Gingerbread Cranberry Trifle

I've been reading Gretchen Rubin's Happier at Home lately and laughing at all her little lists, rules for life, resolutions, and mantras. Laughing because I relate so completely to wanting to categorize the world that way. I won't go so far as to say we're two peas in a pod (her pod happens to be more disciplined and successful than mine) but I'm sure we'd enjoy a cup of coffee with one another.

She has a rule to Keep it Simple. Unless it leads to too much simplicity! She says,

 I was always telling myself, "Keep it simple." But as Albert Einstein pointed out, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." I was made happier by my decision to bring paper plates, not home-baked muffins, to Eleanor's school party, but "Keep it simple" wasn't always the right response. Many things that boosted my happiness also added complexity to my life. Having children. Learning to post videos to my website. Going to an out-of-town wedding. Applied too broadly, my impulse to "Keep it simple" would impoverish me. "Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings," warned Samuel Johnson, "let us therefore be cautious how we strip her."

I would put food and cooking into the "Happy Complexity" category. Making thoughtful decisions about what to feed my family, keeping a stocked pantry, cooking every day. All of this boosts my happiness, but it surely adds complexity. I always joke that if I were to add up the hours I spend planning, shopping, prepping, cooking, eating, and cleaning up, I'd go into shock.

Yancey and I are going to his work Christmas party tonight. His world at the fire station is so separate from mine, and it's a rare chance to meet his shift-mates and their partners and have a night away from the kids. Yancey signed up for the dessert slot, and I decided not to Keep it Simple. Instead, I made this trifle between basketball games, and it's made the house smell amazing all day. (Gretchen also talks about her rule of Embrace Good Smells. Check.)

Out of all the desserts in the world I could make, I chose this one because:

1. I've made it before. As Christopher Kimball says, new recipes aren't what most of us need. We need to master a few good ones. I love pulling things out of my back pocket.
2. Oil-based cakes like this gingerbread one are foolproof. You're not creaming butter and sugar, it's guaranteed to be moist.
3. I adore ginger, gingerbread, and the tang of cranberries. Even though this dessert is definitely sweet, it's a spicy break from the over-the-top sugar that's around every corner at Christmas.
4. No cooking eggs for a custard! Even I stress over custard occasionally. This mascarpone-based custard couldn't be easier.
5. One trifle bowl will easily feed 15 adults, and it transports well.

And, to remind myself mostly, here's the Christmas Pledge I've posted at least once before. Thank you for being such a joyful part of my year:

The Christmas Pledge:

1. To remember those who truly need my gifts.
2. To express my love for family and friends in more direct ways than presents.
3. To rededicate myself to the spiritual growth of my family.
4. To examine my holiday activities in light of the true spirit of Christmas.
5. To initiate one act of peacemaking within my circle of family and friends.

Gingerbread Cranberry Trifle
This is adapted from Epicurious. I found their recipe overly complicated, so yes, I made it simpler! You'll need a deep trifle dish or big glass bowl for this. I found the recipe made more than my trifle dish held, so I made mini trifles in drinking glasses with the rest. Fun and cute. Really any straight-sided glass vessel will work. The one pictured is packed in a glass cannister. I put a lid on it and gave it as a gift.

You'll need to have this assembled and in the fridge at least 4 hours before you need it as the "mushing" time is crucial for trifles. If you made it the night before, it would be even better.

Wine-poached cranberries
2 cups fruity red wine (such as Syrah)
2 cups sugar
16 oz. fresh or frozen cranberries

Gingerbread cake
1 c. extra stout (such as Guinness)
1 c. molasses
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 c. flour
2 Tb. ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon 
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
3 large egs
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
3/4 c. vegetable oil

Mascarpone cream:
3 8 oz. containers mascarpone cheese (3 cups)
3 c. chilled heavy cream
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
3 Tb. Grand Mariner or orange liqueur
4 tsp. finely grated orange peel

For wine-poached cranberries:
Stir wine and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil wine mixture for 5 minutes. Add cranberries and simmer until soft but still intact, about 5 minutes. Transfer mixture to a bowl and chill. Before using, pour cranberry mixture through a strainer to separate cranberries and syrup.

For cake:
Combine stout and molasses in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; stir in baking soda (mixture will foam up). Pour into a bowl and put in the fridge to cool down.

Preheat oven to 350. Generously butter 3 8" cake pans and dust with flour.

Whisk flour and next 6 ingredients in a large bowl to blend. Whisk eggs and sugar in a medium bowl, then whisk oil and cooled stout mixture into egg mixture.  Gradually add flour mixture to stout-egg mixture and divide batter between prepared pans. It will look like it's not enough. Don't worry--you're going to cut the cake up into cubes, so it doesn't have to be all pretty and fluffy.

Bake until inserter comes out clean, about 25 minutes, switching pans on racks halfway through to ensure even cooking. Cook cakes in pans for 15 minutes, then turn out onto racks or a piece of parchment paper. Once cakes are cool, use a serrated knife to cut the cake into 1" cubes.

For mascrapone custard:
Using electric mixer, beat mascarpone in large bowl until smooth. Add all remaining ingredients and beat until peaks form and mixture is smooth. (Don't overbeat as mixture may curdle.) The mixture will look too wet at first. Don't despair. Pretty soon it will start to get more of a whipped cream look. Cover and chill up to 2 hours (though you can use it immediately).

To assemble trifle:
Line of the bottom of your trifle dish with cake cubes, making sure you're covering the bottom while still leaving a tiny bit of wiggles room. Spoon about 2 Tb. of cranberries and a bit of the syrup over the cake cubes. Top the cake and cranberry layer with about 1 1/3 c. mascarpone cream, and repeat 3 more times, ending with a layer of cream. Sprinkle some more orange zest over the top, cover with plastic wrap (which means your trifle will have to stop just below the rim of your dish), and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

To serve, use a long spoon and dish it into bowls.

What I Bring to Potlucks

I feel two ways about potlucks. On one hand, they're the only sensible way for a big group to gather and eat together. In all my magazine-reading (have I mentioned how much I love magazines? The paper kind?), I often come across "Easy Do-Ahead Party Menus!" that look atrocious. More work than I have ever put into having anyone over in my life. Maybe each step is technically easy, but you'd still have to be unemployed (or have a kitchen staff), hyper organized, and LOVE cooking to pull it off. So potlucks solve this problem.

However, *&%$#!. Sometimes too many potlucks stack up in one week, and I find they are just as much work (or more) than what I would have made for my family that night. And I have occasionally cursed potlucks, though please don't tell anyone. Puget Sounders are supposed to love them. Always.

I adore people that bring a hot, main dish to potlucks. People with crockpots (I gave mine away as it was suffering from disuse), people with those handy Rubbermaid sets with thermal jackets. If you're one of those, thank you! Keep doing your thing!

As for me and my house, we will supply the salad. It's usually something like this one--brown rice and kale salad with cranberries and pecans. Here's my reasoning:

1. It's vegan and gluten free. And I label it as such. 
2. It's filling. Though I'm not a Main Dish Super Hero (God bless you!), it's conceivable that someone could eat a **#load of this and feel fairly satisfied.
3. It's delicious. Have I ever let you down? (Don't chime in if I have. I know readers have slaved over some recipes and been ruinously disappointed. I'm sorry!)
4. It is best served room temperature (Potluck Royalty!).
5. It can sit in its vinaigrette forever and just get better. You don't have to worry about it getting soggy.
6. Crazily, I usually have everything I need for a version of this salad--grains, greens, homemade vinagrette. If you wash and dry kale and put it in a ziploc bag in the fridge, it lasts a really long time. (Though it gets gobbled up around here. Along with a latte and Triscuits, it's the food I eat almost every day.)
7. It looks bright and beautiful with the macerated cranberries and the green kale. There's never any left.

And for those of you that have been following this blog since its inception almost 4 years ago, you might remember the very first recipe I posted was something similar--Barley and kale salad with dried cherries and blue cheese. I had taken it to my Mom's birthday party and been accosted with requests for the recipe. I prided myself on always delivering recipes (handwritten and cobbled together from memory) to people who asked for them, but had the idea of putting it online to save my fingers from so much work. I made up the name on-the-spot, and I've always been glad I didn't think it about it much. Otherwise it wouldn't have happened. (I have a couple dear friends who are contemplating--and contemplating some more!--the idea starting a blog. Just get out there. We'll all be better for it.)

Happy Week of Giving Thanks. As always, I'm thankful for you.

Kale and Brown Rice Salad with Cranberries and Pecans
You could use white rice, barley, quinoa...so many other grains here. The important thing is that it's had a chance to cool down a little bit so the grains can separate. If you can't cook it ahead of time and chill it, just spread it out in a very shallow layer, drizzle a little bit of olive oil over it, and stir it occasionally to release the steam.

4 cups cooked grain (I made brown rice in my rice cooker the day before)
1 large bunch curly green kale, de-stemmed, washed, dried, and coarsely chopped
1/2 c. toasted pecans, coarsely chopped
2 Tb. honey
salt and pepper
2 garlic gloves
4 Tb. apple cider vinegar
1/4 c. olive oil 
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced 
1/2 c. dried cranberries

For dressing:
Combine honey, salt and pepper, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil with an immersion blender. (Or with a whisk if you use a garlic press.) Add more of anything to taste. Drop the sliced onions and dried cranberries into the dressing to marinate.

To assemble salad:
In a large bowl, combine rice, kale, and dressing. I use my hands. Make sure everything is covered with the vinaigrette. That's what makes this salad. Scatter the toasted pecans over the top and maybe a little more coarse salt and pepper. 

Winter Oranges

In September, I start thinking about oranges, tangerines, satsumas, minneolas. By October, I salivate whenever I think of them. When I spot the first box of satsumas in early November, I buy them no matter how much they cost. The bright lights of winter. My mom gave me this gray bowl for a housewarming present. When I fill it with fruit and set it on the counter, it reminds me of the riotous abundance in my life and in the world.

We had our housewarming party last month--one year after moving in, one week after the painters were done, and one day after baseboards were nailed to the wall and pictures hung. We cast a wide net--family from here and from Seattle, neighbors, families from Roosevelt Elementary, friends from high school, and old family friends. When the first guests came, I judiciously laid their coats out on my bed and poured them a drink. An hour later, there was a ridiculously massive pile of coats and shoes by the front door and I couldn't even cross the room. 

I told Yancey I had a biological need for a party. A party to say "We're here!" and to christen this house we've resuscitated. The party satisfied my needs in every way. We sat around afterward debriefing with my parents (who produced countless trays of nachos all night), emptying the last pints from the keg, and feeling, more than ever before, that moving to Bellingham has meant coming home in all the best ways. 

I've been cooking my brains out, but in very routine ways. Rice and beans, lentil soup, burritos, baked potatoes, lots of cookies for clients or teacher appreciations. We've definitely entered another stage of life with both kids playing basketball, Wyatt in choir practices, and more and more homework at night. Somehow we've managed to keep eating together at night, but it's meant keeping it really simple. We have friends or family eat with us once or twice a week and I've gotten good at not doing anything special for them. And my new rule is never to apologize for a messy house. It's much more important that we are together.

And that we are grateful. There are some people in my orbit whose lot in life is hard right now. At the moment, my lot in life is easy. But I hope, when the hard times come, I can still be grateful. I'll leave you with this beautiful quote from Kevin Kelly, part of the "This I Believe" NPR series. His essay has been important to me for a long time, but I pulled it out again recently to pass along to a client. As often happens, I needed it too:

I've slowly changed my mind about spiritual faith. I once thought it was chiefly about believing in an unmeasurable reality; that it had a lot in common with hope. But after many years of examining the lives of the people whose spiritual character I most respect, I've come to see that their faith rests on gratitude, rather than hope. They exude a sense of being indebted, and a state of being thankful. When the truly faithful worry, it's not about doubt (which they have) but it's about how they might not maximize the tremendous gift given them. How they might be ungrateful. The faithful I admire are not certain about much except this: that this state of being embodied, inflated with life, brimming with possibilities, is so over-the-top unlikely, so extravagant, so unconditional, so far out beyond physical entropy, that is it indistinguishable from love. And most amazing of all, like my hitchhiking rides, this love-gift is an extravagant gesture you can count on. No matter how bad the weather, soiled the past, broken the heart, hellish the war – all that is behind the universe is conspiring to help you – if you will let it.

Broiled Eggs with Kale and Roasted Kabocha

The Pacific Northwest just finished up over 80 days without rain. Until last week, people were sitting on their decks with cocktails. At Wyatt's soccer game 2 Saturdays ago, I took my shoes and socks off and pretended I was on the beach. 

Now, rivers of rain out my window, there's no mistaking the arrival of Fall. I think Puget Sounders are a little relieved. So much sun was too good to be true. Now we can go back to taking our Vitamin D, feeling sorry for ourselves, and coming up with every conceivable use for pumpkins.

I got the most beautiful Kabocha (or Japanese Pumpkin)  squash at Joe's Garden before it closed for the season. I peeled and thinly sliced it, drizzled it with olive oil and salt, and roasted the slices at 425 until they were tender, about 12 minutes. I then used it for a million things, including a galette and these eggs. 

And that's what I recommend for those inhospitable squash, sitting in your pantry or on your porch and staring you down. If you roast it up (there's a good method here) and put it in the fridge, all of the sudden it will be in your eggs, squished between bread with cheese and grilled, or tossed into pasta. 

Broiled Eggs with Kale and Roasted Kabocha
Serves 2. Turn broiler on. Saute several handfuls of washed and chopped kale in an ovenproof skillet with olive oil and a little garlic and salt. Cook until halfway wilted. Add a handful of your roasted squash and a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of grated lemon zest. Stir. Crack 4 eggs over the top of the kale and squash mixture, and top with feta, sharp cheddar, or other cheese. Add some chopped fresh herbs if you want (parlsey, rosemary, thyme, cilantro.) Cook until eggs are set a bit, then transfer to to the broiler. Broil until everything is bubbling and eggs are cooked to your liking.  Cut around eggs with a small spatula and serve, or just eat right out of the pan by yourself or with your friend or sweetie.  

Mile-High Biscuits

Wyatt wandered upstairs this morning and, noticing my distraction, said, "I guess I'll make myself a piece of peanut butter toast." "No, don't! I'm making biscuits"! He slapped his thigh--"yes!-- and ran downstairs to tell Loretta. Ah. Sunday mornings.

I have a list of 14 daily habits that I aspire to. (Those of you who are my friends in the offline world are NOT surprised. And you might even be rolling your eyes right now.) One of them is, "Do one kind thing for a friend or stranger." This morning I decided that my one kind thing would be to make biscuits for my children.

In my perfectionistic past, this would not have counted. No way. It would have to be delivering a handmade gift, buying lunch for a homeless person, or letting someone cry on my shoulder. Those are all worthy things, of course, but so is being in the moment with my children. I'm their mother, yes, but they're also my friends. I listened to this podcast recently and was blown away. Especially by this idea of parenting, first and foremost, as a relationship. Relationships mean time spent. It means both parties get their feelings hurt sometimes or let each other down. And it means doing kind things for one another, which is so often forgotten in relationships that mean the most to us.

Of course I would have made my children breakfast. I do every day. But I don't always do it in the spirit of relationship. I've been mediating on this quote lately from Thich Nhat Hanh:

If you are peaceful, if you are happy, whatever you do will be an offering for the people around you.

Making the bed in the morning (that's another of the daily habits I aspire to), sweeping under the table for the umpteenth time, listening without judgement to my clients, friends, or strangers. All of that can be an offering if it's coming from my own peace and happiness. 

I've given my biscuit recipe before, but it was a slightly different technique. I've moved onto this because it's less handling of the dough so therefore even lighter and higher! Impossible! I have made these so many times that, not counting the cooking time, they're almost as easy as making eggs and toast. Once you've made them a few times, you'll say the same. And you will become famous in your own household.

Mile-High Biscuits

2 c. flour
1 Tb. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
8 Tb. (one cube) cold unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
3/4 c. cold milk

Preheat oven to 450.

Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Drop butter in and cut in with your fingertips until mixture has pea-sized lumps of cold butter all through it. Pour the cold milk evenly over and mix quickly with a wooden spoon, forming a ball. Let dough rest for one minute. It should come together quite easily in a ball. Add a dab more flour if it's too sticky or a tiny splash more milk if it's too dry.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Quickly pat into a disc, then fold the disc over on itself once. Pat again into a disc about 3/4" thick and 8" in diameter. With a sharp knife, cut disc into 8 equal wedges. Place wedges in a pie plate or small cookie sheet about 1/2" apart and bake until golden on top but not burned on the bottom, 10-14 minutes, checking frequently after 10 minutes.