A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Happy Thanksgiving: Turkey and Dressing Casserole as First Run or Re-Run (Thanksgiving Leftovers Casserole)

I drew the short straw this year and ended up working Thanksgiving Eve and the rest of the weekend. But never fear, we can still have our Thanksgiving, both at work and at home.  For work, I volunteered to handle turkey and dressing.  Because I work at a hospital (Respiratory Therapist) it's not quite the same as an office where we can forward the phones to voice mail and everyone sit down to a celebratory dinner together.  We're scattered throughout the building on the general floors, in Pediatrics, the NICU, and the adult units.  So the upshot is we have to eat in shifts. That means a traditionally carved turkey with dressing on the side is not only impossible to cook or warm up at work in a microwave, we need to keep the food at a safe temperature for at least an hour if not a little more so that people can filter down from all parts of the building in between vent assesments and therapies, not to mention any type of patient crises. We all say a quick prayer going into holidays, for ourselves and for patients and their families, that there will be no codes or other crises.  And we were lucky this year. We had a few patients who struggled but we were able to get them help quickly and there were NO code blues! Yay!

The answer to the food dilemma for our work dinner turned out to be turkey and stuffing casserole, the kind we can keep at a good temp in a crockpot throughout the evening after arriving at 6pm until our 1am dinner time.  This casserole is also a great use for leftovers to freeze for a later date or just for the ease of leftovers throughout the holiday weekend.

Better Than Paula Deen Buttermilk Pie: Choo-Choo's Buttermilk Pie by Crescent Dragonwagon

 

For the 1,000 folks who clicked on my blog yesterday specifically looking for Paula Deen's Buttermilk Pie, I have a better recipe for you.  No offense to Paula, whom I love dearly and whose recipes always get me compliments, THIS buttermilk pie recipe from The Dairy Hollow House Cookbook by Crescent DRagonwagon is da bomb and it is the recipe I have used for years. I did try the Paula Deen recipe the one year I blogged it but I immediately went back to my Crescent recipe. Is the best I've ever tasted and tha'ts saying something considering I, and my family members, are huge buttermilk pie fans!

Choo-Choo's Buttermilk Pie from The Dairy Hollow House Cookbook

by Crescent Dragonwagon

Gene's Tweaked Bachelor Meatloaf

Growing up in my mom's kitchen, I learned to make a decent meatloaf:  ground chuck, ground sausage, finely minced onion, celery, carrots, and green peppers, along with an egg and homemade bread crumbs, baked in a large mound in the center of a rimmed baking sheet with an inch of water poured around the sides to keep it moist.  It was the taste I'd grown up on, the "Mom's Meatloaf" I preferred.  When I married Gene I was introduced to his bachelor version of meatloaf:  ground beef and Lipton dry onion soup mix formed into a patty and baked dry in a loaf pan.

Marriage, and life, is about compromise. There are honestly things I like about both versions so over the last 20 years we've learned to make a very tasty meatloaf by combining the best parts of the two recipes.  It's all about taste and texture.  The beef base in the onion soup mix enhances the flavor of Gene's recipe but the texture is that of a big burger. That's great for folks like Gene who could live every day on burgers but for me the texture is an issue. I prefer the softer, but not mushy, texture of my mother's meatloaf although I can't really find a good reason to do the water thing. It simply makes the sides too mushy. I grew up thinking that the egg, bread crumbs, and veggies were about stretching the loaf to feed our five kid family, and it was up to a point, but those things also soften the texture. Too much and you've got mushy bad restaurant-style meatloaf, but in the right quantities, those ingredients serve to enhance the texture difference between really good meatloaf vs.  a burger. 

Good & Good For You: Crockpot White Chicken Chili

Wasn't feeling very lively this weekend so I made a crockpot full of white chicken chili and a pan of cornbread for us to eat all weekend. This one is a nice change from dark bean chili, with a little lighter texture and taste, super easy to put together and forget. Sometimes, like when the cook in the family isn't up to snuff, easy is a must.

Knitting for the NICU: Thanksgiving '09

Ta-Daaaaaa! The 2009 Official NICU Thanksgiving mascot Turkey Hat!

It makes me smile to look at it.  Well worth the FOUR hours it took to knit it.

We have: Pilgrims and Indians,  Turkeys and Pumpkins, and Camo for deer season.  Viva La Thanksgiving!

I saw an interview with Stephen King one time where a reporter asked him why he chooses to write horror stories and King replied something like "What makes you think I have any choice? It's what's in there."  

That's how I feel about this NICU knitting project. It's like the whole thing has planted roots in my brain and taken over one corner for its own. I have no control, it's just there.  Not that I'm complaining.  Those babies and these hats make me joyous.  It's that simple.  Every time I hold a three pound baby and every time I plop one of my silly little hats onto one of those tiny little heads I see God in their eyes and for those moments I am a mountain of faith that the world is a wondrous place and we are blessed to be here, all connected as one big family on Earth.  On this Thanksgiving I am thankful for all of our little miracles and that I am so lucky to play a part, through respiratory therapy and by knitting hats, in their first days in this life.

Happy Thanksgiving to all the little Littles and to us all!
 

A New Generation of Thanksgiving Pie Makers: Pumpkin and Straight Up Pecan Pie

 Jordan's pie baking debut! She volunteered to be in charge of desserts for the family Thanksgiving party this Saturday and did a wonderful job. Her only request was that she wanted to make some of the pecan pies in smaller mini servings (chicken pot pie pans) just for fun. No prob.  I sat in a bar stool at the counter while she did everything. 

The only thing I "did" was explain why certain things are done a certain way, like running melted butter down the side of the bowl when it's time to add it in while mixing so as not to cook the eggs or why I check the pumpkin and pecan pies with a meat thermometer to test for done-ness.  Eggs set at 140 degrees so at 135-140, you can safely remove the pies from the oven and the little jiggle left in the middle will firm up as it cools.  To bake until the entire pie is set solid is overbaking it and the fillings won't be as tender and moist as they could be if it had been pulled right at the "just done" point. The same is true for quiche.

Great job, Jordan!  We all thank you so much and can't wait to dig in!

 Jordan's pie baking debut! She volunteered to be in charge of desserts for the family Thanksgiving party this Saturday and did a wonderful job. Her only request was that she wanted to make some of the pecan pies in smaller mini servings (chicken pot pie pans) just for fun. No prob.  I sat in a bar stool at the counter while she did everything. 

The only thing I "did" was explain why certain things are done a certain way, like running melted butter down the side of the bowl when it's time to add it in while mixing so as not to cook the eggs or why I check the pumpkin and pecan pies with a meat thermometer to test for done-ness.  Eggs set at 140 degrees so at 135-140, you can safely remove the pies from the oven and the little jiggle left in the middle will firm up as it cools.  To bake until the entire pie is set solid is overbaking it and the fillings won't be as tender and moist as they could be if it had been pulled right at the "just done" point. The same is true for quiche.

Great job, Jordan!  We all thank you so much and can't wait to dig in!

Just For Fun: In Keeping with Flu Season...

November is Premature Baby Awareness Month

 

Photo from www.marchofdimes.com
 

Over 13 MILLION babies are born prematurely in the world every year with the highest preterm births in Africa and Asia.  600,000 of those babies are born the United States.  Rates of premature birth have risen 36% in the U.S. over the last 25 years. 28% of the 4 million neonatal deaths each year are contributed directly to prematurity of birth.

For Preemie Awareness,  Mastercard is matching donations to the March of Dimes dollar for dollarduring the months of November and December to support research for and medical care of premature infants. Please give on behalf of our babies if you can between now and December 31st, 09.

Hat Project Update:  Am in the process of knitting for Thanksgiving.  We will have baby heads warmed by Pilgrim, Indian, and Turkey hats. Will post photos next week.

Jenn's Birthday Sushi and (Hooray) the REAL Japanese steakhouse "Orange" Seafood Sauce Recipe

 

Saturday night, we were invited over to our good friends', Corbin and Jenn's, house to help celebrate Jenn's (cough)nd birthday where we were told there would be a few people and some finger foods--a total underestimation of the food and fun! We met Janis, a fellow foodie who took on the task of a 3-course sushi meal for nine people and her daughter, Jordan, who along with Jenn's daughter, Chelsea, made dessert for us all of chocolate chip cookies and fudgy brownies.  Good work, ladies! Also invited were another lively couple, Al, and his wife Melissa (can't believe I didn't get a decent picture of them all night)  whom I think (from my investigation on Facebook) might know a bunch of people I know which is even more fun. Melissa also had the dubious job of keeping me ante'd into the poker hands last night since she was sitting next to me instead of Gene.  I think she didn't realize she was going to have to take on his job all night of taking care of me but I thank her!

Happy Birthday, Jenn!  Thanks for the great party!

Fruit Cake IS Good...if you do it right

All my life I've thought fruit cake, even my cake baker Mother's, was the nastiest food on the planet.  It's dry, it's got GREEN pineapple in it, poisonous maraschino cherries (okay, just because they're approved by the FDA doesn't convince me that soaking cherries in formaldehyde, and then recoloring them with red dye and chemical flavors, makes for something good for the body), it's dry, it's tasteless, it's dry... well, you get the idea. You've all been tricked into taking a bite of the stuff at least once in your life. And I bet your swore off it too.

When I started blogging I noticed that all the English bloggers got all excited and into Christmas Cake each October/November and spent the next couple of months "feeding", nurturing, and dreaming out loud of their Christmas cakes.  I wondered what this wondrous stuff was.  I mean, come on, I grew up in a cake decorator's household and grew up to be a baker for a while too.  Was there possibly some divine cake I'd never heard of or made myself?  I looked more closely at those cakes on those blogs and was shocked, shocked I tell you!, to see that Christmas Cake was that other awful "F" word--Fruit Cake!!!

At first I thought it must be the seventh sign of the Apocalypse that a whole country would enjoy making AND EATING such a repulsive cake but then I started looking at the recipes and methods more closely and saw my favorite "B" word, as in "booze".  It was my Oprah "AHA" moment heard 'round my house!  The answer to good fruit cake was laid out in front of my eyes.  Our Puritan forefathers had obviously screwed the pooch on this one when they denied me alcohol in my fruit cake.

Okay, seriously, I think part of my problem with fruit cake is that I always expected fruit cake to be  "cake" and to Americans, cake is light and fluffy. I think it should be called "Fruit Bread"  because, honestly, it's much more of a fruited bread in texture and density than it is a cake, although the cake designation may come from the idea that a lot of non-Americans bake theirs in round cake tins, where we're used to the long square log of nasty.  So once I wrapped my head around the idea that it's really a bread, then I took the recipes that I'd been playing with this summer and combined them with my own baking knowledge to come up with my personal fruit cake/bread recipe that not only tastes great but doesn't require a cup of coffee or tea to wash down the sawdust aftertaste. It comes out a dense, moist bread with a sugary, fruity taste and a pop of smokiness from the whiskey.   It's good straight out of the oven but really something special after being fed for a month or two.  Give this one a try and you might change your mind about fruit cake like I did.