Comfort food

After admiring Smitten Kitchen's Mushroom Bourguignon for months and months, it suddenly hit me this afternoon that I had to make it tonight. The thought of it was making my mouth water at 3:30 this afternoon.

So, yeah. I picked up some mushrooms on the way home. I bought big cremini, but I think it would have been good with any meaty mushrooms.

Oh, and because we're not vegetarian and we had two sad week-old slices of (English) bacon in the fridge, we used bacon right at the beginning. It was AMAZING and so much quicker than the full boeuf version and I could hear Julia admonishing me NOT to crowd the mushrooms! (Darling, I didn't. I did them in 2 batches. You'd be proud of me.)

SO good that we ate it all and there were no pictures.

Oh, and we put the pearl onions and butter/flour mixture in right after adding the liquid. Other than that, unchanged. And delicious.

Veggie peeps: go make it.

Meat-eating peeps: this is almost boeuf bourguignon and it was on the table in an hour. SHUT UP and go make it.

And as the other part of my quest for comfort food, I made the pumpkin-apple muffins from the Libby's Pumpkin tin on Thursday last week (Thanksgiving, for those of you paying attention). I wanted cream cheese icing, not streusel, so that's what I did.

Libby's recipe is on the inside of the pumpkin labels, and also here. I used Martha's cream cheese frosting recipe, here. YUM.

Thankfulness

Today is officially the Saddest Day To Be An Expat. Fellow Americans are having an epic four-day weekend, feasting on turkey, and generally making merry. We expats, though, are working (as celebration of the survival of the rebels is frowned upon), having a normal dinner (since making a complete turkey dinner takes ALL day), and generally feeling slightly homesick.

We are, however, having a mini-Thanksgiving (with roast chicken, since I forgot to pre-order my turkey this year) on Saturday.

Regardless of country and turkey-consuming status, I'm still very thankful.

For my family, and friends, on both sides of the Atlantic.
For the fact that my to-read, to-quilt, and to-knit lists are always full.
For the fact that it's now officially After Thanksgiving so I can start in on the Christmas music.

(The W from the Rangers quilt, mid-applique.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating!

We had Stowmarket Thanksgiving last weekend. It was a definite success - the turkey from the butcher (pre-ordered in August, of course) was v. tasty, and all of the sides were both yummy and hot! I was inspired by the NYT stuffing "muffin" suggestion: I made my mom's (NYT circa 1970s) stuffing recipe, John used the blender to mix it together, then we mashed it into a muffin tin and baked it with the rest of the sides after the turkey came out. They were really tasty - crispy on the outside and mushy in the middle.

Because it's cold outside, the knitting has taken hold. I went to Wibbling Wools yesterday and impulse-bought some Rico Pompon yarn. It's a synthetic yarn: cording puncutated by little nuggets of fleece. And when you follow the pattern on the inside of the ball band, makes a scarf like this:

It's kind of fiddly at first, but the result is SO soft. I'm psyched for the end result.

I also had picked out a pattern a few weeks ago for another sweater, and I decided on some yarn. The original pattern is for a now-discontinued mohair yarn. According to the knitting/pattern guru at the store, I can substitute an aran. So I did. It's kind of hard to tell, but it's a charcoal-grey alpaca cotton blend with little flecks of light grey in it. Going to be v. warm and lovely. Once I finish the fleece-nugget scarf, that is.

I will not Crumble in the face of adversity

The blackberries are in all the hedgerows - James and I went foraging a few weeks ago and I put a big tub of them in the freezer. We added some apples from our friends with a Bramley tree, a little cinnamon, lemon juice, and crumble topping, and voila. YUMMY.  I couldn't even take the picture before half had been eaten!

Speaking of food, I ordered my Thanksgiving turkey today. Last year I called our butcher in mid-October and was told that I could have a turkey but could I please call earlier next year.

So I called them today, and said, "Hi, I'd like to order a turkey to be picked up at the end of November."

"Um, a turkey? In November? I don't think we can do that."

In the background, I heard, "Wait, I know who that is - she ordered one last year. Tell her to hang on!"  A long pause.  Then, "Hello, I remember you. A turkey in November? What size?"

After last year's lbs-kg debacle, we will be getting a 5 kilo (11lb) turkey, picked up on the Saturday after American Thanksgiving, to be served on Stowmarket Thanksgiving (the Sunday after A.T.).

Mission, accomplished.

Too...much...turkey

We ordered our turkey a few months ago from the butcher. When I picked it up yesterday it seemed a bit heavy. And expensive. When I got it home, I realized that we'd bought a 9 KILO turkey rather than a 9 POUND turkey. That's an 18 lb turkey for those of you not doing the math. Oh, and there were 6 grown-ups and one kid at our table.

John and I got up at 6 this morning to put the bird in the oven, and accidentally left the oven on 190C instead of 160C. The turkey was a little dry, but otherwise very tasty. Oh, and it was done an hour early. John made the mashed potatoes, and we had butternut squash with shallots and sage, sauteed broccoli with garlic, creamed onions, and stuffing. Freda made some gorgeous cranberry sauce, and the best apple pie I've ever had for dessert. Elia brought a really tasty pumpkin pie with pecans on the top, which we completely devoured in addition to the apple pie. It all looked really festive and Thanksgiving-y on the plate - and I completely forgot to take a picture.



Happy eaters:

We have SO much leftover turkey - I've filled a huge tupperware container, and that was after I'd extracted the dry meat. This picture? AFTER everyone had eaten.


We only got through the meat from one side. I sent a huge chunk home with F & T, and it's going to be turkey sandwiches for the rest of the week. Any turkey recipes would be gladly taken. I thought about making soup, but couldn't bear to extend the turkeyness - so I threw away the bones. I felt SO guilty doing it, but I just knew I wasn't going to use them. Maybe I should have frozen them - I don't know.

Post/Pre Thanksgiving

On American Thanksgiving (Thursday), I called the family and they played pass-the-phone with me. It was good to talk to everyone, if only for 3 minutes each.

Then John and I had veggie chili leftovers and walked to the Stowmarket Regal cinema. It's a 1930s-ish art deco cinema that has just been restored - we love it! We saw Stardust (based on the Neil Gaiman book that I loved) and it was fantastic. The perfect blend of LoTR adventure and Princess Bride camp. I've seen reviews that said that the pacing was bad and Clare Danes was annoying - and I completely disagree. The movie romped along at a v. satisfying clip and Clare was perfectly acceptible. A.O. Scott suggested that it would have been much better with the original choice - Gwyneth Paltrow. Meh...not so much.

Tomorrow is Stowmarket Thanksgiving - here's some of the prep that went on tonight. I had a minor meltdown when I couldn't find my mom's NYT stuffing recipe - I have NO idea where it is and the interweb wasn't yielding anything. I've ended up with this recipe - it sounds similar but I think Mom's might have carrots in it. Not sure. It should be yummy, though.



Oh, and our monster fridge that we thought we'd never fill? FULL.

I'm still here

Well, the blog was COMPLETELY neglected while we were in New York. We basically didn't sit down between when we got in on Thursday night until I got home this evening. John's up at the warehouse in upstate NY until the end of the week - apparently the IT needs some TLC.

We went to Liz & Dan's wedding up in Vermont - it was a beautiful wedding and we all had a really great time!!


Here's a picture of the Stowe Market. Haha.


And here we are at our Ben & Jerry's pit stop on the way home.


We had a really good Thanksgiving with my family and got to see a few of our friends (but it was tough because SO many people were home at their parents' houses for the holiday...)

Lots more pictures and fun stuff to follow, I promise!