Thanksgiving Highlights

404. Thanksgiving will always bring warm and beautiful memories from years gone by.

Delicious food, desserts and time with those we love.

  Each year I am blessed to plan and prepare and sit down to a table surrounded with people I love.  

This year was no different.  Enjoy highlights from our families day of thanks.

"For me, every hour is grace.  And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile."

~Elie Wiesel

Zucchini Noodles with Pesto

393.  While cutting back on bread intake, I'm adjusting and adapting recipes.  As the saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention", and it was necessary to find a replacement for pasta.  

So with all the recipes using squash as a replacement, I wanted to spiralize but due to this quarantine  in place, I can't go to the store.  So, how to create noodles from zucchini?  

The idea to use my hand lemon zester came to mind...and it was genius!  Because the zucchini is softer squash, I had to be careful to go slowly with gentle pressure to make long strips.

I sautéd a quarter of a red onion in a pat of butter, then added the zucchini just to heat it up but not to cook it because the noodles would wilt.

I then heated up a bit of pesto recipe here, and pan seared salmon.

I plated the gently warmed zucchini, spooned pesto over the noodles and then place the seared salmon and topped with pesto.  I don't have to say how flavorful and the textures were so very similar to pasta noodles.

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The recipe is so delightful, light and satisfying.  

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

~Anonymous

The author of this proverb is unknown. It is commonly misattributed to Plato to Benjamin Jowett's popular idiomatic 1871 translation of Plato's Republic, where in Book II, 369c, his translation reads: "The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention." 

Holiday Season

 351.  Christmas Eve 2018 is here and our house is filled to the brim with family and friends.

I have two trees this year, a live 9 foot in the living room and 10 foot artificial tree in the dining room.

 And of course, a charcuterie was the centerpiece on the dining room table.  We all sat and noshed and talked and laughed.  It was a beautiful night.

 And our dinner buffet was Italian themed with lasagna, my honey's sauce, meatballs and sausage, capresé salad, green salad, bruschetta and Italian bread.  Dessert too, chocolate cheesecake and cookies of course.

"I like to compare the Holiday Season with the way a child listens to a favorite story.  The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns  it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending."  ~Fred Rogers

"I cannot think that when God sent us into the world, He had irreversibly decreed that we should be perpetually miserable in it.  If our taking up the Cross imply our bidding adieu to all joy and satisfaction, how is it reconcilable with what Solomon expressly affirms of religion, that 'her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace?'"  ~John Wesley

Salad for Dinner

180. A refreshing change for dinner is taking a break from meat and potatoes. Tonight, we had salad for dinner.

I found a wonderful olive focaccia bread at the local bakery. It was rustic, flavorful and almost a meal in itself.

The salad ingredients were romaine lettuce, chopped scallion, sliced red radish, chopped apple, crumbled feta cheese, ground sea salt, ground gourmet pepper corns, dark balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

This meal was satisfying, and the apple added an extra special sweetness and crunch.

Have salad for dinner and add fruit or nuts for a surprising and delicious change.

"To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist-the problem is the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar."

~ Oscar Wilde

Thyme Honey Glazed Ham

68. Easter Dinner is always one of my favorite meals. This year we stayed close to home and prepared an easy delicious meal with trimmings. I went online and found several yummy recipes and they were all very pleasing. My centerpiece was a flower scape with grass and mini daffodils.

We made a scrumptious baked ham and used

the "Thyme Honey Glazed Ham" recipe and it turned out beautifully.

Instead of mashed potatoes and gravy, I made "Scalloped Sour Cream Potato Bake",

Ham gravy is so very salty and I never seem to enjoy it.

My mother told me that the Polish always have beets and horseradish with their Easter meal so for color I served Buttered Asparagus and Beets. I found several recipes for beets but didn't like all the extras that were added...a cooked, buttered, beet is one of the most delightful flavors of childhood for me.

Horseradish and pickles on the side, to be Polish.

And Brioche with butter...now that is French...oh well.

Dinner was so delicious...I wanted it to last for hours and hours.

For dessert we had coffee, savored

"Strawberry Mascarpone Fruit Tart" with "Chocolate Covered Macaroons"

and Polish Easter Bread. And, played several rounds of "Dutch Blitz"

(..are you practicing K?)

We enjoyed a restful day, besides my tumble onto the kitchen floor with hot asparagus tossed up in the air! Yes, I slipped and fell on a patch of water...from the ice cube our dog was eating...slipped with a pot of hot asparagus I was taking to the sink to drain and landed on the floor. My family thought I passed out...I was just mad the asparagus was on the floor!!! But, I'm ok...a little sore...and shook up...but ok. No more ice cubes for the dog!

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."

~Winston Churchill