It's Thanksgiving Morning and Do You Know Where Your Favorite Food Blogger Is?

That's right. I'm not home cooking. I'm at the zoo doing the Turkey Trot. Though it's more of a walk for me than a trot.

Once I see the elephants, I'm headed home to make some serious potatoes. Happy Thanksgiving!

Photo from the Oregon Road Runners Club, www.orrc.net.

Stories that Rock the Bells

I'm so excited that I finally get to go to a Back Fence PDX event. Check it out:

ROCK THE BELLS

Featuring awesome local musicians telling true stories!!!

Wednesday, December 10th

7:30 doors/8:00 show!

The Mission Theater

1624 N.W. Glisan
Portland, OR 97209

Alcohol. Food. Stories.

$9.00 online/$10.00 door

A sneak peek at a few of the storytellers...

DANNY SEIM from Menomena and All Smiles

NICK JAINA

GIDEON FREUDMANN from Portland Cello Project

ADAM SHEARER from Weinland

ALEX JAMES of Dolorean

You can get tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com (my new favorite ticket vendor!)

Potato, Potahto

This year for Thanksgiving, I was assigned to make a mushroom and potato gratin. I love trying new things and this sounds particularly delicious. But. What about the gravy? Gravy doesn't go on gratin and you can't really have turkey without making gravy. It definitely presents a problem. One that can be easily solved: Make the gratin and ALSO a big pot of mashed potatoes.

It's total excess - there will only be about 15 of us - but there's something to be said for planning Thanksgiving with the expectation of leftovers.

I am having a Thanksgiving Leftover Brunch next Saturday to see who can make the best dish with turkey-day leftovers. I haven't decided what I'm making yet, but I think I should probably do something with the massive potato leftovers we will have.

What would you bring to my brunch?

Here's the recipe for the gratin:




Potato and Mushroom Gratin
from Bon Appetit, December 2008


5 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 1/2 pounds medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, cut lengthwise into 1/8-inch-thick slices
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt plus additional for mushrooms
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper plus additional for mushrooms
1 1/4 cups (or more) heavy whipping cream, divided
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 3 ounces), divided
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
12 ounces fresh crimini (baby bella) mushrooms, sliced

Preheat oven to 375°F. Brush 13x9x2-inch glass or oval ceramic baking dish with 2 tablespoons oil. Arrange 1/3 of potatoes, slightly overlapping, in dish. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Pour 1/3 cup cream over; sprinkle with 1/4 cup cheese. Repeat layering 1/3 of potatoes, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 1/3 cup cream, and 1/4 cup cheese 2 more times. Bake uncovered until potatoes are tender, adding cream by tablespoonfuls if dry, about 45 minutes. Remove from oven; maintain oven temperature.

Sprinkle thyme and garlic slices over gratin. Toss mushrooms in medium bowl with 3 tablespoons oil; sprinkle with coarse salt and pepper. Arrange mushroom slices atop gratin around edge of dish. Drizzle with 1/4 cup cream; sprinkle with 1/4 cup cheese. Continue to bake uncovered until mushrooms are tender and potato edges are golden brown, about 20 minutes longer. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cool 1 hour in dish; cover and chill. Before serving, cut gratin into 10 pieces. Transfer to rimmed baking sheet. Cover with foil and rewarm in 350°F oven, 10 to 15 minutes.

Not a bang-up job, Billy.

Billy Bang's resides in the Water Tower in Johns Landing, a place which is fairly empty in the evenings. We decided to check out their tropical menu on Saturday. The restaurant, decorated with a palm tree motif, was fairly quiet. The menu sounded delicious and it took us a while to decide what we wanted.

Started out with these things called Cheddar Pints - white cheddar cheese covered in beer batter and deep fried. These were tasty - a little sharper than I expected actually. They came with ranch dressing, a typical bar accompaniment, but I think they would have been better with something stronger and less ordinary - maybe a tropical sauce or something.

I ordered the Whisky Smoked Pork - Tender pork loin slow smoked then sautéed in green onions, brown sugar, whiskey, soy sauce, and spices. Except. It wasn't tender. It was very very tough. The texture was not...mmm... enjoyable. It was a chore to eat it. The sauce was very salty, which was not good for the meat, as the meat was already very salty on its own. The vegetables mixed in - zucchini, onions and squash, I think - they added a nice contrast to the sauce and I ate them while pushing the pork out of the way. It also came with sweet potato mashers, which were very nice - sweet and were a palatable relief from the chore of the pork.

Ansley ordered the Mochi Lime Chicken - Fresh chicken sautéed with shallots, wine, lime juice and butter, sprinkled with macadamia nuts and served with pineapple cilantro salsa. I had a bite of it and it was moist and juicy and had a good taste to it.

So, eh. Not horrible, not great. A solid thumbs sideways from me.

Season of Samples

One thing I love about the Holidays is the samples in the grocery stores. Okay. Not just any stores. Zupan's and Trader Joes.

Last week I had an entire Thanksgiving dinner on a sample plate at Zupan's. To which my nephew responded: "That's crazy!" Yes, but it's also delicious. Their sage stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy all piled on a tiny plate - such a delightful pre-cursor to the culinary creativity it inspires. And the cheese - there are always cheese samples, which hits my pocketbook hard.

Today, I had pumpkin pie at Trader Joe's. They are always dependable for a good solid sample.

If you time it right, you can get a whole meal. You have three days before Thanksgiving, and then the Christmas samples start. If I didn't have a job, I would drive around finding good samples and twitter them, so you would all know where to go. But I do have a job. So you'll just have to find them on your own. Happy sampling!

The Short Bus

I recently wrote down this true story to read for a storytelling thing. I decided to share it with you, too. Hope you laugh at least one laugh when you read this.

My rep as a goody goody was hard to shake. There were little things that perpetuated my situation, like the time my mom tried to get Judy Blume books banned from our school library, or the time I had a sleepover at my house and my parents wouldn’t let us watch Grease. But mainly, it was my personality and my self-esteem deficit that screamed “I am a loser!!!!!”

I tried to reverse these situations with such crazy rebellious acts as rolling my eyes at the teacher and practicing swearing in my backyard so that when the situation called for it, I could whip out cuss words like nobody’s business.

Right about the time I was getting comfortable with my newfound sassiness, my mother decided to pick up an extra job. She announced one night, that she would be driving a school bus. Not just any school bus. The Special Ed bus. The short bus. The short bus that said “Sullivan County Rehab Center” on the side of it in giant black letters.

This would have been humiliating on its own, had the school bus company had strict rules about, oh, say, the school bus drivers not going off the route to take their own kids to and from school. But because the normal school bus did not come by our house, my mom decided that it was okay to take us to and from school on her bus route.

We all piled in the short bus in the morning. There were four of us, plus my baby brother in a car seat in the front row. The school bus was old. Some parts of the floor were completely rusted through and often I found myself mesmerized by the road passing beneath us.

First stop was John, who was about 20 and had Down’s Syndrome. He would stomp up onto the bus and plop on the seat in front of us. Then there were the twins, who had one conversation every morning: “Hi Jim, How are you?” “I’m fine, Tina, How are you?” “I’m fine, how are you?” And so on and so forth, all the way to school.
Big John, a 300-pound boisterous handicapped guy, could make all of us smile, especially my mom. “Mrs. Fuss,” he would say every morning, “You look like a movie star!”

My older sister and I did not get along and would often fight on the bus rides. The Rehab Center students would take sides. “Your teeth are yellow,” my sister would say to me. They would laugh. “Shut up!” I would whine. “Yeah, you tell her!” They would yell. We fought about important things, like how ugly each others’ clothes were, or how stupid the other person was. Everytime, they would all jump in and defend us, both of us, no matter what we were saying.

My mom always felt like she had to “drop us at the door” of the school. No dropping us off at the end of the driveway – nope, she had to drive up the school driveway and drive through the parking lot, which oddly was part of the playground. All one-hundred kids would be waiting outside for the bell to ring, and they would all stare as we jumped off the bus. I always hoped that the bus was so dirty that they couldn’t see the words REHAB CENTER on the side.

But, when the day was over, we would go outside and wait for our mom to pick us up. And there she would come, up the driveway, and the kids would yell, “Here comes the Fuss Bus!”

Popping Pomegranate Seeds in the Guacamole

On my way to work this morning, I stopped at the store to pick up a diet Coke and a Lean Cuisine for my day. At the checkstand was the Thanksgiving issue of Gourmet. Oh tempting. I picked it up because it had three different Thanksgiving menus on the cover: Fast, Fancy and Fiery. I flipped through it briefly and found a recipe for Mango Pomegranate Guacamole. Did you hear me? I said MANGO POMEGRANATE GUACAMOLE. One delicious dish on the Fiery Thanksgiving menu.

So, on my way home from work tonight, I stopped at the store and bought the ingredients and made it for dinner.

Mango Pomegranate Guacamole

4 ripe avocados (2 pounds total)
1 cup finely chopped white onion
2 fresh serrano chiles, finely chopped (2 tablespoons), including seeds
1/4 cup fresh lime juice, or to taste
3/4 cup pomegranate seeds (from 1 pomegranate)
3/4 cup diced peeled mango
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Halve, pit, and peel avocados. Coarsely mash in a bowl. Stir in onion, chiles, 1/4 cup lime juice, and 1 1/4 teaspoons salt, then fold in pomegranate seeds, mango, and cilantro. Season with salt and additional lime juice.

from Gourmet, November 2008

Now they say to serve it with plaintain chips, which I'm sure would be amazing. I just ate regular tortilla chips with it and it was amazing even then.

At first bite, I was energized by the pomegranate seeds exploding in my mouth, the pomegranate juice spilling onto the salty chip and the crunchy onion, joining with the mango to give the avocado some body. At second bite, I was addicted.

And so goes my life.

TRY THIS.