Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Good Bread, Good Meat, Good God, Let's Eat

(Not the table grace we say at our house, by the way.)

The heavens are currently dumping snow in great quantities on our state, with more to come, so a quiet dinner at home tomorrow is starting to look pretty good. Here's what's on the menu at the LutheranChik household -- pull up a virtual chair, do the napkin tuck and enjoy!

Roast turkey breast glazed with some chi-chi-foo-foo cherry-honey mustard from northwest Michigan that I had intended to pop in a gift basket, but didn't.

Stove Top stuffing (my mother prefers Stove Top to scratch) amended with dried cherries and pecans (I prefer scratch to Stove Top)

Mashed potatoes

Whole-berry cranberry sauce

Green bean casserole, complete with crispy canned onion tidbits

Braised celery with toasted walnuts (I love cooked celery -- a vastly underrated vegetable, if you ask me)

Sweet-and-sour red cabbage

Pumpkin crisp

It ain't exactly haute cuisine -- in fact, it's neither -- but I think it'll eat just fine for the next three days.

13 comments:

Cathy said...

So good it's posted twice :)

I see it is snowing up your way, while we will have highs in 70s.
Your meal sounds great. I will post mine shortly.

LutheranChik said...

Oopsie...wonder how that happened.

I don't want to hear about 70 degrees! I didn't even get my lawn raked, and now we have almost 2 inches, from the looks of it, of snow outside. Oh, well.

Anonymous said...

Sounds scrumptious! Though I would prefer roast potatoes ;)

Is Thanksgiving more important to you in the US than Christmas? Here the countdown to Christmas began weeks ago, all the shops are dressed in fairly tatty glitter, and everyone is going around with worried faces!

We've still got grey skies, rain, and more rain. Had them for weeks. Very depressing.

Anonymous said...

Mmmm. But I ditto Nicodemia's suggestion about roasting potatoes.

What goes into the bean casserole? And when talking about beans, do you mean long thing green things or little individual beans (like kidney, or butter beans)?

LutheranChik said...

Nic: Ah, but mashed potatoes are such a good foil for all the turkey gravy.;-)

I'm watching morning TV, and a chef is making little individual parfait salads with wild rice on the bottom, diced/sauteed butternut squash and beets on top of that and goat cheese on top of that, with a beet vinaigrette dressing overall. (Chuckling because his ring mold didn't quite work and it all fell apart, and they had to quickly pull a salad out of the fridge. I'm glad this sort of kitchen mishap happens to the experts too.) A little bit ponce-y, as I think you'd say over there, for our humble household, though.;-)

In the States, Thanksgiving tends to be the food-focused winter holiday (heaven forbid it actually be about thanksgiving...), Christmas the "stuff" holiday. And, yes, the stores here started putting out their Christmas merchandise as soon as the back-to-school sales ended.

LutheranChik said...

Ferijen: Roasted potatoes sounds good for the Christmas dinner...I'm deciding between ham or beef for that.

Green bean casserole is the quintessential Midwestern hot dish. It consists of French-cut green (French) beans; mushrooms; cream of mushroom soup; a tiny splash of soy sauce; and crunchy canned French-fried onions. You mix it all together, except for some reserved onions for the top of the casserole, and bake it. It is so popular this time of year that my local supermarket was selling actual kits for making it -- the casserole and all the ingredients all packaged together. Personally I prefer our family's sweet-and-sour green beans -- beans, mushrooms and bacon in a hot bacon fat/vinegar/sugar dressing. (Not a health food.) But we, as they say, chose to go in a different direction this year. (Low-fat cream of mushroom soup...as if this is going matter in any way with all the other food!)

Tom in Ontario said...

As any travel agent will tell you, Thanksgiving is the most widely-observed holiday of the year in North America, since, for example, Jews and Muslims and agnostics do not (understandably!) observe Christmas.

Whole-berry cranberry sauce? For me it's not cranberry sauce unless you can still see the grooves from the tin can. I guess your cuisine is hauter than mine ;-)

Jody Harrington said...

This year I decided that I didn't want to see a green bean casserole again at Thanksgiving. So I am committing the heresy of steaming fresh green beans instead and topping them with walnuts and butter. I'll let you know if the family rebelled...

Anonymous said...

I'm thinking the UK misses out on the foodie thing! We just have Christmas (Turkey, roast potatoes, sprouts, parsnips, stuffing, plus christmas pudding and mince pies). And that's our lot!

Choccie Easter Eggs hardly count!

I can see a November visit to the US is called for!!! ;)

bls said...

Bon appetit!

And Happy Thanksgiving to all.

LutheranChik said...

Dinner recap: Everything went very well...I wound up skipping the turkey glaze, after I opened up the jar of mustard and found it unfit for human consumption, LOL. (Sometimes touristy "boutique" food isn't all it's cracked up to be.) I just used olive oil and herbs -- came out perfect.

The pumpkin crisp was the hit of dinner. I got the idea seeing a Damon's menu photo of sweet potato crisp. All my pumpkin crisp was, was the standard Libby pumpkin pie recipe (slightly tweaked...it calls for cloves, but since that's not my favorite spice I substitute allspice and nutmeg), baked without a crust in a baking dish until it's starting to set up, then covered with the following, which is what I put on fruit crisps:

3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter/margarine, cut into small bits

You mix all of this together until crumbly. And it makes a lot, so if you try this and have leftovers, it's good in baked apples or other hot fruit dishes, on top of muffin batter, etc.

Anyhow, I baked this until the pumpkin was firm and the topping was nice and carmelized. It is very, very good.

Charlotte said...

I like Stove Top stuffing. Please spare a prayer for the lady who co-developed it, who recently died.

(of course I like potatoes better)

The pumpkin crisps sound goooooooood.

Anonymous said...

Pumpkin cobbler is good, too, and soooo easy... just make as you do any "dump cake"-- mix pumpkin with eggs, condensed milk, and spices as if making a pie. Dump into a greased casserole dish. Dump a yellow cake mix on top and spread evenly. Pour a melted stick of margarine on top and bake for 30 min. at 350.