Holiday

Festive Cheese Rounds

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...

On the third day of Christmas, my kitchen gives to you…homemade marzipan! More specifically, homemade marzipan tinted with Christmas colors and molded into adorable Christmas-themed shapes. Did you know that in Italy, marzipan served over Christmas is painted with fruit coloring and shaped to look like miniature fruit? That’s actually how I remember eating marzipan as a kid — someone would usually gift us with a box of the stuff during the holidays, and I always thought they were too cute to eat. I considered making banana and peach-shaped marzipan this year, but I didn’t want to spend hours tinting candy to just the right colors to look like fruit. Besides, how cute is that little Santa? Even if I were a marzipan fiend,...

When I think of Christmas foods, a lot of things come to mind — sugar cookies, ham, egg nog, mulled cider, etc. But, one thing that really sticks out as being quintessentially Christmas-y is Panettone. When I was a kid, my parents would always buy a big loaf of Panettone a week or two before Christmas, set it up in the middle of the breakfast table, then for the rest of the week any time one of us passed through the kitchen we’d stop and cut off a sliver to snack on. Before we knew it there would only be a pile of crumbs left in the box, we would all be just a little sick of Panettone, and it would time to start...

A lot of food bloggers have started their days-before-Christmas count downs already, and the result has been an explosion of posts featuring all kinds of different Christmas cookies, egg nog, gingerbread houses, and the like. Talk about peer pressure! I had originally wanted to wait until exactly 12 days before Christmas to start my list, but quickly realized that if I did that, I would have to cook/blog every single day for almost 2 weeks. I love my blog, and I love my readers, but…that’s just not going to happen. So, I hereby declare that today is the first day of Christmas here at Just Putzing Around the Kitchen; and on this first day of Christmas, I give to you…super rich, super chocolate-y, so-good-it’ll-give-you-chills,...

OK, so I kind of missed the boat on cute pumpkin-themed treats for the months of October and November. I mean, I made pumpkin spice cake a few weeks back, but that was it. It’s not that I don’t like pumpkin — I was just too much in denial about the changing of the seasons. Looking back, it’s kind of a shame, because I missed out on all kinds of great pumpkin goodies. For example, these little fondant pumpkins would have been perfect for topping Halloween and Thanksgiving-themed desserts. Can you imagine biting into a pumpkin cupcake with a fat little edible fondant pumpkin perched on top of the frosting? Adorable. But, it would probably be kind of a waste because don’t think I could bring myself...

So, last week Dan and I flew up to Boston to spend Thanksgiving with his family. It was probably the most stressful trip of our lives, including the time we got robbed in Costa Rica. Why? So many reasons. But let me just say that missing a flight during holiday season is the worst thing ever. We missed our flight by seconds, got stranded in the airport for about 9 hours, and missed Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah. While most of you were feasting on turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, Dan and I were picking at greasy airport pizza and kung pao chicken. Sigh. I know we have a lot to be thankful for — each other, wonderful families, the cats, a roof over our heads...

You know what’s great about the week leading up to Thanksgiving? Nobody works. Most people take the whole week off to spend time with family, and the people who do stick around for work either take it easy or head home early. In my case, I’m home all the time anyway, but this week I get to have Dan home with me most of the day for company. It’s been a fun couple of days. Dan got to put in extra hours with a new video game he bought, I got someone to cuddle with on the couch (and help coach me through the new Zelda Wii game), and the cats got an extra pair of hands for belly rubbing. Everybody wins! Cuddling, gaming, and cat-rubbing can...

Aren’t these sausages the cutest things you’ve ever seen??? I see them packed into bentos all the time in the mangas I read, but I never thought they were actually possible to make. So, when I saw a step-by-step recipe for octopus sausages in my new favorite food-themed manga, I knew what my Halloween blog post would have to be. These Hallo-weenies (ha!) are not only super cute, but also ridiculously easy to make. All you have to do is slice the ends off of a couple hot dogs, make six slits in the bottom, and brown the suckers in hot oil. As they cook, the little “legs” naturally start to curl, and when you turn the sausages to brown all sides, the legs...

Second semester sophomore year, Ana’s Taqueria took over the space formerly occupied by a mediocre crepe shop inside the student center, and my life changed. Not in an altogether good way, mind you. On the one hand, I was over the moon because this place had the best Mexican food in Cambridge. On the other hand, I loved the food a little too much too often, and put on ten pounds that semester. Two grande burritos and/or quesidillas per day will do that, I guess. It took me the entire summer to run those pounds off, but looking back, it was totally worth it. The next year, I toned down my Ana’s consumption, but it was Dan’s turn, as a newly minted college man,...

Happy St. Patty’s Day, everyone! Are you wearing green? I’m not. I don’t really own anything green; it’s not a great color for me. Thank god no one at work is fanatical about the whole wear-green-on-St. Patty’s Day-or-get-pinched thing. That would have sucked! Elementary school bus rides really traumatized me on that front. Anyway, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to do for my St. Patty’s Day post. Something green? Something with Guiness or whiskey? Something super Irish? I did the first two last year, so I decided to go Irish this year. What do Irish people eat? Shepherd’s pie…corned beef…soda bread…potatoes! Gotta have potatoes. The Simply Recipes blog had a post on Colcannon earlier this week that looked pretty tasty, and...

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Holiday

Festive Cheese Rounds

DIY Marzipan

Panettone Muffins

Triple Delight Cookies

DIY Marshmallow Fondant Pumpkins

Sugared Cranberries

Candied Pecans

Octopus Sausages

Tacos al Pastor

Colcannon

Blogs I Love

Cool Sites