Things I Love About Small Town Life #201

Buying our Christmas tree from a cut-your-own tree-farm just down the road from our house.

Cheesecake Flop

I tried making a cheesecake this week. Other than the top being burnt, it was great! I kind of combined the recipes from Ina Garten and Joy of Cooking, but used less cream cheese.

I used Ina's recipe for the crust, expect that I needed more graham crackers (about 13) to get to 1 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs. For the filling I used

2 lbs. of cream cheese
1 1/2 cups of sugar
4 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup cream
zest from one lemon
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Using one of the Joy of Cooking methods, I cooked it at 500 for 15 minutes. That was my mistake. I should have kept an eye on it and just cooked it until it was lightly brown, but instead I set the timer and left the kitchen. By the time the 15 minutes had passed, it was burnt. On the positive side, I had fun playing 6 card golf with my girls. I continued following the directions, turning the heat to 200 for one hour and then turning off the oven and opening the door for 30 minutes and finally taking it out to cool. Other than the burnt top, the flavor was really nice. It had kind of a "cakey" texture, which is fine for me. I will try it again, but will remember to watch it during the 500 degree stage.

Turkey Leftovers

Friday, we made the usual turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce with the leftover turkey, but Saturday we had turkey and rice soup.

We were very proud of ourselves for actually saving the carcasses and making turkey stock. We talked about it last year, but never actually got around to making it. The hardest part was separating the meat from the bones at the end. We could have just thrown it all away, but the meat was just so tasty it seemed like a waste. Maya ended up with most of that meat. Pretty sure that Thanksgiving is now her favorite holiday.

For Saturday, we added carrots, celery, onion, yellow squash and a little bit of basil. Maybe we'll try some different ingredients on Sunday.

Thanksgiving Menu

I wanted to write down all the things that we made for Thanksgiving dinner so we can remember next year.

The nigh before Thanksgiving, Ron got dough ready for four loaves of bread. He's been using Ken Forkish's book, Flour Water Salt Yeast for his bread. He made two loaves that were 10% whole wheat and two that were 40%. They were both delicious. It was colder than it has been, so they took longer to rise and we didn't get to cook them as early as we wanted, but still in time for a small lunch and of course for dinner.

I was going to make the cranberry sauce the day before, but it got late after all the cleaning, so I just made it early in the morning. I just followed the recipe on the bag, but added some lemon zest. I wanted to add orange zest and some juice instead of just water, but the oranges just aren't quite ripe. Maybe I'll make some for Christmas with oranges.

The stuffing turned out tasty, but dry. We didn't put any in the turkey and I think I just needed more liquid. I found a recipe from Ina Garten. I didn't follow it exactly, I just wanted to get an idea for the ratio of bread to liquid, but either I used too much bread, the bread was too different (I used some of Ron's) or not enough liquid. But the flavor was great and I know that my kids loved it, so that's what really matters, right? I added sausage, granny smith apples, onions and celery. The only herb I used was oregano, but like I said, the flavor was great!  

I also made green beans with garlic and pine nuts. I made them before and that is now my favorite green bean recipe. You just boil the bean until they are barely tender, saute garlic and pine nuts in a olive oil and then add the green beans to the garlic and nuts just to coat them. They are quite tasty! 

We ended up with two turkeys because Costco had small hens. One was 11.8 lbs and the other was 10.5. That meant we needed two ways to cook them, so one was roasted and one was deep fried. We thought the roasted one was going to take at least three hours, but it was done in like an hour and a half. Ron put onions, apples, fresh rosemary and cinnamon in the cavity of the one we roasted which gave it a very nice flavor. Good thing to remember about small turkeys, those hour per pound estimates don't work. 

Now we have a big deep fryer for outside. We will be using it to heat up the water to help with de-feathering the chickens once we get around to butchering them. Maybe we'll try deep frying chickens, though they are getting old now, so they will probably need to be cooked differently.

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

Thanks once again to Alton Brown, we had homemade cinnamon rolls this weekend.

Since we ran out of butter and had no cream cheese, we made a simple icing with two cups of powdered sugar and about 4 tablespoons of milk - goats milk from the neighbors. They were scrumptious!

A Lot of Cooking Going On

One of the best things about having fresh ingredients at home is all the fun you can have cooking. Here is a list of some of our recent cooking adventures:

1. Key lime pie with meringue topping (from Joy of Cooking)

2. Various hot sauces with our peppers. One of my favorites was made with our Trinidad Perfume peppers. They have a taste similar to habaneros, but are not hot. How amazing is that!

3. I finally found a recipe for pancakes that turn out nice and fluffy - Thanks Alton Brown!

4. Ron made some amazing rustic french bread that is light on the inside with a nice crust.

5. I made a homemade chocolate cake with whipped cream frosting. Note to self: do not use whipped cream frosting between the layers of a layer cake. The top may slide off...

Tarantulas

Why, oh why do these creatures feel the need to come in the house?