chicken salad for breakfast
November 23, 2015

Well, excepting the snow, it was my kind of weekend. We got a major storm of heavy, wet snow on Friday night and Saturday morning. I'm glad we got our running about done, for the most part, on Friday. I came home from work, made shared grilled cheese sandwiches and a short nap with the B, then ran over to the salon for my 2:30 hair appointment.

Once I got home from that, I indulged in a little quality time with my hobby, cleaning fountain pens for an hour or so. Did a load of wash, and met Spouse out front when he got home from work so we could run to Costco and get it out of the way. Since we'd had a big dinner the evening before (I made pressure cooker pot-roast! ME!), and were kind of beat, we just picked up a tub of their chicken salad and a loaf of Italian bread for supper--but you get so much of that stuff, it's a real commitment to buy some. Two and a half pounds is a LOT of chicken salad--I've had it for dinner on Friday, lunch on Saturday and Sunday--and breakfast AND lunch on Monday!

Spouse let me sleep in on Saturday--I was a little dismayed that I didn't wake up until eight! I stuck my nose out the front door and snapped a quick pick of the snow, and sent it to my dad in AZ. He replied "can't help you--sold my shovel!"

Since it was the rare luxury of a snow day on a Saturday, Spouse made sausage and French toast with maple syrup for breakfast. He used the good Italian bread we'd gotten at Costco, and it was delicious, as usual. After breakfast, I cleaned up the mess and grabbed a shower before getting started on Operation Fruitcake. Spouse called up Auntie for their annual Fruitcake Day chat, while I was busy chopping and measuring in the kitchen.

It is a LOT of work making fruitcakes, but I enjoy it SO much. And there is nothing like bustling about the kitchen on a cold and snowy day, full of Pain Perdu and well-satisfied. chopping up nuts & fruits, grinding spices, and filling the air with the smell of ginger, nutmeg, and vanilla.

I have learned from experience that this is a project best taken in stages. Stage one, prep, means getting filling and dry ingredients chopped, divided, weighed out, sifted, etc. And I do that for both cakes at once; saves time and trouble. Once I have containers all over the kitchen, holding carefully measured piles of various ingredients, I take a few minutes to clean up, then I take a few more to sit down and catch my breath.

Part two starts lighting the oven, then on to the major fiddly bit: lining the pans with parchment. Measure, cut, measure, trim, (repeat two or three times) and then grease the pan, stick the paper in, and grease the paper. Twice. We're making two cakes, remember.

After that, I usually need to sit down again. Some years I get lucky, and Spouse does the pans for me. But this year, he had snow removal to deal with, so I gave him a pass.

Part three: time to bake! Get "Bertha" (the mixer) out and set up, and start on cake number one: creamed the butter, sugar, and wet ingredients together while combining & mixing together the candied fruit, nuts, and raisins. Everything actually came together pretty fast at this point, since I already had most of the ingredients ready to go in. Once the first cake was mixed, panned, decorated with glace fruits and pecan halves, and tucking 300-degree oven, I immediately started all over again on cake number two. Which followed the first into the oven a mere 15 minutes later. They have a long bake time--nearly an hour and a half--so I had plenty of time to get all the rest of the mess cleaned up. While they were in the oven, I relaxed a bit, re-assembled the six pens I'd washed the day before, and read for a while. I was dying for a nap, despite having slept till eight.

But--Part four!: Once the first cake is done baking, it has to rest for 30 minutes before you take it out of the pan and peel off the parchment--and you have to do it all again at a fifteen minute offset, for cake 2. Once both were out of theirt pans to finish cooling, and the pans were washed, THEN I took a nice nap. Spouse and the B were way ahead of me, of course.

I got up at B's feeding time, got him pilled, fed, and pottied, and started dinner. After a day's worth of baking, we figured on an easy, but substantial, dinner. I took the other half of the pasta bake out of the freezer to thaw earlier in the day, so I poured some more sauce over it, and popped it into the oven to heat through. I threw together a tossed salad to go with, and Spouse took a couple of pieces of that good Italian bread and toasted it up with garlic butter and herbs. Nice dinner, disposable casserole dish, easy cleanup, and by the time we were done with the dishes, it was time for...

Part five!: soak cheesecloth in brandy, wrap loaves in cheesecloth, wrap loaves in saran wrap, and--something new this year--vacuum seal them with the Foodsaver. Since we decided to do it this way, I gave them an extra good soak--it's the only one they are going to get! Since they are vac-sealed, I won't be re-sprinkling them with a brandy shower again before they ship. In fact, they are going to ship as-is...cheesecloth and all. I've no intention of unsealing them before they leave. (The vacuum should help the booze get into the cakes really well, too.)

Thus ended fruitcake day 2015; we had them tucked into their little boozy coccons by 7:00 pm. Another victory!

I still have enough fruit & nuts to do one more smaller cake, so I think this year will be the year I make one for me. A dark one, naturally. I'd do another for P, if it wasn't for the fact that he and his brother aren't talking again. And I considered doing one for W&T, since T hints about it every year. But maybe I'll just split one with them--a whole fruitcake is too much for one person, anyway. If I cut it up and take them a plate of slices, they would probably be okay with it. Mine is going to be quite gingery and bourbon-soaked, though! If I can do a customized fruitcake for Auntie, or BIL, I can certainly do one for me!