Thanksgiving

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Bit of Housekeeping, Cheesecake This Week and Also Dinners I Guess

It is the final week of NaBloPoMo, and I am still writing every day over at A Novel Project. Once the calendar flips over to December, I will probably not continue to write there daily, and instead find some sort of mix between writing about book topics (there) and other nonsense (here). One of the things I’m working on for this blog is my somehow now annual Holiday Gift Guide. Pretend shopping for a hundred more things than I need is way more fun than actual shopping, and I do love a gift guide. Unfortunately, there is no way it’s going to be complete by Black Friday, so if you are in need of immediate gift ideas, you may want to check out Swistle’s recent line up. Or you can visit my list of bookish suggestions. And I have many, many posts full of potential gifts you can revisit here.

Okay, now onto food, which is, of course, always at the top of my mind. 

Foremost in my thoughts is cheesecake.

Cheesecake Chat

I have been tasked with bringing dessert to Thanksgiving with my parents, and I have decided on cheesecake. My husband would love for the cheesecake to be pumpkin in flavor, or at least in appearance. I, however, do not much care for pumpkin and would prefer my cheesecake be unadulterated; I believe that my father and child might share this preference. We have come to a truce in the form of a pumpkin caramel. This recipe looks doable, if not exactly easy (what caramel is easy, I ask you?). Or, I could go the easiest route of all and order a jar of pumpkin caramel!

I see that I have completely avoided the actual foundation for all this caramel, which is, of course, the cheesecake. 

Tierney mentioned the two-layer cheesecake with a sweetened sour cream layer on top, and I realized a) I haven’t had that kind of cheesecake in a very long time and b) I really ENJOYED that kind of cheesecake. Tierney linked to an untested recipe, and I also found a recipe in my battered copy of Joy of Cooking. But I’m unwilling to go with the untested version and the JoC version is so much smaller than anything else… Like, I found a recipe for New York Cheesecake in my America’s Test Kitchen cookbook, and it has pretty near TRIPLE the amounts of all the ingredients that the JoC recipe calls for. They both use the same 9 inch springform pan. They both supposedly produce 12 servings. And yet I don’t know how that’s possible. 

Which is a long winded way of saying, I think I will just be going with the Test Kitchen version this year. For a few minutes, I contemplated making the Test Kitchen cheesecake and topping it with the JoC sour cream layer… but I have only made cheesecake a couple of times (and one of those times was a Basque cheesecake), so I’m not sure I have the skill or experience needed to Frankenstein two recipes together. Maybe later on in my cheesecake journey. 

Dinners This Week

Ah yes, onto everybody’s favorite time: planning meals. Here in the U.S., Thursday’s meal is most likely spoken for as it’s the day we celebrate Thanksgiving. My family and I will be at my parents’ house, where they are making my mom’s traditional garlic goat cheese mashed potatoes, sausage stuffing dressing, gravy, spinach salad, and – a Thanksgiving first (for us) – beef Wellington.

But we do need to eat the rest of the week, so here’s what I have planned.

Dinners for the Week of November 24-30

  • Roasted Chicken and Potatoes with Sauteed Green Beans: Everything I need for this meal is already in my house. The green beans are frozen garlic shitake green beans from Trader Joe’s. I have some potatoes leftover from pot roast the other week, so I’ll quarter those and shove them in with the chicken. I plan to marinate the chicken in this marinade.
  • Roasted Teriyaki Salmon and Spicy Zucchini Noodles: My husband will eat a leftover chicken breast instead of salmon, my kid will eat edamame instead of zucchini, and we’ll probably have some brown rice on the side.
  • Turkey, Sweet Potatoes, and Leftovers: My husband and daughter are a teeny bit bummed that our Thanksgiving meal isn’t going to involve turkey. Mom, if you are reading this: I AM NOT BUMMED, I AM ECSTATIC. I DO NOT LIKE TURKEY. They are both going to be delighted by the beef Wellington, I have no doubt, but this weekend I am going to buy a pre-made turkey breast and whip up a miniature portion of our traditional mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows so they can get their fix. I will also make a batch of homemade cranberry sauce for my kid, who loves cranberry sauce. Oooh! I should do this in advance and bring some to put on the cheesecake, for those of us who dislike pumpkin! 

P.S. I did make the lemongrass chicken stir fry last week, with my squeeze tube of lemongrass, and it was a big ol’ meh. I didn’t think it had a whole lot of flavor, but maybe lemongrass is just milder than I expected? If you have any recipes that call for lemongrass, please share them because I have most of this enormous tube leftover.

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Seven Snapshots on a Sunday

Carla has been home with me since the Friday before Thanksgiving, and finally goes back to school tomorrow. My husband took Thursday and Friday off. We’ve been watching movies together and playing games and doing our separate creative pursuits. It’s been lovely spending time with them and I know I’ll feel a little sad when the house is empty. But we have all of today together, although I think it will be mostly a day of laundry and cleaning and preparing for our houseguests.

Here are a few snapshots of what started out on a low note, but ended up being pretty lovely. 

`1. Carla decorated the table for Thanksgiving.

We put out a selection of cheeses to munch on while cooking. I am partial to the caramelized onion cheese (right most) from Trader Joe’s. And yes, those are Hanukkah plates we used for the cheese and crackers.

2. We were in the car and Carla was marveling at how gorgeous the sky was.

She asked me to hand her my phone and this is the photo she took. I love that she is so attuned to the beauty of the world around us.

3. The only finished room in our house.

My husband and I finally hung artwork up in our bedroom and it finally feels finished. It’s smaller than our previous bedroom, but I love it. I am also loving our flannel sheets, which are SO soft. It is very difficult to get out of bed in the morning when I’m so cozy in these sheets! I still don’t have a lamp for my bedside table, but my husband ordered some this weekend.

4. A funny tweet (if one with questionable grammar) that I sent to my best friend and her other best friend.

My best friend and I have slowly been rebuilding our friendship and it’s such a relief and a comfort to me. The three of us are going to plan a Zoom call, 2020 style, later this month since we all live in different states. I don’t know why we don’t do them more often, but we got out of the habit.

5. My breakfast for the past three days.

These are the only Thanksgiving leftovers I care about: garlic goat cheese mashed potatoes and gravy. (With plenty of pepper.) For some reason, the gravy didn’t turn out particularly well this year. My mother saved it, but it wasn’t the rich, dreamy gravy of Thanksgivings past. Some combination of me messing up the proportions and our new oven not cooking the turkey and pan veggies to the deep caramelized brown necessary for developing rich, delicious pan drippings. But Past Suzanne was smart and ordered a container of mushroom gravy from Whole Foods, and it is QUITE delicious. Especially when paired with mashed potatoes.

6. I can hardly believe it, but our holiday cards are IN THE MAIL.

The only reason we pushed to get them out so soon this year is because they are serving as change-of-address notifications, too, and I’m hoping they reach most people before they send their own cards. We’ll see if that calculation works in our favor. But they are OUT. Woo! This is literally the only thing I have done to prepare for the holidays.

7. The very first hint of Christmas around my house.

My mother is much better at being on top of holiday planning than I am. This beautiful wreath arrived the day after Thanksgiving. It smells like Christmas! That doesn’t mean I am ready yet to decorate, but I am ready to think about decorating, which at least is a step in the right direction.

Happy Sunday, Internet!

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Saturday Superlatives: Thanksgiving Edition

For my outside-the-US friends, is your country’s celebration as food-focused as US Thanksgiving seems to be? I feel like it seems lower-key in Canada, and much more relaxing. Then again, maybe I’m one of the few who find Thanksgiving stressful. (I seem to find a way to make everything stressful.) 

If you celebrated this week, how was your Thanksgiving? Are you sick of leftovers yet? While I could happily eat a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy for breakfast until Christmas, I avoid all other Thanksgiving foods until next Thanksgiving. Turkey is something I eat one day a year. My husband is a big fan of leftovers though. This year he has even vowed to make the infamous turkey tetrazzini that people swear by for transforming leftover turkey into something new and fabulous. 

This was a week of highs and lows, emotionally. But it was also overall a nice, low-key week. As the Holiday Table staffer at Whole Foods said when I told her we were down to three from seven people, “Nice! No stress!” And then quickly and ruefully added, “Well, there are pros and cons to all things.” 

Here are some of the superlative moments from this Thanksgiving week.

Worst Moment: When we had to tell Carla that her beloved cousin was no longer coming for Thanksgiving. She sobbed and sobbed. Hopefully we will find another time to get the families together. 

Sweetest Moment: Carla and I sat on the couch one day and watched movies together. Then after dinner we watched Jeopardy! together and she held my hand the whole time. All the heart eyes. 

Most Uncomfortable Moment: I think I mentioned previously that our real estate agent gave us a free apple pie as a thank-you for using them when we bought (and sold) our house. Carla and I were doing Thanksgiving prep work at the house when my husband texted me to remember the pie. So we dashed out to pick it up from the realtor’s office. I was wearing leggings and a sweatshirt under my winter coat (outdoor leggings, of course; not my bedtime leggings) and Carla was wearing a flannel shirt and shorts. Why yes it was only 40 degrees outside but PYB, people, PYB. It was pouring rain and we wore masks even though we’d both tested negative, just in case. I expected to run in, grab the pie, and run out, but no. There was a PARTY being held at the office. People in dressy casual clothing, milling about with drinks. A long table set with drinks and pastries. A special room set aside for children. A fire in the fireplace. My realtor was wearing slacks and a nice sweater. I was in leggings and a mask, dripping wet, my hair plastered to my makeup free face. Once again, Carla was wearing shorts. All I wanted was to get my pie and escape. But my sweet realtor wanted to chat about the house and our Thanksgiving plans. OMG. It was so horrifically awkward. Nearly as bad as those dreams where you go to school naked or you show up for your wedding without your dress. Also… I feel like this is probably rude of me to even ask, but do my realtor’s clients… enjoy parties like this??? Our orthodontist throws a party every year, too, and… it’s nice to do something festive for your clients, but… I don’t know any other orthodontia clients? And it’s not like a bunch of my friends and I all bought houses together. Are people who buy homes in the same year expected to form a club together? Maybe we’re supposed to be schmoozing about lawncare companies and the best place to buy lamps… but I just can’t imagine doing that on purpose. Is this what it’s like to be an extrovert? You just… go to parties purely to socialize with strangers? 

Most You-Win-Some,-You-Lose-Some Moment: The kind people at Whole Foods were so understanding about our change in holiday plans. They refunded me the cost of the green beans and asparagus. While I was standing in line at the Holiday Table waiting to “check in,” with shoppers pushing past us on both sides, and Carla asking if she could please buy a watermelon and what about the chocolate Advent calendar or maybe could she go look for some hot dogs? and what about buns, she really wants to try buns with her hot dog this time, I noticed a display of Ramona Ruby Grapefruit Wine Spritz. I glanced at the label which I thought said $8.99, which seems like a reasonable enough price for four bottles. (My husband and I had Ramona this summer and loved it, and I haven’t seen it anywhere before.) We checked out and it turns out that each four pack is $18.49. OMG. I mean, yes, you could buy a bottle of wine for $18.49 and probably wouldn’t bat an eye (although I am more of a $10-a-bottle kind of gal), but. OMG. Good thing we saved all that money on green beans and asparagus so I could turn around and spend it on booze. (It really is delicious. But still.)

Most You-Really-Should-Be-A-More-Careful-Reader,-Suzanne Moment: Turns out that every single box of Covid tests in our house was expired. And, while several of them had expiration dates that had been extended to nowish, I thought it would be prudent to get some new unexpired-in-any-way ones. I looked up my options at the local Target. The top results cost $35! That seemed like a lot, when I was used to getting them free (I just ordered the latest batch of free ones). I scrolled down a bit in the results and spotted a pack of four tests for $12.99. Much better. Carla and I put on masks and drove to Target for their drive-up service. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I’d purchased drug testing kits. SIGH. 

Funnest and Funniest Moment: This year, Carla helped me with a ton of the Thanksgiving food preparation. She made the cranberry sauce pretty much independently, cut all the cornbread and French bread for the dressing, and helped chop mire poix for the various things that required mire poix. Most helpful was when she helped me deal with the turkey. I am very squeamish about touching raw meat and have used a variety of kitchen tools in past years to prevent me from touching the turkey. This year, I just powered through and touched it with my bare hands. *Shudder.* But one thing I will not do is touch any part of the turkey’s innards, and that’s where Carla came in. Like a champ, she removed the neck and giblets from the turkey cavities with kitchen tongs, while we both squealed in disgust. It was the most fun I’ve ever had dealing with raw meat. (Less fun for her, because I made her wash her hands about 80 times and then gave her a mini lecture about salmonella as I sprayed down the counter with antibacterial spray.)

Favorite Blog Comments: While I adore every comment you leave, sometimes they feel like they’re just for me, you know? Which is fabulous. Other times, they are full of GOLD that I want everyone to read. It was an utter delight to read everyone’s take on pets and pet names. But I think the GOLD this week is in the comments of this post. If you haven’t added your own thoughts, I would love it if you took the time to add your own thoughts about blogs and blogging. And if you haven’t scrolled through to find new bloggers to follow, please check it out. 

That’s it from me, Internet. Now I need to go scour my house clean after having my (ravenous and less-than-tidy) child home with me for eight days straight and prepare (again) for my delayed houseguests. 

Any stand-out moments for you this week?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.