My Thanksgiving contributions

So, I've made an executive decision to move cooking posts back to the main blog and not worry about the food blog any more. My reasoning for starting the second blog in the first place was that since I was going after some food-related freelance writing gigs, I should have somewhere where people who might potentially want to hire me could see my writing without sifting through posts about refashioning t-shirts or knitwear design. But then all the money broke and freelance writing gigs went the way of the thylacine and Virgos don't make good co-bloggers because they're always tripping over their own perfectionism and I'd rather just have all of my everything under one umbrella.

My Thanksgiving contributions this year were fairly minimal, since my brother is a chef and either did stuff ahead of time or faster/better than I would have the day of, but turned out well. I had insisted on having stuffed mushrooms for some reason, mostly because I love them and thought they'd be good to pick at while everything was coming together.

I start by pulling out the stems and scraping out the gills with the dull side of the knife tip to clear as much space in the cap as possible.
I chopped up a quarter of a large onion, browned it, added the chopped mushroom innards, half of a minced rib of celery and about 2 T of sausage that I managed to steal as my brother was putting the stuffing together. If I were making these as part of a party spread or for dinner on their own, I'd probably use more meat and/or some spinach and maybe some bread crumbs, but for an appetizer on Thanksgiving, I wanted them to be less heavy. Once that was all cooked through, I added some cheese. Anything that's going to melt nicely works here. Again, if I were serving them somewhere else, I'd want something more strongly flavored, but whatever this was that I pulled out of my dad's fridge was fine.

Packed into the caps

And done! I'm pretty sure these baked at 350 for 30 minutes or so, which seems a little on the long side, but I'd rather err on the side of more done than less in this case. Extra-browned mushrooms = delicious, slightly raw mushrooms = ptooey.

Then before cleaning the pan, I took a little knob of bread dough that had risen out of bounds,
flattened it, and cooked it on the stovetop.

My companions were dubious, possibly because I kept referring to it as 'fry bread,' but were happy to eat it, comparing it to focaccia.

Geoff is pleasantly surprised. Our dad remains skeptical.

I also made cranberry sauce, because I adore it.

Bag of cranberries, rinsed and picked over, and a finely chopped apple covered with orange juice and cooked down, then sweetened to taste with a combination of sugar and honey. It was delicious. A bowl full of it mixed with Greek yogurt would make a fine, fine breakfast or snack.

The rest of the bread dough baked up nicely too.