Wednesday, 12/1/2010

Turkey, turkey, turkey.  We still have turkey left over from Thanksgiving.  We heated some of it up for dinner tonight and fixed a light fruit salad to go with it.  For the salad, I cut up a banana, added a small can of mandarin oranges, and some frozen raspberries from my parent's garden.  Katie was very excited about the oranges, until she saw the raspberries.  After that, she wouldn't touch an oranges.  While I was getting dinner ready, she would ask for "two" berries at a time.  She wanted to hold one in each hand.  Her fingers were quite red by the time we sat down to eat:)

Tuesday, 11/30/2010

We celebrated 2nd birthdays with our PEPS group tonight.  Barb, Tad, and Ronan hosted the party.  Barb made a fantastic beef stew and fixed up gnocchi to go with it.  Continuing with our cycle of potlucks, we also had snacks for the kids, a spinach and strawberry salad, and crusty bread.  I signed up to bring the dessert.  What fun to make the birthday cupcakes:)  I used a recipe my friend Taran passed to me several years ago for a spice cake made with cream sherry.  Usually made in a Bundt cake pan, it was different to go the cupcake route with the recipe.  Thankfully, it worked great!  Here's the recipe:

SPICE CAKE

Ingredients:
1 yellow cake mix
1 small vanilla instant pudding
2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup cream sherry
4 eggs

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter and flour a Bundt pan. 
2.  Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl.  Add oil, sherry, and eggs. 
3.  Bake for 25-35 minutes.  The cake is done with a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean.
4.  Loosen the cake from the pan with a spatula.  This helps it from sticking to the pan when you turn it over.  Place on a plate and let cool completely.
5.  It tastes great with a cream sherry/powdered sugar glaze on top, or just powdered sugar.  For the glaze, mix a small amount of cream sherry with a large amount of powdered sugar until it reaches a very gooey, non-translucent state.  Pour over top of cake and let harden.  Voila!

Note: This recipe made 6 large and 12 medium sized cupcakes that were all bulging at the top.  I baked them for 23 minutes.  Since the cakes were mainly for 2-year-olds, I didn't think the cream sherry glaze was appropriate.  I frosted the cupcakes with store bought cream cheese frosting instead. I added green sprinkles for the boys and purple sprinkles for Katie. 

Monday, 11/29/2010

Tonight we used Thanksgiving left overs, with a twist.  I wrapped some of the turkey and BBQ sauce in foil.  Then I cooked it in the toaster oven for 30 minutes or so on low heat.  I put too much BBQ sauce on the turkey, but it was still good.  I had one sweet potato that I didn't use for Thanksgiving.  I cubed it and then tossed the cubes in olive oil, salt, pepper, and chopped rosemary.  I baked the potatoes on a cookie sheet in a 400 degree oven for about a half hour.  They had the nice flavor of the potatoes we grilled for Thanksgiving, without having to use the grill.  

For our salad, I used bitter greens and made a lemon and olive oil dressing to go with it.  I made it on a whim; so, I don't have the exact amounts for the ingredients.  I know I started with the juice from half a lemon, then I whisked in olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little sugar.  It ended up being a fine salad:)

Sunday, 11/28/2010

My cold has been lingering on with a good cough.  Knowing that people at church would worry that I would get them sick, we decided to stay home today.  We spent the morning getting the house decorated for Christmas.  We managed to get the tree up and in place while Katie was "helping", but I waited until she was napping to add the ornaments.  Ben worked on adding new LED lights to the front room windows.  They look great:)  

For dinner, we had our first of many left over Thanksgiving meals.  The turkey, dressing, and gravy were still delicious!

Saturday, 11/27/2010

We drove down to Olympia this afternoon to have dinner at Ben's Aunt Carol, Uncle Jim, and Cousin Austen's house.  Carol made burritos with shredded left over Thanksgiving turkey.  I'm not sure what was in the sauce she poured over the top, but they were delicious.  For dessert we had pumpkin pie:)  We haven't visited with Jim, Carol, and Austen for several months.  It was really nice to catch up with them.

Friday, 11/26/2010

For the last three years, we have spent Thanksgiving in Portland with Ben's mom, brother and extended family.  Traditionally, we have enjoyed the turkey meal on Thursday and then shopped on NW 23rd Avenue on Friday.  Since Jennifer and Spencer were at our house this year, we decided to substitute University Village for NW 23rd.  We had a great day of shopping....and eating:) 

We started with breakfast sandwiches at Specialty's Cafe and Bakery.  The food was quite tasty, but the accuracy and timeliness of our orders could have been better.  It took us until 1:30pm to get hungry for lunch.  We then enjoyed great burgers and sandwiches at the Ram Restaurant and Brewery.  Sufficiently stuffed, we didn't really need dinner.  After putting Katie down for the night, Jennifer, Spencer, Ben, and I sat down at the table to play Banagrams and eat cheesecake.  What a great way to end the night!

Thursday, 11/25/2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

For about a month, we have been tossing around the idea of using the Mexican-inspired, Thanksgiving menu from the November 2010 issue of Sunset Magazine.  Ben checked with his mom and brother to see if there were any traditional dishes that they needed to have included in the meal.  Spencer said he needed stuffing with sausage in it.  Since the Sunset menu included Chorizo Apple stuffing, we decided to go for it.  Although we didn't make the pumpkin tacos or the suggested desserts, we did not deviate from the printed menu for the main meal.  You will find each menu item below, including links to the Sunset recipes and my notes.

For the table setting, I started with a simple off-white table cloth and our regular plates.  I put a large clear glass vase filled with mandarin oranges in the middle of the table and flanked it with orange taper candles in cut glass holders.  For the place cards, I traced Katie's hand on paper eight times and then begged her to color on that paper with turkey colors.  She was never enthusiastic about coloring with orange and brown, but she did enough to help me out.  I cut out the hands, glued them to paper tents, and then added eyes, a beak, and a gobbler.  Okay, I am sure it is not called a gobbler, but it's the part that hangs down below the beak:)  They turned out really cute!

Chile and Spice Grilled Turkey: We brined our turkey in a boiling-water canner.  The recipe called for the turkey to be placed in the brine, breast down.  Ours went into the pot breast side up, oops.  Ben realized it with about two hours of brining to go and flipped it.  But, that may have been too late to do much good.  Thankfully, the turkey was moist, but it's hard to know if the flavor of the turkey would have been stronger if the breast had been down.  The turkey we grilled was just over 16 pounds, and it took 3 hours for it to reach 160 degrees.  Ben had a hard time regulating the cooking temperature for the first hour, particularly out in freezing, windy conditions.  But, after an hour of adjusting the gas over 10-15 minutes, it finally stabilized.  It was great to use the grill and leave the over free to cook the side dishes.  We would definitely grill again.

Mole Gravy: I am normally not a fan of gravy.  But, this gravy was a delicious sauce!  I think it was my favorite part of the meal.  Maybe it tied with the stuffing;)  The only thing that caught me by surprise with the gravy was how long it took to make.  I didn't read the recipe all the way through and missed that it would take 12 minutes after the turkey juices were added.

Chorizo Apple Stuffing: Laura and David pre-made the stuffing, and then baked it at our house.  It made our house smell fantastic!  The Chorizo and apples gave the stuffing the perfect balance of spice and sweet.  It was amazing with some of the gravy on top. 

Grilled Rosemary Sweet Potatoes: We decided to bake the sweet potatoes in a 325 degree oven last night, rather than grilling them.  I think they baked a little too long.  They were a bit close to becoming mashed potatoes.  Thankfully, they did set up a bit over night, and we were able to warm them up on the grill today.  The flavor was delicious, but I bet they would have been better if we had grilled them. 

Roasted Chile-Lime Brocollini: Nancy fixed this dish at our house this afternoon.  The ancho chile and lime flavors worked very well with the brocollini.   We all thought it was done enough and moved it into the warming drawer.  Unfortunately, we pulled it out of the oven too early.  And then, the other dishes weren't as close to being ready as I thought they were.  It would have been better to leave them in the oven to crisp up a bit more.  Katie enjoyed chewing on one of the stalks.

Roasted Chile Cornbread:  Spencer made the cornbread at our house last night.  The roasted chile's made the house smell good:)  The cornbread was wonderful.  It wasn't too sweet and was enjoyed by all. This is definitely a recipe that would work well with other Tex-Mex meals. 

Cranberry, Apple, Orange Relish:  Jennifer made the relish at home earlier this week.  The recipe said it could be made up to a week prior to the meal.  Well, I don't think any of us truly loved the relish.  It was pretty sour, and the recipe made way more than needed for each person.  The magazine did say that it would be good on a left-over turkey sandwich.  I'll have to try that. 

Fall Salad with Nuts and Pomegranates:  Nancy made this lovely salad for our meal.  Wow, what great flavors!  I really enjoyed the crunch of the walnuts and pomegranate seeds.  And, the fresh thyme was a delightful surprise each time I got a bite of it.

Orange Chocolate Cheesecake:  This recipe came from the Kraft Foods quarter magazine: Food & Family. I've had the recipe in my recipe box for several years now.  When it came time to decide on a dessert for this meal, I thought the citrus and chocolate would go nicely with the Tex-Mex theme.  I was right!  Everyone loved it!  Spencer made a delicious cordial to go with the dessert.  It was called a "Betsy Ross".  There may be more, but here's the list of ingredients I know the drink included:  tawny port, Grand Marnier, Fundador Brandy, and a special bitters, not sold in the state of Washington.  It was sweet and warming:)

All in all, it was a delicious meal that I am so thankful to have shared with my family and friends.