USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

[DaveStPaul]

Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

That soup sounds good

Ah, but did the beans get fully cooked? No they did not. I turned the cooker off when I went to bed -- it had been cooking for 12 hours -- still hard in the middle. I'll crank it back up this afternoon, see what a few more hours can do.

So there's my big lesson, I guess: even if the recipe says no soaking necessary, you should still soak yer beans.

[jen]

Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

Tonight I have to bake the sweet potato casserole, throw together the apple-cranberry tart, assemble and bake manicotti, and frost cupcakes. I was out of town from Fri-Tue, so I mashed the potatoes ahead of time, and made the manicotti filling, frosting and cupcakes. Tart dough was already made. It worked out pretty well.

Making Choco-Buzz cake this weekend for a family birthday.

I finalized my Christmas cookie baking for next week.

Peanut Butter Maple
White Chocolate Raspberry Thumbprints
Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheels
Cranberry Christmas Canes
Car-co-doodles
Maple Pecan Slice-and-Bake
Chocolate Raspberry Rugelach
Gingersnap Palmiers
Blueberry Pecan twirls
Gingerbread biscotti
Cranberry Bliss cookies
Grasshopper cookies (my grandmother used to make grasshoppers every Christmas)
Cranberry Apricot Oatmeal
Fudgy Gingerbread Bars with Rum Glaze from the cookie contest
Chocolate Rum snowballs

Dark Chocolate Buttercrunch, Cranberry Nut Bark, and Brandy Snaps come a bit later.

My grocery list for the weekend includes 9 pounds of butter.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

I wish I could eat pecans - everyone else in the family does. They start off so buttery...and then, within a few minutes, my throat gets itchy, prickly, and annoying.

I have a mild allergy to pecans, walnuts, and cashews. Brazil nuts are actually the worst - I had a bit of trouble breathing for about an hour after the one time I tried one.

Oddly, no problem with almonds, hazelnuts, or macadamia nuts. And of course, peanuts are not really nuts, they're legumes - no problem there either.

[walrus]

Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

MAN do I love pecan pie.

This crazy, overly-wordy, but helpful site http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/11/pecan-pie/ says to do it overnight. No fridge necessary.

On the non-Thanksgiving side of things, I'm trying my slow cooker for the 1st time today. I went with something simple: bean soup. All it has for ingredients is:

Dried beans
Andouille sausage
Celery
Onion
Thyme
Chicken stock

Dump it all in, stir it up, and run for 7 1/2 hours. Half an hour before the end I add a big pile of chopped

Collard greens

We'll see how it turns out, and what can be different/improved the next time around. Also, it should give us dinner for tonight and tomorrow, freeing up at least a little pre-Thanksgiving running around time.

That soup sounds good

[leswp1]

Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

MAN do I love pecan pie.

This crazy, overly-wordy, but helpful site http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/11/pecan-pie/ says to do it overnight. No fridge necessary.

On the non-Thanksgiving side of things, I'm trying my slow cooker for the 1st time today. I went with something simple: bean soup. All it has for ingredients is:

Dried beans
Andouille sausage
Celery
Onion
Thyme
Chicken stock

Dump it all in, stir it up, and run for 7 1/2 hours. Half an hour before the end I add a big pile of chopped

Collard greens

We'll see how it turns out, and what can be different/improved the next time around. Also, it should give us dinner for tonight and tomorrow, freeing up at least a little pre-Thanksgiving running around time.

Thanks!