Thanksgiving

It may be cliche, but I do love Thanksgiving. Hanging out, eating and drinking, no expectations about gifts, just a good time. We head to the in laws and my family is also invited, which is great because we don't have to split up the holiday.

I'm doing something different this year, pies and bread. I'll be doing a black bottom pecan pie, a regular pecan pie, corn bread and some dinner rolls. The last couple of years I had been making a cauliflower gratin but I wasn't happy with it last year.


This year's recipes are a stretch for me, I've made one pie before in my life and have only made bread once before too, though I do have a bit of experience with pizza dough.

I'm planning on doing most of the prep tomorrow. I'll blind bake the pie shells, make the dough for the rolls and do everything with the cornbread.

The one point of contention is what to use for the pie crust, shortening or butter. There seems to be two camps on this so I'm splitting  the difference and using half butter and half shortening.

Thursday morning I'll make the fillings for the pies and bake them off. I'll have the rolls on sheet pans ready to go in the oven before dinner is served so they're nice and piping hot too.

Hopefully I'll remember to take pictures to post later. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

To do: Tiramisu cupcakes

Far and away, my favorite dessert is tiramisu. I have made a version of it a couple of times and an ice cream version, which is pretty awesome. Rory today sent me this link to tiramisu cupcakes. One day I will make them and they will be awesome.

Pumpkin turtle bread

An awesome sounding recipe, but again, poorly written. I really might have to try this one though.

A site I like

Need to give props to another cooking site that's does a good job: Food Babies. If you don't know what a food baby is go to urban dictionary.

They do a nice job and give a good mix of cooking and eating out. I made their banana bread recipe yesterday and it was the best I've ever had (sorry mom). I did the naughty recipe and added some chocolate chips. Really, really good.

Notes on poor recipe writing

I can't believe it's been seven weeks since I've posted, time flies when you're on deadline. Sadly I won't be getting any better the next couple of weeks.

I have been cooking but nothing too exciting. The main reason for this post is annoyance. I've been in a cooking rut lately and when I had a few minutes I was looking through the Savuer site to see if there's anything new and exciting when I saw the recipe for a chocolate truffle cake.

A post on my to do list has been my eternal search for a good chocolate cake recipe so this one intrigued me. So I was sad to find it horribly written. But maybe you guys can help me be the judge, maybe I'm n a bad mood or feeling the deadline pressure but I found this recipe really though to get through.

I'm still going to try and make it but come on, writing a recipe isn't that difficult.

Photos

Pork top loin roast with Mediterranean spices.

I've been taking more picture of the food I've been cooking and have been very happy with how they have turned out. It's a combination of better lighting-- a lot of the pics I've taken have been outside and the lighting in my old kitchen was horrible--and that I've been taking them all with my new 4G iPhone.

The camera on the new device is really great. I had the 3G iPhone previously and the pictures always seemed grainy and you had to hold it very still. I don't know if they put some new image stabilization software in it or what, but I've been very happy with the pictures that I've taken with it. Also, there's no shutter lag, you can hit the button and it takes another shot almost instantly, much better than my point-and-click Canon.

I know this may seem like a shameless plug for Apple--and it kind of is--but I'm happy that I've been able to get more pictures and witht he quality. I might do a video demo in the future using the iPhone to see how that works too. I did a video of our new puppy this week and it turned out great.

Couple of slabs or ribs smoked for five hours with some potatoes in the aluminum foil.

Pasta with fresh tomatoes

It's August, which sadly means that summer is winding down, but it also means that tomatoes are in season. My topsy-turvy hasn't produced anymore than the two tomatoes I previously mentioned, but some of our new neighbors--thanks Dave and Monica--have been keeping us in a supply of fresh cherry tomatoes.

They brought the first batch over during the pig roast and I decided to do a fresh tomato sauce with some whole wheat pasta. They probably brought over 20 to 30 cherry tomatoes, which I halved and the through into a skillet that already had some olive oil. I added some salt and pepper, about a tablespoon of sugar and about four cloves of diced garlic.

I cooked the pasta to just about al dente, drained and through it in with the tomatoes to finish cooking. I topped with some Parmesan.

Easy, simple and healthy meal and didn't take much longer than 20 minutes. You can make some additions to this too, I was just working with what was handy, you could add a little diced shallot or onion and some basil too. You could also strain to get some of the tomato seeds out to if you so desire.