Thanksgiving

Cranberry-Blueberry Crisp

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Kid friendly baking! They may need help chopping those pesky cranberries.

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Cooking demands attention, patience, and, above all, a respect for the gifts of the earth. It is a form of worship, a way of giving thanks... ~Judith B. Jones~

I don’t think I’ve ever considered cranberries and blueberries together. (We’ll soon see I’ve lied.) There’s an excellent reason for that and it’s because the two don’t exactly show up or ripen during the same season. Blueberries are summer; cranberries are fall. Blueberries and strawberries? Of course. Blueberries and peaches? Sure. Cranberries with apples? Always. But blueberries and cranberries? It just doesn’t jive. I mean, we feel as if there’s a little wiggle room here because we’re still getting Fed Ex blueberries at the store in November when the royal red cranberries begin to show up. And we’ll continue to get some for a bit– but this doesn’t exactly happen in real time, does it? There are other ways to get such a combination, like freezing one kind berry until the other appears or drying a few cups or even canning a batch (as did my mom) and storing them until needed. Even so, I don’t remember mom, a fine baker, mixing and matching summer and fall fruits. Anyone? This November, though, perfectly gorgeous, firm and bloomed Peruvian blueberries seemed to be everywhere in Colorado Springs at a great price. I bought two big packs; best sous and husband Dave came home with another one. I meant to freeze some — my typical modus operandi when we’re flush with any berry–and somehow didn’t. Taking a little fridge inventory the other day, I realized it was bake something with blueberries or die. And…I wondered: Why not mix them up with cranberries? So I did. And a star was born. 😘 Sorry, Mother Nature. Politics (maybe global economy?) makes for odd bedfellows. Or is necessity truly the mother of invention?

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Butternut Squash-Mushroom Arugula Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

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Recipe dedicated to my friend Lisa November, whose presence reminds me to pursue vegetarian dishes!

Looking for other Thanksgiving ideas? Start here..

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When I first made this pretty fall recipe, I posted a junky quick photo to facebook with the words, “Did they tell you to bring a salad to Thanksgiving dinner?” My longtime food blogging and fb friend, Mary, piped up that no one in HER family would ever ask someone to bring a salad!!!…and…she’s mostly right. On the other hand, fine Minnesota friend Lani quipped, “I’m saving this!” So, the jury’s out. For now. Salad, however, really is not the first thing we think of for Thanksgiving, is it? (Didn’t we used to have jello salads? Sure, we did. Long ago and far away. For years and years. Mine had cranberries, apples, and pecans in it. I’ll bet some people still make them.) Thanksgiving is all about turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, vegetable casseroles, rolls and butter, pie, and all things crispy on the outside and tender on the inside–including mac and cheese, they say, though I wouldn’t know. (I do make a first course vegetarian soup lately in a feels-like almost useless, spineless effort to serve a curated meal.) It’s also about feeling thick as an ugly tick and wondering if you should just live on cold pumpkin pie, spiked hot tea, aspirin, and Tums the next day. Which is my way of saying that a little fresh something or other isn’t going to hurt anyone and could be the one thing you go back for when it’s time for seconds. And, playing the grandma card here, some fiber might be exactly what’s needed alongside all that mushy food and free-flowing wine. There. Well, now that that’s out of my system, you can serve this sweetish, peppery, briny, “meaty,” salad featuring butternut squash, mushrooms, and arugula anytime. But if you serve it at Thanksgiving, you’ll be happy!

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Slow Cooker Black Beans with Chorizo + Ham

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Thinking ahead to Thanksgiving? Click here for ideas for the meal and the leftovers.

Thanksgiving Music: Wednesday – Sunday

Need a gift for your Thanksgiving host? Make some cranberry-apple-nut granola to take along!

It’s been a crazy sort of few weeks around our house. Which made it a great time to work on a new slow cooker meal that’s up and cooking a big pot of dinner in not too many minutes at all. Isn’t that how slow cooker recipes should be?! Welcome SLOW COOKER BLACK BEANS WITH CHORIZO AND HAM….just in time for November football games and holiday gatherings…or for just the two of you with a few quarts in the freezer for later. Move over chili, there’s another great pot in the house easy to customize with your very favorite usual suspect toppings, including crushed tortilla chips, red onions, queso fresco or Cheddar, lime crema, tomatoes, avocado, sliced jalapeños, or….

But….why has it been crazy? For quite a while, we’ve barely held our heads above water. Good pun, but you’ll need to know the story. Sad, but true.

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Garlic Cream Broccoli-Cauliflower Casserole

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When folks “talk turkey” about holiday dinners, they, in fact, don’t talk much about turkey. Or ham. (Though they might if it’s roast beef.) They instead remember sides or desserts. Nonna’s baked ziti. Oma’s sauerkraut. Dad’s gravy. Aunt Susan’s pumpkin pie. Because of that, the menu is often a done deal. Who can fight history? As a longtime Thanksgiving cook (I hosted my first Thanksgiving dinner at 24 hugely pregnant with my first child), I pore over each year’s November magazines and keep Thanksgiving cookbooks on my coffee table from September on–always interested in finding something new to dream about. You can well imagine it’s my favorite holiday.

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Thanksgiving-An Intimate View (Redux)

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This post is an update from a Thanksgiving post in 2009 and features new text/ photos, printable recipes, and more.

While some Americans are having a larger Thanksgiving, quite a few are again limiting numbers and thinking about a smaller menu. A turkey roulade (roo-LAHD) — a rolled up, stuffed turkey breast served up with a pan or two of roasted vegetables is for just that more intimate occasion and will serve 1-2 with plenty of leftovers, 4 with some, and 6 without much at all in those pesky where-are-the-lids Tupperware containers. (You can double it all for a larger group if need be, but do plan on more time. I also include a couple of other options for one-pan sides.) With some prep, this beautiful meal goes into the oven all together and is done in less than an hour — which makes it a lovely small dinner party menu as well. If you can get a boned turkey breast and don’t have to bone it yourself, you are way ahead of the game. Not Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes and gravy or …? You can surely add other dishes though you don’t need them. (See TIPS below for links to Brussels sprouts I made, gravy without drippings, my spicy cranberry sauce, etc.) Easily purchased appetizers and a bakery pumpkin pie help give you most of the day off, a lot less dish washing, and time to watch “Home for the Holidays,” with Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft, and Charles Durning– one of my favorite Thanksgiving movies. No movies, but want music? Here are some listening ideas.

Note: While this meal is basically gluten-free, do check all purchased ingredients, including turkey, for GF labels. Our Honeysuckle frozen turkey breast did not contain gluten, but other brands might.

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Apple-Pecan Pie

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When fall finally arrives (not sure it’s here yet), it’s time to bake again — and by November, it’s time to think of baking for Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I am anything in life, I am a pie baker. I’m not a county fair blue ribbon winner, but I’m something better — I’m the person folks like to see walking into their house or the church potluck with a pie basket on her arm. It wasn’t always that way, but pie baking is a progressive art or one that is a lifelong undertaking. I began with pies that didn’t taste badly, but were pale and puny at best and were luckily called out by older, experienced pie bakers in the mid-70’s. (“You could have left that in the oven a while longer.”) Even now, hundreds and hundreds of pies later, there’s the occasional crust that won’t hold together, for example, and gets ceremoniously dumped straight into the garbage can. It doesn’t faze me anymore, but pies continue to be educational as long as you’re willing to bake them. If you don’t bake one for a while and then assume you’ll be fine, that pie may or may not bake into something worth eating with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream.

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Creamy Pumpkin-Peanut Soup

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Every once in a while, it’s time to cook up an old recipe on the blog, take new photos, and tweak the dish up to today’s standard. That’s exactly what happened the other day with the blog’s very first pumpkin soup from way back in November, 2009. With my book club meeting in my living room last Thursday, I thought I’d move away from the same-old, same-old cheese and whatever….and make a soup I could serve in coffee mugs along with the glass of wine we enjoy. Change = good. I looked at the not few pumpkin soups I’ve blogged and settled on the simple, but fun 12-year-old version that is finished off with peanuts and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. As I sometimes will, I tried making it right from the original recipe, which is so old it’s not even printable. While good, it needed perking up, thickening, and expanding. I was amazed, though, to see how readable the recipe was even then. That’s not to say it didn’t need editing and redoing. It did.

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Cornish Hens with Cranberry Cornbread-Brown Rice Dressing: Thanksgiving for One or Two

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Printable recipe and an “Elevator” Version below

I always forget about Cornish hens and then when I make them, I can’t believe I let so much time go by without putting these festive little birds on the menu. They’re quick, inexpensive, and versatile — especially when you’re cooking for one or two for Thanksgiving. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of a bunch of side dishes, you can even cook your potatoes and vegetables such as carrots, onions, halved Brussels sprouts, chunks of zucchini, or diced butternut squash right in the pan with them. I include directions for the easy carrots and spinach from the photo in the printable recipe. And even cooler is the simple pan sauce stirred up in the roasting pan while the hens rest and you pour the wine. No Good Gravy! worries. While a one-pan Thanksgiving always sounds nigh unto impossible, you can actually do it if that’s your druthers. That’s an easy clean up, too. On your own this year? I’d still advise cooking two Cornish hens … you want leftovers, right? I mean, the best part of Thanksgiving is the I-don’t-have-to-cook next day sandwich with mayo on white bread. Right after the pumpkin pie for breakfast, that is. Don’t skip the whipped cream.

Check out Perdue Farms’ THE ULTIMATE GUIDE/How to Cook Cornish Hens if you’d like to grill, slow cook, fry, smoke or…your birds.

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Sweet Potato Soup

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How do you make YOUR sweet potatoes? At our house, marshmallows are saved for hot chocolate when our daughter Emily is home. I’ve never put them on sweet potatoes, though if someone else served up that inescapable casserole, I’d be polite and have a bite or two. I offer up an apology to all those gooey-sweet sweet potato fans out there and make mine the way I like them, which is thoroughly mashed up with butter, sherry, just a little brown sugar, and eggs. Top that with walnuts and bake a half hour while the bird rests and I’m in Thanksgiving heaven. The recipe is called a soufflé, but I’d say that’s stretching it. Leftovers, are, of course, perfect spooned up cold right out of the refrigerator or heated up in a skillet with a fried egg cooked in the center.

Sweet Potato Soufflé with Sherry and Walnuts/Cooks.com

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