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Recipe: grilled lobster

Remember the surf we had for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday?

it stirs the memories and some salivation

Tonight we continued the debauchery with a little bit o’ turf. I wanted to serve it with potatoes and sweet potatoes. I think it was a very good idea to postpone the beef until tonight otherwise I may have wound up in food coma or worse.

nice and standard tenderloin

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I suppose people have completed their festive meals, had their family brawls, drunk too much, and are ready to pass out by now? Ahhh, the good old days. Jeremy and I try not to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday. Driving or flying with potential delays, death, or dismemberment due to weather or stupidity or both can really take years off of your life. We really do cherish our sanity. This year we turned down a few invitations and opted for a quiet meal at home.

As expected, I ditched the notion of a turkey dinner in favor of something easier and in my opinion, far tastier. Rather than one ginormous blowout meal, we grazed through three courses starting at noon. My original plan involved surf and turf, but driving home from the grocery store earlier in the week, I came to the conclusion that I was planning an obscene amount of food for Thanksgiving. Thus we had surf and surf and surf… Turf got booted to tomorrow.

In the morning I prepared parts of dessert and made some treats for my pup. I cook all the time, so much so that the dog will snooze under the kitchen table as I work or wander into the great room to soak up all of the sunlight striking the Earth’s surface. She knows better than to beg while I prep. Somehow, she clues in when I am making something for her and she’ll come around sniffing at the edge of the table or she’ll plant herself squarely in front of me, waiting ever so patiently…

kaweah loves squirrels

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Recipe: sugar plums

As a child, I only knew of sugar plums through The Nutcracker and Twas the Night Before Christmas. Several years ago when I had a subscription to Saveur, I jotted down a recipe for sugar plums, mostly because I had never tasted one before. These sugar plums are confections, not the fruits that you can read about on Wikipedia. They are quite easy to make and tend to be a huge hit with people who either don’t care for chocolate or just enjoy the autumny spices and dried fruits. It’s a heady aroma that wafts through your house when you make a batch: orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, toasted almonds, honey.

almonds, dried dates, dried apricots

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