Cheers!

Hi folks! I hope everyone had a nice cozy holiday. We sure did. I pretty much spent the entire day cooking. I had not planned on spending so many hours in the kitchen but the frangipane tart I made for dessert was a really time consuming project. I should have made at least the tart crust yesterday. Lesson learned. Anyway... we had one of the best Thanksgiving dinners we have ever made. I am so glad we deviated from the old stand by menu. I am so over the rubbery old Tofurkey thing.

People... as soon as you can stand the idea of sweet potatoes hitting your palate again hurry and make THESE. They were seriously good shit. My tempeh turned out better than any I have ever made before too. I think the different was in the fact that I marinated it for like three hours then baked it for about 45 minutes in a stoneware dish. It was fabulous.

I snapped just a few quick and messy pics before we sat down to eat. I was so freaking hungry that I did not have it in me to do any better than these...




I have to give cute plate credit to my neighbor Ann... the biscuit plate in the above photo is hers. She delivered it to us yesterday full of freshly baked cupcakes and cookies and after we demolished those (Ann is a seriously amazing baker) I secretly used her plate for my biscuits tonight. The plate will go back to her in the morning with a slab of my tart riding on it in thanks.

I am happy to say that almost half of our dinner ingredients were locally grown. See those toasted nuts on the sweet potatoes up above? Local! So was the chard, the chives, and the green beans. The pecans I made the tart out of were so fresh they were just wonderful. So... on to the tart!



I have to admit this was one of the hardest things I have ever made... mostly because I do not own any of the recommended equipment such as food processors etc to make the thing. And more so because I have crust phobia. I am always fatalistic about crust. Crust in my family is no small thing. Crust matters. Your ability to make kick ass crust is a large part of whether or not you get to keep your star hanging on the family tree. You could tie my Grandma's hands behind her back, squeeze lemon juice in both of her eyes and light her pants on fire and she could still kick out a pie crust that would bring tears to your eyes with it's flaky goodness. So, that being said I have developed a bit of a crust centered fear factor. I may have conquered it (at least on a low level) today with this confection though! It turned out just fine. Delicious even. I felt that I was keeping the torch lit for the women of my family.

I had promised to do a listing of alternative gift ideas for this Christmas in this posting. It is gonna have to wait until tomorrow. I am too tuckered out to think that hard tonight. It's time to slide in to some pj's and lay like a fat old sea lion on the bed. I will post the gift links tomorrow afternoon for sure.

Good night y'all!