Hosting Thanksgiving? NBD.

Nick and I are hosting Thanksgiving again this year and feel like we have things pretty well under control. Last year was our first year hosting, and we ended up doing a lot of research and planning to make sure things went smoothly. We kept things pretty simple and found this timeline from William-Sonoma super helpful in tackling not only Thanksgiving day, but also the days before. Luckily, most things that I set out to do in this blog post worked out, so we were happy to host again this year. That, and our guests actually agreed to come back!

Our Turkey!

We grocery shopped for everything on Sunday morning. The bread for our stuffing is currently sitting on our counter getting nice and stale. Our heritage turkey will be ready for pick-up on Wednesday. The rest of of the afternoon we will prep more of the food, set the table completely, and get the serving dishes out and label them (naturally!).

Thanksgiving Day Planning and Menu

This year is a bit different for Nick and I - rather than showing up with an appetizer or dessert at a family member's or friend's house for Thanksgiving, we are hosting for the first time! This won't be anything too crazy - only 9 of us total - but I think on Thanksgiving the standards are a bit higher. Not only is the gathering bigger than what we have done before, there are a lot more courses to tie together!

Source - hopefully mine comes out that well!

Attempting Club Med's White Chocolate Bread

After spending a week at Club Med, I once again fell in love with their infamous White Chocolate Bread.  At the time I just assumed this would be too difficult to replicate at home.  However, after a bit of interent searching, I realized making this bread at home was not as far fetched as I originally thought.  Love and Olive Oil had attempted the White Chocolate Bread and seemed to have some good luck, so this was my attempt at bringing vacation home to Boston.

White Chocolate Bread

Italian Easter Bread

At this point, Megan is somewhere in Italy drinking amazing wine and cappuccino and indulging is loads of pasta!  In honor of her Italian trip and her amazing baking, I wanted to share a post on Italian Easter Bread (even though we are nowhere near Easter!).  When I traveled through Italy in 2002 it was Easter time and I ate delicious Easter Bread with almost every meal.  I remember it fondly, and find myself craving it from time to time.

If you want to read more about this recipe, head on over to Delicious Dishings where I am guest posting for the Day!  Congratulations again Megan, I hope you are having an amazing time on your honeymoon!

Easter Bread

Pumpkin Muffins

When weekends morning happen here and we don't have plans, we like to be super lazy and catch up on the DVR, but we still like to make a yummy breakfast.  This past fall there was discussion of another great pumpkin shortage, so whenever I saw pumpkin in the store I bought at least 2 cans of it.  After only making pumpkin blondies and a pasta dish, we had a whole lot of canned pumpkin sitting in our cabinets!  So, on a recent Saturday morning I decided pumpkin muffins would make the perfect breakfast - who said pumpkin was just a fall food!

Pumpkin Muffins!

Using my mom's trusty 70's edition of the Joy of Cooking, I found a recipe for Quick Pumpkin Bread, which turned into muffins (because they are so much better then bread!)

At Least There Was Good Food....

In the wake of last night's depressing outcome, the one thing I will be focusing on is the delicious food Nick and I spent the day preparing.  One of the fun reasons to have some friends over for the Super Bowl is the excuse to prepare some dishes you probably would not otherwise prepare!  So, for the past two weeks I was trolling the internet looking for some inspiration dishes and came up with the following (forgive my Instagram obsession)...

First up was a Cheesey Pepperoni Pull Apart Bread that I adapted from Jen's Cheesey Mushroom Bread, as I have a friend who is not a mushroom fan.  This recipe was easy to pull together and very satisfying to put on the table with the "ooo's" and "ahh's" it received.  With its adaptability to almost anything this will quickly become a go-to appetizer.

Cheesey Pepperoni Pull Apart Bread

Next up was Megan's Buffalo Chicken Stromboli, adapted to add a lot more heat!  I doubled the amount of Frank's Red Hot and allowed the shredded chicken to sit in all of the sauce not taken up during the sauteing to make sure all the chicken was sufficiently ready to burn tongues!  If that were not enough, I picked up this great buffalo Cheddar at Whole Foods that even had bits of jalapenos added to it!  Needless to say the Stromboli had plenty of bite - good thing we had friends over who love spice as much as Nick and I do.

Honey Yeast Rolls

I took my roll of being in charge of bread very seriously for Thanksgiving!  In addition to the hazelnut and cranberry bread for pre-dinner, I wanted to do something from scratch for the main meal.  I thought about making the no knead bread because it always comes out well, but I wanted to try something different and something that would feed a few more people!  Thanksgiving dinner cries out for loads of bread for dipping in gravy.  I consulted a few bloggers for a reliable recipe and decided that honey yeast dinner rolls from Beantown Baker were the best way to go.

Dinner Rolls!

The recipe as stated (and below) makes 12 rolls, but I wanted there to be plenty of rolls and doubled the recipe.

Hazelnut/Pecan and Cranberry Bread

This Thanksgiving was pretty low key for us - only 8 gathered around the table.  While my brother did not make it up for the holiday (paying his dues so he gets Christmas through New Year's off), we were joined by my cousin and her family from Minnesota!  They unfortunately cannot make it to the wedding, but generously offered to come out to Boston for a visit - I mean, they had to meet Nick!  With only 8, my mom had the majority of dinner under control, but still wanting to contribute something to the meal I volunteered myself for the breads.  I figured the possibilities were endless!

Cranberry Hazelnut and Pecan Bread

I remembered a bread recipe that sounded delicious I had seen somewhere with hazelnuts and cranberries.  Knowing we had a bunch of frozen cranberries from our CSA and a bunch of hazelnuts on hand, I was on a mission to find the recipe.  Luckily Nick came to the rescue and did a quick online search and found the recipe on Real Simple's website.

Banana Muffins - my over-ripe banana go-to

I love bananas, but the minute they get too yellow with brown spots I am over them.  For some reason I used to think that banana bread or muffins or some other recipe to use up over-ripe bananas would just be too difficult.  A while ago I decided to stop being wasteful and give the baking ago - turns out, its pretty simple!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

I decided to go with the Joy of Cooking's "Easy Quick Banana Bread" recipe.  My copy of the Joy of Cooking is actually my mom's from the 70's that I "borrowed" for a pie crust recipe a few years back and kept because it is a great resource for newbie cooks like me.

The Ingredients

Beef Bourginon and No Knead Bread

Full disclosure: I made this way too long ago, but never got around to fully blogging it.  On what was supposed to be a semi-cold and rainy day but actually turned out to be an unseasonably warm one, I decided to make one of the dishes everyone says you need to try with a dutch oven - Beef Bourginon.

For Valentine's Day this year, Nick gave me "Williams Sonoma Cooking at Home" by Chuck Williams, which is supposed to be our generation's "Joy of Cooking."  Unlike most Williams Sonoma cookbooks this one does not have any photos.  Instead, it's just packed full of good stuff, including all sorts of helpful tips for every type of chef. 

The Necessities...

1/2 lb. of salt pork (diced)
Olive oil as needed
8 Shallots (minced)
2 yellow onions (finely diced)
2 carrots peeled  (finely diced)
2 garlic cloves (minced)
about 2 cups all-purpose flour
salt, ground pepper and nutmeg
3 lbs well-marbled beef chuck (2" cubed)
1/4 cup cognac
2 cups beef broth
2 fresh thyme sprigs
3 cups dry red wine
1 bay leaf
5 tbls. unsalted butter
18-24 pearl onions (peeled)
2 tbls. sugar
1 lb white or cremini mushrooms (I used a mixture)
Chopped flat-leaf parsley

As always, to start I took the initial ingredients...