Thanksgiving Plan "A" and Plan "B"

Hi there everyone. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. It went way too fast didn't it? My plans for Thanksgiving dinner did not pan out the way I had planned......I had to switch to plan B very quickly, not that I really had a plan....but it sure was a good thing I was not having company and had something in the freezer, I would have been frantic.

I ordered these three meals from Blue Apron to be delivered by Wednesday, the 23rd, no later then 8pm. Well, I waited for FedEx to deliver my meals, and I waited and waited. No meals showed up at my door.

I decided to email Blue Apron and let them know my order did not show up at my door. They responded right away, letting me know their shipping partners truck had mechanical issues. Blue Apron will refund my money on this order and they will also give me 3 free meals. They apologized for my inconvenience and plans I had made. There might be a chance the box will turn up on the 25th...if so please do not use the contents. We'll see, I think the vegies will be fine, the meat might be questionable, but if the freezer blocks are still frozen, do you think it would still be good???? 

So here is what I missed, "Roasted Turkey & Cranberry Sauce with Brussels Sprouts and Mashed Potatoes".....mmmm sure sounded delicious. When I was shopping Sam's club Tuesday, they actually were selling Brussels Sprouts on the large stem it's grown on....I thought, that's neat and almost bought it, but then I thought, no, I better not....getting a whole box of vegies from Blue Apron. Now I wish I had listened to that inner voice.

The second meal, "Italian Wedding soup with Pork Meatballs" I love Italian Wedding soup.

The third meal was "Fresh Cavatelli Pasta with Sauteed Cabbage and Chestnut Breadcrumbs" I was going to make this along with the Roasted Turkey today.....oh well....on to Plan B.

My next three meals, which will be delivered December 29th (and will be free) "Steak & Green Peppercorn Sauce with Kale & roasted potatoes" "Sesame Chicken with Bok Choy & Jasmine Rice" "Cod en Papillote (parchment paper) with Spinach & Freekeh" Looking forward to this one....always wondered how to cook with parchment paper.

Here you see 'Plan B" Pork Tenderloin, homemade sauerkraut, oven fried potatoes, roasted yellow cauliflower and carrots. Oh and cranberry sauce. We just had dessert, Cheese cake with cranberries and whip cream and pumpkin cake.....no calories there right???

Plan B was absolutely delicious. It always helps to have special meals like this on JP's Grandmothers Bavarian China. JP figures the China is about 75+ years old. All still in one piece except for the tea cups, there is only 2 left. They are very fragile.

Well, time to close, I need to get another card up in my Etsy Store....sort of slacking there again. You all have a wonderful night and great day tomorrow on Black Friday. No, I do not plan on going shopping. JP has a Doctor's appointment, follow-up on his prostrate and what we will do about it....to operate or not to operate...his decision.

Keep looking up....better days are coming for sure!!!
Cheers ~ Louise

Chinese Dumplings or Potstickers

Hi there everyone. Aren't  you just loving this wonderful Fall....Indian Summer is always so beautiful. I still have tomatoes on the vines, so I am hoping these next few days they will ripen. Heirlooms seem to take longer for some reason. Picked a few tomatoes tonight, maybe I will put them in a bag and see if they turn red faster.

Well, today I made some Chinese Dumplings. Tina from www.kittykatkards.blogspot.com  gave me the recipe as she is pretty good at making them, they sounded so good, I thought I might like to try my hand at it. You can find the recipe here (sorry about the sideways picture, I wanted to get everything in one picture but forgot to turn it the right way before downloading onto this blog). When you go to the recipe, go to the second section, that will be the recipe that I followed.

In the top picture is the dough, mixed and cut in pieces....2 cups of flour and 1 cup hot water, mixed together and knead then roll into 3" circles. You can see in the top part of the picture I have the filling all mixed together. Ground pork, bok choy, onion, cornstarch, sesame oil, pepper and salt and yes, 1 tablespoon of wine.

In this picture I am rolling out the dough and spooning the filling on the dough and pinching it together on the ends.

Here is a plate of dumplings all ready made....I might have gotten about 35-40 dumplings made. JP ate about 12 of them for lunch....there's no telling how many I ate...gosh they were soooooo goooood!!!

Here they are frying up in the pan, then I added a cup of hot water and let them boil till the water evaporated. The sauce was just low sodium soy sauce and sesame oil....mmmm tasted so good.

This might be the end of the first batch and the beginning of the second batch, as you can see I have some ready to fry up.



Here is JP enjoying his little lunch....he even commented on how the filling even smelled good....he likes when I try something new....this might make it on the dinner table a couple more times. Guess I will have to find out how many calories each dumpling has. Ummmm, do I really want to know???

 

 

Well you have a great week and enjoy the beautiful weather we are having. Cheers ~ Louise