What are you Cooking the Week of December 10, 2023?

[Mike Nolan]

No plans for dinner yet, got some leftovers we may just use up.

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[Joan Simpson]

We have had rain all day, thundering and lightening so I had a bowl of leftover chili and a hotdog.

[BakerAunt]

I made black bean and pumpkin soup for a late lunch today. I mostly follow the Smitten Kitchen recipe, which was her rift on a Gourmet recipe. I froze two of the servings for future lunches. I will eat the rest during this week.

We had most of the leftover black-eyed peas, rice, and ham for dinner on Sunday.

[chocomouse]

We had leftover leftovers -- turkey soup and turkey salad sandwiches. We are predicted to get 12-18 inches of snow by mid-morning. But it's 44* here now, and not predicted to get below 35*. I have to wonder where meteorologists get their training these days!

[Mike Nolan]

We wound up having creamed tuna on toast.

[cwcdesign]

I made Coq au Vin Chicken Meatballs from Half Baked Harvest which I haven't made in a couple of years. I served them with mashed potatoes. When Will was putting the leftovers away, he found the asparagus I forgot to cook. And, my answer was that at least we'll have them for dinner tomorrow 😁

[RiversideLen]

I had my brother over and made a turkey breast, gravy, couscous and broccoli.

I used turkey stock that I made last week in the gravy along with pan drippings from the breast. It was delicious.

[Mike Nolan]

I find it deglazing the pan with a little dry vermouth improves the gravy.

For Thanksgiving I rested our 12 pound turkey for about a half hour in a dome made from two large Vollrath stainless steel mixing bowls, an idea I first saw on an Alton Brown show. That gave me another half cup or so of juices to add to the gravy. (AB when he doesn't go off the deep end has a lot of good ideas, along with a few strange ones, and like a lot of 'trained' chefs, he oversalts his food. I used his recipe for popovers once, then went back to the King Arthur one.)

I have a theory about why so many chefs oversalt their food. Like many kitchen workers, they are heavy smokers and heavy drinkers, and it takes that much salt to register on their palates.

[RiversideLen]

I'll have to give that vermouth idea a try sometime.

I made the base for my gravy a few days ahead of time, a pretty thick paste in which I used the turkey broth that I froze. When I was roasting the turkey breast, I had it sitting on a stalk of celery, carrot and a half of an onion. Then I added enough no sodium boxed chicken broth to just cover the pan, added a little to it a couple of times to keep the pan from drying out (so there really wasn't anything to deglaze). When the breast was done I had nice browned pan drippings that I used to thin out the very thick gravy I had previously made. This two step process really made the gravy making easy and kept me on schedule (on Thanksgiving I ended up being an hour and half behind schedule).

I agree with you about Alton Brown and the myriad of TV chefs. I always thought Emerald was the worse offender in oversalting, throwing in a handful of salt with just about every ingredient he would add to a dish.

[Joan Simpson]

I had rotisserie chicken and a Caesar salad, banana for dessert.

[BakerAunt]

Our dog had her return visit to the vet to remove her bandage and stitches on Monday. It is good to see her right ear again, but it will take a while for the fur to grow back.)

We never waste at trip, so we also did our big grocery shop, as the veterinary practice is in that larger town. Aldi's had good prices on turkeys and hams, so we bought one of each. We also went to Kroger and Walmart.

After we returned home, I made yogurt. For dinner, I roasted chicken thighs and sweet potato chunks on separate pans, and we had it with microwaved fresh broccoli. We have "planned overs" of the meal for tomorrow. For dessert, I pulled out my last frozen loaf of zucchini bread. That was in part to make room for the turkey in the freezer!

[Mike Nolan]

We had a cat who kept picking fights with squirrels, losing badly. They nearly chewed his tail off more than once. He wound up with a couple of bald spots by his tail where the fur didn't grow back out. Eventually he decided that the squirrels weren't worth chasing, and he complained less about going to the vet than any other cat we've had.

[Mike Nolan]

We had spaghetti tonight.

[Joan Simpson]

I had fresh chicken salad,stewed squash and cucumber salad.

[chocomouse]

Mike, we had spaghetti last night also - the first time in several years!! Tonight I made chicken cacciatore, served on rice.

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