Thanksgiving

I just wanted to write a little bit about my Thanksgiving, and what I am thankful for in this holiday season. I really wanted to do this earlier, but I just haven't been on a computer to type this out during my extended holiday weekend.

I have not been someone who has really struggled all that much in my life, I really have been quite fortunate in most areas. I think that even the negative things that have happened in my life only it make it that much easier to appreciate all of the positive things.

Things I am thankful for (not an all inclusive list):

I am thankful for my family. I have 2 supportive and caring parents, both of whom I have great relationships with. We might not talk every day, but I am extremely thankful for them. I also have 2 great brothers who might not live in the same area, but I am always happy to have them.

I am thankful for my friends. I have some great friends in my life, both old and new. I have especially enjoyed making new friends in the past few years, I am glad to have each of them in my life.

I am thankful to have found some passions in life. I like writing on this blog. Its not about how many people read it, its more about being able to write in general, I like to have that kind of an outlet in my life. I also love movies, and thinking about movies, writing about movies, talking about movies, and just movies in general. I also am thankful for the ability to cook, I like trying new foods, I love cooking new recipes and everything in between. I prefer to make things at home rather than buying them when I can. I am always looking for new things to make or try.

I am thankful for my health, and the fact that I have not yet had to deal with any major health issues myself, knock on wood. I may have dealt with some issues mental healthwise, but I feel great in that department too, I have done a lot of work to get here, but also getting through depression has helped make me who I am today. I would not want to change that for the world.

The final thing I will list that I am thankful for is humor. I love my ability to laugh at things, I believe that I am able to find humor in so many different things in life, and I never take myself too seriously. I think humor makes it easier to deal with so many different things in life. I think the fact that I have spent a long time dealing with depression has helped me appreciate the humor in life.

Now that we have covered some of the things that I am thankful for, I want to show some of the foods m family had for thanksgiving:

We started off the day with some cranberry oatmeal bake made with steel cut oats and fresh cranberries, it was really good, I had a few servings of it over the weekend.

The table was set for our dinner, I was the one drinking the ginger ale, everyone else had wine with their dinner.

We set the food up as a buffet because there was not enough space on the table for all of the food.

A loaf of bauernbrot that a a friend of mine was able to get made at the bakery she works at, it was great, I could definitely remember the flavor of it from when we lived in Austria, the large loaf did not survive the weekend.

This was my main contribution to the feast, my mom had some purple and yellow potatoes that we baked with some garlic, oil, and herbs. The result was delicious, and even though it wasn't mashed potatoes, I still enjoyed them a lot.

Wild rice dressing made with dried cubes of my mom's own bread, I loved the flavor of the dressing, it went well with everything. The other dish was a cranberry baked squash, I tried it, but it was still squash so it wasn't for me.

Some home made green bean casserole, made with green beans from my mom's garden, home made cream of mushroom soup, and bread crumbs made with homemade bread and onion.

An apple crumble pie and pumpkin pie, the apples were locally grown, I helped to peel them and got the other pie ingredients together, there was a nice crumb topping on it, the tart apples worked perfectly in the pie. The other is the same pumpkin pie we have been having my whole life, it if ain't broke, don't fix it!

My place with all of the different items on it, the turkey we had was a fresh Wiscosnsin turkey. I was very happy to have a Thanksgiving with lots of home grown and home made ingredients, and we also wanted to use as many local products as we could in our dinner.

Peter's Cooking Diary #11

So last week I made my chili, but as usual I adjusted the recipe, I am always adjusted things each time I make it and based on what is on sale too. This time around I tried to use lots of spices out of my spice cabinet instead of a seasoning packet. There were no measurements for this at all, just put them all together and mixed them together.

I am going to try to remember all of the ingredients in this bowl I know there was curry powder, garam masala, ancho chile powder, sweet paprika, oregano, some kosher salt, and cocoa powder which I have seen used in many chili recipes, I think I need to add more of it next time as I couldn't taste it at all in the chili. I liked what the chili tasted like, I will keep trying to make my own spice mixture as it seems like the type of thing I would enjoy doing, I might even try to mix up a big container of it so I don't have to try every time.

The cooked down onion and garlic mixture that I usually use, 3 green bell peppers, and a pack that contained one red, one yellow, and one orange bell pepper that I got at Aldi. I normally check all the produce thoroughly at Aldi as not everything is great, but the bell peppers were firm and smooth which is what I look for in a bell pepper.

I added the spices from the bowl to the veggies and stirred them up and let them heat together in the crock pot on high for 10-15 minutes, to just get the flavors mixing together. I usually use fire roasted canned chiles but I forgot to buy them. This is also the step I would add in tomato paste into the mix if I were including it.

I added a large can of crushed tomatoes and a large container of stock to the pot and mixed to combine everything together. I put just a little bit of soy sauce into it as well, I love the depth of flavor of soy sauce, even though it seems a bit out of place with these ingredients. I seasoned some chicken breasts and cooked them on high on each side for 7-8 minutes to get a nice golden brown color in the pan, let them sit for a few minutes, and then nestled them into the crock pot with the mixture.

After cooking for about 6 hours on low, I remove the chicken breasts from the crock pot, and let them cool, once they cooled I shredded them up and added them back to the pot, along with 3 drained cans of sweet corn.

I stirred the corn in and added 3 rinsed cans worth of black beans, some people don't rinse their beans out of the can, but I cant stand the starchy water that comes with the beans in the can. I drain them thoroughly. I turn the the chili off before adding the corn and beans, I let them sit mixed in for about 20 minutes just enough to heat everything through.

Here is a shot at the finished pot of chili, my chili is very chunky, and doesn't actually have that much meat it in, I am sure you could take the chicken out and it wouldn't be all that much worse, you would just want to take out the chicken stock and substitute veggie stock and then cook veggies in oil instead of bacon fat and it would be vegan if you wanted it to be.

I wanted to fry up some potatoes to put on top of my chili for a little bit of crispiness. When I pan fry potatoes I will always pat them dry to try to get some of the moisture out of them, it causes less splatter in the hot oil.

I added some salt to the potatoes in the hot oil, they are just starting to brown a little bit in this picture.

I don't turn the potatoes too quickly or they don't brown up as well, let them be for a few minutes before doing anything at all to them. Cooking them like this only takes maybe 10 minutes before they are brown and crispy. I like using Yukon Gold potatoes for this purpose.

I drained the potatoes after frying them, and salted them a little more.

A bowl of my chili covered with cheese and topped with my fried potatoes, it was delicious, the chili with my own seasonings was good too. I will continue to adapt the seasonings, and will probably never have a set recipe.

One last thing I wanted to add was this item I found at Aldi, which chocolate peanut butter, it seemed like an amazing idea, they also had a dark chocolate version. I tried it, and well I was a little bit disappointed by it, its just a bit too sweet for me when it comes to peanut butter, I might have to get some of the dark chocolate, which I bet goes better with peanut butter.