Thanksgiving Menu

My father is an amazing chef and Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday. We usually cook a number of dishes together, from the father-daughter cranberry sauce (fresh cranberries cooked with fresh orange juice and secret flavoring) to the bread stuffing. I love sharing the kitchen with him and learning from each other.

I shy away from the turkey. As a former vegetarian, I still get the willies when I think about touching raw meat. Dad is the one who lifts it into the brine and stuffs it. Last year, I decided I should at least learn how to carve the turkey. (You can see Dad offering advice in the picture.) 

My mother usually makes the “primo” – either a pasta or a soup. This year we’ve decided on homemade pumpkin gnocchi that I made recently and froze. Mom is going to be responsible for a few sides, escarole and candied carrots.

Planning the menu this year, my husband and I are working on forming our own traditions. (While that will probably happen naturally, I am neurotic enough to try to plan them.) He loves ginger and we are integrating it into the yams and pumpkin pie. We aren’t straying too far from my family’s traditions, though. The cranberry sauce and bread stuffing are here to stay.

We have some family recipes and I’ve been reading about others in the Joy of Cooking, Epicurious, and the website hosted by the Ginger People company.

I’m excited to cook, but I’m really excited to eat! Let the feasting begin!

What are your favorite Thanksgiving dishes?

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Naked lemons and recipes

No matter how much you love to cook, sometimes you need a little inspiration.  

I have a absurdly large collection of peeled lemons in the fridge. I made one recipe that called for a hefty amount of lemon rinds and now that I have recovered feeling in my hand after all that peeling, I need to find something to do with the naked lemons.

I usually start with Epicurious when I need a recipe. This website combines recipes from Gourmet, bon appètit and more. I type in an ingredient and peruse a list of recipes. For my pesky lemons, it has offered me pasta sauces and coffee cake. I might try a lemon chicken in the next day or two. 

I’m not a neat enough chef to dare bring my laptop into the kitchen. I know you can log into the site and save your recipes, but I prefer to print them out and keep them in a binder.

Of course, I also love my cookbooks. I have shelves of them and a few out from the library, too. I take notes in the ones I own and remind myself of what went well, and what didn’t, in the various recipes. I even date them to remember when I first made them.

To prepare for our Greece trip, I’ve been experimenting with Greek recipes. My favorite cookbook is Vefa’s Kitchen, which is an encyclopedia of Greek cooking. It was published by Phaidon, who also published the amazing translation of the Italian cookbook The Silver Spoon. According to the index, there are some lemon recipes in there, but they seem to call for more food shopping. They might have to wait for a bit.

A friend recently told me about Tastebook. It comes recipes with social networking. You can collect your favorite recipes and even self-publish and share cookbooks here.

Where do you find your inspiration?

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