Thanksgiving Part 2: The Dinner

When we arrived at my aunt's house we delivered our food. Another relative had brought some deli salads and sliced turkey. I was glad we had cooked. Here is my Thanksgiving plate (definitely missed my big blue and green plate):


Other than what we brought, I ate a potato knish, some kasha varnishkes (bowties with buckwheat), and a stuffed grape leaf. Not very traditional to the holiday but it was OK.

Here was our table. We wanted to keep it simple and clean so my aunt did not have to clean up.



I thought my mom's veggies looked really good. They tasted good too.


EW, gross. But people did like the chicken.


Then there was dessert from our family bakery. Follow us on Twitter: @MindysDesserts or become a fan on facebook.





This is a Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie which I could not eat due to the cheese.


Apple Cranberry Pie.


Birthday cake for my Bubby since it was her Birthday.


Blueberry pie, which I did eat and enjoy.


It was a fun and very tasty night. It was nice to have all the cousins in one place. I don't think we have been all together for about 3 years. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture of all of us. But here are a few fun family pictures.

My sister.

3 generations! Me, my Bubby, and my mom.


Two generations! My Zayda and my cousin.


A word about my Bubby and Zayda: They are the best! My Zayda just turned 89 and he is a reader of this blog, we instant message and email all the time, and he is soon going to join facebook. My Bubby just turned 82. She tells the best family stories from her childhood and her teaching days.

And, to end the post, a picture of my aunt bringing the cake to my Bubby for her birthday.


All in all, a good holiday!

Thanksgiving: Part 1

What is a food blog without a Thanksgiving entry? However, being vegan (kind of), this will not include a detailed account of our Turkey. In fact, this Thanksgiving my family did things a little differently and we did not even have a Turkey (yay!). But we did have chicken (ew!). My cousin was recently in a car accident. He is OK but cannot leave the house for a while. So we went over to my aunt's house to see him. Given all that she is doing to take case of my cousin, she didn't want to make a big dinner. She makes the best turkey (apparently, I don't eat it so I don't know), so no one wanted to make turkey if it was not going to be hers. So my mom and I cooked a couple of dishes and brought them over. Part one of the Thanksgiving post will detail our cooking adventures on Thanksgiving day while watching the parade.

Early in the morning, my mom got up and made two roast chickens to bring. Being that the chickens really gross me out, I did not chronicle their creation. I will say, my mom makes very good chicken and everyone always loves it. But it is not featured here because I think meat is gross.

I did watch the parade on TV. My favorite part was on CBS when Mayor Bloomberg went on about how NYC was great and how other cities are mosaics while we are a more of a mixture. And he didn't stop there, he then went on about how we tolerate people who are different and they tolerate us. Talk about putting your foot in your mouth. But after the parade it was hard core cooking time. So while my sister watched Dexter on TV, my mom and I cooked.


So I started to make the stuffing that we brought. I began cutting up carrots, celery, zucchini, onion, and mushrooms. Cutting the onions was brutal:
All the vegetables chopped up looked like, a mosaic.
But then, all together, it was more of a mixture...just like NYC.


Then it was time to add the bread. I had to take off all the crusts. In retrospect, a nice whole wheat bread, unsliced, probably would have been delicious. But I used a mix of sourdough and challah instead. I had to card the crust off the challah. I felt like the bakers on the Challenge on the food network when they carve the cake.


And here is the bottom of the challah. A little goupy from being in the sink, but I thought it looked kind of crazy. So I wanted to show you, too.


And, since we made A LOT of stuffing, I was back to using a pot as a big bowl, just like in New York. Sometimes a big soup pot is just the best mixing bowl.


So then, after mixing, I laid it out in the pan and poured the wine, vegetable stock and spices over it all.


I put it in the oven to bake but it became a little too soggy on the bottom and too crispy on the top. So we mixed it together and heated it in a big pot.


Then we put it back in the oven. It looked pretty good when it came out. I guess stuffing is supposed to be made in a turkey, but I thought it came out OK.



Next time I will sautee all the veggies and spices first then mix it with the bread. The veggies were a little crunchy, but it tasted OK.


Meanwhile...I was also making sweet potato mash. I boiled the sweet potatoes.


Then mashed away!


And added some cinnamon.


Mixed some more.


They came out very good.


Finally, all this time, my mom was working on a massive cold vegetable dish. She steamed broccoli, asparagus, and green beans. She had to cool them down really quickly in ice water.


Then she made a sauce with mushrooms, soy, ginger, garlic, etc. and poured it over top of the vegetables.


The it was topped with some toasted sesame seeds.


It looked very good. Then we packed our bags to head over to my aunts house.


We also brought dessert from our family bakery.


Stay tuned for Part 2: The Dinner...

A little rant against bridal showers (apologies to those who like them).

So I recently bought some kitchen equipment to supplement my very limited supply.
I hardly had room for the two things I bought in my small kitchen.


At the same time that I spent money on a few kitchen wares (baking pans and a little chopper thing), my mom was invited to a flurry of weddings, and thus a flurry of bridal showers. Now, I always say to each his/her own (well, I sometimes say that), but I just don't understand bridal showers. Why does society think you only need a kitchen when you are married??

Just because you are getting married, doesn't mean you all of a sudden start cooking and need a state of the art kitchen. SINGLE PEOPLE COOK TOO! I also think it is weird to ask people to stock your kitchen in addition to giving you a wedding gift.

Here is an interesting alternative I found to the bridal shower that I think people should consider. Or, maybe I should marry myself like Carrie Bradshaw on the Sex and the City episode "A Woman's Right to Shoes" where she says, "I'm getting married...to myself. And oh, by the way, I'm registered at Manolo Blahnik." I wouldn't register there, but you get the idea.

The Charity Shower

So, to wrap up, you don't have to married to need a kitchen, and if a bride-to-be has been living without a fancy cutting board up until now, she can probably wait until her actual wedding to have one.

Adventures of the soft pretzel...

Yes, it has been a long time. So long that I can't even remember when I attempted to make soft pretzels. A week ago? Maybe two. I know that it was in the midst of the Phillies excitement because I decided to make pretzels, a truly Philly food, to celebrate the successes of the Phillies. Well, the world series is over and the Phillies are defeated, but I am proud of them. So now, I will post my pretzel adventure.

Let me start my saying the the Philly pretzel is an art form I knew I would not master. It is a thing of beauty and culinary genius. These are not mine. These are the real deal.



But I wanted to try it out. There were missteps, for sure. But it was not a total disaster. I started by putting the yeast in hot water. It was supposed to foam but this is all I got.


So perhaps this had an effect on the final product. I also ran out of regular flour and substituted with whole wheat flour. I think these two things together contributed to a pretzel that was too dense.

I mixed the dough which was kind of fun but also annoyingly messy.



Then I let it rise. I think the yeast was not active enough because it did not rise that much. I also did not have a big bowl so I had to let it rise in a pot while I used the big pot to boil the solution for the next step. So there was not that much room to let it rise.



I then rolled the pretzels and let them rise, which is what the recipe said.
But when I went to transfer the pretzels to the boiling water, they stuck together and the shape was compromised so I needed to re-roll them. This must also have made them too dense.


I boiled the pretzels in baking soda and sugar. This is supposed to make them golden brown and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

I then had to make the salt stick. I ended up using the dreaded egg.


I hate using eggs. When they are cracked they remind me of a monster.

Please, if anyone knows a substitute sticky substance that actually works, let me know. But for this project, I used this grossness:

After baking, the pretzels did come out nice and golden-brown.

The taste was not horrible but they were just so heavy. Way too dense.


Hopefully I will do better next time. I feel it is my duty as someone from Philly to make a good soft pretzel.