Ha, I started this days ago! Man, how life has a way of setting up roadblocks to my blogging life!!

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We just got back from the world of no internets, a.k.a, my Grandma’s house and I have to say, I think I’m done with Thanksgiving now!

On to a recap of our Thanksgiving.

The turkey turned out pretty well. We followed the New Best Recipe version of turkey cooking and even though I feared for a while that we’d cooked the wrong side up first (and completely berated slanky for it! it totally would have been his fault too because he was paying uber attention to all the pictures so I thought he’d have it covered) it turns out we had it the right way and it didn’t dry out like my mom feared it would. We should have cooked it for less time and that would have made it even better so next time I’ll start checking it earlier.

My mom wasn’t completely happy with her stuffing because she used bread crumbs insteadof cubes and she didn’t like the consistency as well. I thought it tasted fairly similar to her past versions.

Next up, the green bean casserole. I thought this turned out rather well even though I’d fussed with an Alton Brown recipe (since I was not putting mushrooms in). The coolest part was that you cook it in a cast iron skillet. It was pretty easy, just a roux, onions, fresh beans. Instead of making my own fried onions though I used some Trader Joes ones and they worked out fine. I think it helped add back a bit of nostalgia to the soup can version.
Slanky made buttermilk biscuits and they turned out nice and fluffy even though I forced him to use half whole wheat pastry flour. I think they would have been even better if we’d freshly baked them but time and oven space wouldn’t allow.

The potatoes were very straight forward, just cream, milk, butter and plenty of salt and pepper. I was originally thinking I’d try and do some sort of roast garlic mashed potatoes but with the gravy being a little more complicated I’m glad I didn’t because the flavors would have probably competed.

The gravy was a mixed bag. I decided that rather than worry about the state of the drippings after the turkey was done I’d follow a recipe for gravy from the New Best Recipe. It involved making a broth with the neck and other parts, then starting a roux with butter and flour and adding the broth in and then finally adding the pan drippings from the turkey. Before adding the drippings you were supposed to deglaze the pan with wine and I think that complicated the flavors a little bit (my mom and brother didn’t like the result as well as straight up gravy). I thought the flavor was good, though the gravy was a bit on the thin side but it was the last thing to be completed so I didn’t want to simmer it any longer. Overall, I’m glad we had actual gravy and not screwed up lumpy flour tasting stuff but next time I might try it the old fashioned way.

We also had a former coworker of Slanky’s over and she brought brussel’s sprouts and apple pie, which were quite tasty.

For appetizers I made some baked olives with spices and they turned out really good, though with the rest of the food not many of them got eaten. I also baked some brie and put cranberry sauce on the top and the flavors were good but I learned the hard lesson that brie is best baked in a whole wheel rather than a wedge. It got a little gooey and runny.

For our first run at our own Thanksgiving I was really proud of how well we did! I probably won’t be doing anything like it again for a while but it was a nice accomplishment.

Howdy folks!

We are here in the process of cooking Thanksgiving dinner, independently, for the first time. Why are we not in PA, you ask? Well, family work schedules being what they are, Grandma is now hosting Thanksgiving on Sunday so we’ll go over later this weekend. This gap in our actual Thursday schedule left us with a unique opportunity to try and cook the meal on our own. Many of you have already been doing this for years but in our family we don’t mess with tradition. Grandma cooks the meal with a few additions from select family members. Always the same dishes. Always the same great taste. Anyway, my mom’s very skeptical because I’m cooking the turkey differently, we’re all a little skeptical that I’m making green bean casserole without the soup cans and who knows what will happen with the gravy.

So far it looks like the turkey is going to be a little late getting finished but hopefully by the time it’s done it’ll be good! I’ll post an update of our adventures in cooking later this evening.

We’ve been battling illnesses of one kind and another since Rowan got sick at the end of our Germany Trip in October.  Early on I persuaded Pat to try a twist on the honey lemon tea my mom used to make for my sisters and I when we were sick as kids.  He became so completely addicted to this tea that several weeks ago we invested in an insulated coffee pot so I can make big batches of it, and also a thermos so he can take it to work with him.  If you’re interested here’s how I make the tea–you can adjust all quantities to taste.

• 4 cups of boiling water
• juice from 2 lemons
• 5 heaping tablespoons of honey
• a finely chopped, 1-inch piece of fresh ginger

Steep the ginger in a the hot water for 20 minutes.  Strain out the ginger, then add in the honey and lemon juice.  That’s it!  The tea is very soothing on a sore throat, and also honey, lemon, and ginger are all supposed to be great boosters for the immune system.

I had this fabulous idea for Halloween treats this year. Make two batches of marshmallows and dye one batch orange and one batch black. Then in the last step where you roll the marshmallows in a potato starch/powdered sugar mixture, I’d put orange edible glitter in the potato starch/powdered sugar for the black marshmallows and black edible glitter in the potato starch/powdered sugar for the orange marshmallows. Brilliant, huh?

Unfortunately my plan fell flat on both counts. It took a ton of food coloring for me to get the shade of orange right. I used a ton of food coloring times two in attempting to make black food coloring.  Supposedly yellow, red, and blue in equal quantities make black.  I could never get past brown, even after dumping two whole bottles of food coloring into the marshmallows in a fit of frustration.

And then the edible glitter I ordered turned out to be less like glitter and more like flakes of cellophane. I should have gotten glitter dust, though who knows if it would have worked. Something was off with the orange marshmallows, and the “glitter” kind of melted into them. Looks a bit like mold, don’t you think? Neither of the marshmallows tasted quite right, I’m blaming in on all the dye.

I still think it’s a brilliant idea and am going to try again next year with high quality food coloring and glitter dust. Or maybe luster dust.  I also wonder about rolling the marshmallows in colored granulated sugar instead of cornstarch/powdered sugar/glitter, like Peeps.  Perhaps I should try both, just for good measure.  Oh, and another note for next year–taste the marshmallows before serving them to guests.  That might be the most important change of all.

Now, what to do with the enormous number of weird tasting and weird looking marshmallows I’m stuck with this year?

For all of you who are local, Slanky sent me this and it looks pretty awesome!

Not that I don’t have a project in mind for all of those corks I’ve been saving up over the years! REALLY. I’m going to make that corkboard for the kitchen! It’s on the list! Along with about eighty other projects…hmmm, I suppose I can spare a few corks for a good cause and discount!

The other day I was driving by the Ballard Food Bank and operating just outside it was one of the Dante’s Hot Dog vendors. I’m just hoping they were giving hot dogs away for free because what kind of person tries to make a buck off of people who need to use the food bank? I mean if I were really hungry already and trying to get some food and this overwhelming hot dog smell comes wafting over I might go delusional and spend my last couple bucks on a dog. And somehow I think that’s just not quite right.

Today ekbo, Mr. J and I went down to Theo Chocolates to check out the fancy s’mores and they were excellent. Slanky told us about how Theo was celebrating National S’mores Day (did anyone know that was a day?) with home made marshmallows, graham crackers and your choice of their chocolate bars. They did not disappoint. I think all were in agreement that they were the some of the tastiest s’mores we’d ever had. I only wish I’d gotten a picture of one but we ate them so quickly that there was no time for documentation. I personally had the Chai bar with mine and ekbo had the mint. I think the coconut curry would have also been quite tasty. The marshmallow was really awesome. It had that marshmallowy taste with none of the plastic overtones that commercially made marshmallows have. And the graham crackers were much more buttery and a tiny bit thicker than the normal kind. If you’re in the Seattle area they’ll be serving s’mores tomorrow and Saturday from 3-6pm. Go get yourself one!

as most of you know my little sister, georgia, and her family (husband + 2 little boys) recently came for a visit.  we had a wonderful, if exhuasting time.  february is not an ideal time for travel under the best of conditions (unless perhaps you are in the bahamas or some other place with a nice winter climate), but add five kids under five to the mix, and it becomes very difficult!  so much time to bundle everyone up, then there is the whining about the cold, trying to keep hats and mittens on, trying to keep kids out of snowdrifts, etc.  the weather since they left has been fabulous, naturally.  haven’t even needed hats and mittens at the beach the past couple of days.

anyway, despite the miserable weather we did manage to show them a few of the sights around switzerland, one of them being the château de Gruyères.  besides the castle and the cheese, Gruyère is famous for it’s very thick and rich double cream.  which i made sure, of course, that my sister was able to sample.  We bought a container of double cream and a package of meringues (berries would have been my first choice, but in february meringues are a good substitute) on the way home.  you can actually buy all this stuff in morges, but i personally think it’s always more fun right from the source.

the meringues are so pretty, like waves of silky white desert sand frozen in….um…i think i’d better leave waxing poetic about food to the food bloggers.  but seriously, they are very pretty, don’t you think?  i don’t know why, but they taste different than the meringues i am used to in the states.  ryon, my brother-in-law, thought they tasted like popcorn balls. i checked the ingredients and the only thing they contain is sugar and egg whites, so i’m not sure where the different taste could come from. perhaps they use more of a brown sugar instead of a white sugar? i am not sure.

according to various sources i found on the internet you are supposed to dip the meringues in the double cream. i didn’t immediately adore this combination, but it has grown on me (have to use up all that double cream somehow, right?).  the cream does a great job of cutting the sweetness of the meringues, and the silkiness of the cream also pairs well with the crunchy meringues.  note:  keep it under three meringues per sitting.  otherwise the roof of your mouth will feel like someone has been going at it with sandpaper.  the double cream is supposedly The Best.  period.  having not tasted any other double cream, i can’t say that myself, but it is good!  here is poor niamh holding a meringue dipped in the cream so i could take a photo.  how mean am i–making the child allergic to eggs hold the special-treat-’o-poison.  i did give her a piece of chocolate afterwards for her assistance.

We eat a lot of squash in the Dahlia/Slanky household (well ok, Mr. J eats a lot of squash and since we have it around so much I’ve been trying to think of more ways to use it for our meals as well) and I’ve noticed that I’m pretty one-note with my uses. I’m wondering if anyone has ways they like their squash. I mostly use pumpkins and butternut squash and I either make soups or I stuff them with some sort of mixture, usually made up of stuff I have around, and bake them. Last night we had acorn squash baked with a concoction of garbanzos, onions, rice, spinach and some spices. It was pretty good but nothing spectacular. Can you get spectacular from squash? Anyway. What say you?

one of the hardest things for me about traveling with three small children is not being able to go out to restaurants. on our recent trip to spain there were so many cool restaurants i wanted to go to, but couldn’t. i suppose that’s technically not true. we could have gone to restaurants. but the probability of misery at restaurants is high, especially when the hours are funky, the focus is on quality not speed, and the children are already on the cranky side from spending the entire day being culturally enriched at museums, cathedrals, and the like.

however, as most of you know from pat’s blog we still managed to try some spanish gastronomic delights. this somewhat, though not completely, made up for eating more oscar meyer hot dogs in five days than we had in the past two years. we bought a few (perhaps i use that term a tad loosely, haha) cheeses, some chocolates, world class ham and….drumroll…polvorons.

these cookies, which are a traditional spanish christmas cookie, were divine! the flavor was fairly mild, though rich, and the texture was quite crumbly. a bit like a shortbread cookie, only much more tender. the cookies practically melt in your mouth without really having to chew. so dangerous! they are made primarily with lard, sugar, eggs, and some sort of ground up nut. i’m not sure if it’s almonds or hazlenuts. the word on the ingredient list was ametlla torrada, which i can’t find a translation for. but from doing an internet search on polvorons i’m guessing it must be one of the nuts i mentioned.

i need to experiment a bit and try to make my own. i think this russian tea cake recipe will be a good starting point, though sadly it will probably be a while before i get the energy to try it. perhaps next christmas.