Thanksgiving Part 1

Part 1 of this will focus on Thanksgiving itself (with the usual blanket apologies for the fact that some pictures are missing). It gets dark at . . . 3pm? these days? and the lights in the kitchen (whilst wonderful for the environment and polar bears and ice caps the world over) are less than flattering to dishes of food. Also, as we near dinner time, I increasingly forget to stop and take pictures, preoccupied as I am with table settings, total lack of counter space, telling Mum to stop de-linting the cat baskets in the mudroom, and "For the love of all that is holy you will eat in the garage if you don't come now why the hell am I bothering to do this anyway if you Won't. Come. Now." etc., etc., etc., and also trying, mostly unsuccessfully, not to burn myself, walk into things, and generally suffer clumsiness-induced bodily harm.

That being said, missing from the lineup this year are the final Mashed Potatoes, the Cornbread before it became Stuffing, final Cranberry Sauce, final Indian Pudding, and the glorious Thanksgiving table itself. Sorry. Use your own imagination from what I salvaged off my camera's memory stick. 

THANKSGIVING 2014

THE LEAD IN (Tues/Wed)

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Moroccan Turkey and Prune Tagine with Couscous

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Indian Pudding

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Cornbread

THE DINNER PROPER

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Cornbread Stuffing with Sausages and Leeks

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Mashed Potatoes

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Mustard Green Beans

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Bitter Marmalade Cranberry Sauce

THE AFTERMATH

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Yam and White Bean Cassoulet

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Apple Pie with Cheddar Crust

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Oatmeal Fig Cookies

What did we do on Thanksgiving, you ask? Camp outside Target overnight? Take a walk and savour the glories of the season? Celebrate with friends and loved ones and give thanks for company and good times? Appreciate how lucky we truly are and take joy in little things? 

Um no. 

I watched the Macy's Parade. 

I watched the Dog Show. 

I stretched for an hour and a half. Primrose helped me with my splits. 

I read the entirety of The Guardian. 

Mum did NOT watch the Parade but joined me for the Dog Show. 

Mum read the entirety of The New York Times.

Mum de-linted the cat baskets in the mudroom, as previously mentioned.

We really didn't talk to each other at all.

We had dinner in the library in front of the TV and watched old Miss Marple episodes. Again, not really talking to each other at all. 

We went to bed at 8.30.

It was awesome. 

It was seriously the zen-est, least stressful, most amazing Thanksgiving ever. 

The only problem, as Mum pointed out, is that for the rest of time, we will never be able to have guests. Because the prospect of anything other than a "no people no talking no socialization Thanksgiving" is now complete anathema.

Oh well.

OK ONTO THE FOOD. 

MOROCCAN TURKEY AND PRUNE TAGINE WITH COUSCOUS*
*veggie turkey, duh

I had been wanting to use prunes in a savoury dish for a while (I know, a common problem in the world) and had sort of decided to do this on Tuesday night. I was just worried because Mum is under the impression that she doesn't like prunes. And every time I mention the word "prune" she gets quiet and says after a tentative pause " . . . maybe without the prunes?"

BUT I was listening to the Food Programme driving down Tuesday morning and LO AND BEHOLD they were featuring Medieval Christmas recipes and it was ALL ABOUT MIDDLE EASTERN SPICES INCLUDING PRUNE-BASED DISHES. So that clinched it.

I would like to point out that Mum TOTALLY LIKED THE PRUNES IN THIS. It is also a very comforting winter dinner. And it makes the kitchen smell incredible. 

INDIAN PUDDING
This is one of my favourite autumn New England desserts, but I haven't made it in ages and ages. I decided this year I was going to do it. Indian Pudding is one of the very few things that the Pilgrims got right. It's cornmeal and cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg and molasses and butter and heavy cream. How could it NOT be delicious?

I used the Yankee Magazine recipe, which, if you're gonna do it, might as well do it properly. This version bakes the pudding straight in the oven. It is perhaps not the most traditional of preparations, but much easier than either a water bath or the dreaded "boiling for a billion hours" method, which is just preposterous. I know this is preposterous because when we went to Sturbridge Village last summer they were making Indian Pudding in their recreated hut on the hill, and the girl took it out of the pot wrapped in this soaking wet, smoking, dirty rag, and honestly it looked like something had died and then been boiled, and smelled even worse, and the only thing I could think of was how much the pudding, when turned out onto a dish, resembled the reborn Lord Voldemort baby thing at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 

So. Oven. 

Granted, what you get this way is a more solid pudding, the water bath method definitely makes it a bit wetter, but this was pronounced delicious, especially when eaten hot and accompanied by more heavy cream. Spicy and warm and filling and good. I'm sure the Indians were glad they had shared cornmeal with the Pilgrims as they froze to death / were cut down / died of smallpox / fled their homes in terror.

CORNBREAD
Thanksgiving staple, obviously. I've tried about a billion versions of this over the years and the one I've had the most luck with is Martha Stewart's Buttermilk Cornbread version. It's really moist and not sweet at all, especially after I almost halve the sugar.

It makes either one thick loaf or two flatish ones. (9 x 11 pan) I opted for two flatish, because there would be more "outside, crust area" that I knew would toast better pre-stuffing. Mind you, I had to wrest one of the loaves from Mum who decided that it was delicious toasted for breakfast.

This is the cubed version pre-stuffing oven-toasting.

NOTE: this is NOT the recipe I use for corn muffins. That is a different one from the New England Baking Handbook. The last time I used that was in July. Just FYI.

And of course the Cornbread and its toasted-ness or lack thereof leads me directly into Stuffing which leads me directly into

THANKSGIVING DINNER PROPER

The best part about having only two people at Thanksgiving dinner (and really once you take Beetle's dietary shenanigans into account I only count as half a person) is that I didn't spend all day cooking fourteen different things. This year, for the first time, I maintained a relative sense of proportion. I made only four dishes, in normal amounts, and all of them were fairly easy. The fridge did NOT look like a Prepper's bunker full of leftovers, Mum was NOT left eating stuffing for two weeks after the event (not that she would have minded), and I did NOT go completely bonkers trying to make a six course meal for ten people for no reason other than the fact that I could.

CORNBREAD STUFFING WITH SAUSAGES* AND LEEKS
*veggie sausage, again, duh

Cornbread stuffing is awesome. I've used Wild Rice, Sourdough, Crackers, and Rye in the past, but cornbread is fun, especially when it is homemade cornbread.

The toasted version

The other thing I did this year was use eggs and milk instead of vegetable broth. Neither of us likes vegetable broth (too salty, too greasy, makes me sick), which begs the question "why would you cook with it?" And there is a point to be made there. Stuffing is a once a year gluttony free for all, so why detract with an ingredient you're not wild about?

Why indeed.

I didn't follow a specific recipe. The basic stuffing idea is to saute a combination of onions, leeks, mushrooms, and some kind of vegetable, add a meat or soy-based meat if you want, and mix it with a dried or toasted carb. Then you add broth or milk or eggs, let it soak in, and throw it in the oven. That's kind of it. So I went by feel and look.

The one thing I did wrong with this was that it was a bit too dry. I don't know if it needed more liquid, or less time in the oven without the foil. I was so scared of having it be soggy (last year's wild rice version was too wet) that I think I went too far in the opposite direction. It wasn't "Sahara" but it definitely wasn't perfect. Next year. NEXT YEAR.

I also did not add celery. Everyone always lists celery as a main component of stuffing. But the thing is that celery is disgusting. It's so overpowering, so useless, and so completely non essential / non beneficial to any dish. Mum agrees. We are spearheading an anti-celery movement. Expect the tee-shirts and Kickstarter campaign early in 2015.

LEEKS. THE THINKING PERSON'S CELERY.

MAKE LEEKS NOT CELERY.

I LEEK THEREFORE I AM.

MASHED POTATOES

As I've said, the final potatoes did not make the photo cut. The mixer was burning my hand, the cats were all "what about MY DINNER" and Mum couldn't figure out which spoons to use, so I was a bit distracted.

I went all out with these this year (see comments re: stuffing above). The key for good mash is boiling the potatoes, they have to be WET in order to achieve the desired consistency. I kept the skins on because the skins are delicious, nutrient rich, and give it a nice fleck. Also, do you have any idea how hard it is to peel baby Yukon Golds?

Exactly.

So once they're boiled and super super super tender, drain them, dump them in a mixmaster (the rarely used PADDLE ATTACHMENT comes out here, which gets me thoroughly overexcited) and have at it.

And for the "all out" version, just add significant amounts of melted butter and heavy cream. Your ancestors will thank you.

Overheard at dinner.
Mum: "These are the best potatoes I've ever had."
Me: "Yeah."
Mum: "What's in them? Is it awful?"
Me: "Let's just call them 'special holiday potatoes' and leave it at that.
Mum (through an enormous forkful): "Cool."


MUSTARD GREEN BEANS
Classic recipe. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Cuts through all the richness of the rest of the menu, both visually and gastronomically.

Steamed green beans, olive oil, mustard, and a hell of a lot of fresh dill. Mix. DONE.

BITTER MARMALADE CRANBERRY SAUCE

One of the Thanksgiving legacies of my dad was to clear the table, wash the dishes, then in one movement open the fridge and ask very cheerfully whether anyone would like a turkey sandwich. He would inevitably get a dishtowel thrown at his head.

The other legacy was his Cranberry Sauce recipe, which is a kitchen hack, but an oh so delicious one. It involves a bag of cranberries and a jar of orange marmalade. And that's it.

You just boil everything in a saucepan (make sure the lid is on because exploding molten hot cranberries hurt like HELL) until the cranberries have softened and everything is thick and gooey. And that's it. Mum loves this. I only wish they sold cranberries at more times during the year. It's really only for two weeks before Thanksgiving, unless you want to pay $15 for a bag of them at Trader Joe's, and even we are not that psychotic. 

Note: go for BITTER marmalade, it keeps evertything sharp. Also the more peel you can get in there, the better. 

I made this on Sunday too, and instead of Orange Marmalade I used a jar of Apple Spice Chutney. It was received favourably. 

Ok so that's it for Part 1. Part 2, hopefully later this week, is Cassoulet, Pie, and Cookies, and further musings on Christmas trees, presents, and Hallmark movies. 

Because, um, IT'S CHRISTMAS. 

Belated Halloween Recap Post. Includes Squirrels and Wallpaper and Voting.

Good LORD I've missed this.

HI EVERYONE.

I started going through my photos from Halloween and deleting the ones that were blurry and/or crime-scene like and oohing over the ones that showed the chocolate ganache in all its decadent glory, and I realised just how much fun I was having, and how long it had been since I'd done it, and how I really kind of wanted to write a post. So.

I decided that I needed to do a Halloween recap post. If for nobody else but me.

BEETLE HALLOWEEN RECAP POST
ps I'm sorry this is so late. 

In the interest relaying the most pertinent events with the minimum (for me . . . ) of babble, and because my memory tends to sort itself into bullet points (and sub-bullet points) after a few days, here are the major happenings of Halloween 2014.

• Madame Vastra and I drove down from Vermont on Friday morning.
• This of course included the requisite 4am gym, so I stairmastered with the BBC, showered, drove 40 more miles on I-93 South, and stopped for coffee when it hit 7am and places that were NOT Dunkin Donuts were open. At 7.01 and 23 seconds I cracked the door of a coffee shop in Lincoln, NH that had literally just been unlocked by it's groggy owner said, perhaps a tad too cheerfully, "GOOD MORNING MAY I PLEASE HAVE TWO LARGE CUPS OF COFFEE WITH SOYMILK AND A GLASS OF WATER?"
• In case you missed the major bullet point of above. I drove. From Vermont. For me, in my relative driving novice-ness, this is kind of an achievement. I didn't get lost! I didn't crash! I only stopped to pee once! 
• I noticed that when I am doing interstate changes or other similarly high-attention-demanding manoeuvres, I talk to myself in a very clipped British accent. I don't know when this started. Or when it will go away. 
• We went and watched the trick or treaters on Main Street and had a total fluffy-warm-and-fuzzy-on-the-inside-Disney-Family-Movie moment watching all the adorable kids in their adorable costumes worn underneath their adorable parkas. 
• New England childhood rite of passage #9849849: trick-or-treating with an ugly old coat thrown over your painstakingly created costume because it's 27 F outside and snow is forecast for tomorrow. 
• Ashby, btw, is THE TRICK-OR-TREATING CAPITAL OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY. We had flood lights, state police, troopers with those runway landing glow stick thingys . . . THE WORKS. It was totally awesome.
• We got one trick-or-treater.
• This trick-or-treater was a squirrel.
• Who showed admirable self control in eating precisely ONE mini Snickers before apparently deciding he wanted to watch his waistline and leaving the rest. 
• I found this out when I went before bed to collect the bucket full of approximately $50 of candy that I'd left on the front porch, with all the lights on, with all the curtains open, hoping it would prove a beacon to still hungry children. The bucket had been knocked over, and one mini Snickers had been divested of its wrapper and consumed. We figured it was a squirrel because if it had been a raccoon not only would all the candy be gone, the raccoon would have probably knocked on the door, informed us that he was moving in, and did we have anything "savoury" as a palate cleanser? 
• I voted.
• Reason #65165 I love living in a tiny Massachusetts town:
• When you call the town clerk requesting your absentee ballot, "Lorraine" not only says "oh, you guys are in the big white house, yah I see your Mother all the time" but invites you over on Saturday for voting and tea. You fill out your absentee ballot in front of the woodstove in her kitchen, aided by her large blue-eyed husky Jack, who sticks his nose in your armpit as you check all the boxes for DEMOCRAT. 
• retrospective bullet point: Fat lot of good that did. 
• We discovered a suspicious leak in the corner of the dining room ceiling. 
• This means I got to see our handyman, a rare treat for a lightning weekend home. 
• I always hated that wallpaper anyway.
• I COOKED. DUH. 

HALLOWEEN WEEKEND FOOD

*not a comprehensive list as if I were to list all four loaves of bread and various other things I'd be here all day and this is already late enough. So herewith are the photogenic highlights. 

CARAMEL CORN WITH SALTED ALMONDS

This is such a fussy recipe for me to make, I know, but I was drooling over the Epicurious and Martha Stewart slideshows that get SO AMAZING at this time of year, and I just decided to take a risk and do it. Had I made caramel before? No. Did we own a popcorn popper? No. Does either of us eat popcorn? Um, no. 

BUT LIBRARIANS DO. ESPECIALLY LOVELY ONES.

Please note the added Witch Hat.

Epicurious calls this one, quite poshly, Caramel Corn with Smoked Almonds and Fleur de Sel. And honestly it's not that hard despite the intimidating name. I did shell out for Marcona Almonds (thank you amazon.com) because I didn't want to spend four hours smacking grocery-bought Diamond Roasted with a hammer. I also used microwave popcorn (I KNOW!!! RIGHT?!? CAN YOU STAND IT???), the oil and butter free kind, which I figured would give me the same results in the end and also make my life so much easier. I did three envelopes of the stuff and it seemed to work out proportion wise. 

The trick, which they tell you and which I initially TOTALLY SCOFFED AT, was that you do need to work faster than you have ever worked in your life. Caramel hardens in a nanosecond, and if you have not evenly spread it over your popcorn, then you're fresh out of luck and left holding a meteorite-shaped mass over a bowl of blissfully caramel-free golden kernels. But once you understand that, and hopefully this understanding will be reached BEFORE rather than AFTER, it's actually a pretty simple thing.

The one other thing I learned was that when you plunge your hand into a molten pot of boiled sugar by mistake, it really hurts. Really really really hurts. 

I held on to the saucepan though. 

Beetle = Hardcore

CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH BITTERSWEET GANACHE

or

HALLOWEEN BLACK CAT CAKE

which sounds so much nicer

Duh, Halloween means chocolate. 

I realise that the same can be said for Easter, and Christmas, and all right Valentine's Day too, but when I was deciding what to make for pudding it was obviously going to be deep, dark, squishy, and chocolatey. Kind of a given. 

I wanted just a simple, dark chocolate cake. One that had sour cream in it and would therefore remain moist and gooey, and one that used unsweetened, bittersweet, and at the very palest semi-sweet. NONE OF THIS MILK CHOCOLATE NAMBY PAMBYNESS, PEOPLE. I'd had a lot of luck with my Ganache truffles so I figured I'd do a ganache icing too, since it's really really easy and spreads so nicely, especially when your kitchen is the relative temperature of the outdoors. 

Once again Martha saves the day. This recipe from her Everyday Cookbook popped up in my search engine, and it had the ganache hyperlinked and everything. Done and DONE. The cake really was super easy, not fussy, and I didn't have to buy anything special. The chocolate is just unsweetened cocoa powder, which I think everyone has in their kitchen, even if you never cook at all and hate chocolate. It's just something that EXISTS in the back of your cupboard. It's a fixed point in time and space, is what I'm saying in Doctor Who terms. The ganache, too, is just heavy cream and a giant hunk of bittersweet. I mean . . . 

But with the ease of the cake, the cooling, the ganache, the spreading, what was I going to obsess over? 

Ohhhh.

Right. 

Someday I will remember the FIRST time that when you cut out a template, you have to cut the INSIDE out. Someday I will remember this BEFORE I waste ten sheets of paper and a lot of unnecessary scissoring.

Totally random yet cool ganache / powdered sugar intersection that makes the cat look FEROCIOUS.
Quite unlike my own kitties.
Who prefer to be ferocious in their dreams.
Or possibly at treat time.

It should be noted that we have not one but TWO black cats, and both were particularly pleased with this contribution to the menu. Though the standard silhouette for them during the weekend was more of the large shapeless blob variety, one ear visible over the rim of a basket, twitching towards the space heater.

Less this:

More this: 

OH AND ALSO I MADE PARSNIPS

Inconsequential, but they were so pretty that I had to share. I braised them, incidentally, for what seemed like EONS but they were pronounced delicious, so it was worth the wait. 

The bowl in the background, btw, is lentils and spinach and kelp YES KELP.

So, Halloween! All benefits of kelp, lentils, and parsnips completely overshadowed by black cat cake made entirely of chocolate and butter and heavy cream, but hey.

IT'S THE HOLIDAYS, YOU GUYS. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

Get ready for Beetle Thanksgiving Extravaganza. I've been doing a LOT of stairmaster menu planning . . .

THE ALL-CAPS POST TITLE I'VE BEEN WAITING TO POST FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE ETERNITY

BEETLE GOT A JOB!!!!!!!

[insert every happy dance known to mankind]

[although, if you want to go by my actual reaction to this momentous news, insert staring through the porch screen at the rain as the news is delivered to me, hanging up, continuing to stare at the rain without moving for about five minutes, going into the kitchen and staring at the rain through the windows in there, going into the dining room and staring at the rain through the windows in there, looking up when Mum comes in the room and says "WELL?", responding "I got a job and they want me to start next week", and promptly bursting into hysterical, rib-breaking sobs]

So. Yeah.

BEETLE GOT A JOB!!!!!

I'm also in Vermont. I also own a Subaru. A dark green Subaru. A 2014 dark green Subaru Outback. A 2014 dark green Subaru Outback named Madame Vastra.

Madame Vastra, a Silurian, also the head of the detective agency known as the Paternoster Gang.
Did I mention I'm a Doctor Who fan? 

Madame Vastra keeps me safe, warm, transported to places, and she is the best thing ever.

So to recap. In the last two weeks I got a job, bought a Subaru, moved to Vermont, and am now teaching four sections of English and acting as a dorm proctor at St. Johnsbury Academy.

Nothing like ripping the bandaid off, huh?

So. I would love to give you an exhaustive recap, but honestly, dear reader, the mental floodgates are BEYOND overwhelmed, and I couldn't even form a coherent sentence until Friday when the final bell rang. (We have BELLS, btw, CLASS BELLS. They're awesome.) And walking back up the hill to my house (we have HILLS, btw, LOTS OF HILLS) I was able to say, in response to Mom's millionth request for information, "I really like it . . . " and trail off with a stupid grin on my face.

[Ok, maybe insert another proper happy dance here, if you must. Perhaps similar to the triumphant one I did after successfully wrapping teflon tape around the screw threads of my new shower head and effectively stopping the drip, which was kind of a funky-chicken-will-and-grace-iggy-azalea mashup, only in my underwear.]

So for the time being, I will busy myself with the final two Beetle Bakery creations, and hope they will serve as a temporary farewell of sorts. I will hopefully be posting happy kitchen things when I go home for weekends (which will happen frequently as Mum and the farm aren't too far away and also there is NO WAY she is mantaining the proper organisation of the house and the mere thought of what is happening to the towels, dishes, newspapers, etc, makes me itch) and holidays (don't think I haven't started thinking about Thanksgiving), and you can see them then.

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO.

Oh Good God I don't even know where to START with all of this. It just so happens that the weekend before jobgate happened was an EPIC BEETLE WEEKEND in which so many delicious and photogenic things were made . . . WHICH WOULD BE THE CASE, OBVIOUSLY. Mum was away on the Cape being glamourous and I was at home, cooking and pottering about and binge-watching Masterpiece Theatre. And the weekend AFTER jobgate but BEFORE the move was also visitor-weekend, so MORE food was made, and then at the same time Beetle Bakery had a COMMISSION so MORE baking was done, and then of course I couldn't let my lovely, lovely, BEYOND LOVELY librarians go without a thank you cake, either, now could I? No, of course not. SO. Between jobgate and moving, approx. two weeks  . . .

I made:

• CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE which the FIRST time was a disaster of epic, sweary-trash-dumping proportions but the SECOND TIME was delicious and crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside, in the way that only Southern Living magazine can do. (also only in the south would they use THAT. MUCH. CREAM. CHEESE.)

•  LEMON DILL POTATOES with gorgeous Blue Potatoes from our farmstand, that Mum has requested in perpetuity until she dies.

• ORANGE MARMALADE BREAD PUDDING from my new Williams Sonoma Dessert of the Day cookbook which has a recipe for every day of the year on a calendar. Beetle Note: if you are OCPD like me, this can cause stress if you make a dessert for say, Nov. 14th, on August 10th. I did it, but I wasn't super happy about it. 

• LEMON SHORTBREAD which really needs no explanation.

And finally, best for last I think: 

• RASPBERRY FUDGE CAKE of which I am particularly proud, dear reader. Because I assumed that the only way to make Martha Stewart's Fudge Brownie Cake better was to add a jar of Raspberry Jam to it, and then split the batter into two 9-inch springforms, and bake it juuuuust enough to be gooey but still thin so not overwhelming  . . .  and I assumed RIGHT. 
• HOW ABOUT THAT? EMPLOYED AND RIGHT ABOUT A CHOCOLATE CAKE. MY LIFE HAS PURPOSE YET AGAIN.
• And also, because I bought the coolest stencils in the universe, and I was stress-baking like you wouldn't BELIEVE I did fancy things with powdered sugar and acetate which made me incredibly happy.

• So that was Raspberry Fudge Cake no. 1. That was the Beetle Bakery Commission Cake (along with the Shortbread) 
• Raspberry Fudge Cake no. 2 was for the Librarians. My lovely lovely lovely librarians. 
• It was also for Mum. Who, upon tasting, became rather possessive.
• I have sworn faithfully that this is the first thing I will bake when I'm home in a few weeks. MUM. I'M TALKING TO YOU RIGHT NOW. I PROMISE.
• It took a lot of stencil finagling, including a custom made one, but it was SO worth it.

Because THIS HAPPENED:

It truly was, and is, dear reader, a CAKE OF TRIUMPH. Of recipe experimentation, of stencil creation, and of your own Beetle.

ps custom Beetle stencil = BESPOKE BEETLE OMG I LOVE IT

So. To recap. I'm employed. I'm in Vermont. I spent the day doing vocab sheets. (and this, duh) When I go to dinner in a few minutes I will check on Madame Vastra in the driveway of my dorm. I will then sit with a group of delightful young ladies and discuss their hike this afternoon, the photos of Ariana Grande and Jennifer Lawrence that were leaked this morning, that we won the football game on Saturday afternoon, and how the Chinese food from down the street is preferable to the stirfry on offer.

I'm terrified. I'm ecstatic. I'm beyond overwhelmed.

But I'm doing it. And I'm going to love it.

So for the moment, dear, dear Reader,