Who the heck is that on the cover?! Because it looks like Walt Disney. Like, i'm 98% sure that's the reanimated and re-headed corpse of Uncle Walt himself looming over everything. And the blonde on the right, I'm pretty sure I went to high school with her. Oh, wait, that's Tony Bennett. And Diana Krall? I didn't go to school with Diana Krall, but there was a gal named Dana and she was mean to me all through 8th grade. I'm sure this Diana Krall is a perfectly nice human being.
As usual, the issue starts off with a cheese cake recipe/ad from the fine folks at Philly. Just one, this time, but it looks kinda tasty in an office potluck sort of way. I mean, peppermint bark cookies and cream - basically an Oreo crust and topped with starlight mints. There's just a little too much going on there. You know the rule; always remove one accessory before leaving the house.
Rach's letter to all of us is a testament to how much she loves the holidays. From her 13 3-hour holiday music playlists to her 30-page list of ultra-personal gifts to buy, wrap, and give, she is 100% about Christmas. She even pushes her pool table aside so that she can have room to wrap all of the gifts she gives. She's regular people, just like us! She uses regular brown paper to wrap gifts! Joy!
Next page, walnut nachos. And then an article about hours d'ouvers. I used to call them horse dovers, among other things, and people used to correct me as if I didn't know how to properly ramp up a dinner party. We all know that any gathering needs nosh - and a couple plates of tasty nibbles early on goes a long way towards breaking the ice. Especially if guests are prompted to stop in amazement and look around wide-eyed, asking each other "Was this party catered by Costco?" Because that's what will happen.
Back to Tony and Diana, now we are reading all about their fabulous dinner together that you weren't invited to. Tony's mom's lasagna looks pretty tasty, but the secret ingredient isn't a secret. It's cinnamon. And everybody does it. Facing page, Stouffer's mac and cheese. Someone in layout is disgruntled and I wish I could tip them $10 whenever I see stuff like this.
On Our Radar, the monthly round up of cool new finds: Let's see - Lucite box purses. These were hot in the 1950s. But those aren't Lucite, they are just acrylic, and they will probably fall apart soon. Cookie jars, a Ninja fryer thingy, and sequined vodka is up next. The pink velvet mules are cute, but OH MY DOG NO - a DIY witch kit. I don't wanna sound like a gatekeeper, but some quartz, an abalone ashtray and sage smudge stick is not an introduction to witchery. I mean, it can be, in the right hands and with the right intention, but this thing as it is presented here, is simply crap from my dad's 2nd wife's coffee table, boxed up and sold to Bellevue wives for $46. I'm mad and I'm tempted to skip the rest of this section. Flip, flip, flip. Skipped.
13 Fast and Fresh Ideas: Putting mushrooms on cheeseburgers. Come on now. This isn't new. And it's not a thing you need to be told about. Tika masala flatbread - instead of dipping bread into the tika masala, you put the tika masala on the bread. Like pizza, only tika. Gouda mac and cheese. We've covered all of these things. Ok, oysters with green apple jalapeno mignonette look kinda interesting, but then it's back to things we have been doing for years, like eggnog french toast.
30 Minute Meals: Again, this is not 30 meals I can make in a minute, as the title suggests. Polenta, shrimp... veal. I'm gonna stop right here and say the thing that shouldn't need to be said at all, but evidently bears repeating - veal is for assholes.
Now on to the holiday fare with a collection of roasts - lamb, salmon, prime rib, the usual. I'm just not into any of these. Growing up, we had turkey, if anything, and it was just like Thanksgiving Dinner 2: The Regorgenating. The one and only time I had prime rib for xmess was a couple of years ago at Hattie's Hat, and it was pretty good, but I think I liked the creamed spinach and mashed up taters better.
Budget holiday ideas. Cool, if your budget includes enough time and money to buy a crapton of yarn and make enough pom-poms to cover an entire tree. The diy menorah made from small jars of colored sand seems like pretty good idea on paper, but man, the photo makes it look like someone just crammed some birthday candles into bottles of blue nail polish. But this... THIS... the ghost of Rachael past is haunting up a storm with the go steal paint chips from the hardware store and cut them into lightbulb shapes and glue them to some yarn for a quick diy garland idea.
I skipped a lot this issue; there were meatballs and a latke bar, and some gift ideas that look straight outta the Amazon daily deals section. All of that is boring. The one thing that really caught my eye this time is tucked way in the back - the burger of the month. The subheader claims that it's Rachael's "first attempt at a Christmas burger," but that sentence sits on a throne of lies. A quick google search brings up this recipe from last year, Turkey Cheeseburgers with Cranberry Creme Fraiche. It's a turkey burger with cranberry sauce and leaf lettuce supplying the holiday color.
Reading the recipes itself brings up another issue. There's no turkey in that turkey burger. None. Not a single molecule. She calls it a turkey burger, in fact she spells out the holiday goodness of it all as "a turkey patty with red and green fixings" but the turkey burger is, in fact, sirloin. With bleu cheese in the middle. Your holiday lie-feast is basically a fancy Juicy Lucy. The ingredient list calls for sirloin and the recipe text says "saute the beef." Not a typo.
So I checked the other recipe, the creme fraiche one, and that burger is messed up, too. Serves 4, it says. Make 4 patties, it says. Use 3 brioche rolls or sandwich-size English muffins, it says... Wait. What? That's not a typo either; it's too egregious to be anything but deliberate.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but I'm also not going to rule out the idea that there's a DaVinci Code-style message encoded in all of Rach's weirdness and recipe mayhem. So please pardon me while I take the rest of the month off it listen to a couple seasons of Rabbits and The Leap Year Society while trying to find hidden meaning in all of this mess. I have my doubts that there's anything as sophisticated as Duchamp's hidden face hidden all up in there, but it could be the Colonel's secret bend of herbs and spices or how to do the Hapsburg napkin folds. I mean, you never know.
