Using up the leftovers

I did some baking yesterday to use up some of my Thanksgiving leftovers. These cranberry orange scones are from a very old Cooking Light recipe. I used leftover cranberries and buttermilk. It was great because I had everything I needed in the house. It turns out The Boy really likes these. I plan on making another batch (I still have more cranberries) but will use whole wheat flour instead.



I have some leftover pumpkin puree that I put in the freezer. I plan to make cookies soon.

Boiling our water

The City of Portland issued its first ever boil water notice yesterday. And they issued it right in the middle of our Thanksgiving dinner. Nice.

Other then that, the dinner went really well. I feel like I passed some sort of right of passage. I am now more of an adult because I cook my first Thanksgiving turkey and it turned out really well. I have no pictures. You'll just have to take my word for it.

I don't know why I thought I'd post more this week. I cooked but didn't take photos. I find it hard to take pictures of food. That and Thursday's dinner wasn't a real success. The potpie didn't set so it was more like chicken soup with biscuits then pot pie. At least it tasted good.

One down

Two to go. Actually three. There are three moms pregnant in our play group. One of them is my knitting buddy so I do only have two more on these blankets to help knit. I have something else in mind for my knitting buddy.

When did this become a blog about cooking?

Today was a big day of cooking. I made the squash soup using this recipe. I used the squash from yesterday's post instead of butternut squash. I turned out pretty good. I think it needed a bit more spice. I didn't get any pictures but might tomorrow.

I also baked some cheddar wheat bread from a recipe that I found in some magazine ages ago. Its super easy and super yummy. I didn't get an photos of it either. But I might tomorrow.

Then I baked the pie above. Actually, I baked two. My mom took home the second pie. They were a test run of these recipes. I made the filling from scratch using a sugar pumpkin from a previous farm share. There was another sugar pumpkin in our Thanksgiving share. I really liked the consistency of the pie but I think it needs more spice.

The pie crust is frozen and came two to a package. I don't have custard cups like the recipe suggests so I made two pies. I used Pacific Natural Foods Organic Frozen Traditional 9 Inch Pie Shells and was quite impressed. I'll probably use them again for this weekend as I'll be too stressed out about the turkey to make pie crust from scratch.

Too pretty to eat?

This photo doesn't do this "sweet meat" squash justice. Its a beautiful soft green blue. I'm going to cook it tomorrow for a squash soup.

I'm hoping to have a lot of food photos this week. We're hosting two Thanksgiving meals. One will include cooking my first turkey. What a week!

All done

Mission accomplished! This was my best year yet for preserving. I made raspberry, strawberry and peach freezer jam. And I canned nectarines, pears and 12 half-pints of apple butter. Not bad for a sleep deprived, lazy ass mama.

Next year I'm going to do tomato sauce. I swear I am.

a late night's work

I stayed up late (for me) canning 12 pints of Bartlett pears. Today I'm working on apple butter.