Home for the Holidays: New Recipes for Old Traditions
By: Audrey Swartz, Adult Services and Readers’ Advisory Librarian
From one feast to another, winter months are filled with reasons to cook, join with family and friends, and eat our hearts out. In my family, feasting also comes with the tribulations of food allergies and aversions. For years, I’ve struggled to find things that will satisfy everyone. You won’t find a casserole on our feast table for several reasons, most because we are picky creatures with even pickier tiny humans to feed. I am also allergic to mushrooms and according to the folks I feed, green bean casserole just isn’t the same when made with cream of chicken soup. I often resort to making copper pennies but am always on the search for a great recipe to bring green beans back to the table.
This year I’ve been consulting Manhattan Public Library’s vast cookbook collection and have found several recipes that sound delicious. To keep it simple, I choose to make the “long-cooked green beans with oregano” featured in the “Fine cooking Thanksgiving cookbook: recipes for turkey and all the trimmings.” This recipe takes about an hour to prep and fully cook. Don’t fret, these were great at room temperature and were still a hit the next day.
My only true complaint, has nothing to do with the recipe and more the amount of cooking in the kitchen at my house. My mother and I always split the cooking jobs. She handles the turkey while I handle the sides and pies. Since these need to be tended to throughout their cooking process, it made the kitchen a bit crazy for the last hour before meal time. If your house is a one-cook kitchen, one would need to make sure their time management game is strong or this would be a great dish to bring to a meal. I recommend it and will be making these again for my picky veggie kiddos.
In my house, rolls are definitely the most loved and eaten side dish. My oldest, on feast day, ate 16 rolls. She is a carb machine. Whatever recipe I was going to try this year, I needed to make a lot of them and make them ahead of time. I eventually picked the “honey-oat pan rolls” in the “Taste of Home 201 recipes you’ll make forever: classic recipes for today’s home cooks.” This recipe was incredibly easy to double and only took a few hours of my pre-feast day meal prep. Having never made rolls from scratch, I was nervous, but this recipe was easy to follow and a huge hit. I will absolutely be making it again and probably tripling it this next time if my children continue down their carb loving paths. Sides have long been my favorite part of feast day, and I am aware most people come for the pie.
In my quest to find a pumpkin pie I don’t hate, and that my pie loving family will still enjoy, I turned to Kate McDermott and her cookbook “Art of the pie: a practical guide to homemade crusts, fillings, and life.” Her pumpkin pie reflects the classic recipe you can find on any can of pie filling with the exception of switching out the evaporated milk for lite coconut milk. She concedes that you can use evaporated milk if you like, as I was trying something new, I went with the coconut milk. While this recipe didn’t change my mind on pumpkin pie, it was a major success with the family. The coconut milk added to the savory nature of the pie, which my mother appreciated, and did not take away from the apparent deliciousness. My youngest daughter is a pumpkin pie fanatic and devoured an entire quarter of pie by herself. As this creation did not add any more work to my pie-making time and is a new family favorite, I will continue to make it for our feasts and will concede I am not meant to like pumpkin pie. All the recipes I tried on my family this year were a hit and did not disappoint. I hope you had a wonderful time feasting and enjoying your time with your families, given or found.
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Audrey Swartz, Adult Services and Readers’ Advisory Librarian