NadyaDuke

We're hosting and will have 9 people total, the same crowd as last year, a mix of family and friends. My husband continues to not want turkey, so we're making the honor guard pork roast with apricot dressing from Molly Stevens's All About Roasting, except I'm swapping the pistachios for hazelnuts because Oregon. I'll make gravy from the drippings if luck is on my side (modern pork doesn't always have a lot!), and I'm making the Pioneer Woman's mashed potatoes because they hold beautifully, probably because of the cream cheese. I have no problem making mashed potatoes at the last minute but I'm not up for making that AND gravy at the last minute so always want to do one well ahead of time. My husband is making three pies (chocolate, pumpkin/pecan and cranberry curd) and dinner rolls, my SIL is bringing a light appetizer, one friend is bringing her traditional green beans with shallots and bacon, and another her famous cheesecake. And our friends who have a winery are bringing wine. Oh! And I'm making Mama Stamberg's cranberry relish, which has horseradish in it. I made it last year to go with our beef roast and I think it's a fun way to bring in some traditional Thanksgiving flavor in a way that works well with meat. My husband wanted to try the cranberry curd tart from America's Test Kitchen and was worried it might be too much cranberry in one meal but I told him at the holidays I think it's fine! The other two pies are tried and two favorites. I hadn't heard of an honor guard pork roast before I started cruising for this year's main course. We've done crown roasts many years, and Stevens prefers this presentation because she says it cooks more evenly. You take two frenched rib roasts and stand them up to interlace the bones, like swords crossing in an honor guard. Should be fun.

When I’m browning hamburger meat in a skillet, I always salt the pan and then add the meat, because that’s what my dad did. Works fine but no better than salting after I’m sure. My husband and I have an ongoing debate about whether French toast should be made from a recipe. When I left home, I carefully copied down my father’s recipe with its ratio of eggs, milk, sugar and optional vanilla. But the first time I pulled it out my husband laughed because he learned the winging it way of making it. We’re still debating it philosophically but in practice I wing it or he does. I still have the recipe card though!

My husband suggested chili dogs a few days ago and just sent me this this so now I’m thinking I’ll make the chili dog buckets. I’m debating a ranch/green onion dip or a buffalo dip, plus crudités. We want to make cherry cupcakes to use up some pie cherries in the freezer. My SIL will bring something, unknown but certainly delicious.

I made this tonight, though I had Regan’s orange bitters, with the Freeland Dry Gin. It worked well, as the higher vermouth content smoothed the strong gin, but the gin still came through. I’ll make it again.

I have been given, by different people, two bottle of Freeland Dry Gin, which is 57 ABV, so this is very relevant to my interests.

Thank you, @Norm Matthews!

@Annie_H I hadn’t heard of Mama Stamberg’s relish but it’s now on my menu. Seems like the horseradish will make it good relish for roast beef and the cranberry will be a nod to tradition. Bonus points that I can make it this weekend and freeze!

Ha! My husband doesn’t like mushrooms so I never think of those options. However, having caught up with the thread I’m thinking of throwing some crispy shallots on top and calling it a day.

Turning to the eGullet brain for help with something that may be obvious to others but not to me. We're not making turkey, but smoking a prime rib. However, we'll still have mashed potatoes. I'm worried people will miss the gravy. Smoking doesn't lend itself to drippings. How can I gin up a beef gravy? I have some veal demi-glace in the freezer, when I overbought for another project - is that my secret weapon here? Should I roast bones and do a make ahead? I make gravy like every other year for Thanksgiving - it's not something I do enough to have enough experience to improvise. Rest of menu for the curious: stuffing rolls (rolls with stuffing in them, delicious and a way to work in stuffing/dressing), green beans with bacon and shallots, three pies and a cheesecake. Apps TBD other than our annual purchase of Royal Mix nuts from Sunnyland Farms. Cooking for 9 this year.

Thanks to this, I'm reading "As Always, Julia" and it's delightful.

I love the sauce verte in this recipe https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/green-beans-and-zucchini-with-sauce-verte-359389

The best description I ever heard of how sweet cornbread should be is "about as sweet as a good ear of fresh corn" and that's been my guide. For a recipe with a cup of cornmeal and a cup of flour I use about 2 Tablespoons sugar and that seems about right to me, though I should really try it with 1 and see what I think.

Catching up because I always enjoy this thread. Christmas breakfast for four was lemon cornmeal waffles and asparagus frittata. We call the waffles “7 bowl waffles” because the many steps in the recipe meant we used 7 bowls the first time we made them. I think we’ve sharpened it down to 5 now with some planning. For the frittata I used the technique from this recipe to slow bake the frittata, but swapped out the oven roasted broccoli for pan roasted asparagus and the Parmesan for Fontina. I’d never used this technique before and was really pleased as you get a very creamy set on the eggs despite no cream or milk. Dinner for five was bone in pork loin, butternut squash/leek/goat cheese gratin which is a Thanksgiving staple for me but didn’t make it on the menu this year, cherry chutney, asparagus, and homemade Parkerhouse rolls. (Poor me, my husband has recently taken up bread baking!) I used another new to me technique for the roast from Serious Eats: you slow roast the pork then do a reverse sear in a 500 degree oven. The meat turned out deliciously tender. Next time I’d use convection on the reverse sear. I used a different rub with fresh garlic and fennel. My husband insisted we get an 8 rib roast so there would be leftovers. Smart man.

One holdover from living in New Mexico for three years is that Posole became our traditional New Years Eve dinner. I make it from dried posole which can be hit or miss to find now that I don’t live in NM. However I'd made posole earlier this year and had bought enough for two batches. Then I panicked yesterday when I realized that my old stash of dried red Hatch Chile had been tossed out when I purged for our move last spring and I never restocked. We were in San Diego visiting family, so I detoured by a supermarket thinking we might have better luck there than in the PNW. Sure enough, Vons delivered a 3 oz jar of Melissa’s hot Hatch red and one of green for good measure. (I’ll use it for other things.) Got home last night so soon the posole will be in the crockpot and tonight I’ll make cornbread sticks using my grandmother’s cast iron pan and the sizzling cornbread recipe from the Dairy Hollow House cookbook.

@heidih The cranberry sauce was good, though hard to tell how much of the bitterness came from Campari and how much from the grapefruit. We really like the technique of cooking half the cranberries down and then barely cooking the rest so you had some whole. Here’s the recipe https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/grapefruit-campari-cranberry-relish-recipe-2120647

Doing Alton Browns’s dry brined spatchcocked turkey with roasted vegetable panzanella for the first time this year. You roast the turkey directly on the oven rack with a pan of vegetables and bread below. Should be interesting, Yesterday my husband and his mom made pies, as is their tradition. In addition to the pumpkin pie with pecan streusel topping that I adore, they made a lemon meringue for the first time. My job is to find the recipes and go to work so they can bake. I gave them the Chez Panisse lemon meringue pie recipe from the Essential NY Times cookbook as I’ve been reading that lately. The meringue wept and separated a bit so my husband doesn’t want to serve it and he and I whipped up a trusted recipe, the Mile High Chocolate pie from Bon Appetit after dinner last night. However we tried the lemon pie later last night and it was freaking delicious. The lemon layer is more like a custard than most versions and he’d used Meyer lemons. Yum. He’ll figure out the meringue issue for next time, I know. We’ll have 8 people altogether. I made gravy from roasted turkey wings last night, and I’ll make mashed potatoes later. Rolls are Kenji’s stuffing rolls. My SIL is bringing an appetizer and cranberry sauce (new recipe we found in O magazine that has Campari, so we were in), a friend is bringing green beans with shallots and bacon, and my winemaker friends are bringing bubbles and wine. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Somewhere I saw someone use a plastic pill container for this. The kind that have a compartment or two for each day of the week.

When I lived in New Mexico in the early 90s, for 25 cents you could get a side of Bueno green chile for your hamburger. Green chile cheeseburgers are a thing in New Mexico, and Bueno is the standard store brand you could find in every freezer.

A friend gave me this book this summer and I used it a lot. Last week I turned to it for some post-holiday winter vegetable inspiration and made this parsnips with citrus and olives salad. I liked it a lot and will make it again.

At the Portland (Oregon) airport there's a quite decent restaurant past security called Country Cat. It's an outpost of a local restaurant. Good cocktails and food. It's my standard pre-flight breakfast or dinner if the timing is such that I need one or the other.

Tear Drop is a wonderful cocktail place in the Pearl district, walkable from downtown. Imperial and Clyde Common both have good cocktail programs and good food. Q restaurant is a wonderful reboot of a Portland institution - good cocktails and amazing Osso Bucco and other tasty things. I've heard good things about Headwaters, but haven't been there yet and am looking forward to trying a new restaurant called Jackrabbit - it's run by Top Chef Masters winner Chris Cosentino.

Did this ever get posted? I'm curious how it turned out! Plus, I might pick up some tips ....

Happy to help. I just remembered that the peanut butter and spaghetti sauce, and maybe the tomatoes, have a regular and an organic variety. I buy the regular, but you might want to investigate both to see what works best for your article.

Here are my standards from Whole Foods that are cheaper than the equivalents elsewhere. 365 natural peanut butter 365 basic marinara spaghetti sauce. This has just about the fewest grams of sugar of anything I've found and is inexpensive. 365 canned fire-roasted tomatoes. A staple in my pantry. All of those have good everyday prices and often go on sale. And, of course, there's the bulk food section, which is often a good deal, especially since you can buy just as much as you need and no more.

I've had my GE combination microwave/convection oven for about 8 years now and really like it. It's my second oven for when I need to bake a side dish or dessert while the main oven is busy. And it has a feature that uses both microwave and convection that will cook baked potatoes in 30 minutes - I like them cooked this way better than microwaved only. I also like that it doesn't heat up the kitchen as much as big oven does, so I'll use it if I just have one small thing to bake, or just want a couple potatoes for dinner.