Family recipe Monday: more teabreads

Beauty in the snow, from the Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail site. This one is from Calhoun County, Illinois. It just glows in the blizzard.   

It was a great weekend to stay in, brew tea, read old books and bake. It certainly was not a good weekend for getting out and eyeing birds, as birds are not stupid and tend to stay in warm places where they can't be seen. Nor was it a good weekend for driving around, since the weather was erratic and kept producing icy roads and blowing snow at the strangest times. I think that everyone up here would settle for either better weather or an outright snow day or five.

There is a blueberry cobbler in the refrigerator, the fond memory of buckwheat pancakes from this morning, and another batch of teacakes ready to go off to Afghanistan. Apparently the last batch of teacakes evaporated or something over there.

My favorite snow day therapy is still a window looking out on the snow, Earl Grey tea and teabreads in the late afternoon. These are best combined with a puffy quilt and a stack of books. It's all the more satisfying in a prairie-girl kind of way, I'm finding, if the bread and the quilt are both homemade. Either I've been up here way too long or not nearly long enough. I'm opting for the latter, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Cranberries weren't always easy to get in the flatlands and drylands. Anyone who has only experienced them in the form of canned jelly at Thanksgiving is in for a pleasant surprise in using them fresh and whole. As these two recipes show, they are perfectly paired with orange juice (or any other citrus juice). You can substitute dried ones for fresh ones, but I'd soak them in orange juice for a few hours first. These are good for afternoon and evening gatherings, and also make good mini-loaves for gifts. Don't ignore the advice to let these stand for a while before slicing. Baking-powder breads need  to cool and firm up in order for the crumb to be good and not, well, crumby.

Cranberry-orange tea bread

3 cups all-purpose biscuit mix
1 T grated orange rind
¾ cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
¾ cup milk
½ cup orange juice
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 cup fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped

Combine biscuit mix, rind and sugar in large bowl. Combine egg, milk and orange juice. Add to biscuit mixture and beat for about 1 minute. Stir in nuts and cranberries. Spoon into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350* F for 55 to 60 minutes. Let stand in pan 10 to 15 minutes. Turn out on rack to cool. Wrap in wax paper or plastic wrap and let stand a day before slicing. If refrigerated, first slice, then allow to come to room temperature before serving.

Re the next one: I don't use margarine, full stop. If you are substituting butter, you may need to check both the amount of flour and the heat of the oven to make sure that the texture is good and that the bread does not burn at the edges. I haven't had many problems with this. There are heart-healthier versions out there, though.

Cranberry quick bread with sweet orange spread

½ cup margarine spread
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 T baking powder
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking soda
1 cup unsweetened orange juice
1 cup coarsely chopped cranberries
½ cup chopped nuts

Beat spread and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add combined dry ingredients alternately with juice, mixing well after each addition. Stir in cranberries and nuts. Pour into greased and floured 9”x5” loaf pan. Bake at 350* F for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes and remove from pan.

Sweet orange spread

Combine ½ cup margarine spread, 1 T powdered sugar and 1 tsp. grated orange rind. Mix well and chill.

Happy Monday. What is your favorite bad-weather therapy?

Family recipe Monday: staying warm, giving back

Barn buildings in the snow

I haven't done nearly as much photography in the past couple of months as I would like or need to. It's been difficult to get away from the museum, and sometimes impossible to drive on the blue highways in this not-quite snow and not-quite ice we've been having. And that just feels wrong. I'll do better, at least monthly. The light is terrific these days, and so far the snow has been minimal.

Today is the Martin Luther King Day of Service. We're throwing our support to the Reach Out and Read program.All other factors being more or less equal, early literacy makes the most difference in building rich and productive lives. Get out there and give a book, or read one to a child. It's a huge investment in the future of your community. MLK Day is no longer just another three-day weekend.

But make sure you stay warm out there. No one can understand you if you are trying to read aloud with your teeth chattering or your energy flagging, after all. Building on last week's stocks, here are some good winter soups to fuel your community spirit.

There are a number of elegant squashes that are winter vegetables, often overlooked in the produce aisle. This recipe calls for the warm-weather scallop or patty-pan squash, but can be used with any of the others. It's especially good with butternut squash. Use chicken stock for this one.

Volunteer butternut squash arising out of a stray seed in the compost pile, from Delaware.

Squash soup with rosemary

¼ cup vegetable oil

6 large white scalloped squash, coarsely chopped
1 large sweet onion, coarsely chopped
2 T chicken broth base
2 cups water
1 pint half-and-half
2 T minced rosemary
Salt and pepper
Nutmeg

Heat oil over moderate heat in a large skillet. Add squash and onion, and sauté for 4 minutes while stirring. Add chicken broth base and water. Stir and cover. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are soft. Drain and reserve liquid. Process the solids to puree. Combine puree with liquid and half-and-half. Add rosemary and stir. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat and stir. Serve either warm or chilled. Garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg and a sprig of rosemary. Serves 8.

Multi-bean soup mixes are always good to have on hand. They are easy to make, too, and incredibly inexpensive. Many of us were sent off to college with a pretty glass jar filled with a colorful bean mix and strict instructions to make soup for ourselves, since dorm food could not be trusted. You can substitute other kinds of meat or protein for the bacon and sausage, or leave them out altogether, depending on your tastes. If you're not in Ro-Tel country, use crushed tomatoes and chopped green chilies. Extra points if you grew them yourselves. You can substitute stock for part or all of the water. This is a natural for a slow cooker. The lemon juice really adds a shine to the taste--don't add it until you are ready to serve.

Seven-bean soup

Bean mix

Use 1 lb. each of the following dry beans:

Lima beans
Kidney beans
Pinto beans
Navy beans
Lentils
Black beans
Split green peas

Mix together thoroughly and store in closed glass jars.

Soup

2 cups bean mix
5 quarts water
2 slices bacon
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
Salt to taste
10-oz can Ro-Tel tomatoes with chiles
1 lb. country-style breakfast sausage, browned
2 T lemon juice

Wash and pick over beans carefully. Place in a large pot and cover with 2 1/2 quarts water. Soak at least 2 hours. Bring to a boil and remove from flame. Discard water. Fill with fresh water (2 1/2 quarts again) and bring to boil again with bacon slices. Add onion and garlic. Bring to a boil again, reduce heat, and cook over low heat for 1 1/2 hour or until beans are soft but not mushy. Add Ro-Tel and cook for 30 minutes. Add browned and drained sausage. Add lemon juice and salt to taste. Remove and discard bacon slices. Simmer for a few more hours. Serve hot with tortilla chips or over rice.

Here is another version.

Nine bean soup

Bean mix

Use 1 lb. each of the following dry beans:

Dried yellow split peas
Black beans
Red beans
Pinto beans
Navy beans
Great Northern beans
Dried split green peas
Red lentils
Dried black-eyed peas
Barley pearls

Combine all beans and barley. Divide into 10 2-cup portions.

Soup

2 cups nine-bean mix
2 quarts water
1 lb. diced ham
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
½ to ¾ tsp salt
10-oz can Ro-Tel tomatoes, undrained
16-oz can tomatoes, chopped, undrained

Sort and wash beans carefully. Place in a large pot and cover with water 2” above beans. Soak overnight. Drain beans. Add water, ham, onion, garlic and salt. Cover, bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer 1 1/2 hours or until beans are tender. Add remaining ingredients and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Makes 2 quarts. Serve with cornbread or corn tortillas.

Happy Monday. Go make your corner of the world a little brighter today.



Schoolhouse, South Dakota.

Family recipe Monday: winter stocks

Best doorway ever. Photo by Pat Monaco

“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”
--William Blake

One solid week into 2011, and everything seems to be holding together. It's been an emotional roller coaster of a week, as we deal with getting the new building dried out and put back together, deal with the impact of the tragic shootings in Arizona, and get ready for the search for the new director while missing the old one.

The problems that caused this particular little incident in the building have been fixed, and hopefully we will hear nothing more from the sprinkler system until and unless it has an actual job to do, which Heaven forfend. Classes start next week, and we need to be ready to rumble.

We also started the Nostalgia Night series of vintage films shown in the big-screen vintage movie theatre downtown for the next 10 weekends. This is a fundraiser for the campus library: Best. Idea. Ever. Cheapest date night ever, too. Nostalgia Night is a treasure; there just aren't that many big screens any more, and the older films look wrong in any other format. More on that later.

On the home front, we are bracing for some seriously cold weather. No high winds or heavy snows are in the forecast--just bitter cold. The forecast keeps changing, too. By Tuesday, the low will be -9* F. That kind of weather sets off some genetic switch in my brain to drag out the stockpots and get some serious soups going.

I like to have stock on hand in the refrigerator or freezer at all times, usually chicken or vegetable, to act as a base for creative (aka "good grief, clean out the refrigerator") soup-making. My grandmother would have called these broths and would have had them on hand at all times, too. My dad's grandmother never took the simmering stock pot off the back of the wood stove in east Texas, and legend has it that she added a newly killed and cleaned chicken to it every morning. You are supposed to keep the stock pot going. I usually drag it out every week or two and put the stock in the refrigerator (especially chicken, so that it nicely defats itself) and then the freezer. We like having soup on weekend nights or when we need to thaw out.

For stocks and soups, I use the low temperature-long time (LT²) approach. You can use a slow cooker to get the same results, in fact. Simmer, don't boil. Boiling too fast cheats you of deep flavor and texture, kind of like real life.

Quick and easy vegetable stock

½ lb. carrots
2 medium onions
4 green onions
½ lb. leeks
2 ribs celery
3 T butter or oil
10 cups cold water
Small bouquet garni (2 sprigs parsley, small bay leaf, and 1/8 tsp thyme tied up in cheesecloth)

Peel and slice all vegetables. Sauté vegetables in stockpot in butter until soft. Cover with the water, bring slowly to a boil, skim well with a fine-mesh skimmer and add the bouquet garni. Simmer for 2 hours or until liquid is reduced to 8 cups. Strain stock through chinois or strainer lined with cheesecloth. Store in refrigerator or freeze. Makes about 2 quarts.

Basic chicken soup

1 5 to 6-lb. fowl, or 7 to 8 lb. of broilers, with neck and all giblets except liver

10-12 cups of water, as needed
2 medium carrots, scraped and quartered
2 or 3 celery stalks with leaves, whole or cut in half
1 medium yellow onion, whole or cut in half
2 to 3 tsp coarse salt
8 to 10 black peppercorns

Clean and trim chicken; quarter if necessary. Place in a 5-quart soup pot. Add 10 cups of water for broilers, 12 for a fowl. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a slow simmer and skim the foam as it rises to the surface. When the foam subsides, add all the remaining ingredients with only 1 tsp salt. Cook chicken until it loosens from the bone (~1¼ hours for quartered broilers, 1 ½ for whole broilers, 2 ½ to 3 hours for a quartered fowl and an extra 30 minutes for a whole fowl). Add more water during cooking if chicken is not 7/8ths covered. Turn chicken 2 or 3 times during cooking. Add more salt to taste gradually. Remove chicken, giblets, and bones. Pour soup through a sieve, rinse the pot and return soup to the pot. Skim the fat. The chicken can be trimmed, cut into smaller pieces, and reheated with the soup.

With good stocks on hand, you can do just about anything. I substitute stock for plain water in a lot of entrée and vegetable recipes for better nutrition and flavor. We know what went into our stocks and what didn't, so these are much better for Gene, without the added salt and starch of commercial products. They also make the whole place smell good for hours.

Here is a cold-night favorite. I would and do substitute chicken stock for the water called for.
 

Hot and sour soup

6 dried Chinese mushrooms

8 cups stock or water
4 cubes vegetable bouillon
6 sliced green onions, green and white separated
2 cakes tofu, silvered (1/2 lb.)
2 T dry sherry or Chinese rice wine
¼ cup cider vinegar or Chinese rice wine vinegar
2 T tamari
2 T cornstarch or arrowroot
¼ cup cold water
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup carrot cut in 2” matchsticks
¼ cup bok choy or celery, cut in 2” sticks
¼-½ tsp ground black pepper

Before preparing vegetables, place mushrooms in a small bowl. Bring 2 cups of water to boil and pour over mushrooms. Let stand 15 minutes and prepare other vegetables. Place 6 cups water and bouillon cubes in a large saucepan, Drain mushrooms and add liquid to pan. Simmer. Cut mushrooms in slivers and add to stock with white part of green onions. Simmer 5 minutes and add tofu. Simmer 5 minutes and add wine, vinegar and tamari. Dissolve cornstarch in cold water. Stir into soup and bring to gentle boil, stirring. Drizzle beaten eggs into boiling soup, stirring so that egg forms shreds. When soup becomes clear and thickened, remove from heat. Stir in pepper and adjust vinegar and tamari. Distribute carrots, bok choy and green onion tops among bowls. Ladle in soup and serve at once, passing additional pepper and vinegar. Yield: 4 servings.

(This will cure any cold on the planet. And you can still make it without a prescription.)

Happy Monday. Let's make this a year of inclusiveness and not polarization, k?

Family recipe Monday: enchiladas

Sign photo courtesy of our friend Pat. It describes the past few days very well.

It's been a non-stop beginning to 2011, dealing with the aftermath of the water in the new building. In the midst of the hectic day yesterday, I received an envelope confirming my appointment as Interim Director of the museum. I had so hoped to be called Czarina, but I guess that's not on the state position roster.

To celebrate both the job title change and the fact that we survived three days of post-water aftermath with very little damage, our friend Pat made crayfish gumbo and I made pineapple upside-down skillet cake. They were both great comfort foods. The night before, we made venison chili stew, so our leftovers currently are unbelievable. Pat has headed back for Colorado and I am contemplating making a big pan of enchiladas to have on hand for the next few days.

Enchiladas are wonderful and as simple or as complicated as you want them to be. The Mexican saying "estas no son enchiladas" (these are not enchiladas) is used to describe anything that is not easy. As noted in the great discussion here, "enchilada" simply means "dipped in chili."

It seems as if every Texan has a version of this recipe. Because it is Texan, the enchiladas are rolled. In New Mexico, they are stacked. You can get into endless discussions about the pros and cons of each approach, which I will not do here. These are Texan. They are rolled. Not up for discussion.

Kerrville jalapeño chicken enchiladas

1 large stewing chicken
1 quart water
2 stalks celery, cut into 4” chunks
1 T salt
½ tsp. pepper
½ tsp. poultry seasoning

Put the chicken in a pan with the water, celery, and seasonings. Boil the chicken until tender. Remove chicken and set aside to cool. When cool enough to handle, Remove the meat from the bones and shred. Keep the dark and light meat separated. Make the sauce:

Jalapeño sauce

2 T salad oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 fresh green jalapeños, finely chopped
1 cup cooked shredded dark chicken meat
3/4 cup water
½ tsp. salt
Dash of pepper

Sauté the onion and jalapeños in the salad oil until tender (5-6 minutes). Add chicken and stir for about 2 minutes. Add water, salt and pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Assemble the enchiladas using the following:

2 cups cooking oil
12 corn tortillas
3 cups of the remaining chicken
4-5 cups jalapeño sauce
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Heat the oil in a skillet. One at a time, dip the tortillas into the oil for a few seconds, just enough to soften. Set each aside on a paper towel or platter. Spoon about 2 T of shredded chicken into the center of each tortilla. Cover the chicken with about 1 T of the sauce. Roll and place the enchiladas seam side down. When all the tortillas have been filled, place them in a baking pan, pour the remaining sauce over them, and top with cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes in a 475* F oven or until the cheese has melted. Serve at once. Serves 6.

You can expand the recipe as needed, but don't forget the casserole law: one to have, one to share. This is a one-pot meal in itself and freezes beautifully.

Happy recipe Monday Tuesday. We're a bit late, but we got here, and it looks like we have survived the water crisis just fine.

Happy 2011

We have made it to the start of a new year, despite a last-minute sucker-punch of a winter storm that dropped temperatures here to -15* F (with the wind chill factored in), blew 6 inches of snow in all directions, closed the interstate and just generally wreaked havoc with a lot of New Year's Eve plans. But we had a lovely evening at a friend's house with good food and good company. Minus, unfortunately, the hosts, who were stranded in Denver overnight. They'll have great leftovers, though.

Today is a lovely day with snowdrifts glittering in the sun. The New Year's Day menu was served as planned and we looked forward to enjoying a slow afternoon. I have a quilt to bind and send off. The teacakes arrived in Afghanistan safely and have been consumed to the last crumb, from the reports, so another batch is on the horizon.

It was going to be the last truly slow day for a few months. My boss has taken a well-deserved retirement, after 31+ years of service as a professor and curator. Effective tomorrow, I will be the acting director of the museum until the position is filled. I did not see this one coming and am looking forward to this with some excitement but much more apprehension. I'll be posting on the perspective from the director's office periodically. We all hope that the search will go smoothly and that we'll get someone with the vision to make our museum a leader in the field.

Instead of resting up, I plunged in headfirst today when I got a call that a malfunctioning sprinkler head had flooded the building. Because we have the best colleagues, faculty, staff and students ever, we had a dozen people there in 20 minutes to move boxes and get archives and publications into dry boxes. It is a bit of a nightmare right now, and there will be a lot of drying and recovery to do, but the problem was caught early enough to be a nuisance rather than a disaster.

We are hoping that this gets our bad luck out of the way for the year. Had our security guy not come by today and noticed the problem, we would have had a massive disaster to deal with on Monday. As it is, we will get everything dried out and back in place over the next week.

I am thankful for the people I work with. Museum work does not make any of us billionaires, but it puts us in touch with the best, brightest, most dedicated people I have ever known in my life, believing so strongly that we are blessed to be able to preserve a vital legacy for the future. It is good to remind myself that that is the point of all of this work. Maybe I can do this.

Happy New Year to all.

Family recipe Monday: New Year

Seeking warmth...

There are rules--no, make that laws--about New Year's Day cooking, especially if your family tree is full of Southerners swarming all over its branches, like ours. The most iron-clad, fundamental one of all is that you have to have black-eyed peas on the menu in large quantities. This is supposed to bring good luck and prosperity in the coming year. I was surprised to find out just how deep-rooted this tradition is. Here's one account:

"The 'good luck' traditions of eating black-eyed peas at Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, are recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (compiled ~500 CE), Horayot 12A: "Abaye [d. 339 CE] said, now that you have established that good-luck symbols avail, you should make it a habit to see qara (bottle gourd), rubiya (black-eyed peas, Arabic lubiya), kartei (leeks), silka (either beets or spinach), and tamrei (dates) on your table on the New Year." However, the custom may have resulted from an early mistranslation of the Aramaic word rubiya (fenugreek)....This custom is followed by Sephardi and Israeli Jews to this day....In the United States, the first Sephardi Jews arrived in Georgia in the 1730s, and have lived there continuously since. The Jewish practice was apparently adopted by non-Jews around the time of the American Civil War."

I'm not so sure that it took that long. Black-eyed peas were themselves brought to the US from West Africa, and were very much present on the tables of African families. They were, however, considered a poverty food crop, suitable for the poor and for livestock only, until after the Civil War. They made it from West Africa to the West Indies by 1643 and made it to the continental US as the slave trade expanded. Black-eyed peas were, and are, a sturdy, dependable and nutritious food. They're the opposite of a luxury crop. Their place on the table expanded after the Civil War, when they were often all that was left in the Reconstruction South's fields. Today they are a Southern favorite across the board.

The tradition is to combine these with greens or cabbage (representing folding money) and cornbread (representing gold) to ensure maximum chances at luck and fortune. Southerners take this very seriously. Really, to do it right, you should eat 365 black-eyed peas to ensure that every day will be a success. Leave three peas on your plate for even better luck.

The problem arises with their taste and texture, which is a bit off-putting for some. Plain boiled black-eyed peas are earthy-tasting with a slightly gritty feel in the mouth, which I for one had trouble handling. Flavoring them with ham hocks did not help. I was happy to leave them all on my plate, but that was not an option. You'd think that would help with the luck thing. It was a source of consternation for all those Southern relatives, and it's a miracle I ever had any good luck or money at all, to hear them talk. Eventually I discovered the myriad recipes for Hoppin' John, and have never looked back. If you're up here on New Year's Day, this is what I'll be serving. Come on over.

Hoppin' John

West Indies rice and bean dishes and promptly spawned thousands of variations across the Caribbean, Central and South America, and eventually the United States and Mexico. If they have made it to Canada, all the better. It's easy to see why--these are solid, nutritious, tasty dishes that can be made in quantity very inexpensively. The name "Hoppin' John" has many explanations, the most likely being that it is an English mispronunciation of pois pigeons, or "pigeon peas," the name still used in the Caribbean for the many, many varieties of black-eyed peas. Leftover Hoppin' John served on January 2 is apparently called Skippin' Jenny, and is yet one more harbinger of good luck, representing your frugality. We will take all the luck we can get....

1 pound dried black-eyed peas (or two cans if you forgot to soak the dried ones)
5 T olive oil and/or butter (or enough to cover the bottom of a skillet, just)
1 lb. smoked sausage, sliced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1 can (10 to 14.5 ounces) Ro-Tel tomatoes
2 sweet onions, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno, minced
3 ribs celery, chopped
2 teaspoons Cajun or Creole seasoning (I am a Tony Chachere fan)
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt

This is best made the day before, so that the flavors have time to reach their peak. (You may not feel up to cooking on New Year's Day, either, so this can be a real plus.)

Soak the black-eyed peas for at least 4 hours in plain cold water, better yet overnight. Pick out the floaters and any other non-starters, drain  the water and replace it with fresh cold water just to cover. (I use a slow cooker for this.) In a skillet, heat the olive oil and butter, and saute the sausage, onion, garlic, peppers, and celery. Add the seasonings and continue to saute until the vegetables are cooked through but not limp. Transfer the vegetable mixture to the black-eyed peas. Check the cooker periodically to stir the mixture and adjust seasonings. The peas are done when you can see their skins start to peel back when you blow gently on a spoonful of them. Serve hot over cooked rice (or mix with cooked rice) with plenty of Tabasco (regular, green and/or chipotle, if you're not a purist) and Worcestershire sauce, cornbread and greens.

You can also use a Dutch oven or small lidded stockpot if you want this as a stovetop preparation. Keep the burner temperature low to medium, never high. I personally don't cook the black-eyed peas and rice in the same pot, but that is a popular approach. I just like serving the peas on top of the bed of rice. I've used long-grain white, brown, pecan, and wild rice in years past, all to great effect.

This recipe is great for additions and experimentations with ingredients, and can be doubled (or quadrupled) to feed a crowd. The one thing you cannot do on New Year's Day, unless you want to be swarmed by Southern ghosts, is to substitute any other bean variety for black-eyed peas. Not an option. You have the rest of the year for red and black beans.

I'm planning to use this cornbread recipe:

Texas Panhandle cornbread

1 cup blue or yellow cornmeal
1 T baking powder
1 ½ tsp salt
2/3 cup melted butter or bacon drippings
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
2 cups whole-kernel corn
¼ lb. grated cheese
1 4-oz can chopped green chiles
½ cup bacon bits (very, very optional)

Grease a 9” square pan or large cast iron skillet. Mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Blend the butter, eggs and sour cream with the dry ingredients. Fold in the corn kernels. Pour half of the batter into the pan or skillet. Cover with the cheese and chiles. Pour the remaining batter over the top and add the bacon bits. Bake in a preheated oven at 375* F for 30-40 minutes.

For the greens, I like to do a spinach salad, not having a ready source of fresh collard or turnip greens up here. Cabbage is also an option. I assume that it has to be green cabbage for green folding money, so red cabbage is out. This may annoy Gene's Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, but, really, y'all, we can make up for it starting January 3. This version omits the hard-cooked eggs and bacon. I would use the artichoke oil as part of the dressing, myself.

Spinach salad

Fresh spinach, washed, torn
Tomatoes
1 jar marinated artichoke hearts
Onions
Mushrooms
Garlic salt
Onion powder
Mix all ingredients. Toss with 2 T oil and 2 T vinegar. Toast sesame seeds and mix.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

There are no New Year's Day dessert laws that I know of, so you can go wild there. We made pecan pie for Christmas and may just do it again for New Year's Day.

Pecan pie (Tidewater, Virginia)

Make pastry for 1 9” pie and line pan. Beat together 3 eggs, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/3 tsp salt, 1/3 cup butter (melted), 1 cup dark syrup. Mix in 1 cup pecan halves. Pour into pan. Bake at 375o for 40-50 minutes.
--Dolly Shaffner Hess, Gene K. Hess

Serve with iced tea (sweet if you're Southern) and possibly mimosas if you're up to them after the New Year's Eve party. Here are tips from the Simple Gifts files, if you're unsure about iced tea. Any time you have the option, sweeten tea when it is hot and then allow it to cool.

Three ways of looking at iced tea

• Using loose tea or teabags and boiling water, bring 1 quart of freshly drawn cold water to a full rolling boil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and immediately add 1/3 cup of loose tea or 15 teabags. Stir, cover, and let stand 5 minutes. Stir again and strain into a pitcher holding another quart of cold water. Serve over ice. Yield 2 quarts.
• Using teabags and cold water, fill a clean quart pitcher or container with cold tap water. Add 8-10 teabags without tags. Cover and refrigerate at least 6 hours or overnight. Remove teabags, squeezing against side of container. Pour into ice-filled glasses. Recipe may be doubled.
• Using instant tea or iced tea mixes and cold water, follow directions on jar or envelope. In general, allow 2 rounded T of powder to each quart of cold water. Stir and add ice. If using flavored iced tea mix, use 2 small envelopes or ½ cup mix to each quart of cold water.

May the New Year be bright, bountiful, and just filled to overflowing with good luck for you and yours.