Is it Time to Panic Yet?

Well Thanksgiving is one week away.  We are hosting the feast/celebration at our new home.  Now I’m starting to panic.  When I agreed to do this, I thought “This will be fun”.  I actually brought it up, no one asked me to volunteer, I’m the one who suggested it.  It has been a long time since I cooked a turkey.  I really wish that I had the day before off for some preparation.  So I will be doing a lot of cooking and prep this weekend. 

Usually my sister hosts Thanksgiving, but this year she and her husband are going to Israel for a wedding.  Then, my other sister’s youngest daughter is in her first year of college in Oregon so, they are going to spend Thanksgiving with her and one of my brothers in Idaho.  So that means we will be short at least 5 people for the traditional party.  But my Mom will come and another brother and his wife and I don’t know if my cranky eldest brother will show, and we will have all the nieces and nephews as well as my kids so it will be fun.  Kind of a changing of the guard.  The “kids” who are all in their twenties except for M (17) will out number the adults.  It feels different.  I guess I’m getting old.  Ah well, it happens to the best of us.

 I still have not put together a menu and I don’t know how many people are showing up.  Need to work on a few details.  M has invited all her cousins over to help on Saturday.  Making place cards and helping me cook (I hope).  The house will probably feel a bit like a circus, but hey circuses are fun.

Let’s see, a Thanksgiving menu…..

Turkey, stuffing (vegetarian), cranberry sauce, bourbon sweet potatoes, green beans almondine, brussel spouts, pumpkin muffins(vegan), a vegan main dish (my niece will make), mashed potatoes (vegan), pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie, pumpkin brownies (vegan). 

I think that should do it along with some nibblys before hand and plenty of wine, beer and apple cider.

I think everyone who blogs and is celebrating Thanksgiving should post a photo of their Thanksgiving dinner.  Look for my photo the weekend after.

 

What’s Cooking

Not a very inventive title I will admit, but here’s what’s happening in my kitchen.  P and I had a conversation regarding a house warming party now that we are all moved in.  We have also volunteered to host the family Thanksgiving dinner.  So I suggested to darling P that maybe we should have a holiday/come see our new house party after Thanksgiving.  With the prospect of a houseful of guests not once, but twice in the next few weeks I have been trying out some recipes to make sure that things will taste as good as they sound. 

 So I found a blog called stephencooks.com and he has some wonderful recipes there for everything but I am always looking for snacks and/or appetizers.  Anyway found a recipe for spicy sweet almonds.  Basically, sugar, oil, almonds in a pan, cook until sugar caramelizes, toss with spices and let cool.  These were really yummy and easy.  I started out looking for a recipe for an apple gorgonzola pizza and I think that’s how I ended up on Stephencooks.  He has a recipe for a pear, bacon, Gorgonzola.  So I adapted it for my own purpose.  His pizza dough recipe is fabulous and easy.  He says that using all purpose flour it yields 2 slightly thicker chewy crusts or if you use bread flour, 4 very thin crispy crusts.  Now I like my pizza on the crispy side but not having bread flour in the house I of course improvised.  I used the all purpose flour, made 3 crusts and baked my pizza in a stoneware baking pan from a well known, home party, kitchen gadget business.  I got the pan for free from someone who was going to throw it away.  So, back to the pizza,  I used Gala apples, a regular yellow onion cooked down until almost caramelized, bacon, Parmesan, mozzarella and of course the Gorgonzola.  It turned out really well although the apple was a little subtle.  I think next time I will use a Granny Smith apple to get a bit more intense apple flavor.  My daughter M. really liked it but said, ” I think you need to use a more appley apple.” 

 Well, that experiment turned out so well that I went looking for a recipe for a chicken liver pate.  The ones in the stores all seem to have pork as an ingredient.  So I found one that looked simple enough and could be frozen.  Now I know why pate tastes sooooo good.  3/4 of a pound of butter.  Almost as much butter as liver.  I started the process and actually cut down the butter to 1/2 a pound of butter to a pound of liver.  It turned out really well and I think that the extra butter would have ruined it.  Duncan, my little dog was happy to help me clean up the liver bits that did not make it into the pate. 

Our new favorite for the grill is a flat iron steak.  Similar to flank but much more tender and very flavorful.  I am a big believer in semi-homemade.  I usually have a package of powdered marinade around and I add things to doctor it up…red wine, soy sauce, orange juice, whatever, instead of water to intensify the flavors.  So marinate a flat iron steak, bake a winter squash, a green salad and a nice bread and you have the makings of a really fabulous dinner without a lot of work.

 

Spontaneity

It’s been so long since we’ve done anything spontaneous.  When you live in the mountains, nobody just stops by.  No one comes over for a drink and then goes home.  If people come to your house it’s a planned event.  Planned well in advance.  Yesterday before work I put a flat iron steak in a ziploc to marinate and I went to work.  I had dinner planned, grilled steak, an acorn squash, a nice salad and leftover cake for dessert.  Then M. called and said she was going to the mall and then to a movie with a friend.  No problem, have fun honey. 

I get home and as I said, dinner is planned and we will have more than enough food for two.  My sister and her husabnd have been in Australia for three weeks, they haven’t seen the house , they weren’t around to help us move.  In fact we haven’t seen them since our wedding.  So I open a bottle of wine, (The S2 I mentioned a few posts ago) and call. 

“Have you started cooking yet?”  “Nothing that can’t be stopped”,  she says.  So she calls her hubby home from work and they pop over for dinner…on  a Tuesday.  No elaborate plans, just come on by, share a meal and a bottle of wine.  It was fantastic! We had such a good time just talking and eating.  Dinner was fabulous by the way.  I had an envelope of some kind of powdered marinade which I embellisehd because I always do and the steak sat in the marinade all day.  We threw it on the grill, medium rare and had a roasted acorn squash with a little butter and brown sugar, a basic salad with mixed greens, tomatos, cukes, carrots, sprouts, red pepper and goat cheese, with a balamic vinagrette.  My sister brought a nice crunchy sour dough bread to round out the meal.  All in all very satisfying.

 

Our 1st house guest

Tonight we will have our first official house guest.  Pretty exciting!  We have gone to visit Mark & Jean often when they were in Arizona and they were always so welcoming and generous.  It’s nice to be able to reciprocate.  This time it is only Mark as he is here on business.  It’s too bad Jean can’t be here too, but she will come and stay one day too. 

 I really enjoy having people come to stay but I like it even more when I’m not working so that I can really prepare and entertain.  Mark doesn’t get in until late tonight so this evening will probably just be getting him settled, a little chit chat and then bed.  We all have to work tomorrow so we will all be up and out the door.  Tomorrow evening we will have a little more time to visit and catch up.  We have a bunch of really good wine so I will probably just throw together some spaghetti so that I can sit and enjoy the conversation.  I really do enjoy having friends over.  That’s going to be one of the best things about this house.  The space works so well for entertaining.  The kitchen level is nice and open and there’s a huge granite bar so people can sit and talk and the kitchen prep area is large enough for more than one person to be working at the same time. 

I was going to try to find some fantastic recipe and go all out, but coming home from work and trying to make something new with out a dry run sounds like asking for trouble. 

Yesterday I picked up all the trash from in front of Russel’s house.  Russel is our 80 something next door neighbor.  Nice man, I talked to him for about 30 minutes last week.  I’ve only seen him outside once and that was in the back yard, I’ve never seen him out front.  Anyway, the trash gets stuck under his bushes and it starts to look junky, so I picked it up.  Looks much better and I know Russel appreciates it.