Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Week Before Thanksgiving

oven fries baked in beef fat

Friday (One daughter now does the pizza on Fridays. She wanted to master making pizza from scratch, so I suggested she take over Friday's dinner. She's now a pro.)

scratch pepperoni pizza
cabbage, kale, raisin salad
steamed carrots (saved the residual water to add to my breakfast smoothie the next day)

Saturday
bean and cheese burritos in homemade tortillas, salsa on the side
sautéed beet greens and onions
sautéed spiced apples

Sunday (My husband made dinner for us. He has a couple of things he makes regularly for us, soup being one, burritos including the tortillas being another.)
chicken and vegetable soup, using frozen chicken in stock from last week's roasted chicken
scratch biscuits
apple wedges

Monday
BBQ beef bowls -- beef simmered in BBQ spices, a little tomato paste, vinegar, and brown sugar, topped with cheese, all on top of brown rice, with shredded radish leaves dressed in avocado oil, salt, and chive blossom vinegar on the side, along with avocado slices and chopped yellow tomatoes
sweet potato oven fries baked in a mix of beef fat and vegetable oil
carrot cookies

I had some fat that I cut off of the cut of beef I used in the BBQ bowls and set aside until Tuesday. On Tuesday I cut the fat into small dices and rendered fat to use in cooking. This fat was then used in oven fries on Tuesday and Thursday. I froze the last bit of rendered fat after using what I needed to make the fries.

Tuesday
tuna melts on scratch French bread, yum!
roasted pumpkin cubes
oven fries baked in beef fat
sautéed Brussel sprout leaves, kale, and cabbage sprouts in ham fat (cabbage sprouts are the baby plants which grew at the cutting spot from harvesting cabbage heads) 

Wednesday (My other daughter has wanted to make eggs Benedict for a while, and this was the night she tried them. The English muffins turned out great and the Hollandaise sauce was perfect. We have some leftover Hollandaise -- any suggestions for using it?)
eggs Benedict on homemade English muffins with scratch Hollandaise sauce
frozen peas
stewed prunes

Thursday
leftover cooked ground beef patties in gravy from the freezer
oven fries baked in beef fat
beet leaves mixed with Swiss chard sautéed in ham fat
roasted pumpkin cubes
sautéed frozen apple chunks, using up last of spiced cider for the liquid

Preparing for Thanksgiving

Our fridge is beginning to empty out after doing my big stock-up at WinCo a week ago. Empty is how I want it going into the prep for Thanksgiving, so this is a good thing. You know how this is. I wish there was a rent-a-fridge just for a holiday, or an expandable feature to temporarily increase the capacity of the fridge you have. I need space to thaw some frozen meat and store casserole dishes as they await baking on Thursday. I will also need space for leftovers on Thanksgiving. I'll do a good cleaning of the fridge in the next couple of days, and that will hopefully identify more than can be used or thrown out. No grocery shopping this week, not even to pick up bananas.

In the garden

Unless we have a very mild rest of November, I think the Brussel sprout leaves and Swiss chard are done for the season. If winter is mild, both might come back briefly in spring. I still have some kale, radish leaves, beet roots, and turnips in the garden. I'm also down to my last homegrown pumpkin (out of 8). This last one is the largest. I think I can get 3 meals out of this one. I still have 2 large purchased Jack o' lantern pumpkins to cook and puree. With each passing week we use more and more purchased vegetables.

My favorite meal this week -- honestly I loved many of them. But if I had to choose one which surprised me how much we all enjoyed it was the BBQ beef bowls. All of the combine flavors and textures made this really delicious. Taking a bite of the tangy radish greens (dressed in an oil and vinegar) along with a slightly sweet bit of BBQ beef and a creamy bite of avocado was awesome.

Did you have a favorite meal this past week?

Vintage Thanksgiving: 1960s Edition

One of my daughters picked these 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s cookbooks up at Goodwill for me, knowing my affinity for vintage cookbooks. The (c.1959, p. 1965) holiday one has a multipage section devoted to Thanksgiving. I love reading vintage holiday menus. Although the specific recipe may be different from what my mother prepared, they conjure up what my memory wants to believe holidays were actually like, maybe in a different home or as featured in an advertisement or movie. I thought it would be fun today to go through their suggestions.

First of all, they provided 3 different menus, one featuring turkey as the main dish, the next featuring a roast chicken, and the third with rock Cornish game hens. Poultry, whichever you choose, was the featured type of meat. 

In the section for the turkey menu, they provided a handy guide for how to carve a turkey. 

Cooking instructions, from what I understand, are outdated, as turkeys that you purchase today cook faster than those in the past. The turkeys today are different, as well as our now preference for slightly less done poultry.

There was even a handy guide for spiffing up some of the traditional foods you might serve.

Dinner Accents: appetizers, salads, hot side dishes

apple-pineapple slaw, cranberry jello ring
I think the dish at the top is mayonnaise

creamed onions

an assortment of side dishes -- pretty serving dish

Some side dishes are what we might find on the table today, like baked butternut squash, buttered green beans, orange-glazed sweet potatoes, green peas, Waldorf salad, and pickled beets. But others were less familiar to me, such as creamed onions, a cranberry-strawberry-cream cheese-marshmallow-pineapple-lemon-mayo jello ring, and an apple-pineapple slaw.

The starchy dishes included herb and bread stuffing, corn bread, mashed potatoes, mushroom wild rice, and biscuits.

hot tomato starter

All menus had a starter dish -- hot tomato soup, hot oyster stew, or harvest fruit cup.

And I think there was a lot of coffee poured at holiday meals, if the menus are any indication. Hot coffee is the only beverage listed for all three menus.

mincemeat pie, pumpkin custard pie, cranberry mincemeat pie

Happy Endings

Let's get to the desserts.

pumpkin chiffon tarts, date-orange pudding, steamed cranberry pudding

The list is extensive: classic pumpkin custard pie, mincemeat pie, cranberry mince pie (that sounds interesting), pumpkin chiffon tarts, cheesecake mince tarts, date-orange dessert (a cake-like pudding topped with na glaze and hard sauce), cranberry steamed pudding, and something called pilgrim hats made with upside down, flat-bottomed ice cream cones, puffed rice cereal, and caramel candies made to look like a pilgrims hat. The hat band is made from jelly candies cut into strips. I think that last one was meant to appeal to children at Thanksgiving.

The cookbook also provided instructions for crafting table favors/place cards for each place setting, little pilgrim men.

So, tie on your apron, put on your string of pearls, and get those high-heeled pumps on. We've got a Thanksgiving meal to make!