When I was growing up in the midwest, our Italian neighbors always brought over a tin of pizzelles during the holidays.  To me, those thin buttery crisp waffle cookies symbolize holiday hospitality.

When I moved out of my parent’s house, my mom bought me my own pizzelle iron and every Christmas I carry on the Italian tradition of bringing pizzelles to my friends and neighbors.

Here’s what you will need:

A pizzelle iron – mine is a 25-year-old Rival combo waffle/pizzelle iron.

6 eggs

1 1/2 cups of sugar

1 1/2 cups of melted butter

1 1/2 cups of flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

4 teaspoons of anise extract.  I like to substitute Frangelica which is a hazlenut liquor but Grand Marnier works well too.

2 teaspoons of vanilla

powdered sugar to sprinkle on top of finished cookie

*  *  *  *

Whip the eggs and then add in the rest of the ingredients in the order listed.  The batter will be thick but still flow from a spoon.

Place a generous tablespoon or so of batter in the center of the hot iron, or two dollops of batter if you have a two-top like I do.  Close the lid and allow to cook until it stops steaming, about 45 seconds. This is a terribly blurry picture, but you get the idea.

This is what they look like when they are done, lightly golden brown.  Remove the very hot pizzelles with a fork and lay on a rack to cool. At this point they will be very maleable and you can shape them into a cylinder or a bowl or cone, but you will have to work quickly.

If you want to shape them into a bowl to serve ice cream in later — and might I recommend Blue Bell Pecan Pralines — quickly press them into a ramekin while still warm.

Or you can just place them on a rack to cool and sprinkle them with powdered sugar.  Aren’t they pretty?

I like to serve them after dinner with coffee or tea.  They are very light and not too sweet – the perfect ending to a heavy meal.

And this is how fast they come running when the pizzelles are done.

This recipe makes 40 or more pizzelles minus the 10 or 15 you won’t be able to stop yourself from eating.

So mom, do you know what you’re getting for Christmas?

I’m getting something for Christmas!? Wow, I’m so excited!

Do you know what it is?

No, I have no idea.

Guess.

I don’t want to guess.

Just guess.

Okay……. I have no idea.

Want me to give you a hint?

No, I think I’d like to be surprised.

Okay I’ll give you just one hint.

No really I think I’d like to be surprised.

Okay, it’s something that you wear.

Something that you wear.  Hmmm…. Deodorant?

Mom.

Earrings?

No.

Um, I have no idea.

Okay, here’s another hint.

I don’t want another hint, I want to be surprised.

You wear it in the morning.

It starts with R.

And it also has an O and a B in it.

R. O. B.  I’m getting a Rob! Awesome! I hope he’s cute and can run errands for me.

I love winter produce and I love Mexican food and when you put them together you get Winter Squash Enchiladas. As we all know, a healthy diet includes lots of colorful foods and this is a great way to get some orange and yellow in your diet.

Also, they are a great make ahead meal that will get you out of the kitchen and enjoying family and friends.  This recipe makes about 22 enchilads.

Here’s what you will need:

1 butternut squash

1 acorn squash

1 poblano pepper

1 small sweet onion, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

3-4 T of chopped cilantro (I usually use more because I love cilantro)

1 cup or more corn (fresh, frozen or canned)

1 – 2T sugar

cumin, chili powder, garlic, liquid smoke, salt and pepper to taste

About 3 cups of grated cheese – Monterrey Jack is best but Cheddar or any combination thereof will do.

1 or 2 cans of green enchilada sauce depending on how much you use.  You can make your own tomatilla sauce if you want to be all Martha-y, and I used to do that, but now I have a six-year-old so most of the time I just use Old El Paso mild green chili enchilada sauce which you can find at nearly any grocery store.  The traditional red enchilada sauce doesn’t work well with the mild sweet taste of the squash.

12-15 Corn Tortillas

Sour Cream Sauce – sour cream, chicken broth, green chilis, spices

* * *

So then… start with two lovely sqaush like you see here, acorn in the back, butternut inthe front. Aren’t they purdy?

First, bake the squash.  Cut the squash in half lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds. A grapefruit spoon works great for this task.

Place the squash cut side down on a foil lined cookie sheet and bake at 350 until tender, at least an hour, probably and hour and a half.  When they are done, the skin will be soft enough to dent with your finger and your kitchen will smell awesomely good.

Are they done yet?

The squash meat should be soft and will have a natural amber caramel glaze.  Set aside and let cool completely.

Prepare a poblano pepper.  You can either do this on an open flame on top of the stove, on the grill or in the oven.  I like the oven because it is the least amount of trouble.

Wash and dry your pepper and then place it on a foil lined sheet in a hot oven, about 425.  As the skin begins to char and blister, turn with tongs to allow it to roast evenly. When all sides are charred and blistered, remove from the oven and put in a zip lock bag to steam.  After it cools, remove the outer charred skin, seeds and top and then dice the remaining pepper meat.

If you don’t want to mess with poblanos, a can of green chillis works too, but you can’t beat the flavor of a poblano pepper.

Onion and Pepper Mixture.  Next, dice a small sweet onion and a red bell pepper.  (I didn’t have a red pepper,  so I used a yellow one.)  Cook on medium high heat in 2-3T of olive oil until tender.  Add garlic (I use garlic powder if I don’t have fresh which is often), salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder and 1 teaspoon of liquid smoke, all to suit your taste.  I realize that liquid smoke is probably a real blue collar ingredient, but I love the little bit of smokey taste it gives food without the trouble of grilling and I use it all the time.

When all of that is brown, toss in your corn and add 1 tablespoon of sugar and continue cooking until sugar is melted.

Assemble and Bake. By this time your squash should be cooled.  Scoop out innards into a large mixing bowl.  Add the cooked onion/bell pepper mixture and diced poblanos and about 1 cup of grated cheese and mix well.

Next, pour just enough green enchilada sauce on the bottom of a large glass baking dish to keep the enchiladas from sticking while baking.

Microwave a stack of corn tortillas in a covered container for 30 seconds or until soft.  Some people lightly fry the tortillas before filling, but I think the microwave gets the job done with a lot less mess.

Place about 2 tablespoons of the squash mixture in the center of the warmed tortilla, roll it up and place seam side down in pan. Repeat until pan is filled. Top with a cup or so of green enchilada sauce and then sprinkle cheese on top.  You want to put just enough enchilada sauce on top to keep them from drying out. Too much and they will get a little soggy.  Although they will still taste good.

Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until bubbly and top begins to brown.

You can make these a day ahead.  Take them out of the fridge and bring to room temperature before baking.

Sour Cream Sauce. Now, when I made these the other day, I thought they needed a little sour cream sauce on top. A quick and easy way to do that is to take about a cup or so of sour cream and put it in a small sauce pan on the stove on low heat. Add some chicken broth to thin and then add some cumin, chili powder, garlic and green chilis or poblanos if you have some left over. Cook on low heat and stir until you get the consistency you want.  Drizzle over the top of the enchiladas just before serving.

Here’s the final product which doesn’t look all that yummy (there is an art to food photography which I haven’t had time to perfect) but trust me, they taste much better than they look.

Salud!

Why is the sheriff so sad?

He is sad because he lost his badge and how can you be a sheriff without a badge? You can’t. If you have a gun but no badge, you are not a sheriff, you are a cowboy.  The power is in the badge, not the gun.

While assisting an elderly gentleman in bringing down boxes of Christmas ornaments from the attic, this young sheriff, unable to stay on task, spied a Christmas ornament in the shape of a star. He claimed the star for his sheriff’s badge and put it in his shirt pocket.

Unfortunately the laws of physics were not on his side and when he bent over to investigate yet another shiny object that would take him off task, the ornament badge tumbled out of his pocket and deep down into fluffy piles of blown insulation never to be seen again. It disappeared so quickly and so completely that it was almost like it had slipped into another universe.

The brave sheriff did what any brave sheriff would do.  He cried.

But the elderly gentleman was crusty and offered no assistance or sympathy and probably said something like, “Sorry dude.  That’s a hard lesson.”

So the brave sheriff took his sorrow to a higher power. His mother.

He found her sitting at her desk in the kitchen.  When she looked up she saw big sad blue eyes looking back at her.  The sheriff twisted his face in a valiant effort to hold back the floodgate of tears.  The sheriff’s mother tried not to laugh and at the same time, the sight of the little broken hearted sheriff made her want to cry.

Through snotty slurpy tears and incoherent and incomplete sentences, the sheriff’s mother was finally able to piece together that he had lost his badge in the insulation and that the elderly gentlemen refused to help.

So the sheriff and his mother returned to the attic to find the badge.  His mother slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, got down on her hands and knees and dug through the insulation for 30 minutes all while the sheriff leaned over her and asked about 231 times, “Have you found it yet? Have you found it? Do you think you can find it?”

But the badge was not to be found.

The sheriff mom’s reported the bad news with great sympathy.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s okay. I think I have another badge in my toy box.”

Today we are making crystallized ginger, also called candied ginger.

About 10 years ago I found some crystallized ginger while grocery shopping around the holidays. I bought a small container of it but never really knew what to do with it until one day the spirit led me to plop a few pieces into a cup of hot tea. Okay, it wasn’t really the spirit, I just like to put sweet stuff in my hot tea like peppermints and orange or grapefruit slices and other odd things. But. I loved it.  It added just a little nip of flavor and sweetness and made my cup of tea special.

But by St. Patricks Day, the little box of candied ginger was gone, and lo, there was none to be found throughout the entire kingdom, at least in my kingdom’s grocery store, and there was great sadness.  And hot tea was just not the same.

So the next year around holiday time, the kingdom’s grocers once again put out candied ginger and I bought about 12 containers. But these too did not last the entire year. And again there was great sadness.  Many years passed and there was no candied ginger to be found and I so I tried to go on with my life.

Then one day while in the grocery store I gazed upon a bin of raw ginger and it occured to me that I could probably make it myself.

For this recipe you will need some fresh ginger root, sugar and water.

So then, buy yourself several hands of ginger.  Look for big flat pieces because you are going to have to peel these things and that will be a bit of  pain.

This is how much raw ginger the above three hands yielded.  I don’t know why I call them hands of ginger. Probably because they look like hands or maybe I heard someone call them hands.

Chop into small chunks or strips, whichever you like.

Cover with water and then boil, boil and boil some more.  Boil until they are tender, probably about 45 minutes.

Now for some reason, at this point I put the camera down. Oh, now I know. Because I was going to have to stir boiling sugar.

After the ginger is tender, drain and return it to the pan.

Among candied ginger recipes, there is a lot of variation in the sugar to water ratio.   Some recipes tell you to weigh the ginger and then measure out an equal amount of sugar and then 3 or 4 tablespoons of water.  I don’t have a scale so I just guess on the sugar and add about 1/2 as muchwater.  Other recipes call for a 1 to 1 ratio of sugar to water.   Roughly, you want enough sugar to cover the ginger when it is in the pan.  I have found that in this recipe it isn’t necessary to be absolutely precise.

If you want a chunky crystallized ginger, add more sugar and less water.  If you want more of a glazed ginger, get the sugar to water ratio closer to 1 to 1.

I like my candied ginger chunky, so I used about 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water.  I am no Alton Brown. In my world, cooking is more art than science.

Cook it all on low heat until the sugar is dissolved and then bring to a boil for about one minute, stirring constantly. Then reduce to a simmering boil until most of the liquid is absorbed, stirring frequently. This will take at least 30 minutes, depending upon how much you are making.

Remove the ginger with a slotted spoon and place on wax paper to dry.  When cool, toss with additional sugar if desired.

Bonus:  I poured the left over ginger infused syrup over some Texas Ruby Red grapefruit sections (which are so yummy and in season right now!) And it was a delicious treat.  Also, did you know that ginger is often used to soothe an upset tummy?

Above is the full yield.

Candied ginger in a festive container makes a nice hostess gift.  Or if you have tea lover on your list, add a pretty tea cup and an assortment of teas for a gift that says “Hey! I know you like tea!”

Crystallized (or candied) ginger keeps for six months (or more) in the fridge.

It’s going to be photos and recipes this week because it’s that crazy busy time of year.  Hall decking leaves little time for my ministry of writing mediocre drivel for the world wide web.

Tomorrow or the next day, because I like to be precise — and because I like you! — I’m going to show you how to make crystallized ginger which is lovely in a cup of hot tea.  It’s a bit of trouble to make but keeps well and I think it’s worth it.

But today it’s about the pickles…

This is a recipe that I got from my father-in-law George who has so many recipes in the church cookbook that they finally had to set a limit.  These pickles are super easy to make, keep well and make a nice little hostess gift for pickle lovers.  They are also great in tuna salad or in potato salad or just on the side.  Even people who don’t really like pickles usually like these.

You will need three ingredients — pickles, sugar and Tabasco.

Take a regular old jar of pickles, any old kind will do. Drain off all the liquid.

Chop them into thick slices and return them to the jar.

Fill up the jar with sugar. It will seem like a crazy amount of sugar, but trust me on this.  This was a 46 oz. jar and I used at least three cups of sugar.  Add about 1/4 bottle of Tabasco for a 46 oz. jar of pickles — more if you like the taste of fire, less if you don’t.   In about an hour or so, all of the sugar will dissolve.

Set the pickles aside for one week.  I turn my jar from time to time throughout the week to distribute the sugar and Tobasco. George says you don’t have to, but it gives me something to do.

I know they sound kind of awful and at first they even look kind of awful, but in one week and you will have a jar of delightful firey-sweet crunchy pickles.