For the third year running, we hosted a dinner party with Eileen and Carlos to ring in the New Year.

I love ringing in the new year with a dinner party. We have great food (yes we have to make it ourselves, but it’s way better than we would get out somewhere), great company, and a fantastic view of the Inner Harbor fireworks to ring in the New Year.

This year we had some extra special food items. Tony recreated one of our favorites from the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, escargot on toasts. And Carlos made fantastic welcome cocktails–French 75s from this recipe. Both delicious. And dangerous!

Noel and Carlos played Executive Chefs in the kitchen all night. We were joking that they were trying to found the Noel Schively Restaurant Group…maybe not a terrible idea?

And most importantly, for dessert, Eileen and I decided to go cute over fancy, with a whole bunch of NYE Ball Drop cupcakes! Because nothing is more festive than a mini NYE ball dropping into a bed of beautiful buttercream!

I feel so blessed to spend another wonderful holiday with this group. A great way to celebrate the new year! I hope you had a wonderful start to 2012 and that you’ll keep following along with my adventures in 2012!

Mele Kalikimaka is the right way

To say Merry Christmas to you!

From our (tiki) family to yours, we hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

It’s official. Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. And my favorite time of the year is officially here!

This year we did two rounds of the holiday, one on Thursday with Noel’s family and one on Saturday with our family. So we got a bit of both worlds, some with others cooking for us, some with us being responsible for the big bird. We also had an extra special treat on Thanksgiving night–we sat three rows from the field in the endzone of the Ravens–49ers game!

Our split holiday strategy gave us the opportunity to see all of our family in one weekend–from our nieces and nephews to my sister’s inlaws to be!

I think since my main cooking responsibilities were all for the Saturday meal, the whole holiday was a lot more relaxed for me. I was able to make my contributions–pumpkin rolls and a pumpkin cheesecake on Friday morning before my run–and then Friday night Noel and I set the turkey up to brine and we cooked in up Saturday morning. It was definitely a lot easier than trying to get the whole meal together for Thursday midday!

And here I have to give a special shoutout to Noel, who officially made the BEST turkey I have ever had this year. A fresh turkey + brine + cooking breast side down was AMAZING! So juicy. Everyone was raving over it all day, and even the leftovers were juicy out of the fridge!

It was amazingly beautiful this weekend in Delaware, so we took the opportunity to go down to the beach after dinner and take a walk to look at the hundreds of snow geese that are laying over here on their way south for the winter.

Now it’s time to get ready for the December holidays. I feel like this has been a great Thanksgiving for me and that I truly have so much to be thankful for. I’ve really spent a lot contemplating the meaning of the holiday, and I wanted to tell you all, I’m thankful for all of you. This blog is such an outlet for me–thanks for reading!

From my kitchen to yours!

Thanks for following along on our journey here at 990 Square for the past year. I hope to see lots more of you all in 2011!

We’re not really big on resolutions around these parts, but I do have a couple of goals for the new year:

1. Keep baking and blogging! I feel like at times my blogging motivation has lacked in the last few months, but I want to pump it up in 2011!
2. Keep running strong! I’ve had some injury setbacks this fall, but I’m working through them and I’m going to keep on running, because I love it too much not too!
3. Enjoy every day!

Happy New Year everyone!

Ah, another holiday over. Makes me a little sad. I’m always one to get major post holiday blues.

This year the holiday seemed even more fantastic than usual. Probably because we got to see all of our family, and even a little snow!

We started out at home where Noel and I exchanged gifts. He got me something big. When I saw the box, I thought it was either a mixer, or a very tiny stove ;-)

It was a BEAUTIFUL new Viking mixer! Now I can be cool like the King Arthur ladies and use my Viking! Plus I think my KitchenAid needs to come out of heavy use–it’s been making a sad noise.

This was quite the baking holiday for me–I also got a full sized Zo breadmaker and 7 cookbooks!

Santa brought presents for the cats too…including a weight control ball for Ariadne. We’ll see if that works.

Christmas Eve we headed to Noel’s brother’s house, where Noel helped the kids track Santa via NORAD on his new iPad!

I love this picture. It’s one of the best I’ve ever taken of my nieces and nephew. They were too cute. Zooming on sugar, but super cute!

After Christmas morning (early early with three little ones) and a holiday lunch, we headed to Delaware to be with my family. The drive wasn’t bad, especially because we passed lots of Amish buggies (they are fascinating!) and drove through the Mushroom capital of the World, Kennett Square, PA. Finally we arrived at the shore, where we opened presents. Kori was happy with her new Disney Dooney bag!

Then another holiday dinner–where Kori and Larry made this amazing apple cranberry crisp. It wasn’t sweet, so it was a perfect side to ham. I have to get the recipe!

Ah prosecco….

Art had his friend make us a cake to celebrate our first Christmas at the beach house. Beautiful!

And Sunday morning, we woke up to this! You all know I’m a snow lover, but sadly, this wasn’t a good thing. Because of the snow, we had to back up and leave the beach way earlier than we wanted to. But it’s a good thing we did, because now they’re having a full fledge blizzard down there!

Another amazing holiday! Thanks to everyone who was a part of it!

Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house…

Pandora was playing Christmas music–it must be cookie baking time!

This year, thanks to our weekend in Florida, my annual cookiepalooza in preparation for the Ratskellar Christmas Party was seriously condensed. To one day. Yikes! Somehow I survived, and at the end of the day I had four types of cookies, candy, and some of the most amazing brownies ever (but you’ll have to wait until next week to hear about the brownies).

My favorite of this year’s cookies? Snickerdoodles–which are a cookie I always love, but never seem to find time to make in between satisfying everyone else’s annual cookie requests. But this year, I decided to make room for my favorite. Maybe because I’m still punishing training my body for the half marathon . Or maybe just because I wanted to!

Snickerdoodes
Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cookies

I like this recipe for snickerdoodles because unlike a lot of recipes, it doesn’t call for cream of tartar, which is something that I typically don’t have. Good thing, because I might need snickerdoodles more than just at Christmas time!

Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 cups (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350. Combine flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Put butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture.

Stir together cinnamon and remaining 2 tablespoons sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into 20 (1 3/4-inch) balls; roll in cinnamon sugar. Space 3 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment in airtight containers at room temperature up to 3 days.

Well another fantastic Thanksgiving has come and gone. This one was extra special, since it was our first one (and first holiday!) at the shore!

On Wednesday morning I packed up the turkey and seemingly half of my kitchen and headed to the shore. I had to make a not so brief stop off at the doctor for a running related issue, but eventually I made it to the beach!

I started cooking almost immediately, mostly because I knew I needed to get the star of our meal, a beautiful, free range 20 pound turkey into our brining solution as soon as possible. What a comedy of errors that was! First I foolishly cut the brining bag (don’t ask), then the bottom of the bag ripped out. After a frantic search at the grocery store, we ended up using this recipe and brining in a Hefty bag. Actually two Heftys.

This was one seriously fantastic turkey. Moist, golden, perfect. We barely had enough leftovers for the turkey pot pie I made later in the weekend!

But let me share credit where it’s due–everything at our potluck style meal for 18 was fantastic. We had a ton of food and everyone loved it all. Some of our old favorites–like dinner rolls and pumpkin cheesecake were there–but we also had some fantastic newbies, like a great apple sausage stuffing.

But the great food didn’t stop there! On Friday we did some black friday shopping tasting at Dogfish Head, where they were sampling dark beers to celebrate!

And then on Saturday, there was Christmas decorating! And turkey pot pie! Because nothing says bring on the next holiday like all time comfort food. I used this recipe to use up our leftover turkey–delicious!

And now, a word about the tree and Christmas decorating. In our family, we’re pretty serious about Christmas decorating. So after an exhaustive search, we settled on a 9 1/2 foot tree with 1,000 lights! It’s beautiful and fits the space great! But our decorations don’t stop with the tree…

And no, that’s not all of it!

Kori and I even decorated ourselves in matching pjs!

And finally, Sunday morning, because we weren’t ALL stuffed to the gills, I made applee cider doughnuts. Because who doesn’t love doughnuts?

All in all, a holiday weekend for the record books!

This is another fantastic recipe to add to your Thanksgiving Day this year.

Notice I didn’t say “Thanksgiving Dinner Table” because this bread is so good, and so versatile, you can basically have it any time on Thanksgiving. Breakfast–check. Snack–check. In a pinch, smeared with some peanut butter for lunch–double check. And it could definitely be an edition to the main meal or dessert table. The possibilities are endless! I even have dreams of turning this into french toast!

The secret to this delicious bread–no it’s not cat food (although Ariadne sure was confused!)–is King Arthur Flour’s Cinnamon Flavor Bites! You could also use cinnamon chips, or a lot of cinnamon, but the intense cinnamon flavor of this bread takes this hybrid of yeast and quick bread to a level of cinnamon bliss for cinnamon lovers like me. So if you’re the kind of person that likes a side of toast with your cinnamon sugar, this is a bread for you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m mid flip out about my Thanksgiving feast and the need for me to transport the makings of my feast for 15 from Baltimore to Delaware. Yikes! And I have to pack a holiday wardrobe and race gear. Double YIKES! So I’m cutting this post off. And leaving you with the bread!

Easy Cinnamon Bread
Adapted from King Arthur Flour

This bread was an instant favorite with Noel and me–we loved the way it was the marriage of a yeast and quick bread, with a side of coffee cake. We literally could not stop eating it. Deliciously easy. And so worth ordering flavor bites for!

Ingredients:
3 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup warm milk (we used skim)
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 large egg
1 cup cinnamon chips or flavor bites

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder. In another bowl, combine the milk butter and egg. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, then stir in the cinnamon chips. Let the batter rest, covered, at room temperature for one hour.

Stir the batter down, then spoon into a loaf pan.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven from 40-45 minutes until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove the bread from the oven and let it rest in the pan for 5 minutes, before turning it out and allowing it to cool completely on a rack. Slice once cool.

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