What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?

There’s that old song that asks, “What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” It’s surprising how much angst can surround that question. All sorts of baggage seems to come with this “cheerful” holiday. There’s this idea that you need to be doing something uber glamorous, like sipping martinis in a sequin cocktail dress at someone’s loft in Soho and you’re pathetic if you’re spending the night at home with some movies and takeout. The secondary problem is that it’s incredibly pricey for those in search of those aforementioned glamorous parties. Every dive bar will jack up (or add on) door fees and make these fancy claims about “hors de oeuvres” and champagne thus charging you $75 per person for some nuts, cheap booze and the same horrible ambiance you could get for free any other day of the year. Then of course, there is the inevitable cost of taxis and car services if you don’t have a designated driver in your group.

Now if you are determined to head out into the wild for New Year’s, check Groupon.com and Livingsocial.com religiously. You’ll find some decent packages that will be a lot more bang for your buck. Try to get a decent sized group together—don’t go too big or that gets annoying and unwieldy. Four or Five is the right number. That way you can still share some public transport and there are enough people to make decisions (but not so many that the bickering takes over).

The best option for New Year’s is to go to a party that a friend is hosting. If you don’t have that option the next best thing is to host a small party yourself. The best part of it is that you won’t have to worry about getting home after a few too many margaritas. The first step will be to keep your party to a manageable size. A huge guest list is difficult for most spaces and most wallets. I’d keep your numbers in the neighborhood of ten. Try not to invite all couples and one single person. Keep your single guests in blocks of three. They’ll appreciate it.

Now that you have your guest list, let’s move on to the hosting portion of the evening. Since it’s a late night, let’s go with a menu of heavy appetizers (the kind that will match up with lots of cocktails). My suggestion for a fun and somewhat hip menu is to go retro. You’ll need to have a sense of humor (and style) to pull this one off appropriately but if you do everyone will have a great time. We’re going to go for whimsy and the nostalgia of childhood with a grown-up twist. You basically want to serve childhood favorites in adult ways. Let’s go with sliders—if you have a White Castle in your neighborhood, pick up a bunch and some orders of fries and arrange the burgers on cute platters or trays. Make little cones out of parchment paper or freezer paper and place into small cute glasses (also on tray) and place the fries in them. If you have leftover Christmas paper with a print that works for New Year’s you can use that as well. The freezer section also has large packs of White Castle burgers and bags of frozen fries that you can pop in your microwave or oven. Costco and BJs have these types of items in family packs and both places will typically give you a one day pass for free to try out their service. They are a great resource for hosting and many carry large bottles of alcohol at inexpensive prices. If you have the culinary prowess you can make the sliders yourself, just keep them small and cute. Another option is to go for McDonalds—just cut those burgers in half or quarters and use a little frilly toothpick on each one.

For another appetizer go with some mini grilled cheese sandwiches and mini peanut butter and jelly. Just get yourself a couple cute shaped cookie cutters and go to town. For grilled sandwiches you can prep these in advance and just thrown them on a George foreman grill or in a grill pan shortly before serving. You can also jazz up the peanut butter and jelly by substituting Nutella or using more unique jams. (Or if you were one of *those* kids, make some fluffernutters.)

A trip to childhood wouldn’t be complete without some chicken nuggets. Again, you can whip these up yourself, pick up a few frozen bags, or go the fast food route. Just get a couple dipping sauces and arrange on a platter. For some veggies how about ants-on-a-log? Get creative with the theme—think of your fave childhood items and dress them up a bit.

You’ll want to include lots of retro junk food and it will be all about the displaying of it. Get yourself lots of clear glass containers. All different shapes and sizes. You probably have a bunch at home and even things like wide mouthed jars will work. The trick is to keep all the containers in the same color scheme or medium. Put out your favorite childhood chips in different bowls add some giant pixie sticks to a clear glass vase and some M&Ms with a little scoop in a jar. If you have fun with it, your guests will too.

For desserts, there is nothing better than a hostess cupcake. There are eleventybillion recipes for homemade versions if you’re game and if not, just buy yourself a few boxes. You can opt for the 100 calorie packs that have itty-bitty cupcakes (their cuteness factor is off the charts) and you can do a variety of things like those mini powdered or chocolate covered donates, twinkies, and snowballs. Just use different cake stands or pedestals for each item you choose. Keep all the twinkies on one stand, all the cupcakes on another and so on. If you keep each one uniform it will look surprisingly elegant. You can set up a little area for all the desserts and candies and make it into a desser t bar.

Now for the pricey part—the drinks. Don’t even attempt to stock a full bar, it will just cost you a fortune and half the stuff won’t get used. Opt instead for a few signature drinks that match your theme. Guests will typically ask you if they can bring something, so suggest they bring the alcohol of their choice and that way you’ll end up with more than enough. Now for your beverage options, once again think retro. How about some cherry or vanilla cokes? Mix regular or diet coke with flavored rums, amaretto or even whipped cream vodka. Keep a couple maraschino cherries on hand to complete the drink. Orange Juice plus whipped cream vodka makes something surprisingly like an Orange Julius or a creamsicle. You could go with a large punch bowl with some kool-aid as a base and build from there. (And just as an aside—cherry cool-aid slushie mix will cover the taste of even 90 proof alcohol.) Some hard cider, hard lemonade or hard iced tea give a childhood vibe as well. And since there’s always room for Jello, don’t forget the Jello shots. You know your crowd best so adjust your choices to the types of drinks you think they’ll enjoy.

If possible use some real appetizer plates, real glasses and cloth napkins. You can get sets of 5 appetizer plates for as little as $4.99 from TJ Maxx, Target and Pier1. Using real stuff helps balance out the adult evening with the kid stuff. Plus they are a small investment that you can use for lots of future get-togethers.

For entertainment, have some old school boardgames around and don’t be surprised when they turn into drinking games and get uber competitive. If you have a Wii, get ready for some guitar hero or bowling competitions. Just turn the TV back in time for the big ball drop.

Cheers to booze, sugar, and friends! Happy New Year!

Baking on a Budget

So there’s this idea perpetuated that baking for Christmas is a great way to give inexpensive gifts. This time of year, every lifestyle magazine suggests it. The problem is that if you want to bake a wide variety of cookies and package them decently, your costs can end up rising quickly.

To start, you’ll need at least some basic kitchen tools. (For the sake of your sanity do not attempt to make 10 dozen cookies with only one cookie sheet.) If you want to make different kinds of cookies (and who doesn’t) you’ll probably end up with a grocery list of expensive ingredients like almond extract, assorted nuts, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. And that’s assuming you already have the basic staples for baking. Once you’ve bought all that stuff, you’ll need to figure out a way to package your cookies.

If you’ve are determined to make an assortment of cookies from scratch and want to stay on budget, embrace one thing—coupons. Now, now, don’t get all snobby on me, coupons are making a comeback and many don’t even involve clipping.

A Quick Overview on Coupons

First, make sure you have the shopper card that every grocery store tries to shove down your throat—they are a necessary evil. Visit their online websites to load coupons directly onto your card. If you get the newspaper, there are great coupons in the Sunday paper. You can also print coupons online from a variety of websites like coupons.com and Target. Target has an awesome coupon policy that allows you to use 1 manufacturer coupon and 1 target coupon on the *same* item. Be sure to check their clearance section, as they often have baking items at extremely low prices (like a box of cake flour for under $2). If you shop at Target a lot, consider getting a Target credit card as it will save 5% on every purchase. Just budget accordingly and pay the balance off each month. Finance charges will quickly eat away at any savings you’ve made. Target also has a debit card option for those credit-shy folks.

A couple rules to keep in mind:

• Make sure your coupons are up to date and that it’s for the same size/type item.
  
  
• Match up coupons to sale items by checking your store’s circular.
  (Often available online).
  
  
• Store policy trumps anything written on the coupons.
  Some grocery stores will double coupons regardless of what they say on the front.Take a couple minutes to read up on your store’s policy.
  
  
• Plan your list in advance.
  Write out your grocery list and separate the coupons you plan to use on that visit in an envelope.
  
  
• Remember to bring your coupons with you!
  A little organization and pre-planning will make your grocery trip easier and cheaper.You can get little plastic coupon organizers for a couple dollars.Invest in one and keep a tote bag stocked with reusable bags, your organized coupons, store card, pens, and a mini calculator.Add a Carabiner to the end of your tote.When you are ready to shop, grab your grocery tote and head out.The carabiner will allow the tote to easily clip to your cart while you shop.At most stores, reusable bags will get you a few cents back on your purchase.

When shopping for baking ingredients also keep in mind what you need to splurge on and what can be low budget. It’s tempting to reach for imitation extract when you see the cost of an itty bitty bottle of real extract, but don’t do it. You can get some high end extracts at Marshalls/Homegoods/TJ Maxx for a reasonable price. Save the pricier purchases for the *star* of your cookies so good chocolate for chocolate chip cookies or fancy jam for sandwich style and so on.

Organizing Your Recipes & Packaging Tips

Now there are tons of cookie recipes online so no need to buy a cookbook. Rather than shuffle through a stack of random recipes, start off with a bit of organization.

Get a cheap 3 ring binder and some plastic sheet protectors. Slide the recipes into the plastic protectors and arrange in alphabetical order. You’ll be grateful you did this when you are struggling to find the amazing peanut butter cookie recipe you made last year after your google search ended up with a million hits. Now you have a holiday recipe cookbook with your top picks. If you want to include other kinds of recipes, just pick up a pack of divider pages and organize by type (main, appetizer, etc.). You’ll find the plastic sheet covers incredibly useful since you can smudge them with flour, butter—even blood (whoops those knives are sharp!) and wipe them clean. Leave some blank sheet protectors in the back of your book so you can add recipes to it as you find them. This way when you find a great oatmeal raisin cookie recipe in March just pop it in your binder it will be ready and waiting for that cookie swap in December.

For packaging up these gifts, it’s best to keep your eye out for inexpensive tins, cookie boxes, or cookie bags. You can also get the red or green tinted saran wrap. Both AC Moore and Bed Bath and Beyond have a ton of coupons and lots of packaging options. I recommend hoarding the Bed Bath & Beyond 20% coupons - they never expire and you can use 5 at a time. If you’re going with cookie bags or saran wrap pick up some twine or fabric ribbon. The latter can easily be found on sale at a variety of stores. I can typically find a spool of nice, thin fabric ribbon for a dollar or two.

Baking for Underachievers

Now if you want to bake cookies and do not want to buy a ton of ingredients or be tied to the oven all day, I have an easy option for you. Find yourself a copy of the book 101 Things to Do With Cake Mix by Stephanie Ashcraft (the Kindle edition will only set you back $3.82). You’ll have to trust me here. The book is worth it for the chewy lemon bar recipe alone. This book gives you easy ways to make baked items using cake mix. There are a ton of cookie, brownie and bar type recipes included. This will cut down on your need to buy as many ingredients. Cake mixes are one of the top items for both coupons and sales so they are incredibly budget friendly. If you can get past the snobbery of not making *everything* from scratch you’ll have some amazing, tasty, and inexpensive baked goods.

My Baking Project

Every year I bake gifts for my coworkers. I find baked goods to be a great choice in this context. I need to give a group of different ages and genders the same gift. The item needs to be something small but thoughtful that won’t make people feel obligated to reciprocate. Baking is perfect in this scenario. There are only four people in my department, so I opted out of making a ton of cookies and came up with another baking idea.

I found these individual ceramic mini loaf pans at AC Moore for $1.00 each. They will be perfect for giving individual cakes and include a reusable gift along with the edible gift. If you want to make large sized loaves you can get cardboard pans that you can bake directly into and then wrap up. If your budget allows for more per gift, you can stop by TJ Maxx/Marshalls/Homegoods and wander through the kitchen section. I found small Le Creuset bakers for $7.99 each and large ceramic loaf pans for as low as $5. A home-baked item in a ceramic dish makes a great hostess gift that can be made for less than $12.

Now onto my recipe of choice- I received a free digital Martha Stewart Thanksgiving Cookbook . (To download it yourself, click here.) I decided to go with the “All in One Holiday Bundt Cake” recipe by Dorie Greenspan. Partially because it sounded unusual, but mostly because I had all the ingredients including some cranberries and fresh ginger that needed to be used up. My one change was to substitute walnuts for the pecans. If you don’t have the ingredients for this recipe it would end up pricey, so remember to pick recipes that make sense for your pantry and your budget. Chocolate cake is always a hit and there are tons of great recipes that don’t require too many ingredients.

This is my first time with this recipe and every time I bake, I learn something new. What I learned this time is that halving or “coarsely chopping” fresh cranberries is ridiculous. I can’t even get them out of the bag without spilling them everywhere. If you want to play a joke on someone, ask one of your culinary inexperienced friends to chop some up. Then put it on youtube.

Now the recipe I chose yields a lot more than what I need for gifts so I’m going to reserve the excess batter until my first batch is done, this way if disaster strikes I can try again. Rule #1 in baking is that if you’re making something that is important, and have no extra ingredients or time to start over—something will go horrendously wrong. (Easter bunny cake that ended up looking like a poodle with a glandular problem, I’m talking about you.) Even if it’s just keeping aside a box of cake mix or having enough ingredients to start over—always, always have a backup plan.

The loaves came out great, so I just baked the leftover for me and my boyfriend. This also let me taste test the recipe before giving it out and it was quite delicious. It’s got a cozy, autumn, cinnamon taste. When the loaves cooled, I added the maple syrup glaze and it was time to move on to packaging.

Bed, Bath & Beyond has a great set of 50 assorted Christmas bags that sell for $9.99 (With your 20% off coupon this comes out to $7.99). I buy one of these each year and within those 50 bags are a set of cellophane treat bags. I have some left over from last year and I’m using those to package up the loaves.

Now they need a gift tag. I have an assortment of plain gift tags from Target that I’ll be using, but it’s actually very inexpensive to make your own and something I do regularly. You’ll need to invest in a hole punch. You can get them for a dollar or two at AC Moore or any craft store. If you want to be uber fancy pick up a set of scrapbooking scissors with a fancy edge. These are quite cheap – usually around $2 or $3 for one. (A pack of 6 assorted is $6.34 on Amazon). Then find some cardstock. You can use pieces left from packaging you might have received, a pack of unruled index cards—any cardstock will work. A one hole punch, scrapbook scissors, a spool of your choice of ribbon/twine/raffia and one pack of index cards will yield you tons of gift tags. The best part is they won’t be Christmas themed so you can make tags all year long for all kinds of gifts. You’ll find the scissors and hole punch to be a great investment for other future crafts and decorating.

To make the tags, just cut your desired shape out of the cardstock with the scrapbook scissors. Write your message, punch a hole in the corner and run your twine/ribbon through. Voila, the easiest, quickest craft you’ll probably ever do.

If you want to make labels, you can find all kinds of templates online to download that correspond with the sticky labels you buy. Print them out at home and stick those on top of your baked loaves with the recipient’s name or use them to list ingredients or the kind of food that’s being given.

My finished gifts:

I could’ve gotten fussy and tied curling ribbon at the end but I prefer the simple look. I was going for a fun, casual vibe with these. I’ll be giving these with some cards from a boxed set I bought on sale for half off. Don’t forget to stock up on Holiday cards and packaging right after Christmas. Pack them up with your holiday décor and you’ll be ready for your 2012 gift giving.

Happy Baking!

The Lies Flowers Tell Us

Magazines are illustrations of pretty myths that companies want us to believe are the norm, so that we’ll buy more expensive luxury items. The truth is what we see is only normal for the 1% of the population with high enough salaries to not worry about things like mortgages and the rising cost of public transportation. The first magazine myth that always bothered me was the idea that everyone should *splurge* on fresh flowers and have them around the house/apartment at all times. I can’t tell you in how many times I’ve read that same sentiment, flipping through the glossy photos of perfectly “antiqued” side tables holding gorgeous blooms that say the owner is romantic and chic and appreciates natural beauty despite their overwhelming collection of throw pillows. It’s the glamour of a hotel room, but in your own home. Lies! All lies! Unless you are willing to grow yourself a lovely flower garden in which to clip those beauties, most people don’t (and can’t) have those kinds of arrangements hanging around all the time.

It doesn’t help to watch shows like “The Barefoot Contessa” where teams of gay men descend on her home in the Hamptons to erect tablescapes, palm trees (for beach picnics of course) and sweeping floral arrangements for fresh seafood dinners. Now for the rest of us mere mortals who do not live in the Hamptons or have a gay pride parade’s worth of florists ready to satisfy our horticultural whims, there are some simple ways to put together beautiful arrangements for those special occasions.

So here’s my first suggestion. This one is for those special times when you have company coming or would like to give a nice floral arrangement as a gift. If you’re in a big city, your local bodega type shop sells bunches of flowers from $4 to $12. For those of you in the burbs and places elsewhere, you can grab bunches from the grocery store. (Trader Joes also has lovely flowers at an inexpensive price). There are two routes to take in making your arrangements look professional without much artistic talent: 1. All in the same color tone/family 2. Completely bright contrasting colors. No mixing of different pastels allowed here. And nearly anything can be a vase, from oversized glasses to old pasta jars and teapots. Always save nicely shaped jars and bottles. Wine bottles can make great bud vases, particularly when they are in a striking color (like those cobalt blue ones).

Trim down the flowers to the length that works for your vase of choice and start arranging. Don’t overthink it. If you’d like the flowers bunched tightly together, you can use a rubberband to hold the stems together or even a metal paperclip you undo and use as wire. The rubberband trick is great if you have all the same type of flower. A tightly bunched together group of flowers in a simple vase will come off as quite modern. Since I recently had some friends over for dinner I decided to splurge on some fresh flowers. En route home I stopped at a bodega and picked up a few bunches. I decided I wanted something unusual and they had these cabbage-esque flowers for $10 labeled as Brassica, (although I’m not convinced that’s what they were). I also picked up a small bunch of Statice for $4 and a bunch of unlabeled red berries for $5. My Grand total topped out at $19.00 and with tax $20.00. I could have easily stopped with just the Brassica and only one of the other kind which would have stopped my costs at $14 or $15.

I used a vase I had that I picked up long ago in the clearance section at Pottery Barn for just a couple dollars. They are a great place to visit right after a big holiday or end of season. You can pick up lots of little decorating items for next to nothing. I’ve gotten things like candle holders for less than a dollar there.

Here’s how my arrangement turned out.

I didn’t use any sort of floral foam or other fussy business. Just the purchased flowers and vase. This same arrangement would work well in a large clear jar or any other clear or white container you might have. If you choose a mixed assortment of flowers from the grocery, use some bud vases, wine bottles or tall glasses and make several arrangements grouping the flowers into either the same color/tone or the contrast. A row of three small arrangements grouped down the table will look unique and fresh.

For a regular run of the mill day when you don’t want to spend even $15 bucks on flowers, opt for the kind that keep on giving—flowering plants. Take a stop in the garden section of your grocery store. There is always some small flowering plant on sale in the $4.99 – $6.99 range. When you bring it home tuck it into a basket or whatever pretty container you have. Whitewashed baskets and terracotta pots give it a great look—if it’s a small plant tucking it into a teapot can give it a whimsical Alice in Wonderland feel. For a plant that’s lovely and practical, get a rosemary tree. It will give off a clean scent and you can snip branches for cooking.

The last and most practical suggestion is to skip flowers and move onto fruits. Simple glass cylinders filled with all the same fruit or veggie can be a very striking visual and they are useful to boot. Green granny smith apples, cheerful lemons or even tomatoes can be elevated by moving them from a basket to a large cylindrical type vase. For the holidays you can often get scraps of pine trees from the live tree lots for either nothing or next to nothing and would work great in various arrangements.

With a couple dollars and a little creativity you can have an arrangement any gay florist from the Hamptons would envy.