In a perfect world, like all good bloggers, I should have been cranking out the Thanksgiving recipes and trying out some new ones during the past couple of months. However, as we know, life is not perfect and sometimes imagined perfection must be suspended for the occasional unimaginable reality.
And so it goes.
Much is the same here, but much has changed -- and I am not so good with change. Thank goodness for holidays! They are like life's little rest stops.
We travel this road daily, but every now and then there comes time to pause for a much needed comfort stop, some fuel and a bit of nourishment for the belly and the soul. Unforeseen change is unsettling, but tradition and ritual comfort us and remind us that we have come this way before and will continue on together.
So ... Thanksgiving has come and gone with nary a word from me on the subject. Google continues to send people my way due to my previous posts on the demise of Indian Trail Cranberry Orange Sauce, along with my recipe for an acceptable homemade substitute. It is my claim to food blog fame.
Once a year, from mid-October until mid-January, thousands of people continue to land here while searching for ITCOS. And they also continue to leave comments -- the affirmation that a bloggers voice has reached someone. This year, according to readers who comment, it seems there might just be a couple of new products to substitute for the original. So far though, they are only available regionally. I will continue to make my own -- and share the recipe with all who come searching.
Except for a moist and delicious rum bundt cake for dessert, our Thanksgiving dinner was filled with the old reliables. One turkey and two turkey breasts were fried. A spiral sliced ham was warmed and glazed with a brown sugar goo. There were three kinds of dressing, as usual. Vegetables were mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, corn, sweet potato pudding, roasted brussels sprouts and collards. Mashed parsnips were a newcomer, but more than a few people wondered why we had two bowls of mashed potatoes! The fruit category included a baked pineapple casserole and the aforementioned cranberry orange sauce, plus three other kinds of cranberries. Deviled eggs and rolls rounded out the meal -- and our tummies!
Our dessert course is never the same from year to year, except for pumpkin pie. This year we had a salute to pumpkin, in fact! We had tiny pumpkin cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting swirl on top that were delicious (and way too easy to eat like popcorn, one after the other) plus a pumpkin gooey butter cake that was mmm, mmm good. Oh! I almost forgot the yummy rum bundt cake.
I made the pumpkin pie. Well, I followed the recipe on the Libby's can of pumpkin (not the pumpkin pie mix!), like I do every year. It is so easy and so good, there seems to be no reason to search beyond the Libby's label. However, I did surprise myself with a little artistic pie dough flair this year by adding some acorns and leaves atop the finished pie. Clearly, it was a spontaneous moment in the kitchen -- with a mismatch of acorns and maple leaves, but I'm sure you'll agree, the hand-carved accents and that over-lapping coin edge on the crust put the whole pie over the top!
My plans are to get back to more regular posting. There may also be a couple of changes -- like some features that are not food.
Oh, my! Same comfortable blog, with a bit of fresh air to change things up a little.
See you back here soon, but in the meantime, you can find some of my new interests and inspirations on my Pinterest boards, where I am simply --
Cora Sedlacek.
