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My son has been obsessed lately with preparations for the Chinese (Lunar) New Year. They’ve learned songs and made decorations at school and will be having a family potluck next week. To kick things off at home, we made paper lanterns and egg drop soup yesterday. He’s also asked for “uncut noodles” (symbolizing longevity) and fried dumplings or egg rolls.

Eggs — specifically tea eggs — are served to symbolize wealth and prosperity. Check out last year’s post on PBS Kitchen Explorers for more on the food traditions of Chinese New Year and an egg roll recipe. The Williams-Sonoma blog has a traditional three-course menu if you’re feeling more ambitious.

Recipe: Egg Drop Soup
Adapted from The Kitchn
Serves 2-4

Ingredients:

• 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon miso paste
• 1 or 2 eggs (see note)
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• green onions, sliced

Instructions:

Whisk ginger into broth in a small saucepan. Turn to medium high and bring to a simmer. Lower heat to medium low, maintaining a gentle simmer, and whisk in miso paste until dissolved.

In a separate bowl, whisk together egg(s) and corn starch until smooth. Hold a fork across the bowl and slowly pour the egg mixture through the fork tines into the broth, using your other hand to whisk as you pour. Remove from heat and serve immediately, garnished with green onions.

Makes 4 small appetizer servings, or 2 larger bowls.

Note: I used two eggs which made a very thick soup. If you prefer more broth, just use one.

Cooking with Kids Tips: Little ones can help whisk together the egg and corn starch — older ones can whisk as you pour the egg mixture into the broth. It’s fun to watch the egg turn into little ribbons in the soup. And always let kids add their own garnish — my son doesn’t like extraneous green things, my daughter added some cheese. (And loved it!)

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For those of you in the DC/Northern Virginia area, there are two festivals coming up this weekend, the Chinese New Year Festival in Falls Church and the Lunar New Year festival at Fair Oaks Mall.

Are you doing anything with your kids to celebrate? Yes, getting take-out counts.

I once had the fortune to ride out a Florida hurricane at my great aunt’s house. How was this fortuitous, you may ask. Well for starters, I was with my uncle and aunt. Like any good son of an Italian mother, my uncle cooked up a storm as long as the power held out — there was pasta, scallops, and more. And in the backyard of the house, there were avocado trees. The fruits were strewn across the yard after the storm passed (thankfully, there was no serious damage in the neighborhood), and I flew back home several days later with a suitcase partially filled with fresh fallen avocados. If you’ve never had a Florida avocado, they are quite different than the standard Californian/Mexican Haas avocados found at supermarkets. They are several times larger, lighter colored and smooth skinned, and I find they have a fruitier flavor.

Once home with my hurricane souvenirs I set about to recreate a salad I first fell in love with on our honeymoon in Puerto Rico: the grapefruit avocado salad. The salad is simple to throw together, full of bright flavors to add cheer to cold winter days, and the healthy fats in the avocado help make it deceptively filling. Sometimes I just drizzle my grapefruit and avocado slices with straight olive oil, but it doesn’t take much longer to whisk it with lemon juice for the dressing.

Even when I have to make it with California avocados, it still serves to boost my mood during the dreary days of January.

Recipe: Grapefruit Avocado Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 large grapefruit
• 1 large Florida avocado or 2 Haas avocados
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons good olive oil
• sea salt

Instructions:

1. In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice and olive oil to make dressing. Set aside.
2. Peel grapefruit and separate sections.
3. Halve avocado(s) lengthwise and remove pit. Cut into thick slices, still in the skin, and gently scoop the slices out with a spoon.
4. Arrange grapefruit segments and avocado slices in bowl or serving dish. Drizzle dressing over salad and then season generously with sea salt.

Makes 2-4 servings.

There are a number of ways to build upon this recipe — adding fennel or seafood, for example. Do you have a favorite version?

Once kids enter the picture, New Year’s Eve bashes tend to shift earlier, or vanish altogether, often replaced by cozy evenings at home. Truthfully, I don’t mind too much. When I was growing up, we would get together with close family friends, play games, eat junk food (potato chips and dip) and wait for the Times Square ball to drop. At 5-years and 18-months, the foodie tots haven’t reached the staying-up-till-midnight phase yet, so we’re planning to celebrate with them on London time before sending them off to bed so mama and daddy can enjoy some quiet (and maybe a little bubbly) while waiting for the ball to drop.

New Year’s Day has become the bigger holiday for now, with a family-friendly brunch with friends. Here’s a shirred egg dish that elevates your every-day eggs into a celebration-worthy dish, perfect for starting off the year right. (I always thought that “shirred” referred to baking under cream, but apparently it’s just the baking technique. Nevertheless, the cream helps keep the eggs from drying on top, which is especially useful if your kids prefer their yolks well done.)

Serve these with coffee cake or leftover Christmas panettone (why yes, I did pick up another on sale…). Swap out the bacon for lox and you’ve got a classy, kid-friendly holiday brunch. Don’t forget the blood orange mimosas.

Recipe: Individual Baked (Shirred) Eggs

Ingredients:

• 4 cage-free eggs
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 tablespoons heavy cream
• grated parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Melt butter and divide among 4 small ramekins.
2. Crack one egg into each ramekin. Pour one tablespoon cream over each, and season each with a pinch of salt and pepper (I omit the pepper for the kids).
3. Place ramekins on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 9-10 minutes, until white looks opaque and mostly cooked through. Sprinkle parmesan cheese over tops and return to oven for another 1-2 minutes. Yolks will still be soft at this point — cook 2 more minutes or so for firm yolks if desired.

Serves 4.

Happy New Year to you & your family!

The weather here’s been more wet and dreary than crisp and wintery of late, so comfort food in the form of holiday baking has definitely been in order. I’ve had a cider-based cookie in mind ever since I made boiled cider for those doughnuts a while back. I was envisioning something a little more crisp than your typical apple cookie, so I decided to substitute the boiled cider for molasses in a spiced cookie, resulting in a lighter, more soft and mellow ginger snap type treat.

Recipe: Cider Snap Cookies
Adapted from Martha Stewart

Ingredients:

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup boiled cider*
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Additional cinnamon sugar/maple sugar for rolling cookies

Instructions:

*About the boiled cider: If you don’t have boiled cider prepared (or purchased), boil down 1/2 cup apple cider over medium heat until reduced by half and slightly thickened. Cool to room temperature before using.

1.  Whisk flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, allspice and salt together in a large bowl.

2. In mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add egg, boiled cider and vanilla and mix until well combined.

3. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix on low until just combined.

4. Refrigerate dough for 20 minutes to make it easier to handle. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

5. Roll chilled dough into 1-inch balls, then roll each quickly in cinnamon sugar or maple sugar. Place about 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake until edges are firm and cookies appear set in the middle, 10-15 minutes. Cool on cooling rack. Makes about 3 dozen.

Note: I mixed equal parts maple sugar and turbinado sugar for the coating, but a cinnamon-sugar mixture will work as well if you don’t have maple sugar on hand.

Hopefully by now you’ve consumed the last of your Thanksgiving leftovers, and perhaps you’ve already plunged head first into holiday baking. Me, I need a little time to detox, especially as I’m still coming off the dairy binge that was my November visit to Wisconsin. And there’s no better way to cleanse your diet than with this super simple massaged kale salad. (Look for kale at the farmers markets — it’s one of the heartier greens that can be grown after weaker varieties have called it quits for the winter.)

I’d seen massaged kale salads around the web, and a similar marinated kale version, but it was my friend Jill’s kale with apple salad that finally prodded me to make it. I started simple with just the four basic ingredients — salt, olive oil, lemon juice, and Lacinato kale — and proceeded to devour the entire bowl. Well that’s not entirely true, I had some competition from the foodie bebe. I don’t know if it was the bright green color that drew her in, but each time I’ve made this now she slurps it down like pasta. (She even had three helpings while sick with a cold this past weekend — hooray vitamin C!) We haven’t even branched out yet to add fruit or cheese. We also haven’t shared with the boy or kale-and-tofu-fearing husband yet, so I don’t know if the kale-salad love is limited to those without a Y chromosome. Let me know if you’ve shared it with the men in your life. For now, it’s our little girls’ lunch secret.

Recipe: Four Ingredient Massaged Kale Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch kale, Lacinato or  curly preferred
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Instructions:

1. Rinse the kale and spin or pat dry. Cut the leaves off the stems and then into thin 1/4-inch ribbons.
2. Place in a large bowl and sprinkle with salt. Massage the salt into the kale for two minutes.
3. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the olive oil and lemon juice.
4. Toss dressing with the massaged kale and let stand five minutes before serving.

Serves 1 to 4, depending on your family’s love for kale.

More kale salad variations from around the web:

• Massaged Kale Salad Three Ways at Frog Bottom Farm
• Jill’s Apple Kale Salad at Heavy Table
• Raw Tuscan Kale Salad at 101 Cookbooks
• Fully Loaded Kale Salad at Healthy. Happy. Life.
• Kale Salad with Fried Pear Chips at Food52