[Sca-cooks] Thanksgiving menu

Lilinah lilinah at earthlink.net
Thu Nov 22 09:26:18 PST 2007


My daughter is in Brazil for a friend's wedding.

My consort is in Oklahoma with his mom's family.

And i haven't heard a thing from my family - dunno if my brother is 
off on vacation or what (the year my daughter (who's as good or 
better than i am as a cook) and i were going to cook an actually 
*good* Thanksgiving dinner (rather than the usual bland pap) for the 
family, he took his family out of town for a vacation).

So i'm staying home, rather than indulging in the torture and torment 
that is visiting my family.

This year rather than my nearly annual tofu-&-seitan-based 
pseudo-turkey (why in the world has that become my annual 
thanksgiving main course?), i bought a small... dunno what it's 
called... it's a small roast made of real turkey meat, from Whole 
Paycheck... err... Foods, so it's cosmic and organic and groovy.

Gonna stuff it with chestnut dressing. Since my family won't eat it, 
i get to eat it without them, hurray!

For vegetables:
-- i got a box of beautiful mixed mushrooms to saute with butter and shallots;
-- and a nice orange-meat sweet potato which i'll bake in its skin 
and eat that way just with some unsalted butter - I find them tasty 
enough that they don't need sweetener, or spices, or (shudder) 
marshmallows.

I'm making some autumn/winter fruit thingies:
-- sweet-and-sour pickled crab apples - whole fresh crab apples, 
cored, and simmered in a syrup made of vinegar, sugar, water, and 
cinnamon and cloves - i'm thinking of mixing cider vinegar with a 
little sherry vinegar...
-- homemade cranberry sauce of fresh organic cranberries and an 
organic Satsuma tangerine.
-- a beautiful fragrant huge quince i'm going to cook in water with 
just enough sugar, and when it's done i'm going to add a dash of 
orange flower water.

For dessert, I'm making Huette's infamous pecan pie and topping it 
with a pumpkin-coconut ice "cream".

I also got a bottle of Straus Family Farms organic egg nog. Their 
dairy products are really exemplary and they sell their milk in 
*glass* bottles, so i'm hoping their egg nog will be tasty (so many 
commercial egg nogs have artificial flavors and all kinds of icky 
thickeners - who needs 'em?)

I did all my food shopping earlier in the week. As i mentioned, i got 
some stuff at Whole Foods on Monday. On Tuesday when i went to the 
fabulous Berkeley Bowl around 8:45 AM (it doesn't open until 9) there 
was a monster crowd all lined up with shopping carts at both 
entrances. And when the doors opened they charged in as if it was 
some sort of race. Me, i had my shopping list, i knew where all the 
stuff was and i was in and out in 12 minutes.

I'll skip the Macy's (ho-hum) Parade ('cuz what i like is more 
marching bands! and fewer yakking tv hosts!), but i'll be sure to 
watch the Westchester (or wherever it is) Dog Show...

As i like to watch movies on a holiday, this year i've rented the 
following cheery fare (that's sarcasm - they're all dark movies): "My 
Life as a Dog" (Swedish), "Baxter" (in French), "Toto le Heros" 
(Belgian), "Leolo" (Canadian), and "King of the Hill" (a Soderbergh 
film about life in the US during the Depression).

Happy Turkey Day to the USAmericans on the list.

Aannnnnd weeee'rrrre off! on the annual Butter Festival, lasting from 
now until New Year's...
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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