Friday Top Five

Top 5 Non-traditional Christmas Songs

1. "Just Like Christmas," Low
Between the jingling bells, the loud booming drums and chugging acoustic guitar, I can't help but feel happy each time I hear this song.

2. "Snoopy's Christmas," The Royal Guardsmen
I had this song on a Peter Pan 45 and listened to it over and over again. Even so, it was always a thrill to hear it on the radio each year.

3. "Father Christmas," The Kinks
The best rock-n-roll Christmas song ever. And socially conscious to boot.

4. "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)," The Chipmunks
According to Dr. Demento, Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. (aka Dave Seville) wrote this song when a Christmas display went up in his town a couple months early and his kids started freaking out in anticipation of December 25th. Whether that's true or not, having my own five year old who's been on the verge of exploding with excitement for Christmas since the middle of August, I can totally understand.

5. "O Holy Night," Unknown
Forgive me for this one. I know it's a traditional Christmas carol, it's just that this version is so damn beautiful it makes me cry each time.

Really?

I had to ban a spam-bot from my journal. Every time I deleted one comment (for fabulously cheap Air Jordan shoes), there was another waiting just a few minutes later.

Sauerkraut and mushrooms (kapusta z grzybami)

There's no picture with this one because there's really nothing pretty about fermented cabbage. When it comes to sauerkraut, though, it's not about how it looks -- it's about how it tastes, and this recipe taste pretty damn tasty, if I do say so myself. Here's what you need:

1 quart of sauerkraut (don't get Polish or German style, just get plain old sauerkraut)
1 onion
12 oz. fresh portobello mushrooms (I use the small ones)
3 T butter
3 T flour
2 bay leaves
1 mushroom bullion cube (or vegetable bullion if you can't find mushroom)
2 t caraway seeds
1 t sugar
a little salt and pepper to taste

Drain and rinse the sauerkraut off in a colander, then chop it coarsely on a board. Put the rinsed and chopped sauerkraut into a pot, cover it with cold water, and bring it to a boil. Cover it with a lid, turn the heat down low, and simmer it for 1 hour. While that's cooking, dice the onion and mushrooms and brown them with the butter (I mean really brown them, so the onions are almost caramelized). When they look nice and yummy, add the flour and lightly brown that. By now the sauerkraut should be done cooking for an hour. If so, slowly spoon the liquid from the sauerkraut into the onion/mushroom/flour mixture. Keep adding liquid until the flour mixture is nice and smooth, then pour it all into the pot with the sauerkraut. Add the bay leaves, bullion, sugar, caraway seeds and salt and pepper, mix it up, and cook it over a low flame for another hour.

I serve this on the side with the pierogi I make -- between the cooking and all the added ingredients, it no longer has that crunchy harsh vinegary taste that kraut straight from a can has. Instead it's savory and quite delicious, and as my oldest son will attest, good enough to eat on it's own.