A 7-year-old’s vivid imagination and kind heart have created a new holiday called Wolfenoot, and the thousands of people around the world who’ll celebrate it Nov. 23 will donate to dog- and wolf-related charities, including one in Indiana.
Wolfenoot — say “wolf-uh-noot” — was born after the New Zealand boy told his mom about the holiday: “The Spirit of the Wolf brings and hides small gifts around the house for everyone. People who have, have had or are kind to dogs get better gifts than anyone else. You eat roast meat (because wolves eat meat) and cake decorated like a full moon.”
If you’re planning to celebrate Wolfenoot, we’ve developed some recipes to help — rack of lamb, a cake decorated like a full moon and an easy dog treat.
Just weeks after Jax Goss of Hamilton, New Zealand, mentioned on Facebook that her son had invented the holiday, the official Facebook group — Wolfenoot Central — has nearly 4,900 members from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, various European countries, Norway, Dubai and Japan.
On Twitter, @realwolfenoot has acquired nearly 1,900 followers in less than three weeks.
The overnight delight in the holiday — and a couple of imposter social media accounts offering knockoff merchandise — prompted Goss to quickly begin to form a nonprofit, sponsor a contest for a logo design and get official merchandise arranged at wolfenoot.com/wolfeloot.
None of the money from merchandise sales goes to her family, Goss explains. All proceeds go to the charity the winning logo designer designated — Wolf Park, a research and education facility in Battle Ground, Ind., near Lafayette.
“We were floored. We didn’t know how she found out about us — the artist is in Ohio and has never been here,” says Wolf Park’s events coordinator Caity Judd. “We had heard about the holiday and planned to do something about it, but we didn’t know in advance that she had nominated us.”
Judd says money from Wolfenoot merchandise purchases will be earmarked for a multiyear, million-dollar-plus re-fencing project at the facility, which was founded by a Purdue University professor in 1972. Wolf Park also houses coyotes, foxes and bison, she says.
Wolf Park is planning its own Wolfenoot celebration 6-9 p.m. Nov. 23. “We just started planning (two weeks ago),” Judd says, “but we hope to have food to purchase, and booths with information about how to help wildlife, how people can make a difference. This is a small idea that has turned into a huge phenomenon, and that’s how we want to set it up.”
In mid-October, Wolf Park received its first donation from Wolfenoot.
It is a small idea, but it comes from a child whose family doesn’t even have a dog. “We’re the kind of people who won’t keep a dog because our garden (yard, in the U.S.) is too small. We have two cats, though,” says Goss, reached by Skype in her home in Hamilton.
Goss doesn’t reveal her son’s name because of his tender age but says he’s “an extremely imaginative kid. He’s a pretty remarkable kid, if I do say so myself. I never had to teach him to share. He’s always had that spark of being a kind person, which makes me super-proud.”
Goss works at a zoo and is also an independent book publisher. So where Wolfenoot goes from here is logical. “I don’t want too many expectations,” she says. “I have some ideas about how it can continue and do some good in the world. At some point, we will probably sit down and make a children’s book together, telling the story of the Great Wolf.”
Until then, though, she’s encouraging people to celebrate the holiday in ways that feel best to them. Vegetarians don’t have to eat meat, she says. People can make pies instead of cakes if they wish, she says. “Just go ahead and interpret it however you would like. You don’t need our permission,” she says.
The one thing that needs to remain is the expression of kindness. “The kindness, the small presents thing, has gotten kind of lost. You need to think about what the person would like and seek out something to please them.”
A 7-year-old’s understanding of what makes a good small present is limited, his mom says. “He’s been talking about it for a while, and he’s specific about little presents because it’s so close to Christmas. When I asked him what would be good gifts, he told me Hot Wheels cars, Kinder Surprise Eggs. Or maybe a toy, a puzzle, bath bombs for moms, presents for the pets.”
Though her son doesn’t fully understand what’s happened with the idea that he says “just came out of my brain,” his mom says, “he’s happy that people want to do his thing. He’s really happy that people are doing fundraisers for dog charities and wolf sanctuaries.”
Robin Mather is a longtime food journalist and the author of “The Feast Nearby.” She will celebrate Wolfenoot with her standard poodle, Callebaut.
Rack of lamb with garlic-horseradish cream
Prep: 30 minutes
Cook: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Makes: 4 to 6 servings
Rack of lamb is usually sold with the bones already “frenched,” or cleaned of meat. Your butcher can do this if the racks are not already done. Remove the racks from the refrigerator two hours before roasting, so the meat can come to room temperature.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon each: salt, pepper, crushed dried rosemary
2 racks of lamb (1 ½ pounds each, 7 to 8 ribs each), frenched
Sauce:
1 whole head garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 cup drained bottled horseradish
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Place racks of lamb on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. Score the fat on racks by cutting diagonal lines 1/4- to 1/2-inch deep. Combine olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary; rub mixture into all sides of the meat. Wrap the bones in foil to prevent burning. Place the racks fat-side up on the baking sheet. Let stand at room temperature while you prepare the sauce.
2 Slice off the top of the head of garlic. Drizzle the olive oil over the exposed garlic; wrap it in foil. Roast the garlic until tender, 60 to 75 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.
3 Combine sour cream, heavy cream, horseradish and salt in a small bowl. When garlic has cooled, squeeze cloves into a bowl; discard the skins. Mash the cloves with a fork; add them to the sour cream mixture. Set aside.
4 Raise oven temperature to 450 degrees. Roast lamb racks until well browned, 10 minutes.
5 Reduce heat to 300 degrees; cook until a meat thermometer inserted horizontally into the meat reads 125 degrees for rare, or 135 degrees for medium-rare, 10 to 20 minutes longer. Remove lamb from oven; let rest 15 minutes before carving.
6 To serve, slice between the bones; serve each person 2 to 3 chops. Pass sauce at table.
Nutrition information per serving (for 6 servings): 250 calories, 16 g fat, 7 g saturated fat, 90 mg cholesterol, 5 g carbohydrates, 1 g sugar, 22 g protein, 617 mg sodium, 1 g fiber
Wolfenoot dog treats
Prep: 25 minutes
Bake: 20 minutes
Makes: 40 to 48 treats
A batch of these will surely get you amazing Wolfenoot gifts. Pumpkin is a stomach-soother for dogs, so these treats are a good choice if your pup has a ticklish tummy. Make sure your peanut butter doesn’t list xylitol (a sugar alcohol sweetner) among its ingredients; it’s extremely toxic even in small amounts to dogs and many other animals. Birds and cats also like these treats. If you’d like to cut treats out with cookie cutters, add 1 to 2 cups flour to make a rollable dough.
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree
1/2 cup each: peanut butter, applesauce
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 cups rolled oats
1 Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 or 3 cookie sheets with parchment paper or spray them with nonstick cooking spray.
2 In a large bowl, combine pumpkin, peanut butter, applesauce and eggs. Stir with a rubber spatula until mixture is smooth. Stir in baking powder, mixing well, and then rolled oats.
3 Portion the mixture out by the tablespoon or small scoop onto the cookie sheets. They won’t rise much, so you can put them quite close together. Wet your fingers and pat the portions into flattish disks.
4 Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until treats are lightly browned. Allow to cool completely before refrigerating or freezing. Put a couple of days’ worth out, and refrigerate or freeze the remainder.
Nutrition information per treat (for 48 treats): 54 calories, 2 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 8 mg cholesterol, 8 g carbohydrates, 1 g sugar, 2 g protein, 54 mg sodium, 2 g fiber
Cake that looks like a full moon
Prep: 40 minutes
Cook: 6 minutes (plus cake baking time)
Makes: 8 servings
We didn’t get much direction from young Master Goss on how to make a cake that looks like a full moon. This is how we did it. Because Wolfenoot falls the day after Thanksgiving this year, when the cook of the house may already be exhausted from the previous day’s work, we took the easy way out with a packaged cake mix and packaged buttercream icing. If you’re really tired, buy the lemon curd for the filling too.
Filling:
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed
1 box yellow or white cake mix prepared to package directions and baked in two 8- or 9-inch round layers
1 container (12- to 16-ounces) prepared white frosting
Blue or silver edible spray paint or spray food coloring
1 Make the filling: Combine lemon juice and zest, sugar, eggs and butter in a 2-quart saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the first bubbles appear on the surface and the mixture is thick enough to show tracks from the whisk, 6 to 10 minutes. Allow to cool before using.
2 Place one layer of cake rounded side down on a platter. Spread the top generously with lemon curd. Place top layer rounded side up on top of bottom layer. Frost top and sides of cake with white frosting.
3 To make the stencil for the man-in-the-moon’s face, find an image you like on Pinterest or Google. Enlarge it to the size needed to fit in the center of the cake, then trace it on waxed paper or parchment paper. Cut out the stencil’s features with an Exacto knife.
4 Place the stencil on top of the cake and use the edible spray paint to color in the design, making sure the stencil does not curl. Several light coats are better than one heavy coat. Remove stencil carefully. Use both ends of an egg to make large and small “craters” around the face.
Nutrition information per serving: 670 calories, 27 g fat, 11 g saturated fat, 101 mg cholesterol, 103 g carbohydrates, 76 g sugar, 5 g protein, 560 mg sodium, 1 g fiber
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