Thanksgiving Special Edition

I planned and executed an entire Thanksgiving dinner all by myself, with a good deal of help from Dave. The dinner went over without a hitch - no one got food poisoning, everyone ate seconds, my turkey was juicy, the sweet tea was scarfed down, and, perhaps most miraculously of all, I managed not to cut, burn, or otherwise injure myself despite 2 days of being alone in the kitchen! Those of you who have been privy to my previous injuries (Rose, Casey, Dave) are probably breathing a sigh of relief that I still have all my fingers and avoided any trips to the ER.

Before I post the recipes I used, let me give you some tips for pulling off Thanksgiving; things they fail to mention on Food Network or anywhere else I've read. The thing about Thanksgiving is, if you're going to woman- or man-up and cook an entire traditional dinner all by yourself, you have to do it because you want to do it. If you're not looking forward to it, or feeling a lot of external pressure for perfection, or just unsure of yourself in the kitchen, then don't do it. Buy your meal from Kroger, or better yet, do what two of my Auburn colleagues were doing and go to the beach for the weekend. Turkey's great, but I bet crab claws, steamed shrimp and beer for Thanksgiving dinner is also pretty amazing. Anyway. I was really looking forward to my time in the kitchen, and to my first big turkey, and it helped the day go more smoothly.

Also, being prepared really paid off in this case. I made a detailed timeline of everything that had to get done by Thursday at 1 p.m., and sure enough, I stuck to my schedule and I had very little stress or rushing around on the big day. Figure out what you can make ahead, and write down the day and time you will "make ahead" whatever is on your list. I kept this list on my refrigerator until everything had been checked off.

Lastly, it helps to have a Dave. No, you can't borrow mine. But if you have someone who will go to the grocery store for you (mind you, following a list I categorized spatially by grocery store section and aisle for easy checking; yes, I have my Kroger memorized), and someone who will sanitize coolers for brining the turkey, and who'll vacuum before the in-laws come over, and who'll carve the turkey, and who'll tell you how cute you look in an apron, it makes a big difference.

I swiped some of my recipes off the internet, as usual. I did Alton Brown's roast turkey, and Paula Deen's dressing. I made a cranberry sauce kind of like Tyler Florence's, but instead I used plain sugar, no cinnamon stick, and some orange liqueur. I did green beans really simply, by boiling them in salted water until cooked through, and topping with a couple tablespoons of butter and salt and pepper. I also did mashed potatoes the way I usually do them - cutting them into cubes, boiling for 20 minutes, draining, and mashing them together with heavy cream, butter, salt and pepper. It's not Thanksgiving without Sister Schubert's frozen dinner rolls, so those were in abundance on our table too.

My favorite part of the meal, though, was dessert. Even though my grandmother sent me a pecan pie and two different cakes to use, I couldn't help but make a pumpkin crisp. It's a recipe from Loren (remember bean dip?), who probably got it from her mom, Barbara. The Hawkins family, like the Icenogle family, supplies me with many delicious recipes. This one is no exception.

Pumpkin Crisp

1 can pumpkin
1 large can evaporated milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 t. cinnamon
3 eggs
1 box yellow cake mix
1 c. chopped pecans
2 sticks butter -- melted & cooled

Frosting
8 oz. cream cheese
3/4 cup cool whip
1/2 cup powdered sugar
(mix all three together)

First, preheat oven to 350. Then, prepare a 9 x 13 pan. Spray the pan with cooking spray, line the pan (sides and bottom) with wax paper, and generously butter the wax paper. Set aside. In a large bowl, blend the pumpkin and milk with a mixer. Add sugar, cinnamon & eggs. Blend well - mixture will be thin. Pour into prepared pan. Sprinkle cake mix over pumpkin mixture. Sprinkle nuts over cake mix and pat them into the mix. Pour butter over nuts. Bake for 1 hour or until firm. Let cool before turning onto platter. Carefully peel off the wax paper. Frost when cool.

This dessert is similar to the gooey butter cakes that Paula Deen makes all the time, but it is simply divine. I can't stop eating it. The pecans get all nice and toasty on the bottom, and I know some people think Cool Whip is evil, but I could eat it by the tub. That, and Velveeta are two ingredients from my redneck childhood I refuse to give up. You can't make Rotel dip without Velveeta, so it's a keeper to me.

Anyway. I hope everyone else out there had a nice Thanksgiving, full of not working, being lazy, and spending time with the ones you love.

Thai Pumpkin Soup

Here we are, at that point in the semester where everyone's tired, burned out, and basically over it. Myself included, in some respects. Turns out, writing a literature review for a dissertation is not nearly as much fun as it sounds like. I have 47 pages of crap that I am determined to whip into shape sometime this coming week. I told my advisor I'd have Chapter 2 in its entirety to him on November 1. While he doesn't really keep track of these deadlines, I do (it's kind of our running joke); deadlines cause me to lose sleep, have nightmares (usually about plane crashes), and dang it can Daylight Savings Time end soon? It's dark outside until 7:30-7:40 a.m. and I can't bring myself to crawl out of my nice warm bed to go to the gym when it's dark and cold outside. My triathlon training is suffering. I had a nice swim with Liz today - 40 laps in 50 minutes, thank you - and I've been sitting at a computer all day trying to edit the aformentioned 47 page lit review. And feeling like a slob because I've only run once this week. Blah.

Anyway. Despite being tired all the time and frustrated with this chapter, I - believe it or not - still have to eat. I have been craving pumpkin soup all season, and I have to tell you about the pumpkin soup I made last night. It was di-vine. It was warm, and earthy, and Thai-ish, and made me feel good all over. I stole the recipe from somewhere online but swapped out a couple of ingredients. Here is:

Thai Pumpkin Soup
some olive oil
about 1/2 cup diced onion
1 clove garlic
some red chili flakes
some ginger
some salt & black pepper
1 15 oz can of pumpkin
1 about the same size can of low-fat coconut milk
some chicken broth

Heat the oil, sautee the onion, garlic, salt & pepper, and chili flakes. Add the ginger when the onions are tender, heat through. Add in the rest of the ingredients. Stir together. Once it's well combined and before it comes to a boil, transfer the mixture to a blender or food processor (or whip out the trusty immersion blender) and puree the hell out of it. Pour back in the pot, simmer for 15 minutes. Top with cinnamon.

I ate so much of this soup that I didn't even need a piece of bread or anything else that usually accompanies soup, but I did have my leftover today with a grilled cheese sandwich and it was yummy! I also think the soup would be a great stir-fry sauce. I tasted a sample with honey and cinnamon, and thought the honey made it delicious as well. But, I put honey on just about everything, so you may want to ignore that.

Either way. Go make the soup and enjoy on a cold fall or winter night. Or in the summer when you miss fall. It's great for Halloween since it's orange.

Best Bean Dip Ever

That's Loren, one of my dearest and best friends, with her ah-mazing bean dip. She's part of the Auburn crew, and we have many, many happy memories together. I also have several dip recipes thanks to her. Her corn dip is a tailgate staple, and I'm anxiously waiting on her to share the recipe for pumpkin crisp, which will be on my LBDelicious Thanksgiving Blog Special. What's that, you ask? It's the blog I will do to highlight my first attempt at a full-out Thanksgiving dinner - full sized turkey and all - this November. Lindsey is going to Illinois for turkey day this year, so my cooking-partner-in-crime won't be sharing the kitchen with me as she did last year. Unless somebody else wants to come over, it'll be all LBDelicious this Thanksgiving.

Enough about me. Back to Loren and her dip. It was served cold, and was perfect with tortilla chips. Here's the super simple but incredible recipe:

Loren's Bean Dip
1 can black beans
1 cup salsa
chopped green onions
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 tablespoon cumin
salt & pepper to taste

Mix together. Chill. Eat with tortilla chips.

I think she made this for Bunco night. I'm glad there were leftovers for her to share with us.

Broccoli Soup

Even though fall weather in Lexington reminds me that a harsh, cold winter isn't far away, I absolutely love the fall weather here. If you're one of my friends from Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, or South Dakota (you know who you are), then go ahead and laugh at the fact that Kentucky winters are nowhere nearly as brutal as anything farther north, and I'll laugh at you when you're suffocating in the "Lexington humidity" this summer.

I digress. Fall's always been one of my favorite seasons, though growing up in Alabama, we didn't so much have "fall" as we did a week of cooler weather in November somewhere between summer and winter. With legitimate fall weather comes many culinary desires - I crave the warmth of pumpkin, nuts, apples, cinnamon and nutmeg, which means I'll be making a pumpkin soup before too long. In the meatime, and since Rose bought a bunch of fresh broccoli this week, I made a delicious and insanely healthy broccoli soup for dinner last night. It's not a cream-based soup, which cuts out tons of fat found in traditional broccoli-cream soups. Anne will have to verify, but I think it may be vegan friendly, if one uses vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. Based on a Rachael Ray recipe, here is:

Fresh Broccoli Soup
lots of fresh broccoli florets with parts of the stems (I think I used about 5 cups? not sure though)
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 white onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 Tablespoon dried thyme
couple splashes of Tabasco sauce
4-5 cups of chicken (or vegetable) stock
freshly ground black pepper
good amount of salt

In a stockpot, heat oil over medium heat. Sautee onion and garlic with salt and pepper and thyme and Tabasco. Add broccoli and chicken broth, bring to a boil and cook until broccoli is tender. With an immersion blender (or in a food processor or in a regular blender), puree the hot soup mixture. Be careful and don't burn yourself, as I often do. Return pureed mix to pot, salt again liberally to adjust seasoning, simmer for 15 minutes. Top with cheddar or mozzarella cheese, and a pat of butter if you're feeling so inclined, and serve with:

Mozzarella Cheesy Bread

1 flour tortilla
1/4 cup mozzarella cheese

Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Place cheese in the tortilla, fold in half, and heat up in the pan, flipping once, until cheese is melted. Cut into pieces and use to dip in the soup.

I was beyond frustrated last night when I tried to puree the soup mixture in our blender, and all the broccoli-flavored watery goodness started spilling out of the bottom before I even got it on the stand to puree. After saying several curse words and scaring Smokey, I brought out the immersion blender which scared poor Smokes even more (not that I blame him; I, too, am scared of the immersion blender) and it worked just fine. If I was making the soup at Casa Milam, I would most certainly instead used my trusty KitchenAid Food Processor, my favorite countertop kitchen appliance next to the Melitta Mill & Brew. It never spews broth out of its orifices, and it results in the most amazingly textured everything. But. In A-50, we have little counter space, so the KitchenAid lives at Casa Milam. Along with my trusty KitchenAid hand mixer, and LeCreuset stock pot. And my fiance. Sad.

Anyway. Go make broccoli soup. It's low-carb, low-calorie, low-fat, high-fiber, and green. Delicious.

I Love Gabriel's Desserts

As resistant as I am to much of the ritual that surrounds a wedding, I have been looking forward to doing a wedding cake tasting for weeks, or ever since I decided that Gabriel's Desserts in Marietta would be making my cake.

During the 2 hour wedding cake meeting, where I met with the owner, Johnnie Gabriel, about what I wanted, I also learned the secret to old-time cooked fudge and felt like I made a new best friend. I told her that I really didn't care what the thing looked like as long as it was the best tasting cake I could possibly get.

I knew that the 3 sample tasting cakes she would bake for me would be good, but I had no idea I was about to taste the most amazing cake I'd ever put in my mouth. Our choices were: 1. chocolate cake, with chocolate buttercream frosting and chocolate ganache filling, 2. vanilla, with vanilla buttercream frosting and cooked caramel filling, and 3. lemon pound cake, with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream frosting. All three were fantastic. However, one bite of #3 was all it took - we knew we had a winner. The combination of the lemon with raspberry was simply to die for. The frosting is genuine, authentic, perfect buttercream. The whole thing melts in your mouth and is the most perfect flavor combination in the world. I thought I'd like vanilla best of all, and was hesitant about the idea of a pound cake for a wedding cake, but I was wrong. The lemon pound cake with raspberry filling is perfection in 7" round form.

I could go on and on about this cake. I will be dreaming about it until my wedding gets here, after, of course, I finish off the rest of the sample cake that I brought back to Kentucky with me. I'm tempted to eat it all myself, but I'll probably bring most of it, and the chocolate cake, in the office to share with everyone. Best of all, Dave and I decided this morning that we're going to get Gabriel's to make one of those cakes for us every year on our anniversary.

By the way, Johnnie just published a cookbook, that you can order here: on Amazon.com. I'm definitely getting one for my collection. She's Paula Deen's cousin, by the way.

My Favorite Lasagna

I remember the first time I made lasagna. I think I was 17, and I got the idea that homemade lasagna would be amazing for dinner that night. So I went out to Kroger (which was quite a journey from our backwoods house), spent $35 on ingredients (which I felt was an extravagant amount), and went home to prepare the recipe on the back of the box of lasagna noodles. It was the first time I ever cooked anything for my family. I'm not sure if they liked it or even if everyone ate it, but I was so proud of myself for creating a homemade lasagna, it didn't matter.

Ever since, I've tried variations of lasagnas and have come to the point where I no longer follow recipes but instead do my own thing with whatever I have in the fridge. My most recent attempt is my favorite tasting dish so far:

about 8 lasagna noodles (I used 4 whole wheat and 4 regular, because that's what we had)
1/2 jar spaghetti sauce
1 28 oz can whole tomatoes, pureed in blender
1 tablespoon italian seasoning
1/2 lb ground beef, browned
1 10 oz package frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 15 oz container low-fat ricotta cheese
some mozzarella cheese
about 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 375. First, prepare the sauce: combine the spaghetti sauce with pureed tomatoes, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning in a saucepan, slowly simmer while you get the other ingredients ready. Cook the lasagna noodles in boiling, salted water only until flexible, about 6 minutes. Remove from water and lay out on an oiled cookie sheet to cool. In the meantime, prepare the ricotta filling: combine ricotta, parmesan, egg, salt and pepper in a bowl, set aside. Assemble the lasagna in an 8X8 ceramic pan sprayed with nonstick cooking spray as follows: 1/4 cup sauce, noodles (cut to fit and cover the bottom), 1/3 of the ricotta mix, 1/2 of the spinach, 1/2 of the beef, mozzarella cheese, 3/4 cup sauce, noodles, 1/3 of the ricotta, remaining spinach, remaining beef, some more mozzarella, 3/4 cup of the sauce, remaining ricotta, noodles, and all the sauce that will fit on top without spilling over. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil, place on a baking sheet (so that when it bubbles over it won't get the oven nasty), and bake for 55 minutes. After baking, remove the foil, throw some more mozzarella cheese on top of it (or cheddar if you run out of mozzarella, as I did), and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from oven, allow to cool for 15 minutes, and enjoy.

I don't know what it was about the combination, but it worked! I had extra sauce left over for a garnish or further drenching if desired.

Shorts with Words on the Butt

I went to Maggie Moo's today for ice cream after working for 5 hours straight - a record for me! - on the proposal. As I stood there in line debating on what ice cream flavor/mix in combination would be worth the calories, I realized what I hate about those shorts with words plastered straight across the ass.

Right ahead of me in line was a little girl, probably about 5 years old, and her mom (grandmom? not sure). I couldn't help but notice she had on a pair of bright pink, knit shorts that said "surfer girl!" with pretty flowers around it, on the butt. On the shorts of a 5 YEAR OLD. The problem is complicated with wearing any sort of words on one's rear end. On the one hand, you have this little girl, who just wants to fit in, thinks flowers are pretty, and likes the color pink, and wanted to wear shorts because it's insanely hot today. But on the other hand, it would not be cool for a little 5 year old boy to wear shorts that say "surfer boy!" with sharks or other stereotypically-gendered graphics on his butt. That we, as a culture, have accepted the word-butt-shorts for women, is a shame, especially because they make it seem ok for everyone - girls and guys - to stare at a woman's ass. There's a word on there - she must want me to look at it! Puh-lease. I think that if it was ok for men to go around with words on their asses, too, it might make the situation a little better, but would go no further in solving the problem. That there are now little girls out there who are clueless about this kind of stuff, and have parents buying the shorts for them, is even worse.

Seriously. No need for words on the ass, ever, regardless of sex or gender. Especially not in really young girls. The double standard is my big problem with the butt-word-short.

I walked out of there with a vanilla and chocolate chip cookie dough waffle cone shaking my head.