Stuffing is one side dish that I love, but that no one else in my family has ever loved before.  Until this year, that is.  I took a different approach to it and it paid off well, getting the ravest reviews of everything on the table.

With the help of the magnificently uncomplaining, happy-to-help B, we tore up 5 crusty, day-old baguettes.  Or should I say, I shredded 4 and B shredded 1 and then took 3 of my finished baguettes and put them on his cookie sheet.

I put a single layer of bread on a cookie sheet and then drizzled it with olive oil, and then sprinkled everything with a mixture of kosher salt, ground pepper (the mixed kind that you buy already in the grinder), garlic powder, onion powder, tyme, and sage.  I baked each tray of bread at 325 for 45 minutes to dry it out.  I did the same with a loaf of “fitness” bread, a healthy wheat bread they bake fresh at our Commissary.

This made far too much bread but the leftovers were perfect as croutons for my pumpkin soup that looked like baby poop but tasted great…at least I thought so.  The reviews were polarized: some people absolutely loved it, others absolutely hated it, and the only one in between was Isak who really did hate it but didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

I sliced, very thinly, 3 stalks of celery and chopped 6 peeled gala apples.  I also sliced up 3 chorizo sausages into about 1/4″ thick slices. This was the real stuff, people, not the Johnsonville brat-style chorizo.  The last main ingredient was a bag of dried cherries which were incredible and well worth the $3 for a tiny bag of them.  My only regret was that I didn’t buy more (to my defense, I thought there were more in the bag than what I got! I had to substitute in some cherry-flavored dried cranberries that I had on hand).

I fried the sliced chorizo in a pan; I didn’t drain the grease from the chorizo and added it to the bread which gave it a great flavor and a nice color.  I added the apples, cherries, and celery and mixed it all together with 3/4 quart chicken stock and 4 eggs and baked for an hour at 350°.  I should have added a few pats of butter to the top before baking it, but even still it came out beautifully.

This is definitely going to be made again next year! Hopefully I can find some authentic chorizo to make it with, but even the iffy Johnsonville chorizo would have lent some really good flavor to the dish.

If there was a stuffing contest, this stuff would have won the blue ribbon!

Due to some…stuff…there has been a last minute change of plans and we will be having a small Thanksgiving get-together at my house - Alex and Sophia and our friends, Dave and Michelle and their son.  I’m actually very excited about the whole thing - excited to sit together and eat together instead of sitting outside in the cold and rain feeling very antisocial.  And I am excited to be cooking everything!  I mentioned a bit about the dishes I’m making, but this is the full menu:

Brie and honey-pear sauce on melba toasts (courtesy of Alex) as a starter, and then…

Turkey…unfancy, plain old turkey…
Creamy mashed potatoes with roasted, mashed garlic on the side
Chorizo-apple-cherry stuffing
Sweet potato casserole with crunchy coconut-pecan topping
Obnoxiously Wisconsin green bean casserole
Glazed carrots
Pumpkin pie (with Cool Whip! It’s one of the only two things Cool Whip is good for)
Chocolate Chip Irish Cream Cheesecake(TM)(R)(C)
Chocolate Pecan pie

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  Check back tomorrow for photos of the feast!

I’m such a huge fan of Thanksgiving.  After a relatively thorough review of my blog, I noticed that I have never really explained exactly how much of a fan of Thanksgiving I am.

Or maybe it’s because I didn’t realize exactly how much I love Thanksgiving until I ruined it for myself last year, making a small Thanksgiving feast in October.  As I ate my delicious turkey and my artery-clogging green bean casserole with spoon after spoon of jiggly canned cranberry sauce, I felt worse and worse about ruining the day for myself.

Because Thanksgiving is not meant to be eaten in October.  Thanksgiving is not meant to be eaten without a large population of either seldom-seen relatives or obscure acquiantences that you really don’t see unless your meeting involves a lot of pie.  Thanksgiving is not meant to be eaten until the weather is just right, and just right is the weather that happens every fourth Thursday in November.  It must also involve football.  Whether football is watched or not is irrelevant, so long as it’s on the TV somewhere in the house.  I think the circulation of television waves and electrons makes the turkey that much better.

We’re planning on going to our neighbor’s house again this year to celebrate.  I am bringing my obnoxiously Wisconsin green bean casserole, a sweet potato casserole by request of the hostess, and chorizo-apple stuffing - my own recipe.  Because I’m fancy like that.

I have ambitions to make other dishes, particularly a dessert, but I don’t know whether to make a crock pot cake (I may attempt to make a crock pot carrot cake, though I’ve never tried before), a pumpkin cheesecake on a gingersnap crust, or a Bailey’s chocolate chip cheesecake with an Oreo cookie crust.  Ohhh, the decisions…

In return for making a fabulous green bean casserole and trash talking Brett Favre, since we can’t be together this Thanksgiving, I ask that everyone who reads my blog that lives within driving distance of Milwaukee please do me a favor this Black Friday:

Go to Kopps.  And eat at least one scoop of tiramisu custard.

And if you can figure out how to get a pint to Spain, I will send you…I don’t know…some fancy sherry vinegar that Jerez is famous for.  And some saffron.  And my eternal, undying love and affection.

Intense meaning AFN Europe…and fame meaning a 3 second passing shot of me when I was volunteering last school year for a reading program…but still!  I’m giving out autographs for free and I will let you take your picture with me!

Tune into the :29 second mark and don’t blink.

Ha ha!  That’s me on the opening still shot, too.  Trumped the admiral!

We are suckers for homeless cats.  Ala Spit, aka Spitty Kitty, adopted B on a fishing trip where she jumped into the car and made herself at home.  Toyota Celica, aka Yota, suckered his way into our home as a teeny kitten.  Black cats are very hard to adopt and putting him in the shelter would have meant his life would have more than likely been spent there.

And now we have been adopted by another cat.  We heard meowing at the front door the other day and opened the door and in ran this new cat, who immediately ran to the food on the other side of the house like there was a GPS beacon built into it, pooped in the litter box, and then came and sat on our laps.

This cat is amazingly sweet.  While Spitty and Yota constantly fight, this cat just kind of goes with the flow.  Even Spitty, as temperamental as she is, almost immediately accepted her (unlike Yota who from the age of 3 weeks stressed her out).

Meet the newest Siggy Kitty, Susan Navarra Kittycat, aka Susie:

I should note that she has been homeless for quite some time, roaming our neighborhood.  She was flea-ridden and hungry and fairly thin for her size and we plan on posting notice to see if anyone claims her…but somehow, knowing the reputation for cats being dumped when people move, I have the feeling no one will.

I really do love the cooler weather.  I enjoy snuggly sweaters and scarves and pants that cover my chubba-chubby thighs.   I like boots and hats and the shorter days, snuggling up with the kiddies and the kitties, and warm blankets.  And I really like soup.

I like to cook but a lot of what I cook goes unappreciated by the picky little boy that lives in my house and demands to be fed chips and waffles.  Anja will eat most of what I cook, as long as it doesn’t involve a lot of meat, but doesn’t really get excited about anything I make.  But there is one thing that always gets very literal jumps for joy:  chicken noodle soup.

One of the first really cool days here, I made some chicken noodle soup and boy, did it hit the spot.  I made it from scratch, simmering chicken, celery, onions, carrots, fresh parsley all day in my lovely Lodge pot.  As I stirred in my favorite egg noodles, and it made me reminisce about my own mother’s homemade chicken soup, and I started to think about another meal I had looked forward to in my own childhood: chicken and dumplings.

I had never made chicken and dumplings as an adult and when I looked for a recipe, I was surprised to see it was basically just chicken soup with biscuits cooked into it instead of noodles.  So I thought I’d attempt it and see how it all turned out.

In an effort to save time - there is always a shortage of time at home when it comes to making dinner - I decided to try some store-bought broth instead of making it allll the way from scratch.  I was surprised how nicely everything turned out, and it really was easy and quick to make this way.

The ingredients were simple and - score! - cheap:

2 boxes of chicken broth
1 bag of frozen boneless/skinless chicken breasts
3 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 medium onion
a 4-pack of Pilsbury buttermilk biscuits (the kind that come in a can - they were the cheapest kind)
Milk - or, if you’ve recently passed a physical fitness test, heavy cream

This chicken soup-making phase has made me appreciate my large knife - it’s usually crappy but for chopping carrots and onions and chicken, it’s great!  Please, do not use a small kitchen knife even if it is a great small kitchen knife - your hands will fatigue very quickly.  And use a nice, heavy pot.  I don’t know why it makes such a difference, but it really does.

Boil the chicken until cooked and then drain it and chop it up.
Chop up the carrots, celery and onion.
Bring the broth to a simmer and add the carrots, celery and onion.  Let simmer for about 15 minutes.  Add in the chicken.  Bring the soup to a full boil.

Next comes the fun part: Pinch the biscuits apart into three pieces each.  Drop them into the boiling soup.  Cover your heavy pot with the heavy pot lid and let it boil away for about 5-7 minutes.  When you open the lid, magic!  The biscuits will be all big and poofy.  Start stirring it; the now-dumplings are firmed up enough that you can stir it without everything getting mushy and nasty.

Turn down the heat and let it simmer for another 10 minutes or so, and then stir in some milk.  I don’t know how much - I added probably about 1/2 cup.

The starch from the biscuits helps thicken up the broth a little bit and the cream makes it a really nice texture.  Keep some tongs handy to snip at the little fingers trying to fish extra dumplings out of the pot, and enjoy!