Turkey Soup with Lime and Chile

I made this soup with the turkey stock I made from our leftover turkey.  Before we made stock, we salvaged the meat from the bones to include in the soup and got a surprising amount out of it.  The long and short of it is that this soup was awesome - turkey broth flavored with mirepoix and a bit of chile, used to make a soup with turkey, cilantro, scallions, lime, avocado, and some crispy tortilla strips.  (I made these in the oven instead of frying them on the stove.)  Ken brought some to work for lunch and sent me a text saying how amazing it was that turkey soup could be this good - and it wasn't the first time he was eating it.  We froze some turkey and broth to have this soup again later in the winter.  I can get the toppings anytime.  I'm looking forward to it already.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Even before Thanksgiving, I saw an article in the New York Times: A Radical Rethinking of Thanksgiving Leftovers, unsurprisingly written by Mark Bittman.  Good ideas, and I was excited about them, but I came across a few more that were a little more appealing to me, and ended up with a few of my own, too.  First we made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a spicy mustard (pictured above).  I made ham stock and turkey broth from the leftover bones.  I adapted a White Bean and Ham Stew recipe from Food & Wine magazine to use that ham stock.  My favorite so far has been the Turkey Soup with Lime and Chile from the New York Times, which turned out to be super simple and tasty, just what we needed after a stuffed weekend (the avocado and crispy tortilla strips helped with the transition from heavy to light).  I circled back to the original article and made some exceptional cranberry yogurt parfaits (pictured below).

Thanksgiving 2011

Haley made these cute flags to identify our cheese varieties.

Thanksgiving has now come and gone.  We felt much more prepared than last year - less last-minute stress.  Here's our menu (my notes in italics) - very few repeat appearances this year.  Next year I'm hoping to be even more prepared, to have the menu done sooner, and to get a humanely raised local turkey! Photos courtesy of Haley, my personal photographer. (I was too busy cooking to remember to bring my camera.)

Appetizers

Bacon wrapped water chestnuts (yum!!!)

Cheeses and crackers (including Toma, Herdsman, and Garlic Peppercorn Jack from Cherry Grove Farm) (support your local farmers!)

Carrot and celery sticks with hummus

Main Course

Turkey with Gravy
Spiral Ham
Mashed Potato Casserole

Cranberry Sauce

Ciabatta Stuffing with Chestnuts and Raisins (Cooking Light Nov 2011 p152) (very tasty)

Butternut Squash and Corn Bread Stuffing Muffins (Food and Wine Nov 2011)

Roasted Root Vegetables (turnips, radishes, carrots, sweet potatoes from the CSA, plus onions, roasted in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with parsley and scallions) (excellent)

Pumpkin and Feta Muffins (101 Cookbooks)

Green Beans with Balsamic Dressing (green beans from our CSA, balsamic dressing from The Essential NY Times Cookbook) (defrost green beans overnight before steaming them next time...)

Desserts

Pear and Fig Pie-in-a-Jar (Food and Wine Nov 2011) (YUM! lots of work but a tasty result!)

Black Bottom Banana Crème Pie (Food and Wine Nov 2011) (super easy and a big hit!)

Triple Chocolate Pumpkin Pie (from Martha Stewart) (unusual but it works! chocolate and pumpkin belong together!)

Apple Pie ("can I bake this parchment paper?" haha! Haley's lattice crust rocks as always!)

Gobble gobble!

Ciabatta Stuffing with Chestnuts and Raisins

Butternut Squash and Corn Bread Stuffing Muffins

Haley's Apple Pie

My Black-Bottom Banana Cream Pie

Triple Double Chocolate Pumpkin Pie :)

Pear and Fig Pie-in-a-Jar

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving 2010 was cooked for only 7 people, so we didn't go too overboard.  It was a lot less stressful this way.  We had no appetizers to worry about, either.

Pumpkin and Feta Muffins

These are first because they are the coolest thing we made.  I got the recipe from 101 Cookbooks a few weeks ago and they were the first thing on my Thanksgiving recipe list.  I followed the directions exactly and got excellent results.  The only thing to note was that we ended up with 18 muffins instead of 12, but that's certainly nothing to complain about.

Golden-Crusted Brussels Sprouts

When my sister got wind of the menu (the day before Thanksgiving, of course) she greeted me with: "Can we PUHLEEEAAASE make a DIFFERENT VEGETABLE?!?!"  Right after these were cooked, I saw her stick her hand right in the skillet to try one - and of course she loved it.  Super simple, and the caramelized edges were the best part.  This is another recipe from 101 Cookbooks.

Lemon-Barley Stuffing

This recipe from the New York Times was kind of a wild card, but it worked out in the end.  The mushrooms shrunk into ribbons when roasted, and I thought there wouldn't be enough lemon, but it shined right through.  The chive butter was fun to make and pretty much made the dish.  This is where I gained a deeper knowledge of where the line lies between browned and burned.  Note to self: more liquid next time, trust your instincts.

Sandra Lee's Turkey

Well, of course there was a turkey.  This one had butter massaged into it.  I never liked turkey before, and I still only ate a very small bit of it, but it was very good.  This picture is gross.  (Thanks to Haley for the photo.)

Mashed Potatoes

Yuck.  That's all I have to say about that.  This is a picture of what later became mashed potatoes.  There's no finished picture because there's nothing pretty about mashed potatoes.  (Thanks to Haley for the photo.)

Garden Vegetable and Potato Lyonnaise

I've got these giant rutabagas sitting in my fridge, plus a few turnips, and I've never had these things before, of course, so I had no idea what we could do with them.  I found this recipe through the "look inside" feature of Amazon - it's in Homegrown Pure and Simple by Michael Nischan.  Naturally, Amazon wouldn't let me look at the second page, but I found an adapted version online and used it to sort of wing it, and it turned out alright.  The strong flavors weren't appreciated by all, but I finally got to try a bunch of things through this dish.

Pumpkin Cornbread

When we were little, my dad used to make us biscuits.  Of course, they came from a box, but I had to remind him to channel those times from the past when my mom asked him to help us by making the cornbread.  This alone was the most hectic time of the day, as he insisted on lining up each ingredient, did not know the difference between liquid and dry measures, and refused to stop whisking even when I said he was finished.  Then we ended up having to bake it in the microwave (it makes sense if you've seen my mom's space-age microwave) and since we're all too short to see the top it got a bit toasted.  Fortunately, it tasted fantastic.  This was another New York Times recipe.  (Thanks to Haley for these photos.)

Winter Green Salad with Sugared Walnuts, 

Crispy Pears and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

I made this last year, but did a different candied walnut.  Though we had to make some substitutions, these walnuts were delicious.  Everyone kept walking by them and snatching a few - we're lucky we had any left for the salad.  The vinaigrette was my favorite part.  This recipe is from Clean Food.

"Best-Ever" Apple Pie

Haley made her famous apple pie with lattice crust.  It's the best-ever apple pie!  This particular pie contained a variety of apples known as "whatever we had lying around."

Spice-Kissed Pumpkin Pie

This pumpkin pie recipe is from 101 Cookbooks.  It features a special spice blend and a hazelnut paste between the filling and the graham-cracker crust.  Delicious.

Pumpkin and Ginger Scones

These were not for Thanksgiving, in particular, but they were there when I arrived to cook on Thanksgiving, and they were delicious.  I liked them plain, but they were very good with Haley's cinnamon glaze.

Thanksgiving 2009

I had fun cooking for Thanksgiving with my mom. It took days (literally) and was gobbled up in about 30 minutes (literally) but everything came out pretty great. Here is a little photo tour through our menu... unfortunately I didn't get pictures of everything, but I'll try to describe it all.

Appetizers

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts: I thought these would be gross - I hate water chestnuts. But between the bacon fat and the globs of honey, they softened up a lot and were really flavorful. There is no real recipe for this - just wrap water chestnuts with bacon, pop in a toothpick, and pile on the honey.





In addition to this, we also had brie with dried cranberries, walnuts, and thyme. I think some more stuff was out, but nothing too fancy.

Salad

Winter Green Salad with Sugared Walnuts, Crispy Pears and Pomegranate Vinaigrette: This is from Clean Food. The dressing was a huge success... it was made from pomegranate juice, a little balsamic vinegar, zesty honey mustard... delicious. I didn't use the sugared walnuts recipe from Clean Food because I had to make them for the stuffing anyway (see below), and that recipe was much easier. The tough part here was getting the pomegranate arils out of the fruit. Also check out my sweet Vera Bradley apron!

Main Course

Ham and Turkey: No pictures of the turkey, but here is the ham being slathered in brown sugar. There was some other stuff involved, but I don't know what. All I have to say is... yummm!







Sage, Walnut, and Dried Fig Stuffing: This is a 101 Cookbooks recipe, which I was so excited to make. As I mentioned earlier, I made the sugared walnuts (egg whites, sugar and salt) and used them also in the salad. I was so excited to have vegetarian stuffing with no meat in it! And although it was pretty dry (Mom even added extra liquid) it still tasted good. I would add more liquid next time though.




Wild Rice with Apples: This recipe is from Cooking Light - if not October 2009, another fall issue for this year. I was so excited to make this. It takes a long time though, and so I had to get dressed while I was waiting to bring it to a boil. I asked my mom to turn it down to a simmer after it boiled. A looong time later, I realized that she had turned it all the way up instead. Oops! There was no liquid left but it was completely uncooked. I managed to salvage it by adding a ton of extra liquid and cooking it much longer. Fortunately it turned out really good. It was a really interesting side dish and fit well with the holiday - the sauteed Pink Lady apples were so good.

We also had the typical sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce.

Desserts

Best-Ever Apple Pie: This is from a cookbook of my mom's - I forget the title, but it is actually quite interesting. I read it while I was supposed to be helping with the cooking. This woman traveled to farms all over the country to collect recipes. A lot of them are kind of disgusting (using ingredients like lard, etc.) but some are really cool. There are also sidebars about stuff like avocado farming, for example. Haley did most of this by herself - I helped a little though.

Tofu Pumpkin Pie with Gingersnap Crust: Another Clean Food recipe, but not as much of a hit. There was some flavor here that just wasn't really great, but it was OK. The gingersnap crust was very good though.







Mini Sweet Potato Tarts: Mom made these after she overcooked the sweet potato. I ended up taking over and scooping the stuff into all of the cups and putting on the sweet pecan mixture. I didn't try one of these (I don't like sweet potatoes, I will have to try them again someday) but they looked pretty good.