Christmas and New Years

This past summer I decided to try my hand at making a couple of liqueurs and had varied success with those projects, but after some time steeping, filtering, bottling, and a little more aging I ended up with two liqueurs that I bottled up and gave away as gifts this year. One was nocino and the other one I called Cherry Almond (slightly sweetened sour cherry and sour cherry pit flavored), which tasted a little too much like almond extract for my taste. Nocino showed up on a few blogs over the past year (notably Simply Recipes).

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Holiday Drinks

I grew up drinking what my grandmother called wassail every Christmas. It was a combination of cranberry and apples juices with sugar, cloves, and cinnamon. After moving away during college and deciding to stay put I’ve started making it for myself. Unfortunately, most cranberry juice has high fructose corn syrup in the ingredient list and I’ve been cutting that out of my diet. Last year I had a leftover bag of fresh cranberries that I couldn’t decide what to do with, so I ended up tossing them in a pot with some apple juice, cinnamon, and cloves and cooking it down. After pressing it through a sieve I ended up with a new version of my grandmother’s drink that starting this year is replacing the old recipe. I like the extra thickness the cranberry pulp adds to this hot drink. [...]

Creamy Tomato Soup

As the cold weather settles into Iowa, my cooking turns more to hearty soups and stews. One of my favorite soups is tomato basil bisque, but until recently I had never made it from scratch. Then about a month ago I ended up with about a pound of tomatoes on the verge of going bad – I cubed them and threw them in a pot with some salt, garlic, and pepper, and cooked it all down. After some pureeing, some sieving, and the addition of some cream and basil I sat down to my first batch of homemade tomato basil bisque. [...]