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My dear husband had a birthday this week – now we are both in decade #3. I fixed him an extra-fancy dinner.

Teriyaki Salmon with soba noodles and broccoli:

Tuna Rolls; four variations on the tuna theme with avocado, shitake mushrooms, carrots, and radishes:

This was the first time I’d made sushi with raw fish. It was delicious! Yay for Newman’s Fish Co.

For dessert, I had been plotting for months to make coconut ice cream. At Christmas time we’d been handed down a Cuisinart ice cream maker from J & M who had two of them. We tried it out once while we were in San Jose but it hasn’t really been ice cream weather so we hadn’t used it since then. I was wanting to try making ice cream with only coconut milk, but after scouring the Web I decided to play it safe and use some dairy, since I wanted to make custard-style ice cream with eggs. I followed a recipe I found online for Thai ice cream, which called for coconut milk and heavy cream – I swapped and used whole milk and coconut cream (unsweetened, from the Asian market.) I mashed some fresh ginger in my garlic press and stirred the juice into the warm custard.

It came out quite delicious. A bit overly sweet, though – next time I will use less sugar and probably go all-coconut milk. I want to try other flavorings, too, like lemongrass, lime, mango, pineapple…

My very favorite way to eat any kind of ice cream is with toasted coconut on top. The crunchy, nutty topping is super-yummy.

We have started to get some really nice sunsets:

This year we are staying in Eugene for Thanksgiving. We are invited to our friends the Z’s for turkey dinner, and I volunteered to bring dinner rolls, a vegetable side dish, and a salad.

I’ve been honing my bread-baking skills the last few months, so I definitely wanted to make the rolls from scratch. I “tested” the roll recipe from 100 Great Breads by Paul Hollywood (see this post) on my Thursday ladies’ group last week. The rolls came out great, in fact TD enlisted me to make 2 dozen for her to take to Seattle for the D family Thanksgiving. This month’s Martha Stewart Everyday Food has a dinner roll recipe, too, and it mentions that you can form the rolls and then freeze them for up to several months and then thaw/2nd rise them in time to bake. I decided to try that for TD’s rolls, she could store them in the freezer until Thanksgiving day and then let them thaw while they drive to Seattle. I kept a few extra and tried the thaw-bake thing earlier this week and I think it made the rolls come out even better than before. My theory is that the moisture is pulled to the surface and it makes the crust crispy. The insides were very soft and moist, however. Yum! So the batch I made for us is currently on top of the fridge, thawing for baking a few hours from now.

I’m “unventing” a vegetable casserole, inspired in part by Smitten Kitchen’s cauliflower gratin (can you believe those colors?) and in part by my guilty enjoyment of that horrible (but yummy) green bean casserole that I’ve never been able to resist at other people’s Thanksgiving dinners. (I never had it as a kid, though, my Mom wasn’t big into fancy side dishes for Turkey Day.) My plan is to make a mac-n-cheese style white sauce (with asiago rather than cheddar) and pour it over roasted butternut squash and fresh asparagus. I’ll probably add some sun-dried tomatoes, too. And bake it with, yes, French’s fried onions on top. I can’t help it. But at least no gray-green canned green beans, right? I’m expecting it to be yummy.

For the salad I’m bringing our top favorite, Moroccan Orange Salad from Frances Price.

Looks like I’d better get busy, dinner’s at 3ish.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’m so thankful for my family and friends.

“I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers.” Philemon 1:4

This year I dressed up as a 1950’s housewife. I decided to take along the Joy of Cooking as a prop.

The dress, in natural daylight, is a bright coral polyester that I got from a vintage shop, about 5 or 6 years ago, but this is the first time I’ve really worn it. It fits me pretty much perfectly, and I love the full skirt. The apron I got from my aunt who is one of those people who walks into a thrift shop and all the wonderful, authentic, mint-condition “finds” jump into her basket. My glasses are not exactly cat-eye glasses but I think they work with the whole outfit pretty well. I was rather proud of my hair, but you can’t really tell from the photo that it was puffed up on top into a sort of bouffant.

Oh, October, it’s so sad to see you go. We had such a lovely month of true fall – bright and crisp and not very cold, no rain to speak of, and that meant all the pretty leaves lasted all month long. With the turning back of the clocks came cold, rainy weather and the leaves were knocked from the trees by raindrops.

… beautiful Tahoe sunshine! And our big, crazy family. It was great to see everybody and hang out. I, for one, did not really mind that there was no snow this year. The weather was beautiful, and we found other fun things to do, like ice skating at Northstar and hiking. Thanksgiving dinner was a scrumptious success as usual, with MH and CAP doing the turkey and the rest of us chipping in a dish or two. This year, I discovered how easy it is to make cranberry sauce at home. Seriously, almost as easy as opening a can – just simmer a packet of fresh or frozen berries with sugar and a little juice or water … you can also customize with exotic flavors (citrus, spices, chili pepper?) and reduce the sugar content. Leftovers are welcome, try it stirred into yogurt for breakfast. Yum!