Editor’s Mixing Bowl

Anticipation is a word I easily associate with the approach of the holiday season.

It’s that wistful feeling from childhood, when we scribbled our names in catalogs next to pictures of toys as little voices in our excited dreaming heads called out to our parents to bestow these things upon us. I always drew two stars next to all the super-deluxe models of the Lilliputian cooking kits, and one year I actually received such a treasure … not quite a deluxe model, but a version more in keeping with my frugal Midwestern family’s values.

However, it didn’t take long to learn that the real fun was in a full-size kitchen, and there my family never scrimped on any ingredients we young cooks requested. On any night during the dark season, with snow piling up outside, candelit warmth inside, and egg beaters whirling in the kitchen, all manner of homemade savories, sweets, preserves, and spiced drinks sprawled across the counters and tables. People reliably came through to demolish the goodies as quickly as we made them. That was ample incentive to keep the cooking joy cranked up from Thanksgiving until Twelfth Night, at which point it was officially okay to take a wrecking ball to the gingerbread cathedral.

But why can’t the celebrations last into February, the little voice continues to call out from across the decades?

In the Edible East Bay production workshop, as we assembled this package of stories, recipes, and pictures to inspire your holiday celebrations, we realized we had in our hands just the opportunity to keep cheer raised high right up to February 5, 2019, when the Lunar New Year welcomes in the Year of the Pig. So now we offer an invitation to anyone who likes to spend time in a warm winter workshop or kitchen: