Weekly Recipes 9 {if this week included T.giving as well}

I'm back. I finished Nation Novel Writing Month 2015-I wrote an entire story and it is longer than the 50,000 word requirement. I plan to edit it and work to get it published. I don't know how all that words so if you have any tips let me know.  At the tale end of the month we celebrated Thanksgiving with the four of us. We missed Kaylee but she always spends this holiday with her mom in St. Louis.  I wanted to enjoy the day, not be crazy about writing, and still have good food on the table.  So this is what happened.

I planned an easy menu. I decided I wanted U.S. grass-fed steaks (which we bought while in the Twin Cities), and to please all my people I made three different kinds of potatoes; sweet potatoes for me and I made those a day ahead, mashed potatoes with gravy for the men, and roasted red potatoes for Groovy Girl.  What can I say, we like potatoes.  We had fresh green beans, just sauteed a bit in coconut oil. I always make fresh cranberry sauce that doubles as jam for our bread (this time we bought it from Panera).

The thing I was most concerned about was gravy.  I needed gravy for those mashed potatoes and I did not want to get it out of a jar and I didn't have pan drippings to create my own.  So I did a little research (which means I googled it) and found an excellent recipe that I will make again come Christmas dinner.

The gravy recipe is from Chocolate Moosey.  I used veggie stock and it was a light color (think biscuit gravy) but the taste was phenomenal. It made enough to fill a quart-jar with leftovers that we used (still using for leftover potatoes). That was the gravy recipe I was searching for the whole time we were vegetarians.  Now I've got it.

The cranberry recipe is from Epicurious. I love listening to the tart round berries popping as this simmers. Nothing says holiday meal like that sound in my kitchen.  That and wine pouring. I still have leftover sauce and I used it just last night on a piece of homemade bread.  Yum.

Those are my only two Thanksgiving recipes to share except my husband made an excellent sweet potato cheesecake that deserves it's own post. Playing catch-up for not cooking much in November I made two fantastic meals over the weekend for my husband and son to enjoy together. Groovy Girl is out of the country and not spending every waking moment hunched over my typewriter has freed me up a bit of extra time.

I literally whipped together a dish the other night using diced butternut squash, a pound of farmer-bought hamburger, a Trader Joe's curry simmer sauce, and Israeli couscous.  It was delicious and I should have snapped a photo. That and a nice big green salad and dinner was on the table in about 40 minutes.

{Serious Eats}

Yesterday I had the pleasure of creating a recipe from start to finish which is truly one of life's joys. When you can cook unhurried and enjoy the process.  I planned the menu, I made a batch of dough in the morning that would be ready to bake by dinner, and I set a time early enough that my son would be able to stop here and have dinner before heading to work.

I made a really unique beef stroganoff that was amazing. The sauce, rich with mushroom flavor and pearl onions, would also pair perfectly with tofu-which would gladly soak up the sauce. The recipe is from Serious Eats and I liked reading all the research that went into making a better stroganoff. I don't know what possessed me to choose this but it was a fun recipe to try.

Happy cooking.