Minxeats Newsletter, December 2011

Welcome to the December Edition of the Minxeats Newsletter!

With Thanksgiving just over and Christmas and Hanukkah just around the corner, we're in the thick of the holiday madness. Have you started thinking about your holiday dinner yet? Baking cookies? Making edible gifts? We certainly have - we think about it all year long! But especially now.

Canned pumpkin+brown sugar+spices=pumpkin butter! It's ridiculously easy to make your own, and much less-expensive than buying a jar at the store. Makes a nice last-minute gift, too!

When I make a batch of sauce or bacon jam or something that I'm going to consume pretty quickly, I love to use these working glass jars from Crate and Barrel. They're cheap, attractive, and can be pressed into duty as a drinking glass as well.

One thing that we always do in December is bake COOKIES. Classic Toll House cookies and snickerdoodles are mandatory, and sometimes we bake a few other varieties as well. Two that are on the short list for this year are these super chocolatey (but super ugly) cookies, and maybe some of these unusual oatmeal cookies, too.

For Christmas last year, my friend Leslie gave me a huge jar full of cookies that she had baked with her sister. These were my favorites, and I hope to bake up a batch of these myself this season.

White Chocolate Cherry Cookies

* 1 1/2 cups flour
* 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup softened butter
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 large egg
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 2/3 cup white chocolate chips
* 2/3 cup coarsely chopped dried cherries

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Mix the flour, baking soda and salt together. Cream the butter and the sugar together until fluffy. Beat the egg and vanilla into the butter mix. Add the dry mix to the wet mix. Add the chips and cherries.

Drop teaspoonfuls or 1 inch balls of dough onto parchment covered baking sheets, leaving room for spread. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.

If you're not in the mood for sweet stuff, do try this delicious Moroccan-inspired savory dish of merguez sausage, tomatoes, and poached eggs.

This month, I fell in love with a new food truck, Cazbar on the Go, ate Chinese food somewhere other than Grace Garden, and celebrated my birthday with Lebanese food and still more non-GG Chinese! We celebrated my birthday proper at Lebanese Taverna where we ate some delicious shakshouky (a roasted eggplant salad) and other Lebanese goodies. The following day, we feasted with MinxBro and Dad at Hunan Taste. The "beef on toothpicks" was exactly that - strips of fried beef seasoned with cumin and three kinds of chiles, poked with toothpicks. Everything there was delicious, and I vow not to let another two years pass before we hit the place up again for dinner!

Our sister blog, All Top Chef, has all of the news and updates on the world of Top Chef, and Minxeats is recapping the episodes each week. If you missed them, here are the links to the first couple of episodes:

That's all for this month - thanks for reading! If you have any questions or suggestions for the newsletter or the blog, we'd love to hear from you! Just give us a holler at theminx@minxeats.com. And if you enjoyed this newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up, too! :)