Eating Sunday – Thanksgiving in August

I’m not exactly wild about Thanksgiving. Other than the fact that it’s a day off, state-sanctioned gluttony and a history of familial stress doesn’t make for a magical day. However, I have been feeling really thankful for the good stuff that is going on in my life at the moment and at the same time, feeling like I need a little warm and fuzzy food love. It’s totally out of season, but one of the things I’ve been thankful for is the freedom to do whatever I damn well please, whenever I want to do it…

Gorgeous sage from the garden- key to the Thanksgiving of my childhood. Even though this is an alt take on turkey day, you cannot do without the sage.

or the sorrel or the tarragon…

A long time ago, I tried unsuccessfully to charm the recipe for squash stuffing out of the chef at the Red Star. After a lot of experimentation, I think I’m onto something.

No, not a reject from the Square Meal. I’m not a big fan of squash (I know, it’s very healthy. It just tastes, squashy).

Photographer moment (this is a photo blog, after all): Notice that the squash above is lovely and orange and the squash below looks vibrant and yellow (and the green is verdant and the bread is very breadlike). Orange squash was taken  with natural light which I generally prefer for food. By the time the second photo was taken, I had lost that daylight and had switched to artificial. Since I didn’t feel like setting up the full (hot) strobes, I was winging it and lost some detail in the image. Ultimately, it got run through an Alien Skin filter because I liked the effect, so true color and highlights be damned!

Actually, a great number of things today went through the Alien Skin bath. Who needs Norman Rockwell for Thanksgiving in August?

Skinless turkey breast: healthy. Maybe too angelic. Dredge it in panko, chili flakes, and brown butter charred onion to take the virtue down a notch.

Forget the big 30lb turkey monstrosity from hell. This is my T-day. A small bit of turkey breast, little bit of stuffing, and instead of potatoes…

A tiny baked taro root. This was a roll of the dice and a really good one. It smells better than a baked potato- almost perfumish. I think the entire world is eating this except for us…

And pretty green velour-skinned green beans…

You can’t really do without the green beans… frenched with pecans!

And again, upstairs are very green/blue with just white balance compensation and a teeny bit of polaroid filter. Not very true to life, but I like that shade of green. Downstairs, we have a much more realistic color, but there was far more effort involved playing around to get the yellow out of the final shot. Lighting laziness has its price.

A bit about sweet on savory: I don’t really like it. I don’t really like cranberry sauce that much to begin with and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sully a perfectly cooked bit of turkey with the stuff. My currant sauce is a different matter…

For dessert, a small cream biscuit with banana pudding and remember those tasteless pudding-destined raspberries from a couple of weeks back?

The perfect music for all of this? The Jam. Why? Because I damn well want to celebrate Thanksgiving in August with my meal, the Jam, and a shot of Thanksgiving ouzo. I’m starting a new tradition.

Thanks for my friend-family-acquaintance-coworker-cat security blanket who daily feed my rock star ego and/or alternately tell me when I am completely full of shit.

Thanks for sharp cooking knives.

Thanks for the beauty of herbs and veggies.

Thanks to my long suffering favorite camera for putting up with all my abuse.

Thanks for awesome health insurance.

Thanks for ouzo and Paul Weller.