It’s finally here!  Yipeee! My all-time favorite day!  I’m so so excited!  The only thing that would make it more perfect is if all our family were together.  However, at the moment we are living all over the globe.  Thank God I was able to be with my son and daughter last week when we all met up in Tennessee.  My son who is a captain in the Army had his Change of Command Ceremony.  My youngest grandbaby traveled like a pro with her mommy, but my four year old granddaughter stayed home in Washington with my son in law.  But our group included my daughter in law, my aunt and uncle, as well as my younger brother and his new wife, all of whom traveled from California.  It was like a mini (because some loved ones were missing like my Hubby) pre Thanksgiving and even though we didn’t have turkey, we enjoyed feasting on other delicious food and creating special memories.  Like our memories from last year when we all met up in Austin, Texas for Thanksgiving and a belated celebration of my birthday.  Besides doing our own cooking in a house my Hubby rented for us, we did the most amazing food tour of the city.

As I have shared here and here the important thing about Thanksgiving is in fact that we have a legitimate day, a set aside opportunity to count our blessings.  If you’ve been following along on this blog you know that I live with an “attitude of gratitude” and I don’t need a day on a calendar to tell me to do so.  But it is great to know we’ve got a whole country simultaneously giving thanks!  Americans don’t have many National Holidays.  And with such diversity, not everyone shares all the different holidays on the calendar.  But Thanksgiving is different because it isn’t about religion or ethnicity.  It is really about focusing on what is important, breaking bread with family and friends with appreciation!

Some bloggers have written wonderful posts about what they are thankful for this year.  I have put together my own list of what I am grateful for in my life.  It is in the form of a quasi mnemonic device.  These are 5 things I think are incredibly important.  They are easy to remember because like the five fingers on our hand, each one on its own isn’t as useful as all of them together. As well, I’ve included a totally fun visual to help you remember.  Maybe some of you even made these Turkey Hands when you were younger.

Each finger represents one area of thankfulness and all of them start with the letter F…..so with five F’s you won’t Forget!  I’ll go one by one starting with the thumb.

1. FAITH: What separates a human from other animals is our thumb.  More specifically our opposable thumb.  Anyone who saw Meet the Parents would remember the famous cat scene.  Humans are even more unique than other animals that have thumbs in that our opposable thumb is longer, compared to finger length.  This long thumb and its ability to easily touch the other fingers allow humans to firmly grasp and manipulate objects of many different shapes.  But what is even more rare about us is our Faith. The only living being that worships God and joins organized religion.  In fact even a lack of faith, if we so choose (because we have free will) shows our difference.  And for me I am so utterly grateful for my faith.  I wouldn’t be who I am without it.  And it has kept me hopeful and positive even in the most challenging of circumstances.
2. FAMILY:  Family for some isn’t just the genetic/biological people in your life.  It can be the people you’ve hand picked to be a part of your journey.  Friends and even those you surround yourself with everyday (like the folks at the cleaners you choose to frequent because they make your day that bit happier) are also your family.  And family is number ONE!  They are the people that make this earthy existence worthwhile.  Sometimes you have to experience almost losing them to realize that.  Or other times you need someone to teach you their value.  Like the movie City Slickers’  famous scene.  Here is a clip to refresh your memory and sorry if there is one swear word in it.  I thank God everyday I have my number 1 (index/pointy finger)!  I love my family with all my heart.  So much so that it has stretch marks on it to prove it!

3.  FITNESS:  Since it is in the center and tallest, the middle finger quite literally is the backbone. The quote “your health is your wealth” is important because it is hard to enjoy the other bits of life without it.  I have to say this is my biggest struggle and yet I am super grateful that I have made it this far.  Maintaining your fitness, and that includes physical, mental and emotional, keeps you grounded.  And when you feel good, you look good.  So you don’t need to succumb to the pressure society puts on people to diet or resort to plastic surgery to look attractive.  It will shine through naturally.  I try my best to balance it all out, but if things go awry, I get back on the fitness train.  And thankfully, it usually sorts itself out!

4. FINANCES: It isn’t a coincidence that a wedding ring gets placed on the ring finger. Something precious and costly symbolically attached through a commitment.  Finances are indeed costly if the commitment isn’t respected.  Though frugal,  I am not a cheapskates, in fact I’m far from it.  I love to spend money, just not on myself.  I love to buy things for others.  It isn’t that money is evil, it is the love of money that is so.  Yet I  do realize the importance of spending wisely and also saving.  I am thankful to have enough to provide for a home and a car and the ability to travel, all because of finances.  I am extremely appreciative to have a Hubby who is so hard working.  And most importantly I am content with the fact that through my life I have had no money, loads of money and some money, and yet I am still the same person inside.

5. FUTURE: That little finger, called a pinky.  It’s just at the end, down there, in the future. And yet, it is so important. Our plans, goals, hopes, and dreams, those are all future notions.  I for one am beholden to it because it is what I look forward to in little things, such as a bucket list.  Even my countdown to this day is a spark of excitement.  I love that as humans we have the ability to time travel through our thoughts.  We can look back in the past and reminisces and look forward to the future with wonder.  Some espouse the notion of the “power of now” and while I don’t discount that, I also love being able to think about the future because it gives me guidance as to where I want to go.  And though the path may take a turn or bend, I can still have my eye on the prize.  I am so grateful for the promise of the future.

So if you have read this far, well done!  That means you haven’t overdosed on tryptophan (the common element in turkey that makes you sleepy).  I am not a philosopher and not trying to be preachy like somehow I know it all.  I certainly do not!  But I have lived long enough to know that on this day, Thanksgiving, besides gorging on food, it is good to indulge in some soul searching.  And a bit of soup searching doesn’t hurt either.  In fact, I have the best recipe for butternut squash soup.  It is the perfect starter for a meal like today.  It is delicious and nutritious.  You can even make it with fresh pumpkin if you really want to be in the pilgrim mode!  And since you have your opposable thumbs, you will be able to slice and dice the veg to do all your prep!

Butternut Squash Soup

 Serves 6

2 kg butternuts squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 red onions, peeled and chopped

2 sticks of celery, trimmed and chopped

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked

salt and freshly ground pepper

2 liters vegetable or chicken stock

Extra virgin olive oil

16 fresh sage leaves

* ½ – 1 fresh red chilli, to taste, deseeded and finely chopped (optional, if you want a bit of a kick)

1. Firstly, heat some olive oil in a very large sauce pan and fry the sage leaves for about 30 seconds until dark green and crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon onto some kitchen paper to dry. These will be used for sprinkling over the soup for garnish.

2. In the same pan, add to the oil (which will now be flavoured with sage) the onion, celery, carrot, garlic, rosemary leaves and chilli (if using) and a good bit of salt and pepper. Cook gently for 10 minutes until the vegetables are sweet and soft. Add the squash and the stock to the pan and bring to the boil. Then simmer for 30 minutes.

3. When the squash is soft and cooked through, whiz the soup with a hand held liquidizer. Puree until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning.

4. To serve, pour into bowls and garnish with the crispy sage leaves.

 

I hope you all have an amazing Thanksgiving.  If you aren’t American nor sitting down to a turkey dinner, you can still celebrate the holiday.  Maybe you can just take a moment and dwell on what you are thankful for in your own life.  Even if it is simply the gift of good eyesight, the ability to see, in order to read this.  Or the blessing of enough money to have a smart phone so you can call someone you love.  And once you think of one simple blessing, so many more gratitudes will begin pouring forth!

Grateful for my faith, family (which includes you), fitness, finances and the future!

YDP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an important week my friends!  Not only is Thursday my favorite day of the year, Thanksgiving, but Friday is none other than the Late, Late Toy Show.  For those of you who don’t live in Ireland or are not Irish, it is not only the most highly anticipated show every year, but it’s 2014 installment was the most watched television show of the century!  It is basically a mash up of The Late, Late Show (like the U.S version of The Tonight Show) and Oprah’s My Favorite Things episode.  It is what really gets the country talking about the Yuletide season, and gets the kids fine tuning their Christmas list.

Since Ryan Tubridy, the show’s host since 2009, was a customer of mine in the shop, of course I am a fan!  Tubs (as he is affectionately known) is really a great guy, a wonderful father and happens to be a massive America aficionado.  In fact, last year he read out my email about Thanksgiving on his popular daily radio program.  While I never actually voiced to him my opinion of the Toy Show, I felt now that I am openly sharing on this blog I would touch on a couple important points.

Though on the surface, the Toy Show looks to be an ad for materialism in all its glory, there is actually another element to it: Fantasy.  A great article by Irish Times writer Shane Hegarty, which you can read here, touched on the fine line the show walks in terms of consumerism. But at the end of the day, his coining of the show as a National Treasure is accurate.  It does bring people from around the country together to celebrate the season that’s in it.  And looking back on my own childhood I wish I had been whisked away into a winter wonderland such as the Toy Show.  For some kids in difficult circumstances it is one of the coping mechanisms they use.  Fantasizing about what they could have or experience keeps them going.

As an adult watching the Toy Show, as I did when I lived in Dublin for the past seven years, I feasted on all the amazing toys and wondered if there were kids watching that had little or nothing as my child self.  Growing up I literally had two toys.  One was a doll called “Little Miss No Name” that had a plastic tear stuck to her cheek.  Quite sad and tragic looking for a toy.  No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t scrape it off her face.  And I had a weird looking stuffed owl made out of naugahyde.  His nick name was Naugie and he wasn’t warm and cuddly at all, which you kinda want in a stuffed animal.

They lacked the shiny bells and whistles of today’s toys.  They weren’t even considered nice back in the day.  But then I acted in a super popular Mattel Barbie Doll commercial and things got a little better. Though I found out years later about my mom spending all the money I made on it, I did get to take home a Barbie Doll after the day of filming on set was complete.  And that’s all I cared about.  I finally had a nice toy to take to school on share day, and something to play with that represented the possibility of a happy life.

You see, most poor children know they are in fact poor.  While donations and handouts are important and helpful, poor kids still feel a bit of stigma.  Even in my situation, once my Barbie doll commercial was a success, kids confronted me about going through the free lunch line in the school cafeteria. They questioned why I should be getting handouts if I carried around a new Barbie.  So rather than explain that my parents were divorced, my mom had a drug habit, and we were on welfare, I just quit eating lunch at school.  I would rather feel the grumbling in my tummy than the shame of the situation.

While not every needy kid would go so far as to turn down a free lunch, kids are aware of their circumstances. And if some people criticize the Toy Show for excess in light of the needs around us, I say, let the show go on!  Because whether or not impoverished kids watch the show with longing, there can also be an element of hope.  It is hope that someday, they might get a shiny new toy.  Or in my case, be able to provide for their kids’ super incredible Christmases.  My daughter and son still say those December 25th mornings were unforgettable lifetime experiences.  And I quietly think to myself, yep they were for me too!

HO-HO-HOpe and love,

YDP

P.S. I’ll be posting some great recipes for Thanksgiving later, but here are a few posts that I’ve already shared with delicious ideas for you!

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Pumpkin Pancakes

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Smashing Pumpkin Penne Pasta

 

 

Most women I know love their precious diamonds and gold, and for them a carat or a karat are their best friends!  Not me!  For as long as I can remember the only gem I’ve had an obsession with is a glistening Carrot Cake.  Not only do I love it and I bake it often since it’s my favorite cake, but I also research it.  One thing I like to do is look high and low for the best tasting carrot cake I can find, much to the chagrin of my kids sometimes.  When they were growing up we were always called the Three Muskateers.  But one day it was more like Three Muskatears as I was on the hunt for what was supposed to be the best sugar free carrot cake recipe in Los Angeles.  However, it wasn’t in the nicest part of L.A.  Driving around in our GMC Suburban SUV with my son and daughter in the car she said, “Are you willing to risk our lives for a carrot cake?”  Okay, maybe that was a dramatic response because we weren’t entering gang territory with a twenty-one gun salute.  It was just a scavenger hunt for a twenty-four karat carrot cake.

But all that research led to my finding the best recipe ever!  While my version has all the sugar, it is without a doubt the tastiest and moistest carrot cake you will ever have the pleasure of eating (I am already counting on you to bake it!).  I usually bake it into cupcakes, but have also used this recipe to make a two or three layer birthday cake as well (depending on the size of your baking pans).  And I somehow never feel guilty eating it as I think of all the carrots and raisins and nuts I am consuming, healthy right?

CARROT CUPCAKES WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

Yield: 24 cupcakes

Prep and Cook Time: 1 hour plus about 40 minutes to cool and frost

Ingredients:

2 cups plain flour sifted

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp. ground ginger

2 cups caster sugar

1 ¼ cups canola (or veg) oil

4 large eggs

3 cups grated, peeled carrots

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans (optional)

½ cup raisins (optional)

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C degrees. Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in a medium bowl.       Once blended set aside.
2. In a large bowl whisk sugar and oil until well blended. Add eggs one at a time and mix. Add flour mixture and stir until well blended. Stir in carrots (and walnuts and raisins if using).
3. Divide batter among cupcake pans that have been lined with paper liners. Fill about ¾ full.
4. Bake about 14-18 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean. Let cool in pans about 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack. Cool completely before icing them.

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

Ingredients:

250 g of cream cheese cold

100 g unsalted butter, room temp

600 g Icing sugar sifted

pinch of salt

drop of vanilla extract

In a stand mixer beat icing sugar and butter with paddle attachment on medium speed until mixture comes together and is well mixed. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat until it is completely incorporated. Turn the mixer up to medium high and continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes. Do not overbeat or it will become runny.

I am such a carrot cake fiend that my Hubby and I even had it for our wedding cake!  And my son and daughter in law asked me to make it for their wedding too, though the top of their three tier cake was a red velvet cake.  Even if I’m not baking it, I think it is fascinating to actually look back in history to learn when the carrot cake was invented and by whom.  There is even a carrot trivia website if you are interested.  And you might even want to know the difference between a carrot, carat and karat.  Carrots are important to eat all year, not just for Easter to impress the Easter Bunny.  Certainly incorporating them into savory and sweet dishes is the ultimate way to add vitamins and flavor.

Carrot, Carat, Karat Love,

YDP

 

One of the most fun things about teaching cookery classes is when you get feedback from the students.  Any feedback is helpful, but of course hearing that they were able to successfully master a recipe is always a good thing!  This recipe is without a doubt number one on the list of “I did it and it was fabulous”. It is delicious, easy and great for entertaining. And what I like about it best is its adaptability. You can eliminate ingredients, substitute ingredients and alter the recipe to accommodate those with food intolerances.  So when you have a dinner party and need a go to recipe, this one will take you on the no stress express!

Italian Chicken with Artichokes

 

Serves 6

 

2 small jars of marinated artichoke hearts

4 Tblsp olive oil

¼ cup plain flour (can use gluten free if needed)

6 chicken breast fillets (skinless and boneless) free range and organic if possible

6 tomatoes (peeled and quartered)

4 small cloves of garlic (minced)

1 lb. fresh mushrooms (trimmed and sliced)

1 cup (8 oz) dry sherry

2 Tblsp fresh parsley (minced)

1 ½ tsp salt

¾ tsp pepper

1 tsp dried oregano

2 tsp dried basil

 

1. Drain the artichokes, saving them for later, and combine ½ of their liquid with    the olive oil in a skillet.

 

2. In a bag, place the flour and chicken together, and shake to coat the pieces well.

 

3. Brown the chicken in the skillet with oils, over medium heat for about 5 minutes per side. When finished, transfer the chicken to a casserole dish.

 

4. Combine all the other ingredients except artichokes and simmer over medium/low heat for 10 minutes.

 

5. Pour the sauce over the chicken and bake uncovered in a preheated oven

(180 C/350 F) for 20 minutes

 

6. Sprinkle the artichoke hearts on top and continue baking for another 10 minutes.

 

7. Remove from oven and serve with orzo pasta or rice pilaf and a veg such as roasted asparagus spears. Or just some nice crusty bread and a lovely dressed mixed leaf salad.

If you happen to have access to fresh herbs you can use them instead of the dried oregano and basil if you prefer.  Just double the amount.  And if you have a crowd that doesn’t like artichokes (but don’t know why they wouldn’t) you can substitute marinated sun dried tomatoes instead. My son in law is allergic to mushrooms, so when I make this dish I omit the mushrooms in the batch, but just sauté some separately. Then anyone else in the family wanting that earthy flavor can just sprinkle them on top after it is served.  I also like to sprinkle some freshly grated parmesan cheese on top just before serving for some extra deliciousness!

The cool thing about this recipe is that you can make it in advance and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days before you need it (or it can be frozen).  Dare I even say it tastes better then the first day it is made because the flavors have time to deepen.

This is also a nice dish to make for a family with a new addition. It is a challenge sometimes for a mommy with a baby to get dinner on the table.  Many times I would make this dinner and take it to a friend just home from the hospital and they would say it was the best gift they could have received.  More practical than flowers.  And if you know someone with a bereavement, it too can be just the bit of homemade love and comfort to help them get through a difficult time.  Food is healing!

Easy Peasy Love,

YDP