Happy Thanksgiving!!! If you're Canadian!

Tonight is Canadian Thanksgiving, or Columbus day.  Being Canadian (I grew up there) and living in the US is tough sometimes.  Unforutnately Jon doesn't get Columbus Day off.  It's not exactly the biggest holiday.  Ha ha!  Does it even get celebrated?  So we rarely go up to visit my family on Canadian thanksgiving.  I really miss that family celebration.  Maybe next year I'll ask him to request it off.
 

Don't worry, the chicken isn't burnt, but the seasoning did get a tad dark.

Thank goodness for technology.  I did get to video chat a bit with my family all gathered at Mom's house this evening.  The funniest part was that after I wished the aunts, uncles, and cousins Happy Thanksgiving my mom took me on a tour of the food with the webcam on her droid tablet.  Ha ha ha!!  Of course, the star of the evening. 

They had the usual line up at most American thanksgivings - Turkey, stuffing, yams, pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes.  They also had a few exotic extras (not traditional Canadian fare, just for fun) like pineapple rice, some sort of fish, meatballs topped with yams, and baklava. 

Since I didn't have time to go hunting for a turkey this weekend or this morning (and since a turkey won't fit in my freezer) we had chicken thighs seasoned like a turkey would be, with a slightly gross stuffing experiment  (hence no blog recipe), and yams.  It was a far, sad, cry from a thanksgiving dinner, but the yams satisfied my Thanksgiving craving until the US version comes around. 

The recipe for the yams may come from a magazine.  I'm not honestly sure.  My mom has been making them for Thanksgiving and Christmas for a long time, but I don't think it's one of those family heirloom type of recipes.  It will become one though.  They're sooooo good. 

Actually the recipe calls for sweet potatoes, but we use those red/orange yams most often.  I didn't have pecans on hand tonight so I used walnuts.  Don't do it.  The walnuts had too much bitterness.  Always use Pecans!!
All you Americans will have to try this come November. 

Here's the recipe.  I only made half a recipe tonight since I wasn't feeding the extended family.  My mom usually doubles it for family gatherings and there's rarely any left over.


Sweet Potato (But really Yam) Supreme
(from Mom)

Ingredients
4 cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes (yams) *just boil them until they're mashable.2 tbsp. cream or milk
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. paprika

topping:
1/2 c brown sugar, packed
1/3 c butter

1 c whole pecans

Method

1. Thoroughly mix potatoes, cream, salt and paprika and spread it into a greased casserole dish.

2.  Heat the brown sugar and butter over low heat, stirring constantly, until the butter is barely melted.   It's important not to overcook this, or the topping will harden when the casserole is heated and become more like a brulee top.

3.  Spread butter/sugar topping over the yams and cover with pecans.

4.  You can refrigerate this until it's ready to heat or pop it into a 350 degree oven until bubbling, then serve promptly.

(Note from mom:  "I always remove the butter and brown sugar from the heat when there is a piece of hard butter left.  This way I am sure to not over cook it.  The butter melts anyways when mixed with the sugar after taking it off of the heat.")

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Today I am thankful for a wonderful family, all the blessings you have given us, the children that run around us, the food that we eat, the roof over our heads, the webcams and computers that connect us, and the faith that we have in You.  Amen. 

Wing Night with Sweet Potato Fries

So my meal planning white board for today said Lamb Tikka Masala.  As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I didn't make Lamb Tikka Masala.  There are two reasons for this:

1.  I was pretty much a blob on the couch yesterday and didn't get around to thawing the lamb to marinate overnight.

2.  I realized when I looked at the lamb this morning (thinking maybe, maybe it could work) that it's not really enough lamb for 2 people.  So I'll have to get more lamb for that recipe!

Tonight I went with one of my easy standards.  Wings. 

I made regular wings and hot wings.  Jon's a hot wing fan, but the kids don't really like spicy food and I wasn't really up for the spice today.  Actually, making two types of wings doesn't really add very much to the preparation, but you'll see that in the recipe/instructions below. 

Another favorite side dish for tonight were our sweet potato fries.  I call them fries, but they're baked, so I suppose you could call them roasted sweet potato sticks if you really like being technical.  One great thing about making these two things together is that with my oven and the baking trays I happen to use for these recipes I can get the chicken and the fries in there at the same time and they both turn out well!.

(Sidenote:  If you ever want to see a cute kid stuff his face as fast as possible, just come over here when I make sweet potato fries.  I wish I had taken a video of Michael eating these things.  They're his favorite!  It's almost like he's trying to play chubby bunny with them.  Too bad he can't actually say, "Chubby bunny."  We'll have to try to teach him that next time.)

The wing recipe isn't anything fancy and I didn't really get it from anywhere.  I suppose it accumulated in my brain after watching and reading about all the different ways to make breaded chicken.  I may have gleaned something from the back of the Frank's red hot bottle about how to spice up regular chicken wings though.  So here you have it.  Val's version for oven breaded wings.


Wings!

Ingredients
1.5 pounds wings and drummettes
1 cup buttermilk (or 1tbsp lemon juice + milk to make 1 cup)
1 cup ground oats (magic bullet is great for this!)
1 cup oat bran cereal (Jon's breakfast pulverized by magic bullet)
1tbsp onion powder
2tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
3tbsp butter
3 tbsp hot sauce (we like Frank's)

Method
1.  In a medium bown mix together oats, cereal, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

2.  In another bowl combine wings and buttermilk.  Make sure the wings are well coated.

3.  Take each wing and dredge it in the oat mixture and lay on a baking sheet covered with foil.

4.  Bake wings in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes.



I know, I should have used a larger pan tonight.  I underestimated the size of the wings.



5.  Melt the 3tbsp butter and after the wings have baked for 25 minutes drizzle them with 2tbsp butter.

6.  For hot wings mix 1tbsp melted butter and the hot sauce, stir well, then drizzle over wings. 



7.  Return wings to the oven for another 5 minutes.



These are how Jon's hot wings turned out.  I neglected to get a pretty picture of them on his plate!

Sweet Potato Fries (you can use yams too!)

Ingredients

2 large sweet potatoes cut into sticks (shaped like fries?  Ha ha!)

2tbsp oil

salt and pepper to taste

Method

1.  Toss sweet potatoes in oil and season with salt and pepper.

2.  Put the sweet potatoes in the oven with your chicken on a separate rack!  Try to make sure they're on opposite sides of the oven so the sweet potatoes aren't covered.  Or just bake at 400 for 25 minutes.

If you're baking your fries and the chicken wings at the same time make sure to check on the fries when your chicken wings are ready for their butter or hot sauce.  I wasn't so careful tonight and we ended up with a few blackened casualties.  It also helps if you cut your sweet potatoes in uniform shapes so that they all cook evenly.  I (as I think I have told you before) am not an expert at cutting things yet.  Good thing Jon likes the taste of burnt things.  How lucky am I?

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father,

  thank you for the blessing of our children.  They bring such joy to our home and give us so many opportunities to grow in holiness.  Help us to see those opportunities and give us the grace to make use of them.  Amen.

UIOGD