Author: Big Mama

The holiday of the turkey

About two weeks ago, Caroline and I were leaving Mimi and Bop’s house. Our usual routine is to turn around in their driveway and then roll down the back window so that Caroline can yell “Ciao Ciao! Ciao Ciao! Adios Cha-Chas!”

She is so multicultural.

But on this particular day she motioned for Mimi and Bops to come closer to the car and said, “I want to spend the night at your house after the holiday of the turkey!”

And lo, Thanksgiving for me will henceforth be known as The Holiday of the Turkey.

I have so much to be thankful for this year. It’s been a year of changes and adjustments, but God has been faithful. We are healthy, we are happy, we are blessed.

And I am grateful.

Here’s praying that y’all have a blessed, happy Holiday of the Turkey surrounded by the people and the food that you love.
Heaven in a bowl

I finally managed to make the chocolate ice box pudding. It really shouldn’t have taken me this long to get it all together, especially since it’s the only contribution I’ll be making to Thanksgiving dinner.

I went to the grocery store last Wednesday with my goal being that I wouldn’t have to return to the store until after Thanksgiving. Grocery shopping right before Thanksgiving is like going to a bar on New Year’s Eve. You have to deal with tons of amateurs who have no idea what they are doing.

However, while I was gone this weekend, P informed me that a six foot rat had gotten into my Ghiradelli chocolate bars and that they would need to be replaced. The rat was actually nice enough to go to the store and buy new chocolate, but we ended up running out of other essential items such as toilet paper and powdered sugar. And we have to have powdered sugar.

Anyway, after our trip to HEB this morning, Caroline and I were ready to make the chocolate ice box pudding.

And since I want y’all to have a lovely Thanksgiving, I will share the recipe. Use this information carefully. Once y’all try this you may never be the same.

Chocolate Ice Box Pudding

The Diet Coke with Lime is completely optional and probably not really recommended.

8 oz. of semisweet chocolate
1/2 cup water
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp. vanilla
2 packages of ladyfingers

Mix sugar and water together in a medium size bowl and microwave until the water has thoroughly boiled and the sugar has dissolved. Add in chocolate and microwave another 30 seconds to melt the chocolate. Set mixture aside.

Melt butter and powdered sugar over low heat in a large saucepan. When melted together, add chocolate mixture and stir constantly until it boils well. Set aside for 20 minutes and then add vanilla.

Separate eggs and put egg yolks in a large bowl and egg whites in a mixing bowl. Beat eggs yolks and gradually add chocolate mixture to them. Allow to cool completely (or put in refrigerator if you’re like me and have the patience of a gnat)

Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold into chocolate mixture. Pour into bowl lined with ladyfingers. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Serve with homemade whipping cream. Do NOT desecrate this sacred dish with Cool Whip.

Here’s Caroline with the chocolate. If she had been home on Saturday I have no doubt that she would have served as an accomplice to the six foot rat that ate the chocolate.

This is AJ showing Caroline how to eat the powdered sugar right out of the pan. It was really helpful.

This is the mess I made on the stove when I decided to sling hot butter and powdered sugar everywhere. Tomorrow I will give thanks that at the moment the hot butter hit my hand I managed to not yell any profanities.

Here’s the inside of the cabinet where I keep all my silver serving pieces. Please note that they are all neatly wrapped in silvercloth and stored in Ziploc bags. I am very proud of this because it is the only area of my life in which I am this organized.

However, it still took me 15 minutes to find my medium sized Revere bowl in spite of it being labeled “Medium Sized Revere Bowl”.

I don’t know why.

These are the ladyfingers. It’s a very complicated recipe.

Here they are lining the Revere bowl. This is a crucial step in the process. You must ensure that you have the proper pudding to ladyfinger ratio or Thanksgiving will be RUINED.

Here is the finished masterpiece. Don’t you think Jenni and DeAnna would have been completely okay with the whole Brad dumping them thing if they’d had a bowl of this to self-medicate?

Come to mama.

Caroline insisted that she lick the spatula. And the bowl. And the spoon.

The good news is I don’t plan on washing her face, so tomorrow she can just eat whatever is leftover.

She obviously has no self-control where chocolate is concerned. I don’t know where she gets it.

And I don’t know whose hand that is.
A little Christmas cheer

Okay, so here’s a good way to get yourself in the swing of the season. This is limited to the first 150 people who sign up and qualify, so go. Go NOW.

If you’re a blogger living in the United States with more than 100 unique visitors a month and enjoy the music of Michael W. Smith, head over to this site or just click on the picture above and some nice folks will hook you up with a free CD. All you have to do is:

Listen to the CD while putting up your Christmas tree or decorating your house (or some other Christmas-related activity)

Write a short blog entry about your experience

Put the 150×150 banner in your sidebar

How easy is that?

And if you haven’t heard the CD yet, trust me, you will want this to be in regular rotation throughout your holiday season.

It’s like Santa has come early!
I am but an optimistic fool

< Several of y'all have emailed to ask what I thought about last night's episode of The Bachelor. I wasn't going to talk about it because my feelings for The Bachelor are similar to how you feel when you keep telling your friends you're going to break up with a loser boyfriend but instead keep going back to him. Not that I'd know anything about that. I've just heard that some girls in their late teens are guilty of that kind of behavior. So here's the real question. Has The Bachelor ever really been a great show? No. No it hasn't. But it sucks me in every season with scenes from the upcoming season of girls falling down stairs, being driven off in ambulances, catfights, and the voice of Host Chris Harrison saying "This season is the most dramatic season yet". And because I'm a trusting fool, I can't turn away. Darn you Chris Harrison. Darn you and your empty promises. It's the same reason I watched ER for the first 34 years it was on. The NBC promo would come on and let me know that "this week's episode will have everyone in America talking" and I'd fall for it hook, line, and sinker. I mean I couldn't stand the thought of being the loneliest person in America while everyone around me bonded over Dr. Romano being crushed by a helicopter. Anyway, The Bachelor let me down once again last night. It was ABC editing at its finest, leading us all to believe that we were about to see a real love story play out on national television. LIARS. HUGE LIARS. I had high hopes for Brad Womack. I thought he was different. He seemed a little less polished than previous bachelors and I found it endearing that every line he spoke sounded as if he were reading cue cards. But, as the ending became obvious, I realized we were seeing the reason why a good-looking, 35 year old Texas boy is still single. I believe he has some commitment issues. And that last scene of him sitting on that random platform with a single tear streaming down his face as he held that engagement ring? I think it was a bad call by ABC. The last scene should have been Jenni and DeAnna sitting together eating out of a huge tub of Ben & Jerry's talking about how they can do so much better. Now THAT would be some good T.V. However, all this said, I'll still be tuning in to After The Rose later tonight. I realize I have a sickness.
You say po-ta-to, I say no po-tah-to

I hate to say what I’m about to say. There are some things that are almost too embarrassing to say out loud.

I have never had mashed potatoes with a Thanksgiving meal. Until yesterday I honestly thought I was in the majority of Thanksgiving diners. But 90+ comments later, wherein the majority of y’all professed an undying love of the Thanksgiving potato, have opened my eyes to the cruel reality that is my life.

I have been deprived of an additional carb at the Thanksgiving table. I feel like I’m on an episode of Maury Povich and can hear the studio audience audibly gasping as my darkest family secrets are revealed.

But let me state for the record, P’s family never served mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving either. Which leads me to believe that God brought us together so that we can share our common grief over what were, obviously, deprived holidays. It’s a wonder we survived, what with just the turkey, dressing, cranberries, and green bean casserole.

The horror of it all.

Anyway, several of y’all asked for the recipes I mentioned, specifically the Broccoli-Rice Casserole and my mother-in-law’s dressing. I am more than happy to share those recipes with y’all along with my recipe for mashed potatoes.

Oh, that’s right. I’ve never had mashed potatoes with Thanksgiving dinner.

Obviously I’m trying to block that out.

Broccoli-Rice Casserole

1 medium onion chopped and sauteed in 1/2 stick of butter
2 packages of frozen, chopped broccoli
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup cooked rice
1 8oz jar of Cheez Whiz (personally I prefer the spicy Cheez Whiz)
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and bake at 350 in a greased 9 X 13 baking dish for 1 hour.

Don’t let the sophistication of this recipe scare y’all off. I know just the thought of using a gourmet food like Cheez Whiz is a little intimidating, but it will be so worth it.

Unless of course you’re like my in-laws. I brought my beloved Broccoli-Rice Casserole to my mother-in-law’s Thanksgiving one year and everyone looked at it like I had just set a steaming cow poop on the dining room table.

What do they know? They don’t even have mashed potatoes with their Thanksgiving meal.

The dressing doesn’t have a formal name so I will just call it the BEST dressing ever.

Best Dressing Ever

2 recipes Corn Bread – day old and ground (corn bread recipe down below)
14 biscuits – day old and ground
2 tsp. Poultry Seasoning
2 tsp. Seasoned Salt
1 1/2 sticks butter
4 eggs
1/2 tsp. pepper
3 cups chopped celery (about 1 1/2 bunches)
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
3 cans chicken broth

In a large dutch oven, saute onions and celery in 1 1/2 sticks butter until tender. Add other ingredients and moisten with chicken broth (about 3 cans). Refrigerate overnight.

Reheat as turkey is roasting. Add pan drippings to moisten and season to taste with additional poultry seasoning, seasoned salt and pepper. Stir frequently, scraping the bottom of the pan.

Cornbread for Dressing

2 cups cornmeal
2 cups buttermilk
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
2 eggs
2 tbs. vegetable oil

Beat eggs. Add other ingredients. Melt 1/4 stick butter in a 7 x 11 Pyrex dish in preheating oven. Pour batter into hot pan. Bake at 450 for about 25 minutes.

Cut into large squares and put on a cookie sheet with the baked biscuits. Cover loosely with a clean dish towel and let sit out for a day before grinding.

And lastly, for the perfect accompaniment to the BEST dressing ever, make some homemade cranberry sauce. Eating cranberries straight from the can may be worse than not having mashed potatoes, if that’s possible. It’s just uncivilized and could be grounds for having your American citizenship revoked.

Cranberry Sauce

1 12 oz package of cranberries
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp. grated orange rind

Gently boil sugar and water for 5 minutes. Add cranberries and simmer uncovered without stirring for 5 minutes. Skim off some of the foam. Stir in orange rind. Pour into bowl and cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until served.

At some point in the next day or so, I’ll share the recipe for Chocolate Ice Box Pudding complete with a photo cooking tutorial. The above recipes don’t get a photo tutorial because I’m not making them.

I’ll be too busy whipping up some mashed potatoes and trying to erase our shameful family legacy while Caroline is still young enough to not be permanently scarred.
Talking turkey

I’ve had a terribly exciting weekend but, frankly, I’m too tired to discuss it right now. I’ll get to it at some point but it won’t be today.

So, instead, let’s talk about Thanksgiving.

And now that I think about it, “terribly exciting” might be overselling the weekend. Let’s just say we’ve had fun.

Over the last week, Gulley and I have had several indepth conversations about Thanksgiving meals we have had throughout our lifetimes and it has made us wonder what most people have for Thanksgiving dinner.

I mean, obviously, turkey. And dressing. And probably cranberries.

And spaghetti with meat sauce.

Oh wait, that was probably just at my Me-ma and Pa-pa’s house.

As far back as I can remember, the dish that says Thanksgiving to me is Broccoli-Rice Casserole.

An old Indian legend actually recalls the tense atmosphere at the first Thanksgiving because the Pilgrims totally forgot the Broccoli-Rice casserole. They tried to make some lame excuse about the Cheez Whiz going bad on the Mayflower, but the Indians knew the Pilgrims were full of crap and the real story was they didn’t want to take the time to microwave the rice.

Anyway, my Aunt Sandra used to always be in charge of the Broccoli-Rice. Even though I have her exact recipe, mine still never tastes as good as hers did. I would pile it on my plate because I have always been a dainty eater.

Growing up, I was never really a fan of turkey and dressing. I ate it because it was there, but I never really cared for it one way or the other.

It’s kind of like how I watched “Saved by the Bell” throughout college. I never cared about Kelly Kapowski or Zack Morris or even Jessie Spano, but it was the only thing on from 3-5 p.m. and what else was I going to do with my time?

If you answered study then let me welcome you to my blog. Read the archives and see if they don’t make you change your answer.

The first Thanksgiving I spent with P’s family forever changed the way I viewed turkey and dressing. His mama makes the best dressing in the world. Seriously. She cooks it on the stove, whereas the dressing I always had growing up was baked in a 9 x 13 pan and could be cut in squares.

A bite of his mama’s dressing combined with cranberry sauce is a pretty close second to Broccoli-Rice casserole.

Everything else my family had for Thanksgiving was pretty typical. Green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, something congealed that nobody really wanted but somehow made it on the table, and pumpkin pie for dessert.

And speaking of dessert, P’s family also has chocolate ice box pudding for dessert. I don’t want to say that I would have married him just to get the recipe for the chocolate ice box pudding, but I might have considered it.

So, what about y’all? What food has to be on your Thanksgiving table for it to be the perfect meal?

And please, don’t say a congealed salad. I don’t think my stomach can handle it.

Especially if it’s lime green with some nuts on the top, because the only thing worse than congealed salad is a congealed salad that is a color not found in nature.

Oh, and one more question that I can’t come up with a smooth transition for; what about mashed potatoes? Do you have mashed potatoes with your Thanksgiving meal?

The mashed potatoes have been the source of much debate. I had no idea potatoes could be so controversial.

Of course that may be why people say you should never discuss religion, potatoes or politics.