Thanksgiving Weekend Food

My moth­er came up this past week­end and saw the new place. We had Thanks­giv­ing din­ner with my friend from work, Lau­ren and it turned out pret­ty well. I roast­ed Cor­nish game hens with red pota­toes and aspara­gus, bast­ed in a lemon-gar­lic mix­ture, Mom made some scal­loped yams and brought her pump­kin and famous pecan pies; and Lau­ren brought a Hun­gar­i­an dish called Mush­room Paprikash, which is hearty and tasty and sort of like a stroganoff.

Fri­day I took Mom ’round town and she bought me a bunch of stuff for the apart­ment. I now have an effec­tive knife set and a blender and mix­ing bowls and new sheets. We ate lunch down the street from my place at La Bode­ga, I had the South­west­ern Sub, which was spicy and tasty [the Cajun herbs made the sam­mich but aren’t real­ly south­west­ern] and my mom had the Mediter­ranean sub [which I ate the rest of the oth­er day].

That night I took her out for sushi, some­thing she’d nev­er had before, and though she seemed a bit out of sorts, she did mar­vel­lous­ly. We split a three roll at Pacif­ic East. We got the Sweet Pota­to roll, the Boston roll [shrimp, boston let­tuce, avo­ca­do, ?] and the Ichiban roll [salmon, eel, cucum­ber, avo­ca­do and fish roe].

She left Sat­ur­day after being appro­pri­ate­ly impressed by the West Side Mar­ket. We got a rasp­ber­ry strudel there for break­fast.

Last night I made Mush­room Pike Chow­der, my own inven­tion, and corn­bread.

Ingre­di­ents:
4 Red Pota­toes, diced
3 Gar­lic Cloves, minced [use 2 if you make this]
1/2 pound of bor­ing mush­rooms
2 North­ern Pike filets
1 can cream of mush­room soup
1 can evap­o­rat­ed milk
frozen sweet corn
frozen peas
cilantro, salt, pep­per to taste

Take the skin off of the fish and soak the filets in some water with a bit of lemon in it. If the fish is frozen it will be thawed in about an hour. Dice it, drain it, and put it on a paper-tow­elled plate to soak up extra fishi­ness. [Pike are damn fishy].

Put just enough water in a pot to cov­er the pota­toes and put it on the stove on high heat until it just starts to boil. Then chuck in the evap­o­rat­ed milk and cream of mush­room soup. Stir vig­or­ous­ly. Dump in every­thing but the fish. Sim­mer for a bit. When you put the corn­bread in the oven, drain the fish one more time for good mea­sure and then stir them into the chow­der. Sim­mer some more.

It will all be done at the same time. Watch out for Y‑bones in the fish.

[Note for next time: Use less gar­lic and no cream of mush­room]