So...whats for dinner?
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Thanks everyone, I appreciate it!
I made some Oreo cookie truffles (chilling now) and will cover them in dark chocolate tonight, so they're ready while I'm working on everything else. You know me, I'll be posting pic's tomorrow
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ChiSandy, these are Northern Sea shrimps that taste differently from the shrimps I ate in NYC or in Dominican Republic, I have never been to Chicago though. On the other hand these are the only shrimps we got here except for tiger prawns that are sold frozen. They differ a lot from tiger prawns in taste and texture. They taste sweeter and are softer like langoustines or mantis shrimp. They are though similar in taste to the Black Sea shrimps of what I recall from our family vacations back when I still was a kid. I did one layer with Skagen röra (the shrimp salad) and another one with avocado and gravad lax, the same as lox but after you apply the brine you then also cover it with a layer of coarsely grounded white pepper and lots of dill. When ready to serve you just brush the dill and pepper off and slice it. I can do different variations, cover with chopped basil, with grated beet roots, with lime. The truth is I could not taste the lax, the shrimp salad took over.
I really miss the hens in the store, I remember back in 90-es I could find those in the frozen section for like 1,5 dollar kg but at some point they just stop selling those. And of course I remember eating those when I was on summer vacations at my grandfather's farm. They usually bought small chickens and then when they all were growing up we ate a lot of young roosters because there is now way to see when you buy two dozens of two-week old chickens. A dumpling soup sounds very good, there is a variant of Russian dumplings called pelmeni, I like to eat those in the broth with a table spoon of vinegar, maybe I will ask mom to make those.
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Hey, Ilona, here you go:
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Thanks Cherry. I've always been "that way" (doing household chores), most likely due to the example set by my parents. Sharon is exhausted from work and her allergies are bothering her, so I'm quietly continuing to clean so she can relax.
Special. I hope that your hearing returns and am glad that it's not due to brain mets I do so much with my hearing that I would be scared half to death if my hearing went away.
And the same for you Lacey...
I worry when some new symptom shows up in Sharon and it's not obvious what is causing the problem. I have to work very hard to not worry too much. Sometimes I'm successful and sometimes not so much. I guess it's "ghosts of cancers past".
I fry the turkey, so I don't have pan drippings, so I use a couple of jars of the homemade turkey stock as my start.
The "food porn" pictures are great. I should get my camera out and take pictures as I make/serve stuff, but for whatever reason, I do not do so.
...back to cleaning...floor mopping and that's it..but first I need to feed the sourdough starter. I'm making sourdough dinner rolls tomorrow and I want the starter to be in top form. :-)
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Speaking of gravy, came across this in a newsletter I get:
http://www.extracrispy.com/food/4441/kinds-of-gravy
I agree with cherry Eric, you are most definitely a keeper.
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After cooking all day, too tired to cook dinner so it's carryout hot and sour soup and steamed dumplings. Orange chicken (of course) for dh.
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I found the potato recipe that DD liked so much. It's right here. They are a soft/creamy inside with a crisp outside. I use Serrano peppers as those are the ones that I grow in the back yard....and I add an extra pepper for some extra spice.
DD's roommates are from the east coast and they didn't want to spend the money/time/effort to fly home for just a few days, so DD is bringing them over here tomorrow. Instead of the now normal four, we'll have seven people at the table.
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Had some Key West shrimp that defrosted, and I needed to cook them. So I did a stir-fry in garlic-ginger oil with them, leftover Shanghai bok choy, snap peas, scallions and rice. Made a sauce with mirin, sesame oil, tamari, five-spice and tapioca starch.
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I’m feeling like quite the lazy food gal on this thread, given that I am just making the two items to bring to DS2’s for T-giv dinner today. I even recruited DH yesterday to cut the brussells sprouts off the stalk, which he had picked up at Trader’s (super lazy gal!). The sprouts are so much sweeter right off the stalk that we’ve been enjoying them often.
Loving all of your foodie pics (while I usually like the “food porn” moniker, I can’t quite manage to enjoy it this morning after learning about the sexting foibles of yet another congress(old)man....what have we become?!).
Anyway, that shrimp sandwich cake looks so delicious, Cherry! I wonder if those shrimp taste like the very sweet small ones we used to get seasonally from Maine. They were so wonderful, but we rarely see them in stores now. Will have to research that now that I miss them! Sometimes DH used to buy them, on his commute home, from folks selling them on the side of the road. After that we sometimes saw them in local markets, too, but not recently.
Nance, your asparagus cheesecake looks soooo good!
I make my turkey gravy in a similar way to Sandy and Special’s description, removing turkey, using drippings in pan, etc., but when separating the fat in the little separator cup, I only return the less fatty part of the liquid to the floured roux pan, or it is too greasy. I used to use boiled giblet broth for the rest of the liquid with the livers blended in, but leave the livers out now, even if I use that broth. Yesterday, I saw Lydia B. use some breadcrumbs instead of flour to thicken her gravy. That would be interesting to try!
Eric, I was the East Coast girl in college who spent most Thanksgivings visiting with my midwestern classmates’ families. It was fun learning each family’s culture as well as food traditions. Those memories remain with me....one hilarious image from one family is of my curiosity about where everyone disappeared to after our turkey dinner. Well, it turned out, the men, unsurprisingly, were off sleeping in front of the TV, and the women were all hunkered down in the upstairs locked bathroom, smoking and exhaling out the wide open window. Apparently, the patriarch disapproved of smoking, so this was their forbidden ritual when he was visiting. Ha! At another home, I enjoyed my first New England clam chowder made by my friend’s dad who was a Boston native transplanted to Michigan. I was head over heels about that soup, and it was likely another swaying factor in my decision to come to “the Bean” for grad school.
So Eric, enjoy participating in memory making for DD’s college friends! They will have wonderful memories, I’m sure....and might learn a bit about old cars, vintage recipes, and generallyhow helpful men can be around the house!
Well, I’d best get off this screen and finish up my minimal ‘sides’ prep, which now is pretty last minute.
I hope you all have a wonderful day! I am thankful for all of your interesting, thoughtful, and delicious posts to this thread.
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Happy thanksgiving my friends. I'm so thankful for all of you! Have a delicious day!
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Lacey, these are, now I have googled them up, Crangon crangon shrimps, they can be various sizes, I saw them pretty large and really small Black Sea shrimps. Very soft in texture they also have this sweet taste that to me must come from what we in Sweden call "crayfish butter", the part in crayfish head that is yellow and delicious, these shrimps have similar "butter" inside their head so when I am peeling those, I never buy them already peeled and cleaned, I am trying to pull the head in the way that yellow part remains. You can always make a chowder from the shells. I throw it away often though, but we have a famous chef on TV who is leading Master Chef Sweden and he says that if he finds out that someone throws the shells he swears to pay them a visit.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
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I save not only shrimp shells but leftover lobster shells (I always leave a bit of lobster over to bring home to make salad and then stock). The closest thing I've had to those little shrimps (outside Ikea, of course) are the tiny Alaskan ones we used to get when I lived in Seattle. I'd sprinkle them atop a green salad, usually with buttermilk ranch dressing.
I think I take the prize for "Thanksgiving lazy:" not making or bringing diddly-squat, as we're going to a neighborhood restaurant with friends. Dinner's not till 6, so after I fed the kitties at noon I had a small brunch of one free-range egg fried in olive oil, a slice of good bacon (Nueske's uncured applewood-smoked) and a piece of low-carb high-fiber whole grain toast with salt butter and sugar-free marmalade. Black coffee followed by an almond-milk cappuccino. Not going to eat anything else till dinner, just stay hydrated.
Happy T-Day to all!
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I'm frying the turkey again this year, so that leaves the oven (and covered grill that works well as an oven) available for other things.
The food will be turkey, dinner rolls, the potato recipe I posted earlier for an appetizer (DD is allergic to shrimp and MIL is bringing shrimp), salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, a fruit salad, squash, pumpkin pie, cream cheese pie. MIL is bringing a casserole (Sharon made the arrangements, so it will be a surprise) and stuffing.
I've got everything queued up waiting for its turn. If I can squeeze it into the schedule, I've got some more sourdough bread rising that I'll make and give it to DD and her roommates.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Enjoy! :-)
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We had turkey, steamed carrots, steamed butternut squash, yams, hash brown casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce and homemade rolls here. Dessert is pumpkin or coconut cream pie.
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But of course, IKEA sells those shrimps, I always forget about that. Now I am thinking why it has never occurred me that I actually can bring my lobster shell home with me from the restaurant, to make a stock, exactly!
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My sister & I once shared a lobster in Paris, and we had the wild idea to save the part of the shell with the head--eyes, antenna and all. We washed it thoroughly in our hotel room and she took it back home (wrapped well in plastic) to shellac and mount on a plaque as a joke trophy for her fisherman/hunter husband. Since the French word for cold water N. Atlantic lobster is "homard" (h & d silent), we were going to call it "Omar." Unfortunately, it got crushed in her suitcase. Next time I go to visit her in VA, we should go to Legal Sea Foods at Tyson's Corner, share a lobster, and try again.
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Well, I failed at making gravy. The drippings and flour started out good but when I added broth, it bubbled and clumped up to a point where it couldn't be saved. Fortunately, a friend was able to make a 2nd batch, everything was delicious
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My gravy didn't turn out well either. . It looked fine, but there was little taste.
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That turkey looks yam, gravy is overrated.
Ch Sandy, I shall never leave my lobster shell at any restaurant anymore. Btw, how did you managed to take it to US? I remember when the eldest and I went to NYC for the first time, she told me before the flight, mom remember this sort of apples, you stopped buying them, there were so good. So I saw them in the store and bought seven apples to take with us to eat during the flight. Well, DD ate one and then said that she did not wanted anymore and the flight attendant told me I am not allowed to bring with me anything that was not packaged or... that list was long, so I ended up eating five apples and then just left the last one on the plane because, well, I could not see any more apple that day.
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I just didn't say anything. It was well-wrapped anyway.
It is very confusing as to what you can and can't bring back to the U.S. Cheeses are okay--as long as they are from pasteurized milk and in heat-sealed wrap; but we all know the good stuff is made from raw milk. Once at CDG, killing time (and francs) before our flight home, I bought a sealed tin of pate de foie gras. I told him that since it was tinned it was fine. Of course, since Bob was head-of-household, he filled out the entry card and checked "yes" for the question whether we were bringing back any meats. We got detained at Customs at O'Hare as I tried to explain to the agent that it was sealed and tinned, but she called in a supervisor anyway. The supervisor took one look, rolled her eyes, and said "It's canned. It's fine. Now welcome home and get in the taxi line."
Two years ago, we found ourselves at the Barcelona airport, and I went to the duty-free shop to buy some jamon Iberico and a bottle of Carlos I brandy. Bob freaked out, saying "It's meat! It's refrigerated! It's not in a can!" I said to relax, it was cryovac'ed and sealed, then in a sealed outer cardboard shell. And this time I was the one who filled out the entry card. We breezed through Passport Control (I had ordered a wheelchair because of the 1/4-mi slog down a windowless carpeted cattle chute and I was using a cane), bag claim and then Customs--just handed the card to the agent who simply said "welcome home." All the way home in the taxi, Bob was seething that I had smuggled contraband into the U.S. It was dee-lish, of course. (BTW, how did the organizers of RiojaFest at Union Station get those whole legs of pata negra pigs into the country? I'm sure they were only plastic-wrapped and boxed. Not to mention the hideously expensive packages of little squares of the stuff in the local gourmet groceries--same as what I brought back from Barcelona but half again as costly).
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I figured out why the gravy didn't turn out so well. It's the pretty much standard 2 "units" butter, 3 "units" flour and 16 "units" of turkey stock. MIL brought over margarine because I had run out of butter and I used the margarine. I tried it again today, using butter and it turned out perfectly. This must be one of the cases where margarine and butter can not be substituted.
For the 'experiment' I(I wanted some gravy for the left over mashed potatoes) I made a small batch of gravy. I used 2 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp flour and 8 ounces of *hot* turkey stock. I stir the mixture the entire time it's on the stove so it doesn't scorch. Melt the butter, stir in the flour until it's very thick and almost dough like, heat on medium heat for about a minute then add the stock, a little at a time, until the thickness is about right, simmer a bit, add salt and pepper to taste and put on the table. It took me about 3-4 minutes to make the gravy.
My mom told me that using cold stock would cause lumpy gravy. Since my stock is in canning jars, I just put what I need in the microwave oven and "push the button".
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I think import conditions are different for the wholesales, but I know nothing about delivering to Americas, never worked with this flow, only imported actually and I worked with logistics before, most time on APAC market. I have another story, happened 10 years ago when I was on maternal leave and visited my parents in Ukraine. My mom gave me two paper bags and told me about her old university friend who decided to leave academics long time ago and became a herbalist living in the deep forest in Belorus and growing and collecting different herbs making potions, a kind of parapharmaseutics or homeopatics. I got two, one for stomach and one for as my mom said to calm down the nerves. I do not know what has happened to me, whether my brain did not work due to the lack of sleep or the summer heat, I agreed and put it to one of my three suitcases. We were staying there for 1,5 month so we had a lot of stuff. I have never been stopped by customs before, ever. When we landed in Stockholm and I picked our luggage and we were going towards the exit the custom officer stopped us and said would you please follow me. I asked why and she said that their dog has sniffed something in one of our bags. We are entering the rum and I see several people and the dog sleeping in the corner. I asked her that dog? She took one of the suitcases and asked me to open it, I did and she started to go throw. There was some candy, and some cured meat, I still do not know whether one can or cannot and what to Sweden. She mentioned something about the food but I did not listen, it hit me that I have two paper bags in my other bag with no one knows what inside of them. A nerve calming tea, right? Meanwhile the lady found dried lemon leaves and was asking me what they were and I said my parents grow a lemon tree, these are leaves from it that I use in my cooking, if you rub it you can feel the flavour. She did so and said, well, the dog might have sniffed those, I cannot find anything else. I said you are not opening those, the one she has checked was a small one, the other two were huge, she just looked at those and said, no, those two were fine. I picked everything up and went to my husband, still could not believe that they did not open the other bag. I came home and throw those mix away. Until now when I think about it I cannot believe it, who knows what was inside? On the other hand the dog did not pick anything up so it might as have been harmless.
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Eric, butter & margarine are not interchangeable except for fat content. Margarine is polyunsaturated vegetable oil that has been hydrogenated (with nickel as the catalyst) so that it will be solid at room temperature. It is fat and nothing but (except for chemicals). Butter is churned dairy cream, which has milk solids (unless it's been clarified as "ghee," and even then there is a definite flavor from the naturally occuring esters). Butter is saturated fat, which isn't necessarily the dietary villain it used to be; margarine is a "trans" fat--one that has been artificially hydrogenated with none of the nutrients present in butter, and is much worse than originally thought.
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Eric, good to know, very interesting, I have not been using margarin for probably fifteen years, just red about how it was produced and about advantages of using butter and switched to it. I only use it in baking and in mashed potato and rice, use only olive oil for frying, sauteeing etc. Sometimes the texture is the same and one may think to use it as a substitute and it turns out that it was worth that extra visit to the grocery store. I once baked my zebra cheesecake using Philadelphia light cheese, it was a throw-away, my family still ate it but I learnt never use a light one but always get the original. Cherry
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I'm so glad I NEVER switched away from butter. Sometimes I even have a bit of bread with my butter!!!
I had a wonderful trip & great meals. More later today.
Just wanted to comment quickly on gravy since no one else seems to use my Mother's tried & true method - the only one I've ever used successfully. Separate the fat out of the drippings. Put the drippings back in the pan and heat to boiling. Add water or broth if need a larger batch. In a small bowl - mix flour & a pinch of salt with enough water to make a medium pourable concoction. (think not too thick milkshake) Stir or whisk until no lumps. (interesting side note - my Mother never had a whisk & only used a fork) Gradually pour into the hot liquid while whisking the entire time. Reduce heat & simmer awhile. Add water or broth or wine if too thick.
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Nance - Do you place the asparagus 'spokes' on top of the cheesecake before baking or cook separately & place after cooking?
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Minus, I steam them slightly and put them on after.
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Really Minus? Butter? I understand that I cannot skip butter for baking and the kids want butter in their rice and mushed potatoes. If it was up to me I would only reduce it to baking, I mean I am totally indifferent towards butter, the worst thing that smell when someone uses it in the pan for frying, the taste of anything fryind in butter, I hate it. I have a friend who is frying her eggs in butter, she loves it.
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I have to be careful to not overheat butter when I'm melting it in a skillet...that makes it taste "weird". The other butter thing I don't like and it's probably not butter at all....is the stale smell in a movie theater....I hate that smell.
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You're right Eric - it's not REAL butter in the movie houses. Popcorn at at my house (as at my mother's) gets doused with real melted butter. Anything I fry is in butter - eggs, onions, grilled cheese sangys, etc. Any veg or rice or potato gets butter on top. Lunch today will be Boston Clam Chowder from Costco with crackers and butter. I know I'm a little over the top, but was so glad when science "discovered" that butter wasn't the real problem, not to mention that margarine was not good for you.
On the other hand, my very own brother freaks out if anybody even wants butter in the house where he lives and gets physically ill if anyone suggests mayo. His sandwiches are pretty dry.
Anybody else remember the poem The King's Breakfast by A.A. Milne? It's a great poem of the dialog regarding breakfast for the King between the King, the Queen, the dairymaid & the Alderney (the cow who says's she tired & suggests it's a bother & he should eat marmalade instead).
"Nobody," He whimpered, "Could call me a fussy man; I only want A bit of butter for my bread !" ...(and when the cow sends the butter) ...The King said, "Butter, eh?" And bounced out of bed. "Nobody," he said as he kissed her tenderly, "Nobody," he said as he slid down the banisters, "Nobody, My Darling, could call me a fussy man - BUT- I do like a little bit of butter to my bread."
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