Thanksgiving Planning: Pumpkin Trifle

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  It is not because I want to celebrate any of the things this holiday is known for, I don't even like turkey, and I am certainly not over the moon about the European domination of the western world.  No, it is all about the food. 

I love cooking and eating  a lavish Thanksgiving dinner.  I start planning moments after Halloween (which, by the way, is my FAVORITE holiday and requires me to clean up my spooky decorating for days after the fact, something I am doing today while I plot Thanksgiving) and it is all about what I am going to eat.  I usually try to find some new delicious recipe to make alongside my standards, but I rarely give myself the chance to test them before I make them on the actual holiday.  Silly, I know.  But, this year will be different! (she says with equal parts hope and sarcasm).  Well today I tried out a trifle recipe I dreamed up.  It is delicious AND adorable so I feel like it is a smashing success!  Oh, and it is super easy so you can focus on making the perfect turkey.

Easy Pumpkin Trifle:
1 can pumpkin (29 oz)
1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
1 box Vanilla flavored instant pudding mix
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (to taste)
1 bag of Pepperidge Farm "Gingerman" cookies (or similar product)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
whipped cream to garnish

Simply mix the first four ingredients together with a whisk.  Line a trifle dish with cookies (you can stand them up along the sides and use any broken ones to line the bottom) reserve a couple cookies to garnish the top.  Pour pudding into trifle dish, being careful not to disturb the cookies.  Sprinkle top with cranberries.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1/2 hour, can be chilled up to 4 hours, but cookies will eventually become soggy.  Top with whipped cream and reserved cookies when you are ready to serve.

Amazing Green Salad

So, as usual I don't have an actual "recipe" for you, just a suggestion.  I have a new favorite salad, it is delicious, and crunchy, and beautiful to boot!  It requires very fresh iceberg lettuce, English cucumber slices, fresh green peas (mine are straight from the garden), sliced green onion, and fresh organic nasturtium blossoms.  Assemble salad, top with ranch (no, really, USE ranch dressing, trust me) and add some fresh cracked pepper.  Serve immediately, and prepare to be amazed.  This is so crunchy and refreshing, with just a hint of floral when you go in to bite it, and then you get hit with the subtle spice of the flowers and onions and the sweetness of the peas...  I literally couldn't talk to my dinner "date" until I was done eating this salad.

Buff Chick Pizza

I have been holding onto this one for a week, things have just been so busy!  But here is a recipe for the Buffalo wing lovers.

Buff Chick Pizza requires: your favorite pizza dough, pizza sauce, 1 1/2 cups grated jack cheese, 20+ chicken nuggets, Frank's Red Hot Sauce or similar, 1/4 cup sliced green onions, 1/2 cup blue cheese crumbles.  Prepare your dough, while it rises bake the chicken nuggets according to package directions, set adside.  Adjust oven temp and prebake crust 4-5 minutes at 425 degrees.  Toss chicken with hot sauce to coat, add more or less to suit your own tastes.  Layer sauce, jack cheese, chicken, green onions and blue cheese on crust and cook for 12-15 minutes, or until cheese is lightly browned.  Serve with celery sticks and beer.  Cheers!

Another "Recipe" and Embroidery Progress

Tonight I made the most divine chili and cornbread.  Chili is one of the best ways to use up random pantry items in a tasty, economical supper.  I always make my chili a little bit different, it depends what I have on hand, but there are a few things it MUST contain.  First you need a good chili seasoning, I personally like to keep Carroll Shelby's Chili Kit in the pantry at all times, it tastes great and comes with the seasonings, masa flour, salt, and chili powder packaged individually so you can play with your proportions.  I am a meat eater, so I need a beast in my chili.  I've tried ground beef, turkey, chicken, sausages, and bacon.  And finally there must be some good veg in there to balance things out, I've put just about any vegetable you can think of in chili at some point, but I really like peppers, corn, onions, and beans, I just mix them up with whatever else I have around and omit what I don't. 

So the "recipe" part: Tonight I used chorizo, quinoa, chocolate, flax, green bell pepper, onion, canned tomatoes with green chiles, and kale.  Have I mentioned I am from California?  This was an amazing combination!  It was similar to a molé sauce (I added some sugar to make it nice and sweet) with a complex smoky flavor because I got distracted by the spring rain when I went outside to pick the kale and burned the chorizo a bit...  ahem.  I also made a kellerweiss hefeweizen cornbread (just substitute the beer for milk in Jiffy cornbread).  This was so tasty I don't know if I will ever make normal cornbread again.  Gotta love the folks over at Sierra Nevada for making this spicy gem of a beer (thank you Scott your beer is delicious).  I mixed up a double batch of this bread and baked it at 325 for 30 minutes in a loaf pan covered in foil, then I removed the foil and cooked it at 350 for 15 more minutes.  Unfortunately this wasn't quite enough, it was perfectly golden around the edges but still moist in the center.  Luckily there is a great trick for this- just take the bread out of the loaf pan and microwave it for one minute.  It will cook the center without the risk of burnt edges you get with the conventional oven.

Okay, enough about dinner let's see the embroidery progress

Tada! Now I'm off to bed, good night.

Leftovers Again... F!@# Yeah!

I made a nice roasted chicken last week, AND I remembered to use the leftovers for stock, AND I even picked off all the chicken meat, AND threw it in my freezer.  Amazing right?  So tonight I used the stock and chicken meat to make an Asian fusion chicken and dumplings!  So delicious and quick I must share...

8 cups chicken stock
2 stalks of lemongrass (crush lightly with mallet)
1 leek sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic (pressed or chopped fine)
1 thumb of fresh ginger peeled and cut into large chunks
1-2 cups shredded chicken meat
1 small bunch of kale (or whatever greens you have on hand)
2-3 Tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
1-2 Tablespoons sugar
Prepared dumpling dough (I used Bisquick, but you could make them from scratch)
Prepared chile sauce (I like Sriracha)

Heat stock, lemongrass, leek, garlic, and ginger to a boil over a medium-high burner.  Add chicken, kale, tamari, and sugar.  You may adjust the tamari and sugar to suit your tastes.  Prepare dumpling dough, and shape into 2" balls.  Reduce heat to medium, carefully drop in your dumplings, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.  Serve hot with chile pepper sauce.

Just Yummy

Tonight I made citrus brownies with cardamom whipped cream for dessert.  Yummy and so simple, just added citrus peel and a squeeze of juice to the brownie mix and then mixed in a half teaspoon of cardamom when I made my whipped cream.