Me, that is. Or I should say, Freakin’ Flamingo!

You know I’m making some wild and sexy jams with a South Florida / Caribbean twist down here, right? I’m playing with Florida’s seasonal best and sometimes bringing in the flavors of other parts of the country – but always with our own local flavor. And now, everyone else knows, too!

Check out the new Fall issue of our favorite publication on the local food scene, edible South Florida magazine!

Freakin’ Flamingo jam is featured in their story on brunch from your CSA box and recommended as a stocking stuffer in their edible essentials Holiday Gift Guide, too!

Want some? Order online at www.FreakinFlamingo.com (and don’t forget our Oxford Falls Boutique for some awesome salsas, vegan gluten-free worcestershire sauce, and tasty dressings and sauces!) or come see me at the South Miami Farmers Market, most Saturdays from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm!

Remember: The selection changes all the time, so stop by often and create your own memorable meals and gifts with a Flamingo flare!

Wait. How did it get to be December, already? Here I am, going about my business searching for new ways to dispose of leftover Thanksgiving turkey, and there it is on my calendar: Latke Week! Potato pancakes, that is. Chanukah came early this year, time to light colorful little candles and to commemorate the miracle of a little bottle of oil lasting eight days, by feasting on fried foods. Yum! I thought I’d kick things off with my favorite of them all: Potato Latkes.

Traditional Potato Latkes (Potato Pancakes)
(Makes about 12 4″ pancakes, depending on size)

Ingredients:

2 lbs. white potatoes
1 small onion (about 3 oz.)
1 large egg
1/3 cup matzo meal
2 tsp. kosher salt

Canola or peanut oil for frying

Preparation:

Grate the potatoes and onion together, either in a food processor or with a box grater. Drain off any water and place in a medium glass bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and stir by hand, using a sturdy wooden spoon.

Pour about 1/4 inch of oil into a large frying pan and heat it on high, till a couple of drops of water in the oil, pop. And I mean only a couple of drops! Otherwise, you’ll start your own Fourth of July sound effects going. Seriously.

Now, choose your size of pancake: For a larger latke, scoop up 1/4 cup of the potato mixture, and place it in the hot oil. Using your wooden spoon or a spatula, flatten out the mound to about 1/4″ thickness. If you want a smaller pancake, use 2 Tbs. of the potato mixture and flatten.

Fry each latke for about 3 minutes on each side, or until crispy and golden brown, and remove to a plate lined with paper towels. If you’re making a lot of latkes, you may have to add more oil to the pan. It shouldn’t take long for it to come back up to temperature.

Serve immediately with apple sauce, sour cream, or as we did when we were kids – a light sprinkling of sugar.

Notes:

My ninety-year old mother, bless her, still uses the fine side of a box grater to grate everything by hand. The potatoes seem to release less water that way. I gave that up years ago, though, using the shredding disc on my food processor and simply draining off the excess liquid before adding the other ingredients.

Use a glass or plastic bowl to mix the latke batter. A metal bowl will instantly make the potatoes start oxidizing and turn pink. It won’t hurt the latkes any, but they won’t be white inside. They’ll be pink. Or beige.

This recipe is easily doubled, or even tripled, if you’re cooking them up for a larger gathering. To keep the latkes hot and crispy, set your oven to 200º F, line a large baking sheet with newspaper and put one of your baking racks on top of that. After draining off each batch of latkes, put them on the rack and place the whole pan in the warm oven. They’ll keep in there for a couple of hours.

You can also make these ahead! Just cook as described, and when the cooked pancakes are completely cool, just put them in an airtight container or freezer bag(s) and chuck ‘em in the freezer. To serve, heat your oven to 350º F and lay out the latkes on a baking sheet. Heat for about 15 minutes, or until hot all the way through.

By the way, I just learned a new fact about Chanukah today, by way of an e-mail I received from Jason at BlogCatalog.com. Did you know that there are 16 accepted spellings of Hanukkah in the English language? Hanukkah, Chanukah, Hanukah, Hannukah, Chanuka, Chanukkah, Channukah, Chanukka, Hanukka, Hannuka,Hannukkah, Channuka, Xanuka, Hannukka, Channukka, and Chanuqa. There is, however, only one in Hebrew:

However you spell it, Happy Chanukah! Or Hanukkah!

I love Rugelach. A soft, but crispy, pastry rolled up with a sweet filling and sliced into 2-bite pieces, to me, they’re the ultimate holiday cookies, no matter which holiday you feel like celebrating. While they’re considered a “Jewish” cookie, rugelach are a tasty addition to any cookie platter. That’s why I’ve chosen them for this installment of the 12 Weeks of Holiday (Christmas) Cookies.

One of the best things about rugelach is that you can fill them with virtually anything you like, making them really personal to you. I’ve added some flax seed meal to the dough, as I do with many of my cake and bread doughs, to give it a bit of a healthy boost.

I’m also including a “traditional” filling here, but don’t be limited by that! I filled the cookies you see here with some of my homemade Peach Vanilla Marmalade, sprinkled with finely chopped pecans. You can spread the dough with a thin layer of your favorite jam and/or nuts of choice, or even mini chocolate chips. The only limit is your imagination!

This is also a great make-ahead cookie. They’ll keep for more than a week in a sealed container on your counter and for several months in the freezer.

Rugelach

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup flax seed meal
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, cold & cut into small pieces
1 8 ounce package cream cheese, cold & cut into small pieces
1/3 cup sour cream

Preparation:

Put all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse till the dough comes together in a crumbly mass. Divide the dough into 4 roughly equal pieces. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap and press into a rectangle. Refrigerate the dough for a minimum of 2 hours and up to 2 days.

“Traditional Filling”

1/2 cup white sugar
1 Tbs. ground cinnamon
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raisins

Combine all filling ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Assembly:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Take one of the dough packets out of the refrigerator at a time. On a well-floured surface, roll the pastry out into a 1/8″ thick rectangle (roughly 8″ x 12″, but don’t sweat it). Spread 1/4 of the filling mixture evenly across the surface of the dough, leaving about 1/2″ of clear space around the edges.

Roll the filled dough up, jelly-roll style, long-ways. Turning the roll seam-down, cut the roll into pieces about 1-1/2″ wide and place the pieces on a greased cookie sheet, also seam-side-down. Repeat with the other pieces of dough.

Refrigerate the cookies for 20 minutes before baking. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned.

Notes:

* If using a “wet” filling, such as jam, do make sure your cookies sheet is well-greased. Alternatively, you can also use non-stick foil or a silicone liner to line the pan.

* I don’t know about you, but I never get a nice even rectangle when rolling out my dough. If you don’t either, take a bench scraper or a knife and square off your rectangle to get nice, straight edges. By the time you’re done trimming, you’ll have a rectangle that’s probably smaller than the measurements above. Just put the scraps in a plastic bag and put them in the fridge. When re-chilled, the scraps can be re-rolled to make more rugelach!

* I didn’t write down a “yield” number because your results, as they say, may vary. I got 33 cookies out of my last batch.

The 12 Christmas Cookies series snuck up on me, this year, mainly because the group decided to start now, and – very wisely, I might add – to post one cookie a week instead of one cookie a day.

So, I’m starting off simple, with my favorite chocolate chip cookie in the world. I’ve never made another chocolate chip cookie recipe that could beat it for flavor and texture – chocolaty, chewy, and crispy. It keeps well in an airtight container or plastic storage bag, and freezes well. Although it’s not a fancy schmancy “holiday” cookie, I don’t think any cookie platter would be complete without a really good, rich chocolate chip cookie.

The “Neiman Marcus” Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe started making the rounds of the Internet (such as it was), as an urban legend, about 15 or more years ago, back when the Internet as we all knew it, consisted mostly of e-mail and dancing babies. I’m betting that most of you have never heard the story, having been way too young to remember green screens and DOS, so a quick retelling. The story goes something like this:

A man and his young daughter were eating lunch in a Neiman Marcus restaurant, and ordered their chocolate chip cookies for dessert. They loved the cookies so much, that the man asked their waitress if they could have the recipe. She replied that they could have the recipe, but it would cost them two-fifty. The man thought that $2.50 was pretty reasonable and the waitress gave them the recipe. When he received his Neiman Marcus bill sometime later, he noticed a restaurant charge for $250. Outraged, he called customer service and was told that they could not remove the charge and he was stuck with it. Now apoplectic, the man told them that as revenge, he would e-mail the recipe to all his friends and relatives and urge them to do the same. The End.

This recipe makes an enormous quantity of cookies, so feel free to halve or even quarter the amounts. I quartered it and ended up with 30 cookies. The calculator is your friend.

“Neiman Marcus” Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes approx. 112 cookies)

Ingredients:

2 cups butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
5 cups blended oatmeal *
2 tsp. soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
24 oz. chocolate chips
8 oz. milk chocolate candy bar (grated) *
3 cups chopped nuts (I made these with California Walnuts)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375º F.

Cream the butter and both sugars. On low speed, add eggs and vanilla till completely incorporated.

Add the flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, mixing till combined, then add the chocolate chips, grated milk chocolate, and nuts.

Roll into balls about the size of a ping pong ball and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool on the cookie sheet for several minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely. Or not. A cold glass of milk or hot cup of coffee at this point would be awesome.

Notes:

* To make “blended oatmeal”, measure the amount of oatmeal and run through the food processor or a blender on high, till ground to a fine meal consistency.

* The “original” recipe called for an 8 oz. Hershey Bar. Now, you and I know that Hershey Bars haven’t come in an 8 oz. size in probably 10 years. Also, this time, I didn’t have any Hershey Bars, so I used some Hershey milk chocolate Kisses. In order to grate the chocolate, put it in the freezer for about an hour, then pulse it in your food processor.

Well, of course it’s too early for Christmas, so why wait to make these fabulous cookies? Make ‘em for Halloween or Chanukah, or anytime at all!

I know! We’re in the middle of Chanukah and Christmas Eve is, like 5 minutes away! And you forgot to get Cousin Bluebell anything! What are you going to do?!?

Don’t panic. You can still get Cousin Bluebell a gift certificate from

The Hunger Site
The Breast Cancer Site
The Child Health Site
The Literacy Site
The Rainforest Site or
The Animal Rescue Site

They e-mail the gift certificates to you, and you can cut-n-paste them into your own personal e-mail to the giftee, or your can print them out and present them in a lovely card.

Cousin Bluebell or your little niece Dottie can use the gift certificate at any of these sites’ shopping areas. And there are hundreds and hundreds of things they can get, ranging from jewelry, clothing items, accessories, and even coffee. You know that’s high up on my list! And while they’re shopping, they’ll learn all about these great causes and have a good time doing good.

Happy Holidays, Everyone! Please do stop by Flamingo Fotos for A Flamingo Christmas / Chanukah!

That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the way my house looks right now. The pool table is covered with boxes of decorations, boxes of just-arrived gifts waiting to be wrapped, wrapping paper, and lights.

The dining room table is covered in gifts waiting to be wrapped to go out and the contents of care packages waiting to be boxed and shipped. Mailing deadlines? We don’t need no stinking mailing deadlines!

The tree is in its stand, leaning slightly to the left, in the Florida room (what the rest of you might call the sun porch), still unlit, still unadorned. The menorahs and dreidel lights, too. See the first paragraph re: boxes of decorations.

And through it all, MJ has a new morning pattern. Used to be, I’d get up at 5:30 or 6:00, and he’d stay in bed, snoring away, until about 7:30. A couple of weeks ago, I made him get up at 6:00 twice – only twice! – to go with me to the mechanic (once to drop off the car, the other to pick it up again), and now he’s up at freaking 6:00 a.m. every morning! I set a new pattern for him, he says. Damn! How the hell am I supposed to smuggle in his presents and wrap them, now?!? I’m going to have to drive to work again today (instead of taking the MetroRail) and wrap them in the parking garage in the trunk of the car. And he’s taunting me by having my gifts wrapped and sitting off to the side, waiting for the tree. Pig. And I mean that in the most loving way.

Oh, and P.S. – We’re finally going to have that South Indian dinner to give our friends their wedding present (note the date on that post!)- a year and a half after the fact – this Sunday evening, so all surfaces will have to be cleared by then. Hah! I am so glad it will be dark by the time everyone gets here. I really wish I could get away with candlelight…

No, you’re not seeing double. I’ve pretty much duplicated this post on Flamingo Fotos. Why? Well, mostly because I can. And also because, among the things I’m thankful for, are that MJ and I have a roof over our heads, food on the table, and the ability to provide the same for a kitty or two.

JJ was a shelter kitty. MJ and I went to the southern branch of the county animal shelter to donate an extra piece of cat furniture. While he was filling out the donor paperwork, I went into the “kitten room” – a screen enclosure very thoughtfully located just inside the front door (hee!) – to play with the kittens. As I bent down to pet some of them, a small black striped ball of fur shot vertically into the air and landed on my shoulder, purring wildly. “Look, Honey! A volunteer!” It was, of course, all over after that.

I tell you this story because I’d like you to consider an alternative to some of the traditional places you might do your holiday shopping. Namely, The Animal Rescue Site. Or The Breast Cancer Site. Or The Rainforest Site. Or The Hunger Site. Or The Child Health Site. Or The Literacy Site. If you’ve ever clicked on any of the buttons on my sidebar, you know that you can click every day and – without any cost to you – by clicking you are helping your favorite cause, or all of them. But did you realize that you can shop, too? Serious.

There’s such a variety of things to choose from, ranging from t-shirts to jewelry, house and garden, and on and on. Lots of really cute stuff for kids and teens and adults. And the prices are really reasonable! Look, I know there’s a lot of competition for the few bucks any of us has left, but when you give a gift this holiday season, wouldn’t it be nice to know that your purchase is not just going to make someone smile, it’s not going to cost most of your right arm? And that it will benefit something you believe in?

Like feeding and finding a good home for JJ? C’mon, look into those eyes!