Round 2

I stuck with it! Today I prepared the doughs for pumpkin pie and onion pie. I also made the turkey stock, which isn't difficult, but takes quite a lot of time.

Tomorrow we will make almost all of the dishes (stuffing, glazed carrots, boiled kale, put the pies together) so that Thursday all we'll have to think about is roasting "The Bird" and the other things that are better made the same day like salad and mashed potatoes.

After we are done preparing everything we can on Wednesday, we will be doing what I hope most of you will be doing and EATING DINNER OUT! You'll have enough to think about on Thanksgiving, and you're going to want to start the morning with a clean kitchen. Trust me.

Round 1

3 Days to go! I hope that you are at least thinking about your menu for the biggest feasting day of the year. I decided that I would finally go for "The Bird" this year rather than my past endeavors such of duck, Cornish game hen, or ribs.

I was very proud of myself for getting all of my shopping done on Saturday. Now all I have to do is meditatively stick to my game plan. What a fun week I have in front of me!

Today I made:
-cranberry relish
-sauerkraut with apples
-the filling for the onion pie
-the beet marinade for the marinated deviled eggs.

Didn't get to the pie dough. That'll come tomorrow. Try to have a spirit of thanks all week, and enjoy every minute of it!

I think you must know

In the past have shared with you many of my favorite restaurants. I like to keep this blog positive, but after my dinner out last Friday, I feel I need to rant. Oh yes, we had a terribly mediocre, horribly overpriced dinner. The kind that hurts when you pay for it. This brought back memories of a few other dinners we've had like that. These are dining establishments in Seattle which, no matter how often you hear people say they just loved it, I want to you please heed my words and avoid them like the plague. My biggest disappointment list...

....Begins with last Friday when Raj and I decided to explore the new high end shopping center in Bellevue called The Braven . We should have been clued in when walking by the new Louis Vuitton store that The Bravern caters to people who like to pay waaay to much for low quality junk just to make themselves think it's luxury. We wanted to try something new, anyway, so we went to The Artisanal Brasserie, which apparently is an extremely popular restaurant in Manhattan (that totally blows my mind, because I always imagined that New Yorkers know when they're being taken) and the chef came here to open a new one. The menu was promising, and almost looked like the index for Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I ordered an onion tarte and Raj ordered steak tartare for starters, and we decided to share a cassoulet for an entree (after all, and $20 entree should be enough food for the two of us, right?). It all sounded fancy, but in the end, my "tarte" was caramelized onions on a pita, Raj's tartare was ground beef, and the cassoulet was unremarkable and so small that Raj also had to order soup to fill himself up. The worst part was that combined with two glasses of wine the bill came out to be $100. Don't get me wrong, we've paid that for a good dinner out before, but this was seriously twice as much as it should have been. Combine that with the fact that we saw the movie "2012" after, and you've got one bad date (except, of course, the man I was with)!

If you think $100 is a nauseating bill, a year or two ago we wanted to go "somewhere nice," so we decided to go to Crush at the recommendation of many supposed foodies we had talked to. This was a while ago, so I don't remember the details of what we ate. All I know is that I so badly wanted to love it- the pretentious white decor, the insanely slow service, the food that just didn't tickle me. I wished even more that we had enjoyed the experience when our $250 check came at the end of the meal. Live and learn, and never eat there again, am I right?

Other places to not eat:

The Space Needle Restaurant (total novelty)
Burgermaster (does this go without saying?)
Lark (I'm taking the advice of friends on this one. Some people swear it's their favorite restaurant, but based on my knowledge of our tastes I think we'll skip it)

All I have to say is this:

Apple Crisp

INGREDIENTS

5-7 apples, peeled, cored and chopped into wedges

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup butter removed from fridge 45 minutes prior

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Put the apples in a 9x13x2 inch Pyrex casserole dish.

Sprinkle the lemon juice and nutmeg over the apples.

Sprinkle the cut vanilla extract over the top of the apples.

Stir the mixture around a bit with a spoon.

Combine maple syrup, cinnamon, oatmeal in a bowl. Cut in butter.

Sprinkle mixture over apples.

Bake 45 minutes or until topping looks crisp.

Here is why you are thanking me:

Difficulty: none

Refined Sugar: none

Wheat: none

Guilt: none

You can also replace the butter with coconut oil to make it vegan or the oats with quinoa to make it even healthier (although that's a bit adventurous for me).

Again, you're welcome. ;)

Anthropologie, you're killing me!

Below are the most ridiculously adorable measuring cups you have every seen in your life, courtesy of Anthropologie (in order of what I think to be least cute to most cute).
Geese? Yes, geese! Awwwe

If you need more fowl in yer kitchin, there is a sort of chicken set, too. I'm dying...
Flowers...perhaps a little hard to level off, but still, it's making me crazy!

I love these beautitully painted stone wear measuring cups. Aaaugh!
And last- NESTING DOLLS! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE THEY ARE SO FRICKIN' CUTE!

If your head isn't spinning with cuteness yet, these should put you over the top (also from Anthro)

Oh yes, you too can look adorable while you're using your adorable measuring cups.


I don't think I've ever wanted a pair of salt and pepper shakers this bad. They are just perfect!

Current Obsession: Crystallized Ginger

Crystallized ginger (also known as candied ginger) is not something new, but lately I have been wanting to put it on and in everything I cook and bake. And not just for the nutritional value.

I first began loving candied ginger four or five years ago when I made a cranberry relish from Real Simple Magazine on Thanksgiving that used about 1/2 cup (I'm still searching over the internet to find a link for you, but RS doesn't seem to have it anymore). It was the first time I actually liked cranberry sauce.

Since then, I usually just munch on it for a sweet treat or when I have a stomach ache. However, like I said, lately I've had a hankering to put it into things. Especially into things with chocolate.

I did the dessert catering for a party the other day. Since discovering that most women don't really eat dessert (Tell me, how to they live??), I usually try to include some sort of small bite that goes well with coffee. I made these chocolate biscotti with candied ginger from Martha Stewart. They were really easy, and for taste I would give them an 8/10 (which is where Martha's recipes usually seem to land). It's definitely worth a go.

For the lot of you who like to eat real dessert, I have for you Orangette's Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips and Candied Ginger. Oooooh man.....

1 cup granulated sugar (for vegan version, use raw sugar)
1 large egg (or 1 ½ tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer plus 2 Tbs warm water, says Glenn)
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (or ½ c non-hydrogenated margarine), at room temperature
2 ripe medium-size bananas
3 Tbs milk (or soy milk)
2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips
Small chunks of candied ginger, to taste
½ cup chopped walnuts, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan with butter or cooking spray, and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream sugar, egg, and butter.
In a separate bowl, mash bananas; then mix with milk.
In another separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three parts, alternating with banana-milk mixture in two parts, stirring by hand until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips, ginger, and optional nuts.

Turn batter into loaf pan, smoothing top with the back of a spoon, and bake for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for a few minutes; then remove bread from pan and cool on a wire rack.

I don't get it...

Hey, check out this website! If you want to be a pastry chef like me, or just go to culinary school, then this will help your search for the perfect food education!

Anyway, I was reading an odd article on the New York Times website. According to the Federal Trade Commission, "Beginning Dec. 1, bloggers, Twitterers and many others who write online product reviews must disclose the receipt of free merchandise or payment for the items they write about. The guidelines, an update of the F.T.C.’s 1980 guide concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising, will affect many in the beauty and fashion blogging community, where freebies ($40 eye-shadow palates, $250 clutch purses and, yes, $69 jeans) are rampant. The rules reflect the commission’s concern about how advertisers are using bloggers and social networking sites to pitch their products."

***Hey, do you like to cook? You should go to culinary school! Start your career here!***

I don't understand how this is humanly possible, and I also don't understand why bloggers have been targeted. People have been paid to talk about how they liked products for decades and maybe centuries. Yes, popular bloggers receive free stuff sometimes. Yes, bloggers even get paid to do their jobs.

Hey, you know what? I really value my pastry school education.

I don't really have a problem with the FTC's law, assuming it is protecting the consumer and not per chance having anything to do with...say... lobbyists. What bothers me is that fashion magazines, television, movies, and the radio have been doing this forever. Do you know how sales of a pair of jeans go up when a celebrity is wearing them? Do you think that celeb actually paid for those jeans? And it's not just the pages in magazines labeled "advertisement" that are doing paid advertising. I've even heard rumors of clothing stores giving away clothes to popular kids in high schooles. So why do bloggers and twitterers (tweeters? twits?) have do disclose every time a company sent them a product to sample and write about? I certainly would not write about a product if I didn't like it- free or not.

By the way, owners of fine Seattle dining establishments, I would be happy to write a review about your restaurant if you give me a free dinner. Can't promise it'll be a good one, but why don't you send me a couple gift certificates and we can see what I think?

Lastly, another paragraph in the article states, "Even before the new rules, some bloggers identified posts that advertisers paid them to write as 'sponsored.' But most don’t have formal disclosure policies, or they tend to use ambiguous language about giveaways."

Maybe I am missing something.

This article was 'sponsored' by www.allculinaryschools.com