Holiday Heritage

     
I was invited to go to my Grandmothers house for a little French-Canadian Christmas celebration of a sort. It's been a yearly tradition for my family since way before I was born. We make fried dough with maple syrup and powdered sugar for toppings. We call them "pitouins", but I have never met anyone else who made them or called them that. So, I did a little research and this culinary link seems to connect the tradition of frying bread dough with all the fixin's to Newfoundland and something called "toutons" or "toutins". Sounds awfully close to my grandmothers pronunciation of pitouins (when asked today how to spell the dish she told me, ("It's a lot easier to make it then to spell it"). So, I'm going with that theory, and considering our French-Canadian heritage I have no doubt that it is the origin of our fried dessert. Here is a very easy recipe for pitouins. I am going to warn you now: this is ANYTHING BUT heart healthy.

• frozen bread dough
• crisco oil
• REAL maple syrup (no imitations, please!!!!)
• Powdered Sugar

~Let the dough thaw and rise on your counter overnight. In the morning, prepare the oil....heat it in a large pot but keep a very close eye on it, you don't want it to overheat and catch on fire which it quite possible. You know the oil is hot enough when you can put a ball of dough in and it browns nicely (light brown not dark). Tear off the dough into ball shapes and place them carefully in the oil. With tongs, turn them over once to brown the opposite side, then take them out and let them dry on some layers of brown paper bag. Serve with a dusting of powdered sugar (if desired) and a good helping of maple syrup for dipping. Think happy thoughts for your gall bladder and arteries for the rest of the week. 

When going to this party I also made a really quick little present for my Grammy and I was totally thrilled with the result. All I did was some needle-felting and I made a woven basket out of birch branches. 

 

I didn't really want to let this one go....and neither did my daughter. What a sweet little bird. Can you tell from my inpiration that I am ready for *spring*??