Best Thanksgiving Recipes

I don't have many Thanksgiving recipes. I usually spend this holiday in east Texas with my in laws and they do all the cooking. That suits me just fine. Thanksgiving cooking is less about meal prep and more performance art, so it's nice to not have the pressure. But here are some recipes you might consider adding to your own table this year.  Several of them were already featured in my Fall Recipe feature last month, so feel free to peruse that for even more seasonal inspiration.

Pie is usually how most of us enjoy our pumpkin during the fall. But for those who can't get enough pumpkin flavored baked goods, here's a recipe for pumpkin muffins featuring rye flour.  Pumpkin Curry Soup would make a delicious, yet slightly untraditional starter course for the big meal.
Sweet potatoes are an important part of Thanksgiving. Here's a casserole combining sweet potatoes and orange juice for a treat that's delicious, but not as a heavy and gooey as the traditional one with the marshmallows.

Apple crisp is an easy, but still seasonal alternative to pumpkin pie for dessert. And it tastes good with ice cream.
That doesn't seem like very many recipes, does it? Looks like I have some work to do this month.

UPDATE: True to my word, I've written up more of my Thanksgiving appropriate recipes for your eating enjoyment.  It's still not a huge amount, but I'm feeling more respectable now.

If you are looking for a non-traditional take on sweet potatoes, try these Chili Lime Roasted Sweet Potatoes. I guarantee you won't miss the butter and marshmallows.  For a bread course, check out these No Knead Dinner rolls. They are so easy, I make them for weeknight dinners. And if you need an easy to prepare, but super fancy looking appetizer, you definitely want to use my Holiday Baked Brie. It uses spicy pepper jelly for a surprising twist on a traditional appetizer.

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Fall Recipes Round Up

I noticed my old recipes featuring fall ingredients have been getting lots of hits off Google recently. It's that time of year, I suppose. So to make it easier for you to find my best fall recipes, I've gone ahead and rounded them up into one post for you.

Greens are definitely a fall/winter vegetable in my head. Here's my recipe for easy sautéed turnip greens  with poached eggs. This is a really easy week night dinner. Poached eggs would also go well with this recipe for perfect collard greens.

I haven't made this baked applesauce oatmeal in a long time. I should really dust this one off and make it again soon. But it's a great make ahead breakfast for any day of the week. I used to pack in small glass containers to eat at my desk at work. I've also got a great recipe for gluten free applesauce oatmeal muffins that's worth trying even if you don't an issue with gluten.

If your tomato plants are still producing, you can try your hand at a traditional southern favorite: fried green tomatoes.

We're going apple picking in north Georgia tomorrow, so I'll definitely be using this recipe for apple crisp soon. Fruit crisps are always an easy dessert.

It's pumpkin season! You should totally make this delicious pumpkin curry soup. It also goes well with butternut squash... If you're really adventurous, you can make your own pumpkin puree! Or you can buy a can and just make the pumpkin bread recipe in that link. I won't mind.

I hope these fall recipes inspire you to cook more with fresh, seasonal produce right now. Fall is probably my favorite time of year and the delicious fall treats certainly help with the love. Enjoy!

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What I'm Reading

I'm trying a new thing for the blog. My Google Reader is crammed full of interesting articles about food, local or otherwise. I've often thought about doing a weekly round up of articles I've read here, but its too easy for me to forget what I've read by the end of the week. Finally, I've found a solution: Facebook.

I've made a Facebook fan page for Northside Food. Every day, I share a couple links to articles focused on the local restaurants, seasonal produce and other related items. If you like the things I've written about here, it's pretty likely you'll be interested in what I share over there. And every week, I'll round up the best of those links and post them here for those who prefer that. We'll experiment with this and see how we like it.

This week on Northside Food, we've got a recipe for blueberry butter, as well as simple instructions for freezing your extra blueberries.

FIGO has a deal for free meatballs. You can read my review of FIGO from 2009 here.

To get these as I find them, along with more great recipes, articles, reviews and more, be sure to "like" Northside Food on Facebook.

Holiday Links

I think this nice, in between time between Christmas and New Years is my favorite part of the holidays. I'm off from work, but everything is done. There's no presents to buy, no cookies to bake, nothing that needs decorating. My husband has some time off, so we get to see movies together and have leisurely, late breakfasts of hot rolls and baked oatmeal. Usually I start futzing around for New Year's Eve celebrations at our house right about now, but my friend Diane is taking that on for us. So I get a nice, quiet week to catch up on housework and other projects.

In the spirit of that, here are some holiday appropriate links.

On the subject of brunch, I read two really great articles about preparing easy holiday brunches. Smitten Kitchen writes what I consider to be the definitive guide to holiday brunching. Her thesis? Easy, make ahead recipes that you can prep ahead of time, then throw in the oven the morning of while you shower. Gayle, of Grocery Cart Challenge fame, also submits some breakfast casserole recipes for holiday brunching in her weekly The Daily News column. While her recipe offerings tend to be a little heavy on the processed foods for my taste, two of these rely on fresh or frozen ingredients, which make them winners in my book.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've seen some interesting links about holiday food drives that I thought I'd share. The first was a recent NYT article about the secret preference that food banks won't tell you about: Cash. But if you think about it, it makes sense. What on earth can they do with three cans of pickled artichoke hearts and a cellophane package of ditalini? We feel good taking cans out of our own pantry to give to those in need, but I think too many use it just as an excuse to dump unwanted food guilt free. There's a really good discussion on Chowhound regarding donations to food banks, that I found to be worth skimming.

For myself, I just cleaned out my pantry on Monday and set aside some cans for donating to the North Fulton Community Charities, a non-denominational non-profit that helps families in North Fulton meet their basic needs. What am I donating? Cans of green beans and creamed corn. Our tastes have shifted after eating farm fresh vegetables all summer and canned veggies just taste like mush to us now. So I have about a dozen or so cans bought before, that are neatly boxed up and waiting for a chance to deliver them. Or it may be time to help my students organize another canned food drive.

And to round things out a bit, here's a couple links from online humor site, Cracked.com. First up, is a great discussion of tipping on the Cracked forums. Personally, I always try to tip at least 20 percent when I go out. I have far too many friends and family who work in food service and rely on tips to be comfortable otherwise. And one of today's feature articles is an examination of useless kitchen gadgets, some of which I'm sure were given or received as gifts this year. I've been mercifully gadget free in my kitchen the last few years, but it's only a matter of time before someone decides I just *need* an automatic donut machine. (Though I will say those pizza scissors look pretty sweet...)

Rainy Day Links

I don't know about the rest of you, but rain like we've had this week makes me sluggish and sleepy. I did manage to hit the Alpharetta Farmers Market and host a bridal shower yesterday, but today has been spent either reading or surfing the internet. I didn't even have to cook yesterday, as there were ample leftover finger sandwiches and mini-quiches for all. When I finally rouse myself this evening to cook, it'll be a nice hearty bowl of chicken veggie soup.

Anyways, since I'm trying to keep a regular update schedule around here again, I thought I'd share some of what I've been reading.

Eat Me Daily recently posted some of the ads for the Sydney International Food Festival. These really appeal to the social studies teacher in me, as it's food shaped like flags. Seriously, check them out. And in a related note of coolness, a friend showed me The United Steaks of America, which is a gallery of steaks cut to resemble...you guessed it, the United States.

Gale over at Grocery Cart Challenge posted her incredibly easy looking cheesecake recipe this week. I'm tempted to try it, as I've got all the ingredients sans the graham crackers in my kitchen already. But if I did that, then I'd be missing out on this also incredible looking cheese cake marbled brownies that Smitten Kitchen posted. Both of these sound OMG amazing. Maybe its a good thing I'm knee deep in purple frosted butter cookies right now. Otherwise I'd be happily smeared in chocolate right now and my husband frowning over the mess I've made of the kitchen again.

Here's an interesting article from TIME about the social aspect of obesity. Apparently you eat more with friends or with other overweight people. I believe it. I'm always catching myself thinking "I should order a salad now, so these people won't think I'm fat." Completely ignoring that they can just LOOK at me and see I'm fat. My ordering habits won't change their opinion.

Speaking of ordering the salad, Creative Loafing reposted an article claiming that the presence of salads and other healthy sounding options on menus makes you more likely to order the unhealthy options. Interesting. I haven't noticed that behavior in myself, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Bits and Bites

I have a lot of small stuff to say today, so I'm rolling it all together to make a longer post.

First, the bad news. Poster "Secret Chef" reports on Atlanta Cuisine that Slice has closed. Slice has been a favorite of mine for about a year, I think. So I am very sad to see it go. It does seem like some of the food has migrated over to Durty Kelly's Irish Pub, which has the same owners. So I know where to go when I feel nostalgic.

I ran across this article on Mother Jones this morning about Fiji Water, which made me REALLY glad I gave up drinking bottled water last year. It makes me sad that a bottled water company can somehow convince everyone that it's environmentally friendly. Its all smoke and mirrors, unfortunately. And I had no idea that Fiji itself was run by a dictatorship that relies on sales of Fiji Water to bolster its image overseas. Really interesting article.

In the New York Times, Michael Pollan explores the difference between Julia Child's TV show and the celebrity chefs on the Food Network. In short? Julia encouraged us (Yes, I'm old enough to have watched her on TV. Barely.) to get into the kitchen and take risks. The Food Network wants us to sit back and watch them perform culinary feats impossible for mere mortals, then assemble a meal made of branded products sold by their sponsors. I think he's got a point here. I quit watching the Food Network years ago, when I realized I wasn't learning anything from it.

My new favorite recipe this week is Peach Tomato Salad, courtesy of Cheap Healthy Good, one of my favorite blogs. Its nothing I ever would have thought to put together on my own, but now that I've had it, I don't know how I lived without. I had it for lunch on Friday and I'm serving it again tonight as a side dish alongside grilled bratwurst. I don't bother with peeling my fruit like the recipe calls for. That's far too fussy for me. I just chop it, dress it, and serve.