Leftover Turkey's Last Stand

You had some on Friday, and maybe Saturday; but by today, leftover turkey is the last thing you're craving. Well, we may have just the thing(s). The following recipes are perfect for using up the last of that holiday bird, while at no time reminding anybody of that holiday bird. If you're interested in seeing the full post, just click on the recipe title, and away you go. Enjoy!

	Turkey Manicotti The moist filling will bring the driest turkey back from the dead, and you can literally add anything that can be chopped up. Leftover green beans? Throw it in. Peas and Onions? You bet’cha. Cranberry Sauce? Don’t be ridiculous.
	Turkey Matzo Ball Soup If chicken soup is called, "Jewish penicillin," then we're going to have to refer to this as "American amoxicillin." Really doesn't have the same ring to it. Regardless, this is a great soup.
	Turkey Noodle Casserole Come for the great way to use up leftover turkey, stay for the crispy potato chip topping.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to wish you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving! We’re taking a couple days off, but I’ll be back with a new video before you can say, “Man, I can’t believe I ate that much turkey.” Enjoy your holiday!

.

Thanksgiving Leftover Special: Tom Turkey Kha Gai

One of the great blessings, and curses, of Thanksgiving is leftover turkey. The next day it’s great reheated, or made into sandwiches, but by Day 3 you want something that tastes like not turkey. That’s where this spicy Thai coconut soup recipe comes in.

This is my take on Tom Kha Gai, and as usual I make no claim as to its authenticity. I do know it tastes amazing to me, and will make you forget you even roasted a turkey. There’s lots of everything going on here, so be prepared to adjust radically to your tastes. It should be fairly spicy, sweet, sour, and salty, all at the same time. 

If you can, see if you find galangal, or galanga root, as it's sometimes called. It looks like a thin-skinned ginger, with a sort of similar flavor, although people that make this soup for a living will say it's much different and far superior. I decided to use ginger, since that's what the majority of my audience will use, but I thought it was worth mentioning, in case you live in an area where this rhizome is available.      

As far as the chili oil goes, all I did was mash together a couple tablespoons of sambal with twice as much vegetable oil with a mortar and pestle. Once it settles, the gorgeous, red oil rises to the top, and you’re ready to drip. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving, and that some of your leftover turkey finds its way into this delicious soup. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 4 serving:
 6 cups turkey or chicken broth

3” piece ginger, sliced thin

2 stalks fresh lemongrass, bruised and sliced

kefir lime or lemon leaves, sliced

2 tbsp cilantro stems

1/2 tsp chili flakes, or to taste

Simmer for 15 minutes

Add:

1 pound cubed turkey or chicken

1 cup little mushrooms

2 tsp sugar

2 tbsp. fish sauce

1 (13-oz) can coconut milk

1/4 cup lime juice

1/4 cup green onion

2 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves

Chili oil, cilantro leaves, and lime wedges to garnish

Cranberry Sauce Like a Boss

Just in case you’re still deciding on which of the roughly one million different cranberry sauces you’ll be going with this Thanksgiving, here are a few ideas. Technically, the Cumberland isn’t a cranberry sauce, but it’s close enough, and serves the same delicious purpose. If you're tempted, just click on the bold titles, and away you go. I hope you give one of these great sauce a try, and as always, enjoy!

	Tangerine Cherry Cranberry Sauce Could you just use orange, and call it "tangerine?" Sure, why not, it's only your family you'd be misleading.
	Ginger Pear Cranberry Sauce This one just sounds like it will be great with roast turkey. In fact, when you tell people what it is, they'll say, "Oh, that sounds great." Try it, and see.
	Cumberland Sauce Do you think they just name any old sauce after the Duke of Cumberland? Well, they don't
	Maple Walnut Cranberry Sauce As you'll read, there was a time when I didn't think putting nuts in a cranberry sauce was a good idea. I've evolved on the issue.

Cleaning out

Hello all and happy weekend! Anything fun planned?

I have about 285 things on my list I’d like to get accomplished before Thanksgiving and instead the other day I spent hours cleaning up this mess out in the garage:

It needed to be done, obviously. But it is not on the list. ;) Food and cleaning this house are, however. But noooo…I focus on things like this. In my defense, it’s been driving me crazy for months. ALL of that wood is trim from the renovation. It was way bigger than this – we saved a ton of trim when we took down the wall so I used a lot to do the board and batten in the family room.

There’s still a good amount I’ll use in the kitchen – on the crown, base and board and batten. Some of the pieces I gave away and the rest I’m keeping for future projects. I hoard scrap wood – it’s my thing. ;)

Anyhoo, I finally got most of that area organized and then I kept going in the garage. Usually this time of year is when I organize our garage but usually this time of year isn’t 12 degrees with snow. So I’m doing bits and pieces and I’ll just have to wait till spring for the rest of it.

While I was organizing I realized the truly insane amount of painter’s tape I have. It’s from working with the lovely FrogTape folks – but there’s no way I can use all this tape myself. I LOVE this tape and have worked with them for years but a few months back I pulled out -- I couldn't think of worthwhile projects to do anymore. If I can’t make it worthwhile for you I don’t feel right doing it. So I definitely don’t need all the tape I have and decided instead of dropping it at Goodwill, I’d pass it along to you guys!

I have nearly 20 rolls to give away. I have three rolls of the chevron shape tape:

I’m not a huge fan of chevron but I did use this in a different way to get a unique look:

So even if you’re not a big Chevron person, it still can be used to make different designs!

I have three wave tapes available as well:

I think this stuff is super cute, especially for a bathroom. :) I made this art for my son’s bathroom and still love it!:

I think the scallop tape is pretty too. I have four of these to give away:

I used this on my candy corn bunting last year:

So cute!!

I’m clearing out some of my regular tape as well – I have six of these available:

This is truly my favorite painter’s tape. The crisp lines can’t be beat. I used it to make this pretty ombre wall in our guest room:

I’ve mastered the art of cutting in so I just don’t use painter’s tape as much as I used to.

And this stuff I’m really excited about – it’s FrogTape for textured surfaces:

I’ve never used this so I can’t speak to how well it works, but it’s worth a try! I have three of these to give away.

Here are the deets:

This giveaway is now closed! :)

I will be taking most of next week off to spend with my family. I may be back with a post next Friday but that will most likely be it. I’ll be back with CHRISTMAS when I return though. :)

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am so thankful you follow along with my escapades every week!

Whole Boneless Thanksgiving Turkey – As Close to Turducken as I’ll Ever Get

If you’re a turkey, and you’re getting boned-out, there’s a good chance you’re about to become Turducken, which in this chef’s opinion, is one of the most overrated recipes of all time. When was the last time you sat down in a restaurant and thought, “I hope the chef’s doing a turkey, duck, chicken trio.”

However, the idea of removing those pesky bones before your bird makes its grand entrance may be worth considering. Not only do you get an impressive looking roast to wow the table, but carving is significantly easier. I didn't have time to show here, but of course you are making a killer turkey stock with all those bones, so that's another advantage. Also, if you're worried about losing flavor, don't. This tastes virtually identical. 

If you’ve ever found yourself hacking up a perfectly good turkey in front of the family, while flop-sweat drips onto the mangled meat, then this approach may be for you. Sure, it takes a good hour to prep, but that’s pretty much where the hard work ends.  

These types of videos are near impossible to edit into any reasonable length, but the good news is this is a lot easier to do than I make it look. Just go slow, and keep that knife against the bone, and you’ll be fine. By the way, chickens make an affordable and delicious thing to practice on.

I’ve included my “prop” stuffing below, which was great. It’s more the style you’d see in a stuffed pork chop, but as I said in the video, your favorite stuffing will work beautifully.

I’ve also posted a bonus video below that goes into more detail on the tying technique. So, if you’re looking for a new and exciting challenge for Thanksgiving, I hope you give this a try. Enjoy!

Notes:

• My turkey was about 15 pounds, but this will work on any sized bird.
• I wanted to try salt only on the outside, without butter or oil, like in our salt chicken recipe, just to see what would happen, but nothing did. So, feel free to slather on the butter.
• You’ll need about 3-4 cups of prepared stuffing depending on the turkey.
• My pan sauce was nothing more than the drippings with a big splash of cream, reduced until slightly thickened, and strained.  

Procedure:

Start in a 450 F.  oven for 15 minutes

Reduce to 325 F. until you get an internal temperature of 150 F. (mine took about 1 1/2 hours more)

For the stuffing I used:

1 1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup finely minced onions, sautéed golden

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup golden raisins

1/2 cup turkey or chicken broth, or enough to moisten

salt and pepper to taste

1 tbsp chopped fresh sage

1 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon

2 tsp fresh thyme leaves

2 tsp fresh chopped rosemary leaves

Bonus Knot Tying Video

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The new back door

Happy Thursday friends, one of my favorite days of the week! I’m SO happy to share this final addition to our renovation with you today! It’s not done, so bear with me because there’s a lot left to do. But I’m excited about how it’s looking and that we’re done with this reno!

So if you’re new here – this past summer we took a wall down between my office and our family room to give us more space. You can see the completed space here. :) What we didn’t realize till we knocked down the wall was how much this was going to completely transform our kitchen as well.

So part of the plan was to tweak the bay window area a bit, where our back door used to be:

It’s now all windows and ready for me to build the window seat. Yum.

We decided to move the back door over to where the double windows in the room are:

It just made more sense overall – that window just felt like the logical spot for the door when everything shifted.

Here’s an idea of how where that window was in the old space:

(OH my goodness, look how little my baby was there!!)

The sectional sat up against it, which I didn’t mind too much but try to avoid if I can.

So here’s the thing – we ordered the windows for the bay area and the new door at the same time from Lowe’s. The windows were coming in in a couple weeks. The door was going to take 28 days. I never expected either one of them to come in on time, just because I’m no spring chicken. ;)

Well the windows came in on time but they never called to tell us, so on the fourth week I stopped by to check on the status of things. They told me the door was scheduled to be delivered that week, exactly on time. Whoot! I was so excited, so we picked up the windows and went ahead and had those installed.

Before they replaced our back door with the third window I called Lowe’s again – and they told me that the door would be in that day. So I had the guys go ahead, knowing it would only be a day or two before the new door went in.

We never got a call so I called again later and they told me again in was in…but it wasn’t. ;) It was delayed a little over a week, which was annoying but fine, not a biggie, #firstworldproblems. But a week turned into two, three…four. :) Finally this week it came in.

It took the guys just over half a day to get it in and when I walked into the room I LOVED it!:

It was worth the wait. :) It is exactly how I envisioned it – it makes total sense in that spot. Only one side of the door opens – the other is stationary. I just felt like this way would be more secure. I had dreams of having two doors opened up to the deck and having the warm breeze waft in…and then I woke up and realized we have four animals that we’d never see again. Ha!

You can see in that pic how much work I have left to do – they are framing out the door today in my Craftsman style trim and then I’ll paint. I also have to finish that wall to the right with the base and board and batten that goes throughout the rest of the room.

That speaker isn’t being used anymore so I need to patch that drywall as well. I think it’s going to look so beautiful when it’s all done! I can’t wait!

Our main floor windows are super tall, 72 inches. Because of that we had a big space to fill – instead of having them fill in the area above the door with drywall I had it made with a transom. It adds a nice detail:

Here’s how this area looked a few weeks ago:

And here it is now:

Sorry about light – I had to take the pics in morning (bright) light before the guys got here to work.

Although I think my favorite before and after is this one from a couple years ago:

It still is crazy to me how far our family room used to sit in what is now kitchen space for us:

Goodness, I’m so excited to finish this up and make it look pretty and I’m so excited that after today there will be no one working in our house for a very long time. Well, other than me. ;)

I have big plans for the outside as well:

The siding will go back up today when it warms up a bit. I want to build some kind of decorative cover over the door since the door opens out instead of in. I knew it would take up valuable floor space to have it open in. We didn’t have any coverage over the old door and it was fine but I think it would be nice. I don’t want to block the sun though, that’s the only thing.

I see this spot with big beautiful planters on either side next summer too. Can’t wait! We are also having a new porch light installed to the left of the doors. So overall we’ve added two additional lights to the back of the house and more light is always nice.

Of COURSE I plan on painting the doors black on the inside. ;) All of our interior doors (at least on the main floor) are and I know it will look stunning. The only problem is the panes on the transom are inside the window – but I think I have a solution for that. Stay tuned. :)

I can’t wait to get this finished up and start on the rest of the kitchen next year! Whoo!! Oh, and by the way, the windows were ordered were Pella and they came in right on time. This door is Jeld-Wen and I’m not thrilled so far. Not only because of the delay (it was an issue on their end, not Lowe’s). It’s a good solid door but they really cut corners on things like the trim. You can kind of tell in the pic above that the exterior trim is a mess – it’s all getting redone. Thankfully Lowe’s covered the cost of all the new trim.

At least we didn’t have a big hole in the house! Living without a back door for a month wasn’t a big deal. Have you ever had a reno mishap that you didn’t plan for? I knew this whole thing went way too well. ;)

Singapore Chili Crabs – King of the Crab Recipes?

Living in San Francisco, I’ve had more than my fair share of crab; prepared in more ways than I can remember, but I’ve never enjoyed it more than in this Singapore-style chili crabs recipe. Just be sure to have lots of napkins around. Lots of napkins.

Apparently, this is the national dish of Singapore, and you can’t throw a rock without hitting someone eating a plate of it. By the way, that’s not something you’d want to try. Just ask Michael P. Fay.

As far as I can tell, there’s no one standard way to make this. Besides the crab, and some kind of tomato product, I couldn’t find two recipes alike. What you see here is my take on this, but it does contain many of the most typical ingredients.

Most are easy to find, except maybe the tamarind paste, although any high-end grocery chain should stock some in their international foods section. If you can’t find it, maybe add a little extra pinch of sugar, plus the juice and zest of one lemon.

Obviously the most important ingredient is the crab, so find something really nice. The store up the street had a special on freshly steamed, Dungeness crab, so that’s what I used here, but any similar variety will work. 

If you can somehow get live crabs, that’s the ultimate choice, but I know that’s not realistic for most of you. The good news is, this is incredibly delicious either way. I really hope you give this Singapore-style chili crabs recipe a try soon. Enjoy!

Please Note: My friends in Singapore tell me they serve this with at least twice the amount of sauce, and a type of fried roll to soak up the goodness with. So, if you want to rock the chili crab like a Singaporean, then you should probably double the sauce ingredients!

Ingredients for four appetizer size portions:

2 whole cooked Dungeness crabs (about 2-3 lbs. each), cleaned and cracked

2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/4 cup minced shallots, or other onion

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp minced fresh ginger root

1 tbsp minced serrano pepper

For the sauce:

1/2 cup tomato ketchup

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

1 tablespoon tamarind paste

2 tablespoon sambal (or any spicy ground chili sauce)

2 tsp fish sauce

2 tsp palm sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup chicken broth or water

Finish with:

2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

2 tbsp sliced green onions (the green parts) or 1 tbsp sliced chives

EASY image transfer method

Hello my friends! I’m back today with a REALLY simple way to transfer words or images onto basically anything! I was so excited to find this tutorial because I used to do this by stenciling it – so I would use an X acto knife to cut out each letter and then use it as a stencil and paint.

This method is SO so so much easier, and much quicker. Whoot!

I did a little holiday message on our chalkboard to show how this is done. I found this tutorial on this YouTube page so if you want a visual be sure to check that out.

I started by figuring out what font I wanted for my words. I just use Word – easy is my key word here. :) For the advent calendar I showed you yesterday I used a sharpie for the letters, but I knew I was using chalk for this one so I wanted the letters nice and fat:

Obviously because they were so big the words were broken up on the page. You’ll want to cut them down so they’ll fit together on your surface.

The only problem with that is matching them up when you tape them to the wall or whatever else you’re transferring to:

I just eyeball it. The lettering on my advent is not perfectly straight but it adds to the charm. Or something. :)

So this where the easy comes in – grab some chalk. If you’re transferring to a light surface you can use colored chalk. For a darker surface white is perfect. Just flip up your image and “color” the back:

You don’t need to do the whole thing, just cover the letters.

Here’s how it looks after you’re done coloring with the chalk:

You can blow the excess off – you’ll still have enough to transfer.

Then flip it back down (I tape the other side so it stays put) and then just trace your letters or image with a ball point pen:

That’s IT! SO much easier! My surfaces were a little bumpy but the great thing is you don’t have to be exact. You can fix it later if you are tracing over it again. :)

Here’s a better shot of how I traced:

Again, if you mess up, not a big deal.

When you pull up the paper you will have an outline:

Brilliant. I was afraid all that chalky dust would be all over but it doesn’t transfer – just where you trace.

Awesome!:

So you can leave it as is – I actually love that lighter look. I wanted something that would stand out a little more for our chalkboard so I traced with a chalk pen:

Then I filled it in with real chalk to get that look.

I have a couple different types of these pens – the Chalk Ink are my favorite and I am pretty sure you can only get those online. Anyone know if they are in stores now? The Bistro version is at most craft stores and they are OK, I just don’t love them as much:

It still takes some time but it’s nothing compared to cutting out the stencil like I used to do. It took me maybe 30 minutes to do this one?

Now that I know how to do this I may actually put some cute stuff on my chalkboard from time to time!:

Side note – since that year I spelled Christmas as “Chirstmas” on our cards that went out to everyone we know I’m always looking at it 15 times to make sure it’s right. Haha!! 

I love it! What a fun way to add some seasonal fun to your chalkboard! I’m not great at free handing that stuff so this is great to know. And of course the possibilities are endless with wood – you could go crazy with fonts and do fun signs or art. And it’s practically free!

Here’s how the letters on the advent came out with the sharpie marker:

There you go! An easy and cheap way to transfer just about anything to just about anything. :) I hope this all made sense!

Have you tried this method on anything? Have you done this any other way? Do tell!