Kitchen Note: Holiday Prep. Ugly Cookies. Steamers.

As Christmas and Chanukah are but days off, the IK seriously doubts you want or need another recipe right now. If you’re doing the cooking, the menu is likely set. Or perhaps the food is being served to you. Either way, having consulted deeply with herself on the life-shattering question of offering recipes at the final hour, the IK arrived at some hard-won realizations. They are as follows:

It appears many of you are here just for the pictures. Fine. We’ll give you pictures. Admittedly, we never expected the photos to get top billing, but then again, life is what happens when you’re making other plans.

While the holiday season is ostensibly about holly-jolly and so forth, it is also, for some, a time of tremendous stress, involving travel, expense, and visiting individuals one is on dicey terms with. There may be tense exchanges of conflicting political views and attacks over sexual orientation and/or partner choices. Atop all this, one is expected to consume vast amounts of rich foods. (not pictured below.)

Let’s not even get started on gifts.

Any of things alone is difficult; taken together, they are enough send a person over the edge. And the IK, in all seriousness, doesn’t want any of her readers, however casual or unknown, going over the edge. So consider this post a breather in the action, a place to relax amongst accepting folk and look a few nice pictures. We’ll chat about the action Chez IK, hopefully giving you a nice little rest.

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So…holiday prep and ugly cookies. With only one photo to show for it, and it’s not the finest.

When that Japanese woman released all those books about folding shirts as the path to inner peace, I didn’t get it. I was even amused. Open a drawer or closet around here and things are folded, alphabetized, color-coded. I can’t say it’s led to inner peace. Nevertheless, in years past, Christmas saw me ready: gifts bought and mailed, cookies baked.

Enter Christmas 2016. The linen closet still looks good. Gifts I managed, albeit later than usual. Granted, October was spent in a dentist’s chair. But baking?

Baking I forgot about.

Do I have cute Christmassy cookie cutters? No. Was I out of Droste Cocoa powder? Yes. In the midst of all this, did Cuisinart recall millions of food processor blades, including mine? Yup.

Nevertheless, I settled on a classic plain butter cookie and another with the added cocoa.

Last weekend saw me creaming butter with sugar, chilling dough, then trying to cut cute little stars with the one cookie cutter I do possess. The dough stuck to the granite countertop, steadfast. Additions of flour rapidly worsened matters, taking an already unworkable butter dough into the realms of truculently grainy. Near frustrated tears, I gathered the mess up, rolled it into logs, and cut cookies with a knife. The result resembled chocolate hockey pucks. Instagram? Blog? Oh hell no.

The hour was late. Trying not to think of all the beautifully decorated cookies shedding crumbs all over social media, I carefully bagged the butter pucks, sending them to my spouse’s office and caregiver.

And–I report to you in pleased shock–the compliments poured in from his co-workers. John’s caregiver raved about them.

Lesson: don’t worry so much about appearances. Good butter truly is worth it.

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There are two things that annoy me no end in cookbooks: assuming readers have expertise they don’t possess–granted, not always the easiest call–and recipes that send you jumping around the book (i.e. make the dough (see p.346) using the cumin-coriander paste (see p. 24)). So it is with certain kitchen skills, like steaming. Until yesterday, I didn’t understand how the process worked. Therefore, it intimidated me, which is a real problem if you want to make Chinese food, as much of the cuisine involves steaming.

Thanks to Carolyn Phillips, who explains steaming in detail in All Under Heaven, now I get it. She says you should buy a cheap wok and use it exclusively for steaming, as the boiling water strips the pan’s seasoning. Used woks show up at my local Goodwill all the time, and sure enough, I went looking, and found this one for 10 bucks.

This wok–which was new, the tags still on it–comes from a large Swedish housewares store I am not fond of. The place gives me claustrophobia. I used to try, womanfully, to find whatever it was I was searching for, writing it down on those terrible little pads. Then it was down to their cavernous basement, hunting for the Britt or Helmut or Ulf, which of course was sold out. By that time I’d be running for the door, frantic for Valium.

Also, every product I’ve ever acquired from this place broke, nearly immediately.

This did not give me good feelings for the wok, a bad attitude toward an object that had done nothing to earn my ill will, so I apologized to it. We’ve gotten on well since.

I know. You wonder about me.

When not apologizing to inanimate objects, I go marketing. The winter citrus is in.

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Also green garlic:

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And hot peppers. These are going into a fermented hot sauce.

And what better way to close than with hot sauce?

Thank you for reading. Have a safe, restful, and restorative holiday–d