January Diet

Will you be eating salade today?

AND tomorrow? 

And perhaps all of January? 

Wouldn't it be nice if this month's salades could be Paris take-out from MIYOU? 

Or La Cantine at Merci? 

Miam...miam 

MIYOU again - shrimp, quinoa, pomegranate, rocket. 

Saumon + salade in St. Germain-en-Lay 

I lurve Rose Bakery's mixed salade plate. Not a bad way to make up for all the marshmallows and gingerbread of December.

Is salade des fruits allowed on the January diet?

Make-shift Gingerbread

Yesterday when Sue mentioned she'd made Trader Joe's gingerbread mix(in a box in fact), wheels started turning. Off to TJ's to search and reconnoiter. This morning I took one look and decided I would try making gingerbread cookies out of these puppies. Why not?
It was easy to knead the lumps into a ball and roll out..

Pigs and rabbits here I come!

The dough comes with a packet of crytallized sugar for decor. I added in some cinnamon for extra umph...

The 1st batch came out rather pathetic but tasted fine :)

The 2nd batch was pas mal at all!

Instead of 12 fat chewy cookies I got 3 dozen plus crunchy, hard, quite tasty cookies...

For all of $2.99!

BIG MERCI Trader Joe's!

Granted my little ginger bunnies are a long way from Birdbaths gentlemen...

And I'll never sniff again at Eleni's gorgeous yellow taxis...

Miracle of miracles, baking these cookies did not turn me into a glutton!? Three cookies and I was satisfied. Did the baking aromas do the trick? Do I now dare to make homemake marshmallows?

You tell me? What have you been baking lately?

CHEERS!

Marshmallow Madness

Go to Motorinos for a clam pizza (tres delish) on 349 E. 12th street.

Then walk to Birdbath Bakery for the best home-made marshmallow ever.

I do not say this lightly, especially after 3 days of intensive research and furtive gobbling. 

Birdbath is a 'green' offshoot (one of 5 in the city) of City Bakery 

You can buy a 10-pack ($10) or by the piece ($1) as I prefer for freshness.

I spotted packets of marshmallows at Balthazar but none sold individually. 

I thought I was addicted to French guimauve but last weekend I was converted to the American way. 

Why is it that when you've eaten something all your life you think you own it. Not so. 

As a candy, marshmallows go back to ancient Egypt when mixed with honey and for medicinal purposes using the marshmallow plant. The 19th century French version of the recipe, called pâte de guimauve (or "guimauve" for short), included egg white meringue and was often flavored with rose water. French candy shop owners used to make it on the premises. La Mere du Famile makes wonderful loops of marshmallow but they are much dryer and less sticky than City Bakery's (they must have a longer shelf life).

In 1948 American Alex Doumak invented a way for marshmallows to be manufactured in a fully automated way - extruded in soft cylinders and then cut.

Thank you Wikipedia

Photo by Jacob Margolis/NPR

Recipes for the homemade marshmallow abound. NPR has a nice one. Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz will show you how to do it yourself. 

I don't trust myself around the lava-like marshmallow. I'll stick with picking up a few daily at City bakery and then seeing how long I can keep them in the house (24 hours is tops so far) 

Birdbath (but not City Bakery) has nice stocking stuffer 10-packs of small gingerbread men for $5. 

Shhh...here's a hot chocolate tip: Trader Joe's for the holidays has a peppermint hot chocolate($4.95) exactly like William Sonoma's hot chocolate ($19.95). TJ's tin is green but the inside is exactly the same yummy chocolate flakes.

ENJOY!

Extreme Gingerbread Addiction (EGA)

Like clockwork, every December I suffer from a severe case of Extreme Gingerbread Addiction (EGA)

It hit big time last week and I was ready to attack anything with the word 'Gingerbread' in sight. Fortunately I restrained myself from wolfing down 'gingerbread' dog biscuits at the Grand Central Xmas Fair.

Nor did I wolf down Whole Foods PC/natural/zero/trans fat 'Folk' gingerbread cookies. Would you?

Whole Foods has a DIY gingerbread 'chalet' too. Who cares. I like my gingerbread to be men and unadulterated.

I noticed Whole Foods' mistletoe nearby.

'Not for human consumption'

Is someone expecting ET to show up? Is Santa an ET..?

I am not fond of French Pain d'Epice de Dijon either. This is a kind of soft honey bread/cake that is such a distant relative of gingerbread it hardly bears being in same category in my humble opinion.

A newish pastry chain in New York, La Financiere, fancies itself to be very Frenchie since they offer macarons. They admonished me for taking this picture, so perhaps they really ARE French? These look like standard issue gingerbread that could well be left over from last year and outsourced to boot. I was not impressed.

Union Square Farmers Market can be depended upon for the old fashioned ginger cookie.

And they had the 'brokens' on sale. These were not half-bad though a true ginger cookie should be break-your-teeth-hard and these were not sadly :( Tant pis.

Breezy Orchard Farms had practically life-sized gingerbread at the outrageous price of $5 bucks. I did not have the nerve to fork over the dough, but I did give them a gentle squeeze and they were sufficiently rock hard. No brokens or on sale yet malheureusement

You can get a perfectly good cup of hot apple cider for a mere $2 at the Breezy Hill stand along with apples up the whazoo etc.

Chocolate 'gingerbread' men on a stick from NUNU in Brooklyn. Lately ANYTHING at all from Brooklyn is hot hot hot.

I looked for a possible substitute like a gingerbread men tree ornament but was not lucky at Union Square.

Eleni NYC does have gingerbread taxis if you're so inclined to contemporary shapes. My gingerbread history goes way back - to the days when I stood side-by-side with my mom baking. I helped cut out and decorate gingerbread cookies to go on our tree. Adding the strings was another favorite task. In addition I ate all broken, damaged gingerbread (when no one was looking of course) so they could be spared embarrassment on the tree. You can understand why my gingerbread addiction is longstanding.

One year Anita of Desserts First sent me a tin of gingerbread and I sent her a watercolor in deep gratitude. If any PBers gets the urge to follow her example do not resist!

Photo courtesy of Sarabeth

I did find the gingerbread of my dreams last week. Hard as a rock and full of intense gingery flavor like the kind my mother made. At Sarabeth's Bakery! I didn't have my camera with me, but I found this picture on Sarabeth's blog. It turns out her utterly divine and quite spare icing is WHITE CHOCOLATE! Who knew? I wonder if the cookie recipe is in her fab cookbook? The icing recipe is on her blog so stop by. I'm not allowed to DYI my own gingerbread. I'm not safe around raw gingerbread dough - I will eat it without thinking twice. Would you? 

New Yorkers are out there running around like maniacs shopping till they drop. I am contemplating running back to Sarabeth's for more True Gingerbread.

Should I?

It only comes once a year.

You tell me :)

BONJOUR EXTREME GINGERBREAD LOVERS!