Smashed Potatoes with Bacon, Greens and Cheese

December 30 was National Bacon Day. Luckily we had some bacon and I found this simple "no recipe" for Smashed Potatoes with Bacon, Greens, and Cheese recipe using some of the other ingredients we had on hand. We used bacon, cheddar /gruyere, kale, and avocados to make this colorful, flavorful, and easy lunch. 

Chicken Enchiladas

 

This recipe came from our Best Simple Suppers for Two cookbook. The original intention was to make it for Valentine's Day, but we decided to roast a whole chicken instead for our romantic February 14 dinner. Since this recipe called for shredding a prepared rotisserie chicken it made more sense to use the leftover chicken for this one. The recipe says this has a prep time of 10 minutes, which I found wildly inaccurate. It took about twice that long to shred the chicken, chop the onion and garlic, cook it all with the other ingredients, then divide, and assemble. 

Full ingredient list includes:

4 six-inch corn tortillas (next time I will use six tortillas)

2 T olive oil

1 garlic clove (minced)

1 small onion (chopped)

2 cups shredded cooked chicken

1 can black beans (rinsed and drained)

1 can diced tomatoes

juice of one lime

1 cup corn kernals

1 t. cumin

1 c. enchilada sauce

2 cups shredded pepper jack cheese

While sautéing the onion and garlic in our indispensable cast-iron skillet I charred the tortillas in a dry cast iron pan on the stovetop. I added the chicken and beans to the skillet and seasoned with some salt and pepper. Once the chicken and beans were warmed through I removed half the mixture to a separate bowl and mixed half the corn, half the tomatoes, half the cumin, half the lime juice, and half the enchilada sauce into what was left in the skillet and sprinkled a third of the cheese on top. Two tortillas were placed on top of this, and then the rest of everything (except the cheese) was mixed together in the bowl with the remaining chicken and bean mix, and then put over the tortillas. A third of the cheese was added, and then the other two tortillas followed by the last of the cheese. This was all baked in the skillet (with its lid) at 350 for 14 minutes. We topped our enchiladas with sour cream.

A spicy, flavorful meal with a lot of texture. We both liked this, although it wasn't especially simple. It had a lot of ingredients, a lot of steps, and created a lot of dishes. We will likely have this again, but I will save it for a weekend meal next time.

Pam's first fried rice

Serendipity is sometimes what brings us to try something new. This week it was a recipe on my Facebook feed from New York Times cooking that featured fried rice with bacon. I heavily modified this to something I could make without doing any additional shopping. We had leftover cooked rice and some uncooked bacon. The recipe also calls for cabbage and scallions, which I did not have so I did not use. 

I began by cutting the bacon into small pieces and cooking in olive oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. When the bacon was cooked I removed it and then put in 4 minced garlic cloves which I sauteéd for about a minute and then added them to the bowl with the bacon bits. 

Next I added some olive oil to the pan and then spread the rice in a layer on the bottom of the pan. I added Worcestershire Sauce, salt, and some ground ginger. I let it cook until it became crispy, then stirred it a bit and let it cook just a bit more after re-spreading it then folded in the bacon and garlic along with some sliced carrots and frozen peas. 

As the rice was finishing I quickly cooked four over-easy eggs. The rice was divided onto two plates and two eggs were placed on top of each.

We were pleased with the meal. Easy, nutritious, delicious.

Chicken with Walnuts

A quick recipe from a classic cookbook (Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book) this used several leftover ingredients that I had in my refrigerator including two half bell peppers (one green, and one orange) and 3 scallions. 

I started by slicing two chicken breasts into about 20 pieces and then slicing the peppers, and scallions. Everything was set aside while I made the sauce which consisted of what was left in my bottle of soy sauce (the recipe says 3 T), 2 t cornstarch, a bit of port wine (in lieu of cooking sherry), a sugar cube, a bit of ground ginger, salt, and crushed red pepper. 

Using my indispensable cast-iron skillet I first sautéed the chopped vegetables for two minutes on high heat with orange-infused olive oil (I chose this flavor cooking oil because the recipe lists kumquats as an option for serving). The veggies were removed and then a cup of chopped walnuts were given a turn in the skillet for one minute. They were removed and then the chicken strips were cooked in the skillet. Once they were cooked through (it only took a few minutes) the sauce was added and then the vegetables and walnuts were put back in. Everything was covered and cooked together for another minute. 

We had some leftover lemon rice with almonds which we heated in the microwave oven and served with the chicken. 

An easy, delicious, and nutritious weeknight meal.

Meat Loaf

 It would appear that we have never posted about meat loaf before. I'm a little surprised by this. But, I also know that we rarely have prepared this in our 34 years of marriage. The impetuous for the preparation of this ultimate of comfort foods was a bit of ground beef, a bit of spicy sausage meat, a bit of "bacon ends" and some leftover rice all sitting side by side in our refrigerator. Since I indeed had not made meat loaf in quite some time I turned to Amy Sedaris for some guidance. What I prepared was only loosely based on the recipe in her book I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. For instance, I, remarkably, had no garlic or onion, so I used garlic salt and onion powder as substitutes. She called for ketchup (no quantity given). I used a can of tomato sauce. I used one egg instead of two because that was all I had. I also threw in about a cup of the cooked rice. I topped the loaf with some of the bacon ends before baking - a suggestion Amy provides. The loaf baked at 350 for 55 minutes. It wasn't as firm as either James or I remembered our mothers' loaves to be, but it was tasty and made for some good leftovers for lunches this week.

The ingredient list as provided in the cookbook is pictured below.

Chili

Chili is hardly a "nueva" recipe in our house -- I have made chili in essentially the same way since I first started cooking, though I have gotten increasingly adventurous in the seasonings. I notice, for example, that in my 2014 post entitled "Heritage Chili" I spend several paragraphs telling the story of one ingredient -- and hinting that "some day" I should reveal the overall approach. So here it is, albeit in the process of describing a significant departure.

The first consideration is time. As I wrote in our Celebrating Silver post, chili should be started 24 hours ahead of time. I exaggerated -- usually I will start chili around 9 pm for use at 5 or 6 the next evening. In a pinch, I'll make it right after breakfast of the day we're to eat it, and such was the pinch for yesterday's chili.

Herewith, my "recipe" for chili. It starts with the beans; if I do not plan ahead, I use a couple of cans of kidney beans. This week, I did plan ahead. The night before making the chili, I rinsed one pound of dry kidney beans in a colander. I think put them in boiling water in a large stock pot, boiling, covered, for a full two minutes. I then turned off the burner and left them on the stove overnight to soak and expand. In the morning, I rinsed them again in a colander and set them aside. I also set aside the stock pot -- I do not use it for chili.

The next step is almost always to brown -- in our heavy, indispensable cast-iron skillet -- about a pound of ground turkey, ground beef or sausage. In recent years this has often been sweet and/or hot Italian sausage, casings removed. In this case, however, the chili was Pam's recommendation for doing something a bit different with the steak leftover from what I had grilled on Sunday. In this case, I had given it a good rub of coffee and chili powder before grilling it to medium rare, using some very delicious bottled sauce. I grilled that to medium rare, and we had a delicious linner on Sunday, but with far more steak than we needed.

Hence, a departure from the usual ground meats -- I cut the steak into small cubes, heated up a bit of olive oil in the skillet, and browned it while chopping the veg -- onion, red and green bell peppers, a jalapeño (should have used two), and a few cloves of garlic. These I sauteed until just slightly softened, adding a bunch of seasonings -- black pepper, cayenne, cumin, basil, oregano, and a bit of cinnamon. This last was just a pinch (and actually, there had been some in the original steak rub); for measuring the other spices, the question is only whether to pour it on with an overhand or underhand shake.

My chili is another one of those dishes that is more photogenic at some stage
 in the middle of the process than it is as a final product.

I spooned all of this into our 1987 wedding-gift crockpot and then added the beans, a few cans of crushed,whole, and diced tomatoes, and a couple of bay leaves. I stirred thoroughly, cutting the larger tomatoes with the side of the spoon, and simmered -- covered -- on high. I restirred every hour or so and declared this chili ready after only 6-7 hours.

Near the end, Pam made simply splendid biscuits on our baking stone and we enjoyed this with some  -- as one might guess -- Malbec from Mendoza. We agreed that the chili was tasty, though with a notably different texture. It was a very good use of the steak, but I'm still partial to the sausage version.

Lagniappe

Leftovers from our leftovers: After having chili for a couple of days, Pam suggested an easy lunch: nachos. I preheated the oven to 350F and spooned chili over a layer of chips. After it heated for about 10 minutes, I added a freshly-shredded mix of cheddar and pepper-jack. At the table, we added salsa and sour cream.

It was a good excuse to use one of our cool talavera plates. We store them on the kitchen walls for easy access and decorative value between uses.

One Roast -- Four Sequestered Meals

Favored caption: Low and Slow
Alternate caption: Wash Me!

We keep our Big Green Egg on a very open, covered patio, which allows me to use it without much regard to weather. When taking the photo above, I realized that it means this vital cooking machine never gets a rinse.

Anyway, the key to this ancient cooking method is to get the temperature right and then leave it alone. In this case, the idea was to stay as close to 250F as possible over the course of 5 hours. At 4 hours I realized I had let it dip just under 200, but I opened the vents and got it back up to about 275, and left it for an extra half hour.

The entire time it was smoking -- complete with some hickory chips -- I did not once check on the pork shoulder inside. I was able to restrain myself because I had succeeded in 2017 with a pork butt, which I described in detail in There's the Rub!

We buy a small amount of local, naturally raised meats, rather than a large amount of cheap, factory-raised meat. The "it" in the previous paragraph is free-range, local pork shoulder from Crescent Ridge in Sharon, where most of the meat we buy comes from. Most of the rest comes from J.H. Beaulieu in Fairhaven.

Spicehound, by way of Crescent Ridge

This time I followed essentially the same process, with different details. The rub was an almost random mix of about ten savory spices at hand, plus a bit of chili-cocoa powder. (Yes, that is something likely to be in our kitchens at any time, without a special shopping trip.) I gave myself a break and included barbeque sauce in our Crescent Ridge order. Shortly before removing the roast, I whisked -- over medium-low heat -- some of the sauce with a ginger-honey white balsamic from (you guessed it) our friends at L.O.V.E. 

Something I neglected to describe in the 2017 post is how to pull the pork. While it is very hot and tender, it can be shredded easily in the pan with two forks. I shredded just enough for what we would need that evening and the next afternoon.

Two More Meals

I am writing this during the current pandemic because it is not only a Big Green Egg story -- it is more importantly a story about finding ways to eat well with what is in the house, in order to reduce shopping trips. Our state is a leader in adhering to social distancing, and our county is a leader within the state. This means we are doing pretty well at following not only the letter of the regulations -- keeping only essential businesses open -- but also the spirit: making VERY efficient use of our time in those businesses. So during this crisis we have spread out our typically frequent trips to be a week or more apart, buying a variety of foods that can be combined in different ways to keep meals interesting and to preclude dashing back in for one or two items (which I usually do several times a week).

This evening was exhibit A: I had bought some tortillas and several different cheeses. I had one specific dish in mind -- my famous sweet-potato quesadillas -- but also a vague notion that we would find something to do with the rest.

And thus was born the pulled-pork quesadilla! I should have taken a photo of process. Because the pork had now been in the fridge a couple of days, it was not fork-tender. I heated some oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet and put a hunk of the pork shoulder in, over medium heat. I then used a fork and small knife to pull the pork and occasionally slice it, until it was in small enough chunks to facilitate two-fork pulling. Once it was heated through, I added about a quarter-cup of water to the pan and simmered for a few minutes so that the pork would be especially tender again. Because of the rub, I had no need to add spices at this stage. While heating a small amount of oil on our cast-iron griddle, I divided the pork between two tortillas (staying on one half of each -- I should have taken a photo).

And one more meal to come. Whenever I talk to my mom by phone in Annapolis, she asks -- knowing that we cook. a lot -- "What you having good for dinner?" And with the pandemic we're talking more often than usual.  On Saturday, I replied that I was roasting the pork shoulder, and she started talking about pot pies. We had many, many of the Swanson frozen variety when I was a kid, but then a couple times a year she would make one for real.

So that is what is going to happen with the remainder of this roast: good ol' Virginia pot pie with a flaky crust top, vegetables, and white sauce. I think I want a few more vegetables, so we are going to freeze this just for a bit -- to make better use of a shopping trip a week or so from now.

Two easy corn and tomato salads for summer

Corn Salad with Tomatoes, Feta, and Mint
As is often the case with New York Times Cooking recipes, the name of the dish is the ingredient list. In this case, olive oil is the only additional ingredient, but as it turns out, I didn't use it anyway. I had saved the recipe a few days ago, but I couldn't open the recipe online last night when I made the salad so I wasn't able to determine if I was missing anything. And it was fine without the olive oil. I used cherry tomatoes, and fresh sweet corn from the local farmer's market, and mint from my garden. Everything was sweet and fresh.

Update: One perk I have at my job is that my office is next to a meeting room where food is often served. Any leftover food is fair game to take home (I keep Tupperware in my office for just this reason). The day after I made this salad I cut up a cooked chicken breast (procured from the meeting room) and mixed it with the leftover salad for a cool, summer main dish. Both the salad and the chicken's flavor were improved. 

Sweet Corn Salad
Also from the New York Times, this has some overlap with the previous recipe, but in fact has a few more ingredients. The corn, tomatoes, spring onions, and basil were all procured at the farmer's market. I skipped the marjoram. James and I both agreed that the red wine vinegar was overkill. The acidity from the tomatoes would have sufficed. Otherwise, another simple, sweet summer salad.

Loco Moco

We've had a bit of a hiatus on keeping up with trying new recipes, but mostly it's because we were having new experiences traveling in South America to see a total eclipse of the sun, and tasting wine.

But we're back now and ready to take on some new cooking challenges. James made cheeseburgers on Wednesday night, and we had about 1/2 pound of leftover ground beef so I went to the New York Times cooking page to find something new we could do with it. Loco Moco is a Hawaiian dish. I selected it because we already had much of what we needed. It was a bit tricky getting everything timed to be ready at the same time (burgers, fried eggs, rice, caramelized onion) and that was without actually making the gravy indicated in step four.

The result was good, and flavorful. I found that I liked it best when I had a taste of everything on my fork and I expect it would have been better with the gravy. Next time I will not skip that part.

Burned Toast Soup

Two weeks ago one of James' colleagues brought him some bread from her brother's bakery - a loaf of sourdough and a loaf of rye. We used most of it to make some sandwiches, but as we were getting down to the tiny pieces and the heels, this recipe showed up on my Facebook feed. Since it called for bacon (which we already had on hand) and sourdough bread it seemed like a good thing to try. It is not difficult to make, although it calls for several rounds of "letting it stand", so it does take more time than one might expect. I also make a small mess with the immersion blender. The soup splattered out of the pot, and onto my clothes, as well as the stove top and kitchen walls. We used both the last bits of the sourdough and the rye, and the flavor of the rye was quite detectable. It was a good recipe for using up the last few pieces of bacon and the bread that was beginning to go stale, but I wouldn't make it again otherwise.

Birthday leftovers

Some thirty years ago James and I spent our wedding night at a hotel in Columbia, Maryland. The following morning we had breakfast at a restaurant on Main Street in Historic Ellicott City called Side Streets. The restaurant is long gone, but we have a lasting memory of the delicious first meal of our first full day of married life - an Eggs Benedict-esque repast made with crab meat in lieu of ham.

I was inspired by the leftovers of my birthday meal (Oysters à la Gino) to make something similar to our matrimonial breakfast for brunch on Memorial day. All of the oysters got eaten at dinner on Saturday, but there was a fair amount of crab and bacon filling leftover, which James baked in a tiny casserole dish. I spread some of this filling on each of two pieces on Naan bread and broiled for about a minute. Meanwhile I fried two eggs, and then placed one on top of each of the crab/bacon/Naan piles. I added some shredded Parmesan cheese and then broiled again for another minute or so until the cheese melted. Nothing wrong with this meal, except that I wish there were more!

And Now a Pie

Tonight's dinner was a two-step, leftover invention. A fortnight ago, I had made Chipotle Orange Roast Chicken, which was a sweet-hot, wonderful thing. And despite three decades of Latin and Southwest cooking, it was the first time I had purchased a can of peppers in adobo sauce.

One can; three meals

Even that small can had been more than I needed, so I put the rest in a glass jar in the fridge (this is a much better way to store things than are plastic containers). A week later, I made simple burritos with the rest of the sauce. I boiled some boneless chicken thighs and shredded them with two forks as I cooked them in oil with garlic and onion. I then added a adobo sauce and a small can of tomato paste (to moderate the intense flavor of the chilis) and a bit of water. This made a lovely filling for burritos. I could have included some rice for balance, but it was quite good as it was.

What does this have to do with pie? We -- and especially Pam -- have been intrigued by the Indian flatbread naan of late, and decided that our weekend meals would be small pies made with these breads, a package of which we had purchased at Costco. Pam heated the oven, put two naan breads on a cookie sheet, and divided the leftover burrito filling between them. She topped each with shredded pepper-jack cheese from Cabot (our regional farmer-owned dairy cooperative). This made two delicious and filling pies, which we topped with Cabot sour cream.

The pies paired perfectly with a Merlot made from Long Island grapes and vinted across the Acushnet River from us at Travessia in downtown New Bedford.

Said Chowder

Herewith, the recipe for the chowder I made from ingredients left over from Pam's excellent clams-and-linguine dish the night before. Somehow the 2 pounds of clams recommended at Kylers ended up being more than 3, which was more than plenty for the excellent pasta Pam prepared.

We had plenty of broth (wine, EVOO, onion, garlic) and plenty of clams remaining. So I consulted the basic chowder recipe on AllRecipes. We decided not to purchase bacon for this, but did begin by sauteing a small, finely-chopped onion in a bit of bacon fat reserved from recent cooking. Although there were already onions in the broth Pam had prepared, this allowed for some newly caramelized flavor to begin the dish.

Once the onion was slightly browned, I added Pam's broth, instead of the water called for here, and some diced red-skin potatoes. While this was cooking, I removed the clams from their shells and trimmed them. When the potatoes were tender, I added about a pint of half-and-half, the clams, and the butter.

As this was gently heating, I whisked a tablespoon of flour into a small dish of water, and added it for thickening. Clam chowder comes in two kinds -- Manhattan (red) and New England (white). And the New England kind comes in two sub-kinds -- authentic (thin) and delicious (thick). I actually enjoy the authentic stuff when expertly made, but for my own purposes, the thick stuff was perfect. I did not, however, overdo it -- this was still a chowder, not a solid object!

Final verdict: this turned out quite well -- wine, bacon, butter and cream each playing a key role, I suppose, and we will be back to Kylers for more clams soon.

Rice Pizza

Rice Pizza? What could that be?

Following some nice tortillas Sunday and Asian carry-out on Monday, we found ourselves with a bit of a surplus of rice at Casa Hayes-Boh, and took to the cookbook shelf to see how we might use it. My first inclination was to reprise the Tabasco-enhanced Country Captain Chicken we had enjoyed a couple of weeks ago, but since chicken had been featured in both the Asian dinners and the leftover Asian lunches, Pam suggested pulling the essential Jane Brody's Good Food Book from the shelf.

I found a lot of entries under "rice" in the index, including all kinds of items about rice -- its preparation, nutrition, measurement, and so on. But I also found the intriguing "Rice-Crust Pizza" on page 480 and decided to give it a try, modifying the quantities, mainly by sheer guesswork.

I began by beating one egg and combining it with the cooked rice (we had just a bit more than a cup and a generous pile of shredded mozzarella). I applied olive oil to a glass pie pan and pressed this mixture into it. I then placed the pan in a 450F oven for 30 minutes.

Then I combined tomato sauce (after opening the wrong can, I pureed one can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste to get a thick sauce), dried oregano and basil, and freshly minced garlic. When the crust was somewhat browned, I spread this sauce on generously (having once worked at a pizza place where sauce was rationed, I do not like to skimp!). I then added some sliced mushrooms (and favorite topping would do) and freshly shredded parmesan.

Crisis averted! While it baked a further ten minutes, I set about to open the inevitable Malbec, breaking a corkscrew in the process. We have been cursed with poorly-made corkscrews and can-openers of late, but we are not to let a simple failure get between us and a nice wine pairing. After a miserable attempt with channel lock pliers, I retrieved our spare cork  jack from the car and wrested the cork from the bottle.

Victory is ours!

We then removed the small pizza pie from the oven. Having the cheese IN the crust made for a nice extra bit of crunchity goodness. We'll be doing this again, I'm sure!

Special Salad

Last night James and I bought some stuffed cod at Kyler's Catch Seafood Market and brought it back to our Whaling House for me to bake while he went Whaleboat rowing. I knew we didn't have many options in the way of vegetable or salad at the house and found only a small wilting carrot and a clementine on the downturn in the refrigerator. Not one to waste food I decided I was going to make a salad with them. I found some raisins and slivered almonds in the cupboard and so I shredded the carrot, and sectioned the clementine, removed the membrane, and added the pulp to the carrots. I threw in a handful each of the raisins and almonds. It seemed like it needed a dressing, so I went back to the cupboard where I found a grapefruit/raspberry vinaigrette - a free gift sent along with our last order from L.O.V.E. It turned out to be a perfect topping. This was sublime. I loved that it was sweet, crunchy and chewy. I will definitely make this again, but next time I will plan ahead and make sure we have additional carrots and oranges so that I can have a bigger serving!

Northern Hash

The best thing about being a teacher is what I gain from my students. Usually these gains are intangible -- lessons learned and the satisfaction of lessons taught. But sometimes my students bring small but tangible gifts, occasionally things I would never find on my own.

I have been especially fortunate this pre-holiday week, in which students have given me highball glasses etched as globes, a beer home-brewed from tea, a coffee-themed deck of playing cards, and a can of salmon caught and canned just this side of the Arctic circle at Naknek, Alaska (58°44′23″N; 156°58′18″W). Feel free to explore the map at the end of this post.

Each of these gifts comes with a story, in the case of the salmon, the student had been living in nearby King Salmon last summer, when she was taking my online class that included a lot of discussion of Carl Safina's writings on Alaska and other places at the front lines of climate change.

So this week I found this can of salmon perched (pun partly intended) on the doorknob of my office, with a note about its provenance, and this morning Pam helped me figure out what to do with it: hash. Seems to be hash season, so this did not take much convincing. Especially since we have had a very hectic week, and Pam identified leftovers that would work perfectly with this gift.

So when I got home today, I fired up the indispensable cast-iron skillet and got to work on a quick and delicious dinner.

First, I heated a generous dollop of olive oil in said pan while finely chopping one half of a white onion. I browned the onion on high heat with a generous sprinkling of black pepper and then added leftover diced, roasted potatoes (see below), and then stirred in the can of salmon. I cooked until crispy -- as Goddess intended hash to be -- and turned and cooked some more. Then I made two divots, placing an egg into each one. I covered the pan and lowered the heat, cooking until the whites were set and the yolks still soft.

This was delicious with bread, butter, and Pinot Noir.

Diced Roasted Potatoes

This is a staple in our house that I "invented" while we were in grad school. I often see commercial packages in the produce aisle that I think allow the purchaser to make an inferior version at greater expense. It goes with many kinds of other dishes, or if those grad-school paychecks are being stretched thin, it can be the main dish.

Quite simply, I pre-heat the oven to 425 and then dice a handful of potatoes (the number depending on the number of diners and the size of the potatoes, perhaps 3 small spuds per diner. I usually peel them, but not completely, leaving about half the skin on. I put the diced potatoes (about 1/2-inch cubes) into a casserole dish with a generous dollop (there it is again) of olive oil. I then add a large amount of paprika, oregano, black pepper, and perhaps a couple other herbs. I roast until it reaches desired crispness, stirring and scraping occasionally. We sometimes serve this with sour cream or plain yogurt.

Usually, there are no leftovers, regardless of how much I've made. But today there was just enough for some perfect hash.

Grilled Cheese and Fig Jam sandwiches

Sometime in the recent past I found a recipe on the web for this sandwich. I don't remember now where it came from, but it didn't matter too much as I didn't really need a "recipe" since knowing the the name of the dish sufficed for instructions. I won't explain here what I did either, but I will elaborate to say that I used Fig and Ginger jam, and cheddar cheese to make the sandwiches. We ate them with a side of nachos made from the leftover filling of the sloppy joe's we had the night before. The meal was complemented with sangria. All good.

Kitchen Sink leftovers

Last night's dinner was put together with a variety of leftovers, combined with some of the vegetables I froze over the summer from our CSA.

I started by sauteeing an onion and some garlic scrape (CSA), in a large cast iron pot and added some ground beef. Once the beef was browned, I added some diced celery (CSA); parsley (CSA); and dried basil. Next I added a 6 oz. can of tomato paste, and 12 oz. of water. When everthing was mixed I added some kale (CSA) and leftover rice. Upon taste testing I found it a bit bland, so I added some red pepper flakes and a tablespoon of the mole leftover from James' adventure a few weeks ago with Champandongo which gave it just the right kick. We topped our servings with shredded cheddar.

Mashed Potato Pancakes

We brought home a bunch of mashed potato leftovers from our Thanksgiving dinner. Fortunately, the Huffington Post provided this list of 19 things to do with mashed potatoes just in time for the holiday. I wasn't even sure which one to prepare as so many of them looked promising, so I began at the beginning and made the Cheesy Pancakes. It was pretty simple as the potatoes were already mashed all I had to do was add some shredded cheddar cheese and some chopped scallions and form them into patties. They cooked quickly and easily, and were quite tasty topped with some sour cream.

Feast with Friends

Cranberries (James)

The day before Thanksgiving, as an icy drizzle began to fall on our town, I called a friend a few blocks away, to let her know I would be driving to her house. She waited at the door, so that she would be ready to trot out with a precious cargo -- a large bag of large cranberries -- so that I could rush them from her freezer to ours.

During this year's harvest, she had been moonlighting in quality control at Ocean Spray, the grower-owned cooperative that markets our region's most important crop. Work in QC means taking samples that cannot be put back into the commercial supply chain, so our friend has more delicious cranberries than she can handle, and she rightly surmised that we would put some of them to good use. 

Image: Chiltepin was Chile of the Month last April for the World of Chiles online chile club.

Rather than our usual rum-based preparation, we decided to try something from our previous home in Arizona, from a survey of Thanksgiving culinary traditions recently published in the NY Times. Of course cranberries do not grow in Arizona, but chiles do, so this would be another entry in our sweet-hot series.

I made a few substitutions in the recipe; if it is successful, I'll invest some time next year in getting it right. First, whereas our local grocery store in Tucson had an entire aisle dedicated to chile peppers, here our options are much narrower. I am certain I could have found the chiltepin called for in this recipe, but used some dried peppers of unknown provenance we keep on hand for just such emergencies. Two other omissions I cannot blame on geography: I simply forgot to put a lime and an orange on my shopping list, and decided four grocery runs in two days would have to be my limit. So I omitted the lime-zest garnish and substituted a splash of Triple Sec for the orange zest.

Preparation was quite simple, actually: I brought everything (including the cranberries directly from the freezer) to a simmer in our indispensable cast-iron skillet and then kept it on a very low simmer for about 20 minutes. I then transferred it back to the fridge.

I am especially intrigued by the chiltepin, which resembles both coffee and cranberry fruits. We have a good location for chiles in the sunny front yard of our house, so hope to have some harvested and dried by this time next year.

The Bird (James)
As we have for the past couple of years, we purchased a free-range turkey from Misty Knoll Farms in Vermont, delivered as part of our regular dairy order from Crescent Ridge. Among the many things for which we are thankful are companies such as these, and our financial ability to support them. One should not ask why ethical, healthy food is so expensive, but rather what corners are cut to make so many other foods relatively cheap. A few years ago, we learned that we could free up room in the ovens -- and have better turkey -- if we prepared the turkey outside. Rob began preparing the coals in an ordinary grill early in the morning, and when we arrived he put a pan on them to hold some white wine and to catch drippings. I had rubbed the turkey with a paste of paprika, garlic, and olive oil, and we set it right on the grilling surface, but over such low heat that it just roasted in a winy mist. As it neared the safe-food target temperature, Rob added a couple of slivers of milled oak for smoking. (Stuffing, by the way, was prepared in separate baking pans.)

Roasted, not grilled.

Beets from the Farm Box (Pam)
Our last farm box pick up for this season was several weeks ago. We had eaten and/or frozen most of what we had from this year's "harvest," except for the last of the beets. We are not crazy about beets, and have tried all manner of ways of preparing them to hide the flavor. Some recipes have turned out better than others. I ran a search on allrecipes.com for beets to see if there was something new to try and found a recipe actually called Thanksgiving Beets which was pretty simple, and made use of a lot of spices. so I figured it would do a good job in covering the bitterness that we don't like. Although there were not a lot of beets, and there was a fair number of people (13) at dinner, only about half of this dish was eaten. We did have one true beet lover at the meal though, who was happy to take all the leftovers.

Dessert (Pam)
One of the special things about Thanksgiving dinner is that there are so many desserts to try. This year's options included homemade double-crust apple pie; homemade pumpkin pie; homemade bread pudding; homemade Dark Chocolate Guinness Cake with Bailey's Cream Cheese Icing (Pam's contribution). I emphasize that all of these are homemade because virtually all those who partook in yesterday's meal also had a hand in preparing it.

We got the Bailey's Bristol Cream a few months ago from an estate sale (the same one where I got the biggest bottle of wine. Ever. Which was also enjoyed at yesterday's dinner). The cake was rich, but not too sweet, and appeared to be a bigger hit than the beets.

It was a feast of foodies, with many of the victuals grown locally, in some cases at the same house where they were prepared.

Franksgiving Follow-Up

Thanksgiving is the holiday that keeps on giving -- in the form of leftovers -- and as we continue to reflect with gratitude on our many blessings, we also continue the feast, beginning with our Franksgiving hash.