Is it really almost Thanksgiving again?

Wow. I do hope you all can forgive me for going so long without posting anything on here. There is really no excuse, so I won’t even try to make one up. I am just going to pretend that it is perfectly normal to have so many Thanksgiving entries bunched up like this, and continue on my way…

So without further ado, here are the beginnings of this year’s Thanksgiving menu. Comments/questions/suggestions welcome.

Apps:

Shrimp

Bacon wrapped scallops

Cheese/crackers

Trout pate

Bacon wrapped figs stuffed with goat cheese

Sides:

Peas a la francaise

Roasted brussels sprouts

Mashed potatoes

Mashed squash

Stuffing

Cranberry sauce

Gravy

Dinner rolls

Apple cheddar turnovers

Desserts:

Pumpkin pie

Apple pie

Lemon cheesecake

 

There will also be turkey, obviously. And I am considering making apple spice muffins for breakfast time nibbles, although they may be far too dense. Perhaps just some cut up fruit?

This was actually for the blog for a class I am taking on food writing, but I hadn’t updated this in a while, so I figured I would post it to here as well.

For someone who spends almost every ounce of free time in the kitchen, I almost never actually think about food. It is a very bad habit I have been trying to kick for a while, but it just isn’t getting any better. In the last month I have done a decent job of taking a mental inventory of the contents of my cupboards, and every night I try really really hard to make dinner using only ingredients I have lying around, especially ones that are about to go bad. Yet somehow, day after day I inevitably wind up having to run for the store for one or two things, and manage to come with bags full of impulse purchases. I desperately need to stop. I have developed a reputation as somewhat of a foodie, and I regularly lecture anyone who will listen on the wonderful qualities and importance of vegetables like kale or Swiss chard, but as soon as I am alone in my house, I have absolutely no qualms about eating tropical fruit in the dead of New England winter.

Earlier this evening while I was making my lunch for tomorrow my sister finally reached me on the phone, having called earlier from the grocery store. In an attempt to do a better job at eating produce that is locally in season she left having only purchased turnips and parsnips. She had absolutely no idea what to do with them. So she called me, incorrectly assuming I would be just the person to ask for ideas on how to prepare them. I looked down at my cutting board at the piles of diced mangoes, tomatoes, and avocados, the weight of the guilt practically crushing me. We eventually solved my sister’s vegetable situation (my mom chimed in, telling her to peel and slice them, and then bake them with some dairy products), and we hung up. At this point, I can only hope that the coupling of our sibling rivalry, and her recent good behavior is the extra push I need to set me straight.

Thanksgiving

Ok, with only 4 days to go, here is this year’s menu:

Appetizers:

Shrimp

Trout pate with bread

Crudites with dip

Garlic cheese crostini

Gruyere walnut crisps

Sides:

Sausage and apple stuffing

Mashed potatoes

Pumpkin lentil salad

Peas a la Francaise

Squash

Homemade cranberry sauce

Canned cranberry sauce

Rolls

Bacon cheddar onion biscuits

Cornbread with bacon crust

Brussels sprouts with bacon and figs

Sauteed Kale with shallots, garlic, and capers

Apple cheddar turnovers

Desserts:

Pumpkin pie

Cranberry almond tart

Poached pears

Chess pie with pineapple salsa

Brown butter custard pie

Chocolate lemon pie

And oh yeah, there will be turkey too. Get excited.

Honey Lavender Ice Cream

A while back I found a recipe for honey lavender ice cream on epicurious, and I have been lusting after it ever since. I have no idea how long it has actually been, but it feels like forever. I finally got everything I needed to make it, and I finally found the time. This ice cream was going to be perfect. I bought some fancy honey on my field trip to the St. James Cheese Shop, my mom sent me some culinary lavender in my birthday package, and I bought an ice cream maker. I finally found the time to make it the other night, and it turned out to be absolutely horrid. Huge disappointment. There was way too much lavender, and not enough anything else. It tasted like I was straight up eating a lavender bush.

The night would have been a total waste, but the shipment of caramel apple tartlets I’d gotten earlier from my lovely friend Lizzie totally saved the day. I guess the moral of the story here is that I should always make sure to have delicious frozen snacks on hand for nights where I realize I actually have no idea how to make good food. Oh well.

28 days

Alright, with 28 days to go until I’m home, here is my final list of potential Thanksgiving excess. If you could put any thoughts/input you have into a comment on this post so that I can keep track of them that would be lovely.

Hors d’oeuvres/Munchies:

Gruyere-walnut crisps

Garlic and cheese crostini

Sides:

Spiced pumpkin, lentil, and goat cheese salad

Sauteed kale, with shallots, garlic, and capers

Bacon-cheddar biscuits

Cornbread with bacon crust

Cranberry sauce with red wine, pomegranate molasses, and mediterranean herbs

Golden delicious apple and cheddar turnovers with dried cranberries

Pumpkin pomegranate turnovers

Brussels sprouts, with bacon and figs

Desserts:

Ginger mousse

Chocolate mousse

Rice pudding with caramel gala apples

Earl grey chocolate truffles

Chevre-Fig ice cream

Chess pie with blackened pineapple salsa, and caramel sauce

Brown butter custard pie with cranberry glaze

I love my mom.

My mom rocks.

In case you were unaware, I am not exactly your typical college freshman, and sometimes it kind of sucks. Every time I get on the phone with my sister, she spends a sizable chunk of the conversation practically begging me to learn to binge drink until I vomit. Even my parents do it to some extent, but with my birthday coming up my mom acknowledged that when I get stressed out, it isn’t the bottle I run towards, but the kitchen. I got her first package of goodies today, and the next one is scheduled to arrive on Thursday. I absolutely cannot wait until the weekend, when I can start to use all of this awesome stuff.

Today’s package contained a big jar of culinary lavender, a box of creme fraiche and spring onion crackers, a box of Annie’s bunny fruit snacks, a jar of truffle salt, a box of my favorite apple tea, a book called A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg, and an outstanding box of goodies from Penzeys, which contained jars of Sunny Paris seasoning, Vanilla sugar, Pumpkin pie spices, ground Allspice, Hot Chocolate Mix, Orange peel, Lemon peel, Powdered ginger, Ground cloves, Mural of flavor, Candied ginger, and Cinnamon, packed with bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, and whole nutmeg. Life is awesome.

Coming soon: Honey Lavender Ice Cream

Brown butter custard pie with cranberry glaze

I went ahead and made the brown butter pie last night and it actually came out pretty well, in spite of a few mishaps. I don’t have a food processor, so making the crumbs for the crust was pretty difficult, and the pieces were much larger than I would have liked. Although there was so much butter on them I didn’t particularly care in the end. I also forgot to measure out the mashed sweet potatoes I made, so the ganache was a tad too potato-y, but still, yummy all the same. The pie was not at all too rich, which is what I was the most afraid of, and overall tasted just like Thanksgiving should.

More Thanksgiving fare!

Here is another recipe to add to the list of potential excess thanksgiving fare! This recipe sounds particularly yummy, but I have a sense that the list is growing a wee bit out of control. I’ll post something with the entire list all in one place in a week or two so I can get input before I have to start putting together a shopping list to give to my mom. Anyway, here is the recipe: Brown Butter Custard Pie with Cranberry Glaze. I find the added touch of sweet potato-white chocolate ganache to be particularly enticing, and anyway, it is from Momofuku! A somewhat repeated theme in my life as of late…

Ice Cream!

I spent all summer lusting after ice cream makers, and I am pleased to announce that a couple of weeks ago I finally bought one. I had it with me on another trip to Purdue last weekend, and my boyfriend and I ended up making about 4 pints in total. We were missing things like a strainer and a food processor, so none of them turned out as well as they could, but they were yummy anyway. First we tried something simple: Kiwi-Lime Sorbet made with kiwis stolen from the dining hall. Because we didn’t have a food processor, the tough white part in the center stayed solid for the most part. Other than that though it was yummy, and a good start to the trip. The next night I was feeling adventurous, and decided to try to make the bacon/honey/pepper/cheese filled figs I had made recently, but in the form of ice cream. The bacon actually worked quite well when the night I actually made the ice cream, but after sitting in the freezer for the weekend it got kind of soggy. Next time I will probably use it as a topping instead.

Chevre-Fig Ice Cream:

3 cups heavy cream

3 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup diced dried black mission figs

8 ounces peppered goat cheese

2 tablespoons honey

1/2 pound of bacon

1. Bring cream to a boil in a large saucepan

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar.

3. Slowly add hot milk to eggs, whisking constantly.

4. Pour custard back into saucepan, add figs.

5. Cook custard over medium-low heat for about 2 or 3 minutes.

6. Put cheese and honey in a large bowl.

7. Pour custard over the cheese and stir until cheese is melted.

8. Cover mixture, and chill until very cold. (Several hours)

9. While mixture is cooling, fry bacon until crispy. Crumble bacon.

10. Once mixture is cooled, freeze in ice cream maker according to instructions, and put in freezer.. Either add bacon to mixture while in ice cream maker, or add later as a topping.

We also made Lemon Ice Cream the next day to use up the rest of our eggs and dairy products. I didn’t get a chance to actually try any of it, but the guys said it was good.

Oh, and we made real food too! We made a whole meal on Friday night, and had a picnic on the floor of my boyfriend’s dorm room. It was super classy. We had steak topped with bacon and button mushrooms, mashed potatoes made with creme fraiche and cheddar cheese, cider glazed carrots, and baked sweet potatoes with apples and swiss chard. It was really nice to be able to experience fall after a couple weeks of a heat wave.

November Bon Appetit

As I was flipping through the latest issue of Bon Appetit I was pleasantly reminded of how perfect Thanksgivings in my house always are. They don’t need changing. Except for the one year we left the potatoes up to our guests, and they showed up with baked sweet potatoes rather than 5 pounds worth of mashed yukon golds, nothing has ever really gone wrong that I can recall. No matter what happens I can always rely upon Thanksgiving to bring my family together for one enjoyable, relatively argument-free day. I can count on Thanksgiving in a way that I can’t count on anything else. This is the one day a year when my family’s underlying OCD undoubtedly comes in handy. On this day, we never run out of ingredients in the middle of cooking, the turkey always goes in the oven on time, and no dish ever gets forgotten. We have a schedule, and we stick to it, and unlike when we try that on family vacations, it actually works really well. We all come together to work as a team, and the result is something beautiful. No matter what happens, I can count on Thanksgiving to supply me with brussels sprouts with cranberries, mashed potatoes, (whipped?) butternut squash, peas a la francaise, 2 kinds of cranberry sauce, 2 bowls of stuffing, perfectly cooked turkey, and (thanks to a traumatic experience when my parents generation was young) enough pumpkin pie to choke a horse. I’m not kidding about the pie either– by the end of the day (most years) we still have at least one pie that hasn’t been touched at all, if not more.

All that being said, I couldn’t help but lust over a few smaller items. Although that might just be because at school I can’t really make recipes that call for tiny amounts of staple-y ingredients, such as the 2 tablespoons of brandy found in the truffles. Either way, here they are:

Early Grey Chocolate Truffles

Gruyere-Walnut Crisps

Cornbread with Bacon Crust

Cranberry Sauce with Red Wine, Pomegranate Molasses, and Mediterranean Herbs