If the thought of Christmas cookies immediately brings a picture of you standing in a kitchen surrounded by bags of flour, pounds of butter, and little dishes of candy sprinkles to your mind’s eye, you might be dreading the upcoming Christmas social round. It can take hours to work your way through the pile of […]
Austen Gilliland
Posted inFood + Drink
Log rolling
The bûche de noël, or Yule log, is a show-stopping Christmas dinner finale especially popular with people who aren’t crazy about the traditional Christmas dried-fruit-and-booze-laden cakes and puddings. Made of cream-filled sponge cake, covered with chocolate icing and fancifully decorated, it’s sure to impress—and to taste much better than the original wooden version. Historically a […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Stir it up
Get out your pudding basins and your double boilers; find your parchment paper and your string; soak your dried fruit in Guinness and your loonies in Coca-Cola; it’s Christmas pudding time. Less like a creamy mousse and more like a fruitcake, Christmas pudding has long been a staple of English holiday tables, and it’s a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Snack-o’-lantern
Pumpkins aren’t just for making pie or jack-o’-lanterns. They’re also the perfect source of the raw ingredient for one of fall’s most underrated snacks: pumpkin seeds. With a little bit of time and effort, you can turn your pumpkin’s innards into a snack that’s healthy and delicious—and which will put any Halloween candy to shame. […]
Posted inFood + Drink
The stuff of legend
It surprises me that exactly two weeks before Thanksgiving, the Turducken King has two hours to spare to sit down and talk. Shouldn’t he be busy stuffing chickens into ducks into turkeys, making sure that there are turduckens aplenty for his hungry subjects to enjoy on Thanksgiving weekend? The King has a philosophical answer. “Thanksgiving […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Fowl ball
Thanksgiving and turkey go together like Easter and chocolate bunnies: somehow, it just doesn’t seem right to have one without the other. As times have changed, though, so have our options. Just as the selection for Easter chocolate now ranges from bunnies to dinosaurs, race cars and kitty cats, the range of options for your […]