Thanks Giving

Here's a bit of a different purpose. I give thanks.

I am thankful for (in no particular order):

1. Kevin


2. Isaac


3. My friends


4. My home away from the road surrounded by trees and deer


5. Vodka soaked with lemon rinds (more on that later!)


6. Naps


7. My family


8. Snow


9. Big Bang Theory


10. My gas stove


11. Baxter


12. Bosley


13. Vacations


14. The Single Pebble


15. Warm Brie


16. The trail network in the back yard


17. Hoops and Yoyo

And, of course, there's more.

Why I'm Disappointed

I've been eating left over Thanksgiving for two days. Every meal. I ate some cold turkey for breakfast this morning. Just picked off a little piece before I bolted out the door before the Little Guy and The Boy woke up. I'm oddly okay with this.

Typically, I'm not down with leftovers. People are always saying, "Whatever-it-is is better the next day." And I think, "Not so much". I'm usually quite happy with my food the first day. Why did I put food on the plate that could have been better?  Did I forget how to season? Seriously. I don't get it.

But this week? I'm happy. I pulled all of the turkey on the carcass, and I was happy to see that there was a ton of dark meat left. The Boy is a garbage disposal for left overs--which works out really well for me, by the by. He doesn't like the dark meat though, so I knew that meant there would be more for me.

I know that sounds selfish. I am a little bit selfish, unfortunately.

I'm not sure why I'm so happy about this. Maybe it's the four bottles of wine that were left over from the party on Saturday. And yes, they were all left open, so I've been having to drink them. We wouldn't want them to go bad. That's just crazy talk.

So, why am I disappointed even though I'm wine-and-turkey-happy? I'm disappointed that I haven't figured out the Red Thai soup. And, the fact that nobody's helped me means that either:

1) Nobody is reading, so nobody wants to give me any help.
2) Nobody cares about me or my needs.
3) I will fail at my mission.

I know that left overs and a Red Thai soup recipe have very little in common. But they do have one very important thing in common.

They are what I was thinking about after that second glass of wine.

Gobblers

My friends and I have a tradition. It's called Friends' Thanksgiving, and it started when I was a junior in college. We were going home for the Thanksgiving holiday, and we decided that this holiday was about spending time sharing food with the people you love. So, we invited all of our friends to the apartment. My roommates made various things that I can't remember right now; I made my first turkey.

Now, fourteen years later (I think that's right) I made my fourteenth Friends' Thanksgiving turkey. I've hosted that other, more widely known Thanksgiving at my house, too, so I'm guessing I'm up to about twenty turkeys total for large groups. I think for only being 34, that's pretty good.

For the past couple of years, I've gotten the this-is-the-best-turkey-ever complements. So, I feel some pressure to produce a good bird now. I wish I could take the credit for it, but it's really the most dummy-proof recipe ever.

1) Brine the bird the night before. This is not a hard step. I put it in a 5 gallon bucket that used to have spackle in it. We washed it out, and now it's affectionatly called the Brining Bucket. I put about a cup of kosher salt, 1/2 a cup of brown sugar, and some all spice and peppercorn berries into it. Bring the salt and brown sugar together in some hot water, the add the all spice and pepper corns. After, put that in the bucket, put the turkey in, and then cover the rest of the turkey with cold water. Put it in the fridge over night.

2) Take the turkey out of the brine and rinse it off to get all the all spice and pepper corn that will inevitably be stuck to it.

3) Put it in a turkey bag.

4) Rub about two tablespoons of butter under the skin, right on top of the breast. I don't worry about if it's in a big lump. It's butter. It will melt.

5) Stuff some apples and onions and herbs in the turkey butt. It will like it.

6) Now, here's the key (I think). Use a thermometer. Get rid of that pop-up thing. We've all heard of carry-over. Well, that pop-up thing pops when the bird is done. If you wait for it to pop up, well, carry over will bring your turkey to over done. Set the thermometer to go off at 161. I'm not sure why that one degree. It's a WWAD (what would alton do?) thing that I do.

7) Close up your bag and put it in a 350 degree oven.

Then, you wait. This is the hard part, because I never know how long it's going to take.

You can decide once your timer goes off if you want to brown it up. I tend not to because I don't think people NEED to be eating more turkey skin and I'm not into the whole unvailing presentation part of it. So, my turkey's ugly, but it tastes yummy.

Once it comes out, leave the darn thing alone for a while. I'm talking like thirty minutes at least. It's fricken huge; it's not going to get cold. Heat up your other stuff. Make your gravy. But, for the love of Alton, leave it alone!

That's it. Next year, I promise to take pictures and to make this a more...funny?...story. Here's the nitty gritty. Next year, we'll get into the fun.

Rules

People have accused me of being "Brooke-centric". I believe there are certain rules that apply, that people know them, and that when they break them, they are giving me permission to judge them.

When you are invited to dinner at someone's home, the polite thing to do is ask the following question: "What can I bring?". If you don't ask this question you need to acknowledge something about yourself. You're a little bit rude. When my friends do this, it's okay. I still like them. In fact, it doesn't really bother me all that much because I do love to cook. But, I do judge them just a little bit.

Now, if you're a guest in someone's home, you are, oddly, not expected to bring anything. I don't know why. I guess the fact that you spent more than $10.00 on gas to visit exempts you from buying food. But, if you and your host go to the grocery store in order to feed your sorry self, then your job is to ask if you can help with the bill. But, otherwise, you're off the hook. Yeah, I know this means you might pick up the tab for vegetable oil that you'll only be having 1/4 cup of in some brownies, but it's the right thing to do. Again, I don't know why. I didn't make up the rules.

As you may have noticed previously, I believe that there are certain things that make meals more...enjoyable. They involve little rules that aren't written down. They just are. For example, the only appropriate vegetable to have when you're eating a spaghetti dinner is a salad. I mean, really, can you imagine a side of brussel sprouts with your spaghetti? That's just weird. And the only other appropriate accompaniment is garlic bread. But, you shouldn't have garlic bread with pizza. Unless it comes beforehand, like an appetizer. With cheese. Of course. Duh.

My mom and dad raised me. They did not ship me out to be raised by some sort of strange type-A cult group of wolves with strange eating rules. And, since they raised me themselves, guiding me through this crazy thing called life, you would assume that they would know the rules.

Today I invited my parents to dinner. We were going to have maple glazed salmon with a balsamic reduction, salt and pepper roasted carrots, seamed snap peas, and for dessert, popovers with pumpkin ice cream. I know. This sounds amazing and gives you pause at my brilliance. I can't take credit. The Boy came up with it. I love him.

Mom did not ask what she should bring. She always asks what she should bring. I figured something was up her sleeve. Tomorrow is the Boy's birthday. He'll be 137. So, when I called her to find out when they were coming over, I asked if she liked my dessert idea. She had already made chocolate pudding for dessert.

Let's recap. She didn't ask what would be an appropriate dessert to bring. She made something willy-nilly. Like it didn't matter to bring the meal to it's logical close. The fact that chocolate pudding was an okay ending is not the point. The point is the willy and the nilly.

Luckily, I am a level-headed person with a bit of self control. She only asked me twice if itwas okay that she brought the pudding she had made special for the Boy.

Perhaps she could hear something in my voice.

I was very smooth during the whole thing, I'm sure.

I really wanted popovers.

Red Thai?

As a teacher, I take assignments very seriously. If given one, I do try my best. It may be my sarcastic best, but it's my best.

So, now that one of my best friends has given me as assignment, I need to figure out how to do my best. And her assignment has keyed into cooking. So, now it's fun to do.

But...she's created a challenge. Create the Red Thai soup from A Single Pebble restaurant. Now, A Single Pebble is the best restaurant in Vermont, in my opinion. The chef there is amazing. One of my most favorite things in the whole world is the mock eel at this restaurant (and, my idol Alton Brown agrees with me). It is amazing. So, to consider recreating a dish from this place is daunting.

So, where do I begin?

A year ago I would have began with a trip to A Single Pebble. I would have had the soup (and the mock eel, of course) there with dinner, and then I would have gotten some as take out. I would have tasted it and tried to figure out all of the ingredients. Then, I would have tasted my creation beside another order of the soup from there (and some more mock eel). And this would have continued until I had it.

But now the Little Guy is here. So, impromptu trips to get soup an hour away is kind of hard.

So, what to do?

I have considered calling the restaurant and simply asking for the recipe. Cheating? Perhaps. But easy.

I can't do that though. It takes the fun out of the chase. It's like hiring a a cheap prostitute. So, I'm left with the question of what to do. The only thing I can think of is to try to make it from my memory and the description on the menu and just hope that it's good enough. Maybe I'll get up there and I'll get some take out. Maybe not.

What I can only hope it this. I hope that whatever it is that I do make, while it won't be the Red Thai soup, I hope it's amazing enough for her!

Awww....Pretty

Little brown meals. That's what I call it when we have chicken, corn, and potatoes. And when this happens, I will sometimes eat it off of my yellow fiesta ware plate instead of the red or purple one. Why? Because I need to punish myself for creating an ugly meal. I need to see the hidiousness through.

Today, I made something pretty. It was taco seasoning. Today we had tacos--not any sort of special, gourmet tacos, but they were pretty tacos.

The tomatoes were red, and the lettuce was green. The cheddar was white, and the beef (with that pretty seasoning) was brown. A bit of guacomole, black beans, rice, and sour cream on the tortilla shell...and I had one pretty heck of a meal.

I ate it off of a tourquois plate.

My Mother Thinks I'm Killing My Baby

I turned out alright. I mean, I don't NEED therapy.

Thus, my mother believes I should raise the Little Guy the same way she raised me. Hmmmm...

We do some things the same.

She used cloth diapers, and I am doing the same. Admittedly, she thinks I'm crazy and only wants to put him in disposables when she's babysitting, but that's not the point, right?

We both believe that the Little Guy shouldn't be watching too much TV--especially at his age. Admittedly, I have never sat him down in front of the TV (yet) as a babysitter. And she has. A lot. But again, we're the same, right?

We both don't believe in the "cry-it-out" method. I can't just leave my little baby in his crib to scream. He could be scared or hurt. Until he has language, I can't do it. Admittedly, Mom sent me a link to a "cry-it-out- site. But again...we're doing some things the same, right?

That might be it for what we do the same.

The Little Guy sleeps on his back. He doesn't use blankets. We don't keep stuffed animals in the crib. He doesn't ride in a car--no matter how short the distance...without being in a car seat. We're waiting until he's six months old to introduce solid foods. I didn't have a baby shower. All of his clothes and toys are gifts, and mostly hand-me-downs. She thinks we're crazy, but she accepts these things. Because we're the parents. We get to decide. She's good like that.

But...who doesn't think it's a little bit fun to poke the bear?

I read some articles about introducing spices to the baby food you make your child. This sent my mom right to crazy town and back.


The Boy and I love to eat all foods. And, I love to cook. So, when I made this chicken curry last night, I said to him, "I think when Little Guy starts eating, I can just put these carrots and sweet potatoes right in the food processor. I can cook them with the chicken, get a little of that yummy chicken goodness into them, a little carmelization, and that curry spice...and then zip them up and feed them to him. Of course, this is all after he's eaten sweet potatoes and carrots on their own. We're not totally crazy.

My point? I want my son to love food as much as I do. And, sometimes it's okay to not do things just like your mom did them. Even if I did turn out pretty okay.

The Great Food Out

Kevin has done this twice. It's one of those crazy, mythical experiements that he speaks of nostalgically as something he did back then when he was a healthier, stronger person.

Now we're softer. We've gotten used to having whatever we want to eat every second of every day. If we don't have cheese in the fridge, well, that's a cause for a quick trip to the grocery store.

We're the people who like to go to the grocery store. Seriously. I enjoy it in the same way that I enjoy cooking. It's a place where my imagination can run wild...sometimes too wild according to Kevin. Anyway, because we like to go to the grocery store, it's not hard to imagine that the lack of cheese in our fridge would allow us to run out to our favorite place in order to have that perfect meal tonight.

That's where the mythical event of past comes. What if we stopped going to the grocery store until all of the food in the house was gone? How long would that take? Two weeks? A month? Three months? Well, we're considering figuring out.

Like I said, Kevin's done this twice before. This experiment is the reason we don't buy Jell-O. Ever. Apparently he got down to about five boxes of Jell-O and decided to just throw them away instead of eating a meal of lime and cherry Jell-O one night. And, that was how the first Great Food Out ended.

Before we begin, we have to figure out the rules. What constitutes "food"? Is ketchup food? Is ground thyme food? Are sugar and flour and molasses food? What will we have to throw away at the end in order to allow the Great Food Out to come to an eventual end?

When do we start? Do we start with our last grocery trip, or do we go to the store and stock up on things that we know will make the next however-long-it-is better? That seems like cheating. It almost seems like this should hurt.

Can I buy seeds and grow fresh veggies in my garden? And if so, does that mean someone else that I knew personally could...and I could, say, go to the Farmers' Market like we always do in the summer time? Or, should we just wait until the end of summer, when the fresh veggies won't call to me in the night?

As you can see, I'm thinking I'm going to have a hard time with this.

The following are my opinions on how we can do this, while being true to the idea but still staying sane:

1. We start when Kevin gets out of school.


2. We don't count spices or condiments as food.


3. We don't count raw baking ingredients (sugar, yeast & flour) as food.


4. We can buy food to bring to friends' homes for potluck dinners, but we have to bring it all and leave it there.


5. We can grow things in my garden, and we can go to the Farmers' Market. I do believe that the Farmers' Market is cheating, but I'm not opposed to cheating.

I think that's all I need to figure out and get Kevin on board with. What do you think?

Party Food

I'm that person that hates coming to a party with some boxed brownie mix. Don't get me wrong. Boxed brownies rock, and I secretly think that anyone who makes them from scratch is pretentious. There are some things that you can't get out of a box. Cookies. Those boxed or tube cookies are disgusting. But boxed brownies? Delicious.

That said, I don't like to show up at parties with them. My fans expect more. They want me to make mini-quiches or chorizo puffs. And I always like to bring about double what I think the party will actually need. Now Kevin on the other hand is the guy that bought a large pizza, had the guys at the restaurant double-cut it, and that was what he brought to a party of 30. So, when we're invited to a potluck party, you can imagine that we have different ideas about what to bring. Entirely.

Well, we're invited to a Superbowl party this evening. And, I'm in such a bad mood about this cooking thing lately that I am simply making what Kevin told me to. I'm dumping sauerkraut into a crock pot and then cutting up some kielbasa and putting it in. Well...kind of. I don't want to make it that simple.

I'm going to make this dish "special" in the only way I can think of in my stunted culinary-mind. I'm going to cook some barley into the sauerkraut. The nutty flavor seriously elevates it, and it's a good, sneaky way to get some whole grains into anyone's diet. I also bought some really nice, stone ground mustard to put on each little round.

And, with those two simple additions to my wonderful husband's idea of a good potluck dish, I think we might have come up with something that we can both be proud of. Now, if I could only have convinced him that we needed four rings of kielbasa instead of two, we could have both been completely content.

All By Myself...

Okay, so this could come across as sad, but it's not. Nope. Not bothered by it at all.

Tonight for dinner I made some super yummy cod. I put a little bit of butter in a pan, then poured in a bit of lemon juice. Then, the cod fillet went in...a little salt, pepper, parsley, and dill. I put it on low, covered it, and waited for it to begin to fall apart. I love it when meals a that easy. No timer. No temperature. No measureing. It's one of the reasons I don't love to bake the way I love to cook.

Then, on the side I had a nice big salad with carrot, red onion, some sharp cheddar, and a bit of that ham from the other day. I made a maple-mustard-balsamic vinegrette...and voila!...I had a fabulous dinner.

The cod was super delicate and flavorful. It tasted like butter and lemon. I love fish and seafood so much. It's the last meat group I would get rid of in the world...if I had to get rid of meat. Poultry would definately be the first. Anyway...

Why was I all by myself in this fabulous meal you might ask? Well, it wasn't that Kevin was gone for the night partying or building homes for the less fortunate. Nope, he was sitting next to me eating his wonderful meal, too. A pizza. A sausage pizza with a nice thick crust. And I'm totally okay with that. Because I had my fish. Yup. Totally okay. Not bothered or anything.

Well...maybe a little.

Oink

I got to go home early from school today because of the snow and ice. Getting home was a bit sketchy, but there weren't really any other freaks on the road, so I just pointed the Element in the general direction and hoped for the best.

When I got home I thought to myself, "Self, you have some time to actually make something for dinner." So, I baked a ham and cooked the crap out of some kale. When Kevin got home, the house smelled like I'd been cooking all day, which I kind of had, but really it was the oven that was cooking. I just sat on the couch and watched The Talk for the first time and got a whole lot of credit.

This meal is so easy that my cats could make it. I put the ham in the oven, stuck it with the thermometer, set it to 325, and then set the thermometer to go off at 132. See? Simple.

The kale was just as easy. I put a piece of bacon all cut up in the bottom of a pot. Cut up the curly kale, put that in with a little water, spilled in a little apple cider vinegar and grated some fresh nutmeg on top and then sprinkled a little bit of kosher salt. Then, I put it on the stove on low and cooked the crap out of it.

So, two parts to this meal--two different types of pig. Now, I need to say that I know this meal, while high in iron, was not healthy. Yup. I'm well aware. I think that if someone was to take my cholesterol right now they would think I was an 88 year old man who had eaten nothing but Big Macs for my whole life. But, as you may know, I have tried to eat more healthy recently, but this gestational diabetes thing is getting the best of me. My whole wheat tortilla kicked my sugar-ass last night. It seems like when I try to eat anything other than a straight protein on top of a salad (which was a streak I had for about a month) that my sugar goes crazy. OR...I can be on the Atkins diet. And, with only a month left of this...I've made the decision to go with Atkins. Maybe bad...but you know what? I am 8 months pregnant, and I have lost weight in the last two months.

Blather, blather, blather. The point? I hope to get back to a normal diet soon, begin to enjoy the food I eat again, and get back to my normal me.

Experimentation

I have chosen to experiment with this diabetes diet. And, I've done that with none other than the no-good, horrible, very bad tortilla. Yup. They are surprisingly high in those pesky carbohydrates. But...maybe, just maybe...a whole wheat one will work. We'll find out in two hours.

So, for the first time in a long time, I had a device other than lettuce to bring food to my mouth. Think about it. We have edible devices. Pasta. Rice. Tortilla. Bread. Crust. They are all, at best, tasty little devices for getting the real meal into our mouths. Who picks the tortilla when they can have the fajita fixings? Or the bread when they can have the peanut butter and jelly? I had never thought about it before this whole thing.

Did I mention that as soon as this pregnancy is done, the midwives get the Culinary Institute chef's truffles and give me one. Yup. Baby out. Truffle in. Just saying. It's that easy.

Anyway, I smooshed some avocado with some lime juice and salt, spread it on my whole wheat tortilla, sprinkled some really ripe tomato, put on some nice cheddar (no, not traditional, but it's what we had), got some sauteed onions and a little bit of black beans on there and topped it off with some fresh cilantro. And that was dinner.

Here's hoping I won't be cursing any sort of god of carbohydrates or anything like that. I liked my edible device this evening.

Butter & Flour

Today was Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday) in the house. Kevin was very excited for the thawing of the leftover Thanksgiving turkey. We bought some turkey broth for gravy, and we had all of the vegetables we needed.

So, in order to stick to traditional male and female roles (oh, yeah, we love those) Kevin went outside to snowblow the driveway while I cooked dinner. And, it seems like it all started with butter and flour.

A steamed head of cauliflower inspired me to make a cheese sauce. And what does a cheese sauce start with? Butter and flour. I used whole wheat flour in order to protect my ever annoying sugar numbers. A little butter in the pan until it was melty and bubbling, then a good sprinkle of the flour to make the roux. I cooked that off until it was nice and thick and smelled good. After that I added some milk until it was the consistency of a thick soup. And then, the star, some sharp Cabot cheddar. After that, salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg. Yummy. The cauliflower and cheese sauce into a cast iron skillet with a sprinkle of panko on top. In the oven at 425 until the rest of dinner was ready. It was good. Really good. I'm thinking about making it again pretty much every night.

Then, I put some Brussels sprouts on to steam. Sorry. False advertising in the everything started with flour and butter department. But, I did finish them with some olive oil and salt. Oh well.

The turkey gravy though did start with that same butter and flour to make a roux. After that, I slowly poured in the turkey gravy until it was a very thin soup. Then, lots of pepper. Lots and lots of pepper. I love a peppery gravy. After that, I put the turkey in the gravy bath and let it simmer until it was warm again.

This is not a healthy meal, you may say. Nope. Sauces and sauces and butter and flour. Nope. Not healthy. But, one of the things I've learned from my doctors is that I need to worry more about my sugars for at least another six weeks and less about me cholesterol. Yeah, we had two vegetables. But a cheese sauce and a gravy. Oh well. Me and Atkins. We're buddies for six more weeks. Then, bring on the french fries for a little while.

Red Hot Chicken

I swear, I've eaten since October.

A change I've gone through since then though is that I've developed gestational diabetes, which is no fun at all for a person who likes to cook. I feel stiffled by my diet, and food just hasn't been at all fun. But...I do eat. Just not what I always would like to eat.

In my mind, tonight I had some really good french fries with some great garlic aoli. Then, there was a crispy fried white fish and I washed it down with a nice pint of Guiness. Yup. That was my mind's eye meal. It was good.

What did I actually eat? Well, I had some chicken which I baked with just a little salt on my pizza stone. I love my pizza stone. I can cook anything on it, and it doesn't matter. Everything turns out well. I think I need to buy a stone dish with sides so that I can start cooking things which would run over the flat pizza stone surface. Anyway, back to the actual meal--otherwise known as the reason you've continued to read.

I tossed this cooked chicken in a mixture of melted butter and Frank's Red Hot Wing Sauce. It ended up being a bit too hot for me, so I cut it with a little ranch dressing, but Kevin ate it right down.

On the side of that, we had a crunchy green salad and cucumbers. Unfortunately, since it's winter the salads haven't been as good and the cucumbers all have that wax on them, so I have to peel them. I hate touching that wax; it gives me the heeby-jeebies. We also had some thin slices of tomatoes with mozzerella, olive oil, and sprinkled with salt, pepper, and dried basil.

So, that was my dinner. Tomorrow? Who knows.