Thanksgiving Aftermath

It's 9:28 am and I am eating Thanksgiving leftovers.

One of the things I bemoan the night of a Thanksgiving feast is that I cannot fit more into my stomach. I spend most of the night keeping my fullness at maximum capacity, heading to the kitchen for a bite of turkey or a spoonful of mashed potatoes or ambrosia salad every time there is a centimeter of space in me.

Unlike most of the country, we celebrated Thanksgiving last night instead of Thursday. As most of our friends have family elsewhere we all joined culinary forces to create a Friday Feast.

There was turkey, and I'm sorry to say, its the best turkey I've ever had. I'm sorry to say this because it means that I've told my mother her turkey has been dethroned as best turkey. I highly recommend brining your turkey, and I would follow Alton Brown's recipe if you attempt it. The recipe even has a link for the Good Eats episode that shows you how its done and why it works so well. Alton Brown is a culinary icon in my mind.

Mashed potatoes, stuffing (both gluten free and otherwise), and a collection of various vegetable dishes were also a part of dinner. Ambrosia salad, pumpkin whoopie pies, peanut butter ice cream pie, pumpkin pie, and custard tarts were for dessert. While the tarts and pumpkin pie were not gluten free, we had contributed the whoopie pies and peanut butter ice cream pie, so those most definitely were. You can find the pumpkin whoopie pie recipe here. They were delicious! I do however, recommend using a single recipe of filling for two batches of cookies, but that's just me.

The peanut butter ice cream pie recipe comes from a small book my grandmother got for me while I was in Lake Tahoe visiting her last summer. We had ventured to Virginia City, as we typically do, and gone to their old fashioned ice cream parlor to watch them make sweets and treats in their window. A conversation had begun about making ice cream, as my friend that had joined us had brought the ice cream maker attachment for her Kitchen Aid Mixer. My grandmother responded by buying the book for us. Its brilliant!

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Peanut Butter Ice Cream Pie (care of Old Fashioned Ice cream Recipes by Bear Wallow Books, page 23)

Ingredients:

• 1 9-inch graham cracker pie crust (make with gluten free graham crackers if desired)
• 1 quart vanilla ice cream, softened
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup chopped peanuts

"Prepare graham cracker crust. In a mixing bowl blend the quart of softened ice cream, the cream whipped to soft peak stage, the peanut butter and half of the chopped peanuts. Pour into pie crust and top with remaining chopped nuts. Freeze pie till firm."

Note: I do not like chunky peanut butter and therefore left out the peanuts. I made up for the volume by putting in a cup of peanut butter instead of a half cup.

Note unrelated to cooking: Also, I put the directions in quotations because of the use of the word "till". Its until, not till, people. Till is not a preposition, it is a noun or a verb: a cash register, a type of sediment, or the act of cultivating land. I distinctly remember editing a professional research paper for engineers that had that word in it. This is why I now own a soap box specifically used for the misuse of the word till.
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Here are some pictures of the pie making process. 

Despite how wonderful the pie was, I think I am most excited for my stuffing recipe. It is a work in progress, but its coming along pretty well.

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Gluten Free Stuffing (adapted from several recipes to the point that I think its officially my own now)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 loaf Pamela's Gluten Free Bread (mix info here) cut into slices or cubes and set out to dry for at least 48 hours
• 1 tablespoon sage
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 large onion chopped in 1/4 inch dice
• 3 celery stalks chopped (halve lengthwise and then slice in 1/4 inch pieces)
• 1 14.5 oz can chicken stock
• 2/3 cup golden raisins
• 2 to 3 small apples chopped
• olive oil (I never measure this, but I would guess it was about a tablespoon overall)

If bread is already cubed, simply toss with sage, thyme, and garlic powder. If it is in slices, break slices into food processor and add spices. pulse until there are both bread crumbs and some larger chunks (about 1in x1in at most). Transfer bread mix to large mixing bowl (I use my giant stainless steel bowl for this to help me avoid making a giant mess)

Heat oil over medium high heat until hot. Add onion and cook until softened and translucent, about 10 minutes. Transfer to bowl with bread, there should be some oil left in the pan.

Preheat over to 325.

Add celery to pan and 1/4 cup chicken stock. While celery is softening, put golden raisins in bowl with the rest of the chicken broth and microwave on high for 1 minute. Allow celery to continue to soften for about 10 minutes in pan, stirring frequently.
Add the broth and raisins and bring to simmer in pan. Simmer for a few minutes to allow raisins to begin to plump up (may not noticeably do so at this time).
Add apple and simmer for another minute or too to soften apple slightly. Pour celery mix over bread and onion and toss everything together. Transfer mix to 9x13 pan.

Bake at 325 for 20minutes uncovered, then cover pan and bake for another 10 minutes.

Note: To be honest, I haven't tried the cubed bread method, and I don't think that half a loaf is enough for a 9x13 pan. Feel free to adjust ingredients as you see fit. I am young and the number of holiday meals that I have contributed to are few. It was still quite delicious.
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This year, I guess I am thankful for a gluten free partner that stands ready at the sink to wash all the dishes I use while baking our contribution to a Thanksgiving feast.

Enjoy your own holiday aftermath!!

Thanksgiving and Google

Google is a harsh mistress.

Long ago I started using the Google network and set up an account tied to my primary e-mail address. At some point in the last couple years I made a Gmail account, which is powered by Google and was thus made on the same account as everything else I'd ever done with Google. I made this account specifically for one purpose and this purpose no longer exists, but the name I used on the account does. Its not a name I care to have attached to me any longer, yet its a name that Google insists I use if I reactivate Gmail on that account.



Oh Google, why must you be so enchanting most of the time and yet, every so often, be so cruel?

I had a solution to this problem, however. For months now I have bemoaned my plight and been told by friends that I should simply set up a new account. I insisted that this would be highly problematic as I now have a Google+ account, Google Documents, and Maps set up through my old Google account. Despite this concern, I gave it a shot. It was so incredibly simple to send my contacts from Yahoo! to Gmail, and Google told me that I could toggle between two accounts. This, however, wasn't really as easy as it seemed like it would be, or at least the easiness was over-shadowed by the annoying-ness of switching accounts back and forth. I, therefore, moved my Google Documents over (as simple as sharing them with my new account and then making the new account the only individual that could edit them). I set up a new Google+ account and most of my Friends have already added me back, I'm not worried about the few that haven't. The maps I've set up aren't anything I've looked at in a long time so I'm sure they aren't that important.

"Great!" I thought, "I'm well on my way to getting my new Google account set up and I should be set to delete my old one by the end of the holiday weekend. I think I'll go blog about this ..."


"Oh shit."

My blog is also tied to said old Google account.

I then considered the cons of creating a new blog on my new account.

• It would require a  new web address and therefore a new name - If anyone had bookmarked my blog, they would have to change the bookmark. I can't imagine too many people having trouble with this and I could make a name that is similar
  
• I would lose all of my old blog entries - On some level this bothers me, but on another I find it perfectly fine. Other than the few most recent blogs I've written, I'm not especially attached to the old entries. In fact, I look back at them and feel that they could have been done better, or that they are outdated.
  
• I don't know if I could make it look this same - This is by far the con that seems to upset me the most. I recall when I started this blog that it took me a great deal of fiddling to get the look to my satisfaction. I was surprised that the image I uploaded as my new picture at the top of my blog got placed so well.

Obviously, these concerns are not really concerns; they are trifles. So I did start a new blog. It does look a little different, but I think I am satisfied with the overall look of it.



You can now find my new blog here.


In addition, today is Thanksgiving, though I'm not celebrating it today. I'd like to wish everyone a happy holiday and promise that I will be posting about our Thanksgiving on Saturday after we've had our Friday Feast. This post will be on my new blog.

Waste Not, Want Not

I've spent the last couple hours cooking and pureeing some winter squash for a soup I am making for dinner. The soup recipe calls for frozen pureed squash, which would make the recipe unbelievably easy from my perspective. We, however, have entered the winter squash season for our CSA box. I couldn't be more pleased about this even if it does make soup recipes take 4 times as long to prepare.

The winter squash I am working with this afternoon was one that I wasn't really familiar with before it showed up in our box the Thursday before last. Luckily, I have a culinary bible known as Vegetable Love by Barbara Kafka. The last 140 pages before the index of this cookbook has something called the "Cook's Guide" in which Kafka describes the way to identify, pick, store, prep, and cook almost any vegetable you could think of. Her section on winter squash includes the description of what each type of squash looks like and this was my resource for discovering that the squash I just dealt with was Delicata Squash.

And I quote complete with citation:

"DELICATA (Cucurbita pepo) This small (1 to 1 1/2 pound) cucumber-shaped squash has pale yellow skin creased with green stripes. The flesh is pale yellow with a light taste reminiscent of sweet corn and a texture between that of winter and summer squash. Delicata will store for only 2 to 3 weeks. During storage, the green stripes may turn orange; this color change will not affect the taste. Delicata slices easily and is best steamed, sauteed, or baked. Its small size and shape make it ideal for stuffing." (Kafka, 2005, p. 651)

Two pages later, Kafka describes how to cut said squash and also divulges that the skin is edible. Turn one more page and you'll find directions for steaming said squash. This is what I did.

This book is indispensable to the recipient of a CSA box.

In addition to this information, there is a note somewhere in the winter squash section that says that most winter squash seeds are edible and should be roasted. I have an affinity for roasted seeds and decided to try to live more by the title of my blog by spending 45 minutes picking seeds out of gourd snot.

Unfortunately, Kafka doesn't mention Delicata seeds anywhere in her recipes for roasting seeds. This concerned me, and I went on a web search to see if anyone else had ever tried such a feat. Luckily, the mighty Google led me to a blog called "Lighthearted Locavore" and the author included this entry on delicata seed roasting, complete with pictures (which I lack due to the lack of a worthy camera for such a job). I plan to add some chili powder to mine in addition to salt.

I hope everyone can enjoy some winter squash this season!

Addition:
After making the recipe that I linked above, I would say that the sausage seriously overwhelms the dish. Save yourself the money and the calories and use less or something less fattening. We plan to try it with ground turkey that we have mixed dry or fresh sage into next time. Also, there aren't enough beans in our opinion. As an ex vegetarian, I don't often do meals that are heavy on the meat and was raised on my father's super frugal heavy bean, light meat chili (much to the chagrin of my meat eating friends). More beans and less meat would also bring out the flavor of the squash a bit more, which I am sad to say was not even remotely prevalent enough for my liking.

Just my two cents; take it or leave it.