Spiced Carrots Recipe - Guest Post

Amazing chef and mother, Jill Redding, from Pianissamma, joins our blog group with an incredibly carrot recipe. Yes, you read that right. An. Incredible. Carrot. Recipe.

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Photo by Tejaswi Kasturi.

When I was a child, I always looked forward to Sunday dinners at my grandmother’s house. Sunday dinners were always worthy of the good plates, especially after a good sermon at church.

It wasn’t uncommon for some of those Sunday dinners to include a roast with potatoes, carrots, and onions. All cooked together in a Dutch oven.

When I decided to become a vegetarian, I realized that I missed that idea of a one-pot meal. Sure, I use my slow cooker to make stews all the time. But to have root vegetables baked with a broth? I had yet to find a recipe that brought those veggies to life. So one Thanksgiving about ten years ago, I decided to make my own. This works well as a side dish.

Spiced Carrots


2 Cups carrots peeled and quartered lengthwise
3 Cinnamon Sticks
1 Teaspoon Whole Cloves
1 Teaspoon fresh thyme
1 Teaspoon chopped basil
1 Teaspoon oregano leaves

Marinade
1/8 Cup orange juice
1/8 Cup soy sauce
1 Tablespoon honey (Agave nectar may be substituted)
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Pinch of saffron strands
1 Dash of crushed red pepper

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Spread carrots evenly in an 8-inch baking dish. Sprinkle cloves, thyme, basil and oregano on carrots. Take your cinnamon sticks, and break them in half lengthwise. Add cinnamon sticks to carrots, interspersed throughout the dish. Drizzle marinade over carrots.

Cover with aluminum foil, and bake for 1 hour. Garnish with sprigs of thyme. Serves 4.





 

What I Am and What I Wanted to Be

I often say my life changed forever the day I found out I was having twins (the same day I then had to turn down a job offer in New York City), but in all honesty, my life changed a month before that.

It was Thanksgiving, 2007. I was living the life I'd thought for years I'd wanted to live. I'd made the huge jump from associate producer at a cable station in Connecticut to the morning show producer in San Diego. And not the baby morning show producer. The big guy. 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.

By this point, I'd covered wildfires nonstop with no breaks (commercials) for nearly a 16-hour period. I'd manually timed shows with nothing more than a stop watch and a printout rundown (unheard of in the business). I'd produced a show live from the Del Mar races. I'd interviewed Jennifer Lopez, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and freaking John Levitz (shut up, he's awesome.) I'd made Mario Lopez sing "Merry Christmas" San Diego, for a canned promo.

One of the Dukes of Hazard dented my car for a teaser.

Now, I'm not relaying all this because it's super-duper glamorous or anything, but I was only 25 at the time. It seemed as if I was on my way, know what I mean?

Anyway, in order to get this dream job (which was actually the stuff nightmares were made of, no offense, KUSI, but I cried at your station on the daily, and you can't tell me it's me because in my seven months there, thirty two  people quit. And more than half of them didn't have anywhere to go. I was number 33.) I'd moved across the country from my boyfriend (now husband).

I thought it was a good thing. We hadn't planned on being serious and forever, and an opportunity came up, and I didn't want him to hang out in a relationship he didn't want to be in just because I wanted him to be in it. (I know, I don't know, shut up.) Anyway, I packed up, thinking we'd try long distance for a bit, then probably break up, and live our own lives.

That...didn't happen.

I missed him with a ferocity I'd never previously known. He'd come to visit me every couple of months, and each departure would leave me wrecked for days.

I once called a friend of mine who asked me how things were in San Diego. I answered that the weather was beautiful. She told me that was the saddest "the weather is beautiful" she'd ever heard. In short, I was a wreck.

Sure, I had friends (Meghan!) and made more (Laura!), but I couldn't get my bearings. There was a San Diego me and a Connecticut me, and the SD me was just a shadow, a shell. No matter what I did. I went to coffee shops. I read dozens of literary masterpieces, I talked to the neighbors and made friends with my coworkers (the ones who weren't Satan himself, tbh). I listened to French music and took long walks on the beach. I was miserable.

That Thanksgiving, I went to a few different places. People knew I was alone and kindly invited me to join in their celebrations. And around all that festivity, all that happiness, I couldn't appreciate. I couldn't do anything but excuse myself to the bathroom to go cry.

I hated everything.

And that's when my life changed. That Thanksgiving. I somehow had an inkling that what was waiting for me (well, I mean, mostly waiting) in Connecticut was something bigger than my dreams of becoming a big-time producer. I didn't know what it would be at the time. But I knew right then, that day, that I had to give up the fast-track I was on. I had to admit defeat and go home. With no job, no insurance, no apartment of my own. It was a decision incredibly unlike me, perhaps the only one I've ever made like it (I usually stick things out until the bitter end). I didn't know what was in store, but I put faith in me landing on my feet.

I got off the plane on December 13th 2007. The doctors say that's the date I conceived.

Today, in 2013, I'm struggling with three research papers, two sick kids and a hefty order for a five-course Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I haven't "worked" in three years. The broadcast ship has probably long sailed.

The last time I saw a celebrity was this morning, but it was Charlie Brown on my TV.

I'm not anything close to what I thought I would be. I've not done anything I thought I would.

And I couldn't be more thankful for that.

Thanksgiving, two years ago.

Kindergarten Kids - Oh God, Oh God, A Week of Vacation

Problem: 

When we were kids, I had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off for Thanksgiving. That's reasonable, right? One wouldn't really question that. That's pretty much what the work world does, too. Well, thank goodness for me, I had a chat with the teachers yesterday where I learned that the girls have the entire week off of school. The whole thing.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I mean, not that I don't want to see my kids 24/7 for the next nine days, I totally do. That sounds like heaven to me. Except I'm all in grad school right now, and from now until Christmas is the 'busy time.' And I just lost 12 hours of research paper work. Plus, I have to actively find something for us to actually do. Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh, God.

Solution:

I have got to get my butt on the phone right now, and call every friend and acquaintance the girls have in the hopes I can procure them some entertainment in the form of another five year old. Of course, a lot of people are going away for Thanksgiving. A lot of other people are having family over. Great. I'll scour the sites for fun diversions, but Tgiving is a family time. So, I'll probably make them do some school work, too. That I make up for them. Because, I work, they work. I don't know.

The only solution I can see is to organize the heck out of this 'vacation.' I'll make a concrete schedule and post it up on the fridge, and I'll include things like, "go outside" and "clean your playroom" in there along with "paint for an hour" or "bake an apple pie." I'll try to secure myself alone time in at least one-hour increments so I can code, write, and calculate my papers. Maybe. Or I'll just barely get them in with the minimum effort and be thankful I have solid grades that can maybe carry me through the end of the semester.

Solution for next year? Take vacation this week. Do more school work before Thanksgiving week next year, so this doesn't happen again. I don't know. Life is hard.

Wish us luck.








 

Thanksgivukah Advent-ures: How to Celebrate the "Season" before You Celebrate Christmas - Guest Post

Resident Thealogian Kate Allen who can be found at Life, Love, Liturgy, preps for the holidays in amazing ways. (as always).

If you're like me, you're just not ready for the red and green and tinsel cropping up at Target, Starbucks, and the grocery store.  I want to go, "Hey, don'tcha know there's all kinds of cool stuff that goes on for a couple of months before Christmas ever arrives?"

I invite you to try out the following this year, not to ditch your family traditions, but to expand them.

Thanksgiving/Chanukah: This year, for the first time (and the last time for 77,000 years, according to one source, Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah coincide.  This year, as you finalize your Thanksgiving day menu, consider a few Jewish specialties, like latkes 

Courtesy: All Recipes

or matzo ball soup.

Courtesy: Food Network

(Pro-tip: matzo ball soup can be made in minutes using a handy-dandy pre-made dry mix in the Jewish section of your grocery store.)  When you and your family and friends are gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table, share the story of the miracle of Chanukah, in which an oil lamp with only enough oil for one night lasted eight nights, providing ongoing light in darkness.  Chanukah is an eight-day Jewish feast of enduring, miraculous light--telling this story is is a great time to light the first candle of eight of your menorah, if you have one, or perhaps the first of other candles you have on your table.  Allow this to be your segue into a giving of thanks by each person around the table.

Then, when you awake the day after Thanksgiving, consider just staying home.  Really.  Eating latkes with cranberry sauce for breakfast while sipping home-brewed coffee and wearing fuzzy slippers is a far gentler holiday practice than trampling your neighbor at 3 a.m. to get through store doors.  Consider continuing your candle-lighting through the eight days of Chanukah, saying a silent prayer as you light them if you aren't familiar with the Hebrew prayers.

Next, Advent, as in, advent-ure!  

That's right--before you pull out your tubs of Christmas glitz, try cutting a few boughs from an evergreen (places that sell Christmas trees may give these away for free, if you don't have any evergreens of your own) and fashion an Advent wreath with your kids.

Courtesy: Happy Home Fairy

Each Sunday, beginning December 1, light one of the candles.  Sing a verse of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" or "People Look East" with your kids. Invite them into conversation about what the dawning of light means.  Refer back to the Chanukah ritual, if you used it.  You might ask:

Why do we want light when it's dark?  

What are examples of darkness we experience?  

What are ways that we can bring light to dark places?  

Allow Advent to be the season of quiet, pregnant anticipation that it's intended to be--because if you do, the glimmer and dazzle of Christmas Eve's light and the bright clamor of Christmas morning will shine and ring out for you in a whole new way.

 

Thanksgiving for Being an Ordinary Mother

I'm going to make some changes around here presently, and in thinking about how to go about it, I had a conversation with a friend about how I am not an unlikely mother at all. What false branding.

Sure, the title seemed to make sense more than three years ago when I first had the twins. I felt like an unlikely mother. But even then I really wasn't. What makes an unlikely mother? I don't know. But I do know I don't have it. I'm a completely ordinary mother. And that's a good thing. At least it is for me.

To exemplify why I took this title, here are some thanksgivings of past:

2005: I was thankful to celebrate the holiday with a core group of people I considered my "urban family" if you will. The night crew from the television studio at which I was working at the time. I thought we'd all be best friends forever. I don't know where they stand as a group, but I grew apart from them soon after.

2007: I was thankful for having a few friends in San Diego where I'd moved to take an overnight television production job. They took me in for the holiday, fed me, and it was very nice overall. Of course, I was tired, achy and cranky. Pretty much how I felt for the entirety of my stint in San Diego.

2008: I was thankful for the television station in Boston that had such a lenient maternity leave. I got three months off at half-pay. I was just about going back to work as Thanksgiving rolled around, having been allowed to care for my tiny infants until then.

2009: I was thankful for my PR job at the Catholic Church. It was closer to home. Closer to my kids.

2011: I'm finally biting the bullet and making our first family Thanksgiving dinner. I'm a stay at home mom who cleans and freelances and plays with her kids every day. You do not get more ordinary than that. I'm cooking turkey, potatoes, beans, stuffing and cranberry sauce. I've made fudge and baked an apple pie. Some of this is boxed. Some is from scratch. You don't get any more ordinary. A typical mother making a typical meal for a typical loving husband and father and her typical three-year-old twins.

It's never felt so good to be ordinary.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Guest Post - Andouille Dirty Rice Dressing

I am so pleased to be here today and share one of my favorite Cajun recipes on my friend Darlena’s incredible blog, Tales of an Unlikely Mother. Please, let me introduce myself: I’m Jessica, the girl behind the Cajunlicious blog. When Darlena asked me if I would like to do a guest post on a Cajun twist to a Thanksgiving Day side I knew this would make the perfect side dish for anyone’s Thanksgiving menu.

If you are not familiar with Cajun food, here is a little history.

Cajun cuisine (in French: Cuisine Acadienne) An authentic Cajun meal is usually a three-pot event, with one pot devoted to the main dish, one dedicated to rice, cornbread, or another grain dish, and the third containing a vegetable. The food is regularly spicy and typically makes use of regionally abundant provisions such as seafood, wild game, and rice. Most Cajun dishes begin with trinity, which provides the distinctive flavoring of specific dishes.

To read more about Cajun Culture click here

So, without further ado, I give you my Andouille Dirty Rice Dressing

Traditional dirty rice is made from Boiled Cajun Rice cooked with small pieces of chicken giblets, which give it a “dirty” color and a distinctive flavor, but I love the flavor that Andouille sausage adds to any meal and this side is always on my table for all holidays.

You will need

1-cup long grain white basmati rice

Chicken stock

8 ounces of Andouille sausage, diced

1 & 1/2 cups trinity

3 white mushrooms, sliced

2 garlic cloves, pressed

Tabasco pepper vinegar, to taste

Crystal hot sauce, to taste

Cajun seasoning blend

To make the Cajun seasoning blend mix salt, pepper, parsley, granulated garlic, onion powder, cayenne powder, and a pinch of dried thyme. Mix well and adjust to your liking.

For the rice

Rinse rice 2 times with a strainer to remove extra starch. Place rice in a saucepan and add 1 ½ cups chicken stock, 2 bay leaves, 1-teaspoon olive oil, and a pinch of sea salt. Place saucepan (uncovered) over high heat and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Let the stock reduce slightly below the rice. Cover and reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.

For the Dirty Part

Sauté the andouille on medium high heat to brown. Once browned and slightly crisp lower the heat to medium and render the fat.

Remove andouille with a slotted spoon into a bowl. Sauté the trinity in the rendered fat until soft and add the garlic and mushrooms and continue to cook until the garlic is fragrant. Add the seasoning mixture and stir.

Add 2/3 cup chicken stock and 1/2 teaspoon Tabasco pepper vinegar and deglaze the pan scrapping up any brown bits. Add the amount of hot sauce you like to season while the cooking in finishing.

Add the andouille and rice. Cook until liquid is absorbed.

View my post about perfect Boiled Cajun Rice.

Thank you so much Darlena for inviting me to guest post with you today, it truly is an honor!

Have a happy, safe, and yummy Thanksgiving everyone!

Recipe Monday - Pumpkin Cheesecake Bites

I got this recipe from my friend Cassie, just a few days ago. They came out so well that my husband is already talking about "the next time" I make them. Haha. Now, trust me, you can make better-looking bites than this. I was using muffin papers that were too big!

1 can pumpkin pie mix (the kind that already has spices in it)

1 can sweet condensed milk

3 eggs

1 package cream cheese (room temp)

1 cup sugar

Pinch salt

1 package ginger snaps (I used Maria biscuits and graham crackers, just a half of a quarter at the bottom of each cupcake wrapper; they rise to the top in deliciousness)

 (Oh, when I took this photo, I was going to try Oreos in some of them. But then the girls woke up and ate the Oreos.)

This makes 24.

Cream together all ingredients except the cookies.

Line cupcake tin with papers.

Drop one cookie in the bottom of each cupcake liner.

Fill with mixture.

Bake at 425f for 15 minutes then reduce oven to 350f and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until firm.

Put them in the fridge and enjoy! (I put the cookie in only half of them, not sure which way would taste better. Go with the graham. Seriously.)

Colorless Thoughts on Black Friday

I don't like Black Friday.  It's not the starting at ridiculous a.m. that gets me.  It's not the notion of big, bad capitalism taking over the holidays.  It's not the fear of being run over by thousands of parents who need just the right talking baby doll for their littles ones.

It's a timing thing.  Each year, it seems Black Friday creeps further up on Thanksgiving, and we don't have much wiggle room left.  On Thursday, we are expected to bask in the warmth and ease of our family and loved ones, giving thanks for all we have.  On Friday, and recently, on Thursday night, we are made to forget all of that thanksgiving and concentrate instead on what we don't have, on what we need, right this second, at 70 percent off.  The turkey isn't even cold on the counter before many families turn their attention from laughter and forgetting to bargains and strategy.

To be a successful Black Friday shopper, one must have a route planned out.  Store visits are put on deadline.  If we don't get out of Toys R Us at 5 a.m., we'll never stand a chance at Kohls!  Do people even go to bed on Thanksgiving night anymore?

And what about the moms and grandmothers in all this?  Somebody had to make that dinner for 18 people.  Somebody had to fret over getting the turkey just right and setting the dip out on time, and hiding the bread loaf that didn't rise.  After all that stress, the peace and tranquility that comes after the meal is needed to preserve the day's meaning. 

I've got nothing against consumerism, but when it encroaches upon and nearly redefines a holiday I love, I do feel a bit put upon.  Even if you choose not to partake in the event, someone in your family is going shopping, and they are going to tell you all about it.  Memories of your beloved ones, talk of family ties, and chit chat about the day tend to be drowned out by anticipation of standing, cold, in line for eight hours to get that new computer. 

Why not put a little space in between them?  Would Black Saturday be such a bad idea?

I'm not saying everybody should stay home and buy presents at full price, or make little trinkets themselves.  I'm not saying the rush is necessarily a bad thing.  I'd just like a few hours to enjoy my Thanksgiving before being flooded with news stories about maulings and arrests. 

Thanksgiving is for being grateful for all you have; Black Friday is for ignoring all that you have in favor of all that you want.  I simply think they are too close together.


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Thanksgiving

Here it is, Thanksgiving Day, and I am not making a turkey.  There is no bread in the oven, no pie cooling on the rack, no clink of glasses, no shovelling of forks.

It's not that we don't like Thanksgiving over here; we definitely do.  It's one of my favorite holidays, in fact.  But I don't know how to make a turkey.  And I've never particularly enjoyed sweet potatoes.  With only the four of us here, and only two of us really eating, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to attempt a big meal filled with exotic things that definitely don't come out of a box.

I will miss the laughter of my mom's dining room table.  I will miss the awkward pauses as members of my extended family try to catch up on one another's lives without getting too involved.  I will miss the slice of custard pie I always swipe from my grandfather's kitchen.

While the festivities of the holiday may be lost on me this year, the meaning is not.  I have never in my 28 years been so thankful for everything I have.  Everybody always says how thankful they are that they have food to eat and that they have family to share that food with.  I'd be lying if I said that as a kid I didn't roll my eyes at the sentiment as I waited impatiently for my brother to pass the mash.

Only now, this year, do I truly understand the meaning of Thanksgiving.  Ironic that this meaning should come to me on the first year I'm not doing anything by way of celebration.

The intense struggle of the past two years has culminated in a beautiful family, secure in love and (right now) finances.  I look around at my cluttered living room, and I am at peace.  I hear my babies laughing, the extent of their problems being that I no longer allow them to wear shoes to bed.

No matter how you are celebrating Thanksgiving - or not celebrating, as the case may be - I wish everyone not only a happy day, but a happy life.