For the Love of Food

This is going to be a loooong post, so brace yourself. If it gets too long for you, just skip to the “bottom” where all the recipes, with individual pictures, can be found.  Bellow (above the recipe section) are my individual thoughts on what I made this year.  Every year brings something new – even to “old” recipes.

I’d like to thank Foodbuzz for accepting me to the November 24, 24, 24 event. Because of them, I was able to make my Thanksgiving grander than ever. Thank you.

This is what the menu looked like:

Appetizers: Bacon Wrapped Date, Texas Deviled Eggs, and Rumaki
Main Dish: Rosemary & Lemon Turkey with American Cranberry Sauce
Side Dishes: Bread Stuffing, Rice with Mushroom & Noodles, Garlic Bread Rolls, Bacon Green Beans, French Mushrooms in Crème Frâiche, and a Seasonal Salad
Dessert: Pumpkin Pie, Pecan Pie, S’more Tart, and Whipped Cream

The bacon wrapped dates were a huge hit – as always.  Our guests ate them up pretty quickly.

The Texas deviled eggs were something I thought-up this summer.  The individual flavors really melded well with one another, and even though this was a spicy dish, they were gone before the meal started!

The Rumaki was something that my father-in-law recommended I make.  I thought it sounded disgusting, but it was so absolutely fantastic!  My guests had never heard of anything like it and everyone wanted the recipe!

This year I decided to try something completely new with my turkey. That is, I am taking my favorite recipe for chicken (Rosemary Lemon Chicken), and fitting it for a whole turkey. I have never been a big fan of turkey, so I attempted to make it taste better than “the usual”. And, the turkey came out juicier than ever.  The lemon acts as a tenderizer and really helped moisten the turkey, especially the breast meat.

The the stuffing, I used is my favorite stuffing that my mom has been making my entire childhood. This year, for the first time, in keeping with my “absolutely everything is homemade” for my Thanksgiving feast 2008, my husband made a large loaf of bread for our stuffing in advance.  This is a really big hit.  Many of our guests said that they had aways heard about this on TV, but could never imagine it.  We ended up sending many guest home with extra stuffing – always a good sign!

The cranberry sauce is my father-in-law’s recipe. And, this is the only part of our meal that we didn’t actually make ourselves. While we can find (expensive) cranberries here in Germany -yes, Ocean Spray to be exact – my father-in-law sent us some of his homemade cranberry sauce as a gift, and it would have been a shame not to use it – since it tastes so good. I did not grow-up eating cranberry sauce. I’m not sure how old I was the first time I tasted it – maybe I was already in college. So, I am not as “in love” with it as my husband is. Our guests enjoyed the sauce with their turkey, but, my husband, as usual, pulled out a spoon and finished it off after he finished his meal.

The rice with mushrooms & noodles is a take on a favorite recipe of mine that my aunt makes called Mushroom & Almond Rice.  Since I have a guest who is allergic to nuts this year, I have omitted nuts in all recipes possible, and, in the case of the rice, have substituted with dry soup noodles that soften when cooked.

The garlic rolls are my favorite roll recipe of all time.  It actually came about by accident and is a modified pizza dough recipe!  While cleaning up the house in the morning, I found my son had sneeked one and had the entire roll half way in his mouth.  When I caught him, he promptly pulled it out of his mouth and put it back in the muffin tin as if nothing had happened!  It was so cute.  Of course, I let him eat one ahead of time.  He loves the garlic rolls so much.

The French Mushrooms in Crème Frâiche is always everybody’s favorite dish and there’s never enough – no matter how many times I double and quadruple this recipe!  So, how did French Mushrooms become part of my yearly American holiday menu??  When I was in high school, in French class, we were all given the task of finding a French recipe, reproduce it, bring it to class, and share with one another.  I was so head-over-heels for this recipe that I asked my mom to let me make it at our next Thanksgiving meal, and it was such a hit…and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Bacon Green Beans are, in my opinion, a true southern staple in the US.  This year I decided not to make a green bean casserole since most of my German guests don’t like it.  So, instead, I made my favorite green bean dish.  They went over very well, and no one realized that I forgot to add the salt!

The Greek Salad was a hard choice for me this year.  I really wanted to make this from items that are only in season, and I really wanted to use my favorite homemade Greek salad dressing – which put me in quite of a pickle.  So, I decided to go with a Greek salad – however untraditional – because many of its ingredients can be found year-round and have no season (ie: feta cheese, olive, onions).

This year I decided to change dessert in a few ways.  I still served pumpkin and pecan pies, but I decided to make my pumpkin puré from scratch (this is so easy and quick you will barely believe it!), I decided to make a maple peacn pie instead as well as a s’more tart for the first times.  And, this year I also went ahead and made the pies a few weeks in advance, frozen them, and defrosted in the refrigerator so that I could have a more relaxing cooking day(s).  The pumpkin pie was a bigger hit this year than in previous years.  I guess this year I had pumpkin-lovers over!  The pecan pie was ok.  I felt that the new recipe had too strong of an alcohol tase to it and not enough of the traditional pecan pie flavor that I have grown to love.  And the s’more pie..don’t get me started on this!  It was a baking desaster when it came to the topping.  I think my egg whites were not stiff enough and I just endded up with a mess.  It was the most eated pie, but I really felt that it was not worth making.  Which is a shame since it looked like it was going to be so pretty and I hoped it would be a big highlight of the evening.

As I do every year, this year I made my whipped cream from scratch.  It’s so quick and easy – and tastes WAY WAY better than the store bought version.  This year I made 2 flavors: vanilla and almond.

The appetizers were a last minute idea..as always…I worry that my guests won’t have enough to eat- crazy huh?  And, as always, there was too much to eat.  This year we even have too many leftovers, which has never happened to me before.  6 of my guests ended up not showing!  So, there were only 11 of us.

We also did sugar cookie decorating in between the meal and the dessert.  The children really liked this.  I think nxt time I will have to hold Thanksgiving in the late afternoon instead of the evening.  It was too late for a lot of the kids.  The cookies tasted fantastic, and I loved the hint of almond in the recipe.  But, the icing was just way too sugary, and I like my cookies without.

On to the recipes: Continue Reading »

I’d like to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

Even though I am in Germany, I am also preparing for a big meal to share with my closest friends.

My next post will be on Sunday. And, it will be a mega post with 11 recipes in one post!! I may even throw in 3 more recipes…not so sure yet. If this post freaks you out as much as it does me (because of it’s insane size), rest assured that I will be posting the recipes in single form after the fact.

Off to some more baking!

So, today I did my practice set-up for the big Thanksgiving dinner this week. I am so excited!

However, there are still a few “kinks” to work out, which is why I’m asking for your help.

The main Issue is the sled I am using to elevate the desserts.
1. I need a box behind it to extend the space behind the sled – how should I make this “disappear”?
2. What can I put underneath the sled so it doesn’t look so empty?

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
…like another color I could paint my dining room walls

I have been meaning to try to make falafel for quite a while now. A few months ago I came across a really cool blog called The Hummus Blog. So, I knew any recipe they had in regards to falafel would be good.

I was so surprised how easy it was. Why did they say it was easier then making hummus??? I find making hummus soooo easy. And, while hummus may take longer to make, I think this falafel recipe is equally as easy.

We all loved these. And all my son could say was “mooyyy” (toddler for: “more”).

So, if you love eating falafel, but thought they would be too complicated to make, please try this recipe, it’s just so easy and good. Continue Reading »

I know I rarely post twice in a day, but I am so excited about this find that I had to share it with you!

So, one this I never mentioned is that for my birthday my mom gave me this awesome book: Food Styling For Photographers (if you buy it through my amazon store, a small percentage is donated to my blog!). I had been wishing for this book for quite some time now, and I ready through it quickly once I got my hands on it. It’s like a great novel for foodies…without being a novel at all. It is not just a book on food styling, but rather a book written for photographers who are not food stylists but need to food style for some reason or another.  There are lots of pictures, step by step explanations, and great lighting and camera tips.

That being said, there are exact instructions on how to style just about anything. However, while I learned a lot from this book, I don’t think I will be making margaritas out of Soil Moist granules anytime soon – even if they look fantastic. I like to stick to the edible type of styling, and there are plenty of ways to achieve that.

One food styling technique that caught my eye was how to style bacon (page 210-211 in book). It never dawned on me that most bacon is curly when styled and it always comes out flat when I cook it.

I am going to share with you just how easy it is to make this, and then share with you my recipe for baked potato chowder bellow! Continue Reading »

I want to apologize to all of you.

I promised I would have a video today on how to make pie crust. Well, I have a video that I made with my cell phone that looks great and sounds great on my phone, but my computer doesn’t seem to support the sound files. So, it will take me a few days to figure out where I can find a program to properly read a .3pg file. And, with Thanksgiving just around the corner, I regret that it may come to the fact that this will be posted after the fact. It really bums me out.  Any of you know any good free software I could use??? My husband found something…they are converting…and maybe I can have something for you guys this week!!

But, on a happier note, I can show you all some more finished rooms in my apartment after they were renovated.

So, the image above is of my son’s room (the nursery) and my husband’s office.  They are in one large room together and are devided in half by some great Ikea shelves. Continue Reading »

This month for Taste&Create I was paired with Stef from Cupcake Project. I was really excited be be making cupcakes again, and when I saw her Ferrero Rocher Cupcakes I knew what I had to do!

The great thing about this recipe (besides that the taste will leave you enchanted and your friends will all be impressed) is that it is recreating the Ferrero Rocher flavor and not using the candy itself. Continue Reading »

If I have told you once, I’ve told you many times at this point: I live in Germany. And, here there is no such thing as pumpkin pie.

However, there are plenty of pumpkins at this time of year. So, while I cannot go to the store and by a can of pumpkin to make pumpkin pie with, I can really really easily (in 20 minutes) make a homemade version that works perfectly.

How did I get this idea and why is there a baby cookbook in the picture???
When my son was younger, I used to cook all his baby food for him from scratch. I was introduced to this wonderful little book (in German) called “Das Baby-Kochbuch” – The Baby-Cookbook” with many many recipes divided up by age. It really helped me pull everything together. As one of the first meals they recommend feeding your child is pumpkin puré. I would have never come to that conclusion on my own, but my son was head over heals for it. Unfortunately, he also ended up being allergic to it.

I used to make large batches of everything, freeze small meal-sized portions, and defrost them in a bowl of warm water for him to eat them. Once we found out that he was allergic, I was left with a few frozen puréed pumpkin cubes and I decided to make pumpkin pie with them. I was so thrilled by how well it worked that I decided this Thanksgiving I would make my own as well.

In the recipe I will share with your bellow I use a Hokkaido pumpkin which has a light orange color as well as a mild flavor. So, if you like a milder pumpkin flavor than what you’re used to in the can, I recommend you use a Hokkaido pumpkin. If you want something stronger and more fragrant, I recommend going with “Nutmeg Pumpkin” – which I am translating directly from the German word of “Muskatkürbis”. If you don’t know what kind of pumpkin I am talking about, you can see a picture of it here named “Muskatkürbis”. It’s dark green on the outside and dark orange on the inside.

Moving on to the recipe… Continue Reading »

As promised yesterday, as well as the day before, I am going to give you a tour of my “new” kitchen.

Many of you know that my apartment has been a work in progress since November of 2004. And, we are almost done – it’s just so hard to motivate the people you contract out to to do the last few little things!!

Anyways, the kitchen is done, and I want to share it with you… Continue Reading »

As promised yesterday…

This is a really cool gift my husband gave to me for my birthday. Three types of popsicle holders.

The yellow ones are traditional.

The blue ones are star shaped with an insert to make room for a second color/flavor.

And, the red ones are rocket ships with the same insert at the stars.

They work really well, and my almost 2 year old son is now in love with posilces.  These popsicles are made with 2 types of juice – a dark yellow/orange colored one and a red one – both not natural juices because we wanted really intense color.

After more trial and error we have found that pineapple juice not from concentrate works really well color wise for a dark yellow orange.  And, unlike many other juices, dose not end up becoming “watery” in flavor after being frozen like, say, apple juice.  And, for red, cranberry juice where you can mix a no sugar added cranberry concentrate with less water than is called for will give you a wonderfully intese color and tangy flavor.

Tomorrow: A tour of my (finally) newly renovated kitchen!!