The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 12

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 12

A Christmas Carol

Well, I couldn't end this year's project without touching on the most prolific story this time of year, aside from, you know, the birth of Christ...Everybody has a favorite version of this story in movie form, and I have three! Scrooged, a fun modern retelling, A Patrick Stewart Christmas Carol, who was born to play Scrooge, and A Muppet Christmas Carol, which isn't one I grew up with, but has quickly come to be one of my newer faves.

Since I was not going to do a goose, one of the main entrees mentioned in the story, I was going to do turkey and mince pies. Then it was turkey and steamed pudding, also mentioned. And then I busted both my knee and and my foot this week and it would be irresponsible for me to spend more time on my feet than is necessary, so it became just the turkey, which I had purchased last month and was in the freezer.

So, roast turkey lunch it was! And then it started snowing right as I was dishing up, so it was pretty perfect. The meal was delish too, so it was a great note to end the project on. Since I can't find the source of the recipe, I'll go ahead and write it out.

Scarborough Faire Turkey

1(12-14lb) turkey

1 cup dry white wine

1 cup chicken broth

1/2 cup packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped

2 Tbsp. chopped fresh sage leaves+12 sprigs

1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary leaves+2 sprigs

1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves+2 sprigs

1/2 cup butter, softened

salt/pepper

1 med. onion, cut into eighths

1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise

1.)Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2.) Drain juices from turkey, discard neck and giblets and pat turkey dry with paper towels.(My note: Don't discard that stuff, make stock with it if you plan to follow this recipe exactly, but never just throw that away...) Place turkey, breast side up, on wire rack in large roasting pan (17"x 11 1/2") Into pan, pour wine and chicken stock.

3.) In food processor with knife blade attached, pulse the herb leaves, minus the sprigs, until very evenly chopped. Add butter and pulse until well-blended.

4.) Working from large cavity end of turkey, gently run fingers between skin and meat to loosen skin from flesh. Using rubber spatula, place 3/4 mixture under skin on both sides of breast bone. Gently massage skin to evenly distribute butter. Spread remaining herb butter all over outside of turkey. Sprinkle 1 1/2 Tbsp. and 1 1/2 tsp. pepper all over outside of turkey and inside cavity.

5.) Place onion, garlic, and herb sprigs in cavity. With kitchen string, tie wings against body and tie drumsticks together.

6.) Roast turkey 1 1/2 hours. If turkey breast is getting too brown, cover loosely with foil. Roast 1 hour longer or until it reaches 170 degrees in thigh and 160 degrees in breast.

7.) Carefully lift turkey from roasting pan and tilt slightly to allow juices to run into pan. Place turkey on large platter; cover loosely with foil and let stand 15-20 minutes.

8.) Remove rack from roasting pan. Strain pan drippings into 4-cup liquid measuring cup or medium bowl. If desired, let drippings stand 1 minute to allow fat to separate from meat juices and discard fat. Carve turkey and serve with pan juices.

12 servings-495cal, 22 g fat, 0 g fiber

The final line up of ingredients for this project!

Here is the pan with the tray in it. Chicken broth and wine on the bottom

Because I don't need a whole turkey, I bought just the breast, which is enough for a couple meals and some leftovers. It's perfect for a small amount of people.

When you mix butter with stuff, it's called a compound butter. I ended up using dried herbs instead of fresh, and it was just fine. This recipe is called Scarborough Faire, after the sing with the lyrics "parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" and this uses all of those herbs.

With just the breast like this, you don't have as much skin to get the herb mixture into it. I only made half of what it called for, but still managed to get it all in/on it.

Here is the onion and garlic before putting it in the oven.

And out of the oven. This was about 2.5 hours at 325 degrees and it was perfection!

Here's what the juices look like after you spoon off most of the melted butter. It's very flavorful and would be great drizzled over the turkey. I used it as the base of turkey gravy that I just made from the packet and it was fine that way.

Here's the final product, on the plate! Because we'll be doing mashed potatoes with Christmas dinner and we had them last week with dinner, we did steamed red potatoes instead. And fresh green beans. This was a really good and easy recipe.

I could definitely see the Cratchett family enjoying this turkey recipe after Ebenezer Scrooge sent them one on Christmas Day after learning to be a better person.

And now, as Christmas is in exactly one week, and this project officially draws to a close for the year, I say to us all, God bless us, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 11

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Movie Edition-Week 11

Home Alone

There are a couple of food scenes in Home Alone, but the one that stands out the most, is the cheese pizza Kevin wants so badly and was unable to get at the family dinner. He comes up with a hilarious, if cruel, way of finally getting his own pizza. Because of this, I decided to try making my own cheese pizza. It turned out to be half successful. The sauce was great, the dough, not so much. Because of that, I will only be sharing the sauce element, because I don't want to share a recipe that didn't work!

I used this recipe, which claimed to be easy, and turned out to be true. This was a super simple recipe, using ingredients most people have in their pantry. It made far more than I needed for the pizza, so I will portion and freeze the rest to test out other pizza dough recipes in the future.

This is it for the ingredients. I don't have garlic salt so I made a combo of salt and granulated garlic and that's all garlic salt is, so don't waste your money on a product you could just easily make yourself.

Here it all is, ready to mix. It's a well-seasoned sauce!

This is perfectly thick, as pizza sauce should be. If you didn't want to use the leftovers for more pizza, you could always thin it down and use it for spaghetti sauce.

The pizza was a very unround shape, it just ended up being whatever shape it wanted to be. I put TONS of cheese on it, including feta. If you have not had feta cheese on a pizza, you are missing out!

Here was the final product. The sauce does soak into the dough and toppings, so I recommend putting a lot of sauce on the dough.

This pizza would not have made Kevin happy, and I want to keep looking for the perfect pizza dough recipe, but when I find it, at least I'll have a sauce I like, ready to go!

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Week 10

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Week 10

This Christmas

This Christmas is one of my favorites. Family fun and an amazing cast. Highly recommend this one if you've never seen it before.

I have been a bit distracted this weekend, and only one of my two planned items got made. Luckily, the one that was made turned out very tasty!

The movie has a family dinner, before Christmas, where the mom mentions having a Sock-it-to-Me cake and I thought that name sounded really interesting. I found a good, but simple recipe for one from this website. Because it's also from a cookbook by the website's author, I won't share it here. I do, however, plan to buy her cookbook because, if this recipe was any indication, everything in it is going to be amazing! I can at least show you how I made it.

Here's the ingredient shot. I had the liquid egg substitute leftover from Thanksgiving and they worked just fine in this recipe.

This is a great recipe, made a little easier by using a boxed cake mix as the base, but adding stuff to it to make it fancier. I really liked the sour cream added to it. It added to the texture and flavor.

Here's what it looks like all mixed. You can see that it's thicker than if you'd just made the cake mix as the box directions suggest.

2/3 of the batter into the pan.

Covered with the chopped pecan, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar mix.

And the last of the batter on top.

Here it is, out of the oven. I found it needed about 10 minutes more to bake than the recipe called for.

Out of the pan. I did not glaze this, as it suggested, because I wanted to take some of it to my parents and it was still too warm. By today, when I tried it, I didn't feel like dealing with it. It was just fine plain, but I can see how the glaze would have been great too. You could also just sprinkle this with powdered sugar, if you wanted.

Here's the portion I cut for my parents. I hope they liked it!

And here's a close up of my piece. This was really tasty! I would definitely make this cake again. It also made me very interested in trying out the other recipes in the author's cookbook. I'm sure they're all amazing!

I highly recommend watching This Christmas, and I highly recommend eating this cake while you do. The flavors are perfect for the holidays. It's not overly sweet, but nice and warming from the cinnamon. Just delish!

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Week 9

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas: Week 9

Miracle on 34th Street

This week I made my recipes early so my family and I could try them out on Thanksgiving. It's the first time this season that I've been able to share these recipes with people for the first-tasting. I chose Miracle on 34th Street because it begins on Thanksgiving and has an important "meet cute" dealing with the Thanksgiving meal. I was unable to track down the scene online, but I immediately thought of it for this project!

I made three sides, two of which were from recipes to test, and one was my own take on something I tried a couple weeks ago. Luckily, they all turned out pretty good! My family enjoyed getting to try them all and even my sister, the picky eater, tried them all, even if she didn't eat a lot of it!

First up was this recipe that I made on Monday in my spare time while working from home. Cranberry sauce is a good recipe to make several days ahead and save you the time closer to Thanksgiving to work on the more complicated recipes. This was pretty simple to make.

Here are all the ingredients, minus the thickener, getting ready to cook on the stove!

Cranberries really are so pretty, aren't they? Here is the mixture, sugar melted, and the thickener added.

It takes a little time for it all to cook down just right, and to start thickening, but it will, just be patient!

Here it is, done, and just needing to sit for a bit to cool down.

And here it is, ready to be chilled in the fridge. You can see how much it thickens up and solidifies. This makes a LOT of cranberry sauce, so you could easily cut this recipe in half, if you wanted and still have plenty to use!

I found this to be very tasty, but a bit too sweet for my tastes. I would cut the amount of sugar in half next time and try it that way. You can always add more, but you can't take away. This was really easy to make, and if you've never made cranberry sauce from scratch, this is a great one to try.

Next up was a green bean casserole recipe. I have a few of these and thought this was a great time to try one out. I wasn't able to track down the source so I'll go ahead and type it out for you.

New Green Bean Casserole

3lb. green beans, trimmed and cut in half

4 large shallots, divided

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 1/2 cups course fresh breadcrumbs

1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves, chopped

Salt/Pepper

3 cups milk

3 Tbsp. butter

1/4 cup flour

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.) Heat covered, 8 qt. saucepot of salted water to boiling on high. Add beans and cook, uncovered, 6 minutes or until bright green and just tender. Drain well and transfer to shallow 3-qt. glass or ceramic baking dish.

3.) Meanwhile, finely chop 2 shallots. Thinly slice remaining shallots; set aside. In 12" skillet, heat oil on medium until hot. Add chopped shallots and cook 4-7 minutes or until browned and tender, stirring occasionally. Add breadcrumbs and cook 2 minutes or until dry and golden, stirring. Transfer mixture to large bowl. Stir in the thyme, 1/4 tsp. salt, and 1/4 tsp. pepper.

4.) Microwave milk on High for 4 minutes or until milk is warm.

5.) Meanwhile, in same 12" skillet, melt butter on medium. Add sliced shallots and cook 5 minutes or until golden brown and tender, stirring occasionally. Add flour and cook 2 minutes, stirring. Gradually pour milk into flour mixture in slow, steady stream, stirring constantly; heat to boiling, stirring. Stir 2 minutes longer or until thickened(mixture should have the consistency of heavy cream.) Stir in nutmeg, 1/4 tsp. salt, and 1/4 tsp. pepper.

6.) Pour sauce over green beans; gently stir until green beans are evenly coated. Stir Parmesan cheese into bread crumb mixture; spread evenly over green bean mixture in casserole.

7.) Bake casserole 30 minutes or until breadcrumbs are golden brown and sauce is bubbling.

Makes 12 servings

I cut this recipe down to 1/3 because we were only 4 people and had no need of a full recipe. It worked just fine. I was going to prep some of this the day before but ended up doing all of it the day of and it worked out well. Sometimes if you prep green beans too soon, the ends can dry out.

Blanching the beans.

Half the shallot is chopped and the other half is sliced.

Sauteing the chopped shallots for the topping.

Added the breadcrumbs. I used panko for this.

In the same pan, I wiped out first, sauteing the sliced shallots in butter.

Cooked till golden and adding the flour to make the roux.

And slowly adding the milk to mix. I did it in bits and stirred as I went so the roux mixed in as I cooked.

All the milk is now mixed in.

And cooked until thickened.

Getting the rest of the casserole assembled. Mixing the sauce into the beans, getting the Parmesan ready to add to the breadcrumbs and sprinkle on top.

All mixed!

All topped and ready to bake!

And right out of the oven. I think it was too much topping for the amount of green beans so next time I'd use at least half of that.

This tasted really good, and I thought it was a nice take on the classic green bean casserole. It is mushroom-free for people who don't like mushrooms. The shallots are an inspired choice, as I think they are a highly underappreciated aromatic. Please use shallots more, if you're not too familiar with them. You won't be disappointed.

Last up was my own version of a recipe I tried a few weeks ago. It doesn't have a name, but it's mashed, roasted acorn squash.

So, cut open acorn squash and remove the seeds. This roasts on a sheet pan, so it's a pretty simple cooking process.

Here is the olive oil with salt, pepper, smoked paprika, granulated garlic, crushed rosemary, and dried thyme. I didn't measure anything, but I definitely should have doubled all the seasonings.

Spoon the oil over the squash and leave it upright on the sheetpan. Roast it in a 400 degree oven for about 45 minutes to an hour until softened.

Here's the final product. Just scoop the flesh into a bowl and mix well. Top with crumbled feta cheese and toasted pine nuts. That's it, it's that easy! I thought this was great, but the seasoning didn't taste strong enough so I would definitely use a LOT. My whole family liked this one, so I could easily see it becoming part of the annual Thanksgiving dinner from now on.

So, all my recipes turned out great, and my family enjoyed them all! It was fun trying these out and this is one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving, blending the tried-and-true with the brand-new. Definitely give these a try if you want to try something new next Thanksgiving!