TeakettleSlim

I’m reviving this long dormant thread to tell you about the Moroccan green mint lime gimlet I made for my birthday. A pint of vodka, infused for 2 hours with a tablespoon each of whole leaf gunpowder green tea and dried mint. Lime juice, simple syrup. It was a fine thing.

I freeze them in whatever form makes the most sense for that cookie, and can bake a variety fresh when needed. After I have enough for a nice variety, I start giving them away. We have a big platter on Christmas Eve, with the in-laws here. Some go to my mother's friends in her apartment building. Many turn into goodie bags for a local charity for homeless teens. Some I keep in freezer for general holiday and beyond munching. Edited to add: I find it a lot more relaxed than trying to make several kinds all on one day and then have all these fresh cookies sitting around needing to be dealt with immediately.

I have my list. The baking has begun. Yes, I AM self-indulgent, how did you guess? In no particular order: 1. Peppermint swirl cookies 2. Nut gems (a Russian tea cake type thing) 3. Thumbprint cookies a) with jam, and b) red velvet cream cheese filled 4. Chocolate ginger molasses cookies 5. Biscotti a) double chocolate walnut and b) dried cherry, lemon, ginger, white chocolate 6. Peppery bourbon gingerbread snowflakes 7. Cut out cookies a) regular and b) chocolate 8. Mocha peppermint shortbread 9. Those orange creamsicle cookies 10. Confetti cookies 11. Garam masala cookies with white chocolate cream cheese frosting 12. Smitten kitchen's pretzel linzers with caramel filling 13. Cornmeal lemon rosemary butter cookies 14. Pumpkin maple cookies 15. Cinnamon bun cookies 16. Brown sugar/brown butter/cinnamon/coffee cut out cookies 17. Eggnog cookies 18. Brown butter/honey/pistachio bars 19. Struffoli 20. Marshmallows 21. Sourdough fruitcake 22. Pralines

Last year I started almost a week late but made a batch of cookies every day of December through the 24th. Baked enough off for us to enjoy that day and froze the rest. When I needed cookies to give away I would bake up an assortment fresh. Then at the end of the month I still had enough that our spread had about 15 kinds on it. I felt awesome. I plan to do it again, starting on the 1st this year. Will pop back in here to post the list when I've got it sorted out.

I made a soup version of Laurie Colwin's tomato pie tonight, plus biscuits. It was a very good idea.

You might try boiling it a bit longer. Gel point is 221F. Sometimes it can take a while to get there!

I don't care for cooked oatmeal either, even baked (though it is better than non-baked). But I took the ingredients for this (subbed dates for raisins and maple syrup for brown sugar), mixed them with pan-toasted rolled oats, and ate them with some yogurt. Excellent! Nice and crunchy and fresh.

Ok, ChocoMom-- how do you peel a Hubbard? The best I have been able to come up with is dropping it on the sidewalk and roasting...j sliced my knuckle open to the bone once trying to get at it with a knife!

Pureed squash.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I won't let that stop me. I am a diehard Hubbard fan-- it's the only winter squash that tastes good enough to eat the plain roasted purée by the bowlful. Which I do. Maybe with some marmalade stirred in. I have 3 of the biggest ones I could find waiting to be roasted right now. If you roast a Hubbard or another sweet large squash and cover it well enough in foil that juices and drippings accumulate, you can boil them down at the end and make a lovely molasses-like syrup. My absolute favorite soup is this one: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/southwestern-pumpkin-soup-104064 Though I double the spices. It's the quickest (no onions!) and smoothest and all around bestest. I do something similar to the Parmesan squash discussed earlier in the thread, but with extra sharp cheddar. Slice up the butternut and layer it in a pan with cubed cheddar, sprinkle on some thyme and drizzle with cream. Bake until bubbly and brown and soft.

That might work! I don't recall having seen it around here, though. I will have to go on a search. Have you tried it in caramels? Does it otherwise behave like cane sugar?

A little girl in our circle of friends is allergic to cane sugar and dairy (among other things). I was planning on bringing a caramel apple station to a potluck she'll be at and would love to be able to offer something she can partake in too since she feels pretty excluded this time of year. I found a recipe using all honey, and tahini, but don't know how she'd feel about the tahini. I am curious about whether I could use all maple? Or coconut oil and coconut cream for the fat? Corn syrup is also an option.

The Jamlady cookbook is another good one.

For our family it is not religious, not patriotic (although some books my children have been given do talk about that mythical First Thanksgiving). Many of my friends have gratitude-focused practices they undertake for the month of November, and while I don't do anything public like 30 Days of Gratitude on Facebook or somesuch, I would say that is more my focus too. And as you say, family, friends, and sharing food. We always try to find people to invite who might not have anywhere to go for the day, and my mother tells about my grandmother giving plates of food to people in need out the back door during the Depression. Celebrating abundance and sharing it to some extent.

Chelseabun, my mother suggested rhubarb too...but I've never been a fan, really. I guess because it wasn't available where I grew up. More importantly, I have not seen it frozen (but admittedly have not sought it out). Will have to add it to the long list for years when we have more guests. I hear many people are fans. AnnaN: YES. That is it! Thank you thank you thank you!

What? No thanksgiving menu topic yet? Surely it hasn't all been said already. We're having about 10 people over. Some are insisting in bringing dishes I would rather make myself. We order a smoked turkey from a local BBQ place. The menu is pretty standard, the exciting part is the pie extravaganza afterward. Inspired by an account I read somewhere a few years ago, we are making n + 1 pies (where n= number of guests). Then we invite everyone we can think of to help us eat them. Proposed pies (subject to revision): 1. Pumpkin 2. Maple pecan 3. Apple 4. Biscoff 5. Bacon rosemary pecan 6. Blackberry 7. Cranberry sage 8. Mincemeat 9. Masala pear 10. Lemon sponge 11. Peach custard I'm also trying unsuccessfully to track down a dinner roll recipe I found here on eGullet last year-- it was a no-knead recipe, had a bit of lemon zest in it. If that rings any bells, I'd be grateful for someone to point me the way to it.

I really like thyme with apple, whether in applesauce, crisps, or pie. Lemon or orange thyme is especially nice.

Unrelated to the article above, but since the topic title is fairly general, thought I'd add a nice blog post I read recently on the history of the words 'tea' and 'chai': http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2014/08/tea-if-by-sea.html?m=1

I make a nice dressing for fruit salad that uses mint. Just plain yogurt (homemade if you do that sort if thing-- kind of thin consistency is best), honey, and minced mint. Toss with whatever fruit tickles your fancy.

I checked this out of the library the other day and today tried the chocolate cookies. In the book, you are told to roll them into logs, freeze, slice. The baked cookie looked rich and shortbread-like. What I found was that the batter was way too liquid to form into anything, even after I refrigerated it for an hour first. I poured it into waxed paper in my French bread pan and gave it my best shot. Left it in the freezer for 3 hours, and was still too soft and sticky to slice. Stuck to the waxed paper something awful. I scooped it into cookie-sized piles and baked, and what I got was a thin, very spread out cookie. Chewy. Now I see that some of the measurements in the recipe got lost in translation from metric? Can anyone confirm for me the amounts of, say, flour in the recipe? This edition says 2 tsp of flour, which seemed a little strange to me, but had no cause for suspicion at that point.

If I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake! Hot tamales (Robert Johnson) Cornbread and butter beans (most recently recorded by the Carolina Chocolate Drops) And my favorite sea shanty, "all for me grog". There is a wonderful hip hop song about Thanksgiving foods, but I can't remember the title or artist.

We love Shlomo and Vito's too! The food is good and the portion sizes are insane. I think it should be mentioned in this thread just how much good pizza there is in Tucson. Chicago-style at Rocco's, brick oven at Grimaldi's, 1702 with it's amazing beer list, Scordato's (love their wild mushroom pie), Time Cafe, Heist (great selection of cured meats), Oregano's (a more standard kind of pizza joint with great food), a Pizzeria Bianco coming soon, and more that I'm forgetting. Tucson pizza could have it's own thread!

Ah! Squirt bottle! Very clever. For the chocolate, too. Thank you! You have saved our party. Probably.

Well, I was hoping there was a way to just rewarm it enough for stuff to adhere to the outside without necessarily heating it all to the temperature it is when initially dipped.

We're planning to have an Apple Festoon party as part of our autumnal celebrations. The idea is that guests will come and dip/decorate their own caramel apples. We did this a few years ago and discovered some problems with the plan-- namely, the period of refrigeration between dipping and rolling it in stuff, and then again before going home with it. This year I thought we might try dipping them in caramel ahead of time, and then having guests just roll them in stuff. Or maybe have chocolate available for dipping, if they want to wait. But how to re-soften outside of caramel so nuts and whatnot will stick? Seems like popping them in the oven would make the caramel slide off. Hit it briefly with a hair dryer? Anyone have any ideas? There must be a way to streamline this.