Your Author's Diets

This week, I have mostly been eating... well, it's not the eating so much as the cooking. Although the eating has been GOOD - thanksgiving always provides that - but we've been trying out a few things and as it's always a resolution to cook new things, I'm going to start being disciplined and actually posting the yummy food that we've cooked.

So...

Thursday: For Thanksgiving, we took along our traditional (tradition of one year, ahem) shredded brussels sprouts that we cook with bacon and butter. This year, most of the sprouts enjoyed the addition of blue cheese, which added a whole other dimension of creaminess and yumminess to the already tasty food. We also made this roast beet & orange salad, which was pretty good, I have to say.

Friday: Friday was spent prepping for today's Thanksgiving feast (part deux). But, of course, there had to be brunch to make sure the cooking troops did not eat the food as we went along. So, for the first time, I made hollandaise to form eggs benedict (thanks to Nigel Slater's Appetite for guidance - still my hands down favourite book for cooking). I am extremely peeved that I didn't take photos of it, but I did take a pic of the lovely cranberry, ginger ale and prosecco cocktail that this lovely lady brought with her. Then we made this blueberry tart by Clothilde, doubling the quantities of the custardy filling because we made it as a pie, not a tart, Joanna made a gorgeous pumpkin pie (that at time of starting this post was baking away and set beautifully, thank goodness) and I made this pecan pie. TOH and Joanna's TOH made a gorgeous acorn squash veloute that smells absolutely amazing.

Saturday: Well, we were mostly going to be spending today eating. We made fresh bread baking to either accompany the soup, and then bought staleish bread to make croutons fried with garlic, mustard seeds and cumin seeds. And then we ate ourselves into oblivion. I only managed a sliver of the pumpkin pie, a hefty wedge of the pecan (because it was as dense as a neutron star) and none of the blueberry. The pastry was lovely, though, and a definite keeper. I also made the booziest bourbon cream ever - note to readers, add bourbon slowly and delicately.

Sunday: we got up surprisingly early and went for a stroll around the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (more about that later this week). Then home to put on some pulled pork in the slow cooker - we're quite excited about it, and will report back later as to its success.

But first: evidence of this week's successes.