Looking Forward to Thanksgiving

My all-time favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It's because of the food of course. Thanksgiving is also one of the main reasons I can't be a true vegetarian. It's not that I like to eat turkey meat so much. Rather, it's all the other food that the turkey juices touch. That sounds so gross!

I love stuffing - and yes, it must be stuffed and cooked in the bird, no matter how that goes against all of my sanitation-freakish ways. I love picking the burnt stuffing out of the turkey while it sits on the counter to cool. I love dipping said burnt stuffing in the drippings. I love home made giblet gravy on mashed potatoes. I love picking the dark meat out of the leftovers container.

But most of all, I love the smell of the turkey roasting. There is no better food-related smell, in my opinion.

Happy Thanksgiving

Free Cruet with Purchase of Two Seasoning Packets!

I am slowly turning into my grandmother. I bought a Good Seasons salad dressing kit. It came with two packets of seasonings for Italian dressing and free cruet. What the heck is a cruet? It's that glass salad dressing bottle that was probably in your parents' or grandparents' refrigerator when you were a kid. But let me tell you, if you add good extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar to the seasoning packet, you'll get really yummy salad dressing!

Since the purchase of my Good Seasons kit, my salads have gone up a notch. The same time I bought the kit, I also bought a bag of fancy baby salad greens. (I usually buy Romaine or green leaf lettuce.) These greens and the semi home-made salad dressing make for a delightful salad! No need for cucumbers or out-of-season tomatoes. I did add some goat cheese, walnuts, and dried cranberries, though, and it was really good.

Along with this all this salad, we've been eating a lot of home made pizza. I hosted a pizza party for my Ask This Old House television debut and we had some dough left over. I made the dough in my bread machine for the first time and was pleased with the results. Some of the toppings that found their way onto my pizzas were carmelized onions, broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes on one type of pizza, and red bell peppers, kalamata olives, and goat cheese on the other.

To finish off my cooking spree, last night for dinner, I made ravioli with pumpkin sauce. It was pretty good, but it will probably be a one-time recipe for us. The sauce was pretty simple:

• One 15 oz can of pureed pumpkin


• 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth


• 3 Tbsp brown sugar


• 1/2 tsp cinnamon


• 1/2 tsp ground ginger


• 1/8 tsp nutmeg


• 1 Tbsp butter


• dash of cayanne pepper (not part of the original recipe)


• salt and pepper (also not in the original recipe)


• 1/4 cup sour cream


• parmesean cheese to sprinkle on top of the ravioli


• One 30 oz bag of frozen cheese ravioli

Mix all of the sauce ingredients except for the sour cream and simmer for 10 minutes. When ravioli are cooked, take sauce off heat and stir in sour cream. Pour sauce over ravioli and sprinkle with parm cheese. With this, I served more salad, and bread machine bread (Krusteaze Honey Wheatberry, which is really good for a mix).

My Ask This Old House Airs Tomorrow!

The episode of Ask This Old House where Tom Silva builds window boxes for me is scheduled to air tomorrow, Thursday, Nov 11 at 8:30 p.m. on GBH 44 in Boston. (The channel number may be different if you have cable.) It will air again on Saturday, Nov 13 at 5:30 p.m. on WGBH 2.

If you aren't in the Boston area, you can find out when the show airs in your area by checking here.

You can watch my 15 minutes of fame (or humiliation, depending on how it goes) on public television! It'll probably be more like 6 minutes - I'm sure they edited a lot out!