Festive Food
I have a number of things to write about (so what else is new) but let’s start with festive food.
On those occasions when I spend Thanksgiving at home, it’s an excuse to cook a rare multi-course meal. This year I started with a green salad with lemon basill vinaigrette dressing.
For the main course, I roasted a turkey breast. This is easy - you just mix olive oil with seasonings (a little paprika, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, except I was out of thyme and didn’t have time to go out to the store for more). You rub that under the skin of the turkey breast and then rub more on the skin. Then roast the whole thing in a 375 degree oven until a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part reads 165 degrees. (It took a little over 2 hours.)
I wanted to go with Indiian (as in East Indian, not Native American) flavors for the side dishes. One of those was a potato casserole with spinach and chick peas, that is intended to be sort of like the filling of a samosa. It’s seasoned with garam masala and amchur (mango powder). and chilis. It wasn’t as spicy as I’d hoped and I’ve been remedying that as I heat up the leftovers.
My other side dish was going to be butternut squash theron. But the recipe called for coconut and, when I took the bag of shredded dried coconut out of the pantry, I discovered it had weevils! Despite one friend who suggested that just adds extra protein, er, no, I don’t do insects. So I just tossed the squash with olive oil, cumin, black pepper, and cinnamon and roasted it until tender.
I was also going to bake carrot bread, but that also calls for coconut, so I just skipped it. It’s not like I needed more food.
Here’s a picture of the plated turkey and sides:
I poured some shiraz to drink with that, which worked well.
For dessert, I had apple-cranberry crumble:
That came out a bit sweeter than I intended, probably because I used sugar bee apples instead of the granny smith apples I would usually have used. It was still good.
I’ve been eating leftovers ever since. Though I’ve now used up the leftovers I put in the refrigerator and can hold off eating those in the freezer for a few weeks, while I eat other stuff.
On top of that, Chanukah started last night. I’ve gone with boughten potato latkes this year, since I don’t feel like grating onions. (Grating potatoes is fine, but onions get painful quickly. No wonder my mother used to make me and my brother do those.) also bought a box of sufganiot, i.e. doughnuts from Astro Doughnuts and Fried Chicken in Falls Church. The challenge is trying to make them last eight days. I fear I am going to fail at that.
The undecorated ones are creme brûlée. The ones with powdered sugar and chocolate gelt on top are filled with jelly. Everything is tasty.
I’ve made plans for my next round of ProLon in a couple f weeks.
This entry was originally posted at https://fauxklore.dreamwidth.org/499710.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
On those occasions when I spend Thanksgiving at home, it’s an excuse to cook a rare multi-course meal. This year I started with a green salad with lemon basill vinaigrette dressing.
For the main course, I roasted a turkey breast. This is easy - you just mix olive oil with seasonings (a little paprika, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, except I was out of thyme and didn’t have time to go out to the store for more). You rub that under the skin of the turkey breast and then rub more on the skin. Then roast the whole thing in a 375 degree oven until a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part reads 165 degrees. (It took a little over 2 hours.)
I wanted to go with Indiian (as in East Indian, not Native American) flavors for the side dishes. One of those was a potato casserole with spinach and chick peas, that is intended to be sort of like the filling of a samosa. It’s seasoned with garam masala and amchur (mango powder). and chilis. It wasn’t as spicy as I’d hoped and I’ve been remedying that as I heat up the leftovers.
My other side dish was going to be butternut squash theron. But the recipe called for coconut and, when I took the bag of shredded dried coconut out of the pantry, I discovered it had weevils! Despite one friend who suggested that just adds extra protein, er, no, I don’t do insects. So I just tossed the squash with olive oil, cumin, black pepper, and cinnamon and roasted it until tender.
I was also going to bake carrot bread, but that also calls for coconut, so I just skipped it. It’s not like I needed more food.
Here’s a picture of the plated turkey and sides:
I poured some shiraz to drink with that, which worked well.
For dessert, I had apple-cranberry crumble:
That came out a bit sweeter than I intended, probably because I used sugar bee apples instead of the granny smith apples I would usually have used. It was still good.
I’ve been eating leftovers ever since. Though I’ve now used up the leftovers I put in the refrigerator and can hold off eating those in the freezer for a few weeks, while I eat other stuff.
On top of that, Chanukah started last night. I’ve gone with boughten potato latkes this year, since I don’t feel like grating onions. (Grating potatoes is fine, but onions get painful quickly. No wonder my mother used to make me and my brother do those.) also bought a box of sufganiot, i.e. doughnuts from Astro Doughnuts and Fried Chicken in Falls Church. The challenge is trying to make them last eight days. I fear I am going to fail at that.
The undecorated ones are creme brûlée. The ones with powdered sugar and chocolate gelt on top are filled with jelly. Everything is tasty.
I’ve made plans for my next round of ProLon in a couple f weeks.
This entry was originally posted at https://fauxklore.dreamwidth.org/499710.html. Please comment there using OpenID.