I know I'm not the only one who has recently suffered the effects of flop sweat from following the meltdown of our economy. It occurred to me, since we’re all at the mercy of this maudlin financial burlesque that we should band together in a grassroots effort to create a bailout of kindness and respect through baking and giving. Let’s help each other weather this emotional and fiscal trauma by sharing some ideas and knowledge. I for one have wanted to start gardening for years now. I think what’s held me back is a fear of destroying the otherwise brilliant futures of some beautiful leafy creatures through negligence and pure stupidity. If you can share your agricultural knowledge with me (us), then you can help me bring food to my table, take a load off my wallet and lessen my carbon footprint. Yeah, I know, pretty late in the season to think about planting tender baby seedlings but I can start planning for next year.
In exchange, I’ll be your baking resource.
And with the holidays fast approaching, we’ve got to change the programming that’s directed our butts to dump hard earned savings at the corner Galleria and transform ourselves into creative, fiscally efficient elves. I think we’ve been living in a mall rat bubble for far too long.
An email from a lovely reader by the name of Shilpa inspired me. She asked for a peppermint bark recipe, a treat that immediately brings the winter holidays to mind. And when I think of holiday treats, I think of holiday giving. And I start salivating at the myriad ways in which to house my tasty treats for transport to their happy destinations. Personalized labels! Cute little boxes! Ribbons! I’ve spent years compiling resources for packaging. And I’d like to share some of my finds along with a few great recipes for cost effective holiday gift giving.
To start, a PEPPERMINT BARK RECIPE!
17 ounces extraordinarily good bittersweet chocolate gently melted on a double boiler (Lindt, Valrohna and Callebaut chocolates are perfect)
30 red and white peppermint hard candies, crushed to course bits.
1 simple ganache made with a teaspoon of peppermint extract. Make sure ganache is warm
On a baking sheet covered with foil, pour you’re your melted chocolate onto the foil and using a off set spatula, spread evenly over the entire area. Sprinkle with ¼ cup of the crushed peppermint candies and chill for 15 minutes.
Spread ganache in an even layer over the chilled chocolate and peppermint and sprinkle with remaining peppermint bits. Chill until firm.
Lift foil from sheetpan. You can cut the bark in into neat triangles or break into jagged pieces. Chill in an airtight container until ready to use.
Another option is to make a batch of ganache laced with a teaspoon of peppermint and chill until it’s hard enough to manipulate. Take a small cookie scoop, making neat little rounds of chocolate and (gloved hands are best for this) roll the truffle in your hands until you’ve created a perfect little ball of chocolate goodness. Roll in crushed peppermints.
Now you’ve got your bark or your peppermint truffles and you want to nestle them in non-toxic food friendly recepticals that aren’t Tupperware. So you can gift them to friends and family and receive mountains of compliments.
FOR PACKAGING AND BAKING SUPPLIES!
For general baking supplies, baking papers and candy wrappers, check out www.fantes.com.
For cookie tins, you can’t go wrong with the aptly named www.cookietins.com.
I use www.uline.com religiously. They can make simple custom labels, they have a small range of food packaging materials and they have tremendous customer service. Along with very reasonable pricing and insanely fast delivery. Go to their retail packaging and label links. But feel free to explore their vast array of shrink wrap and janitorial supplies for shits and giggles.
Check out www.overnightprints.com for custom holiday cards, holiday labels, magnets, postcards…you name it.
If you want a mind numbing selection of packaging materials, www.usbox.com will keep you surfing for hours.
And for the most adorable custom labels, and I don’t use the word adorable lightly, you must go to www.myownlabels.com. Selection is fabulous and the customer service is top notch.
Send along your ideas and resources and I’ll share them here. And be safe everyone. Take care of yourselves. But take the time to take care of the people around you as well. Everyone’s fragile at the moment and can be annealed with a simple act of kindness.
For general baking supplies, baking papers and candy wrappers, check out www.fantes.com.
For cookie tins, you can’t go wrong with the aptly named www.cookietins.com.
I use www.uline.com religiously. They can make simple custom labels, they have a small range of food packaging materials and they have tremendous customer service. Along with very reasonable pricing and insanely fast delivery. Go to their retail packaging and label links. But feel free to explore their vast array of shrink wrap and janitorial supplies for shits and giggles.
Check out www.overnightprints.com for custom holiday cards, holiday labels, magnets, postcards…you name it.
If you want a mind numbing selection of packaging materials, www.usbox.com will keep you surfing for hours.
And for the most adorable custom labels, and I don’t use the word adorable lightly, you must go to www.myownlabels.com. Selection is fabulous and the customer service is top notch.
Send along your ideas and resources and I’ll share them here. And be safe everyone. Take care of yourselves. But take the time to take care of the people around you as well. Everyone’s fragile at the moment and can be annealed with a simple act of kindness.
9 comments:
Great packaging and baking supply resources - can't wait to use them for my homemade holiday gifts!
Hope you get some gardening tips too. That's one of my goals for next year. :)
As a novice gardener myself, I found inspiration in a couple of books: Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch and Veggie Gardener's Bible by Ed Smith (who lives in Plainfield, VT, so his tips are useful for the far northeast climates!).
And online, I have a friend who writes a fun and hopeful blog as she herself discovers gardening: www.adventuresinmyurbangarden.blogspot.com
The best tip I can give you myself is to go for it! Pick a couple of veggies you particularly enjoy (for me it was brussels sprouts and tomatoes) and put them in the ground. Each year, as your confidence and abilities grow, you can add another item or two. We have worked our garden for the past two years and that was the best learning experience of all. And the satisfaction of eating food you created can't be matched! (as you likely know...)
BOOKS! You have hit me directly in my most vulnerable spot. books. I love to read, to learn something new and wonderful from bound paper. I will start slowly. And I've been told that I can start with garlic now and have it by next summer. I'm very jealous, though, when I see creepy vines in my neighbor's yards with giant pumpkins sprouting among them. But I know I must be patient. And I have to thank Jane for bringing me the first pumpkins of her harvest because otherwise I'd have to resort to pumpkin robbery.
Yes! Garlic could not be easier. Break up a head and put each clove in the ground while it is still not frozen - about two to three inches space between each clove, mark the spot (so you don't accidentally dig it up in the spring), and wait. You'll have lovely little green shoots in early spring and the stalks are fun to watch grow. When the seed head (also known as a scape) curls around to look like a P, cut it off so the plant's energy goes into the bulb in the ground. And when some of the leaves on the stalk begin to turn brown, dig it up! Let each head cure for about a week and then you can braid the stalks together and hang the bunch in your kitchen as long as it lasts. I did three heads of garlic the first time around at it clearly is not enough, as we have already breezed through about half of the harvest. So I'll be devoting much more space to garlic this year.
Oh! I thought of another book, more of a fun romp through the year than an instructional tome. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is FANTASTIC! I couldn't put it down. And there are great tips in there (that's where I picked up the garlic-braiding technique), as well as recipes and whole meal plans for eating locally.
i have to agree with you on uline, they have a great label making service. as far as overnight prints goes though, i'd definitely go with PrintsMadeEasy, they offer better customer service and shipping, plus the design system there is awesome too :D
Gesine, one of the best gardening books I used when I was learning how to garden is Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. A great nursery resource, especially for heirloom strawberries (like Seascapes which I can't get outside of California) and raspberries: www.raintreenursery.com. Good luck!
This past Spring, I drilled holes in the bottom of 6, 5-gallon plastic buckets. Filled each with a soil/compost mix and planted a single tomato seedling in each.
All sat spaced apart (so not to touch each other) on my deck, in the sun. I did nothing for maintenance except watering and pruned any dead leaves. The plants did the rest. No blight either.
I'm still picking tomatoes weekly. Great simple introduction to vegetable gardening.
Gesine, I came across this "Peppermint post" today, and I have to say that you are one of the most generous people I know in terms of sharing information with your reader/fans, etc. The shipping, label, etc., info is so great. I would like to add another paper resource to the list--Paper Mart. They too have tons of choices and very, very good service as well.
Thank you again for all the time and effort you put into your blog (and us). :)
I wana congratulate you for such a wonderful and excellent work keep it up though its awesome
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