Sigh.

Thanksgiving dinner went well. It was a gluttony fest and I was happy to share it with E yet another year. The sticky rice stuffing I adored but E felt it was too sweet. Maybe I overdid the quantity of Chinese sausage or the soy. I'll continue to have to work to tweak the recipe. But now we own a huge bag of sticky rice so maybe I'll work on my rice pudding recipes next? I have a lovely one that calls for coconut milk, dried sour cherries and mangoes that I haven't made in a while.

The community servings pies were kinda well, average. I was a little disappointed in a couple of things:

1.) the crusts were clearly supermarket made. Blah to that!

2.) the apple pie sported a crumble topping that was not very crumbling. It was actually quite soggy by the time it got to us (10am in the morning on Wednesday) and had a cornstarch thickened apple filling (ala McDonald's).

I was really hoping for more. Luckily it's hard to really f up a pecan pie so I was pleased with that.

All in all it was a very nice Thursday off with the one I love the most.

So the reason for the pepto? I'm not really sure to be honest but I came home last night, ate some Trader Joe's Flaxseed Chips and then thought I was gonna die from stomach pains. It was pretty bad and pretty instantaneous and lasted almost all night.

And tonight as I was eating our turkey day leftovers I felt like everything tasted gammy and just weird. Lately my stomach and my taste buds haven't been really happy and I'm not sure what's going on. I usually have a stomach of steel and I'll happily eat just about anything. I will say that my employee's mom made me a lovely sandwich for lunch and I ate that no problem.

Sigh. I'm trying to figure out what's going on with me, food and my body these days but sometimes it feels like I'm not making much progress. E and I will be doing a juice detox later this week so hopefully that will help to reset some stuff for me.

Our Thanksgiving Day Dinner...

E and I didn't really feel like doing turkey this year so here is our T-day dinner menu:

Fried Chicken Legs
Sticky Rice Stuffing
Baby Bok Choy

Community Servings Pie (Pecan for me and Apple for E)

I'm really excited about this meal!!

I hope all of you have a really wonderful Turkey day with those you love.

Childhood is Calling?

My mom did make rice krispy treats when I was young. They were simple and seemed marginally more nutritious with the addition of rice cereal. When I went to college, our Dorm Mother (we actually had those...an adult woman who often had a family with them living in the dorm to look after us kinda like Edna Garrett on "The Facts of Life") made them for TV night but she used an entire stick of butter for one batch. They were overly rich in a way that was both addictive and kinda sickening. And when I became an adult, well rice krispies became prepackaged as a snack I'd eat during my office job. They even came in peanut butter and chocolate dipped. Certainly these were not the rice krispy treats of my past. I didn't really think much about rice krispy treats at all...

Until those commercials with the mom and kids. Oh you know the ones. They're set in black and white with the cute kid all in awe over rice krispies. Damn you marketing! So when I was in the grocery store with E today, I told her I wanted to make rice krispy treats. E proceeded to tell me that she had never had a homemade rice krispy treat to which I was both shocked and amazed. I thought everyone had had homemade rice krispy treats. Sure the packaged ones were good but nothing like the ones you made at home.

So happily I made E and me some rice krispy treats but these I decided to change a little bit. I browned the butter before melting and folding into the marshmallows and mixing in the cereal. I didn't notice a difference in the taste profile at first but asked E what she thought. She liked them a lot and said she noticed the nuttiness of taste that the brown butter brought. I decided that clearly I needed to try another taste and so tried it again. And you know what? Browning the butter is a good move. I don't think you need to add extra butter to the recipe ala adding the freshmen 15 move that my Dorm Mother did, but I do think the added step of letting the butter heat until it gets brown is a nice one. A subtle but grown up taste to something I remember from long past.

I was glad to share it with E but with a new touch that is all our own.