More Side Dishes – Salads to Give Thanks For
For me, the cranberry salad is mandatory – but not for you! If you want to give it a try, the Sultan Center has cranberries in the frozen section. Frozen is good enough. I have even made this with jellied whole cranberries from a can, but that is sheer desperation.
Mom’s Cranberry Salad
I must have given this recipe to nearly 100 people by now – it never fails to make a big hit. In Tunis, and in Amman, where fresh cranberries were no where to be found, whole cranberry sauce dissolved down worked wonderfully. It’s amazing what you can do when you are motivated! Note – I use raspberry or cherry or strawberry jello instead of lemon, because I like it to be red for the holidays.
1 1/2 C cranberries (wash, pick over and cook until soft
1 1/2 C water
add 1 Cup sugar and boil one minute
add 1 small pkg lemon jello (I use raspberry or cherry or strawberry because I like red)
When all is dissolved, add juice of one No. 1 can of pineapple (Mom’s recipe says a #1 can – use one of the small cans.) When cool, add diced pineapple from can, and 1/2 cup finely diced celery and 1/4 cup chopped walnuts. Refrigerate until firm.
One small buffet mold.
(This recipe is from the 1950’s. I double everything, Pour into mold for the holidays, or into a crystal bowl from which it can be served without having to unmold)
Mom’s Roquefort Dressing
This recipe is so BAD for you. So much salt! So much fat! So incredibly rich and delicious, and so simple to make. They have REAL French Roquefort right now at the Sultan Center. No, I do not work for the Sultan Center. Momma says if it isn’t real Roquefort, don’t bother.)
1 pint sour cream
1/2 teaspoon each:
garlic salt
celery salt
pepper
paprika (red powdered paprika, best from Hungary)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 lb Roquefort cheese
Mix all ingredients together except Roquefort, then carefully fold in cheese. Serve with green salad, but in a separate serving bowl so guests can control how much or how little they want to use! This is also good as a dip with fresh raw vegetables. Oh, so rich!
Side Dishes – More to Give Thanks For!
Take another deep breath. These are not mandatory, these are just options!
Shrimp Cocktail
Buy BIG shrimp. Take the shells off, and with a tiny paring knife, make a tiny line down the back of the shrimp where you see that black stuff, and take the black stuff out. (Don’t think about this, just do it.) Bring water to simmer, put shrimp in and TAKE OFF heat. Let them turn pink – about one minute – and pour water out immediately.
Williamsburg Peanut Soup
(If you have help and want to serve in courses)
Fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes or stewed tomatoes, chopped and heat in pot.
Chicken broth – together with the tomatoes, about enough for all who are coming.
Sauteed onions if you like them can go in, too.
Add glops of CHUNKY peanut butter into the hot liquid and stir until you like the consistency. Salt if you think it needs it. Ladle into bowls and then sprinkle a few chopped peanuts over each dish. People will think you labored for hours on this soup, and it is SO delicious. Big bang for the buck on this one!
Shrimp Cocktail Sauce: Take about a cup of Heinz Ketchup, add 1 Tablespoon Horseradish and 1 Tablespoon very fine SWEET, finely chopped pickle or pickle relish. Mix together. Some people add a little chili powder, but you know your own family.
Use bowls or champagne glasses. Put a little salad greens in the bottom, and place shrimp over the rim around the glass or bowl. Put cocktail sauce in the well formed in the center, right on the greens (Hardly anybody ever eats the greens, they are just there to be pretty.)
Cornbread Stuffing
(Mandatory if you are married to a Southerner)
You can find cornmeal in any grocery store, but we like the coarser grind found in the health foods section.
Make a batch of cornbread according to the instructions on the corn meal you have bought. Cool it slightly.
While the cornbread is baking, sautee:
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1/4 cup chopped parsley
in 1/2 cup butter.
(You can use corn oil, but it won’t have the same flavor.)
Sautee 1/2 lb Jimmy Dean sausage, mild (here, in Islamic Kuwait, I am using smoked turkey sausage)
When cornbread is slightly cool, crumble it into a large bowl, add the sauteed onion, celery, parsley, butter and sausage, and stir together. Add 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans. At this point, you can store in the refrigerator until the turkey is baked.
Gather one – two cups turkey broth, mix into cornbread mix with one egg, salt, pepper, a little sage and thyme to taste. Pour into baking dish and bake 30 minutes at 300°. Serve with turkey as side dish.
Second – Get Organized
Here’s what you need for this step – paper, pen, phone, e-mail, WOM (word of mouth). Figure out who you want to spend Thanksgiving with. Give them a call. If they sound genuinely disappointed because they have visitors from out-of-town, tell them to bring their visitors – Thanksgiving is a great holiday for flexibility. (We usually have more than one table going, one for the kids, too, or several mixed up)
Our book says that we are to entertain strangers, that sometimes when we welcome strangers, we welcome angels without knowing it. Sometimes a stranger adds the most amazing memory.Our first married Thankgiving, we had a soldier join us who would soon be leaving the military. We still remember his delight and amazement at being included. We’ve never fogotten him – he added so much to that day.
When someone asks what they can bring – have some ideas ready! It’s usually safe to ask someone to bring a dessert – or drinks – or dinner rolls. If they have something else in mind, unless it is totally outlandish, say “yes” and just roll with it. It’s part of the fun.
Outline what you want to serve – finger foods before dinner, dinner – courses if you are including soup, dessert and coffee (in the same room? move to another room?)
Make a grocery list. Do the major shopping now, so you have everything you need. Go with what is available – for example, last night in the fish market, I saw the most amazing, huge shrimp, and the man told me they are from Kuwait. Believe me, we will have shrimp cocktail on our menu this year!
Figure out how you want the table(s) and check your linens to be sure what you need is clean and ironed. Make sure the silver is polished, the crystal washed and sparkling. Do this now! You don’t want to have to worry about this close to Thanksgiving. Give yourself the gift of time, by doing the little things in advance that can throw you off course if you let it go to the last minute. We want you to be thankful on Thanksgiving, happy and relaxed and delighted to see your friends – and that takes some preparation and work ahead of time.
(My preference is to set up a buffet table – that way people can eat what they want and pass on what they don’t want, without being conspicuous. You know, like you may adore creamed onions, and the kids will hate them! It’s OK. They’re kids. It’s Thanksgiving.)
Take another deep breath – honestly, this is going to be fun.
The Feast of Thanksgiving
This coming Thursday, the fourth Thursday in November, is the American Thanksgiving. Although it has a religious context – giving thanks for all we have been given – it is not a church holiday, but a secular one.
A group of people fled England (we call them the Pilgrims) seeking a place where they could practice their particular and very fundamental religion without persecution. They landed in a new country and established a colony. A good many of them died in the first year – from starvation, from minor ailments like ear infections that went untreated and became more serious illnesses. At the end of the harvest, the following year, they gave a great feast to celebrate those who had survived.
Honored guests were the Native Americans, who had welcomed the newcomers, showed them berries and forms of wildlife good for gathering and hunting, and without whom the Pilgrims could not have survived. At the table were foods never seen in the old world – turkey, corn, cranberries, possibly potatoes. . .
Wherever we are in the world, we take this 4th Thursday in November to give thanks, and to feast, preferably with family and friends.
My nieces, Little Diamond and Sparkling Diamond grew up going to the local soup kitchen on Thanksgiving with their parents to serve the poor and homeless their Thanksgiving meal. Many of us have special church services that day. Most of us spend a good part of the day in the kitchen!
We have so much to be thankful for this year. Although my parents are old, I have been able to go back and help them several times this year. The next generation of our family has (mostly) finished school and all have jobs they love doing. We shifted our tent successfully to another country this year, and are having a great time getting to know Kuwait. We have found a church here and are thankful to be able to worship freely. Through another friend, we met a family here we dearly love, and we will spend Thanksgiving with them. I am sure it will be a mountain of food.
I will be fixing my Mom’s cranberry salad, cornbread stuffing for my husband-of-Souther-origins, a pumpkin pie, and some balsamic roasted sweet-potatoes (the potatoes are tradition, the balsamic is not) and a few other dishes. We try to balance the traditional with something new from time to time. We will break open one of the fruitcakes to serve with the other desserts. Mom’s Fruitcake Recipe
You will know where people will be gathering and feasting by the delicious aroma of roasting turkey as you take advantage of this gorgeous weather to go out walking . . . We give thanks for the beautiful weather, too.
What is This?
Does anyone know what this is? On the right of the (whatever) in the foreground is some kind of station with a shack and machinery. A boat comes and visits it from time to time. Whatever this is stays a few days, and then the boat comes and moves it somewhere else. At one point, maybe they were drawing nets up, but it was night. I could see silvery flashes – fish? – but it also may have been moonlight. . .
The two pieces shown seem to be related. The closest seems to be rusty pipe on floats. The second is linked floats . . . but I cannot figure out what they are doing.
Qatteri Cat
We were flying back to Qatar after visiting our son. It was December, and we would not see him at Christmas; he was in his first real-life grown-up job and couldn’t get the time off for the long trip to Qatar and back. We were desolate.
I turned to my husband and said “I need a cat.” I expected a fight. “You work all the time, and I need a cat to keep me company.”
He said “I need a cat, too.” His eyes were kind of teary.
When we came to Qatar, we came with a 14 year old diabetic cat. When I arrived at the airport, without the right papers, the customs guy told me he would have to hold her overnight while I got the right papers from the Department of Agriculture. I started digging out all the hypodermic needles, and her insulin, and telling him she needed her shot at exactly seven in the morning and seven at night and he looked at me in shock and said “take her! take her!” and I scampered out of there as fast as I could, before he could change his mind.
When she died, the Gulf War was starting. In the middle of an important meeting, my husband came home because I kept thinking maybe she wasn’t really dead. It was heartbreaking. She was like a member of our family. My husband said “No more cats; I can’t go through this again.”
So it was only 9 months later when he agreed we could get another cat.
I went straight to the vet, who said he had just the cat for me. He was the longest, skinniest cat I had ever seen, with a great big fluffy tail like a fox. I adored him.
When he got home, he wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Every time I came near him, he cringed, and ran and hid. But the minute my husband walked in the door – it was love at first sight. Later on, we met his original owners, and one of the women said “is he still such a naughty cat?” and we said NO! that he was a good cat! The truth was that when he got scared, he would forget and use his claws and teeth. I still have the scars to prove it. It took a long time to teach him to trust again, but now, he is the sweetest and most loving cat you could meet. It just took time.
It took time for him to trust me. Now, he hangs out with me all day, and he loves to curl up with me. I don’t kid myself that this is love – he just loves my warm body and he loves that I feed him.
True love is when my husband comes home. Qatteri Cat can hear him coming long before he opens the door. He will leap from wherever he is sleeping and run for the door, and sit there waiting like a dog until my husband comes in the door. His body quivers with anticipation. He leaps for joy, and runs like a crazy cat around the house, scraping all the carpets into piles as he tries to get a grip on the marble tile floors.
When my husband showers or bathes, the Qatteri cat is there. When he works at his computer, the Qatteri cat is on his desk, or at his feet. He is content just to look at my husband with utter adoration.
And then, in the morning, when my husband leaves, the Qatteri cat cries. His cries would break your heart. He sits by the door and asks why my husband has abandoned him, once again. And then he goes and gets his babies, one by one, and puts them by the door. Who knows what this cat is thinking?
Mom’s Fruit Cake Recipe
Wooo Hooooooo! The fruitcakes are in the oven, and already the house smells wonderful. I’ve been making these cakes since I got married. I don’t think I have missed a year, but I may have. I grew up smelling these delicious cakes every winter. I don’t think my Mom makes them every year any more. I wish I were close enough to pop one into her refrigerator for their holidays.
Mom’s Fruit Cake
Even people who think they HATE fruit cake like this fruit cake. It has a secret ingredient – chocolate!
This is the original recipe. I remember cutting the dates and prunes with scissors when I was little; now you can buy dates and prunes without pits and chop them in the food processor – a piece of cake!
1 cup boiling water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup lard or butter
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. cloves
3 Tablespoons chocolate powder
1/4 cup jelly
1 cup seeded raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup candied citron
1/2 cup cut prunes
1/2 cup cut dates
Put all in a pan on stove and bring to a boil. Boil for three minutes. Let cool. Add:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Flavor with lemon
Bake at 350° in loaf pans for one hour. Makes 2 normal bread loaf sized cakes.
My variations: I put in about three times the fruit, the difference primarily in the candied citron – I prefer using whole candied cherries, because they are so pretty when the loafs are cut. This recipe doubles, or quadruples with no problems.
Pans: Mom used to line all the pans with brown paper and grease the paper. I grease the pans, then dust with more of the chocolate powder. Use a good quality chocolate, not cocoa. When the cakes come out of the oven, let them cool for ten minutes, loosen them with a knife, then they will shake out easily. Let continue to cool until they are totally cool, then wrap in plastic wrap, with several layers, then foil, then seal in a sealable plastic bag. Let them age a couple months in a corner of your refrigerator. I make mine around Halloween, and serve the first one at Thanksgiving.
I never make these the same any two years in a row. This is the first year, ever, that I won’t be using any brandy – alcohol in Kuwait being against the law. Yeh, I have some friends who laugh and say “you can get it anywhere!” but we made a decision to obey the law. Only rarely do I regret it . . . sigh . . .fruitcakes really need brandy.
Update: If you are in a country where brandy is available, and if you want to use brandy, here is how to use it in this recipe. You know how raisins get all dried out and taste yucky in fruitcakes? The night before you intend to make the fruitcakes, take all the raisins you intend to use (depending on how many fruitcakes you intend to make) and put them in a glass container. Pour brandy over them, to cover. Microwave just to the boiling point. Let stand in the microwave overnight.
The next day, you can drain that brandy and use it in a stew or something, and in the meanwhile, you now have plump, juicy raisins to use in your fruitcake, and just a hint of brandy flavor. Yummmm!
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
Today’s Grin for today, from, no kidding, The Kuwait Times, page 6:
Brothels’ raids continue
Raids launched against brothels and suspected love dens continued unabated all over Kuwait. A security force yesterday raided two apartments in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh where 34 Asians were caught red-handed in the most uncompromising positions . . . .
Google Earth – It Just Keeps Getting Better
This morning I had an e-mail from my nephew at GoogleEarth. There are days I feel like one of the luckiest women in the world – my sisters and I have the most interesting children, now young adults, and they are all working in areas where they feel useful – stressed, working too hard – but greatly satisfied, greatly productive.
How cool is it to love Geography, and to be working for GoogleEarth? I grin every time I think of my nephew, who loves the work he is doing.
His e-mail a couple weeks ago reminded me that the new GoogleEarth was out and to be sure to upgrade. You can be sure I did. Today, he tells me about another blog that always has the most up-to-date goodies from GE – Google Earth Blog.
On November 12, Frank Taylor, the blog author, says:
Google has quietly introduced four new Featured Content Layers today. Go to the Layers on the lower left and look for “Featured Content”. Open the folder and look for the new layers at the top. Each is marked with a red “New!”. Here’s a brief overview of the new layers:
Rumsey Historical Maps – This is a collection of historical maps which you can overlay over their location on Earth. If you are not running Google Earth 4, you will not see this layer. Open the folder and turn on the map that interests you. The first link shows you the locations of the different map and each description gives you a few details. You can then turn on each map and they will be overlayed in GE. The maps are “regionated” which means they will load more detail as you get closer (it also means the images are scanned at a very high resolution). I’m sure some of my mapping friends like Jonathan Crowe will be curious to see these.
Tracks4Africa – this is my favorite of the new layers. There are maps of places to go in Africa built by compiling data from GSP tracks. The layer also has lots useful information and photos. Zoom in closer to see more detail. You can read more, and buy the maps for your GPS, by going to Tracks4Africa’s web site.
Spotlight on Africa – This is a collection of placemarks showing the flag of each country of Africa. The placemark description includes an overview of basic information of each country from the CIA World Factbook. The placemarks were developed by the National Geographic My Wonderful World campaign to help kids become more geographically aware. This is nicely done, but you can see the whole world done in a similar fashion in this collection.
European Space Agency – this layer shows ESA logo placemarks of different locations where a satellite photo can be viewed of that location. A small picture is in the placemark description, and a link to a page where you can see a larger picture. I am disappointed that you can’t just view the larger pictures overlayed in Google Earth though.
I am blown away by all the new Africa content. On a day when the sky has turned yellow in Kuwait, there are waves cresting out in the Gulf and the air smells like impending squalls, it is a perfect day to spend in Africa, via Google Earth!
Frank Taylor has all kinds of useful information on GE, and I am adding him to my blogroll.
Targeted
On my way home from a meeting today, there was a guy in a big hurry. First he was behind me, in his great big beat-up black Chevy SUV, then passing me, and then, there he was, right in front of me at the next light. Here’s what gets my attention. On his lower left rear, just above the bumper, are three bullet holes, pretty closely spaced, too. It’s not easy to place three bullets that close together, and I can only imagine that it was done while at least one car was in motion, if not two.
So I’m impressed; someone around here is a sharp shooter.
But why would anyone be shooting at another car here in Kuwait? I can’t remember seeing another car with bullet holes.
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