Thanksgiving really takes care of itself, doesn’t it? The meal itself is so steeped in tradition that you’re not really changing much, are you? Maybe you’ll have roasted Brussels sprouts…
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Recipes
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Growing up not far from Little Saigon, pho shops all had numbers -- Pho 79, Pho 84, but somewhere along the line pho went mainstream and so did the names of the shops. So let's get the jokes and gimmicky names out of the way upfront.
"What the Pho?" -- Kids in my class were using this one as far back as junior high -- in the late '80s. Now, it's a noodle shop in Bellevue, WA.
"9-0-2-1-Pho" -- This is real. And yes, it's in Beverly Hills.
"Jenny Pho" -- Also real. In Issaquah, WA.
And of course, the king of all Pho shops...well, there's an, um, king and he don't serve burgers.
Creating a good pho broth takes hours, but there's no reason you can't do it. Put aside your worries about leaving a pot simmering on the stove unattended overnight, because you can make a good traditional pho broth in the slow cooker. I never would have thought of it, and then a lightbulb flicked on over my head when I saw the recipe on Serious Eats.06
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We were on our way out the door to see Gravity around 11 am yesterday and Wolf went to open the garage door. Nothing. It had been a gusty morning, with acorns and pine cones plonking on the roof and leaves blowing out of the trees, but it was otherwise uneventful. Then, literally the moment we went to leave, the power went out. With my car trapped in the garage.
Having the power out on a not-a-work-day Saturday should have been a liberating experience. No power means no doing laundry, no puttering around all day on the Internet, no TV. It also means, for the most part, no cooking. No access to my car also meant not going anywhere. It meant sitting around and reading. It should have been a good thing, right?16
"Two fingers," he'd say, holding two gnarled, deeply tanned digits up to his glass.
Reaching into the sideboard cabinet, he pulled out a half empty bottle. He poured two fingers worth of brown liquor into the rocks glass and I followed, holding the carton with two hands and topping the booze with at least two more fingers of eggnog. Some years it was Wild Turkey and others Crown Royal, but always whiskey with eggnog.
Like a lot of Japanese-American men of his generation, my grandpa wasn't a super talkative man, but he'd sit at the kitchen table and shoot the s**t over a glass of spiked eggnog, getting chattier as he got deeper into his cups. Even now, there's nothing like a whiff of whiskey and eggnog and nutmeg to put me right back at that table with him during the holidays.
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One of the best things I've eaten in an airport was a roasted butternut and feta sandwich in Melbourne. Simple, earthy and salty all at the same time. We're no strangers to the virtues of butternut squash around here, and in fact, my grinchiness about pumpkin this year has sent me straight into the arms of butternut squash. Roasted, it makes great soup, salad, risotto, pasta, even pizza sauce. Even with a good, sharp peeler, it may feel like prepping a butternut is taking your life into your own hands, but it's worth the effort.
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Wolf was down in California finishing off Triathalon season over the weekend and I was back at the ranch prepping for the long week ahead. Food-wise, it was a hodge-podge, though I did cook Friday night after living off of enchilada casserole all week. It felt good to get back in the kitchen on Saturday morning and do something that didn't involve sitting in front of a computer. Kneading dough for pita bread and running some errands did me some good. But then that pita really needed something to go along with. Hummus? Mmm, ok, but maybe something else?
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"Slightly Gingery. The Ed Sheeran of cookies,” says the sign at Trader Joe’s. Can you guess? Speculoos, aka biscoff cookies. Now, I’m late to the biscoff cookie crazy. I’ve never really flown Delta, which is where a lot of people first encountered a 2-pack of those cinnamony, gingersnappy cookies. Long known in Belgium, those little cookies have been one of the positives airline passengers can point to about flying in the last few years.
Gingersnaps have been a favorite of mine since childhood, thanks to little purple bags of Pogen's cookies. But I never paid much mind to speculoos. I mean, I’ve had a packet of them in my cupboard for the last several months, just languishing. So when I bumped into this blueberry mascarpone tart with a speculoos cookie crust, a light flicked on in my head. Speculoos cookies would be perfect for ice cream sandwiches.02
Peeling back the wrapper on a can of refrigerator biscuits and thwacking it against the edge of the counter takes me back to childhood. I’m not talking about the big flaky layer biscuits, I’m talking the cheapest ones – the skinny tube of “homestyle” or “buttermilk” refrigerator biscuits that come 10 to a can. I’ll eat them every which way, but not as baked biscuits. Most of the time, I plunk them on top of Chunky Chicken Noodle soup and let them steam up in a shortcut version of chicken and dumplings. It’s comfort food from childhood that still hits the spot to this day if I’m not feeling great.
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