Tonight's Dinner: November 27, 2012

Our friends Will and Lindsay gave us their turkey carcass after our Friendskiving on Sunday.  So tonight I shoved it in a pot with some onions and whatever veggies were left in the bird with some water to make a stock. I let it come to a boil while making my Mom's/Campbell's linguine in clam sauce.  It's a family favorite that I've converted Nick into loving.  I'm sure you've all seen it on my blog many times before.

We're planning to give the Cramers three jars of stock since
Lindsay says that she always intends on making stock but
never gets around to it.  The stock actually smells like a
Thanksgiving dinner.  

This is one of my favorite meals.  I could eat it all the time.  

Tonight's Dinner: November 26, 2012

Tonight I decided that I wanted to tackle the mall when it was least likely to be infiltrated with crazy holiday shoppers.  I succeed in getting six bottles of soap, two small candles, two mini candles, and five hand sanitizes from Bath and Body Works for $43.58.  That is a steal! I also was able to use a Body Shop Groupon that I had bought a while ago and a couple of things from JC Penny's.  I think at this juncture, my holiday shopping is nearly done.

My parents have been wanting to try Tomi, the sushi buffet that opened recently, so I called them up to see if they wanted to meet us there.  My stomach must be shrinking because I was only able to have two bowls of soup, a full plate, and a half plate of veggies.  My Dad on the other hand, had five plates.  At least he got his money's worth.  The food was okay, but it was pretty expensive at $21 a head for five people.  At least they got to experience it.  We still like Moonstar.

This is a sampling of their cold selection. 

I did really like their wonton noodle soup.  They make it fresh in front of you
so it's nice and hot. 

My dad on his fourth plate.  He had a full plate of dessert
afterwards.

Christopher got sushi and dessert at the same time.  Bleh.

Tonight's Dinner: November 25, 2012

To conclude our Thanksgiving weekend, Nick and I went to a friend's house for Friendskiving.  We offered to bring the appetizers and decided on all bacon.  I had actually been planning our appetizers when we were at the F1 race. It was keeping me busy until my phone battery started to die.  There are so many good bacon recipes out there that it was hard to choose, not to mention that Nick wanted to come up with his own.  We ended up making a cracker with brie-dates-bacon with balsamic reduction, brie-bacon-apricot tartlets, and twice baked potatoes with gouda, spinach, and of course, bacon.  Nick grilled all of our thick cut bacon to give it extra flavor.  We started at 9:30am and still ended up being late for the 1pm lunch!  Who knew three appetizers could take so much time. Everyone liked them so that is what matters.

Grilled bacon makes everything better.

Brie!  Oh how I love thee!

I had a lot of difficulties with the puff pastry because I didn't thaw it correctly.
It turned out okay in the end, but some tartlets were a little more doughy than
others.  I stuffed the pastry with a cube of brie, bacon and then apricot preserves.

A water cracker with brie, bacon, and a sliced date with
a balsamic reduction.  We popped these into the oven for
a couple of minutes so that the cheese would be gooey.

Kind of blurry, but we were on the move.  I decided to make
these because our hostess, Lindsay, loves baked potatoes.
I didn't want to just bring baked potatoes so I thought that
slices of twice baked would be a better option. 

Lindsay made the turkey.  Yum!

One of our friends brought a turkey shaped sour dough loaf. 

Lindsay also made roasted vegetables.

Linda made a spinach salad. 

Tonight's Dinner: November 25, 2012

Today was the only free day of the Thanksgiving weekend and I wanted to take advantage of it.  Sometimes I wonder why I even moved out of the house because I spend so much of my time on my parent's couch.  Especially since our place could use a good cleaning...  Nick was going to the city for a car show with his Dad so Emmy and I headed to my parent's place early to do laundry and camp out on the sofa.  First things first, I raided their fridge.  I'm a Chin, I always have food on my mind.

Left over pasta with a fried egg.

I was extremely pleased to have my three loads of laundry done by noon (we got up early so that Nick could carry it all down the stairs for me on his way out).  I was also able to do some catching up on my blog for our Austin trip while watching holiday movies.  Since I had been sprawled out on the sofa all day, I decided to make dinner for my family before going home.

I seared up some pork chops, which successfully smoked up the whole down
stairs, and made a cranberry-onion reduction sauce for the top using left over
cranberry sauce. 

Tonight's Dinner: November 24, 2012

After my baking spree, we went to see Skyfall, the new James Bond movie, with my family.  Because I always watched James Bond movies with my Dad, it didn't feel right going to see it without him.  So we got ourselves a family-sized popcorn and settled in for the afternoon into the comfy movie theater chairs.  I tried to ignore all the germs and possibilities of lice and bed bugs.  I much rather watch movies at home, but this seemed like one that we needed to see on the big screen.

The movie was much longer than we had anticipated so we had to rush back home to start our contribution to our second Thanksgiving dinner with the Chins.  To make things easy, we offered to bring roasted vegetables and garlic green beans.  I had parboiled the green beans the day before and the potatoes were precooked, but it still took quite a bit of time to roast. By the time we ended up getting in the car and out to the City, everyone was already starting dinner!  It's a good thing we didn't offer to bring appetizers.

There was a lot more food, but I didn't get pictures of them all.

One of my aunts made the best fried chicken.  This was a new dish to us, but
 I'm going to have to request this for Christmas too.

Lumpia is always a crowd pleaser.  I must have had at least eight and a couple
of egg rolls too.  

Spring rolls!

Because our family is so big, this is two turkeys.  

My Auntie May always brings ham, which I'm all over.

This was a pack and a half of green beans from Costco.  I
was surprised to see that it was all gone. 

Emmy was a good, patient girl to wait for us in the car two days in a row. She
of course got walks in between and some Thanksgiving turkey as a treat.  Once
we got home she was pooped from having to "guard" the car. 

Today's Breakfast: November 23, 2012

I was wide awake at 6am because my hips and knees hurt from being immobile for too long.  It didn't help that I forgot to turn off one of my everyday work alarms.  Once that sounded, I couldn't get back to sleep.  I tossed and turned for while and start thinking up more things to do with the pumpkin puree.  I decided to make pumpkin spiced muffins and started scouring Allrecipies for guidance as I figured someone had to have made them in the past.  I was right.

After taking Emmy for her morning walk, I headed over to Sprouts to pick up more pie crusts, wheat flour, eggs, potatoes, apple sauce, and dried peas.  Thankfully, they opened at 7am.  I felt a little bad that I was the first customer in the store.  The employees were clearly still getting stuff ready, but their doors were open.  I gathered my items and tried to smile at the groggy shelf stockers.

By the time that Nick woke up at 9am, I had made pumpkin-cranberry muffins and three pumpkin pies.  I was waiting for him to wake up before I made breakfast.  Since I had plenty of eggs, I decided to make a bacon-mushroom fritatta.  I also discovered coffee and Kahlua.  Boy, have I been missing out.  Someone had given us some last year, but we never opened it.  I was pretty sore from the run but didn't want to have a glass of wine at 8:30am (I'm not that much of a wino) so when Nick got up he made me coffee with a splash of Kahlua.  It was so good.  Now I see why people have it in the morning.  I'd much rather have that than a Bloody Mary.

I forgot to take a picture of the batter, but got a quick one in the oven.  I added
left over cranberry sauce for some extra texture.

As muffins usually go, these were not overly sweet.  They were quite moist
and fairly healthy for you as they were made with non-processed pumpkin,
homemade cranberry sauce, and whole wheat flour.  They were rather guilt free
for the day after Thanksgiving. 

I rendered the bacon until it was getting slightly crispy before adding in
chopped onion and sliced mushroom.  Once those were cooked down, I threw
in some cubed left over Thanksgiving ham.  I only added about a teaspoon of
salt since the bacon had plenty, but I didn't want it to be too bland with all of the
eggs.  This breakfast is not as guilt free as the muffins. 

I scrambled up eight eggs with a splash of water to make it fluffy.  On medium
heat, I covered the eggs to cook the edges before putting them into a 350 degree
oven for about eight minutes.

Because of all the bacon fat and the non-stick pan, the fritatta came right out
of the pan. 

This was a little mushroom heavy for me and made my mouth and throat itch
 (I'm a little allergic) but the flavor was awesome. 

Bacon-Mushroom Fritatta 

6 slices bacon, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

8-10 mushrooms, sliced

1/2 lb ham, cubed (optional)

8 eggs, scrambled

1 tsp sea salt

1 tbsp black pepper 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Over high heat, render bacon until slightly crispy in non-stick pan; about seven minutes.  Add onions and mushrooms to saute.  Add cubed ham and toss until warmed through. Salt and pepper to taste.  Scramble eight eggs with a splash of water or milk to make them fluffier.  Pour eggs into pan and lower to medium.  Do not stir.  Cover pan until edges of eggs become firm.  Remove cover and put into hot oven for 8-10 minutes depending on how runny the center of your eggs are. Once the eggs become puffy in the center, remove pan.  Gently use a spatula to loosen edges of the fritatta before removing to cutting board.  Serve hot.  

Note:  I have to add my mushrooms at the same time as my onions so that they are fully cooked and "dead" otherwise I get a very bad allergic reaction to them.  If you like your mushrooms more firm, add later with the cubed ham. 

Tonight's Dinner: November 22, 2012

With the 10k under my belt, I was exhausted and not exactly ready to make all of the sides for Thanksgiving dinner.  It's a good thing Nick was in charge since it was for his family's dinner.  I helped him chop a few things, but generally, my limbs were too tired to do anything. So I painted my nails instead.

We brought:

Green bean casserole
Bacon brussel sprouts
Roasted cauliflower and mushrooms
Garlic mashed potatoes
Stove top
Dinner rolls
Cranberry sauce
3 pumpkin pies

Dinner was splendid.  We got to Dennis' house around 5pm where Mr. Fong promptly got me a glass of wine and my legs felt better.  The food was really good and we were all excited to eat.  After we were all stuffed to the gills we watch Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, which is a holiday favorite of mine, we listened to Melissa and Stephanie try to phonetically pronounce words in Mandarin.  It was so funny that I laughed so hard I gave myself an asthma attack.

Our little ring bearer is getting so big!

Ye Ma made yams and melted butter and marshmallow on each slice. 

Nick's green bean casserole.

Nick got all fancy with this mashed potato even if it looks like regular mash.
He roasted five heads of garlic and then using an immersion blender, mixed it
with cream and butter.  It looked like he made a garlic bechamel before he added
it into the red potatoes.

This was the first Thanksgiving that I spent with Nick's
family.  Every year I look forward to my Auntie Sylvia's
bacon brussel sprouts, that's where my love for them started.
I told Nick that if I was going to miss Auntie Sylvia's fabulous
cooking, that we at least needed to make the bacon brussel
sprouts even if it's something that I make on a regular basis.

We were just going to do roasted cauliflower, but Nick added in the extra
mushrooms that we had for the green bean casserole. 

Brown-and-serve rolls were another thing that I demanded.
These are probably the simplest, cheapest, easiest things to make.
 I'm sure that you can get them throughout the year, but I love them
because I only have them during the holidays.  They are rather
tasteless, but I have to have them.  I believe that I ate six alone.

As simple as this is, one of the Fong's traditions is to have broccoli with cream
of mushroom soup.  I'm definitely not complaining.  I love the stuff. 

Nick's Pau Pau makes the gravy every year.

A pretty standard cranberry sauce that I whipped up with
fresh cranberries, orange juice, sugar, and a little bit of
ginger powder.

Nick and Dennis really like Stove Top, so Stove Top is what
we had.  No need for fancy dressings if the easy things
make them happy. 

Nick has become our official turkey cutter.

I know that turkey usually takes the stage when it comes to Thanksgiving, but
I love when there's ham.

Pumpkin pie, cream puffs and apple pie.

Tiramisu