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Well, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  Our dinner went really well, everything I made turned out to be very tasty!  We especially loved the turkey cooked with beer…we’ll definitely do it again next year, maybe with a different beer.

So now, I’m thinking about Christmas dinner.  What beers to have, what food to cook.  I like to cook duck for either Christmas or New Year’s…by then, we’re all turkeyed out and want something different.  I don’t want to have so much turkey sitting around, that it will still be there when I’m ready for Medicare supplement insurance!

I saw Lidia Bastianich cooking a duck on her TV show, and she served a dish of lentils and rice with it.  I might try that for a holiday dinner.  The recipe is in her new book, Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy, which I just ordered.  Not just for the duck recipe, but because I love her and her books, and wanted to get it anyway.

I also pre-ordered Julie & Julia on DVD, which is due to be released on December 8.  Just $9.99, can’t beat that price!  No extras, I hear, just the movie, but I’m happy!

Here it is…our official Toikey Day menu for this year.  You can click the image to see bigger, it should open in a new tab/window.

All of the shopping is done. I hope I didn’t forget anything; I’d rather travel all the way to Texas and have dental work done, hold the Novocaine, at the best implant dentist Plano has to offer, than have to go into a supermarket in the few days that precede Toikey Day.  Seriously, that is how bad the supermarkets are in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, Sunday is really the last day to go, while it’s still reasonably sane.

First of all, if you like this menu template shown here, you can download it and other cool holiday templates for free HERE.  This includes the one I used last year.  I chose to use this one, this year, because the text that I wanted to use didn’t fit on last year’s template.  And yeah, it’s not true to color, the color cartridge in my printer is going, I need to replace it soon.

So now, let’s talk about the food.  The first course is a twist on the one from last year.  Instead of serving the Old Sturbridge Village Gourd Soup in small bowls, I’m doing a fancy restaurant thing and serving it as shots.  Only I don’t own any actual shot glasses, so old tasting glasses from the Maine Brewers Festival will have to do.  So that makes it a bit more than a shot, but who cares?

You can find the recipe for this here:  Butternut Squash Soup Shots with Candied Bacon.  It includes a recipe for the squash soup which is slightly different from the OSV one, but I’m sticking to the recipe I love best.   I just wanted the recipe for the candied bacon.  Ooooohhh….BACON!

Recipezaar is a great site, in part in that it helps take the guesswork out of reducing or increasing a recipe.  Twelve soup shots are definitely too much for the two of us.

As for the turkey, gravy and stuffing, you may be asking, “what’s a Märzen?”  Well, it’s a German/Oktoberfest style beer, and there are many to choose from, as you can see HERE.  Consult this list if you can’t find the Flying Dog beer where you are, if you want a good alternative.  I chose this one from the Flying Dog Brewery, simply because I saw it at Bert’s Better Beers on Saturday, I like the way the label looked, so I said, what the hell?  This beer has won several awards, and you can learn more about it HERE.

I got the idea to do this, from this article on HopPress.com.    Now, I like the way this Mario Rubio dude thinks!  You need at least three bottles of the Märzen of choice…the first you pop open, pour into your favorite glass, and drink while you cook.  The second bottle goes into the roasting pan with the turkey, and the third is for the gravy.  Having more than three bottles, of course, would be good, as you might want to drink them with the meal!   And, as Mario suggests, you may also want to use this same beer to moisten your stuffing.

Use your favorite turkey/gravy/stuffing recipes for this.  This year, I’m keeping it relatively simple…the roast turkey and gravy from Julia Child’s The Way To Cook, using the beer where wine or stock is called for.  For the past few years, I’ve used Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe, complete with the brine, and it’s excellent.  But Julia’s recipe is simpler, and as for brining, I’m just going to use a plain water/salt/sugar brine.  I really want the flavor of the beer to come through, and not fight with any additional brine flavorings.  Just a warning – if you buy a Kosher turkey, or a Butterball® one, do not brine it at all, these already come brined.  If you buy a cheap frozen one for 47¢ a pound (as I did, from Shaw’s), definitely brine it.  It really does make a difference!

The stuffing recipe I’m using is a very basic, New England traditional one, using Bell’s Seasoning.  You’ve probably seen the stuff in the spice section of the store, it’s the one with a picture of a turkey on the box.  See it, right over there?  The stuffing recipe is on the back of the box, but you can also find it HERE.  This makes enough to stuff a 5-pound bird, you can double or even triple it if you need more.  We don’t stuff the turkey anyway, we just bake it up in a casserole dish.  The amount given in this recipe will be plenty for the two of us.

I’m tweaking it in two ways…instead of sauteeing the onions and celery in butter, I’m going to render some bacon fat, and use that, reserving the bacon.  Then when I mix it all together, I’ll add the crumbled cooked bacon.

In keeping with the beer theme, I’m going with this recipe for Roasted Garlic IPA Mashed Potatoes.  This was linked to in the article about beer and turkey that I linked to above.

For this recipe, I am choosing to go with Gritty McDuff’s 21 IPA.  IPAs (India Pal Ale) are hoppy and on the bitter side, and not to everyone’s taste, for sure.  But this recipe only uses a few spoonfuls, too much would certainly overpower the dish.  And since it only uses a few spoonfuls, guess who gets to drink the rest?

There are many great IPAs out there.  I went with Gritty’s 21 because I’d had some at both the Maine and New Hampshire Brewers Festivals, and I really liked it.  It’s a bit hard to find near where I live, but I did find it on our visit to the aforementioned Bert’s Better Beers.

The Brussels Sprouts with Sweet & Sour Bacon Dressing is a repeat from last year.  And butternut squash makes an encore appearance, in this simple Baked Butternut Squash.  Click on the links to access these recipes.  As for the rest of the menu, the cranberry sauce is out of a can, and the pumpkin pie was store-bought.  I’m just not too good at making pies!

But, speaking of pumpkins, one of the stars of the show promises to be Pugsley’s Signature Series Smashed Pumpkin Ale, a very special seasonal brew from Alan Pugsley, the brewmaster of Shipyard Brewing Company up in Portland, Maine.  I could not wait to try this once it first came out, as I LOVE pumpkin ales.  I had it for the first time, on tap at the Great Lost Bear up in Portland over Labor Day weekend, and was NOT disappointed.

This is sold in 22 ounce bottles, and has been flying off the shelves.  I had heard that Shipyard’s retail store had sold out, but on the way home from Labor Day weekend in Maine, I did find exactly two bottles in Federal Jack’s retail store, in Kennebunk.  The Shipyard store has since restocked, and so has Federal Jack’s, and you can bet I stocked up, before it’s gone for the season.  Also, I saw a decent amount of it at Bert’s Better Beers, in Hooksett, NH, the other day.

Who needs homemade pumpkin pie?  This is better!

Happy Toikey Day to all!

Now I’m probably never going to make this…but it’s a cool sight to see…Chef Paul Prudhomme showing you how to prepare a Turducken!

Now, for those of you who might not know a Turducken from an UGG Classic Short Boot, let me enlighten you.  A Turducken is a chicken, stuffed into a duck, which is then stuffed into a turkey.  It is indeed a very time-consuming process, as you’d have to bone out all three birds and all.  Most people who want to try Turducken choose to order one that someone else made, there are several websites from which you can order.  They are not cheap, however, they go for around $85 or so.

But, just for entertainment value, if you get Create TV in your area, you can see an episode of Chef Paul’s “Always Cooking”, where he will show you How To Make A Turducken.

Create TV is a digital TV channel from PBS.  It features shows about cooking, crafts, gardening, home improvement, and travel, all from the vast PBS television library.  Although it is a digital channel, you do not need to have cable to get it.  If it is available in your area, you should be able to pick it up with a digital TV, or with an older analog TV equipped with a converter box.

I know you probably aren’t ambitious enough to make a Turducken, either, but it sure is fun to watch!

So by now, you have all heard of The Great Eggo Waffle Shortage of 2009-10.  If not, read all about it HERE.

So, waffle fans…what to do?  Do you need to make a trip to cancun or some other foreign place in the hope of finding some Eggos? Nope, they probably don’t have them there, either.    You could go to a breakfast place, such as IHOP, for waffles.  But I can’t in all good faith recommend IHOP, because the last time we were in one, we came hungry and left hungry.  We used to go to the one in Kenmore Square, for breakfast before a Sunday afternoon Red Sox game.  This was back in the days before you had to take out a bank loan to buy Sox tickets.

Anyhoo, they were always very busy on Sunday mornings, and having to wait an hour for a table was common.  But we always allowed enough time for this.

On that fateful day, we waited the usual hour for a table.  When we were seated, a waitress came over and asked if we wanted coffee.  We said yes, and that was the last we saw of her, or any other server.  We sat there for a good hour, and there was this guy sitting next to us who did get to eat, but he was waiting for someone to bring him his bill.  He’d been sitting there waiting longer than we were!  I was getting really pissed, and said that if I were him, I’d just get up and walk out.

I don’t know what he ever did, but it was getting close to game time, so we got up and walked out, and went to the ballpark.  I was pissed because we missed batting practice due to this lack of service.  We decided that we were never going to set foot in another IHOP anywhere, ever again.

That particular IHOP is long gone, they tore down that whole block of Commonwealth Avenue and built some fancy-schmancy hotel in its place.  Whatever, no big loss.  But to this day, when I see IHOP commercials that tell us to *come hungry, leave happy*, I remember how we came hungry and left hungry.  Not good business!

But I digress.  Instead of Eggos, you could always buy some other brand of frozen waffles.  But the fact is, they just aren’t as good as Eggos.  So, the best solution is to learn how to make your own waffles.  It’s not hard at all, the only thing is that you will need to buy a waffle iron.  These can range in price from anywhere from $20 to hundred of dollars.  The cheaper ones tend to not heat up as well as the pricier ones, so your waffles will take longer to cook than the recipe says.  But as long as you know this, and plan accordingly, you’ll be okay with a cheap one.  Mine is a Toastmaster that I got for about $20 at Sears some years ago.  It’s one of those ones that makes four square waffles.  Unless you are a real waffle aficionado, I just don’t see the need to spend so much money on this appliance.

If you don’t want to buy a waffle iron, perhaps you can borrow one from someone, make a whole bunch of waffles, then let cool, wrap tightly and refrigerate or freeze for future use.

The recipe I’m sharing with you here is from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion.  Fortunately, it can also be found on the King Arthur Flour website, which save me the trouble of having to type it all out.  So I’ll just link to it:  Classic Buttermilk Waffles.

Despite what the recipe says, these waffles are perfectly fine when cooked in advance, refrigerated or even frozen, and reheated, in either a regular or toaster oven, or a toaster.  I undercook them slightly if I’m doing them in advance, so they don’t get overcooked or burnt in the toaster.

Oh…in this recipe, *soda* means baking soda, not Coke or Pepsi or Mountain Dew or anything like that!  And finally…even if your waffle iron is nonstick, you will still need to spray it with nonstick cooking spray.  Trust me on this one!

Hopefully, you will like this recipe as much as I do, and it will help you survive until Eggo waffles are back on the shelves in your favorite market’s freezer section!

Welcome to this year’s Toikey Day posts here at c-m dot net!  You know…Thanksgiving…a holiday that comes between Halloween and Christmas?  Or, as retailers may prefer to call it, the day before Black Friday?

I’m always looking for interesting things to make.  Today I came upon this recipe:  Butternut Squash Soup Shots with Candied Bacon.  Apparently, serving soups as *shots* is one of the latest fancy restaurant trends.  I can easily see doing this as a starter for our Thanksgiving dinner.

I already have a favorite recipe for butternut squash soup – the heavenly Old Sturbridge Village Gourd Soup.  But I printed out the recipe from Recipezaar, because I wanted to know how to make the candied bacon.  Yum…BACON!  Yes, I think this will be a wonderful starter for our Thanksgiving feast!

For all of my Toikey Day posts, past and present, click on category Toikey Day here or in the sidebar.