Totally unintentional, but stuffed peppers are all about Christmas and stuff. Some diced mushies, garlic, onion and a few bits of pepper with a hot, butter bath will provide you with enough bits to pop in your peppers and cover with cheese. A slow roasted, stuffed pepper is always a welcome friend for any menu.
Chook covered in olive oil ( and butter if it’s not totally frozen ). Lemon squeeze. Garlic smoosh. Thyme and salt and pep. Roast that baby and forget about it because your toddler didn’t nap and dagnabit, it’s time you grabbed a glass of wine and walked around the farm in the feezing cold for a few minutes while dinner cooks.
So simple. So lovely.
Some avocados
A clove or two of garlic
Hot peppers if you wish
Squidge Of lemon
Salt and pepper
Cilantro if you wish ( I wish. Those who have the cilantro ” soap” gene, may not wish )
Let it settle and you are off on a journey of Meh-Hee-Can delight.
If lovin’ cream cheese brownies is wrong, GIRL, I don’ wanna be rightah.
( beef cubed, ginger and perfectly blended Sri Lankan spices )
A friend hand delivered a box full of ingredients that would do me good for a fine beef curry. Alls I have to do is add the beef. Seeing as we are beef farmers, I happen to have a kilo or two of beef in the freezer ( or on the field depending on how you wish to slice it ).
Thus far, I’ve got my meat locked and loaded for a few hours of supermarionation. This will soon be followed with a quick sweat of the onion bits, a browning of the beefy bits followed by some water and tomato purée to bubble away for a couple hours.
I must say, the “curry kit” was an awesome gift. As I know you don’t Patek your curries, that pre-spice blend can take a little time. Having it pre-made was a great gift. A little holiday idea for you. As a recipient, I was most pleased.
Today marks the conclusion and ending ceremony of Thanksgiving. There will be no poultry paraCelebration. This is it. With the final few bits of turkey parts, I bring you: Turkey Soup.
I stuck the rest of the turkey, any leftover gravy, all the celery and friends in a pot with an onion pricked with a few cloves, some bay leaves and a dash of sage and thyme.
That bubbled away as stock ( but not too bubbly ). After a chill and a strain and a meaty bits sort, I made some soup. It turned out good. When the husband eats a couple bowls, you know it’s not for pity’s sake.
Freshly made rye bread, sliced thin
Buttered
Tuna-ed
Topped with grated Cantal Jeune ( or mild cheddy )
Toasty toasty under the grill
Yum!
Fun for a girl or a boy.
Take some butter, okay a lot if butter, add some milk and flour and you got yourself some roux. Add some eggs and you have the power to puff. From here you can make cheesy poofs or eclairs or Yorkshire pudding. Really, you can puff anything. Have you puffed today?
Okay, it’s not done yet, but I layered Thanksgiving in a pot pie. Sure it’s been done before, but I ain’t got time for interwebs. What I have is a lotta leftovers.
A turkey stock milky gravy, frozen peas, carrots, leftover roast yams, some leftover mashed pots, leftover turkey chopped that is all covered with leftover stuffing will hopefully make for a warming dinner tonight. Only time will tell.
I’ll let you know if it sucks.
As we are in France and the kids didn’t get last Thursday off, we gave our thanks on Saturday. I like to do Thanksgiving dinner because it is very American. It’s also an easy dinner to do that isn’t a huge cost ( I’m glad the lord didn’t bless the pilgrims with a mother load of rare abalone ).
In America, a whole turkey is easy to find. Often, they give them away free if you start loading up your cart with oodles of pre-Christmas bargains ( cha-ching ). In France, this is not so. I can buy whole birds of many varieties. You got your pheasants, your pigeons, your ducks, your chickens, your medium birds, your teeny birds, your big birds all of which come complete with heads and feet. But do they sell a whole turkey? No.
To fill my Thanksgiving table, I run around town in search of turkey parts. This year, we had a two legged, three roast turkey. Now if I may draw your attention to exhibit A, you’ll notice that that is a rather large leg for a turkey. I’ve cooked ( okay my husband has cooked ) a lot of whole birds and we’ve never seen a leg quite that big.
Should you grab a minute while your potatoes are boiling and the yams are roasting to take that leg and mentally build a turkey to scale, I believe you will arrive at a VERY large bird. So you wonder, do they not sell whole turkey carcasses in France because they don’t fit in the refrigerated display case? Are they not able to carry the entire bird, a glass of red wine and a cigarette at the same time? Or is it something more mysterious like it’s not actually a turkey, but a prehistoric genetic strain of pterodactyl that tastes an awful lot like turkey.
We’ll never know. Each year, I will keep at our little slice of America. Maybe someday, I’ll grow a little pterodactyl of my very own. Until then, I use my favorite Thanksgiving photo as inspiration which hangs in my kitchen.
Girl On Grill Action 