Category: Food

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What a Meal!

This Thanksgiving, we traveled to Cleveland to spend it with our boys. We have a ‘relative rotation’ going on and this is our year for them to be with us for Thanksgiving Day. Doesn’t make sense for five of them to find their way to southern Ohio, figuring out the various work schedules, when the two of us can drive up and do it all there.

It made all the more sense to travel to them when the youngest has access to a restaurant kitchen and the three boys decided to do the cooking! My love and I got there about midday Thursday to find the three boys chopping and mixing and generally scurrying around to the blare of some contemporary music.

We watched in wonder as one turkey (stuffed with a sausage dressing), two ducks (brined and stuffed with a berry and hot chili pepper cornbread dressing) and two pheasants (stuffed with a chestnut dressing – we brought up the chestnut meats – and overnighted with pearl onions and garlic cloves) went into the oven. A whole cranberry relish thickened on top the stove along with duck/chicken gravy. An apple pie at least six inches high and a two-toned pumpkin/sweet potato pie were pulled out of the oven at the golden brown stage (the pumpkin cheesecake was already waiting in the fridge at Tom’s house). Extra cornbread, with corn kernels freshly cut off the cob, was baked with huge blackberries added. Of course, everything was done with butter or duck lard. About ten pounds of smashed white potatoes (with sour cream and cream cheese added) and 5 large whipped sweet potatoes were also cooked along the way. The fresh asparagus spears waited to be lightly steamed till right before the meal.

My love and I supplied the wines, fruits and cheeses to keep us going before, during and after the meal. The favorite cheese seemed to be a smoked hot pepper gouda. The most interesting looking one was an elderberry cheese with a green rind – it did not turn out to be as interesting in taste as looks, though.

And what a meal, when we finally all sat down at Tom and Lydia’s lovely table! We took it slowly in courses with the various dressings accompanying the birds they were cooked in. Turkey first, then duck and finally the pheasant. The desserts came a lot later!

I don’t think the boys realized how much food they were making – we did a reprise of the meal on Friday (after spending several hours in the Art Museum perusing the Masters exhibit) with plenty more left for them to munch on for a couple more days.

I know I missed mentioning some of the wonderful ingredients in the above dishes (in particular, the cranberry sauce had a lemon zest and some other liquid – maybe a wine? or cherry soda? or ?). It was hard to keep up with what they were throwing in and mixing around. One of the great things about using the restaurant kitchen was being able to use their big pots and pans for cooking and transporting, and the dishwasher for clean-up!

I don’t think my love and I can compete with that sumptuous of a meal when they come in for the Christmas holidays, but I don’t think that will be a problem. We’ll have home and the hot tub. <g>

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Knitting, etc.

The fiber of the day is….. whole wheat! That and regular flour went into a huge batch of pumpkin/banana/applesauce muffins and breads. The bananas needed to be used, so it just made sense….

Other bits and pieces of fiber work lately entailed getting some items ready for the Weavers Guild Fall Sale coming up in a couple of weekends. And continuing the knitting of Christmas gifts for the boys – since they all know due to my asking for measurements I can safely tell: arm socks.

That’s the name the youngest son gave them when he saw them. The boys ride their bikes all winter, so I figured gloves would be needed. But they need to keep the wrists securely covered and fingers free to grip the handlebars firmly. So these ‘gloves’ are fingerless, covering more or less of the fingers up to the first joint (depending on which son wants what) and going up over the elbow. Sort of like knee socks for the arms = arm socks.

Two of the boys are pretty comparable in size so that helps in knowing what size to make. The oldest doesn’t have the arm length that the other two have, so I don’t have to knit as much! They all like different types of striping and colors, so that has been a bit of fun.

What we still have to keep under wraps is that I’ve made similar items for their wives – with softly changing variegated yarns and a different cable design per pair. Didn’t have the chance to measure the girls, so I hope I’m not off by too much!

I think I will actually have them all done by Christmas!

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Smorgasbord

Lately I’ve been doing a smorgasbord of fiber work. Bits and pieces of various things.

For the Weavers Guild I did some handspinning and rope making out of corn husks. A very pleasant day outside while the flax process was being demonstrated; I then got our visitors to try their hand at spinning and plying the husks. Some nice cordage was made, including a six strand ply by one very determined young woman! Another much older woman visitor brought in her own cattail and iris leaves to see how they would work – just fine, thank you!

Also for the Weavers Guild (actually for me to have ready for their Fall Sale) I made a series of small blank notebooks. Never did use the sheet music, but that will come in handy for something else, I’m sure. I’ve got some folded papers ready to make up into star ornaments/mini books, too. Need to get out the glue pot for that.

I’ve had some knitting time and have been working on what my youngest son calls ‘ arm socks’ – fingerless gloves that go up over the elbow. Designed for when the guys do winter bike riding. Lots of stripes and fuky colors and many rounds of stockinette. One pair finished and a second one started.

Right now I have some corn husks cooking on the deck. Since I had leftover leaves from the rope making session, I decided to see how they would work up into paper. All I’m doing is cooking the heck out of the leaves (after cutting them into 1-2″ pieces), rinsing them and then putting them through a blender. The iris needs cotton to make a nice sheet. The cattail could stand on its own but does better with a bit of cotton added. After I cook the corn husks I’ve got some Christmas cactus leaves that have shrunk up due to my poor care this summer. Will report on those two sets of pulp when I get that far.

Since the pulp cooking is happening on the deck, I should be able to keep the cooking pots straight and not pick up the wrong one for dinner. Corn husk soup would be interesting…

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Bun Report

The buns are okay. Not stellar, but not bad. And not too stale, either. Yet. Most likely tomorrow will be a dunking day.

They are fine with peanut butter, raspberry jam and cream cheese. Separately. Together would probably be okay, too, but I didn’t try a combination.

I may toast them tomorrow. Maybe with some yogurt and fruit.

I DID remember another reason why I don’t make yeast bread very often: I wind up eating the majority of it. Although, if it was regular bread, my love would probably give me a hand; he doesn’t like sweet breads.

Fortunately I was able to pass a bunch along to some siblings and friends so I don’t have toooooo many left to feel guilty about.

I have no idea now why I thought I needed a double batch. Maybe it was just to use up the yeast before it was outdated.

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Hot Cross Buns

My buns are getting stale.

In the spirit of the season, I made hot cross buns today. To take to friends and family tomorrow. Because the picture in the paper with the recipe looked really good.

[Just a bit of a detour here as I’ve been picky about words today: I’ve never known these particular buns to be served hot; if the buns are squarish – which they usually are – the icing makes more of an X on the top; they are more like rolls than buns. Okay, back to the story.)

Unfortunately, I have a history of not being able to do yeast breads very well. They never seem to rise as well as I think they should and as other people seem to get them. So I was sweating that part a bit.

The rising seemed to happen although they did seem to spread a bit more than I expected. (I think that might be a result of not having a stiff enough dough although a soft dough was the goal. My making a double batch all at once may have also played a part as I lost count of the number of cups of flour being used.) I substituted dried cherries for currants to go along with the listed apricots – I don’t think that affected anything.

The recipe called for a cross to be cut in the top of each bun before baking. All I managed was to deflate the bun when I tried making that cut. So I skipped the cut on the vast majority of buns.

I must say, the buns got nicely brown and sounded hollow when thunked.

The recipe said to remove from pan immediately after baking and then give each bun a sugar wash. It made more sense to do the wash before taking them off the pan to prevent sugar water all over the counter. I then very carefully pulled apart all the buns on the racks to cool them.

Now that the buns are completely cool, the lemon icing forming the cross almost disappears on top of the bun, but it does taste good.

And I’ve noticed that the sides of the buns are drying out – exposed to the air. Should’ve left them attached to each other. I’m afraid they may be hard as rocks by morning.

These will definitely be dunking buns. If all else fails, we can always pick out the cherries and apricots.

Hmmmm……… cold X dunking buns just doesn’t have the same ring to it….