The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I have been on the hunt for new and exciting sage recipes. I don’t know what it is with this herb but it sure does grows like a weed in my garden. I was looking through some pictures the other day, taken in May just after planting and realized how quickly I forgot about the savory, marjoram and dill I planted – all absorbed by my mutant sage bush. I have cut it back twice now, but this just seems to encourage new and stronger growth to the point where half of one of my vegetable beds is now all sage. I used to love sage but I have to say it is officially getting a little old.

I’ve made several varieties of sage pesto, sage anchovy fritters on 2 separate occasions for a crowd, stuffing, brown butter sage ravioli, crispy fried sage for topping salads, sage in every soup imaginable I even harvested large bundles for bouquets, this thing is unstoppable. I was considering dedicating a whole series of posts to good old sage but this guy thought otherwise and I am bound to obey. A series of posts, ha! You are crazy lady.

I bake a lot. Probably too much. I’m starting to realize this is the reason I’m currently about 40 pounds overweight. Funny how that realization just makes me want to bake more. Just joking… I do have every intention of being able to wear jeans again and hopefully soon at that. After one full year in leggings I think its time, and when I say leggings I mean underneath long muumuu type shirts so lets not get excited people i am NOT that person. Actually, I was trying to evaluate how long I thought I could safely get away with the whole just had a baby thing and I came to the conclusion that I am rapidly approaching the the end of that era.

Waaaaaaaa. But its definitely for the best.

Staying true to this years traditional thanksgiving menu, I couldn’t fathom having anything but apple and pumpkin pie. While I had thoughts early on of pecans and all of the different varieties of pies I could have potentially made with them,  I just couldn’t bring myself to this sort of nonsensical experimentation. There was too much at steak and the risk of failure was just too great. Not to mention that nothing about pecan pie says Canadian harvest, no pecan pie was way too American for my thanksgiving dinner.

You have to be careful with desserts and by this I mean because they come at the end of a meal they have the power to either be the perfect end to a perfect meal if they are a success following a successful meal, redeem the meal if they are a success and the meal wasn’t, or depreciate an incredible meal if they are disastrous.

To avoid any negative results, if the recipe allows it, I try to make the dessert course the day before. It really make everything so much easier on the day and if you are like me and enjoy the challenge of a completely home made meal I would recommend doing as much in advance as possible. These pies were both made the day before and both held up beautifully until we ate them the following evening.

When you make just a few side dishes to accompany your thanksgiving dinner, it’s important to make sure that you have the right quantity. I don’t believe in going crazy but it may be wise to test out a few sides before you cook them on actual thanksgiving so that you can not only make sure that they are as good as possible but also to determine the quantity you will need when serving a crowd. I made the mistake of not doing this and felt that I could have have perhaps made a bit more. At least in the leek department.

I was experimenting with the leeks, knowing how much I love them as an addition to any dinner involving poultry but not quite sure if the rest of my family would be in agreement, and I cold have definitely made a few more. That being said you want to make sure that you have a braising dish that’s large enough to hold the amount of leeks you make in one single layer, without having to stack them.

Turkey is one of those things that once you’ve done it once and are over the fear of actually cooking it, you realize that there was nothing to really be afraid of in the first place. Thanksgiving is actually a fairly easy meal to bring together, most of the smaller details like vegetable sides can be done in advance and the gravy is relatively simple to make once the turkey is out of the oven resting. As I mentioned in the menu post I like to keep things simple and fairly traditional. The focus of the meal is always the turkey, the vegetables that you serve on the side could not compete so why stress yourself out with fancy sides when you could be enjoying some wine with your guests?

I feel like I should apologize in advance for the quality of these thanksgiving photographs. As thanksgivings go, there was just too much to remember this weekend, something had to be forgotten and this year it was my camera. I’m more than just a little disappointed about this and even contemplated just skipping these posts, but I came to the conclusion that too much hard work went into it, so I’m going to pretend these photos are exceptionally beautiful, you know the kind you would see here or here and call it a day.

I’m pretty excited that this years Thanksgiving dinner had very few hiccups. I think this was in part due to my busy work schedule which allowed me no time to over think the menu, make changes and generally complicate the process. I have a major tendency to over think things and in most instances this leads to more problems than inspired ideas. But there were definitely a few things I would change if I could have. For example, I would not have bothered running out to the store last minute on Sunday afternoon and avoided the extremely annoying human being who decided to merge right into my car, minor though it was and not my fault, that would consume my precious cooking time and result in the making of what I call “anger pies”. My mother has since informed me that I’m no longer allowed to make pies at her house. I told her that would result in no more Natalie pies, she seemed not really to care about that but I bet she changes her tune come Christmas time-that woman loves her pie.