The Long Christmas Dinner

was a play by Thorton Wilder. My Christmas Dinner was a filling meal for 6 people,, with nods to several times and places.

Tea Eggs garnished with Caviar

Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb

Yorkshire Pudding

Roasted Root Vegetables with Rosemary

Mushroom Risotto

Cold Asparagus with Chinese Flavors

Spicy Tomato Aspic with Cottage Cheese

Old-Fashioned Ambrosia

A Bowl of Smoking Bishop

Jim made the punch, of course and Alyson and Jamie helped with the Ambrosia. My Mom assembled the appetizers and helped me plate the Aspic salad.

The tea eggs and the asparagus are a nod to James' former homeplace, China; and the aspic was something we used to have on every Christmas table in my childhood. I made mine spicy with horseradish and black pepper. It tasted a lot like a Bloody Mary, which was just what I wanted.

Recipes tomorrow. The dishwasher is chugging away with the second post-dinner batch (there were two before dinner also) and dirty dishes still in the sink and on the floor.

The lamb bones have been simmered for stock and Mommo took Ambrosia and Roasted Veggies home. To bed, to bed...snowstorm due tomorrow.

The elusive 5-way sugar cookie

from Life magazine, November 14, 1949, page 90

The aforementioned recipe, as I remember it, in all it's colored glory!

Now here is my transcription of the recipe, and some notes from the first time I made it in 30 years or so...

Ann Pillsbury’s 5-Way Holiday Cookies

From Life magazine November 14, 1949

Yield: 7 dozen medium (I get more)

• 1 ¼ cup shortening (1/2 butter)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup cream
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp. salt

Cream shortening and sugar; add eggs, cream and vanilla and beat until light. Mix all dry ingredients and add to the creamed mixture. Divide the dough into five equal portions and mix in additions, below.

Form cookies by Tablespoonfuls on greased cookie sheet, flattening each spoonful slightly, and bake at 400° for 8 to 10 minutes.

Additions:

For Orange-Pecan: 1T. grated Orange rind (zest) and ¼ cup chopped pecans; top each cookie with a pecan half.

For Coconut: add ½ cup shredded coconut; dip tops in beaten egg (yolk or white) and dip in plain or colored coconut.

For Chocolate-Nut: 1 sq. melted baking chocolate (unsweetened) and ¼ cup chopped nuts and 1 Tablespoon cream.

Fruit: ½ cup chopped candied fruit (fruitcake mix) or mock mincemeat.

Plain: top with colored sugar.

Variations:

These take 10 minutes to bake in my 400° oven. Coconut always seems slightly underbaked and may need another minute.

Fruit and spice: chopped a combination of seeded raisins and candied ginger, total about 1/3 cup and about ½ tsp freshly ground spices (cinnamon, cloves, mace, black pepper and coriander). Good but could use more raisins and spice.

I didn’t much care for the fruitcake variation as a child. The pecan-orange is probably to best balanced and most distinctive flavor combination.

Must go now - gotta start Jamie's birthday cake.

The elusive 5-way sugar cookie

from Life magazine, November 14, 1949, page 90

The aforementioned recipe, as I remember it, in all it's colored glory!

Now here is my transcription of the recipe, and some notes from the first time I made it in 30 years or so...

Ann Pillsbury’s 5-Way Holiday Cookies

From Life magazine November 14, 1949

Yield: 7 dozen medium (I get more)

• 1 ¼ cup shortening (1/2 butter)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup cream
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp. salt

Cream shortening and sugar; add eggs, cream and vanilla and beat until light. Mix all dry ingredients and add to the creamed mixture. Divide the dough into five equal portions and mix in additions, below.

Form cookies by Tablespoonfuls on greased cookie sheet, flattening each spoonful slightly, and bake at 400° for 8 to 10 minutes.

Additions:

For Orange-Pecan: 1T. grated Orange rind (zest) and ¼ cup chopped pecans; top each cookie with a pecan half.

For Coconut: add ½ cup shredded coconut; dip tops in beaten egg (yolk or white) and dip in plain or colored coconut.

For Chocolate-Nut: 1 sq. melted baking chocolate (unsweetened) and ¼ cup chopped nuts and 1 Tablespoon cream.

Fruit: ½ cup chopped candied fruit (fruitcake mix) or mock mincemeat.

Plain: top with colored sugar.

Variations:

These take 10 minutes to bake in my 400° oven. Coconut always seems slightly underbaked and may need another minute.

Fruit and spice: chopped a combination of seeded raisins and candied ginger, total about 1/3 cup and about ½ tsp freshly ground spices (cinnamon, cloves, mace, black pepper and coriander). Good but could use more raisins and spice.

I didn’t much care for the fruitcake variation as a child. The pecan-orange is probably to best balanced and most distinctive flavor combination.

Must go now - gotta start Jamie's birthday cake.

Searching for Pillsbury

The first memory I have in regards to cooking is of sprin(dumping)kling colored sugar on cookies before they are baked. I believe I was three years old, and it may be my oldest accessible memory.

Certainly before I could read I could roll out sugar cookie dough, cut out the cookies, carefully fitting the cookies together so as not to waste dough, and decorate them. I also put pans into the hot oven, and removed them with cotton looper potholders.

I got a set of miniature cake pans for Christmas when I was five, and after using up the miniature cake mix packaged with them, I made cakes from the Washington Flour single-layer sized mixes, measuring the ingredients when my mother read them off to me.

(pictured-not my real mother)

The following September I started school and learned to read, so by Christmas, I could read the instructions myself.

I think reading those instructions, and other recipes was my first experience of learning a new skill by reading - something I've never stopped.

Lately, I've been trying to find a recipe I remember from childhood. Pillsbury 5-way sugar cookies. I've Googling my brains out, without success.

I asked my Mother to find it, as I remember it from her notebooks, but she's stymied, too.

That WAS, until today.

After I got home from church, I Googled again, this time with 5-way (figure five hyphen way) and Google books rendered up selections from a 1949 Life magazine.

Check back tomorrow - my rendering of the recipe, and my first revisit in thirty or more years.