Thursday, March 20, 2008
Triduum and Easter Plans
I've been neglecting my food blog. I visit here often, because I have found it so convenient to print out my recipes, and not have to search around. But I haven't been very creative in the kitchen, so I haven't added to the blog.
But for those that are tired of seeing blueberries on the top venue, this post is for you. ;-)
I have to mention that I've decided blogging is the best thing for me. Why? Because when I write down my plans and/or the events of the feast days, I can remind myself next year what I did. It was nice to see last year's events, and easy for me to remember what cake recipe I actually did make for the lamb.
I'm keeping meals at basic for the Triduum. After seeing Joanna Bogle on Feasts and Seasons, it made me want Hot Cross Buns, which I may buy from the grocery store. I preferred her recipe which had a flour and water cross, but the whole bun had a sugar glaze. The local ones just have icing crosses, which seem less penitential. But Mrs. Bogle said having the buns on Good Friday, even with their spicy sweetness makes that day special. It's a special food only eaten on that day (although she did mention some serve the buns on Easter morning, too).
She also mentioned something about being in the kitchen more during holydays, such as Holy Week than the rest of the year. I've been feeling guilty that I bake only during these times, that it's not a good representation of my life, and I worried I was detracting from the feast. But she said just the opposite -- spending the extra time making these treats for the holy days marks the time and food as special, unique. She said it more eloquently, but it made me feel more confident to continue.
Tonight I'm serving roast beef and mashed potatoes. We'll rushing out to get a good seat for the Mass of the Lord's Supper, but we'll try to do similar to last year.
We're spending Easter Sunday at my mother's. Her meal will be roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn, asparagus, green salad, rolls, and I will bring the Lamb Cake for dessert.
I'm making two cakes, one allergy safe for my son. I can't praise enough the mixes from The Cravings Place. These are the best egg, dairy, and gluten free mixes ever. Trust me, I can't make something this good from scratch. We've now had the brownies and chocolate cake mix. Yummy, even for those who don't have to abstain from certain foods.
Easter Monday, part of the Octave of Easter, when each day is Easter Sunday all over again. I'll be serving up Ham with Spirit Glaze. I love serving ham. It makes me feel frugal, when I can whip up several meals and lunches from one ham. It also is one of my son's favorite meals.
And now to work....
10:19 Posted in Easter , Liturgical Year | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Easter, Triduum, lamb cake, Good Friday, Holy Thursday
Friday, April 13, 2007
Easter Ham
Christ is risen, Alleluia! He is risen, indeed, Alleluia!
My mother hosted our Easter family celebration this year. For the main meal, she decided to have roast beef and ham, and I offered to bring the ham and bake it for her. I think I've mentioned this before, but many glazes on hams have allergens, particularly wheat. Some hams have injected juices, so it's important to read labels before buying ham.
I bought one at Costco. I follow the reheating instructions, 325 degrees at 8 minutes per pound, but I do not use the glaze packet, instead I follow the recipe from the old version of Joy of Cooking for Spirit Glaze for Ham. This is really taste, keeps the ham moist, and is my family's favorite. When serving dinner, the question came "Is this Jenn's ham? Allright!"
Spirit Glaze for Ham
1/2 to 1 cup dry red wine
1/2 to 1 cup bourbon whiskey (I use Maker's Mark)
1/2 to 1 cup brown sugar
6 bruised cloves
2 tablespoons grated orange peel
Heat all ingredients in a small saucepan until sugar is melted. Pour over the ham and baste throughout the cooking cycle, about every 15 minutes.
The best thing about ham is that it can do double or triple duty for meals. So this ham was part of our Easter feast on Sunday, then a repeat meal on Easter Monday at home. On Wednesday we had Red Beans and Rice, one of my favorites.
12:34 Posted in Easter , Liturgical Year , Main Meal , Wheat, Egg and Dairy Free | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Easter Lamb Cake
I had huge success for my lamb cake this Easter, and really I have to give all credit to Elizabeth Foss, since she shared her recipe on the Easter Menu discussion from the 4RealLearning Forums. I have a different cake mold than the Wilton version, but the recipe and directions worked out perfectly. I had no breakage, no floppy cake. The cake itself was firm but moist and tasty. The decorator icing was delicious...a bit on the sweet side, but that's typical for decorator icing. I used the No. 21 tip and made stars to recreate the fluffy lamb's wool. I used jellybeans for the eyes and mouth, dyed coconut green and sprinkled on the top of the base to recreate grass.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for sharing your family's secrets. I'm reproducing the recipe so I can keep it for my records (every year I forget what I did the last time).
Pound Cake:
1 1/2 cups butter
1 (8 oz) package of cream cheese
2 3/4 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 cups cake flour
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Have all ingredients at room temperature.
Beat butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat eggs, one at a time. Sift flour and add to batter. Add vanilla; mix well.
Place batter into a greased and floured pan; follow Wilton baking instructions.
I didn't need to double the recipe. The leftover batter was enough to fill one 10 inch layer to use as the base for the lamb. Next year I might double to make a layer cake. The pan cooked much more quickly than the lamb, so watch that carefully.
I didn't ice right away. From my decorating class I had the recommendation to wrap up the cake in many layers of plastic wrap and then freeze the cake. I do believe I was supposed to "crumb" the cake, which was to put a thin layer of frosting all over the cake before freezing, but I skipped that part. The freezing would make the cake firm for decorating and keep it moist.
Hazelnut Frosting
1/2 cup Shortening
1/2 cup Butter
5 cups Confectioner's Sugar
4 Tbsp. Frangelico (or more to get the right consistency)
Cream butter and shortening with mixer for 3 minutes on high speed. Add Frangelico. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. Mix on high speed for 5 minutes.
I did double this recipe and had only a little leftover. I LOVED the Frangelico addition. I think next time I might add a pinch of salt to cut the sweetness, but I'll have to think that one over.
I used decorator bags, which turned out to be hard for me to squeeze. Next year I'm going to try to use a Decorator, perhaps like the one from Pampered Chef, which will not require as much thumb movement.
12:23 Posted in Desserts , Easter , Liturgical Year | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Eggstra Special Treatment
So why post about plastic eggs in a food blog? DS is ALLERGIC to real eggs. He can't eat them without having an anaphylactic reaction and he can't touch them (or have other people who touch or eat them then touch him) without getting hives. I don't want to condemn all eggs, even the kinds that can't harm ds, just because he's allergic. Now, if he couldn't be in the same room with the smell or odor of eggs without reacting, I think I would have a stronger stance. So I'm writing about having eggs in a non-allergic fashion.
I love eggs, especially at Eastertime. The new life bursting out of a shell is the perfect symbol of the Resurrection--Jesus coming out the tomb. I love the traditional art of decorating eggs, such as the Ukrainian pysanky eggs. I've enjoyed trying my hand at making pysanky, too. Every year we decorate and dye eggs with the extended family. It's an ongoing tradition. We use Crayons and cover the eggs with Easter symbolism and alleluias and then dye them. The most beautiful egg with Alleluia becomes the special Alleluia Egg for the Easter Egg Hunt on Easter Sunday.
But that was before ds was diagnosed with egg allergies. I've had to cut back on our "egg hoopla" for Easter. But he wants a part of the traditions, so this Easter we dealt with eggs head on. Okay, not exactly head on, but some ideas that made it easier to deal with his sensitivity and allergy to eggs.
1) Painting: I couldn't do pysanky eggs, nor color eggs, so we painted. We painted a wooden cross from the Dollar Store and wooden eggs with colorful paints. I also created a Resurrection Garden scene, with a Sculpey tomb. Ds and I had fun painting that, also, and getting the materials to create the rest of the scene.
2) Plastic eggs in abundance: My one brother-in-law runs the Easter Egg Hunt at my mother's house. He set aside a part of the yard as my son's area and hid plastic eggs for him (before he touched the other eggs, too...very thoughtful). Ds searched for eggs while the rest of the hunt went on around him. He felt that he was a part of the activities.3) White House Easter Egg Roll: We had the privilege of attending this year on Easter Monday. Egg Rolls is an old tradition that harkens back to the stone that rolled back from Christ's tomb. Although very wet (it rained the whole time we were there), ds really enjoyed the sport of rolling an egg to the finish line with a kitchen spoon. With the long spoon, ds could play without touching the egg. Next year, I want to have an egg roll in our own backyard.
4) Dying eggs: We didn't color designs with Crayons this year, as touching the eggs can spread the allergens. I strove for minimal handling. So we used food coloring and dyed eggs. We only did a dozen, and dipped straight into the cups. Ds was fine watching and supervising, but no touching. He loved the result and talked about the beautiful colors, but no contact, so no reaction.Top image courtesy of freeimages.co.uk. Other images, just my apology. Developer messed up my order so I didn't get a copy on a disk and I'm inept at scanning.
09:30 Posted in Easter , Food Allergies | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Continuing Our Easter Joy!
This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it, Alleluia, Alleluia!
This Easter I did minimal cooking. Ds was sick most of Holy Week. I chuckle to think I can write about food, and didn't do much in the kitchen! Dh bought a wonderful Italian Easter bread, Columba al Moscato made by the Italian company Albertengo. This is the one we ate -- delicious! A friend shared a Ukrainian-made sausage for our Easter breakfast, we had some store-bought treats for our Easter baskets, and the only food I made for my mother's Easter meal was a Pampered Chef Chocolate Indulgence Cake! I even found lamb-shaped butter sold in the grocery store in Altoona, PA, so I didn't have to mold my own.
But the Easter season lasts for 50 days, until Pentecost. And the first eight days during the Easter season are called the Octave of Easter. During this time the Church considers every day another Easter, with the focus on the newly baptized, celebrating the liturgy of Easter Sunday until the Second Sunday of Easter.
I find it takes an effort d to keep up the joyful spirit and festivity for that long. It's an uphill struggle, since society views Easter as one day!
I thought one way was to keep making some special Easter meals. So I baked an Easter ham this week. Since Jesus came and established the New Covenant, we no longer have to follow the rules of the Old Covenant, which forbade pork. I found that a "safe ham" for ds can be found at Costco, spiral sliced, with bone. I'm still looking for options that don't contain sulfites, but so far the ones I've tried are extremely salty.
The ham is really easy (you'll see that's my constant mantra -- simple but tasty), but I can't use the glaze packet that comes with the ham, as it contains wheat starch. I also don't like sweet glazes on ham...I'm more of tart and spicy gal. So from the classic cookbook, Joy of Cooking, 1975 edition
Spirit Glaze for Ham:
1/2 to 1 cup dry red wine
1/2 to 1 cup bourbon whisky (Maker's Mark is the family preference)
1 cup brown sugar (I use less, as I don't like the "sweet" taste)
6 bruised cloves
2 Tbsp. grated orange peel
Combine and simmer on stove until sugar is melted. The directions call for putting on ham before baking, but I only do it in the last half hour, following the package directions of the ham. Continue to baste it every 5-10 minutes.
The alcohol is burned away, so no one gets tipsy, I promise. I've also made this without the orange peel and it's still tasty. It makes the ham moist and cuts on the salty taste. Everyone asks for the recipe for the glaze!
Ham has been our friend, especially when ds first got diagnosed with the food allergies. I was still nursing, and so also had to follow the allergen free diet. Needing quick-fix higher protein breakfasts was difficult, so having the leftover ham made it easier on me. We use this ham and recipe to cook for other holiday dinners at extended family's homes, so we all could eat together. The leftover ham allows sandwiches for dh for work, and quick lunches for ds. I liked to bake a ham if we had to go on trips. It helped to have some ready-made food for ds. I know it's not the ideal or healthiest meat out there...but when on the road with limited choices, it's a lifesaver.
I always use the leftover ham bone for another meal. But that's another day.
18:05 Posted in Easter , Food Allergies , Liturgical Year , Main Meal , Wheat, Egg and Dairy Free | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this