Cindy Eats: Thanks-birthday

My birthday usually falls around Thanksgiving weekend, so I usually try to do small things since people are revved up for big cooking. Also, I like doing small things so you can have time to actually hang out with people instead of a giant loud mob of people you don't really spend time with.

First up: I had a birthday brunch with my girl's night crew. I also got a great early birthday gift from cousin: Ad Hoc cookbook. I love that my friends like cooking:

Starting at 12 o'clock: asparagus strata with poached eggs, vegetarian quiche (goat cheese), quinoa muffins, green onion potato pancakes with smoked salmon (and horseradish sauce). The potato pancakes were form the cookbook. Turns out, having a shredder blade on your food processor does make a difference.

Also, I need a food processor. More recipes that I pick out seem to call for it (a sign of aging?)

Hasbrown baskets (half with bacon and half without). Bottom layer is hash browns that you bake, then you crack an egg into it and bacon if you want. Bake again. So good and individual sized!

Cranberry french toast (with home made cranberry syrup!). Similar concept to the strata (soaked overnight in the egg concoction). So it was like having a savory and a sweet option. Also, if you don't want a whole piece of french toast this is a nicer way to portion control and not miss out on flavor.

Plate 1 - only because it all wouldn't fit on it at once.

Plate 2: the syrup was good on the muffins too. Not pictured - bloody mary, mimosa, and watermelon!

Brunch was at 11, I was supposed to go running at 4. Running didn't happen.

Next: Bizzaro round 2. I had been craving spaghetti carbonara and one of my frequent foodie in crime wanted to eat for my birthday. Had to try Bizzaro.

Snap pea carbonara - it's a well rounded meal with all 4 food groups!

One of the specials of the night: Chestnut ravioli stuffed with mushrooms and served with beef brisket in truffle sauce. Just look at it...

They are also famous for their meatballs. I had to try one:

And for those of you out there that miss gluten free Italian food - they have gluten free pasta!

I come from a long line of foodies. My uncle is one of the more vociferous producers of foodie delights. Thanksgiving Lunch was a perfect example of the random smorgasbord of deliciousness that we can conjure. Especially when uncle has obtained a smoker...

Homemade cheese ball (bacon, green onion, red onion, walnuts), scotch cheddar - I don't drink scotch... so I failed at picking up the flavor well, brie, and a blue cheese cheddar thing. Think blue cheese but yellow base. Soon to be - newest member of the family (cousin's fiance) made the cheese ball. She'll fit in just fine.

Cheese ball with a spicy option!

The full menu clockwise from top left: grapes, jalapeno/habanero deviled egg, tomato/cucumber salad, smoked chicken with cucumber sauce on grilled pita, smoked fish with (um.. I forgot the sauce) on cracker, smoked (what I called pork, others called duck) with cheese crumbles on a toasted baguette, smoked duck with cilantro and plum sauce in a steamed bun, and smoked duck with a mushroom-vinegar reduction.

You know I did close ups, right?

Duck/pork? Either way, yum.

What I thought was duck 2 ways (but it might have been 3 ways).

Chicken with cucumber sauce.

Smoked fish. It wasn't exactly tartar sauce.

Spicy deviled egg!!!

With Thanksgiving dinner we just continued the cooking factory:

Roasted vegetables, sticky rice and snap peas and mushrooms (made by Aunt), kale salad with mango (made by another Aunt), garlic mashed potatoes and port cranberry sauce (made by cousin), last minute giblet gravy - a collaborative effort once we realized there was no canned gravy, and of course... deep fried turkey (by the man with the smoker).

Some of you may wonder - what's with the sticky rice? When we used to bake the turkey the sticky rice was the stuffing. And let me tell you... it is SOOOOO good. Can't really do the same when you deep fry, but it's still considered a necessary (and very popular component to Thanksgiving meal).

The gravy was a close call this year. Usually my brother makes giblet gravy. He's got a system down. Since he's moved to Japan for a while we thought there would be canned gravy, but when we looked in the cupboard we couldn't find it.

Cousin (that gave me the cookbook) and I decided to wing it / look up a recipe online. It's a bit tricky when there's no flour in the house or any turkey drippings.... She found the recipe, I found ingredients / asked Aunt where they were...

Cousin that made the cranberry sauce also has a tradition of making the dessert. This year she made chocolate bread pudding with dark chocolate Guinness sauce.

No, that's not rye or pumpernickel. It's the chocolate that turned that bread brown! We also get tons of persimmons from (pay attention now) my sister in-law's dad's tree.

If you've never had one, they're like the consistency of an apple with the sweetness of .... well it's between an apple/peach on the sweetness scale I would say. Hard to describe. Anyways we decided to try and incorporate the persimmons into our meal beyond the usual eating the fruit as-is. Enter: Persimmon pie.

What's that? How's it all look together? It looks like it also comes with dairy free vanilla ice cream!

I insisted that a birthday cake would not be necessary since there would be way too much food. Here is what my loved ones did to improvise:

Those are slim jims stabbed into the middle of those twinkies. They added the candles because the slim jims wouldn't light on fire. I thought the powder was black pepper, but it turns out they sprinkled the dish with cocoa powder, and surrounded it with fresh berries. I ate the berries. One of the dogs wouldn't even eat the slim jim.

It provided good fodder for our frying experiment:

What do you do with a vat full of frying oil after the turkey is done? Why you find other things to throw in there. The next day we had our sweet plate- fried twinkies, fried persimmons (not actually bad), and fried snickers.