More cooking--Blueberry Cobbler and Macaroni and Cheese

tAfter the wild success of the banana bread, I was back into cooking. The next day I went to my favorite produce market and picked up a nice quart of blueberries with the intent to make muffins. Instead, I decided to make Blueberry Cobbler which I had made a number of times last summer. The recipe I use is fabulous and is from America's Test Kitchen 1996 Cookbook. It can also be found on the ATK website, but you have to have a membership to access it (current season recipes are free, back recipes require a paid subscription). D and I finished off the cobbler pretty fast, and I ended up making another one a week later with wild Maine blueberries which we brought to his cousin's house.

On Labor Day, I set to work cooking again. Two women in my newcomers club had recently had babies so I wanted to make meals for them, and also to start stocking my own freezer. I chose to make Macaroni and Cheese because pretty much everyone likes it (and it's usually a hit with toddlers, which both of these women have). I use the recipe from Barefoot Contessa Family Style. It's a classic baked mac and cheese with a white sauce and bread crumbs on top. It's delicious and freezes well. It's very similar to the mac and cheese my mom makes, though I think she usually uses just cheddar. I do about 1/2 cheddar and 1/2 gruyere, sometimes emmentaler. Really whatever cheese is available works--I haven't done this, but it's probably really yummy if you use all of the bits and pieces of cheese leftover from a cheese platter after a party!

Swedish Style Turkey Meatballs

When I was a pre-teenager, I went through a phase where I would not eat red meat. I'm not sure exactly how or why this started, though perhaps it was at summer camp. In any case, my mom was pretty supportive of this even though it meant that I often wouldn't eat what was being served for dinner. In many households a non-red meat eater might not be a big deal, but in my household we had beef or pork 5-6 times per week for dinner. You see, my father is allergic to poultry so chicken was a "treat" that we would have only when dad was away on business trips. But I digress. In any case, I went though a non red meat phase which meant that hamburgers became turkey burgers.

I haven't had ground turkey in a long time, but when I was at my new favorite grocery store on Saturday, I bought 2 packages of ground turkey since it was buy one get one free. I thought to myself, "turkey is healthy*" so I should use it instead of beef in meatloaf, chili, etc. Upon arriving home, I checked Epicurious for some ground turkey recipes. The first one I came upon that sounded good was Turkey Swedish Meatballs. Perfect--in fact, D is 1/4 Swedish.

I made the meatballs on Tuesday night. From beginning to end the recipe took about 1.5 hours, but would have been about 15 minutes less if I had put the water on to boil for the noodles earlier. The original recipe is here, but I modified it a little bit because of what I did and did not have on hand.

Swedish Style Turkey Meatballs with Egg Noodles
from Epicurious (originally from Gourmet, April 1998)

For Meatballs:
4 slices firm white sandwich bread (I used leftover Challah)
1 medium onion
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground allspice (in the future I would use a little less)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 3/4 pounds lean ground turkey (I used 1 1/4 because that's what I had)
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

3/4 pound cholesterol-free egg noodles such as No Yolks

For Sauce:
1 small onion
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 cups beef broth (24 fluid ounces)
3 tablespoons medium-dry Sherry
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon nonfat sour cream (I used regular Greek yogurt, a big heaping tablespoon)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill leaves (I left this out--I didn't have any on hand)

Garnish:
chopped fresh dill leaves (again, I left this out)

Accompaniment:
1/2 cup lingonberry preserves or cranberry sauce (I used canned cranberry sauce)

Make meatballs:
Into a blender/food processor tear 2 bread slices and grind into fine crumbs. Transfer crumbs to a large bowl. Make more bread crumbs in same manner and transfer to bowl. Finely chop enough onion to measure 3/4 cup (I used the food prpocessor to grate onion since I had it out for the bread crumbs) and add to bread crumbs. In a small bowl whisk together egg, nutmeg, allspice, salt, and pepper and add to bread crumb mixture. Add turkey and with your hands mix mixture until just combined (do not overmix).
Form turkey mixture into 1 1/4-inch balls (about 80--mine was about 30) and arrange on a tray. Meatballs may be prepared up to this point 1 day ahead and chilled, covered.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a 12-inch non-stick skillet heat oil over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking and brown meatballs in 2 batches, turning them occasionally, about 4 minutes for each batch. With a slotted spoon transfer meatballs as browned to a shallow baking pan and reserve any drippings in skillet. Bake meatballs, tightly covered with foil, in middle of oven until just cooked through, about 25 minutes. (I lined the bottom part of a broiler with foil and then cooked the meatballs on the top of the broiler pan, covering the meatballs with foil).

While meatballs are baking (better yet, before you put them in the oven), fill a 6-quart saucepan three fourths full with salted water and bring to a boil for noodles.

Make Sauce:
Finely chop enough onion to measure 1/2 cup. In a small bowl whisk together cornstarch and 1/2 cup broth (I heated my broth in the micro first). To reserved drippings in skillet add Sherry and onion and simmer mixture, stirring and scraping up brown bits, until most of liquid is evaporated. Add remaining 2 1/2 cups broth and bring to a boil. Stir cornstarch mixture and whisk into broth mixture. Boil mixture, whisking, 1 minute (look at the clock)and remove skillet from heat. Whisk in Worcestershire sauce, sour cream, and dill and keep sauce warm, covered, over low heat (do not let boil). (Add salt to taste in the sauce, mine could have used a little).

When there's about 15 minutes left on the timer for the meatballs, cook noodles in boiling water until al dente. Drain noodles well in a colander and transfer to a large serving dish. Gently toss noodles with sauce and meatballs and garnish with dill. Put 1 tablespoon preserves or cranberry sauce on top of each serving.

I really liked this recipe. It produced a lot of dishes for D to wash, but I think it was worth it. Also, these were lots of leftovers which I froze.

*Incidentally, I checked the nutrition information for ground beef vs. ground turkey.

For 1/4 lb (raw) here's the info for 93% lean ground turkey (from the Jennie-O package):
Calories: 170
Fat: 8 grams
Saturated Fat: 2.5 grams
Cholesterol: 80 mg
Sodium: 80 mg
Protein: 23 grams
Iron: 6% daily value

And for 1/4lb ground beef 95% lean (from Calorie-Count.com):
Calories: 148
Fat: 6 grams
Saturated Fat: 2.25 grams
Cholesterol: 69 mg
Sodium: 65 mg
Protein: 22.5 grams
Iron: 14% daily value

Typically I buy 93% lean ground beef rather than 95%, but for most things I think I'm going to stick with ground beef instead of ground turkey. The iron is a good thing for me, plus, I like the taste of beef.

Christmas Cookies

In the past 2 weeks I've started making my Christmas cookies. First, I made creme de menthe brownies for a cookie swap. I don't use a recipe, I just make up a batch of fudgie brownies (my grandmother's recipe), ice them with buttercream frosting that's been tinted green and spiked with creme de menthe, and then coat them with chocolate (semi-sweet chips and some butter melted).

The second cookies I made are peanut butter balls. This is a heavily guarded recipe that originally came from my neightbor/my best friend's step-father's ex-wife. My friend Amanda makes these every year and we call them Mandy's Candies. The recipe is out there all over the place in the Internet, so I don't need to post it here and risk upsetting the balance of the universe of my old neighborhood.

Finally, I made sugar cookies. My sister is the queen of cut-out sugar cookies. She makes them for every holiday, bridal showers, etc. She's also a great pie baker. I don't have a lot of patience for rolling out dough (or a lot of time), so I made our grandmother's sugar cookie recipe, rolled it into a log, chilled it for a couple days, and then sliced and baked. They came out approximately round, and I knew that they would look great iced. Here is the recipe:

I also made up a 3/4 batch of my grandmother's christmas cookie icing. Techinically I guess it's royal icing, but I always refer to it as Christmas cookie icing. The icing gets very hard, and I love the combination of soft cookie with a coating of hard icing on top. When I was a kid, my grandmother always made sugar cookies like that. I can still picture her pink-clad santas (I have that cookie cutter now). The santas were pink because she used liquid food coloring and it takes a whole lot of liquid food coloring to dye icing red. These days I use gel food coloring and am able to get more of a red color.

I simply use a ziplock bag instead of a pastry bag for most of my decorating needs. It's easy and disposable--just fill with colored icing and snip a very small hole in the corner. For the holly leaves I did use a pastry bag and tip, but the disposable pastry bag split at the seams before I was finished--I had green icing all over my hands!Here's the recipe for the icing (Doris Arnold is my grandmother):

The recipes are from this cookbook:

I made it a number of years ago by covering a blank book with cut outs from magazines (and the Williams Sonoma catalog). I covered the whole thing with contact paper, and even included measurement equivalents table inside the front cover. I love this little book. It contains my favorite family recipes (banana bread, brownies, cranberry bread, cookie recipes, coffee cake, etc.) as well as some of the recipes I've cut out of magazines. I've always loved cutting and pasting!!!

Daring Bakers: Tender Potato Bread

I bit off more than I could chew in November. First, I signed on to do a blog challenge of organizing my office. Well, that wasn't so successful (though it's much better than it was). Then we celebrated my grandmother's 90th birthday and a week later celebrated by husband's grandmother's 90th birthday. Then it was Thanksgiving! By Thanksgiving night I was totally pooped! But, I still needed to complete my November Daring Bakers challenge!

I started the recipe at about 5pm on Saturday evening (not the best time to start a yeast bread, especially when you hosted 12 people for dinner 2 days earlier). I cooked the potatoes and kind of forgot about them on the stove (I'm a space cadet), so by the time I got to them they had largely become one with the cooking water. Now, I don't have a baking scale (maybe Santa will bring me one?) so I used 3 big potatoes--perhaps that was too many. I measured my potato water and I just about had 3 cups so just added a little extra water to it.

I followed the recipe, adding yeast, all purpose flour, and wheat flour and floured by counter top (I have a beautiful board given to me by D's cousins, but I hadn't used it yet so needed to oil it before the first use and I just didn't have time for that). The dough was extremely sticky, but I figured this was how it was supposed to be. I kept kneading in flour until I ran out of all purpose flour (I hadn't measured before I started, I just assumed I had enough). The dough was still extremely sticky, so I kneaded in some whole wheat flour--not sure how much. Then I put the dough into a bowl, covered it with a towel, and set it on the mantel of our gas fireplace to rise. Then...I fell asleep!
Yes, in the midst of my bread-making, I fell asleep on the sofa. I woke up around 10 and realized I had to finish the bread! So, back to kneading, and it was still soooo sticky. I definitely think I over kneaded though. It was sticky and I was tired, so I buttered up 2 pans and a muffin tin and threw the dough in them (it was so sticky there was no "shaping" my loaf). Then I stuck the bread in the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes. When the timer dinged I stuck the muffin tin in the oven.

When the bread was done it looked nice, but man did it feel dense! I cut open one of the "rolls" to see what it was like. Okay, but dense. I ate it with some honey.On Sunday I was re-reading the recipe and that's when I saw it: "Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 35 to 45 minutes, until puffy and almost doubled in volume." Oops! I forgot to let it rise in the pans before baking!!! So a combination of using more whole wheat flour than called for, over-kneading, and not doing the second rise made the bread very dense. But, I am pleased to report it still tasted very good. perfect with jam or honey on it, or to dunk in soup. I also made a very good "Pilgrim Sandwich" with it. Yum!

Lessons learned:
1) Measure all ingredients before starting in case you need to run out to the market
2) When instructions are given my weight, use a scale. Don't guess
3) Don't make a new recipe when you're tired, and don't start so late that you won't finish until past your bedtime
4) Read the entire recipe and make sure you understand the instructions before you begin

Oh, and the "Mrs." apron I'm wearing? That was a gift from my wedding caterer, Fine Catering by Russell Morin. If you need a caterer in Rhode Island or Massachusetts I very highly recommend them!

Here's the recipe if anyone would like to try it:

Tender Potato Bread

From Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour & Tradition Around the World
Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

Makes 1 large tender-crumbed pan loaf and something more (I made 2 8x4 loaves and 1 dozen muffin-tin rolls).

Potatoes and potato water give this bread wonderful flavor and texture. The dough is very soft and moist and might feel a little scary if you’ve never handled soft dough before. But don’t worry: Leaving it on parchment or wax paper to proof and to bake makes it easy to handle.

Once baked, the crumb is tender and airy, with ting soft pieces of potato in it and a fine flecking of whole wheat. The loaves have a fabulous crisp texture on the outside and a slightly flat-topped shape. They make great toast and tender yet strong sliced bread for sandwiches.

Ingredients:

4 medium to large floury (baking) potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks variety of potatoes you might want to use would include Idaho, Russet & Yukon gold

For the beginner I suggest no more than 8 ounces of potato; for the more advanced no more than 16 ounces.

4 cups water (See Note)
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
6 ½ cups to 8 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1 cup whole wheat flour

Topping:
For Loaves and Rolls: melted butter (optional)

Instructions:
Put the potatoes and 4 cups water in a sauce pan and bring to boil. Add 1 teaspoon salt and cook, half covered, until the potatoes are very tender.

Drain the potatoes, SAVE THE POTATO WATER, and mash the potatoes well.

Measure out 3 cups of the reserved potato water (add extra water if needed to make 3 cups). Place the water and mashed potatoes in the bowl you plan to mix the bread in and let cool to lukewarm – stir well before testing the temperature – it should feel barely warm to your hand. You should be able to submerge you hand in the mix and not be uncomfortable.

Add yeast one of two ways:

Mix & stir yeast into cooled water and mashed potatoes & water and let stand 5 minutes. Then mix in 2 cups of all-purpose flour and mix. Allow to rest several minutes.
OR

Add yeast to 2 cups all-purpose flour and whisk. Add yeast and flour to the cooled mashed potatoes & water and mix well. Allow to rest/sit 5 minutes.

Sprinkle on the remaining 1 tablespoon salt and the softened butter; mix well. Add the 1 cup whole wheat flour, stir briefly.

Add 2 cups of the unbleached all-purpose flour and stir until all the flour has been incorporated.

At this point you have used 4 cups of the possible 8 ½ cups suggested by the recipe.

Turn the dough out onto a generously floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes, incorporating flour as needed to prevent sticking. The dough will be very sticky to begin with, but as it takes up more flour from the kneading surface, it will become easier to handle; use a dough scraper to keep your surface clean. The kneaded dough will still be very soft.

As a beginner, you may be tempted to add more flour than needed. Most/many bread recipes give a range of flour needed. This is going to be a soft dough. At this point, add flour to the counter slowly, say a ¼ cup at a time. Do not feel you must use all of the suggested flour. When the dough is soft and smooth and not too sticky, it’s probably ready.

Place the dough in a large clean bowl or your rising container of choice, cover with plastic wrap or lid, and let rise about 2 hours or until doubled in volume.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead gently several minutes. It will be moist and a little sticky.

Divide the dough into 2 unequal pieces in a proportion of one-third and two-thirds (one will be twice as large as the other). Place the smaller piece to one side and cover loosely.

To shape the large loaf:

Butter a 9X5 inch loaf/bread pan.

Flatten the larger piece of dough on the floured surface to an approximate 12 x 8 inch oval, then roll it up from a narrow end to form a loaf. Pinch the seam closed and gently place seam side down in the buttered pan. The dough should come about three-quarters of the way up the sides of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 35 to 45 minutes, until puffy and almost doubled in volume.

To make a small loaf with the remainder:

Butter an 8 x 4 inch bread pan. Shape and proof the loaf the same way as the large loaf.

Dust risen loaves and rolls with a little all-purpose flour or lightly brush the tops with a little melted butter. Slash loaves crosswise two or three times with a razor blade or very sharp knife and immediately place on the stone, tiles or baking sheet in the oven. Place the rolls next to the loaf in the oven.

Bake rolls until golden, about 30 minutes.
Bake the small loaf for about 40 minutes.
Bake the large loaf for about 50 minutes.

Transfer the rolls to a rack when done to cool. When the loaf or loaves have baked for the specified time, remove from the pans and place back on the stone, tiles or baking sheet for another 5 to 10 minutes. The corners should be firm when pinched and the bread should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Let breads cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing. Rolls can be served warm or at room temperature.
Interested in being a Daring Baker? Check out the blogroll site for information on joining the group, and check out all of the other Daring Bakers' blogs!

Gravy, Stock, and a Science Lesson

So, now that I've covered the turkey and the stuffing, it's time to get into the gravy. My husband says his family is more of a cranberry sauce family, but my family is all about gravy! Gravy can be messy to make, and it has to be done on the stove top after the turkey comes out of the oven, so I decided to make mine in advance. I made it on Sunday and pulled it out of the freezer this morning to thaw for tomorrow. Here's the approximate recipe. Again, like with stuffing you don't need to be too precise.

Turkey Gravy

Pan drippings from a turkey cooked on the bottom of the pan (not on a rack)
flour--about 3 tablespoons
chicken or turkey stock--about 2 cups
water--about a cup or so
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
skin from the turkey you just cooked
herbs and bacon from under the skin of the turkey you just cooked

Start by putting the roasting pan containing the drippings on the stove over low heat. Skim off some of the fat so you have maybe 3 tablespoons left (no need to be precise). Add flour a tablespoon at a time as if you were making a roux (which is what you're doing, only with turkey fat instead of butter). Stir the turkey fat, browned bits from the bottom of the an, and flour together until smooth. Turn the heat to medium and add the chicken stock. Stir until smooth and there are no lumps of flour/roux. Add some water to thin it out a little. Add some skin from the turkey for more flavor (remember the turkey skin was covered with bacon grease and salt and pepper). Scrape the herbs and diced bacon off of the turkey and add that too. Simmer until very fragrant and of a good gravy consistency. If it gets too thick, add some water. Strain the gravy through a sieve into a container or gravy boat. Enjoy!!!

Gravy is one of the major reasons people gain an average of 7 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Years!!!

After I made the gravy on Sunday, D and I sat down to a great lunch of turkey, corn muffin stuffin', gravy, and cranberry sauce. He came in from raking the leaves and was really happy to have a hot home cooked meal--a great pre-cursor to Thanksgiving dinner!

Oh, but I wasn't done yet. After making the turkey breast, stuffing, and gravy, there was still more to do! I had a beautiful turkey carcass just screaming to be made into stock. In my opinion, the slow cooker was invented for making stock! I picked all of the bits of meat off of the turkey and put them into a bowl in the fridge for later. Then, I broke the carcass apart and loaded the whole thing into the slow cooker along with a very coarsely chopped onion, about 1/2 a heart of celery (including leaves), the 10 or so baby carrots I had in the fridge, 2 cloves of garlic I peeled but didn't use for the turkey, and enough water to cover the whole thing. Then I set the slow cooker on low for the next 12 hours (and had it automatically switch to "keep warm" at 4am until 8 when I got up). Then, in the morning, I strained it all into a tupperware container. When I strain it, I like to pull out the veggies first and use the back of a spoon to smush them through the sieve. Then I pour the rest of the liquid through and strain out all of the bones.

Today I'm working from home, so for lunch I pulled out the turkey stock and leftover turkey bits for some soup. I used a spoon to remove the layer of fat from the top of the broth. Then I spooned the broth into a bowl. Well, more accurately I spooned the "turkey jell-o" into my bowl. I know that gelatin comes from animal bones and so this wasn't that surprising, but it was funny to see.



Turkey "Jell-o" with turkey on top (after I microwaved it, it turned into delicious trukey soup!)





Since I'm home, I just pulled out one of my favorite books about cooking "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" by Harold McGee to find out more about the gelatinization process. Here's what he says:

"Collagen is the major structural component of the simplest of many-celled animals, the sponges, and accounts for some 30% of the protein in the human body. It is found in the skin and tendons as well as in between muscle cells and muscles, and it is a large part of the matrix in young bones that is later filled with hard minerals. The name comes from the Greek for "glue producing," referring to the fact that when it is heated in water, insoluble collagen is transformed into gelatin, a soluble, gummy solution that can be used for glue as well as a thickener for soups and desserts."

Pretty cool stuff. If you don't have this book and you like to cook (or like science and eating), I highly recommend buying it or getting it out of the local library. It was recommended to me by Rich Herzfeld of Chef's Table in Westport, CT. I took my very first "real" cooking class from him and learned a tremendous amount (including adding brown sugar to food that is too spicy, making large amounts of roux and freezing it in small portions, and wilting cabbage leaves by sticking them in the freezer).

Scarborough Fair Stuffing and Corn Muffin Stuffin'

In addition to cooking a turkey breast on Sunday, I also made my stuffing. My family has always been a white bread and Bell's Seasoning stuffing family and while I mostly wanted to stick to tradition, I also wanted to do something a little different. Last week I happened upon the blog "The Pioneer Woman Cooks!," where Ree had posted beautiful step-by-step instructions for her corn bread stuffing. She made it look so incredibly good (and her commentary is great) that I just had to try it!

I made some modifications to her recipe including making my corn bread using a mix (horrors---I never used bread or brownie mixes until I discovered the ones at Trader Joe's), and using vegetable broth instead of chicken (I'm serving 2 vegetarians and 2 non-poultry eaters on Thursday). Also, I tend not to really measure anything--just eyeball it. This is stuffing after all--it doesn't need to be precise. Another modification I made came from a phone call with my mom while I was busy cooking on Sunday. We were talking about Thanksgiving and she mentioned that she had been watching the Food Network all week for new Thanksgiving ideas. One that she particularly liked was from Rachel Ray who made individual stuffing portions using muffin tins. I thought this was a fun idea, and so I did this with my cornbread stuffing--hence I named it Corn Muffin Stuffin'.

Here's the ingredient list for the stuffings I made (this makes LOTS of stuffing--a baking dish full of regular bread stuffing and 16 corn muffin stuffin's).

2 loaves of Pane Rustica (chewy crusty white bread from Trader Joe's)

1 8" square pan of baked corn bread (I used Trader Joe's mix)

1 large (softball sized) yellow onion

1 1/2 celery hearts

3/4 cup salted butter

3 cups vegetable broth (or use chicken if you don't have a dad who is allergic to it)

Fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme chopped (that's the Scarborough Fair part)

(I used about 1/4 cup parsley, 2 teaspoons thyme, a tablespoon or so of sage, and 2 teaspoons or so of rosemary--no need to be precise)

sea salt

freshly ground pepper

You can follow Ree's instructions with pictures here, or follow my instructions below which aren't as decorative.

Cut bread and cornbread into approx. 1"x 1" pieces and spread out on rimmed baking sheets. Bake at 200 degrees for about 1/2 hour--until it's dry (but not hard). Transfer about 3/4 of the white bread to a large bowl. Transfer 1/4 of the white bread and all of the corn bread to a second bowl. In a large skillet, melt butter. Add to it diced onion and diced celery. Let the onion and celery cook in the butter, stirring occasionally, until they are translucent and the bits stirred up from the bottom are starting to turn brown. Add stock. Simmer until hot. Add the herbs, plus salt and pepper to taste. Ladle 1/2 of the mixture over the bowl of white bread. Toss to coat. Pour into a buttered baking dish. And set aside. Ladle/pour the other half of the mixture over the white/cornbread mix. Toss to coat, and spoon into buttered muffin tins. Press the stuffing in (not too hard, you want it to stay in there, but you don't want it as hard as a rock), and mound a little on top so it looks like a muffin.

At this point, I covered the baking dish and the muffin tins in aluminum foil and stuck them in the freezer to bake and serve on Thursday. Of course, I had plenty and so I cooked some in a 350 oven for about 20-30 minutes and D and I ate it for lunch along with turkey and gravy. D loved the stuffing, as did I! Hope you do too!

Thanksgiving Prep--Turkey recipe

D and I are hosting thanksgiving for the first time this year. We will have 12 people in total including 2 90-year old women named Ruth and 2 dads who don't eat poultry! It will be the first time both of our families have been together since our wedding 6 months ago (6 months today!! Happy Anniversary D!). Luckily, D and I both have family members who like to cook so we've divvied up most of the meal for others to bring, and I decided to get as much as I could of my part of the meal done in advance. So that meant the liquor store and Trader Joe's on Saturday and cooking on Sunday!

I happened to be home sick last Wednesday with a killer cold (now on antibiotics for a sinus infection) and I watched Martha. Emeril was on and they made a turkey breast that looked so delicious! I used that recipe yesterday to cook a turkey breast so that I could make my Thanksgiving gravy in advance. I'm going to use the same recipe on Thursday when I cook my actual turkey. Here's the basic recipe as I followed it (and you can click here for the original on Martha's site).

Emeril's Bacon and Herb Roasted Turkey Breast

5.67 lb fresh hotel style turkey breast (bone-in)

5 strips of bacon

3 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp chopped fresh sage

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary

1 tsp chopped fresh thyme

1 tsp chopped fresh oregano (I used some regular oregano and some Greek)

2 Tbsp sea salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 375. Rinse turkey breast and pat dry. Cook bacon in a skillet and reserve the grease. Soften the butter and add crumbled bacon, garlic, herbs, 1 tsp of the salt, and the pepper. Cream butter mixture to make a paste. Loosen the skin of the turkey with your hands and rub the meat with the butter mixture--make sure there is butter mixture between the skin and the meat all over the breast of the bird. Sprinkle salt and pepper inside the carcass. Baste the outside of the skin with the reserved bacon grease, and then generously cover with the remaining salt. Place the turkey, breast side up, in a roasting pan. If you want to make gravy, do not use a rack in the pan. Cook in a 375 over for about 1 hour 20 minutes until a thermometer reads 165 degrees (note: on my breast the timer didn't pop up when it reached 165. I think if I had cooked it until the timer popped up it would have been dry). Remove the bird from the oven and move to a platter or cutting board. Cover with foil and let rest for 20 minutes or so before slicing.

The skin on this turkey was unbelievably good--crispy and salty! I had to eat some right away! I'll post later today on the rest of the prep I did on Sunday. Stay tuned for recipes for gravy and stuffing!

Here's a picture of all of the fresh herbs I used for the turkey and stuffing. The the pots of herbs on my deck are still going strong despite heavy frost. I plan to use up just about all of the herbs on Thursday. One good trick for fresh herbs that I learned somewhere is to rinse them in cold water and then spin them in the salad spinner!

Oh, and it wouldn't be me if there wasn't a little mishap involved in this cooking. Sunday's casualty was a scorched oven mitt. I moved the skillet with the bacon in it off of the burner, but forgot to turn the burner off. I was chopping herbs and grooving along to James Taylor singing Shower the People (from his new album, played on Sunday Morning Over Easy, my favorite radio show), when suddenly I smelled something dreadful. Burning polyester smells awful, but I was so stuffed up that I didn't smell it until it was really smoking! Good thing it was a nice day (though 40 degrees) so I could open all of the windows!

Weekend Happenings!

The weekend started out on Friday night with some organizing of my office/craft room. Anyone who has lived with me knows that "neat" and "organized" do not typically describe the rooms I inhabit. This is most certainly true of the craft room/office. The room contains my old desk from when I was a kid (but painted black with glass pulls), D's old filing cabinet, a gate-leg extension table that used to be in my grandparents' house, a chair I pulled out of someone's garbage and painted and recovered, and 3 additional chairs of various origins. In addition to the furniture, there are a bunch of boxes containing wedding gifts that haven't yet been put away, various shopping bags full of stuff that I have to return to the store or out away somewhere, a shopping bag containing gifts I'll be giving for Christmas, about 5 bags of yarn, a huge stack of photographs to sort, a huge box of sorted photographs, and 2 bags, a box, and a stack of scrapbooking stuff. On Friday night I did manage to put some of the stuff away, and I'll put more away once I move a chest down that's currently in the master bedroom.

On Saturday am I headed to a Friends and Newcomers new member coffee. I met some more nice women and learned a few more of the ins and outs of my new town (and the surrounding area). One thing that has been very reassuring about meeting these women is finding out that I'm not the only one who loathes the grocery store in our town. While the prices at the Market Basket are very good, the aisles are narrow, the lines are long, the parking lot is too small, and the produce goes bad too quickly. Everyone seems to shop in neighboring towns either at the Shaws, Hannaford, Stop and Shop, or Donelans. Typically, I do as much shopping as possible at Trader Joe's and then head to Market Basket for whatever I can't find. It drives me nuts every time I go there, but it is much less expensive than the really nice Donelans that is also close to our house.

One of the women at the Newcomers coffee told me about a place called Idylwilde Farms in Acton. She said it was similar to Wilson Farms in Lexington and that they had terrific produce and meats. I knew I had to check it out, so I headed over on Saturday afternoon. Basically, it looks like a big barn, and outside they have stacks of fresh local produce. This week they had tons of different kinds of pumpkins, squash, applies, and multi-colored cauliflower. I picked up a sugar pumpkin and some purple cauliflower. Inside it was a mix of Wilson Farms and Russo's in Watertown. Perfect stacks of fresh and colorful produce, fresh baked goods, a huge cheese section, and a perimeter of staple and gourmet foods. I was able to find all of what I needed for my Daring Bakers challenge, including a vanilla bean and superfine sugar. They also had fresh raspberries which I knew would make the perfect garnish. I also picked up a fresh, natural roasting chicken for Sunday dinner.

Upon coming home from Idylwilde, I started in on my Daring Bakers challenge (you can read about the details of that in my previous post). Meanwhile, D put together 2 more storage shelves in the basement and started tearing up the carpet in the master bedroom so we can get started on our demolition/construction. We're demoing the existing closet and building a walk-in because I have way too much stuff! Were also going to lay down hardwood flooring in the master bedroom and upstairs hall. I can't wait until the room is done and we can start sleeping on the beautiful sheets that my mom gave us for our shower. The colors are so soothing.

Saturday night we went to the Gibbet Hill Grille for dinner to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of our engagement. We had heard about Gibbet Hill from D's cousins, and then saw it on TV Diner where it won the "Platinum Plate" award. Luckily I had called 2 weeks earlier for a reservation because it was parents' weekend at the local prep school and the restaurant was very busy. Gibbet Hill Grille is located in a beautiful refurbished barn on a farm in Groton, MA. There's a fireplace by the bar making it very cosy, and they serve a nice variety of wines by the glass. I had a very nice Pinot Noir and D had the house beer--Gibbet Hill Brew. We were ushered into the dining room promptly at 8pm and started perusing the menu.

There were many fabulous-sounding choices--from gourmet sandwiches to roasted beet salad to all kinds of steaks. We started with PEI mussels which were served in a delicious better/herb broth with a piece of toast to soak up the juices. Being a huge lamb lover (I eat it probably 1 out of every 3 times we go out to dinner), I was happy to hear that they had a rack of lamb special served with braised cabbage and brussels sprouts and roasted sweet potatoes. D had the Arctic Char (he loves all things Icelandic/Scandinavian). My lamb was delicious and I think D was a bit embarrassed when I separated the bones and started gnawing on them after I had finished most of the meat. I had a Malbec that was specially selected to pair with the lamb. After dinner we had port and coffee, during which time we watched and listened as others in the restaurant ran up to the bar to check out what was happening in the Red Sox World Series game.

Sunday was also a moderately busy day for me. D and I organized some things on the shelves in the basement and decided there were some more items we could part with. I also went through my closets and pulled out some stuff to try to consign and some to donate. D mowed the lawn while I worked on a project handblock printing onesies and dish towels (I'll post on this later). Then D and I spent about 1/2 hour laying in the hammock in the warm sun (until the sun went behind the trees and the breeze became too cool).

After "hammock time" I set to work making dinner--chicken with 40 cloves of garlic from the Joy of Cooking. I originally consulted Joy just for the minutes per pound for a roast chicken, but found the garlic recipe which called for lots of dried herbs and garlic. I have a whole deck covered in fresh herbs that we need to eat up so I thought this would be a perfect recipe. Basically, I basted the chicken with olive oil, rubbed under the skin with fresh chopped herbs and salt and pepper, seasoned the cavity and stuffed it with whole fresh herbs (sage, rosemary and thyme) and a quartered lemon. Then I put the chicken in a covered casserole, added some chicken broth and white wine, and all of the peeled cloves of garlic from 3 heads! The covered casserole went in a 375 oven for 25 minutes, then the cover was removed, the temp increased to 450 and the timer set for 35 more minutes of cooking.

While the chicken was cooking I boiled potatoes for garlic mashed potatoes (with the garlic from the chicken). I also cut open 2 sugar pumpkins, saved the seeds on a cookie sheet for roasting later, and roasted the pumpkin pieces. Not sure yet what I'm going to do with the roasted pumpkin. A few weeks ago I made roasted pumpkin risotto which was quite good. I may make that again, or pumpkin soup.

When the chicken was done it smelled heavenly. I removed it onto a platter and added the garlic to the mashed potatoes. I then strained the cooking liquid into a bowl and added some hot chicken broth to thin the sauce down a little. The flavor was great. After dinner I picked all of the remaining meat off the chicken and then put all of the carcass pieces into the slow cooker along with a quartered onion, 3 celery stalks, 2 carrots, the herbs that were in the chicken cavity, and a handful of fresh parsley. This morning I strained that and will make soup with it tomorrow night for dinner.

It was a full weekend that also included watching the Red Sox win the World Series for the 2nd time in 3 years. While I watched the Sox I finished my knitting project for my swap partner. Hopefully I'll get the box in the mail to her tomorrow.

Channeling a 50s mom...

When we first moved into our house we received a lot of catalogs and junk mail for the previous owners--a family with 3 little girls. In addition to kids clothing catalogs and double and triple copies of Lands End and Pottery Barn, we received a "magazine" called Kraft Food and Family. Basically, it's a glossy marketing piece from Kraft with recipes using Kraft products like Oreos, Jello, Cool-Whip, Philly cream cheese, etc. For my nephew's birthday I actually made one of the recipes and bought a tub of Cool-Whip for the first time in my life. The recipe was an easy ice cream cake made with layers of ice cream sandwiches (which I love) and a filling made from Jello chocolate pudding, cool-whip, hot fudge sauce, and crushed oreos (which I also love). The whole thing was covered with Cool-Whip as icing, and then as a special touch I coated the entire thing with chocolate jimmies. It was a hit on Tim's birthday (he's 5), but the Cool-Whip kind of grossed me out and the filling had a weird nougaty texture after a couple of days in the freezer.

I received another one of these Kraft Food and Family magazines this weekend and perused it before going grocery shopping on Sunday night. I saw a few recipes that looked interesting and so I bought the ingredients. I think it was the first time I bought Jello for something other than Jello shots in a very long time. Last night I made the first recipe for dinner. "Chinese Take-Out" Lemon Chicken. The ingredients were all pretty mundane for a stir fry--chicken, red pepper, green beans, chicken broth, garlic, corn starch--except for the 2 magic Kraft ingredients. Those magic ingredients? Zesty Italian salad dressing and....drumroll please...lemon Jello! Now, usually I shy away from cooking with artificial colors and artificial flavors, but I was really intrigued by putting Jello in a stir fry, so I tried it. I served it to D and asked him if he could guess the magic ingredient. He couldn't. Overall the recipe wasn't bad, but it was definitely too sweet, yellow, and artificial tasting for my liking. I think kids would probably dig it (and my brother-in-law Michael would probably dig it too). It did get me thinking though about making a General Tsao style chicken with orange jello...

When I was a kid my mom had the Campbell's Soup cookbook and some of the recipes in there became staples of my childhood--like pork chops and rice, beef stroganoff, and Swedish meatballs all made with cream of mushroom soup. I also really like the tuna noodle casserole my mom used to make occasionally (and, when dining services served it for lunch at Middlebury I always took a heaping helping), but I wasn't a big fan of the meatloaf with tomato soup sauce. Now, don't get me wrong and start thinking that my mom wasn't a good cook and so had to rely on these recipes--actually completely the opposite--but when you have to come up with dinner for your husband and kids every day for 21 years+ easy recipes that can be made from staples on hand are a real plus! Something tells me I'll be asking my mom for those recipes once I have kids--and maybe, just maybe, they'll get Jello chicken once in a while just for kicks!

There's a great website that features all of these "brand" recipes from the 40s-60s and it is so hysterically funny! Check it out: The Gallery of Regrettable Food. A few examples of the "cookbooks" on this site are below (click to link to the actual picture and hilarius descriptions).And, while you're looking at funny retro stuff, check out Stitchy McYarnpants for vintage knitting patterns with fabulous commentary (her first post is on vintage recipes right now, but scroll down to get to the knitting patterns).

A Very Busy October! Part 1

It's been a very busy October at our house. First, we had a visit from D's sister and family up from New York. Andrea and David left the kids with D's parents on Saturday night so that we could have an adults night out. I was planning to cook a great dinner for them, but it was a crazy week at work and I just didn't have time. Instead we went to our new favorite restaurant, Belle's Bistro. Belle's is a tiny little place that has really fabulous food and is a gem in a town where the other dining options are pretty much limited to Chili's, The 99, Applebees, and some pizza places. I had the pan seared duck breast with pumpkin sage ravioli and roasted brussels spouts and cranberries. It was unbelieveably good!

Unfortunately, because we closed the restaurant down, we didn't have time for a Trivial Pursuit rematch. When we were in New York for Easter we played girls against guys and Andrea and I were victorious (of course). I get a little too in to Trivial Pursuit because it's a game I'm actually good at (as opposed to Monopoly which I don't play anymore since I used to throw a hissy fit everytime I lost to my sister and cousins when i was a kid--of course, they were all at least 3 years older, so it really wasn't a fair match up).

Sunday we hosted a family brunch before Andrea and David and the kids headed home. My in-laws brought the boys up to the house and we ate our first family meal on the new dining room table. I served home fries (from Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook), a monterey jack and french bread strata, bacon, maple glazed sausages, banana bread, and Mary's sticky buns.

After brunch we headed outside and the kids rode their bikes aound the cul de sac and then Avery and I went on an "apple hunt." Our neighbors have 2 apple trees that abut our property and each has tons of apples, but they haven't been treated with any pesticides and so the apples are riddled with bug and worm holes (next spring D and I are going to approach out neighbors about spraying with some sort of organic orchard pesticide). I gave Avery a bucket and had him pick up the dropped apples--we made a game out of lobbing them into the bucket.

With the apple hunting finished, Avery wanted to go on a kitty hunt. We called Mercury, but she didn't want to come out of the woods (she's terrified of unfamiliar people, especially kids). Aparently she came out of the woods eventually because Avery spied her under the deck. He was so happy to have seen her, but unfortunately Ethan didn't get a peek at her before she scooted back into the woods. I went into the swamp to try to lure her out, but to no avail. Instead, I came back with cat-a-nine tails for the kids. While they were no substitute for a real cat, the boys did enjoy using them as light sabers!

Eventually Mercury did come out of the woods and she and I had a nice time cuddling on the sofa for an afternoon nap! She also played with the new catnip mouse that the boys had brought for her...I'll post a picture of that...

A rainbow of tomatoes

Hands down Trader Joe's is my favorite grocery store. They have fabulous food, and there are always great surprises. On Saturday I spied a container of multicolored cherry tomatoes that looked way too good to pass up! Then, in the dairy section I discovered "perlini" mozzarella--little tiny balls of fresh cheese! Yum! Together these became a Caprese Pasta Salad. Simple and deliscious!

Ice cream!

Last night D and I made our first batch of homemade ice cream using our new ice cream maker attachment for our KitchenAid mixer.














We started with a French Vanilla base I had made on Sunday night, and then added Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Guess what I had for breakfast?

The inspiration for making ice cream came from 2 sources. First, I read a blog called Desert Candy written by a woman who has posted a new ice cream recipe a few times a week in the month of August. She's got some pretty crazy flavors...like avocado, olive oil, and beet (not mixed together) and also some more conventional flavors.

The second inspiration was in Christopher Kimball's Letter from Vermont email in which he talks about making ice cream and has a link to America's Test Kitchen's review of ice cream makers.

I guess there was a third inspiration too...the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker attachment was on sale at Macy's for 20% off!

Flora, Fauna, and Food

It's been a busy couple of weeks in Suburbia and the outlying areas. First, the weekend of the 21st D and I went to Western MA for our friends' wedding at a place called Bucksteep Manor. It was a whole weekend affair beginning with a rehearsal and BBQ on Friday night and ending with a brunch on Sunday morning. The bride and groom glowed throughout the entire weekend, and surprised everyone with a fabulous waltz for their first dance (the groom really surprised us). I took the camera while D was getting ready with the other groomsmen and shot about 300 photos...mostly of the grounds and chapel, but also of the bride and bridesmaids. I would say I'm much better at photographing plants than people! Here are a few floral pics from that weekend:

Last week was calm for the most part, though I've been having a little frustration with recipes lately--finding them, not making them! First, on Thursday I had taken some halibut out of the freezer because I remembered I had seen a recipe for halibut with new potatoes and rosemary. When I came home Thursday evening (hungry), I couldn't find the recipe...I thought it was from Everyday Food, but it wasn't. And then I couldn't find it online either. Maybe I dreamed the recipe?? Anyway, I was so fed up that I bagged on the halibut for the night, but did find a recipe for it the next night.

I made a poached halibut with pepper oil and fresh polenta from Jacques Pepin "Fast Food My Way". The fresh corn polenta was really fabulous--just zip the corn off the cob, puree it in a blender, and simmer with some butter. Because we didn't have any chilled white wine, D and I decided to break into a bottle of champagne given to us by the former owners of our house. Delicious!

My next bout of recipe frustration came on Saturday. In the "Notes from the Test Kitchen" email I receive from Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen there was a link to a video for blueberry cobbler. It looked so good, so I went to find the recipe on the site. Turns out that the recipe is from a past season so you can't access it without a paid membership. I was really disappointed because the cobbler looked so good! D suggested I look in the America's Test Kitchen cookbook we own, and lo and behold, there it was! I baked it on Monday night when our friends from Long Island came to visit.

In addition to spending time in the kitchen this past weekend, I also spent time in the yard. On Saturday am, I walked around the yard taking stock of everything. Our 2 Rose of Sharon are blooming. One is a purply-pink and the other is white with a deep pink center. They're really beautiful. Then D and I cut back the overgrown rhododendron that was impeding the sprinkling of the back lawn. I also organized my garden shed, and we planted a hydrangea. As we were planting the hydrangea it began to pour, so we went inside and had some lunch. Then Mercury and I lay on the couch and watched PBS cooking shows together--just like we used to do on Saturday afternoons in my old apartment. That made her one happy cat!

Later that afternoon I noticed something slowly making it's way across the mulch in the backyard. It was a turtle that had come out of the wetlands (e.g., swamp) behind our house. D took some pictures of it and then I used a Vernal Pool guide written by Dave's old high school teacher to identify it as a juvenile snapping turtle. He was really cute! I love that we have wildlife in our backyard, especially the dragonflies that eat the mosquitoes!

A Tale of Two Salads

Yesterday, when we were at Williams Sonoma making a return, D and I found a gadget called the "Corn Zipper" to be used for taking kernels off the cob. This morning I put it to the test with 10 ears of leftover corn on the cob. At first it was working okay, but after about 5 ears I cut my thumb. D then came in and noted I was using it incorrectly - he had read the instructions on the package about how to hold it. It was MUCH easier after that. The Corn Zipper removed the kernels quickly and easily, though it makes a little bit of a mess (so does a knife).


Once the corn was off the cob, I had to decide what to do with it. I consulted our cookbooks, but everything required ingredients I didn't have on hand. Then I remembered that my sister-in-law comment from yesterday indicated that she likes a Martha Stewart corn salad recipe. I checked MarthaStewart.com and found the recipe. It called for just corn, white wine vinegar, olive oil, scallions, salt and pepper--perfect! I put 1/2 the corn in another bowl (so I could make 2 different recipes) and not having white wine vinegar, I substituted rice vinegar for the first bowl of corn. As I was chopping the scallions, I thought lime juice would make a great substitution for the white wine vinegar, so I added the juice of 1 lime to the 2nd bowl. Both bowls then got some olive oil, salt and pepper and the lime juice bowl got a handful of cilantro while the rice vinegar bowl got some grated ginger root. Both salads were delicious!

As I was just finishing up, D's brother-in-law called to say they were on their way home from Maine and would be arriving at our house in less than 2 hours. I was excited to serve them corn salad for lunch!

Being on a cooking binge I then decided to make banana bread (because having a 350 degree oven on for 1 1/2 hours on an 85 degree day didn't seem insane to me at the time). As the banana bread was baking, I made a watermelon salad with the 1/2 melon leftover from the 4th of July. Then I decided to grill some sweet potatoes to go with lunch. I consulted a new cookbook we just received the other day and found a recipe (basically I just wanted to know how long to cook the slices). We used our new shaker basket for the grilling.

My sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and nephew stopped by for a tour of the house and a quick lunch of the food I had prepared this morning and brought a fabulous peach foccacia from a bakery in Portland.