Debi Simons

Author of Intentional Happiness

A Tuesday Trove of Treasures

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I’ve never done a post like this one before, but I had some items I wanted to pass on, so here goes:

First, a push for you to consider coming to the Cherry Creek Chorale’s Christmas concert this weekend. I just went onto our website and as far as I can tell there are still tickets left. (Link is to the sales page.) I didn’t go all the way into the checkout process, but I think you should be able to come if you want to. However, I wouldn’t suggest that you just come on Friday or Saturday night and expect to buy your ticket at the door, as our Christmas concerts usually do sell out. They close down the online ticket sales on Thursday at noon, so be warned. I don’t want anyone to come and be turned away!

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Food As Fuel, Part II–Make Your Own Real Food

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Can you make your own version of what’s in this container? Yes!

Eating real food involves a certain amount of effort, unfortunately. Your great-grandma wouldn’t recognize frozen pizza. Learning to make something that’s good for you and tastes good is a true life skill and a test of your ability to take care of yourself. You can’t just eat cold cereal for dinner or order takeout every night. You can’t go out to eat for every lunch. And you can’t skip breakfast! If you do these no-no’s you’ll spend way too much money, almost certainly weigh more than you should, but, more importantly, you’ll be eating lots of processed food, which means you’ll be eating lots of salt, non-healthy fats, and weird stuff. That’s the technical term: weird stuff.

This isn’t a cooking blog per se, especially for regular weekday meals. Most of the recipes you’ll find on this site as it is going to be re-branded and re-purposed will be for party food, and even

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Food As Fuel, Part I–Is It Real Food?

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Mushrooms, Chanterelles, Market, Food
Did you think these were boxes of Chex Mix? Au contraire, mes amis. They’re chanterelle mushrooms at a market.

There are two proper rules for food in our lives.

First, fuel. We know this. We know that, given enough time without food, we’ll die of starvation, and we also know that there are plenty of people in the world right now who risk experiencing exactly that.

But we live in a society of abundance, indeed over-abundance. While there are certainly people in the US who go hungry every day, the experience for most of us veers in entirely the opposite direction: Not only is food readily available to us at all times, we are also constantly urged to eat by means of advertising.

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In Which I Give the Green Light to “The Green Book”

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Green Book poster.jpg
official trailer image; accessed and copied from Wikipedia.

As I’ve said a number of times, this website is switching over to an emphasis on food and hospitality. But I plan to still include book and movie reviews in some way, and since we haven’t made the complete switch yet I’m just writing a regular post on a movie I think you should see. Jim and I had been very intrigued with a segment on the PBS NewsHour about the film, and after our rousing success at our voice recital we found a location and time that worked for us. Jim was a little doubtful about it as there’s been some backlash, especially from the brother of one of the main characters portrayed in it, but I was all gung-ho and he was willing to be a good sport. Honestly, we just sat laughing in pure delight throughout most of the two-hour running time. The interplay between two award-winning actors, Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali, is brilliant. One of my big tests for a movie is, Would I want to see it again? The answer is YES. Maybe we’ll go see it with our son when he gets home for his college break.

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Change Your Eating by Changing Your Mind

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As we head further into the holiday season I think it’s a good time to launch my series on respecting food roles. Indeed, sometime over the next few weeks you’ll see this entire site transform before your very eyes! The banner will change from its leafy tendrils to a food-related theme and the name will change from “Intentional Living” to “Respect Food Roles.” And what are those roles? Glad you asked. As I’ve thought about that question I’ve come up with only two legitimate ones:

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The Thanksgiving Post-Mortem

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Roast Turkey just out of the ovenHow was your Thanksgiving? I have to say that this was one of the nicest I can remember in an unbroken string of enjoyable holidays. We had our 15 people who ate, played games, talked, watched college football, and hung around for a long time. That’s always my yardstick for measuring how successful a party is.

But since I’ve been writing about the food, I’m going to tell you how that part went. Also, if you don’t particularly care about my results, at least scroll down and read about the two things you shouldn’t do when cooking a turkey. As I said in an earlier post, this is a bit late for Thanksgiving but you may end up having a turkey for Christmas too. (I’m hoping to be asked to do some cooking for that meal, too.)

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Some Additional TG Pointers on Pie and Turkey

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Who am I kidding? (Actually, whom am I kidding?) If you’re the cook for tomorrow you’re not reading blog posts, and this won’t arrive in your inbox until 6:00 this evening, at which point it will be far too late for you to go to the grocery store and buy a butternut squash. I actually should have posted this additional material on Monday, or even Sunday afternoon, as a friend told me at church that morning that she hadn’t been able to access the New York Times articles/recipes by Melissa Clark. But there it is. Maybe you’ll decide to make her pie for Christmas dinner. And you can still roast your turkey the way Melissa says to do it even if you decide not to do the dry marinade. I think you should be able to access the video at least:

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Thanksgiving Menu for 2018

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Everyone reading this probably has TG dinner all planned out, but just in case you don’t, here’s what I’m planning to do right now. We’re up to 15 for the count, with possibly more to come. I’m so thrilled! Back in our old house I always wanted to have 20, but the most we ever had was 13. Which was WONDERFUL, of course. But to me this holiday should be completely and utterly over the top. It’s my favorite holiday of the year. So here goes:

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A Great, Unusual, Not-too-Sweet Cranberry Cake

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This is a great recipe Not terribly simple, but well worth the effort!

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Martha Stewart's Cranberry Upside-Down Cake

This is so pretty and so good--it's not terribly sweet, and the cornmeal and almond paste/extracts make it different and special.

Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword cranberries, almond, cornmeal
Servings 12 23 grams of sugar per serving
Author Debi Simons

Ingredients

  • 12 tablespoons butter, softened or 14 tablespoons if not using the almond paste--see below
  • 2 3/4 cups cranberries or one 12-oz. bag, rinsed and shriveled ones removed
  • 9 tablespoons maple syrup or 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 3/4 cup flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 6 tablespoons cornmeal or 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons--The recipe recommends coarsely-ground; I usually buy Bob’s Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills brands, not the Quaker de-germed stuff.
  • 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/4 cup almond paste An expensive ingredient, I know, but this cake is really special. If you feel that you just can’t splurge on this, I’d suggest that you add 2 tablespoons extra butter. Or make your own almond paste—see Note below.
  • 3 large eggs, separated
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tsp. almond extract
  • 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

  1. 1. Spray Pam on or butter a round cake pan, then flour it. (I used a 9-inch springform pan, which made unmolding the cake much easier than if I'd used a regular cake pan. The original recipe says to use an 8” pan, but at least one comment on this recipe said that that size pan was too small. So if you don’t use a springform pan you probably should use a 9” cake pan.) In a large skillet, heat 6 tablespoons butter until melted, add cranberries and cook 2-3 minutes, until beginning to soften.

    2. Add the maple syrup and cinnamon. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes more, until cranberries are completely softened but still hold their shape. (Don't worry if they cook a little long--they just won't look as pretty.) Remove the cranberries with a slotted spoon and spread them in the cake pan. Boil the syrup remaining in the skillet until it boils and thickens, 3-4 minutes. Don't let it cook too long. Pour the syrup over the cranberries and let cool while you make the cake batter.

    3. Place rack in center of oven and preheat to 350. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cornmeal. Beat together the remaining butter (6 tablespoons if using the almond paste, 8 tablespoons or one stick if not) and the almond paste, crumbled, if using, and the 3/4 cup sugar until creamy looking. (You're supposed to use an electric mixer, but mine was packed, so I just had to use a spoon and beat it by hand.) Add the egg yolks, one at a time, and beat until well combined. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk in two batches.

    4. In another bowl beat the egg whites until foamy; slowly add the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar; beat until soft peaks form. Whisk a third of the whites into the batter, then fold in remaining whites.

    5. Spread the batter over the cranberries in the cake pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan (original recipe says 2 hours) before inverting it onto a serving plate. Cake is best eaten within 2 days.

Recipe Notes

Note: You can make your own almond paste, especially if you have some almond flour hanging around and need to use it up. Use 1 ½ cups almond flour, 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, one egg white, and 1 1/ tsp. almond extract. Process in a food processor until it’s smooth. If you just have almonds, process 1 ½ cups of those with the powdered sugar until finely ground—don’t process the almonds by themselves or you’ll end up with almond butter—and then add the other ingredients. You can divide up the paste into 1/2-cup or 1/4-cup portions and put them in ziploc bags, then freeze.