Happy Purim! And a Hamantaschen recipe!

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Happy Purim! 
This year the Jewish holiday of Purim (see below for links to the history of Purim and how to celebrate it) was Feb. 9 -10, and I decided that, for the first time, I would make Hamantaschen! (Or Hamentaschen, depending on how you choose to spell it!) I think that the last time I had Hamentaschen ("Hamen's Pockets" in Yiddish; they're called "Oznei Haman" אוזני המן in Hebrew, meaning "Haman's ears"- read the story of Purim below to understand why...) on Purim, they were in a "Mishloach Manot"- a traditional foodie gift parcel I was given when I was in the IDF... They were a fun holiday treat, but they weren't terribly good: heavy cookie-dough, with very little nondescript filling, they weren't exactly a delicacy... These, while not Pinterest-Gorgeous, were VERY good- a buttery, thin, and flaky dough, with lots of tasty filling! They are also fast and easy to make! Hamantaschen are are delicious with a cup of coffee, a glass of milk, or a glass of wine! Google and you will find a thousand Hamentaschen recipes out there; having never made them before I used Jamie Geller's "classic" Hamantaschen recipe, (she has at least 10 on her website), because her recipes always work! :-) I did half of them with the traditional poppy seed (Mohn) filling in the recipe, and half with Bonne Maman Four-Fruit Jam: https://jamiegeller.com/…/hamantaschen-with-easy-poppy-see…/ Chef Dan gave them his seal of approval and we ate them all up before Purim had ended! :-)
These Hamantaschen are really delicious little cookies, and can be made any time, not just for Purim!
And now, on to the Hamentaschen Chronicles!
NOTE: if you make this recipe there are several things not mentioned in the recipe which I put in bold below: soften the butter, flour the board and the rolling pin... do not overfill them, or they will fall apart or leak while baking... and grease the cookie sheet you bake them on!
As you will see in the recipe, you mix the sifted flour and and ground almonds (you can make ground almonds by putting sliced almonds in a food processor, and processing them until they are ground) in a bowl. Then you beat the softened butter with the confectioners's and granulated sugar in another bowl. You add the eggs, and then the flour and almond mixture, baking powder, and salt. You mix it into a dough, and wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. Now you make the poppy seed filling: Cook the orange juice, sugar, and poppy seeds for 15 minutes, add the honey and lemon zest, and cook for another 5 minutes. Let it cool- it will thicken. If you are using jam or another filling (there are many possibilities- "Google" Hamantaschen Recipe!) get it ready. Grease a cookie sheet. Preheat the oven to 375 F degrees. Take the dough out of the refrigerator, flour your board and rolling pin, (you will have to do this several times, as the dough will stick to the table and pin otherwise), and roll the dough out very thinly. Cut 3" diameter circles with a cookie cutter or a drinking glass as shown in my photo. Put about 1/2 a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle, as in my photo. Do not overfill them, or they will fall apart or leak while baking!! Fold the dough up on three sides as in my photo into a triangle as in my photo, and pinch the edges closed. Place the Hamantaschen on the greased cookie sheet and bake them for about 10 minutes in the 375 F degree oven. They will be pale golden; do NOT over bake them!

How to make Hamentaschen...

How to fill Hamentaschen...

On the cookie sheet...

Hamentachen, ready to eat! 

For more delish Hamantaschen recipes- savory and sweet!- see Jamie Geller's Ultimate Hamataschen Recipe Collection :  https://jamiegeller.com/holidays/ultimate-hamataschen-collection-41-recipes/

The carved, wooden Megillah Esther in the top photo- an Esther Scroll with the story of Purim hand-written on parchment- is the only piece of Judaica I have from my family, besides my father's Bar Mitzvah Talit & prayer books. Everything else was either lost or stolen; I have no idea. My uncle David, my mother's brother, gave me this Megillah many years ago, telling me that he was giving it to me as I was the only one in the family who would care about it. Due to intermarriage, I am the last Jew on both sides of my family...  

For lots of great information on the holiday of Purim and how to celebrate it, check out Chabad: https://www.chabad.org/.../default_cdo/jewish/Purim.htm

Here is the "condensed" version of Purim, the Megillah Esther, or Esther Scroll:  https://www.chabad.org/holidays/purim/article_cdo/aid/3602036/jewish/What-Is-the-Book-of-Esther-About.htm 

What dishes do you make for Purim, and how do you celebrate? Let me know in the comments! 
Hag Samay'ach- Happy Holidays!

EASY Puff Pastry Apple Roses for Rosh Hashanna!

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This post is for everyone who thinks they can't make Puff Pastry Apple Roses- If I can do it - and I am not known as "Ms. CraftFail 1959" for nothing- you can do it! I am NOT "crafty", and most of the things I have tried to make based on Pinterest pins and Video Tutorials have turned into Epic #PinterestFail messes. But this one actually worked- and on the first try, too! Puff Pastry Apple Roses seem to be this year's "Hot Desert" for Rosh Hashanna (Jewish New Year), when it's traditional to eat apples and honey to usher in a sweet new year, and there are at least a dozen recipes, tutorials, and videos on the web showing how to make them, but most are professionally photographed, and, while gorgeous to look at, incredibly intimidating in their perfection! This recipe, on the To Simply Inspire blog, sounded easy and actually do-able: https://www.tosimplyinspire.com/apple-rose-puffed-pastries.html#comment-426815  and it is where I started from...

Ingredients:

• 1 box of Pillsbury Puff Pastry (Yes, you can make your own puff pastry, but this is for people like me who won't. LOL) The box contains 2 packs of dough. I made 6 roses using one pack. You can make 12 roses at once, or make 6 and keep the other pack in the fridge or freezer.
• 3 red apples for one pack of dough
• Lemon Juice
• Flour to dust your work surface
• Apricot Preserves
• Butter for greasing the Muffin Tin or Ramekins
• Sugar & Cinnamon (aka Cinnamon-Sugar LOL)
• Powdered Sugar for dusting

Tools: 

• Sharp Knife, Spoon
• Rolling Pin
• Melon-Baller to scoop out the seeds from the apples
• Mandoline to slice the apples thinly
• Microwave to gently par-cook the apple slices
• Muffin Tin or Ramekins

The first thing you do is halve and core the apples- you want red apples, so the edges of your rose petals are red. :-)  I used a "melon-baller" to scoop out the seeds, and then cut the ends off with a knife. Three apples will give you more than enough slices for 6 roses.

The next thing you do is slice the apples very thinly, using a Mandoline. Yes, you can do this with a knife, but unless you have the Knife Skills of an Iron Chef they probably won't be thin and perfect, and for this you want thin and perfect. A cheap plastic Mandoline with a good, sharp blade (be Careful when using it!) is one of The best kitchen tools to have around...

Slice all the apples thinly, and, as you slice them, IMMEDIATELY put them in a bowl with water and a little lemon juice, so they won't turn brown! Toss the apple slices gently in the lemon water to make sure they all get coated.

Microwave the bowl of apples and lemon water for about 5 minutes, tossing them gently in the lemon water every minute or so, until the slices are soft enough to roll. You don't want them mushy, but they have to be soft, or you will not be able to roll them up into roses.

Flour your flat rolling surface and lay your cool (defrosted) Puff Pastry out on it. You need the pastry dough to be cool in order to work with it, so if it starts to get warm and sticky, pop it into the freezer for a few minutes or the fridge.

Using a rolling pin, roll out the Puff Pastry until it's a large, thin rectangle. Cut off any wavy edges so it's straight.

 Cut the Puff Pastry into 6 even strips.

 Spoon the Apricot Preserves on each strip of Puff Pastry.

Drain the apple slices and cut each one in half. 
Place the slices, slightly overlapping them, as shown, all along the edge of the Puff Pastry strip, with the red edges of the apples sticking out a bit over the edge of the pastry.

Fold the Puff Pastry up over the apple slices as shown. 
Starting at one end, quickly roll it up like a jelly roll- and you will have a rose! Don't try to roll it tightly- just roll it gently, but quickly.

A Puff Pastry Rose!

Voila! A Puff Pastry Rose! Isn't that the cutest thing ever? :-)

Immediately put each Rose in a BUTTERED muffin tin, or into porcelain baking ramekins. I found they fit perfectly into our trusty old muffin tin. (If you don't butter the tin or ramekins the pastry may stick, and it will be impossible to get them out).

Cinnamon-Sugar Dusted Roses

Dust each one with cinnamon-sugar:

Bake then for 40-45 minutes in a pre-heated oven. I baked them at 375F for the first 10 minutes, and then at 350F for the last 30 minutes. (Everyone's oven and pans are different, so bear that in mind!)

When done, this is what they looked like!

 Once they are cool, pop them out and put them on plates or in ramekins to serve them. (If you bake them in porcelain ramekins, you can serve them like that, straight from the oven- just sprinkle with powdered sugar and go!)

I heated them in the microwave right before serving, and then sprinkled them with powdered sugar, and we served them with a bit of caramel sauce on the side!

They came out so well, in fact, that we served them as a special treat to our Elkhorn Inn Dinner Guests and they loved them- and wanted the recipe! :-)

I can think of a number of interesting variations you could try with different fruits- and I want to try it with veggies like squash or beets- anything you could slice really thin and get soft enough to roll would probably work- and make savory ones!  Maybe using pesto instead of the preserves???

Have you made these yet? Let me know how they came out in the comments- and if you have a really funny "Fail", let me see that, too!

Hanukkah at the Elkhorn Inn!

My favorite expression for how we celebrate Hanukkah at the Elkhorn Inn is: "Go Big or Go Home"!

This year, I'm happy to say, we outdid ourselves. LOL Known, by my own self-proclamation, as the "Martha Stewart of Inflatable Decor", over the years, and thanks in great measure to eBay, we have accumulated a rather large collection of humongous inflatable holiday decorations, including Giant New Year's Baby, Valentine "I Love You" Bear, St. Patrick's Day Leprechaun, Easter Bunny on Motorcycle, The Great Big Birthday Cake, Uncle Sam, Scarecrow On Tractor, Hunting Snowman, Thanksgiving Turkey, a whole bunch of Halloween inflatables, a giant 10' snowman, and more Christmas ones than I can count! But, as I have come, sadly, to learn, there are few inflatables available for the Jewish Holidays, and, frankly, Hanukkah Menorahs are basically "it". (I have looked in vain for a giant, inflatable Lulav-Etrog Set for Succot, and a Great Big Seder Plate for Passover, as well as an 8' Kiddush Cup and Candlesticks, but apparently Gemmy- the Inflatable Company of Record- doesn't feel the need to create them...) We've had a series of 6' high blue inflatable Hanukkah Menorahs festooning the Inn for many years, and our Holiday Traditions are Dan's Annual Inflating of the Decorations, and my posting a photo of "Me and the Menorah" in front of the Inn on Facebook! As I'm evidently the only Jew in McDowell County, West Virginia at this time, if we don't celebrate the Jewish Holidays they don't get celebrated, and so we make the effort to celebrate them in style!

When our latest Big Blue Menorah finally needed to be replaced (DIY Dan is great at fixing them, but there comes a point where even he can't repair them! When we finally toss something, trust me: it is absolutely and totally un-fixable!), I broke down and eBayed the ne plus ultra of inflatable Menorahs- the 8' high one! And then, because too much is never enough, I got the dreidle-spinning, yarmulke-wearing Hanukkah Bear, too!  

Hanukkah is the Jewish "Festival of Lights" commemorating the miracle of a single day's worth of oil burning for eight days. The history of the holiday, from chabad.org: In the second century BCE, the Holy Land was ruled by the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks), who tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek culture and beliefs instead of mitzvah observance and belief in G‑d. Against all odds, a small band of faithful Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks from the land, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of G‑d. When they sought to light the Temple's Menorah (the seven-branched candelabrum), they found only a single cruse of olive oil that had escaped contamination by the Greeks. Miraculously, they lit the menorah and the one-day supply of oil lasted for eight days, until new oil could be prepared under conditions of ritual purity. To commemorate and publicize these miracles, the sages instituted the festival of Hanukkah. For EVERYTHING you have ever wanted to know about Hanukkah, including the history, traditions, prayers, and traditional foods (fried in oil, of course!), go to: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/default_cdo/jewish/Hanukkah.htm

Dan and I have a collection of Menorahs (or "Hanukiot" as they should be called, as Menorah means "light" in Hebrew, and Hanukkiah is one specifically for Hanukkah), including many from Israel, as well as ones that were given to us as gifts. A Hanukkiah has 9 lights- one for each of the eight days of Hanukkah, plus a "Shammas"- the higher one that is used to light the others. Each night you light the Shammos and say the prayer, and then light the other candles, adding one each night, going from right to left. The Deer Hanukkiah was a candelabra I bought many years ago in NYC- it had 10 tea-light antlers, so I lopped off one and turned it into a Hanukkiah! This year I found a Very clever "Travel Hanukkiah" on Modern Tribe that has a cork bottom that fits into a wine bottle, and I added that to our collection, and then Dan surprised me with a new one he had ordered, along with fancy blue and white and silver candles! I set up my "annual Hanukkah display" of our Hanukkiot,  dreidles, and silver and blue stars on one of the Inn's dining room tables, and lit the lights each night.  The last night (tonight) I even managed to take a "selfie"! And Chef Dan, the "Latke King of Landgraff" made his AbFab sweet-and-purple-potato latkes!
We hope you are having a joyous holiday season, too! Please comment and tell me what special things you do to celebrate!

Chef Dan's yummy latkes (potato pancakes)!

First Night of Hanukkah!

Second Night of Hanukkah!

Third Night of Hanukkah!

Fourth Night of Hanukkah!

Fifth Night of Hanukkah!

Sixth Night of Hanukkah!

Seventh Night of Hanukkah!

Eighth Night of Hanukkah!

Happy New Year 2009! Gary Bowling's House of Art, & Trains!

New Year's Eve 2008-2009: Gary Bowling's House of Art, Bluefield

New Year's Eve was fun- for the first time in 6 years we left the Elkhorn Inn on New Year's Eve-

because there was finally someplace worth going to! Friends and family from Virginia, North Carolina, and Minnesota came in, and we all got duded up & went to Gary Bowling's House of Art in Bluefield, WV, the area's only professional art & music venue, for their BYOB Dinner-Dance. Gary Bowling and his friends have truly created a great creative space in Bluefield- a professional art display space with a great and eclectic selection of interesting artwork (much of the best, in my opinion, being Gary's 3-D installations), a professional music venue with a real dance floor, and a fun place for dining, exhibit openings, and special events.
I really have to hand it to him, as after 6+ years here here we'd both truly given up hope that there would Ever be place within several hours driving distance of the Inn worth going to.

The food was served downstairs, at tables situated amongst the art displays: a pleasant pasta buffet with Caesar Salad & desert cannolis, it wasn't exactly what I'd envisaged as a gala New Year's Eve dinner... but we broke out our wine, and had a nice meal. Then we went upstairs where The Emeralds, a very good oldies band, was starting to cook, and spread out the contents of our cooler along our festively decorated table: more wine, Bushmill's Irish Whiskey, Applekorn from Germany... The band played a great deal of fun dance music, mostly 60s & 70's, & everyone had a great time swing dancing, slow dancing, even line dancing, for hours. We took "smoke breaks" and wandered around looking at all the art work (Mel loved the "biggest Skateboard in the World"!), got make a few new friends, and congratulate Gary on pulling off a great party! I got to wear the beautiful hand-painted silk Ao Dai Dan had made for me in Vietnam, & so, even as fat as I am right now, I at least felt as pretty as possible! (The long, floaty Ao Dai tunic, slit up both sides to the waist and worn with slim plants, must be The most flattering outfit ever engineered!) Our niece Mel from Minnesota got to spin around the dance floor in a wonderful iridescent purple ball gown, and she truly was the belle of the ball!

Happily, when we finally had to do the long drive back to the Inn in the wee hours it was uneventful, with no traffic stops, little traffic, and no problems. A Very nice way to start off 2009! I wanted to soak in the hot tub in the wee hours of the new year, like Dan & I did last year, but everyone else was too pooped!

"Chef Dan" made a fine dinner of Poached Salmon on Pasta with Alfredo Sauce at the Elkhorn Inn the evening our friends arrived, and we served on our festive New Year's dining table, complete with our giant, 6' inflatable New Years Baby!

The night of Jan. 2 we finally saw our "first trains of the New Year": The Pokey stopped in front of the Inn for an hour! It was a beautiful railfan scene, the lights of the train softly illuminating the track and landscape ahead in a gentle rain, but but try as I might, I couldn't get a decent photo of her with our little point-&-shoot digital camera! AAAUGH! We really do need to get a Real camera- a digital SLR that I can take night shots with! The photos of "our" little train- the inflatable Santa Express- came out just fine, however! It's been so rainy, gray, & ucky lately that we've decided to leave up all our big, colorful inflatable decorations (see previous post) until the first Inn guests of the new year arrive this week!

And so begins 2009!