Happy Thanksgiving

What a busy long weekend! A wedding on Saturday night, last night a wonderful gluten-free Thanksgiving dinner prepared by my mom and this evening Jason and I cooked a huge chicken for his family. Jason sharpened his carving knife in preparation:

 I decorated my red table kitchen:

I lucked out in the beautiful flower department! Jason brought me the orange plant on the left yesterday and the bouquet on the right came from his mom today:

 My mom made these colorful little chocolate autumn leaves to put on my table:

This picture is for everyone who doesn't understand what Jason and I do without cable television. Note the 2 chairs:

Check out the huge bird! Jason made his special rub... you'll have to ask him for the recipe. All I know is there's lots of oregano and garlic and it's delicious:

Now as for new recipes, I tried two and both were a success! First off, I found a great recipe for vegetarian gravy that I could easily adapt into a gluten-free/vegetarian gravy. Sadly, I cannot find the original source so don't give me credit for it! Here it is:

Easy Vegetarian Gravy
3 tablespoons margarine
2 tablespoons of finely chopped onions (I left this out for this batch, but will toss it in next time)
2 minced garlic cloves
3 tablespoons flour (gluten-free blend from planet organic)
2 tablespoons soy sauce (gluten-free)
1 cup water
salt and pepper

1 Put margarine in a pot and saute the onions and garlic over med-high heat.
2 Reduce heat back to medium after onions and garlic have become golden brown.
3 Make a roux by gradually adding the flour, while continuously stirring to avoid lumps.
4 Still stirring, add soy sauce and water to the mixture.
5 Add salt and pepper to taste.
6 Once the gravy has reached desired thickness, turn off the stove and you are done!

MY REVIEW: I loved this gravy! The one change I would absolutely make next time would be omitting the salt. Soy sauce has enough salt on its own. Other than that, this was fantastic. I served it to 2 vegetarians this weekend and both seemed to enjoy it. 

This next recipe was suggested to me by a friend and her raving reviews gave me the confidence to try it on this special occasion. Usually I'll try something on Jason first but I just went for it with this one and it turned out wonderfully. It's from the Best of Bridge cookbook but I found it on this blog. I forgot to take a picture of it when I served it with the sour cream and nutmeg so here's a picture of the leftovers!:

 Champagne Squash Soup
4lbs squash acorn or butternut (I used 2 acorn)
2 medium onions diced (I used 3 small white onions)
2 TBSP butter
1/4 cup of Champagne (I subbed white wine in here)
4-5 cups chicken broth
2 TBSP butter
1/2 tsp nutmeg
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 cup sour cream for garnish

Preheat oven to 350, line a cookie sheet with foil.
Quarter squash, cut out seeds, place skin side up & bake 1- 1 1/2 hours until squash is tender.
Cool. Scoop out pulp & puree.
Saute onions in 2 TBSP butter. Add champagne. Cook until liquid is absorbed, and onions are golden brown stirring often.
Puree onions in food processor with a little of the squash puree.
In large pot, combine onions, squash & broth. Cover & simmer stirring occasionally.
Whisk in 2 TBSP butter.
Season with nutmeg, salt & pepper.
Garnish with sour cream, using knife to swirl through soup.

MY REVIEW: Acorn squash has such a great flavor and it really shines in this soup. Since our blender is no longer functioning, we purchased a hand blender and it made this soup so easy. It was silky smooth!

JASON'S REVIEW: The soup was delicious. It tasted like golden acorn squashes bouncing off my taste-buds with just the right amount of spice.

Meat & Potatoes with Vegetarian Gravy

I had a hankering for something smothered in gravy this evening. Not really a healthy hankering, but I tried to satisfy it in the most healthy way possible! To start, we had a tomato salad.

When we were in Italy and ordered a "tomato salad" it was always extremely literal... tomatoes and olive oil. For my tomato salad I whisked together a little dressing consisting of olive oil, dijon mustard, white vinegar, kosher salt, lemon juice and fresh ground black pepper.

For the main course, skinless boneless chicken breast cooked in the oven with fresh ground black pepper and a rosemary sprig on top. I made a vegetarian gravy using canned mushrooms, flour, vegetable broth (from powder), skim milk and some herbs and spices. I really can't get any more precisise than that.. I was adding things left, right and center to get the right consistency and flavour! You're going to have to do the same thing. I kept the gravy on the side because I didn't know if Jason was in a "gravy smothering everything" mood as I was. As it turns out, he was.

Note the "X" cut into the potato. This is how I always eat my baked potatoes and at a recent family BBQ, was questioned about my eclectic potato eating ways. Well - this was a little trick I picked up in kindergarten on the day we made baked potato volcano's.  You wait till the potato cools enough to touch, cut an "X" on the top and then push the sides into the middle with your fingers causing the potato (lava) to "erupt" out the center. At this point you would put lava (bacon bits), grass (chives) etc. on top of your volcano. I don't exactly know why my kindergarten class was making baked potatoes but that is one lesson that stuck.

JASON'S REVIEW: Dinner was fantastic and I wouldn't hesitate to eat it again.

MY REVIEW: Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it's meals like this that make me feel like I've actually made some progress in my cooking journey. In the beginning, the simple task of cooking a chicken breast would have required a phone call to my mom and at least half an hour of internet research. The end product would almost always be burnt as I figured that was the only sure way to know it was fully cooked. I am slowly but surely getting a "feel" for it and learning to trust myself in the kitchen. I just made vegetarian gravy from scratch without even looking at a recipe...go me!