One of the many benefits of raising chickens is knowing the eggs you collect are not only fresh, but are handled carefully and kept clean, so the risk of Salmonella and E Coli are lessened compared to cooking with store bought eggs.  I try to incorporate our fresh eggs into our weekly menu as often as possible and also into our holiday menus.

 Eggnog is a holiday tradition at our house. Our fresh eggs, along with some scraped vanilla bean and freshly ground nutmeg, make my eggnog truly a guilty pleasure guaranteed to deliver plenty of holiday cheer.

Adapted from a combination of Martha Stewart's Classic Eggnog recipe and Emeril's Eggnog recipe, I think you will agree that my eggnog is worthy to be served all through the holiday season to special friends and family.

My recipe does contain alcohol, but please feel free to just omit the liquor if you want to make a family-friendly version.

Holiday Eggnog
(makes approximately 3 quarts)

~Ingredients~8 fresh eggs, plus 4 additional eggs separated
1-3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream, plus 1/2 cup
6 cups whole milk
Vanilla bean
1 Tablespoon vanilla bean paste
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, plus more for garnish
1/2 cup bourbon
1/4 cup sherry
1/4 cup brandy

~Method~Whisk the 8 eggs plus 4 additional yolks with the sugar in a medium bowl until pale yellow and thick. Heat the 2 cups heavy cream, milk and scraped vanilla bean in a large saucepan over medium-low heat, whisking until hot. Add about a cup of the milk mixture into the whisked egg and whisk to blend, then pour the egg/milk mixture into the hot milk in the saucepan and continue to cook, whisking, for about 3-5 minutes, or until thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl and allow to cool.

Add the vanilla bean paste, nutmeg and liquors to the eggnog and stir well. In a small bowl, beat the 4 egg whites until soft peaks form and then gently fold into the eggnog. In a clean chilled bowl, beat the remaining 1/2 cup heavy cream to soft peaks and fold it into the eggnog. Refrigerate until chilled, then garnish with additional fresh grated nutmeg and serve. 

 

Happy Holidays!

Easter is here, and we are all awaiting the annual visit from the Easter Bunny! This year will be so much fun now that our littlest one, Tyler, will be able to join in all the fun. He may not understand the entire concept of the whole day, but he will have fun along with his sisters and brother.

Every year we have our Egg Hunt, and then we all sit down to a big breakfast. I try to make our holiday meals special, I will include things I wouldn't normally make throughout the year. These are the times when everything that graces our table is homemade and from scratch, right down to the butter! I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I see my family enjoying a meal that I have put my heart and soul into.

That is not to say that I do not cook any other time. I try to make a full meal every night, but on occasion when time is tight, we will get take-out or have "breakfast" for dinner. I love to cook and especially bake. That is the reason we decided to start our small baking business. I wish I had more time to devote to these simple pleasures and hopefully in the near future I will. Those sentiments are the reason I take my time and enjoy the meals I make for the holidays, because that is the way I want to cook for each and every meal, so I savor those times that I am able to do it.

We have simple traditions that we take great pride in. Family is our number one tradition; holidays are not the same unless they are spent together. We read holiday appropriate stories before bedtime, sing songs that go along with the holiday theme, watch the specials on TV, and do all the holiday activities, but it all comes down to family. So on Sunday when we all sit down together to eat our Easter meal of glazed baked ham, mashed potatoes with garlic butter, maple glazed carrots, roasted asparagus, herb buttered corn and warm rolls, we savor each bite of not only the food but of the company that surrounds us. We carry on our traditions as we sit down together and quietly wish that this happened more often and not only for a Holiday. Happy Easter and Happy Every Day!

After reading that most people fail to keep their New Year’s Resolutions (the statistics report that 55-60 percent of people abandon their resolutions), I was ready to give up, but then I heard an NPR report that brought joy back to my list-making heart.

Turns out you’re 10 times more likely to follow through with a resolution than someone who doesn’t have one. Think about the percentage who are successful. In his NPR interview, John Norcross talks about a study where people with similar goals were compared. Of those with resolutions, 40-46 percent were successful at 6 months. The chance of similar success for those without resolutions was 0-4 percent (not-so-great odds).

If, like me, these numbers have inspired you to think about making some "new deals" for the new year, the top ten New Year’s Resolutions on About.com: Pittsburgh might add fuel to the fire. Then check out this eHow article on wording your resolutions in a way that makes them more likely to stick.

The University of Maryland Medical Center gets a couple more psychiatrists to offer tips on healthy resolutions and preparing for success (Dr. Norcross says believing a change is possible makes success much more likely).

And Gretchen Rubin, in the midst of some very good advice on changing habits, wins me over by quoting Voltaire.

Over at the Nemec household, we had a very ABBA Christmas (my parents saw Mama Mia on Broadway and are in love with the movie – my brother and sister-in-law, not so much). So, here's some music to get resolute to:

(Thanks Lime & Violet.)

I’ll post my list soon; in the meantime, take the next step and get some accountability by sharing your change of habit in a comment.

Image by Sally M, licensed under Creative Commons.

OK, OK. This does qualify as one of my goofiest gifts ever, but … I have to admit I’m enjoying it immensely.

When I visited with my cousin in San Francisco last week, she mentioned that she was sitting in front of a roaring fire, relaxing. I thought this was odd because I didn’t remember her small house in the hills there in the Bay Area having a fireplace.

We visited a few more minutes and she said, “Just a minute, let me turn the fireplace down.”

“The damper,” you mean.

“No,” she said. “I have a remote. It’s a virtual fireplace.”

I thought she was kidding, but the more she explained her fireplace DVD to me, the cooler it started sounding. For the first time in many years, I don’t have a fireplace or a woodstove in my home. And now that the weather has been in the single digits, I really miss the warmth, glow and crackle.

As it turns out, now that Cousin Janet has sent my very own Digital Fireplace DVD, I can have the glow and crackle by pressing a button. The warmth, I’ll have to imagine. But the heck of it is, I honestly believe having the faux-fireplace crackling away in the background does make it seem warmer.

There is also a little ambient noise – dogs barking in the distance, I think, and maybe kids playing – that some online reviewers objected to, but that I find just add to the coziness.

I imagine this isn’t the very best thing I could be doing for the environment – it does use some electricity, after all. But … no smoke, no ash. That counts for something, doesn’t it?

In today's difficult economy, the big advice is "trim your gift list," "give homemade gifts." I've been doing that for years. The odd Christmas is the one where some fortunate few on my list get fancy storebought doodads. So for me the challenge is how to put a new twist on the same old stuff. That stuff being my homemade soaps and lotions. Okay, so maybe you don't want to do the soapmaking thing, but stay with me, because it's the twists that might give you some ideas. One of the things I do with all the milk from my cow, goats and sheep is make milk soaps. I also make lotion bars, lip balms and candles. This started for economic reasons, as well as a desire to eliminate unnecessary chemicals from my body and, of course, to "live off the land" (chuckle). There are also a number of small children in my extended family, with whom soap gifts do not make a big impression. 

In past years I have frequently traded with other crafters at craft shows for handmade toys, clothes and other items I thought my dear ones would enjoy. This past year the gas loving pickup was not taken out any more than necessary, so this was not possible. Think, think, think, what to do for the little guys. I also make various sizes and shapes of bags filled with dry rice, that go in the microwave for a few minutes and can be used as a heating pad, or can go in the freezer to be used as an ice pack. They also make interesting toys. Think bean bags. So some of the little ones will be getting teddy bear or flower boo-boo bags. Dollar store mugs will be stuffed with candies and homemade hot chocolate mix, with mini marshmallows and a cinnamon stick. For the adults, they will be stuffed with homemade vanilla mocha latte mix and a cinnamon stick. A friend sent me a recipe for "dangerous chocolate cake," dangerous because it is mixed in a mug and microwaved for 5 minutes, meaning you're only 5 minutes away from evil calories any time of day or night. Some of these will go out to a chosen few.

My five year old has worked his way up from 25 piece jigsaw puzzles to 100-300 pieces. The dollar store had an abundant variety of these and so I thought, "Why not?" You're welcome, parents who will be inundated with all these tiny puzzle parts. But why not revive an old tradition – board games and jigsaw puzzles instead of TV and videos? Okay, so that part isn't homemade, but it's not expensive either.

A few other gifts in the works are photo books and specialty bath items. 10-25 picture photo books are available at the dollar store, and I have stacks of digital photos on CD. I prepay for photos to get them for less than 10 cents apiece and am assembling several of these for loved ones. Some may have captions, and some not. But I know the recipients will have fond memories when they pick them up and enjoy them. I make little cloth bags with ribbon ties for soap ends and lotion bar packaging. Some of these will be filled with milk bath, baking soda bath, and sugar face and body scrub (in sandwich bags). I may break down and do a few larger versions of these bags to hold all those jigsaw puzzle pieces...

To give all the recipes for the mixes I mentioned would take up too much space, but they can be easily googled. To give just a few: milk bath is just dry milk, baking soda is plain old baking soda. You can mix in some essential oils really well into the dry powder to make them smelly, or just leave them plain. The sugar scrub I would leave plain, and it's just plain sugar. You can also use brown sugar instead. As for the Vanilla Mocha Latte: 1 c. good instant coffee, 1 c. dry milk, 1 c. sugar (if desired), 1/2 c. cocoa, 2 T. vanilla flavor. Mix dry ingredients well. Add vanilla last and mix quickly so it doesn't clump all in one spot. Put 1/2-1 c. mix in a sandwich bag and close with a twist tie, attach a cinnamon stick and instructions: "Add 1-2 T. to 6 oz. boiling water, stir with cinnamon stick." Put in a dollar store mug, or an attractive box, basket or bag.

The good thing about most of these gifts is they don't even need additional wrapping. If you do want to wrap, a plain brown bag or the comic page of the newspaper tied with raffia makes an inexpensive and country style gift wrap. They also don't take any more time than what I would spend driving around and fighting the crowds at the stores. I can make them in the peace (or chaos) of my own home, on my own time, mostly with stuff I always have on hand. Happy gifting.

This year, for the first time in recent memory, I have been tasked with bringing something to Thanksgiving dinner. When I announced this in our staff meeting last week, everyone was quite impressed, until I told them I was making the two JELL-O/Cool Whip–related salads that we always have at a Nemec family holiday dinner.

One year we only had one of the two, and my little brother (not so little anymore) just couldn't handle it. So, these two must be there. The names are what we call them, and I'll have to check with Mom to find out from whence they came. (I'm pretty sure I remember the first time we had the apricot one, but the cherry seems to have always been a staple.)

The first we call "Apricot Salad," which is a bit of a misnomer, because it's not very "salad-y." It's made with only 3 ingredients: apricot JELL-O (1 package), apricot nectar (2 cups – I found this in the juice aisle at a local grocery store), and cream cheese (1 brick, 8 oz., softened).

The nectar takes the place of water in the directions on the JELL-O package. First heat one cup of the nectar and then dissolve the JELL-O in it.  Place the softened cream cheese in a medium-sized bowl, and then with a whisk (or an egg beater), slowly add the nectar mixture to the cream cheese. Then add the additional cup of nectar in a similar manner. (If you find it too sweet, you can switch out some of the nectar for water.)

This salad turns out differently depending on how earnestly you wisk/stir the creamcheese into the JELL-O. If you're a bit lackadaisical, you end up with slightly creamy JELL-O with a cottage-cheese-looking topping. If you are more serious about getting the lumps out, the whole thing turns into creamy goodness – though don't go too far, or you'll end up with foam on top. All of these versions taste great, and I'm pretty sure my brother prefers the cottage-cheese-y version.

The second salad (which my brother's been making lately) is the "Pink Fluff." This one is even easier, because you don't have to heat anything up. In this one you have a can of cherry pie filling (my dad's favorite), a can of crushed pineapple (don't get the "in syrup" kind), a can of sweetened condensed milk, and a container of whipped topping. Drain the pineapple juice (into a glass -- yum), then mix it, the cherry pie filling, and the condensed milk together in a rather big bowl. When those three are good and combined, slowly fold in the whipped topping. (This is where you can get in trouble with this one, when "folding" becomes "beating" you end up with a soupy mess.)

Most of my family eats these as "dessert" rather than with the meal, and a little goes a long way. When the pink fluff and turkey sandwiches are gone, it's time to head home.

When I was in college, I had a nightmare that involved my boyfriend taking me home to his family Thanksgiving and his mother asking me to make the gravy as a test... I woke up screaming.

Since then, I've advanced (much more than I let on). I can make many wonderful meals in my wok, I love quinuoa, and I'm learning more every day. I likely won't be involved in the turkey basting process this year (or maybe ever, one of my brothers has a restaurant management degree and is pretty territorial about the bird), but . . . I made the salads.