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Thanksgiving – Advance Prep

My Thanksgiving menu is not especially ambitious this year, but I’m still doing a little advance prep to lighten the load on the actual day.  Here’s my game plan:

  • Sunday 11/16 – make and freeze gravy and cranberry sauce
  • Tuesday 11/18 – make and freeze pie dough (2 bottoms, 1 top)
  • Friday 11/21 – roast pumpkins; make and freeze pumpkin pie filling
  • Tuesday 11/25 – pick-up turkey and start dry brine
  • Wednesday 11/26 – make and chill mashed potatoes; make apple pie, pumpkin pie, and cranberry tart; make stuffing
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Savory Waffles – The Possibilities are Endless

Is your waffle iron suffering from neglect?  A lot of us have acquired a waffle iron on a whim (or perhaps a hand-me-down from someone else who acquired one on a whim), but we don’t actually make waffles very often. Savory waffles are a great way to make more regular use of a waffle iron and to add a little flair to your presentation at lunch and dinner.

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Lucky Foods to Kick Off the New Year

For the past several years, we’ve traveled to Europe over the Christmas holiday and returned on New Year’s Eve, in order to collect airline miles for the year about to end.  So, New Year’s Eve in our family is often a jet-lagged stagger toward a 9:30 bed time, with a little “Happy New Year!” at midnight in the time zone from which we’ve just come.  This year, we stayed home for Christmas, and while we’ve all had our moments of really missing the pace of the quaint European villages we’ve discovered over the years, we’ve discovered that staying home for the holidays has its own quaint and restful pace.

We’ll enter 2013 without jeg lag or any other form of sleep deprivation.  That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll make it past midnight tonight, but we’re OK with that!  We’re hosting a little New Year’s Day open house tomorrow with the obligatory combination of games, football and foods for good luck, and that will be festive enough!

Here’s the menu:

cocoa and spice slow roasted pork and onions

black-eyed pea salad

roasted root vegetable hash

kale caesar salad

fresh-not-fermented sauerkraut with bratwursts

wheat and sesame sandwich rolls

orange and brandy cake

 

 

Happy New Year!