The Naptime Chef

The Occasion: Afternoon chili bar in a snowstorm!

Menu: Chicken Chili, Melissa Clark’s Whole Wheat Honey Cornbread, Pumpkin-Ginger Tart, Beer & Wine

Attendees: Party of 6 adults, 3 kids

Naptime Goals: Bake cornbread, prepare chili.

The weekend before Halloween we invited some friends up from New York for the weekend. Our mutual friends, who live in our Connecticut neighborhood, were also invited over for lunch with their kids so we could all catch up together. We had expected to celebrate a late fall weekend with a hot lunch and plenty of fresh air and then, wouldn’t you know it, it snowed! Snow is no big deal around here in, say, January, but it was highly unusual in late October. We didn’t lose power during the Snowtober drama, thank goodness, but if we did it wouldn’t have been a problem – we had steaming bowls of chili and the most amazing sweet cornbread to last us all weekend long.

A Winter Village as decorated by a little kid (ps – my fancy camera is in the shop!)

It’s that time of year again – time to plan holiday gifts for family and friends! I am a huge advocate of giving homemade gifts for Christmas. Giving a simple bag of homemade candy bark or jar of hot fudge sauce is a heartfelt way to show friendship and happiness and is much less expensive than buying bags of gifties at hefty retail prices. I am planning an entire week dedicated to homemade kitchen gifts that are naptime cooking-friendly in early December, so stay tuned. Today we are going to talk about planning for these gifts and things to consider in your gift giving this year, including some great ideas for reasonable gifts from Red Envelope to pair with your homemade delicacies.

This is the latest installment of my Powernap column. The series where I share quick, easy food that can be made for all kinds of situations. Powernaps are short and sweet, and so are these recipes. These are the things I make in a jiffy when I need a quick snack, am in the mood for a recipe experiment, or simply need to clean out the pantry.

Last week I bought my first fresh cranberries of the season. They were floating loose in a container of water at the grocery store and I quickly scooped up a a few cupfuls to bring home. Though I often make cranberry sauce and cranberry cakes this time of year, this time I wanted to make something sweet that my daughter would love, but with a healthier slant, so I turned to these muffins. Today I am excited to be sharing the recipe with the Macy’s mBlog and they have generously donated a gorgeous Red Martha’s Stewart Ceramic Covered Casserole Dish for me to giveaway to one lucky person!

I make it no secret that I am a huge fan of Magnolia Bakery. Not very long ago I lived, literally, right around the corner from the UWS location. It was a very dangerous time. I used to walk at least five times around the block before purchasing a cupcake, then walked around several more times after eating it. It was always worth it. As luck would have it, last week my friend Nicole and I went to delicious Thanksgiving dessert tasting at that very store to sample some of the amazing desserts they are offering this Thanksgiving season.

Over the weekend I spent a long time reviewing the new Food52 cookbook that I just received in the mail last month. As you may recall, Food52 is a website that hosts weekly themed recipe contests and compiles the winners into a series of the cookbooks. This is the first cookbook in their series and I have three (3!) recipes in it. I was so excited to win these contests and it is absolutely awesome to see them in print. Of course, I follow the website closely and a lot of my friends and fellow food bloggers also have awesome recipes in the book. I highly recommend checking out Cara’s Secret Ingredient Beef Stew, Veronica’s Secret Cookies. If you don’t know the site, don’t worry, this cookbook stands on its own and is great to cook from. A vast majority of the recipes lend themselves perfectly to naptime cooking and entertaining. There are even several short and quick dishes that would be perfect powernap recipes!

Congratulations to Annette, the winner of the Roasting Pan and Turkey Lifters for BigKitchen.com!

1. How to Fry a Turkey
2. Best Turkey Fryer Models
3. 10 Easy & Elegant Non-Pie Desserts
4. 22 Peanut Butter Recipes
5. Best Thanksgiving Cake Pops

6. Turkey Cakes for Inspiration

7. Ginger-Pie Tart