If I don’t gain twenty pounds between now and New Year’s, it won’t be for lack of trying. There will be so much holiday yumminess in my house that I should go for a run just thinking about it.
My kids’ French teacher is Moroccan and offered to make Moroccan food for a party we are having on Sunday. She’s doing a beef and chickpea dish, an eggplant dish and a beet salad. This will, of course, be on top of a variety of appetizers and desserts. I plan to make brownies, pumpkin pie and cherry tartlets. And Sock It To Me cake.
If there were any residual doubts that I have become my mother, I laid them to rest today when I baked a Sock It To Me cake. My mom used to make this all the time when I was a kid. I’ve never made one before, but I found a recipe online and went to it. From scratch, even. Its basically a regular butter cake with sour cream, and a layer of chopped pecans, cinnamon and brown sugar that bakes in the middle. Nothing earth-shaking, just solid, satisfying yumminess. And it turned out pretty well.
On Christmas Eve we’re having tamales and to go with them, I’m crockpotting beans. Plus, we have taken to baking chocolate chip cookies every Christmas Eve (for Santa, doncha know). Carb loading in anticipation of Christmas morning, right?
The meal I’m most looking forward to is Christmas dinner. My husband decided to reach into his German/Russian Mennonite background and give us all the gift of artherosclerotic deliciousness. He’s going to make “vernanika” (which is how his family butchers the word vareniki). His grandmother traditionally served it with what they call “schmantfant” — I can’t find anything exactly like it online but it is basically a heavy cream sauce made with bacon, bacon grease and ham. I like it except for the bacon, which is cooked just long enough not to oink and floats flaccidly in the sauce. We’ll also saute onion in butter and that will be the schmantfant alternative sauce. I bought some farmer’s cheese from Sasha’s Russian Market for the vernanika filling as well as some Polish sour cream (25% fat, y’all – mmmmmm!) that we’ll use in addition to the sauce. Yes, that’s right – cream or butter sauce AND ALSO high fat sour cream. To round out the meal (as if we won’t be clogging our arteries enough already), I ordered cabbage rolls from Sasha’s. We had them once and they are really tasty.
And of course, Mike will be also be making the ever-popular “toybak” (AKA zwieback).
