Your Monthly Salary

Your Monthly Salary is now signing on.

Now, sit back and relax for the opening of the second episode of…. Your Monthly Salary. I am your host, Ms. PIG, Pretty Intelligent Girl and I’d be the one to feed your mind with everything you want and need to hear.

As anyone would notice, Christmas season is already approaching: white snow outside, beautiful pine trees in each house, wonderful gifts wrapped in colorful wrappers, and hearing the lovely voice of chorale.

This month of December, Your Monthly Salary will give you some tips on how to celebrate the season we are all waiting for.
First in the list: preparing your food.

In Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, eating in the Great Hall with your friends is one of the most treasured moments of a student. Therefore, I personally had my research on how house-elves serve these remarkable desserts.


Pastry:
1 ½ sticks plus 2 tablespoons butter
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg, beaten with a fork
¾ cup ground almonds
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

Filling:
6 cups fresh white bread crumbs
1 ½ cups Lyle’s Golden Syrup
Grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

Line the bottom of an 11-inch tart pan with parchment paper.

Pastry:
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add beaten egg gradually, mixing as you go to avoid curdling. Fold in almonds and flour gently. Try not to over mix or handle the pastry much…a light touch is vital.

This may produce a very soft pasty and refrigeration up to 8 hours may be needed in order to handle. (My pastry was workable after mixing, perhaps because I used very cold butter.) You may have trouble rolling pastry. If so, resort to pressing into the tart pan, striving for a thin shell. If you have time, refrigerate for 1 hour after pressing into pan. Bake shell in a preheated 375ºF oven for 15 minutes, watching closely not to burn.

Filling: Mix the filling ingredients together. Fill the baked shell, and bake in a preheated 375ºF oven for 40 to 45 minutes. When ready, remove from oven and allow to sit for 10 to 15 minutes. Serving warm or at room temperature with ice cream or whipped cream.




INGREDIENTS
unsalted butter for baking dish
1 cup and 1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1 teasoon baking powder
3/4 cup pitted dates chopped
7 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/4 cup boiling water
5 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions:
Heat the oven to 350° F.
Butter an 8x6" baking dish.
Sift the flour and baking powder onto a sheet of waxed paper or into a bowl; set aside.
Chop the dates fine; toss with 1 tablespoon flour in a small bowl.
Beat 4 tablespoons of butter and 3/4 cup sugar in large bowl until mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the egg along with a little of the flour mixture; beat for 1 minute. Beat in remaining flour mixture.
Add dates, baking soda and vanilla to the 1-1/4 cups boiling water, stirring to combine; add to batter, beating until well blended.
Pour batter into a prepared baking dish; bake until set and well browned on top, 35- 40 minutes.
Remove from oven to wire rack.Heat broiler.
Heat remaining 3 tablespoons butter, the brown sugar and the 2 tablespoons heavy cream in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat to simmering; simmer until thickened, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat; pour topping over pudding.
Place pudding in broiler, about 4 inches from source of heat; broil until top bubbly, about 1 minute.




As a bonus, I added a recipe for the mothers out there. This is a famous biscuit that one of our heroes in the second wizarding war, Ron Weasley’s favorite: his mother’s rock cakes.


Ingredients:

8 oz/ 225g self rising flour
1 tsp double action baking powder (US) or 1 tsp baking powder (UK)
4 oz/110g soft butter or margarine
2 oz/ 55g granulated sugar
4 0z/ 110g mixed dried fruit
2 oz/ 55g currants
1 medium egg
1 - 3 tbsp milk
Demerara sugar for sprinkling
Oil for greasing

Preparation:
Heat the oven to 400F/200C/Gas 6
Sieve the flour and baking powder into a large baking bowl, add the softened butter or margarine, and lightly rub together with fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add the sugar and the dried fruit and mix so all ingredients are well incorporated.
Add the egg and 1 tbsp of the milk and mix to create a stiff dough. If the mixture is still dry add milk a tbsp at a time until required consistency.
Lightly grease two baking sheets.
Using a tablespoon divide the mixture into 12 mounds evenly spaced on the 2 baking sheets. Sprinkle with the demerara sugar.
Bake in the preheated oven for 15 mins or until golden brown and well risen.




As a student, not all of us are going to be enjoying Christmas with our families. Some will stay in their schools. Students out there, who would spend their holidays in Hogwarts, do not worry, for Ms. Pig is here to the rescue!

WHAT TO DO TO HAVE A WELL-SPENT CHRISTMAS?
Here are some tips in which I, myself organized for you to enjoy Christmas in school.
1. Play wizarding chess with your friends. Destroy somebody else’s chess piece!
2. Give your loved one (or maybe your friends) a present. It is what makes Christmas complete.
3. Create your own Yule Ball! Even though Triwizard Tournament is not in the season, it is not a reason not to have a Yule Ball.
4. Look for mistletoe and…you know? (PG-13)
5. Write a Christmas card and put it on your Christmas tree located in your common rooms.
6. Go to Great Hall and count if the Hogwarts stuff correctly placed twelve Christmas trees this year. Maybe a shortage of pine tree will be a reason if there are only 11 of them.
7. Ski. Snow is just outside the castle. Step on thin wood and be ready to slide!
8. Share some stories in front of a bonfire. Fire can balance the temperature around.
9. It is the time to make a snowman. I know, it is childish but Christmas is also about being a kid.
10. Sing the Christmas carol: Christmas at Hogwarts (Ring the Hogwarts bell/Cast a Christmas Spell)


Don't know how to sing it? Click this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOzB4Fh5R18


You think you know everything about this holiday already? Wait until you read these trivias:
1. The longest Christmas celebration is in the Philippines. They start to celebrate at September first and end at the late January.
2. A traditional Christmas dinner in early England was the head of a pig prepared with mustard.
3. An artificial spider and web are often included in the decorations on Ukrainian Christmas trees. A spider web found on Christmas morning is believed to bring good luck.
4. During the Christmas/Hanukkah season, more than 1.76 billion candy canes will be made.
5. For every real Christmas tree harvested, 2 to 3 seedlings are planted in its place.
6. In Britain, eating mince pies at Christmas dates back to the 16th century. It is still believed that to eat a mince pie on each of the Twelve Days of Christmas will bring 12 happy months in the year to follow.
7. It is estimated that 400,000 people become sick each year from eating tainted Christmas leftovers.
8. The "Twelve Days of Christmas" was originally written to help Catholic children, in England, remember different articles of faith during the persecution by Protestant Monarchs. The "true love" represented God, and the gifts all different ideas:
9. If you counted all the gifts that were given in the song “Twelve Days of Christmas” you would realize that the number of gifts being presented were 364 in total, thus a gift was given for each day of the year.
10. Kris Kringle really lives in the North Pole. But guess what he foregoes the reindeer and drives a 1984 Ford Tempo, additionally; he delivers Pizza (a very popular muggle food) instead of working in a magical toy shop.
11. It was once believed that any woman who went under a mistletoe and was not kissed would not marry the coming year.
12. The Puritans forbade the singing of Christmas carols.




Now, some Hogwarts trivia!

decorations:
 twelve Christmas trees
 Christmas ornaments
 armor enchanted to sing carols
 snow, dry and warm, falling from the enchanted ceiling
 for the Yule Ball: walls covered in silver frost, garlands of mistletoe and ivy

festivities:
 the Christmas Feast - midday meal
 the Yule Ball - from 8 pm until midnight (1994 only)
 presents - piled on the foot of their beds when they wake up

other
 The famous Transfiguration professor, McGonagall goes around at the beginning of December having kids sign up who are planning to stay at Hogwarts over the holidays


Coming from the studio, happy holidays to everyone!

Well, that’s it for now. Tune in for another informative topic next month only here on your favorite radio show, The Monthly Salary.

Your Monthly Salary now signing off.



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