Thanksgiving

As our reduced family (two uncles and a daughter couldn't make it this year) sat around dessert yesterday, I vowed I would remember all the family stories that came up so I could include them in this post today. Naturally, when I woke up this morning, they were all gone from my head. There are psychologists that make a case for forgetfulness. There's the problem of the internet, which saves everything. I have thought about this often-- the value of the ephemeral--and applied it in our lives by not documenting every moment of our children's journey, as American parents do.

So meals like yesterday's become important, when everyone brings the stories out and you compare notes and hone the details. As I write I can't even remember the subjects of the stories. Did we talk about Seng Lim's time on the cruise ship? About moving the shop down the street? Did Uncle Lajos come up? I can't remember.

Nga Jee called from England after dinner, and we described the meal to her. Mary  had made the traditional meal, and described its provenance-- a complete Thanksgiving menu published in the late 70s in the old Betty Crocker magazine Sphere. Mary  and I have been making this meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas (and sometimes both) for more than 20 years. I have the old recipes that Mary wrote out for me long before the kids were born, I finally laminated them.

Turkey with apple-raisin stuffing

1 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. butter
1 quart chopped apples (I use Granny Smiths)
1 c. chopped celery
1/2 c. golden raisins
1/4 c. fresh parsley
1 egg
1/4 c. apple cider
1 1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Saute onion in butter over medium heat until transparent (about 5 minutes); stir in apples and celery, simmer uncovered over medium heat sitrring occasionally (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat, lightly beat egg and stir in, stir in remaining ingredients. Stuff bird. Oops. Find a recipe/instructions for roasting a stuffed turkey. Do that.

World's Best Cranberry Chutney
1 lb cranberries (these used to come in 16 oz bags, now they've reduced bag size to 12 oz, so just deal)
1 cup white sugar
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 c. golden raisins
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground clove
1/4 tsp allspice
1 cup water
1 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped apple (Granny Smiths)
1/2 c. chopped celery

Simmer cranberries, sugar, raisins and spices in 1 cup water, uncovered, in a saucepan over medium heat, just until the cranberries release their juice (about 15 minutes). Keep heat low, and stir in remaining ingredients. Simmer until it thickens, about 15 minutes. Can be served warm or cold. I think it's best when made the day before and stored in the fridge, then served at room temperature for the actual meal.

Finished up with pumpkin pie, but enough with the pumpkin recipes already.

Cranberry sauce

Wonkette : Wonkette’s Actual Awesome Real Cranberry Business

This is how I am going to write all my recipes from now on. (Seriously, this looks delicious)

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Maybe the cold makes me revert to meat

In my northside Chicago neighborhood, we still have an old-fashioned Centrella butcher in a little free-standing, independently owned grocery store. If it's not the last of its kind, it's close. It's the sort of place where the bag boy knows which car is yours, and the butcher/owner remembers your kids' birthdays.

For most of the time my kids were growing up and I was working downtown full time, we seldom went there, because he's only open during working hours-- 9 to 5 and closed Sunday-- so I was never able to make it. A few years after starting to work at home I had a facepalm moment, duh! I don't have to buy the awful industrial meat at Dominick's anymore. So I periodically do a "meat binge" and rack up the protein meals for a while. His chickens have actual dark meat, you can get fresh, never-frozen turkeys the day before Thanksgiving, ground chuck that you'd swear was ground steak (at half the grocery store price), homemade (by him) sausage, and guaranteed tender pork.

Rosemary pork loin roast with roasted potatoes

Small pork loin roast, boned (the butcher will do this for you)

1/4 cup olive oil
2 T dried rosemary
1 T dried sage
green peppercorns, ground, to taste, or about 1/4 teaspoon
sea salt, to taste, or about 1/2 teaspoon
4 large cloves of garlic

1 large russet potato per diner

Blend the herbs, 2 cloves of the garlic, and oil together. Cut about 6 slits in the roast and insert slices of the remaining garlic cloves. Rub the oil mixture on all sides of the roast. Let sit on the counter 1 to 3 hours.

Heat oven to 450F/230C. Roast the meat for 20 minutes. While it is roasting, cut the potatoes into large chunks (peel or not, personal preference), put them in a pot and bring them to a boil, then drain*. Potatoes should have just started cooking (don't let them cook through). Remove the roast from the hot oven and baste it in its own juices, then add the potatoes to the roasting pan and dot with butter. Turn the oven down to 300/150 and continue cooking, basting meat and potatoes occasionally, until thickest part of roast is 170F/75C. (One source I found recommended 145/62. My thermometer has pork at 170-180. If you're not sure, slice into the meat. Pork should have no red in it or it isn't done.)

Pan gravy

When it's done, transfer the roast and the potatoes to a serving dish, and use the drippings to make pan gravy. Simply put the roasting pan on a burner, add a cup of liquid (broth and/or white wine, or water if you have neither). Bring it to a simmer and scrape the browning off the bottom. Add a pat of butter and simmer till it melts, then strain it. For a thicker gravy, add the butter first, with an equal amount of flour, and heat until it forms a thick paste, then add the liquid and mix thoroughly. Don't worry if it looks lumpy, the lumps will come out when you strain it.

*Starting the potatoes in boiling water helps ensure that they actually finish cooking in the oven rather than getting some raw and some cooked, which is what always happens with me. I think it's genetic, because my mother, wonderful cook though she was, also could not roast potatoes to save her life.

Still had some cranberries left over

Another original recipe, although there are other similar ones on the web (there's probably a web law for this-- if you can think of it, there's already a website).

Porkchops with cranberry gravy

1 pork chop per diner

1 yellow or Vidalia onion, sliced
1 1/2-2 T butter
6 oz fresh cranberries
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1/2 cup white wine
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
add'l liquid as needed

Season the porkchops by sprinkling salt, pepper and parsley on each side. Let sit about 10 minutes. Over medium heat, melt the butter in a large saucepan, then sear the pork chops on both sides allowing the pan to brown a bit. Add the onions and sauté until they just start to go translucent. Add the cranberries and heat until they start to release their juice (about 5 minutes). Add the white wine and the sugar and cook the liquid down. When the pan starts to sear again, add the broth.

Continue simmering, turning the chops occasionally, adding liquid (water, broth or more wine) as the gravy reduces. Cook until chops are cooked all the way through, about 15 minutes more or less depending on the thickness of the chops.

Serve over egg noodles or fettucini.

With the cheese bread, this was a beautiful holiday meal. If only there had been someone here to share it with me!

Testing for the holidays

I couldn't make the promised cheese crackers because I realized I don't have a full-sized food processor anymore. My 40 year-old antique finally gave up the ghost last winter. Now I've only got the little 3 cup one.

But I've been jonesing for cheesy things lately, so I didn't want to give up on the cheese, not to mention that I have a fridge full of cheese because I thought I'd be making cheese crackers.

We'll be spending Thanksgiving at my brother- and sister-in-law; I'll be using the last of pumpkin palooza to make some recipes from this site as my contribution. In the meantime, I picked up a couple of bags of cranberries earlier in the week to try a cranberry syrup (it's delicious). Only used one bag for the syrup, so I tried my favorite google search today-- recipe: Random Ingredients.

The Random Ingredients of the day were cranberries and cheese. Yes. There are recipes that use both cranberries and cheese. This one looked like the winner:

Cranberry Cheese Bread
from Baking Bits

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
a 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

3/4 cup fresh orange juice (forgot to get oranges, so I used the cranberry syrup, 3T in a measuring cup, then filled to 3/4 cup total liquid)
2 teaspoons grated orange rind (I used some dried that I had)
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 egg, beaten
1 cup chopped cranberries

Sift dry ingredients. Cut in butter until mixture looks like coarse cornmeal.

Combine orange juice (or whatever), rind, and egg and pour into dry ingredients. Mix just to dampen. Fold in cheese, cranberries and nuts. Pour (BakingBits said "pour" but it was more like "glop." Batter is quite thick.) into greased and floured loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until toothpick in center comes out clean. Cool and store overnight before slicing.

I wish I could take a picture of the smell, because it is indescribably delicious. Ditto the taste. Sweet crust, salty cheese, tangy berries.

A visit from the garden glove fairy

Two gardening posts in a row, sorry! I promise a recipe for cheese crackers sometime in the next couple of days.

Just wanted to put up a plug and a thank you for my blogging buddy MrBrown Thumb, font of much gardening wisdom and nexus for all things gardening on the web. He put up a post last summer asking for pictures of gardeners hands, and the prize would be a pair of gardening gloves. Inasmuch as I was the only one who entered (I had just happened to have taken a picture of my hands in my ratty old gloves that day, haha), so I won.

They're gorgeous. They fit like a dream, they feel like high quality driving gloves and not like any gardening gloves I ever had. So a plug for MrBrown Thumb, thank you to Ethel Gloves for asking him to test them (which is I guess why he had this bounty). Sorry for the fuzzy picture. It is very hard to take a photo with one hand.

MBT, thank you so much!

Can't wait for spring!

Bloom Day November

I made a lovely cheddar-broccoli soup last night, but no recipe today. Bloom Day is for flowers.

It's early early morning in a November that's been more like late summer than mid fall. I've been out in the garden in shirtsleeves, and my cool weather crops are loving the warm temperatures and short days. The fall flowers are mostly fading on schedule, but the summer ones are thriving.

Inside, the Strepto and the holiday cactus are exploding with color, but I decided to stay outside in the sun. Plenty of winter bloom days ahead for the stay-at-homes.

A volunteer nicotiana, naturalized to a faded, variegated pink. The originals, planted maybe 12 years ago from flats, were white or dark red.

Dwarf iris. Never bloomed outside of June before.

Broccoli, bolted. The flowers, however, are also edible.

More flowers at my flickr page, and don't forget to go over to May Dreams and see everyone's November blooms!