I hope you all had a safe, fun Thanksgiving with plenty of bounty to eat!
There’s always the decision each year, turkey or ham? I’m not the biggest fan of turkey; I usually eat a bit of the dark meat and the neck so I can live with it or without it except of course for Christmas. That day is more about a childhood memory with its fabulous smell permeating the house and that big golden breasted beast laid out on a platter. Unless outvoted for Thanksgiving, I usually cook my favourite, the ham, basted with a glaze of pineapple juice, brown sugar and mustard and serve all the trimmings, a meal to be thankful for!
This year I got the protein of my choice easily because we were invited out for turkey at a friend’s house Saturday evening. Our ham was served Sunday. I see it as the best of both worlds on our plates and the two meals were certainly excellent. We walked away from the tables holding our belts, hoping they wouldn’t explode under the pressure. They don’t call it a feast for nothing. There’s gorging and ramming in as if there’s no tomorrow. We always over eat on holidays and special occasions, it’s a rule! It’s not a day to count calories or worry about sugar problems. It’s a celebration! There are so few special days and Thanksgiving is just that, a day to be thankful and we need to honour it with stuffing our faces and being grateful for the bounty we can afford to put on the table, a simple deed denied many.
By the lineups at the grocery stores, you’d think we were headed for a famine. The rows of people waiting for the cashiers were brutal, the constricted isles barely wide enough to get through with a cart. Somehow we are all programmed to think a long weekend is the end of the world. Just because the store was closed Monday didn’t mean we’d starve for that one day, after all turkey or ham usually mean leftovers, surely there would be food in containers to get them over that hump.
I usually go to the grocery store every second day because I don’t stock anything prepackaged. All the food at our house is made from scratch with fresh ingredients. I don’t have canned foods or boxed anything to fall back on but I see what others put in their carts, surely they have frozen things or something to open instead of panicking that the store is closed for one day....but what do I know?
The second best thing for a holiday meal is the desert. My interest was piqued by a video going around FB last week for Apple Roses. The recipe looked simple and who doesn’t like apple pie for Thanksgiving? We had traditional, homemade and delicious pumpkin pie with the turkey meal so it was fitting to do something with apples with the ham. Once again we were so lucky to score all the favourites!
So I made my pastry and set it aside to prepare the apples. The recipe called for a microwave to soften them in lemon water. We don’t own a microwave so I put them in the oven on 300* for 15 minutes and that offered the same result. The apples have to be soft enough to roll inside the pasty.
The only sweetener was apricot preserve, smeared along the length of the pastry and I think perhaps a bit of brown sugar would have sweetened the pot a bit more. If I make them again I’ll do that but the ice-cream we served worked well to sweeten the taste. The company didn’t rave about them but everyone agreed they were tasty and absolutely lovely to look at.
Being a person that leaves nothing to chance, I made butter tarts as a backup in case they fell short of their advertised goodness. I think everyone was happy with both pastries as they disappeared faster than wool at a fill your bag for free sale.
After the dishes were cleared we played Euchre, a card game that originated in Ontario. We played guys against the gals and tied three for three. All in all, a great weekend!
To view the apple roses recipe click here.
https://www.facebook.com/JustEatingRealFood/videos/vl.949328228421779/696922263768544/?type=1&theater
There’s always the decision each year, turkey or ham? I’m not the biggest fan of turkey; I usually eat a bit of the dark meat and the neck so I can live with it or without it except of course for Christmas. That day is more about a childhood memory with its fabulous smell permeating the house and that big golden breasted beast laid out on a platter. Unless outvoted for Thanksgiving, I usually cook my favourite, the ham, basted with a glaze of pineapple juice, brown sugar and mustard and serve all the trimmings, a meal to be thankful for!
This year I got the protein of my choice easily because we were invited out for turkey at a friend’s house Saturday evening. Our ham was served Sunday. I see it as the best of both worlds on our plates and the two meals were certainly excellent. We walked away from the tables holding our belts, hoping they wouldn’t explode under the pressure. They don’t call it a feast for nothing. There’s gorging and ramming in as if there’s no tomorrow. We always over eat on holidays and special occasions, it’s a rule! It’s not a day to count calories or worry about sugar problems. It’s a celebration! There are so few special days and Thanksgiving is just that, a day to be thankful and we need to honour it with stuffing our faces and being grateful for the bounty we can afford to put on the table, a simple deed denied many.
By the lineups at the grocery stores, you’d think we were headed for a famine. The rows of people waiting for the cashiers were brutal, the constricted isles barely wide enough to get through with a cart. Somehow we are all programmed to think a long weekend is the end of the world. Just because the store was closed Monday didn’t mean we’d starve for that one day, after all turkey or ham usually mean leftovers, surely there would be food in containers to get them over that hump.
I usually go to the grocery store every second day because I don’t stock anything prepackaged. All the food at our house is made from scratch with fresh ingredients. I don’t have canned foods or boxed anything to fall back on but I see what others put in their carts, surely they have frozen things or something to open instead of panicking that the store is closed for one day....but what do I know?
The second best thing for a holiday meal is the desert. My interest was piqued by a video going around FB last week for Apple Roses. The recipe looked simple and who doesn’t like apple pie for Thanksgiving? We had traditional, homemade and delicious pumpkin pie with the turkey meal so it was fitting to do something with apples with the ham. Once again we were so lucky to score all the favourites!
So I made my pastry and set it aside to prepare the apples. The recipe called for a microwave to soften them in lemon water. We don’t own a microwave so I put them in the oven on 300* for 15 minutes and that offered the same result. The apples have to be soft enough to roll inside the pasty.
The only sweetener was apricot preserve, smeared along the length of the pastry and I think perhaps a bit of brown sugar would have sweetened the pot a bit more. If I make them again I’ll do that but the ice-cream we served worked well to sweeten the taste. The company didn’t rave about them but everyone agreed they were tasty and absolutely lovely to look at.
Being a person that leaves nothing to chance, I made butter tarts as a backup in case they fell short of their advertised goodness. I think everyone was happy with both pastries as they disappeared faster than wool at a fill your bag for free sale.
After the dishes were cleared we played Euchre, a card game that originated in Ontario. We played guys against the gals and tied three for three. All in all, a great weekend!
To view the apple roses recipe click here.
https://www.facebook.com/JustEatingRealFood/videos/vl.949328228421779/696922263768544/?type=1&theater
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