Day 7 Gift. Video about Stale Bread

Yesterday’s Gift:

Yesterday, I asked you to tell me your favourite Christmas or holiday memory, especially as it relates to food, and I’d pick a winner and send you a $25 Gift Certificate from Amazon.com.

Here’s the winning entry:

I didn’t have the greatest childhood family and Christmas well let’s just say that Christmas was for other people. Now when I got older, things were some better, but every Christmas was still well let’s say I was “bah humbug.” Until one Christmas someone pointed out that I was looking behind instead of going forward. They brought the fixings for a turkey, and showed me how to enjoy strangers as family. So from that day forward, even if I can’t afford a turkey, a piece of chicken and stuffing from a couple pieces of bread will do, a few branches and or plant dressed with small lights, and a few memories, an ornament or two here and there. Christmas — even if it is just with my dog — I don the Santa hat and share some cookies and perogies for gifts to neighbours and friends. So my greatest memory is being shown that it is not what you have or don’t have, it is the season to be honest and share what you can, and enjoy others’ joys as your joys. Gifts come in boxes with ribbons and bows, but the greatest gifts come from the heart and spirit of the season. Merry Christmas to the Head Tomato and all that share this One Roast Vegetable site.

Thanks to Jaycee for submitting this story. I’ve also had many Christmases spent with new friends, strangers, and untraditional families, and I enjoyed them all. Watch your email Jaycee for your Amazon.com gift certificate.

There are 3 others that I also really loved — and I give these Honourable Mentions

Sunshine wrote:

One year, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, my mother decided that we would make gingerbread people and then hang them on the tree as edible decorations. We spent lots of time decorating with sprinkles and Smartie buttons (like M&Ms), and strings on the tops of their heads to hang them off the tree. When we woke up in the morning, the heads were still on the tree, and all the little bodies had fallen off and were now decorating the floor. Not to waste the idea, we made another batch of royal frosting, slowly matched the heads and bodies, and gave each gingerbread person a ‘scarf’ to keep them warm, and reattach their heads.

Jim wrote:

It was the fudge. Oh, god, how I waited for Christmas each year, because my mom only made her two specialties then: cinnamon shortbread cookies and her famous fudge. My mom’s fudge was deeply, darkly chocolatey, and she tossed in a tiny bit of crushed candy canes for a teensy bit of peppermint. Once the fudge was set, she cut it into little one-inch squares, so one pan yielded hundreds!

Here’s how I ate that fudge (and I still eat it this way today): open mouth, insert one piece. Close mouth. Do not chew… just let it dissolve. Ooh, feel the buttery, chocolatey, slightly granularness of it on your tongue. Mash it up against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Feel the chocolate juices running out of it. Patience…. do not chew. Feel the silky softness, and then the tiny shards of peppermint that touch the tongue as the fudge dissolves. Close your eyes and swim around in the darkness of it. Mmmm. Patience… wait for it…. and when there is nothing left but the peppermint with just a little pool of fudginess… it’s OK to chew up the rest.

You know, once I grew up and started cooking for myself, I learned that the fudge was the simplest thing in the world to make. Still, it’s never tasted as good as when I was a kid and it was a mystery. Merry Christmas!

And finally this hilarious one from Vicky:

My favorite Christmas memory is very short, but cute. My family was serving liver paté as an appetizer. and my nephew who was probably around 2 years old at the time, took a bite — I’m sure thinking it was a sweet of some sort — and promptly spit it out saying, “why are we having dog food on Christmas?

Today’s Gift:

Today’s gift is a little video about how to make homemade breadcrumbs. It’s about 3 minutes long and it was filmed here in the Paris test kitchen.

In the new year, I hope to launch a paid class called “Cooking for One or Two,” to show how much fun small-scale cooking can be (for one or two).

But it’s also a class about how to scale recipes down (or up) to suit the number of people you’re serving.

AND I want to cover how to make the best use of leftovers. Because I know that every family — big or small — needs that!

You may be surprised, but I have lots of experience cooking for one, as I didn’t meet André until I was 38! And, yes, even as a single girl, I still made a real dinner 4 nights a week with a meal plan! (maybe I’m a bit deranged, but you knew that about me already).

So I’ve got lots of tricks up my sleeve about using up leftovers — just like today’s video gift about homemade breadcrumbs. Because really, as a single person, you can never eat bread before it goes stale

Hope you liked the video. Post a comment below and let me know what you think, and what you’d like to see covered in the Cooking for One or Two class. Also, you can sign up to get more info about the new class by clicking here.

All best,
me

I am giving away a gift EVERY DAY for 29 days. If you would like to be emailed each day to know what the gift is for the day, you can sign up for my EVERYTHING LIST HERE