Eating on Jitneys

The longer I don’t write something the harder it is to start. So many holiday meals have passed since the last entry but obviously I was busy. It was the holiday season. Duh. So to start things off, I thought it most appropriate to document for you the most memorable, and possibly most tasty meal of all: Stone Soup.

Two of my brothers and my sister came over the weekend before Christmas for a dinner party. Many themes for this dinner party were discussed, from 19th century prisoners’ diets to imaginary foods. Eventually, and I’m not sure how but it happened, we settled on Stone Soup. Imaginary, meager, cheap, and fun.

We went to the store and picked out the meagerest ingredients possible. Don’t you kind of love when you go to the grocery store and you look into your basket to find that you are buying eggs, milk, bread, and butter? Now imagine looking down and finding this in your basket (cabbage, turnip, jimaca, a single large carrot, beet, and something simply labeled “root”):

I suppose I can ruin the secret of Stone Soup. Keep in mind that it can be whatever you want it to be (like so many great things). At first, I imagined Stone Soup to be water and stones, boiled for hours. But more and more roots vegetables were chopped and some onion was sauteed (along with the rocks and single shell) and from this, unbelieveably awesome tastes were created. I am not shitting you when I say that this was the tastiest soup of the year.

Ingredients

Stones
1 head cabbage
1 jimaca root
1 other various root
1 turnip
1 beet
1 very large carrot
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic for each stone
water
pinch of salt and pepper

First of all, you need to boil some water with some stones. They should boil together for…at least a couple of hours. The longer the better. I mean, you do need that amazing stone taste. I would assume?

While this is boiling, have a drink. Or a snack! It will take a while. Whenever you are ready, start chopping and slicing vegetables. If you want to get crazy, use cookie cutters on the roots. We did.

We decided to wanted a slightly stronger taste to the soup. I know, save the lectures….it’s Stone Soup. It should have little to no taste. We went through this. However, since this was our actual dinner, we decided to sautee some onion and garlic. It really is best if you take the stones out of the boiling water and sautee them with the onions. If you are really starving, add some garlic like we did.


That’s…pretty much it.
Here was the feast:

We also made Wassil and Cabbage Water (tastes how it sounds, yet surprisingly good):

Here we are enjoying the fruits of our labor:

After dinner, Lindsay provided Invisible Pie (it was so good) and she told the best story ever:

Next up:
tales of me and FVD’s trip to Detroit/Pittsburgh, and my first week of pastry school!

**Special Thanks to Gaper’s Block Drive Thru for mentioning this old blog today.

This is long overdue, but things have been busy. I made these Christmas cookies last weekend, but, despite the fact that I keep eating them as a dessert to my breakfast, there are still a ton of them left so I really don’t think it’s too late.

Even just a year ago I thought that Russian Teacakes were something that just my extended family made. Same with Thumbprint cookies. I don’t know where I was. I mean, how did I somehow miss the cookie tin in every single childhood friends’ house that probably was filled to the brim with every American childs’ favorite fucking Christmas cookies: Russian Tea Cakes? It’s not that it ruins the cookies, knowing they weren’t especially special to my family, but it does make me realize there might be more than just one recipe for them. However, Christmas makes me crave tradition like nothing else. And what’s more traditional than a Betty Crocker recipe? For Christmas cookies that your mom made? Right?? So I used that one, and here’s a picture:

Next came the Thumbprint Cookies: also a mistaken family secret. As a kid, I used to only like these without jam in the middle. I would eat them before my mom had put the jam in the center for…I have no idea what reason. Jam in cookies is so good!

Thumbprint Cookies
(adapted from Betty Crocker by my mom)

1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup brown sugar (packed)
1 egg, separated
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup finely chopped nuts
jelly or jam

heat over to 350 degrees.
mix thoroughly butter, shortening, sugar, egg york and vanilla. work in flour and salt until dough hold together. shape dough by teaspoonfuls into 1-inch balls.

beat egg white slightly.
dip each ball into egg white; roll in nuts.
place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet; press thumb deeply into center of each.

bake about 10 minutes or until light brown. immediately removed from baking sheet. cool.
fill thumbprints with jelly or jam (raspberry is best)

I also made these Swedish Christmas Cookies because I wanted to make something I had never tried before, in addition to the two family staples.

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My friend Emily sent me this cool link that I thought I should share…

Foodpairing

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