Local Thanksgiving Menu

We're hosting Thanksgiving this year. 20 people...EEK!!! Thankfully, I'm not doing all the cooking, as I have to work until 2pm Thanksgiving Day. We're having supper at 5 or 6, and my Mom and Sister will be at my house while I'm at work to get things going. I wanted to share our *mostly* local menu with you:

Turkey-ordered from nearby Plainville Farms

Local Mashed Potatoes- with local butter and sour cream

Sausage stuffing- using locally-made Gianelli sausage

Stuffed squash- using locally grown turban squashes, local apples, home-made bread, and local walnuts (just found these at the co-op, super excited about them!)

Sauteed Spinach-will try to find local, but if I can't then organic at least

Salad, with local greens

Applesauce-with local apples

Homemade Rolls

Pies-Grandma's in charge, but probably made with local fruit she picked this summer and froze

Appetizers:

Deviled eggs-local free-range eggs

Onion dip- local onions, with locally-made potato chips

Salsa-homemade with local produce, and organic corn chips.




It's not perfect, but I think it's a pretty good stab at our first conscious effort to have a local Thanksgiving feast, especially with family members who are not always on our local bandwagon. Look for photos of our feast sometime this weekend!!

Breadwinner!

Off and on now, I've been making bread at home using this recipe for "Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day" I originally read about it in Mother Earth News online. So, when we want bread at home, this is the recipe I use, because it's fast, and also because kneading bothers my wrists (this is a no-knead recipe).

Now, normally, I don't experiment when I bake, thinking that any deviation from the recipe will ruin the result, and I don't like wasting food. But when I cook, I don't measure hardly at all....

Yesterday, I got brave and experimented with the bread recipe. Before mixing the bread together, I threw some oatmeal, wheat bran, dry kamut cereal, walnuts, flax seed, and sunflower seeds into the food processor. I pulverized it, and replaced it for the same volume of flour. The rest of the flour I used half white flour and half wheat flour. I set the bread to rise, and held my breath.

Put it in to bake, and VOILA!!!

There it is!

It was hard to wait for it to cool to slice it, but I did....lookin' good...

I was worried the texture would be too dense, but it's not really, sort of the texture of a muffin inside.....and DELICIOUS!!!

Needless to say, I'm very proud of myself. Now I only have to duplicate it.....great.

I will be a domestic goddess...

I had big plans for today. I was going to get a ton of things done-cleaning the bathroom, canning salsa, making bread, making some Christmas gifts, laundry, pick up bunny supplies for the bunny at work, make ginger ale syrup, pick up some stuff from work so I could finish some of that on time for once.....

I made (a ton of!) salsa and barbecue sauce and mixed the bread dough, which is rising in the fridge. I may get to it today. I may not.
canned salsa

salsa to use soon and freeze

the beginning of my delicious barbecue sauce-
some for this weekend, some to freeze

Why are weekends so difficult to cram everything into? Tomorrow's a wash because I have a gig out of town, and I'll be gone from 10am until at least 7pm...


Also, although I love my stove with the gas cooktop, built in grill, and electric oven, it's too small. I rarely grill indoors because it's uneven heat, and it's a real pain when I can because I can't do anything else. My new (to me) canner is also too large for the burner, and my other pot feels crowded. This one is the smaller one that I had on while the salsa was processing, the big one with the salsa in it was a real squeeze!

Sorry to do so much unloading, it's what happens when my brain gets to much alone time....

Someone stop the world...

...I want to get off!

What a busy Halloween season we had around here! Also, I've been slacking on posting because there were photos of my wedding dress on my camera and I didn't want to accidentally upload them to our computer. But, photos are now safely on a work computer, and this week is less busy.

So, without further delay, here are some photos of my busy Halloween season: