I’m heading to Louisiana tomorrow for an extra-long (and warm-weathered) Christmas visit with my family! (Cue happy dance.) Gil has to work this week, so he’ll join us after spending a few days alone with the dogfaces. Since I won’t be around for the start of Hanukkah, I thought I’d make Gil a batch of chocolate-drizzled macaroons to remember me by.

I was still working on my drizzling technique with these first few, but they’re charming in a jolie laide sort of way, right?

Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate it! Next up: something savory to balance all of the sugar I’ve been posting…

recipe after the jump

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Hi, everyone. For the second year in a row, I’m afraid my schedule won’t allow for an annual Advent Calendar. (For honestly annual Advent Calendars past, see the 2007 & 2008 installments.) Part of the craziness is just my day job, which always astounds me with its busy-ness — you’d think I’d get used to holiday madness after working for a clothing retailer for 10 years, wouldn’t you? — but also

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I have a photo assignment! I’ll be shooting photos for a cookbook (not my own) starting next weekend!!!! It’s really just a dream come true, as clichéd and silly as that sounds, especially because I’ve toyed with giving up on this blog so many times. But without it I certainly never would have learned enough about photography to even consider doing this for a living. (Just putting it out there, universe…)

Anyway, instead of the Advent Calendar, I’m hoping to squeeze in a few posts on easy-to-make treats that might be nice for the holiday season. These little chocolate & pomegranate nibbles were inspired by something I saw in a comments section somewhere, but I just can’t remember the site. (If they look familiar, please leave a comment and I’ll give credit where it’s due.) Just melt chocolate in a double boiler, add pomegranate arils to achieve a chunky consistency, spoon onto a waxed paper-lined baking sheet and top with more arils, then chill until ready to serve. The juicy, tart arils really are a delicious foil to the smooth, bittersweet chocolate (or chocolate of your choice). I used only the two ingredients that were suggested, but I’d imagine they’d be delicious with the addition of chopped nuts, warm spices or a little liqueur.

And a little housecleaning:
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I didn’t make latkes this year for my husband because we’d much rather eat McDonald’s fries than any fried potato that comes out of my kitchen, but we did get the dogs to dress up for another portrait session. (One of the really, truly annual things on this blog. 2009 edition. 2008 edition.) Poor guys.

Happy Hanukkah!

Otis, rakish

Rufus, dubious

Stay tuned for Christmas photos next week.

Hi all, and happy Hanukkah! We had slightly non-traditional latkes (fried in duck fat) for breakfast this morning as a late start to the festivities, but there’s been a distinct lack of cooking going on around here otherwise. I’ll try to do better by you, but can’t promise anything until next weekend.

Instead, you get cute holiday pictures of the dogs after the jump!

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Hey, we’re a mixed-faith household; it’s only fair… Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

For the full set of pictures, click here. Check out Rufus enjoying his first dreidel here.

And for the 2007 Advent Calendar, click here.

recipe after the jump

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Despite the prevalence of Advent posts here, Hanukkah Harry’s a generous soul and has been known to visit me on occasion. In addition to a great cookbook from the Official MI Mother-in-Law (more on which later), he brought me something completely unexpected last week — a Gary Fong Flash Diffuser from Claudia at the always-terrific cook eat FRET! I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but I did some design work on her banner a few weeks ago and got to know her a little in the process. Long story short, she’s just as awesome as you’d believe reading her posts. I mean, c’mon — supporting my photography habit and we haven’t even met yet? That’s generosity of spirit right there.

And so, onto some test photos! I know almost nothing about using my new speedlight flash, but I think these shots illustrate just how nicely the diffuser will play with the flash once I get up to speed with the technical stuff. Photo below is of our library downstairs, sans flash:

And here, with full direct flash:

And here, with diffuser:

Much nicer, yes? And I haven’t retouched any of them in any way. I think this’ll help my evening pictures quite a bit, since the light situation in our house isn’t, um, good. It’s cozy, but not the best for documenting our dinners.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Claudia! And Hanukkah Harry, for the delivery!

As we are a dual-faith household, I thought it’d be nice to give Gil, if not equal play, at least a nod in the midst of my Advent posts. So after my stunning and unexpected victory over my nemesis the oven fry recently, I grew bold and decided to tackle the latke this weekend, even keeping it as traditional as possible! That’s right — no bacon grease, no smoked paprika or roasted garlic to liven things up. Nope, just potatoes, onions, egg, a little whole wheat flour (no matzo meal at our local grocery, sorry), salt and pepper, and olive oil for frying.

Bow down to the latke queen! These were completely delicious — crispy on the outside, still soft on the inside, oniony, and not oily at all. It probably helps that I didn’t fry them in nearly as much oil as most recipes call for, but most of them seemed a lot like suggestions, anyway, so I tweaked. We ate them with the usual suspects — sour cream and applesauce — and then took a nap. I hear that part’s traditional, too.

I think I still prefer the fries, but these will definitely get play at least yearly at Hanukkah.