Menu Plan, Thanksgiving Edition

Last week's menu plan went pretty well. The only substitution was that instead of spaghetti with Italian sausage, I decided to make sausage and peppers instead. YUM!

Yesterday, we met some friends for dinner at Van's Vietnamese Restaurant on Central Ave, Albany. It was absolutely amazing. I completely loved the experience and will be back again soon. Afterwards, we went to a small birthday celebration at a friend's house, where they made an absolutely divine flourless chocolate cake from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. YUM!

Now, given the fact that it's that time of year again, and we're hosting a combined Thanksgiving with our families for the second year in a row, I'm not bothering with a weekly menu plan this week. Mostly because, after cleaning the house to pass the white-glove test and taking Wednesday off to spend the day cooking, I foresee takout in our future; and hopefully leftovers after the big day!

Let's do something more fun and talk about what we'll be serving for Thanksgiving dinner.

Right now, we're expecting eight people: hubby and myself, our parents, my sister-in-law and hubby's uncle. I wanted to get my favorite low-cost pinot grigio, Ecco Domani, but unfortunately Empire Wine was out of it when I went there this weekend so I picked up Cavit pinot grigio to sip throughout the day. Most people usually stick with that for the turkey, but we have Blackstone pinot noir on hand as well for red-wine drinkers.

Appetizers:

• A hot crab dip, consisting of canned claw meat crab, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and scallions. Mixed together and baked at 350 until bubbly, topped with extra cheddar cheese and baked for another 10 minutes, and served with freshly baked and toasted whole-grain gluten free bread for toasting. (Sorghum and brown rice flour are perfect for this!)
  
• To go along with the whole grain toast, I'll have a bowl of Trader Joe's olive tapenade to spread on slices. YUM!
• Shrimp cocktail, a holiday staple.
  
• An assorted cheese and cracker spread.
  

Dinner

• We've purchased a 25-lb. turkey, which we'll be roasting, and of course, making gravy from scratch.
  
• Both "regular" and gluten free stuffing, to be prepared by my mother and mother-in-law, respectively.
  
• Mashed potatoes
• My mother's famous sweet potatoes, with liberal amounts of marshmallow and brown sugar
• Creamed white onions (using sweet rice flour to thicken the sauce)
  
• My mother-in-law's famous applesauce
  
• Southern corn-bread, using the recipe from America's Test Kitchen (it only calls for corn meal, so it's naturally gluten free!)
  
• Homemade cranberry sauce
• Italian-style whole green beans, tossed in garlic and olive oil
• Kernel corn tossed in butter
• Peas

Dessert

• Non-gluten free pumpkin and pecan pies, purchased from FoCastle Farms
• Gluten free apple pie, with a pie crust from Gluten Free Girl's wonderful site
  
• Gluten free pumpkin pie, with a pie crust made up of crushed gluten free graham crackers
• Pecan cloud cookies
• And, of course, vanilla ice cream and Starbucks (decaf) coffee. Irish coffee optional. ;-)
  

Fortunately, the last piece of cardio equipment for our home gym will be delivered and set up for Black Friday post-food-comatose workouts. :)

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! What are your plans??

Our first Thanksgiving!

Welcome back from the Thanksgiving holiday! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday full of gluten free treats, family and friends. We certainly enjoyed ourselves!

We started the week off with dinner with my friend Samantha and her family. They made an amazing amount of Italian food, and we were touched not only to be included but also with the fact that they were so aware of cross-contamination, etc. They made a gluten free baked ziti dish for my husband, and made sure he had his own dish of gluten free sauce, and pointed out the other dishes on the table that were safe for him to eat. I know how much of a pain we can be to cook for, especially when there is a group of people, and we were very appreciative!

Then, on Thursday -- My husband and I hosted our first Thanksgiving. We're fortunate that both my parents and his are local, so we invited both of our immediate families for the holiday. We ended up with a total of eight people, three dogs, and two ferrets.

While I've roasted chickens before, this was my first turkey. I was also excited to finally have a chance to finally use the pretty china we selected before our wedding!

Our menu:

Appetizers:

• Cheese and crackers (we had "regular" crackers, as well as rice crackers and gluten free crackers).
• Veggies and dip (with extra green peppers for the puggle, she absolutely adores them)
  
• Homemade crab dip with freshly baked brown-rice-and-sorghum toast for spreading

Main course:

• 20-lb roast turkey and gravy
• Mashed potatoes
• Dressing, both traditional and gluten free cornbread (courtesy of both our mothers)
• Sweet potatoes and creamed white onions (two dishes, courtesy of my mother)
• Homemade applesauce (courtesy of my mother-in-law)
• Freshly baked dinner rolls
  
• Corn
• Peas
• Green beans
• Cranberry sauce

Dessert:

• Traditional pecan and pumpkin pies (non-gluten free, purchased from Grandma's)
  
• Gluten free apple pie from Laurie's Gluten Free Goodness, in Scotia
• Homemade gluten free coconut cream pie

Everything came out very well! There were two minor snags with the turkey, but neither of them affected the taste of the bird, which ended up juicy and delicious. However:

• We purchased an electronic thermometer that was supposed to alert us when the bird was "almost done," "done," and "overdone." I don't know if we stuck it in the wrong, er, location of the turkey or the contraption was just a piece of junk, but it beeped that my 20-lb. turkey was done two hours into the roasting cycle. We took the electronic thermometer out at that point and relied on the manual meat thermometer and pop-up timer in the bird itself.
  
• Most of our serving utensils, including our carving fork, are made of plastic. They presented an interested engineering problem when actually faced with removing the bird from the pan, but fortunately we were up to the challenge. :-)
  

Other than that, the meat fell off the bone and somehow, everything was done at the perfect time. So overall I'd consider the meal a success. We have finally reached the point where the leftovers are almost all gone!

The one note about the pie: I was very excited to try the pie from Laurie's gluten free goodness. It wasn't bad, but there was something missing. The apple filling was very tart and there wasn't a lot of sugar in the pie crust either. I would have preferred the filling and/or the crust to be slightly sweeter, though it was interesting to taste her crust!

Overall we had a wonderful time, and it kicked off holiday celebrations just right!

Thanksgiving Series: Gluten Free Jalapeno Cornbread

So, it's that time of year again - Thanksgiving is going to be around the corner before we know it. This is going to be our first gluten-free Thanksgiving, so it's a pretty big deal. We've always had the usual, traditional trimmings in the past: turkey with stuffing and gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, cornbread, creamed white onions, applesauce, a selection of pies, and, at least personally, a longing to get back into my skinny Seven for All Mankind jeans for at least a week afterward.

Well, the good news is that a lot of this stuff is naturally gluten free - turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, sweet potatoes, gravy (we've always used cornstarch), and applesauce are all good. And since my hubby isn't a fan of the onions, or the pecan or pumpkin pies that leaves a short list of things to try to make gluten-free:

• stuffing
• cornbread
• apple pie

Now my original plan was to go apple picking, and make a gluten free apple pie with fresh granny smith apples - unfortunately due to the lovely Upstate NY weather that was postponed for a week or two. So, I did the next best thing and tried my hand at cornbread. I picked up a package of Arrowhead Mills organic yellow cornmeal, and found a recipe on the back of the package for a jalapeno cornbread (it's since been removed from their recipe page).

Here's the recipe, for your reference:

Ingredients

• 1 cup onion, finely chopped (I didn't measure but used 1 medium sweet onion)
  
• 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup unbleached white flour (I used the same amount of white rice flour with 1 tsp xanthan gum)
• 1 cup yellow corn meal
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp sea salt (I used regular, iodized salt)
• 1 cup soy milk or milk substitute (I used skim milk - I wonder if that made a difference?)
• 3 Tbsp vegetable oil or butter (I used butter)
• 2 eggs or 1/2 cup liquid egg substitute (I used 3 eggs)
• 2 Tbsp honey
• 1 1/4 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated (I used extra sharp)
• 2-4 jalapeno peppers, chopped (I used a handful of canned jalapeno slices, certainly not as many as the recipe called for)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 F
   
2. Prepare an 8x8 pan with cooking spray
3. Sautee the onions in the 1 Tbsp oil until just limp, about 5 minutes, and set aside
4. Combine the dry ingredientsg
5. Seperately beat together the milk, eggs, oil/butter, and honey. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until just moistened
6. Stir in the onions, 1 cup cheese, and jalapenos
7. Pour into prepared pan, top with the remaining cheese
8. Bake 20-25 minutes or until top is crusty brown (it took about 20 minutes in my oven)
   

Now - the cornbread turned out tasty, but if I decided to make it again I think I'd make some changes:

• The dough came out very thick and the top of the cornbread was lumpy and unattractive. I think the dough needed more liquid or a couple Tbsp less flour
  
• I love spicy food and would prefer to use fresh jalapenos next time - however my hubby hates spicy food and probably wouldn't eat the cornbread!
  
• There wasn't enough cheese. I would probably put the entire 1 1/4 cup in the mixture, and top the dough with another 1/2 cup or so

Anyway, that's all for now - let's hope the weather's better for apple picking this weekend so I can try my hand at a pie!