Work today so I can enjoy Thanksgiving with everyone else

I'm guessing that a fair number of you friends are either on the road to family or busy getting Thanksgiving preparations underway. I'm busy getting things done to host Thanksgiving at our house.

Last week I made up a list of work to be done with a calendar for when to do each task, beginning with tasks for Saturday. On Saturday I finalized the menu, went grocery shopping for everything we'd need, and made sure everyone knew how they would participate in the preparations.

Sunday was a day of rest.

Today, Monday, I finalized the menu again in the morning, then went shopping for the other items we'd need for our meal. Both daughters were home in the afternoon, so we made a lot of progress on our work list. We got the guest bathroom cleaned, all of the downstairs vacuumed, the dining room table set, the Christmas tree out and set up (we decorate after Thanksgiving dinner), the trunks of ornaments brought downstairs, the meat out of the freezer, a loaf of French bread baked for the stuffing, and a batch of no-milk condensed cream of mushroom soup made for a casserole. Oh, and I finalized the menu again later in the day. I also made beef stew for dinner and a batch of coconut-almond bar cookies so I could lick the bowl as my appetizer for lunch.

So far, this is the "final" menu

Roast chicken with tangerine-sage glaze

Smoked pork roast

Bread, sage, onion, celery, and sausage dressing/stuffing

Mashed root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, turnips, browned onion and garlic)

Green bean casserole

Sweet potato casserole

Carrot, celery, olive tray

Garden greens (kale, radish greens) and dried plum salad in sweet and tangy dressing

Gravy

Cranberry relish

Pumpkin Pie 

Cherry Pie

Whipped Cream

Sparkling cider and sparkling water

It sounds like a lot, I know. I do like to send our guests home with leftovers. And I like to have variety. We have folks with very different dietary preferences, and I aim to please if I can.

Tomorrow is another day of preparations. I'll be up early getting work underway. Wishing you well as you travel or prepare for your holiday.

Pumpkin Spice-Chocolate Chip Bar Cookies and how to modify recipes using home-cooked pumpkin

With clouds and rain returning this afternoon and Thanksgiving just around the corner, today seemed like a great day to bake an easy pumpkin treat. These are a soft cake-like bar cookie. What I love about cake-like cookies is they often have less sugar and butter. This recipe uses just 1/4 cup of butter and 2/3 cup of sugar. As a bonus, they have one whole cup of pumpkin puree, which means we all get a little bit more nutrition in our cookie. If the recipe below looks remotely familiar, that's because I modified the applesauce-raisin bar cookies I opted about last month to use pumpkin puree and chocolate chips (plus a wee bit more spice). Enjoy!

Pumpkin Spice-Chocolate Chip Bars

¼ cup butter or margarine, softened

⅔ cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup pumpkin puree (use slightly less by 1 tablespoon if using thick or canned pumpkin)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 ¼ to 1 ½ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (or any combination of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg to equal the amount)

¾ cup chocolate chips (I use mini chips, but regular chocolate chips or chocolate chunks would also be good)

confectioners' sugar, about 1 tablespoon for dusting after baking

Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). Grease a 9X13 inch baking pan. (I use a Pyrex one.)

In a medium bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Beat in egg, then pumpkin puree. Stir in salt, spices, and baking soda. Stir in flour and chocolate chips.

Spread in the prepared baking pan. Bake for about 25 minutes, until done in the center and edges are golden.

Cool in the pan on a wire rack. Dust with the confectioners' sugar and cut into 24 squares.

(My husband 's comment,"these aren't going to last long." I think they're a hit.)

Home-cooked pumpkin puree and recipes that assume you're using canned pumpkin

This was a question from Kris in the comments the other day. I realize that many folks don't have time to follow the comments and then follow-up on answers to questions there. So, I thought I'd post about how to handle the often times, more watery consistency of home-cooked pumpkin compared to canned in baking recipes.

You have a couple of choices in how to compensate for the less thick home-cooked puree. 

1) Dump your puree into a mesh strainer set over a bowl and leave it to strain in the fridge overnight. 

2) Cook the puree down in a saucepan, stirring frequently, until of comparable thickness to canned pumpkin. 

3) Bake your puree in a metal baking pan in a 300 degree oven for about 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes, bringing puree from the sides into the center and vice versa.

4) Adjust the liquids or dry ingredients when baking. 

For recipes that include other liquids (such as pie, cakes, muffins), reduce the other liquid by 1 to 2 tablespoons, amount depending on how much liquid the recipe calls for. So, for pie I reduce the milk/cream by 2 tablespoons. With muffins, I often reduce by about 1 tablespoon. With pancakes, I reduce the liquid judging by the thickness of the batter. I can eyeball how thick a pancake batter needs to be.

With recipes that don't include other liquids, such as drop cookies, I add 1 extra tablespoon of flour to the cookie dough.

Decreasing the liquid or increasing the flour seems to work well for me, although I do strain off excess liquid after pureeing just before packing in freezer containers.