ATg Food + beverage Roundup — Holiday Favorites

Column Editors: Nicole Ameduri (Licensing Manager, Springer Nature) <Nicole.ameduri@springernature.com>

and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) <Lisalibrarian@gmail.com>

Nicole’s Picks — Holiday Staples

These are three of my cold-weather staples that I make throughout the holiday season.

Biscuits

Makes 12 biscuits 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 tablespoon sugar ½ teaspoon cream of tartar ¼ teaspoon salt ½ cup butter ¾ cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, cream of tartar and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour to form coarse crumbs. Make a well in the center of the ingredients and pour in the cream. Lightly blend with your hands, being careful not to overwork the dough.

Place dough onto a floured surface and make into a smooth ball and then roll out until about 1 inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out as many biscuits as possible. Gather the dough, reroll and cut more biscuits. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes.

Apple Tarts

Makes 4 tarts

Dough

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces 1/3 cup ice water

Filling

2 ½ cups peeled and sliced Granny Smith apples ¼ cup light brown sugar ¼ cup sugar ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg (I highly recommend grinding your own nutmeg. The taste will be much more vibrant than if you buy ground nutmeg.) 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons butter

Dough

In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt and refrigerate to chill. Starting with cold ingredients will yield the flakiest crust. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or fork. Add the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing with a fork until the mixture forms a dough. If the dough is too dry and crumbly, add an additional tablespoon of ice water until it comes together. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Cut the dough into 4 equal portions. Use a rolling pin and a small amount of flour to roll out each piece into a circle roughly 7 inches in diameter. Brush off any excess flour and place on a large baking sheet.

Filling

In a large bowl, toss the apples with the brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour. Make sure the apples are evenly coated.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Divide the apple filling into 4 equal portions. Place 1 portion of the apple filling into the center of each dough circle. Decoratively arrange the apples, leaving a 3/4-inch border all the way around. Fold the border over the apples along the edges, pinching edges together as necessary.

I like to save the left over dough and cut maple leaves out of it. You can be creative.

Maple-glazed Root Vegetables

Makes 4 servings 1 cup peeled and large-diced parsnips ½ cup large-diced turnip ½ cup peeled and large-diced carrot 1 cup peeled and large-diced golden beets 3 tablespoons maple syrup 1 tablespoon melted butter ½ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the parsnips, turnip, carrot and golden beets in an 8 x 8-inch glass or ceramic baking dish. Drizzle the syrup and butter over the vegetables. Sprinkle the rosemary and a pinch of salt over the vegetables as well. Stir to incorporate.

Bake until all the vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes.

Lisa’s Picks — Coffee to Cocktails … Mailed to Your Home

I’ve learned many things in the past few months but the pile of boxes in my garage evidences my newly discovered pleasure

in the range of items one can have shipped to their home. One senses how wonderous the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalog was for those in a previous era! In addition to subscriptions to a couple of newspapers and magazines that I used to read in airport lounges during layovers, I’m also enjoying three beverage subscriptions: coffee, wine, and cocktails.

I started the Trade Coffee subscription when I decided to learn how to brew my own iced coffee. Think of this as my version of learning to make sourdough … you leave it alone to do its thing for hours, never quite sure if it will be the same as the last, and celebrate when it turns out as you hope, sublime in its simplicity. The Trade Coffee website walks you through a quick interview on your level of experience with coffee, your intended brewing method, whether you add cream and/or sugar to your coffee, your preferred roast, and your preferred taste palette in order to make recommendations. Subscription options include one or two bags per order, whole bean or ground, and shipping frequency of every one to six weeks. I’ve enjoyed all of the coffees that have been selected for me by the algorithm and it has been fun to learn more about what I think makes a good iced coffee vs. hot brewed. Website: https://www.drinktrade.com/

I have my local “wine guy” who makes excellent recommendations, honed by my many years of attending his weekend wine tastings (sigh, a casualty of the pandemic). So, though Todd’s Wines at Art Mart (http://smilepolitely.com/food/interview_with_todd_fusco_art_marts_wine_buyer/) is my go to for bottles, I needed a different sort of service when some friends and I set up a weekly happy hour over the summer and wanted to incorporate a wine tasting component into it. We needed a way to have more than one wine per happy hour without ending up with multiple open bottles and for our geographically dispersed selves to all have the same wines. Happily, we found Vinebox. On a quarterly basis, we each get a shipment of nine vials of wine and a booklet with tasting notes and recommended food pairings. And, if you really like something you taste, there is of course the option to buy full-sized bottles as well or follow Vinebox’s recommendations for other wines you might like to order. Website: https://www.getvinebox.com/

Finally, there is Cocktail Courier. I must confess — this subscription has been long-standing. I started it in 2016! This subscription can be set for weekly, every other week, or monthly and I particularly valued (in before pandemic times) that during heavy work travel times you can also skip a delivery or pause your subscription. After you set your delivery pattern, you also choose which spirits you like. I have mine set to whiskey, cognac/brandy, and aperitif/digestif right now but I can also change that if, for example, I want to add gin during summer months. Each shipment comes with all the alcohol, mixers, etc. needed to make appropriately 8-12 drinks, including fancy garnishes, and detailed directions for execution. And, just like you might have a favorite bartender, you may find yourself with a favorite Cocktail Courier mixologist. I have come to know that I will always enjoy any concoction dreamed up by Laila Grainawi (https://www.cocktailcourier.com/bartender/laila-grainawi-2/)! Note: If alcohol cannot be shipped to your state, there is a “Just the Mix” at a lower price point option as well as mocktail options. Website: https://www.cocktailcourier.com/

Let me add a final comment. As is the way of Internet commerce, I have referral and discount codes for all of these services as a subscriber. Email me if you are interested in trying any of them and I can generate a code for you!

Squirreling Away

from page 81

complete puzzle, we find that our aspirations are often greater than our reality.

The same can be said about libraries, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our reality is less than ideal. Instead of missing pieces, we are managing with flat (if we are lucky) budgets, empty positions and new responsibilities. So in many regards, it is difficult to measure accountability or assessment when each of our libraries are dealing with dramatically different conditions. We are often measuring our libraries against peer institutions or, worse yet, the fantasy of an optimal situation. I have often been tasked with exploring what peer institutions are doing, but that does not tell the entire story. Just like if you have a cat with a jigsaw puzzle, you might have a furry friend who really can’t be bothered to knock the pieces on the floor. Some cats are too lazy to even bother with puzzles.

With all that being said, our job in libraries is not simply to complete the puzzle, but to take the pieces that we have and create the best puzzle that we can. Our job is to consider that a puzzle is made up of discrete pieces that combine to make a larger picture. The same is true in our libraries. We offer up a number of resources and services, when taken on their own, cannot truly be completely useful to many people. But taken as a whole, it provides a more complete picture of information resources and services that our community uses.

And much like every piece of a puzzle that Cosmo knocks on the ground and essentially into Runyon’s waiting mouth, librarians are left to figure out how to manage and create the best picture possible when not all the pieces are there. With budget constraints and position freezes in nearly every library across the country (and maybe across the globe), we must all figure out how to do the best when we do not have all the pieces we need. That should be the measure of accountability in libraries that we embrace. Let’s not compare against our peers or our better days. Let’s figure out how to deliver the best service we can during the time that we live in.

And for God’s sake, wear a dang mask.

Corey Seeman is the Director, Kresge Library Services at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is also the new editor for this column that intends to provide an eclectic exploration of business and management topics relative to the intersection of publishing, librarianship and the information industry. No business degree required! He may be reached at <cseeman@umich.edu> or via twitter at @cseeman.