Dear Friends:

I’m excited to be writing to you from Oklahoma City [ok, not really].   There are so many exciting dining options and opportunities out here [if you like a lot of fried fattening foods, otherwise you're S.O.L. for the purposes of this particular postcard.].  Take for instance, the Steak and Catfish Barn.

When I was here last October, I made a trip up to Edmond to visit my friend, Carrie.  As I was driving around Edmond, lo and behold what do I see but this sign for a Steak and Catfish Barn.  BARN.  Where they serve both STEAKS and CATFISH.  I’ve been wanting to visit this place ever since [no, really.  It's all I've talked about].

My first glance into the restaurant lived up to my expectations.  I was so thrilled by this sight that I nearly bounced to my table, which was in the next room – brighter & better lit…

[check out the guy in the overalls! 2 of the patrons were wearing overalls...appallingly, this one actually referred to a person from India as a 'little brown man from injia']

Our server was wonderful and friendly and even helped me with my selections [even if she didn't actually bring me those selections, which she corrected right away]. I have to say, they had the best french fries I’ve ever eaten.  I ate half of Carrie’s.  It was awesome.

As a matter of fact, I even bought a t-shirt because it’s just so spectacular…[a catfish riding a bull...]

I have to admit, my cousin’s wife [who IS Chinese] makes the best Chinese chicken salad. Ever. No question. In spite of having the recipe, I can’t seem to make it like she does.  I think she’s holding out on some secret ingredient.  Some day, I promise to share this crack like salad with you guys…but not just yet.

Lettuce greens of your choosing

arugula [I took some from my garden]

carrots

dried cranberries

slivered almonds

Chicken breast, shredded

Dressing Recipe:

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil [i used canola]
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp vinegar [i used rice wine vinegar but any white vinegar will do]
1/4 cup white sesame seeds, toasted
2 tsp sesame oil

mix together ingredients until combined and sugar is melted. Toss over salad ingredients listed above.

I am the worst when it comes to sticking to a timeline. I find them too restrictive.  So  not surprisingly, here I find myself on Wednesday night, the only night I have available before the January 15th due date for the first bread braid.  There is NO way I was going to flake out on the very first project of the year.

I mixed up the dough on Tuesday evening, understanding that it was going to be a “wet” dough but still concerned that it was really, really wet.  After work on Wednesday, I went straight into my kitchen as soon as I walked through the door, well, because my back door is attached to my kitchen.  But the point here is that I got straight to work.

Once I let it rest and rise, I did my snipparooo.  I examined my work. I couldn’t figure out why my Epi looked so flat.  I look at the picture in the cookbook. Nice and puffy. I looked back at mine. Flat and pankcakey. Hmmmm. I was about to stick it in the oven when I realized that I needed a baking stone.  I mentally searched my brain as to its location. ARGH. Store room. The room that contained boxes and boxes of stuff – and the baking stone underneath ALL the boxes up against the wall.  I got scared and pretended like I didn’t own one.

Hmmm…read the instructions again and realized that there was supposed to be leftover chili powder. Crap.  Well, there goes that.  During my brief reading of the instruction, I saw that the instructions called for a pizza wheel.  A pizza wheel??? What the HECK would I be doing with a pizza wheel??  I mentally visualized my utensil drawer.  Hmmmm…well, ok, theoretically, ANYTHING could be in that thing including a pizza wheel and a tire jack.

[Friends, please note, if I ever tell you that I NEED a utensil, remember this photo and realize that I am lying to you and that my pants are on fire.  Also, if you happen to see my mom, please don't tell her that I actually posted up a photo of my utensil drawer for all the world to see.  If she were dead, she'd be turning in her grave.  Thankfully, she's still alive and quite able to yell at me for shaming her and all the generations of women who have gone before her.]

Sadly, my crackers came out more like the bread and my bread had the consistency of the crackers.  Quite unfortunate but it most definitely tasted wonderful! Better luck next time [hey, who knows...perhaps I'll read the instructions THOROUGHLY first.  naaaahhhh]

My friend, whom we’ll call “Bron”, was dating this girl, whom we’ll call “Bemily”, who I wasn’t totally crazy about.  However, the one thing she could do well was BAKE.  Amazing bites of deliciousness.  That’s what I remember most about her [other than the fact that I didn't care for her very much].

This pear square recipe had to be one of her best and I was able to get it before they broke up [no fault of mine, I assure you]. I love preparing this because it’s easy to do and has a huge impact on the taste scale.  It’s a great potluck dessert!

Crust:

1 cup unsalted butter

1 1/3 cup nuts [i use pecans or almonds]

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

Middle Layer:

2 [8 ounce] bricks of Cream Cheese

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Topping:

1 large can pears, drained and sliced

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp sugar

Instructions:

1. Prepare crust: Soften butter and mix with flour and nuts. Press into a 9 x 13 pan, baking at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

2. Cream together cream cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Mix until smooth. Pour onto cooled crust.

3. Cut pears over cream cheese mixture, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

4. Bake at 350 for 25 – 35 minutes until edges are gold brown. Cool and refrigerate.

It was so wonderful having my cousins all under one roof for New Years Day again.  It had been 20 years since we were all together under one roof for the New Year. The only other times we’re all together is either for funerals or weddings, so this was such a joy to just hang out and catch up.  It was with a lot of anticipation that my mother & I worked for several days just to get the menu done & ready for the masses that would flow through the day/evening.

We had so much food at the party, I didn’t even realize that my stomach had that much room in there to down it all.   My cousin, Kathy, makes the BEST CHINESE CHICKEN SALAD EVER.  I mean EVER. I had the recipe but it just never tasted like hers.  Not to worry, I will post up this recipe for you guys but I’m sure that there is just some element missing from this recipe.

The one thing that probably stood out the most at the party was the Bacon Maple Caramel Pecan Bars a la SweetSavoryLife that I made for this party.  I decided to experiment a bit by using the caramel recipe from La Fuji Mama [adjust to fit products that I actually had on hand] along with the crust from a Pear Square recipe that I had.  It made for a dense chewy wonderful bit of deliciousness.  My cousins spent some time suspiciously hovering around the dessert table before one of them would actually take a chance on it…

This caramel was the one thing that was no longer left by the end of the evening [of course, I was hiding Tartelette's Dark Chocolate Truffles in a corner so I could take some home].

adapted from La Fuji Mama and Savory Sweet Life

2 cups granulated sugar
8 ounces unsalted butter
1 cup Rice Syrup

1/2 cup Maple syrup
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 package bacon, brown to a crisp

3 cups pecans

1. Prepare tart crust recipe [below] in a 9 x 13 pan

2. Place the granulated sugar, butter, rice syrup, maple syrup and heavy cream in a heavy saucepan (minimum size of 3 quarts)  and cook over high heat while stirring until the mixture reaches 210 degrees Fahrenheit.

3. Reduce the heat to medium and continue cooking and stirring constantly until the mixture reaches 245 degrees Fahrenheit (firm ball stage).

4. Remove the pan from the heat and add the vanilla, pecans and bacon and stir quickly.  Pour the caramel into the buttered 9×13-inch pan and set aside to cool.

Pecan Tart Crust

1 cup unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/3 cup pecans [chopped]

Soften butter and mix with flour and nuts.  Pres down in a 9 x 13 pan. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. [Be careful not to overbake this - it'll make it very difficult to remove the bars from the pan.]

I used to work with a woman who was a wonderful cook.  I stole every recipe I could wrest from her grasp.  I even tracked her down about 5 years after I stopped working with her just so that I could get more recipes from her.  Unfortunately, I’ve lost contact with Myra over the years but there are a few recipes that I still hadn’t tried [and it's been almost 10 years since I last stalked her].

Whenever the weather starts to turn nippy in LA [that would be 68 degrees or below] I start craving a hot bowl of Chili over rice.  I like the recipe I’ve been using for years [ground beef, tomatoes, onions, beans] but the recipe for thick chunks of chuck steak chili was crying my name.  Luckily, I still had this recipe from Myra that I never tried.

After doing some detective work, I figured out that this recipe was from Craig Claiborne, food editor at the New York Times [published in Family Circle June 1975].  I received a huge crockpot for Christmas so I really wanted to give it a try.  I wanted the meat to fall apart tender. It was wonderful, juicy, and had a great spiciness to it…just comforting enough to ward off the cold [served over a bed of rice, of course].

adapted from Real Texas Chili

3 pounds boneless chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 cloves garlic, chopped

4 to 6 tablespoons chili powder

2 teaspoons ground cumin

3 tablespoons flour

1 tablespoon leaf oregano

2 cans [13 3/4 ounces each] beef broth

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Optional:

1 can [15 ounces] pinto beans

1 cup airy sour cream

1 lime, cut into wedges

1. Heat oil in a 4 quart pot or heavy bottom pan over medium heat.

2. Add beef, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon until meat changes color but does not brown.

3. Lower heat, stir in garlic.

4. Combine chili powder, cumin, and flour. Sprinkle meat with chili mixture, stirring until meat is evenly coated. Crumble oregano over meat.

5. Place beef mixture into crockpot, set on low

6. Add 1 1/2 cans of the broth and stir until liquid is well- blended.  Add salt and pepper [and beans if desired].

7. Cook on low until meat is fork tender [took me about 6 hours]

8. Cool thoroughly, cover and refrigerate overnight to ripen flavor.

Every year from the time I was born [and before, since I'm the youngest grandchild], my first [and sometimes second] cousins would come together and celebrate the New Year’s Japanese style with an Osechi Ryori.  When my grandmother was still alive, she, my mom, and my aunts would cook for days before hand to prepare the bountiful meal, each dish symbolic of something.

Over the past 10 years or so, my brother has been hosting our New Year’s day party, inviting his in-laws, friends, and more recently, our clan of cousins.  My poor mom is still in charge of preparing the Japanese Osechi for the legion of people who attend the party.  I decided that it was time for me to step up and act like an adult [ie, no New Year's Eve partying for me] and help my arthritic mom out with the preparations.

I will be leaving my home at 5:30am on the 31st to head down to the LA Fish Company to pick up all of our sashimi and seafood with my brother & dad.  I get a little overwhelmed  and unfocused whenever I’m down there. The temptation to pick up a pound of masago or 10 pounds of tasty oysters is sometimes too much for me to bear.  Luckily, my brother giving me the evil looks of death really puts an end to my unrealistic hopes and dreams.

Unfortunately, because I’ve been facebooking so many of the things I’ve been making over the past several months, I’ve gotten myself into a situation where I promised many baked goods to appear at the New Year’s Party.  For the first time at our New Year’s party, I will be making a dessert table filled with goodies like SavorySweetLife Bacon Caramel Pecan Bars, Tartelette’s Dark Truffles, La Fuji Mama’s Caramels, The Pioneer Woman’s no knead dinner rolls [my nephew's request], my own LAUSD Coffee Cake, Meyer Lemon Mini Cupcakes, and whatever else my teeeny little brain can bake up on Wednesday.

But one thing that I have to remember is that it’s not all about the food [and booze, gotta toast in the New Year's with Sake!] but about my [extended] family and friends.  This year, we’re expecting all of my family members, ALL of my cousins and their kids, both of my brother’s-in-law’s families, friends of family, former high school friends, etc etc.  I feel so incredibly grateful for the abundance that we get to share!

Happy New Year’s from my family to yours, wishing you a very healthy, prosperous, and blessed 2010!

or as my people say it:

“Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu.  Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu!”
[Happy New Year.  I hope to rely upon you this year as well!]