Tag Archives: Pine Nuts

Grinch

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes by

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant
Around the whole room, and he took every present!
Pop guns! And bicycles! Roller skates! Drums!
Checkerboards! Tricycles! Popcorn! And plums!
And he stuffed them in bags. Then the Grinch, very nimbly,
Stuffed all the bags, one by one, up the chimney!
Then he slunk to the icebox. He took the Whos’ feast!
He took the Who-pudding! He took the roast beast!
He cleaned out that icebox as quick as a flash.
Why, that Grinch even took their last can of Who-hash!
Then he stuffed all the food up the chimney with glee.
“And NOW!” grinned the Grinch, “I will stuff up the tree!” – From How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

Well, today is Christmas Eve Day, and I feel like the Grinch. I’m going to spend much of the day taking down Christmas.

I am undecorating the house, of course, because we are leaving very early tomorrow for our drive to Arizona for the winter. I will start the day by cleaning out the refrigerator, throwing out every last thing that won’t last until we get back. Just like the Grinch. Then I will remove the ornaments and stuff the tree up into the attic (again, similar to the actions of the Grinch).

The winter of 2013 was the first in which we spent the entire first four months of the year in Arizona. Up until then, we had spent a few weeks here and there. Last year we committed. So taking down decorations Christmas Eve, packing up the car, and leaving Christmas Day is our new tradition. As long as the weather cooperates. This year it will.

As I approached Christmas Eve this year, I recalled a funny Christmas Eve tradition we had when I was a child. For some years, Santa came Christmas Eve night while we slept, just as tradition dictates. But at some point my mom and dad, for reasons unclear, decided Santa should come Christmas Eve before we went to bed. So, around 5 o’clock, we would pile into our car to drive around town and look at the Christmas light displays. Every year, Dad would have a reason to go back into our house, where he would spend a bit of time taking all of the presents that he and Mom had hidden in their bedroom and putting them under the Christmas tree. He would come out looking very innocent, and we equally innocently never suspected a thing. We would spend about an hour looking at lights, and would return to find that Santa had come to our house when we were gone!

I asked Bill yesterday if he remembers the feeling of coming into the living room and seeing that Santa had come. Despite his 71 years of life, he admitted that he remembers that feeling as if it were yesterday. What magic. He also shared that he remembers being 30-something and putting together bikes or game tables or scooters in his pajamas at 2 o’clock in the morning. “And there were always screws missing,” he recalled. No magic there.

Last night I made my own version of a Who Feast and our son and his family came for dinner and gift-opening. And a feast it was. Racks of lamb, shredded brussel sprouts with pine nuts and bacon, mashed potatoes, cream puffs for dessert. Yum. Sent the Who Feast leftovers home with the kids.

And gifts – dolls and pjs and sock monkeys and ornaments – lots of happy faces. Then goodbye to more grandchildren until we see them again.

Bill and I will be busy packing up our things today for our time in Arizona. Sad to say goodbye to this home, but happy to say hello to our other home.

Hope Santa finds his way to your house, and here is my recipe for the delicious brussel sprouts. Try them even if you think you don’t like brussel sprouts. They’re delicious.

Shredded Brussel Sprouts (from allrecipes)

Ingredients
½ lb. sliced bacon
¼ c. butter
2/3 c. pine nuts
2 lbs. Brussels sprouts, cored and shredded
3 green onions, minced
1/2 t. seasoning salt
Pepper to taste

Process
Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium-high heat until crisp. Drain, reserving 3 t. grease, crumble and set aside.

In the same skillet, melt butter in with reserved bacon grease over medium heat. Add pine nuts and cook, stirring, until browned. Add Brussels sprouts and green onions to the pan, and season with seasoning salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat until sprouts are wilted and tender, 10 – 15 min. Stir in crumbled bacon just before serving.

Making a Pesto of Myself

Posted in Recipes by

Way back in 2001, Bill and I traveled to Italy with my sister and her then- twentysomething daughter. We had a really wonderful time, visiting Rome and the Tuscany area. We spent a couple of days in one of my favorite spots on earth, the Cinque Terre. While I have been back to Italy several times since, that was my first time to see the Mediterranean Sea.

The Cinque Terre are five small towns sitting on the side of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. The villages are lovely, with pastel houses and colorful boats tied up along the shoreline. It really is probably the most beautiful place I have had the good luck to visit. The climate is warm and sunny, and all of the houses and restaurants have window boxes bursting with geraniums and fragrant basil.

The first night when we went to the café for dinner, we noticed that many of the diners were eating spaghetti with a green sauce that I knew to be pesto. At that time, however, I had never eaten it and really didn’t know how it was made. We just knew that we kept seeing this bright green sauce, and we all commented that it didn’t look good to us. “It’s so green!” we all exclaimed as we ate our pasta with some kind of seafood.

One of the most interesting things about the Cinque Terre is that there are no roads connecting these five villages. The only means of getting from one town to the next is by boat, train, or on foot. There is a footpath that connects all five of the little towns. So the next day, the four of us set off from the first village, determined to make it to all five by the end of the day. Which we did. Yay for us.

What a walk. The path varies in width, sometimes being wide enough for two to walk, sometimes being nothing more than a narrow little path set on the very edge of the hill. One false move and you seriously could tumble into the sea. The view is absolutely spectacular. The Med is as blue as the Crayola crayon called Azure, and so is the sky, or at least it was that day. Vineyards climb up the sides of the hills, grapes somehow growing in that rocky soil.

It was a very hot day, and though we had brought water, we were all getting extremely tired and warm. We came around the corner and, like a gift from God, there was a farmer who had set up a table and chair from which he was selling his homemade vin santo wine. Icy cold, sweet white wine. Well, just like the boy scouts, Bill and I are always prepared. In our little fanny packs we carried four plastic wine glasses in case we needed sustenance after an afternoon of sightseeing and wanted to buy a bottle of wine. We paid the farmer for a small bottle of vin santo and again set off, figuring we would find a wide spot in the road where we could stop and sip a cold glass of vino. We went around the corner, and lo, and behold, there was a picnic table overlooking the ocean. Wow. That’s a memory I will never forget.

Fortified with our wine, we completed the walk sometime midafternoon, and landed back in Vernazza, one of the little villages. We all laid down, completely spent, in some cool grass, and realized that we were very hungry. What did we want to eat, we asked each other. Funny enough, we all agreed we wanted to try spaghetti with pesto. Somehow after all of that clean air and hard work, the freshness of a basil sauce seemed the perfect thing. We went back to that same café and each of us ordered a plate of spaghetti with pesto. It changed our lives!

I use pesto as a sauce for pasta, but also as a condiment for other things. Last night I made tilapia, which I topped with parmesan cheese and broiled for 10 min. I put it on our plates and covered it with pesto. Yum.

Basil Pesto
Courtesy Giada Di Laurentis

Ingredients
1 clove garlic
2 c. fresh basil leaves
¼ c. toasted pine nuts
Salt and pepper
½ c. extra virgin olive oil
½ c. parmagiano reggiano

Process
In a food processor, mix together the garlic, basil, pine nuts, salt and pepper until finely chopped. With processor still running, slowly pour in olive oil. Transfer to a bowl, and add the cheese.

Nana’s Note: Since my life was changed, I always have pesto in my freezer. Each year I grow basil in my garden, and at the end of the summer, I pick what’s left since it won’t live through our cold winters. I make a batch of basil pesto, put it into several ice cube trays, and freeze the yummy sauce. Once it is completely frozen, I wrap each pesto cube in plastic wrap, and then store them all in a bag in my freezer. When I need a quick dinner, I take out two cubes, let them thaw, and put them in a bowl over which I drop some kind of cooked pasta and mix. Boom. Dinner is ready!