monkeys and ponies

Logging this here for my own memory as much as anything else:

• Cherry tomatoes stuffed with guacamole – do not do this again unless the tomatoes are much bigger, my god, what a pain in the butt no matter how good they were


• Cheese pennies, of which I have now made two batches in about as many days, 'nuf said


• Grilled turkey & gravy, bird butterflied, of course; a 12lb. bird on a grill in 50° weather took a bit more than 2 hours


• Vegetarian main: tater tot casserole, with many sautéed mushrooms instead of sausage


• Cranberry-tangerine conserve


• Cornbread dressing


• Roasted brussels sprouts with vegetarian fish sauce vinaigrette, all hail Bragg's Liquid Aminos


• GF biscuits


• Homemade pistachio-honey ice cream


• Mendiants with candied orange peel and walnuts, and hooray, I have enough chocolate and orange peel to do another batch


• GF cheesecake brought by my friend J

That was more than enough food for six, but my god, how good it felt to be able to have a proper Thanksgiving meal again. Also, the lightly smoked turkey is going to make one hell of a gumbo tomorrow night, but that's columbina's responsibility. (If you'd like to cook along, here's the spouse's recipe writeup.)

IDK why I'm bothering to write down anything that vaguely approximates a recipe here, because of course I didn't measure a goddamned thing while I was working on these other than the crust elements. But anyway, if you too would like SHEER DELICIOUSNESS, I recommend these very highly:



( something almost but not entirely like a recipe, after the cut )

I have always wanted to make croissants, while also always being terrified of making laminated pastry. It looks so complicated! And like it's so much work! Probably not worth the effort!

But then I acquired a 25lb. bag of flour and some other baking supplies from a nearby pub that had switched to grocery sales while restaurants remain closed, and even though I gave half of it to my sister and a friend, that still left me with 12-ish pounds of flour to bake with.

CROISSANT TIME.
( after the cut )

Logging this for my own reference as much as anything else:

• Cherry tomatoes stuffed with avocado. I filled these with a piping bag and plead the Fifth about whether any of the remaining filling was piped directly into my mouth.


• Red-sauce glazed spatchcocked turkey. (Note for self: cooking a 10lb. bird at 450° for 30 minutes and 325° for 1.5 hours worked fine.)


• Vegetarian main: deep-dish quiche with leeks, mushrooms, and spinach


• Cranberry-tangerine conserve


• Mixed greens, including collards and this ornamental but perfectly edible kale from the CSA, and some Russian Red kale I picked up at the store. Cooked with a lot of vegetable broth, miso, onions, and garlic.


• Mashed potatoes and caramelized onions, all from the CSA. I cooked down three pounds of onions and still have a bag left over, so I'm pretty sure I'm getting my money's worth from the late fall share.


• Cornbread dressing


• Gluten-free biscuits, plus two of our guests brought GF rolls


• Banana-honey-cardamom ice cream. Notes for next time: try to find a stronger-flavored certified GF-honey; either use more than 10 cardamom pods or find a better way to steep them in warm cream (hmm, wonder if I can use alcohol and essentially make cardamom extract); thaw bananas twice as long as Alton says they need to be thawed, or chop them up, then freeze and thaw.


• The spouse made a black-bottom pecan pie, and our guests also brought GF trifle and mini apple, blueberry, and pumpkin pies.

Tonight: uh ... maybe turkey pot pie with mashed potato crust. The remaining turkey parts (a drumstick, two thighs, and two wings) are booked for gumbo on Sunday, HOORAY. I also need to make turkey stock from the carcass and process the 6lbs. of CSA apples into sauce so they stop taking up room in the fridge, but more important, provide plenty of applesauce for latkes. PRIORITIES.

Back in April, I visited my family in DC, and I lucked out, foodwise: my hotel was just a few blocks from Momofuku's DC outpost. I had their chilled Szechuan noodles with pork, Thai basil, and cashews and vowed then and there I'd replicate the dish at home if I could.

Which I have, or near enough for my purposes.



( recipe, after the cut )

Let's not discuss how far over I am on today's calorie allotment, because the truly important thing is that a good third of them went to a martini, my favorite beer, and homemade coconut cream pie:



Happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans!

I would title this post "burying the lede," but honestly, there's no point in it; might as well just say it, which is that yesterday I submitted an original story to Uncanny Magazine for publication. Honestly, I don't expect them to buy it, because the odds are always against slushpile entries. But you never know -- it's spelled and punctuated correctly, which is probably better than some entries they get; it's a story that "make[s] you feel," which is the type of stuff they're after; and who knows, maybe now that they've hit their Kickstarter stretch goal of an extra story per issue, they'll be open to giving unpublished authors a shot. (I did mention my published nonfiction in my cover letter, but I have no published fiction, which is probably what they most care about.)

So anyway, that happened, and the final story prep and submission was utterly terrifying, but I did it. I should hear back in about a month, although they say authors should contact them if they haven't heard back in 45 days. And I suppose if it doesn't sell to Uncanny, I can always try another market.

Other things: I have a new lead at work that is basically already sold without my having to do a damned thing, as well as a possible small continuation of an existing project. I still need to send out marketing email Real Soon Now, but because last year was such a financial disaster, we are actually owed a huge refund on our taxes (GOD BLESS CPAs) that we will apply to next year's taxes, which makes it much easier to coast by over the next few months.

Also, we had an utterly lovely day today. ( some photos and video after the cut )

Yesterday, I found out that Cadbury makes Pots of Joy, the equivalent of creme egg pudding. As a longtime creme egg fan, I knew I had to try these … but I quickly discovered that like my beloved Cadbury Twisted bars, Pots of Joy are not available in the United States. (In fairness, you can get Twisteds by mail through Amazon and other outlets. But you can't walk up to your local drugstore and buy them, which is the problem.)

Anyway, the point here is that I was being denied creme egg-flavored pudding, and clearly this was just wrong. Fortunately, I am capable of making pudding. So I did.

( Recipes, photos, and instructions )

While I contemplate whether to spend this evening writing fic, beta'ing fic, or both, I might as well log the Thanksgiving menu:

• Grilled turkey -- an 8.75-pounder this year, since there were only three carnivores at the table, but I think I need to go a touch larger to have sufficient leftovers for turkey salad *and* gumbo. (The Sunday night gumbo is compulsory.)


• Cranberry-orange-apricot sauce


• Cornbread dressing


• Kohlrabi rémoulade


• Potato-parsnip latkes, since it's Thanksgivukkah this year. One of the best batches I've ever made, possibly due to the chickpea flour used to make them celiac-friendly. Served with sour cream and homemade applesauce.


• Mixed greens braised in tamari


• Vegan entrée brought by my friend J: polenta-lentil cakes with an amazing coconut milk-mushroom sauce


• Pecan pie


• Chocolate-hazelnut cake with chocolate-honey ganache (also celiac-friendly!)


• Coconut sorbet


• Milk chocolate pecan turtles J got from a wonderful restaurant in Harvard Square

Four desserts for five people sounds reasonable, yes? I thought so, anyway.

Hope those of you who observe Thanksgiving and/or Hanukkah are having as nice a holiday weekend as I am.