravy as is with the 10 tablespoons of fat and flour. On Thursday we shall see how it thaws and heats. Will the gravy be too thick? Too thin?

I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, we wait for a wet, nasty snow storm forecasted by eager meteorologists. Will our daughter Dee make it north from New York? Will we lose our power, and if so, for how long?

Again, I’ll keep you posted.

After the long bike ride my husband, Clif, and I took yesterday, our minds quite naturally turned to dinner, and as our refrigerator and pantry are overflowing, we decided to make use of the food on hand. We had bought pizza dough for grilled bread for our Sunday get together, but there were so many great appetizers that we decided to forgo the grilled bread.

This meant we could use the dough for what it was originally intended—pizza. Now for the sauce. I had plenty of ripe tomatoes—Juliet is the variety I grow—from my own little garden, and it only took me two seconds to decide that a roasted tomato sauce would be just the thing for this pizza. In the refrigerator, I had a very mild soft cheese that came from Wholesome Holmstead. Not exactly mozzarella, but I thought it would be an acceptable substitute. For a topping I had leftover pancetta that Shannon had brought for appetizers on Sunday. (In my post about the Sunday barbecue, I mistakenly referred to it as prosciutto.)

The sauce takes a bit of time, but most of it is hands-off as the tomatoes roast in the oven. I took two pounds of tomatoes—the fair Juliet with a few romas mixed in. I cut the Juliets in half and quartered the romas. I put them in a bowl then tossed them with a few splashes of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt. Next I spread them, cut side up, on an oiled cookie sheet and baked them for about an hour at 375°. (The tomatoes are done when they are very soft and a little brown here and there.)

After the tomatoes had cooled a bit, I put them in the food processor and pulsed a few times until I had a nice saucy mix. Into a large skillet, I heated two tablespoons of olive oil and added two cloves of garlic, chopped fine. I let the garlic sizzle for a minute or so and then added the sauce, which was very thick. I simmered the sauce for about a half hour, adding a bit of water occasionally to get a texture I liked. Not too thin, of course. I didn’t want a runny sauce, but neither did I want a thick gloppy sauce.

While the sauce was simmering, I crumbled the soft cheese, cut the pancetta into little clumps, and set both aside in small bowls. I also chopped 1/3 cup of basil leaves, which I added to the sauce when it was done simmering.

The time had come for the pizza dough. Someday soon, we hope to provide a picture tutorial for grilled bread as there really is a knack for stretching it and grilling it. But for now I can give just the barest outline because Clif is the grilled-bread master. He stretches the dough by hand, puts it on a floured board, brushes the top with olive oil, and puts it on the grill oiled side down. He immediately oils the top and cooks it with the cover down for a few minutes—until it is brown underneath. Then he flips it, cooking it until it is brown. He flips it one more time, adding the sauce, cheese, and toppings. He turns off the heat underneath, but leaves the other side on, so the cheese is heated by the indirect heat. Clif closes the cover for this phase, too.

The results? The best pizza there is outside of a wood-fired brick-oven pizzeria. This particular pizza, with the roasted tomato sauce, the soft cheese, and the smoky pancetta, was especially good.

Combined with a green salad, the pizza made for a very satisfying meal after a long bike ride. Best of all, there were enough leftovers for another meal.

In a recent post, I wrote about how, through our CSA share, we are receiving a bounty of greens. So many, in fact, that at first it put me in a bit of a panic. How would I use them all before they went bad? While we do have a compost bin, I hate throwing food away. Not only is it wasteful, but it is also expensive. To the rescue came Mark Bittman, with his 101 ideas for salads, and since our friends Judy and Paul were coming for dinner on Saturday, what better way to use some of those greens than to make one of Bittman’s salads?

I made salade niçoise, or at least something resembling it. I didn’t have green beans, but I did have sugar snap peas, and that’s what I used, blanching them first, just a little, so that they were soft but still had a crunch. I cooked some red potatoes and hard-boiled some eggs. I also used capers, olives, and sliced radishes. On a large glass platter, I made a huge bed of mixed greens—lettuce, Swiss chard, and spinach, and I sprinkled the diced potatoes, pea pods, chopped eggs, capers, olives, and sliced radishes over the greens. The salad was dressed with a simple vinaigrette.

I am happy to report that the salad was a hit on Saturday. We decided it was familiar, in that it was a salad, and unfamiliar, because of the selection of ingredients. Definitely a make-again salad—so good  that it is likely to be a summertime staple at our house, both for when we have guests and for our own dinner.  In fact, tonight’s meal will be salade niçoise, where I will use leftover potatoes from Saturday, cook some more eggs, and include the rest of the ingredients listed above. I will also add some canned salmon, since this will be the main event for our dinner.

On Saturday, along with this salad, we had grilled bread and sliced cantaloupe for appetizers; the salade niçoise; a pasta and spinach salad; hamburgers; and for dessert, ice cream with fresh raspberries, purchased that morning at the farmers’ market.

The weather on Saturday could be described in one word—delicious. It was very warm, but not too hot or too humid. We sat on the patio and ate as birds fluttered around the feeders. From deep within the woods came the ethereal song of the wood thrush. The dog barked at passing cars. A summer’s night, all the more beautiful because such warm evenings only come to Maine for two months each year. The mosquitoes drove us in for dessert, but we had a couple of fine hours on that patio.

As we do on a regular basis, my husband, Clif, and I reflected on how lucky we are to have that patio and to have such a nice backyard to share with our friends.

Yesterday, it was as hot as it gets in central Maine. The temperature was over 90 degrees in the shade, which meant that it must have been nearly 100 in the sun. The relative humidity? Pretty much the same. I sweat as I watered the gardens and hung the laundry; I sweat as I ate lunch on the patio. The orange cat lolled beneath my chair, and the dog made a place for himself in the cool shade of the ferns by the house. The black cat joined her brother under my chair, and we all seemed to be in a suspended state, with the heat and the humidity stretching time so that the one afternoon seemed like days rather than hours.

Despite the heat, despite the humidity, I love summer, even the sweat and the stretched time, and the older I get, the more this is the case. Time was when winter’s cold did not faze me. I would stay outside until my face was red with cold, and it did not bother me a bit. Those days are gone, and in deep winter, I now have to steel myself to go for a walk.

Yesterday was also the day that Farmer Kev dropped off our CSA share. The wooden box overflowed with greens, greens, and more greens, and as I surveyed them, I felt a moment of panic. What would I do with all those greens—the spinach, the lettuce, the Swiss chard, and the beet greens with the baby beets? Fortunately, that very morning, I had come across Mark Bittman’s “101 Simple Salads for the Season.” I had even printed it, and I read it while I had lunch.

So I told myself, “Don’t panic. If Mark Bittman can come up with 101 simple salad suggestions, then you can find a way to use those greens. Let Bittman be your guide.”

Once the panic went away, the ideas started coming. There were the usual side salads Clif and I have each night with dinner. That’s the low-hanging fruit, so to speak, and while it does make a dent in the greens, a side salad each night doesn’t even begin to use them all.

Well, our friends Paul and Judy are coming over for dinner on Saturday. Why not make a version of Bittman’s salade niçoise? His calls for green beans, which I don’t have. Instead I’ll use blanched sugar snap peas, which were also included in my CSA delivery. After all, as Bittman noted in his salade niçoise entry: “None of these [ingredients] is crucial; you get the idea.” I do, indeed, and along with sugar snaps I’ll include cooked potatoes, at room temperature; tomatoes; olives, capers, and hard cooked eggs. And they will all be on a thick bed of—you guessed it—greens. I plan to dress it with a simple vinaigrette.

Also for that dinner on Saturday, a pasta and spinach salad with a bit of basil, olive oil, and feta. I made it for our Fourth of July picnic, and it was so tasty, I don’t mind having it again so soon. That salad uses two cups of chopped spinach, which will make a real dent in my spinach bag. I found the recipe in the Portland Press Herald, and this salad is fast on its way to becoming a family favorite. (Note: I substituted little pasta for the orzo in the recipe.)

Then I thought, what about today’s lunch? Why not roast those baby beets and have them in a wrap along with a bit of goat cheese, chopped olives, lots of greens, and a little dressing? That’s just what I’ll do, and I can’t wait for lunch.

So take that, greens! You do not intimidate me anymore.

Addendum—July 7, 2011: I just got an email farm share update from Farmer Kev, and he promised that next week there will be new potatoes. Woo-hoo! I won’t be panicking about how to use those little beauties. Boiled until soft—you don’t even have to peel them—add a bit of butter, and that’s it! I certainly am looking forward to next Wednesday.