thanks

happy thanksgiving eervra-one! best holiday ever! and thanks to all of you! for being so great!

except you! you know who you are.

pumpkin rolls

so they're all done and ready. i used soooo many eggs. i took one to work and let me tell you, it was a hit. the secret is.... i replace a little bit of the sugar in the cake part with vanilla pudding. i bake two batches at a time with:

one whole can of pumpkin (which is a little more than called for)

1.5c four

1t baking powder

1t baking soda

0.5t salt

some ground cloves, ground cinnamon, a little ground ginger

6 eggs

a little less than the suggested 2c sugar

i don't add walnuts cuz gross

other than that it's all the same... tips:

use a lot of powdered sugar on the towels

keep the wax paper on the cake when you roll it (take off when the cake's cool)

since i do two at a time, i put both in the oven at the same time and rotate top to bottom back to front halfway through

leave some room for the icing to sckoosh to the edge

wait till cooled to cut anything.

you know how to make cream cheese icing... i go light on the sugar. and don't use weird butter substitutes or it won't set up correctly.

forks

i finished aaaall the rolls. i'm getting my pictures organized.... while you wait, here are some forks defying gravity (thanks to me).

gearing up for thanksgiving. here, i think, is the final list. (although... matt did say, "i don't know, i guess." to some or many of my persistent questions.) i will be baking aaaalll weekend so don't call me. unless it's an emergency. 8 pumpkin logs/rolls (that's right!) 1 cherry pie 2 sets of cake balls (for some body's birthday... shh! don't tell jane!) 1 pecan pie 6ish batches of pretzels (we'll see)

grilled chicken and zucchini slash yellow squash

fall veggies. mmmmm

halibut and asparagus

fish=broiled and generously seasoned

asparagus=seasoned and sauteed

rice bowl

i made a bowl. ok, well i didn't make the bowl, but i did paint a tiny bird on the inside of a bowl that was, no doubt made by a small foreign child in a sweat shop and fashioned out of the souls of unicorns. i had a lot of fun making it and i'm glad to be finally reunited with it... finally, no thanks to somebody.

cuban chicken and (cuban) broccoli

bamboo steamers are cool. i really love mine a lot. i got them when i made tamales a looong time ago. you can stack them really high with tons of things to steam. like vegetables and other stuff (tiny kittens?)

i've been getting organic free range chicken because of my chicken related guilt. those poor little chickens. i used the (cuban) marinade from the chicken (with shallots) on the broccoli, it had about half as much orange juice as lemon juice and lime juice and some other cool spices but mostly juice.

pot roast with fall vegetables

i love fall. i love sweet potatoes. what's better on cool-ish fall day than pot roast with a chunk of bread? absolutely nothing at all. speaking of fall, thanksgiving is coming up (except for those sadly misguided canadians who already celebrated some sort of "thanksgiving" to the north of us). we're going to matt's mom jane's house to hang out with her and matt's sister robyn's family. we've gone for the past two (?) years to visit jane. so this year should be different and obviously fun. matt's already planning what we're taking to houston thanksgiving. we brought a few pies and pumpkin rolls last year. i think we're going for a berry pie, pumpkin rolls (yum), and i think pecan pie (which is like the easiest pie ever in the history of pies. so, fingers crossed). and then, we're coming back up here to spend saturday at my grandmother's house warming (pool) party. at the end of november. it's a spanish themed margarita party. hopefully there will be a mariachi band.

soft pretzels

the recipe i found had me rest the dough overnight in a plastic container. then i rolled them out into looooong ropes. this part takes forever i think because this dough needs to be so chewy at the end. what i ended up doing was rolling one, resting, rolling another, resting and so forth. switching the ropes one at a time.

then you pretzel them and let them rise for thirty minutes on a greased cookie sheet. supposedly they double in size, i felt mine only rose a tiny bit.

now they get a bath in 4 cups boiling water mixed with 2 tablespoons baking soda for 10 seconds.

they look a little dimply after the bath. now they're back on the sheet to get brushed with...

egg wash. one egg and a little bit of water and my nifty silicone brush.

after the egg wash you can put anything you want on them. salt, pepper, sesame seeds (my next try), etc.

matt wanted lots of salt on his and ate them with yellow mustard. i used kosher salt, but i think it would be better with pretzel salt or compound salt (might be the same thing). when he was finished, matt said these might be his new favorite thing i cook, edging out coconut curry soup.

mine had kosher salt and pepper on them (according to matt he's never seen pepper on a pretzel. and obviously that sort of thing should not be allowed). i decided to go with a parmigiana cheese sauce to dip mine in. i'm not a fan of mustard at all.