Happy Thanksgiving
All of our guests enjoyed the running commentary on each dish – the history of the garden and seeds, how everything was harvested, the process of canning and preserving it all. It was different from most Thanksgivings I’d been a part of. It was less about stuffing ourselves to excess, and more about how miraculous it was that there was a full table of food in the first place. I couldn’t help but think that was supposed to be the point of the holiday all along. I also couldn’t help but think that my role as an advertiser contributed to the misperception of food as a commodity whose value was distinguished mainly by calorie count and serving size. Boasting about the size of one’s holiday turkey is really only genuine when one had something to do with feeding it.
Josh Kilmer-Purcell (The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir)
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Chiot’s Run. We hope you have a day filled with good food, lots of family fun and relaxation. I’m pretty excited about pumpkin pie, cranberry relish and stuffing. I can take or leave pretty much anything else on the table at Thanksgiving.
What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish?
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A Smashing Success
After mentioning in my post about the big dinner we had planned, many of you asked for photos. Of course I took photos all throughout the day. The beauty of a meal like this one, is that it doesn’t take a lot of work, it’s a lot of waiting around. I was lucky enough to score a beautiful 10.5lb standing rib roast from a local farm last week.
This isn’t my first time cooking a standing rib roast, we’ve enjoyed them New Year’s a few times in the past. This year I decided to give Alton Brown’s dry aging a try. Basically you wrap the roast in a towel and put it in the fridge for a few days to dry a little. I’ll give it two thumbs up, so did everyone else. The dry aging is supposed to help the meat cook more evenly, providing a medium rare roast throughout instead of one that is cooked on the ends and rare in the middle.
The beauty of a standing rib toast, is that it bakes in the oven for a few hours while you prepare the rest of the meal. The Christmas dinner menu from The Williams-Sonoma Entertaining was my guide for the meal because all of the sides are made on the stovetop. There were mashed potatoes with celery root, caramelized carrots, oyster stew, sautéed mushrooms, marsala au jus, fresh horseradish sauce and a very impressive Yorkshire Pudding!
Dinner’s like this are great because they’re a good excuse to get out the nice glasses and silverware. It reminds me of the joy of setting up tea for the dolls as a kid.
The meal was perfectly rounded out by a maple bourbon pecan pie, which was AMAZING. I used my Grandma Graham’s Pie Crust Recipe. The bourbon in this recipe really helps cut the sweetness of the pie. I’ve always found pecan pies to be way too sweet, but this one was just right!
Mr Chiot’s even roasted decaf coffee beans and fired up the coffee maker to make cappuccinos for us to enjoy with the pie. Along with the maple bourbon whipped cream and the pie, it was the perfect ending for a wonderful meal.
We were happy that my parents and our neighbor (who brought some wine) came up to enjoy it with us. Oh yeah, the recommendation that you need one pound of standing rib roast for every person is a bit overkill, looks like we’ll be eating on this for the next week (not that I’m complaining).
What did you enjoy for Christmas dinner?
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Taking a Day Off
It’s been busy around here, as I’m sure it has been in your world as well. I’ve been cooking, cleaning, and crafting trying to get everything ready for the upcoming celebrations we’ll be attending. If you want to see a few of the crafty things I’ve been doing head on over to Not Dabbling to see what I’ve been up to. Of course I wouldn’t leave you without something lovely to look at, so here are our two cats that don’t often make the cut, Soafie (gray) and Samson (orange). The gray one, Soafie hates having her photo taken (as you can tell by her look).
These two beauties came to our home from a feral cat rescue 8 years ago when the cat I’d had since high school died. We vowed to wait a year before getting another cat, but I spotted these two cuties on Petfinder.com and we had kittens only a few months after Jeffrey was gone. We got them at 8 weeks and they’ve been snuggled up on our bed ever since. My mom has one of their brothers too.
Did you make any handmade gifts this year?
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In Appreciation
Mr Chiots and I live in a small town and we love it. Every week when we head in to town we chat with the friendly folks at the Post Office, the library, and the bank. We appreciate each every one of these people, sure they’re working and getting paid for what they do, but they do their jobs well, which makes our lives a little easier. The librarians know what kinds of books we like and will save new ones out for us. The post office will add any additional postage I forgot and just let me know how much I owe the next time I come in, and the ladies at the bank give Lucy treats in the drive thru.
Because we appreciate how well they do their jobs, we like to show it during the holidays. Every year I make a few batches of caramel corn and Mr Chiots heads in to town and passes it out. After the first year I knew I could never stop because I started getting questions around Thanksgiving about the caramel corn. One of the guys at the post office even tried to get me to start a business selling it so he could buy it all year long. Since everyone loved it so much, I’ve been doing ever since, which I think has been 5 years at least. Yesterday I spent the evening baking up four batches and packaging it up. Today Mr Chiots will head in to town to show our appreciation!
Do you make anything to hand out to neighbors and others during the holidays?
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And They’re Off
Last week I talked about taking photos and setting up our Christmas card. I sent them in to the printer on Sunday night and the UPS man delivered them Friday evening, not bad turnaround time for custom printed Christmas cards. Saturday morning was spent addressing all the cards while Mr Chiots was out sitting in the woods waiting for a nice doe to walk by. I finished up most of them right before noon and ran them in to the post office so they’d be on their way for delivery later this week.
Some people forgo holiday cards for environmental reasons, others for time or cost issues. Personally, I enjoy sending them and receiving them. In a world dominated by quick virtual communication, I find it satisfying to address glossy cards with a pen in hand. I enjoy thinking about the people I’m sending them to and about the ways they each arrived on my Christmas list. The creativity involved in coming up with my Christmas card every year is also something I thoroughly enjoy, it’s a good challenge (and I LOVE a challenge). This year I sent out cards our personal cards and cards from Ethel, which I spent Sunday afternoon addressing and writing notes in. Some of the people overlap from my personal to my work life and they’ll be getting one of each.
Since you’ve been waiting to see what our final card looks like, this is it. It features the little camper we built this summer and took on our trek across the country.
Since I received the printing overages I have a good number of cards left. If you’d like to receive a Christmas card from Chiot’s Run use the “contact me” button to the right to send me your mailing address. I’ll gladly send one along as I’d rather seem them hanging in your home than in the recycling dumpster in town.
How do you display the cards you get from others?
