26 November 2011
Thanksgiving
Here's what separates me from food bloggers who make a living out of it: I post about the biggest food day of the year three days after the fact instead of three days before. Guess I'll keep my day job.
Bryant flew in from Las Vegas and he, Sunny and I drove down to East Moline, IL to see our dad. He just bought a house. So we packed up are new Subaru Impreza, Emily, and drove down. The nice think about Emily is that she had four seats and is just all around pleasant to take on road trips. Where our Ford Ranger is better is in having a lot of room for things. We've been spoiled. Now we have to re-learn to pack light, which means planning ahead.
So here's what my Thanksgiving was all about:
That's Tofurky in the middle. I prepared it just like I did last year, except I had forgotten how I'd done it. I had to check my blog post from last year, and I realized I needed carrots, onion and celery. Luckily I had baby carrots and onion, and I don't like celery anyway.
There's a sweet potato dinner roll at about 10 o'clock. I'm not sure what the exact recipe was. Sunny made it, and I think she got the recipe from allrecipes.com. Last year she used Egg Replacer, but we didn't have that this year, so we used apple sauce and baking powder.
1/4 c Applesauce and
1/2 t Baking Powder
Mix it together and it equals one egg.
We couldn't even tell they had applesauce in them.
In the bottom there's some mashed potatoes with kale. Bryant made that. It was yummy. Sunny was inspired by it, so when we got home she made her own rendition. Mashed potatoes, turnips and rutabegas (which Microsoft informs me has no H. Why did I think it had an H?) with steamed kale. It's good. I'm eating it right now with a glass of Nouveau.
There's also some beets. Bryant felt bad for the beet in Greatest Grains and decided to buy it.
He also sauteed red cabbage and added lemon juice and freshly ground pepper.
And lastly, Brussels Sprouts:
I've made this a few times now. It's Brussels sprouts, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dried cranberries, pine nuts and rosemary. Stick it in the oven at 400 until its tender. Like I said, I've made it a few times, so obviously I like it. I think Sunny and I have gone through about ten stalks of Brussels sprouts.
We also has apple crisp for dessert. Here's how we've been making it:
Filling (from Sunny's mom, Judy)
8 c sliced apples (I used Macouns)
1/2 can apple juice concentrate
2 T lemon juice
1/2 c sugar
2 t cinnamon
1/4 c almond meal
For the crisp
1 c margarine
1 c brown sugar
1 3/4 c almond meal
1 1/2 c oats
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
Just mix the filling and crisp separately and put them into a 9x13 pan: filling on bottom; crisp on top. Bake at 400 for 25-30 minutes.
It's gluten free, but we forgot to bring almond meal, so we used flour. None of us are gluten intolerant anyway.
So that was pretty much our Thanksgiving.
On our way back to Minneapolis Friday morning, we stopped in Iowa City for coffee from Java House. They brew your coffee right there in front of you. You should check it out, because it's pretty cool. Bryant and I make it a point to stop there whenever we drive through Iowa City.
Then we walked to the New Pioneer Food Co-op for pastries. We got some rhubarb (That's why I though rutabega had an H. It's rhubard that has an H.) scones. Oh my goodness were they light and fluffy and delicious. Alright, I believe that a good scone should be dense, but that's just semantics. These things were so good. We also got some fresh cookies, which were also amazing. If I live in Iowa City I would live between these two establishment and do nothing by walk back and forth drinking coffee and eating pastries.
Alas, I have to work to afford the coffee and pastries, which means I must sleep. I hope you all had fantastic Thanksgivings.
