Preparing for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween are way too commercial, and 2 out of 3 of those holidays involve dressing up in order to: 1. get a boyfriend/girlfriend 2. get laid. Thanksgiving, though, is about being thankful for what you have, and about food. Those are my favorite things, y'all.

The main meal:

Alton Brown's recipe for brining and roasting is fan-freaking-tastic. (Food Network's photo)

I've used Alton's method many times, and it consistently produces a beautifully browned, moist, and flavorful turkey. Every. Time. This recipe converts a turkey carcass into a vessel of warmth, comfort, and deliciousness. Though it is a bit time consuming to brine a turkey, the results are well worth the effort, and actual cooking time is reduced (which is great for when you have other sides/breads/desserts you may need the oven for on Thursday).


Cornbread Sausage Stuffing. My oldest sister Kim made it last Christmas, and it was out of this world.


Oat bread rolls. This is a great bread recipe. It always comes out light and fluffy, and oat adds nuttiness, iron, and fiber.


Giblet gravy with egg. I believe this type of gravy is a southern thing. I know what you're thinking...It sounds gross, but it tastes like little fairies carried happiness and joy and magic straight to your taste buds. I learned this recipe from my oldest sister, who learned it from her southern mother-in-law. Even though we're Vietnamese, my sister married a good ole country boy, and we've enjoyed this recipe in our family ever since. Why eggs, you ask? Why not? Don't you like the taste of happiness and joy and magic???

Mashed cauliflower (Food Network's photo)

A lot of people on the internet will tell you that pureed or mashed cauliflower will have the same taste/texture as mashed potatoes, but they are LYING. It's similar, yes, but not the same. Still, I really appreciate that it's a healthier alternative, and whenever I've made this dish in the past, I mixed it with a bit of garlic mashed potatoes. Doing that gave it more of the texture and flavor that I enjoy in regular mashed potatoes, but with added vitamins and fiber (46% DV of Vitamin C!!!), and can cut calories by 25%. Suggestion: If you're trying to cut fat/calories, do not add a huge dab of butter onto your serving, the way that Food Network did in that photo. More nutrition facts here.




To be honest, I started planning for this year's big meal in August. I have a pile recipes ripped out of Sunset, Taste of Home, and Better Homes and Gardens magazines, and bookmarks on my browser that lead to recipes that I thought might be good for when T-giving finally rolls around. Now that the time is almost near, I feel like my menu is still lacking. There are only 3.5 of us, so there really will be plenty of food, but I feel like I'm missing an important staple that everyone should have on T-giving. We won't be having green bean casserole (even though I LOVE it!), because my sister doesn't think it's that great...Maybe a broccoli casserole? Mac and Cheese? Lumpia??? Any suggestions?




Next post...Thanksgiving desserts!!!

awesome things

Hi, friends. My plan for this post was to write about a recent break up. I was going to explain how I'm still grieving the loss, and follow it up with a story of how baking the hell out of things when stressed helps, until I found this particular entry on 1000 Awesome Things. Go on, read it. 

So, I am choosing to move forward. This does not mean that I will stop being sad, or that I will care less about what happened. It just means that I'm going to try to focus more on what's in store, rather than obsessing over how I feel each day, comparing good days to bad. I know that God's in control (which can be difficult for a control freak like me), but I must trust Him.

I did bake some "heartbreak muffins", but I've renamed them "blueberry and strawberry muffins":

Recipe here. My changes: omit crumb topping, sub applesauce for oil, add extra berries, and reduce the sugar to suit an Asian family's tastes. I doubled the recipe, and froze a bunch of them for busy mornings, when your only other choice is greasy McDonald's or a stale donut from 7-11. Verdict: My favorite muffin recipe so far. Good, moist, semi-healthy, and they boosted my spirits. Bueno.

Mac n Cheese

I never knew that mac and cheese could be more than the boxed variety until I was in high school. (I don't know how I survived such a sheltered culinary life.)  This was a low-fat mac and cheese recipe that I adapted from, my favorite site, allrecipes.  Some changes: no onion, and didn't bake it.  It's been so hot here lately that I couldn't bear to use the oven.   It doesn't exactly taste like the mac and cheese that remember from childhood (not really a bad thing), but it's light, creamy, and quite pleasant paired with some grilled Italian sausages and a humongous salad.*








*And a beer.

Bundt in the Oven

I made my first bundt cake a few weeks ago. It was a lemon pound cake with lemon glaze recipe thar I found on the side of a cake mix box. Yes. I made a cake that wasn't from scratch, and I don't care what you think. A version of the cake is on Allrecipes here.

As usual, I tried to reduce the amount of fat by substituting apple sauce for oil. Even without the oil, the cake baked beautifully. I had a hard time getting it out of the bundt pan though, but I'm not sure if the lack of oil in the batter had anything to do with it. As I tried to get it out, chunks of the cake broke off. I was left crying "whyyyyyyyyy????" in the kitchen at midnight, the night before the Father's Day potluck at church. So, I "glued" the chunks back onto the cake, using the glaze as an adhesive, and then to cover up the ugliness of the breaks, I covered the whole thing with more glaze. It looked even worse. It looked like I had poured Elmer's glue allover cornbread. Deeeelicious.

I freaked out. It was late, and I didn't have enough confectioner's sugar to make frosting for another cake. "Work smarter, not harder," I told myself. I cut it up, arranged it "artfully" on my platter, and went to bed.

This wasn't my finest baking accomplishment. The flavor was ok, but could have been a bit more "lemony." Also, get this--the sugar glaze was too sweet. Weird. The texture was nice, and very moist, which I appreciated. I'm not sure I would make this cake again, but I think people enjoyed it fine. It just seemed like a whole lot of effort for an ok result.

Huh.

I was going to take time this morning to write about what I actually eat normally for breakfast (oatmeal, whole grain english muffins), and juxtapose it with some of the more exciting things I've written about (dutch babies, stuffed french toast), but I'm still sick. I was getting better for the past few days (at least, I thought I was), but this morning it was worse. I don't know if it's a new sickness, because my body was already weak from the cold, or what.

Now that I think about it though, my breakfast entry idea sounds incredibly boring. I just wanted to write about my boring breakfasts, so that you friends don't think I eat unhealthy junk every day. So now that I've just told you that, I guess there's no point to writing about it in the future. End. 

Dutch baby, I'd like you to meet...

Oatmeal with cinnamon and banana. 

Isn't the contrast so depressing?

Chocolate cake x 2

I recently posted about a chocolate cake recipe that I modified to be butter/oil free. I frosted with an easy peanut butter frosting that I found on allrecipes.com. It was a nice cake, but it wasn't *bam-doodily* fantastic, so I'm not sharing that recipe. (Although it had a dark chocolate flavor, it was kind of dry.) Do check out the pb frosting recipe though!

Later that week, I made some chocolate cupcakes for a friend's birthday, and used PIONEER WOMAN'S CHOCOLATE SHEET CAKE recipe. Instead of making it fully free of butter, I substituted half of the fat for mashed bananas, and the result was moist, chocolate-y, and bladow, ALL up in your face.* Please please please try this recipe today. My family and friends loved it at half fat level, so I'm guessing that a full butter batch can only be abso-freaking-lutely incredible.

  I love you too, my little lovecakes.

I did not use PW's frosting, but half ass(embl)ed my own. Combine: 1 can cream cheese frosting, softened cream cheese (I used neufchatel), baker's cocoa, confectioner's sugar, room temp. milk, vanilla extract, and dash of cinnamon. All of those amounts will vary by your taste and texture preferences, so just add a little bit at a time, and then whip it until light and fluffy.

Found these little star shaped sprinkles at Fred Meyer.

 Candy letters also from Freddie's.

* Translation: It was delicious.

Quick post

This is what I did with my morning:

Modified a chocolate cake recipe to make it free of oil/butter. Am cooling it now, and hope to top it off with peanut butter frosting later. The frosting will not be butter free, but I'm going to justify it by calling it a half fat cake. :)

Banana Ice Cream

via Apartment Therapy

So, my friend Corinne posted on her Facebook last week that she was going to make ice cream using a recipe from Apartment Therapy. Ice cream from 1 ingredient...Out of nothing but BANANAS. Intriguing? Yes. 

Here in Seattle, we often buy bananas from the local Asian market, because they sell them in 5 lbs bags for 99 cents. 99 cents! That's as good as those green apples I found last time! I love a good deal.

I try recipes from the internet often, but because I am idiotic enough to believe most of what I read, those recipes aren't always great. (BTW, did you know that there is a spell you can chant to become a MERMAID???) This ice cream recipe however, was wonderful. It was simple, delicious, healthy, and very satisfying. It's also very banana-y. Warning! You may need to be a fan of bananas in order to enjoy banana ice cream. Luckily, we like bananas, but more importantly, MY NEPHEW LOVED IT. I got him to eat healthy food without extra sugar and force feeding. Amazing. It's like I tricked him, but without the negative consequences. I feel drunk on power.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

I love pineapple upside down cake. It's warm, gooey, and has fruit so it's extremely healthy. Not really healthy, but it is delicious. When I've made it in the past, it had the typical rings of canned pineapple with maraschino cherry halves in the center, thick brown sugar and butter sauce, and boxed white/yellow cake mix thrown on top. It's a simple dessert that looks like it took some effort.

The other night, as I was making dinner, I looked into the fridge to see what ingredients I had ready to make an apple pie. (We'd just bought a 5lbs bag of granny smith apples at the market for 99 cents!) But when I looked in the fridge, I noticed a small container of pineapple that I'd bought on discount from the market, but never finished eating.

Pineapple upside down cake came to mind. "But it's so HEAVY," I thought. It's warm and comforting, but as soon as your eyes roll back into place from the top of your head, you realize that your veins are no longer pumping blood but butter! How could I make it a bit healthier?

I vowed then and there, in front of the refrigerator, to challenge myself to try to recreate the cake, but without (most of) the guilt.
“What are you doing?” My sister asked, “Why are you just standing there?”
“Mind your own business! ... Do you want pineapple cake for dessert?”
“Mmm, ok!"

So, I took the pineapple chunks, and ran it through the food processor until it had the consistency of apple sauce. I was running out of brown sugar, and the cake was going to have enough butter, so I skipped the syrup. I added a little bit of flour and strawberry preserves to thicken the pineapple sauce up a bit. (Not really sure if that step added anything, but I was in the “Ratatouille zone,” you know? Where Remy is like, crazy inspired and just throwing all sorts of things into the soup pot? You know what scene I'm talking about???) 

 via moviesdivx.net

My next step was the cake. I'm not experienced enough to make my own cake batter, and  I didn't even know what ingredients went into a butter cake! So, with the help of the forums over at www.tasteofhome.com, I found this recipe. Here is the recipe from a forum member (candykisses_Oklahoma), but with my changes in parenthesis. I didn't have all of the ingredients:

1 c. butter flavored Crisco (I used ½ c butter & ½ c margarine)
2 c. sugar (I reduced it to 1 ¼ c, because we don't like it too sweet)
4 eggs
3 c. flour (we had AP, unbleached)
1 T. baking powder
3/4 c. buttermilk (¾ c sour milk = 3/4 c whole milk + 3/4 tbs of vinegar)
1/4 c. whole milk
1 t. vanilla (2 tsp imitation vanilla)

Instructions:
Cream butter flavored Crisco, gradually adding sugar, beating well. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine flour and baking powder. Add to creamed mixture alternately with milk and buttermilk. Mix well. Add in vanilla. Mix well. (Spoon pineapple sauce mixture into bottom of pan, sprinkle with cinnamon.)
Pour (batter) into a 9x13" cake pan that has been sprayed with a non-stick cooking spray.
Bake 350 for around 25-30 min. or until toothpick stuck in center of cake comes out clean. (Or, in my case, cover the cake with foil when the top becomes alarmingly dark, while the rest of the cake has not yet fully cooked.)
There you have it, pineapple upside down cake, but the “healthy” version. 

 

Ok, ok. It's not pretty. It's not what you expect from most versions of pineapple upside down cake, but it really was delicious. The cake wasn't overly sweet, the edges were a bit crisp when you bit into it, it was soft and (gross word alert!) moist. I loved it, and so did my family. And I know...it's not really healthy. There's still a cup of butter/margarine in it, and it's CAKE! The only healthy cake I've ever come across has always been some sort of lie. BUT I figured that since I didn't use a box cake (where I would not have had any control over the ingredients), and used fresh pineapple without the sugar/butter sauce dumped in, then it had to be a LITTLE bit healthier, right? It is in my mind, at least!

 Depressingly sad, unbaked, uneaten apples