Relish, no can

Gotta post this great recipe for the quintessential Thanksgiving accompaniment, cranberry relish. Funny thing, I never eat it. Not because I don't like cranberries, love them and their juice. Can't say exactly but it might be growing up that jellied-from-the-can stuff was always on our table.

Because I can't shamelessly post this as my own creation I'll give credit to Pioneer Woman. Her recipes always seem to need a little adjustment and this one took less than most. Here is our version.

1 twelve oz. bag of fresh cranberries
1 sixteen oz bottle of POM, pomegranate juice
3/4 cup of sugar

If you like a looser sauce add all the juice. If you like a firmer sauce take out about a quarter cup but don't toss it, drink it; it's really good. Sugar, too, give it a taste and add more but we like ours on the tart side.

Combine all into a large sauce pan and bring to a slow boil--medium low hear-- lid off. Cook for at least twenty minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. All those wonderful little berries need to pop and the juice reduce a bit. Cool and refrigerate. I think it tastes better the next day but hey, if don't it will be ok. It will thicken a bit more when it cools.

See I told you it was easy.

The movable feast

Thanksgiving is a universal, one size fits all, no present required, small effort holiday. What is not to love about that! For our family it's also a movable feast. To accommodate the odd schedules we shift it around a bit and this year it landed the Saturday before the traditional date. This works on a number of levels. No crowds at the market before the event. All the store are stocked with all the appropriate items and they are super fresh. Why not?

We had three together to cook the day before; a great idea. Doodles, step-mom Mary, and myself chopped and mixed and baked up a storm leaving the turkey for the actual day. You must have that wonderful roast turkey smell awaiting the guests. Our guests this year were Pat and Frank, Mary's sister and brother-in-law. We must do the prep early as it is our tradition to drink Mimosas on Thanksgiving.

This year we had the traditional Thanksgiving fare. A wonderful fresh Foster Farms turkey from Costco. It was the tastiest bird I've had in a long while. Sometimes the turkey can taste something like a big chicken but this bird had flavor. We didn't brine it because I sort of ran out of energy but you would have thought we did. It was so juicy even the wings were tender.

Everyone has their own favorite way to roast a turkey and I give it a blast of high heat for about fifteen minutes, then cover the breast with heavy foil and reduce the heat to 325 for a good long time. The last thirty to forty minutes I remove the foil to crisp up the skin. The thighs get done without the breast drying out and it was amazing. Also, don't try this without a meat thermometer and let it rest a good thirty minutes before carving. Don't forget it give it a nice foil blanky to keep it warm. If in doubt, go to the Butterball Turkey website. It has all sorts of tips and roasting times.

Not anything new except a wonderful cranberry relish from lil bird. Maybe she'll share that recipe. I will put a link to our must have broccoli casserole.

Oh, and Christmas this year, a day or two after. Like I said, "It's the people, not the day."

thanksgiving - part 2

thanksgiving dinner
Originally uploaded by lornababy

check out that steam!

as we all know, the majority of the pbetouffee family had thanksgiving a few weeks back - without me. not one to go without my turkey and fixin's on turkey day, i had mother moon and my pa over for a little meal on thursday afternoon. we also had my bunky's dad over and took in a family-less quebecois for the day, as well. of course, there was the standard turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy and, our family standby, broccoli casserole. new additions this year were braised brussels sprouts with pancetta and bertha's corn pudding from miss sylvie's soul fusion kitchen. the corn pudding was great, i think we're going to put that one in regular holiday rotation. mooncrazy brought the pumpkin pie and a good time was had by all. hope everyone's thanksgiving was just as great!

here's the family broccoli casserole recipe. it is so not low fat, but who cares!

10 oz package frozen chopped broccoli
10 oz can cream of mushroom soup
2 oz sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup bread crumbs
butter for top

defrost broccoli, drain well. stir together soup and cheese,
gradually add milk, mayo and egg. stir until well blended. pour over
broccoli in casserole. sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

bake 350 until heated and bubbly, about 45 minutes.

Addendum from Moon,
In an earlier post, Doodles talked about our early Thanksgiving dinner. Although we missed lil bird and her husband not being with us, we did have a fine dinner, complete with all the trimmings. There is a dish the West Coast portion of the family would not think of leaving out of our holiday feast, Broccoli Casserole. Doodles prepared it when we were visiting them in Connecticut in the early 80s. My family loved it. Lil bird was much lil-er at the time and broccoli was her favorite so this recipe was taken home to California. Our father, who was a great cook, ate it at our house and it then appeared at each Thanksgiving dinner there after.

Jump to our recent Thanksgiving in the desert. All three of us, Mary, Doodles and myself prepared our meal and when it came to the casserole we were quite shocked when Doodles didn't recognize her recipe. What?! Although we'd spent many a Christmas holiday together, we'd not done Thanksgiving so our small tradition was unknown to the East Coast contingency of the family. We had a good laugh. I can't tell the amount of times I'd served this recipe and gave my sister credit.

This Thanksgiving, at lil bird wonderful dinner, we ate broccoli casserole as she explained the tradition to new guests at their table. The tradition continues.

You do know that Thanksgiving can be celebrated anytime

And that we did!!!

It seems Sister Moon and her hunky husband, my Mr Doodles, stepmomma, oh and me, were all together last week. We missed niece Lil Bird and her Big Bird husband cause they are off to a conference in some far away place.

Anyway we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving last Friday. And we did it with all the trimmings. Well all the trimmings that we do as a family unit.





The bird was done on the grille, potatoes cooked for mashing, apple salad, sausage stuffing/dressing, and sister moon made some to die for turkey gravy. A little wine was served and of course dessert, compliments of Marie Callender's, which is a local pie shoppe. Our choice was a lemon cream cheese pie in a graham cracker crust with whipped cream as a topping naturally.

So HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all of our visiting friends.

Addendum
This is Moon and I'm adding my two cents here. We didn't miss having our obligatory morning Mimosa while we did the prep for dinner. We also learned a new card game, we love games, and that kept us busy all day long in between fussing with preparing dinner.

The turkey is a tradition my father started a very long time ago. They live in Palm Desert and the temp is usually in the 80s that time of year so why cook a bird in the oven, the BBQ is much easier. It's quite easy.

There are many ways to do this but here is what my Dad always did. Prepare the bird like you do for the oven but no stuffing. Instead we do celery, sage, and rosemary but most any herbs would do. Season it, rub some oil on the dried skin and roast on a pan on the grill. We start about 400 then turn it down to about 325. Just cook it as long as you would cook an unstuffed bird in the oven. If it starts to brown too much, tent with foil. Check with a meat thermometer, I like 150/160 for the breast. Of course there is always the "wiggle the leg" test, too, then let rest for at least thirty minutes. It give you time to have one more Mimosa.