Sunday, December 15, 2019

Tis the Season to Bake...


RHYS BOWEN: I have to confess that although I am addicted to the Great British Baking show, I am not the world’s most enthusiastic cook. I still truly believe that I should have been born a generation or so earlier so that I could have Mrs. Patmore in the kitchen and good food would magically appear on my table.

But this time I year I have to do a certain amount of baking, because it’s the family tradition and they expect it. Two things were passed down from my mother: mince pies and sausage rolls. They are both so yummy and delicious that I don’t mind the intensive work to make them. (I’ll share a secret. This year my daughter Clare and granddaughter Mary Clare will be at the house and I’m planning to use them in a production line to make things go quicker).


Christmas food is complicated these days by family dietary preferences and needs. One member is lactose free, gluten free, doesn’t eat red meat. Two are pescatarian but also lactose free. That means they won’t eat sausage rolls and my pastry dough can’t be made with butter. And I have no idea what’s going to happen with the Christmas turkey. Has anyone tried a fake turkey for vegans?  If not it will have to be vegetables and stuffing. Oh wait… gluten free one can’t have ordinary stuffing. I’ll have to make some from toasted gluten-free bread for her.

Sigh.

It was so much simpler in my childhood. Everybody ate what was on the table. When I tell the younger family members what we ate I get rolled eyes and exclamations of “Yuck”.
Okay, it was the post-war years in Britain. We were still rationed until 1953, so we ate a lot of offal: liver, kidneys but also heart, tongue, sweetbreads. I really liked them. I still do like lambs liver although I can’t quite bring myself to eat kidneys any more, now I know exactly what they do. And I’ve always drawn the line at brains. I was a student in Germany and my land lady cooked me the most delicious vol au vent. “This is so good,” I said, “What is in it?”
“Calf brains,” she said. And strangely I could hardly swallow the rest of it.

Our baking was always done with lard—animal fat and boy, did it make the pastry taste good. Our steamed puddings including the Christmas pudding, were made with suet (hard bits of animal fat). In the past mincemeat was really made with meat, and during my lifetime with animal suet.

And now I’m on the subject of disgusting things to eat: dripping toast.  We took the fat run by the roast beef or lamb and spread it on toast. I suppose in those days one needed that amount of fat to stay warm in unheated houses. And it also tasted good.

So do share: what was the most disgusting thing you grew up eating (and enjoying?)

Here are my Christmas recipes to share:

Mince pies:
Crosse and Blackwell’s mince meat (you’ll find it in better supermarkets at this time of year)
Your favorite pie crust recipe (I make mine in the Cuisineart) and add a spoonful of sugar to it.

Cut out circles for muffin pans and smaller circles for lids. Half fill with mince meat (too much and it bubbles over).  Brush with milk and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake at 425 until dough feels crisp to touch (about 15 minutes?)

Sausage Rolls.
In the US I buy Jimmy Dean sage sausage meat.
Either use the same pie crust recipe or buy sheets of puff pastry. Both are good.
Make rolls with sausage meat. I make mine about 2 inches long so they are appetizer sized.
Bake at 400 degrees until done
( I don’t like to give times as ovens vary so much. Mine is slow)

Do you still bake for Christmas? What are your specialties.

65 comments:

  1. Thanks for the recipes, Rhys. I, too, remember we ate whatever was on the table. [Creamed chipped beef showed up occasionally; I disliked it then and I dislike it still. Same with cold cereal which, somehow or other, always managed to be my breakfast when I was growing up.]

    What do I bake? Lots of cookies, cake, bread. I’ll make mince pie for John, but I am not particularly fond of pie myself.
    I make plum pudding [with hard sauce] for Christmas day.
    I don’t know that I have a specialty, per se, but I have great recipes for gingerbread cake and a couple of amazing chocolate Bundt cakes . . . .

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  2. I absolutely love baking. The Great British Baking Show inspired me to try all sorts of new things. Last Christmas I bought a pudding steamer and I have made many sticky toffee puddings since then.

    My book club is subjected to my experiments every month. This month, when we discussed
    Little Women, I made a Blanc mange and reviews were mixed. (Our book club is called The Read and Feed Book Club and we all bring a book inspired treat to meetings).

    My "specialty" changes when I find a new favorite recipe. Who knows what it'll be next. Probably something I read about in a book and had to see what it's like.

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    1. Amy, isn't that the best kind of book club? We had our annual holiday meeting this past Thursday, and at one point we were giving thanks for each other. Among other things, we mostly enjoy that everyone in the group is a good cook, or is married to one.

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    2. Pudding steamers exist? I can make my own sticky toffee pudding? Bliss. Now I know what I want for Christmas!

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    3. Karen, yes! It gives us a chance to learn something about the food in the book and try new things!

      Rhys, it's one of my best purchases ever. I use it all the time.

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  3. My baking varies for the holidays. Pies can include pecan, pumpkin, or transparent. My daughter fixed the pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving and taught this old dog a new trick. My recipe calls for just under 3 cups of sugar for two pies. My daughter doesn't want her children to eat that much sugar, so she used a cup of sugar and about a fourth (maybe a little more) cup of honey. I was skeptical, but they were delicious. I'll adjust my recipe in the future. Other options I'm considering for Christmas dessert are a strawberry cake or a jam cake.

    Oh, I don't know how disgusting it's considered, but my mother used bacon grease in the green beans. I have continued that. You don't use much, and it makes those green beans amazing. Plus a teaspoon of sugar.

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    1. Of course you use bacon grease in the green beans. What else? I admit I rarely fry bacon, but I cut up a pound into about four packages and freeze it. Then when I make baked beans, green beans, you name it, I can pull a little bit out to thaw. I put a slice of bacon in my green beans!

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    2. "Can" on the stove for bacon drippings was how I was raised. Grandma and Mom both had one. Most green vegetables out of a tin can had a little bacon fat added.

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    3. Hank, Transparent pie or tarts is something I grew up with. It is a regional recipe from my hometown in Maysville, KY where Magee's Bakery made them for 60 years. The transparent puddings, as we called the small tarts. were a staple in our house and in every house in Maysville and the surrounding area. They are George Clooney's favorite, too, and he would usually visit Magee's and get some when in the area (his parents live down the road in Augusta, KY). Magee's just this last year sold its store to an organization in town, and I hate to say it, but when I tasted the tarts at the new store, I found them just a bit lacking. Hopefully, that will improve. Anyway, here's an article you might enjoy about transparent pie and tarts. It tells you the difference between it and chess pie, which people erroneously often confuse it for. https://www.mycountrytable.com/transparent-pie/

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    4. Ann and Deana, I'm so happy to find other bacon drippings/grease fans! And, yes, Deana, there was always a can for the drippings by the stove.

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    5. Transparent pie sounds great!

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  4. I don't do a lot of baking at any time of the year, but I can make excellent apple, pumpkin, and mincemeat pies. Mincemeat was always a favorite, from when I was a kid. I once asked my mother to make me a mincemeat pie instead of a birthday cake. That must count as the disgusting thing I still eat because any time I mention it, my friends make faces. Clearly they have never tried it.

    Debs is my ally in this, though. She shares my love of mincemeat, so maybe I'll bake a pie or tart or something the two of us can share.

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    1. I like mincemeat, too, and get the same reaction from others. I think it's the name, don't you? I know before I'd tried it I had the preconception that it must be awful.

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    2. I’m glad I have two mincemeat fans. So good

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    3. There's absolutely nothing wrong with mincemeat! That was one of Mom's favorites.

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    4. I think you're right, Karen. They get stuck on the idea that there's meat in there, and they can't get over it to try even a little taste. These are also, often, the people who don't like raisins in their cookies, so even if you try to rebrand it as a dried fruit pie, they don't want to risk it.

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    5. I've never even eaten mincemeat pie. I think I know what my next new recipe is going to be.

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  5. My friend still swears by lard in her pie crust! I have a couple of pescatarians in the family, but luckily no one is needs to avoid lactose or gluten. I make Christmas butter cookies, Mexican bridecakes, and Spritz cookies, decorated with green and red sugars, recipes from my grandmothers that my mother made. I also like to make something chocolate, like candy cane brownies. My mom used to make a mincemeat pie at Thanksgiving but I haven't had one for year.

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  6. My grandmother made a coconut cake for Christmas from scratch. It was fascinating to me as a child to watch her pierce the coconut, drain the milk, grate the meat,etc. What a lot of work but it was delicious and she was famous in her church and town for Mrs. McDonald's coconut cake
    I baked cheese biscuits the other day to give away from a recipe I got from a caterer in Greenville, MS. We had gone for a funeral and at the reception afterwards I told the caterer that her cheese biscuits were the best I had ever tasted and would love to have the recipe. Well normally caterers don't share their recipes but she sent it to me! I guess at two states away I am no danger.
    For my gluten free sister-in-law and my diabetic friends I make Nigella Lawson's Clementine Cake. We love it and it smells divine. You can find the recipe on line. I was lucky enough to watch her making it on a cooking segment on TV and it was a trip.

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    1. I'm going to try this Clementine cake for my gluten free sister in law. She actually has celiac disease, unlike the rest of my gluten free friends.

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    2. I’m going to look this up. I wonder if Nigella has more gluten free recipes?

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    3. There's a gluten free cookie recipe called Forgotten Cookies. Nigella and BBC Food have them on line. I have a friend who makes them too. It's basically a meringue. Nigella's have chocolate chips and pistachios so I am going to try hers. You put them in a hot oven and turn it off and leave them overnight. What's not to like!

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  7. My mother always managed to procure a plum pudding we garnished with "hard sauce" (butter and powedered sugar beaten together and flavored with brandy). I make apple pies with the last of the local apples to please the pie fanatics in the family. Ham with cranberry glaze and Louisiana sweet potato casserole for Christmas Eve. Christmas Day brunch is a raisin bread, apple, and egg concoction and Diane Mott Davidson's sausage, potato, and egg casserole. Last year I made beef bourgignon a day ahead which was a big hit. With my daughters, we bake a different cookie variety every day: chocolate chunk nutella, sugar cookies, pecan praline bars, chocolate shortbread. Bon appetit!

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    1. The sausage casserole sounds like a great idea. Better than fried eggs for 14!

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    2. two brunch casseroles assembled the day before and slipped in the oven for 30 minutes while we open presents. Perfect for feeding the mob.

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    3. Warm bread pudding drizzled with eggnog is great for Christmas brunch.

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    4. Ham with cranberry glaze sounds amazing.

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  8. I used to do all kinds of holiday baking: pies, cookies, and fruitcake. This is the first year in 35 that I have not made fruitcake. My husband and I both love it, as do my best friend and her husband, so I always gave them one. But none of us need the extra calories, and this year I haven't had the time to manage them, anyway.

    One year I decided to make gingerbread men and ornaments, and a gingerbread bowl. What a project! The bowl turned out nothing like the magazine photos, and the recipe made enough cookies for five families. That was at least 20 years ago, maybe more, and I still can't look a gingerbread guy in the eye.

    My daughter is hosting us at Christmas again this year, and she has her things she likes, and I am not encouraged to add to the roster. Which is a huge relief, frankly.

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  9. My mother was the best baker, specializing in different kinds of cookies and wonderful pies, always using lard for her pie crusts. My brother now living in ID told me that he thinks bear lard makes the best crust and he offered to send me some. I thanked him for his generosity but turned down his offer.
    Growing up, the worst thing we ever had to eat was oyster stew. My mother told us it was traditional to have that on Christmas Eve. Very recently I have come to realize she never had that growing up so it certainly wasn't a tradition in her family. I concluded it was something she read in a book and thought it sounded like a good idea.

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    1. Oyster stew was our family Christmas Eve tradition too, and I adored it but haven't had it since. A few years ago Julie and I started making cioppino on the night before Christmas, and that's the plan for this year, so easy and so good and only one pot to wash.

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    2. Recipe, svp!! For cioppino. And can you make it without mussels?

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    3. I love oysters or cioppino. I may try the latter for Christmas Eve

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    4. Hallie, I’ll send you the recipe. Too long to post here. And you can make it with any combination seafood you like. It’s the real San Francisco treat!

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  10. Rhys, my mom would eat drippings on toast! We used lard or bacon grease to cook with and to bake with when I was growing up. And yes, Kathy, to bacon grease in green beans--my beans have never tasted the same since I left home. And I could not eat tongue or brains or kidneys. Liver, yes. And make it myself--except my college roommate would insist I make it when she was not home. For Christmas, I hope to make Rhys's sausage rolls--so good! And I will bake a Key lime cheesecake (many thanks, Coralee!), a cookie I concocted one year (a mash-up between peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, and chocolate chip cookies), and a small batch of chocolate peanut butter fudge.

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    1. I've eaten tongue more than once growing up. We had mustard on the side.

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  11. I'm cutting the Christmas baking way back this year, just because I don't feel like doing it. But I did make the date nut bread for Julie and her siblings, still have two loaves in the freezer saved for us. And of course I'll make the sausage rolls and little mince pies, just like Rhys does. I'm the only one in the house with a sweet tooth, so no cut out cookies lovingly decorated, no fudge lovingly beaten and no fruit cake that no one likes but me. I might buy a little one tho. This will be the first year since I remember than I haven't make loads of Christmas cookies, including Madeleines and ginger snaps. Am I actually moving to the class of former bakers who buys all this stuff at the bakery?

    Possibly

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    1. Someone mentioned blancmange but I can't find it now. This was a favorite of my children when small, the pink blancmange bunny that Auntie Pauline produced for birthdays. A few years ago I bought them each rabbit molds and packets of blancmange mix. They tried it and all THEIR children made ugly faces and spit it out. I guess it wasn't up to Auntie Paul, although she used the same mix too.

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    2. I grew up on blancmange and I still have the bunny mold. We had it for birthday parties. I made it for Clare’s second birthday and everyone looked at it in horror

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    3. I've never tried blancmange. I always remember Woody Allen beating off the giant pudding in Sleeper.

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    4. Sigh, Rhys. There’s a whole generation growing up sans blancmange

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    5. I loved the blancmange I made for my book club and my Danish friend also loved it. I think it wasn't sweet enough for a lot of the other ladies. It's definitely going to be in my rotation now.

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  12. Does it count as baking?: roasted chestnuts. My stepfather loved them, and made them every holiday season, and all of us kids hated them. Hated them! I remember getting sent away from the table about it when refused to eat them! Also, I know this is silly, but ham salad from the holiday ham leftovers. Yuck and double yuck.
    And mymother used to make oyster dressing for the turkey. Disgusting.
    And I agree, mince pie was never a favorite. Didn’t the mince come out of the jar? Is that what you were talking about, Rhys? The Crosse and Blackwell? Yes, I remember that!

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    1. I LOVE roasted chestnuts - remembering the smell of the on the streets of NYC where they were roasted and sold from street carts.

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    2. I also love roasted chestnuts. Especially buying them on the street in Europe

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    3. Oyster dressing, yum! Just don't out it in the bird, cook it like a casserole. We never stuff our turkeys, saved a great deal of cooking time.

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    4. Great! You can all have my roasted chestnuts… Perfect.

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    5. I love roasted chestnuts from the street vendors in London! And I loved oyster dressing, but no one likes it anymore but me so no one makes it.

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  13. A treat growing up was chopped chicken liver. Glistening with chicken fat, onions, hardboiled eggs, and seasoned with plenty of salt. I still make it when I've remembered to save chicken (or duck) fat (schmaltz). When I roast a chicken, I try to trim excess fat and freeze/save it for this. Start by rendering chicken fat. A delicious by-product is the crispy bits (gribens) left after the fat has melted away. I still love chopped liver, but only freshly made (by me). I chop it in the wooden bowl my grandmother used--the bottom of it is crosshatched with marks from the chopping blade. And remembering it here is inspiring me to see if there's any chicken liver in the market... that's the other challenge, finding chicken livers.

    Otherwise for the holidays I make very nondisgusting treats. This year: hazelnut biscotti, mandelbrot cookies, candied orange rind, turtle bark, and maybe linzer cookies. Some of it I'll save to make with the grandkids.

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    1. I sometimes make the linger cookies too, Hallie and I love the candied peel

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    2. Hallie, here in the South we have plenty of chicken livers and all of the other parts too. I saw duck fat in a container for sale at the Fresh Market today!

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    3. LOVE chopped liver. So yummy! With hard-boiled eggs chopped up in it. But the pieces of the chopped liver cannot be too big. Very picky about this..... :-)

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    4. There are eight synagogues in Rochester. I live within walking distance of seven of them. Chopped liver abounds.

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  14. No Christmas baking here but I have a date with the grandgirls - 3 1/2 and 6- to make Hanuka cookies when they are on school vacation. The little one had a good time sorting through the cookie cutters: "I'm going to make this one. And this one. And this one. And THIS one." (all of them really) I'm ready with food coloring and confectioner sugar for the icing.And lots of sprinkles. (I use a terrific New York Times sugar cookie recipe) Note to Hallie: I know where in Brooklyn you can buy commercially produced schmaltz in jars, ready to freeze and have on hand. What's it worth to you? ;-)

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  15. If it helps, Rhys, I will - quite literally- eat anything! And your menu sounds delish! What time should I be over?

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  16. I've gone to the bottom to write my comment first and then I'll go back and read your marvelous comments.. I want to move in with all you mincemeat fans. We need to have gathering for mincemeat lovers. I've always be only person to liked it in my mom's extended family. Once my dad's family was pretty much dissolved, Mom would make a pie for me. Now I make my own. Rhys has her preferred brand of bottled mincemeat, I grew up with None Such. Grandma would cook up some beef, put through the meat grinder and add to the bottled stuff along with a couple healthy spoonfuls of White Christmas. I don't add the beef, I've been known to add a handful of dried cranberries and a healthy spoonful of brandy in my mincemeat. I made mincemeat from scratch once, with Mom, using venison, suet and culled apples. It was a huge project and I'd only do it again with someone else and a big kitchen that has more than one counter. Other traditions - we made Paintbrush cookies. It's a sugar cookies, with a little almond extract added to the vanilla, decorated with a tinted egg yolk wash and sprinkles before baking. I like gingerbread, pretty much any gingerbread. I've even made a yeast gingerbread men that is bread and not a cookie or cake. Maybe that will be my project this year. I don't think I have any disgusting food items, the rest of the world just hasn't caught to me.
    Hallie - is there a smaller grocery with a butcher counter near you? You could order your chicken livers in advance. I've done that with leg of lamb before.

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  17. Disgusting or dubious things I used to eat? Not too many. I loved to sample raw cookie dough and lick the beaters and mixing bowl. I figure if the batter didn't taste good the final product wouldn't either. So consider it a public service. My maternal grandpa used to put a piece of leftover cornbread in a bowl, add milk and sugar, and mush it up. He'd eat it for breakfast. I've never been tempted to try that one. As kids we loved to help Mom make bourbon balls but hated eating them. Didn't like the flavor. I'm still not wild about them. I did see a similar recipe recently for margarita balls with tequila I might just try.

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    1. I do that cornbread thing but with buttermilk.

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  18. The most disgusting food from my childhood memories were liverwurst sandwiches for school lunches once in a while.

    Rhys, have you tried Earthly Balance as a butter substitute? It is strange. I had problems with dairy in the USA, though in Britain and Europe, I never had problems with dairy. I recently learned that wheat does not like me so I cannot eat wheat anymore. Sourdough seems ok, though. I was at the family Thanksgiving and despite dishes with dairy and wheat, I managed to find lots of food without dairy or wheat. There was turkey, salad and green beans. I ate the pumpkin pie and left the crust. I always figure a way around my allergies so I can enjoy eating.

    I have been looking at dairy free gluten free recipes among the 36 cookbooks that I have.

    Diana

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  19. Disgusting things? My mom loved calves liver with onions, which I didn't like, but a year or so ago I tasted a friend's in a French bistro in London and it was delish. My mom made brains with scrambled eggs, not a success with me. But sweetbreads I loved! Still do. Funny that people cooked them because they were cheap, but now you only get in fancy French restaurants!

    I'm not much of a baker, in spite of loving Great British Baking. But this year I may make Laurie Colwin's Old Fashioned Gingerbread. And I just saw a recipe from Deb Perlman (Smitten Kitchen) for super easy sugar cookies that I may try.

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    1. Deborah, that reminds me. I did not like bell peppers until I was at Oxford in England. The bell peppers were yummy and now I love them! Let us know how your sugar cookies or gingerbread turn out.

      Diana

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    2. I used to love liver and onions as a kid, but none of the other kids in my family would touch them.

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