My Thanksgiving Menu for this Year

Hi folks!

Thought I’d share my TG menu with you with links to most of the recipes, just in case you don’t already have your own plans well in hand. My mother-in-law and I usually work together on the menu, but she is having cataract surgery on Monday and will be under weight-carrying and activity restrictions. So I’m doing the whole thing. Here’s what the plan is:

My usual classic stuffing: “World’s Greatest Thanksgiving Stuffing

Classic mashed potatoes, with lots of butter and cream. I’m not doing that make-ahead version with cream cheese and sour cream. It’s not all that fluffy.

Roasted acorn squash with chili-lime vinaigrette from the great, great Smitten Kitchen cooking blog–note that this post is 15 years old, back when Deb Perelman’s photography skills were not what they are now. The recipe itself, though, looks great.

Green beans with shallots, mushrooms and (my addition) bacon, from Bon Appetit

Classic cranberry-orange relish, made from the recipe on the back of the bag but also available here. Note that you really shouldn’t just throw the whole orange in the mix but should take the time to peel off the outer skin, the zest, and then remove and discard the bitter white pith. It’s only that outer skin that has the flavor. Then you can proceed as directed, throwing the outer skin, all the orange flesh, and the cranberries into your food processor. I’d start with an even lower amount of sugar–maybe 1/2 to 2/3 cup, then taste.

Two pies, one Melissa Clark’s brandied butternut squash pie and one made with apples and almond paste, always a winning combination in my book.

I’m not bothering with rolls. We have enough bread in the stuffing.

And what about the turkey and gravy, you ask? Well, I’m planning to use the method below from the great Adam Ragusea for boning out a turkey and thus being able to roast the white and the dark meat separately, while making the turkey broth ahead of time from the bones. I’m not, not, NOT going to do his sauce, though. I’m going to make conventional gravy, and I am going to use those wonderful drippings in the roasting pans that he seems to be ignoring. But I’m very excited about getting an evenly-cooked, easily-sliced turkey. We’ll see! Take a look and see what you think:

 

What I Had for Breakfast Today–and Another Cookbook Update

photo credit: Jim Simons

Pretty cool, huh? Much better than the pictures I take. I thought I’d write a short post today describing this meal and also let you know that

MY COOKBOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.*

The e-book will be available here on my website soon. We need to do a few tweaks for that and then I want to do a video about it, which should happen early next week.

If you want a paperback version you’ll have to go through Amazon, as I have no interest/capability in shipping out books myself. I will point out that I have little to no control over Amazon’s pricing, and the paperback isn’t cheap. Its price is, however, in line with other cookbooks. The Kindle edition is reasonable, so if you want to get it right away that’s also an option. I am going to be doing giveaways and discounts next week here on this site, just so you know.

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A Totally Thrown-Together-but-Great Chicken Casserole

Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay

So . . . we’ve all been cooking solely for our families and pods, right? Last Friday night, though, Jim and I actually attended a dinner party. Woo-hoo! It was over at our church in what’s called the “Fireside Room,” which actually has a fireplace, and included just us and two other couples. The other four had all had COVID, so we felt pretty safe. I had volunteered to bring the main dish. It’s an easy choice to make something Italian and pasta-ish, and always good, but I wanted something a little different. I’ll give you the very basic item I came up with and then some ideas to jazz it up/change it up. One of the women asked for the recipe, which was flattering. When she, and you, see what I did you’ll probably laugh, but my idea worked really well. There are still some leftovers in the fridge as I type this Monday morning, and I’m looking forward to having some for lunch.

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Some Year-End Thoughts

Image by Erad from Pixabay

Have you just recently started getting posts from this blog? The pause was caused mainly by an accidental change in our mailing-list service. It was also at least somewhat caused by the fact that I hadn’t been writing many posts recently, as I’ve been concentrating on my music blog. For 2021, though, I’m going to set the goal of writing a post a week here. Remember, this isn’t a food blog as such, or a cooking blog. It’s a site that concentrates on the part that food should play in our lives. (“Roles,” remember.) Ideally, all the food that you eat should fulfill at least one of these two roles:

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Yet Another Roll Recipe–with Pumpkin

Hello everyone! We are 10 days from Christmas, and I don’t know exactly what we’re going to be doing for our family celebration. We had 10 people for Thanksgiving, so we kept to our state’s limit, but for Christmas we’ll be just our immediate small group: the five of us who live here in this house plus my brother-in-law. The vaccines are rolling out even as I write this, and we don’t want to expose ourselves unnecessarily right as help is on the way. We’ll be sure to do a Zoom call with my sister-in-law and her husband at some point.

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A Nice Addition to your Roll Repertoire

Hello everyone! Just a quick post today with the promised roll variation. I’m not posting a picture of anything–just the brief description from my own recipe files. This is from my Cook’s Illustrated magazine that my son subscribes me to every year for my Christmas present. I’ve changed it just a little bit to make it simpler and more streamlined (of course),but other than that it’s basically the same. I like the addition of the molasses and the oatmeal. It’s like a warm, cozy, nubby sweater for fall!

WHOLE WHEAT OATMEAL-MOLASSES ROLLS

Ingredients:

3/4 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
1 cup + 2 tablespoons boiling water
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, or a half-and-half mixture of ww and white
1/4 cup molasses
2 teaspoons yeast
1 tsp. salt

Instructions:

I just use my bread machine. Put the oatmeal, boiling water and butter into the pan of your machine and let sit until somewhat cooled off. Since I use a grain mill to produce the flour, I let the water/oatmeal sit while I do the grinding. That takes a few minutes. I then put the four on top of the oatmeal mix, then put the other ingredients on top of that. As the cycle begins the mixture cools off even more, especially since the egg is cold. I’m giving you all this explanation because I want you to realize how simple this recipe really is, even with the boiling-water step. You may need to add a little more flour as the dough comes together, but it should remain fairly moist. Divide into 12 portions and put in a round cake pan, 9 around the edge of pan and 3 in the middle. Let rise for perhaps 1/2 hour while you heat the oven to 375. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until well browned and 195 in the idle of the middle roll. Turn out onto a rack and let cool. These are a nice alternative to plain ww rolls.

Some Modern-Day Versions of Ma

Martha A. Goertzen
Martha Goertzen, my dad’s sister, who lived from 1924-2019. Image retrieved from the website of LaCanne Family Funeral Services, Windom, MN.

Later today or tomorrow I’m planning to put up a brief exercise video, something you can put to use on your living-room floor, and then I’ll be posting much less frequently on this blog as I concentrate on my other site, Behind the Music. That material is much more heavily trafficked, and I have quite a bit of material on sale there, with more being added periodically. If you’re a subscriber to this blog but not to that one, please take a moment to sign up if you have any interest at all in choral music. I write posts about the music we sing in my lovely, lovely choir, The Cherry Creek Chorale, and I also have several books on major choral works. So take a look! All materials except for the books are free, just to be clear.

I did want to finish up a few ideas about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her estimable mother Caroline. As I mentioned in the last post, Laura and her daughter Rose shaped the narrative as they wrote the Little House books. They re-arranged and sometimes left out events, also giving the impression

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Maybe You Can Cut Some Items from Your Menu!

Just a thought. As I sit here late Tuesday afternoon my mother-in-law and I have done some menu simplification. We’ve ended up having only 11 people (and we’re happy to see all of them, of course), and so in the end Jan was the voice of reason and said, no, we didn’t really need a turkey plus a turkey breast, plus three kinds of gravy, plus two kinds of stuffing. We have one vegan guest and I want to have items she can eat, so that’s a nice challenge. Here’s what we’re having, with links to recipes that are linkable:

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A Lovely, Festive Holiday Sweet Roll Recipe—That’s Not Too Sweet!

Closeup of cranberry walnut rolls
photo: Jim Simons

For the main dish at the Cherry Creek Chorale’s Saturday-morning rehearsal breakfast, I’m making my old reliable Union Square Breakfast Casserole. I didn’t make enough of my Caramel-Apple French Toast casseroles last time; I think for this event I’ll make a six-fold batch. But . . . I have some nice ham on hand that I need to use up, so I’m just going to dice that up and use it instead of the Italian sausage called for, and I’m going to make 1/3 (so two panfuls) without the ham so it can be vegetarian/kosher. I won’t have to brown sausage, which is a whole step in the recipe. [Also, later update: I didn’t do the fresh mushrooms, nor did I cube the bread. The casseroles were pretty thrown together, but they tasted great.] You do need to follow the recipe for the egg/milk proportions and for the basic amount of bread, but beyond that you can do pretty much what you want. Which I did!

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A New Occasion for Feeding People—And Some New Lessons Learned

There’s been a friendly rivalry of sorts going on at our church between another woman and myself over who gets to do what food events. Neither one of us is actually running a business per se, but we both enjoy(?) putting on big meals. I had done our church Christmas party dinner (60-75 people) for about three years, then I said it was just too much. So my friendly rival (henceforth designated FR) took it over and did a spectacular job. I stayed out of the fray except for making desserts and my famous pink eggnog for several years, but then I sort of missed it. Last year I asked the woman in charge if I could do it. “Oh, I’m so sorry, but FR already asked if she could do it again this year, and I said yes.” So I stuck with my usual role. FR had also done the food for our annual women’s retreat for a couple of years, with the 2018 one being especially good. She made her grandmother’s green chile (chili? I can never remember when to use which spelling), and it was awesome. Plus she made this cold strawberry soup for dessert. Man! Plus, she made some little chocolate tarts that were . . . vegan. And in spite of that drawback they were honestly one of the best things I have ever put in my mouth. So rich!

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