Life is more than the Cubicle: 2012

Thanksgiving Dinner with Friends

This year I had the pleasure of having 2 thanksgivings. One with friends the sunday before and one with my parents followed up with a wonderful thanksgiving dinner of hotpot with some of the far from home transplants. It was a week of very good food and a bit of overeating.

Below are pictures of the things I made for the sunday dinner. Turkey, dressing and pie

I had about four hours to get all of the cooking done so here is how I did it.

First, I started with pumpkin persimmon pie. The easiest recipe that I've ever encountered. And super tasty too!

The crust is made in the food processor. Just whirl around until it forms a ball like above

Then press into your pam'd pie pan and bake

Then take some tasty persimmons provided by your wonderful friends (thanks Daniel and Kim!)

And mix with pumpkin and spices and sugar. This is where I experienced the saddest thing in my life...I ran out of cinnamon. It was traumatic

Then pop into oven and bake until this goodness happens

Then I made root vegetable stuffing.

I have to confess. I burned it a little. Forgot that it was in the oven when I started preheating it to cook the turkey. Sorry friends. I do love you and I'm not trying to kill you, I promise.

Made some whipped cream but left it in the fridge instead of taking it to the party because I'm S-M-R-T

Then take turkey, that is spatchcocked (or cut out the backbone with great difficulty and break the breast until it lays flat), spread with butter and herbs and five spice on one side and place veggies on the bottom of the pan). Cook turkey for 1 hour

And make stock while waiting. This is the regular turkey stock. There is a backbone in there somewhere

And this one is the "chinese" style stock with the neck, garlic and ginger. Yes, it is being cooked in my wok

Turkey done! (Actually slightly overdone, sorry again friends, I really do love you all)

After this cooking fiasco, I participated in the turkey trot on turkey day morning, then had turkey lunch with my parents. Then I met up with some of my far-from-home friends and we had our own turkey day dinner of hot pot.

Then I got sick and stayed home all weekend. It was productive.

Hope you all had a happy turkey day!

8:15 PM
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Cooking Update

Pictures of the some of the things I've made recently

First were apple brownies that I brought to a friend's wine night

The recipe was super simple and was basically throw everything together in the mixer then add in the apples and bake

Accidentally wrapped them before I took a picture

They were good but a little mushy, will have to figure out how to firm them up

A bit later I made some chicken buns using biscuit dough, shredded chicken and hoisin for a slightly asian flavor

They turned out beautifully

Now, I am embarking on a mini Thanksgiving dinner. I initially signed up to bring stuffing. Then I found a nice pie recipe.

Then we ended up with only one 20 pound turkey which would not feed the 30+ adults and 7 children in attendance. So I figured, If I'm using the oven to make the stuffing and pie, I might as well just throw a turkey in there.

So I bought this beast from Safeway. I have never encountered a turkey this big. Usually my family tries to find the smallest one that we can to feed the 4 of us.

And of course it was frozen solid like a brick. I made a little ice water bath for it and let it defrost today for 6 hours. Then butterflied it.

That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in the kitchen. Lots of bone cracking...

But while I was waiting for the turkey to thaw, I made some wonton so I'll end on that instead of that indecently spread turkey :)

3:28 PM
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Canadian Rockies Roadtrip 2012

From October 10-15 I went up to the Canadian Rockies to visit some of the coolest girls that I've ever met. We all met in Europe and wanted to see each other again so we decided to drive 1,776 kilometers (1,100 miles) because that's what friends do.

Jill and Dakota met Pri and I at the Edmonton airport with these adorable signs. I don't have the picture of the 4 of us though but I know it exists out there.

Then we got in the car and drove 4 hours to Jasper. It snowed the whole way there. We got in at around midnight and settled in and went to bed

The next morning we got up and went to breakfast. Then we walked around downtown Jasper

And we took a lot of pictures

With Jasper the Bear (I think?)

The second night we had a hotel party complete with fries and poutine

The next day we stopped by Patricia and Pyramid lakes on our way to Banff

Pyramid lake had this really cool island in the center

We took a lot of pictures

Next we drove to the Athabasca Glacier and bought tickets to go out onto the ice. The picture above is of one part of the bus trip to the ice field. The ice in the background is level with the horizon, that's how steep we were for a bit.