Sorry, it's food again

 Sunday we did part one of Thanksgiving shopping with our dear friend Charley. We made the trek to Bingo (the frum answer to Costco) in Monsey. Their Brooklyn store is ten miles closer but the travel time to Monsey  is less and the trip is less irritating because of Brooklyn traffic.

We are doing Thanksgiving with Charley. One constant on his Thanksgiving table is brisket. My job is to cook the brisket. Last year, the brisket came from a fancy local kosher butcher. I almost fainted when I saw the price on the meat. Charley joined us for Passover and had brisket I had sourced at Bingo. Despite it not being polite to share the cost of the food with your dinner guests I did share the cost of the brisket with our dear friend. He suggested that we make the trek to Bingo.

There are many wonderful things to buy at Bingo. The produce is beautiful, really beautiful. I didn't take photos of the produce. I was distracted by OTHER things.

I was distracted by the green marshmallows. I love looking at the snack foods they have to offer.

Our kids no longer live at home. If they did I certainly would have brought home some Yippy Dippy or Fruit Flutes.

My daughter had once brought us a box of Fruit-a- Toots which ended up being the centerpiece of a themed meal---Don't ask for the entire silly backstory but we had a great time at that meal and may have started a new Shavuot custom.. 

The Fruit-a-Toots despite their ridiculous name are actually pretty good. The are instruments made out of  100% fruit juice sweetened fruit jelly.

The best product name this trip went to Torah Oodles. 

There are other great products available for sale at Bingo. There are toys.

You could purchase Fraidy the baby doll.

You had your choice of toy Torah scrolls either the Ashkenazi or the Sefardi version.

They had more Kinder Velt play sets.  I liked this one for the Autumn holiday season.

I also adored this one to mark the tradition of marking a boy's first haircut as a big celebration.

I own one Kinder Velt set that I keep in my dining room. It's all I need but it is fun to look at the other sets.

I just love shopping in a supermarket where it is possible to buy a kiddush cup, or a tallit or a challah cover or tzitzit or even

leather and fur tallit bags.

When Charley saw the price for the brisket, his eyes bugged out of his head. ( The price was a third of what it would cost at the fancy local butcher.) He bought enough for me to make brisket for the crowd at Thanksgiving.

I bought many packages of soup bones and soup vegetables amd put a pot of soup up to cook as soon as I got home. I put the soup in my turkey roaster and put the pot in the oven to cook overnight.

My husband and I are of different opinions about chicken soup. My husband loves his soup unstrained with all of the bones and vegetable matter included. I love (despite the backbreaking work) to serve a clear soup with all of the STUFF strained and squeezed out so that the eater is faced with a clear broth that is jam packed with flavor.  

This time I decided to please my husband.  I will be serving soup with STUFF. It was significantly less work.

I ended up making about eight quarts of soup.

Today I received a lovely note from my nephew asking me to share what I will be cooking for Thanksgiving here on the blog. While I haven't actually started to cook anything I will share my plans for the holiday. 

Aside from cooking the brisket, I am also making gravy and a sweet potato or winter squash dish, wild rice, rolls, real cranberry sauce ( for those of us who are snooty about canned jellied sauce).I am also making pies.

I am trying to figure out which pies to make. Normally if you have winter squash for the main course then a pumpkin pie isn't needed, but for my Halloween born oldest it is a necessity, so I may make it anyway. Charley's late wife, my dear buddy Shawna, used to make a towering apple pie. I may attempt to make one, despite knowing that there is no way my humble offering will come close to Shawna's tower of apples encased in crust. I am very fond of making a cranberry chocolate pie. The cooked and sugared cranberries over a layer of chocolate is so beautiful and is so delicious.The other usual Thanksgiving pie is pecan.

Four pies is too much, even for Thanksgiving. I think that there will only be a dozen of us at the table, so four pies is definitely too many pies. While typing this, I remembered how my son in law longs for his late mother's pumpkin pecan pie. His mother used to pave the top of her pumpkin pie with pecan halves  and call it Pumpkin Pecan Pie. I think that the pumpkin topped with pecans will be one of the pies. The cranberry chocolate will be the second. I will have to be brave to try to attempt an apple pie but I will do my best.

This is how I think I will be making the winter squash. 

Hot and Sweet Butternut Squash

preheat oven to 375 

put parchment paper on a large shallow pan

cut the skinny end off a butternut squash

cut it in half and slice into very skinny slices

remove the seeds from the fat end of the squash and clear out the stringy crud

slice the fat part of the squash in half and cut each half into skinny slices

put all of the squash onto the prepared tray (you could also add slices of sweet potato or batata or any other winter squash to the pan)

now make a dressing for the squash 

add to a bowl a few tablespoons of olive oil

some vinegar

a spoonful of red hot pepper paste (I bought a little jar of Traciones Andinas sauce

this summer, that I have been using. It is kind of a one note of hot pepper) but use what you have in your pantry. 

Gochujang would be yummy here

a tablespoon or two of honey or maple syrup

some shakes of allspice, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper (yes, you can vary the spices if you don't have issues with salt like I do, you can add some)

 Adjust flavors to your taste you want some heat, some autumn spices and some sweet

 pour the dressing over the squash

bake

stir the contents of the pan occasionally as the squash cooks to be sure that every surface is well coated in the dressing

cook until the squash is caramelized

Here is a photo from last week of the hot and sweet squash, (and some random root vegetables from the bottom of my fridge) served over salmon that was cooked in the same dressing. My husband thought that it would make a good side dish for Thanksgiving.

I also want to follow up on friday night's dinner. The mystery chicken from the freezer had been cooked with limoo, dried lime.  The mystery chicken juice that had flavored the noodles was from jerk chicken. I added amba powder and sumac to balance the flavor and the noodles were the star of the meal.

I didn't know quite what to expect with the faked cake, but it turned out to be the sort of cake that mid century cookbooks used to call snack cakes, a simple not too sweet cake  that you might feed a crowd of kids after school. Not every cake needs to be a show-offy event.Given the anxious times we are living in---it was the dessert I didn't think I needed.