A Thanksgiving Feast!

This year we spent Thanksgiving at the Skilling Farm surrounded by family and friends.  The Burrous, Crane, Carver, and Ewanowski families joined us as we gave thanks for all of life's blessings.  Our grand total for mouths to feed = 19!  We all missed Matt & Rachel (we actually missed Rachel and her corn pudding the most!) and Obi getting into all of the food that was left out on the counters!  Why have 1 turkey?  Well, we couldn't all agree on what kind of turkey to have so we decided to do 3!  Mom oven roasted her turkey, Frank smoked his turkey (injected with Cajun butter), and Melissa deep fried her turkey breast.

Our goodies for Turkey Day included:  3 different kinds of turkey, one ham, sweet potato suffle (one topped with marshmallows and one with pecans), mashed potatoes, squash casserole, green bean casserole, stuffing, gravy, homemade cranberry relish, canned cranberry sauce, and creamed onions.  Ali made 2 apple pies and Mom mad 2 pumpkin pies for dessert.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The dining room table

The feast!

Melissa's fried turkey breast

Frank supervising the Orion smoker and deep fryer

 

Sandy making her turkey gravy

Pumpkin Time

As Thanksgiving approaches I was inspired to make some sort of pumpkin creation in my kitchen.  I wanted to share some with our co-workers, a few neighbors, and a friend's family.  I give all of the credit for this recipe to my sis-in-law, Rachel.  She made these one year at the Farm and they were an instant hit!  I forgot how many muffins this recipe makes and I decided to double it.  What was I thinking?  Well, 140 muffins and 3 hours later I finally finished baking!  1 batch of these muffins will make about 24 regular sized muffins or 12 regular muffins and over 50 mini-muffins.  Today I made 25 regular muffins and 115 mini-muffins!  I'm sure a couple were eaten here and there for quality control purposes, but that was the final count!  I hope you try these and share some with your family and friends this Fall! 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 and 1/2 cups veg oil
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin
1 bag of mini chocolate chips

Mix the first 4 ingredients in one bowl.  Mix the next four ingredients in another bowl.  Add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients.  Fold in the bag of chocolate chips.

Bake at 375 for 20-23 minutes for regular muffins.  15 minutes for mini muffins.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

White Chili

The Fall makes you want to bundle up under a blanket on the couch, watch some TV (preferably football), and EAT!  I started out the day motivated and that has slowly dwindled.  Since I only cook 3-4 nights per week I thought I'd make something tonight that would stretch for a couple of days and also provide me with some good leftovers for lunch.  

1 pound of ground turkey (I used white turkey meat, but you could substitute ground turkey which has a little more fat)
4 cups of chicken broth
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 T ground cumin
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cans of white beans, rinsed and drained
2 cans of diced green chiles
1 medium onion, diced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 T EVOO
1-2 T cornstarch
sour cream
shredded white cheese (either monterey jack or pepper jack)

Brown the turkey in a large stock pot until no longer pink.  Add onion and garlic and cook for a few minutes.  Add the stock, beans, broth, cumin, cayenne, and oregano.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes on low.  In the last 5 minutes of cooking time add some of the chili broth to a bowl with the cornstarch.  Mix well and then pour the cornstarch/broth mixture back into the pot.  This will help thicken the chili.  Top with sour cream and shredded cheese. 

Surf N Turf

A few weeks ago we had a weekend at home with no plans and decided to clean out the frig and freezer for dinner.  Well, I was very surprised what we found stored in our home.  I usually buy meat/fish on sale and freeze it if I'm not cooking it within a few days.  We've recently taken to liking Chilean Seabass.  When it's on sale it is 1/2 off the usual price.  Other than the mushrooms and crab meat, we already had all our dinner "fixins" stored at home.  Here's what we did to pull off our very own Surf N Turf...

Filet: grilled with just salt, pepper, and garlic powder
Chilean Seabass:  place the 1/2 pound fish filet on a piece of foil that is sprayed with Pam.  Top it with some salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and lemon slices.  Put a small pat of butter and about 1/8 of white wine in the foil "pouch".  Seal up the pouch so the fish basically steams inside.  Bake at 400 for 25-30 minutes or until the fish is completely cooked.
Mushrooms:  Bake the mushroom caps for about 20 minutes or until they start to get soft.  In a small bowl mix some crab meat, a little mayo, sour cream, diced bell pepper, onion, and cheddar cheese.  Top the softened mushrooms generously with the crab meat topping.  Back 10-15 minutes or until the topping is hot.
*You can cook the fish and mushrooms in the oven at the same temperature*

Since we had red meat and fish we were torn between red or white wine...Frank suggested BOTH, but we went with an Oregon Pinot Gris (the same wine we put on the fish).  :) 

ENJOY!

Italian Wedding Soup

This soup is simple and tastes great.  Over the years, the meatballs that we put in the soup have changed from just simple small balls of ground beef to Grammie's much better variety (see earlier post)...Either way, the soup is great, depending on how much time you have to spend making it.  The base of the soup is just chicken broth - either from the can, boullion cubes, or from some broth that you've saved - we've found that adding extra water to the broth extends the soup without changing the flavor too much.  We make about 2 cups of broth per person.

Bring the broth to a boil  and either add in precooked meatballs or cook them directly in the boiling broth.  If you cook them in the broth, you may have to skim off the fat later.  Once the meatballs are cooked, bring to a boil and add in about 1/3 cup of rice and 2/3 cup of water per person.  Keep the heat on and the rice will take about 15 minutes.  Once the rice is done, turn off the heat and add in a handful of fresh baby spinach for each person.  It is ready to serve in about 2 minutes.  This is soup can be as large or as small as you want.  Finally, add some Parmesan cheese and fresh pepper to each bowl ... enjoy!