Day 286: Leek & Potato Soup, Roast Turkey, Stuffing, Acorn Squash, Mashed Potatoes, Honeyed Carrots, Brussels Sprouts with Almonds, Cranberry-Rhubarb Sauce, Pumpkin Pie and Apple Browned Butter Bliss
I didn’t think I ate too much until I went and listed it. No wonder I’ve managed to fill out even my PJ pants. As usual, I ate too many warm, puffy-white Pillsbury Crescent Rolls (this is the only night we have them) between oven and table before I even started on dinner. (As I was rolling them up, I snuck a chunk of my Dad’s 70% cocoa Lindt chocolate into the middle of one I then arranged crookedly in one corner of the cookie sheet so I could distinguish it from the others. Kind of a lowbrow chocolate croissant.)
Everyone contributed something: I did the soup (threw all the ingredients, including two leeks the size of baseball bats, in the slow cooker last night and left it, then pureed with a hand-held immersion blender right in the pot), cranberry-rhubarb sauce and dessert, and nothing was that elaborate, really; even the squash was just thrown in the microwave and the baby carrots quickly steamed and drizzled with honey. My sister cut simmered Brussels sprouts in half and browned them with some sliced almonds, and my mom did the turkey and plain old bread, onion and sage (the very best kind) stuffing.
I had to make the requisite pumpkin pie, but also made another browned butter bliss: apple this time, as it’s the season for them, and I didn’t have the gumption today (after teaching a hands-on risotto class) to make pumpkin and apple pie. To make the bliss I sliced unpeeled Jonagold apples straight into a baking dish, stirred up the butter-sugar-egg-flour batter, spread it over the apples and baked it until it was bubbly; the result was fantastic rewarmed in my Mom’s oven while we ate dinner and served with softened vanilla ice cream. Next I must try it with pears. Or maybe pears and fresh cranberries.
Must go finish digesting.
Happy Thanksgiving, Julie!
Wait a minute! WAIT A MINUTE!! Since when have the Van Rosendaals been eating BRUSSEL SPROUTS?! Whoa Baby! You sure that isn’t a TYPO? Can’t believe it. Would love to claim it was my influence after all these years. See? There’s hope yet for your mother — someday, she’s gonna loooooooove her vegies. It just takes time 🙂
Nope, she hates them. My dad hates even having Brussels sprouts on the table, and my mom eats one annually – at Thanksgiving. Chokes it down, is more like it. We all love them though, so we have overridden the no B.S. rule.
Mmmmmm…all so good.
I agree about the stuffing, it is the best. This year my sister made a rice stuffing…I’m sure it was tasty, but I was so disappointed! Where’s the bread, the sage, the onion? Ah well…I’m a little like Ursula from the Little Mermaid…”Waisting away to practically nothing!” as my “statuesque” curves tell the true tale, and the need for expand-a-waist pants…hey where are my old maternity pants hiding?! So, missing out on stuffing is probably a good thing.
Happy Thanksgiving to you!
In my family, it isn’t Thanksgiving (or Christmas) dinner without Brussels sprouts. There are those that hate them, but for the rest of us, we just have to have them. We also have to have homemade cranberry sauce, since I started making it about 10 years ago. Never any canned sauce for us and if that is all there is, we go without.
Your dinner look delicious, and it sounds like you had a great family day.
I finally made Browned Butter Bliss tonight (with four smallish Empire apples). I was serving even numbers from each camp in the great battle of cake vs. pie. We unanimously agreed that the Browned Butter Bliss is delicious – and we all claimed it as a victory for our own side. Pie lovers think it’s a pie! Cake lovers call it a cake! I really do think that it’s the miraculous middle-ground that we’ve needed to come to a peaceful resolution of this age-old war.
(We just need to figure out whether to call it a pie-cake or a cake-pie)