Today has been full of surprises.   I got home from work today (at 4:00! working from home tomorrow! five days away from the office! but, hey, who’s counting?!) and found a big cardboard box, criss-crossed with packing tape, waiting just inside the front door of our building.   My eyebrows, I’m sure, betrayed my confusion—first arching, then furrowing.  The return address revealed its sender (my grandparents), but that only stumped me more.  It’s my birthday on Friday, but my grandparents sent a gift a couple weeks ago (ever prepared).  After huffing-and-puffing my way up the four flights of stairs mulling over the box’s contents, I finally made it into our apartment, sliced through the tape and found big bags of my grandma’s caramel corn and my grandpa’s party mix (homemade Chex mix), both of which are holiday harbingers if ever my family had any.  My grandparents, it seems, figured that if I wouldn’t be joining them in Minnesota this Thursday, they’d send a little bit of our traditional Thanksgiving to me here in Chicago.

The package promptly delivered a spring to my step and had me practically sprinting into the kitchen to do the Thanksgiving baking and cooking I had on the agenda for the evening.  Elbow deep in flour, the oven throbbing with heat and a couple flames dancing on the range, I began cracking eggs for the chocolate pudding that will fill our Thanksgiving chocolate cream pie.  Two egg yolks in, I reached for a third egg, gave it a quick rap on the countertop and split it in half.  Inside the shell were two perfect yellow orbs: twin yolks!  I breathlessly showed the treasure(s) to Kevin, tweeted about the incident and then got back to the pie at hand.

But the real surprise of the day came earlier this afternoon at work when a funny thought leapt into my head.   I had been updating my calendar and something about the date led me to pause.  Didn’t I start blogging around this time of year?  Sure enough, I checked the archives, and two years ago to the day, this site was born.  Two!  Years! 

The realization stunned me and thrilled me and I felt I couldn’t let it pass without note here on the site itself.  The problem was that the only photos I had in the pipeline were the photos for these cashews.  Now, I love these cashews.  Love.  But when’s the last time you celebrated a milestone with, ah, nuts?  Even jacketed, as these cashews are, in savory-sweet-spiciness, cocktail nuts seem to fall a little short of the mark for such an occasion.

But, the more I think about it, these cashews are perfect.  They’re one of the few recipes that I safely counted as a stand-by before I launched this site.  Before I started writing with regularity; before I learned that I can do almost anything in that kitchen of mine (all it takes, it turns out, is a willingness to fail); before I fell in love with the things that I see through the lens of my camera; before my mild distrust for the Internet began to thaw; before I started to try any food, any restaurant, any recipe at least once; before I met most of you, a bunch that is inspirational and encouraging and funny—a bunch that I feel awfully lucky to call my friends.  It seems like another life, really: pre-blog.  But, when I think hard enough, I can remember it and, I assure you, these nuts were there even back then.

And they’re still here, post-blog (or during-blog?).   For years, I have relied on this recipe for nearly every party, turned to it for absolutely every holiday, and, often, let it serve as a small gift, poured into a glassine bag and tied with twine.  In other words, these cashews are generally around for the celebrations in my life (as they will be this Thursday, for our Thanksgiving).  So I suppose they’re just the thing for today’s occasion.  Happy birthday, blog.  And thank you, from the depths of me, to all of you for reading.

Rosemary Roasted Cashews
Adapted very slightly from Ina Garten

1 1/4 pounds cashew nuts
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 tablespoon light or dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon melted butter

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the nuts on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes until they are warmed through. Meanwhile, combine the rosemary, pepper, sugar, salt and butter in a large bowl. Toss the warm nuts with the rosemary mixture until the nuts are completely coated. Serve warm.  (If you make the nuts ahead of time, you can simply rewarm them briefly in a hot oven.)

I took a little vacation from Thanksgiving this weekend.  While most Americans were just getting ramped up, I was in need of a break—listed out, planned out.  Dare I say I was over-prepared?  Prior to this weekend, I didn’t think such a thing existed.  But I might have jumped the gun, a bit, I admit, in my Thanksgiving preparation.

So, once I finalized my grocery list on Thursday, I barely thought about the impending holiday until Sunday afternoon.  On Friday, we spent the night at a favorite dinner spot.  Then, on Saturday, we packed our car full of chili and fixings and plenty of beers and some peanut butter brownies, and set up shop in a parking lot near Northwestern’s football stadium, along with a bunch of friends.  We cooked Italian on Saturday night and went to bed early.  Turkey and tubers and stuffing and such all seemed far, far away.  The positively un-November weather added to the illusion.  How could Thanksgiving be only a few days away when it was sixty (!) degrees and the sun was shining and the smell of grill smoke filled the air?

Of course, the signs of Thanksgiving were there still there, lurking in the background: the trees had long since shed their leaves; the sun set well before five o’clock; my friends and I swapped Thanksgiving menu tips at our tailgate (Brynn, if you’re reading, I really do need your grandma’s pumpkin chiffon pie recipe!).   And, when I woke up early Sunday morning, I was finally ready to get back to the business of getting ready for Thanksgiving.

But I eased myself back in.  We went Thanksgiving Grocery Shopping (an event fully worthy of capitalization), but only after a nice, leisurely breakfast.  And I made gravy (in the freezer, now), ice cream (to slump up alongside the pies) and some cocktail nuts for Thursday, but I did it slowly, at my own pace, mixing in some “regular” cooking along the way.

This soup falls squarely—blissfully—in that “regular” cooking category.  In fact, I’ve been making this soup all fall, long before we rounded this bend toward Thanksgiving.  And I adore it—it’s simple and hearty, with a faint hint of porkiness.  It’s studded with orange cubes of carrots and green wisps of thyme leaves and pink slips of diced bacon.  And it achieves the perfect split pea soup texture—just this side of a puree, most of the peas broken down and gone creamy, but plenty of the peas retaining their shape.

It’ll be just the thing to keep my energy up this week as I dig in my heels for the Thanksgiving homestretch.  If you’re more sensible than me and only just now getting started with your Thanksgiving preparation, tuck this recipe away for after the holiday, when you’re ready to return to the regular.

Split Pea Soup

Yield: 4 bowls

2 to 3 slices of thick-cut, best-quality bacon, diced
1 medium onion, diced
3 medium garlic cloves, minced
3 medium carrots, peeled and diced
2 celery ribs, diced
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
1/4 cup white wine
4 cups chicken stock (homemade or low-sodium/store bought)
2 cups water
1 1/2 cups split peas

In a large, heavy soup pot, cook the diced bacon over medium heat until it begins to brown (about 5 minutes).  Add the onions, garlic, carrots, celery and thyme to the bacon; stir and cook for several minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften (about 5 minutes).  Add wine, using a wooden spoon to scrape up any brown bits on the bottom of the pan.  Add the stock, water and peas; bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat and cook the soup over medium-low heat for an hour to an hour-and-a-half, until most of the split peas have broken down and the soup reaches your desired consistency.

First, let me just say thank you for your responses, both in the comments and in emails and even a couple phone calls, to my last post.  It felt a lot like one great big virtual group hug; maybe you couldn’t feel it, but I could: firm and comforting and warm.  It’s so reassuring to read your cheering-on and so inspiring (and, at times, hilarious) to read your own stories.  So, thanks.  And a real live hug from my mother-in-law helped tremendously too.

I’m actually in a much better place on the whole topic of Thanksgiving than I was last week—less terrified, more focused on the excitement.  I’ve nailed down our menu (which you can see here, on a new page that pulls together various Thanksgiving-y recipes) and I’ve got lists and schedules that I would be far too embarrassed to show anyone but Kevin (because, frankly, I think they even scare him a little bit).

I’ve also got a pretty decent jump on the actual cooking.  I spent a chunk of Saturday morning kicking up a cloud of flour in the kitchen—whizzing up pate brisee in the food processor; stamping out a supple creme fraiche biscuit dough into thick rounds; letting a tart dough rise slowly into a spongy, springy mass.  These things all reside now in the freezer—the pate brisee hardened into two salad plate-sized disks, the biscuits flash-frozen into little hockey pucks, the tart dough slid into an oiled ziploc bag.

And then there’s the matter of the cranberries—typically my least favorite element of any Thanksgiving spread.  I figured that I might as well get them out of the way.  They’d freeze well and I’d be able to check a dish off my menu—the one that excited me the least, no less.

At Whole Foods, a giant heap of bagged cranberries had appeared, seemingly out of thin air, near the front door.  I plucked two bags from the pile and, really, that was probably the biggest effort that this recipe required from me.  From there, it was all downhill.  I dumped the bags—a pound, in all—into a buttered baking dish.  Into this, I poured an amount of sugar that would normally make me blush (but this is Thanksgiving, which is simply not the time for moderation where things like sugar or butter or cream are concerned), a dash of spicy cinnamon (I’m still making my way through a bag of Penzey’s Vietenamese Cinnamon my mom sent me—one of the many reasons why she’s a keeper, that mom of mine) and a glug of bourbon (the scent of which I inhaled happily as the stream tumbled into the dish).  Stirred together, the mixture took on the appearance of cranberries packed in snow—the snow, of course, being sugar (see above regarding the need to eschew all tendencies toward moderation).

Sealed with foil and set on a sheet pan, the whole thing went into the oven at moderate heat, where it popped and hissed and generally smelled ridiculously good for the next hour.  That hour created the space of time I needed for the aforementioned floury projects.  If not for the popping, hissing and perfume, I might have forgetten all about the cranberries altogether until the oven timer dinged.

While I had been pulsing, pastry-blending and kneading, the oven had been working a kind of magic on the cranberries.  Gone were the sugar-showered firm-as-marbles cranberries I’d slid into the oven a mere hour ago.  In their place was a jammy panful of burst cranberries glowing and glistening in a deep shade of magenta.  Even if I didn’t like them, at least they’d be pretty.

So, things are off to a good start, I’d say, this Thanksgiving.  My freezer’s stocked and my mind’s at ease.  Heck, I can even be assured that, for once, I’ll like the cranberries.

.

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Bourbon Cranberry Sauce

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Yield: About 3 cups

About 1 tablespoon unsaltedbutter, for greasing the baking dish
1 pound (about 4 cups) cranberries
2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup bourbon

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine all ingredients in a buttered 9×13-inch baking dish. Cover tightly with foil and bake until cranberries are tender and sugar is dissolved, stirring once, about 1 hour. Remove from the oven, carefully remove the foil and allow the cranberry sauce to cool completely.  Refrigerate cranberry sauce until well chilled. (Can be prepared 1 week ahead.) Transfer to bowl and serve.

[Note: I froze the sauce and intend to take it out of the freezer a couple days before Thanksgiving to allow it to thaw.]

You could say I was born to love Thanksgiving being that I was, well, born on Thanksgiving.  Or maybe I was born to love eating or cooking or tradition or big family meals or afternoons spent on the couch with the din of a football game in the background.  Whatever the case, as it turns out, I do love all these things.  Perhaps most of all, I love Thanksgiving.  (Yes, for the record, even on the many years when my birthday does not fall on the holiday.)  So I suppose it’s a little odd that I haven’t divulged a big fat piece of news to you all, one that has to do with Thanksgiving and cooking and food.  Being that it’s nearly mid-November and being that this is a food blog and being that you and I are basically friends because we both like to cook (right?), I really should have let you in on the secret by now.

So, here goes nothing: I’m hosting Thanksgiving.

There.  I said it.  To be more accurate, Kevin and I are hosting Thanksgiving.  Joining us will be his parents, sisters, one sister’s boyfriend and one of his grandmas.  There’s the small matter of needing to get our hands on eight dining chairs (let alone matching, functioning dining chairs) before the big event, but that rather significant shortcoming aside, it’s really happening.  And I’m all kinds of excited about it.  I’ve got grocery lists and dog-earred magazines and schedules and, heck, I’m even allotting a fair portion of my day dreams to this quickly-approaching feast.

And I suppose I’m a little nervous.  It’s a big deal, Thanksgiving: it comes around but once a year.  Screw it up, and it’s three-hundred-sixty-five days until you get yourself a re-do.  If you’re allowed a re-do, of course.  To make matters worse, my experience in the bird-roasting department is limited to 3- or 4-pound chickens.  I haven’t a clue what to do with a big heritage turkey (though you better believe I’ve been reading up on it).  I haven’t made mashed potatoes in months and, would you believe this, I’ve never made a proper stuffing.  Gah!  This post was supposed to be therapeutic, but it’s only making me more nervous!

And about the brioche: this was the first item on my Thanksgiving to-do list.  I was all set to bake and freeze a loaf of brioche, stashing it away for the stuffing recipe I’ve got my eye on.  If all went well, I was hoping to also use the recipe to make little brioche rolls, which I’d tuck into a napkin-lined basket that would perch on the edge of the dinner table.  And, well, all didn’t go well.  The recipe was just odd, with its confusing instructions and hard-to-follow organization, and it produced a great tasting but, in my opinion, very undersized, squat loaf (smaller, even, than your average loaf of banana bread).  In that respect, I suppose it’s the perfect candidate for cubing into a stuffing filler, but it’s unlikely I’ll be returning to the recipe again.  Perhaps brioche and I just aren’t meant to be?  I’m hoping that Thanksgiving and I have a different fate.

The recipe for this Brioche Loaf comes from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, an otherwise fabulous book.  I haven’t found the recipe online, which is kind of my pseudo-guideline for republishing a non-original recipe on this site (i.e., if it’s not already out there on the web, I’d rather not be the one to put it there without permission, especially when, as here, I didn’t adapt the recipe at all).  In light of that fact, along with the fact that I was pretty nonplussed with the results (especially considering the effort it required), I’m not going to transcribe the recipe here.  If anyone’s got a foolproof alternative recipe, I’d love to know about it!

What about you all?  Any first-time hosts?  Or have any memorable first-time-hosting stories? 

I’m fresh off vacation, rested and even a little bit sun-kissed.  But I’m also suffering that old post-vacation affliction: The Difficult Return.  A vacation I’ve been looking forward to for months is suddenly over, an engagement we’ve been celebrating for almost two (!) years has become a marriage.  The real world has been thrust upon me, with all its mundane chores and the requirement that I actually go to work, rather than sip from a boozy, frosty, umbrella-adorned glass all the livelong day.  It’s a tough thing to take, I tell you.

Of course, I’m exaggerating.  But one portion of The Difficult Return is no joke: I’m feeling completely out of sorts when it comes to the season.  When I left for Mexico, the trees were lit up in a palette of red-yellow-orange; when I got back, the leaves were all but gone.  Add to that the fact that I just spent a week on the beach, banishing all footwear besides flip-flops and refusing to don even a pair of jeans.  Then, I got back to Chicago and braced myself for a chill as I pushed my way out of O’Hare’s revolving doors.  But there was no chill.  Not even a breeze.  And the next two days would be drenched with sunshine and would warm to nearly 70 degrees.

But, countering all this, there’s the matter of the calendar.  It says, clear as day, that it’s November.  And, as if to remind me of the date despite the weather, the darkness starts to swallow the daylight at an alarmingly early hour.  Like, prior to five o’clock.  And Thanksgiving is suddenly staring us down, less than three weeks away.  Meanwhile, the stores and advertisements have hopscotched right over Thanksgiving and have already begun to deck the halls with Christmas cheer.

Ever practical, I decided to take action this weekend.  I needed to get my head out of the clouds—to plant myself firmly back in fall mode, to remind myself that it is indeed the second week of November.  The solution emerged, as it often does, from my kitchen.  It hailed from the oven, to be precise, in the pretty ring that only a bundt mould can produce.  It was a cake stuffed to near-bursting with chunks of apple, spiced with cinnamon and spiked with bourbon.

It’s a lovely cake, one fit for either breakfast or dessert, provided, of course, it’s an autumn breakfast or dessert that’s at issue.  And you know what?  It worked like a charm.  The apples, cinnamon and bourbon brought me squarely back to the present.

More photos from the trip are here.

Cinnamon-Spiced Bourbon-Apple Bundt Cake
Adapted from Martha Stewart

The bourbon addition, to both the cake batter and glaze, was my sole adaptation.  You can, of course, omit the bourbon.  If you do, I think the cake batter would probably benefit from a splash of vanilla.  In the glaze, you can just use water.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons bourbon, divided
6 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and diced into 1/4 inch cubes
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 to 2 tablespoons water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Make the Cake:

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. In a large bowl, combine butter, brown sugar, eggs and 1 tablespoon bourbon. Whisk until smooth. Gradually whisk in dry ingredients just until combined (do not overmix). Using a rubber spatula, fold in apples.  [It might look like there are too many apples, but don't worry, it will all work out.] Spoon batter into a 12-cup nonstick Bundt pan, and smooth top. Bake until a tester inserted in cake comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes. Cool in pan on rack 15 minutes; invert onto rack to cool completely.

Make the Glaze:

Whisk together confectioners’ sugar, remaining tablespoon of bourbon and enough water to form a thick yet pourable glaze. Set rack with cake over a piece of wax paper (for easy cleanup); drizzle cake with glaze, and let set before serving.

For the recipe, I’ll send you to the two sites that ensured this salad hit my Must Make List: Smitten Kitchen and Lottie + Doof (talk about strong endorsements).  The recipe itself for Escarole Salad with Pickled Onions is here.

About two weeks prior to any holiday, I receive a card in the mail.  It’s usually stuffed inside a brightly-colored envelope, my grandmothers’ loopy script scrawling out my name and address across the front.  In February, the envelope might be a deep magenta; in October, a firery orange.  Inside the envelope is a card, one out of an 8-pack (the remaining identical cards are sent in different directions to my sister and my cousins and other relatives).  The card itself has a little quip or poem about the impending holiday (the most recent one I received featured a dachsund in a witch’s hat and proclaimed, in the inside of the card, “Happy Halloweenie!”) and, better still, a short little note from my grandparents.  There’s always a bill folded in half, slipped inside the card, but, of course, that’s not the point.

The point is the thoughtfulness.  The dependability.  The tradition.   Now that I live in Chicago while my grandma lives in northern Minnesota, these cards, knit together throughout the year, make up a part of our relationship.  To remind her how special I think these cards are, I decided to send my grandparents a package of cookies.

I opted for pecan sandies, a cookie I recall seeing at their house when I visited as a kid.  It also happens to be a cookie I quite like.  It’s sandy and rich and delicate.  Where chocolate chip cookies are homey, best eaten straight from the cookie jar and call for a tall glass of milk, a pecan sandie calls instead for a lace doiley or a linen napin, along with a pretty tea cup, clanking in its saucer.   Chocolate chip cookies are a bit more everyday, but pecan sandies seem like a cookie for an occasion—perhaps a ladies’ luncheon or a game of bridge.  And I hoped that my grandma would love them.

So I mixed the dough together, rolled into rows of neat little balls, gently pressed a pecan half into the top of each ball and baked them up.   Once baked, they smelled of toasted nuts and that seductive aroma of butter and sugar that has just met the oven.  I let them cool and showered them with powdered sugar and tucked them into a little container, which I wrapped with a floppy bow, and walked the cookies to the UPS store down the street.

They made the quick journey up to Minnesota where I’m told my grandparents devoured them (my grandma, she confessed, eating more than her fair share).   While I loved to do this small thing for them and I love that my grandma dutifully mails those holiday cards, sometimes I get sad that we have to depend so much on these packages criss-crossing their way across the midwest to keep in touch during the long gaps between visits.  But, this week, we’re all together on the beach in Mexico, here for my childhood best friend’s wedding.  And it feels so good to be together—really together, without the aid of the postal service.   Now, if only I’d thought to bring some of these cookies along for the trip …

Pecan Sandies
Adapted from Martha Stewart

Yield: 5 dozen cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2/3 cup pecans, finely ground
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
60 whole pecan halves
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

Heat oven to 350 degrees. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and granulated sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in vanilla.

Mix ground pecans with flour and salt, and add to butter mixture. Beat, beginning on low speed and increasing to medium, until combined, about 1 minute.

Lightly flour palms, if necessary, and roll dough into 3/4-inch balls (a small ice cream scoop works well here, too). Place on an ungreased baking sheet 1 inch apart.  Gently press a pecan halve into each cookie.

Bake until just brown on edges, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove cookies from baking sheet while still warm; sift confectioners’ sugar over tops.

Somehow, October has all but slipped away.  Along with it will go the leaves that have been so beautifully dying, daylight savings time, patches of late summer weather, outdoor farmers’ markets, that lovely golden fall light, and, perhaps most sadly of all, pumpkin baking season.

I know many of these things won’t disappear immediately, but the end of October, I think, is the beginning of the end of the fall.  Quite an ominous honor, but late October carries it well.  And sure, when it comes to pumpkins, the gourds will be around for weeks more, but most will be jack-o-lantern-bound this weekend or pie-bound at the end of November.  Let’s face it: the time for pumpkin is waning.

Somehow, this site has been bereft of new pumpkin posts this season.  The case in my kitchen, however, has been quite different—happily so.  There’s been this loaf, which I’ve since tweaked to produce a taller loaf that’s now studded with walnut halves instead of chocolate shards.  There was also supposed to be a pumpkin cake, topped with brown butter glaze, but at the last minute, it became these brownies instead.  And these, brownies, it turns out, are the best of all.

The recipe is a hybrid—part brownie, part pumpkin bar.   And the sum of these parts has got it all as far as late October recipes are concerned: Halloween colors: check!; warm spices: check!; a little bit of treat (chocolate! butter! sugar!) and a little bit of trick (a subtle kick of cayenne): check!

It’s also got pumpkin—which weaves its way through these brownies in a pattern not unlike the one that a zebra sports.  And, because by my calendar, pumpkin season is all but over, I suggest you make them now.

Pumpkin-Swirl Brownies
Adapted from Martha Stewart

This recipe, when cooled and cut, yields a pretty cakey brownie.  If you, like me, prefer a more fudgy brownie texture, store these in the fridge, where they’ll firm up and become just perfect.

Yield: 16 brownies

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for pan
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups solid-pack pumpkin
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8- or 9-inch square baking pan or dish. Line bottom of pan with parchment paper; butter lining.

Melt chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, cayenne, and salt in a large bowl; set aside. Put sugar, eggs, and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; beat until fluffy and well combined, 3 to 5 minutes. Beat in flour mixture.

Divide batter between two medium bowls (about 2 cups per bowl). Stir chocolate mixture into one bowl. In other bowl, stir in pumpkin, oil, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Transfer half of chocolate batter to prepared pan smoothing top with a rubber spatula. Top with half of pumpkin batter. Repeat to make one more chocolate layer and one more pumpkin layer. Work quickly so batters don’t set.

With a small spatula or a table knife, gently swirl the two batters to create a marbled effect.

Bake until set, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack. Cut into 16 squares.