1. Christy assigned Debbie and me two dishes to bring to Thanksgiving Day dinner: a cranberry dish and a side featuring squash or sweet potatoes.
I told Debbie I'd take care of this assignment. That meant her job was to buy dinner wine.
I wanted to try out dishes we'd never had before at Thanksgiving and ended up consulting the very reliable New York Times online for recipes.
The first recipe to catch my eye featured couscous, one of my favorite pastas, and dried cranberries. I immediately fired off an email to Christy and Carol, hoping that using dried cranberries would be all right. Normally, we have cranberry dishes made by boiling raw cranberries or use cranberries out of a can.
I got the A-OK from my siblings, so I moved forward with the recipe entitled, "Couscous Salad with Dried Cranberries and Pecans".
I had pearl couscous on hand. They are my favorite kind of couscous so I didn't use wheat couscous as called for in the recipe.
I cooked up a batch (very easy) and once it cooled I put the couscous in a bowl and added dried cranberries, roughly chopped pecans, grated carrots, a bunch of green onions chopped, olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and coriander. I combined all of this and refrigerated it over night and today I set it out and when the bowl reached room temperature, I added chopped parsley and sage.
I subbed yams for the sweet potatoes in my other dish called "Sweet Potatoes Baked with Lemon".
It also was simple. Once I boiled the yams for about 30 minutes, let them cool, and peeled them, I chopped the yams into disks about a half an inch thick.
In a saucepan, I combined water, light brown sugar, about six inches worth of lemon peel, cinnamon, and nutmeg and simmered it for about ten minutes and then added butter to this syrup. Once the butter melted, I took the pot off the burner and added lemon juice.
I used half as much brown sugar as the recipe called for. I should have, then, also reduced the water. Then the sugar/lemon/butter mixture would have been thicker, been more of a syrup.
Next time!
I greased a baking pan, arranged the yam disks in it, and poured the "syrup" over the yams.
I refrigerated it over night and today let it reach room temp and then put in the oven for about twenty minutes at 425 degrees.
I have concluded, now that we've finished eating dinner, that my yams would have worked better had the liquid I poured over them been a thicker syrup.
BUT, I also think that the liquid I did make would make a great simple syrup and, mixed with rum, make a superb hot drink.
I need to get down to the liquor store -- and get over to Yoke's. I think real maple syrup would also be good in this syrup.
2. Our Thanksgiving dinner started with a tray of vegetables that Molly and Zoe arranged to look like a turkey complimented with Christy's Harvest Punch. We had some pre-dinner conversation in the living room and then moved to the dining table where Molly, Ryan, Christy, Carol, Paul, Zoe, Debbie, and I sat down, bowed our heads when Paul said grace, and then began passing the food around.
Carol and Paul roasted a turkey and made mashed potatoes and gravy. We had dinner rolls from a local home bakery. Christy prepared the dressing. The dishes I made were on the table. Zoe had requested cranberries out of the can. We also had pickled beets.
For dessert, Christy made a pumpkin cream cheese slab pie and Zoe baked a pecan pie.
I can't eat a lot of food at any one sitting. I had small samples of everything at the table, but wisely only had one small piece of pecan pie.
After dinner, Debbie and I had considered stopping in at The Lounge for a nightcap, but I had some business to take care of at home and, once we were in the house, we decided to stay put. We plan to go to The Lounge on Friday.
3. I stayed up to watch the 9:45 (or so) tilt between Gonzaga and the Portland State Vikings.
Portland State's squad, to its credit, played with high energy, tenacity, and aggression, but, really, to no avail.
Gonzaga's players are superior to Portland State's and Gonzaga had little trouble moving the ball, getting open shots, and hitting a high percentage of them.
In essence, to me, at least, Portland State was defenseless and so Gonzaga could showcase the many ways their players can score, especially against lesser players.
I watched this game to the end. Gonzaga hit the century mark, winning 102-78.
Gonzaga's Malachi Smith transferred into the Zags' program in the off season from the Univ. of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Last year, he was the Southern Conference's Player of the Year and tonight he seemed right at home against the PSU Vikings, leading the Zags' scorers with 23 points.
It was great to see Smith perform so well against PSU, and it would be a major boost to the Zags if Smith can also score, say in double figures, against better competition.
I'll be very interested to see how much he plays and how he performs against Purdue in Friday evening's game.
If he is emerging as a significant contributor to the Zags' efforts, this will be huge for Gonzaga.
I'm keeping my expectations moderate and will wait and see.
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