Refrigerator, We Have a Problem

Namely, I've blown through all my Thanksgiving leftovers.

The first night it was Turkey Tortilla Soup.

The second night it was Turkey Enchiladas.

This morning I used up the last three cups of stuffing in a frittata recipe that I featured in last year's post-Thanksgiving post. That leaves only about two cups of mashed potatoes which will soon find their way into soup, bread, or be fried in little cakes.

If you're still fortunate enough to have some leftovers, check out these easy recipes.

Turkey Tortilla Soup
1 c. chopped onion
2 cloves minced garlic
2 c. shredded turkey
1 c. corn (optional)
1/4 c. wine
Pinch of crushed red peppers
1 t cumin
1 t Worcestershire sauce
1 t chili powder
2 (14.25-ozs cans) chicken broth or equivalent
1 can diced tomatoes OR 1 lg can tomato sauce or 1 jar salsa

Saute onions and garlic in Tbsp olive oil in a soup pot. Add everything else. Reduce heat and simmer 1 hour. Serve topped with shredded cheese, sour cream and crushed tortilla chips. 4-5 servings.

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Turkey Enchiladas
1 c. sour cream
sprinkle of cilantro to taste
1.5 t cumin
2 c diced cooked turkey
2 c shredded cheddar, separated into 1 c for filling and 1 c for topping.
1/2 jar salsa

6 8-inch flour tortillas
6 ozs cream cheese, cut into long slices
can enchilada sauce

Combine filling ingredients. Divide into equal portions. Fill each tortilla, laying a strip of cream cheese on top. Line the enchiladas up in an 8x8 pan and pour enchilada sauce over. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Cover and bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 15 minutes until cheese browns.

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My other food-related problem is that the Bellevue Farmers Market season has ended (alas). I continue to buy my meats, poultry and eggs through the Skagit River Ranch Bellevue Buyers Club (delivered monthly to a centralized Bellevue location), but if I want local produce and specialty foods, I'll have to venture to another farmers market. It just so happens that a college student in Santa Barbara has developed a helpful tool to locate farmers markets for those times when we are out and about.

The program, called "Find the Data," allows you to enter "Bellevue" under the Location (state, city, or zip) field. Choose Bellevue, Washington, hit Enter, and a list of local markets pops up. Although clicking on a market name will not give you the hours and start and end dates, if any, there is a link to that market's particular website. It's a work in progress, and a helpful start!

During the Market off-season I'll be keeping up with the weekly posts on food, nutrition, foodie book reviews, and more, so check back often.

The Thanks that Keep on Giving

Nothing says it like a Hand Turkey

Yesterday my youngest drew up an 80-item list of things she was thankful for. I'm thrilled to report I topped it, well above "Clocks" (#17), "Candy and Cake" (#34), and even "Weapons" (#72). "God" made a pathetic appearance at #80, barely beat out by "Couches." That's always a tough call.

While the eight-year-old's list began to sound like those "Anniversary Gifts" booklets they hand out in Hallmark stores--Silk, Cloth, Wood, etc.--she nevertheless had the right idea, in this season of thankfulness.

Gratitude researcher (yes, there is such a job) Robert Emmons of UC Davis has found that people who practice gratitude demonstrate greater overall well-being. To take just two examples, he discovered that,

1. In an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003) [emphasis mine]. And,
   
2. A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others).

It can be too easy during the holiday season for adults to focus on the negative: negotiating logistics, difficult family situations, the stress of gift-giving, lines at the post office, planning the giant feasts. Consider this post a gratitude intervention and feel free to come up with your own Top Ten List!

Top Ten Wonderful Things about Thanksgiving:

1. The food. Whether you eat in a restaurant, buy your feast at the grocery story, potluck it with friends and family, or slave over the whole thing yourself, Thanksgiving kicks off the season of deliciousness. If I ever go completely berserk from not keeping a gratitude journal, end up on Death Row and am offered a final meal, I just might ask for a Thanksgiving meal. It's all about the stuffing and cranberry sauce, the green-bean casserole and pumpkin pie. Mmmm...


2. It's not Christmas. No gift pressure. Yeah, maybe you bring your host a bottle of wine, but that's it.


3. We're stuffed, not starving. Think about the pilgrims and how touch-and-go things always were food-wise. Thank heaven for Native-American generosity in those early days and the abundance of our modern food supply.


4. Thanksgiving celebrates leftovers. As I've mentioned before, so many times leftovers get pushed to the back of our fridge until they liquefy or grow nasty gray-green fur. But Thanksgiving leftover creativity has become a tradition in itself. Turkey soup, turkey enchiladas, turkey a la king. Cranberry sauce appears on sandwiches and made into quick bread. When in doubt or suffering from lack of imagination, we just eat the meal itself, over and over until we run out.


5. Thanksgiving is all about opening our doors to each other. The Pilgrims and the Native Americans again. We gather with family or friends or strangers or a mix of all three! And that's how it should be, traditionally speaking. No one cares about 4th-of-July-Barbecue Orphans or Arbor-Day Loners, but Thanksgiving's a whole 'nother story.


6. Time off! (Unless you work for the government, in which case you have already received your reward.)


7. Nap time is sanctioned. Thanks to the early meal and the game on, everyone catches up on some sleep.


8. You don't have to dress up or give out candy. Call me the Halloween curmudgeon, but I consider this a real bonus.


9. We take a moment to compile lists like these. One family I know has everyone go around the table and name something they're thankful for before they can dig in. If you know anyone with a gratitude problem, this can be a real motivator.


10. Thanksgiving leads to Christmas. The second my husband puts down his fork, it's officially Advent. The lights go on. The Christmas music goes on and away we go.


Happy Thanksgiving! May your turkey come out juicy and your rolls lofty!


(This post is shared by both my blogs today.)

Last Farmers Market of the Season!

From Attitude of Gratitude website

Thanksgiving approacheth, and it's worthwhile to remember our causes for gratitude, as I sit typing this with dinner unmade and my 7th grader in tears beside me over her math. I am grateful for free public education. I am grateful that, prepared or not, there will eventually be food on the table. I am grateful for a three-day week next week, followed by family time and the tastiest meal of the year, in my humble opinion.

For the umpteenth annual time, we can pledge to eat at least one local food at Thanksgiving. Piece of cake, considering the riches of our local produce. Last Saturday at the Bellevue Farmers Market, I found different potato varieties, brussels sprouts, winter squash, apples for pie, cheese for the cheese plate, bread to cube into stuffing, fresh parsley--even first-course soups! Eating local captures the original Thanksgiving spirit, when shipping exotic viands thousands of miles was simply not an option. Eat what you could find or whatever had been put by earlier, throw in your lot with your friends and neighbors, and give thanks.

Enjoy the following links to some of my favorite seasonal recipes:

Elena's delicious Butternut-Squash-Apple Soup. I made this the other day with squash I'd already roasted. So easy and happens to be vegan, if one of your guests is!

Cook's Illustrated Green Bean Casserole. I love this dish in any form, even the open-a-can-of-cream-of-mushroom kind, but this one is over-the-top yummy.

If you don't do mashed potatoes, try this simple Gratin Dauphinois from Cooking Light. (I do substitute whole milk for the nonfat business.)

And, a repeat from an earlier post, the dinner rolls I make ahead and freeze every Thanksgiving and Christmas, adapted from Betty Crocker's Best Christmas Cookbook.


Besides grabbing your feast fixings, be sure to stock up for the long dry spell. Loki Fish offers a discount when you buy 10 lbs, so I'll be loading up on Sockeye filets. If you have a favorite sausage or other meat from Olsen Farms or Samish Bay, now's the time. Artisan bread from Ble or Snohomish Bakery freezes beautifully. Depending on how I plan to serve it, I either slice and freeze (for sandwiches) or throw it in whole.

And if you've managed to dodge hosting Thanksgiving or Christmas, hostess gifts abound at the Market. I've shown up with Jonboy caramels, Pete's Perfect Butter Toffee or a jar of Handmade by Rome jam--the fig with vanilla is fabulous on a cheese tray.

My blog will continue weekly during the off-season, but this Saturday will be our last chance to run into each other live and in person! See you at the Market.

Eating Local, Island Style

Hula Grill courtesy Mike George

I just had the best brussels sprouts. On Maui, of all places. And they were local, too. You would think, with its sunshine and year-round growing season, local food would be more of a thing in Hawaii, but, as every tourist knows, who has been and gone bug-eyed over the prices in grocery stores and restaurants, Hawaii imports most of its food. Up to 85%, to be specific. And, with gas at $4.46/gallon in Kahului, well--you do the math.

Even on vacation, the thought of eating local lures this Urban Farm Junkie, so as I lolled on the beach and worked my way through no less than five books, I did some research on local-food possibilities in the Lahaina-Ka'anapali area and am passing my hard-won knowledge to you, all in the Spirit of Aloha and the hopes that you will find yourself on the beach in Maui this winter.

First off, those brussels sprouts. If you can tear yourself away from Front Street in Lahaina, drive your dorky rental car up the hill to Starnoodle, where they do Hawaiian (and the pan-Asian influences that go into Hawaiian) creative, fresh, and local. So instead of the kalua pork and cabbage found at the luau, there were brussels sprouts with bacon bits, served with a puree of kim chee and a swath of spices. Had I stomach enough and time, I would have loved to sample every "sharing plate," but I had to make room for the house-made noodles, in my case the Singapore Noodles with chicken, shrimp, vegetables, and a tasty yellow curry sauce. The kids snacked on the steamed pork buns, and we washed it all down with green tea spiked with orange and pummelo.

More on the beaten (tourist) track, we ate at the Hula Grill (lunch) and Cane and Taro (dinner) in Ka'anapali's Whalers Village. Both featured local beef, fresh-caught fish and island-grown produce. May I just say that I'm a sucker for Maui onions? Every bit as good as our own Walla Walla Sweets. The Molokai-grown sweet potatoes and Maui Gold pineapples float my boat as well. As for fresh coconut...well, I've been longing for years to taste again that Lappert's Haupia Custard Ice Cream I had on Oahu along about 1999--never seen it since, though I always, always look.

We did discover, finally, Ono Gelato in Lahaina, where the luscious flavors are made onsite with local ingredients where possible. I had Coconut, which, while it was no Lappert's Haupia Custard, was quite tasty and chewy, served alongside always-satisfying Dulce de Leche.

I was hoping to visit an actual farmers market on Maui, of which I saw several advertised, but alas--they were nowhere nearby. Or not near enough for me to overcome my lolling-on-the-beach inertia or our reluctance to drive the awful full-size Mercury cruiser we rented, which became the source of many of a ship-themed joke when we had to park it somewhere and still have room enough to get in or out or turn it around. That and the aforementioned $4.46/gallon, baby. The island of Maui, as you may know, is shaped like the head and torso of a well-endowed woman. Our hotel was on her forehead, but the nearest farmers markets were on her neck, clavicle and earlobe. Therefore, I leave that research to you, my intrepid readers!

Speaking of intrepid, our Bellevue Farmers Market continues through the Saturday before Thanksgiving (two more weeks!), and in November, when not in Maui, the Urban Farm Junkie's thoughts turn to her favorite feast. See you at the Market this Saturday from 10-3! Remember that many sides like rolls, green bean casseroles, cranberry sauce, and pies can be made ahead and frozen. I may just have to pick up some brussels sprouts early, though, to see if I can still capture that Maui experience. Clearly we need a kim chee vendor!