Home Is Wherever Your Family Is

This is my first Thanksgiving away from home.

I know many of my friends have spent their Thanksgivings elsewhere--on campus during undergrad, or with their partner's family, or just on their own--whether because travel was too expensive or because their family was in the middle of shaking up the established order of Thanksgiving rituals, or because for them, Thanksgiving was never a huge holiday.  I always felt saddened by this because for me, Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday.

Thanksgiving in general tends to be a warm and fuzzy holiday: good food, family ties, woolly sweaters and maybe a fire in the fireplace, with the weather getting just cold enough outside for the deck to be a secondary fridge for leftovers (well-protected from raccoons and squirrels, of course).  Even better, my family has a tradition of eating the Thanksgiving meal in the early afternoon--usually around 1 pm--so that the rest of the day can be spent in a cycle of napping, playing Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit, and snacking on leftovers.

When I realized I would have to work on Thanksgiving (people get sick on Thanksgiving, too), I knew I wouldn't be able to go home to my family.  Even if I had the day of Thanksgiving itself off, I have to work on Wednesday and Friday, so going home was out of the question.  Luckily, my brother also decided this year that going home was too far for him to travel.  Instead, he is driving down from the UP and will stay with me, and then on the weekend we will visit our cousin who lives in Chicago now (much cheaper & more manageable than going all the way home to KC).

As the days get closer to the holiday, I started to get the itch to make all the traditional Thanksgiving foods--if we can't go home, maybe I can conjure up all our traditions here.  A few quick searches later and I needed  to make a (rapidly-growing) list of items from the store to make the foods that must be on my Thanksgiving table:
-Turkey breast (for my carnivore brother)
-Trader Joe's vegan "turkey" roast (they were sampling it in the store...it was delicious!) for me
-Mashed potatoes (my spin: with roasted garlic)
-Green bean casserole
-Corn casserole
-Dinner rolls
-Pumpkin pie
+/- some optional dishes that seemed like they should appear, though by now my grocery list was a mile long:
-stuffing (inside of acorn squash from my garden?)
-cranberry sauce (maybe I'll go with the can?)

I have a deep, wide ceramic pasta dish that looks like a flying saucer--I'll be able to bake the stuffing, green bean casserole, and corn casserole together.  Make the pie, rolls, and peel the potatoes the night before and I actually think this is pretty doable.

I'm actually excited to give this a try...preparing a meal like this one takes coordination and a considerable amount of hubris, I suppose, to try and recreate my mother's cooking.  I'm also pretty excited to have my own veggie "turkey" option.  But mostly, I'm just happy and thankful that I'll still get to see some of my family for the holiday.  Even if I can't go home, having my brother here and my cousin a short drive away make it feel like home is actually all around me.

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Recipes

Green bean casserole
1 bag frozen green beans, French cut
~4 oz portabella mushrooms, sliced
1 small onion, diced
2-3 T. butter
2-3 T. flour
~1 c. milk, warmed
S&P
French's fried onions (you have to.  It's required.)

1. Saute the mushrooms and onions in the butter.  S&P to taste.
2. Stir in the flour until the butter is soaked up (should be about equal amounts).  Cook for about a minute.
3. Whisk in the milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, for a minute until the bechamel thickens.
4. Mix in the green beans and spread in a baking dish.
5. Bake at 350 for ~20 minutes, then top with the fried onions and bake another 10-15 minutes, until sauce is bubbly and onions are toasted (but not brown!)

Corn casserole (also known as scalloped corn, corn pudding, and other names)
1 can creamed corn
1 can corn, drained
1/4 c. butter, melted
2 eggs
1 c. sour cream
1 box Jiffy corn bread mix
S (just a bit) &P
optional add-ins (dice or finely chop):
bell pepper
onions
pickled jalapenos, or a can of green chilis, drained
anything your heart desires

1. Mix together all ingredients
2. Bake at 350 30-40 minutes until a knife comes out cleanly.

Mashed potatoes with roasted garlic
potatoes
butter, cubed
cream
roasted garlic
generous S, some P

1. Peel potatoes if desired and cut into medium chunks (the night before if necessary--just keep completely covered in water)
2. Boil potatoes until fork-tender, then drain.
3. Return to the pot in which they were boiled (this will help them dry off a little) and add in butter, roasted garlic, and a splash or two of cream. S&P to taste.
4. Mash by hand, or if you prefer really smooth potatoes, with an electric hand-mixer.
5. You can also add softened cream cheese, herbs, & other seasonings.

Soft dinner rolls (adapted from several recipes around the web, but it's basically a lightly-enriched yeast dough that you roll into balls and bake in a 9x13 pan)
1 T. yeast
1/2 c. warm water
1 c. warm milk
2 T. sugar
2 T. melted butter or oil
1 t. salt
~4 c. flour

1. Combine water, milk, and sugar in a large bowl.  Sprinkle yeast on top and let sit for a couple minutes until it looks bubbly.
2. Stir in melted butter and salt.
3. Add in 3 cups of flour, then add flour in 1/4 to 1/2 cup increments until a soft but workable dough forms.
4. Cover and let rise until doubled, 20-30 minutes.
5. Flour a work surface and pat into a rectangle.  Cut rectangle into six strips (halve, then each half into thirds). Cut each strip into 4 pieces = 24 rolls.
6. Take each piece of dough and palm it, then roll against a surface til the edges are tucked under and it's nice and round.  Place in a greased 9x13 pan.  Repeat with remaining dough.
7. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise until doubled.
8. Bake at 400F for 20minutes until brown on top.  You can also brush them with melted butter before you bake them so they brown even better.

Pumpkin pie
I use the recipe on the can of Libby's pumpkin!  I think it calls for evaporated milk, eggs, pumpkin, spices, and sugar.  Very traditional.
No-roll pie crust from Allrecipes:
1.5 c. flour
1/2 c. oil
1/4 c. cold water
pinch salt
1-2 t. sugar

1. Mix pie crust ingredients together.  Press into the bottom and sides of the pie pan to an even thickness.
2. Pour in pumpkin pie filling and bake according to directions.

Fall Means Apple Butter

When I was little, my mom and I made apple butter every year.  There was a specific ritual to it: we'd go to the apple farm to get a good deal on a huge bag of apples (a peck? half a bushel?), make sure we had new lids for the canning jars, and got to work.

My job was to cut up the apple quarters into tiny pieces.  One of the first times I remember being allowed to help, I must have been maybe seven years old.  My mom and Gammy were much faster--one of them would quarter, core, and peel the apples while the other would chop.  My "job" was really just to keep me busy, I'm pretty sure.

After the invention of the slap-chop thingamajigger, my job became much more important.  Mom would keep the apple quarters coming, and I would slam the handle down in rapid-fire mode until the apple pieces were pulverized.  

The rest of the day only got better from chopping apples.  We would make our apple butter in huge batches in a Nesco turkey roaster oven so that we had enough to give as gifts and to eat all year long, and once all the ingredients were cooking I got to lift the lid periodically and take the longest-handled spatula we owned to stir the bubbly, spicy, molten apple lava.

The end of the day was the best part, though.  If you make apple butter, there is absolutely no way to know that it has been properly made unless you taste it on homemade bread.  Once the apples had been cooking for a long time--usually early afternoon--Mom would make a couple loaves of country white bread. She had a knack for timing it so that the loaves were cooling while we sterilized and canned the apple butter.  There always seemed to be the right amount left for a bowlful of scrapings that we dipped into with spoons, smearing the mahogany-colored preserve over the fresh bread.

The jars of apple butter we processed in a hot water bath for ten minutes, taking them out and letting them cool upside down on a towel on the counter top.  After an hour or so we turned them right side up and I always tried to listen for the pop as the cooling air inside the jar set the seal.

This ritual of making apple butter was so ingrained in my experience of fall that when I went to college freshman year, I woke up one September morning craving apple butter.  When I called my mom a few days later, she actually told me that she had made her yearly batch of apple butter that weekend!  Somehow I must have known it was an apple butter day, even four hours away from home.

If you have a crockpot, apple butter is a cinch to make--prep it in the afternoon and let it cook on low all night, and you can make bread in the morning and have it for breakfast.  If you make it on the stove, it only takes a couple hours for it to come together (and less if you have friends to help you chop apples).

Apple Butter

makes 7 or so jars

1/2 peck + a few apples, any kind*

1/4 c. white vinegar

3-4c. sugar

4 T. cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp salt

Quarter the apples.  These are Golden Delicious
from the farmer's market.

 

1. Peel, core, and chop the apples to small-to-medium pieces.  The bigger the pieces, the chunkier the final product.  If you like yours thick and spreadable, chop the apples smaller.

Seems like I've cut up so many!  Not nearly enough.
Keep going!

This is half a peck of apples, quartered.

This step takes a while.  Cut out the core from each
quarter and peel them.  I ended up using this many plus another 1/3 of this bowl of apples--enough to fill my dutch oven.

Chop the apple quarters into small pieces.  I cut them
lengthwise into thirds or fourths, then chopped them crosswise.

 2. Put all the apples in either a large crockpot or a dutch oven.  Add the vinegar, sugar, and spices to the apples and stir until the spices are well-distributed.

Add the other ingredients to the apples and turn on the heat to medium.

3. If using a crockpot, turn on high until it starts to bubble, then switch to low heat.  If using the stove top method, turn heat to medium.

It only took a couple minutes for them to start getting juicy!

 4. Cook in the crockpot on low overnight or on high 8-ish hours, until the apple butter has reached a pleasing consistency (up to you) and color.  You might have to switch to high heat and take the lid off to evaporate some of the liquid and make it thicken up.

Stove top method: once the apple juices are bubbling, turn the heat to medium-low and stir frequently to prevent bubbling over.

Bubble, bubble, bubble.  Be sure to stir every 5 minutes or so
or you might get scorched apple butter on the bottom.

This is maybe an hour in.  It's cooking down a lot and
the apples are getting softer.

 5. Once some of the liquid starts to evaporate, check out how the consistency is coming along.  If the apple butter is getting thick without changing to a deep cinnamon-brown, you can add a little water, put a lid on the dutch oven, and turn the heat down lower to give it enough moisture to cook for longer.  If it's coming along nicely, skip that part and let the juices cook out until you get a consistency you like.  Be aware that as the liquid evaporates, you'll need to stir more frequently to prevent scorching.

(Almost) finished!  It reduced in volume by about 50%.
I let it cook a little longer with the lid on, on very low heat,
so that the bigger pieces softened up and the butter looked darker.

6. Once the apple butter is done, you're ready to go!  You can can it at this point--and if this is your plan, while the preserves are cooking you might want to wash and sterilize your jars in a big stock pot of water so that hot apple butter goes into hot jars.  Otherwise, you can keep the apple butter in the fridge for a reasonably long time (several months--like a jam.  The sugar/vinegar/cooking helps preserve it).  I have trouble getting jars of apple butter to last that long, though.  This recipe made enough for 7 peanut butter or regular jelly jars (I recycle the glass ones--they make great pantry containers).

7. Enjoy the scrapings from the pot (or whatever won't fit into your jars) on a slice of fresh bread.  Or, you could get a nice rustic loaf from the bakery/store and toss it in the oven on low for a few minutes to warm it up.  If you're feeling super-nice, share with friends.  Otherwise, hoard it til next fall.

Other people's comfort food

Comfort food is a very culture-specific thing.  Not always the healthiest food, not always the most decadent food, not always the most complicated food, it's usually simple and hearty and makes you feel like your mom just called you in to dinner after a long day playing outside.

For me, comfort food can be many things: macaroni and cheese, chicken noodle soup, tomato soup and grilled cheese, oatmeal, peanut butter and jam sandwiches with a glass of milk, apple crisp.  The idea of "soul food" comes pretty close, too--fried chicken, green beans simmered all day with bacon and onions, mashed potatoes and gravy. 

Over spring break, my best friends from undergrad and I met up in Chicago for a weekend.  We went to Chinatown and ate dim sum, and as we were leaving one of my friends realized that every Chinese family in the restaurant had a big steaming pot of rice porridge on the table.  

"This place must be known for their jook!  We should have had some," she lamented. By this point, though, we were stuffed and resolved to use the jook as an excellent excuse to come back to Chicago.  I asked Gena, whose heritage is half Chinese, half Japanese,and Inez, who is from Singapore, what exactly went into making jook.

Finished jook: all it takes is a handful of rice, lots of water,
bouillon paste, some mushrooms, and plenty of time.

Jook, also known as congee, is just rice porridge: much the way Americans eat oatmeal, or oat grains cooked in plenty of water until they soften into mush, most Asian cultures have a name for rice cooked the same way.  It sounded easy and nourishing and hearty, and I resolved to try to make some once I was home.

All the rest of the week, I made jook just about every morning.  Not just because it was easy, not just because it was new, but also because it's absolutely delicious.  And here's how you do it:

• First, decide how much you want to make.  It's easy to scale up, and a little bit of rice makes a LOT of jook.
• Measure out the rice in a pan.  Add water, about 8:1 water to rice (yes, 8:1.  So if you use a quarter cup of rice, add 2 c. water).  Add any seasonings you might want, or maybe some leftovers (chicken would be yummy, or I just chop up some raw mushrooms and toss them in to stew a bit).  Bring to a boil, then cover and cook on low until the rice has swollen up and completely softened, maybe half an hour or more.  

  

  Raw egg in the bottom.

• To serve, I eat mine the way Inez says she used to get hers at her school cafeteria: a raw egg in the bottom of the bowl, jook on top, some soy sauce and sesame oil sprinkled in, and a generous helping of chopped scallions.  Take your spoon and stir the egg into the jook, it makes it rich and sort of creamy, a bit like custard.  (The heat from the porridge cooks the egg, no worries.)

Chopped scallions, a few drops of sesame oil, soy sauce go in next.

• A few caveats: white rice is best for this, it gets nice and soft (I used jasmine, which is excellent).  If you can't stand it and have to have brown rice (or if brown rice is all you have), it works fine, but be aware that the resulting jook will be chewier and nuttier-tasting and won't get that creamy, soft consistency.  Also, sticking to traditional Asian flavors really go well with the rice, but I'm sure you could use other flavor combinations, too (get creative!).

Stir it all together, then the best part: eat it!

Sometimes, all you really want is your favorite comfort food: when it's rainy, when it's been a bad day, when you're sick, when you miss home...any and all of the above.  But it's nice to branch out once in a while and try on other cultures' comfort foods: jook is definitely a new member on my list of favorites!

bisous,

Lindsey

Honey Mustard Salad Dressing

In undergrad, the "all you care to eat" cafeteria option had lots of daily choices of entrees as well as a handy selection of desserts and baked goods.  They also had the best salad bar, with all the trimmings and tons of different salad dressings.  Most of them were gloopy and pretty gross--your generic red French dressing, thick Ranch, oily Italian straight out of the bottle...and then one gem: honey mustard dressing.

For some reason, this dressing was amazing: tangy, sweet, zippy, a little bit of a bite, strong mustard flavor.  It went well with everything, and my roommate loved it so much we would eat at the cafeteria just so she could get the honey mustard dressing.

I was making a salad for lunch today and that honey mustard dressing popped into my head.  I figured it was worth a shot to try and make it, so I pulled out a few things and whisked them together.  I couldn't have been more shocked that it was pretty spot-on!

Even if you've never had the original, this is a pretty awesome salad dressing and a great sauce for dipping veggies into.  It took about a minute to put together and I doused it all over my salad, which I am now enjoying with relish.

Honey Mustard Salad Dressing

1 T. dijon mustard (I used Grey Poupon)

1 T. honey

~1-2 t. rice wine vinegar

~1-2 T. olive oil

Whisk the mustard, honey, and vinegar together, then drizzle in the olive oil while you whisk briskly.  (Then say "whisk briskly, whisk briskly" five times fast!)  Serve on your favorite salad or dip crudites into it.

Ooey gooey brunch: Monkey Bread

Post-exams is always a daze, but especially after finals.  To celebrate being done (and to nurse our inevitable hangovers), some of my friends and I got together and made brunch on Friday morning.  At my house growing up, you can't have holiday brunch without Monkey Bread, also known as pull-apart bread, also known as the best breakfast treat ever.  My mom would make this every Christmas Eve because it was easy to just throw it in the oven while we opened presents.  Then, the warm, cinnamon-sugar smell would remind us that we were starving and we would cluster around the counter, sneaking pieces before they cooled and snacking on them loudly to cool them even as we gobbled them down.

My mom always made ours in this special pan--a white ceramic loaf pan with a little tray to turn it out onto after it baked.  She also used frozen roll dough cut into pieces and dipped them in butter, cinnamon, and sugar.  Since I like to bake bread from scratch (and since it's actually cheaper), I used the recipe found here at Eatin' on the Cheap to make Monkey Bread from scratch.

The recipe is not too complicated if you're familiar with yeast breads: the dough is enriched (milk for liquid, plus some melted butter and some sugar) and also contains some cinnamon.  The sugar mixture for coating contains cinnamon and nutmeg mixed with brown sugar, and then the bottom of the pan gets a mix of melted butter, brown sugar, and chopped walnuts.  Then it's just a matter of assembly (and patience)!

The dough has to be mixed, kneaded, and left to rise for about an hour before you can really start the rest of the recipe.

Get everything set up first: melted butter, sugar-spice mixture, and dough chunks.

The dough gets divided into quarters.  Each quarter is rolled into a log and then cut into 16 pieces.  (Here's a great way to practice your fractions if you're rusty.  I cut the log in half, then each half into halves, then each of those into four pieces.)

Roll a quarter of the dough into a log and cut it into 16 pieces.

The dipping part is definitely the messiest part.  I suggest having the sugar/spice bowl right next to the bundt pan so there's minimal sugar all over afterwards.  I also thought it was easier to plop the buttered dough piece into the bowl and scoop some sugar over it rather than actually rolling it around.

Dip the pieces in butter and then into the sugar-spice mixture.
Then arrange the pieces over the bottom of the bundt pan.

Repeat for all four quarters of the bread dough, layering as you go and smushing the dough as necessary to make it fit tightly in the pan.  Toward the end I ran out of sugar for rolling, so I just dipped the dough in butter and threw them in there (luckily the top ones turn into the bottom ones once you flip it).

Add more pieces in layers until you've used them all up, about 3-4 deep.
I ran out of sugar and spice at the end so these last few are just dipped in butter.

Now you can cover it and put the pan in the fridge overnight.  In the morning, take the pan out an hour before you want to bake it.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40-50 minutes (mine was perfect at 40 minutes), then let it cool for five minutes in the pan.  Don't let it cool too much longer than that, though, or else it will stick in the pan.  Put a plate or platter over the top of the bundt pan and flip the whole thing over and voila! You're ready to go.

Ooey, gooey, caramely goodness!

This was so delicious and really not complicated--totally worth it.  If you're pressed for time, frozen roll dough or (as per other recipes I saw on the internet) biscuit dough would probably work okay, too...but the extra oomph from the bread being cinnamony was pretty delicious.

Happy holidays!

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiive

I have embarked upon a wild adventure.

No, I'm not climbing mountains or traversing cliffs barefooted or scuba-diving in the Marianas Trench.  Think more like wild as in organisms--growing organisms.  I started a sourdough culture!

I have fond memories of my mother experimenting similarly with wild yeast and bacteria in the form of a wide-mouthed quart jar with a hinged lid and strawberries on the sides that smelled funny and contained a thin, watery liquid.  The jar would sit in the back of our fridge for weeks at a time, and then sometimes Mom would pull it out and wake up the starter, then use it to make bread.

Since buying Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I have taken my whole bread-baking obsession to a new level.  The type of bread with the most patience and time requirements, though, had remained elusive--how to justify taking more than a week to make a loaf of bread when there was physiology and neuroscience to study?  I resolved to wait until this summer to give it a go, with the hopes that once I have my starter made I, too, can keep my own little kitchen chia-pet in the back of the fridge.

Reinhart's method started with whole wheat flour and pineapple juice, and I'm now at the point where I've fed the little bugger for a few days running.  I'm almost at the barm stage now, which is sort of like the leveled-up version of the seed culture and will itself get fed and watered until it's ready to be used in bread-making.

Stay tuned for pictures and updates!  Hopefully I'll get to bake some bread over the long holiday weekend.

Love,
Lindsey