In winter, everything is too short. It’s dark when you wake and when you return from work. Every day feels over as soon as it’s begun, but there are always myriad more things to do! Presents to buy, parties to plan or attend, and travels to prepare for.

Don’t you just want to take a break?

A Grown-up Kid’s Party

Amongst the obligatory professional and purely social holiday parties, carve out some time to really hang out with your good friends this holiday season. Not all of them, and not the balanced-for-maximally-interesting-conversation group you would invite to a holiday party. Just your four or five closest friends.

I’m going to break my usually dinner party riff for once and actually recommend that you do a weekend brunch or lunch. Sunday at ten (or two . . . It depends what your friends are like ) are ideal for relaxing and catching up. Call or email your crew and pick out a mutually beneficial time on a weekend before people start heading home for the holidays.

Make a date for a cookie swap.

Say what?

Yes. That most housewifely and church group-esque of traditions, the cookie swap.

It’s quaint. It’s extremely homey. But who doesn’t love cookies?

The best part is that if it is your cookie swap, you set the rules. Not a baker? Have people bring their in treats from their favorite bakeries. Prefer to bake with friends? Pick up a bunch of flour and sugar, have your friends bring recipes and special ingredients and bake them together. Not the cookie type? Have people bring cupcakes!

This holiday season, I have received invitations to countless cookie swaps. Annual meetings have been co-opted into cookie swaps. Book and can drives have added a cookie swap component. Clearly, people all over are catching on that the holidays are just more fun when you give each other cookies.

Sharing is Caring

Sadly trite, but totally true. And sharing is even better when it is (a) food and (b) homemade – or made with love, as most mothers would say.

Really though, the best part of a cookie – or cupcake, brownie, or truffle – swap is the new flavors. You can make one batch of your signature lemon-lavender shortbread cookies and get to enjoy not only those but also Italian snowflakes, gingerbread men, and frosted sugar cookie stars.

So go on, pick a treat and some friends and let the holiday sugar rush begin!

Enter the Advent Calendar Giveaway

What’s your favorite holiday cookie? Tell us in the comments below to enter to win a copy of the Mrs. Fields Cookie Cookbook.

Nothing Beats Real Gingerbread

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I have been craving the taste of real, honest-to-goodness gingerbread cookies this holiday season.

Around nine o’clock most evenings, I whine at my husband enough that he lets me drag him into town to Pete’s or Starbucks or the grocery store in search of suitable specimens. Every gingerbread run has ended in disappointment. Either they are out, the cookies are too tough to chew, or they only have “gingerbread loaf.” (WTF is that Starbucks?? Seriously. It doesn’t even taste like gingerbread. Stick to your seasonal lattes.)

The only passable — actually it was quite delicious, but it was also the only edible one I’ve found — gingerbread I have experienced this holiday season was made by a hotel. For a large catered dinner. For a bunch of foreign computer scientists! And I only got only baby-sized piece. Sigh . . .

Gingerbread is Coming to Town

But now, thanks to my best friend (or rather, her recipe collecting mother) gingerbread time has arrived. Tomorrow night, my house will be filled with deliciousness as I prepare for my holiday party and accompanying gingerbread decorating contest.

Be warned: the recipe is a bit slippery. Not physically, but more metaphorically. My friend has made it the same day, with the same measurements and ingredients, and had it turn out quite differently. And the icing is made to harden, which is great for keeping your gingerbread house together, but not great for making in advance. So make a little batch right before you get started, and make more as needed.

GingerBread House by Carrie Stephens from Flickr

Gingerbread Recipe

Based on a Recipe from The Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

• 3-½ cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp ground cloves
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup butter
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup dark molasses
• ¼ cup water

Method

1. Sift dry ingredients together.
2. Cream butter, sugar and dark molasses.
3. Add dry ingredients and water alternately into creamed mixture to form a stiff dough.
4. Roll out dough to ~ ¼ inch thickness and cut shapes.  You can roll directly onto cookie sheet.
5. Gather scraps and repeat.
6. Bake at 350°F for ~8-12 minutes – depends on size of cookies or gingerbread house sections.
7. Let cool.

Note:  don’t try to make a double batch – it is a very stiff dough, hard to work in larger volume.

Icing Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 egg white
• approximately 1-½ cups confectioners sugar.

Method

1. Beat egg white in mixer until frothy;  add sugar gradually, continuing to beat until glossy white and creamy.

Note: Use icing immediately – it hardens with exposure to air. Other kinds of icing can be used for cookies – this icing works to hold a house together as it hardens over time.

What is gingerbread?

Gingerbread first appeared in Europe in 992! Like most good things in the dark ages, the delicious tradition was preserved by monks, who handed down the recipe and method over the years.

Ginger — a new flavor from the Far East — had important health benefits. But gingerbread may have carried on over those years for a more interesting reason. Ginger kept the bread fresh longer. Good to know when you are trying to figure out what to do with leftovers!

In many place in Europe, they are called witches houses because of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. This story was the impetus for turning gingerbread from a tummy soothing biscuit into the colorful candy-coated houses we know and love today.

The Plan

Get everyone psyched about the contest in your holiday party invite. Use an evite with a gingerbread design and explain the idea. At the party, everyone gets a block of “land” and “building materials” to create their own edible architectural masterpiece. Once everyone has made their house, arrange them around the room or on the dining table and hold a secret ballet. The winner can take home the extra candy!

Each of your guests should bring a bag or two of candy — nothing special, just jellies, candy canes, or non-pareils. (You can ask people to RSVP with what type of candy they are bringing if you are worried about balance.)

To make things really easy on yourself, you can just provide graham crackers to make the houses. But if you are feeling ambitious, by all means, make real gingerbread! There are many kits available and I’ll post by best friend’s gingerbread recipe later this week if you want to make your houses from scratch.

Your engineer friend may have a hidden talent for decoration even he isn’t aware of, while someone else’s daughter may be a clear structural engineer in the making with her gingerbread mansion!

The Menu

Dry finger foods are ideal for a gingerbread making party. You don’t want to serve foods that will make a mess on guests workspace of get reside on their hands.

Honor gingerbread’s French origins with a simple charcuterie plate. You can get everything pre-made, making for a super simple soiree on your part.

You’ll need:

• baguettes (one per three people)
• pate (duck with port is divine, pate de campagne is hearty)
• sliced spicy sausage (chorizo or soppresata)
• thinly sliced cured meat (prosciutto, culatello or mortadella)
• three cheeses (one hard, one brie or blue, one soft goat)
• whole grain mustard
• fig or apricot preserves
• olives
• cornichons (tiny french gherkin pickles)

The Prep

Prepare your gingerbread house building area. Each guest will need a square or rectangle of cardboard covered with aluminum foil as the base of their house and a knife for frosting. Set out bowls for the candy your guests are bringing.

On another table, arrange the nibbles and drinks with little plates and party napkins. You can pre-slice the baguettes or set them out with a cutting board and bread knife. Arrange the pate, sliced meats, and cheeses on another cutting board and spoon the mustard, preserves, olives, and pickles into little bowls.

Set out some red wine with the food, anything from this year’s Beaujolais to a light Cotes de Rhone to a vintage Bordeaux. Keep some port in reserve to have with dessert (gingerbread cookies — mais oui!), for a perfect time-honored seasonal pairing.

I’ll be holding a gingerbread contest at my holiday party this year. If you have any tips to add, I’d love to hear them below.

Enjoy!

On a scale way too grand for a fourteen or fifteen year old, I would spend weeks planning my fete. I’d corral gifts for every friend that was set to attend and spend all day cooking. To me, it was a nice way to give all of my friends their presents in one fell swoop.

Grown-up Holiday Party Guests

Back in those days, I would invite my socially homogeneous group of fifteen or twenty close friends to my holiday party. Or really any party.

But as an adult — or grown-up, if you will — party, homogeneity is exactly what you don’t want. A stand-up, hors d’oeuvres-driven party presupposes mingling. And mingling, according to Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster, is to bring together different elements without a fundamental loss of identity.

Same group identity? No mingling.

Mix it Up

So now, at my annual holiday party, I bring together people from all different areas of my life.

Thankfully I travel in diverse circles. One year, we had a tango performance followed by an impromptu salsa class from one of Boston’s best and kindest teachers. People traded obscure French lounge music on their laptops in one room while some Asian med students enjoyed their first encounter with mulled wine too much in another.

When you bring together diverse groups of people, interesting things are bound to happen. And you never know what connections will be made.

Compiling the Guest List

For a good cocktail party, you need to reach to the edges of your address book — of Google contacts list, as most people use these days — and invite co-workers, old friends, your favorite barista, your best friends’s boyfriend’s cute buddies, and your ex’s friends that you wish you had kept in better touch with.

If you think that you don’t know people from different groups or different backgrounds, ask your friends to help with the guest list. That’s a surefire way to bring in some new characters.

A variety of backgrounds, experiences, and potential conversation topics will make your party sparkle.

If you haven’t heard, we are doing something special here at 30 Minute Dinner Party headquarters this month to share some holiday cheer with our readers . . . a whole month of gift giveaways!

Prizes include cookbooks from Julia Child, Mrs. Field’s cookies, and others; cookware; courses; homemade treats and more!

How to Enter

Okay folks, this is an easy one. Even year, my parents ask me what I want for Christmas, and I draw a blank. This year, this situation has been worsened by the fact that I just got married in October and our house disappeared under a mountain of Crate and Barrel boxes.

So, help me out here. What foodie gift would you like this holiday season?

Just add a comment below with a food-related gift you would like this year, and you’re entered! Entries for the first gift accepted till 1pm PST December 2nd.

You can review the giveaway rules here if you have any questions.

When I worked in an office, I liked to share these treats with my co-workers. But now that I work at home, I’m sharing the holiday cheer with you!

The 30 Minute Dinner Party Advent Calendar

It’s not religious. But it is delicious.

Do you like surprise treats?

Great! Then visit me here, starting tomorrow, to sign up to receive a gift from the 30 Minute Dinner Party Advent Calendar.

The Rules

• Each entry lasts all month. If you enter once, your name goes into every daily drawing.*
• You can gain extra entries by doing the activity of the day — leaving a comment, filling out a survey, or answering a trivia question. Just look for the foodie advent calendar graphic.
• You can also gain extra entries by tweeting about the giveaways, posting about them on Facebook, or mentioning them on your blog. Just drop me a line to let me know you’ve done so and I’ll take care of it.
• Prizes are drawn by random number generator unless otherwise noted.

The Prizes

I almost forget to tell you about the prizes!

Although, it’s nice enough to get something free, does it really matter what it is is? Yeah, right. You want to know what you’re signing up for.

Here’s a small peek at what I’ve got lined up for you:

• Crate and Barrel Gift Card
• vintage Julia Child cookbook
• Mrs. Fields cookie cookbook
• homemade lavender lemon shortbread cookies
• Bon Appetit subscription
• silver coated sweets from India (shuttled back by yours truly)
• preview copy of my new e-book
• and more cookbooks, cookware and treats!

I can’t wait to start sending out** holiday gifts to you readers! Join me back here tomorrow for the first opportunity to enter.

Or, tweet or post this link on Facebook and get a free entry right off the bat!

I’m not saying that you can cook a whole turkey. But if you are looking for a quick and easy Thanksgiving, I bet you aren’t the cook-a-whole-turkey type.

Traditional? Sure!

A 30 Minute Thanksgiving is based on being a bit nontraditional, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to deprive you of your turkey! This bacon-wrapped, roast turkey ballotine is lovely enough to impress a crowd and easy enough that you can look good doing it.

You can round out the whole meal with a vegetarian main dish (Cheddar Butternut Squash Bread Pudding) as an all purpose side and this awesome pumpkin pie from 101 cookbooks.

Or . . . Inventive!

That’s about as simple as it gets, but you can get the full play-by-play on two multi-course 30 minute Thanksgiving dinners here. Or see all of the adventures of my Thanksgiving test kitchen here.

And stay tuned for a 30 minute Indian Thanksgiving menu and cooking plan!

By the way . . . I hate that name. Can you help me come up with something better? Every time I type “I-N-D-I-A-N T-H-A-N-K-S-G-I-V-I-N-G,” I feel like I am making some horribly culturally insensitive reference to what a Native Americans eat or do on Thanksgiving.

I can even throw in a nifty prize from my swag pile to the person with the best suggestion.

The Goal

I have been doing quite a bit of research, brainstorming, and wild imagining for this Thanksgiving. But not so much in the testing area. I have been really focused on creating something original and playing with flavors of the different styles of cooking I have learned.

But it is time to get some real world feedback, so I have invited some unsuspecting victims over to be my guinea pigs.

As always, I have devised more dishes than I actually need, so if something fails miserably, I can quickly and easily sub it out with something more palatable.

The Plan

It is a week night. And my cooking adventures have a way of stressing my husband out (probably should have figured that out . . . um . . . before we got married, right ). So, I am not undertaking any of my more interesting projects today, like pumpkin kulfi ice cream pie or fall vegetable bhaji with sweet potato pau.

Nevertheless, I have tried to hit the bases on as many of the traditional areas of Thanksgiving cooking as I can. Here is the list again (from my planning post)

• turkey √
• potatoes √
• stuffing √ (sort of . . . I think rice counts)
• sweet potatoes √
• cranberries √
• vegetables √
• rolls √ (sort of . . . I am making a type of individually sized bread product)
• pie √
• drinks √

The Menu

One unexpected snafu with making an Indian Thanksgiving is that many Indians are vegetarians. Thus turkey presents a bit of a problem.

Our group of friends is about half and half or less depending on the night. If you are playing along at home and want to cook a scaled down version of this menu for folks at home, you can leave out the lentil dish.

But for those dear friends that are coming over tonight, please note that I am making a vegetarian main as well.

• Turkey Korma with Ginger and Cinnamon
• Fragrant Rice
• Garam Masala Mashed Potatoes (or Subzi)
• Sweet Potatoes in Sweetened Coconut Milk
• Lentil and Green Bean Casserole
• Cranberry Stuffed Parathas
• Masala Spiced Gluwein

And the real kicker . . .

• Pistachio Crusted Coconut Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Saffron Cream
  (based on this luscious hazelnut version from 101 Cookbooks)

A Few Notes

1. I’d love to say that I will make this in 30 minutes, but parathas are time consuming beasts. Once I have demoed a few dishes, I will put together a 30 minute Indian Thanksgiving for you.

This turkey dish should only take 20 minutes, so I think I’m off to a good start on that.

2. I think that I failed to mention a few of these dishes to my husband, so don’t tell him about the menu yet. Thanks!

3. A few of these recipes are from Madhur Jaffrey’s new cookbook At Home with Madhur Jaffrey, which I highly, highly, highly recommend. But you can email me and I will send you the above recipes if you would like them.

I mean, I do . . . but my husband likes to remind me that is large to most people. On the Epicurious site poll for the past several weeks, they asked how many people people you plan to cook for this thanksgiving. Even I found the guest ranges on their survey a bit unsettling.

A Super-Sized Holiday

Thanksgiving is an exception to many standards of appropriate size. Take turkey.

Does any family ever make a whole turkey and actually finish it on Thanksgiving evening? Maybe there are some regular super-sized-fast-food-meal-eaters out there who can, but even my aunt with her army of five growing boys (yes, I am counting my uncle in there ) doesn’t usually polish off the entire turkey.

The whole meal is at a euphemistic scale. One could say (please don’t throw rotten fruit), that in this day and age, the excess of dishes and portion sizes that mark this holiday is actually quite American.

What do you think? Are you feeding half the neighborhood? Or making eight dishes for five people?

Instead of trying to encapsulate American Thanksgiving essentials into one meal, my aim is to create a new type of cuisine: Indian Thanksgiving food.

Why?

I am not going for some new age-y melding of cultures. It is as simple as: I want Thanksgiving foods on Thanksgiving day . . . that aren’t a pain in the a$$ or too foreign to our friends and family.

But do I really want fusion? This is the question.

I could choose Indian dishes that have the traditional Thanksgiving items (turkey, sweet potatoes, etc.) as the main ingredients. Turkey curries and sweet potato dishes are not hard to find, but they are, inherently, Indian dishes. I’m just not sure if that will feel like Thanksgiving to me or just be like any other week of fall produce-centric Indian food.

Or: as a fellow foodie suggested at a Bay Area food blogger event, I could just “add some curry powder” to Thanksgiving dishes.

I don’t think I’ve come across a recipe for curry-flavored stuffing, and while I could wing it, the issue would be the same. Whether American Thanksgiving food with some Indian spices thrown in for good measure or Indian dishes that happen to involve traditional Thanksgiving ingredients, both ideas center around one cuisine without really involving or incorporating both.

Though I use cringe at the term “fusion,” especially where Indian food is concerned, it’s just what the doctor ordered this year. Maybe I have been eating too much Indian Chinese food of late–a real cuisine in and of itself, quite different from both its progenitors–or perhaps I was just intrigued by At Vermilion, a Latin-Indian tapas restaurant in New York, but I believe this can be done.

Covering My Bases

As when I began my quest last fall, I have been poking around to see what are the essential elements of Thanksgiving. I could honestly spend–and certainly have over the last couple years–hours researching and dissecting these Thanksgiving traditions. Are mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes an interchangeable starch component or separate parts of the meal serving diverse purposes? The world may never know. But for the purposes of this year’s challenge, I have broken the traditional American Thanksgiving into the following categories:

• turkey
• potatoes
• stuffing
• sweet potatoes
• cranberries
• vegetables
• rolls
• pie
• drinks

While I have thrown out a few ideas that are too likely to flop (cranberry parathas, curry-flavored stuffing, and vindaloo duck) there are a few far-fetched things I am itching to try out: pumpkin kulfi ice cream pie, fall vegetable bhaji with sweet potato pau, and coriander cranberry chutney.

My menu is definitely still in the early planning stages, and with little time remaining till Thanksgiving we are getting into dinner party gear to invite some new guinea pigs — I mean — friends over.

So look for some crazy new menus as I watch this infant cuisine develop into its own rich new tradition. Who knows–maybe cranberry parathas with garam masala spiced wine will become our favorite holiday party appetizer!

As always here at the 30 Minute Dinner Party the focus remains on fast easy dishes. While that adds another layer of difficulty to my planning, I hope it makes it easier for you to try out some of these new dishes in your own home.