My Thanksgiving Timetable

My sister asked about this post, and when I couldn't find it I realized I'd written it for the Co-op blog I contributed to for five years (from inception until we quit). Our last post was in 2015, but since the internet is forever you can still read our posts - mine under the byline Sadge - at the Simple Green Frugal Co-op.

So, from November 2010: I'm the oldest of five children, so learned early how to cook for a crowd (in fact, I had to learn to cook all over again, for one, when I moved out on my own). Although there are just the two of us now, Thanksgiving Dinner at my house is usually for at least six, and sometimes even more. Over time, I've developed a timetable schedule that lets me get everything ready and on the table at once, with a minimum of stress. The menu doesn't vary much - we pretty much stick with tradition for this meal.

Things get started the weekend before Thanksgiving. The turkey needs to be out of the freezer and into the refrigerator by Saturday to thaw - it will take at least 3-4 days. I use my timetable as a reminder when making out my shopping list that day too (should you wish to refer to mine, clicking on the picture below should bring it up in a more-legible size).

By Tuesday, the turkey has thawed enough that I can get the giblet bag and neck out (when my sister first cooked TG dinner for the family, she didn't realize that those extras were inside. Mom discovered them, cooked inside, when she went to carve the bird) to use for making stock for gravy and moistening the stuffing. I submerge the bird in a bucket of brine, in the refrigerator, until Wednesday, and then let it air-dry, also refrigerated until time to get it into the oven on Thursday.
With the brining bucket out of the refrigerator Wednesday, I can start getting some of the other items prepped and in. I'd rather cook from scratch instead of out of cans when possible. Although the timetable says pumpkin, I prefer either a pink banana or butternut squash for my pie. Any of them will work, but where pumpkin pie can have a greenish cast to it, Pink Banana Squash Pie tastes the same but with a nice brown color instead. Whole sweet potatoes cook at the same time, later to be peeled and sliced into a casserole dish. Bread for the dressing, either Cornbread or One-Hour French Bread, is baked, cut into cubes, and left out on the counter overnight to dry. I use the "day before" list pretty much in order for the most efficient use of my oven.

The "Make" list, I might leave until my sister arrives. I always have a "guest apron" or two available, and we enjoy the chance to talk, wait for the local radio station to play Alice's Restaurant, maybe drink a toast to the harvest, and work together preparing the dishes we've had for Thanksgiving since we were children.

For "The Day" I have two sets of serving times in the left margin. If my husband has the day off work, we can eat in the afternoon; if he's working (Nevada casinos are 24/7, so getting the day off is never a certainty), TG dinner becomes an evening meal. Since there is only enough room in my oven for the turkey, everything else goes in when the turkey comes out. The side dishes cook while the turkey rests; gravy is stirred and potatoes mashed; husband carves while everyone else gets their choice of beverage. Then everyone helps get the meal on the table. And then we all sit down together. I hope you and your families are similarly blessed this holiday season.

The Picture of Dorian Orange

A Halloween homage to Oscar Wilde

  "How sad it is!" murmured Dorian, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young . . . "

 " . . . and, though I am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole month younger than i am, I must admit that I delight in it."

 "The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing."

 "There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly apparent."
 

 "A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness."

 "Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight . . . "

 "Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself - something that would breed horrors and yet would never die."

 "What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace."

 "Beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean."

 "He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometime which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age."

"An explanation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him."

 

 "[Dorian] looked round, and saw the knife . . . As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work . . . He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it."

 

 "When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was."

The Day Before Thanksgiving

Name That Culture

Pete lives in our refrigerator. Pete came here almost 20 years ago, but I'm sure he's much older than that. As a newlywed, and new to the neighborhood, I frequently saw an elderly neighbor walking her dogs past our house, so introduced myself. She lived in the house down the street with a wonderful garden. Her husband did the gardening, she did the cooking, and although now long retired, used to run a local catering business. We became good friends. She could see me out in my garden from her kitchen window, and when I'd come in for a break and the phone would ring, I could bet it would be Mae.

But I was talking about Pete, wasn't I? As a newlywed, my husband used to reminisce about the wonderful sourdough waffles his grandma used to make, asking if maybe I could learn to make them. His grandma was long gone, and his mom didn't bother with sourdough anymore either. But I happened to mention it one day while over visiting with Mae. She pulled out her jar of starter out of her refrigerator then and there, filled up a pint jar, and gave it to me along with instructions and a couple of recipes (I've also found Adventures in Sourdough Cooking & Baking, by Charles Wilford, a great resource for additional recipes). I have no idea how long she'd kept that starter going, but I'm betting it was decades. She also told me that, since the starter needs to be cared for and fed regularly, I should also give it a name just like any other house pet.

And so, Sourdough Pete came to live with us. What got me to thinking about all this, however, was that last night I realized I have another culture living here now that needs to be fed and cared for. There's a gallon jug of apple cider fermenting away on my kitchen counter, destined for my vinegar jar up in the cupboard. And it's the mother of vinegar I got last fall that will make it happen. I've heard about the folklore saying to name your sourdough starter, but never anything about vinegar mother. But I figure it's the same principle, and I certainly don't want to discriminate. So I've decided to name my vinegar mother Jolene, and hope she'll have a long and happy life here with us too.

Thanksgiving Orange Stuff

Our weekend company is gone, and the guest room bed changed and made up again. Having an extra set of flannel sheets for that bed means I can put the room back into crafts/office mode right away, without having to rush wet sheets out onto the clothesline in gale-force freezing winds. The turkey carcass was cooked into soup last night (with barley, carrots, and mushrooms), and the leftovers are slowly disappearing. The last of the Thanksgiving Orange Stuff made a great lunch today.

Orange Stuff is one of those really retro recipes. I first tasted it more than 20 years ago, as a regular dish at my mother-in-law's Thanksgiving table, and I'm sure she'd been making it since the 1950's at least. It never really even had a name - it was just that orange stuff she always made. It's a regular on my Thanksgiving table now too.

Thanksgiving Orange Stuff
16 oz cottage cheese
8 oz Cool-Whip (thawed)
3 oz box orange Jello (dry powder)
15 oz can mandarin oranges (drained)

Mix everything together and chill until serving time.

My Texas cousins gave me their church fundraising cookbook, and this type of "salad" appears in quite a few variations - drained pineapple with lemon Jello, or miniature marshmallows with pistachio instant pudding powder. It's good enough that I always think I should make it more often.

I tried something different this year, that really ended up being a hit. Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my sister's family is on the road from California, and I'm trying to decide what to do for dinner when they get here. I need something quick, easy, that everybody will like. The refrigerator is full of food for the next day, including the brined turkey air-chilling, so there's no room for leftovers either. So, how do I feed a vegetarian, two hard-core meat-loving men, two picky but hungry teenage boys, and an omnivore (me). How about make-your-own pizza? My pizza dough recipe makes enough for two 12" pizzas. Figuring half-a-pie per person, I increased amounts by half again to feed six people. That evening, the dough divided into six equal balls, we set up a dough-rolling station, opened up a jar of tomato sauce, shredded a mountain of cheese, and sliced up a variety of topping choices. We could cook two pizzas at one time, so everyone was in the kitchen. It turned mealtime into a fun event, everybody happy and well-fed, and no leftovers. Everyone agreed that ideas's definitely a keeper.

20th Wedding Anniversary

Twenty years ago, we got married outside the Virginia City Courthouse. It was basically an elopement. I didn't really want a big wedding or lots of guests showing up - this was just for us. My sister and my roommate at the time stood up with us. Three friends from work showed up unexpectedly, making the Justice' Chambers a bit too crowded, so we took it outside - a little lawn area under the golden-leaved cottonwood trees, next to the building. That was really nice. I also liked the idea that our officiating Justice of the Peace was a woman (Aries was surprised, but I'd set it up so I knew).

Something old: I had an antique linen handkerchief with crocheted edging that belonged to my grandma in my pocket. Something new: I wore brand-new white tennis shoes - they hadn't even been scuffed up yet. Something borrowed: my sister loaned me a beautiful pair of earrings to wear. Something blue: blue jeans (after the ceremony we went down the street to one of those old-timey dress-up photo places for our "official" wedding photo, so Mom did get a wedding picture of me in a wedding dress). And a 1953 silver dime in the heel of my left shoe.

I keep my wedding night peignoir and negligee tucked away in a satin-lined pouch, getting it out again each year, to add to that sense of occasion (note to the ladies: if this is a tradition you'd like to try, I'd advise choosing either something diaphanous and floaty or one with some stretch and ribbon ties - you'll be glad you have that bit of leeway in the fit during all stages of your life together). Sweet husband gave me an anthurium. For him, I looked up the list of traditional gifts. China, it said, for a 20th anniversary. So I told Aries he'd need to get a passport - couldn't talk him into that though. Instead, we spent the afternoon at the Italian Fest in Reno (he liked that - he's half Italian-descent), tasting pasta sauces and wandering about in the crowd.

Roasting Chiles

I got a good peach crop this year, and set aside 15 pounds to make a batch of salsa. I'm just about out of roasted and peeled chiles from last year, so before I can make salsa I needed more chiles.

So I headed out to the garden with a basket and clippers, and found plenty of green California chiles on my six plants. Next comes one of my favorite fall food prep activities - roasting the chiles (I've written a how-to for the whole process: roasting to char the skins, leaving the chiles to sweat in a bag, removing the skins and seeds (gloves on!), and then freezing or canning them for use throughout the year here).

Roasting chiles just says fall to me. I guess because I always pick a nice September evening to spend out on the deck. Even though the nights have started getting cooler, the days are still warm, and the shadow of the house on our east-facing deck feels good. The chickens scratch in the yard below; the sun still shines on part of the valley floor and Prison Hill to the east. I lift a chilled glass of a crisp Sauvignon Blanc in my annual silent toast/prayer of thanks for another harvest, and fire up the propane grill. The wonderful smell of roasting chiles soon fills the air, as I use my tongs to flip and turn the chiles.

This year, my sweet husband fetched home a Take-n-Bake pizza from the little shop down the street. He dressed it up with more veggies, fresh from the garden, before putting in the oven, and soon brings a plate out to me. Wine and pizza and a peaceful evening out on the deck - this truly is one of my favorite fall rituals.

By the time I've gone through all the chiles in the basket, the shadows have fallen across the valley floor. The last light of the setting sun makes a pinkish glow on the Pine Nut mountains. I have a lot to be thankful for.

MLK Day of Service

During the 1950s and '60s, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized the power of service to strengthen communities and achieve common goals.
President-Elect Obama has asked Americans to observe Monday's MLK Holiday by performing some action in the days leading up to the Presidential Inauguration to better your own community. So bright and early this Sunday morning, I'll be out, bundled up against the cold, in my work boots, gloves, and bright orange vest, my Ipod in my pocket, picking up trash along a mile of Nevada Highway 50/395 (the photo is from last summer - that's me on the left, in sunglasses and my goofy straw gardening hat). Aries, meanwhile, will be over at an elderly neighbor's place, bringing down a few widowmakers - trees on her property that are leaning over, threatening to fall. Find events in your community here. What are you going to do?

Happy New Year!

I'm visiting my sister, in California's San Francisco Bay Area, for a couple of days. I drove out of a blue sky day where our snow is quickly melting, over an icy pass through the snowy Sierras, down through the foothills where some trees are still dropping their fall leaves, and then down into a thick tule (pronounced two-lee, named after the reeds that grow along the river banks) fog where the citrus trees are heavy with fruit. In less than four hours drive, I'm in a completely different world.

So we're eating the last of the Christmas fudge, sharing a bottle of champagne, watching movies, fitting in a couple of trips to the gym (those New Year resolutions, you know), teaching my nephews to play poker (we're only playing for chips - Auntie Sadge had quite a pile raked in last night). I'll be back to write more in a couple of days. If you really need a fix of more Sadgey wisdom before then, I researched and wrote a post about recycling your old electronics over on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog. Especially if Santa left a new electronic gadget under your tree, it's something you should read. Check it out - and do the right thing for Mother Earth and our future generations!

Soup & Bread for Christmas Eve

The traditional Christmas Eve supper at our house growing up was always Oyster Stew. Basically just canned oysters (we were in land-locked Colorado, after all), milk, and butter, served with round oyster crackers. It was ok, but I didn't really like eating the big oyster chunks. The hot, buttery milk was good, but not really enough. So I've adapted Dad's tradition to suit my own tastes. Sticking with the idea of a seafood soup, I make a red vegetable chowder using canned baby clams. Add a homemade artisan-style crusty loaf of bread and some champagne with a splash of peach brandy (a budget Bellini, and really dresses up cheap champagne) and we've got a wonderful Christmas Eve supper (candlelight optional).

Vegetable Clam Chowder (makes 4-6 supper-size servings)
1 cup clam juice
1 cup water
8 oz tomato sauce
16 oz canned whole tomatoes, cut into chunks
2 medium potatoes, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 onions, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 tablespoon marjoram
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon sugar
10 oz canned baby clams
1 cup corn, fresh or frozen
salt & pepper to taste

Combine clam juice (from canned clams too), water, tomato sauce, tomatoes, potatoes, green pepper, carrots, onion, celery, marjoram, thyme, salt, pepper, and sugar in large saucepan. Bring to boil. Lower heat, cover, and simmer about 20 minutes, or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Add clams and corn. Simmer soup for another 10 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste. Optional: garnish with chopped parsley when serving.

I'm starting the bread tonight - a very wet, no-knead dough that gets its flavor from sitting overnight on the counter; its crusty goodness from being baked inside a very hot dutch oven. The recipe is now many places on the Internet. I first came upon it a year ago in Mother Earth News and love how easy it is to turn out an artisan-style loaf, without any fancy equipment, and very little effort (read the article all the way through, and some of the comments - I love the suggestion to use your microwave as a bread box. I, too, have to reduce the heat a bit for my cast-iron dutch oven, but the amounts work well for me).

Quick and Easy Fudge

A lot of my Christmas recipes are traditional family hand-me-downs - Grandma's Meringue Cookies, Mom's fruitcake recipe with just candied fruits and nuts, my sister's Cranberry Liqueur. But my favorite holiday treat is homemade fudge, and the family recipes just didn't cut it. They called for candy thermometers or boiling the mixture to something-something stage involving dripping it onto a plate or into a cup of cold water, then glopping around with it to assess when it was ready. And then the fudge didn't ever stay creamy good - it quickly turned into hard sugary cubes. I now use a new recipe, begged from a co-worker a few years ago. So quick, so easy, and so, so good!

Quick and Easy Fudge (makes 64 one-inch pieces)
1 can sweetened condensed milk (see note below)
12 oz semisweet chocolate chips
1 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups chopped nuts, or craisins, or dried pie cherries, or ?

Butter 8"x8" pan. Heat milk and chocolates in 2-quart pan, stirring constantly, until melted. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and whatever else you're adding. Spread evenly in pan. Refrigerate 1 hour, then cut into 1" pieces.

Note: If you have a no-canned goods kitchen, here's a recipe for making your own
Sweetened Condensed Milk (equal to a 14-oz can)
1 cup instant dry milk
3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
⅔ cup sugar
⅓ cup boiling water
Mix in a blender until smooth. Store refrigerated.

Canning Sweet Pickle Relish

Before I left to go camping I picked all the okra and zucchini, knowing I'd have more than enough when I returned. And so I did. But I didn't expect the cucumbers to go crazy that week too. I don't can every item every year. I know, from my canning records over time, that for just the two of us, various batches only need to be canned every three to four years. For example, I still have jars of dill, sweet, and bread & butter pickles from the past few years. So this year, it was time to make some sweet pickle relish.

This is my mom's pickle relish recipe, which I've cut in half to make 9 ½-pints (go ahead and double it to suit your family's needs). Nowadays, most cooks would use a food processor to chop the vegetables. But I was lucky enough to find an old food grinder, forgotten in a top cupboard in a rental house long ago, so I make my relish the same way Mom and Grandma did. Cut your cucumbers in half lengthwise and scrape with a spoon to remove the seeds before chopping or grinding.

Sweet Pickle Relish (makes approx 9 ½-pints)

Mix together:
2 quarts ground cucumbers
1 cup ground onion
1 cup ground bell pepper (optional)
¼ cup non-iodized salt
Let set 2 hours. Rinse and then drain well (I use a colander lined with a towel, pressing out as much liquid as possible). Start heating your jars and sealing rings in water to cover.

In an enameled pot, mix the cucumber mixture with the following and bring to a boil.
3 cups sugar
1½ cups vinegar
1 teaspoon turmeric
1½ teaspoons celery seed
1½ teaspoons mustard seed

Take the hot jars out of the boiling water and turn off the heat. Fill your jars, leaving ¼" headspace. When you know how many full jars you have, drop enough lids into the hot water, and then make sure the top rims of the jars are clean (I use a dampened folded paper towel, both so that I can turn and refold it for each jar, and so I don't transfer any bacteria from a dishcloth to the jar tops). Seal jars, hand-tight, and put into hot water bath (making sure the hot water covers the tops of the jars by at least 1" - I pour a splash of vinegar into the hot water after all the lids are removed to prevent hard water marks on my pretty jars of preserves). Process 10 minutes after bringing the water back to a low boil. Remove from the water and let set (do NOT touch or tighten the lids) and listen for the wonderful "ping" of a sealing jar.

After the jars are completely cool, I remove the rings for storage and wipe down the jars. If any haven't sealed they're stored in the refrigerator (with rings) and used first. I stick little labels on the lids (so I don't have to deal with removing them from the jars later - Mom just writes the date on the tops with a grease pencil). See my jar lifter, on the left of the above photo? It belonged to my dad's mom. I found it in a kitchen drawer of the old farmhouse before the house was sold, jacked up, and moved. It's a true work of art and a joy to use - easy and secure one-handed operation and immense sentimental value to me.

Housewarming Tradition

We went to a housewarming in our neighborhood tonight. Two generations have owned the house above us in the twenty-some years we've been here. The "grandparents" lived and raised a family in a little cottage on the original 5-acre homestead. The "parents" later inherited the place, eventually adding on to the house, but splitting off some of the acreage. A couple of years ago, their son moved back home after a divorce, bringing with him his children, "the grandchildren", the fourth generation in that house.

The son is a contractor - they divided the lot once again, and he started building a house above his parents house. Long story short - he met someone and they got married only a couple of months ago. And he finished building his new home. Tonight, they invited friends and neighbors to an open house to celebrate/meet his new bride/housewarming.

As a housewarming gift, I baked a loaf of my One-Hour French Bread, added the recipe card, plus a jar of sea salt and a bottle of honey. Since this is practically a forgotten tradition, I then wrote a card explaining the significance of such a gift:

"The bread and salt tradition come from an old Russian folk custom. Back in the day, when the emperor and empress would pay a village a visit, merchants and gentry would present their esteemed guests with a loaf of bread piled with salt - a sign of hospitality. Peasants were honored using a similar ceremony upon introducing a new spouse to the village, with the gift of bread and salt signifying that the new couple would always have the necessities of life. When given at housewarmings, therefore, bread and salt represent the wish that the recipients' pantry will always be full. Honey (or sugar), on the other hand, symbolizes the hope that their life together be sweet." (~quoted repeatedly all over the internet)

I wasn't sure if they drank alcohol, so didn't include a bottle of wine, but the German version of this tradition replaces the honey with wine: "Bread so you'll never go hungry, wine so you'll never be thirsty, salt to ensure your good luck."

Memorial Services

I'm home again, after a very emotional week in Colorado. My mom and two sisters had taken care of a lot of the arrangements before my two brothers and I made it home. Such a difference from when my in-laws passed. Aries' family is so different from mine - they observed no services, no family get-togethers, nothing.

My family is different. We all needed to be together. There were lots of hugs and tears but it was a healing experience too. One sister had a birthday that week, so we all went out to dinner to her favorite Mexican food place one night. Everybody got into a cribbage game or two, childhood friends dropped by, we took turns checking our email on one brother's laptop, cooked and ate family dinners together. I put together a couple of collage displays for the services from the photos Mom liked best. We three sisters went to a yoga class. We watched another brother's favorite DVD movie. Dad would have loved having the whole family together there (darn, now I'm making myself tear up again).

The memorial service was very nice. Dad was a Mason, so the Masonic Lodge did their formal ceremony. The man leading the opening prayer got so choked up he couldn't finish and I was afraid he was going to collapse on the spot, but another Lodge brother got up and took over. It was very touching. The funeral home had put together a nice video display, my sister's childhood friend sang, the pastor read the obituary my sister wrote, and afterwards there was a luncheon reception with food brought by all Mom's friends.

Dad was WWII Army veteran, having served in the 10th Mountain Division in Italy and the Aleutian Islands. After the service and reception, we had a family-only, full military honors ceremony at Fort Logan Cemetery. Taps was played, and the flag unfurled and refolded and presented to Mom. Half of Dad's ashes, wrapped in his Mason's apron, will be interred there.

The next day, we drove up into the Rocky Mountains to one of Mom and Dad's favorite fishing and camping spots. We chose a high little point overlooking the lake, where a few early wildflowers were already in bloom and a couple of small butterflies flitted, even though a snowbank still lingered down by the road. There we scattered the rest of his ashes, along with some wildflower seeds and our silent goodbyes. Amazingly, a hummingbird perched on a nearby branch to watch. It was all sad and bittersweet and really a lot of planning and ritual, but then too brought a necessary and comforting sense of closure.

So now I'm home, sleeping once more in my own bed. I've got a garden to plant (although it snowed for a bit here yesterday), a campaign to plan, baby chicks out in the dog run, a new dog in the house (more on that later), and with the official Memorial Day start of the tourist season, work assignments starting to come in. Life goes on.