A little retro

Early in December The Canadian Living Christmas Book was the go to book for an easy festive evening.  Published in 1993,  Canadian Living products (magazines and books) could always be relied on for good recipes that were easy to make, with ingredients you could find and (almost) always turned out.  Same way with their crafts.  Because of that I have about a 1/2 dozen or so of their cookbooks.

I also had a subscription to Canadian Living for over 30 years,  but I must admit that I have not enjoyed the magazine as much the last decade or so and have dropped my subscription.  I still occasionally look through the magazine,  but have not found a reason to subscribe again.

Unlike a number of people, I don't like to write in my books, whether it was textbooks, a novel or cookbook there is little to tell I was there before.  In a cookbook, the only way you could tell if I tried a recipe before was if there was a cooking stain on that page!  Sometimes I remember, when I start making a recipe but I can't be sure if it was that exact recipe or one similar.   It has been awhile since I pulled this book off the shelf and it wasn't until I started making some of the recipes that I remembered making them before.

I have learned, doing this cookbook review, is to make notes and comments on recipes I tried.  I often like to make changes when I make things,  after all recipes are just a guide to follow!  As I am getting older 😊  the only way I am going to remember what I did is to mark it down.

I was looking for a quick easy meal that could be ready fairly quickly.  Thanks to some prep work in advance,  we were able to eat soon after we arrived home.

I started off a little retro with a jelly salad!  Growing up any special occasion featured a jellied salad at the meal.  My mom had several that she made,  the number of different kinds depended on how many people were coming to dinner.  There was a molded green (or orange - depending on the jelly powder used) salad and a corn beef salad mold that was a regular feature, there were others in her repertoire    Though jellied salad I made for this meal would never have been on the table growing up - mainly because avocados were difficult to find in New Brunswick until recent.

Guacamole Pate with Salsa with some tortilla chips made a nice light start to the meal.  I didn't use the cilantro because I am one of those people who don't like the taste of it.  As the saying goes you either love it or hate cilantro.  Do  you love Cilantro or hate it?  Despite the retro feel it was a tasty dish.

We moved onto Spaghetti with Meatballs, the meatballs were simple and could be done ahead.  I usually have spaghetti with a meat sauce, rather than meatballs, but this allowed those who didn't want meat to have just the sauce which contained lots of veggies.  The recipe was in a section called Christmas is for Kids,  so the sauce was very plain, I added some extra seasoning (oregano, more garlic, basil) to brighten it up

I finished the meal with assorted sweets,  I made two out of this cookbook.   Unfortunately one did not turn out.  I tried the recipe for EggNog Fudge, as I was making it I remember making the recipes before.  This time despite having reached the appropriate temperature and initially setting it end up a soupy mess when cut.  I don't really recall how it turned out last time, but I  suspect it didn't turn out that great otherwise I would probably have made it every Christmas (when I find a Christmas recipe I like I tend to make it almost every year)

The second sweet out of the book was called SugarPlums,  a mixture of dried apricots and crystallized ginger.  It has little resemblance to the Sugar Plums referred to in T'was a Night Before Christmas,  but it is fun to tell people you have SugarPlums, which were actually a big hit and will probably be repeated.

Now with visions of SugarPlums dancing in my head I think I will go off to make a cup a tea and enjoy the few that are left.  Happy dreaming everyone.