Thanksgiving menu plan

by Jon Sullivan - 2023-09-07 - Food

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Time passes fast in Oregon. Seems too early to start Thanksgiving planning. It's not.

I need to not let this year's TG menu sneak up on me, again. Sharon will have some additions, and sometimes people bring things (not encouraged, but we can fit it in), but my current test recipe list for next Thanksgiving is :

- Al Pastor pork pizza
- Candied pumpkin corn cakes
- Shrimp curry fries
- Citrus steak salad
- Beef and lamb gyros with roasted red pepper feta
- Pork and apricot ravioli with red pesto
- Prawn cordon bleu
- Pulled pork melt sandwiches
- Smoked deviled eggs
- Grilled vegetables with gochujang butter
- Belgian waffles with glazed bananas, spearmint cream, and tart cherry drizzle
- Scallop and brie toasts
- Mushroom parm bagel sliders

The pizza and pumpkin cupcakes are my only solid menu items so far. Both were tested and approved by local Oregon foodies. Curry fries are unlikely, too simple. The stuffed prawns I have envisioned may be impossible. The smoked stuff will depend on the smoking set up at my sister's. The list above will all get whittled down to 6-7 dishes. And of course the cooks will get the secret first course of brie, pate and champagne.

A recap for those not familiar with my traditional-to-me Thanksgiving dinner : Every Thanksgiving I make up a crazy hard menu of delicious food, and then race through the day trying to cook and eat it all. It's a stunt. But for a foodie that has 0% interest in ever cooking for a living, it's a pretty good challenge. 12 hours of cooking the best food I can. Pretty much always original recipes. For 20 years I mostly did it alone, but these days I go over to my sister's for more of a family holiday.

So... lots of cooking in my near future.

But really, lots of cooking for others. One of the big changes this year has been how much I'm cooking for other people. And rather often people ask for the recipe. So I'm also going to try and post more recipes here. Which is good in that more recipes out in the world is always good. But bad in that I'm way too critical of my recipes and generally hate them all, even the ones I use a lot. And some of what people are asking for are dishes where my "recipe" is to use prepackaged stuff that needs to be special ordered. Like my yellow curry, which is basically just Penzeys curry powder and coconut milk. Not much to be proud of there.... But...... Now that all the existential life changes and craziness is over, I'll need to find something new to blog about. I think we can all admit the "new Jon" posts were getting quite tedious.

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