I have very nearly perfected our Thanksgiving menu, it’s almost exactly the same as last year’s – there’s really only room to add one side dish and change up the turkey recipe (which I choose but leave to my mom to execute since I’m a [mostly] veggie). This year was kicked off with Ezra Pound Cake’s (Mom’s) Monkey Bread.

It’s a bit of a cheat seeing as it’s just refrigerated biscuits dipped in butter and cinnamon sugar, but it was definitely a tasty way to start the day!

Then we had to face the problem of lunch. Since we always, always miss our 4:00 target eating time, we usually end up with the dilemma of how much to eat at lunchtime. I solved that this year by doing a small spread of appetizers for us to munch on around lunchtime, just to tide us over to dinner. We had salmon spread with crackers, apple and goat cheese tartlets (of the puff pastry variety, not short pastry), and pecorino romano with apples and fig jam (which Jillian made for one of our food parties and I definitely inhaled more than my fair share).

I changed the turkey recipe to this black pepper-pomegranate molasses glazed one since my mom said they didn’t want to do a brined one. Reports were that it was pretty tasty! (It certainly smelled very yummy.) And we made roasted garlic mashed potatoes which were very, very tasty. Our new side dish was a simple but tasty one – roasted Brussels sprouts.

Roasting is really the only way to go with Brussels sprouts and Ina’s right – they should be super-salty, like French fries. (These were very good at the time, but I notice that they seem to be outlasting the rest of the leftovers, so they’ll probably be switched out next year in favor of some newfangled recipe I want to try.)

The other place that I’m usually open to some change is in the desserts. Usually I do a rum pumpkin chiffon pie, but this year I was tempted to stray by this bourbon pumpkin cheesecake (instead of the genoise base or a graham cracker crust, I went with a gingersnap crumb crust [which usually accompanies the rum pumpkin chiffon pie]).

My mom always requests a pecan pie (which is not one of my favorites) so I thought I’d switch it up a little bit and make Ezra Pound Cake’s (again) recipe for Southern Comfort pecan pie.

And I’m always up for a cocktail, so since pomegranate was featuring in the turkey and the decoration for the cheesecake, I chose pomegranate cosmos which were super-tasty but stronger than they seemed!

Now to eat all these yummy leftovers over the next week or so!

What do you have for dinner the night before you are inundated with yummy, yummy food?

If you answered “pear and gorgonzola tartlets,” you’d be correct!

I wasn’t sure how these would go over with my parents because of the gorgonzola cheese (it is sort of an acquired taste being such a strong cheese), but it was a hit (unless they were lying which is entirely possible). The sweetness of the pear was a nice contrast to the sort of bitter gorgonzola, so that might have helped a bit. At any rate, I liked them very much and was excited to get to use my new, super-cute mini-tart pans complete with removable bottoms. (Oh, and this is the crust recipe I used since one wasn’t given in the original recipe.)

Technically I should have said ‘a couple’ because I only have two things to share, but that word’s too long for an already long enough post title, so:

1. I got lost in YouTube the other day (I wandered in via Wikipedia) and ended up discovering Know Your Meme at the Internet Meme Database, which is super cool – I watched all their videos even when I didn’t know what they were talking about.

2. And they, or more specifically, their video about autotune, led me to this which I am now completely obsessed with:

Like seriously. I sing it in the shower and I made it into a ringtone (which is problematic because I end up wanting to listen to it instead of answering the phone).

3. Oh, look, my post title was accurate after all. You all know that I am firmly in the book camp when it comes to the whole book vs. e-book debate, but this comic that Lucy Knisely posted at her blog really makes me want to like e-books. Regardless of how I feel about e-books, I do know that I adore Lucy Knisely and her comics. Nobody should be able to write AND draw so well!

…I’m DREADFULLY behind on my NaNoWriMo. I managed a fairly big push today, mostly by being very bad and skipping ahead to write a scene that won’t happen for quite some time but that I had pretty set in my head. That ate up about 2,000 words, but still. (I ought to have hit approximately 16,000 words today and I think I’ve only just barely hit 5,000.)

Part of the reason I’m behind is that I am the world’s best procrastinator and managed to make no less than two soups, Brian’s Potato Cheese Soup (of which I have no photo, but you know what soup looks like) and Sweet Potato, Corn, and Jalapeno Bisque, both of which were very tasty. The potato cheese soup was pretty traditional. The sweet potato, corn, and jalapeno bisque is less so, but still very, very good – it’s a little sweeter than I was imagining, but the molasses adds a nice smokey flavor to it and the jalapeno and cayenne bring out a warmth that cuts through the sweetness.

Accompanying that, I also made cornbread and honey butter to go with it. Mostly because I had extra buttermilk left over from the butternut squash casserole I made a while ago and from the lemon cake I made after that to try and use up the rest of my buttermilk. I had to do a bit of searching for a cornbread recipe – I prefer sweeter cornbread – and stumbled across this one along the way. It’s perfect – moist and sweet (without being cake-sweet or anything). Yum!

Then I made the aforementioned lemon cake from Ina’s recipe (how can you go wrong, right?). It was very easy – though my hand got very tired from zesting and juicing all those lemons! – and very tasty. I decided to put this in the freezer since I also have the cornbread to get through, so I’ll try and remember to let you know how well it survives that experience.

And then I made Linguine with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce and Pine Nuts. I had never done the whole char-the-vegetable-and-the-skin-comes-right-off thing and this was the first time I’d used my broiler here, but it all went off without a hitch and ended up being super-tasty. I think I might add some goat cheese next time, but it was still very good even without it.

And, quite by accident, I also discovered a very tasty cocktail called an Applejack Rabbit. I happened to have calvados around from making El Grito and lemons from making the lemon cake and maple syrup because I love waffles and always have it around, so I whipped one up (because I don’t really know what to do with the calvados) and it’s super-super tasty and, just as the original recipe says, perfect for fall!

So all of that (and this post) are the reason my NaNoWriMo total is so low. That and the fact that it is much harder than I was expecting! But I’m plowing ahead still – I may not actually hit 50,000, but anything’s better than nothing, I suppose. Wish me better luck this week! Janis, I hope you’re making better progress than I have been…

Holy cats, this is harder than I thought it would be! I’ve been staring at the computer all day (1, 667 words a day does not leave me time to write it out and then type it in) and have only done 1,452 words so far. I’m not giving up yet – I still have an hour before it’s time for me to go to bed…

I’m not planning on posting the whole thing here, but I thought I’d at least give you my first paragraph:

Ned had no idea where he was. It was dark and cold and there were loud noises that sounded like explosions and he had no idea where he was. Actually, that wasn’t true. Ned knew exactly where he was. He was huddled in a doorway in the high street just outside the tube station and the longer he sat there, the clearer it became that, although he knew where he was, what he didn’t know was when he was.

I’m hoping I can get the widget in my sidebar here to work eventually, but, failing that, I’ll at least keep you posted as to my progress. Wish me luck!

How are you doing, Janis?

Saturday afternoon was a beautiful fall day…

…so my dad and I headed out to Allerton Park to enjoy the weather…

…and fly a kite…

…(like you do).

I’m sure I have a kite with a brontosaurus on it somewhere, but I could only find the circle-of-dolphins one, so we were slightly less-than-cool, but it was still fun.

And then we watched The Godfather. It was very good – I hadn’t started out being in the mood to watch a 3-hour mobster drama, but it ended up making me an offer I couldn’t refuse (although some of the drama of the last hour or so was interrupted by trick-or-treaters, but still…).

Holy cats, there are so many great Halloween-inspired recipes out there, but I finally couldn’t resist this one (I really, really want to make this one, but managed to refrain…for now).

I found the brain mold here, the candy melts from Jo-Ann’s, and used good old Martha’s red velvet cupcake and cream cheese frosting recipes. Also, I’m a little ashamed to say, I did not actually make my own caramel sauce (I bought it). Shh!

This was my first time working with a candy mold and, I have to say, it was actually pretty easy! I haven’t actually tasted a cupcake yet (the brains are sweet but kind of bland) because I only have the exact right number to share with people tomorrow – hopefully they’re tasty…

*Apologies for the worse-than-usual photos – my mom has jetted off on a cruise, leaving my dad and me to entertain each other with Wii evenings and Godfather marathons, and also took her camera, leaving me to take photos with Edward (I love you, Edward, but you don’t do close-ups well). Go and look at the originals again, they’re much better.

CASSEROLE!

Casseroles are not usually my thing – a bunch of mushy things baked together so that they become even more mushy and topped with those fried onion things or whatever they are? Not my idea of tasty. But this?

Is tasty.

I’ve been on a fall foods kick lately – you should see the bookmarks I have, they are full of apples and pumpkins and squash and cinnamon. Lovely, warm, and comforting foods. When I saw this Butternut Squash Casserole on Ezra Pound Cake, I was hooked! And I’m glad I managed to overcome my prejudice against casseroles because this is super duper. (Fair enough, put anything with enough cheese and it becomes delicious by association.)

I did halve the recipe because there is only one of me and I don’t need to try and feed 8 to 10 people (or myself for 8 to 10 days) and it worked out well in my 8×8 baking dish. I also forgot to add the spinach (well, arugula because I had some to get rid of), so I decided to just serve it on a bed of arugula instead. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the pumpkin seeds – it could be because I used store bought ones – they got very chewy after being baked for an hour and, frankly, it’s hard work, especially when compared to the amount of chewing required for the rest of the casserole.

Well, now that all the fall shows have officially started up (Chuck! Better Off Ted! Mysterious fate of Scrubs! Why are you making me wait until January?!), I thought I’d recap who I thought was off to a good start and who I’d given up on:

And the winners are:

1. 30 Rock
2. The Office
3. Cougar Town
4. Glee
5. Modern Family
6. The Big Bang Theory
7. HIMYM (They’re only this low on the list because Lily and Marshall are still stuck as stereotypes of themselves and we need to get over the novelty of Robin and Barney.)
8. Community (They stumbled a bit after a strong premiere episode, but the last couple have been getting better again.)
9. Smallville (Oh, my god, how is this show so boring?! I miss Lana, Lex, Lionel, Smallville, and the Kents and I HATE Oliver Queen when they try to give him an entire episode and I wish someone would kill off Tess already and why is Clark wearing black (stop angsting and get over yourself)?! Also Zod is a lot less cool than I imagined him to be. Even Chloe seems to be less awesome this season which I didn’t think possible – because Chloe is super awesome – but I’m still not ready to give up on it yet.)

The Losers

1. The Vampire Diaries (I know quite a few people like this show, but it’s one I’d have to get a hold of later on and it didn’t intrigue me enough to make it worth the effort.)
2. Heroes (It was so bad last season – and the one before that – that I didn’t even try.)
3. The Simpsons (It makes me sad to see how far they’ve fallen – I gave up halfway through last season and couldn’t bring myself to try again.)

p.s. – I forgot House! House should be in the winners category, but I still have the second half of the fifth season to watch and it’s up against HIMYM so I have to watch it later anyway. But once I catch up, I’m sure it’ll be on the winners list.

So the other night, after I’d finished dinner, I decided that I wanted something sweet and realised that I didn’t have any more Oreos in the house (my chocolate experiment is only going kind of well and, for the most part, it’s okay if it doesn’t, but I will definitely miss Oreos if I go off it again). What I did have was leftover maple cream cheese frosting from the pumpkin whoopie pies I made a while ago and the beginnings of the batter for Amish cinnamon bread (I even had the required Jello vanilla pudding packet) in the freezer.

I put the two together and got this:

It’s very good (how could it not be, really?). The main problem was that, even though the cake has three layers, I only baked two cakes. I cut off the top of one of them to make a level surface for stacking which left me with an extra top of a cake to eat (which is the best part with the crunchy cinnamon sugar topping).

I finished it easily in about two days, eating a third of it standing in the kitchen, a third of it for dessert that evening, and the rest the following morning for breakfast. D:

I don’t really have a recipe for you, but if you do some Googling, you can find recipes for the bread and for the starter. Some of the starter recipes have yeast in the starter and some of them are just milk, flour, and sugar. The batter keeps well in the freezer, just make sure you go through the whole 10-day ritual with the last one so you’ll have more to tuck away for later.