I Cook Differently

For diverse reasons, the traditional Thanksgiving-Dinner-in-Germany didn't happen this year. And good friends didn't get their St.-Martin's-Day-Goose cooked, either. Since we gave her - an English teacher - a Better Home's and Garden's Cookbook for her birthday, we decided to do a bird today.

We actually couldn't find a smallish bird, so we are "making do" with 12 pounds. Lots of leftovers coming up! We are cooking at their place, as they have two ovens, and I've been collecting up my stuff to take with me while making the pumpkin pies this morning. Collecting up turkey stuff is hard, as I only use it once a year and it gets pushed to the back of the drawers (yuck, they need cleaning).

Anyway, I normally cook with Better Home's and Garden's - it's a cookbook I was given as a wedding present, it is old, torn, spotted - i.e. well-used. I started to cook with it when I moved to Germany, and discovered that many of my Grandmother's good stuff was in here. So for many, many years cooking involved getting out the BH&G and getting started (even though I own a good many other cookbooks).

But today - as often in the past - after looking at the BH&G I went online. Googled a bit. Clicked away the stupid collections of advertising posing as recipes. And found a good idea here, a nice addition here. And I ended up making a blended recipe, sort of as if I had called 3 friends to ask them how *they* made thus-and-such, and then I put together my own synthesis out of that.

The Cranberry Relish I made a few days ago was delicious (cranberries, navel oranges, walnuts - turned out I had candied ones, so I dropped some of the sugar, raisins soaked in rum). Let's see how the pies turn out.

I suppose I now have a reason for going out to get a computer for the kitchen.