Your Blizzard Menu

 The first of the big blizzards is coming to the new York area and  that means staying home. We are used to it by now and it's a good time to make hearty meals.A hot steamy dish or pasta or chili can get your through a day of shoveling or just having fun. 

A crock pot is your best friend in this weather.  It's great for making rib sticking chilis and pastas. A good chili is one loaded with beans and ground beef. You can vary the beans, using pintos and kidney  along with black beans for extra flavor. If you want heat , then add a good tablespoon of hot pepper flakes. For a five alarm one, think about sliced jalapenos, chipotle, adobe and ancho. If you want a more veggie based, then add more onions and sliced green peppers. What to serve with it? rice is always a good choice but polenta is another hearty side.It is a cooling factor for spicy ones along with being great at sopping up the sauce. Of course you could also have a bed of saltines or tortilla chips. A different spin is white chili which is a blend of chicken or pork,mild Anaheim peppers and green or red peppers.It's topped with sour cream or guacamole. Your crockpot can be used for that second classic winter dish tomato sauce for pasta. A basic sauce is combining olive oil with tomato paste and sauce along with chopped onion and garlic. a dollop of honey gives it a mellow sweetness and balances out the tomatoes tang. The most obvious choice of pasta is spaghetti but penne and farfalle work well too.

If you don't want to use your crock pot, there 's the oven. Casseroles are a great winter dish and flavorful. Lasagna is the most famous and loved of all of the dishes. It's tasty layers of whatever you want, You can go with homemade sauce from your crock pot or jarred. Cheese can be ricotta or even cottage cheese. The meat can be sausage or ground beef or you can try a vegan version. Vegetables can be subbed in for meat. Try bell peppers and squash along with zucchini and broccoli. Another tasty casserole is baked mac and cheese .The traditional version is a deep dish layered affair, with a roux of flour butter and milk. Sharp cheddar  gives mac and cheese its' famed bite and tang. You can add a layer of bacon strips or bits for more flavor . Tuna casserole is one of the most famous dishes , going back to the 1950s. It's actually a simple mix of tuna, egg noodles and green peas.Cream of mushroom soup is the liquid used to moisten and flavor it while a topping of breadcrumbs give it crunch. For a different  spin on a hearty meal, think chowders. These chunky soups are perfect for a cold day. They can be made either in a crockpot, stove top pot or slow cooker. A tasty treat would be a lobster or shrimp chowder but you can also have a corn one or one laden with chicken.

Blizzard weather is here and with it comes the need for hearty meals. Create something that's rib sticking and satsifying. It'll get you and your family through the  blustery days ahead

Homemade Food Gifts

Nothing beats a homemade gift. It symbolizes the epitome of love and care. Home chefs and home bakers can definitely attest to this. Family and friends love homemade nibbles. The best part is that it's an easy gift to make.

The New York Times Food section touched on this in an article written by regular contributor, Kim Severson. Food gift swaps are kind  of like culinary Facebook events. Everyone finds out on line and then people are paired with gift givers who also expect a home baked or home cooked gift in return.As with Facebook and Twitter it is a fun way to meet fellow foodies from across the country. There are moderators such as the website Food52 which is dedicated to cooking and decorating brings food lovers together. This year 1,1507 from fifteen countries signed up, (it's closed for this Christmas but you can sign up for next year's). Gifts can be anything from homemade jam to peanuts raised in an Alaskan backyard garden. A new mother, Adrienne Kerrigan, a Seattle food blogger received a container of frozen apples cooked forever from her food exchange couple. They had found out she was expecting and sent her  the same first food that they had fed her baby. As for people with allergies, celiac sufferers are paired with other allergy sufferers.Europeans are given names of foodies on their continent while Canadians are matched with fellow ones.

You don''t have to use Food 52 to have a food swap. If your family and friends love your cooking and baking then gift them with edible gifts. The Food section online has an amazing array of recipes for making fresh from the oven and stove top presents. Snack lovers will go wild for Melissa Clark's tamarind spiced nuts with mint. It's taking cashews and coating them in a blend of tomato paste, light brown sugar,honey butter and tamarind. The nuts are then baked in a 300 degree F oven for 25 minutes. Candy lovers will enjoy opening up a box of Florence Fabricant's buttery English toffee made with a pound of Lindt or Tobler chocolate and two and a half cups of butter. Then there's  David Tanis;' chocolate bourbon truffles , rife with heavy cream,  crushed pecans, or hazelnuts and of course, bourbon. He also has a savory pecan cookie, spiked with rosemary and Parmesan cheese. Give a tin of them with a dry sherry for a one of a kind gift. .If you have jam lovers in your circle surprise them with bacon onion jam, a blend of bacon, Spanish onions, and mustard seeds cooked down with dark brown sugar and balsamic vinegar. Bake a loaf of  sourdough to accompany it for a great lunch or hearty snack.

Food gifts are fun to make and fun to give . Join a food swap or give a holiday treat to friends and family. It'll be enjoyed and remembered throughout the entire year.