Southwest Cookbooks

Last Wednesday I wrote about Southwestern US cooking, concentrating on Native American cuisines. Besides those I mentioned, I also own some cookbooks from about urban, non-Indian cuisines of the Southwest -- very distinct from Mexican cuisines south of the border.

First -- a gorgeously illustrated volume titled Coyote Cafe, written by Mark Miller, the former owner of the Coyote Cafe restaurant in Santa Fe, NM:

From the famous Coyote Cafe.

Mark Miller became a star chef in the 1980s. Before Santa Fe, he cooked for Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, and various other places. His creative cooking at Coyote Cafe was very influential, and the book, published 1989, presents a number of his innovative fusion recipes. I ate there on at least two occasions, and found the food, the style of presentation, and the decor of the restaurant extremely enjoyable. Unfortunately I don't seem to have taken any photos of my fascinating meals!

My second Southwest cookbook is more conventional:

Classic Southwest Cooking by
Carolyn Dille and Susan Belsinger, 1994.
A less flamboyant volume!

Experiencing Southwest foods: pumpkins, gourds, and chili ristras on a winter day at the Los Alamos NM market, 2004.
I recall purchasing pozole (with a recipe) and hand-made chili powder to take home.

A number of years ago, I subscribed and tried many recipes from Chili Pepper magazine -- though I didn't save any of the issues of the magazine. Founded in 1987 by Albuquerque food writers Dave Dewitt and Nancy Gerlach, the magazine is still published around 6 times a year, and covers the uses of the many types of chili peppers that grow in the Southwest, as well as hot pepper recipes from all parts of the globe. I especially remember two recipes from the magazine: one for corn and chili pancakes, one for chili cornbread!

Classic Southwest Cooking includes descriptions of many
types of chili peppers. I've tried several of the recipes.

Cheese and Jalapeño Stuffed Potatoes
adapted from Classic Southwest Cooking

6 baking potatoes (about 1/2 pound each)
1 and 1/2 cups sour cream (I used less)
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 jalapeño peppers, stemmed, seeded, and diced
1 and 1/2 tsp toasted and ground cumin seed
3 tsp chopped fresh coriander leaves
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese 

Scrub, pierce, and bake potatoes at 375 degrees for about 50 minutes. Cool around 10 minutes, cut around 1/3 of top from potatoes and scoop out flesh leaving around 1/4 inch shell. Mash the insides of the potatoes (including the tops) with the sour cream, salt, and pepper. Stir in jalapeños, cumin, and coriander. Fill the shells with the mixture 

Bake the filled potatoes for around 20 more minutes at 350 degrees. Remove potatoes from oven, sprinkle with the cheddar, and broil the potatoes around 5 inches from broiler for 1 to 2 minutes until cheese is bubbling and slightly browned, watching carefully so they don't burn. Serve hot! 

Note: I have used this twice-baked potato method with a variety of fillings for potatoes.

My experiences with Southwest cuisines include several trips to New Mexico, Arizona, and southern Utah. Besides the Coyote Cafe, I've eaten at other memorable restaurants in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, visited markets, and also done quite a bit of sightseeing in the fabulous mountain and desert landscapes. The various dishes of Southwest cuisine, using many New World foods, make a marvelous cuisine, and I should experiment with it more.

Cookbook Wednesday is inspired by
Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.

Roadkill Chronicles -- Carl Hiaasen

During my trip to Florida this week I've been reading Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen, the first of his books (pub. 1987) about the really quirky character named Skink. The book is mainly set somewhere in Florida not far from the areas I've been visiting. It's a very long murder mystery with lots of cliches, like pretty but dumb women who throw themselves at the central detective-type character. Pretty amusing, sort of out of date with regard to women.  I liked Bad Monkey, his more recent book, better.

One of Skink's most bizarre habits is eating road kill. During the book, he collects fresh opossum, squirrel, rabbit and even armadillo, which he carefully cooks over an open fire. I was going to get direct quotes but actually they are kind of gross! Skink also eats minnows live right out of the bait bucket, and he is close friends with a gigantic large-mouth bass. (The plot of the book is about bass-fishing tournaments, but I'll skip that part.)

What I liked best about Double Whammy was how much the author (and the more sympathetic of his characters) hated the way the natural world of Florida had been destroyed by truly cynical developers who ripped out the natural vegetation, ruined the marshes, dunes, and beaches, and polluted the waterways. The strange behavior of Skink is attributed to how much he had wanted to stop development and ruination of the landscape, and how he had failed.

Going into the wildlife refuges is a contrast to the overdevelopment that, as Hiaasen illustrates, has been so common in Florida, and when trying to find the remnants of the once-abundant bird life here you definitely are aware of it. And there certainly is a lot of road kill around -- though it's mostly vultures, not eccentric and reclusive literary characters that devour it. I thought that it was a very interesting thing to see these impressive birds of prey that circle around everywhere. So here are a few scenes from our travels in Florida to complement my reading:

Black Vultures eating a wild boar (Skink never gets one of these!)

Vultures eating a raccoon, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

A shore bird eating someone's rejected fish catch,
Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge.

Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge

Jack's 95th!

Why we are in Florida: Jack's 95th birthday.
Here are Jean (whose birthday was yesterday) and Jack with the cake!

Dancing to the music of one Frank Sinatra imitator
and one Elvis impersonator -- with costume!

Jean's Friendly Birthday

Jean's birthday at Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor

Jean & Jack

My favorite birds from a day of birdwatching.
First: a Florida scrub jay at Merrit Island

And a limpkin at Green Cay natural reserve: note the drop of water at the tip of his beak.

Merrit Island, Florida

Roseate Spoonbills

American Indian Cookbooks

New Mexico and Arizona have several local cuisines of note, including traditional Native American cuisines, the cooking of early Spanish settlers and ranchers, local versions of Mexican foods, and the cooking of famous restaurants in well-known tourist towns like Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I have several cookbooks and food books reflecting these cuisines. In this post, I will talk about some books and articles that relate to Native American foods and cooking.

Two books from my cookbook collection.

Native American cooking in the Southwest today combines several traditions. The book Native Harvests describes how to cook with little-known herbs, vegetables, and game that were familiar to early native peoples, as well as recipes that are popular now with Indians throughout the country.

Navajo frybread may be the best-known Indian food preparation. The Manataka Indian Council website gives at least 10 recipes for frybread from a number of tribes, using either baking powder or yeast. The use of flour, sugar, and lard or other cooking fat (all unknown before European arrival in the Americas) suggests that the inventors of this dish were making use of the rather poor cooking materials that were provided to reservation Indians as they were deprived of many of their native food traditions.

An article in Smithsonian Magazine (2008) summarized the history of frybread thus:

"Navajo frybread originated 144 years ago, when the United States forced Indians living in Arizona to make the 300-mile journey known as the 'Long Walk' and relocate to New Mexico, onto land that couldn't easily support their traditional staples of vegetables and beans. To prevent the indigenous populations from starving, the government gave them canned goods as well as white flour, processed sugar and lard—the makings of frybread."

The Smithsonian article continues with a discussion of the very complex views that Indian people have about frybread. Controversies abound: "frybread links generation with generation and also connects the present to the painful narrative of Native American history."

Many Southwest Indians, Navajos and others, simply enjoy eating frybread. Some view frybread as a delicious element of their mothers' heritage cooking. Some see frybread as a dangerous and highly caloric contributor to diabetes, obesity, and other health problems among their people. Some activists revere frybread "as a symbol of Native pride and unity."

Here are two pages from my cookbooks with the recipes for frybread:

From Indian Recipes, compiled by United Tribes
Educational Technical Center, Bismarck, ND, 1079

From Native Harvests by Barrie Kavasch, 1979.

Two books that have much more information about Indian and Southwest foods.

Why Some Like it Hot by Gary Paul Nabhan describes the co-evolution of native people and the plants in their environment. He documents the harm that's been done by depriving deeply-rooted agricultural people or hunter-gatherers of the foods that their ancestors were accustomed to. This is a much more nuanced analysis than the discussions of frybread. 

Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky offers descriptions of foods from the Southwest and many other regions based on a WPA oral history project in the 1930s. Both of these books provide interesting insight into the history of foods of the Southwest.

Cookbook Wednesday is inspired by
Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.

Next week: more Southwest cookbooks from my cookbook collection.

"Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut

The small Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, fictional location of the last scenes of Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, was home of the Bokononist religion. The book parodies the features of totalitarian (or any) government as well as taking an ironic look at the relationship of religion in politics.

Cat's Cradle's narrator, who is about to become president of San Lorenzo, is served a buffet "burdened with native delicacies," which contained:

"roasted warblers in little overcoats made of their own blue-green feathers; lavender land crabs taken from their shells, minced, fried in coconut oil, and returned to their shells; fingerling barracuda stuffed with banana paste; and, on unleavened, unseasoned cornmeal wafers, bite-sized cubes of boiled albatross.  

"The albatross, I was told, had been shot from the very bartizan in which the buffet stood. 

"There were two beverages offered, both un-iced: Pepsi-Cola and native rum." (p. 227)

Cat's Cradle is the second Vonnegut book that I decided to reread this week because I loved it long ago. My memories of this book, like my memories of Slaughterhouse Five, were rather flawed, with certain highlights -- like the ritual of Bokononism which consists of two people pressing the soles of their bare feet against one another. And the final end of the world from ice nine, a substance that freezes all water at normal temperatures and thus kills everyone and everything. But I forgot lots of the intermediate details of the characters and actions in the book, and even forgot some of the ironic things about the religious leader Bokonon and the made-up associations like granfalloons.

Vonnegut is very clever, and sometimes his writing is a little over-the-top, exaggerated, too precious. Some of his quirky inventions become a little thin on second reading. I'm afraid I'm just a little less enthusiastic than I was long ago -- though I did like the irony of that buffet menu served right before the world ended. My screen-shot of the covers of the numerous editions of Cat's Cradle suggests that it has been very popular for a very long time, and I don't dispute the merits that keep it well-loved.

Anyway, I couldn't forget Bokononism because my brother once specified it on a form that asked for his religion, and a local newspaper reported the results of the survey, solemnly listing the numbers of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and so on and finally "and one Bokononist, whatever that is."

And I love the significance of the cat's cradle -- the flimsy string construction from the children's game that one of the characters in the book points out has neither a cat nor a cradle.

"The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine"

As the Soviet Socialist Empire disintegrated, large numbers of Jewish refugees fled from their impoverished, discriminatory, and increasingly erratic life there, often taking young and impressive children with them. Now we know that among these children were a large number of gifted writers. These Russian emigrants, as I've noted before, offer us a variety of insights into how they adjusted (or didn't adjust) to their new schools, environments, material possessions, and to the problems of assimilation that their parents faced.

Rosa, the narrator of Alina Bronsky's novel The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is for me one of the least sympathetic characters of this newish literary school (if you can call it that). Bronsky's family left Russia for Germany, unlike most of the other immigrant writers I've read -- who live in New York, mainly. I don't know if this difference has anything to do with the unlikeableness of this character.

In the novel, Rosa's daughter Sulfia, Sulfia's daughter Aminat, her husband (who leaves her and she scarcely cares), and several lovers and other contacts all are seen through her self-absorbed, self-serving, and sometimes cruel eyes, and as a result it's also hard to be very sympathetic to them or to her. At least that's how I reacted. Rosa was raised in an orphanage where she learned Russian and forgot the tartar language, culture, and cooking of her vaguely remembered parents.

Most of the novel takes place in Russia, where food is scarce -- food scarcity is always an issue whenever you hear about life in Soviet times, of course. Rosa had a garden outside the city, and also, in her second bedroom, raised some sort of fungus that could substitute for tea. She stood in line to get oranges and other healthy food for her granddaughter. She used chocolate (sometimes stale) to bribe teachers and others. Sulfia, a nurse in a clinic, had big stashes of chocolate that she apparently received as bribes herself. And Rosa summarized their eating this way:

"We'd all had the same recipes here for a long time: noodles with butter, sausage with boiled potatoes, oatmeal with old marmelade, tea with rock-hard cookies. Those were the only foodstuffs you could get hold of without connections." (p. 138) 

Unlike most of the novels by Russian Jews, most of the characters in this one aren't Jewish at all; however, the second of Sulfia's three husbands is Jewish and Rosa tries to cook Jewish food for his family (he's a mama's boy).

"I decided to make gefilte fish and vorschmack, and for dessert tzimmes. I'd be making all of these things for the first time in my life, which excited me. The vorschmack turned out to be the same as an appetizer I'd made every New Year's Eve for years. I put chunks of brined herring, moistened white bread, onion, and a large apple through a meat grinder and grated hard-boiled egg yolks with vinegar. The gefilte fish turned out to be a sort of cold fishcake that took hours of my time only to taste like nothing at all. I didn't think the effort was worth it." (p. 100)

Finally Sofia's third husband, a German visitor, took the family to Germany. His profession: food writer! He's writing about Tartar cuisine, but despite her efforts, Rosa has nothing to contribute to him -- her family recipes were all forgotten, though she tries to convince him that she has secret expert knowledge. After he dies she reads through his draft of a book on Tartar cuisine and learns about her own heritage, which she had lost in the orphanage. In his notes she reads

"Pechleve -- a layered dessert... Kystybyi, also called kuzimak, is a sort of pierogi made of unleavened dough... Katyk denotes curdled milk that the Tartars heat for a long time in a clay pot. It is sometimes finished with the addition of cherries or red beets... For the filling of gubadia, a baked layered pie made for festive occasions, they sometimes use qurut, a uniquely processed dried yoghurt." (p. 246)

And finally, Rosa found in his notes: "It is proving practically impossible to write a cookbook about Tartar cuisine." (p. 247) I felt as if she should have channeled Vonnegut: "And so it goes."

One of many year-end articles in Forward was "The Year of the Former Soviet Author," which briefly mentioned Alina Bronsky along with a list of other Russian emigrant writers. Several of these I've already read like Gary Shteyngart, Lara Vapnyar, Anya Ulinich, Boris Fishman. I think I'm hooked, as I added several other authors and more books by the ones I've read before to my list, including Bronsky (whom I don't really regret reading) and Olga Grjasnowa.

"Slaughterhouse Five"

So many editions of Slaughterhouse Five! (google image result)

This week, I decided to reread Slaughterhouse Five. This famous novel is a thorough attack on the practice of war -- it's subtitled "The Children's Crusade." The central point: soldiers are children sent by grown-ups who should have more sense than to mess things up so much. An irresistible point.

Vonnegut's own experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden, where he survived the infamous fire bombing by having been sent to an underground prison area, informs the book. However, the book includes less direct narrative of his memoirs than I thought I remembered from earlier readings. Vonnegut sometimes says "I was there" when he describes the war experiences of Billy Pilgrim, the time traveler at the center of the book. I mistakenly recalled more first-person accounts. I think my memory tricked me because I translated the impact of the book into more of a polemic and less of an sci-fi type story than it actually is.

Hunger was a predominant theme of the war scenes. The people of Dresden were starving. The soldiers were starving  -- except for some English prisoners who received disproportionate rations and provided an extremely ironic contrast to all the individuals who were intensely suffering. (Irony: big in Vonnegut! But you knew that.)

When the prisoners, including Billy Pilgrim and by implication Vonnegut himself, are marched into Dresden, Vonnegut says: "Thousands of people were on the sidewalks, going home from work. They were watery and putty-colored, having eaten mostly potatoes during the past two years." The slaughterhouse that becomes their prison "wasn't a busy place any more. Almost all the hooved animals in Germany had been killed and eaten and excreted by human beings, mostly soldiers. So it goes." (p. 191 & 193)

The American prisoners are led to a kitchen where a war widow was impatiently waiting for them. She has soup and black bread for them. "All the real soldiers are dead," she says when she meets them. (p. 203)

Billy Pilgrim and his fellow soldiers are put to work at the former slaughterhouse, making a malt syrup to be used as a vitamin and mineral supplement for pregnant women who presumably have no real food to eat. All the syrup workers secretly sampled as they worked, twirling forbidden spoons in the syrup pots to make a "gooey lollipop." The excessive quantity of syrup gives Billy "a boiling case of heartburn." The other workers were "skinny and hollow-eyed." Their skin blossomed "with small sores," as did their mouths, throats, and intestines. "The malt syrup ... contained only a few of the vitamins and minerals every Earthling needs." (p. 207)

It's very hard to summarize this strange story of the time-traveling and space-traveling Billy Pilgrim. In a way, I am not very fond of the episodes on the far-off planet where space and time are indistinguishable, and where Billy Pilgrim is a captive in a zoo. But somehow I end up convinced that this is a logical part of the story. Vonnegut was a wonderful author. Who could resist saying this: "So it goes."

"One Continuous Picnic"

The first book I have read in the new year is One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia by Michael Symons (1982). I didn't pick it for any reasons of significance -- it's been on my shelf for a while. I read the original edition, though it appears to have been updated in 2007.

Symons covers an incredible amount of material in this book, beginning with the arrival of the first convict ships in January, 1788, continuing with the early settlers, the development of cities in the 19th century, and the impact of the two World Wars on Australian food and agriculture. His chapters on the 1950s through 1970s show how trends familiar from American food history also affected Australian cuisine. Twentieth-century industrialization and mass production of food is one of Symons' recurring themes. I found it interesting how much this process followed the lead of European and especially American inventors and business developments.

I had been aware that American bases in northern Australia during World War II were a significant force for change. I was very interested in details of how the American military imported food processing plants (in particular a Coca Cola bottling plant) and how they changed Australian food processing and agriculture. The Yanks made quite an impact with their demands for beef and pork instead of the Australian choice of mutton and with their consumption of more fruit and vegetables.

The Pavlova, a meringue-based cake with fruit, is often claimed as a truly original Australian contribution to world cuisine from around 1929. Symons documents that New Zealand's counter-claims to have invented the Pavlova have merit. A winner of a baking contest in an Australian women's magazine was from New Zealand: she submitted a popular New Zealand recipe for a nearly identical cake. The Australian chef who "invented" the Pavlova soon after the contest was very likely to have read the magazine. Although the name Pavlova in New Zealand referred to a slightly different meringue cake, Symons concedes that Australia can't claim sole creation of the dish.

Symons seems amazed at how few native Australian plants or food products became mainstream or were adopted outside Australia: basically, the macadamia nut is the only native plant to go global -- and it was first shipped worldwide from plantations in Hawaii. Early versions of the Pavlova used passionfruit -- more recent versions use strawberries or other fruit. While the passionfruit was extremely popular and grown widely in Australia by the 19th century according to Symons, it was a South American import.

Maybe the updated version of the book reflects the recent popularity of raising emus for eggs and meat in the US, though I don't think it's a very high-impact trend!

I had heard of this book long ago, and I'm glad I have finally read it!

The Ball Dropped at 8:15

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

New Year's Party down the block with kids:
the ball drops at 8:15 PM and then bedtime!

Michigan Cookbooks and Happy New Year!

First, I hope everyone will have a wonderful year in 2015, 

with lots of truly wonderful experiences cooking, eating, and living happily.

Now for some Michigan cookbooks:

Seasonal Samplings (1991) from the Michigan Cancer Society,
The Woodland Herb Farm Condiment Cook Book (1982).
The farm, founded in 1976, continues to operate.

Cooking at Chimney Corners (1979)
Chimney Corners is a resort on Crystal Lake where we enjoyed very quiet lakeside vacations many
years ago. The food was very good, and the recipes were passed down from mother to daughter
along with the business. It's still there, I think under the fourth or fifth generation of women --
but we haven't visited lately.

One of my favorite recipes from Chimney Corners: this makes a HUGE cake!
Unfortunately, I'm a little unsure of using the raw egg in uncooked frosting.

As this page explains, Chimney Corners has a very long history.

Ann Arbor Fresh (1998) was written by my friend Lois Kane and a collaborator.

Cookbook Wednesday is inspired by
Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.

Idealized Farmers?

Dust Bowl scene from PBS special, looks just like the ones in "Interstellar"

I was thinking about the stereotype of the farmer reflected in the movie "Interstellar." The main character, Cooper, is a farmer in a vast dust bowl where the only crops left are corn and okra, and okra is in trouble. His children are being programmed to a life of more farming by a pathetic and unimaginative educational system, teaching a revised, untrue, and vile version of history.

In the early scenes of the movie the usual cliche -- nobility of farming in extreme and challenging conditions -- seems set-off against the unexplained chase after a drone where Cooper runs his truck (with flat tire) through huge fields of corn.

Soon after this, Cooper finds a clandestine underground NASA space program and meets the secret NASA scientists. We learn that he despises farming and always wanted to return to his original occupation as a space pilot. Presumably the endangerment of okra was to get our attention and make us see what a travesty farming has become in this post-apocalyptic world. Everyone is eating okra? OK. Being a farmer is beyond depressing, not so noble at all in the coming disaster, thanks to negligence on the part of current humanity. Social relevance!

Although the key to the situation is that humans are facing starvation, in fact there isn't much actual eating (presumably of corn and okra) in the movie except for a sort of around-the-table-in-the-farmhouse scene and one meeting where Cooper and the chief scientist have a cup of coffee in the secret NASA headquarters. The piloting mission Cooper accepts is to find a well-watered temperate planet where the remnants of the human race can avoid mass starvation -- sort of like the settlement of Australia in the early 1800s. Humans have ruined this world and he and a few stalwart comrades must find them another.

The romance of farming continues to be questionable in the lives of the two Cooper children, the very bright daughter Murph who becomes a scientist and actually seems to sort of save humanity and the unimaginative son Tom who in fact loves farming even though it's so blighted. Flashbacks to the dust-bowl days of the early part of the movie all echoed the testimonies of actual 1930s farmers interviewed on the PBS American Experience special "Surviving the Dust Bowl."

Farmers have a big role in popular movies, even when there's really very little going on with the actual process of farming. Like in Star Wars where we meet the good honest protective farm family of Luke Skywalker (with the retrospective explanation of who they all were, given in the prequels). We all want to see heroes live like the Ingalls family in "Little House on the Prairie."

Two Classics

First, a classic sandwich:

BLT for lunch

Second, the scientific answer to a classic mystery:


Why spaghetti shatters into more than two pieces when you try to snap it to fit in the pot -- a question that Feynman tried to answer but failed. More on that here: http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf099/sf099p15.htm -- but this only confirms that Feynman looked at the problem, their answer isn't as clear as the one in the video.

(Note: you might have to click "skip the ad.")

Beautiful Food in 2014!

The New York Times food writer Pete Wells has posted his 9 favorite restaurant dishes for 2014. I am unlikely ever to see (or taste) them but I find them just beautiful. I'm surprised at the number of classic dishes depicted, including gratinéed French onion soup, a pizza (though with potato carbonara), a pasta dish, and a prime rib dish.

Beautiful roast beef sandwich from the slide show.

Several other newspapers have showcased best dishes of the year, but mainly more unusual. For example Eater, the Miami Herald, the Denver Post -- all very exotic choices.

Chinese Dinner and Movies for Christmas

Christmas Eve: "Interstellar."

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Elaine and Larry who are visiting from Indiana. Of course our plan was movies and Chinese food, which we quite enjoyed. At 2:30 PM on Christmas Eve we went to a theater to see "Interstellar," which some of us liked a lot, some liked a little, and one hated. On Christmas Day we watched two movies on streaming video, took a walk in the park despite the gloominess and damp, and cooked and ate some Chinese food.

Christmas Morning: "Laura" (1944). Beautiful visuals in this film noir.

Christmas afternoon: "Insomnia." Rather strange movie.

Cooking Chinese Christmas dinner. You can see the package of Trader Joe's
pot stickers at left, and the rice cooker at right.

Stir-frying vegetables.

Pot stickers.

Stir-fried vegetables with roasted salmon.

Zingerman's gingerbread cake after we ate most of it.

English Christmas Dinner

Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas!

At Rules, a restaurant in London.

My friends Sheila and John in London shared their beautiful photos of a Christmas celebration at Rules, a restaurant in London where they live. The pictures were so beautiful and Christmas-like that I asked if I could repost them here, for Christmas.

Eel Salad 

Wild boar & mushroom pie

Mince pies

Decorated for the holiday

Last Night of Chanukah

Latkes, sour cream, smoked salmon, red cabbage salad,
apple kugel, cranberry-applesauce.