Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

Ah Thanksgiving. The holiday that celebrates the harvest. I've certainly been thankful for my harvests this year. Our family goes to friends for most Thanksgivings. This year there will be somewhere around 30-40 people there with about 12 different families. In the past it was smaller, but over the years it has grown.

Trying to figure out who brings things with that many people is always hard. But we break things out into colors. My family has been assigned orange along with another person, Lori. In fact I asked for orange. I like to try to incorporate things from my garden on Thanksgiving. I knew I had lots of squash and carrots, so orange it was. I also asked to bring some cranberry ice as it is a family tradition. My son elected to make some crepes with peach sauce for dessert and Lori is bringing pumpkin pie, so I'm not making any dessert. So here is what I'm bringing:

• Pumpkin beer
• Maple Sugar Carrots with Dill
• Daphne's Squash Casserole
• Cranberry Ice
  

As to the pumpkin beer, I had a pumpkin beer tasting with nine beers at my house a few weeks ago. I saved all the left overs. After our friends voted it turns out that Pumking is the best of the pumpkin beers. Sadly we drank it all at the party, but I do have some of the number three beer, Shipyard Pumkinhead. And I have a lot of the lower ranked ones as well.

The Maple Sugar Carrots with Dill is a take off from an Allrecipes dish. I make mine as follows:

• 3 cups carrots in slices
  
• 2 T maple syrup
• 2 T butter
• 1 1/2 T chopped dill
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 t pepper
  

Boil the carrots until soft. Drain. In a pan add maple syrup and butter and cook for a couple minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and toss until covered. If you look at the Allrecipes recipe you will notice that I only chance the brown sugar out for maple sugar. Really maple sugar is so much better.

Daphne's Squash Casserole

• 1 egg
• 1 c squash puree
• 1/2 c soy milk
• 1/4c maple syrup
• 1/2 t vanilla
• 1/4 c butter melted
• 1/4 t cinnamon
• 1/4 c flour
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/8 t salt

Mix the wet and dry ingredients separately then mix together. Cook 1 hour at 350. Have you noticed a trend to liking maple syrup. I also use it when I cook squash to eat plain. Some add brown sugar and butter to the squash but I add maple syrup and butter. Yummy.

For the squash puree I put some squash halved in the oven at 350-375F. I wanted very thick puree so I didn't put any water in the pan and kept the squash upright.

This made five cups of very very thick puree. I'll double the casserole recipe when I bring it as it will actually fit a good sized casserole pan then. Usually I put it in a small one since I'm the only one eating it.

My Grandma's Cranberry Ice

• 12 oz cranberries
• water
• juice from one lemon
• gelatin
• 3/4 c sugar
• salt to taste
  

Pick over the berries and put in a saucepan. Just cover with water and boil until soft. While it is boiling soften the gelatin in 3/4 c of cold water. When the berries are done put through a sieve or food mill. Add the sugar and lemon juice and simmer until dissolved. Take off the heat and add the dissolved gelatin. Freeze.

Hope you all have a happy Turkey Day if this is when you celebrate! And join in on Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard with Robin.