Happy Thanksgiving!

As much as we may like to think this holiday is about giving thanks and being with family—which it is—it is mostly about food! As I said before, I have decided to contribute to our Thanksgiving dinner by making the aforementioned cheesecake and a salad (plus accessories). I’ll be coming back to this post throughout the day to edit and update. But as of now, we’re a few hours off from the dinner. I made croutons yesterday and just finished the two salad dressings. I’ll toss together the actual salad closer to dinner. I initially was going to make five recipes from Moosewood, but that didn’t happen. Details below.

            So the croutons were pretty simple. There are two possible ways to make them, according to Moosewood. I chose to do the sautéing and baking method. Basically, you fry some cubed pieces of bread in butter and garlic salt, and then bake them to make them crispy and crunchy. I would recommend pouring the garlic butter over the bread while it's already in the pan. I tried melting the butter first, in the pan, and then adding the bread. It worked pretty well, but some of the pieces were more saturated than others. I also didn’t bake them for very long (Moosewood doesn’t give a time, just until they’re crisp). But I tried one after I took them out of the oven, and it was pretty good! I mean, as good as garlicky, buttery, hard bread can be. We’ll see how they turn out on the salad later.

            I also made two salad dressings: ranch and balsamic vinaigrette. The ranch had the option of including mayonnaise, another Moosewood recipe, which I was planning to do. However, the fates were against me. The recipe calls for cider vinegar and ours was a little past it’s prime. You’d think vinegar couldn’t go bad, but apparently, it can. So I tried just using plain. Also, you’re supposed to mix it all up with a blender/food processor, but I’m lazy and figured I could just do it by hand. Not so much. Nothing really happened and it never turned into a mayonnaise like substance. The vinegar smell was quite over powering and very unappetizing. Again, my laziness shone through and I decided not to include it in the ranch. It’s optional anyway.

            The ranch without the mayonnaise seems fine. I haven’t tried it yet, obviously, so it’s kind of hard to judge. It doesn’t look quite like the correct consistency for ranch dressing, but maybe it’ll thicken up in the fridge. The vinaigrette was very easy! It’s basically just oil and balsamic vinegar, shaken together: hard to screw up. Though I shouldn’t speak so soon…

            I can tell my family is skeptical about my contributions to this dinner as they looked on warily at my mayonnaise making attempts. It’ll be a couple hours before I can either prove them wrong or hang my head in ashamed dismay.

            Okay so dinner and dishes have all been done now. And it was all a great success! Even the cheesecake went over well!

            The salad I made came from Moosewood’s guidelines—I wouldn’t really call it a recipe, but it’s listed as one—on constructing a green salad. According to that method, you’re supposed to start with a large bowl that will become “your special salad bowl”. We have one of these, but I did end up kind of having a hard time tossing everything together. I guess I need to get my own bowl so that it can “acquire more depth and soul with each use” and “enhance something nameless” in me. Step two is the leafy greens. I have never been a fan of lettuce, so I chose to use spinach. Next, you add the extras; I chose feta cheese, pomegranate seeds, cherry tomatoes, and walnuts. I kept the croutons I made earlier on the side. Though the pomegranate juice got EVERYWHERE, it was a quick and simple process to through all of that together. I only got yelled at once, because I forgot to wash the tomatoes (um, did the pilgrims wash their tomatoes? Yeah, didn’t think so.) but everyone shut up once the food was served. My croutons even got several compliments!

The vinaigrette dressing was great on the salad, and the ranch was sub par but still okay. We didn’t have onion flakes, which Moosewood called for, so I used minced pieces of real onion. It gave it a kind of interesting texture.

So my plan for five Moosewood Thanksgiving recipes almost worked! I made four successfully, three of which were actually pretty good! There are a ton of leftovers, so I’ve got my next several meals covered. And I get to cross off a few more recipes from my list! 22/241!