holidays

...now browsing by tag

 
 

Thanksgiving roundup

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

pecan pie

The problem I have with the endless emails and web articles I see about “16 Thanksgiving side dishes” and “10 million pies” and “what to make for Thanksgiving this year” is that, like many people, I like to make the same things for Thanksgiving every year, and I don’t use recipes for most of them. When I’m in charge of dinner, I generally make turkey, mushroom-sage stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, roasted sweet potatoes, creamed spinach, and pecan pie. And I don’t need other people telling me how to make those things, as I’ve already done them, thanks.

I was going to do a roundup of Thanksgiving recipes from the past three years of my blog, only to discover that I haven’t really written most of them down – for the above reason, that I don’t really follow recipes for this sort of cooking. I do use a recipe for pecan pie, but it’s pulled straight from Baking Illustrated so I don’t really want to reprint it here and have the fine folks at Cook’s Illustrated come after me with pitchforks. I have found a few good recipes to mention here – the fresh cranberry relish with a whole orange that I like so much, sweet potato dinner rolls, the spinach recipe that isn’t remotely healthy but tastes fantastic, and a cranberry tart that doesn’t replace pecan pie in our household but is still really nice.

My favorite cranberry sauce

Sweet potato dinner rolls

Aunt Mary’s creamed spinach

Cranberry tart

And, since I’ve been so lame on the Thanksgiving post front, here are some posts from other bloggers giving a nice range of holiday experience and planning from past years, many of whom avoided all kinds of stress by simply leaving out the turkey:

A Cook Local Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, Downsized

Gluten-Free Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Local Style

Thanksgiving in France

Gobble, Gobble

Ix-Nay on the Urkey-Tay

Share

Happy Halloween, and NaBloPoMo!

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

squash

Here’s to a fun and safe Halloween evening – what’s everyone dressing up as? We’re doing something piratical, but details are still getting ironed out.

You may be interested to know that I have once again lost my mind and signed up for NaBloPoMo, so I will be posting every single day for a month, starting tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Share

so long, 2009

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Happy New Year!

Best wishes to you all for a joyous New Year’s Eve and a wonderful 2010.

Tomorrow we’re off for a three day duck extravaganza in the San Juan Islands with cook, teacher, and cassoulet/confit expert Kate Hill. Wish us luck!

Share

all-day braised lamb

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

holiday lights

After the usual holiday diet of chocolate, too much coffee and a lot of salami and cheese, it’s always a good idea to have something solid in mind for dinner. I can hardly imagine a more perfect dish for Christmas day than long-braised leg of lamb. Get it going after breakfast, peek at it occasionally throughout the day, pull it out in time for dinner. The only downside is that it takes up oven space that you might want for, say, baking pie, but the braise can easily be moved to the stovetop (which is what we ended up doing).

veg

The lamb braises in a wine-tomato-stock mixture, but then you get to fill in the space around it with whatever veg you like. The original recipe recommends turnips, onions and carrots; we left out the onions and threw in parsnip and fennel. The long, slow braising makes the vegetables incredibly tender while still retaining their shape, so they can be scooped out of the broth and served alongside the meat.

braising lamb

Click to continue »

Share

images from Christmas

Monday, December 28th, 2009

holiday lightspaperwhites

Christmas is over and done with, and I would be back at work today if I weren’t home sick with a sinus headache and the sniffles. In my next post I’ll tell you about the six-hour braised lamb we made for Christmas dinner, but in the meantime here are some pictures from our weekend. Hope yours was fun as well!

persimmon

the ponderosawinter light

sausage on the woodstove

cuties

Click to continue »

Share

we wish you a Merry Christmas…

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

the tree

…and a wonderful weekend to all.

Share

a dinner that couldn’t be beat

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Thanksgiving dinner

In case you were wondering, here’s what Thanksgiving dinner looked like (on my plate, at least – there were a few more marshmallows and schnecken on other people’s plates). My husband’s relatives always put on a tremendous do, and this year was no exception.

Thanksgiving buffet

I ended up with mashed potatoes, turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, challah, creamed spinach, stuffing, and a hefty spoonful of the roasted vegetables that my brother-in-law and I prepared earlier in the day (fennel, onion, mushrooms, beets, sweet potatoes, parsnips, and carrots).

the pie station

And, of course, there was pie.

the centerpiece

What goes on your Thanksgiving plate?

Share

happy Thanksgiving

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

high water

It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the States, time to roast vegetables and cream spinach and carve turkeys and yell at football on television. Hope you all have a good one!

Share

squash noodle

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

aaargh!

My original plan for Halloween dinner was to try a recipe for sweet potato gnocchi from the penultimate issue of Gourmet (sigh), but the little sugar pie pumpkin that I bought at Gordon’s was looking at me reproachfully. Right. I put off the gnocchi in favor of a sort-of repeat of last year’s pumpkin ravioli. Why did I think it would be less painful this time?

cleaning out the pumpkin

Click to continue »

Share

the rain’s on the pumpkin

Friday, October 30th, 2009

pumpkin

Last week I went out and got us a carving pumpkin (not yet carved) and our annual sugar pie pumpkin at Gordon’s. I have a plan for Halloween dinner, but we’ll see if I change my mind before I get there.

And coming soon: NaBloPoMo!

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Share