Republished from 11/6/2011 from the What’s Cooking Archives at The Stars Hollow Gazette

Mince pie is a old holiday tradition that can be traced back to 13th century when European crusaders returned from the Middle East with recipes for meats, fruits and spices. Mincing was a way of preserving meats without salting or smoking. The pie has been served at royal tables and, at one time, was banned by the Puritans since it was a symbol of the Pagan Christmas celebration.

Traditional mincemeat pie contains shredded meat and suet along with fruits and spices and cooks for hours. Mostly made with beef, there is a record of a recipe that used whale meat.  Today, most cooks buy mince in a jar, like Cross & Blackwell or None-Such, to make pies and small tarts. I use to do that as well, adding chopped apples, walnuts and extra brandy.

Several years ago, I came across recipe for a meatless mince full of apples, dried fruits and lots of spices. It cooks over low heat for about ninety minutes filling the house and the neighborhood with its spicy aroma. This recipe calls for pippin apples but MacIntosh, Granny Smith or any pie variety of apple is a fine substitute. I use a combination. It can be made a week or so ahead of time and kept refrigerated in an airtight container. The recipe will make one pie or about a dozen medium tarts. I like the tarts even though it’s more work making the crusts. For the top crust, I make decorative cutouts with small cookie cutters, shaped like leaves and acorns. I’ve also just made a few cutouts in the top crust and surrounded the pie edge with the dough cutouts.

Ingredients:

   3 1/2 pounds small pippin apples (about 7), peeled, cored, chopped

   1/2 cup chopped pitted prunes

   1/2 cup golden raisins

   1/2 cup dried currants

   1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

   1/4 cup unsulfured (light) molasses

   1/4 cup brandy

   1/4 cup orange juice

   1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

   2 tablespoons dark rum

   1 tablespoon grated orange peel

   1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

   1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

   1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

   1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

   1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

   Pinch of salt

Preparation:

Combine first 17 ingredients in heavy large saucepan or Dutch oven. Cook over low heat until apples are very tender and mixture is thick, stirring occasionally, about 1 1/2 hours. Cool filling completely. (Can be prepared up to 1 week ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Position rack in lowest third of oven and preheat to 400°F. Roll out 1 pie crust disk on lightly floured surface to 13-inch-diameter round (about 1/8 inch thick). Roll up dough on rolling pin and transfer to 9-inch-diameter glass pie plate. Gently press into place. Trim edges of crust, leaving 3/4-inch overhang. Fold overhang under crust so that crust is flush with edge of pie pan. Crimp edges with fork to make decorative border. Spoon filling into crustlined pan, gently pressing flat.

Roll out second disk on lightly floured surface to 13-inch round. Cut out about 28 three-inch leaves using cookie cutter. Press leaves lightly with tines of fork to form vein pattern. Brush bottom of 1 leaf with milk. Place leaf atop mince, overlapping crust slightly and pressing to adhere to crust. Continue placing leaves atop pie in concentric circles, overlapping edges slightly until top of pie is covered. Brush crust with milk. Bake until crust is golden brown and mince bubbles, about 40 minutes. Cool completely. Serve pie with rum raisin ice cream if desired.

(To make this recipe vegan substitute light olive oil for the butter.

Bon appétit!

Republished from 12/11/2011 from the What’s Cooking Archives at The Stars Hollow Gazette

In Autumn, the appearance in grocery stores of stacks of candied fruit and mountains of nuts in all their wonderful variety is a sure sign of the approach of the holidays. As the days grow short and the nights grow cool preparations for a joyous time of baking begins.

My daughter is the bread baker but Sugarplum Bread is the one I enjoy making, too. This sweet bread studded with candied fruit is not as heavy as fruit cake. It is topped with a white icing glaze and decorated with red and green cherries to look like clusters of berries. It is a treat for breakfast or in the afternoon with tea. I make small ones baked in large muffin tins, decorated and wrapped in colored plastic wrap tied with ribbon as gifts for guests.

The following recipe is a rich dough flavored with nutmeg, candied fruit and peel, and raisins

Candied fruit would have melted in the summer heat and its sweetness would attract ants but it keeps well in the freezer. After the holidays, when the price is reduced for clearance, if you have space in your freezer buy a supply. It assures that you’ll have candied fruit on hand in the months when it can’t be found in the market.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 23 is the 357th day of the year (358th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are eight days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1893, The opera Hansel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed.

The libretto was written by Adelheid Wette (Humperdinck’s sister), based on the Grimm brothers’ Hansel and Gretel. It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the Abendsegen (“Evening Benediction”) from Act 2.

The idea for the opera was proposed to Humperdinck by his sister, who approached him about writing music for songs that she had written for her children for Christmas based on “Hänsel und Gretel.” After several revisions, the musical sketches and the songs were turned into a full-scale opera.

Humperdinck composed Hansel and Gretel in Frankfurt am Main in 1891 and 1892. The opera was first performed in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. It has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances and today it is still most often performed at Christmas time.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris will be: Former Governor James Florio (D-NJ), Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers University; Mayor Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta, GA); Mayor Michael Nutter (D-Philadelpha, PA); Dylan Glenn, Senior Vice President of Guggenheim Advisors and former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush; Heidi Moore, Finance and Economics Editor for The Guardian newspaper; Kevin Alexander Gray, Contributing Editor to Black News and Contributing Writer to CounterPunch and Black Agenda Report; Maya Wiley, Founder and President of the Center for Social Inclusion; Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Rebecca Peters, international arms control advocate who led the campaign to reform Australia’s gun laws after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests on This Week” are former congressman and DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson, the head of the NRA’s National School Shield Program;  Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.; and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

The  roundtable debates all the week’s politics, with Newark Mayor Cory Booker; Americans for Tax Reform President and NRA board member Grover Norquist; political strategist and ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan; and WashingtonPost.com columnist and Editor and Publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: On this weeks program guests are NRA President David Keene, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va; Senator-designate Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; and an interview with actor Ben Affleck about his work with the Eastern Congo Initiative.

The Chris Matthews Show: Tjis week’s guests are Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor; Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent; and Sam Donaldson, ABC Reporter.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: MTP guest are the head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre; Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

On this week’s roundtable are Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), former Democratic congressman Harold Ford, Jr., and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are congressmen Steven LaTourette and Mick Mulvaney; former congressman and DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson, the head of the NRA’s National School Shield Program; USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page, CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein, and Time‘s Washington Bureau Chief Michael Duffy

On MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes, Host Chris Hayes and his guests discuss what they now know since the week began. Chris’ panel guests were Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald), columnist and blogger for The Guardian; Hina Shamsi, director of National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, former senior adviser to United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, and lecturer at Columbia Law School; Spencer Ackermann, writer and blogger for Wired.com; and Nancy Giles, analyst for CBSNews.com.

State of the Climate Global Analysis November 2012

Global Highlights

   The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for November 2012 was 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average of 12.9°C (60.4°F). This is the fifth warmest November since records began in 1880. Including this November, the 10 warmest Novembers have occurred in the past 12 years.

   The globally-averaged land surface temperature for November 2012 was the sixth warmest November on record, at 1.13°C (2.03°F) above average. The globally-averaged ocean surface temperature was also sixth warmest on record, at 0.50°C (0.90°F) above average.

   ENSO-neutral conditions continued in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean during November 2012. Neutral conditions are expected to last through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2012/13 and into spring 2013.

   The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September-November 2012 was 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F), marking the second warmest September-November on record, behind 2005.

   The globally-averaged land surface temperature for September-November 2012 was the third warmest September-November on record, at 1.03°C (1.85°F) above average. The Southern Hemisphere land temperature was record warm for the period.

   The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January-November 2012 was the eighth warmest such period on record, at 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average.

Thieves Arrested After Stealing 6 Million Pounds of Canadian Maple Syrup

Talk about a sticky mess.

The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers believe several million cans of stolen maple syrup may be sitting on U.S. grocery shelves.

Quebec police arrested four men in connection with the robbery of 6 million pounds of maple syrup stolen from a Canadian warehouse in a heist spanning just under a year.

The thieves managed to steal the sticky substance from a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford between August 2011 and July of this year. The stolen syrup tops out at $18 million in total market value.

“It’s one of the most important robberies in Quebec because of the quantity stolen and the value of the syrup,” said Sgt. Gregory Gomez Del Prado of Quebec police.

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

This week’s recipes come in response to requests from readers for ideas for snacks to have around the house during the end-of-the-year holidays: something to replace the candy bowls and cookies that are usually there and easy to nosh on. Commercial snacks that are healthy (or healthier – read the labels closely) are available including vegetable chips and pita crisps, seaweed snacks, nuts, dried fruit and trail mix. But some of these have a lot of salt and they can be pricy.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole

Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, would have been better advised to remain wherever he had been hiding after the Newtown, Conn., massacre, rather than appear at a news conference on Friday. No one seriously believed the N.R.A. when it said it would contribute something “meaningful” to the discussion about gun violence. The organization’s very existence is predicated on the nation being torn in half over guns. Still, we were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant. [..]

The N.R.A., which devotes itself to destroying compromise on guns, is blameless. So are unscrupulous and unlicensed dealers who sell guns to criminals, and gun makers who bankroll Mr. LaPierre so he can help them peddle ever-more-lethal, ever-more-efficient products, and politicians who kill even modest controls over guns.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Ask a Democrat: On Social Security, Which Side Are You On?

This is a moment of moral clarity. Right now there are only two sides in the Social Security debate: the side that says it’s acceptable to cut benefits — in a way that raises taxes for all income except the highest — and the side that says it isn’t.

It’s time to ask our leaders — and ourselves — a simple question: Which side are you on?

Nancy Pelosi says she can convince most Congressional Democrats to “stick with the President” as he pursues his gratuitous and callous plan to cut Social Security benefits as part of a deficit deal — even though Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.

Excuse me: Stick with the President? What about sticking with our seniors and our veterans? What about sticking with our disabled fellow Americans? What What about sticking with the more than 4,000 children on Social Security who lost a parent in the Iraq War?

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are nine days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1808, Ludwig von Beethoven’s 5th Symphony makes its world premier in Vienna.

Also premiering that day at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna were Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, and the Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68-the “Pastoral Symphony.” But it was the Fifth Symphony that, despite its shaky premiere, would eventually be recognized as Beethoven’s greatest achievement to that point in his career. Writing in 1810, the critic E.T.A. Hoffman praised Beethoven for having outstripped the great Haydn and Mozart with a piece that “opens the realm of the colossal and immeasurable to us…evokes terror, fright, horror, and pain, and awakens that endless longing that is the essence of Romanticism.”

That assessment would stand the test of time, and the Fifth Symphony would quickly become a centerpiece of the classical repertoire for orchestras around the world. But beyond its revolutionary qualities as a serious composition, the Fifth Symphony has also proven to be a work with enormous pop-cultural staying power, thanks primarily to its powerful four-note opening motif-three short Gs followed by a long E-flat. Used in World War II-era Britain to open broadcasts of the BBC because it mimicked the Morse-code “V” for “Victory,” and used in the disco-era United States by Walter Murphy as the basis for his unlikely #1 pop hit “A Fifth Of Beethoven,” the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony have become a kind of instantly recognizable musical shorthand since they were first heard by the public on this day in 1808.

David Dayen, aka d-day, proprietor of FDL’s News Desk, has decided to take his keyboard and depart the blogosphere after eight years. There is no way to fill the gap he will leave. Damn, David, who is going to explain the next financial debacle or Washington’s latest manufactured crisis with your clarity?

A few days before his last post at the News Desk, David talked with Sam Seder on Majority Report to give us an insight to his reason for leaving blogging.

The privilege has been all ours, David. Thanks and best wishes.  

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: Another Questionable Bank Settlement

The Department of Justice would like you to believe it has finally gotten tough with a too-big-to-fail bank. As part of the global investigation into interest-rate-rigging at the world’s biggest banks, it has extracted a guilty plea for felony wire fraud from UBS Securities Japan, a subsidiary of UBS, the Swiss bank. [..]

Seen in that light, a subsidiary’s plea on a single criminal charge appears to shield the parent company and the prosecution of two traders appears to shield their managers. And even though a $1.5 billion penalty is large by historical standards, there is little reason to believe that such fines, disconnected from criminal charges against bank officers, will deter future wrongdoing.

The Justice Department referred to the UBS rate-rigging as an “epic” scandal. But, as yet, there has been nothing epic in the department’s response.

Paul Krugman: Playing Taxes Hold ‘Em

A few years back, there was a boom in poker television – shows in which you got to watch the betting and bluffing of expert card players. Since then, however, viewers seem to have lost interest. But I have a suggestion: Instead of featuring poker experts, why not have a show featuring poker incompetents – people who fold when they have a strong hand or don’t know how to quit while they’re ahead?

On second thought, that show already exists. It’s called budget negotiations, and it’s now in its second episode. [..]

As in 2011, then, the Republican crazies are doing Mr. Obama a favor, heading off any temptation he may have felt to give away the store in pursuit of bipartisan dreams.

And there’s a broader lesson here. This is no time for a Grand Bargain, because the Republican Party, as now constituted, is just not an entity with which the president can make a serious deal. If we’re going to get a grip on our nation’s problems – of which the budget deficit is a minor part – the power of the G.O.P.’s extremists, and their willingness to hold the economy hostage if they don’t get their way, needs to be broken. And somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen in the next few days.