Category Archives: Accidentally Went to HomeGoods

Thanksgiving Wrap Up

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Cheers!

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Oh relax, its a pomegranate/apple juice spritzer. But Cousin Minecraft’s face does have a Dorothy Parker Algonquin Round Table “bored with you all” kind of look to him.

The Table

Because this is the smallest of McNamara/Guilfoile/Kuhn holidays, what with people going to various in-laws’ houses, we can, for this one-time only, fit at one table.

These are my new dishes that Kevin got me for my birthday.   My other ones are almost 20 years old and are starting to show their age.   I’ll still keep the ones that aren’t chipped, but I thought it was time to class things up around here.

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The aforementioned salted butter:

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The Final Menu

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The Gravy  While the gravy made with the turkey was good, it was not that different from the gravy made two weeks ago and frozen.  Therefore, that gravy wins as it doesn’t require sweating over the stove at the last minute until your previously flat bangs turn into water buffalo horns.

The Turkey from Epicurious.  Was done even faster than the recipe said (maybe because I only did one pan, not two).

The Pumpkin Cornbread Stuffing

The Salad.  I used the dressing from this Brussels sprout slaw from The View From Great Island but poured it over butter lettuce, toasted walnuts, shredded carrots and dried cranberries.

Also Colleen & Mitch’s cheesy potatoes, sweet potatoes, Mom’s stuffing, corn and fruit.  So for those counting, yes, that is 3 potato dishes and 2 stuffings.  For 13 people.   Irish Thanksgiving.

Dessert Table

Chocolate Pie from the Pioneer Woman.  Guitar Boy’s comment:  My life has been changed forever.   So I think he liked it.

Salted Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats   I’d seen so many food bloggers comment on Smitten Kitchen’s recipe that I had to try them.  Plus, Drummer Boy doesn’t really like cake, pie, pudding or candy which leaves him a bit stranded in the McNamara dessert oasis.

Apple Pie – from Kirschbaum’s bakery.   Why mess with greatness.

Cranberry Orange Scones from Trader Joes – because GG likes them.

And Aunt Colleen brought brownies.   Because you can’t have only 4 desserts for 13 people!

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Who Was There?

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But Really, Who Was the Cutest Person There?

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Why it was Colleen and Mitch’s grand-nephew, Sweet Baby D.

So what now?

Christmas is going up.  I’ll come back with a post about some of my favorite Christmas items a little later.  With respect to recipes on deck, I’ve got to take something to Rob and Nancy’s most awesome white elephant Holiday Party that we look forward to every year.  But my company’s party is the same night, so it’s going to have to be cookies that I can pre-wrap on the tray I’m giving them:

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And then Kevin can just bring the cookies with him when he picks me up at the train from the company party.  Note, the tray is not our white elephant gift as it is not impractical, inappropriate, useless or hilarious. I’ll let you know what we gave/received after the party.

Here are some of the possible choices on the cookies though:

The Pioneer Woman’s Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cookies

I’ve made them before and they are quite tasty.  However, the Chocolate Pistachio Sablés from Bon Appetit look delicious and fancy (you can tell they are fancy because of l’accent aigu over the e).    Food always tastes better with an accent aigu or accent grave.  It’s a fact.  I’m sure it’s on Wikipedia somewhere. Or it will be shortly.

If I find myself slacking off and sleeping more than 4 hours a night, I might do these wonderful, but time-intensive, Lemon Wreaths from Martha Stewart.

Now go get your weekend on!

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A Time to Give Thanks

As far as my young children are concerned, Thanksgiving is just a small step between Halloween and Christmas. A step where people eat “gross” food (except for canned, jellied cranberry sauce – that apparently is acceptable). So we were trying to make it more meaningful last week and in talking about what we are thankful for, the main thing the boys agreed we are thankful for is:

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Skunk, our cat.   Sure, we love our family and friends.  Happiness and health – good things as well, both boys agreed.  But survey says what we are most grateful for is our cat.   That, and Xbox.

Since we cannot show our appreciation and thanks to the folks at the Microsoft corporation, we instead agreed with the boys that if we are thankful for Skunk, we should show our thanks during this season by donating to the shelter that saved him.   So the boys gathered up their tooth fairy and the occasional chore money and we took it over to the shelter (Mom and Dad augmented the donation).

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The shelter couldn’t have been more gracious. Getting out of there without another kitten may qualify as a Thanksgiving miracle.

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But enough about giving thanks for the things we should, let’s talk about giving thanks for the little things that make Thanksgiving easier or more fun.  After all, this blog is about tabletops and recipes, written at night by someone who works 12 hour days sitting behind a desk and really isn’t physically fit or mentally competent to be offering any kind of life advice.  If you want to read some truly uplifting and spiritual discussions about how to live your life, I suggest you try my sister-in-law’s blog at Everyday Faith.

But as for me, on with the material possessions!

Serving Platter/Carving Board

This carving board from Cost Plus World Market:

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Isn’t it pretty?  I most often use it as a cheese board but this year will use it for the turkey.  And right now it’s $29.99 and, if you still have the Sunday Chicago Tribune around from 2 weeks ago, there’s a coupon in there for 10% off.   THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.   It’s a newspaper.  Yes, on paper.  Yes, we still get one.

Wishbones

Given that I have two boys who feel bad about eating animals (but won’t eat beans, kale, spinach, cheese or any other protein or iron based food – so chicken nuggets it is!),  I’m not sure how they’d feel about breaking a turkey’s furcula (look it up!).   But hey, tradition, so I had them make a bunch of these fun clay wishbones from Oh Happy Day.  Added bonus, everyone who comes for Thanksgiving can make a wish.

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By the way, I told Guitar Boy and Drummer Boy  that I think Turkey’s Furcula should be the name of their band someday “THANK YOU CHICAGO  – WE ARE TURKEY’S FURCULA – GOODNIGHT!!!”   They did not agree.

Salted Butter on Little Plates

I read this story at TheKitchn about salting butter. Now I don’t usually use butter on bread, but Faith Durand’s story about how this simple act – slicing butter and sprinkling smoked salt on it – would transform people’s opinion on bread and butter moved me to action. And I can tell you, it totally works, everyone comments on it. You know, because we need to find a way for Americans to eat more bread and butter. I’m a patriot really.

I use this smoked salt from Williams and Sonoma.

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 And I serve on little plates.  Such as these.  From TJ Maxx/HomeGoods.   I know.

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Chocolate turkeys:

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Because I can.   WorldMarket, Dylan’s Candy Bar and Godiva all have some.

Turkey – to heck with tradition

After seeing 3 or so articles from chefs about how we are all suckers for cooking a turkey whole, where the breast is done and dry way before the dark meat was fully cooked, I decided to try the turkey in parts. You show everyone the turkey for like 1 minute and then take it back to the kitchen for slicing, so why all the hype about a whole turkey? *shaking fist at Norman Rockwell in heaven*

The practice turkey from House Beautiful turned out well. The whole turkey, white and dark done to perfection, in 1 ½ hours.

However, we thought it needed a little something-something. So Thanksgiving turkey will be some combination of these two recipes from Epicurious: Deconstructed Holiday Turkey with Sage Gravy or Citrus Sage Roast Turkey Breast.

I’ve made the latter turkey breast before in testing out the stuffing recipe (see below), but kind of think brining could help. I’ve also pre-made the gravy (wha?!) because TheKitchn told me I could. We’ll do a gravy taste-test on Thanksgiving to see if TheKItchn was right. Mmmmmmh, gravy taste-test.

I’ll let you know how everything turns out afterwards – in between cleaning up Thanksgiving and putting up Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Halloween Redux

Here are various pictures of the crew:

at Alvin’s costume birthday party:

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carving pumpkins:

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and actual Halloween.

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Check out the detail on Fake Sister’s home made by Dad Up costume.  Amazing.

New decorating idea – cheap snakes from Target dollar section stuck in my flowers.

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 Green pepper ghouls:

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Oranges for the kids – everyone knows that kids DEMAND healthy snacks when they return from trick-or-treating in the Illinois Halloween snow.  Yep, snow.

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And, best drink from Halloween Pizza Night:

Vampire Blood Margaritas (aka Pomegranate Lime Margaritas from Howsweeteats)

As I had to make 2 pitchers of them, after juicing 12 limes I decided that bottled lime juice is no longer as fake tasting as I tend to think it is.  And it tasted fine mixed with the fresh in the drink.

Dipped top of pitcher in corn syrup mixed with red food coloring and let it drip down the outside for spooky effect.  But forgot to take a picture, because, well, 2 pitchers of pomegranate margaritas might explain why.

NEW MONTH

But, now that it’s November and Halloween is behind us (other than the 12 hours of putting away all the Halloween décor), I made a mini Thanksgiving. I was inspired to do so when I saw pumpkin/cornbread croutons at Trader Joe’s. Then I found this recipe for Pumpkin Cornbread Stuffing at The View from Great Island.

Use 2 boxes of TJ’s pumpkin cornbread croutons.  3 out of 5 Wileys surveyed recommend this stuffing.  But quick, it’s a seasonal item so HOARD NOW.   Among other things, I combined it with the Citrus Sage Roast Turkey Breast from Epicurious.

I’ll be back when Christmas season approaches.

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Don’t forget to set your clocks back!

Happy Daylight Savings Time everyone!

 

Welcome to October

Well, it’s official. I have more Halloween storage bins than Christmas storage bins (and I have a loooooot of Christmas storage bins). So it only took 2 days to get all the Halloween stuff up with help from my 10 and 8 year-old Halloween gravestone-placement consultants. I wanted to share some of my favorite décor items.

These are my new platters. I love, love, love them. I would marry them, but I don’t think they could get all the Halloween bins down from the attic with the efficiency that Kevin can. They are from Cost Plus World Market online:

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Hello gorgeous! From TJ Maxx/HomeGoods:

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Candles from Martha Stewart for Grandinroad a few years ago.  Ghostie and pumpkin from TJ Maxx/HomeGoods:

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Nosferatu painting in the bathroom – from Ebay, can’t read the artist’s name very well anymore, looks like it says Renee Backer:

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Pillows for the kitchen table bench from TJ Maxx/HomeGoods (are you sensing a theme here?): image

My favorite Halloween picture of Guitar Boy and Fake Sister (they were 4 & 5).  Frame from TJ Maxx/HomeGoods:

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My favorite Halloween picture of Drummer Boy.  Frame from Kohls:

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 Here’s what the outside of the house looks like during the day:

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And at night:

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Soooo, it’s pretty clear that I have a TJ Maxx/HomeGoods “problem” that needs to be confronted.

Moving on.

What food is being made to celebrate this magical season you may ask?   Well, it depends.  Are we talking about the 9th Avenue Halloween Block Party?  Allison’s Costume-Mandatory 6th Birthday Party?  The High School/College/Old Friends We Never See Halloween Pizza Night Open House?  Or are we talking about actual Halloween (on a Friday – woot!)?  It is a crowded Field Notes party planner, that’s for sure.

Food on deck:

Crack Dip with Tomatoes from Whiteonricecouple.com

(see picture from prior post)

White Pizza Dip from Howsweeteats (my newest blog obsession)

Apple Cider Sangria from Howsweeteats (see above)

Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cookies from The Pioneer Woman  (who is now designing her own line of cookware – jealous!)

Candied Pumpkin Seeds from Healthygreenkitchen

Cheddar Chive Cheese Pumpkin from Jamhands

Creamy Tomato Soup from Howsweeteats (really, I need to stop bothering this woman).

And in case you were wondering, Guitar Boy will be going to various parties as a crypt keeper/angel of death (need to get multiple uses out of our scythe!) and trick or treating as Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy. Drummer Boy will be a faceless specter at the parties and the 10th Doctor Who for Halloween.   Because out here, one costume is simply not enough.

Where could these kids get their sense of Halloween excess from?  I wonder.

Happy Halloween everyone!