Menu:
Baby Bella Mushrooms stuffed with
Rancho Gordo Christmas Lima Beans,
Blue Cheese & Walnuts
Grandmom Gladys’ Mashed Potatoes
Grandmom Jean’s Stuffing
Mushroom Gravy
Canned Cranberry Gelée
Noe Valley Bakery Pecan Pie with
Hand-Whipped Cream
Monday:
Grocery shopping for all ingredients.
Made the compound butter for the entree and the gravy, because those are the things that keep best for a few days. Still, somehow I’m drastically behind schedule.
Blue Cheese & Walnut Compound Butter
1 stick salted butter
2oz blue cheese
1/3 cup very finely chopped walnuts (think: dust)
1 TBS dry sherry
Generous snip of rosemary
Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature.
Stir, stir, stir. Stir more. Stir until you don’t really see any more streaks of plain butter, or until you just don’t care anymore.
Can be stored in a sealed container for 3-4 days before use.
Take a tentative, curious lick of the spatula. Lose all sense of decorum. Lick the bowl. Lick your fingers. It’s butter with cheese, nuts, and alcohol, FFS. It’s DELICIOUS. Keep licking. Why else could we possibly be on earth if not to revel in pleasure.
Mushroom Gravy
I basically followed the recipe from Serious Eats, with very few modifications:
– Veggie stock (used a vegan “beef” stock) instead of meat stock
– Hen of the Woods and portabella instead of crimini
– Rosemary instead of thyme
– Finally, I pureed it until it was silky smooth. I don’t want a chunky gravy.
Sooooooo. I’m washing and chopping 12oz of mushrooms, and I’m like, JFC, this is a lot of mushrooms. Did I buy too many? So I check the recipe, and no, I bought the correct amount. The recipe yields 12 servings, or 4 full cups of gravy.
Fortunately, it’s DELICIOUS, and after licking the spatula, I switched to a spoon and just started eating it like soup. Why isn’t it soup? It IS soup.
https://www.seriouseats.com/mushroom-gravy-sauce-recipe
Wanted to get more done today, specifically, I’d planned to cook the beans and prep the mushrooms for the entree. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty busy week for me and Mike, apart from cooking and cleaning and decorating. Tomorrow we have two (count ’em, TWO) appointments in the middle of the day.
Stay tuned to see if I catch up tomorrow!
Tuesday:
Woke up to a text from my sister-in-law.
I had knitted Christmas stockings for all the nieces and nephews when they were born. When they were putting away their Christmas decorations last year, they asked me if I could repair a tiny hole in one of the stockings. Honestly, a 5-minute job. Of course! I’m happy to do it! They give me the stocking. I promptly put it aside, and don’t give it another thought until this morning, when my sister-in-law texted, asking if I had the stocking ready, bc they needed it for Christmas.
Dear reader, I have NO FUCKING CLUE where that stocking might be. It has not been repaired, unless the elf on the shelf has gotten out of the snitch racket and started being actually helpful for a change.
So, for those keeping score at home, today I need to:
– Catch up on the cooking prep I didn’t finish yesterday.
– Do all the cooking prep originally scheduled for today.
– TWO appointments outside the house!
– Find, repair, and ship the missing stocking.
It’s really not as bad as it sounds. I mean, the stocking situation is BAD, but the cooking is fine. I got up and immediately started the beans. As you know, I use the Rancho Gordo method, which for this batch went something like this:
Christmas Limas
1/2 lb beans
1/4 tsp baking soda, divided
2 TBS salt, divided
2 TBS olive oil
4 large cloves garlic, peeled
lots of rosemary
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
– I did a pre-soak, only bc I remembered. Put beans in a large bowl with 1/8 tsp baking soda and 1 TBS salt, filled with cold water, stirred, covered (only so the cats wouldn’t get into it) and let sit overnight.
– Woke up, freaked out over the stocking, poured a cup of coffee.
– Drained and rinsed the beans.
– In a large pot, sauted garlic and rosemary in olive oil, just until fragrant. Added beans, lots of water, 1/8 tsp baking soda and 1 TBS salt, pepper. Brought to a hard boil, and let ‘er rip for 10 minutes. Turned the heat down to as low as it will go, and covered, leaving the smallest crack to vent.
– Sat down to update the blog. Still haven’t finished my coffee. Start to wonder exactly what time I started the beans. They need maybe 45 minutes? IDK. It doesn’t matter, since I don’t know what time they started.
– Ah! But I took a picture of the beans boiling! So, check the time stamp, 8:22am, great, it’s been about 40 minutes, I should check.
– Yup. Done. Transfer into pyrex to cool. Try not to eat too many right now.
Stocking Update:
Fixed the hole.
Ready to ship!
Wednesday:
I’ve typed an update each day, with the day of the week in large, bold type, but I still can’t believe it is Wednesday, and tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I’m doing fine with cooking, but I need to clean for company. Okay, yes, company isn’t coming until Sunday, but, still. I think Sunday will be the first “party” we’ve hosted since the before times, and neither my living room nor I am ready in any way.
ANYWAY. Wednesday. I’ve made the mashed potatoes, and they are perfection. They taste just like Grammy’s, even tho I followed the recipe from The Pioneer Woman, which I’m pretty sure is the same as Grammy’s. No real mods, I didn’t use Lawry’s, I did use white pepper.
https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a12083/delicious-creamy-mashed-potatoes/
Turns out, I don’t own a potato masher. I used a pastry knife to start, and switched over to my hand mixer to finish, which worked fine.
Checklist and timing for tomorrow:
12:30 – Pull mashed potatoes and compound butter out of ‘fridge
1:45 – Make stuffing
2:00 – Pre-heat top oven to 350
2:15 – Saute and stuff mushrooms
2:25 – Stuffing into top oven
2:50 – Mashed Potatoes in top oven
3:00 – Pre-heat bottom oven to 450
3:01 – Gently reheat gravy
3:15 – Mushrooms in bottom oven
3:25 – Everything out of oven, plate the cranberry gelée
3:30 – Sit down to dinner
Thursday: Thanksgiving Day
Like most days, I started today with a Prilosec and cold brew.
Unlike most days, I added a splash of Amaretto to my coffee, because it’s a holiday, dammit.
Grandmom Jean’s Stuffing.
Growing up, this was our all-purpose stuffing. We used it for stuffed peppers, braciole, and of course, Thanksgiving.
I was explaining the recipe to some friends, and they pointed out that this recipe is more like a savory bread pudding than stuffing. Great! Whatever. To me, this is stuffing.
The recipe is simple, but, in honor of Grandmom Jean, who died way too young and didn’t give up her cooking secrets easily, I’m not really able to give any exact measurements. It’s more of a, “keep adding things until it smells right” situation.
1 loaf good crusty Italian bread
12 eggs
4-5 cups grated Locatelli (ONLY Locatelli. If you can’t find it, do not make this recipe.)
1/2 – 1 bunch parsley (the whole bunch, from the grocery store) cleaned and minced
1/2 – 1 tsp black pepper
– Cube the bread, spread in one layer on cookie sheet, and leave out to dry or dry in the oven.
– Whisk together the eggs, and the rest of the ingredients, starting with the smaller quantities. Stir into the bread cubes. Stir, stir, stir. You want the bread to absorb all the eggs, and start to dissolve. You *don’t* want bread cubes floating in eggs. Give the mixture a good sniff. You should clearly smell each ingredient. Can you smell the parsley? If not, add more. Can you smell the cheese? If not, add more.
– Transfer into a greased casserole dish. It’s good to let it sit for a while (even overnight) in the ‘fridge, so that *all* of the bread has absorbed the egg, but this isn’t critical. Today I only let it sit about 30 minutes while I pre-heated the oven.
– Bake at 350 for about an hour, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Maggie’s Mushrooms
Maggie got naming rights to this dish because she gave me the idea to use the mini-muffin pan. Brilliant!
24 perfect crimini mushroom caps, cleaned and de-stemmed
Compound butter and Christmas Lima Beans (above)
– Saute the mushrooms just until they give up their liquid.
– Distribute caps into a mini-muffin pan. Stuff each cap with about 1tsp compound butter and exactly 3 Limas.
– Bake at 425 for about 12 minutes until sizzly.
I’ll be honest. They were much prettier before they went into the oven. Below is a “before” pic, the beans split in the oven, spoiling their cover girl good looks. But OMG so delicious!!! The balance of flavors was perfect.
The leftovers have been put away, and I’m typing by the twinkly holiday lights in our windows. Thanksgiving is over.
Really happy with how everything turned out. The mashed potatoes and stuffing with the mushroom gravy were *exactly* what I want Thanksgiving to taste like.
I’m always a little bemused when I plan and cook for three days, just to eat one dinner. Conversely, I know I could take the time to make mashed potatoes any time I wanted, but I don’t. Mashed potatoes make this Thursday special.
This year I feel like I found a good balance between cooking plenty of delicious holiday foods, without running myself ragged, or feeling let down when it was over. So in the spirit of the holiday, I am grateful.
– I am grateful for all the therapy (physical and mental) that got me to the point where I can take on a big project without burning myself out. I sit here now, with only the faintest migraine, and for that I am SO grateful.
– I am grateful for the abundant good fortune that brought me to this moment, here, now, safe and warm, with a roof over my head, and delicious food on my table.
– I’m grateful for the friends and family that saw me through the days (years) when I was in pain, out of balance, and dysregulated.
– I am grateful for Paco & Francis.
– I am grateful for Mike.
