What's Cooking This Weekend?
Weekend of December 4-5, 2010

Hello, December! Winter blew in this week, and we're getting ready for a weekend of holiday baking and cooking. What about you? What are your cooking plans? Read on for a quick roundup of all our gift guides from the past week, plus a few other pieces of good weekend reading. Take a look, then tell us: What's cooking this weekend?

• Some gift suggestions and guides: Food and ingredients for food-lovers and cooks. Also, liquors in beautiful bottles. We also rounded up 20 great stocking-stuffers, gifts for good causes, practical tools for the cook, goodies for the caramel-lover and 40 homemade treats for making and gifting.

• The best baked treats for shipping.

• Pretty much the cutest, easiest present-wrapping idea we've seen this year.

• 5 simple truths about salt from a salt-expert.

• Holiday disasters - recapped.

• Tips for overcoming cheese phobias.

• Two food writers throw Thanksgiving dinner together.

• A free iPhone app for your coffee.

• Holiday cards for food-lovers.

Happy weekend!

(Image: Faith Durand)

Comments (23)

Buttermilk biscuits, homemade ricotta, roasted root vegetables and some white bean and kale soup.

shutterbean's lentil soup and neverhomemaker's no knead whole wheat bread. i'm a name dropper but they are worth it!

happy weekend!

I'm making gluten-and-nut-free biscotti (almond and lemon kinds) for my visiting mother!

Beef Strogonoff from the Silver Palate Cookbook. Might roast a chicken on Sunday.

Starting my Christmas gift baking/cooking frenzy. Trialing an austrian walnut chocolate bar. Homemade vanilla, mandarin jam, rosemary salt and nutella. On Sunday we are planning a night in Portugal, so salt cod fritters with ginger/scallion "mayo" sausages (and a few things my husband hasn't told me) and to finish custard tarts. I also need to make another batch of granola and perfect my spiced nut recipe. I wish I didn't work this weekend!

I will cook turkey necks so long that they will disarticulate and make up a mess of bean soup with the resulting stock.

Yesterday I baked some rather involved cookies in the new Martha Stewart Living--stacked strips of citrus cookie dough with layers of apricot jam and crushed pistachio in between. They're pretty good, if not worth all the effort! I might stash a bunch in the freezer and give a bunch to the neighbors so I can bake some different cookies this weekend. Other than that, black bean enchiladas with Mexican rice tonight.

I'm baking cinnamon shortbread cookies. (I just add 1 tablespoon cinnamon to a standard shortbread recipe, then sprinkle the top with cinnamon sugar before baking.) Delish! I'm sure my son and I will devour most of them over the course of the weekend.

Latkes, lots and lots of latkes!

braised collards for weekday meals and a quiche w/ kale and jarlesburg for easy lunches

I'll be making a huge batch of my Grandmother's chili and a batch of peppermint bark (easy peasy recipe from Food Network) for next weekend's tree trimming party.

I'm trying Julia Child's Daube de Beouf today...I just read the recipe through this morning and realized that I have to get started in about...twenty minutes in order to eat it for dinner!!! hahahahaha...I hope it's amazing!!! Also going to try coconut macaroons for the first time this weekend. I've been freezing egg whites in my freezer and need to use them up!

I roasted a turkey yesterday. No occasion, no dinner guests-- I just couldn't think of anything better than having a bunch of cooked turkey on hand to eat this week!

Husband is making a new batch of beer today, so I'm out of the kitchen until dinner. And who knows what that will be... pork tenderloin with roasted purple carrots from today's farmers market.

A quiche with kale and jarlsberg sounds amazing! That might have to go on my to-do list.

Last night I made a baked macaroni and cheese with pureed squash and roasted broccoli, tomatoes, and mushrooms.

http://greenandlean09.blogspot.com/2010/12/roasted-vegetable-mac-n-cheese.html

Tomorrow it will be banana and chocolate waffles!

Not so much cooking this weekend, though I do have a roast in the slow cooker for French Dip sandwiches and some cole slaw in the fridge. I'm planning recipes for next week's party--either Wassail or Gluehwein, cookies, spiced nuts, various dips, etc.

Chili in the slow cooker and Jamie Oliver's Squash Soup for lunch for the week. Some brown sugar granola bars and cinnamon almonds for snacks.

Testing out my husband's oma's gingerbread recipe for the first time, and playing with decorating ideas so we can make a big gift batch in a week or so.

Shepherd's pie for dinner, mmm.

I'm starting the curing process to make my own bacon. One batch is a maple bacon and the other is a savoury bacon. I've also started some lemon, mint and almond extracts.

I made an awesome veggie soup with carrots, onions, celery, mushrooms, chick peas, butternut squash, cilantro, coriander, cumin and bay leaf. It was amazing - I can't wait to make that again. I also made two loaves of baguette and some sugar cookies with royal icing and sprinkles for decorations.

My chicken broth is cooling, my hubby roasted the chicken, which we had with baked beans and a veggie gratin. It was a fresh winter veggie soup on Saturday with a cheese plate for snacking during the football game.

Pulled out the slow cooker for the first time this season. Made a new beef stew recipe that turned out wonderful.

Meant to make apple-spiced bread for my husband's breakfasts this week, but didn't get around to it.

homemade biscuits, chocolate chip bread pudding and chicken pot pie with puff pastry crust.