Monthly Archives: December 2011

Best of 2011

2011 was a pretty exciting year for us here at Just Putzing Around the Kitchen. Dan and I finally furnished our new condo, got a second cat, settled into our first post-school grown up jobs, and went on our first international vacation together. Then my year-long clerkship ended, and I found myself bored and unemployed for a few months…that, of course, led to an explosion of cooking and blogging. Now, Dan and I are engaged, I’ve just landed the perfect job, and the cats are fat and happy. All in all a pretty good year. And, what better way to toast the end of a great year than to look back at some of the tastiest treats that came out of it? Here are some...

Hi guys! Hope everyone had a fun and food-filled Christmas. Mine was pretty awesome. Dan and I went up to Massachusetts to spend the holidays with his family and between the two back-to-back holiday parties, the generalized excitement over our engagement, the many many bottles of wine, the mountains of presents, and the groaning tables loaded down with delicious food, it was pretty much impossible not to have a fantastic time. Speaking of groaning tables…Dan’s family really knows how to cook! I’ve enjoyed his mom’s cooking many times before, but never on such a grand scale. We ate so well — honey BBQ wings, stuffed mushrooms, racks of lamb, baked halibut, broccoli & cheese, green beans, perfectly cooked prime rib, roasted potatoes, Christmas cookies, truffles,...

I think I am one of the few people in America who doesn’t like popcorn. But honestly, no matter how much butter and salt you put on the stuff, it still tastes like styrofoam. Styrofoam that gets stuck in your teeth and turns your mouth into a salt lick. Yuck. I’ll tell you what I can’t get enough of though — caramel corn. Caramel makes everything taste good, and it transforms boring, styrofoam-y popcorn into sweet, crunchy kernels of awesomeness that no one can resist. I dare you to try eating just a few pieces — betcha can’t do it! Caramel corn is seriously addicting. I’m making a huge batch for my parents’ Christmas party this year, and I have a feeling the guests...

On the 10th day of Christmas, I ran out of eggs. I had planned to make gingerbread whoopie pies and/or egg nog cupcakes, but the no-egg situation proved devastating to my plans. Luckily a quick Google search revealed a number of fun egg-free dessert ideas, including a few eggless mug cakes. So, I quickly scrapped my original plans, cobbled together a few different recipes, and came up with something delicious, easy, and totally egg-free: Gingerbread Mug Cake. It’s kind of mind-blowing, but from start to finish this cake took only 5 minutes to cook, and all I needed was a mug, some basic ingredients, and a microwave. And before you say that nothing delicious can possibly be produced with such ease, let me assure...

On the 9th day of Christmas…our friends Amy and Brad invited us over for a holiday/cookie-decorating party. They throw the best parties with the most delicious and deceptively lethal cocktails, so there was no way that Dan and I were going to miss out on this one! Plus, they asked me to make the cookies for decorating, so…just call me Tina the Cookie Elf. I was originally supposed to make sugar cookies and gingerbread men for the party, but between truffle-making and oil-infusing, I didn’t have time to start baking until Saturday morning. And, the problem with both sugar cookies and gingerbread men is that you’ve got to chill the dough and then roll it out over and over again so that you can individually...

I’m really excited about Christmas this year. We’re going up to see Dan’s family again, which is always fun, but even more exciting — the cousins are doing a Kris Kringle gift swap! The only other time I’ve been part of a gift swap/Secret Santa exchange was freshman year of college, and I remember it being a lot of fun. There’s something really exhilarating about sneaking around behind someone’s back, gathering data and trying to figure out what they want for Christmas… The only problem with being Secret Santa for Dan’s cousins is that I don’t know all of them that well. Over the years I’ve tended to have more interactions with some than others – nothing personal, just a timing/geography thing. And, wouldn’t you know...

When I was a kid, the holidays were all about “receiving” — gifts from my parents, gifts from my relatives, gifts from Santa…Nothing made me happier than seeing the stack of presents under our Christmas tree get bigger with each wave of guests that came by. Ah, childhood…Luckily, as I’ve gotten older and started having money of my own to buy stuff, I’ve discovered the joys of giving. Because I love shopping, I’m usually a big fan of store-bought gifts. But lately I’ve started to warm up to the idea of homemade presents. They’re a great cost-saving measure for anyone who’s in a tight spot financially, they’re thoughtful and personal, and they’re usually at least partially re-usable and eco-friendly. I’m not craftsy enough to...

For this month’s Improv Cooking Challenge, the two key ingredients are egg nog and cranberries. I was planning to make egg nog cupcakes with a cranberry-based buttercream, but…I ran out of sugar. I know. A good food blogger never runs out of staples like sugar/butter/flour, but somehow it happened. And it was tragic. But, while I didn’t have sugar, I did have eggs, milk, cream, spices, rum, and a whole lot of cranberries. So I decided to just throw creativity to the wind and just make good ol’ fashioned, rummy egg nog. To stay within the guidelines of the challenge, I infused my rum with cranberries, blended the rum-soaked berries into a boozy puree, and added both to my ‘nog. It was delicious. The first...

I know hot chocolate is a staple around Christmas, but…I’m just not that big a fan of hot beverages. I feel like liquids should always be refreshing and thirst-quenching, but hot drinks just aren’t like that (incidentally, I also don’t like soup). Every time I drink hot cider or cocoa or tea, my mouth ends up feeling like a gumball that’s been left out in the sun for a couple hours. Don’t get me wrong, I think the drinks are super delicious, but there’s nothing worse than sticky dry mouth. So, you can imagine my excitement when I discovered frozen versions of popular hot drinks. My first sip of frozen hot chocolate was life changing; the second sip was earth shattering; the third sip...

The holidays are all about spending time with friends and family, and that means that means one thing — tons of dinner parties with guests galore. And, of course, feasting. My parents always throw two parties this time of year; one on Christmas Eve, another on Christmas itself. Each day, they get up at 7am to start cooking, the guests start trickling in around 4ish, and in no time at all the dining table is loaded down with 20+ delicious dishes, and our house is packed to the gills with people (adults karaoke-ing on the first floor, screaming kids in the basement, and teenagers holed away upstairs). It’s an exhausting but amazingly fun time. But you know, the problem with dinner parties is that...

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Monthly Archives: December 2011

Best of 2011

Kahlua Cake Trifles

Caramel Corn

Gingerbread Mug Cake (Egg-less)

Christmas Sugar Cookies

DIY Infused Olive Oils

Oreo Truffles

Cranberry Egg Nog

Frozen Hot Chocolate

Festive Cheese Rounds

Blogs I Love

Cool Sites